et Vetera Nova Fall 2023 • Volume 21, Number 4 The English Edition of the International Theological Journal Co-Editors Matthew Levering, Mundelein Seminary Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Associate Editors Holly Taylor Coolman, Providence College Gilles Emery, O.P., University of Fribourg Paul Gondreau, Providence College Scott W. Hahn, Franciscan University of Steubenville Thomas S. Hibbs, Baylor University Reinhard Hütter, Catholic University of America Christopher Malloy, University of Dallas Bruce D. Marshall, Southern Methodist University Charles Morerod, O.P., Bishop of Lausanne, Geneva, and Fribourg John O’Callaghan, University of Notre Dame Michael S. Sherwin, O.P., Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Daria Spezzano, Providence College Board of Advisors Anthony Akinwale, O.P., Dominican Institute, Ibadan, Nigeria Khaled Anatolios, University of Notre Dame Michael Barber, Augustine Institute Robert Barron, Bishop of Winona-Rochester John Betz, University of Notre Dame Bernhard Blankenhorn, O.P., University of Fribourg Christopher O. Blum, Augustine Institute Stephen Brock, Pontifical University of the Holy Cross Cajetan Cuddy, O.P., Dominican House of Studies Michael Dauphinais, Ave Maria University Angela Franks, St. John’s Seminary Jennifer Frey, University of Tulsa Simon Francis Gaine, O.P., Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Anthony Giambrone, O.P., École Biblique Nicholas J. Healy, Jr., Pontifical John Paul II Institute (Washington, DC) Russell Hittinger, Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology Paige Hochschild, Mount St. Mary’s University Andrew Hofer, O.P., Dominican House of Studies Angela Knobel, University of Dallas Dominic Legge, O.P., Dominican House of Studies Steven A. Long, Ave Maria University Reginald Lynch, O.P., Dominican House of Studies Guy Mansini, O.S.B., Ave Maria University Andrew Meszaros, St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth Francesca Aran Murphy, University of Notre Dame Thomas Osborne, University of St. Thomas (Houston) Aaron Pidel, S.J., Pontifical Gregorian University Trent Pomplun, University of Notre Dame Scott Roniger, Loyola Marymount University Richard Schenk, O.P., University of Freiburg Michele Schumacher, University of Fribourg Vincent L. Strand, S.J., Catholic University of America 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 Fall 2023 Vol. 21, No. 4 Tract for the Times Tract 14: Confession.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anonymous 1115 Articles Are There Failed Persons?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John O’Callaghan 1123 Teaching the Trinity: Scripture and Performance of the Psychological Analogy in Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Zane E. Chu 1149 “He Who Eats Me Will Live Because of Me”: Eucharistic Indwelling and Aquinas’s Johannine Theology of the Missions of the Divine Persons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Daniel M. Garland Jr. 1171 Whose Red Garments? Which Divine Warrior? Thomas Aquinas on Isaiah 63 and the Literal Interpretation of the Old Testament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Joshua Madden 1201 Christ’s Human Nature and the Cry from the Cross: St. Thomas Aquinas on Psalm 22:2.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Philip Nolan, O.P. 1219 Extramarital Contraception in the Catholic Faith: A Call to Action from a Physician and Ethicist. . . . . . . . . . . Cara Buskmiller 1245 The Establishment Hypothesis: Toward a More Integrated Theology of Holy Orders.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dominic Cerrato 1275 Symposium on Sacramental Sanctification Maurice Blondel on the Practice of Supernatural Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anne M. Carpenter 1305 Augustine on the True Presence and the Eucharist as Sacrament of Unity.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Elizabeth Klein 1325 Sacramental Character and the Pattern of Theological Life: Medieval Context and Early Modern Reception . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. 1337 Patterns of Penance and the Sin of Cain: Approaching a Sacramental Biblical Theology. . . . . . . . . . . . James B. Prothro 1371 Sacramental Wisdom: Humilitatio, Eruditio, Exercitatio in the Scholastics and Today.. . . . . . . . . . . . Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, O.P. 1391 Review Essay Aquinas, Modern Theology, and the Trinity. . . . . . . . . . . . Guy Mansini, O.S.B. 1415 Book Reviews Virtue and Grace in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas by Justin M. Anderson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Thomas V. Berg 1421 Politics and the Earthly City in Augustine’s City of God by Veronica Roberts Ogle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aaron C. Ebert 1426 Divine Action and Emergence: An Alternative to Panentheism by Mariuscz Tabaczek, O.P... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Edmund Lazzari 1430 Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology edited by Michael Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger W. Nutt. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J. David Moser 1435 Engaging the Doctrine of Israel: A Christian Israelology in Dialogue with Ongoing Judaism by Matthew Levering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Justin Schembri, O.P. 1437 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 978-1-64585-360-2) 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. 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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. 21, No. 4 (2023): 1115–1122 1115 Tract 14: Confession Confession as Natural When it comes to sacramental participation, the bad news is everywhere. For example, a poll for 2007 determined that 75 percent of American Catholic went to the sacrament of reconciliation less than once a year, or never.1 Given the sacrament’s bad press—“Catholic guilt-tripping!”—and the universal mental barrier against discussing personal failings with someone else, it is not surprising that people have fled the confessional. Indeed, the wonder may be that people approached it in such numbers for so long. And yet there is a great irony in our abandonment of this sacrament that seems so unnatural. The irony is that we are made to confess; it is built into our nature. In this sense, we are all daily confessants. These ordinary confessions happen in two ways: bodily and verbally. Our bodies manifest ourselves constantly, whether asleep or awake. In fact, this constant confession is the one thing our bodies do perfectly, all the time, no matter our health or fitness. From the first moment of our life to our last breaths, our bodies continually make visible the persons that we are. While keeping us alive, and therefore in being—as Aristotle tells us, the “being” of living things “is to live”—the larger reason for our bodies is precisely this constant, personal confession.2 As Pope John Paul II argued, “The body expresses the person.”3 The body’s constant determination to reveal the invisible is one reason why the Pope said that the human body has a “quasi-sacramental” character. 1 2 3 Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, “Fewer Catholics Participating in Reconciliation,” The Cara Report 12, no. 4 (Spring 2007). De anima 2.4.415b13. John Paul II, General Audience of October 31, 1979, in Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body, trans. Michael Waldstein (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 2006), 154. 1116 Anonymous By expressing the person, the human body also speaks what Augustine heard the whole of creation confessing, shortly after his conversion: He made me! He made me!4 This ongoing confession of limitation and ontological dependence points to the infinite and purely simple God, who made us not because he needed any addition to himself, but only out of love. The gratuity of the world is a constant confession of the Creator. Thirdly, our bodies, as sexed, confess that we are ordered to another; no one can procreate alone. The Second Vatican Council emphasizes in Gaudium et Spes that “man can only find himself through a sincere gift of self ” (§24). As existing as male or female, each human body confesses this orientation to self-gift to another. We are made for love. Of course, the fact that our bodies confess in this triple way does not mean that anyone is hearing the confessions. Our ability to hear the language of creation has been damaged by sin, and our bodies seem to speak instead of very different things, of compulsion and danger and disease. Yet beneath this angry and fearful language is the original voice of creation as it confesses persons, human and divine, and the need for love. The second way we daily confess is through the human ability to use language. We put into words what we are feeling, believing, hoping—all of this constantly. Those who cannot speak gesture. Those who cannot gesture speak with their eyes. Babies ache to make themselves understood. The mystery of human language is profound and almost divine. Indeed, it is a mystery that has its source in the deepest origin of the Trinitarian persons: the Father speaking all that he can say, the whole divine essence, in his one and only Word, both of them the source and somehow also the recipient of the gift of eternal Love. This is the primordial, divine confession. The concrete reality of these mysterious, constant, human confessions can be, however, something quite different from their Trinitarian origins. Both the bodily and the verbal confessions can be disrupted—often, it should be noted, for good purposes. We can smile when we would rather frown. We can say a kind word when our interior monologues are quite different. But, more morally serious, we can refuse to speak the truth, using language to obfuscate rather than manifest the truth. Words, precisely because they are the uppermost edge of the depth of rationality, are supported by the tremendous potency of the intellect. They can be great tools of a will to power. In contrast, the body’s natural confession, because it is tied to the other sub-rational animals, is therefore more difficult to disrupt through reason 4 Augustine, Confessiones 9.10.25, trans. Maria Boulding, 2nd ed. (Hyde Park, NY: New City, 2012), 228. Tract 14: Confession 1117 than is linguistic confession. No matter how much I may wish it, my body cannot naturally confess me to be a six-foot-tall man if I am a five-foot-tall woman. My body constantly “tells on me,” without my express permission. This stubborn consistency in revealing the truth about oneself is probably why the body has been such a lightning rod for technological manipulation. Our age is one that finds comfort in the simulacrum and the avatar, an age in which appearances are detached from and elevated beyond the reality they are meant to express. The natural continuity of confession, from interior to expression, is severed to relocate the appearance to its own endlessly manipulable plane, cut off from any confessional purpose. The point is no longer to manifest the truth, but to win admiration, to influence others, or for any number of other, self-chosen ends. What does it matter if my smiling photo on social media hides the fact that I was actually miserable on that vacation? Self-curation of one’s image wins out over the simplicity of natural confession. Yet the natural anchors that the body and language have to the truth cannot be simply uprooted. Surrounded by simulacra and empty images, we instinctively sense that only the truth is solid and safe. Untruth leaves one exposed to the malice of others, to be manipulated just as words are. No one likes to be lied to. As ambivalent as I may be about my own confession, I want others to be truthful with me. Attempts at Confession Given this bias toward truth, the uncomfortable question forces itself forward: When, if ever, do I tell the simple truth in deeds and words? How, in fact, can I even proceed with such a project? To answer this, let us look at two archetypes of confession, consciously understood as such by their authors. I will begin with the later example, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his Confessions, deconstructively modeled on Augustine’s book of the same name. Despite being written almost fourteen hundred years after Augustine’s, Rousseau’s Confessions are, the Frenchman insists, sui generis. “I have resolved on an enterprise which has no precedent, and which, once complete, will have no imitator. My purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature, and the man I shall portray will be myself.”5 The reason, therefore, that his book is inimitable is that there never was and never will be another Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the central object as well as the authorial 5 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions, trans. J. M. Cohen (New York: Penguin, 1953), 17. 1118 Anonymous subject of his confession. The key phrase “true to nature” tells us everything. “Nature” does not refer only to Rousseau’s humanity but even more so to his authentic core. Authenticity is the criterion for confessing, according to Rousseau. Much of Rousseau’s confessional style is appealing to us moderns. Lurid memoirs are regular landmarks in the geography of digital anonymity, which exists without boundaries or passports. Internet narratives of identity (often sexual in nature) are all narratives of authenticity. In this regard, Rousseauian confession is much imitated. Yet Rousseau cannot give a good answer to a central question: How can I know what is authentically me? Lacking any conceptual verification, he turns to an emotional one: my private feelings. It is me because I feel myself to be so. Thus, I am myself. X = X. Any thoughtful person will see how little Rousseau is actually saying here, how unhelpful he is for any existential crisis. More, this criterion of authenticity will always be a retroactive baptism of one’s life choices, rather than any substantive challenge to them. Thus, while appearing to demand a costly honesty, Rousseauian confession is just cheap grace. Against such authenticity-confession, Augustine gives us a model of confession as Confitebor tibi, Domine: I will confess to you, oh Lord. In his Confessions, Augustine does not speak primarily to his contemporaries, nor to the admiring posterity, and certainly not to himself, but to God. He will relate much later: “The thirteen books of my Confessions concern both my bad and my good actions, for which they praise our just and good God. In so doing they arouse the human mind and affections toward him.”6 Augustine’s criterion for confession is not a vicious circle of authenticity, but instead the Word who is Truth. In book 8, Augustine relates how others’ confessions moved him. The well-known Platonist Victorinus converted and then confessed the Christian creed in public, “to proclaim his salvation before the holy company. . . . As he climbed up to repeat the Creed they all shouted his name to one another in a clamorous outburst of thanksgiving. . . . Then in more subdued tones the word passed from joyful mouth to joyful mouth among them all: ‘Victorinus, Victorinus!’”7 Augustine saw something universal in Victorinus’s conversion, because the latter “preferred to abandon his school of talkativeness [teaching rhetoric] rather than forsake your word, through which you impart 6 7 Retractiones 2.6.32, in Confessions (Boulding trans.), 36. Confessiones 8.2.5 (p. 189). Tract 14: Confession 1119 eloquence to the tongues of speechless babes.”8 In ascending to his place of confession, Victorinus showed Augustine, his fellow rhetor, the proper ascent of language. Augustine can speak of and to God because God first spoke: “Let us make man according to our image” (Gen 1:26). From the details of his life on the micro-level to the truth of temporal, material, and spiritual creation as expressed in Genesis on the macro-level, Augustine’s rehearsing of God’s creative speech is a confession that gives back to God his own divine words, a tiny participation in Christ’s great mediatory work. Dominical Confession Augustine’s confessions, therefore, are not self-verified in a circular way by their authenticity, but by their prior dependence upon God’s confessional speech. This confession reaches us through creation—“by the word of the Lord the heavens were made” (Ps 33:6)—and through the human person’s imago-nature. The human imago­reflects the primordial divine confession, as we saw above, of the Father confessing all truth as his Word in the Holy Spirit. But, as Augustine so clearly saw, his imago-nature’s bidirectional confession (in flesh and in word) was disrupted and contaminated by sin. The originary divine confession becomes distant and silent to sinful man, who cannot hear it. Hence the need for a mediator to speak it to us, the God-man, Christ. As Word made flesh, Jesus divinizes the natural human modes of confession. More, he mends their internal fractures between truth and expression. He is the Truth ( John 14:6) who confesses with his human mouth, in human words, all that the Father has spoken in him ( John 12:49), and he gives us the possibility of doing the same. This is the context for the sacrament of confession. Adrienne von Speyr proposes that the dominical institution of the sacrament occurred in a particularly intense way on the Cross. Jesus’s wordless cry was his confession of all our sins, the perfect confession that every sacramental confession distantly imitates.9 On the Cross, Jesus confesses the sins of others, through word and flesh, fulfilling superabundantly our natural confessions of language and body. This superabundant fulfillment is itself a sacrament, that of reconciliation. 8 9 Confessiones 8.5.10 (p. 192). Adrienne von Speyr, Confession, trans. Douglas W. Stott (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), and The Cross: Word and Sacrament, trans. Graham Harrison, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2018). 1120 Anonymous Sacramental Confession Confession in this sense is our insertion into the truthfulness of the Word made flesh. We must tell him, through the priest who serves in his place, what he already knows and has confessed to the Father, namely, the truth of ourselves. In his book Till We Have Faces, C. S. Lewis captures the transformational nature of hearing ourselves speak the truth about ourselves. His protagonist has written a book of accusations against the gods, but when she reads it out loud in a dream, the book shrinks, and she hears herself repeating the same resentful narratives. “Now I knew that I had been reading it over and over—perhaps a dozen times. . . . And the voice I read it in was strange to my ears. There was given to me a certainty that this, at last, was my real voice.”10 Sacramental confession is the opportunity to hear one’s own true voice, which is inevitably petty and pathetic, and maybe even malicious and sadistic. I the penitent hear it, and also—in the priest as Christ’s representative—humanity hears it, the Church hears it, and the triune God hears it. In the most discreet way possible, protected by the seal of the confessional, my sins are made “public.” And as soon as they are so publicized, they are forgotten by the words of absolution. “He that hides his sins shall not prosper, but he that shall confess, and forsake them, shall obtain mercy” (Prov 28:13).11 I can face humanity, the Church, and God with a clear conscience once more. Confession heals the wounds of bodily and linguistic expression and returns to me the possibility of living according to the law of love, which is also the law of truth. Rather than Rousseau’s self-referential circle, this is true authenticity: who I the sinner am now, versus who God wishes me to be, normed by God’s criterion rather than by my shifting self. The demanding nature of the law of truthful love (or loving truth) is why the saints have eager recourse to this sacrament, knowing how badly, without grace, they would imitate the transparency of God who is Loving Truth eternally spoken. We have been dwelling on just one aspect of the sacrament, namely, confession as a human and divine requirement. The whole sacramental context extends to contrition prior to the sacramental confession and satisfaction for one’s sins after it (Catechism of the Catholic Church §1450). The sacrament’s concern is the mending of a whole life in the light of God’s mercy. It should lead to a life of penance for sin, mine and others, and in 10 11 C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces: A Novel of Cupid and Psyche (New York: Mariner, 1984), 292. Quoted by Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] III, q. 84, a. 7, ad 2. Tract 14: Confession 1121 this sense, penance is a virtue as well as a sacramental act.12 Confession is a way of life. The example of Thomas Aquinas is instructive. After his late mystical experience, he broke off his work on the Summa theologiae. When asked why, he famously responded that it seemed like so much straw, compared to what had been revealed to him. It is significant that the treatise Thomas had been writing at the time was on the sacrament of penance. Perhaps we can understand his experience as his hearing God’s great confession of divine glory, which cannot but also confess the smallness of man in comparison. After this divine confession, what was left to Thomas except to spend the rest of his life immersing his own words in the merciful ocean of the Word? And this is precisely what the sacrament enables us all to do. 12 ST III, q. 85. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2023): 1123–1148 1123 Are There Failed Persons? John O’Callaghan University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN Introduction Are there failed persons? Yes. However, before explaining what a failed person is, it will be good to consider closely a very significant part of our society to get a sense of what it thinks a failed person is, since my account of what a failed person is is markedly different. It is important to think about the question of failed persons because there are growing movements here and abroad aimed at killing by medical means human beings who are judged in some sense to be failed persons, human beings who do not count as persons according to a common societal notion of persons, a social-psychological notion of persons. The question for anyone who lives within this society with its notion of failed persons is whether one will take part in and support this movement toward killing human beings or avoid it, indeed whether one will push back against it. It is easy enough to fall into a trap of thinking about failed persons the way much of our society does. One’s complicity in adopting the social-psychological notion of person contributes to enabling the acceptance of such killing, even if one believes one would never perform the killing act. My effort here is precisely to push back against such killing, by pushing back against the notion of persons that animates it. The killing of human beings by our society is not simply confined to abortion, as it has been legally and widely available here in the United States for almost fifty years now. Recent political discussions in the wake of the Dobbs decision have made it clear that many political leaders think such killing ought to be allowed all the way up until birth, and perhaps after. Relatively 1124 John O’Callaghan recently there was an article in a mainstream bioethics journal by Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva arguing that what most people would take to be cases of infanticide should be renamed, per their title, “After-Birth Abortion.”1 The article was not about the moral legitimacy of either infanticide or abortion. The moral legitimacy of those acts for various reasons was taken as a given by the authors. In the case of euthanizing infants, they noted the expanding number of arguments for it among philosophers, the desire for guidelines for doing it among members of the medical profession, and the protocols for it established in places like the Netherlands. The authors argued that in the case of newborns, including healthy newborns, killing them should not be considered infanticide or euthanasia.2 They distinguished abortion from both euthanasia and infanticide. Euthanasia involves killing a human person, where a person is understood to be a being that can experience itself as having interests that can be harmed. “We take ‘person’ to mean an individual who is capable of attributing to her own existence some (at least) basic value such that being deprived of this existence represents a loss to her.”3 Euthanasia, when justified, is justified by being in the best “interests” of the person killed. Infanticide involves euthanizing children. However, the authors claim that a newborn is not a person in the sense of “person” specified. So, the authors’ term “after-birth abortion” is a terminological distinction based upon denying that a newborn is a child, children being persons. They also assume that infants are children as they understand “child.” So not being a child, a newborn cannot be an infant. Not being an infant, killing it cannot be infanticide or euthanasia, again as the authors define those terms.4 Instead, killing the newborns, healthy or not, should be thought of as having the same moral weight as an abortion before birth, and thus rather than being called infanticide or euthanasia, it should be called “after-birth abortion.”5 Killing a newborn then is “ethically permissible” in just the same circumstances and for the same reasons as abortion is ethically permissible. Among 1 2 3 4 5 Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, “After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?,” Journal of Medical Ethics 39, no. 5 (2012): 261–63. Giubilini and Minerva, “After-Birth Abortion,” 262. Giubilini and Minerva, “After-Birth Abortion,” 262. That they do not consider newborns infants is not entirely clear, as later they will write: “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual” (Giubilini and Minerva, “After-Birth Abortion,” 262). What is clear is that the authors want to deny that the term “infanticide” should be applied to the killing of a newborn. Giubilini and Minerva, “After-Birth Abortion,” 261–62. Are There Failed Persons? 1125 the “ethically permissible” circumstances for killing newborns, including perfectly healthy newborns, are that the “well-being of the family is at risk” with respect to “social, psychological, economic” factors,6 but also the fact that the sense of loss in giving up a newborn for adoption may never be “gotten over” because of the “dream [of many natural mothers] that their child will return to them.”7 (This should probably be “their newborn, now a child, will return to them,” given their distinction between a newborn and a child.) Abortion and the killing of newborns, because of their finality, exclude the possibility of that dream hanging over the parent’s heads and not being “gotten over.” “However weak the interests of actual people may be, they will always trump the alleged interest of potential people to become actual ones, because this latter interest amounts to zero.”8 Newborns have no moral status at all, no more moral status than does a fetus. With the terminological distinction of “after-birth abortion” in hand, those who kill newborns need not be concerned with the more troublesome moral constraints in society that often accompany questions of infanticide. Moreover, there is also the moral acceptance, philosophical defense, and increasing legalization of medically assisted euthanasia of other human beings who on the societal notion of person do not count as persons. One can also consider the often tacit social, but even state-sponsored eugenic pressure upon women to kill unborn human beings judged to be undesirable according to some prenatally diagnosable condition, particularly Down syndrome, but soon many others as well. The future of non-invasive prenatal genetic testing will soon enough be able to diagnose a tsunami of thousands of genetic abnormalities, all of them potentially providing a reason for societal and state-sponsored eugenic pressure to kill in order to improve the human social livestock. Often explicitly and at other times implicitly, the justification for this growth of medically assisted killing relies upon a confused and indefensible notion of failed persons characteristic of contemporary Western society. So, I would like to begin with that societal notion in order to try to discover by contrast what a clear and defensible notion of failed persons might be, a notion that does not allow for killing human beings, but suggests something rather startlingly different about our relationship to one another as human beings. 6 7 8 Giubilini and Minerva, “After-Birth Abortion,” 263. Giubilini and Minerva, “After-Birth Abortion,” 263. Giubilini and Minerva, “After-Birth Abortion,” 263. 1126 John O’Callaghan “They Got a Name for the Winners of the World” Consider the Washington Post, a beacon of mainstream as well as elite social attitudes. There was a curious confluence of two opinion columns that appeared over two consecutive days in March of 2018. The first, “When will we stop killing humans with Down syndrome?” on March 8, was by Marc Thiessen, a political conservative. It took note of the very high rates of abortion of children prenatally diagnosed with Down syndrome in places like Iceland (practically 100 percent), Denmark (98 percent), and the United States (67 percent). He did not mention, although he could have, that Denmark has announced as a state-sponsored policy goal the elimination of Down syndrome by the year 2030 through the practice of universal prenatal testing and abortion. Eliminating Down syndrome by abortion involves an odd claim. Such a cure of the condition lasts only so long as no other woman conceives a child with an extra twenty-first chromosome, and then what was cured or eliminated must be cured or eliminated again. Down syndrome would be one of the only medical conditions cured not by addressing the pathology as a means to assisting the patient who suffers from it, but by killing the patient who suffers from it as a means to getting rid of the pathology. Imagine if a similarly state-sponsored program were directed at the widespread cure of the much more common disease of hypertension. Hypertension and the social impact of it upon the community could be widely decreased if not entirely eliminated9 by the killing of human beings with a genetic predisposition to it. The difference of course is that hypertension is often genetically inherited while Down syndrome is not. So theoretically one could eliminate a gene for hypertension in the human gene pool by killing all those newly conceived human beings who possess it, while Down syndrome will only be eliminated for a day, a week, or a month, and then have to be cured all over again by eliminating the new human being who suffers from it. In any case, Thiessen’s title—“When Will We Stop Killing Human Beings With Down Syndrome?”—is a good and important question. However, he supported his argument by focusing upon the achievements of people with Down syndrome that we see reported in the news, achievements like Karen Gaffney swimming the English Channel, others modeling clothing for department stores, or Lucas Warren being named the Gerber Baby. Noting all these achievements, Thiessen argued that these human beings ought to 9 I write “widely decreased if not entirely eliminated” as there are other non-genetic factors that can contribute to hypertension. Are There Failed Persons? 1127 be valued and included within our society, rather than killed. His message seemed to be that they ought to be valued because of what they can achieve that we as a society find valuable. The very next day (March 9) Ruth Marcus, a political liberal, took the opposite position, as she wrote a column unapologetically and proudly entitled “I Would Have Aborted a Fetus with Down Syndrome. Women Need that Right.” She took note of the diminished cognitive capacities and increased health problems that often accompany Down syndrome, as well as the lowered expectations one can have for what such people can achieve. Within five sentences, she flatly contradicted herself, writing first that “certainly, to be a parent is to take the risks that accompany parenting; you love your child for who she is, not what you want her to be.” That statement seems to run counter to the picture presented by Thiessen in which one seems to value human beings in terms of what one thinks they can achieve that one finds valuable as a society, very much what one wants out of them. However, almost immediately, after three sentences describing the difficulties associated with Down syndrome and presumably imagining a child of hers receiving a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome, Marcus wrote: “I’m going to be blunt here: That was not the child I wanted.” So, despite what she had earlier claimed, it seems at the end of the day that loving the child or killing her depends very much upon what the parent wants her to be. One cannot help but suspect a kind of cheap grace in affirming the love of your child for who she is rather than what you want her to be, so long as you did in fact get what you wanted to acquire in having her. Thiessen is opposed to abortion in general, even apart from the argument he tried to make in his column. Perhaps he simply thought that pointing out what human beings with Down syndrome can achieve was rhetorically powerful given his audience in the Washington Post, adopting that argument as a political tactic. However, as Giubilini and Minerva understand in “After-Birth Abortion,” the words and language we use have an impact upon social attitudes. But as a political and rhetorical strategy, Thiessen’s language simply underscores all the more the point—why would he think that rhetorical strategy effective? That rhetoric is all too familiar when it comes to Down syndrome—given everything human beings with Down syndrome can achieve, it is a tragedy that so many are aborted and never have the chance to surprise us with their accomplishments. Still, sometimes adopting a rhetorical strategy does nothing other than fundamentally reaffirm the social context that is in fact the root problem—our valorization of other human beings for what they achieve amongst us, associating their 1128 John O’Callaghan worth or dignity with what we value, what we want in ourselves and in those with whom we are willing to associate. Thiessen rhetorically and Marcus in principle appear to share an underlying assumption about human value. The assumption is that how we ought to treat other human beings, particularly in the context of a societal argument about whether or not to kill them or assist them, depends upon what we can expect from them in terms of their capacities for achievements that we value. Summarizing this societal context, we can speak of a community of moral concern or value—the community of moral concern consists of those human beings whom we think we have moral obligations toward and responsibility for. The very practical question for a society that kills human beings is who is a member of that community of moral concern and who is not. How is the boundary drawn between those human beings that may not be killed and those that may, and why? It is here that the notion of person often comes in to play, particularly in the field of bioethics. In bioethics the boundary is most often drawn between those human beings who are persons and those human beings who fail to be persons, even if one day they might become persons.10 “Person” effectively delimits the boundary of the “we,” of the “us.” “We” are persons with all the inherent dignity, moral weight, and worth that status implies. The failed human beings outside the boundary of “us” are not persons and do not have such status, because they do or will fail to live up to being persons. Effectively, being a person is nothing other than being a human being that “we” find acceptable to “us” in terms of human achievements that “we” happen to value, or at least minimally being capable of forming aspirations and plans for achieving what “we” find valuable.11 They do not have inherent dignity or moral worth that needs to be respected apart from what “we” value. This approach to the question of human value is not uncommon within our culture, as if confined to the technicalities of bio-ethical questions. In both contemporary culture and philosophy, the term “person” is often used 10 11 Here are two simple examples from Giubilini and Minerva, “After-Birth Abortion”: “Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’” (262). See also Peter Singer, Practical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 151: “Since no fetus is a person, no fetus has the same claim to life as a person.” I add the last clause to cover those who attempt to ground personhood or human dignity in some sort of intrinsic cognitive or volitional characteristic of the individual human being—capable of forming aspirations and plans for achieving what “we” find valuable—seeming thereby to avoid the situation in which personhood appears to be entirely socially constructed. Often those who take this route will identify this capacity with the capacity to form a sense of self. Are There Failed Persons? 1129 to mark out the community of human beings who have rights that must be respected, human beings whom we think we should care for by providing them with enough to eat, shelter, education, and health care, keeping them safe from crime and poverty. Failure to provide for these things is often thought to be an offense against human dignity. Our culture is certainly right to judge such failures to be offenses. However, as many cultural writers and philosophers have pointed out, the notion of human dignity actually employed in contemporary societal discourse to make these judgments just seems to be a catchphrase for the notion of personhood. Who has dignity? What fails to be a person and who does not? Whom must we respect?12 In that discussion, almost everyone who engages in it agrees that not all human beings are persons. Some human beings fail to be persons. Such non-person human beings bear no rights and may be killed without the question of justice ever arising for or about them. We have already seen this distinction between human beings and persons in the heart of the “after-birth abortion” argument mentioned above, where a human newborn, healthy or not, is denied the status of a person, and thus, on Giubilini and Minerva’s assumptions, denied the status of being an infant or a child. In both that discussion and most other philosophical discussions the term “person” serves functionally to demarcate the community of moral concern, those human beings who have dignity and rights that cannot be justly violated. Those human beings towards whom we have moral obligations. It is useful to consider briefly that notion of person in relation to the ancient pagan and Roman legal concept of a person, a legal concept that still animates much of modern jurisprudence. In the Roman legal notion, a persona is a human being understood in relation to his or her standing before the law. All human beings are persons, because all human beings stand in some way before the law.13 Human beings as persons before the law have claims of right before courts, persons whose claim must be respected, even if ultimately decided against. 12 13 For a historically oriented and culturally diverse collection of essays on different notions of “dignity” see Dignity: A History, ed. Remy Debes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). In particular for the complications of dignity in relation to personhood and questions of bioethics, see Marcus Düwell’s “Reflection: Why Bioethics Isn’t Ready for Human Dignity” (323–32). For a philosophical history of the various ideas that the author argues “contributed to the coalescing of ideas which we denote the concept of the person,” see John M. Rist, What Is a Person: Realities, Constructs, Illusions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2020). See, George Mousourakis, “The Law of Persons,” in Fundamentals of Roman Private Law (New York: Springer, 2012), 85–118; René Brouwer, Law and Philosophy in the Late Roman Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), 82. 1130 John O’Callaghan However, the rights and responsibilities of persons before the law depend upon different status.14 A citizen has a different status from a slave, and correspondingly different rights and responsibilities. One’s status could change, as a slave could become a freedman, with a consequent change of rights and responsibilities. A citizen could become a slave if he refused military service, again with different rights and responsibilities now as a slave—likely only those imposed upon him by his master. The different claims of right cannot simply be disregarded. Aliens had varying status depending upon their country of origin and its relation to Rome. Thus, St. Paul, as a Jewish Roman citizen, avoided being bound and flogged when arrested (Acts, 22:25–29), and was able to make a claim to be tried before the emperor’s tribunal in Rome (Acts, 25:10). He had the status or dignity of a citizen of Rome. Other human beings had no such dignity, in this case many of his fellow Jews. Later jurisprudence uses “person” more fluidly for the purposes of law. Consider the infamous two-thirds passage of article 1, section 2, of the U.S. Constitution. Representative and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. This statement does not say that slaves are two-thirds of a person in the Constitution, as is often claimed. It says that the number of persons who are not free shall be multiplied by two-thirds, the result to be added into the number of free persons to determine a total number for a state for the purposes of representation and taxation. So here the notion of “person” applies to both free persons and slaves, although it leads to differential results in state representatives in Congress. On the other hand, in another sense it might be argued that until the 14th amendment defined citizenship as entailed by being a “perso[n] born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” and guaranteed “equal protection” to such persons, the notion of a “person” did not apply to all natural persons for the purposes of the Bill of Rights. However, notice also in the two-thirds 14 Craig Anderson, Roman Law Essentials (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 23–34. Are There Failed Persons? 1131 passage the reference to Indians who are untaxed. They are not counted at all in article 1, section 2. They are free persons who are excluded and do not “stand” before the law relevant to this section. And yet they may count as persons having standing for other sections of the Constitution, for example, in the capacity as within a tribe to make a treaty. Thus, this constitutional use of “person” would seem to track the Roman legal notion fairly well, differentiating as it does the different status of persons vis-à-vis different constitutional provisions. However, consider this passage from a nineteenth-century law dictionary. They are also sometimes divided into free persons and slaves. Freemen are those who have preserved their natural liberty, that is to say, who have the right of doing what is not forbidden by the law. A slave is one who is in the power of a master to whom he belongs. Slaves are sometimes ranked not with persons but things. But sometimes they are considered as persons for example, a negro is in contemplation of law a person, so as to be capable of committing a riot in conjunction with white men.15 This dictionary entry makes it clear that, rather than being a person with different status in different contexts, it might be the case that one is not considered a person for the purposes of the law in one area while being considered a person in another for other purposes. The distinction between “person” and “thing” that it relies upon dates back to the basic distinction in Roman law between “persons, things, or actions.”16 A more contemporary example of the fluidity of the legal term person might be the law as it applies to unborn human beings in different areas of civil and criminal law.17 The point is that we see in these later modern and contemporary examples the ancient legal notion of a person as having standing before law, detaching in some cases that standing from the biological classification of being a human being, and sometimes manifested functionally depending upon the area of the law. Some human beings are persons having standing for some 15 16 17 John Bouvier, A Law Dictionary Adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United States of America and of the Several States of the American Union, with References to the Civil and Other Systems of Foreign Law, vol. 2, 12th ed. (Philadelphia: George W. Childs, 1868), 326. Gaius, Teaching Manual, quoted in Brouwer, Law and Philosophy, 80. Linton, Wardle and Jean Reith Schroedel, Is the Fetus a Person: A Comparison of Policies Across the Fifty States (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000). 1132 John O’Callaghan purposes of the law, while those very same human beings are not persons having standing for other purposes of the law. The law and culture of a society often feed off one another—the law codifying what a society’s culture finds most important to protect or least important and not worthy of protection, while the law in turn instructs the citizens in what the society as a whole finds most and least important for its concern. Functionally the current cultural notion of a person plays a similar role in common social attitudes and more rarefied social discourse to this more modern and contemporary phenomenon of the functional use of “person” in legal contexts. Who has standing before “us?” Whose right to life must be respected by “us”? Who has dignity before “us?” Whom do “we” recognize as a person, when, and why? Before the culture adjudicates the claim of right, it must first determine which human beings have standing not simply in the law, but in the culture broadly. Consider more closely the content of this cultural-philosophical concept of a person. Think of what people mean when they say of someone very old who suffers from the extremes of dementia or some debilitating disease or condition often referred to as a persistent vegetative state.18 Often one hears people say, “that isn’t the person I knew.” “The person I knew and loved is gone.” They seem to be saying the human being with whom I lived a life, who engaged me in various different ways having to do with ordinary cognitive and volitional functioning—speaking with me, playing with me, eating with me, perhaps making love with me, raising children with me—no longer does so, and is incapable of doing so. He or she no longer “stands” before me as a person. Here again near the end of life, rather than the beginning, the human being is judged to be a person or not by what he or she does or does not achieve in relation to what “we” persons value in life or think is significant human achievement. This notion of person is a social-psychological notion of personhood. It is psychological because it tends to emphasize the manifestation of cognitive and volitional capacities in human action. It involves the ready capacity to express cognitive and volitional acts, to act consciously. It is social, because first it tends to emphasize the ways in which the human being engages other human beings through those cognitive and volitional capacities, and second because it emphasizes expressions of cognitive and volitional capacities that we, the community of moral concern, find valuable. 18 For a technical discussion of the medical terms “vegetative state” and “persistent vegetative state,” see Bonnie Steinbock, Life before Birth: The Moral and Legal Status of Embryos and Fetuses 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 18–23. Are There Failed Persons? 1133 There is a distinction to be made on the one hand between what we might call the metaphysical question of when a human being is or becomes a person related to the presence of healthy cognitive and volitional capacities, and on the other hand the moral significance placed upon these psychological capacities determined by various social attitudes towards them, as well as their relative strength and health. How healthy and strong must those capacities be as manifested to “us” to count for determining the circle of moral concern, the circle of human persons worthy of moral concern versus the circle of failed human persons? Think of me writing this essay and you reading it now as paradigmatic instances of social-psychological persons exhibiting significant capacities for reason and will. However, the example could just as well be eating dinner with one another, or playing football, both types of activity manifesting significant capacities for reason and will. On this social-psychological notion of being a person, a human being is a person only if he or she can readily exhibit a certain level of performance with respect to suchlike normal human activities characterized by reason and will. The Washington Post columnists seem to assume this social-psychological notion of a person. Despite their disagreement about aborting prenatally diagnosed children with Down syndrome, they both share the assumption that the case ought to be decided on the basis of what human beings with Down syndrome perform amongst us in terms of various activities that we value. There is a social-psychological bar over which such human beings must jump to be included in the community of persons. The height of the bar is set by the social attitudes of the powerful, power being defined in terms of the capacities for achievement that the community of moral concern values. If that is the case, no matter how low one might set it, there will always be human beings who fail to be persons on this social-psychological criterion. As long as one has a bar, there will be living human beings who cannot jump it. It is fair to say that within contemporary philosophy and bioethics, arguments for the moral legitimacy of such things as abortion, infanticide, euthanasia, eugenics, and so on are dominated by some form of this social-psychological notion of a person. The most famous philosopher in the field of bioethics is undoubtedly Peter Singer of Princeton University. Here is how he argues for the infanticide of human beings born with Down syndrome in his book Rethinking Life and Death, where presumably the imagined parents did not know until after birth that their child had Down syndrome. 1134 John O’Callaghan To have a child with Down syndrome is to have a very different experience from having a normal child. It can still be a warm and loving experience, but we must have lowered expectations of our child’s abilities. We cannot expect a child with Down syndrome to play the guitar, to develop an appreciation of science fiction, to learn a foreign language, to chat with us about the latest Woody Allen movie, or to be a respectable athlete, basketballer or tennis player.19 Singer goes on to argue that animated by this concern for the parents’ well-being as seekers of children, the parents ought to be able to engage in infanticide with the assistance of the medical community, in order that they may start over and try again to get the child they wanted, a child capable of performing and achieving success along these lines. Although occasionally employing it, Singer does not like to use the term “person” for various reasons, including the thought that it would get in the way of protecting beings with mere sentience rather than intelligence. He will at times speak of “life in the morally significant sense.”20 However, it is clear that in the case of arguing for infanticide of human children he is employing what others would call a notion of personhood, as well as that 19 20 Peter Singer, Rethinking Life and Death (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1996), 213 (emphasis added). See Singer’s reflections in Practical Ethics on abortion and infanticide of human beings either prenatally diagnosed or born with disabilities, including Down syndrome and hemophilia, but many other disabilities as well (175–217), esp. on 190: “The question is, when does a life, in the morally significant sense, really begin?. . . . [Life] only begins in the morally significant sense when there is awareness of one’s existence over time. The metaphor of life as a journey also provides a reason for holding that in infancy, life’s voyage has scarcely begun.” For a related but different account of what is necessary for moral standing see, Steinbock, Life before Birth. Steinbock seeks to ground moral standing in the fact of having interests, a necessary condition of which is being conscious: “If we think of interests as stakes in things, and understand what we have a stake in as defined by our concerns, by what matters to us, then the connection between interests and the capacity for conscious awareness becomes clear. Without conscious awareness, beings cannot care about anything. Conscious awareness is a prerequisite to desires, preferences, hopes, aims, and goals. Nothing matters to nonsentient, nonconscious beings” (6). She continues soon after: “On the view I have been presenting, a being can have interests only if it can matter to the being what is done to it. Interested beings can be made happy or miserable; they can feel pleasure or pain. Of course, they do not always know what will make them happy or sad. . . . All I am claiming is that if nothing at all can possibly matter to a being, then that being has no interests. Its interests therefore cannot be considered, and so the being lacks moral standing” (7). This is also the approach of Giubilini and Minerva in “After-Birth Abortion” when they deny to newborns the status of being persons. Are There Failed Persons? 1135 it is the social-psychological one. Indeed, his argument transfers easily to those discussions that do use the term person. It also translates easily to the context of prenatal diagnosis and abortion, again since he also argues that there is no rational moral distinction to be drawn between abortion and infanticide. It is difficult not to think of Marcus’s piece in the Washington Post while reading this passage. As a matter of fact, Singer is wrong about the abilities of human beings with Down syndrome, as many can engage in these activities, the point that Thiessen emphasized. Only those who are in general ignorant of the lives of people with Down syndrome would think they cannot. We might fruitfully ask why so many in our society are so ignorant of those lives that they can simply hear or read these claims and knowingly nod agreement? Why is it the case that when people with Down syndrome do these things it is so newsworthy? Can it be for any reason other than that those who find it newsworthy are surprised because they have very little personal engagement with individuals with Down syndrome and other impairments? It is because “we” have already excluded them from the community of moral concern that we engage in our lives. We do not care to know, because they have no “standing” before “us.” Thus, when pointed out, the achievements of these human beings become for “us” the occasional curiosity piece in the daily news. In any case, this passage of Singer’s broadly aligns with both Thiessen’s and Marcus’s arguments about abortion, now transposed to infanticide—the case is to be determined upon the basis of performance and what parents want in and from their children. No matter that Singer’s list of achievements expresses a particularly Western and bourgeois attitude toward human excellence. Tennis? Woody Allen movies? Notice in particular the way that this social-psychological measure of human value shapes our understanding of the goal of medicine in the case of a condition like Down syndrome, not to mention many others. For this way of thinking, the disease that medicine is to address is not really Down syndrome, the presence of an extra twenty-first chromosome in a child that has been conceived. The disease or pathology calling for our moral concern is the parents’ inability to produce the child they want, the child they expect to perform as they desire, to perform up to their standards, the child Marcus insists on acquiring. The infant with Down syndrome is the monstrous outgrowth of that disease. The parents in conceiving such a child suffer from a pathology, the pathology of being underachieving reproducers in our society. It is the task of medicine to cure the parents of that disability, giving the parents another chance for success by first killing off their bad seed. The parents’ pathology is a failure to live up to their expectations of what success 1136 John O’Callaghan in reproduction looks like, expectations of their own to be sure, but that are very clearly socially conditioned by contemporary Western bourgeois values. Down syndrome is not the disease here. Being a producer of such a child is. On this view of medicine, the medical field of obstetrics is transformed into a kind of prenatal and postnatal cosmetic surgery for couples. I am not exaggerating when I say that an extraordinary amount of the philosophical discussion of personhood that takes place in contemporary secular philosophy, especially in bioethics, is in service to expanding the scope of human beings who may be killed by restricting the scope of human beings who are judged to be persons. Moral and political philosophers talk very little about persons except for those contexts in which the question is whether human beings may be killed. When the question of killing is not on the table they typically tend to talk simply about rational and autonomous individuals. But when we dig down into what is meant by a rational and autonomous individual, it turns out to be pretty much the same as a mostly independent individual with the ready capacity to engage in sophisticated cognitive and volitional capacities, the meaning of “person” characteristic of the bio-ethical discussion. In that discussion it is evident that there are human beings with no standing, human beings that are not persons and that may be killed, human beings for whom “we” have little, if any, ultimate concern. “I Want a Name When I Lose” Against the background of Western history, far from being progressive, as its advocates might claim, this social-psychological criterion of personhood appears to be regressive and the expression of a new paganism. It is regressive insofar as, rather than seeking to expand more and more the circle of moral concern and privilege to the weak and defenseless, it seeks to restrict it to the healthy and powerful. It is a kind of new paganism, insofar as it settles on a criterion of personhood that is fundamentally cultural and by extension legal, not metaphysical, and thus in large measure socially constructed. It reintroduces more ancient judgments of social stratification and difference in law and the cultural expressions of value, rather than the fundamental human equality more characteristic of modern movements toward justice, however imperfectly realized those movements may be. However, with a little reflection it is evident that this social-psychological criterion of personhood should be abandoned. One difficulty with it, even for those who advocate it, is that as it stands it allows too much killing—the bar is set too high. For example, it allows for the killing of those who are in Are There Failed Persons? 1137 a comatose state. Comas are not typically persistent, although they can be. However, someone in a coma does not have the ready capacity to engage in sophisticated cognitive and volitional capacities. Such human beings cannot speak their own language much less a foreign language, cannot play tennis, or appreciate Woody Allen movies. Even more, there is a huge class of human beings who fail to be persons on this social-psychological account, a class of human beings that dwarfs the class of the demented, the vegetative, the cognitively impaired, the sick, the blind, the halt, and the withered—that class is the class of healthy human infants who have been born but are pre-linguistic. The social-psychological criterion of personhood allows for the killing of healthy human infants.21 For some it may even be considered legitimate up until, at the latest, sometime roughly in the middle or later of the second year after birth when language use begins to appear, although it is not language of a particularly sophisticated sort.22 Healthy infants do not have the ready capacity to manifest sophisticated capacities for cognitive and volitional activity along the lines of Singer’s criteria any more than the severely cognitively impaired do. They cannot play basketball, watch Christopher Nolan movies, read Ursula K. LaGuin novels, or go to tennis camp. In that case these infants should fall outside the circle of moral concern, the circle of human life in the “morally significant sense,” that by the social-psychological criterion of personhood forbids killing human persons—they are human beings without being persons. However, we should simply reject this social-psychological notion of personhood that enables the setting of a killing bar. We should either just reject the notion of personhood altogether or recognize, on the contrary, that all human beings are persons in a more fundamental sense. To see why we should adopt the latter, the more fundamental sense of what it is to be 21 22 See, for example, Singer’s discussion of abortion and infanticide in Practical Ethics, 135–74. Singer appears to suggest that the line might go even further than that. “It would, of course, be difficult to say at what age children begin to see themselves as distinct entities existing over time. Even when we talk with two and three year old children it is usually very difficult to elicit any coherent conception of death, or of the possibility that someone—let alone the child herself—might cease to exist” (Practical Ethics, 171). See Steinbock’s discussion of the position that, without beliefs that involve an epistemic attitude towards sentences, a being cannot have interest, and thus cannot have moral standing (Life before Birth, 6–7). Steinbock argues that, on her “interests” view, the possession of language is not necessary for having interests, but simply consciousness; therefore pre-linguistic, post-linguistic, or non-linguistic beings can have interests, and thus moral standing (15). 1138 John O’Callaghan a person, we should begin by thinking about the moral obligations that we think we have toward those human beings amongst us who are healthy. Much of modern moral philosophy thinks that the specific character of moral agency is encountered in our lives in the rational but particularly autonomous activity of an individual. To be autonomous is to be an individual self-directed agent, setting one’s own goals and having the rational capacity and will to achieve those goals. This emphasis upon rational autonomy is very much an element of the social-psychological notion of person. It does not follow that others to whom the autonomous agent relates are of no moral weight unless the agent chooses to make them so—rational autonomy does not entail relativism about our moral obligations to others. But it is a feature of this way of thinking of the moral that the basis for our obligations towards others is a problem to be solved. I will not rehearse here the various attempts to solve what we might be called the problem of the other in modern moral philosophy, that is, how the autonomous rational agent ought to relate to others. Consider instead a less idealized and abstract perspective on the phenomenon of the moral character of our lives than that of the ideal of rational autonomy. In reality the specifically moral character of our lives is primarily engaged in our relation to other beings, whether those others are human beings, dolphins, birds, or the environment in general. In addition, whatever ideal of autonomy is put forward by modern moral philosophy, in reality any such autonomy is an autonomy conditioned by dependence upon others.23 In reality, we live our lives not as wholly individual autonomous agents, even ideally, but as agents dependent upon and among one another, engaging one another well or badly. Some measure of autonomy might be achieved in this or that activity or context, which is a good thing depending upon the activity or context. However, a realistic assessment of such autonomy will recognize the extent to which it is at the very least enabled if not determined by our dependence upon one another. We should not think of our more fundamental dependence upon one another for almost everything we do as a bad thing to be overcome, that one is not a person unless one has achieved the ideal of rational autonomy, overcoming our dependence upon others. If rational autonomy is a goal and good to be pursued by human beings, it can only be so for human beings who are already moral agents directed to and capable of pursuing such a goal, conditioned and directed to it by what they already are, human beings. We 23 Alasdair MacIntyre explores this dependence and its moral significance in Dependent Rational Animals (Chicago: Open Court, 1999). Are There Failed Persons? 1139 are not human persons because we have crossed some threshold of development of capacities of reason and will, come to conceive of our “selves” as having a future, or become rational autonomous agents. We are human persons because, being human, we are from the beginning of our lives set upon a course of development that includes as stages of development those capacities and many others besides. Now consider the fact that the specifically moral character of our lives becomes more engaged when attending to weakness rather than strength. There are all sorts of moral attitudes we take and actions we express that we do not really notice when dealing with the healthy—smiling at a friend when he walks in the room, making dinner for one’s family, answering a roommate’s question about the physics exam tomorrow, not insisting on the movie to go to this weekend, but allowing one’s friend to decide for once, attending a football game to watch the Packers beat the Bears again. Because these are human actions, they are moral actions,24 even if we do not pay much attention to them as such. However, we experience ourselves much more explicitly as moral agents when confronted with weakness, when confronted with the question of whether to help or to turn away. One engages a ticket agent when one’s flight is delayed because of incompetence on the part of the airline. It is a struggle, but one does one’s best to be pleasant to the agent at the gate respecting his or her role, advice, and so on, thanking the agent as one leaves. It was not after all the agent’s fault. One may not self-consciously experience oneself as a moral agent then and there, even though one is in fact acting as one. Only later upon reflection does it occur to one that such a situation is both a reminder of one’s dependence upon others and also a context for expressing oneself well or badly as a moral agent, a context in which acting well may not come easily. However, every time one walks by a beggar on the streets, one explicitly and self-consciously experiences oneself as a moral agent by what one does in stopping or walking by. A more extreme case. A white Westerner travels to Kolkata, India, and sees an abandoned child of maybe three years old squatting and defecating well out into a busy street in the midst of the commercial district. He walks by in anguish. Someone later asks him, “what did you do?” He responds, “nothing. What could I do?” The next day he walks by what looks like a dead man’s body sprawled face down on the sidewalk. Again, he walks by in anguish. His anguish is not only at the plight of the child or the man 24 See Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae [ST] I-II, q. 18, aa. 5 and 8–9. Aquinas even treats “human action” and “moral action” as synonymous. 1140 John O’Callaghan who may have died as he lay in the sidewalk. It is anguish at his own moral impotence. What could he do? His moral impotence in those circumstances amplifies the point about how we are dependent upon one another to pursue our lives. What could he do? He has no idea how to get help in this city so foreign to him. If he rushed to pull that child out of the street, what then? The child’s fundamental problem is not defecating in the street, though that is surely a very serious problem. His fundamental problem is his homelessness, which is not unique to him there or elsewhere. Suppose it is a holiday and there are tens of thousands of Indians around, having come in to the city from the countryside. What would have happened if he were seen picking up an Indian child and walking away with him, even if only to give him to the Missionaries of Charity where he is headed? These people would not know that. They would see a white Westerner carrying away an Indian boy. How would they react? But whom could one ask for help? How does one even ask for help? Who does one turn to in order to get the body of the dead man off the sidewalk and taken care of ? The police collect those dead bodies. It used to be a scheduled activity that they did every Tuesday. Now they will do it when called. How does one call the police? Impotent, one walks by. In all of this misery around one, one’s moral impotence is in large part due to the fact that one has no one to help one to act well as the moral agent one should be. We are not just dependent upon one another in times of our own physical or economic weakness, but in our pursuit of moral strength and excellence. We cannot even be morally good without one another, unless we severely limit the scope of moral concern by closing our eyes to the wide range of human suffering and the need to address it, deadening our consciences. But how can we be morally good if we do close our eyes? There is no easy answer as to what to do when one walks by a beggar. One wishes one did not know that there is no easy answer when one walks by a dead body lying in the sidewalk in an utterly foreign city one has only just entered into. However, we need to acknowledge the way that our weakness appearing concretely before us in these circumstances amplifies for us our character as moral agents, and calls for a response in a way that ordinary encounters with relatively stable, healthy, and strong individuals and groups do not. After all, anyone who sits on the street begging for money is suffering from some sort of weakness, even if in a particular case, as sometimes happens, it is not the weakness of financial poverty. How should we help to the extent that we can? The point is not simply a subjective point about the experience of the moral in our lives being heightened in engaging weakness and suffering. It Are There Failed Persons? 1141 is the reality of the moral in our lives, not our experience of it, that matters. That reality of the moral comes out most strongly in the ways in which we encounter those who need our aid: the weak, the impaired, the hungry, the neighbor or stranger looking for help, the dying. It is precisely the depth of the moral character of life in the circumstance of encountering weakness that draws the individual autonomous self-directed agent away from his or her heroic quest to be a law unto himself or herself. When others are healthy and strong, our moral lives, if we act well, have a kind of unnoticed grace because of the ease with which we can live amongst one another. However, depending upon how we engage those who are weak and suffering, the ease with which we ordinarily act, our moral character, can very easily appear to be something analogous to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”—a cheap morality that is fortunate enough never to be confronted by real need, or that engages in “charitable” practices of distancing oneself from it when confronted. On the other hand, when others are ill and weak, the character of our lives, if we act well, takes on a kind of deep and rich grace that penetrates to the core of our existence as moral agents. Indeed, to act badly here is precisely to turn away from moral depth to moral superficiality, out of fear or selfishness or other forms of moral distraction and weakness. One ought not to go to places like Kolkata if one is unprepared to face one’s own moral superficiality and the moral superficiality of the society one comes from. If I am right about the depth of moral character we experience when we act well in the face of the suffering we encounter, then we move and advance toward human perfection the more we move toward those who suffer. Returning now to the healthy infants who are not persons on the social-psychological criterion of personhood, we can see why we should begin to reject that notion of person wholesale. Even if one said healthy human infants are not persons, no one would say that they are failed persons. We do in fact believe we have moral obligations to this class of human beings who do not count as social-psychological persons. Despite what is implied by the social-psychological criterion of the philosophers of killing, we cannot kill them to satisfy our desires for a different child. We have to feed them. We have to clothe them. We have to shelter them. Provide them with medical assistance. I believe even most of the philosophers who argue for the permissibility of killing impaired human infants would be shocked at the killing of healthy infants or the failure to assist them, suggesting that they recognize some moral responsibility to such human beings.25 25 This claim is somewhat generous in its extent. See, for instance, Singer, Practical Ethics, 1142 John O’Callaghan Why then do we have these obligations? The advocates of the social-psychological notion of personhood will answer that we have these obligations precisely because they are healthy human infants who will develop into persons if everything goes according to plan. Human life, like all animal life, is dynamic and developmental. Calling these infant human beings healthy just marks the fact that they will become social-psychological persons with some ordinary help from us. However, this response is ad hoc and essentially gives up the game for the social-psychological notion of person, because it acknowledges that being a social-psychological person is actually derivative upon something more fundamental than the ready capacity for cognitive and volitional acts. Being a social-psychological person does not come from nowhere, as if by metaphysical magic. It is a developmental stage in the life of a particular kind of animal, a human animal. So, the moral obligations we have towards others who are healthy are not grounded in their being social-psychological persons, but in their being human beings who are dependent upon one another even in health. However, if what I said above about the depth and grace of the moral character of our lives as human beings is correct, we have to recognize that the moral obligations that we have toward one another become deeper and greater insofar as we engage those amongst us who are ill, impoverished, homeless, alone, cognitively and volitionally impaired in some way. We cannot understand these forms of suffering as forms of suffering except insofar as we understand those involved to be human beings. The notion of illness is just as much grounded in the nature of what we are as human beings as is health. The man or woman in a coma is ill, where what it is to be ill is determined by what it is to be a human being. To be ill or suffering in some way is to be in a condition one ought not to be in given what one is, a human being rather than an earthworm, a bat, or a dolphin. An earthworm is not suffering because it cannot engage in cognitive activities, but a wolf is suffering because it has broken a leg and cannot hunt for food. 171: “If we can put aside [the] emotionally but strictly irrelevant aspects of the killing of a baby we can see that the grounds for not killing persons do not apply to newborn infants.” Later Singer explains that restrictions that might be put upon the killing of infants “might owe more to the effects of infanticide on others than to the intrinsic wrongness of killing an infant. Obviously, in most cases, to kill an infant is to inflict a terrible loss on those who love and cherish the child” (173; emphasis added). The use of “inflict” in this statement is striking and chilling, insofar as in its ordinary use “inflict” suggests that the one upon whom a harm or “loss” is inflicted does not suffer the harm or “loss” voluntarily. The harm is to be “inflicted” upon those who “love and cherish” the child who is killed. Are There Failed Persons? 1143 A human being suffers because she cannot but should be able to do what she is conceived and born to do. Much more is required of our moral depth in engaging her suffering than is required in engaging her brother’s health. That greater moral depth is required of us precisely because she is a human being just like her brother. Again, the nature and depth of our moral obligations is more pressing in the face of illness than it is in health. These moral obligations to others are not grounded in the social-psychological personhood of the others, grounded in their possibilities of success in our moral community, but in something more fundamental. They are grounded in the nature of being human against which health, illness, and much else besides are understood and measured. The point about the nature of moral depth in human life being greatest in the face of suffering is not confined to non-persistent suffering or illness. Consider a thought experiment. Suppose a human being from another planet arrived at the doorstep of a hospital and said, “why are you earthlings so indifferent to the suffering of these people you say are in a persistent vegetative state? Why do you want to kill them? On our planet we figured out how to cure that condition centuries ago. We’ll show you how; it’s easy.” Now enabled by this celestial visitor to cure those in a persistent vegetative state, it is clear that we should provide such help to the human being who is in what is now a merely vegetative state given our developed capacity to assist him or her. It would be morally abhorrent not to do so. However, what this thought experiment suggests is not that we come to have moral obligations towards the human being because now we have the possibility of a cure, that is, that the obligation follows from the cure. On the contrary, it suggests that the obligation precedes the cure. The obligation to assist is already present, even when we are not in fact able to assist. It is an obligation toward human beings as such. Only such obligations toward human beings as such can make sense of the great moral character of our efforts to find cures for conditions we cannot yet cure. So, more generally we have moral obligations towards human beings whose suffering we cannot in fact ameliorate or fix. Minimally, we have the obligation to care for them by abiding with them in their suffering, suffering with them, adopting their suffering as our own. Ambrose of Milan, commenting on the story of Naboth in the Book of Kings, and for the first time in extant Latin texts associating compassion (compassio) with mercy (misericordia), writes: “Misericordia is not in the habit of judging merit, but of giving assistance in necessities, of serving the poor, not investigating justice, for as Scripture says, ‘blessed is the one who understands the destitute and poor.’ . . . Who then is it who understands [the destitute and poor]? 1144 John O’Callaghan The one who is compassionate to him, who faces him as a natural friend, who recognizes that The Lord made both the rich and the poor, who knows that he will sanctify his fruits, if he will deliver some portion of them to the poor.”26 Not only does Ambrose bind mercy to compassion, but he grounds this compassion in “natural friendship”—not friendship by choice, but friendship that one is bound to by being born into humanity. Thomas Aquinas follows Ambrose in these associations. To adopt the suffering of another as our own is precisely what the term “compassion” means etymologically—suffering with. Friendship is often described in its highest form as an adopting of the good of another as one’s own. However, as Thomas argues, the nature of human friendship is such that you cannot adopt the good of someone else as your own if you are not willing to adopt his or her suffering as well.27 Where there is no compassion, there is only failed friendship. So, Aquinas repeats Augustine’s definition of mercy or misericordia: “Suffering in our heart the misery of another, by which, if we are able, we are compelled to assist.”28 However, even if one is unable to alleviate the suffering, misericordia, mercy, is still expressed in compassionate suffering with the one who suffers, abiding with the one who suffers in his or her suffering. Here a different more defensible notion of a human person arises than we find in the social-psychological: a human person is an animal of a certain kind or nature ordinarily characterized by stages of development including cognitive and volitional capacities displayed rationally in various animal type activities. It is important to realize, however, that, for animals that develop over time, one can have a particular nature and yet one’s capacity for pursuing what is otherwise an ordinary stage of development of that nature be impaired or even absent. That I could not reproduce at a certain stage of my life, or had I been impaired in doing so, is no argument that I am not alive, even though it is a defining characteristic of living kinds of beings that they are capable of reproduction.29 Similarly, even if a human person is impaired with respect to or even lacks the ready capacity to engage in rational and 26 27 28 29 Ambrose, 8.40 (Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 32.2:490 [lns. 14–16]; trans. mine). See my “Fearless Mercy beyond Justice: Aquinas and Nussbaum’s Pity Tradition,” in Beyond the Self: Virtue Ethics and the Problem of Culture, ed. Raymond Hain (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2019), 43–66. ST II-II, q. 30, a. 1, resp. Some instance of hybrids among mules, hinnies, ligers, tigons, and so on are exceptions to that general characteristic of living things. Are There Failed Persons? 1145 volitional activity, he or she remains a human person, a person who is suffering. It follows from this fact that, on this second and very different notion of a human person, he or she remains a person, a member of the community of moral concern that cannot be killed. No human being can fail to be a person. Conclusion: Failed Persons That said, a human being can be a failed person. There is an ambiguity in my title. Consider. To be a failed chess player, one first has to be a chess player. To be a failed musician, one first has to be a musician. And to be a failed person, one first has to be person. The ambiguity is between failing to be a person and failing as a person. On the criterion for being a person that I have proposed, no human being can fail to be a person. However, even if one cannot fail to be a person, one can fail as a person. So how does a person fail as a person? One might be tempted to think that precisely because they are persons, those human beings who do not manifest the ready capacity for cognitive and volitional acts or for whom such capacities are severely injured or impaired are those who fail as persons. That approach would make a triviality of the distinction between the social-psychological notion of a person and the one I have proposed. It would also be a mistake. Because human life is dynamic and developmental, success or failure as a person has to be understood with respect to the goals pursued by persons through their actions. There is an element of truth in the social-psychological notion of person, despite now having rejected it as generally false. There are goals human beings pursue precisely because they are persons—walking to the store, going to school, making love to their wives or husbands, worshiping God, and many more besides. These are achievements that give expression to the reality of being a human person because they proceed from the capacity to understand the good of the goals involved, to will them as so understood, and to will to put proper order into the pursuit of them. However, if one cannot bring reason and will to bear upon those goals for some reason, then one does not fail. One is a person who for some reason cannot pursue the goals of a person. Would we say a chess player is a failed chess player if, for example, someone stole her board, or she was called away by the sickness of her child, or she was knocked unconscious? No. Similarly, the very young human being, the very old, the severely cognitively impaired—all are persons. But they are not failed persons, because precisely as persons they are prevented for various reasons from acting and succeeding as persons. To fail as a person, one has to be a person, not be impeded for some reason 1146 John O’Callaghan in acting as a person, and yet not be acting as a person. So, who then might be failed persons? Well, unless we are supermen or superwomen, we all fail as persons now and again: we all struggle, make mistakes, perhaps frequently, perhaps infrequently. However, to answer that question with a little more depth than simply acknowledging our ordinary failures as persons, we should focus upon one feature of the lives of human persons that is necessary to any success as persons. It is almost impossible to think of an activity we engage in as persons that does not involve dependence upon other human beings for its accomplishment, however much its accomplishment may most properly belong to an individual. From the food we eat, to the disciplines we study, to the games we play, to the sidewalks we walk upon, to the wives and husbands we marry, to the children we raise, a clear-sighted vision of reality requires that we acknowledge our dependence upon others for what we achieve and for our success if we succeed. I argued above that this dependence is particularly true in our pursuit of moral goodness. This feature of our lives can properly be described as a life of friendship and solidarity with one another, friendship and solidarity precisely in our dependence upon one another in our weakness and our vulnerability, not despite it. Friendship with other human beings is not something we choose for our lives. It is something we are born to as a precondition for our success as persons. Here then, I believe, is a defensible notion of human dignity as such: human dignity consists in being directed by nature to friendship and thus compassion for and misericordia to any human being one encounters in the course of one’s life. Much more would have to be said to defend this notion of dignity, but it is a start. Vulnerability is not something to be overcome in a quest for autonomy. Our mutual vulnerability is what makes possible the great good of human friendship and solidarity to which we are born. If I am right, just as we are persons because we are human, we are also friends because we are human. Being a friend to the human beings we encounter in life is no more a choice we make than is being a person. It is the condition of our lives. To fail as a friend is to fail as a person. But who is my friend you will ask? Who is my neighbor? The answers to those questions are not determined by our choice. We are conceived and born into human personhood, which just is to be conceived and born into human friendship. In fact, I would like to say but cannot adequately defend here that despite any difference of conceptual content between the two terms, the nature of being a human person just is identical to the nature of being a human friend.30 30 It is like the morning and evening star—the same thing understood in two different ways. Are There Failed Persons? 1147 However, even though one cannot choose who one’s friends are, being a friend is something that one can succeed or fail at, because the friendship we are conceived for and born to finds expression through specifically human activity. So perhaps the most important question concerning success or failure as a person involves not how we act towards the friends we mistakenly believe we are free to choose to love, but how we act toward the friends we are conceived and born to love. Moral and political reasoning that concludes to the possibility of killing the weak, the vulnerable, and dependent is moral reasoning that aims at the destruction of natural human friendship and solidarity. When we act to destroy the weak, the vulnerable, and dependent among us, even if only by turning our backs upon them, we act to destroy our friends. In so doing we act to destroy the possibility for our own success as persons. In a certain sense, when we act to kill other human beings, we act to kill ourselves. Yes. There are failed persons. Looking for such failed persons, we should not go looking among the very old and the severely impaired, the weak and the lame. We should look in the mirror and ask whether we see the face of a person who is a friend to these other human persons, these other friends. The greatest most successful human friendship is the friendship that offers and gives the most help to those persons most in need, because it has used its reason and will to acknowledge that it is already bound in compassion to these persons in their need, already bound to them by nature. The only person who ever chose human friendship was Jesus Christ. The rest of us have no choice. So, my success as a human person is bound to those who suffer, bound to them as to my friends. In conclusion, when one looks in the mirror one will only see a successful person if one has first learned to recognize the face of a person in one’s natural friends—the weak, the vulnerable, the severely impaired, the suffering, all those friends who do not count as social-psychological persons for much of contemporary philosophical and ethical thought. A failed person is a person whose face is not the face of compassion and mercy. Am I a failed person? Well, look at my face and tell me what you see. Do you see the face of mercy, the face of misericordia? If not, then I am a failed person. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2023): 1149–1170 1149 Teaching the Trinity: Scripture and Performance of the Psychological Analogy in Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae Zane E. Chu University of Toronto Toronto, Canada Teaching the Trinity, for St. Thomas Aquinas, takes its point of departure from Sacred Scripture. He makes this explicit at the outset of the Trinitarian treatise in the Summa theologiae, citing Christ’s words at John 8:42, “from God I proceeded,” and affirming, “divine Scripture in the things of divinity, uses words that pertain to procession.”1 The order of teaching then continues through speculative effort to give an account of the scriptural witness to the distinction of persons in God, in order to return to the same Scripture with a deeper grasp of its meaning.2 Aquinas is a master of the sacred page, and his basic pedagogy for theology involves the “exercises of Sacred Scripture” of reading, disputing, and preaching.3 Recent scholarship draws attention to his reading of Scripture 1 2 3 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] I, q. 27, a. 1. Translations are my own. I refer to Summa theologiae, Cura et studio Instituti Studiorum Medievalium Ottaviensis, emended ed., 5 vols. (Ottawa: Harpell, 1941–1945). For the Lectura Super Ioannem, I refer to the Latin-English Commentary on the Gospel of John, 2 vols., trans. Fabian R. Larcher (Lander, WY: Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2013). Gilles Emery, “Theologia and Dispensatio: The Centrality of the Divine Missions in St. Thomas’s Trinitarian Theology,” The Thomist 74, no. 4 (2010): 515–61, especially at 546–49. Peter the Chanter, Verbum abbreviatum, cited in Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 54. See also Aquinas’s inaugural lecture Rigans montes. 1150 Zane E. Chu expressed in biblical commentaries as foundational for his teaching and as an interpretive context for his summative works.4 My purpose is to illustrate this basic pedagogy in the Trinitarian treatise of the Summa theologiae, taking the Lectura super Ioannem as an interpretive context for the analogies of word and love—the psychological analogy—for the Trinity. Most scholarly discussion of the psychological analogy elaborates on its theoretical aspects, with some attention to its scriptural foundation.5 I wish to show the priority of Scripture in Aquinas’s employment of this analogy in three respects, namely, its foundation in exegesis, performative aspects, and orientation toward preaching. My investigation focuses on question 27 of the prima pars alongside pertinent sections of the Super Ioannem. I argue that citations from the Gospel of John (8:42, 15:26, and 14:16) in the sed contras of articles 1 and 3 function to ground the psychological analogy in scriptural exegesis and to prompt its performance. Turning to the corresponding commentary shows Aquinas leading the student to knowledge of Christ as divine Word and to love of him from the Holy Spirit that both leads to and follows upon such knowledge. This provokes an affective experience of loving Christ in knowing his divinity that is an actual performance of the psychological analogy. The magisterial responses then use this affective experience as a basis to facilitate a grasp of the analogy, the articulation of which is a further guided performance that reflects on this experience. Aquinas teaches the Trinity by exercising the student both affectively and intellectually in its scriptural foundation for a deeper grasp that prepares for preaching. I develop my argument in three 4 5 See Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:55; Thomas G. Weinandy, Daniel A. Keating, and John P. Yocum, “Preface,” in Aquinas on Scripture: An Introduction to his Biblical Commentaries, ed. Weinandy, Keating, and Yocum (London: T&T Clark, 2005), ix; Piotr Roszak and Jörgen Vijgen, “Towards a ‘Biblical Thomism’: Introduction,” in Reading Sacred Scripture with Thomas Aquinas: Hermeneutical Tools, Theological Questions and New Perspectives, ed. Roszak and Vijgen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), viii; Thomas Aquinas, Biblical Theologian, ed. Roger Nutt and Michael Dauphinais (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2021). For discussion of the psychological analogy with contemporary biblical exegesis, see Matthew Levering, Scripture and Metaphysics: Aquinas and the Renewal of Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). For further treatment of the analogy, see Bernard Lonergan, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, ed. Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, vol. 2 of Collected Works (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997); Gilles Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas, trans. Francesca Aran Murphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); David B. Burrell, Aquinas: God and Action (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2016); Lawrence Feingold, “The Word Breathes Forth Love: The Psychological Analogy for the Trinity and the Complementarity of Intellect and Will,” Nova et Vetera (English) 17, no. 2 (2019): 501–32. Teaching the Trinity: Scripture and Performance of the Psychological Analog y 1151 main steps. First, I specify the place of Scripture in Aquinas’s teaching and review the composition of the Trinitarian treatise. Then, I examine the first four articles of question 27 and corresponding sections of the Super Ioannem, in the order of the analogies of word and of love. Lastly, I consider Aquinas’s treatment of the Holy Spirit’s proper name of Love and subsequent preaching to illustrate Scripture as a point of arrival through performance of the psychological analogy. The Place of Scripture in Aquinas’s Teaching For Aquinas, Scripture is placed within his broader practice of sacra doctrina or holy teaching, attention to which assists in demonstrating how the Johannine citations ground the psychological analogy in Scripture and prompt its performance. Sacra doctrina has a primarily pastoral orientation, namely, to form Dominicans for preaching and hearing confessions.6 Though more speculative than practical, sacra doctrina as speculation or contemplation of the truth of Christian faith contained in Scripture is to be handed on to others.7 This requires training in the scriptural exercises of reading and disputing as preparation for preaching. These may be taken as “spiritual exercises” that engage not only thought, but also affectivity in service of personal transformation for the preacher’s way of life.8 Aquinas’s practice of sacra doctrina begins with reading Scripture as expressed in biblical commentaries, and develops in the Summa theologiae, which accesses Scripture through citations to offer a summative grasp of the truth contained therein. Here, I review the formal aspects of Aquinas’s teaching from Scripture in these texts. The Dominican convent and the university that inspired its curriculum began each day with lectures on a book from Scripture. In the convent, this reading focused on exegesis of the literal sense to promote a grasp of Scripture as a whole, providing a foundation to build toward the spiritual senses, especially the moral sense for preaching and hearing confessions. In the university, which is the setting of Aquinas’s Super Ioannem, this reading 6 7 8 Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, Thomas Aquinas: Faith, Reason, and Following Christ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), x. See especially M. Michèle Mulchahey, “First the Bow is Bent in Study . . .”: Dominican Education Before 1350 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1998), 130. See Olivier-Thomas Venard, Thomas d’Aquin, poète théologien I: Littérature et théologie—Une saison en enfer (Geneva: Ad Solem, 2002), 105–8, and Gilles Mongeau, Embracing Wisdom: The Summa theologiae as Spiritual Pedagogy (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2015), 10–15 and 80. See Mongeau, Embracing Wisdom, 9 (citing the work of Pierre Hadot) and 16. 1152 Zane E. Chu was more advanced, but followed the same pattern from the literal to the spiritual.9 The basic method of reading was to divide the text into smaller units of meaning that are more easily remembered and related to each other. In a culture that relies upon trained memory, this simplifies learning of the text and prepares for composing sermons.10 University biblical commentaries implement the method of divisio textus, or dividing as a formal compositional element.11 After a prologue that presents the subject matter, intentio or aim, order, and author, the commentary begins with a divisio textus of the whole that best reflects its subject matter and shows a ductus or pathway through the text that leads to its aim.12 Along the way, the divisio textus is performed for each chapter, units within a chapter, and even individual verses to facilitate reading and exegesis of the words in all their senses. Presupposing and building upon the reading of Scripture in the biblical commentaries, the Summa theologiae has a summative aim and responds to a need to reform pastoral education. In addition to Scripture, lectures on the Sentences of Peter Lombard assisted students in making the bridge from the literal to the moral sense through theological science.13 However, the structure of the Sentences was ill-suited to moral formation, and there was also a tendency at this time to teach moral and sacramental theology apart from dogmatic matters.14 When Aquinas was sent to Rome in 1265 to experiment in Dominican curriculum, he abandoned use of the Sentences and began his own summation of theology, in order to place pastoral education on a more secure dogmatic basis with a commitment to improved pedagogy. The Summa theologiae aims to provide a summative contemplation of the truth of Christian faith through theological science. This requires an order of teaching and pedagogy appropriate for “beginners” preparing to preach and hear confessions. Materially, the principal intentio to hand on 9 10 11 12 13 14 Gilbert Dahan, “Genres, Forms and Various Methods in Christian Exegesis of the Middle Ages,” in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament: The History of its Interpretation, vol. 1, pt. 2, ed. M. Sæbø (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2000), 196–236, at 212. Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 174. Dahan, “Genres, Forms and Various Methods,” 214. See Mary Carruthers, “The Concept of Ductus, or Journeying through a Work of Art,” in Rhetoric Beyond Words, ed. Carruthers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 190–213, at 200. Mulchahey, First the Bow is Bent in Study, 139–41. Mongeau, Embracing Wisdom, 81–83. Lombard’s Sentences follows the structure of the Nicene Creed and lacks a natural place for discussing the virtues. For a brief discussion, see Mark D. Jordan, Teaching Bodies: Moral Formation in the Summa of Thomas Aquinas (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017), 3–8. Teaching the Trinity: Scripture and Performance of the Psychological Analog y 1153 knowledge of God leads to a divisio textus of the Summa in three parts: God in himself and as beginning of all things (prima pars); God as end of all things in general, through the movement of the rational creature into God (secunda pars), and in particular, through Christ as the most perfect way into God (tertia pars).15 This order corresponds to the requirements of theological science, proceeding from principles to conclusions, and from causes to effects. Formally, the material is to be presented briefly and clearly, avoiding unnecessary repetition.16 To do this, the Summa employs the basic literary form of the disputed question, which initially emerged to reconcile contradictory statements in Scripture and remains a formal compositional element in biblical commentaries.17 The developed form of the disputed question, as found in commentaries on the Sentences and collections of disputed and quodlibetal questions, exercises the student in a deeper grasp of the truth, consistent with the scientific aim of the text. This formal pedagogy is assisted by the divisio textus, which constructs the questions into a whole, and textual reference, which creates links within the whole and to the foundational interpretive context of Scripture. By constructing a pathway through the material, the divisio textus implements the order of teaching required by theological science, ordering the questions to each other to shape content and promote learning.18 The further division of a question into articles orders their various determinations to each other as they respond to the virtual questions: “is it so?” (an sit); “what is it?” (quid sit); “in what way is it?” (quomodo sit).19 The various affirmations, explanations, and descriptions all lead to a deeper grasp of the particular truth in question. Textual reference forms an interpretive context and promotes brevity and clarity. Intratextual reference appeals either to what has already been said to assist present explanation (analepsis), or to what will be explained more fully later but is needed to understand present material (prolepsis).20 This strengthens the links that the divisio textus seeks to construct in the student and reduces repetition. A degree of repetition, however, does remain: the full meaning of recurring key terms, ideas, or citations emerges only through the entire course of the text. Extratextual reference to various authorities form 15 16 17 18 19 20 ST I, q. 2, proem. ST I, proem. Dahan, “Genres, Forms and Various Methods,” 222–24. Mongeau, Embracing Wisdom, 97. Richard McKeon, “Rhetoric in the Middle Ages,” Speculum 17, no. 1 (1942): 1–32, at 5. Mongeau, Embracing Wisdom, 99. 1154 Zane E. Chu an enriching interpretive context of the material at hand. These citations are metonymies: “The ‘part’ that is cited calls the student to retrieve from trained memory the ‘whole’ of the res.”21 In particular, citations in the sed contra prepare for and set up the magisterial response, in which the master determines and articulates his own affirmation, explanation, or description on the specific question of the article. In Aquinas’s practice of sacra doctrina, Scripture finds its place as both the source and aim of teaching.22 A structured set of exercises provides training in Scripture for preaching and hearing confessions. The exercise of reading promotes a grasp of Scripture as a whole, which is expressed in biblical commentaries such as the Super Ioannem. The exercise of disputing leads the student to a deeper grasp of the truth contained in Scripture, of which the Summa theologiae offers a summative contemplation. While not a biblical commentary, it helps to form the scriptural imagination through its order and formal pedagogy of theological science. In particular, the Summa accesses Scripture through citations, around which it may be said to be constructed.23 Aquinas’s teaching of the Trinity, then, is founded upon Scripture through citations whose broader whole and commentary provide an interpretive context for his determinations and articulations, such as of the psychological analogy. Composition of the Trinitarian Treatise Having specified the place of Scripture within Aquinas’s practice of sacra doctrina, the place of his teaching of the Trinity now requires attention, to better disclose the function of the Johannine citations that initiate this teaching. In the Summa theologiae, the divisio textus of the prima pars constructs a pathway to contemplation of God in himself and as beginning of all things. Aquinas divides this into three parts: what pertains to the divine essence, the distinction of persons in God, and the procession of creatures from God.24 The Trinitarian treatise is the second part of this division, and begins at question 27, which affirms procession in God as preparatory to treatment of the relations, and ultimately the persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Here, I review this placement and the composition of the Trinitarian treatise and of question 27. 21 22 23 24 Mongeau, Embracing Wisdom, 98. See Marie-Dominique Chenu, La théologie comme science au XIIIe siècle (Paris: Vrin, 1969), 84. Roszak and Vijgen, “Towards a ‘Biblical Thomism,’” ix. ST I, q. 2, proem. Teaching the Trinity: Scripture and Performance of the Psychological Analog y 1155 The Trinitarian treatise is placed after a preparatory study of the divine essence. This initiates the basic exercise, for teaching the Trinity, of dynamically holding together unity of essence and distinction of persons in God. Aquinas conducts a negative approach to the divine essence, for “we are not able to know what God is, but what he is not.”25 Because language signifies in a creaturely mode, its continued use in divine things requires removing from God whatever does not belong to him, such as composition and change. The affirmation of divine simplicity in question 3 of the prima pars initiates this exercise, to which the basic terms for teaching the Trinity—procession, relation, person—will be subjected. Negating the creaturely mode of signifying disciplines a proper and analogical use of terms to intimate what God is like.26 The inherently analogous term actus or “act”/“action” spans treatment of God as one and triune to offer a way of “taking” what cannot be said.27 Its paradigm case of psychological activity—knowing and willing—introduced in questions 14 and 19 will provide an analogy for making proper sense of the scriptural revelation of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Aquinas composes the Trinitarian treatise by dividing it into three parts: the origin or procession of the persons, the relations of origin, and the persons themselves. Because the persons are distinguished by relations of origin, this pedagogical division already indicates theological content.28 Treatment of processions and relations is therefore preparatory to that of the persons, which is the pedagogical aim, to name Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as distinct persons in unity of essence.29 The psychological analogy is an aid in this division that offers a deeper grasp of the processions and relations by which the persons are distinguished.30 Question 27 initiates the Trinitarian treatise through a ductus of five articles. These affirm that there is a procession in God (a. 1) called generation (a. 2), another procession (a. 3) not called generation (a. 4), and not more than two processions in God (a. 5). The citations in the sed contra of the first and third articles provide scriptural authorities for affirming procession in God. I propose that corresponding commentary in the Super Ioannem shows that these citations both ground the psychological analogy in scriptural exegesis and prompt an affective experience of loving Christ in knowing his divinity 25 26 27 28 29 30 ST I, q. 3, proem. David B. Burrell, Exercises in Religious Understanding (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974), 88–89. Burrell, Aquinas: God and Action, 130. ST I, q. 27, proem. ST I, q. 29, proem. See also Emery, Trinitarian Theology, 50. Lonergan, Verbum, 214–16. 1156 Zane E. Chu that is an actual performance of the analogy. This shows Aquinas’s teaching of the Trinity to be profoundly scriptural, which the magisterial responses carry through by articulating the analogy as a further guided performance upon this affective basis. In the next section, I examine the citation of John 8:42 in the first article, which establishes the procession of generation and the analogy of word. Then, I turn to the citations of John 15:26 and 14:15 in the third article, which establish the procession and analogy of love. Procession and Analogy of Word The sed contra of the first article of question 27 cites Christ’s words at John 8:42 as the authority for affirming procession in God: “From God I proceeded.”31 Christ, the teacher of sacra doctrina, teaches about procession in God.32 Christ is also the subject of procession in God, which Aquinas proposes as the intentio of the Gospel of John: to manifest the divinity of Christ as Son/ Word of the Father. His commentary on John 8:42 shows how this citation both grounds the analogy of word in scriptural exegesis and prompts its performance in the student. Commentary on John 8:42 and 1:1 On first glance, Aquinas’s commentary on John 8:42 does not appear to contribute much to the understanding of procession in God or the analogy of word. Yet, after glossing that Christ “proceeds” as “only begotten from eternity, of the substance of the Father,” Aquinas makes an analepsis to John 1:1, “in the beginning was the Word,” to show that Christ’s procession is understood according to the procession of the Word in God.33 Citation of John 8:42 engages and forms the scriptural imagination: not only does it confirm that Scripture uses words that pertain to procession in God, but it also recalls John 1:1, which indicates procession of the Word in God, suggesting an analogy to the procession of a word in us. While the Summa theologiae does not require a grasp of the detail of the commentary on John 1:1 at this point, two important features of the latter show the emergence of the analogy of word from Scripture, preparing for and prompting its performance both there and in the continuation of commentary at John 8:42. First, Aquinas’s commentary on John 1:1 establishes the divisio textus 31 32 33 ST I, q. 27, a. 1, sc. Mongeau, Embracing Wisdom, 125–26. Super Ioan 8, lec. 5, no. 1236. A prolepsis is also made to John 16:28—“I came forth from the Father”—where Christ’s procession is treated through analysis of the word “came forth.” The analogy of word has prominence in the ST. Teaching the Trinity: Scripture and Performance of the Psychological Analog y 1157 of the entire Gospel and of the first two verses, which show the matter and order for teaching the divinity of the Word. From the prologue, he recalls that the Gospel of John intends to show the divinity of Christ, and divides the text into two main parts: first, it introduces (insinuat) Christ’s divinity (chapter 1); and second, it manifests his divinity through the things he did in the flesh (ch. 2–21).34 The verb insinuare denotes indirect statement or assertion, suggesting that Christ’s divinity is more clearly shown by the narration of his deeds in the flesh, rather than by the statements of John 1.35 Yet it may also be translated as “to introduce by windings or turnings” or “to penetrate” or “to make one’s way.”36 This suggests that Aquinas will propose an order or pedagogy in his exegesis of the statements of John 1 to lead to contemplation of the mystery of Christ’s divinity. The citation of the Gospel of John in the Summa theologiae presupposes and recalls this intentio. The divisio textus of John 1:1–2 proposes the pedagogical order of these verses. The first two clauses—“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God”—pertain to the an sit question (whether it is so), and the last two clauses—“and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God”—pertain to the quid sit question (what it is).37 Aquinas explains that this division most congruently follows the order of teaching, appropriately leading to contemplation of Christ’s divinity and his procession: “since the Word was with God by origin, it was necessary to show first that the Word was in the Father and with the Father before showing that the Word was God.”38 Scripture itself teaches, in proper order, that there is procession of a Word in God, and that this Word is God. The prima pars retains this order, reflected in the positions of questions 27 and 34, with the latter affirming Word as a proper name of the Son. Second, Aquinas articulates and guides a performance of the analogy of word through exegesis of the literal sense of “word.” Citing a definition from Aristotle—“vocal sounds are signs of the affections that exist in our soul”—Aquinas directs the student from the familiar to the unfamiliar, from the exterior use of words in speech to the inner word that is presupposed.39 34 35 36 37 38 39 Super Ioan 1, lec. 1, no. 23. Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt, “‘That the Faithful Become the Temple of God’: The Church Militant in Aquinas’s Commentary on John,” in Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 293–311, at 306. Cassell’s Latin Dictionary (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1968), 314. Insinuare does not carry the negative overtones of “insinuate” in English. Super Ioan 1, lec. 1, no. 23. Super Ioan 1, lec. 1, no. 54. See also no. 53. Super Ioan 1, lec. 1, no. 25. See also ST I, q. 34, a. 1. 1158 Zane E. Chu He proposes a grasp of the inner word by elaborating a theory of knowing, which appeals to experience and makes us more conscious of our knowing; hence, “statements designed to evoke that awareness should be allowed to accumulate.”40 The ordered series of statements in Aquinas’s commentary lead to a grasp of the inner word as a relational term that may be said properly and analogously of God. He guides the performance of discovering the difference and relation between understanding a thing and expressing it in a word through an example: the exterior word “stone” signifies neither the substance of the intellect, nor the species by which the intellect understands, nor the act of understanding itself. Rather, since the exterior word signifies the inner word, the latter is something formed by the intellect, “something that proceeds from an intellect existing in act,” and also “a ratio and likeness of the thing understood.”41 Citing Augustine, Aquinas confirms that when the thing understood is oneself, meaning when the intellect understands itself, there is a likeness or analogy of the Trinity in the mind. To complete the exegesis of “word,” Aquinas asks if the inner word is produced in all intellects. He affirms this in three kinds of intellectual nature: human, angelic, and divine. Because the word of John 1:1 was “in the beginning,” it cannot be a human or angelic word, since these have a cause and principle of their being and operation. Aquinas alludes to John 1:3—“all things were made through him”—to argue that this word is divine: “The word the Evangelist had in mind he shows by saying that this word was not made, since all things were made by it. Therefore, the word about which John speaks here is the Word of God.”42 While this articulation of the analogy of word goes beyond the scope of question 27, it illuminates the scriptural foundation of Aquinas’s teaching of the Trinity. The Super Ioannem follows the order of the scriptural text, which shows the order of teaching that the Summa theologiae retains. The latter, however, is not strictly subject to the order of the scriptural text, and spreads out and adapts the teaching for beginners to grasp the truth of Christian faith. Question 27 answers the an sit question about the Word in God, and is supported by earlier affirmation of understanding in God in question 14, which outlines some of the theory of knowing. Question 34 answers the quid sit question about the Word as God, prepared for by the affirmation of procession in God, the definition of persons as subsistent relations, and the procedure for proper naming of the persons according to principle and term. 40 41 42 Burrell, God and Action, 165. Super Ioan 1, lec. 1, no. 25 (emphasis added). Super Ioan 1, lec. 1, no. 25. Teaching the Trinity: Scripture and Performance of the Psychological Analog y 1159 Its treatment of the Word is therefore concise, for it need only indicate from the word analogy a relation of principle and term to properly disclose the person of the Son. Though question 34 does not explicitly cite the Gospel of John, it is an outworking of the scriptural pedagogy initiated in question 27 and enriched by the Super Ioannem. The procession of the Word in God is affirmed and understood through exegesis of the literal and proper sense of “word” by analogy to the procession of a word in us.43 The performance of the analogy of word in the commentary on John 1:1 comes to a height at John 8:42. In John 8, Aquinas presents the power of Christ’s teaching to enlighten, which is a spiritual benefit that manifests his divinity. Christ is arguing with some Jewish leaders, rejecting their claim of origin from God. At verse 41, he proposes the true sign of divine sonship, which is love of God: “If God were your Father, you would indeed love me.” Aquinas notes that we are made children of God through a communicatio or sharing of the Holy Spirit, according to Rom 8:15: “You did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of sonship.” This is because the Spirit causes love of God, according to Rom 5:5: “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.”44 Verse 42 in John 8 gives the reason for the sign of divine sonship: “I proceeded from God.” The analepsis to John 1:1 recalls its performance of the word analogy, which Aquinas now heightens in explaining Christ’s argument. Since friendship is founded on a union, such as when brothers and sisters love each other on the basis of having the same parents, if these Jewish leaders say they are children of God, then they should love Christ, because he proceeds from God.45 Aquinas suggests that if one loves Christ, since he proceeds from God, then one loves God. Since charity from the Spirit is needed to love God, it is needed to love Christ in his divinity and affirm his procession in God. Love of God is a condition for knowledge of procession in God; hence, the performance of grasping the inner word is properly based upon love of the Word that leads to some grasp of this mystery in God. In this way, Christ’s words and authority at John 8:42 are used to evoke an affective experience as a basis for the analogy for understanding procession in God. His words may be addressed directly to the student: “If God were your Father, you would indeed love me; for I proceeded and came forth from God.” This ought to provoke love for Christ in his divinity, who proceeds as 43 44 45 For the development of Aquinas’s understanding of “word,” see Venard, Thomas d’Aquin, poète théologien II, 344–59. Super Ioan 8, lec. 5, no. 1234. Super Ioan 8, lec. 5, no. 1236. 1160 Zane E. Chu the Word in God. Insofar as love proceeds from a word, which itself proceeds in knowing, this affective experience is an actual performance of the analogy for understanding procession in God.46 Aquinas prompts this performance as a basis for facilitating a grasp of the analogy through its articulation in the magisterial response in the Summa theologiae. Magisterial Responses in Articles 1 and 2 of Question 27 in the Prima Pars The citation of John 8:42 is not only a scriptural authority that indicates procession in God, but it also recalls John 1:1 and provokes love of Christ in his divinity, such that a student performs the analogies of word and love. In the magisterial response of the first article of question 27, Aquinas articulates the word analogy according to the basic exercise in Trinitarian theology of holding together both unity of essence, against Arius, and distinction of persons, against Sabellius.47 To determine a correct understanding of procession in God, these two extreme positions must be avoided. Arius took procession as an effect proceeding from its cause, such that the Son and Holy Spirit proceed as creatures. Sabellius took procession as a cause proceeding to its effect, such that Father, Son, and Spirit are the same, differing only in the effects of taking flesh and sanctification. The central problem in the positions of Arius and Sabellius is that both view procession as something exterior and do not posit procession in God himself. But Aquinas explains that since every procession is from some action, just as there is outward procession in actions tending toward exterior matter, so there is inward procession in actions remaining in an agent. Having prompted the affective experience of loving Christ in knowing his divinity, Aquinas guides a further performance that reflects on this experience to grasp the inner word. He appeals to the clear evidence of the intellect that its action, “to understand,” remains in the one who understands. When we understand an object, something interior proceeds: the concept of the object understood. The concept proceeds from actual knowledge of the object by our intellectual power and is signified by the spoken word and called the “word of the heart.” Because God is above all things, what is 46 47 The importance of the experience of knowledge and love of God is confirmed in ST I, q. 43, a. 5, ad 2, and q. 93, aa. 7–8. See Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 2, Spiritual Master, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 94–98. For discussion of Aquinas’s scriptural framework for refuting the heresies, see Levering, Scripture and Metaphysics, 151–52. See also Super Ioan 1, lec. 1, nos. 44–45, for a grammatical approach to this basic exercise. Teaching the Trinity: Scripture and Performance of the Psychological Analog y 1161 understood of God must be taken from likenesses of the highest creatures. Hence, procession in God is taken as an intelligible emanation, understood by likeness or analogy to the intelligible word of the speaker that remains in the speaker.48 Though anticipated by citation of John 8:42, the word analogy is not yet explicitly linked to the Word of God as at John 1:1, awaiting its proper place in question 34. Still, Aquinas advances this linkage by explaining in the second article why procession of the Word in God is called generation. The word “generation” properly signifies the origin of a living being from a conjoined living principle. What is generated is called “begotten” if it proceeds in a likeness of specific nature, such as a human from a human or a horse from a horse. While in these examples generation includes a sense of change from non-being to being, this must be excluded in God, who does not change, while retaining the proper sense. In this manner, the procession of the Word in God is taken as a generation. The Word proceeds: by mode of intelligible action, which is a living operation; from a conjoined principle, the intellect of the speaker; in a likeness, because the concept is a likeness of the thing understood; and existing in the same nature, because in God to understand is the same as to exist. Hence, procession of the Word in God is understood as generation, and the Word proceeding is called Son.49 By the end of the first two articles of question 27, Aquinas has exercised the student in the scriptural affirmation of procession in God through analogy with the procession of a word in us. His citation and commentary on John 8:42 ground this analogy in Scripture and prompt its performance. The citation recalls John 1:1, which explicitly affirms that there is a Word in God and that this Word is God. Exegesis of the literal sense takes “Word” properly in God, allowing for an analogy with the human word, which is a likeness of the thing understood proceeding from the intellect in act. The magisterial response of the first article engages the positions of Arius and Sabellius to come to a proper understanding of procession in God analogous to intellectual procession, which prepares for use of the word analogy in its proper place in question 34. The citation is also used to provoke love of God needed to grasp procession in God, knowing Christ in his divinity that presupposes love of him, as an actual performance of the analogy. The articulation of a theory of knowing guides a further performance in which the student reflects upon this affective experience to grasp the word analogy, in order to come to a deeper grasp of Christ’s procession as Word of the Father. 48 49 ST I, q. 27, q. 1. ST I, q. 27, a. 2. 1162 Zane E. Chu Procession and Analogy of Love The third article of question 27 affirms a second procession in God other than generation. The sed contra again cites Christ’s words, teaching that the Holy Spirit “proceeds from the Father” at John 15:26, and is distinct from the Son at John 14:16: “I will ask my Father, and he will give you another Paraclete.”50 The Scriptural context and Aquinas’s commentary ground the analogy of love in scriptural exegesis and continue to prompt its performance similar to and building upon the use of John 8:42. Commentary on John 14:16 and 15:26 In Aquinas’s commentary on John 14 and 15, Christ’s words evoke a more stirring affective experience, building upon 8:42, that is again a performance of the psychological analogy. While Christ argues pointedly with Jewish leaders in John 8, he now speaks directly to his disciples, consoling them about his imminent departure and their future tribulations. In John 14, Christ promises them the presence of the persons of the Trinity, particularly the Holy Spirit as “another Paraclete” or consoler. This word indicates the Spirit as “Spirit of love,” for love produces spiritual consolation and joy, according to Gal 5:22: “The fruit of the Spirit is charity, joy, etc.”51 In John 15, Christ exhorts the disciples to abide in him, as branches with the vine, by keeping the commandment of charity. Facing future tribulations (the pruning of the vine), Christ will console them by excluding the excuses of their persecutors through sending the Paraclete, “the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father.”52 Christ’s words continue to provoke love of him, needed for knowing the truth of his divinity and eternal procession, and now extending to truths about his divinity, meaning the procession of the Spirit. Aquinas invites recalling experience of the Spirit of love and truth, who brings consolation and joy even in the midst of tribulations, as an affective basis for understanding this procession. The emergence of the analogy of love from exegesis is not as direct as for the analogy of word. Aquinas must first affirm that there is a second procession in God. He glosses John 14:16—“[the Father] will give you another Paraclete”—adding “although not without the Son.”53 The word “another” indicates distinction of persons in God against Sabellius. To the question of 50 51 52 53 ST I, q. 27, a. 3, sc. Aquinas likely prioritizes John 15:26 because it contains the verb procedit. Super Ioan 14, lec. 4, no. 1911. Super Ioan 15, lec. 5, no. 2044. Super Ioan 14, lec. 4, no. 1911. Teaching the Trinity: Scripture and Performance of the Psychological Analog y 1163 whether “another Paraclete” suggests that the Spirit has another nature than the Son, because different actions indicate different natures, Aquinas replies by differentiating the persons. Each is a consoler in his own way according to personal property: the Spirit is a consoler inasmuch as he is formally love, and the Son is a consoler inasmuch as he is the Word, through his teaching and by giving the Spirit to inflame love in our hearts.54 For Aquinas, John 14:16 clearly affirms a second procession in God other than generation. The next verse introduces the phrase “Spirit of truth,” from which Aquinas draws out the analogy of love for understanding the second procession. The word “spirit” indicates subtleness of nature, hiddenness, and invisibility, as well as impulsion or power that moves us to act and to work well, according to Rom 8:14: “All who are impelled by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” Next, “of truth” is added because the Spirit “proceeds from truth and speaks the truth,” for he “is nothing other than love.”55 While Aquinas has affirmed that the Son and Spirit are distinct persons, he has not yet explicitly affirmed that the Spirit proceeds from the Son. The words “Spirit of truth” suggest the latter, since Christ is the truth, as he teaches at John 14:6: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.” Hence, Aquinas proposes the analogy of love: “Just as from truth conceived and considered in us follows love of that truth, so from truth conceived in God, which is the Son, proceeds love.”56 Love proceeding from truth leads to cognition of truth, according to John 16:14: “He will glorify me; because he will receive of mine and will show it to you.” Any truth, regardless of who speaks it, is from the Spirit, according to 1 Cor 12:3—“no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit,”—and John 15:26, which begins, “when the Paraclete comes, whom I will send you, the Spirit of truth,” and continues, “who proceeds from the Father.” There, Aquinas argues that the Spirit also proceeds from the Son.57 Because the Son is “the truth,” the words “Spirit of truth” are equivalent to “Spirit of the Son” as at Gal 4:6, “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts.” Also, because the word “spirit” indicates impulsion, and the effect of every motion is fitting to its principle, the Spirit makes those to whom he is sent like the one whose Spirit he is: as Spirit of truth, “he will teach you all truth,” according to John 16:13, and as Spirit of the Son, he makes children of God, according to Rom 8:15. 54 55 56 57 Super Ioan 14, lec. 4, no. 1912. Super Ioan 14, lec. 4, no. 1916. Aquinas’s exegesis of “Spirit of truth” is fuller here than at John 15:26. Analysis of the word “spirit” is paralleled in ST I, q. 36, a. 1. Super Ioan 14, lec. 4, no. 1916. Super Ioan 15, lec. 5, no. 2062. Nos. 2063–65 present a full argument that the Spirit proceeds from the Son, paralleled in ST I, q. 36, a. 2. 1164 Zane E. Chu Aquinas’s commentary on John 15:26 and 14:16, building upon John 8:42, shows that the affective experience of being made children of God by the Spirit of the Son is a performative basis for the analogy for understanding procession in God. Christ teaches us to love him in his divinity, knowing that he proceeds from God. Such love of God comes from the Spirit who proceeds from and leads to the Son, just as love follows upon and leads to truth conceived. Aquinas leads the student to attend to the truth conceived of Christ’s divinity, and the love that follows upon and leads to it that comes from the Spirit. Scripture explicitly indicates the word analogy by using “Word” to name the Son, but the analogy of love derives from analysis of “Spirit of truth” to name the distinct person of the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Son.58 Magisterial Responses in Articles 3 and 4 of Question 27 The citations of John 15:26 and 14:16 not only indicate a second procession in God, but also provoke love of Christ from the Holy Spirit, such that the student again performs the psychological analogy as an affective basis for facilitating its grasp. Focusing on the analogy of love for understanding the second procession, Aquinas begins his magisterial response in the third article of question 27 by recalling what the first article established, that procession in God is conceived according to action remaining in the agent, as in the intellect. But he now directs the student’s attention to action in the will, which involves a procession distinct from that of a word. He guides the further performance of discovering that this other procession is love, “according to which the beloved is in the one who loves; just as through conception of the word, the thing spoken or understood is in the one who understands.”59 This analogy requires a clarification in light of divine simplicity. An objector argues that because God’s will is not other than his intellect, there is only one procession in God, that of the Word. Aquinas concedes the former but notes that the will and intellect require a certain order between them, for nothing can be loved by the will unless it is conceived in the 58 59 Gilles Emery notes that the analogy of love is not on the same level as the analogy of word, since Scripture has a textual opening for the latter, but not the former (“Biblical Exegesis and the Speculative Doctrine of the Trinity in St. Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on St. John,” in Dauphinais and Levering, Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas, 23–61, at 32). This indicates why the Super Ioan does not explain the Spirit’s procession using love’s ratio of inclination, as in the ST. I suggest that the latter is pedagogical shorthand for accounting for the scriptural witness. ST I, q. 27, a. 3, resp. Teaching the Trinity: Scripture and Performance of the Psychological Analog y 1165 intellect.60 The processions of the Word and Love in God are distinguished according to their order. The fourth article further explains the difference between the processions in terms of the operations of intellect and will. The intellect is in act according to the likeness of the thing understood being in the intellect. The will is in act not by a likeness of the thing willed in the will, but according to the will having an inclination to the thing willed.61 Intellectual procession is a likeness and called “generation.” Procession in the will is not a likeness, but an impulse and movement toward something. But an objector has difficulty with the principle that likeness is a cause of love. Aquinas’s reply clarifies how likeness pertains to a word in one way, and to love in another. A word is itself a likeness of the thing understood, just as something begotten is a likeness of its generator. Love is not a likeness of the thing loved; rather, the likeness of the thing understood is the principle of loving. Hence, love is not begotten, but the one begotten is the principle of love.62 Aquinas uses this clarification to explain that the Son, the likeness and Word of the Father, is a principle of the Love that is the Holy Spirit. By the end of the fourth article of question 27, Aquinas has led the student to affirm and understand two processions in God. Scripture itself indicates procession in God, of the Word and of the Spirit of truth who causes the love of God in our hearts. Aquinas articulates the analogies of word and love to make proper sense of the meaning of Scripture and uses the same Scripture to prompt the affective experience of being made children of God as a performative basis for guiding the student through the analogies. Our love of God based upon our knowledge of God is an actual performance in us of the analogies for the Trinity, and the further performance of being guided through it leads to a deeper grasp of each procession. The truth of Christ’s divinity conceived in a word is a likeness of the Word, and love of him, founded upon this likeness, is an impulse, movement, or inclination toward him as beloved that discloses the procession of the Spirit. The Word proceeds in likeness from the Father, and the Spirit of truth proceeds from them both as the Love who makes us children of God through this knowledge and love to lead us to God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 60 61 62 ST I, q. 27, a. 3, ad 3. ST I, q. 27, a. 4, resp. ST I, q. 27, a. 4, ad 2. 1166 Zane E. Chu The Holy Spirit’s Proper Name of Love and Preaching The scriptural pedagogy for the Trinity initiated in question 27 comes to a height in question 37, which affirms “Love” as a proper name of the Holy Spirit. Aquinas uses the analogies of word and love to maximal effect in order to distinguish the Spirit from the other persons. Within this deepening contemplation of the Trinity, an opening to return to Scripture appears. To complete tracing the priority of Scripture in Aquinas’s employment of the psychological analogy—its foundation in exegesis, performative aspects, and orientation toward preaching—I examine his affirmation of the Spirit as Love and his preaching on the Spirit on this basis. Article 1 of Question 37 The first article of question 37 asks whether “Love” is a proper name of the Holy Spirit. The first objection cites Augustine’s traditional formulation of this question: how is charity, which is God’s essence, also the distinctive name of the person of the Spirit?63 Augustine was concerned with exegesis of Scripture, which speaks of the Spirit of the Father and of the Son, suggesting their common charity, yet it does not say, “the Spirit is charity,” but that “God is charity.”64 Augustine responds by arguing that 1 John 4:13 and 16 show that the Spirit is love: “The Holy Spirit of which he has given us . . . makes us abide in God and him in us. But this is precisely what love does. He then is God who is love.”65 Though Augustine introduces Love as a proper name of the Holy Spirit, Aquinas cites Gregory the Great as the authority in the sed contra: “The Holy Spirit himself is love.”66 This is taken from a homily on Pentecost Sunday and confirms Aquinas’s pedagogy in three ways. First, as in Aquinas’s exegesis of John 8:42, 15:26, and 14:16, Gregory articulates the condition for loving God, which is having the Spirit who is love and who is God. At Pentecost, the Spirit came to the disciples, and so they received God and were enflamed by love, for “the Holy Spirit is love, and so John says: ‘God 63 64 65 66 ST I, q. 37, a. 1, obj. 1, citing Augustine, De Trinitate 15.17.28. Augustine, De Trinitate 15.17.27. Augustine, De Trinitate 15.17.31, trans. Edmund Hill (Brooklyn, NY: New City, 1991), 420–21 (trans. modified). He also notes that 1 John 4:7–8 shows that the Spirit is love, but that 1 John 4:13 and 16 shows it more clearly. ST I, q. 37, a. 1, sc, citing Gregory, Homily 30 on the Gospels. Transmission of Gregory’s homilies through the Office of Matins renders them “a sort of official commentary on the Sunday Gospel.” (Santha Bhattacharji, translator’s preface, Reading the Gospels with Gregory the Great: Homilies on the Gospels, 21–26, trans. Bhattacharji [Petersham, MA: St. Bede’s Publications, 2001], 8). Teaching the Trinity: Scripture and Performance of the Psychological Analog y 1167 is love,’” echoing Augustine. Gregory adds, “no one could love God unless he possessed the one he loves.”67 Second, Gregory invites us to perform an examination of our loving: “Dearly beloved, enter into yourselves and inquire if you truly love God. But let no one believe the answer his heart gives in his own case apart from testimony of his works.”68 For, “the proof of love is its manifestation in deeds,” which Aquinas often cites.69 Third, Gregory proposes how to love the Spirit whom we do not know visibly. While we cannot see God, we can look at God’s servants in their virtues and miracles. By walking in their light, loving God and neighbor with our whole heart, “we may sometimes raise our eyes to observe him in heaven.” Since we cannot truly love our neighbor without love of God, “let us love the one who is near us, so that we may be able to reach the love of the one who is above us.”70 By citing Gregory, Aquinas invites a further performance of examining our love of God and neighbor, in order to grasp the distinction and proper name of the Spirit who is Love, whom we have received and who inflames our love, which is the affective basis of the psychological analogy. In his magisterial response, Aquinas affirms that “Love” is a proper name of the Holy Spirit by distinguishing between taking Love essentially and personally in God.71 He explains this by making an analepsis to question 27 to refine the analogies of word and love. When I understand a thing, “to understand” signifies my regard to the thing understood. This act of understanding results in the procession of a word, or intellectual conception, which, though interior, may be said “to be spoken.” In God, “to understand” is said only essentially, because of itself it does not indicate relation to the word proceeding; “word” is said personally, because it signifies that which proceeds; and “to speak” is said notionally, because it indicates relation of the principle of a word to the word itself. Similarly, when I love someone, “to love” signifies my regard to the beloved. This act of love results in an “impression” of the beloved in my affection, such that the beloved is said to be in me. This impression is analogous to the word proceeding. Lack of terminology, however, requires use of the same term “love” to indicate both the regard of lover for beloved and the proceeding impression of the beloved. Aquinas completes his explanation by distinguishing the uses of “to love” in God, similar to the use of “‘to understand,” “word,” and “to speak.” “To 67 68 69 70 71 Gregory, Homily 30 on the Gospels, in Forty Gospel Homilies, trans. David Hurst (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1990), 236–48, at 236. Gregory, Homily 30 on the Gospels (p. 237). Gregory, Homily 30 on the Gospels (p. 236). Gregory, Homily 30 on the Gospels (p. 247). ST I, q. 37, a. 1, resp. 1168 Zane E. Chu love” taken essentially indicates the relation of lover to beloved. “Love” taken personally expresses that which proceeds by way of love, the impression of the beloved or “love proceeding.” In this way, “Love” is a proper name of the Holy Spirit, since it is a term distinguished from its principle. “To love” taken notionally indicates the relation of the principle of love proceeding to love proceeding itself. Since the Son is the likeness and Word of the Father, the Father and the Son love each other, and the Holy Spirit is their proceeding Love. By the end of article 1, I suggest, it confirms the function of the scriptural citations in question 27. The authority of Gregory recalls Aquinas’s citation and exegesis of John 8:42, 15:26, and 14:16, from which the analogies of word and love emerge, and invites a further performance of examining our love of God and neighbor that the Holy Spirit gives to us and is in person. Within this proper context, Aquinas refines the analogies of word and love in order to affirm that “Love” is a proper name of the Spirit.72 Just as our love of God results in an affective impression of or inclination toward the beloved, so the Holy Spirit is distinguished as the proceeding Love of the Father and the Son. This contemplation of the Spirit, in turn, provides a basis for sound preaching, of which Gregory’s homily is an authoritative source. Aquinas often cites a memorable saying from this homily—“The proof of love is shown in works”—for use not only in speculative theology but also in his own preaching.73 Aquinas’s Sermon for Pentecost Completing our tracing of Aquinas’s teaching of the Trinity from Scripture to Scripture, his sermon for Pentecost Sunday offers a glimpse of sound preaching based upon contemplation of the Holy Spirit through the analogy of love and building on the authority of Gregory. In the preamble, Aquinas asks the Spirit to give him the words to speak and cites Gregory’s words, “those whom he fills, he makes wise.”74 The theme for the sermon is from 72 73 74 An anonymous reviewer emphasizes “Love” not simply as an appropriated name for the Spirit, but as a proper name. Our love of God, as performed in the psychological analogy, is the work of all three persons and appropriated to the Spirit. Yet this appropriation is possible precisely because of the notional Love that the Spirit is in person, which the analogy helps to disclose. For further discussion, see Emery, Trinitarian Theology, 243–44, 330–31, 389–90. Two uses in the Super Ioan are illustrative. On John 3:16, it indicates why God “gave his only-begotten Son” (Super Ioan 3, lec. 3, no. 476). On John 14:23, it indicates why we must keep Christ’s commandment to love, “if anyone loves me he will keep my word” (Super Ioan 14, lec. 6, no. 1942). Aquinas, Emitte Spiritum, citing Gregory, Homily 30 on the Gospels. I refer to Teaching the Trinity: Scripture and Performance of the Psychological Analog y 1169 Psalm 103:30: “Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth.” Aquinas proposes a fourfold division: the Spirit’s properties, sending, power or effects, and recipients. His preaching on the Spirit’s properties illustrates the use of the analogy of love, and his preaching on the Spirit’s effects explicitly builds upon Gregory’s preaching. As in the Super Ioannem, he here takes the word “spirit” to suggest properties of the Holy Spirit: hidden origin, impulse of motion, subtleness of substance, and holiness of life. Aquinas uses the analogy of love to ground his discussion of the first three properties. Hidden origin indicates the cause of things, which is God, who creates not from need, but from a will of love: “This love is the Holy Spirit . . . whose property is love.” Impulse of motion indicates that all things in the world are moved by the Spirit. God is the first mover, moving by will; the first motion of the will is love; and the operation of love is that one moved by love rejoices by love over the thing loved. Subtleness of substance is from the fact that the Spirit is the love “of God and of those who love God.” The Spirit is “the love by which God loves God and by which the Father loves the Son.” Just as love moves to rejoice over the beloved, so the Spirit as Love creates, moves, and makes us lovers of God so that we may love the Son as the Father loves him. Aquinas then turns to preach on the effects of the Spirit, based upon his properties and grounded in the analogy of love. Since the Spirit is the love that creates, our renewal by grace is taken as a re-creation: just as when one comes into existence the first thing obtained is life, so in the existence of grace there must be something through which one lives, namely, charity. Thus, Aquinas exhorts to love of neighbor, for whoever does not do this is dead. Charity is the life of the soul, which lives through God dwelling in us through charity, according to 1 John 4:16: “He who abides in charity abides in God, and God abides in him.” Citing John 14:23, from the Gospel of the day—“if a man loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him”—Aquinas warns that whoever does not do the will of God does not perfectly love him, for “it belongs to friends to will and not will the same thing.” He reinforces this by citing Gregory: “Love’s proof is in love’s work.” Aquinas exhorts against doubting our power to fulfill God’s commands by positioning John 14:23 as a response to such doubt: God’s presence enables us to dedicate our powers to fulfill God’s commands, and the charity for fulfilling them comes from the Spirit, according to Rom 5:5. Just as one has a share of daylight from the translation by Peter A. Kwasniewski and Jeremy Holmes, isidore.co/aquinas/ Serm11Emitte.htm. 1170 Zane E. Chu the sun, so one has charity from the Spirit, who is the love “of God and of those who love God.” Returning to the theme, Aquinas glosses, “therefore: ‘Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created,’ namely, in the being of the life of grace, through charity.” Aquinas preaches and prays that we would have the Spirit and charity which makes us children of God, knowing God by knowing Christ as the divine Word and by loving him, just as the Father loves him by the same Spirit. Through the analogies of word and love, we perform in ourselves that which we seek to contemplate more deeply, God in three persons. Conclusion In this essay, I have sought to demonstrate the function of the Scripture citations at the outset of the Trinitarian treatise in the Summa theologiae. Aquinas initiates his teaching of the Trinity by citing John 8:42, 15:26, and 14:16, where Christ teaches about his procession in God and that of the Holy Spirit. The corresponding commentary in the Super Ioannem grounds the analogies of word and love in exegesis of the literal sense of the Word in God and of the Spirit of truth. The citations and commentary also prompt actual performance of the psychological analogy by provoking knowledge of Christ as the divine Word and love of him from the Holy Spirit that both leads to and follows upon such knowledge. The articulation of the analogies is a further guided performance that reflects on this affective experience to facilitate grasp of the analogy, in order to come to a deeper grasp of the processions of the Word and Love in God. This pedagogy comes to a high point in Aquinas’s consideration of “Love” as a proper name of the Holy Spirit, refining the analogy and preparing for preaching, as evidenced by his sermon for Pentecost Sunday. Aquinas’s teaching invites students and teachers of the Trinity to continually return to Scripture, which is both the source and aim of all theological effort. “Intellectualism” in such efforts, at least for Aquinas, is not simply taking a philosophical position, but an affective and intellectual exercise of Scripture within the lived Christian life. The Spirit of truth makes us lovers of the Word, children of God who seek to understand this God revealed in Scripture more deeply so as to grow in love of him.75 75 I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this and other helpful suggestions, as well as to Gilles Mongeau, S.J., and Gordon Rixon, S.J., for helping me think through material in this essay. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2023): 1171–1200 1171 “He Who Eats Me Will Live Because of Me”: Eucharistic Indwelling and Aquinas’s Johannine Theology of the Missions of the Divine Persons Daniel M. Garland Jr. Ohio Dominican University Columbus, OH Introduction In the Bread of Life Discourse of John 6, Jesus begins his teaching by stating that he is the true bread from heaven sent from God to give life to the world. After “the Jews” (οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι)1 boast that Moses gave their fathers manna to eat in the wilderness, Jesus makes a contrast between the manna in the wilderness and himself as the “bread of life” (6:35). While the title “Bread of Life” carries a metaphorical sense, Jesus climaxes his discourse by 1 For the difficulties in translating οἱ Ἰουδαῖοι, see John Bergsma, “Qumran and the Concept of Pan-Israelite Restoration,” Letter & Spirit 8 (2012–2013): 145–59. Bergsma, following the work of Shemaryahu Cohen, notes that the word “Jew” has become an exclusively religious term. For this reason, “It should be used with great care when translating the Hebrew yehûdî and the Greek ioudaîos, because in antiquity these terms more commonly mean a ‘Judean’ in an ethno-geographic or political sense, not a ‘Jew’ in the religious sense” (147). Bergsma further states: “The English term ‘Jew’ is often used (inaccurately and anachronistically) to describe Judeans who are merely ethnically or politically associated with Judea, as well as Israelites of any time period. This confusion begins already with Josephus, who employs ioudaîoi indiscriminately to describe the people of Israel back to the time of Samuel at least (e.g. Ant. 6:30 et passim). Despite the antiquity of this conflation of terminology, it should be avoided, inasmuch as it leads to confusion and blurs the distinction between ancient Israel and the various forms of Judaism in the minds of students and even scholars themselves” (147). 1172 Daniel M. Garland Jr. insisting that believers eat of (ἐσθίω) or gnaw on (τρώγω) his flesh and drink his blood. Then, in John 6:57, Jesus makes the startling claim: “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so the one who eats [τρώγω] me will live because of me.” Jesus, here, connects his mission with the giving of his flesh as food for eternal life. At the same time, Jesus declares in John 17:3 that eternal life is predicated on the knowledge of God the Father and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent. There seems to be a tension here in John’s Gospel. Do we have eternal life by eating or by knowing? This article will explore the gift of eternal life communicated through the sacramental eating and drinking of Christ’s body and blood and its relation to our coming to know the Father and the Son. It will be divided into two main parts. The first part will explore this as revealed in the text of the Gospel of John by examining what it means “to know God.” Next, I will show that Jesus has the power to give eternal life because he is Life itself and that John points to the root of this power as being derived from Jesus’s procession from the Father. Then, I will take up Jesus’s mutual abiding/indwelling language in John 6 and elsewhere in the Gospel and how this contributes to bringing eternal life to believers. The second part will show how St. Thomas’s teaching on the missions of the divine persons further clarifies Jesus’s teaching in the Gospel of John that eternal life comes about through both eating Christ’s flesh and coming to the knowledge of the Father and the Son and also gives greater theological insight into the Johannine theology of the Eucharist as the source of eternal life. Gospel of John John 17 and the Relational Name of the Father and the Son in Relation to Eternal Life In John 17, Jesus prays from the vantage point of already having completed (17:4; τελειώσας) the work that the Father has given him to do. The work that Jesus speaks of is both a past event, consisting of the signs that witness that the Father has sent him (see 5:36; τελειώσω), but also the future event of the Cross (see 19:30; τετέλεσται).2 Here, Jesus requests glorification by the Father in order that he, as Son, may glorify the Father in return. This mutual glorification is rooted in the power (ἐξουσίαν) that the Father has given to the Son over all flesh—the power to grant eternal life (17:2). Jesus 2 See Rodney A. Whitacre, John (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1999), 403–4: “In his prayer Jesus will speak of the past and the future from an eternal perspective, but it is all grounded in the present, at this particular climactic point in salvation history: Father, the [hour] has come (v.1)” (emphasis original). Eucharistic Indwelling and Aquinas’s Johannine Theolog y 1173 then defines eternal life in 17:3 as “to know the only true God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent.” There is an intimate connection, here, between knowing the Father (“the only true God”) and Jesus. Eternal life is not merely knowledge of the Father, but knowledge of the Father as the one who sent the Son.3 How does one know the Father? John 17 suggests that it is through the revelation of his name. There is a repeated refrain in John 17 of Jesus making known the Father’s name (17:6, 26) and keeping them in this name (17:11, 12). Looking back in the Gospel, we can recall that in John 5:43, Jesus associates the “Father’s name” with his mission: “I have come in my Father’s name.” The same can be said of John 10:25: “The works that I do in my Father’s name, they bear witness to me.” Eternal life then seems to be connected with the revelation of the “name of the Father.” Yet, at the same time, as Joshua Coutts has noted, there is also a “strong emphasis on Jesus’s own name which pervades the Gospel of John: Followers ‘believe’ in (3.18) and pray in his name (14.14), suffer for his name (15.21), and have ‘life’ in his name (20.31), and the Spirit-Paraclete is sent in his name (14.26).”4 Given John’s emphasis on the interrelation of the Father and the Son (see 5:23, 38; 6:57; 7:16; 10:36; 12:44, 45; 14:7, 10, 11; 17:10, 21, 23) and Jesus’s emphasis on doing nothing from himself, but only what he has received/seen/heard from the Father, we can suggest that the “name of the Father” is not simply “Father,” but is rather relational—his name is “Father of the Son.” Likewise, the name of the Son is not simply “Son,” but “Son of the Father.” Knowing God Jesus, therefore, has the power (ἐξουσίαν) given to him by the Father to grant eternal life (17:2) to those who have come to know that Jesus is the Son of the Father and that God is the Father of the Son.5 When we compare John 17 with the prologue to the Gospel, we receive even further clarification on the nature of the eternal life that the Son has been sent to bring.6 John 1:12 tells us that to those who receive Jesus and believe in his name, Jesus gives power (ἐξουσίαν) to become children of God (τέκνα θεοῦ). As we have 3 4 5 6 See Whitacre, John, 407. Joshua J. F. Coutts, The Divine Name in the Gospel of John: Significance and Impetus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017), 126. See Francis J. Moloney, The Gospel of John (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1998), 461: “This is not a gnostic promise of a saving ‘knowledge,’ but the promise of life that can be had by those who believe that Jesus Christ has told the saving story of God (cf. 1:18). The believer has eternal life by knowing the God revealed by Jesus, the logos of God. The revelation that makes eternal life possible for ‘all flesh’ (vv.2–3) has taken place in Jesus’ revealing words and works.” See also Whitacre, John, 406. See Moloney, Gospel of John, 461. 1174 Daniel M. Garland Jr. suggested above, to believe in the name of Jesus is to believe in Jesus as Son of the Father. Being “kept in the name” of the Father, then, as Jesus prays for the disciples in John 17:11, is parallel to the formula in John 1:12 of “receiving” and “believing in the name” of the Son. To receive and believe in the Son and to be kept in the name of the Father is to know (γινώσκειν) the only true God (the Father), and Jesus Christ (the Son) whom he has sent (17:3).7 To those who know Jesus as the Son of the Father Jesus will give the gift of eternal life.8 Yet, how does one know God in a way that leads to eternal life? Is saving knowledge simply a recognition or perception that Jesus is the Son of God the Father—speculative knowledge—or is it something more?9 We can begin by stating that the knowledge that Jesus is sent to bring is more than the merely speculative knowledge that Jesus is the Son of the Father and that the Father is the Father of the Son. Surely, this is an aspect of what it means to have the saving knowledge that brings about eternal life, but it does not exhaust what Jesus speaks of in John 17:3. Further, the knowledge that Jesus gives is something that he himself possesses. That is, Jesus makes the Father known because he himself knows the Father (8:55; 17:25). This intimate knowledge of the Father comes from Jesus’s mutual indwelling with the Father—Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in him (10:38; 14:10, 11, 20). Due to this mutual indwelling which gives the Son intimate knowledge of the Father, to know the Son is also to know the Father (8:19; 14:7). Thus, C. K. Barrett notes: Knowledge of God cannot be severed from knowledge of his incarnate Son. . . . Saving knowledge is rooted in knowledge of a historical 7 8 9 See Bertil Gärtner, “The Pauline and Johannine Idea of ‘to Know God’ against the Hellenistic Background,” New Testament Studies 14, no. 2 (1968): 209–31, at 224: “According to the Prologue it is only through a transformation or re-creation that a man becomes capable of sharing the eternal life, the blessings of the heavenly world, a sharing that in the gospel as a whole is called ‘to know God.’ The process of transformation into the new existence is ‘to become a child of God.’” See also Thomas Aquinas, Super Ioan 17, lec. 1, no. 2187. See Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel According to St. John, vol. 2, bk. 6, ch. 5, trans. Edward Pusey (Oxford: James Parker, 1874), 490: “Very necessary then was it, for our Lord Jesus Christ to tell us, that those who have been called through faith to sonship and eternal life, not only ought to learn that the true God is One only, but that He is also a Father; and is the Father of One Who became flesh for our sakes, and Who was sent to restore the corrupted nature of rational beings, that is, of mankind.” See Rudolf Bultmann, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans. G. R. Beasley-Murray (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971), 491: “According to v. 3, the life which [ Jesus] bestows is nothing other than the knowledge of God and of himself as the Revealer.” Eucharistic Indwelling and Aquinas’s Johannine Theolog y 1175 person; it is therefore objective and at the same time a personal relation.10 This knowledge of the incarnate Son comes to the disciples through the mutual indwelling of the Son in the disciples and the disciples in the Son. Just as the Son knows the Father through the mutual indwelling of the Son and the Father, so also that knowledge of the Father is mediated through the Son to the disciples in the mutual indwelling of the Son and the disciples. In John 10:14, Jesus teaches that those who are truly his sheep know Jesus and he knows them. Then, in 14:19–20, Jesus elaborates on how this mutual knowledge of one another will occur. After Jesus returns to the Father by way of his death, resurrection, and ascension, he will return to his disciples through the Holy Spirit. In that day, through the gift of the Holy Spirit dwelling in his disciples, Jesus promises that they will know that he is in the Father and that they are in him, and he in them.11 Jesus makes a parallel statement later, in 17:25–26: O righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you; and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.12 In revealing that he is the Son, Jesus has made known the Father’s name as Father of the Son, but he will further make it known (γνωρίσω) in a way that 10 11 12 C. K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John: An Introduction with Commentary and Notes on the Greek Text, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), 504. See also Rodney Whitacre, John, IVP New Testament Commentary Series (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1999), 407: “Eternal life is not just a knowledge of God as revealed by the Son; it includes a knowledge of the Son himself.” See C. H. Dodd, The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), 423: “Knowledge of God which is life eternal is mediated by an historical transaction. Only through the ‘departure’ and ‘return’ of Christ, that is, through His actual death on the cross and His actual resurrection, is the life He brings liberated for the life of the world. If the goal is the unity of mankind with God, it is only by dying that Christ can ‘gather the scattered children of God’; it is only by being ‘lifted up’ on the cross that He can ‘draw all men to Him.’ The prayer, ‘that they may all be one, I in them and thou in me,’ finds fulfilment only because He who offers it has laid down His life for His friends.” πάτερ δίκαιε, καὶ ὁ κόσμος σε οὐκ ἔγνω, ἐγὼ δέ σε ἔγνων, καὶ οὗτοι ἔγνωσαν ὅτι σύ με ἀπέστειλας· καὶ ἐγνώρισα αὐτοῖς τὸ ὄνομά σου καὶ γνωρίσω, ἵνα ἡ ἀγάπη ἣν ἠγάπησάς με ἐν αὐτοῖς ᾖ κἀγὼ ἐν αὐτοῖς. Trans. from the Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006). 1176 Daniel M. Garland Jr. goes beyond mere speculative knowledge. It will be known in an experiential or affective way through the mutual love of the Father and the Son, that is the Holy Spirit, which is given to the disciples, causing Jesus to be in them. Bertil Gärtner, who sees John’s teaching on this type of knowledge as a taking up and deepening of the Hellenistic principle of “like is known by like,” concludes: “To know God” is thus an expression of “like by like”: only when the Paraclete-Pneuma had arrived, was the qualitative presupposition of knowing God created.13 The Holy Spirit dwelling in believers makes them have an immediate experiential knowledge of the Son, which through the mutual indwelling of the Father and the Son gives experiential knowledge of the Father.14 It is this knowledge that gives eternal life. In the sections that follow, I will further flesh out how eternal life is given through this knowledge that is communicated to believers by Jesus. I will show that John presents Eucharistic eating and drinking as the source of this experiential knowledge through the mutual indwelling of Jesus and believers that it brings about. Jesus as Life Itself in John The power that Jesus has to give eternal life is not a power that is outside of him. Rather, Jesus imparts eternal life because he is life itself. In John 14:6, along with Jesus declaring that he is the way (ἡ ὁδός) and the truth (ἡ ἀλήθεια), he also declares that he is the life (ἡ ζωή). Earlier, in the Bread of Life Discourse, Jesus describes himself as “the Bread of Life” (ὁ ἄρτος τῆς ζωῆς; 6:35) who will give life to the world (6:33). Jesus as life itself has already been established at the beginning of John’s prologue in 1:3–4, where the Evangelist states: “That which had come to be in him was life, and the 13 14 Gärtner, “Pauline and Johannine Idea,” 226. See Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John XIII–XXI, Anchor Bible 29a (New York: Doubleday, 1970), 752: “For John . . . knowing God is not a purely intellectual matter but involves a life of obedience to God’s commandments and of loving communion with fellow Christians (I John i 3, iv 8, v 3). This is in agreement with the Hebrew use of the verb ‘to know’ with its connotation of immediate experience and intimacy.” See also George R. Beasley-Murray, John, 2nd ed., Word Biblical Commentary 36 (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1999), 297: “Such knowledge advances beyond the intellect to include relationship and communion; its revelation by the Son entails entry into the koinonia (fellowship) of the Father and the Son, which is the heart of life in the saving sovereignty (cf. Rev 21:3; 22:3–5).” Eucharistic Indwelling and Aquinas’s Johannine Theolog y 1177 life was the light of men.”15 John began the first verses of his Gospel with an allusion to the creation of natural life in Genesis,16 but here in verses 3–4 and following he shifts to tell of the new creation to supernatural life.17 As the Word who was with God and is God (v. 1), this life who is the light of men, has come into the world to overcome the darkness of sin (v. 5) and to enlighten all men (v. 9) through the gift of eternal life (cf. 4:10). Rooted in His Procession from the Father Jesus as life itself is rooted in his procession from the Father. In John 5:26, Jesus tells his interlocutors that as the Father has life in himself, so also has the Father given to the Son to have life in himself (οὕτως καὶ τῷ υἱῷ ἔδωκεν ζωὴν ἔχειν ἐν ἑαυτῷ).18 St. Thomas comments: That has life in itself which has an essential, non-participated life, i.e., that which is itself life. Now in every genus of things, that which is something through its essence is the cause of those things that are it by participation, as fire is the cause of all things afire. And so, that which is life through its essence, is the cause and principle of all life 15 16 17 18 For this reading, favored by Nestle-Aland 28, see Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John I–XII (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966), 6–7. See also Johannes Beutler, A Commentary on the Gospel of John, trans. Michael Tait (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017), 38–39. See Beutler, Commentary on the Gospel of John, 40: “The flashback of the first verse of John’s prologue to the first verses of the Bible, Gen 1:1–2:4a, is clear. Both texts open with ‘in the beginning.’ They counterpose ‘light’ and ‘darkness.’ To the phrase ‘God spoke’ of Genesis corresponds the ‘Word’ of the prologue. Both texts speak of ‘coming into being’ (ἐγένετο is the most frequent verb form in the first creation account). Both also speak of ‘life’ as the work of God (in Genesis, applied to the creatures, Gen 1:20–30).” See Beutler, Commentary on the Gospel of John, 39: “The transition from the creation ‘through’ (διἁ) the Logos in v. 3a to the γέγονεν ἐν at the beginning of v. 4, over which Bultmann stumbled, can be explained through the indication that v. 4 is precisely not dealing with the creation any longer but with salvation ‘in’ the Logos. . . . With ‘light’ and ‘life,’ two central catchwords of Johannine theology are introduced. Just as Jesus gives life (cf. 3:16, 36), and indeed is life (14:6), so he is also the light of the world (9:5; 8:12; 12:46). The incarnation of the divine Word is not directly expressed yet, but nonetheless appears to be presupposed here.” See Beutler, Commentary on the Gospel of John, 156: “In v. 26, the evangelist abandons for a moment the traditional world of eschatological notions and speaks of Christ as the source of life in more theological language. The Father has life in himself, and he has also handed over this power to the Son. Here the prologue of the Gospel comes to mind ( John 1:4), where the divine word appears as bearer and source of life.” 1178 Daniel M. Garland Jr. in living things. Accordingly, if something is to be a principle of life, it must be life through its essence.19 To have life through essence is the prerogative of God alone. Thus, Jesus signals that he, too, is God, just as the Father is God, and so is life itself. In John 6:57, Jesus likewise speaks of the life he has received from the Father and adds to it the concept of his mission from the Father: “As the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father . . .” (καθὼς ἀπέστειλέν με ὁ ζῶν πατὴρ κἀγὼ ζῶ διὰ τὸν πατέρα . . .). The Father has sent the Son to communicate to man that life which is natural to God through the gift of himself (cf. 3:16–17; 6:53–57). The life that comes to man through the gift of the Son is the abundant life (10:10) that flows from the believer’s status as a child of God in the Kingdom of God (see 1:12; 3:5). Life of Jesus Communicated to Believers through Mutual Abiding/Indwelling The central question, however, is how one becomes a child of God in the Kingdom of God and so come to possess this gift of abundant life that the Son is sent to give. The answer is that this status as children of God is mediated through Jesus, by the Spirit/Paraclete (see John 14:15–18, 25–26; 15:26; 16:17–15),20 and it is received and sustained, according to John, through the sacramental life of the Church, primarily through baptism and the Eucharist. In John 3, when Nicodemus comes to speak to Jesus under the cover of night, Jesus reveals to him how one is to receive this power of becoming children of God, which here is spoken of in terms of entering into the Kingdom of God (βασιλεία τοῦ θεοῦ).21 Only by being born ἄνωθεν (anew or from above) of water and the Spirit (ἐξ ὕδατος καὶ πνεύματος) is entrance into the family/ 19 20 21 Aquinas, Super Ioan 5, lec. 5, no 782. Unless otherwise noted, English quotes from Super Ioan are trans. Fabian Larcher and James Weisheipl (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 287. See Dodd, Interpretation, 187–200. See Matthew Vellanickal, The Divine Sonship of Christians in the Johannine Writings (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1977), 213: “According to Jn 3:11–21 the kingdom of God is realized in Christ as Son of God. Apart from the Prologue, this passage is the only Gospel text in which Jn uses the term μονογενής. Here it occurs twice, and in v. 18 it occurs in the typical Johannine formula πιστεύειν εἰς τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ μονογενοῦς υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ. Thus the imperfect faith expressed with a similar formula in 2:23, passing through the supernatural begetting described in 3:3–10, is transformed into authentic faith expressed in 3:18. So with faith in Christ as the only Begotten Son of God, one sees the Kingdom of God realized (v. 3) and enters into it (v. 5). So entering into the Kingdom of God means for Jn entering into a life of faith in, and communion with, Eucharistic Indwelling and Aquinas’s Johannine Theolog y 1179 Kingdom of God possible (3:3, 5).22 On the part of Nicodemus, we see a bit of Johannine irony. Nicodemus is right in thinking that Jesus is speaking of becoming a child again, but he is mistaken in thinking that this will occur at the physical level, by entering back into one’s mother’s womb. Jesus, on the other hand, has a spiritual, sacramental birth in mind, whereby through the power of the Holy Spirit and the waters of baptism one is able to receive rebirth. For Jesus, this rebirth of water and Spirit is absolutely necessary for becoming a child of God and entrance into the Kingdom of God.23 The same is true for the sacrament that completes divine begetting, the Eucharist. Once we have entered initially into the family of God as children, our sonship must be sustained. Jesus Christ gives us an imperative that we must eat his flesh and drink his blood, for if we do not, we will have no life in us ( John 6:53). In the words of the Council of Trent, “[Christ] wished . . . that this sacrament be received as the soul’s spiritual food which would nourish and strengthen those who live by the life of him.”24 How, then, does the act 22 23 24 Christ who is the Son of God, namely, to become children of God participating in His sonship.” See Oscar Cullmann, Early Christian Worship, trans. A. Stewart Todd and James B. Torrance (London: SCM, 1953), 75–76: “The relation of rebirth to Baptism is already a common conception in the early Church. The important Pauline chapter on Baptism, Romans 6, speaks in v. 4 of ‘newness of life,’ in which we walk, through Baptism into Christ’s death. In Tit. 3.5, we have indeed a direct parallel with our passage: ‘He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost.’ But quite apart from the generally accepted connexion between rebirth and Baptism, a direct connexion is here expressed in Jesus’ answer to Nicodemus’ question in v. 4, a question which reveals Nicodemus’ complete lack of understanding. He makes the meaning of ἄνωθεν γεννηθῆναι precise in that he now quite clearly speaks of Baptism (v. 5): ‘Except a man be born of water and the spirit . . .’ Bultmann and some other exegetes think, however, that the words ὕδατος καί should be struck out. But neither textual criticism nor the sense permit such an omission, for it is important for the author here, as throughout the whole Gospel, that the Spirit is present in material elements just as the Logos became flesh. But obviously there is a quite special connexion here with the Sacrament.” See Vellanickal, Divine Sonship, 168–169: “Jesus announces a general and universal condition that is relevant to all men without exception. This condition of supernatural begetting is conceived as a fact that takes place at a definitive moment in the life of men. The categorical denial οὐ δύναται followed by the aorist infinitive suggests the absolute necessity of this spiritual begetting, even to enter the condition of seeing and entering the Kingdom of God.” See also, Michael Dauphinais, “Christ and the Metaphysics of Baptism in the Summa Theologiae and the Commentary on John,” in Rediscovering Aquinas and the Sacraments: Studies in Sacramental Theology, ed. Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais (Chicago: Hillenbrand, 2009), 14–27, esp. 23–24. Council of Trent, sess. 13, ch. 2: “Sumi autem voluit sacramentum hoc tamquam 1180 Daniel M. Garland Jr. of partaking of the Eucharist give us everlasting life? Verses 56 and 57 of John 6 reveal the answer: “The one eating my flesh and drinking my blood abides [μένει] in me, and I in him” (v. 56). Christ promises us that if we eat his flesh, then he will abide in us in such a way that we in return abide in him. Thomas Dubay explains: The abiding is more than sacramental. It is indwelling. . . . The word, “abiding,” indicates some sort of permanent duration, and yet the sacramental presence is merely transitory. The sense seems to be: “If you eat my flesh and drink my blood, I will be in you not only at that moment, but more, I will dwell in you abidingly, that is, I will live permanently in you as a result of your sacramental nourishment.”25 As an explanation of the efficacy of the mutual indwelling/abiding described in verse 65, John 6:57 reveals that the gift of Jesus’s flesh and blood in the Eucharist is an essential part of his mission to give life to the world: “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so the one who eats me will live because of me.” As Raymond Brown remarks: In its brevity vs. 57 is a most forceful expression of the tremendous claim that Jesus gives man a share in God’s own life, an expression far more real than the abstract formulation of II Pet i 4. And so it is that, while the Synoptic Gospels record the institution of the Eucharist, it is John who explains what the Eucharist does for the Christian.26 This is made possible due to the nature of the flesh that we receive in the Eucharist, namely, flesh that has been united to the Word and glorified in his resurrection. Cyril of Alexandria states: And since the flesh of the Savior has become life-giving (in that it has been united to that which is by nature life, namely, the Word from God), when we taste of it, then we have life in ourselves, since 25 26 spiritualem animarum cibum, quo alantur et confortentur viventes vita illius” (Heinrich Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, ed. Peter Hünermann, 43rd ed., Latin–English edition ed. Robert Fastiggi and Anne Englund Nash [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012], no 1638). Thomas Dubay, “Eucharist, Indwelling, Mystical Body,” Review for Religious 26, no. 5 (1967): 910–38, at 915. Brown, John I–XII, 292–293 (emphasis original). Eucharistic Indwelling and Aquinas’s Johannine Theolog y 1181 we too are united to that flesh just as it is united to the Word who indwells it.27 The reception of this sacred flesh mingles with us in a miraculous way and we are in return mingled with the flesh of Christ so that, by this commingling, we participate in Christ’s own life.28 It is as if our flesh becomes Christ’s own flesh, and if our flesh, then also our whole person.29 Aquinas comments: For this food is not changed into the one who eats it, but it turns the one who takes it into itself, as we see in Augustine, when he says, “I 27 28 29 Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, vol. 1, bk. 4, ch. 1, trans. David R. Maxwell, Ancient Christian Texts (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013), 236. See also Matthias Scheeben, The Mysteries of Christianity, trans. Cyril Vollert (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1954), 493: “As a result of the Incarnation we are no longer merely adopted children of God. Through the sacred humanity we are received into the natural, only-begotten Son of God as His members, and as His members share in His personal relationship to the Father, somewhat as His own humanity does. But by the Eucharist we are bound to Him much more securely, and become His body much more perfectly; for He has not only taken His flesh from our flesh, but has returned to us the flesh that He assumed.” See also Michael Dauphinais, “‘And They Shall All Be Taught By God’: Wisdom and the Eucharist in John 6,” in Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas: Theological Exegesis and Speculative Theology, ed. Michael Dauphinais and Matthew Levering (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 312–17, who, following Aquinas, notes: “To receive Christ’s flesh in a material way would not give life since flesh in and of itself has no power to give eternal life—not even Christ’s flesh. To receive Christ’s flesh in a spiritual way, however, does give life because Christ’s flesh is understood to be united to the Word and to the Spirit (Ioan. 6, lect. 8, nn. 992–93)” (317). See Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, vol. 1, bk. 4, ch. 1, who uses the analogy of wax to describe this commingling: “If someone were to join wax with other wax, they will surely see that one has come to be in the other. In the same way, I think, the one who receives the flesh of our Savior Christ and drinks his precious blood, as he himself says, is found to be one with him, mixed together, as it were, and mingled with him through participation so that they are found in Christ, and Christ in them” (p. 239). Not, however, in a pantheistic, gnostic sense, but rather through participation. We ourselves do not become divine, but we are elevated in our nature to the divine life. See André Feuillet, Johannine Studies, trans. Thomas E. Crane (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1964), 69n33: “Thus the promise of resurrection is linked to the promise of the Eucharist. In effect, if the glorified Son of Man, whose flesh is vivified by the Spirit of God (VI:63), is to feed men with His flesh and blood, the salvation which He offers must affect their whole being, body as well as soul. Thus Jesus describes Himself as the resurrection and the life of men (ego eimi hē anastasis kai hē zōē), implying thereby that the divine life which he gives now will eventually be fulfilled in a resurrection of life (anastasis zōēs).” 1182 Daniel M. Garland Jr. am the food of the robust. Grow and you will eat me. Yet you will not change me into yourself, but you will be transformed into me.” And so this is a food capable of making man divine and inebriating him with divinity. . . . So this bread is very profitable, because it gives eternal life to the soul; but it is so also because it gives eternal life to the body.30 This union with Christ is not the same as that brought about by baptism. It is a union that brings about a deeper, more intimate relationship with our Lord.31 This intimate union with Jesus allows us to know him in an experiential way by coming in contact with him substantially and allowing us to participate in the divine nature that is fully possessed by Jesus, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit. As C. H. Dodd explains: γνῶσις is awareness of a relation of mutual indwelling of God and man. . . . For John this experience is made possible through the recognition of Christ as the revelation of God, of Christ as inseparably one with God; and it finds its completion in an experience of our own unity with Christ in God.32 Thus, we see the wisdom of Peter when, after Jesus’s teaching about mutual indwelling through Eucharistic reception, he exclaims, “You have the words of eternal life” ( John 6:68). The completion of the speculative knowledge that “Christ [is] inseparably one with God” and that he is the Son of the Father is found in the experiential/affective knowledge which comes through eating the flesh of Jesus.33 30 31 32 33 Aquinas, Super Ioan 6, lec. 7, no. 972 (p. 183). See Jules Lebreton, Histoire du dogme de la Trinité: des origines au Concile de Nicée, vol. 1, Les origines (Paris: Gabriel Beauchesne, 1910), 513–14: “In the Eucharist, the union of Christ and the believer is consummated, along with the vivifying transformation of which it is the fruit; there is no longer a question only of adhering to Christ by faith, nor the incorporation into the body of Christ by baptism. This is a new union, at once very real and very spiritual: by it we can say that he who adheres to the Lord is not only one in spirit with him, but also one flesh. This union is so intimate, that Jesus does not fear to say: ‘Just as I live through the Father, in this way he who eats me will live through me.’ Without a doubt, this is only an analogy. But, the fact remains that, in order to respect it, it should be understood not as a moral union founded upon a similarity of feeling, but a real physical union, which entails the mixture of two lives, or rather, the participation by the Christian in the very life of Christ” (trans. mine). Dodd, Interpretation, 169. See Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John, vol. 2, ch. 5: “How does Christ speak Eucharistic Indwelling and Aquinas’s Johannine Theolog y 1183 Dwelling in the Triune God With this language of mutual indwelling, John is showing us that the place for the followers of Christ to dwell is in the true temple of Christ’s body (see 2:21).34 In him is also the place for the new worship in the Spirit and in truth (4:23, cf. 14:6).35 The language of abiding (μένω) found elsewhere in 34 35 truth, when He says that eternal life is the knowledge of God the Father, the One true God, and (with Him) of the Son? I think, indeed, we must answer that the saying of the Saviour is wholly true. For this knowledge is life, travailing as it were in birth of the whole meaning of the mystery, and vouchsafing unto us participation in the mystery of the Eucharist, whereby we are joined unto the living and life-giving Word. And for this reason, I think, Paul says that the Gentiles are made fellow-members of the body and fellow-partakers of Christ; inasmuch as they partake in His blessed Body and Blood; and our members may in this sense be conceived of, as being members of Christ. This knowledge, then, which also brings to us the Eucharist by the Spirit, is life. For it dwells in our hearts, shaping anew those who receive it into sonship with Him, and moulding them into incorruption and piety towards God, through life according to the Gospel. Our Lord Jesus Christ, then, knowing that the knowledge of the One true God brings unto us, and, so to speak, promotes our union with, the blessings of which we have spoken, says that it is eternal life; insomuch as it is the mother and nurse of eternal life, being in its own power and nature pregnant with those things which cause life, and lead unto it” (Pusey ed., 489; emphasis original). See also, Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 4.20.5: “It is not possible to live apart from life, and the means of life is found in fellowship [μετοχῆς] with God; but fellowship with God is to know [γινώσκειν] God, and to enjoy his goodness” (trans. A. Roberts in Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 1 [Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2005]). See Ceslas Spicq, “L’origine johannique de la conception du Christ-prêtre dans l’Epître aux Hébreux,” in Aux sources de la tradition chrétienne: Mélanges offerts à Maurice Goguel (Paris: Delachaux et Niestlé, 1950), 259–60: “Effectively, according to John 2:19–22, Christ immediately makes allusion to his death and resurrection, which will be the condition and the beginning of the new spiritual cult. The sentence ‘Destroy this temple’ must be understood of the sanctuary of rock where the levitical cult is exercised, whereas ‘I will raise it again in three days’ intends the glorified body of Christ and which in the new economy will play the same role as the earthly temple, the center of the Mosaic religion. The entire cult is organized, in effect, based on a sanctuary. By driving out the animals from the temple and by purifying it, the Lord insinuates a different form of cult, where the victims will no longer be beasts without reason, and where as a result, the sanctuary will no longer be material. . . . It is Christ who, henceforth, will be offered in sacrifice and who, from his ascension, will inaugurate a new liturgy. The whole Christian cult is summarized in him” (trans. mine). See Joseph Ratzinger, Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. John Saward (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 43–44: “Worship through types and shadows, worship with replacements, ends at the very moment when the real worship takes place: the self-offering of the Son, who has become man and ‘Lamb,’ the ‘Firstborn,’ who gathers up and into himself all worship of God, takes it from the types and shadows into the reality of man’s union with the living God. The prophetic gesture of cleansing the Temple, of renewing 1184 Daniel M. Garland Jr. John further supports this notion of the Eucharistic Body of Christ as the new place of the new temple worship. We see in John 14:23 that the Father and Son will make their home (μονή) with the one who keeps Jesus’s word. No doubt, part of keeping the word of Jesus involves his command to eat his flesh and blood, which brings about the mutual abiding of Christ and the believer. Both μονή and μένω are from the same root, so a μονή is a place of abiding (μένω).36 After Jesus’s Passion, Sabbath rest, and resurrection, believers abide in Christ (and with Christ, the Father) as Christ promised in John 14:2–3. James McCaffrey elaborates on the significance of John 14:2–3 and its connection to 14:23: As believers have dwelling-places (μοναί) with the Father in union with Jesus in Jn 14,2–3, so Jesus and the Father have an abiding-place (μονή) in every believer in Jn 14,23. The plural form μοναί of Jn 14,2–3 emphasises the individuality of the places which all believers have with Jesus in the Father. Inversely, the singular of Jn 14,23 emphasises the dwelling-place of the Father with Jesus in each disciple individually. In Jn 14,2–3 the Father becomes the spiritual area where the whole community of believers dwells individually in union with Jesus; in Jn 36 divine worship and preparing it for its new form, has reached its goal. The prophecy connected with it is fulfilled: ‘Zeal for your house has consumed me’ (Ps 69[68]:9; Jn 2:17). At the end it was Jesus’s ‘zeal’ for right worship that took him to the Cross. This is precisely what opened the way for the true house of God, the ‘one not made with human hands’—the risen body of Christ. And the interpretation that the Synoptic Gospels give to Jesus’s symbolic act of prophecy is also fulfilled: ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nation’ (Mk 11:17). The abolition of the Temple inaugurates a new universality of worship, ‘in spirit and truth’ (cf. Jn 4:23), which Jesus foretold in his conversation with the Samaritan woman. Needless to say, the words ‘spirit and truth’ must not be taken in a subjectivist sense, as they were in the Enlightenment. No, they must be seen in the light of him who could say of himself: ‘I am the truth’ ( Jn 14:6).” See also Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 270: “On the one hand . . . the Eucharist emphatically moves right to the center of Christian existence; here God does indeed give us the manna that humanity is waiting for, the true ‘bread of heaven’—the nourishment we can most deeply live upon as human beings. At the same time, however, the Eucharist is revealed as man’s unceasing great encounter with God, in which the Lord gives himself as ‘flesh,’ so that in him, and by participating in his way, we may become ‘spirit.’ Just as he was transformed through the Cross into a new manner of bodiliness and of being-human pervaded by God’s own being, so too for us this food must become an opening out of our existence, a passing through the Cross, and an anticipation of the new life in God and with God.” James McCaffrey, The House with Many Rooms: The Temple Theme of Jn. 14, 2–3, Analecta Biblica 114 (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1988), 32. Eucharistic Indwelling and Aquinas’s Johannine Theolog y 1185 14,23 each individual believer becomes the spiritual area where the Father dwells in union with Jesus.37 Thus, with the reception of the Eucharist, the mutual abiding brings us into the dwelling place of Jesus, which is the dwelling place of the Father. At the same time, too, we become dwelling places—temples—of the Blessed Trinity. The Analogy of the Vine and the Branches In John 15:1–11, Jesus teaches about the gift of eternal life given to believers through the analogy of branches bearing fruit due to their connection with the vine. The vine–branch analogy is a continuation of Jesus’s teaching in John 6 of mutual indwelling and eternal life given through the Eucharist.38 Here as in John 6, the language of mutual indwelling/abiding is present: “As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me”(15:4).39 Just as the vine is the source of life for the branches—if they are cut off, they die—so abiding in Jesus is our source of life. Dodd remarks: [ John] xv. 1–12 is based upon the symbol of the vine, which in itself suggests a unity like that of a living plant, in which a common life, flowing from the central stem, nourishes all the branches and issues in fruit.40 37 38 39 40 McCaffrey, House with Many Rooms, 165. See Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism to the Transfiguration, 261–62: “Let us recall that the parable of the vine occurs in the context of Jesus’ Last Supper. After the multiplication of the loaves he had spoken of the true bread from heaven that he would give, and thus he left us with a profound interpretation of the eucharistic bread that was to come. It is hard to believe that in his discourse on the vine he is not tacitly alluding to the new wine that had already been prefigured at Cana and which he now gives to us—the wine that would flow from his Passion, from his ‘love to the end’ ( Jn 13:1). In this sense, the parable of the vine has a thoroughly eucharistic background. It refers to the fruit that Jesus brings forth: his love, which pours itself out for us on the Cross and which is the choice new wine destined for God’s marriage feast with man. Thus we come to understand the full depth and grandeur of the Eucharist, even though it is not explicitly mentioned here. The Eucharist points us toward the fruit that we, as branches of the vine, can and must bear with Christ and by virtue of Christ. The fruit the Lord expects of us is love—a love that accepts with him the mystery of the Cross, and becomes a participation in his self-giving—and hence the true justice that prepares the world for the Kingdom of God.” See also Barrett, Gospel According to St. John, 470, and Brown, John XIII–XXI, 672–74. καθὼς τὸ κλῆμα οὐ δύναται καρπὸν φέρειν ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ ἐὰν μὴ μένῃ ἐν τῇ ἀμπέλῳ, οὕτως οὐδὲ ὑμεῖς ἐὰν μὴ ἐν ἐμοὶ μένητε. Dodd, Interpretation, 196. 1186 Daniel M. Garland Jr. The fruit of eternal life is based upon continual union with Jesus.41 If one does not abide in Jesus, he will be cast forth and wither (15:6). The same warning was given in 6:53. To those who do not eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus, he declares, “you do not have life within you [οὐκ ἔχετε ζωὴν ἐν ἑαυτοῖς].” The union of mutual indwelling that takes place through the reception of Jesus’s body and blood in the Eucharist is what allows us to abide/remain in Jesus, the real vine (ἡ ἄμπελος ἡ ἀληθινὴ).42 The outward sign of this abiding in Jesus is the keeping of Jesus’s commandments out of obediential love in imitation of his obediential love in keeping his Father’s commandments ( John 15:10).43 The commandment that the disciples of Jesus are to keep is to love as Jesus has loved (15:12). This love is no less than the sacrificial self-offering of Jesus on the Cross for “those he loves” (τῶν φίλων αὐτοῦ; 15:13).44 There is a parallel here with the Eucharistic principle found in John 12:24–26. Unless the grain of wheat falls and dies it does not bear fruit, but remains alone. Yet, if it dies, it bears much fruit. To give one’s life in imitation of Christ (see 12:26: “If any man serves me, let him follow me [ἐὰν ἐμοί τις διακονῇ, ἐμοὶ ἀκολουθείτω]”), that is, as a sacrifice to God, is to bear fruit for eternal life (12:25). Yet, as Raymond Brown notes: 41 42 43 44 See Moloney, Gospel of John, 420: “It is not enough to be with him and to have received his word; they must abide in him and he will abide in them (v. 4a: meinate en emoi kagō en hymin). There must be an ongoing lifegiving mutuality generated by the disciples’ union with Jesus and Jesus’ union with them. . . . Abiding in Jesus is the sine qua non of fruitfulness.” See J. P. Heil, The Gospel of John: Worship for Divine Life Eternal (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2015), 107: “Indeed, eucharistic worship serves as a preeminent way of ‘remaining’ in Jesus. His directive to ‘remain in me, as I in you [μείνατε ἐν ἐμοί, κἀγὼ ἐν ὑμῖν]’ (15:4a) and his declaration that ‘the one remaining in me and I in him [μένων ἐν ἐμοὶ κἀγὼ ἐν αὐτῷ]—this one produces much fruit’ (15:5) recall and resonate with his declaration that ‘the one who feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood in me remains and I in him [ἐν ἐμοὶ μένει κἀγὼ ἐν αὐτῷ]’ (6:56). The one remaining in Jesus with the divine assistance afforded by the Eucharist ‘produces much fruit’ (15:5), future believers to have divine life eternal, but anyone who does not ‘remain’ in Jesus will be discarded as useless for producing such fruit (15:6).” See also, M. J. Lagrange, Évangile selon Saint Jean (Paris: Gabalda, 1948), 400. See Moloney, Gospel of John, 420–421: “Union with Jesus with its consequent fruitfulness is not a matter of enjoying the oneness that exists between the disciple and the master; it also consists of doing something, and without Jesus this is impossible. To bear fruit (v. 4b) means to do something (v. 5c). That ‘something’ has already been summarized in the command to love, which Jesus taught would be the hallmark of his disciples (cf. 13:34–35).” See Brown, John XIII–XXI, 664, for the translation of φίλoς as “loved one” or “beloved”. Eucharistic Indwelling and Aquinas’s Johannine Theolog y 1187 Christian love does not simply consist in laying down one’s life; but because it stems from Jesus, there is a tendency in Christian love that produces such self-sacrifice. This is why John xv 13 has left a greater mark on subsequent behavior than, for example, a similar sentence in Plato (Symposium 179B): “Only those who love wish to die for other.”45 We see, then, that the obedience that comes from abiding/remaining in Jesus finds its fullest expression in martyrdom. The one who has Christ abiding in him due to the grace of the Eucharist is given the strength to abide in Christ to the ultimate end of sacrificing his life in imitation of Christ.46 “He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (12:25). The martyr, empowered by Eucharistic communion with the Son, knows God beyond the speculative level and truly penetrates to the depth of experiential knowledge to realize that Jesus “is the resurrection and the life; he who believes in [ Jesus], though he die, yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in [ Jesus] shall never die” (11:25–26). Adopted Sonship: The Goal of Mutual Indwelling The goal of the mutual indwelling brought about by eating and drinking the flesh and blood of Jesus, which in turn gives us experiential knowledge of the Father through the Son, is to have eternal life as children of God. Blessed Columba Marmion sees the Eucharistic reception as the ultimate act of sonship: To receive Christ in the Eucharist is to . . . share in the highest possible measure in the Divine Sonship of Christ. . . . Eucharistic Communion is therefore the most perfect act of our Divine adoption. There is no time 45 46 Brown, John XIII–XXI, 664 (emphasis original). See Augustine, Homily 84 on John, no. 1: “This is what the blessed martyrs did with ardent love. If we aren’t celebrating their memories in vain, and we approach the table of the Lord at the banquet at which they themselves were also filled, it behooves us also to prepare the same things as they did. That’s why, of course, we don’t commemorate them at this table like the others who rest in peace, such that we would also pray for them; it’s rather that they pray for us, so that we might follow closely in their steps, because they fulfilled the charity than which the Lord said that nothing could be greater. For they presented to their brothers and sisters the same things as they likewise received from the table of the Lord” (Homilies on the Gospel of John 41–124, trans. Edmund Hill, The Works of Saint Augustine, A Translation for the 21st Century [Hyde Park, NY: New City, 2020], 301–2). See Augustine’s Homily 27, no. 12, for an example of how the Eucharist strengthened St. Laurence for martyrdom. 1188 Daniel M. Garland Jr. when we can be more justly entitled to say to our Father in heaven: “O Heavenly Father, I abide in your Son Jesus, and your Son abides in me. Your Son, proceeding from you, receives communication of your Divine life, in its fullness. I have received your Son with faith. At that time, faith tells me, I am with Him. And since I share in His life, look at Him, through Him, with Him, as the Son in whom you are well pleased.”47 As the “most perfect act of our Divine adoption,” the abiding in Christ that is brought about by Eucharistic reception is not something we must wait for at the end of time. Rather, for John, it is something partaken of now. Francis J. Moloney, in commenting on John 1:12, states: The power given is not a promise but an achieved fact for those who receive and believe. A Johannine understanding of life and eternal life has been broached for the first time. One does not have to wait for an end-time to become a child of God. The choice of the aorist infinitive “to become” (genesthai) indicates that Johannine faith and so-called “realized eschatology” demand continual commitment. In a traditional eschatology the believer waits for the resurrection and the end of time for the final gifts of life and eternal life. In the Fourth Gospel these gifts are anticipated. They are available to the believer now, and are thus “realized.”48 47 48 Blessed Columba Marmion, Christ, the Life of the Soul, trans. Alan Bancroft (Bethesda, MD: Zaccheus, 2005), 383 (emphasis original). Moloney, Gospel of John, 38 (emphasis in original). See also Brown, John I–XII, cxvii: “In many ways John is the best example in the NT of realized eschatology. God has revealed Himself in Jesus in a definitive form, and seemingly no more can be asked. If one points to OT passages that seem to imply a coming of God in glory, the Prologue (i 14) answers, ‘We have seen his glory.’ If one asks where is the judgment that marks God’s final intervention, John iii 19 answers, ‘Now the judgment is this: the light has come into the world.’ In a figurative way Matt xxv 31ff. describes the apocalyptic Son of Man coming in glory and sitting on the throne of judgment to separate the good and the bad. But for John the presence of Jesus in the world as the light separates men into those who are sons of darkness, hating the light, and those who come to the light. All through the Gospel Jesus provokes self-judgment as men line up for or against him; truly his coming is a crisis in the root sense of that word, where it reflects the Gr. krisis or ‘judgment.’ Those who refuse to believe are already condemned (iii 18), while those who have faith do not come under condemnation (v 24). Even the reward is realized. For the Synoptics ‘eternal life’ is something that one receives at the final judgment or in a future age (Mark x 30; Matt xviii 8–9), but for John it is a present possibility for men: ‘The man who hears my words and has faith in Him who sent me possesses eternal Eucharistic Indwelling and Aquinas’s Johannine Theolog y 1189 We truly participate in eternal life here and now through the sacrament of baptism and the Eucharist. Eternal life as children of God begins with baptism and is realized more and more through our continual reception of the Eucharist. Summary The saving knowledge that consists of knowing God the Father and Jesus, the Son who is sent by the Father, is more than merely speculative knowledge. It is also an experiential/affective knowledge brought about by mutual indwelling, the effect of which occurs through eating and drinking the body and blood of Christ. In receiving Christ in the Eucharist, the believer comes in contact substantially with Christ’s flesh and blood, which is hypostatically united to his divine nature. This contact with the divine nature, mediated through Christ’s flesh, allows us to know God experientially. This knowledge of / participation in God is what gives us eternal life. We can see it as a chain of knowledge that leads to life. Through eating the flesh of the Son, we come in contact with the Son and know him experientially. The Son, by nature and from all eternity, intimately knows the Father, possessing the same nature as and coming forth from the Father. The Father has life in himself and Jesus is also life itself since he is in the Father and the Father in him. Having been sent from the Father, Jesus gives the life that he is to those who eat and drink his flesh and blood. Moreover, because this Eucharistic indwelling is mediated by the Holy Spirit, we ourselves become dwelling places or temples of the Blessed Trinity. In the next section, I will explore how St. Thomas Aquinas’s theology of the divine missions illuminates Jesus’s teaching in the Gospel of John that eternal life comes through both Eucharistic eating and experiential knowledge. In doing so, we will see that Aquinas’s Trinitarian theology allows one to more fully flesh out the role of the Holy Spirit in giving us eternal life through Eucharistic reception. Further, Aquinas’s theological insights will also provide us with a fuller understanding of the nature of experiential knowledge. Thomas Aquinas on the Missions of Divine Persons Mission in General Since the mission of the Son from the Father is a dominant theme in the Fourth Gospel, some have taken the language of sending in John (πέμπω; life . . . he has passed from death to life’ (v 24). For Luke (vi 35, xx 36) divine sonship is a reward of the future life; for John (i 12) it is a gift here on earth” (emphasis original). 1190 Daniel M. Garland Jr. ἀποστέλλω) to imply that the Son, secundum divinitatem, is subordinate to the Father.49 The first objection put forth by St. Thomas in the Summa theologiae [ST] I, q. 43, a. 1, follows this line of thought in order to deny that it is fitting for a divine person to be sent. “For one who is sent is less than the sender.”50 Thus, it seems that if, on the one hand, the sender is greater than the one sent and, on the other hand, in the Gospel of John the Son is clearly described as being sent from the Father, then the evidence for the Son’s subordination in John is insurmountable. Yet Aquinas distinguishes between three ways in which one who is sent proceeds from the sender as principle. The first way is according to command (imperium), in the way in which a master sends a servant. The second is according to counsel (consilium), in the way in which a counselor advises a king to go to war. The third is according to origin (origo), in the way in which a flower is sent forth from a tree.51 The first two ways (command and counsel), Aquinas teaches, bring about an inferiority on the part of the one sent. For, one who commands is greater than the one he commands, and likewise the counselor is wiser than he whom he counsels.52 If, therefore, the Father sent the Son according to command or counsel, this would imply that the Son is subordinate to the Father. Yet Aquinas states that the mission of a divine person does not proceed by way of command nor counsel. But, does this not go against the clear words of Jesus in John’s Gospel, where he says: “The Son can do nothing from himself, except what he sees the Father doing” (5:19). “The Father loves the Son and shows him all things that he is does” (5:20). “As I hear, I judge” (5:30). “As the Father commanded me, that I do” (14:30). 49 50 51 52 For a more recent example, see Christopher Cowan, “The Father and Son in the Fourth Gospel: Johannine Subordination Revisited,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 49, no. 1 (2006): 115–35. ST I, q. 43, a. 1, obj. 1 (unless otherwise noted, all English quotes of ST are trans. Laurance Shapcote, ed. John Mortensen and Enrique Alarcón [Lander, WY: Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012]). ST I, q. 43, a. 1, corp. ST I, q. 43, a. 1, ad 1. Eucharistic Indwelling and Aquinas’s Johannine Theolog y 1191 St. Thomas argues that there are two ways that this does not fall into being sent by command or counsel. First, if what Jesus says is to be taken according to his divinity, then: The Father’s showing and the Son’s hearing are to be taken in the sense that the Father communicates knowledge to the Son, as He communicates His essence. The command of the Father can be explained in the same sense, as giving Him from eternity knowledge and will to act, by begetting Him.53 The second way he says is the better way, and that is to interpret Jesus’s words according to his human nature, in which case the problem is solved. For Jesus as a divine person, however, the only way he can be said to be sent is according to a procession of origin, since this is the only way that does not introduce imperfection in the divine persons, for a procession of origin is according to equality. This affirmation of a divine person being sent in the manner of a procession of origin is in accord with the Scriptures’ consistent witness of the oneness of God.54 The Father and the Son are equal because they are one in substance, each possessing the divine nature fully.55 One can note here the sapiential ordering of Aquinas’s Summa in that he treats of the mission of divine persons immediately after the question about the equality and likeness among the divine persons (ST I, q. 42). This is a shift from his treatment in the commentary on the Sentences, where he treated the missions within the context of Pneumatology.56 As Gilles Emery has noted: 53 54 55 56 ST I, q. 42, a. 6, ad 2. Cf. Exod 20:3; Deut 4:35; 5:7; 6:4; Isa 43:10; 44:6; Mal 2:10; Mark 12:29; John 10:30; 17:3; 22; 1 Cor 8:6; Eph 4:6; Jas 2:19. See ST I, q. 39, a. 2. See also Super Ioan 10, lec. 5, no. 1451, where in commenting on Jesus’s words in John 10:30 (“I and the Father are one.”), Aquinas notes: “Now through this a twofold error is excluded: namely, that of Arius, who divided the essence, and that of Sabellius, who combined the persons, so that thus we are freed from both Charybdis and Scylla. For through this insofar as he says ‘one,’ he frees us from Arius; for if one, then there is not a difference. Through this, on the other hand, insofar as he says ‘we are,’ he frees from Sabellius; for if we are, then the Father and the Son is one person and another person” (trans. mine). See Gilles Emery, The Trinitarian Theology of St Thomas Aquinas, trans. Francesca Aran Murphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 361–62: “Without dismissing the notion of ‘temporal procession’ from consideration, St. Thomas’ discussion in the Summa Theologiae (Prima Pars, q. 43), foregrounds the idea of mission. He no longer puts mission in the study of the Holy Spirit: it is now set after the question of the equality of the persons, within his investigation of ‘the comparison of the persons to each 1192 Daniel M. Garland Jr. This structure is a good indication that the consideration of the persons in their immanent divine life is not separated from the Trinitarian economy: the question of the missions closes the investigation of “the distinction of persons in God” or “the Trinity of persons in God”: it creates the bridge between the field which studies God’s mystery as it is in itself, and the field of God’s design in creation. The missions of the divine persons are what ultimately make sense of the gift of existence, human work and vocation, the mysteries of the humanity of Christ (the “mission of the Son”), the sacraments and eschatology. Thus, the equality that exists in the eternal procession of the Son from the Father remains in the temporal procession. Another aspect of the mission of a divine person involves the relation of the one sent to the place where he is sent. The one sent will begin to be present in that place either as one who was never there before or as one who was previously in that place but now exists there in a new way. Now, since there is one common mode by which God exists in all things through his essence, power, and presence, just as the cause existing in the effects which participate in his goodness,57 it would have to be the case that the divine person is sent to where he previously existed, yet in some new way. For the Son in his visible mission “is said to be sent by the Father into the world, according as he began to be in the world visibly by taking on flesh [per carnem assumptam], and nevertheless he was previously in the world.”58 Further, the Son does not cease to be where he once was in being sent. A local separation occurs between the one sent and the sender when the one sent is sent to where he previously was not. Yet, as stated above, this is not the case with the mission of a divine person. Rather, in the visible mission of the Son, he is present in the world in a new way—in his Incarnation—and is not moved locally from the right hand of the Father in heaven.59 57 58 59 other.’ A panorama comes in view at this point. The enquiry into the missions brings the study of the persons’ mutual relations to a head: to think about the missions is still to consider the persons in their relationships, their divine being, and their own properties. In fact, by pinning down which of the persons are sent and which of them ‘send,’ this question will examine the personal interrelationships implied by one person’s sending. So when theologians turn to the Trinity’s work of sanctification, they do not shift their attention away from the mystery of the Trinity in itself; and conversely, our investigation of the Trinity in its mysterious intimacy comes to completion when we reflect upon the Trinitarian economy.” See ST I, q. 43, a. 3, corp. ST I, q. 43, a. 1 (trans. mine). See ST I, q. 43, a. 1, ad 2. Cf. Super Ioan 1, lec. 6, nos. 143 and 144. Eucharistic Indwelling and Aquinas’s Johannine Theolog y 1193 For St. Thomas, then, mission (which expresses the temporal term together with the relation to the principle60) always involves two aspects, reference of origin (being from) and reference to the point of arrival, either in the sense of a new arrival or a new mode of being at the same place (being toward). The reference of origin is the eternal procession of the Son from the Father. If we were to stop here, strictly speaking, we would not have yet reached the designation of “mission.”61 The reference to the point of arrival adds the temporal term and extends the eternal procession into the temporal mission.62 Now that we have set forth, with the help of St. Thomas, the contours of the mission of a divine person in general and specifically of the Incarnation of the Son (his visible mission), we will next explore the invisible mission of the Holy Spirit which is given through gratia gratum faciens.63 The Invisible Mission of the Holy Spirit In the gift of eternal life given by the Son, the Holy Spirit plays a vital role. In John 16:7, Jesus insists that his return to the Father is necessary, because without it the Holy Spirit will not be sent. The mission of the Holy Spirit, who is sent from the Father in the Son’s name (see John 14:26), will bring about the grace necessary for eternal life (gratia gratum faciens). As we stated above, “mission” is a temporal sending of a divine person. The invisible mission of a divine person is in such a way that he is present in a new way in anyone and he is given as possessed by anyone. In ST I, q. 43, a. 3, St. Thomas raises the question as to whether the Holy Spirit in his invisible mission is given according to the donum gratiae gratum facientis alone. The concern is that if this is the case, then the Holy Spirit himself will not be given, but only his gifts.64 Aquinas answers that beyond God being in all things by his essence, power, and presence according to the common mode, as the cause of all that exists, there exists also a special mode of God’s presence, whereby he is in the rational creature as an object known is in the knower (cognitum in cognoscente) and the beloved is in the lover (amatum in amante). The rational creature attains to God himself through his operations of knowledge and 60 61 62 63 64 See ST I, q. 43, a. 2, corp. Although, Aquinas does admit that “procession” can be taken in both an eternal and temporal sense, in that the Son proceeds eternally as God and temporally in his Incarnation. See ST I, q. 43, a. 2, corp. See ST I, q. 43, a. 2, ad 3. The phrase gratia gratum faciens is translated literally as “the grace that makes pleasing.” It is, however, commonly translated as “sanctifying grace.” ST I, q. 43, a. 3, obj. 1. 1194 Daniel M. Garland Jr. love. This special mode is only brought about through this donum gratiae gratum facientis.65 Further, we only possess that which we freely use (uti) and enjoy (frui). Gratia gratum faciens perfects the creature so that he can freely use the created gift itself and likewise disposes the soul to possess and enjoy the divine person himself. This is signified when it is said that the Holy Spirit is given as a gift of grace.66 Therefore the invisible mission takes place according to gratiam gratum facientem and the divine person is sent and given.67 Aquinas notes that through this special mode, God not only exists in the rational creature, but dwells in him as in a temple.68 Here, it is not just the Holy Spirit who dwells, but the Father and Son as well (see John 14:23). As Jeremy Wilkins notes: The created term of the mission of the Spirit is gratia gratum faciens. But this term is not personally assumed by the Spirit, and therefore is not a principle of proper operations. The Spirit himself is sent and given, but he does not assume a created nature as a principle of proper operations ad extra and therefore does not come alone. Hence, the gift of the Spirit entails the indwelling of the whole Trinity. In giving their love, their Spirit, the Father and the Son give themselves.69 With this indwelling of the Blessed Trinity, brought about by grace, there is also a participation in the life of the Trinity, allowing one to know and love 65 66 67 68 69 ST I, q. 43, a. 3, corp. ST I, q. 43, a. 3, ad 1. See Aquinas, Super Ioan 4, lec. 2, no. 577, commenting on the gift of living water that Jesus speaks about with the Samaritan woman in John 4:10: “The grace of the Holy Spirit is correctly called living water, because the grace of the Holy Spirit is given to man in such a way that the source itself of the grace is also given, that is, the Holy Spirit. Indeed, the grace is given by the Holy Spirit: ‘The love of God is poured out into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us’ (Rom 5:5). For the Holy Spirit is the unfailing fountain from whom all gifts of grace flow: ‘One and the same Spirit does all these things’ (1 Cor 12:11). And so, if anyone has a gift of the Holy Spirit without having the Spirit, the water is not united with its source, and so is not living but dead: ‘Faith without works is dead’ ( Jas 2:20)” (p. 215). ST I, q. 43, a. 3, corp. See Jeremy D. Wilkins, “Trinitarian Missions and the Order of Grace According to Thomas Aquinas,” in Philosophy and Theology in the Long Middle Ages: A Tribute to Stephen F. Brown, ed. Kent Emery, Rusell Friedman, and Andrea Speer (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 689–708, at 691–92. Eucharistic Indwelling and Aquinas’s Johannine Theolog y 1195 God analogous to the way in which he knows and loves himself.70 Wilkins continues: This participation in the trinitarian life is also the perfection of the imago, which is dynamically ordered to its realization in the immanent operations of knowing and loving, and specifically in knowing and loving God. Gratia gratum faciens is a participation in the divine nature, and faith and love are participations in the processions of Word and Spirit.71 We see here that the invisible missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit are thus united, although distinct.72 In man’s sanctification, both the Son and the Spirit are at work in leading man to the knowledge of the Father.73 Aquinas explains the necessity of both missions for the salvation of man in his commentary on John 14:26: 70 71 72 73 See also, ST I-II, q. 110, a. 4, corp.: “For as man in his intellective powers participates in the Divine knowledge through the virtue of faith, and in his power of will participates in the Divine love through the virtue of charity, so also in the nature of the soul does he participate in the Divine Nature, after the manner of a likeness, through a certain regeneration or re-creation.” Cf. Wilkins, “Trinitarian Missions,” 695: “The order of grace is not merely the provision of created gifts—these are used—but the constitution of a new interpersonal situation in which we come to enjoy, to know, to love the divine Persons and, in that way, to participate in the intimacy of their own eternal mutuality.” More will be said on this point in the next section. Wilkins, “Trinitarian Missions,” 696–97. See Emery, Trinitarian Theology, 387–92, esp. 391–92: “The missions are also inseparable from the perspective of the effect, and that in two capacities: because grace, the root of this effect, is attested in both missions, and because the knowledge and love in which the mission is evident are inseparable. Charity proceeds from faith, and that faith is dead which does not flower in charity. And here the exemplar function of the divine persons becomes very clear: in the same way that the divine Word is the ‘Word breathing love,’ so the kind of knowledge which the mission gives us is a knowledge filled in love. Without charity, knowledge would not even reflect the property of the Word, and would not allow us to recognize that the Son is emissary. From the standpoint of the donation of the divine persons, one can even pick out a certain priority of the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is not a temporal priority, but a priority deriving from the nature of love: ‘since the original dynamic which moves and is inclined toward being given is love, the donation of the Holy Spirit comes before the donation of the Son’ (Aquinas, I Sent. d. 15, q. 4, a. 2, ad 2). In every respect, there is an absolute solidarity and simultaneity between the missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit, the one entailing the other.” See Dominic Legge, The Trinitarian Christology of St Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 223–31. 1196 Daniel M. Garland Jr. Just as the effect of the mission of the Son was to lead us to the Father, so the effect of the mission of the Holy Spirit is to lead the faithful to the Son. Now the Son, once he is begotten Wisdom, is Truth itself: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (14:6). And so the effect of this kind of mission [of the Spirit] is to make us sharers in the divine wisdom and knowers of the truth. The Son, since he is the Word, gives teaching to us; but the Holy Spirit enables us to grasp it.74 Drawing on Jesus’s words in John 6:45, Aquinas further elaborates on the role of the Holy Spirit in the soul of the believer as it relates to 14:26: We read before that “Every one who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me” (6:45). Here he is expanding on this, because one does not learn without the Holy Spirit teaching. He is saying in effect: one who receives the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son knows the Father and the Son and comes to them. The Spirit makes us know all things by inspiring us from within, by directing us and lifting us up to spiritual things.75 The way that the Holy Spirit makes us know the Father and the Son and lifts us up to spiritual things is through the gift of charity, allowing us to participate in the divine nature through experiential or affective knowledge. Affective Knowledge through Connaturality St. Thomas distinguishes between the two types of knowledge in commenting on John 17:25–26: O righteous Father, the world has not known you, but I have known you; and these know that you have sent me. I made known to them your name, and I will make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them. Aquinas states that neither through speculative nor affective knowledge did the world know God completely. Thomas will grant that some Gentiles knew God speculatively in regard to the attributes that can be known by reason.76 But this limited knowledge was mixed with many errors and it was not the saving knowledge that Jesus spoke of, namely, the knowledge of “God as the 74 75 76 Aquinas, Super Ioan 6, lec. 14, no. 1958 (p. 87). Aquinas, Super Ioan 6, lec. 14, no. 1959 (p. 87). Aquinas, Super Ioan 6, lec. 17, no. 2265. Eucharistic Indwelling and Aquinas’s Johannine Theolog y 1197 Father of an only begotten and consubstantial Son.”77 Even further, the world did not have an affective knowledge of God “because it did not love him” and, therefore, did not know him “as a Father, through love.”78 The faithful, on the other hand, receive the two types of knowledge through Christ, the radix et fons of our saving knowledge of God.79 Aquinas affirms that “insofar as men participate in the Word of God, to that extent do they know God.”80 Speculative knowledge comes from the external words of Christ’s teaching.81 Affective knowledge, on the other hand, Thomas teaches, is “from within, through the Holy Spirit. Referring to this [ Jesus] says, and I will make it known by giving them the Holy Spirit: ‘When the Spirit of truth comes, he will teach you all truth’” (16:3).82 This affective/experiential knowledge of the Holy Spirit which comes from within allows us to know God by making us like God through grace. In the ST I, q. 43, a. 5, ad 2, St. Thomas notes that when one of the divine persons is sent to someone, the soul of the person is assimilated to the divine person by grace.83 Further, because the Holy Spirit is love, the soul is assimilated to the Holy Spirit through the gift of charity. Likewise, since the Son is the Word “who breathes forth love” (spirans amorem), he is sent according to the intellectual illumination, which breaks forth into the affection of love, as is said ( John 6:45): Everyone that hath heard from the Father and hath learned, cometh to Me, and (Ps 38:4): In my meditation a fire shall flame forth. Thus Augustine plainly says (De Trin. iv, 20): The Son is sent, whenever He is known and perceived by anyone. Now perception implies a certain experimental knowledge [experimentalem quondam notitiam]; and this is properly called wisdom, as it were a sweet knowledge, according to Ecclus. 6:23: The wisdom of doctrine is according to her name.84 Thus, the Holy Spirit dwelling in us through the gift of charity assimilates us and gives us experimental knowledge of himself along with that of the Son.85 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 Aquinas, Super Ioan 6, lec. 17, no. 2265 (p. 195). Aquinas, Super Ioan 6, lec. 17, no. 2265 (p. 196). Aquinas, Super Ioan 6, lec. 17 no. 2267. Aquinas, Super Ioan 6, lec. 17, no. 2267 (p. 196). Aquinas, Super Ioan 6, lec. 17, no. 2269. Aquinas, Super Ioan 6, lec. 17, no. 2269 (p. 197). ST I, q. 43, a. 5, ad 2. ST I, q. 43, a. 5, ad 2. See Gilles Emery, Trinity in Aquinas (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2006), 162: “By the gift of grace, the saints are united to God by knowing God and loving him. When 1198 Daniel M. Garland Jr. This experimental or experiential knowledge leads to a certain connaturality (connaturalitas) with the divine persons. Aquinas provides an example of the type of knowledge of God that leads to a connaturality with God through a parallel with the virtue of chastity.86 One can come to speculative knowledge about chastity through studying what chastity consists of so as to be able to explain and teach it to others. Someone else, however, who is living in the habitude of chastity knows about chastity through a kind of connaturality with the virtue, which is an experiential knowledge from within. With the Holy Spirit’s gift of the wisdom that comes to us through charity, a connaturality with God is produced in our soul which unites us to God.87 This knowledge through connaturality is the eternal life that Jesus speaks about in John 17:3. Conclusion In the invisible mission of the Holy Spirit, which follows upon the visible mission of the Son, the Holy Spirit himself is given to the believer along with the gift of grace (gratia gratum faciens). The Holy Spirit dwelling in the soul of the believer leads him to the knowledge of the Son, who in turn leads to the knowledge of the Father, both of whom (Son and Father) abide in the soul of the just man. The Holy Spirit and the Son dwell within as being sent, but the Father abides not as one sent, since he is not from another.88 The 86 87 88 the Son is sent on mission, the saints are ‘assimilated’ to the Son by the illumination of their intelligence (participation in the property of the Son, through an effect of grace appropriated to the Son) which enables them to know God. When the Holy Spirit is sent on mission, the saints are ‘assimilated’ to the Spirit through the ardor of charity (participation in the property of the Holy Spirit, by an effect appropriated to the Holy Spirit), which enables them to love God. The theological activity of knowledge of God and love of God, in the saints, ‘imitates’ or ‘represents’ the activity of God the Father who pronounces the Word and breathes the Spirit.” ST II-II, q. 45, a. 2. ST II-II, q. 45, a. 2, corp. See also Jacques Maritain, The Degrees of Knowledge, trans. Gerald B. Phelan (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 277: “What is it that makes us radically connatural with God? It is sanctifying grace whereby we are made consortes divinae naturae. And what makes this radical connaturality pass into act; what makes it flower into the actuality of operation? Charity. We are made connatural to God through charity. Charity is not just any kind of love. It presupposes sanctifying grace, of which it is the property, and it lays hold on God as He is really present within us as a Gift, a Friend, an eternal life-companion. However, it wins to God immediately as God, in His very deity, in the very intimate and absolutely proper life with which He will beatify us. Charity loves Him in Himself and by Himself.” See ST I, q. 43, a. 4. Eucharistic Indwelling and Aquinas’s Johannine Theolog y 1199 action of the Holy Spirit in the soul of the believer leading him to the knowledge of the Son and the Father is essential for the gift of life, since eternal life is predicated upon this knowledge, according to John 17:3. This knowledge comes from a certain connaturality brought about by eating Christ, the “real food” (ἀληθής βρῶσις; 6:55). In so doing, we are conformed to the Son of the Father as children of the same Father. And as the Son knows his Father, so we who are united to him (the Son), know our Father and thus have eternal life. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2023): 1201–1218 1201 Whose Red Garments? Which Divine Warrior? Thomas Aquinas on Isaiah 63 and the Literal Interpretation of the Old Testament Joshua Madden Blackfriars Studium Oxford University Introduction In attempting to discern the principles by which St. Thomas Aquinas offers a literal interpretation of the Old Testament, this essay will serve to highlight the tension between various periods and methods of biblical exegesis in the hope that it will allow a more fruitful engagement with the conclusions of both St. Thomas and modern biblical commentators. In order to make this discernment, we begin first by addressing the concept of literal interpretation as a whole, as significant misunderstandings can arise in any discussion of what a “literal” reading of Scripture actually is. This exploration will serve our project well by allowing us to pin down precisely what is meant by this term, as well as why it should be important in any mode of theological exegesis (especially that of the Old Testament). When we are able to parse out the exact nature of literal interpretation and the implications of taking such an approach with regard to St. Thomas, we will then be capable of examining a particular instance of Thomas’s exegesis by offering a test case of his methods in the reading of Isaiah 63, in which Isaiah prophesies the future appearance of a heavenly warrior who will bring both judgment and salvation to Israel. To sum up, we have two goals: to show that St. Thomas’s understanding of the literal sense is both logically coherent and perennially illuminating, and to highlight a particular instance in which St. Thomas’s exegesis and literal interpretation is employed in an insightful and creative manner. The conclusion of such an investigation will demonstrate that Aquinas is a 1202 Joshua Madden valuable resource for the science of biblical exegesis precisely because of his philosophically robust methodology and his commitment to the grounding and foundational importance of the Old Testament’s historical, literal sense. The Nature of Literal Interpretation At the very outset of the Summa theologiae, St. Thomas deals with the issue of biblical interpretation and the various senses of Scripture. First, he clarifies what it means to speak of a literal sense of Scripture: “that first signification whereby words signify things belongs to the first sense, the historical or literal.”1 Having established what he means by the literal sense, he goes on to speak of the various spiritual senses—allegorical, moral, anagogical—and the way in which they are to be parsed out, but he is careful to note that a multiplication of senses does not necessitate equivocation in meaning: “Thus in holy Scripture no confusion results [from the multiplicity of senses] for all the senses are founded on one—the literal—from which alone can any argument be drawn, and not from those intended in allegory.”2 To sum up: the literal, historical sense of Scripture is that meaning which is intended by the words themselves, and it is upon this understanding alone that any argument (and thus any theology) can be founded.3 Now one should not take this definition of the literal sense as somehow historicizing or demystifying the text of Scripture, as though St. Thomas were concerned merely with what the words of the human authors mean. First, it is not merely the intention of the human author that must be ascertained, for the human author is not the only author: “The author of holy Scripture is God.”4 In the preface to the Super Isaiam he says the same: “the author of Sacred Scripture is the Holy Spirit,” and it is “the prophet’s tongue” (lingua prophetae) which acts as the divine instrument (organum spiritus sancti).5 So 1 2 3 4 5 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] I, q. 1, a. 10, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Burns, Oates, and Washbourne, 1948). ST I, q. 1, a. 10. What is more, Aquinas also points out that the literal sense takes up into itself the use of metaphor: “The metaphorical sense is contained in the literal, for by words things are signified properly and figuratively. Nor is the figure itself, but that which is figured, the literal sense. When Scripture speaks of God’s arm, the literal sense is not that God has such a limb, but only what is signified by it, i.e. the power to act” (ST I, q. 1, a. 10, ad 3). This clear understanding of metaphor as a part of the literal sense is one of the key features of St. Thomas’s exegesis which will allow him to avoid many of the allegorical pitfalls into which the Christian interpreter may at times be liable to fall. ST I, q. 1, a. 10. Thomas Aquinas, Super Isa, proem., lns. 10–11, 16–17, in Leonine ed. vol. 28 (1974). Thomas Aquinas on Isaiah 63 1203 here we have a necessary condition for literal interpretation, that it must treat God as the primary author of Scripture. Therefore, a literal exegesis of any particular text must take into account not only the intention of the human author, but the divine author as well. Let us proceed. It is a particularly modern approach to couch this search for the literal sense of the text as the search to ascertain “what the author meant.” For St. Thomas, this is a question that is not in itself particularly helpful, as the intention of Sacred Scripture does not depend primarily on what the human author means to say at a particular point in time, but what the Holy Spirit intends Scripture to teach. In an essay addressing this very issue, John Boyle points us to one of the disputed questions in the De potentia, where St. Thomas is discussing the interpretation of Genesis.6 Stepping back to comment on interpretation in general, Aquinas offers two basic principles for consideration. There are two things, Aquinas says, which the interpreter must avoid: One is to give to the words of Scripture an interpretation manifestly false: since falsehood cannot underlie the divine Scriptures which we have received from the Holy Spirit. . . . The other is not to force such an interpretation on Scripture as to exclude any other interpretations that are actually or possibly true, since it is part of the dignity of Holy Scripture that under the one literal sense many others are contained.7 St. Thomas goes on to state that it is even possible that the sacred authors were aware of all the various ways in which their words might be understood, and wrote them down in such a way that their words would contain a multiplicity of meanings: “They expressed [these truths] under one literary style, so that each truth is the sense intended by the author.”8 And not only this, even if the human author did not possess a knowledge of the full range of meanings which their words might convey, this is of little consequence, as the author of Scripture is the Holy Spirit, who certainly understood each 6 7 8 All Latin citations will be taken from this volume, with the corresponding line numbers (note that division by lectio is not present after ch. 9); and all translations are my own. See John Boyle, “Authorial Intention and the Divisio Textus,” in Reading John with St. Thomas Aquinas: Theological Exegesis and Speculative Theology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 3–8. De potentia, q. 4, a. 1, resp., trans. English Dominican Fathers (Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1952). De potentia, q. 4, a. 1, resp. 1204 Joshua Madden truth which could be meant, and thus “every truth that can be adapted to the sacred text without prejudice to the literal sense is the sense of Holy Scripture.”9 We must take account, then, of the true manner in which St. Thomas goes about his discernment of the literal meaning of Scripture, and the mode in which he goes about crafting an interpretation ad litteram. As Boyle points out: “What is missing from Thomas’s criteria, and notably so to moderns, is any consideration of what the author meant. This is not a momentary lapse.”10 The very nature of speech is that words signify things, and it is quite possible that there are times in which even the human author of Scripture could have intended to signify more than one truth through the vehicle of the spoken word. Though one would look in vain for a treatment of the meaning of the author of Scripture in the works of St. Thomas, what is not missing from his thought is an understanding of the importance of the intention of the author. However, as Boyle remarks, caution must be taken here as well, for to come to understand the intention of the author, more is to be considered than simply “what they meant”; what an author really means in any particular instance is sometimes very difficult to ascertain, but what an author intends is often more easily discerned. In this regard, intention is, by and large, a macro-level concern, while meaning is a micro-level concern. For the book of Isaiah, Thomas states at the very outset what Isaiah’s intention is: to proclaim the future coming of the Son of God. The commentary itself is concerned to make judgments about what each individual part of the book means in light of this primary intention. According to the mind of St. Thomas, the meaning of any particular word or turn of phrase chosen by one of the authors of Scripture is entirely in service of the end to which the author is tending. Taking up the basic categories of goal and intention, when one intends something—when one wills something in particular—one also chooses the means to that end precisely because they will contribute to the attainment of that end. In any sequence of events chosen to bring about a particular good, every choice is ordered toward the attainment of that good, of bringing it about. In 9 10 De potentia, q. 4, a. 1, resp. This is a position which many moderns find beyond the pale, and is in fact not even within their horizon as a possibility. For example, in his recent volume on Isaiah, Ben Witherington attempts to give a brief overview of Thomas’s reading of the sacred text and makes an elementary mistake in this regard when attempting to understand the medieval exegetical method: he equates St. Thomas’s understanding of the literal sense with merely that which the human author intends to say (Isaiah Old and New: Exegesis, Intertextuality, and Hermeneutics [Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2017], 414). Boyle, “Authorial Intention,” 4. Thomas Aquinas on Isaiah 63 1205 the case of the sacred author, their intention—what they intend to teach and proclaim—governs the manner in which they set about bringing that intention into being. Taking up the Super Isaiam, we see that Aquinas states clearly what he understands to be Isaiah’s intention: “His principal intention revolves around the coming of Christ and the calling of the nations.”11 Every interpretive choice Aquinas makes, then, is going to be viewed through this hermeneutic lens—to attain the “literal sense” of any particular passage, it is necessary to keep this intention always in mind.12 It is this primacy of authorial intention that provides the unifying structure to the text, especially as laid out in the divisio textus, the method by which the Scholastic theologian carried out the medieval equivalent of literary criticism. While it would take us too far afield to raise the issue of the authorship of Isaiah, suffice it to say that St. Thomas asserts single-authorship (no other theory is even broached). Though it is impossible to know what the Angelic Doctor would think about modern hypotheses of multiple authorship, there is a sense in which it would ultimately be a fruitless exercise, as he would still insist upon reading Isaiah as an intrinsically unified whole due to its source in the agency of the Holy Spirit as the principal author. In seeing the canonical form of Isaiah as possessed of an interior unifying principle, Thomas can assert that Isaiah has an explicit intention around which the written work revolves, and which guides the structure of the text. Anticipating the contemporary division of the book (though with obviously different motives and conclusions), St. Thomas finds Isaiah to be concerned with two main ideas: God’s justice, and God’s mercy. Chapters 1–39 (what modern scholars have commonly dubbed “Proto- Isaiah”) are principally concerned with the proclamation of God’s retributive justice: first against the chosen people themselves, and then against any others who would persecute Israel or who would doubt the word of God. Chapters 40–66 (“Deutero-Isaiah,” and according to some “Trito-Isaiah”) are principally concerned with the proclamation of the consoling mercy of God: first by assuring them of God’s love and announcing the divine promises, and then by relating how those promises would be brought about.13 11 12 13 Super Isa 1, lec. 2, lns. 152–54. There is of course the question of why this reasoning is not circular. It seems to me that the intention of the author, as Aquinas sees it, is relatively obvious and can be gleaned from the text without any particular difficulty. Once the reader has discerned the basic intention of the sacred author, then one can go back into the text and use the primary intention of the author as a key to interpret the more obscure portions of the work in light of the overall structure and authorial intent. Thomas gives us his division, as one would expect, at the beginning of the commentary in the second lecture treating the first chapter: “Therefore, this book is divided into two 1206 Joshua Madden For Aquinas, the sacred author is a master teacher who lays out his work with the utmost care and orders the text in a manner best suited to his purposes. By emphasizing the two great attributes of God in two major parts—justice and mercy—the prophet Isaiah is able to rebuke Israel for their sins and their failure to live up to the stipulations of the covenant, while also offering the people hope because of the Lord’s mercy. Indeed, for St. Thomas, Isaiah’s principal intention is the message of hope found in the latter half of the book: it is precisely because of Isaiah’s intention to announce the great hope of the coming savior and the calling of the Gentiles that he writes anything at all. Far from seeing Isaiah of Jerusalem as the author of the first thirty-nine chapters alone, Aquinas’s understanding is that Isaiah is in fact most properly the author of chapters 40–66 because those contain the message which he principally intends.14 14 sections: in the first, the condemnation of divine justice is set down with regard to the eradication of sinners; in the second, beginning at chapter 40, the consolation of divine mercy with regard to the resurrection of the just” (Super Isa 1, lec. 2, lns. 162–165). Thomas repeats the structure when beginning the second “section” of Isaiah, when commenting on chapter 40: “This is the second major part of this book, in which he chiefly intends the consolation of the people through the many benefits that had been solemnly promised” (Super Isa 40, lns.1–4). For all of its precision, St. Thomas’s use of the divisio is a sword that cuts two ways. On the one hand, perhaps his most significant contribution lies in this distinction between Isa 1–39 and 40–66, which specifically addresses the modern problem of authorship and unity. The distinction between divine justice and mercy is absolutely crucial in discerning Isaiah’s intention. On the other hand, it is clear that there are times where Thomas’s division seems rather to obscure the intention of the author, such as when the unity of the Servant Song which spans Isa 52–53 is glossed over simply because of the (arbitrary) chapter divisions. Perhaps in this particular instance, we can blame the imprecision on his youth and a hectic teaching schedule; the expositio was, after all, meant to be a quick gloss over the text. This line of thinking is remarkably similar to the argument advanced by John Oswalt, who claims that “what is taught in chs. 1–39 requires chs. 40–66” (The Book of Isaiah: Chapters 40—66 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988], 8). Oswalt goes on to conclude that it is precisely the existence of the book of Isaiah as a whole that gave hope and strength to those who found themselves in exile, wrestling with the difficult circumstances of seeming abandonment by their God: “The fundamental point that chs. 40–55 address is the possibility of restoration. . . . More than anything else, the exile would raise questions about the character of the God whom Isaiah and the preexilic prophets had been proclaiming. Had the book of Isaiah in its entirety not existed prior to the exile, it is easy to imagine the exilic community simply abandoning their pre-exilic faith and assimilating to the dominant Babylonian culture, as a number of the Jews did” (8). If the sum total of Isaiah’s prophecy before the exile ended with ch. 39, would it have even been left to posterity? The hope found in the promises of restoration and glorification was the driving force behind the faith of the Jews who would remain faithful—the existence of the book of Isaiah in its entirety would allow the people Thomas Aquinas on Isaiah 63 1207 If Isaiah’s principal intention is to announce the coming of the messiah and the ingathering of the nations, then every choice he makes in conveying that message will be ordered to that end. Since Isaiah has a coherent intention in mind, the text which is produced on account of this intention is coherent as well. Furthermore, if it is true that what is first in intention is last in execution, then it makes perfect sense for Isaiah to only move into the ideas with which he is primarily concerned in the latter half of his work. By setting up his work in chapters 1–39, he sets up chapters 40–66 to shine forth all the greater. As a preliminary exercise, let us examine a particular instance where St. Thomas’s principles are seen in action, where his exegesis explicitly resorts to this concept of a “multiple literal sense.” While the immediate application of an appeal to a multiple literal sense may not be immediately apparent, its relevance should be immediately discernible in practice. While the possibility of a multiple literal sense is not widely held, it is a load-bearing concept for Thomas’s methodology (and pre-modern exegesis as a whole). In the area of Pauline studies for instance, Scott Hahn and John Kincaid have demonstrated the value of Thomas’s appeal to the multiple literal sense as “an important tool that could help bridge some of the exegetical divides that currently plague” the field,15 and it is clear that the same is quite true regarding interpretation of the Old Testament.16 Commenting on Isa 35:4–5—“then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, 15 16 to hold on to hope as everything they knew fell around them. While many modern scholars remain unconvinced that Isaiah of Jerusalem can be credited with the majority of the content and structure of the book as a whole, the logic with which Aquinas approaches the text of Isaiah—that the prophet composed the whole of the book, and can be credited with the unified vision presented through the divisio textus—is in line with that of Oswalt and others who are sympathetic to the single-author theory of composition. This does not preclude the possibility and likelihood that later figures in Israel’s history may have added certain passages, clarified certain proclamations, or made editorial contributions, but it does take seriously the integrity of the internal structure and message of the book. Scott Hahn and John Kincaid, “The Multiple Literal Sense in Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on Romans and Modern Pauline Hermeneutics,” in Reading Romans with St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 2012), 163. See Hahn and Kincaid, “Multiple Literal Sense,” 164: “It should go without saying that we are not the first to discover Thomas’s understanding of Scripture’s multiple literal sense. Indeed, he affirms the multiple literal sense in six different texts, which his interpreters have studied and debated for centuries. Nor does Thomas claim to have invented the idea, which, like so many of his other fundamental notions, he inherited from Augustine.” 1208 Joshua Madden and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped, then the lame man shall leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall be free”—Aquinas states: “These are figurative expressions if they are to be referred to the time after the Assyrian destruction, and are to be understood of spiritual defects, as above. However, if they are taken to refer to the appearance of Christ in the flesh, as is related in the Gospel, they are to be taken literally.”17 So, has Aquinas’s interpretation ad litteram broken down? Not at all. Aquinas presents the reader with two possible interpretive options, both at the literal level, and neither are mutually exclusive to the point that only one of them is possible. Of great importance here is St. Thomas’s inclusion of the use of metaphor under the literal sense: if the passage is taken “literally,” then it must be speaking of the miracles worked by Christ during his public ministry, for this is the only time when these kinds of miracles had occurred in the life of Israel. However, if the passage is to be taken as speaking “figuratively”—and here we are still in the provenance of literal interpretation—then it should be understood metaphorically, referring first of all to the spiritual restoration that began to take effect in the wake of the Assyrian crisis. When interpreted in the light of Isaiah’s principal intention to reveal to Israel the impending advent of the messiah and the ingathering of the nations, the possibility of a twofold literal interpretation is made even more likely. Aquinas goes on shortly to propose that the “path” mentioned by Isa 35:8, just a few verses later, is first of all the path which leads to the Temple, and yet also that which leads to the Church. For Aquinas, this was an illuminating foray into the recognition of Israel’s place in a literal interpretation of Isaiah. Take the exegesis of St. Jerome, for example, who is the author of one of the most extensive and profound commentaries on Isaiah in the history of Christian interpretation. Jerome interprets these verses in chapter 35 to refer to the time of Christ and the Church alone. Commenting on the passage, he makes no mention of Israel’s spiritual renewal whatsoever, and the path of Isa 35:8 is not the path to the Temple (as Aquinas understands), but is the path of Christ, who alone is “the way” (cf. John 14:6).18 In his own commentary, St. Thomas is adamant about attributing a partial fulfillment to the promise of restoration in the time before the advent of Christ—in fact, this is exactly the tendency Aquinas exhibits in his interpretation of the more obviously eschatological portions of the book, especially beginning with chapter 60. 17 18 Super Isa 35, lns. 35–40. Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah, trans. Thomas P. Scheck (New York: Newman Press, 2015), 502–4. Thomas Aquinas on Isaiah 63 1209 In his brief study of Aquinas in The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture, Brevard Childs has correctly identified the characteristic mark of St. Thomas’s exegesis as the deft ability to move from sign to reality, minimizing the instantaneous move from literal to allegorical that other interpreters seemed to make often. Summarizing his findings, Childs remarks: “His emphasis on the literal sense has often been correctly stressed, but equally important is Thomas’s largely non-allegorical manner of penetrating to the figurative sense by means of an ontological, intertextual move shaped by the substance of the witness itself.”19 This dynamic is important to highlight: the witness of the text to a literal interpretation that is often also figurative, and open to possibilities which transcend the immediate context of the utterance.20 In avoiding an allegorism that strays too far afield from the immediate context of the passage in question, Aquinas is able to penetrate to the realities in question without uprooting the text from its natural habitat. When interpreting a passage, the whole context of any particular passage is always taken into account when moving from the literal to the figurative in order to avoid an understanding that would be arbitrary or disconnected from the surrounding narrative. At the same time, however, St. Thomas is careful never to set an absolute limit to any particular interpretation and remains open to the transcendent nature of Scripture as the word of God (and therefore always capable of being entered into more deeply). This dynamic openness we see in Aquinas seems at least in part to be speaking to the same reality that Ben Witherington is careful to affirm: “The revelation in the OT while true is always partial and pointing forward. For the Christian, full clarity about the nature and salvific purposes of God does not come to light before Christ.”21 This fullness of meaning which presents itself only in the fullness of time (cf. Heb 1:1) is precisely what Aquinas is getting at when he is able to interpret a passage from Isaiah as fulfilled partially in historical Israel and more fully in the context of Christ and the Church. For Witherington, it is inherent to the expression of prophecy to be open-ended, capable of a “surplus of meaning” which may not necessarily have been in the mind of the prophet, as though containing some deeper hidden meaning which the prophet intended to conceal, “but rather a trajectory of meaning that can be added to later, so long as it is moving in the same 19 20 21 Brevard Childs, The Struggle to Understand Isaiah as Christian Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 162. Of course, St. Thomas also engages the spiritual senses of the biblical text as well, most notably in the collations found throughout the work. Witherington, Isaiah Old and New, 444. 1210 Joshua Madden direction.”22 This additional meaning is not additional in the sense of being extrinsically imposed as a foreign object, but additional in the sense that it is only in light of certain events brought about by God that the full meaning of some particular utterance is understood.23 If we think of the various words and deeds of Jesus which the apostles were only able to understand in all their depth after the event of the resurrection (cf. Luke 24:13–35; John 2:13–22), we realize that the witness of the New Testament itself teaches us to look back to the events recorded in Scripture with renewed vision made possible by the Christ event. This openness to a “surplus of meaning” so crucial to Witherington’s understanding of prophecy cuts very close to the hermeneutical principle of Aquinas (following Augustine) that a text can contain a multiplicity of meaning as long as it is in keeping with the deposit of faith.24 Recall his 22 23 24 Witherington, Isaiah Old and New, 343. Gilbert Dahan brings out this point marvelously in his article. Speaking of the relationship between the exegete and the prophetic oracle, he states: “This speaking or doing [i.e., of the prophetic oracle] exceed [sic] the prophet’s understanding: it is the work of the exegete to make explicit the inspired word or action. This is not to make the exegete superhuman or superior to the prophet: exegesis is a humble science which falls within a tradition—but the exegete benefits from the perspective of history and this placement within a history enables the progressive clarification of the word of God. This word is presented for understanding and is understood little by little as history progresses.” In (“Thomas Aquinas: Exegesis and Hermeneutics,” in Reading Sacred Scripture with Thomas Aquinas: Hermeneutical Tools, Theological Questions, and New Perspectives, ed. Piotr Roszak and Jörgen Vijgen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), 49. In De doctrina Christiana, Augustine offers the following reflection in 3.27–28 which is worth quoting at length: Sometimes not just one meaning but two or more meanings are perceived in the same words of Scripture. Even if the writer’s meaning is obscure, there is no danger here, provided that it can be shown from other passages of the holy scriptures that each of these interpretations is consistent with the truth. The person examining the divine utterances must of course do his best to arrive at the intention of the writer through whom the Holy Spirit produced that part of scripture; he may reach that meaning or carve out from the words another meaning which does not run counter to the faith, using the evidence of any other passage of the divine utterances. Perhaps the author too saw that very meaning in the words which we are trying to understand. Certainly the spirit of God who worked through the author foresaw without any doubt that it would present itself to a reader or listener, or rather planned that it should present itself, because it too is based on the truth. Could God have built into the divine eloquence a more generous or bountiful gift than the possibility of understanding the same words in several ways, all of them deriving confirmation from other no less divinely inspired Thomas Aquinas on Isaiah 63 1211 statement in the De potentia that an interpreter of Scripture is bound “not to force such an interpretation on Scripture as to exclude any other interpretations that are actually or possibly true.”25 This principle seems to be of special significance in the interpretation of prophecy, which is by nature open to the future; the task of the prophet in announcing future judgment or vindication forces future generations into discerning their place within the narrative of salvation history. In the first place, the reader (or hearer) of Isaiah in the period after the exile surely encountered the text in a deeply personal manner. To an even greater extent, as the New Testament bears witness, the apostles and early Christians were able to encounter an even greater mystery proclaimed by Isaiah, receiving a depth of understanding that had been previously inaccessible before the Incarnation and the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Divine Warrior of Isaiah 63—A Test Case As the final stage in our exploration of Aquinas’s exegetical methodology, we will examine Isa 63:1–6 with St. Thomas as our guide, and compare it with the interpretations offered by various modern treatments of the passage. In the Douay-Rheims translation of the Vulgate, the passage reads as follows: Who is this that comes from Edom, with dyed garments from Bosra, this beautiful one in his robe, walking in the greatness of his strength? “I that speak justice, and am a defender to save.” Why then is your apparel red, and your garments as those who tread in the winepress? “I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the Gentiles there is not a man with me; I have trampled upon them in my wrath, and their blood is strewn about, and I have stained all my apparel. For the day of vengeance is in my heart, the year of my redemption has come. I looked about, and there was none to help: I sought, and there was none to give aid, and my own arm has saved me, and my wrath itself has helped me. And I have trodden down the people in my wrath, and 25 passages? When one unearths an equivocal meaning which cannot be verified by unequivocal support from the holy scriptures it remains for the meaning to be brought into the open by a process of reasoning, even if the writer whose words we are seeking to understand perhaps did not perceive it. (On Christian Teaching, trans. R. P. H. Green [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997], 86–87). De potentia, q. 4, a. 1, ad 8. 1212 Joshua Madden have made them drunk in my indignation, and have brought down their strength to the earth.”26 St. Thomas begins his commentary by laying out the traditional interpretation as found in the writings of the holy men and women down through the ages: “Now it is known that all the saints commonly interpret this with reference to Christ.”27 Eusebius of Caesarea, for example, writing in the early fourth century, interprets the passage with reference to the end of the world and Christ’s return in judgment of the earth.28 Jerome on the other hand, while aware that he is in the exegetical minority, argues instead that this refers to the first coming of Christ and his work of redemption accomplished in the Passion.29 Regardless of the nuance the interpretation takes on, the trajectory is clear: from very early on, the warrior in blood-spattered clothes is seen to be the incarnate Christ. Childs agrees that the identity of the figure is quite clear, but does not agree that the figure is that of Christ: “God’s identity is obvious to all. . . . Yahweh is portrayed returning from the slaughter having requited his great anger.”30 However, his interpretation may not be as far from the traditional reading as it might seem at first glance. Bringing his reflection on this divine warrior figure to a close, he states that “the crucial function of chapter 63, which is set forth in a retrospective sequence, is to emphasize in the strongest manner possible that the divine judgment against the evil and injustice of those in rebellion against God’s rule must precede the entrance of God’s promised kingship in the transformation of Zion.”31 Penetrating through the sign to the res, to the reality at the heart of the matter, Childs is convinced that the primary locus of meaning is centered in the sacred 26 27 28 29 30 31 The Douay-Rheims translation, taken from the Clementine Vulgate, emended slightly to fit better with the text as reflected by the reading of St. Thomas. Super Isa 63, lns. 11–13. See Eusebius, Commentary on Isaiah, trans. by Jonathan J. Armstrong (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013), 304. Jerome comments: “By necessity, therefore, we are compelled to interpret everything that is said with reference to the first coming of the Savior. . . . Let us show that [these things] have already been fulfilled in Christ, both according to the flesh and according to the spirit” (Commentary on Isaiah, 799). Childs, Struggle to Understand Isaiah, 517. Oswalt summarizes the last five hundred years of reflection on this passage in a single sentence: “Reacting against anything that might smack of allegorization, Calvin spoke out strongly against this interpretation [i.e., that the figure is Christ], and virtually all commentators since have followed him” (Isaiah: Chapters 40—66, 595). Childs, Struggle to Understand Isaiah, 519. Thomas Aquinas on Isaiah 63 1213 author’s conviction that God’s justice and purgation of evil must precede his enacting of mercy in the transformation of the people and restoration of the holy city. In his own words: “What is at stake is that Israel’s ultimate vindication must be preceded by God’s judgment, which he alone is able to execute.”32 The path he takes to that conclusion is different from those of Eusebius and Jerome, but the conclusion is remarkably the same. Let us now bring Aquinas back into the discussion. It must be acknowledged at the outset that Aquinas is very conscious of the history of interpretation involved here, and his interpretation on the first run-through takes the traditional stance: the figure is Christ, and the passage is to be interpreted in light of this reality. The astonished questioners are here the angels, who cry out with amazement at the mystery of the Incarnation as Christ strides into heaven by his own power, whose robe is the flesh of humanity in which he had clothed himself, and whose limbs are stained with the blood of the Passion. He speaks justice because he himself is the judge, who will pronounce the sentence upon the wayward nations and defend all mankind from the demons. The work of redemption which he had to undertake was a solitary affair, the suffering and victory was achieved alone. Though, taking Isaiah’s choice of words quite literally that there was “not a man” with him, he states: “He very clearly says ‘a man’ on account of the Blessed Virgin, in whom faith was never lacking.”33 After this lengthy exposition on Christ, the heavenly warrior who works justice and redemption for the salvation of the human race, St. Thomas makes an unexpected interpretive choice (historically speaking): Now all of this can be interpreted literally so as to represent the Lord under a metaphor, as one who comes to destroy the various peoples who are enemies of the Jews (particularly the Idumeans), in accordance with the metaphorical mode in which it is clothed, for as it is said above, “he put on justice as a breastplate” (Isa 59:17).34 True to form, Aquinas offers two different interpretations according to the letter, both of which involve the acknowledgment of the heavy use of metaphor involved, and does not feel compelled to choose between the 32 33 34 Childs, Struggle to Understand Isaiah, 517. A short while later he concludes his comments by stating: “According to the witness of these chapters, the eschatological economy of God unfolds sequentially according to his purpose of judgment that precedes the final redemption of God’s elect” (519). Super Isa 63, lns. 101–2. Super Isa 63, lns. 136–41. 1214 Joshua Madden two. If interpreted of God simply, the metaphor is obvious, as everything corporeal is meant to be understood as signifying a spiritual reality (e.g., the image of the winepress as the place of divine judgment). If interpreted of the incarnate Christ, however, this image also must be understood to portray spiritual realities under metaphor, for as Aquinas notes: “This is said according to the likeness of a conqueror, whose ripped garments have been stained, as above: ‘with garment mingled with blood’ (Isa 9:4).”35 In many ways, the latter interpretation stands out as more vivid in the mind of the Christian reader, for when it is interpreted as referring directly to Christ, we can actually picture the beaten and bloodied figure of Christ on the road to Calvary and hung upon the Cross—the metaphor is all the more striking because of the reality that Christ’s act of redemption literally involved the shedding of blood. Witherington, along with Childs, rejects a Christological interpretation, but curiously invokes the imagery of Revelation 19 as part of the basis for his argument.36 Admittedly, Witherington is more concerned to clarify that the blood with which the warrior’s garments are stained is that of his enemies—and not his own blood, as a Christological reading would have—but Witherington’s denial is particularly strange because the rider in Revelation 19 is specifically identified as “the Word of God,” the Johannine title for the divine Son. His primary focus is important, stressing the point that the blood with which the warrior is stained is first a symbol of judgment, yet he seems to gloss over the rather obvious identification of the apocalyptic figure of Revelation: Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. . . . He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is the Word of God. . . . From his mouth issues a sharp sword with which to strike the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron; he will tread the wine press of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name inscribed: King of kings, and Lord of lords. (Rev 19:11, 13, 15–16) On the one hand, if he wishes to deny a Christological interpretation to the passage from Isaiah, it does not seem that Revelation 19 helps his cause. 35 36 Super Isa 63, no. 111–13. See Witherington, Isaiah Old and New, 315. Even more curiously, Witherington denies that the rider in Revelation—specifically identified as “the word of God”—is in fact Christ, saying that the rider is merely “like Christ” (319). Thomas Aquinas on Isaiah 63 1215 On the other hand, it is indeed important, as Witherington notes, not to ignore the aspect of judgment and wrath here in our passage from Isaiah. The two ideas, however, are by no means mutually exclusive—we need not deny an identification with Christ so as to emphasize the primacy of judgment. Significantly, Aquinas cannot be accused of this oversight, as he too emphasizes the aspect of wrath and judgment even in his Christological reading of the text, as we saw above. The reading of the passage by John Oswalt on the other hand, as well as that of J. Alec Motyer, is similar to that found in Aquinas, and allows for a “surplus of meaning” in the text (to quote Witherington).37 Thus Oswalt writes: First, the blood that spatters the robes of the Warrior is unquestionably that of his enemies. Sin and evil will be converted or destroyed. Second, this is not an allegorical presentation of the crucifixion. What the Warrior has done here may include the crucifixion, but it is not limited to, or primarily about, that event. But neither is the passage limited to the destruction of external enemies alone. It is about the destruction of all that prevents the “Holy People” from realizing all that God has promised them. In this sense, the passage is about the work of the Messiah that makes it possible for the people of God to be and to do what God commands them to do.38 Here Oswalt, like Witherington, is careful to emphasize the role of the Warrior as a judge, stained with the blood of his enemies. He is comfortable going beyond this, however, because he is convinced that the Warrior is undoubtedly related to the anointed one mentioned in Isaiah 59,39 and even with the servant of chapters 49–53.40 37 38 39 40 See Witherington, Isaiah Old and New, 343. Oswalt, Isaiah: Chapters 40—66, 596. Thus Oswalt comments on Isa 59:20: “God assumes the warrior stance so that he may fill the role of redeemer. His ultimate purpose in attacking the sin of the world is to redeem the world as typified in Zion. No matter how fearsome his wrath against sin, no matter how terrified those who choose to remain in sin should be, still it is the patient compassion of a God who longs to forgive that should capture our attention as it did that of the ancient Israelites. . . . It is not remarkable that God should be incensed at the corruption of his purposes for creation. What is remarkable is that he should persevere in compassion toward those who have become corrupt” (Isaiah: Chapters 40—66, 530). See Oswalt, Isaiah: Chapters 40—66, 595. Commenting on Isaiah 52:10 he writes: “God’s power is expressed in the image of the outstretched hand or arm. Here, like the 1216 Joshua Madden Motyer likewise identifies the Warrior with God’s anointed one, arguing that this is merely the final act of a sequence of narratives focused on God’s desire to render justice among the nations: The Lord too was appalled that earth’s sinners were without any to come to their aid (59:16ab; 63:5ab). But between these two passages, the beginning and end of the whole sequence, we have learned that the Anointed One comes with a ministry of comfort, vengeance and salvation (61:2), and that it is on him that the Lord puts the garments of salvation and righteousness (61:10). The third Song of the Anointed One and its tailpiece focused on salvation (61:10; 62:1, 11), and now it falls to the final Song to unfold the last act of the drama, the day of vengeance.41 If Oswalt and Motyer are correct in identifying the Warrior with the Anointed Messiah who will come to enact God’s judgment and bring about ultimate redemption and restoration, which seems beyond doubt, then a literal interpretation which includes the work of Jesus Christ is perfectly fitting. One need not imagine that Isaiah was granted an explicit image of the crucified Christ in a vision, but this does not exclude a Christological dimension from our understanding of the passage. If Jesus truly was the expected Messiah, and if Isaiah’s Warrior is a metaphorical image of the divine work which the Lord had prepared for his Anointed One to perform, then a soberly Christological interpretation naturally follows.42 Wrapping up his treatment of the Warrior, and adding the final layer to his 41 42 warrior preparing for battle, the Lord has shrugged off his cloak and his powerful arm is bared for battle. For the nations determined to oppose him (66:14), that is cause for a shiver of apprehension; but for those who submit to him, it is cause for hope (51:5)” (371). J. Alec Motyer, The Prophecy of Isaiah: An Introduction and Commentary (Downers Grove, IL; IVP Academic, 1993), 509. In point of fact, the Old Testament often presents the reader with an unresolved paradox in the relationship which exists between the action which the God of Israel claims for himself and the action which he calls another to perform. Take another of the major prophets, Ezekiel for example, and the image of the divine shepherd. In Ezekiel 34:15, yhwh declares: “I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep.” And yet only a few verses later, he gives this exact same task to another: “I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them; he shall feed them and be their shepherd” (34:23). What are we to make of this? Is it yhwh who is to be the shepherd, or is David to assume the task of the “one shepherd”? The prophet leaves the paradox unsolved. It is only in the New Testament that an answer is offered: “I am the good shepherd” ( John 10:11). Thomas Aquinas on Isaiah 63 1217 argument in favor of viewing the Warrior’s mission as intrinsically related to that of the Anointed One, Oswalt clarifies all that is meant by the declaration of judgment and vengeance: What is the vengeance about? God’s hurt pride? No, it is about redemption, about breaking the power of sin and evil so that those who are held in its grasp may go free. This is precisely the point that the Servant/Messiah made in 61:2 in similar words (and one more reason to recognize that all of the work of that person, both salvific and judgmental, is included here).43 The work of the Warrior is not only one of judgment and recompense; he is not fixated on the outpouring of his wrath alone (as Childs seems to intimate), but his work is ultimately one of salvation which must include judgment on account of human sin. St. Thomas recognizes this joint mission of judgment and redemption, refusing to sever either from the other as if their coexistence were untenable. Commenting on the Warrior’s answer—“I that speak justice, and am a defender to save”—Aquinas explains that this response indicates the threefold nature of his role: “I [that speak justice].” Here he sets down the response, and reveals the judge himself, “[I] who speak justice,” i.e., who have authority to carry out the judgment of the nations (cf. Isa 42); the teacher: “I am the Lord, speaking justice [and declaring right things]” (Isa 45:19); and the savior, “a defender” against the demons, “to save” the race of mankind: “the Lord is my strength and my praise, he has become salvation to me” (Exod 15:2); “the Lord is a man of war, Almighty is his name” (Exod 15:3).44 Not only does Aquinas’s interpretation show a depth of understanding that belies the dense form in which it is composed, but his quotations from the book of Exodus demonstrate that he is quite familiar with the Old Testament’s “divine warrior” motif. Steeped in a profound knowledge of the Scriptures, St. Thomas is no artless interpreter, approaching the text as if the only possible explanation for Isaiah’s use of this image is his explicit foreknowledge of the victory wrought by Christ. Aquinas shows that the 43 44 Oswalt, Isaiah: Chapters 40—66, 598–99. Super Isa 63, lns. 65–74. 1218 Joshua Madden biblical image of the Lord as a mighty warrior is quite familiar to him, and is in fact the reason that he is quite confident in his assertion that the depiction of the Lord under the image of a warrior—and the twofold metaphorical interpretation he offers—is not only possible, but appropriate. Conclusion The unifying aspect to any discussion of biblical interpretation, especially for St. Thomas, is crystallized in one main concept: authorial intention. We saw how authorial intention is crucial for Aquinas’s interpretation of Isaiah as a whole, since the prophet’s intention is the catalyst for everything contained within the book—not only does intention provide the overall structure of the text (macro-level interpretation), but also informs the exegete as to how the individual sections of the text are to be interpreted (micro-level interpretation)—Aquinas’s use of the divisio textus demonstrates this masterfully. Isaiah’s intention in composing the book—proclaiming the future coming of the Son of God—is the primary lens through which St. Thomas reads and explains the text. For the modern exegete, even if they deny the premise that Isaiah’s primary intention includes Jesus Christ, the basic approach remains the same: the intention of the author is the main factor in the interpretation of the text. Inquiring further into St. Thomas’s exegetical method, it is clear that his concept of the literal sense reaches much further than a superficial reading would suggest. It is also clear that an ad litteram interpretation according to St. Thomas is markedly different from the kind of literal interpretation to which most modern practitioners of the art would subscribe. Aquinas shares the most common ground with exegetes who identify as historical critics in his reliance on the literal sense of Scripture as the foundation for argumentation and demonstrative proofs. Further, his reliance on a purified realism allows him to engage with the text of Scripture in a manner that is very grounded in the historical, preventing him from straying too far afield into tangential allegorism—this includes and emphasizes his insistence on the inclusion of literary metaphor under the umbrella of literal interpretation. Thomas’s insistence on the dual authorship of Scripture, as well as his macro-level focus on authorial intention—as demonstrated in his precise use of the divisio textus—can help to pave the way for a purification of modern exegesis which allows the exegete to operate with a fundamental metaphysical base upon which to build a truly theological, and (frankly) realistic, interpretation of Scripture. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2023): 1219–1244 1219 Christ’s Human Nature and the Cry from the Cross: St. Thomas Aquinas on Psalm 22:2 Philip Nolan, O.P. Holy Innocents Parish Pleasantville, NY Christ’s cry from the Cross quoting Psalm 22 (Mark 15:34; Matt 27:46) has become a central focus for contemporary Christological debates.1 A number of modern thinkers have read this verse as expressing in Christ an experience of dereliction incompatible with traditional positions concerning divine impassibility, Christ’s beatific knowledge, and Trinitarian relations.2 Thomas Joseph White has recently offered an insightful Thomistic critique of these interpretations: 1 2 For a comprehensive study of this verse and an introduction to the debates attending it, see Gérard Rossé, The Cry of Jesus on the Cross: A Biblical and Theological Study (New York: Paulist Press, 1987). Other more recent engagements with this verse include Evaggelos Bartzis, “My God, My God, Why Have You Abandoned Me?”: The Experience of God’s Withdrawal in Late Antique Exegesis, Christology and Ascetic Literature (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021); William L. Bell, “God Hidden from God: On Theodicy, Dereliction, and Human Suffering,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 88, no. 1 (2019): 41–55; Eleonore Stump, Atonement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 143–75; Beth A. Rath, “Christ’s Faith, Doubt, and the Cry of Dereliction,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 81 (2017): 161–69; Holly J. Carey, Jesus’ Cry from the Cross: Towards a First-Century Understanding of the Intertextual Relationship Between Psalm 22 and the Narrative of Mark’s Gospel (London: T & T Clark, 2009); Anthony Clarke, A Cry in the Darkness: The Forsakenness of Jesus in Scripture, Theology, and Experience (Oxford: Regent’s Park College, 2002); and Thomas Joseph White, O.P., The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2017), 308–39. God’s impassibility: Jürgen Moltmann, a prominent proponent of divine passibility, treats the cry from the Cross in The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation 1220 Philip Nolan, O.P. The final cry of Christ on the cross cannot be interpreted as a cry of either despair or of spiritual separation from God. By contrast, it must be understood theologically as a prayer of desire related to Christ’s abandonment to the Father and his hope to introduce humanity into the eschatological gift of redemption.3 In his work, White is concerned to engage with modern Christological themes using principles derived from the Thomistic tradition. For this reason, he articulates a rather original alternative to modern theologies of dereliction—especially those marked by divine kenoticism and Luther’s theology of the Cross. In offering a view inspired by Thomistic principles, White presents his own creative retrieval of Aquinas’s ideas concerning the cry from the Cross. At times, however, White’s argument leaves somewhat obscure the literal meaning of the words of that cry: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”4 For example, in pushing back against radical interpretations 3 4 and Criticism of Christian Theology (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 145–52. For a contemporary defense of divine impassibility in regard to the cry from the Cross, see Thomas G. Weinandy, Does God Suffer? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2000), 209–11. For a more general introduction to the contemporary debate about divine passibility, see Pavel L. Gavriljuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 1–20; Divine Impassibility and the Mystery of Human Suffering, ed. James Keating and Thomas Joseph White, O.P. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009). For a challenge to the traditional position on Christ’s possession of the beatific vision, see Jean Galot, “Le Christ terrestre et la vision,” Gregorianum 67 (1986): 429–50, who argues: “The cry of Jesus on the Cross manifests all the depth of a suffering incompatible with the beatitude of vision” (435, trans. mine). In a similar vein, see Thomas Weinandy, “Jesus’ Filial Vision of the Father,” Pro Ecclesia 13 (2004): 189–201. Regarding challenges to classical formulations of Trinitarian relations, see, for example, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 3, The Dramatis Personae: The Person in Christ, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 228–29, 529–31. For an analysis and response to Balthasar’s thought on the cry from the Cross, see Alyssa Lyra Pitstick, Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ’s Descent into Hell (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2007), 117–29, and John Yocum, “A Cry of Dereliction?: Reconsidering a Recent Theological Commonplace,” International Journal of Systematic Theology 7, no. 1 ( January 2005): 72–80. White, Incarnate Lord, 310. White treats this subject throughout chapter 7: “Did God Abandon Jesus? The Dereliction of the Cross” (308–39), engaging, among others, Hermann Reimarus, Albert Schweitzer, Karl Barth, Moltmann, Balthasar, and Galot. White modifies the Revised Standard Version translation from “forsaken” to “abandon,” a modification I follow for the sake of consistency. Likewise, unless otherwise noted, I use the RSV. St. Thomas Aquinas on Psalm 22:2 1221 of dereliction, he shifts the language of “abandonment” from God’s abandonment of Christ to Christ’s abandonment to the Father. My argument in this article is that the textual commentaries on Psalm 225 by Augustine and Aquinas—material that White does not consider specifically—can provide an alternate and somewhat complementary Thomistic approach to the one White proposes, and one more soundly based on Aquinas’s texts themselves.6 Christ’s cry is a quote from this psalm, and Aquinas’s commentary on Ps 22:27 develops the Augustinian interpretation of this verse in order to give greater emphasis to Christ’s human nature. This emphasis helps to explain, in a classical way, what it can mean that Christ is abandoned. Thus, Aquinas’s exegesis bolsters the orthodox response to contemporary revisionist theologians by providing a clear literal understanding of this contested biblical passage without applying an experience of damnation to Christ or denying classical positions concerning divine impassibility, Christ’s beatific knowledge, and the nature of Trinitarian relations. To make this argument, I will first look at the rich tradition of reflection on the Christological meaning of the Psalms, and Psalm 22 in particular, inherited by Thomas. This tradition includes a series of psalm commentaries, conciliar documents, and a variety of other theological works. In this tradition, I argue, we see two primary interpretative approaches. The first is what I will call the Augustinian approach, which insists that Christ is speaking on the Cross for sinners and in the voice of sinners. The second interpretation places more weight on Christ’s own voice and insists that he is speaking in a real way for himself—Christ in some way truly is abandoned by God. These interpretations need not and should not be read as contradictory. In fact, all the authorities I examine insist on the first approach. Differences emerge, however, in how they coordinate the latter interpretation with the former. I will discuss Thomas’s synthesis of these interpretations, a synthesis that he grounds in the reality of Christ’s human nature. Finally, I will suggest 5 6 7 In Thomas’s classical numeration, this is Psalm 21. I use the text of the Super Psalmos from the 1863 Parma edition, which the Aquinas Institute has reprinted with a facing English translation: Commentary on Psalms, trans. Albert Marie Surmanski, O.P., and Maria Veritas Marks, O.P. (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2022). I use this translation (available online at aquinas.cc) with some modification. The verse as Thomas had it was: “Deus, Deus meus, respice in me: quare me dereliquisti? Longe a salute mea verba delictorum meorum”—“My God, my God, look on me, why have you abandoned me? Far from my salvation are the words of my sins.” White does not include Aquinas’s Super Psalmos in the bibliography of Incarnate Lord. The RSV does not treat the title prescript of the psalm as the first verse, while the Vulgate does, as does the New American Bible Revised Edition. I follow the NABRE’s enumeration here. 1222 Philip Nolan, O.P. how a close reading of Thomas’s mature treatment of Ps 22:2 supplements contemporary Thomist responses to modern Christological concerns and misguided interpretations of Christ’s cry on the Cross. Thomas’s Sources for Reading Psalm 22:2 Thomas’s primary source for understanding Ps 22:2 is Scripture itself. Both Mark and Matthew report that Christ spoke the words of this psalm from the Cross, a fact which necessitates for Thomas a Christological interpretation of the psalm.8 Augustine links Ps 22:2 with passages in St. Paul’s epistles, such as 2 Corinthians 5:21—“For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God”—and Romans 8:3—“For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.” These links inform Augustine’s interpretation of Ps 22:2 as primarily a revelation of Christ’s relationship to his members—the Church. Later theologians who build on this Pauline/ Augustinian interpretation include Cassiodorus and Peter Lombard, as well as sources such as the Glossa Ordinaria.9 These later commentators largely follow the lines of Augustine’s thought, either implicitly or explicitly. To this Augustinian line of interpretation of Ps 22:2 Thomas adds a second interpretive tradition which focuses on the human nature of Christ. Thomas insists that Christ spoke not only for the Church and for sinners, but also for himself, in his own human nature, when he cried out on the Cross. Such a view is not altogether absent from Augustine’s thinking, but the African bishop’s focus is elsewhere. On this point, Thomas was influenced by his reading of the acta of the Second Council of Constantinople 8 9 In the Vulgate, the psalm verse differs slightly from the quotation in the Gospels. Matt 27:46 and Mark 15:34 quote only the first half of the verse, have “Deus meus, Deus meus” in place of “Deus, Deus meus,” do not include “respice in me,” and have “ut quid dereliquisti me” in place of “quare me dereliquisti.” Martin Morard notes Thomas’s dependence on these sources and locates his originality in his brief summaries of earlier glosses, in his introduction of other sources, especially biblical ones, in his theological explanations, and in his division of the text. See Morard, “Sacerdoce du Christ et sacerdoce des chrétiens dans le Commentaire des Psaumes de saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue thomiste 99 (1999): 121. See also St. Thomas Aquinas, Commentaire Sur Les Psaumes, trans. Jean-Eric Stroobant de Saint-Eloy (Paris: Cerf, 1996). The notes in Stroobant’s French translation offer some guidance but are incomplete. Morard has a helpful critical review of Stroobant’s work: “À propos du Commentaire des Psaumes de saint Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue thomiste 96 (1996): 653–70. St. Thomas Aquinas on Psalm 22:2 1223 (especially in its condemnation of Theodore of Mopsuestia), as well as by the writings of John Damascene. Convicted of the need for an adequate literal interpretation of Ps 22:2, Thomas emphasizes the place of Christ’s human nature in his cry from the Cross. Augustine Turning now to a closer look at the sources Thomas relied upon in his own interpretation of the cry from the Cross, it is clear that Augustine’s foundational exegesis of the Psalms has pride of place. His exegetical principles and Christological focus set the trajectory for the Western engagement with Ps 22:2,10 a trajectory that Thomas largely follows. Augustine reads Christ’s cry as a vicarious expression of the experience of sinners, not primarily as something pertaining to Christ’s own experience.11 As a result of this approach he concludes, “God had not abandoned him, since he himself was God”12—a conclusion that defends divine impassibility and the union of Father and Son, but leaves somewhat ambiguous the meaning of the words Christ speaks from the Cross. Augustine develops his interpretation of the cry from the Cross in his commentary on the Psalms, written over the course of his career (ca. 396–420). A first thing to note about Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos is his underlying conviction that the Psalms are prophetic.13 Augustine thinks that the Psalms were written by King David, but that does not mean that the words of all the Psalms are primarily about the Israelite king. Augustine notes of Psalm 22: “The passion of Christ is recounted in this psalm as clearly as in the Gospel, yet the psalm was composed goodness knows how 10 11 12 13 Gregory Vall, “Psalm 22: Vox Christi or Israelite Temple Liturgy?” The Thomist 66 (2002): 175–200. Vall ascribes to Augustine the “authoritative voice” that confirmed the Christological reading of the psalm (180–81). I will examine Augustine’s two commentaries on Psalm 22, as well as his treatment of the psalm in his epistolary response to the bishop Honoratus, who asked for exegetical help in interpreting the cry from the Cross. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos [En. Ps.] 21.2.2.3, trans. Maria Boulding, O.S.B., The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century III/15 (Hyde Park, NY: New City, 2000), 229. I take all the English translations of Augustine’s En. Ps. from Boulding’s work. Michael Cameron, “The Emergence of Totus Christus as Hermeneutical Center in Augustine’s Enarrationes in Psalmos,” in The Harp of Prophecy: Early Christian Interpretation of the Psalms, ed. Brian Daley, S.J., and Paul R. Kolbert (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), 205–28; Michael Fiedrowicz, “General Introduction,” in Boulding’s translation of En. Ps., p. 43. 1224 Philip Nolan, O.P. many years before the Lord was born of the virgin Mary.”14 Christ himself, Augustine argues, speaks Psalm 22 from the Cross to teach us how to read Scripture: “Why did he say, My God, my God, look upon me, why have you forsaken me? unless he was somehow trying to catch our attention, to make us understand, ‘This psalm is written about me’?”15 Thus, Augustine sees himself as following the Gospel writers in hearing Psalm 22 as “spoken in the person of the crucified one.”16 Augustine’s conviction that we must read the Psalms as referring to Christ raises the question about how we should understand Christ speaking in Ps 22:2 as if he were abandoned or a sinner. How, in other words, does Christ make “our sins his own, in order to make his righteousness ours”17? Any answer to this conundrum must defend the clear scriptural witness to Christ’s sinlessness (1 Pet 2:22). To adjudicate this dilemma, Augustine relies upon the literary device of prosopopoeia, whereby one person speaks in another’s voice.18 From the Cross, Christ speaks in the voice of sinners, or “in the character of our old self [veteris hominis noster].”19 St. Paul’s teaching about the mystical body stands at the root of this teaching.20 In multiple treatments of Ps 22:2, Augustine relies upon Rom 6:6, in which St. Paul applies the idea of the mystical body to the crucifixion: “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin.”21 Christ, “who deigned to assume the form of a slave, and within that form to clothe us with himself, he who did not disdain to take us up into himself, did not disdain either to transfigure us into himself, and to speak in our words, so that we in our turn might speak in his.”22 Because he took our form, “we were there” with him on the Cross.23 As Christ “has made our sins his own,”24 so he makes our voice his 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Augustine, En. Ps. 21.2.2 (pp. 228–29). Augustine, En. Ps. 21.2.3 (p. 229). Augustine, En. Ps. 21.1.1 (p. 221). Augustine, En. Ps. 21.2.3 (p. 229). See Cameron, “Emergence,” 209–12; Fiedrowicz, “General Introduction,” 50–60. Augustine, En. Ps. 21.1.1 (p. 221). See, for instance, Augustine’s reference to 1 Cor 12:2 in En. Ps. 3.1.9 (p. 81). Augustine, En. Ps. 21.1.1 (p. 221). See also Augustine’s letter to Honoratus, which Thomas knew as On the Grace of the New Testament (see Super Psalmos 21, no. 1), and which is known presently as Letter 140, in Saint Augustine: Letters, vol. 3, Letters 131–164, trans. Wilfrid Parsons, Writings of Saint Augustine 11 (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1953), 58–135. Augustine, En. Ps. 30.2.3 (p. 323). Augustine, En. Ps. 21.2.3 (p. 229). Augustine, En. Ps. 21.2.3 (p. 229). Note the reference to 2 Cor 5:21, a verse Thomas also uses in his exposition of this psalm. St. Thomas Aquinas on Psalm 22:2 1225 own, that we might receive his righteousness. This Augustinian reading of St. Paul becomes a Christological pillar for subsequent commentators on the Psalms, including Thomas Aquinas. Building upon St. Paul, Augustine develops the notion of the “whole Christ,” who speaks in the Psalms both in the voice of the head (Christ himself ) and of the members (the Church). Augustine says that Christ must at times be speaking in the voice of his members, not his own voice as head: Do you suppose, brothers and sisters, that when the Lord said, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me” (Mt 26:39), he was afraid to die? . . . Why did he make that prayer, then, except because he was bearing our weakness, and made it for those members of his body who still fear death? That was where the words came from; this was the voice of his members, not of the Head, as also are these words of the psalm: “I have cried by day and by night, and you will not listen.”25 Similarly, Augustine thinks, Christ must be speaking in the voice of the Church when he asks “why have you abandoned me?,” because “God had not abandoned him, since he himself was God.”26 For Augustine, to say that Jesus had an experience of God-forsakenness would contradict his divinity. An experience of abandonment is proper to sinful humans, not to Christ, because Christ is not only human, but is himself God. Christ the head can speak in the voice of his members for their sake, without expressing something properly about himself. Does “abandonment” pertain to Jesus in any way beyond his headship of the mystical body whose members sometimes seem abandoned? Augustine finds an answer to this question in light of Ps 22:3—“O my God, I will cry to you all day, and you will not listen to me. And in the night, but you will not collude with my foolishness.”27 By looking at the Gospel narrative, we see that God does not seem to answer Christ’s prayer for deliverance in the Garden of Gethsemane, as Jesus died on the Cross the next day. The purpose of this prayer, in Augustine’s view, is largely pedagogical, helping us to understand why God sometimes leaves prayers unanswered. God does not answer some prayers because he wishes to teach those praying “not to ask in sinful words prompted by longing for temporal life, but in the words of one converted to you [God] and tending to eternal life.”28 Abandonment, then, refers only 25 26 27 28 Augustine, En. Ps. 21.2.2.3 (pp. 229–30). Augustine, En. Ps. 21.2.2.3 (p. 229). Augustine, En. Ps. 21.1.3 (p. 221). Augustine, En. Ps. 21.1.3 (p. 222). See also Augustine, Letter 140, ch. 6 (pp. 68–71), 1226 Philip Nolan, O.P. to God’s decision not to continue to furnish merely temporal goods—in this case the continuance of Jesus’s earthly life. While this explains in some sense how Christ was abandoned, it is clear that for Augustine, Christ’s motive for speaking is primarily to teach his members how to understand why they experience the loss of temporal goods. Even in the most painful of sufferings that God allows, Augustine argues, divine providence is always at work: “Many people cry aloud in their distress, and are not heard, but this is for their salvation.”29 In his long letter to the bishop Honoratus (ca. 412), Augustine repeats the main lines of his exegesis and links the pedagogical and the mystical headship interpretations of Ps 22:2. He writes that when Christ speaks of being abandoned, “doubtless he is forsaken, inasmuch as his prayer was not heard; Jesus transferred this voice to himself, the voice, no doubt of human weakness, to which the goods of the Old Testament had to be refused, that it might learn to pray and hope for the goods of the New Testament.”30 Christ, our head, prays in our voice in order to teach us to desire the good of eternal life, not mere bodily perdurance. Christ can speak these words because he came in “the form of a servant” and in “the likeness of sinful flesh.”31 Thus, Augustine distinguishes between what is proper to the head and to the members in order to emphasize the gift that Christ gives in becoming like us and dying for us. Drawing together Augustine’s response to the exegetical and Christological questions raised by Ps 22:2, we can say that his conviction of the verse’s prophetic nature leads to his presentation of the Pauline teaching of the mystical body of Christ—head and members—and the exchange Christ brought about between the old and new man. These Pauline principles reveal the way in which Christ can speak in the voice of sinners from the Cross. By speaking in this way, Christ himself teaches us how to read the Scriptures, purifies our prayer, and instructs us to prioritize eternal salvation over earthly goods, even the good of earthly life. Christ was “forsaken” insofar as his prayer for earthly salvation was not answered, but in another sense, he had “transferred” that prayer and forsakenness to himself for pedagogical purposes—to teach his members to long for eternal life. 29 30 31 on the distinct ends of the Old and New Testaments. Thomas will cite this explanation in Super Psalmos 21, no. 1. Augustine, En. Ps. 21.2.3 (p. 230). Augustine, Letter 140, ch. 6 (p. 69). Augustine, Letter 140, ch. 6 (p. 70). St. Thomas Aquinas on Psalm 22:2 1227 Cassiodorus and the Glossa Ordinaria Augustine’s exegesis of Ps 22:2 informed subsequent commentators. Chief among these is the sixth-century exegete Cassiodorus.32 Cassiodorus follows Augustine’s exegetical principles, repeating his conviction that “Christ speaks through the whole of the psalm.”33 He agrees explicitly that Psalm 22 seems more like gospel or history than prophecy.34 Theologically, Cassiodorus draws upon Augustine and his use of Scripture to understand how Christ could pray in the words of a sinner. He explicitly mentions Augustine’s letter to Honoratus, as well as scriptural verses, such as 2 Cor 5:21, that Augustine relies upon for his interpretation of the cry from the Cross.35 Cassiodorus’s work, however, does not seem to have influenced Thomas in toto. In the Super Psalmos, Thomas relies on the Glossa Ordinaria and above all the gloss-like commentary by Peter Lombard for many of his references to patristic and classical interpretations of the Psalms.36 So while many ideas from Cassiodorus’s commentary are evident in Thomas’s Super Psalmos, it seems that Thomas’s knowledge of this early commentary was filtered through these later glosses. For example, Lombard reports Cassiodorus’s tripartite divisio of Psalm 22—the first part is “a complaint [conquestio] about abandonment and a prayer,” the second a description of the Passion and a prayer for resurrection, while the third shows the fruit and power of the Passion.37 St. Thomas loosely follows this divisio, only modifying the description of the last part: (1) a complaint, (2) the story of the Passion, (3) a petition for freedom.38 However, neither Lombard nor the Glossa mentions 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 For a recent translation of Cassiodorus’s Expositio Psalmorum with helpful notes, see Explanation of the Psalms [Ex. Ps.], 3 vols., trans. P. G. Walsh, Ancient Christian Writers 51–53 (New York,: Paulist Press, 1991). Cassiodorus, Ex. Ps. 21.1 (1:216). See Cassiodorus, Ex. Ps. 21.1: “Though many of the psalms briefly recall the Lord’s passion, none has described it in such apt terms, so that it appears not so much as prophecy, but as history” (1:216). See also 21.9: “We surely seem to be reviewing the gospel here, rather than a psalm, since these things were fulfilled so authentically that they seem already enacted rather than still to come” (1:221). Cassiodorus, Ex. Ps. 21.2 and 21.29 (1:218, 232). Mark D. Jordan, “Préface,” in Stroobant’s trans. of Commentaires sur les Psaumes (note 9 above), 10. For the gloss of Psalm 22, see Biblia Latina cum Glossa Ordinaria, Facsimile Reprint of the 1st ed., Adolph Rusch of Strassburg, 1480/1481, vol. 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992), 478–480. See also Martin Morard’s Glossae Scripturae Sacrae electronicae (https://gloss-e.irht.cnrs.fr/). See Cassiodorus, Ex. Ps. 21.1 (1:216). For Lombard’s commentary on Psalm 22, see PL, 191: 225B–242B. He reports Cassiodorus’s tripartite division in 191:225C. The translations of Peter Lombard are my own. Super Psalmos 21, no. 1. 1228 Philip Nolan, O.P. Cassiodorus’s interpretation of the cry “look upon me” as a prayer for the resurrection.39 Thomas himself reads “look upon me” as a prayer for mercy.40 These examples show the filtered nature of Thomas’s reliance on Cassiodorus. Peter Lombard Peter Lombard serves as an important source for Thomas, providing in some sense a summation of the tradition of exegesis that has Augustine as its greatest monument. Thomas so relies on him that portions of his commentary on Ps 22:2 are near-verbatim replications of Lombard’s commentary. Compare for instance, Thomas’s and Lombard’s explanations about how Christ must be speaking in the psalm in the words of his members in the Church. Lombard writes: For God did not abandon him, since he was God, the Word of God, but for us he said this, for we are one in him as members, and we are his body. . . . And these “words,” namely, “you have abandoned me,” and “far from,” and “why,” are not of a just man, but of “my transgressions,” that is they show me not to be just, but a sinner.41 Thomas argues very similarly that the words of Ps 22:2 should be taken as Christ speaking in the voice of the Church: These words, namely, “you have abandoned,” “far from,” and “why,” do not seem to be of a just man or of justice, but seem to be “words of my transgressions,” namely of human sin, that is, they show me not to be just but a sinner. Therefore, Christ spoke these words in the person of the sinner, or of the Church.42 On a textual level alone, it is clear that Thomas relies on Lombard to express how Christ prays from the Cross in the voice of a sinner. Summing up the main lines of the Augustinian reading of Ps 22:2, we see that this tradition reads the verse as prophetically written by David in the voice of Christ, who himself is speaking in the person of his members. The key for this tradition’s understanding of Ps 22:2 and Christ’s quotation of it on the Cross is St. Paul’s teaching regarding the mystical body and the “exchange” worked in Christ: “For our sake he made him to be sin who 39 40 41 42 Cassiodorus, Ex. Ps. 21.1 (1:216). Super Psalmos 21, no. 1. PL, 191:227A. Super Psalmos 21, no. 1. St. Thomas Aquinas on Psalm 22:2 1229 knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21). It is worth briefly noting that White’s emphasis on Christ’s eschatological desire as the interpretive key for the cry from the Cross falls squarely within this Augustinian tradition. Although White acknowledges the role of Christ’s desire for his own exaltation in the cry from the Cross,43 it is Christ’s “soteriological desire on our behalf which characterizes above all the cry of Christ from the cross.”44 The Acta of the Second Council of Constantinople Thomas was influenced by other sources beyond this tradition of psalm commentaries in his understanding of the cry from the Cross, and these sources, as we shall see, lead him to nuance the Augustinian interpretation. First, Thomas’s discovery of the acta of Constantinople II (ca. 553) and its condemnation of both the exegetical principles and the Christology of Theodore of Mopsuestia shape, in turn, his own exegesis and Christology.45 In fact, Martin Morard suggests that Thomas is unique among Scholastics for the way he relied on the Council, especially with regard to principles of exegesis.46 Since Thomas himself explicitly mentions the Council’s condemnation of Theodore in his own exegesis of Psalm 22, I will here briefly present the relevant aspects of this conciliar source. Theodore denies the prophetic quality of Ps 22:2, asserting that “it is beyond doubt that the psalm does not at all fit the Lord,” because Christ himself is not a sinner.47 Nonetheless, “the Lord himself, according to the common law of men, when he was being crushed by the passion, uttered the words, ‘My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?’”48 Theodore argues, however, that Christ’s quoting of Ps 22:2 does not legitimize reading the 43 44 45 46 47 48 White, Incarnate Lord, 338: “The desire that informs this exclamation should be interpreted as a beseeching by Jesus for both his own deliverance/exaltation and our salvation in one inseparable act. In praying for both these objects, Christ’s words on the cross are eschatological in nature.” White, Incarnate Lord, 337. The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553, trans. Richard Price, Translated Texts for Historians 51 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009). For an analysis of the historical data regarding Thomas’s discovery of Constantinople II’s acta and its effect on his theology, see Martin Morard, “Une Source de Saint Thomas D’Aquin,” Revue des Sciences philosophique et théologiques 81, no. 1 (1997): 21–56. For a more exclusively theological analysis, see Daniel E. Flores, “Thomas on the Problem of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Exegete,” The Thomist 69, no. 2 (2005): 251–77. Morard, “Une Source,” 36. Acts of the Council of Constantinople, sess. 8, no. 28 (p. 246). Acts of the Council of Constantinople, sess. 8, no. 28 (p. 246). 1230 Philip Nolan, O.P. psalm as about Christ himself, despite the fact that the Passion narratives are laced with allusions to many other verses from the psalm. Rather, he says, the Gospel uses language from Psalm 22 in the Passion narratives because “the evangelist, understanding the words in the light of the reality, applied them to the Lord.”49 Theodore’s concern for Christ’s sinlessness thus leads him to reject the prophetic nature of the psalm. Why did Constantinople II condemn Theodore’s positions? As one scholar notes, “with the single exception of Theodore of Mopsuestia, late antique theologians identified unanimously Jesus as the ‘I’ that cries out in Ps 22:2.”50 Following the near-universal position of their forefathers (including, as we saw, Augustine), the fathers of Constantinople II saw that the prophetic nature of the Psalms was something other than mere subsequent application. Rather, Christ teaches us from the Cross a truth about God’s plan of salvation as foretold in the Old Testament. To deny that Psalm 22 is about Christ, the Council fathers insist, is to reject the clear prophecies about Christ in the Old Testament.51 As we shall see, Thomas takes this condemnation of Theodore’s denial of the prophetic nature of Psalm 22 quite seriously. John Damascene A final inspiration for Thomas’s understanding of the cry from the Cross that I will consider is John Damascene. This monk from the late seventh and early eighth centuries is widely acknowledged as having influenced Thomas’s Christology to take fuller account of Christ’s human nature.52 Thomas Ryan, however, calls John Damascene only an implicit authority in Thomas’s Super Psalmos.53 It is true that Thomas does not name John Damascene in his analysis of Ps 22:2. There is reason, however, to consider the Greek doctor as having a significant influence on Thomas’s reading of the passage, for both historical and theological reasons. Thomas worked on the Super Psalmos at the same time as he was writing the tertia pars of the Summa theologiae.54 This chronological overlap leads M. Michèle Mulcahey 49 50 51 52 53 54 Acts of the Council of Constantinople, sess. 4, no. 29 (p. 247). Bartzis, My God, My God, Why Have You Abandoned Me?, 77. Acts of the Council of Constantinople, sess. 8, no. 29 (p. 247). See Paul Gondreau, The Passions of Christ’s Soul in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Munster: Aschendorff, 2002), 58–66. Thomas Ryan, Thomas Aquinas as Reader of the Psalms, Studies in Spirituality and Theology 6 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2000), 41. Jean-Pierre Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol, 1, The Person and His Works, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005), 247–66. St. Thomas Aquinas on Psalm 22:2 1231 to suggest that, while in Naples, Thomas gave his course on the Psalms in the morning, and lectured on the first half of the tertia pars in the evening.55 J. G. Ginther notes the logic of this argument, while pointing out that it is hard to maintain on a textual basis. Pertinent to our study, however, Ginther states that a “minor exception is found in Thomas’s comments on Psalm 21 [22].”56 That is, Thomas’s treatment of Psalm 22 has links to the Christological questions of the tertia pars. Since John Damascene is “the key source of Thomas’s Christological psychology,”57 it would not be surprising at all if that influence carried into Thomas’s broader treatment of Ps 22:2. In the one place I can find that Thomas explicitly uses John Damascene to explain Ps 22:2,58 he puts him and Augustine in conversation. In his argument against there being any sin in Christ, Thomas gives Ps 22:2 as the very first objection, claiming that in his speech from the Cross, Christ himself speaks of “the words of his sins.”59 Thomas is raising the same concern that we saw in Augustine: Ps 22:2 seems to designate Christ as a sinner.60 Before going to the Augustinian interpretation, however, Thomas first presents John Damascene’s double principle of predication from chapter 25 of De fide orthodoxa III.61 Thomas paraphrases: “Things are said of Christ, in one way, with reference to his natural and hypostatic property, as when it is said that God became man, and that he suffered for us; and in another way, with reference to his personal and relative property, when things are said of 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 M. Michèle Mulcahey, “First the Bow is Bent in Study . . .”: Dominican Education before 1350 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1998), 313–15. J. G. Ginther, “The Scholastic Psalms’ Commentary as a Textbook for Theology: The Case of Thomas Aquinas,” in Omnia Disce: Medieval Studies in Memory of Leonard Boyle, O.P., ed. A. J. Duggan, J. Greatrex, and B. Bolton (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005), 221n44. Ginther’s note refers to Summa theologiae [ST] III, q. 50, a. 3, in particular, but, I suggest, his argument opens up other possibilities. Gondreau, Passions of Christ’s Soul, 58. ST III, q. 15, a. 1, obj. 1. English translations of ST (with some modifications) are from vols. 13–20 in Latin/English Edition of the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Laurence Shapcote, O.P., ed. John Mortensen and Alarcón Enrique (Lander, WY: Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012). ST III, q. 15, a. 1, obj. 1. The extent to which Thomas is thinking with the tradition is evident in his use of 2 Cor 5:21—a verse so often quoted by Augustine and later commentators—as obj. 4 in the same article. John Damascene, De fide orthodoxa 3.25, trans. Frederic H. Chase, Jr., in The Fathers of the Church: A New Translation, vol. 37 (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1958), 330–31. For a critical edition of the Greek with a French translation, see Jean Damascene, La Foi Orthodoxe, 2 vols., trans. P. Ledrux, Sources Chrétiennes 540 (Paris: Cerf, 2011). 1232 Philip Nolan, O.P. him in our person which nowise belong to him of himself.”62 Augustine’s reading emphasizes the second way that things are said of Christ, a reading that St. Thomas supports: “Christ, speaking in the person of his members, says: ‘The words of my sins’—not that there were any sins in the head.”63 Nonetheless, John Damascene’s distinction helps to clarify for Thomas how to discuss Christ’s human nature as related to Ps 22:2. As we shall see in the second half of this article, John Damascene’s distinction influences Thomas’s reading of Ps 22:2 in the Super Psalmos. Thomas and Psalm 22:2 Turning from the sources that informed Thomas’s understanding of Ps 22:2 to Thomas’s own exegesis, I will first describe more generally the context for his engagement with the verse, above all in his Super Psalmos. I will then look at the exegetical principles he applies, and suggest how his sources influence him. Finally, I will look at his Christological reading of Ps 22:2 and the special weight he gives to Christ’s human nature. I argue that Thomas’s conviction concerning the psalm’s literal Christological meaning necessitates, for him, a greater emphasis on Christ speaking in his own human nature in the cry from the Cross. Thomas’s engagement with Ps 22:2 fits within the larger context of his life as a Dominican friar and master of the Sacred Page. As a friar, he daily spent hours praying the Psalms; as a medieval theologian, “Thomas’s exegetical work is at the core of his theological study.”64 Among medieval thinkers, he especially searches for the literal meaning of the text, without rejecting spiritual meanings built upon that literal meaning.65 This focus on the literal sense shapes his exegesis and gives it an originality, even as he is indebted to the thinkers and sources examined above. These general observations apply in a particular way to his engagement with the Psalms. The text we have of Thomas’s Super Psalmos comes to us as a reportatio of a course he gave to Dominicans in the Naples studium.66 62 63 64 65 66 ST III, q. 15, a. 1, ad 1. ST III, q. 15, a. 1, ad 1. In this question, Thomas cites Augustine’s use of the “rules of Tychonius,” from De doctrina Christiana 3.30.42–37.56. For an English translation, see Augustine, Teaching Christianity, trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (Hyde Park, NY: New City, 1990), 187–97. Ginther, “Scholastic Psalms’ Commentary,” 211–29. See also Paul Murray, Aquinas at Prayer: The Bible, Mysticism and Poetry (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 83–86. See Murray, Aquinas at Prayer, 90; Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1:54–74. See Ryan, Thomas Aquinas as Reader, 11–13. for the most recent critical timeline of St. Thomas Aquinas on Psalm 22:2 1233 It contains a prologue and commentaries on the first fifty-four Psalms and is clearly aimed at teaching friars who already have had some theological formation. As is the case with Thomas’s other scriptural commentaries, this text has received relatively little attention in modern scholarship, although in the past several decades that has begun to change.67 The prologue of the Super Psalmos orients Thomas’s treatment of Ps 22:2. First, Thomas says that the Psalms materially contain the whole of theology.68 An implication of this claim is that the Psalms contain truths about Christ. Taking direction from the New Testament use of Psalm 22 in the Passion narratives and the Augustinian tradition of interpreting the Psalms in the voice of Christ, head and members, Thomas reads the Psalms in a thoroughly Christological way. Indeed, Thomas repeats the traditional claim that the Psalms present such a clear picture of the Incarnation that they can seem to be not prophecy, but the Gospel.69 Related to this conviction is Thomas’s insistence that in certain rare instances the literal sense of a psalm refers to Christ himself.70 His treatment of Psalm 22 is perhaps the paradigm case of such a claim. Exegesis Because of how he read Constantinople II’s condemnation of Theodore of Mopsuestia, Thomas believed that the literal referent of Ps 22:2 must be Christ himself. Before Thomas had access to the texts of Constantinople II, he insisted that the verse must be read in the voice of Christ, but he did not insist that to do otherwise is heretical. Thus, in his Catena aurea in Mattheaum (1262–1264), Thomas cites Jerome, who says that “it is impiety 67 68 69 70 all of Thomas’s works, see Jean-Pierre Torrell, Initiation à saint Thomas d’Aquin: sa personne et son œuvre, new ed. (Paris: Cerf, 2015), 430–86. For studies of Thomas’s scriptural commentaries, see Aquinas on Scripture: An Introduction to His Biblical Commentaries, ed. T. G. Weinandy, D. A. Keating, J. P. Yocum (London: Bloomsbury, 2005). Unfortunately, the book does not contain a chapter on Thomas’s Super Psalmos. Relatedly, Stroobant’s 1996 translation of Super Psalmos into French (note 9 above) was the first published translation in a modern language. Super Psalmos, proem. Thomas notes that the material of theology is all of God’s work, which is fourfold: creation, governance, reparation, and glorification. According to his scheme, Ps 22:2 treats primarily of reparation. Super Psalmos, proem. See Ryan, Thomas Aquinas as Reader, 109: “Although claims that entire Psalms refer literally to Christ are the exception (much more often, it is Thomas’s exegetical strategy to discover Christ at a mystical level), they corroborate Thomas’s perception of the Psalms as almost gospel and not prophecy.” See also Flores, “Thomas on the Problem of Theodore,” 275, who notes that Thomas “is particularly careful to protect Psalm 22 and Isaiah 7:14” as examples of Old Testament texts literally referring in Christ. 1234 Philip Nolan, O.P. therefore to think that this Psalm was spoken in the character of David.”71 By the time Thomas arrives at writing his commentary on Matthew (1269– 1270), however, he not only recalls Jerome’s accusation of impiety for those who would deny that Christ speaks in the psalm, but also attributes such a reading to Theodore of Mopsuestia and condemns it as heretical.72 Thus, it is likely that Thomas’s discovery and use of Constantinople II ratchets up his conviction that Psalm 22 must be literally about Christ himself. This conviction both confirms and goes beyond the tradition of Augustinian exegesis he receives. As we saw, Augustine reads Psalm 22:2 primarily as pedagogical: Christ quotes the psalm from the Cross at least in part to teach us that the psalm is about himself. A loose treatment of this principle might still allow for some sort of theory of later application. Thomas wishes to avoid any such possibility. Thomas manifests his conviction that Christ himself speaks in Ps 22:2 in the very way that he cites the text. The full psalm verse as Thomas had it is: “My God, my God, look upon me, why have you abandoned me? Far from my salvation are the words of my sins” (“Deus, Deus meus respice in me: quare me dereliquisti? Longe a salute mea verba delictorum meorum”). Thomas, following earlier commentators, notes that the words “look upon me” are an addition, and thus were not quoted by Christ on the Cross.73 Additionally, as noted above, the verses in Matthew and Mark have a few minor differences from the psalm verse.74 In some places, however, Thomas explicitly cites the Gospel version as Ps 22:2.75 While this could be taken as an instance of Thomas’s way of paraphrasing quotes from memory, I think it suggests something of the extent to which he himself hears Ps 22:2 as identical in meaning and voice with Christ’s cry from the Cross. Thomas sees Christ himself as the link between the psalm and the Gospel, and only when read in the light of the crucifixion is the literal meaning of the psalm available. 71 72 73 74 75 Catena aurea in Mattheaum 27, lec. 9. Morard has a helpful analysis of Thomas’s use of Jerome in conversation with the Council (“Une Source,” 31–37). Super Matt 1, lec. 5. For a brief synopsis of the arguments regarding the date of Thomas’s discovery of Theodore’s exegesis, see Flores, “Thomas on the Problem of Theodore,” 251n1. Super Psalmos 21, no. 1. For example, they read “ut quid dereliquisti me” in place of “quare me dereliquisti.” See Super Matt 27, lec. 9. Similarly, in ST III, q. 15, a. 1, obj. 1, Thomas cites the Gospel quotation as if it were the psalm: “Dicitur enim in Psalmo, ‘Deus, Deus meus, ut quid dereliquisti?’” St. Thomas Aquinas on Psalm 22:2 1235 Christology Thomas’s strong sense of prophecy has Christological ramifications. It is Christ himself who speaks the words of Ps 22:2. As such, the words of that verse apply literally to him. As we saw, according to John Damascene, words spoken of Christ apply in one way to what is proper to him naturally and hypostatically, and in another way to those with whom he has a relation—his mystical body. Augustine’s reading of Ps 22:2 emphasized this second sense, arguing that “abandonment” primarily refers to Christ’s members, and it certainly does not refer to Christ’s divinity. But is there any sense in which these words apply to the human nature hypostatically united to Christ’s divinity? As we saw above, Augustine suggests that there is, insofar as Christ’s prayer for deliverance is not answered, but even in this instance Augustine argues that Christ is expressing a desire for earthly goods in order to teach his members to long for eternal goods. Thomas, on his part, insists that it is crucial for us to see that Christ’s words apply not only to his members, but also to his own human nature. Thomas’s Augustinianism In early engagements with Ps 22:2, however, Thomas inclines to the Augustinian emphasis on the mystical body. In De veritate, q. 29, a. 7, in the context of a question about the grace of Christ, Thomas asks whether Christ can merit for others. After listing a number of objections to this position, Thomas includes Ps 22:2 as the key citation for a sed contra.76 He gives a typically Augustinian line of thought, arguing that when Christ quotes Psalm 22:2, he is speaking in the person of the Church. The union with his members that allows him to speak for the Church, Thomas argues, allows Christ also to merit for us. In this instance, Thomas gives a reading of Ps 22:2 that emphasizes the members of the mystical body without making reference to Christ’s human nature itself. Thomas also draws on Augustine’s understanding of the “abandonment” spoken of in Ps 22:2. As we saw, Augustine understood abandonment to mean God’s refusal to answer certain prayers, a refusal motivated by his desire to teach us to long for eternal life.77 Citing Augustine explicitly, Thomas argues “God indeed is said to forsake man, according to the ordering of his providence, but only in so far as he allows man to suffer some defect of punishment or of fault.”78 For Thomas, God’s abandonment of Christ in 76 77 78 De veritate, q. 29, a. 7, sc 3. Augustine, Letter 140, ch. 6 (p. 69). ST I, q. 113, a. 6. corp. See also In II sent., d. 11, q. 1, a. 4, qa. 3. 1236 Philip Nolan, O.P. the Passion is an instance of this general principle—the divine permission for suffering—the difference being of course that the defect Christ suffers is for our sake, not because of any personal fault. Thomas reproduces the main lines of Augustine’s argument that this does not mean that Christ was completely abandoned, because “it is evident that neither man, nor anything at all, is entirely withdrawn from the providence of God.”79 God exposes Christ “by not shielding him from the passion, but abandoning him to his persecutors,” with his provident goal being nothing less than the salvation of the human race.80 Turning from “abandonment” to the related language of “the words of my sins,” we see more distinction between Thomas and his Augustinian inheritance. In question 46 of the tertia pars, Thomas maintains Augustine’s interpretation of the “words of my sins” but situates it within his own systematic account of the Passion, an account notable for its focus on Christ’s suffering in his human nature.81 Where Augustine emphasized that Christ spoke the “words of our sins” to save us, Thomas links those words to Christ’s interior suffering: “The cause of the interior pain was, first of all, all the sins of the human race, for which he made satisfaction by suffering; hence he ascribes them, so to speak, to himself, saying in the psalm: the words of my sins.”82 Christ speaks these words not only to reveal to us the marvelous exchange he works—the satisfaction he makes—but also to reveal that our sins are the cause of his own human suffering.83 The Cross and Christ’s Humanity In the Super Psalmos, we see an even more pronounced emphasis on Christ’s humanity. Thomas modifies traditional Augustinian expressions about Christ speaking in the person of the “old man” to focus more on Christ speaking in his own “human nature.” This modification becomes clear by analyzing Thomas’s adaptation of Lombard’s exegesis, which follows Augustine’s use of Rom 6:6 and the language of the “old man” to interpret Ps 22:2. To explain how Christ can say to God, “you have forsaken me,” Lombard writes: “Here is the solution. As if he says, behold ‘why’ [quare]: that is, namely, because you are ‘far from my salvation,’ namely, [the salvation] of me, the old man [veteris hominis], because salvation is far from sinners (Ps 79 80 81 82 83 ST I, q. 113, a. 6. corp. See also In II sent., d. 11, q. 1, a. 4, qa. 3. ST III, q. 47, a. 3, corp. Gondreau, Passions of Christ’s Soul, 59. ST III, q. 46, a. 6, corp. For an insightful reflection linking Christ’s knowledge of our sins to his suffering see White, Incarnate Lord, 333–38. St. Thomas Aquinas on Psalm 22:2 1237 118).”84 As Lombard understands it, Christ speaks in the voice of the old man to ascribe to himself the sins of his members. Thomas follows Lombard very closely, but instead of using the language of the “old man,” he uses the language of “human nature.” He writes “‘far are the words of my sins from my salvation,’ that is, [the salvation] of me, the true man [veri hominis], insofar as I have human nature: ‘salvation is far from sinners’ (Ps 118).”85 Thomas’s text clearly relies on Lombard’s, but he changes veteris hominis to veri hominis to emphasize that Christ, in his humanity, prays also for his own bodily salvation from the Cross. The difference between Thomas and Lombard is all the more striking when we discover that this Pauline language of the “old man” (veteris hominis), which is common in the earlier commentaries, is altogether absent from Thomas’s treatment of Psalm 22 in the Super Psalmos. This total absence suggests an intentional effort by Thomas to ground his reading of Ps 22:2 literally in the voice of Christ himself, speaking not only in the voice of his members but also in his own human nature. Such an effort would be in keeping with the exegetical convictions regarding the literal sense of the psalm that Thomas developed after reading the texts of Constantinople II. The psalm is about Christ himself, not simply about the general condition of mankind whose voice Christ takes on. Thomas further underlines Christ’s human nature by linking the cry from the Cross to the prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. In his interpretation, Thomas analyzes the prayer according to the two ways John Damascene predicates things of Christ. Thomas writes: When his passion was approaching, Christ prayed, “Father, if it be possible,” etc. But these words which Christ prayed can be explained in two ways. In one way, Christ said these [words] as though bearing in his person the infirmities which are in the Church: because it would come about that some of his weak members, when suffering threatens them, would be afraid. In another way, he made this petition, bearing in Christ the office of weak flesh, which naturally fears and flees death.86 The first interpretation refers the prayer to struggling Christians in the Church; the second to Christ’s own human nature. Thus, Thomas hears 84 85 86 PL, 191:227A. See Super Psalmos 21, no. 1. Super Psalmos 21, no. 1. 1238 Philip Nolan, O.P. Christ on the Cross saying to his Father, “‘[I am] far from bodily salvation,’ since this cup, or passion, does not pass from me as I have requested.”87 Thomas further argues: “Since [Christ] seeks therefore to be delivered, it [his prayer] becomes the statement either of the members in which sins are found, or of the flesh of Christ in which there is a similitude to transgression or sin.”88 We clearly see in this passage Thomas applying John Damascene’s distinction about the two ways things can be predicated of Christ to Christ’s prayer. In a question in the Summa theologiae, Thomas expands his insight regarding Christ’s prayer in such a way as to emphasize his human nature: Christ prayed with his sensuality inasmuch as his prayer expressed the desire of his sensuality, as if it were the advocate of the sensuality— and this, that he might teach us three things. First, to show that he had taken a true human nature, with all its natural affections; second, to show that a man may wish with his natural desire what God does not wish; third, to show that man should subject his own will to the Divine will.89 The prayer of Christ is a revelation not only of the good of eternal life, as Augustine writes, but also of Christ’s true human nature, which itself grounds the pedagogical meaningfulness of the prayer—Christ truly prayed as a human. Where Augustine understands Christ’s pedagogy as eschatologically oriented, in this instance Thomas focuses on Christ’s words as spoken for the sake of revealing to us his own human nature. Thomas analyzes Christ’s “words of my sins” again with the help of John Damascene’s distinction. To express how Christ can speak of the “words of my sins,” Thomas follows Augustine’s use of Rom 8:3 to argue that, in Christ, there is a “likeness of sin.”90 The likeness of sin could pertain to the sin of the members, which Christ refers to himself as their head. Or it can pertain to “the flesh of Christ in which there is a similitude of transgression or sin.”91 The first explanation follows the Augustinian emphasis on Christ speaking in the voice of his members. The second explanation emphasizes Christ’s own flesh. Christ is not truly a sinner in himself, but he can apply 87 88 89 90 91 Super Psalmos 21, no. 1. Super Psalmos 21, no. 1. ST III, q. 21, a. 2, corp. Super Psalmos 21, no. 1. Augustine cites Rom 8:3 in Letter 140, ch. 5 (p. 68). Super Psalmos 21, no. 1. St. Thomas Aquinas on Psalm 22:2 1239 “sins” to himself insofar as he hypostatically bears a passable human nature, which “naturally fears and flees death.”92 I do not mean to suggest that Augustine neglected the truth of Christ’s humanity in his treatment of Ps 22:2, nor that Thomas added something altogether new to Augustine’s interpretation. After all, in his letter to Honoratus, Augustine speaks of Christ’s “carnal desire,” that is, his desire for bodily safety.93 As is typical, however, even in this case Augustine immediately states that these words are spoken in the person of the Church, thus focusing on the exchange brought about by Christ. Christ’s humanity serves in a sense as a necessary but sometimes implicit middle term. Thomas makes what is implicit in Augustine more explicit. For example, in the Super Psalmos, Thomas cites Augustine’s explanation of “the words of my sins.”94 But right before this citation, Thomas insists that it is as if Christ, in his own weakened flesh (infirmae carnis), “were saying, ‘I do not attain the salvation which I intend. If my petition that I ask should be heard, Father, let this cup pass me by.’”95 Thus, while Thomas draws more attention to the role of Christ’s human nature in the prayer from the Cross, we can say that he is highlighting, with the help of John Damascene and Constantinople II, a reality known and loved by Augustine and those who followed his exegesis. Thomas’s Contributions to Contemporary Debates in Christology In this final section, I wish to suggest a variety of ways in which Thomas’s emphasis on the humanity of Christ in his interpretation of the cry from the Cross can help address contemporary Christological concerns. First, a focus on Christ’s human nature in interpreting the cry from the Cross contributes to the project of responding to contemporary theologies that use Christ’s cry to call into question basic tenets of traditional Christian doctrine. Jürgen Moltmann and Hans Urs von Balthasar, for example, respectively raise questions concerning Jesus’s unity with the Father and his possession of the beatific vision in part because they understand the primary meaning of “abandonment” to be an experience of damnation.96 In his response to these revisionist arguments, in order to deny that Christ experienced damnation and to affirm Christ’s beatific vision, White emphasizes more the ways in 92 93 94 95 96 Super Psalmos 21, no. 1. Augustine, Letter 140, ch. 6 (p. 70). Super Psalmos 21, no. 1. Super Psalmos 21, no. 1. For a brief presentation of the thought of Moltmann and Balthasar on this point, see Rossé, Cry of Jesus, 88–95. 1240 Philip Nolan, O.P. which Christ is not abandoned than a literal exposition of the cry from the Cross itself.97 His focus, for good reason, is elsewhere. Nonetheless, the arguments that Aquinas himself makes in the context of exegeting Ps 22:2, I argue, offer helpful supplementary considerations to White’s response, particularly with regard to the meaning of Christ’s abandonment and its relationship to his prayer. Thomas’s exegesis keeps theological speculation grounded in what has actually been revealed regarding Christ in the words of Scripture. He reads the “abandonment” of Psalm 22 as expressive of the suffering of Christ in the Passion, a suffering that helps to prove Christ’s true humanity. Thus, Thomas’s developed treatment of Ps 22:2 shows the necessity of linking the Augustinian theme of exchange to Christ’s actual human experience of suffering. Aquinas would certainly agree with the Augustinian note White sounds when he writes that “the real potential ‘despair’ and ‘separation from God’ that Christ perceived at Calvary were not in himself, but in us.”98 But Thomas would also be sure to insist that Christ, in his human nature, was in some sense, as the psalm says, “far from salvation,” in that his earthly life was coming to an end in death. Without falling into the modern error of ascribing an experience of damnation to Christ, Thomas’s exegesis offers a literal reading of the cry, in that he accounts for the meaning of God’s abandonment of Christ. Christ’s abandonment is not some totalized experience of God-forsakenness, but the experience of the divine allowance of his human death and the lack of fulfillment of his simple desire for the preservation of his life. In this respect, we can indeed say, as Augustine and Thomas both do, that Christ was abandoned by God. Thomas’s reading is also theologically sound. He does not obscure classical positions concerning Trinitarian unity and divine impassibility for the sake of extreme speculations about Christ’s subjective interior state.99 Another area where Thomas’s focus on Christ’s human nature may offer 97 98 99 See White, Incarnate Lord, 308–39. Summing up his argument, White writes: “I will draw upon theological reflections from Aquinas to argue that the final cry of Christ on the cross cannot be interpreted as a cry of either despair or of spiritual separation from God. By contrast, it must be understood theologically as a prayer of desire related to Christ’s abandonment to the Father and his hope to introduce humanity into the eschatological gift of redemption” (310). White, Incarnate Lord, 337. White offers a helpful distinction between what we can say objectively about Christ’s agony and his union with the Father and what we can say about his subjective state: “The happiness of being united in will with the Father could coexist with extreme agony in Christ, such that the two experiences were objectively distinct but subjectively (and therefore experientially) inseparable” (Incarnate Lord, 330). St. Thomas Aquinas on Psalm 22:2 1241 some light, I suggest, is the question of divine innocence as related to the crucifixion. Nicholas Lombardo has stated that Thomas seems “untroubled by the questions” raised by the affirmation “that God wills Christ’s passion and death, but does not will the actions of those crucifying them.”100 In other words, how does Aquinas defend the innocence of God the Father in the death of his Son? In the context of the cry from the Cross, Thomas’s focus is not on the innocence of God the Father (something he would take as paradigmatic first principle), but on the fact that in the cry from the Cross Christ speaks in his human nature both for himself and for his members. Christ shows us the legitimacy of expressing the feeling of abandonment even within a context of absolute confidence in God and his divine goodness. Christ’s cry from the Cross, Thomas insists, not only teaches us to long for eternal life, but also teaches us that Christ is fully human with us and for us. In other words, God’s innocence is on display precisely in the innocent cry of Jesus’s humanity.101 A final problem to which Thomas’s treatment of Ps 22:2 offers insight is the issue of unanswered prayer.102 In the Garden of Gethsemane, we hear Christ ask: “Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me; still, not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). As we saw, both Augustine and Thomas draw a link between the cry from the Cross and the prayer in the garden, and they see “abandonment” to be related to God’s leaving this prayer in some sense unanswered. But does God truly refuse to answer Christ’s prayer? In his analysis of this question, Thomas again helpfully refocuses 100 101 102 Nicholas Lombardo, O.P., The Father’s Will: Christ’s Crucifixion and the Goodness of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 145n2. For a lively critique of neo-Thomism as failing to defend divine innocence, see David Bentley Hart, “Providence and Causality: On Divine Innocence,” in The Providence of God: Deus Habet Consilium, ed. Francesca Aran Murphy and Philip G. Zeigler (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 34–56; Hart, “Impassibility as Transcendence: On the Infinite Innocence of God” in Keating and White, Divine Impassibility, 299–323. Related to this point, elsewhere White links what Christ offers on the Cross with a Thomist theory of predestination: “What we know from the New Testament is that God’s first response to all who sin is the universal offer of the grace of Christ, which is an offer of divine mercy and saving forgiveness in light of the truth. If this is the case, then we can say that the Thomist theory of God’s ‘antecedent divine permissions’ of sin from all eternity, far from being an obstacle to the theology of divine innocence, is in some way required if we are to maintain an adequate conception of God’s universal offer of salvation to all human beings in the wake of human evil” (“Catholic Predestination: The Omnipotence and Innocence of Divine Love,” in Thomism and Predestination: Principles and Disputations, ed. Steven A. Long, Roger W. Nutt, and Thomas Joseph White, O.P. [Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2016], 119). White, Incarnate Lord, 262–74; Lombardo, The Father’s Will, 132–42. 1242 Philip Nolan, O.P. on Christ’s human nature. In his question on Christ’s prayer, Thomas distinguishes between senses of “will.” Properly considered, Christ’s human will always is in accord with his reason, which in turn is always in accord with God. Therefore, every prayer from Christ’s will, properly considered, is answered, because what God wills comes to be. Secondarily considered, “will” can refer to the desires proper to the sensuality of human nature, which are “willed not absolutely but conditionally—that is, provided no obstacle be discovered by reason’s deliberation.”103 One such desire is the desire not to undergo death. Thomas sees that Christ did not want to die according to “the movement of his sensuality, which was his as man.”104 This is the desire expressed in the first part of Christ’s petition—“take this cup away from me.” But Christ goes on to express the fullness of his human will as aligned with his reason when he says, “Not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42). Christ shows that the most reasonable prayer to make is to ask God that his will be done. In this sense, Christ’s will always conformed to God’s, “and consequently his every prayer was fulfilled.”105 Both in the garden and on the Cross, Christ teaches us that it is most reasonable, regardless of the difficulty of the situation, to pray that God’s will be done, even as it is also good to express one’s simple, human desires to God. We can see here Thomas circling back to Augustine’s appreciation of Christ’s pedagogy: his prayer is “for our instruction.”106 But by focusing on the different faculties of Christ’s human nature, Thomas is able to show how Christ could both experience a desire that was not fulfilled and, at the same time and in a deeper way, never desire anything other than what his Father willed. This revelation of the fullness of Christ’s human nature teaches all Christians, in turn, how to pray to God in confidence even in the gravest sufferings. Conclusion During Thomas’s infrequent explicit engagement with Ps 22:2 over the course of his career,107 his reliance on those who came before him allowed him to read the verse as fully expressive of Christ’s headship of the Church, 103 104 105 106 107 ST III, q. 21, a. 4, corp. ST III, q. 21, a. 4, ad 1. ST III, q. 21, a. 4, corp. ST III, q. 21, a. 4, ad 1. An Index Thomisticus search for the “Deus, Deus meus” yields only twenty-three results, while a search for “quare me dereliquisti” yields only fifteen results in all of Thomas’s works. St. Thomas Aquinas on Psalm 22:2 1243 as well as fully expressive of Christ’s human nature. Contrary to modern revisionist theologians, as White insists, Christ’s experience of abandonment does not mean that he experienced damnation or God-forsakenness at the deepest level of his soul. But St. Thomas Aquinas’s own exegeses shows that we can still helpfully speak of Christ as being forsaken, since, as fully human, he faced bodily death, and was “abandoned” insofar as God allowed his death. Furthermore, Christ’s expression of this experience of abandonment in an act of confident prayer teaches us, his members, how to pray in the face of our own mortality. Thomas’s understanding of the cry from the Cross thus connects a long tradition of exegetical interpretation with a reappreciation of authoritative exegetical principles and conciliar doctrinal statements on the truth of the hypostatic union. In efforts to respond to revisionist theologians, contemporary Thomists can benefit by continuing to return to Aquinas’s own exegesis and exegetical principles. Thomas’s insights contribute to our own understanding of Christ’s human nature and our appreciation of what he won for us in his suffering, death, and resurrection. In short, studying Thomas’s exegesis can purify our own reading of Scripture so that we may better hear and love the voice of Christ himself.108 108 I would like to thank Fr. Andrew Hofer, O.P., for his comments on multiple drafts of this essay, as well as Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P., for his helpful feedback. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2023): 1245–1274 1245 Extramarital Contraception in the Catholic Faith: A Call to Action from a Physician and Ethicist Cara Buskmiller Baylor College of Medicine Houston, TX Introduction Definitions Before proceeding to a discussion of extramarital contraception, it is relevant to lay a foundation of definitions and limitations of this essay. Here, “sex” and “sexual act” will refer to acts of penile–vaginal intercourse and acts meant to lead to such intercourse, respectively. Other acts which are rightly called “sexual” are not relevant to this essay, as the focus here is on encounters that could result in fertilization. The traditional natural law theory with its analysis of object, intention, and circumstances is at play in this essay, with a hylomorphic understanding of nature and ethics. In this understanding of ethics, the names of many acts include not only an object but an intention and circumstances (e.g., murder specifies an illegal type of killing with premeditation). Likewise, “contraception” here refers to the use of any drug or device which temporarily lowers fertility (object), to prevent fertilization (intention) due to presumed-fertile sex (circumstance). Such drugs or devices are called “contraceptives” in this essay. In this essay, “contraception” is not committed solely by intending to avoid fertilization, so acts such as trying to avoid fertilization by timing sex during infertile parts of a menstrual cycle are not contraception, and the pastoral term “contraceptive mindset” does not apply. “Contraception” is also not solely defined by the use of particular medical products, since the intention to avoid fertilization is part of the definition in this essay. Thus, 1246 Cara Buskmiller prescribing or taking a birth control pill for polycystic ovarian syndrome, in the words of Pope St. Paul VI in his 1968 landmark encyclical Humanae Vitae (HV), is not at all illicit, here because such treatment is not contraception, and the problems of contraception do not apply (§15). “Marriage” in this essay refers principally to sacramental matrimony, made by the consent of a baptized man and a baptized woman.1 Civil marriage, cohabitation, long-term affairs, sex in dating, short-term hookups, prostitution, and sexual assault represent a spectrum of falling away from matrimony. This essay assumes that matrimony is God’s one true plan for sex, fertilization, and childrearing. This essay also makes heavy use of the Scholastic-personalist perspective of HV on the unitive and procreative dimensions of sex. As sexual relationships “fall away” from matrimony, they lose resemblance to these dimensions. “Consent” is here defined as a free act in which a person agrees to do, accept, or reject something.2 Consent is an act of the will, and it may be partial or total. Only when consent is total is a person held fully responsible for his or her actions; for example, only when consent is total can a person commit a mortal sin. Consent is different from assent, which is not of the will, but of the mind.3 In this paper, sex without consent is termed “sexual assault”—the status of the act as an assault is solely determined by consent. These definitions allow for a sexual assault in which a victim withholds consent and yet does not resist an attack,4 which is different from past legal and colloquial definitions.5 This definition also allows for assault victims that have positive emotional responses to or physical arousal from an attack. These responses from a victim do not make the assault consensual or desired, 1 2 3 4 5 The Code of Canon Law: English Translation [CIC] (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984), can. 1057, §1. John A. Hardon, Modern Catholic Dictionary (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1999), s.v. “Consent.” Hardon, Modern Catholic Dictionary, s.v. “Assent.” See, for example, Mary Adkins, “The Misguided Definition of Sexual assault as ‘Force,’” The Atlantic, May 21, 2014; James Hopper, “Why Many Sexual Assault Victims Don’t Fight or Yell,” Washington Post, June 23, 2015; Shaila Dewan, “She Didn’t Fight Back: 5 (Misguided) Reasons People Doubt Sexual Misconduct Victims,” New York Times, Nov 3, 2017. See, for example, Hukm Chand, “Consent Implied by Non-Resistance,” in Principles of the Law of Consent with Special Reference to Criminal Law: Including the Doctrines of Mistake, Duress, and Waiver (Bombay: Bombay Education Society’s Press, 1897); Jed Rubenfield, “Campus Sexual Assault,” Time, May 15, 2014; James D. O'Neill, “Consent (in Canon Law),” in The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton, 1908). Extramarital Contraception in the Catholic Faith 1247 and in fact make post-traumatic recovery more difficult.6 Simply put, consent is of the will, and this is not diminished by whether the body follows suit; this differs from some legal definitions of consent in canon law, where the will of the person agreeing to a contract is signified by externals, even if there was no intention to fulfill the duties of the contract.7 Consent will be central to this essay, since it helps make the spectrum of relationships that “fall away” from marriage intelligible in two sets: one with consent, and one without. “Intellectual disability” in medical and ethical literature refers to a large spectrum of differences in mental and behavioral performance, but this essay is only considering intellectually disabled persons who would be unable to contract marriage according to the Catholic Code of Canon Law, meaning incapable of understanding “that marriage is a permanent partnership between a man and a woman ordered to the procreation of offspring by means of some sexual cooperation.”8 Finally, since this inquiry is about preventing fertilization, the words “woman” or “girl” will be used throughout, although sexual assault of males is sadly prevalent as well. With this foundation laid, we must examine the most important part of the background on this topic: Humanae Vitae (HV). Summarizing nineteen hundred years of Church teaching, HV has also defined the fifty years since its promulgation. The Focus of Humanae Vitae Is Marriage Pope St. Paul VI made clear for his readers that HV is about contraception in marriage. Marriage is mentioned twenty-two times in the thirty-one sections. The words “conjugal” and “marital” are used eight times to describe “the conjugal act” and the rights and love of married people. As a brief illustration of this focus, the below is an excerpt from the introduction, which can be trusted to define the scope of the work. The transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate . . . with God. . . . The fulfillment of this duty has 6 7 8 See Roy J. Levin and Willy van Berlo, “Sexual Arousal and Orgasm in Subjects Who Experience Forced or Non-Consensual Sexual Stimulation—a Review,” Journal of Clinical and Forensic Medicine 11, no. 2 (2004): 82–88; Tiffany M. Artime and Zoe D. Peterson, “Feelings of Wantedness and Consent during Nonconsensual Sex: Implications for Posttraumatic Cognitions,” Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice and Policy 7, no. 6 (2015): 570–77. J. D. O’Neill, “Consent (in Canon Law),” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 4 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1908); also at newadvent.org/cathen/04283a.htm. CIC, can. 1096, §1. 1248 Cara Buskmiller always posed problems to the conscience of married people. . . . Also noteworthy is a new understanding of . . . the value of conjugal love in marriage and the relationship of conjugal acts to this love. . . . Taking into account the relevance of married love to the harmony and mutual fidelity of husband and wife, . . . could it not be admitted, in other words, that procreative finality applies to the totality of married life rather than to each single act? This kind of question requires . . . a new and deeper reflection on the principles of the moral teaching on marriage. . . . In carrying out this mandate, the Church has always issued appropriate documents on the nature of marriage, the correct use of conjugal rights, and the duties of spouses. This commission included married couples. . . . Its task was to examine views and opinions concerning married life. . . . Certain approaches and criteria for a solution to this question had emerged which were at variance with the moral doctrine on marriage constantly taught by the magisterium of the Church. (HV §§1–6; emphasis added) This excerpt alone demonstrates that Pope St. Paul VI, while certainly having a view to the whole human person and natural law, focused this letter on sex in marriage, not sex in general. The Pope does not specify whether HV applies to extramarital sex or not; however, he does repeatedly ground his arguments in marriage throughout the encyclical. For example, he writes that “some people today raise the objection . . . concerning the moral laws governing marriage” (HV §16; emphasis added). Or, when discussing exclusion of the procreative aspect of sex, he writes: “The Church . . . teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life” (HV §11; emphasis added). Many Catholic writers are uncomfortable with this presentation of HV as specific to marriage, arguing that HV demonstrates that “contraception is in itself always gravely evil,” with at least one writer believing these words are in HV, placing them in brackets as part of §14.9 But these words do not appear in HV §14, which describes acts like withdrawal and contraception in marriage: We base Our words on the first principles of a human and Christian doctrine of marriage when We are obliged once more to declare that 9 Anthony Zimmerman, “The Angelic Doctor and the Birth Control Pill: Why Aquinas Was Kept out of Humanae Vitae,” Fidelity 8, no. 11 (1989). Extramarital Contraception in the Catholic Faith 1249 the direct interruption of the generative process already begun . . . [is] to be absolutely excluded as lawful. . . . Similarly excluded is every action that [renders procreation impossible before the] conjugal act.” (HV §14; emphasis added) Later in the same section, the Pope does write about how deliberate contraception can make sex intrinsically wrong, again within the context of marriage: “It is a serious error to think that a whole married life of [fertile sex] can justify sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive and so intrinsically wrong.” Here, the Pope says contraception can bankrupt sex in marriage. But nowhere does he say contraception is gravely evil in itself, or intrinsically wrong. The Pope rejects contraception in HV because of what marriage is; he never makes an argument that applies to all contraception or even all sex. One such argument, a physicalist understanding of the natural law, is explicitly addressed in HV, but without using it to show that contraception is always gravely evil. A physicalist understanding of the natural law implies that only the physical structure of an act matters for its moral analysis, ignoring or diminishing the intention behind the act. Detractors and supporters have both identified physicalism in HV, and the history of the discussion on this topic is beyond the scope of this essay.10 To those Catholics who imagine that HV rejects contraception because it regulates or obstructs a natural process, HV itself responds that the “Church is the first to praise and commend the application of human intelligence to [sex]” (§16), and argues that “controlling birth” can be perfectly licit when done without exerting control on God’s will. To those detractors who accuse HV of being grounded in conservative, traditional natural law theory, this author admits that it can sound overly attached to the order of animal nature; however, the same teachings were already being articulated from personalist perspectives, and have since flowered into documents like Pope St. John Paul II’s 1981 encyclical Familiaris Consortio and his “theology of the body” and the 1997 Vademecum for Confessors concerning Some Aspects of the Morality of Conjugal Life by the Pontifical Council for the Family. Fundamentally, all readers must understand Pope St. Paul VI in the context of the whole of Church teaching, and see that his opposition to contraception was because contraception removes spouses’ opportunity for co-creation with God (procreative aspect) and it subtracts 10 See, for instance, Mark S. Latkovic, “Is the Teaching of Humanae Vitae Physicalist? A Critique of the View of Joseph A. Selling,” Linacre Quarterly 62, no. 4 (1995): 39–58. 1250 Cara Buskmiller from their total self-gift to each other (unitive aspect), not because it uses technology to regulate a natural process (licit use of reason). Further, when the Pope mentions the natural law, he specifically references marriage in the same breath: “In urging men to the observance of the precepts of the natural law, [the Church] teaches that each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life” (HV §11). If there are arguments about the natural law regarding extramarital sex, and the contradiction that contraception represents against all sex, the Pope does not make them.11 Rather, he relies on the natural law surrounding marriage to reject contraception in HV. This relationship between HV and marriage also means that later pronouncements about HV are related to marriage. For example, Pope St. John Paul II stated in one address that, “when Paul VI defined the contraceptive act as intrinsically illicit, he meant that the moral norm does not admit exceptions: no personal or social circumstance has ever been able, is able, or will ever be able in itself to ordain such an act.”12 Even if the language is absolutist and general, the context of HV limits it to marriage. In fact, John Paul II described his understanding of HV as related to marriage, saying in a 1968 letter that “Humanae vitae . . . concluded a period dedicated to the in-depth study of the theme of the transmission of life in marriage.”13 Later in the letter, then-Cardinal Karol Wojtyła outlines instruction to help implement HV, part of which “should, following the encyclical Humanae vitae, set out the doctrine on marriage [and] marital love.”14 Paul VI and John Paul II did not specifically address extramarital contraception, probably because marriage is the only setting in which sex is permitted. Before HV, many denominations and other religions already permitted contraception in marriage (e.g., the Anglican Church at the Lambeth Conference in 1930), based on persuasive arguments. Two such arguments are relevant to review here. The first, called the “reason argument” in this essay, uses Christian teaching on the nature of man as a rational animal and his call to use reason to order nature for the sake of greater goods. This argument concludes that married people should use reason to regulate their licitly used fertility for the good of their family, and can do so using contraception. The second, called “the totality argument,” argues that a married 11 12 13 14 See replies to objections, below, for a discussion of the perverted-faculty argument. The Associated Press, “Pope Says Conscience Not Enough in Birth Control Decisions,” AP News, November 12, 1988. Diana Montagna, “Never before Published Letter of Cardinal Wojtyła to Paul VI on Humanae Vitae,” LifeSite, July 25, 2018 (emphasis added). Montagna, “Never before Published Letter of Cardinal Wojtyła.” Extramarital Contraception in the Catholic Faith 1251 couple can intermittently use contraception as long as they have a mindset that generally accepts the gift of children—if the whole of the marriage is fertile, individual instances of sex can be contracepted. Pope St. Paul VI saw that the reason argument applies to many things on the plane of nature, but that reason cannot govern the marital act by internally frustrating God’s role in it, only by regulating man’s use of it within naturally established patterns of fertility. The Pope saw what other denominations missed: the marital act is uniquely exalted among earthly things, by its participation in sacramental co-creation with God, which is above reason’s grasp (§17). In this response, as already noted above, the Pope did not appeal to physicalism, but to the teaching on marriage. The Pope also rejected the totality argument, replying that every marital act must retain its exalted nature, with both its unitive and procreative aspects. To withhold fertility in any marital act is to withhold part of a purportedly complete self-gift, which he describes as being “intrinsically wrong” or intrinsically contradictory about contraception in marriage, as already noted above in response to a mischaracterization of HV §14. Thus, the Pope rejected the reason and totality arguments as insufficient to justify contraception in marriage, by grounding his rebuttals in the nature of marriage. Catholics reading HV today should be grateful to Pope St. Paul VI for responding to the hardest, most persuasive case of contraception. Rejecting the reason and totality arguments imagined in faithful matrimony required insight and subtlety. In contrast, rejecting arguments for contraception in adultery or childfree cohabitation is trivial, requiring only a basic understanding of sin, sex, and marriage.15 If the Catholic Church did not permit contraception at its most rational and well-intentioned, she is unlikely to permit it when at its most selfish and convenient. Perhaps as a result, no one has ever approached the Holy See with arguments in favor of extramarital contraception, because all such arguments seem to be weaker than the arguments for contraception in marriage. This essay takes up that seemingly ridiculous task: we must test whether the reason argument, the totality argument, or other arguments is valid for extramarital contraception, in an attitude of fidelity and submission to the tradition of the Catholic Church. Luckily, this essay is not the first foray into this topic. 15 See Prov 28:13 and Catechism of the Catholic Church §2378, on children as the “supreme gift of marriage.” 1252 Cara Buskmiller The Debate Some Catholic moral theologians believe that HV’s proscription of contraceptives can be generalized to extramarital sex, and that all contraception is intrinsically evil.16 Others hint that HV may not apply to all extramarital sex.17 A helpful spotlight on the debate is the issue of emergency contraception (EC), on which there is broad agreement on liceity, but disagreement as to the reason for liceity. In EC, a clinician provides a drug or device to prevent pregnancy after sex. Secular professional guidelines on EC describe its use for up to five days after any act of sex (consensual or nonconsensual). Depending on the timing of sex and EC during the female cycle of fertility, EC might work by preventing ovulation, or by ending the life of an embryo.18 The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops permits EC in directive 36 of its 2009 Ethical and Religious Directives (ERD) only for victims of sexual assault, and only when a clinician can be morally certain that the drug or device will prevent fertilization, and not act after fertilization on an innocent embryo. Thus, the USCCB does permit EC in some cases, to prevent the taxing and traumatic experience which is pregnancy after sexual assault. Writers who hold that contraception is intrinsically evil agree with the bishops by explaining that EC is not actually an act of contraception, but one of self-defense.19 Those who hold that contraception is not intrinsically evil argue that EC is contraception because it is a drug or device that is used explicitly to prevent fertilization (unlike use of these same contraceptives to treat a medical problem). However, despite its nature as contraception, these 16 17 18 19 For a small sample, see Christopher Tollefsen, “Contraceptives for Victims of Sexual Assault and for the Mentally Disabled: A Reply to Stephen Napier,” Linacre Quarterly 77, no. 3 (2010): 308–22, and Janet Smith, Humanae Vitae, a Generation Later (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991). For another small sample, see Steven Napier, “Contraception for the Mentally Disabled: A Contraceptive Act?,” Linacre Quarterly 77, no. 3 (2010): 280–307, and Tad Pacholczyk, “Catholics and Acceptable Uses of Contraceptives,” Making Sense of Bioethics, March 30, 2016. Kathleen M. Raviele, “Levonorgestrel in Cases of Sexual assault: How Does It Work?,” Linacre Quarterly 81, no. 2 (2014):117–29. Catholic Medical Association, “Statement on Emergency Contraception,” September14,2015,cathmed.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Statement-on-EmergencyContraception-in-Cases-of-Rape.pdf. The present essay will continue to call this emergency contraception (EC) because of this essay’s definition of contraception (a use of these drugs or devices with an aim to prevent conception), which matches the medical term for this act; see American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists “Practice Bulletin No. 152: Emergency Contraception,” Obstetrics and Gynecology 126, no. 3 (2015): e1–e11. Extramarital Contraception in the Catholic Faith 1253 writers uphold that EC is allowed because of the difference between sexual assault and the marital act described in HV. One of the best articulations of this argument is by Steven Napier, writing about contraception in the intellectually disabled. Napier bridges the gap between writers who hold that all contraception is evil and those who do not: Napier himself holds that contraception is intrinsically evil, but offers a helpful insight on how sexual assault differs from the marital act. Napier’s insight is that contraception after sexual assault is “not [intended] to separate the unitive and procreative meaning of [a] conjugal act.”20 Indeed, Napier goes on to explain, sexual assault does not have a unitive aspect because of the lack of consent which is part of the definition of sexual assault. Sexual assault is not a mutual loving self-gift, but a grave and violent sin by the perpetrator and a traumatic attack on the victim. Put another way, sexual assault represents a falling away from sex in marriage. In sex in marriage, spouses make an exclusive, total self-gift that unites all their faculties, including their fertility and their wills. Contraception is evil in this setting in part because it interrupts this self-gift. In contrast, sexual assault contains no mutual self-gift and certainly no unity of wills. In fact, the lack of this unity seems to be the key loss in the “falling away” of sexual assault from the ideal of the marital act. There is superficial physical resemblance of unity, but there is already such a deprivation “of [sex’s] meaning and purpose” (HV §16) and deviation from “the consent of the spouses” that establishes “the conjugal community”21 that contraception does not appear to interrupt sexual assault in the way it interrupts a marital act. If there is no unity between the sexual partners, there is no unitive aspect to destroy by withholding fertility, and HV’s main argument against contraception does not apply. If Napier’s line of reasoning is correct, contraception in sexual assault is not wrong for the same reasons contraception is wrong in marriage. However, this does not automatically make contraception in sexual assault licit. Positive arguments must be made. What positive argument already exist for EC? The literature largely makes a positive argument that EC is licit by describing EC as self-defense against the completion of an act by an aggressor. Just as she can physically resist with her fists, the victim of sexual assault can pharmacologically resist with pre-fertilization mechanisms of contraception. Most Catholic physicians are content with this, but perceptive readers will notice that EC is only analogically “self-defense,” in that the woman protects 20 21 Napier, “Contraception for the Mentally Disabled,” 295. Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC] §2201. 1254 Cara Buskmiller her gametes from being accessed by her aggressor’s gametes.22 However, the way she achieves this is more truly called an act of contraception than an act of self-defense: she is using a drug that lowers her fertility in order to avoid fertilization. Thus, a perceptive reader will realize that we must contend with the underlying “reason argument” again, this time without the doctrine of Christian marriage. EC involves a victim and her physician using their reason to curtail the victim’s fertility after an assault. In marriage, the use of reason was an unacceptable affront to something above us; unlike the exalted marital act, sexual assault is beneath us. Thus, without any formal defense of the use of reason to regulate a natural process after sexual assault, the ordinary magisterium has accepted the use of reason to regulate fertility with contraception when sex lacks key aspects of the marital act: consent and a unitive aspect (HV §12). In EC, a real act of contraception is licit, given the intention to protect the victim and a method that does not harm any embryos. Thus, EC demonstrates that the ordinary magisterium and many Catholic writers already believe we can use our reason to employ contraception to regulate the natural process of sex and fertilization in a narrow setting. Given this, perhaps there is a broader role for the reason argument in other settings of extramarital contraception, or a role for other tools like double-effect reasoning. But even if this is so, why should we attempt to investigate extramarital contraception? Isn’t EC enough, and couldn’t more investigation cause scandal? Why Should We Determine the Liceity of Extramarital Contraception? Idle inquiries about hot-button topics help no one. But the discussion of EC as self-defense highlights one reason for a discussion of extramarital contraception: the USCCB recognizes that victims of assault should be permitted to repel the act of their aggressor (ERD §36). Before moral theologians and bioethicists addressed this question, Catholic hospitals unnecessarily withheld this option from women.23 We can now recognize this as unfortunate: because ethicists waited, women were unable to resist their aggressors in this way. Are there other categories of victims who could be helped by a more general rule on extramarital contraception? Possibly. Another reason to ask this question is to avoid scandal. Whenever a 22 23 Some are tempted to say it is self-defense against pregnancy. But “self-defense” implies an aggressor, and she is not defending herself from his offspring, since any fetus that arises is a new innocent bystander, not her aggressor. L. Bucar and D. Nolan, “Emergency contraception and Catholic hospitals,” Conscience 20, no. 1 (1999): 20–22. Extramarital Contraception in the Catholic Faith 1255 pontiff discusses a gradualist approach to contraception or a truth about contraception, there is confusion among the faithful and the world.24 This confusion probably comes from the general impression that contraception is intrinsically evil because it is artificial or unnatural, a physicalist simplification of HV. Making exceptions to a supposedly intrinsically evil act generates the scandalous impression that Catholic teaching is positive law—a modifiable, barely coherent list of rules. A comprehensive approach to extramarital contraception could prevent some confusion, like completing the Nicene Creed prevented confusion about the person of Christ and the Church. Certainly, concupiscence and poor catechesis will always feed scandal, but these failings do not remove the utility of a complete body of teaching on contraception. There is another reason to seek a systematic answer to extramarital contraception, but it is a subtle one. The Church has long explained that God’s plan for the begetting of children is within marriage between a man and a woman.25 While the Church has never precisely said the corollary, it follows that raising children outside of marriage falls away from the fullness of God’s plan; it is less good. People born and raised outside of marriage are more likely to suffer consequences from this less-good setting.26 While it always possible to adopt these children into marriages, this comes with its own adverse consequences.27 The only way to completely avoid this less-good situation for children is to prevent extramarital pregnancy. Clearly, the best way of preventing extramarital pregnancy is holiness of life among all the faithful. However, in a fallen world when vulnerable unmarried persons can become pregnant against their will, it is worthwhile asking whether some 24 25 26 27 See Martin Pendergast, “The Pope’s Shift on Condoms Is No Surprise,” The Guardian, November 23, 2010, and David Willey, “Is Pope Francis’ Contraception Hint Just a Puff of Smoke?” BBC News, February 21, 2016. See CCC §1646, Gaudium et Spes (1965), §50, and Ann Schneible, “Pope Francis: Children Have a Right to a Mother and Father,” Catholic News Agency, November 17, 2014. See Sara McLanahan and Gary D. Sandefur, Growing up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994); Jane Waldfogel, Terry-Ann Craigie, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn “Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing,” The Future of children 20, no. 2 (2010): 87–112; Robert Rector, “Marriage: America's Greatest Weapon against Child Poverty,” The Heritage Foundation, September 16, 2010. Sharon K. Roszia, Allison Davis Maxon, and Deborah N. Silverstein, Seven Core Issues in Adoption and Permanency: A Comprehensive Guide to Promoting Understanding and Healing in Adoption, Foster Care, Kinship Families and Third Party Reproduction (Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley, 2019). 1256 Cara Buskmiller extramarital pregnancies can be licitly prevented by preventing extramarital fertilization. Of course, this line of reasoning is too feeble to support all-out endorsement of contraception to prevent all extramarital fertilization and birth. This line of reasoning must also be carefully handled pastorally, as it affects the faithful who have been born outside of marriage.28 Also clearly, this line of reasoning does not endorse abortion for extramarital pregnancy—once an embryo is conceived, Catholic teaching is extremely clear on the sacredness of his or her life. After fertilization, the only licit options to address the imperfect environment for this child are reparative (not preventative), such as marriage, good parenting, and community support. In summary, the discussion of the potential future child that may be conceived after extramarital sex is subtle and not the strongest reason to proceed with the present inquiry, but stems from Church teaching and relates to real-world consequences for children. For this reason, it deserves mention, but it will not form the basis of any further arguments. Given all of the above reasons to pursue a systematic approach to extramarital contraception, let us consider a framework for analyzing this broad topic. The Liceity of Extramarital Contraception Establishing Three Categories of Extramarital Sex There is a long and complex spectrum of sex and sexual acts that fall away from marital chastity, and this spectrum can seem intimidating and impossible to analyze. To more clearly discuss extramarital contraception, we can use consent to create a non-exhaustive list of three categories: 1. Sex in which both parties have capacity to consent, and both consent to sex. 2. Sex in which both parties have capacity to consent, but one withholds consent and this person is overpowered. 28 Preventing fertilization is not ontologically or pastorally equivalent to abortion. Ontologically, each being adds to the good; however, preventing extramarital fertilization is akin to preventing a falling away from the good, not deleting goods. Pastoral concerns about preventing extramarital fertilization often surround persons conceived this way who feel “illicit.” But God certainly wills that these people exist and he willed their birth. However, the fullness of his will would have had their life come about a different way, so that those people never had to question that they are loved. Extramarital Contraception in the Catholic Faith 1257 3. Sex in which one party has no capacity to consent, and this person is overpowered. These categories do not define whether the overpowered party is male or female, but this essay is self-limited to female victims. Because these categories are structured using this essay’s will-centered definition of “consent,” these categories do not consider whether a victim of assault has a response to sexual advances other than one seated in the will. It also does not include either party’s maturity, prudence, or cultural background, which are circumstances relevant to culpability but do not determine the object of an act in classical Catholic ethics. Category 1 includes all consensual sex, even if consent is partial or not accompanied by strong desire. Examples of category-1 acts are the sex in cohabitation, consensual adultery and fornication, consensual hookups, and voluntary sex work. Category 2 includes all forms of sexual assault regardless of the partners’ relationship, except abuse in category 3. Category 3 includes sexual assault of those unable to consent such as some minors (especially those below the age of reason), intellectually disabled adults, psychotic patients, or dementia patients. Category 1: Consensual Extramarital Sex There is a long history of proscription of contraception associated with voluntary sins such as fornication, adultery, and prostitution, which arguably apply to cohabitation, voluntary sex work, and relationship arrangements such as polyamory. Church fathers and doctors condemned sterilization and contraception centuries before HV.29 The ancient world was aware of the difference between abortion and contraception, as Soranus of Ephesus explained in his second-century Gynaecology that “a contraceptive [ἀτόκιον] differs from an abortive [φθόριον], for the first does not let fertilization take place, while the latter destroys what has been conceived.”30 It is occasionally difficult to determine whether ancient writers accepted this distinction. Catholic writers in the first centuries had a predilection to speak of contraception, sterilization, extramarital sex, and homicide all in one breath. 29 30 See, for example, Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus 2; Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium haeresium 9.12; Canon 1 of the Council of Nicaea; St. Augustine, De bono coniugali 11–12 and De nuptiis et concupiscientia 1.15.17; St. John Chrysostom, Homily 28 on Matthew, no. 5; St. Jerome, Adversus Jovinianum 1.19 and Letter 22, no. 1; St. Ambrose, Hexameron 5.18; Origen of Alexandria, Contra Celsum 5. Keith Hopkins, Sociological Studies in Roman history, ed. C. Kelly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). 1258 Cara Buskmiller However, some at least list contraception, abortion, and sterilization as different acts, although writers disagreed as to whether these acts were different or identical in gravity.31 It can be gathered from ancient writings that contraception adds evil to the evil of consensual extramarital sex, in two ways. First, contraception in consensual extramarital sex dodges the natural consequences of an evil act; second, it moves one more step away from God’s plan for sex, which bestows children as a supreme gift. Thus, whenever two agents are capable of consent and choose extramarital sex, contraception takes them further from God’s plan for human sexuality. This conclusion cannot be overstated and must be expounded upon to have a truthful view of the Catholic Church’s teaching on contraception. A university student in a hookup culture may lack prudence when she consents, but if she consents, contraception adds to the evil of extramarital sex. It does not help her or her partner. The Church’s purview encompasses more than the practical convenience of avoiding an undesired pregnancy; its focus is on the effect that contracepted fornication has upon her soul’s ability to pursue God’s will, her ultimate happiness. As another example, a couple may live together envisioning a future marriage, but presently choose to engage in extramarital sex. Since both are capable of consent and marriage, contraception adds to the evil of their fornication, it does not lessen it and it is not good for them. Put another way, avoiding the exclusive and permanent commitment to a sexual partner is one evil, and avoiding the procreative consequences of sex is another. The Catholic Church has already been very clear on contraception in this type of extramarital sex. It cannot be entertained, as it is in no way compatible with Catholic teaching about the will of God, human perfection, and sexual mores. In fact, it may be argued that the more a sexual act resembles marriage, the greater is the evil of contraception. Specifically, the closer a sexual relationship is to an exclusive, permanent, selfless self-gift, the greater the rupture that contraception presents. Couples who are cohabiting for the long term and even having children are meaning to make an exclusive self-gift with their sexual intimacy and mode of life, so contraception is a grave subtraction and a lie. In contrast, a one-night-stand makes no pretense of an exclusive self-gift, so the addition of contraception into the already bankrupt use of sex is still evil, but less of a dramatic reversal. 31 See St. Hubert’s Penitentiary (850) for the former and John IV of Constantinople’s Libellus poenitentialis for the latter (PG, 88:1904). Extramarital Contraception in the Catholic Faith 1259 Category 2: Nonconsensual Extramarital Sex When Consent Is Possible In sex between two parties with capacity to consent, but in the absence of one party’s consent, one agent violently suppresses the freedom of another and frustrates their desire. This discussion must be divided into two parts: contraception administered after sex (post-exposure), and contraception administered before sex (pre-exposure). As described above, a consensus of moral theologians agree that post-exposure contraception (EC) is licit, as long as it is truly contraception, meaning it works before fertilization and no innocent embryos are harmed. This wraps up the discussion of post-exposure contraception in nonconsensual extramarital sex: it is licit, with a few details to prevent loss of greater goods. What about pre-exposure contraception in nonconsensual extramarital sex? Catholic ethicists have not often discussed pre-exposure contraception for sexual assault victims, probably for multiple reasons. Certainly one reason is that the issue of whether contraception is intrinsically evil is still unresolved. In addition, sexual assault is an unplanned event and thus pre-exposure interventions would be difficult to time. Further, abortion after sexual assault is vehemently opposed by the Church and the optics of considering pregnancy prevention in sexual assault might be confusing. Finally, there are other ways of preventing pregnancy from sexual assault (e.g., prudence and physical resistance) that are less tricky to support. However, none of these reasons rebut the central idea in EC literature: contraception in sexual assault is like pharmacological resistance, and victims should be able to resist their aggressors. Famously but perhaps apocryphally, it was argued that women could take pre-exposure contraceptives if they were at serious risk of sexual assault because of their mission territory.32 Most writers brush this example off as fictional or quickly transition to discussing EC, but the topic is worthy of investigation. Let us imagine two women on mission in an area where sexual assault is used as a weapon in guerilla war. One woman happens to 32 Edward Bayer, Sexual Assault within Marriage: A Moral Analysis Delayed (Eugene OR: Wipf & Stock, 1985), 82–83. Bayer has argued that wives facing marital sexual assault could use preventative contraceptives, especially if a grave reason is present that prompts avoidance of pregnancy but the husband is unwilling to prevent danger to his wife by abstaining from sex. This is a difficult topic and beyond the scope of this essay, as this piece is focused on extramarital contraception. However, the author suggests that avoiding the occasion of sexual assault by living separately is a preferable solution to contraception, since (1) extricating oneself from risk of assault is prudent if assault can be foreseen and (2) contraception may have post-fertilization effects, which will be discussed below. 1260 Cara Buskmiller be taking a combined oral contraceptive for a medical indication. Despite every prudential action including prudent physical resistance, both women are sexually assaulted around cycle day fourteen. Both go to the nearby Catholic hospital for evaluation after the assault. Both women should be able to defend themselves against their aggressor’s sperm reaching an egg. The woman taking an oral contraceptive is anovulatory according to lab testing by the hospital—her contraceptive pill is suppressing monthly egg release and has enabled her to defend herself against the completion of her aggressor’s assault. Unfortunately, as is often the case in mid-cycle assaults, her companion who is not on a pre-exposure contraceptive is ovulating. The Catholic hospital cannot in good conscience offer her EC, out of concern for harming an embryo. Although the ERD say this woman “should be able to defend herself,” she is powerless to do so. This illustration demonstrates what Catholic hospitals and physicians often encounter: if a woman needs EC because she is near ovulation, she usually cannot get it. If she does not need it, she paradoxically can get it. EC in a Catholic, embryo-conscious protocol is actually least available to women who most need it: women are cyclically fertile, and at the fertile time they are least able to withhold their fertility from rapists if only post-exposure EC is offered. But if the bishops write that women should be able to pharmacologically defend themselves from their aggressor, why does current practice only acknowledge this ability after assault, and fail women most when they are fertile? The answer is simple and is related to circumstances that gave rise to the EC decision: the ethics of the ERD are reactive, formulated by looking at secular medical practice and deciding how to modify it to breathe in the truth of the faith. The bishops looked at the unbridled provision of EC by secular hospitals, and applied doctrines from the beginning of life to write directive 36 permitting EC. Pre-exposure contraception in sexual assault was never specifically examined. Let us examine it now. Importantly, this discussion does not apply to women who can control their surroundings, such as enfranchised women on university campuses who can avoid occasions of sexual assault, or avoid use of substances that dull judgment. The Catholic Church lays a heavy charge on each soul to form their conscience according to the moral law, grow in prudence, and remain in control of their will so as to act virtuously. The pre-exposure contraception being discussed in this section applies to unacceptably high risk of assault and disenfranchisement, such as the captivity and repeated sexual assault that ostensibly happened to religious sisters in the Congo in the 1960s.33 33 Bayer, Sexual Assault. Extramarital Contraception in the Catholic Faith 1261 Here, Napier’s insight about the unitive aspect of the marital act shines forth again. Marriage is made by consent,34 meaning that sexual assault is missing one of the most fundamental characteristics of marriage. This deprives sexual assault of a unitive aspect, even if there is physiological unity between the victim and the attacker. Given that there is no unitive aspect, extramarital contraception in assault cannot be not wrong because it destroys such an aspect. Moreover, there is no procreative requirement of a victim after this act of violence, as EC already demonstrates. As EC shows, a victim can use her reason to regulate her fertility because sexual assault is not above reason, as is the marital act. Thus, extramarital contraception in assault cannot be wrong because it disrupts an untouchable unitive or procreative aspect, absent here. In short, extramarital contraception in assault is not wrong for the same reasons that contraception in marriage is wrong. In fact, the foregoing discussion suggests that, when other options cannot extricate a woman from the high risk of completely nonconsensual sex, it might be licit to accept pre-exposure contraception.35 But as above, we need positive arguments for liceity, not just suggestions that it is not illicit. Can a woman suppress her fertility, which is a great good, for the sake of avoiding pregnancy after sexual assault? Temporary loss of this good must be proportionate to the danger of attack. The Catholic Church has a long, consistent teaching on proportion when a morally neutral act has two effects—one evil, one good. In the setting of pre-exposure extramarital contraception, an unmarried woman is suppressing fertility (an evil effect), which she believes is not to be used until marriage anyway, for the sake of avoiding fertilization after sexual assault (a good effect). If a woman faces near-certain sexual assault despite her best attempts at avoiding it, the chances of fertilization from one assault are between 5 percent and 30 percent.36 If circumstances mean this threatens her health due to a pre-existing condition, or if this directly translates into a 5–30 percent chance of conceiving a child bereft of his right to be raised within marriage, there may be proportional benefit to the temporary suppression of a power not being used. In addition, there is a risk that EC will have post-fertilization effects even if intentionally used only for pre-fertilization mechanisms.37 Using 34 35 36 37 CIC, can. 1057, §1. As with EC, such pre-exposure contraception is clearly an act of contraception, not simply an act of self-defense. Bernardo Colombo and Guido Masarotto, “Daily Fecundability: First Results from New Data Base,” Demographic Research 3 (2000), article 5, demographic-research.org/ volumes/vol3/5/3-5.pdf. Rebecca Peck, Walter Rella, Julio Tudela, Justo Aznar, and Bruno Mozzanega, “Does 1262 Cara Buskmiller pre-exposure contraception increases the likelihood of anovulation, lowering the likelihood of fertilization after assault, and lowering the odds of post-fertilization effects, although this may not be true of all methods.38 Potentially decreasing the risk of post-fertilization effects to innocent embryos, which is rare but never acceptable, is also arguably proportional to the temporary suppression of fertility in an unmarried woman. Are there undue costs to this temporary suppression? Long-term studies of hormonal contraceptives, the most common types employed worldwide, suggest that some women have menstrual irregularities during the initial months after stopping the contraceptive. Injectable Depo-Provera is associated with a reversible loss in bone density, meaning that any decrease in bone density is recouped after cessation of Depo-Provera.39 Women who take combined oral contraceptive pills are at lower risk of ovarian and endometrial cancer compared to never-users, but higher risk of cervical and breast cancers.40 Although these risks are real, the absolute effect sizes are small. Overall, the temporary loss of fertility due to preventative contraception may be proportionate to a very real risk of sexual assault. Another important factor to discuss is whether the pre-exposure nature of this contraception is problematic; the short answer is, no. The fact that these women anticipate their sexual assault and take contraception ahead of time (unlike the sexual assault victim who takes EC afterwards), does not alter the liceity of their act of contraception. Two examples of anticipation not affecting the object of an act are self-defense and previable delivery. Defense of life and property can include precautionary measures, since self-defense means “an action taken to prevent or reduce harm to oneself.”41 As another example within reproductive bioethics, the timing of an anticipated danger 38 39 40 41 Levonorgestrel Emergency Contraceptive Have a Post-Fertilization Effect? A Review of Its Mechanism of Action,” Linacre Quarterly 83, no. 1 (2016): 35–51. Ian Milsom and Tjeerd Korver, “Ovulation Incidence with Oral Contraceptives: A Literature Review,” Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care 34, no. 4 (2008): 237–46. Tina Raine-Bennett, Malini Chandra, Mary Anne Armstrong, Stacey Alexeeff, and Joan Lo, “Depot Medroxyprogesterone Acetate, Oral Contraceptive, Intrauterine Device Use, and Fracture Risk,” Obstetrics & Gynecology 134, no. 3 (2019): 581–89. Ronald Burkman, James J. Schlesselman, and Miriam Zieman, “Safety Concerns and Health Benefits Associated with Oral Contraception,” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 190, no. 4 (2004):S5–22. Christian Coons and Michael Weber, The Ethics of Self-Defense (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 3. Extramarital Contraception in the Catholic Faith 1263 does not affect the use of morally acceptable means to mitigate that danger by performing a previable delivery.42 In summary, while no person can completely control whether a child is conceived from an individual act of assault, a woman may prevent this as much as she is able, whether it is because she anticipates an unavoidable assault, or because one has already occurred. Category 3: Nonconsensual Extramarital Sex When Consent Is Impossible Finally, the last category of extramarital sexual encounters represents sexual assault of those without the capacity to consent. Most literature on this category focuses on intellectually disabled women, but this category would also include those with severe mental illness, those with dementia, and some minors (especially those below the age of reason). Two important voices in this discussion are Napier and Christopher Tollefsen. Napier and Tollefsen discuss this issue in contrasting 2010 articles in the Linacre Quarterly.43 Both look for a way to defend the intellectually disabled, and their main difference is the way they do so: Napier redefines contraception in the intellectually disabled as not contraception, and Tollefsen uses the principle of double effect to justify contraception. Both authors sympathize with the family and the woman in a difficult place, both intuit that this is a different matter from contraception in category 1, and both seek to know how God’s mercy can be applied to this situation. Each ultimately fails to show the liceity of contraception in category 3 because both hold on some level that contraception is intrinsically evil. This leads to a relabeling fiasco of what is and what is not contraception, with both magnifying the importance of intention, a perilous thing to do.44 Ultimately, Napier descends into consequentialism and Tollefsen into physicalism, but both conclude that intellectually disabled women can use pre-exposure contraception. This essay will attempt to avoid physicalism, misuse of double-effect reasoning, consequentialism, and the pitfalls of overemphasizing intention. 42 43 44 National Catholic Bioethics Center, “Medical Intervention in Cases of Maternal–Fetal Vital Conflicts, a Statement of Consensus,” National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 14, no. 3 (2014): 477–89. Napier, “Contraception for the Mentally Disabled”; Tollefsen, “Contraceptives for Victims of Sexual Assault and for the Mentally Disabled.” This territory has been previously covered with work on craniotomy: a craniotomy cannot be justified as a changing-of-shape for the sake of saving life. The object of craniotomy is a lethal act upon the fetus, and no amount of recharacterizing will change the fact that it is unacceptable to perform this act, regardless of the aims. See Gerard Magill, “Threat of Imminent Death in Pregnancy: A Role for Double-Effect Reasoning,” Theological Studies 72, no. 4 (2011): 848–78. 1264 Cara Buskmiller As has been already mentioned, Napier’s key insight is that when there is no unitive aspect to divide from the procreative, the evil of contraception represented in HV is no longer present. In category 3 more than ever, union is impossible, as sacramental marriage is (by the definition of “intellectually disabled” in this essay) impossible. Thus, even if pre-exposure contraception is really contraception, and the person acting on the disabled woman’s behalf truly intends to prevent fertilization before an assault occurs, this essay argues that pre-exposure contraception is licit in category 3, just as in category 2. Just like post-exposure and pre-exposure contraception when consent is not given, post-exposure and pre-exposure contraception can be used when consent is impossible. Responses to Objections Humanae Vitae Contains Language about the Whole of Nature and Biology, So At Least Some Aspect of It Applies to All Sex and All Contraception Despite all of the above analysis, especially of the words “intrinsically wrong” modifying sex (not contraception) during the Pope’s response to the argument of totality, it might still be objected that HV contains frequent language of nature and natural law. Most uses of the word “nature” are in comments about the nature of marriage or the nature of the marital act, but some relate to human nature or what could be called biology, such as §12: “The reason is that the fundamental nature of the marriage act . . . renders them capable of generating new life—and this as a result of laws written into the actual nature of man and of woman.” This comment explains that fertility emerges from the nature of men and women as complementary for human reproduction, not about built-in inviolability of everyone’s reproductive systems. But more troublesome is a quote in the next section: Hence to use this divine gift while depriving it, even if only partially, of its meaning and purpose, is equally repugnant to the nature of man and of woman, and is consequently in opposition to the plan of God and His holy will. . . . Just as man does not have unlimited dominion over his body in general, so also, and with more particular reason, he has no such dominion over his specifically sexual faculties, for these are concerned by their very nature with the generation of life, of which God is the source. (HV §13) This section is meant to illustrate how contraception breaks the divine design for the conjugal act, and it begins about marital sexual assault—“a Extramarital Contraception in the Catholic Faith 1265 conjugal act imposed on one’s partner without regard to his or her condition or personal and reasonable wishes in the matter.” It then establishes an analogy between marital sexual assault and contracepted sex, describing sexual assault as a violence upon the will of one spouse that frustrates their desire, and contraception as a violence upon the will of God, which “frustrates His design which constitutes the norm of marriage, and contradicts the will of the Author of life.” The next pronouncement, “he has no . . . dominion over his specifically sexual faculties,” is because these are concerned with something beyond him. This section and this objection must be taken very seriously. While the language introducing this analogy is marital, it seems to imply that any frustration of procreation is evil because it excludes God from sex, and we must never exclude God from anything. HV responds to the objection for us with its clear-cut response to the reason argument. In his response to this argument, Pope St. Paul VI makes room for ways to regulate fertility that do not exclude God (§16), and only rejects the use of reason to break a promise, that is, to withhold fertility in what is meant to be a complete self-gift. If there are other licit ways to use reason to govern fertility, this sentence does not condemn them. All extramarital sex already frustrates God’s design and contradicts his will; it remains for reason, following faith, to detect what licit methods there may be for regulating fertility. This essay proposes that reason, guided by faith, does find licit applications for contraception outside of marriage, but that reason can never find a licit application for contraception within marriage, because of the exalted nature of the marital act and the importance of preserving the couple’s capacity for co-creation. Instead, reason identifies other licit methods of regulating fertility in marriage, such as abstinence on fertile days, which preserve as much capacity for life that each instance of sex possesses. “Physicalism” Is a Straw Man of a Proof That Contraception Is a Natural and Moral Evil What I have referred to as “physicalism,” also occasionally termed a “naturalistic fallacy,” is an overly simplified version of the perverted-faculty argument, best summarized by Edward Feser.45 The full-bodied version of this argument comes from the long-standing voice of old natural law and an Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding of the nature of man as rational animal. Feser’s account of reality is true, the perverted-faculty argument is valid, and personalist and new natural law arguments generally mirror 45 Edward Feser, “In Defense of the Perverted Faculty Argument,” in Neo-Scholastic Essays (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2015), 378–415. 1266 Cara Buskmiller perverted-faculty arguments.46 To summarize a summary, Feser syllogizes that what is good for any being is to pursue its ends, and sex has unitive and procreative ends, so acting at variance with these ends is by definition evil for a thing. This argument is watertight and demonstrates why contraception is evil for category 1 sex. But Feser, like Pope St. Paul VI, has blinders on: just as the Pope does not consider the liceity of contraception when sex is illicit, so Feser does not consider the status of contraception when sex is not chosen. Feser shows the limitations of his analysis when he describes sex as “individual deliberate act[s]” that involve “use of the sexual organs.”47 This is a great description of consensual sexual acts and consensual sex (category 1), but is not a good description of category 2 or 3, when a female victim does not make a deliberate choice to use her sexual organs. In sexual assault as perhaps in no other type of abuse, the aggressor uses a faculty which he cannot wield alone. He arrogates both complementary “halves” of the reproductive system and initiates a “use” of the victim’s sexual faculty without her choice. As in other misuses of this faculty, the rapist turn[s] sexual pleasure away from its natural end of leading a person intensely to delight in and thereby to bond emotionally with another individual human being and reduces it to a kind of recreational virtual reality.48 This text from Feser’s argument supports Napier’s realization that sexual assault has no unitive aspect, since a rapist is using his victim’s body as an instrument for his own satisfaction. A rapist uses his sexual faculties, a victim’s faculties are used. Since choice is required to sin, a victim of sexual assault is not guilty of anything connected to using her sexual capacities; if it were up to her, they would not be used. But surely, although the victim does not sin during sexual assault, she and her physician (category 2), or a surrogate decision-maker and a physician (category 3), certainly attempt to “frustrate the procreative end of sex altogether” at another time, which is opposed to a natural end.49 In answer, two 46 47 48 49 Indeed, Feser points out (“In Defense,” 409) that personalists who do not employ the perverted-faculty argument often must fall back on divine revelation, which this essay argues that Pope St. Paul VI does (by falling back on the divine nature of marriage when he prohibits contraception). Feser, “In Defense,” 407. Feser, “In Defense,” 409 (speaking of masturbation and pornography, applied here to rapists). Feser, “In Defense,” 396. Extramarital Contraception in the Catholic Faith 1267 points from Feser himself are useful, on the complexity of human acts and on the spectrum from natural to moral evils. Feser admits that natural ends cannot solely determine how humans act toward sex and at times fertility is sacrificed for a greater good, as physicians do when they modify or halt fertility altogether for true treatment of disease.50 Feser discusses corollaries and apparent exceptions to the perverted-faculty argument which neatly align with Catholic teaching (celibacy, sex for infertile and postmenopausal couples, etc.). EC, although promulgated by the USCCB by 2015, is not among his list of consistent teachings even though it represents a suppression of one good for the sake of a greater good. Perhaps this is because contraception in sexual assault is so unusual. Unlike in elective contraception, the victim had no opportunity to avoid pregnancy by avoiding sex. Unlike in abortion, the victim has no obligation to carry any embryo, since no embryo yet exists. Unlike consensual sex, the victim does not use her sexual faculties in sexual assault or when accepting EC—she uses her reason as argued above, which as in other situations modifies fertility to achieve a greater good. “The reason argument,” wrongly used by so many that Feser rebuts, is finally useful to show that reason can be and is used to pursue a greater good than the completion of an evil sexual assault. Contraception in categories 2 and 3 is not always a “failure to live well,”51 but may when used prudentially and in deference to embryonic life achieve a greater good than the natural end of a sexual assault. The Doctors of the Church Disagree with This Essay’s Main Premise St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine, two of the highest non-scriptural authorities in Catholic theology, suggest that contraception is a vice against nature. (This is similar to Feser’s objection, but with greater authority.) St. Augustine writes that “intercourse even with one's legitimate wife is unlawful and wicked where the conception of the offspring is prevented.”52 Contraception within marriage is unlawful and wicked (this essay agrees), and St. Augustine’s “even with” (etiam) implies that extramarital contraception is even more unlawful and wicked. This author certainly agrees that consensual sex using contraception to prevent natural consequences adds sin to sin. But what about nonconsensual sex? St. Augustine is not clear on the matter, since he speaks of a man choosing sex, both in his text and the example he cites (Onan with Tamar in Gen 38:9–10). 50 51 52 Feser, “In Defense,” 397–98. Feser, “In Defense,” 408. St. Augustine De adulterinis coniugiis 2.12. 1268 Cara Buskmiller St. Thomas writes from a nature-based perspective and, unusually for him, from a consequentialist perspective: Now just as the preservation of the bodily nature of one individual is a true good, so, too, is the preservation of the nature of the human species a very great good. And just as the use of food is directed to the preservation of life in the individual, so is the use of venereal acts directed to the preservation of the whole human race.53 St. Thomas does not ignore that the marital act is good for individual couples,54 but he emphasizes that married couples also serve the human race. This is an important part of his argument against contraception. The more necessary a thing is the more it behooves one to observe the order of reason in its regard; wherefore the more sinful it becomes if the order of reason be forsaken. Now the use of venereal acts, as stated in the foregoing Article, is most necessary for the common good, namely the preservation of the human race. Wherefore there is the greatest necessity for observing the order of reason in this matter: so that if anything be done in this connection against the dictate of reason's ordering, it will be a sin.55 The common good is here defined as the propagation of the human race, but a higher common good might be proposed, which is the fullness of God’s will. Without violating this higher common good, this essay proposes a few licit uses of extramarital contraception that do not jeopardize St. Thomas’s slightly lower common good. After all, this essay will leave married people to prevent human extinction exactly as St. Thomas desires, and only allows contraception in persons who have neither the right nor the duty to continue the human race with their aggressors. Marital sexual assault presents a slightly more complex case, which is beyond the scope of this work. But this consequentialist argument is not the only argument St. Thomas employs. He has been quoted as finding contracepted sex to be intrinsically problematic regardless of consequences or marital status. Many have quoted the below passage on “the unnatural vice” as describing contraception along with bestiality and homosexual acts: 53 54 55 St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae [ST] II-II, q. 153, a. 2, resp. ST suppl., q. 49, a. 2, resp.; a. 3, resp. ST II-II, q. 153, a. 3, resp. Extramarital Contraception in the Catholic Faith 1269 Wherever there occurs a special kind of deformity whereby the venereal act is rendered unbecoming, there is a determinate species of lust. This may occur in two ways: First through being contrary to right reason, and this is common to all lustful vices; secondly, because in addition, it is contrary to the natural order of the venereal act as becoming to the human race: and this is called the unnatural vice. This may happen in several ways [among which is] by not observing the natural manner of copulation, either as to undue means, or as to other monstrous and bestial manners of copulation. . . . The lustful man intends not human generation but venereal pleasures. It is possible to have this without those acts from which human generation follows; and it is that which is sought in the unnatural vice.56 These arguments are not consequentialist—they do not look for what happens after the act, but what the act is like in itself. Several responses may be made, depending on what St. Thomas intended from his rather opaque wording. If he is making a physicalist argument about foiling the ultimate end of human copulation, which can be construed from wording like “undue means” and “becoming to the human race,” similar rebuttals as applied above also apply to St. Thomas. However, if he is rejecting the use of contraception to avoid consequences of sex and obtain unbridled pleasure, this essay wholly agrees with him. The present piece does not defend the intentional use of contraception to only obtain sexual pleasure. While St. Thomas writes to condemn the rapist, this essay writes to defend victims’ attempts to curtail the availability of their bodies to their perpetrators. Finally, if St. Thomas argues from grounds of justice (i.e., that it is unjust to bend sex away from procreation for some non-physicalism reason), I reply that a physician who provides EC or other contraception to an assault victim restores as much separation between victim and perpetrator as is possible, and this is just. The victim and perpetrator, who are not married to each other, ought to have a complete separation between their sexual faculties, but this was overridden to a great degree by the perpetrator. The victim and her provider can help the victim re-establish whatever degree of separation is possible, even if only at a cellular level. In this author’s mind, it is less self-defense and more a restoration of a just state of affairs that characterizes this type of contraception. This weak argument proposes that contraception in the face of near-certain or certain assault offers a type of restorative justice 56 ST II-II, q. 154, a. 11, resp. 1270 Cara Buskmiller to the victim, which is possibly why the USCCB says a woman “should” be able to obtain EC if it does not offend greater goods. However, this is not to say that contraception in the setting of assault is required, or restorative of a kind of health. Contraception for the Intellectually Disabled Will Increase Vulnerability to Abuse Some object that any long-acting or regularly used contraception in vulnerable populations would encourage abusers, since abuse could go undetected due to pregnancy prevention. This is a critical prudential and pastoral concern, and it should affect decisions about particular cases, but does not change the arguments laid out above. To assess whether the danger of increased abuse outweighs the benefit of avoiding pregnancy in a particular case requires an examination of particular circumstances. Double-effect reasoning can be employed here, since this situation might fulfill all four of its criteria: 1. The act itself is morally neutral or good: if the foregoing arguments be accepted, administering a drug or device to prevent fertilization from nonconsensual sex is neutral. 2. The good effect (protecting the victim from pregnancy and preventing extramarital fertilization) can be the only effect intended. 3. The good effect (protecting the victim from taxing and traumatic pregnancy) is not obtained by means of the evil effect (increased vulnerability to abuse); rather, the effects emerge from the act itself enumerated in (1), namely, contraception. 4. There is a proportion between the evil effect and the good effect. This last criterion is the one that requires significant prudence. Heavily anonymized cases from the author’s experience illustrate two potential outcomes from the consideration of this question. In the first case, consider a young woman with paranoid schizophrenia. Her disease is severe and persistent. She interacts with audiovisual hallucinations for most of the day, despite her doctors’ best efforts. She lives in a mental hospital that allows consistent observation for her safety. Most of the facility is under surveillance. The young woman experiences menses and Extramarital Contraception in the Catholic Faith 1271 smears her blood on the walls and eats it. Annual gynecological exams are a challenge. Although a special clinic exists for patients like her, she does not understand pelvic exams and resists to the point of endangering herself and others. Her family believes that nine months of prenatal care, fetal assessment for the wellbeing of the baby, delivery, and postpartum recovery would be a nightmare for this young woman. Given the relative security against abuse provided by mechanisms like surveillance, and the significant benefits of avoiding pregnancy, the family decides that there is a proportion between the vulnerability to abuse and the protection from pregnancy. Menstrual suppression and contraception are provided. In another case, a middle-aged woman with multiple sclerosis cannot care for herself. She has a supportive husband, but he must work long hours and he cannot care for her throughout the day. Their cheapest option is admission to a skilled nursing facility. She shares her room at the end of the hall with a bedridden woman with debilitating dementia. The room has a door that latches shut and there is no indoor security footage apart from a camera on the front and rear doors of the facility. There are male and female staff for lifting and caring for male and female patients, but staff rotate routinely between patients. This woman is unable to lift more than her head and forearms off the bed. Multiple sclerosis does pose risks in pregnancy, but these are relatively minor and she would be able to cooperate with prenatal care and delivery. The woman and her husband jointly decide that the risk of making her more vulnerable to abuse far outweighs the benefit of protecting her from pregnancy after sexual assault. Instead of contraception, her husband visits twice daily and carries on loving conversations with his wife as a clear signal to staff of her mental acuity and the consequences of any abuse. These two scenarios of women who are vulnerable to sexual assault are very different. The objection that contraception may make victims more vulnerable to abuse is a good one, and will be valid in many cases. However, this does make the act of extramarital contraception in itself illicit—it only means that in some circumstances, it is not prudent. What about Non-Disabled Minors without Mental Illness? The entire foregoing discussion was based around agreement to participate in sex, and about pregnancy prevention. Children below the age of reason are completely unable to agree to this act, but are also unable to become pregnant (with very few exceptions). Any children below the age of reason who are unable to become pregnant are completely beyond the scope of this essay and no argument herein is meant to apply to them. Children below the age of reason who are capable of conceiving a 1272 Cara Buskmiller pregnancy, such as children with untreated precocious puberty who become fertile before the age of seven, do fall under the discussion of this essay. In the author’s estimation of clinical variables and double-effect reasoning, these girls would rarely or never meet the fourth criterion of the principle of double effect for anticipatory contraception to be prudent. This is not the least because contraceptive devices or drugs in these children are higher in risk, unwieldy, and uncomfortable. The insertion of a barrier contraceptive in a child may itself be abusive. Thus, for children below the age of reason, this essay does not defend the routine use of contraception to prevent pregnancy. Cases where this would be the best, most ordinary, and most prudent solution to reducing the risk of abuse and pregnancy would be vanishingly rare or nonexistent. Adolescents represent a slightly more complex case. By and large, adolescents are fertile, and they are able to agree to participation in sex (as recognized by secular culture, which permits them emancipation in matters of reproductive health). This essay hinges on agreement to participate—not on biology, not on foresight, not on compete maturity—and thus many or most sexually active, unmarried adolescents are participating in category 1 sex, where contraception adds to the evil of fornication. It would be a tragic misinterpretation of this essay to begin widely endorsing contraception to unmarried adolescents—far better are strategies that reduce premarital sex and the physical, spiritual, and psychological consequences of this sin. Contraception in the Intellectually Disabled Constitutes Eugenics Various forms of reducing fertility have been used for eugenic motivations since biblical times (Pharaoh’s direction to kill male newborns in Exod 1:15– 16). More recently, eugenics flowered in Germany and the United States.57 It is laudable to avoid this attitude in treatment of vulnerable persons, whom the Church teaches are especially deserving of care and attention in accord with the principle of solidarity.58 If Catholics choose contraception in the settings described in this essay, it is the author’s hope that they do so in accord with all of Catholic teaching, not just mere liceity as determined by one essay. If a woman or her surrogate choose to use extramarital contraception as a licit option, it should be in accord with teachings on the will of God in chastity, prudence, solidarity, and the spiritual work of mercy to catechize. 57 58 Stefan Kuhl, The Nazi Connection: Eugenics, American Racism, and German National Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (2004), §§182–84. Extramarital Contraception in the Catholic Faith 1273 Catholics Advocating for Contraception Will Cause Scandal Scandal must be guarded against. If Catholics advocate for contraception in the intellectually disabled or a similarly justifiable population, it would require discretion and careful communication to those close to the decision. Avoiding widespread misunderstanding of these nuances, and avoiding provision of contraception to category 1 situations would be paramount. However, as mentioned above, a consistent and complete teaching on contraception might prevent the later “discovery” of “exceptions” and the scandal that inevitably follows in media and in souls. This Is All Irrelevant, because Most Contraceptives Are “Abortifacient” Unfortunately, most hormonal contraceptives have a post-fertilization mechanism of action listed in their package inserts, and peer-reviewed medical literature suggests that oral contraceptive pills and other short-acting contraceptives may predispose to luteal-phase deficiency, and thus possibly iatrogenic early pregnancy loss, in up to one-third of cycles.59 A similar paper by the same investigators found that in just under 5 percent of cycles in women using intrauterine devices, an embryo was detected with a pregnancy test, but then lost before clinical or sonographic evidence of pregnancy was appreciated.60 This evidence is preliminary and not definitive, but it creates serious concern for pro-life physicians, Catholic or not.61 Lamentably, the most effective and practical contraceptives for the intellectually disabled population are hormonal in nature. Barrier contraceptives such as diaphragms or female condoms can cause discharge and discomfort, symptoms that are difficult for nonverbal patients to communicate. Design of a non-embryotoxic hormonal contraceptive would entail significant device design or pharmaceutical engineering, which is unlikely to arise in the present market. 59 60 61 Donna Harrison, Cara Buskmiller, Monique Chireau, Lester A. Ruppersberger, and Patrick P. Yeung, “Systematic Review of Ovarian Activity and Potential for Embryo Formation and Loss during the Use of Hormonal Contraception,” Linacre Quarterly 85, no. 4 (2018): 453–69. Cara Buskmiller, Donna Harrison, Lester A. Ruppersberger, and Patrick P. Yeung, “Systematic Review of Postfertilization Effects and Potential for Embryo Formation and Loss during the Use of Intrauterine Devices,” Linacre Quarterly 86, no. 1 (2019): 60–77. American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Committee Opinion: Embryocidal Potential of Modern Contraceptives (Eau Claire, MI: AAPLOG, 2020). 1274 Cara Buskmiller Conclusion Extramarital contraception has been incompletely addressed by the Catholic Church. This may be because of fear of scandal or scarcity of real workable options. Aside from practical concerns, there is an argument in favor of using contraceptives to prevent pregnancy in nonconsensual extramarital sex, which has no unitive aspect. When contraception does not divide anything resembling marital love, the main criticism in Humanae Vitae does not apply, leaving room for reason to investigate whether contraception can ever be licit. The most notable of the arguments in favor of contraception in the 1960s was our ability to use reason. In extramarital sex without consent, we can use reason to prevent bodily suffering to victims of sexual assault. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2023): 1275–1304 1275 The Establishment Hypothesis: Toward a More Integrated Theology of Holy Orders Dominic Cerrato Diocese of Joliet Joliet, IL Preliminary Considerations Understanding the Problem Though the Sacrament of Holy Orders is a single sacrament consisting of three degrees, throughout its theological development, much of the focus has been on that of the priesthood. By priesthood I mean the two degrees that are sacerdotal in nature, the episcopate and the presbyterate. Given the growing understanding of the Eucharist in the Tradition, and its intrinsic connection to the priesthood as its exclusive agent, this sacerdotal emphasis was a natural and organic development.1 Nonetheless, while revealing much, this sacerdocentrism, along with the adoption of the cursus honorum,2 had the unintended effect of obscuring the third level of the hierarchy, the diaconate.3 While the diaconate as an ancient order (Acts 6:1–6) would eventually be numbered among the major orders, being ordained non ad sacerdotium sed ad ministerium episcopi4 meant that deacons were not, in the same sense, related to the Eucharist as were priests. Consequently, much of 1 2 3 4 This emphasis on orders and the priesthood can be seen in Summa theologiae [ST] suppl., q. 37, a. 2. The cursus honorum (course of honors) was the sequential order of public offices held by aspiring politicians in the Roman Republic. It was adopted by the Church in the fourth century such that, to obtain a higher office, one ascended from a lower office. Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium [LG] §29. Hippolytus of Rome, Apostolic Tradition 8; LG §29. 1276 Dominic Cerrato what passed for diaconal theology is its liturgical role and charitable work among the poor. As observed by the Benedictine theologian Dom Augustinus Kerkvoorde just prior to the restoration of the diaconate, “there is, as far as we know, no independent theology of the diaconate. The number of authors and works should not delude us. None of them deals with the diaconate exclusively, say, to help deacons correctly understand and exercise their function in the Church.”5 He goes on to characterize diaconal theology as fragments strewn throughout the various writings on orders in general, the priesthood, and the sacraments.6 As later noted by the 2002 International Theological Commission on the Diaconate, this lack can be clearly observed in both the conciliar and post-conciliar documents on the diaconate. Of these, the commission wrote, “with reference to the pastoral priorities and in what concerns objective doctrinal difficulties, the Council texts show diversity of theological nuances which it is quite hard to harmonize.”7 In a similar manner, with regard to the 1983 revision of the Code of Canon Law, the American canonist James Provost commented that there is: still no coherent treatment of the permanent deacons as a “proper and permanent rank in the hierarchy” comparable to the treatment given presbyters and bishops in the code; rather they are treated as exceptions to the norms for presbyters.8 As a result, both before and after the Second Vatican Council, theological consideration of Holy Orders focused almost exclusively on the episcopate and presbyterate.9 The recognition of a deficient theological development in the diaconate does not mean that there has been no progress over the centuries. There are, as Kerkvoorde observes, fragments throughout the Tradition up to and beyond the Vatican II. Moreover, there are some who have proposed new 5 6 7 8 9 Dom Augustinus Kerkvoorde, OSB, “The Theology of the Diaconate,” trans. David Bourke, Karl H. Kruger, and William F. Schmitz, in Foundations for the Renewal of the Diaconate (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 1993), 91–92. Kerkvoorde, “Theology of the Diaconate,” 91–92. International Theological Commission, From the Diakonia of Christ to the Diakonia of the Apostles, ch. VII (“Theological Approach to the Diaconate in the Wake of Vatican II”), section I (“Texts of Vatican II and the Post-Conciliar Magisterium”). James H. Provost, “Permanent Deacons in the 1983 Code,” Canon Law Society of America Proceedings 46 (1984): 175. William T. Ditewig, The Emerging Diaconate (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2007), 13. Toward a More Integrated Theolog y of Holy Orders 1277 ways of envisioning the diaconate grounded in these very same fragments.10 While these have advanced our understanding of the diaconate as an order, missing is precisely how the three degrees relate to one another and how this unity is grounded. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) points out, Holy Orders is a single sacrament consisting of three degrees. If one degree, say the diaconate, is theologically impoverished, then the unity of Holy Orders suffers from this same deficiency. Put another way, the triune nature of this sacrament means that its unity is dependent upon the three degrees and their relationship to one another. Commenting on this dependency, the English Dominican scholar Aidan Nichols observes: “The priesthood cannot be approached in isolation from the episcopate and the diaconate.”11 To better illustrate the relationship of the three degrees to the intelligibility of Holy Orders, he goes on to observe: To the ordinary Catholic Christian, the priesthood is the order with which he or she is most familiar, and understandably so. . . . In this sense, it is the central image of the triptych: yet the central panel cannot be appreciated without those which flank it. We need the whole picture. 12 The image of the triptych to describe the unity and diversity of Holy Orders is quite useful. As a work of art consisting of three hinged panels, the three panels together, when opened, unfold the whole story. Extending this image: if one of the panels, say that of the diaconate, were only partially open, then the triptych would only disclose part of its truth, concealing something of the artist’s intention. Moreover, this concealment not only obscures the one partially closed panel, but insofar as that panel hides part of the adjacent panel, it obscures that as well. As a result, something of the entire message, something of the artist’s intent is lost. For the entire truth to be realized, for the triptych to reveal the whole 10 11 12 Examples can be found in Ditewig, Emerging Diaconate; Kenan B. Osborne, The Permanent Diaconate (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2007); Dominic Cerrato, In the Person of Christ the Servant (Bloomingdale, OH: St. Ephraem Press, 2014); James Keating, The Heart of the Diaconate (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2015); The Character of the Deacon, ed. James Keating (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2017); W. Sean McKnight, Understanding the Diaconate (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2018). Aidan Nichols, Holy Order: Apostolic Priesthood from the New Testament to the Second Vatican Council (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1990), 3. Nichols, Holy Order, 3. 1278 Dominic Cerrato story, the side panels need to be extended fully. Without this full extension, we are left with an incomplete and partially disintegrated story. The same can be said of Holy Orders. Without the diaconal panel extended, we are left with an incomplete and partially dis-integrated sacrament. In this case, something of the episcopate and presbyterate remains hidden, and beyond these, something of Christ himself. This is because each degree ontologically configures the ordinand to Christ in a way proper to the order received. In this respect, they incarnate him in a preeminent way such that all three degrees, like the open triptych, reveal Christ in a way no single degree does. Observe also that the three panels only tell the whole story when they are hinged together and opened wide. The hinges are a figurative way of describing how the three panels relate to each other and how, together, they reveal the larger picture. Applying this analogy to Holy Orders, we would do well to focus primarily on the hinges that unite the three degrees as a means to discover a more integrated and complete theology. In this respect, while we have recognized the deficiency of the diaconate panel being partially closed, our main concern lies in the whole of Holy Orders from which, like that of the priesthood, a diaconal theology can be more effectively addressed at a later time. Much of the early Tradition sees the unity of Holy Orders in the Eucharist, as exemplified by the work of Thomas Aquinas: “The sacrament of Order is directed to the sacrament of the Eucharist, which is the sacrament of sacraments.”13 Today, the Church uses broader language, teaching that Holy Orders, as a sacrament of service is, “directed towards the salvation of others” (CCC §1534). This by no means diminishes the Eucharistic focus, but rather presupposes it and further specifies its ultimate goal, eternal life with Christ. Accordingly, the Catechism, citing Pope Paul VI’s Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests, teaches: The Eucharist is “the source and summit of the Christian life.” “The other sacraments, and indeed all ecclesiastical ministries [emphasis mine] and works of the apostolate, are bound up with the Eucharist and are oriented toward it. For in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the Church, namely Christ himself, our Pasch.” (CCC §1324, citing Presbyterorum Ordinis §5; emphasis mine) The above analysis makes clear the need to arrive at a more organic and unified understanding of Holy Orders, one which maintains the Eucharistic 13 ST suppl., q. 37, a. 2. Toward a More Integrated Theolog y of Holy Orders 1279 focus of the Tradition while at the same time advancing the relationship between all three degrees. In this paper, I will attempt to do just that in what I call the “Establishment Hypothesis.”14 The Establishment Hypothesis is a proposed theological explanation of the origins of Holy Orders grounded in the Paschal mystery. It hopes to demonstrate, using personalist language, how all three degrees came to be in Christ’s self-giving love and how it is transmitted to and through the Church as an essential component in the mystery of salvation. In this respect, the hypothesis has the potential to provide a more integrated and unified understanding of Holy Orders. As we begin our consideration, it is important to recognize that what is being advanced in this paper, as the title denotes, is a hypothesis. In this respect, it is simply a proposed theological explanation presented in such a way so as to undergo the scrutiny of the theological community. The aim here is to begin a new theological conversation, one in which the origins of Holy Orders leads to a better understanding of the sacrament and its place within the mission of the Church.15 Toward a Solution Having laid out the problem, it is now possible to propose a particular remedy. In doing so, it will prove most effective to start from the very beginning, that is, at the origins of Holy Orders. Beginning here will allow us to develop a more fundamental line of inquiry, enabling us to examine the theological implications as we progress. With this in mind, our approach will take up the personalist thought of Pope St. John Paul II along with aspects of his “theology of the body.” Because personalism will enable us to turn to the subject without simultaneously turning away from the object, another level of meaning can be achieved without in any way diminishing what we already know. This will allow us to advance our understanding of Holy Orders in continuity with the tradition that preceded it. With this hermeneutical approach established and given what was said earlier regarding the sacraments being bound up and oriented to the Eucharist, we will apply this personalist approach to the Paschal mystery. This is because, while each 14 15 The phrase “Establishment Hypothesis” is a novel designation exclusively used by me as a title to describe this more integrated approach to Holy Orders. I have published earlier versions of this hypothesis in popular publications, but this essay represents the most advanced version of the hypothesis to date. Those prior expositions are: In the Person of Christ the Servant, 190–208; “The Indispensability of the Diaconate,” Josephinum Diaconal Review, Spring 2017, 36–49; Encountering Christ the Servant (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor, 2020), 105–11. 1280 Dominic Cerrato of the sacraments mediate the grace of this mystery, the Eucharist represents the most perfect participation in that grace. It therefore deserves a primacy in any consideration of Holy Orders. A Hermeneutic of Personalism Throughout his life, Pope St. John Paul II repeatedly demonstrated the value of personalism as a means to deepen and enrich the faith. In much the same way Aquinas used Aristotelian thought as his philosophical foundation, personalism opened up for John Paul new horizons across a wide theological expanse. While continually reaffirming the traditional teachings of the Church, he nonetheless reinterprets them through a personalist lens, contributing to their objectivity a new subjectivity. In this turn to the subject, which we will later explore, John Paul advances our understanding from objective categories to lived experience without in any way compromising the objective realities already established. In examining John Paul’s thought, and seeking to discover its definitive characteristic, Avery Dulles argues: What lies at the very heart of his message? . . . the mystery of the human person. As pope he is of course bound to the whole dogmatic heritage of the church, but he presents it in a distinctive way, with his own emphases, which are in line with his philosophical personalism.16 Although during his pontificate John Paul never applied philosophical personalism to the origins and nature of Holy Orders, nonetheless, his legacy makes possible its application to our investigation. Indeed, as we will demonstrate, just as his use of the mystery of the human person reveals profound insights across a wide range of issues,17 it promises much the same in the way of advancing Holy Orders. Thus, an essential contention of this study is that the mystery of the human person, as employed in John Paul’s philosophical 16 17 Avery Dulles, “John Paul and the Mystery of the Human Person,” in Avery Dulles, Essential Writings from America, ed. James T. Keane (Notre Dame, IN: Christian Classics, 2019), 245. Papal biographer George Weigel describes the theology of the body as “one of the boldest reconfigurations of Catholic theology in centuries” (Witness to Hope [New York: HarperCollins, 1999], 336). It is, he explains, “a kind of theological time bomb set to go off with dramatic consequences, sometime in the third millennium of the Church” (343). Weigel maintains that the theology of the body has barely begun to “shape the Church’s theology, preaching, and religious education,” but when it does, “it will compel a dramatic development of thinking about virtually every major theme in the Creed” (853). Toward a More Integrated Theolog y of Holy Orders 1281 personalism, will provide new insights into the origins and nature of Holy Orders. These insights arise largely out of personalism’s claim that to be (esse) is to be with and for another. It is this social dimension, flowing from our very nature, that views the person as a human being, not a human doing. We are, at our core, social beings and, because of this, relationships are essential to revealing the mystery of the human person as it relates to every aspect of our lives, including Holy Orders. In its most basic sense, personalism is a philosophical movement that centers on the person as the ontological and epistemological start of any rational reflection. Here, personhood is understood as that which gives meaning to all of reality and, by that fact, constitutes its supreme value. In this regard, personalism is merely descriptive of a diverse school of thought rather than a practical philosophical approach.18 However, from this school, several philosophies have emerged, among which is Lublin Thomism. It is from this school that John Paul derives his approach as both the earlier philosopher Karol Wojtyła and the later Pope. In applying his thought to Holy Orders, and to achieve our end, we need only draw from two key personalist themes: the irreducible, and love as self-donation. Before proceeding, however, one final note is in order. While aspects of personalism are used as the hermeneutic for our investigation, one need not adopt a personalist philosophy to appreciate both the irreducible and love as a gift-of-self. This is particularly true as these apply to the origins of Holy Orders. They bespeak first principles in the sense that they represent foundational propositions that cannot be deduced from any other propositions.19 Nonetheless, they are self-evident in human experience and witnessed in Sacred Scripture particularly as they reveal Christ. In this sense, as we advance, these principles will prove both helpful and relatable. The Irreducible In contrast to Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, where the person sits atop the continuum of being, Lublin Thomism does not view the person as simply an object among other objects in the natural world differentiated only by intellectual faculties. Indeed, just as Wojtyła maintained that, by phenomenologically reflecting on human experience, certain truths emerge that give rise to a more complete understanding of the human person, the same can 18 19 In 1947, the French philosopher Jacques Maritain quipped that there are at minimum of a dozen personalist doctrines, which at times have nothing more in common than the word “person” (The Person and the Common Good, trans. John F. Fitzgerald [New York: Scribner’s Sons], introduction). Aristotle, Physica 1.5.188a. 1282 Dominic Cerrato be said for its application to Holy Orders. Where the classical approach tends to reduce the person to the otherwise helpful Aristotelian-Thomistic categories, the initial datum of human experience reveals the entire concrete person as a whole. This fundamental revelation means that the person cannot be boiled down or reduced to objective classifications or functions, no matter how insightful these might be. To do so would be to examine the parts at the expense of the whole. Thus, applied to Holy Orders, any consideration of Jesus, to whom the ordinand is ontologically configured, that reduces him to general categories of being or functionality passes over that which is most human, “since the humanum expresses and realizes itself as the personale.”20 To better appreciate the irreducible as it relates to Holy Orders, we need to consider how, in describing his mission, Jesus defines himself as one who serves and gives himself up for others (Matt 20:28; Mark 10:45). In this one phrase, we have both diakonos and sacerdos. Indeed, these descriptors ground his mission in two distinct but interrelated activities and, based on the Latin maxim “agere sequitur esse,” say something essential about him. He is both diakonos (one who serves) and sacerdos (one who sacrifices and is sacrificed). Applied to the Paschal mystery, in Jesus’s Passion, death, Resurrection, and Ascension, he gives himself irreducibly as both deacon and priest.21 He can himself give no other way because both find their definitive meaning in him. Put another way, when Jesus gives himself for the salvation of the world, which is perpetuated in Holy Orders through the mission of the Church (CCC §1536), he does so whole and entire. This is not to suggest that each grade of Holy Orders receives both diakonos and sacerdos in the same measure,22 but that the whole of Holy Orders receives these gifts. The concept of irreducibility, particularly as it relates to the Paschal mystery, will be an essential element in our later consideration of the origins and nature of Holy Orders. Love as Self-Donation To better grasp Wojtyła’s personalist understanding of love and how it relates to Holy Orders, we need to turn to his papal work, more specifically his “theology of the body.”23 These teachings, which make up a systematic 20 21 22 23 Karol Wojtyła, “Subjectivity and the Irreducible in the Human Being,” in Person and Community: Selected Essays, trans. Grzegorz Ignatik (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2021), 215. Diakonos and Sacerdos by no means exhaust Jesus’s humanity and divinity. They do however describe how he gives those two natures in the Paschal mystery. Though the episcopacy does receive the fullness of Holy Orders (LG §21). John Paul II’s theology of the body is encapsulated in Theology of the Body: Human Toward a More Integrated Theolog y of Holy Orders 1283 catechesis, are distinct from his earlier pre-papal work in that they represent a theological development and application of his personalist thought as expressed in his ordinary magisterium. Reflecting on his theological contribution as it relates to understanding the person, John Paul would later write in his 2001 Novo Millennio Ineunte: “The mystery of the Incarnation lays the foundations for an anthropology which, reaching beyond its own limitations and contradictions, moves towards God Himself, indeed towards the goal of ‘divinization’” (§23). Consequently, the theology of the body builds upon personalism in much the same way that Aquinas builds on Aristotle. Moreover, while John Paul focuses on marriage and sexuality, the implications of his approach are not limited to spousal love. Indeed, he maintains that the theology of the body will immerse us into “the perspective of the whole Gospel, of the whole teaching, in fact of the whole mission of Christ.”24 As a result, it represents an entirely new theological approach whose full potential remains untapped.25 John Paul’s theology of the body is grounded in a key passage found in Vatican II’s Gaudium et Spes. It is a theme to which, throughout his many talks, he returns time and time again. It reads: Indeed, the Lord Jesus, when He prayed to the Father, “that all may be one . . . as we are one” ( John 17:21–22) opened up vistas closed to human reason, for He implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God’s sons in truth and charity. This likeness reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself. (Gaudium et Spes §24) John Paul’s theology of the body is shaped by what his personalism calls “a hermeneutic of the gift.” It is essentially a broad and sweeping interpretation of reality in terms of self-donation. He describes this self-donation and its primary effect by saying that “the love in which the man-person becomes a gift and—by means of this gift—fulfills the very meaning of his being and existence.”26 Like all gifts, it presupposes a willing giver and a receiver receptive to the gift. When the receiver freely accepts the gift from the giver 24 25 26 Love in the Divine Plan (Boston: Pauline Books and Media, 1997), which comprises 129 talks given by the Pope during his Wednesday audiences between September 1979 and November 1984. Pope John Paul II, Theology of the Body, 175. See Weigel’s comments in note 17 above. Pope John Paul II, Theology of the Body, 63. 1284 Dominic Cerrato an intimate union is formed; the “I–Thou” becomes a “We.” Understood this way, gift and reception enjoy a mutual, complementary, and reciprocal dynamic. Of this John Paul says: “The giving and the accepting of the gift interpenetrate, so that the giving of oneself becomes accepting, and the acceptance is transformed into giving.”27 He elsewhere says: “The affirmation of the person is nothing but acceptance of the gift, which, by means of reciprocity, creates a communio personarum.”28 Love, then, for John Paul, consists of a mutual gift-of-self that wills the good of another for the sake of the other. It is initiated by God’s creative and redemptive love through the gift of his Son Jesus Christ and is reflective of the ultimate self-giving love found within the heart of the Trinity. It is reciprocated when the believer believes or, more specifically, when his or her belief is expressed in free, concrete acts of reciprocating love. This mutual self-donation establishes what John Paul calls, “the nuptial relationship.” Deeply rooted in the Scriptures, he points out that, among all of the biblical images used to describe the relationship between God and humanity, marriage enjoys a preeminence. From the creation of man and woman in Genesis, through the sensual language found in the Song of Songs, to the wedding feast of the Lamb in the Book of Revelation, marriage is used repeatedly to describe God’s intimate relationship with humanity. Although the nuptial relationship is typically used in a narrow sense to describe marital love, it also has for John Paul a broader meaning. He sees nuptiality as so inscribed in the mystery of creation and redemption that, in a very real way, it possesses a universal significance. This is precisely St. Paul’s point in his letter to the Ephesians. After explaining the relationship between the spouses, he goes on to say: “This is a great mystery [mystērion], but I speak in reference to Christ and his Church” (Eph 5:32). Paul, building upon the biblical tradition of the Old Testament, sees marriage as taking on a new symbolic meaning in light of the Paschal mystery, one which reveals the intimate love between Christ and his Church in a profound way. Later John Paul would write in his 1994 Gratissimam Sane (Letter to Families): “The ‘great mystery’ which is the Church and humanity in Christ, does not exist apart from the ‘great mystery’ expressed in the ‘one flesh’” (§19). Indeed, because divine love constitutes the original and fundamental gift from God, reflecting his own inner life, all of creation possesses a nuptial character.29 If this is true of creation then, flowing from the same God, it is equally true, 27 28 29 Pope John Paul II, Theology of the Body, 71. Pope John Paul II, Theology of the Body, 65. While the nuptial meaning is most fully expressed in the total gift-of-self found exclusively in spousal love, all love participates in God’s love to a greater or lesser degree. Toward a More Integrated Theolog y of Holy Orders 1285 or perhaps even more true, of redemption. Consequently, this divine nuptial gift-of-self, begun at creation, finds its fullest expression in redemption and its ultimate promise, eternal life. The Establishment Hypothesis As Holy Orders finds its contextual framework within the mystery of salvation and the mission of the Church, the same contextual framework must, by necessity, be applied to any new theory on Holy Orders. As noted earlier, the “Establishment Hypothesis” is a proposed theological explanation of the origins of Holy Orders grounded in the Paschal mystery and expressed in personalist language. This, as we shall see, has the potential to reveal a greater integrity within orders itself, along with a deeper sense of how these orders participate in the mystery of salvation and the mission of the Church. As we proceed, it is important to establish at the outset that God’s plan of salvation is more profoundly revealed when it is interpreted as a divine gift-of-self. Christ does not offer salvation in a cold and depersonalized manner, but instead by giving himself ( John 3:16) in a deeply personal way. This self-revelation, replete throughout his life, is intimately and inextricably tied to the Good News as revealed in his Passion, death and Resurrection. This is a God who, by his gift-of-self wants to be known by us and, in doing so, invites us to know him through a reciprocal gift-of-self. Accordingly, the Catechism teaches: “By revealing himself God wishes to make them [humanity] capable of responding to him, and of knowing him and of loving him far beyond their own natural capacity” (CCC §52). The dynamic by which this flows from God to humanity has been described by Victor Salas as an “analogical community.” Of this he writes: If the analogical community between God and creatures establishes the possibility for a fuller disclosure of the meaning of self-giving, its only on account of the exemplar relation upon which it is founded. Following the general metaphysical axiom of causality, namely, that omne agenes agit sibi simili (every agent causes something similar to itself ), one can, from consideration of an image or effect (i.e., creation) find contained therein traces of its exemplar cause.30 30 Victor Salas, “The Analogical Structure of Self-Giving and Receiving According to John Paul II,” Gregorianum 90, no. 3 (2009): 474. 1286 Dominic Cerrato Consequently, our ability to give ourselves, to love others, begins with God’s love (1 John 4:19) precisely because contained in us are traces of our Exemplar Cause. As a result, we are called to love one another with a divine love, albeit in a human way (1 John 4:7). All of this reveals that love, properly understood, is not to remain the sole possession of the beloved. We cannot bury the love we receive like the servant who buried his talents (Matt 25:15–30), but must instead invest it in others. In this sense, the gift-of-self we received is to be re-gifted. This means it is to be passed on to others in and through us, perpetuating the mission of the Church by incarnating Christ’s own universal gift-of-self in our own particular gifts of self. This “passing-on” does not diminish the gift received from Christ, but paradoxically, enhances it. Figure 1 provides a basic illustration of this “passing-on” through a series of successive gifts.31 It is used to describe, in rather broad terms, a soteriological unfolding, not an ecclesial process. It is primarily concerned with the way in which salvation is revealed, not with the manner in which Holy Orders was historically developed, though the two share certain commonalities. Figure 1 Keeping the above in mind, we now turn to the Establishment Hypothesis proper by considering the Paschal mystery and its relationship to the Last Supper. In many respects, the Last Supper is not only part of the Paschal mystery; it encapsulates it. This is to say, what Jesus said on Holy Thursday, he actually did on Good Friday, “Take, . . . this is my body which will be given for you.” (Luke 22:19). Indeed, by giving the command “Do this in memory of me” (1Cor 11:24), he enables us to participate in the Last Supper anew, and by extension in the Paschal mystery, each time Mass is celebrated. Accordingly, the Catechism teaches: “In the liturgy of the Church, it is principally his own Paschal mystery that Christ signifies and makes present” (CCC §1085). In terms of the priesthood, the Church has long looked to the Last Supper as its institution. If there is a cohesive unity to be found in the 31 Though Figure 1 starts with Christ, it assumes that the ultimate source of this self-giving is the inner life of the Blessed Trinity. Toward a More Integrated Theolog y of Holy Orders 1287 origins of Holy Orders, then it would make sense to find it in the Paschal mystery, and because this mystery is encapsulated in the Last Supper, this event should be our starting point. Two Sets of Dominical Commands On the night before he died, Jesus shared the Passover meal with the Twelve. There, he issued two distinct sets of commands. The first, as we have already seen, is found in the Synoptic Gospels and consists of: “Take and eat; . . . Take and drink; . . . Do this in memory of me . . .” (1Cor 11:23–26; Matt 26:17–30; Mark 14:12–26; Luke 22:7–39). These commands make up what is traditionally known as the institutional narratives because they simultaneously institute the Eucharist and the priesthood.32 However, during that same meal, 33 there was another set of commands, not found in the Synoptics but instead in John’s Gospel. There Jesus, after washing the feet of his disciples says, “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do ( John 13:15).” Later, at that same meal, Jesus would become more explicit and emphatic when he says: “I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” ( John 13:34–35). Also known as the mandatum, this set of dominical commands does not supplant the commands of the Eucharist in the Last Supper, but rather complements and supplements them, with several scholars seeing a symbolic connection between the two.34 Of this, John Christopher Thomas writes: Since Jesus’ actions in John take the place of the institution of the Eucharist as recorded in the Synoptics, it is often assumed that the author of the Fourth Gospel is drawing a connection between the two 32 33 34 This includes what would later be called bishops in the sense that they were also called sacerdos with the presbyters called sacerdos secundi ordinis. While the Catholic tradition has long recognized the Last Supper and the mandatum as part of the same event, this is not without some debate among scholars. Nonetheless, regarding the Establishment Hypothesis, it is sufficient for our purposes to contextualize the Last Supper and the mandatum within the broader Paschal mystery. What is maintained here is not so much a chronological connection, but a theological connection. For a more thorough analysis of the relationship between the Last Supper and the mandatum see: Barry D. Smith, “The Chronology of the Last Supper,” Westminster Theological Journal 53, no. 1 (1991): 29–45; Herold Weiss, “Footwashing in the Johannine Community,” Novum Testamentum 21, no. 4 (1979): 310. John Christopher Thomas, Footwashing in John 13 and the Johannine Community (Cleveland, OH: CPT, 2014), 3n5. 1288 Dominic Cerrato stories. It is further asserted that since John alludes to the Eucharist through specific events in Jesus’ life . . . it is natural to assume that the footwashing is also an allusion to the Eucharist.35 In light of the above, it is of interest to note that, in Luke’s Last Supper narrative, there exists something of a parallel of John’s foot washing. In Luke, Jesus asks: “For who is greater: the one seated at table or the one who serves? Is it not the one seated at table? I am among you as the one who serves” (22:27). Despite the fact that Luke does not relate the foot washing in his Gospel, one could arguably discover an allusion to it in this post-meal dialogue between Jesus and his Apostles. Within the context of the meal, Jesus identifies himself as diakonos. The reference to the table also suggests a link between the Eucharist and service, between priesthood and the diaconate. This link is symbolically expressed in the Church’s liturgy. On Holy Thursday, at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper, the Ceremonial of Bishops calls for the bishop to begin the foot washing by removing his chasuble, under which is his dalmatic, the vestment of the deacon. These vestments symbolically represent the layering of Holy Orders, as the bishop’s ordination to the priesthood and his subsequent ordination to the episcopacy do not supplant his earlier ordination to the diaconate.36 While he is bishop, he is still ontologically a deacon, and the rite he is about to enact is one of service, diaconal. Pope Francis, during this ritual, does not wear the dalmatic. Instead, after removing the chasuble, he modifies his priestly stole into a diaconal stole before washing the feet of the people. This is to say, he takes the stole from around his neck and refashions it to hang over his left shoulder and across his chest, thus denoting the rank of a deacon. Pope Francis and the bishops do this because, while they are bishops, they still possess the diaconate, and there is something intuitively diaconal about this act. While this truth is expressed “lex orandi, lex credendi” in the liturgy of Holy Thursday, it is also expressed at each Mass when a deacon serves at the altar, particularly during the doxology at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer. Whether the celebrant is a bishop or presbyter, the deacon stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the celebrant in elevating the Sacred Species. In this moment, the Timeless Eternal Sacrifice is being offered back to the Father, the celebrant raising the Sacred Host and the deacon raising the 35 36 Thomas, Footwashing, 3. This assumes each order, independent of the others, “imprints” an indelible character that is ineffaceable. See CCC §1582. Thus, a subsequent order does not efface a lower order. Toward a More Integrated Theolog y of Holy Orders 1289 Precious Blood. Both stand together in unity, the priest in a priestly way and the deacon in a diaconal way, offering back Christ who is the Sacerdos and Diakonos. This unity is further reinforced by the doxology itself when the celebrant says: “Through him, and with him, and in him, O God, almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, for ever and ever.”37 In the “Amen” that follows the doxology, all affirm this unity. In this way, along with the people in a manner proper to their vocation, the priest and deacon offer themselves in union with the Unbloody Sacrifice of Christ. This liturgical rite also signifies, in a starkly visible way, the unity of Holy Orders grounded in the Paschal mystery, whose purpose it is to serve the People of God by the example of sacrifice and service, thus fulfilling, in a sacramental way, the mission of the Church. In our consideration of these two sets of dominical commands, one sacerdotal in nature and the other diaconal, it is both important and relevant to contextualize them within the New Covenant established by Christ in the Paschal mystery. Just as the Old Covenant was expressed in the Decalogue, Jesus takes this up and elevates these commandments when he is asked by a scholar of the law which is the greatest commandment and replies: You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments. (Matt 22: 37–49) In Jesus’s response, one can detect a kind of New Covenant symmetry between the Eucharist and the mandatum, paralleling respectively love of God (Eucharist/priesthood) and love of neighbor (mandatum/diaconate). Where the Eucharist makes Christ present—Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity–in a unique way so as to love God with all our hearts, souls and minds, the mandatum requires that love to be passed on by loving our neighbors as ourselves. Indeed, to use a cruciform image, where the Eucharist directs our gaze upward, the mandatum simultaneously directs our gaze outward. In this respect, the two gazes interpenetrate one another, and while they can be distinguished, properly understood, they cannot be separated. They are, in many ways, part and parcel of the same reality: “Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me” (Matt 25:40). This interpenetration means that each grade of Holy Orders, while 37 General Instruction to the Roman Missal, 3rd ed., 151. 1290 Dominic Cerrato perhaps emphasizing one of the two commandments of the New Covenant proper to their order, must not neglect the other. Indeed, just as the beams of the Cross connect and upon that connection is found Christ, so too Christ is found in the connection between love of God and love of neighbor. In many respects, this complementarity is symbolically paralleled in the priestly and diaconal orders. Returning to the Last Supper, we have two sets of dominical commands: one unmistakably priestly in nature, and the other unmistakably diaconal. In this respect, the Establishment Hypothesis is not really new in grounding the diaconate in the Paschal mystery. James Keating writes, “The footwashing scene at the Last Supper is an expression of the institution of the diaconate by Christ, since it reflects the doctrinal truth of the unity of Holy Orders. There is symmetry between the ‘Do this in memory of Me’ (Lk 22:19) charge to the Apostles, and his other Apostolic charge ‘so that as I have done for you, you should also do’ ( Jn 13:14–15).”38 In making this observation, Keating cites Walter Kasper, who asserts: We have seen that without diaconia there cannot be a Church, because Christ himself is one who serves (Lk 22:27). Therefore, at the Last Supper . . . he not only established the idea of priesthood, but, in principle, also laid the foundation of the diaconal ministry. By the washing of feet, he gave us an example, so that we also do, as he did to us ( Jn 13:15). In these words, one can see the foundation of the diaconate.39 Similarly, in 2021, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops also acknowledged the origins of the diaconate in the mandatum: The Apostles’ decision to appoint ministers (Acts 6:1–7) . . . has long been interpreted as a normative step in the evolution of ministry. It is seen as a practical response to Jesus’ command during the Last Supper of mutual service among the followers. In washing his disciples feet, Jesus as Head and Shepherd of the community modeled the service that he desired to be the hallmark of their faithfulness. 40 38 39 40 Keating, Heart of the Diaconate, 64. Cardinal Walter Kasper, “The Deacon Offers an Ecclesiological View of the Present-Day Challenges in the Church and Society,” presented at the International Diaconate Centre Study-Conference, Brixen, Italy, October 1997. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, The National Directory for the Formation, Ministry, and Life of Permanent Deacons in the United States of America, 2nd ed. Toward a More Integrated Theolog y of Holy Orders 1291 The association of the mandatum and the diaconate is by no means new. It is first mentioned in the Didascalia Apostlorum, a third-century Syrian document on various aspects of early Christian life, worship, and organization. The document underscores the symbolic significance of footwashing for deacons. In this respect, it is not just a practical act of hygiene but a spiritual and symbolic act that represents humility, love, and service. Referencing the mandatum, the author writes: If then the Lord of heaven and earth performed a service for us, and bore and endured everything for us, how much more ought we to do the like for our brethren, that we may imitate Him. For we are imitators of Him, and hold the place of Christ. And again in the Gospel you find it written how our Lord girded a linen cloth about his loins and cast water into a wash-basin, while we reclined (at supper), and drew nigh and washed the feet of us all and wiped them with the cloth [ Jn 13.4–5]. Now this He did that He might show us (an example of ) charity and brotherly love, that we also should do in like manner one to another [cf. Jn 13.14–15]. If then our Lord did thus, will you, O deacons, hesitate to do the like for them that are sick and infirm, you who are workmen of the truth, and bear the likeness of Christ?41 Where the Establishment Hypothesis breaks new ground, and where it builds upon Keating’s and Kasper’s intuitive observations, is that it describes precisely how this happens through a series of successive gifts of self (acts of love—Figure 1). Critical to this is the fundamental assumption that we simply cannot give what we do not first possess. In other words, if the Apostles had not received the fullness of what we now call Holy Orders from Christ, they could not have passed it on to the bishops. Likewise, if the bishops had not received Holy Orders from the Apostles, they could not have passed it on to priests and deacons. Similarly, if priests and deacons had not received their orders from the bishops, they could not have passed them on to the laity in the form of priestly and diaconal ministry. This progression is grounded in the Latin maxim “nemo dat quod non habet,” literally meaning, “no one gives what they do not have.” Another important insight from this is that the diaconate has its origins not from the choosing of the seven in Acts 6:1–6, but like the priesthood, from the Last Supper. 41 (Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2021), 29 (emphasis mine). Didascalia Apostolorum: That Is Teaching of the Twelve Holy Apostles and Disciples of Our Savior, trans. R. Hugh Connelly (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929), 62. 1292 Dominic Cerrato This would mean that, through the mandatum, the diaconate was directly instituted by Christ at the same pivotal event in salvation history.42 Such a connection now inextricably links the origins of the priesthood with the origins of the diaconate. In Search of a Typology The possibility of a direct institution by Christ raises a fascinating question. If the mandatum marks the origins of the diaconate, then was it, like the Eucharist and the institution of the priesthood, prefigured in the Old Testament?43 Put another way, is there a typological basis for the mandatum? Finding a type in the Old Testament, grounding it in the Semitic tradition,44 would go a long way in substantiating the claim of a direct institution of the diaconate. While it is certainly true that God has placed anticipations of Christ in the events and people of the Old Testament, it does not follow that every event and person in the New Testament is prefigured in the Old. Nonetheless, the point is well taken with regard to the mandatum, and given the centrality of the Paschal mystery to Holy Orders, it is reasonable to expect some prefigurement. Of this, however, the Tradition is silent. This silence may be because such a typological connection does not exist, or perhaps it is because it has yet to be found. To identify whether there may be an undiscovered typology of the mandatum, we need to identify first what the mandatum signifies and whether it was foreshadowed in the Old Testament. In his consideration of the foot washing, Jan Gabriël Van der Watt observes: What was important was not necessarily the action in itself, but rather the character of the action; in other words, the intent and attitude the action illustrates. This might be the reason why there is no known evidence that the practice of foot-washing was continued in the early Church in the sense of the Johannine example. However the 42 43 44 The apparent discrepancy between the call of the seven and Last Supper will be addressed later. A fuller explanation can be found in Cerrato, In the Person of Christ the Servant, 162–77. See Lawrence Feingold, “Typology of Exodus and Passover,” Spring 2013, https:// www.hebrewcatholic.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/11.09Typologyof ExodusandPassover.pdf. Foot washing in the Old Testament was practiced for three reasons: cultic ritual of purification, hospitality, and hygiene. Toward a More Integrated Theolog y of Holy Orders 1293 requirement of intense love, serving one another, even in humbling tasks, remained part and parcel of Christianity.45 If Van der Watt is correct that the intent and attitude of the mandatum is intense love, and if we wish to discover a possible typological connection in the Old Testament, we will need to return to the narrative to appreciate the context of that love. This will enable us to fine-tune our search and subsequent examination of any possible type. The narrative begins by placing the foot washing within the Last Supper. John says: “Before the feast of Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father. He loved his own in the world and he loved them to the end” (13:1). This reference to loving his disciples “to the end” contextualizes what follows, providing insight into Jesus’s motivation, the very reason for this act.46 The hour (hōra) refers to the climactic event of Jesus’s Passion, death, and Resurrection, this is to say the manner in which he will express this love. This direct connection to the Paschal mystery means that the intense love expressed in the mandatum is of the deepest kind. Of this Jesus says: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” ( John 15:13). Anticipating his Passion through a symbolic expression, Jesus dons the garb of a servant and performs a servant’s task—an act unrivalled in antiquity.47 Here, his intense love is expressed in service, in a redemptive gift-of-self that wills the good of another for the sake of the other, prefiguring and finding its fulfillment in the Cross and Resurrection.48 This is precisely what Jesus meant when he said: “The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matt 20:28). If the intent and attitude of the mandatum is, as Van der Watt observes, intense love, and if that love is expressed in the sacrifice of a servant, then it follows that a possible Old Testament typology will be found in a suffering servant. In Isaiah 52 and 53, the author describes an enigmatic figure that the Church Fathers would later called the “Suffering Servant.” The parallels between this servant who suffers and Jesus are quite striking. Because of this, the early Church wasted little time in making a typological connection between the two. It was not so much that the typology rested on two servants who suffered, but that the suffering they endured was redemptive for 45 46 47 48 Jan Gabriël Van der Watt, “The Meaning of Jesus Washing the Feet of His Disciples ( John 13),” Neotestamentica 51, no. 1 (2017): 19. Thomas, Footwashing, 53. Thomas, Footwashing, 114. Thomas, Footwashing, 53–54. 1294 Dominic Cerrato others. As Isaiah points out, “he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins; . . . by his stripes we were healed.” (Isa 53:5). It is noteworthy that the first recorded biblical figure to recognize Jesus as the Suffering Servant was Philip, one of the first deacons, in his encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:29–35). This connection is also found in Peter’s first epistle (1Pet 2:22–25). Likewise, the Church Fathers were quick to pick up on this typology. In his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin Martyr refers to this text thirty-one times.49 Indeed, even a superficial survey of patristic literature demonstrates a strong typological connection between the Suffering Servant and Christ.50 Today, the Church summarizes this identification when she teaches: By his loving obedience to the Father, “unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8), Jesus fulfills the atoning mission (cf. Is 53:10) of the suffering Servant, who will “make many righteous; and he shall bear their iniquities” (Is 53:11; cf. Rom 5:19). (CCC §623) The typological connection between the Suffering Servant and Jesus, already well established in the Tradition, may seem distinct from a possible typological connection between the Suffering Servant and the mandatum. This typology, at first glance, may seem tenuous until we consider the irreducible, that is, until we shift our focus from the act to the agent, from the foot washing to the Foot Washer, Jesus Christ. This irreducibility, grounded in personalist thought, is key to unlocking this mystery further. In both examples, we have not two typologies, but one single typology revealed at two different levels. This is to say that the mandatum, precisely because it is inextricably linked to the Paschal mystery, reveals more fully who the Suffering Servant is and why he suffers. It extends an already existing typology rather than revealing a second typology. Here, the same Suffering Servant referred to prophetically in Isaiah, is the one who washed his Apostles’ feet. Commenting on foot washing in the Semitic imagination, John Christopher Thomas observes: Footwashing is generally the responsibility of servants. While a host/ hostess offers hospitable acts, it is [sic] ordinarily carried out by his/ her slaves, even though the guests may sometimes wash his/her own 49 50 St. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, ed M. Slusser (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 227. For a survey of the Fathers, see The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources, ed. Bernd Janowski and Peter Stuhlmacher (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 228–29. Toward a More Integrated Theolog y of Holy Orders 1295 feet. There is so much identification with servants footwashing that the footbasin comes to function figuratively as a sign of servitude. Those who receive footwashing are always the social superiors of those who render the service.51 In many respects, a typology of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant and the mandatum is not new, but coexists with the typology of the Suffering Servant and Jesus as part of the same reality. This is precisely because Jesus’s Passion, death, and Resurrection are inextricably tied to the Last Supper and the Last Supper is inextricably tied to the mandatum. To deny this is to deny the typological relationship between the Eucharist and the Suffering Servant, as both this and the relationship between the mandatum and the Suffering Servant are grounded in the same event, both of which share a similar reference to being a servant.52 Understood this way, the mandatum has always had a typological connection; it just had not been fully explored. As a result of this further exploration, the claim of the diaconate being directly instituted by Christ through the mandatum gains credibility. It does so by virtue of its prefigurement in the Old Testament, sharing the ancient typological connection between the Suffering Servant and Jesus. Seven Steps Returning to the Establishment Hypothesis, to better appreciate the progression of self-donation described above, it will be broken down into seven distinct but related steps (Figure 2). In considering these steps, it is important to note the irreducible in terms of how Christ gives himself totally as Sacerdos and Diakonos, and how each step is differentiated from the others by distinct and successive gifts of self. Taken together, these form an organic unity within the sacrament, a kind of integral continuity that moves humanity from the Paschal mystery to its final end. Recall earlier how John Paul taught that “the giving and the accepting of the gift interpenetrate, so that the giving of oneself becomes accepting, and the acceptance is transformed into giving.”53 Applied to the successive gifts of self, Christ’s self-donation in the Paschal mystery interpenetrates the Apostles so that the giving of himself becomes the acceptance of the Father’s will, and this acceptance is subsequently transformed into giving. Observe that it is the forward giving of the gift that constitutes a fuller acceptance of 51 52 53 Thomas, Footwashing, 34. Cf. Luke 22:27 and John 13:15. Pope John Paul II, Theology of the Body, 71. 1296 Dominic Cerrato the gift already received. In this respect, the Apostles more fully accept the gift from Christ when they give it to the bishops. This is equally true of the other orders and the laity. In each case, the giving and the receiving, which give rise to an interpenetration, move the participants from an I–Thou relationship to a We, thereby constituting a communio personarum throughout the continuum. Critical to a correct understanding of this progression is that what is given is not something, but rather someone. This is a key insight of personalism, moving ministry from a functional approach to an interpersonal and incarnational reality. Within the progressive gift-of-self, it is important to observe that God is the Efficient Cause. The subsequent gifts of selves represent material causes. This is to say that the apostolic gift-of-self to the bishops is not so much the Apostles gift, as if it is sourced in them alone. Rather, this gift originates with Christ and, through the grace of participation, flows through the hands of the Apostles to the bishops. In a similar fashion, the subsequent gifts represent a passing-on of a gift ultimately sourced in the divine and received in a manner proper to the receiver. So, for example, the laity do not receive this gift so much from priests and deacons, as if they are the source, but from Christ through the hands of the priest and deacon. In this respect, Christ’s gift is not diminished at each level, but distributed in a manner proper to the receiver, enabling the receiver to receive the fullness of that gift and, as a result, become an agent of that gift to others. In what follows, each step of the hypothesis will be discussed in relation to Figure 2. • Step 1: Through his gift-of-self on the Cross, Jesus reconciles humanity to the Father. This reconciliation, expressed in the Paschal mystery, is encapsulated in the Last Supper, which is also a foretaste of the heavenly banquet to come. • Step 2: In the Last Supper, Jesus issues two sets of commands to his Apostles, one at the Eucharist, and the other at the mandatum. • Step 3: These commands, in light of the Paschal mystery, institute both the priesthood through the Eucharist and the diaconate through the mandatum. This constitutes Christ’s gift-of-self to the Apostles. • Step 4: The Apostles, having received this gift-of-self from Christ in both the priesthood and diaconate, now gift themselves to their successors, the bishops. This constitutes the apostolic gift-of-self to the episcopacy. Toward a More Integrated Theolog y of Holy Orders Figure 2 1297 1298 Dominic Cerrato • Step 5: The bishops, having received a full share of Christ as both sacerdos and diakonos through the Apostles, now pass this gift-ofself on to priests and deacons in a way proper to their order; priests being configured to Christ the Priest, and deacons being configured to Christ the Servant.54 This constitutes the episcopal gift-of-self to priests and deacons. • Step 6: Priests and deacons, having received a specific share of sacerdos and diakonos, each in a manner proper to their order, now pass this gift-of-self on to the laity in a manner proper to the lay state through evangelization, the dispensation of the sacraments, and acts of charity. This constitutes the priests and deacon gift-of-self to the laity. • Step 7: Finally, the laity, having received this gift of sacerdos and diakonos in a manner proper to their vocation through baptism,55 now pass it on to the world. This constitutes the lay gift-of-self to society. The combined effect of this self-giving from Christ to the world (steps 1–7) manifests the Christus totus. The use of this phrase may seem an overstatement. However, it is employed here in a very limited and very specific sense. First, it does not imply that the process of self-giving expressed in the Establishment Hypothesis reveals absolutely everything about Christ. This is obviously not true. Rather, it simply means that the fullness of God’s revelation in Christ is made known through the Apostles and their successors under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. This revelation is articulated and transmitted by the entire Church for the salvation of the world.56 Such an articulation also comprises everything that flows from it, including the Scriptures and the Tradition, along with the Church’s doctrinal, moral, sacramental and liturgical life. Taken together and interpreted by the magisterium, these sources provide the believer with all that is necessary for redemption in Christ. It is only in this limited and salvific sense that we can rightly speak of the Christus totus as applied to the Establishment Hypothesis. 54 55 56 Insofar as the Church requires that every priest be first ordained a deacon, the priest possesses both ontological configurations. Consequently, he is both diakonos and sacerdos. Though his primary identity is priest, at his core, he is still deacon. CCC §1547 speaks of a lay participation in the one priesthood of Christ. In a similar way, it can be argued that there is also a lay participation in the one diaconate of Christ as all of the baptized are called to serve (Matt 20:25–28). This progression, as a soteriological unfolding, reveals the ordinary way in which salvation is offered. It does not preclude extraordinary ways expressed in the natural law (See LG §14). Toward a More Integrated Theolog y of Holy Orders 1299 Reconciling with the Tradition Much of the Establishment Hypothesis can easily be reconciled within the broader tradition of Holy Orders with one exception, the institution of the seven found in Acts 6:1–6. Traditionally, this is held to be the origin of the diaconate, which occurs chronologically after the Paschal mystery.57 One way to address this apparent conflict is through the distinction between officium and ordo. Where an office is a position in a larger organization that carries with it a specific function, an order is an office shared by two or more forming a recognized body. In the sequence of causality, an office always precedes an order. Before a man can enter the order of bishops, there must first be an episcopal office. Similarly, before a man can enter the order of presbyters, there must first be a presbyteral office. Likewise, before someone can enter the order of deacons, there must first be a diaconal office. While the mandatum established the office of deacon (step 3 in Figure 2), the selection of the seven and the laying on of hands represent the institution of the diaconal order (step 4 in Figure 2). Where the office represents a kind of conception, the order represents a kind of birth. They are not two separate things, but rather two stages of the same thing. There is some implicit evidence for this office–order sequence in the Scriptures. We know, for example, that the office of priest was established at the Last Supper. However, the presbyteral order (what would later be called the “priesthood”)58 was instituted sometime after, as witnessed by Luke (Acts 57 58 Although there are multiple attestations of Acts 6 as the origins of the diaconate throughout the Tradition, there are Scripture scholars today that have called this connection into question. I have dealt extensively with this issue in my first book on the diaconate (In the Person of Christ the Servant, 177–89). There, I conclude that when working from a purely biblical perspective, using only the methods of historical criticism, these scholars are correct but incomplete. To argue theologically apart from an ecclesiological context is to omit the mind of the Church, neglecting the very ecclesiological matrix from which the Scriptures arise. It is to reduce scriptural interpretation to the literary sense, while at the same time ignoring the spiritual senses so very vital for a complete hermeneutic. Consequently, the seven in Acts are the diaconate in embryonic form. They are not two separate things, but the same thing at two different points of development. For those who accept Acts 6 as the call of those who would later be identified as deacons, what follows reconciles this passage with the hypothesis. For those who do not, this discussion is irrelevant. Regardless of where one stands on the question of Acts 6 and the origins of the diaconate, the Establishment Hypothesis does not rise or fall on this point. As in the case with the connection between Acts 6 and the origins of the diaconate, certain Scripture scholars using only higher criticism reject the biblical connection between the early presbyterate and the priesthood. Assumed here, as a result of a broader hermeneutical approach described in the previous footnote, and based on the 1300 Dominic Cerrato 15:6, 23) and Peter (1 Pet 5:1). Likewise, we can say that the episcopal office (the fullness of orders) was also established at the Last Supper. However, the episcopal order was instituted sometime after, as witnessed by Timothy (1Tim 3:1–7).59 If this is true of the presbyterate and episcopate, then it is reasonable to conclude that it is also true of the diaconate. Thus, the call of the seven in Acts 6 presents us with an instance of discernment on the part of the Church as to how a ministry already instituted by Christ at the Last Supper was to be carried out in the concrete circumstances of the nascent Christian community. Conclusion This essay has been an attempt to offer a more integrated approach to Holy Orders through the “Establishment Hypothesis.” In this pursuit, we began by exploring the personalist thought of Pope St. John Paul II through an examination of the irreducible and love as a gift-of-self revealed most fully in the Paschal mystery. This provided the hermeneutic lens by which we reexamined the scriptural basis of the sacrament. We then offered a consideration of the hypothesis proper, describing in personalist terms the origins of Holy Orders as a whole, demonstrating the Christological unity of all three degrees. In what follows, we will conclude by exploring some of the key contributions of the Establishment Hypothesis as it relates to a more integrated understanding of Holy Orders. Some Key Contributions Through the mystery of the human person, the Establishment Hypothesis lays the foundation for a more integrated theology of orders which, reaching beyond its own limitations, moves toward a deeper appreciation of divine love as it relates to our final end. It attempts to grapple with a question not explicit in the Scriptures or Tradition and not addressed by the theological community in any depth. In this respect, it does not pretend to offer a definitive explanation, but instead a reasonable possibility of what might be. In 59 ecclesiological Tradition, the presbyterate is the priesthood in embryonic form. They are not two separate things, but the same thing at two different points of development. Once again, regardless of where one stands on the connection between the presbyterate and the priesthood, the Establishment Hypothesis does not rise or fall on this point. It could be argued that the episcopal order was instituted at the Great Commissioning (Matt 28: 16–20), as that event occurred within the Paschal mystery just before the ascension. This would allow for a direct dominical institution and explicitly link the episcopacy to the mission of the Church. Toward a More Integrated Theolog y of Holy Orders 1301 the absence of formal teaching by the magisterium, this exercise falls well within the scope of the theological community. That said, while not fully developed, the hypothesis does offer several key theological contributions that, taken together, constitute a more complete theology of orders. Briefly, these include: Holy Orders as an Interpersonal Reality. By rereading the Paschal mystery in light of John Paul’s philosophical personalism, we were able to advance our understanding of Holy Orders through an examination of the subjective dimension of the sacrament. This “turn to the subject,” expressed in a hermeneutic of gift, allows a shift from the objective categories used in the traditional teaching on orders to the subjective category of lived experience, without in any way compromising the categories already established. Such an approach enabled us to supplement rather than supplant the tradition on orders, thereby enriching what we already know by what we just learned. By re-envisioning Holy Orders as an act of love expressed in a gift-of-self, an objective ecclesial reality now becomes, at the very same time, a subjective interpersonal reality. Far from being separated, the objective and subjective interpenetrate and infuse one another such that they become two aspects of a single reality. Consequently, Holy Orders is not merely something done to the ordinand by the laying on of hands and the prayer of ordination, but also a deeply personal and spiritual encounter borne out of a divine love, calling him to intimate communion with a God who defeated death for him. This love, this divine gift-of-self, personified in the Word incarnate, Jesus Christ, when personally appropriated by the one ordained in an ongoing way, now becomes the source of his life and ministry. As a result, these encounters radically inspire and empower him to gift himself through those who bear God’s image. Holy Orders as Profoundly Incarnational. Where God, who is Love, is incarnate in Christ, humanity follows this example by also incarnating this redemptive love through subsequent gifts of self in Holy Orders.60 Here, the Establishment Hypothesis emphasizes and describes how this love Incarnate is received and successively given such that each in their own way act either in persona Christi Capitis (priests) or in persona Christi Servi (deacons). Indeed, the laity play their own essential role in this incarnational dimension as, in the exercise of their vocation, they act as alter Christus. Understood this way, what emerges from the Paschal mystery is an incarnational progression 60 This is true of marriage as well. Just as marriage expressed the nuptial meaning of the body in a personal way, Holy Orders does so in an ecclesial way. 1302 Dominic Cerrato in which each participant is linked together through acts of love sourced in divine love. In doing so, they participate and contribute, in unique and unrepeatable ways, to the redemption of humanity. As a result, Christ is manifested in personal and tangible ways across the entire spectrum of humanity. This incarnational dimension of Holy Orders means that it is not simply I who gift myself, but with me, the Christ who lives in me (Gal 2:20). Soteriological Emphasis of Holy Orders. Following the model of exitus–reditus, the hypothesis proceeds from Christ and returns to him. It takes up and reflects the broader notion of emanation and return as these are applied specifically to the order of redemption. This Neoplatonic scheme, which forms the very organizing principle of the Summa theologiae, considers the divine economy of salvation, from the beginning of creation to the end of the world, according to a strict logical sequence. While Aquinas treats this from creation, the Establishment Hypothesis assumes this, picking it up at the Paschal mystery. As a result, it emphasizes that Holy Orders, and the redemption it proclaims, finds its origins and end in Christ, following a soteriological path. Situating the Origins of the Diaconate within the Paschal Mystery. As we have already seen, grounding the origins of the diaconate in the Paschal mystery is not unique to the Establishment Hypothesis. What is unique, and what the hypothesis contributes, is how this takes place through Christ’s irreducible gift-of-self. Beyond this, through the distinction of officium and ordo, the hypothesis reconciles the Paschal mystery with the call of the seven to describe two stages of the same reality. All of this allows for the origins of the diaconate to be founded in the Paschal mystery without diminishing the Tradition as expressed in Act 6:1–6. Consequently, the diaconate is not simply viewed as a stop-gap measure to facilitate apostolic preaching, but as an integral part of the mystery of salvation. By incarnating Christ the Servant, the diaconate contributes something of Christ that the other two orders on their own do not, forming a complementary expression of divine love. Holy Orders as a Participation in Divine Love: The Establishment Hypothesis contextualizes the mystery of salvation and the mission of the Church in a personal love characterized by self-donation. Here, participation in this mission requires a reception of a divine love whose ultimate acceptance is realized when it is given away ( John 13:34). Essential to the hypothesis is the observation that this giving is not the giving of something, but instead the giving of someone in some act of service, whether priestly Toward a More Integrated Theolog y of Holy Orders 1303 or diaconal, whether through ordained ministry or through the laity. This dynamic process of freely receiving and freely giving results in a personal transformation, a divinization of sorts. It also illustrates how sanctifying grace is transmitted and received, revealing a distinctively personal dimension moving from the mystical to the practical without losing the mystical. This is perhaps the greatest contribution of the Establishment Hypothesis, and one that requires further investigation. Grounding the Unity of the Sacrament in Its Origins: While we have made distinctions concerning the three grades within Holy Orders, it is nonetheless a single sacrament. This is to say that it not only enjoys a unity distinct and apart from the other six sacraments, but it is also harmonious within itself, possessing the quality of perfection. Though the Church’s understanding developed over time, the Tradition has long maintained this unity as having some level of participation in Christ’s own priesthood.61 The Establishment Hypothesis affirms this and demonstrates how this unity is achieved through a sacrificial and redemptive gift-of-self that is shared and perpetuated by all of the faithful, each according to its state and vocation. Indeed, because of its personalist approach, the hypothesis demonstrates that this participation is not simply a sharing in the Paschal mystery in some abstract sense, but what this mystery points to and makes present, Christ himself. Thus, the theological basis of the unity of Holy Orders is Jesus Christ, who is both Priest and Deacon par excellence, and to whom the ordinand is ontologically configured on the day of his ordination. Concluding Thought Earlier, we drew upon the image of Aidan Nichols’s tryptic to illustrate Holy Orders with the three panels representing the three degrees. Our attempt in this study is to open wider the side panels by rethinking how we can speak of these three degrees with respect to their diversity within the one sacrament. Using personalist language, I believe we have begun the process, or at least begun a new conversation. If Holy Orders is the sacrament through which the mission of the Church is transmitted, then it follows that, as we develop a more advanced understanding of this sacrament, we will likewise develop a more profound sense of our mission, a mission that invites us to gift ourselves to others in imitation of Christ. 61 See Thomas Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 24, q. 2, a. 1, ad 2; Council of Trent, sess. 23, can. 3, CCC §§1113, 1536. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2023): 1305–1324 1305 Maurice Blondel on the Practice of Supernatural Religion Anne M. Carpenter St. Louis University St. Louis, MO Introduction Maurice Blondel attended daily Mass to the very end of his life.1 This essay is, in a way, a meditation on this fact. But it is more nearly a confrontation with Blondel’s philosophical argument in defense of human action’s capacity for affirming the infinite, for “containing” the infinite in its affirmation of the infinite, an affirmation achieved in action’s finitude. That is, this is an essay on Blondel’s argument for a supernatural religion that can be literally practiced. Much like Blondel’s larger philosophical works, this essay spends its time exploring the coordinating ground of supernatural religion, which is the natural world split open in two directions: in its very existence, which is a supposition of what absolutely outstrips its power; in its very action, which in ecstasy takes the shape of a desire for a reversal that it cannot offer itself. So the natural world presupposes the supernatural and desires the supernatural while remaining, of its own power, natural. Blondel makes a theoretical distinction in the universe that, concretely, is a natural–supernatural one committed to a single destiny. This theory and this concreteness cohere in order to make the literal practice of religion both possible and necessary, terms that this essay explains. 1 Oliva Blanchette, Maurice Blondel: A Philosophical Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), 36–37, 416–17, 760–61. 1306 Anne M. Carpenter Action: The Problem of Theory and Practice Blondel’s later writing in the 1930s expands on an important paradox that appears in the very early L’Action (1893). That paradox has to do with a distinction between theory—that is, the world of ideas and reflection—and practice, by which Blondel means the concrete world of human action, a world that for Blondel is an expansive range or “body” of action. It is true, after all, that an idea is not a deed. And yet no deed is without its idea, without the mediatory power of the act of consciousness, nor without the mediation of this consciousness’s rationality—a further synthesizing act within consciousness—even when the deed contradicts reason. “Hence,” says Blondel, “it is because we find in our acts a kind of creative sovereignty that we have a consciousness of ourselves and reason; it is because we are reasonable and conscious of ourselves that we judge ourselves capable of voluntary initiative.”2 The paradox, at one angle, is this leap or gap, this difference nevertheless sustained by a mediation, where ideas and deeds are non-identical yet inseparable. At another angle, it is a paradox that a “science of practice” has to straddle, since it studies (as science) what it is not: concrete action (practice). Blondel, whether young or of his latter days, is after the possibility of such a science. He is also after the bond between reasoning and acting. In this section, I also seek that bond, and I make use of Blondel’s early and later works together to give a sense not of Blondel’s development, but of the Gestalt of his life’s work with respect to the bond between thought and action.3 The bond first requires the rejection of monism. Though Blondel’s stance toward theologies of his day tends to be more well-known among theologians, and therefore filtered through questions of nature and grace and carried through to a rejection of a two-tiered conception of the universe, still, his nearer interlocutors are often monists: modern philosophers and the modern sciences, and their strange compatriots in history, the spiritual movements of the fin de siècle, involving spiritualisms of various kinds, recollected in our popular imagination today in visions of crystal balls and séance tables. The positivism of the modern sciences and of modern (French) philosophy poses a totally self-contained “nature” that can be explained 2 3 Maurice Blondel, Action (1893): Essay on a Critique of Life and a Science of Practice, trans. Oliva Blanchette (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 101. For Blondel’s later works, I have used the digitized versions available through Bibliothèque Paul-Émile-Boulet de l’Université du Québec à Chicoutimi at classiques.uqac. ca/. These versions contain notation that reference the original pagination of the texts, which I have used in this essay. Maurice Blondel on the Practice of Supernatural Religion 1307 without religion, in a form of what English speakers might call “secularism,” but which is more accurately filtered through French Republican desires for laïcité.4 While Blondel was writing, there were not only these political and scientific and philosophical trends, but also the semi-pantheistic, variously agnostic religious movements that dominated privileged circles in Europe at the time. These are a kind of monism in their desire to perceive a wholeness in the world, effervescent of experience, in an inversion of secularism, where what religion seeks is discoverable in the proportionate world, which is again or still all that there is.5 Blondel defies these monisms through reflection on the concrete universe, the universe in which they are situated and which they claim to study or to transcend from within. His most basic claim is that all forms of monism fail to notice that our universe is heterogeneous; it contains not a single horizon, but many horizons. The failure here is not only theoretical. It is a failure to honestly confront the world in its concreteness. “The study of true immanence,” Blondel says to these monistic self-sufficiencies, “does not lead to affirming an interior plenitude; . . . it consists on the contrary in giving evidence of our incurable spiritual indigence and misery. Far from any pretense of filling an emptiness through the deployment of our nature, it deepens the emptiness that only the supernatural can fill.”6 “Immanence,’ here, should sound to Catholic ears with the warning against the immanentism of modernism in Pius X’s famous 1907 encyclical, Pascendi Domini Gregis. Notice that Blondel agrees with Pius, and that Blondel reveals the insufficiency of immanentism on its own grounds, for immanence immanently reveals its needfulness for what it is not.7 The heterogeneity of the universe is implicit already in the very notion of several (modern) sciences, and of several human sciences. In his critique of historicism, for example, Blondel points out that the field of history is not omni-competent: “Inevitably it relies upon ulterior problems, upon sciences superior to it, which it can neither supplant nor replace . . . by falsely 4 5 6 7 See Ann Margaret Doyle, “Catholic Church and State Relations in French Education in the Nineteenth Century: The Struggle between Laïcité and Religion,” International Studies in Catholic Education 9, no. 1 (2017): 108–22. See Maurice Blondel, L’Être et les êtres (Paris: Alcan, 1935), 321–22. I cite other relevant passages in other works below. Maurice Blondel, The Philosophical Exigencies of Christian Religion, trans. Oliva Blanchette (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2021), 50. Maurice Blondel, “The Letter on Apologetics,” in The Letter on Apologetics and History and Dogma, trans. Alexander Dru and Illtyd Trethowan (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 151–53. 1308 Anne M. Carpenter proclaiming itself a sort of total metaphysics.”8 But historians seem to forget this immediately, when they deny—based in a total competency they could not have in the method of history—things like miracles. The unitive power at work is not the world (with its many objects) and not the sciences (whose methods are many), but is minds asking about these many objects using many methods. “There is,” says Blondel, “continuity and solidarity in the work of the mind; there is heterogeneity in the points of view and in the bearing of scientific affirmation.”9 Monism, in its desire to mount great heights, does more than forget that the continuity of the mind’s work is not evidence of continuity in the world. Monism’s more devastating act is the denial of any radical entitative disproportion that we might call the absolutely supernatural. Instead, monism collapses the Supreme One (l’Un suprême), or the absolutely non-contingent, into becoming, change, contingency—in other words, the “whole” (tout) that is the universe. The Supreme One and the (contingent) whole become one. Monism then contents itself with contradictions. “Fallacious” is, Blondel argues, the name of monism; for the two sides that we are forced to attribute to nature and thought are never identifiable: neither the whole [tout] is one, nor the one merges with the whole. Fallacious, the theosophical systems which profess both the cult of luminous or even dazzling images and which claim to initiate us into that which has neither form nor consciousness nor knowability of any kind; to be agnostic, pantheist, [or] theosophist is therefore supposedly to know that one does not know, while knowing that there is an unknowable and that this unknown is known as unformulable, formless, and transcendent to the relative and the absolute with which we use it in turn to certify, define, or sublimate it.10 8 9 10 Maurice Blondel, “History and Dogma,” in Dru and Trethowan (trans.), Letter on Apologetics and History and Dogma, 234. Blondel, “History and Dogma,” 236. Maurice Blondel, L’Action (1936), 2 vols. (Le problème des causes secondes et le pur agir and L’action humaine et les conditions de son aboutissement) (Paris: Alcan, 1936), 358: “Fallacieux, le nom de monisme; car les deux faces qu’on est forcé d’attribuer à la nature et à la pensée ne sont jamais identifiables: ni le tout n’est un, ni l’un ne se confond avec le tout. Fallacieux, les systèmes théosophiques qui professent à la fois le culte des images lumineuses ou même éblouissantes et qui prétendent nous initier à ce qui n’a ni forme ni conscience, ni connaissabilité d’aucune sorte; être agnostique, panthéiste, théosophe, c’est donc prétendument connaître qu’on ne connaît pas, tout en sachant qu’il y a un inconnaissable et que cet inconnu est connu comme informulable, informe Maurice Blondel on the Practice of Supernatural Religion 1309 What monism excises from existence is an incommensurability (incommensurabilité) of two orders, of God as Pure Act and of creation as contingent act. It is this incommensurability that, Blondel insists, in fact makes possible the coherent unity of “certainty and mystery, discursive life and contemplative life.”11 I discuss this incommensurability more below. For now, it is important to note Blondel’s rejection of monism in favor of heterogeneity. And this rejection is not an excursus in the problem of theory and practice. It treats the problem of theory and practice first of all by framing the universe in which the two are distinguished and also bonded, and second of all by suggesting that the unity of theory and practice need not be found in the world of contingency at all, though this unity will be affirmed by a contingent, supernaturalized act—in an action in which God also acts. On the one hand, Blondel does in fact straightforwardly deny that theory and practice can be resolved in such a way that the one is the solution to the other. Here Blondel has in mind both a reduction of theory to the “practical,” a flattening of principles into practice or a rejection of the notion that there can be notions applied to more than one moment in time, and he has in mind the reduction or reversion of practice into theory, as if the theory understands “already” what practice will bring about in theory’s being-practiced.12 He is as suspicious of “moral dogmatism” as he is of theory’s domination of the real.13 These suspicions are important because theory and practice, their distinction and their relationship, set the stage for the conceptuality that will fund Blondel’s idea that dogma can remain absolutely true (that is, dogmatic) and that it can nevertheless be practiced, in what he calls the “literal practice” of (supernatural) religion. But it is also important to see underneath the suspicions a desire to really unite dogmatic, supernatural religion and its practice. And so, on the other hand, Blondel supports a mutual enrichment in the dialectic between theory and practice, which is a first way of suggesting that it is possible to bring together what he distinguishes. “If it is possible, true and salutary to accord the intransigence of principles with the flexible 11 12 13 et transcendant au relatif et à l’absolu dont nous usons tour à tour pour le certifier, le définir ou le sublimer.” (This is the 1936 two-volume French version in which Blondel substantially expanded and adapted the 1893 dissertation from which Blanchette did his English translation, and so I include here the 1936 French from which I have translated, as it differs from the 1893 version translated in whole by Blanchette.) Blondel, L’Action (1936), 1:358–59. Maurice Blondel, L’Action (1936), 2:411–14. Blondel, L’Action (1936), 2:409–10. 1310 Anne M. Carpenter diversity of contingent solutions—it is because a theory never exhausts in advance the practice which it serves to arouse, to guide, to control;—and because human action never does without a speculative view, without retrospective support, without anticipatory prospecting.”14 The trouble, in a way, is to falsely demand that either theory or action be the other. This will separate them irrevocably, and result in perceiving principles as oppressors, or in splintering moral principles into a pure situationalism. For Blondel, the fact that theory and action require one another without being one another opens a heterogeneous universe into a radical furtherance of its heterogeneity, and it confronts human beings with the question of their ultimate destiny. This furtherance and this confrontation are not yet entirely clear, though we have a hint of it in the notion of the incommensurability of God and the world. We have seen something of its mechanism, too, in Blondel’s mysterious claim about the “solidarity” of the human mind that does the work of asking various questions. For now I want to leave us with the idea that an opportunity is at hand, and next I will fill out its shape. “The advantage,” says Blondel, “of having demonstrated at the same time the limits of theory and those of practice, their imperfect but undeniable connection, their very real scope but not reaching the desired and required point of convergence—it is there: an infinitely precious opening, both for the speculative effort and for the unstoppable and unsatisfied demands of humanity.”15 Action: A Body Literal and Transcending If, for Blondel, dogma not only can but also must be “literally practiced,” his claim stands or falls on his science of action. It is this science that offers a definition of action, therefore of practice, and therefore of the literal practice of (dogmatic) religion. In this section, I explain the most important vertexes in Blondel’s notion of action as they lift into the practice of religion. I emphasize his earliest work, his dissertation L’Action (1893), and the sections that follow trace salutary aspects of the development of his theory of literal practice over the course of his career, bringing them together into a unitive position. In the first version of L’Action, Blondel traces the pathway of human 14 15 Blondel, L’Action (1936), 2:409–10. Blondel, L’Action (1936), 2:415: “L’avantage d’avoir avéré en même temps les limites de la théorie et celles de la pratique, leur connexion imparfaite mais indéniable, leur portée très réelle mais n’aboutissant pas jusqu’au point de convergence désirée et requise, c’est là, pour l’effort spéculatif et pour les exigences incoercibles et insatisfaites de l’humanité, une ouverture infiniment précieuse.” Maurice Blondel on the Practice of Supernatural Religion 1311 action, which is first of all an élan or an ekstasis, a continual and complex surpassing of original conditions into new conditions. One of Blondel’s most important examples is human consciousness. It is not mere emergence, not the result of blood, heart, neurons, nerves, though its whence is these various powers in their collaborative action. “That is how the fact of consciousness is built up little by little. The relation of the subject to the elementary conditions by which he is nourished is manifest, but he can contain and sum up his antecedents only by dominating them.”16 Human consciousness is an action that organizes what precedes it, and in reorganizing these powers it transcends them with a new order, an order that is not its origin, articulating a new facility with its originating actions, a facility that it also is: consciousness. This consciousness is experience, the being of a body that experiences its being. “What we thus call ‘interior,’” Blondel explains, “is the presence of the whole to its part and of the part to its whole.”17 So Blondel’s singular noun “action” refers to many actions, and to the élan that at every point is these actions and the transcendence of them. Blondel calls action a “body.” It is a composite body of actions, and it is a composing of the actions. Its character as perpetually self-transcending power or élan lends to it an aspect of infinity, or of a disproportion whose very power to summarize its preceding horizons cannot be had by “adding-up” those horizons. Frankenstein’s monster lays on the table with all the necessary parts of a human being, but the lightning that would or could light it up as subject, as subjectivity, requires an infinite more than lighting up every nerve and cell. Even if thus alive, the monster of sense is not yet the monster that is conscious. The good doctor looming over the body does not realize the infinity his own body inexorably supplies to him, with his gaze that not only sees but also looks, that not only sees but also experiences its seeing. But what for Mary Shelley is the horror of a scientific god and his misbegotten creation is for Blondel the wonder that a human being wakes and is present to himself in his waking. The body of human action proceeds by an interior law that bears, in Blondel’s speech, a “determinism.” It proceeds by an order that it cannot but follow. “Determinism,” here, means an immanent intending heuristic, which Aristotle names the principle of motion that defines each nature, and here the question is of the nature of human action. Determinism does not mean inevitability. Freedom can halt or refuse action’s movement outward, cutting off the path of transcendence in what Blondel terms “superstition.” 16 17 Blondel, Action (1893), 101. Blondel, Action (1893), 99. 1312 Anne M. Carpenter Freedom can also cooperate with its own élan by being that further, reorganizing horizon that extends individual human action into transcending horizons: discrete actions, interpersonal communion, larger communities, and so on, even unto cooperation with the universe. At every horizon that it greets, freedom can close the hatch, denying its own expansion into, for example, community, or it can follow the law of human action in its élan with that élan’s free procession. It is in the context of an élan determined to be as wide as the universe that Blondel makes his major distinction within the human will, between the “willing will” (volonté voulante) and the “willed will” (volonté voulue). 18 Blondel observes that a single act of the will does not exhaust the will, which continues in other (willed) actions, in actions with further ranges, in elaborations of actions. This concrete fact not only implies a distinction in the human will itself; it also poses a question, which is the question of whether at any point the human will can reach a terminus that completes it. For Blondel, it is a question of whether the willing will and the willed will can “equal” one another, of whether the will can equal itself by willing in a way that results in the total rest of human action.19 But even at the limit-point of nature, in its surrender to the universe that is coming into being, human action does not rest. The interiority of human being in its being remains unequal with itself, evinced of an infinity that it always supposes and is not. “Blondel,” says Jonathan Heaps, “shows how even the most sincere and sophisticated effort to explain human action does not just fail in its highest aspiration to explain human destiny per se. A fortiori, he shows that it fails at any and every level of analysis.”20 Much more than this supposition of infinity, however, which helps Blondel to articulate our failure to explain human action, the internal disproportion of human willing speaks to an interior impracticability that is also a necessity, since the will wills to will itself entirely and cannot. “As I come up against the supreme necessity of the will, therefore,” explains Blondel, I have to determine what I will so that I may be able, in all fullness, to will to will [vouloir vouloir]. Yes, I have to will myself; but it is impossible for me to reach myself directly; from myself to myself, there is an 18 19 20 See. Blondel, Action (1893), 53 and throughout; Henri Bouillard, “The Thought of Maurice Blondel: A Synoptic Vision,” International Philosophical Quarterly 3 (1963): 393. Blondel, Action (1893), 135–35; cf. 12–14. Jonathan Heaps, “The Ambiguity of Being: Medieval and Modern Cooperation on the Problem of the Supernatural” (PhD diss., Marquette University, 2019), 149. Maurice Blondel on the Practice of Supernatural Religion 1313 abyss that nothing yet has been able to fill. There is no escape route for me to run away by, no passage for me to take forward by myself: what will come of this crisis?21 For Blondel, the answer to the crisis is to posit the supernatural. In Blondel’s terms, the supernatural is “necessary” to the natural, but “impracticable” to it.22 So the supernatural is an absolute disproportion that proportionate action cannot bring to itself, cannot make its own by its own power. Such a definition of the supernatural is quite broad, and Heaps offers a clarification here: in Blondel, the “supernatural” refers to the entirety of God’s ad extra activity, which would mean both creation and redemption. Heaps explains: “Because Blondel’s philosophy is separated from the Christian doctrinal context, his ‘supernatural’ cannot be read as synonymous with, for example, Lonergan’s ens supernaturale or de Lubac’s surnaturel. . . . The supernatural is, even as unknown, that ‘one thing necessary.’ This one thing necessary is produced in every action.”23 The natural, thus, is always sustained in its proportion by the disproportionate, and any further encounter with the supernatural on nature’s part, which nature in a sense wills by willing to will itself, would require the supernatural, since nature cannot in all fullness will to will.24 The apparent monolith of the universe erected by Blondel’s secular colleagues at the École normale supérieure, one where philosophy could be content to treat religion as beyond its purview, receives a fracture at the very heart of the human being, splitting open the ens of the universe in its esse, yet without rendering a supernatural religion natural. Blondel’s point, instead, is that the natural supposes the supernatural; it speaks to an entitative source not within its own power, and it “speaks” this source by the operation of its own proportionate power. “It is because in acting we find an infinite disproportion in ourselves,” explains Blondel, “that we are constrained to look to infinity.”25 If the content of the supernatural is beyond philosophy to know as a known, its supposition is not. “To deny it or to ignore it, that is what is contrary to the philosophical spirit.”26 Our reality is not thereby dominated by a supernature towering over-against nature, but evinced of 21 22 23 24 25 26 Blondel, Action (1893), 313. Blondel, Action (1893), 297; cf. Blondel, “Letter on Apologetics,” 159–62. Heaps, “Ambiguity of Being,” 151–52. Blondel, “The One Thing Necessary,” in Action (1893), 314–29, esp. 325–29. Blondel, Action (1893), 324. Blondel, Action (1893), 358. 1314 Anne M. Carpenter an intimate unity of proportion and disproportion, which Blondel calls an “integral reality.”27 For Blondel, the integral reality that is the universe has what he calls a “single destiny.”28 This destiny is contingent on the one thing necessary to its existence: God. Here I touch upon one of the controversies surrounding Blondel, often framed around Henri de Lubac and the natural desire to see God. But I want to emphasize, with Heaps and with Oliva Blanchette, Blondel’s philosophical rather than theological placement. It is, in other words, not quite grace of which Blondel speaks when he speaks of the one destiny of the integral universe, and therefore the one destiny of human action. Instead, Blondel’s discussion is of the dilemma or crisis that human action faces, which is that it cannot equal itself. The dilemma itself necessarily implies not grace, but God. “A thought and a will,” explains Blondel, “without which there would be no thought and will in me and yet which neither my thought nor my will can comprehend, these are the solidary terms of the mystery that imposes itself on my consciousness.”29 Grace would be that by which such action could emerge out of its dilemma. But philosophy can only anticipate that supernatural religion would answer a need that nature cannot answer.30 It is helpful to see Blondel’s dilemma through the eyes of Bernard Lonergan for a moment, as Lonergan approaches the problem of the natural desire to see God explicitly, and from out of a different range of resources, but he arrives at a solution that resonates with and illuminates Blondel’s. For Lonergan, the question is what the natural desire to know—expressed in our asking quid sit and an sit—desires to know. And it might seem that proper fulfillment of this desire is to be had in the proportionate, since it is naturally fulfilled only by proportionate objects. “The facts,” says Lonergan, “are otherwise. We are not content to ask quid sit solely with regard to material things, and we are not content with merely analogical knowledge of immaterial things.”31 “Quid sit Deus?” is a question that arises naturally 27 28 29 30 31 Among other places, see Maurice Blondel: Une alliance contre nature: Catholicisme et intégrisme: La Semaine sociale de Bordeaux 1910 (Brussels: Lessius, 2000), 7; Action (1893), 445–46; “Letter on Apologetics,” 159–61. He uses this phrase often. Here I will only note that a single destiny is not the same as metaphysical monism. Blondel, Action (1893), 321. See Heaps, “Ambiguity of Being,” 151. Bernard Lonergan, “The Natural Desire to See God,” in Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan, vol. 4, Collection (Toronto: University of Toronto of Press, 1988), 83. Lonergan’s discussion of the necessary presuppositions for his position receive brief explanation on 84–85. Maurice Blondel on the Practice of Supernatural Religion 1315 in the desire to know. This quid sit is factual evidence of intelligence’s basic desire for the transcendental ens, which Lonergan insists is the adequate object of the intellect.32 But this desire, though natural, cannot be fulfilled naturally. Thus Lonergan argues that “the desire of our intellects is natural in origin and transcendental in its object.”33 It is fulfilled in the beatific vision, which is only had supernaturally. Lonergan’s solution mirrors the basic shape of Blondel’s, but since Lonergan’s solution uses Thomistic terminology, it offers clarity about what that basic shape is. So, Blondel speaks of a “determinism” of human action, a determinism which traces the dynamic ratio of a body of human operations should its interior law of self-transcendence be followed. In other words, Blondel examines what it is that human nature does and desires to do in its doing. He argues that this proportionate action has not only proportionate objects, but also a radically disproportionate object. Thus “action” is in Lonergan’s terms natural, but its desire is transcendental. In Blondel’s terms, the action necessarily supposes the supernatural, but finds it impracticable to nature. Notice, then, the interlocking categories here in L’Action: “The ‘one thing necessary,’ then, is not the obscure side of my thought. . . . I am necessarily brought to conceive it only because I am necessarily brought to acknowledge what is lacking to me in the very thing that I do.”34 And again Lonergan can comment: “The best that natural reason can attain is the discovery of the paradox that the desire to understand arises naturally, and that its object is the transcendental, ens, and that the proper fulfillment that naturally is attainable is restricted to the proportionate object of finite intellect.”35 Blondel himself does not frame the problem in terms of the natural desire to see God, but in terms of “destiny.” Nevertheless, this destiny contains a double meaning. By this double meaning, Blondel differentiates God’s ad extra action as much as he makes a distinction in methodical analysis. “This equivocal word,” Blondel explains in his conclusion to 1893’s L’Action, “designates the necessary development of life, independent of man’s intervention, . . . and at the same time it designates the personal way through which we arrive at our last ends according to our use of life.”36 The first use 32 33 34 35 36 Lonergan, “Natural Desire,” 4:82. Lonergan, “Natural Desire,” 4:83. Cf. the explanation of ens, not as transcendental in Kant’s sense, but in a Thomistic metaphysical sense, discussed on 4:82–83; also helpful is the discussion of objections on 4:86–91. Blondel, Action (1893), 321. Lonergan, “Natural Desire,” 4:84. Blondel, Action (1893), 427. 1316 Anne M. Carpenter of “destiny” posits for human action a participation in God regardless of what, exactly, human freedom does with this participation. The second posits action’s cooperation with its own reversal, where God supernaturally acts in human action as its principle, acknowledged explicitly as such, and practiced explicitly as such—in supernatural religion, in the realm of grace. Blondel’s singular destiny for integral reality thus does not collapse into an identity what remains integral: a proportionate universe whose very being relies on the being of the God that it is not, a proportionate universe that heads toward supernatural redemption. Action: On Nature and Dogma Into this integral reality enters the literal practice of religion. Literal practice is the effect, the effecting, of Blondel’s divine reversal, where human action either changes unto the perfect “sincerity” of equaling itself supernaturally, or else it refuses the supernatural invitation to change, thereby remaining the same. To change is to be redeemed; to remain the same is to be condemned.37 “The strength and light we have,” says Blondel, “cannot legitimately belong to us unless we first refer them back to their principle.”38 But how this is to be done—this reference that the will necessarily desires, this reference that the will cannot fulfill in an affirmation achieved by its own power—is something of a problem. And Blondel says that the problem is solved through action. In other words, for Blondel, Lonergan’s “paradox” of a natural desire transcendentally fulfilled cannot be overcome except through a “mortification” where self-transcendence becomes absolute trust. Blondel’s ascesis can appear, at first, vague. He is saying that the “resolution” of human action is, in a sense, more action. The body of action retains its elemental structure; the deliberative ekstasis of human action maintains its cooperative extension into the universe; the operations remain identical. But all is also changed. All is radically changed, for the animating principle of the body, the ecstasy, the operation, is different. Blondel describes the birth of what, in the realm of theology, are called the theological virtues: the participatory elevation of human faculties in a divine revelation whose content is expressible in thought and deed. “Even supposing that this theandric action is founded entirely on the divine will, the human will remains coextensive to it. It is a gift, but a gift we acquire as if it were an earning.”39 37 38 39 Blondel, Action (1893), 333. Blondel, Action (1893), 354. Blondel, Action (1893), 371. Maurice Blondel on the Practice of Supernatural Religion 1317 So literal practice is more than a supernatural reversal. The will sacrifices its supposedly self-contained self-coherence and enters a new horizon whose first fruit is faith. And it is important to understand, here, how the “reversal” is sustained by an act of the will that nourishes the mind, how, in a sense, the agreement, the mortification, anticipates a richness the mind cannot conceive until first conceived in this mortification. “God acts in this action,” explains Blondel, “and that is why the thought that follows the act is richer by an infinity than that which precedes it.”40 Now faith becomes “the principle of acts embodied in sensible nature.”41 Religion is literally practiced. Blondel rejects the notion that the infinite cannot be “contained” in contingent acts—that a supernatural religion cannot be practiced. In the first place, he has already demonstrated that the infinite is, already, the disproportion present in every proportionate act, that the efficacy by which the will is efficacious is an infinite efficacy, a perfect efficacy. But the question of proportionate action’s perfection is, precisely, one of further action, and Blondel describes a kind of elaboration, a “living commentary” where the surpassing knowledge of faith is surpassed by the concreteness of action.42 “For,” Blondel argues, “if ideas are forces, it is not just by what is already clear about them, but especially [by] what remains obscure about them . . . [that] we find, in the clarity of practice, something to illumine the obscurities of thought.”43 Blondel calls it a “practical dogmatism,” by which he means the opposite of reducing dogma to common-sense practicality.44 But how that can be is the question for the rest of this essay. Blondel’s notion of literal practice relies on a notion of dogma such that dogma commands not only intellectual assent but also the assent that is all of human action enlivened by a supernatural principle. It is a problem different from the question of faith and works, though they are cousins in certain respects. It is much more a problem of trying to assemble and describe the exigencies of supernatural religion in a way that preserves its status as supernatural while rejecting the claim that its being supernatural makes it unnecessary or superfluous to nature. If nature cannot in some way need religion, if religion is not in some way in concourse with the natural, then the secular universe is the only one truly necessary for understanding the world and, most importantly, for understanding human beings in the 40 41 42 43 44 Blondel, Action (1893), 371. Blondel, Action (1893), 378. Blondel, Action (1893), 377. Blondel, Action (1893), 379. Blondel, Action (1893), 383. 1318 Anne M. Carpenter world. I referenced this trouble in a previous section ( “Action: The Problem of Theory and Practice”). Now it returns for elaboration. “The Letter on Apologetics” establishes some of Blondel’s concerns in this regard. Topically, he is dealing with how immanent explanations of Christianity’s usefulness fail in their description of Christianity. This would be something like the argument that Christianity is helpful to people, that it has good morals, gives good discipline. “It is true,” he says, that one can explain why Christianity both satisfies and mortifies a man. But then either our natural resistance to the demands of the Gospel is accounted for like that which we oppose to the claims of everyday duty—and in that case we are still on the human level; or else it must be recognized that the supernatural troubles us because it is supernatural—and then we are faced with the whole question of why this superhuman trouble should be imposed on us as an obligation.45 The fruit of Christianity is not merely natural; its call to human beings is, however familiar its means, not a call to the familiar; and that which makes its bequest to us in Christianity is not another human thing among human things. “For what we find in ourselves is precisely not what we have to receive.”46 But if Christianity is pure exteriority, if its supernaturality is not only supernatural to nature but also alien to it, then not only is Christianity not required by the world or by human beings, but also requiring it of nature becomes intolerable domination, since nature feels no needfulness in itself for the supernaturally Christian. Blondel calls this problem “not the problem of believing in certain truths but the problem of faith in its formal and integral aspect.”47 Faith is not nature’s excess, which nature can then slough off as so much winter fur. But faith is excess in the sense that it is in excess of nature’s power. How to resolve these apparent contraries is the problem. As I have intimated, the resolution is not grace, which is supernatural—but it also is not not grace, which is supernatural. I would again invoke Heaps: “The aggregation of explanatory failures in which [Blondel’s] phenomenology of human action results provides the warrant for a negative, but heuristic conclusion: there remains ‘one thing necessary’ to explain human action and it cannot be 45 46 47 Blondel, “Letter on Apologetics,” 138. Blondel, “Letter on Apologetics,” 152–53. Blondel, “Letter on Apologetics,” 155. Maurice Blondel on the Practice of Supernatural Religion 1319 produced by human thinking or willing.”48 In his “Letter,” Blondel calls this negative heuristic a “necessity,” that is, the necessary conception, in human action’s self-conception, of a concomitant “possible heteronomy,” an “inevitable idea of a dependence of human reason and will.”49 It is the dependence of human reason and human willing upon the supernatural. But philosophy itself “cannot attach to the supernatural the sort of certainty which it confers on all that it affirms.” At its maximum, philosophy can only anticipate the interior, immanent preparations for what the supernatural alone could affirm, in affirming itself.50 Supernatural revelation, and therefore supernatural religion, do, however, become necessary for nature to ask about, and the reply that revelation poses to such a nature is not spoken in such a way that nature recognizes in itself no answering need, in its very questioning. Blondel explains: What is necessary is that, in some form which cannot be defined to cover particular cases, the thoughts and actions of each one of us together make up a drama which cannot reach its conclusion unless the decisive question arises, sooner or later, in the consciousness. Each one of us, simply by using that light which enlightens every man coming into this world, and by the use of his own resources, finds himself called upon to pronounce upon the problem of his destiny.51 Supernatural religion can at last appear as more than an intolerable burden, more than a tyranny of commands from a suddenly appearing divinity; for, what revelation commands of the nature it transfigures, this can nature receive, can it desire, can it “recognize” in the taste of its reception of what is supernatural to it. Grace, though not nature, nevertheless has nature as its object and instrument, and, in the “determinism” of its élan spanning always an infinite that it is not, nature does not greet grace as a foreign invader. “Thus we discover man’s natural incapacity not only to reach his supernatural end but also enclose to himself in his own natural order.”52 Supernatural revelation enters the universe by way of the universe’s basic heteronomy: the negation on the side of nature—that it requires what it is not—becomes, in grace, positive gift. “Our action,” says Blondel, “contains of 48 49 50 51 52 Blondel, “Letter on Apologetics,” 150. Blondel, “Letter on Apologetics,” 159. Blondel, “Letter on Apologetics,” 134. Blondel, “Letter on Apologetics,” 162. Blondel, “Letter on Apologetics,” 201. 1320 Anne M. Carpenter its nature a point of insertion.”53 In L’Action (1893), Blondel gives to revelation various qualities such as exterior, sensible sign, mediated by a mediator.54 In “History and Dogma,” it is historical, it regards historical facts but is more than the facts, and mediated by tradition. In the Testis essays, revelation is an afférence “from above”; it is ecclesial, and supernatural. The later works (here especially Pensée, Action, Être et les êtres) borrow all of this earlier terminology. Through all of his writing, Blondel insists that he remains speaking in a philosophical mode, and so he stresses those conditions and transfigurations that would be on the side of nature, and thus, since concrete, since natural in their aspect as effective in nature, are phenomena that philosophy can study. But revelation itself remains the realm of theology alone, and strictly so.55 Since, however, philosophy can study the exigencies of a nature that cannot close itself off at the supernatural, it can also make a study of supernatural religion’s literal practice. I focus more on this literal practice in a moment. For now, I want to pause to pull forward the intelligibility of literal practice, which Blondel associates with dogma and even our need for dogma. It is helpful first to note the kinds of dogmatisms that Blondel distinguishes from “dogma” in what we might call a “Catholic” sense. There is, for example, a problem I already mentioned: the negative moral dogmatism that, in attempting to counter the pure determination of a situation by the human will, leaves out the will that must creatively affirm dogma in a situation.56 Similarly, there is the sort of dogmatism that treats human thought as a “raw datum, a ready-made fragment.”57 Both of these dogmatisms secure themselves by a refusal to consider empirical reality: either the reality that, though situations differ and beings become, nevertheless they bear an intelligible élan that renders them coherent (which is to say, intelligible) even in their mutability; or the reality that thought is not first of all an object, but the action of a subject, nor first of all a whole that the finite reaches only ever partially, but a principle of intelligence in act. Even if dogma, as intelligible, is supra-intelligible with respect to finite intelligence, nevertheless it is intelligible and for intelligence. It is intelligible and intelligent first of all as a divine initiative and a divine intention for the world, where we understand the self-revelation of the Trinity to be a claim, among other things, that the divinity is intelligent, that God is in some sense 53 54 55 56 57 Blondel, “Letter on Apologetics,” 163. Blondel, Action (1893), 366–67. Even very late in his life, Blondel is concerned to protect theology in this way; see Philosophical Exigencies, 10–13. Blondel, L’Action (1936), 2:335. Blondel, L’Action (1936), 2:438. Maurice Blondel on the Practice of Supernatural Religion 1321 Intelligence itself. But dogma is also intelligible and intelligent as the gift of the divine Logos to humanity, making for a faith that, as Augustine would have it, is not only obedient but also intelligent, able to be an understanding and able to seek understanding. So the operation of human intelligence, the operation of a subject in act, is sustained in the life of faith, even as it must embrace the ascetic mysticism of analogy in order to embrace the divine mystery. “Our being in the process of becoming,” says Blondel, tends analogously to imitate by its genesis the living and intelligent action of the divine Spirit . . . by participating in some small way in a Thought that is always in act, far from being in God a nature undergone or in the universe an obscurely totalized reality, supposes a comprehensive and generous initiative whose principle is not all or all done in particular things or in universal immanence, but subsists eminently in the unique, absolute, intelligible and charitable transcendence of the divine mystery and of its creative design.58 Dogma is also historical, and in at least two senses: it is a claim about what God is doing in history in the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ himself is subject to history, and so is his Church. At one level, Blondel sets out to defend history, and therefore the historicity of dogma, as empirical in a richer sense than the material empiricism of the historical sciences of his time. History itself is not only its own material facticity. “History is not just phenomena that can be recorded on a film or on disc,” Blondel argues. “What is most historical is spiritual significance, the invisible reality, the concrete unity that takes shape underneath the superficial play of appearances. That is where lies the truth of Catholicism.”59 This spiritual significance is attributable to historical fact because historical facts are made, or come to be, through human action, and human action—as we have seen in the preceding argument of this paper—is not mere epiphenomenal exteriority, but an élan that bears the gravity of its own freedom. 58 59 Blondel, L’Action (1936), 2:527: “Et c’est pour cela que notre être en devenir tend analogiquement à imiter par sa genèse la vivante et intelligente action de l’Esprit divin en ne subissant pas la pensée comme une donnée brute, comme une parcelle toute faite d’une réalité diffuse ou incluse dans l’univers, mais en participant si peu que ce soit à une Pensée toujours en acte qui, loin d’être en Dieu une nature subie ou dans l’univers une réalité obscurément totalisée, suppose une initiative compréhensive et généreuse dont le principe n’est pas tout entier ni tout fait dans les choses particulières ou dans l’immanence universelle, mais subsiste éminemment dans la transcendance unique, absolue, intelligible et charitable, du mystère divin et de son dessein créateur.” Blondel, Philosophical Exigencies, 28. 1322 Anne M. Carpenter Because human history is not only fact but is also human action, or because human history is fact by way of human action, Blondel’s careful and elaborate exegesis of human action makes it possible for dogma to be historical in its two essential senses as the intelligibility of what God is doing in history and as sustained in and across history. For, human action already relies on the supernatural for its efficacy, and is already capable of a renunciation that allows God to supernaturally act in its action. Blondel’s “dogma” is something like John Henry Newman’s “Christian idea” in that respect. Similarly, because human action is not only intelligent but also free, not only an intelligence in act but also the transcendence of that action into the world, and not only fact but also faced with the decision of its destiny—because of this, dogma can and must be practiced. Action: The Literal Practice of Religion I have left aside the problem of theory and practice with which I began this essay. In this last section, I can return to the problem with some sense of its Blondelian resolution. Or, I should not say “resolution.” Nor is it “synthesis.” It is something more like “body” as Blondel uses it in “body of action”: a many held together by the action of its élan. In such a body, neither theory nor practice wins the day. Instead, the two remain distinct but entwined in a dialectic of mutual enrichment. “A theory,” he writes, “never exhausts in advance the practice which it serves to arouse, to guide, to control; and human action never does without a speculative view, retrospective support, anticipatory prospection.”60 The concreteness of their dynamic irresolution and dependence anticipates, and in a certain sense is, the openness of the natural to the supernatural: Recognizing this flaw is to pave the way, the only possible [way], the only beneficial way to a genuine solution. And the advantage of having demonstrated at the same time the limits of theory and those of practice, their imperfect but undeniable connection, their very real scope but [their] not reaching the desired and required point of convergence, is there [in its solution], an infinitely precious opening for speculative effort and for the unstoppable and unsatisfied demands of humanity.61 60 61 Blondel, L’Action (1936), 2:413: “Jamais une théorie n’épuise d’avance la pratique qu’elle sert à susciter, à guider, à contrôler ;—et jamais non plus l’action humaine ne se passe de vue spéculative, d’appui rétrospectif, de prospection anticipatrice.” Blondel, L’Action (1936), 2:415: “Reconnaître cette faille, c’est ouvrir la voie, la seule Maurice Blondel on the Practice of Supernatural Religion 1323 After this study in the pages above, it is easier to “see” in Blondel’s expression here what is less a total aporia, and still less a nature without an integrity that we might call its “own,” but rather what is a nature whose reality is “integral” in Blondel’s specified sense, where reality is natural and supernatural. Recall that, for Blondel, a purely immanent explanation of human action fails, not just at its ultimate, but also at every single successive integrative level expressed by its élan. Recall as well that Blondel insists that dogma, which mediates an intelligibility that is “infinite” or radically disproportionate to contingent nature, can be affirmed by human action even before it receives its most developed expression by human intelligence. As we saw in both of these positions, Blondel does not reject intelligibility or even propositional truths. That is the mistake that his secular colleagues in philosophy make. Rather, he secures intelligence and truth by conceiving of them not so much as practical—which refutes truth apart from a concrete instance of practice— but as practicable, as affirmed not only by the assent of the mind but also by the freedom of the will, which enriches the action of intelligence with the concreteness of further action, the concreteness of practice. In other words, practice is also intelligent. (Or else it is sin.) And since it is also free, practice by its very contingency affirms truth in or by way of a concrete instance. If “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb 13:8), then Christian practice contributes to this temporal “same” in its affirmations across concrete instances, which vary as concrete, but which do not vary as intelligible. In an integral universe, a non-competitive relationship between dogmatic truth and practical contingency is possible. This is not because dogma sits “above” the contingent, throwing the shadows of a single object on the water of time as it passes. Rather, divine revelation is itself historical; what it communicates is divine, and in this sense its very principle of communication is divine; its secondary or proximate principle of communication is the principle of human history, which is human action. In his very last work, Philosophical Exigencies of the Christian Religion, Blondel explains: “We will be able to call ourselves Christians only on this twofold condition: that we accept as historical certitudes certain facts that we can call dogmatic, . . . that never remain in the state of speculative mysteries, but that must pass into us as principles of spiritual vivification and of transformative union.”62 Dogma 62 possible, la seule salutaire à une solution authentique. Et l’avantage d’avoir avéré en même temps les limites de la théorie et celles de la pratique, leur connexion imparfaite mais indéniable, leur portée très réelle mais n’aboutissant pas jusqu’au point de convergence désirée et requise, c’est là, pour l’effort spéculatif et pour les exigences incoercibles et insatisfaites de l’humanité, une ouverture infiniment précieuse.” Blondel, Philosophical Exigencies, 11. 1324 Anne M. Carpenter “can” vivify in one sense because contingent reality already relies on the supernatural for its efficacy; in another sense, dogma “can” vivify because contingent freedom is able to accept and cooperate with a further reliance, or a specified type of reliance, on the supernatural, and this we call grace. “There remains in us a place accessible and destined only for God,” says Blondel. “If God is not admitted by us to occupy this center and to make unity in us, then we have damnation, with disunion of parts, the intestinal discord that divides being like fire disintegrates bodies.”63 So the literal practice of religion is, for Blondel, a type of affirmation and a type of elaboration. It is an affirmation in the sense that an infinite thought for the world, God’s own, receives a contingent agreement; and of course this infinite thought is prior to all contingency, but affirmed as real in the contingent universe in this agreement. It is an elaboration in the precise sense that everything that is contingent is not God, and so the alterity of contingent existence can receive what it itself is not. Therefore Christianity, says Blondel, is “a permanent simplicity, a directive idea, an action ever identical to itself and nevertheless constantly creative.”64 Or again: “There is only one Christian spirit quite simple and quite straightforward; and yet there is infinite diversity, each soul having, as it is said in the Apocalypse, its single name, proper to it and secret.”65 By way of conclusion, we might say that one of Blondel’s great labors, in rendering a more complicated portrait of human action, is to allow this action its immense spiritual gravity, the seriousness of life. But he also breaks open action so that its significance is everywhere rather than reserved to the most grandiose gestures. It is our every gesture that is almost unbearably real, committing us whether we would like it or not. Similarly, the dialectic of dependence and difference that persists between theory and practice is, instead of a failure, an opportunity for the enrichment of theory and practice with the gravity of being human. Supernatural religion, Blondel insists, can be literally practiced. On this we in fact depend. “The question of freedom and of action,” he says, “places us inevitably before the dilemma: participate in the divine initiative by identifying our willing with the very willing of the first cause, or else try in an egoistic autonomy to constitute ourselves. . . . This convergence, about which there is nothing accidental, arbitrary, or avoidable, manifests the profoundly realistic character of Christian religion.”66 63 64 65 66 Blondel, Philosophical Exigencies, 22. Blondel, Philosophical Exigencies, 29. Blondel, Philosophical Exigencies, 43. Blondel, Philosophical Exigencies, 86. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2023): 1325–1336 1325 Augustine on the True Presence and the Eucharist as Sacrament of Unity Elizabeth Klein Augustine Institute Denver, CO Augustine’s understanding of the Eucharist has been a thorny topic for theologians (both within the academy and without) since the Reformation.1 Ulrich Zwingli cited Augustine as an authority in favor of his merely symbolic understanding of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist at the colloquy of Marburg, to which Martin Luther reportedly conceded: “You have Augustine and Fulgentius on your side, but we have all the other fathers.”2 John Calvin also insistently took Augustine to be in his camp on the question of the Eucharist, citing, for example, Augustine’s John commentary in a refutation of the Roman doctrine of transubstantiation—specifically regarding what happens when an unbeliever eats of the Eucharist: “Let those, therefore, who make unbelievers partakers of the flesh and blood of Christ, if they would agree with Augustine, set before us the visible body of Christ, since, according to him, the whole truth is spiritual.”3 To this day, some Protestant commentators maintain a narrative about the theology of the Eucharist that follows a trajectory something like this: Augustine had a more spiritual or symbolic understanding of the 1 2 3 Augustine was, of course, also cited in earlier Eucharistic debates (such as in the dispute between Ratramnus and Paschasius), but the modern debate certainly traces back to the intense controversy surrounding transubstantiation during the Reformation. Reported in Philip Schaff, History of the Church, 3rd ed., vol. 7 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2006), no. 108. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 17.34, trans. and ed. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845). 1326 Elizabeth Klein sacrament, but this understanding was slowly effaced in the early to late Middle Ages, and then recovered at the Reformation. Correspondingly, in academia, Augustine’s theology of the sacraments is often ignored or underplayed, no doubt in part due to the inheritance of this Protestant memorialist narrative. At the heart of the debate over Augustine’s view of the Eucharist is his view of the effect of the sacraments. Are the sacraments, and the Eucharist in particular, a cause of sanctification for Augustine? Or are they merely a kind of symbol or reminder, one means among many for strengthening faith? Phillip Cary, perhaps the most vigorous opponent of seeing any efficacy in Augustine’s sacramental theology, argues that Augustine “has no room for such a notion, which I shall label ‘efficacious external means of grace.’”4 But, at the same time, the Catechism of the Catholic Church draws liberally from Augustine in its description of the Eucharist and its effects (for example, see §§1372, 1396, and 1398), as does Thomas Aquinas—particularly on the question pertaining to the effect of the sacrament.5 How can Augustine’s legacy be so hotly contested, claimed by two opposing camps on such an essential theological question? The short answer is that Augustine speaks about Christ’s presence in the Eucharist as symbolic and as real in equal measure, and that both modes of expression were entirely natural to him. But that is not a wholly adequate answer. What is Augustine’s Eucharistic theology and how does it accommodate this breadth of expression? What does the Eucharist really mean for him? Part of the difficulty of discerning Augustine’s Eucharistic theology is his reticence to speak about it directly,6 but let us take as our point of departure two passages from book 4 5 6 Phillip Cary, Outward Signs: The Powerlessness of External Things in Augustine's Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), ix. See, for example, Summa theologiae [ST] III, q. 73, aa. 3 and 5; q. 74, aa. 1 and 3; q. 75, a. 5; q. 77, a. 7; q. 78, a. 5. On the effect, see ST III, q. 79, aa. 1–2 and 6–7. Part of this silence comes from Augustine’s strict adherence to the disciplina arcani. James O’Donnell notes: “In all the years after his baptism and ordination, in all the five million surviving words of his works, Augustine never describes or discusses the cult act that was the centre of his ordained ministry” (introduction in Augustine, Confessions, vol. 1 [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012], xxix). Augustine often uses circumlocutions (for example: Sermones ad Populum 37.27; 132.1; Enarratione in Psalmos 48.3) or suggests that only the faithful will really know what he is talking about (for a few examples, see Sermones ad Populum 4.31; 5.7; 58.5; 90.1; 198 [=Dolbeau 26]; Enarratione in Psalmos 21.27; 32.2.2; 33.5; 39.12; In Iohannis evangelium tractatus 26.13; De Civitate Dei 10.6). The few places where he discusses the Eucharist at any length and fairly openly are in De civ. 10, in his homilies on John 6, and in his homilies to the neophytes during Easter week, but even in these texts he is often more indirect than one would like. Augustine on the True Presence and the Eucharist as Sacrament of Unity 1327 1 of De doctrina Christiana in which Augustine explicitly mentions the Eucharist and where he sounds, at first blush, very much like a Zwinglian. Those, you see, who practice or venerate some kind of thing which is a significant sign, unaware of what it signifies, are enslaved under signs, while those who either carry out or venerate useful signs established by God, fully understanding their force and significance, are not in fact venerating what can be seen and passes away, but rather that reality to which all such things are to be referred. . . . In this time, though, after the clearest indication of our freedom has shone upon us in the resurrection of our Lord, we are no longer burdened with the heavy duty of carrying out even those signs [i.e., of the old covenant] whose meaning we now understand. But the Lord himself and the discipline of the apostles has handed down to us just a few signs instead of many, and these so easy to perform, and so awesome to understand, and so pure and chaste to celebrate, such as the sacrament of baptism, and the celebration of the Lord’s body and blood. When people receive these, they have been so instructed that they can recognize to what sublime realities they are to be referred, and so they venerate them in a spirit not of carnal slavery, but rather of spiritual freedom.7 After this introduction to the signs of the old and new covenants, Augustine begins to give examples and to explain how one determines if something in Scripture is literal or figurative. In this context, he brings up John 6:53: If it is an expression of command, either forbidding infamy or crime, or ordering usefulness or kindness, it is not figurative. But if it seems to command infamy or crime, or to forbid usefulness or kindness, then it is figurative. Unless you eat, he says, the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you ( Jn 6:53). He seems to be commanding a crime or an act of infamy; so it is said figuratively, instructing us that we must share in the Lord’s passion, and store away in our minds the sweet and useful memory that his flesh was crucified and wounded for our sakes.8 7 8 De doctrina Christiana 1.3.9, in Teaching Christianity (De Doctrina Christiana), trans. Edmund Hill (1991; rep. New York: New City, 2017). De doc. 1.6.24. He speaks similarly about John 6, e.g. in In Iohan. ev. tract. 27.11, where he says that John 6 tells us “about those who were scandalized who knew spiritual things in a carnal way” (trans. Edmund Hill [Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2009]). 1328 Elizabeth Klein The sum total of these two texts is that Augustine admonishes us not to take John 6 too literally, or we will fall into practicing useless signs, as did many in the old covenant. Eating the flesh of Christ means conforming ourselves to him and remembering him. Why would Augustine say such things if he had a robust understanding of the true presence, even if on necessarily different terms from the later doctrine of transubstantiation? Some historical context will help us to see what he means. Firstly, it is not credible that Augustine had the same kind of spiritualized understanding of cultic practices as some of the Reformers did, nor as modern people do. For every citation from Augustine that sounds highly symbolic in regards to the Eucharist, one can find another that sounds highly realistic. For example, Augustine can say, “recognize in the bread what hung on the cross, and in the cup what flowed from his side.”9 Moreover, Augustine’s cultural context is simply a highly cultic one. J. J. O’Donnell writes: Why do we downplay cult initiation for Augustine? There are several reasons, beginning with our own prejudices. Few modern scholars (indeed, few moderns of any stripe, including the most ardent proponents of a traditional doctrine of transubstantiation) hold a view of the importance and efficacy of cult acts that even remotely approaches the visceral reverence for cult that all late antique men and women felt.10 And, if one looks at Ambrose’s mystagogical catechesis, the very same sort that Augustine himself had heard from Ambrose, it is hard to imagine Augustine being trained to think of the Eucharist in any kind of solely spiritualized way.11 Allan Fitzgerald likewise writes: It has often been asked whether Augustine taught the same doctrine as we presently hold. . . . Some scholars, by way of comparison, said that Augustine only believed in a symbolic presence, while Ambrose believed in a real presence of Christ. These discussions failed to recognize the mindset that Ambrose and Augustine shared: they simply presumed the real presence of Christ. Not having to defend that nor 9 10 11 Sermones ad Populum 228.2. Pamela Jackson catalogs a series of highly realistic quotations in Augustine alongside highly symbolic ones in “Eucharist,” in Augustine through the Ages, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 332–33. O’Donnell, Confessions, 1:xxviii. See, for example, Ambrose, De Mysteriis 9.54–55. Augustine on the True Presence and the Eucharist as Sacrament of Unity 1329 any other aspect of Eucharistic doctrine, their pastoral objectives were focused on other problems.12 We, therefore, have to bear in mind Augustine’s audience: he is writing and preaching to a Christian community that is already inclined to an unhealthy or overly simplistic view of cultic acts.13 But even more specifically, Augustine’s chief theological opponents at the time of his writing the first book of De doctrina are the Donatists. According to Augustine, the Donatists have precisely the kind of literalistic understanding of the Church and of the Eucharist that he is worried about; they act as if intercommunion with a sinner could contaminate the soul, and as if the signified, we might say, of the visible Church (that is, the Church triumphant) is going to be manifested on the earth.14 Regarding these passages in De doctrina, Rowan Williams therefore comments To look at the cross then, and to “sign” ourselves with it, is to accept the same limits [i.e., the limits of history and therefore of signs] and to live in hope, and Augustine adds, oddly at first sight, to have proper reverence for the sacraments; not so odd if we see this as a further illustration of the need to see the symbolic life of the Church itself as pointing beyond itself, rather than providing a ground for spiritual complacency and stasis (as for the Donatists, perhaps, whom Augustine certainly has in mind here).15 12 13 14 15 Allan D. Fitzgerald, “Saint Augustine and the Eucharist: The Presence of the Church,” in Our Journey Back to God: Reflections on Augustinian Spirituality, ed. M. A. Keller (Rome: Curia Generalizia Agostiniana, 2006), 240. That his audience had such an inclination is implicit in the strong anti-carpharnaitism of his homilies on John 6. Take, for example, In Iohan. ev. tract. 27.15: “What is this then, the flesh is no use at all? It is no use at all, but in the way those people understood it; they understood flesh as that which is torn off a cadaver or sold at the butcher’s.” Patout Burns also argues that the context of the Donatist controversy is essential for understanding Augustine’s Eucharistic theology. By emphasizing ecclesial unity (what we might now call the mystical body) as the res of the sacrament, rather than Christ’s historical or resurrected body as such, Burns argues that Augustine is able to completely sidestep any question about what happened at Donatist Eucharists; in schism they had a sign with no signified (“The Eucharist as the Foundation of Christian Unity is North African Theology,” Augustinian Studies 32, no. 1 [2001]: 1–23, at 15–17; see also 22 regarding the idea that Augustine’s theology excludes the possibility of pollution spreading through the Church). Rowan Williams, “Language, Reality and Desire: The Nature of Christian Formation,” in On Augustine (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 49. 1330 Elizabeth Klein In light of this historical context, we will now hear Augustine’s warning in De doctrina loud and clear. Just as many under the old covenant did not understand the spiritual meaning of the signs that they performed, so also if we think our salvation is a fait accompli by the mere practice of cult, we are gravely mistaken.16 We might think of the Donatists as having the opposite temptation of the memorialists. If memorialists think of the Eucharist as a sign but not a destination (i.e., as a means or way but not an end), then the Donatists think of the Eucharist as a destination but not as a sign. For a Donatist, if you receive, you have arrived, which is why there is such high stakes when it comes to who receives and from whom.17 Augustine’s position lies in between these two extremes, and he is not arguing for the Zwinglian one simply because he rejects the Donatist: the Eucharist is a sign, but it is only a sacrament because it actually does signify. If the Eucharist does not do anything, if it does not convey what is being signified, if it does not actually begin the work of sanctification, then it is only a carnal sign received in the spirit of slavery, as in the case of many under the old law and of the Donatists. Articulating this understanding of Augustine’s Eucharistic theology helps us to understand the fittingness of the image of journeying that appears earlier on in book 1 of De doctrina. There, Augustine is explaining his distinction between what is to be used and what is to be enjoyed. He says that everything except God is to be used, like a sea-faring vessel or land vehicle that conveys us to the homeland from which we are in exile. If we fall in love with the journey or the vehicle—the things to be used—we will never reach our destination.18 If we apply this paradigm to the sacraments, we could hear Augustine saying that the sacraments are simply a kind of tool employed for a task and then discarded. That reading would be a mistake, however, as is clear from the fact that our neighbors are also, according to Augustine, to be used,19 but they are not merely a means to an end, nor will they be discarded when we are at journey’s end. Instead, what Augustine is trying to express is that things are loved properly precisely when they bring us to God and when they are done for God’s sake. If anything is 16 17 18 19 See In Iohan. ev. tract. 26.15 and 27.11. Fitzgerald summarizes Augustine’s concern by saying: “An instinctive reverence for religion was not enough for Augustine; he would show the weakness and the falsity of pagan claims about their worship” (“Saint Augustine and the Eucharist,” 241). See Burns, “Eucharist as the Foundation,” 18–19, on the North African view of unity with the Church as essential for salvation. De doc. 1.4.4. De doc. 1.22.20. Augustine on the True Presence and the Eucharist as Sacrament of Unity 1331 possessed privately or if anything is taken to be our final destination other than God, we will love improperly, both the neighbor and God. This explanation of use and enjoyment with reference to a vehicle is actually a very helpful analogy for illuminating our discussion about the Eucharist.20 The Donatists board the ship and think they have reached the homeland. The memorialists believe that the ship is simply supposed to remind them of the homeland. Augustine understands that one must board a ship bound for the homeland but never mistake that ship for the final resting place—that is, not mistake coming to the altar for coming to the beatific vision; rather, we must allow the sacrament to transport us there through the continued process of sanctification that it offers. And the sacraments, like all those neighbors that we use in order to enjoy God, are not discarded in the beatific vision; rather, they come to their resting place on that distant shore along with us. In short, they convey us to the signified. Understanding this Augustinian view of the sacraments, I think, also helps us to see why he used the word “sacrament” in such a capacious way: for him, “sacrament” can refer to any mystery, including those in Scripture, that point us to God and can be used by us to get to him. Even so, what we would now consider more narrowly the sacraments of the Church are still set apart from other signs in that they are not a mere word, but a word added to a material element—which is Augustine’s definition of sacrament21 used throughout the Middle Ages and beyond, including in both Luther and Calvin—and among these sacraments, the Eucharist is unique. If I have contended that the Eucharist must do its signifying work in order to be truly a sacrament, what work does the Eucharist do in particular? The Eucharist is the body of Christ, which, according to Augustine, effects unity: unity with each other and with God. It would be hard to overstate how important this idea of unity is for Augustine. For him, unity with Christ in his body the Church constitutes salvation. Be in Christ’s body, Augustine says, and you will go into heaven where the head has gone.22 Christ’s body— in the Incarnation, in the Church, and in the Eucharist23—is the center of Augustinian theology around which everything else orbits. 20 21 22 23 Augustine uses the image of a ship bound for the homeland also for the Church (see, for example, Sermones ad Populum 75), which likewise is brought to its completion rather than discarded upon arrival. In Iohan. ev. tract. 80.3. See, for example, Sermones ad Populum 272 and In Iohan. ev. tract. 26.13. In both these instances, this soteriological explanation comes in the context of a discussion of the Eucharist. See also Sermones ad Populum 341. Tarcisius van Bavel also expounds on these three 1332 Elizabeth Klein De Trinitate book 4, which is essentially a short treatise on salvation, is helpful for showing this centrality of the sacrament of Christ’s body. The main thrust of Augustine’s argument in this book is to show how Christ is the perfect mediator and harmonizer, bringing together and fulfilling in his person disparate or divided things—soul and body, word and meaning, priest and sacrifice, time and eternity—in short, God and man. “The sinner did not match the just, but man did match man. So he applied to us the similarity of his humanity to take away the dissimilarity of our iniquity, and becoming a partaker of our mortality, he made us partakers of his divinity.”24 This unification occurs by way of the sacrament of Christ’s body: But being clothed with mortal flesh, in that alone he died and in that alone he rose again; and so in that alone he harmonized with each part of us by becoming in that flesh the sacrament for the inner man and the model for the outer one.25 Here Augustine underscores the importance of the body of Christ as sacrament for the sake of the “inner man.” What is the inner man? The Pauline language of the inner and outer man is critical to the latter half of De Trinitate, where Augustine is searching for the image of God in humankind. This 24 25 meanings of “body of Christ” for Augustine (historical, Eucharistic, and ecclesial): “These three meanings are strongly interconnected and cannot be separated from one another.” His article aims at demonstrating the importance of the Christus totus, including how this ought to shape our understanding of Augustine’s Eucharistic theology (“The ‘Christus Totus’ Idea: A Forgotten Aspect of Augustine’s Spirituality,” in Studies in Patristic Christology, ed. Thomas Finan and Vincent Twomey [Dublin: Four Courts, 1998], 84–94). By contrast, Patout Burns argues that the historical body of Christ is “sharply contrasted” with his ecclesial body in Augustine’s Eucharistic thought (see “Eucharist as the Foundation,” 11). Due to Augustine’s understanding of the intimate unity of Christus totus, it is not totally clear to me why Burns makes this claim; he references the Easter sermons to the neophytes (see Sermones ad Populum 225–29 and 272). I take Augustine in those sermons to be explaining how Christ’s body can be present in the Eucharist when he has already ascended into heaven. He does so not by contrasting Christ’s historical body and his ecclesial one, but by showing how they are of a piece and mediated by the sacrament. The tone is one of common sense (i.e., we do not see Christ here at the liturgy, and we know that he went into heaven, so why do we call this bread his body?)—see for example, his explanation in Sermon 272. In short, I take Augustine to be explaining the mode of Christ’s presence, not attempting to distinguish and separate Christ’s historical body from his ecclesial one. De Trinitate 4.2.4, trans. Edmund Hill (New York: New City, 1991). De Trin. 4.3.6: “Sed indutus carne mortali et sola moriens, sola resurgens, ea sola nobis ad utrumque concinuit cum in ea fieret interioris hominis sacramentum, exterioris exemplum.” Augustine on the True Presence and the Eucharist as Sacrament of Unity 1333 image, he says, can only be found in our inner man, that is, in our mind as it worships God.26 The outer man, by contrast, refers to our mind as it works on things in the world, and so encompasses everything from sense perceptions to the cardinal virtues; 27 an exploration of the outer man occupies books 9–13. Even faith, Augustine argues, belongs to the outer man, since we will no longer need to have faith in the beatific vision.28 Understanding to what the phrase “inner man” refers makes Augustine’s argument in book 4 all the more striking: it was in his flesh alone that Christ was the sacrament for the inner man, and this sacrament is surely a material sign that effects what it signifies, meaning that the death and resurrection of Christ’s flesh defeats death and effects the resurrection of the inner man. It would be quite odd for Augustine to emphasize this sacrament that is the flesh of Christ if, for him, there was no such thing as an external means of efficacious grace. One would expect him to emphasize that the grace flowed more so from Christ’s intention or his spirit or something of that kind, but Augustine’s point is that body and soul in Christ are in complete harmony, and that the Cross accomplishes that harmony in all humankind. In other words, it was the act of Christ’s mortal flesh that harmonized us with ourselves interiorly and with God (the inner man), and which gave us the perfect model exteriorly to imitate in our actions in the world (the outer man). If in the Eucharist we have that same sacrament, that same mystery, it is no surprise that Augustine can speak about it both as the sacrament for the inner man (i.e., as a means of grace, as a means of unity with God) and also a symbol or a reminder (i.e., the prime model for the outer man, recalling that even faith belongs to the outer man). But given the argument of De Trinitate, we should not even be so quick to assume that, when Augustine is speaking of keeping Christ in our memory as he does in book 1 of De doctrina when he admonishes us to “store away in our minds the sweet and useful memory that his flesh was crucified and wounded for our sakes,”29 he is strictly speaking about the outer man, that is, that he is simply exhorting us to think about Christ or to have faith in his death and resurrection. His entire argument about memory towards the end De Trinitate is that memory is the ground of our being, that it refers not simply to recalling past events, but to being recalled to God.30 That is the first and most fundamental stage of conversion. It is no coincidence, then, that book 14 of De Trinitate, which is the last step 26 27 28 29 30 See especially De Trin. 14.1.1 and 14.4.15. De Trin. 14.3.12. See De Trin. 14.1.3–5. De doc. 1.6.24. De Trin. 14.4.21. 1334 Elizabeth Klein of his argument in attempting to locate the image of the Trinity in the inner man, is replete with liturgical references. Book 14 demonstrates that it is by baptism and by “turning to the Lord”31 in the Eucharistic liturgy that the inner man is being renewed; in other words, it is being renewed by the flesh of Christ that is the sacrament for the inner man. Augustine’s fascination with memory as the place of encountering God is also evident elsewhere, most notably in Confessiones book 10, a book written in a Eucharistic key.32 Moreover, in De Trinitate book 1, Augustine also speaks about the humanity of Christ as having the function of a sign, just as he does for the sacraments in De doctrina. He is trying to explain the meaning of 1 Cor 15:24: “Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power.” The verse would seem to imply that Christ is less than the Father. To explain it, Augustine appeals to his hermeneutic of Philippians 2, namely, that we can speak of Christ either in the form of God or in the form of slave (or both), and that this verse is therefore referring to Christ in his humanity. But Augustine goes further: what could that possibly mean that Christ in his humanity hands over the kingdom? He explains that the verse means “when he brings believers to a direct contemplation of God and the Father,” that is, “when there is no more need for the regime of symbols administered by angels; . . . we see now through a glass in a puzzle, that is in symbols, but then it shall be face to face.”33 Recall that Augustine is explaining what Paul is saying about Christ in the form of slave, that is, in his humanity. Christ’s humanity is a sign, which Augustine goes on to demonstrate with the example of Philip, who did not yet understand that when he saw Christ he was also seeing Father.34 Christ affirms his divinity in his exchange with Philip, but also acknowledges that it requires faith to see it, because his humanity is a sign that is not completely transparent; Christ has not yet handed over the kingdom. Rehearsing a theme that we have already seen, Augustine explains that Christ handing over the kingdom finally means incorporating us into his body and bringing it to where the head is: “His faithful, after all, whom he 31 32 33 34 De Trin. 14.4.21–5.22, Augustine in these passages twice echoes the conversi ad Dominum (“turn to the Lord”), a summons which Augustine himself would give to his congregation after the homily. It indicates turning to the Lord in prayer, which perhaps included physically turning to the East. For more on this point, see John Cavadini, “Eucharistic Exegesis in Augustine’s Confessions,” in Visioning Augustine (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2019), 184–211. See also Fitzgerald’s discussion of Conf. 10.42.67–70, the strongly Eucharistic conclusion of that book, in “Saint Augustine and the Eucharist,” 244–47. De Trin. 1.8.16. De Trin. 1.8.17. Augustine on the True Presence and the Eucharist as Sacrament of Unity 1335 bought with his blood, are called his kingdom (Rv 1:5), and he now makes intercession for them (Rom 8:34), but then he will attach them to himself there where he is equal to the Father, and will no longer beg the Father for them.”35 Christ’s body—his humanity and the Church together—will be delivered to the Father, and all signs will cease. So, for Augustine, that Christ will hand over the kingdom does not mean that Christ’s humanity is not the locus of his divinity, nor does it mean that Christ’s humanity ceases to exist in the beatific vision. Rather, it means that Christ’s body the Church is still in via, and finally it will be brought to where the head is already, resting in the bosom of the Father. Furthermore, it means we require faith to see Christ’s humanity for what it is. So also, we should understand that when Augustine speaks of the Eucharist (which is Christ’s body available to us now36) as a sign, or as a vehicle, he does not mean that it is not also the true presence of Christ who is divine, nor does he mean that the Eucharist is simply a tool to be discarded, but that this body is the way by which we are brought finally to the Father. It is also the body of Christ even if we require faith to receive it for what it is. We are perhaps not used to Augustine’s way of speaking about the Eucharist, but I think it has something important and timely to communicate to us. If the Eucharist is not doing its signifying work, if it is not ordered towards effecting unity, according to Augustine, we will receive it to our damnation, like the Donatists. If we think that, by virtue of receiving the Eucharist, we have come to our final destination, we will actually thwart the work of the sacrament. The Eucharist, as Christ’s body, is the way that is also our end; it is the sign that effects what it signifies. It is also, as the Catechism puts it, “an anticipation of the heavenly glory” (§1402).37 But now in this time it is still operating as the way, it is still actively signifying as a sign. And so follows Augustine’s famous but seemingly redundant advice to the neophytes: “Be what you receive, and receive what you are.”38 By this he means that in the 35 36 37 38 De Trin. 1.10.21. A point that Augustine expresses in an especially poignant way in Sermones ad Populum 235.5, where he sees in the road to Emmaus an important pedagogical moment for the Church: “Ah yes, brothers and sisters, but where did the Lord wish to be recognized? In the breaking of bread. . . . It was for our sakes that he didn’t want to be recognized anywhere but there, because we weren’t going to see him in the flesh, and yet we were going to eat his flesh.” Gerald Bonner also argues that, for Augustine, the Eucharist is the moment when the eschatological Church is glimpsed (“The Church and the Eucharist in the Theology of St. Augustine,” Sobornost 7, no. 6 [1978]: 448–61). Sermon 272. 1336 Elizabeth Klein Eucharist we truly receive perfected humanity in unity with divinity,39 and at the same time we are not yet perfect. We are not yet in unity with the divine, and so we must let the sacrament do its work of sanctification in us so that, as Augustine admonishes, our “amen” might be true. 39 Burns argues strongly that Augustine does not have the Alexandrian conception of Christ’s divinity being applied to our humanity in the Eucharist, as a means of healing corruption. I have aimed to show through my discussion of De Trinitate 4 that he does indeed have some such conception, albeit in a different modality from that of the Alexandrians—it is unity with Christ as mediator and harmonizer that allows us to be restored as human beings and united to the divine. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2023): 1337–1370 1337 Sacramental Character and the Pattern of Theological Life: Medieval Context and Early Modern Reception Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. Dominican House of Studies Washington, D.C. In question 63 of the tertia pars, Thomas Aquinas defines the so-called character that is conferred by certain sacraments (namely baptism, confirmation, and holy orders), as a secondary effect caused by the sacraments, with grace itself identified as the primary effect. As separated instruments of the humanity of Christ, in his mature work in the Summa theologiae Aquinas argues that all Christian sacraments are perfective instrumental causes of the effect of the Incarnation in the human persons who receive them.1 As instrumental means by which these effects are conferred, therefore, for Aquinas the sapiential intelligibility of the sacraments is found in the larger sweep of sacra doctrina and the Incarnation, wherein the ratio and necessity of these larger theological themes contextualize Aquinas’s understanding of the necessity of the sacraments themselves as instrumental extensions of the same.2 Taken in itself, aspects of what would later become the question of sacramental character for Scholastics first emerged as a doctrinal topic in the context of patristic debates over the permanence of the sacrament of baptism.3 In the Latin West, the influence of Augustine’s distinction between the permanence of the sacramentum received in baptism and its use in charity proved to be a ubiquitous influ1 2 3 See Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] III, qq. 62–63. For the necessity of sacra doctrina, the Incarnation, and the sacraments, see, e.g., Aquinas, ST I, q. 1, a. 1 ; III, q. 1, a. 2; q. 61. See Jean Galot, La nature du caractère sacramentel, 2nd ed. (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1958). 1338 Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. ence for later Latin theology.4 Concerning the metaphysical nature of this character, however, in both his Sentences commentary and Summa theologiae, Aquinas joins an ongoing conversation among thirteenth-century Scholastics about the utility of the Aristotelian categories for describing sacramental character. What is sacramental character specifically, and how should this be understood in relation to the wider speculative complexities of grace, the infused virtues and gifts, and beatitude? Because of continued controversy over the role of Aristotelianism in theology during the second half of the thirteenth century, many Scholastics of Aquinas’s generation analyzed the quiddity of sacramental character from an Aristotelian perspective, working to describe the doctrine inherited from the Church’s tradition using Aristotelian terminology. As will be shown, although some argued that sacramental character should be understood as a habitus, Aquinas argues that character is better understood as a power. The second and third sections of this article will explore the development of Scholastic accounts of the quiddity of sacramental character during the medieval and early modern periods, and the wider theological implications of these conversations. In the final analysis, it is my aim to show not only that Aquinas’s account of sacramental character is intrinsically fitting on theological grounds, but that Aquinas’s account of sacramental character as a qualitative power conveys and preserves the received theological tradition more effectively than the options proposed by some of his contemporaries. With these larger objectives in mind, the first section of this article serves as a necessary historical prelude—what, precisely, is at stake from the wider perspective of the Church’s theological tradition in these medieval and early modern Scholastic debates? Accordingly, the first section will provide an overview of the historical development of the doctrine of sacramental character, focusing specifically on the way in which certain Augustinian doctrinal concepts and linguistic usages developed in later medieval usage and ultimately came to be incorporated into the framework of Peter Lombard’s Sentences—the text that would serve as the common backdrop for the Scholastic conversations about the “quiddity” of this same doctrine. In the following, therefore, this article will begin by examining the origins of the doctrine of sacramental character in Latin theology in Augustine’s baptismal theology. Building on this foundation, our attention will turn to Peter Lombard’s reception of Augustine’s as the context in which 4 Nicholas M. Haring, “St. Augustine’s Use of the Word Character,” Mediaeval Studies 14 (1952): 79–97; Haring, “A Brief Historical Comment on St. Thomas, Summa Theol. III qu. 67, a. 5: Utrum non baptizatus possit sacramentum baptismi conferre,” Mediaeval Studies 14 (1952): 153–59. Sacramental Character and the Pattern of Theological Life 1339 thirteenth-century Scholastic debates about sacramental character would develop. Although the specific metaphysical questions that Scholastics like Aquinas and Bonaventure would entertain do not form part of Augustine’s approach to this issue, Lombard’s particular articulation of Augustine’s sacramental theology would provide the textual and conceptual backdrop against which these later Scholastic conversations would develop. Accordingly, the second section of this article will build on the first, beginning with a consideration of Aquinas and Bonaventure in conversation with each other in their commentaries on the Sentences, and closing with a consideration of Aquinas’s later treatment of this same subject in the wider context of his quidditative approach to the theological life in the Summa theologiae. In the final section of this article, a selection of important Renaissance and early modern interlocutors will be considered who each engage both Aquinas’s and Bonaventure’s positions in different ways. Beginning with John Capreolus, John Duns Scotus, and Thomas Cajetan, this final section will conclude with a consideration of Francisco Suárez, whose own approach to the metaphysics of sacramental character reflects the influence of both Bonaventure and Scotus, even as he engages aspects of Aquinas’s arguments in his textual commentary on the Summa. Augustinian Context and Medieval Reception Although the notion of sacramental sealing can be found in Greek theology, the concept of sacramental character is a characteristically Western doctrine, frequently associated with the writings of Augustine.5 Although Augustine 5 For the Greek patristic tradition, the most common biblical source for the concept of sacramental permanence was the idea of “sealing” (σφραγίς; sphragis) with the Holy Spirit, using the epistles of Paul and other New Testament sources to describe this doctrine. See esp. Eph 1:13; 4:30; 2 Cor 1:22; John 6:27. See also A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. [BDAG] rev. and ed. Frederick William Danker (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. σφραγίζω and σφραγίς. In the first and second centuries, σφραγίς was used to describe Christian baptism. Evidence of this usage of σφραγίς can be found in both The Second Letter of Clement (7.6; 8.6) and The Shepherd of Hermas (8.6.3; 9.16.3; cited in BDAG, 980-81). For a summary of scholarship and textual evidence on the dating and authorship of 2 Clement, see Christopher Tuckett, 2 Clement: Introduction, Text, and Commentary (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 58-64. Tuckett himself tentatively proposes that the text was authored in Rome during the early or middle of the second century (64). The Shepherd of Hermas is also understood to be a Roman document, produced in either the late first or early second century, between 70 and 150 (Dan Batovici, “The Shepherd of Hermas in recent scholarship on the canon: A Review Article,” Annali di storia dell’esegesi 34, no. 1 [2017]: 90; see also Andrew Gregory, 1340 Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. frequently uses biblical terminology like sigillum and signaculum in various ways to describe the effect of baptism, at times he uses the term character as well. Among these terms, however, character would take on a much wider role in later theology. Augustine’s baptismal terminology is shaped in large part by his response to the Donatist practice of rebaptizing those who had failed the test of martyrdom during times of persecution.6 For Augustine, the 6 “Disturbing Trajectories: 1 Clement, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Development of Early Roman Christianity,” in Rome in the Bible and the Early Church, ed. Peter Oakes [Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2002], 142). The term sphragis also features in later Greek patristic sources such as Cyril of Jerusalem (†386; see J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 5th ed. [San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1978], 428–32). Charting the gradual appropriation of σφραγίς in the Greek theological tradition, Galot shows that, while some Greek theological circles employed σφραγίς primarily as a reference to the outward liturgical actions of baptism, this term also took on a distinct role as a sacramental concept in the Alexandrian school where it came to represent a kind of transformative sealing with the divine image (La nature, 29–30). The biblical texts cited here which reference the Spirit’s σφραγίς appear in the Stuttgart Vulgate (Biblia Sacra Vulgata, ed. Robert Webber and Roger Gryson, 5th ed. [Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2008]) as signaculum or signare: 2 Tim 2:19; 2 Cor 1:21–22, Eph 1:13; 4:30. The Vetus Latina textual tradition seems to mirror this usage: manuscript references to 2 Tim 2:19 in the Vetus Latina also utilize signaculum; references to 2 Cor 1:22 use signare; the majority of references to John 6:27 use signare, although there is a reference to the text as significare; references to Eph 1:13 use signare; references to Eph 4:30 use signare, although one text uses significare. References for Vetus Latina are retrieved from the Brepols Vetus Latina Database online, www.brepols.net/series/vld-o. See “Donatism,” in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, rev. and ed. F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 503. The question of rebaptism had emerged earlier, in the third century, prior to the council of Nicaea (Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology, and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009], 380–99). Clement of Alexandria held that heretical baptism was not genuine (Stromata 1.19.96.3–4). Tertullian likewise argued that because heretics did not use the correct form of baptism, they had no baptism at all (De baptismo 15.2; see Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church, 380). In Augustine’s North Africa, there was a strong theological tradition, tracing its authority to Cyprian, that supported the practice of rebaptism. On the general context of African Christianity, see: J. E. Merdinger, Rome and the African Church in the Time of Augustine (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997); Christianity in Roman North Africa: the Development of its Practices and Beliefs, ed. J. Patout Burns and Robin Margaret Jensen (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2014); François Decret, Early Christianity in North Africa, trans. Edward Smither (Cambridge: James Clarke, 2011); Allen Brent, Cyprian and Roman Carthage (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). On Cyprian’s theology and its context, see: Cyprian of Carthage: Studies in His Life, Language and Thought, ed. Henk Baker, Paul van Geest, and Hans van Loon (Leuven: Peeters, 2010); Maureen A. Tilley, “Cyprian of Carthage,” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan Sacramental Character and the Pattern of Theological Life 1341 Donatist controversy raised the questions of sacramental permanence and effect in the context of ecclesial communion. In responding to these issues, Augustine is clear that baptism is unrepeatable, regardless of the ecclesial status of the one who administers it.7 By the Scholastic period, “sacramental character” had acquired clear ontological significance, and in the sixteenth century the Council of Trent would define this character as a “spiritual and indelible mark on the soul.”8 Although not the most frequent terminological description of baptismal permanence in Augustine’s writings, the term 7 8 D. Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 262–64; Adrien Demoustier, “L’ontologie de l’êglise selon saint Cyprien,” Recherches de science religieuse 52 (1964): 554–88. Concerning the scriptural sources and dating of Cyprian’s works on baptism, see Karl Shuve, “Cyprian of Carthage’s Writings from the Rebaptism Controversy: Two Revisionary Proposals Reconsidered,” Journal of Theological Studies 61, no. 2 (2010): 627–43. On Augustine’s baptismal theology and his reception of Cyprian, see Matthew Alan Gaumer, Augustine’s Cyprian: Authority in Roman Africa (Boston: Brill, 2016). See also: William Harmless, “Baptism,” in Fitzgerald, Augustine through the Ages, 84–91; Adam D. Ployd, “The Power of Baptism: Augustine’s Pro-Nicene Response to the Donatists,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 22 no. 4 (2014): 519–40; Joyce E. Salisbury, “The Bond of a Common Mind: A Study of Collective Salvation from Cyprian to Augustine,” Journal of Religious History 13 no. 3 (1985): 235–47. For the place of North African theological controversy in the broader context of the social instability of the Roman world during the third century, see Géza Alfödy, “The Crisis of the Third Century as Seen by Contemporaries,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 15 (1974): 89-111, and “Der Heilige Cyprian und die Krise des Römischen Reiches,” Historia 22 no. 3 (1973): 479–501. For a study of Augustine’s appropriation of this Cyprianic tradition, see J. Patout Burns, “Appropriating Augustine Appropriating Cyprian,” Augustinian Studies 36 no. 1 (2005): 113–30. For a study of the continued relevance of Cyprianic and Augustinian models of baptism and ecclesiology for Orthodox Christianity, see Will Cohen, “Sacraments and the Visible Unity of the Church,” Ecclesiology 4, no. 1 (2007): 68–87. In De baptismo, Augustine insists that the validity and permanence of baptism is not dependent on the minister’s status with respect to the Church; a priest or bishop not in full communion with the Church because of schism or personal sin can administer the fullness of the sacrament (1.1.2; De baptismo can be found in Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum [CSEL], 51:145–375). Augustine’s specific use of the term character can be found in texts like De baptismo and Contra Cresconium. See Augustine, De baptismo 1.4.5; Contra Cresconium grammaticum et Donatistam 4 (CSEL, 52: 325). Council of Trent, sess. 7, decl. 1, ch. 9 (Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner and Guiseppe Alberigo, vol. 2 [Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1990], 685). See also sess. 23, can. 4 (Tanner and Alberigo, Decrees, 2:742–44), esp. concerning the sacrament of orders. For a summary of the development of magisterial teaching on sacramental character, see Bernard Leeming, Principles of Sacramental Theology (New York: Longmans and Green, 1956), 132–43. 1342 Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. character—and the conceptual images it invokes—would have the widest and most pervasive influence on these later developments. In many ways, the metaphorical root of Augustine’s concept of character is more secular than it is biblical. Although character does appear in Jerome’s Vulgate text in several instances (particularly in Revelation), to reference a marking of individuals, the earlier version of this Latin text available to Augustine used slightly different terms.9 Augustine’s reference is rather to a Roman practice found in the military and elsewhere, in which a mark—or character—was tattooed on a person to differentiate him from others and to mark him irreversibly as a member of a group. The marking of Roman solders in this manner became widespread in the late fourth century, and spread throughout the empire during Augustine’s lifetime.10 Although Nicholas Haring has argued that Augustine’s semantic field for the term character may be restricted to the outward rite,11 Haring also shows 9 10 11 Concerning Rev 16:2, see Haring, “St. Augustine’s Use,” 82n1: “Where the Vulgate reads character, the pre-Vulgate versions read inscriptio nominis or nomen scriptum or the simple transliteration charagma.” See Bradley Mark Peper, “On the Mark: Augustine’s Baptismal Analogy of the Nota Militaris,” Augustinian Studies 38, no. 2 (2007): 353–63. Concerning the means of effecting this mark and the terminology associated with it, although other armies in antiquity employed a brand for similar purposes, according Peper, the Romans favored the cognate stigma to refer to the mark of the legion, associating it with the process of tattooing. The Greek root here is στιγζειν, signifying the “pricking” process of tattooing (355). Peper relies on the work of C. P. Jones, “Stigma: Tattooing and Branding in Graeco-Roman Antiquity,” The Journal of Roman Studies 77 (1987): 139–55, and others. Augustine himself prefers the terms nota and character, both of which can refer to a stamping or impressing action (see entries in Charlton Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary [LS] [1879; repr. Oxford: Clarendon, 2002]). Character (derived from χαρακτήρ) indicates either “an instrument for branding or marking,” or “the mark or sign burned or imprinted” by the same (LS, s.v. character). Nota can stand for a mark, sign, or note and has a broader semantic field than character, ranging from tattoos to brands to characteristic qualities. (LS, s.v. nota). However, Peper argues that it seems unlikely that Augustine would have intended to indicate a brand-like impression, given his direct association of the term with the Roman military usage of his day (“On the Mark,” 356). Haring argues convincingly: “The word character, as used by St. Augustine, designates not a spiritual imprint on the soul but the trinitarian form or the external rite. . . . In other words, to express the doctrine that these two sacraments (Baptism and Holy Orders) produce a permanent effect which modern theology calls character, St. Augustine uses a different terminology, viz., sacramentum or less frequently sanctitas, consecratio, baptismus and ordinatio” (“St. Augustine’s Use,” 83). Recently, Phillip Cary has made an even stronger claim; although similar to Haring in some respects, Cary goes much farther, arguing that for Augustine the signs that compose the outward rite of baptism are “causally inert,” producing no necessary lasting effect in the recipient Sacramental Character and the Pattern of Theological Life 1343 that the sense of permanent, interior change that emerges in the later sense of sacramental character is more often expressed by Augustine with the term sacramentum.12 While sacramentum has a number of secular usages,13 early in the history of Western theology it came to function as a specific reference for Christian religious ritual, commonly serving as a translation of the Greek mystērion (μυστήριον) in the Vetus Latina textual tradition of the Bible. As a result, sacramentum became a common theological term among early Latin Fathers.14 The term seems to have had a particularly rich theological life in Augustine’s own North Africa: even when the Latin neologism mysterium became increasingly popular in the northern parts of the empire, sacramentum remained in use as a theological term in the Roman province of North Africa.15 In addition to many other theological applications, Tertullian 12 13 14 15 (Outward Signs: The Powerlessness of External Things in Augustine’s Thought [New York: Oxford University Press, 2008], e.g., 200–201). It may be that Augustine’s meaning is limited to some degree by the historical context of the metaphors he chooses; however, it seems likely that the larger theological themes that he desires to express also play a determinative role. But there is some reason to see more than this in Augustine: in Latin usage, the concept of ‘character’ is not usually found apart from the idea of marking or impressing—it can refer either to the mark itself or the means by which the mark is impressed (see note 10 above). Haring states that, “the Augustinian equivalent of character as used by Scholastic theology is sacramentum, signifying a lasting effect in the recipient” (“St. Augustine’s Use,” 83; see also 95–96). For an example of this usage, see De baptismo 1.1.2. On Augustine’s use of sacramentum in this context and in others, see my previous work, The Cleansing of the Heart: the Sacraments as Instrumental Causes in the Thomistic Tradition (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2017), e.g. 11–13 (nn. 3–5). In Roman use, sacramentum referred to a sum of money deposited by two parties in a legal dispute; following the verdict, the sum deposited by the losing party was used to fund religious institutions. The term could also refer to the cause, suit, or civil process itself. Further, sacramentum could also refer to an oath of allegiance required for military service, and to other oaths and solemn obligations (LS, s.v. sacramentum.) Both Cyprian and Tertullian use the term frequently: Cyprian uses it 64 times, and Tertullian 134 ( Johann Auer, A General Doctrine of the Sacraments and the Mystery of the Eucharist, vol. 6 of Dogmatic Theology, ed. Johann Auer and Joseph Ratzinger [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press], 10–11). Concerning Tertullian’s use of sacramentum, see Robert Sider, “Approaches to Tertullian: A Study of Recent Scholarship,” The Second Century: A Journal of Early Christian Studies 2, no. 4 (1982): 238–41. André Mandouze, “A propos de sacramentum chez S. Augustin polyvalence lexicologique et foissonnement théologique,” in Mélanges offerts á Mademoiselle Christine Mohrmann (Utrecht: Spectrum, 1963), 225. Beyond conveying the Biblical meaning of μυστήριον, however, sacramentum quickly came to be specifically associated with the rites of the Christian Church in the West. Augustine employed sacramentum to refer not only to specified liturgical ritual but also to signification, meaning, and the process 1344 Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. specifically associated the term sacramentum with baptism, anticipating Augustine’s more specific use of the term in this context in some respects.16 During the eleventh century, however, this usage of sacramentum underwent a fundamental transformation that would produce much of the sacramental vocabulary codified in Lombard and employed during the Scholastic period.17 As the term sacramentum began to be exclusively associated with the outward sign of the sacrament alone in the medieval West, the categories of res et sacramentum and res tantum were also introduced. By the thirteenth century, the permanent effect of baptism (now commonly referred to as the “sacramental character”) came to be associated by many with the res et sacramentum of the sacrament, rather than with the sacramentum tantum.18 This development was initially forced in part by Berengar of Tours, who associated the Augustinian concept of sacramentum with the outward sign of the sacramental action alone, excluding any connection with the interior reality.19 Although developments like these in the medieval Latin 16 17 18 19 of sanctification. The Latin sacramentum comes to stand not only for individual liturgical acts, but also for the theological significance of the liturgy, in a way that can be compared to the Eastern use of the term μυστήριον (228). See Auer, General Doctrine, 10–11: “Tertullian, who is of particular importance for the development of ecclesiastical Latin, used [sacramentum] in many different senses: in a general sense, like the Greek μυστήριον, for initiation rites and the celebrations of the mysteries of the gods; for sacrifices, signs, and gestures of cults; for faith and the doctrines of faith; for secret teachings and for the divine plan; but especially in the specifically Latin sense of ‘oath formula’ (‘pledge of allegiance’ in military language) and, as a legal term, it refers to the sum of money deposited as a security in a temple at the time of entering a contract. In the sense of ‘pledge of allegiance’ Tertullian applied sacramentum especially to the promises of baptism, and thereby he lay the foundation for the theological term ‘sacrament’ in the current sense.” It is likely that Tertullian was the first to use sacramentum in relation to baptism and the Eucharist, and Cyril continued this usage. Augustine uses sacramentum in a wide sense, including references to sacred signs and manifestations of divine presence. It is in his debates with the Donatists and Manichees, however, that Augustine’s use of sacramentum becomes more focused and reaches theological maturity (see Emmanuel J. Cutrone, “Sacraments,” in Fitzgerald, Augustine Through the Ages, 741–47). Nicholas Haring, “Berengar’s Definitions of Sacramentum and Their Influence on Medieval Sacramentology,” Mediaeval Studies 10 (1948): 109–47. See also Lynch, Cleansing of the Heart, 11–12. Stephen P. McHenry, Three Significant Moments in the Theological Development of the Sacramental Character of Orders: Its Origin, Standardization, and New Direction in Augustine, Aquinas, and Congar (New York: Fordham University Press, 1983), 148–49. “Berengar of Tours,” in Corpus Christi: An Encyclopedia of the Eucharist, ed. Michael O’Carroll (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1988), 37. Those familiar with Scholastic Sacramental Character and the Pattern of Theological Life 1345 West presented new challenges for the reception of Augustine’s sacramental doctrine, Augustine’s texts and conceptual lexicon continued to function as a ubiquitous point of contact for the emerging paradigms of Scholastic thought. The threefold distinction between sacramentum tantum, res et sacramentum, and res tantum, which was further developed and integrated into the Latin theological tradition by Hugh of St. Victor and other Victorine theologians, would provide the lens through which the conceptual distinctions of Augustine’s sacramental theology were received by later Western theologians.20 Despite the shift in Augustinian vocabulary and the development of res et sacramentum as a sacramental concept, however, the Augustinian term character and its associated imagery were not immediately or universally adopted as the primary conceptual description of baptism’s permanent effects. In 20 theology are used to hearing the word sacramentum used to define the outward aspects of the rite, either as distinct from the reality imparted (sacramentum tantum versus res tantum) or in combination with the reality (res et sacramentum). Haring argues that in Augustinian usage this was in fact reversed to a certain extent: sacramentum referred to that which was communicated by the sacraments (character or sacramental grace), while more ontic language (res or similar terminology) was sometimes used to describe the outward sign or physical “things” involved in sacramental symbolism and action. Haring has convincingly argued that the word sacramentum underwent a transformation during the Berengarian controversy that effectively reversed its usage, giving rise to the later medieval emphasis on sacramentum as outward sign (see “Berengar’s Definitions” and “Brief Historical Comment”) Because Berengar was concerned in no small part with the interpretation of Augustine’s sacramental doctrine of sign and reality, the controversy that ensued gave rise to distinctions which affected the reception of Augustinian sacramental doctrine in the pre-Scholastic period. The link between the Berengarian controversy and the development of the distinction of res tantum, res et sacramentum, and sacramentum tantum is well studied: Ronald F. King, “The Origin and Evolution of a Sacramental Formula: Sacramentum Tantum, Res et Sacramentum, Res Tantum,” The Thomist 31 (1967): 21–82. King differs from Haring on the original source of this theological formula (37). Within the Victorine School, Hugh of St. Victor incorporated the threefold distinction between sacramentum and res into his systematic account of the sacraments (Thomas Finn, “The Sacramental World in the Sentences of Peter Lombard,” Theological Studies 69 [2008]: 568). It was Hugh of St. Victor in the early twelfth century who “deepened and specified the Augustinian definition. For [Hugh] the rite itself (sacramentum tantum) not only resembled or pointed to the inner reality (res) but also contained and conveyed that inner reality (res et sacramentum). The clarification was critical for the theology of the sacraments in general, a clarification made permanent by the increasingly widespread use of Peter’s Sentences” (Finn, “Sacramental World,” 568; in support Finn cites Hugh’s De sacramentis 1.9.2 [PL, 176:317d–318b]); we should also note that Peter Lombard studied with Hugh, beginning while the latter was completing his De sacramentis (see Philipp W. Rosemann, Peter Lombard [New York: Oxford University Press, 2004], 27). 1346 Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. the case of Lombard, his teaching on the non-iterability of baptism as a sacrament and its sacramental effects is structured by the threefold distinction between res and sacramentum, rather than the term character. Indeed, Lombard mentions the term only once in his arguments against the rebaptism of heretics in distinction 6 of Sentences IV—despite having received the sacrament while outside the communion of the Church, Lombard argues that these persons are nonetheless protected (servare) by the character of Christ, and therefore should be reconciled through the imposition of hands alone so that they might receive the Holy Spirit.21 Lombard’s teaching on baptism is found in Sentences IV, where he begins with a treatment of the sacraments—first in general, then individually beginning with baptism.22 After a brief treatment of the sacraments of the New Law, distinction 2 deals primarily with the distinction between the baptism of John and the baptism of Christ, where Lombard makes the point that while the baptism of John was of penance as a preparation for Christ’s baptism, the baptism of Christ was for remission.23 In distinction 3, Lombard takes up the form of baptism, its institution, and the reason for its institution.24 Lombard does not discuss the permanence of the sacrament in this distinction, but he does touch on what he refers to as the res of the sacrament when describing the causa institutionis. Lombard maintains that through the grace of baptism, the renewal of the mind (innovatio mentis) is accomplished and the burden of sin removed.25 In distinction 4, he takes up the question of the recipient in relation to the sacrament of baptism. Here he discusses the distinction between those who receive the sacramentum et res, and those who either receive the sacramentum only or the res only.26 Throughout distinction 4, Lombard cites Augustine’s De baptismo 21 22 23 24 25 26 Peter Lombard, Sent. IV, d. 6, ch. 2, no. 3. The text of Lombard’s Sentences can be found in Sententiae in IV Libris Distinctae, 3rd ed., vol. 2 (Rome: Ad Claras Aquas, 1981). Lombard, Sent. IV, dd. 2–6. These distinctions deal with the sacrament of baptism; see also Rosemann, Peter Lombard, 145–48. Lombard first published his Sentences in AD 1156–1157, after having lectured on them during that academic year. The edition that has been handed down to the present in manuscript form appeared as a second edition in 1158 (Rosemann, Peter Lombard, 55). Lombard, Sent. IV, d. 2, ch. 3; see also ch. 4. Lombard, Sent. IV, d. 3, ch. 1. Lombard, Sent. IV, d. 3, ch. 9. Lombard, Sent. IV, d. 4, ch. 1. As he indicated at the close of distinction 3, the res of baptism is justification (ch. 9). Lombard makes it clear that infants and faithful adults receive the sacramentum et res, but someone who receives the sacrament unworthily only receives the sacramentum, whereas an un-baptized martyr could receive the res alone. See Rosemann, Peter Lombard, 148–49. Sacramental Character and the Pattern of Theological Life 1347 consistently (and makes mention of several other Augustinian texts). Although he does not mention the word character specifically, as Lombard works through the contingencies of receiving the sacramentum alone, the res alone, or the sacramentum and res, he does make consistent appeal to Augustine’s De baptismo to resolve these questions. Lombard concludes his discussion of the res of baptism (justification) in relation to the sacramentum in distinction four by reasserting the fittingness of receiving the res along with the sacrament, even if some may receive it apart from baptism itself.27 Because Lombard himself does not conceptually identify the place of sacramental character in this context or discuss its quiddity, subsequent Scholastic discussions of this topic would ground themselves in different sections of Lombard’s text. Because of its emphasis on the threefold formula and the specific concept of res et sacramentum, it is perhaps unsurprising that Aquinas and a number of other Scholastics chose to address the quiddity of sacramental character in his commentary on distinction four of Lombard’s text. However, it should be noted that there are other aspects of Lombard’s teaching on baptism that also provided points of departure for Scholastic discussions of sacramental character. Bonaventure, for example, begins his discussion of character in distinction 3 of book IV. As will be shown, the association that Bonaventure sees here between the immediate effects of baptism and the habit of virtue prove important for his account of the quiddity of sacramental character. Building on this, Bonaventure takes up the subject again in distinction 6, which concerns the liceity of baptism. Building on his treatment of the theological nature of baptism in distinctions 2–4, Lombard addresses in distinctions 5–6 first the minister of the sacrament, and then the circumstances in under which it should be celebrated. In Lombard’s discussion of liceity in distinction 6, the conceptual relevance of sacramental character in this discussion becomes immediately clear in chapter 2, where Lombard asks whether or not those baptized by heretics must be rebaptized. Lombard assembles a number of opinions from the Fathers, but the great majority of them are from Augustine, several of which are from De baptismo, and other works of Augustine as well.28 In distinction 6 Lombard deals with a few other concerns regarding the minister and a curious dubium concerning the baptism of unborn children in their mother’s womb;29 overall, however, distinction 6 is dominated by the questions of heretical baptism and rebaptism mentioned at the beginning of the 27 28 29 See Lombard, Sent. IV, d. 4, ch. 7. In Lombard, Sent. IV, d. 6, ch. 3, Lombard cites Augustine’s Ad Dardanum (Epistle 187) 9.31. See Lombard, Sent. IV, d. 6, ch. 3. 1348 Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. distinction, which recall clearly, by both the choice of subject and supporting texts, the Donatist controversy and St. Augustine’s response. Given this focus on the non-iterability of baptism and the re-presentation of key Augustinian texts from the Donatist controversy (already presented earlier by Lombard in his theological treatment of baptism) it should not surprise us that these texts also proved attractive to Scholastic commentators interested in the developing doctrine of sacramental character. Character and the Species of Quality: Bonaventure and Aquinas Although Augustine’s thought would leave a lasting and definitive impression on later theological paradigms in the Latin West, his later receptions would be shaped by new context and theological concerns as well. Although Lombard’s terminological reformulation of Augustine’s categories would certainly be influential, during the thirteenth century, the Scholastic movement would also be deeply shaped by the thought of Aristotle, whose texts were newly available in more comprehensive and reliable editions in the Latin West. During the 1250s, Paris saw a great influx of newly available Aristotelian texts and commentaries that sparked renewed interest in the Stagirite’s thought, not only in the arts faculty, but in Scholastic theology as well. Also beginning in the 1250s, the practice of commenting on Lombard’s Sentences became a standardized practice at Paris and other universities. As this practice evolved, these commentaries gradually began to take on a theological life of their own, to the point that distinct theological schools could be recognized exercising themselves within the proscribed genera of the Sentences commentaries.30 In many ways, Lombard’s Sentences served as the context for new theological appropriations of Aristotelian concepts, even as it provided a standardized conduit for the reception of the pre-Aristotelian Western theological tradition by Scholastic thinkers. In the case of sacramental character, although the traditional Augustinian teaching conveyed by Lombard was clear enough doctrinally, for those interested in how these distinctions might be re-voiced using the conceptual language of Aristotle, the precise metaphysical implications of these inherited distinctions remained less certain. As some of the first commentaries on the Sentences within their own developing theological schools, the work of both Aquinas and Bonaventure would continue to influence Dominican and Franciscan theological perspectives for generations. 30 G. R. Evans, ed., Mediaeval Commentaries on the Sentences of Peter Lombard: Current Research, vol. 1 (Boston: Brill, 2002), 42. Sacramental Character and the Pattern of Theological Life 1349 When commenting on the Sentences, both Aquinas and Bonaventure choose to take up the idea of sacramental character, and offer conflicting accounts of its nature. From the outset, however, it is important to recognize that their disagreement is not total: in choosing to classify the sacramental character as a species of quality in the Aristotelian sense, the two men already share a great deal in common, even among those who would use elements of Aristotle’s thought to explain baptismal character.31 Because baptism is the first of the sacraments, both Thomas and Bonaventure choose to situate their most substantive commentary on the subject of sacramental character there. It is primarily in their commentaries on the fourth book of the Sentences that Aquinas and Bonaventure can be seen to react in very different ways not only to the patristic texts put forward by Lombard (predominantly from Augustine), but to the speculative implications of the theological topic set before them by the Sentences. In the following we will examine first Bonaventure and then Aquinas, noticing the way in which they situate the question of sacramental character in relation to Lombard’s text and the wider theological question of baptismal permanence. As will be shown, conversation that develops between Aquinas and Bonaventure regarding the most effective way to articulate the received doctrine of baptismal permeance within an Aristotelian view of reality will continue to resonate in later Scholastic conversations. Bonaventure Beginning his treatment of sacramental character in distinction 3 of book IV, Bonaventure distinguishes between baptism in itself as the sacramentum and character, which is the res et sacramentum most properly. In this way Bonaventure distinguishes between the event of baptism and its outward signs, and its effect.32 Bonaventure does allow for the res et sacramentum to be called baptism in a more specific sense, and here he calls upon St. John Damascene: “Baptism is the principle of the spiritual life, the seal [sigillum], preservation [custodia] and illumination [illuminatio] of the mind.”33 Bonaventure understands this statement to apply more properly to baptism’s effect, which is the character. In this passage from Damascene Bonaventure sees a fourfold definition of baptismal character. As principium vitae it prepares the soul for grace. As sigillum it distinguishes those who are of God’s flock from those who are not. Custodia refers to its permanent and 31 32 33 See Aristotle, Categoriae 7–8. Bonaventure, In IV sent., d. 3, pt. 1, a. 1, q. 1, ad 4 (as Opera omnia, Ad Claras Aquas, 10 vols. (Quaracchi: Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1882). Bonaventure, In IV sent., d. 3, pt. 1, a. 1. 1350 Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. unrepeatable nature, and it is an illuminatio mentis in as much as it disposes for faith.34 In this regard, Grahame Connolly has argued that Bonaventure’s treatment of the nature of sacramental character in distinction 3 sets the stage for his more robust treatment of the subject under distinction 6 by introducing “the notion of a permanent effect in baptism—a lasting ‘sacramentum’ which is character.”35 Understanding baptism as a “principle of spiritual life” will shape Bonaventure’s understanding of character. In the patristic period, debates over what came to be called “sacramental character” were framed by practical threats to the Church’s faith and practice, and the insistence on the permanence and non-iterability of the sacrament, as well as the distinction between the “character” or “seal” and the life of grace itself, which can admit of increase or of loss. However, when Bonaventure and other Scholastic thinkers begin to concern themselves with the nature of the character per se, this conversation is not conducted without reference to the larger scope and thrust of the sacrament of baptism. Because Bonaventure understands the concept of res et sacramentum to be integrally linked to the finality of the sacrament’s res tantum, Bonaventure’s discussions of character in this context cannot be reduced to isolated speculations about the metaphysical nature of baptismal sealing—rather, Bonaventure is discussing an intermediate effect of the sacrament that makes possible the ultimate teleological finality of the same sacrament.36 Following this pattern, Bonaventure identifies three effects of baptism, character being the first effect, while the infusion of grace is the second, and the restitution of innocence the third.37 Moving to consider the quiddity of character more specifically, in his commentary on distinction 6 Bonaventure argues that character should be 34 35 36 37 Bonaventure, In IV sent., d. 3, pt. 1, a. 1, q. 1, ad 4. See Grahame J. Connolly, S.M., “Sacramental Character in Five Famous Medievals: A Study on the Teachings of Peter Lombard, Alexander of Hales, St. Albert the Great, St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas Aquinas” (dissertation, Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, 1963), 25: “Under distinction IV, character is shown as the automatic effect of valid baptism. It is a mode of putting on Christ which can be effected despite evil dispositions in the recipient. And in such evilly disposed subjects, character forms the basis for what we would call reviviscence of the sacrament, against the day of their coming to a change of heart.” See also 26–27. Despite the progress made in this regard by Hugh of St. Victor and others, the terminology in use in the thirteenth century was still somewhat fluid. Unlike St. Albert and at times Lombard, Bonaventure’s use of this schema can be understood as more congruent with post-Tridentine understandings of this same threefold terminology. See Connolly, “Sacramental Character,” 27–28. Bonaventure, In IV sent., d. 4, pt. 1, a. 1, q. 3. Sacramental Character and the Pattern of Theological Life 1351 understood as a habitual quality.38 Because Bonaventure sees character as an initial effect that is tied intrinsically to baptism’s second and third effects, it is important for Bonaventure that the formal quiddity of character also reflect something of the sanctifying finality that fully configures us to Christ, even if only by kind of anticipation. Bonaventure selects habitus from a list among the following list of three things found in the soul, according to Aristotle: power, passion, and habit.39 Bonaventure claims that character cannot be either power or passion, and so settles on habit. Aristotle himself presents the idea of quality as a form of accidental being in the Categories, and there delineates four species of qualities that shape Bonaventure’s treatment of the issue, and Aquinas’s response. In chapter 8 of the Categories, Aristotle defines “quality” as “that in virtue of which people are said to be such and such.”40 The first species of quality is in fact “habit” or “disposition,” the former being the most solidified adequately. Among the qualities which can be said to be habits are knowledge and virtue. The second species of quality refers more to the inborn capacity or incapacity to accomplish something with ease. This second quality is sometimes referred to as power or potency. The third species of quality is that of affective qualities, which include such things as sweetness, bitterness, heat, and whiteness. The fourth species of quality is figure or form, and is understood as “the shape that belongs to a thing.”41 Isolating habit as his preferred descriptor of sacramental character, Bonaventure rejects the other species of quality as possibilities in this case. Concerning the second species—which Aquinas will prefer—Bonaventure rejects the notion of character as power because he claims that describing character as a power would imply that the character was something natural, falling within the potency of human nature itself. Further, since he intends to describe character as a disposition to receiving grace, he is uncomfortable with the category of potency, as it would seem to imply that the character would be necessarily perfected in the presence of a perfecting agent, such as grace—a suggestion Bonaventure rejects.42 38 39 40 41 42 Bonaventure, In IV sent., d. 6, pt. 1, a. unic., q. 1. See Aristotle, Ethica nicomachea 2.5; see Bonaventure, In IV sent., d. 6, and Connolly, “Sacramental Character,” 29. Aristotle, Categoriae 8. Aristotle, Categoriae 8. This of course does not refer to substantial form, but rather to accidental forms such as “roundness” or “triangular.” See Bonaventure, In IV sent., d. 6. Concerning affective or passible quality (the third species of quality), Bonaventure argues that this too is unsuitable. The proponents of this view describe this type of quality as interior, affecting the spiritual sense, but Bonaventure objects that this is not acceptable because all truths accessible to the intellect would then fall into this category. Concerning “figure” or “form” (the fourth 1352 Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. In favor of character as a habitus, Bonaventure clarifies that in this context he understands this term in the broadest sense, as essentially equivalent to a disposition. Although Aristotle distinguishes these two categories, arguing that habitus is distinct from disposition as a more permanent and stable quality, Bonaventure argues that in the case of character habit should be understood in the broad sense as a disposition, while at the same time retaining the permanence of habitus. Bonaventure wishes to accept habit in a broad sense, such that it can be understood as disposition, while at the same time retaining the permanence of habitude in the proper sense.43 Although Bonaventure’s reading of Aristotle on this point may seem idiosyncratic, in this case Bonaventure seems to be motivated primarily by the perceived theological utility of these Aristotelian ideas, rather than close textual interpretation of Aristotle on his own terms. In the context of the threefold distinction inherited from Lombard, recall that for Bonaventure character is one of three baptismal effects (the infusion of grace and restoration of innocence being the second and third, respectively). As a habitual quality that disposes towards these other effects, Bonaventure hopes to retain an understanding of character that is fundamentally ordered towards the perfection of grace. Accordingly, he defines the character in itself as a quality in the soul, not fully perfected in itself but rather disposing towards the perfection of grace; it is in this sense that character is essentially a disposition for Bonaventure, as a reality intrinsically ordered towards a further perfective finality.44 Although Bonaventure’s theological instincts in this regard may be sound, Aquinas will question whether or not such an eclectic appropriation of Aristotelian quality can sustain these theological intuitions. Specifically, the central weakness that emerges in Bonaventure’s approach concerns the question of permanence—recall that for Augustine, the question of baptismal permanence featured prominently in the immediate historical context for his involvement with the questions of the Donatist controversy, and also informed Augustine’s conceptual distinction between the sacramentum of baptism itself—which could not be repeated—and the use of this sacrament in charity, which could be lost and subsequently recovered. Despite Bonaventure’s theological intuitions, if the qualitative category of disposition or habit is not able to capture the doctrine of baptismal permanence in the full sense, he risks undermining the doctrine of baptismal non-iterability 43 44 species), Bonaventure argues that “figure” or “form” implies a certain immobility that would be inappropriate in this context (In IV sent., d. 6, q. 1). See Aristotle, Categoriae 8, and Bonaventure, In IV sent., d. 6, pt. 1, a. unic., q. 1, opin. 6. Bonaventure, In IV sent., d. 6, pt. 1, a. unic., q. 1, opin. 6. Sacramental Character and the Pattern of Theological Life 1353 itself. As Aquinas will argue, a habit that is difficult to change is not the equivalent of an unrepeatable sealing. The Early Aquinas Bonaventure and Aquinas read the Sentences at roughly the same time in Paris, separated in their studies by only a few short years. Bonaventure probably lectured from 1250 to 1252, and Aquinas studied under St. Albert from 1252–1256. Bonaventure served a term as regent at Paris from 1253–1257 (while Aquinas was still lecturing on the Sentences), and Aquinas held this post from 1256–1259.45 Although they are almost chronological contemporaries, Bonaventure was already lecturing as a popular master of theology when Aquinas was only beginning his studies in Paris. Bonaventure’s Sentences commentary would have certainly been available to Aquinas, and as a proponent of the Aristotelianism that was gaining ground in some intellectual circles, Aquinas may well have taken an interest in Bonaventure’s rather conservative attempt to appropriate some aspects of Aristotelian thought within the outlines of traditional Western theology. Regarding the framework of Lombard’s baptismal theology itself in the Sentences, Aquinas chooses distinction 4 of book IV as the nexus of his treatment of sacramental character, where Lombard discusses the relationship between what would come to be referred to commonly as the res et sacramentum and the res tantum. Almost immediately, the reader can notice a marked imbalance between the treatment of Aquinas and his immediate predecessors: while Bonaventure certainly treats the subject seriously, Aquinas devotes the entire substance of the first question of his commentary on distinction 4 to the topic of sacramental character, using that which is imparted at baptism as his point of departure.46 St. Thomas begins his treatment of sacramental character by addressing directly the nature of the character itself—the first question posed in article 1 of question 1one of his commentary on distinction 4 is: “whether character is something in the soul.” In the first objection, he immediately takes up the Aristotelian model that Bonaventure invoked from Nicomachean Ethics where Aristotle names three things in the soul: power, passion, and habit.47 Regarding the first of these, Aquinas reiterates the substance of Bonaventure’s argument against character as potentia: because potentia or impotentia is something consequent on nature, sacramental character cannot 45 46 47 Evans, Mediaeval Commentaries, 44–45. Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 4, proel. Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 1, arg. 1. 1354 Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. be placed in this category. Aquinas also provides refutations of the other two options (power and passion), and so leaves himself with seemingly no basis for describing sacramental character from within the Aristotelian understanding of being. In the second objection, however, Aquinas narrows the scope of the discussion to the category of quality: for Aquinas, character cannot be reduced to a species of being except quality—but this also seems impossible, because no species of quality can contain it. So far Aquinas has framed the question in the same way as Bonaventure, and accordingly he offers arguments against the possibility of understanding character under any of the four species of quality.48 His arguments against the first and second species are of the most immediate interest here, as they correspond to Bonaventure’s position and Thomas’s own. Aquinas’s objector brackets the discussion of habitus proper, assuring the reader that it will be discussed at a later time. Here the objector does dismiss the category of disposition, however, on the grounds that it contradicts the indelibility of character. This points to a weakness in Bonaventure’s use of disposition in this same context, as an orientation towards the perfection of grace.49 Aquinas himself will expand on this critique subsequently. Against the idea of character as power, Aquinas’s objector argues that character is less a function of natural potency or the absence thereof, but is rather attributable in some sense to the sacraments themselves.50 The way in which Aquinas chooses to frame this objection is significant: Bonaventure had claimed that any reference to power would necessarily be a reference to nature; here Aquinas frames his objection as referring to natural potency, opening the way for a discussion of potencies more appropriate for the sacramental economy. However, he does grant Bonaventure the point that impotency is not an appropriate category for baptismal character. Beginning his own response to these objections in the sed contra, Aquinas 48 49 50 Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 1, arg. 2. Bonaventure, In IV sent., d. 6, pt. 1, a. unic., q. 1, opin. 6. Bonaventure uses the broader and more diffusive nature of “disposition” to avoid some of the attributes of habitus proper which he feels are ill-suited for his purpose, but then proceeds to deny to disposition its quality of “easy movement” or ready change, the very attribute which established it as distinct from habit properly so called in the first place (see Aristotle, Categoriae 8). Although Bonaventure’s understanding of habit and disposition claims to allow of this interpretation, Aristotle dispels this notion: “One sort of quality is ‘habit’ or ‘disposition.’ Habit differs from disposition in being more lasting and more firmly established” (Categoriae 8.8b27–29, trans. Richard McKeon in The Basic Works of Aristotle [New York: Modern Library, 2001], 23). Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 1, arg. 2. Sacramental Character and the Pattern of Theological Life 1355 immediately invokes Damascene, referencing the same text that Bonaventure used.51 However, where Bonaventure employed a fourfold interpretation of Damascene, Aquinas singles out the word sigillum, associating a sign impressed in something else as a character of that first thing.52 As Aquinas focuses on this term found in Damascene’s definition, he also positions his understanding of character as a theology of image: now the character begins to appear as more than a simple permanent seal, but as a reality related to the person as imago Dei.53 Many of these themes can be found in Bonaventure;54 recall that in treating the same quote from Damascene, Bonaventure refers to principium vitae, sigillum, custodia, and illuminatio mentis as preparing the soul for grace, distinguishing the flock of God from the world, non-iterability, and disposing for faith (in that order).55 Bonaventure’s emphasis on custodia as the aspect of character which distinguishes is echoed by Aquinas in the second section of his sed contra, where he insists that character must be given in the sacraments in order to distinguish the faithful from the world and among themselves.56 Bonaventure’s emphasis on principium vitae and illuminatio mentis as the aspects of baptismal character which dispose the recipient for grace and faith is intriguing, and hints at the broader context in which Bonaventure intends to place his understanding of baptismal character, presumably embracing the elements of human life which elevated in faith and grace are transformed and deified. Bonaventure is less explicit about his intentions in this regard, however, and the reader is left to speculate about the implications of some of his statements for other areas of theology. How, precisely, for example, are the metaphysics of grace and character related to each other, and to that of the infused theological virtues? For his part, Aquinas is able to situate baptismal character within the Aristotelian categories in such a way that the res et sacramentum and the res tantum of baptism can be fully integrated with the life of Christian holiness within the context of image and perfection. In the body of the first article, Aquinas treats the four species of quality one by one, in the same way as Bonaventure. Interestingly however, he frames the entire discussion 51 52 53 54 55 56 Bonaventure, In IV sent., d. 3, pt. 1, a. 1. Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 1, sc 1. Where St. Paul referenced the sealing of the Holy Spirit and the Greek fathers spoke of σφραγίς, the Scholastics now began to speak of character in relation to divine image. See Stephen McCormack, “The Configuration of the Sacramental Character,” The Thomist 7, no. 4 (1944): 460. See McCormack, “Configuration,” 460. See Bonaventure, In IV sent., d. 3, pt. 1, a. 1, q. 1, ad 4; see Connolly, “Sacramental Character,” 26–87. Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 1, sc 2. 1356 Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. in terms of a triple distinction: sign, distinction, and configuration.57 In the first way, character signifies relation to the sign, in the second to that from which it distinguishes, in the third to the one to whom we assimilate. It is this third relation of configurative assimilation that will most distinguish Aquinas’s treatment of baptismal character. Aquinas continues to argue that the character must adhere accidentally in the soul (for reasons obvious to an Aristotelian), and that it must be a quality: since substantial form is not given in the sacraments, similitude must be conferred accidentally within the category of quality.58 Aquinas treats all four species of quality here, but for the sake of brevity we will limit ourselves to the first two, which concern most immediately the point of disagreement between Aquinas and Bonaventure. Aquinas argues that habitus is not a fitting category for baptismal character because a habit admits of both good and bad, lesser and greater, whereas power is said simply. 59 Aquinas seems to take on Bonaventure’s use of disposition to broaden the concept of habitus, saying not only does disposition share all of the unacceptable traits of habitus, but that it is in fact nothing but an incomplete habit. Perhaps most interesting, however, is Aquinas’s observation that by using habitus, one is limited to saying that the baptismal character is oriented only towards the disposition for grace, rather than ultimate perfection. When Aquinas offers potency—the second species of quality—as an alternative, it is partly this need to connect the character of baptism as res et sacramentum with the res tantum in a meaningful way.60 Here, Aquinas offers a very rich treatment of the character imparted by the sacrament of baptism in relation to the final end of the sacrament. At this juncture, Aquinas introduces a new source, not found in Bonaventure: (pseudo) Dionysius. Until this point, Aquinas’s commentary has resembled Bonaventure’s in many respects and relied on similar sources, despite clear points of disagreement. Now for the first time, however, we see Aquinas introducing an entirely new source. In this section, Aquinas frames the Aristotelian category of quality-as-potency within the larger metaphysical vision of Dionysius. Throughout his treatment of character in his commentary on distinction 4, Aquinas consistently and very explicitly refers to Dionysius, unashamedly putting his ideas of participation, image, and divinization forward as the governing paradigms for his discussion of character: Aquinas corrects Bonaventure for failing to understand character as fundamentally ordered toward ultimate perfection, and in light of the Dionysian paradigm 57 58 59 60 Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 1, corp.. Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 1, corp. Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 1, corp. Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 1, corp. Sacramental Character and the Pattern of Theological Life 1357 he invokes, it is easy to see why this point would be so important for Aquinas. In this case, the disagreement between these two masters is not simply a philosophical quibble about the most appropriate way to interpret a seemingly obscure point from Aristotle, but in fact concerns the proper anthropological and anagogical context of this entire theological discussion in the first place. Aquinas responds to Bonaventure’s concern that potency would limit character to the confines of human nature by indicating that it is by being born again in spiritual life that we acquire a new potency for participation in divine beatitude; as such, it is not the natural potency mentioned by the objector61 that is in question here, but rather a new supernatural potency that is otherwise unavailable to the human person on natural terms.62 Aquinas goes further, integrating an understanding of sacramental efficacy within character-as-potency, such that the sacrament has instrumental power through both the minister and the character.63 To this end, Aquinas claims that the character is the cause of sacramental grace.64 This is significant, because it is as an instrumental power that character serves as our entry point into the moral life of grace,65 opening up for us the life of participation in the divine hierarchy that Dionysius proposes. In the rest of what follows of his treatment of baptismal character (articles 2–3 of question 1), Aquinas further develops the vision of sacramental character that we have seen here thus far. In article 2, Aquinas introduces two complementary quaestiunculae, in which he first reconciles his understanding of character as potency with the more traditional language of sign or sealing, and in the second he introduces the notion of the character as recreated Trinitarian image. At the beginning of the first quaestiuncula, Aquinas introduces (under the guise of an objector), the possible non-congruity between his language of potency and participation and the more traditional language such as signum that appears in Lombard. Here in article 2, Aquinas introduces a definition of character that has been attributed to Dionysius,66 and asks whether or not it is appropriately chosen.67 In his response, Aquinas reminds the objectors 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 1, arg. 2. Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 1, corp. Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 1, corp. Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 1, ad 4. See Colman O’Neill, O.P., “The Instrumentality of the Sacramental Character: An Interpretation of Summa Theologiae, III, q. 63, a. 2,” Irish Theological Quarterly 25 (1958): 263–64. Aquinas In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 2, qc. 1. See also ST III, q. 63, a. 2, ad 3. Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 2, qc. 1, arg. 1. 1358 Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. that character rightly takes on the name of sign, as it is through the visible and sacrament that the ends of the sacrament are effected and signified.68 Further, Aquinas asserts that the category of potency is not incompatible with sign, as exterior signs and symbols frequently accompany power—such as the scepter and crown which signify the power of the king.69 The second quaestiuncula contrasts the definition ascribed to Dionysius with a second definitio magistralis which defines character as an eternal image impressed on the rational soul, recreating the image of the Trinity.70 St. Thomas interprets this recreation as a configuration—a participation in divine power71 which takes the form of recreation in the image of the Triune God. More can be said concerning Aquinas’s treatment of baptismal character, even from within this section of his commentary on the Sentences. However, in so far as his treatment of baptismal character is to be compared with Bonaventure’s, it is clear that his understanding of character as a category of accidental being—a potency for eternal life and recreation in grace— represents an important advance in Scholastic conversations about the quiddity of sacramental character. Understanding character as a qualitative power more effectively preserves the doctrine of baptismal non-iterability inherited from Augustine. Furthermore, through the introduction of Dionysius, Aquinas is able to more accurately describe the relationship between baptism and Christian holiness, perfection, and beatitude. Aquinas on Character in the Summa In the Summa, Aquinas’s causal approach to both character and sacramental grace shifts, making it clear that the principle effect of baptism is grace— character, by contrast, is named as only a secondary effect.72 Additionally, his interpretation of Damascene undergoes a degree of development in his mature thought in the Summa, where he associates it with both sigillum and custodia.73 More than simply a semantic shift, this signals a more nuanced connection between the reality of sacramental character and Aquinas’s mature doctrine of sanctification in grace and virtue. Invoking the distinction between character as res et sacramentum and that inward justification which 68 69 70 71 72 73 Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 2, qc. 1, ad 1. Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 2, qc. 1, ad 2. Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 2, qc. 2, arg. 1. See also Leeming, Principles, 133–35. Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 2, qc. 2, ad 3. ST III, q. 62, 63. See Lynch, Cleansing of the Heart, throughout. ST III, q. 66 a. 1, ad 1. In his commentary on the Sentences Aquinas associates character only with sigillum (Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 1). Sacramental Character and the Pattern of Theological Life 1359 is the res tantum of baptism, Aquinas uses Damascene’s text to argue that sigillum and custodia refer to different aspects of baptismal character—as a kind of sealing (sigillum), character keeps the soul safe (custodia) in the good. Building on this, Aquinas notes that Damascene also introduces two conceptual distinctions that Aquinas argues pertain to the ultimate reality of the sacrament of baptism: regeneration, and enlightenment: Aquinas argues that the first of these (regeneration) refers to the beginning of the new life of grace in the one who is baptized; Aquinas argues that the second (enlightenment) refers more directly to the life of faith that flows from baptism.74 Building on this baptismal trajectory towards the broader life of faith and grace, Aquinas returns to Dionysius, who positioned baptism in relation to the other sacraments as a principle that imparted the habits of soul necessary to engage fruitfully with the rest of the sacramental economy. For Dionysius, baptism is understood in relation to the other sacraments in different ways: like all sacraments, baptism is oriented towards beatitude; as a form of regeneration, however, baptism is the beginning of the spiritual life and also stands as a principle for the habitual disposition to receive the other sacraments.75 In the Summa, Aquinas’s treatment of sacramental character is positioned as part of his larger conceptual understanding of the perfection of the human person as divine image through the process of sanctification, of both the individual who possesses the character and others. In addition to these developments in his doctrine of sacramental character, in the Summa Aquinas has also introduced a number of distinctions within the process of sanctification itself, clearly distinguishing between grace—and its various species—and the reality of the infused theological virtues and that of the gifts of the Spirit. Those sacramental characters which pertain to different aspects of the process of sanctification are likewise distinguished from each other. Although baptismal character is directed to the sanctification of the individual who receives it, the character of orders is directed towards the sanctification of others. In this much, a parallel exists between this form of sacramental character and the charismatic gifts—both are intended to contribute to the sanctification of others.76 Beginning with sanctifying grace (gratia gratum faciens), one may distinguish the concept of sacramental character from habitual grace itself and from the infused virtues and gifts according to the way in which each interacts with the parts of the human soul. Aquinas describes habitual grace as a quality adhering in the essence of 74 75 76 ST III, q. 66, a. 1, ad 1. ST III, q. 66, a. 1, ad 1. ST I-II, q. 111, a. 4; III, q. 63, a. 6, corp. 1360 Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. the soul.77 The infused virtues, which are distinct from grace,78 are dispositions for divine life, derivative of habitual grace as a participation in divine nature according to the mode of Trinitarian indwelling.79 Sanctifying grace, therefore, is effectively the principal or root of the infused virtues and the life that flows from them.80 Accordingly, while grace directly concerns the essence of the soul, the infused virtues concern the soul’s powers.81 Like the virtues, sacramental character is a power, as we have seen.82 For Aquinas, sacramental character is situated in the intellective power of the soul.83 Although the infused virtues and sacramental characters are both located in the powers of the soul, they are distinguished from each other not only by the species of quality themselves (habit in the case of the virtues, power in the case of the characters), but by their respective ends as well. Where the infused virtues are ordered to participation in divine life, baptismal character (for example) orders us to divine worship according to the rites of the Church.84 Regarding the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Aquinas implies that habit can be used to describe these as well,85 inasmuch as they represent a special receptivity to divine motion, perfecting human nature to participate in the power of the Holy Spirit in a manner that resembles the manner in which moral virtues perfect the appetitive powers of the soul to participate in the power of reason.86 Capreolus, Scotus, and Cajetan After Aquinas, conversations about the quiddity of sacramental character continued between the Dominican and Franciscan schools. In his commentary on Aquinas’s Sentences, in the prologue of his commentary, Capreolus begins by situating the question of character among the texts used by both 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 ST I-II, q. 110, a. 2, ad 1. ST I-II, q. 110, a. 3, corp. ST I, q. 43, a. 3, corp. ST I-II, q. 110, a. 3, ad 3. ST I-II, q. 110, a. 4, sc and corp. ST III, q. 63, a. 2, sc. ST III, q. 63, a. 4, ad 3; a. 5, corp. For Aquinas, the incorruptible nature of intellective being corresponds to the indelible nature of sacramental character. ST III, q. 63, a. 5, corp. ST III, q. 63, a. 2, corp. While character is reducible to the second species of quality (capabilities/incapabilities), grace is reducible to the first species of quality (habits and dispositions), as a disposition (ST I-II, q. 110, a. 3, ad 3). ST I-II, q. 68, a. 3, corp. ST I-II, q. 68, aa. 2–3. Sacramental Character and the Pattern of Theological Life 1361 Bonaventure and Aquinas in their commentaries on the Sentences, focusing on Damascene’s terminological descriptions of baptism. Against those who would deny that sacramental character imprints anything in the soul, Capreolus focuses his reader’s attention on Damascene’s notion of character as sigillum, which Capreolus asserts implies that character is a quidditative impression on something. It quickly becomes clear that many of Capreolus’s interpretations of Aquinas are framed as responses to Scotus. For Scotus, the concept of character is connected to the non-iterability of baptism as a divinely instituted sacrament, resulting from no prior cause or from any human volition; as a sacrament, baptism provides full remission for original sin and its effects. Baptism, Scotus argues, functions as a gate by which one enters the law of Christ as a kind of family member in his body, and a member of the Church militant.87 Concerned that Aquinas’s approach would result in classifying character as an absolute form (forma absoluta),88 Scotus argues that character’s non-repeatable nature distinguishes it from grace and the infused virtues, and refers most directly to that which formally distinguishes those who have received the sacrament of baptism from those who have not; further, this distinction also signifies the recipient’s conformity to 87 88 Scotus, In IV sent., d. 6, q. 7, schol. (Opera Omnia, vol. 8 [Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1968], 332). Although Scotus acknowledges that some kind of indelible character is a common explanation of the unrepeatable quality of the sacrament of baptism, he is also quick to point out that in Lombard’s own treatment of baptism in the Sentences, the term character is mentioned only at the outset of distinction 6 (Sent. IV, dist. 6, ch. 2, no. 3), where Lombard indicates that baptized heretics have received the character of Christ, and therefore should not be rebaptized. Scotus attributes Lombard’s use of this term to the baptismal vocabulary that Lombard inherited from Augustine, whose authority justifies the use of ‘character’ in the context of baptismal non-iterability. To establish a working definition of character, Scotus returns to the text of Heb 1:3, where he notes that the term charactēr (χαρακτὴρ) occurs in the Greek text where figura substantiae appears in the Latin (In IV sent., d. 6, q. 9, schol. (Opera Omnia, 8:340). Focusing on the concept of “figure,” Scotus turns to the use of character in Latin texts in Revelation, where the term describes a kind of figure or sign of the beast (e.g., 16:2). Basing himself on these biblical examples, Scotus argues that in the most general sense character should be understood as a sign—in this way, character is said of baptism, inasmuch as it is a kind of sign On the use of character in the Vulgate and in the Vetus Latina, see Haring, “St. Augustine’s Use,” 82n1 (where the Vulgate uses character, pre-Vulgate versions use inscriptio nominis or nomen scriptum or charagma). Returning to the instance in which Lombard himself uses character in the Sentences IV (d. 6, ch. 2, no. 3), Scotus argues that Lombard’s own reference to the “character of Christ” should be generally understood as a reference to the implications of the form of the sacramental words (In IV sent., d. 6, q. 9, schol. [Opera Omnia, 8:340]) . Scotus, In IV sent., d. 6, q. 10, schol. (Opera Omnia, 8:351) 1362 Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. Christ and the attending obligations that this conformity has imparted.89 For Scotus, character is better understood as a kind of relation.90 Because it is not associated with any specific act on the part of the baptized, but rather represents the distinction of those baptized from those not, for Scotus this relation is understood to be logical, rather than real.91 Were character to be considered among Aristotle’s species of quality, Scotus argues, a number of problems would arise. For Scotus, if character is to be considered as accidental being in the absolute sense, it follows that it would likely be considered in either of the species of quality considered by Bonaventure and Aquinas: either habit or power. For Scotus, however, the second species of quality (power) is unsuitable, primarily because of the supernatural nature of sacramental character—for Scotus, Aristotle’s description of qualitative power applies to natural potencies, and cannot easily be applied in this case. Throughout his treatment of sacramental character, Scotus consistently voices the concern that classifying character as a qualitative power not only would result in a reification of character as an absolute accidental form, but would also seem to associate character with the natural potency of the person possessing it; this would not only risk conflating natural and the supernatural powers, but also would imply an undue malleability in the character itself. A supernatural power, Scotus argues, if it is considered as a form of absolute, accidental, and spiritual being, would need to be classified within an intermediate genus; Scotus argues that supernatural habits represent an intermediate genus of this kind. Therefore, arguing that character should be considered a kind of supernatural qualitative habit (as Bonaventure did), in part because such habitual qualities are difficult to move or change, seems more reasonable to Scotus.92 However, should someone insist that character is in fact a supernatural power (as Aquinas does), this would be less suitable in Scotus’s view. Responding to a series of possible critiques, Scotus invokes a number of concerns that might cause someone to exclude habitus in favor of power in this case: in addition to the seeming incompatibility between power and habit on both natural and supernatural levels, character is also understood to dispose for grace in a way that habit could not. Further, some (like Aquinas) have argued that habitus is unsuitable because, of its nature, habit is disposed towards good or evil actions in a way that character taken in itself is not.93 For Scotus, as 89 90 91 92 93 Scotus, In IV sent., d. 6, q. 9, schol. (Opera Omnia, 8:340). Scotus, In IV sent., d. 6, q. 10, schol. (Opera Omnia, 8:356). Scotus, In IV sent., d. 6, q. 10, schol. (Opera Omnia, 8:357). Scotus, In IV sent., d. 6, q. 10, schol. (Opera Omnia, 8:361). Scotus, In IV sent., d. 6, q. 10, a. 1, corp. (Opera Omnia, 8:361–62). Sacramental Character and the Pattern of Theological Life 1363 a disposition towards another term, habit can be understood as a principle disposed toward a concluding term. In this sense, habit is not reduced to disposition as described by Aristotle in his discussion of the first species of quality, inasmuch as disposition in this context represents an easily moved quality that is opposed to a comparatively immobile habitus. In this regard, Scotus defends aspects of Bonaventure’s reasoning to a certain extent. Understood as a supernatural habitus (rather than a natural one), Scotus argues that character functions as the principle of certain supernatural actions. Concerning Aquinas’s assertion that habitus is always associated with an ordering to either good or evil actions, Scotus argues that the acquisition of habit can be independent of its moral application—taken in itself, habit may be indifferent, Scotus argues. Calling attention to the science of geometry as an example, Scotus asserts that having facility with the conclusions of this science is independent of the use to which these conclusions are eventually put—one may have the habit of this science therefore, according to Scotus, without any specific inclination towards either good or evil acts.94 In this respect, Scotus compares character to the infused theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity, which he argues are examples of supernatural habits that, while dispositions to good actions, are not the proximate eliciting principle of these same actions.95 As a sign of the life of grace and its obligations and a disposition for sacramental grace, for Scotus character is in the will rather than the intellect.96 In his response to Scotus, Capreolus argues that, although it is a relation in one sense, inasmuch as it is understood as a sign, in itself character refers to something truly in the soul, upon which the sign is founded.97 For Capreolus, the underlying metaphysical reality that sustains the signate dimension of sacramental character does not fall within the category of substantial being as such, but rather should be considered as a quality. Introducing a distinction from Aquinas’s De veritate, Capreolus differentiates between a consideration of something that pertains to that thing absolutely and a consideration of the same thing under a certain respect.98 Here, Capreolus uses this text from the De veritate to provide context for one of Aquinas’s responses to an 94 95 96 97 98 Scotus, In IV sent., d. 6, q. 10, a. 1, corp. (Opera Omnia, 8:361–62). Scotus, In IV sent., d. 6, q. 10, a. 1, corp. (Opera Omnia, 8:362). Scotus, In IV sent., d. 6, q. 11, a. 1, corp. (Opera Omnia, 8:369–71). Capreolus, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 3, no. 1 (Defensiones Theologiae divi Thomae Aquinatis, ed. Ceslaus Paban and Thomas Pègues, vol. 6 [Tours, France: Alfred Cattier, 1906], 90). See also a. 1, concl. 1. Capreolus, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 3, no. 1 (Defensiones Theologiae divi Thomae Aquinatis, 6:90), citing De veritate, q. 21, a. 6. 1364 Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. objector in the Summa theologiae who proposes that character should be defined as sign of the Church’s communion, and of that which is conferred in ordination by the hierarchy. Based on this understanding of character as sign, the objector argues that, because sign is in the genus of relation rather than power, as a sign character should therefore not be understood as a spiritual power.99 In his response, Aquinas insists that, inasmuch as the term “sign” indicates a relation of some kind, this presumes a foundation of some kind, other than the relation itself. For Aquinas, it is not the essence of the soul in the immediate sense, but rather something in the soul.100 Continuing in his response to the fourth objection, Aquinas argues that, as a sign, character is to be compared most directly with the sensible sacrament by which the character itself is imparted. In itself, however, character has the nature of a principle.101 Capreolus continues to cite from Aquinas’s treatment of character in the Summa, noting that Aquinas’s reply to the second objection in article 1 also supports this approach to character as in one sense a sign: here, Aquinas argues that character is a sign insofar as it is imprinted by a sensible sacrament.102 For Capreolus, naming character as sign does not speak to character’s quidditative identity in an absolute sense, but rather gives only a posterior and accidental definition of character that describes the reality of sacramental character only with regard to certain consequences of its essential identity. Properly speaking, Capreolus argues, character is a quality (specifically, of its second species) in the absolute sense.103 Building on Capreolus’s response to Scotus, in his commentary on the second article of question 63, Cajetan argues that, as distinct from the category of relation, sacramental character is best understood as a spiritual power that orders a person to divine worship.104 Without implying anything natural within the essence of the soul, character indicates a capacity or power for a certain set of actions, just as a man is ordered as a solder to strike, or as a doctor is ordered to heal. As a spiritual power, character renders the soul able to receive and hand on those things which properly pertain to the 99 100 101 102 103 104 ST III, q. 63, a. 2, arg. 3. ST III, q. 63, a. 2, ad 3. ST III, q. 63, a. 2, ad 4. ST III, q. 63, a. 1, ad 2. Capreolus, In IV sent., d. 4, q. 1, a. 3, no. 1 (Defensiones Theologiae divi Thomae Aquinatis, 6:90). Aquinas refers to character in this way in the corpus of this article, and Cajetan adopts this definition in his commentary. Cajetan, at In III ST, q. 63, a. 2. Cajetan’s commentary can be found in the Leonine edition of Thomas’s Opera Omnia, accompanying Thomas’s text of ST III, qq. 60–90, in vol. 12. Sacramental Character and the Pattern of Theological Life 1365 Christian religion.105 Responding to Scotus’s notion of indifferent habits directly, Cajetan argues that no specific, individuated human act is morally indifferent. Taking up Scotus’s geometrical example, Cajetan argues that when the conclusions of geometry are frequently considered—provided these conclusions are known scientifically—this frequent consideration generates a good habit, namely science itself. this scientific habit of mind is considered a virtue, through which good and truth alone are attained. However, if this frequent consideration is not scientific, only the habit of opinion is generated; such a habitual opinion is not indifferent in itself, however, but declines from either goodness or evil to the extent that the opinion in question is either true or false. Accordingly, inasmuch as character is understood as a supernatural form impressed by God, if this supernatural form is a habitus, it would not be able to be indifferent as Scotus claims. Further, Cajetan argues that, despite Scotus’s assertions, these infused virtues are not examples of such indifferent habits and do in fact function as sufficient and proximate principles that elicit good actions—most especially, the infused virtue of charity functions as both a sufficient and a proximate principle that elicits the love of God above all things.106 Suárez Writing in the later sixteenth century, the Jesuit Francisco Suárez would engage Cajetan’s work and promote some of Cajetan’s conclusions, even as he defended and rearticulated important aspects of Scotus’s position. In his commentary on question 63 of the tertia pars, Suárez treats each of the six articles of Aquinas’s question separately, commenting on each in turn. In his commentary on the first article, which concerns the notion that the sacramental character constitutes something real in the soul itself, Suárez begins by affirming Cajetan’s interpretation of Aquinas on this subject. Invoking Cajetan, Suárez affirms that the very nature of the question posed in this question situates sacramental character more specifically within the broader genre of sacramentality in the common sense—as opposed to the sacraments of the Old Law, only the sacraments of the New Law could be understood to have such an effect. In an indefinite manner, therefore, Suárez argues that the something of the nature of sacramental character already emerges not only from the very nature of this question but also from the intelligibility of the word character itself, which can be variously translated as signum or sigillum, 105 106 Cajetan, In III ST, q. 63, a. 2. Cajetan, In III ST, q. 63, a. 2. 1366 Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. noting that a sign of this kind indicates the marking that might be found on a servant or on sheep, distinguishing them as servants of the lord or members of their lord’s flock. As a sign, therefore, the common sense of character implies something that is imposed by human persons that is intended to function as a sensible sign.107 Beginning with the text from Second Corinthians (1:21–22) that Aquinas includes in the sed contra, Suárez concurs that this text can be understood as a reference to the sacramental character and argues that in this text Paul designates four divine effects: the first effect is faith, which is made firm in Christ; the second is charity and grace, with which we are anointed; the third is the pledge (pignus) of the Spirit, which is a testimony of a good conscience. Fourth, Suárez argues that the phrase “ [God] has put his seal upon us [qui et consignavit nos]” in fact indicates an effect that is distinct from the others listed here, and which most aptly describes what is meant by the sacramental character that Christ imparts as a seal.108 Expanding on this, Suárez proceeds to invoke a number of patristic sources not referenced by Aquinas in this article, ranging from Ambrose and Anselm to Chrysostom, who confirm that character is a distinguishing mark imposed on the baptized.109 In the Summa, however, Aquinas engages the specific metaphysical identity of sacramental character in the second article of this question. Here, having established already that character is a mark imparted by Christ’s sacraments in the soul, he asks whether or not this same character should be understood as a spiritual power. In commenting on this text, Suárez builds on his own argument in his commentary on the first article, arguing that the answer to the question raised by Aquinas in this second article—which concerns the quiddity of sacramental character—presupposes an understanding of sacramental character as a kind of sign. For Suárez, the question implied by Aquinas’s second article concerns the coherence of an association 107 108 109 For Suárez, the use of the term character in the context of the sacraments assumes this general definition, using it to describe the sign imparted by the sacraments of Christ to Christian souls as a spiritual sign or character’ (In III ST, q. 63, a. 1; in Opera omnia, vol. 20 [Paris: Vivés, 1860], 182.1). In his response to the first and second objections, Aquinas does use signaculum to describe the sacramental character (ST III, q. 63, a. 1, ad 1 and ad 2). For Cajetan’s own part, in his commentary on this same article he does not invoke this same etymological analysis (Leonine ed., 12:31). Suárez, In III ST, q. 63, a. 1 (Opera, 20:182.2). See 2 Cor 1:21–22: “But the one who gives us security with you in Christ and who anointed us is God; he has also put his seal upon us an given us the Spirit in our hearts as a first installment” (New American Bible, Revised Ed.). Suárez, In III ST, q. 63, a. 1(Opera, 20:182.3.2). Sacramental Character and the Pattern of Theological Life 1367 between the concepts of sign and power.110 Suárez begins by affirming that, although all signs involve relations by virtue of their signification, as something imprinted on the soul sacramental character cannot be reduced to relation only—neither, however, should it be understood as a substance itself, since it clearly adheres in the soul as an existing substance. Among the categories of accidental being, however, after ruling out relation, quantity, and other alternatives, Suárez concurs with Aquinas’s own conclusion in article 2, affirming that character should be understood as a kind of quality.111 Although Suárez does agree with Aquinas that the real accidental being attributed to sacramental character should be described using the Aristotelian species of quality, he disagrees with Aquinas’s arguments in both the sed contra and the corpus of this article. Concerning the sed contra, Suárez argues that Aquinas’s interpretation of chapter 5 in the second book of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics remains inconclusive. As we have previously discussed, in this text Aristotle indicates that three things are in the soul: power, habit, and passion. Because of the indelible nature of character, for Aquinas the category of passion is too transitory; habit, although admittedly less changeable than passion, is intrinsically ordered to good use rather than bad—hence, virtue is a fitting perfection of moral habit, while vice is a distortion of the same. By contrast, Aquinas argues that character is not only permanent but also exhibits a kind of indifference to its use, noting that some who have character use it well, while others misuse the same character. For Aquinas, while habits themselves may be either virtuous or vicious, no single, really existing habit is indifferent to virtue and vice—rather, in the order of accidental being, virtue and vice are established as habits, without the option of adopting the other identity without becoming a different habit with the opposite character.112 For Suárez, however, Aquinas’s reasoning in the sed contra is unconvincing for at least two reasons. The first of these is that, according to Suárez, in the genre of moral habit, the good or bad use of a given habit is not necessarily contrary to the nature of qualitative habit itself. For example, Suárez argues, in a case in which the will is determined to act in only a probable sense, a certain indifference is expressed towards the habits of virtue and vice that may be relevant to the actions contemplated. At this stage, Suárez argues, the species of the act itself remains indifferent— even if the categories of good and evil are imposed extrinsically, the nature of the person and the determination of their will to act remains indifferent 110 111 112 Suárez, In III ST, q. 63, a. 2 (Opera, 20:184.1). Suárez, In III ST, q. 63, a. 2 (Opera, 20:184.1). Aquinas, ST III, q. 63, a. 2, sc. See Aristotle, Ethica nicomachea 2.5.2. 1368 Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. intrinsically, even at the level of habit.113 Secondly, Suárez argues that this also applies to the particular case of intellective habitus, where the intellect’s habitual knowledge may be used for good or for ill. Because Aquinas situates character in the intellect, Suárez argues that there is nothing that would prevent character itself from being described as a habitus, to which the will puts to either good or evil use. For Suárez, it is the goodness of the will’s judgment that determines the moral end to which the intellectual habitus is put.114 Accordingly, Suárez is happy to classify character as an intellectual quality, using the species of habitus. Clearly, however, Suárez’s position relies on an approach to the relationship between intellect and will that differs from Aquinas’s in critical respects. In several respects, Suárez’s arguments also resemble those advanced by Scotus and the earlier Franciscan tradition—Suárez does not share Scotus’s aversion to identifying character within an accident that has real being (in the “absolute” sense), and his use of the concept of qualitative habitus in this regard resembles Bonaventure to a certain extent. However, his approach to the indifference of this habitus to moral action resembles Scotus’s defense of Bonaventure’s position, in which Scotus implicitly responds to certain of Aquinas’s critiques of the use of habitus in this context. Although Suárez has clearly engaged Cajetan’s commentary on question 63 of the tertia pars, it does not seem that Cajetan’s response to Scotus on the question of indifferent habits has impacted Suárez’s interpretation of this same question. Despite his disagreements with Aquinas, Suárez’s detailed and thorough commentary on the Summa theologiae represents a development in the emerging Jesuit theological tradition. Although previous Jesuit theologians like Robert Bellarmine did not publish extensive commentaries on the Summa, aspects of Suárez’s approach seem to have been influenced by Bellarmine’s treatment of character in his Controversies.115 Suárez’s synthe113 114 115 Suárez, In III ST, q. 63, a. 2 (Opera, 20:184.2). Suárez, In III ST, q. 63, a. 2 (Opera, 20:185.2). Placing Suárez in the broader context of the emerging Jesuit tradition in the late sixteenth century, earlier sources within this tradition also emerge that provide context for Suárez’s views on this subject. The earlier Robert Bellarmine, for example, approached sacramental character in a similar way. Although Bellarmine did not comment extensively on Aquinas’s Summa directly, in his Controversies he does provide a catalogue of critiques of the doctrine of sacramental character, emphasizing sixteenth-century Protestant arguments. Following a recapitulation of the Catholic teaching on this subject—then recently articulated by the Council of Trent—Bellarmine proceeds to offer a defense of this doctrine from scriptural and patristic sources, and from rational arguments (Controversiae II [De sacramentis], ch. 18; in De Controversiis Christianae fidei adversus huius temporis Haereticos, vol. 3 [Paris, 1613], 161). Several Sacramental Character and the Pattern of Theological Life 1369 sis would prove influential, however, and later Jesuits like Gabriel Vásquez would follow Suárez’s approach to character as a qualitative habit.116 Conclusion In the preceding pages, we have examined a series of critical developments in the doctrine of sacramental character in the Latin West, focusing especially on Scholastic conversations about the metaphysical identity of sacramental character. We have seen that Aquinas’s view of sacramental character as a qualitative power differentiates him from Bonaventure, who holds instead that character is a habitus. Further, we have seen that these respective positions continued to develop in the later Franciscan and Dominican traditions as Capreolus and Cajetan began to engage Scotus’s amplification and development of Bonaventure’s habitus theory. In these later conversations, the continued disagreement between Thomists and Scotists on the topic of sacramental character also serves to underscore the more fundamental metaphysical disagreements over which these two traditions diverged—ranging from analogy to the concepts of substantial and accidental being, the Scotistic and Thomistic traditions developed significantly different accounts of reality that would put them at odds on a wide range of natural and theological topics for centuries. The specific case of sacramental character, however, highlights a certain set of these more fundamental disagreements, inasmuch as they pertain not only to the quiddity of character directly, but to the wider anthropological context in which character and other aspects of grace 116 aspects of Suárez’s approach to this question are also found in Bellarmine’s Controversies. For example, concerning the text from 2 Corinthians that Aquinas cites in ST III, q. 63, a. 1, sc, and Suárez exegetes at length, Bellarmine also provides an explanation of this text similar to that found in Suárez, including some of the patristic exegesis that Suárez relies upon from Ambrose (Controversiae II, ch. 20 [De Controversiis Christianae fidei, 3:166]). On the quiddity of sacramental character specifically, however, Bellarmine’s approach to character provides only a partial foundation for Suárez’s later teaching on this subject. Bellarmine argues that, excepting Scotus and Durandus, there is consensus in the Catholic tradition not only that character is a spiritual sign imprinted on the soul, but that this spiritual imprint is a kind of quality. For Bellarmine character is neither a habitus nor an operative power. Although he acknowledges that some theologians situate character in either the will or the intellect, others place it simply in the substance of the soul—and for Bellarmine, this explanation seems most probable, not only because it seems to accord most directly with conciliar teachings of the Church which indicate that character is an indelible mark on the soul, but because, according to Bellarmine, character is neither a habitus nor an operative power(Controversiae II, ch. 19 [De Controversiis Christianae fidei, 3:163–64]). See Vásquez, In III ST, q. 63, disp. 2, ch. 3. 1370 Reginald M. Lynch, O.P. and sanctification pertain to human nature. Cajetan’s response to Scotus’s misclassification of the theological virtues, for example, points to an important contrast between these two Scholastic perspectives on the relationship between accidental being and human nature, and the implications of this for the relationship between the natural and the supernatural. Although the question of the metaphysical identity of sacramental character might appear to be a Scholastic quibble that would seem to hold little relevance outside of the proprietary concerns of specific Scholastic schools of thought, the underlying questions of the relationship between human nature and the sanctifying effects of the sacraments are of enduring importance. In this regard, Augustine’s ecclesiology of charity—and the sacramental categories it engenders—continues to provide a determinative frame of reference for continued considerations of these questions in the present. Although hermeneutically distinct from Augustine in many respects, Aquinas’s approach to sacramental character as a power captures central aspects of Augustine’s doctrine of baptismal non-iterability more fulsomely than do the various articulations of habitus theory found in Bonaventure, Scotus, and later in Suárez. Additionally, viewed from the broader perspective of theological anthropology, Aquinas’s account of character as a qualitative power also allows him to integrate the concept of habit into other aspects of his theological anthropology—namely grace and infused virtue—in a manner that complements the nature of character as a permanent quality and provides a more compelling account of both the permanence of the sacrament of baptism (and other character-conferring sacraments) and their use in charity in the broader context of the theological life. These considerations not only suggest a deep compatibility between the sacramental theologies of Aquinas and Augustine, but further recommend them both as resources for conversations about the sacramental implications of the Church’s theological anthropology in the present. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2023): 1371–1389 1371 Patterns of Penance and the Sin of Cain: Approaching a Sacramental Biblical Theology James B. Prothro Augustine Institute Graduate School of Theology Greenwood Village, CO My essay focuses particularly on the sacrament of reconciliation. I am currently composing a monograph on this sacrament for a series in biblical theology, surveying the Scriptures to see how, within them, the Church’s sacraments are prefigured, revealed, and commanded, and to illustrate Scripture’s witness in a way that will “strengthen” and “rejuvenate” our theology and practice, following Dei Verbum (DV) §24. My contribution here focuses especially on how to approach writing a biblical theology of penance. Biblical treatments and defenses of the sacrament are often brief, contenting themselves with proving a few conceptual points or doubling down on Jesus’s giving his apostles the power and duty of absolution in John 20:19–23. Robert Fastiggi’s discussion of the biblical “foundations” of reconciliation, for instance, spans less than thirty pages for both testaments combined, and concludes with a kind of anti-climactic apology: “While it’s clear that the Sacrament of Penance has been instituted by Christ, the actual form of the administration of the sacrament will need to develop within the Church’s tradition.”1 This is a roundabout way of saying that although Scripture clearly attests to the sacrament’s theological foundations, it leaves us only with foundations. If this is true, how far can a biblical theology of the sacrament go, and how should one go about it? Approaching a biblical theology of penance, I think, requires us to pause and consider two aspects of the task. First, we should give an account 1 Robert L. Fastiggi, The Sacrament of Reconciliation: An Anthropological and Scriptural Understanding (Chicago: Hillenbrand, 2017), 36. 1372 James B. Prothro of “biblical theology” and our aims in writing one. Secondly, we should consider how to write a theology of this sacrament in particular. What should we be looking for? Such questions will help us gain a clearer vision of what illumination we should expect from Scripture about penance and how we will go about finding it. With our approach and aims discussed, this essay can then conclude with an attempt to follow them in practice by offering a theological, penance-focused exegesis of the sin of Cain (Gen 4:1–16). A Biblical Theology of the Sacrament Writing a biblical theology of the sacrament of reconciliation requires us to attend to the notion of “biblical theology.” Unfortunately, there continues to be little agreement on exactly what biblical theology is. The phrase is “a wax nose” molded always to the interpreter practicing it.2 Thankfully, however, this lack of consensus allows us to offer our own proposal and tailor it to the task at hand. Rather than offering a requisite Forschungsbericht or haggling with other proposals in detail as though my goal were to dismantle or replace them globally, I can in this brief essay tell you how I think one should go about this task and why. Our task is writing a biblical theology of penance, and we may begin by noting already two small words in that phrase that tell us much. The first is the indefinite article, “a.” We are writing a biblical theology. That designates our goal already as an academic product that fits a particular genre, not simply a lens with which I read. Depending on which term one emphasizes—biblical or theology—and depending on what one means the phrase to rule out, the phrase “biblical theology” can be used to indicate exegesis that is “theologically interested”3 (as opposed to exegesis that spurns dogmatic theology) or to indicate theology that is “biblically faithful”4 (i.e., explicitly biblically sourced as opposed to theologies that operate from first principles other than revelation). Both of these uses of the term, I think, have valid interests but cede too much definitional ground: exegesis that is opposed to or not aimed at the theological truth is incomplete, from a Catholic perspective, and theology that is not constantly informed and reformed by God’s 2 3 4 Edward W. Klink III and Darian R. Lockett, Understanding Biblical Theology: A Comparison of Theory and Practice (Downers Grove, IL: Zondervan, 2012), 13. Robert D. Miller II, OFS, Many Roads Lead Eastward: Overtures to Catholic Biblical Theology (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2016), 10 (summarizing Roland Murphy). D. A. Carson, “A Biblical Theology of Education,” Themelios 46 (2021): 257–68, at 258. Patterns of Penance and the Sin of Cain 1373 word can only be ancillary to theology.5 To do exegesis that is theological or theology that is exegetical is simply to do exegesis or to do theology; we do not need an added composite term. Writing a biblical theology indicates not merely an attitude or interest, but a formal property: we are going about a biblical analysis that will participate in a particular mode of inquiry and form of presentation. Second, we note the preposition “of ” in “a biblical theology of” the sacrament of reconciliation. That is, our biblical theology is focused on a particular practice, and one that is already known from our present context. The work of biblical theology, according to many, “aims at presenting, in a unified and systematic way, the origin and development of revealed doctrine in its successive stages.”6 This view, expressed here by the Catholic Augustin Cardinal Bea, echoes almost exactly the influential and constructive work of the Princeton theologian Geerhardus Vos: “Biblical theology, rightly defined, is nothing else than the exhibition of the organic process of supernatural revelation in its historic continuity and multiformity.”7 This captures the formal character of what we hope our ultimate product to be: a descriptive and synthetic presentation of divine revelation across the biblical canon. But this is done best when, as in our current pursuit, it is focused on a particular mystery or topic. To trace out and synthesize all of the theological content in the Bible is a gargantuan task that leaves even its largest literary specimen lacking.8 However, many such biblical theologies are carried out 5 6 7 8 See, for instance: Aquinas’s insistence on theology as a science whose principles are those revealed and apprehended by divine faith in Summa theologiae [ST] I, q. 1, aa. 1–2; Augustine’s discussion of the praeambula fidei he finds in Platonism and the saving God he can know only through Scripture and the Church in Confessiones 7.9.21; and Pope Benedict XVI’s formula for Catholic biblical exegesis in Verbum Domini (2010) §34: “Only where both methodological levels, the historical-critical and the theological, are respected, can one speak of a theological exegesis, an exegesis worthy of this book.” Augustin Cardinal Bea, “Progress in the Interpretation of Sacred Scripture,” Theology Digest 1 (1953): 67–71, at 71. Quoted in Richard C. Barcellos, “An Analysis of Geerhardus Vos’ Nature and Method of Biblical Theology,” The Master’s Seminary Journal 31 (2020): 151–71, at 163. See, more fully, Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology: Old and New Testaments (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1948). As a case in point, see the large and impressive work of Charles H. H. Scobie, The Ways of Our God: An Approach to Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003), which totals over a thousand pages, but whose syntheses of topics like God’s Spirit or ethics or God’s Son who is Wisdom—syntheses describing the biblical witness to these topics across both testaments—occupy, on average, only around forty pages. A Catholic biblical theology that follows Vos’s interest (see above) in form, content, and 1374 James B. Prothro with a distrust of dogmatic theology or a desire to replace it, and such an expansive burden need not concern a Catholic who trusts the complementarity of Scripture and Tradition. Nor are we primarily engaged in sola scriptura apologetics—in which one prescinds from dogmatic theology so that Scripture may prove dogma independently. We can assume our practice of the sacrament and the dogmas that undergird it, allowing them to serve as “lights on the path” and illumine our reading.9 Rather than coming to the Bible to construct a theology from scratch, we stand on something already known within the “living tradition” and look back to see it anew in Scripture (DV §12). Beginning from our chosen topic, we can look to see how it is unveiled throughout Scripture and plot out key points, developments, and trajectories across the canon in order to represent them and reflect on them for Catholic theology and the life of the faithful today.10 This leads us to a third observation regarding the motivation and benefits of such a “biblical theology.” If we already know the truth through our dogmatic formulations and are not engaged in apologetics or answering open questions, why turn back to unearth or rearticulate the Bible’s witness distinctly—especially when its witness only grounds or anticipates later developments that gave shape to the sacrament as it is given to us? One answer, of course, is that, in the minds of the faithful or in the mouths of preachers, God’s own inspired words take precedent over other kinds of discourse, as they possess uniquely the “fire” and “mighty power” of divine speech.11 Another answer is that reexamination of Scripture’s canonical witness guides the magisterium in reform and the “maturation” of the Church’s judgments (DV §12). Further, reading Scripture in the light of the Church’s Tradition contributes to our constant groundedness in revelation 9 10 11 salvation-historical progression is Paul Heinisch, Theology of the Old Testament, ed. William Heidt (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1950). Catechism of the Catholic Church §89. That dogma can help, rather than merely hinder, exegesis is emphasized by Gary A. Anderson, Christian Doctrine and the Old Testament: Theology in the Service of Biblical Exegesis (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2017), xi; Karl Rahner, “Exegesis and Dogmatic Theology,” in Dogmatic versus Biblical Theology, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler (Baltimore: Helicon, 1964), 39. This approach is sketched out by Brevard S. Childs, despite his criticisms of the “biblical theology” movement in the era of Vos (or Bea): Biblical Theology in Crisis (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970), 131–32. Childs’s “canonical” emphasis for biblical-theological method (e.g., 99), though it requires some qualifications for which we do not here have space, is in part an attempt to affirm an exegesis that assumes rather than brackets out Christian theological presuppositions at least regarding the one God to whom the Bible as a whole bears witness. Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus (1893), §7. Patterns of Penance and the Sin of Cain 1375 and breathes vigor and new life into the way in which the faithful understand, live, teach, and preach the truth. We may hear from Dei Verbum once more: Sacred theology rests on the written word of God, together with sacred tradition, as its primary and perpetual foundation. By scrutinizing in the light of faith all truth stored up in the mystery of Christ, theology is most powerfully strengthened and constantly rejuvenated by that word. (§24) A biblical theology that rearticulates a mystery of the faith or an aspect of revealed truth and shows its unfolding within revelation strengthens the discipline and lived practice of Christian theology by exposing the epistemic foundations on which it rests. Moreover, just as its results are able to contribute to the Church’s maturity, it also lends youth and vigor to the faithful by a kind of rejuvenation. I suggest that biblical theology, as distinct from dogmatic theology, can contribute uniquely to this rejuvenation specifically in that it redescribes and synthesizes the biblical witness in the Bible’s own mode.12 If dogmatic theology formulates and distills what God reveals, God chose to reveal the content through the literary vehicles of story, song, and instruction. Biblical theology aims “to describe OT or NT faith and practice from within its original presuppositions, and with due attention to its own organizing principles,”13 rearticulating and representing how the stories, songs, and forms of instruction in Scripture disclose divine truth. This is not only a good thing in that these divinely inspired modes of communication, providentially given within the conceptualities of particular cultures and languages, “possess a privileged congruence with the divine actions and mystery-bearing realities in salvation history.”14 It is a good thing because—as embodied creatures who receive and express truth in metaphor and live within linear time—the narratival, 12 13 14 According to Angelo Tosato, receiving the gift of revelation ad modum recepti is the touchstone of all Catholic biblical interpretation (The Catholic Statute of Biblical Interpretation, ed. Monica Lugato [Rome: Gregorian and Biblical Press, 2021], 14). Krister Stendahl, “Biblical Theology, Contemporary,” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, ed. George A. Buttrick, 4 vols. (1962): 1:418–32, at 425. William M. Wright IV and Francis Martin, Encountering the Living God in Scripture: Theological and Philosophical Principles for Interpretation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2019), 206. Compare also René Latourelle, SJ, Théologie de la révélation, Studia 15 (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1963), 380–82; Xavier Léon-Dufour, Dictionary of Biblical Theology, rev. and ed. E. M. Stewart, trans. P. Joseph Cahill, SJ (New York: Seabury, 1973), xxi–ii. 1376 James B. Prothro metaphorical, and otherwise embodied modes of Scripture’s communication not only inform our formulation of truth but also form and enliven our religious imagination, and thus our self-understanding and practice.15 If simpler language calls me to “live virtuously,” the Bible calls me to imagine myself “walking the path” of righteousness, a path on which I can “stumble” or put a “stumbling block” in front of others, one from which I might go or be led “astray,” and from which I must therefore not even “turn aside to the right or to the left,” lest I fail to reach my destination.16 This may all refer to the same thing as “living virtuously,” but it shapes my imaginative framework for my life in the world and the telos of my calling in God toward beatitude more than the accurate but more abstract formulation. Thinking of sin as a “debt,” even though it is so only analogously, shapes my imagination about invisible realities when I transgress, and it is a core metaphor from which we derive also our conceptions of this debt being remitted, forgiven, blotted out, or repaid, whether in one’s personal life or in the Church’s development of doctrine (e.g., indulgences).17 This goes also for stories—historical or parabolic—that serve as larger vehicles for communication and invite us to see ourselves and realities about humanity, God, sin, and justice within the interactions between characters. Thinking of human rejection and divine providence through the Joseph story (Gen 37–50) adds pathos and imaginative fodder to our prayer in times of abandonment and our contemplation of God’s mysterious ways. We are called to embrace Christian suffering, but the image of “bearing one’s cross” after Christ (Mark 8:34) calls us specifically to imagine ourselves in our sufferings as ascending Golgotha with Christ, falling, groaning, yet bearing up under pain for love of God. Biblical metaphors are important not merely for the ultimate res to which they point but also for how they construe it, and biblical stories and songs are important not merely for the truth or virtue they ultimately manifest, but the 15 16 17 On the goodness and connaturality of biblical metaphor for the human recipients of revelation, see Aquinas, ST I, q. 1, a. 9. On embodiment in human language and cognition, see here George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Peter Richardson, Charles M. Mueller, and Stephen Pihlaja, Cognitive Linguistics and Religious Language: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2021). E.g., Gen 6:9; Exod 32:8; Deut 5:32; 2 Kgs 21:9; Job 31:7; Ps 1:1; 17:5; 119:133; Luke 21:8; Rom 11:11; 14:13; 2 Pet 2:15. See Gary A. Anderson’s volume on the growth of the “sin is debt” conception and its utilization in imagining atonement and satisfaction: Sin: A History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009). See also Joseph Lam, Patterns of Sin in the Hebrew Bible: Metaphor, Culture, and the Making of a Religious Concept (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Patterns of Penance and the Sin of Cain 1377 way in which they manifest it, the priorities the story’s characters assume or embody, their postures and relations and reactions, or the symbols within the story. The biblical-theological task of drawing these metaphors and stories out for our reflection about ourselves or a particular mystery is beneficial, even when it has no effect on dogmatic formulation, because it gives human creatures richer and thicker frameworks by which to understand and live the truth. This is part of the rejuvenating task and benefit of biblical theology, lending the inner dynamism of God’s revelation by presenting the Bible for the Church’s theology and life in the Bible’s own mode. Looking for Penance in Biblical Patterns Our biblical theology of penance, then, can assume the sacrament’s practice and dogmatic presuppositions without having to prove or reconstruct them. We can begin from the sacrament and then look backward to see the sacrament and its foundations enfleshed in individual narratives and stories, moving from Genesis to Revelation to sketch its unfolding and ultimately its institution as a sacrament by Christ for the Church. A practical question, of course, is where to look. How will we see the sacrament in Scripture? Naturally one would look for the elements that constitute the sacrament, but this can be complicated. The sacrament’s practice as it has been developed in the Church is not directly visible in the Bible—indeed, in either testament. Jesus’s own opposition to sin and occasional pronouncements of forgiveness in his own person as the divine Son (e.g., Mark 2:5) are fundamental and showcase the Christological act mediated sacramentally in the Church.18 The dominical institution is given in John 20:19–23, to be sure. But unlike baptism, we do not have clear New Testament examples of it being carried out as a sacrament. James 5:16 and the command to “confess your sins to one another,” coming after the promise that sick believers who ask anointing from local presbyters will be healed and “forgiven,” is significant. Yet it is at best an example of the authority conferred in the sacrament and the persons involved. This command assumes much and explains little other than promising forgiveness with the healing. We do not see the absolution which is the “form” of the sacrament, conferred by Christ through the priest’s words. Paul’s apostolic authority is clearly 18 Jean-Philippe Revel, La reconciliation, vol. 5 of Traité des Sacrements (Paris: Cerf, 2015), 201–10. Fastiggi shows four principles grounded in the Old Testament: (1) that sin causes alienation from God; (2) that its resolution requires conversion and repentance; (3) that conversion requires internal and external penitence; (4) that forgiveness does not necessarily remit the temporal consequences of sin. 1378 James B. Prothro involved in reinstating the shunned sinner in 2 Cor 2, though he does not emphasize his authority and “spirit” as heavily here as when insisting on the excommunication in 1 Cor 5:3–5. This means that, for the New Testament as well as the Old, we will have to look for types that prefigure and anticipate the sacrament and the grace delivered through Christ’s ego te absolvo in the priest. If we cannot simply look for the form of the sacrament, we might then focus on its matter. However, as Fastiggi states: “For the Sacrament of Reconciliation, identifying the matter is a bit more complex because there is not a single sensible sign or action but several.”19 The “quasi-matter” of the sacrament, as defined at the Council of Trent (1551), is the penitent’s contrition, confession, and satisfaction.20 As Aquinas expresses it, human beings take the place of what in other sacraments would be the material element, particularly as the penitent human’s words and actions seek and are met by the words and actions of the priest.21 Looking for episodes and institutions and other material in Scripture that prefigure the sacrament, then, requires us to look for patterns in postures and behaviors in the context of sin and its removal, in which a sinner cries out in penitence and hope or in which God responds to this penitence with absolution or holds back sin’s fullest penalty. Typological exegesis is often carried out by seeking meaning in signs, the things signified, and then in considering what the natures of those things might signify further.22 But we cannot follow such a model here, since those “things” which will prefigure the sacrament and illumine it spiritually are not things with natures, but events, acts, postures, and responses whose semantic and theological value is found in the relations between characters 19 20 21 22 Fastiggi, Reconciliation, 93. Council of Trent, sess. 14, can. 3. The Council of Florence, sess. 8 (1439), anticipated Trent in its Bull of Union with the Armenians (see Fastiggi, Reconciliation, 55, 93–94). Absolution formulas phrased as intercessions, where they are (or, in past times, were) the approved formula for use in the sacrament, constitute valid form as well. That the sacrament’s form is the absolution, and not the penitent’s contrition or act of satisfaction, comes as at least partial closure to debates regarding the efficient cause of absolution and reconciliation and the distinction between the virtue of penance and the sacrament. See Bernhard Poschmann, Penance and the Anointing of the Sick, trans. and rev. Francis Courtney, SJ, Herder History of Dogma (New York: Herder and Herder, 1964), 155–90. See the phrasing in ST III, q. 84, a. 1, resp.: “For the penitent sinner, by what he does and says [per ea quae agit et dicit], indicates that his heart has ceased from sin; similarly too the priest, by what he does and says [per ea quae agit et dicit] regarding the penitent, indicates the work of God who remits sin.” Even Jeremy Holmes’s recent monograph, which is nuanced in its discussion of biblical narrative, focuses spiritual-sense exegesis on a thing’s nature (Cur Deus Verba: Why the WORD Became Words [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2021], 124). Patterns of Penance and the Sin of Cain 1379 and their context in the narrative of salvation. Rather, we will need to follow something like Paul’s approach to typology in patterns. Paul recounts Israel’s golden calf apostasy as a warning to the Corinthians, and claims: “These things happened to them as an example, and they have been written down as a warning to us” (1 Cor 10:11). Paul derives the “spiritual sense” here from a pattern of events between God and Israel that corresponds to a pattern of events that is repeatable in the Church: liberation (from Egypt/sin), baptism (into Moses/Christ), and sustenance from spiritual food (manna/Eucharist), followed then by pride, apostasy, and destruction (1 Cor 10:1–12). Paul calls these “types” or “patterns” (Gk. typoi) and says that they happened “as types” (typikōs) so as to become a textual warning for the Church (1 Cor 10:6, 11). Our search for penance in Scripture must likewise look for such patterns. With baptism, we can see the sacrament figured or partially figured by looking for its material element of water, and we can consider the nature of water as a drowning or cleansing agent or as a source of life from the womb until the tomb. With penance, we will best illumine the sacrament by considering biblical situations and patterns in which we see penitence and reconciliation in the context of sin and its consequences. And, since we are dealing with this sacrament in particular, its most fitting biblical figurations will occur in the context of a preexisting redemption or relationship with God analogous to baptism or the friendship with God enjoyed by the baptized. Some figurations will occur in narrative, and we will be able to see the main elements of confession, pardon, and penance explicit or implicit in a sequence of events. We can “see” in a narrative framework, and against the backdrop of very grave failure, the mediation of forgiveness through God’s representatives in Nathan’s rebuke and pronouncement of forgiveness to David (2 Sam 12:13–14). At other points we will see the elements expressed in a non-narrative context. In the Psalter, for instance, we are often left not knowing the result of a prayer for forgiveness or the specific sin in view, but we can “see” the figure of the penitent in the psalmist’s posture, note the deliverance he expected and asked of his merciful God, and note also what his inspired words assume regarding sin’s penalties and atonement. The institutions of Israel’s purificatory and reparation offerings, likewise, can illumine vividly the logic of sin, atonement, and communal reconciliation that are fulfilled in Christ and offered to the faithful in the sacrament.23 And didactic biblical material, of course, can speak directly or theoretically about sin and its removal. By examining patterns of sin, penance, and restoration in 23 Aquinas points to the reparation offering in Lev 5:15–16 (5:17–18 in the King James Version and many English versions) in particular: ST III, q. 84, a. 7, ad 2. 1380 James B. Prothro the stories, songs, and instruction of the Bible, we can reflect through them on God’s great mercy and be shaped in our self-understanding as penitents or as priests in the confessional. Seeing Penance in the Sin of Cain After discussing our aims and approach, it is fitting to offer a sample exegesis, and I will do so with a text from the Old Testament: the sin of Cain and its aftermath in Gen 4:1–16. This text is rarely referenced in discussions of penance.24 Yet it prefigures or parallels many elements of the sacrament, though it does not prefigure the sacrament as fully as others (e.g., David’s sin, which includes rebuke, confession, absolution through a mediator, and temporal penalty). The story of Cain, on many readings, narrates the beginnings of civilization as “ruled and governed by sin,” beginning with the fratricide of Cain and followed by the “anti-genealogy” of Cain’s successful but violent heirs.25 The protology in Gen 1–11 certainly does show us the beginnings that set in motion the story of human history. However, it does not do only this. The narrative does not merely sweep from creation to the state of the world in Abraham’s day: it stops at points to dwell on individuals in their relations to one another and to God. Here, the narrative slows not only to show us the increase of sin with Cain’s fratricide but also to showcase Cain’s interaction with God regarding the sin and God’s assignment of punishment, as well as God’s continued care and protection for Cain.26 This invites us to slow down as readers and take note not merely of the historical 24 25 26 Most modern books on penance omit this passage entirely. In the Septuagint, when Cain’s offering is rejected, God intervenes by indicating Cain’s error and says, “Be silent!” In De paenitentia 2.104, Ambrose uses this as support for prohibiting those in grave sin from using the sacraments before completing their penance, as does John Chrysostom in Homily 3, no.2. Stephen G. Dempster, Dominion and Dynasty: A Theology of the Hebrew Bible, New Studies in Biblical Theology 15 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2003), 70–71; see also Robert B. Robinson, “Literary Functions of the Genealogies of Genesis,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 48 (1986): 595–608. Leon R. Kass points to the natural rivalry between siblings “further accentuated” in the narrative by the differences in their occupations and the types of civilization they represent (The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006], 129 [127–32 more broadly]). One tradition even reads Cain and his line as demonic, conceived by Satan and not Adam, though this tradition appears to be very late (Gary A. Anderson, The Genesis of Perfection: Adam and Eve in Jewish and Christian Imagination [Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2001], 89–92). See Hieronymus Horn, Anfänge, die Geschichte Schrieben: Das Buch Genesis (1–11) neu Kommentiert (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2013), 87. Patterns of Penance and the Sin of Cain 1381 effects of Cain’s sin but also of his interactions with his brother and with God and what wisdom we gain from it regarding human sin and God’s merciful justice. Reading the episode in light of the sacrament of reconciliation, we will be able then to consider ourselves and our own sin through the figure of Cain and in light of God’s treatment of him. Cain’s sin is narrated at verse 8: “Cain said to his brother Abel, ‘Let us go out in the field.’ When they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.”27 This is a great violation of the natural law, aggravated indeed by the murderer’s and victim’s close consanguinity. But to consider this sin and its aftermath in terms of this sacrament, we should step back to consider the conditions in which it was committed. This is not merely a great crime. It is a great crime against God’s created order despite Cain’s preexisting relationship of fealty and benefaction with God. Cain and Abel’s parents, Adam and Eve, retain faith in the Lord, as implied by Eve’s naming of Cain (v. 1). And Adam and Eve have, with some apparent success, passed their faith and relationship with God to their children. According to the text, Cain first, then Abel following, makes an offering or “gift” of homage (Heb. minḥāh) to the Lord (v. 3). Cain is aware of a duty to make offerings in thanksgiving and praise to God. Further, Cain’s relationship with God includes an awareness of sin and of the duty to avoid it. There is nothing explicit in the language to indicate that sin is the cause for him to make this offering; it appears simply to be a thank-offering. But when Cain is dejected because he knows God has accepted Abel’s offering but not his own (v. 5), God intervenes to correct Cain for his misdirected anger (“Why are you angry?”; v. 6) and redirects his attention to the amendment of his future behavior. “If you act rightly, you will be accepted; but if not, sin lies in wait at the door: its urge is for you, yet you can rule over it” (v. 7). This is a difficult verse to make sense of in the extant Hebrew, and there are a number of interpretive possibilities due to its dense phrasing.28 Most translations, however, understand the context to 27 28 Quoted translations are all from the New American Bible Revised Edition unless otherwise noted. The second half of the verse, which sounds almost like a maxim, can be taken to speak of a desire or urge for “it” or “him” (the masculine pronoun does not match the feminine noun for “sin”) or the desire that “it” or “he” has for Cain, and the line about Cain ruling over “it” (or “him”) might in context be interpreted as a command or as an indicative statement assuring Cain of his abilities. In the first half of the verse, is sin personified as waiting at the “opening” like a robber (with the feminine noun ḥaṭṭā’t personified as a masculine participle rōbēṣ) or is some robber crouching at the “opening of sin”? And what is promised if Cain does well? Is it that he will receive something, that he himself will be received, that he can “lift” his head in pride or that something or 1382 James B. Prothro indicate that this statement rebukes and instructs Cain, similar to the New American Bible Revised Edition quoted just above.29 Vulgate: If you do well, won’t you receive? And if you do wrongly, will not sin will be right there at the door? But its desire will be under you, and you will rule over it. (trans. mine). New Revised Standard Version: If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.30 New English Translation: Is it not true that if you do what is right, you will be fine? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. It desires to dominate you, but you must subdue it. New Jerusalem Bible: If you are doing right, surely you ought to hold your head high! But if you are not doing right, Sin is crouching at the door hungry to get you. You can still master him. Jewish Publication Society Tanakh: Surely, if you do right, / There is uplift. / But if you do not do right / Sin crouches at the door; / Its urge is toward you, / Yet you can be its master. On any of these translations, we see in Cain’s relationship with God before Abel’s murder an assumed moral code that affects one’s standing in God’s favor and the acceptability of one’s offerings.31 God is admonishing Cain on the basis of a moral law which he should know he has somehow transgressed. In just a few verses of background we learn that Cain wants to be pious, 29 30 31 someone else (his guilt?) can be “lifted” or “borne” away? Kass even suggests that the “lifting” may rather be the subject of “doing well,” in this case referring to Cain’s concern with sacrifices: “Whether the lifting [up of offerings] does well or does not well, sin coucheth at the door” (Beginning of Wisdom, 139n21). The Septuagint (and its exact quotation in, e.g., 1 Clem 4:4) interprets the verse as God’s explanation of how Cain erred, indicating that Cain “sinned” (hēmartes) because he offered the sacrifice rightly (orthōs prosenenkēs) but failed to divide it rightly (orthōs de mē dielēs). The English Standard Version and Revised Standard Version are substantially identical to the NRSV—the KJV as well, excepting “his” and “him” (rather than “it”) pronouns. I do not therefore find a “seeming capriciousness” on God’s part in rejecting Cain’s offering. The narrative gives little to identify as the specific reason Cain’s offering was rejected, yet the scene assumes that Cain should know or be able to recognize Patterns of Penance and the Sin of Cain 1383 even if his love of God is imperfect or even servile. He at least wants to be accepted, whether he wants to do what is required to be accepted or not. In this, as we consider our own post-baptismal sin through Cain’s story, we can see a great similarity between us and this child of God. We have a natural—and by our baptismal grace, also a supernatural—longing to be accepted before God. As with Cain, too, God intervenes to call us to live justly through the Scriptures and the Church, warning us that sin is like a robber whom we must resist and whose near occasion we must avoid. Indeed, beyond Cain, we have the promise that we will dominate over sin, since it is under the Church’s foot that God will, on the last day, finally “crush Satan” (Rom 16:20). Before God’s final victory, however, we have the potential to be like Cain in mortal sin. The horror we feel when we read Cain’s slaughter of Abel, and this right after God has intervened to recall Cain to act with justice, should be felt also when we consider any mortal sin. Cain knows right and wrong, and he is reminded of it again by God in response to his feeling dejected. But Cain’s response to God’s call to be free from sin is to throw himself more firmly into its power. Cain is not a tragic figure with a fatal flaw or blind spot. He is knowledgeable and culpable, and his act is premeditated and willful. The fratricide is narrated very briefly, yet in a succession of three verbs: (1) Cain spoke to Abel to invite him into the open field, away from parents or other eyes; (2) Cain attacked (literally “rose up against”) Abel while they were there; (3) and he killed him (v. 8). The succession underscores Cain’s continued willfulness in the deed, as the repeated description of Abel as “his brother” lends pathos to our reading.32 Cain had the ability, as God insisted, to shun sin and not let it hold sway over him. But instead he let his anger against Abel take shape in a deliberate plan, chose to invite Abel to the field, chose—here not in the heat of passion but with calculation—to attack him and ultimately killed him. If we step back to consider this within biblical theology more broadly, we 32 a deficiency in his offering or in himself that could cause such an outcome (despite Walter Brueggemann, Genesis, Interpretation [Atlanta: John Knox, 1982], 57.) Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, Word Biblical Commentary 1 (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1987), 106: “The awefulness [sic] of the deed is accentuated by the stark brevity of the description and the twice-repeated ‘his brother.’” Compare also Bruce Vawter, On Genesis: A New Reading (New York: Doubleday, 1977), 95: “It is as though the author is saying that what he tells is too frightful for words, that brother should slay brother, and that so soon after both had made their offerings to the same God.” One notes a comparable heightening of pathos in the binding of Isaac, where God, the narrator, and the characters name Abraham as “father” and Isaac as “son” in nearly every verse before God intervenes to stop the killing (Gen 22:2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10). 1384 James B. Prothro can see narrativized here a depiction of sin paralleled in other, more theoretical passages. For one, we can consider the workings of sin within Cain and within the human person. Cain’s grave sin stems from within, beginning with his dejection at not being accepted and, in response to God’s good rebuke, proceeds by a sequence of choices to lure away and kill his brother. In James’s terms, anger and jealousy within Cain seduce his will, “conceive” sin, and then bring forth death—both a spiritual death for Cain in this sin and the biological death of his brother ( Jas 1:14–15).33 One sees the fittingness of Jesus’s teaching of the fifth commandment that focuses interiorly on anger, as the fruit of murder is borne by roots sown from the seeds of anger and bitterness (Matt 5:21–22; cf. 15:19; Rom 3:13–15; Eph 4:31). Moreover, we can see here Paul’s depiction of sin’s abuse of God’s law to spur on more sinning. As he curves in on himself, sin and covetousness that are already “within” Cain turn God’s good rebuke into a goad propelling Cain toward greater iniquity (Rom 7:5, 7–12; cf. 1 Cor 15:56). Cain’s mopey jealousy and broodiness show that anger is already in his heart. And Cain does not hear God’s rebuke as a positive call to do right and seek God’s face; instead, he hears God’s correction of himself only in comparison with God’s approval of his brother. It is God’s good rebuke that occasions Cain’s greater turn to evil. Further, if we follow the reference to Cain in 1 John, we find Cain to be an archetype of one who sins against the second table of the law. In Christ, we are assured that we have passed from death to life “because we love our brothers,” but “everyone who hates his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:14–15). “We should love one another, unlike Cain who belonged to the evil one and slaughtered his brother” (1 John 3:11–12). But for John, such hatred is manifested not only in equally heinous acts of murder, but in the willful refusal of compassion for those with material needs (1 John 3:17). The opposite of brotherly love is brotherly murder. For 1 John, all acts of uncharity toward one’s brethren are compared to the sin of Cain, because they are sins against the life and dignity of those whom baptism has made our brothers and sisters. And how many of them are committed out of jealousy and strife, considering our sin or disfavor in relation to our neighbors, 33 The feminine image of desire seducing the will and then giving birth in James calls to mind an intriguing parallel between sin in 4:7 and Eve in 3:16. The word for “urge” or “desire” in 4:7 is təšûqāh, a rare term in the Hebrew Bible, its only other occurrences being Song 7:11 and the curse that Eve’s “desire” will be for her husband in Gen 3:16, which parallels 4:7 in structure and vocabulary. The curse of Eve states, woodenly: “toward [el] your husband is [or will be] your desire [təšûqāh], and he [pronoun] will rule [yimšāl] over [bə, “in”] you.” God’s words to Cain are, woodenly: “toward [el] you is [or will be] its desire [tešûqāh], and you [pronoun] will rule [timšāl] over [bə, “in”] it.” Patterns of Penance and the Sin of Cain 1385 whom we then try to best or defeat, rather than in relation to God whom we should please by repenting?34 If Cain can serve here as a figure of post-baptismal sinning, and his fratricide a figure of sins against our brothers and sisters, we should consider the words and deeds of the other main character in this story: God. The first thing we see in the text—and perhaps the most fundamental as we reflect on the Sacrament of Penance—is God’s initiative to address and interact with the sinner. God comes to speak to Cain immediately. The Hebrew text places these two words in immediate sequence: wayyahargēhû wayyōʾmer—“And he killed him. And he [the Lord] said . . .” If Cain’s response to God’s correction was to lure Abel away, God’s response to the murder is to seek and address Cain. If sin causes separation or alienation, God’s response is to close the distance and invite sinners to re-engage their relationship with God. At this point in Scripture’s narrative, this has been God’s response to every human sin. When Adam hid, God’s response was to ask: “Where are you?” (Gen 3:9). Now that Cain has killed Abel, God asks Cain: “Where is your brother Abel?” (4:9). Assuming that God knows the answer to both questions, we should see God’s intention in posing them to be an invitation to confess. God’s questions point to the sin and the person affected, Adam himself (“Where are you?”) after he has brought death on himself and, here, Abel (“Where is your brother”), whose life has been unjustly taken. God puts Cain in a position with few options: to confess his sin, lie, or attempt to evade. Cain, like Adam, evades. As with Adam (“Have you eaten from the tree?”; 3:12), God will not leave the sin unaddressed, but accuses Cain directly: “Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground!” (4:10). Cain refused to accuse himself before God, so God now accuses Cain. Like the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah, this sin cries out to God and demands to be condemned and requited (Gen 18:20–21). And it is: the earth which Cain has defiled with Abel’s blood will work against him in his farming, and Cain will now be a “wanderer” with no home in the land (4:11–12). Yet the rationale for which God accuses Cain is not, it appears, mere just deserts or even exacting vengeance for the slain. Cain’s penalty for fratricide here does not follow the talio explicitly demanded for the shedding of human blood: “The land can have no expiation for the blood shed on it except through the 34 I have drawn on 1 John here, but others have made the same point based on the structure of the Genesis narrative as it stands. Cf. David W. Cotter, OSB, Genesis, Berit Olam (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 2003), 42: “The text . . . implies that all sin is somehow fratricide.” Similarly Vawter, On Genesis, 95: “Cain’s sin . . . is intended to represent a paradigm of the human condition as it was in the Yahwist’s time and unfortunately as it has remained thereafter.” 1386 James B. Prothro blood of the one who shed it” (Num 35:33; cf. Gen 9:6; Exod 21:23–25). In fact, God makes it clear that he wants Cain not to die. Cain moans that his punishment is great and that, in his wandering, “anyone may kill me” (4:14). Cain knows the danger that the loss of a settled home poses and expects that God’s punishment is subtly aimed at exposing Cain to mortal danger. But God insists that this is not the case. God again intervenes to correct and assure Cain that God will avenge Cain’s death sevenfold on anyone who should slay him in the open country. Furthermore, God also takes action to prevent his slaughter: “The Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one would kill him at sight” (v. 15). Precisely what this “mark” or “sign” (Heb. ʾôt) was is unclear.35 The mark’s function and what that implies about God and Cain’s penalty are the salient points here: its purpose is to protect Cain’s life.36 God wants Cain to bear this penalty, but not to die from it. He is cast out, punished, and yet amid the rest of humanity he retains a protection that is meant to help him live and thus to continue bearing this penalty. Considering this historically and literarily as an independent episode, Gerhard von Rad calls this perhaps “the most enigmatic part of the narrative.”37 Some suggest that this is a feature of the story’s origin as an etiology for the Kenites, nomadic wanderers not among Israel who were yet worshipers of the Lord.38 Others explain Cain’s retaining his life by suggesting that Cain’s guilt is mitigated by the fact that, as none have yet died in the Genesis narrative, Cain could not have truly desired to kill Abel or known that his blow would have this effect.39 Considering this in the light of the truth we already know to be revealed to the Church about sin and penance, we can see rather a God who punishes sin with fitting consequences and yet “takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live” (Ezek 33:11). God’s imposed consequences are fitting. Cain will wander in the open country, just as he lured Abel into the open country; 35 36 37 38 39 The opinions preserved in the midrash Genesis Rabbah 22.12 already include the views that God caused the sun to shine for Cain (as a “sign” giving assurance of God’s promise), gave Cain leprosy, gave Cain a dog, or made a conspicuous horn grow out of his body. See also Kass, Beginning of Wisdom, 144; Nahum M. Sarna, The JPS Torah Commentary: Genesis (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), 35; Vawter, On Genesis, 97. Other interpretations read the mark as a kind of shameful brand given as a punishment. Gerhard von Rad, Genesis, rev. and ed. W. L. Jenkins, Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1973), 109. See von Rad, Genesis, 107–8; Vawter, On Genesis, 93–94. E.g., Nahum M. Sarna, Understanding Genesis, Heritage of Biblical Israel 1 (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1966), 31. Patterns of Penance and the Sin of Cain 1387 Cain has sinned against his family and will now be bereft of that family’s home; and the ground which he defiled with Abel’s blood will now work against him when he comes to till it. Yet the punishment is not final. Cain’s murder is not matched with his own death. His banishment will bereave him of family and home, but he settles “east of Eden” and begins a new family (Gen 4:17–24). And although he departs from “the Lord’s presence” (v. 16), God’s protective mark goes with him, as does the blessing of fertility. As with Adam and Eve, there are consequences for sin. And those consequences not only are set in motion in the individual who sinned but also take hold in the still young human race. Adam’s sin brings mortality into the world for all Adam’s heirs (Rom 5:12–14). Cain’s sin launches his family line on a trajectory of success marred by wrath and violence (Gen 4:17–24). Yet despite these sins’ historic ramifications, in both stories we see a God who intervenes to preserve the one who sinned, presumably in hopes that they will learn repentance through God’s punishment and discipline. God promises Adam’s line a redeemer (3:15), provides for them in their shame as they depart from the garden (3:21), and continues to fulfill in them his own pronounced “blessing” of offspring rather than annihilating them (1:28). Cain, too, is preserved in bearing his banishment and granted the blessing of offspring. Likewise, in both stories, we see God intervene directly following the sin to encounter the sinner and invite them to confess, renew their relationship with God, and receive the live-giving “medicine” of penance.40 One recalls Paul’s statement about divine discipline: God may leave outsiders to the full penalty of their sins at the judgment, but for the people who in Christ are his own he disciplines them and calls them to penance so that they “will not be condemned along with the world” (1 Cor 11:32). Unlike Sodom and Gomorrah, whose sin also cried out to God, Cain will receive a fitting penance rather than full punishment, and thus a further opportunity to repent and be reconciled to God. All of this can inform our imagination as we consider our own sins. How much more serious might our nightly examen be if we consider all sins against our brethren as, at heart, fratricide? And how much more should Cain’s mitigated penalty, despite his great sin, show us God’s mercy and desire for the life and repentance of the lost (Luke 5:32)? Reflecting on Cain’s penalty, too, can encourage us in fulfilling our penances and confessing our sins in hope, knowing that the God who imposes consequences for sin does so not merely to punish or exact justice but to instruct and reform us. God’s rebukes are discipline (Ps 39:11/12; Heb 12:7–11). 40 Augustine, De Civitate Dei 15.7. 1388 James B. Prothro In so many of these ways we are like Cain and can meditate on this episode to inform us about the nature and danger of our sin, God’s fitting penalties for sin, and his desire that we bear those penalties for our own good as penances rather than be destroyed for our transgressions. However, we must consider an important point at which this story must instruct us only by counter-example. God promises protection for Cain as he imposes consequences for his sin, but he pronounces no absolution. Correspondingly, God’s invitation to confession does not appear to be met with sincere confession or contrition on Cain’s part. There is a possibility that Cain’s lament in Gen 4:13 should be translated, “My guilt is too great to be forgiven.” The Vulgate and Septuagint both render the Hebrew this way.41 Indeed, interpretations of Cain as the Bible’s first penitent, though not a majority interpretation, go back at least to the time of the Rabbis (Genesis Rabhah 22.13). Yet, if Cain is contrite, his contrition is far from perfect, as he laments the enormity of his guilt but proceeds to complain about the pains of his imposed penalty (Gen 4:13–14). Moreover, this lamentation comes only after God tells Cain that his sin is known and will be punished (vv. 10–12). Cain fails to accuse himself before God. We in penance are called to anticipate God’s judgment and accusation against us—to quote Paul’s words about self-examination and penance again: “If we judged ourselves, we would not be judged” (1 Cor 11:31; NRSV). God has to go after Cain and invite him to confess, and even then Cain is evasive. For all who have run from confession, this image powerfully reminds us of the shepherd who will seek out and call the stray: to him no soul is expendable; each is worth pursuing and saving (Luke 15:1–7). But if God’s response even to Cain’s failure shows us his mercy and goodness, Cain’s example is a bad one for us. When God invites Cain to confess and turn again toward the Lord, Cain turns away. He does not fling himself guilty and self-exposed upon God’s mercy in hope and contrition. He accepts his punishment, his penance, reluctantly. And his acceptance is not truly contrite, and God pronounces no forgiveness here. The story of Cain shows us a grave sin committed by one who already had a relationship with God, sin’s temporal consequences, and God’s invitation to confess one’s sin and be reconciled. All of this gives us fodder for prayer and meditation and self-examination in the context of our post-baptismal 41 Sarna, for one, reads Cain’s words in vv. 13–14 in a contrite and plaintive light and suggests also the possibility of rendering v. 13 as a pleading question: “Is my sin too great to be forgiven?” (JPS Torah Commentary, 34). John H. Sailhamer argues that God’s merciful response itself implies that Cain is repentant in v. 13 (The Pentateuch as Narrative: A Biblical-Theological Commentary, Library of Biblical Interpretation [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1992], 114). Patterns of Penance and the Sin of Cain 1389 sinning and our encounter with God in penance. We should also note that the sweet moment in which God’s absolution meets our contrition in confession is missing. What might have happened had Cain confessed with sincere contrition? Would God have forgiven his sin and have imposed these same penalties to amend for its temporal consequences, as when God forgave Israel or David and yet still required a fitting but mitigated penalty for their sins?42 The text leaves the fate of Cain’s soul unknown, and thus it leaves our biblical-theological investigation with an implicit command: “run to confession.” For all that Cain is like us and can be a figure for us in our meditation, we should not be like Cain. We should anticipate God’s judgment and accusation of our sin by accusing ourselves before the Lord, knowing his mercy and love—offered more wonderfully in the Church through the merits of Christ. The grace of the Spirit within and the preached word name and rebuke our sins. And we should consider the open confession times and the priest’s email or office number as invitations to come and receive what Cain avoided. To enter the confessional of our own free will, to approach God in self-accusation, is to re-engage the relationship that our sin ruptured. Our penances, whether in the form of prayers or devotions or acts of charity for our neighbors, fittingly match our Cain-like sins of insufficient worship and malice toward our brethren. Penance allows us to turn toward the God who turns toward us and to receive his graces in absolution for our past and in preservation for our future, that as we judge ourselves and receive God’s discipline we might not be condemned along with the world (1 Cor 11:31–32). And as we approach in the humility and contrition that Cain lacked, we receive what Cain did not receive: God’s sweet word of absolution, the gift of forgiveness. 42 See Num 14:20–23 and 2 Sam 12:13–14. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2023): 1391–1414 1391 Sacramental Wisdom: Humilitatio, Eruditio, Exercitatio in the Scholastics and Today Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, O.P. University of St. Thomas Houston, TX Introduction The relationship between human nature and the sacraments is often characterized in a way that takes away from the beauty and power of the sacraments. Sacraments are sometimes viewed today as something basically irrelevant to human life, an interesting spiritual “option” for those who find comfort in ritual. This view leads to a sacramental practice that is occasional, irregular, or nonexistent. Many young people who fail to grasp religion as important to their reality implicitly embrace this perspective. The difficulty parishes have had in the past few years in convincing parishioners to return to liturgical prayer after each wave of the coronavirus pandemic demonstrates this viewpoint. In another perspective, the sacraments might be viewed precisely as expressions of what it means to be human, or one might say, to be human in a world in which God reveals himself at all times.1 In this view, the sacra1 This viewpoint has roots in Karl Rahner’s emphasis on the supernatural existential, that is, God’s grace as always already present. In sacramental theology, this idea bleeds the uniqueness out of sacramental and liturgical encounters with God. It seems that Rahner’s intention is to emphasize the power of God’s grace, but his thought moves in a direction that merges the supernatural into the natural. See Rahner, “Considerations on the Active Role of the Person in the Sacramental event,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 14, In Dialogue with the Future, trans. David Bourke (New York: Crossroad, 1976), 166. 1392 Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, O.P. ments are our own graced self-expression as a community. They merely make thematic what already happens each moment. Alternatively, they celebrate who we are, and perhaps can be radically updated to reflect changing categories of social identity. 2 Both of these viewpoints overlook the fallen state of human nature that cries out for healing from God. The first view does not preclude knowledge of human violence and fragility, but fails to recognize the sacraments as a medicine needed for the remedy of human ills. The second viewpoint, while professing a need for Christ, looks to the human person or community for healing rituals. This approach risks being enmeshed with human nature in a disordered state in such a way that it celebrates human disorder instead of healing it. Alternatively, the viewpoint may lead to the abandonment eschatological hope and wither into inanity. There are profound metaphysical and anthropological issues that play out in these two opposite but strangely united viewpoints. Rather than directly analyze these errors, this paper would like to propose the recovery of a medieval viewpoint that offers another perspective. This is Hugh of St. Victor’s explanation that the sacraments fit and heal human nature through offering humanity humility, instruction, and exercise. 3 This paper will briefly survey Hugh’s contribution, analyze its reception by several of the thirteenth-century Scholastics, shows its deep rootedness in biblical wisdom, and then show how it fruitfully opposes current-day challenges. Hugh of St. Victor Hugh of St. Victor was a twelfth-century canon of the Parisian Abbey of St. Victor. The most influential writer of the Victorine school, his work is characterized by an Augustinian concern for the re-formation of the image of God in man, a sense of the wise ordering of salvation history, and an emphasis on both virtue and liturgical practice. In his masterwork, De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei, Hugh of St. Victor divides the works of God into two main periods: the work of creation and the work of restoration. Within the 2 3 See Joseph Martos, Doors to the Sacred, rev. and updated ed. (St. Louis, MO: Ligouri, 2001), 458. His words humiliatio, eruditio, and exercitatio, are usually translated in this way, although the English words capture the sense of the Latin somewhat awkwardly. See De Sacramentis Christianae Fidei 1.9.2, in On the Sacraments: A Selection of the Work of Hugh of and Richard of St Victor, and of Peter of Poitiers, ed. Hugh Feiss, Victorine Texts in Translation 10 (Turnhout: Brepols: 2020), 80; see also 91 (notes to this section of De Sacr.). Humilitatio, Eruditio, Exercitatio in the Scholastics and Today 1393 work of restoration, there are three periods: the period of the natural law, that of the Mosaic or written law, and that of grace, inaugurated by Christ.4 His book’s division into two parts cuts across these distinctions: Part 1 of Hugh’s text covers creation, the restoration in general, faith, sacraments in general, as well as particulars of the sacraments of the periods of the natural and written law. Part 2 includes the Incarnation, the Church, various Christian rituals, and the final restoration of Christ’s return. Hugh is writing around the time when theologians began to list the number of the sacraments of the Church as seven. Emerging from the wider use of the term, Hugh uses the word “sacrament” in a wide sense, but distinguishes several categories of sacraments. Following Dominique Poirel, scholars recognize that Hugh uses the word sacramentum in five main ways.5 The first is a general definition: (1) any sign of anything sacred. The second through fourth are more specific usages, to which we do not commonly give the term “sacrament” today: (2) Scripture, which signifies sacred realities both through its text and the realities to which its text points, (3) Christ and the mysteries of his life, particularly the Passion, and (4) the Christian mysteries, received by the believer as teachings signifying greater realities. The fifth is Hugh’s definition of a sacrament that will be of interest to this paper: (5) “The sacrament is a corporeal or material element, presented on the outside in a sensible way, which represents by a resemblance, signifies by institution [ex institutione], and contains by sanctification a certain invisible and spiritual grace.”6 This definition applies most perfectly to the sacraments given by Christ, but can be stretched to include the rituals of the Old Law and even those practiced by upright individuals during the period of the law of nature before the Mosaic Law.7 In this case, ex institutione would perhaps be better translated as “by convention.”8 This definition, as most of Hugh’s vision, is explicitly Trinitarian. Hugh unpacks it, noting that the Creator decreed that things be able to represent spiritual grace, the Redeemer instituted particular things for specific 4 5 6 7 8 Hugh, On the Sacraments: A Selection, 25 (general introduction). Dominque Poirel, “Sacraments,” in A Companion to the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris, ed. Hugh Feiss and Juliet Mousseau (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 278–86. Hugh of St. Victor, De Sacr. 1.9.2: “Sacramentum est corporale vel material elementum foris sensibiliter propositum ex similitudine repraesentans, et ex institutione significans, et ex sanctificatione contines aliquam invisibiliem et spiritualem gratiam” (PL, 176:317; trans. mine). Marcia Colish, Peter Lombard, vol. 1 (New York: Brill, 1994), 359. This is the translation used by On the Sacraments: A Selection, 28. 1394 Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, O.P. significations, and the Holy Spirit (the Dispenser, whom he connects to the spoken “blessing” in the sacraments) makes them able to be sources of grace.9 It is after his discussion of the definition of a sacrament that Hugh turns to the question of why the sacraments were instituted. This discussion considers the wisdom of God in tempering his means to the human condition after the fall. He states that the sacraments were instituted for a threefold purpose: humility, instruction, and exercise.10 Humility, Instruction, and Exercise in Hugh Humility Hugh places his discussion of the way in which the sacraments teach humility squarely in the context of fallen humanity. Echoing the Augustinian language of frui and uti, Hugh explains the fall as a disruption of the proper hierarchical ordering of creation. God is the highest good, meant to be enjoyed by the human person.11 Original sin involved humans subjecting themselves to lower goods which were meant to be employed in the service of God. As a just result, they became further subject to the material world through concupiscence. The humility of obeying God in using the material elements of the sacraments is an appropriate counter to the pride of the first sin, helping humans merit reconciliation with God. Hugh sets up the humiliation of the sacraments as something speaking to the entire disordered human condition. It is a conscious practice of humble obedience which enables humanity to seek a proper orientation to God. In describing the effects of the fall on the human person, Hugh mentions a “darkness” which prevents the mind from recognizing the Creator and a “coldness” in which he does not seek God through love.12 The second and third reasons for the sacraments will address these two effects. Instruction Hugh teaches that the human mind, darkened by sin, cannot recognize the invisible things of God except through the visible. In the original creation, the world did have a sacramental aspect in that it showed forth God’s invisible good, but this was not the main way in which the human mind knew God or other things.13 Man knew many things about the world through infused 9 10 11 12 13 Hugh, De Sacr. 1.9.2. Hugh, De Sacr. 1.9.3. Hugh, De Sacr. 1.9.3. Hugh, De Sacr. 1.9.3. See Boyd Taylor Coolman The Theology of Hugh of St. Victor: An Interpretation Humilitatio, Eruditio, Exercitatio in the Scholastics and Today 1395 knowledge.14 He also possessed an “interior, contemplative knowledge of the divine presence.”15 After the fall, things changed, and human access to the invisible became mainly through the physical. Therefore, it is appropriate that the sacraments have visible appearances to instruct men about the spiritual good which is restored by the sacraments. Hugh uses the image of medicine in a container. The labeled container identifies the medicine within which would otherwise not be recognized. Exercise Hugh bases his third reason for the sacraments in the weakness of human love, which cannot focus on the love of God. Although Hugh intends to describe the negative impact of sin on the human person, he describes a human instability that seems to be based on the finite character of the human person as well. Human life involves a variety of activities. For example, it is not possible for a human person to always walk, sit, stand, or eat.16 Likewise, contemplation of God is no longer an activity that can be sustained in this life. Hugh identifies two main categories of human activity after the fall: those that are useful and necessary to life, such as eating, and those that concern vicious pleasures. Sacramental rituals introduce a third kind of activity, the worship of God. This worship interacts with the other types of action. It completes useful activities, giving human life an order towards an end, which directs useful activities also to the service of God. This teaching echoes the Scholastic notion that charity forms or directs moral virtue. Sacraments need to be integrated into a life of virtuous works. They are not salvific alone, but when united with faith. They are meant to be fruitful in virtuous good works.17 In regard to vicious actions, worship displaces their perverse pleasures with the peaceful, harmonious, and beautiful pleasures of the liturgy. Under sacramental exercise, Hugh places all the variations in the liturgical life: the different holy places and times, as well as moments of speech, singing and silence. Three Schemas Within the context of Hugh’s theology, three schemas can be loosely “mapped” onto the threefold reason for the sacraments. 14 15 16 17 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 48. Hugh, De Sacr. 1.6; Colish, Peter Lombard, 1:359. Coolman, Theology of Hugh, 168. Hugh, De Sacr. 1.2.9. Hugh, De Sacr 1.9.8; Colish, Peter Lombard, 1:522. 1396 Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, O.P. Human/Psychological The first is a psychological view of the human person. In this schema, humility refers to the general orientation of a human life to God. Hugh does not treat humility as a single virtue, but as a properly ordered attitude of the creature to the Creator, who is also the highest good.18 Under this general orientation, instruction and exercise order and heal specific faculties of the human person: the intellect and affections respectively. This schema draws on Augustine’s inner triad of mind, understanding, and will, if mind is stretched to include the spiritual orientation of the person in his totality.19 Hugh’s discussion of exercise refers to the will, but includes sensible pleasures as rightly subordinated to the known good. 20 Describing the reasons for the sacrament according to this schema emphasizes that the human person is made for union with God. It also teaches that God works in a way appropriate to the human person, when he acts to heal the spiritual faculties of the person. Definition of Sacrament Hugh’s definition of a sacrament also maps on to his threefold reason. As mentioned above, Hugh’s definition has three parts: a material element, institution, and sanctification. Hugh connects humility to the engagement with the material element in the sacraments. Instruction has to do with the ability of the sacrament to teach about the grace given. This connects to the institution that gives the sacrament its specific signification. Exercise matches sanctification because Hugh teaches that the human person grows in holiness through the continued practice of sacred rites. He speaks of interior renewal and “devotion leading to holiness” found in the exercise of holy activities.21 This holiness connects to both the grace given in the sacrament and the exercise of virtue required by consistent liturgical practice. Trinity Once it has been shown that Hugh’s definition of a sacrament maps onto his threefold reason, it follows that the same Trinitarian schema found in Hugh’s definition will also apply to the threefold reason. Hugh is well-known for 18 19 20 21 See On the Sacraments: A Selection, 91 (notes to the section). Boyd Taylor Coolman, “‘In Whom I am Well Pleased’: Hugh of St. Victor’s Trinitarian Aesthetics,” Pro Ecclesia 23, no. 3 (2014): 344. Colish notes that Hugh’s psychology draws a strong line between the mental (mind and will) and sensing faculties of the human person (Peter Lombard, 1:358–59). Hugh, Devotione ad Sanctitatem. See also Hugh, De Sacr. 1.9. Humilitatio, Eruditio, Exercitatio in the Scholastics and Today 1397 the lens of Trinitarian appropriation through which he views reality.22 Hugh appropriates the qualities of power, wisdom, and goodness to the Father, Son, and Spirit, respectively.23 Sometimes he matches them with the responses of fear, truth, and love in restored humanity.24 The Trinitarian schema in humility, instruction, and exercise is subtle rather than explicit. In speaking about humility, Hugh references God as Creator, an activity appropriated to the Father. In his discussion of instruction, Hugh speaks about the medicine given to restore humanity. Christ is the teacher and the physician who administers the medicine.25 When linked with the recognition that sacraments signify because of their institution, instruction is linked to Christ. This is true even if the threefold reason is read as pertaining to the sacraments of the Mosaic Law or the time of nature. For Hugh, the Wisdom who is the second person of the Trinity is expressed in all of God’s revelation, and the restoration of which all sacramental rituals teach is that accomplished by Christ.26 Exercise, since it has to do with the human person gradually becoming sanctified through sacramental practice, is connected to the Holy Spirit. Taken together, these three superimposed schemas express the appropriateness of the sacraments to restore the image of the Trinity in the human person, echoing key themes from Hugh’s theology. Reception Hugh’s teaching was integrated into the thought of many of the early Scholastics. This paper will consider only a few: Peter Lombard, who incorporated Hugh’s thought into his Sentences, as well as Alexander of Hales, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas.27 Peter Lombard Lombard studied with Hugh of St. Victor in Paris, who was a major influence on him.28 Lombard’s Sentences includes a section discussing the threefold 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 He is credited with pioneering Trinitarian appropriation (On the Sacraments: A Selection, 65). Coolman, “In Whom I am Well Pleased,” 338. Coolman, “In Whom I am Well Pleased,” 351. Hugh, De sac. 1.8.2; Coolman, Theology of Hugh, 96. Hugh, On the Sacraments: A Selection, 63. Other authors could have been selected as well. Colish notes that the threefold reason of Hugh is also reproduced in the author of the Summa Sententiarum and the Sententiae Divinitatis (Peter Lombard, 1:527). Philipp W. Rosemann, Peter Lombard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 27, 45. 1398 Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, O.P. cause of the sacraments. 29 His treatment is a faithful but shorter version of Hugh’s teaching. 30 In incorporating Hugh’s three reasons, Lombard keeps them in the order in which Hugh gave them. In his discussion of humility, he puts emphasis on obedience rather than healing. He does not immediately contextualize the three reasons with a discussion of the fall, but it is present in Lombard’s wider writing on the sacraments, so this is not a departure from Hugh.31 In his treatment of instruction, Lombard agrees with Hugh that a clear knowledge of God was lost with the fall so that humans now need visible things through which to come to know the invisible divine things.32 In his discussion of exercise, Lombard repeats Hugh’s three types of activity. He does not elaborate on liturgical activities as Hugh does, but instead puts emphasis on avoiding evil activities by doing good. Only traces of Hugh’s psychological schema can be recognized in Lombard’s account. This is probably because Lombard’s preferred view of the human soul is dual: the higher power of reason (including the will) as distinguished from the lower power shared with animals.33 The schema does not map well onto Hugh’s three reasons. Lombard does follow Hugh in discussing sacramental humility in the context of relationship with God. It enables man to obey and please God. His discussion of instruction mentions the human mind, but his discussion of exercise focuses on good actions and avoiding temptation, rather than on the will or ordered pleasure emotions. The second and third schemas from Hugh are not present in Lombard. Lombard’s preferred definition of a sacrament is: “a sign of God’s grace and a form of invisible grace in such manner that it bears its image and becomes its cause.”34 This is a dual definition, which has its emphasis on sign and cause. Accordingly, Lombard’s discussion of the threefold reason does not map onto the schema of his definition of a sacrament, nor does he draw Hugh’s links with the persons of the Trinity. 29 30 31 32 33 34 Peter Lombard, Sent. IV, d. 1, ch. 5. Rosemann also lets this section pass with a simple summary (Peter Lombard, 146). Lombard also insists that sacraments are medicinal, and therefore did not exist before the fall (Sent. IV, d. 1, ch. 1; d. 2, ch. 1). Lombard has a substantially different understanding of the extent of the infused knowledge of natural things that unfallen man would have had. While Hugh advocates for an extensive infused knowledge, Lombard suggests an infused contemplative knowledge of God, but space for learning in regard to many other things (Colish, Peter Lombard, 1:370.) Colish, Peter Lombard, 1:371; Lombard, Sent. II. d. 24, chs. 4–5. Lombard, Sent. IV, d. 1, ch. 4. “Sacramentum . . . signum est gratiae Dei et invisibilis gratiae forma, ut ipsius imaginem great et causa existat” (trans. mine). Humilitatio, Eruditio, Exercitatio in the Scholastics and Today 1399 Alexander of Hales Alexander of Hales’s Gloss on the Sentences treats Hugh’s threefold reason very briefly. Hales orders the three reasons as Hugh does. Despite its brevity, Hales’s treatment does imply a psychological schema. It is slightly different from Hugh’s. He interprets humility the same way as Lombard and Hugh, describing this humility as ordering the person “in relation to God” (quantum ad deum).35 Hales connects instruction to the speculative intellect and exercise to the practical intellect, thus giving a treatment of the threefold reason that focuses on the relationship of the human mind to divine things. The distinction between the speculative and practical intellect shows Hales’s different psychological concerns from Hugh. Hales’s treatment does not reveal an overlying schema related either to a definition of the sacraments or the Trinity. Albert Albert the Great encountered Hugh’s teaching through Hugh’s own writing as well as those of Peter Lombard and Alexander of Hales, who taught in Paris while Albert was there. 36 In his Commentary on the Sentences, Albert shows Hales’s influence: he follows Hales’ division of the Sentences into chapters and distinctions. Albert himself influenced later reception of Lombard’s Sentences by introducing the division into smaller articles as well as the Scholastic disputatio method of commentary.37 Albert connects the threefold reason both to Lombard and directly to Hugh.38 Albert treats Hugh’s threefold reason in his three most important works of sacramental theology: his Commentary on the Sentences, his De sacramentis, and his De corpore Domini. This study will consider points from all three works, with prominence given to the Commentary on the Sentences. In his Commentary on the Sentences, Albert treats Hugh’s threefold reason within the question of whether Lombard assigned these three causes rightly.39 Here, Albert follows Hugh’s order of humility, instruction, and exercise. 35 36 37 38 39 Alexander of Hales, In IV sent., d. 1, ch. 3, in Glossa in Quatuor Libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi: In Librum Quartum (Florence: Quaracchi, 1957), 10. Wayne Hellmann, Timothy LeCroy, and Luke Townsend, “Historical Introduction,” in Bonaventure, Commentary on the Sentences: Sacraments (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 2016), 23. Hellmann, LeCroy, and Townsend, “Historical Introduction,” 23. See Albert the Great, De Corpore Domini, d. 6, tr. 2, ch. 1, in On the Body of the Lord, trans. Albert Marie Surmanski, Fathers of the Church Medieval Continuation 17 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2017), 344. Albert, In IV Sent., d. 1, ch. 13, in Beati Alberti Magni Opera Omnia, vol. 29, ed. Auguste Borgnet (Paris: Vivés, 1894). 1400 Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, O.P. When, however, he returns to the threefold reason to use it explain the sacrament of confirmation, he re-orders the elements so that instruction is first, then humility and exercise.40 He likewise varies the order in his De sacramentis, while in De corpore Domini, he always puts instruction first. 41 Albert’s discussion of humility follows the reasoning of Lombard fairly closely, speaking about a just humiliation which helps man rise up from his sinful subjection to material things. 42 Albert’s discussion of instruction includes the idea from Hugh and Lombard that, as a result of sin, mankind needs physical things to be led to the spiritual things of God.43 In addition, Albert includes material from Dionysius which implies that the need for the physical to attain knowledge of the spiritual is, to some extent, proper to the natural human condition.44 Albert also does something novel in his discussion of exercise. In his Commentary on the Sentences, Albert’s objector asks how it is possible to speak of an “exercise” of the sacraments when some of them are only received once.45 Instead of appealing to the wider daily liturgical practice which Hugh has in mind, Albert answers by shifting the meaning of exercise from liturgy to the inner action of sacramental grace. Grace remains in the soul, repeatedly affecting it.46 Although Albert is aware that earlier authors used the term sacramentum more “loosely for any sacred thing” (“abusive . . . pro quacumque re sacra”), it has taken on the more focused meaning when Albert writes.47 The narrowing of the usage of the term turns Albert towards an explanation of exercise which focuses on the sacrament rites rather than wider liturgical practice. Albert also has interest in the nature of sacraments as causes; connecting exercise to the life of grace given by the 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 Albert, In IV Sent., d. 7, ch. 3. Albert, De Sacramentis, tr. 1, q. 3, obj. 6, ad 9, in Opera Omnia Sancti Doctoris Alberti Magni, vol. 26, ed. Albertus Ohlmeyer (Münster: Aschendorff, 1958); Albert, De Corpore Domini, d. 6, tr. 2, ch. 1 (On the Body of the Lord, 344). Albert, In IV Sent., d.1, ch. 13, ad 2. Albert, In IV Sent., d. 1, ch. 13, ad 4. Albert, In IV Sent., d. 1, ch. 13, ad 4. Bernhard Blankenhorn identifies Dionysius as an influence on the psychology of Albert, gradually influencing him to a theory of knowledge less dependent on Augustinian illumination and more comfortable with the idea that the human mind is naturally ordered to come to knowledge through the senses. Blankenhorn carefully traces this development in Albert (The Mystery of Union with God: Dionysian Mysticism in Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2015], 59–67). Albert, In IV sent., d. 1, ch. 13, obj. 5. Albert, In IV sent., d. 1, ch. 13, obj. 5. Albert De Sacr., tr. 1, q. 2, sol. Humilitatio, Eruditio, Exercitatio in the Scholastics and Today 1401 sacraments allows him to connect one of the threefold reasons to the role of sacraments as causes. This will be important for his analysis of the reason for the threefold reason. Schemas Albert’s tendency to re-order Hugh’s threefold reason suggests strongly that he is reading it within his own psychological schema, which places the intellect first, followed by the will and the sensitive powers of the soul.48 It is probably Albert’s emphasis on the primacy of intellect over will that leads him to place instruction before humility or action. Albert reads the threefold reason as corresponding to the human intellect, then affections (will and sensitivity), followed by grace-supported action. When Albert gives the threefold reason in Hugh’s order, he lines it up along a definition apparently based on Hugh’s. Albert knows Hugh’s definition of a sacrament; he quotes it as one of several valid definitions of a sacrament.49 When Albert explains Hugh’s threefold reason, he says it is based on the fact that sacraments have matter [materia], the notion of a sign [ratio signi], and the notion of a cause [ratio causandi].50 This definition echoes Hugh’s “material, signification, and sanctification,” although it has shifted the focus of the third element. While Hugh generally connected exercise to the sanctification found through virtuous liturgical practice, Albert has shifted the meaning of exercise to focuses on the ability of a sacrament to cause grace. Albert sees the matter in the sacrament as connected to humility, signification to instruction, and causality to exercise. Albert does not discern a Trinitarian appropriation in the threefold reason. The fact that Albert does not read this Trinitarian level into the threefold reason undoubtedly contributes to his ease in changing the order of the reasons. Aquinas Aquinas had familiarity with all of the writers mentioned above. Like Albert, Aquinas discusses the threefold reason in his Commentary on the Sentences. He treats it in a similar manner in his Summa. In both texts, Aquinas discusses the threefold reason in treating the necessity of the sacraments. In his Commentary on the Sentences, Aquinas follows Hugh and Lombard’s 48 49 50 See Stanley Cunningham, Reclaiming Moral Agency: The Moral Philosophy of Albert the Great (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 107–9. Albert, In IV sent., d. 1, ch. 5; Albert, De Sacr., tr. 1, q. 2. Albert, In IV sent., d. 1, ch. 13, sol.; see a parallel passage in Albert’s De Sacr., tr. 1, q. 2, ad 9 1402 Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, O.P. order in the objections, but in the body he gives the threefold reasons in the order of instruction, humility, exercise. He follows this latter order in his Summa. Aquinas’s exposition draws on Hugh, Lombard, and Albert. He emphasizes the wisdom of God and the fittingness of material sacraments for human nature. In his discussion of instruction, he, like Albert, appeals to the Dionysian principle that it is best to come to know the spiritual through the physical, which is better suited to us.51 Thomas’s description of humility uses the lens of virtue or strength. He argues that contraries heal each other; therefore, the humiliation of using bodily things in the sacraments makes reparation for the sin of pride which originally damaged human virtue. While Hugh uses the medicine box containing a healing remedy to explain instruction, Aquinas uses it to explain the humility needed to accept being taught and healed through the material. 52 In the Commentary on the Sentences, Aquinas’s explanation of exercise focuses on refuting the objection in 1 Tim 6:8 that physical exercise profits little. When joined to piety, this exercise has value.53 In the Summa, he adds Hugh’s understanding that right worship prevents superstitious practices. While Aquinas does not explicitly spell out a psychological schema, his re-ordering of the reasons as instruction, humility, and exercise shows that he orders his discussion according to the human faculties which are healed: the mind by instruction, the affections through being re-ordered in their attachment to sensible things, and the actions as they use physical things for the honor of God.54 These three do not include all elements in a full Thomistic psychology, but do order the faculties connected to these three reasons into the hierarchical order in which Aquinas understands them. Aquinas does not overlay a definition of the sacraments onto the threefold reason, nor does he work within a schema of Trinitarian appropriation. Summary There is a wisdom in Hugh’s threefold schema which is both approved and modified by the next generations of writers. All of those who have been studied agree that the necessity of the sacraments is not a necessity binding God, but is a necessity of fittingness in which God tempers his remedies to the needs of the fallen human condition. While Hugh’s threefold reason is 51 52 53 54 Thomas Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 2, qc. 1, ad 3; Pseudo-Dionysius, De Ecclesiastica Hierarchia 1 (PG, 3:370). The medicine box image is not used in the threefold reason by Lombard. Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 2, qc. 1, ad 4. Aquinas, In IV sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 2, qc. 1, corp., ad 3. Humilitatio, Eruditio, Exercitatio in the Scholastics and Today 1403 overlain by three schemas, the Trinitarian and definitional schemas fade in the reception of his teaching. In contrast, the psychological schema remains prominent in these theologians who follow Hugh. The Dominicans, tentatively in Albert and boldly in Aquinas, actually re-order the threefold reason in order to express the primacy of the intellect over the will. An important insight into the relationship of the sacraments to human nature is found in the thought of all of the theologians surveyed. Sanctification is not merely a general turning to God, or recognition of God, but involves a deep re-orientation on several levels. It requires an openness of mind, and of heart to change, both a healing and a gradual growth in love supported by practice. Order Trinitarian Schema Definition Schema Psychological Schema Hugh of St. Victor Humility, Instruction, Exercise Father, Son, Holy Spirit Material, Institution, Sanctification Orientation to God, Mind, Affections Peter Lombard Humility, Instruction, Exercise No No Orientation to God, Mind, Actions Alexander of Hales Humility, Instruction, Exercise No No Orientation to God, Speculative Intellect, Practical Intellect Albert the Great Humility or Instruction, Exercise No (with humility first) Matter, Sign, Cause (with instruction first) Intellect, Affections, Need for grace Thomas Aquinas Instruction, Humility, Exercise No No Mind, Affections, Body/Actions The slight flexibility found in the ordering and interpretation of the elements suggests an enduring value to Hugh’s schema. The basic truths it describes about human nature are valid, even when the deepest wounds in human psychology and relationship to God are considered in slightly different ways. They have not been appropriated by many current-day authors, but a few who have considered them are able to integrate them into some present-day challenges. For example, Margot E. Fassler in her 2011 work 1404 Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, O.P. Gothic Song emphasizes the way in which Hugh’s understanding of the sacraments highlights human dignity. She writes, “Sacramental action is a model for the way of restoration, proving to humans that they too, like the sacraments, have hidden worth buried within the elements for their flesh. By learning and believing, they can find the divine within themselves as surely as they can find the divinity within the waters of baptism or the bread of the altar.”55 Fassler finds here a testimony to the reality of the spiritual world, against materialism. Interestingly, she couches her analysis almost in the terms of a counselor who may need to assure others of their value and worth. She recognizes that the gradual nature of growth in knowledge and holiness through sacramental practice reminds the Christian to be patient with the slow rhythms of human growth. Her affirmation of the value of each person underlines a concern of the magisterium since the Second Vatican Council, and in the teaching of Pope John Paul II and Pope Francis. One wonders if a present-day study, perhaps one which considers the value of direct experiences of others and the sensible world (as opposed to virtual, computer-mediated experiences) could be employ this schema with a contemporary twist. Biblical Quotes and References To support the proposal to seek enduring wisdom in Hugh’s threefold reason, it is necessary to look at its grounding in Scripture. If Hugh’s reason truly contains something of permanent value in the Church’s reflection on the sacraments, it must be because it presents in an insightful way the revelation given in Scripture. The major explicit background for Hugh’s threefold reason is the Genesis account of creation and the fall. God creates a physical universe, in which humans share as creatures with bodies, and are also called to spiritual communion with God. Man was originally united to the goodness of God, using the physical things of creation in a way that honored the Creator. This affirmation of the goodness and purpose of material creation is a remote backdrop. More proximate is the fall itself, in which humanity lost its initial intimate friendship with God, falling into a condition in which pain, suffering, confusion, and interpersonal alienation have become the facts of daily life. 55 Margot E. Fassler, Gothic Song: Victorine Sequences and Augustinian Reform in Twelfth-Century Paris, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011), 231. Humilitatio, Eruditio, Exercitatio in the Scholastics and Today 1405 Hugh underlines the extent to which human behavior and experience have been impacted by the fall by identifying all humans living in the world with the tragic figure of Cain. Cain was, as Hugh quotes, “a wanderer and fugitive upon the earth” (Gen 4:12). While Cain’s wandering was, in the context of the Genesis account, a punishment for his murder of his brother Abel, Hugh reads Cain’s unsettled state to be paradigmatic of the human condition which suffers the general punishment for sin. This restlessness is why the sacraments need to offer “exercise” to the worshiper of God. This restlessness can be assuaged by profitable works, but not entirely healed in this life, which supports the need for many sacraments as well as liturgical activity to be repeated. Another key image from Scripture is that of a medicine jar. Hugh speaks about the sacraments as spiritual medicine held within a vase. This echoes Jesus’s claim to be the physician found in many places in Scripture, such as in Mark 2:17 where he says: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Lombard puts the image of the good Samaritan who applied medicinal oil and bandages to the wounds of afflicted humanity at the beginning of his Sentences IV, giving an additional Christological emphasis to the image of medicine.56 This image is found in Lombard, Albert, and Aquinas. Both of these images express the saving power of God as revealed in Scripture. Neither Lombard nor Hales nor Albert add additional direct biblical quotations to their exposition of Hugh’s threefold reasons, although they use many more in their overall explorations of sacramental theology. Aquinas uses several quotes to defend the biblical background of the threefold reason. The most significant of these are found in the sed contra of the Commentary on the Sentences, and the reply to objection 3 in the Summa Theologiae III, q. 61, a. 1, ad 3. In the Commentary on the Sentences, Aquinas refers to St. Paul’s “law of sin in the parts of my body” from Rom 7:23, also calling it the “wound of sin.” Aquinas argues that because the wound of sin affects even the body, so the medicine for sin should involve the bodily. There is a certain reversal here: the alienation from God brought by sin shows itself as disordered physical desires; therefore, it is appropriate that the healing given reach the mind through the body. What is seen in the physical expresses the spiritual. This of course, ties God’s way of acting in the sacraments to his pedagogy in the Old Testament (which speaks through sensible signs and wonders) and his coming in the Incarnation. The text of St. Paul which continues on to speak 56 Lombard, Sent. IV, pt. 1, ch. 1. 1406 Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, O.P. about Christ Jesus as saving him from this “body which is subject to death” (Rom 7:24) affirms this connection. In his Summa passage, Aquinas answers an objection against sacraments in light of the sufficiency of Christ’s Passion by appealing to Romans 6:3: “All we who are baptized in Christ Jesus, are baptized in His death.”57 He argues the sacraments are powerful through Christ’s Passion. Here both human physicality and the Incarnation which heals through the revelation of God in the flesh of Christ are seen to be at the heart of the threefold reason. Wider Biblical Background Because Hugh places his threefold reason for the sacraments within the wide sweep of salvation history, it is in accordance with his mind to see other places where the biblical unfolding of God’s plan supports the threefold reason for the sacraments given by Hugh. This paper briefly will consider biblical themes which support each of the three reasons. The most significant implicit biblical background in Hugh’s account is found in God’s various commands which specify and order human worship. Since these are commands to practice early “sacraments,” they pertain to all three of the reasons. Hugh does not quote a specific command of God, but likely has in mind the Mosaic covenant and Christ’s institution of the sacraments, as well as the few pre-Mosaic specifications about worship, for example, the Exodus 20:25 command to use only stones which have not been shaped by a human hand to build an altar. Using material elements in worship is an act of obedience because God has issued various commands about worship. This aspect of God’s revelation in the Old Testament also ties into the Hugh’s understanding of instruction and exercise. The reason why sacraments can instruct about specific graces is that God specified the meaning of various liturgical activities when he instituted them. The later prophetic clarification that sacrifices were instituted for the sake not of God but of humanity also affirms that this activity is given for the good of humanity rather than of God. This is expressed in the ironic questioning of Ps 50:13–14: “Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and pay your vows to the Most High.” Specifically grounding Hugh’s teaching on humility is the Christ of the Philippians hymn (2:5–11), who descended into the physicality of the human world in order to raise us up to the true knowledge and worship of the Father. In his section on the Incarnation, Hugh quotes this text in his 57 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] III, q. 61, a. 1, ad 3. Humilitatio, Eruditio, Exercitatio in the Scholastics and Today 1407 discussion of what Christ merited for humanity by his suffering and death. Here, Hugh concludes that glory would have been due to Christ even without the humiliation of his suffering and death. These were undertaken in order to merit for disordered humanity.58 Christ merits and is the model for the humble sacramental obedience which humanity must accept. Finally, the theme of the revelation of divine wisdom through the Incarnation fits with Hugh’s understanding of instruction.59 Throughout the Old Testament God makes himself known in human language and human events as he forms his people. The theology of John’s Gospel, which teaches that the glory of the Father is revealed through the incarnate Word, also supports the need for divine instruction. That this instruction continues in the sacraments affirms one way in which the revelation of the divine presence and power touches each human life. Therefore, Hugh’s threefold exercise ties into several fundamental biblical themes: the revelation of the glory of the Father through the Word incarnate, humanity’s estrangement from God and need for healing of heart, and the idea that the activity of worship supports seeing the glory of the Father and conversion of heart. Relevance for Contemporary Sacramental Issues General Insights As mentioned above, many issues in contemporary sacramental theology have deep metaphysical and anthropological roots. Theological investigation which traces these to their source and unravels their complexity is important. Equally valuable is the retrieval of a perspective of wisdom which holds up the more complete against the damaged or impartial. It is this second sort of corrective that the threefold reason of Hugh of St. Victor offers to several trends in contemporary sacramental theology. Humility The medieval teaching that the sacraments were instituted for humility contradicts the idea that all human impulses point directly towards the good. It teaches that human desires have been disordered by the fall. Therefore, the sacraments require a willingness to go against what may feel natural in order to allow oneself to be re-ordered by God. This is not always recognized. 58 59 Hugh, De Sacr. 2.1. Hugh also makes the point that Christ’s love and obedience meant glory even without his humiliation. For a reading of Hugh which sees the sapiential theme as central to his theology, see Coolman, Theology of Hugh, 81–102. 1408 Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, O.P. Sometimes, instead, there is a desire to affirm and celebrate what is disordered. A contemporary example of the attitude which is in tension with Hugh’s thought can be found in the conflict in the German Church over the blessing of same-sex couples.60 The practice of blessing the unions of such couples recently began to be practiced in the German Church. After a Vatican statement condemning such blessings, protest ceremonies were organized in early 2021 under the slogan “Love wins.”61 This is a particularly difficult part of Catholic moral teaching for the contemporary world to accept. Testifying to a more diffuse form of the failure to recognize sinful behavior as disordered is a 2015 “pew survey” on the topic of sin. This survey notes that many Catholics disagree with the Church in what constitutes a sin. For example, 23 percent denied that abortion is a sin and 33 percent that living with a romantic partner outside of marriage is one.62 This is not a directly liturgical example, but shows the loss of humility before the moral teaching of the magisterium. Hugh’s teaching about humility suggests that we need to approach human nature with an expectation of finding disorder as well as a desire to act to re-order ourselves. The small acts of liturgical obedience practiced from year to year push back against the tendency to deny the reality of sin or to celebrate behavior which natural law and the Christian tradition consider disordered. Hugh recognizes the courage needed to undertake this re-ordering when he speaks of the “merit” in the exercise of humility. Merit is directly connected to love, but usually also implies a challenging difficulty which evokes a deeper act of love. It implies the difficulty in accepting and following certain aspects of the moral law. To accept it is implicitly to enter into Christ’s humiliation. It implies a difficulty and pain in conversion, but also is a reminder that humanity can be healed and is called to something beyond this world. Perhaps the call to be restored to the image of the humble Christ should be noted as the true ground of this element. 60 61 62 “Germany: Several Churches Offer ‘Blessing Service for Lovers,’ Including Homosexual Unions,” Vatican News, May 10, 2021, vaticannews.va/en/church/news/2021-05/ germany-catholic-churches-blessing-lovers-homosexual-unions.html. “German Priests Defy Vatican to Bless Gay Couples,” BBC News, bbc.com/news/ world-europe-57055162. “More Than 230 German Theologians Protest Vatican Statement against Blessing of Same-Sex Unions,” America: The Jesuit Review, May 22, 2021, americamagazine.org/faith/2021/03/22/germany-theologians-same-sex-unionsblessing-vatican-240293. “What’s a Sin? Catholics Don’t Always Agree with Their Church,” Pew Research Center, September 25, 2015, pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/09/25/whats-a-sin-catholicsdont-always-agree-with-their-church/. Humilitatio, Eruditio, Exercitatio in the Scholastics and Today 1409 Instruction Hugh’s understanding that the sacraments teach us pushes back against various suggestions that the sacraments be re-designed to fit our contemporary situation. Hugh connects the instructive element not only to the natural signifying properties of various natural elements, but to a revealed institution (either in the Old Law or by Christ). In this understanding, sacraments should be respected because they are a message from God. Specifically, their instruction teaches us the sort of healing which they offer. The element of instruction stands in opposition to two particular contemporary tendencies. The first is a denial of revelation or the Church’s normative interpretation of revelation. A strong example of this is found in some types of feminist theology. Paradigmatic of this attitude is a statement from Elizabeth Johnson (although not made in the context of sacraments) that, instead of situating the center of theology in the revelation given by God, theology should view the world through “the lens of women’s flourishing.”63 A revealing statement of this attitude can be found in Rosemary Radford Ruether’s Women-Church, where there are suggestions for new liturgies to be developed for events in women’s lives, such as ceremonies for menstruation, miscarriage, and abortion which she puts on the same level as baptism.64 Hugh’s understanding that the Christian sacraments speak to us about a healing medicine given by Christ would not make it possible for a community either to de-center Christ or to replace his sacraments with others. This is because of a recognition that Christ himself acts through the sacraments to heal the soul. Although suffering is always individual, the perennial teaching suggests a commonality in the sorts of healing which the human soul needs, whether male or female and in any time period. A second tendency which Hugh’s element of instruction pushes back against is a completely sociological view of the sacraments. An example of this is found in the theology of Joseph Martos, who claims that it is “magical thinking” to claim that the sacraments heal the soul in any way other than that brought about by the psychological-social experience of the rite itself.65 He suggests that the American Church should institute new sacraments that are psychologically and socially relevant to present-day Americans. For 63 64 65 Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroads, 2002), 18–21. Rosemary Radford Ruether, Women-Church: Theology and Practice of Feminist Liturgical Communities (Harper and Row, 1985), 125–220. Joseph Martos, Honest Rituals, Honest Sacraments: Letting Go of Doctrines and Celebrating What’s Real (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2017), 83. 1410 Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, O.P. example, prison ministry should be substituted for confession. Marriage is re-imagined as a temporary commitment, vowed without reference to children or indissolubility. 66 Martos writes from a Heideggerian-Rahnerian viewpoint influenced by the postmodern thought of Louis-Marie Chauvet.67 Chauvet shows a real reverence for the presence of God which he understands as present in a hidden, non-causal way in the sacraments. The sacraments then act as “expressive mediations” which allow the subject to situate himself in the world.68 Coupled with an understanding of the sacraments as actions entrusted to the Church, this understanding attenuates until sacramental theology becomes merely the historical narrative of a faith community. Martos describes the sacraments as: “celebration and transition rituals, . . . intensification rituals . . . which function as doors to sacred realities.”69 These are merely psychological-social realities—indeed, a true and important dimension to the sacraments, but not enough to express their full meaning. The recognition that the community of the Church expresses itself in the sacraments is not in contradiction to Hugh’s thought, but it is not adequate to it. The sacraments are moments when the Church “remembers” and “expresses” its experience of Christ, but this is a remembrance mediated by the gift of Christ himself, given to conform the Christian to Christ. As St. Albert teaches, Christ imparts both his wisdom and power through the sacraments.70 The specificity of the healing and of the power of Christ requires that the specific gift that Christ gives be continued in the Church. There is an individual immediacy made possible in the sacramental celebration. Hugh’s instruction invites the Christian to re-discover the “healing medicine” within each sacrament, although it is correct that this medicine does need to be administered at a particular time and to an individual. Exercise Hugh’s insistence that the sacraments help to heal the human person by giving the opportunity to engage in activities directed towards God offers valuable insight into both the nature of the sacraments and that of the human person. As with instruction, there are two problematic attitudes towards the 66 67 68 69 70 Martos, Honest Rituals, 121. See Martos’s article “Louis-Marie Chauvet’s Postmodern Sacramental Theology,” in Assembly: A Journal of Liturgical Theology 35, no. 2 (2009): 26–28. Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence, trans. Madeleine Beaumont and Patrick Madigan, SJ (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1995), 110. Martos, Honest Rituals, 459. Albert, De Sacr., tr. 1, a. 2, ad 3. Humilitatio, Eruditio, Exercitatio in the Scholastics and Today 1411 sacraments that this reason resists. First is the idea that there is no need for sacraments because the whole world is the place of the revelation of God. This way of thinking is related to an aforementioned Rahnerian perspective which gives a sacramental version of the supernatural existential. In this tendency, there is an emphasis that God is always present everywhere, with the sacraments only serving as moments of human recognition of such presence.71 As a result, specific liturgical moments matter less than a general awareness of the holiness of creation. This can result in an individualistic desire to “worship God by walking in nature,” or a tendency which sees Church buildings a places for a community to meet—the Church building and liturgical times occasioned by a purely human social need, rather than a moment in which to engage in a sacred activity.72 In contrast, Hugh emphasizes the need for the human person and community to engage with the things of God. In his analysis of exercise, Hugh both distinguishes and unites moments of liturgical prayer from daily activities, which he calls “useful” and “activities of necessity.”73 While Hugh seems to have survival activities in mind, it is likely that all good natural activities could fit into this category, including the philosophical and artistic. In Hugh’s teaching, specific moments of liturgy are different from daily activities, but also have an effect on them, orienting them towards God so that natural activities are “perfected.”74 Hugh suggests that the way to allow the awareness of the presence of God into all the mundane moments of life is to sacralize life by moments of more intense liturgical actions. In his classic text The Spirit of the Liturgy, Ratzinger pushes back against the idea that we do not need specific times and places of worship because the whole world is holy.75 Certainly, the whole world is the place of the Incarnation of the Word, but we need specific moments of worship in order to overcome sin and allow God into the world. Hugh’s thought on this topic is in harmony with the recent work of David W. Fagerberg entitled Consecrating the World: On Mundane Liturgical Theology.76 Fagerberg, while writing beautifully of the world as a sacrament 71 72 73 74 75 76 Karl Rahner, “Considerations on the Active Role of the Person in the Sacramental Event,” in Theological Investigations, 14:161–84. Ratzinger discusses this latter manifestation of this trend in his classic text The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. John Saward (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 62. Hugh, De Sacr. 1.9 (On the Sacraments: A Selection, 82). Hugh, De Sacr. 1.9 (On the Sacraments: A Selection, 82). Ratzinger, Spirit of the Liturgy, 62–73. David W. Fagerberg, Consecrating the World: On Mundane Liturgical Theology (Kettering, OH: Angelico, 2016). 1412 Sr. Albert Marie Surmanski, O.P. revelatory of God, nevertheless reminds his readers: “The world does not just sit there as a sacrament, it must be made to operate as a sacrament, and this only Christ can do because he has conquered Satan in fact. Now his victory can go and be transcribed, transferred, translated onto each of us personally, which liturgy does when it unites us to Christ’s symbolic action because his liturgy wields efficacious signs, called sacraments.”77 In Fagerberg’s thought, specific moments of sacramental conversion are necessary for the recognition of the sacramentality of the world. A second tendency, which is largely opposed to the first, is a loss of faith in the effectiveness of the sacraments. Perhaps this can be seen simply in the Mass attendance numbers given by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate’s numbers. The 2015 statistics say that only 39 percent of baptized Catholics in the United States attend Mass every Sunday.78 There are various reasons for this behavior, no doubt (and certainly the numbers are lower post-pandemic). One underlying attitude is the thought that one does not get anything out of Mass or liturgy. There is a doubt that the sacraments effectively change the life of the Christian. An example of a tendency towards this could be Cardinal Walter Kasper’s proposal in book The Gospel of the Family that divorced and remarried Catholics be sometimes offered communion while they are working to turn aside from sin, but before they have chosen to reject it. To an extent, Kaspar’s endorsement of the “way of penitence” agrees with Hugh (in that he recognizes the need for repeated practice for growth in virtue.) His pastoral suggestion, however that communion be given to those in ambiguous moral situations overlies a doubt about the ability to truly turn from disordered behavior.79 Hugh’s insistence on exercise as a sacramental aspect necessitated by human nature invites the Christian to re-evaluate what it means to “get something out of liturgy.” Hugh situates the sacraments within the larger Christian life of faith and growth in virtue. Spending time in worship strengthens the Christian in discipline and faithfulness, while also training the will to appreciate the things of God. Fassler observes: “The sacraments require constant practice to be understood and appreciated properly. This exercise is of great benefit to the learning and development of humans.” 80 The mention of appreciation suggests the role of the “delight” which Hugh 77 78 79 80 Fagerberg, Consecrating the World, 86–87. “U.S. Catholics Open to Non-Traditional Families, Chapter 2: Participation in Catholic Rites and Observances,” Pew Research Center, September 2, 2015, pewforum. org/2015/09/02/chapter-2-participation-in-catholic-rites-and-observances/. Walter Kasper, The Gospel of the Family (New York: Paulist Press, 2014), 51. Fassler, Gothic Song, 231. Humilitatio, Eruditio, Exercitatio in the Scholastics and Today 1413 connects to exercise. He understands that prayer, ritual, and pilgrimage to some extent take the place of vicious activities. They do this by filling up time in the life of the Christian, but they also fill up emotional needs by their ability to enchant. Their sensible beauty should form the taste, drawing the Christian to love and appreciate the things of God. Hugh’s reasons call upon the parish to consider the aesthetic quality of the liturgy offered. The liturgy is not pure entertainment. It is meant to direct the will to God. Yet it should have a certain “multiplicity, variety and interludes”81 in order to “refresh” and “renew” the soul as it practices the virtues demanded by the liturgy.82 St. Albert’s insights on exercise are important here as well. Concerned about the sacraments as causes of grace, Albert emphasizes that the grace of the sacrament is what has repeated exercise in the life of the Christian. Far from Martos’s “magical thinking,” Albert teaches that the Christian can trust in God’s help given in the sacraments, but that this help is drawn upon in the moments of daily life when virtue is exercised. The Christian must act to co-operate with grace, allowing the “exercise” of the sacraments to unfold in the discipline of the entire moral life, if he truly wishes to be changed by the healing grace given in the sacraments. In both Hugh and those who take up his teaching, the sacraments are closely allied to a life of virtue, but do not substitute for it. They offer a final end—a perfecting activity—but still require that other activities be ordered to it. Conclusion In conclusion, Hugh of St. Victor’s three reasons emphasize the mercy of God in giving sacraments fitted to human nature. They are grounded in the general trajectory of God’s revelation in salvation history. They were slightly re-ordered by the medieval tradition to fit slightly different anthropologies, but even this slight re-ordering emphasized the relevance of the sacraments to the human faculties. While this appeal to medieval theology does not account for all of the questions and complexities that modern and postmodern theories of the Church and language have raised, they nevertheless outline a set of compelling reasons for looking to the traditional theology of the sacraments with renewed interest and respect. 81 82 Hugh, De Sacr. 1.9 (On the Sacraments: A Selection, 82). Hugh, De Sacr. 1.9 (On the Sacraments: A Selection, 82). Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2023): 1415–1420 1415 Review Essay: Aquinas, Modern Theology, and the Trinity Guy Mansini, O.S.B. Ave Maria University Ave Maria, FL As one would expect from his Incarnate Lord, Thomas Joseph White’s Trinity is no exercise in historical theology, although of course it calls on history, but aims to give us St. Thomas’s theology as an enduring and so contemporary theology that both respects the creedal commitments of the Catholic Church and offers a more satisfying understanding of the Trinity than anything proposed by the great theologians, Catholic and Protestant, of the past hundred years.1 The Trinity, however, gives a more complete and satisfying view of its subject than does The Incarnate Lord. Can St. Thomas really be fruitfully located within the dialectic of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Trinitarian speculation? Yes, and it is one of White’s principal contributions to show how St. Thomas’s medieval contemporaries, the early Franciscans on the one hand and William of Ockham on the other, remotely but really adumbrate nineteenth- and twentieth-century theological positions, once due attention is paid to the key issues of the analogical naming of God and his knowability. The reader is thus assured that Aquinas’s original project was composed with some awareness of temptations and alternatives repeated (though not exactly, of course) in modern thought. It should be added that St. Thomas is by no means treated as the only systematic theological authority for Trinitarian theology, but White recognizes his paradigmatic place in the Catholic theological tradition. 1 Thomas Joseph White, O.P., The Trinity: On the Nature and Mystery of the One God (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2022). 1416 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. The most important issue for assessing the enduring value of Thomas’s Trinitarian theology, then, whether in the thirteenth century or twentieth century, turns out to be the applicability and centrality of the psychological analogy for an understanding of the immanent intelligibility of the Trinity, an analogy suggested by Scripture, and developed by the Cappadocians, St. Augustine, St. Thomas, and other medieval writers, not to mention John Henry Newman and Matthias J. Scheeben. What is the status of this analogy? Olivier-Thomas Venard laconically describes it as “revealed”—too hot. Michael Maria Waldstein has recently argued vigorously and at length that it is not revealed at all—too cold. White does not discuss this in detail but is satisfied with saying that it is “derived” from Scripture—just right. However one thinks this question is to be resolved, White robustly defends the psychological analogy as a proper analogy and as the only systematic theological instrument ever offered by the theological tradition that succeeds in providing real understanding of the immanent life of the Trinity, one that preserves the transcendence of God and honors the dogmatic tradition of the Church bearing on the nature of God and the Trinity of persons—Nicaea, Lateran IV, and Vatican I, especially. This is how he does it in chapter 22. 1. We know the mystery of interior Trinitarian life based on God’s manifestation of it to us in the economy of salvation via the missions of Word and Spirit, which disclose to us distinct personal processions. 2. Such processions are either immanent or transitive. 3. But transitive processions terminate in some substance distinct from whence they emanate. 4. God, however, is one in nature (essence, substance) both specifically and numerically. 5. Therefore, the processions are immanent to the godhead. 6. However, there are only two immanent immaterial activities known to us, that of knowing and that of loving. 7. Therefore, we cannot have some understanding of the mystery of interior Trinitarian life except by analogy with these two Review Essay: Aquinas, Modern Theolog y, and the Trinity 1417 activities. That is to say, we know the mystery of the Trinitarian life according to the “psychological model” or not at all. This argument can be re-phrased with more pointed reference to modern theologies of the Trinity. 1. If we wish to understand the mystery of the immanent Trinitarian life of distinct persons, but not by way of immanent activities and processions, then we must appeal to transitive activity to account for the distinction of persons. 2. Transitive divine activity can be conceived of (1) as creative, (2) as within creation relative to its history (the continental way), or (3) as taking place between three already constituted divine individuals, relating transitively to one another (the analytic way). 3. But the first way (the creative) is Arianism, where Son and Spirit are created. 4. According to the second way (the continental), the persons will be really related to and so constituted only in relation to created realities, and in this way, God’s life will not in fact be wholly immanent, independent of and eternally transcendent to the created order. 5. The third way (the analytic) is tritheistic: once the idea of immanent processions in the one God is abandoned, we end up with three gods transitively related to one another, the knowledge of whose interior life is opaque apart from their communication of themselves. 6. In neither the second way nor the third (nor first way), therefore, do we attain to an immanent Trinitarian life such as is disclosed to us in Scripture. 7. So, there is either the psychological analogy or no Trinitarian theology adequate to Scripture (and to the tradition from Cappadocia to Augustine and beyond). Thus, those who appeal to some transitive divine activity within the godhead or within the created economy to account for the distinction of 1418 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. persons—Karl Barth, Sergei Bulgakov, Wolfhart Pannenberg, Karl Rahner, Jürgen Moltmann, Hans Urs von Balthasar—cannot provide an account of immanent Trinitarian life that, in the most extreme instances, escapes tritheism (Moltmann, Balthasar), or that, even in the better instances, escapes compromising the transcendence of God accordingly as the distinction of persons is thought to be historically constituted by their activity within the economy of salvation (Rahner and sometimes Barth). Moreover, White has an explanation of this common inability of the greats to preserve the transcendence of God, to provide some analogical intelligibility to the triunity of persons that are each the one essence of God, and to stay within the commitments of the conciliar tradition of dogmatic teaching. It stems from their acquiescence to the strictures on reason proposed by the Kantian critique (no natural theology, no de Deo uno, therefore no psychological analogate for the Trinity in the human mind), and thus the subsequent Hegelian attempt to find God constituting himself in history. The first part of chapter 31, where the debt of twentieth-century Trinitarianism to the influence of Kant and Hegel is laid out in some detail, helps enormously to make sense of the twentieth-century effort as a whole. The reader will find himself saying over and over again, “oh, now I understand why Barth (or Moltmann, or Balthasar, or …) proceeded as he did.” Stating the argument of the book in this way, however, makes it sound more polemical than it is. The author describes it, more justly, as an essay in “Thomistic ressourcement,” as both a contribution to the Thomist tradition, extending it into the present, and an engagement with contemporary theologies of the Trinity. As an essay in ressourcement, perhaps the finest chapter is chapter 23, on Trinitarian relations and the divine persons as subsistent relations, where we find the psychological analogy and the analogy of distinct persons in mutual encounter. The deployment of the category of relation to explain the distinction of persons follows from the processions of Word and Spirit disclosed in Scripture, to be sure, but “just as the use of relation sends us from the psychological analogy to the interpersonal analogy (by way of the consideration of subsistent relation: the communication of the whole of the godhead),” so also does “the use of relation . . . send us from the interpersonal analogy back to the psychological analogy (by way of consideration of subsistent relation: each person is wholly relational in all he is).” Exclusive reliance on the psychological analogy risks modalism; exclusive reliance on the second risks tritheism. Rather, the Trinitarian persons are “each truly personal” and “each truly God” and “each wholly relational.” In order to make good the psychological analogy, it is altogether essential to arrive at a prior understanding of the divine essence in its unity, simplicity, Review Essay: Aquinas, Modern Theolog y, and the Trinity 1419 perfection, immutability, and eternity. That is, to make good the psychological analogy such as it is deployed by St. Thomas in questions 27–33 of Summa theologiae I, it is altogether necessary to pursue the treatise de Deo uno in questions 3–26, with its preamble in question q. 2, on the existence of God, all of which is undertaken in part II of White’s book. Those who would think of using White to teach students mostly unfamiliar with the physics, metaphysics, and logic of Aristotle (and of the Areopagite), should be assured that White lays out the requisite philosophical principles and distinctions so simply and concisely that no child need ever be left behind. There is also a robust defense of the relative autonomy of the philosophical instrument St. Thomas deploys in conversation with Victor Preller, Stephen D. Long, and others and St. Thomas’s evident commitment to the scientific integrity of philosophy (chapter 11). Scripture and the Catholic faith elicit the exercise of natural reason’s capacity to know God. The book is divided into four parts, each of whose chapters White has designed in such a way that they can be read independently of one another. Part I notes the peculiar cultural circumstances in which the question of God is asked today in the West. It then proceeds rapidly and expeditiously to assemble the Church’s teaching on the triune God, canvassing the Scriptures, observing the homogeneity of Nicene doctrine with scriptural teaching, and rightly emphasizing the contributions of Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzen, and Augustine, especially their employment of the psychological analogy. Part II reviews questions 2–25 of the Summa theologiae I, paying that attention to the divine simplicity, perfection, knowing, and willing that are foundational for the subsequent Trinitarian considerations of White’s part III. The treatment of divine immutability in part II is especially fine, as is the connection the author makes of the many topics of questions 3 and following with their scriptural background. Important and repeated use is made of the Dionysian doctrine of analogy in this section of the book. Part II closes very nicely and reasonably by asking about the possibilities of a natural knowledge of the Trinity (just as we have in principle a natural knowledge of divine simplicity and infinity, etc.), treating Richard of St. Victor’s argument thereunto. Part III locates Thomas’s Trinitarian theology in its historical context. It offers a spirited defense of the psychological analogy, as noted, which will give a theology that aims not simply at dogmatic assertion, but also at an imperfect, analogous, but still fruitful understanding of the mystery of the Trinity. Part IV takes St. Thomas’s theology of the Trinity into closer quarters with the greats of the twentieth century. This will be the most rewarding part of the book for many, since the comparisons and contrasts serve all the 1420 Guy Mansini, O.S.B. more for us to see what we have in Aquinas, and what we do not have in the moderns. Part IV is a sort of essay in Trinitarian theological sanation or healing, a tour de force wherein the virtualities in St. Thomas for understanding how the moments of the Paschal mystery display Trinitarian reality are put to work. One reads the Gospels armed with the distinctions of processions and missions, of essential and notional acts, with an acknowledgment of the distinctive modes of subsistence of the three persons, and with the stratagem of appropriated but still informative predications—armed, in short, with the armory available to many great pre-nominalist theologians but exemplarily deployed by St. Thomas and his followers. Thus, the attempt to find the revelation (but not the constitution) of the Trinity in the life of Christ and especially in the moments of the Paschal mystery, the common and great desideratum of the post-Kantian and post-Hegelian enterprise, is well within the compass of the explanatory power of Thomistic Trinitarian and Christological theology, where the missions declare processions and where the actions and passions of Christ are understood to be so entirely filial that they necessarily declare the identities not only of the incarnate Son but also those of Father and Spirit. The Trinity opens by evoking the distinction between philosophic wisdom and the wisdom of sacra doctrina. I think we will be in debt to White’s achievement of theological wisdom for many years to come. Nor is it to be thought that it will not sustain the exercise of that third wisdom, the gift of the Holy Spirit. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2023): 1421–1442 1421 Book Reviews Virtue and Grace in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas by Justin M. Anderson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), xiii + 327 pp. To ignore Aquinas’s theological backstory to his account of the virtues—namely, his account of grace in its relation to human action—is to distort his account of the virtues. This is the very valid thesis explored by Justin Anderson in Virtue and Grace in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas. Anderson critiques the tendency among contemporary Anglophone virtue ethicists to quietly bracket his account of grace even as they admire his account the virtues. More pointedly, Anderson holds that Aquinas’s account of virtue is inseparable from his account of sin, grace, “and God’s presence in human life and action.” He endeavors to evidence Aquinas’s authentic account of virtue and its “inner reliance on the theological categories of grace, sin, and divine providence” (1). Anderson thus proposes a reading of Aquinas that is diachronic, analytical and systematic, and text-based, and which follows the logic inherent in Aquinas’s own reasoning. And he delivers. After a brief overview of Aquinas’s understanding of virtue in chapter 1, in chapter 2, Anderson explores the Thomistic distinction that will largely serve as a heuristic for most of the study: the distinction between virtue secundum quid (pagan virtue) and virtue simpliciter, virtue infused in us by God—virtue in the truest sense of the term. In chapter 3, Anderson traces the historical evolution in Aquinas’s understanding of grace as this impacts his understanding of the conditions under which a person can possess or embody virtue. He bases this exploration in part on the work of both Henri Bouillard and Bernard Lonergan. First Anderson explores how that evolution came about in the context of the emergence of two powerful categories of thought: the Aristotelian concept of nature in the twelfth century and the category of the supernatural in the thirteenth. According to Bouillard, Aquinas’s understanding of grace would 1422 Book Reviews have been further shaped by two sets of discoveries during his sojourn in Italy in the early 1260s, the first being two anti-Pelagian tracts of St. Augustine, and the second being the Liber de bona fortuna, a Latin compilation, possibly translated by William of Moerbeke, consisting of two chapters on good fortune, one taken from Aristotle’s Magna Moralia, and the other from the Eudemian Ethics. Aquinas discovers in Augustine’s anti-Pelagian works the contention that the beginning of faith is from God and not from the individual. As with the grace of final perseverance, both initiation and perdurance in faith are gratuitous gifts of God. In his encounter with the Liber (and particularly his consideration therein of the “problem of the first deliberation”), like other medievals, Aquinas “[was] presented Aristotelian investigations regarding the possibility of a divine movement, even unacknowledged by the agent, at the very roots of human action” (98). And, in Thomas’s evolved understanding, this divine influence would constitute an inner movement within the human agent apart from those external circumstances ordained by providence. Anderson embraces the thesis that, in this context, and under these influences, Aquinas’s understanding of grace underwent a “revolution,” that a mature Aquinas—and this is the thesis of Lonergan—moves beyond a consideration of grace merely as habitus (gratia gratum faciens) to a notion of operative grace, of grace as a movement, utilizing “the unique idea of a ‘moving grace’, a movement of God in, and in some cases with, the human soul” (105). And—Anderson is emphatic—this revolution in thought quickly steers Aquinas clear of what centuries later will be termed semi-Pelagianism, and toward a firmly anti-Pelagian conception of the human capacity for virtue. Chapters 4–9 comprise the second and third parts of the book. It is here that Anderson masterfully and exhaustively engages in the heavy lifting of evincing just how, in fact, Aquinas’s account of virtue is inseparable from his theology of grace. On the supposition that Aquinas’s mature theology of grace understands the latter to play a causal role in the emergence, continuance, and culmination of virtue, Anderson organizes these chapters following a simple schematic rubric, first for virtue simpliciter (chapters 4–6) and then for virtue secundum quid (chapters 5–9). For each, Anderson identifies the grace conditions which, according to Aquinas, lie at the beginnings of virtue, make possible the human subject’s perseverance in virtue, and provide for the attainment of virtue’s end. This is, as Anderson observes, to explore the ontological grounding of virtue—in its beginning, middle and end, both in the case of the postlapsarian baptized Christian in a state of grace, and in the Book Reviews 1423 case of the infidelis; whether nonbeliever or person who, having fallen from grace through mortal sin, still possesses faith and hope but without charity. Anderson’s chapter 7— “The Conditions for the Beginning of Virtue Secundum Quid”— is particularly crucial to his critique of contemporary virtue theory’s “standard account” of how Aquinas conceives of the possibilities for virtue in the person lacking grace. The chapter thus seeks to resolve any number of questions: What sort of resources does this graceless virtue provide for living an excellent life? How perfect can nontheological virtue be? What sort of virtuous life is possible without God’s grace? And especially, if grace plays so significant a role in Aquinas’s conception of the moral life, what do we have in the moral agent when grace is removed from consideration? And Anderson is at pains to insist that this investigation must be faithful to Aquinas: “We cannot decide in advance the sort of responses we will accept from Aquinas on behalf of Aquinas” (176). Anderson’s dissent from the standard account of Aquinas’s theory in chapter 8—in which he explores the corrupting effects of sin on the pagan’s possibilities to grow in virtue—is the fruit of a wonderfully holistic read of the Angelic Doctor. “My position is not that Aquinas is, in fact, pessimistic about the possibility of the pagan’s virtue. My position is that his optimism is not born from his account of that virtue itself. If one were to insist on banishing grace from the picture, even from the picture of ‘pagan virtue,’ then one would come to such a pessimistic view. However, Thomas never did imagine such a banishment, and hence his optimism remains” (177). The problem, then, with the standard account is not what it asserts, but what it lacks. “There is good reason to think Aquinas never divorces, even from the virtue of the one without grace, God’s direct and immediate operation in every act of pagan virtue. . . . This means Thomas’s account of pagan virtue cannot even begin without acknowledging a second way divine action is present to the virtue of the graceless,” namely by way of divine application (193–94). And here, Anderson has done some of his finest scholarship. Divine application, as expounded by Aquinas—see especially Summa theologiae [ST] I-II, q. 9, a. 6, particularly ad 3—is a conception of God’s causal activity within his creatures which, going beyond mere conservation in being, remains nonetheless always on the natural plain, falling short of a supernatural intervention. God, as first cause of his creatures, brings it about that the natural causality he creates should in fact be effective. Within the rational creature, before she can proceed to the self-determination with which she is endowed, there must be a primal movement by which she is moved from potency to act to in fact be a self-determining rational being. (Domingo Bañez would famously refer to this as premotio physica). In other words, the 1424 Book Reviews rational creature is the proximate cause of his self-determination, but not the first cause; the rational creature remains capable of self-determination, but not absolutely independent of the Creator’s presence and providence. As for the great battles around freedom and grace which considerations of divine application or divine premotion historically set in motion, Anderson acknowledges that a detailed discussion is beyond the scope of his volume. This teaching is at the heart of the De auxiliis controversy, and is logically tied to Aquinas’s account of divine providence and predestination. The point of divine application is that God disposes natural agents to act, and “if a human agent is free to determine himself to the good, then God has infallibly moved him to be so free” (203). This divine application—which would have been operative in the rational creature even before the fall—is the natural analog to the divine moving grace Aquinas will discuss one hundred questions later, in question 109 of ST I-II. Anderson carefully traces the development of Aquinas’s understanding of divine application through his more mature thought influenced by the Liber and Aristotle’s doctrine of “first counsel” and the beginnings of deliberation in human action (see ST I, q. 82, a. 4, ad 3). In thus identifying the nature of divine causality’s impact on pagan virtue according to Aquinas, Anderson draws into wonderful relief how divine application is the basis for the intimate presence and influence of the divine in human action. He summarizes beautifully: “A divine motion, then, stands as the first, natural breath of the process of human action. It constitutes the natural analog for how God will grace an agent to dispose himself for the accepting of his gift of habitual grace. Nevertheless, this natural analog is not a grace itself. It is a divine motion given to the human agent by God, without any mediating principles, which begins human action” (220). From all this and especially from his conclusions in chapter 8, treating the question of the graceless agent’s perseverance in virtue, two conclusions follow. First, when Thomas conceives of the possibility of virtue in a graceless agent, this does not imply a conception of “virtue without God.” For Aquinas, there is no such possibility. Second, his optimism about the graceless agent is not founded on that agent’s virtue. “Instead, his account of divine help—in the form of both natural divine application and supernatural, preparatory moving grace—is precisely why he can be so pessimistic about a fallen agent’s natural capacities, and simultaneously be so optimistic about every moral agent’s ability to live a life of virtue” (247). And this is why Anderson will insist in chapter 10 that Aquinas always and only endorsed one specific definition of virtue, the Augustinian-Lombardian definition: “Virtue is a good quality of the mind by which we live righteously, of which Book Reviews 1425 no one can make bad use, which God works in us, without us” (ST I-II, q. 55, a. 4, obj. 1). In the end, does Anderson succeed in his project? Yes—in spades. In myriad ways he evinces that Aquinas is not the “virtue ethicist” that some contemporary virtue ethicists would take him to be. Anderson’s volume is a remarkable contribution to Thomistic scholarship for which I am personally indebted to the author—so indebted that I struggle to find anything to criticize in this work. While Anderson’s analysis of the necessary questions is painstaking, his style is not tedious. The reader simply needs to be prepared to cover a broad, and perhaps unexpected, panoply of topics, from Pelagianism, to the De auxiliis controversy, to Thomas’s natural desire for God, and a critique of de Lubac’s understanding of the same—and much more. This is why I hesitate to suggest that Anderson could have spent a bit more time elucidating the contours of the argument with which his book is most immediately engaged, which is the way in which some philosophers within the recent revival of virtue ethics among especially Anglophone philosophers distort Aquinas’s account of virtue. That Anderson’s book constitutes a corrective to these philosophical interpretations of Aquinas as “virtue ethicist” is evident throughout. Yet Anderson would have done well to spend a bit more time illustrating the nature of those misinterpretations. So much for a minor quibble with Anderson’s wonderful volume. More importantly, I prefer to dwell on its many merits. Of particular note is Anderson’s comprehensive and holistic presentation of Aquinas’s account of virtue—historically accurate, sensitive in its diachronic development, and inseparable from his account of grace—which should inoculate any aficionado of Thomistic ethics against “Thomistic Pelagianism.” But perhaps more than anything else, this most readable and spiritually sensitive work is informed in every chapter by the author’s own life of faith. Consequently, it wonderfully reveals how Aquinas’s authentic account of grace and virtue can open new vistas for us to understand divine action in human life, aiding us to discover how intensely present God is to us and how involved he is in our lives—far more than one often thinks. And that is an immensely encouraging thought. Thomas V. Berg St. Joseph’s Seminary Yonkers, NY 1426 Book Reviews Politics and the Earthly City in Augustine’s City of God by Veronica Roberts Ogle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021), x + 201 pp. Politics is not a word in Augustine’s lexicon—at least, it’s not something he speaks of, in the abstract, in his great work of political theology, the City of God. This curious omission from Augustine’s late magnum opus et arduum has given rise to many a divergent reading of his political thought. Lacking an express account of the very term in question, his politics can seem to admit of a wide range of interpretations. On one side of the spectrum, it has been described as anticipating the religious neutrality of modern liberalism. On the other side, it has been interpreted as consolidating politics into religion by transposing political philosophy into the key of ecclesiology and making the Church the new realm of politics.1 In her elegantly written and insightful new book, which builds on the work of her 2014 dissertation at the University of Notre Dame and on a few published articles, Veronica Roberts Ogle charts a new interpretive path for reading Augustine on politics. She does this by means of two principal interventions. The first is by elucidating City of God’s rhetorical purpose, what Ogle calls its “psychagogic character” (6). Psychagogy, “the art of leading [agô] souls [psychai] to a state of health,” was the rhetorical aim and genre of much ancient philosophy (3). It took its cue from the philosopher’s perception that his readers were sick with the disease of unhealthy attachment to the things of the world. Philosophers were physicians of the soul: they applied “the medicinal art of contraries” to their sick patients. This meant that their literary curatives often met patients/readers with the bitter taste of a poison (4). But—and this is the crucial point for Ogle—the poison was given for the purpose of health. What this means for Augustine’s City of God, Ogle argues, is that we ought not take the work’s biting and at-times-venomous rhetoric as evidence that Augustine is trying to poison his reader’s vision of politics. Rather, he is trying to cure them of their attachment to the myths and delusions of politics-according-to-Rome and, instead, “to help us see the world, even the political world, anew: as part of a created order that is good, but that points beyond itself all the same” (4). Augustine’s descriptions of Rome—indeed his frequent equations of Rome with the civitas 1 The list could be long here, and I will not pretend to have read most of them. But, for the former view, see especially Robert A. Markus, Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine, rev. ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988). For a version of the latter, see John Milbank’s provocative engagement with Augustine’s City of God in the final chapter of his Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), esp. 391–429. Book Reviews 1427 terrena—are indeed meant to shock. But, so Ogle argues, they are meant to shock us out of destructive attachments so that we can learn to make the right attachments, first to Christ, and then, through Christ, to our earthly communities as pilgrims. City of God’s pessimistic rhetoric is not Augustine simply denouncing the natural project of politics. It is a bitter medicine for a people deathly ill with an addiction to earthly glory. The second intervention of Ogle’s book lies in its attention to what she calls City of God’s “sacramental ethos” (5). This, I would argue, is the book’s most important contribution. It is also the insight on which the heart of the book’s argument depends. Sacraments, for Augustine, are signs that point us to God. Understood in this broad sense, the whole created order—that is, everything that is not God—has the quality of a sacrament by virtue of its very existence. This is connected closely to Augustine’s understanding of evil as privatio boni: all that exists, to the extent that it exists, is good; and all that exists is, by nature, a sign (signum) pointing beyond itself to the Lord. These are not new insights into Augustine’s doctrine of creation, but Ogle’s application of them to the question of politics and the earthly city is suggestive. For what emerges is a new account of the relationship between politics and the earthly city. The whole created order—political life included—is imbued with an original, sacramental meaning: it serves to refer us back to the Creator. “For Augustine,” Ogle argues, the hallmark of the earthly city is “its perpetual attempt to edit the original meaning of reality—to erase meanings it does not like, and to reenforce illusions in which it has a stake” (6). Politics, as she puts it with a striking metaphor, is “coveted, besieged, by the earthly city”; the relationship is one of “usurpation” (145). In other words, as Ogle puts it, “Augustine is aware of the earthly city’s constant designs on political life, but he does not concede politics to the earthly city, nor does he make the Church the new realm of politics. Instead, the Church as sign of the city of God contradicts the message the earthly city sends about politics. It calls the earthly city’s claim on politics into question”; yet, it does this “without underestimating the hold the earthly city has on the world” (143). On Ogle’s reading, Augustine’s view of the earthly city is that it sits illegitimately, like a usurper, upon the throne of politics, coopting and distorting that throne’s original proclamation. In short, the book unfolds these two claims—psychagogic genre and sacramental ethos—in the middle chapters (2–5), bookended by accounts of the earthly city (1) and politics (6). Chapter 1 lays out Augustine’s foundational vision of the civitas terrena, focusing especially on books 11–14. The earthly city, Ogle argues, is a parody, a counterfeit, a simulacrum of the civitas Dei. It is “like a cloud casting 1428 Book Reviews shadows on a world that should be bathed in light” (37). It is animated by amor sui, the love closed in upon itself to the exclusion of God and neighbor. Having sketched this fundamental vision, chapters 2–4 then unfold Augustine’s “psychagogic strategy” for leading the reader out of the delusions of the earthly city and, through Christ, into the city of God. Chapter 2 is a close reading of book 1 in City of God, which Ogle describes as a “microcosm” of the psychagogic argument of the rest of her book. Instead of beginning with the earthly city in abstracto, Augustine builds a bridge to his readers and begins with Eternal Rome in concreto: the particular community that presently embodies the earthly city’s charade. Chapter 3, then, zooms out to look at Augustine’s broader argument as it unfolds over books 1–9 of City of God. It unpacks Augustine’s three false solutions to the problem of happiness: the promise of empire (bks. 2–5); the promise of philosophical politics (bks. 6–7); and the promise of philosophy as a way of life (bks. 8–9). All three miss both the diagnosis and the cure of our problem. Chapter 4 closes the first part of the argument by homing back in on Augustine’s books 2–5. Ogle returns to these books in order to show how most of the work of psychagogic liberation takes place in these early books by means of a re-telling of Roman history. The is an important point in Ogle’s argument, for, as she notes, these are the books whose pessimism is most frequently cited as evidence that Augustine takes Rome simply and irredeemably as the city of the devil. But, if she’s right about the psychagogic aim of the work, there’s a different way to take the bitter rhetoric of these early books, “as something akin to the application of contraries, designed to detach his Roman readers from an idolatrous attachment to their earthly patria” (97). Chapter 5 marks an important hinge in the argument. Here, Ogle departs temporarily from City of God in order to provide an account of Augustine’s understanding of signs and sacrament not made explicit in the work itself. It is in this chapter that Ogle unfolds her argument about City of God’s “sacramental ethos” which I described above. It is a key piece of the argument, to which I will return in a moment. Finally, chapter 6 (“The Status of Politics”) closes the book with a re-reading of book 19 of City of God in light of the foregoing argument. What is the status of politics in Augustine’s City of God? In a word: besieged—besieged by the earthly city. This new metaphor for understanding the relationship between politics and the earthly city is the punch line and payoff of the book. It is offered as a kind of North Star for navigating a middle course between the proto-liberalism of a Robert Markus reading (politics is neutral) and the almost-Manichean dualism of a John Milbank reading (politics is simply “the realm of sin”).2 2 Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, 411. Book Reviews 1429 As I have said, Ogle’s argument that Augustine conceives of politics as sacramental and of the earthly city as coveting, besieging, even usurping that natural project is the key intervention of her book. What she offers is a reading which simultaneously rehabilitates the natural goodness of politics and treats with sobering seriousness the power the earthly city’s myth has on our un-graced vision of politics. In the spirit of testing the strength of her proposal—for it is one I am attracted to but whose implications I am still thinking through—I would like to put some pressure on this joint in her argument. First, can Ogle’s reading account for the one passage in City of God which comes close to an assessment of politics in the abstract? Augustine writes in 19.15 that originally God “did not want a rational being, made in his image, to have dominion except over irrational creatures: not human over human, but human over beast.” This is a clear and strong statement about the original order of social life. It certainly seems to suggest that politics ipso facto “is a mark of fallen society.”3 Augustine’s novel reading of Gen 2:21–22 adds weight to this: Eve was made from Adam’s rib to signify not the latter’s role as ruler, but “how precious ought to be the union of husband and wife” (City of God 12.28). Does Augustine, therefore, envision a transition from social life in Eden to political life outside of it? Ogle thinks not. She concedes, at one point, that “Augustine accepts postlapsarian hierarchy for what it is,” and even that “coercive institutions . . . are decidedly postlapsarian” (169, 170). But she maintains (as a reading of Augustine) that “the political project is ontologically prior to both dominion and domination” (169). I do not think this is just a dispute over words—Ogle calling “politics” the life in Eden which others call only “society”—because her argument is that politics, as we know it today, post lapsum, is not intrinsically sinful, that we can inhabit it in a way that “resists participating in the economy of the earthly city” (171). But can this reading be squared with the passage in 19.15. Can it be squared even with Ogle’s own concessions about the shift effected by the Fall? Second, does Ogle’s reading take seriously enough Augustine’s chosen device for telling the story of history: two cities? In other words, is the omission from City of God of “politics in the abstract” more deliberate than Ogle’s reading allows? As so many readers have noted, Ogle herself included, one of the most striking features of City of God is the ruthlessly excluded middle. There appears to be no “natural community” between the diabolical civitas terrena and the civitas Dei. The choice is between Babylon and Jerusalem. It is significant, in this respect, that Ogle must go outside City of 3 John Rist, Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 252. 1430 Book Reviews God to retrieve Augustine’s sacramental worldview and then bring it to bear on City of God’s argument. On the one hand, this reading might prove to be contextually sensitive, attentive to the place of City of God in Augustine’s larger oeuvre such that one should read the former in light of the latter. But could it also be that the absence of natural, sacramental middle is deliberate? Could it be that Augustine’s telling of history in City of God is intentionally binary, and that Ogle’s interpretation is, in a certain way, more Augustinian than City of God itself ? These questions notwithstanding, Politics and the Earthly City is an impressive new reading of Augustine’s City of God. In addition to what has already been said, the book has the merits of being very well written (not to be assumed in academic writing) and of offering wide coverage of and substantive engagement with much of the City of God. Thus, the book would serve very well as a companion to Augustine’s text in a seminar setting: it provides commentary on a large swath of the work while also advancing a stimulating argument. The book also attends insightfully—at points even convictingly—to a very Augustinian point: that the earthly city is not something out there; it also runs its course right through the heart of the city of God. That pilgrim-citizens of the civitas Dei are themselves implicated in the delusions, violence, and suffocating self-love of the civitas terrena is a point underappreciated in readings of City of God. Ogle’s is a welcome correction. Whether or not her book proves to chart a genuinely new interpretative path, a third way between the extremes, only time and criticism will tell. This reviewer, at least, hopes the book will hold up to both. Aaron C. Ebert Duke University Durham, NC Divine Action and Emergence: An Alternative to Panentheism by Mariuscz Tabaczek, O.P. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2021), xviii + 346 pp. One of the most challenging scientific phenomena for metaphysical explanation is the emergence of higher-order properties out of lower-level constituents of a system. This relatively recent scientific observation raises serious questions for metaphysically reductionist materialism and has inspired a great deal of recent philosophical and theological activity, Book Reviews 1431 varying greatly in their level of understanding of the scientific phenomenon itself. At the same time, contemporary theological discourse about divine action and the sciences has turned more and more toward panentheism as a way to involve God in the scientific workings of the world without disrupting its operations. Fr. Tabaczek addresses both of these major developments in this volume. For those who do not have the stamina or the interest to dive into his exhaustive analytic treatment of emergence in his previous 2019 volume, Emergence: Towards a New Metaphysics and Philosophy of Science, Fr. Tabaczek provides a detailed summary of his findings in the first two chapters of this volume. Rather than repeat the first volume’s detailed consideration of different emergent phenomena, Fr. Tabaczek simply identifies different levels of emergent phenomena in inorganic chemistry, molecular biology, fluid systems, macro-organisms, and evolutionary systems before providing a substantial overview of contemporary philosophical perspectives on emergence. Even in this short overview, however, the reader will find mention and references to the fundamental historical figures in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Anglophone thought on emergence, often omitted by contemporary literature, such as George Henry Lewis, Samuel Alexander, and C. D. Broad. The rest of the chapter consists in a concise classification and description of contemporary views of emergence, explaining and illuminating issues with downward causation-based accounts, whole-part constraints-based accounts, and supervenience-based accounts before moving on to spend a significant amount of time on Terrence Deacon’s dynamical depth account of emergence. While full-length treatments of each account are provided in Emergence, the reader will find herself with more than enough philosophical engagement to understand the different models of emergence and Fr. Tabaczek’s explanations of their shortcomings. While also much shorter than in Emergence, Fr. Tabaczek’s overview of Deacon’s account provides the necessary foundations for his Aristotelian synthesis of hylomorphism and emergence in the second chapter. The second chapter once more provides a review of Emergence, providing a comparison between classical Aristotelian metaphysics and “neo-Aristotelian” metaphysics of disposition. In both the classical- and neo-Aristotelian sections, Fr. Tabaczek shows his competence in chemistry by consistently applying Aristotelian notions of hylomorphic constitution, efficient causality, and final causality to chemical and cellular phenomena. While he criticizes neo-Aristotelianism for its lack of commitment to substantial form, he finds that its dispositionalism grounding act and potency 1432 Book Reviews provides it with a significant advantage over other models when accounting for emergent phenomena. While not fully endorsing it, Fr. Tabaczek’s Aristotelian synthesis answers many of the philosophical questions Deacon addresses in his model. The third and fourth chapters of Divine Action and Emergence introduce a much-needed account of the panentheistic turn in recent theology and science literature. Fr. Tabaczek is especially astute to introduce the history of these accounts after the rigorous and sustained questions of the analytic-philosophical analysis of emergent phenomena. After giving a historical overview of the major figures in panentheism—from German idealism through Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne to contemporary theology–science dialogue, Fr. Tabaczek turns his analytic rigor towards dispelling ambiguities in panentheistic claims about God– world relations. Building on the work of Michael Brierley, Fr. Tabaczek argues that the meaning of “en” in panentheism is not a univocal term in the different writings of panentheistic writers, but rather share a Wittgensteinian family resemblance. This disambiguation of the claims of different panentheistic writers throughout history and in theology–science dialogue precedes an overview of the main avenues taken by those writers using emergence in theology–science dialogue before the critical evaluation of these positions in chapter four. This fourth chapter provides the heart of Fr. Tabaczek’s critique of the panentheistic tendencies that have dominated the contemporary theology–science discussion. While chapter 3 provided a concise overview of the major figures, chapter 4 applies the account of emergence to the claims of contemporary thinkers to show that the vague notions of “in” as applied to God cannot be saved by a coherent philosophical account of emergence, demonstrating that the best figures in this dialogue have not avoided the “mereologization and spatialization of theological discourse, as well as the problem of specifying the ontological nature and character of the relation between God and his creatures” (151). After giving rather short shrift to divine immanence, merely defending classical theism against the panentheistic critique of God’s lack of relation to the world, Fr. Tabaczek focuses on the problems of divine transcendence in panentheism. Panentheists often attempt to preserve divine transcendence while still attacking divine immutability. It is here where Fr. Tabaczek’s work in chapter 3 most clearly supports his criticism of panentheism. Neither philosophical nor theological panentheism manages to escape the consequences to ontological divine transcendence in a way that can keep panentheistic interdependence of the world and God while assuring that God remains absolute, infinite actuality Book Reviews 1433 and omnipotence. While still relying on largely classical criteria for divine transcendence, Fr. Tabaczek shows the internal inconsistencies in panentheistic thinkers and that their attempts to avoid this dilemma do not succeed. After briefly treating the problem of evil and the vagueness of the body– soul metaphor in panentheistic discourse, chapter 4 wages a sustained critique of panentheists’ use of emergence. Largely addressing Arthur Peacocke’s emergent theism, Fr. Tabaczek particularly stresses earlier findings that it is only the diverse and irreducible kinds of Aristotelian causality that make for a coherent account of emergent phenomena. Because Peacocke and other emergentist panentheists rely on insufficient philosophical accounts of emergence, they face the same problems of coherence when applying these accounts to God’s interactions with the universe. What they attempted to use as an explanation for their theories only adds to the inconsistencies of their views. Fr. Tabaczek turns his attention in the last chapter to his own account of divine causality and emergence that attempts to synthesize his Aristotelian analysis of emergence with the classical natural theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. Fr. Tabaczek’s last chapter begins by going over rather well-trodden ground for any reader familiar with the natural theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. Careful to avoid the over-generalizations of other interpreters of Aquinas (like Austin Farrer and critics of Aquinas in contemporary debate), Fr. Tabaczek outlines the formal, efficient, final, and exemplar causality of God’s interaction with the cosmos. Defending the double-causality distinction against contemporary critics, Fr. Tabaczek follows Fr. Michael Dodds, Msgr. John Wippel, and Ignacio Silva in stressing God’s creation of the actus essendi, and thereby all actuality of created creatures in the creation and sustenance of the universe. Perhaps most interesting in this initial account is Fr. Tabaczek’s emphasis on the exemplar causality of God. Exemplar causality in the divine ideas provides the interconnection between formal, efficient, and final causality in the creation and unfolding of the universe, thus providing the operations studied by the sciences. In a bit of intramural Thomism that becomes relevant to the analytic-philosophical analysis of emergence, Fr. Tabaczek argues that the concept of non-being does not enter into God’s knowledge (and therefore the exemplar divine ideas) against Wippel, Chris Branick, and Gregory Doolan. This move excludes non-being exerting a causative role in the phenomenon of emergence, as Deacon’s dynamical depth claimed. Fr. Tabaczek ends by showing that Deacon’s version of emergence, modified by slightly more Aristotelian criteria, allows for the full Thomistic view of natural theology to account for creaturely action. There is no need to posit 1434 Book Reviews a causal joint, divine self-limitation, or other panentheistic considerations because of the consonance between emergence as actuality and the metaphysics of divine action in Aquinas. Overall, it seems that Fr. Tabaczek’s latest volume is aiming to be more accessible to a larger theological audience than his much more densely analytic Emergence. With the amount of philosophical and theological ground he covers in Divine Action and Emergence, this accessibility comes at the price of deeper detail in arguments. While he certainly provides a broader historical overview than is usual in the contemporary theology–science conversation, Fr. Tabaczek alternates between defending classical theism from attacks on its coherence and criticizing panentheistic positions on their own terms. The last two chapters seem to be doing more of the latter than the former, which is rather disappointing, considering Fr. Tabaczek’s rigor and the dominance of these positions in the contemporary conversation. The core of his argument seems to be that classic analyses of emergence are scientifically and philosophically inadequate to explain the phenomenon, and therefore varieties of panentheism that rely on these interpretations of emergence are inadequate in their own desire to adequate their concept of divine action to contemporary scientific phenomena. Fr. Tabaczek’s overviews and analyses of the history of emergence on panentheistic thought are certainly valuable and broader than most treatments in the wider literature. Nevertheless, it seems that Fr. Tabaczek ran out of either time or space to engage fully with historical figures, as he shows he is capable of doing with Whitehead and Peacocke. Given his scientific, philosophical, and theological abilities, the Divine Action and Emergence leaves the reader wanting more of an argument for why St. Thomas Aquinas’s position is the one panentheists are desiring and missing through more of an engagement with their internal motivations, rather than the defense of classical theism merged with dynamical depth emergence Fr. Tabaczek gives. There are certainly significant moments of this engagement, such that it is necessary for anyone in the panentheistic school to respond, but there is not a sustained critique of panentheistic thought that renders Fr. Tabaczek’s approach the clear fulfillment of what such thinkers are looking for. Divine Action and Emergence is a well-argued and coherent defense of St. Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysics of divine action in light of emergence in the contemporary theology–science conversation. As it stands, Divine Action and Emergence is greatly beneficial for scholars, both those acquainted with either the literature on emergence or the contemporary dialogue between theology and science (or both). As far as use in graduate seminars, Divine Action and Emergence would need to be Book Reviews 1435 greatly supplemented by Fr. Tabaczek’s earlier Emergence and by significant primary-source readings in the history of panentheistic thought and theology–science dialogue. With the amount of engagement with panentheistic thought already in it, though, the reader will be left wanting Fr. Tabaczek to deliver the alternative to panentheism rather than merely an alternative to panentheism. Edmund Lazzari Duquesne University Pittsburgh, PA Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology edited by Michael A. Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger W. Nutt (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2021), ix + 422 pp. This volume is a collection of papers presented at the “Thomas Aquinas and the Crisis of Christology” conference at the Aquinas Center of Ave Maria University in Ave Maria, Florida, in February 2020. Dozens of papers were presented at the conference; this volume contains many of the plenary papers and the two keynote addresses given by Bruce Marshall and Thomas Joseph White, O.P. The title, especially the term “crisis,” has multiple meanings in the essays. On the one hand, some of them address the crisis in contemporary Christology. For example, Michael Dauphinais draws on Aquinas’s theology of participation to pose what he sees as a better alternative to Richard Rohr’s The Universal Christ. As Dauphinais shows, Rohr’s popular Christology conflates Incarnation and creation as one and the same reality. Through careful exegesis of Aquinas’s Commentary on John, Dauphinais argues that the Incarnation must be distinct as a unique act of God, and thus decidedly not the same as creation (253). On the other hand, as J. Augustine DiNoia observes in his foreword, the term “crisis” comes from the Greek krisis, or “judgment” (ix). Christ’s judgment of all human beings emerges as a persistent theme in the volume. So Andrew Hofer’s introduction explores Aquinas’s teaching on Christ’s judgment of teachers of the faith, noting the implications for theologians who hold the office of teacher. Marshall’s and Daria Spezzano’s essays are powerful accounts of Christ’s role as judge. Both diagnose contemporary crises of faith over which we will be judged and remind us that the Lord Jesus judges to save those who love him. These essays read almost like sermons, and they deserve careful attention when 1436 Book Reviews Christ’s judgment seems irrelevant in an age when God can only be thought to be winsome and nice. Some of the essays contribute to ongoing Thomistic scholarly debates. The vexed question of how to understand the esse secundarium in article 4 of Aquinas’s De unione verbi incarnati receives two essays: one by Roger Nutt and the other by Steven A. Long. Nutt argues that Aquinas did not reverse his teaching on the single esse of Christ in the De unione. He observes that Aquinas uses the terms principale and secundarium to manifest “the ultimate unity of composite realities,” and thus secundarium esse is not “second esse” in the order of being (87). Like Nutt, Long argues that Aquinas is consistent in his position on Christ’s singular esse. He invokes a wide array of interpretive and metaphysical arguments in a mere nine pages. Though they do not resolve the problem (at least in my view: how could an esse distinct from another esse be numerically the same esse, as they would have to be for Christ to have one esse?), they are useful contributions to the ongoing interpretation of Aquinas on this point. Similarly, Christ’s human knowledge in Aquinas’s theology and Catholic doctrine gets two essays. White expands on prior work on this topic and argues that Christ maintained consciousness of his filial identity prior to the resurrection. As usual, he does careful work deploying the insights of Catholic doctrine in conversation with biblical studies. Simon Francis Gaine expands on his argument in Did the Saviour See the Father? Christ, Salvation and the Vision of God by arguing that a divine person does not need to have the beatific vision to be incarnate. He contrasts metaphysical necessity with soteriological necessity; Christ needed to have the beatific vision to give it to us, but he did not need it as a necessary consequence of being incarnate. It would be interesting to see Gaine and other Thomists interact with John Duns Scotus’s argument that Christ could be incarnate without the beatific vision, or highest possible grace (Ordinatio III, d. 13). Scotus, in my view, puts the issues at stake clearly, and it would help Thomists expand on Gaine’s thought about what should be said here. Some of the essays are master-classes in theological exposition of features of Aquinas’s Christology. I will mention three that fall in this category. First, John Emery persuasively argues that “communication” is a controlling concept in Aquinas’s Christology. It holds together the multiple ways that Scripture speaks of Christ’s act of saving us. For Emery, Christ chiefly communicates his charity to us. Christ communicates it in multiple different forms of causality: exemplary, moral, instrumental, and meritorious. Second, Gerald Boersma’s essay on Aquinas’s Christology and the spiritual senses illuminates the connection of these topics. As Boersma shows, Aquinas uses Book Reviews 1437 the psalmist’s terms “taste” and “touch” in his religious epistemology. For Boersma, this realistic, tactile experience of God is rooted in the saints’ union with Christ as his mystical body; we participate in Christ’s superabundant taste and touch of the divine essence. Finally, Guy Mansini’s essay beautifully intertwines the themes of Christ’s authority and charity in Aquinas’s theology. This essay alone is worth the price of the volume; it is a wonderful portrayal of Christ, the Judge who loves without bounds. The conference was a rich time of spiritual and intellectual reflection. As one who attended, I believe that what happened was important in the life of the Church: Catholic and Protestant theologians came together to reflect on the mystery of the Incarnation with Thomas Aquinas guiding the proceedings in a sense. For that reason, I wish more of the papers could have been included to reflect on the ecumenical character of this event, especially those of the eminent Protestant evangelical theologians who presented: Oliver Crisp, Steven Duby, and Fred Sanders. Nevertheless, the conference and this volume that came from it are a testament to the enduring spiritual power of Aquinas’s theology over the whole Christian church. Why? I suspect it is because Aquinas wanted to lead his students (including us) not to his own opinion about the mysteries of the faith, but to the feet of our Lord Jesus, who will judge us all with upbuilding love at the end of time. J. David Moser Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady University Baton Rouge, LA Engaging the Doctrine of Israel: A Christian Israelology in Dialogue with Ongoing Judaism by Matthew Levering (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2021), 547 pp. Engaging the Doctrine of Israel not only presents an interesting take on an old and complex problem but also is intriguing in its basic thesis and overall development. In this book, Levering attempts, and succeeds, to marry a scripturally grounded dialogue with ongoing Judaism with the necessary presuppositions of Christian dogmatics. He does so in order to understand the central realities of God’s biblical people Israel and to shine a light on how these realities must inform Christian thought (3). Such a volume fills a gap in research, since Christian dogmatic studies 1438 Book Reviews often suffer a lack of appreciating just how important understanding “Israel’s covenantal life” is for Christian doctrine (3). Thus, while Levering tells us that this book is “the dogmatic sequel” to his Engaging the Doctrine of Marriage (1), the content of the book cannot be divorced from its scriptural foundation, nor from a contemporary dialogue with Israel. After an ample introduction (1–47), Levering begins his treatment of the matter by explaining the necessary hermeneutical framework in which such an engagement can take place (48–109). This foundational chapter not only provides the grounding for the chapters that follow but also examines the pitfalls to avoid in dialoging with ongoing Israel. In particular, Levering finds a balance in the need for both Christians and Jews to retain core beliefs and a recognition that both sides have suffered from unnecessary and painful biases that have hurt dialogue in the past (52–53). Since Levering is writing from the point of view of a Christian, he is right to point out that a healthy and fruitful dialogue with Judaism in the present moment requires both a solid foundation in Christian doctrine and an acknowledgement of how the New Testament has been misused to reject and subject the Jewish people to injustice over the centuries. Thus, in agreement with the author, I too think that Christian–Jewish dialogue plays a vital role not only in healing such biases but also in bridging needless gaps between the two groups (108–109). This crucial chapter is followed by an examination of six different areas (110–443) in which Levering engages with Israel’s doctrine through a Christian lens. In each case, a similar format is found in the sense that Levering first introduces the topic and then engages with different Jewish and Christian scholars in order to elicit a more robust space for dialogue to happen. Each topic of study, then, is brought to a conclusion wherein Levering explicates both the pitfalls to be avoided and what truth can Christians glean. The first area to be discussed is creation (110–46). In this chapter, Levering examines why is it important for both Jews and Christians alike to affirm that omnipotent God created creation ex nihilo. The author is right to point out that if God did not create creation out of nothing, then God is not omnipotent but rather merely a “powerful finite being” (111). While I would have like to see a more robust exegetical analysis on Gen 1:1–2 (especially with regards to bərēʾšît, since it is not so certain that this prepositional phrase should be interpreted temporally), the author is right to move beyond the metaphysical question of creation ex nihilo, to point out that creation is “also rooted in God’s speaking, and thus his Word,” since creation must be understood as the way in which God establishes “a dialogic communion” (124) with creation. After all, it is the Word which is Book Reviews 1439 fundamental; God speaks and practically invites creation to take its place amongst the grooves that God has made. What is more is that this Word, as Levering acknowledges, is both divine and human, since it is the Word of God written in human language. Thus, in Scripture, we cannot escape the “divine–human collaboration” (145) that is willed by the Creator. At the heart of this collaboration, we find the “theo-drama of intimate (marital) love” through which the more metaphysical notion of creation ex nihilo makes sense (145), since God did not create creation arbitrarily, but rather with the intention to bring about true dialogue that leads to relationship, rooted in the Word (145). After creation, Levering moves on to consider the Exodus (147–93). Here, after emphasizing the paradigmatic and normative nature of the exodus motif in both the Old Testament and New Testament (148–49), Levering makes clear that this chapter is really focused on understanding the inherent meaning of not only the exodus itself but also the new exodus wrought by Jesus (149). In his focus on the exodus itself, Levering rightly contrasts how the Creator God redeems his wayward people from bondage with how, due to constant rebellion, the people still suffer (155–65). Within this section, I thoroughly agree with not only how the author unites God’s identity as Creator and Redeemer—God can redeem because he is the omnipotent Creator God—but also how, in rebelling, what really happens is all-out civil war between the people and their sovereign God. Levering then enters into a dialogue with Rabbi Sacks (165–76) and especially develops the undercurrents of the Book of Exodus, theocentrism, and covenantal partnership, in order to emphasize the significance of nationhood, since the nation’s purpose is to embody God’s presence (174). The chapter ends with a discussion on the new exodus in Christ (176–88). Here, the author understands the first coming of Christ as the one which inaugurates the kingdom and initiates the journey for all Christians to the promised land, the consummation of the kingdom (176). What is interesting here is that Levering builds on Sacks’ understanding of nationhood, and thus kingdom (177), wherein the perfected land would entail the perfection of communal life of believers in the long-awaited final temple in its eschatological form (177). In this way, Levering is right to assert that, for any Christian interpretation of the exodus motif to be correct, it must be grounded in the very Jewish idea of nationhood (178). The third topic is the Torah (194–261). The central point of this chapter is the problem concerning how there seems to be much antagonism between 1440 Book Reviews Jews and Christians regarding the law, even though both agree that the Torah is “authoritative divine revelation” (200). Christians, of course, believe that Christianity is “a messianic fulfillment and reconfiguration” of the Torah (201). However, from the Jewish perspective, the fact that Christians claim that Jesus is the Messiah and God incarnate is problematic, since it is possible to interpret Christianity as “having retrogressed and returned to pagan idolatry” (210). On the other side, Christianity, based on a supersessionistic hermeneutic, has often claimed that Jews have “fallen into talmudic legalism” (210). Echoing what is said in chapter 1, Levering rightly states that, even if both groups cannot completely bridge this gap, it does not mean that dialogue on the nature of the law is not worthwhile, because precisely here is where not only can we learn to appreciate each other but also Christians can recognize exactly why “Christ is Torah” (211). The rest of the chapter is divided into two: a presentation of the Halakhic man of Soloveitchik (215–27) and its Christian application (227–56). While the Christian application could have perhaps been more succinct, the author presents an admirable and, to my mind, quite original application that has the scope of illustrating that we can indeed find many common points between Jews and Christians. Fourthly, we find an examination of the Temple (262–321). As in the previous chapter, the point in question here is supersessionism (262–63), especially with animal sacrifices (even within Judaism) and the implementation of laws, such as those found in Pope Eugenius IV’s bull Cantate Domino in 1442, which forbid the practice of Jewish rites (263). Levering, in this chapter, correctly walks a fine line in the sense that he is right that Christians must be supersessionists of a kind—because Christians cannot behave as if Christ did not come—but not supersessionists who despise the temple cult or the ongoing Jewish people, since any understanding of Jesus as the eschatological temple is thoroughly founded upon the theological framework of the temple and the history of Jerusalem (266). To do this, Levering gives a good analysis on the biblical reflection on the temple, first in its Old Testament (266–79) and then in its New Testament context (279–91). At the heart of this analysis is that the temple really implies God’s presence among us (268, 271), a presence that, from a Christian perspective, is now found fully in the person of Jesus Christ (280). However, I do have one point of contention here. On 281, while Levering is correct to point out the significance of Acts 21: 27 as the point where the “the temple is essential left behind,” one should not forget the importance of Paul’s second narration of the Damascus event since, in Acts 22: 17–21, Book Reviews 1441 where Jesus appears to Paul in the very temple of Jerusalem. For this reason, I am inclined to see Luke’s interest in the temple in Acts much more than a “cultural significance” (281); rather, it points to how the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus reconfigures the theology of the temple—Paul sees the face of God, the face of Jesus, in the very place that so many psalmists desired to see the same face of God. The chapter ends with an articulate examination of the contemporary Jewish and Catholic critiques of animal sacrifices wherein the author rightly shows how to both appreciate the deeply positive theology behind the use of animal sacrifices and how contemporary Jewish and Christian authors have illustrated that both sides have moved beyond them (293–321). The last two topics are the land (322–94) and the significance of the role of the king (395–443). In the former, Levering rightly states that, while a “Christian Israelology must affirm the eschatological fulfillment of the land promised by Jesus Christ,” this affirmation needs to incorporate a theological commitment to supporting the Jewish people within the context of the two-state solution (343). This stance precludes the hatred towards Jews that has been sadly witnessed in Christian communities in the past. In the latter chapter, the author examines Davidic kingship and the abuse of power by both kings and popes. He shows here how abuse of power is regrettable as it is not the will of God. These last two chapters are perhaps the weaker ones in the book. In the chapter on the land, while Levering rightly examines the importance of the land (and a precise territory) for both ancient and ongoing Judaism, discussion on the exile is conspicuously missing. I think that, since Second Temple Judaism is borne out of the exile, it is very difficult to fully appreciate the importance of the land without tackling not only the thorny issues that arise from the exile but also the theological developments that occur. The weakness of the last chapter is especially witnessed in those pages that concern the Edgardo Mortara case (415–27). I do understand the reason behind such an examination of such a regrettable event, but I think it is out of place in a volume so grounded in scriptural analysis and real dialogue between Jewish and Christian authors. The work itself ends with an appropriate conclusion (444–66) wherein Levering brings the book to a fitting end by extrapolating the implications inherent therein. This is followed by an ample bibliography (467–540) and index (541–47). Overall, notwithstanding any observed weakness, such a volume is certainly praiseworthy and to be recommended. As this work presupposes 1442 Book Reviews a good background on the various topics of discussion, such a volume is especially ripe for doctoral studies and further scholarly development. Justin Schembri, O.P. Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Rome, Italy