et Vetera Nova Spring 2022 • Volume 20, Number 2 The English Edition of the International Theological Journal Co-Editors Matthew Levering, Mundelein Seminary Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Associate Editors Holly Taylor Coolman, Providence College Gilles Emery, O.P., University of Fribourg Paul Gondreau, Providence College Scott W. Hahn, Franciscan University of Steubenville Thomas S. Hibbs, Baylor University Reinhard Hütter, Catholic University of America Christopher Malloy, University of Dallas Bruce D. Marshall, Southern Methodist University Charles Morerod, O.P., Bishop of Lausanne, Geneva, and Fribourg John O’Callaghan, University of Notre Dame Chad C. Pecknold, Catholic University of America Michael S. Sherwin, O.P., Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas 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, Catholic University of America Stephen Brock, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross Peter Casarella, Duke University Divinity School 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., Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas 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, University of Notre Dame 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 Spring 2022 Vol. 20, No. 2 Tract for the Times The Holy Eucharist as Contemplative Encounter with God. . . . . Anonymous 365 Commentary The Christian Meaning of Suffering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . John M. McDermott, S.J. 373 Munificentissimus Deus and the Unity of Body and Soul. . . . . . . Kevin Raedy 403 Articles “Arise, Let Us Leave This Place”: John 14:31b and Pseudo-Epiphanius. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Heintz 421 The Good of Authority in the Theology of Matthias Joseph Scheeben. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Patrick Auer Jones 433 A Deeper Look at Aquinas’s First Way. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gaven Kerr 461 The Relation of Metaphysics to the Secondary Object of Revelation, and the Analogy of Being as the Metaphysical Framework for Sacra Doctrina. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Steven A. Long 485 The Human Intellect as the Natural Herald of a Natural Divine Institution.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Angel Perez-Lopez 513 Congar’s Imperfect Critique of “Hierarchiology”. . . . . . . Ephrem Reese, O.P. 545 Symposium On The Incarnate Lord Thomistic-Balthasarian Comments on Thomas Joseph White’s The Incarnate Lord. . . . . . . . . . . . . Angela Franks 575 Response to The Incarnate Lord.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Ian A. McFarland 601 A Schleiermacherian Rejoinder to Thomas Joseph White’s The Incarnate Lord. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joshua Ralston 613 White’s The Incarnate Lord: An Appreciative Interaction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chris Tilling 629 On the Ecumenical Work of Reforming Christology: Sacra Doctrina, Analogia Entis, and Kenosis....... Thomas Joseph White, O.P . 649 Book Reviews The Theology of Benedict XVI: A Protestant Appreciation, edited by Tim Perry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Emil Anton 673 Joseph Ratzinger and the Healing of the Reformation-Era Divisions, edited by Emery de Gaál and Matthew Levering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Emil Anton 675 The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman, edited by Frederick D. Aquino and Benjamin J. King. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Elizabeth A. Huddleston 679 A Greek Thomist: Providence in Gennadios Scholarios by Matthew C. Briel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reinhard Hütter 683 To Stir a Restless Heart: Thomas Aquinas and Henri de Lubac on Nature, Grace, and the Desire for God by Jacob Wood. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kevin E. Jones 688 The Experiment of Faith: Pope Benedict XVI on Living the Theological Virtues in a Secular Age by Matthew J. Ramage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jean-Paul Juge 693 The Cleansing of the Heart: The Sacraments as Instrumental Causes in the Thomistic Tradition by Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joshua H. Lim 696 Aquinas’s Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance by Matthew Levering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kevin E. O’Reilly, O.P. 700 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 978-1-64585-245-2) is published quarterly by St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, 1468 Parkview Circle, Steubenville, OH 43952. Nova et Vetera is distributed to institutional subscribers for the St. Paul Center by the Catholic University of America Press. Institutional subscriptions, notifications of change of address, and inquiries concerning subscriptions, back issues, and missing copies should be sent to: JHUP Journals Division, PO Box 19966, Baltimore, MD 21211-0966. All materials published in Nova et Vetera are copyrighted by St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. © Copyright 2022 by St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. All rights reserved. POSTMASTER: Please send address change to Nova et Vetera, 1468 Parkview Circle, Steubenville, OH 43952. Periodical Postage Paid at Steubenville, OH. This periodical is indexed in the ATLA Catholic Periodical and Literature Index® (CPLI®), a product of the American Theological Library Association, 300 S. Wacker Dr., Suite 2100, Chicago, IL 60606, USA. Email: atla@atla.com, www.atla.com and is indexed and abstracted in the Emerging Sources Citation Index. Nova et Vetera Subscription Rates: • Individuals: one-year $40.00, two-year $75.00 International: one-year $60.00, two-year $115.00 • Students: one-year $30.00, two-year $50.00 International: one-year $40.00, two-year $70.00 • Colleges, Universities, Seminaries, and Institutions: one-year $110.00, one-year print + electronic subscription $150.00 International: one-year $135.00 To subscribe online, please visit http://www.nvjournal.net. For subscription inquiries, email us at novaetvetera@stpaulcenter.com or phone 740-264-9535. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2022): 365–372 365 Tract for the Times 2 The Holy Eucharist as Contemplative Encounter with God At the Church of San Domenico in Naples, and now in his last years, St. Thomas Aquinas frequently visited a side chapel of St. Nicholas in the early hours before Matins. The story is told that Dominic of Caserta, the Dominican church sacristan, hid one night to observe Thomas in prayer and saw him elevate “almost two cubits in the air” while Thomas was weeping and speaking to the crucifix on the wall of the chapel. The words Thomas spoke in prayer were not kept, but the words from the figure of Christ on the Cross did enter into history. “Thomas, you have written well about me. What reward will you have?” And Thomas quickly replied: “Lord, nothing but yourself.”1 William of Tocco, the early biographer of St. Thomas Aquinas, recounted that Thomas was writing the third part of the Summa theologiae at this time in Naples. In fact, it is possible by that night that Thomas had completed his magnificent treatise on the Holy Eucharist in questions 73–83, and plausible as well that Thomas wept in front of that crucifix with a sense of the inadequacy of human words before the unutterable mystery of the Lord’s Presence in the Eucharist. The reply of Thomas to what he might want as a reward—only you, Lord, nothing else—is a fitting reminder to all who come to love the Eucharist that there is nothing more desirable than our immediate contact with the bodily Presence of Jesus Christ himself in this unique Sacrament. The mystery of the Eucharist invites us to ponder a revealed truth that calls for a deep response of soul. For the fervent Catholic believer, we might say that a detached spirit of discussion toward the Eucharist is 1 James Weisheipl, O.P., Friar Thomas D’Aquino: His Life, Thought, and Work (New York: Doubleday, 1974), 316. 366 Anonymous inappropriate, even unworthy. The mystery is too attractive, too personal and privileged, to remain confined within the bounds of a doctrinal examination. Serious thought about the Eucharist brushes up against the sublime transcendence of a mystery that is nonetheless physically near us with every entry we make through the doorway of a Catholic church. Our divine Lord is in our midst, never far away, and we are invited to touch and taste, to draw closer in love, to consume and adore. It is a perennial Catholic truth that doctrine and spirituality feed each other, unite and reinforce each other. This is especially true in regard to the Eucharist. As such, a kind of contemplative appreciation for the theological truths pertinent to the doctrine of the Eucharist can open our soul to a different personal engagement with Our Lord’s gift of himself in this sacramental reality. After pondering the Eucharistic truth more fully, we may find ourselves, before the Blessed Sacrament, or in the reception of Holy Communion, more often silent in his Presence, aware that we want only him, nothing more, longing in the immediacy of his Presence only for himself. Certain aspects of Catholic teaching on the Eucharist, clarified in the Tradition, deserve particular notice. Spiritual fruits and a deeper love for the Eucharist may follow. I recall a conversation with a Catholic permanent deacon, a convert from Lutheranism, where he had been a minister of his church, who insisted that he already believed in the Real Presence of the Eucharist long before his conversion to Catholicism. In making this claim, he was faithful to his Lutheran forebears. Martin Luther, in apostasy, affirmed the reality of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ present after the words of “consecration” in the Lutheran service. What the Lutheran teaching also proclaims, however, is that the Body and Blood of Christ are present in the reality of the bread and wine on an altar. In this heretical view the bread and wine do not undergo a change from being bread and wine, but rather become containers, as it were, vehicles for the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ to be received. The evident distortion of Catholic doctrine in this illustration—by contrast, bread and wine in a Catholic Mass are changed entirely, completely, totally, in their substantial reality into the Body and Blood of Christ—conveys an important truth that may not be honored sufficiently among Catholics. That is to say, the Catholic doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is a distinct teaching from the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. Even as the latter truth, in Catholic understanding, is the source of the former truth, they are nonetheless capable of being sadly separated, as in the case of Luther, the one truth believed without the other also held in divine faith. The evidence of this unfortunate approach toward the Eucharist is perhaps Tract for the Times 2 367 observed in every casual and disrespectful treatment of the sacred Host when placed in the hands of communicants at Mass. Unfortunately, belief in the Real Presence may also be absent in such cases. The Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, while distinct as a doctrine, is nonetheless supernaturally conjoined to the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In one sense transubstantiation can be called a term of precise theological explication. An offshoot, as it were, of Aristotelian metaphysical terminology, dating back at least to 1140, and as such long before St. Thomas Aquinas employed it in the third part of the Summa theologiae, “transubstantiation,” for all its abstract connotation, is a term referring to nothing less than the miraculous. A divine act takes place in every Mass whereby the bread and wine as particular substances on the altar change at the words of the consecration into the Body and Blood of Christ. The realization of God’s Presence in act at the altar, and then of his immediate Presence after the consecration in the Person of Jesus Christ, is a contemplation of mystical realities. Transubstantiation itself is an act of God piercing the fabric of temporal reality at each Mass. Our senses are blind in that hour, prostrate with incomprehension before the action of the eternal God penetrating time and entering a place. We are summoned to adore that sacred instant in the Mass when the consecration takes place inasmuch as God acts in that moment. The Mass as a direct act of God demands as such a sacred awareness beyond mere reverence. Our familiarity with the Mass ought not to make us forget how men in the past remained overwhelmed at the action of God parting the waters of the Red Sea, or when they saw a dead man named Lazarus walk out of a tomb, or when they met a Virgin who had conceived a child at the miraculous condescension of God. We are in the presence of the miraculous at each Mass no less than men who witnessed the divine miracles recounted in Scripture. The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist likewise calls for a further recognition in faith. We are in the presence of another distinct miracle at the lifting of the Host in Mass, or kneeling before a tabernacle or monstrance. We see bread elevated in the priest’s hands and raised above the altar, and yet there is no bread. The appearance of bread continues only by a miraculous intervention of God. Accidents, in Aristotelian metaphysics, cannot perdure without the substance in which they inhere also continuing in existence to sustain them. In the Eucharist the accidents of the substance of bread, their appearance and physical qualities, remain only inasmuch as a divine act keeps them miraculously in place, since no bread and wine exist after the consecration, only the reality of the Body, Blood, 368 Anonymous Soul, and Divinity of the Person of Jesus Christ under the sacramental sign. Our worship of the Host is never directed at what can be considered the sacred object before our eyes, but must pass beyond the veil of the appearance of bread to the reality of Our Lord himself. The Eucharist is thus not a sacred thing deserving respect, as sometimes may be unreflectively thought, but the invisible Presence of Our Lord in our immediate vicinity. The Host as sacred Bread serves as a sacramental sign allowing us to adore Our Lord in prayer and to consume him for the sake of union with him in Holy Communion. Another truth of Eucharistic doctrine can animate our spiritual awareness. Even as he is immediately present to us in the Eucharist, Jesus Christ does not leave heaven, but remains in his glorified Body at the right hand of the Father. He does not descend down to the altar at the consecration as though he departed from a location. In the countless Catholic Masses offered each day, he does not spread himself far and wide across the world as though his Body is multiplied and expanded in dimension. The proper understanding is that with each Mass he lifts up the bread and wine on the altar into himself at the consecration, changing them into himself, so that they no longer exist as bread and wine but have become himself under the sacramental sign. The sacramental signs of bread and wine are in effect a sacred veil hiding the miracle perpetually in our midst in Catholic life. In the Presence of the Eucharist, we already cross a threshold into eternity even in this life. We kneel before the Real Presence of Jesus Christ as he lives now glorified in heaven. This truth imposes a demand in faith that we grasp the special privilege of any time spent in prayer in a Catholic church before a tabernacle. We are with Our Lord and God as he is in heaven, even in our distracted or troubled circumstances of mind, body, and soul. The importance of the sacrificial action taking place in the Mass and extending beyond the Mass in its effects upon us is likewise a profound truth of the Eucharist. The notion of sacrifice has a precise meaning in the reality of this Sacrament. The sacrifice in this case is not a reenactment of the death of Jesus at Calvary, as though his suffering and death are repeated with each Mass. In that sense it is not proper to describe the Mass as a kind of mystical re-presentation of the dying of Christ. But neither is the Mass a mere commemoration of the past event with a link to Calvary only in remembrance. Rather, at each Mass Jesus as he lives now in heaven is the unseen Priest who offers himself sacrificially as a Victim to the Father for the redemption of the world. He did this once in a bloody sacrifice at Calvary, but he continues in heaven in his glorified state to make the same offering of himself as a sacrificial Victim. This offering takes place as the Tract for the Times 2 369 priest at the altar pronounces the words of consecration in persona Christi. The sacrificial action contained in the words of consecration spoken by a priest belongs to Jesus Christ the High Priest. It is real and effective as a sacrifice because the One offering it is truly present in the priest and is acting in a sacrificial manner by offering himself as a Victim. The twofold, separate consecration of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ places before our senses a sacramental re-presentation of this sacrificial immolation, a real image of what took place at Calvary: the separation of Jesus’s Blood from his Body in a sacrificial immolation on the Cross. The Blood “poured out for many,” repeated in the words of consecration at each Mass, invokes the reality of the death undergone by Our Lord as he ended his earthly life. Jesus Christ crucified, the Lamb who was once slain, who remains even in heaven marked by the wounds of his Passion, is really present at the altar after the consecration. We are in the presence, as St. Thomas Aquinas affirms, of “Christ himself who has suffered” (Summa theologiae III, q. 75, a. 1, corp.). It is indeed a striking reality of the Mass and of the Eucharist that we are in the Presence of the One who suffered personally for us. The Passion as a historical event took place within a limited passage of time that can be counted in hours, but nonetheless, in a certain sense, is a continuing reality that has left a permanent mark upon the humanity of Our Lord. In heaven, even in his glorified state, he remains the Victim of love which he became at Calvary. His incarnate being is perpetually identified with the sacrificial love he poured out at Calvary. For he continues to offer this same sacrifice to the Father in the Eucharist. A love that has suffered, that has been wounded by transgressions, is the reality of Christ’s humanity in heaven. This is the truth we encounter in the Presence of the Eucharist when we face him in love. It is not without significance that Our Lord showed himself with his wounds after the Resurrection. It is a Eucharistic truth as well that he comes to us with his sacrificial wounds. He gives himself to us as One wounded by love for us. In a statement to St. Faustina, Jesus said: “You are engraved as a deep wound in my heart” (Diary of St. Faustina, 1485). The sacrificial reality of the Eucharist hides its deeper meaning in this awareness of Jesus Christ offering his wounded love for us. When the medieval mystic St. Angela of Foligno asked Our Lord how she could please him more, he showed himself to her in his Passion and told her to “look at my wounds.” Our love for Our Lord deepens always with the return of our gaze upon his wounds of love. This repeated effort can become a steady aspiration in our approach to the Mass and the Eucharist. Finally, in considering the reception of the Holy Eucharist, we can 370 Anonymous pursue further insights from these previous reflections. If we recall the reply that St. Thomas Aquinas gave to Our Lord when asked what reward he would like—only you, Lord, nothing else—we have in these words a clear expression of what we ought to seek in the gift of the Eucharist. We might remember first that the Sacrament of Love is not meant simply for our comfort or consolation. The Real Presence we are receiving is the Lord who suffered for us, who remains always the One who offers himself as a Victim of love. The Mass itself is a profound action whereby our divine Lord draws souls, and indeed the entire Church, into a union with his own sacrificial love. Just as he lifts up bread and wine into himself as he now is in heaven, so, too, he wants to lift up our own offering of ourselves to a oneness with his being. When we speak of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, it is primarily a Eucharistic truth. The Church becomes the Body of Christ by offering the Eucharist and consuming Christ. He in turn receives us into himself when we receive him in a loving surrender of ourselves. To the degree we are taken into him, we become one with his own sacrificial love. In effect, the reception of Holy Communion is to receive the Passion of Christ into our lives. If we grow in love and faith, we will recognize more clearly that the sacrificial disposition of Christ’s love animates our lives more strongly and, indeed, transforms all suffering in our lives. A readiness to give ourselves to a sacrificial offering for others is a fitting consequence of the reception of the Eucharist when love is clearly present in our soul. We are drawn to enter into Our Lord’s own self-offering and ready to lay down our lives for others. A perennial truth of the Church is that it flourishes in holiness to the degree that souls in all walks of life are fervent in sacrificial self-giving, offering their sufferings for other souls. The strength for this spirit of self-offering comes from the Eucharist. Love ought to be the last word in any attempt to ponder the Sacrament of Love. A rhythm of receiving from God the gift of himself, succeeded by a flowing out in our own sacrificial self-giving, is a pattern in every life inflamed by love for the Eucharist. We might propose an example from the life of a contemporary saint. It is not surprising that St. Teresa of Calcutta would have a great love for the Eucharist that matched the dedicated outpouring of herself to the poor. She grasped the essential truth of the Eucharist in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ as Priest and Victim, and then found his Real Presence each day hiding in the disguise of misery and hardship in the poor. One day a consecrated Host at a Mass in the Motherhouse of the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta had accidentally fallen from the ciborium to the floor between the altar and the tabernacle. The priest had not noticed this. After being informed about the Host by a Tract for the Times 2 371 novice cleaning the chapel after Mass, Mother Teresa went to the chapel, approached the Eucharist on the floor, prostrated herself, and then knelt for some time in prayer before the Presence of her Lord and God lying on the floor, before placing the Host back in the tabernacle. What was in her prayer in those minutes? Perhaps the same words as St. Thomas—only you, Lord, nothing else? Or she might have pondered the thought of the presence of Jesus Christ in the poor people on the floors of misery throughout this world. The Eucharist cannot but lead us, if we love much, to realize that Jesus continues to show us his Passion until the end of time. Let us be ready, if we love him in the Eucharist, to allow him to show his Passion in our own personal lives. Eras in the Church differ, but each is defined in a certain sense by its relationship with the Mass and its love for the Eucharist. We live in a time of extreme contradiction and contrariety in this regard. It is a time of the most widespread prevalence of sacrilege in the Church’s history. This has coincided with sickening scandals in the priesthood and a diminished reverence toward the Eucharist to a degree that has no comparison in recent centuries. Yet at the same time the inflamed fervor of many souls in love with the Eucharist is quite pronounced. The Eucharist remains at the center of countless Catholic lives, in many hidden lives, both within religious congregations, among priests, and in the laity. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is a daily fixture in many of these lives. If we wonder what captures such souls, the answer is that the Real Presence of Our Lord takes hold of hearts that love him. Transubstantiation is not an abstruse doctrine in such lives, but a burning reality of truth. They are drawn to make their own the sacrificial offering of love which they encounter each day in the Mass, receiving the One who suffered for a world in desperate need of his Presence more than ever. They have found the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price, and nothing is more desirable in their lives. Jesus Christ has given himself to them, and they have learned to offer themselves in return. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2022): 373–402 373 The Christian Meaning of Suffering1 John M. McDermott, S.J. Sacred Heart Major Seminary Detroit, MI With its attendant travail mortality weighs heavily on man. Like all corruptible creatures composed of soul and body, he is born to die. Yet he alone knows his threatening fate. This fate, which he might postpone but can never evade by his own powers, reveals a strange rupture within his own being. His nature strives to perpetuate itself, but by the same nature he is doomed to death and corruption. As St. Paul wrote, “Wretched man that I am! Who can save me from this body of death?” (Rom 7:24). He was not the first to lament the calamity inherent in human existence. Our attempt at understanding commences by considering the responses of men to death and suffering apart from Christian revelation, contrasting ancient pagan with modern atheistic views. Once the problem of God’s relation to suffering is identified, we can examine suffering from a purely philosophical perspective. Third, Christ’s revelation illuminates suffering and indicates its positive meaning. Only in Christ, as understood within the full ambit of Catholic doctrine, does suffering find an explanation satisfying man’s head and heart. This answer serves to assuage human pain even as it lays the foundation for a Catholic apologetic in world wracked by dissension yet fearful of the Cross, mankind’s only salvation. 1 This article expands a lecture delivered most recently at the centenary celebration of Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit. The University of Notre Dame Press will publish its shorter form in Enter by the Narrow Gate: Contractions of the New Evangelization in the series Global Perspectives on the New Evangelization, edited by John Cavadini and Donald Wallenfang. I express gratitude to Laura Ring for suggested improvements and Victor Salas for philosophical clarifications. Neither agrees with everything in the article. Responsibility for errors is my own. 374 John M. McDermott, S.J. The Pagan Predicaments Classical Paganism: Gilgamesh and Achilles Since almost 2000 BC the myth of Gilgamesh was retold throughout Mesopotamia in Akkadian, Hittite, Hurrian, and Babylonian versions.2 In it, Gilgamesh, Uruk’s king, confronting death’s mystery, attempts to escape its doom. Two-thirds divine, one-third human, mighty Gilgamesh meets his equal in Enkidu, and from their struggle arise mutual respect and friendship. Together they decapitate the monster Huwawa and destroy the Bull of Heaven that was devastating the earth at the instigation of Ishtar, whom Gilgamesh insulted by refusing to become her consort. As punishment for killing the bull, the gods decree that one of the heroes must die; they decide on Enkidu. Distraught, Gilgamesh mourns his friend’s departure “to the house which none leave who have entered it” (7.4.34),3 a land bereft of light where food consists of dust and clay. Fear of death then invades him and he roams far from home in the effort to avoid his fate. The divine Siduri advises him to be content with his mortal lot and enjoy earthly pleasures: “When the gods created mankind, death for mankind they set aside, life in their own hands retaining” (10.3.1–4). But Gilgamesh persists and voyages over the waters of death to meet Utnapishtim, who promises immortality if Gilgamesh can resist sleep for six days and seven nights. The hero fails the challenge. In pity Utnapishtim reveals “a secret of the gods”: if Gilgamesh can pluck a particular plant from the sea’s depths, its eating will rejuvenate him. After consuming a morsel, Gilgamesh pauses on his return home to bathe in a cool well, leaving the plant aside. A serpent smells its fragrance, steals it, eats it, and sloughs off its skin. Despairing Gilgamesh laments his fate: “For whom . . . have my hands toiled? For whom is being spent the blood of my heart? I have not obtained a boon for myself ” (11.293–95). Homer’s Iliad similarly describes man’s plight. Doom hovers over all: “The generation of men is as the generation of leaves. The wind pours leaves upon the earth, but the vibrant forest generates others when spring becomes seasonally present. So one generation of men flourishes, another ceases” (6.146–48). Each lifetime harbors manifold woes, as Zeus 2 3 See Ancient Near Eastern Tests Relating to the Old Testament, ed. James Pritchard, 3rd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), 72–73. The translation of the reconstructed text follows on 73–97 of ANET and will be cited parenthetically here by tablet, section, and line or tablet and line. Unless otherwise noted, all English translations are my own; for the Old Testament, however, I rely on the RSV, while making occasional changes in view of the original. The Christian Meaning of Suffering 375 acknowledges: “Of all things that breathe and creep upon the earth none is more wretched than man” (17.446–47). That harsh truth is illustrated in Homer’s tale. Achilles loses his friend Patroclus at Hector’s hands while defending fellow Greeks against a Trojan onslaught. Informed by his goddess mother, Thetis, that if he reenters the fray, he will lose his life under Troy’s wall, Achilles accords greater weight than life to his duty to avenge a friend. Entering battle, he kills Hector and dishonors his body by dragging it behind his chariot. After Patroclus’s funeral games Achilles’s wrath retains Hector’s body. In pity benevolent gods preserve it from decay, and Zeus orders a reconciliation. Achilles bows to the divine command, and Priam, likewise acceding, gathers a ransom for Hector’s body. Entering Achilles’s tent as a suppliant, the Trojan king embraces the knees and kisses the hands that destroyed his son to request the corpse’s restitution. His presence reminds Achilles of Peleus, his father, whom he will never see again. Achilles’s heart is moved by the plight of the old man who lost his son and of his own father soon to lose his only son. Both weep at fate’s cruel blows, and Achilles reflects: “The gods destined poor mortals to live in grief, while they are themselves without care” (24.525– 26). He counsels the grieving father to bear disasters divinely sent: “Be stout. Let not your heart lament without abating, since your mourning can do nothing for your son, not raise him up, before you suffer another evil” (24.549–51). Priam reclaims Hector’s corpse and return it to Troy amid general lamentation. The world’s greatest epic concludes with a second funeral and the “burial of Hector, tamer of horses.” Those early sagas define the human condition: life begins with a cry, ends with a sigh, and in-between a world of woe does lie. Why did men not despair, but struggle to live on? One reason may lie in their expectation of the afterlife. Consuming dust and clay did not appeal to discerning palates in Gilgamesh’s audience. In the underworld Achilles’s shade informs Odysseus that it is preferable to be a poor farmer’s serf than to dominate the dead. His sole consolation comes from hearing of the glorious accomplishments of Neptolemus, his only son (Odyssey 11.488–91; 11.505–40). Wretched as is this life, the next shadowy existence is worse. Modern Revisions Current Western culture is far removed from its heroic age. Then people knew that life was challenging, often short and brutal, but they struggled not to leave it. Too many familial relations and friends depended upon them. Today in the United States, a bellwether for technological societies, the suicide rate among young people 17–25 has been climbing 376 John M. McDermott, S.J. even faster than in the general population, and males are four times more likely than females to end their lives. Approximately forty-seven thousand suicides occur annually, the second leading cause of death among youth 10–34. Almost 2 percent of youth 18–25 contemplated suicide in 2017. The suicide rate increased 31 percent in the period 2001–20017.4 Yet no previous generation was so richly endowed with technological improvements facilitating life’s tasks; medical expertise prevents and heals diseases or injuries which previously involved permanent impairment. Pain has been alleviated as never before. Yet people are obviously unhappy. Surveys reveal that 27 percent of the population rarely or never feel that anyone really understands them, and loneliness peaks in the 18–37 age group. In a 2019 survey, 61 percent of those polled say that they are lonely; among millennials the percentage climes to 71%, and for generation Z the loneliness index reaches 79 percent.5 And these dire statistics reflect a state of the country previous to the imposed Covid restrictions which aggravated societal isolation. Centuries earlier Aristotle remarked: “Without friends no one would choose to live.”6 Perhaps the privileged expectation of achieving happiness, whose pursuit the U.S. Declaration of Independence guarantees, leads to too many rebuffs. The heroic age embodied an aristocratic order; each had to accomplish challenging duties incumbent upon rank. Today’s egalitarian ideology breeds a sense of entitlement which mutates readily into a mentality of victimization: because I desire, yet lack what my equals possess, society conspires against me willfully or systemically. Such a mind-set, conducive to neither happiness nor achievement, augments frustration and anger. Revolutions generated in envy usually wind up devouring their children, a truth exemplified in Danton and Robespierre. During its revolution (1789–1804) France went from shouting “liberty, equality, fraternity” and “decapitate aristocrats” to “long live the emperor.” Any revolution promising justice is doomed to disappoint its devotees. Justice bifurcates into two principal types: commutative and distributive. The former treats everyone in abstract equality before the law, tit-for-tat; the latter treats all people according to their needs, skills, and achievements, that is, 4 5 6 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Suicides Rising across the US,” Vitalsigns, cdc.gov/vitalsigns/suicide; National Institute of Mental Health, NIMH, nimh.nih. gov/health/statistics/suicide.shtml. Cigna Insurance, CIGNA U.S. Loneliness Index, 2018, www.multivu.com/players/ English/8294451-cigna-us-loneliness-survey/docs/IndexReport_1524069371598173525450.pdf. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 8.1.1155a 5. The Christian Meaning of Suffering 377 differently according to situation, history, status, merit, and in view of the common good. Obviously what is justice to one is injustice to the other. Anyone raised in a family recognizes how children insist on strict equality in parental treatment when it is to their advantage, yet defend their privileges vis-à-vis siblings by pointing out differences in age, sex, achievement, experience, and so on, when benefits accrue to them. Analogously in civil society some groups insist on strict individual equality before the law and reward according to merit while others demand recompense for disabilities foisted upon their particular group in past times. Pure justice seems a utopian ideal.7 A comparison of heroic and present ages reveals very different family experiences. The ancients knew parents and relatives. Patronymics identified them. Family, clan, and city-state provided a sense of secure belonging. Fathers and mothers ruled families. Modern Western society, precisely qua egalitarian, isolates individuals. In my youth people identified themselves by surname and baptismal name; today people habitually introduce themselves by their first name alone. Often American college students do not know their friends’ family names. Technology doubtless contributes to isolation. Students regularly wander around campus staring into iPhones and punching out crabbed attempts at intelligible communication; they fail to notice the wider world.8 Isolation is intensified through the family’s decay. While in the Unite States the divorce rate has been gradually lessening from the 1990s, when over half of marriages seemed doomed to dissolution, a main reason is the decline in the number of marriages. People enter various cohabitations instead. Unfortunately these temporary alliances are becoming ever more transient. Sadly, painful consequences persist. Children from broken homes are four times more likely to suffer divorces in their own marriages than children from stable families, not to mention more out-of-wedlock pregnancies, transient cohabitations, lower academic and professional achievements, and general 7 8 The volume Equality: Selected Readings, ed, Louis Pojman and Robert Westmoreland (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), offers a broad gamut of diverse interpretations of “equality.” Underlying the confusion rests the philosophical conundrum of the one and the many, same and different, continuous and discontinuous, infinite and finite, absolute and relative, etc., which manifests itself in the physical sciences; see John McDermott, S.J., “Mystery of Matter,” Angelicum 87 (2010): 993–1014; McDermott, “Matter, Modern Science, and God,” Angelicum 88 (2011): 481–508. A hierarchical society has its own problems, but that is matter for another study. The abolition of the distinction between “Mrs.” and “Miss” in social addresses witnesses the egalitarian reduction of everyone to amorphous, unrelated individuals. Now that some wish to delete gender references, it is no wonder that people become confused. 378 John M. McDermott, S.J. insecurity and unhappiness.9 How can anyone be happy when a basic human relation is destroyed, especially if solemn pledges of fidelity were given? How can one overlook one’s own children deprived of a parent? Many unhappy, even guilty people must be walking around America’s cities and villages, and their children often find themselves unmoored and rudderless in the swirling tides of accelerated societal change, as the media permeates conscious life and post-modern academe, the media’s nursemaid, insists that meaning is created by will and language.10 Current secular society finds itself in a contradiction, caught between modernism and post-modernism. On one hand people justify trespassing traditional moral norms by insisting on their freedom to do what they feel like doing, that is, doing what comes naturally; the Enlightenment jettisoned original sin, freeing philosophes to “follow their nature,” to seek happiness, to encourage self-love, to embrace passions, pride, and sexual pleasure, even in promiscuity.11 Modern seekers of “self-fulfillment” are the 9 10 11 Jane Anderson, “The Impact of Family Structure on the Health of Children: Effects of Divorce,” Linacre Quarterly 81 (2014): 379–83; Wayne Parker, “Key Statistics about Kids from Divorced Families: What Research Tells Us about the Effect of Divorce on Children,” verywellfamily, July 15, 2020, verywellfamily.com/children–of-divorce-inamerica-statistics-1270390; Children-and-Divorce.com, “Children of Divorce Statistics” children-and-divorce.com/children-divorce-statistics.html. Paul Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (New York: Doubleday, 1966), a popular textbook, presents a society choosing its own values without reference to nature or any objective structure. Statements are made apodictically, e.g.: “Humanness is socio-culturally variable. In other words, there is no human nature in the sense of a biologically fixed substratum determining the variability of sociocultural formations. . . . Man constructs his own nature, or more simply, . . . man produces himself ” (49). Even more simply: “Society is a human product. Society is an objective reality. Man is a social product” (61). Hence language must be controlled: “Language provides the fundamental superimposition of logic on the objectivated [sic] social world” (64). “In sexual matters, man is capable of almost anything,” since “human sexuality is characterized by a very high degree of pliability” (49). The authors never inquire which societies function better. Apparently sociology can establish no objective standard of judgment. John Bowlby’s psychological studies, however, show how a child’s early attachment to both parents explains success and satisfaction in later life; A Secure Base (New York: HarperCollins, 1988) well summarizes his attachment theory explicated in his publications. Sociology digressed even further from scientific “objectivity” after Berger and Luckmann. Instead of describing the world, sociologists seek to change it, see Jackson Toby, “Left-Wing Politics and the Decline of Sociology,” The Wall Street Journal, January 26–27, 2019, A15. They have become partisan, ideological politicians. Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, vol. 2 (New York: Knopf, 1969), 170–74, 187–207, 281–82, 303–4, 526–27; Paul Hazard, European Thought in the The Christian Meaning of Suffering 379 Enlightenment’s heirs. On the other hand they insist that, since man is free, transcending nature, he should create his own values. This view devolves from the Enlightenment’s equation of nature with Newton’s mechanistic physics; man, standing above nature, can manipulate it to fulfill his needs. But such transcendental freedom changes nature and thus abrogates the laws of physics. With mechanistic physics’s demise under Einstein’s theory of relativity in the macro-physical realm and Heisenberg’s postulation of indeterminism in micro-physics, the notion of universal natural laws has been radically questioned. So much does man consider himself nature’s master that he even undertakes to alter his gender. Existential philosophers, like Sartre, noting man’s inability to grasp the individual as such, deny universal concepts the ability to grasp reality. Since existence— self-conscious individuality—precedes essence, the notion of an objective order grounded in natures is outmoded. Readers are urged to create their own values by arbitrary choices. “To choose to be this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the good, and nothing can be good for us without being good for all. . . . Man makes himself.”12 Unfortunately individuals rarely agree on what the good entails and resist its imposition by others. Sartre interprets life as a struggle to prevent the Other from objectivizing and thereby controlling oneself, even as one’s subjectivity strives to protect itself by objectivizing the dangerous Other. His play “No Exit” culminates in the insight, “Hell is—other people!”13 Similarly post-modern professors, like Michel Foucault, undercut universal scientific knowledge by insisting on the relativity and arbitrariness of abstract categories applied to nature.14 Nonetheless science’s success in controlling nature heightens expectations of happiness. If man can tame rivers, conquer disease, and fly to the moon, why can’t he create a perfect society of satisfied desires? Sadly, frustration facilely tempts to drugged euphoria. In freedom’s name Americans vote for unimpeded access to marijuana, whose employment deprives them of freedom’s exercise. Even worse, almost twenty million Americans—almost 12 13 14 Eighteenth Century, trans. J. May (Cleveland, OH: World, 1963), 14–25, 162–69. Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Human Emotions, trans. B. Frechtman (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957), 19–21, 47. See also Sartre, Being and Nothingness, trans. H. Barnes (New York: Washington Square, 1966 [originally 1953]), 340–65, 474–93. Jean-Paul Sartre, “No Exit,” trans. S. Gilbert, in No Exit and Three Other Plays (New York: Random House, 1973 [originally 1949]), 47. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (New York: Random House, 1973 [originally 1971]), xi–xii, xxi–xxiii, 157–62. The same tension existed in the Enlightenment, but most philosophers refused to recognize it. 380 John M. McDermott, S.J. 7 percent of the population over the age of 12—suffer some form of substance abuse, be it drugs or alcohol.15 They cannot do what they want to do; they fettered their freedom. God and the Problem of Suffering: The Context of the Atheistic Protest Perhaps the greatest contrast between the heroic age and our own consists in diverse attitudes toward the divinity. Gilgamesh and Achilles knew that the gods could arbitrarily, even unjustly intervene into human affairs. Yet they recognized the need to obey them lest worse befall themselves. Born into a world of obvious, superhuman, established natural powers, they could hardly imagine that forces superior to themselves would be less than conscious and free. They accommodated themselves, obeying and offering sacrifice to propitiate the immortals. Current secular culture, having suffered religious wars and fearing lest sectarian differences result in societal conflict, banishes God from public policy. God’s absence from public consciousness easily results in denial of His existence. What exercises no pragmatic effect is readily ignored. Ludwig Feuerbach reduced God to a projection of human need, opening the path to Karl Marx’s insistence that man make himself in his own image and create heaven on earth. Apparently Christian monotheism’s triumph over polytheism invited its reversal. Paradoxically the most brazen rejections of God arise in the culture formed by the biblical tradition. For the Bible confronts man with an ineluctable choice: his eternal salvation or damnation is at stake. Mesopotamian and Greek divinities had their disputes, affairs, and deceptions which involved human beings willy-nilly. Woe betide you if Hera went into a huff or if, like Hippolytus, you snubbed Aphrodite. It was hard to live in a universe of squabbling gods, when the unexplained thunderbolt might emerge from above at any moment. Monotheism offers a great advantage in simplifying human lives. Moses’s words recognize the basis of Jewish religion and furnish the daily prayer of pious Jews: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut 6:4–5). If only one God exists, men can unify their lives in His service; they need not worry about foreign forces derailing them. All stands under God’s control. But that advantage can metamorphose 15 J. Bose, S. Hedden, R. Lipari, E. Park-Lee, and SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration), Key Substance Use and Mental Health Indicators in the United States: Results from the 2017 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/cbhsq-reports/NSDUHFFR2017/ NSDUHFFR2017.pdf. The Christian Meaning of Suffering 381 into a problem: why does God allow the virtuous to suffer? This question is all the more pressing when, unlike many Buddhists or Hindus, one believes in a personal God. Despite the Enlightenment’s initial, rational optimism, Job’s dilemma resurfaced in Western society with Pierre Bayle, Voltaire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, especially after the 1755 Lisbon earthquake.16 Militant Marxism insisted on the incongruity of a good God and human suffering. Passionate protests assailed a deaf heaven when the industrial revolution accentuated the proletariat’s sufferings, and rage intensified when social crusaders depicted the innocent sufferings of children tormented for others’ sins. Perhaps no one denounced the Christian dilemma more poignantly than Ivan Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s embodiment of atheistic socialism. He refused to accept a world in which innocent children must suffer. Yet Dostoevsky, an Orthodox believer, eviscerated Ivan’s complaint by inserting into it internal contradictions and by portraying his mental collapse under the strain of guilt, which reason could not absolve. He concluded The Brothers Karamazov with a reconciliation achieved by Alyosha’s free acceptance of suffering love, a ringing affirmation of the resurrection, and three cheers for Karamazov.17 Nonetheless, twentieth-century epigones, failing to perceive Dostoevsky’s pious purpose, re-enkindled Ivan’s passion. Albert Camus directed a theatrical presentation of The Brothers Karamazov, reserving Ivan’s role for himself. He so identified with Ivan that he considered Dostoevsky the first thinker to understand rebellion, allegedly more at ease with Ivan than with Alyosha. Camus championed Ivan’s cause in The Plague, employing the plague to portray the suffocation felt by all who confront evil, especially innocent suffering. After witnessing a child’s tormented death, the Jesuit Paneloux refuses to abandon belief in God: “We must believe everything or deny everything. And who, among you, I ask, would dare to deny everything?” When Dr. Rieux, the secularist hero, feels “mad revolt” in the face of evil, the priest invites him: “That sort of thing [the child’s death] is revolting because it passes our human understanding. But perhaps we should love what we cannot understand.” Rieux rejects the 16 17 Hazard, European Thought, 309–10, 316–24. F. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. A. MacAndrew (New York: Bantam, 1981 [originally 1970]), 280–96, 933–36. Among the internal contradictions are: Ivan’s postulation of God in order to complain about the world He created; Ivan’s protest in behalf of innocent children despite his claim that they are not in solidarity with adults, not of the same essence; his initial demand for truth, but not at the cost of suffering; his protest for love of humanity while upholding the impossibility of loving one’s neighbor. 382 John M. McDermott, S.J. plea, declaring: “No, Father. I’ve a very different idea of love. And until my dying day I shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which children are put to torture.” Ultimately Paneloux’s faith in a recompense beyond this world alienates him from others in the struggle against evil; he dies, a “doubtful case.” Since the sufferings of children are inexcusable, Camus affirmed life’s absurdity, finding meaning only in rebellion against the sufferings suffusing human existence.18 More calmly the linguistic analyst Anthony Flew challenged believers to justify their belief in a loving God. If God really loves us like a father, why does He remain so distant from our world? A human father does everything possible to save his child racked by inoperable cancer, but his heavenly Father does nothing. This heavenly Father is either incapable of changing things or unconcerned. If the former, He is not God. If the latter, men should be unconcerned about Him.19 The Secular Impasse Complaining is always easier than discovering and implementing practical answers. Camus admitted that for secular man there is no resolution to the tension between the demands of justice and the need of freedom; man is always tempted to become God and impose a totalitarian vision. Hence the struggle against totalitarianism permits no conclusion; in the final analysis unrequited suffering remains—and perpetual rebellion. Yet Ivan Karamazov confesses, “I don’t believe that it is possible to live in rebellion—and I want to live!”20 Most secularists are not so clear-sighted. Secularism finds God otiose except when it wants to complain. Complaining obscures its own inability to handle suffering, its own Achilles heel. Secularism cannot respond adequately to suffering, and that incapacity is, one suspects, the deepest reason for the culture of death which John Paul 18 19 20 A. Camus, The Plague, trans. S. Gilbert (New York: Random House, 1948), 202–3, 208, 217. Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, trans. J. O’Brien (New York: Random House, 1955), esp. 12–14, affirms life’s basic absurdity. In The Rebel, trans. A. Bower (New York: Random House, 1956), 55–61, 246–52, 280–306, Camus develops his philosophy of continual rebellion. See also C. Petersen, Albert Camus, trans. A. Gode (New York: Ungar, 1969), 74, and Ronald Batchelor, “Dostoevskii’s Ivan Karamazov: Inspiration to Albert Camus,” fifteen-eightyfour (blog), March 27, 2014, cambridgeblog. org/2014/03/dostoevksiis-ivan-karamazov-inspiration-to-albert-camus/. A. Flew, “Theology and Falsification,” in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. A. Flew and A. MacIntyre (New York: Macmillan, 1964 [originally 1955]), 96–99, 106–08. Camus, Rebel, 100–04, 145–48, 173–76, 233–52, 294–306; Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov, 296. The Christian Meaning of Suffering 383 II identified as the blight of our civilization.21 Because the world finds no sense in pain, it seeks to abolish suffering and frustration by all means possible: scientific taming of nature, universal hospital coverage, unlimited “safe sex,” no-fault divorce, abortion, euthanasia, “trigger warnings,” “safe spaces,” and so on. To paraphrase Flannery O’Connor: “Compassion leads to the gas chamber.”22 The more one flees suffering, the more terrifyingly and intolerably it permeates one’s existence. Complaints about God’s providence come easily to mind when bad things happen to good people. As just noted, while atheists and agnostics frequently focus on innocent suffering to justify their repudiation of God, a perusal of atheistic literature reveals that no matter how ferociously they reject God, they shed little light upon life’s meaning. Human existence is a mystery. The world existed long before the human race came into it and it will endure long after the demise of protestors. What is its purpose? What meaning has my individual existence in it? Definitive answers to such immense questions surpass every mortal mind, yet hints of meaning appear. Alongside all the suffering arise moments when the heart leaps in gratitude and joy: a beautiful sunrise or sunset, friendship given, truth’s discovery, courage and honesty manifested in fidelity, parental sacrifices. Are these lasting values or delusions? If there is no God, all such values crumble with mortal mankind into dust. If there is no God, to whom does one render thanks? If there is no God, why sacrifice in a world condemned to frustration? Are life’s positive experiences merely the carrot dangling before the dumb donkey to motivate mankind’s endless motion on a purposeless evolutionary treadmill? Or are they omens of deeper meaning? Such is life’s mystery. If meaning exists beyond mortal finitude, God exists. Yet within his horizon of meaning every believer should recognize why suffering is so intricately entwined in human life. John Paul II wrote: “Suffering seems particularly proper to man’s nature. It is as deep as man himself, precisely because it manifests in its own way the depth proper to man, and in its own way surpasses it.”23 Philosophical analysis and 21 22 23 John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae (1995), §§12–30. The original version comes from Flannery O’Connor, introduction in A Memoire of Mary Ann by the Dominican Sisters of Perpetual Help Home (Savanah, GA: Beil, 1991): “When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness [i.e., Christ], its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.” We cite it from Marion Montgomery, “Walker Percy and the Christian Scandal,” First Things, no. 32 (April 1993), 38–39, who quotes Percy to the same effect from his Thanatos Syndrome. John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris (1984), §2. 384 John M. McDermott, S.J. theological insight illuminate why suffering permeates human life, a truth bitter to bear but ultimately liberating. Philosophical Analysis: Suffering Is Humanly Irradicable No mortal can exterminate all pain from human existence. Any attempt to do so is doomed to increase suffering. Consider first the human predicament and suffering’s conditions of possibility. All humans have sentient bodies. They require feelings to maneuver in a material world. Sensations cause pleasure and warn against danger. Physical pain derives from excess sensation. Coming inside on a cold day one can steer a frozen backside toward a great fire; its warmth is very pleasant. But if one stays too close too long, warmed cheeks become burned buns. Even in Paradise Adam could have stubbed his toe; that improves on continually banging his brains against walls through which he tried to walk. Abolishing all possibility of physical pain entails abolishing sensation and, with it, all bodies and physical pleasure. Pain and pleasure, Plato noted, are practically inseparable: two beings fastened at their acme (Phaedo 60b). But physical pain’s total abolition does not render men impervious to injury. Pure spirits can and do suffer. Human beings are limited in body and spirit—they exist in relation to others and are dependent upon others for weal and woe. This truth especially regards other freedoms. People can reject or accept each other. Further, finitude, when perceived, is always transcended; once a limit is recognized, the spirit is already beyond it. As long as a baby in a playpen does not recognize bars as restrictions, he does not feel constricted. Once he perceives them as limitation, he is already beyond them in knowledge and desire. Thence springs a longing for something more; but nothing finite can satisfy a desire for the always more, and the finite cannot reach pure infinity on its own. Man can never be totally fulfilled through finite experience, and the more finite consciousness is elevated to awareness of its limits, the more exquisite become its spiritual sufferings. For that reason most variations of Buddhism and Hinduism aim at desire’s total eradication; for desire is the cause of evil. Ultimately this option leads to suppression of the self, the extinction of individual consciousness.24 24 R. C. Zaehner, Hinduism (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 4–5, 59–63, 66–72, 74–79, 114–20; Robert Hume, “An Outline of the Philosophy of the Upanishads,” in The Thirteen Principal Upanishads, trans. Robert Hume, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1931), 66–69; Kenneth Ch’en, Buddhism (Woodbury, NY: The Christian Meaning of Suffering 385 Some preliminary conclusions offer themselves. First, the only sure way to nullify all pain is to escape the body and either become the infinite God or reduce all others to automata controlled by oneself, a pure spirit. Implicit in many modern protests against God lurks the hidden desire to become God, to determine good and evil by rendering one’s arbitrary freedom supreme. Who aspires to create such a loveless world? A second conclusion follows: because sufferings are tied to finitude, they can be relativized. Just as no best possible world can exist, neither can a worst possible world. Irish and Polish optimists console themselves: things can always get worse. Since different viewpoints are possible on finite realities, one’s perspective on sufferings can increase or diminish them.25 For example, were anyone to threaten to kill the average citizen unless he ran twenty-six miles in under four hours, he might well reply: “Shoot me now; why bother with that agony?” If the same threat were delivered to a world-class marathon runner, Wilson Kipsang could reply, “No problem; I do that before breakfast every other morning.” Perhaps a reader recalls gridiron glory. Did you feel the bruises as you smashed through the line for Hobash High’s greater glory? You might have been half-maimed, but the battle was exhilarating and adrenaline was pumping. The next day you might groan in the hospital, but on the field you were Superman. Should Lois Lane visit the hospital and gush over your fabulous feats, what are yesteryear’s wounds on St. Crispin’s day? At the opposite extreme dwell the fabled princess who excruciatingly feels the pea under twelve mattresses and the spoiled brat who, in intolerable torment, insists on his Wheaties instead of the Corn Flakes served by his mother. A final conclusion flows from finitude: human beings depend upon each other. The most rugged individualist needs a Mommy and a Daddy to give him life, feed him, and teach him to talk. Old Testament scholars recognize “corporate personality”: the individual is a representative as well 25 Barron’s Educational Services, 1968), 33–39, 41–47, 49–52, 54–60. In modern civilization pangs of childbirth are much anticipated and empathized. But George Engelmann, Labor among Primitive Peoples, 2nd ed. (St. Louis, MO: Chambers, 1883), 7–10, noted how labor pains increase with civilization: among primitives, “labor may be characterized as short and easy.” An extreme interpretation of subjectivity’s influence over pain is found in Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928), 382–84, 397, 400, 408–9, 414–18, 458–59: Jesus enjoyed “imperturbable blessedness” of his God-consciousness even in his Passion. Schleiermacher lacks a proper understanding of the hypostatic union; he places Jesus’s human nature—i.e., his human self-consciousness—in direct contact with the divine nature, which is understood as bliss. 386 John M. McDermott, S.J. as a constitutive member of the group to which he belongs.26 The group influences him, and what he does affects the group: David’s sin caused the plague striking his people (2 Sam 24); Moses’s prayer saved Israel (Exod 32:7–14; Ps 106:23); Abraham’s fidelity explains why God so loves the Jews (Gen 23:15–18; Sir 44:19–22). The Israelites identified themselves with their ancestors and knew that their conduct had repercussions upon fellow Jews. God punishes to the third and fourth generation but shows mercy to the thousandth generation (Exod 20:5–6). Orthodox Jews today become upset with Conservative and Liberal Jews. One Jew’s infraction of the Law has negative repercussions on all Jews (Deut 29:18–19). Corporate solidarity also explains how the Suffering Servant bore the sins of others and how Adam’s sin affected his children. However antithetical to modern susceptibilities, this biblical view contains a great truth. Men are their brothers’ keepers. No one is a mere individual, responsible for himself alone. That insight undermines the complaint of those protesting against the injustice whereby children suffer for their parents’ sins. Can a child be independent of all other human beings until he performs a free act? Can she be isolated from her parents? Can he be a new Adam at creation’s beginning, responsible for himself alone? If such isolation were possible, how might anyone protest in the child’s name, in solidarity with the child? Ivan Karamazov’s blustery rebellion quickly sputters and perishes of asphyxiated isolation. Suffering Is Humanly Unintelligible Original sin’s mystery has been foreshadowed, but first suffering should be analyzed from a different angle. No human can fully explain suffering. Unique to each person, it is my suffering or yours or his or hers. Even your sympathy does not let you suffer my sufferings. Suffering is individual, and the individual as such cannot be captured in any science. Science employs universal concepts—“the soul knows bodies through the intellect with an immaterial, universal, and necessary knowledge” and “science is not of singulars.”27 Yet universal concepts cannot comprehend the individual as such. Goethe’s axiom identifies science’s predicament: Individuum est 26 27 H. Wheeler Robinson, Corporate Personality in Ancient Israel, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980); Jean de Fraine, S.J., Adam and the Family of Man, trans. D. Raible (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1965). Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I, q, 84, a. 1, corp.; In I analyt. post., lec. 44, no. 396. The Christian Meaning of Suffering 387 ineffabile.28 Men are mysteries to themselves, especially in their freedom, individuality, and sufferings. Human science’s limitations become obvious once the ultimate reason for unjust sufferings is sought. Seeking something’s reason means seeking its cause, and that presupposes a necessary connection between cause and effect; otherwise only an event’s occasion or condition is named, not a cause. Hence in seeking the cause one seeks a necessity. But if the reason, or cause, for injustice is discovered, injustice is made necessary. That absurdity would not only make God, the First Cause, responsible for injustice but also insert men into a warped moral universe against which their moral sense protests. Actually, injustice presupposes freedom, a free act deliberately gone awry, whereas a cause’s “necessity” removes freedom. Clearly finite minds cannot understand evil choices in themselves. From a human perspective no total answer to the conundrum of unjust suffering or any suffering is to be expected. This conundrum undercuts particularly philosophies based upon natures.29 For pain indicates a nature’s malfunctioning, and what is contrary to nature falls outside the parameters of such philosophies. Consequently, if men cannot understand evil, physical and moral, they can never banish it. No human plan can liberate mortals from suffering. The solution to suffering’s dilemma must come from beyond man. Suffering’s Positive Value If suffering is not an absolute evil—sin alone is an absolute evil—some positive meaning can be discovered in it. First, suffering alerts against greater physical evil: being singed by fire warns against being burned. Second, to grow physically stronger athletes have to break down muscle tissue: no pain, no gain. Physical exercise hurts, but it strengthens and tones muscles. On the spiritual level, suffering stands at the service of growth. Men learn more quickly and more thoroughly through suffering. When my father attributed his education to the school of hard knocks, he was paraphrasing the popular adage—knowledge makes a bloody 28 29 Wolfgang Janke, “Individuum/Individualismus I: Philosophisch,” Theologische Realenzyklopädie 16 (1987): 117, notes that, although this expression has not been found in any medieval thinker: “It derives [stammt] from a good Aristotelian family.” Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics 7.15.1039b 27–40a 7. Lest anyone conclude that man cannot know God’s existence by his natural reason—contrary to Catholic doctrine (First Vatican Council, Dei Filius; see Denzinger-Schönmetzer [DS], nos. 3004 and 3026)—see a proof of God’s existence based on freedom apart from revelation in John McDermott, S.J., “Faith, Reason, and Freedom,” Irish Theological Quarterly 67 (2002): 307–32. 388 John M. McDermott, S.J. entrance—which reflects Aeschylus’s wisdom, “[Zeus] regularly joins learning to suffering” (Agamemnon 177).30 Moreover, suffering can break down selfishness. Leon Bloy wrote consolingly to a friend who lost his young daughter: “Man has places in his heart that as yet have no existence; pain has to enter before they can be.”31 At the least suffering can function as a punishment for sin, recalling sinners to themselves and to concern for others. It can also awaken compassion and force men to live with others. An economic depression can reinforce family cohesion in a common struggle whereas economic prosperity allows individuals to ignore their need for and appreciation of others. A maimed child often brings his family to greater unity and assistance.32 Love in mutual self-sacrifice produces greater joy than countless material comforts. Finally, ordinary people often become aware of their value as free persons when they freely suffer for duty or an ideal. Nobility is manifest when someone willingly dies for a belief. Martyrs illustrate to what heights of fidelity humanity is capable under grace. Many people make smaller, analogous sacrifices in daily life, finding meaning in them and testifying to man’s transcendence of natural tendencies to self-perpetuation and self-fulfillment.33 Imagine a world without the possibility of suffering. Every challenge and adventure would disappear. No dragons would be slain nor princesses rescued. Scaling Mount Everest would be as dangerous as scratching one’s nose. Men would remain on their spiritual backsides all day, consuming fruit dropping from the mango tree. A world of ennui would ensue since no risk could be involved. No one wins since no one loses. Even suicide out of boredom is excluded lest people hurt themselves. In short, a finite world without the possibility of suffering is intolerable. The Mystery of Death Most men mightily fear death, which is anticipated in suffering. Satan employs fear of death as his principal means of enslaving men (Heb 2:14–15). Nonetheless death cannot be an absolute evil. First, insofar as 30 31 32 33 Repeated in Agamemnon 250–51: “Justice inclines the scale in order for those suffering to learn.” Cited by Yves Congar, O.P., “The Problem of Evil,” in God, Man and the Universe, ed. Jacques de la Bivort de la Saudee (London: Burns & Oates, 1954), 401. See Jerome Schulman, Coping with Tragedy (Chicago: Follett, 1976), for examples. Immanuel Kant, Grundlegung der Metaphysik der Sitten (1785), ed. Bernd Kraft and Dieter Schönecker (Hamburg: Meiner, 1999), 18–21, 61–63, 87–89; Kant, Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft (1788), 9th ed., ed. Karl Vorländer (Hamburg: Meiner, 1928), 95–98, 177–79, connected human dignity to moral freedom suffering for moral duty. The Christian Meaning of Suffering 389 this life is replete with sufferings, death liberates from them. Reflecting on his brother’s death, St. Ambrose remarked: “From the beginning God did not institute death, but He bestowed it as a remedy. . . . There ought to be an end to evils in order that death might restore what life lost.”34 Second, imagine, if possible, a material world without death. It would be stupefying. Greek mythology recounts how Aurora, goddess of dawn, became enamored of Tithonus and abducted him (Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 218–45). In the felicity of passionate love she entreated Zeus to grant him immortality and eventually prevailed. Alas, she neglected to request perpetual youth. He constantly aged, continually shrinking in size. Aurora eventually locked him in her bedchamber, while she sought other paramours. In another version he is transformed into a ceaselessly chirping cicada.35 In retelling the myth Tennyson has Tithonus pray for mortality and speak “of happy men that have the power to die, / And grassy barrows of the happier dead.” A similar fate befell the Cumaean Sibyll, who negligently besought immortality without eternal youth from Apollo and withered into a cicada. Kept in a cage in a tavern, she endlessly repeats her chant, thelo thanein, thelo thanein—“I wish to die, I wish to die.” T. S. Eliot placed that phrase as a motto at the beginning of “The Waste Land,” describing modern culture, which has no reason to perpetuate itself but cannot quite die. Before Elliot, Jonathan Swift concocted the race of Struldbruggs, humans born with a mark upon their foreheads indicating their immortality. They are condemned to “the dreadful project of never dying.” Grown old, they become “opinionative, peevish, covetous, morose, vain, talkative.” They gradually lose their spiritual faculties, retain only envy and impotent passions, and wander friendless in a perpetual daze. These most pitiable creatures lose their teeth and hair as well as their appetite, yet remain subject to diseases of all sorts.36 Even if their spiritual faculties and bodies did not deteriorate, would they not become utterly bored as the same experiences keep repeating themselves without end, the eternal return of the same? In J. R. R. Tolkien’s myths about Middle-earth, the elves, who retain their powers and cannot die except by violence, ultimately grow weary of living there and, following their hearts’ desire, depart freely for Valinor’s Blessed Isles. Death is rightly called the Gift of 34 35 36 Ambrose, De excessu fratris 2.47; (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 72:274). The subsequent quote has the same reference. Herbert Rose and Charles Robertson, “Eos,” in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, ed. N. Hammond and H. Scullard, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon,1970), 385. Jonathan Swift, “Gulliver’s Travels” (1735), pt. 3, ch. 10, in The Writings of Jonathan Swift, ed. Robert Greenberg and William Piper (New York: Norton, 1973), 181–83. 390 John M. McDermott, S.J. Men as well as the Doom of Men.37 Life without death would be dreary. As Ambrose remarked: “Immortality is more a burden than enjoyment unless grace breathes upon it.” In this life death cannot be entirely bad.38 In many ways death bestows a poignant value on human life. Shakespeare’s sonnet 73 notes how various earthly realities perish before concluding: “This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong, / To love that well which thou must leave ere long.” The very fragility of mortal things endears them. Parents’ love for a child endangered by sickness witnesses that truth. Their love grows through shared sufferings.39 The good and the beautiful should be protected. The Roman forum in its dilapidated state is rendered more romantically and entrancingly beautiful because it no longer gleams like the proximate, garish monument to Victor Emmanuel; its brokenness touches men’s imaginations and feelings. Finally, consider the relation of morality to suffering. As noted above, men become aware of their worth when they are ready to suffer for an ideal or another person. In life, conflicts emerge between what one feels like doing and what one should do. Moral conscience opens men to a universe transcending the ordinary world with its search for self-fulfillment. Heroes give their lives for duty and love. The very appeal for justice reveals that one suffers at recognizing injustice. Hence moral awareness, which differentiates man from beasts, is bound up with suffering. If justice prevailed in this world and only the evil suffered, it would be impossible to distinguish self-interest from moral altruism. If morality immediately received its just reward, only the invincibly stupid would be immoral. God’s Relation to Suffering Denying God does not solve the problem of suffering. One can imagine God’s extirpation, but the suffering remains, and the injustice remains, and 37 38 39 J. R. R. Tolkien, The Return of the King (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1955), 234, 308–10, 315, 342–43, 406; Tolkien, The Simarillion, ed. Christopher Tolkien (Norwalk, CT: Easton, 1999 [originally 1977]), 41–42, 88, 104–05, 264–65. In view of Gen 2:16–17 and 3:22 and Rom 5:12, many have assumed that physical death is due to sin alone. But death is natural to man (Pius V, Ex Omnibus Afflictionibus [1567; DS, nos. 1926, 1978]; Pius VI, Auctorem Fidei [1794; DS, no. 2617), and as such cannot be evil. Sin renders it a terror instead of the transition to eternal beatitude. See John McDermott, S.J., “Is Death Evil? A Question for Father Peter Ryan, S.J.,” Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly 31, no. 2 (2008): 21–33, and Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly 31, no. 3 (2008): 31–40; McDermott, “Do Charismatic Healings Promote the New Evangelization? Part II,” Antiphon 24 (2020): 205–23. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 9.7.1168a 21–27, noted the same. The Christian Meaning of Suffering 391 there is no hope for a solution. If this world is all that is, what is justice? So many predators escape punishment for their iniquitous actions. “Justice” becomes a phantasmagorical figment of imagination, a term exploited by media moguls to manipulate the masses. Justice does not exist in a world of injustice. Justice’s standard must transcend this world. And “justice” cannot be an impersonal norm; it must be capable of judging human hearts. Only a personal God can afford any hope of making sense out of this piebald world. As my Irish grandmother prognosticated, “There has to be a heaven since there’s no justice on this earth.” But why does God permit innocent suffering? That is the question’s nub. The Christian God alone supplies a satisfactory answer. The Theology of Suffering Two cautions must be issued initially. First, suffering is real. Some religions deny suffering’s reality, as Christian Science does, and types of Buddhism and Hinduism see all finite realities as “appearance,” maya. Nonetheless, since the appearances hurt, they must be somehow real. All philosophies distinguishing appearance from reality face the impossible challenge of explaining how appearances, the non-real, somehow exist in the world or the mind. Second, an immediate appeal to religion is short-sighted and contradictory. Whoever says, “Don’t worry about all the sufferings here, God will make it up hereafter,” risks divorcing God from His creation. If God can do justice later, why doesn’t He do it here, now? If this world is abandoned to injustice, how can a God of justice be recognized? Pious assurances to the contrary seemingly contradict experience. The basis for affirming God’s justice and love must be discovered in this world. What are innocent sufferings? Who are innocent? The modern world has enshrined a juridical notion of innocence whereby no guilt is incurred before a malevolent free act is performed. Hence all children are considered innocent. Nonetheless all cultures insist that they be trained to self-discipline and regard for others. No one wants little Johnny to poop perpetually in his pants or howl incessantly for comfort at 2 a.m. The urges of children must be conquered for freedom’s growth. Human nature seems fundamentally egocentric, seeking to fulfill basic, inborn impulses before learning civility. Adults too confess that they sometimes suppress inspirations to do good and help others for fear of being hurt or seeming ridiculous. The tendency to selfishness is inborn. St. Augustine recalled a child raging against his brother who was sharing his mother’s milk, even though the first child was already sated (Confessions 1.7). Freud’s success 392 John M. McDermott, S.J. at convincing countless intelligent people that little boys want to kill their fathers and rape their mothers indicates that many readily recognize deep distorted passions in human psyches.40 The Church identifies concupiscence as an inborn tendency deriving from and inclining to sin.41 St. Paul’s “indwelling sin” (Rom 7:17–23) afflicts humans from conception. It is restrained only through freedom’s proper discipline under grace. That entails a struggle. Full innocence requires mastering temptations. Who then are fully innocent in not succumbing to egoism? Catholic theology responds: only Jesus and His mother; both went to the Cross without recriminations. A simple clarification refutes another atheistic objection. The Bible never proclaims God the Father of all men. In the Old Testament Yahweh is Father to Israel, the king, and the just man by his election. The New Testament acknowledges Jesus alone as Son of God by nature, by His eternal birth from the Father. He alone dared to address Yahweh as Abba, Dad or Daddy. Men are not sons by nature but become sons by adoption, by rebirth in baptism. Jesus gives them the courage to call His Father “Our Father.” He always distinguished “My Father” from “your Father.” Only once He enunciated “Our Father,” when teaching His disciples how to pray (Matt 6:9).42 Jesus, revealer of the Father, enables men to become God’s children. St. John stated it simply: “To those who received Him [ Jesus], believing in His name, He gave the power to become God’s children; they were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” ( John 1:12–13). This reality bestowed in faith and baptism Paul named “adoptive sonship” (Gal 4:5; Rom 8:15.23; Eph 1:5). Consequently, Christians should understand God’s Fatherhood as Jesus did. His innocent sufferings did not cause Him to deny His Father. Rather in His agony, foreseeing his torments, He affirmed God’s omnipotence and fatherhood: “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you. Remove this chalice from me. But not what I will but what you 40 41 42 Abraham Arden Brill, “Introduction,” in The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud (New York: Modern Library, 1938), 3–32, esp. 4 and 31–32, witnesses the adulation accorded to Freud. Bowlby, Secure Base, offers a saner view of children’s psychology. Council of Trent, Decretum de peccato originali (1546; DS, no. 1515). Gottlob Schrenk, “Patēr,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 10 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964), 5:974–1014; H. F. D. Sparks, “The Doctrine of the Divine Fatherhood in the Gospels,” in Studies in the Gospels: Essays in Memory of R. H. Lightfoot, ed. D. E. Nineham (Oxford: Blackwell, 1955), 241–62; Witold Marchel, Abba, Père! (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1971); Joachim Jeremias, “Abba,” in The Prayers of Jesus, trans. J. Bowden, C. Burchard, and J. Reumann (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978), 11–65. The Christian Meaning of Suffering 393 will” (Mark 14:36). On the Cross His last words were “Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit” (Luke 23:46). For Christian disciples, who receive Jesus’s Spirit, innocent suffering does not contradict but reveals God’s love. John affirmed God’s love for the universe “because He gave His only-begotten Son” ( John 3:16), and Paul argued that because God sacrificed His only Son for us nothing in creation can separate us from God’s love in Christ (Rom 8:28–39). It is a strange religion in which the suffering of the innocent proves God’s love for men. Such is Christian faith, the key to suffering’s meaning. Christian Suffering: Original Sin What is the sense of Christian suffering? The Bible offers many reasons for suffering: the evil are punished while the good are rewarded—that is justice; God brings sinners to a fall to convert them; after conversion they still require purification; eradicating sinful habits entails a painful going against the warped grain. Men are tested by God insofar as God’s love involves a choice, a preference of Him over everything else, and the sacrifice involved can be painful. Furthermore, Christians do not suffer only for themselves, just as they do not live for themselves alone. They suffer for others. That truth devolves from the mysteries of original sin and redemption.43 God created man, male and female, in the image of His love. He wanted to share His life with men, to divinize them. For God is tri-personal Love, pure mutual self-giving from eternity to eternity. What other reason might move philosophy’s self-sufficient, blissful, omniscient, omnipotent God to create a world that would only give Him trouble? Mankind’s original parents’ sin broke the primordial unity of love existing among men and between men and God. Without encountering love in the world no one can know the God who is Love. In a loveless world men lose their freedom; they have no reason for any choice; every finite reason for acting can always be relativized and put into question. “Why should I prefer another person to myself ?” Divorce and abortion are available. Without love the world’s meaning becomes opaque, or at best ambiguous: Does God love us? Does God exist? What reason remains for living, for enduring so much pain, if death frustrates all plans and hopes? After the primordial sin all human beings are born into a world from which their progenitors tried to banish God, a loveless world. “We were 43 The biblical basis for these answers is expanded in John McDermott, S.J., The Bible on Human Suffering (Middlegreen, UK: St. Paul, 1991). 394 John M. McDermott, S.J. by birth [physis: nature] children of wrath, like the rest” (Eph 2:3). The perpetuation of such a world involves hell. No one has access to God, and since man was originally created out of love for love, fallen man is doomed to eternal frustration. God could have abandoned men to the world which they attempted to create exclusively for themselves. Is it unjust that all humans are condemned for what Adam and Eve did? “Why should I have to suffer for what someone else did so long ago? How unfair of God!” Such is mankind’s plaint. Another question answers that question. Who can name the wheel’s inventor, the tamer of fire, the first shipbuilder? How many good things humans take for granted without gratitude, yet once something inconveniences them, how swiftly they groan and protest! Can anyone live in human society and expect to accept only good things from predecessors while reviling them for whatever goes wrong? Expressed more personally: suppose your father committed a crime that turned everyone against him. What would your reaction be? Should you say: “I want nothing to do with him. He is not my father”? Is not such a rejection patricide and ultimately the wish for self-annihilation? Into that predicament we are born as a result of original sin: either we love our parents and share their fate or we reject them and prove ungrateful children. Original sin springs the trap: either we identify with sinner-parents or refuse them love and repeat their sin, further polluting the race. We are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Who can redeem our sinful situation? Who can restore humanity’s fractured unity and let men find love and God again? Frequently philosophers construct an anthropology dealing with individual natures without recognizing that “man” never exists alone. All depend on parents for life, nourishment, and flourishing. No one learns a language in isolation, and without language thought hardly stirs or quickly atrophies. Communality defines man primordially. Everyone exists in himself and in relation. The very notion of finite being implies that it is limited (finitum) by others. As John Paul II’s analysis of freedom indicates, a person is both in himself and in relation.44 This explains how man 44 Karol Wojtyła, The Acting Person, trans. A. Potocki with A. Tymieniecka (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1979), 276–300; Wojtyła, “The Person: Subject and Community,” Review of Metaphysics 33, no. 2 (1979):273–308, esp. 283–306. When Wojtyla, “Person,” 303, presupposes “the particular priority of the subject as person in regard to the community,” that reflects his starting point in individual consciousness; earlier, however, he admits: “The whole process of understanding man must embrace both the others and my own self and . . . I may start from either” (273). He also writes: “The person and the community may be said to coalesce together” (Acting Person, 276). The self-conscious The Christian Meaning of Suffering 395 is created in God’s image, that is, in freedom for love. “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them” (Gen 1:27). By oscillating between singular and plural in describing the culminating object of creation the sacred writer recognized the unity and plurality implicit in being human. Man cannot be fully human without relations to others, indeed without loving them. St. Maximus the Confessor recognized that “man” is primarily a concrete whole encompassing the individuals constituting it: the individual only exists within that whole in relation to others. Further, in the hypostatic union he identified the basic principle of divine love which effects the greatest unity while maintaining the greatest diversity of natures. “Insofar as [the union] comes together it does not entirely obscure their essential and natural elements but perfectly preserves the difference.”45 His insight applies to humanity as well as to the ontological structures of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Husband and wife, the basis of family and society, are intended to be two in one flesh (Gen 2:24; Mark 10:7–10; Eph 5:31). Though each spouse desires complete union with the other, both wish the other to remain fully himself or herself. Love provides the greatest unity while maintaining the greatest diversity. Recent Thomistic thinkers like Pierre Rousselot, Erich Przywara, and Hans Urs von Balthasar have insisted on mankind’s fundamental, primordial unity in diversity.46 That insight facilitates understanding the eschatological Adam’s redemption as well as original sin. Redemption No part of the broken whole can reconstitute the whole. Mankind’s shattered state recalls Humpty Dumpty; all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put him back together again. No man can constitute himself the new beginning by demanding everyone else’s love. Besides, based on 45 46 subject’s in-itself cannot be separated from his relation to others. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cosmic Liturgy, trans. B. Daley (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2003), 159–65; Maximus the Confessor, Epistola ad Nicandrum (Patrologia Graeca [PG], 91:96D–97A), and Ambiguorum liber (PG, 91:1044D–1045A; 1056CD). P. Rousselot, S.J., L’Intellectualisme de saint Thomas, 2nd ed. (Paris: Beauchesne, 1924), 124–32; E. Przywara, S.J., Analogia Entis, 2nd ed. (Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1962), 135–41, 199–210; Przywara, Deus Semper Major, vol. 1 (Freiburg: Herder, 1938), 54–61, 70; Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theodramatik II/1 (Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1976), 334–61; Balthasar, Theo-logic I, trans. A. Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 153–58, 168–70. Aquinas’s polymorphic “nature” includes a concrete universal; see John McDermott, S.J., “On Nature, Freedom, and Person in Aquinas and Beyond,” Nova et Vetera (English) 9, no. 3 (2011): 798–99. 396 John M. McDermott, S.J. experience, who can assure us that God is love and really cares? Only the one who is personally eternal Love can assure men of Love’s reality, and He assumed a human nature to communicate love in a language intelligible to men. He called all to conversion, to follow Him, to unite themselves to Him and share His fate. He submitted to creaturely limitations and suffered death since sinners rejected admitting their needy sinfulness. All except His mother betrayed, abandoned, and killed Him, but on Easter morning He rose from the dead to prove Love stronger than death and sin, to offer Himself to men again, converting their hearts. When men love Jesus, God Himself in person, they are one with God where they are most themselves, in their personal freedom, where each says “I.” In love human beings are most free, most themselves, yet most joined to their beloved, letting Him rule their lives. “Now live no longer I, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20). “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain” (Phil 1:21). This profound union with God banishes sin, love’s refusal. Jesus paid redemption’s price in His Cross and resurrection, setting sinners free to love Him without fear. All those who love Jesus are united with Him entirely, body and soul. Thus is established the Church, Christ’s Body (1 Cor 12:12–31; Eph 5:21–33), where Jesus remains present through all time, offering Himself in word and sacrament to sinners. Christians desire conformation to Christ crucified (Gal 2:20; Phil 3:8–11; Rom 8:17). The Church is the place of crucified love, where men should let God’s love penetrate their hearts. Consequently, the Eucharist stands in the Church’s center, the place of love’s concrete commitment and her daily nourishment. The Church also engenders resurrected joy, for there love conquers human hearts. When believers live for Jesus, crucifying fleshly desires, they are liberated to love (Gal 5:1.24; Rom 6:6–11; 8:2; Col 3:5–15). From self-sacrificial Christians a marvelous community results. But none should join the Church to enjoy a personally enhancing community; the ultimate reason for entering the Church is that she is the ordinary means of salvation joining repentant sinners to Jesus.47 Precisely because the Church embraces concupiscential men, living with them entails crosses. Jesus’s liberating love resolves the dilemma of original sin. It no longer matters that men are sinners; they can confess their sins without fear; they can identify with their sinful parents, for God loves sinners ( John 3:16; Rom 5:8; 1 John 4:10). They need no longer defend and justify 47 Council of Florence, Cantate Domino (1442; DS, nos. 1351), and Pius IX, Quanto conficiamur moerore (1863; DS, nos. 2865–67). The Christian Meaning of Suffering 397 themselves. Justification is God’s gift in Christ (Rom 3:21–30; 5:1–2). Jesus has broken the vicious circle of sin, guilt, and recrimination. Christians can and should love their parents. If Jesus bears their sins, in union with Him they can and should bear their parents’ sins. Salvific Suffering This union in love explains the meaning of Christian suffering. Christians suffer for personal sins and to root out habits of sin, which, congealed in concupiscence, deform them. Created by love for love, humans want to be loved. Love entails opening oneself to the beloved, rendering oneself vulnerable. Yet all fear being hurt. Consequently, in a fallen world men seek protection by heaping up money, property, and power. Since such things invariably distort friendships, they console themselves in love’s absence with purchased pleasures, love’s sickly substitutes. This internal contradiction renders people miserable: they refuse to attain what they really desire (Rom 7:14–25). Seeking to save their lives, they lose them (Mark 8:35). Christ alone liberates men (Gal 5:1). For conformity to Christ, achieved in loving Him, reforms sinners into the image of God in which they were originally created. Christ is the eschatological Adam in whose image man was created (1 Cor 15:45; 2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15–20; Eph 1:3–10). Consequently, reformed sinners strive to overcome their inborn selfishness and gladly bear the sufferings entailed in the struggle. Christians suffer with Christ for others. They are baptized into Christ’s death in order to be crucified with Him, to die to sin, and to share His eternal, resurrected life (Rom 6:3–11). They enjoy the communion which Christ’s love creates. Looking upon Jesus crucified, suffering for their sins, how can they remain distant, neutral observers? No! Love wants to suffer with the beloved. If God let His heart be broken to break the hardness of calloused hearts, how can anyone refuse to share His crucified love?48 48 That God suffers for men is in accord with Christian faith. Catholic doctrine defines God’s immutability (Fourth Lateran Council [1215; DS, no. 800], Vatican I, De Filius [DS, no. 3001]), but that immutability need not depend upon Scholastic arguments from potency to act. Change occurs in God if He freely created the world, chose to redeem it, and responds to prayer (Luke 11:9–13). God is immutably infinite, tri-personal Love; he cannot be otherwise, and he will definitively conquer death and sin. John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantem (1986), §§39–40, and Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi (2007), §39, and Deus Caritas Est (2006), §§10–12, allow for God’s compassion due to man’s sin. Earlier Pope John II approved the orthodoxy of the expression “one of the Trinity suffered” ( John II, Olim quidem [535; DS, nos. 401]; see also Constantinople II, Anathematism de tribus Capitulis [553; DS, nos. 423 and 432]). For a speculative grounding of divine immutability allowing change see McDermott, 398 John M. McDermott, S.J. If Jesus invited a doubting Thomas to insert his hand into His wounded side ( John 20:27), why do others hesitate to touch the heart of God? Love creates communion. Paul uses the Greek word koinōnia to describe the relationship between Jesus and the Christian and among Christians. It signifies primarily community, communion (as in Holy Communion), participating in, and sharing actively with. He twisted the Greek language to express the Christian mystery’s novelty. For the first time koinōnia involved a sharing not just in material realities or ideas but in persons: a communion in the Holy Spirit (2 Cor 13:13) and in Christ’s Body and Blood (1 Cor 10:16); likewise, koinōnia for the first time indicated an active sharing, not just passive participation (Gal 6:6; Phil 4:15–16). Koinōnia embraced material as well as spiritual realities (Rom 15:26–27); also for the first time it indicated a monetary collection, the one destined for Jerusalem’s poor (Rom 15:26). This word koinōnia, pregnant with so many meanings, describes many aspects of life in Christ’s Body. It illuminates believers’ sufferings. At the beginning of the Second Letter to the Corinthians Paul writes: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all consolation, who comforts us in all our tribulation, so that we might comfort others in all tribulation through the comfort with which we are comforted by God. For as Christ’s sufferings superabound [perisseuei] upon us, so also through Christ our comfort superabounds. If we are troubled, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort active in the bearing of the suffering which we also suffer. And our hope for you is firm, since we know that as you are sharers (koinōnoi) in the sufferings, so you are sharers in the comfort. (2 Cor 1:3–7) Because Christians share Christ’s life, His sufferings overflow upon them, remaking them ever more into the image of incarnate Love. Christians are strange in this world. The New Testament repeatedly reports rejoicing in suffering, from the Beatitudes on! For in their suffering they are joined to Christ and His redemptive work. Paul writes: “Now I rejoice “Faith, Reason, and Freedom,” 307–32. Protestant theologians Kitamori, Pannenberg, Moltmann, and Jűngel have sought to reconcile becoming with God’s being. For the history see H. Hoping, “Caritas est passio: Das Sterben Jesu und die Frage nach dem leidendem Gott,” in Mein Herr und mein Gott: Festschrift W. Kasper, ed. G. Augustin, K. Krãmer, and M. Schulze (Freiburg: Herder, 2013), 334–46. The Christian Meaning of Suffering 399 in sufferings for your sake, and I fill up what is lacking to Christ’s tribulations in my flesh for the sake of His Body, the Church” (Col 1:24). Not that Christ’s redemptive work lacks any perfection. Greek hysterēmata, translated “what is lacking,” is generally used by St. Paul as the opposite of perisseuma, superabundance. Just as God’s infinity does not exclude but creates finite men, just as God’s omnipotence saves mankind without destroying their response but rather creating it, so there is room for believers to contribute in love to saving all others sharing in Christ’s koinōnia, his Body.49 This mystery of love is full, yet grows. Illustrations abound. With marriage vows husband and wife intended to love each other without conditions, yet over time they can confess that their love has grown. Similarly religious dedicate their whole lives to God without restrictions when they pronounce vows. Their love is full, yet no one kills them immediately after the vow formula. Though full, their love, it is augured, should grow. This paradox is based upon the Christian mystery: in Jesus the kingdom of God was already fully present, yet still to come. Room was left for the superabundant accomplishment of God’s will in Jesus’s disciples. The indicative of love accomplished in Christ grounds the imperative for their response of love (1 John 4:7–11).50 Their free acceptance of sufferings contributes to the salvation of all in the Church and, over the Church, to all whom Christ calls into love’s fullness. Thus the leaden dross of suffering is transmuted into love’s gold by Christ’s Cross, a mystery more transformative than any philosopher’s stone and deeper than the wisdom of worldly philosophers. The Church’s Mission This understanding of suffering also illuminates man’s original task in the world. God enjoined on Adam the tilling of the Garden (Gen 2:15). Without a commission to fulfill man would have been reduced to the passivity of a welfare recipient, deprived of meaningful accomplishments. Instead his ingenuity and fortitude were challenged to improve the world and suffuse it with works of love, making it more hospitable to his fellow human beings and reflective of God’s generous love. Despite the Fall God’s original plan for the world’s amelioration remains to be carried out. Though now more burdensome, the task is more imperative. Not 49 50 For further elaboration, see John McDermott, S.J., “The Biblical Doctrine of KOINONIA,” Biblische Zeitschrift 19 (1975): 64–77, 219–33. John McDermott, S.J., “Jesus and the Kingdom of God in the Synoptics, Paul, and John,” Église et Théologie 19 (1988): 69–91. 400 John M. McDermott, S.J. only should material creation be enhanced, but men’s eternal salvation is at stake. The sacrifices entailed in overcoming sin’s disruption should contribute spiritually to their salvation. A world called to greater charity in its spiritual evolution challenges men to grow “to the measure of the stature of Christ’s fullness” (Eph 4:13–16). In Christ’s Cross men confront the ultimate choice of faith and meaning. Either they close themselves in upon their sufferings, finding no meaning in them—pain is individual, unintelligible to human reason, and contrary to nature—and so embitter themselves or else they open themselves to love’s mystery far surpassing their minds and hearts. Evolution in both physical and spiritual spheres calls for sacrifice. Christian disciples join their sufferings to Christ’s for love’s increase, mankind’s redemption, and eternal sharing in divine life. They know that God can bring good out of evil as He did in His Son’s Passion. Sometimes He wishes to open human hearts in order that He might respond to prayers for particular intentions. Then He provides a requested healing or bestows comfort and strength. If some suffer more than others, that is attributable to the humanly incalculable concatenation of physical conditions, the residue of past sins, and human freedom. Furthermore, believers who suffer are invited to conform themselves to His beloved Son, the perfect expression of selfless love. Although God usually treats His weak children more gently than they deserve, sometimes He summons them to heroism. When Paul repeatedly besought God to remove a particular “thorn in the flesh,” he received the answer: “My grace is sufficient for you; for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Then Paul proclaimed his faith: “I shall most gladly boast of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore for Christ’s sake I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:7–10). Great saints, like Therese of Lisieux and John of the Cross, desired sufferings in order to conform themselves more closely to Christ for the world’s salvation.51 Such heroes by grace overcome the world, leaving mankind models of courage, patience, and fidelity. All others should adopt ascetical discipline willingly in their lives.52 God 51 52 E.g., Therese of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, trans. J. Clarke (Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1976), 214–20; John of the Cross, The Dark Night, 2.5–12, in The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross, trans. K. Kavanaugh and O. Rodriguez (Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 1979), 335–57. John McDermott, S.J, “Asceticism: The Language of Love,” Homiletic and Pastoral Review 74 (December 1973): 10–18. The Christian Meaning of Suffering 401 alone is the final judge of frail hearts summoned to love in challenging conditions. May He be merciful. Catholic Christianity preserved this positive evaluation of suffering in its entirety. Before post–Vatican II theologies introduced confusion into Catholic life, the faithful commonly recited daily the Morning Offering, offering prayers, works, joys, and sufferings in reparation for sins. Thereby personal growth in love and holiness ensued. It may be time to renew that practice. Catholics knew that God wanted them to share in His redemptive work, not as independent agents, but entirely animated by His omnipotent love. One merits justification as little as one earns love. Justification results from God’s free love implanted in human hearts through Christ. Christian faith insists that natural powers alone do not suffice for salvation. Sinful creatures are empowered by God to surpass themselves. Ultimately God created them not for happiness or its pursuit, but for divinization, sharing His eternal life of self-giving love. Men are challenged to surpass their nature. Only in dying to themselves do they live to God. God Himself is humble (Matt 11:29). The Lord prefers to serve His creatures ( John 13:13–17). Hence His self-humiliation in the form of a crucified slave does not contradict His nature, but truly reveals who He is (Phil 2:7–8). This self-emptying love constitutes the deepest mystery of the Trinity: “For this reason the Father loves me because I lay down my life in order to take it up again” ( John 10:17). The divine invitation to enter into the Son’s sacrifice of love and participate in the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4) provides the answer to suffering in the concrete: when tragedy strikes a loved one, do not enter into a philosophical or theological analysis of suffering, as this essay attempts. Rather place yourselves and your loved ones under the Cross with Mary, God’s mother, who accepted the Father’s will for her Son and drank the redemptive cup to the dregs. Salvation was won on the Cross, God’s definitive revelation in a fallen world; through it the new creation is accomplished in Christ’s resurrection, which is offered to all who die to self. Consequently, since “strength is perfected in weakness,” Paul “takes delight in weaknesses, insults, calamities, persecution, and difficulties for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:9–10). The Church’s doctrine can illuminate suffering’s meaning and instill hope, consolation, and courage to people who must undergo sufferings here below—that is, everyone. Unfortunately not everyone hears the good news about suffering. Catholic Christians should mediate knowledge of it by living their lives joyfully, even when sufferings are inflicted upon them. 402 John M. McDermott, S.J. Not only are ascetical sufferings required to overcome the concupiscence dwelling deep in human breasts but also sufferings freely accepted increase union with their Savior Jesus Christ. Living this mystery, their zeal should be enflamed to spread it to others who are suffering and seeking meaning. Let Christ’s love move them to bring its consolation and strength to others. Whoever is not strengthened to bear sufferings in this life will bear them in the next. A single hope summons all: assume Christ’s Cross and encourage others to do likewise. Planted in the Church’s midst is the new tree of life, the blessed Eucharist, challenge and consolation, sacrifice and joyous celebration.53 53 See John McDermott, S.J., “The Centrality of the Eucharist,” Antiphon 28, no. 2 (2021): 211–44, for the Eucharist’s role in revelation and redemption, while resolving ontological problems. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2022): 403–420 403 Munificentissimus Deus and the Unity of Body and Soul Kevin Raedy Hillsborough, NC November 1, 2020, marked the seventieth anniversary of the issuance of the apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus (1950), in which Pope Pius XII pronounced, declared, and defined the dogma of the Assumption. As milestones go, the seventy-year mark would typically serve as an adequate prompt for some measure of recognition and ceremony. But in this case, the occasion slipped past quietly. As a purely practical matter, November 1, is, of course, the date of another solemnity, the Feast of All Saints, and the coincident occurrence of the two may have left those best positioned to commemorate the dogma’s proclamation preoccupied with other matters. More conspicuously, the current global pandemic has had a muting effect on all manner of things, ecclesial and otherwise. But other, more deeply-rooted, factors may have played a role as well. At the Second Vatican Council, the bishops chose to locate their consideration of Mary within the broader context of ecclesiology. Without questioning that move, some theologians have suggested that the decision not to produce a separate conciliar document on Mary had a disorienting and dampening effect on what had been a vibrant Marian movement within the Church, one that largely emanated from the Marian apparitions of the mid-nineteenth century. In turn, those who were best able to fuel further developments in Mariology and sustain a lively Marian devotion among the faithful found themselves confined to the margins.1 1 Joseph Ratzinger refers to the matter as a “profound crisis of postconciliar Marian doctrine and devotion” and says of the move at the Council to envelop Mariology 404 Kevin Raedy Focusing more directly on the dogma itself, the Assumption, as an ecumenical lightning rod, simply doesn’t carry the same charge as Mary’s Immaculate Conception.2 Because Catholics are not as likely to find themselves fending off theological accusations regarding the Assumption, they might feel less compelled to devote their energies to understanding the dogma or, for that matter, engaging in basic liturgical or devotional pieties surrounding Mary’s Assumption. In turn, the Assumption may, in a sense, evanesce into the ether for many of the faithful. Although an emphasis and focus on Mary’s Immaculate Conception, relative to her Assumption, might well exist for reasons that are easy to intuit, those reasons are also mistaken. The two are intrinsically related— they cannot be properly viewed as disconnected events in the life of Mary, or as entirely distinct dogmas, revealed to the Church in disjointed fashion. As such, the treatment of the Assumption in this brief commentary will draw significantly on its relationship with the Immaculate Conception. Importantly, the consideration of that relationship will take place primarily through the lens of the Church’s teaching on human nature as a unity of body and soul. The commentary will close with a short discussion of catechetical considerations that follow from this perspective. Body–Soul Unity Before proceeding directly into a discussion of Mary’s Assumption, a succinct summation of the Church’s teaching on the human person— specifically the nature of the relationship between the human body and the 2 within ecclesiology that “the immediate outcome of the victory of ecclesiocentric Mariology was the collapse of Mariology altogether.” For his historical account, tersely summarized here, see “Thoughts on the Place of Marian Doctrine and Piety in Faith and Theology as a Whole,” in Hans Urs von Balthasar and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Mary: The Church at the Source, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), 19–36, at 19–24. Benoît-Dominique de La Soujeole, O.P., notes that the issue was one of the most divisive at the Council—a swing of only twenty votes out of nearly twenty-two hundred would have reversed the outcome (“The Universal Call to Holiness,” in Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition, ed. Matthew L. Lamb and Matthew Levering [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008], 37–53, at 46–49). The prominent Protestant New Testament scholar Scot McKnight states: “As Protestants we go to the Bible first, but we find nothing about Mary’s death or her assumption in the Bible. Does that mean Mary wasn’t ‘assumed’ into heaven? Obviously not. . . . So we are left to examine the evidence and make up our own minds” (The Real Mary: Why Evangelical Christians Can Embrace the Mother of Jesus [Brewster, MA: Paraclete, 2007], 133). Munificentissimus Deus and the Unity of Body and Soul 405 human soul—will prove useful. An important inflection point in the development of the Church’s doctrine on this matter is found in the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas states unequivocally that the human person is composed of both a soul and a body, and, relying on conceptions developed by Aristotle, that the intellectual soul is the form of the body: “The first thing by which the body lives is the soul. And as life appears through various operations in different degrees of living things, that whereby we primarily perform each of all these vital actions is the soul.”3 There is an interdependency, however, which works in the other direction as well. Aquinas indicates that “the form [the soul] is not for the matter [the body], but rather the matter for the form.”4 The soul is dependent on sense perception, a faculty it does not possess, for the acquisition of knowledge.5 Further, when the soul is deprived of its connection with a corporeal body, as upon death, certain of its powers are lost.6 Thus, Aquinas is explicit in rejecting the notion that the human soul exists as a self-reliant, discreet entity, with the body functioning as mere instrument.7 Rather, for Aquinas, “the human being is an integrated whole, a unified composite of body and soul.”8 Thomas’s teaching essentially remains as the contemporary teaching of the Church. At the Second Vatican Council, the Church affirmed that, “though made of body and soul, man is one.”9 Similarly, the current Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “the human person, created in the image of God, is a being at once corporeal and spiritual,”10 and that “spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.”11 This notion of body–soul unity will serve 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] I, q. 76, a. 1; cf. I, q. 75, a. 4. The quotation is taken from the translation of the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benziger Bros., 1947). For an extensive exposition of Aquinas’s thought on the composite nature of body and soul, see Gilles Emery, O.P., “The Unity of Man, Body and Soul, in St. Thomas Aquinas,” in Emery, Trinity, Church, and the Human Person: Thomistic Essays (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2007), 209–235. ST I, q. 76, a. 5. ST I, q. 76, a. 5. ST I, q. 77, a. 8. See Emery’s explanation in “Unity of Man,” 210–11. Paul Gondreau, “The Humanity of Christ, the Incarnate Word,” in The Theology of Thomas Aquinas, ed. Rik Van Nieuwenhove and Joseph Wawrykow (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 252–76, at 266. Second Vatican Council, Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Gaudium et Spes (1965), §14. Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC], §362. CCC, §365. 406 Kevin Raedy as a useful frame of reference in considering the relationship between the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption. Ineffabilis Deus and Munificentissimus Deus The dogmatic definition of Pope Pius IX’s apostolic constitution Ineffabilis Deus (1854) states that “the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin.”12 At the risk of stating the obvious, the dogma of Mary’s Immaculate Conception is concerned primarily with the metaphysical; the Church, in other words, understands original sin as a disorder that afflicts the soul. The Second Council of Orange refers to original sin as “the death of the soul,” and it specifies the physical body as the locus of punishment for sin. Aquinas affirms this characterization, as does the Council of Trent.13 In Ineffabilis Deus, we see explicit reference to this association between original sin and the soul in Pius IX’s brief retracing of the doctrinal history of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. Noteworthy is a quote from Pope Alexander VII, who states that, with regard to the Blessed Virgin Mary, “ancient indeed is that devotion of the faithful based on the belief that her soul, in the first instant of its creation and in the first instant of the soul’s infusion into the body, was . . . preserved free from all stain of original sin” (emphasis added).14 Subsequently, Pius affirms that Mary “was entirely a fit habitation for Christ, not because of the state of her body, but because of her original grace” (emphasis added). The phrase “original grace” here is a clear reference to the special grace by which her soul was preserved from the stain of 12 13 14 Translation taken from papalencyclicals.net/pius09/p9ineff.htm. Second Council of Orange, can. 2. Cf. ST I-II, q. 83, a. 1, and Council of Trent, Decree on Original Sin, §2. The phrase “death of the soul” is obviously hyperbole. Although the Church’s teaching on the immortality of the soul took time to crystalize, its roots stretch back to ancient Judaism. See Ratzinger’s treatment of this topic in Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, trans. Michael Waldstein (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 104–61 and 241–60. Pius IX is here quoting from Alexander’s apostolic constitution Sollicitudo Omnium Ecclesiarum, given on December 8, 1661, nearly two centuries prior to Ineffabilis Deus. Pius further notes that the definition of Ineffabilis Deus is a renewal of constitutions and decrees issued by predecessor popes “in favor of the doctrine asserting that the soul of the Blessed Virgin, in its creation and infusion into the body, was endowed with the grace of the Holy Spirit and preserved from original sin” (emphasis added). Munificentissimus Deus and the Unity of Body and Soul 407 original sin.15 But the notion that Mary was “a fit habitation for Christ” also harkens back to the opening paragraph of Ineffabilis Deus, where Pius places special emphasis on Mary’s predestination: From the very beginning, and before time began, the eternal Father chose and prepared for his only-begotten Son a Mother in whom the Son of God would become incarnate. . . . So wondrously did God endow her with the abundance of all heavenly gifts poured from the treasury of his divinity that this mother, ever absolutely free of all stain of sin, all fair and perfect, would possess that fullness of holy innocence and sanctity than which, under God, one cannot even imagine anything greater. (emphasis added) Thus it is that at the opening of the apostolic constitution we are told that the sanctity of Mary’s soul at her very conception was predestined from before the ages, and at the close we are given the definition of her Immaculate Conception. It is the purity of Mary’s soul, granted as a special grace, that runs from the beginning to the end of Ineffabilis Deus.16 In a shift of emphasis, the dogma of the Assumption is self-evidently concerned with the fate of Mary’s body when the course of her earthly life reached its completion. In light of the Church’s teaching on human nature as a composite of body and soul, one can see on an intuitive level why, “when it was solemnly proclaimed [in Ineffabilis Deus] that Mary, the Virgin Mother of God, was from the very beginning free from the taint of original sin, the minds of the faithful were filled with a stronger hope that the day might soon come when the dogma of the Virgin Mary’s bodily 15 16 Cf. Pope John Paul II, encyclical letter Redemptoris Mater (1987), §§8 and 18. Other than the quote at the beginning of this paragraph, which explicitly asserts that the state of Mary’s body was not the basis for her suitability as the biological mother of Jesus, Ineffabilis Deus contains only four other explicit references to Mary’s body. Two of these serve simply to acknowledge her body as the physical locus of her soul. Another— “more holy than holiness, singularly holy and most pure in soul and body”—appears in a paragraph which consists of a litany of poetic praises for Mary, understandably present in a text which proclaims her Immaculate Conception, but not elemental to the arguments therein. The final case states that Mary was “entirely free from every stain of sin, and from all corruption of body, soul and mind.” This mention is likely a passing reference to Mary’s Assumption. Such would not be surprising given that the doctrine of the Assumption had already been in development for several centuries, even though it would be almost another century before it was elevated to the level of dogma. 408 Kevin Raedy Assumption into heaven would also be defined by the Church’s supreme teaching authority.”17 As an explication of Mary’s bodily Assumption, Munificentissimus Deus does not take the form of an exhaustive theological treatise. Rather, it culls from a body of evidence—one that has accumulated over the course of centuries—some of the salient points that led the Church to define and proclaim the Assumption as dogma. Matthew Levering notes that the contemporary understanding of the truth of Mary’s Assumption is buttressed by three considerations: the teaching authority of the Church under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the legitimacy of typological reading as a method of interpreting Scripture, and the fittingness of the Assumption within the context of the faith as a whole. Elements of all three can be found in Munificentissimus Deus.18 Appeals to the history of the liturgy also provide insight into the Church’s understanding regarding the Assumption.19 But in addition to these lines of argumentation, there also appears to be a logic at work at the intersection of the state of Mary’s soul—as a consequence of her Immaculate Conception—and the notion of body– soul unity as understood and taught by the Church.20 Mary’s Immaculate Conception straightforwardly implies that her soul entered a state of beatitude immediately upon her death.21 Correspondingly, Munificentissimus Deus takes issue with the notion that that her body, following her death, could be anywhere but with her soul in heaven.22 17 18 19 20 21 22 Pope Pius XII, Munificentissimus Deus (1950), §6; cf. §§4 and 27. Matthew Levering, Mary’s Bodily Assumption (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), 2. For arguments in Munificentissimus Deus that appeal to the Church’s teaching authority, see especially §§12, 41, and 44. For examples of typological reading of Scripture, see §§26, 29, and 39. For arguments from fittingness, see §§18, 32, 34, 36, and 38. See, for example, §§16–20. Others have viewed the Marian dogmas from the perspective of body–soul unity. Hans Urs von Balthasar, for example, asserts that the Incarnation required an assent from Mary that entailed the entirety of her human nature, body and soul, an act of her whole person (“Mary in the Church’s Doctrine and Devotion,” in Balthasar and Ratzinger, Mary: The Church at the Source, 99–124, at 104 and 131). With regard to Mary’s Immaculate Conception, the Catechism notes that Mary was “redeemed from the moment of her conception” (CCC, §491) and that “by the grace of God Mary remained free of every personal sin her whole life long” (CCC, §493). One mildly curious feature of Munificentissimus Deus is that it repeatedly affirms Mary’s temporal (physical) death (§§14, 17, 18, 20, and 21) but is entirely silent on the length of time her body remained in the tomb before its Assumption. According to various texts which date to as early as the late fifth century, Mary committed her Munificentissimus Deus and the Unity of Body and Soul 409 Pius XII appeals, for example, to Amadeus, Bishop of Lausarme, who “held that the Virgin Mary’s flesh had remained incorrupt—for it is wrong to believe that her body has seen corruption—because it was really united again to her soul and, together with it, crowned with great glory in the heavenly courts” (§28; emphasis added). Pius also turns to St. Bonaventure, who, in a typological reading of Song of Solomon 8:5, argues: “We can see that she is there bodily; . . . her blessedness would not have been complete unless she were there as a person. The soul is not a person, but the soul, joined to the body, is a person. It is manifest that she is there in soul and in body. Otherwise she would not possess her complete beatitude” (§32).23 Similarly, Pius notes that St. Peter Canisius “declared that the very word ‘assumption’ signifies the glorification, not only of the soul but also of the body” (§36).24 These quotes suggest that the state of Mary’s soul was taken as a given, already established by virtue of her Immaculate Conception, and that the fate of her body can, in turn, be inferred from the intrinsic unity of her body and her soul. The specific and unique “effects” of the Assumption for Mary are stated clearly enough at the outset of Munificentissimus Deus. While, upon death, the immortal souls of the just ascend to the glory of heaven (albeit, for most, after first enduring the purifications of purgatory), their bodies undergo the corruption of the grave and are reunited with their souls only at the general resurrection: “God does not will to grant to the just the full effect of the victory over death until the end of time has come” (§4). Mary, however, is an exception. Her body is not subjected to corruption, and “she did not have to wait until the end of time for the redemption of her body” (§5).25 23 24 25 soul to Jesus upon her death, and three days later Jesus returned to take her body to heaven, where it was reunited with her soul. See Brian E. Daley, “Introduction,” in On the Dormition of Mary: Early Patristic Homilies, trans. Brian E. Daley, S.J. (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998), 1–45, at 7–8. Quoting St. Bonaventure, De Assumptione B. Mariae Virginis, Sermo 1. Pius also draws upon St. Bernardine of Siena, who sees, in the inherent unity of body and soul, an analogical argument in favor of the Assumption: “The likeness between God’s Mother and her divine Son, in the way of the nobility and dignity of body and of soul—a likeness that forbids us to think of the heavenly Queen as being separated from the heavenly King—makes it entirely imperative that Mary ‘should be only where Christ is’” (Munificentissimus Deus, §33). Pius draws the argument and the quote from St. Bernardine of Siena, In Assumptione B. Mariae Virginis, Sermo 11. These two effects of the Assumption are repeated a number of times, either individually or in tandem, throughout Munificentissimus Deus, albeit with some variation in the manner of expression from one instance to the next (see §§14, 17, 20, 22, 29, and 40). 410 Kevin Raedy To be clear, it is the case that all human persons ultimately retain their nature as a body–soul composite; physical death brings about a strictly temporary interruption that will be resolved at the general resurrection.26 Mary’s exemption from bodily corruption, as well as the reunification of her body with her soul shortly after death, make her an exceptional case. The sanctity of her soul—her freedom from sin—means that her body was not subject to the repercussions of sin, that is, corruption and separation from the soul. Before moving forward, it should be acknowledged that there are a number of different theological tacks one can take in explicating the dogma of Mary’s Assumption. As Munificentissimus Deus reaches its apex, Pius XII notes that Mary was “from all eternity joined in a hidden way with Jesus Christ in one and the same decree of predestination” (§40; recalling the opening paragraph of Ineffabilis Deus), that she was engaged in a common struggle with him against Satan as prophesied in Genesis 3:15, and that her Assumption is the proper culmination of the privileges associated with her divine maternity, particularly in light of her Son’s resurrection (§39). Nothing in this commentary detracts from that understanding. Rather the purpose is simply to highlight and discuss one particular facet of the logic which binds these two dogmas together. Evidence from the Liturgy Ineffabilis Deus marshals a range of testimony and argumentation in support of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. With regard to Scripture, the protoevangelium (Genesis 3:15) weighs heavily in Pius IX’s explication of the dogma. Already in the second paragraph of the apostolic constitution, Pius states that “it was wholly fitting that so wonderful a mother should be ever resplendent with the glory of most sublime holiness and so completely free from all taint of original sin that she would triumph utterly over the ancient serpent.” In four other cases throughout the course of the text, Mary is specified as the one who crushed the head of the serpent. Hugo Rahner expounds upon this biblical text as it was understood by the Church Fathers: 26 For Aquinas, the separation which takes place at death leaves the surviving soul, deprived of its body, in an intrinsically unnatural state which cannot be maintained in perpetuity; see Summa contra gentiles IV, ch. 79, no. 10. For an informative discussion, see Emery, “The Unity of Man,” 228–34. Munificentissimus Deus and the Unity of Body and Soul 411 God’s first word of salvation, spoken outside the locked gates of Paradise, already indicates a woman, a single woman, who could never be overcome by Satan. . . . This woman was first of all Eve, to whom the astounding promise was made that the Redeemer should come from her race. But the full meaning of the prophecy [in Genesis 3:15] is only realized when we see foreshadowed in Eve the other “Mother of all the living,” who herself should actually give birth to the Savior. . . . The woman who crushed the serpent’s head was the Mother of God-made-man. From the beginning of Catholic theology the text has thus been interpreted.27 In Ineffabilis Deus, Pius IX notes that it was in the New Testament texts which identified Mary as “full of grace” (Luke 1:28) and “blessed among women” (Luke 1:42) that the Fathers and Doctors of the Church recognized her as the new Eve who crushed the head of the serpent.28 As noted earlier, Munificentissimus Deus does not function so much as a theological treatise as it does a proclamation. There is, however, in §39 of that text, an interesting scriptural justification for the Assumption of Mary. There, Pius XII invokes Genesis 3:15—the verse which plays a central role in Ineffabilis Deus—and the reading of that verse by the Church Fathers, whereby they recognize Mary as the new Eve who “is most intimately associated with [Christ] in that struggle against the infernal foe which, as foretold in the protoevangelium, would finally result in that most complete victory over the sin and death which are always mentioned together in the writings of the Apostle of the Gentiles” (emphasis added). Genesis 3:15 serves here as the link which connects Munificentissimus Deus back to Ineffabilis Deus and Mary’s Immaculate Conception, and the phrase “and death”—an almost seemingly innocuous addition—is the incremental scriptural move which marks the turn to Mary’s Assumption. At the conclusion of the line just quoted above, Munificentissimus Deus cites via endnote several verses from the Pauline epistles which illustrate the point—that St. Paul views Christ’s death and resurrection as a joint victory over both sin and the consequence of sin, which is death (Rom 5–6; 1 Cor 15:21–26; 1 Cor 15:54–57). Munificentissimus Deus §39 continues: 27 28 Hugo Rahner, S.J., Our Lady and the Church, trans. Sebastian Bullough, O.P. (Bethesda, MD: Zaccheus, 2004), 16–17. Cf. Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, §§7 and 11. 412 Kevin Raedy Consequently, just as the glorious resurrection of Christ was an essential part and the final sign of this victory, so that struggle which was common to the Blessed Virgin and her divine Son should be brought to a close by the glorification of her virginal body, for the same Apostle says: “When this mortal thing hath put on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory” [1 Cor 15:54]. Thus Mary, who “suffered temporal death . . . could not be kept down by the bonds of death” (§17; quoting the Gregorian Sacramentary). While Ineffabilis Deus has as its emphasis the conquering of sin in the person of Mary by virtue of her Immaculate Conception, Munificentissimus Deus reveals the manner in which her bodily Assumption evinces in her person the conquering blow against death.29 Her Assumption, in turn, is an instantiation of what will eventually occur for all the faithful, a concrete manifestation of what the just can hope for at the general resurrection. As something of a check on these observations, I will now turn to the Church’s liturgy for the Feast of the Assumption. In Munificentissimus Deus, Pope Pius XII states that “the sacred liturgy, ‘because it is the profession, subject to the supreme teaching authority within the Church, of heavenly truths, can supply proofs and testimonies of no small value for deciding a particular point of Christian doctrine’” (§16).30 He similarly notes that the Church’s liturgy “springs from [the Catholic faith] . . . as the fruit comes from the tree” (§20). In an earlier encyclical, Mediator Dei, Pius explains that, in the liturgy, the truth entrusted to the Church is proclaimed in several ways: the recitation of the Creed, the celebration of the Eucharist, “and likewise by the reading of holy scripture” (§47). Against this backdrop, I will consider changes which took place in the liturgy for the Feast of the Assumption, particularly with regard to the selection of readings from Scripture, subsequent to the promulgation of Munificentissimus Deus. The missal which bears examination is that which was issued by Pope Paul VI in 1969, because the lectionary which corresponds to this missal saw significant increases in and revisions to 29 30 It is worth noting that the word “death” appears exactly once in Ineffabilis Deus (no adjectival or verbal variants of the word appear), and in that case it is not in any way central to the argumentation therein. The word appears sixteen times in Munificentissimus Deus. Pius is here quoting from his own encyclical letter Mediator Dei (§48), issued three years earlier (1947); cf. Mediator Dei §45. Munificentissimus Deus and the Unity of Body and Soul 413 the specific biblical texts to be read during the Liturgy of the Word.31 In his 1974 apostolic exhortation Marialis Cultus, Pope Paul indicates with regard to Marian feasts that “[the] numerical increase [in scriptural readings] has not however been based on random choice: only those readings have been accepted which in different ways and degrees can be considered Marian, either from the evidence of their content or from the results of careful exegesis, supported by the teachings of the magisterium or by solid Tradition” (§12). Prior to 1969, the first reading at the Mass for the Feast of the Assumption was taken from the Book of Judith, verses 13:22–25 and 15:10.32 One can readily understand why these particular verses were selected for reading on a Marian feast day: in the second sentence of the reading, the Israelites praise Judith for an act of valor, saying, “Blessed art thou, O daughter, by the Lord the most high God, above all women upon the earth,” an obvious adumbration of Elizabeth’s words to Mary during the Visitation.33 More significant for our purposes, however, is the following sentence: “Blessed be the Lord who made heaven and earth, who hath directed thee to the cutting off the head of the prince of our enemies.”34 Here we see a clear harkening back to Genesis 3:15 as it is read by the Church—particularly as emphasized in Ineffabilis Deus—where Mary is understood as the new Eve who crushes the head of the serpent. Notably, however, there is nothing in this passage that evokes a sense of victory over death as concretized in the Assumption of Mary. 31 32 33 34 Pope Paul VI’s 1969 Missal constitutes the first revision since the1950 promulgation of Munificentissimus Deus to introduce significant changes to the selection of readings for the Mass. On that specific dimension, the 1969 Missal is essentially equivalent to the missal that is in use today (the 2002 Missal of Pope John Paul II). The verse numbering indicated here corresponds to the Sisto-Clementine Vulgate (the Church’s official text of Scripture at that time), as well as the Douay-Rheims translation of that text. In contemporary translations, e.g., RSV 2nd Catholic Edition, the corresponding text appears in verses 13:17–20 and 15:9. The discrepancy is caused by the fact that St. Jerome was translating from a Semitic text which no longer survives, whereas contemporary translations are based on a Greek translation of the original Semitic text. Judith is a heroine who saved the Israelite people from impending military defeat through a dangerous and cunning mission in which she beheaded the general of the Assyrian army. The Old Testament character of Judith has long been understood as a type of the Virgin Mary. See, for example, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Daughter Zion: Meditations on the Church’s Marian Belief, trans. John M. McDermott, S.J. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983), 19–29. Cf. St. Jerome, Epistle 22, no. 21. Cf. Luke 1:42. The scriptural quotations here are taken from the Douay-Rheims text, which was the translation used in the Church’s missal at that time. 414 Kevin Raedy It is perhaps not surprising, then, that Pope Paul’s 1969 missal does not retain this reading for the Feast of the Assumption. Note, however, that the second reading for the Mass is 1 Corinthians 15:20–27, one of the passages cited by Munificentissimus Deus as emphasizing that Christ’s victory through his death and resurrection was a victory not just over sin, but over sin and death. In these verses, St. Paul tells us that Christ is risen from the dead, and that “he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death, for ‘he subjected everything under his feet’” (emphasis added).35 The entire passage is taken from a larger discourse within 1 Corinthians on the bodily resurrection of the dead.36 The other readings selected for the Mass are similarly reflective of the emphases found in Munificentissimus Deus. The first reading, for example, is taken from the Book of Revelation. In the latter verses of that selection, John gives an account of his vision of the woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, whom the Scholastic Doctors interpreted to be the Blessed Virgin, already assumed into heaven (§27).37 The reading begins, however, with John describing that portion of his vision in which he sees the Ark of the Covenant resting in God’s temple in heaven (Rev 11:19). Munificentissimus Deus notes how some of the Doctors and Fathers of the Church “have looked upon the Ark of the Covenant, built of incorruptible wood and placed in the Lord’s temple, as a type of the most pure body of the Virgin Mary, preserved and exempt from all the corruption of the tomb and raised up to such glory in heaven” (§26; emphasis added).38 In corresponding fashion, the Gospel reading is taken from 1:39–56 of 35 36 37 38 The text as quoted here comes from the current missal, which takes its scriptural texts from the New American Bible with Revised New Testament and Revised Psalms (1991). As for the inner quotation, St. Paul is quoting from Ps 8:6. In fact, sin, per se, is not mentioned at all in the passage read at Mass. Several verses prior, Paul states that Christ died for our sins (1 Cor 15:3), but he then moves into a lengthy discussion of Christ’s resurrection and the resurrection of the dead. The missal contains a different set of readings for the Mass held on the vigil of the Assumption, but they are thematically similar to the readings for the Mass during the day. Contemporary English translations of the biblical Hebrew text tell us that in Exod 25:10 the Lord instructs the Israelites to construct the ark using “acacia wood,” a material with properties that render it fiercely resistant to decay. Munificentissimus Deus here reads incorruptibili ligno, or “incorruptible wood,” obviously wanting to emphasize the connection between the Ark of the Covenant and the teaching of the dogma that Mary’s body never suffered the corruption of the grave. Such a rendering is not without precedent, as the Brenton translation of the Septuagint renders the Greek text as “incorruptible wood.” Cf. §29 for another reference to the Ark as a type of Mary. Munificentissimus Deus and the Unity of Body and Soul 415 Luke’s Gospel, the first several verses of which convey Luke’s typological rendering of Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant. Collectively, the current readings for the Mass of the Feast of the Assumption convey the reality of Christ’s victory over death as instantiated in the two “effects” of Mary’s Assumption: the incorruptibility of her body and the reunification of her body with her soul. The first two readings displace the reading from the Book of Judith, present in previous missals, which, although decidedly Marian, does not anticipate Mary’s Assumption as explicated by Pius XII. It is reasonable to infer that the current collection of readings constitutes a deliberate reflection of the rationale on display in Munificentissimus Deus.39 Catechesis Broadly speaking, Mary’s Assumption, as a truth revealed to the Church, has an intrinsic beauty and appeal that should naturally draw the faithful into the Church’s liturgical celebration of that feast. At a more specific level, the Church’s teaching on the unity of the soul and the body, understood as one particular facet of the dogma, correlates well with certain catechetical deficiencies currently confronting the Church. The remainder of this commentary will focus on some of those issues. The most obvious place to begin is with the Church’s longstanding confession regarding the resurrection of the body. This teaching is overtly biblical, asserted unequivocally throughout the New Testament (e.g.: Matt 22:23–32; John 5:25–29; Acts 24:14–15; Rom 8:11, 23; 1 Cor 15; 2 Cor 5:1–5; Phil 3:20–21; 1 Thess 4:13–18). Support for bodily resurrection can also be found in the Old Testament, such that its status as a biblical truth stretches back over two thousand years.40 Affirmation of bodily resurrection also pervades the various Christian creeds which have arisen over the centuries. Anyone who has ever attended Mass and participated in the recitation of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed has professed a belief in the resurrection of the body.41 39 40 41 The Liturgy of the Hours is also informative here. Munificentissimus Deus §39 constitutes a significant portion of the second reading from the Office of Readings on the Feast of the Assumption (as does §40, which continues the arguments of §39). In the Old Testament, support for bodily resurrection appears most notably in Dan 12:2–3 The final form of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, which includes specific reference to the resurrection of the body, dates to 381. But all of the articles of the Apostles Creed, which also affirms the resurrection of the body, can be traced back to theological 416 Kevin Raedy And yet, there is evidence which suggests that, for many Catholics, this basic belief either hasn’t taken hold or has deteriorated over time. Survey data reveals that, even among Catholics who self-identify as “conservative” and attend Mass at least three times per month, less than 60 percent believe in the resurrection of the body. Among self-identifying “liberal” Catholics who attend Mass with the same frequency, belief in bodily resurrection sits at 30 percent. Interestingly, the same survey indicates that the rate of belief in life after death for conservative and liberal Catholics is 85 and 75 percent, respectively. When these numbers are juxtaposed with the figures for resurrection of the body, we see that many who believe in an afterlife think that heaven entails, for all eternity, a disembodied existence, one in which their body will never be reconstituted and reunited with their soul after death.42 Munificentissimus Deus expresses the hope that its formal proclamation of the dogma of the Assumption will strengthen belief among the faithful in the resurrection of the body, a hope which obviously has not been realized (§42). Celebration of Mary’s Assumption, which encompasses the reunification of her body with her soul—emblematic of what will happen for all of us—provides a catechetical opportunity to address this confusion. A closely related consideration involves the burial of the dead. With regard to the deceased, the Church has a very lengthy history of presumption in favor of burial of the body, as opposed to cremation. This position arose from a variety of considerations, including respect for the body, which, while alive was a temple of the Holy Spirit. The Church also favors burial as a tangible sign of Christian belief in the resurrection of the body. In 1963, the Church’s Holy Office issued the instruction Piam et Constantem, relaxing certain canonical penalties in recognition that cremation may sometimes be undertaken “through innocent motives and for grave reasons.”43 Such might include hygienic or economic considerations: cremation could be permitted as a pastoral accommodation in locales where sanitary burial is not practicable, or when the cost of burial is unreasonably 42 43 formulas which were in circulation around the turn of the first century AD. See Creeds of the Churches, ed. John H. Leith, 3rd ed. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1982), 22. Survey data is taken from The Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture, Relationships in America (2014), 12–13. The survey is, admittedly, a bit dated, but it is difficult to imagine that the situation has improved over the last seven years. The instruction rejects cremation as a viable option in those instances where it is intended as a polemic against dogmatic pronouncements on the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul. The canonical penalties addressed here included denial of “ecclesiastical burial” (i.e., funeral rites). Munificentissimus Deus and the Unity of Body and Soul 417 prohibitive. Nonetheless, the instruction is clear that cremation should be exceptional: “Care should be taken so that the custom of burying the bodies of the faithful be religiously preserved; hence Ordinaries should . . . see to it that Catholics do not practice cremation and that, except in cases of necessity, they do not abandon the practice of burial, which the Church has always kept and which she consecrates with solemn rites” (§1). The Church’s current Code of Canon Law, revised in 1983, contains a tersely-worded stipulation—one might argue an underspecified stipulation—which reflects the above instruction: “The Church earnestly recommends that the pious custom of burying the bodies of the deceased be observed; nevertheless, the Church does not prohibit cremation unless it was chosen for reasons contrary to Christian doctrine.”44 In 2016, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued the instruction Ad Resurgendum cum Christo (To Rise with Christ), noting that, among the general population, the rate of cremation since the revision to canon law has “notably increased” (§1). More to the point, the presentation of this new instruction issued by the Holy See’s press office on October 25, 2016, noted that, despite the Church’s clear statements indicating that burial should be the norm, “the practice of cremation is significantly widespread also within the Catholic Church.” Ad Resurgendum cum Christo “insistently recommends” burial of the body upon death, noting that this practice is the most effective expression of the Christian hope in resurrection of the dead (§3). Through burial of the body, the Church “intends to show the great dignity of the human body as an integral part of the human person whose body forms part of their identity” (§3). Importantly, the Instruction explains that “by death the soul is separated from the body, but in the resurrection God will give incorruptible life to our body, transformed by reunion with our soul” (§3). The overarching point is that the trend within the Church away from burial in favor of cremation may well reflect a decline in the understanding of (or belief in) the nature of the human as a body–soul composite. Conversely, the continuing and unconditional acceptance of cremation, along with the encouragement implicit in the proliferation of columbariums at Catholic parishes, may have the effect of reinforcing a deficiency in catechesis on basic matters of the Catholic faith: the resurrection of the body and the reunification of the resurrected body with the immortal soul. The dogma of the Assumption provides, in ways that are self-evident, an 44 Pope John Paul II, Code of Canon Law (1983), can. 1176, §3. 418 Kevin Raedy occasion for recatechizing (or catechizing for the first time) the faithful on these important doctrines. A third issue is that of abortion. As with resurrection of the body, this is another case where polls reflect a divide between self-identifying Catholics and the teaching of the Church: in a relatively recent poll, 56 percent of Catholics said that abortion should be legal in most or all cases (although the numbers improve somewhat with those who attend Mass weekly—33 percent said it should be legal).45 At the outset of Ineffabilis Deus, we read that Mary was the one chosen and prepared by God to be the mother to his only-begotten Son, the mother “in whom the Son of God would become incarnate and from whom, in the blessed fullness of time, he would be born into this world.” It was by virtue of her immaculately conceived soul that she was able to offer her fiat to the angel Gabriel, and to God: “Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Mary understood the implications of that fiat. She knew that, once pregnant, no one would question Joseph’s right to divorce her, and that, as all would assume her to be an adulterer, she could, under the law, be stoned to death. Free from sin, her intellect was able to grasp a higher truth and her will was able to muster a “yes” in the face of potentially dire consequences.46 From that fiat, which was possible only because of the immaculate state of her soul, emerged her divine motherhood—a physical, biological, bodily motherhood. And when the one who took his flesh from her was crucified on the Cross, a sword pierced through her own soul also. Pope Pius XII tells us in Munificentissimus Deus that “it seems impossible to think of her, the one who conceived Christ, brought him forth, nursed him with her milk, held him in her arms, and clasped him to her breast, as being apart from him in body, even though not in soul, after this earthly life” (§38). That act of the soul, of the intellect and the will, meant that her body would not see corruption in the grave. Rather it would be assumed into heaven where it would be reunited with her soul. For Mary, in an extraordinary way, the motherhood that began with the Incarnation and continues to this day is an act of the soul and the body, an act of her entire being as a unified body–soul composite. An explanation of her Assumption (together with her Immaculate Conception) in this fashion might carry some weight for Catholics who lack clarity on the matter of abortion. It might, in other 45 46 Dalia Fahmy, “8 Key Findings about Catholics and Abortion,” Pew Research Center, October 20, 2020. Cf. Pope John Paul II, Redemptoris Mater, §13. Munificentissimus Deus and the Unity of Body and Soul 419 words, reveal how the rejection of motherhood, when it takes the form of abortion, entails not just the routine surgical extraction of a biological entity; it carries, rather, a momentous gravity, a cutting moral edge that pierces all the way down to the soul.47 Conclusion In this commentary, I have suggested that the apostolic constitution Munificentissimus Deus might fruitfully be understood by way of its relationship with Ineffabilis Deus, and through the lens of the Church’s teaching on human nature as a unity of body and soul. I also proposed some catechetical opportunities that flow from such a perspective. In keeping with the motivating purpose of this commentary—to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the promulgation of Munificentissimus Deus—I will close by letting the text speak for itself. Pope Pius XII, in formally proclaiming and defining the dogma of the Assumption, expresses his aspirations as follows: And so we may hope that those who meditate upon the glorious example Mary offers us may be more and more convinced of the value of a human life entirely devoted to carrying out the heavenly Father’s will and to bringing good to others. Thus, while the illusory teachings of materialism and the corruption of morals that follows from these teachings threaten to extinguish the light of virtue and to ruin the lives of men by exciting discord among them, in this magnificent way all may see clearly to what a lofty goal our bodies and souls are destined. (§42) Coming from the pen of the Holy Father, this exhortation carries a catechetical weight all its own. As our Church faces the mountainous task of re-evangelizing the faithful—in heated competition with a secular culture that has lost its compass—his words, seventy years after the fact, still speak loudly to us. They are perhaps more relevant today than when they were first written. We would do well to heed them. 47 A fourth issue that is also germane to the topic at hand encompasses same-sex attraction (including same-sex unions) and gender dysphoria. For a recent discussion, see John Grabowski, “Sexual Difference and the Catholic Tradition: Challenges and Resources,” Nova et Vetera (English) 19, no. 1 (2021): 111–134. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2022): 421–432 421 “Arise, Let Us Leave This Place”: John 14:31b and Pseudo-Epiphanius Michael Heintz Mount St. Mary’s Seminary Emmitsburg, MD John Behr, in his recent and magisterial study of John the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel,1 numbers, among the compositional aporias that trouble modern readers, John 14:31b: ἐγείρεσθε, ἄγωμεν ἐντεῦθεν (“rise, let us be on our way”; NRSV). Jesus speaks these words at the Last Supper, yet immediately proceeds to continue discoursing for three more chapters (15–17). Despite their apparent oddness to modern readers, the manuscript tradition leaves no indication of early or later editors attempting to correct, omit, transfer, or expand upon these three words; the phrase apparently posed no challenge to their reading or understanding of the text. 2 And yet likely because of its awkwardness (seemingly leading nowhere), it has been omitted in the Roman Catholic Lectionary, where significant portions of John 13–17 make appearance on the Sundays following Easter and form something of a lectio continua during the weekdays (weeks 4–7) of the Easter season.3 A shorter version of the same phrase—ἐγείρεσθε ἄγωμεν—is recorded 1 2 3 John Behr, John the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 34–35. The 28th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece offers no variants. For that matter, neither does the Weber-Gryson Biblia Sacra Vulgata Editio quinta. John 14:23–31 is found also in the Lectionary of the usus antiquior of the Mass, assigned to be read at Pentecost; and lest the suspicious infer that the omission of 14:31b in the reformed Lectionary is a modernizing move, verse 31b is omitted in the older form as well. 422 Michael Heintz by both Mark (14:42) and Matthew (26:46), without variants in either case; in both instances the line is uttered in Gethsemane, as Judas approaches to hand Jesus over to the authorities. In the Synoptics, the line does not pose the same quandary as does its placement in the Johannine narrative. However, in all three instances, the line is spoken in a context in which Judas and his act of betrayal figure prominently. The context of the Johannine narrative is not yet the garden, but Jesus’s supper in the company of his disciples. Having indicated that he is well aware that he will be betrayed, Jesus, signaling to the Beloved Disciple the one who would betray him, hands the morsel (τὸ ψωμίον) to Judas, who takes it (μετὰ τὸ ψωμίον . . . λαβών). The evangelist indicates that in the very act of reception, Satan entered Judas ( John 13:27). Judas’s departure was immediate, and the evangelist adds the detail, “it was night” (ἦν δὲ νύξ; 13:30); this is no mere descriptive aside, but rather a theological commentary ( John 1:5; 3:19; Luke 22:53). What amounts to the first sacrilegious communion is substantially an anti-communion: a refusal by Judas of the offer of communion made by the Lord in his gesture of handing Judas the morsel.4 This act is thus effectively a counter-sign: Judas receives the morsel from the Lord and simultaneously intends to hand him over, signaling by this very act his chosen complicity in the satanic rebellion. Judas recapitulates the primal sin of Adam: what was intended as gift is seized and grasped as possession; the communion established, offered, and intended by God is broken only by human choice. The essence of sin is to take as possession what is intended to be received as gift. Adam (here and throughout a synecdoche for the first couple) sought to grasp and to possess what was not and could not be his other than by divine gift. In an Irenaean hermeneutic, Philippians 2 unties the cord knotted in Genesis 3: Christ relinquishes the prerogative of divinity which is properly his, precisely in order to offer it as gift. Both the initiative and the gift are divine. Augustine makes this precise connection with verbal hints at Genesis 3 and Philippians 2 in explaining John 14:31: “Adam had ‘grasped’ the sin when, having been duped, he presumptuously reached out his hand in order unlawfully to seize upon the title of divinity, which was 4 Augustine interprets it precisely in such terms; see In Evangelium Johannis tractatus 50.10: “Peter and Judas received from the one bread, yet what share is there between the one who is faithful and the one who is faithless? For Peter received unto life, Judas unto death [de uno pane et Petrus et Iudas accepit, et tamen quae pars fideli cum infideli? Petrus enim accepit ad vitam, Iudas ad mortem]” (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina [CCL], 36:437). “Arise, Let Us Leave This Place” 423 conferred on the Son of God by nature, not by robbery.”5 Perhaps it is the case that Judas, disheartened that the pomp and promise that attended Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem just a few days earlier seem to have fizzled and petered out into mere idle talk and foot-washing, chose to take matters into his own hands by his collusion with the Jerusalem authorities. In his failure to understand the divine plan, he sought to wrest control of the situation from Jesus, even as he receives, quite disingenuously, the Lord’s offer of communion. There is extant from Christian antiquity a homily attributed to Epiphanius of Salamis (†403 AD),6 a small portion of which is assigned to be read as part of the Office for Holy Saturday in the Liturgy of the Hours.7 One of the striking features of the homily is that the words of the Lord recorded in John 14:31b (ἐγείρεσθε, ἄγωμεν ἐντεῦθεν) are placed by the homilist repeatedly on the lips of the Lord Jesus as he seeks out Adam in Hades. Communion with God, broken originally by Adam, recapitulated in Judas’s betrayal, now restored by the Crucified, is once again offered to Adam, as Christ invites him to depart Hades in his company. The entire homily deserves careful theological and stylistic analysis,8 but for the purposes of this inquiry attention is given to the last part of the homily and in particular its peroration. Adam, bound in the depth of Hades, is described by the homilist as “the first-created, the first-formed, and the first-to-die, who is deep within [us] all.”9 Despite his being 5 6 7 8 9 In Evangelium Johannis tractatus 79.2: “Rapuerat autem Adam peccatum, quando manum in arborem praesumptione deceptus extendit, ut incommunicabile nomen inconcessae divinitatis invaderet, quam Filio Dei natura contulerat, non rapina,” (CCL, 36:527). Unless otherwise noted, all translations are mine. For a further development of this theme, see my essay “Liturgy and Vocation,” Nova et Vetera (English) 14, no. 4 (2016): 1083–98. Patroliogia Graeca [PG], 43:439–64, entitled by the editors Homilia [II] in sancto et magno Sabbato and classed there among the spuria and Dubia; in addition to the text reproduced by Migne, there is another (non-critical) edition by Wilhelm Dindorf, Epiphanii Constantiae Opera (Leipzig: Teubner, 1859–1862), 4.9–29. See also Clavis Patrum Graecorum, no. 3768, where, among the works spuriously attributed to Epiphanius, it is assigned the title Homilia in divini corporis sepulturam. It is employed similarly in the Byzantine liturgical tradition; see Synaxarion of the Lenten Triodion and Pentecostarion, ed. D. Kidd and G. Ursache (Rives Junction, MI: Holy Dormition Monastery, 1999), 160–61. Questions of provenance and authorship are neither unimportant nor uninteresting, but do not affect the analysis offered here. ὁ Ἀδὰμ ἐκεῖνος, ὁ πάντων ἀνθρώπων πρωτόκτιστος, καὶ πρωτόπλαστος, καὶ πρωτόθνητος ἐνδότερος πάντων (PG, 43:460–61); Henri de Lubac, who cites this homily in his influential volume Catholicisme: Les aspects sociaux du dogme (Paris: Cerf, 1938), draws 424 Michael Heintz described as securely shackled in Hades (μετὰ πολλῆς τῆς ἀσφάλειας δέσμιος κατεχόμενος), it is he who first recognizes the footsteps of the approaching Master, and alerts the others to his coming.10 Christ is described by the homilist as entering Hades armed with his Cross as token of his victory (τὸ νικητικὸν ὅπλον τοῦ σταυροῦ κατέχων).11 The pivotal moment is when Adam greets Christ, and the homilist takes on the persona of Christ, speaking with his voice (shifting from third-person to first-person). Adam, in something of a liturgical greeting, says, “My Lord be with [you] all,”12 to which Christ responds, “and with your spirit,” acknowledging—or perhaps re-establishing—a bond. Christ then grasps Adam by the hand (the very hand that had seized the fruit), raising him up and speaking to him the words of Eph 5:14. For the next seventy-five lines or so (of the Greek text as printed in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca [PG], vol. 43), Christ speaks to Adam. It is a brilliant a rhetorical conceit by which the homilist, speaking to Adam, is in fact speaking to his hearers, Adam’s progeny. His first two invitations addressed to Adam are, as one would expect, in the singular: ἐγείρε, ἄγωμεν ἐντεῦθεν (PG, 43:461) and λοιπὸν ἐγείρε, ἄγωμεν ἐντεῦθεν (PG, 43:464). The rhetorical intensity is heightened by the use of anaphora, the repetition of the same word or words in successive clauses: ἀνάστα, a synonym for ἐγείρε (the two verbs that are employed in 10 11 12 upon it in support of his larger thesis and includes a portion of it in the collection of primary texts which form a lengthy appendix. Perhaps it was de Lubac’s drawing attention to this particular homily that explains its subsequent incorporation into the reformed Liturgy of the Hours; further, it is cited (the citation itself referring to the Liturgy of the Hours) in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in explicating the credal article on Christ’s descent ad inferos (§635). Neither Eve (nor any other of the dead) engage in dialogue with the Lord, but when the homilist shifts to third-person, she, along with “many other bodies [καὶ ἡ Εὔα καὶ ἄλλα πολλὰ σώματα]” are described as sharing in the resurrection, as Adam, described as being “in [Christ],” leads the way (ὁ ἐν αὐτῷ ἡγωμένος Ἀδάμ; PG, 43:464]. Irenaeus had drawn the connection between the description in Isa 9:5–6 to “the government [ἡ ἀρχή] upon his shoulders” and the Cross to which Christ’s shoulders were affixed: that which was a sign of embarrassment and reproach becomes the sign of his victory and rule; see On the Apostolic Preaching 56, trans. by J. Behr (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), 76–77. Even earlier, Justin had made the same interpretive move in Apology 1.35 [I am grateful to an anonymous reader for this latter reference]. This phrase, found in 2 Thess 3:16, had been incorporated, by the time of the so-called Apostolic Tradition attributed to Hippolytus, in the Eucharistic liturgy. The Greek of the homily is here perhaps intentionally ambiguous; it could equally be translated “my Lord is with [us] all,” serving as an announcement by Adam of the conquering Lord’s parousia in Hades. “Arise, Let Us Leave This Place” 425 Eph 5:14), is repeated three times in the invitation to “arise”; then διὰ σέ is employed eleven times, as the homilist, in the voice of Christ, catechizes Adam on God’s kenotic love revealed in the Passion.13 Woven into this rhetorical pattern is another anaphora, this time through use of the imperative ἴδε (five times), inviting Adam to witness his wounds, the eternal sacrament of that love. The reiteration of “for your sake . . .” and “see . . .” serves both to heighten rhetorical intensity and to convey soteriological truth. The homilist invites Adam to contemplate the Lord’s Body as the living sign of God’s unfathomable love for his creature, and to recognize himself as the object of that divine love. Yet, even more boldly, Christ declares to Adam: “For you are in me, and I am in you, we are now inseparably one person [σὺ γὰρ ἐν ἐμοὶ, κἀγὼ ἐν σοὶ, ἓν καὶ ἀδιαίρετον ὑπάρχομεν πρόσωπον].”14 The New Adam reveals to the first Adam the fullness of his own identity: what the human being was created to be is revealed, even to Adam, only fully in Christ.15 Further, in an intricate series of rich typologies, which explicate this “identity” between Adam and Christ, the homilist links the garden of the Fall both to the garden of Gethsemane and to the garden of the crucifixion;16 Adam’s hands grasping at the wood of the tree in Eden to Christ’s hands extended on the wood of the Cross;17 and the side of sleeping Adam, from which Eve came forth, and 13 14 15 16 17 Articulated in fuller fashion in the Nicene and Constantinopolitan formula “for us men and for our salvation”: δι' ἡμᾶς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους καὶ διὰ τὴν ἡμετέραν σωτηρίαν. Further, the homilist explicitly uses the language of Phil 2:7 to drive home the paradox of such love: “It is for your sake that the Master took the form of a servant” (διὰ σὲ ὁ Δεσπότης ἔλαβον τὴν σὴν μορφὴν τοῦ δούλου; PG, 43:461). In the context of the development of Christology, πρόσωπον is a freighted term, though I do not think the author is here making any formal Christological claim; it is a rhetorical ploy. To the degree that is it a metaphysical assertion, it is less about the persona of Christ and more about the identity of the first Adam and the New, and, precisely because of this, the intimate communio established by Christ with each believer. See John 15:4 and throughout the Fourth Gospel, where the verb μένω recurs over forty times and introduces a predominant Johannine theme that Paul also develops with his own language of being “in Christ.” On this theme, see the trenchant reflections of John Behr, “Older than All Creation,” Communio Viatorum 55 (2013): 237–54, and as developed more fully in John the Theologian, 194–244. The notion that Christology is simultaneously an anthropology is one of the principal themes of John Paul II’s inaugural encyclical, Redemptor Hominis (1979). “[It was for you who] departed from a garden, that I was handed over to the Jews in a garden, and that I was crucified in a garden” (ἀπὸ κήπου εξελθοντα ἀπὸ κήπου ᾿Ιουδαίοις παρεδόθην, καὶ ἐν κήπῳ ἐσταυρώθην; PG, 43:461). “[See] my hands, pinned to a tree for your good, who, for a wicked purpose, stretched out your hand to a tree” (τὰς προσηλθωσείσας χεῖρας ἐν τῷ ξύλῳ καλῶς, διὰ σὲ τὸν 426 Michael Heintz the pierced side of Christ who sleeps in death.18 Christ’s wound, Christ’s “sleep,” heals and undoes Adam’s wound, his “sleep” of death.19 The words “Arise, let us leave this place” are then repeated (the first of four times), and function as something of a refrain or antiphon, as the homilist continues using types to relate the first Adam to Christ, but the figurative links educed by the homilist now are arranged as delicate antitheses, revealing the even-greater dignity afforded Adam in the economy of grace, a dignity made possible by the Incarnation: the enemy drove Adam from paradise, but what now awaits Adam is greater than paradise—he is to be seated on a heavenly throne;20 Adam was prevented from receiving from the tree of life, but that tree itself was a type of the life which is God himself, and God has made himself one with Adam, sharing that life;21 the cherubim were commanded to guard Adam as one would a slave, but now the cherubim are made to worship Adam as they would a god;22 naked, Adam had hidden himself from God, but Adam now conceals within himself the “naked” God;23 in shame, Adam clothed himself in garments of skin, while in response God has clothed himself in Adam’s flesh and blood.24 The gift 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 ἐκτείναντα τὴν χεῖρα ἐν τῷ ξύλῳ κακῶς (PG 43:461). “I slept on the Cross, and a sword pierced my side for the sake of you who, asleep in paradise, brought forth Eve from your side” (ὕπνωσα ἐν τῷ σταυρῷ, καὶ ῥομφαίᾳ ἐνύχθην τὴν πλευρὰν, διὰ σὲ τὸν ἐν παραδείσῳ ὑπνώσαντα, καὶ τὴν Εὕαν ἐκ πλευρᾶς ἐξενέγκαντα; PG, 43:464). “My side has healed the pain in your side; my sleep will wake you from your sleep in Hades” (ἡ ἐμὴ πλευρὰ ἰάσατο τὸ ἄλγος τῆς πλευρᾶς· ὁ ἐμὸς ὕπνος ἐξάξει σε ἐκ τοῦ ἐν ᾅδη ὕπνου; PG, 43:464). “The enemy led you out from paradise; I will establish you, no longer in paradise, but upon a heavenly throne” (Ἐξήγαγέ σε ὁ ἐχθρὸς ἀπὸ γῆς παραδείσου· ἀποκαθιστῶ σε οὐκέτι ἐν παραδείσῳ, ἀλλ' ἐν οὐρανίῳ θρόνῳ; PG, 43:464); on this particular point, see A. Stolz, The Doctrine of Spiritual Perfection, trans. A. Williams (New York: Herder and Herder, 2001), 27. “I forbade you from the tree which was but a type of life, but I who am Life have made myself one with you” (Ἐκώλυσά σε τοῦ ξῦλου τοῦ τυπικοῦ τῆς ζωῆς, ἀλλ' ἰδοὺ αὐτὸς ἐγὼ ἡνώθην σοι ἡ ζωή (PG, 43:464). “I commanded the cherubim to guard you in the manner of slaves; I now make the cherubim worship you in the manner of gods” (Ἔταξα τὰ χερουβὶμ δουλοπρεπῶς φυλάττειν σε· ποιῶ τὰ χερουβὶμ θεοπρεπῶς πρυσκυνῆσαι σε; PG, 43:464); the juxtaposition of δουλοπρεπῶς φυλάττειν σε and θεοπρεπῶς πρυσκυνῆσαι σε captures magnificently the changed status of Adam in the order of grace. You hid yourself from God because you were naked; but behold, you bear hidden within yourself the ‘naked’ God” (Ἐκρύβης ἀπὸ θεοῦ ὡς γυμνός· ἀλλ' ἰδοὺ ἔκρυψας ἐν ἑαυτῷ θεὸν γυμνόν; PG, 43:464). “In shame, you clothed yourself in garments of skin; but I, who am God, have clothed myself in your flesh and blood” (Ἐνεδύθης τὸν τῆς αἰσχύνης δερμάτινον χιτῶνα· ἀλλ' “Arise, Let Us Leave This Place” 427 of communion, severed by Adam in the beginning, is restored again, by Christ’s invitation, and Adam and Christ are now one, and so raising the first Adam to an unparalleled dignity and honor. Then, subtly, the homilist, in addressing Adam, shifts the verb to the plural. The homilist now more explicitly associates his hearers with Adam,25 having first associated Adam with Christ. Christ’s words, addressed to fallen and (now) redeemed Adam, are from this point on addressed to the entire Paschal congregation, as Adam. The homilist then repeats the invitation three times, now in the plural: ἐγείρεσθε, ἄγωμεν ἐντεῦθεν.26 His hearers are, through him, and with him, and now in him, to depart the place of darkness, from the shadow of death,27 and return to the communion originally intended and now made possible again by the suffering and saving love of the incarnate Son, the New Adam. It is through his undergoing death and rising, Christ declares to Adam, that his lordship over all things, living and dead, has been established.28 Their “departure” is described with a series of clipped prepositional phrases, and their “destination” is capped by a collage of images drawn from the Scriptures, with “Arise, let us leave this place” again serving as a kind of refrain. They are departing “from death to life, from corruption to incorruption, from darkness to eternal light, from grief to gladness, from slavery to freedom, from captivity to the Jerusalem on high, from bondage to release, from detention to the delights of paradise, from earth to heaven.”29 Christ tells Adam that his heavenly Father is awaiting the lost sheep, 25 26 27 28 29 ἐνεδύθην θεὸς ὢν τὸν τῆς σῆς σαρκὸς αἱμάτινον; PG, 43:464). Recall that the homilist had earlier alluded to the fact that Adam is “deep within [us] all”—ἐνδότερος πάντων (PG, 43:461). All three instances are found in PG, 43:464; note that, in his edition, Dindorf [p. 28, ln. 31] offers a variant with the addition of διό introducing its final occurrence—διὸ ἐγείρεσθε, ἄγωμεν ἐντεῦθεν—serving to sum up and finalize the repeated invitations: “For this reason, then, arise, let us leave this place.” The homilist had already echoed the language of Ps 23:4 and Luke 1:79, addressing “those dwelling in darkness and the shadow of death [τοὺς ἐν σκότει καὶ σκιᾷ θανάτου καθημένους]” (PG, 43:452). The homilist places Paul’s words (Rom 14:9) on Christ’s lips: “For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living” (NRSV; Ἐπὶ τοῦτο γὰρ ἀπέθανον καὶ ἀνέστην, ἵνα καὶ νεκρῶν καὶ ζώντων κυριεύσω; see PG, 43:464). Διὸ ἐγείρεσθε ἄγωμεν ἐντεῦθεν, ἀπὸ τοῦ θανάτου εἰς τὴν ζωὴν, ἀπὸ τῆς φθορᾶς εἰς ἀφθαρσίαν, ἀπὸ τοῦ σκότους εἰς τὸ αἰώνιον φῶς. Ἐγείρεσθε, ἄγωμεν ἐντεῦθεν, ἀπὸ τῆς ὀδύνης εἰς εὐφροσύνην, ἀπὸ δουλείας εἰς ἐλευθερίαν, ἀπὸ φυλακῆς εἰς τὴν ἄνω Ἰερουσαλὴμ, ἀπὸ τῶν δεσμῶν ἐπὶ τὴν ἄνεσιν, ἀπὸ τῆς κατοχῆς ἐπὶ τὴν τοῦ παραδείσου τρυφὴν, ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν (PG, 43:464). 428 Michael Heintz and that the ninety-nine, too, are awaiting Adam, their fellow-servant (σύνδουλος), as he rises, ascends, and returns to God.30 What awaits him? He is told: “The cherubic throne has been prepared, its bearers keen and ready; the bridal chamber has been arranged; the meal has been prepared; ready, too, are the eternal dwelling places and mansions; the treasuries of goods have been opened: the Kingdom of heaven has been made ready for you from before the ages.”31 The phrase ἐγείρεσθε, ἄγωμεν ἐντεῦθεν is not a particularly classical expression, nor, to my knowledge, is it found anywhere in pre-Christian Greek literature. And in addition to appearing in patristic commentary on the Gospel text itself, it is found elsewhere only in a handful of places, always with allusion to the text of the Gospel. Three instances where the phrase is picked up and used are, however, worthy of particular note: (1) in a work spuriously attributed to Athanasius; (2) in an oration of Gregory of Nazianzus on baptism; and (3) in the Greek text of Barlaam and Josaphat, traditionally associated with John Damascene but quite probably the product of the tenth-century Athonite monk Euthymius. The lengthy homily spuriously attributed to Athanasius is given the title Εἰς τὸ πάθος τοῦ κυρίου καὶ εἰς τὸν σταυρόν,32 and the phrase ἐγείρεσθε, ἄγωμεν ἐντεῦθεν emerges within a discussion of the harrowing of hell, and description of the Lord’s victory as a triumph over the powers of death. The text emphasizes that by his death Christ makes sport of death itself and leads from Hades those whom he associates with himself: “And he loosed the bonds of Hades, and raised the others, saying as he did so, ‘Arise, let us leave this place,’ and he rose from death to life, having made a mockery of death itself.”33 Like the text of Ps.-Epiphanius, the words from John 30 31 32 33 πότε ἀναστῇ, πότε ἀνέλθῃ, καὶ πρὸς θεὸν ἐπανέλθῃ [PG 43:464]. Χερουβικὸς θρόνος ηὐτρέπισται· οἱ ἀναφέροντες ὀξεῖς καὶ ἕτοιμοι· ὁ νυμφὼν παρεσκεύασται· ἐδέσματα ἕτοιμα· αἱ αἰώνιοι σκηναὶ καὶ μοναὶ ἕτοιμοι· οἱ θησαυροὶ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀνεῴχθησεν, ἡ τῶν οὐράνων βασιλεία πρὸ αἰώνων ἡτοίμασται (PG, 43:464); this allusive collage of images draws from, respectively, Ezek 10:1, Matt 22:10 [cf. the variant witnessed in Codex Sinaiticus], Luke 16:9, John 14:2, Deut 28:12, and Matt 25:34. The homilist makes use of a series of perfect passive verbs, underlining the fact that what is now the case is so because God had so planned it πρὸ αἰώνων. De passione et cruce Domini (PG, 28:185–249); the Migne volume includes it under the dubia; cf. Clavis Patrum Graecorum, no. 2247, which notes the existence of versions in both Syriac and Armenian. De passione et cruce Domini 26: καὶ τὰς ὠδῖνας ἔλυσε ᾅδου, καὶ τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἤγειρε λέγων, ᾿Εγείρεσθε, ἄγωμεν ἐντεῦθεν, αὐτὸς δὲ ἐξανέστη καὶ κατέζησε τοῦ θανάτου, χλεύην αὐτοῦ τὴν τόλμαν ἠγησάμενος (PG, 28:229); it is worth noting that the choice of the verbal ἠγησάμενος may be quite deliberately a pun, meaning here (tropologically) “Arise, Let Us Leave This Place” 429 14:31b are used by Christ in Hades, as he invites those who have died to share in his victory and in his life. The phrase is also found in one of the Orations of Gregory of Nazianzus, a homily on baptism given on Epiphany of 381 at Constantinople. The phrase is placed amid a mélange of scriptural texts and is employed as part of an invitation and encouragement to the baptismal font. Gregory assembles a group of texts which are meant to arouse and move his hearers to action. He makes use of Psalm 95:1, “Come, let us exult before the Lord”; Micah 4:2, “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord”; and Matthew 11:28, “Come to me, all who labor and are burdened, and I will refresh you.”34 He then uses the words of John 14:31b (“Arise, let us leave this place”) and employs Lamentations 4:7 (“her leaders were purer than snow, whiter than milk, more ruddy than ivory, more beautiful than sapphire”) to allude to the mystery of light and glory proper to baptism. He encourages his hearers neither to resist nor to dally, but to emulate John and Peter, racing each other to the tomb ( John 20:3–4); Gregory says, “‘Arise, let us leave this place’ . . . let us become Peter and John: as they raced to the tomb and to the resurrection, so let us hasten to the font, running, racing one another, striving to be the first to receive such a good.”35 By clever use of these texts, Gregory has shifted from the second-person singular to the first-person plural to forge an identity between his hearers and himself. This sets him up nicely to employ with some power the hortatory subjunctive of John 14:31b, and then to follow it with Γενώμεθα: his hearers are not merely invited to do something; they are invited to become something. While here, unlike the homily attributed to Athanasius or that of Ps.-Epiphanius, the liturgical context is not Paschal, nonetheless the phrase is employed in relation to the mystery of baptism, and further linked to the tomb, the light and grace of the Risen One, and the transformation offered to the believer. The Greek text of the story of Barlaam and Josaphat is another witness to the use of this phrase, though in abbreviated form. Strikingly similar to its employment in Ps.-Epiphanius’s homily, the context is not the harrowing 34 35 “having regarded” or “having considered,” but whose original meaning, in the active voice, is of course “to lead” or “to lead the way”—in leading those imprisoned in Hades to freedom, Christ simultaneously demonstrates a disdain for death and its power. The verb common to these three texts and linking them in Gregory’s mind is δεῦτε. Oration 40.25: μὴ ἀντιτείνωμεν, μὴ βραδύνωμεν . . . ᾿Εγείρεσθε, ἄγωμεν ἐντεῦθεν . . . Γενώμεθα Πέτρος καὶ ᾿Ιωάννης, ὡς ἐπὶ τὸν τάφον ἐκεῖνοι καὶ τὴν ἀνάστασιν, οὕτως ἐπὶ τὸ λουτρὸν αὐτοὶ σπεύδωμεν, συντρέχοντες, ἀντιτρέχοντες, ὅπως, ἂν τὸ ἀγαθὸν προλάβωμεν ἀγωνιζόμενοι (Sources Chrétiennes, 358:252–54). 430 Michael Heintz of hell, but the invitation to faith and baptism is offered to Josaphat by Barlaam. While the context is not Hades, this invitation to faith which Barlaam offers is cast precisely as an invitation to liberation from the grip of the devil, and to depart the “prison” (φυλακή) and bondage to the ruler of this age (τῆς δουλείας λυτρώσασθαι τοῦ δεινοῦ κοσμοκράτορος).36 Josaphat responds to Barlaam: “Lead my soul forth from this prison, and taking me with you, let us leave this place, so that, fully ransomed from this wicked world, I might then receive the saving seal of baptism, and become with you a sharer in this wonderful philosophy and supernatural askesis.”37 Note that the words here are on the lips of Josaphat, rather than Barlaam, and express both an understanding of what is offered and an eagerness to embrace it. Josaphat’s response echoes almost antiphonally the invitation issued by Barlaam, indicating his desire for freedom from the devil’s harsh grip (τῆς πικρᾶς τοῦ διαβόλου δουλείας ἐλευθερῶσαι).38 The fact that the words are Josaphat’s, and not Barlaam’s, also explains their abbreviated form and the omission of the imperative, ἐγείρεσθε: here it is not an invitation, but a response. Moved by the invitation to faith, it is Josaphat’s initiative that is highlighted. While the setting is not Hades, the themes of liberation from the devil’s grip, baptism, and participation (κοινωνός . . . γένωμαι) in new, supernatural life are central. Intriguing questions of borrowing and dependency aside, and perhaps beyond our capacity presently to discover, the deliberate choice of the otherwise unknown homilist to place the words of John 14:31b repeatedly on the lips of Christ as he extends his saving work even to Hades is significant. Words which, in the Gospel, are associated with the betrayal by Judas, here in this homily, with an irony worthy of the Fourth Gospel, become words signaling an invitation to a communion restored, offered by the New Adam to the first Adam. Further, these words are also employed elsewhere, outside of strict commentary on the Gospel text, by three other witnesses, and in each instance the phrase is likewise associated in the imagination of 36 37 38 Barlaam and Josaphat 18.156 (Loeb Classical Library [LCL] 34, ed. G. R. Woodward and H. Mattingly (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1967), 262]. Barlaam and Josaphat 18.157: Ἐξάγαγε ἐκ φυλακῆς τὴν ψυχήν μου, καί, παραλαβών με μετὰ σοῦ, ἄγωμεν ἐντεῦθεν, ἵνα τέλεον λελυτρωμένος τῆς τοῦ κόσμου ἀπάτης τὴν σφραγῖδα τηνικαῦτα δέξωμαι τοῦ σωτηρίου βαπτίσματος, καὶ κοινωνός σοι τῆς θαυμαστῆς ταύτης φιλοσοφίας καὶ ὑπερφυοῦς ἀσκήσεως γένωμαι (LCL, 34:266–64). “Philosophy,” by the time of the Cappadocians in the fourth century (and undoubtedly even earlier) came to be used synonymously with an intentional asceticism, an entire way of life, not merely the adoption of a discourse or adherence to a set of intellectual propositions. Barlaam and Josaphat 18.157 (LCL, 34:264). “Arise, Let Us Leave This Place” 431 each author with a nexus of themes including the harrowing of hell,39 the new life offered in baptism, and communion with the Risen One. 39 Literary and theological engagement with the harrowing of hell is by no means limited to the East. Prudentius († ca. 410 AD), in the ninth poem of his Liber Cathemerinon, expends considerable energy on the descent to Hades. The Hymnus omnis horae is devoted to the gesta Christi insignia. Having recounted Christ’s remarkable birth, his healings, and miracles, Prudentius then crafts thirty-two lines (of 114 total lines, thus more than one fourth of the hymn) unpacking the significance of Christ’s redeeming work in Hades (Tartarum benignus intrat), and of his undoing of the deceit of the ancient serpent (anguis/serpens). Adam, and with him all humanity, is redeemed by the Incarnation and by Christ’s death: “quid tibi, profane serpens, profuit rebus novis / plasma primum [recall here the reference to Adam as πρωτόπλαστος in the Ps.-Epiphanian homily; PG, 43:461] perculisse versipelli hortamine? / diluit culpam recepto forma mortalis Deo” (Liber Cathemerinon 9.91–93 [LCL 387, ed. H. J. Thompson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1949), 82]). Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2022): 433–460 433 The Good of Authority in the Theology of Matthias Joseph Scheeben Patrick Auer Jones The Catholic University of America Washington, DC Both polemics against and apologetics on behalf of the living authority of the Catholic Church can hinge on an understanding of authority as mere arbitration. The presence of living human authorities within the Church can be alternatively criticized or justified by appealing to the raw necessity of designating some person or persons to resolve disputes within a diverse and widely extended polity. The aim of this essay is to call into question just such an understanding of authority. In doing so, it will first take up the question of authority from a philosophical vantage, presenting Yves Simon’s defense of authority as a natural human good. Then, it will turn to the theology of Matthias Joseph Scheeben to offer an analysis of the nature of the Church’s authority in light of her character as an agent not only of God’s power, but of God’s truth. The aim will be to produce a positive account of the Church’s authority through the prism of Scheeben’s analysis of theological faith. In the course of the essay, it will be shown that ecclesial authority stands in an analogous relationship to other forms of human authority. At the same time, the Church’s authority must be understood by clarifying the nature of divine faith, and the Church’s role in producing the act of faith. The twentieth-century philosopher Yves Simon provides a philosophical preamble to Scheeben’s account of the living authority of the Church. In his work A General Theory of Authority, Simon remarks: “The issue of authority has such a bad reputation that a philosopher cannot discuss it without exposing himself to suspicion and malice. Yet authority is present in all 434 Patrick Auer Jones phases of social life.”1 Simon notes that authority is construed, particularly in the twentieth century, as an impediment to justice, human vitality, truth, and order.2 A multitude of philosophical theories underlie this resistance to authority, some radically anarchist, but more commonly of a “liberal” variety (e.g., classically liberal views of democracy and of the function of the free market). Yet, Simon argues, “authority is unmistakably present” even in those societies and their systems which claim to be anti-authoritarian.3 In response, he sets out to show why authority is natural when it comes to justice, human vitality, truth, and order, and why it is in fact essential to all of these when understood in its “plurality of functions.”4 Simon takes aim at a view of authority in which “deficiencies alone cause authority to be necessary.”5 According to this view, a gap in the otherwise free-standing vital functions of political or market order demands the heteronomous influence of an authority outside of that system. Or, in matters of judgment, an irresolvable doubt demands that, absent any reasonable criteria for practical judgment, authority should step in arbitrarily: “Not knowing which way to take, but realizing that movement in any clear direction is better than unending idleness, we let authority decide which way we shall take, and we admire its ability to substitute definite action for endless deliberation.”6 Simon only tangentially engages the question of authority as it relates to theology, and does not delve at all into the question of the living authority of the Catholic Church. It is therefore necessary to expand Simon’s theory of authority if we are to apply it to Christianity. Matthias Joseph Scheeben’s analysis of the relationship between the act of supernatural faith and the Church’s living authority provides the basis for just such an expansion. Scheeben views ecclesiastical authority not solely as a juridical arbiter, but as representative and instrument of God’s truthfulness.7 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Yves Simon, A General Theory of Authority (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1962), 13. Simon, General Theory of Authority, 14. Simon, General Theory of Authority, 13. Simon, General Theory of Authority, 22. Simon, General Theory of Authority, 22. Simon, General Theory of Authority, 18. For a variant of this view, see Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. George Schwab (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 5: “Sovereign is he who decides upon the exception.” For Schmitt, sovereignty is defined as the power to suspend otherwise lawful norms and is thus a “borderline concept”: “This definition of sovereignty must therefore be associated with a borderline case and not with a routine.” As an example of a view that de-emphasizes the role of truthfulness in favor of power The Good of Authority in the Theolog y of Matthias Joseph Scheeben 435 The Church’s power for juridical decision is, for Scheeben, only one of its attributes. Indeed, the communication of juridical power to the Church depends upon the investiture of that authority by which “the divine motive of faith confronts us . . . and exercises its influence on us.”8 The Church therefore plays a necessary role not just in presenting the material content of faith, or in settling internal disputes, but as a “living organ” by which God presents himself as the formal motive for the act of theological faith. Scheeben’s account of the Church’s authority over the faithful relies on his account of faith as the act of religion by means of which God assimilates the intellect of the believer to divine truth. The essay will proceed in three parts. In the first section, I outline Simon’s account of authority in the context of the philosophical “search for truth.” I show that for him, trust in a reliable witness is a feature of the love of truth, as well as the means by which the intellect is gradually led to its full activity. Next, I turn to Scheeben’s account of faith in volume 1.2 of the Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics. While Scheeben’s account of belief is similar to Simon’s, theological faith alone has the character of a latria of the mind; what he calls the sacrificium intellectus. Scheeben turns to the First Vatican Council’s Dei Filius to show that this sacrificium is not arbitrary, but reasonable from a metaphysical standpoint. Concluding the second section, I point to the “lofty nature” of faith as effecting an “intimate union” with God, showing that salvation of the intellect actually resides in the latria of the mind. Having argued for the authority of God 8 in ecclesiastical authority, one could point to the anti-liberal Joseph De Maistre. For De Maistre, authority lies in the hands of the one “who governs and is not governed, who judges and is not judged” (The Pope Considered in His Relations with the Church, Temporal Sovereignties, Separated Churches, and the Cause of Civilization, trans. Rev. Aeneas Dawson [New York: Howard Fertig, 1975], 1). Since De Maistre understands authority to necessarily reside in a single person, this ability to judge without being judged must rest in the monarchic authority of the pope. De Maistre understands the Church as, most fundamentally, a political body or empire, which requires an absolute authority due to its vast geographical extension: “The idea of universality alone suggests this form of government [papal monarchy], whose absolute necessity rests on the dual reasons of the number of subjects and the geographical extension of its empire” (3). De Maistre goes as far as to state that a defense of papal authority “by no means requires [support] by theology,” due to the fundamental identity between the principles of ecclesiastical and political sovereignty (4). It becomes clear in Scheeben’s analysis of ecclesiastical authority that apologetics rooted only in naturalistic political principles cannot do justice either to the supernatural character of the Church’s mission or to her unique charism as envoy of God’s truthfulness. Mattias Joseph Scheeben, Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics, vol. 1.2, trans. Michael Miller (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2019), no. 765. 436 Patrick Auer Jones as recognized in the act of theological faith as a positive good, I turn to volume 1.1 of the Handbook to show how, for Scheeben, this authority is communicated by means of the human authority of the Church.9 Through her investiture with ambassadorial authority, the Church is empowered to represent God as the formal motive of faith. Further, the Church’s authority must be living, capable of producing divine faith throughout history, as well as governing the kingdom of believers. Authority and “The Search for Truth”: Yves Simon on Philosophy and Authority At the beginning of A General Theory of Authority, Simon observes that the “aversion to authority derives energy from sublime sources. Its really formidable power originates in the loftiest inclinations of the human soul.”10 The reaction against authority proceeds from the desire to preserve the most dignified human capacities, such as reason and sociality, from heteronomous control that would prevent their independent flourishing. Simon devotes his second chapter to detailing the essential role of authority in matters of practical judgment. In the third chapter, he turns to the more difficult question of authority’s role in the search for truth. While practical judgment takes the form of an answer to a practical question “what ought we to do?,” theoretical judgments answer the question “what are things?” They concern “states of affairs,” “facts,” or “theories.”11 But if theoretical judgments are concerned with determining the character of reality itself, how could authority assume a mediating role between the human intellect and reality without restricting the intellect’s capacity for knowledge? Simon turns to an evaluation of the person in authority in matters of truth—the “witness.” While an authority in practical matters has the character of a leader, the witness does not share in the leader’s position of superiority over others in matters of governance. The authority of the witness “is nothing else than truthfulness as expressed by signs which 9 10 11 In using the phrase “positive good,” I do not mean to introduce a technical term into the argument. I merely mean to distinguish the idea of authority as a means by which human beings are led to truth according to their nature and the idea of authority as a kind of harsh necessity which results from the fundamental inability of human beings to know. In the first cause, authority plays a perfective role, while in the second it is only a consequence of inescapable human imperfections. Simon, General Theory of Authority, 13. Simon, General Theory of Authority, 81–82. The Good of Authority in the Theolog y of Matthias Joseph Scheeben 437 make it recognizable in varying degrees of assurance.”12 The witness has authority because of something outside himself, namely, the true things to which he attests. At the same time, Simon asserts that when we encounter a trustworthy witness, “yielding to their testimony is a duty and a matter of honesty.”13 To believe a credible witness under the right circumstances, then, is to perform not only an intellectual but also a moral act. While belief is morally obligatory in numerous cases (in everyday social intercourse, in the scientific division of labor, or in historical matters), it is necessary to recognize the substitutional and provisional character of authority. Human beings will always rely on the testimony of reliable witnesses in the course of their affairs, but they nevertheless pursue “objective” knowledge—the exercise of their own rational insight—in other matters. As John Henry Newman puts it, credence may suffice in a number of matters, yet the responsible thinker will seek to attain speculative certainty in others.14 The teacher, who perhaps most often inhabits the role of the “witness” in theoretical matters, must aim at propelling his students beyond the “credence” they originally lend to the propositions he delivers, and toward the ability to achieve a demonstration of theoretical truths. The simple consideration that the role of authority in theoretical matters is entirely substitutional makes it easy to understand both how docility to reliable witnesses proceeds from the love of truth, and how the love of truth stirs an indefatigable eagerness for a cognition in which authority no longer plays any part. If truth is loved, the main thing is to know it. If truth cannot be known obviously, it is 12 13 14 Simon, General Theory of Authority, 84. Simon, General Theory of Authority, 84. See John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1979). Both “credence” and “speculation” are types of notional assent. Newman defines “credence” thus: “What I mean by giving credence to propositions is pretty much the same as having ‘no doubt’ about them. It is the sort of assent which we give to those opinions and professed facts which are ever presenting themselves to us without any efforts of ours, and which we commonly take for granted, thereby obtaining a broad foundation of thought for ourselves, and a medium of intercourse between ourselves and others” (60). He defines “speculation” thus: “I use [speculation] . . . to denote those notional assents which are the most direct, explicit, and perfect of their kind, viz. those which are the firm, conscious acceptance of propositions as true. This kind of assent includes the assent to all reasoning and its conclusions, to all general propositions, to all rules of conduct, to all proverbs, aphorisms, sayings, and reflections on men and society” (75). 438 Patrick Auer Jones good to know it by way of belief. Likewise, when it is impossible to live with a friend, we still say that we remain close to him.15 The substitutional role of authority in theoretical matters determines the moral obligations of both students and teachers. Students who love truth will submit to the authority of the teacher as the initial step in their own progress toward science: “Teachable minds have the privilege of understanding that a provisional belief often is the best, or the strictly indispensable way, to science.”16 But the teacher must also understand his role as provisional if he is to serve truth over his own ego: “As for the teacher whose ambition is to be believed permanently, he is guilty of extreme dishonesty, no matter how true his propositions.”17 Education is meant to culminate in the student’s capacity to demonstrate theoretical truths—to form their own judgments through demonstration. To draw a parallel again to Newman’s language, Simon distinguishes the mere “apprehension” of propositions from knowledge:18 “In the simplest case a theory proposes to connect with each other, by the copula is, a subject S and a property P. I do not yet know if it should be said that S is P; the synthesis is merely enunciated, and I do not know, as yet, if it conforms to reality.”19 Knowledge is only secured when demonstration shows “that there exists a relation of conformity between the interconceptual synthesis and the real world.” When the “objectivity” of a proposition has been recognized, assent is “promoted from a state of weakness and potency to a state of firmness and actuality.”20 According to Simon, “the determination of theoretical assent involves neither authority nor liberty: it is an issue settled by objectivity alone.”21 The “power” disclosed in demonstration is that of the object of knowledge in its “independence.” Yet to say that the mind is “forced or constrained to assent” by the object or by the demonstration is to use “inadequate 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Simon, General Theory of Authority, 93–94. Simon, General Theory of Authority, 96. Simon, General Theory of Authority, 97. Newman, Grammar of Assent, 29: “By our apprehension of propositions I mean our imposition of a sense on the terms of which they are composed.” Apprehension is distinct from assertion, in which the proposition is held in “the absence of any condition or reservation of any kind, looking neither before nor behind, as resting in themselves and being intrinsically complete” (25). Simon, General Theory of Authority, 86. Simon, General Theory of Authority, 86. Simon, General Theory of Authority, 87. The Good of Authority in the Theolog y of Matthias Joseph Scheeben 439 language.”22 Following Aristotle, Simon talks about the relationship of the knower to the object of knowledge as one of “passion.” Yet the passion of the intellect is not the same as the passion of the body. While the latter is “heteronomic” insofar as, when acted upon by a bodily object, “the subject acted upon loses some determination, for which another determination, issued from an external agent, is substituted,” the passion of the intellect is autonomic because the reception of object of knowledge brings the intellect from a state of potency to a state of full activity.23 The law of the mind resembles the law of the object in the way in which potential and actual being resemble each other. The intellect is, in potency, and desires to be, in act, what the object actually is. By receiving the determining influence of the object, by becoming the object, determinately, exactly, in precise coincidence, it is, in a very deep sense, changed into itself.24 Simon follows De anima, where Aristotle states: “What possesses knowledge becomes an actual knower by a transition which is either not an alteration of it at all (being in reality a development into its true self or actuality) or at least an alteration in a quite different sense from the usual meaning.”25 For Aristotle, this transition is the soteria of “what is potential by the agency of what is actual.”26 In Simon’s words, this transition is a soteria—a remedy—because it saves the knower from the “alienation which is ignorance, error, doubt.”27 Indeed, it is only in “objectivity”—in the achievement of knowledge through demonstration—that full “intellectual vitality” can be achieved: “The victory of objectivity is also a victory of intellectual vitality.”28 But if intellectual vitality demands that the intellect arrive at the capacity for science, how does the authority of the witness remain standing as a positive good? Does Simon’s account of objective knowledge subvert his governing thesis, that authority is not simply the result of a deficiency? In one sense, Simon’s explanation of the role of authority in the search 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 Simon, General Theory of Authority, 90. Simon, General Theory of Authority, 91. Simon, General Theory of Authority, 91. Aristotle, De anima 417b (Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon [New York: Random House, 1941]). Aristotle, De anima 417b. Simon, General Theory of Authority, 91. Simon, General Theory of Authority, 90–91. 440 Patrick Auer Jones for truth hinges on the imperfection of the human intellect. Unlike the angelic intellect, the human intellect does not have immediate knowledge, such that rational demonstration is unnecessary.29 Instead, the intellect must move from potency to act to reach perfection. However, the thrust of Simon’s argument is to show that the role of authority in the search for truth is in accordance with human nature, such that authority (if exercised well by the right persons) does not impose itself on the human intellect as a constraint. Instead, the teacher recognizes the substitutional character of their authority, and recognizes further that this substitution is “provisional and pedagogical.”30 Conversely, those who love truth submit themselves to credible authorities as beginners, in “preparation for an understanding or a vision that is not yet possible.”31 In the penultimate chapter of A General Theory of Authority, Simon points out that his presentation of authority applies to the Christian act of faith. Christian faith merely substitutes, provisionally, for clear knowledge: statements of the Holy Scripture on this subject are unmistakable, “We see now through a mirror in an obscure manner, but then face to face.” “Now faith is the substance of things to be hoped for, the evidence of things that are not seen.” The center of Christian life is not found in faith and authority: it exists in a world of clear intuition. But between this true center of Christian life and our present condition there stand death and much natural dread.32 Simon highlights the analogy between the role of authority in the Christian life and in philosophical development, but leaves this insight undeveloped. Authority leads the believer, as it does the student of philosophy, beyond itself toward a possession of the fullness of truth. In the case of the Christian life, however, the possession of this truth is “clear intuition” as opposed to scientific demonstration. Simon’s pointing us to Aristotle’s description of rational demonstration as a soteria of the mind only deepens the analogy. Just as the conformity of the mind with the nature of the thing known brings the mind fully into act, the “clear intuition” that characterizes the beatific vision completes a journey toward a supernatural soteria. The role of faith and authority in the progression of the Christian 29 30 31 32 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] I, q. 58. Simon, General Theory of Authority, 161. Simon, General Theory of Authority, 161. Simon, General Theory of Authority, 161. The Good of Authority in the Theolog y of Matthias Joseph Scheeben 441 life toward the beatific vision will now be further developed by turning to Scheeben’s analysis of the theological virtue of faith. Scheeben on Faith and Authority In this section, I turn to Scheeben to develop Simon’s insight that theological authority is a positive good, leading the Christian toward the fullness of vision. Scheeben offers a complex unfolding of the manner in which Christian faith relates to authority. In this discussion, it will be important to notice some aspects of theological faith which make it fundamentally distinct from human faith. As Scheeben will spell out, notable distinctions between theological and natural faith derive from the absolute “dignity” and “majesty” of divine authority, the efficient causality which God exercises in the infusion of faith, and the resultant supernatural elevation of the mind which occurs through faith. Having mapped Scheeben’s account of God’s authority, it will then be possible to show why human authority in the Church, far from being a constraint on the faithful, is essential and necessary to establish the union between God and man which is enabled by the act of faith. Scheeben’s treatise on faith in the Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics 1.2 begins with a definition of belief as such. He writes: In the proper and strict sense of the word, we understand belief to mean a firm assent or a decisive judgment of the mind, which relies not on personal insight or cognizance of the object thereof, but rather on the insight or knowledge of other intelligent beings that has been made known to us, or a conviction that is not produced by our own initiative but rather in us, by another intelligent being who proposes his insight to us as the grounds and criterion for our conviction. Accordingly, because the motive for belief lies in another intelligent being as the author of our conviction, therefore the motive is called authority, and the actual belief itself is called faith on authority, in order to distinguish it from all acts by the same name; in contrast, any conviction based on one’s own insight is called knowledge, like this insight itself.33 This rich definition lays a basis for his ensuing development of the character of theological faith, so it is necessary to pause to unpack its elements. 33 Scheeben, Handbook 1.2, no. 617. 442 Patrick Auer Jones First, insofar as belief indicates a “firm assent” or “decisive judgment,” it is to be distinguished both from “credence” (as Newman defines it) and “opinion.” Scheeben’s emphasis on the firmness of the assent of belief follows St. Thomas, who says that, while faith “is firmly attached to one alternative,” opinion “decides for the one side [of an argument] but with fear of the opposite.”34 Second, the “motive” of belief is not derived from our own insight, but rather from that of another. It is precisely because his insight acts as the “grounds and criterion” for our conviction that this other intelligent being is called “author” of our conviction. Indeed, it is his authority itself which is the motive. This means that the authority of the witness as such stands in for rational principles which might act as premises for our own syllogistic reasoning. Thus, belief needs to be distinguished from knowledge, in which the motive of assent is our own insight. At the beginning of Scheeben’s treatment of faith, before he has proceeded to theological faith, the formal motive of belief comes to light as its defining feature. That is to say, before any consideration of the material received from an authority— of the content of the authority’s insight—Scheeben wishes to show that belief unfolds from a self-reflective judgment that is itself made on the basis of authority rather than knowledge.35 Scheeben goes on to distinguish between “human faith” and “theological faith.” He says: Theological faith, generally speaking, is the believing acceptance through which we assent to the word of God in the manner corresponding to its dignity and force. This kind is called divine faith (fides divina) as opposed to human faith that is founded on human authority; supernatural faith insofar as it is accomplished in a supernatural manner by both the will and the intellect so as to be able to serve as a beginning of supernatural salvation (and therefore to be fides salutaris), and therefore has God not only as its objectively motivating author but also as its interior cause.36 34 35 36 See Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 2, a. 1 (trans. T. C. O’Brien in Summa Theologiae, vol. 31, Faith: 2a2ae, 1–7 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006]). See Newman, Grammar of Assent, 157: “That mode of Assent which is exercised thus unconsciously, I may call simple assent. . . . But now I am going to speak of such assents as must be made consciously and deliberately, and which I shall call complex or reflex assents.” Scheeben, Handbook 1.2, no. 654. The Good of Authority in the Theolog y of Matthias Joseph Scheeben 443 Two aspects of theological faith distinguish it from human faith. First, divine authority is of an absolute character. The “dignity and force” which underlie the word of God are unconditional and infallible. We might also point out that, unlike the human witness that Simon describes, God does not have authority because of something outside of himself. Indeed, God as the one who speaks through an external word presents to mankind not an object of knowledge beyond himself, but reveals himself as the supreme object of human knowledge. Nor does he lack superiority over the believer. God is therefore categorically superior to any human witness. Second, while Scheeben has stated that in belief a conviction is “produced . . . in us,” such that we subjectively receive the insight of the authority, theological faith comes to be in a “supernatural manner.” It is not simply that the human mind takes on the content of the word of God as a material object, but in fact God operates as an efficient cause on the faculties of intellect and will to engender faith. As Scheeben says later, “[faith] is called for and supported by God not merely externally and objectively through the motivating and sustaining force of His authority, but also is brought about and upheld internally and subjectively through His prompting and supporting grace and consequently is a supernatural act of virtue.”37 Simon argued for submission to a credible witness as an act of “honesty” and “duty.” As was noted, even acts of human faith have a moral component. However, the act of theological faith is both prompted and supplied in a supernatural manner, and is thus directed to its object through a supernatural act on the part of the human being. For Scheeben, then, the act of faith is not simply an intellectual act, but is a “religious act of virtue” and is latreutic in character.38 This “distinguishes (theological faith) from every other form of reasonable or unreasonable belief, with which it has been lumped together in the modern era, partly by rationalists and partly by unclear fideists.”39 Scheeben emphasizes that the act of theological faith is a form of latria which is specific to the intellect. It is a religiositas mentis or sacrificium intellectus.40 Thus, the intellect and not only the will submits to God. Yet Scheeben faces two sets of difficulties concerning the sacrificium intellectus. First, the “rationalistic views of the age” regard the sacrificium intellectus as an offense to reason. Second, the theological tradition contains a dispute between accounts that emphasize the will and the intellect respectively in 37 38 39 40 Scheeben, Handbook 1.2, no. 657. Scheeben, Handbook 1.2, no. 657. Scheeben, Handbook 1.2, no. 657. Scheeben, Handbook 1.2. no. 670. 444 Patrick Auer Jones the act of faith. Scheeben takes William of Paris as representative of the former camp insofar as he “emphasized and elaborated most decisively and most thoroughly” the “obedience of faith.”41 While William grounds the sacrificium intellectus in the obedient response to God’s imperium as Creator, the Thomists “express God’s authority in a narrower sense . . . by saying that the motive for faith is the prima veritas or primordial truth.”42 In response to rationalism, Scheeben must show that the sacrificium intellectus which is given through obedience to God’s imperium is a reasonable sacrifice (obsequium rationale). In adjudicating the dispute between “voluntarism” and “intellectualism,” Scheeben must show that their respective emphases on the command of God and on God’s truthfulness as formal object can be synthesized.43 Scheeben finds an answer in chapter 3 of Dei Filius, where God’s imperium and his infallibility are linked. Man responds to God by rendering “the homage of intellect and will,”44 and this response is grounded in the metaphysical relationship of creature to Creator. Dei Filius states: “Since man is totally dependent upon God, as upon his Creator and Lord, and since created reason is absolutely subject to uncreated truth, we are bound to yield by faith the full homage of intellect and will to the God who reveals.”45 The submission of reason to Deus revelans does not restrain or confine the intellect, but rather is completely fitting, since created reason is 41 42 43 44 45 Scheeben, Handbook 1.2, no. 673. Scheeben, Handbook 1.2, no. 673. This synthesis cannot be analyzed here in all of its detail. Though Scheeben is not, of course, innovative in identifying the critical role played by the will in faith, he attempts to grant the intellective character of faith its full due while preserving the centrality of the will and of the affections. Indeed, Scheeben insists that the pia affectio voluntatis is the “actual root of faith” (see Handbook 1.2, no. 651). John Courtney Murray gives a concise enunciation of the character of Scheeben’s attempt at a synthesis between the roles of the intellect and the will in faith through presenting faith as a “compound act”: “. . . that is to say, an act compounded of an intellectual and a voluntary aspect. Obviously such a concept is as such a theological commonplace—the freedom of faith is defined doctrine. He does indeed maintain, and quite properly, that the intellectual assent as such ‘forms the genuine substance and essence of faith’; but he insists far more on the inseparability of the intellect’s action from that of the will, both in the genesis of faith and in its internal constitution. His characteristic formula is that pius credulitatis affectus ‘belongs to the substance of faith.’” Emphasis mine. Heinrich Denzinger, Compendium of Creeds, Definitions, and Declarations on Matters of Faith and Morals, ed. Peter Hünermann, 43rd ed. [DH], English ed. Robert Fastiggi and Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), no. 3008. See Scheeben, Handbook 1.2, no. 656. The Good of Authority in the Theolog y of Matthias Joseph Scheeben 445 dependent upon uncreated truth. At the same time that Dei Filius places God’s authority as “Creator and Lord” alongside his status as uncreated truth, the document also points directly to God’s infallibility as the motive of faith. Dei Filius goes on to say “faith . . . is a supernatural virtue whereby . . . we believe that what [God] has revealed is true, not because the intrinsic truth of things is recognized by the natural light of reason, but because of the authority of God himself who reveals them, who can neither err nor deceive.”46 Scheeben will gloss this passage as an account of the motive of faith specifically according to its “intellectual aspect”: The motive for the act of cognition in faith or of the assent itself—and consequently the formal motive . . . and the formal object (obiectum formale) of faith according to its intellectual aspect—is generally, as becomes clear from the words of the Vatican Council, God as the one “qui nec falli nec fallere potest,” “who can neither err nor deceive.” . . . The motive is therefore God, as the one who in His external word or testimony offers the content thereof infallibly as the content of His own infallible knowledge, in order to determine and to substantiate our assent.47 The Thomists are right, then, to insist that God as prima veritas is the motive of the intellectual assent of faith. Because God is “unoriginated principle of all knowledge and of all knowing beings and therefore also prince of all minds,” he must command the assent of rational beings to whom he has revealed himself. Scheeben’s gloss on Dei Filius also serves to undermine the spirit of rationalism as it appears in theology. Against Juan de Lugo and Josef Kleutgen, Scheeben argues that the assent of faith cannot be given on the grounds of our own insight—even our philosophical insights into the attributes of God such as omniscience or infallibility.48 Instead, “God, precisely as the first and deepest, firmest and soundest root of all truth, offers Himself as the reason for our assent.”49 But this intellectual assent has much more than a logical character. Indeed, the intellectual assent of faith cannot be extricated from the movement of the will toward God, and thus from faith “according to its ethical 46 47 48 49 DH, no. 3008. Scheeben, Handbook 1.2, no. 674. See Scheeben, Handbook 1.2, no. 681. Scheeben understands Lugo and Kleutgen to advocate a “logical-mechanical view of faith as a syllogism through which we demonstrate to ourselves the truth of the content of faith.” Scheeben, Handbook 1.2, no. 674. 446 Patrick Auer Jones aspect.” Further, in making the intellectual assent of faith, the believer not only receives the “insight” of God through the material content of his external word; he also enters into a “most intimate union with God.”50 While the sacrificium intellectus might appear to the modern rationalist as a forfeit of the most excellent of human powers, Scheeben actually deems it the means by which the mind can attain to its highest dignity through contemplation of God. As John Courtney Murray says, it is one of Scheeben’s “dominating ideas . . . that faith is a participation in the knowledge of God.”51 Faith maintains a “specific sublimity” insofar as it achieves not just a likeness between God’s mind and the human mind, but a profound communion: The believer, prompted by grace, strives to conform his judgment to God’s judgment through submission to God’s authority and trust in his truthfulness and to unite his conviction to God’s infallible insight as closely and as firmly as possible and to found it thereon; and the support of grace makes it possible for him to accomplish this union in such a way that the most intimate communion, interpenetration, and affinity comes about between the believer’s knowledge and God’s knowledge, so that therefore the divine force and dignity of the latter is transplanted to the former and shapes it into a commencement and anticipation of eternal life.52 It is in this “interpenetration” of the human and divine minds that Scheeben grounds his claim that theological faith transcends even the most elaborate or certain philosophical insight. The “transcendental knowledge” which contemporary philosophers pursue, he asserts, is in fact only obtainable through faith, which “really accomplishes through humble attachment to God what [the modern philosophers] tried to accomplish through proud, excessive demands on their natural powers of reason.”53 In his work Nature and Grace, Scheeben presents faith as a commencement of the journey toward the beatific vision: “Nothing more sublime or profound can be said about faith than that it is a preparation and anticipation of the beatific vision.”54 In the Handbook, he clarifies that this view 50 51 52 53 54 Scheeben, Handbook 1.2, no. 674. Murray, Matthias Scheeben on Faith, 58. Scheeben, Handbook 1.2, no. 660. Scheeben, Handbook 1.2, no. 717. Matthias Joseph Scheeben, Nature and Grace, trans. Cyril Vollert, S.J. (London: Herder, 1954), 235. The Good of Authority in the Theolog y of Matthias Joseph Scheeben 447 of faith is by no means innovative, but rather traditional. He holds that, though this was largely the consensus of the Scholastic theologians, it has been eclipsed by the varieties of rationalism evident not only among the modern philosophers, but also among theologians.55 We notice here a conformity with Simon’s closing insight about authority and the search for truth. Faith substitutes for vision, but at the same time, prepares the believer for that vision. The beatific vision stands as the supernatural analogue to the soteria of the natural potencies of the mind which is brought about by scientific demonstration. In the beatific vision, then, faith has a terminus that is on the one hand analogous to the philosophical telos of rational “objectivity,” and at the same time transcends it. But it should also be noted that, for Scheeben, it is not only the beatific vision that transcends philosophical insight, but even that faith which unites the mind and will to God in via. Divine faith motivated by God’s status as unoriginated truth transcends philosophy even in this life, and brings the mind to an “interpenetration” with a supernatural object even before the mind attains perfect vision. Indeed, in his Mysteries of Christianity, Scheeben further elaborates the mystery of grace as an adoption of the believer into the communion of the Holy Trinity. There is an uplifting of the entire soul that occurs through the interior influence of God that simply does not lie within the soul’s natural powers.56 Though this topic cannot be discussed adequately here, it is important to note that Scheeben does not present a fideistic account of the role of human reason. The role of reason in theology and the relationship between 55 56 See Scheeben, Handbook 1.2, no. 658: “There was even less talk in the aforesaid systems (particularly those of Hermes and Günther), not so much as a hint, of the intrinsic relation that ought to have been mentioned at the same time between theological faith and the beatific vision, which is just as important for the supernatural character of faith as it is for the supernatural character of revelation, and which therefore even in the older theologians, especially after St. Thomas, was selected as the starting point for the definition of the nature of faith.” See Murray, Matthias Scheeben on Faith, 67: “The doctrine of faith as the anticipation of the beatific vision finds its natural insertion into these two fundamental mysteries of the supernatural order, our adoption as the children of God in the image of His Son, our participation in the divine nature, and the consequent communion in the divine life with which we are thus ‘graced.’” See Matthias Joseph Scheeben, The Mysteries of Christianity, trans. Cyril Vollert, S.J. (London: Herder, 1968), 169: “But we must . . . say that grace and charity constitute the dignity of the sons of God inasmuch as they render the soul conformable to God. But also because they make God’s own Spirit the property and innermost possession of the soul. . . . The indwelling of the Holy Spirit seals the relation of adoptive sonship [inasmuch] as His procession from the Father and Son crowns and completes the relation of the natural sonship.” 448 Patrick Auer Jones philosophy and theology are dealt with in the second chapter of Handbook 1.2. In this account Scheeben shows that he by no means wishes to deny the dignity of human reason, especially when it is brought into relationship with God through the act of faith and becomes capable of theological wisdom. Yet it is critical to observe that this sophisticated use of human reason to cognize the content of faith depends entirely on the formal motive of God’s authority and truthfulness as its starting point. If this starting point is neglected, human reason in fact misses its opportunity for the strengthening and elevation of its own powers. When theological faith is construed as dependent on human insight, rather than God’s authority as the source of all truth, the trajectory of the intellect toward transcendence is subverted. The intellect then falls short of the dignity which is made available to it by grace.57 This section has striven to clarify the role of God’s authority in the theological act of faith. It has been shown that Scheeben presents an analysis of faith which elaborates on Simon’s insight concerning the role of authority in Christian life, presenting a systematic epistemological account both of human faith and of divine faith. Scheeben insists that through the latria of the mind which constitutes the act of theological faith, the intellect rises to a dignity much greater than the demonstrative philosophical knowledge in which Simon locates the full vitality of the intellect. This elevation of the intellect depends upon the sacrificium intellectus as the means by which God draws the human mind into “intimate union.” This union reaches its fulfillment in the beatific vision. In Simon’s terms, the sacrificium intellectus through faith culminates eschatologically in “clear intuition.” Yet even in this life, faith effects an “intimate union” with God, transforming the intellectual assent of faith into a meritorious act of the virtue of religion and raising the believer to a lofty dignity beyond his natural powers. While Scheeben notes the analogy between natural and theological faith, it must be reiterated that the term of the intellectual movement begun by faith is not the propositional demonstration which Simon identifies as scientific knowledge. For Simon, the teacher helps the student arrive 57 See Scheeben, Handbook 1.2, no. 822: “Now just as [faith] attains a supernatural moral nobility and value on the basis of this supernatural freedom, so too it strives essentially for the state of a supernatural and divine freedom of the mind, for the freedom of the children of God, for freedom from error and doubt, and for the full, unhindered, and untroubled possession of the highest truth in the bosom of Eternal Truth. Its childlike sense is consequently the most sublime high-mindedness and leads to the most sublime intellectual greatness and strength, while unbelievers in their idle arrogance and false sense of freedom fall back into the weakness of children.” The Good of Authority in the Theolog y of Matthias Joseph Scheeben 449 at the point of conformity between the mind and the object of knowledge through syllogistic argumentation. Though Scheeben offers an extensive treatment of the cognition of the object of faith through theological science, it is crucial to emphasize the transcendent and, indeed, divinizing character of the submission of the intellect in theological faith.58 By reason of the supernatural character of revealed truths, the object of theological faith simply transcends the natural capacities of the intellect. Correspondingly, the theological virtue of faith transcends even the most perfect exercise of the natural intellectual virtues. The act of faith motivated by God’s authority, then, does not compromise but rather elevates the human mind, and indeed the whole human soul. The Need for a Living Human Authority Having examined Scheeben’s account of divine authority in the act of theological faith, I now move to the question of the role of human authority. It will be the purpose of the following section to show that, for Scheeben, the authority of the Church is not reducible to her juridical power. Rather, her authority is rooted in her role as the medium by which divine life is communicated to believers through faith. The Church is not first of all an arbiter of disputes or even a “leader” in Simon’s sense of the world. Rather, 58 Scheeben engages the relationship between faith and reason in theological science in section 2 of Handbook 1.2. Though it does not belong to this study to explain Scheeben’s account of the nature of theological knowledge and the act of theological reasoning, it suffices to recognize that Scheeben understands the vital role played by human reason in attaining a more profound understanding of the supernatural mysteries revealed by God. Following Dei Filius again, Scheeben opposes the two possible consequences of “modern rationalism.” See Handbook 1.2, no. 855: “In opposition to modern rationalism, which sometimes declares impossible any understanding of the doctrines of the faith and sometimes claims to have an absolute understanding of and complete insight into them, the Vatican Council, after assigning to faith its specific object in the mysteries, established the Catholic doctrine about the truly possible understanding thereof excluding both extremes. On the one hand it teaches that an understanding, and indeed a remarkably productive one is possible. . . . On the other hand it teaches that this understanding is not of the same kind as the insight into natural truths, and in particular is more obscure and more incomplete than the latter.” The sacrificium intellectus is necessary because the believer cannot assent to the mysteries of the Christian faith through a syllogistic demonstration. Yet, having received and assented to the mysteries of faith on the authority of the One who reveals, the Christian can proceed toward a greater understanding of these mysteries, particularly in their relationship to each other and “from the analogy with the objects of [reason’s] natural knowledge” (Dei Filius, ch. 4). 450 Patrick Auer Jones she is a “teacher” given license to present the truth by the very source of truth: God who can neither err nor deceive. At the same time, just as the theological act of faith itself responds both to God’s sovereignty or imperium and to God’s truthfulness as prima veritas, the Church’s teaching role as agent of divine truth necessarily implies an authentic power to demand assent as well as to govern and judge. Thus, the Church is both leader and teacher, but only insofar as she is the ambassador of God’s truthfulness. For Scheeben’s account of the Church, I turn to Handbook 1.1, where he presents “the objective principles of theological knowledge.” Having laid out the character of divine revelation “as the principle of [theological] knowledge in us” in the first chapter, Scheeben turns to the “transmission” of divine revelation in chapter 2.59 In the opening of chapter 2 Scheeben states: “Although it is meant for all people of all places and times, divine revelation is still not immediately bestowed on all. . . . In order for it to be effectively proclaimed to all people, other arrangements are necessary, which are distinct from it but nevertheless come from God.”60 Recall Simon’s account of the teacher in chapter 3 of A General Theory of Authority. The authority of teachers, he says, “originates in a law that these people did not make.”61 It is important from the outset to note that Scheeben distinguishes between divine revelation and the “medium” of its transmission. The question, of course, is the nature of this “medium.” Here, Scheeben must engage the disputes between the Catholic and Protestant positions, which he claims “are diametrically opposed.”62 Scheeben distinguishes between “Modern”/“New” and “Old” Protestantism. Modern Protestantism is more forthright in proclaiming this principle as the way of grasping the meaning of revelation. Old Protestantism, on the other hand, claimed to eschew an individualistic principle but “produced in fact the opposite of its goal, by making the Faith a plaything of the moods and imaginations of each individual.”63 While New Protestantism adopts a “natu59 60 61 62 63 Mattias Joseph Scheeben, Handbook of Catholic Dogmatics, vol. 1.1, trans. Michael Miller (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2019), no. 1. Scheeben, Handbook 1.1, no. 57. Simon, General Theory of Authority, 84. Scheeben, Handbook 1.1, no. 56. Scheeben, Handbook 1.1, no. 59. See John Henry Newman, “Faith and Private Judgment,” in Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations (London: Longmans and Green, 1921), 192–213, at 201: “Protestants, generally speaking, have not faith, in the primitive meaning of that word, this is clear from what I have been saying, and here is a confirmation of it. If men believed now as they did in the times of the Apostles, they could not doubt or change. No one can doubt whether a word spoken by God is to be believed; of course it is; whereas any one, who is modest and humble, may easily be The Good of Authority in the Theolog y of Matthias Joseph Scheeben 451 ralistic” view of the meaning of revelation as “exclusively religious-moral edification,” the Old Protestantism adopts a “pseudo-mystical way and thus [tries] to base the firmest and fullest supernatural faith thereon.”64 Instead of “religious-moral edification,” Old Protestantism understands the meaning of revelation to lie in the “comforting certainty of the forgiveness of sins.”65 Both of these forms of Protestantism adopt what Scheeben calls an “indifferentist attitude toward the objective transmission of revelation,” such that they “protest against a revelation that approaches each and every individual authoritatively, or against a living, exterior, divinely-ordered authority which makes the claim to interpret revelation authentically in the Name of God and which authoritatively obliges obedient, universal, and unified faith in this revelation.”66 In confronting Protestantism, Scheeben must confront the very dispute which Simon engages in his philosophical account of authority. He must show how a living human authority, rather than acting as an impediment to the transmission of divine revelation, in fact serves as a necessary condition for this transmission, such that the individual Christian (and Christians collectively) can receive faith most perfectly through the medium of the Church. The individualistic principle in Protestantism, Scheeben says, reduces the entire concept of revelation to its subjective effects. In this way, it denies the objectivity of revelation as proceeding “from God as the Creator and Lord of Mankind.”67 As was shown in the last section, it is by virtue of this status as Creator and Lord and unoriginated principle of knowledge, that God himself serves as the grounds and criterion for the act of faith. Though Old Protestantism may point to the “record” of revelation left in Scripture as some version of an “unoriginated principle,” it mistakes Scripture for the formal motive of faith. This record indeed presents God’s external word, but to make it the grounds of faith is to confuse the external word with the one who speaks that word, thus in fact diminishing “the power and sovereignty due to the Word of God.”68 The motive of faith cannot in any way be rooted in the individual who receives the external word of God, or even in the written record of the divine word. Instead, faith is the intellectual assent made to what God has revealed because of God’s identity as the “first and deepest, firmest 64 65 66 67 68 brought to doubt of his own inferences and deductions.” Scheeben, Handbook 1.1, nos. 60 and 59. Scheeben, Handbook 1.1, no. 69. Scheeben, Handbook 1.1, no. 59. Scheeben, Handbook 1.1, no. 60. Scheeben, Handbook 1.1, no. 60. 452 Patrick Auer Jones and soundest root of all truth,” which lifts the mind and will toward God and effects an “intimate union” of the human mind with the divine Mind. The same reasoning that governs Scheeben’s account of God’s authority and truthfulness as the formal motive of faith governs his account of the Church’s causal role not only in transmitting the material content of revelation, but in serving as a representative of that formal motive. Along the lines of the Apostle’s saying, “faith through hearing,” the Church’s proposal also has influence and importance for faith because she, being the living proclamation of God’s word, carried out in His name, with His authority, and in His power, causes God Himself to speak to us, and consequently the divine motive of faith confronts us through her and in her and exercises its influence on us.69 As Scheeben explains, faith is produced in the human soul by the interior influence of God. In this sense, the primary cause of the generation of faith is God himself. Yet the Church exercises a kind of secondary causality precisely by acting as the means by which God’s word confronts human beings as testimony of Deus revelans. At the same time, the Church is not, so to speak, a “dead” instrument with a merely material nature, nor does it act merely as ministra materiae Dei or of the material object of faith, “but rather as ministra Dei loquentes or as the organ and envoy of God himself who speaks.”70 The Church as “living organ,” “envoy,” and “ambassador” receives a participation in God’s authority and his power through divine delegation, and does not rest passively as the “mirror” in which the material object of faith becomes visible.71 As envoy or ambassador of God’s imperium and of his truthfulness, the Church is able to speak authoritatively for God and, further, to demand the response of faith.72 As Scheeben explains, 69 70 71 72 Scheeben, Handbook 1.2, no. 765. Scheeben, Handbook 1.2, no. 765. Scheeben, Handbook 1.2, no. 765: “The importance of the Church’s proposal for the faith is nevertheless not restricted to the fact that it serves the faith somehow as a detailed and infallibly correct representation of its material object or holds that material object up to faith as though in a conduit or a mirror, as that might also happen more or less through a lifeless book. In that case only a purely material difference would exist between Catholic faith and divine faith.” It is important to note that, at least in the context of the second chapter of Handbook 1.1, Scheeben is not speaking specifically about the Church’s sacramental ministry as the means by which she “produces” faith. Rather, he is drawing attention to the vicarious role the Church plays vis-à-vis God as the formal motive of faith. Insofar as the Church is a “living envoy,” she is entrusted with God’s truthfulness and authority. The Good of Authority in the Theolog y of Matthias Joseph Scheeben 453 an “envoy” or “ambassador” not only receives the mission of transmitting the sovereign’s message, but is enabled to act vicariously in the name of the sovereign.73 The motive for submitting to the envoy is not the authority the envoy possesses in his own person, but rather the authority of the master who sends the envoy. Similarly, the Church justifiably demands the assent of faith to what she proposes as true not because of any authority proper to her human members as such, but insofar as these human members are invested with divine authority. In Handbook 1.1, Scheeben offers further distinctions concerning the attributes of the “agents,” “organs,” or “envoys” of God who are the successors of the apostles. These agents, Scheeben says, are “divine envoys who appear in God’s Name and carry [God’s word] publicly by dint of a divine commission and divine authority and with divine power conferred on them by God.”74 But these respective conferrals are in fact distinct moments of the Church’s trusteeship. The commission to preach proceeds from “God’s promise” and a “divine sanction” that invests the Church with infallibility when it comes to the proclamation of the external word. But this commission, Scheeben goes on to say, “would suffice . . . merely to prompt faith.”75 The investiture of the Church with God’s authority enables the Church not only to prompt faith but to “produce it also” according to the to the “title” or Recht which God bestows. Finally, the bestowal of God’s power is the basis of the Church’s judicial function, by which it can “demand imperatively the acknowledgment of the truth that is proclaimed and . . . support this demand through punishments.”76 While Scheeben posits the preaching office of the Church—the proclamation of the external word—as a primary function of the apostolate, it is important to note that the proclamation of the word cannot be an exhaustive definition of the Church’s charism. Indeed, to reduce the Church’s commission merely to a presentation of the material to be believed would be to make the Church a “mirror” of the material object rather than an envoy. 73 74 75 76 As he says in Handbook 1.2, no. 765, it is through the Church that the “divine motive of faith . . . exercises its influence on us.” Scheeben does not include a treatment of the Sacraments in the texts under consideration here. Scheeben distinguishes between mere messengers and envoys: “The word of God, being the glad tidings or message of God to mankind, cannot and should not be spread merely by arbitrary town criers, or even merely through simply messengers or heralds of God. The proclamation must instead be carried out by true ambassadors, i.e. envoys equipped with God’s power and authority” (Handbook 1.1, no. 74). Scheeben, Handbook 1.1, no. 67. Scheeben, Handbook 1.1, no. 68. Scheeben, Handbook 1.1, no. 68. 454 Patrick Auer Jones It is crucial here to recall Scheeben’s adjudication between “intellectualism” and “voluntarism” in his treatment of faith. Just as Dei Filius connects God’s absolute sovereignty as Creator with his status as First Truth, the Church herself is invested simultaneously both with plenipotentiary power and with the fullness of divine truth. Thus, Her authority as such proceeds from a vicarious participation in God’s imperium and his truthfulness. When it comes to the Church’s authority, it is necessary to maintain the synthesis between God’s sovereign power and his supreme truthfulness which lies at the basis of Scheeben’s analysis of the act of theological faith. Scheeben insists on the primacy of the Church’s mission to produce the theological act of faith and thus to communicate divine truth. The teaching authority of the Church comes to light as more fundamental than her disciplinary or juridical authority. Yet Scheeben carefully identifies how the Church differs from any merely human teacher by virtue of her investiture with God’s sovereign power. As Scheeben states, “the whole efficacy and nature of the apostolate is greatly illumined by the concept of teaching, if the latter is correctly defined and filled with content, but both would be just as greatly obscured by the same concept if it were understood merely according to a human analogy.”77 The teaching authority of the Church is necessarily “far more sublime” than any authority of a human teacher—so much so that Scheeben insists that “the only analogy is found in parents with respect to their children.”78 The Church as magister possesses a “power to teach” symbolized by the cathedra or the teacher’s chair. Scheeben’s account of the magisterium can be compared with and distinguished from Simon’s account of the “teacher.” As was shown, Simon distinguishes between the “leader” and the “teacher” insofar as the former possesses a personal, directive authority. The latter possesses authority only indirectly and in reference to the objective truth that is outside himself. While the Church certainly possesses a purely received authority and testifies to God as the supreme authority and First Truth, her authority is also both personal and directive. As “envoy” and “organ,” the Church is invested with the personal authority of God as well as directive and judicial power. It is for this reason that Scheeben likens the authority of the Church as magister to paternal authority rather than, for example, the authority of a professor. Just as faith is a response both of intellect and will to God’s sovereignty and truthfulness, the Church’s authority exercises a claim on intellect and will together. It therefore 77 78 Scheeben, Handbook 1.1, no. 83. Scheeben, Handbook 1.1, no. 83. The Good of Authority in the Theolog y of Matthias Joseph Scheeben 455 extends both to questions of “what is the case?” and “what is to be done?,” to borrow Simon’s language. As has been shown, Scheeben understands the Church to exercise a “causal role” in “producing faith.” It is clear, however, that this causality is exercised by the Church only insofar as she is an “organ” of God’s authority by which she has received not only a commission to preach the external word, but the power to demand the obedience of faith which is due to God. For Scheeben, the defense of the authority of the Church depends on her capacity to produce supernatural faith in the God who reveals. This issues in a characterization of the Church as an “envoy”—an authoritative personal representative—of God invested with the proclamation of divine truth through her magisterium. The more expansive governmental and juridical powers of the Church over the “empire” of Christians must originate first of all in the Church’s magisterial competency to produce supernatural faith by acting as a representative of God. The question of authority, then, is not reducible merely to the question of judicial power, though they are intimately related. Authority, as the motive of faith, has to do with the transmission of truth from God to humankind. Whatever judicial powers the Church possesses exist for the sake of guarding the truth and promoting genuine faith in believers. Scheeben roots the magisterium of the Church in God’s own “magisterial power”: the Church’s proclamation “is called authoritative insofar as the one responsible for it also formally represents God’s magisterial power over the creation subject to Him and as God’s real representative participates in it.”79 It is due to this investiture with God’s magisterial power that the representative—the “living organ” or “envoy”—“can imperatively demand faith and at the same time oblige others to carry it out, as is the case in a human situation with a judge.”80 The Church exercises an authority over both the intellect and the will, insofar as she authentically and credibly presents the truth about God and acts as an ambassador of the supreme sovereign and Creator to whom obedience is owed. It has been established that the authority of the Church exists for the sake of the transmission of divine revelation and that the Church represents God as the formal motive for the assent of faith. It is in light of this “trusteeship” that the Church has any power to bind or loose. But Scheeben makes a further argument for why the Church must be a living representative of God. The individualistic principle underlying both 79 80 Scheeben, Handbook 1.1, no. 68. Scheeben, Handbook 1.1, no. 68. 456 Patrick Auer Jones forms of Protestantism threatens to disperse and render ineffective the revelation which God has intended to transmit to mankind. Indeed, this individualism, Scheeben states, must be contrary to God’s own provisions if his intention is to bring mankind into “intimate union” with himself. Scheeben says: The revelation cannot possibly have been put into the world by God in such a way that the document or word containing it was exposed to the four winds, so as to wait until the men who by chance are able or willing to do so seek it and, each according to his temperament, insight, and ability, recognize its existence and find out its content or explain it for themselves.81 By making faith a product of chance, of human emotion, or of personal insight, the individualistic principle turns out to contradict the formal motive of faith as Scheeben has explained it: God’s own authority and truthfulness, which raises man to a supernatural dignity and communicates otherwise unobtainable knowledge. The Church has been invested by God with the authority to preach the Gospel, to bring about the act of theological faith in individuals, and to authoritatively interpret the contents of revelation because of God’s intention to gather humankind into a “kingdom of truth.” The Church exercises a living authority in service of God’s majesty and his truthfulness and communicates supernatural life to mankind throughout time and space. For Scheeben, the Church’s status as a living authority is derived from the character of revelation itself as a life-giving principle: “[Revelation] should be a fruitful principle of supernatural knowledge and life and a supreme law of faith, thought, and action for all men, as a whole and individually, through which [human beings] are to be united in one kingdom of truth and holiness, whose King is God Himself.”82 Scheeben affirms the political character of the Church, but the Church, unlike any natural political regime, is a “kingdom of truth and holiness.”83 It is a sovereignty rooted in God’s status 81 82 83 Scheeben, Handbook 1.1, no. 65. Scheeben, Handbook 1.1, no. 62. Here, Scheeben’s view can again be contrasted not only with that of De Maistre, but with that of De Maistre’s modern disciple Carl Schmitt. Schmitt repeatedly equates God’s sovereignty with his judicial power, comparing the God of pre-Enlightenment monotheism with the “invisible person” that stands as omnipotent judge behind even the most positivistic modern legal orders: “There always exists the same inexplicable identity: lawgiver, executive power, police, pardoner, welfare institution. . . . The The Good of Authority in the Theolog y of Matthias Joseph Scheeben 457 as Creator but also as “unoriginated principle of knowledge”—as prima veritas. God’s sovereignty is not ordained simply toward the maintenance of order within his kingdom, but first of all toward a communication of his own divine life and his own “insight” to mankind.84 Conclusion The motive of this investigation was to pursue a line of thinking about the nature of authority proposed by Yves Simon as it relates to the reality of living, human authority within the Church. Though Scheeben and Simon may seem to be distant figures, they share a similar account of the subordination of the mind to the credible authority of witnesses. They also seek to respond to modern political liberalism and philosophical rationalism, albeit with distinct philosophers and political figures in mind. Yet I have tried to argue that Scheeben produces an account of authority which, like Simon’s, combats the idea that authority as such acts only as a constraint on the mind and ruins its proper vitality. Though Simon offers a glance at the relevance of his philosophy for faith, Scheeben develops his insights systematically and in view of rigorous distinctions. It is fitting to conclude with a brief review of the analogies and distinctions between the respective accounts of Simon and Scheeben. They are in agreement concerning the nature of authority in matters of natural truth. For Simon, the student assents with trust to the propositions proposed by the teacher. The teacher, on the other hand, recognizes that his authority springs from the truth itself rather than his own intellect or will, and aims to lead his students to the full activation of their powers of intellect through rational demonstration. As was shown in the second section of this paper, this is precisely how Scheeben characterizes the natural act of belief. Assent is given to propositions because of the trustworthiness of the authority. The student thus makes a “firm assent” to what he receives 84 ‘omnipotence’ of the modern lawgiver, of which one reads in every textbook on public law, is not only linguistically derived from theology” (Political Theology, 38). Here I use a term operative in Scheeben’s account of natural and theological faith in Handbook 1.2 (see nos. 617 and 657). For Scheeben, the use of the term helps establish the analogy between natural and theological faith insofar as the submission of the student to the teacher is given on account of the superior insight of the teacher. But, clearly, when applied to God, “insight” should not signify the product of any ratiocinative power. The term, then, should not connote any univocity between the divine and human modes of knowing, but rather indicate that God is trustworthy because of his infinitely perfect knowledge of himself and of all creatures. 458 Patrick Auer Jones from the teacher due to the latter’s insight. The teacher thus becomes the “author” of that assent. While Simon had pointed out that the Christian life does not have its “center” in faith and authority but rather in the “clear intuition” granted by the beatific vision, Scheeben contends that the theological act of faith in fact possesses an even greater “majesty” and “dignity” than demonstrative philosophical knowledge. Though the act of faith is not brought about by the clear vision of God in his essence, it takes on the character of an act of religion—a latria of the mind—and brings the believer into “intimate union” with God even in this life. Therefore, Scheeben adds to Simon’s account a robust argument for the act of theological faith as elevating, bringing the believer even now into the life of grace by which he is supernaturally unified with the object of belief. Further, Scheeben clarifies that, because the Church is invested with both God’s sovereignty and his truthfulness, she possesses a uniquely dignified status as a teacher who also possesses authority to demand assent as well as to govern. The Church, then, is both a “leader” and a “teacher” according to Simon’s categories. The salient point remains that the Church’s authority to govern can never be disentangled from her identity as bearer of divine truth. But in her role as God’s ambassador, the Church transcends the natures and capacities of all other “leaders” and “teachers.” Scheeben’s theology of faith, it was shown, is intimately bound together with his articulation of the Church as an “agent,” “organ,” and “envoy” of God. The Church is relegated neither to a mere presentation of the material object of faith nor to a judicial role of resolving practical disputes, but rather possesses an ambassadorial authority to produce faith in the souls of believers. The authority of the Church is dependent entirely upon her vicarious representation of the truthfulness of God. The living, human authority of the Church as the agent which produces divine faith in the souls of believers is responsible for the invigoration and elevation of the soul to the dignity and majesty of “intimate union” with God. The Church indeed exercises juridical and disciplinary authority, but only insofar as she is first the “envoy” of God’s truthfulness. In his treatment of the act of faith Scheeben turns to Dei Filius to synthesize the intellectualist view of God as prima veritas with the voluntarist view of God as imperator. Similarly, Scheeben’s treatment of ecclesiastical authority synthesizes the power to demand faith, as well as the exercise of juridical authority, with the mission of transmitting divine truth. Just as authority and truthfulness are united in God’s essence, so must they be co-present as grounds for the Church’s authority and mission. The Good of Authority in the Theolog y of Matthias Joseph Scheeben 459 Scheeben gives an account of the political character of the Church as a kingdom not only of power and judgment, but of “truth and holiness.” Revelation offers a “supernatural principle of life,” which the Church transmits authoritatively throughout time and space, with God as its sovereign. It is because of her competency to produce supernatural faith throughout space and time that the Church, despite her political characteristics of authority and power, transcends any merely human kingdom. The Church alone is “trustee” of the divine truth which is received on God’s authority and raises mankind to the lofty stature of adopted sons of God. As Augustine says, “incomparably fairer is that Supernal City where victory is truth, where dignity is holiness, where peace is happiness and where life is eternity.”85 The Church is the means by which God’s kingdom is established on earth in order to lead the faithful toward the “Heavenly Country,” where we “will find the one and true God, Who ‘will set no bounds or duration to your estate, but will grant empire without end.’”86 85 86 Augustine, De civitate Dei 2.29, trans. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Augustine, De civitate Dei 2.29. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2022): 461–484 461 A Deeper Look at Aquinas’s First Way Gaven Kerr St. Patrick’s Pontifical University Maynooth, Ireland The first way is traditionally referred to as the argument from motion, and its general form comes from the arguments for a first mover put forth by Aristotle in books 7–8 of the Physics. Aquinas puts forth similar arguments in Summa contra gentiles [SCG] IV, chapter 13, as well as in other places in his works.1 Thomas states that this is the more manifest way, and accordingly he opens the five ways with it. This argument has been attacked and defended on numerous occasions, and recently it has come within the purview of criticisms of Edward Feser’s defense of the argument from motion. In what follows I propose a reading of the first way that sets it up as a metaphysical argument for God’s existence. I then situate that reading within the context of Aquinas’s metaphysical thought. Having done that I address one particular recent objection. The First Way In this section I will consider the first way in itself. I shall begin with a statement of the argument and then proceed to an analysis of its reasoning. 1 Joseph Owens presents a survey of the argument from motion in Aquinas’s thought in “The Conclusion of the Prima Via,” in St. Thomas Aquinas on the Existence of God, ed. John R. Catan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980), no. 4; see also Owens’s, “Aquinas and the Proof from the ‘Physics,’” Mediaeval Studies 28: (1966): 119–50. The relevant passages in Aquinas are: In I sent., d. 3, proem.; Summa contra gentiles I, ch. 13; De potentia, q. 3, a. 5; Compendium theologiae, ch. 3; In VII phys., lec. 2; In VIII phys., lec. 9. 462 Gaven Kerr The Argument The text of the first way goes as follows in Summa Theologiae [ST] I, q. 2, a. 3: The first and more manifest way is taken from the side of motion. It is certain and evident to sense that something is moved in the world. Now, whatever is moved is moved by another; for nothing moves unless it is potency to that to which it is moved and something moves insofar as it is in act. To move then is nothing more than to bring something from potency to act, and nothing can be reduced from potency to act unless by something that is in act, just as the hot in act, for example fire, makes the wood, that is hot in potency, to be actually hot, and in doing so moves and alters it. It is not possible that the same thing can at once be in act and in potency in the same respect, but only according to diverse respects. So what is actually hot cannot simultaneously be potentially hot, but it is potentially cold. It is impossible then that in the same respect and mode something is mover and moved, or that it moves itself. Therefore, whatever is moved must be moved by another. If therefore that by which a thing is moved is itself moved, the latter must be moved by another, and that by another. This cannot proceed to infinity, for then there would be no primary mover, and consequently no other mover; for secondary movers do not move unless they are moved by a primary, just as the stick does not move unless moved by the hand. It is therefore necessary to come upon some primary mover that is moved by nothing, and this all understand to be God.2 2 Summa theologiae [ST] I, q. 2, a. 3: “Prima autem et manifestior via est, quae sumitur ex parte motus. Certum est enim, et sensu constat, aliqua moveri in hoc mundo. Omne autem quod movetur, ab alio movetur. Nihil enim movetur, nisi secundum quod est in potentia ad illud ad quod movetur, movet autem aliquid secundum quod est actu. Movere enim nihil aliud est quam educere aliquid de potentia in actum, de potentia autem non potest aliquid reduci in actum, nisi per aliquod ens in actu, sicut calidum in actu, ut ignis, facit lignum, quod est calidum in potentia, esse actu calidum, et per hoc movet et alterat ipsum. Non autem est possibile ut idem sit simul in actu et potentia secundum idem, sed solum secundum diversa, quod enim est calidum in actu, non potest simul esse calidum in potentia, sed est simul frigidum in potentia. Impossibile est ergo quod, secundum idem et eodem modo, aliquid sit movens et motum, vel quod moveat seipsum. Omne ergo quod movetur, oportet ab alio moveri. Si ergo id a quo movetur, moveatur, oportet et ipsum ab alio moveri et illud ab alio. Hic autem non est procedere in infinitum, quia sic non esset aliquod primum movens; et per consequens nec aliquod aliud movens, quia moventia secunda non movent nisi per hoc quod sunt A Deeper Look at Aquinas’s First Way 463 To begin with, Thomas makes an observation about motion in the world; he tells us that it is evident that there is motion. Having observed motion, Aquinas goes on to explore the nature of motion, and he begins by affirming that whatever is moved is moved by another. The justification for this principle represents a significant portion of the first way.3 Whatever is moved is moved only because it stands in potency to something, and in the process of being actualized it is in motion. Accordingly, what moves the thing potentially in motion must be actual and capable of moving the thing that is in potential to such actuality; in other words, the mover must have the ability to impart motion to the thing that is potentially moved. And this is what motion is: the actualization of that which exists in potency. And such can occur only if we have something that is capable, that is actual in the appropriate respect of actualizing the potency.4 Thomas gives the example of fire, which is actually hot, heating wood, which is potentially hot but actually cold. The first has the actuality of heat and can reduce the potentiality of the wood for being hot to actuality. Now the same thing cannot be both in act and in potency in the same respect; for then it would be actualizing its own potency in that respect; for example, the wood cannot be both actually hot and potentially hot, for in that case it would be both actually hot and actually cold, which is impossible. Moving on, the mover is actual with respect to the motion, in that it can bring about the motion, and the thing moved is in potency with respect to the motion, in that it undergoes the motion in question. The mover then actualizes the potentiality of the thing moved. But if the same thing cannot be in both act and potency in the same respects, then the 3 4 mota a primo movente, sicut baculus non movet nisi per hoc quod est motus a manu. Ergo necesse est devenire ad aliquod primum movens, quod a nullo movetur, et hoc omnes intelligunt Deum” (Marietti ed.). Unless otherwise stated, all translations from the works of Aquinas will be my own. A highly readable translation of the Summa is Summa Theologica, 5 vols., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Allen, TX: Christian Classics, 1981). See also In VII phys., lec. 1, nos. 885–86. For a somewhat different justification of this principle. In the latter Thomas defends the principle by considering a significant counterexample: self-motion. He accordingly takes a mobile object AB and divides it into its parts; thence he argues that insofar as it comes to rest by the rest of its parts, it is therefore moved by one of its parts, in which case even in self-motion whatever is moved is moved by another. Here in the Summa however the defence of the principle is in terms of act and potency, and so significantly different; we will return to this point later. In III phys., lec. 2, no. 285. 464 Gaven Kerr thing moved, which is in potency in respect of the motion, and the mover, which is in actuality with respect to the motion, cannot be the same. Consequently, the thing moved must be moved by another. Having established the principle that whatever is moved is moved by another, Thomas then goes on to set up a regress of movers. He conceives that if we have a mover and a thing moved which mover is itself moved, we can then ask about the mover of that, and then about the mover of that and so on. But, crucially, Aquinas argues this cannot proceed to infinity; for if it did there would be no primary mover, and if there were no primary mover, then there would be no secondary movers, since the latter depend on the former for their motion. Aquinas offers the example of a stick being moved by a hand; without some primary mover to move the stick, the stick remains immobile. So, without a primary mover to move the secondary movers—movers that are both movers and moved—there would be no motion in the series. Hence it is necessary that there must be some primary mover without which there would be no motion in the series, and this is what we understand God to be. The Reasoning So much for a statement of the argument. I have deliberately avoided any gloss that would stress one interpretation over the other. The standard objections to the first way and their standard responses are all still live options at this point. Let us now consider the reasoning and what it establishes. Aquinas begins by stating that this is the first and more manifest way. One can evidently see how this way is more manifest because it focuses on a feature of reality evident to every philosopher from the beginning of philosophy, and that is the reality of motion. Since the pre-Socratics and their grappling with the problem of the one and the many, the reality of motion has been something of a self-evident fact to philosophers. Its self-evidence does not entail that motion is easily explainable, only that one cannot escape it, not even Parmenides. Given the inescapability of motion, it is natural to think of an argument from motion as one that is more manifest. But this raises an initial problem with the first way from the outset: is it a physical argument drawn from the philosophy of nature and tracing motion in the natural world to a point of origin in some originator of cosmic motion, much like some contemporaries would trace the motions of the universe to a point of origin in the big bang? Or is it a metaphysical argument which reasons to the need for some originative source of all actuality with the physical motion observed from the outset A Deeper Look at Aquinas’s First Way 465 being a springboard for the argument? Both readings of the first way have been offered, and so before even delving into the reasoning, we should investigate how to situate it in terms of metaphysics or natural philosophy. The natural-philosophical reading of the first way has a lot to support it: it was the reasoning of Aristotle in several important places on which Aquinas comments and whose argumentative structure informs the first way; by remaining with physical motion the argument remains true to its designation as the more manifest way; and it is the natural way of reading the argument given the examples Thomas uses and the reasoning he employs. Not only that, the physical reading of the first way has the support of no less than Cajetan and Suarez, as well as more contemporary interpreters such as Anthony Kenny.5 In Aquinas’s commentary on Aristotle’s Physics he defines motion generally in terms of change, and qua change motion is the act of that which exists in potency as potency.6 Later he applies this definition to generation, corruption, and motion proper; this motion proper is motion in the strict sense and is applicable to quality (alteration), quantity (increase and decrease), and place (locomotion).7 There is some scope then for interpreting the motion at work in the first way as being a kind of physical motion not unlike that deployed in Aristotle’s Physics. Despite these considerations, when we look at the actual argument of the ST, we notice that the pivotal steps in the argument are significantly metaphysical ones. Looking at the motion principle that whatever is moved is moved by another, we notice that in the ST text, Aquinas’s 5 6 7 See Owens, “Conclusion,” no. 5, for Cajetan and Suarez; see also William Wallace, “Newtonian Antinomies Against the Prima Via,” The Thomist 19, no. 2 (1956): 151–92, for whom the first way was intended (by Thomas) to be understood by physical scientists. For Kenny, see The Five Ways (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), ch. 2. Kenny sees all the ways as being embedded within medieval cosmology (3) and so sees them as depending on cosmological, and thus physical, reasoning. Indeed, in dealing with the first way’s principle that whatever is moved is moved by another, Kenny focuses primarily on the physical arguments in favour of this principle offered elsewhere by Aquinas (e.g., SCG I, ch. 13, and In VII phys., lec. 1), and he considers (and dismisses) the more metaphysical demonstration offered by Thomas in the actual text of the ST. More recently Heather Thornton McRae and James McRae have also considered the first way primarily as a physical argument, so much so that they seek to re-cast it in more contemporary cosmological terms so as to update it for the contemporary reader; see “A Motion to Reconsider: A Defense of Aquinas’ Prime Mover Argument,” in Revisiting Aquinas’ Proofs for the Existence of God, ed. Robert Arp (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 29–47. In III phys., lect. 2, nn. 285–286. In V phys., lect. 2, no. 649. 466 Gaven Kerr reasoning for its truth is based on a consideration of act and potency and how they are the backbone of the analysis of the change under consideration. We contrast this with his considerations of the same elsewhere, such as the first lectio in the commentary on book 7 of the Physics and the thirteenth chapter of SCG I, where the same principle is considered and defended but primarily by means of physical considerations. In the ST text these physical considerations drop out and only the metaphysical demonstration of the principle remains; this indicates that Thomas is thinking metaphysically in the first way.8 Moreover, the more physical argument from motion advanced by Aristotle in the Physics need not conclude to anything more than a world soul which moves the outermost sphere.9 Indeed, Aquinas in his commentary on the Physics points out that Aristotle ends with a primary principle of all of nature, not of all that is. Thomas does claim that this is God, who is blessed forever; but the text itself of Aristotle does not justify this unless buttressed with more metaphysical considerations (and theological ones pertaining to God’s blessedness).10 Not only that, in the SCG I, chapter 13, where Thomas is advancing several arguments from motion, he notes a problem with the physical argumentation insofar as it fails to get us to something absolute, and so it needs to be buttressed by more metaphysical considerations. 8 9 10 For discussion see John Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2000), 446–47; David Twetten, “Clearing a ‘Way’ for Aquinas: How the Proof from Motion Concludes to God,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 70 (1996): 259–78. See also my article “The Summa Contra Gentiles and Aquinas’s Way to God,” forthcoming in Nova et Vetera [English]. See Owens, “Aquinas and the Proof from the ‘Physics’”; John Knasas makes the same general point that we must distinguish between a prime mover of the spheres demonstrable in natural philosophy and the prime mover which is God demonstrable only in metaphysics; see Thomistic Existentialism and Cosmological Reasoning (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2019), 176–77; see also Twetten, “Clearing a ‘Way,’” 262–63, in particular 263: “Aristotle’s Physics does not expressly arrive at God for Aquinas, but at best only indicates the manner of reasoning by which the Metaphysics alone properly and expressly concludes to a first mover that can only be the first being or God.” Twetten also notes that the autograph of the SCG gives some evidence in the redactions that the Aristotelian proof from the Physics leads only to a world soul (“Clearing a ‘Way,’” 269); the redactions of the autograph of the SCG text can be found in the Appendix to the Leonine edition. In VIII phys., lect. 23, no. 1172: “Thus the Philosopher ends the common consideration of natural things in [a consideration of ] the primary principle of the whole of nature, who is God over all blessed forever [Benedictus in saecula].” A Deeper Look at Aquinas’s First Way 467 On the other hand, the primary mover of the first way at which Thomas arrives in the conclusion is simply the primary mover moved by nothing, which he claims all understand to be God. The sed contra of the article gives us an indication of Thomas’s understanding of God, who is identified as the primary mover in the conclusion of the first way: He Who Is. But He Who Is is self-subsisting esse.11 It follows then that the conclusion of the first way is not simply a primary principle of all of nature, per the Physics, but the first principle of all things simpliciter.12 Hence the first way is not the same kind of argument as the physical argument of Aristotle’s Physics. We also must bear in mind what Thomas states about the demonstrability of God in the immediately preceding article of this question. In article 2, Thomas denies that we can have a propter quid demonstration of God, and this because we have no direct knowledge of the essence 11 12 ST I, q. 4, a. 2 (“Since God is self-subsisting esse, he cannot be without any perfection of being); q. 11, a. 4 (“He is maximally being insofar as he does not have esse determined by some nature adjoined to him”); q. 13, a. 11 (“This name, He Who Is, is most properly the name of God. First because of its signification; for it does not signify some form, but esse itself. Hence, since God’s esse is his essence itself, and nothing else is adjoined to this it is clear that among other names this name [He Who Is] most properly names God”); note also in particular the response to the first objection in a. 11, wherein this name is even more proper than Deus (“This name, He Who Is, is even more properly the name of God than this name ‘God’ because of [quantum ad] that from which it is imposed, namely from esse”); SCG III, ch. 19 (“All things have esse insofar as they are assimilated to God, who is self-subsisting esse”); De anima, a. 6, ad 2: (“If there is something that is self-subsisting esse, as we speak concerning God, we say it participates in nothing” [Marietti ed.]); De spiritualibus creaturis, a. 1 (“Hence we say that God is his own esse itself ” [Marietti ed.]); De malo, q. 16, a. 3 (“Deus enim per suam essentiam est ipsum esse subsistens” [Marietti ed.]); Quodlibetales III, q. 1, a. 1 (“Since God is self-subsisting esse, it is manifest that the nature of being belongs to God in an infinite way, without any limitation or contraction” [Marietti ed.]); In de divinis nominibus, ch. 5, lec. 1 (“But only God, who is self-subsisting esse, has esse according to the whole power [virtutem] of being” [Marietti ed.]); In de causis, lec. 7, no. 182 (“The primary cause is not a nature subsisting in its own participated esse but rather is self-subsisting esse ”). See James Weisheipl, “The Principle Omne quod movetur ab alio movetur in Medieval Physics,” Isis 56, no. 1 (1965): 29, for a similar point. Weisheipl contends that in the first way we must take motion in the widest possible sense so as to signify every coming into being and thereby get us to God. Despite this, Weisheipl treats the motion principle as exclusively physical rather than as a metaphysical principle with an application in the philosophy of nature; though to be fair to Weisheipl, he is here dealing with the principle in the context of the history of science and certain problems with that principle as a scientific principle. He simply alludes to the principle in the first way as a particular presentation of it. 468 Gaven Kerr of God. Hence, we must have a quia demonstration the middle term of which does not involve a knowledge of God’s essence, but a knowledge of his effects, creatures. Now, the only consideration of creatures that can generate a demonstration of God is a metaphysical consideration, and this is because such a consideration views creatures in terms of their being. As Thomas argues elsewhere, it was because previous philosophers did not consider creatures in terms of their being that they were unable to rise to the thought of a creator.13 Hence in order to reason our way to God, we need to construe God’s effects in terms of their very being, otherwise we will stop short of arriving at God as the originating source of all being.14 Furthermore, when we look at Aquinas’s denial of an infinite regress of moved movers in the first way, we see his appealing to the notions of primary and secondary movers and arguing that the secondary are moved only as instruments of the primary. He then calls to our attention the kind of motion involved in the series involving the hand and stick, an example that is elsewhere illuminative of what are called per se ordered series, whose nature we will be considering. The fact that Aquinas appeals to the instrumentality of secondary movers in relation to the primary and his use of the hand and stick example as illuminative of such instrumentality—which example is quite prominent in the metaphysics of the per se series—shows us that Aquinas is motivated to deny an infinite regress of moved movers not on the basis of physical considerations pertaining to motion as are found in the commentary on the Physics and in SCG; rather, it is clear that Aquinas here seeks to deny an infinite regress of moved movers on the basis of metaphysical considerations pertaining to the being of primary and secondary movers such that if there were no primary, then secondary movers would not have the actuality of the motion in question. 13 14 See ST I, q. 44, a. 2: “And finally there emerged others who considered being as being, and they considered the cause of things, not only as things are this or such, but insofar as they are beings. That which is the cause of things insofar as they are beings, must be the cause of the esse of things, not simply as they are such through accidental forms, nor as they are these through substantial forms, but according to all that pertains to the esse of things in whatever mode.” See also De potentia, q. 3, a. 5: “Later philosophers indeed, such as Plato, Aristotle, and their followers, came to a consideration of universal esse itself; and therefore they alone posited some universal cause of things, from which all else is derived in esse, as is clear from Augustine, and with whose thought [Plato, Aristotle, and their followers] even the Catholic faith agrees.” See my article referred to in note 8 for a discussion of how Aquinas’s thought on the demonstrability of God entails that our way to God must be metaphysical proceeding from a consideration of the being of things. A Deeper Look at Aquinas’s First Way 469 Finally, and following on from the previous point, I take the first way as a causal demonstration of God’s existence. But in the Physics Aquinas argues that it does not belong to natural philosophy to treat the causes of things insofar as they are causes, but only insofar as they are causes of natural changes. By contrast, it is the task of the metaphysician to consider causes as causes.15 From this it follows that it is not the concern of the natural philosopher to consider the causality possessed by any number of secondary causes and reason to a primary cause thereof possessing that causality essentially; for this would not be to consider causes as causes of natural changes, but in terms of their very causality. The proof of the first way, however, does just this: it considers the actuality of causality (motion) in a series of causes and reasons that such causality would not be present were it not for some primary cause. Hence the causal reasoning employed by Thomas here is on his own account the kind of reasoning with which the metaphysician deals. Hence, the first way must be read as a metaphysical argument. Bearing in mind then the metaphysical caliber of the first way, we proceed to consider the steps of argumentation involved. We begin then with the motion principle: whatever is moved is moved by another. This principle quite evidently has a physical application insofar as things that are moved and thus in motion are moved by another. Despite physical readings of the motion principle, we have argued that Aquinas’s first way is not a physical argument, but a metaphysical one, and so the motion principle ought to be read and defended in a metaphysical light even though it bears physical application. Elsewhere Aquinas establishes this principle with a number of arguments (alluded to above) which scrutinize the nature of physical motion, but in those same places he also offers a defense of this principle based on the roles that act and potency play in a process of change. Act and potency exhaustively divide the common being that is the subject matter of metaphysics. So, by considering motion in terms of act and potency and defending the motion principle thereby, Aquinas will be offering a metaphysical consideration of motion in the first way.16 In 15 16 In II phys., lec. 5, no. 176. For the division of ens commune into act and potency see SCG II, ch. 54: “It is therefore clear that the composition of act and potency is in more than the composition of form and matter; accordingly, matter and form divide material substance, but potency and act divine common being [ens commune].” And for the metaphysical consideration of motion as pertaining to the common nature of being, see Super de Trinitate, q. 5, a. 4, ad 6: “The metaphysician considers singular things not according to their proper 470 Gaven Kerr adopting this approach whilst abandoning the more physical approach present in other texts, Thomas opts for a thoroughly metaphysical mode of argumentation in the first way. Accordingly, holding that motion is the reduction of something in potency to act, Aquinas argues that the thing that is in potency is not self-actualizing in the same respect to which it is in potency. Hence, the wood is not both potentially hot and actually hot, yet it is potentially cold. So, in order to be moved from hot to cold or vice versa, there must be something that has sufficient actuality to bring the wood to the state to which it stands in potency, otherwise such potency will not be actualized. That which actualizes the potency of the thing for some actuality is the other by which the thing is moved when reduced from potency to act. Hence what is moved is moved by another. Now it will be opportune at this point to dispel some common misconceptions of this argumentation. To begin with, Thomas’s reasoning is not so elementary as to make the blunder that the actualizing principle of the thing in potency is in all cases itself identical to the actuality that it brings about. Whilst of course fire produces fire, it is not the case that a king-maker must be a king or that only dead men commit murders, as Kenny points out.17 The only way in which Thomas could be committed to such an absurdity is if he is committed to the principle that “only what is actually F will make something else become F.”18 But Thomas of course is not committed to any such principle; rather he is committed to the principle that nothing can be reduced from potency to act, except by something in act (“de potentia autem non potest aliquid reduci in actum, nisi per aliquod ens in actu”). This principle is not to say that what actualizes the potency of the thing is itself actual in the respect of which the potency is actualized; it simply must be so actual that it is within its power to actualize the potency of the thing, and hence the thing that is actualized is so moved by another and not by itself.19 Indeed, just two questions later in the ST, Aquinas offers an account of how perfections present in effects can pre-exist in their cause in a non-univocal, but virtual, sense and 17 18 19 intelligibility by which they are such or such a being, but according as they participate in the common nature of being, and thus even matter and motion pertain to the consideration of the metaphysician.” Kenny, Five Ways, 21. Kenny, Five Ways, 21. For discussion see Aquinas, In VIII phys., lec. 10, nos. 1052–53; Wippel, Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, 447; Scott MacDonald, “Aquinas’s Parasitic Cosmological Argument,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 1 (1991): 133–35; Edward Feser, Five Proofs of the Existence of God (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2017), 33–34. A Deeper Look at Aquinas’s First Way 471 so causes, whilst not in act in the same way as their effects, are sufficiently in act to produce their effects.20 Furthermore, it is no objection to this principle that animals and in particular rational animals are self-movers and so appear to self-actualize. Aquinas is aware of this issue and addresses it later in the Summa Theologiae when discussing volitional activity. In ST I-II, q. 9, a. 3, Aquinas explains that whilst the will moves itself to will the means to some end, it does not reduce itself from potency to act in willing the end, since (a. 4) it is moved by an object, something external, to will that end. Now, in willing the means to the end to which the will is so moved, the will moves the intellect to take counsel as to the appropriate means. And so the picture we see emerging is that an object moves the will to will an end, the will in so being moved wills the intellect to take counsel as to the means, and with the means having been so understood the will in turn wills those means. At no point do we have anything that is potential in some respect being actual in that same respect, but at every point we have something being moved by something other than it. Given the physical application of the motion principle, one might argue that it is undermined by Newtonian physics with the latter’s commitment to the principle of inertia. According to this principle, things are in a constant and uniform motion unless acted upon by something else.21 Hence, it is not exactly the origination of motion that calls for explanation but the change of motion. Yet even granting the principle of inertia, Aquinas’s reasoning still follows, since even if things are subject to inertia, they are not self-actuating.22 Inertia is conceived to be a principle of motion of the 20 21 22 ST I, q. 4, a. 2. Isaac Newton, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, ed. A. Koyré and I. B. Cohen (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), definition III: “The vis insita or innate force of matter is a power of resisting, by which every body, as much as in it lies, continues in its present state, whether it be of rest, or of moving uniformly forward in a straight line.” See also his first law of motion: “Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it” (ibid.). The laonic “if ” here refers to the fact that it is not clear whether inertia is a demonstrable feature of physical things, as opposed to an inference concerning what motion would be like at the limit of resistive force, a situation which is never experienced and which it would appear cannot be tested. See Wallace, “Newtonian Antinomies,” 178–80. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange reproduces a letter from Pierre Duhem in which he (Duhem) argues that when physicists speak of inertia, they do not do so as if it were some truth about reality of which they are certain, but because it is a useful tool to 472 Gaven Kerr thing, and as such a principle it can explain the motion that the thing is currently undergoing. But it says nothing as to the origin of such motion, nothing of how such inertial motion came to be applicable to the thing in the first place; and this would require appeal so some efficient cause of motion, the sort of causal appeal that generates Aquinas’s reasoning in the first way. Indeed, Newton was well aware of the fact that inertia cannot be the most fundamental explanation of a thing’s motion, since he explicitly states in the Opticks that there is needed some principle by which things are put into motion and conserved in motion.23 Consequently, Newtonian inertia, if indeed it is true of physical things, does not explain the origin of motion in things, nor does it even explain the current state of motion, since Newton himself holds that the conservation of motion requires some other principle. All in all, inertia does not account for the actuality of motion in a thing, in which case that actuality requires some cause independent of the thing, something other by which the thing is moved, and this is what Aquinas’s motion principle maintains.24 So much for the motion principle, now let us consider the infinite regress. Aquinas sets up the regress argument in a familiar fashion. If we have something moved and we know that it is moved by another, we ask whether that mover is itself moved. If it is not, then we have reached a mover that is unmoved; if it is, then we infer a mover for it and consider whether that mover is moved and if so what about its mover and so on. 23 24 make sense of motion and that no successful physical theory can do without it. Hence, as Duhem presents it in his correspondence to Garrigou-Lagrange, inertia is a principle by which we can make sense of things the truth of which we are certain, i.e. the motion of physical bodies, but it itself is not a truth of which we are certain. Thus, Duhem takes the principle to be almost like a regulative ideal by means of which we can make sense of motion. For Duhem’s letter see Garrigou-Lagrange, Dieu: son existence et sa nature (Paris: Beauchesne, 1914), 761–63. Newton, Optics or A Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light (New York: Dover, 1952), bk. 3, query 32: “The vis inertiae is a passive principle by which bodies persist in their motion or rest, receive motion in proportion to the force impressing it, and resist as much as they are resisted. By this principle alone there never could be any motion in the world. Some other principle was necessary for putting bodies into motion; and now they are in motion, some other principle is necessary for conserving the motion.” For discussion of the Newtonian principle see Ernan McMullin, Newton on Matter and Activity (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978), ch. 2; for the Thomistic reaction to the challenge of inertia see Wippel, Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, 454–56; Jacques Maritain, Approaches to God, trans. Peter O’Reilly (London: Allen and Unwin, 1955), 24–5; Wallace, “Newtonian Antinomies,” 173–86. A Deeper Look at Aquinas’s First Way 473 Now Thomas denies that such a series of moved movers can go on to infinity because in that case there would be no primary mover and so nothing else would be moved, since secondary movers are moved by a primary mover, like the stick is moved by the hand. Given that there are secondary movers as the preceding reasoning of the first way makes clear, we must then arrive at some primary mover whence such secondary movers derive their ability to move others. I interpret this denial of an infinite regress in terms of per se ordered causal series, but before going on to spell out what this entails, it is important to note that here Thomas does not make use of the more physical argumentation he utilizes in SCG I, chapter 13, and lectio 2 of the commentary on Physics 8 to deny an infinite regress. Rather his reasoning here focuses more on the interaction of primary and secondary movers such that the latter would not have motive power (causal actuality) unless for the former. This fact ties in with the more general metaphysical outlook of the first way to the effect that it was the metaphysics of act and potency that establishes the motion principle, and so the same metaphysics can be applied to the denial of an infinite regress of moved movers. This then takes us into a consideration of per se ordered series. A per se ordered series, or essentially ordered series, is a series of causes the members of which do not possess the causality of the series in virtue of what they are. The typical example is the mental agent who moves his hands to move the stick to move the stone. The hands, stick, and stone do not possess the causality of motion in virtue of being what they are, since hands, sticks, and stones are themselves immobile unless something move them. Hence the causal actuality that they have in this case—motion—is derived from the mental agent. Were there no such cause for the causality that these secondary causes wield, there would be no such causal series. Hence, per se ordered series cannot be without a primary cause for the causality of the series; and such a primary cause is primary precisely because it has the causality of the series per se.25 25 For further details on the metaphysics of per se ordered series see my articles “Essentially Ordered Series Reconsidered,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 86, no. 4 (2012): 541–55, and “Essentially Ordered Series Reconsidered Once Again,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 91, no. 2 (2017): 155–74; see also Caleb Cohoe, “There must be a First: Why Thomas Aquinas Rejects Infinite, Essentially Ordered, Causal Series,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 21, no. 5 (2013): 838–56. More recently, a consideration of per se ordered series as figuring in one of Avicenna’s proofs of God can be found in Celia Byrne, “The Role of Essentially Ordered Causal Series in Avicenna’s Proof for the Necessary Existent in the Metaphysics of the Salvation,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 36, no. 2 (2019): 121–38. 474 Gaven Kerr Given the latter, if we have a series of moved movers, all such movers are in themselves lacking in the actuality of the motion that they have and they depend on something other than themselves for such actuality. If there were an infinite series and hence no primary mover from which all such motive actuality were derived, everything would be a moved mover and so essentially lacking in actuality; and insofar as an infinite series has no primary cause for such actuality, without a prime mover there is nothing to bring about the actuality in the things which essentially lack it. Consequently, an infinite series of moved movers would be essentially immobile, and this contradicts the manifest fact that there is motion, in which case a series of moved movers cannot be infinite. This reasoning against an infinite series of moved movers does not equivocate between a primary mover that is simply an earlier mover imparting motion and a primary mover which is the source of all motion, as Kenny states it does.26 Given the metaphysical reading of the first way that I have been advocating, the primary mover is taken to be a mover which brings about the actuality that all secondary movers have, and not just something that is earlier in the series and gets it going. Hence throughout the argumentation, Thomas is thinking of the primary mover as the source of actuality. Furthermore, this argument does not suffer from the problem proposed for it by Christopher Williams, who argues that employing the notions of “primary” and “secondary” mover in the reasoning presupposes that there is a primary mover, since one cannot have a sufficient notion of a secondary mover unless one has already arrived at a notion of primary mover from which to differentiate it. But one does not arrive at a primary mover until one has denied an infinite series of moved movers, in which case considerations pertaining to primary and secondary movers cannot be used to establish that there is a primary mover.27 Williams’s objection is misguided because Thomas has a clear notion of secondary mover in place when he sets up the regress, and this is to the effect that secondary movers are those movers that depend on another for their actuality, so that when we look for that by which a thing is moved we can ask whether it is dependent for its actuality and so on. Given this 26 27 Kenny, The Five Ways, 26. C. J. F. Williams, “Hic autem non est procedure in infinitum…,” Mind 69 (1960): 403–5, in particular, 403: “For not until we know that such a series is impossible can we know that all movers are properly described either as ‘a first mover’ or as ‘second movers.’ This, however, is precisely what the argument assumes. It equates ‘movers other than the first mover’ and ‘second movers.’” Kenny makes a similar objection in Five Ways, 26–27. A Deeper Look at Aquinas’s First Way 475 notion of secondary mover, we know that something is a primary mover if it is not like that; but this does not entail at this point that any such primary mover exists, only that this is what a primary mover would be. It is a further step to deny an infinite regress and affirm a primary mover; yet given the independent intelligibility of the notions of primary and secondary movers prior to the denial of such a regress, these notions can be put to use in considering whether or not the series of moved movers can be infinite. Having arrived at a primary mover put in motion by no other and the source of motion for all, Aquinas maintains that we have arrived at what we understand to be God. This may cause some concern for physical readings of the argument insofar as some natural phenomenon, or singularity, or world soul could be the source of all motion; and indeed, on a physical reading of motion, it is not necessarily the case that the absolute source be He Who Is as conceived in the sed contra of the article. But if we give the argument a more metaphysical reading there is some plausibility in holding that the primary mover is God, and this precisely because as a primary mover God is the source of actuality for all things that are in motion, but whatever is in motion is in potency, in which case God is the source of actuality for all things that are in potency. As source of actuality for all things that are in potency, God himself can be in potency in no respect; for then he would not be the source of actuality for all things that are in potency. Hence, God must be pure actuality. If God as primary mover is pure act, then all things are subject to him and he is subject to nothing. This reading certainly takes us beyond some first source of all physical motion and closer to the classical conception of God as the source of all things. Interpretation and Objection So much for the first way; we have considered it in depth and related it to some of Aquinas’s wider philosophical commitments. In what follows I wish to interpret the first way as a form of Aquinas’s more general way to God. Having done that, I shall consider one recent objection. Aquinas’s Way to God The first way pertains to motion, but not just to the observation of physical motion and the discernment of some sort of first source of that. Rather, what is under investigation is the metaphysics of motion, that is to say, what metaphysical structures need to be in place for motion to 476 Gaven Kerr occur. This is evident in Aquinas’s defense of the motion principle in terms of act and potency. As we have seen, Aquinas defends this principle by considering how act and potency are at work in motion itself. Thus, we have moved away from any one instance of physical motion and are considering the causality of motion in itself. As such, while it may springboard from a consideration of motion, Aquinas is not concerned with this or that motion and drawing a line from that to a first; rather Aquinas is concerned with any motion, and as such the reduction of any kind of potentiality to actuality. This then entails that what Thomas is striving after is not a first cause of some particular species of motion, but a primary cause without which there would be no motion. Now, as is clear, to move something is to bring it from potency to act: “Movere enim nihil aliud est quam educere aliquid de potentia in actum.” The actuality of the motion whilst the motion is ongoing is not yet complete; its actuality participates in that of the efficient cause and anticipates as an end some completion of its actuality. Motion then is an imperfect actuality originated by some motive cause, awaiting to be perfected.28 So for example (the prima via example), the stick participates in the motion granted to it by the hand, and whilst in motion it anticipates the completion of its activity in moving the stone. If the first way is after a primary mover responsible for all motion, the first way is after a principle without which there would be no reduction of any potentiality to act. In other words, the first way seeks to demonstrate that the primary mover is what actualizes any potentiality. The metaphysical reading of the first way justifies the further conclusion, manifest in the following questions of ST I, that the primary mover of the first way is pure act, since as the primary mover metaphysically conceived, he is that without which there would be no actuality in any process of change. Hence, nothing is in act unless by the primary mover. This metaphysical analysis in turn brings in the context of Aquinas’s metaphysics of esse. The primary mover of the first way is that without which there would be no actuality; it is pure actuality. But esse is the act of all acts. Hence, the kind of reasoning offered here for a primary mover conceived of as responsible for all actuality is the same as that offered 28 In XI metaphys., lec. 9, no. 2291: “Motion does not have any nature separate from other things; but insofar as it is in becoming, some form is an imperfect act which is called motion.” See also no. 2310: “Something is said to be able to cause motion from its power to move; it is a mover then in its activity, that is, insofar as it actually exists; and thus, since a mover is called such on account of motion, motion will be the act of the thing capable of causing motion.” A Deeper Look at Aquinas’s First Way 477 elsewhere by Aquinas for a primary source of esse. The argumentative strategy is the same on both accounts: isolate some causal feature of things which exhibits metaphysical dependency for actuality, such as motion/ distinction of essence and esse, then locate that causal feature within the context of the metaphysics of per se ordered series, and then reason to a primary cause for such actuality without which there would be no actuality in question. The first way is a manifestation of the more existential way to God but springboards from a different starting point. Not only that, this reading of the first way accords with what Aquinas says elsewhere about the demonstrability of God and the raising of philosophical minds to a consideration of a primary cause as a creator. As we observed in the previous section, Aquinas holds that we reason to God by considering some feature of creatures and thence inferring that God is the cause of such a feature. We also noted that when it comes to the history of philosophical reflection on creation, Aquinas noted that it was only when philosophers had considered beings in terms of their very being that they were able to raise their minds to the notion of a creator, since a primary cause of the very being of things is thus a creator. Considering these points, the first way isolates some dependent feature of creatures, such as dependency for actuality disclosed in motion, and in turn arrives at a primary cause without which there would be no actuality in question. Such a cause can only be the cause of the being of things, since the primary and most fundamental form of actuality is that of the being or esse that things have. It is not the case then that here we have several ways to God in Aquinas: the first way from motion and the more existential way(s) manifest in other places. Rather, what we have is Aquinas’s way to God which moves from the observation of some dependence for actuality and reasons to a primary source of actuality without which there would be nothing. Aquinas’s way to God remains the same, but it is manifested as different viae given the different contexts from which he wants to springboard the argument.29 Given this reading of the first way, one might charge that on my reading 29 This is the same approach to the first way adopted by Owens and Knasas. See the articles by Owens, “Immobility and Existence for Aquinas,” “Actuality in the Prima Via,” and “The Conclusion of the Prima Via” in St. Thomas Aquinas on the Existence of God; Knasas, Thomistic Existentialism, 251–56. One difference I have with those is that they see the first way as based on an underlying concern for esse and proceeding to affirm a primary cause of esse. Whilst sympathetic to that approach, I maintain that Thomas’s concern is for dependent actuality and so reasons to a primary source of all actuality. It may be however that the difference between us is merely one of emphasis. 478 Gaven Kerr Thomas begins with natural philosophy and then moves to metaphysics. This is because I grant that Aquinas begins with an observation of physical things but quickly proceeds to consider them metaphysically, and so seeks an account for the actuality that anything has in a dependent fashion.30 Someone might insist that either the argument is a physical argument and we remain with physical demonstrations or it is a metaphysical argument and we remain with metaphysics throughout. But I do not think that this charge can be levelled at my reading. The advertence to some physical feature of the world to springboard an argument does not entail that the feature thereby considered is drawn from a domain exclusive to natural philosophy; rather, all it shows is that the phenomenon under question is drawn from the natural world. And both the metaphysician and the natural philosopher consider the natural world, though what differentiates them is the formality under which they consider it. In the case of the metaphysician, he considers the world in terms of its very being. Hence, it is the explanation of the phenomenon taken as a starting point that will designate the argument as metaphysical or otherwise. But we have seen that the explanation of motion is in terms of act and potency and so is metaphysical. Hence, the argument, whilst observing physical realities, is metaphysical from start to finish.31 Existential Inertia In our presentation, we have gone into some depth on the argumentative moves that Aquinas makes in the first way, and we have defended those moves against some traditional misunderstandings, such as understanding the argument as a metaphysical rather than physical argument, clarifying 30 31 I share my reading with Wippel, Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, 457: “My view is that the first way as it appears in ST I, q. 2, a. 3 starts from a physical fact, but that if it is to reach the absolutely unmoved mover or God, it must pass beyond this and beyond a limited and physical application of the principle of motion to a wider application that will apply to any reduction of a being from not acting to acting. In other words, the argument becomes metaphysical in its justification and application of the motion principle, and only then can it succeed in arriving at God. This means that, in its refutation of an infinite regress of moved movers as an alternative explanation, the argument concludes to a source of motion that is not itself moved in any way whatsoever and, therefore, is not reduced from potency to act in any way.” Knasas criticizes Wippel for this reading in Thomistic Existentialism, 254–55. On this score I am in substantial agreement with Twetten, who holds that the first way is thoroughly metaphysical from start to finish, taking as its starting point the fact of motion but explaining that in metaphysical terms of act and potency (“Clearing a ‘Way,’” 67–71). A Deeper Look at Aquinas’s First Way 479 the nature of motion and per se ordered series, and noting that the causality at stake in the first way is that of actuality and so the reduction of any potentiality to actuality. These involve traditional misunderstandings of the first way, and their treatment has appeared in several notable publications since the renewal of interest in Aquinas’s thought in the twentieth century, and the renewed interest in the philosophy of religion in general in the second half of the twentieth century. In dealing with these objections in the text, we have not broken a lot of new ground; we have simply clarified what Thomas said or what his exponents have already pointed out. However, there are some objections of recent vintage which whilst sharing some things in common with older objections do present themselves as new objections. This is no doubt because of the renewed interest in the argument from motion brought about because of Feser’s defense thereof and the reaction it has provoked. Whilst Thomists will continue to defend the first way against various objections, I would like to focus on one particular objection here, and that is existential inertia. The reason why I focus on this objection is not simply because it has recently emerged in the discussion of Aquinas’s argumentation, but also because the very proposal of this as an objection requires a commitment to an underlying metaphysics alien to Aquinas’s metaphysics. Hence, existential inertia as an objection can be pushed only from within the context of a non-Thomistic metaphysics. And this highlights that what is at stake in the argument is not an interpretation of some physical reality at the physical level, such as motion, but the metaphysical framework within which that physical reality is to be understood, which is that of act and potency. Graham Oppy and after him Joseph Schmid have recently published papers in which they target Feser’s argument from motion.32 In Feser’s argument, he argues that the principle of actuality which actualizes something currently in act must be concurrent with it, and from there he reasons to some primary cause without which even now there would be no actuality. Oppy and Schmid object that there is an alternative account of actuality and actualization, that in the absence of some competing causal influence, the object simply remains in existence. This is an old objection because at its core it is a reiteration of one made by Mortimer Adler. He maintained that objects do not need some cause 32 Graham Oppy, “On Stage One of Feser’s Aristotelian Proof,” Religious Studies 57, no. 3 (2019): 1–12; Joseph Schmid, “Existential Inertia and the Aristotelian Proof,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 89, no. 3 (2021): 201–20. For Feser, see Five Proofs, ch. 1. 480 Gaven Kerr of their current existence given that they do exist; rather unless there is a cause which stops a thing from existing, objects simply continue to exist. Accordingly, objects enjoy what has come to be called existential inertia.33 Despite this objection being a somewhat older objection, it has received very little presentation in the literature, and next to no systematic articulation of what existential inertia involves.34 If this objection is correct, then we have a problem; for it would entail that the actuality objects have is not dependent on some cause whenever they have it. Thus, whilst the objects have actuality non-essentially and so appear to be candidates for members of a per se causal series, there is no need for a primary cause within which such objects participate for their causal actuality, since once gifted to them that causal actuality remains. So at most we could say there is a first cause for actuality, but not a primary cause that is per se actual. Let’s begin by focussing on the nature of objects as Aquinas conceives them, especially objects as they are conceived in the first way. What is being considered in the first way is the reduction of potentiality to actuality. As the argument goes, no potency is reduced to actuality unless for some principle of actuality which so reduces it. Objects then are composites of potency and act. Now the act which reduces the potency must be concurrent with the object in the reduction to act precisely because, unless the object participates in the actuality by which its potency is reduced, its potency would not be reduced. We can illustrate this by considering Thomas’s thinking on essence and existence. For Aquinas, unless something participates in its act of existence, its esse, it would be nothing. It is not the case that a thing can have esse and that the esse conjoin with it and remain with it once conjoined. This is because the thing is precisely nothing without the esse. Hence esse is not like a color 33 34 See Mortimer Adler, How to Think about God: A Guide for the 20th Century Pagan (New York: Macmillan, 1980), ch. 13. See: Jonathan Kvanvig and Hugh McCann, “Divine Conservation and the Persistence of the World,” in Divine and Human Action, ed. Thomas Morris (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988); Alfred Freddoso, “Medieval Aristotelianism and the Case against Secondary Causation in Nature,” in Divine and Human Action: Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism; Freddoso, “God’s Concurrence with Secondary Causes: Why Conservation Is Not Enough,” Philosophical Perspectives 5 (1991): 553–85; John Beaudoin, “The World’s Continuance: Divine Conservation or Existential Inertia?,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 61 (2007): 83–98; Feser, Five Proofs, 232–38, and “Existential Inertia and the Five Ways,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 85 (2011): 237–67; Paul Audi, “Existential Inertia,” Philosophical Exchange 48, no. 1 (2019): 1–26. A Deeper Look at Aquinas’s First Way 481 property of a substance which remains with the substance so long as no other cause comes along to change things (Oppy’s example). Rather, esse is that actuality without which there would be nothing in the first place, in which case the actuality in question (esse) does not reside in an object already existing; rather the esse is the actuality without which there is nothing, so that unless the object participates in its esse for any moment in which it exists, the esse would be precisely nothing. With regard to existential act, existential inertia then is a non-starter for Thomas.35 But let us just consider actuality per se, and not focus on existential actuality. Whilst the purveyors of the existential inertia objection are concerned only with the actual existence of the thing, one might wish to argue that the objection applies to any kind of actuality, and this because Thomas takes the motion in the first way to be any reduction of potency to act, not just the act of existence. There are two things to say about this. First, esse is the act of all acts, so that any actuality in the thing presupposes esse and thereby participates in esse. Hence, if the existential inertia objection does not work against esse, then we have a fundamental principle of actuality without which there would be nothing and on which any actualized potency in the thing fundamentally depends for any moment of its existence. Hence, the reasoning in the first way is safeguarded. Second, even when it comes to just any actuality, a thing in question must participate in that actuality for as long as it is actual in that respect. Take Oppy’s example of a color persisting in a substance. Oppy takes this as an illustration that things remain as they are unless something comes along to change them, in which case we need not a concurrent cause for the state of things; rather we need only a cause for the change in state. But if we consider Thomas’s understanding of the color of a substance, Oppy is wrong in this respect. A substance is colored because it is formed in some way, that is, a configuration of its matter has occurred such that it is colored that way. This configuration of the thing’s matter is the actuality that it enjoys, and so long as the matter participates in that actuality—in that form, the form remains. Hence, the matter of the thing must continually be present to the form to be so formed. Now of course, this does not mean that the thing must be continually present to the efficient cause of the form in order to be so formed, only that it be continually present to the formal cause, the form. One cannot generalize from the fact that an object does not continually depend on an 35 For more details on this issue with specific consideration of esse, see my article “Existential Inertia and the Thomistic Way to God,” Divinitas 62 (2019): 157–77. 482 Gaven Kerr efficient cause for some actuality to the conclusion that actuality per se does not require some concurrent cause. In the color case, the actuality is that of form, and the form needs to be concurrently in the matter for the matter to be so informed. In the case of existence, we have a different kind of actuality, not a formal actuality which resides in the matter of the thing, since essence and existence are distinct. Nevertheless, unless the thing participated in its esse, it would not have esse. Hence the principle of actuality by which the thing is in act must be concurrent with the thing; and that being the case, a thing cannot have some actuality non-essentially and yet persist in that actuality independently of the primary cause of that actuality. In the color case the primary cause of that actuality is the form; in the existential case, it is that whose essence is its esse. Given what we have said above, we can engage with Schmid’s recent account of existential inertia. He offers two models by which to understand it. The first is that the current existence of an object is explained by its previous state and existence along with the absence of any causally destructive factors.36 This offers a precise account of existential inertia, but it gives us no reason to accept it, especially not in light of Aquinas’s metaphysics. On the Thomistic account, given that an object would not be were it not to participate in esse, at any point at which it is, it is dependent on esse; for not only presently, but at any point in its past and future history, an object exists because it depends on its esse. Hence, unless the object is caused in its existence at any point at which it exists, it simply would not exist. Just as something is illuminated at any moment because it participates in some source of illumination and is in darkness otherwise, so too an object exists because it participates in esse and is nothing otherwise. Schmid believes that if a thing persists through time, then it is something about that thing itself by which it persists through time, so that if the thing were not itself able to persist through time, not even God could cause it to persist. So, if God causes a thing to persist through time, that thing itself must be able to persist through time, in which case God’s causality presupposes the persistence of a thing and does not establish it.37 The problem here is that Schmid is deploying a metaphysics of his own with which a Thomist need not agree, especially when it comes to existence. A thing simply cannot exist by itself, since essence and existence are 36 37 Schmid, “Existential Inertia,” 5. Schmid, “Existential Inertia,” 5. A Deeper Look at Aquinas’s First Way 483 distinct in the thing, and were the thing not to participate in its existence it simply would not be. Hence, God’s causality with regard to existence does not presuppose the existence of the thing, but establishes it. In that case, then, a thing persists through time precisely because it participates in its existence, which it would not have were it not for God’s granting it. We can illuminate this point further by considering an example that Aquinas often uses in the context of the causality of existence. The atmosphere is illuminated for as long as it participates in the source of illumination; it is not caused to be luminous independently of that source. Similarly, a thing exists at whatever moment it exists because it participates in esse; it is not caused to possess esse independently of the cause of esse. Thus, a thing exists for as long as it does exist precisely because it is present to the source of existence receiving existence from it. On Thomas’s account of existence and actuality, then, existential inertia or a modification thereof makes no sense. Schmid’s second model of existential inertia is not so much a model but a claim that it is simply basic.38 As such it is non-threatening to Aquinas’s position insofar as Aquinas draws upon a metaphysics, defended elsewhere, which guides the steps of the first way. This does however present us with the opportunity to make an observation about Schmid’s engagement here which will round off this article by exposing once again Aquinas’s approach to demonstrating God’s existence. The observation is this: Schmid presumes that the dialectical context of argumentation for God’s existence is metaphysically neutral, such that we can enter the argumentation free from metaphysical baggage. Accordingly, when it comes to deciding over existential inertia and what he calls the existential elimination thesis, we must have an attitude of neutrality.39 Indeed, Schmid characterizes things in terms of entertaining two competing theses from the outset. Regardless of whether this is how Feser (Schmid’s target) thinks about things, it is certainly not how Aquinas thought. Thomas took the demonstration of God’s existence as something that occurs in metaphysics. That being the case, the argumentation is guided within the metaphysics that Thomas endorses, a metaphysics we have seen at use in our presentation of the first way. Given that existential inertia is an impossibility on the Thomistic metaphysics, we need to see some justification for why we should accept it as basic. Schmid offers none other than certain theoretical virtues; but a defender of Aquinas can simply point out 38 39 Schmid, “Existential Inertia,” 9. Schmid, “Existential Inertia,” 9; see the introductory section. 484 Gaven Kerr that the same theoretical virtues are met with his metaphysics, and on the latter existential inertia remains an impossibility. So, unless Schmid can justify the alternative metaphysical backdrop that would make existential inertia plausible, it is not threatening to Aquinas’s first way.40 40 I would also observe, but not pursue the matter here, that in his discussion of the explanatory primitive nature of existential inertia, Schmid confuses something’s being explanatorily basic, and so not explained by anything further, and having a justification for accepting that something is the case. The Thomist is no stranger to something’s being explanatorily basic, and indeed I myself have argued that esse is explanatorily basic in Aquinas’s thinking; see “Thomist esse and Analytical Philosophy,” International Philosophical Quarterly 55, no. 1 (2015): 25–48. However, that does not mean that one is absolved from offering reasons for holding that something explanatorily basic like existential inertia (or Thomist esse) signifies how things are in reality. For the latter we need to offer reasons, a metaphysics; this is something that Thomas and Thomists in general do, but it is something that Schmid has not as yet undertaken. Having said that, I want to thank Schmid for his engagement with me on these issues and for raising the issue of existential inertia once again in the literature. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2022): 485–512 485 The Relation of Metaphysics to the Secondary Object of Revelation, and the Analogy of Being as the Metaphysical Framework for Sacra Doctrina Steven A. Long Ave Maria University Ave Maria, FL In this essay I will try to pursue several objects that are essentially related, but rarely treated together systematically. First, I will consider the secondary object of revelation—that which is required for the intelligibility of revelation—as necessarily including not only historical and logical, but metaphysical truth. Some of these truths are medicinally revealed in Scripture although they are natural truths, for as Thomas writes in Summa theologiae I, q. 2, a. 2, ad 1: “The existence of God and other like truths about God, which can be known by natural reason, are not articles of faith, but are preambles to the articles; for faith presupposes natural knowledge, even as grace presupposes nature and perfection the perfectible.” I will start by referring to former Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith prefect then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Professio fidei,1 a commentary on the profession of faith issued by the CDF on June 29, 1998. I will also point out the Church’s consecration of certain natural metaphysical principles in her teaching, principles that are not merely contingent concepts or placeholders but whose own density of natural intelligibility is vital for the intelligibility of the doctrine of the faith. I also here address St. Thomas’s teaching 1 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Professio fidei [DCPF], issued June 29, 1998, coincident with the promulgation of Ad Tuendam Fidem by Pope John Paul II, modifying the Oriental and Latin codes of canon law. 486 Steven A. Long regarding the necessarily essential role of metaphysics within sacra doctrina or theology. Secondly, I will offer remarks regarding St. Thomas’s development in his work of the metaphysical framework for sacra doctrina in his teaching of the analogy of being as the foundation for the analogy of creature to God—an account never renounced by him but expressed later in different language the reasons for which he indicates. Failure to observe the reasons he provides for the shift in his language has actually led several authors in the twentieth century2 to hold that Thomas radically altered his account of analogy, or else to hold that he does not have such an account. But to the contrary, I will argue that he holds one formal account that universally structures his theology. Thirdly, I will address Thomas’s account of the imago dei in the human creature, illustrating the essential importance of the analogy of being within Catholic theology for understanding this teaching. Fourthly and finally, I will conclude with observations regarding the challenging analysis of a contemporary theologian of great intelligence and probity—my distinguished, insightful, and learned colleague Father Guy Mansini, O.S.B.—who has argued that valid reasoning for the existence of God is something of nature that seemingly owing to the effects of original sin is only possible for man following upon revelation and pari passu with infused theological faith and sanctifying grace.3 Without providing the 2 3 E.g., to name the most prominent, Bernard Montagnes, The Doctrine of the Analogy of Being according to Thomas Aquinas, trans. E. M. Macierowski, ed. Andrew Tallon (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 2004). See the last sentence of Fr. Mansini’s “Why Revelation Gives Shelter to Metaphysics,” Nova et Vetera (English) 18, no. 4 (2020): 1089–1101, at 1101: “It must exist in order for revelation to be affirmed; it is enabled to exist only with the continued assent of faith to that same revelation.” But his thesis is more extensively developed and stated in his conference paper “Acts 17 and the Structure of Apostolic Hope,” given February. 13, 2021, at the conference sponsored by the Aquinas Center of Ave Maria University on “Hope and Death: Christian Responses (February 11–13). Therein he argues that the natural knowledge of God is possible only pari passu with the integrality of the reception of sanctifying grace and infused faith. This is a work of great interest and penetration, which will in due course be published, and my remarks pertain particularly to this. It is, on reflection, implied by the line from his earlier work quoted above: i.e., if metaphysics can only be “enabled to exist” through the continued assent of theological faith, this implies that it cannot exist without theological faith. This is the premise at issue. In the first essay, the truth that God exists is affirmed as necessarily required to be available outside of revelation, but that does not rule out (as he later argues in his conference paper) that the natural capacity for this truth is after the Fall only actuated at one moment with the reception of theological faith: that as it were it The Relation of Metaphysics to the Secondary Object of Revelation 487 full consideration and response this challenging consideration merits, I will argue that this judgment seems deeply problematic for the intelligibility of revelation and the Church’s discourse with the world; that it seems unduly to constrict the dignity of the imago dei in man—the principle which is the created foundation for all later perfections in grace and glory; and that the metaphysical intelligibility of being itself may be seen as a sign of the transcendence of the image of God in man. All these points highlight the crucial role of metaphysical truth in relation to revelation, doctrine, and theology. The Secondary Object of Revelation In the CDF’s Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the Professio fidei, then-Cardinal Ratzinger observed the distinction in Church teaching between that which is formally revealed, and that which is required for the intelligibility of the reception and promulgation of revelation.4 Regarding that which is formally revealed the document begins by quoting the profession of faith that it is commenting upon: The first paragraph states: “With firm faith, I also believe everything contained in the Word of God, whether written or handed down in Tradition, which the Church, either by a solemn judgment or by the ordinary and universal Magisterium, sets forth to be believed as divinely revealed.” The object taught in this paragraph is constituted by all those doctrines of divine and Catholic faith which the Church proposes as divinely and formally revealed and, as such, as irreformable.5 4 5 all comes together in one package and at one time, the natural knowledge being pari passu with reception of theological faith, even though this is a function of nature restored by theological faith (to illustrate his suggestion using my own example: just as my holding a cup up is simultaneous with my arm’s activity, and yet the arm’s activity is causally prior). And the proposition of the first essay—that natural knowledge of God can only be enabled to exist with the “continued assent of faith”—does seem clearly to imply, and to need, the further development that Fr. Manini lends to his treatment in the second paper. For why should something whose initial existence did not require theological faith, necessarily be insusceptible of being enabled to exist if theological faith is lost? The thesis of the first essay does seem to imply this. It is simply not as conspicuously articulated in the first essay, while—or so it seems—implying it. DCPF, §5 with respect to revelation, §§5 and 6 with respect to that which is required for the intelligibility of revelation, the “secondary object” of revelation. DCPF here adds: “These doctrines are contained in the Word of God, written or 488 Steven A. Long The Commentary states a paragraph further down that: These doctrines require the assent of theological faith by all members of the faithful. Thus, whoever obstinately places them in doubt or denies them falls under the censure of heresy, as indicated by the respective canons of the Codes of Canon Law. The Commentary notes further that: 6. The second proposition of the Professio fidei states: “I also firmly accept and hold each and everything definitively proposed by the Church regarding teaching on faith and morals.” The object taught by this formula includes all those teachings belonging to the dogmatic or moral area, which are necessary for faithfully keeping and expounding the deposit of faith, even if they have not been proposed by the Magisterium of the Church as formally revealed.6 It notes that: Every believer, therefore, is required to give firm and definitive assent to these truths, based on faith in the Holy Spirit’s assistance to the Church’s Magisterium, and on the Catholic doctrine of the infallibility of the Magisterium in these matters. Whoever denies these truths would be in a position of rejecting a truth of Catholic doctrine and would therefore no longer be in full communion with the Catholic Church. It continues: 7. The truths belonging to this second paragraph can be of various natures, thus giving different qualities to their relationship with revelation. There are truths which are necessarily connected with revelation by virtue of an historical relationship; while other truths 6 handed down, and defined with a solemn judgment as divinely revealed truths either by the Roman Pontiff when he speaks ‘ex cathedra,’ or by the College of Bishops gathered in council, or infallibly proposed for belief by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.” DCPF here adds: “Such doctrines can be defined solemnly by the Roman Pontiff when he speaks ‘ex cathedra’ or by the College of Bishops gathered in council, or they can be taught infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium of the Church as a ‘sententia definitive tenenda.’” The Relation of Metaphysics to the Secondary Object of Revelation 489 evince a logical connection that expresses a stage in the maturation of understanding of revelation which the Church is called to undertake. The fact that these doctrines may not be proposed as formally revealed, insofar as they add to the data of faith elements that are not revealed or which are not yet expressly recognized as such, in no way diminishes their definitive character, which is required at least by their intrinsic connection with revealed truth.7 The document thus speaks of the truths pertaining to the secondary object of revelation as being of “various natures” giving “different qualities to their relationship with revelation.” It lists logical connection with revelation, or historical relationship to it, but does not suggest that this is an exclusive list. It is in fact, I will argue, impossible that it should be an exclusive list. That argument begins now. Metaphysical Truth and the Secondary Object of Revelation As part of the divine providence preparing the world for Christian revelation, classical civilization laid the foundation for certain metaphysical insights into the truth of being and nature and the relative but real transcendence of human spirit. These insights have been developed and elevated further by a long process of intellectual refinement and assimilation to the understanding of revelation. Articulated in what are called the preambles of faith concerning God and the human soul, arguably they enter into the secondary object of revelation, that is, the conditions requisite to the intelligibility of the promulgation of the Gospel, although some are medicinally revealed (as for instance the incorruptibility of the soul, which Thomas thought to be philosophically demonstrable).8 Christ did not come to preach the message of the metaphysical principle of contradiction, but if the principle does not pertain to the real—a metaphysical premise—the entirety of the realism of the assent of faith is denied in one breath. Similarly, whatever the structure of created being is, it is by divine decree rather than by human assertion a prerequisite for, and a conditioning element of, 7 8 DCPF here adds: “Moreover, it cannot be excluded that at a certain point in dogmatic development, the understanding of the realities and the words of the deposit of faith can progress in the life of the Church, and the Magisterium may proclaim some of these doctrines as also dogmas of divine and catholic faith.” DCPF §7 mentions logical and historical necessities for the intelligibility of the promulgation of the faith: but clearly and more fundamentally there are metaphysical necessities for the intelligibility of the promulgation of the faith. The principle of contradiction as applying to being is not merely a logical, but a metaphysical, principle. 490 Steven A. Long supernatural revelation. Thus theology that lacks metaphysics and philosophy of nature—or even lacks realist ontology of knowledge—seems in danger of converting divine truths into a species of glossolalia. The Church has consecrated certain principles and insights in formulating her teaching. For example, to mention only a few: relation and procession, person, nature, and substance with respect to the Trinity; substance and nature with respect to the Person of Christ; form with respect to sanctifying grace, justification, and the sacraments. With respect to the moral life, one would need to observe the primacy of the Church’s embrace of the natural law doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas9—principles such as “end,” “object,” “matter,” “intention,” “choice,” “eternal law,” and “divine law”—whose intelligibility itself involves and requires metaphysical judgments.10 Imagine that the metaphysical intelligibility of person, nature, God, and man is subtracted from the proposition that Christ is one person with two natures, divine and human. What remains? Not to mention that the term “one” itself requires metaphysical explication in terms of transcendental unity. When one treats all such natural principles consecrated within the Church’s teaching as lacking immutable and naturally intelligible content founded on the reality of things, even revealed truth is in danger of becoming a species of metaphor rather than a doctrine of faith “irreformable by virtue of itself.” The relativization of the content of the secondary object of revelation— of that which is naturally required for the intelligibility of the doctrine of the faith—ineluctably endangers and relativizes the doctrine of the faith itself. This is precisely why overt negation or rejection of the secondary object of revelation (as opposed to simple confusion or ignorance) causes separation from communion with the Church. This is of course not to say that every metaphysical unclarity or error is itself immediately a cause of separation from the Church, but only (1) that certain metaphysical truths are required for the intelligibility of revelation, and further, (2) that the structure of created being enters into doctrinal consideration and questions of doctrinal development and application 9 10 See Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor (1993), §44: “The Church has often made reference to the Thomistic doctrine of natural law, including it in her own teaching on morality.” Final cause or end, taken as a principle of moral thought, is of course part of a teleological account of the moral life. Natural law as a rational participation of the eternal law of course presupposes the account of the eternal law, which is vouchsafed by the natural intelligibility of the arguments for God as first efficient and last or ultimate final cause. There are, of course, many other illustrations. The Relation of Metaphysics to the Secondary Object of Revelation 491 pertaining to faith and morals. This was the problem that catalyzed the furor regarding la nouvelle théologie: not merely the special role of the teaching of Aquinas, but rather the nature of Church doctrine itself, and the possibility of theology as scientia, as a noble contemplation of the truth about God unifying the truths of revelation and nature. The preambles of faith are medicinally revealed, while nonetheless they are discernible to natural intelligence. God may elevate any person in grace, but the capacity to realize that finite beings are effects of God arguably is a natural capacity essential to any being created ad imaginem dei. I will return to this point. But first we must move from the inclusion of metaphysical truth in the secondary object of revelation to the essential and privileged instrumentality of metaphysics in sacra doctrina. To put the matter as St. Thomas does, we do not possess quidditative or direct essential knowledge of God, who is the subject of theology. A science of that which we essentially do not know sounds like a contradiction in terms: yet even after revelation we do not enjoy direct knowledge of the essence or quiddity of God, a knowledge which awaits the beatific vision. One recalls the judgment of St. Thomas in De veritate11 that philosophic knowledge of God should be compared with beatific knowing more as not-seeing to seeing than as not seeing so well to seeing better. How then can theology proceed? Thomas’s answer in ST I, q. 1, a. 7, ad 1, is clear: theology proceeds on the basis of all the effects of God in nature and grace.12 But the proper and first effect of God, is being in the sense of esse or actual existence.13 As Thomas puts it in the ST I, q. 45, a. 5, Now among all effects the most universal is existence itself: thus it must be the proper effect of the first and most universal cause, and that is God.14 A little further on within the body of the same article, Thomas writes, “but that which is the proper effect of God creating is that which is presupposed to all other effects, namely, absolute existence.”15 The “to be” or “actual existing” of beings is presupposed to all other effects. On this 11 12 13 14 15 St. Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 18, a. 1. St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] I, q. 1, a. 7, ad 1. ST I, q. 45, a. 5, resp. ST I, q. 45, a. 5: “Inter omnes autem effectus, universalissimum est ipsum esse. Unde oportet quod sit proprius effectus primae et universalissimae causae, quae est Deus.” ST I, q. 45, a. 5: “Illud autem quod est proprius effectus Dei creantis, est illud quod praesupponitur omnibus aliis, scilicet esse absolute.” 492 Steven A. Long understanding it is only owing to esse—“to be, existence”—that ens, that which exists, is real and so can be first in the intellect’s conception. Esse is the most universal effect. The is in the that which is—the actuality of any and every being, and accordingly what is most formal in that which is—is esse. Being in the sense of the “that which is” or ens (as present participle) necessarily is known in relation to “being” as esse or actual existing (as verb). Thomas writes in the Summa contra gentiles that we naturally know being (ens) and whatever belongs to a being as such, 16 (i.e., the per se properties of being) and in De trinitate that knowledge of ens commune which is the subject matter of metaphysics precedes and is the basis for natural knowledge of God.17 The proposition that the proper effect of God is esse absolute, when conjoined with ST I, q. 1, a. 7, establishes the privileged instrumentality and centrality of metaphysics within sacra doctrina. For what stands in for the lack of quidditative knowledge of God is all the effects of God in nature and grace, and the most universal effect (esse) is the most formal 16 17 Summa contra gentiles [SCG] II, ch. 83, no. 31: “Naturaliter igitur intellectus noster cognoscit ens, et ea quae sunt per se entis inquantum huiusmodi; in qua cognitione fundatur primorum principiorum notitia, ut non esse simul affirmare et negare, et alia huiusmodi” (trans. James F. Anderson in Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles Book Two: Creation [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975], 281–82). Of course this is while persistently affirming that what the human intellect is most natively proportioned to knowing is “quiddity in corporeal matter”—cf. ST I, q. 84, a. 7, corp.: “Intellectus autem humani, qui est coniunctus corpori, proprium obiectum est quidditas sive natura in materia corporali existens.” See St. Thomas’s commentary on Boethius’s De trinitate, q. 5, a. 1, ad 6: “quamvis subiecta aliarum scientiarum sint partes entis, quod est subiectum metaphysicae, non tamen oportet quod aliae scientiae sint partes ipsius. . . . Sic autem posset dici pars ipsius scientia, quae est de potentia vel quae est de actu aut de uno vel de aliquo huiusmodi, quia ista habent eundem modum considerandi cum ente, de quo tractatur in metaphysica”—“Although the subjects of the other sciences are parts of being, which is the subject of metaphysics, the other sciences are not necessarily parts of metaphysics. . . . However, the science treating of potency, or that treating of act or unity or anything of this sort, could be called a part of metaphysics because these are considered in the same manner as being, which is the subject of metaphysics.” And q. 5, a. 4, corp.: “Sic ergo theologia sive scientia divina est duplex. Una, in qua considerantur res divinae non tamquam subiectum scientiae, sed tamquam principia subiecti, et talis est theologia, quam philosophi prosequuntur, quae alio nomine metaphysica dicitur”— “Accordingly, there are two kinds of theology or divine science. (1) There is one that treats of divine things, not as the subject of the science but as the principles of the subject. This is the kind of theology pursued by the philosophers and that is also called metaphysics” (translation mine). The Relation of Metaphysics to the Secondary Object of Revelation 493 principle of the subject of metaphysics (ens commune or that which exists in general). It follows that metaphysics has a privileged instrumentality within sacra doctrina, and the theologian who proceeds without metaphysical wisdom risks either absorbing revealed truths into contingent conceptual constructs or social ideology, or else converting the contemplation of the truth of revelation into a species of fideist poetry or only aspirationally connected historical moments. The actual being, nature, and substance of created things are real, and supernatural revelation is real. The continuity and relation between these can only be understood, short of the beatific vision, on the basis of metaphysical truth. We cannot start out within the beatific vision and see clearly therein or deduce the entirety of divine providence, creation, grace, and revelation. The principle of contradiction in its application to being is one such metaphysical principle; and arguably it cannot be sustained as applying to many, limited, changing creatures without the real division of being by potency and act for the reasons made conspicuous by Aristotle and that I will set out below. A theologian who wishes to deepen insight into the reality of nature, grace, and revelation, and who absents himself from these principles does so at hazard to the unity and fruitfulness of theology as sacred science. Saint Thomas Aquinas and the Metaphysical Framing of Theological Science This brings us to my second consideration, that of the metaphysical framing of theological science. Here I will speak briefly about the division of being by potency and act—with its harvest of the real distinction of essence and existence in finite being—but in particular and at length regarding his account of the analogy of being as the foundation for the analogy of creature to God. Unsurprisingly, the division of being by potency and act is spoken of by Aristotle as analogical. As pertains to the division of being by potency and act, Thomas embraced and further perfected Aristotle’s account. While Aristotle develops this teaching in relation to the analysis of physical being, his purpose is from the beginning the provision of an adequate metaphysical response to Parmenides. Parmenides famously held18 that being is 18 See fragments of Parmenides’s On Nature in G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 494 Steven A. Long self-identical and one with itself, and that plurality is unreal; that being is all there is, and outside of being there is nothing, and so nothing exists outside of being to limit it, so that being is unlimited; and that being could only change by becoming nonbeing, but being is not nonbeing and nothing is outside of it that could alter it, so that change is impossible. Of course, we look up and see a flock of many, limited, changing creatures flying by, and conclude that Parmenides is out to lunch. But the difficult question is how to reconcile the principle of contradiction as a principle of being with real manyness, limit, and change. Aristotle saw that there was a principle in being which is neither act, nor mere negation of act, but rather potency or capacity for act,19 and that potency explained the reality of manyness, limit, and change. Aristotle himself provides a metaphysical, and not a purely physical, account of this distinction. As Aristotle teaches in Metaphysics 11.9.1065b15–16: “Now since every kind of thing is divided into the potential and the real, I call the actualization of the potential as such, motion.” Any actualization of potency as such is according to Aristotle “motion,” and every kind of thing is divided into the potential and the real, that is, this division extends to everything. God is Actus Purus, Pure Act, but everything else is act limited by potency. I do not concur with the late Fr. Norris Clarke’s argument that the metaphysical doctrine of the limitation of act by potency cannot be found in Aristotle’s teaching.20 In my view Aristotle clearly understands that manyness pertains to being only owing to potentia, and that there can be but one Actus Purus; whereas manyness involves act as limited by potency, for example, to take one illustration, substantial form as limited to particular dimensions in relation to matter as a potential principle. The confusion about “limitation” is that Aristotle often refers to the potential infinitude of matter and to form as limiting in this respect. But he clearly asserts that manyness, limit (with respect to perfection), and change accrue to being by potency and do not pertain to the divine nature as Pure Act. Proceeding from the Aristotelian insight into the transcendence of act 19 20 e.g., 248–51. Of course, Aristotle makes clear that subjective potency exists solely in relation to, and as limiting, some principle of act: potency in itself is not a subject of being but exists in relation to an actual subject. The extension of this principle to what we would call “possibility” refers to what is within the objective frame of causality of an active power, or else to what is noncontradictory (as that which is noncontradictory might be, although of course the real constraints of the nature of the principles in play makes this something quite different from the logicism of “possible worlds” scenarios). See W. Norris Clarke, S.J., “The Limitation of Act by Potency,” in Explorations in Metaphysics: Being-God-Person (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994). The Relation of Metaphysics to the Secondary Object of Revelation 495 Aquinas explicates Aristotelian actual nature in terms of existence as act and essence as potency in finite being (arguably something at least implied by Aristotle’s thought). In any case there seems no reason to doubt that the analogical formality of act according to proper proportionality—a likeness of truly differing proportions—is Aristotelian in provenance, and is taken up and developed by St. Thomas. As Aristotle put it: Our meaning can be seen in the particular cases by induction, and we must not seek a definition of everything but be content to grasp the analogy, that it is as that which is building is to that which is capable of building, and the waking to the sleeping, and that which is seeing to that which has its eyes shut but has sight, and that which has been shaped out of the matter to the matter, and that which has been wrought up to the unwrought. Let actuality be defined by one member of this antithesis, and the potential by the other. But all things are not said in the same sense to exist actually, but only by analogy—as A is in B or to B, C is in D or to D; for some are as movement to potency, and the others as substance to some sort of matter.21 In De veritate Thomas’s initial illustration of proper proportionality is a mathematical example (e.g., as 6 is to 3, so is 4 to 2) that of course mathematically reduces to one-half. But he quickly moves to the proposition that as sight is to the eye, so is understanding to the mind.22 This does not reduce to one univocal object either in genus or in species: sight is not understanding, and the eye is not the mind. The “illumination” in question is not one thing but radically diverse, yet proportionately identical as each may be taken to articulate a relation of object and power, although these—and the comparable act/potency relations23—are radically diverse. He argues that the analogy of proper proportionality—that as one thing is to what is its own, so is another to what is its own, or “as A is to B, so is C to D”—is the form of analogy pertinent to being, true, and other transcendental or pure perfections that of themselves do not include in their definitions any material limit24 (as “being” does not of itself desig21 22 23 24 Aristotle, Metaphusics 9.6.1048a35–1048b9. Aquinas, De veritate, q. 2 a. 11, resp. E.g., as actual sight is to the eye, so is actual understanding to the mind. Aquinas, De veritate, q. 2, a. 11, resp.: “Quandoque vero nomen quod de Deo et creatura dicitur, nihil importat ex principali significato secundum quod non possit attendi praedictus convenientiae modus inter creaturam et Deum; sicut sunt omnia in 496 Steven A. Long nate some particular limit of being,25 which would be a particular limit of potency).26 A perfect univocal abstraction takes in one thing, and leaves everything else out: as one takes in “circularity” and leaves out “blue” and “plastic.” A genus does not include the specific difference in its definition: if it did, then every member of the genus would be of that species. But unlike a univocal object, being must include all its natural genera, specific differences and ergo species, and individuals, on pain of their nonexistence. The being analogically common to finite things contains everything in 25 26 quorum definitione non clauditur defectus, nec dependent a materia secundum esse, ut ens, bonum, et alia huiusmodi”—“At other times, however, a term predicated of God and creature implies nothing in its principal meaning which would prevent our finding between a creature and God an agreement of the type described above. To this kind belong all attributes which include no defect nor depend on matter for their act of existence, for example, being, the good, and similar things” (trans. mine). Thomas is very clear that this is proportionality. Having spoken of (strict) proportion and ruled it out as the analogy pertaining to God, he treats proportionality, stating: “Sed in alio modo analogiae nulla determinata habitudo attenditur inter ea quibus est aliquid per analogiam commune; et ideo secundum illum modum nihil prohibet aliquod nomen analogice dici de Deo et creatura”—“But in the other type of analogy, no definite relation is involved between the things which have something in common analogously, so there is no reason why some name cannot be predicated analogously of God and creature in this manner” (trans. mine). The analogy of proper proportionality is not metaphor, precisely because the perfections affirmed do not designate any particular limit (consequent on potency) whatsoever: good does not signify evil, being does not signify nonbeing, and true does not signify falsity. Yet the beings, goods, and truths we connaturally apprehend in this life are limited: we know “of ” God naturally, but do not simply “know” God (something that happens in the beatific vision, wherein of course God always measures our mind, and is never measured by it). As Aristotle (Meta. II, 3, 998b22) and Thomas (in his commentary and elsewhere) both hold, being is not a genus, because no genus includes in its definition the specific differences that cause there to be different species within the genus: if it did, then all members of the genus would necessarily be of that species. For example, if the definition of the genus “animal” contained “reason” then all animals would be rational. But all the differentiae of being are included within being, on pain of not existing at all. The actual being affirmed of different beings and kinds of beings is thus already a transcendental and analogical perfection, proportionate to the subject and limited only by whatsoever degree and kind of potency. If being were not analogical from the start, then the “is” of the premises in the argumentation for the existence of God would mean only “is material” or “is of this limit of potency,” and thus the “is” of the conclusion correspondingly would mean only “is material” or “is materially limited.” Nothing can be in a valid conclusion that is not already in the premises. If, and only if, the “is” of the premises is intrinsically analogical can the conclusion to God as unlimited in perfection and wholly immaterial be reached. If the prime perfection of being is The Relation of Metaphysics to the Secondary Object of Revelation 497 proportion to its existence or actuality as really limited by potency, and is utterly exceeded by God its principle as Pure Act exceeding all limit of potency. Diverse existing individuals, real differences and consequent natural species, and the material substrate founding genera, all are contained within the subject matter of metaphysics. As Aristotle observes, such analogy is manifest in the division of every category of being by act and potency:27 the respective acts and potencies simply are not the same, yet are proportionally similar.28 In this kind of analogy, St. Thomas states, “no definite relation is involved between the things which have something in common analogously, so there is no reason why some name cannot be predicated analogously of God and creature in this manner.” What is in question here is the likeness of different proportions insofar as they are truly diverse: as the angel is to its being, so is the frog to its. But there is no natural genus of “angel-frog.” This is a likeness of differing proportions of act insofar as they are different and with no limit on how different they may be. Hence such analogy can extend to God, whose perfection is not limited by reciprocal proportion to finite creatures. While the analogy of proportionality is trans-generic and trans-specific, it does not of itself necessarily rule out all real two-way proportion. Two finite beings that share no natural genus because they lack common matter, and that share only the logical genus of substance29—for example, 27 28 29 affirmed proportionate to the subject as limited by whatsoever potency, and the subject is unlimited by potency, the subject possesses the perfection of being without any limit. Indeed, all the ways in which the plurifiability of being is affirmed require potency, and so a subject lacking all potency is radically one, as there is nothing to account for its plurification. Thus Thomas argues in De ente et essentia that if there were a being whose essence were not really distinct from its existence, there could only be one, and he makes this argument before formulating his argument for the universalization of the real distinction (a fortiori in all other cases, existence and essence are really distinct) and before offering a universal proof for the reality of God predicated on the universal distinction of essence and existence in all but one possible case and showing that since beings that are not their own esse cannot account for their being, all things must receive their existence from ipsum esse subsistens per se, God. Aristotle, Metaphysics 11.9. 1065b15–16. See Aristotle, Metaphysics 9.6.1048a25–b9. ST I, q. 88, a. 2, ad 4: “Ad quartum dicendum quod substantiae immateriales creatae in genere quidem naturali non conveniunt cum substantiis materialibus, quia non est in eis eadem ratio potentiae et materiae, conveniunt tamen cum eis in genere logico, quia etiam substantiae immateriales sunt in praedicamento substantiae, cum earum quidditas non sit earum esse. Sed Deus non convenit cum rebus materialibus neque secundum genus naturale, neque secundum genus logicum, quia Deus nullo modo est in genere, ut 498 Steven A. Long angel and frog—are still as finite separated ontologically by only a finite degree of perfection. Thus one may determinately and ordinately possess a supra-generic analogically greater perfection of act than the other, even though they share no common genus or species: there is hierarchy in created being. The analogy of proper proportionality (as A is to B, so is C to D) does not require such finite difference, but it does not exclude it where it obtains. It simply does not require it. The difference between two finite beings is itself finite, and so a real two-way analogical proportion may be affirmed even between things sharing no common genus. As superior as angelic intelligence is to human intelligence, it is not infinitely superior. But the case is different when one moves from analogical relations within finite being to those between creatures and God. Thomas in De veritate affirms what he affirms everywhere else in his corpus: namely, that while the creature has a determined real relation to God, God has no real determined relation to the creature, is in no way really dependent on the creature, and infinitely transcends the creature.30 Thus there is not a strict “two-way” commensurate proportion, because God does not transcend the creature by merely some finite increment of perfection. There is a relation of one thing to another, or, as he puts it, as the creature is to what is its own, so is God to what is His own. This he calls an “analogy of transferred proportion” 31 —proportionis translatum—because it takes the term “proportion” from the case where there is a “two-way” real relation in a reciprocal proportion, and applies it to the case where only the creature has a real relation to God32 and God has no real proportion to or relation of dependence on the 30 31 32 supra dictum est. Unde per similitudines rerum materialium aliquid affirmative potest cognosci de Angelis secundum rationem communem, licet non secundum rationem speciei; de Deo autem nullo modo”— “To the fourth it should be said that created immaterial substances are not in the same natural genus as material substances, for they do not agree in power or in matter; but they belong to the same logical genus, because even immaterial substances are in the predicament of substance, as their essence is distinct from their existence. But God has no connection with material things, as regards either natural genus or logical genus; because God is in no genus, as stated above (q. 3. a. 5). Hence through the likeness derived from material things we can know something positive concerning the angels, according to some common notion, though not according to the specific nature; whereas we cannot acquire any such knowledge at all about God.” De veritate, q. 2, a. 11. De veritate, q. 23, a. 7, ad 9. De veritate, q. 2, a. 11, ad 1. Actually, there are two “transferences”: one is from quantitative comparison to analogy of proportionality; the other is from things that are different only by a finite ontological distance though this is trans-generic and trans-specific and so do exhibit analogical reciprocal proportion, to God, to whom no The Relation of Metaphysics to the Secondary Object of Revelation 499 creature. God is infinitely transcendent Pure Act and would be identically the same if there were no creation. Only a way of predicating being, true, good, and so on, which does not designate God in such a way as to limit God to the perfection of creatures will be sufficient: namely the analogy of proper proportionality, which intrinsically affirms all the transcendental perfections of God as identified with the unique simple substance of God who is infinitely perfect. There is no “two-way” proportion here because God is not merely first in a series but infinitely transcends the series: God possesses transcendental perfections proportionate to the lack of constriction of any potential principle whatsoever, while the creature possesses perfection proportionately constricted by potency. In De potentia, the Summa contra gentiles, and other works, Thomas drops the phrase “transferred proportion” and speaks simply of the relation of any one thing to another as proportion for so long as no real determined relation of God to the creature is affirmed.33 He simplifies his semantics and explains why: namely, the creature is really related to God and this may be called a proportion although it is not properly reciprocal. Thomas throughout his work denies that there is real determined relation of God to the creature. He does speak of the real attribution of the created effect to God since the effect only is an effect as attributed to the cause. But this first requires that there be a way of affirming that God exists without treating the existing of the infinite God as proportioned to the finite: the way he early identified as proportionis translatum, “transferred” proportion. God is to what is his, as the creature is to what is its own, and the creature is really ordered to God, but not the converse. Thomas holds this throughout his work, and explains his later use of the term “proportion” not for what is reciprocal but rather one-sided, in De potentia, the Summa contra gentiles, and other works. For example, in the Summa contra gentiles he rules out “commensuration in an existing proportion” but allows “proportion” to stand for “any relation of one thing to another.”34 In 33 34 being has any commensuration in a genuinely reciprocal two-way proportion. See St. Thomas Aquinas, De potentia, q. 7, a. 10, ad 9: “Ad nonum dicendum, quod si proportio intelligatur aliquis determinatus excessus, nulla est Dei ad creaturam proportio. Si autem per proportionem intelligatur habitudo sola, sic patet quod est inter creatorem et creaturam; in creatura quidem realiter, non autem in creatore”— “If by proportion is meant a definite excess, then there is no proportion in God to the creature. But if proportion stands for relation alone, then there is relation between the Creator and the creature: in the latter really, but not in the former” (trans. mine). See SCG III, ch. 54, no. 14: “Proportio autem intellectus creati est quidem ad Deum intelligendum, non secundum commensurationem aliquam proportione existente, sed secundum quod proportio significat quamcumque habitudinem unius ad alterum, ut 500 Steven A. Long the Summa theologiae he uses the analogy of proportionality in speaking of the divine transcendence.35 Nowhere does St. Thomas hold that God has any real proportion to the creature; and nowhere does he unsay his unequivocal affirmation that the analogy pertinent to transcendental being, true, and good is that of proper proportionality.36 The analogy of transferred proportion, of one to another, and effect to cause between the creature and God all presuppose the analogy of being as one of proper proportionality: first because act or existence is intrinsically affirmed of each thing proportionate to what it is, and these proportions are diverse;37 and secondly because only such analogy permits the intrinsic 35 36 37 materiae ad formam, vel causae ad effectum. Sic autem nihil prohibet esse proportionem creaturae ad Deum secundum habitudinem intelligentis ad intellectum, sicut et secundum habitudinem effectus ad causam”—“Now, the proportion of the created intellect to the understanding of God is not, in fact, based on a commensuration in an existing proportion, but on the fact that proportion means any relation of one thing to another, as of matter to form, or of cause to effect. In this sense, then, nothing prevents there being a proportion of creature to God on the basis of a relation of one who understands to the thing understood, just as on the basis of the relation of effect to cause. But to speak of a relation of one to another requires first affirming that each actually exists, and this can only be by the analogy of proportionality since the actuality of God has no reciprocal commensurate proportion to the creature” (trans. mine). See e.g., ST I-II, q. 114, a. 1, resp.: “Manifestum est autem quod inter Deum et hominem est maxima inaequalitas, in infinitum enim distant, et totum quod est hominis bonum, est a Deo. Unde non potest hominis ad Deum esse iustitia secundum absolutam aequalitatem, sed secundum proportionem quandam, inquantum scilicet uterque operatur secundum modum suum”— “Now it is clear that between God and man there is the greatest inequality: for they are infinitely apart, and all man’s good is from God. Thus there is not able to be justice of absolute equality between man and God, but only according to a certain proportion, inasmuch as each is operative according to its own mode.” It is on the basis of the being of creatures that the mind rises to God, and the real relation of createdness in creatures is a quasi-accident of “having being from another” whose foundation is the being of the creature since nonexistent things have no real relations. But the language of being is the language of the likeness of differing proportions of act. Since non-existent beings do not have real relations, and creation is not a real change in God, the real relation of the creature to God is founded upon the being of the creature. Being is intrinsically predicated both of creatures and of God, and it is only owing to this that a “one-way” analogy of attribution of the created effect to God is intelligible. God is proportionate to what pertains to God, as the creature is proportionate to what is its, but this does not mean that God is or can be proportioned to the creature. Nonetheless, as noted, proper proportionality as obtaining among creatures—even creatures as distant from one another in perfection as the angel and the frog—permits ontological reciprocal proportion without requiring it, because the analogical “distance” between two finite beings (even beings that share no common genus or species) is The Relation of Metaphysics to the Secondary Object of Revelation 501 attribution of perfections of God in an infinitely different way from the way they are predicated of creatures. When extended to God, “two-way” reciprocal proportion cannot obtain because God is not determined in proportion to the creature.38 God is to what pertains to God, as the creature is to what is its own: proportionality, not proportion. 39 Thomas’s semantics alter, but not the framing role of the analogy of proper proportionality with respect to being. One sees this understanding in play in the doctrine of the creation of man ad imaginem dei, according to the image of God. The Imago Dei in the Human Creature St. Thomas’s understanding of the imago dei, the image of God in the human creature, has been subject to a misunderstanding that has been applied in diametrically opposite senses. Some—I would name Jacques Maritain in his seminal work The Person and the Common Good—seem to err in reducing the analogical pure perfection of person in man to the imago dei understood as simple intellectual nature.40 Others (I would 38 39 40 finite. So there is a hierarchy of finite perfections and a real finite analogical “distance” between angelic and sublunary being. Much like the way that being may be found with potency but need not be, the analogy of proper proportionality may be found in cases of real two-way analogical proportion but need not be. De veritate, q. 2, a. 11. See De veritate, q. 23, a. 7, ad 9. Thomas’s use of the quantitative illustration when clearly it is insufficient is reminiscent of his use of “fire” in the fourth way in the Summa theologiae, where he is reasoning concerning differing gradations of the intensive perfection of being, true, good, and other transcendental or pure perfections: yet there is no reason to think that he considered “fire” to be a transcendental or pure perfection. It seems merely to be a “hook” to provide a species of phantasm to enable the natural philosopher to have a point of comparison. Something like this seems involved here, too. All this is rendered difficult because in De veritate Thomas continues to use the stock example of mathematical proportionality long after he has left it substantively behind. Yet no Thomist exegete thinks that for Thomas the only form of real determined proportion between God and creature that he means to deny is quantitative—as though God were not on a quantitative continuum with creatures but were in other respects limited by a real determined proportion to the creature. And in De potentia what is denied of God is definite excess in relation to the creature (that is, God infinitely exceeds the creature); see De potentia, q. 7, a. 10, ad 9. See Jacques Maritain, The Person and the Common Good, trans. John J. Fitzgerald (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1994). He speaks of the person as a whole, but treats matter as a potential part which is the root of the individual as distinct from the person. But the complete substance of a rational nature essentially includes bodily perfections. It is the intellectual nature alone in which St. Thomas says that the 502 Steven A. Long suggest Karl Barth or Edith Stein41) seem to err in the opposite fashion, by supposing the imago is identical with the analogical perfection of person as complete substance of a rational nature and thus including matter and bodily perfections. Both are incorrect in supposing that person and imago are the same. According to St. Thomas, the imago is found in man sola natura intellectualis,42 only according to the intellectual nature as a purely immaterial principle. He clearly holds that all else in the human creature pertains to the imago only as an accidental quality (accidental vis-à-vis the imago taken analogically and as such, not accidental vis-à-vis the complete substantial nature of the human person) and by way of “trace,” that is, a likeness that does not attain to the perfection of an analogical image. The analogy of person as a pure perfection regards the integral or complete substance of a rational nature, and in the human case this integrality essentially includes matter and bodily perfections. But the analogy of intellectual nature as a pure perfection excludes materiality—excludes the sense powers and all bodily perfections. Thus, the imago dei is an analogical pure perfection extrinsically limited by matter in the human person, predicated with differing limitations of potency of man and angel, and affirmed in the “First-Born of creatures” as perfect: according to proper proportionality.43 41 42 43 imperfect analogical imago in the human creature consists. Barth explicates the Pauline account of unilateral uxorial submission by a principal appeal to submission within the Trinity; Stein affirms that the sexual difference is originatively and most formally spiritual, rather than spiritual owing to the nature of the substantial union of spiritual soul and matter (which is originatively second matter affecting the manner in which it may be brought to diverse act: as male, or female). For Barth, see Church Dogmatics IV/1, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1961): “His divine unity consists in the fact that in Himself He is both One who is obeyed and Another who obeys” (201); and “As we look at Jesus Christ we cannot avoid the astounding conclusion of a divine obedience. Therefore we have to draw the no less astounding deduction that in equal Godhead the one God is, in fact, the One and also Another, that He is indeed a First and a Second, One who rules and commands in majesty and One who obeys in humility” (203). For Edith Stein / Teresa Benedicta, see Edith Stein, Essays on Woman, 2nd revised edition, volume 2, trans. Freda Mary Oben, ed. Lucy Gelber and Romaeus Leuven (Washington, DC: ICS, 2017). ST I, q. 93, a. 2, ad 3. As Thomas says of the Word made flesh in ST I, q. 93, art. 1, ad 2, “The First-Born of creatures is the perfect Image of God, reflecting perfectly that of which He is the Image, and so He is said to be the ‘Image,’ and never ‘to the image.’” But creatures are created according to the image. Created nature and imago are not necessarily coextensive, and indeed are fully so only in God. The Relation of Metaphysics to the Secondary Object of Revelation 503 The intrinsically spiritual soul, while limited by potency and accordingly imperfect in its actuality, is nonetheless such as to provide an analogical image of God in the human creature precisely because it is positively immaterial. Without this foundational principle of spirit in the human creature, the elevation of the human person to the beatific vision would be as impossible as the bestowal of the beatific vision to a rock. The rock would need substantially to change into a knowing and loving creature to be susceptible of elevation to the order of grace and the attainment of a union of knowledge and love with God. Owing to the imago—the intellectual nature—the human creature does not need to lose humanity in order to be elevated through grace to attain to this vision: under the active agency of God the natural universality of its intellective power is capable of higher actuation. The overflow of the beatific vision into the flesh is required for the sake of integral human nature, but the beatific vision is essentially possessed even by the separated soul. To repeat, in ST I, q. 93, a. 2, ad 3, Thomas says that the intellectual nature alone is to the image of God—“sola natura intellectualis est ad imaginem Dei”44—and that it “has a capacity for the highest good”— “quae est capax summi boni.” What kind of capacity is this? Those who know Thomas’s teaching realize that he adverts to obediential potency—a passive potency for perfections that may be brought forth in a creature only by an extrinsic active power.45 The universality of the adequate objects of intellect and will manifests what—consequent on revelation—we realize to be a purely passive capacity for elevation to the beatific vision, a vision toward which Thomas teaches that no creature can move apart from grace.46 All the nobler perfections of the imag44 45 46 It is noteworthy that Aristotle names God as “thought thinking itself ”—as Pure Act and Perfect Intellect . . . But whence does Aristotle find the analogical foundation for such affirmations, save in the evidence of being as irreducible to any genus whatsoever, within which he discerns that analogicity of intellectual nature between man, separated substance, and God, that becomes for Thomas the foundational, essential, and principal reality signified by the imago dei in man, the imago naturae? St. Thomas deploys this principle with respect to infused virtue in Christ and in all those in a state of grace, to the capacity of human nature to be elevated to union with the Person of the Word, and generally to infused virtues in the soul. With respect to obediential potency and infused virtue in Christ, see Summa theologiae III, q. 11, a. 3, resp.; with respect to the union of human nature with the Person of the Word, observe his text in the tertia pars of the Summa theologiae, q. 1, art. 3, ad 3; and with respect to infused virtue generally, see Quaestiones disputatae de virtutibus, q. 1, a. 10, ad 13. See, e.g., ST I, q. 62, a. 2. And, of course, for Thomas desire is motion: cf. Summa theologiae I-II, q. 3, art. 4, resp.: “But it is evident that desire itself of the end is not attainment 504 Steven A. Long ing of God in and by the human creature, the perfections of the imago gratiae—the image of grace—and of the imago gloriae—the image of glory—presuppose the intellectual nature. The stakes at hazard are thus great in understanding that the human creature is created ad imaginem dei by reason of that which is noblest in the human person, the intellectual nature in its openness to the universe of being, true, and good. And the imago is predicated by analogy of proper proportionality of man, angel, and God. Although we may say that there is a hierarchy of analogically finite distance between the perfections of man and those of the myriad angelic host, this is only because of the varied limitations of potency: God has no determined finite proportion to the creature, but the creature is ordered determinately to God. The Imago and the Intelligibility of Creation I wish to close by adverting to the reasoned disquisitions of my profound and insightful colleague Father Guy Mansini—who is inclined to hold the thesis that knowledge of the reality of God is a natural possibility for man foreclosed by sin but opened up again by the reality of revelation and sanctifying grace. His analysis is articulated first in his 2020 article “Why Revelation Gives Shelter to Metaphysics,” but is more expressly and definitively developed in his 2021 conference paper “Acts 17 and the Structure of Apostolic Hope.”47 Although one might argue with his conclusion on the grounds of positive theology in interpreting the teaching of Vatican I that natural knowledge of God our Creator and Lord is truly possible, this does not reach the heart of his thesis, for he affirms that it is natural, but seems to suggest that it is natural in the way that the full density of natural virtues is “natural” after the Fall—that is, post-lapsarian man will require sanctifying grace for this recovery of nature. 47 of the end, but is a movement towards the end” (“Manifestum est autem quod ipsum desiderium finis non est consecutio finis, sed est motus ad finem”). See note 3 above for brief added consideration of these two works and their relation. The Relation of Metaphysics to the Secondary Object of Revelation 505 It is arguable whether the authors of Vatican I meant this: but this reading of “natural” in the light of the wider tradition poses a question that arguably has not been definitively addressed.48 So there is dispute in positive theology. 48 Acknowledging that there is space in the tradition to raise this question on the basis of the reasons already articulated above (i.e., that the account in question holds that there is natural knowledge of God but that after the Fall for this natural knowledge to occur requires sanctifying grace, rendering such natural knowledge putatively similar to the possession of all the acquired natural virtues after the Fall, which requires sanctifying grace), it should be observed that the magisterium has on the whole interpreted Vatican I differently. It must in justice be noted that Fr. Mansini’s proposal does unequivocally acknowledge that the knowledge of God in question is essentially natural—something that most of those who affirm the need for sanctifying grace to have such knowledge actually deny. Nonetheless, the possibility that the knowledge in question requires grace as a conditio sine qua non of its possession after the Fall—for whatsoever reason—is, with severity (but this could be argued to be because of the negation of the naturalness of such knowledge tout court by most of those who think grace is necessary for it) denied. See Pius XII, Humani Generis (1950), §25: “It is not surprising that novelties of this kind have already borne their deadly fruit in almost all branches of theology. It is now doubted that human reason, without divine revelation and the help of divine grace, can, by arguments drawn from the created universe, prove the existence of a personal God; it is denied that the world had a beginning; it is argued that the creation of the world is necessary, since it proceeds from the necessary liberality of divine love; it is denied that God has eternal and infallible foreknowledge of the free actions of men—all this in contradiction to the decrees of the Vatican Council.” It is a sign of how discerning and penetrating is the formulation of Fr. Mansini’s consideration, that one may ask the question whether the reason for the condemnation articulated in Humani Generis is that the position condemned would deny the essentially natural character of such knowledge (which Fr. Mansini’s position expressly seeks not to do—although a critic might argue that his analysis implies this, but that is another matter), or simply because it affirms sanctifying grace to be necessary for it. The simplest reading would seem to be that in Humani Generis both are considered erroneous but specifically that divine revelation and the help of divine grace are denied to be necessary for such knowledge. In the absence of an express qualification, the teaching of Humani Generis appears to be that such knowledge does not require sanctifying grace but lies within the ordinary exercise of the natural rational power even after the Fall and apart from sanctifying grace. Other cognate magisterial fonts might be cited to similar effect. For a criticism of the position that natural knowledge of the truth of the proposition that God exists presupposes revelation, see Joseph Trabbic, “By Revelation Alone? Some Objections to Robert Sokolowski’s ‘Christian Distinction,’” The Heythrop Journal, 59, no. 3 (2018): 456–67. With respect to this excellent essay—with whose principal conclusions I concur, and whose analysis is bracing—one might however note that something may be “natural” in an equivocal sense, that is, as belonging in its full character to the normative iteration of a species, but not necessarily in the same way to a damaged or unhealthy one in whom it may be found with diminution. This seems to 506 Steven A. Long Systematically, this consideration is a theological exploration of the feasibility of a moderate and insightful “pruning back” of the Thomistic apologetic optimism regarding natural knowledge of God.49 It is a challenging consideration. It might be thought that this is in some way profoundly consistent with the Thomistic emphasis upon the efficacy of the divine motion of grace in healing and restoring nature. Father Mansini’s treatment is brilliant in mapping out precisely where and how this consideration 49 be the argument of Sokolowski and Mansini with respect to the Fall. Yet this analysis of Sokolowski and Mansini also seems implicitly to involve viewing the intellect as subject to the Fall in the same manner as the will, whereas one might think there is a difference, since the openness of the intellect to being is arguably presupposed to revelation. On this view of the difference between intellect and will in relation to the Fall (which I am inclined to hold), while one may not after the Fall and apart from grace successfully and practically integrate this natural judgment of the existence of God with the whole of one’s life, or be able to draw the full existential or moral fruit from natural knowledge of the reality of God, nonetheless one may achieve such knowledge and discern certain of its strategic implications (even some moral implications). Such knowledge may also of course involve a certain admixture of error (although not to the point of annulling the possibility of the knowledge itself ). This seems to be St. Thomas’s teaching. It must be observed that howsoever helpful the intellectual achievement of insight into the dependence of creatures on God is, that no demonstration whatsoever can force anyone to entertain it or even assure that its own intelligibility will be communicated adequately to every intelligent mind. The proofs, for example, presuppose antecedent intelligent engagement. Brilliant but profane minds are possible, as are profane but obtuse minds, and it is possible that many in each category are remote from such considerations and indeed spend effort in diverting themselves precisely from such considerations. This, of course, need not impede the helpfulness of such reflections for those who seek ardently for truth and appreciate it. But one must not assume that there is a “silver bullet” of apologetic reasoning, since any such consideration penetrates not alone by the “velocity” of its argument, but by virtue of minds that are proximate to receive it. One may think—I do—that there are many such minds, and that the natural motion of the mind in the face of the evidence often illatively precedes the formulation of the precise arguments and the full answers to objections (much as natural reasoning power is presupposed to the development of formal logic). But this still requires the somber realization that finally it is an all-disposing providence that governs the motion of souls. Interestingly, those who believe that such argumentation can at times be dispositive for souls who need the cautionary reminder of the limitation of such reasoning, since those for whom it is considered to be a capacity of nature whose exercise after the Fall will first require sanctifying grace as including the gratia sanans to recover its use, will never deploy it apologetically in speaking to those remote from the faith, and so no reminder would for them seem to be apologetically necessary. But it is necessary for those whose apologetic activity seeks to manifest awareness of the natural dynamism of the mind to such truth and the possibility of some genuine attainment of it even prior to the gratia sanans, but who must not for all that fall to the supposition that this is some species of “silver bullet.” The Relation of Metaphysics to the Secondary Object of Revelation 507 fits integrally within the state of the tradition.50 I will be reflecting on his analysis for a long time. His argument is the more powerful because he clearly understands the need for immutable content in doctrine, and the role of natural truths in this judgment.51 Further, he retains the affirmation of the knowledge as natural, but as available to post-lapsarian nature only under the causality of the grace of faith. The issue is one of epistemology taken precisely in relation to original sin and grace. It is a brilliantly articulated and structured consideration, of great doctrinal fruitfulness not least in its invitation to think through the entire Catholic problematic. There are, however, problems. There is an argument to be made simply from the natural knowability of the premises of arguments for God and their implications. That is, it does not seem impossible to know these premises naturally. It may be said that the cloud of sin and death morally undercut such knowledge; but conversely, it may be pointed out that the judgment that things flow forth from God who is infinitely good is, even in the face of sin and death, such as to suggest the thinkability of an indeterminate “more” which, of course, in fact comes to be realized beyond all determinate natural expectation in supernatural revelation. Thomas famously said that “I answer that not only does faith hold that there is creation but reason also demonstrates it.”52 There is also a question whether the thesis is consistent with the fact of the case: have not persons in mortal sin come to hold prior to their conversions, and on the basis of ordinary experience and reason, that God exists? There is a possible concern with circularity. One may be moved by grace without knowing demonstrations for the reality of God. Yet the natural motion of the mind articulated by these demonstrations precedes these, just as natural reason precedes development of formal logic. If such knowledge is possible only by grace and not by natural reason alone—if the reason absolutely needs grace to see this—there is at least danger of an intellectually vicious circle. However, in closing I wish to pose an issue that pertains to the imago and to the intelligibility of revelation. 50 51 52 I would add, that while traditionalism with respect to knowledge of God has in certain particular applications, developments, or possible implications been condemned, it itself with respect to knowledge of God seemingly has not ever discretely been condemned. See Fr. Mansini’s remarkably penetrating and instructive work, “The Historicity of Dogma and Common Sense: Ambrose Gardeil, Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Yves Congar, and the Modern Magisterium,” Nova et Vetera (English) 18, no. 1 (2020): 111–38. St. Thomas Aquinas, In II sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 2, sol. 508 Steven A. Long The intellectual nature (the imago) extends to being, which is the first intelligible as sound is the first audible. The universality of its range and object renders it in relation to the active power of God to be a passive power for divine elevation to grace and glory. The natural power of intellect extends to the universal being common to finite effects, and thus to the question of the cause of this being.53 The premises of argument for the reality of God include no proposition knowable by revelation alone. How then can it be impossible for the intellectual creature to discover this apart from supernatural revelation? And if it were impossible, would the minimal conditions for the intelligibility of revelation be able to be articulated or to be grasped by the human mind prior to the actual reception of infused theological faith? Since being is the first, proper, and most universal effect of God, it is also in this life that in terms of which effects as effects are intelligible. Accordingly, the validity of reasoning from finite effect to God—from universal being to its cause, from per accidens to per se, from imperfect to perfect—is something of nature available to the intelligence to understand. Were finite effects as depending on and pointing to God naturally unintelligible absent revelation, the rational communicability of the idea of revelation might itself seem to become endangered, such that no middle term of conversation could exist between the Church and the world. Revelation in this life is a created grace—as is, indeed, the humanity of Christ as subsisting uniquely in the Person of the Eternal Word.54 But understanding this, itself, requires prior capacity to see that finite created effects depend on their divine first cause. The intelligibility of the faith requires this, but one might think the capacity for it proceeds from the foundational 53 54 It might be thought that the account of original sin as rendering natural knowledge of God impossible apart from gratia sanans consequent on sanctifying grace, implies a species of voluntarism with respect to human knowledge (or at least a greater parity of the effect of original sin on both intellect and will than has often been supposed to be the case). Of course, an intellectualist account does not suggest that the possessor of natural knowledge of God apart from grace consequent on original sin will be wholly able to integrate such a conviction with the entire scope of his life. In any case, an account treating the effects of original sin on intellect directly rather than indirectly owing to the “curvature” of the will might then also suggest or imply a more purely fiduciary account of the act of faith. Yet this does not seem to be the intention of the analysis. Fr. Mansini’s analysis is, precisely by way of drawing the mind back to central issues in fundamental theology, a profound and helpful exploration, howsoever distant I am from its principal conclusion with respect to natural knowledge of God after the Fall. ST III, q. 2, a. 7, resp. and ad 2. The Relation of Metaphysics to the Secondary Object of Revelation 509 character of the intellectual nature as that in which the imago dei in man essentially consists. One essential sign of the universality of human spirit is arguably the inherent natural intelligibility of being: but that intelligibility is not itself a supernatural mystery.55 This objective proportioning of the imago to being is ineradicable, such that the created human intelligence as such may be impaired in attainment of metaphysical truth but this cannot be rendered absolutely impossible for it as such by any condition in which it is still susceptible of act. This is because this proportion of intellect to that which is constitutes the foundation of the very ordering of any intellect prior to any act: in man it is part of the passive participation of the eternal law that 55 Another way of making the same observation, is that nature is weakened but not destroyed by the Fall, and that the Fall affects intellect and will differently. So that arguably it is impossible that (apart from cases like brain injury and others) that one have intellect and be simply incapable of knowing that which one might even prefer not to know, or for fallen man to be incapable of natural knowledge of the reality of God apart from sanctifying grace, because the intellect’s root capacity for truth implies this and it cannot be denied without suppressing the very foundation of the rectification of the will through reception of truth. This of course does not mean that the recipient need be capable of making full use of such knowledge inasmuch as sin and unrectified appetite may obstruct further application of such knowledge. St. Thomas argues in ST I-II, q. 85, a. 1, resp., that nature is, in part, destroyed by original sin. He identifies three senses of human nature: (1) the principles and properties of human nature; (2) the natural inclination to virtue; and (3) that gift of original justice conferred upon the first parents of the human race. He states that the third (the gift of original justice) is destroyed by sin; the second (the natural inclination to virtue) is diminished by sin; and the first (the principles and properties of human nature) is neither destroyed nor diminished by sin (after all, if the principles and properties of human nature were diminished or lost by sin humans could not be damned—for the damned would not be human!). Since the root of our natural inclination to virtue is the rational nature, this inclination cannot be wholly snuffed out—even the damned possess it, for it is the source of their unending remorse of conscience. The tendency of the rational creature to God cannot wholly be eradicated. And as the intellect as a power has being for its adequate object, that the mind be incapable of seeking causal origination of the being common to the proportionate objects of our knowledge and inferring the reality of the prime cause might be taken even to deny the intellective principle itself. Whereas, diminished rational motion, and the incapacity apart from grace wholly to harvest the implications of the reality of God, do seem to be implications of the Fall. Hence a more certain demonstrative knowledge of God as prime cause might be naturally found only among the few, and with admixture of error; but a wider but less certain knowledge, predicated on the natural motion of the mind to seek causes, but not given demonstrative form or precision and further admixed with error, might be thought even after the Fall to be more common than the thesis of the impossibility of such natural knowledge apart from sanctifying grace envisions. 510 Steven A. Long is the ontological condition for natural law, and for the obediential potency of man to grace and glory. One recalls St. Thomas’s words of ST I-II, q. 91, a. 2, that all things participate the eternal law from which they derive their inclinations to their proper acts and ends. These inclinations are derived from the ontological and teleological order impressed on creation. The human intellect is ordered to being (ens) as adequate object, to the true as formal object, and to quiddity in corporeal matter as proper object. Thus the intellect is of its very nature capax with respect to the knowledge of being, howsoever it may suffer impediment, for so long as it can attain its act at all. It is for this reason that one might argue that the obscuration of sin cannot remove the possibility of natural discovery of the existence of God prior to sanctifying grace: because the causal question regarding being concerns the object proper to intelligence as such, and so may not wholly be suppressed or obviated so long as intellectual activity remains. Being as ens (actual nature, that which actually exists, essence under the formality, as it were, of existing) is first in the intellect, and is the adequate object of intellect in relation to which truth is principally and first known.56 If this proportion of intellect to being were utterly lost, it is not clear how truth could be possible for man nor how one could be elevated in grace; but if the proportion howsoever weakened is retained, the truth of the judgment that God exists may become conspicuous. It is not for historically antiquarian reasons that one observes that Aristotle affirmed that God as first cause has no real reciprocal dependence on anything, implying that God absolutely transcends limited beings. Aristotle speaks of God as “producing motion as being loved”57 indicating both efficient causality (production) and “being loved” or the final causality of God as end. Indeed, Aristotle named God analogically from what Thomas later identifies as that wherein man is created ad imaginem dei, namely, spirit, the intellectual nature as pure perfection. God is Pure Act, Pure Intellect knowing itself. With all the imperfections of Aristotle’s account—such as his failure to treat the intellectual perfection of will (i.e., love) in God, or his erroneous conviction of the demonstrability of the eternity of the world—his affirmation of divine simplicity and transcendence nonetheless implies the divine aseity. It is incompatible with the view 56 57 Ens incorporates actual and possible being, but knowledge of the latter presupposes prior knowledge of the former, since both potency and possibility are only intelligible in relation to act. Aquinas is not wrong to see in Aristotle’s actual nature, and in Aristotle’s teaching that every category of being is divided by potency and act, the foundation for his teaching of the real distinction of essence and existence. Aristotle, Metaphysics 12.7.1072b3–4. The Relation of Metaphysics to the Secondary Object of Revelation 511 that God is merely the first member of a series. While the trail of created effects leads to God, according to Aristotle God also stands absolutely outside the series.58 Aristotle speaks of these things employing the analogy of the proportionality of act and potency. It seems difficult to attribute these insights to sanctifying grace in him, although surely it was a limited but actual grace. Conclusion The spiritual power in man testifies naturally to many things whose ultimate exegesis will be provided only by faith. But one might think one must truly be able to speak of them for that exegesis actually to obtain: the illumined page cannot be written in invisible ink.59 This is the gravamen of the account of sacra doctrina, and the apologetic derivative from it promulgated in Aeterni Patris, which turns our minds to St. Thomas Aquinas not for parochial, but for evangelical, reasons.60 58 59 60 Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book XII 12.10.1075a10–15: “We must consider also in which of two ways the nature of the universe contains the good or the highest good, whether as something separate and by itself, or as the order of the parts. Probably in both ways, as an army does. For the good is found both in the order and in the leader, and more in the latter; for he does not depend on the order but it depends on him” (trans. mine). One notes the lack of any dependence of the supreme good (God, Pure Act) upon the order of the world. But the order depends on God, and to be contained thoroughly within this order is also to have reciprocal real relations with some aspect of it (even angels depend on God to be, and for their infused species, and are existentially determined by their place in the hierarchy of created being). Of course, Aristotle does not speak of creation, but his account of God is an account of the cause of being on whom all else depends for its actuality. I write this because, if visible, these truths may—with howsoever many imperfections and failures—actually in some case be known even in the poor light of a postlapsarian mind prior to justifying grace. But then the beginning of such discernment may in some cases become a material occasion for the grace of conversion. Or so it seems to me. Fr. Mansini’s invitation to think through with great care this entire problematic should be received with profound gratitude. Since presenting and editing this essay, I have enjoyed the great benefit of receiving further clarification from Fr. Mansini regarding his full position, to the effect that on his account even in purus naturalibus one would not be proximate to natural knowledge of God, but that this proximity is achieved only following upon revelation from God as to the contingent status of the world as such. The natural status of this knowledge raises further questions—if there is no active power for its realization absent revelation, one might think it is not a natural capacity (but some Scholastic doctors, e.g., Scotus, have differed with Aquinas on this point). However, after the Fall and prior to the definitive revelation in Christ, it is my understanding that on Fr. Mansini’s 512  account, such knowledge ought to be considered no longer naturally proximate to the human person owing to the effects of original and actual sin. And so my analysis stated above does pertain to Fr. Mansini’s account: first, inasmuch as this knowledge that is held to be in a sense natural though uniquely and solely facilitated by revelation is rendered impossible owing to sin prior to definitive revelation in Christ; and second, also inasmuch as the natural foundation of the imago in the human person is not thought to imply the real possibility of such knowledge in puris naturalibus. While the analysis here falls short of a complete presentation, appreciation, or critique, I hope that the strategic concerns here articulated—especially that which is founded on the adequate object of human intelligence in relation to the imago dei—may provide a helpful ground of contrast and engagement with the further development of the theology of disclosure. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2022): 513–544 513 The Human Intellect as the Natural Herald of a Natural Divine Institution Angel Perez-Lopez Saint John Vianney Theological Seminary Denver, CO Introduction The last century has witnessed an anti-metaphysical trend to eliminate (natural or revealed) theology from our understanding of the natural law.1 Its epistemological and anthropological “dimensions” have eclipsed, as it were, its inherent metaphysical character as a divine institution.2 This trend made its way into Catholic moral theology. It was very patent during the times of Humanae Vitae and before Veritatis Splendor (VS). To remedy this problem, Pope Saint John Paul II made great efforts to lead us to a Christocentric moral theology, capable of harmonizing its biblical and metaphysical foundations, and proposing an integral view of the human person created in God’s image and likeness.3 Hence, in Fides 1 2 3 I am extremely grateful to Stephen Brock for his very helpful review and comments on a previous version of this paper. Brock does not address in his writings the explicit concern of this paper with respect to Veritatis Splendor. Yet the whole of my argument is highly indebted to my reading his works, especially, Stephen Brock, The Light that Binds: A Study in Thomas Aquinas’s Metaphysics of Natural Law (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2020). That said, obviously, whatever limitations or errors are present, they remain my own responsibility. Yves R. Simon is famous for identifying these three foci for the natural law: order in nature, order in the human mind, and order in the divine mind (Tradition of Natural Law [New York: Fordham University Press, 1992], 129). For Karol Wojtyła’s philosophical integral view of the human person, see Angel Perez-Lopez, De la experiencia de la integración a la visión integral de la persona: Estudio histórico analítico de ‘Persona y Acción’ de Karol Wojtyła (Valencia, Spain: Edicep, 2012). 514 Angel Perez-Lopez et Ratio, he explained that “in order to fulfill its mission, moral theology must turn to a philosophical ethics which looks to the truth of the good, to an ethics which is neither subjectivist nor utilitarian. Such an ethics implies and presupposes a philosophical anthropology and a metaphysics of the good.”4 Nevertheless, the same anti-metaphysical tendency aforementioned seems to be resurging nowadays. This rebirth has taken place, especially, during the debates concerning the right interpretation of Amoris Laetitia (AL). It was reproposed, predominantly, by those who were sympathetic to proportionalism and celebrated an alleged discontinuity between Pope Francis’ document and VS.5 Within the context of this revival, VS §42 can be an unexpectedly challenging text to interpret. Who is the promulgator of the natural law according to the encyclical letter? This text could be read as proposing that the natural law is promulgated by the human intellect as an opus rationis, and that consequently, the natural law is a human institution. This view would imply that the natural law is an ordinatio or command of human reason and that the latter is the legislator. Yet, the other extreme—namely, the denial of any promulgating role to the human intellect—would contradict the letter of VS. It would also jeopardize the natural character of the natural law. It would compromise the compatibility of these two truths: (1) our intellect, from the moment of birth, is like a tabula rasa, on which nothing is written; and (2) the natural law is naturally known to all men (naturaliter nota). One does not need to endorse proportionalism to be comfortable with the view of human reason as legislator of the natural law. One would be uncomfortable with it if, following Aquinas, one understands the natural law as a natural divine law, upholding the natural law’s full legal character as well as its being natural. 4 5 Pope John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (1998), §99. All magisterial texts are taken from the official Vatican webpage. For how the question concerning an ontology of the good is reopening within ethics, see Stephen Brock, “Metafisica ed Etica: La Riapertura della Questione Dell’Ontologia del Bene,” Acta Philosophica 19 (2010): 37–58. See Angel Perez-Lopez, “Veritatis Splendor and Amoris Laetitia: Neither Lamented nor Celebrated Discontinuity,” Nova et Vetera (English) 16, no. 4 (2018): 1183–214. For a more detailed answer to those who claimed that John Paul II had not offered a true theology of love, see Angel Perez-Lopez, Procreation and the Spousal Meaning of the Body: A Thomistic Argument Grounded in Vatican II (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2017). For how this autonomous morality is making a comeback, see Charles J. Chaput, “The Splendor of Truth in 2017,” First Things, October 2017, firstthings.com/ article/2017/10/the-splendor-of-truth-in-2017. The Human Intellect as the Natural Herald of a Natural Divine Institution 515 Besides proportionalists, other authors who think that the natural law is only a law in a qualified sense, such as Dom Odon Lottin, Germain Grisez, or John Finnis, would be more comfortable with the position. They may even endorse it.6 I do not discuss their views here, partly because it has already been done, and partly because VS reacts against proportionalism and not against them.7 Still, without a doubt, this is a scholarly fascinating but highly unclear issue. Elizabeth Anscombe, for instance, would raise her voice against anyone upholding that human reason is the legislator of the natural law. In her customary blunt and clear way of expressing her ideas, she would say: “That legislation can be ‘for oneself ’ I reject as absurd.”8 My thesis in this paper is that the way to overcome this challenge and to shed some light onto this controversy lies in the metaphysical doctrine of the subordination of causes and in its application in understanding the human intellect as a natural herald, which instrumentally promulgates the natural law. Such an understanding elucidates that, according to John Paul II, the natural law is, in reality, a natural divine institution.9 I will proceed to prove my thesis in four steps. I will first explain the metaphor of the herald and the benefits of its controlled imprecision. Second, I will introduce the text from VS §42, pointing out some potential open questions concerning its interpretation. Third, I will evaluate the interpretation of human reason as legislator of the natural law. I will show that such a view contradicts the internal logic of VS, its reading of Aquinas against proportionalism, previous magisterial pronouncements, and the 6 7 8 9 See, for instance, John Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 258. See Brock, Light that Binds, 5–11. See also Steven Jensen, Knowing the Natural Law: From Precepts and Inclinations to Deriving Oughts (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2015). Elizabeth Anscombe, Ethics, Religion and Politics: Collected Philosophical Papers, vol. 3 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), 37 (emphasis added). See also Robert A. Gahl Jr., “Who Made the Law? God, Ethics, and the Law of Nature,” in Virtue’s End: God in the Moral Philosophy of Aristotle and Aquinas, ed. Fulvio di Blasi, Joshua P. Hochschild, and Jeffrey Langan (South Bend, IN: Saint Augustine Press, 2008), 113–23. For a succinct exposition on Thomas’s doctrine on the subordination of causes, see Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, The Order of Things: The Realism of the Principle of Finality, trans. Matthew Minerd (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2020), 125–28. Some important contextualization for the relevance of my position in the contemporary scholarly debate concerning the natural law can be found in Matthew Levering, Biblical Natural Law: A Theocentric and Teleological Approach (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). For many important insights into to the correct understanding of Veritatis Splendor on the natural law, see Russell Hittinger, The First Grace: Rediscovering the Natural Law in a Post-Christian World (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003). 516 Angel Perez-Lopez philosophical opinion of Karol Wojtyła. Fourth, I will offer an alternative interpretation of the passage, which solves the difficulties of the view of human reason as legislator of the natural law. The Metaphor of the Herald In ancient times, heralds were messengers sent by monarchs and noblemen to convey messages or proclamations. They would make the monarch’s law known. Yet, their job description, as it were, included things not pertinent to my argument. They were part of fighting tournaments and cheerleaders for knights. Moreover, their mission changed and expanded over the centuries.10 What interests me here about heralds is that they were subordinates to their lord; to proclaim the laws of the monarch, they had to be literate; their job conferred a certain nobility on them; they represented their lord, and they were able to convey messages or proclamations on his behalf. There are elements of similarity and dissimilarity in the relation existing between the herald and his lord as a lawgiver, on the one hand, and the relation existing between the human intellect and God as Lawgiver. Like a herald, the human intellect is subordinated to God. The intellectual nature of human reason resembles a herald’s capacity to be literate. Such an intellectual nature also manifests its nobility or dignity. The human person is created ad imaginem Dei.11 Moreover, human reason also represents God and “speaks” on his behalf. Of course, metaphors like this one always entail a level of imprecision. The heralds just described are not natural. Humans do not have the capacity to make such a thing. Only God can. Our artifacts do not have a nature as natural substances do by virtue of their substantial forms.12 Only God can direct us to our own end, by giving us a rational nature, an intellect that “speaks” on his behalf, as it were. Moreover, heralds carry out their mission toward those listening to them within the context of positive promulgation. Both the herald and his listeners need to know that the former is speaking on behalf of their lord. The human intellect, instead, is inserted within a different context, 10 11 12 See Rodney Dennys, Heraldry and the Heralds (London: Jonathan Cape, 1982), and Clarence Gabriel Moran, The Heralds of the Law (London: Stevens & Sons, 1948). See Ignatius Hübscher, De Imagine Dei in Homine Viatore secundum Doctrinam S. Thomae Aquinatis (Leuven, Belgium: F. Ceuterick, 1932). See Stephen Brock, The Philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas: A Sketch (Eugene: Cascade Books, 2015), 25–50. The Human Intellect as the Natural Herald of a Natural Divine Institution 517 namely, that of natural promulgation. It speaks, as it were, on behalf of God the Lawgiver, even when his existence has not yet come to be known by our minds.13 Another element of potential dissimilarity to be considered is that the subordination of the intellect to God, in acting as a natural herald, does not entail a violation of human dignity. Put in Wojtyłean terms: this instrumentality is not a transgression of the “personalistic norm.”14 It does not violate the dignity of being rational agents created in God’s image and likeness. On the contrary, it is an affirmation of such a dignity. Indeed, in the visible world, we are the only creatures that can receive such a natural promulgation of the eternal law. God is able to move the spiritual faculties of the human person from within and in accordance to their rational nature. He can do so, since he is their (efficient and final) cause. Our collaboration with divine providence is a good example to dispel the phobia of words like “subordination” or “instrumental,” characteristic of a personalistic sensitivity with little foundation in the metaphysics of the good. In contrast to that sensitivity, the Thomistic personalism of Wojtyła affirms that “the ‘personalistic norm’ may be said to have its fullest justification and its ultimate origin in the relationship between God and man.”15 Human providence is included under divine providence as a particular cause under a universal cause.16 This collaboration between God and man is real. Yet, such a collaboration does not make us equal to God. It is not a coordination, but rather a subordination. He remains the Lord of the 13 14 15 16 For an analysis of the knowledge of God most men could attain in Aquinas, see Stephen Brock, “Can Atheism Be Rational?” Acta Philosophica 11 (2002): 215–38. For the related topic on the force of law or obligation inherent in the precepts of the natural law and the knowledge of God, see Brock, Light that Binds, 180–214, 245–49. Some context for this claim can also be found in Walter Farrell, The Natural Law According to Aquinas and Suarez, ed. Cajetan Cuddy (Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2019), 141–42. See my discussion of the personalistic norm as different from Kant’s second formulation of the categorical imperative in Angel Perez-Lopez, “Immanuel Kant y el Mandamiento del Amor a la Luz de Veritatis Splendor,” Scripta Fulgentina 55 (2018): 117–35. Karol Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, trans. H. Willets (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 245–46. See Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] I, q. 22, a. 2, ad 4. All citations from ST are taken from the Latin–English edition of the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas, vols. 13–20, ed. J. Mortensen and E. Alarcón (Lander, WY: The Aquinas Institute, 2012). The other works from Aquinas are taken from Enrique Alarcon’s corpus thomisticum (corpusthomisticum.org), and unless otherwise indicated, the translations are mine. 518 Angel Perez-Lopez universe. We are his ministers. We are made in his image. But, we are not him. We can rightfully lord over creation and have dominion over it only in the Lord.17 I do not intend to say that the entire role of human reason with respect to the natural law is exhausted by this one metaphor. For example, other than being like a herald, who publicly declares or proclaims, human reason is also like a judge, who applies laws made by a superior, as we can experience in the forum of conscience. Despite the imprecision of the herald metaphor, the risk is worth taking. The clarity that the metaphor can afford surpasses its controlled imprecision. This metaphor can be useful in clarifying how, according to VS, the monarch of the natural law is God himself, and how the human intellect is not its institutor or legislator, but only its herald. Therein lies the authentic and probably the most original role of practical reason with respect to the natural law, emphasized in the last century in dispute with proportionalism.18 However, we also find in that role a very important limit, a very fine line of demarcation between faithful and unfaithful interpretations of VS, on who makes or institutes the natural law. Presentation of the Text It is time now to take a closer look at VS §42. I will leave untranslated what I consider to be a challenging subordinate clause. In his journey towards God, the One who “alone is good,” man must freely do good and avoid evil. But in order to accomplish this, he must be able to distinguish good from evil. And this takes place, above all, thanks to the light of natural reason, the reflection in man of the splendor of God’s countenance. Thus Saint Thomas, commenting on a verse of Psalm 4, writes: “After saying: Offer right 17 18 See Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles [SCG] III, ch. 113; Vatican II, Lumen Gentium, §36; John Paul II, General Audience of October 31, 1979, §3, in Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein with introduction and index (Boston: Pauline, 2006), 154–55. See Martin Rhonheimer, Natural Law and Practical Reason: A Thomist View of Moral Autonomy, trans. Gerald Malsbary (New York: Fordham University Press, 2000). For a helpful historical review of the postconciliar status questionis concerning the natural law in moral theology, see Livio Melina, José Noriega, and Juan José Perez-Soba, Caminar a la luz del Amor: Los Fundamentos de la Moral Cristiana (Madrid: Ediciones Palabra, 2007), 295–317; Christopher Kaczor, Proportionalism and the Natural Law Tradition (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2002). The Human Intellect as the Natural Herald of a Natural Divine Institution 519 sacrifices (Ps 4:5), as if some had then asked him what right works were, the Psalmist adds: There are many who say: Who will make us see good? And in reply to the question he says: The light of your face, Lord, is signed upon us, thereby implying that the light of natural reason whereby we discern good from evil, which is the function of the natural law, is nothing else but an imprint on us of the divine light.” It also becomes clear why this law is called the natural law: it receives this name not because it refers to the nature of irrational beings but because ratio promulgans propria est humanae naturae.19 The last sentence is drawing a conclusion from Summa theologiae [ST] I–II, q. 91, a. 2, corp. The passage from VS explains why the natural law is called “natural.” It is not so because the natural law refers to the nature of irrational beings. The answer provided is “because ratio promulgans propria est humanae naturae.” The last two affirmations, however, do not deny the moral significance of the principle “art imitates nature.” To appreciate it, we need to adopt a metaphysical perspective, which points to the divine pedagogy. In this way, we can dispel any fear of physicalism. God is the Author of the natures of irrational beings. Understanding how he guides them to their end is a good lesson for us to learn how to conduct ourselves to our own due acts and end. We learn best, after all, from the nature of material things. Since they are the proper object of the human intellect, they are very suitable pedagogical tools used by the divine teacher.20 With this clarification, let us come back to the Latin text: “ratio promulgans propria est humanae naturae.” As is known, promulgation is part of the classical definition of law. Some authors view it as constitutive of its essence. Others, instead, consider it a proprium or essential property.21 Be that as it may, this Latin clause raises some questions: is the natural law natural because it is promulgated to human reason by God, or is it natural because it is promulgated by human reason to human reason? Is the natural law natural because human reason is the origin of the binding force of the natural law, or because the human intellect is like a herald, who makes it known to the intellect itself, but without conferring such a force? Is the human intellect the institutor of the natural law like Christ 19 20 21 Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor [VS] (1993), §42. See Brock, Light that Binds, 141–79. See ST I-II, q. 90, a. 4. See also Walter Farrell, O.P., The Natural Law According to Aquinas and Suarez, ed. Cajetan Cuddy, O.P., with introduction (Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2019), 15–16. 520 Angel Perez-Lopez institutes the New Law, or does the human intellect more resemble Moses and the prophets, in their promulgating role of the Old Law, as well as the Apostles, in their own role in promulgating the New Law? Is this text advocating in favor of an anthropocentric account of the natural law? Should we consider the moral order as a creature of divine providence, or is the latter something added on to an already autonomous human jurisdiction over the realm of morality?22 The interpretation in favor of the autonomy of the natural law, or in favor of the sovereignty of the human intellect over the natural law, would render the text: “because the promulgating reason is proper to human nature.” Linguistically, the translation is absolutely correct. The issue we are dealing with has to do, mainly, with its interpretation, since one could easily read into this text that human reason is not the herald or the judge who applies the law, but rather its author, the promulgator who takes care of the community and its common good. Prima facie, this interpretation would be warranted by ST I–II, q. 94, a. 1, where the Angelic Doctor explicitly affirms that the natural law is a work of human reason, an opus rationis. I will discuss the exact meaning of this text later. For the moment, I will show strong indications that this interpretation is philosophically and theologically unsound. Inconsistencies within Veritatis Splendor The anthropocentric interpretation entails serious problems within the document and its clear purpose of presenting the teachings of Thomas Aquinas against proportionalism. The goal of VS, as we know, was to remedy a problematic situation within the Catholic Church. The issue consisted in a systematic calling into question of traditional moral doctrine regarding the natural law, based on the deformation of human freedom in its dependence on the truth for both its origin and its fulfillment.23 The anthropocentric interpretation of VS §42 would undermine that same traditional doctrine. In fact, it presents at least five problems of internal coherence within the encyclical letter: (1) it contradicts the formal definition of the natural law as the participation of the rational creature in the eternal law affirmed in the document; (2) it contradicts John Paul II’s teachings on the natural law being beyond the power of man’s will; (3) against the explicit teaching of VS, it could easily place the natural 22 23 For this last question, see Hittinger, First Grace, 26. See VS §4. The Human Intellect as the Natural Herald of a Natural Divine Institution 521 law, even its negative precepts, under the virtue of epikeia; (4) it places an impossible responsibility upon the human person to fulfill, and (5) it ends up upholding the proportionalist views of Joseph Fuchs, which VS explicitly refutes. The Eternal Law Impressed in the Soul Veritatis Splendor explains that the natural law is infused by God in man. Citing Aquinas, John Paul II explains that the natural law is “nothing other than the light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we understand what must be done and what must be avoided. God gave this light and this law to man at creation.”24 This infusion or impression, as well as its natural result, is what Aquinas identifies as the natural promulgation of the natural law: “The natural law is promulgated by the very fact that God instilled it into man’s mind so as to be known by him naturally.”25 According to this last text, the natural law is promulgated to human reason by God. He instilled the natural law in man’s mind. But if we pay close attention, we will realize that Thomas also accepts here a role of the human intellect in this promulgation. The natural law is, to a certain extent, promulgated by human reason to human reason, insofar as it is known naturally by the human mind. Thomas seems to imply here that the intellect is instrumental in God’s natural promulgation of the natural law.26 The agent intellect is the light infused by God in us. This same light enlightens the truths of the natural law, which are thus instrumentally promulgated.27 Yet, as Russel Hittinger acutely points out, “in the case of the natural law, Thomas defines the law from the standpoint of its causal origin (that is, what makes it a law), not 24 25 26 27 VS §12. See also In II sent., d. 42, q. 1, a. 4, ad 3; De veritate, q. 16, a. 3; SCG III, ch. 114–15; ST I, q. 88, a. 3; I-II, q. 109, a. 1, ad 2. ST I-II, q. 90, a. 4, ad 1. See Brock, Light that Binds, 50. See ST I, q. 79, aa. 3–4. This way of presenting things does not make the knowledge of the natural law a wholly passive matter. It is a perception, a sort of active seeing through the mind’s own light. As Brock explains: “The light by which the mind sees these truths is primarily the mind’s own. It is the light of the ‘agent intellect,’ which is the soul’s power to abstract the intelligible forms of things from the matter represented in their sensible images. The abstracted forms themselves also ‘illumine;’ it is through them that the mind discerns the truth about the things that they are the forms of. But it is only by the agent intellect’s abstracting the forms from matter that the illuminating power of the forms is actualized” (“Natural Law, the Understanding of Principles, and Universal Good,” Nova et Vetera [English] 9, no. 3 [2011]: 671–706, at 681). 522 Angel Perez-Lopez in terms of a secondary order of causality through which it is discovered (the human intellect).”28 In another place, Aquinas explains why moral conscience is binding, following this same notion of natural promulgation. Our conscience is not the natural law, but rather a witness to the latter: “Man does not make the [natural moral] law for himself, but through the act of his knowledge, by which he knows a law made by someone else, he is bound to fulfill the law.”29 This same idea is present in VS. Citing Saint Bonaventure, John Paul II appeals to the very metaphor of the herald we are invoking to clarify the way the human intellect instrumentally promulgates the natural law. In the forum of conscience, man has a dialogue, not only with himself, but also with God as the Author of the moral law: “Saint Bonaventure teaches that ‘conscience is like God’s herald and messenger; it does not command things on its own authority, but commands them as coming from God’s authority, like a herald when he proclaims the edict of the king. This is why conscience has binding force.’”30 Since conscience is nothing but an act of the human intellect,31 this whole teaching echoes that the natural law is not a different law from the eternal law, but only a participation in it. In fact, Aquinas places an objection to the existence of the natural law in man, saying that, if that were the case, man would be ruled by more laws than the irrational creatures, who are ruled by the eternal law only. That extra law (the natural law) would be, according to the objection, superfluous. Thomas answers: “This argument would hold, if the natural law were something different from the eternal law: whereas it is nothing but a participation thereof.”32 John Paul II also upholds Aquinas’s explicit teaching concerning the definition of the natural law as “the participation in the eternal law of the rational creature.”33 The Polish Pope remarks that “the natural law enters here as the human expression of God’s eternal law.”34 That is not something said of all laws. They all have a connection with the eternal law. But only 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 Hittinger, First Grace, 9. De veritate, q. 17, a. 3, ad 1. VS §58. See Saint Bonaventure, In II Sent., d. 39, a. 1, q. 3, conclusion. The metaphor of the herald squares very well also with Vatican II’s teaching on moral conscience; see Gaudium et Spes §16. See ST I, q. 79, a. 13. ST I-II, q. 92, a. 1, ad 1. See ST I-II, q. 91, a. 2, corp. VS §43 (emphasis added). The Human Intellect as the Natural Herald of a Natural Divine Institution 523 the natural law is formally defined as “the participation in the eternal law of the rational creature.” Veritatis Splendor finds a scriptural warrant for Aquinas’s formal definition in Genesis 2:16–17. In fact, this text was considered by the Fathers of the Church as a primary theological locus for the natural law.35 Commenting on God’s command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, John Paul II affirms: Revelation teaches that the power to decide what is good and what is evil does not belong to man, but to God alone. The man is certainly free, inasmuch as he can understand and accept God’s commands. And he possesses an extremely far-reaching freedom, since he can eat “of every tree of the garden.” But his freedom is not unlimited: it must halt before the “tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” for it is called to accept the moral law given by God. In fact, human freedom finds its authentic and complete fulfillment precisely in the acceptance of that law.36 If the natural law is formally a participation in the eternal law, it is not a completely different self-standing law, totally independent from God. The natural law is a law only in relationship with the eternal law. Otherwise, it is very unclear how it could fulfill its being an ordinance of reason directed to the common good, promulgated by him who takes care of the community.37 If according to VS human reason made or instituted the natural law, the document would contradict itself. It would uphold that human reason does not receive it from God. Natural law would be a law in its own right. It would be a different law from the eternal law. But these things are patently denied by John Paul II. As he clearly explains, “the moral law has its origin in God and always finds its source in him: at the same time, by virtue of natural reason, which derives from divine wisdom, it is a properly human law.”38 Beyond the Power of Man’s Will Were human reason the promulgator of the natural law as its maker or institutor, a great deal of the natural law would be subject to man’s will, like 35 36 37 38 See Hittinger, First Grace, 41. VS §35 (emphasis added). ST I-II, q. 90, a. 4, corp. VS §40. 524 Angel Perez-Lopez speed limits are subject to the will of the legislator of that human positive law. Indeed, every law is an ordinatio rationis, that is, a command (imperium), which presupposes an act of choice (electio).39 Were the natural law an ordinatio of human reason, it would be preceded by a free choice from man. It would not be beyond the power of man’s will, but rather under its control and dominion. However, John Paul II opposes that view. He explicitly rejects that sort of human dominion. The moral law is beyond the power of man’s will. Man can understand and accept it. Yet, the human intellect cannot be the king of the natural law, its institutor, or its legislator—he who makes it binding. That would make “freedom self-defining and a phenomenon creative of itself and its values. Indeed, when all is said and done man would not even have a nature; he would be his own personal life-project. Man would be nothing more than his own freedom!”40 But, we do have a rational nature. It is given by God to us in order to direct us to our due acts and end. The natural law is natural to us. In that sense, it is truly human. Yet, for that very reason, the natural law is also beyond our control. Our providence, unlike God’s, does not extend to natural things, precisely because we are not the Author of nature.41 Consequently, VS cannot be saying, without falling into a great contradiction, that we are the authors of the natural law. Under the Virtue of Epikeia? If the human intellect would be the promulgator of the natural law as its maker, one could argue that the virtue of epikeia has ample room here, even within the realm of its negative precepts. If the human intellect makes the natural law, the latter would share in the imperfections of the former, also in the case of precepts such as “not to commit adultery.” Then, we should recourse to a benevolent but just interpretation of “the letter of the law” in some cases, whose circumstances were not foreseen by the limited and ignorant legislator. We would have to argue that, if the legislator could have foreknown such circumstances, he would have excluded the strict application of the letter of the law in such a particular 39 40 41 See ST I, q. 17, a. 1. See also Jacobus Ramirez, De actibus humanis (Madrid: Instituto de Filosofía Luis Vives, 1972), 397–468, and Daniel Westberg, Right Practical Reason: Aristotle, Action, and Prudence in Aquinas (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994). VS §46. See ST I, q. 22, a. 2, ad 3. The Human Intellect as the Natural Herald of a Natural Divine Institution 525 case.42 This position is very close to that of some authors who celebrated the alleged discontinuity between AL and VS. John Paul II clearly reacts against this view. He decidedly explains that the negative precepts of the natural law, such as not to commit adultery, are exceptionless. They are binding always and everywhere: 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 behavior 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 neighbor. 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.43 As Aquinas also clarifies, not even God can dispense from these precepts of the natural law: “God cannot dispense a man so that it be lawful for him not to direct himself to God, or not to be subject to His justice, even in those matters in which men are directed to one another.”44 An Impossible Responsibility Another problem with the view of the intellect as the maker of the natural law is the tremendous responsibility this institution would impose on the human person. To appreciate this problem, we need to keep in mind two clear affirmations from Aquinas: (1) the natural law is not a self-standing and different law from the eternal law; and (2) the natural law retains its full legal character, for above all, it fulfills the ratio legis—namely, its being 42 43 44 Cardinal Cajetan, not Thomas Aquinas, is the one who explicitly asks, for the first time, the question concerning the possibility of epikeia correcting the natural law. His answer is radically different from what we have described. It is a qualified “yes,” which would oppose the position just presented. According to Cajetan, human laws contain two kinds of elements of the natural moral law. First, they contain elements that can never fail to apply, which correspond to intrinsic evil acts. Herein, according to Cajetan, epikeia has no room whatsoever. Second, human laws can contain another element from the natural moral law such as the positive command to return what one has borrowed. In this kind of element, epikeia has some room to preserve the virtuous character of the action to be performed. For more on this topic, see Angel Rodríguez Luño, “La virtù dell’epicheia. Teoria, storia e applicazione (I): Dalla Grecia classica fino a F. Suárez,” Acta Philosophica 6 (1997): 197–236. VS §52. ST I-II, q. 100, a. 8, ad 2. 526 Angel Perez-Lopez an ordinance of reason for the common good, promulgated by he who takes care of the community. We have already seen the truth of the first affirmation.45 The second one, in turn, can be easily deduced from the way Aquinas handles the following objection: “It would seem that promulgation is not essential to a law. For the natural law above all has the character of law. But, the natural law needs no promulgation. Therefore, it is not essential to a law that it be promulgated.”46 His answer leaves untouched the assertion that “the natural law above all has the character of law.” That affirmation is absolutely valid and true for Thomas. Thus, the Angelic Doctor answers with a text which we already cited above: “The natural law is promulgated by the very fact that God instilled it into man’s mind so as to be known by him naturally.”47 Keeping these two affirmations in mind, the common good of the natural law must be the natural ordination of the whole universe to God. Yet, if the natural law is not infused and given by God, but is rather made by human reason, the human person would be obliged to take care of this common good.48 That would be his responsibility, given to man by a non-paternalistic God, a God beyond anthropomorphisms. Fuchs would smile and nod at this reasoning. He would certainly be pleased by it. Take a close look at his own proposal: Theologically understood, the realization of the world is the task given to human beings through the gift of their environment. For this reason, one must hold as theologically suspect any position in which God appears somehow to be alongside the human (therefore to be categorial) whenever a question arises concerning the right realization of the world, that is, the right behavior of human beings in their world. Some instances of this suspect approach are the imposition of commandments, the requirement of particular rights, and disjointed interventions in the historical process and emerging order of the world.49 After reading this text, an objection comes immediately to mind. It is directed not only against Fuchs’s view, but also against the interpretation 45 46 47 48 49 See ST I-II, q. 92, a. 1, ad 1. ST I-II, q. 90, a. 4, obj. 1 (emphasis added). ST I-II, q. 90, a. 4, ad 1. See ST I-II, q. 90, a. 4, corp. Joseph Fuchs, Christian Morality, trans. Brian McNeil (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1987), 28. The Human Intellect as the Natural Herald of a Natural Divine Institution 527 of VS §42 in an autonomous key, which we are evaluating. How could the part take care of the whole, if the whole is greater than the part? Only an all-knowing and all-powerful being, who has made the universe and is not part of it, can take care of its immanent common good (the good of each part and of all of them as a whole) and direct it to its transcendent common good (his own glory).50 We call that being God! Aquinas explains: The good of the whole universe is that which is apprehended by God, Who is the Maker and Governor of all things: hence whatever He wills, He wills it under the aspect of the common good; this is His own Goodness, which is the good of the whole universe.51 Since the law is made only by him who takes care of the community, the natural law would have to be promulgated by God as its maker, and not by man’s reason. The latter cannot be the king, but only the herald of the natural law. We find further confirmation of this view in John Paul’s rejection of Fuchs’s position. The Refutation of Proportionalism If the anthropocentric interpretation of VS §42 would be correct, John Paul II would be allowing, through the back door, the very view of autonomous morality that he explicitly repudiates. That would be most absurd! We have to conclude that VS’s explicit rejection of the sovereignty of reason in the domain of moral norms is not only an explicit rejection of proportionalism but also an implicit rejection of the autonomous position we are evaluating. Consider the following affirmations in light of the quote from Fuchs presented above: 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 50 51 See Lawrence Dewan, Wisdom, Law, and Virtue: Essays in Thomistic Ethics (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), 7–31. ST I-II, q. 19, a. 10, corp. 528 Angel Perez-Lopez 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 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.52 The text could not be clearer. It is against the Church’s constant teaching to deny that the natural law has God as its Author. It is against the magisterium to affirm that the natural law is a human institution. It is not for man to establish! To explain some foundational aspects of Fuchs’s moral theology will help underscore, even more, the antithesis that exists between the internal logic of VS and the interpretation we are now evaluating. Fuchs experienced a radical change of mind during his advising of Pope Paul VI regarding the morality of the contraceptive pill. He turned to the writings of Karl Rahner and utilized his transcendental anthropology to ground a more “personalistic” and less “naturalistic” morality.53 In consonance with the view we are evaluating, Fuchs argues that even if the natural law results from participating in God, it is nevertheless man-made, something created by the human person. As Hittinger acutely unveiled, in Fuchs’ opinion, “while God creates, he does not govern the human mind.”54 We see in this affirmation a clear and frontal denial of the subordination of causes, which we are proposing with the metaphor of the herald. In Fuchs’s opinion, man-made natural law formulations must accept their limitations and even their failings. Natural law judgments, such as 52 53 54 VS §36 (emphasis added). Some commentators refer to this line of demarcation by speaking of a pre-conversion and a post-conversion Fuchs. See Mark E. Graham, Joseph Fuchs on the Natural Law (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2002). For a summary of Rahner’s views on morality (his so-called existential ethics), see Daniel M. Nelson, “Karl Rahner’s Existential Ethics: A Critique based on Thomas Aquinas’s Understanding of Prudence,” The Thomist 51, no. 3 (1987): 461–79. A splendid and definitive Thomistic refutation of Rahner can be found in Israel Pérez López, “Los fundamentos rahnerianos del teorema de la opción fundamental: Un discernimiento desde el pensamiento de Tomas de Aquino,” Scripta Fulgentina 48 (2014): 46–67. Hittinger, First Grace, 23. The Human Intellect as the Natural Herald of a Natural Divine Institution 529 “sexual intercourse outside of marriage is fornication,” are too rigid. They are too human and very imprecise. We would have to distinguish, for instance, between extramarital sexual activity among people who love each other and are planning to marry and extramarital sexual activity as found in a one-night stand. The moral law, according to Fuchs, should be gradual. To be sure, Christians should have good attitudes, biblically guided. Yet, for worldly decisions regarding right and wrong, the biblical orientation requires the autonomy and sovereignty of reason in its own realm.55 Reason helps the biblical orientation to become concrete and particular. The biblical orientation is too universal and abstract to effectively guide incarnated actions. The latter exist in a rich multiplicity of circumstances not captured by abstract indications.56 Only human reason, in its rightful autonomy, does so by the following process: Norms and judgments of morally right behavior require an evaluation and a comparison of the good/ills or values/nonvalues implied by particular conduct in the human world; for responsible behavior must strive to augment human goods and values. . . . One should interpret this position neither as simple utilitarianism nor as calculating consequentialism; for in such an endeavor to explain right behavior it is not the case that either means alone or consequences alone are considered in isolation; rather, the entire reality of a moral act is taken into account—its own meaningfulness as seen within the context of the meaningfulness which the entire act and its result represent and signify. Proportionalism, a term customary today chiefly in America, is, therefore a better name for this process of comparative evaluation. 57 Fuchs warns against an anthropomorphic image of God. Such a view would make God guilty of not keeping within his own transcendence, where goodness belongs, and of not respecting man’s rightful autonomy and sovereignty in the categorial realm, where rightness is found. If we purify our concept of God from anthropomorphisms, we would see how God left man in the hands of his own counsel with respect to the right 55 56 57 A development, according to Fuchs’ principles, of the notions of right and wrong, as different from being morally good or bad is found in James Keenan, Goodness and Rightness in Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1992). See Fuchs, Christian Morality, 15. Fuchs, Christian Morality, 16. 530 Angel Perez-Lopez development of the world, at the risk of allowing some mistakes, which are to be viewed in light of the graduality of the law. Yet, all this is exactly what VS is explicitly and rigorously refuting with great vigor: 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.58 Therefore, the correct interpretation of VS §42 cannot betray the internal logic of the whole document. To avoid such a betrayal, the interpretation of VS §42 cannot present a view of the human person as institutor or maker of the natural law, promulgating laws about the realization of the categorial realm, thanks to the exercise of his autonomous reason. Inconsistencies with Previous Magisterial Pronouncements We can now explore more in depth why the anthropocentric interpretation of VS §42 would entail a view “contrary to Catholic doctrine.” The teachings of this encyclical letter are to be interpreted in light of previous magisterial pronouncements concerning the natural law. Wojtyła explains this hermeneutical principle, which he calls the principle of “integration,” in his commentary on Vatican II. Such a principle consists in an organic cohesion expressing itself simultaneously in the thought and action of the Church as a community of believers. It expresses itself, that is, in such a way that on the one hand we can rediscover and, as it were, re-read the Magisterium of the last Council in the whole previous Magisterium of the Church, while on the other we can rediscover and re-read the whole preceding Magisterium in that of the last Council.59 58 59 VS §37 (emphasis added). Karol Wojtyła, Sources of Renewal: The Implementation of the Second Vatican Council, trans. P. S. Falla (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980), 40–41 (emphasis added). Pope Benedict XVI expressed a very similar principle when he argued in favor of the hermeneutic of “reform and renewal” over and against the hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture (Address to the Members of the Roman Curia, December 22, 2005). The Human Intellect as the Natural Herald of a Natural Divine Institution 531 This principle can help us in our own reading of VS §42. The correct interpretation should help us rediscover and re-read the teachings of VS in the previous magisterial teachings on the natural law and its relationship with the eternal law. In turn, such an interpretation should also aid us in rediscovering and re-reading all of those affirmations in VS. Out of the different pronouncements found in the magisterium concerning the natural law, I will concentrate on only one key text from Pope Leo XIII, which provides a very metaphysical view of the natural law, a sapiential understanding most pertinent to our discussion.60 In his encyclical letter Libertas, on the nature of human freedom, Pope Leo XIII explains: Foremost in this office [of guiding man’s actions] comes the natural law, which is written and engraved in the soul of every man [scripta est et insculpta in hominum animis singulorum]; and this is nothing but our reason, commanding us to do right and forbidding sin. Nevertheless, 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. For, since the force of law consists in the imposing of obligations and the granting of rights, authority is the one and only foundation of all law—the power, that is, of fixing duties and defining rights, as also of assigning the necessary sanctions of reward and chastisement to each and all of its commands. But all this, clearly, cannot be found in man, if, as his own supreme legislator, he is to be the rule of his own actions. It follows, therefore, that the law of nature is the same thing as the eternal law, implanted in rational creatures, and inclining them to their right action and end; and can be nothing else but the eternal reason of God, the Creator and Ruler of all the world.61 The context of these affirmations is Leo XIII reacting against some views on human freedom, influenced by what he understands as “liberalism” and autonomy.62 Although the term “autonomy” does not appear 60 61 62 In the magisterium, we find an uninterrupted or continuous way of understanding the natural law in a sapiential or metaphysical way, that is, alongside the teaching on the eternal law and divine providence. Other than Leo XIII, one could also appeal to other examples, such as Pius XI, Casti Connubii (1930), §§49, 80, 94–95, 103, 105, or Paul VI, Humanae Vitae (1968), §§4, 18, 23. Pope Leo XIII, Libertas (1888), §8. See Leo XIII, Libertas, §17. 532 Angel Perez-Lopez explicitly in the document, Libertas explains its content under the notion of “rationalism.” The fundamental doctrine of rationalism is the supremacy of the human reason, which, refusing due submission to the divine and eternal reason, proclaims its own independence, and constitutes itself the supreme principle and source and judge of truth.63 Against these views, Leo XIII establishes three fundamental truths about the essence of the natural law. They establish a landmark in other magisterial pronouncements and include an application of the metaphysical principle of the subordination of causes to the question of the natural law. To avoid the error of rationalism, human reason must acknowledge its due submission or subordination to the divine and eternal reason. Firstly, natural law is our reason. Yet, the natural law is not something reason makes. Human reason does not have that kind of supremacy. Remember, Leo XIII frontally opposes independent morality.64 Yet, because human reason is dependent on God and receives its nature from him, its exercise is such that “the end, or object, both of the rational will and of its liberty is that good only which is in conformity with reason.”65 As he says in another place: “Reason prescribes to the will what it should seek after or shun, in order to the eventual attainment of man’s last end, for the sake of which all his actions ought to be performed.”66 In reality, Leo XIII is thus applying Thomas’s teachings on the dependence of the goodness of the will on the eternal law and on human reason. Aquinas explains it, appealing to the same metaphysical principle we hold to be the key to understand the human intellect as a herald. Note how he speaks of the human intellect as subordinated to divine reason: Wherever a number of causes are subordinate to one another, the effect depends more on the first than on the second cause: since the second cause acts only in virtue of the first. Now it is from the eternal law, which is the Divine Reason, that human reason is the rule of the human will. . . . It is therefore evident that the goodness 63 64 65 66 Leo XIII, Libertas, §15 (emphasis added). See Leo XIII, Libertas, §15. Leo XIII, Libertas, §5. Leo XIII, Libertas, §7. The Human Intellect as the Natural Herald of a Natural Divine Institution 533 of the human will depends on the eternal law much more than on human reason.67 An immediate objection to Thomas’s position would be that the eternal law is unknown to us. How could something unknown be the measure of the goodness of human action? Aquinas answers, hinting at the role of the human intellect as a herald, who represents his master: “Although the eternal law is unknown to us according as it is in the Divine Mind: nevertheless, it becomes known to us somewhat, either by natural reason which is derived therefrom as its proper image; or by some sort of additional revelation.”68 Secondly, Libertas argues that natural law is morally binding for man precisely because its origin is not man, but someone higher than him. The text from Leo XIII clearly implies the authority of God. The nature of our very reason and will depend on him: “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.”69 We see in these affirmations the implicit idea that we are proposing as the key to read VS §42: human reason is like an instrument or delegate which makes known or announces a law that is instituted by God. It is like a herald who declares or publicly announces the law instituted by the true king of the universe by divine reason. Thirdly, and as a sort of conclusion from the two previous points, Libertas unveils the essence of the natural law only in relationship with God. The natural law is, according to Leo XIII, the eternal law implanted in the rational creature, inclining him to his due end. Note the powerful identifications made by the text: (1) the natural law is the eternal law implanted in man; and (2) the natural law is God’s eternal reason as Creator and Ruler of all the world. Hence, much in accordance with Aquinas, Pope Leo affirms: “The eternal law of God is the sole standard and rule of human liberty.”70 If one were to interpret VS §42 in an anthropocentric sense, as if human reason would make the natural law, it would be very difficult to maintain that the natural law is the eternal law implanted in the rational creature, and that the natural law’s binding force comes from God. Instead, we would be opening the door to rationalism and to the very independent morality 67 68 69 70 ST I-II, q. 19, a. 4, corp (emphasis added). See also Farrell, Natural Law, 140–42. ST I-II, q. 19, a. 4, ad 3 (emphasis added). Leo XIII, Libertas, §8. Leo XIII, Libertas, §10. 534 Angel Perez-Lopez which Leo XIII so adamantly opposes.71 Additionally, we would be violating the principle of integration in the hermeneutics of magisterial texts. Inconsistent with Karol Wojtyła The position we are evaluating would also contradict the philosophical opinion of Karol Wojtyła. In a very rich passage from Love and Responsibility, the Polish philosopher explains, in his own terms, why the human intellect cannot be the legislator and ultimate source of the natural law. Man is just towards God the Creator when he recognizes the order of nature and conforms to it in his actions. . . . Man, by understanding the order of nature and conforming to it in his actions, participates in the thought of God, becomes particeps Creatoris, has a share in the law which God bestowed on the world when He created it at the beginning of time. This participation is an end in itself. . . . Man, being a reasonable creature, is just towards the Creator by striving in all his activities to achieve this specifically human value, by behaving as particeps Creatoris. The antithesis of this belief is autonomism, which holds that man most fully asserts his value when he is his own legislator, when he feels himself to be the source of all law and all justice (Kant). This is erroneous: man could only be his own ultimate lawgiver if, instead of being a creature, he were his own first cause. . . . The value of the created person is most fully exhibited by participation in the thought of the Creator, by acting as particeps Creatoris in thought and in action.72 Wojtyła’s position is clearly Thomistic. It opposes Kant and his views of practical reason binding itself to unconditional laws, with no grounding in any extrinsic authority.73 Moreover, it clearly distinguishes between God 71 72 73 That interpretation will also contradict Leo XIII’s classical explanation about the origin of many human laws in the natural and the eternal law: “Laws come before men live together in society, and have their origin in the natural, and consequently in the eternal, law. The precepts, therefore, of the natural law, contained bodily in the laws of men, have not merely the force of human law, but they possess that higher and more august sanction which belongs to the law of nature and the eternal law” (Libertas, §9; emphasis added). Wojtyła, Love and Responsibility, 246–47. Wojtyła also critiqued the alleged opposition between person and natural law, upheld by those who dissented with Humanae Vitae. He clarified, as early as 1970, that the problem resided in an incapacity to understand the metaphysical meaning of nature. See The Human Intellect as the Natural Herald of a Natural Divine Institution 535 and man as a creature, asserting the dependence or subordination of the second on the first. Man’s reason participates in God’s mind. But man is not the legislator of the moral law. His reason remains subordinated to the Lord. In fact, much in accordance with Aquinas, Pope John Paul II considers the opposite—namely, the rebellion against this subordination as the key to understanding original sin and the loss of original innocence.74 Hence, Wojtyła’s position is also contrary to the autonomous view of the natural law inherent in the interpretation of VS §42 that we are evaluating. Such a view is unsound, above all, because it is a-metaphysical. In that a-metaphysical milieu, the rational nature of the human person has lost its “metaphysical transparency,” its capacity to disclose the intelligibility and language of the Creator.75 Therefore, the interpretation of VS §42 which envisions human reason as the legislator of the natural law entails a contradiction within the document, a rejection of the previous magisterial teachings on the natural law, a contradiction to the texts from Saint Thomas that it attempts to explain, and also a frontal denial of Wojtyła’s philosophical views on the natural law. The Human Intellect as Natural Herald Another way of understanding VS §42 is by appealing to the principle of integration and to Leo XIII’s metaphysical insights, understanding them under the Thomistic principle according to which the promulgation of the natural law carried out by God and by the human intellect entails a certain subordination: “Above all, in relation to God, the First Cause, we cannot hold that it is a question of created activity being a kind of activity coordinated with God’s. Instead, created activity is a subordinate form of activity.”76 Consequently, we need to make a distinction between promulgation and institution. Moreover, we also need to acknowledge a certain sense in 74 75 76 Karol Wojtyła, Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Theresa Sandok (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 181–85; Paul Kucharski, “Pope John Paul II and Natural Law,” in Karol Wojtyła’s Philosophical Legacy, ed. N. Mardas, A. Curry, and G. McLean (Washington. DC: Council of Research in Values and Philosophy, 2008), 111–24. See Perez-Lopez, Procreation, 147–54, 192–98; ST I, q. 95, a. 1; q. 97, a. 1; II-II, q. 164, a. 1, corp. See Joseph Ratzinger, “Il rinnovamento della teologia morale: prospettive del Vaticano II e di Veritatis Splendor,” in Camminare nella luce: Prospettive della teologia morale a partire da Veritatis Splendor, ed. Livio Melina, and Jose Noriega (Rome: Lateran University Press, 2004), 41. Garrigou-Lagrange, Order of Things, 126–27. 536 Angel Perez-Lopez which the human intellect can be the instrumental promulgator or herald of the natural law. To do so, we could also find some support in the Polish version of VS. Although the normative text is the Latin, it is no secret that in recent decades, Latin texts are produced at the Vatican after the redaction in the vernacular most comfortable for the pope in question is finished. Hence, it seems reasonable to take a look at the Latin normative text in light of its Polish predecessor. The sentence we are interpreting reads in Polish: “że rozum, który to prawo ogłasza, należy do ludzkiej natury.” The key word here is ogłasza, from the verb ogłaszać. It literally means to announce, to declare, to make public, or to publish. One could render it in Latin as promulgare. Similarly to this Latin verb, ogłaszać, in and of itself, does not entail the acts of instituting and of making something binding. It does not imply authority over the subjects of the law, to order them to their common good.77 John Paul II is not saying here that human reason makes the natural law, as if it were its institutor, as if natural law had its primary seat in the human intellect. Rather, he is thinking about it in the sense of making a public declaration, like the one a herald can do for his lord. The verb ogłaszać presents human reason more like the herald, who announces or declares the law, than like the king, who institutes it and gives it its original binding force. Promulgation has to do with setting something before the public, with “provulgating,” so to speak. But, to promulgate is not only the solemn public notification or proclamation of a law. It can also entail its imposition in the mode of a rule or measure. Reason is our first inner principle of action. Hence, this imposition takes place thanks to a kind of knowledge which wins our assent and inclines us to judge the law as something obligatory.78 Although God is the primary promulgator of the natural law, Aquinas would admit a subordinated and instrumental role of reason in this same natural promulgation. We have some important indications, for instance, when he explains how the Apostles did not institute the New Law of the Gospel. Yet, they promulgated it.79 They even let us know about the sacraments instituted by Christ.80 77 78 79 80 The Polish version of the Summa theologiae does not render promulgatio in this way. Instead, it uses another term: obwieszczenie. Nevertheless, Św. Tomasz z Akwinu, the Polish translator of ST I-II, q. 90, a. 4, on promulgation, has a similar expression, often qualifying it with the adjective publiczne (Suma Teologiczna, I-II, q. 90–105: Prawo [Law], vol. 13, ed. and trans. by P. Bełch, O.P. [London: Veritas, 1986], 8). See Brock, Light that Binds, 46–47. See ST I–II, q. 108, a. 3, corp. See In IV sent., d. 17, q. 3, a. 1, qc. 5, ad 2; d. 23, q. 1, a. 1, qc. 3, corp. The Human Intellect as the Natural Herald of a Natural Divine Institution 537 Another example of instrumental promulgation in the manner of a herald is the angels. They promulgated (but did not institute) the Old Law: “It is for the sovereign alone to make a law by his own authority; but sometimes after making a law, he promulgates it through others. Thus, God made the Law by His own authority, but He promulgated it through the angels.”81 Additionally, the written word can also be considered as another instance of instrumental promulgation: “The promulgation that takes place now, extends to future time by reason of the durability of written characters, by which means it is continually promulgated.”82 Indeed, “those who are not present when a law is promulgated, are bound to observe the law, in so far as it is notified or can be notified to them by others, after it has been promulgated.”83 For this reason, Stephen Brock explains Aquinas’s views in the following manner: The rule of a community according to law can be accomplished by its governor either immediately or through mediators or instruments. Consequently, if the term promulgation names the act through which the rule of law is initiated, nothing prevents attributing promulgation not only to the governor, as to the primary agent, but also to any instruments that he uses to complete the imposition of the law upon its subjects. The initial promulgation, or the institution, of law must be an action of the governor himself, since the law is issued from his own mind and finds its principal seat there. But the process by which it comes to exist in the minds of his subjects may involve certain further, intermediate acts of promulgation or publication on the part of his ministers. . . . What can be concluded from the twofold existence of law, then, is that a distinction in promulgations need not entail a diversity in the thing promulgated. It does not imply that a new order has been instituted. One and the same law can have several promulgations, although they must all be ordered to one primary promulgation, by which the law first issues from the mind of the governor. The secondary promulgations do not establish the law as something by which the lawgiver rules. They only distribute it to the subjects, as something by which they are ruled.84 81 82 83 84 ST I-II, q. 98, a. 3, ad 3. ST I-II, q. 90, a. 4, ad 3. ST I-II, q. 90, a. 4, ad 2. Brock, Light that Binds, 50–51. See also In I sent., d. 39, q. 2, a. 2, ad 4; In III sent., d. 37, q. 1, a. 3; In IV sent., d. 33, q. 1, a. 1; SCG III, ch. 78. 538 Angel Perez-Lopez Keeping these considerations and the Polish text in mind, the Latin version of VS §42 could be seen as saying “ratio promulgans [instrumentaliter] propria est humanae naturae.” In this way, the natural law is said to be natural not in relation to the nature of irrational beings, but because “the (instrumentally) promulgating reason is proper to human nature.” It seems that this qualification of the Latin text would be in complete consonance with the internal logic of VS, with the previous magisterium on the natural law, with the teachings of Aquinas concerning promulgation, and with Wojtyła’s philosophical views. Only human nature is a suitable recipient of God’s naturally promulgating the eternal law. Irrational creatures cannot be said to have received the promulgation of the eternal law in a natural manner, even though they are ruled by divine providence. They do not have the proper receptivity to receive it as law.85 They are not intellectual, and by definition, law is an act of reason, an imperium, an ordinatio rationis. That is one of the senses of the contrast which the text from VS is making between irrational and rational nature, with respect to the notion of promulgation. Another sense is that the human intellect naturally experiences the imposition or binding force of the divine precepts. Thus, human reason declares and applies but does not legislate the natural law. As Thomas said, “the natural law is promulgated by the very fact that God instilled it into man’s mind so as to be known by him naturally.”86 Thus, God is the King who makes the natural law, and man’s mind is the natural herald that makes it known. The human person is the only creature in this visible world having the necessary receptivity or potentiality to be the subject of a natural promulgation. That is the kind of promulgation which makes the natural law to be a species of law, that is to say, to be natural. Without this kind of promulgation from God to man, it would not be possible to distinguish human positive law from the natural law. Natural Law as Opus Rationis It is time now to ask whether our position squares with ST I–II, q. 94, a. 1, and its teaching on the natural law as an opus rationis. The proponents of the anthropocentric view of the natural law may be quick to point out that this entire question does not mention once the eternal law. Hence, Thomas would seem to be more in favor of their view. In reality, the answer 85 86 See ST I-II, q. 91, a. 2, ad 3. ST I-II, q. 90, a. 4, ad 1. The Human Intellect as the Natural Herald of a Natural Divine Institution 539 to this objection concerns the very sense of the question posed in ST I–II, q. 94, a. 1.87 At this point of the Summa theologiae, Aquinas has already dealt with what makes the natural law to be a law as a participation in the eternal law of the rational creature in ST I–II, q. 91, a. 2. For this reason, he thus begins to ask about what is specific about the natural law as something natural to man as a rational animal. Hence, the question asked in ST I–II, q. 94, a. 1, could be expressed in two steps: which kind of perfection of the human intellect is the natural law? Is it a habit? The answer will be “no.” Yet, there is a clarification to be made about the natural law as opus rationis. Allow me to analyze the response in some detail: A thing may be called a habit in two ways. First, properly and essentially: and thus the natural law is not a habit. For it has been stated above that the natural law is something appointed by reason, just as a proposition is a work of reason. Now that which a man does is not the same as that whereby he does it: for he makes a becoming speech by the habit of grammar. Since then a habit is that by which we act, a law cannot be a habit properly and essentially. Secondly, the term habit may be applied to that which we hold by a habit: thus faith may mean that which we hold by faith. And accordingly, since the precepts of the natural law are sometimes considered by reason actually, while sometimes they are in the reason only habitually, in this way the natural law may be called a habit. Thus, in speculative matters, the indemonstrable principles are not the habit itself whereby we hold those principles, but are the principles the habit of which we possess.88 Thomas begins by reminding the readers of something already explained, when dealing with the definition of law in general as an ordinatio rationis. Aquinas distinguished in the acts of the intellect between the operationem and the operatum. In the speculative intellect, we have different operations: understanding, judgment, and reasoning. Each one of these operations has a different operatum, namely, the definition, the proposition, and the syllogism. The natural law is an operatum of practical reason. It is a set of universal propositions 87 88 See Brock, Light that Binds, 63–68. ST I-II, q. 94, a. 1, corp. 540 Angel Perez-Lopez directed to actions. At times, these propositions are considered in actuality. Other times, they are contained by means of a certain habit.89 If we keep this distinction in mind, we will understand why, strictly speaking, the natural law is not a habit itself but is contained in a certain habit called “synderesis”: “Synderesis is said to be the law of our mind, because it is a habit containing the precepts of the natural law, which are the first principles of human actions.”90 The natural law is constituted by reason in the way a proposition is constituted by the human intellect. In writing this paper, for example, the habit of grammar aids me in composing full and correct sentences. It is that through which I can make them. Now, the sentence stands in this example for the opus or operatum. Natural law is something like it. Hence, it cannot be a habit. It cannot be that through which the opus is attained, because the natural law is the opus or the operatum itself. Yet, in another way, Thomas explains that the natural law can be said to be contained in the natural habit of synderesis. The latter is compared with the habit of intellectus, and the principles of the natural law with the first indemonstrable principles of speculative reasoning. Let us think, for instance, about the principle “the whole is greater than the part.” That is a proposition; it is an affirmation, a judgment. The habit of intellectus is the habitual way of containing that proposition and others like it, which are formed through contact with experience. For example, we may have understood that the whole is greater than the part when we were children. It may have happened the first time we realized we wanted the whole bag of candy but our parents told us we could have only part of it. We could even say that the habit of intellectus is the knowledge of this principle and others like it known through the light of reason. Once known, that first principle is in the intellect, even if the intellect is not actually considering it. It is habitually there, contained in the habit of intellectus. We can find a pertinent text on this issue in Thomas’s commentary on Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics: Understanding is not taken here for the intellect itself but for a certain [quodam] habit by which a man, in virtue of the light of the agent intellect, naturally knows indemonstrable principles. The name is suitable enough. Principles of this kind are immediately understood from a knowledge of their terms. Once we know what a 89 90 ST I-II, q. 90, a. 1, ad 2. ST I-II, q. 94, a. 1, ad 2. The Human Intellect as the Natural Herald of a Natural Divine Institution 541 whole and what a part is, we grasp immediately that every whole is greater than its part. It is called understanding [intellectus] because it reads [legit] within, observing the essence of a thing. Hence, in his third book De Anima, Aristotle says that the proper object of the intellect is the essence of a thing. So the knowledge of principles, which immediately become known when the essence of the thing is understood, is suitably called “intellect” or understanding [intellectus].91 With these clarifications at hand, we can establish a similar relationship between the first indemonstrable principles and the habit of intellectus, on the one hand, and the natural law and the habit of synderesis, on the other. But in this relationship, it is also important to distinguish the knowledge every man has of the first indemonstrable principles from the metaphysical theory which defends them. Similarly, we have to distinguish the knowledge we have of the precepts of the natural law from its metaphysical theory. Through experience, practical reason manages to attain the work we call natural law, namely, first practical propositions. The latter are contained in a habitual manner in synderesis. As a perfection of the intellect that is the work of reason, the natural law is not practical judging or practical reasoning. Natural law is not an operationem, but an operatum, contained habitually in our practical intellect. To be sure, it would not be very beneficial to completely disassociate the contents of the act from the act itself. Yet, the distinction stands, and it is important.92 We can appeal to the example provided by Aquinas. To have faith can refer to the act of believing. But, we can also refer to the content or object of the act of believing with the word “faith.” For instance, we often say that, “I want to know my faith better.”93 In this last expression, the faith stands not for the operationem of believing, but for the operatum, namely, for the propositions of the Creed that we want to further explore. We know the truth through composing and dividing. The thing known is in the knower according to the mode of the knower. For this reason, the object of faith, although simple in itself, is complex for us. It is in us as a proposition (per modum enuntiabilis).94 The natural law is also in us, insofar as it is a work of reason, as a 91 92 93 94 In VI eth., lec. 5, no. 1179. See De veritate, q. 16, a. 1, ad 14; In II sent., d. 24, q. 2, a. 3. See also Farrell, Natural Law, 143–44. See ST I-II, q. 55, a. 1, ad 1. See ST II-II, q. 1, a. 2, corp. 542 Angel Perez-Lopez proposition. Yet, at the same time, the natural law has an extrinsic origin, namely, God. The example of faith continues to shed light on this point. We may come up with a propositional formulation of the faith such as “consubstantialem Patri.” But the revealed data of faith is divine in its origin. Similarly, God’s imperium intimates an order or a command into our own minds. He does so in such a way that he configures our intellect to naturally understand the precepts of the natural law. We receive our participation in the eternal law according to the mode of the receiver. It is complex for us. We are able to formulate its precepts in different propositions. As it happens with faith, the natural properties of the natural law are understood according to the mode of the knower. A derivation of the eternal law exists in us through the natural instrumentality of our intellect. Such a derivation is a certain perfection of our minds. It is not a habit, strictly speaking, but the object of synderesis. As Brock clarifies, Aquinas does not say that the precepts are instituted by reason, as though reason were their legislator. . . . He only says that they are considered by it. That is how they are its work. Propositions, whether practical or speculative, exist only through reason’s consideration; more precisely, through its act of judging, “composing and dividing.” But this does not mean that reason has any control over their validity, or even its own assent to them.95 If human reason were the legislator of the natural law, the latter would not be naturally known and we would have control over its validity and assent to it. To interpret Thomas in this way would contradict him on the formal definition of the natural law as a participation of the rational creature in the eternal law. It would exalt human reason beyond its proper dignity of being the natural instrument through which the natural law is promulgated. Conclusion Every law that is fully a law must be an ordinatio rationis. The natural law—for Thomas Aquinas, for Veritatis Splendor, for previous magisterial pronouncements, and for Karol Wojtyła—is not made or instituted by human reason as its legislator. It is not an ordinatio or imperium made 95 Brock, Light that Binds, 67. The Human Intellect as the Natural Herald of a Natural Divine Institution 543 binding by human reason. Rather, the natural law is an ordinance of divine reason, directed to the common good of the universe, promulgated by God (that is, the One who takes care of this common good) to man, in the creation of his rational nature, conferring on him a participation of God’s divine light through man’s created reason.96 Consequently, the challenge found in the interpretation of VS §42 finds its solution in the metaphysical view of the subordination of causes. Such a view allows us to understand the human intellect as a natural herald of the natural law. The text should be read as saying that the natural law is natural because “the (instrumentally) promulgating reason is proper to human nature.” Precisely because human reason is a light that shares in the divine light, in God’s light we see light (Ps 36:9). Human reason is a medium, an instrument, through which the natural law is promulgated by God to man. The natural law is an opus rationis in the sense that it is a work (operatum or opus) of man’s natural and God-given reason, not because human reason rules over the natural law, but because it is natural to it. Human reason is not the legislator, but the natural herald of the natural law. The latter is not a human but a natural divine institution. The preceptive judgments of human reason transmit or communicate the binding force of the natural law, a force that we experience in the forum of our conscience ex ratione boni, and which comes from above. Looking at the “signs of our times,” we have an opportunity to rediscover the metaphysical perspective in our study of the natural law. Hopefully, the reader can better appreciate, after these pages, that John Paul II can still help us to better formulate a Thomistic Christocentric moral theology capable of harmonizing its biblical and metaphysical foundations, thanks to an integral view of the human person created in God’s image and likeness. 96 See Brock, Light that Binds, 61. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2022): 545–574 545 Congar’s Imperfect Critique of “Hierarchiology” Ephrem Reese, O.P. Dominican House of Studies Washington, DC The Secretary-General of the Synod of Bishops opened a recent address by stating his hope for the Church: Yves Congar believed that Catholic ecclesiology over the last two millennia can be divided quite simply into two distinct periods. The first millennium, he said, operated out of what he called a communio-ecclesiology; the church of the second millennium, shifted to operating out of a top-down ecclesiology, which Congar summarized as “hierarchology.” Today I want to share my hope that, in the wake of Vatican II and its reception by Pope Francis, historians will look back on the church of the third millennium as one characterized by an ecclesiology of “synodality.”1 What is this top-down ecclesial modus operandi of the second millennium that must sink at last, as the star of synodality rises? The Dominican theologian Yves Marie-Joseph Congar (1904–1995) is commonly recognized as the most important ecclesiologist in the twentieth century, one whose ideas about the Church repeatedly found expression in the documents of the Second Vatican Council. Congar made “hierarchy,” a 1 Mario Cardinal Grech, Secretary-General of the Synod of Bishops, “Sensus Fidei and Consensus in a Synodal Church,” 2021 Frank Morrissey address, presented at the Canadian Canon Law Society 55th annual convention, October 25, 2021. As noted below, “hierarchology” and “hierarchiology” are simply variant English spellings of Congar's hiérarchiologie. I am grateful to Anthony VanBerkum, O.P., for this timely reference. 546 Ephrem Reese, O.P. term apparently coined by Pseudo-Dionysius in the fifth or sixth century,2 one of the special objects of his theological focus. In treating it, he ridicules “hierarchiology” (which he means to be a post-thirteenth-century Western reduction of writing on the Church to the clergy), and castigates “Dionysian ideology,” which he discerns in Boniface VIII’s bull of 1302, Unam Sanctam.3 For all of Congar’s staggering erudition, fervent faith, and ecumenical spirit, he rarely credits Dionysius as a pillar in the ecclesiologies of both East and West. Instead, when Dionysius is treated, he appears in Congar’s writing as the downfall of medieval ecclesiology. Recent appreciation for Dionysius shows him to be a Pauline thinker who deftly translates biblical and liturgical realities into neo-Platonic vocabulary.4 Dionysius gives us a rather full and impressive treatise on 2 3 4 See Josef Stiglmayr, “Über die Termini Hierarch und Hierarchia,” Zeitschrift für katholische Theologie 22 (1898): 180–87. See also Ronald Hathaway, Hierarchy and the Definition of Order in the Letters of Pseudo-Dionysius: A Study in the Form and Meaning of the Pseudo-Dionysian Writings (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1970), xxi: “Pseudo-Dionysius is the virtual author of the term with the lexical meaning which it has possessed since.” Since it is possible that this author of unknown date and origin took the term and its use from some preceding author or school, it is merely probable that Dionysius coined it. Translations of Dionysius here are taken from Pseudo-Dionysius, The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid and Paul Rorem (New York: Paulist, 1987). Since Dionysius never refers to the bishop of Rome, nor features one bishop over other bishops, one can question how Dionysian Unam Sanctam’s teaching is. For the historical context and likely sources of the theology of Unam Sanctam, see Walter Ullmann, “Boniface VIII and His Contemporary Scholarship,” The Journal of Theological Studies, n.s., 27, no. 1 (1976): 58–87. But Boniface VIII explicitly claimed Dionysius as his authority in the bull’s preparation for the pronouncement that “it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” Boniface cited only one non-biblical authority in Unam Sanctam: “According to St. Dionysius it is the law of Divinity that the lowest are to be led through the intermediate to the highest [secundum beatum Dionysium, lex divinitatis est, infima per media in suprema reduci]” (Church and State Through the Centuries: A Collection of Historic Documents with Commentaries, trans. and ed. Sidney Z. Ehler and John B. Morrall [Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1954], 92). Congar, of course, had a passionate interest in the problematic legacy of Unam Sanctam, founding his own ecumenical book series under the same name. See Alberto Melloni, “Congar, Architect of the Unam Sanctam,” Louvain Studies 29 (2004): 222–38. I have in mind theological interpreters such as Andrew Louth, Alexander Golitzin, Maximos Constas, Matthew Levering, and Charles M. Stang. For Dionysius’s pseudonymity as an “ecstatic devotional practice” along the lines of his literary master St. Paul, see Stang, Apophasis and Pseudonymity in Dionysius the Areopagite: “No Longer I” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). Whether or not one accepts Stang’s adventurous thesis about pseudonymity, his deep understanding of Dionysius’s text and context is very useful. Congar’s Imperfect Critique of “Hierarchiolog y” 547 the Church many centuries before the ecclesiological debates sparked by Boniface VIII’s pontificate. Rather shortly before the seismic conflict over ecclesiastical and civil power between Pope Boniface and Philip the Fair toward the beginning of the fourteenth century, Thomas Aquinas embraced and adapted Dionysian thinking on hierarchy to defend religious priests in the mendicant controversies of the thirteenth century, and to reveal the sacramental principles of the Church. Close reading of Dionysius and Aquinas reveals a harmony between the two that differs from what Congar describes. It can be shown that Dionysius himself differs from his reception by certain Dionysian thinkers, and develops a faithfully Christian account of the divinization of all through orthodox worship and theology.5 It can also be shown that Thomas read Dionysius carefully and followed him more closely than his anti-mendicant adversaries in his understanding of hierarchy, while developing a unique theology of religious perfection through charity and sacramental grace.6 Since demonstrating those theses 5 6 He does so in the language of not only the neo-Platonists but also various Christian spiritual traditions, especially Greek and Syrian monasticism. See Dimitrios A. Vasilakis, “On the meaning of hierarchy in Dionysius the Areopagite,” in Platonism and Christian Thought in Late Antiquity, ed. Panagiotis G. Pavlos, Lars Fredrik Janby, Eyjólfur Kjalar Emilsson, and Torstein Theodor Tollefsen (New York: Routledge, 2019), 181–200; Alexander Golitzin, Mystagogy: A Monastic Reading of Dionysius Areopagita, ed. Bogdan G. Bucur (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2013). Golitzin contends that Dionysius is a Greek-speaking Christian theologian, well acquainted with the Syrian ascetical tradition (Mystagogy, especially xxxiii–58). His interpretation of Dionysius is sometimes called the “liturgical reading” (Vasilakis, “Meaning of hierarchy,” 187). Thomas develops his theology of the religious life, making use of the Celestial Hierarchy [CH] and Ecclesiastical Hierarchy [EH] of Dionysius and responding to criticisms on the basis of his Epistle 8, throughout the two phases of the mendicant controversy at Paris, especially in his Contra impugnantes dei cultum et religionem, De perfectione spiritualis vitae, and Summa theologiae [ST] II-II, qq. 171–89. See the work of Michel-Marie Dufeil, for example, “Ierarchia: un concept dans la polémique universitaire parisienne du xiiième siècle,” in Soziale ordnungen im selbstverständnis des Mittelalters, ed. Albert Zimmermann, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 12/1 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1979), 56–83; Andrew Hofer, O.P., “Aquinas’s Use of Patristic Sources in His Theology of Religious Life,” in Reading the Church Fathers with Thomas Aquinas, ed. Piotr Roszak and Jörgen Vijgen, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Sciences Religieuses (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021), 295–338; Mary C. Sommers, “Defense and Discovery: Brother Thomas’ Contra impugnantes,” in Laudemus viros gloriosos: Essays in Honor of Armand Maurer, CSB, ed. R. E. Houser (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 184–208; David E. Luscombe, “Thomas Aquinas and Conceptions of Hierarchy in the Thirteenth Century,” in Thomas von Aquin: Werk und Wirkung im Licht neuerer Forsuchungen, Miscellanea Mediaevalia 19 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), 261–77; and, most recently, Christian Raab, O.S.B., Understanding 548 Ephrem Reese, O.P. would entail two larger projects, I will not attempt to do so here. Rather, I will summarize Congar’s influential account of hierarchy as “hierarchiology” and propose a revision to his Thomistic ecclesiology. I will isolate my study of Congar to six texts which span several decades.7 7 the Religious Priesthood: History, Controversy, Theology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2020). Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P., gives a very useful account of Thomas’s theology of grace and charity in comparison with Dionysius and Albert the Great, in The Mystery of Union with God: Dionysian Mysticism in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2015), 285–91, arguing that “the relative primacy of love in union with God distinguishes Aquinas’s mysticism from the Areopagite’s more intellect-centered approach, even though Thomas remains far from so-called Affective Dionysianism” (288). The latter phrase refers especially to the Bonaventurian-Franciscan interpretation of Dionysius, which was influenced by Thomas Gallus’s commentary: see Dufeil, “Ierarchia,” 65–66. According to Boyd Taylor Coolman, this Victorine affective way, “following Hugh but departing from Dionysius, champions love (amor, dilectio, affectio) over knowledge in the pursuit of union with God . . . [and] both reflects and effects profound shifts in the history of western theology, the reverberations of which continue to be felt” (“The Medieval Affective Dionysian Tradition,” Modern Theology 24, no. 4 [2008]: 615–32, at 615). See also Bernard McGinn, The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism (1200–1350), vol. 3 of The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York: Crossroad Herder, 1998), 78–136, as well as Coolman’s and McGinn’s entries in The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity, eds. Paul L. Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 121–58 (“Thomas Gallus”) and 190–209 (“Late Medieval Mystics”), respectively. Regarding this matter in relation to the idea of hierarchy, Coolman describes an important passage in Gallus’s commentary “where the charge of anti-intellectualism emerges,” in which the human soul, ascending through nine ranks of “angelization,” culminates its journey in an apex affectionis, in which scientia is cut off (145). The volume of Congar’s work makes it difficult to give universal characterizations, or to identify shifts over time. Speaking of Congar’s theology in general, though in the context of his theology of the local and universal Church, Christopher Ruddy judges that Congar’s thought before and after the Second Vatican Council, “while evolving as is natural after an event of such magnitude, remained in deep, fundamental continuity with his earlier efforts; its development is largely organic and the differences are ones of degree, not of kind” (The Local Church: Tillard and the Future of Catholic Ecclesiology [New York: Herder & Herder, 2006], 39). For an overview of Congar’s ecclesiology (which contains little discussion of hierarchy), see Timothy I. MacDonald, The Ecclesiology of Yves Congar: Foundational Themes (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984). MacDonald argues that “the fundamental principle which is the mainstay of his entire ecclesiology . . . is the dialectic of structure and life,” and refers the critique of hierarchiology to this principle (88–89). Congar contributed a brief foreword to this dissertation (xxii–xxiii), demurring slightly from MacDonald’s thesis about structure and life, and attributing his dialectical approach to the Church to an early “discovery Congar’s Imperfect Critique of “Hierarchiolog y” 549 The earliest and latest of them are dedicated to expressing Thomas Aquinas’s theology of the Church, and serve as bookends to this discussion. The earlier is important for having been published numerous times, and giving a broad programmatic statement of Congar’s Thomistic idea of the Church.8 This 1939 essay, “L’idée de l’Église chez saint Thomas d’Aquin” (text 1), may be paired with Congar’s 1978 essay “Vision de l’Église chez Thomas d’Aquin” (text 6).9 Congar’s long 1961 essay “Aspects ecclésiologiques de la querelle entre mendiants et séculiers dans la seconde moitié du XIIIe siècle et le début du XIVe” (text 2)10 is the most decisive for the question of Dionysian hierarchy, and its influence is felt in any subsequent writing on Thomas and the mendicant controversies. However, other works anticipate, corroborate, and elaborate the ideas expressed in “Aspects ecclésiologiques.” Congar’s 1953 book Jalons pour une théologie du laïcat (text 3) contains a critique of “hierarchiology” and situates it within his important project of formulating a “theology of the laity.”11 A 1962 collection of essays edited by 8 9 10 11 of eschatology,” which supplemented “what was most lacking in the Roman documents and in Roman theologians with their juridical point of view.” I use the words “Thomist” and “Thomistic” generically. Congar might be said to oppose “Thomism,” or l’école thomiste, as a more historical expositor of Thomas working against Scholastic Thomistic presentations which he considered inauthentic to the spirit of Aquinas’s theology. I leave aside such dichotomies and call Congar a “Thomist” simply in the sense of a theologian writing about and influenced by Thomas Aquinas. On this matter, with reference to Congar’s theology of the Church, see Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., “Yves Congar et l’ecclésiologie de Saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 82, no. 2 (1998): 201–42. This controversy continues in the francophone Thomasien world. “L’idée de l’Église” is the French text of Congar’s 1939 address to the Aquinas Society of London, published in English as “The Idea of the Church in St. Thomas Aquinas,” The Thomist 1 (1939): 331–59. It appeared later in French in the Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 29 (1940): 31–58, and was reprinted in the eighth volume of the series Unam Sanctam, Esquisses du Mystère de l’Église (Paris: Cerf, 1953), 59–91. (For polemical comments bearing on Congar’s founding of Unam Sanctam, see Melloni, “Congar, Architect of the Unam Sanctam”). “Vision de l’Église” was published in Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 62 (1978): 523–41, and can also be found in Yves Congar, Thomas d’Aquin: sa vision de théologie et de l’Église (London: Variorum Reprints, 1984), as the sixth reprinted article. Please note that all translations presented from non-English titles (unaccompanied by corresponding locations in published translation titles) are my own. Yves Congar, “Aspects ecclésiologiques de la querelle entre mendiants et séculiers dans la seconde moitié du XIIIe siècle et le début du XIVe,” Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 28 (1961): 35–151. Yves Congar, Jalons pour une théologie du laïcat (Paris: Cerf, 1953) (see xxxii: “the 550 Ephrem Reese, O.P. Congar and Bernard Dupuy contains two pertinent essays by Congar: “La hiérarchie comme service selon le nouveau testament et les documents de la tradition” (text 4)12 and “De la communion des églises à une ecclésiologie de l’Église universelle” (text 5), 13 which show some of his influential thinking on the eve of the Second Vatican Council and add important detail to his critique of the ecclesiology of preceding eras. Congar gives a caricature of Dionysian ecclesiology as generally modeled on the angels, but does not give evidence of knowing the fundamentally sacramental structure of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy (EH).14 This Dominican, who perhaps rivals his brother Thomas in theological influence today, defines Dionysian ecclesiology through a certain Franciscan interpretation, and argues that Thomas’s ecclesiology cannot be significantly influenced by Dionysius. Here I will present Congar’s critique in my first section, and his own attempt to salvage hierarchy from the distortions of Dionysian theology in the second. In response, I will then, in a final third section, suggest how a better understanding of Dionysius would help, not hinder, this rehabilitation of ecclesiastical hierarchy. 12 13 14 preparation of the book having been spread over two years”). Published in English as Lay People in the Church, trans. Donald Attwater (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1965). The translation uses the word “hierarchology” at 39, whereas Congar writes “hiérarchiologie.” The alternate spelling occurs sometimes in related English-language literature, e.g., Avery Dulles, Models of the Church, expanded ed. (New York: Doubleday, 2002), 28. “La hiérarchie comme service” appears in L’Épiscopat et l’Église universelle, ed. Yves Congar and Bernard Dupuy (Paris: Cerf, 1962), 67–99. It was later expanded and published in Pour une Église servante et pauvre (Paris: Cerf, 1963). The latter volume was then published in English as Power and Poverty in the Church, trans. Jennifer Nicholson (Baltimore: Helicon, 1964). “La communion des églises” appears in L’Épiscopat et l’Église universelle, 227–60. The EH is largely a discussion of Christian rites, with painstaking explanations of their signification and the divine power at work in them. Dionysius adopts the pagan concept of “theurgy,” but applies the term principally to the one Theurgist, Christ. See Panagiotis G. Pavlos, “Theurgy in Dionysius the Areopagite,” in Pavlos, Janby, Kjalar, and Tollefsen, Platonism and Christian Thought, 151–77, at 152: “He asserts that the provider of the theurgic mysteries (θεουργὰ μυστήρια) is Christ Himself. . . . Thus, for the Areopagite, theurgy is not an art depending for its efficacy on the similarities of the sensible world to the world of the gods, but a novel historical event associated with God’s physical presence in the world and a certain new theandric activity.” Christ’s human actions establish the chief rank of the ecclesial hierarchy: the sacraments of baptism (“illumination” or “divine birth”), Eucharist (“synaxis” or “communion”), and confirmation (“ointment” or “myron”), see EH 2–4. Congar’s Imperfect Critique of “Hierarchiolog y” 551 Hierarchiology as “Dionysian Ideology” Just as Dionysius may have coined “hierarchy,” so Congar seems to have coined the term “hierarchiology.” He uses it several times as a caricature of ecclesiology that fails to see beyond clerics to the full human scope of the Church. This is especially important in his attempt to promote lay participation and understanding in the Church: If theology De ecclesia be practically reduced to a “hierarchiology” or, more generally, be made a theology only of the Church’s structure, without reference to her life, there is a risk of the laity being regarded as simply an accident, an appendage of the Church, at most necessary to her bene esse.15 Offering a simile of growth and harvest, where the laity and hierarchy are together represented by the fruition of an ear of corn, while the provisional hierarchical mediation of divine gifts is the stalk that supports the ear but will ultimately be destroyed, Congar writes: In this way then are their respective parts allotted so that the hierarchy and the faithful may form one Church and carry out her mission to the full. The hierarchy is a means by which Christ’s specific and properly divine life is brought to the stalk of the corn; through the faithful, the measure of Christ comes to the teeming substance of mankind and the world. The resuming of everything in Christ is realised by the two together.16 Congar acknowledges the need for hierarchical mediation, but emphasizes its temporary nature. He places “hierarchy and faithful” together under the eternal rule of Christ. He promises an account of lay activity in the Church as participation by the grace of Christ in the cosmic fulfillment of humanity: “A complete theology of the laity will be a total ecclesiology: it will also be an anthropology, and even a theology of the creation in its relation to Christology.”17 But in this context, hierarchy appears as a shadow cast over the promise of a “total ecclesiology.” A sprawling footnote in Jalons laments that “there is 15 16 17 Congar, Lay People, 45 (trans. altered); Jalons pour une théologie, 74. Congar, Lay People, 111; Jalons pour une théologie, 158. Congar, Lay People, xxxiii; Jalons pour une théologie, 14. 552 Ephrem Reese, O.P. a certain number of twelfth to sixteenth century texts wherein the word Church is used to mean hierarchy.”18 By 1961, Congar applies a range of terms to the ecclesiology focused on hierarchy: besides hiérarchiologie, there are hiérarchisme19 and l’idéologie hiérarchique de Denys,20 among others. In the genealogical question of hierarchiology, Congar suspects that its scion in the thirteenth century is St. Bonaventure. The disputes over the mendicant orders, according to Congar, thoroughly determined the early systematic treatment of the Church: The friars could only justify their ministry by means of a mission and jurisdiction received from the Pope, and by a theology of his universal and immediate authority, surpassing all local structures. Now, the friars intervened in theological activity in a massive and decisive fashion and, regarding ecclesiology, at the moment that it was at the point of being constituted as a proper and separate treatise.21 The position of the mendicants indeed required a strong defense of the pope’s “universal and immediate authority.” For Congar, this gives thirteenth-century ecclesiology a slant not only toward “hierarchiology,” but also toward overstating the power and authority of the pope St. Bonaventure’s theology of hierarchy, which I will not discuss here in depth, differs from Thomas’s most significantly with respect to the Trinity. Bonaventure affirms, in addition to the celestial and sub-celestial hierarchies, a “super-celestial” hierarchy of divine persons.22 The hierarchical God marks every creature hierarchically, especially the Church. Congar 18 19 20 21 22 Congar, Lay People, 42n22; Jalons pour une théologie, 71n40. Congar, “Aspects ecclésiologiques,” 129. Congar, “Aspects ecclésiologiques,” 123. Congar, “Aspects ecclésiologiques,” 99. Congar, “Aspects ecclésiologiques,” 109; see Bonaventure, Collationes in hexaemeron 2.16, in S. Bonaventurae Opera Omnia V, ed. studio et cura PP. Collegii a S. Bonaventura (Florence: Quaracchi, 1891), 339. See also Bonaventure, In II sent., comm. in d. 9, praenot.: “Hugh [of St. Victor] uses these terms: celestial, super-celestial, and sub-celestial hierarchies. Some say they are improper designations, but this is false, because in each there is a sacred primacy [principatus]” (Opera Omnia II, 238). This point traces to Bonaventure’s reliance on the Victorine interpretation of Dionysius. See Conferences on the Six Days of Creation: The Illuminations of the Church, trans. Jay M. Hammond, Bonaventure Texts in Translation 18 (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2018), 100, where Hammond notes: “On this point, Hugh and Bonaventure disagree with the Dionysian tradition by extending the notion of hierarchy to divinity itself.” Congar’s Imperfect Critique of “Hierarchiolog y” 553 writes: “The ecclesiology or hierarchiology of St. Bonaventure shows that it is profoundly a ‘theo-logy.’ The hierarchical order, of which Dionysius is the doctor, is trinitarian.”23 The universal conception of hierarchy in Bonaventure makes him, in Congar’s judgment, “perhaps one of the most authentically Dionysian [thinkers] that one finds in the West,” for he “uses Aristotle and Averroes in a Dionysian spirit.”24 Congar charts the “Dionysian synthesis” in Bonaventure and his contemporaries and followers, such as the Franciscan Thomas of York, through the Augustinian Giles of Rome, to the ecclesiological watershed of Pope Boniface VIII’s Unam Sanctam: It is incontestably with St. Bonaventure and Thomas of York that the Dionysian synthesis best preserves its fullness and value as a total construction of the world and the Church.25 Giles [of Rome] draws, from Dionysian principles, certain hierocratic conclusions. . . . [This work is] very surely, as to this theologico-political Dionysian metaphysics, a direct inspiration of the bull Unam Sanctam.26 Ideologically, Giles sets in motion the Dionysian construction of a scaled [échelonnée] hierarchy: he applies ecclesiologically some ideal of a “reduction” to the Sovereign Pontiff. . . . Once more, there is a pyramidal construction, à la [French revolutionary theorist] Siéyès, more chimerical than real.27 The appeal to Dionysian themes, dear to Franciscan theologians, prepared the formulas of the bull Unam Sanctam.28 The “Dionysian synthesis” seems to mean essentially that the earthly Church mirrors the heavenly. Thomas is also guilty, in Congar’s eyes, of 23 24 25 26 27 28 Congar, “Aspects ecclésiologiques,” 113. Congar, “Aspects ecclésiologiques,” 111. Congar’s judgments about Aristotle in this essay are rather diverse and unexplained. He ascribes both the monarchical quality of thirteenth-century ecclesiology (103–4) and Aquinas’s “anthropologically conditioned” independence from Plotinian emanative theories of man and society to the use of Aristotle. Congar, “Aspects ecclésiologiques,” 138. Congar, “Aspects,” 140. Here he cites the “very nuanced proof ” of this influence in Jean Rivière, Le Problème de l’Église et de l’État au temps de Philippe le Bel (Paris: E. Champion, 1926), 394–404. On the importance of Giles of Rome in the composition of Unam Sanctam, see Ullmann, “Boniface VIII,” 75–79. Congar, “Aspects ecclésiologiques,” 141. Congar, “Aspects ecclésiologiques,” 149. 554 Ephrem Reese, O.P. espousing this aspect of Dionysian ideology: “The doctrine, on this point, is the same; the tone is different.”29 However, Thomas’s version of this shared thirteenth-century “hierarchism” provides a seedbed for Congar’s alternative vision. Yes, the Church is governed by a hierarchy of clerics, but Thomas “equally sets in motion the idea of the visible representation and ministry of Christ’s government of the universal Church, as he exists in it by his sanctifying action in sacramental ministry.”30 Congar proposes competing versions of neo-Platonist exitus–reditus at work in his contrast between Bonaventure and Aquinas. Bonaventure espouses that of Dionysius and, through him, of Plotinus. This emanation of the One results in an idealized, universal structure, mediated through the pope. This leads directly, in Congar’s mind, to Boniface VIII’s claim that submission to him is absolutely necessary for salvation. Congar maintains this argument regarding the papacy in other important texts. “Aspects écclesiologiques” was published in 1961. The following year, Congar published “La hiérarchie comme service” as part of a volume of the series Unam Sanctam composed as an aid to the work of the Second Vatican Council.31 He would make it more widely available in 1963, adding a paper given in 1961 at the Abbey of Bec as a chapter within “La hiérarchie comme service,” under the heading “Destin historique.” Congar says himself, in the preface to the later edition, that this work on hierarchy “was well-received and aroused considerable response,” noting a “widely quoted” address of Pope John XXIII which bears the mark of Congar’s influence.32 We find in the second version another appearance of the word “hierarchiology.” Congar says that, in the post-Tridentine Church, “ecclesiology, 29 30 31 32 Congar, “Aspects ecclésiologiques,” 105. Congar, “Aspects ecclésiologiques,” 105. Congar, L’Épiscopat et l’Église universelle. See Ruddy, Local Church, 40: ¨[Congar] helped to organize several preparatory and exploratory studies, for example, L’Épiscopat et l’Église universelle. . . . Immediately after the council he set to work on Unam Sanctam’s commentary on the conciliar documents, ultimately releasing over twenty volumes—and thereby justly earning the title of ‘the theologian of Vatican II par excellence.’” The last statement is from Etienne Fouilloux, “Frère Yves, Cardinal Congar, Dominicain: Itinéraire d’un théologien,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 79 (1995): 400. Congar, Pour une Église, 9; Power and Poverty, 11. He does not take credit for the pope’s words here, but Congar enjoys the reputation of wielding major influence upon the pope and the Church just before Vatican II. It is reported that Angelo Roncalli, who would become Pope John XXIII, read Congar’s Vraie et fausse réforme dans l’Église (1950) and asked: “A reform of the Church, is it possible?” See Jean Puyo, Une vie pour la vérité: Jean Puyo interroge le Père Congar (Paris: Centurion, 1975), 117, cited in Ruddy, Local Church, 178. Congar’s Imperfect Critique of “Hierarchiolog y” 555 as far as the instruction of clerics and of the faithful is concerned, became fixed in a set pattern in which the question of authority is so predominant that the whole treatise is more like a hierarchiology or a treatise on public law.”33 He goes on here to describe the Western Church’s exaggerated focus on papal authority, saying that authority in the Church seems “first and foremost the idea and exercise of papal authority. The pope is really episcopus universalis.”34 This is a serious accusation of an ecclesiological error leveled at mendicant friars like Thomas Aquinas by anti-mendicant theologians like William of Saint-Amour. Thomas is careful to avoid the term “universal bishop” in his defense of papal authority, acknowledging the authority of canon law and, ultimately, Gregory the Great.35 So what does Congar 33 34 35 Congar, Pour une Église, 62; Power and Poverty, 70. Congar, Pour une Église, 62: “Le pape est vraiment episcopus universalis”; Power and Poverty, 70. While his tone is ambiguous here, this “vraiment” seems to be sarcastic. Congar, in a diary entry on October 29, 1964 criticizes Michael Browne, former master of the Order of Preachers (1955–1962) and then Cardinal, for holding that the pope is episcopus universalis; see Mon Journal du Concile, vol. 2, ed. Éric Mahieu (Paris: Cerf, 2002), 233. The mendicants, because of their appeals to the papal institution of their orders, were accused of calling the pope the episcopus universalis, or “universal bishop.” The anti-mendicant masters (as Thomas formulates their complaint in an objection) admitted the pope’s universal governance, but appealed to Gratian’s Decretum, dist. 89, which prohibited the use of the term “universal bishop” for the pope (Gratian, Decretum, p. 1, dist. 99, ch. 5, in Corpus Iuris Canonicis, col. 351; Aquinas mistakenly cites dist. 89). Thomas explains that the title is denied to the pope “not because he does not possess complete and direct power over every diocese in the Church, but because he does not rule any particular diocese as its peculiar and special pastor. Were he to do so, the powers of the other bishops would lapse” (Contra impugnantes, ch. 4; Leonine ed. 41A:82, [lns.1242–49]). This objection, enshrined by Gratian, derived ultimately from Gregory the Great, who rejected “universal bishop” as a term used by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. The Decretum, dist. 99, citation is from Gregory’s letter of June 1, 595, to Eulogius, Patriarch of Alexandria, and Anastasius of Antioch, referring to John IV of Constantinople’s use of the title; see The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R. C. Martyn, vol. 2 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2004), 359–63. For context, see George E. Demacopoulos, “Gregory the Great and the Sixth-Century Dispute over the Ecumenical Title,” Theological Studies 70 (2009): 600–621. Gregory’s judgment against the title rests not only on a translation of οἰκουμενικός into Latin as universalis, but also on Gregory’s own moral theology of pride and pastoral rule. Demacopoulos writes: “Key to understanding Gregory’s stated rejection of the title is the fact that he, like the Latin translators of Justinian’s Novellae, took the Greek word οἰκουμενικός to mean ‘universal’—universalis in Latin. According to Gregory, this meant that John was proclaiming that he was, in effect, the ‘only bishop,’ implying that all other bishops received their authority through him. Gregory 556 Ephrem Reese, O.P. intend by this troubling description of episcopus universalis? It seems that he means to point out an unhealthy tendency by exaggerating it sarcastically. The choice is unfortunate, and it is parroted by several of Congar’s followers.36 A second essay in the same volume of Unam Sanctam elaborates the argument. “La communion des églises” continues Congar’s historical reflection on the development of hierarchy. This historical presentation is engineered to inspire new thinking about the episcopacy. Here again, Congar will attribute a Dionysian character to the problematic idea of the pope as universal bishop. Congar depicts the early belief and practice of the Church as a communion founded on the fellowship of bishops among themselves: The identity of the faith professed and the sacraments celebrated, among relatively autonomous local communities, is precisely what establishes communion. This is expressed in gestures of solidarity among Christians, among churches, among the bishops who represent or personify these churches: communion of churches occurs in the communion of bishops.37 Congar does not contrast this notion of the Church with Dionysius’s overtly, but in light of the direction he will take, it is worth noting that Dionysius’s ecclesiology does not contradict this description. While Dionysius does not focus on the communion among bishops (hierarchs), so much as their vertical mediatory role with regard to their inferiors, he seems to take communion among bishops for granted. This is apparent, for example, in the instructional nature of his Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, written to Timothy, from whom Dionysius “exact[s] a promise to deal in purity with what is pure and to share the divine operations only with men of God, to share perfection only with those who actually are perfected.”38 And, again, the Corpus Dionysiacum makes no mention of a pope. 36 37 38 fundamentally opposed that claim, not just for the bishop of Constantinople but for any bishop, including the bishop of Rome” (608). See, e.g., R. Kevin Seasoltz, A Virtuous Church: Catholic Theology, Ethics, and Liturgy for the 21st Century (New York: Orbis, 2012), 123, where Seasoltz repeats the term “hierarchiology,” and paraphrases Congar’s narrative from this text: “The pope became the universal bishop.” See also Ormond Rush, The Vision of Vatican II: Its Fundamental Principles (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2019), which includes a section entitled, “Overcoming ‘Hierarchiology’” and cites this Congar passage at length. Congar, “La communion des églises,” 232. EH 5.1.5.377B. When Dionysius says, on the other hand, “Talk of ‘hierarch’ and one Congar’s Imperfect Critique of “Hierarchiolog y” 557 Congar then singles out the eleventh century as a period of juridical and theological centralization under the pope, using familiar terms: Under the pen of Leo IX, often held by Humbert of Moyen­ mouthier [a.k.a., Humbert de Silva Candida, notorious for his actions in 1054], and under that of Gregory VII, there abound formulas of an ecclesiology of the Church conceived as one unique society submitted under the authority of the pope. The pope is the universal bishop.39 This characterization has the same problematic ambiguity as we saw in Pour une Église servante et pauvre (in which “La hiérarchie comme service” was reprinted a year after its 1962 reprinting in L’Épiscopat et l’Église universelle).40 Does Congar mean that the Western Church has simply forgotten how to reject, with St. Gregory the Great, the idea of a “universal bishop”? We find here as well a historical narrative that traces thirteenth-century developments to a neo-Platonist “reduction to the One.” Congar says that, among medieval authors, ecclesiology immediately entails the affirmation of the universal jurisdiction of the pope, for the unity of a plurality supposes a principle of reduction to unity, and thus an authority. This idea, with its rigorous entanglement of social unity with the unity of a leader, is extremely strong in the Middle Ages.41 Thomas is part of this, yet Congar absolves him: “Decidedly, St. Thomas Aquinas insists on the authority of bishops. . . . He is without a doubt the closest to the ecclesiological positions of the secular Masters.”42 But Thomas’s moderate position on the relationship of bishop and pope flows from his sensitivity to various sources, including both Church law and Dionysian theology.43 39 40 41 42 43 is referring to a holy and inspired man . . . someone in whom an entire hierarchy is completely perfected and known” (EH 5.1.3.373C), he seems to mean that a “relatively autonomous local community,” in Congar’s terms, is perfected in its bishop. Congar, “La communion des églises,” 238. See note 11 above. Congar, “La communion des églises,” 245. Congar, “La communion des églises,” 246–47. See especially Thomas’s use of Dionysius in his Contra impugnantes, ch. 2, where Aquinas attributes his opponents’ misunderstanding of relations in the Church to “a bad understanding of Dionysius.” The numbering within this work is confused among 558 Ephrem Reese, O.P. Yet Congar’s comments again suggest that the theological model in which power and authority flow from pope to bishops is “Dionysian”: Bonaventure . . . proposes a justification of the supreme power of the pope by having recourse to the Dionysian metaphysics of unity . . . [like] Matthew of Acquasparta, one of the advisors of Boniface VIII for the bull Unam Sanctam (Nov. 18, 1302), in which is found a revival of the Dionysian ideology.44 It is through recourse to Dionysius that Thomas consistently upholds the idea of episcopal perfection, and even maintains what Gilles Emery considers a point of contact with the Eastern ecclesiological tradition.45 Yet Congar insists that Thomas is less Dionysian than those who simply use the “metaphysics of unity” to discuss the pope. Clearly, this use of Dionysius constitutes an “ideology” leading to “hierarchiology” and, in Congar’s judgment, must be corrected. Congar does believe that it is necessary to defend papal primacy. He thinks that this must be done in the idiom of communion: “The ecclesiology of pontifical power, as ‘episcopal’ power qualitatively superior to the ensemble of Churches and of the faithful, ought to be expressed in union with a theology of communion.”46 Communion in the Mystical Body is, for Congar, an expression that combines universality and sacramental grace in a way that transcends the otherwise perfect unity of the local Church.47 44 45 46 47 various translations and editions, so one should follow the Leonine ed., 41A:61 (lines 568–69): “Procedit etiam eorum ratio ex malo intellectu Dionysii.” Please note that Hofer, “Aquinas’s Use,” 296n2, clarifies the ways in which what corpusthomisticum.org states as the Leonine edition here (the version it presents in its opera omnia of Thomas for this work) differs from the actual Leonine edition. Congar, “La communion des églises,” 247. The “distinction of ordo is limited to the relation of the bishop to the mystical Body of Christ that is the Church”; by this limitation, “St. Thomas perceived here an important aspect of patristic and Eastern ecclesiology” (Gilles Emery, “A Note on St. Thomas and the Eastern Fathers,” trans. Jennifer Harms and John Baptist Ku, in Trinity, Church, and the Human Person: Thomistic Essays [Naples, FL: Sapientia, 2007], 197n16). Congar, “La communion des églises,” 260. Congar, “La communion des églises,” 252. Here Congar raises Thomas as an example of privileging Eucharistic communion, and pointing out repeatedly (with references to Contra impugnantes and De perfectione) that the pope has no greater power to consecrate the Eucharist than a bishop, or even his priest. For Congar as a theologian of communion, set helpfully within the context of “Communio” ecclesiology, see Dennis M. Doyle, Communion Ecclesiology: Visions and Versions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000), 38–55. Doyle’s chapter compares Congar with Charles Cardinal Journet, as two Congar’s Imperfect Critique of “Hierarchiolog y” 559 Congar regrets that Thomas is partially entangled in the “hierarchism” of his milieu. However, he argues that Thomas’s alternative formulations of the Church amount to a rejection of “Dionysian hierarchism”: Dionysian hierarchies interpose certain insurmountable intermediaries between God himself and men. St. Thomas evidently does not admit this hierarchism: God himself, immediately attained in himself, is the term of man’s full reditus. The Dionysian position, later that of Gregory Palamas, who found a point of departure in the precedent, would not be, for St. Thomas, the formula for a full and true divinization. But, beneath this essential question, it is the whole Dionysian hierarchism, with its intermediaries, which is involved. It is ultimately the Plotinian metaphysics of the One, assumed by Dionysius, and rejected by St. Thomas. 48 For Congar, it is thanks to Thomas’s biblical accuracy, and his Aristotelian realism, that Thomas detaches himself from the Dionysian ecclesiastical hierarchy modeled on the angels: St. Thomas evidently owes much to Dionysius. . . . But his ecclesiology appears to us little influenced by Dionysius in its deep lines. It is too Christological, too soteriological, too anthropologically conditioned, to be truly attached to an angelic and celestial model. Too realist, also, too carefully elaborated upon New Testament texts and upon the facts. Finally, too tied to Aristotelian inspirations regarding causality and the conditions of man and society.49 It is clear that Congar has some familiarity with Dionysius’s own writings, and occasionally mentions them. However, this argument is, in his own words, expressly about “the usage made of Pseudo-Dionysius by different authors” of the thirteenth century.50 He evidently wants to blame the result of Unam Sanctam on the “Dionysian ideology” of Bonaventure and the subsequent tradition of “hierarchiology,” which Thomas “rejected.” A ballooning of the rhetoric against “hierarchiology” is a notable part 48 49 50 different Thomistic precursors to communion ecclesiology. Congar, “Aspects ecclésiologiques,” 129. Congar, in “La hiérarchie comme service,” 76, contrasts “the God of Plotinus,” who is “the One who loves himself,” with Jesus Christ, who leans down to us in grace. Congar, “Aspects ecclésiologiques,” 132. Congar, “Aspects ecclésiologiques,” 114. 560 Ephrem Reese, O.P. of Congar’s legacy. One recent theologian praises Congar, saying that “his greatest influence of all was in helping to bring about the ecclesiological transformation brought about by Vatican II that was deemed most essential to the overcoming of the dominance of hierarchichalism and of hierarchiology.”51 Another, not preserving Congar’s historiographical subtlety, calls hierarchiology “a theology that exalts the hierarchy and belittles the laity.”52 Congar exculpates Thomas Aquinas from his indictment of thirteenth-century ecclesiology only by distancing him from Dionysius, and attributes both “hierarchiology” and the (mis)understanding of the pope as universal bishop to a “Dionysian ideology” stemming from Bonaventure. Hierarchy Rehabilitated But Congar wanted to save hierarchy from hierarchiology. Like St. Thomas, Congar was a Catholic and Dominican doctor, loyal to the Church and intent on explaining its essential features in a theologically sound way. Since “mendicants are men of a world that changes,”53 he wished to produce a theology adequate to the Church in his time. In his early synthesis of Thomas’s thought on the Church, “L’idée de l’Église,” Congar laid down themes that would structure his ecclesiology for decades, and affect the way he characterized Thomas on hierarchy. It began as a conference in English, and was published numerous times in both English and French.54 Congar claims that all that he says about Thomas “is equally true of St. Bonaventure, Alexander of Hales, Albert the Great and the other 51 52 53 54 Gerard Mannion, “Beyond Hierarchiology: Congar, Pope Francis and the Council’s Unfinished Liberation of Ecclesiology,” in The Promise of Renewal: Dominicans and Vatican II, ed. Michael Attridge, Darren Dias, Matthew Eaton, and Nicholas Olkovich (Adelaide, South Australia: ATF Theology, 2017), 47–73, at 62. Richard J. Beauchesne, “Heeding the Early Congar Today, and Two Recent Roman Catholic Issues: Seeking Hope on the Road Back,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 27, no. 3 (1990): 536. Congar, “Aspects ecclésiologiques,” 147. It also exists in the English volume The Mystery of Church: Studies by Yves Congar (Baltimore: Helicon, 1965), which notes a first English “version” by A. V. Littledale published in 1960, Mystery being a 1965 “revised translation.” This edition omits many footnotes, “especially those likely to be of little interest to readers whose inquiry and capacity does not extend beyond the English language” (vii). It is here that Congar describes “L’idée de l’Église” as “a synthesis, rather than an exposition, of the Thomist theology De Ecclesia” (ix). This shows how the essay, republished over four decades, eventually reached, or aimed to reach, a wide readership. Congar’s Imperfect Critique of “Hierarchiolog y” 561 scholastics of that epoch,” in other words, before the conflict between Philip the Fair and Pope Boniface VIII caused ecclesiological works to focus on papal and royal power.55 But he understates the Thomistic quality of his account: this essay certainly provides a wealth of theological thought specific to Aquinas, not a general ecclesiological profile of the thirteenth century. Moreover, we have already seen how important the contrast between Thomas and Bonaventure in their thinking about hierarchy becomes for Congar. Congar argues that Aquinas’s ecclesiology is latent, not only in his understanding of the grace of Christ,56 but also in his moral theology, adverting to the structure of the Summa theologiae. In what will become a thematic idea for Congar, he attributes the lack of a treatise specifically dedicated to the Church to the fact that, for Thomas, “the Church is not a separate reality, something outside the Christian-Trinitarian mystery, outside the anthropologic, christologic, sacramental thing which is the subject of theology.”57 The order of Congar’s presentation puts the Holy Spirit first, as the principle of life in the Church, corresponding to the theological virtues in the individual Christian soul.58 This is, in part, to show that Thomas’s idea of the Church is “theocentric,” before it is “christocentric”—Christ is indeed central, but not methodologically so, in determining a Thomist ecclesiology.59 Thomas’s conception of faith, hope, and love is theocentric, these virtues having God himself as their formal object. The Church “is one because, by faith, hope, and love, all have the same vital object and goal, and because this is itself the very object of the life of God.” For Congar, the notion of theological virtue and the divine life 55 56 57 58 59 Congar, “L’idée de l’Église,” 59–61; “Idea of the Church,” 332. For one might locate St. Thomas’s ecclesiology in just one question of the Tertia Pars, q. 8, on the capital grace of Christ. Congar, “L’idée de l’Église,” 90; “Idea of the Church,” 358. In light of my focus below on “things” in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, it is important to note that the English in the version of the essay printed in The Thomist (presumably Congar’s own text) gives “sacramental thing” where Congar says in French only “le mystère . . . sacramentaire,” etc. Congar, “L’idée de l’Église,” 64; “Idea of the Church,” 335. Congar, “L’idée de l’Église,” 69–70; “Idea of the Church,” 340. This difficult notion seems to be polemically motivated, but I cannot offer a satisfactory explanation here of why Congar wants to deny “christocentrism,” or what this means precisely. Positively speaking, he says here that “the ecclesiology of St. Thomas, like the ethic to which it is wedded, is before all things theocentric. . . . St. Thomas has thrown into relief the theological or theocentric phase before the ‘Christ’ and christocentric one. . . . [We find in his commentary on the Creed] an elemental notion which is anthropologic and ethic or pneumatologic and theocentric.” 562 Ephrem Reese, O.P. it makes possible for humans is emblematic of how the moral theology of the secunda pars is also an account of the Church’s return to God: “Hence it is also true to say that the entire Second Part of the Summa theologica is ecclesiology.”60 Congar wishes to emphasize that the Church is not only the Body of Christ, but also this moral and spiritual reality of human potency proceeding from and returning toward God: motus creaturae rationalis in Deum.61 He does not wish to minimize the importance of communion in Christ, much less subordinate it. Rather, Congar wishes to show how the consummation of the tertia pars relates to the treatment of man as image of God in the secunda pars: “The degrees of realization of the image of God, the analysis of whose richness and manifold phases is the work of the Secunda Pars, are correlatively degrees of incorporation into Christ.”62 He dwells at length on our participation in the Body of Christ as a society organized “by faith and the sacraments of the faith,” per fidem et fidei sacramenta.63 While he relates this to the hierarchy of the Church, the relation is troubled. He emphasizes the Body of Christ as the principle of “the Church as a society differentiated and established under a hierarchy.”64 He uses language that suggests Dionysius (purifying and illuminating) in describing the relationship of the “power over the Mystical Body” that the Church holds: 60 61 62 63 64 Congar, “L’idée de l’Église,” 66: “The manner in which we live the life of God is the manner appropriate to spirits, to men, that is, to have as everyday objects the everyday objects of the life of God. . . . Thus, to define the Church as a body in a shared life experience with God is to consider it as humanity itself insofar as it orients its life toward God, by means of the theological virtues, which have God himself as their object, and insofar as it organizes its life according to God by means of the moral virtues. The ecclesiology of St. Thomas is profoundly moral and theocentric. . . . Thus, in the Summa theologiae, the entire secunda pars is ecclesiological”; see “Idea of the Church,” 337. The theological virtues have God as object in different ways. Congar cites numerous places in Aquinas’s writings, but see, e.g., for charity, ST II-II, q. 23, a. 2, ad 2 (“God is effectively the life both of the soul by charity, and of the body by the soul: but formally charity is the life of the soul, even as the soul is the life of the body”); for faith, e.g., ST II-II, q. 1, a. 2, ad 2 (“The believer’s act does not terminate in the propositions, but in the realities”). He cites the prologues to ST I, q. 2, and ST III to make this point, in “L’idée de l’Église,” 69. He substitutes reditus where Aquinas has motus (“de motu…”). Congar, “L’idée de l’Église,” 75; “Idea of the Church,” 345. Thomas used this phrase or a similar one throughout his writings; see Congar’s references in “L’idée de l’Église,” 84–89; “Idea of the Church,” 353–58. Congar, “Idea of the Church,” 352; cf. “L’idée de l’Église,” 83. Congar’s Imperfect Critique of “Hierarchiolog y” 563 the power to purify and enlighten souls by the preaching of the truth, and that of preparing or disposing for the reception of the Eucharist by a juridical control. . . . St. Thomas asserts that all such powers over souls come to the Church solely from the power or ministry which she has in the celebration of the Eucharist, the Sacrament of Christ Crucified, Sacrament of our Salvation.65 Here, Congar distinguishes the juridical power of the Church from her essentially sacramental ministry. He does not pit the ministerial against the juridical, but in light of his eventual critique of hierarchical juridicism, we may note how he highlights the subordination of the juridical to the sacramental and Christological. “L’idée de l’Église” outlines Congar’s Thomistic ecclesiology. We see his emphasis on the Trinitarian and Christological structure of the life of the Church. In his comments on the importance of the theological virtues, we see the Thomistic grounds for emphasizing the powers of the human soul in speaking of the mystical communion of the Body of Christ. Dionysius, as a name, is absent from this work, but procession and return are prominent, conceived especially by reflecting on the structure of the Summa theologiae. Finally, the sacraments receive prominent place, contextualized within the “theocentric” vision of Christ and the Spirit as returning man to the Father. But when he wanted to rehabilitate the idea of hierarchy, Congar turned away, not only from Dionysius, but also from Thomas. In his widely read essay on hierarchy as service, Congar pursues the admirable goal of showing that hierarchy is essentially God’s instrument for revealing himself as Lord and Savior in the Church, coming in the counterintuitive form of a servant. Any Christian’s reception of honor must mirror that of Jesus, but “Jesus himself has this honour only by reason of the mission he received from the Father. The Father alone is the principle without a source. All comes from him, all is called to return to him.”66 The Son “rediscovers the logic of the spirit. . . . This can be achieved only when the order of 65 66 Congar, “L’idée de l’Église,” 86 (emphasis mine); “Idea of the Church,” 355. The language of “purify and enlighten” recalls the first two hierarchical powers in Dionysius. Within each of Dionysius’s hierarchies, there is a threefold rank, distinguished according to power. Ranks and powers, though permanently distinguished, are ordered toward a sacred union. The threefold powers and the ranks that they distinguish, in ascending order, are the power to purify, to illumine, and to perfect. See CH 3.165C–168B; EH 5.1.3.504A–C. Congar, “La hiérarchie comme service,” 70; Power and Poverty, 23. 564 Ephrem Reese, O.P. obedience is perfectly fulfilled, when everything is brought back to its Principle, when ‘God’ is ‘all in all.’”67 Matthew Levering approves of this approach as providing an important theological ballast for hierarchy. After citing this essay of Congar’s, Levering writes: Ecclesiastical hierarchy must be shown to belong to the Trinitarian and Christological pattern of the communication of the divine life, a pattern that cannot be separated from the election of Israel and the covenantal structures of gifting, receptivity, and mediation that have shaped the people of God from the beginning.68 We may consider also the Christological and Trinitarian conception of the Church described in Lumen Gentium §§2–4 as fulfilling this need. Congar shows consistency with his earlier “L’idée de l’Église,” in which the human life of the Church, as in Thomas’s secunda pars, is a return to God through God’s own sharing of his inner, Trinitarian life. Again, this is a matter of understanding the theological virtues. Congar expresses the relation between the divine life of faith and charity, and discusses this in relation to the role of the bishop and the concept of the state of perfection forged in the mendicant controversies. However, he removes this section from the later edition of “La hiérarchie comme service” in Pour une Église servante et pauvre, inserting in its place a few footnotes to Thomas’s works.69 There is a certain emphasis, even in the first version, on the personal quality of perfection.70 Congar continues to underline the human development of virtuous service as constituting the Christian idea of hierarchy. According to him, both Scripture and Tradition point to this: “Authority in the Gospel is a relationship of sub et supra within the general relationship of service, which is the necessary accompaniment of being a Christian.”71 67 68 69 70 71 Congar, “La hiérarchie comme service,” 74; Power and Poverty, 29. Matthew Levering, Christ and the Catholic Priesthood (Chicago: Hillenbrand, 2010), 4. Levering cites Congar similarly in his conclusion, summarizing the aim of his own book (278). Congar, “La hiérarchie comme service,” 90–95; cf. Pour une Église, 86. Nicholson mistakenly gives “St. Bernard saw the episcopate” for “Saint Thomas a vu l’episcopat” (92). I imagine Congar’s omission could either be attributed to the popular level of the new edition, or to the difficulty or unpopularity of Aquinas’s theology of the episcopacy. Congar, “La hiérarchie comme service,” 91–92. Congar, “La hiérarchie comme service,” 89; Power and Poverty, 91. Congar’s Imperfect Critique of “Hierarchiolog y” 565 The problem of Dionysian hierarchy comes into full view as Congar concludes this essay. What is not often understood about Dionysius’s ecclesiastical hierarchy is that although the second and third ranks belong to men, the first rank belongs to things: the sacraments themselves.72 Congar, who emphasizes interpersonal development among Christian men, and rightly so in most cases, adds that, in the Middle Ages and afterward, “the domain of men and the Christian community was neglected for the domain of things.”73 Congar is not referring there to sacraments, but to laws. This statement belongs to Congar’s continuing discourse on the juridicizing trend of the Church’s history.74 While Congar is no enemy of the sacraments, it is important to note how his effort to regain the importance of personal relationships, in the teeth of overbearing legalism, leads to inadvertent conflict with the divine things that are, paradoxically, impersonal and supremely personal, the sacraments. His conception of the “Dionysian ideology” as juridical seems to have the unintended consequence of evacuating the theology of hierarchy of its sacramental and liturgical realism as well. Congar lists some New Testament vocabulary of order and authority, claiming that διακονία is the term that most often expresses authority there. He points out the significance of its being connected to a task or activity, but does not seem to intend a reference to the sacramental actions so important for Dionysius. Rather, this is relational: “an assured service in the community.”75 He acknowledges ten uses of τάξις but adds that seven of them are from Hebrews to refer to Aaron and Melchizedek.76 Tellingly, he notes here that the word “hierarchy” is absent from the New 72 73 74 75 76 The principal place of sacred rites or sacraments is best expressed at EH 5.1, where Dionysius articulates it twice in introducing the rite of clerical orders: “In our sacred tradition every hierarchy is divided into the most reverend sacraments [τὰς ὁσιωτάτας τελετὰς]; those, inspired by God, who understand and purvey them; and those who are sacredly initiated by these” (EH 5.1.1.501A); “Like every hierarchy [ours] has a threefold division, namely the most holy operations of the sacraments [τὰς ἁγιωτάτας τῶν τελετῶν ἱερουργίας], the godlike dispensers of the sacred things, and those guided by them, according to capacity, toward the sacred” (EH 5.1.2.501D). Congar, “La hiérarchie comme service,” 97 (emphasis and ellipsis original); Power and Poverty, 98. See “La hiérarchie comme service,” 97. Congar’s professed intention in much of the essay is to show how Christian authority as service is different from worldly authority (98). Yet it seems that he argues his point to the detriment of sacramental reality in the Christian dispensation. Congar, “La hiérarchie comme service,” 80. Congar, “La hiérarchie comme service,” 80–81. Elsewhere he suggests that there is no conceivable connection between the apostles and the Aaronic priesthood (82). 566 Ephrem Reese, O.P. Testament.77 This suggests that he is unfamiliar with the Dionysian provenance of the word. Indeed, the only mention of Dionysius comes in the revised version of “La hiérarchie comme service,” in the section entitled “Destin historique.” His use of Dionysius there is odd: Monasticism has often been represented as a protest against a Church that had become too worldly, too rich, too powerful in a physical sense for an eschatological Christianity which taught that the world should be opposed. In monasticism it was possible for a charismatic or spiritual authority to continue to exist. . . . This type of authority did in fact acquire a kind of autonomy in the Church in relation to the ordinary hierarchical structure. This was the case in the East. Both Origen and the pseudo-Areopagite held views which tended to link the illuminating and sanctifying effect of hierarchical acts with the interior and spiritual holiness of the minister.78 I can find no evidence, for example in Congar’s “Aspects ecclésiologiques,” that he was aware of Dionysius’s important Epistle 8. In this literary instruction, one of ten, Dionysius, apparently as bishop, reprimands the monk Demophilus for assuming spiritual authority over a priest, invading the sanctuary, and preventing the reconciliation and communion of a sinner.79 It is indeed misleading, in light of Dionysius’s Epistle 8, to say that the spiritual man could claim “autonomy in the Church in relation to the ordinary hierarchical structure.” Congar does not mean to vindicate Demophilus, of course, but to point out Dionysius’s attempt to attribute to the hierarch a true fullness of sacred knowledge and spiritual power. To do 77 78 79 Congar, “La hiérarchie comme service,” 80. Congar, Pour une Église, 45; Power and Poverty, 47–8. See, for example, Ep. Epistle 8, no. 4: “Accept the place assigned to you by the divine deacons. Let them accept what the priests have assigned to them. Let the priests accept what the hierarchs have assigned to them. Let the hierarchs bow to the apostles and to the successors of the apostles. . . . This, then, is what I have to tell you about what you should know and do”; “I would never have believed that Demophilus could have so little awareness of God’s goodness and of his love for humanity, that he could forget how much he himself needed a merciful savior, that he could take it upon himself to reject the priests who are made worthy, out of goodness, and out of a sense of their own frailty, to ‘bear the errors of the people.’” See Golitzin, Mystagogy, 8. For a general study of the Eastern phenomenon to which Congar refers, see Daniel Caner, Wandering, Begging Monks: Spiritual Authority and the Promotion of Monasticism in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). Congar’s Imperfect Critique of “Hierarchiolog y” 567 so in this way, however, and to group him simply with Origen, suggests that Congar is (again) not particularly interested in Dionysius, or his concept of hierarchy. Congar revisited the question of Thomistic ecclesiology in 1977, almost forty years after “L’idée de l’Église,” in “Vision de l’Église,” an Ottawa address on the feast of St. Thomas; the address appeared in publication in 1978. This later work to some extent reconciles the tension between a Thomistic approach—one that makes use of arguments from the structure of the Summa theologiae, the Trinitarian processions, the theological virtues, and Christology—and an approach which emphasizes communion. After two sections on the importance of the theological virtues (especially faith) and the provisional status of the earthly Church in view of the homogeneity of the faith across past, present, and future, a third section provides a substantial account of the mystery of the Church as constituted by Christ and the Spirit.80 Congar pays special attention to Thomas’s theology of sacramental causality, articulating in turn Thomas’s gradually developed teachings on the instrumental causality of the sacred humanity of Christ in De veritate81 and the power of the Holy Spirit as effecting sacramental communion in the faithful.82 Among these comments, Congar again highlights the fact that “Thomas often says that the Church is founded and built by the faith and the sacraments of the faith.”83 God’s action through the sacraments constitutes a relation of service between ministers and faithful. As in “La hiérarchie comme service,” Congar is anxious to emphasize the office of a hierarch, not in terms of superiority and inferiority, but as “a pure ministry, a service: ‘he is not a master, but a steward.’”84 80 81 82 83 84 Congar, “Vision de l’Église,” 529–36. Congar, “Vision de l’Église,” 530: “This thesis appears to us necessary and decisive in the theological project of St. Thomas.” Many today agree: see, e.g., Reginald Lynch, The Cleansing of the Heart: The Sacraments as Instrumental Causes in the Thomistic Tradition (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2017), for a recent study of Thomas’s turn to instrumental efficacy in his sacramental theology. Congar, “Vision de l’Église,” 534–36. Congar, “Vision de l’Église,” 531. Congar, “Vision de l’Église,” 531: “These ministers do not, as such, have any efficacious action except in persona Christi, playing the role of Christ in a visible and public setting. Prelatus in Ecclesia gerit vicem Dei [In the Church, the Prelate takes the place of God]. But this is a pure ministry, a service: non est dominus, sed dispensator [he is not a lord, but a steward]. This ministry, however, has an eschatological efficacy. Coming from Christ, God made man, who has received all power on earth and in heaven (Matt 28:18), he is able, here below, to open the gates of heaven.” The two Latin phrases are 568 Ephrem Reese, O.P. In “Vision de l’Église,” Congar affirms that Thomas’s theology contains all the elements that go to make up a sound ecclesiology. But he regrets that Thomas lacks “consideration of these elements as forming a collective reality of the mediation of the grace of the Holy Spirit and of Christ; the consideration of the Church as Communion, and even a Communion of local or particular churches.”85 Interestingly, he believes that the ecclesiastical realities of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, including the division of order from jurisdiction according to geographic place seen especially in the mendicant orders, resulted in a problem for the theology of the Eucharist and holy orders, especially affecting the theology of the episcopacy.86 For Congar, this manifests the problem of “treating the sacraments without explicit consideration of the Church, and above all of local and particular Churches.”87 The mendicant orders, exercising an itinerant clerical ministry, seem to sever the bond between local Church and its Eucharist, at least in principle. Thomas’s successful theological defense of the mendicant ministry thus creates a speculative problem for the Eucharistic ecclesiologies of our own time, inspired by Congar and others. This late, synthetic, and critical presentation of Thomas’s thought shows how Congar sought to articulate a Thomistic theology of hierarchy that would retain the Thomist tradition’s intellectual strength, but also admit of certain points of revision. He maintained here the importance of the sacraments for constituting the Body of Christ, even if he saw a problem regarding the relationship of clerical order and jurisdiction in Thomas’s theology of holy orders, stemming from the mendicant controversy.88 Congar recognized the importance of hierarchy, so much so that he offered an elaborate apology for the idea in “La hiérarchie comme service.” But his defense of hierarchy was only reluctantly Thomistic—and emphatically non-Dionysian. He preferred to emphasize the Thomistic theology of the indwelling of God in the faithful through the theological virtues and the grace of Christ, an ecclesiological vision we see both toward the beginning and the end of his influential theological career. He saw the 85 86 87 88 from Aquinas, with many references given. Congar, “Vision de l’Église,” 536. Congar, “Vision de l’Église,” 537–38. He refers to the historical work of Joseph Lécuyer, “Les étapes de l’enseignement thomiste sur l’épiscopat,” Revue thomiste 57 (1957): 29–52. The question interested Dominican Thomists in the era of Vatican II. See, e.g., Santiago Ramirez, O.P., De episcopatu ut sacramento deque episcoporum collegio (Salamanca: Instituto Histórico Dominicano de San Esteban, 1966). Congar, “Vision de l’Église,” 537. Congar, “Vision de l’Église,” 529. Congar’s Imperfect Critique of “Hierarchiolog y” 569 sacraments as efficacious causes of this human participation in God’s life, and embraced Thomas’s important arguments for the nature of sacramental causality. Hierarchy, in Congar’s eyes, needed to be rehabilitated as service, διακονία, and could only then be counted among the truly spiritual manifestations of the divinely structured Mystical Body. To make hierarchy appealing, Congar thought he needed to jettison Dionysius, and hide embarrassing Dionysian aspects of Aquinas. Perfecting Hierarchy: Restoring Dionysius to Congar’s Rehabilitated Hierarchy Congar succeeded in rehabilitating hierarchy, striking a compromise with the “hierarchiological” approach of the past. This is evident in the documents of Vatican II, which contain abundant usage of the term “hierarchy.” The broad effort to develop a “theology of the laity” in which Congar was involved also bore evident fruit, especially in Vatican II’s Apostolicam Actuositatem, the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity. In §3 of the decree, we read how, “through the faith, hope, and charity which the Holy Spirit diffuses in the hearts of all members of the Church,” the laity receive an “apostolate,” that is, a share in the Apostolic office of preaching the Gospel.89 This recalls Congar’s emphasis on the theological virtues and the Spirit within a “total ecclesiology” inspired by Thomistic moral theological principles. The same passage states: The laity derive the right and duty to the apostolate from their union with Christ the head; incorporated into Christ’s Mystical Body through Baptism and strengthened by the power of the Holy Spirit through Confirmation, they are assigned to the apostolate by the Lord Himself. . . . The sacraments, . . . especially the most holy Eucharist, communicate and nourish that charity which is the soul of the entire apostolate.90 89 90 Quotations are taken from the English translations provided by the Vatican website. Apostolicam Actuositatem exclusively follows the modern, binary usage of hierarchy– laity, rather than the ancient, broader usage, which can refer to “our hierarchy” as the full, ecclesiastical triad of sacraments–clergy–laity. 570 Ephrem Reese, O.P. The text makes no reference to Pseudo-Dionysius.91 However, this passage is similar to Dionysian hierarchy, modified by Aquinas’s theology of perfection: sacred initiation through the sacraments leads to a full ecclesiastical sharing in the hierarchic order, knowledge, and activity, perfected especially in charity.92 Rather than focusing on the thirteenth-century usage of Dionysius to support a papalist hierarchiology, as Congar did, we might use Dionysius as a theological justification for magisterial assertions such as Apostolicam Actuositatem §3. In order to avail ourselves of Dionysius, however, it seems that we must overcome the prevailing understanding of Dionysian ecclesiology stemming from Vatican II’s most prominent ecclesiological voice, Yves Congar. In response to Congar’s non-Dionysian rehabilitation of hierarchy, I offer the following five points of correction for a stronger rehabilitation of this essentially Dionysian concept: (1) a better neo-Platonist genealogy of Dionysius, (2) a unified sense of “our hierarchy” as including laity, (3) the Pauline or scriptural character of Dionysius’s neologism, (4) recognition that Thomas is not less, but arguably more, Dionysian than other Western theologians of the Church, and (5) the enduring presence of Dionysius in Thomas’s mature theology of Christian perfection. (1) A better neo-Platonist genealogy of Dionysius will admit not only the influence of Plotinus and borrowing from Proclus, but also the importance of sacraments as a form of neo-Platonist “theurgy.” A significant dispute arose in the third and fourth centuries within the pagan neo-Platonist schools over “theurgy” as the privileged way to union with God.93 Dionysius does bring with him a Plotinian God 91 92 93 See the reference to Dionysius in Lumen Gentium §28, note 66. This occurs within chapter 3, “On the Hierarchical Structure of the Church and in Particular on the Episcopate.” The placement of this chapter after chapter 2, “On the People of God,” is one of the best-known instances of the vindication of the theology of the laity—although it appears that the notion of “people” is intended to include both laity and clergy (“hierarchy”). See Gilles Emery, O.P., “The Ecclesial Fruit of the Eucharist in St. Thomas Aquinas,” in Trinity, Church, and the Human Person: Thomistic Essays (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2007), 155–72; Joseph Wawrykow, “The Greek Fathers in the Eucharistic Theology of Thomas Aquinas,” in Thomas Aquinas and the Greek Fathers, ed. Michael Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, and Roger Nutt (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2019), 274–302. This is documented in Iamblichus’s De mysteriis, a response to Plotinus’s disciple Porphyry: see Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, trans. Emma C. Clarke, John M. Dillon, and Jackson P. Hershbell (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003). For the most Congar’s Imperfect Critique of “Hierarchiolog y” 571 who loves himself and is the source of an order of intellectual beings. But this heritage does nothing to predispose Dionysius to a “metaphysics of the One” that leads to overbearing papalism or legalism, as Congar suggests. Rather, Plotinus’s Platonism is the basis for a metaphysics of return, which Dionysius will refine through his use of later neo-Platonist theology into a theory of sacramental worship that can be intellectually appreciated, but not exhausted. His notion of ascent and deification is not only intellectual, but theurgic. (2) The work of Christ is a work in which all participate. Both clergy and lay persons are taken up into the “theurgy” of Christ. Dionysius purifies theurgy of its polytheist character, and instead of a pagan pantheon, describes a universe of men and angels being divinized through sacramental participation in Jesus. This universal access to Christ through symbolic acts of his own institution should be central to a “theology of the laity.” (3) Dionysius’s “hierarchy” is indeed a novel term, but it names something that we can identify, in an inchoate form, in the writings of St. Paul. Dionysius’s pseudonymity is a literary device signaling his intent to follow Paul’s theology.94 He especially develops Paul’s theology of the Church and its order by imitating Paul’s counsel to the “hierarch” Timothy. In writing as a Pauline thinker in a fifth or sixth century milieu of monastic conflict, Dionysius transposes Pauline theology into a new key. He uses Paul and other scriptural sources as his primary authorities, speaking in sophisticated philosophical terms to a later ecclesiastical audience. (4) Saint Thomas was accused by anti-mendicant theologians and canonists in his own time of transgressing hierarchy.95 It would be a larger project to chart how he defends his Dionysian reading, from his early polemical work, the Contra impugnanes, through the secunda secundae of the Summa theologiae. Both William of Saint-Amour and Congar, in opposed ways, think that Thomas Aquinas is “less Dionysian” than 94 95 extensive study of theurgy, see Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus, 2nd ed. (Kettering, OH: Angelico, 2014). David V. Meconi gives a very helpful comparison of Augustine and Dionysius, showing how both of these Christian Neoplatonists developed a Eucharistic theology in response to the phenomenon of pagan theurgy (“Augustine and Dionysius the Areopagite: Two Christian Responses to Theurgy,” in Divine Promise and Human Freedom in Contemporary Catholic Thought, ed. Kevin A. McMahon [Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2015], 15–36). Stang, Apophasis and Pseudonymity, 3. William of Saint-Amour, De periculis novissimorum temporum, trans. G. Geltner (Leuven: Peeters, 2008), e.g., 56–57. 572 Ephrem Reese, O.P. his theological rivals. Aquinas responds directly to the challenge to his Dionysian loyalty, showing that he understands Dionysius’s basic notion of “our hierarchy” better than some thirteenth-century secular Masters. He notices Dionysius’s comments on hierarchy in EH 5.1 in a way that few others do, and like Dionysius he is disposed to a sacraments-first approach to Church order.96 Like the critique of William, that of Congar proceeds ex malo intellectu Dionysii. Thomas’s following of Dionysius here, incidentally, brings him into harmony with Eastern ecclesiology, an enduring concern of Congar’s. (5) Thomas’s mature theology of Christian perfection in ST II-II, qq. 184–89, is a Dionysian-influenced one, augmented especially by his reading of Gregory the Great. His polemical focus leads him to spell out Christian perfection in the way that he sees it most clearly on display: in the Dominican life of contemplation and preaching.97 But this culmination, in which perfect religio perfectly mirrors the active and contemplative life of the apostle, fits within the broader arc of the secunda pars. As Congar rightly emphasizes, this work describes a universal spiritual movement. It is the pneumatological and moral motus creaturae rationalis in Deum captured speculatively. The implicit ordering toward Christ of the secunda pars, and the explicit treatment of the grace of Christ in the Incarnation and the sacraments in the tertia pars, is in harmony with Dionysius’s liturgical presentation of the divinizing sacraments in the EH. Congar allows a faulty understanding of Dionysian hierarchy to hold a central place in his project of salvaging Aquinas and refounding the idea of hierarchy as service. Thomas’s polemical works, including the secunda secundae, show that his theology of the Church is indeed influenced by Dionysius “in its deep lines.”98 And this is a blessing for the theology of hierarchy. Dionysian hierarchy makes every member of the Church, from bishop to catechumen, a sharer in the luminous works of God. The idea 96 97 98 Aquinas, Contra impugnantes, ch. 2: “In chapter 4 [our chapter 5] of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, Dionysius distinguishes our hierarchy into three parts [in tria]: sacred actions, those who communicate them, and those who only receive them” (Leonine ed., 41A:55 [lines 41–44]). ST II-II, q. 188, a. 6. This should be understood in the context (1) of Thomas’s having to defend, throughout his life, the very existence of the Order of Preachers, (2) of the dignity of the apostles in mediating grace and doctrine to the entire Church, and (3) of the ultimately contemplative vocation of all Christians to see God in the beatific vision. Congar, “Aspects ecclésiologiques,” 132. Congar’s Imperfect Critique of “Hierarchiolog y” 573 of hierarchy, while obscure to the uninitiated, does not seem to entail the problem of bureaucratic mediation that some fear. Because Christ the “theurgist” is present in liturgy and sacraments, his divinizing power is accessible to every Christian in rites passed on by certain ministers—an economy that Christ established, and through which he actively works.99 Dionysius gives, not an obsessive “hierarchiology” of clerical discipline, but an exposition of “our hierarchy” as a varied yet beautifully ordered sharing in the light of Christ, leading us back to the Father of Lights.100 99 100 See Pavlos, “Theurgy,” 158–61. See the very beginning of CH, Dionysius’s gloss on James 1:17: “Every good endowment and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” He refers pointedly to “Jesus, the Light of the Father.” Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2022): 575–600 575 Thomistic-Balthasarian Comments on Thomas Joseph White’s The Incarnate Lord Angela Franks St. John’s Seminary Boston, MA Reading Thomas Joseph White’s The Incarnate Lord is a very great pleasure. His carefully argued and measured theology draws on the thinking of St. Thomas Aquinas in original and fruitful ways. As a lover of the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, however, I must confess that my enjoyment was occasionally tempered with suffering—but, shall we say, only in the lower parts of my soul. Among the many things I appreciate in this book is Fr. White’s love of patristic and medieval sources. Following his guide, St. Thomas Aquinas, he combines precision with breadth of knowledge and depth of thought. Further, like St. Thomas’s generous reading of manifold sources, Fr. White makes frequent irenic gestures. I am thinking in particular of the emphasis on the filial mode of Christ’s obedience throughout, plus the gentle reading of Karl Barth’s treatment of obedience and the end of chapter 8 on the death of Christ. He and I share many points of agreement, almost too many to mention: the enduring importance of Chalcedonian Christological metaphysics; a suspicion of liberal historicism; and an opposition to theological anachronisms, in which the Person of Christ is interpreted according to contemporary mores rather than through revelation. I will expand on two areas of particular agreement (on analogy and on the Son’s obedience), before raising a question concerning the beatific vision, and then recording some criticisms regarding soteriology (specifically, regarding Christ’s abandonment and descent). 576 Angela Franks Praise for White’s Treatment of Analogy and Obedience Analogy The chapters pertaining to analogy, natural theology, and human nature continue the Catholic theological dialogue with Barth begun by thinkers such as Erich Przywara, Gottlieb Söhngen, and Balthasar. White reiterates many of the points that they made in the mid-twentieth century, in particular the necessity of some sort of similarity between human nature and God (200–201), and therefore between human language and revelation (228–32) for the Incarnation and revelation to occur at all.1 Given that these proposals have been rehearsed before, although too often lacking the careful argumentation that White brings to the question, I will merely indicate my appreciation for these pages and move to developing White’s overriding concern for the defense of metaphysics in general for the very possibility of Christology. As White points out in his chapters most dedicated to Barth, one’s rejection of analogy does not mean that one ceases to speak of God. On the contrary, the rejection of analogy only means that one speaks either equivocally or univocally—or, even more likely, oscillating between the two. A pure equivocity, also manifested as an extreme apophaticism, is well-nigh impossible to maintain, because the pole that is remote (the divine) usually becomes forgotten, practically speaking. And why would it not be? That of which we never speak, even if because we believe we cannot speak of it, becomes that which we forget. The pole that is close at hand fills our language and hence our thoughts. It becomes the only terrain we explore conceptually. This practical univocity manifests itself theologically as a reduction of God to our world when our world is all of which we can speak. Thus, it is no accident that White sniffs out some Spinozism in Barth’s metaphysics. Spinozistic univocity is the great alternative to analogical thinking. As Catherine Pickstock puts it, regarding the greatest recent exponent of such univocity, Gilles Deleuze, “the two philosophical options in consequence would appear to be Deleuzian [univocity] or Platonic [analogy], respectively.”2 One might argue that it is mere human reflection that has created these 1 2 Thomas Joseph White, O.P., The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2017); cited parenthetically in main text. Catherine Pickstock, Repetition and Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 87. Thomistic-Balthasarian Comments 577 alternatives of equivocity, univocity, and analogy. The Christian approach, it is argued, involves rejecting the commencement of thought on the human level and instead beginning with the divine, such that these alternatives are surpassed with the super-abundance of God as revealed in Christ. Indeed, one might see Barth’s project as precisely this attempt to bypass human constructions in pursuit of the divine excess. One might reply that such a method does not escape the messenger fallacy, in that it presumes that Barth alone has escaped to tell us that theology has been human, all too human. That seems tendentious, however. More to the point, I would respond that the problem of the One and the Many—to which analogy is (I contend) the most insightful response—is a perennial question that reality must pose to the mind. This is the case for sound metaphysical reasons. But given the doubt that a post-Kantian might harbor about metaphysics, let us reframe the question in theological terms: the One and the Many is a perennial question because of the reality of God himself as triune. In other words, in addition to the enduring questions of unity and multiplicity that the world cannot but force upon any thoughtful person, the truth of the triune God demands reflection upon the One and the Many. I would argue still further: it is precisely because God is triune that the otherness of the world from God can be conceived in positive terms and not merely as a fall from a primordial unity into a regrettable multiplicity (as in many varieties of Platonism, both pagan and Christian). Because God is triune, the world’s being-as-other is real, not counterfeit, and good, not a fall. As Balthasar puts it, the Trinity shows that “the fact that ‘the Other’ exists is absolutely good.”3 Only in Christianity can creaturely multiplicity be given divine warrant.4 This metaphysical and Trinitarian introduction leads nicely to the concerns of the next topic for which I will praise White’s book, his treatment of the Son’s obedience. The Son’s Obedience In chapter 6 (277–307), Fr. White critiques Barth on the Son’s obedience and provides his own positive contribution (280: “The Son’s divine 3 4 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 5, The Last Act [hereafter, TD5], trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 81 (emphasis original). There are aspects of this in Thomas as well, in that he recognizes a transcendental “multiplicity,” in addition to a transcendental “one,” because of the Trinity; see the texts in Gilles Emery, O.P., The Trinitarian Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Francesca Aran Murphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 137–41. 578 Angela Franks receptivity is the transcendent ontological foundation for his temporal mission among human beings”).5 I am in substantive agreement with his approach on these points. I disagree with White on the extent to which his own interpretation explicitly rules out the possibility of “attribut[ing] obedience to God the Son in his eternal procession as God” (305)—or, rather, I agree with what seems to be an unacknowledged implication of his thought. It seems to me that White does indeed provide a way to attribute obedience to the eternal Son’s procession—but only analogically. In making this case, I will be following Balthasar’s explication of the Son’s obedience. This way of proceeding will also prepare the ground for my more substantive disagreements with White in the last part of the essay. Balthasar depended upon analogy throughout his trilogy dedicated to the transcendentals: of Beauty in The Glory of the Lord, Goodness in Theo-Drama, and Truth in Theo-Logic.6 The purpose of his trilogy is to explicate the similarity and greater dissimilarity between creaturely Beauty, Goodness and Truth, on the one hand, and the divine Beauty, Goodness, and Truth that is identical with God himself, on the other. Balthasar knew the necessity of analogy for his project: “‘Glory’ [as God’s beauty revealed in the world] stands and falls with the unsurpassability of the analogia entis, the ever greater dissimilarity to God no matter how great the similarity to Him (Denz.-Schonm. 806).”7 This project of connecting and distinguishing the world and God is based on a key insight, that all good things have some analogous similarity (within an ever-greater dissimilarity) to the triune God. Balthasar’s 5 6 7 I am not so sure, however, that Barth intends the hard claim that White attributes to him: “Obedience is entirely constitutive of [the Son’s] person. . . . God the Son proceeds from the Father in and through his act of obedience to the divine will of the Father” (296–97; emphasis original). This would mean obedience functions as filiation, using Thomas’s language (the relation and personal property that constitutes the Son; see the texts and the priority of relation as distinguishing the Persons in Emery, Trinitarian Theology, 120–27). If this is indeed true for Barth, it is certainly insupportable. Obedience cannot take the place of filiation; it is rather an analogical expression of the Son’s filial “stance” or relation vis-à-vis the Father. Barth’s rejection of analogy makes, of course, this way of proceeding methodologically difficult for him. I explicate Balthasar’s use of analogy and its importance to his Trinitarian theology and metaphysics in “Trinitarian Analogia Entis in Hans Urs von Balthasar,” The Thomist 62 (1998): 533–59, and in “The Epiphany of Being: Trinitarian Analogia Entis and the Transcendentals in Hans Urs von Balthasar” (PhD diss., Boston College, 2006). Hans Urs von Balthasar, Glory of the Lord, vol. 5, In the Realm of Metaphysics in Modernity, trans. Andrew Louth, John Saward, Rowan Williams, and Oliver Davies, ed. John Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), 548. Thomistic-Balthasarian Comments 579 approach depends upon a Thomistic metaphysics, reflected in a quote from the Summa theologiae given by White (ST I, q. 4, a. 2): “Since therefore God is the first effective cause of things, the perfections of all things must pre-exist in God in a more eminent way. . . . Consequently, He must contain in Himself the whole perfection of being” (196n54). This is the context in which Balthasar explicates the analogous attribution of human virtues and evangelical counsels, such as poverty and obedience, to the triune Persons. This method means that however close he and Barth are theologically—and they are often very close—they cannot agree on this basic starting point. Balthasar was especially clear about the analogical attribution of obedience to the Son: The application of the concept of obedience to the divine person is, of course, a figure of speech—an anthropomorphism. But, in the final analysis, all human speech about God is anthropomorphic, and this figure has been made definitive and proper by the Incarnation of the Son (Phil 2:7). In applying it, everything is to be excluded from the concept of obedience that derives from the relationship between God and the creature insofar as the creature is regarded qua creature, that is, as having its origin in nothingness. Everything is to be retained, on the other hand, and translated into the infinite (in the sense of the via eminentiae) that pertains to the analogy between God and the creature as the positive image of God, or more properly, of the Trinity.8 This commitment, unfortunately lacking in Barth, means that Balthasar can agree with and even quote from the section on obedience in Church Dogmatics that Fr. White treats, but the ideas will be reinterpreted within Balthasar’s analogical framework.9 8 9 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Christian State of Life, trans. Sister Mary Frances McCarthy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983), 78. I have quoted this text at some length because it presents clearly Balthasar’s foundational presupposition that he repeats across his entire works. But this means that the reader needs to keep in mind the metaphysical context of analogy while reading Balthasar’s Christology and Trinitarian theology. Balthasar repeats his commitment to analogy frequently—in fact, in every book of the trilogy, as I work through them in Epiphany of Being. But the reader can still cherry-pick passages out of this larger context and misinterpret them. See, e.g., The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, Seeing the Form [hereafter, GL1], trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, ed. Joseph Fessio, S.J., and John Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1983), 276. For a similar account of the importance of analogy in Balthasar’s 580 Angela Franks What Balthasar “excludes from the concept of obedience” is any inequality between the Persons (any distinction of nature, including a distinction of will)10 and any temporal sense (a succession of moments in God). What is retained is the hypostatic distinction and orientation of the Son to the Father, which is constituted by the processions in God. The Son is a receptive hypostatic “stance” vis-à-vis the generating Father, a receptivity captured in the Scholastic language of “passive generation.”11 In receiving all things from his Father, he also receives the Father’s will. As Thomas puts it: I answer that the Father and the Son do have the same will, but the Father does not have his will from another, whereas the Son does have his will from another, that is, from the Father. Thus, the Son accomplishes his own will as that of another, that is, as having it from another; but the Father accomplishes his will as his own, that is, not having it from another. This is why he says: I do not seek my own will, that is, such as would be mine if it originated from myself but my will, as being from another, that is from the Father.12 This personal structure of receptivity of the Father’s divine will constitutes the eternal form of the Son’s filial obedience.13 10 11 12 13 Trinitarian theology, see John R. Betz, “The Humility of God: On a Disputed Question in Trinitarian Theology,” Nova et Vetera (English) 17, no. 3 (2019): 769–810. See TD5, 88: “The Father has given the Son everything, including his will.” See the treatment by Michele M. Schumacher, A Trinitarian Anthropology: Adrienne von Speyr and Hans Urs von Balthasar in Dialogue with Thomas Aquinas (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2014), 333–36. White discusses Thomas’s treatment of the same idea, i.e., the Son’s reception of the divine nature and hence the divine will from the Father (302–3). See Matthew Levering, The Achievement of Hans Urs von Balthasar: An Introduction to His Trilogy (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2019), 73: “Von Balthasar remarks that [Christ’s obedience to the Father] means that there must be some analogous intra-Trinitarian obedience of the Son as Son. Insofar as obedience characterizes the form of Christ vis-à-vis the Father, that form must analogously express an intra-Trinitarian form. For von Balthasar, Christ’s filial obedience is an expression of receptive, self-surrendering love.” Thomas, Super Ioan 5, lec. 5, no. 798. I am grateful to Michael Waldstein for pointing out this text, which places obedience not in the relation between the human and divine wills of Christ but personally between the Father and Son. This form of obedience as a state or “stance,” prior to its expression through obeying certain commands, is crucial for Balthasar’s concept of obedience. As Joshua R. Brown states, “Obedience is not merely consent to this or that; it is an attitude of openness, Thomistic-Balthasarian Comments 581 White comes very close to just this idea: “Because this receptivity (as proceeding from the Father) characterizes his very person, he can be obedient in and through his human actions in a characteristically filial way, that is to say, as the Son made man. His human obedience thus reveals his eternal, personal relativity to the Father” (281; emphasis original). Put in Balthasarian terms, the analogous source of human obedience is the eternal hypostatic receptivity of the Son to the Father.14 Balthasar would add that this is expressed in Jesus’s human actions, to be sure, but also in his eternal filial “stance” vis-à-vis the Father.15 Fr. White grounds these reflections, as he must, in the truth that the mission of the Son is a temporal extension of his eternal procession from the Father. “[W]e understand the Son’s ‘pre-temporal obedience’ as pertaining to his mission to become incarnate, received from the Father” (280; see also the formulation on 306). I would merely clarify that this mission refers to his very Person, in that there is only a logical distinction between his procession from the Father and his Person.16 The Son could not proceed from the Father to the world in an additional and new procession, because that would in effect constitute an additional Person in God. It is better to say that the procession 14 15 16 of allowing oneself to be moved and directed by God” (Balthasar in Light of Early Confucianism [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020], 108). Jesus’s “a priori obedience” means “his existence itself is already obedience” (Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Christology and Ecclesial Obedience,” trans. Edward T. Oakes, in Balthasar, Explorations in Theology, vol. 4, Spirit and Institution [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995], 139–69, at 142; emphasis original). As White points out, this is expressed in Christ’s prayer, which is not directed toward a generic God but rather “to the Father: it is primarily, therefore, a human mode of expression of his intra-Trinitarian filial identity, . . . a human expression and enactment of his eternal relation to the Father” (Incarnate Lord, 268). Schumacher cites Balthasar’s A Theology of History, Communio Books (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 31: the incarnate Son’s “mode of being here on earth will simply be the manifestation in the created sphere, the translation into creatureliness, of this heavenly form of existence: existence as receiving, as openness to the will of the Father, as subsistent fulfillment of that will in a continuous mission” (Trinitarian Anthropology, 326). As Brown notes, Christ’s obedience was “how God revealed himself as triune” as well as “the fundamental language of the Incarnation, both God’s word to man and the possibility of man’s answer to God” (Balthasar, 111, 119; see also 132–39). Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] I, q. 41, a. 1, ad 2; see my “The Mission and Person of Christ and the Christian in Hans Urs von Balthasar,” in The Center Is Jesus Christ Himself: Essays on Revelation, Salvation, and Evangelization in Honor of Robert P. Imbelli, ed. Andrew Meszaros (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2021), 272–99. 582 Angela Franks that he eternally is from the Father is his mission when it is related to the creature as its temporal term.17 This precision means that his mission is personal, that is, coinciding with his personal procession from the Father but in the conditions of the Incarnation in time. This further underscores the fact that the Son’s obedience is not that of a nature to another nature but of a person to another person—the Son to the generating Father who “gave everything [including his commandments] by begetting.”18 In any case, a development of such a Thomistic mission-Christology as White’s here is sorely needed both for clarity and for deepening contemporary Christological reflection.19 A Question (or Three) on the Beatific Vision In addition to this praise, I would like to pose a question to White concerning his treatment of the beatific vision of Christ. Or, rather, I will pose three distinct questions that all center around what still needs to be clarified in order for White’s account of the beatific vision to be persuasive. I say “White’s account” and not “the Thomist account” because, as White himself acknowledges, there is a development in his proposal that extends beyond Thomas’s argument for Christ’s beatific vision. I am not convinced that this development, as stated, does the work he wants it to do. 17 18 19 See ST I, q. 43, a. 2, ad 3. See also Emery, Trinitarian Theology, 364–68, esp. 364: “A divine person’s mission will have two constitutive features: (1) this person’s eternal procession; and (2) the divine person’s relation to the creature to whom this person is made present in a new way.” See Thomas, Catena aurea in Ioan, ch. 10, lec. 4. The complete text is: “The Word did not receive the command by a word, but in the only-begotten Word of the Father there is every word. When the Son is said to receive what he has substantially, the power is not lessened, but his generation is shown. For to the Son, whom he generates as a perfect Son, the Father gave everything by begetting.” I am grateful to Michael Waldstein for pointing out this passage (trans. Waldstein; personal communication). The lack of understanding of the missions of the Son and Holy Spirit has been put into relief by the efforts of some erstwhile Thomistic critics of Balthasar (who would need to criticize White as well on this point). See, for example, Alyssa Lyra Pitstick’s strange suspicion of Balthasar’s language of mission (Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ’s Descent into Hell [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007], 215). A similar misunderstanding of the hypostatic center in Thomas’s category of mission leads R. Jared Staudt to confuse divine missions with appropriations in his critique of Balthasar’s Trinitarian Christology in “For the Holy Trinity: The Mission of Christ and the Order of His Human Soul,” Angelicum 91, no. 3 (2014): 569–606. Thomistic-Balthasarian Comments 583 First, I believe that the nub of the problem concerning Christ’s beatific vision could be more precisely stated. This is because there have been too many strawmen scattered about in theological reflection on this issue. So allow me to first dispense with three of them. With Fr. White, I am not persuaded by Jean Galot’s argument that Christ’s beatific vision would be incompatible with human suffering (242). There is no suffering in heaven, certainly, but given that the Son of God is incarnate in human history, an account of his beatific vision could accommodate both the vision and the ordinary human experiences, including that of suffering and death. In fact, I believe that Balthasar’s (late) understanding of the visio immediata of Christ mediated through his mission consciousness does just this; but more on this later. I am also not convinced by Galot’s concern of monophysitism, such that the possession of the beatific vision through a calculation of maximal human perfection in Christ would somehow negate that humanity (242). Human perfection is just that, the perfection (and not the negation) of humanity. Lastly, I find Fr. Thomas Weinandy’s wish to avoid positing both a human “I” and a divine “I” in Christ understandable, but I do not think arguing for Christ’s having, “as man, only one ‘I’ and that human” is promising. 20 Weinandy is clear elsewhere that he holds that there is only one, divine Person in Christ, so his is an attempt to make sense of Christ’s theandric consciousness, not a proposal of ontological Arianism. But it is insufficiently protected from the latter, I believe.21 If these concerns do not get at the crux of the problem of the beatific vision, what does? There are three points for which the theologies of the beatific vision of Christ do not yet sufficiently account (to my knowledge): first, the necessity of a hypostatic subject for the beatific vision; second, its reality as the vision of the triune God by human subjects, and not an inner-Trinitarian vision; and, third, the possible distinction between a beatific and an immediate vision of God by Christ. First, the requirement of a hypostatic subject who sees God—in other words, a person who is seeing. This is Fr. Weinandy’s most important (and still insufficiently answered) point, namely, that the beatific vision is a 20 21 Thomas Weinandy, “Jesus’ Filial Vision of the Father,” Pro Ecclesia 13 (2004): 189–201, at 196 (quoted in White, Incarnate Lord, 245n16). See the response to Weinandy’s proposals concerning Christ’s consciousness by Anselm Ramelow, O.P., “Persons, Pronouns, and Perfections: A Response to Thomas Weinandy's ‘The Hypostatic Union: Personhood, Consciousness, and Knowledge,’” Nova et Vetera (English ed.) 17, no. 2 (2019): 425–50. 584 Angela Franks reality that only makes full sense for persons, for it is only persons (not natures) who see. Natures provide the power to see, but only persons are the agents of the action.22 Fr. White is clear on the communicatio idiomatum: “There is only one subject to whom all is attributed. . . . Christ was crucified in his human body and suffered physically and spiritually by virtue of his human nature. But it is the Word himself, Jesus Christ, who is the true subject of the suffering” (20–21). Yet this truth still needs to be applied more rigorously to the question of the beatific vision of Christ.23 This leads to my second concern, namely, that the beatific vision is not, properly speaking, meant to describe an inner-Trinitarian reality (e.g., the Son’s union with the Father), but rather a state of the eschatological union of human (and angelic) persons with the whole triune God.24 It is a matter of something White discussed previously, namely, the distinction between union via secondary actuality, or operation, and union via primary actuality, or substantial being (61–69). “By contrast [with the mode of substantial union of divine and human in the Incarnation], our union with 22 23 24 Fr. White responded to this concern with an article referenced but not included in Incarnate Lord: “Dyotheletism and the Instrumental Human consciousness of Jesus,” Pro Ecclesia 17, no. 4 (2008): 396–422. The article is an able defense of White’s use of language that Weinandy felt tended toward Nestorianism: that is, the implication that it is Jesus’s human nature and not the Son who sees the Father, a move that would substantialize or personalize the nature as a rival to the divine Person of the Son. White utilizes patristic sources to show the ancestry of his expressions. The defense of White’s language does not yet, however, meet the substantive point of Weinandy: how can the divine Son contemplate and be united to the triune God (which is, of course, the object of the beatific vision for human persons) from the outside, so to speak, when he is himself one of the Trinity? As Weinandy puts it, “since it is the Son who must be the subject of any such vision of the Father, his vision of the Father cannot be a vision of the divine essence as an object ontologically distinct from and over against himself ” (“Jesus’ Filial Vision of the Father,” 192, quoted in White, Incarnate Lord, 244n14). Weinandy restated this concern recently: “The beatific vision, as first conceived and traditionally employed, is defined as the immediate vision of God possessed by the blessed souls in heaven, and so as a knowledge of God enjoyed by those who are not God. Jesus is not in this ontological situation” (“The Hypostatic Union: Personhood, Consciousness, and Knowledge,” Nova et Vetera [English] 17, no. 2 [2019]: 401–23, at 414). As White, of course, knows: “This grace of the vision of Christ, then, while analogous to that grace received in a human person or angel who sees God, is different insofar as it does not give the soul of Christ an awareness of the Trinity as a subject ontologically distinct from himself, but rather permits the Son to know himself ‘objectively’ and to understand his own filial personhood in a certain and evidential way” (Incarnate Lord, 262). Or more simply later: Christ “does not adore the Trinity” (268). But is this still the beatific vision at all, or some other kind of vision? I propose the latter below. Thomistic-Balthasarian Comments 585 God takes place primarily in the second mode, through human operations” (63). But the divine Persons are not united to each other merely operatively. The Son is certainly united to the Father, but essentially (in the one divine nature) and personally (through the Holy Spirit as the fruit of their love and through perichoresis). These are entirely divine modes of union in comparison to the beatific vision, although the latter is analogous to them—more on this next. Lastly, perhaps the goals that are sought through a theology of the beatific vision can be achieved through distinguishing it with an immediate vision.25 For example, the text by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith cited by White (238n1) in order to demonstrate the magisterial acceptance of Christ’s beatific vision speaks of Jesus’s filial consciousness and “an intimate and immediate knowledge of his Father. . . . The hypostatic union and Jesus’ mission of revelation and redemption require the vision of the Father and the knowledge of his plan of salvation.”26 This immediate knowledge would be properly Trinitarian knowledge, experienced by the theandric Christ—a knowledge of the Father in the Spirit, not of the triune God “as a subject ontologically distinct from himself ” (262). Thus, this language protects what the theology of the beatific vision of Christ wishes to safeguard but underscores the Trinitarian relationship that is at its core. Is the distinction between a beatific vision and a visio immediata a distinction without a difference? I would argue not.27 Both are immediate 25 26 27 Indeed, as Bernard Blankenhorn, O.P., notes, drawing on Jean-Pierre Torrell, one cannot speak in any simple way of “a settled teaching of ‘the tradition’” concerning Christ’s beatific vision: “It was a scholastic consensus that followed a real diversity of patristic positions”; see review of Light in Darkness by Alyssa Lyra Pitstick, Nova et Vetera (English) 6, no. 4 (2008): 951–55, at 954, citing Torrell, Le Christ en ses mystères: La vie et l’œvre de Jésus selon saint Thomas d’Aquin, vol. 1 (Paris: Desclée, 1999), 135–42, and “Saint Thomas d’Aquin et la science du Christ: Une relecture des questions 9–12 de la ‘Tertia Pars’ de la ‘Somme Théologie,’” in Recherches thomasiennes (Paris: Vrin, 2000), 198–213. For Torrell’s hesitations concerning this Scholastic consensus, see the summary in Joshua R. Brotherton, One of the Trinity Has Suffered: Balthasar’s Theology of Divine Suffering in Dialogue (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2019), 91–94. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Notification on the Works of Fr. Jon Sobrino, S.J., Jesus the Liberator (1991) and Christ the Liberator (1999), 2006, §8 (emphasis mine; cited in White, Incarnate Lord, 238n1). Pitstick, in her eager prosecution of Balthasar, does not think so either. She makes the distinction between the two and Balthasar’s use of the language of immediate vision another example of Balthasar’s divergence from orthodoxy (Light in Darkness, 164–90). 586 Angela Franks visions, but, by definition, the beatific vision refers to the heavenly state of created persons, while a visio immediata is not so specified in advance, such that it could be descriptive of the state of a divine Person operating by means of a human nature. Fr. White himself approaches close to this by his presentation of the beatific vision of Christ, which, to my mind, more resembles a visio immediata by the Incarnate Son of the Father than a beatific vision of a human person. He insightfully takes up Maximus the Confessor’s distinction between nature and mode, such that the vision is experienced by Christ’s human operations of intellect and will, while its subject is in the Son. This latter point means that the vision is “filial in mode” (246): “Not only the human nature but also the graces of the humanity of Christ subsist in the Word, and thus have a filial mode as well” (262). This emphasis on Christ’s filial mode is one of the strengths of the chapters on soteriology. He and I are in complete agreement on the filial mode of this vision and, indeed, all of Christ’s subsistence and operations. But would this filial mode, which is due to the personal existence of the Son, mean Christ’s vision is only analogously a beatific vision of the triune God, but properly an immediate filial vision of the Father in the Holy Spirit? I would add to this that the mission-Christology discussed above has an important implication for this question. If Jesus’s mission is not merely an understanding of the Father’s plan but also co-extensive with his Person as proceeding from the Father, then Jesus’s knowledge of his mission is one with his knowledge of his identity as the Son sent by the Father.28 This means that, when Balthasar proposes Christ’s mission as the criterion for what happens in his earthly life, this is based on a hypostatic reality. Balthasar believes that the unchangeable identity of the Son provides the possibility for Jesus’s conscious experience of the visio to be veiled for the sake of his mission, leaving the underlying reality of his mission-Person untouched.29 Even in this experiential veiling, however, the Father is present precisely as the one who is missed. 28 29 My “Mission and Person” essay explicates Balthasar’s mission-Christology. Joseph Ratzinger’s Christology is similar; see Introduction to Christianity, 2nd ed., trans. J. R. Foster and Michael J. Miller (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 184–228, and Behold the Pierced One: An Approach to a Spiritual Christology, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 13–46, and “On the Essence of the Priesthood,” in Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1996), 105–31. I would like to see a stronger presentation in White of this hypostatic reality of mission. Balthasar’s own treatment of Christ’s visio beata is inconsistent. See Randall S. Rosenberg, “Christ’s Human Knowledge: A Conversation with Lonergan and Thomistic-Balthasarian Comments 587 To sum up: a visio immediata of the Father by the incarnate Son would avoid the three problems with a beatific vision while safeguarding the consciousness of the incarnate Son of his divine identity and mission. It is “analogous” to the beatific union but differs in being proper to a divine Person.30 A problem arises, however: this approach does not in an obvious way meet the soteriological concern of St. Thomas, namely, that “Christ must have the vision so that he can communicate it to others” (239n2). This should indeed be given more thought, but I will make a proposal by way of starting the conversation: the beatific vision as the creaturely and eschatological mode of union with the triune God occurs through a grace that perfects the human being. This perfection was conveyed to Christ’s human nature at the moment of his conception through the grace of union (84–91). Thus, Christ’s human nature possesses the perfection of the saint in heaven, even if he is not thereby engaged in the action of the saint in heaven (contemplating the triune God), which is proper to a human and not a divine Person. Thus, his human nature is still the instrumental cause of the perfection of the saints in heaven. Further, let us grant that the mode of beatific union of creatures is an analogous participation in the divine mode of Trinitarian union, in particular the personal union of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In this way, the visio immediata of the incarnate Son united to the Father in the Holy Spirit would be the efficient, exemplary, and final cause of the beatific union of the saints with the Trinity. This intimate connection between Christ’s incarnate experience of the Father and the beatific vision of the saints meets the Thomistic concern for the soteriological causality of Christ. 30 Balthasar,” Theological Studies 71 (2010): 817–45, at 828–29 (Balthasar’s use of the category is “fluid”); see also Brotherton’s chronological treatment in ch. 3 of One of the Trinity, esp. 109–21. Brotherton grasps that the key to the question is Christ’s mission-person: for Balthasar, “comprehension of [Christ’s] mission implies complete understanding of the divine essence since His missio and processio are identical” (120). He considers Balthasar’s late understanding of the beatific vision of Christ to contain features similar to Jacques Maritain’s distinction between supraconsciousness and infra-consciousness (113–18). Balthasar’s later work in Theo-Logic, vol. 2, Truth of God, trans. Adrian J. Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), comes close to this more nuanced position, citing Adrienne von Seyr’s commentary on 1 Corinthians: “On earth the Son has an immediate and absolute knowledge of the Father, which as such cannot grow and to which corresponds an absolute mission” (290n17). See also Nicholas J. Healy, “Simul viator et comprehensor: The Filial Mode of Christ’s Knowledge,” Nova et Vetera (English) 11, no. 2 (2013): 341–55. 588 Angela Franks By way of closing out this section, I would like to observe that I am not convinced by Fr. White’s strong language of the necessity of Christ’s beatific vision as the basis for the operative unity of Christ: “Only this vision safeguards the unity of the personal actions of Christ in and through his two distinct natures and operations. . . . [The vision] is essential for there to be personal unity in the voluntary acts of the man Jesus.” (246, emphasis mine).31 This is a daring proposal that, as he freely acknowledges, goes beyond those of Thomas (while not, for all that, being necessarily incompatible with them).32 My hesitation is entirely Fr. White’s own fault. His earlier chapters convinced me that an accidental operation cannot be the foundation for Christ’s ontological unity (e.g., 41–43). But would the beatific vision not be precisely such an accidental operation? I recognize that White’s proposal regards the operative unity (the unity of action) and not the ontological unity of Christ, but it is by no means clear to me why the primary causality of the grace of union (that is, the hypostatic union itself ) is insufficient as a basis for operative unity. Is it really the case that only the beatific vision of Christ, as White puts it, would provide the operative unity that the hypostatic union of Christ should already provide?33 Assuming, however, that we could dispense with the “only,” I grant Fr. White’s important point, that Christ’s human knowledge must be constant in its awareness of his identity lest his human nature be left thinking, willing, and operating in psychological isolation from the Logos. My thesis is that securing this truth requires anchoring Christ’s human knowledge of his identity as the One Sent in his filial relation to the Father, which 31 32 33 Christopher M. Hadley, S.J., addresses White’s critique of Balthasar’s understanding of “faith,” arguing that the latter is not incompatible with a certain reading of Christ’s visio (“The Archetypal Faith of Christ,” Theological Studies 81, no. 3[2020]: 671–92, at 683–86). He does not, however, address White’s concern about operative unity. Brotherton cites Guy Mansini to argue that Christ’s beatific vision, for Thomas, is fitting but not strictly necessary (Guy Mansini, “Understanding St. Thomas on Christ’s Knowledge of God,” The Thomist 59, no. 1 [1995]: 91–124, at 94–96, cited in One of the Trinity, 89n32). If not necessary to the Incarnation, it is hard to see how it could be necessary for Christ’s operative unity. See White himself: “The cooperation of the two wills [of Christ] stems from the hypostatic identity of Christ and is indicative of the unity of his person” (255). See also from some of the loveliest pages of the book: “Because Christ’s human nature is united hypostatically to this divine will in its filial mode, the latter must exact upon this nature the expression of its own hypostatic identity: that of God the Son” (265). Is not the cooperation of the two natures and wills one example of operative unity stemming from the hypostatic union? Thomistic-Balthasarian Comments 589 is unchanging. It may be, in fact, that Thomas’s language of the vision operating in the apex of Christ’s soul would be the best for capturing this awareness of his filial identity.34 Some Disagreements on Soteriology As the preceding indicates, I agree entirely with Fr. White’s “central claim” that “Chalcedonian Christology has a permanent importance for Christian theology” (236). I disagree with the structural implication of the book: that Chalcedonian Christology (expounded in the first half ) naturally leads to one (and only one?) soteriology (the essays in the second half ). Certainly, some forms of soteriology are ruled out by Chalcedon, such an Arian or Pelagian proposal that would make our salvation solely a matter of exemplarism. Nevertheless, the Church did not follow up the early Christological counsels with similar conciliar activity on the matter of soteriology, allowing a de facto orthodox soteriological multiplicity that is reflected in Aquinas himself.35 In that spirit, I offer alternatives to some aspects of Fr. White’s soteriology. Abandonment Fr. White’s chapter on the cry of abandonment from the Cross (Mark 15:34) is an insightful and moving treatment of the Son’s sufferings. His explication of the “I thirst” cry ( John 19:28) was especially profound (323–28).36 This chapter showed the coherence of Jesus’s sufferings in his divine Person and nature, the eschatological nature of Jesus’s desire, and the possibility of the coexistence of suffering with hope and with an immediate vision of God. The chapter did not, however, sufficiently answer the question of why Jesus chose to speak of being abandoned by God. If Jesus wished only to express that he suffered and experienced eschatological desire for us and for his resurrection, surely other psalms would have been 34 35 36 I am grateful to Adrian J. Walker for his help in articulating this paragraph. For example, Thomas accepts but contextualizes Anselm’s soteriology of satisfaction by presenting three other ways in which Christ saves us (ST III, q. 48; see Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, God Sent His Son: A Contemporary Christology, trans. Henry Taylor [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010], 289–300). I treat the water theme in the Gospels from anthropological, Christological, and Trinitarian perspectives in “Fluidity: Man, the Triune God, and the Eucharistic Christ,” Communio 46 (2019): 585–619. Fr. White’s treatment of John 19:28 pointed out a lacuna in that essay, in that I do not treat the “I thirst” cry. 590 Angela Franks more appropriate (e.g., “Oh, God, come to my assistance! Oh, Lord, make haste to help me!” [Ps 69:2]). Why cry out instead of abandonment? Further, it should be noted that, while many Scripture passage might be cited in order to celebrate God’s future victory, Psalm 22 describes the entire arc of the Paschal mystery. Yes, there is victory, but it is a victory that is preceded by specific forms of redemptive suffering. “All who see me mock me” (v. 7); “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint” (v. 14); “they have pierced my hands and my feet” (v. 16); “They divide my clothes among them, and cast lots for my garment” (v. 18)—all these verses, including the very first (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”), present the precise contours of what Christ would do for our salvation as the Father hands him over to death.37 A further concern is White’s argument that, because the pains of damnation are due to the free rejection of God, these pains are “essentially dissimilar” from Christ’s pains on the Cross and therefore the two pains “cannot be compared analogically” (316). He explains further that “strictly analogical predication requires something that is essentially common to the two terms that are compared” (317). The example that he gives involves two kinds of goodness, the analogues goodness-1 and goodness-2, each analogously applicable to two different aspects (the analogates) of a human being “because they [I believe White means the analogues, although grammatically it would be the analogates] have existence in common, and all existence is good” (317). But, he argues, there is not such a possible analogy between “both the love for God and the refusal to love God, because one is the privation of the other” (317). Thus, Christ cannot experience “something analogous to damnation and despair,” because this would be equivocity (316). His conclusion: “The essence of Christ’s agony, therefore, stems from something entirely different from such aversion to God [analogue-1] ([namely,] divine love [analogue-2]) and therefore, strictly speaking, is not analogous to the state of the damned. In fact, at heart it is entirely dis-analogous” (318; emphasis original).38 37 38 The divine prerogative captured in biblical traditio language is addressed in Brian K. Peterson, “What Happened on ‘The Night’? Judas, God, and the Importance of Liturgical Ambiguity,” Pro Ecclesia 20, no. 4 (2011): 363–83, and discussed in Franks, “Fluidity,” 599–601 and 614–15. Brotherton makes a similar argument against comparing the otherness between the sinner and God with the otherness of the distinctions of the Trinitarian Persons. To compare the two kinds of otherness is, Brotherton argues, “actually an equivocation” (One of the Trinity, 218; cf. 244–46). I will treat Trinitarian difference shortly, but here it is appropriate to note that Balthasar is not arguing that the difference between moral evil and God is simply analogous to the difference between the divine Persons. Rather, Thomistic-Balthasarian Comments 591 This closely reasoned passage nevertheless pushes too far. Balthasar and Joseph Ratzinger (more on the latter shortly) are not arguing that Christ’s experiences are analogous to the pains of abandonment, but rather the real experience of them. As Joshua Brotherton puts it, “the ‘separation’ between God and Christ crucified is only phenomenal—it is a profound subjective experience, a psychological separation, not a metaphysical one (i.e., not the objective separation that exists where caritas does not).”39 Nevertheless, White’s conclusion—that Christ’s agony is “entirely dis-analogous” to the state of the damned—would disallow their and any position that holds that Christ is experiencing that state, so let us examine his argument more carefully. Both Balthasar and Ratzinger agree with White, of course, that Christ himself is not a sinner.40 The difference is that they apply a logic of redemptive causality rather than one of similarity between two analogues. This logic looks like this: the sinner’s rejection of God causes the experience of abandonment by him. With Christ, this effect is detached from its cause; instead, it is Christ’s love that is the cause of his experience of abandonment. If analogy is relevant to this, it would apply to the “essential similarity” of the human natures of the sinner and of Christ, which provide the possibility for either to experience abandonment by God. 39 40 his point is that the possibility for sin is derived from the Trinitarian difference, for two reasons: first, there is creaturely otherness that is not a fall because of Trinitarian otherness; and, second, the otherness of sin is a perversion of this creaturely otherness and parasitic upon it—the creature can choose, dramatically, what is not God because it is, metaphysically, not divine. Balthasar is motivated in part by a desire to avoid a Gnostic dualism in which evil is attributed causally to a malicious principle other than God. For the perversion of sin and its “not-God” aspect, in contrast to God’s reality, see Balthasar, Theo-Logic, 2:316–26, esp. 323: “Diabolical contra-diction cannot be assimilated into God’s logic.” Brotherton views arguments utilizing “conditions for the possibility of X” as suspiciously Kantian and epistemological, not ontological (see One of the Trinity, 248), but he has perhaps not considered how deeply Balthasar engaged the (neo-)Platonic metaphysical logic, which inexorably refused any ground for otherness beyond its being a fall. In this sense, Balthasar’s (metaphysical!) concern is decidedly pre-Kantian. See his reservations concerning the Platonism of the Fathers on precisely this point in his early article “The Fathers, the Scholastics and Ourselves,” trans. Edward T. Oakes, Communio 24 (1997): 347–96; see also “A Résumé of My Thought,” trans. Kelly Hamilton, Communio 15 (1988): 468–73. Brotherton, One of the Trinity, 47–48. In general, Brotherton’s treatment of the descent on 15–77 must be commended as a careful and charitable treatment of a topic that arouses strong but not always clearly thought-out reactions. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama, vol. 4, The Action [hereafter, TD4], trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1994), 336: there is no “identification of the Crucified with the actual No of sin itself.” 592 Angela Franks Fr. White might object to such a severing of cause and effect, in that the cause (sin) is not found in Christ, while the effect (the experience of abandonment) is. Yet in fact Christ’s mission frequently entails the interruption of the normal order of cause and effect. Thomas, in quotations provided by White, gives some examples: the disruption of the natural connection between the beatific vision and its effects in the body (Christ’s body before the resurrection is passible and mortal; see 329n51), and the normal experiences of the consolation of virtue not given to Christ on the Cross (331n56). White himself rightly presents this interrupted causality: “[Christ’s] role [as redeemer] entails an acceptance upon himself of some of the consequences of sin in our fallen humanity . . . without an experience of that sin itself ” (331, emphasis original; cf. 405). Further, it seems quite radical to argue, as White does, that the essence of Christ’s agony is “entirely dis-analogous” with the experience of the sinner. Thomas himself does not shrink from noting that Christ takes on our punishment, which is an effect of sin, even if this theme is not emphasized by him.41 Balthasar takes up the same question in the following way: “The crucified Jesus suffers, in our place, our experience of estrangement from God.” But he immediately adds: “For him, there is nothing familiar about it; it is all that is alien and horrible to him. He suffers something deeper than any ordinary man can, because only the Son incarnate knows in truth who the Father is and what it means to be deprived of him, to have (seemingly) lost him.” This is nevertheless “not a question of punishment, since the work accomplished here between Father and Son with the cooperation of the Holy Spirit is utter love.”42 Following Balthasar, I would argue that Christ’s cry of abandonment entails many of the points defended by White (an eschatological desire for 41 42 Thomas writes: “There are four reasons why Christ descended in his [human] soul to hell. The first was to take on the entire punishment of sin and thereby to atone wholly for its guilt” (In Symbolum Apostolorum expositio, in Opuscula theologica, trans. Edward T. Oakes, “Descensus and Development: A Response to Recent Rejoinders,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 13, no. 1 [2011]: 3–24, at 11). Hans Urs von Balthasar, “The Scapegoat and the Trinity,” in You Crown the Year with Your Goodness, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), 85, cited in Margaret M. Turek, “In This Way the Love of God was Revealed (1 Jn 4:9): Atonement as a ‘Patrogenetic’ Process (Part II),” Communio 47 (2020): 399–440, at 410. The “seemingly” here points to the error in Brown’s assessment of abandonment in light of filial obedience, because Brown assumes that the Father “really” (and not experientially) withdraws from the Son; see Brown, Balthasar, 182; cf. Turek concerning God’s forsaking as a mode of redemptive love, discussed in the body of the text shortly. Thomistic-Balthasarian Comments 593 his own resurrection and for our salvation, etc.) but is at its heart exactly what it states: a cry to the Father expressing the Son’s experience of abandonment by the One with whom he is eternally united. This is possible because of the redemptive activity of the Passion, which shifts the burden of our sin onto Christ while he remains the sinless one.43 Allow me a few words on why this stance makes good sense of revelation. As Margaret M. Turek’s important work on atonement is demonstrating, Scripture presents sin as the abandonment of God: “They have forsaken YHWH, spurned the Holy One of Israel” (Isa 1:2, 4).44 God’s response is to forsake Israel: “I have forsaken my house; I have abandoned my heritage. I have given the beloved of my soul into the hands of enemies” ( Jer 12:7). This forsaking, however, is only for the purpose of bringing Israel to repentance. As Turek shows, Balthasar, Ratzinger, and John Paul II all describe how Jesus experiences this forsakenness in the place of sinners, to make possible their reunion with the Father. Ratzinger maintains that Jesus’s experience of death, to “the God-forsaken land of darkness, a realm of distance from God,” thereby “brings the world’s anguished cry at God’s absence before the heart of God himself. He identifies himself with all who suffer ‘under God’s darkness’; He takes their cry, their anguish, all their helplessness upon himself—and in so doing transforms it.”45 43 44 45 Balthasar argues that, during the Son’s Hour, in particular during his descent into hell, the Son’s visio immediata is veiled. Is this the same as the view I dismissed above, namely, the argument that the beatific vision is incommensurate with the suffering of the Passion? As is the case for Balthasar regarding all things Christological and soteriological, Christ’s experience of this reality is dependent upon one thing only, namely, his mission to save us. In other words, it is not the suffering that determines the vision but rather the mission that determines both the suffering and the vision. In order for Christ to experience fully the dark night of the sinner in his abandonment by God, the vision is veiled in his experience. Yet, objectively, this is the time of the incarnate Son’s most profound union with the Father. Margaret M. Turek, “In This Way the Love of God was Revealed (1 Jn 4:9): Atonement as a ‘Patrogenetic’ Process (Part I),” Communio 47 (2020): 7–47. She follows this with a treatment of the New Testament in “Atonement as a ‘Patrogenetic’ Process (Part II),” and develops it in a book-length meditation, Atonement: Soundings in Biblical, Trinitarian, and Spiritual Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2022). Joseph Ratzinger, Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life, trans. Michael Waldstein (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 93, and Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 2, Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection, trans. Vatican Secretariat of State (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 214, as exegeted by Turek in “Atonement as a ‘Patrogenetic’ Process (Part II)”, 414–17. 594 Angela Franks John Paul II expanded on this theme in Salvici Doloris. I will quote the entire relevant passage: After the words in Gethsemane come the words uttered on Golgotha, words which bear witness to this depth—unique in the history of the world—of the evil of the suffering experienced. When Christ says: “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?,” his words are not only an expression of that abandonment which many times found expression in the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms and in particular in that Psalm 22[21] from which come the words quoted. One can say that these words on abandonment are born at the level of that inseparable union of the Son with the Father, and are born because the Father “laid on him the iniquity of us all.” They also foreshadow the words of Saint Paul: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin.” Together with this horrible weight, encompassing the “entire” evil of the turning away from God which is contained in sin, Christ, through the divine depth of his filial union with the Father, perceives in a humanly inexpressible way this suffering which is the separation, the rejection by the Father, the estrangement from God. But precisely through this suffering he accomplishes the Redemption, and can say as he breathes his last: “It is finished.” (§18, emphasis original) The words of abandonment, the Pope writes, certainly pertain to Israel’s messianic hope of deliverance (as emphasized by White); yet John Paul II does not stop there when he writes, again, “these words on abandonment are born at the level of that inseparable union of the Son with the Father, and are born because the Father ‘laid on him the iniquity of us all.’” The cry depends upon the triune relation of unity and distinction between Father and Son, because of which the Father can lay upon the Son our iniquity. The words do not express an actual rupture within the Trinity, but rather the experience of “the separation, the rejection by the Father,” that is proper to us as sinners, not to the Son. But on the Cross, the Son takes on our experience, for the sake of his mission to save us.46 46 Again, mission (and not, e.g., human perfection in the abstract, such as the ability to suffer with confidence; see White, Incarnate Lord, 322n38) is the criterion for Christ’s actions and Passion. Jesus’s sufferings (“unique in the history of the world,” as John Paul II says) differ from those of, e.g., the martyrs in 2 Macc 6 and 7 or Stephen in Acts 6, because Christ’s (divine and universal) mission was different from their (human) participation in his. Thomistic-Balthasarian Comments 595 Christ’s experience of separation is, as White notes, quoting Balthasar, only possible because of the eternal Trinitarian relations: “If Jesus can be forsaken by the Father, the conditions for this ‘forsaking’ must lie within the Trinity, in the absolute distance/distinction between the Hypostasis who surrenders the Godhead and the Hypostasis who receives it.”47 It is not correct, however, to say (with White) that, for Balthasar, “obedience as separation . . . is characteristic of the very generation of the Son from the Father” (375, emphasis mine). The inner-Trinitarian life as an eternal reality entails the “distinction” of Persons, but only analogously “distance” or “separation.”48 Instead, the distinction of the Persons of the Trinity provides the conditions of possibility for the Son to take on the sinner’s separation from God. To address this question takes us to the next topic, that of the descent of Christ to hell on Holy Saturday. First, however, one additional note: Balthasar’s theological proposal on abandonment is mirrored in the experiences of many female mystics, especially in the twentieth century.49 Adrienne von Speyr is one obvious example. But she is not the only one. I would like to call attention to the life and teaching of Chiara Lubich, the founder of the Focolare movement.50 Her teaching can be condensed to two key phrases: unity and Jesus abandoned.51 47 48 49 50 51 TD4, 333 (quoted in White, Incarnate Lord, 375n89). Balthasar often signals this analogous reality by putting “separation” in quotation marks, but not consistently. This inconsistency is undoubtedly a weakness in Balthasar’s writing. For chronologically earlier examples, especially medieval ones, see Hans Urs von Balthasar, Dare We Hope “That All Men Might Be Saved?”: With a Short Discourse on Hell, trans. David Kipp and Lothar Kraut (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 97–113. Focolare is much better known in Europe than in North America. For a summary of its charism, see Amelia J. Uelmen, “Chiara Lubich: A Life for Unity,” Logos 8, no. 1 (2005): 52–64, and the secondary literature given there. Lubich writes: “It was the Holy Spirit, we believe, before leading us into the mystery of unity, who concentrated our faith and all of our love in Jesus who in an insuperable climax of love and suffering, cries out from the cross: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Mk 15:34; Mt 27:46). In that moment he experienced the most profound separation that can ever be imagined; in a sense, he experienced being separated from his Father with whom he was and remained one. At the same time, he gives all humankind a new and fuller unity than the one lost through sin: he reunites all with one another and with God in a new unity, which is a participation in his unity with the Father and with us. Therefore, Jesus forsaken is the key to understanding and living out unity” (Chiara Lubich, Essential Works: Spirituality, Dialogue, Culture [Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2007], 206 [emphasis added], cited in Piero Coda, “The Unity of Reciprocal Love: The Charism of Chiara Lubich and the Theology of Klaus Hemmerle,” International 596 Angela Franks Lubich does not think it is an accident that this aspect of Christ’s life is so emphasized recently, perhaps as a development of doctrine: This is why Jesus forsaken seems to be the God of our times. He is heaven’s response to the terrible chasm of sufferings and trials cut deep into the hearts of men and women by the atheism permeating many aspects of our modern culture; by the extreme poverty of millions of displaced people; by the quest for meaning and ideals of the disillusioned and confused new generations.52 Lubich here calls to mind the experience of St. Therese of Lisieux at the outset of the twentieth century, who sat at the table of atheists, experiencing their distance from God while herself not being a sinner. If this is an atoning act possible for God’s saints, the exemplary case of it would be Jesus’ cry of abandonment. Recent popes have not rebuked Lubich for these proposals. On the contrary, as expressed by Benedict XVI in his message to Focolare when Lubich died, they have tended to support her precisely on this point: “I have been moved by news of the death of Chiara Lubich, which came at the end of a long and fruitful life marked by her tireless love for the abandoned Jesus.”53 Descent and the Trinity Fr. White treats the descent in chapter 9 (380–437). Much of what I had to say about the cry of abandonment applies to the descent, so this section will be briefer. I will not address the question that takes up much of the chapter, namely, the question of universal salvation. While worth treating, we cannot progress much further than Balthasar’s own insistence on both the real possibility of finite freedom’s choice of hell and the hope that grace 52 53 Journal of Philosophy and Theology 78, nos. 1–2 (2017): 155–71, at 162). It has been the lifework of Msgr. Coda, Lubich’s friend and theological advisor, to unpack her Trinitarian insights. Coda has served as a member of the International Theological Commission and of the Pontifical Academy of Theology (as secretary prelate from 2003–2008). See also Coda’s From the Trinity: The Coming of God in Revelation and Theology, ed. William Neu (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2020). Lubich, Essential Works, 206, cited in Coda, “Unity of Reciprocal Love,” 162. Catholic News Agency, “Beatification cause opened for founder of Focolare movement,” January 24, 2015, catholicnewsagency.com/news/beatification-cause-opened-forfounder-of-focolare-movement-52945. Thomistic-Balthasarian Comments 597 prevails in the end for all human beings. If Balthasar does indeed deny either of these poles, then he would certainly need to be corrected. Further, I would like to note my appreciation for White’s treatment of limbo, in particular his words on 416–17. Lastly, I think that White’s concern about Balthasar’s ambiguity about the reality of an intermediate state of the soul after death (summarized on 422–23) merits further thought and hopefully will inspire a Balthasarian approach that takes this critique into account.54 I will instead turn to a question that has been underlying all of White’s engagement with Balthasar, namely, the merit of the latter’s Trinitarian theology. This brings us back to the opening pages on analogy. Fr. White questions whether Balthasar presents a primordial Trinitarian rupture that impermissibly projects our sinful separation from God into the Trinitarian relations. Balthasar, of course, denies this. What the Cross reveals is not “God’s ‘self-alienation,’” but rather his salvific love for the world.55 But what, then, about Balthasar’s language, such as “separation” and Trinitarian “enrichment”? Is Balthasar trying to have it both ways? (See White, 417–18 and 429–34.56) Let us begin with “separation.” I have spoken about his analogous use of this language, which admittedly can be misunderstood. But what Balthasar wishes to underline with it is the distinction within the Trinity, which must be maintained as forcefully as its unity if we are to avoid modalism. Fr. White is concerned that Balthasar’s emphasis undercuts divine simplicity, but of course White also grants that there is distinction in the Trinity: namely, the otherness of the divine Persons, distinguished through opposed relations of origin (418). Only subsisting relations can distinguish the Persons in a way that does not introduce either rupture or subordination into God. Thus, the “Son is infinitely Other, but he is also the infinitely Other of 54 55 56 Brotherton undertakes such an attempt in One of the Trinity, 62–77. Balthasar, GL1, 462, 462. The dramatic Trinitarian relations of distinction and unity are neither “tragic” nor “comic” but transcendent (Balthasar, TD4, 327). He criticizes Balthasar for taking notions of “separation,” “self-surrender,” and “passivity” and applying them not “to the humanity of Christ alone, but to his Godhead as such. In that sense, they come to characterize the very relations of the Father and the Son from all eternity” (White, Incarnate Lord, 394; emphasis added). If by “his Godhead,” White means to indicate the divine nature, his words are imprecise as a description of Balthasar. Balthasar’s language signifies the Trinitarian relations and, in particular, the filial relation to the Father that the Son is. See TD4, 322–28; see also the texts and commentary in Schumacher, Trinitarian Anthropology, 343. While there is no real distinction between the divine Persons and nature, the primary referent of these kenotic terms is to the relations. 598 Angela Franks the Father.”57 Both the unity and the otherness within the Trinity are of infinite and divine “dimensions.” The wholly good otherness of the creature vis-à-vis God is derived from this divine Otherness. The “not” which characterizes the creature—it is “not” God and cannot exist of itself—is by no means identical with the “not” found within the Godhead. However, the latter constitutes the deepest reason why the creaturely “not” does not cause the analogy of being between creature and God to break down. The infinite distance between the world and God is grounded in the other, prototypical distance between God and God.58 “Distance” and “not” in God, that is, are meant to express the opposed relationships of origin that constitute the Persons of the Trinity: The Father is “not” the Son in generating the eternal Son, who exists eternally in a relationship of filiation to the Father. The distinction between them Balthasar often renders analogically in spatial terms, such as “distance” and “space.” Sin takes this naturally good, metaphysical otherness and perverts it into willful rejection of God. Sin can do this because of the “space” of freedom opened up between the creature and God. This very “space,” however, is metaphysically dependent upon the “distance” between the divine Persons. The introduction of sin brings us back to Christ’s descent. Metaphysically, sin is not any-thing; it is only parasitic upon being, as the sinful will is parasitic upon the freedom derived from the Trinity. Sin only decays being without becoming anything positive. But sin is experienced historically as a terrible force.59 This weight of historical experience the Son takes on in the redemption, all the way to hell. Because the perversion of sin occurs within the “space” of the triune God, as does creation itself, its redemption will occur in the same “space.” Sin is not capable of breaking free from the all-embracing reality of God. As Aidan Nichols puts it, “nothing in the 57 58 59 Balthasar, TD4, 325. Balthasar, GL1, 266. The second sentence in this passage was, according to a footnote, a rejoinder to Barth. See Richard Barry, “Retrieving the Goat for Azazel: Balthasar's Biblical Soteriology,” Nova et Vetera (English) 15, no. 1 (2017): 13–35, at 14, for a linguistic treatment of the same idea: “Sin has no substance of its own. It is being inclined toward nothingness, and ‘nothing’ is the truly unthinkable thought. Yet the psalmist says ‘my sin is ever before me’ (Psalm 51:3): sin is our constant companion.” Existentially, we must confront the nothingness of sin that, paradoxically, “is ever before us.” Barry’s treatment of Balthasar’s language of the “burden” of sin is especially helpful, at 22–27. Thomistic-Balthasarian Comments 599 Economy can go further than the absolute self-surrender which characterizes the triune life from all eternity.”60 Drawing on the scriptural witness, Turek notes the atoning reality of distance from God: “Sin (its effects) must also be transformed into a condition for the expression of filial love. Here we need to recall that the principal effect of sin is distance from God. This effect must be transformed into a condition for the expression of filial love.”61 Here I extrapolate from this to the descent: By traversing the whole path of our rejection of God, all the way down to Gehenna, the Son ensures that death and sin need not have the last word by transforming our distance from God into the space to express his deepest economic union with the Father in the Holy Spirit.62 How does this economic experience “enrich” God? Balthasar insists that this enrichment does not add “anything that is lacking to his eternal life.”63 But how can the economy “perfect” and “enrich” God “without adding anything that is lacking”?64 In the recapitulation of all creation that the 60 61 62 63 64 Aidan Nichols, No Bloodless Myth: A Guide Through Balthasar's Dramatics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 213. See also Balthasar, TD4, 324: “On the basis of what is manifest in God’s kenosis in the theology of the covenant—and thence in the theology of the Cross—we must feel our way back into the mystery of the absolute, employing a negative theology that excludes from God all intramundane experience and suffering, while at the same time presupposing that the possibility of such experience and suffering—up to and including its christological and trinitarian implications—is grounded in God” (emphasis added). Turek, “Atonement as a ‘Patrogenetic’ Process (Part I),” 31 (emphasis original). Turek relies primarily upon Balthasar, John Paul II, Ratzinger, and contemporary biblical scholarship to provide a detailed exegesis of relevant Old Testament passages. She summarizes this scholarship as revealing a “gradually emerging pattern of a process whereby atonement involves ‘conversion,’ not simply in the sense of turning away from sin, but also as the ‘conversion’ of sin itself. The sinner turns back to God with filial love (regenerated by God; in this respect, God is near), such that now he endures the effects of sin (principally distance from God) as a condition that pains him, and by lovingly bearing this sin-wrought distance he turns sin around: from a refusal of filiation to an occasion of it. Sin is effaced in being converted into its opposite: nearness to God in the filial love-suffering of God’s distance” (“Atonement as a ‘Patrogenetic’ Process [Part II],” 400). See Balthasar, TD5, 268: “Now we have seen dereliction as a mode of eternal communion between Father and Son in the Spirit, and in conclusion we begin to see how the ‘economic’ modes of relations between the Divine Persons are latent in the ‘immanent’ modes, without adding a foreign element to them as such. The only foreign element is sin, which is burned up within these relations—which are fire.” Balthasar, TD5, 514. Balthasar, TD5, 514. See also 515, quoting von Speyr: “When the risen Son returns to the Father, ‘something happens in God. . . . This new joy perfects the Trinity in the sense 600 Angela Franks Son performs in the Incarnation and which he returns to the Father, God gains the world, now sanctified and returned to him. But this does not add anything to God, because the world is sanctified through participating in God’s own life.65 As Nichols states, “what the world gives to God, as Balthasar makes clear, is what it gives back to God of the love it has received in taking part in the Trinitarian dialogue, through the saving economy in which God himself has enfolded it.”66 Conclusion This brings us back to the point of departure, the goodness of creation as a participation in the Good that the triune God is. G. K. Chesterton once remarked that Thomas Aquinas’s religious name should be “Thomas of the Creator.” These Balthasarian reflections on the analogous goodness of creation are deeply indebted to Thomas’s metaphysics of analogy, while Balthasar’s theology of the Trinity depends upon the teachings of the Persons as subsisting relations and as processions extended into missions. While Fr. White and I disagree on how to judge Balthasar’s contribution to theology, we are still speaking the same theological language, although perhaps in different dialects. Fr. White’s book insightfully presents Thomas’s metaphysics, its Christological implications, and further soteriological proposals. His treatment is rich and thought-provoking and will serve as a guidepost for a contemporary Thomistic Christology and soteriology. I am grateful to have this opportunity to comment on it.67 65 66 67 that the grace that is to be bestowed becomes ever richer, both in the world into which it pours forth and in God himself, who is willing to bestow it.’” Balthasar, TD5, 521. Aidan Nichols, A Key to Balthasar: Hans Urs von Balthasar on Beauty, Goodness, and Truth (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 78 (emphasis original). See the whole section of 70–78. I am grateful to Matthew Levering, Margaret M. Turek, Michael Waldstein, and Adrian J. Walker for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this essay. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2022): 601–612 601 Response to The Incarnate Lord Ian A. McFarland Candler School of Theology Emory University Atlanta, GA I read The Incarnate Lord when it first appeared in 2015, as I was beginning to work on my own book on Christology.1 I thought it a major achievement at the time, and reading it again has done nothing to change that first impression. It is a magisterial piece of scholarship, and I am in full agreement with most all of its substantive Christological conclusions. Father White’s judgment that the deviations from Chalcedonian Christology in the work of (inter alios) Karl Barth, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Jon Sobrino create problems for a coherent confession of Jesus as Lord strike me as both fair and persuasive. More specifically, I find his contention that the implications of Trinitarian doctrine pose serious difficulties for various forms of kenoticism compelling (especially for the questions they raise about the coherence of penal substitutionary accounts of the atonement); I think his case for the necessity of the beatific vision in the earthly Christ is pretty well decisive; and I have never read an analysis of the cry of dereliction that is more exegetically convincing or theologically astute. And yet if I am in general agreement with Father White’s specifically Christological claims, I find myself less at ease with his overall approach to the subject. This may seem a rather odd line of critique, for if he ends up pretty much where I myself would land, and by way of arguments that are dogmatically sound, it might seem that concerns over methodological 1 Thomas Joseph White, O.P., The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2017); Ian A. McFarland, The Word Made Flesh: A Theology of the Incarnation (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2019). 602 Ian A. McFarland issues could easily be left to the side. I would normally be inclined to agree, except for the fact that these issues seem to stand very much at the center of his own concerns. Indeed, although part 1 of the book is called “The Mystery of the Incarnation,” the first four of its five chapters are as much concerned with defending the importance of metaphysics for theological argument as with specifically Christological topics, and these same methodological concerns return to center stage in the book’s conclusion. By this measure, nearly half of the volume is not directly concerned with Christology at all, but rather with establishing the conceptual context (viz., that of classical metaphysics) he believes needs to be in place for Christological questions to be explored productively. I want to be clear that I do not view the fact that Father White chooses to devote so much attention to methodological issues as a problem in itself. I make the point only to substantiate my claim that his concern with such questions is by no means marginal to the overall argument of The Incarnate Lord. In this context, I confess that when I read the opening sentence of chapter 5 (“Let us assume for the sake of argument that the central claim of this book hitherto is correct: Chalcedonian Christology has a permanent importance for Christian theology” [236]), my immediate reaction was one of surprise. For it seemed to me that the central claim of the book up to that point had not been the perennial importance of Chalcedonian Christology (clearly though this conviction had been affirmed), but a rather different sort of claim that is most clearly stated on 152: Unless some natural knowledge of essences is possible, then Christian discourse is inevitably reduced to one meta-narrative among others, a tribal rhetoric that is not subject to the laws of universal verification in any respect, and that cannot in turn make an appeal to human nature (or educate Christians or non-Christians as to what is proper to nature and to the natural law) even from within the domain of Christology and even in the light of Christ. With this claim I do not agree. For as much as Father White’s criticisms of Barth’s views on the Son’s eternal obedience seem to me spot on, I continue to side with Barth when he rejects the idea that theology either needs or ought to wed itself to any metaphysical system capable of being articulated prior to or independently of specifically Christian theological positions. In taking this position I am not arguing that Christian dogmatics either can or does float free of particular claims about the way things are, for, as a Christian, I believe that Christianity communicates the essential and Response to The Incarnate Lord 603 ultimate truth about God and God’s will for the world. Nevertheless, I see no way of avoiding the conclusion that Christian discourse is, in fact, “one meta-narrative among others,” precisely because I do not believe that it can be vindicated by any putative “laws of universal verification.” It seems to me, rather, that in a context where God has “made foolish the wisdom of the world” (1 Cor. 1:20), Christians can do no more than engage in what George Lindbeck called “ad hoc apologetics”: eschewing the pretense of a universally available and acknowledged framework within which the claims of faith might be given definitive demonstration, in favor of a more contingent program of responding to particular objections with whatever conceptual resources may be at hand.2 Moreover, I would claim some support for this view from Thomas himself, who at the very beginning of the Summa theologiae writes: If . . . an opponent believes nothing of what has been divinely revealed, then no way lies open for making the articles of faith reasonably credible [ad probandum . . . per rationem]; all that can be done is to solve the difficulties [ad solvendam rationes] against faith he may bring up. For since faith rests on unfailing truth, and the contrary of truth cannot really be demonstrated, it is clear that alleged proofs against faith are not demonstrations [demonstrationes], but charges that can be refuted [solubilia argumenta].3 One might object that Thomas’s claim is limited to divinely (viz., supernaturally) revealed truths here; but even if we concede this point, it seems evident to me that, in denying the possibility of “making the articles of faith reasonably credible” (in distinction from the more modest task of resolving objections to them), Thomas precludes the Christian meta-narrative being assessed by “laws of universal verification.”4 But for Thomas (and me) that 2 3 4 George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1984), 131–32. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I [ST], q. 1, a. 8 But does Thomas not, in the very next question, ST I, q. 2, offer five “ways” in which the existence of God can be proved? There is no denying that Thomas uses the word probari in a. 3 (and demonstrabile in a. 2). Yet it is surely significant that Thomas does not conclude any of his five viae with “and therefore God exists” (as William Placher points out, this is consistent with Thomas’s insistence in q. 1 that the Summa is a work of “sacred doctrine,” not philosophy; see The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modern Thinking about God Went Wrong [Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1996], 23–24). Moreover, Victor Preller notes that the metaphysical presuppositions of the viae are all over the place: neither fully consistent with one another, nor with 604 Ian A. McFarland does not mean we despair of argument; it simply calls us to scale down our expectations for what theological argument may accomplish. We may not be able to prove that Christian claims are true, but we can nevertheless engage opponents meaningfully, by explaining the meaning of Christian doctrines, and thereby showing how Christians believe their teachings avoid contradiction, equivocation, and incompatibility with other truth claims that are accepted by both the Christian and the critic.5 I think that this is roughly Barth’s position. In defending it, Barth did not mean to suggest that Christians can avoid metaphysical language (e.g., “nature,” “person,” and the like): theological speech necessarily draws on human words, and these will have native semantic habitats that will, in turn, carry more or fewer explicit metaphysical connotations in their wake.6 But (again with Barth) making use of metaphysical language need not commit us to a particular metaphysical system. Father White argues that, where commitment to a robust metaphysical superstructure is lacking, theological discourse lacks sufficient conceptual anchorage to keep the theologian from drifting into error, precisely because the semantic “drag” (my language, not his) of key terms will lead to metaphysical commitments being smuggled in unawares. He cites Barth’s account of intra-Trinitarian 5 6 claims Aquinas makes elsewhere (Divine Science and the Science of God: A Reformulation of Thomas Aquinas [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967]). In this context, the fact that Aquinas concludes all five arguments with variations on “and this is what everyone calls ‘God’” suggests that the point of q. 2 is less probative than illustrative: mapping out the semantic space within which God-talk naturally arises, rather than establishing that a “thing” called God exists. If nothing else, when the viae are read with an eye to the limitations on human knowledge of and speech about God laid out in the prefatory material between qq. 2 and 3 of the prima pars, it is clear that Thomas is keen to avoid any form of talk about God that would suggest God might be regarded as a discrete item in a metaphysical inventory. By “incompatibility with other truth claims,” I have in mind Thomas’s insistence that Scripture should never “be understood to mean certain things the contraries of which are shown by sufficiently evident reason” (De potentia, q. 4, a. 1, ad 5; cf. the responsio for the same question: “One should not say that what is plainly false ought to be understood in the words of Scripture” [trans. mine])—though I would want to stress that the criteria of “sufficiently evident reason” and “plainly false” will be relative to particular communicative contexts (e.g., Thomas would not have regarded the biblical dating of the earth’s creation or its implicit geocentrism as “plainly false”). Indeed, hypostasis was itself a term appropriated from a linguistic context where it was, at best, only vaguely different in meaning from ousia to name a different ontological category under the pressure of biblical witness. Neither the aim nor the result was to make a new metaphysical system, but simply to use a term to avoid both tritheism and modalism. Response to The Incarnate Lord 605 obedience as an example, and I agree that Barth is in error here.7 But when error is present, it seems to me sufficient to identify and correct it. The idea that metaphysics is a prophylactic against error seems to me belied by the fact that even people with shared metaphysical commitments can come up with very different theological conclusions, not to mention the fact that people have done Christian theology from a number of mutually incompatible metaphysical systems, and I see no way of adjudicating between them apart from the kind of ad hoc approach I am advocating (since, insofar as metaphysical systems set the terms of verification, they cannot themselves be subject to a common framework for verification). Again, that does not mean that argument is pointless, just that arguments remain moments in an ongoing conversation and cannot be secured in any air-tight fashion.8 I trust my general position here is clear enough, and I do not see much point in the context of this panel in getting into the weeds of longstanding debates between foundationalist and non-foundationalist epistemologies. I think it will be more productive to indicate briefly two areas where it seems to me that my approach does affect my assessment of Father White’s theology, even if it does not entail disagreement with his substantive theological claims. The first has to do with theological language. I have no interest in disputing Kant’s influence on Barth and other modern theologians, but my view of his significance for theology is more benign than Father White’s. Although Kant clearly saw himself as an opponent of theology as scientia (viz., as capable of making valid claims to knowledge), I am inclined to see him as having done theology something of a favor. For it is important 7 8 See White, Incarnate Lord, 194–95. As an aside, while Barth conceded to “a little Hegeling” in his later work, I would contend that, in his deduction of the Word’s eternal obedience from the economic obedience of the incarnation, he is doing rather too much Hegeling. See Bruce L. McCormack, Orthodox and Modern: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 271. Two further points may be added here. First, to say that arguments are not conclusive or final is distinct from claiming that the doctrines they seek to defend are not final: I can maintain that the orthodoxy of Chalcedon is irreformable while recognizing that a set of arguments in its favor that once proved persuasive no longer carry much weight and need to be supplemented. Second, to claim that the conversation over doctrine is ongoing is not to deny that, at any given point, interlocutors may simply give up on that conversation in frustration, mutually convinced that no progress can be made; but that, too, is a contingent development—and one that may be reversed based on changing conditions (as arguably happened, e.g., with Catholic and Lutheran debates over justification between the sixteenth and late-twentieth centuries). 606 Ian A. McFarland to remember that the most immediate target of the first Critique was the rationalist theology of the Enlightenment, which sought precisely to vindicate God-talk on the same terms as other sciences (viz., in terms of univocal argumentation). Against such approaches, Kant provided a salutary reminder that, by Christianity’s own tenets, God could not be talked about in this way. It is not that Kant thought the idea of God incomprehensible or nonsensical; on the contrary, he conceded that the idea of the absolutely unconditioned (or, as Thomas would say, that “to which everyone gives the name of God”) is the natural goal of scientific investigation.9 The problem, Kant argued, is that by definition that goal is incapable of being reached through empirical science, because that which is unconditioned is by definition not relative to other phenomena and so lies outside of the spatio-temporal nexus within which scientific investigation takes place—and within which scientific knowledge is therefore possible. Leaving Kant’s own attempts to recover God-talk on other grounds to one side, the upshot of his analysis for those who want to defend that idea that Christian doctrines do entail claims to knowledge is that recourse must be made to analogy in explicating those doctrines: because God is not a “thing” alongside other things, the words we use to talk about created beings (and these are the only words we have) cannot be understood to have the same meaning when applied to God. And it is just here that I am doubtful that metaphysics is going to be of much help. This is partly because I part company with Father White’s understanding of the role of analogy in theological discourse. His position is shaped by the idea that analogy saturates our speech, and that extending analogical speech to God is therefore not a great leap.10 By contrast (and recognizing that analogy, like being, can be said in many ways), I view the use of analogy in theology 9 10 I do not mean to suggest that Kant and Aquinas approach the concept of God in similar ways, for they do not (Kant’s first cause is a regulative idea, whereas Thomas’ is derived from a posteriori reflection on human experience; see Incarnate Lord,178n18). My point is merely that the theological value of Kant lies not in his assault on metaphysics, but in his challenging Christians to take seriously God’s incommensurability with created entities. Specifically (and in the context of the example of “human existence,” which I pick up in the next paragraph), he argues that consideration of the conditions of everyday discourse “makes use of the analogy of being absolutely unavoidable at what modern Thomists . . . term the ‘predicamental level,’ because such a use is simply co-extensive with rational thought. Pontius Pilate exists, Jesus exists, Peter exists, and so do you and I, each in an analogically signified fashion” (Incarnate Lord, 222). Response to The Incarnate Lord 607 as far more sui generis, reflecting the unique character of the­ology’s object, God.11 Thus, in discussing human existence (on 221–22), Father White states that the kind of existence that can be attributed to himself or me or anyone else as a human being may also be attributed “analogically” to Pilate and to the man Jesus. By contrast, I would say that the existence in question is attributed univocally to all those subjects, insofar as all enjoy specifically human existence. For, if my existence as a human being is only the same as yours analogically (on the grounds that each of us enjoys a “singular existence”), then I am unsure under what circumstances univocal predication is possible at all, except perhaps of purely notional entities like numbers. When I say that the existence I have as a human being can be predicated univocally of every other human being, I am not saying we are all the same, but only that the predicate (“possessing human existence”) is being applied in the same way to all members of the species. Likewise, if I say, “this basketball player is tall; that oak tree is tall; Mt. Everest is tall,” I am predicating the word “tall” univocally of all three subjects, notwithstanding the fact that their heights differ by orders of magnitude, absolutely speaking. That is, the word “tall” is being applied in the same way (viz., to mean “characterized by above-average vertical extension for members of the species”), so that if I tell you, “the widget behind the curtain is tall,” and I am using “tall” univocally with the other examples given, you will understand the point of my locution (viz., the relatively greater vertical extension of the named widget compared to most other widgets), even if you cannot see the widget and have no idea what a widget is. Talk about God is different, and so when Thomas describes in question 13 of Summa theologiae I, what it means to predicate attributes of God analogically, he is pointing to a much more significant shift in meaning. When we say God is good, wise, or whatever, we are saying something true of God—but not in a way that allows the kind of extrapolation I have just illustrated using the word “tall.” God’s wisdom is not disconnected from our experience of wisdom, but his is not simply able to be extrapolated from ours, just as (to use the example Thomas gives) the word “healthy” may be properly applied to diet and to urine, but it signifies something different in the two cases, such that understanding its meaning in the former case (viz., that which makes healthy) does not give any clue as to its meaning 11 Father White makes it clear that he refers to “the so-called analogy of proper proportionality” (Incarnate Lord, 222n33), which (as I argue below) seems to me different from the sense of analogy Thomas uses to set up his discussion of divine predication in ST I, q. 13. 608 Ian A. McFarland in the latter case (viz., that which reflects health). If the language we use to talk about God is analogical in this sense, and if, prior to the eschaton, we lack with respect to God the wider framework that allows us to understand the different uses of the word “healthy,” then theological language is indeed a proper object of suspicion, because the Christian theologian will have to confess that, when she applies words to God, they do not mean just the same thing that they do when applied to worldly items. It follows that Christians do not know fully what they are saying when they talk about God, and this fact legitimately gives rise to the worry that the whole theological enterprise is tennis without a net. Analogy in this sense (viz., the incommensurable-but-not-quite-equivocal use of a term illustrated by Thomas’s “healthy” ) seems to me pretty well distinctive to theology.12 It is for this reason that Barth preferred to speak of analogy of faith rather than of being: out of concern that the latter implied a ground of univocity that risked a projection of creaturely categories upward on to God.13 The point at issue for Barth (and me) is not whether analogy is necessary in speaking of God, but whether the basis for applying and interpreting divine predicates is a general ontology or Scripture. Father White fully well understands this line of reasoning, but counters that “in thinking out the analogia fidei . . . we [are] perhaps . . . committing ourselves to the analogia entis” (205). Against this perspective, I would again make a distinction between adopting metaphysical language (which is unavoidable) and committing oneself to a particular metaphysics that would require positing an “ontological resemblances between God and creatures that can be discerned and understood by the powers of natural human reason” (205). Because God is (in the language of Nicholas of Cusa) “not other” with respect to creatures, it seems to me that we simply lack the ability to do any analogical relating of divine and creaturely attributes apart from revelation. Instead, the words we use need to be given us—and even then we lack the ontological framework to know exactly what we are saying when we say that God is good, wise, and so on, even 12 13 That Thomas can deploy worldly uses of the word “healthy” as an example would seem to disprove my claim here. In response, however, I would note that the ambiguity of the word “healthy” could in principle be resolved through the use of more precise terminology (e.g., “health-making” and “health-reflecting” alongside “healthy”), no such possibility exists for language about God because, again, we lack in this life the wider framework that would allow us to understand how divine wisdom, justice, etc. differ from its worldly instantiations. I hasten to add that I do not believe Barth’s critique actually applies to Aquinas, who (as the proponents of Radical Orthodoxy in particular have pointed out) posited analogy over against any idea of univocity of being. Response to The Incarnate Lord 609 though the fact that these words are vouchsafed for us by God in Scripture means that we may be confident that these assertions are true. In short, the asymmetry between God and creatures means that, although when I say God is wise and Socrates is wise, I commit myself to the belief that there is indeed an ontological basis for this claim in God and Socrates, this basis can be neither discerned nor understood by the powers of human reason alone.14 Does this make any difference in practice? I think it does, and this brings me to the second area where I have concerns about Father White’s approach: the way in which he talks concretely about God. When in The Incarnate Lord the topic of divine attributes comes up, they tend to be the so-called “absolute” or “metaphysical” (!) attributes of omnipotence, immutability, simplicity, eternity, and the like (see, e.g., 279–87, 294–99, 302–6, 418). Now, I am in full agreement that these are indeed divine attributes, but they are not attributes we discern from looking at Jesus, who, precisely as a human being, displays none of them.15 By contrast, the attributes that distinguish the “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob” from that “of the philosophers and savants” are precisely those that are visible in revelation, beginning with the call of Abraham and culminating in the Incarnation: God’s compassion, mercy, goodness, and love, which lead him to save people from their sins. Father White certainly acknowledges these attributes, but he tends to speak about them rather generally and abstractly, with the result that their meaning seems mostly assumed rather than defined with concrete reference to the biblical accounts of the history of Israel and the life of 14 15 Here I follow Ralph McInerny and Bruce Marshall in reading analogy in Aquinas as pertaining to the structures of our thinking rather than to the nature of the things about which we think (to which Father White responds on 205n4). This is not to deny that there is ontological similarity between, e.g., God and Socrates with respect to wisdom, nor that this similarity results from causal dependence; it insists only (again, following the thrust of what I take to be the upshot of Thomas’s discussion of analogy in Summa Theologiae 1.13) that God’s transcendence is such that we have no access to the divine term in a way that would allow us to understand the nature of the similarity, and thus to compare divine and creaturely wisdom in any systematic way. Paul’s comments on divine wisdom in 1 Corinthians 1 seem to me to substantiate this point rather forcefully. Jesus does display great power (e.g., Matt 8:27 and parallels), but he denies that this in itself distinguishes him from other humans (see John 14:12); in any case, insofar as Jesus during his earthly ministry lives within space and time, any perceptible act he performs is relative to (and thus conditioned by) other entities, and therefore falls short of the unconditioned exercise of power characteristic of the divine nature. 610 Ian A. McFarland Jesus, in spite of his claim that Jesus reveals “to us who God is precisely by being human, in and through his human actions” (113). Here the exception—Father White’s close and careful reading of the crucifixion narratives, which includes extensive reflection on divine love (see esp. 316–20)—proves the rule. For his argument here makes little reference to the concrete character of Jesus’s ministry before his arrest; and this is problematic, for the significance of Jesus’s death can only be assessed in light of the commitments that characterized his life (since it is, after all, perfectly possible to give one’s life for a dreadful cause). It is only by viewing Jesus’s death in light of the concrete practices of solidarity with outcasts—the “tax collectors and prostitutes” of Matthew 21:31, as well as ritually unclean persons like the leper (Matt 8:1–3 and its parallels in the other Gospels), the Gerasene demoniac (Mark 5:1–20 and parallels), and the woman with the hemorrhage (Matt 9:20–22 and parallels)—and sinners that we know concretely what it means to call him Lord and Savior.16 Now, given that I am not claiming that any of Father White’s Christological claims are wrong, I recognize my critique of his book is a pretty pallid one. Moreover, since no book can claim to treat fully every aspect of Christ’s person and work ( John 21:25!), and since Father White addresses with clarity and insight a number of significant issues in modern Christology in what he has written, it may seem puerile to dwell on what he has not. To this, I have two rejoinders. First, when someone has written a very good book, then it is unreasonable to expect much more than a relatively pallid critique! Second, my critique (pallid though it may be) relates to what for me is the chief significance of the doctrine of the Incarnation as explicated in Chalcedonian terms: that it is precisely the humanity of Jesus, as lived out in Palestine from the years 1 to 30, that is our final and definitive index for Christian talk about God. What I worry about in Father 16 In this context, I find the claim that “Christ is our unique savior because he can raise us physically from the dead” (Incarnate Lord, 464) odd, since it is at least possible that some will be raised to eternal torment—and therefore will not be saved by resurrection. The claim that “it is the victory of Christ, his triumphant, luminous entry into hell on Holy Saturday, that manifests most to us his love for the human race” (420) seems equally odd, since this is not a matter of his visible, public ministry (and, indeed, is at best witnessed to only rather obscurely in the Bible). More promising is Father White’s earlier claim that “Christ is the savior because he bears within himself the action of God who reconciles us with himself effectively, through the event of Jesus’s passion, death, and resurrection” (306). But while this statement is completely unobjectionable in itself, in the absence of discussion of the divine character as one who seeks the flourishing of creatures in the face of historical (no less than supernatural) powers that seek to diminish and destroy, it remains, again, rather abstract. Response to The Incarnate Lord 611 White’s exposition is that his attention to metaphysics means that he tends to talk about Jesus’s divinity as a power lying behind the “instrument” of his humanity rather than that which is disclosed most fully through it. As a result, Jesus’s humanity, although confessed in thoroughly orthodox terms, becomes marginalized as a focus of genuine theological interest. By contrast, it seems to me that the upshot of the doctrines of the resurrection and ascension is that the Incarnation is not simply a means to an end, but is itself the end of God’s ways with the world: the proleptic realization of the promise that “the home of God is among mortals” (Rev 21:3). The resurrection is the vindication of Jesus’s incarnate life as God’s life—a life that God wills to live with us, and which has the specific characteristics shown forth in the practices that led Jesus to have the reputation of being “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matt 11:19). And I fear that, if a Chalcedonian Christology does not maintain a tight focus on those concrete features of the Incarnation as recorded in the Gospels, the result will be the same sort of crisis that led to the modern rejection of Chalcedon: that the Christ preached by the Church becomes in practice an otherworldly figure hovering (in rather Nestorian fashion!) behind his humanity, rather than in it. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2022): 613–628 613 A Schleiermacherian Rejoinder to Thomas Joseph White’s The Incarnate Lord Joshua Ralston University of Edinburgh Edinburgh, Scotland Indulge me a personal confession to begin this review. I am a Protestant theologian in the broadly Reformed tradition whose own theological thinking is shaped in fundamental ways by reading and thinking with both Friedrich Schleiermacher and Karl Barth. At the same time, I am preoccupied with Islamic theology and the majority of my theological work is focused on engaging with and responding to Muslim critiques of Christian claims regarding God’s triunity, Christology, and Scripture. Central to my work is reconsidering classical Christian theologians and particularly mining the insights and creative thinking of late antique and early Arab Christian thinkers, both Chalcedonians like John of Damascus and Theodore Abu Qurrah, but also non-Chalcedonians such as ‘Ammar al-Basri and Abu Ra’itah al-Tikriti. Why begin a review of Thomas Joseph White’s wide-ranging and impressive articulation of a Thomistic Christology with a personal testimony on the two diverging strands of my own scholarship? In part because it is vital to be honest about the different theological and ecclesial assumptions that we bring to the task of reflecting on the person and work of Jesus Christ. In White’s and my case, that includes central divergences regarding the binding norms of Church councils and the legacy of the Reformation on the one hand. Neither my philosophical condition nor my ecclesial formation aligns with White’s. I am a post-Kantian Protestant committed to undertaking theology through reflection on Scripture, within attention to the provisional norms of tradition and the need for theologians to “begin again at the beginning” in each generation. This is not to deny the 614 Joshua Ralston import of tradition, but to subject it constantly to fresh analysis in light of Scripture, Christian piety, and contemporary thought. The debates around Chalcedon and the Council’s aim to affirm Jesus Christ’s divinity and humanity without any confusion or change, division or separation do provide a vital touchstone for contemporary theological articulation of Jesus’s identity and work. With the Council, I too wish to affirm the identity of Jesus of Nazareth as the Word of God and to articulate how Jesus is truly God and truly human. At the same time, I view the metaphysical assumptions that were used to articulate this confession at Chalcedon as contextual and accidental. It is not only my Protestantism, however, that has me see the import and limitations of Chalcedon. For on the other hand, theological and ecclesial engagement with churches of the “East” means that the “heresies” of Nestorianism condemned at Ephesus and the monophysitism challenged at Chalcedon are not simply theological hermeneutics to critique modern theologies, but living Christian communities. The Church of the East, Syriac Christians, Coptic Christians, and others have worshiped and theologized in the shadow of the mosque, to use Sidney Griffith’s provocative phrase, for millennia, and have much to offer us in the West who seek to consider the meaning of our confession of God’s presence in Jesus in the context of Muslim and Jewish critiques.1 While this concern is not central to the review, I do wish to register it, and asks questions about Chalcedon’s legacy, not only theologically, but also in current ecumenical engagement between the Latin Catholic Church and the Oriental Orthodox communities, especially those indebted to Cyril of Alexandria. How does starting, not only with Chalcedon, but its later interpretations and formulations allow us in the Latin West to engage with these church communities and name the misinterpretations and misrepresentations that were present on all sides, even if we still wish to affirm the fundamental logic of Chalcedon? Are we not asking more than is theologically necessary, both for non-Chalcedonian churches but also for Muslims, when we tie faith in Christ and a commitment to God’s redeeming work in Jesus primarily—or only—to its interpretation by a council in 451? These two strands of my theological approach fundamentally impact my reading of White’s work and name diverging assumptions about Chalcedon and its legacy, post-Kantian theology, and the import of classical metaphysics for articulating the central Christian confession that “Jesus is Lord.” 1 Sidney Griffith, The Church in the Shadow of the Mosque (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). A Schleiermacherian Rejoinder to The Incarnate Lord 615 Simply put, we bring to the theological task of reflection on the person and work of Jesus both fundamentally different philosophical commitments and also diverging ecclesial formations. White considers theology to be “primarily speculative in nature” (3), while I contend that theology should refrain, as much as possible, from speculation. Reading White’s book, then, was like entering an ornate and highly structured theological cathedral, one that was impressive in its command of Thomas Aquinas, reading of Scripture, and engagement with modern theology. And yet, the foundations and its framing assumed so much about history, the centrality of Rome as theological arbiter, the normative place of Thomas, and the fundamental primacy of Aristotelian logic and Greek metaphysics, that it was ultimately uninhabitable for my own piety, theology, and philosophical assumptions. How might theological discourse bridge these fundamental divides around philosophical disposition, historical approach, and theological commitment on the one hand, but also recognize points of conversation and contact? Is it possible to engage in substantial theological dialogue across Protestant–Catholic and post-Kantian–Thomistic divides without falling into an overly irenic ecumenism that fails to recognize the true differences between us? Rather than re-litigate these prior ecclesial and metaphysical divergences, rooted as they are in century-long central theological debates, let me instead register my appreciation for the work, and suggest ways that a certain more “orthodox” reading of Schleiermacher’s account of Christ’s person and work may provide a path for Thomistic–Reformed dialogue. In the space that remains in this review, I will seek to explore this possibility in dialogue with Schleiermacher’s Christology and White’s own theological concerns about errors in modern theology. White’s aim in deploying Thomistic Christology, especially its own constructive attempts in part 2 of the book, is to consider the mystery of redemption in relation to the obedience of the Son, the death of Jesus, the cry of dereliction, and the central importance of the resurrection. Interestingly enough, given my disagreement about the enduring import of classical metaphysics, I am either in sympathy or agreement with much of his analysis of the problems of modern theology. While White’s reading of Thomas and my reading of Schleiermacher do fundamentally disagree on the metaphysics of Christology, it may turn out that our constructive concerns about errors in modern theology, especially kenotic Christologies, divine suffering on the Cross, and the historicizing of God, align in spirit if not in metaphysical letter. To address this, I will first offer a sketch of Schleiermacher’s Christology and its relation to Chalcedon before turning to a brief analysis of White’s 616 Joshua Ralston seventh chapter and its resonance with Schleiermacher’s own reading of Christ’s suffering and our redemption. Scriptural Reading and the Primacy of Metaphysics Before turning to Schleiermacher, I first must register a more fundamental protest about White’s understanding of the necessity of metaphysics, not only for Chalcedon but more importantly for reading Scripture and confessing faith in Jesus Christ. The central wager of White’s book is that Christology has an “irreducible ontological dimension that is essential to its integrity as a science” (5). Theological reflection on the identity and saving work of Jesus of Nazareth is formed by scriptural revelation (3) that can neither be proven nor disproven by philosophy. At this point, all is well and good. However, White offers a much thicker and more speculative metaphysics to advance these opening claims about Christology and theology. According to White, much of modern theology has gone adrift and Thomas Aquinas provides a scriptural, philosophical, and metaphysical ballast that might correct the tides of Nestorianism brought about by post-Kantian philosophy and historical criticism of the New Testament. Kant and Nestorianism hang over much of the book. Thus, the opening two chapters propose a model of reading the Bible ontologically and suggests that a modern Thomistic approach is the best response to the limitations in both Schleiermacher’s and Barth’s Christologies. Unlike these Reformed theologians from Berlin and Basel, a modern Thomistic Christology offers an “adequate understanding of the relationship between Chalcedonian ontology and a realistic philosophical metaphysics,” thereby allowing for “analogical discourse concerning the transcendent God” that rejects Kantian restraints on speculation and still makes “judicious use of modern historical-critical approaches to the figure of Jesus” (70). With these provisions in mind, White goes on to offer an extended defense of the hypostatic union, natural theology, the analogia entis, and a particularly metaphysical articulation of the human and divine natures of Jesus. I do not contest that a reading of Thomas and the deployment of his Aristotelian logic and metaphysics might prove useful for interpreting and articulating the saving mystery of God’s presence in Christ and the classical articulation of this in Chalcedon. However, I am unconvinced that this is either necessary or the only way to speak of Jesus as truly God and truly human. Moreover, I fear that White’s own philosophical commitments become so identified with his theological claims about the mystery of the A Schleiermacherian Rejoinder to The Incarnate Lord 617 triune God and Jesus Christ that they are virtually indistinguishable. Faith in Christ veers toward faith in metaphysics. Let me expand on this concern. “Only” is a versatile word that may operate as an adverb, adjective, and occasionally as a conjunction—but no matter its use, it is a term that seems to beckon the theologian to (over) use. In the case of White’s introduction and prolegomena, “only” recurs again and again. This occurs in relationship to his understanding of biblical interpretation. He writes that that “speculative issues” lie at “the heart of New Testament theology” and that these “can only be engaged by an overly metaphysical reflection on scripture” (17). Additionally, he claims that that “ignorance of ontology is ignorance of Christ” and that the reading of the Fathers and the Scholastics is “the only form of reading that attains objectively to the deepest truths of the New Testament” (8). What this means is that “seeking to understand the New Testament claims about Christ non-ontologically is in the end a non-biblical exercise” (117). One can agree with the impulse behind White’s claims and assert that the New Testament witness is more than simply historical data, and that it invites theological reflection on the nature of God, humanity, and salvation. However, as the argument proceeds White presents a very specific form of theological and metaphysical reflection as the truly faithful and scientific reading of Scripture. For instance, he argues that a minimal ontology or metaphysic is insufficient and what is need is a “robustly metaphysical form of thinking” (5). What is this robustly metaphysical and ontological form of thinking? Chalcedonian Thomism, of course. For example, Christ’s likeness to us is best articulated through metaphysical discourse on human nature, one that is particularly indebted to the substance metaphysics of Aristotle. White writes that “only a metaphysics of human nature that understands there to be perennial characteristics of the human being through time” can make sense of the divine economy and saving work of Christ (25). Similarly, he argues that, “if we believe in the incarnation, we need to be committed to the retrieval of some form of classical metaphysics” (66), since “one cannot articulate a genuine Chalcedonian metaphysics without a simultaneous commitment to classical metaphysics in general” (46). Part and parcel of this commitment to metaphysics is also a commitment to a particular form of rational theological knowledge grounded in analogical forms of causality and knowledge of God “derived from the metaphysical considerations of creatures.” There is much to unpack in these claims, and other contributors to this symposium like Ian A. McFarland also draw attention to them. Suffice it to say that the metaphysical and ontological meaning of Jesus is taken to included certain 618 Joshua Ralston forms of analogical discourse, natural knowledge of God, and views of nature and grace. Two questions arise from this. The first concerns how we read the New Testament, and the second relates to the normative import of Aristotelian substance metaphysics. White asserts that affirmation of the pre-existence off Christ is a hermeneutical prerequisite for reading Scripture. John 1, Colossians 2, Hebrews 1, and Philippians 2 are interpreted as the key to reading the New Testament as a whole, such that “the pre-existence of Christ is a normative doctrine” and “a framing issue” that gives “right perspective on all else that is presented in the apostolic testimony” (10). While the New Testament surely testifies to the pre-eminence of God’s action toward us in Christ and Christ’s relationship to God, I wonder if prioritizing this top-down approach is the only or even the best way to read the New Testament. Instead of beginning with the pre-existence of Christ as a necessary condition for theological reflection, I read the New Testament witness as framed by the biblical invitation that White rightly notes to “consider the personal identity of Jesus of Nazareth” (14) and “the kind of life undertaken by Christ” (18). By shifting the starting point from the pre-existence of the Word to the life of the Word made flesh, we begin with Jesus’s life, teaching, death, and ultimately his vindication through the resurrection. It is in this life that Jesus is revealed to be Lord, and it is because of this life that early Christians, by the power of the Spirit, came to testify to God’s saving power in Jesus. This gave way to theological claims about Jesus’s identity as the Word of God and Son of God. The pre-existence of Christ was not the condition for Christian claims that Jesus saves; it was a consequence of it. White argues that the “presupposition” is that “Jesus of Nazareth is God made man” (73). This presupposition, however, is based on a more fundamental confession, namely that God has acted to save the world in the crucified and risen Jesus. It is this doxological claim and its accompanying soteriological belief that presses toward these more theologically proper claims and their accompanying metaphysics. We confess that Jesus is God made human only because we first confess that Jesus saves, or in a more Schleiermacherian idiom, that Jesus is the Redeemer. For me, at least, this soteriological commitment precedes these more theologically proper claims about pre-existence. This fundamental shift from White’s desire to begin with pre-existence to the primacy of the concrete life of Jesus as testified in Scripture and in history demands speculative and metaphysical constraint. And here with Calvin and Schleiermacher, and against A Schleiermacherian Rejoinder to The Incarnate Lord 619 Thomas and Barth, theology must say enough about the eternal life of the God of Israel as revealed in Jesus but not too much. For the early Christians, the issue of Jesus’s place within the divine life did not emerge from a fascination with ontology or speculative metaphysics, but out of an experience or encounter with divine salvation and revelation in and through Jesus of Nazareth. This event pressed Christian theologians to begin to haltingly and inchoately connect Jesus with the power and presence of God. There is then something like a double move in Scripture where writers both identify the Word with Jesus and also note excess where the Word or Son exists before Jesus. When the historical encounter with Jesus occurs, we read backward so that Paul or the deutero-Pauline authors can place Jesus before creation. While in other contexts, like in John’s prologue, the Words pre-existence can signal a coming into flesh as Jesus at a particular time and place. Thus, the author of Hebrews shows both of these moves in his opening homily: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word” (Heb 1:1–2; NRSV). While these verses have many theological complications to work out, it is vital that we see the double movement within the New Testament and not view the top-down approach as the only way to make sense of God’s Word. Contra White’s critique of this move, this does not demand that the project of historical study alone can vindicate Christ’s substantial identity as the Word. It is very much a recognition, following scholars like Luke Timothy Johnson and Wolfhart Pannenberg, that we only see these more fundamental claims about God’s presence in Christ through the light of resurrection faith. Second, I wonder if commitment to the Chalcedonian pattern and its distinctions necessitate a Greek and late antique metaphysics, such that Scripture and Christian theology becomes inextricably tied to Greek and Latin? White writes that “the metaphysical tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas is of perennial value and that it permits us to articulate a Christological science that is of enduring value as well” (29). While I agree with White that “sacred doctrine can make use of philosophy to illustrate theological truths” (54), I fear that he elevates one particular mode and discourse of philosophical reflection to such an extent that it becomes near impossible to confess God’s presence in Jesus without recourse to it. He does caveat this insistence when he argues that he is not “presuming that Aquinas’s metaphysics is necessarily correct, or that a particular version of 620 Joshua Ralston classical metaphysics must be embraced if any modern Christian theology is to succeed” (51), but the difficulty of the book, however, is that all other theologians are judged not only by their adherence to the New Testament witness or even the logic and impetus of Chalcedon, but by Thomas’s metaphysical articulation of it. White invokes “Thomistic standards” (102) throughout the book to show the limitations of his various interlocutors, who may be working with different philosophical understandings. Is it possible, then, to confess Jesus is Lord and truly God and truly human by deploying the philosophical tools of say, Hegel or Kant or Husserl? Or is Christian confession bound to the philosophical options available in late antiquity? In the end, I fear that White ties the Gospel confession that Jesus is savior and Lord too strongly to its Greek philosophical and metaphysical articulation at Chalcedon and later in Thomas. If the metaphysics of Chalcedon are part and parcel of Christian faith, it becomes hard to see how Christianity and the Church are not only accidentally Western and Greek, but essentially so. Let me be clear, I am not suggesting that the New Testament and early Christianity was corrupted through Hellenization à la Adolf van Harnack. Or that the use of metaphysical and philosophical language in the classical period was necessarily problematic. Far from it. For as Kathryn Tanner has argued, theology depends on engaging and taking up the language, cultural practices, and philosophy within which a theologian and church community exists.2 That Greek philosophy, not to mention Syriac thought, was deployed in such a manner is wholly appropriate. The question for me is whether or not this is the only way to articulate our faith in the incarnate Lord, especially under alternative philosophical and cultural conditions. For many, including myself, the metaphysical assumptions of Thomas are simply alien to our understandings of science and philosophy. Language of natures imply static and settled realities, which inhibit how we account for human plasticity or the dynamic and changing nature of creation. Reference to God’s nature, especially when primarily interpreted through discourse of the omni-attributes, distracts from what seem to be more primary biblical concerns regarding God’s faithfulness, love, and wisdom. One is left to wonder if Christian faith demands not only confession that Jesus is Lord, but that Thomistic metaphysics are true. 2 Kathryn Tanner, Theories of Culture: A New Agenda for Theology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1997). A Schleiermacherian Rejoinder to The Incarnate Lord 621 Schleiermacher’s Christology Rethought Friedrich Schleiermacher would seem an odd conversation to turn to at this point in the review, especially suggesting that a re-reading of his theology of redemption might serve as a bridge between White’s theology of redemption and my own. It might seem odd particularly because White’s opening two chapters include a repudiation of Schleiermacher’s Christology as overly determined by historical criticism and post-Kantianism, which gives way to a “subtle” form of the Nestorianism (102) that reduced “the union of God and man in Christ to one that is moral rather than substantial” and thus is “something novel and represents a rupture” with tradition (43). Moreover, White suggests that Schleiermacher’s account of salvation leaves much to be desired. He writes how “Schleiermacher’s confusion . . . obscures the supernatural mystery of Christ and confines his meaning to the reductionist speculations of historical-critical scholars and their conjectures” (61), and how John Hick and other theologians go awry because, “pace Schleiermacher, the person of Christ cannot be said to be the exclusive mediator of salvation for all human beings” (104). The reason for this, according to White, is Schleiermacher’s decision to abandon the hypostatic union and locate the “union” of God and man in Christ “within the world of human consciousness, and specifically within the human consciousness of Christ. Christ is united with God through his self-awareness” (43). The fallout of this is that the union of God and humanity is accidental and not substantial, and thus fundamentally moral and grounded in coordination rather than true unity of identity. This veers toward Nestorianism, which White diagnoses as one of the modern heretical tendencies par excellence. This is the case because of the propensity that White sees in Schleiermacher as well others like Karl Rahner to locate the “ontological union of God and man in Christ in the same place where Nestorianism typically locates it” (76). For White’s Schleiermacher, this is Jesus’s own self-awareness or self-consciousness, which White reads as an attribute or property of human nature, and not the substantial being of his person as such. White rightly is worried about how Rahner and by extension Schleiermacher invoke a Christology of scale, where Jesus Christ is distinct from us only in light of his excellence and not due to his divinity identity. What to make of this critique of Schleiermacher? On the one hand, White is certainly correct in his reading that Schleiermacher challenges Chalcedon and its accompanying metaphysics. In fact, §§91–97 of the Christian Faith involve a recurring critique of Chalcedon and other later 622 Joshua Ralston Protestant confessions. In particular, Schleiermacher demurs from descriptions of the divine nature, asserting that God is “beyond all existence and being,” since God alone is simple and unconditioned (§96).3 Moreover, Schleiermacher argues that the attempt to make sense of the living unity of the divine and the human in Christ, the Redeemer, is hampered by Chalcedon’s metaphysics. While Schleiermacher rejects the metaphysical language of Chalcedon, particular the category of divine nature, he nonetheless seeks to articulate how Christ is both truly God and truly human. As such, §96 affirms that in “Jesus Christ divine nature and human nature were combined.” In fact, the entire section on Christ’s dignity or person is oriented around affirming both Christ’s fundamental likeness to us and also Christ’s fundamental difference from us. The aim of theology is to “describe Christ in such a way that in the new corporate life a vital fellowship between us and Him shall be possible, and, at the same that the existence of God in Him shall be expressed in the clearest possible way” (§96.1; p. 391). Schleiermacher seeks to name how Christ is fully human and shares in all of our realities, save sin, and also how Christ is not in need of redemption himself and thus can truly be our Redeemer. There remains a Chalcedonian instinct at work even in Schleiermacher’s rejection of the metaphysics of Chalcedon. He writes that “all the results of the endeavor to achieve a living presentation of the unity of the divine and the human in Christ, ever since it was tied down to this expression (Chalcedon), have always vacillated between the opposite of errors of mixing the two natures to form a third which would be neither of them, neither divine nor human, or of keeping the two natures separate, but either neglecting the unity of the person in order to keep firm hold of the unity of the person, disturbing the necessary balance, and making one nature less important than the other and limited by it” (§96.1; p. 394). The critique, however, is not primarily of the creedal patterns, but of the philosophical assumptions that they carry. For instance, Schleiermacher strongly emphasizes the priority of the divine “person” acting in and through the human nature throughout §§96–97. As Jacqueline Mariña notes, it is clear from Schleiermacher’s discussion that: “He is in complete agreement with Chalcedon in regard to the position it rejects. . . . Nevertheless, Schleiermacher rejects the starting point of Chalcedon, namely the adoption 3 Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. H. R. Mackintosh and J. S. Stewart, trans. D. M. Ballie, et al. (London: T & T Clark, 1999), 393. All citations will reference the § numbering in the 1830/1831German original [Der Christliche Glaube [Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008]); translations will be from Ballie, with page numbers from that edition after the German §. A Schleiermacherian Rejoinder to The Incarnate Lord 623 of the language of two natures requiring one to attempt to construct an impossible figure.”4 He writes, for instance, how “the existence of God in the Redeemer is posited as the innermost fundamental power within Him, from which every activity proceeds and which holds every element together” (§96.3; p. 397). Or later in the same paragraph after affirming both the Pauline claim that God was in Christ and Johannine testimony that the Word become flesh, he contends that, “in so far as all human activity of the Redeemer depend, as a connected whole, upon this existence of God in Him and represents it, the expression is justified as exclusively of Him,” such that every moment of Christ’s existence is rightly named as the incarnatedness of God” (§96.3; p. 397). As such, Lori Pearson has argued that he “affirms a single-subject Christology that gives a prominent and primary role to the divine without compromising the full integrity of the Redeemer’s human nature”5 Recent scholarship by figures such as Mariña, Pearson, and Kevin Hector, have shown how Schleiermacher creatively engages with the Chalcedonian legacy, not to reject its concerns tout court, but to consider how its framework, although not its metaphysics, provides a hermeneutic for presenting the saving presence of God in Christ. So, for instance, Pearson has shown how Schleiermacher’s own thinking “represents a new synthesis of the mutually corrective Christological positions that Chalcedon brought together”6 that draw on both Alexandrian concerns about the single-subject and Antiochene commitments to the integrity of the divine and human. In a different direction, Hector has argued that interpretations of Schleiermacher’s Christology should attend to its actualist ontology and his description of love as the only proper predicate of God’s essence. If love is the only attribute that can unequivocally be applied to God’s essence, and Jesus’s own activity is marked fully by “the divine in Christ,” which is nothing other than “divine love” which shapes all his action, then Schleiermacher’s theology can rightly be described as truly high (§97.3; p. 407).7 Moreover, Schleiermacher, unlike Hick’s claims about him, seeks to protect the unique and unparalleled redeeming power of God in 4 5 6 7 Jacquelina Mariña, “Christology and Anthropology in Friedrich Schleiermacher,” in The Cambridge Companion to Friedrich Schleiermacher, ed. Jacquelina Mariña (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 155. Lori Pearson, “Schleiermacher and the Christologies behind Chalcedon,” Harvard Theological Review 96 (2003): 365. Pearson, “Schleiermacher,” 350. Kevin Hector, “Actualism and Incarnation: The High Christology of Friedrich Schleiermacher,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 8 (2006): 307–22. 624 Joshua Ralston Christ. In Jesus of Nazareth alone is redemption found. What sets Jesus apart from all others is that in him and him alone is God fully present and redemption found. One of the limitations of Schleiermacher’s own theological presentation is the misleading nature of the term “God-consciousness.” Much like theological terms such “mode,” “person,” or even “nature,” “God-consciousness,” when extracted from its particular usage within a dogmatic context, can give way to misunderstandings. Simply put, God-consciousness is not simply Jesus’s own self-understanding. To claim as such, as many interpreters of Schleiermacher’s Christology assume, is mistaken. Schleiermacher actually ties Christ’s God-consciousness directly to God’s presence in Christ. “To ascribe to Christ an absolutely powerful God-consciousness, and to attribute to Him an existence of God in Him, are exactly the same” (§94.2; p. 387). The God-consciousness is present in Christ’s self-consciousness, but this is not to say that the God-consciousness is simply Christ’s own self-awareness, as implied by White. In fact, Schleiermacher affirms that the presence of God in Christ is not a gradual unfolding within him, but is implanted in Christ from the beginning. “The God-consciousness in Him was absolutely clear and determined in each moment . . . that is to say, the existence of God in the Redeemer is posited as the innermost fundamental power within Him, from which every activity process and which holds every element together” (§96.3; p. 397). If it was not, then, Christ would not rightly be called our Redeemer, since there would be moments in Christ’s life where the redemptive love and power of God was not present. Thus, unlike us Christ has an “absolutely powerful God-consciousness” at all times of his life, even if this is understood by Christ in ways that are appropriate for his various ages and stages of human development. Like White’s own assertions about Christ, Schleiermacher also seeks to affirm that the human life of Christ is marked by growth, education, maturation, and change—all features of human existence. Theology must account for the absolute humanity of Jesus, and thus ascribe to his humanity its own will, intelligence, and growth, without thereby compromising the presence of God in him. Schleiermacher deploys the philosophical language of his day and his own program to account for that, which is language of sensible self-consciousness and God-consciousness. However, God-consciousness does not finally equate to self-consciousness, but is more akin to how the tradition has deployed the divine nature. Christ’s full God-consciousness is present and active throughout his whole life, even if his self-awareness of this is varied as appropriate for a human being at distinct stages of development. A Schleiermacherian Rejoinder to The Incarnate Lord 625 By gesturing to these aspects within Schleiermacher, I am not aiming to convert White from Thomism, but to suggest ways that modern Christology can make sense of the aims of Chalcedon without necessarily adopting its metaphysics. As Hector writes in his defense of Schleiermacher’s high Christology, “Schleiermacher’s is not the definitive word on such a description” of traditional Chalcedonian Christology, “but his approach can help us think about God, Christ and redemption in a world where Greek metaphysics are no longer convincing.”8 Now of course, for White, Greek metaphysics are not only still convincing but a salve for what ails much of modern theology. However, for Schleiermacher and other theologians after him, theology is not required to deploy Aristotelian substance metaphysics in order to offer an account of Christ and the hope that he instills within us. This is not to defend Schleiermacher’s account in full, for his own philosophical assumptions and deployment of God-consciousness can obscure as much as it illumines. They, like Chalcedon’s, may not be our own. Moreover, Schleiermacher’s claim that the resurrection is not central to the science of Christology is inadequate for making sense of either the New Testament witness or of the experience of early Christians who began to ascribe to Jesus of Nazareth a divine identity. Here White’s own critiques of Schleiermacher and arguments for the central importance of the resurrection as one with both existential and bodily import provide an important correction to Schleiermacher’s focus on Jesus’s life and death. Without a clear sense of how the resurrection vindicates Jesus as God’s own loving presence to and for us, it becomes difficult to see how Schleiermacher’s claims about redemption through Christ and union with him can be saving. There is more to be said about both White’s and Schleiermacher’s Christologies, but let me conclude with a reflection on where they may share abiding commitments, and that is around the cry of dereliction and suffering of Christ. Schleiermacher and Modern Theology’s Limitations Chapters 7 and 8 of White’s book presents a compelling reading of the cry of dereliction and the salvific meaning of the Cross that diverges from certain modern theologians’ arguments about the soteriological importance of divine passability or Jesus’s abandonment by God on the Cross. Through a close reading of John and the Synoptic Gospels, as well as 8 Hector, “Actualism and Incarnation,” 322. 626 Joshua Ralston Thomas, White argues that “Christ in his crucifixion experienced terrible agony, both spiritual and physical . . . yet did not despair of the promises of God, nor experience the moral separation from God that is characteristic of the damned” (319). Implicitly criticizing post-Shoah theologians such as Jürgen Moltmann and Johann Metz who see Christ’s suffering as indicative of a fissure within the divine life, White presents a nuanced reading of the true agony of the Cross on the one hand, but also Christ’s full unity with the Father and continued beatific vision. Christ truly suffers anguish in his humanity, even as this suffering does not separate him from the Father. The cry, according to White’s reading of Matthew 27 in particular, is an eschatological cry for the redemption of the world. Thus, White rightly argues for the compatibility between a realistic suffering and anguish on the one hand, and also Christ’s enduring unity with the Father on the other. The power of God’s saving act in Christ does not occur because of suffering within the divine life, but because, even in suffering and anguish, Christ “as God retained the power to save effectively human beings even in and through the mystery of the cross” (377). Echoing Rahner’s critique of Moltmann, White asks how it is sensical or theological compelling to introduce into “his own deity the historical states of suffering, death, non-being, and separation from God” (351). Instead, White shows how the whole of Jesus’s ministry, life, death, and resurrection prove saving in the theology of Thomas. Reading these two chapters alongside Schleiermacher’s theology of the atonement in his account of the threefold office and work of Christ might prove surprisingly illuminating. For as much as Schleiermacher and White diverge on metaphysics and their interpretation of Chalcedon, they may find more common ground in their understanding of divine suffering and the saving power of God in Christ. For instance, Schleiermacher shares a worry with White about how Calvin’s theology overemphasizes motifs of repayment and suffering. Schleiermacher, like White and Thomas, seeks to read the whole of Jesus’s life as redeeming. By locating Christ’s death within Christ’s life, Schleiermacher tries to guard against a number of problematic interpretations. First, Schleiermacher shows how Christ’s death can have a form of necessity without suffering being explicitly chosen. He does this by interpreting Christ’s decision to go to the Cross as “identical with His persistence in redemptive activity”; Christ does not choose death per se, as to do so would be “arbitrary self-torture” (Christian Faith, §104.4; p. 462). Rather, Christ persisted in his vocational work of redemption, both in his proclamation of the Kingdom and his persistence in sympathizing with human misery. Suffering is not a punishment for sin that levels the scales of A Schleiermacherian Rejoinder to The Incarnate Lord 627 justice. Suffering occurs because of Christ’s commitment to the Kingdom of God. Christ does not choose suffering or death for its own sake, but for vocation and life even in the face of death’s shadows. Christ can thus be said to have voluntary chosen his death, but only in so far as it was part of the “duty involved in His vocation” and in order to “proclaim the full dominion of the spirit over the flesh” (§104.4; p. 463). Thus, Christ’s entire life, not just his death, is actually touched by suffering. “Now Christ’s sufferings can be thought of in connection with his redemptive activity only when regarded as a whole and a unity; to separate out any particular element and ascribe it a particular reconciling value” is flawed in so far as it fails to see how the whole of our lives are marked by sin and suffering (§101.4; p. 437). This is the case because Christ existed in our world, one marked by experiences of suffering in the sensible self-consciousness. It is within these qualifications that he affirms, then, a connection between suffering and salvation. To borrow from Tanner’s argument, God is not changing God’s relationship to us in the redemptive activity of Christ; God is addressing our condition and relationship to God. Avoidance of suffering is simply not possible for creatures. Christ’s suffering is a characteristic of his whole life and ministry. Christ suffers in all of his life in so far as he sympathizes with our sin and misery; Christ is actively obedient, even in death, as he maintains an unbroken union with God. His whole life is saving, not because of what it merits from the Father, but because of how it proves healing for us. Suffering is caused by Christ’s opposition to misery and sin. “The climax of His suffering . . . was sympathy with misery.” For Schleiermacher, Christ saves by maintaining blessedness and God-consciousness even in the face of sin and death. Contra Moltmann, there is no divine suffering in the Cross or radical breach between Jesus and the one he calls Father. Instead, Christ saves by maintaining full union with God even to the point of death. His blessedness is “not overcome by the full tide of suffering. The more so that this suffering arose out of the opposition of sin, and that therefore the Redeemer’s sympathy with misery, ever present, though without disturbing His blessedness” (Christian Faith, §101.4; p. 436). Even in death and suffering, nothing can separate Christ from the love of God. In this section, we can see how Schleiermacher’s theology, despite its role in inaugurating modern liberal theology, is still marked by recognizably classical commitments about God’s immutability, simplicity, and transcendence, values that White’s own contemporary Thomistic Christology seeks to affirm. Moreover, the salvific import of Christ’s suffering is found in his sympathy with us and how God’s redeeming power is found 628 Joshua Ralston even at the point of death. Christ saves, not because of a fissure between the Son and Father on the Cross, but because Christ’s God-consciousness and blessedness reaches into the very depths of our suffering and death. Moreover, the way that he renders participation or union with Christ as central to redemption places him much closer to classically Catholic or Orthodox theologies of salvation than to typically Reformed penal substitutionary ones. Despite all their divergences, then, over the metaphysics of Chalcedon, I wonder if shifting the conversation with Thomas and Schleiermacher to the saving meaning of Christ would provide a more fertile ground for shared Catholic–Reformed theological exchange than White’s project appears to allow. This would entail a recognition of the parting of metaphysical ways, but also of a shared desire to consider the meaning of the Christian confession that Jesus is Lord and that in Jesus Christ God reconciled the world to God-self. And yet a fundamental issue still remains: both White and Schleiermacher share a view that metaphysics is baked into the Chalcedonian formulation. The question, then, becomes: if one finds this metaphysics either inaccessible or implausible given the nature of science and philosophy in a post-Kantian era, how then are we to relate to them? White argues, in what must be one of the most fulsome defenses possible in the modern period, for the renewed metaphysical import of Chalcedonianism as interpreted through Thomas and his own contemporary reconfiguration and re-articulation of Thomism. Schleiermacher rejects the substance metaphysics of Chalcedon as ill-suited to his own 19th nineteenth-century context, even as he seeks to affirm the single identity of Jesus Christ who holds together both the divine and human. I wonder, however, if Chalcedon is inextricably tied to the metaphysics of hypostasis and ousia, or if these might function more as grammatical frames for confessing how Jesus Christ is truly like us and also truly the saving power of God. The question is not, at least for me, if Schleiermacher or Thomas any other theologian remains true to the metaphysics of Chalcedon, but if their engagement with the heritage of Chalcedon is deployed in such a way that it allows us to confess that Jesus is Lord and that Jesus saves. On this, both White and I can agree. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2022): 629–648 629 White’s The Incarnate Lord: An Appreciative Interaction Chris Tilling St. Mellitus College London, England Every few years or so, I have been fortunate enough to read authors to whom I know I will endlessly return. For me, that list includes the likes of Karl Barth, Douglas Campbell, Jeff McSwain, and Richard Bauckham, to name some of the “likely suspects.” I may now add Thomas Joseph White to that list, for he has encouraged me to rethink some of my inherited theological commitments. Indeed, the learning, eloquence, and cogency of argumentation on display in The Incarnate Lord1 was, for me, like a New Testament baptism in that I felt plunged into deep waters—refreshing waters, I might add, as he kept sight of “first order” theological discussion. Rather than a boring and very well-worn escapade into hermeneutical or reader-centered concerns that some inexplicably still seem to think are cutting edge, here we are treated to the kind of theological analysis that stretches, that seeks to advance. What is more, the scope of White’s volume is impressive. His argument ranges confidently through philosophical subtleties, both ancient and modern. He handles complex, yet important, Christological debates and soteriological discussions in conversation with giants in the field, one of whom alone usually suffices for a lifetime of reading. And this is all done in conversation with important contemporary interlocutors. As a result, the numerous and arguably important observations contained in The Incarnate Lord will shape my own questions for years to come. How refreshing to read a work of theology that seeks 1 Thomas Joseph White, The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2017). 630 Chris Tilling unapologetically to “peer into the mystery of God himself ” (29)! This is all to say that it is an honor to respond to White’s work. It is also a considerable task for this humble Neutestamentler. Consequently, in what follows, I will not outline what I consider to be White’s overarching concerns, except as they are refracted by my own interests, nor place his contributions on the landscape of alternative proposals. Rather, I will alight upon what I consider to be matters most worthy of dissection given my own expertise and interests. To wit, I will first note areas that are significant impulses in my own theological development. This will lead to the most substantial section of this paper, second, where I will ponder White’s engagement with Scripture and in light of Scripture, particularly as presented in his introduction. This will provide a useful springboard into a variety of substantial concerns in White’s volume. Third, I will seek to bring the many debates and discussions to as sharp a formulation as possible, in the hope that it may provoke fruitful dialogue. Significant Contributions As stated, this section is not meant to enumerate the various contributions White makes in terms of general systematic theological discussion. This would extend an already overly ambitious review. I would be ill-equipped to make such judgments, either way. This is more personal, relating to an entirely contingent theological biography, and how White’s arguments push me to develop. First, I note his critical commentary on the Barthian tradition, and its implicit endorsement—without sufficient theological justification—of the Kantian critique of metaphysics. This was an insight made with particular force and cleverly contrasted with the implicit ontological commitments of Chalcedon. As he rightly asks: “What does it mean to say that God personally ‘exists’ as a human being among us? How should we understand the difference between Christ’s human nature and his divine nature?” Or again, how is “nature” attributed “to Christ’s human essence as distinct from his divine essence?” White presses the point: “In seeking to recover Chalcedonian ontology ‘after Kant’ without a commitment to classical metaphysics, the Barthian ‘tradition’ cannot answer these questions adequately” (49). In particular, he then asks whether it is adequate to follow Barth in placing the “site” of the hypostatic union in the identity of God “revealed in a voluntary act of the human Christ.” Barth, thereby, locates central ontological considerations concerning the divine–human unity in “an ‘accidental’ feature of the human being of Christ” (49). As such, this tends toward a White’s The Incarnate Lord: An Appreciative Interaction 631 particular understanding of Nestorianism (as worked out in detail in the first chapter). While questions remain for me, these observations must be taken seriously in future discussion. His own question lingers: “Can the ontology of the incarnation be understood rightly without recourse to core elements of the ‘pre-Kantian’ metaphysical tradition?” (70). I will present my own resolution in what follows, but this is a tentative exploration, provoked by White’s own clarity. This dovetails with two areas of concern I have had with Barthian theological trajectories, and that I think may call for further work—and this despite the fact that I, as a reader of Paul, see more theological affinities between Paul and Barth than Paul and Aquinas. First, there’s the matter of discourse in the “public space.”2 Arguably, revealed theology often lacks the resources Thomism has for creating space to emphasize common ground. This is not true, arguably, of T. F. Torrance, so it is not necessarily intrinsic to the Barthian tradition.3 And it may be that a theology of revelation, as Phil Ziegler argues, “might be able to deliver part of what contemporary advocates of natural law seek.”4 But where common ground is without specifically theological justification, it is surely inevitable that different perspectives will simply shout louder in isolated ghettoes, thereby undermining the common good. Without such underpinning, andere Geister enter, which insist that all relations be tabulated according to an infantile reduction to two-dimensional power games in the spirit of Michel Foucault and Friedrich Nietzsche. These have not been redemptive trends in modern socio-political developments. All strength to White for his sophisticated case against related trends in the final pages of his book. A second feature of Barthian theology that has problems yet to be sufficiently addressed, to my mind, is the relation between the identity of God and creation, particularly given evil. Of course, White adopts a metaphysical frame for which this is not an (immediate) problem: “There is no real relation between God and creatures” (189; italics suppressed), and there is thus a non-reciprocity between “the similitude attributed to creatures in relation to God and the non-similitude attributed to God in relation to creatures” (188; see also, most forcibly, 200). This arguably produced its own problems, which may not be insignificant, but White 2 3 4 With more space it would be ideal critically to interact with the provocative work of Theo Hobson, God Created Humanism: The Christian Basis of Secular Values (London: SPCK, 2017), to expand and qualify some of these concerns. Contrast the discussion in Philip G. Ziegler, Militant Grace: The Apocalyptic Turn and the Future of Christian Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), 122–27. Ziegler, Militant Grace, 136. 632 Chris Tilling again underscores where perhaps more Barthian work needs to be done. Of course, the brilliant Robert Jenson begun such work in earnest as early as his doctoral dissertation on Barth,5 yet arguably more work needs to be done for those who work with a consistently Christological approach.6 What White does, then, is question aspects of Barthian theology with incisive acumen, presenting alternative solutions and substantial criticisms that require further discussion. Much more could be said about White’s commanding reasoning on a host of issues. But it is likely most fruitful in such a context to raise areas for discussion. Scripture And so we turn to White’s handling of Scripture. The extent to which a theologian commits to grounding their work on Scripture remains one of perennial concern to me. This is not merely because I am a biblical scholar, though that of course plays a part. Pope Francis recently exhorted, in continuity with various papal predecessors,7 “a greater emphasis on the study of Scripture in ecclesiastical programmes of training for priests and catechists,” and encouraged that “efforts should also be made to provide all the faithful with the resources needed to be able to open the sacred book and draw from it priceless fruits of wisdom, hope and life” (apostolic letter Scripturae Sacrae Affectus [2020]). Indeed, at the risk of stating the obvious, the Scriptures have always nourished the Church, not least also for Thomas Aquinas with his various commentaries. Hence, I consider it a matter of principle to judge a theological proposal as follows: the extent that any implied or explicit theology distracts us from the importance of Scripture in the life of theological work and education is the extent to which that theology needs to be reformed. With that in mind, it was encouraging to encounter engagement with Scripture in White’s introduction, and Scripture read responsibly together with important biblical scholars. But two questions emerge, the second of which will dominate this response. First, do White’s claims, in light of Scripture, move too quickly? 5 6 7 See Robert W. Jenson, Alpha and Omega: A Study in the Theology of Karl Barth (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1963), 52–55. I am not persuaded that Jenson’s two-volume work on systematics deals with these concerns sufficiently, but see Jenson, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, The Triune God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 73. Pope Leo XIII’s Providentissmus Deus, Pope Pius XII’s Divino Afflante Spiritu, the Second Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution Dei Verbum, and the various published works of Benedict XVI. White’s The Incarnate Lord: An Appreciative Interaction 633 And second, has White managed to capture the dynamic of New Testament Christology in its native epistemological and ontological frames? So first, did some of White’s arguments move “too fast,” and allow potentially fatal counter-arguments? For example, in defending the New Testament account of Christ’s deity he leans on Larry Hurtado’s Lord Jesus Christ, and particularly the claim that the earliest Christians worshipped Christ in a way “reserved in Second Temple Judaism to God alone” (15). This is then bolstered with reference to Charlie Moule’s slightly dated work The Origin of Christology, and the claim that the “New Testament theme of incorporation into the Lord manifests clearly the notions of his deity” (15). I wish that more New Testament scholars would remember Moule’s contributions—it functioned as inspiration for my own work in this area—but it must immediately be added that Moule used concepts that have long since been undermined in New Testament scholarship.8 Furthermore, some may find similar “incorporative” language applied to a figure in 1 Enoch who was not understood therein to be the God of Israel (see 1 En. 49:3). To claim that Moule’s focus “manifests clearly the notions of deity” moves too fast—and strikes me as rather vaguely phrased. Likewise, in tackling the evidence relating to the worship of Christ as cited by White, biblical scholars will refer in response both to the worship of figures other than God—or figures with whom God shared his divinity, if we accept trendy notions of fluid deity9—as well as the sparse nature of the evidence in the New Testament for this supposed worship of Christ.10 Arguably it is better to see worship as part of a wider, relational pattern, which indeed dominates at least Pauline theology, if not the whole New Testament, and this will not be insignificant.11 But that is to rush ahead of my argument. Instead, I will pick up another area that seemed a little “too fast” in terms of the argument. White claims 8 9 10 11 See, S. E. Porter, “Two Myths: Corporate Personality and Language/Mentality Determinism,” Scottish Journal of Theology 43 (1990): 289–307. On this, see particularly the work of Crispin H. T. Fletcher-Louis in, e.g., Luke–Acts: Angels, Christology and Soteriology (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997); “The Worship of Divine Humanity as God’s Image and the Worship of Jesus,” in The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism, ed. C. C. Newman, J. R. Davila, and G. S. Lewis (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 112–28; and Jesus Monotheism, vol. 1, Christological Origins: The Emerging Consensus and Beyond (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2015). See, e.g., Maurice Casey, “Monotheism, Worship and Christological Developments in the Pauline Churches,” in Newman, Davila, and Lewis, Jewish Roots, 222. See Chris Tilling, Paul’s Divine Christology, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015), and the application of my method to James in David Michael Wyman, “James’s Divine Christology” (master’s thesis, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, 2016). 634 Chris Tilling that “the Son existed personally as God prior to his historical life as man” (9). Some New Testament experts will argue that, contra the scholar White references in his support (Gordon Fee), the preexistence of Christ is best understood as the preexistence of God’s wisdom, rather that Christ himself per se. This was developed by J. D. G. Dunn, yet it has appeared elsewhere.12 White surprisingly references Dunn on this issue, but he does not appear to realize the revisionary nature of Dunn’s proposal. What is more, the Similitudes of Enoch presents a character who does not seem to be the God of Israel (who is called the Lord of the Spirits therein), yet is described in terms of preexistence (48:6). So preexistence does not necessarily imply specifically divine preexistence. Others will also reference the apparently preexistent Jacob-Israel in the Prayer of Joseph.13 Fee, upon whom White leans, does not interact with, never mind refute, these problems with his case. What is more, Fee’s claims for the centrality of preexistence in Paul’s Christology are often bolstered by unconvincing exegetical maneuvers, which associate the notion of “preexistence” with a supposed “Son of God Christology” category. But Paul arguably did not think in terms of a discrete “Son of God” Christology, with particular thematic associations. Worse, Fee reads preexistence into texts when it is arguably not even implied. Without wanting to deny a preexistent Christology in Paul—I think it is the logical corollary of what is indeed central in Paul’s theology, namely his relationally divine Christology—the central place Fee gives it appears forced onto the texts.14 To leap from these exegetically fragile foundations, then, to a particular account of preexistence is arguably moving too fast for many New Testament scholars. This worry may appear compounded when White asserts that, “in the New Testament, or much of it, the pre-existence and divinity of Christ as creator seem to be understood as the precondition for any right form of theological thinking” (11). Few New Testament scholars would be so bold or sweeping in their assessment of the actual textual data. And while on sweeping statements, I would suggest some caution when claiming, as White does, that “generally speaking the Bible is deeply concerned with the ontological structure of reality in its dependence on God” (7). That all depends on what this might mean, and is a matter that we will pick up below. As it turns out, I am happily one scholar who would argue that Paul, 12 13 14 Famously, see J. D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation (London: SCM, 1980). For a summary of these issues, see Tilling, Paul’s Divine Christology, 37. On this, see Tilling, Paul’s Divine Christology, throughout. White’s The Incarnate Lord: An Appreciative Interaction 635 including most of the New Testament texts, explicitly articulates (not merely presupposes) a divine Christology. It is arguably better to speak of Christ’s personal preexistence (yes, “personal,” contra Dunn) as a logical corollary of this insight, one which was not nearly so often explicitly articulated in the New Testament, though it was occasionally. All of that is enumerated in my works on Pauline Christology elsewhere, so I will not repeat myself. My point, therefore, is not about White’s conclusions as much as the speed of his argumentation and reliance on problematic scholarly justification. Further, I would add that the lack of focus in the New Testament on preexistence is due to the particular ontological dynamics undergirding New Testament theology, which leads to my second question, namely whether White has managed to capture the dynamic of New Testament Christology in its native epistemological and ontological frames with his affirmations. Initially, I was left a little unsure how the argument worked in his account of biblical “ontology.” After all, White defines ontology at the start as follows: In speaking of ontological Christology, I am referring not to a subject of philosophy as such, or to a philosophical reflection on Christ (for example, Aristotelian-inspired analysis of the person of Christ). Rather, I am referring to specifically to a biblical mystery: Christ revealed in scripture as a person who truly exists. The personal being of Christ is subject to theological investigation. (6) However, by the end of his summary of Christ’s preexistence and divinity, White asserts that “nothing short of a Christology that looks directly into ontological questions” will suffice, and that apart from that “the New Testament itself remains fundamentally unintelligible” (16). But if by ontology, here, White simply means the person Jesus who truly exists, I am not sure what has been achieved in the argument. It would be saying that nothing short of a Christology that looks directly into the Christ who truly exists will suffice, which borders on tautology. Perhaps more weight is being placed on the word “ontology” than the initial disclaimer suggests? Or is it that White thinks preexistence and divinity by themselves justify a particular ontological account, as the developing argument suggests? Greater clarity here would be ideal, though I recognize the limitations may well be in my account of these arguments. Either way, irrespective of whether the use of Scripture in his arguments can better an adoptionist or Arian who could wield isolated passages such 636 Chris Tilling as Romans 1:4, John 14:28, and 1 Corinthians 15:27–28 just as confidently, I want to press the following: does the move from preexistence, divinity, humanity, and the communication of idioms account sufficiently for the ontological and epistemological frame of these earliest Christian writers? After all, White seeks to present an account of biblical ontology. To focus on Paul’s letters, I make two points, the first about epistemology and the second about metaphysics. This second issue is broader, so will also need to examine clusters of load-bearing terms. Pauline Epistemology So first, I maintain that Paul’s theological epistemology is dominated by a revelation-relational framework. This, in turn, also accounts for the fabric of his Christological insights. To begin negatively, too often theologians head quickly—and on pain of being anathematized by the First Vatican Council (cited in 204n2)—to Romans 1:20 as justification of a particular “natural theology,” which Paul is thereby seen to endorse. But these verses will take far more away than they give, unless they are used in arbitrary and isolated fashion. After all, if we take this passage as it stands, we do not simply prove a philosophy of “natural theology” (the rhetoric of 1:20–32 ends up denouncing homosexuality, which is hardly an obvious deduction from the premises). Instead, we end up unleashing at least two further dynamics, the first of which has been called “methodological Arianism,” a serious charge specifically when speaking of axiomatic characteristics of God vis-à-vis humanity.15 The second dynamic is a strong theology of desert, one which is not only argumentatively—vis-à-vis the immediate textual frame—but theologically difficult to square with the unconditional love of God revealed in Christ (Rom 5:8). And both in turn generate further mischief in a host of other ways that I will not enumerate now.16 Hence, the most theologically alert readers of Romans 1 recognize deep discordance here with Paul’s theology everywhere else in his letters.17 Instead, and now to state things positively, typical of Paul’s epistemology 15 16 17 See Chris Tilling, “Campbell’s Apocalyptic Gospel and Pauline Athanasianism,” in Beyond Old and New Perspectives on Paul: Reflections on the Work of Douglas Campbell, ed. Chris Tilling (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014), 49–73. But see Douglas A. Campbell, Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God’s Love (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2019). See, e.g., J. C. O’Neill, Francis Watson, and E. P. Sanders, among others, as they seek to square a circle, all as canvassed and analyzed in this respect in Douglas A. Campbell, The Deliverance of God: An Apocalyptic Rereading of Justification in Paul (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009). White’s The Incarnate Lord: An Appreciative Interaction 637 is 1 Corinthians 8:1–3, which sets up important contrasts for his unfolding argument about idol food. Paul’s “necessary knowing” (8:3) is a knowledge of God understood in relational and love-for-God orientated terms. As such it is not a possession, contra the claim of the Corinthian “knowledgeable,” but God’s knowledge of his people. In other words, theological knowledge, for Paul, is not the possession of humans but remains, we could say, the property of the self-disclosure of God in Christ, and is hence derivative of participation in the reality of Christ risen. So, in Galatians 4:9, Paul corrects himself when speaking of our knowledge of God, as this might problematically imply, as Martinus de Boer puts it, “the language of the religious quest for a proper relationship with God.” He changes track: “Rather, we have become known by God.” Paul’s Gospel, de Boer continues, “is not an instance of the religious quest for God . . . but the expression of God’s apocalyptic self-disclosure in Christ.”18 Similarly, Paul, in 1 Corinthians 8:1–3, undermines the claimed possession of knowledge. Even stating true propositions (as cited in 8:4) does not demonstrate “necessary knowing” for Paul, when separated from this relationality and giftedness, but merely shows that the Corinthians were “puffed up.” For Paul, knowledge of God is given in revelation (Gal 1:15–16; 1 Cor 1:21–2:16). It is eschatologically determined and Christologically permeated. The knowledge of God is not grounded nor mastered in mere formula, but is part of that subject’s life and interpersonal relations.19 So much for Paul’s epistemology. The point, now, is to emphasize that Paul’s theology is couched in a particular epistemological frame that likewise corresponds—as we shall see—with his account of the ontology of Christ’s divinity. It is revealed, given, and relational. Any suggestion that there should be a “minimal distinction between natural and supernatural modes of knowledge” (208), as White maintains, may need to negotiate such Pauline distinctions. Before moving on from epistemological matters, permit me one minor 18 19 Martinus C. de Boer, Galatians: A Commentary, The New Testament Library (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2011), 273. See also J. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 33A (London: Doubleday, 1997), for the most expansive and theologically alert account of Paul’s language. This is to rather vainly cite a number of conclusions of one of my own essays, where I further analyze these realizations with respect to the question of how one best defines “abstraction” and the necessary utility of propositions in light of Paul. See Chris Tilling, “Knowledge Puffs Up, But Love Builds Up: The Apostle Paul and the Task of Dogmatics,” in The Task of Dogmatics: Explorations in Theological Method, ed. Oliver D. Crisp and Fred Sanders (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2017), 87–107. 638 Chris Tilling related point. In note 40 on 229, White suggests that Barth may have overlooked dangers when rejecting the analogia entis. One is the “‘alienation’ of the God of Jesus Christ from the world of human understanding, rendering him a ‘mere abstraction’ or gnostic deity.” Of course, it depends on what one means by “the world of human understanding,” and I will return to that below in my subsection on the “human cluster.” But it could also be noted that at least a revelational account comes with the promises of God in Paul, and elsewhere in the New Testament ( John 1:18; Matt 11:27). Could the same be said for the particular metaphysical structures mobilized by White? Pauline Metaphysics The Ontology of Paul’s Theological Christology Now to Paul’s ontology. For Paul, as I have argued elsewhere at length, God’s unique Godness is expressed in both (what I call) the God and Christ relations,20 and these relations as actualized by the activity of the Holy Spirit. These insights should not be overlooked when attempting to present “biblical ontology.” For this relationality is part of how Paul, as a Second Temple Jew, would have defined the Godness of God. The Shema, crucial in thinking about Jewish “monotheism,” emphasizes love for God in the same sentence of mention of the ʾeḥād. Oneness is not just theological fact, for Paul, which is indeed how the Corinthian knowledgeable may have misunderstood the matter. Indeed, the correct understanding of God’s oneness is about loving relationality in terms of God and others. Anything else is a knowledge that “puffs up.” Hence, as Nathan MacDonald argues, in light of the Deuteronomic Shema, that “monotheism” is not simply “a truth to be comprehended”; it is “a relationship in which to be committed.”21 Likewise with Paul, his ontology of divine Christology is the Christ-relation, conclusions which of course dovetail with his epistemology. In this light, I worry that White moves quickly to an ontology involving substance and accidents, oneness and unity and such like. I do not want to argue here that Aristotelian notions cannot help clarify and even deepen the Church’s meditation on the person of Christ within certain metaphysical frames, but it should do so by paying primary attention to 20 21 My apologies for the clumsy terminology in this sentence. I have toyed with “transcendent uniqueness,” but a colleague has persuaded me to recant. Nathan MacDonald, Deuteronomy and the Meaning of “Monotheism” (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 97. White’s The Incarnate Lord: An Appreciative Interaction 639 the scriptural witness. It needs constantly to ensure that these themes lead us toward, rather than away from, Scripture. So, when White claims that “we find in the New Testament itself the seeds of ontological reflection concerning Christ” (8; see also 16), I worry that this underestimates the ontological movements already in place in the New Testament when pondering the person of Christ. Classical metaphysics is not the only option, of course. Indeed, for the Church it was perhaps the first major revisionary metaphysics. So when White claims that attempts to understand the “New Testament claims about Christ non-ontologically is in the end a non-biblical exercise” (117), we can agree, but with the footnote that we cannot assume that the contours of that ontology and metaphysics are the same thing as classical metaphysics. At least some work needs to be done to show how it can correspond with Pauline metaphysics. It should be obvious that I am not, therefore, seeking to offer a refutation of White’s central thesis in dialogue with the Apostle Paul. I merely want to question the way in which “biblical ontology” has been presented. Of course, this may have wider ramifications, but that remains to be seen. At least the following can be said: when an ontology, which distinguishes between substance and accidents for example, is brought into discussion with the biblical witness, it needs to do at least two things. First, it needs to admit that the ontological framework being deployed is etic, rather than emic, to use the terminology deployed by anthropologists. It is a framework imposed from without (it is revisionary), rather than one that emerges from within. This is not to falsify it, of course. Second, the nature of such metaphysics, including, for example, the analogical relation between the accidental (relational) and substantial, must be demonstrated to be appropriate to biblical metaphysical intuitions, and thereby show why it facilitates rather than hinders engagement with the Scriptures. White argues that the biblical texts concerning Christology should prompt us to metaphysical reflection (e.g., 17). Indeed so, but rather than merely “metaphysical reflection on scripture” (17; italics mine), I suggest we not underestimate the metaphysical framework of Scripture itself, and thus urge “metaphysical reflection with scripture.” This may then lead to a different kind of interaction with the theologically load-bearing distinctions White presses, with other Thomists, such as between primary and secondary actuality, and more generally those between substantial and accidental or “properties,” between natural and supernatural and historical and eternal, and so on. 640 Chris Tilling “Time” Cluster Naturally, an account of Pauline metaphysics must go further, and to do so we will examine two clusters of terms. The first involves the words “time,” “history,” and “eternity.”22 We need to interrogate these load-bearing terms as carefully as possible if we wish to present biblical metaphysics. So divine mysteries occur, White states, “in and through historical time” (24; italics mine). The terms are of course found in his polemic against the “historicized portrait of the deity of God” in the theologies of Jürgen Moltmann, Eberhard Jüngel, and Jenson (48–50; italics mine). He argues that there are “perennial characteristics of the human being through time” (25; italics mine), and will speak of the Son who “took upon himself a human nature within the horizon of human history” (75; italics mine). In other words, these terms are load bearing in discrete arguments for White. So, what does the biblical witness add to the metaphysics of these terms? The initial impression is that Paul may complicate matters, for he handles “time” in such a manner that destabilizes notions that are linear and one-dimensional, especially when he talks of Christ who is, clearly, his primary obsession. For Paul, time appears as a creature rethought around Christ. Paul, like other Second Temple Jews, thought flexibly about time. But Paul goes further. The whole scope of time seems to be contained in the story of Jesus Christ, from creation (Col 1:16–17; 1 Cor 8:6), through to the resurrection. Christ’s death is the death of all—yours and mine (2 Cor 5:14) —and our resurrection is “with Jesus” (2 Cor 4:14), not only like his resurrection. We exist, in other words, in the time of Jesus Christ— as Barth saw clearly—an insight that undermines unimaginative accounts of time as a sliding scale with past–preset–future, onto which we must map theological complexities, together with supposed problems relating to ugly ditches.23 The “common history that we share with Pontius Pilate” (221) is thus, for Paul, the time of Jesus. To use it otherwise would need careful justification by the theologian.24 22 23 24 There is no space to meditate upon the latter in this paper. On this, see Chris Tilling, “Paul, Christ, and Narrative Time,” in Christ and the Created Order: Perspectives from Theology, Philosophy, and Science, ed. Andrew B. Torrance and Thomas H. McCall (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2018), 151–66, and Seth Heringer, Uniting History and Theology: A Theological Critique of the Historical Method (London: Fortress Academic, 2018). On this, see Lincoln Harvey, Jesus in the Trinity: A Beginner’s Guide to the Theology of Robert Jenson (London: SCM, 2020), 195. It is also well known that “eternal” is often a debatable translation of αἰώνιος (See, e.g., Ilaria Ramelli and David Konstan, Terms for Eternity: Aiônios and Aïdios in Classical and Christian Texts [Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2007]), and this is apart from whether one ought to think of eternity as itself White’s The Incarnate Lord: An Appreciative Interaction 641 I would, therefore, suggest an alternative emphasis when speaking of “history” and “historical-critical.” White asks: “What are the historical-critical conditions for a theological rather than merely apologetic discussion of these events as revelatory of Christ” (33). But a potential danger is that this assumes a metaphysics of “historical,” which Paul may challenge on the grounds noted above. He may insist we turn the question around and think about the theological conditions of historical criticism. White further opines that “the historical-critical method can be employed profitably to identify rationally the enduring theological significance of the historical figure of Jesus” (36). But this raises further questions that we will pick up below, namely whether historical criticism, working within methodologically naturalistic presuppositions, can offer truly theological input in a way Paul might recognize as theological. We will be in a place to extend some of these reflections after the next subsection. “Human” Cluster The second cluster of terms involve “humans” and “nature.” Once again, we are brought back to matters of definition, and Paul’s theology offers resources that may help. After all, human nature, for Paul, is radically reconstituted in the death and resurrection of Christ. It dies and is raised as it participates in Christ’s death and resurrection. So, Paul exclaims, “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20), and “you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3). Anthropology seen in this light is more difficult, it seems to me, to square with hermeneutical categories and distinctions that speak of “intrinsic” and “natural,” as if that is something prior to and apart from the life of Christ as articulated in the Gospel (see, e.g., 226–28). As Luther observed I think in a Pauline key, there seems to be a sense in which “reason receives life from faith. It is killed by faith and brought back to life by faith.”25 This is why, for Paul, those in Christ do not go through mere reformation, but death and resurrection. As this participatory and 25 an analogous concept. But I say this only in passing as I would otherwise stray from my primary purpose to interact tangentially with Paul. Jenson maintains that a difference in accounts of eternity is “the key epistemological difference between his [namely, Aquinas] and my own thought” (Systematic Theology, 1:55n87). Martin Luther, “Die Sammlung von Konrad Cordatus (Schluß),” in D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesammmtausgabe, 127 vols. (Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1883–2009), vol. WATR 3 (Tischreden aus den dreißiger Jahren, vol. 3 of “Table Talks” [Tischreden]), no. 2938a (p. 104, lines 27–29). See also Todd R. Hains, Martin Luther and the Rule of Faith: Reading God's Word for God's People (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2022). 642 Chris Tilling Christological anthropology is a deep Pauline insight (see, e.g., Rom 6; 2 Cor 5), I hesitate when White opines that “grace is a great and perhaps even necessary aid for the right exercise of any natural human knowledge of God” (205). For Paul, that nature dies in the death of Christ so grace is no “perhaps.” Or again, when he states that, “if there were in our fallen condition no persisting capacity for natural knowledge of God (if we are not capable in principle of a so-called natural theology), then human beings would be radically and irremediably incapable of receiving knowledge of Christ by grace alone under any form whatsoever” (207; italics his; see also 208, 225, 228, 232). For Paul, at least, anthropological continuity with the “old” or natural man is not his concern. As it has died with Christ (2 Cor 5:14) the solution is not to plaster a bit of (possibly) necessary grace. The solution is life from death: resurrection! In other words, citing Matthew’s Gospel at this point does not seem entirely inappropriate: “For humans this is impossible, but for God all things are possible” (19:26). However, we can perhaps go further and suggest ways in which White’s basic thesis at this point stands, albeit on an adjusted metaphysical basis, one in which the new humanity is foregrounded. This new creation, which is the work of the resurrection of Christ (Eph 2:15; 2 Cor 5:17), is achieved for all (Rom 5:18; 6:10; 11:32; 1 Cor 15:22; 2 Cor 5:14–15, etc.), and thereby establishes a theological anthropological ground which is “Christ in us” (Col 1:27) by the Holy Spirit (Rom 8:9). This would mean adjusting what is meant by “natural,” perhaps, placing it not next to but within what is revealed in the Gospel. And it may reverse the order of logic White wants to secure.26 The claim on 202, that “because we can know something of God by our ordinary, natural powers, therefore we can receive knowledge of him by grace that is not wholly alien to our ordinary form of knowing,” could be read in Pauline terms differently as: “Because we have died and are reconstituted in Christ as a new creation by and act of divine intervention and grace, therefore the knowledge of God that is in Christ is not alien to our ontological constitution, which is hid with Christ in God.” Put bluntly, when talking about humans and their relation to Christ as their life, one may find some elements of classical metaphysics ill-equipped to aid the 26 See, e.g., Colin E. Gunton, A Brief Theology of Revelation (London: T&T Clark, 1995), 40–63, and the distinction between natural theology and a “theology of nature.” Thanks to Lincoln Harvey for drawing me back to Gunton’s account. White’s The Incarnate Lord: An Appreciative Interaction 643 reader of Scripture,27 for it will refuse to consider creaturely knowledge and understanding “in abstraction from the work of the Spirit.”28 We are perhaps now best placed to discuss wider matters that emerge from these observations. First: a further remark on White’s clever argument for a natural capacity to think about God as the necessary condition for knowledge of God. Cannot one, following the Torrances, suppose that “epistemological extrinsicism” need not render that knowledge “utterly distinct from the world”? (208). For revelational theology, it can be understood as more about procedure and starting points, in light of which judgments may be made retrospectively and analogically. So, Barth too can say of the world of religion, that though it be Unglaube it still relates to the revelation of God. He writes of “Gottes Offenbarung als Aufhebung der Religion” and implies not simply religion’s abolition, but its “sublimation,” as Garrett Green most recently translates the word.29 Barth insists on the freedom of revelation over against religion, yes, but without denying the religious nature of revelation.30 To be religious is more or less a universal feature of humans,31 he argues, and cannot simply be negated by God’s revelation. This is to say that “the judgment of divine revelation does not sweep aside or destroy the world of religion. On the contrary, ‘In his revelation God is present in the world of human religion.’”32 Barth thus advocates a posture of humility, and implies an expectation that Christ can and will speak in unexpected spheres in what Barth calls “parables of the kingdom.”33 It follows from this that Barth’s approach could offer a more positive 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 For a particularly insightful and exegetically fruitful treatment of biblical anthropology, see now Jeff McSwain, Simul Sanctification: Barth’s Hidden Vision for Human Transformation (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2018). John Webster, Confessing God: Essays in Christian Dogmatics II (London: T & T Clark, 2005), 136. Garrett Green, “Religion,” in The Westminster Handbook to Karl Barth, ed. Richard E. Burnett (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2013), 180–81, translating from Kirchliche Dogmatik I/2, no. 7. See also J. M. Fritzman, Hegel, Classic Thinkers Series (Cambridge: Polity, 2014), 48. See J. A. Di Noia, “Religion and the Religions,” in Cambridge Companion to Karl Barth, ed. John Webster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 246, where Di Noia cites Garrett Green. Di Noia, “Religion and the Religions,” 246. He refers at this point to Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. I/2, The Doctrine of the Word of God, part 2 (London: T&T Clark, 1969), 297 (Di Noia, “Religion and the Religions,” 250). See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. IV/3, The Doctrine of Reconciliation, part 3 (London: T&T Clark, 1988), 117–18. 644 Chris Tilling account than White suggests for how we might reconcile “the biblical portrait of Christ and modern historical studies of Jesus” (70). It could encourage, at least in theory, a retrospective account of historical work that takes seriously the task of “taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor 10:5). For White argues that Barth neutralizes the “theological importance of the historical-critical life of Jesus studies” (39; italics suppressed). I can see why this conclusion might be drawn. But I am not persuaded that this is a necessary corollary of his Christological focus, as Seth Heringer’s thesis shows.34 With Heringer, it may be argued that “historical-critical” will never be critical enough unless it is assessed in terms of Christ. And what is offered by historians of any stripe can be assessed retrospectively, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. But it has a Christological basis, a plumb-line if you will, for critical assessment— undertaken in oscillating hermeneutical fashion. And this is key, as “historical work” is not univocal. It may denote that work that work sheds light on particularity, but this is not the same work that offers grand reconstructions of the “historical Jesus,” alternative to the Gospels. Do both have the same independent theological worth?35 How might we judge that? Further, in Pauline studies I think it is fair to say that it is Barth-inspired scholars who have worked hardest to offer the thickest accounts of Paul’s historical contingency.36 And this is no mere accident, as a revelational account helps determine a particular account of what is “reasonable” and what counts as the “raw data,” whether it be the Virgin Birth or Jesus walking on the water. And as far as historical-Jesus scholarship is concerned, the debates are still raging as to what should be considered appropriately “probabilistic and conjectural” (59).37 Moreover, as John Webster argued: [Christ] is, and therefore he is present, and therefore he is known. There is a negative inference to be drawn here, namely that this given 34 35 36 37 See Heringer, Uniting History and Theology. On this, see also Luke Timothy Johnson, The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), and Richard J. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006); see also helpful distinctions in Michael Wolter, “Which Jesus is the Real Jesus?” in The Quest for the Real Jesus, ed. Jan Van Der Watt (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 1–18. See, e.g., Martyn, Galatians, and Douglas A. Campbell, Framing Paul (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014). See also Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity, ed. Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne (London: T&T Clark International, 2012). White’s The Incarnate Lord: An Appreciative Interaction 645 presence of Christ excludes ways of approaching the task of Christology in which there lurks the assumption that Jesus Christ is not, or may not, or cannot be present to us. . . . He cannot be approached as if he were an elusive figure, absent from us, locked in transcendence or buried in the past, and only to be discovered through the exercise of human ingenuity. . . . All such strategies, whether in biblical scholarship or philosophical and dogmatic theology, are in the end methodologically sophisticated forms of infidelity.38 This is not to negate historical work in toto, far less human knowledge and study. It negates, rather, grand historical reconstructing of the life of Jesus that assumes what is false from the start. For these reasons, among others, should an undefined “historical Jesus studies” function as “in some real sense foundational for the discernment of what constitutes (or does not constitute) properly theological knowledge of Christ”? (37). It depends how the metaphor of “foundation” is pressed, as well as what is meant by the nature of the historical work in question. So as it stands, Barth’s Nein! wants to rush to my keyboard! This is why it is, I think, an oversimplification to state that “historical reconstructions,” for the Barthian, must “stand outside of the proper object of Christology” (39). It depends on what is meant by the words used. Speech concerning God is only made possible Christologically for Barth (46), true, but this does not negate the retrospective negotiation of truth claims in light of what is given in Christ, which is why there is so much historically informed exegesis in the Church Dogmatics. Christology, here, is about the right ordering of God-talk and its reframing rather than the principled exclusion of historical work. Three things follow from these arguments. First, I do not see a compelling reason why a Barthian could not happily commend Chalcedonian metaphysics as a retrospective judgment on a particular set of terminological, ontological, and epistemological coordinates. I return to this point at the end. And this is also why I do not think it is “ironic” (50) that Barth’s strategy involves the application of human categories. Second, the same judgments can be applied to Barth’s appropriation of Kant. I do not agree that either Barth or Barthians “tend to import wholesale Kantian philosophical presuppositions into their theology without sufficient justification,” as White charges (194; italics mine; see also 234–35). Rather, is there principled reason why some of Kant’s insights 38 Webster, Confessing God, 136–38. 646 Chris Tilling could not be sifted and deployed retrospectively, much as with historical work? After all, a case could be made on theological grounds by working backward from the unconditionality of revelation in Christ (Rom 5:8). Suspicions about the human capacity to speculate accurately about God apart from revelation could also be drawn through a longer tradition than Kant, stretching through Luther to Augustine and ultimately to Paul.39 After all, “the mind of the flesh is enmity to God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be” (Rom 8:7). Third, a Christological focus, which maps neatly onto Paul’s epistemology, helps set a bar by which to judge key issues. White draws on Aquinas to show how we might know God “through the formal medium of revelation and through the distinct formal medium of philosophical speculation simultaneously” (53). But how could we judge if they do not conflict? Does this not require another ground to adjudicate the coherence of the relationship? And how might that, in turn, be justified (enter the problem of infinite regress)? If revealed theological truths are considered to be the final backstop, as White’s phrases such as “in that light” and “after the fact” (56–57) suggest, there may be encouraging grounds for more of an ecumenical rapprochement. Bringing It to the Point So much more could be said about White’s case for natural theology and the analogia entis or his account of the likeness of the human and divine natures, and much more besides, but space is limited. So I want to bring it to a sharp point. As far as I see it, we can suggest at least the following, though it is admittedly reductionist: (A) Given a commitment to classical metaphysics, (A1): which functions both as a necessary presupposition for Chalcedonian orthodoxy, and enjoys a long history of worshipful and precise Christian reflection, especially rigorous in the Thomist tradition(s), (A2): thereby justifying its contemporary theological deployment (B): White ably demonstrates that Thomism, so understood, offers important insights and correctives for modern Christological and soteriological discussion. 39 See the discussion in John M. Barclay, Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015), 100–102. White’s The Incarnate Lord: An Appreciative Interaction 647 The key question that I, as a biblical scholar, must ask, is whether—or rather, in what way—(A) is foundational for contemporary theological reflection.40 Surely (A1) and (A2) cannot be breezily ignored in the name of some kind of ahistorical biblicism. But a fundamental decision needs to be made about (A), and this will determine the extent to which much, even if not all, of White’s theses can be accepted (B). My hesitation’s about accepting (A) as uniquely authoritative have been introduced above. But an alternative way of framing matters could be presented as follows, and thereby open up appropriate and scripturally justified space between (A1) and (A2). On the one hand, the gap between (A1) and (A2) can be maximalized, and this not simply in a “let’s make stuff up as we go along and drink deep from whatever contemporary sensibility happens to flutter past” liberalism sense. Instead, as Brian Daley recently argued, Chalcedon should be seen “a mid-fifth-century way station” and “a brilliant but largely unsuccessful attempt to reconcile competing traditions,” rather than “a final resolution of difficulties, or a foundation for lasting ecumenical agreement.”41 My difficulties with this position will not busy me now, except to say that I think it provides a useful coordinate against which to plot White’s position. So, and on the other hand, for White the articulation of the Incarnation has become equated with its expression and metaphysical frame in Chalcedon, so that, “if we believe in the incarnation, we need to be committed to the retrieval of some form of classical metaphysics” (66). My concerns with this brilliantly articulated position have been outlined above. But it boils down to a concern that we not underestimate biblical metaphysics, and thereby be better positioned to understand and critically negotiate classical metaphysics as the revisionary work it was. After all, the Apostle Paul was not so philosophically committed, yet his theology—and here I would agree with White—is all about the fullness of deity dwelling in bodily form (Col 2:9). These observations may encourage, then, a middle path between a Daley and a White. Namely, it asks whether Chalcedon and beyond can be seen 40 41 I did not obtain a copy of Keith Johnson’s helpful article until after I had drafted this review. It is clear that my own reflection, at this point, overlaps with his earlier remarks; see Johnson, “When Nature Presupposes Grace: A Response to Thomas Joseph White, O.P,” Pro Ecclesia 20, no. 3 (2011): 264–82. It would have been useful had White responded to some of Johnson’s concerns in the monograph. Perhaps he can attempt that in our discussion? Brian E. Daley, S.J., God Visible: Patristic Christology Reconsidered (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 200. 648 Chris Tilling as establishing the correct set of coordinates and authoritative decisions vis-à-vis Christology given those particular metaphysical presuppositions. To establish what counts as heresy, then, would not simply insist that contemporary theology subscribe to the same metaphysical framework. Rather, it would map the considerations and decisions made within a different set of wider metaphysical coordinates to apply to decisions made in new epistemological and metaphysical frames. In other words, Chalcedon would still function in authoritative terms, but in such a way that would also facilitate the wise negotiation of continuity in discontinuity and discontinuity in continuity. In other words, it would indeed be deployed as foundational, but with due consideration to its own historical particularity, and this, too, negotiated via a Christologically governed reading of Scripture that plumbs its own metaphysical and Trinitarian depths.42 42 See, Chris Tilling, “Paul the Trinitarian,” in Essays on the Trinity, ed. Lincoln Harvey (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2018), 36–62. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2022): 649–672 649 On the Ecumenical Work of Reforming Christology: Sacra Doctrina, Analogia Entis, and Kenosis Thomas Joseph White, O.P. Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Rome, Italy I would like to thank Angela Franks, Ian McFarland, Joshua Ralston, and Chris Tilling for their generous comments on my book The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology. The wonderful professionalism of engagement and theological verve that each of their essays demonstrates are impressive and stand somewhat in disproportion to my theological merits. The topics we are engaging with are important ones for the understanding of the mystery of Jesus Christ and the Church’s common confession of faith, as well as ways that academic theology seeks humbly to understand that mystery. There is, perhaps happily, too rich a content in the essays for me to respond to comprehensively. Given the ecumenical context of our discussion in this format, I would like to address three topics briefly: sacra doctrina in the Thomistic tradition, analogia entis as it relates to ecumenism, and topics in kenosis, particularly with regard to the renewal of dyotheletism and what I take to be the helpful traditional use of the communication of idioms when speaking of God’s human suffering and kenotic love. Sacra Doctrina Catholics in the Thomistic tradition and Protestants influenced in noteworthy ways by Barth do often have clear substantive disagreements theologically, to be sure. However, they do not always understand one another in the terms each other would easily recognize. I think it is important to make a few comments about Thomistic self-understanding regarding 650 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. the practice of theology as a normative discipline and how it relates to Scripture, Tradition, dogma, and philosophy, as well as normative claims about orthodoxy and heresy. As anyone recognizes, Aquinas is only one theologian among many in the Catholic tradition. Evidently, no one who is a member of the Catholic Church is required intellectually to be committed to Thomistic interpretations of commonly held doctrine, let alone to Aquinas’s own distinctive philosophy. What then do Catholic Thomists make, methodologically, of the inherent theological pluralism within their own Church, and how does it relate to argumentative claims Thomists sometimes propose regarding the supposed insufficiencies of alternative theological viewpoints, or the conceptual advantages of Thomistic positions in Christology? First let us simply note some levels of authority that Aquinas himself recognizes in question 1 of Summa theologiae [ST] I, and questions 1–2 of ST I-II. My list below is affected by an interpretation of Aquinas made in light of the Second Vatican Council Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, but it is not for that reason, I think, artificial or extrinsically imposed. (1) God reveals himself in free self-disclosure and self-communication by way of grace, teaching us through the medium of the prophets and apostles, and this teaching is found in Scripture and early apostolic Tradition. It is received, transmitted, and understood within the living tradition of the Church. The whole Church is assisted by the Holy Spirit in this process to understand and receive the teaching of God revealed in Christ faithfully down through the ages, not without the assistance of the apostolic college, the episcopal authorities of the Church acting in communion with the see of Rome. (2) This teaching is itself codified at times in dogmatic universal pronouncements, which are not identical with primal revelation as such but which seek to promote and protect right understandings of integral elements of it. The dogmatic teaching of Chalcedon, for example, is not identical with scriptural revelation but is taken to indicate something perennially true about the ontology of Christ which is revealed implicitly in the New Testament. Most Catholic theologians agree that the Church understands this kind of dogmatic teaching as infallibly expressive of divine revelation, and irreformable. This does not mean that the teachings given in these locales are comprehensive or fully adequate, but they do indicate core confessional truths, manifest implicitly or explicitly in Scripture, that must be preserved On the Ecumenical Work of Reforming Christolog y 651 through the ages, even if such conciliar teachings also can be reinterpreted in various ways in subsequent ages, in new theological and philosophical formats. The latter formats, novel though they may be in each age, need to preserve sufficiently the acquisitions of the Church’s previous claims. This includes whatever is essential in the ontological content of the classical dogmatic tradition.1 Of course theologians working with the magisterium of the Church try to work out over time what is essential in the ontological signification of the past teachings as they are interpreted within the horizon of new contexts. (3) There are different schools of theology within the Catholic Church, for example, Augustinian, Syriac, Byzantine Eastern Catholic, Bonaventurian, Thomist, Scotist, Suarezian, Rahnerian, Balthasarian, and so on. This is not a comprehensive list. These distinct schools of thought all have a common commitment to the two levels indicated above: divine revelation and its doctrinal formulations. They are united within the Church by this common confession of faith, and come to distinct interpretations of that revelation. It is true that sometimes members of one of these schools argue that the position of another school leads implicitly toward a heretical position inadvertently. Aquinas seems to have thought this about Alexander of Hales’s theology, as leading inadvertently toward a problematic form of Nestorianism, for example. And I think this about Rahner’s Christology, clearly. More often, however, they accuse them of being wrong theologically, which is not an identical charge. Neither of these forms of argumentation entails the accusation of heresy of course. Heresy amounts to a willful defense of a teaching condemned by the Catholic Church or the willful denial of a proposition taught by the Church. By contrast, theological error is something most theologians traffic in at some time, perhaps even daily, despite their best intentions, and has to do with the struggle to understand the truth of revelation within diverse traditions, some of which may promote less perfect, erroneous or deficient understandings. Of course some also think that the various positions of major schools each have it partly right or are compatible or convergent tending to a mutual consideration of mystery, or are equally inadequate. A Catholic Thomist, then, who claims that a Scotist Trinitarian theologian who refuses to think of the persons in the Trinity as subsistent relations is 1 One may think here of John Henry Newman’s explorations on the topic of the continuity that takes place in the development of doctrine, and of Yves Congar’s understanding of actualizing tradition in Tradition and Traditions (La tradition et les traditions, 2 vols. [Paris: A. Fayard, 1960–1963]). 652 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. doctrinally outside the Catholic Church is not speaking reasonably. The Thomist can argue however that the Scotistic view of the Trinitarian persons is problematically univocalist, that is, erroneous, or the Scotist can argue that the Thomist holds a view of divine persons that is incoherent. Both are arguing about the actual content of what they already agree on (the dogmatic confession of Trinitarian faith) but have distinct and partially incompatible accounts of that content. I take it that Barthians and Thomists are often doing something analogous, if not precisely identical (since Barthians are not Catholic, typically, and believe in reformable dogmatic ecclesial claims). (4) How do distinct philosophies relate to the distinct schools? It is true that distinct philosophical views emerge among various theologians and their followers. Aquinas famously believed in the real distinction and composition of essence and existence in all creatures and in its non-distinction in God, a view Scotus and Suarez each reject in distinct ways. Aquinas’s view on this point has many implications for his theology of creation, the Trinity, and the hypostatic union. Henry of Ghent and Scotus, meanwhile, have irreconcilable anthropological notions of the way human beings formulate concepts, and make use of these distinct ideas in their reflections on the eternal Son as the Verbum of God. Balthasar and Rahner differ deeply on the nature of anthropology, natural knowledge of God, and the possibility of metaphysics in a post-Kantian setting. What should we make of all this diversity that is so deeply interrelated to the diverse “philosophies” used within theology? First, differences among the schools do not arise only or even primarily from their respective philosophies. They arise from different conceptions of the truth about the mystery of revelation itself. That is to say, differences of opinion in various schools arise principally from diverse conceptions of the formal objects of faith as such (i.e., from diverse conceptions of the Trinity or Incarnation) rather than the philosophical instruments of sacra doctrina. That being said, differences among the schools do arise in part due to distinct philosophical commitments. Scotus and Ockham come to very distinct views of the Trinity and the psychological analogy in part because of the ways they understand divine simplicity, which are related in turn to their metaphysical views about composition in creatures and the truths we can infer about God from those compositions.2 2 See the study of Russell L. Friedman, Medieval Trinitarian Theology from Aquinas to On the Ecumenical Work of Reforming Christolog y 653 On this view, there is no point in Catholic theological history at which non-Christian philosophical ideas were taken up into the practice of theology uncritically, without being discussed, vetted, reformulated and reconsidered in light of Christ and the New Testament revelation. The use of ousia metaphysics in the fourth century, for example, already entails a reformation of ambient philosophical concepts in view of the exposition of a distinctively Christian, Trinitarian confession of faith at Nicaea.3 The medieval project of trying to understand philosophical notions in Aristotle or Avicenna within a Christian context (substance, relation, and so forth) took place overtly by critique of these philosophical concepts, conducted in light of Christ and the apostolic Tradition. This was the main point of the dispute of how to critically receive and evaluate the Aristotelian heritage in the high Middle Ages.4 The modern Catholic use of the classical terms like “essence,” “person,” “relation,” and “nature” in creedal formulations retains a decidedly ontological signification, but distinct schools of thought interpret in varied ways how we might best preserve their use. Many modern Catholic theologians seek to preserve classical ontological significations while transposing them into modern philosophical idioms. Walter Kasper, for example, has quite impressively sought to make use of ideas from both F. W. J. Schelling and the Frankfurt school to articulate a commitment to classical Nicene Chalcedonian dogma in modern ontological idioms.5 Rahner seeks to do something analogous in developing his own Thomistic version of transcendental anthropology.6 Note three sub-presuppositions here: First, Catholics can agree with Protestants at least in some ways when the latter claim that “there is never any nature that does not presuppose grace”: philosophical reflection in the Catholic theological tradition presupposes always already an ongoing reformation of all prior philosophical notions 3 4 5 6 Ockham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). See for example the helpful analysis of Khaled Anatolios, Retrieving Nicaea: The Development and Meaning of Trinitarian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018), and Brian Daley, God Visible: Patristic Christology Reconsidered (Oxford: Oxford University press, 2018). See on this point the analysis of Russell L. Friedman in Intellectual Traditions at the Medieval University: The Use of Philosophical Psychology in Trinitarian Theology among the Franciscans and Dominicans, 1250–1350, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2012). See Walter Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ, trans. M. J. O’Connell (New York: Crossroad, 1989). Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, trans. W. V. Dych (New York: Seabury, 1978). 654 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. in light of Christ. This is not a novel view, as any historian of patristic or medieval theology should rightly attest.7 Second and simultaneously, grace does presuppose nature: there are no philosophically innocent theologians. Every theologian makes some use of philosophical and indeed metaphysical notions, whether modern or classical, even if he also seeks to baptize them within a theological format, as presumably Barth has tried to do (however successful one thinks he is) with Kant and Hegel, or Schleiermacher with his modern metaphysics of consciousness, or Eberhard Jüngel with Heidegger. I take it that none of these thinkers operates without at least an implicit commitment to philosophical and metaphysical positions, and none can rightly be understood without some philosophical analysis as such. I am not convinced therefore of the epistemological possibility of a post-metaphysical theology, but only of options among alternative metaphysical influences. Third, all this need not lead to the conclusion that medieval ontology in general or Thomism in particular must represent the apex of faith. The idea that “older is better” or “newer is better” is misleading. What is best is what is true, not what appears earlier or later in time. Where does this leave us? Based on the account I am offering, there is no tradition free from the philosophically influenced reading of the New Testament or the patristic tradition. Professor Tilling’s reading of Paul’s ontology in relational terms is influenced by the Barthian tradition, and by that very measure, I think one can perceive in it the shadow of Hegel’s Logic. That does not mean his relational analysis of covenant in Paul is erroneous, but it does mean that, if I am correct, we should treat skeptically any claim of Protestant theologians to provide us with chemically pure interpretations of Scripture that are free from the taint of or dependence on frameworks of reception 7 If one presses this argument, from the Barthian side, it can become self-defeating. Let us agree that the grace of Christ and his covenant is the backbone of the creation, such that all that is given in creation is always already given from, for, and unto the mystery of the covenant of grace. This means all natural unfolding of creation is in some way anticipated and taken up into the dynamic history of election. By this very measure it becomes possible conceptually to posit that, “because grace is everywhere” in human culture, human culture will have evolved naturally under grace, so as to anticipate and be able to signify something of the reality of God naturally, only after and from the effects of grace. If by a “doctrine of lights” one presses the idea that cultures “outside” the historical sphere of overt Christian confession can anticipate something (anything) of the truth about God, then one is very close to a form of thinking compatible in principle with the First Vatican Council. On the Ecumenical Work of Reforming Christolog y 655 through the medium of a theological tradition that has itself assimilated philosophy (however critically or uncritically). Neither Schleiermacher’s nor Barth’s use of post-Kantian ontological categories indicates a theological problem per se, based on what I have mentioned above. As I have argued elsewhere, a Catholic theologian can think of Barth in particular as a helpful resource for thinking about how to express many biblical and traditional Christian claims in a distinctively modern context and idiom.8 If one interprets him as successfully “modern and orthodox” on various points of theology, this does not make him better or worse than Athanasius or Aquinas, but it means we have a right and responsibility to compare them among themselves and with others to think about what we take to be the best formulations ontologically, in light of Tradition, and in accord with Scripture and common doctrine (like Chalcedon), as well as sound philosophical practices. This being said, we should I believe treat the acquisitions of the great Tradition as having a greater weight than lone innovations, if only because the popularity of the “common doctors” suggests, by their widespread acceptance and use, the possibility of a greater accord with the sensus fidei of all the baptized. Augustine is a reference in part because he helps us get to the Church’s common thinking regarding the truth of divine revelation, and he does so by making constructive use of the ambient pre-Christian philosophical heritage. The same could be said of many notable theological “doctors” of the past. This means that newer ideas should, as John Henry Newman said, be subject to assessment by association with the various references of the Tradition in those instances where the latter displays “chronic vigor.”9 There is admittedly an outstanding difference between Barth and the Catholic tradition at least on this point: whether the Christian critique and reformation of all non-Christian forms of ontology may give rise to a “philosophy on Christian soil,” or a Christian philosophy, that is fully assimilated to and compatible with the scriptural deposit of faith and the dogmatic Tradition but susceptible in principle to extraction for the purposes of teaching philosophy (or metaphysics) as a distinct field of 8 9 See Thomas Joseph White, “The Crucified Lord: Thomistic Reflections on the Communication of Idioms and the Theology of the Cross,” in Aquinas and Barth: An Unofficial Catholic Protestant Ecumenical Dialogue (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013), 157–92. John Henry Newman, An Essay on Development of Christian Doctrine (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1989). Chronic vigor is the seventh of the famous seven notes of authentic development. 656 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. reflection.10 After Christ and in his light is it possible for there to be a philosophical ontology as such? Concretely speaking, can one teach a class on philosophy in a seminary that offers metaphysical analysis of what a living thing is, or a human person, or philosophical arguments for the existence of God, and so on? Here Catholic theologians most typically hold that such philosophical instances of thought are possible and even salutary, especially given the effects of sin (original, personal, collective) on human intellectual endeavors outside of grace. Due to the effects of sin and the need for grace, non-Christians may be unlikely to interest themselves in or accept such a Christian philosophy, but if grace presupposes and must heal and rehabilitate nature in the light of Christ, then some re-formation in philosophy is necessary even on—and especially on—Christian soil.11 Relatedly, the Catholic Church teaches that there are praeambula fidei, philosophical and moral truths accessible to reason in principle but difficult to attain to in our fallen state, that the Church teaches to assist human reason but that are philosophical as such.12 She also teaches that there are “reasons of credibility,” derived from signs of the truth of revelation, in things like ongoing miracles or the moral witness of the saints, that designate obliquely the truth of the Christian faith to human reason in extrinsic ways that do not provide the grace of faith as such but do show its rationality or non-irrationality. This last point does remain an outstanding topic of division, but how important is it? Regarding this question, I will now turn to the second section. The Analogia Entis and Ecumenical Theology Clearly the engagement between Erich Przywara and Karl Barth in the early 1930s was an occasion of elevated ecumenical encounter and gave rise to subsequent conversations of great importance, not least in virtue of Balthasar’s famous book, The Theology of Karl Barth, as well as in many 10 11 12 I take it as a matter of historical fact, on this point, that Aquinas for example does think that there are philosophical demonstrations of the existence of God. See Lawrence Dewan, “The Existence of God: Can It Be Demonstrated?,” Nova et Vetera (English) 10, no. 3 (2012): 731–56. There are famous twentieth-century disputes on the nature of Christian philosophy, a concept that appears in the papal encyclical of John Paul II Fides et Ratio. I propose ways of thinking about this theme that take some inspiration from Jacques Maritain in an appendix of my book Wisdom in the Face of Modernity, 2nd ed. (Naples, FL: Sapientia Press, 2016). First Vatican Council, Dei Filius; 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§36–38. On the Ecumenical Work of Reforming Christolog y 657 other instances.13 Nevertheless, we should ask ourselves whether either Przywara or Barth rightly identified the theologically essential differences between Protestantism and Catholicism. Is Barth correct to say for example in Church Dogmatics (CD) I/1 (Doctrine of the Word of God, part 1) that the use of the analogia entis presents the only reason not to be Catholic?14 I would like to suggest two errors that were made in this debate, and refer to one intervention that acts as a remedy. The first error as I see it, and perhaps the most consequential, stems from Przywara, who famously claimed that the analogia entis is the “fundamental form of Catholic theology.”15 When most Catholics speak, admittedly somewhat vaguely, of an analogia entis, they mean to refer to the human ability to know something of God by way of natural philosophical reflection. (Incidentally, this is how I almost always use the term as well.) Przywara does not mean this alone, however, as John Betz has repeatedly and rightly pointed out.16 Importantly, Przywara’s definition includes philosophical knowledge of God by way of metaphysical reflection and analogical discourse. However, this form of knowledge is itself, for Przywara, taken up into a larger Catholic thought-form that includes properly theological reflection on the mystery of the Trinity and Christ, as well as the Virgin Mary, the Church, and the sacraments. In fact he is referring by this term to ontological similitudes between the Trinity and creatures that emerge in a variety of instances, in the rhythm of creation (characterized in part by the metaphysics of the real distinction), by the history of human beings under grace, by the Incarnation in the two natures of Christ, by the fiat in grace of the Virgin Mary, by the life of the Church in the Holy Spirit.17 What is significant for our purposes is that Przywara claimed that the study of this structure of ontological similitude that is evinced both in the 13 14 15 16 17 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Karl Barth: Exposition and Interpretation, trans. E. Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992). See Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, trans. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, vol. I/1 (London: T &T Clark; New York: Continuum, 2004), xiii: “I regard the analogia entis as the invention of Antichrist, and I believe that because of it it is impossible ever to become a Catholic.” See the expression of this idea as expressed after his debate with Barth in Erich Przywara, Analogia Entis: Metaphysics: Original Structure and Universal Rhythm, trans. J. Betz and D. B. Hart (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014), 348–99 (pt. 2, ch. 2: “The Scope of Analogy as a Fundamental Catholic Form”). See John R. Betz, “Erich Przywara and Karl Barth: On the Analogia Entis as a Formal Principle of Catholic Theology,” in The Analogy of Being: Invention of the Antichrist or Wisdom of God?, ed. T. J. White (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011), 35–87. See Przywara, Analogia Entis: Metaphysics, 185–91, 234–37, 493, for example. 658 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. orders of nature and grace and that is known philosophically and theologically is the essence of Catholic theology. If I understand him rightly this means that the essence or formal object of Catholic thought is the study of the similitudes between the Trinity and creatures, making use of a sound metaphysics. He contrasts this, in turn, with what he takes to be “essential” to Protestantism, a distrust of human mediations, behind which Przywara posits a latent oppositional mode of thinking between God as sovereign agent and the human agency of persons, their natural powers even under grace, their cooperation in the order of sanctification, and so forth.18 One suspects he is suggesting that there is an implicit meta-ontology that lies behind the doctrine of justification in Luther’s early theology, which is reflected in the subsequent Lutheran and Reformed refusal of various facets of the Catholic tradition, such as instances of authoritative doctrinal clarification, Mariology, theories of instrumental sacramental theology, and so forth. Przywara’s ideas are interesting and perfectly appropriate to explore within the context of a robust ecumenical conversation. But I think he in fact misled Barth by his characterization of the “fundamental form” or essence of Catholic theology. Let us return to our consideration of sacra doctrina from the first part of this essay. What is the formal object of Catholic theology? Medieval theologians expended great effort arguing about this topic, presenting diverse theories, some saying Christ the Word made human, others saying the Church’s life and her sacraments.19 Aquinas’s view is that the proper object of theology is God the Holy Trinity.20 The fundamental form or essence of theology then is the study of God, revealed in Christ. Aquinas then stipulates that one must understand all things in light of the Trinity, which is why the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed functions as a reference for core principles, as it allows us to read Scripture correctly in a Trinitarian light, and interpret the scriptural revelation in a Trinitarian perspective.21 What none of the medievals—or anyone before or since Przywara— has ever claimed is that the formal object of theology is the study of the ontological similitudes between the Trinity and the creation. That is not a ridiculous suggestion, and indeed it has some potential connections to Aquinas, as I have just intimated. But note the difference. In Aquinas it is 18 19 20 21 Przywara, Analogia Entis: Metaphysics, 348–53. See Ulrich G. Leinsle, Introduction to Scholastic Theology, trans. by M. J. Miller (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 120–81. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] I, q. 1; II-II, q. 1, a. 1. ST I, q. 1, a. 7. On the Ecumenical Work of Reforming Christolog y 659 clear that theology “looks” first and foremost at the Trinity and interprets the world in light of the ultimate truth revealed in Scripture, making some measured use of philosophical ontology within theology. Przywara seems to invert the order of procession; the philosophical study of the analogy of being, which has roots in Greek philosophy, anticipates a rhythm of being we will discover again at a higher level, in the domain of revealed truths about Trinitarian ontology. It may be possible to defend his claim, from a Thomistic point of view, but what Przywara does is give us the impression that if we begin with the right metaphysics we will reach to the right theology.22 The study of philosophical ontology inaugurates the engagement with revelation itself. Barth’s reaction is equally nebulous or disputable, to my mind. It seems clear enough that the classical disputes stemming from the Reformation era are about mediation: is there an episcopal structure stemming from apostolic times that is an essential part of the constitution of the Church? Are there seven sacraments, or only two, and what is a sacrament? In what sense is it a sign and instrument of grace or is it? Can Church councils be said to formulate irreformable doctrines that are free from error and in what sense is it true to say that the Church preserves infallible teaching? Are the Virgin Mary and the “saints” exemplars of the life of grace, whose actions under cooperative grace manifest the saving power of Christ’s action in the world, or is this Catholic superstructure an extrinsic scaffolding obscuring the true face of Christ? The Reformation “solas” regarding Scripture, justification by faith alone, and grace alone (meaning God acting prior to and above human cooperation) work to assure a more restricted view of mediation, presumably in view of the greater manifestation of the glory of God alone and the centrality of Christ as the unique mediator of salvation. Many classical Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican divines reserve a place for the measured use of philosophy within dogmatics, including philosophical arguments as such for the existence of God and the determination of what we might say or not say about his attributes. Barth presented the rather novel claim in CD I/1, however, that the core differences between Catholic and Protestant theology stem from the analogia entis, initially interpreted largely as “natural theology,” which then creeps into every facet of Catholic theology.23 22 23 Perhaps his idea could be restated in a more measured way: “Without a realistic sense of philosophical ontology one will not be able to cooperate well with the articulation of the theological mystery.” But his view seems to go further than this. See Barth on the analogia entis in CD I/2 (London: T & T Clark, 1963), 144–46, esp. 660 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. This is, historically speaking, a very novel claim. It may be defensible, especially if one thinks that Przywara’s account of sacra doctrina as “the fundamental form of theology” in the Catholic tradition is correct. However, Przywara’s claim amounts to nothing more than a very brilliant and eccentric thought experiment, one held by virtually no one before him or since. But Barth takes it as insightful and constructs a counterreaction, which is somewhat similar in content, but distinct in method. It is distinct in method because the fundamental core of Reformed theology, according to Barth, is determined by knowledge of God procured only by revelation and only by the consistent activity of the Holy Spirit, without any contribution from philosophy. We should note the dialectical reaction here: if Przywara suggested that philosophical metaphysics set the tone for Catholic theology as a kind of initiation, Barth reacts by denying any role to specifically philosophical or metaphysical knowledge of God as such even within sacra doctrina. Neither of these positions seems to reflect that of Aquinas, who thinks that theology studies God the Holy Trinity, and can make use of philosophy as a subordinate science, in the service of theology.24 Many Reformed theologians, especially in the Protestant scholastic traditions, have a similar view, and arguably there is a good bit of harmony here between Aquinas and Calvin himself. However, this now all seems to be obscured. What the Reformation is about, we are told after the Barth–Przywara debate, is a new Barthian idea of unilateral divine activity without human agency, allied with an 24 144–45: “E. Przywara purports to give us final clarity in the matter when he writes that there are contained ‘in the Catholic doctrine of the analogia entis the possibilities of a true incarnational cosmos, including body and soul, community and individual, because in their totality. . . . They are ‘open’ to God. From the standpoint of the Catholic doctrine of the analogia entis creation it is totality is the vision, mounting from likeness to likeness, of the God who is beyond every likeness. It is, therefore, a receptive readiness for Him. In its final essence it is, as it were, already Mary’s ‘Behold, the handmaid of the Lord. Be it unto me according to Thy word’ (Religionsphil. Kath. Theol. 1926, p. 53).” ST I, q. 1, a. 5, ad 2: “This science can in a sense depend upon the philosophical sciences, not as though it stood in need of them, but only in order to make its teaching clearer. For it accepts its principles not from other sciences, but immediately from God, by revelation. Therefore it does not depend upon other sciences as upon the higher, but makes use of them as of the lesser, and as handmaidens: even so the master sciences make use of the sciences that supply their materials, as political of military science. That it thus uses them is not due to its own defect or insufficiency, but to the defect of our intelligence, which is more easily led by what is known through natural reason (from which proceed the other sciences) to that which is above reason, such as are the teachings of this science” (emphasis mine). On the Ecumenical Work of Reforming Christolog y 661 idea about the absence of any natural knowledge of God in the human community. Now we can only gain access to the classical Reformed “solas” if we also acknowledge these new Barthian truths. Is this correct, however, simply as a reading of the Protestant tradition? It is powerful and intriguing, surely, but I think it falls into the same category within the Protestant community that Przywara’s thought falls into within the Catholic community. That is to say, it is an eccentric and deeply original proposition, with the difference that it has been far more influential among Protestants than Przywara’s idea has been among Catholics. And with one other very important difference: the methodological extensiveness of Barth’s proposal. Effectively, what Barth proposed in CD I/1 is related methodologically to the Christological ontology of election, covenant, and creation that he develops later in CD II/2 (Doctrine of the Word of God, part 2), III/1–2 (Doctrine of Creation, parts 1–2), 1–2, and IV/1–2 (Doctrine of Reconciliation, parts 1–2). Here he does assimilate and reformulate all kinds of philosophical notions from modernity in a creative and innovative way, ideas from Hegel, Kant, Sartre and others. So one could believe that those constructive proposals are all somehow logically dependent upon or conceptually intimately related to the ideas of the start, regarding “natural theology” and the conditions of theology. This means that if one is committed to ideas from Barth’s later Christology one is also likely to see this as somehow connected to his earlier ideas of revelation. Perhaps within the logic of Barth’s overall oeuvre such connections are indeed essential and must be maintained to make use of any of his later ideas, but personally I doubt it. In fact it is fairly simple to articulate an argument to the contrary. Take Barth’s theology of the relation of the divine and human essences of Christ in CD IV/2, which posits a relational account of the divinity and humanity of Jesus within a dynamic view of the unfolding of the covenant in time so that the Incarnation is the place where God’s Trinitarian pre-history, or eternal identity, is manifest to us precisely in God’s Filial human life. It would be possible to develop a more ontologically rich account of these very ideas in conversation with the classical Chalcedonian tradition (Barth in conversation with Maximus and Aquinas, for instance), and to make use of concepts developed on “Christian philosophical soil” to do so. This could be done in conversation with Hegelian notions of relation and divine-event ontology, and Kantian ideas about the limitations of human knowledge, as a moment of explication of the “novelty” of revelation in Christ. But the articulation of all these ideas could include a more overt set of reflections about the philosophical warrant of ideas of Maximus, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel, and so forth, and this 662 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. “moment of philosophical reflection” is lacking in Barth, by design. I do not think this helps his case, in the end, but rather weakens it considerably, because his notions of topics like “relation” and “event” in God seem slightly incoherent and under-examined. Whether or not I am right about this, I do not think my judgment should be considered “Church dividing,” and I think it is a very serious error within Protestant theology to think that it is. There are many Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican theologians who would agree with me and other Catholics, as they themselves accept that there is a place for overt philosophical reflection within sacra doctrina. The person who saw things similarly and who sought to put the debate in the right framework was Gottlieb Söhngen.25 Söhngen’s essays on the controversy famously influenced Barth who indicated in a somewhat nebulous way that, if Söhngen’s view of the analogia entis was correct, he had no difficulty with the doctrine.26 Some take Söhngen’s view to be a kind of Catholic reformulation of the idea of natural knowledge of God made in concession to Barth’s theology, one that anticipates the later theories of Vatican I offered by Balthasar in his book on Barth. However, Söhngen is well versed in modern scholastic theology and his analysis of the debate is based, as I see it, on the kinds of points I have been making above. Catholic theology studies the object of revelation, God himself, and in doing so, seeks to unfold the analogia fidei as understood in Catholic thought, which is the likeness or resemblance found between the mysteries, the nexus mysteriorum.27 It can do so by making use of philosophical knowledge of God or creatures, now placed in subordinate service to theological reflection. The latter process presupposes that the philosophical ideas of human culture, including evolving Christian intellectual culture, be analyzed and reformulated in light of divine revelation and ultimately in view of a Christological center of theological reflection on Scripture. The Church’s Tradition and way of reading Scripture provide normative points of reference for the understanding of Scripture as a unified text and as a text understood in a unified coherent 25 26 27 See Gottlieb Söhngen, “The Analogy of Faith: Likeness to God from Faith Alone?,” trans. K. Oakes, Pro Ecclesia 21 (2012): 56–76, and “The Analogy of Faith: Unity in the Science of Faith,” trans. K. Oakes, Pro Ecclesia 21 (2012): 169–94. The originals appeared in the German theology journal Catholica in 1934. However one interprets Barth’s claims that he had buried the debate, I agree with Keith Johnson that he in fact held out against natural theology for the duration of his theological career. See the analysis of Balthasar, Theology of Karl Barth, 328–34. I have offered a sympathetic recent interpretation of this point in Söhngen in “The analogia fidei in Catholic Theology,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 22 (2020): 1–26. On the Ecumenical Work of Reforming Christolog y 663 way down through time (in Church doctrine). Söhngen was critical of the Przywarian definition of theology, and rightly so. Balthasar in turn also followed Söhngen in his adjudication, as did the most famous doctoral student of Söhngen, Joseph Ratzinger.28 In the first section of this response essay I have argued that a Thomistic understanding of sacra doctrina rightly understood has a place for contributions from philosophical ontology, critically assimilated in light of divine revelation. In this second part of the essay I have argued that this conception of the use of philosophy within sacra doctrina is not Church dividing. Przywara and Barth together have bequeathed us a legacy of thinking that it is or must be. However, I think that this legacy is something of a poisoned chalice, one that Protestants and Catholics together should refuse to drink from. The terms of agreement and disagreement should be re-evaluated, including in Christological conversation. Ecclesia semper reformanda est. Surely if Barthians hold that conciliar definitions such as those of Nicaea and Chalcedon are reformable in principle, they must consider Barth’s own “dogmatics of the Church” as reformable in principle as well (unless Barth has become a paper pope, on the so-called analogia entis). Of course I am not suggesting that Catholics and Protestants have no significant theological divisions among them, but only that these need not and should not be framed in terms of the analogia entis. Catholics and Protestants can and should argue about the truth or falsehood of diverse Christological ontologies, and about the value of various philosophical ontologies, whether classical or modern, but those arguments need not be Church dividing. Referring back to my hierarchical degrees from the first section of the essay: one can agree on Chalcedonian principles in Christology while belonging to distinct schools of thought that in turn harness concepts from diverse philosophical traditions. There are arguments worth having between the schools, but they are not arguments about the truth of the common creedal confession of faith per se. 28 See Balthasar’s criticism of Przywara on this point in Theo-Logic: Theological Logical Theory, vol. 2, The Truth of God, trans. A. Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 94n16, and the logically congruent remarks on 273n109. For Ratzinger, see Introduction to Christianity, trans. J. R. Foster (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2000), 74–79, 137–61, and “In the Beginning . . .”: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and the Fall, trans. B. Ramsey (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998); Pope Benedict XVI, encyclical Deus Caritas Est (2005), §§10 and 13. 664 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. Kenosis Having made these comments about revelation, dogma, schools of theology, philosophy within theology, and the necessary distinctions between them, I would like to treat one topic of substantive theological disagreement in view of constructive conversation. Here I should first thank Angela Franks for composing what is surely the most substantive Balthasarian engagement of my book, and for her many substantive comments of appreciation, proposed (re)interpretation, and respectful criticism. Let me begin with a stipulation and then I will make three basic claims, all too succinctly, due to the constraints of our format. The stipulation with a caveat: It is natural to think that the profound existential confusion and moral evil experienced by many in the twentieth century should be the occasion for the Church to meditate theologically upon the crucifixion of God so as to make progress in understanding the mystery of the Trinity revealed by the Cross. My own presentation of the cry of dereliction seeks in its own way to acknowledge this facet of modern theology, albeit in a Thomistic light, and I take it that my own analysis bears some resemblance to (and takes inspiration from) that of Pope John Paul II, not only in the passages cited by Professor Franks from Salvifici Doloris but also from another well-known passage in Novo Millennio Ineunte.29 I disagree with her, then, as to how closely my perspective corresponds to the theological perspective elaborated in those documents, and would argue that the views expressed in them are very close to those of Aquinas, as well as influential twentieth-century Thomists, such as Charles Journet.30 29 30 John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte (2001), §26: “Jesus’ cry on the Cross, dear Brothers and Sisters, is not the cry of anguish of a man without hope, but the prayer of the Son who offers his life to the Father in love, for the salvation of all. At the very moment when he identifies with our sin, ‘abandoned’ by the Father, he ‘abandons’ himself into the hands of the Father. His eyes remain fixed on the Father. Precisely because of the knowledge and experience of the Father which he alone has, even at this moment of darkness he sees clearly the gravity of sin and suffers because of it. He alone, who sees the Father and rejoices fully in him, can understand completely what it means to resist the Father's love by sin. More than an experience of physical pain, his Passion is an agonizing suffering of the soul. Theological tradition has not failed to ask how Jesus could possibly experience at one and the same time his profound unity with the Father, by its very nature a source of joy and happiness, and an agony that goes all the way to his final cry of abandonment. The simultaneous presence of these two seemingly irreconcilable aspects is rooted in the fathomless depths of the hypostatic union.” This passage bears remarkable similarities to Aquinas’s analysis in ST III, q. 46, aa. 6–8. See, for example, Charles Journet, Les Septs Paroles du Christ au Croix (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1954), 88–90. On the Ecumenical Work of Reforming Christolog y 665 This being said, history is not destiny in theology. Barth proved that in the face of Schleiermacher and Harnack. The reflections on the dereliction of Christ crucified found in Catherine of Siena, Thomas Aquinas, Francis of Assisi, Bonaventure, Julian of Norwich, John of the Cross, and Teresa of Avila should matter to us as much as those found in Balthasar or von Speyr, and their views differ notably from the latter (and sometimes from one another). If Barth, Balthasar, and/or von Speyr are set up as a unique guiding canon to the whole tradition, one may wonder rightly about the method and criteria at work. I do not think these criteria in Balthasar come primarily either from mystical experience or from an insight related to the Barth’s rejection of natural theology. I think they come from another source. Hegel’s Christology and the Ontology of Freedom Surely Hegel is one of the most underrated theologians in modern theological studies, even among those who are most influenced by him. This influence is indirect, mediated through the post-Hegelian Trinitarian theologies of the twentieth century.31 This is true above all when one thinks of his proposals regarding kenosis in God that stem in great part from his theological innovation with regard to the communication of idioms. Hegel knew of the seventeenth-century debate between the Giessen and Tübingen schools of thought regarding the communication of idioms and the predication of the attributes of the divine and human natures to the person of Christ. Both schools presuppose some version of the genus majestaticum: the idea that certain properties of the divine nature may be attributed to the human nature of Christ.32 In the Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, Hegel inverts the perspective of the Tübingen school regarding the genus majestaticum. Whereas they speculated on how or in what way the attributes of the deity might be communicated to the 31 32 See the pertinent analysis of Bruce Marshall, “The Absolute and the Trinity,” Pro Ecclesia 13, no. 2 (2014): 147–64. The former school held that the Son of God made man simply concealed his divine prerogatives during the course of his earthly life, while the other held that he in some sense suspended their use by way of a kenotic self-abandonment of divine properties. Like Aquinas and Calvin, I take it that the very idea of an attribution of the divine attributes (like omnipresence) to the human nature is itself problematic and contrary to the mainstream use of the communication of idioms in patristic representatives such as Gregory of Nazianzus, Cyril of Alexandria, Leo the Great, and John Damascene. They attribute natural properties of each nature not to the alternative nature but only to the person of the Son, who genuinely subsists in each nature, such that the natures are united but not confused. 666 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. humanity, Hegel speculates on how the attributes of the humanity might be communicated to the divinity, a view later referred to as the genus tapeinoticum. In virtue of the Incarnation, God is able to take attributes of human finitude, such as temporality, suffering, and death, into his own divine life and being. The foundation for this capacity of the deity is located in God’s freedom, his capacity to identify even with his ontological contrary by way of self-exploratory diremption.33 Barth rightly identified problems with this view in CD IV/1, §59, but sought to reformulate the idea in what he acknowledged in turn to be a very novel way.34 The condition of possibility of God taking on human attributes into his own life and essence as God is not grounded in a developmental history of God in the economy, but arises from an eternal pre-condition in the life of the Trinity, in which the eternal kenotic life of the Son from the Father anticipates (by analogy we could say) the temporal historical life of the Son as human.35 Balthasar in turn basically adopts this view from Barth, with additional ideas from Bulgakov (who was himself also deeply dependent upon Hegel’s conception through the mediation of Thomasius).36 33 34 35 36 For a characteristic example, see “The Consummate Religion,” in Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, One-Volume Edition: The Lectures of 1827, trans. R. F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson, J. M. Stewart (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), 452–69, at 468–69: “‘God himself is dead,’ it says in a Lutheran hymn, expressing an awareness that the human, the finite, the fragile, the weak, the negative are themselves a moment of the divine, that they are within God himself, that finitude, negativity, otherness are not outside of God and do not, as otherness, hinder unity with God. Otherness, the negative, is known to be a moment of the divine nature itself. This involves the highest idea of spirit. . . . This is the explication of reconciliation: that God is reconciled with the world, that even the human is not something alien to him, but rather that this otherness, this self-distinguishing [of the divine nature through diremption], finitude as it is expressed, is a moment in God himself.” On historical aspects of the communication of idioms in the Tübingen school, see also Walter Kasper, The Absolute in History: The Philosophy and Theology of History in Schelling’s Late Philosophy, trans. K. Wolff (New York: Paulist Press, 2018), 459–65. See Barth, CD, IV/1 (London: T & T Clark, 1961), 157–357. See for example Barth, CD, IV/1:129; 177; 179. See, in this regard, the important notion of a Trinitarian inversion in Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 3, The Dramatis Personae: Persons in Christ, trans. G. Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 183–91 and 521–23. The processions of the Son and the Spirit are supposedly inverted in the economy: due to this kenosis of the Son, during the time of his Incarnation and prior to the resurrection, the Son proceeds from the Spirit and is utterly relative to him not merely in his human instincts of mind and heart (i.e., in virtue of Christ’s capital grace), but rather in his very person and being as Son. Likewise consider the thematic argument On the Ecumenical Work of Reforming Christolog y 667 Balthasar rightly saw that, if this account is to be defended, it requires an exploration of the “similitude” or analogy between the Son as God and the Son in his human dereliction in ways that are not previously anticipated in the classical Christian tradition. This is especially the case since, in light of the move Hegel and Barth make, we now seek to identify the eternal mutual relations of persons in the Trinity based on the kenotic human actions and sufferings of Jesus. The Son’s obedient self-offering to the Father in the abandonment is the outward economic face of an inward immanent Trinitarian love of mutual freedom, characteristic of the eternal differentiation of the Father and the Son. Freedom of mutually self-giving wills (in the plural) seems now to become the condition for an understanding of all divine and human ontology. Thus we are faced with the obligation to undertake a rejection or radically dialectical reassessment of key elements of the patristic and medieval tradition. Most notably, Balthasar realizes that the psychological analogy for the processions of the Son and Spirit according to a likeness of Word and Love from the Father will have to be abandoned (though it is arguably biblical in origin).37 Consequently the central theological motive in all of Western Trinitarian theology is in fact displaced in modern Catholic theology, in light of the novel insights of Hegel and Barth. Traditional theology of the unity of God, based on the study of the shared divine attributes, and in particular the unity of will in the three persons, is also now rethought in light of an ontology of primal reciprocal freedom.38 37 38 of Bulgakov, The Lamb of God, B. Jakim (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008), 247–63, who interprets the Third Council of Constantinople in a kenotic way, so that the human consciousness of Christ in his historical life, suffering, and dereliction is commensurate with his divine self-emptying love. The distinction of natures is reinterpreted as a diremption of the divine nature into a human form. See the very clear remarks in Theo-Logic: Theological Logical Theory, vol. 2, Truth of God, trans. A. Walker, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 128–34, where Balthasar distances himself from the psychological analogy and then proposes an alternative conception of divine self-emptying love (134–37). See Balthasar, Theo-Logic, 2:94–95, 173–218, 273n109. Likewise, see Epilogue, trans. by E. Oakes (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 89–90: “How can Jesus say of himself, ‘I am the Truth’? This is possible only because all that is true of in the world ‘hold[s] together’ in him (Col. 1:17), which in turn presupposes that the analogia entis is personified in him, that he is the adequate sign, surrender, and expression of God within finite being. To approach this mystery we must try to think: In God himself the total epiphany, self-surrender, and self-expression of God the Father is the Son, identical with him as God, in whom everything—even everything that is possible for God—is expressed. Only if God freely decides in the Son to bring forth a fullness of non-divine beings can the Son’s essentially ‘relative’ and thus ‘kenotic’ act in God be 668 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. Of course one can argue that all this represents the right way to go. However, my suspicion is that we should return to Hegel and ask whether he interpreted the communication of idioms correctly, and whether Barth and Balthasar made the right decision to try to develop this new “school” of analogy. Hegel departs in problematic ways from the classical tradition in this domain, and in turn there are problems with the decision to assimilate, reformulate, and “correct” his thought Christologically, in the way these later theologians undertake to do. In the final part of this essay I will explain briefly what I take the better option to consist in. Dyotheletism and the Christological analogia entis There is of course a likeness between the human nature and activity of Christ as human and his divine nature and activity as Lord and God. The former is reflective in some way of the latter, even when the Son voluntarily suffers, is crucified, and dies. The dyotheletist principle established by the Third Council of Constantinople, following Maximus the Confessor, notes that there is a distinction of two natures in Christ and thus also a distinction of two activities (or natural operations) and wills. However, it is also the case that each “set” of operations is attributed only to one subject and person, the eternal person of the Son, who is truly divine and acts as Lord and truly human and acts and suffers as man.39 The human actions and sufferings are therefore also (1) subordinate to the divine actions and (2) expressive of the Son’s personal identity and nature as God. In short, all that Jesus does and suffers in his human nature, life, and operations is indicative of his divine Sonship and at least obliquely indicative of the divine work he is accomplishing with the Father and the Holy Spirit. It follows from this that the mode in which Jesus is human (his distinctive way of subsisting in human nature) is utterly personal and filial, due to the hypostatic union. His nature, grace, actions and sufferings as human are always revelatory of his personal being as Son, who exists in personal filial relation to the Father and to the Spirit (in distinct ways) in all he is and does. So, to respond to one question of Professor Franks’s essay: is Jesus’s beatific or immediate vision as man (by which he knows the Father immediately and intuitively in the heights of his human intellect by grace) specifically the same as ours or is it filial? We should say theologically that it is distinctly human in species or kind, but filial in mode. If Jesus’s beatific 39 seen as a personal act (esse completum subsistens) within the act of creation that gives to everything its real identity (esse completum sed non subsistens).” I have tried to give greater articulation to this idea in “Dyotheletism and the Consciousness of Christ,” Pro Ecclesia 17 (2008): 396–422. On the Ecumenical Work of Reforming Christolog y 669 vision is not specifically of the same kind as ours then God has not truly identified with us in our condition as human and realized our salvation as one of us from within our human condition. Here the famous claim of Gregory of Nazianzus to Apollinarius applies: what God has not assumed he has not saved. However, if Jesus has this immediate vision as a human being, he also has it in a filial way, much as he is humanly free but also acts freely as the Son of God, always from and in relation to his Father and in conformity with his own divine willing. When the Son is humanly conscious of God, he is humanly conscious of the Father being his Father, and of being the Son of the Father, and of being the co-principle of the Father’s Spirit, whom he wishes to send upon the world.40 If we recognize that the human nature of God as human can and does reveal his divine identity and the relations of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit truly, in Jesus’s human life, suffering, death and exaltation, it is because we recognize that these human actions take on this distinctive filial mode of expression proper to the Son made man. To recognize this, however, is to acknowledge also the difference of the human nature qua nature from the divine, as it is truly man that God has become, and indeed God has become human precisely to express his inner mystery of Sonship in flesh and blood, within our human sphere. This presupposes difference and analogical dissimilitude of the two natures, not only likeness. There is no strict identity between the humanity of God and his divinity, nor can there be. However, I think it is just this that is compromised by Hegel’s innovative use of the communication of idioms, since he transmits the human attributes into God and evacuates the divine attributes, or at least makes them disposable at the discretion of God’s evolving freedom in history. Barth does something very different but arguably more radical, since he renders the human attributes “always, already” present in God as the condition of possibility for the personal differentiation of the Father and the Son.41 In various ways, Pannenberg, Balthasar, Jüngel, and Moltmann are all downstream from this decision, and commonly adopt this way of proceeding, albeit in various ways and with significant, interesting differences between them. What emerges in all these thinkers, due to this primal conceptual decision, is what may be termed a form of “inverted monophysitism,” in which 40 41 John 15:26: “But when the Counselor comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness to me.” I argue this at further length in “Crucified Lord.” 670 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. the divine nature of the Son is conceived of not in terms of analogical similitude, but in fact by way of univocity. Simply put, the properties and characteristics of the human nature of Jesus, particularly in his voluntary acts of freedom, obedience, suffering, dereliction, experience of abandonment as separation, and death, are transposed onto the divine nature, as indicative of a polarity in God that exists between the Father and the Son eternally. I do not think this inverted monophysitism comes from a close reading of St. Paul, but from the Christology of Hegel, and I take it that this is a matter of historical fact, not speculation, and one that can be verified readily not by an attentive historical study of the New Testament, but by a close historical-critical study of Barth and Balthasar in their proximate intellectual context.42 I am in no way denying that these thinkers aspire to read Scripture in harmony with the Chalcedonian tradition, and I am not claiming that they are necessarily less orthodox or more philosophical that Aquinas. They take up other options as theologians, making proximate use of philosophical ideas critically, and therefore simply present us with a distinctive school of thought, or perhaps two schools of thought. What I am claiming, however, is that what their schools argue on this point is in fact disadvantageous to a better understanding of Scripture regarding the kenotic suffering of Christ as indicative of the inner reality of the Trinity (which it is in some way). This argument allows one to return to the question of a need for analogical reflection in both Chalcedonian Christology and metaphysics as distinct but interrelated modes of reflection. To her great credit, Professor Franks attempts at manifold points in her substantive essay to defend the well-foundedness of the Christological analogy of human and divine action 42 I would note in passing here that although Joshua Ralston takes me to be focused particularly on the dangers of Nestorianism in modern theology (in the wake of Schleiermacher and Rahner), it is in fact the case that I am equally concerned about the dangers of an “inverted monophysitism” in modern kenotic theology that in practice if not always in theory risks to collapse the distinction of natures, characterizing the divine nature of the Son by reference to his human mode of being, thus projecting irreducibly and uniquely human traits onto the transcendent divine nature. I agree with Prof. Ralston that this theological tendency can have very detrimental effects on the Church’s theological conversation with adherents of modern Judaism and Islam, who would tend to see in this kind of inverted monophysitism the danger of a human projection in Christianity that obscures one’s rightful acknowledgment of the transcendence of the divinity of God. This is not to say that I advocate for any form of Nestorianism, classical or revised. John Damascene’s Chalcedonianism is a model in this respect, for dialogue between Western and Eastern Christians, and for conversation with Muslims regarding the transcendence of God. On the Ecumenical Work of Reforming Christolog y 671 and nature in Balthasar. She would probably agree with much of what I say about analogy, dyotheletism, and the need for probity in the domain of Christological transposition of human attributes onto the divine. We no doubt agree about the benefit of some of Balthasar’s aspirations, and especially that he wanted to speak about the analogia entis Christi.43 However when he speaks of the eternal Son under the auspices of human actions and sufferings, I take it that he is in fact speaking univocally of the divine nature in human terms. This kind of discourse could be metaphorical at best, but of course followers of Balthasar do not interpret him this way, nor should they, if they wish to defend Balthasar’s own (to my mind implausible, problematic) claims. If God is incomprehensibly but truly one in being and one in will, as the Church basing herself on Scripture teaches is the case, then there is no eternal obedience, surrender, infinite distance, separation, self-emptying, or suffering in God. To the extent that we use these notions to describe the inner life of the Trinity, I think we step out of the world of the Bible and into a new form of univocity theory, in which all-too-human attributes are hypostatized. Instead we should return to the use of the psychological analogy, and the theology of divine attributes, as a way to understand the eternal processions of the Word and Spirit, who each possess in themselves eternally from the Father the indiminishable plenitude of divine life. The Tradition provides us already with this distinctive theological analogy of what is proper to the inner life of the Trinity. However, in sacra doctrina as I understand it, we can press forward with this analogy of the immanent eternal life of the Trinity to ask more overtly the question that the post-Hegelian theologians ask. How does the mystery of the Cross reveal God, the Holy Trinity? Might we offer new answers to this question, other than those presented by Balthasar, even if we also remain in dialogue with his great work? What then would be the way forward in a deeper dialogue between Thomists and Balthasarians? We would need to think about Christological principles and how we each hold to them, especially the interpretation of the communication of idioms and the teaching of the Third Council of Constantinople regarding dyotheletism, and we would also need to talk about analogical terms for the divine nature and what should and can, or should not and cannot be prescribed of the eternal nature and life of God. I take it that many ideas of Barth in CD II/1 regarding attributes of 43 It is interesting to notice how with this term from Balthasar we are somehow back to Przywara’s non-philosophical usage of the notion of the analogia entis, but now from the top down, as it were, knowing all being in light of the mystery of Christ. 672 Thomas Joseph White, O.P. the one God could be of help in this conversation. In that volume Barth engages in profound conversation with figures like Augustine, Boethius, and Aquinas in considering the Church’s confession de Deo uno: on the oneness of God, in his freedom, eternity, sovereignty, universal presence and so forth. This reflection has a grounding in the classical tradition even as it engages with modern questions in a creative way. As such it can contribute to an ongoing discussion of the Church’s common confession of the unity of the Triune God, and the real distinction of the divine and human natures of the incarnate Lord. In pursuing such topics together, Protestant and Catholic theologians alike can contribute together in fraternal collaboration to the responsibilities and work of Christology. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 20, No. 2 (2022): 673–704 673 Book Reviews The Theology of Benedict XVI: A Protestant Appreciation, edited by Tim Perry, foreword by Tracey Rowland, afterword by Matthew Levering (Bellingham, WA: Lexham, 2019), xix+314 pp. No pope in history has interacted as profoundly with Protestant theology as Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI, and probably no other pope has ever been called “a good Lutheran lad.” Previously nicknamed the “German shepherd” or “God’s rottweiler,” Catholic and Protestant theologians have now reached a consensus that Benedict XVI should rather be characterized as “God’s border collie,” meaning “small, tough, faithful to the Shepherd and to the ultimate welfare of the sheep” (5, cf. xvii). This is the conviction of Tim Perry, the editor of The Theology of Benedict XVI: A Protestant Appreciation, and Tracey Rowland, a Catholic Ratzinger scholar who provided the foreword to this fine volume that gently but firmly takes Ratzinger studies to ecumenical pastures. On the back cover of the book, prominent Catholic names such as Charles J. Chaput and Scott Hahn rightly praise this collection of sixteen essays by Protestant theologians as being “suffused with fraternal respect” and “a model of authentic dialogue.” In the afterword, Catholic theologian Matthew Levering places the volume in “the very first rank—the top handful—of studies on Ratzinger’s thought,” bearing witness to the intellectual caliber of both Benedict XVI and contemporary Evangelical theologians (282). The topics covered include truth, faith and reason, theology, Scripture, anthropology, Christology, Mariology, Trinity, ecumenism, priesthood, liturgy, Eucharist, preaching, prayer, and catechesis. Most of the articles of the volume remain on the descriptive level, explaining and appreciating Ratzinger’s insights, taking note of Catholic–Protestant differences, and sometimes trying to overcome them. The reader encounters impressively positive Protestant explanations of the Catholic Marian dogmas (by Perry) and the doctrine of the Eucharist (by Joey Royal). However, only a few of the authors engage in a critical and constructive dialogue with Ratzinger, 674 Book Reviews attempting to identify inconsistencies in his theology or suggesting new solutions to ecumenical problems. Peter Leithart’s essay “One Book, One Body” is the most outstanding exception in this regard. Leithart takes as his starting point Ratzinger’s “one-Bible theology,” that is, his vision of the relationship and unity between the Old and the New Testaments. Leithart applies this to Ratzinger’s treatment of the Eucharist as meal and sacrifice. According to Leithart, Ratzinger downplays the meal in favor of the sacrifice. In this instance, Ratzinger uncharacteristically “tends toward spiritualization rather than incarnation” (202) and fails to exhaust the ecumenical potential of his scholarly sources (notably the work of Hartmut Gese). As a witty Protestant, Leithart contends: “To prioritize the Eucharist over the meal, to treat the Eucharist as if it is a separable action, is as odd as offering table prayer for a meal that is not eaten” (198). Ben Myers’s lead article, “Truth, not Custom,” presents another fairly original idea. Myers identifies the “priority of communal belonging” as the problem of modern Protestant theology, whereas both Luther and Ratzinger are portrayed as rightly prioritizing “truth over communal belonging” (11–12). This way of putting it sounds somewhat strange to Catholic ears, though it certainly gives food for thought. From a Catholic perspective, the axiom is easily applied to non-Catholics, but what about Catholics? After all, Ratzinger lays heavy emphasis on the community of the Church, its faith, and the truth of its faith, to the extent that it seems difficult to pit truth and Church against each other. Would Ratzinger encourage a Catholic convinced of the falsity of some Catholic dogmas to become Protestant, or to humbly submit to the magisterium and remain in the Church? This problem is connected to the point raised by Kevin J. Vanhoozer, who identifies Benedict XVI’s Catholic position as follows: “Scripture, tradition and the Roman magisterium always coincide, because they are guided by the same Spirit” (85). Though not far off the mark, this is in fact incorrect. Carl R. Trueman is more nuanced in recognizing that not all Catholic teaching is infallible and emphasizing the important point that Ratzinger criticized Vatican II’s Dei Verbum for failing to address “the fallibility of the Church and the need for criticism of tradition” (164). The appealing idea of Scripture as a correcting rule and judge, even of the Church, is raised by several contributors, but so is Ratzinger’s equally compelling criticism of the “inner difficulties” of sola Scriptura, such as its tendency to hand “the definition of faith over to whatever happens to be the latest scholarly consensus” (164). While some of the authors wish to portray Ratzinger as a “sola Scriptura Catholic” (Christopher R. J. Holmes Book Reviews 675 on 106 and Perry on 7), others recognize that sola Scriptura really lies at the heart of the dividing line between Ratzinger and the Reformation (Gregg R. Allison, Vanhoozer, Trueman). Trueman’s essay provides a most brilliant two-sentence summary of the fundamental nature of the Catholic–Protestant divide: “Roman Catholicism is not simply Protestantism with a different set of doctrines. It is a different way of thinking about Christianity, a way that draws a very tight connection between Scripture, tradition, and the doctrine of the church in a manner alien to Protestantism” (153). This is seconded by Gregg Allison, who describes Catholicism and Protestantism as “significantly different theological systems grounded on different axioms (the Roman Catholic nature–grace interdependence and Christ–church interconnection; the Protestant principles of sola Scriptura and justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone), different structures of authority, different ecclesiologies, and more” (63; in the same vein, see also Vanhoozer on 70). Rather than listing two or three doctrines, something like this should become the standard answer to the simplistic but common question: “What is the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism?” The really decisive follow-up question is whether these two ways of thinking can be reconciled or not. The Ratzingerian answer would probably be a biblical one: “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Joseph Ratzinger and the Healing of the Reformation-Era Divisions, edited by Emery de Gaál and Matthew Levering (Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Academic, 2019), xxvii+371 pp. When George Smith first deciphered the Mesopotamian account of the Flood and realized he was the first person to read it in a couple thousand years, he started running around the room in excitement and taking his clothes off. Without the undressing part, I experienced the same impulse while reading Joseph Ratzinger and the Healing of the Reformation-Era Divisions, a collection of seventeen priceless chapters by both Catholic and Protestant scholars, coming out of a conference held in 2017 to celebrate Joseph Ratzinger’s ninetieth birthday and to commemorate the five-hundred-year anniversary of the Reformation. This wonderful book takes its place as clearly the leading volume on Ratzinger and Catholic– Protestant ecumenism. Based on his media image, recently reinforced by the Netflix movie 676 Book Reviews The Two Popes, one would not think that Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI would prove a relevant figure in overcoming the centuries-old Catholic–Protestant divide. All one remembers about Benedict XVI and ecumenism, based on news coverage, is that he said Protestant churches are not really churches. Fortunately, the scholars contributing to the present volume dig deeper, look behind the scenes, and uncover Ratzinger/ Benedict’s “history-changing contributions” (22), such as saving the Catholic–Lutheran Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification and making “The Thames flow into the Tiber.” (Talk about an ingenious chapter title!) In order, the topics covered in this volume include papal primacy, principles of ecumenism, exegesis and liturgy, secularism, Mariology, public theology, Christology, Luther, love, Eucharist, creation, conscience, missiology, justification, Radical Orthodoxy ( John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Graham Ward, et al.), and the relationship between Scripture, Tradition, and Church. Space does not permit me to review all of the articles; instead, I will highlight only some points that I found particularly illuminating. As editor, Matthew Levering opens the introductory chapter with a comparison of Karl Rahner’s and Joseph Ratzinger’s views on attaining Christian unity. Rahner presents what Thomas A. Baima calls “a Pelagian view of ecumenism” (23), a rash manmade institutional unification which might be a marvel of pragmatic skill but could not account for its structures in terms of God’s instituting Word (xix). Ratzinger’s model is more theological and patient: respecting our differences, accepting the good reasons both sides have for them, and thus learning from each other, “will in the end deepen our unity and, in God’s time, will allow for the ‘must’ of division to give way to a doctrinally articulated unity-in-diversity” (xxi). But what should this unity-in-diversity look like? In his article on the principles of ecumenism, Baima makes a helpful distinction between the Church’s structure and its institution. For example, in communist Ukraine there was no Catholic ecclesial institution, but the sacramental and apostolic structure of the Church remained. The two terms are often confused; distinguishing between them helps to clarify that the goal of Christian unity is not necessarily a common institution, but it does include a common sacramental structure. Baima also notes that Ratzinger rejected “the return model used by the Council of Florence” when he famously said that “Rome must not require more of the East with respect to the doctrine of primacy than had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium” (28). Baima raises the very pertinent question as to how this might “inform dialogue with the communities of the Reformation” (29). Would it not Book Reviews 677 mean, for example, that Rome should not demand that Protestants accept the dogmatic definitions of 1854, 1870, and 1950 as such, but simply admit that they are not heretical doctrinal developments? (The next question would be whether Catholics could also legitimately think so.) The question is very much connected to the relationship between Scripture and the Church, treated by Douglas A. Sweeney in his important contribution. While acknowledging rapprochement between Evangelicals who are “sinking deeper roots in Church history, growing more catholic in their handling of the Bible, and working much harder on the doctrine of the Church than they ever have before” (349) and Catholics who, taught by Ratzinger, have moved “past the notion that their doctrine has remained ever the same” (367), Sweeney argues that Ratzinger’s theology of revelation creates new ecumenical obstacles by making it more difficult to speak of the Bible as revelation, to use it to call for reformation in the Catholic Church, and to distinguish the teachings of Scripture from those of Tradition. Yet such a distinction exists and is quite important, for as Evangelicals believe (and Catholics can agree), “the Bible has inherent power to save us from the ravages of sin, death, and Satan outside the Catholic Church,” such as at “Billy Graham crusades, in soup kitchens and jails, in hotel rooms with Bibles, through personal Gospel witness,” and so on (368). That kind of power can hardly be found in a Pastor Aeternus or a Munificentissimus Deus. But can there be rapprochement on the vexing issues of the papacy and Mariology? An affirmative answer is suggested by Ratzinger’s “martyrological” theology of the papacy and his Christological Mariology. At the end of his fine paper on the former topic, the Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg asks: “Could Luther in all seriousness have termed the papacy as the ‘antichrist’ when faced not only with our current Pope but also Pope Benedict XVI? . . . Is it even possible to make the papal office more in line with the Gospel or more in line with Christ?” (15). As far as the latter topic is concerned, the book contains a veritable pearl of great price, namely notes from Ratzinger’s “only Mariology course,” obtained from a “student’s unpublished script” (94) and commented upon by editor Emery de Gaál, who suggests as many as ten possible contributions of Ratzinger’s Mariological approach to the healing of Reformation-era divisions. These include paying attention to the hierarchy of truths and canonical exegesis. Canonical exegesis is a theme that understandably features in more than one chapter. Mariusz Biliniewicz shows how exegesis is connected to liturgical renewal: how one sees the relationship between the Old and New Testaments affects one’s view of the nature of New Covenant worship. 678 Book Reviews Despite an initial Ratzingerian critique of some Protestant principles of exegesis, Biliniewicz ends with Ratzinger’s highly appreciative evaluation of Lutheran liturgy: “It always impresses me that our Protestant brethren, in transforming the medieval liturgical forms, have achieved a real balance between, on the one hand, the relationship of the community to its leader and, on the other, their common relationship to the cross” (73). Another essay in which canonical exegesis plays an important role is Timothy Larsen’s “Joseph Ratzinger on the Nativity of the Lord: Protestants and Catholics Reunite for Christmas,” which I have to admit was—to my great surprise—my favorite chapter in the book. It contains multiple super-interesting threads, only some of which can be briefly outlined below. First, with regard to exegesis, Larsen writes that Ratzinger’s Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives “could have been written by an evangelical Protestant such as a Wheaton professor,” for it is so completely in accord with “the kind of biblical interpretation that is done . . . at Wheaton” (126). But Larsen goes further and admits that Ratzinger’s canonical exegesis taught him the biblical basis for many Christmas traditions that he had “always assumed were exclusively based in culture” (125), such as the ox and the ass at the manger (see Isa 1:3). Second, Larsen writes about the Christmas truce of 1914, where Protestants and Catholics, Englishmen and Germans, gathered in No Man’s Land for an ecumenical worship service in defiance of military orders, singing each other’s songs and exchanging gifts. Third, there is the observation that this sort of ecumenical exchange of gifts continues to this day: Catholic hymnals contain Protestant Christmas carols and vice versa. Fourth, there is the ironical reality of an Evangelical focus on the so-called secular “War on Christmas” (e.g. “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”), for the “original war on Christmas was a Protestant crusade” (128)—in Calvinist Scotland celebrating Christmas was actually punishable, and even Wheaton College used to specifically hold final exams for the fall term through Christmas (in 1864, they were held on December 26), which would prevent students from celebrating at home with family on the day itself. This is a logical consequence of the “regulative principle” interpretation of sola Scriptura (Reformed, not Lutheran), which stipulates that “whatever is not given specific warrant in the New Testament is not allowed to be included in congregational worship and the life of the Church” (128). The theological and ecumenical lesson is that Christmas has in fact relaxed the regulative principle for the vast majority of Protestants: it is a church tradition, “but one that points us toward rather than away from Christ and the Scriptures” (129). Book Reviews 679 There would be much more to quote from Larsen’s most delightful article, but instead of more quotes I will rather conclude with a personal testimony. Looking at the table of contents, I thought this would be the least interesting of all the chapters. How could Christmas, that all-too-familiar annual holiday, have anything to do with the Reformation-era divisions? In the end, this turned out to be precisely the article that set me running around the apartment in excitement. And then I had an idea. I live in the country of Santa Claus (he does not live on the North Pole, but on the Arctic Circle in Finnish Lapland); how about organizing the next ecumenical Ratzinger conference over here and visiting good old St. Nicholas together? Indeed, the conference is now being planned for early June, 2022, and you can find more information on it at ratzingerandreindeer.wordpress.com. Emil Anton Vantaa, Finland The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman, edited by Frederick D. Aquino and Benjamin J. King (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), xiii + 604 pp. Pope Francis proclaimed in his homily for the canonization of Saint John Henry Newman (October 13, 2019) that: “Faith calls for journey, a ‘going out’ from ourselves, and it can work wonders if we abandon our comforting certainties, if we leave our safe harbours and our cosy nests. . . . Faith increases by giving and grows by taking risks” (see Vatican website). Along the same lines, in light of Newman’s canonization, Prince Charles of Wales wrote: “We can draw inspiration from [Newman’s] writings and his life even as we recognise that, like all human lives, it was inevitably flawed. Newman himself was aware of his failings, such as pride and defensiveness which fell short of his own ideals, but which, ultimately, left him only more grateful for the mercy of God.” In beautiful homage to Newman’s legacy, Prince Charles continues: “In the image of divine harmony which Newman expressed so eloquently, we can see how, ultimately, as we follow with sincerity and courage the different paths to which conscience calls us, all our divisions can lead to a greater understanding and all our ways can find a common home.”1 1 vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2019-10/newman-canonization-prince-charleseditorial-britain.html. 680 Book Reviews While neither Pope Francis nor Prince Charles were speaking of the academic sub-field of Newman studies, their words hold a certain sting for those entrenched both in the study of John Henry Newman in the academy and in more popular arenas. This is because many of the controversies that surfaced during Newman’s own lifetime still cause friction amongst those active in the reception of his ideas and the way historians tell and retell the story of his life of faith. However, as Newman scholarship continues to grow and more become acquainted with the writings of the newly minted saint, we will hopefully continue to see research poised to bridge ideological and methodological gaps, rather than seeking to consistently tear down the research of those with whom we disagree ideologically. With its wide-ranging methodological schema and ecumenical cast of contributors, the compilation of essays reviewed here is one of the more recent attempts at bridging the ideological and methodological disconnects in contemporary Newman scholarship. The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman is organized into four parts. Part 1 looks at the historical and social context of Newman’s writings. The five essays making up part 1 investigates the Oxford Movement, the Oratory, Newman’s time in Ireland, his relationship with his brothers, and print culture as the context for understanding Newman and Newman scholarship. Part 2 investigates influences on Newman, with five essays discussing the Church Fathers, Joseph Butler, the British Naturalist tradition, Evangelicals, and Richard Whatley as influences on Newman. The third part, which happens to be the most extensive section in the book, is interested in the theological (section a) and the philosophical and literary (section b) themes of Newman’s writings. Section (a) includes essays on the Anglican parish sermons, justification, the sensus fidelium, doctrinal development, revelation, ecclesiology, and infallibility, with a final essay is on ecumenism, Mariology, and the papacy. Section (b) includes essays explaining Newman’s epistemology, political and social thought, philosophy of education, conscience, the Apologia, and Newman’s literary style. The final part, part 4, addresses the ongoing significance of John Henry Newman’s life and writings. The five essays making up the fourth part deal with Catholic theological receptions, Anglican theological receptions, the university, historiography, and Newman’s literary legacy. To help contextualize the contemporary divide in Newman scholarship, one must understand it within the framework of Frank Turner’s controversial depiction of Newman in his John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion and the heated back-and-forth between Simon Skinner and Eamon Duffy that ensued as a result of the methodological Book Reviews 681 and ideological differences in the narration of the reception history of Newman.2 Though Turner’s volume has often been deemed in Newman literature as too critical of Newman or not properly understanding Newman, a deep historical analysis was achieved in composing the book. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the methodology or even the thesis, Turner’s work should be taken seriously in the study of John Henry Newman. However, few have given Turner’s work more than a cursory analysis, except when looking to dispute his claims. In many cases, Turner’s work is simply ignored and not cited in the footnotes of works on Newman. An obvious companion to Aquino’s and King’s earlier edited volume Receptions of Newman (2015), which was also published by Oxford University Press, featuring an almost identical cover, and dedicated “to Frank Turner and Basil Mitchell for opening up new historical and philosophical lines of inquiry,” The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman is very much interested in investigating these “new historical and philosophical lines of inquiry.” Many essays in The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman take seriously Turner’s research and look to either qualify or temper his research based on new and updated scholarship. This said, the aim of this handbook is not focused primarily on Turner’s work. Rather, it introduces in some depth a vast array of the most up-to-date Newman scholarship. The editors make it a point that they are interested in moving past the tired hagiographical/iconoclast slump Newman scholarship had experienced in the 1990s and early 2000s when they write: “In assembling scholars who are neither uncritically dedicated to nor reacting against Newman in doctrinaire fashion, this Handbook seeks to explore him with critical appreciation and to assess the large amount of secondary literature” (2). The theological and historical techniques in this volume range from historical to philosophical, and always with an eye toward the theological. The variation in methodologies demonstrates the multi-dimensional character of Newman studies. Aquino, a philosopher by trade, and King, a historian, complement one another in terms of methodological leanings. This volume does an excellent job of introducing the most recent Newman scholarship and goes deep enough into the arguments to leave the reader 2 See Frank M. Turner, John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002). The back-and-forth between Simon Skinner and Eamon Duffy was published as a series of corresponding articles in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History as late as ten years after the publication of Turner’s book (and after Turner’s death in 2010). The initial article in this particular exchange was Simon Skinner, “History versus Hagiography: The Reception of Turner’s Newman,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 61, no. 4 (2010): 764–781. 682 Book Reviews itching to research further. Each chapter essay ends with both references and suggested readings, which is quite helpful for those using this as a steppingstone to further research. However, each chapter essay functions as a stand-alone argument with an independent thesis, making this truly a handbook for a broad range of Newman’s thought, rather than a homogenized set of essays arguing different angles to similar topics. The diversity of methodologies and depth of research presented in The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman have done a great service for the academic study of St. John Henry Newman, and it will be used in Newman scholarship for years to come. The only weakness of this book is the lack of emphasis on his role as a pastor, or to be more precise, on the role that his pastorate had on his theology, with the exception of Eamon Duffy’s chapter, “The Anglican Parish Sermons” (chapter 11). After reading through the essays in the volume, I was left wondering what impact his time at St. Clements or Littlemore, or even his role as pastor in the Birmingham Oratory, may have had on his more academically inclined work, such as his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine or his Grammar of Assent. More than anything, though, this lacuna should be viewed positively, as a place for further research. The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman serves as both an excellent introduction to the depth of Newman scholarship and a demonstration of the shift within it from a more hagiographical read of Newman. It presents a more systematic and historical approach to his writings, using Newman’s own writings as sources while also situating them in the historical context in which he lived and wrote. This book looks critically at both Newman’s ideas and the historical and intellectual context that produced the Newman who was (and still is) so influential today. This book comes highly recommended for anyone even remotely interested in Newman and Newman-related scholarship. Persons of any methodological persuasion will find this book beneficial, and it serves as an excellent companion for those enmeshed in Newman scholarship particularly, but also those interested in Victorian studies more broadly. The further reading and bibliographic information at the end of each chapter is also quite useful. All in all, this book will continue to be one of the go-to handbooks for the study of John Henry Newman for many years to come. Elizabeth A. Huddleston National Institute for Newman Studies Pittsburgh, PA Book Reviews 683 A Greek Thomist: Providence in Gennadios Scholarios by Matthew C. Briel (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2020), xv + 270 pp. A Greek Thomist is the revised version of Matthew C. Briel’s doctoral dissertation written at Fordham University under the direction of George Demacopoulos. In its adapted and published form, this monograph is an important contribution to a dramatically under-researched area of Church history and historical theology: (1) the complex transition period before and right after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and (2) the reception and integration into Orthodox theology of key elements Thomas Aquinas’s thought by the leading Byzantine Orthodox intellectual of his day—Gennadios Scholarios. The volume is heavily researched and very well documented; the bibliography alone comprises forty-nine pages and the endnotes another sixty pages. The book includes translations by the author of major parts of Scholarios’s First Tract on Providence and an appendix listing fifteenth-century Greek texts on providence by Scholarios and his contemporaneous interlocutors. A Greek Thomist opens a welcome and most instructive window on a lost world unknown to most Catholics in the West. The central figure of the monograph is Gennadios Scholarios, who was born in Constantinople around 1400, where he received an excellent philosophical and theological education (and possibly was a student of the philosopher Gemistos Plethon, an extraordinary polymath, celebrated Platonist, and the leading secular intellectual of his day). Scholarios, then a layman, ran a school of philosophy in Constantinople and eventually was asked (as was Plethon) to be part of the delegation of about seven hundred persons, including the emperor John VIII Palaeologos and the Patriarch of Constantinople Joseph II, to the Council of Ferrara-Florence (1438–1445) that concluded with the decree of union, Laetentur Caeli, signed on July 6, 1439. After their return to Constantinople, many of the Greeks repudiated the union; among them was Scholarios, who while in Italy had strongly supported it. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Mehmed II, in an attempt to use the Orthodox Church to stabilize his empire, appointed Scholarios patriarch of Constantinople and granted him ecclesiastical as well as civil authority. In 1454 he was consecrated by the metropolitan of Heraclea Perinthus. Because Scholarios was a lay scholar when appointed patriarch, he was consecutively ordained, first as a deacon, then as a priest, then finally as a bishop, before being appointed patriarch. After three years, Scholarios resigned and retired to the Monastery of St. John the Forerunner, fifty miles northeast of Thessaloniki, where he died in 1472. Having 684 Book Reviews been throughout his intellectual career a strong advocate of Aristotelian philosophy (in opposition to the Plethon’s programmatic resuscitation of Platonism), Scholarios—as Briel shows persuasively—begins to draw upon Aquinas’s works in a deep and sustained way (by translation and commentary) after his return from Florence during his opposition to the union and right up to his death in 1472—a reception of Thomas Aquinas’s thought that culminates in the composition of his five tracts on divine providence. Yet why would anyone who is not an expert in Eastern Orthodox theology, in the late Byzantine Empire and its final fall in 1453, or someone with the recondite interest in one of the more arcane fields of intellectual history—the reception of Thomas Aquinas’s thought by medieval Orthodox theologians in the Byzantine Empire—want to read a volume like this one? Has not Marcus Plested in his very fine book Orthodox Readings of Aquinas (Oxford University Press, 2012) said everything one might want to know about the latter? What else could a work like this teach a theologically interested audience in the early twenty-first century, mostly not made up of Byzantinists? Any reader of Briel’s book will find out quickly not only that the book is eminently readable but also that it is surprisingly relevant for Catholic theology in the Latin West, and this for at least three reasons: (1) Briel opens a fascinating window into the theological discourse on divine providence from a time-period that could only have been understood by all contemporaries as pervasively and persistently catastrophic—the theological questions raised and the answers given ring authentic in a contemporaneous context that has its own dimensions of dramatic decline and catastrophe, a context in which many wonder about God’s existence, presence, and providence. (2) Briel’s study illustrates that understanding the development of Catholic theology in the emerging Renaissance and on the eve of the Protestant Reformation is greatly aided by grasping the intellectual and theological influence of the constantly present “other” to the Latin West, the rich and sophisticated Byzantine theological and intellectual life. (3) In the background of Briel’s study stands the clearly articulated and frequently repeated claim that Scholarios’s reception of Aquinas’s thought and successful integration into a Palamite framework made possible a version of a, so to speak, “orthodoxly” refined and perfected Thomism that—had it been re-received in the West— might have helped avoid later debilitating dead-ends, as (in)famously, the De auxiliis controversy in the late sixteenth and very early seventeenth centuries between Dominicans and Jesuits. A Greek Thomist comprises seven chapters divided into three parts. In the first two chapters, Briel paints a vivid picture of the last century Book Reviews 685 of the ever-shrinking Byzantine Empire—a century in which frequent devastating earthquakes occurred, in which the plague struck severely and recurringly, drastically diminishing the population, in which the Ottoman conquests occurred more and more frequently, and in which—last but not least—a civil war weakened Constantinople from the inside during the time of its greatest need for political stability and strength. Affliction is at the heart of many people’s lives and the source of the question where God is in the middle of these catastrophes. Apocalypticism—Scholarios together with many other Byzantine Christians expected the world to end in 1492—and a resurgence of classical Greek tyche as well as an encounter with Muslim qismet were key elements of a shared intellectual context in which the question was pressed whether God is free and all-powerful (or possibly bound and limited by the laws of nature and history that God had set up himself ) and whether human beings are free (or whether their acts are fated). Scholarios develops an answer in which he argues—largely on the basis of Aquinas’s work—that both are the case: God is sovereignly free and the human being is free as well. Yet how is God’s providence actually to be conceived of in light of these two suppositions? In order to contextualize Scholarios’s theology of divine providence theologically, in the second part, Briel adumbrates first the Greek Patristic, then the Byzantine theologians, and finally Aquinas as the theological resources Scholarios drew upon. Briel advances a nuanced discussion of Origen’s account of divine providence and human freedom, especially in Origen’s Romans commentary and in the anthology of his writings that was preserved under the title Philokalia, Maximus the Confessor’s theology of providence, and finally, the account John of Damascus gives in his On the Orthodox Faith. A fascinating discussion throughout this part is the question of the limit of life and the hour of death; Briel displays a wide command of sources and voices of Orthodox theology over the course of eight hundred years. Compared with this rich and nuanced discussion the very brief chapter on Aquinas’s theology of providence does unfortunately not quite rise to the same level of nuance and penetration. In the last culminating part of his study, Briel lays out the development of Scholarios’s thought on providence from 1432 until his death in 1472. It is in this part that Scholarios’s central antagonist (and likely former teacher), Georgios Gemistos Plethon (1355–1452), makes his appearance. Plethon was one of the most renowned philosophers of the late Byzantine period and was the main motor of the revival of Platonism in the Italy of the fifteenth century (due to his presence in Florence during the union council). Raised in a family of well-educated Christians, Plethon turned 686 Book Reviews away from the faith and became what one might call somewhat anachronistically a secular philosopher, first in Constantinople and later in Mystras, the Byzantine capital and cultural center on the Peloponnese. As became clear only after his death, Plethon was, as Scholarios had long suspected and learned by way of reading the Nomoi, a polytheist, who endorsed a return to the religion of the Hellenic gods. During his lifetime, however, Plethon was known for arguing that Platonism was more conducive to the Christian faith than Aristotelianism—he lectured on the topic of the differences between Platonism and Aristotelianism, favoring Platonism, with great effect in Florence. In response to Plethon’s teaching in his De differentiis, Scholarios offered a defense of Aristotle, to which Plethon responded again. Scholarios also responded critically to Plethon’s treatise on fate and, based on this initial response, began to develop his increasingly nuanced theology of divine providence. Briel argues convincingly throughout his third part that, in both responses to Plethon, it was actually Thomas’s perfected version of Aristotle and key moves of Thomas’s theology of providence that formed the heart of Scholarios’s rebuttals. The strength of Scholarios’s response to Plethon comes from an Aristotle perfected by Aquinas’s interpretation and improvement. The acme of the book is a close reading with translation and a historical and theological interpretation of Scholarios’s First Tract on Providence (the first of five tracts). It is fascinating and instructive to observe the selective integration of Thomas’s thought into Scholarios’s Orthodox theological framework (shaped by Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus). Scholarios does draw upon the extant Greek translations of the Summa contra gentiles and the Summa theologiae as well as upon his own translations/commentaries of the De ente et essentia and of Thomas’s commentaries on Aristotle’s Metaphysics and De anima. Scholarios might also have translated Thomas’s commentary on Aristotle’s Posterior analytics, now lost. Where matters remain somewhat fuzzy in Briel’s otherwise lucid interpretation (most likely due to Scholarios’s own unclarity) is the precise nature of the metaphysical integration of Thomas’s account of divine simplicity within the Palamite real distinction between the divine essence and the divine energies. That at least a non-contradiction between these two is conceivable, if not even a positive metaphysical integration, other scholars have also tried to argue in recent years, yet it remains unclear how Scholarios actually does achieve this integration in a way that would satisfy both the Thomist and the Palamite. When one has completed Briel’s monograph, one has a sense that Book Reviews 687 Scholarios is advancing a substantive account of divine providence very much ad mentem S. Thomae yet subtly qualified by a wider Orthodox theological framework, and thereby an implicit answer to all those who would be attracted to or troubled by Plethon’s teaching on fate. Based on Aquinas, Scholarios advances an account of liberum arbitrium to which no Origenist can object and an account of transcendent divine causality to which no fatalist can object. What is excluded by Scholarios, a fact strongly emphasized by Briel, is the discussion of predestination (in the way Briel takes it to follow from Augustine’s late writings on grace). Briel relies astutely on Newman and MacIntyre for a sophisticated concept on discursive traditions and the development of Tradition, and indeed, of doctrine. These resources allow him to unfold the complex narrative of the integration of Aquinas’s Aristotle and key concepts of Aquinas’s own metaphysics (the real distinction between esse and essentia and the related concepts of divine simplicity and transcendent causality) into a Palamite theological framework. Yet this sophisticated hermeneutic is not applied with equal nuance to the Western tradition, whether in regard to the complex Augustinian tradition in its own right or to the Thomist tradition in its various sub-strands. Here the book leaves a lot to desire, be it in regard to Augustine (who appears primarily as a negative foil conveying largely the reception of Augustine as found in Calvinism and Jansenism), or in regard to the profound and complex theological discourse and development around “nature and grace” (the brief and uncommented references to natura pura do not inspire confidence, nor the references to “irresistible grace”—a concept of Protestant Reformed theology—that “forces” human freedom, a notion foreign to any of the participants in the De auxiliis controversy). Briel seems to imply that in the account of divine causality of divine predetermination of the human act—the technical term among Thomists for that is “praemotio physica”—advanced by one party in the debate is a causality competitive to human freedom. Briel’s claim at the end of his book that “it was a presupposition of both the Jesuits and the Dominicans that grace was irresistible” (130) does not do justice to the either position, to say the least. Even the most basic recent literature on these, admittedly complex, topics would have saved the work from a number of avoidable infelicities. It seems that to communicate one complex theological tradition successfully to another and to suggest what are taken to be superior aspects of the former to be considered and possibly adopted by the latter, presupposes a presentation of the latter that matches the presentation of the former in precision and nuance. In a tightly organized monograph, matters of great complexity that are not at the center 688 Book Reviews of the discussion might unavoidably be painted with all too broad a brush. These reservations are therefore meant to encourage the kind of follow-up work that might balance out and clarify these matters in order ultimately to facilitate what seems to be the deeper intention of the author—the re-reception of an “orthodoxly” refined and perfected Thomism into the Western theological tradition. Notwithstanding these reservations, A Greek Thomist is a noteworthy contribution to understanding Byzantine theology around the fall of Byzantium in 1453, and more specifically a remarkable contribution to a fuller understanding of the leading Byzantine theologian of the period, Gennadios Scholarios, and as such an important contribution to the complex reception of Thomas Aquinas’s thought by later generations of theologians, West and East, and finally a welcome exercise in educating Western theologians, Catholic and Protestant, in the history, theology, and intellectual life of Eastern Orthodoxy in general, and of the last century of the Byzantine Empire specifically—something about which Christians in the West remain notoriously undereducated and misinformed. All of this united in an overall well-researched and compellingly written volume, is a commendable scholarly achievement. Reinhard Hütter The Catholic University of America Washington, DC To Stir a Restless Heart: Thomas Aquinas and Henri de Lubac on Nature, Grace, and the Desire for God by Jacob Wood (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2019), xvi + 472 pp. Rarely is it the case that a contribution to the nature–grace debate receives near-universal approval. John Milbank’s The Suspended Middle (Eerdmans, 2005) met approbation from many supporters of Henri de Lubac, and many neo-Thomistic readers reacted similarly to Lawrence Feingold’s The Natural Desire to See God According to St. Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters (Sapientia Press, 2010 [2nd ed.]). Jacob Wood has succeeded in garnering approval from both camps. More impressive than this peacemaking is the depth of thought and scholarship on display. It is unequivocally the most significant contribution to the nature–grace debate since those works, and lays much of the foundation for a rapprochement between the two sides of the debate. Book Reviews 689 Wood’s contribution here is so significant precisely because of the methodology he employs. At its heart To Stir a Restless Heart is an examination of the development of two aspects of Thomistic thought: the relation between reason and the will and the relation between matter and form. After an introduction to Augustine’s theology of the desire of God and the contours of the debate over de Lubac, the first chapter lays out the debates taking place in Paris that predated Thomas’s academic work. Wood lays out Peter Lombard’s Augustinian theology of creation and Philip the Chancellor’s attempt to integrate Aristotelian natural philosophy with the received Augustinian theology. He then presents receptions of Avicenna and Averroes, followed by Bonaventure’s attempt to integrate the two Aristotelian traditions. Most fundamental to this section of the book is the relation between matter and form. For Avicenna, the soul desires an end just as a body desires to be at rest in a place, and so moves in that direction; there is “a positive motion toward God” belonging to human nature (132). In William of Auvergne’s hands, Avicenna’s approach lends itself to affirming “a natural inclination that can only be satisfied by the vision of God” (86). In contrast, those reading Averroes would have concluded that what matter (and human nature) naturally desire must be attainable by nature, and so had trouble articulating the openness of human nature to God (135). The next four chapters present St. Thomas’s developing thought on these questions, beginning with his studies as a bachelor of the Sentences in Paris at 1252. As a consequence of matter’s purely passive character, it has a passive appetite that “merely designates the potential to receive” substantial forms (147). As matter possesses a capacity to receive forms from an outside power, such as God, human nature has a capacity to receive grace, such that “what Albert called a potency for obedience is for Thomas contained among the properties of our material potency, broadly conceived” (149). When it comes to the natural desire for God, Aquinas concludes in his commentary on the Sentences that “human nature can by all means be said to have a natural appetite for the vision of God, because it is passively capable of receiving the vision of God, but it cannot be said to have a natural desire to see God . . . because that would require that the vision of God fall within the range of activity” open to the active powers of human nature (177–78). This natural appetite cannot prove that human beings are called by God to supernatural beatitude, but it can prove that such beatitude is possible, and furthermore that it alone would maximally fulfill human nature. Aquinas’s theology of the relation between natural and free will, reason and nature, the Fall, and limbo also ties into the 690 Book Reviews issues at hand. Limbo in particular throws the difference between desire and appetite into relief; the unbaptized babies “reach an end, because they reach the terminal development of their natural desire, but they do not reach their ultimate end, because they do not reach the terminal development of their natural appetite” (201). Aquinas develops his distinction between natural desire and natural appetite in the Summa contra gentiles. The natural appetite for the vision of God is rooted in the intellect’s capacity to know, and “the resulting desire seeks the perfection of its corresponding appetite ‘insofar as is possible’” (244). The active natural desire proves that the vision of God is possible. Human nature is capable of receiving such a vision without ceasing to be human, and furthermore this end is “the only possible final end for human nature” (230). However, the natural desire does not prove that any human being has ever received the visio Dei. It also allows Thomas to affirm the gratuity of grace without having to resort to a proto-voluntarist position. In the next chapter Wood articulates Thomas’s writing on the agent and possible intellects, the relation of reason and the will, and his reactions to Bonaventure’s philosophy of incomplete forms during Thomas’s time in Rome, ending in 1268. Aquinas’s account of grace in the prima pars of the Summa theologiae is also treated: “Grace is not above the passive principle in nature. If it were, grace would be contra naturam, not supra naturam”; rather, it “actualizes a creature’s passive potential for accidental perfection” (285). Wood notes that Thomas makes theological conclusions in the prima pars; he proves not only that human nature could receive such a vision, but in the case of the Christ and the saints it has. Wood concludes his discussion of Thomas by examining Thomas’s most mature position. Wood lays out one crucial addendum to Aquinas’s central argument that human nature, like matter, is open to God analogously to matter’s openness to form. The human being is per se open to the vision of God, not merely per accidens in the way that matter is able to be changed from one form into another. The human being is able to accomplish this “per se material potency” only through God, in contrast with his other per se potencies, which he can accomplish under his own steam, but this does not make the change any less “natural” in the sense of being a perfection of his form and not something that makes him a different type of thing with a new substantial form (303). The necessity or lack thereof of movements of the will and the relation between intellect and the will are treated again, with particular attention paid to Aquinas’s most mature position on the case of Adam and Eve. This reworking leads to a reworking between the prima pars and the prima secundae on the question of the natural desire for Book Reviews 691 God: as the will directs the intellect to think, so too is “the natural desire of the will prior to the natural desire of the intellect” (354). In the last chapter Wood articulates the contemporary significance of Thomas’s thought. Contradicting Thomas, Giles of Rome and the Aegidian tradition held that “there must be in matter some positive principle toward form in order for form to be received in matter naturally” (362). The problem with this position is that, whereas for Thomas “one and the same privation accounts for both a creature’s openness to natural change as well as its openness to grace,” Giles must posit “obediential properties” to account for humanity’s openness to God (364). Wood characterizes Giles’s position as a return to an Avicennian account of “an active, determinate, natural desire, which has the vision of God as its specific end,” (366) and so can admit of no limited, imperfect happiness; only the vision of God qualifies as happiness in any real sense. Original justice is thus a debt owed to humanity; a debt of fittingness and not an absolute debt, but a debt nonetheless. After briefly discussing other major Scholastic thinkers, Wood situates de Lubac in this Aegidian tradition. More specifically, the mature de Lubac pulls his distinction between the creation of a rational nature, the ordination by God of that nature to an end (which is not in itself “a positive ordering to the beatific vision” [422]), and the creation of individual person from Fulgence Lafosse (412). It follows that God could create a rational being without giving it the end of the vision of God or create a rational being with the desire for the vision of God without granting that desire. In this way de Lubac concedes the possibility of a pure nature not ordained to a supernatural end while denying it any theological relevance; a pure nature would have an end different from that of human nature, and so be subject to a different natural law. On the basis of what he has laid out here, Wood charts out a way forward for the nature–grace debate. As matter is open to receiving forms and so has a passive appetite for its perfection, so too human nature is open to grace and has a passive appetite for the vision of God. Wood roots the human openness for grace in the fact that “the natural desire seeks the complete fulfillment of the natural appetite of the soul, and . . . the natural desire comes to rest in either a natural or supernatural end depending on whether God chooses to communicate grace to the soul or not” (432). With de Lubac, Aquinas has no need for explaining the capax Dei through obediential potency and affirms a natural desire for a supernatural end. With the commentarial tradition, Aquinas teaches that human nature possesses a natural end and is passive with regard to grace (430). Wood’s work is painstaking and detailed. It demands attention and is 692 Book Reviews at times a difficult read. This difficulty is primarily due more to the intricacies of St. Thomas’s thought than to any infelicities in phrasing. Such is especially the case with the first few chapters. At times the reader may also feel bogged down while Wood lays the foundations of his final argument. The discussion of Aquinas’s development on the relation of reason and the will comes to mind here. It has immense relevance to Thomas’s explanation of original sin, and is well worth reading as a contribution to the scholarship on that subject. A similar comment applies to Wood’s discussion of the relation of matter to form. It is exhaustive and profound, but it is not until the end of the work that its full import is realized. In both cases these details fill out Thomas’s world more than they contribute directly to the eventual thesis of the book, although they are well worth reading and gave this reviewer a much better grasp of Thomas’s theology in particular and medieval theology in general. The book is also challenging at times, a characteristic of texts written for what I take to be Wood’s audience: graduate students and academic theologians. Perhaps Wood could have written a shorter book and still cogently made his case, but the great breadth and depth with which he approached the issues at hand was time well spent. The reader gets a much fuller picture of the medieval context, making the text useful for a wider range of theologians. To Stir a Restless Heart deserves a wide readership within this audience. Thomists will find the first four chapters useful, and students of twentieth-century theology will find his interpretation of de Lubac significant. Specialists in theological anthropology in particular will engage Wood’s scholarship for years to come. Time will tell the breadth of acceptance his position gains, but in any case, he has moved the discussion forward immensely. If the nature–grace debate (and theological debate in general) “possesses within itself a teleological orientation toward the proclamation of the truths which it considers in the Church’s praedicatio” (428), then To Stir a Restless Heart belongs in the library of every seminary and university with a theology program. Kevin E. Jones Alaska Pacific University Anchorage, AK Book Reviews 693 The Experiment of Faith: Pope Benedict XVI on Living the Theological Virtues in a Secular Age by Matthew J. Ramage (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2020), x + 283 pp. In a refreshing departure from the attempts of apologists to “prove” the Catholic faith from supposedly neutral premises, Matthew Ramage instead advocates Pope Benedict XVI’s course for evangelization, a via media between triumphalism and relativism. Following Benedict, Ramage argues that the most convincing apologia for the Christian faith is to see it from “the inside,” that is, to live it out in practice. Only by running the “experiment of faith” can one note its inner beauty and its answers to the questions of the human heart. A guiding analogy for Ramage is one that Benedict made while delivering a homily in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York: from the outside, a Gothic cathedral appears dark and cold, its windows dim and lifeless; yet, from the inside of the cathedral, “these same windows suddenly come alive with resplendent light passing through their stained glass” (264). Similarly, Ratzinger notes, “it is only from the inside, from the experience of faith and ecclesial life, that we see the Church as she truly is: flooded with grace, resplendent in beauty, adorned by the manifold gifts of the Holy Spirit” (264). Thus, rather than fight in the trenches of difficult moral doctrines to win over non-believers, Ramage reorients the standard approach to apologetics by inviting believers and non-believers alike to discover the Catholic faith’s truth and goodness, not from pages of syllogisms, but from the beauty visible to one who “get his hands dirty” and acts as if one believed, as C. S. Lewis might say, until one does. While never sacrificing content for clarity, Ramage’s Experiment of Faith shares with the writings of its model, Pope Benedict XVI, the quality of being simultaneously profound as well as eminently readable. At the outset of his book, Ramage identifies Friedrich Nietzsche as his “ideal periodical interlocutor” for Ratzinger (9). As Ramage points out, the Pontiff frequently cites Nietzsche’s anti-Christian position in order to contrast the proclamation of the Gospel with its most cogent critic. For Nietzsche, the truth of Christian doctrine is a matter of secondary importance; rather, his fundamental charge against Christianity is that it is life-denying and nihilistic in concrete existence insofar as it condemns the exercise of vital human forces such as libido and power. Ramage, following Ratzinger, believes that the best response to Nietzsche—as well as to the numerous anonymous Nietzscheans of today—is found, not in objective intellectual arguments, but in the “laboratory of life,” in which Christianity, 694 Book Reviews as actually practiced and lived out by ordinary saints, manifests the fullest expression of beauty, truth, and goodness (19). In the first part of his book, Ramage takes seriously Nietzsche’s critique (it is a merit of Ramage as a scholar that he never builds straw men or carelessly dismisses opposition) and responds with a depiction of the Christian view of human life, which is oriented toward holiness through the practice of obedience to the moral law. By masterfully synthesizing insights from Scripture, Church Fathers, and Aquinas, Ramage presents an alternative narrative to Nietzsche’s, one in which holiness is indistinguishable from charity or love and in which God elevates humans through this same love into a share in the divine nature. Were Ramage to conclude his response at the theoretical level, however, he would have failed to address the heart of Nietzsche’s censure, which passes beyond the logical and touches the existential; for this reason, Ramage not only examines holiness, morality, and prayer abstractly but also weaves in concrete suggestions for those who desire to see the reality from within (for instance, Ramage’s introduction to Lectio Divina fits in quite naturally with the forgoing discussion and yet is immensely helpful for those wishing to pray either for the first time or for the thousandth). In this way, the reader herself becomes part of the response to Nietzsche by undergoing the experiment of faith and all the divine realities contained within. In part 2, Ramage employs the theological virtues—faith, hope, and love—as “lenses for the exploration of the real-life questions” faced by those practicing Christianity in a predominantly secular culture in which non-belief is a live and even common option (8). At the same time, however, the theological virtues—each receiving two chapters of treatment—are also the lens by which Ramage introduces the reader to the theology of Ratzinger/Benedict as a whole, an apt approach since Benedict penned four encyclicals relating to faith, hope, and love (Lumen Fidei being largely indebted to Benedict although published by Pope Francis). The treatment of various theological themes in Benedict’s writings, such as eschatology and integral ecology, never come across as digressions, as these realities are tied to theological virtues necessary for anyone embarking on the experiment of faith. Part 3 notes parallels between Benedict’s insights and those of other thinkers who “do not cite Benedict or otherwise demonstrate familiarity with his thought” (197). Ramage first introduces the insights of three exegetes—Dru Johnson, Peter Enns, and Matthew Bates—who each in a different way highlight Benedict’s conviction that, in Scripture, “faith” (Hebrew ’āman; Greek pistis) does not denote a mere intellectual assent, Book Reviews 695 nor an infallible emotion contra Nietzsche, but rather a personal act of entrusting one’s whole self to God (198). According to Ratzinger, and in line with the views of these exegetes, faith is less about possessing the truth with certainty and comprehension and more about allowing the Truth, who “is a person” to possess us and dictate the direction of our lives (65). In an additional survey of contemporary scholars, Ramage turns to the work of three philosophers—James Smith, John Cottingham, and Myron Penner—who all express insights on Christian faith in the modern, secular age that are consonant with Benedict’s thought. Throughout the consideration of these authors, the enduring relevance of insights from Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre comes to the fore and one wishes Ramage had explicitly devoted sections to these two philosophers rather than to their interpreters (Smith’s book How Not to Be Secular, while extraordinarily clear and helpful, is nonetheless a digest of Taylor’s A Secular Age). The concluding section begins with a reminder that the most effective path for apologetics and evangelization, according to Ramage and Benedict, is “the via pulchritudinis, the way of beauty” (239). Ramage writes: “In short, for Benedict the truth and goodness of the Christian faith is seen most clearly under the aspect of its beauty” (240). Such beauty is most clearly evident in “the well-lived life of non-canonized saints—the ‘simple’ or ‘ordinary’ people we know—who for Benedict and for most of us are the truest sign of where the truth of the faith lies” (248). As a concrete instance of the life of faith, Ramage invites the reader to consider his personal reasons for belief as well as the challenges and sufferings of his life, both spiritual and physical, that have acquired a new meaning through following Christ. While most chapters of this book conclude with practical, personal remarks from the author, this culminating chapter anchors the more abstract truths of the book in the unique, concrete existence of its author, who, like most of us Christians, experiences the joy and frustrations, the obstacles and the hope, of discipleship. While Ramage makes no claim to be an example of the via pulchritudinis, his own accounts of deep tribulation and spiritual comfort are tangible enough to instantiate doctrinal points such as redemptive suffering and the hope in the resurrection. In The Experiment of Faith, Ramage has assembled an accessible and penetrating glance into the heart of Christian life as it is both professed and practiced. For brevity’s sake, I was unable to note the many masterful, yet concise, treatments of doctrines such as divinization, the general resurrection, and the sacrament of marriage, and even an outstanding articulation of the continuity between Benedict’s thought and Pope Francis’s Laudato Si’. None of these excursuses are untethered from the thesis of the book, 696 Book Reviews which is also the heart of its success: Christianity makes the most sense not when it is pondered as an abstract idea in isolation from praxis, but when it is worn, and even worn-in, as the garment of Christ. One question that I would like to pose concerns Ramage’s frequent claim that the Catholic faith’s truth and goodness “cannot be seen from the outside, . . . but only in the context of lived belief,” that is, from within the practice of the faith (77, 265). Throughout my reading of the book, I hesitated on this point, and wondered: Surely there must be some good perceived by the subject for her to even consider running the experiment of faith in the first place? In other words, what draws people to enter within the apparently dark and perhaps frightening Gothic cathedral (to recall Ratzinger’s metaphor) of the Catholic faith if not for some perceived goodness or beauty? Although Ramage does not explicitly answer this question, I found a solution in his conviction that anyone can perceive the beauty of the lives of saints: “The greatest apologia for the Church is the beauty and saints she has produced” (118). It is primarily by witnessing the joy and beauty exuded by those faithfully following Christ that non-believers find reason to undergo the intimidating prospect of “the experiment of the cross,” wherein “we bow down in service and self-gift” and thereby “open up doors of perception that are otherwise unavailable” (142). The Experiment of Faith is an indispensable contribution to contemporary apologetics and will hopefully inspire many more of its kinds. This book belongs both in the hands of open-minded unbelievers and in those of Christians who seek to harmonize the Catholic faith as understood and as lived. Jean-Paul Juge Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA The Cleansing of the Heart: The Sacraments as Instrumental Causes in the Thomistic Tradition by Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2017), xvi + 225 pp. The combination of colors, oils, and brush strokes that constitute a piece of art are more than mere colors on a canvas; rather, instruments are used by the artist to represent and effect, through the very signification of the art, that which exceeds the capability of the instrument as such. Book Reviews 697 Thus, Monet’s Vetheuil in the Fog (1879), found on the dust jacket of the present work, is capable of communicating to its viewer the ever-changing, ephemeral nature of reality. Even more remarkably, the central image of Monet’s Vetheuil, an ethereal church, directs its viewer toward the transcendent, precisely in and through ordinary, immanent, and fleeting means. This disproportion between the form of the instrument (e.g., the paintbrush, the oils, the canvas, etc.) and its effect (the Vetheuil and its impression on the viewer) through the intention of the principal agent (Monet) is a helpful analogue in considering how God operates in the realm of grace. As Saint Augustine put it, God, through the water of baptism, touches the body and cleanses the heart (“corpus tangat et cor abluat”) (17–18). It is difficult to read Augustine without seeing the very water of baptism as being in a very real way a causal instrument in the hands of the divine artist. Father Reginald Lynch’s The Cleansing of the Heart can be read as a historical overview of the development of this Augustinian intuition which “occupied the best minds of the scholastic period” (18). Lynch begins with a treatment of sacramental causality in twelfth- and thirteenth-century medieval Scholasticism (ch. 1) and culminates with Saint Thomas’s understanding of the sacraments as instrumental causes. Lynch shows how Saint Thomas’s thinking developed from the commonly held view of the sacraments as dispositive causes of grace in his commentary on the Sentences (ch. 2) to a more robust notion of instrumental causality in the Summa theologiae (ch. 3) and concludes with a consideration of the subsequent reception of Thomas’s teaching in early modern approaches to sacramental causality (ch. 4), focusing specifically on the Thomist response (in the person of Domingo Báñez) to Melchior Cano’s notion of the sacraments as moral causes. In reviewing the development and synthesis of Saint Thomas’s teaching, Lynch shows how the Thomist understanding of the sacraments forms a sapiential synthesis of the most vital aspects of theology (anthropology, Christology, grace, merit), all of which converge on the question of sacramental instrumental causality, which stands “at the heart of the Christian mystery” (205). As is to be expected with any account of the Scholastic development of sacramental theology, one must navigate a number of crucial distinctions. By way of an overview, I offer a brief account of three distinctions that figure largely in Lynch’s account of Saint Thomas’s teaching. Lynch highlights the character of the sacraments as perfective rather than dispositive, intrinsic rather than extrinsic, and physical instead of moral causes of grace. 698 Book Reviews First, the sacraments are perfective instrumental causes rather than dispositive. Lynch shows how Saint Thomas’s early teaching of the sacraments as dispositive causes in the Scriptum (shared together with his Scholastic contemporaries) is eventually abandoned for the sake of a more robust notion of instrumental causality. According to the early view, the sacraments merely dispose the recipient for grace without actually perfecting the subject in grace. As created instruments, the sacraments are disproportionate to the end intended by the principal agent. After all, how can created water communicate divinizing grace? In the Summa theologiae, however, Saint Thomas sees the sacraments as perfective causes of grace, or “instrumental causes of grace simpliciter” (120). This is to say that the sacraments directly bring about the grace they signify. Behind this development, Lynch identifies a shift in Saint Thomas’s understanding of grace (as well as a vital development in his Christology which we will touch on below). Beginning with the De veritate, Saint Thomas consciously abandons a contemporary framework which treats grace as a parallel to creation—that is, as a re-creation—and instead focuses on grace as a concreated form in the soul. This is important because the parallel with creation implies that grace can only be communicated immediately (just as creation ex nihilo or the infusion of the human soul at conception must be immediate); by focusing instead on grace as an accidental concreated form, Saint Thomas conceives of grace as an actualization of a potency that is connatural to human nature. Later Thomist commentators will refer to this as the creature’s “obediential potency”—it is a potency that really exists in the created nature but can be reduced to act only by God, the principal agent (it is therefore not to be confused with miracles, which have no corresponding creaturely potency). With grace, “God’s creative act does not bring something to be from nothing but works within the accidental potencies of an already existing nature” (116). Thus, the communication of grace, unlike the act of creation, allows for perfective rather than merely dispositive instrumental causality. Secondly, and related, the sacraments are intrinsic rather than extrinsic causes of grace. Since grace corresponds to a real potency in the creature, Lynch argues for a similar obedience and connaturality in the sacraments themselves, enabling them to be intrinsic causes of grace (139). “The sacraments are true causes in the proper sense; they produce real effects under the direction of God” (29). This is distinguished from an extrinsic view that sees the sacraments as merely a condition (sine qua non) or occasion for God’s direct communication of grace (e.g., via a divine pact). Besides rendering the sacraments of the New Covenant indistinguishable from Book Reviews 699 that of the Old, the extrinsicist view cannot account for the causality of the sacraments except equivocally. Thirdly, the sacraments are physical rather than a moral causes. The fact that the sacraments are not merely the occasion or even sine qua non causes of grace further entails that they are not simply moral causes of grace. Melchior Cano (†1560) is the first to appeal to grace explicitly in terms of moral as opposed to physical causality. According to Cano, the sacraments are causes not because they directly bring about grace in the recipient, but insofar as they persuade (175) the human free will (171). Cano therefore returns to a construal of the sacraments as dispositive and extrinsic “causes.” Cano’s competitive schematization of divine and human action prevents him from seeing how grace can act on the human will in a physical manner without compromising human freedom. Unsurprisingly, Cano’s sacramental theory has important ramifications for the doctrine of grace (see section “De auxiliis and modern theology,” 195–200). In contrast, Thomas views the sacraments as real instrumental causes by which God draws the believer into the life of grace. Significantly, the maturation of Thomas’s thought is part and parcel with a recognition of the “christic dimension” of the sacraments. One of the strengths of Lynch’s work is highlighting Saint Thomas’s Christological developments in connection to his teaching on sacramental causality. It is precisely because of Saint Thomas’s conviction of the role of Christ’s humanity as the instrument of redemption (more specifically as conjoined and animated instrument of the divinity) that the sacraments are able to have the sort of causal power that they have. Indeed, the sacraments are “extensions of the instrumental dimension of the hypostatic union, extending the obediential elevation of nature that was first made present in the Incarnation to all the baptized” (139). The emphasis on sacramental causality’s link to the Incarnation is a reminder to readers that Saint Thomas’s doctrine of sacramental causality (along with the prior and subsequent Scholastic treatments of the matter) does not arise from a penchant for “vain speculation,” but stems directly from a meditation on the concrete redemption effected by the Word Incarnate. By viewing the sacraments as perfective, intrinsic, and physical instrumental causes, it becomes possible to recognize in the sacraments “a form of divine artistry, interacting with created reality through the medium of created tools” (103–4). Thus, in a more profound manner than a human Monet, God appears “as an artist working with his tools, gathering all created finalities towards an end that he has foreseen in wisdom” (78). Lynch’s work is a welcome addition to the growing literature on 700 Book Reviews sacramental causality from Dominican theologians. Specifically, his monograph can be seen as building on the work of his confrere, Bernhard Blankenhorn,1 by showing how the Thomist commentatorial tradition received and developed the Common Doctors’ thought. Joshua H. Lim Thomas Aquinas College Northfield, MA Aquinas’s Eschatological Ethics and the Virtue of Temperance by Matthew Levering (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019), xi + 432 pp. In the resurgence of interest in virtue ethics in recent decades, temperance has received relatively little treatment compared to the other three cardinal virtues—leaving aside of course the copious attention that John Paul II’s Theology of the Body has received. The reason for this neglect is no doubt the difficulty that attends the living out of temperance, which, as St. Thomas writes, “is properly about pleasures of meat and drink and sexual pleasures” (Summa theologiae II-II, q. 141, a. 4). Temperance however is not restricted simply to matters concerning food and sex. Any virtue, Thomas tells us, “that is effective of moderation in some matter or other, and restrains the appetite in its impulse towards something, may be reckoned a part of temperance” (ST II-II, q. 143, a. 1). Temperance thus includes not only the virtues that engage our embodied condition but also the virtues of humility, clemency, meekness, and studiousness. Matthew Levering clearly states the thrust of his book at the very outset: in it he shows that “chastity and the other parts of Christian temperance are inseparable from the moral life of the inaugurated kingdom, as set forth in the New Testament and as elucidated systematically in Aquinas’s theology” (1). The author achieves this end by examining the “parts” of temperance as set forth by Thomas in the light of three dimensions of the inaugurated kingdom: “The eschatological renewal of the temple, the eschatological restoration of the people of God, and the eschatological forgiveness of sins 1 See esp. Bernard Blankenhorn, “The Instrumental Causality of the Sacraments: Thomas Aquinas and Louis-Marie Chauvet,” Nova et Vetera (English) 4, no. 2 (2006): 255–94. Book Reviews 701 and the outpouring of the Spirit” (7). Thus, the integral parts of temperance—“The integral parts of a virtue are the conditions the concurrence of which are necessary for virtue” (ST II-II, q. 143, a. 1)—namely shame and honestas, are linked with the eschatological renewal of the temple. Shame, while it does not enjoy the perfection of virtue, nevertheless impels a man to flee the disgrace and ugliness of intemperance. Honestas, on the other hand, refers to moral excellence, and anyone who possesses this virtue also manifests spiritual beauty. When through lack of shame a man allows his sensual desires rather than rightly ordered reason to rule his life, he inevitably descends into idolatry, worshipping the creature rather than the Creator. He thereby becomes morally ugly. The repentant man, in contrast, appreciates that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. The practice of temperance renders his body honorable and spiritually beautiful. By the grace of the Holy Spirit he participates in “the perfect worship of the true temple, who is Christ himself ” (48). The subjective parts of temperance—that is to say, its species that are differentiated “according to the difference of matter or object” (48)— include abstinence, fasting, sobriety, and chastity. Levering argues that Thomas’s treatment of these virtues “illumines the eschatological restoration of God’s people accomplished in Christ” (52). Indeed, eating and drinking rightly is a fundamental trait of this eschatologically restored people. As Thomas writes, the use of and abstinence from food “belong to the kingdom of God, in so far as they are done reasonably through faith and love of God” (ST II-II, q. 146, a. 1, ad 1). Abstinence, when undertaken in accord with right reason, aims at God’s glory and fosters a concern for our neighbors’ needs. Fasting, for its part, in addition to restraining the lusts of the flesh and satisfying for sins, also facilitates the contemplation of heavenly things. Consumption of alcohol obviously has the capacity to undermine this contemplation, since it constitutes “a special kind of hindrance to the use of reason” (ST II-II, q. 149, a. 2). As Levering notes, “when we are drunk, we cannot govern ourselves toward charitable service of God and neighbor, and indeed drunk persons often inflict harm upon other people, including family members” (75). Sobriety, in contrast, along with abstinence and fasting, helps to form “an eschatological people configured to Christ’s cruciform love” (77). Chastity, for its part, is also crucial in this regard. As the virtue by which “reason chastises concupiscence” (ST II-II, q. 151, a. 1), it facilitates the establishment of God’s wise order in the world, since it overcomes “the vices of fallen sexual desire that have long undermined family life” (p. 85). In the case of virgins, the eschatological beatitude to which God’s restored people is ordered is anticipated by 702 Book Reviews abstention from marriage and sexual intercourse so that they can devote themselves to “the contemplation of Divine things, for the beauty and welfare of the human race” (ST II-II, q. 152, a. 2, ad 1). While married Christians constitute an eschatological sign of the indissoluble union of Christ and his Church, consecrated virgins “specially anticipate the focus on ‘the affairs of the Lord’ (1 Cor 7:32) that will constitute the beatitude of the kingdom” (95). Clemency, meekness, humility, and studiousness pertain to the potential parts of temperance inasmuch as they moderate our desire for non-bodily human goods. Clemency and meekness, examples of which abound in Scripture, apply to the passion of anger. They differ from each other in that clemency moderates the external punishment that a man seeks to inflict whereas meekness moderates anger itself. As Levering observes, “to belong to the inaugurated kingdom, we must be meek like Jesus and ‘slow to anger’” (118), while in Thomas’s words, “love makes one quick to mitigate punishment” (ST II-II, q. 157, a. 1, ad 2). While anger gives rise to quarreling, swelling of the mind, contumely, clamor, indignation, and blasphemy, clemency and meekness make manifest “in the community of believers and to the whole world, the eschatological forgiveness of sins and the outpouring of the Spirit” (123). Humility overcomes pride, which rebels against being “subject to God and His rule” (ST II-II, q. 162, a. 6). Central to the virtue of humility is acceptance of our creaturehood. Levering shows how for Thomas “the eschatological forgiveness of sins and outpouring of the Spirit are concretely manifested in the humble human creature, freed from the original sin of idolatrous pride” (133). Studiositas moderates the human desire to know so that the mind seeks knowledge about the right things and in the right way. Directing the mind away from its fallen tendency to things that stimulate the flesh, studiousness helps to focus it on God in Christ. Drawing upon the work of Paul Griffiths, Levering highlights the important role that liturgy plays in this regard. As we have come to expect from the author, this book engages contemporary biblical scholarship in a way that both shows forth the biblical inspiration of Thomas’s treatment of temperance and also illumines that treatment. The cardinal virtues are of course associated with ancient Greek philosophy. It is for this reason that some theologians have neglected them. As Levering masterfully shows, however, their treatment by Thomas constitutes a veritable synthesis of faith and reason. Just as in the Sermon on the Mount the worlds of Second Temple Judaism and the Graeco-Roman virtue tradition meet, so too in Thomas do they intersect “through the combination of the New Testament and the writings of the Book Reviews 703 pagan philosophers” (23). This meeting of faith and reason continues in Levering’s study in which the range of engagement with biblical, theological, and philosophical scholarship is breathtaking. A brief review cannot, unfortunately, do justice to this engagement. An important aspect of this book is its ecumenical character. A large proportion of the Scripture scholars and theologians with whom Levering engages are non-Catholics. N. T. Wright and John Webster are just two examples. The notions of “the eschatological renewal of the temple, the eschatological restoration of the people of God, and the eschatological forgiveness of sins and the outpouring of the Spirit” are to be found in Wright’s Paul and the Faithfulness of God, while that of human creatureliness figure in the thought of Webster. The astute reader will nevertheless understand that the truths enunciated by them have already been stated by Thomas long before them in some kind of way. Levering’s ecumenical spirit is all-encompassing: all authors whom he cites, even when he expresses his disagreement with them, are treated with respect and their views faithfully communicated. Growth in temperance constitutes the first baby steps in the moral/ spiritual life. Thomas, writing about the first of the three degrees of charity, says: “It is incumbent on man to occupy himself chiefly with avoiding sin and resisting his concupiscences, which move him in opposition to charity: this concerns beginners, in whom charity has to be fed or fostered lest it be destroyed” (ST II-II, q. 24, a. 9). The current crisis within the Church, not to speak about Western civilization, is due in no small part to the denigration of this basic virtue. We are indebted to Levering for highlighting its centrality to life as transformed by the grace of Christ. Kevin E. O’Reilly, O.P. Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Rome, Italy