et Vetera Nova Winter 2024 • Volume 22, Number 1 The English Edition of the International Theological Journal Co-Editors Matthew Levering, Mundelein Seminary Thomas Joseph White, O.P., Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Associate Editors Holly Taylor Coolman, Providence College Gilles Emery, O.P., University of Fribourg Paul Gondreau, Providence College Scott W. Hahn, Franciscan University of Steubenville Thomas S. Hibbs, Baylor University Reinhard Hütter, Catholic University of America Christopher Malloy, University of Dallas Bruce D. Marshall, Southern Methodist University Charles Morerod, O.P., Bishop of Lausanne, Geneva, and Fribourg John O’Callaghan, University of Notre Dame 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 Winter 2024 Vol. 22, No. 1 Tract for the Times Tract 15: The Conditions for Eucharistic Reception in St. Justin Martyr’s Church . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anonymous 1 Commentary The Three Pillars of Catholic Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone 7 St. John Henry Newman’s Theory of Doctrinal Development and the Synodal Process: A Survey and Concrete Application.. . . . . . . . . . . . William B. Goldin 21 Articles Philosophy after Christ.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . John O’Callaghan 49 Theology, Philosophy, and Biology: An Interpretation of the Conception of Jesus Christ. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Juan Eduardo Carreño 71 The Christ Who Meets Us in the Sacraments: The Influence of St. Ambrose on the tertia pars of St. Thomas’s Summa theologiae.. . . . . . . Damian Day, O.P. 103 Reason, Passion, and Metaphysics in Bonaventure: Against Hylomorphic Enthusiasm. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Matthew J. Dugandzic 123 Picking Up the Pieces of a Shattered Culture: Abandoning Sartre for Aquinas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . R. E. Houser 135 Technology and Our Relationship with God. . . . . . . . Anselm Ramelow, O.P. 159 Deaconesses and Ritual Impurity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Catherine Brown Tkacz 187 On David Bentley Hart’s Account of Tradition. . . . . . . . . Matthew Levering 215 Theistic Evolution: An Exchange General Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221 Afterword to the Polish Edition of Thomistic Evolution: A Catholic Approach to Understanding Evolution in the Light of Faith. . . . . . Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. 225 Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?—A Critique of the Theistic Evolution of Mariusz Tabaczek. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Chaberek, O.P. 239 Evolution and Creation—A Response to Michael Chaberek’s Critique of Theistic Evolution.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. 255 Book Reviews Benedict XVI: A Life. Volume 2, Professor and Prefect to Pope and Pope Emeritus 1966–The Present by Peter Seewald. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Emil Anton 285 The Light That Binds: A Study in Thomas Aquinas’s Metaphysics of Natural Law by Stephen L. Brock. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Brian Besong 289 Origen and Prophecy: Fate, Authority, Allegory, and the Structure of Scripture by Claire Hall... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Milanna Fritz 293 Cross and Creation: A Theological Introduction to Origen of Alexandria by Mark E. Therrien. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jean-Paul Juge 295 The Achievement of David Novak: A Catholic–Jewish Dialogue, edited by Matthew Levering and Tom Angier . . . . . . . . Christopher Kaczor 299 Christian Social Ethics by Elmar Nass.. . . . . . . . . . . Andrzej Dominik Kuciński 302 Primacy of Christ: The Patristic Patrimony in Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s Analogy in Theology by Vincent C. Anyama.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Roland Millare 307 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, English Edition, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2024): 1–6 1 Tract 15: The Conditions for Eucharistic Reception in St. Justin Martyr’s Church Writing his Apology to Emperor Antoninus Pius (d. 161), Marcus Aurelius (d. 180), and Lucius Verus (d. 169), St. Justin Martyr (d. ca. 165) explains at the beginning of chapter 66: And this food is called among us “Eucharist,” which no one may partake except one: who believes these things taught by us to be true, who has been washed for the forgiveness of sins and the washing unto rebirth, and thus who lives just as Christ handed on.1 Many theologians and scholars of early Christian practices have studied Justin’s witness to the Eucharist in Rome. Given the needs of our times, we would do well to return in meditation to this single sentence of Justin. Close attention to this teaching of an early holy layman renowned as a philosopher and martyr can be fruitful for us. Here we do so by meditating on the sentence’s four parts. And this food is called among us “Eucharist,” which no one may partake except one . . . Justin indicates that “this food” has a special name: Eucharist. The word was in circulation before Christianity, and Greek specialists understand that it usually has the senses of gratitude and the giving of thanks. After the 1 Justin Martyr, Apol. 66.1: Καὶ ἡ τροφὴ αὕτη καλεῖται παρ’ ἡμῖν εὐχαριστία, ἧς οὐδενὶ ἄλλῳ μετασχεῖν ἐξόν ἐστιν ἢ τῷ πιστεύοντι ἀληθῆ εἶναι τὰ δεδιδαγμένα ὑφ’ ἡμῶν καὶ λουσαμένῳ τὸ ὑπὲρ ἀφέσεως ἁμαρτιῶν καὶ εἰς ἀναγέννησιν λουτρὸν καὶ οὕτως βιοῦντι ὡς ὁ Χριστὸς παρέδωκεν. 2 Anonymous prefix, the stem of the word is χάρις, a word that is often translated in Latin as gratia and in English as “grace” or “thanks.” St. Paul uses the verbal form of Eucharist in 1 Cor 11:24 to speak of Christ having giving thanks on the night on which he was betrayed. To the Corinthians, Paul explains that he hands on to them what he received from the Lord. Rather than betraying Christ, delivering him over to enemies, Paul delivers the mystery of Christ over to the faithful. For, Paul makes present the mystery where, taking bread and wine, Christ gave his own Body and Blood and said to do this in remembrance of him. The thanksgiving that accompanies this most solemn act thus lends its name to “this food,” so that the food is the Eucharist. The Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca, Paul’s contemporary, determines that “it is an ungrateful person who gives thanks (agit gratias) without witnesses present” (On Benefits 2.23). Jesus Christ gave thanks to the Father in the presence of his apostles on the night before he died. He wanted his disciples to witness his thanksgiving. In the following century, Justin Martyr offered in his Apology a literary thanksgiving for this food before Rome, in some way symbolizing the whole world. There is the danger that a public act, before many witnesses, might hand Christ over to his enemies. The Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom has this prayer at the time of Communion: “O Son of God, receive me today as a partaker of your Mystical Supper. For I will not speak of the mystery to your enemies, nor will I give you a kiss, as did Judas. But like the thief, I confess to you: Remember me, Lord, in your kingdom.” In some places and times in early Christianity, the Eucharistic mystery was guarded by the discipline of secrecy so that only the faithful would hear of what is being celebrated. Today our situation may be more like the Church of Rome during Justin’s time. Justin publicly explains in detail aspects of the Eucharistic mystery, and anyone presently can read about the Mass of the Roman Rite or any Eucharistic liturgy in books and online. Yet, we should not forget the fundamental difference between the great accessibility of reading and hearing about the Eucharist and what Justin identifies as the prohibition of receiving “this food.” He does not welcome just anyone to receive the food. In fact, he says “no one may partake except one . . .” His inclusiveness of making known the thanks that the Church gives requires an exclusiveness. “No one.” Is Justin unusual in this prohibition? The Didache [or Teaching] of the Twelve Apostles, one of the most ancient non-canonical witnesses to the practices of the Church, explains the Eucharistic rite, providing some of its words of thanks, and then cautions: “But let no one eat or drink of your Eucharist . . .” (9.5). Its author imposes the condition, and then quotes the Lord’s words, “Do not give what is holy to dogs” (Matt 7:6). Tract 15: The Conditions for Eucharistic Reception 3 We can recall that the apostle Paul instructs the Corinthians: “Anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself ” (1 Cor 11:29). Paul shows that this is the reason for Christians’ being punished: “That is why many among you are ill and infirm, and a considerable number are dying. If we discerned ourselves, we would not be under judgment” (1 Cor 11:30–31). While the Roman lectionary features 1 Cor 11:23–26 in several places and includes verses 17–26 and 33 in the weekday cycle of readings for Mass, never are verses 27–32 proclaimed in the Mass’s Liturgy of the Word. This omission can draw our attention to that teaching on the Eucharist. The Catechism of the Catholic Church quotes 1 Cor 11:27–29, and continues: “Anyone conscious of a grave sin must receive the sacrament of Reconciliation before coming to communion” (§1385). Do we want to hear Paul’s words about the dangers of receiving the Eucharist unworthily? Do we want to continue the way of thinking of the Didache and Justin Martyr, where the first consideration is that no one should receive the Eucharist unless certain conditions are met? The three conditions that St. Justin gives for receiving Holy Communion are still conditions today. All are welcome to abide by these three conditions and so receive the Eucharist. We will now look at each condition singly, with assistance from Justin’s other teachings so important for his time and ours. Who believes these things taught by us to be true The first requirement for Justin is faith, and he does not mean a generic ability to trust. Rather, Justin knows that the Church in Rome, where Justin is living, teaches particular doctrines that come from Christ and must be held in faith. In turn, the one permitted to share in the Eucharist must believe these things. This continues what we read in John 6. After teaching on the Bread of Life, Jesus says: “The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe” ( John 6:63–64). After he identified that some do not believe, many disciples went away from him. But Simon Peter, speaking for all believers, confessed: “We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God” ( John 6:69). In his Apology, Justin adamantly maintains that the reason why he wants his audience to accept what he says is “because we speak the truth” (23.1). Justin teaches certain articles of faith concerning Christ and the resurrection of the body, as well as doctrines about the meaning of life. He loves to contrast what Christians accept as truth with pagan teachings and immoral practices. 4 Anonymous In his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin argues at length with the Jew Trypho that the Scriptures foretell Jesus Christ. Early in the account, he relates that he himself had turned from a variety of Greek philosophical schools to the truth communicated by a certain old man by the sea who interpreted the prophets for him. After the old man went away, Justin’s spirit was immediately set on fire, and he discovered that what the old man told him was “the only sure and beneficial philosophy” (8.1). From recounting his own conversion, Justin sought in dialogue to convert his audience to the truth. Indeed, truth is of the greatest importance to Justin. He died for the truth. In the acts of his martyrdom, a portion of which appears in the Office of Readings on his memorial of June 1, we read that the Roman prefect said to Justin, “You are called a learned man and think you know what is true teaching.” He was trying to persuade Justin to turn from the faith that he had received. Justin’s reply includes this confession of faith: “We hope to suffer torment for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ, and so be saved. For this will bring us salvation and confidence as we stand before the more terrible and universal judgment-seat of our Lord and Savior.” In this way, Justin followed the example of Christ himself. Shortly before his own death, Jesus Christ gave witness before Pontius Pilate by saying, “For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice” ( John 18:37). At Mass on Sundays and solemnities, we recite the Creed. Yet, every Mass is for the “faithful,” that is, those who profess the faith. Some bemoan the fact that we have a crisis of morality. Perhaps there is something deeper than that, a crisis of faith. Christians have a distinctive religion in the world based upon a conviction of truth in the faith that we profess. Do you believe that what the Church teaches is true? Who has been washed for the forgiveness of sins and the washing unto rebirth The second condition is baptism, identified with a double water imagery of being washed for the forgiveness of sins and washed unto rebirth. In order to approach the Eucharist, you must not only believe properly; you must also be baptized. There is no Eucharist without the primary sacramental act of baptism. St. Paul says: “We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life” (Rom 6:4). In his Apology, Justin describes the Trinitarian baptism of being washed Tract 15: The Conditions for Eucharistic Reception 5 in the name of God the Father, and of Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit (ch. 61). Justin sees that this baptism expresses the Lord’s words, “Unless you be born again, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” ( John 3:3). This fulfills Isa 1:16–20, which speaks of being washed from sin so that, even if the sins are scarlet, they will be washed white as snow. In his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin articulates to his purported Jewish audience the hope of salvation through a fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy of the forgiveness of sin: “There is no other way than this, that you come to know this Christ, be washed for the forgiveness of sins, as Isaiah proclaimed the washing, and so live henceforth without sin” (44.4). Notice that Justin places baptism after coming “to know this Christ,” and baptism prefaces a kind of life that rejects sin. The Church teaches and practices the sacramental life, which begins with baptism. No one is born a Christian. We are reborn Christians in baptism. How do we thank God for our baptism? What kind of life are we to live from this rebirth? And thus who lives just as Christ handed on. Justin’s third condition for receiving the Eucharist in Rome is a certain kind of life. It is not enough to believe and to be baptized, but one must also live as Christ lived. For this life, Christ was hated and was crucified. But he was raised from the dead and is now seated at the right hand of his Father. With the gift of his Holy Spirit, we can live his life. St. Paul says, “I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me” (Gal 2:19–20). In the deification brought about in us by the sacramental life, we are called to live just as Christ handed on by word and deed. In his Apology, Justin contrasts the life that Christ gave with the life of those who live unreasonably (ἀλόγως), which could be understood as living without the Logos (57.1). Justin wants the world to know that Christians live reasonably, according to the Logos of God. Rather than having a life that celebrates the immoralities of pagan myths, Christians can have a new life in the world, a life that prepares for heaven’s unending life. In his Dialogue with Trypho, Justin maintains “everyone who repents can, if he wants, obtain God’s mercy” (141.2). The whole point of this long dialogue, and arguably of all of Justin’s works, is to have people receive God’s mercy in Christ and have lives freed from the power of sin. 6 Anonymous In receiving the Eucharist, we are to have lives that reject sin and are open to an increase in the life of Christ. Mindful of our sinfulness, we begin Mass with a Penitential Rite, begging for mercy; and we pray, “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you” before receiving Holy Communion. A life that rejects God’s mercy by preferring grave sin is not the life that Christ handed on. He came to give us mercy. Do we want to have that mercy on his terms? The life that Christ gives us is a cruciform life: “If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). St. Justin Martyr knew that, and he imitated his Savior. He gave up his life, expressing the truthfulness of the Eucharist in the most eloquent way conceivable. By continuing to meditate on the teaching of St. Justin Martyr regarding the conditions for Eucharistic reception, we can grow in the mystery of life and death at work in the Eucharist and, with his intercession, give witness in our own times. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2024): 7–20 7 The Three Pillars of Catholic Education Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone San Francisco, CA Lecture for Ave Maria University’s Academic Convocation Introduction On February 13, 1999, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger visited St. Patrick’s Seminary and University in Menlo Park, California. He gave a lecture entitled, “Faith and Culture.” Pope St. John Paul II had only back in September of the previous year published his momentous encyclical Fides et Ratio. Purposely placing his own remarks under the umbrella of that encyclical, Cardinal Ratzinger used the opportunity at St. Patrick’s Seminary to discuss the growing relativism which was even at that time eroding our culture. He began his lecture by using an example from C. S. Lewis’s great work The Screwtape Letters. The future Pope remarked: This book consists of fictional letters from a senior devil who is giving advice on how best to proceed to one beginning in the work of leading men astray. The younger devil has expressed concern to his superior that especially intelligent people, in particular, might read the books of wisdom of the ancients and might thus come upon the track of the truth. Screwtape calms him by pointing out that the “Historical point of View,” with which the intellectuals of the Western world have fortunately been inculcated by the devils, means in fact that “when a learned man is presented with any statement in an ancient author, the one question he never asks is whether it 8 Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone is true. He asks who influenced the ancient writer, and how far the statement is consistent with what he said in other books, and what phase in the writer’s development, or in the general history of thought, it illustrates, and how it affected other writers,” and so on.1 The startling truth is that now, almost twenty-five years later, what Cardinal Ratzinger articulated back in 1999 has only crystallized. In almost every area of our culture, the notion of truth has receded due to the acidic encroachment of relativism. As a culture we have given up on any hope of finding truth and instead consigned reality to something that is determined by the individual. We see the extent to which this relativism has taken hold of our culture in the now-famous words of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”2 In this breathtaking statement, Justice Kennedy seemingly makes irrelevant the entire history of Western civilization. The irony, of course, is that it is precisely the course of Western philosophy and thought which has steered the culture in such a direction that it could produce a Supreme Court justice who would articulate such a bewildering statement. For we do not, nor can we, exist in a philosophical vacuum. And such is the great irony of this moment that we occupy—it is on the ash heap of Western civilization that relativists stand attacking the very history which brought them to be there in the first place. Given this sad reality, we can see Cardinal Ratzinger’s criticism from 1999 as a clarion call, and as prophetic in describing what has transpired in the decades since. The complete dominance of relativism in all its forms demands that we return to the primacy of truth. But it is not only unfettered relativism that necessitates this return to truth. The return to the splendor of truth becomes all the more important for us as Christians. As the First Letter of St. Peter makes clear, the Christian is to purify his soul by obedience to the truth (1 Pet1:22). And in the Gospel of St. John, we are told that Christ is the true Light who enlightens all, and who gives the power to become children of God to those who receive him ( John 1:9–11). In this vein, I would like to present what I believe is the strength of Catholic education and the need to restore a truly Catholic vision. To this end, I believe Cardinal Ratzinger was correct in his forecast of the repercussions of bracketing out truth from our culture. While the broader repercussions of 1 2 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, “Faith and Culture,” The Patrician, February 1999. Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992). The Three Pillars of Catholic Education 9 this are too far in scope for this talk, I would like to frame my discussion as a response to bringing truth back into the academic environment, especially in higher education. To do so, I will discuss the goal of a Catholic worldview—that is, the flourishing of the human person. With this established, I will then discuss the three pillars of Catholic education: faith and reason, virtue, and the sacramental principle. The Catholic Worldview: The Flourishing of the Human Person From the time of the ancients, the human person has been understood as oriented toward the good. Aristotle believed that authentic happiness occurs when we do what is good for us. And what is good for us as human persons sets us apart from other creatures. But this raises the question: what is the good? For Aristotle, the ultimate good was eudaimonia, a life of well-being and flourishing constituted by human goods and activities. This is helpful because it shows that the human person is naturally oriented toward something larger than himself. To use Aristotle’s language, the human person has a natural end by which he or she is directed toward the good.3 By the medieval period, St. Thomas Aquinas built off this Aristotelian notion of eudaimonia, but now grounding it in grace, specifically in beatitudo. This is a relational dimension of the human person that reflects on, and partakes in, the goodness, the beauty, and the holiness of God. St. Thomas clearly understood that the human person has as his or her ultimate graced end the beatific vision: divine beatitude, that is, happiness with God, in a word, beatitudo.4 The relevance of this for our topic of discussion is that beatitudo defines the entire expression of a life well lived, of the ultimate good, and, as one might say, of a “graced eudaimonia.” For this reason, the Catholic worldview, building from natural reason’s insights found in Greek philosophy and advancing into revealed knowledge given through Holy Scripture, is especially interested in developing the human person holistically, with an eye toward that ultimate graced end of happiness with God. Hence, every aspect of Catholic education must be subordinate toward this ultimate end, and every component of Catholic education must have this as its fundamental goal. From this foundation we can now understand the mission of Catholic education: to serve the Church’s mission of sanctification and evangelization. 3 4 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.7.1097b28. Summa Theologiae [ST] I-II, q. 2, a. 8. 10 Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone The Mission of Catholic Education and the Three Pillars: Faith and Reason, Virtue, and the Sacramental Worldview If the ultimate graced end of the human person is beatitudo, then it should not surprise us that the mission of Catholic education is to serve the Church’s mission of sanctification and evangelization. The entire point of the Church is to sanctify her members and to bring others into her fold. But, with this understanding of Catholic education, we must reorient our everyday understanding of “success.” Typically, many students of higher education assume success in purely worldly terms. Questions asked might be: Will my major get me into a high-powered and high-paying career? Will this program increase my chances of finding the perfect internship? In other words, students often have high academic expectations, but solely as a means to an end—the end being a worldly, and thus material, success. It seems that, in the eyes of most, a university education is nothing more than a high-end vocational school, training for a high-end job. For any Catholic education, however, academic rigor and high expectations are priorities for their own sake. The Catholic Church, indeed, has provided some of the greatest minds ever to live, from poets and writers to philosophers and theologians, to the greatest physicists and chemists. Intellectual achievement needs to be an important hallmark of any Catholic higher education. Yet, given the Catholic worldview, this very important good must also be subordinated to the larger end of beatitudo. The Church, in the final analysis, has as its divine mandate to create saints and to bring people to Christ. For this reason, success for Catholic education is defined by parameters different from those usually understood in the contemporary secular academic world, for it is defined by souls captivated and redeemed by the love and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. The First Pillar: Faith and Reason While true success for Catholic education is not solely defined by academic rigor, the fact is that knowledge is a key ingredient in achieving that ultimate graced end of beatitudo. As St. Thomas Aquinas famously put it, “You cannot love what you do not know.”5 And so, in the great wisdom of the Church, there has always been an insistence on the roles of both faith and reason. St. Augustine recognized that there can be no opposition between intellectual understanding of God and our own emotive and intuitive appetites.6 They 5 6 ST I-II, q. 27, a. 2. See, for example, De civitate Dei 8.8. The Three Pillars of Catholic Education 11 support each other, and the intellectual can help ground our emotions and intuitions in such a way as to give them vital structure. In many ways, we can see the truly Catholic appreciation of the interplay between faith and reason as a rejection of two mutually exclusive extremes. On one side is the Protestant notion of radical depravity which has its theological roots in Martin Luther yet was also the hallmark of the influential twentieth-century theologian Karl Barth. For Barth, there is an intrinsic correlation between a human person totally depraved and a total reliance upon Christ for any real knowledge. This is seen in his twofold analogy, that of being and that of faith. His quip that the analogy of being—analogia entis—is the invention of the anti-Christ shows his tremendous fear for any role of natural knowledge.7 On the other hand, his use of the so-called analogia fidei is an attempt to bridge a gap between an obvious need for a religious epistemology and a subject of knowing, but remains incapable of finding the human person capable of knowledge without the light of grace. This relegates knowledge of this world to an intolerable place. Does the fall of mankind truly make us incapable of knowing that two plus two equals four? Does not the natural world provide a reality that is at the same time both predictable and successive? It would seem clear that the human person is capable of arriving at some knowledge by his or her own natural faculties, even if it is always limited. Ultimately, this extreme Reformed position represents the error of ignoring any role for reason and the total annihilation of any natural faculties within the human person. At the other extreme is the error of Pelagianism in its various forms. While Pelagianism comes in different degrees, what unites them all is the basic belief that the human person is by nature capable of justifying himself or herself through natural moral achievements. The corresponding epistemology that fits Pelagianism is a view of the human mind which has no limitations, a pure access to reality as such. Here the light of reason is so exalted that grace almost seems superfluous. One must only remember the unspeakable tragedies perpetrated by the atheistic regimes of the last century to dispel any doubt about the danger of a glorified and triumphant view of human nature untouched by grace. This extreme position espouses a view of reason that is too triumphant, to the detriment and the necessity of faith. The truly Catholic position threads the needle between these two extremes, taking the truth that each offers and leaving behind what they negate. The light of faith and the light of reason are precisely complementary 7 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. I/1, The Doctrine of the Word of God, Part 1 (London: T&T Clark, 1975), xiii, 239. 12 Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone and illuminate each other. Such is the beauty and splendor of truth. Truth is so powerful as a transcendental that the light of both reason and faith illuminate it, but from different modes and in different degrees. As Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate: Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity. That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity: it grasps its meaning as gift, acceptance, and communion. Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. (§3) What Pope Benedict XVI shows is the cooperation between these two lights working in tandem because they are both at the service of the truth. Therefore, Catholic education must capture this need for cooperation between the two. A truly Catholic institution of higher learning will allow for a mutual penetration of the theological into the other sciences and vice versa, while still keeping their appropriate scientific methods separate. The thriving of both the properly secular and the theological means that both have a seat at the academic table, maintaining the scientific methods appropriate to both. For example, St. Thomas Aquinas argued that the fact that natural science, mathematics, and metaphysics all share objects of speculation as their obiectum materiale does not guarantee that they will arrive at the same conclusions: “The unity of a faculty or habit is to be gauged by its object, not indeed in its material aspect, but as regards the precise formality under which it is an object.”8 In this regard, the obiectum formale (formal object) must be taken into account, that is, the obiectum formale quod (what is focused on) and obiectum formale quo (how it is focused on). In terms of the speculative sciences, even though there may be a common material object, the individual sciences are diversified by their particular formale quo and formale quod, that is, what they focus on and the methodology by which they focus on it. What this shows is that the diversity of sciences is mutually beneficial—the sciences benefit from each other, as long as they avoid the pitfalls of conflation and contradiction. The light of reason and the light of faith make it necessary to respect and utilize all sciences, while upholding their appropriate distinctions. 8 ST, I, q. 1, a. 3, resp. See also Thomas Aquinas, The Division and Methods of the Sciences, trans. Armand Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1986). The Three Pillars of Catholic Education 13 The Second Pillar: Virtues and the Natural Law Following our Catholic worldview of a graced eudemonia and realizing the Catholic appreciation for both faith and reason, it is important once again to return to the insights of Aristotle. For Aristotle, human flourishing required a life of developing virtues, creating habits that over time orient the human person toward his end. Here Aristotle is echoing his master, Plato, who taught that only the philosophical soul which has mastered the ethical life could eventually reach the heights of the Forms.9 From human reason, it is possible to know that there is a need to develop virtues in order to flourish. Moreover, there is an inherent correlation between the natural law and the development of virtues in the human person. The moral theologian Paul Wadell writes: “The natural law expresses how God has created us so that we can, by carefully attending to the fundamental inclinations of our nature, flourish both individually and communally.”10 Here the insights of the Angelic Doctor can help us once again. Borrowing from St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas argues that the human person is, by nature, attracted toward the good, and hence the natural law (which is determined by ends, that is, by goods) is the way in which the human person may find fulfillment in God’s eternal plan for salvation (beatitudo).11 Given this background, I would like to focus on two specific virtues that I believe are foundational to all—that is, they are the necessary first steps to acquiring the other virtues—namely, humility and chastity. These virtues will also help orient Catholic education back to a graced human flourishing. The Virtue of Humility Modern society belittles the virtue of humility. We live in a culture that prioritizes selfish ambition over self-sacrifice for the good and love of others. Because of this, humility has become a virtue that is seen as a weakness, as something that will not get you forward in life. And if we are operating from an understanding of success as defined by the world, then this rejection of humility makes complete sense. However, when we understand that true human flourishing is found in developing habits that orient the human person toward his or her ultimate graced end, these worldly values no longer hold the same sway over us. Correctly understood, humility is a virtue based on reality as such, on the way things are. “Humility” comes from the 9 10 11 See, for example, Republic 6.508a–518b. Paul Wadell, Happiness and the Christian Moral Life: An Introduction to Christian Ethics, 3rd ed. (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016), 88. ST I-II, q. 91, a. 4, resp. 14 Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone Latin word humus, which means “earth.”12 Humility means lowliness, as in being close to the earth. But the earth is the ground upon which we walk, so humility is what grounds us so that we can walk successfully through the many vicissitudes of life. Humility means that we realistically account for where we are now and where we are going. It means realistically accepting one’s own limitations and surrendering the need to overvalue or undervalue either the self or others. Humility is essentially, in this context, a recognition of reality and a willingness to embrace our limitations rather than struggle against them. At the same time, humility is also a Christian virtue—indeed, a quintessential Christian virtue—which in turn is based on the fact that the human person is made in the image and likeness of God. God instills in human nature a desire to seek and respect the basic goals of human existence. Respecting basic human goods means conforming oneself to objective norms that exist as givens in the created order. Here we return to the notion of the natural law. According to these norms, certain human goods must always be respected: life, truth, beauty, love, friendship, and others. Moreover, there are also particular goals that are revealed in personal prayer, which is conversation with God. A humble person approaches God in prayer and asks, “Lord, what do you want me to do? What are you asking of me?” These are the questions every person must ask God if that person is to live out his or her life in a manner befitting an ultimate graced end. In this sense, there is both an objective and a subjective element to humility. On the objective level, the humble person is governed by those human goals that are essential to everyone in order to flourish, such as love, friendship, sacrifice, and justice. On the subjective level, the humble person presents himself or herself in totality and in honesty before our Lord, who always seeks to bring out more goodness and love from within us. The reality is that persons are made by God to love, praise, and honor him. The virtue of humility is the regular disposition and practice by which a person acknowledges his or her true defects and gifts, and in light of those, submits to God’s will. In other words, a humble person accepts his or her limitations and imperfections and, at the same time, uses his or her gifts and abilities to praise God and to serve him. As St. Augustine is supposed to have said, “humility is the foundation of all other virtues; hence in the soul in which this virtue does not exist, there cannot be any other virtue except in mere 12 Arthur Devine, “Humility,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 7 (New York: Robert Appleton, 1910). The Three Pillars of Catholic Education 15 appearance.”13 And St. Teresa of Ávila is also supposed to have said, “there is more value in a little study of humility and in a single act of it than in all the knowledge of the world.”14 Hence, from what I have articulated, the truly humble person has three convictions: first, the need to recognize his or her limitations, imperfections, and the reality that all of us are sinners; second, that he or she is made in the image and likeness of God and therefore, despite his or her sins and limitations, also has gifts that are bestowed on him or her by God the Creator; and third, the desire to strive to fulfil God’s personal plan and goals given in prayer. Through the encouragement and engagement of the virtue of humility in Catholic education, the student is given the possibility to grow closer to the person God created him or her to be, which is a person fully alive, fully flourishing in Christ’s grace. The Virtue of Chastity Just as the virtue of humility is at best misunderstood in our culture, and at worst outright mocked, so too with the virtue of chastity. In some ways, the virtue of chastity is abhorred the most of all. Part of the reason for this is due to the misunderstanding that chastity is something purely negative, a deprivation, giving up something, namely, the suppression of the sexual appetite. Furthermore, many people assume that chastity is something that primarily applies to young people and unmarried people. In truth, though, chastity is a virtue to be developed and lived in every age and in every state in life. The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines chastity as “the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being” (§2337). Another way to put it is that chastity is the constant disposition to love another person the way that person ought to be loved, corresponding to the person’s intrinsic human dignity. Hence, already we can see the breakdown of any superficial understanding of chastity as simply abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage. Certainly, observance of this moral norm is absolutely necessary for one to be chaste, but by itself this is insufficient for acquiring the virtue of chastity in its more profound fullness. The constant disposition to love another person as that person should be loved applies equally to married couples as to those who are not married. 13 14 For an example of Augustine’s beautiful insight into the exalting power of humility, see De civitate Dei 14.12. For Teresa’s conception of humility as the quality of soul most attractive to God, see Way of Perfection 16.1–2, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh, O.C.D., and Otilio Rodriguez, O.C.D. (Washington, DC: Institute of Carmelite Studies, 2000). 16 Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone But an obvious question immediately arises: what is the true meaning of love? Given the distorted and demeaning answers to this question we find all around us, creating enormous confusion in the minds of many people, we have a huge challenge before us. Returning to the insights of St. Thomas Aquinas, the classical definition of love is the giving of oneself to the other for the good of the other.15 Love requires respecting and always affirming the intrinsic dignity of the other and in every way, and never treating the other as a means to an end, as a way of getting some personal benefit, even unconsciously. Chastity as genuine love (not merely physical attraction) for another person stresses the person’s willingness to extend oneself to the utmost limits to do things that are for the good of another person. A necessary characteristic for acting always with this motivation is that one must be selfless. But one also must understand that some acts, such as the marriage act, while they have attractive qualities, work for the good of the other person, including the offspring, only when they are performed in the context of marriage. Chastity is also obviously central to the vocation of priesthood and religious life. Also in these cases, candidates for these two vocations must healthily integrate their sexuality with their interior life. If this does not occur, the priest, nun or brother will not be able to interact well with other people. While the vocation to the priesthood and religious life is necessary and important, many young people are called to marriage, and marital chastity is equally central to a couple’s happiness and perseverance in their vocation. Given the profound self-giving that is the key ingredient in true love, the human person will simply not find true, deep happiness in life without acquiring the virtue of chastity. Chastity, then, together with humility (without which chastity—like all other virtues—is impossible) is what enables a person to live beyond a mere superficial, banal existence that ends in a life of boredom and loneliness. Acquiring these two virtues enables one to live a life that is other-centered and open to the transcendent; it enables one to look beyond the surface, beyond the physical, to the other’s interior life, and it enables one to live out these deep human goods in very concrete ways, in the body. Fortunately, teachers have many opportunities in the classroom to emphasize the importance of the education of the entire person—physical, intellectual, emotional, and social, all integrated into the spiritual and interior life of the individual. This is obviously the case in the teaching of 15 See, for example, ST I-II, q. 28, a. 3, resp. and ad 3. The Three Pillars of Catholic Education 17 religion, but this topic can be addressed from a number of other perspectives as well in all other areas of education: literature, history, biology, languages, the physical sciences, and so forth. Regardless, a truly Catholic education will incorporate these virtues—indeed all the virtues—as the way in which the human person can flourish and achieve that ultimate graced end. The Third Pillar: The Sacramental Principle In 1934, the Swiss philosopher and Jewish convert to Catholicism Max Picard wrote the classic The Flight from God.16 In this insightful work, Picard argues that the perennial crisis of man is, precisely as the title indicates, his flight from God. Even in 1934, Picard could see a new and dangerous religious crisis that was forming. Flight from God had become so all-encompassing, so systematized, that it was beginning to penetrate all forms of daily life. Whereas before, a flight from God would have still been a flight into a culture of faith, even already in Picard’s times, he could see that, when man flees from God, the world will flee with man. What in a prior age happened only on the individual level now was happening collectively: the loss of faith and, with it, the loss of the sacred. Now, almost ninety years later, this crisis as seen by Picard has only intensified. There is a flattening happening to our world. With the receding of truth comes even the inability to tolerate divergent opinions. Our societal instinct has become to flatten out difference, and many times—ironically and tragically—in the very name of diversity. Nowhere do we see this flattening out more than in the signs and symbols of faith. We have lost the importance of symbols. Yet the human person needs symbols, and, in fact, despite ourselves, we still have a deep intuition of their importance. Rather than dismiss them totally, we pick and choose which symbols are still relevant and which we disregard. As an example, just look at the controversy over flag burning: people on both sides of that debate know that we are not talking simply about a piece of colorful cloth. No self-respecting American, for example, would ever dream of tearing up a flag and use it to wash his car. No, much more than a piece of colorful cloth, the flag makes present to us all what our nation stands for: its values, its founding principles, and all those who have made it great, especially at the cost of such great sacrifice, most especially the supreme sacrifice of giving their lives to defend our freedom. In fact, I still remember a story I heard on NPR several years ago about the “flag sergeant” in the Civil War. The flag sergeant was the one who had 16 Max Picard, The Flight from God (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2015). 18 Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone the honor of carrying the flag into battle. If he was hit, another would take his place and assume that honor, and at great risk to his own life. No, this is something far more than—in fact, quite different from—the idea of “just a symbol, not reality.” And that is why—have you noticed?—when we recite the Pledge of Allegiance, we pledge our allegiance not only to the republic for which the flag stands, but to the flag itself. What these examples show is that we have an inherent need for real symbols, understood as a sign which both points to a bigger reality beyond itself and makes that reality present. Indeed, symbols are part and parcel of all cultures. We see that in the etymology of the word “culture,” as it arises from the word “cult”—connected to worship. In an important way, culture is derived from an already-perceived value of worship and the types of cultic practices that have developed from that. And all cultic practices involve the use of symbols to mediate religious belief. As the philosopher Paul Ricœur has remarked regarding religious symbols, they are not merely “decorative with an emotional value but no informational value.”17 In other words, symbols are not mere ornamental trappings, but rather convey the content of religious discourse. However, as true as that is about all religious discourse, there is something unique about Christianity, a uniqueness which derives from the mystery of the Incarnation. In the Incarnation, visible and concrete materiality is caught up into the deeply mysterious and invisible reality of God. In the physical person of Jesus of Nazareth, we see not only a Galilean carpenter, but through him, the visible face of the invisible God. And so, this sacramental principle, which can be defined as “the invisible made visible through the physical,” imbues the entire way in which we, as Catholics, view our world, which is why we have always understood that symbols teach more powerfully than words. A truly Catholic education must hold out the sacramental principle not only as the center of religious sensibility, but also as the center of the understanding of all reality. The human person craves the deep intuitive longing for the spiritual that is communicated in symbols. And nowhere does this longing meet its end more than in the Catholic Faith, a faith intimately correlated to the intrinsic relationship between the physical and spiritual. In the use of the sacramental principle, we see the rejection of a purely material view of reality and, instead, the recognition of the spiritual. In other words, we see both the search for truth and its fulfillment—a truth that moves the mind from the purely passing material reality to the eternality of the spiritual. 17 Paul Ricœur, Figuring the Sacred, trans. David Pellauer (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 1995), 17. The Three Pillars of Catholic Education 19 Concluding Remarks The influential German theologian Romano Guardini famously quipped that the logos must precede the ethos.18 The principle that Guardini was insisting upon was that truth must come before practice. There can be no coherent action without first being cognizant of the truth. In 1987, then-Cardinal Ratzinger captured the importance of this principle in his work Principles of Catholic Theology: If the word “orthopraxis” is pushed to its most radical meaning, it presumes that no truth exists that is antecedent to praxis, but rather that truth can be established only on the basis of correct praxis, which has the task of creating meaning out of and in the face of meaninglessness. Theology becomes no more than a guide to action, which, by reflecting on praxis, continually develops new modes of praxis.19 The temptation for a worldview that reverses the order and places praxis prior to truth was a temptation for many liberation theologians who were deeply influenced by Marxism.20 This temptation to bracket out truth from practice is certainly very much a mark of our age. Indeed, I would unambiguously maintain that this reversal of order is destroying our culture and, ultimately, is dehumanizing. The rejection of truth in favor of pure praxis replaces the vital understanding of human flourishing with a purely subjective relativism that has no ability to speak to the inner spiritual yearning that exists in every human soul. It is precisely because of this momentous societal breakdown that the mission of Catholic education has become paramount. Through reestablishing the three pillars of Catholic education—namely, faith and reason, formation in the virtues, and the sacramental principle—education will be structured in such a way that it can support basic human needs. These pillars encourage students to discover the answers to deep and abiding questions that arise and cannot be answered by a purely materialistic and 18 19 20 See Roland Millare, “The Primacy of Logos over Ethos: The Influence of Romano Guardini on Post-Conciliar Theology,” Heythrop Journal 57 (2016): 974–83. Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), 318. See Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction on Certain Aspects of the “Theology of Liberation” (1984), X, no. 3. 20 Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone worldly perspective. Moreover, these pillars buttress areas of the human person that are crumbling under the dictatorship of relativism.21 This is accomplished only because of the wisdom of our Catholic Faith. The Catholic worldview has always prioritized the flourishing of the human person. Here the best of Western civilization is brought to bear upon Sacred Revelation and graced knowledge. In other words, in the Catholic worldview, human reason and its insights into eudemonia on the human level find fulfillment in beatitudo—the graced beatific vision. For this reason, Catholic education as I have articulated it can be part of the solution to an age that has lost its way. It is true that charting a truly Catholic course in higher education is daunting and there are strong gale force winds against us, but there is no greater challenge and opportunity than this moment. And, with God’s grace, we can rise to the occasion. With the fall of the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church was able to rebuild civilization, and to do so in a Christian way. The Church was able to preserve order against disorder, beauty against the ugliness of brutality, and truth against ignorance and error. We are called once again to a similar endeavor in our own age, for we are in the midst of nothing less than a huge civilizational collapse. We, as Catholics, are once again called to rebuild civilization, and to do so in a Christian way. And the good news is that this is something we know we can, with the help of God’s grace, accomplish. In fact, ultimately this active remembrance of our shared past is something only the Catholic Church can give to a society and culture that has lost its way. In the final analysis, the Church is humanity’s only hope—and Catholic education is on the front lines of bringing that hope to the next generation. Thank you for what you do to make this hope a reality. 21 For the genesis of this apt characterization of our age, see Joseph Ratzinger’s homily at the Mass of the Papal Chapel, “Pro eligendo Romano Pontifice,” April 18, 2005, https:// www.vatican.va/gpII/documents/homily-pro-eligendo-pontifice_20050418_en.html. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2024): 21–47 21 St. John Henry Newman’s Theory of Doctrinal Development and the Synodal Process: A Survey and Concrete Application William B. Goldin Our Lady of Guadalupe Church La Habra, California Lecture delivered to the Pontifical North American College Reunion, Garden Grove, California, June 22, 2022 Good afternoon, Your Excellencies, Most Reverend bishops, and my brother priests. Firstly, please permit me to say that, while it is certainly an honor to have been invited to speak to you, for which I would like to express my gratitude to my own bishop and our host for this reunion, His Excellency, Bishop Kevin W. Vann, it is also not a little bit daunting. To speak to such an erudite group of clerics, all of whom have a connection to our common alma mater and to the various celebrated universities in the Eternal City, brings back fond memories of my three years at the Casa Santa Maria. During that time, while I would occasionally have the opportunity to preach at Sunday Masses at the Casa, I was always keenly aware that I was not nearly as qualified to do so as many of my listeners. As such, I beg your pardon if I should fail to explain adequately any aspect of this lecture, and I would be grateful for any questions and/or corrections, theological or otherwise, that you may have afterwards. Let us begin with a prayer: In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 22 William B. Goldin Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of thy faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of thy love. Send forth thy Spirit and they shall be created, and thou shalt renew the face of the earth. Let us pray. O God, who didst inspire thy faithful by the light of thy Holy Spirit, grant that, in the same Spirit we may be truly wise and ever more rejoice in His holy consolation. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. Vergine Immacolata . . . Aiutateci. Introduction: The Synod on Synodality and Speculation on Doctrinal Change In the late autumn of 2021, Bishop Vann appointed me and my colleague, Mrs. Katie Dawson, our diocesan director of parish faith formation, as the coordinators for the Synod on Synodality in the Diocese of Orange. In this role, we were tasked with bringing to fruition the diocesan phase of the synodal consultation of the faithful here in Orange County. Since last autumn, we have labored to carry out the bishop’s synodal plan for this diocese, and I must say that I have been pleasantly surprised with the manner in which the consultation took place, and in its results, notwithstanding my initial reservations both as to the scope of this particular synod and as to the potential risks inherent in such a universal survey. As we all know from diocesan and parochial life, “listening sessions” have a tendency to become “shouting sessions”; and as a thoroughgoing introvert myself, such sessions do not exactly bring joy to my heart. Thankfully, though, my fears were not realized, and the actual experience of our synodal process was almost altogether pleasant. Perhaps surprisingly, one of the fruits of our consultation, which we heard from the majority of the faithful, is their clear desire for doctrinal clarity in their faith journeys. The majority of the People of God in Orange County whom we surveyed do not want to see any doctrinal changes emerge from this synod that could be critiqued for being in serious discontinuity with the St. John Henry Newman’s Theory of Doctrinal Development 23 solemnly defined magisterial teaching of the past. Regularly, they expressed to us that, if our “journeying together” is to be authentic and credible, then the continuity of our doctrinal teaching is a matter of no small importance. Indeed, the ability of many to take the Church’s faith seriously depends on whether the doctrinal content of that faith seems solid and unshakeable. If the content of our faith can shift substantially in ways that mirror modern shifts in secular thinking, then people can easily critique our faith as being blown about by the winds of change, with no certitude whatsoever. If something taught by the Catholic Church can be true today and false tomorrow, then why is the Catholic Church’s message worth listening to at all? What we heard from the overwhelming majority of our consultees is that most people want a Church that teaches the truth, even if it should be unpopular to do so.1 But, since this is the case, and since our people would like to know how truth claims can both change and remain the same, how can we determine whether a putative “doctrinal development” be true or false? Since we are not doctrinal positivists, since it is not the case that doctrine is true simply because the Church teaches it, but rather that, since the Church knows the truth, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, her doctrines are therefore trustworthy, how can we theologians assist the magisterium of the Church in adjudicating difficult doctrinal questions, especially during a universal process of theological and doctrinal discernment such as the current Synod on Synodality? I would like to propose that St. John Henry Cardinal Newman’s theory of doctrinal development provides us with a guide in this regard which is both helpful and salutary. Not uncommonly, those who would like to see real 180-degree shifts in Church teaching on any number of issues will invoke Newman’s theory as potentially vindicating their desired shifts; however, based on the way they themselves describe why they think Newman’s theory makes such changes possible, I am always left wondering whether such individuals have actually read Newman. As such, since many of us have heard of Newman’s theory, but may not be familiar with how it works and how it can be used, I will present this talk in two parts. First, in the majority of this lecture’s content I will explain Newman’s theory in detail—we will hear his own words and the words of some of his most noted interpreters, so that we can see what his theory actually entails; and then, second, I will 1 It should be noted that our synodal “synthesis” also includes a “minority report” section, in which we include the opinions of people who do want to see doctrinal change on certain issues. 24 William B. Goldin apply his theory very briefly to one speculative doctrinal postulate contrary to the settled doctrine of the Church: namely, the idea that women can and should be ordained to the ministerial priesthood (and, by extension, to the episcopate), which is one of the so-called “minority report” themes that emerged from our own synodal process, and which likely emerged from your diocesan consultations as well. Through this investigation of Newman’s theory, I hope to provide us with one tool that we can use to determine whether speculative doctrinal claims proposed for our consideration—especially during the synodal process— might be true or false, and why or why not. Naturally, of course, this is not meant to replace the magisterium’s role as teacher of the faith, nor to call into question the Church’s authoritative discernments of authentic developments, but rather to be an aid to the magisterium’s work. I pray that it may also be a useful tool for you all, as you seek to guide the faithful in your Dioceses and parishes as to why certain speculative ideas are doctrinally possible or impossible, and why or why not. St. John Henry Newman and the Development of Doctrine Let us proceed now to Newman’s theory of doctrinal development itself. In this presentation, I will be examining his two main works on the subject; namely, in passing, the fifteenth Oxford University Sermon and, extensively, his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. I will treat of two main points: (1) a brief history of his theory and its role in the Catholic theological tradition, then and now; and (2) his description of his seven notes of authentic development and how they can be used to analyze developments in doctrinal history. I will largely follow Newman in the way in which he himself presents his views. Of course, it is impossible in a brief treatment such as this to examine every aspect of this theory, but I will nonetheless endeavor to touch on what are perhaps the most important aspects.2 Newman’s Theory of Developments—History and Purpose Newman’s first real foray into tackling the issue of doctrinal development can be seen in his fifteenth Oxford University Sermon, in which, as Gerard McCarren writes, “Newman took up the topic [of doctrinal development] 2 This section is an edited and updated excerpt from the sixth chapter of my doctoral dissertation written at the Pontificia Università S. Tommaso D’Aquino (the Angelicum): William B. Goldin, “St. Thomas Aquinas and Supersessionism: A Contextual Study and Doctrinal Application” (doctoral diss., Pontificia Università S. Tommaso D’Aquino [Angelicum], 2017), 357–77. St. John Henry Newman’s Theory of Doctrinal Development 25 directly.”3 His Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, however, is where we find his fully developed and “pioneering understanding of doctrinal development, . . . which came starkly to grips with historical change.”4 The major difference between these two works, aside from the obvious difference of size (the fifteenth Oxford University Sermon being twenty or so pages in length, and the Essay well over four hundred), can be seen in that, in the Essay, Newman sought to answer the question of the locus of the true Church of Christ—a question he deliberately eschewed in the fifteenth Oxford University Sermon.5 In that sermon, written while Newman was still an Anglican, his main focus is on the social development of the “idea of Christianity” within the Christian faithful.6 That “idea” for Newman, becomes the guiding force of the community, and as it were, takes control over those who have received it and owned it as theirs.7 The reason for the Essay, on the other hand, is utterly practical: “The following Essay is directed towards a solution of the difficulty . . . which lies in the way of our using in controversy the testimony of our most natural informant concerning the doctrine and worship of Christianity,” that is to say, Church history.8 Thus, for Newman, the postulate of doctrinal development is a tool, “an hypothesis 3 4 5 6 7 8 Gerard H. McCarren, “Development of Doctrine,” in The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman, ed. Ian Ker and Terrence Merrigan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 119. McCarren, “Development of Doctrine,” 120. McCarren, “Development of Doctrine,” 124–25. See Terrence Merrigan, “The Imagination in the Life and Thought of John Henry Newman,” Cahiers victoriens et edouardiens 70 (Autumn 2009 [ John Henry Newman: Texts collected by Christophe Duvey]): 195. Terrence Merrigan, Clear Heads and Holy Hearts: The Religious and Theological Ideal of John Henry Newman (Louvain: Peeters, 1991), 254. See John Henry Newman, “Sermon XV: The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine,” in Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford Between A.D. 1826 and 1843 (Westminster, MD: Christian Classics, 1966), §6: “What a remarkable sight it is, as almost all unprejudiced persons will admit, to trace the course of the controversy, from its first disorders to its exact and determinate issue. Full of deep interest, to see how the great idea takes hold of a thousand minds by its living force, and will not be ruled or stinted, but is ‘like a burning fire,’ as the Prophet speaks, ‘shut up’ within them, till they are ‘weary of forbearing, and cannot stay,’ and grows within them, and at length is born through them, perhaps in a long course of years, and even successive generations; so that the doctrine may rather be said to use the minds of Christians, than to be used by them.” See also McCarren, “Development of Doctrine,” 122. John Henry Cardinal Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 6th ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 29. See also Charles Stephen Dessain, John Henry Newman (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1966), 80. 26 William B. Goldin to account for a difficulty,” and “an expedient to enable us to solve what has now become a necessary and an anxious problem.”9 In terms of a purpose for Newman’s theory, Avery Cardinal Dulles holds that it is geared towards explaining the continued existence and coherence of the ancient Christian faith: “For him it is axiomatic that the faith of the apostles must perdure.”10 For Dulles, what Newman’s theory is emphatically not, however, is “a brief for a kind of dogmatic Darwinism.”11 On the contrary, Dulles notes that, unlike a blind evolutionary model, Newman wants to hold that, “in order to retain its vitality and ward off new errors, the living Church will sometimes have to articulate its faith in new ways.”12 According to McCarren, Newman’s model of doctrinal development is notable in that it gives real importance to the significance of history in doctrinal formulation: “Only with Newman’s publication of his Essay could it be said that history’s inexorable bearing on Christian doctrinal claims was recognized and met with a somewhat tentative, but imposing answer.”13 In writing the Essay, Newman the Anglican was seeking to find the truth, and to make up his mind regarding whether Roman Catholicism was that truth.14 Newman was certain at the outset of his Essay that his model of doctrinal development could not possibly give an infallible answer to the question of whether or not the claims of Roman Catholicism were true, nor would he ever have the time to answer all the questions regarding Roman Catholic doctrinal claims.15 As Aidan Nichols notes, “the Essay does not offer a full criteriology of doctrinal development which would show Roman developments to be the genuine ones.”16 It is important to note, therefore, that his theory will also not be an infallible guide for evaluating all possible doctrinal developments, but merely a tool to “account for a difficulty.”17 With these preliminary points in mind, it is now possible to begin to describe Newman’s “pioneering” theory.18 Unlike a dry mathematical 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Newman, Essay, 30. Avery Cardinal Dulles, John Henry Newman (New York: Continuum, 2002), 74. Cf. Dessain, John Henry Newman, 81. Dulles, John Henry Newman, 74. Dulles, John Henry Newman, 74. McCarren, “Development of Doctrine,” 118. Dulles, John Henry Newman, 74. Cf. McCarren, “Development of Doctrine,” 124–25; Dessain, John Henry Newman, 80–81. Newman, Essay, 31–32. Aidan Nichols, O.P., From Newman to Congar: The Idea of Doctrinal Development from the Victorians to the Second Vatican Council (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1990), 47, cited in McCarren, “Development of Doctrine,” 125. Newman, Essay, 30. McCarren, “Development of Doctrine,” 120. St. John Henry Newman’s Theory of Doctrinal Development 27 formula, Newman describes the development of doctrine through history by using the language of a river, which develops out from its source and becomes all the “clearer” in the process: “It is indeed sometimes said that the stream is clearest near the spring, . . . [but this] does not apply to the history of a philosophy or belief, which on the contrary is more equable, and purer, and stronger, when its bed has become deep, and broad, and full.” This image from the natural world is helpful for understanding his theory, for it is easy for anyone to grasp the image of a river, moving through the earth, which “remains perhaps for a time quiescent, . . . tries, as it were, its limbs, and proves the ground under it, and feels its way.” Furthermore, the river, or the developing doctrine, can do this even should it encounter obstacles: “It seems in suspense which way to go; it wavers, and at length strikes out in one definite direction; . . . parties rise and fall around it; dangers and hopes appear in new relations; and old principles appear in new forms.” Finally, in this analogy, Newman concludes with one of his most famous and oft-repeated sayings by noting that this process is even required in our world of inconstancy and motion: “In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.”19 This theory of the development of doctrine has influenced Catholic theology profoundly since Newman, even at very high levels of the Roman Catholic Church’s official magisterium, or teaching authority. As Dulles writes: “The principle of the development of doctrine, pioneered by Newman, came to be universally accepted in the Catholic Church by the end of the nineteenth century.”20 And as McCarren puts it: “The Essay framed subsequent confrontations with the problem [of doctrinal development]; indeed the compatibility between Newman’s Essay and the understanding of doctrinal development espoused by the Second Vatican Council is conspicuous.”21 Having briefly investigated the history and purpose of Newman’s theory, let us now turn to his seven notes, or signs, of authentic doctrinal development. 19 20 21 For these three citations, see Newman, Essay, 40. Dulles, John Henry Newman, 154. Cf. International Theological Commission, Texts and Documents: 1986–2007,” ed. Michael Sharkey and Thomas Weinandy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009), 52; Benedict XVI, “A Proper Hermeneutic for the Second Vatican Council,” in Vatican II: Renewal within Tradition, ed. Matthew L. Lamb and Matthew Levering (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), xiii [originally: “Ad Romanam Curiam ab omnia natalicia,” Acta Apostolicae Sedis 98 ( January 6, 2006): 40–53]. See also Dessain, John Henry Newman, 44. McCarren, “Development of Doctrine,” 118. 28 William B. Goldin The Seven Notes of Authentic Doctrinal Development In his Essay, Newman begins by presenting his notes one at a time and in brief,22 and then he moves on, as he himself describes it, “to apply the foregoing seven Notes of fidelity in intellectual developments to the instance of Christian Doctrine.”23 Before introducing his first note, Newman describes the reason for needing such explanatory devices for the determination of true developments: “It may be said in answer to me . . . that what I have called developments in the Roman Church are nothing more or less than what used to be called her corruptions; and that new names do not destroy old grievances.”24 As such, Newman attempts to provide a system which can answer such a claim.25 As Dulles writes in this regard: “Granted that development must occur, it must still be asked whether the new formulations are in accord with the ancient faith,” which as we have already seen, “must perdure.” To this end, Dulles continues, Newman “proposed seven tests for authentic development.”26 As Newman himself notes, “it becomes necessary in consequence to assign certain characteristics of faithful developments, which none but faithful developments have, and the presence of which serves as a test to discriminate between them and corruptions.”27 Newman does this by investigating Christian antiquity, and indeed he even “derives his tests from the patristic period, with which he was familiar.”28 Following Newman’s modus operandi, then, let us turn now to his presentation of the notes in order that we might have them as a tool for our application to speculative doctrinal postulates. Note 1: “Preservation of Type” Newman calls his first note of authentic doctrinal development the “Preservation of Type.”29 In his initial brief treatment of this first note, he provides several useful analogies and descriptions of his meaning for helping his readers to understand it.30 The first of these analogies, “the analogy of physical growth,” is particularly important.31 Newman describes how it is possible to see a definite connection between the physical state of a young animal and 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 See Newman, Essay, 171–206. Newman, Essay, 207. Newman, Essay, 169–70. Newman, Essay, 170. For these two citations, see Dulles, John Henry Newman, 74. Newman, Essay, 170. Dulles, John Henry Newman, 76. Newman, Essay, 171. Newman, Essay, 171–78. Newman, Essay, 171. Cf. Dulles, John Henry Newman, 74. St. John Henry Newman’s Theory of Doctrinal Development 29 that of the same animal when fully developed: “The adult animal has the same make, as it had on its birth; young birds do not grow into fishes, nor does the child degenerate into the brute, wild or domestic, of which he is by inheritance lord.”32 Furthermore, Newman quotes St. Vincent of Lérins, who recognized the same principle in doctrinal development: “Vincentius . . . adopts this illustration in distinct reference to Christian doctrine . . . ‘Let the soul’s religion . . . imitate the law of the body. . . . Small are the baby’s limbs, a youth’s are larger, yet they are the same.’”33 As Dulles remarks on this point, Newman wants to show that, “just as an adult keeps the same members and organs as the newborn child, so the Church and its teaching must always remain recognizably the same.”34 All of this being said, while Newman posits continuity in this physical analogy between the beginnings of an animal (or a doctrine) and its later state, this is not to say that this continuity excludes the possibility of real change: However, as the last instances suggest to us, this unity of type, characteristic as it is of faithful developments, must not be pressed to the extent of denying all variation, nay, considerable alteration of proportion and relation, as time goes on, in the parts or aspects of an idea. Great changes in outward appearance and internal harmony occur in the instance of the animal creation itself. The fledged bird differs much from its rudimentary form in the egg. The butterfly is the development, but not in any sense the image, of the grub.35 Note 2: “Continuity of Principles” In Thomistic philosophy and theology, the soul is the form of the body; that is to say, the soul is the body’s unifying and governing principle. While Newman was by no means a Thomist, this notion of form is a helpful analogy for Newman’s second note, the “Continuity of Principles.”36 As Newman 32 33 34 35 36 Newman, Essay, 171–72. Newman, Essay, 171–72. Dulles, John Henry Newman, 74. Newman, Essay, 173. Newman, Essay, 178. Cf. Merrigan, Clear Heads and Holy Hearts, 262: “Newman was not a systematic philosopher, and his attempts to explore the character of human perception—as a propaedeutic to his consideration of the grasp of the idea—make this very clear. His terminology is imprecise, even at times contradictory, certainly not consistent. He continually shuttles between analogies, talking now of the experience of a material object, then of the intuition of one’s own existence, and yet again of the power of imagination and so forth. Nowhere does he provide a comprehensive epistemological framework within which one can situate all these reflections—at least 30 William B. Goldin himself puts it: “The life of doctrines may be said to consist in the law or principle which they embody.” Furthermore, whereas doctrines are particular and “relate to facts,” principles, on the other hand, are “abstract and general.” Thus, Newman wants to posit here that principles are the undergirding form, as it were, of doctrines: “Doctrines develop, and principles at first sight do not; doctrines grow and are enlarged, principles are permanent; doctrines are intellectual, and principles are more immediately practical.”37 In Dulles’s interpretation of Newman’s second note, what Newman desires to show is that, “in order to preserve its type, the Church must stand by its foundational principles, . . . [and] if any of these principles were abandoned, Christianity itself would be mutilated.”38 Or, as McCarren describes it: “It is because development takes place ‘on definite and continuous principles’ that type is preserved.”39 For Newman, these principles are, as it were, the engines behind the doctrines of Christianity: “Doctrines are developed by the operation of principles, and develop variously according to those principles.”40 Thus, to apply Dulles’s observation listed above in a mechanical analogy, if one does damage to the engine of a machine, either the machine will not function at all or it will begin to work in a faulty manner. To see principles as engines is but one image; they might also be seen as the “stimulant” of thinking itself: “Principles stimulate thought, and an idea concentrates it.”41 In Newman’s understanding, this can apply to developments both within the Catholic Church and also outside the Church. Thus, he notes that, “the various sects of Protestantism . . . are called developments of the principle of Private Judgment, of which they are but applications and results.” And, therefore, it is clear that true doctrinal development “must retain both the doctrine and 37 38 39 40 41 not consistently with one another. . . . That being said, however, it must be remembered that Newman, in his day, was working on the edge, so to speak, of prevailing English philosophy, and this in two senses: first, and most obviously, as an outsider, a non-philosopher with a limited knowledge of current philosophical trends in England, and almost none of recent continental philosophy; secondly, and more significantly, as a very individualistic thinker, who, in view of his distance from the center, as it were, was free to explore new avenues of inquiry, and experiment with new approaches to the issues that concerned him.” See also Dessain, John Henry Newman, 44: “Unlike the Roman theologians, he was brought up under the influence of no dominant philosophy or tradition of theology.” For these three citations, see Newman, Essay, 178. Dulles, John Henry Newman, 75. McCarren, “Development of Doctrine,” 126. Newman, Essay, 180. Newman, Essay, 186. St. John Henry Newman’s Theory of Doctrinal Development 31 the principle with which it started.”42 In this line of thinking, “corruption” in doctrine consists of “the destruction of the special laws or principles of a development.”43 Note 3: “Power of Assimilation” Life requires feeding, as is obvious to all who have lived, and if animals do not eat, they soon die.44 Yet is it not a marvel of the living being that it eats something external to and quite different from itself which, provided it is the correct food and the animal is healthy, not only gives sustenance to the animal but provides for its further thriving?45 In Newman’s third note, the “Power of Assimilation,” he applies this very phenomenon to the development of doctrine by providing just such an analogy to living beings: “In the physical world, whatever has life is characterized by growth, . . . [and] it grows by taking into its own substance external materials; and this . . . assimilation is completed when the materials . . . come to belong to it or enter into its unity.” Furthermore, he notes that, “two things cannot become one, except there be a power of assimilation in one or the other.”46 In Newman’s view, this can also be applied as a proper tool for understanding “certain peculiarities in the growth or development in ideas.” Thus, continuing here, he remarks that, “doctrines and views which relate to man are not placed in a void, but in the crowded world, and make way for themselves by interpenetration, and develop by absorption.”47 Or, as Dulles writes in his analysis: “As a healthy organism builds itself up by ingesting food, so the Church takes in what is assimilable in the cultures it meets, and transforms what it appropriates.”48 In this view, since “development is a process of incorporation,” it is precisely this ability to receive and grow that shows forth a true development of doctrine.49 Note 4: “Logical Sequence” For Newman, the preeminent existence of the life of the Christian faith in the minds of its first and greatest proponents, the apostles, those chosen 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 For these two citations, see Newman, Essay, 181. Newman, Essay, 185: “If it be true that the principles of the later Church are the same as those of the earlier, then, whatever are the variations of belief between the two periods, the later in reality agrees more than it differs with the earlier, for principles are responsible for doctrines.” Dulles, John Henry Newman, 75. Newman, Essay, 185–86. Cf. Dulles, John Henry Newman, 75. For these two citations, see Newman, Essay, 185–86. For these two citations, see Newman, Essay, 186. Dulles, John Henry Newman, 75. Newman, Essay, 186–87. 32 William B. Goldin witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, constitutes the background content for this fourth note—the “stuff ” upon which human reasoning can later act: “Thus, the holy Apostles would without words know all the truths concerning the high doctrines of theology, which controversialists after them have piously and charitably reduced to formulae, and developed through argument.”50 Commenting on the meaning of this note, Dulles remarks that “Newman’s term ‘logical sequence’ is much broader in scope than formal inference of conclusions from premises, although Newman does not exclude deductive argument.” Rather, Dulles continues, this note affirms the reality that “certain truths, when believed and put into practice, are seen to imply other truths.”51 These additional “implied truths” lead to “new” realizations and, according to McCarren, “because Newman interpreted logic in the widest sense, doctrines which proceed one from the other can be said to be truly new.”52 This emergence of truth from truth is key to Newman’s understanding of this note.53 Newman’s explanation here takes reason beyond mere logical formulations, such as syllogisms, and brings it to a richer exercise than that of mere mathematical formulation: “Logic is the organization of thought, and, as being such, is a security for the faithfulness of intellectual developments, . . . but, if by this is meant a conscious reasoning from premises to conclusion, of course the answer must be in the negative.”54 Therefore, in this altogether human explication of the mental exercise of reason upon the truths of faith, Newman shows that the Christian faithful “logically” develop the content of the faith and are able to explain the necessities engendered by the articles of the faith.55 (It should be noted that this theme is more fully developed in Newman’s reflections on what he refers to as the “illative” sense in his Essay in aid of a Grammar of Assent).56 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Newman, Essay, 191. For these two citations, see Dulles, John Henry Newman, 75. McCarren, “Development of Doctrine,” 126–27. Newman, Essay, 190. Cf. Dulles, John Henry Newman, 75; McCarren, “Development of Doctrine,” 126. Newman, Essay, 189. Newman, Essay, 190–92. Cf. Newman, “Sermon XV,” §6. See Merrigan, Clear Heads and Holy Hearts, 205–28; and especially, 229: “In his analysis of the illative sense in [An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent], Newman is primarily concerned with its operation in the minds of individual Christians. As Newman describes it, the illative sense is able, on the basis of a complex process of largely implicit reasoning involving the whole person, to discern the upshot of a series of converging probabilities, and to facilitate the mind’s unconditional assent to a proposition apprehended as an object of real experience. . . . The object of this chapter is to demonstrate that the same basic polar structure discernible in Newman’s vision of the St. John Henry Newman’s Theory of Doctrinal Development 33 Moreover, for Newman, this process involves the natural illumination of the “idea” in the mind: “An idea under one or other of its aspects grows in the mind by remaining there; it becomes familiar and distinct and is viewed in its relations.”57 Furthermore, while this development is at least somewhat “subconscious” for Newman, the vicissitudes of life engender the activation of the conscious processes of the mind and the forthright response to challenges posed to the idea.58 Applied to an individual, Newman describes the process thus: “A body of thought is gradually formed without his recognizing what is going on within him,” but when “external circumstances elicit into formal statements the thoughts which are coming into being in the depths of his mind,” not only will the Christian person be required “to begin to defend them,” but this in turn will lead to “the further process [which] must take place, of analyzing his statements and ascertaining their dependence one on another.”59 Thus—and this is key—while the apostles would find themselves in the unique position of possessing the complete faith habitually, with all of its complexities and depth, albeit it in semine, it would fall to their successors and to the later Christian “community” to explicate what they held, and to enable the growth of the doctrinal “seed” into the “tree” of doctrine.60 Finally, then, Newman holds that this growth from seed to tree proceeds along “logical” lines, and this will illustrate whether the development is good or not: “A doctrine, then, professed in its mature years by a philosophy or religion, is likely to be a true development, not a corruption, in proportion as it seems to be the logical issue of its original teaching.”61 Note 5: “Anticipation of Its Future” Newman calls his fifth note the “Anticipation of its [the doctrine’s] Future.”62 This note, quite simply, is the idea that, because human reasoning remains “the same in all ages,” instantiations of “advanced teaching [may] very early 57 58 59 60 61 62 operation of the illative sense in the individual is present in his vision of the process of dogmatic definition in the Church. In other words, Newman’s analysis of cognitional activity is applicable not only to the individual believer, but to the whole community of believers. One might express the same thought by saying that Newman’s theological reflections, whether these have as their object the assent of faith on the part of the individual or the determination of the object of faith on the part of the Church, employ the same basic model of cognitional activity, a model characterized by its distinctly polar character.” Newman, Essay, 190. Newman, Essay, 190. Newman, Essay, 190. Newman, Essay, 190–92. Newman, Essay, 195. Newman, Essay, 195. 34 William B. Goldin occur, which in the historical course are not found till a late day.”63 As Newman says, it is thus the case that a sign of authenticity of a development will be that the late doctrine will have a “definite anticipation at an early period in the history of the idea to which it belongs.”64 Note 6: “Conservative Action upon Its Past” As is well known, the role of the Supreme Court in the United States of America is to interpret the Constitution of the United States. When the Supreme Court makes a legal decision, it decides between varying interpretations of the Constitution which need to be settled one way or the other. At certain times in history, however, these decisions radically reinterpret former decisions and sometimes lead to a 180-degree shift in opinion. An example of such a shift can be seen in the overturning of the 1896 ruling in Plessy vs. Ferguson, which allowed for segregation between blacks and whites in public schools, by the 1954 ruling in Brown vs. the Board of Education, which declared such segregation unconstitutional. This 180-degree shift from Plessy to Brown is a radical development, which, if segregation were a religious doctrine, would seem to be a corruption of said doctrine, and not a true development. It would not be a true development precisely because the shift between Plessy and Brown did not preserve, but rather utterly reversed, what came before it.65 In his sixth note, “Conservative Action upon Its Past,” Newman is trying to formulate just such a “test” for genuine developments in religious doctrine.66 As he writes: “A true development, then, may be described as one which is conservative of the course of antecedent developments being really those antecedents and something besides them.” Furthermore, such a development “illustrates, not obscures, corroborates, not corrects, the body of thought from which it proceeds; and this is its characteristic as contrasted with a corruption.”67 Writing from Church history, Newman remarks in his brief introduction to this note that we can see this note exemplified in the Church Fathers and especially in Leo and Vincent of Lérins: “Such too is the theory of the Fathers as regards the doctrines fixed by Councils, as is instanced in the language of St. Leo. ‘To be seeking for what has been disclosed, to reconsider what has been finished, to tear up what has been laid down, what is this but to be unthankful for what is gained?’” In addition, 63 64 65 66 67 Newman, Essay, 195 and 196. Newman, Essay, 199. Newman, Essay, 200. Newman, Essay, 199–200. For these two citations, see Newman, Essay, 200. St. John Henry Newman’s Theory of Doctrinal Development 35 according to Vincent of Lérins, Newman continues: “Vincentius, . . . in like manner, speaks of the development of Christian doctrine, as profectus fidei non permutatio. And so as regards the Jewish Law, our Lord said that He came ‘not to destroy, but to fulfill.’”68 Note Seven: “Chronic Vigour” Newman begins his description of his final note, “Chronic Vigour,” with an analogy to a Stoic motto regarding the duration and quality of pain: “Si gravis, brevis; si longus levis; is the Stoical topic of consolation under pain; and of a number of disorders it can be said, The worse, the shorter.” And then he points to what he sees as a particular characteristic of true developments versus false corruptions: “Corruption cannot, therefore, be of long standing; and thus duration is another test of a faithful development.”69 As McCarren avers, this difference in duration leads Newman to suggest that “an attempt to dismiss the longstanding peculiarly Catholic beliefs as corruptions would be to postulate a miracle indeed.”70 In Newman’s own short opening description of this note, he elaborates that he sees the history of heresies as an example of how corruptions in true doctrine flicker to and fro before finally falling out of existence: “The course of heresies is always short; it is an intermediate state between life and death, or what is like death; or, if it does not result in death, it is resolved into some new, perhaps opposite course of error, which lays no claim to be connected with it.” In addition, he further distinguishes here between “decay” and “corruption” in order to show that this falling into error can be a long process as well: “It is true that decay, which is one form of corruption, is slow; but decay is a state in which there is no violent or vigorous action at all, whether of a conservative or a destructive character.”71 Newman sees examples of such decay and corruption in the history of world religions, including Christianity, and he ends by suggesting that, “while a corruption is distinguished from decay by its energetic action, it is distinguished from a development by its transitory character.” 72 68 69 70 71 72 For these two citations, see Newman, Essay, 201. Cf. McCarren, “Development of Doctrine,” 127. Newman, Essay, 203. McCarren, “Development of Doctrine,” 127. For these two citations, see Newman, Essay, 204. Newman, Essay, 205: “And then, at length, perhaps, [the corrupt systems] go off suddenly and die out under the first rough influence from without. Such are the superstitions which pervade a population; . . . such was the established paganism of classical times, which was the fit subject of persecution, for its first breath made it crumble and disappear. Such apparently is the state of the Nestorian and Monophysite communions; such might have been the condition of Christianity had it been absorbed by the 36 William B. Goldin Conclusion of the Analysis of Newman’s Notes As we have seen, Newman’s notes are by no means “systematic” proofs for the truth of a doctrine’s development, but rather signs which point to the possibility that one can believe in the Church of Rome “in parallel cases where the investigation had not been pursued.”73 Before leaving our brief study of Newman’s theory and moving on to our application of his seven notes, let us remind ourselves of what those notes are: 1. Preservation of Type: The same “type” of the Church’s apostolic faith must always be preserved in her doctrines throughout the millennia; 2. Continuity of Principles: The Church’s founding “principles,” the engines of her doctrines, must remain the same throughout her history, along with the doctrines they produce; 3. Power of Assimilation: The Church can integrate intellectual and/ or practical elements from outside of her faith and structure for the discernment of the development of doctrine without any harm to herself; 4. Logical Sequence: All true doctrinal developments will be the “logical” outgrowth of that which preceded them in the tradition; 5. Anticipation of Its Future: Anything the Church teaches in the present will be anticipated in the past; 6. Conservative Action upon Its Past: All true doctrinal developments will “conserve” what was taught in the past, even if that “conservation” elaborates upon the past teaching; 73 feudalism of the middle ages; such too is that Protestantism, or (as it sometimes calls itself ) attachment to the Establishment, which is not unfrequently [sic] the boast of the respectable and wealthy among ourselves.” Newman, Essay, 32. Cf. McCarren, “Development of Doctrine,” 128: “One can cautiously suggest guidelines for [the notes’] application. With the Essay Newman was concerned primarily to confirm that the Roman Catholic Church as such could plausibly claim to embody authentic developments of doctrine, though it remains true that only some of the ‘notes’ apply to particular doctrines. In addition, the ‘notes’ for the most part must be applied together; it is hard to assess the applicability of just one or more of them to a doctrine or to the Church. . . . The ‘notes’ serve to dispel accusations that Roman Catholic doctrines are additions compromising the pristine apostolic deposit of faith. With the assistance of the ‘notes’ one can defend the plausibility of distinctively Catholic doctrines. Moreover, Newman’s presentation of the ‘notes’ was not highly systematic. He did acknowledge them in 1878 to be ‘seven out of various Notes, which may be assigned, of fidelity in the development of an idea.’ His impending reception into the Roman Catholic Church prompted him to rush the book to its conclusion, leaving it ‘unfinished,’ such that he moved progressively from a protracted exposition of the first ‘note’ to a cursory outline of the seventh.” St. John Henry Newman’s Theory of Doctrinal Development 37 7. Chronic Vigour: A sign of an authentic development can be seen in that it will increase the vitality and endurance of the Church, not decrease them.74 I. The Ordination of Women as Priests and Bishops under Newman’s Microscope Introduction to the Application of Newman’s Notes Having discussed what Newman’s theory of doctrinal development entails, let us proceed now to apply Newman’s seven notes to the postulate that women can and should be ordained to the ministerial priesthood and/or to the episcopate. Naturally, this treatment is altogether cursory, and by no means meant to be exhaustive. To be fair, I am not an expert on this question as such, and this short survey will not engage with the now voluminous secondary literature on this topic. Nonetheless, the good news for us is that Newman’s notes do not require expertise: they require only an ability to look at the basic facts of doctrinal history and see if the speculative position under examination passes Newman’s tests for continuity or not. I offer this treatment especially in the context of this National Reunion of the Pontifical North American College to show how pastors of souls, such as yourselves, can use Newman’s notes to defend controversial and definitive teachings, especially if and when they are called into question during our present synodal journey. Note 1: “Preservation of Type” With regard to the first note, “preservation of type,” it is important to begin with the most ancient example we have in the Church’s tradition, namely, the scriptural witness. I would like to propose that the New Testament record of Christ’s selection of only men to join the ranks of the apostles is abundantly clear75 (for instance, even when Mary, the Mother of God herself and 74 75 Newman, Essay, 206: “The point to be ascertained is the unity and identity of the idea with itself through all stages of its development from first to last, and these are seven tokens that it may rightly be accounted one and the same all along. To guarantee its own substantial unity, it must be seen to be one in type, one in its system of principles, one in its unitive power towards externals, one in its logical consecutiveness, one in the witness of its early phases to its later, one in the protection which its later extends to its earlier, and one in its union of vigour with continuance, that is, in its tenacity.” Raymond E. Brown, S.S., “Episkopē and Episkopos: The New Testament Evidence,” Theological Studies 41, no. 2 (1980): 323–24. Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church §1577, cited in Sara Butler, M.S.B.T., The Catholic Priesthood and Women: A Guide to the Teaching of the Church (Chicago: Hillenbrand, 2007), 14: “The Lord Jesus 38 William B. Goldin St. Mary Magdalene are chosen witnesses of the resurrection, and thus meet that criterion to be numbered among the Twelve, they are not).76 According to the resurrection accounts, Christ did not commission his Mother or the Magdalene to go out to all the world and baptize the nations, nor to forgive sins with his power, as he did with the apostles (see John 20:23 and Matt 18:18).77 As Raymond Brown puts it: All the Gospels portray a group of the Twelve existing during Jesus’ ministry, and 1 Cor 15:5 implies that they were in existence by the time of the Resurrection appearances. Therefore there is little reason to doubt that Jesus chose the Twelve. Why did he do this? We have only one saying attributed to Jesus himself about the purpose of the Twelve: he had chosen them to sit on (twelve) thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Mt 19:28; Lk 22:28–30). The idea seems to have been that in the renewed Israel which Jesus was proclaiming there were to be twelve men, just as there were twelve sons of Jacob/Israel at the beginnings of the original Israel.78 Moreover, this is true even after the fall of Judas. The apostles certainly could have replaced Judas with the Mother of God or with the Magdalene, had they 76 77 78 chose men (viri) to form the college of the twelve apostles, and the apostles did the same when they chose collaborators to succeed them in their ministry. The college of bishops, with whom the priests are united in the priesthood, makes the college of the twelve an ever-present and ever-active reality until Christ’s return. The Church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible.” Butler notes that we should in no way see this as an apostolic affront to the Mother of God, nor to any of the other preeminent female saints in the apostolic era or afterwards. See The Catholic Priesthood and Women, 15: “The Blessed Virgin’s dignity was not compromised because she was not called to apostolic office and the ministerial priesthood; neither does the non-admission of other women to priestly ordination tell against their dignity. As female saints throughout the history of the Church bear witness, women share in the apostolic mission of the whole people of God and exemplify the holiness of the faithful to which the ministerial priesthood is ordered. In this context, the Pope [ John Paul II in Ordinatio sacerdotalis] recalls the admonition of Inter Insigniores (art. 6) that the highest place in the kingdom of heaven belongs not to the ministers but to the saints.” Brown, “Episkopē and Episkopos,” 324: “In particular, during the ministry of Jesus Mt 10:5–6 has the Twelve being sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and after the Resurrection Mt 28:16–20 has them (minus Judas) being told to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them.” Brown, “Episkopē and Episkopos,” 323–24 (emphasis mine). St. John Henry Newman’s Theory of Doctrinal Development 39 thought it appropriate to do so when they prepared to draw lots, but they did not do so; instead, by lots, they chose St. Matthias (Acts 1:15–26). And indeed, as the Church grew and spread, the apostles also did not set women apart to exercise episkopē, the oversight of the new churches they set up.79 Of course, one could argue that Jesus and the apostles were simply too conditioned by their patriarchal context to envision women either in the apostolic role or in the nascent episcopate,80 but we need to be careful because we are talking about the incarnate God of Israel after all (who personally knew all things as their Creator, both those in heaven and those on earth, and who was not merely a creature of his time), and we are also dealing with the apostles, who, as Newman holds, and as we too must hold, possessed the fullness of the faith in a habitual way, and who were under the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit for the formation of the early Church and its structures. However, what if the Lord and the apostles were simply acting “economically,” choosing only men for the apostolic and episcopal roles given the tenor of their times, and given their knowledge that women would not have been accepted as apostles and episkopoi (bishops) by their surrounding culture in that period?81 To this question, I would argue that, if that were the case, the only way we could possibly know of the Lord’s “economic” intention, or of the apostolic application of the Lord’s intention, would be in how the sacred Tradition of the Church interpreted what they did and why. There is no way to know of the Lord’s hidden intentions except through the guidance of the Holy Spirit as the Tradition unfolds. Since the constant teaching of the Church’s doctrine and practice—that is to say, the universal magisterium—is unambiguous from that time on that women cannot be set apart as successors of the apostles, we must argue that the original “type” of the apostolic witness, received from the Lord himself, precludes the ordination of women as bishops. For Newman, of course, that “type” must be preserved. 79 80 81 For a treatment of the meaning of episkopē, see Brown, “Episkopē and Episkopos,” 322–23. See Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Inter Insigniores (1976), §4 (cited in Butler, The Catholic Priesthood and Women, 50–51): “No one however has ever proved—and it is clearly impossible to prove—that [ Jesus’s] attitude is inspired only by social and cultural reasons. As we have seen, an examination of the Gospels shows on the contrary that Jesus broke with the prejudices of his time, by widely contravening the discriminations practiced with regard to women. One therefore cannot maintain that, by not calling women to enter the group of the Apostles, Jesus was simply letting himself be guided by reasons of expediency.” For this insight, I am indebted to my friend Dr. Tikhon Pino, assistant director of the Pappas Patristics Institute at the Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology (Brookline, MA), in a telephone conversation he and I had on June 16, 2022. 40 William B. Goldin That being said, if one were to accept these points and yet say that, while perhaps women cannot be ordained to the highest degree of holy orders as successors of the apostles, as bishops, perhaps they can be ordained to the second degree, as presbyters, once again the scriptural witness would militate against such a view being part of the original “type” of the Church’s apostolic faith. Firstly, there is actually little distinction in the New Testament itself between episkopos (bishop) and presbyteros (elder/presbyter), and often the terms are used interchangeably (in modern scholarship, they are often referred to as one reality: “presbyter-bishops”).82 In fact, in the Tradition, it takes a while for a hard and fast distinction between these two degrees of holy orders to develop. But secondly, the fact remains that women were not set apart as presbyters in the apostolic era, nor anytime thereafter. Recall too that the Scriptures do not hesitate to speak of women in ecclesiastical ministry, as St. Paul clearly refers to the ministry of at least one “deaconess,” namely, Phoebe (see Romans 16:1–2).83 As such, while we know that Phoebe, along with other women, did receive some share in some form of diakonia in the apostolic era, and indeed for centuries thereafter in the early Church, they certainly did not receive or exercise the presbyteral or episcopal roles. (As an aside, I do not personally think that our doctrinal history is flexible enough to allow for the ordination of women to the diaconate either. And the reason is simple: We understand the diaconate now to be the first degree of the one sacrament of holy orders, to which only males can be admitted. If we were to say that women can in fact receive the first degree of holy orders, how can we possibly forbid them access to the other degrees? Women can either receive the one sacrament of holy orders, and therefore all the degrees of that sacrament, or they cannot receive any of them. Since I do not believe our tradition can admit women to the one sacrament of holy orders at all, I hold that they cannot be ordained deacons, in the strict sense. In my view, then, whatever Phoebe and the other “deaconesses” of the early Church had was not, in fact, holy orders, but perhaps something analogous to an “instituted ministry,” much like our modern-day instituted lectors and acolytes [which, of course, as of very recently, are ministries now open to women as well].)84 Thus, I would argue that the original “type” we 82 83 84 Brown, “Episkopē and Episkopos,” 326. Romans 16:1–2: “I commend to you Phoebe our sister, who is also a minister [i.e., diakonos, in the accusative case here in the Greek text, diakonon] of the church at Cenchreae, that you may receive her in the Lord in a manner worthy of the holy ones, and help her in whatever she may need from you, for she has been a benefactor to many and to me as well” (New American Bible). For the change in Canon Law allowing women to be instituted as lectors and acolytes, St. John Henry Newman’s Theory of Doctrinal Development 41 must preserve throughout our doctrinal history must be in accord with the scriptural and apostolic witness on this question, and with the way that the Tradition has unfolded up until the present, which excludes the ordination of women to the episcopate or to the presbyterate. Note 2: “Continuity of Principles” Moving on to the second note, “Continuity of Principles,” I would argue that two doctrinal principles are the engines behind the authoritative teaching that women cannot be ordained to the presbyterate or episcopate: (1) Christ’s choice of only men for the apostolic role (and by extension, for the episcopal and presbyteral roles as well); and (2) the symbolism of the male-only priesthood and episcopate as participating in Christ’s male role as bridegroom to the Church, his bride (a female role), and of the priest and bishop acting in persona Christi capitis ecclesiae (in the person of Christ, the head of the Church) on behalf of Christ’s bride.85 If these two principles must be the engines that drive this doctrine throughout its history, then it is difficult to see how we could change these principles and yet maintain faithful to the continuity of the doctrine that flows from them. As Newman teaches, both the principles undergirding the teaching and the doctrine itself must remain in continuity. If we were to change either of these principles, would the doctrine that results from such a change remain faithful to the biblical witness and the Church’s Tradition? The answer seems to me to be a resounding “no.” Note 3: “Power of Assimilation” As we have seen, Newman’s third note, the “Power of Assimilation,” is the idea that the Church can come into contact with intellectual theories and other elements outside of its faith and structure and can assimilate them to its own uses without breaking apart in the process. Perhaps, then, if we were to take the intellectual contributions of the diverse modern feminist movements into the Church’s doctrinal discernment, we might be able to change 85 see Pope Francis’s 2021 motu proprio Spiritus Domini. It is notable that Pope Francis teaches that this disciplinary change pertains to the ramifications of our theology of baptism, and not to our theology of orders: “A doctrinal development has taken place in recent years . . . based on the common condition of being baptized and the royal priesthood received in the Sacrament of Baptism; [these ministries] are essentially distinct from the ordained ministry received in the Sacrament of Orders.” In part, I draw these two principles from Butler’s analysis of Pope St. Paul VI’s letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, F. Donald Coggan, dated November 30, 1975, as well as her analysis of the 1977 CDF decree on the impossibility of female ordination, Inter Insigniores (The Catholic Priesthood and Women, 5, 9, 13). 42 William B. Goldin our teaching that only men can be ordained priests and bishops. Indeed, if men and women are inherently equal, and if, in Christ, there is “neither male nor female” (Gal 3:28), then perhaps modern feminism might show us a way forward in this regard. However, it is important to remember that Newman’s notes are meant to be used together and in harmony with each other,86 and one note cannot make or break the analysis of a doctrine’s vitality or corruption. And moreover, one could also argue that not all feminist theories are the same,87 and the Church might indeed assimilate some modern feminist views defending the particularity of women and their genius without saying that a historically male ecclesiastical role should be extended to women, as if women are deficient without it. In fact, if we hold that, in order for women to be equal, they need to have exactly the same roles as men in the Church, we need to realize that many Catholic women do not want to have such roles extended to them and are insulted by the suggestion. It is as if we are telling them that historically male roles are necessary for their completion or for the expression of their genius, which is evidently absurd. Some theories of modern feminism, in fact, are perfectly comfortable with gender-role differences and celebrate the particularly female roles (such as motherhood) in which men cannot participate at all, except as beneficiaries and as admirers. As such, Newman’s understanding of the “Power of Assimilation” could certainly vindicate the doctrine that women cannot be ordained as priests or bishops as indeed taking aspects of modern feminism into consideration without breaking apart in doing so.88 86 87 88 See McCarren, “Development of Doctrine,” 128. See Butler, The Catholic Priesthood and Women, 24n17: “Because feminism has multiple expressions, it is necessary to specify ‘liberal feminism,’” in order to contrast it with other feminist theories. See also 44n16: “Not all women theologians are ‘feminist’ theologians in this sense [i.e., the liberal sense] (some are called ‘papal feminists’), and not all feminist theologians are women.” One example of how the Church has indeed “assimilated” certain feminist theories can be seen in John Paul II’s development of post-conciliar teaching on the genius of women in his apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem. For an excellent treatment on this topic, see Butler, The Catholic Priesthood and Women, 22–24. Butler’s analysis of post-conciliar developments in this regard is apposite for our considerations. See 24: “As these official texts show [i.e., the conciliar and post-conciliar magisterial statements on women], there has been a gradual clarification and development in Catholic social teaching. The earlier concern to protect women’s ‘place’ in the home and their ‘role’ in the family is now augmented by specific attention to women as ‘persons’ having equal rights and equal dignity with men in the social order. From Pope John XXIII forward, the magisterium has increasingly expressed advocacy for women’s full participation in public life and has vigorously denounced whatever would prevent this.” St. John Henry Newman’s Theory of Doctrinal Development 43 Note 4: “Logical Sequence” The fourth note, the “Logical Sequence” of the doctrine’s unfolding, also militates against a change in the Church’s teaching on this matter. Indeed, put simply, how could one argue that a teaching which has remained consistent throughout the entire history of the Church suddenly be reversed completely, the way in which Supreme Court decisions can be reversed? While it is true that doctrines can “proceed one from the other” and perhaps even be “new,”89 their novelty must not contradict what preceded them, but rather unfold and clarify what came before. If we were to argue that the postulate that women can and should be ordained priests or bishops is the logical outgrowth of the doctrinal history which preceded it, the burden of proof would be heavy indeed. Note 5: “Anticipation of Its Future” If it is a sign of the authenticity of a development that the late doctrine will have a “definite anticipation at an early period in the history of the idea to which it belongs,”90 then Newman’s fifth note, “Anticipation of [a Doctrine’s] Future,” clearly is against female presbyteral or episcopal ordination. No such incidents exist in the history of the Catholic or Orthodox Churches in either West or East,91 despite certain apocryphal stories to the contrary (such as the medieval myth of Pope Joan) and despite the recent actions of some schismatic groups (such as the organization calling itself: “Roman Catholic Women Priests”).92 Note 6: “Conservative Action upon Its Past” The sixth note, “Conservative Action upon [the Doctrine’s] Past,” is the idea that whatever was taught in the Church’s past authoritative teaching should be preserved in future doctrinal discernments. As Newman puts it, a true development “illustrates, not obscures, corroborates, not corrects, the body of thought from which it proceeds; and this is its characteristic as contrasted with a corruption.”93 If we were to say that women can and should be ordained as priests or bishops, then we would have to show how 89 90 91 92 93 McCarren, “Development of Doctrine,” 126–27. Newman, Essay, 199. See Butler, The Catholic Priesthood and Women, 5: “The tradition of reserving priestly ordination to men has been unbroken in the Churches of East and West, which maintain a sacramental understanding of priesthood.” See the website Roman Catholic Women Priests, romancatholicwomenpriests.org. Newman, Essay, 200. 44 William B. Goldin such a change is not out of step with our previous teaching to the contrary, in order not to fall afoul of Newman’s sixth note. Note 7: “Chronic Vigour” Finally, Newman teaches in his seventh note, “Chronic Vigour,” that heretical teachings lead to the dissolution of the institutions that accept them and portend their ultimate failure. While we cannot look to the Catholic Church for an example of a body that holds that women can be ordained as priests or bishops, nor to the effect such a teaching has had on it, we can look to the effect the embracing of said teaching has had on worldwide Anglicanism. And the question I would like to pose in this regard is simple: Has the acceptance of female presbyteral and episcopal ordination led to the flourishing of a unified global Anglican Communion, or has modern Anglicanism been divided by accepting such a teaching? On this point, let us hear the words of Justin Welby, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, who, speaking of the impact both female ordination and the liberalization of Anglican views towards homosexuality are having on the Anglican Communion, stated in 2014: “I think, realistically, we’ve got to say that despite all efforts there is a possibility that we will not hold together, or not hold together for a while.”94 Statistically, it seems, the answer is clear, and the Anglican Communion is more divided than ever. We can, therefore, apply Newman’s seventh note here in a prognostic way: If the Church were to accept female ordination to the presbyterate and episcopate, we could expect a similar result in our Church as that which has taken place in the Anglican Communion. We could expect the breakdown of ecclesiastical communion; in other words, we could expect schism. Conclusion of the Application of Newman’s Notes In wrapping up this application of Newman’s notes, notice what I have not done. Until now, I have made no reference to the definitive decree on the impossibility of the ordination of women to the presbyterate and episcopate promulgated by Pope St. John Paul II on May 22, 1994, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis.95 While that decree is not an exercise of the extraordinary and 94 95 Michael Gryboski, “Anglican Communion May Experience Schism, Says Archbishop,” The Christian Post, CP Church and Ministries, December 10, 2014, christianpost.com/ news/anglican-communion-may-experience-schism-says-archbishop.html. Pope St. John Paul II, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994), §4: “Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church’s divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the St. John Henry Newman’s Theory of Doctrinal Development 45 infallible papal magisterium, it is no less binding on all of us for a different reason. That is to say, it confirms precisely what I have attempted to show in this Newmanian analysis: namely, that the constant Tradition of the universal Church on this question, from the apostolic era until the present, is unambiguous. As John Paul II says, the Church has “no authority” to ordain women, because the Church cannot, at will, contradict the Lord’s own will and the apostolic application of his will, nor break with the continuity of her universal magisterium. In Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, John Paul II was not proclaiming anything new, or even answering a truly disputed question (even if some people were in doubt about it). Rather, he was simply confirming what the Church has always known and always will know about this question.96 The teaching that women cannot be ordained priests or bishops is not infallible and definitive just because that saintly Pope said it is; it is infallible and definitive because the doctrine and practice of the Church has always taught and lived this truth.97 I made no reference to that decree until now for a pastoral reason as well. Many of our faithful, for different reasons, whether understandable or not, do not trust in the authoritative decrees of the magisterium. I would suggest 96 97 brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church’s faithful.” John Paul II’s apostolic letter was preceded by the CDF’s 1976 Inter Insigniores, issued during the pontificate of Pope St. Paul VI (see Butler, The Catholic Priesthood and Women, 8). See The Catholic Priesthood and Women, 15: “This judgment itself, however, provoked further discussion and theological dissent. In October 1995, in response to a formal query about the status of Ordinatio sacerdotalis, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith replied that its teaching belongs to the deposit of the faith and that it requires a definitive assent ‘since, founded on the written Word of God and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal magisterium.’” For the CDF decree on the authority of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, see “Doctrinal Congregation, ‘Inadmissibility of Women to Ministerial Priesthood,’” Origins 25, no. 24 (1995): 401. My argument in this paragraph is not based on Butler’s analysis. However, her own treatment of this same matter is useful to consider here as well; see The Catholic Priesthood and Women, 2: “The apostolic letter [Ordinatio Sacerdotalis] does not propose this as a new doctrine but claims only to confirm—after a period in which it has been put in question—a teaching ‘preserved by the constant and universal tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the magisterium in its more recent documents.’ From the outset of our examination we should notice the precise focus of this assertion: it concerns the limits of the Church’s authority over the sacrament of Holy Orders. What must be ‘definitively held’ is that the Church does not have the authority to ordain women as priests. Catholics may no longer regard this as an open question or publicly advocate for a change in Church practice.” 46 William B. Goldin that, as pastors of souls, it may be beneficial for us not to begin our teaching of the faith with arguments from authority, but rather, using Newman’s notes, to show how arguments from authority are based in the Tradition that is readily available to all of us, and which is both intelligible and coherent. If we can help our faithful to understand the importance of doctrinal history and of our fidelity to the lived Tradition before we invoke authority, we may find that we have a more receptive audience. Permit me to bring this section to a close with a (perhaps slightly polemical) word about the current attempts that we see from some churchmen (such as those involved in the highly problematic synodaler Weg [the “synodal path”] of the Catholic Church in Germany) to argue that we can utterly contradict, and reverse completely, the ancient and universally held tradition of the Church on contentious issues. When clerics (of any rank) take it upon themselves to tinker with the Church’s Tradition as if it were theirs to change, is this not a clear example of that clericalism which Pope Francis so often excoriates? We are not Mormons, after all, for whom “truth” can change with the times from on high by clerical fiat. We priests and bishops (and yes, even the pope of Rome himself ) are merely servants of the living Tradition, and not the masters thereof.98 II. Conclusion In this lecture, I have attempted to show that, during the current Synod on Synodality, Newman’s seven notes of doctrinal development can assist the magisterium in weighing the truth or falsehood of certain doctrinal desiderata on the part of some of the faithful throughout the world, including in this local church of Orange County. While Newman’s theory is not the only method we can use in looking at putative doctrinal “developments,” it is both useful and ecclesiastically accepted. As we have seen, it is not difficult to apply Newman’s notes to any doctrinal postulate under our consideration, and anyone with a modicum of theological knowledge and historical awareness can apply the notes as a private intellectual exercise. In particular, I hope that my admittedly cursory and brief application of these notes to the question of female ordination to the priesthood and episcopate shows that it is easy to argue that such a teaching would do violence to the apostolic faith and to the Church’s doctrinal tradition, and would render that particular postulate to be a doctrinal “corruption,” to use Newman’s words, and 98 For the insights in these two paragraphs, I am indebted to a conversation I had with my friend Fr. Henry Stephan, O.P., on June 19, 2022. St. John Henry Newman’s Theory of Doctrinal Development 47 certainly no true development. To put it plainly, the doctrine that women cannot be ordained priests and/or bishops is so deeply rooted, so unambiguously constant, and so utterly universal that, if we were to attempt to change it, we must also be aware of the effect such a change would have on our entire system. If we can change this teaching, we can basically change anything. In a time such as ours, fraught as it is with so many difficulties, both in secular society and in the Church, it is essential that our Catholic doctrinal teaching be clear, in order for our saving witness to be compelling. Such was the clear message of the majority of our synodal consultees to us here in Orange. In this lecture, then, I hope that I have offered but one tool to assist us in providing a compelling and clear witness to the truth in our common journey back to Our Lord Jesus Christ, the source and reason for our hope. Thank you very much for your attention. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2024): 49–69 49 Philosophy after Christ John O’Callaghan University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN Consider the words of Justin Martyr written in the middle of the second century after the birth of Christ and after Justin’s conversion to Christianity: Philosophy is indeed one’s greatest possession, and is most precious in the sight of God, to whom it alone leads us and to whom it unites us, and in truth they who have applied themselves to philosophy are holy men.1 In addition to the praise heaped upon the philosophers, among whom Justin had counted himself before his conversion,2 the text is one of the earliest pieces of evidence for the historical reality of Christian intellectual engagement with pagan or secular philosophy. Whether that engagement proved spiritually fruitful or sterile in any particular age or any particular tradition of philosophy, Christian intellectuals have often sought out engagement with philosophy as an inherent task of the intellectual life of the Church, in order to pursue and develop the understanding of Christian revelation and the mode of life informed by it. One lasting result of the impetus represented by Justin is to be found even now in the normative requirement in Catholic education that, at a certain stage of development, anyone who receives a 1 2 Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, in Selections from the Fathers of the Church, vol. 3, St. Justin Martyr, trans. Thomas B. Falls (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2003), 5. See Justin’s description in Dialogue with Trypho” of the various schools of philosophy he tried. 50 John O’Callaghan serious Catholic education must be introduced to serious philosophical reflection on where we came from, what we are, and where we are born to go. In addition, one of the general points John Henry Newman made in The Idea of a University is that the human mind looks for unity in the diversity of intellectual disciplines it pursues. In search of this unity, it seeks a kind of primary discipline that takes into account the truths discovered throughout the other disciplines as it seeks to understand what it can of the whole of reality, not just its parts. But Newman also pointed out that, in the absence of such a unifying discipline, practitioners of each particular discipline will often claim for their particular discipline the prize of being primary—of being the discipline by which all others must be understood and judged.3 Take classical and modern physics. A familiar claim of some physicists, but even more so of non-physicist physicalists, is that physics is the fundamental intellectual discipline for understanding what is real. All reality, living reality, historical reality, moral reality, indeed perhaps even literary reality, must be reduced to reality as described by the physicists or rejected as unreal or epiphenomenal, or in a kinder, gentler vein, non-reductively emergent and supervenient. Whichever position is taken, whether reduction, non-reductive emergence, or epiphenomenalism, the thought is that the real work of the really real is done by reality as described by physics, either in its actual contemporary state or, more likely, in an idealized future state always on the horizon of where physics presently is. We are really atoms spinning ceaselessly in the void, mostly empty space, the warp and woof of a four-dimensional space-time manifold, or congeries of strings in an even more bizarre thirteen-dimensional manifold, or whatever was said most recently to surpass what was said before that by the leading physicists in California or Cambridge. However, anyone who has actually practiced physics knows that, even when uttered by a physicist, these are not claims of physics, but about physics. What prompts them is the sense that there is no intellectual discipline other than contemporary physics itself that can both understand the achievements of physics and integrate them into a larger intellectual comprehension of reality as a whole. These claims about physics nicely display Newman’s point about the way in which a particular discipline, in the absence of a larger more comprehensive discipline, can take on an importance for its practitioners well beyond its disciplinary limits. 3 John Henry Newman, Idea of a University (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996). discourse 3, no. 4 and 10, and esp. discourse 4, nos. 4–5 and 14–15. Philosophy after Christ 51 In the case of physics, if a more comprehensive unifying discipline is not to be found, this attitude is not entirely unjustified, for Newman’s point is partly Aristotelian. Aristotle had pointed out that, if one cannot show that unchangeable, and thus non-physical beings, exist, then what Aristotle called “first philosophy” would just be physics as he understood it, the science of change, rather than that discipline that in philosophy has come to be called metaphysics.4 Even as physics has changed extraordinarily since Aristotle, his point still appears to hold for contemporary physics. But if such an overarching unifying discipline is to be found, claiming for one’s own limited discipline the role of unifying discipline is hubris that goes beyond the discipline itself, is not rationally justified, and lacks the proper humility of an intellectual discipline before its proper object. Physics should stick to physics and not masquerade as metaphysics, if there is something other than and greater than the corporeal world as described by physics, perhaps literature, or music, or God. So, for Newman, to concretely understand education, rather than just abstractly, one has to answer the question as to whether there is or is not such a unifying discipline to be found, and what its object is. The point I want to make here is that what we call philosophy in a Christian education has to have proper humility and avoid hubris, because it has to take history seriously. And the history it has to take seriously is the history of Christ incarnate. It must be philosophy after Christ. To make my point, I want to distinguish here three senses of “philosophy”: a sociological sense, a sapiential sense, and an autonomous sense. In one sense of the term, the autonomous sense, philosophy has an essential place in Christian education, and to the extent possible ought to engage in the unifying activity that Newman describes. However, it has to be open to the possibility that it is not the primary discipline of which Newman spoke. I want to claim that, in another sense of the term, the sapiential, there is no such thing as Christian philosophy apart from Sacred Theology. In the autonomous sense, however, I do think there is something that we could call Christian philosophizing. The latter will not characterize a field of study, but rather provide an insight into the character of the one who pursues philosophy, not just in Christian educational institutions, but wherever and whenever he or she pursues autonomous philosophy as such. 4 Aristotle, Metaphysics 6.1.1026a27–32 and 11.7.1064b6–12, trans. W. D. Ross, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984). 52 John O’Callaghan How To Speak of Philosophy We can speak of philosophy in many ways, including the common cultural sense of the question “what’s your philosophy of life?” Here I would like to consider it in the context of education. In that case, we can speak of it in a sociological sense, in which case we would mean by “philosophy” something like the collection of all the different things that happen to take place in the departments called “philosophy department” throughout the world of higher education. Here there is no normative content to what we say. No claim is made that this is what philosophy should be, only what it in fact is at this particular time. Particular individuals within departments of philosophy in the sociological sense may make claims as to what philosophy ought to be, which is often what the claimant himself or herself is doing. One is reminded of the exchange between Socrates and Euthyphro, when Socrates asks Euthyphro what piety is, and Euthyphro responds, “what I’m doing now.” However, Socrates points out that his answer does not answer Socrates’s question. Nonetheless, however much particular individuals might assert a normative claim about philosophy, little agreement among these individuals is to be found. So, in the sociological sense, “philosophy” is used descriptively, and it makes little sense to ask what should be studied in those departments. Philosophy in this sense just is what it is, and it is not what it is not. On the other hand, we could also take “philosophy” in a normative sense conceived of as a discipline with a particular subject matter. In the normative sense and looking at what philosophy is sociologically, it makes sense to ask whether it is what it should be. Could it be better? Could it be worse? Consider a similar case. The same initial distinction might be observed in distinguishing sociologically all the different things that take place within departments of mathematics, which may include such things as computer science or logic, versus the normative conception of mathematics as concerned with quantity and extension as such. Logic provides an interesting example of the ambiguity involved in considering a field sociologically, since the very same study of logic considered normatively quite often takes place in both the mathematics and philosophy departments of the same educational institutions, with its practitioners often talking more to each other across the departments than they do the members of their own respective departments. Initially, it is perhaps easier to talk about philosophy if we consider it sociologically rather than normatively. Considered sociologically, there is a long historical story to be told, at least in Western philosophy, about its founding in ancient Greek reflections upon the world and human nature, a Philosophy after Christ 53 long history that proceeds on through the ages to the departments of philosophy that we now know understood in the sociological sense. However, sociologically it is not important whether all those departments themselves tell that story or pursue those or similar questions, because mostly they believe as a matter of fact that they are the present stage of that long history, whatever else they may choose to do. That story can be told against the admittedly conventional but also useful historical divisions of ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary philosophy. The sociological story involves a beginning in which the scope of the subject matter of philosophy was fairly broad in the ancient world, including most disciplined approaches to understanding the different features of existence—physics, biology, mathematics, but also ethics, tragedy, rhetoric, and so on. That breadth of scope by and large remains within the medieval period, particularly after the retrieval of the Aristotelian philosophical corpus in the Latin West of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. However, it is important to acknowledge different variations on the theme, given the quite different historical and religious conditions within which philosophy took place—Islamic, Jewish, and Christian. Characteristic of the modern and contemporary period is a narrowing of that scope of philosophy, as various disciplines spun off from philosophy as such, particularly natural scientific disciplines, but also with the birth of the humanities and literary and historical disciplines, leaving philosophy with less and less to do, as it were. This is a familiar story. Take for example the fact that natural science was still being referred to as “natural philosophy” as late as the early twentieth century, despite the fact that by then it bore almost no resemblance to what went on in departments of philosophy. Forgive the personal anecdote, but while a physics major in college, I used to collect textbooks of “natural philosophy” as a hobby. They weren’t very interesting to read, insofar as they pretty much all said the same thing in the same mathematical way with a few improvements here and there, and once in a while what appeared to be a revolutionary chapter at the end. But somewhere the name of those textbooks changed from “natural philosophy” to “physics” around and as late as 1920. There are two features of this history in the sociological sense that are worthy of note. First, there is a certain forgetfulness of the fact that, in its origins, philosophy consisted in a disciplined way of life more than it did a speculative perspective on ways of life—a practice in the world more than a perspective on it as we tend to think of it now. The French scholar Pierre Hadot examined this character of philosophy in its origins in his Philosophy 54 John O’Callaghan as a Way of Life.5 Hadot criticizes the contemporary perspective of readers of ancient philosophy who see the ancients doing pretty much what we now do, building systems of thought, whether theoretical or practical. However, Hadot distinguishes philosophy from philosophical discourse in the ancient world. What we now read is the product of the philosophical discourses of the philosophical mode of life practiced by the ancients. The discourses were not intended to be systems that one then sought to apply. They were produced in the midst of carrying on the philosophical mode of life reflective of the figures identified as their arche or principle—Pythagoras, Epictetus, Epicurus, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and so on. We, however, look back upon the “schools of philosophy” expressed in the philosophical discourse left to us associated with these figures as constructed systems of thought and theories and remark on how confused these ancient “systems” appear to be. On the contrary, according to Hadot these figures practiced a way of life that involved philosophical discourse in the development and teaching of that way of life. But those discourses were not systematic treatises on the good life that one would then follow as if a blueprint. Entering into the teacher–disciple relationship was more important than achieving the system of thought as an object of speculation. You lived as a Stoic, a Platonist, a Peripatetic. It filled up your day and life, if you practiced it well. This aspect of the philosophy as a disciplined way of life is nicely captured in Aristotle’s insight that the theoretical study of ethics will not make anyone good. You must become a pupil of those who are good, a disciple of one who is good to learn the discipline of goodness. Second, in the modern and contemporary period, there was a growing anxiety about just what the role of philosophy is in a world, so different from the ancient world in which it was born and the medieval world in which it encountered in a sustained way Christian thought. What is its task now, after having become so narrow with the loss of so many areas of interest? At the same time as it has become increasingly narrow, in a kind of recapitulation of Newman’s point about universities without a unifying discipline, contemporary philosophy has become increasingly specialized and correspondingly fractious, and can no longer lay claim to the unifying discipline as it may have once done. If it is not unified in itself, how can it unify all the others? This fractiousness may help to explain why so often philosophy departments adopt the sociological stance when thinking about themselves, what 5 Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, trans. Michael Chase (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). See also Hadot, “Ancient Philosophy: An Ethics or a Practice,” in The Selected Writings of Pierre Hadot: Philosophy as Practice, trans. Matthew Sharpe and Federico Testa (London: Bloomsbury, 2020). Philosophy after Christ 55 they do, and how they should proceed. By contrast, despite the equally specialized nature of their disciplines, physicists, mathematicians, biologists, and the like can tell you what each of their fields do. But what do the physicists see when they look at philosophy? What answer are they given when they ask of the philosophers, “what do you do?” Often the answer given when defending its place in the curriculum is that philosophy teaches something called “critical thinking,” which critical thinking, it seems, is sorely absent in fields like history, literature, mathematics, or physics. Philosophy in a Second Sense However, if we turn to considering philosophy normatively, claiming for it a certain subject matter, we can talk about a second sense of the term quite different from the sociological sense only too briefly described above. Christians and their institutions of higher education have a certain advantage in thinking normatively about what philosophy ought to be, even after the sociological diaspora of the modern period. A useful starting point for the normative consideration of philosophy for Christians is reflection upon the point that St. John Paul II made in his 1998 encyclical Fides et Ratio, that it is important for philosophy to return to and recover its sapiential dimension—it ought to pursue that sapiential dimension. By referring to the sapiential dimension of philosophy, St. John Paul deliberately places philosophy within a normative conception of philosophy as the love of and search for wisdom. While acknowledging a broad diversity of philosophical approaches, he places philosophy normatively considered within the traditions of philosophy born within ancient Greece that flourished in many different ways and even in some traditions into the modern period despite the advance of the sociological diaspora. Focusing upon this sapiential character of philosophy and situating it within the tradition of ancient Greek thought, one should be under no illusions that others will not dispute that such a setting ought to provide a normative account of philosophy and its tasks. It is precisely because one takes a normative stance that one enters into inquiry and dispute with others about its subject matter, others such as Justin Martyr. One task of philosophy conceived in the normative sense I have adopted is to argue about whether there is any hope for such sapiential philosophy. Consider Plato and Aristotle. Plato had described a love of wisdom that is the pursuit of the highest cause or causes of things that allows one to put order into one’s own life and the life of the world around one. Platonic wisdom, if achieved through discipline, would have this twofold character, 56 John O’Callaghan speculative and normatively practical because of the speculative vision. Recall the vision of the philosopher in the Allegory of the Cave, outside the cave gazing upon the Sun, the Form of the Good that gives being and unity to all other forms and all other things. Where the prisoner had been compelled by some mysterious undescribed external compulsion to leave the cave, dragged kicking and screaming out of it, by contrast, in the vision of the Sun, informed by goodness as such, the former prisoner, now the lover of wisdom, experiences an internal compulsion to return to the cave and assist others. Consider for a moment the asymmetrical parallel of the two compulsions—the compulsion to leave the cave and the compulsion to return to the cave. The prisoners are enslaved by their ignorance. But the image of their imprisonment does not work as an allegory if they are aware of their shackles, aware of being chained there. They are unknowingly compelled to remain seated gazing at the non-being of the shadows. They first feel a compulsion when they are freed and made to get up and look at the fire behind them. But the compulsion they feel comes to them extrinsically. Someone or something is pulling them away from the shadows. No doubt in their ignorance, this feeling of external compulsion feels like enslavement, and yet in reality the compulsion is freeing them. Yet they are forced eventually out into the open beyond the cave. Only now are they free to wander about, drawn to the things they see by their own desire, drawn to the really real and ultimately the Sun, the Form of the Good. However, the vision of the Good results in another new compulsion, a compulsion that has been internalized and that leads the lover of wisdom back into the cave to help others out. The vision of the Good is the wisdom that has become his form, the form of his life, his action toward himself and toward others—not a discourse, but a disciplined way of life. Because the compulsion comes from within now, rather than from without, the philosopher is genuinely free in his mode of life, his disciplined practice of care for himself and care for others. Veritas vos liberabit—the truth will set you free. So, the wisdom that informs the philosopher is both speculative and practical. It is of course also tragic as presented by Plato’s Socrates, as the lover of wisdom’s return to the cave leads to his death, overcome by the resistance of the very slaves to ignorance that he now seeks to free and drag out of the cave. The fact that the philosopher who returns to the cave is killed by the other prisoners leaves the reader with a subtle suggestion that whatever compulsion originally freed the philosopher could not have involved merely human agency, but must have been greater, perhaps something of the divine. Finally, it must be granted that Socrates himself does not see death as a tragedy. As he explains in the Phaedo, the love Philosophy after Christ 57 of wisdom is nothing other than preparation for death, and he consoles his friends with arguments about the soul after death. After Aristotle, however, the speculative aspect of this search will be understood to be the search for first or primary philosophy that we now call metaphysics, contrasted with the practical search for phronesis, or practical wisdom. Still, Aristotle also said with some great degree of practical wisdom that the speculative study of ethics will not make anyone good. Much less so, we might add, the speculative pursuit of physics or metaphysics. So, even there we see that, for Aristotle, while ethics may take the normative aspects of human life as its subject matter, it is not itself the normative practical wisdom that Plato sought. However, it is important not to forget or misunderstand Hadot’s point. Even for Aristotle, philosophy itself, including the practices that lead to both speculative and practical wisdom, however distinct they may be, was a disciplined way of life, not a speculative system, as it may be for us now. Still, after Aristotle, while the ideal of the wise man is the one who possesses both speculative and practical wisdom, the unity of wisdom itself has become problematic. In a sense, it has undergone a divorce, severing the speculative from the normative. By and large, with other traditions like Stoicism mixed in, it is this Greek sapiential tradition, including Aristotle’s distinction between speculative and practical wisdom, that the early Church encounters and engages, the historical encounter given evidence to by Justin Martyr. The North African theologian Tertullian took an attitude quite different form Justin Martyr’s toward the philosophical disciplines. He saw them as the seedbed of heresies the Church needed to avoid. Thus, his famous rhetorical question often cited as, “what has Athens to do with Jerusalem.”6 But it is important to recognize that Tertullian posed that dichotomy on behalf of the notion of revelation as the true way of life, as genuine wisdom, writing, “Christ called Himself truth, not custom.” His claim was not on behalf of a conception of the irrationality of the Christian faith, as if accepting its irrationality constituted the merit of faith. His claim was on behalf of God’s revelation as genuinely rational and truly sapiential, as opposed to the errors of the philosophers in their claims to wisdom. By contrast, Justin sees 6 Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum 7.9–11: “What then of Athens and Jerusalem? What of the Academy and the Church? What of heretics and Christians? Our education is from the porch of Solomon, he who himself had taught that “the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart [Quid ergo athenis et hierosolymis? quid academiae et ecclesiae? Quid haereticis et christianis? nostra who de porticu solomonis est qui et ipse tradiderat dominum in simplicitate cordis esse quaerendum].” (Library of Latin Texts Online, Brepolis Publishers. www.brepolis.net; trans. mine). 58 John O’Callaghan within these disciplines of ancient philosophy a preparatio evangelica. Rather than a seedbed of heresy, if understood correctly they are the soil within which the seed of Christian life can grow and flower, providing material to be transformed in the flourishing of Christian life, for those who hear and accept the good news of life in Christ who is Truth. Now, with this particular normative sense of philosophy in view, what philosophy should be, its sapiential character, there is another broad historical story about philosophy and where we are now, very much like but also crucially different from the sociological history described earlier. In the ancient period, the philosophical search for wisdom took place in many ways as a counterpoint to the cultic and civic religion of the pantheon, as a certain demythologizing and depersonalizing of the religious search for understanding of the highest causes of things. An interesting figure here is Socrates. On the one hand, as he describes his quest for wisdom defending his life in the Apology, he takes seriously the Oracle of Delphi that sets him out on his quest for wisdom, attending to the voice of the divine reported to him by his friend Chaerephon, the divine voice that played a role in the cultic religion of ancient Greece. In addition, before he dies, Socrates instructs his disciple Crito that “we owe a cock to Asclepius,” a cultic religious sacrifice. On the other hand, in his dialogue with Euthyphro, he explicitly asks Euthyphro, “Euthyphro, do you really believe these stories about the gods,” stories often portraying the gods as engaged in what look like petty human squabbles, in particular mentioning Zeus’s imprisoning his father Cronos who had previously castrated his own father Uranus—primeval Oedipal acts, as it were, among the gods and titans. Most importantly, the dialogue ends in confusion as they fail to figure out what the appropriate human language is with which to speak of the gods. This result is not a denial of the existence of the divine, what we would now call “atheism.” It is rather, and can be understood to be, a religiously motivated apoplexy, in the quest for wisdom faced with divine transcendence. How can one be genuinely pious if one cannot speak coherently of or to the gods? So, Socratic demythologizing does not come with atheism about the gods, but a lack of ability to speak. This demythologizing move of ancient Greek philosophy can be seen to culminate in Aristotle’s divine being as self-thinking-thought-thinking-itself-thinking. However, starting in the later stages of the ancient period and continuing into the medieval in the encounter of Jewish and Christian revelation with the Greek tradition, we see in the West a sometimes negative but often positive appropriation of the Greek philosophical search for wisdom in service to a better understanding of that sacred revelation. Ancient philosophy adopts Philosophy after Christ 59 the role of handmaiden to what Aquinas calls Sacra Doctrina, or what we now call Sacred Theology. As Joseph Ratzinger describes this stage in the engagement of Christian religious faith with philosophy, there is a kind of re-personalizing without re-mythologizing of the ultimate principle of being, once it is recognized that this ultimate principle that the Greeks sought is the god that Jews, Muslims, and Christians worship, Christians knowing that god as a consubstantial Trinity of persons .7 However, as this re-personalizing described by Ratzinger is taking place, philosophical reasoning assists the universalizing concern of Christianity toward the recognition of God as first principle of all being, and ultimately creator ex nihilo of all that is—the God of Israel is the God of all. In effect, the universal highest principle of all that exists, sought by the Greeks, speaks like a god without myth—a possibility mostly incomprehensible to Greek philosophical thought.8 Not even Aristotle’s de-mythologized self-thinking-thought-thinking-itself-thinking speaks. It thinks itself without speaking of itself. But in the Gospel of John the Logos is a Verbum. Finally, in the revelation that culminates in Christ, the practical ethical question of wisdom—“how ought we to live?”—is captured in the recognition that, along with all other created things, persons in particular come from God but also have their natural destiny and fulfillment, their happiness, eudaimonia or beatitudo, in a knowing loving union with God. We ought to live knowingly and lovingly as creatures of God, made to his image, and destined, God willing and by his grace, to eternal beatitude and joy with him and one another in him.9 The Christian life is a disciplined way of life informed by what God has spoken. “Nil hoc verbo veritatis verbo verius”—“Truth Himself speaks truly, or there’s nothing true.”10 7 8 9 10 Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 70–76 (ch. 3: “The God of the Philosophers”). See also Etienne Gilson, God and Philosophy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1941). See Plato, Timaeus 29d, for the mythic character of his account of the generation, not creation, of the world as we experience it. David Sedley argues that creation accounts as one sees in such pre-Christian settings are always a creating out of a preexisting stuff that is acted upon, not a causing to be from nothing; see Creation and Its Critics in Antiquity (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007). See also my “Evolution and Catholic Faith,” in Darwin in the Twenty-First Century, ed. Phillip R. Sloan, Gerald McKenny, and Kathleen Eggleson (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), 269–98. See Aquinas, Summa theologiae [ST] I, q. 1, a. 1, and I-II, qq. 1–5. Thomas Aquinas, Adoro Te Devote, trans. Gerard Manley Hopkins, rosarychurch.net/ mystic/aquinas.html. 60 John O’Callaghan This movement of appropriating Greek philosophy within Sacra Doctrina finds exemplary but not exclusive form in Augustine and Aquinas. Augustine recognizes the ways in which the questions of the philosophers are the natural human questions that arise in the heart of all human beings concerning happiness, joy, and peace. Even if, as Augustine himself believes, Christian revelation provides the best response to those questions, the questions do not come from within Christian revelation itself. They are the questions of the restless human heart itself, arising out of common human experience, created precisely to ask those questions. In that respect Augustine continues the movement in Christian life begun with Justin Martyr. The nature we are born to is the proximate cause of our questions, the nature the Greeks sought to understand. Yet what Augustine recognized was that the Greek philosophical pursuit of wisdom, originating in the study of human life or nature, only deepens the natural restlessness of the heart for God, as one recognizes that, in the midst of all its wonderful achievements, secular pagan wisdom ultimately fails to bring to the desire of the heart understanding, joy, and peace. It does not bring rest to the restless heart. At its best, it promotes further inquiry, deeper questions but also greater unsatisfied human longing. Only in what has been revealed in and through Christ do such rest and peace come. Rather than humanity rising to the heights of wisdom, wisdom descends in the person of Christ to the depths of humanity. Still, philosophy, understood as the sapiential quest of pagan thought, has for Augustine a place within the Christian life precisely because of the depth with which it can explore and encourage the restlessness of the heart for God, blowing, as it were, upon the still glowing embers of human desire after sin, stirring up the flames of a burning desire that knows no satisfaction in this world. Thus, in this engagement with the Greek search for wisdom as we see it in Augustine, the early Church is essentially arguing that the revelation of Christ made known to us through the Church’s appropriation of Sacred Scripture is what the Greek philosophers were looking for. The questions of the Greeks find adequate and ultimate answers that constitute love as joy only in revelation, and most clearly in Christ incarnate. The revelation of Christ our savior is the normative philosophy the Greeks were looking for. The Confessions are, of course, as much a story of Augustine’s intellectual struggles, his intellectual concupiscence and pride of life, as of his struggles with bodily concupiscence.11 And the wisdom he ultimately finds that brings 11 See Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 30, a. 1, ad 1, and q. 77, a. 5, on intellectual concupiscence and “pride of life.” Philosophy after Christ 61 rest to his heart is both speculative and normative. Philosophy as a way of life after Christ now has the primary character of listening rather than striving, reading rather than speaking, loving rather than grasping. Consider for a moment St. Ambrose and the extraordinary effect he had upon Augustine’s conversion. Recall that one of the aspects of St. Ambrose’s disciplined way of life that impressed Augustine most was his disciplined reading of Holy Scripture silently, silently in a world where most people read aloud when they read at all. That silent reading bore disciplined fruit in Ambrose’s preaching that Augustine attentively listened to, preaching that at last spoke to Augustine’s restless heart. Nonetheless, that reading and listening lead to further questioning and inquiry into what has been revealed to one about the highest cause through whom all things were made, Christ the Logos, the Verbum, the Word made incarnate. The lover of wisdom seeks to love what he or she has come to know and understand. Christ is Wisdom incarnate, and the disciplined loving pursuit of understanding Christ and all things in God as revealed by Christ is the wisdom the Greeks sought but could not provide for themselves. After Augustine, the normative sapiential traditions of philosophy inherited from the Greeks have become inherently Augustinian. Aquinas will repeat this fundamental apologia that sacred doctrine is the normative philosophy the Greeks sought. That is the extraordinary achievement of the beautiful argument of the first question of the first part of the Summa theologiae. In that question Aquinas argues that, despite the authentic achievements of the “philosophical disciplines,” still, by the standards of Greek philosophy itself, specifically the standards set out by Plato and particularly Aristotle in the Posterior Analytics, Sacra Doctrina or Sacred Theology, which is intellectual inquiry that takes its starting point from divine revelation, is in the first place a scientia participating by faith in God’s own self-understanding or scientia,12 in the second place both a speculative and a practical scientia, in the third place most certain among all the scientiae, in the fourth place a wisdom, and in the fifth place the highest of all wisdoms as bearing upon the highest of all causes that allows us to put order into our own lives and in the world around us, primarily a discipline and only secondarily a discourse. Aquinas underscores the aspect of Sacra Doctrina as providing the discipline necessary to achieve wisdom when, in commenting on the Apostle’s Creed, he quotes Hab 2:4 and writes, “‘my righteousness lives by faith.’ And 12 This is in the ancient and medieval sense of “science” as an ordered body of knowledge pertaining to some subject matter, a sense much broader than we now employ to describe modern natural science in particular, but also the human and social sciences. 62 John O’Callaghan this is clear, since no one of the philosophers before the advent of Christ was able, despite his entire effort, to know God and of the things necessary to eternal life, so much as an old woman knows by faith after the advent of Christ.”13 Notice that Aquinas does not here deny that the philosophers before Christ knew anything of God and what is necessary. Employing for emphasis what in our age is an unfortunate metaphor, he says it does not compare to what a person of faith knows after Christ. This theme of the poverty of the wisdom of the philosophers is analyzed more systematically in Summa theologiae [ST] I, q. 1, a. 1, where Aquinas asks “whether it is necessary for there to be a discipline in addition to the philosophical disciplines.” It is necessary to have such a discipline because of the poverty of what the philosophical disciplines achieve in the knowledge of the human end and the discipline to achieve it, the difficulty of knowing it apart from faith, and the many errors that accompany even what the philosophical disciplines do achieve. The necessary discipline is Sacra Doctrina. In effect, the unified search for Platonic wisdom took a fall in Aristotle when he separated speculative wisdom from practical wisdom. However, Aquinas puts them back together again in Sacra Doctrina, knowing full well of Aristotle’s separation. Still, with a nod to Aristotle’s distinction, Aquinas does recognize that there is a way in which Sacra Doctrina can be pursued by the learned that does not in fact lead to the practice of the way of life that Christ manifests—in Hadot’s terms a mere discourse rather than a genuine philosophical discipline. In addition, echoing Aristotle, he recognizes that those who engage in the practice may be more learned in Sacra Doctrina than the theologians.14 Sacra Doctrina is the wisdom Plato and the philosophers sought, the position Justin Martyr took in the second century, Augustine at the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth, and again Aquinas in the thirteenth. It is Sacra Doctrina that is philosophy after Christ. Aquinas, for all of his use of Aristotle, has a fundamentally Platonic and Augustinian sense of what philosophy as wisdom should be, given the historical fact of the Incarnation. Because of his faith in Christ, it is Sacra Doctrina as discipline. But where Plato’s wisdom was ultimately a tragedy, Aquinas’s is, in the classical sense, a commedia. 13 14 Aquinas, Expositio in symbolum apostolorum, proem. Aquinas’s Latin, quoting Hab 2:4 has “iustus meus ex fide vivit,” where the Vulgate has “iustus autem in fide sua vivet.” So I have translated the passage in Aquinas somewhat freely to achieve something like a grammatically correct translation in English of what Aquinas appears to have been reading. ST I, q. 1, a. 6, ad 3. Philosophy after Christ 63 A Third Sense of Philosophy However, Aquinas’s discussion in the first question of the Summa now also allows us to isolate a third sense of philosophy from the two we have considered so far. It is a variation on the second, normative sense, but with an epistemological turn. While Sacra Doctrina counts as philosophy in the second, sapiential sense, indeed it is in that sense philosophy par excellence, we can also speak of philosophy as the endeavor of normative philosophy unaided by the epistemological resources of religious faith. In the very first article of question 1 of the Summa, Aquinas begins with the question “whether it is necessary that there be a discipline in addition to the philosophical disciplines?” Aquinas answers yes to that question, that the necessary discipline in addition to the philosophical disciplines is Sacra Doctrina, which we now know is the highest wisdom. When one reads that article, one often passes too quickly over the presupposition of the question, which is that the “philosophical disciplines” of which Aquinas writes do not have to justify themselves. They are taken for granted as achieving something, even if not the something that makes Sacra Doctrina necessary. Thus, in the first article, Aquinas is not justifying the legitimacy of what he calls “the philosophical disciplines.” Those disciplines are not rejected, but taken for granted. On the contrary, Aquinas is justifying the legitimacy of Sacra Doctrina. Aquinas believes such limited, narrowly circumscribed philosophy as manifested in the philosophical disciplines has a role to play as handmaiden to Sacra Doctrina, responding to challenges that come from outside of Sacra Doctrina, but also assisting from within in the pursuit of greater clarity and understanding of what has been revealed. Still, as limited philosophy, it has to recognize its ultimate inadequacy as wisdom. To say that it is inadequate as wisdom is not to say it is in principle in error, although Aquinas does not hesitate to point out errors when they occur in practice. It is only to recognize that it does not achieve what it strives for. This third sense of philosophy is genuinely autonomous in that it does not rely upon Sacra Doctrina to provide it with principles and additional truths upon which to conduct itself. In this respect, although there are several other philosophical traditions that Aquinas draws upon, by and large it is autonomous Aristotelian philosophy that he employs as handmaiden to Sacra Doctrina. However, such autonomous philosophy is also open to the possibility of something greater than itself which it can serve, deepening the understanding of what we are, where we came from, and where we are going in a way that also increases the restlessness of our hearts by its 64 John O’Callaghan final inadequacy as wisdom. It is in this third sense that I deny that there is any such thing as Christian philosophy. If there is a Christian philosophy, it is nothing other than the Sacra Doctrina that epistemologically presupposes faith. Nonetheless, now turning to the modern period, against the background of the development of the natural sciences and reflection upon the worldwide scale of natural evils and disasters, the third autonomous sense of philosophy becomes increasingly skeptical of the possibility of transcendent knowledge and wisdom, and turns away from its role as handmaiden to Sacra Doctrina, with some among the philosophers eventually even forbidding the aspirations of wisdom to attain a transcendent First Cause of all things. Increasingly, autonomous philosophy is devoted to attempting to provide a kind of alternative mundane wisdom over against what are understood to be the irrational claims of faith in a personal First Cause of all that exists. Modern autonomous philosophy in this third sense now effectively re-mythologizes the Christian faith, mostly in order to turn away from that faith as irrational. God is now seen as one among the many gods of superstitious primitives. Often Sacra Doctrina is now portrayed as a form of irrationality, at best little more than a repository of morally uplifting stories, in order for autonomous philosophy to propose itself as a demythologized rational alternative to Christian faith, ironically recapitulating the move of ancient philosophy against Greek pagan religion before its encounter with Christian revelation. In that respect, it is a reactionary autonomous philosophy. In short, in this second sapiential way of telling the story of philosophy that I have pursued here, in these three stages we have initially a philosophy searching for wisdom, then an autonomous philosophy giving way to and serving a greater love of wisdom that has been revealed to humankind by the personal first principle philosophy seeks, a first principle of being who speaks, and finally a reactionary philosophy seeking to free itself from what it perceives to be the bondage of a revealed and transcendent divine wisdom. It may seem harsh to speak of the modern move as reactionary, but what is meant by that is that, with some notable exceptions, it seeks to ignore history, even when it is being historical, and return to philosophy as it was before Christ. It is defensive of its autonomy in a way that ancient philosophy was not. In being so, it loses its humility. Given our conventional divisions of ancient, medieval, and modern, we are of course in the fourth age—post-modern, as the reactionary modern philosophy has not paid its dues and kept its promises to provide wisdom free of all irrationalities of faith. By and large, this is well recognized in Philosophy after Christ 65 continental philosophy, and increasingly so in Anglo-American philosophy. But it is the age in which the best we seem to be able to do in talking about philosophy is to return to the first sociological sense of philosophy—it is sociologically institutionalized and whatever is happening in departments with the name “philosophy” in the institutions of higher learning. In giving these two alternative stories of philosophy, I have in the first place told oversimplified and flawed histories. Things are much more complicated than I have suggested. In the second place, suitably corrected, I have told two stories that are compatible. They do not exclude one another, but should rather be seen as complimentary. Part of the importance of emphasizing history is that there are many ways to see the story of philosophy and the situation we are now in that do not exclude one another, but rather shed light upon our predicament. That is why doing the history of philosophy is doing philosophy—it engages movements of thought embedded in traditions, not simply abstract lifeless concepts. Coming to a Conclusion about Philosophy after Christ I want to conclude with a suggestion. At the beginning I said that I do not think there is any such thing as Christian philosophy. Now we can see that what I mean by that is that there is no such thing as Christian philosophy if we are talking about autonomous philosophy. If we are speaking of sapiential philosophy, however, we have seen that Aquinas argues it is Sacra Doctrina that culminates in the Incarnation of Christ and our disciplined living in imitation of him. However, even in the sense of autonomous philosophy, I do think there is such a thing as philosophizing in a Christian way. To philosophize in a Christian way is to take seriously the history of revelation and the Incarnation of Christ, not so much as a corrective to autonomous philosophy, as if providing otherwise unknown premises for argument, but as posing a challenge to philosophy in the third, limited and autonomous sense. If autonomous philosophy is to be true to the search for wisdom, it has to acknowledge and respond to the claims of Christ. That is not to say that, in acknowledging and responding to the claims of Christ, it transforms itself into Theology. No. But philosophy in the third, autonomous sense has to ask itself whether it is adequate to the task it has set itself, once it takes into account the historical fact of the Incarnation. It ought to defend its autonomy. But it ought also to consider whether it is the last word on reality. Indeed, it ought to consider whether it is even the first word on reality. Is it wisdom itself ? Or is it more John the Baptist to one greater than it? 66 John O’Callaghan So, to what extent does philosophizing in a Christian way take its bearings from the truth of the claims that the Church makes about God and Christ? We ask this not because it will lead to the creation of something called Christian philosophy that has been revealed, not created. Rather, we ask it because it will inform the way in which Christians and their fellow travelers think about the tasks of philosophy in the third sense. I say “fellow travelers” because it is possible to philosophize in a Christian way without affirming the truths of Christian faith, indeed, even without being a believer in God. To philosophize in a Christian way requires only that the philosopher take seriously the challenge to wisdom that the historical reality of Christ poses to the aspirations of philosophy in the third, autonomous sense. The autonomy of philosophy in the third sense consists in the fact that it does not take its epistemic starting points from a position of faith in divine revelation. However, that autonomy does not free it from the epistemic responsibility to consider the challenge that revelation poses to it as the search for wisdom. It should be the virtue of any philosopher in the third sense to acknowledge that there may be a greater wisdom, even if he or she does not recognize it. The standard of inquiry that requires autonomous philosophy to take seriously challenges to its claim to wisdom come from within autonomous philosophy itself. That is simply the humility of good philosophy. In short, if we want to know what philosophy is after Christ, we have to ask ourselves in what sense we are speaking of philosophy. If in the first sociological sense, the answer is simple. What philosophy after Christ is is nothing less and nothing more than what takes place in philosophy departments in educational institutions throughout the world. But that is simply a philosophy that almost overwhelmingly does not take seriously the claims of Christianity. Indeed, in some but not all instances, it is a philosophy that explicitly sees itself as a rational alternative to the irrationality of Christian faith. In practice, it is to treat the claims of Christianity as if they are not truth claims, to treat Christianity as if it is a fideistic faith, not a rational faith willing to put itself to the test. Looking back to Justin Martyr’s praise of philosophy, to pursue philosophy merely in that first sense is, on the contrary, intellectually lazy. If we are talking about philosophy in the second sense, then we are attempting to recapture the sapiential dimension of philosophy, as St. John Paul II urged us. But if we are talking about philosophy in that second sense, and if Aquinas is right, we have to acknowledge that we are talking about Sacra Doctrina broadly construed, and not what any department of philosophy in the sociological sense would recognize as philosophy. Philosophy after Christ 67 So, I end with a question. Is there hope for autonomous philosophy, philosophy in the third sense acknowledged by Aquinas, philosophy that is not dependent upon revelation for its principles and central truths and yet is open in humility to a greater wisdom than itself ? This is autonomous philosophy that is recognizable in the philosophy departments of this world, even if not particularly advocated or practiced in some. In that respect, it is philosophy that can dialectically engage the other philosophies that animate those departments, both learning from them and contributing to them when possible. In particular, autonomous philosophy done well can be said to be a kind of Socratic philosophy after Christ. Socrates said that the beginning of wisdom is to acknowledge that one does not know. But this autonomous philosophy after Christ is different from the historic Socratic philosophy precisely because it takes account of history after Christ. It is open to the possibility that the end of philosophy in this sense, its telos, not just its beginning or arche, is to acknowledge that it does not know. It should be in its own uncertainty that philosophy after Christ acknowledges that it is not the wisdom our hearts seek. For an example, I want to conclude by descending from the heights of theory to the depths of practice to display what I mean by acknowledging uncertainty. Consider the challenge that the reality of evil presents to autonomous philosophy, challenging it to humility before reality. We autonomous philosophers who are also Christians often see evil as a problem to be solved with our apologetics and theodicies of free will. Free will is such a great good that God tolerates evil that proceeds from it and will bring good out of it. One cannot help but believe that we think that we are in the position of defense lawyer for God, who is, as C. S. Lewis put it, “in the dock.”15 Our “free-will defense” gets God off scot-free, as we exculpate him for the horrendous amount of evil that confronts us in his creation. Hannah Arendt wrote of the banality of evil. Here, I often find myself thinking of the banality of free will, or at least of the banality of its defense, when I consider even those close to me that I love who have suffered at the hands of the “free will” of others, not to mention the extraordinary expressions of “free will” in the Holocaust, genocide in Rwanda, the torture of 15 C. S. Lewis, “God in the Dock,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (1970; repr. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994), 244: “The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. . . .The trial may even end in God’s acquittal. But the important thing is that Man is on the Bench and God in the Dock.” 68 John O’Callaghan political prisoners, rape, sexual abuse, and exploitation perpetrated by those in authority, pastoral or otherwise, or the brutal violence of “free will” that shoots children in a school learning at their desks or playing on the playground, children pursuing the very activities that God himself delights in. I do not deny the reality of free will properly understood. What I question is the Christian philosopher’s solution to the problem of evil when it exculpates God in this way, whether it properly understands free will. Augustine’s and Aquinas’s philosophical responses to evil are such a small part of their thought as to be almost incidental. Even then, they do not present the “free-will defense” of God allowing evil.16 Indeed, I suspect in their own thought, their philosophical responses, such as they were, were beside the point. Much more significant are their efforts to understand God’s response to evil. After all, even in his own defense, in revelation God does not give the “free-will defense.” Rather, I ask you, “where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?” ( Job 38:4–7). We autonomous philosophers who are Christians should ask, when we try to exculpate God for evil, whether our efforts touch the hearts of our fellow human beings, believer or not, or rather deaden them? Do we end up confronting the banality of evil with the banality of a Christian philosophy? Or should our impotence in the face of horrendous evil rather prompt us to “cry out in tears,” “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.” Does our defense rather make us deaf and dumb to the evil and suffering around us, allowing us to walk by with the thought, “well God will make something good of this?” Is it rather a defense of ourselves than of God? God did not respond to the problem of evil with the free-will defense. He said: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Take the evil of death and consider for a moment the rather different response of Christ to it from Socrates’s welcome embrace of it. Christ’s friend had died. 16 Augustine accepted a version of the defense in his early work, only to reject it in his later work. See Jesse Couenhoven, “Augustine’s Rejection of the Free-Will Defence: An Overview of the Late Augustine’s Theodicy,” Religious Studies 43 (2007): 279–98. For Aquinas’s view that God permits evil, because he can by his almighty power bring good from it, see ST I, q. 22, a. 2, ad 2. The key to his response, however, is that Aquinas does not attempt to argue that God could not have created a world with free will that did not contain some measure of evil as the result of that free will and that the good of free will justifies creating such a world. See also Summa contra gentiles III, ch. 71. Philosophy after Christ 69 In Christ’s way of life, his discipline, his wisdom, his misericordia, he wept, and then he acted to relieve the suffering of the one who had died by raising him from the dead, eventually offering his own life for his friend and all of us. We Christian philosophers cannot imitate Christ’s power to raise the dead. Surely, however, we can imitate him by weeping for those who suffer evil and do what we can for them. That is a rather different sense of free will. Not, “your free will is so great a thing that I will fix everything in the end,” but, “you were made to the image and likeness of God; your free will allows you to address the evil around you here and now, in imitation of me.” Perhaps we philosophers who are Christian, confronted with horrendous evil, need to learn to be silent and listen to God’s response, in order to participate in it. Perhaps then also, our secular colleagues who confront us with this problem to be solved will listen to our silence, see our response, and be more prepared to hear and see God’s response, not our solution. After all, but for the theological gift and virtue of hope, it seems manifestly clear that Christians have little if anything to say about extraordinary evils like the Holocaust, or even the more common evils like the death of innocent children, hunger, homelessness, and poverty, little to say that could possibly do them justice or hope for mercy. Perhaps we Christian philosophers actually dishonor God by saying he will fix it in the end, rather than imitating his actual response to it here and now. If we do not listen to and imitate the discipline of God’s response to evil, what right have we Christian philosophers to speak at all about the reality of it? In our speculative efforts to exculpate God for the problem of evil, we run the risk of blinding ourselves to God’s actual response to evil—Christ hanging on a cross for our salvation, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. But if we thus blind ourselves to that response to evil, we cannot possibly hope to imitate it in our own lives as we are called to do as made to the image and likeness of God. I do not want to know how Christian philosophers solve the problem of evil and suffering, and thus exculpate God. I want to know how Christian philosophers respond to the discipline of Christ, in imitation of him to the evil and suffering around them. Philosophy after Christ has to be willing in humility to stand at the foot of the Cross, “lost, all lost in wonder”17 at its apparent folly and horror, and wonder at how our hearts can rest in imitation of the peace and joy of the One who reveals himself there. Aristotle tells us that philosophy, the love of wisdom, begins in wonder. 17 Aquinas, Adore Te Devote. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2024): 71–102 71 Theology, Philosophy, and Biology: An Interpretation of the Conception of Jesus Christ Juan Eduardo Carreño Universidad de los Andes Santiago, Chile Introduction A large body of literature and a vigorous academic establishment—university chairs, foundations, societies, and journals—focus on an interdisciplinary field variously described as “science and religion,” “science and faith,” or “science and theology.”1 “Philosophy” is a recent occasional addition which turns these dyads into triads.2 However, not only the terms themselves but also the ways their relationship are understood have generated debate. Indeed, Ian Barbour’s well-known typology defining four canonical modes of the science-religion relationship—conflict, independence, dialogue, and integration—has played an organizing role but has not satisfied everyone.3 Although our purpose here is not to recapitulate these discussions, it might be helpful to mention an issue that frequently arises within them: whether Barbour’s classification is necessarily exhaustive, and in particular, if what he understands by “integration” is really the perfect culmination of a link that could connect science and faith. Thus, some authors prefer to speak of 1 2 3 For an up-to-date presentation of the field, see Alister E. McGrath, Science & Religion: A New Introduction (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2020). See, for example, Albert Bagood, “Presentation: Science, Philosophy and Theology: What Can We Say about Them?,” Angelicum 86, no. 1 (2009): 9–11. See Ian Barbour, “On Typologies for Relating Science and Religion,” Zygon 37, no. 2 (2002): 345–60. 72 Juan Eduardo Carreño “interaction,” “compatibility,” or “articulation” to describe this relationship, either replacing or superimposed upon Barbour’s integration modality.4 We believe that at least part of this series of controversies results from the lack of fundamental definitions and distinctions. “Science” is not univocal but an analogous term, since it can be predicated both from extremely diverse disciplines and also from a cognitive act, a habit, or a corpus of knowledge.5 On the other hand, “faith,” “religion,” and “theology” have neither identical meanings nor even an analogous epistemic scope in different religious traditions. All this outlines a problem whose many edges cannot be enclosed within the margins of a categorization, however nuanced. This article aims to illustrate the complexity of the relationship between science, philosophy, and theology, using as a case study the contribution of contemporary embryology and developmental biology to theological reflection on the Incarnation of Jesus Christ. We begin by examining some theological hypotheses that, using the biological knowledge and speculations of their time, attempt to deepen our understanding of the mystery of the incarnate Word. Next, we propose an interpretation of the conception of Jesus Christ, in which the facts contributed by biology could enrich, and perhaps illuminate, certain aspects of theological reflection. As we will argue, this encounter does not fit the integration model described in Barbour’s typology, because, among other reasons, the discourses at stake—theological and biological—neither belong to the same epistemological plane nor play an equivalent role in this relationship. Some Hypotheses about the Conception of Jesus Interestingly, from as early as its antecedents in ancient Egypt, the genesis and development of mankind inevitably intersects with religious beliefs. This trend is projected in Judaism and reaches its greatest realization, for reasons partly understandable, in the Christian tradition. Of course, an authentic religious worldview cannot avoid at least some mention of human 4 5 For a glimpse of this controversy, see Geoffrey Cantor and Chris Kenny, “Barbour’s Fourfold Way: Problems with His Taxonomy of Science-Religion Relationships,” Zygon 36, no. 4 (2004): 765–81; Taede A. Smedes, “Beyond Barbour or Back to Basics? The Future of Science and Religion and the Quest for Unity,” Zygon 43, no. 1 (2008): 235–58; Ian Barbour, “Taking Science Seriously without Scientism: A Response to Taede Smedes,” Zygon 43, no. 1 (2008): 259–69; Smedes, “Taking Theology and Science Seriously without Category Mistakes: A Response to Ian Barbour,” Zygon 43, no. 1 (2008): 271–76. For more details, see Juan Eduardo Carreño, La filosofía tomista ante el hecho de la evolución del viviente corpóreo (Santiago, Chile: RIL, 2017), 339–56. An Interpretation of the Conception of Jesus Christ 73 ontogenesis, but belief in the factual basis of the Incarnation elevates the matter to a new and original plane. This is how it is understood by a number of believers who, from the first centuries of our era, and until recent times, advance hypotheses and models where biological and philosophical knowledge about human conception are combined, in different proportions, with Christological notions and doctrines. The account offered here is not intended to be exhaustive; our interest is only in outlining certain theological interpretations that have arisen in the course of history, as precursors to those discussed in the next section. The Conception of Jesus and the Incarnation of the Word Origen’s position regarding preexistence of the soul (proyparxis) and its union with the human body as a result of a fall attracted many philosophical and theological objections in the centuries following.6 Once this alternative was rejected, however, several paths remained open to account for human generation. The “translationist” hypothesis (according to which the human soul, like the body, derives from the parents through the act of natural procreation) had its Eastern adherents but seemed to find itself at home in the West. This reception was undoubtedly influenced by the plausibility the Bishop of Hippo, Augustine, albeit hesitantly assigned to translationism as a way of explaining the inheritance of Adam's sin.7 However, the creationist doctrine (conceiving of the soul as the fruit of a special act of God’s creation) soon claimed primacy, ending up definitively imposed in Scholasticism.8 But this option did not completely settle the issue of human conception either, as attested by the great controversy unleashed between creationists, defending the thesis that the creation of the human soul is simultaneous with conception (synyparxis), and those postulating the infusion of a human soul 6 7 8 The harsh terms in which Jerome refers to this thesis are well attested; see Joseph Needham, A History of Embryology, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 77. On the condemnation of this thesis at the Second Council of Constantinople in 553, see Evgenia Tzouramani and Christos Terezis, “The Origenic Doctrine of the Pre-Existence of Souls in Relation to the Christian Canon,” Florentia Iliberritana 18 (2007): 421–31. See Roland Teske, “Augustine’s Theory of the Soul,” in The Cambridge Companion to Augustine, ed. Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 116–23. See Ralph Hennings, “Disputatio de origine animae (CPL 623,37) or the Victory of Creationism in the Fifth Century,” in Studia Patristica 30, ed. Elizabeth A. Livingstone (Leuven: Peeters, 1997), 260–68; A. W. Argyle, “The Christian Doctrine of the Origin of the Soul,” Scottish Journal of Theology 13, no. 3 (1965): 273–93. 74 Juan Eduardo Carreño occurring at some later stage of development, that is when some organicity already exists (methyparxis).9 As Dirk Krausmüller has shown, these positions intertwine in the great Christological debates of the sixth to tenth centuries between Chalcedonians, Nestorians, and Monophysites; they appeal, unsurprisingly, to both the embryology of the time and the authority of the Holy Scriptures.10 Indeed, the Aristotelian theory of delayed hominization—according to which the human being, in its development, possesses first a vegetative soul and then a sensitive one, and only in a third phase, when ready, does it receive a human soul—was an authority explicitly cited by adherents of methyparxis. But it is remarkable that authors such as Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus of Lyons, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximus the Confessor were already openly defending its rival.11 This discussion would continue for centuries, but less on the Christological than the embryological level. This is clearly the case with St. Thomas Aquinas,12 who, regarding the first phases of human development, resolutely follows the Aristotelian theory of delayed hominization, and not the proposal of his teacher, St. Albert the Great.13 But the model of methyparxis is explicitly 9 10 11 12 13 See Dirk Krausmüller, “When Christology Intersects with Embryology: The Viewpoints of Nestorian, Monophysite and Chalcedonian Authors of the Sixth to Tenth Centuries,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 113 (2020): 853–78. See Krausmüller, “When Christology Intersects with Embryology,” 854–55. For some famous Aristotelian passages on this issue, see De generatione animalium 2.3.736a24–737b6; Historia animalium 7.3.583b10–20; Politica 7.16.1335b20–27. For the idea of human conception in the Fathers, see Michael Gorman, Abortion and the Early Church: Christian, Jewish and Pagan Attitudes in the Greco-Roman World (New York: Paulist Press, 1982). For the works of Aquinas: any quotations from the Summa theologiae [ST], the Summa contra gentiles [SCG], the commentary on the Physics [In I–VII phys.], Quaestio disputatae de anima [Q.D. de an.], Quaestio disputata de spiritualibus creaturis [De spir.], Quaestiones de quodlibet [Quodl.], Compendium theologiae [CT], and De principiis naturae (De princ.) are original translations from the Leonine edition; original translations from the commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences [In I–IV sent.] are done from Scriptum super libros sententiarum, 4 vols., ed. P. Mandonnet and M. Moss (Paris: Lethielleux, 1929–1947); translations of Quaestiones disputatae De potentia [De pot.] are done from vol. 2. of Quaestiones disputatae, ed. P. Pession (Turin: Marietti, 1965); translations from the commentary on John (Super Ioan) are from Commentary on the Gospel of John, Chapters 1–8, ed. The Aquinas Institute, Latin–English Edition of the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas 35 (Lander: The Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2013). For some relevant text in Aquinas, see Q.D. de an., q. 11, ad 1; De pot., q. 3, a. 9, ad 9; ST I, q. 76, a. 3, ad 3; q. 118, a. 2, ad 2; SCG II, ch. 89; CT, ch. 92; De spir. III, ad 13. For some discussions on this point in contemporary Thomism, see John Haldane An Interpretation of the Conception of Jesus Christ 75 discarded by Aquinas when formulating the mystery of the Incarnation; for him, the conception of the Son of God is an exception, not only on the ontological plane and on that of grace, but also, and in close connection, on the strictly organic. Jesus does not go through merely vegetative or sensitive phases before receiving a human soul: He is fully man—and fully God— from the moment of conception.14 As a result of the debates raised by the question of abortion, the magisterium of the Catholic Church has repeatedly and consistently defended the belief that the life of the human person begins at the moment of conception,15 which of course also applies to the case of Jesus Christ. The Word assumes a complete human nature—soul and body—at the same instant in which that nature is generated under the action of the Holy Spirit.16 From this follows the infeasibility of introducing chronological differences between the generation of the organicity of Christ, the creation of his soul, and the Incarnation of the Word. The Work of the Holy Spirit in the Conception of Jesus Christ The faith of the primitive Church in the virginal motherhood of Mary and the early rejection of the adoptionist doctrine are two clear testimonies that, for the first Christian communities, the humanity of Jesus Christ could not be conceived as the result of an ordinary generative act, if by such we mean one in which a male and a female procreate.17 But on the other hand, 14 15 16 17 and Patrick Lee, “Aquinas on Human Ensoulment, Abortion and the Value of Life,” Philosophy 78, no. 2 (2003): 255–78; Jason Eberl, Thomistic Principles and Bioethics (New York: Routledge, 2006), 23–42; Craig Payne, Why a Fetus is a Human Person from the Moment of Conception: A Revisionist Interpretation of Thomas Aquinas’s Treatise on Human Nature (New York: Edwin Mellen, 2010); Fabrizio Amerini, Aquinas on the Beginning and End of Human Life, trans. M. Henninger (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013). See ST III, q. 33, a. 2, ad 3: “What the Philosopher says is true in the generation of other men, because the body is successively formed and disposed for the soul: whence, first, as being imperfectly disposed, it receives an imperfect soul; and afterwards, when it is perfectly disposed, it receives a perfect soul. But Christ’s body, on account of the infinite power of the agent, was perfectly disposed instantaneously. Wherefore, at once and in the first instant it received a perfect form, that is, the rational soul.” See also In III sent., d. 3, q. 5, a. 2; SCG. IV, ch. 44; CT, ch. 218; In Ioan 1, lec. 9. See Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC], 2nd ed. (Washington DC: United States Catholic Conference of Bishops, 2019), nos. 2270–75; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Donum Vitae, I.1–6; III; Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et Spes §51; Codex Iuris Canonici, cans. 1314, 1398. See notes 59 and 60 below. For the virginity of Mary in early professions of faith, see Heinrich Denzinger, 76 Juan Eduardo Carreño the ancient pagan model of theogamy, where divinities fertilize women in a physical (i.e., sexual) or quasi-physical way, did not fit well either with what revelation teaches about the Incarnation of the Word. The reason for this discrepancy is not to be found in some kind of taboo, and even less in any alleged disregard for corporeality. In the context of an authentically Christian understanding, the luminous glory of the shadow of the Holy Spirit that has fallen on Mary, precisely because of its transcendent character, goes far beyond the categorical plane that belongs to second causalities, including of course that of sexuality.18 God is truly the Father of Jesus Christ, but in a sense whose depth infinitely exceeds—and ultimately founds—the reality of biological fatherhood.19 Seen thus, the conception of Jesus Christ overflows all the Old and New Testament prophetic figures, including that of his cousin, John the Baptist, in whose miraculous generation the power of God certainly intervened, but with the assistance of a man and an elderly and sterile woman (see Luke 1:5–25). The only begotten Son, by contrast, becomes flesh with God as the immediate, direct, and transcendent cause and Mary as the ever-virgin mother. This is true, as we said, for ancient images that depict gods copulating with women, but also for those who, in our day, are tempted to introduce the idea of a divinity that manipulates certain second causes—sperm, pronucleus, chromosome endowment, or whatever—to bring about the fertilization of Mary and Incarnation of the Word.20 Faced with such conjectures, it must be emphasized that God truly acts in his creation, while transcending the type of causality that belongs to his creatures. And, for this reason, the paternity of God seen in the person of his eternal Son definitely exceeds not only the limit of biological generation, but also that of the causal efficiency proper to human intervention. In short, God has not sexually begotten Jesus Christ, 18 19 20 Enchiridion Symbolorum: A Compendium of Creeds, Definitions and Declarations of the Catholic Church, ed. Peter Huenermann, 43rd ed. [DH], English ed. Robert Fastiggi and Anne Nash Englund (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), nos. 10–64. Here we can also mention the testimony of Augustine, who points out that we do not have to look for examples in nature to explain the virginity of Mary (Epistle 162, no. 7). As Gerhard Müller points out: “Sexuality is an expression of created causality. But Yahweh is not a creature. He acts on creatures, but not in a creaturely way” (Dogmática: teoría y práctica de la teología [Barcelona: Herder, 2009], 320; trans. mine); see also Müller, Nato della Vergine Maria: Interpretazione teológica [Brescia: Morcelliana, 1994]). See Miguel Ponce, “María en la reflexión teológica,” in Diccionario de teología, ed. César Izquierdo et al., 3rd ed. (Pamplona: EUNSA, 2014), 628–29. See, for example, Roger J. Berry, “The Virgin Birth of Christ,” Science & Christian Belief 8 (1997): 101–10. An Interpretation of the Conception of Jesus Christ 77 but neither has he operated a kind of assisted fertilization. Ultimately, these hypotheses perpetuate an error similar to that described of theogamy, namely to reduce divine causality to the plane of creaturely causality. A variant of this categorical error is embodied in the hypothesis that appeals to parthenogenesis to show that Jesus Christ was conceived in the womb of Mary without male participation.21 Here, the oocyte of the Virgin would have self-fertilized. To explain the obvious sex difference between mother and child, those who introduce this idea are forced to add a number of assumptions. For example, they hypothesize that Mary would have been a carrier of the “histocompatibility factor Y,” which could explain why Jesus— genetically female— had the phenotypically masculine appearance assigned him by the Scriptures and Tradition.22 From this perspective, the miracle of the Incarnation of Jesus would have resided less in the fact of his conception than in being born male. Some critics have objected that parthenogenesis is a form of asexual reproduction that does not occur naturally in mammals.23 This being an unnatural way of conceiving in humans, it would follow it could not have been so in the case of Jesus, who is truly man. Others— perhaps better focused—emphasize the incompatibility of this hypothesis with Christological dogma. Certainly, the idea that Jesus has a masculine appearance but carries a chromosomal abnormality (from which, according to some evidence, a testicular disorder would follow) seems to put force into the article of faith that declares the Savior perfect God and perfect man.24 While it goes without saying how bizarre this conjecture can be in the light of the Christian faith, it seems, however, that truly significant in this whole discussion is not so much the hypothesis of parthenogenesis itself as the objections raised against it. We believe a fundamental blurring is operating here. First, that mammals, including man, do not usually reproduce by parthenogenesis is not an outright objection to their postulation as God’s chosen path to his Incarnation. As we specify later, the Church teaches that Christ is truly man, but also that the fullness of divinity resides in him, 21 22 23 24 See Edward Kessel, “A Proposed Biological Interpretation of the Virgin Birth,” Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation 35 (1983): 129–36. The prophet Jeremiah has been cited to give biblical support to the model (see Jer 31:22). According to some, the passage in question states: “For Yahweh has presented a new thing on earth: a woman who must become a man.” In the translations we have in view, however, it can be read: “For Yahweh is creating something new on earth: the Woman sets out to find her Husband again.” See Giuseppe Benagiano and Bruno Dallapiccola, “Can Modern Biology Interpret the Mystery of the Birth of Christ?,” The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine 28, no. 2 (2015): 240–44. See note 57 below. 78 Juan Eduardo Carreño something that cannot be said of any other human being. He is unique and exceptional from the moment of conception, which does not harm his humanity. As Aquinas shows, Jesus Christ being truly a man does not require his conception to be the same as that of other men; it is enough that the result of that conception is an individual possessing human nature, which certainly happens with Jesus.25 Second, and as noted previously, the Christian proclaims his faith in an Almighty Father. Had the Father wanted to resort to parthenogenesis to perform the miracle of the Incarnation, he certainly could have done so. In this sense, objections pointing to the incompatibility of parthenogenesis with faith in Jesus Christ as perfect man attempt to safeguard a true point of doctrine without considering that God’s action is not constrained by any biological process. In principle, because of his infinite active power, nothing prevents God causing a parthenogenetic process in a healthy woman—Mary—resulting in a healthy male embryo, Jesus.26 With the above argument, we do not intend to support the idea of a parthenogenetic Incarnation, but to highlight, on the other hand, the inadequacy of the arguments used to reject it. The underlying problem is not the normality or otherwise of parthenogenesis as a biological reproductive process, but rather whether it respects a crucial aspect of the Christian faith, reiterated over the centuries: the conception of the human nature of Jesus Christ is the work of the Holy Spirit.27 Now, the main characteristic of parthenogenesis, whether natural or artificially induced, is that the parent is the sole, or at least principal, cause of its offspring. In other words, if God had chosen this process for the Incarnation, the human nature of Jesus would have had as its immediate and main cause only the Virgin Mary. In such a setting, it can still be said that God had causally concurred in the process—facilitating it or preventing certain undesired results—but with a type of intervention approaching, at times, that of a technologist manipulating organisms in a lab. Such an image is undoubtedly inadmissible within Catholic orthodoxy. If these considerations prevent us from reducing the causal role of God in the Incarnation to that of a mere creature, it is also possible to err in the 25 26 27 For Aquinas, see ST III, q. 33, a. 4, ad 1 and In II sent., d. 3, q. 2, a. 2 (see note 98 below). To be fair, Benagiano and Dallapiccola, in the article cited above, do not entirely rule out the possibility of a miraculous intervention employing the parthenogenetic process, but seem to argue this would close the way to a fruitful epistemological interaction between theology and biology. As we argue at the end of this article, we sustain a different position on this point. See notes 53–55 below. An Interpretation of the Conception of Jesus Christ 79 opposite direction, something perhaps more frequent today. Without a rigorous assessment of the transcendent character of divine action in the Incarnation in its ontological status, one can go to the extreme of suppressing the effective reality of divine causality. Thus, the literature contains many testimonies of authors who empty the mystery of the Incarnation of Jesus and the virginal conception of Mary of any real foundation: These stories or myths can be regarded sacred insofar as they deal with primordial and fundamental realities, which provide support for a rituality and ethical normativity.28 For example, in an article expressly intended to address the question of the birth of Jesus Christ, Ann Milliken Pederson and her colleagues state that what is really important is not the how but the why of the Incarnation, which they understand as a “redemptive narrative” or an expression of “the mystery and grace of God’s incarnation not only in human nature, but also in all of nature.”29 For our part, we agree with these authors that the purpose of the Incarnation, as revealed to us, is much more important for the life of the believer than any rational inquiry about the way such a miracle could have happened. However, it does not follow that this last exercise is the idle result of a mere curiositas. As Aquinas teaches, the end has an indisputable ontological primacy over the other causalities, but it is still true that, without the exercise of those causalities, the end simply would not come to be.30 An illustration of this truth is provided by Pederson and colleagues themselves when, despite statements to the contrary, they cannot but refer to the event that made possible the union of the human and the divine in the person of Jesus. Their words are quite expressive in this regard: “For theological and consequently, biological reasons, we believe that the birth of Jesus must be 28 29 30 Just as an example, see Ernest Renan, Vie de Jésus (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1924); Alfred Loisy, L'Évangile et l'Église (Paris: Picard, 1902); Histoire et mythe à propos de Jésus-Christ (Paris: Librairie Emile Nourry, 1938); Martin Dibelius, Jesus (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1949); George A. Wells, The Jesus Myth (Chicago: Open Court, 1998). See Ann Milliken Pederson et al., “Fully Human and Fully Divine: The Birth of Christ and the Role of Mary,” Religions 6 (2015): 172–81. Following the Aristotelian antecedent, Aquinas teaches that the efficient is the cause of the thing that is the end, but it does not cause the end to be the end; conversely, the final cause does not give the efficient its efficiency, but it does give it its status as cause. Therefore, it can be said that the end is causa causarum, i.e., the cause of the causality of the other causes, including not only the efficient, but also the formal and material. (De princ., ch. 4). 80 Juan Eduardo Carreño fully human—Jesus must have had a human mother and a human father. Otherwise, Jesus is not fully human.”31 These authors argue that a perspective focused on how the Incarnation could take place brings dissent and disunity, while one focused on its redemptive purpose produces the opposite effects.32 But, as we see, their reflection on the intention of the Incarnation already implies a position about the way it should be understood, and of course, the kind of agents intervening in it. We do not see how this position could provoke that longed-for union to which the authors appeal, not even on the margins of Protestantism. Later, we address the substantive argument these authors raise about the need for a biological father for Jesus; for now, we must insist that the affirmation of the transcendence of divine action in no way diminishes the effectiveness of its causation.33 God truly acts in the world and, of course, in the Incarnation of the Word. The most obvious indication of this is the result of that action—not a narrative, myth, or exhortation, but a person of flesh and blood, named Jesus, who lived and walked in Palestine, and in whom, according to Scripture, “the whole fulness of deity dwells bodily” (Col 2:9).34 The Participation of the Virgin Mary in the Conception of Jesus Christ Diametrically opposed to the above are authors who, based on both contemporary biological knowledge and theological reasons, tend to minimize any causality Mary may have exerted in the conception of Jesus. As is known, a tradition that dates back to Aristotle in the West—and which, according 31 32 33 34 Pederson et al., “Fully Human and Fully Divine,” 176. See Pederson et al., “Fully Human and Fully Divine,” 175. See Joseph Ratzinger, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 56–57: “Karl Barth pointed out that there are two moments in the story of Jesus when God intervenes directly in the material world: the virgin birth and the resurrection from the tomb, in which Jesus did not remain, nor see corruption. These two moments are a scandal to the modern spirit. God is ‘allowed’ to act in ideas and thoughts, in the spiritual domain—but not in the material. That is shocking. He does not belong there. But that is precisely the point: God is God and he does not operate merely on the level of ideas. In that sense, what is at stake in both of these moments is God’s very godhead. The question that they raise is: does matter also belong to him? . . . If God does not also have power over matter, then he simply is not God. But he does have this power, and through the conception and resurrection of Jesus Christ he has ushered in a new creation.” Thomas Joseph White lucidly shows the doctrine of the hypostatic union to be not mere theological abstraction, but on the contrary, the key to a correct understanding of the historicity of Jesus of Nazareth (The Incarnate Lord: A Thomistic Study in Christology [Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2015], 116–18). An Interpretation of the Conception of Jesus Christ 81 to Joseph Needham, has an even older oriental background35—held that the seed (spérma; semen) that originates the human embryo derives from the male. The man, therefore, would exercise the role of formal and active principle of the generative act. The woman, for her part, would provide the menstrual blood (which she stops losing during pregnancy), acting as the material and passive principle of the generation.36 Although the alternative hypothesis of the two seeds (one derived from the male, the other from the female) boasted distinguished representatives in the Hippocratic school of ancient Greece, and despite Galen’s decisive support in the second century AD, the theses classically associated with the Aristotelian theory of human generation—including not only the idea that the male is the formal principle of generation, but also the aforementioned theory of delayed hominization37—remained present in biological, philosophical, and theological discussions related to human ontogenesis until the late seventeenth century.38 The Aristotelian influence is strongly felt in the texts that Aquinas, the great Scholastic theologian, dedicates to the question of human embryological development. It is not our intention to offer a detailed account of the many conceptual and historical elements involved in this problem, but suffices to underline that the passive role Aquinas assigns to the Virgin in Christ’s conception—which contrasts sharply with the active role assigned her by other thirteenth-century masters of theology39—is undoubtedly influenced by the embryological scheme he receives from the Stagirite. Nonetheless, we think there is room here for a clarification that warns us against some distortions and caricatures that circulate today about the Thomistic understanding of human ontogenesis.40 A careful review of 35 36 37 38 39 40 See Needham, History of Embryology, 18–27. See Aristotle, De generatione animalium 1.2.716a5; 1.19.727b31; 1.20.729a9– 12; 1.21.729b18–21; 2.4.738b20; 6.1.765b10. See also Needham, History of Embryology, 42–43. See note 11 above. Needham writes, in this regard: “If I have devoted such ample space to account of Aristotle’s contributions to embryology, it is, firstly, because they are actually greater in number than those of any other individual embryologist, and secondly, because they had so profound an influence upon the following twenty centuries. Embryology from the third century B.C. to the seventeenth century A.D. is meaningless unless it is studied in the light of Aristotle” (History of Embryology, 54). See Alexander of Hales, Summa universae theologiae III, q. 8, m. 1, qa. incidens 3 (Universae Theologiae Summa, Pars Tertia [Venice: apud Franciscum Franciscium, 1576], 25–26); Bonaventure, In III sent., d. 4, a. 3, qq. 1–2 (Opera omnia, vol. 3 [Quaracchi: Ex Typographia Collegii S. Bonaventurae, 1882], 110–14); Albert the Great, In III sent., d. 3, a. 11 (Opera omnia, ed. Adolphe Borgnet, vol. 28 [Paris, 1894], 53–54). We refer to the decontextualized and distorted use that some make of the Thomist 82 Juan Eduardo Carreño Aquinas’s doctrine regarding the Incarnation shows that his reception of the Aristotelian theory of human generation was in fact selective and critical, as seen in his explicit dismissal of the delayed hominization model in the context of Christology, and in part also in the subtle correction of Aristotelian embryology Aquinas introduces in relation to the Virgin Mary’s participation in the conception of Jesus Christ. Undoubtedly, Thomas affirms that she disposes of a matter that the active virtus of the Holy Spirit informs to originate the human nature of Christ; that matter is not the menstrual blood itself (which, according to Aquinas is already contaminated by a concupiscence that had no place in the mother of Jesus Christ), but a blood actively purified by the organicity of the Virgin herself.41 As we aim to show in the next section, modern biological data offers room to underline further the active role of the Mother of God in the generation of her Son. But it is important to maintain, with Aquinas, the fundamental theological point: In the Incarnation, it is God who has the first initiative, and it is He who has an active role simpliciter. It also seems that a theological agenda inspires a much more extreme theory regarding the Incarnation and Mary’s role in it—the Christological doctrine of the Anabaptists in the sixteenth century. Ignoring the guidelines of the Council of Chalcedon, Menno Simons reissues the ancient monophysitism of Eutiques under his own categories. Jesus Christ, in this framework, possesses only a divine nature; Mary offers her womb for the development of the divine conceptus, but her nature is not assumed by the person of the Word.42 Joyce Irwin has shown convincingly that, while Simons resorts to the Aristotelian theory of biological generation to support his Christological interpretation, the role of the former in the latter is merely instrumental.43 The authentic conceptual horizon in which Simons’s position is inscribed is not that of the controversy between Aristotelians and Galenics regarding human generation (which indeed raged in Europe in the 41 42 43 doctrine to attack the Church’s teaching on abortion, for example. As a good number of scholars agree, and as we underline for the question dealt with here, while Aquinas was indeed strongly influenced by Aristotle’s biology, it seems more than probable that, had he been in possession of the knowledge we have today, his position regarding the status of the embryo would have varied dramatically. For relevant bibliography, see note 13. See ST III, q. 31, a. 5, ad 3. See also In III sent., d. 3, q. 5, a. 1. See Menno Simons, “The Incarnation of Our Lord,” in The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, trans. Leonard Verduin (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1956), 792–813. See Joyce Irwin, “Embryology and the Incarnation: A Sixteenth-Century Debate,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 9, no. 3 (1978): 93–104. An Interpretation of the Conception of Jesus Christ 83 sixteenth century),44 but rather the discussions about the sinless conception of Jesus Christ, which in those years faced Anabaptists and other Protestant denominations. Undoubtedly, the faith in the Immaculate Conception of Mary, not yet then solemnly proclaimed by the Catholic Church despite its long history in Catholicism—was not popular in territories where the weight of the Reformation was felt. So, to ensure that Christ was not touched by Adam’s sin, the option remained—in fact, explicitly defended by Melchior Hoffman—to resort to divine omnipotence, arguing that God exempts his Son from that inheritance associated with human nature. But in the eyes of some, like Simons himself, that alternative seemed suspiciously close to Catholicism. After all, both required an exception to sin, differing only on the generational level—that of the Mother or of the Son—in which such an exception had been worked by God.45 However, the relevant point for Simons and his followers is that Mary’s role in the Incarnation is little more than a biological incubator. The Virgin receives in her womb the fruit of the work of the Holy Spirit, but only to offer him a favorable environment for his development, since she contributes nothing of her own to the human nature of Christ. Also today—albeit in a different theological and cultural framework—there are some inclined to suggest this kind of solution. For example, Joseph Thomas has conjectured that the Holy Spirit may have intervened in creating a totipotent cell, with a complete human genome ready to replicate. The author admits (seemingly without seeing any drawbacks) that, in this scenario, Mary would be the birth but not the biological mother of Christ.46 But the truth is that hypotheses like those of Simons and Thomas end up posing more difficulties than they supposedly solve. One of the most obvious relates to the possibility of reconciling these interpretations with the messianic prophecies that speak of a mediator (king, priest, prophet) who comes from the people of Israel.47 Indeed, if Jesus did not have any blood relationship with Mary—nor, therefore, with any human—it is not at all obvious how he could be an authentic 44 45 46 47 See Roberto Lo Presti, “Scientific Evolution and Embryology: Rejection or Transformation of Antiquity? A Comparison between the Procreation Teachings of Cesare Cremonini, William Harvey and René Descartes,” Sudhoffs Archiv 98, no. 1 (2014): 1–27. See Irwin, “Embryology and the Incarnation,” 94–95. See Joseph Thomas, “If Not Parthenogenesis Why Not ‘In Vivo Embryogenesis’ with Mary as a Birth Mother,” The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine 28, no. 15 (2015): 1850. See, for example: Gen 12:7; Deut 18:15; 2 Sam 7:12; Gen 3: 15; Isa 40–55; Jer 33:17– 18. For the traditional teaching of the Church, see Pope Pius XII’s Divino Afflante Spiritu (DH, nos. 3825–31). 84 Juan Eduardo Carreño descendant of Abraham, Moses, and David, and thus fulfill the Old Testament prophecies. On the other hand, the idea of a Virgin who only harbors Jesus seems to conflict with the condition of the Mother of God that the Tradition and the magisterium explicitly attribute to Mary; rather, it could be said, as Nestorius affirmed (although for reasons different from those of Simons), that she is Θεοδόχος, the one who receives God.48 A Plausible Interpretation of the Conception of Jesus Christ Without excluding other possible approaches, we adopt here as our theological framework the doctrine received, enriched, and transmitted within the Catholic Church, as formulated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the councils, encyclical letters, and other texts of canonical and magisterial rank. This is not intended to restrict the speculative scope of the intelligence of faith to the mere repetition of these truths; however, an effort to deepen the understanding of the mystery of the Incarnation, carried out within the framework of the Catholic faith, must respect at least certain points of doctrine, outlined in general below. This is followed by a brief recapitulation of the events described by current developmental biology and embryology. The third part outlines a potential interpretation of the Incarnation that remains sensitive to these biological facts while respectful of Catholic doctrine. The Incarnation of the Word in the Light of the Catholic Faith The Catechism places the mystery of the Holy Trinity at the center of Christian faith and life, the source and root of all other mysteries, including, of course, the Incarnation.49 Indeed, the mystery of the “only Son of the Father” ( John 1:14) makes sense only in the context of the Trinitarian faith, which confesses one God in three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who differ strongly because of their reciprocal relationships, while being each identical to the fullness of the one and indivisible divine nature.50 But the reverse is 48 49 50 See Karl R. Hagenbach, Compendium of the History of the Doctrines, vol. 1, trans. Carl M. Buch (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1850), 297–98. It is telling that Joseph Thomas’s colleagues clearly perceive the obvious difficulty his suggestion implies; see Giuseppe Benagiano and Bruno Dallapiccola, “Authors’ Response to J Thomas: ‘If Not Parthenogenesis Why Not “In Vivo Embryogenesis” with Mary as a Birth Mother,’” The Journal of Maternal-Fetal & Neonatal Medicine 28, no. 16 (2015): 1917. See CCC §§234, 249. See Compendio del Catecismo de la Iglesia Católica (San Bernardo, Chile: Obispado San Bernardo, 2005), 34. An Interpretation of the Conception of Jesus Christ 85 also true, because, if there is no lack of evidence of the Trinity in creation and in the Old Testament, this is ultimately “a mystery that is inaccessible to reason alone or even to Israel’s faith before the Incarnation of God’s Son and the sending of the Holy Spirit.”51 It is Jesus Christ who reveals the paternity of God, not only as creator of everything that exists but also, and above all, as eternally begetting the Word, “the reflection of God’s glory and bears the impress of God’s own being” (Heb 1:3). Already by the fourth century, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Symbol recognizes and confesses Jesus Christ as “the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made.”52 This same profession of faith adds that, for our salvation, and through the work of the Holy Spirit, the Word “was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, and became man.”53 Some centuries beforehand, the Symbol of the Apostles proclaimed that the Lord “was conceived by the Holy Spirit” and “born of the Virgin Mary.”54 These early texts testify that the Church has, from its origins, confessed that Mary, by virtue of a special choice of the Father, freely assented in “the obedience of faith” (Rom 1:5) to conceive in her womb “the Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:32) absque semine concepisse ex Spiritu Sancto, as stated in the classic formula of the Lateran Council of 649.55 In support of this last point, we also quote the words that, according to Matthew, the angel of the Lord transmits to Joseph in dreams: “Do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit” (Matt 1:20). Joseph obeys, and without his having known her, his wife gives birth to a son, “and he named him Jesus” (1:25). The virginal conception of Jesus of Nazareth cannot be reduced to a myth without seriously damaging the integrity of the Christian faith in the Incarnation. Jesus is the eternal Son of the Father according to divine nature, but also the true Son of Mary according to human nature. Of these filiations, however, the first has the primacy that properly corresponds to the Lord for two reasons: Firstly, the conception of his human nature is the work of the Holy Spirit, as shown; secondly, as the Council of Chalcedon teaches that, although there are two natures in Jesus, they remain united, 51 52 53 54 55 CCC §237. Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, in DH no. 150. Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, in DH no. 150. Old Roman Symbol, in DH, no. 30. For other similar but older formulas, see DH nos. 10–29. Lateran Council of 649, in DH no. 503. 86 Juan Eduardo Carreño without confusion, in the only person of the Word.56 This conclusion rests on the Christological truth of the hypostatic union that the aforementioned Council expresses in a well-known formula: “We unanimously teach and confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, composed of rational soul and body; consubstantial with the Father as to his divinity and consubstantial with us as to his humanity.”57 Everything in the humanity of Jesus—complements the Catechism—must be attributed to his divine person as its proper subject, who works through the human nature he has assumed, including “not only His miracles but also His suffering and even His death.”58 As a divine person, Jesus Christ is always and above all the only begotten Son of the Father. But, on the other hand, and as the third ecumenical council meeting in Ephesus teaches, the Virgin Mary is truly called Θεοτόκος, “not that the nature of the Word or His divinity received the beginning of its existence from the holy Virgin, but that, since the holy body, animated by a rational soul, which the Word of God united to himself according to the hypostasis, was born from her, the Word is said to be born according to the flesh.”59 Herein is already contained the truth—which the Church expressly teaches—according to which the Son of God has assumed human nature from the moment of conception.60 Note that this is not an embryological subtlety, but a Christological thesis closely linked to the doctrine of the hypostatic union. Christ’s human nature certainly cannot be assumed except from his conception, because it is the person of the Son that gives him the ontological support necessary for effective existence. On the contrary, admitting that this nature could have developed before the Incarnation itself presupposes some hypostasis of its own, different from that of the Word, 56 57 58 59 60 See Council of Chalcedon, in DH no. 302; CCC §467. Council of Chalcedon, in DH no. 301. CCC §468. See also Council of Ephesus, in DH no. 255. For an intelligent analysis of this doctrine in the thought of Aquinas, see Dominic Legge, The Trinitarian Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 103–28. Council of Ephesus, in DH no. 251. It is interesting, in this regard, that the Greek word Θεοτόκος is frequently translated into Latin as Deipara or Dei genetrix. The word genetrix perhaps has a broader meaning than the original Greek term, since it alludes not only to the very act of giving birth, but to that of mother, begetter, producer. See, for example, Giuseppe Alberigo, Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. Centro di Documentazione Istituto per le Scienze Religiose Bologna (Barcelona: Herder, 1962), 46, 48, 62, and throughout. See CCC §466: “Christ’s humanity has no other subject than the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it and made it his own, from his conception.” For Aquinas’s thought on this point, see note 14 above. An Interpretation of the Conception of Jesus Christ 87 a conjecture close to the Nestorian heresy and expressly discarded by the Council of Ephesus.61 It is significant that, in the event of the Annunciation and in response to the Virgin's question about how she could be a mother, “since I have no knowledge of man” (Luke 1: 34), the angel Gabriel alludes to the situation of Elizabeth, her cousin, also expecting a child at an advanced age, “for nothing is impossible to God” (Luke 1:37). His limitless power extends to all creation, which he has brought into being ex nihilo, but in a particularly diaphanous way, as the angel warns, in this unprecedented fact of the Incarnation and its culmination in the crucifixion, “to the Jews an obstacle they cannot get over, to the gentiles foolishness” (1 Cor 1:23). The admission of this point, as shown below, plays a fundamental role regarding that methodological strategy which, in our opinion, should underpin an approach to the problem of the biological dimension inherent in the Incarnation of the Word. God, as Aquinas teaches, can do everything that can be done, and therefore, no limitation or necessity constrains his actions.62 But neither should one fall into the opposite error of conceiving God as an arbitrary monarch.63 As the 61 62 63 See the Council of Ephesus: “For he was not first begotten of the holy virgin, a man like us, and then the Word descended upon him; but from the very womb of his mother he was so united and then underwent begetting according to the flesh, making his own the begetting of his own flesh” (DH no. 251). For some passages in which Aquinas expressly quotes the Luke 1:37, see De pot., q. 1, a. 3, sc; SCG II, ch. 22, no. 7; ST I, q. 25, a. 3, sc. According to Aquinas, the inherent limits of every being cannot be ascribed to the power of God, because its essence is infinite; neither is it affected by the restrictions that constrain nature, since its power is the origin and exceeds all nature; finally, it is not legitimate to confine the divine power to a given, factual order, because that order depends on the will of God. Besides the passages cited above, see De pot., q. 1, a. 2, corp.; SCG II, chs. 22, 23, 26–27; In I sent., d. 42, q. 2, a. 2; d. 43, q. 1, aa. 1–2; q. 2, aa. 1, 2; d. 44, aa. 1–4; ST I, q. 25, aa. 2, 5–6. This image has its roots in a conceptual shift that took place between the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, strongly influenced by the Condemnations of Paris of 1277 and the speculations of the canonists at the end of the thirteenth century. The bibliography available on this issue is vast. For some relevant studies, see Francis Oakley, Omnipotence, Covenant, and Order: An Excursion in the History of Ideas from Abelard to Leibniz (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984); Eugenio Randi, “La vergine e il papa: Potentia Dei absoluta e plenitudo potestatis papale nel XIV secolo,” History of Political Thought 5, no. 3 (1984): 425–45; William Courtenay, “The Dialectic of Omnipotence in the High and Late Middle Ages,” in Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Tamar Rudavsky (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1985), 243–69; Gijsbert van den Brink, Almighty God: A Study of the Doctrine of Divine Omnipotence (Kempen: Kok Pharos, 1993); Massimiliano Traversino Di Cristo, “The Classic Age of the Distinction between God’s Absolute and Ordered Power: In, Around, and After the Pontificate of John XXII (1316–1334),” Franciscan Studies 76, no. 1 (2018): 207–66. 88 Juan Eduardo Carreño symbols of the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed confess, God is almighty but a Father Almighty.64 What Biology Tells Us about Human Ontogeny Speculation about human conception, development, and gestation has a long tradition, the many details of which lie beyond the scope of this paper.65 It suffices to point out that, especially from the eighteenth century, a new approach to organic life has triggered a rapid advance in morphology, physiology, and taxonomy. Of course, the scientific approach to the early stages of human development is not exempt from this progress. With the 1759 publication of Caspar Friedrich Wolff ’s thesis, Theoria generationis, the epigenetic embryology of William Harvey (where adult structures are not preformed but emerge throughout development) took on a new force, becoming the dominant conceptual framework in the field to this day. The next great step lies in the intersection of embryology with the new genetic discipline already claiming its place on the scientific scene.66 From this synthesis emerges a narrative whose general and most significant outlines—at least with regard to the subject of concern here—can be summarized as follows. The sperm that comes into contact with glycoproteins in the zona pellucida surrounding the plasma membrane of the oocyte undergoes the so-called “acrosome reaction.” Enzymes released allow penetration of the zona pellucida and membrane of the female gamete.67 With this last event 64 65 66 67 See Old Roman Symbol, in DH no. 30; Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, in DH no. 150. For a commentary, see Rémi Brague, The Kingdom of Man, trans. Paul Seaton (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame Press, 2018), 130. Besides the work of Needham, quoted above, see Frederick B. Churchill, “The History of Embryology as Intellectual History,” Journal of the History of Biology 1, no. 3 (1970): 155–56; Richard M. Burian and Scott F. Gilbert, “Selected bibliography on History of Embryology and Development,” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 22, no. 3 (2000): 325–33. See Pedro Laín Entralgo, Historia de la medicina (Barcelona: Salvat, 1978), 434–38. It should not be overlooked that the historical and conceptual link between genetics and embryology was not without difficulties and disagreements. See in this regard Garland E. Allen, “Heredity under an Embryological Paradigm: The Case of Genetics and Embryology,” The Biological Bulletin 168, no. S (1985): 107–21. For an overview, see Noritaka Hirohashi and Ryuzo Yanagimachi, “Sperm Acrosome Reaction: Its Site and Role in Fertilization,” Biology of Reproduction 99, no. 1 (2018): 127–33; Hanisha H. Bhakta, Fares H. Refai, and Matteo A. Avella, “The Molecular Mechanisms Mediating Mammalian Fertilization,” Development 146, no. 15 (2019): 1–13; Karen K. Siu, Vitor Hugo B. Serrão, Ahmed Ziyyat, et al., “The Cell Biology of Fertilization: Gamete Attachment and Fusion,” Journal of Cell Biology 220, no. 10 (2021): 1–15. An Interpretation of the Conception of Jesus Christ 89 begins the activation of the oocyte, which entails a coordinated sequence of phenomena including the hyperpolarization of its membrane, increases in intracellular calcium, exocytosis of the cortical granules (which in the case of the human, modify the zona pellucida to prevent the penetration of new spermatozoa), and termination of the second meiotic division with elimination of the second polar corpuscle.68 At the same time, the sperm nucleus is incorporated into the cytoplasm of the oocyte in minutes, its envelope disaggregated, and the chromatin decondensed by contact with proteins and factors present in the cytoplasm of the oocyte. The release of the second polar corpuscle is accompanied by a recondensation of the sperm chromatin, which is enveloped in its respective pronucleus. On the opposite periphery, the female pronucleus becomes less dense and small. This is followed by the synthesis and duplication of the genetic material, the configuration of the mitotic spindle, the approach and disintegration of the pronuclei membranes, and the alignment of the chromosomes.69 The zygote thus formed, unlike gametes, is already a diploid cell with a karyotype and genetic profile typical of its species.70 Research in recent decades has shown that this zygote experiences accelerated metabolic activation, with early transcriptional activity; besides, the characteristic three-dimensional cytoplasmic arrangement of its various parts and structures, as well as other biochemical changes, constitutes a reservoir of biological information that, since not strictly dependent on its genes, is called epigenetic.71 All the cells, tissues, and organs that, a few months later, can be identified in a newborn, and years later in any of us, derive from this zygote through a fundamentally continuous process of development. Approximately twenty-six hours after fertilization, the first cleavage occurs, beginning the segmentation process.72 This first division results in an embryo composed of two cells (blastomeres) whose phenotype and 68 69 70 71 72 See Binyam Mogessie, Kathleen Scheffler, and Melina Schuh, “Assembly and Positioning of the Oocyte Meiotic Spindle,” Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology 34 (2018): 381–403. See Thomas W. Sadler, Langman’s Medical Embryology, 14th ed. (Philadelphia: Kluwer, 2019), 41–42. See Alejandro Serani, “El estatuto antropológico del embrión humano,” in El viviente humano (Pamplona: EUNSA, 2000), 77–92; Jason Eberl, “Metaphysical and Moral Status of Cryopreserved Embryos,” The Linacre Quarterly 79, no. 3 (2012): 304–15. See Xudong Fu, Chunxia Zhang, and Yi Zhang, “Epigenetic Regulation of Mouse Preimplantation Embryo Development,” Current Opinion in Genetics & Development 64 (2020): 13–20. See Fernando J. Prados, Sophie Debrock, Josephine G. Lemmen, et al., “The Cleavage Stage Embryo,” Human Reproduction 27, no. S1 (2012): 53. 90 Juan Eduardo Carreño final destination will be different. Thus, by the fifth day, the human embryo already has two differentiated tissues. Inside, there is a set of cells known as the inner cell mass (derived from the blastomere that carries the entry point of the sperm), from which will originate human body tissues. Surrounding this mass, it is possible to identify a layer of polarized cells (originating from the other blastomere), collectively referred to as a trophoblast.73 On the sixth day, implantation of the embryo begins, with erosion of the endometrial tissue by the trophoblastic cells, triggering a complex process that lasts until the third or fourth month of pregnancy, the tangible result of which is the placenta. This organ, derived from the embryo and the mother, performs important nutritional, respiratory, excretory, endocrine, immunological, and protective functions.74 During the second week of development, the cells that make up the inner cell mass additionally differentiate into two types, the epiblast and hypoblast, together comprising the bilaminar disc.75 The germ layers of the ectoderm and endoderm then emerge from this disc, and during gastrulation (third week of development), an intermediate layer forms, the mesoderm, at which time, the embryo is already said to have a trilaminar arrangement.76 During the embryogenesis phase (until the eighth week of development in the case of the human species), the tissues making up the body differentiate from these three germ layers.77 In the third week of this phase in particular, the first identifiable anatomical structures of the 73 74 75 76 77 See Subhadra Devi, Inderbir Singh’s Human Embryology (London: Health Sciences Publisher, 2017), 53; Julie Firmin, Jean-Léon Maître, “Morphogenesis of the Human Preimplantation Embryo: Bringing Mechanics to the Clinics,” Seminars in Cell & Developmental Biology 120 (2021): 22–31. See Emin Maltepe and Susan J. Fisher, “Placenta: the Forgotten Organ,” Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology 31 (2015): 523–52; Martin Knöfler, Sandra Haider, Leila Saleh, et al., “Human Placenta and Trophoblast Development: Key Molecular Mechanisms and Model Systems,” Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences 76, no. 18 (2019): 3479–96. See Anna L. Boss, Lawrence W. Chamley, and Joanna L. James, “Placental Formation in Early Pregnancy: How Is the Centre of the Placenta Made?” Human Reproduction Update 24, no. 6 (2018): 750–60. See William Hamilton, J. D. Boyd, and Harland Mossman, Human Embryology— Prenatal Development of Form and Function, 4th ed. (Cambridge, UK: Heffer, 1972); Tomonori Nakamura, Ikuhiro Okamoto, Kotaro Sasaki, et al., “A Developmental Coordinate of Pluripotency among Mice, Monkeys and Humans,” Nature 537 (2016): 57–62. See Cathy Vaillancourt and Julie Lafond, “Human Embryogenesis: Overview,” Human Embryogenesis 550 (2009): 3–7. An Interpretation of the Conception of Jesus Christ 91 nervous and cardiovascular systems appear, derived from the ectoderm and mesoderm, respectively.78 From the ninth week, the conceptus is already classified as a human fetus, a stage that lasts until birth. During this phase, no new organs or tissues form, but rather those already formed mature (which, in some cases, such as the nervous, urogenital, locomotor, respiratory, and digestive systems, remain incomplete until later in postnatal life), with intensive and sequential growth of body mass.79 Although there is no formal and universally accepted staging of the fetal period, some relevant milestones exist from the biological point of view. Between weeks 9 and 12, the body begins to grow faster than the head, the mouth is formed, the palate is completed, the intestines enter the abdomen from the umbilical cord, and blood production shifts from liver to spleen. The fetus can produce urine and excrete it in the amniotic fluid. During subsequent weeks, the head becomes smaller in proportion to the body, and there is an active ossification of the fetal skeleton. Also, reflex responses and muscle activity begin. By week 21, myelination of the spinal cord is already underway, and until week 25, a significant increase in body mass is observed. At this stage, there are already startle reflexes and rapid eye movements, the eyebrows and eyelashes are fully formed, and from week 24, the lungs begin to produce surfactant. Between weeks 26 and 29, blood production shifts again, this time from spleen to bone marrow. The central nervous system is now mature enough to direct respiratory movements, and the available subcutaneous fat already allows some maintenance of body temperature. The eyelids begin to open. From week 30, and until birth, there is a rapid deposition of body fat, which increases at a rate of fourteen grams per day; the physiological systems, including the pulmonary, are already in their final stage of intrauterine maturation, the skin appears smooth, and a fine hair that covers it, called lanugo, gradually disappears, as is also the case with vernix caseoso, a greasy whitish substance produced by sebaceous glands to protects the fetal skin from amniotic fluid. At term, the typical fetus 78 79 See Felicitas L. Lacbawan and Maximilian Muenke, “Central Nervous System Embryogenesis and Its Failures,” Pediatric and Developmental Pathology 5, no. 5 (2002): 425–47; Adriana Gittenberger-de Groot, Margot M. Bartelings, Marco C. Deruiter, et al., “Basics of Cardiac Development for the Understanding of Congenital Heart Malformations,” Pediatric Research 57, no. 2 (2005): 169–76. See David C. Mundy and Gustavo Vilchez, “Overview of the Normal Development of the Human Embryo and Fetus,” in The Diagnosis and Management of the Acute Abdomen in Pregnancy, ed. Peter B. Greenspan (Cham, Netherlands: Springer, 2018), 25–39. 92 Juan Eduardo Carreño weighs approximately thirty-two hundred grams and is between forty-eight and fifty-two centimeters long.80 Integration of Biological Facts in an Interpretation of the Incarnation of the Word The biological process described cannot be applied, without qualification, to the conception of Jesus Christ. In this, as noted, the material and auxiliary role that particular discipline plays with respect to the deposit of faith is illustrated. Only by considering the dogma is it possible to build a narrative that integrates, as far as possible—and always tentatively—the contribution of biology to our necessarily finite understanding of the mystery of the Incarnation of the Word. Considering these clauses, it seems reasonable to speculate, with all the caution the case warrants, that the immediate corporal disposition the Virgin could have offered with her acceptance consisted of an oocyte capable of fertilization. This gamete, as we said, has a series of peculiarities that distinguish it from other cells, including a haploid set of chromosomes (half of the chromosomes), abundant cytoplasmic organelles (especially mitochondria, from which all those of the future embryo derive), and a still partially known series of cytosolic, nuclear, and membrane elements and factors that make it suitable to generate, under the right conditions, a new organism of the human species. We say that this is only the immediate organic disposition the Virgin has freely placed at the service of God, since an oocyte by itself, isolated from the whole of which it is a part, is completely unviable. Undoubtedly, the functional sexual cell the Virgin presumably provides for the conception of Jesus Christ is the corollary of a chain of physiological processes that, ultimately, involve the whole of her bodily economy.81 Mary, in other words, has put her entire body in God’s hands, and does so because she has placed all her spirit and being at his service.82 This body constitutes the first environment—maternal, fully feminine, welcoming, protective, and sheltering—of the zygote generated from the oocyte by the transcendent and real action of 80 81 82 See Keith L. Moore, Trivedi Vidhya Persaud, and Mark G. Torchia, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology (Philadelphia: Saunders, 2018), 87–91; Sadler, Langman’s Medical Embryology, 106–9. See Ioannis E. Messinis, Christina I. Messini, and Konstantinos Dafopoulos, “Novel Aspects of the Endocrinology of the Menstrual cycle,” Reproductive Biomedicine Online 28, no. 6 (2014): 714–22; Sadler, Langman’s Medical Embryology, 34–38. See Joseph Ratzinger, “Et Incarnatus Est de Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine,” Theotokos 3 (1995): 291–302; Vincenzo Battaglia, “Umanità/corporeità e sensibilità affettiva di Gesù di Nazaret. Prospettive di ricerca per ‘ri-dire’ l’evento dell’Incarnazion e,” Carthaginensia 35, vol. 67 (2019): 53–79. An Interpretation of the Conception of Jesus Christ 93 the Holy Spirit. This zygote is, from a strictly biological viewpoint, a fragile and tiny unicellular organism, but this little living being already has a name: He is called Jesus—God saves—because in him is fulfilled the promise made by God to Adam and to all mankind.83 He is the one expected, the one that, a few months later, the old Simeon will recognize in the Temple as “a light of revelation for the gentiles and glory for your people Israel” (Luke 2:32). That cell, like all of its class and species, is already a person. What distinguishes it from all the others that have existed and will exist, however, is that in it resides the fullness of divinity. This zygote is the only begotten Son of God, since in him the second person of the Holy Trinity has assumed human nature. A whole God in a single cell, sheltered and nourished by the organic tissues provided by his virginal mother, an anticipation of those others with which Mary will clothe her Son and the shroud with which she will cover him after death on the Cross. Here is the most amazing, wonderful realization of God’s tenderness. After a few hours, the zygote undergoes a first division, followed by others. About a week later, the human body of Jesus goes through the embryonic phase of a blastocyst and implants itself in Mary’s uterus, already modified and prepared by the action of the hormones of pregnancy. As noted previously, this milestone marks the beginning of the formation of the placenta, an organ to which the tissues of the mother, Mary, and of the unborn person, Jesus, contribute, in close and intimate cooperation. With gastrulation and the formation of the trilaminar embryonic disc, a vigorous phase of organogenesis begins, lasting about two months. During this period, as we said, the organic tissues that make up the true human body of Jesus Christ will originate and continue to develop in the fetal and postnatal stages. At approximately twenty weeks of pregnancy, the Virgin Mary can already feel the fetal movements of her Son, already about twenty-five centimeters in the caudad direction and weighing a little less than half a kilogram. At this time, the heart, kidneys, liver, spinal column, genitals, and intestine of Jesus Christ already have their near final shape, although they will continue to grow in size and mature physiologically. His brain is also reasonably developed, but there remains a long maturation phase ahead, which will not be completed for some years. In the epidermis of the fingers, palms, and soles, grooves begin to appear in a characteristic and unrepeatable pattern, a correlate of that unique individuality that corresponds to each person, and 83 See Gen 3:15. For other relevant passages, see Isa 53:7–12; John 8:34–36; Matt 20:28; Luke 24:25–27; 24: 44–45; Acts 3:13–14; 7:52; 8:32–35; 13:29; 1 Cor 15:3; 15:21–22; Rom 5:19–20. See also CCC §§410, 412, 599 and following. 94 Juan Eduardo Carreño from which the incarnate Word cannot be exempt. Under this skin, adipose tissue increasingly accumulates, and from this moment, the body of Jesus is covered with lanugo and vernix caseoso. In time—at thirty-eight weeks of gestation assuming an uneventful pregnancy—the Virgin gives birth to a full-term newborn, probably roughly three kilograms in weight and fifty centimeters in length. This neonate inaugurates extrauterine life with a characteristic cry, allowing him to mobilize secretions present in a newly opened airway; the Mother hugs and tucks him in, knowing that newborn babies get cold easily (what modern medicine describes as a still immature thermoregulatory capacity). Upon coming into contact with the warmth of the maternal body, Jesus eagerly seeks food, that colostrum that Mary’s body produces to satisfy the special needs of her Son in these first hours. This helpless child is the Lord of the universe, come to redeem and save the world. This is recognized by some wise men and local shepherds, who, guided by a star and alerted by angels, respectively, worship him as God and Savior (Matt 2:1–12; Luke 2:8–20). The developmental story of Jesus Christ does not end here, of course. In the following years, this child grows “in wisdom, in stature, and in favor with God and with people” (Luke 2:52), until, when aged thirty, he begins his public ministry to announce the Good News: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is close at hand” (Mark 1:15).84 Assumptions and Scope of this Integration The story proposed is based on certain assumptions. The first is that of the mystery that involves the action of God in Jesus’s conception. Indeed, the interpretation advanced here does not intend to suppress the fog that shrouds this action, nor could it do so without incurring the categorical error that threatens some of the hypotheses examined in the second section of this article. The action of the Holy Spirit in the Incarnation escapes those empirical findings from which natural human knowledge originates and with which it is closely linked—also in its experimental dimension—that subtype of knowledge now generically classified as natural science.85 This 84 85 Among many other passages, see Matt 4:12–25; 5:13; 8:11; 10:5–7; 22:1–14; 25:31–46; 28:19; Mark 4:1–34; 13:44; Luke 4:18; 7:22; 17:20–37; 1 Tim 1:15. See also CCC §541 and following; García-Moreno, “Reino de Dios,” in Diccionario de teología, 848–54. For a pertinent passage from Aquinas, see In II phys, lect. 3, no. 8. For a commentary, see Jacques Maritain, Filosofía de la naturaleza, trans. J. Román Delgado (Buenos Aires: Club de Lectores, 1967), 51–53. An Interpretation of the Conception of Jesus Christ 95 divine action is real, but its reality is accessible only in and by faith.86 This does not preclude, however, consideration of the participation of the Virgin Mary in the Incarnation and the effects such participation may have had on his human nature. Mary is unquestionably conceived, in the Catholic tradition, as the highest of creatures in the order of grace, but she is a creature after all. Therefore, our understanding of her role in the miracle of the Incarnation of God can be enriched with the contributions of philosophy and biology about natural human conception.87 In the conclusion, we return to the methodological significance of this point. A second pillar of our integration, partly derived from the first, can warn against the typically mechanistic bias that frequently distorts current conceptualizations of the corporeal living being.88 Undoubtedly, God does not operate as a craftsman, adding pieces to those the Virgin has contributed, to “assemble” a conceptus. The Word has not come to “pilot” an organic-molecular machine especially suitable for its mission; he has truly assumed a complete human nature, including not only an organicity but also the informing, actualizing, and life-giving principle that allows such organicity in the first place. Explicitly stated by the Council of Chalcedon in a passage already quoted, it was also affirmed by Aquinas when pointing out that the human nature of Christ includes a soul and a body, and that indeed God assumes the body by means of the soul of Jesus Christ.89 The Catholic 86 87 88 89 See Gerhard L. Müller, Dogmática, 491. See Müller, Dogmática, 320: “The transcendental cause of the origin of the life of Jesus in Mary without male intervention does not admit of comprobation or verification with empirical means. The only thing that can be verified is its impact on the creature, in that a conception has occurred without the intervention of a man” (trans. mine). Mechanistic philosophy may have played a heuristic role in the maturation of experimental biology, and very especially of biochemistry and molecular biology, two subdisciplines that have claimed a leading role in recent decades. But whatever its relationship with modern biology, we share Hans Jonas’s diagnosis regarding the partial and impoverishing nature of the idea of life and living being the materialistic mechanism advances; see The Phenomenon of Life. Toward a Philosophical Biology (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 7–13; see also Juan Eduardo Carreño, Vivere viventibus est esse: la vida como perfección del ser en la obra de Tomás de Aquino (Pamplona: EUNSA, 2020), 263–295. See note 14 above. It should be emphasized that, when Aquinas says the Word assumes the body through the soul, this does not imply a chronological order, but an order of nature, derived from the greater dignity that corresponds to the soul in comparison with the body, and from the causality this soul exercises as a formalizing, actualizing, and vivifying principle of the corresponding body. See ST III, q. 6, a. 1; a. 4, ad 3; q. 50, a. 2, ad 2; In III sent., d. 2, q. 2, a. 1; d. 21, q. 1, a. 1, qc. 1, ad 1; SCG IV, ch. 44; De spir., a. 3, ad 5. 96 Juan Eduardo Carreño Church teaches, in this regard, that the soul of each man, by its spiritual nature, cannot come from matter, but only from a direct creative act of God. There is no problem, then, in admitting that this is also true, and with much greater reason, for Jesus, the only begotten Son of God. This also helps clarify a third assumption implicit in the narrative proposed, in agreement with the Tradition and magisterium of the Church: the Incarnation of the Word is simultaneous with the conception of Jesus.90 We differ, therefore, from the model of methyparxis, and of course all forms of adoptionism. The conception of the human nature of Christ, with his soul and body and the act by which that nature is assumed by the second person of the Holy Trinity, although different secundum rem et rationem, are nevertheless absolutely simultaneous events. Although, as noted, the resolution of this point is ultimately a matter of faith and doctrine, we cannot miss the opportunity to underline the indirect support provided by biological data properly interpreted in the light of the philosophia perennis. The panorama science offers today regarding human ontogeny—when uncontaminated by prejudices unrelated to science itself91—reveals a chain of events that connect one to another in a fundamentally continuous sequence, from the conception of the zygote until the death of the individual. This means any break point inserted in that sequence will always be conventional. The reason for this continuity is not to be found in the genetic identity of the developing organism; while that identity certainly exists, it is not the cause, but rather the consequence of another ontologically more fundamental permanence: the subject or suppositum. In the case of Christ, it is the second person of the Trinity who provides the ontic support for the human nature assumed 90 91 Müller writes about this: “God does not unite, at a later moment, with a man who already possesses a hypostasis created by virtue of a natural generation. In his will to humanize himself, God himself is, immediately and by virtue of his creative action (without mediation, therefore, of natural generation and the created causality of the origin of a man), the foundation that sustains the human existence of Jesus in the uncreated hypostasis of the divine WORD” (Dogmática, 491; trans. mine). We refer here to the images used by those who defend the moral licitness of abortion. Those who hold this position assign, explicitly or implicitly, a substantial status to a specific ontogenetic landmark—for example, the appearance of some structure of the nervous or cardiovascular system. Only once that milestone occurs are we in front of a human person. Before that, the subject in question is something else (a set of cells or an individual of the human species, but in no case a person) which could be disposed of without moral fault. For our part, it seems the only ontogenetic milestone with substantial significance is not to be found in the ontogenetic development itself, but in its origin, namely, conception. Therefore, any act that has the direct and explicit purpose of ending the life of an embryo or fetus, regardless of its stage of development, will always and necessarily be illicit. About this question, see note 70 above. An Interpretation of the Conception of Jesus Christ 97 with Incarnation, and correspondingly, the movements and changes that constitute, as a whole, the process of morphogenesis.92 Seen from this perspective, it is coherent—although not absolutely necessary—that the Incarnation coincides with the only milestone that involves a substantial change, namely, conception. A fourth assumption operating in our interpretation is potentially more controversial if misunderstood—Mary’s role in the conception of Jesus Christ. Contemporary biological description of the early stages of human development clearly seems to follow, at least regarding the parents’ roles, a line much closer to Hippocratic and Galenic biology than to the Aristotelian scheme. That the woman brings a spérma—that is, a gamete, or more specifically, an oocyte in metaphase II—and not only the substrate or conditions for the growth of the embryo can be considered, at this point, as a universally accepted biological fact supported by innumerable empirical results.93 On the other hand, we know the mother is not merely a passive receptacle for the embryo or fetus. She collaborates both genetically and molecularly, biochemically, physiologically, and morphologically in the gestation of her child, with the placenta, an organ that derives from both mother and child, a tangible correlate of this participation. All this shows a woman who, in contrast to the passive reception attributed to her in the Aristotelian scheme, has a truly active role in the generation and gestation of the conceptus. Is there any need to project this situation onto the conception of Jesus Christ? From a biological viewpoint, no. Divine action, being transcendent, is not constrained by any regularity, be it biological or any other kind, so nothing prevents the Virgin Mary’s role in the conception and development of Jesus being completely different from that of other mothers. The conjecture that she played an active role in the conception and gestation of her Son, on the other hand, has to do with the very contents of revelation. Indeed, the angel announces to Mary that Jesus will inherit “the throne of his ancestor David” (Luke 1:32), and moreover, the Apostle asserts that the Lord “in terms of human nature was born a descendant of David” (Rom 1:3,4). Note this goes beyond the content of the article of faith that confesses the true and perfect human nature the Word assumed in the Incarnation. To clarify, recalling the situation imagined by Simons: By virtue of his omnipotence, God could certainly have created the human nature he assumes with the Incarnation without assistance from the Virgin, so we could still say that Christ is true God and true man, since he possesses a human nature but has 92 93 See note 56 above. For more details, see the previous section. 98 Juan Eduardo Carreño received that nature exclusively and directly from God, without intervention from anyone linking him genealogically with the people of Israel, and hence, the rest of humanity. Could one speak in such a case of Jesus as a descendant of Adam and David? It does not seem clear this is the case. In arguing in this way, we do not mean to posit our interpretation as the only one available for God’s action, but merely suggest that affirming the Virgin Mary’s active participation in the conception of Jesus Christ provides greater consistency with current knowledge of how human conception occurs, without damaging the mystery of divine action. We are aware that both Aquinas and some relevant Gospel passages emphasize the passive role of Mary when she accepts the divine proposal transmitted by the angel: “You see before you the Lord’s servant, let it happen to me as you have said” (Luke 1:38). But, as indicated before, Aquinas himself is careful to add that, for the conception of Jesus, the Virgin does not limit herself to disposing of menstrual blood, as Aristotle taught, but actively generates a purified blood.94 Certainly, the reasons Aquinas makes this clarification relate to considerations beyond the scope of our discussion, but the very fact he allows himself to do so is already significant. Aquinas unequivocally affirms the passivity of Mary regarding the action of the Holy Spirit, and we fully subscribe to this assertion. In relation to God, who is a pure act and infinite active potency, every creature behaves like the potency to act. From this, however, it does not follow that the Virgin lacks any activity of her own; such activity in no way diminishes the primacy and initiative of God. As First Cause, divine action is not only transcendent but also immanent to the action of his creatures, since he acts in and for second causes: “It is God who, for his own generous purpose, gives you the intention and the powers to act” (Phil 2:13).95 As noted, the pagan model of theogamy is satisfied with substituting the role of the male for that of the divinity in the generation. In such a scheme, god and woman are progenitors and causes of the begotten being, since they work on the same ontological plane. The Gospel is completely different. Faced with the legitimate question of Mary, the angel affirms that the Holy Spirit will come upon her, and the power of the Most High will envelop her with his shadow (Luke 1:35). This emphasizes not only the mystery and transcendence of divine action but also the fact that, however relevant Mary’s participation in the conception of Jesus, a parallel cannot be established between the causality she exercises and that belonging to God in 94 95 See note 41 above. See Gaudium et Spes §36. See also CCC §308. For a commentary, see Enrique Colom, Fe y razón: el nexo entre la fe y la ciencia (Pamplona: EUNSA, 2021), 116–24. An Interpretation of the Conception of Jesus Christ 99 the Incarnation of the Son. As Miguel Ponce observes, “it is not Mary who makes Christ her Son, but it is the Word who chooses her as His Mother. For this reason, she appears as the one who receives, albeit actively, God’s initiative to incarnate in her womb.”96 In our opinion, this active reception of Mary is manifested initially in the acceptance of God’s plan by faith. It is with and through that faith that she also places her corporality at the service of the Holy Trinity. The objections against faith in a virginal conception are neither new nor original.97 Faced with the argument of Pederson and her colleagues, it is sufficient to point out that a conception of Jesus Christ not involving a man does not threaten his true humanity, as Aquinas observed in the thirteenth century. Aquinas affirms that Christ is the Son of Man because he has a human nature, regardless of its provenance. Surely, one thing is the generation of the human nature of Jesus, undoubtedly supernatural because it is caused by the Holy Spirit without the help of man, and another is its result, a true and real human nature. Thomas illustrates the point through the example of a blind man miraculously regaining his sight: the recovery itself exceeds the realm of nature, but once it has happened, the operation of seeing occurs naturally in that man.98 One might ask, however, what we gain from such an interpretation, 96 97 98 See Ponce, “María,” 629. Italics are from the original. See Javier Ibáñez and Fernando Mendoza, La Madre del Redentor (Madrid: Palabra, 1988), 46–48. See ST III, q. 33, a. 4, ad 1. For a parallel passage, see In II Sent., d. 3, q. 2, a. 2. In support of Aquinas’s thesis, we can add that the admission of an argument such as that of Pederson et al. would lead to certain absurdities. For example, we would have to deny the true humanity of Adam and Eve, since they lack parents, for obvious reasons. More closely, we should also question the anthropological status of those persons conceived by artificial means (i.e., by in vitro fertilization). Of course, in this case, there are parents, but the way their generative power is instrumentalized to generate the conception itself escapes the natural process. Although the moral admissibility of this class of interventions can be questioned, it is clear that what is generated is a complete human person. And in passing, it should be noted that the psychological and moral development of Jesus—who experienced like every true man—does not suffer from the lack of a human father figure. First, because Jesus Christ is the Word, the eternal and consubstantial Son of the Father. Everything in him—also the human nature he assumes, above all the work of God—refers to his divine filiation. Second, because, in his infinite wisdom, God arranged for Jesus to grow up in a family with a mother and also a human father. Joseph is not the biological father of Jesus, but this does not prevent him being truly a father. From him and Mary, Jesus receives the loving care a human should experience in an authentic family; he learns obedience, piety, and the customs of his people. And with Joseph, Jesus learns a craft and the value, not only human but also supernatural, of work. See John Paul II, Guardian of the Redeemer 100 Juan Eduardo Carreño since generations of Christians have professed and lived a perfectly coherent and mature faith without ever hearing of calcium waves, mitochondria, or trophoblasts. Here we believe it necessary to distinguish between the essential and the relevant. What biology—or any other science for that matter—can contribute to a formulation or understanding of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, at least within the framework of the Catholic faith, cannot modify what the magisterium has solemnly defined. But this does not mean such inquiries are useless or sterile. In principle, a critical and cautious assimilation of facts described by particular sciences can illuminate aspects of dogma that would otherwise remain unspoken or only partially outlined. In the case of the narrative proposed, this could be the case with the causal role the Virgin Mary plays in the conception of her Son. While biology is unable to show that the Mater Dei actively received what the Holy Spirit worked in her, the data this discipline provides regarding natural human conception, interpreted in the light of the Christian faith, certainly support the idea that a humble young Jewish woman was chosen from all eternity and invited by God to be an active instrument of the central event in human history. The deep theological background behind all this discussion, nonetheless, is the tension between exceptionality and true humanity manifested in the person of Jesus Christ. According to his human nature, he is distinguished from each one of us only by the total absence of sin. This includes the morphogenetic development of this nature, which must have gone through the stages every human experiences. That, however, is not valid for the actual generation of that nature, undoubtedly unique and exclusive to him. This observation is not, of course, unprecedented in the history of theology, but we think biological facts allow us better to underline and embody this truth. The humanity Christ assumes is generated absque semine ex Spiritu Sancto, but once that Incarnation has occurred, it submits to the natural dynamisms of which he is, ultimately, the Author. Final Remarks Finally, we would like to return to the methodological point raised in the introduction. As noted above, one of the most obvious features of the academic field now known as “science and religion” is its manifest conceptual and epistemological heterogeneity. Despite this, a large proportion of the problems addressed in this body of literature begin by contrasting two types [Redemptoris Custos] (Boston: Pauline Media & Books, 2014). See also Frère Ephraim, Giuseppe di Nazaret: Il mistero del Padre (Rome: Ancora, 1998). An Interpretation of the Conception of Jesus Christ 101 of discourse. The first generally comprises the results of particular sciences in a specific subject (cosmic origin, chance, determinism, evolution, knowledge, human behavior, etc.). The second considers what can be said about this issue from the viewpoint of some dominant philosophical tradition. A relationship is then established between these perspectives, which can take very different paths. Regardless of whether it is exhaustive or not, in this matter, Barbour’s typology has the undeniable merit of introducing order and clarity. However, a point usually unnoticed in these categorizations is the evident asymmetry of the discourses thus linked. In this relationship, the epistemic priority belongs to philosophy. Indeed, the physiognomy this relationship finally acquires (in Barbour’s terminology: conflict, separation, contrast, or integration) does not ultimately depend on scientific knowledge, but on the philosophical framework from which the exercise is carried out. The question that fundamentally motivates this class of disquisitions is philosophical, and it is from a specific philosophical setting, including a range of metaphysical, cosmological, anthropological, and epistemological principles, that it acquires its meaning and distinctive configuration. This is true even for those positivistic authors willing to discard or correct a considerable part of historical philosophical thought in the name of superior scientific knowledge. After several decades of Auguste Comte, and fewer but enough of Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap, we know that positivism is not a scientific doctrine but a philosophical one.99 Other approaches included under the heading of “science and religion” go further and explicitly consider specific religious beliefs in their analyses. What has been said before about the role of science in all this also applies here, mutatis mutandis. The topic addressed in these pages, the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, requires the clarification of a doctrinal framework that gives meaning and relevance to the question of the possible contribution of biology. In the case of Catholicism, this framework includes the professed articles of faith, their revealed sources (Sacred Scripture and Tradition), the exegetical canons used and accepted by the authority (magisterium), the main lines of theological speculation, and a number of philosophical notions and propositions known collectively as preambula fidei.100 From this 99 100 For a historical perspective on the fates of logical positivism, see Oswald Hanfling, “Logical Positivism,” in Routledge History of Philosophy, vol. 9, Philosophy of Science, Logic and Mathematics in the Twentieth Century, ed. Stuart. G. Shanker (New York: Routledge, 2004), 193–213. For a recent review of this question within the framework of Thomistic philosophy, see John F. Wippel, Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas III (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2021), 73–97, 142–73. 102 Juan Eduardo Carreño basis, it is worth asking how biology can contribute to our understanding of the mystery of the Incarnation. This is clearly not a formally biological or philosophical question, but a theological one, and the role played by biological fact is subordinate to and defined in the light of the aforementioned doctrinal framework. To illustrate this, consider how superfluous our interpretation may be to a subscriber of an adoptionist or docetist Christology. For the first, the conception of Christ differs in no way from that of any other human; for the second, biology simply has nothing significant to say about an Incarnation that, strictly speaking, is no more than an appearance of such.101 The fundamental reason for this epistemological asymmetry now becomes evident. If the Christian faith professes an Almighty and Creator God, then it is not he who is subject to its work, but vice versa. Therefore, neither philosophy nor the natural sciences can invoke a natural “legality” to limit divine action in the world. If the considerations provided by these disciplines have value for theology, this is only to the extent that revelation itself informs us of certain courses of action God has freely chosen.102 Evidently, he could have created and redeemed everything differently or created nothing, without affecting his infinite goodness and happiness at all.103 This being the case, the rationalist approach comes across as fundamentally misguided when, confusing convenience with necessity, it tries to deduce the event of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ from certain premises evident to human reason. Of course, human reason, supported by revelation, can provide some indications of the divine salvific plan, but we must never lose sight of the fact that the ultimate source of his designs lies in the unfathomable wisdom and goodness of the one and triune God. The Word made flesh is a surprise—perhaps the most astonishing of all—for angels, demons, and men, then and today. 101 102 103 For a historical perspective of this heresy and its origins, see Michael Slusser, “Docetism: a Historical Definition,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 1, no. 3 (1981): 163–72; Ronnie Goldstein and Guy G. Stroumsa, “The Greek and Jewish Origins of Docetism: A New Proposal,” Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum 10, no. 3 (2006): 423–41. See Javier Sánchez Cañizares, “Prólogo,” in Colom, Fe y razón, 14–15. See CT, chs. 200–201; In III Sent., d. 4, q. 3, a. 1, ad 3; IV, d. 10, a. 1, ad 3; ST I, q. 25, a. 6, ad 3; III, q. 1, a. 2, corp.; SCG IV, chs. 54–55. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2024): 103–122 103 The Christ Who Meets Us in the Sacraments: The Influence of St. Ambrose on the tertia pars of St. Thomas’s Summa theologiae Damian Day, O.P. Providence College Providence, RI Introduction The recent increased interest in St. Thomas Aquinas and the Fathers of the Church has produced a number of excellent studies of the Angelic Doctor’s understanding of the authority of the Fathers and his use of them.1 In this article, I hope to contribute to the ongoing study of Aquinas and the Fathers by examining how Thomas employs St. Ambrose in the tertia pars of his Summa theologiae [ST]. Thomas’s use of Ambrose has received little detailed 1 A recent collection of essays dedicated to the memory of Leo Elders constitutes a significant contribution: Piotr Roszak and Jörgen Vijgen, eds., Reading the Church Fathers with St. Thomas Aquinas: Historical and Systematical Perspectives, Bibliothèque de l’École des Hautes Études: Sciences religieuses 189 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2021). See also Leo Elders, Thomas Aquinas and His Predecessors: The Philosophers and the Church Fathers in His Works (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2018); Elders, “Thomas Aquinas and the Fathers of the Church,” in Theological Innovation and the Shaping of Tradition: The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West from the Carolingians to the Maurists, ed. Irena Backus (Leiden: Brill, 1996), as well as Elders’s numerous articles; Michael Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger Nutt, eds., Thomas Aquinas and the Greek Fathers (Ave Maria, FL: Sapientia Press, 2019); Michael Dauphinais, Barry David, and Matthew Levering, eds., Aquinas the Augustinian (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2007); Gilles Berceville, “L’autorité des Pères selon Thomas d’Aquin,” Revue des sciences philosophiques et théologiques 91, no. 1 (2007): 129–44. 104 Damian Day, O.P. attention. One of Leo Elders’s last contributions to the study of Aquinas and the Fathers provided an overview of Ambrose’s presence in Thomas’s writings.2 I hope to expand upon Elders’s work of cataloging and describing Thomas’s numerous citations of Ambrose—Thomas names Ambrose over eleven hundred times in his writings3—by making a particular argument about Thomas’s Christological and sacramental use of Ambrose. While Elders gives an excellent summary of where Ambrose appears in Thomas’s corpus, he does not connect Thomas’s use of Ambrose in his treatises on Christ and the Eucharist. I argue that Thomas’s citations of Ambrose in the tertia pars help him develop an understanding of the Incarnation that supports his sacramental realism, especially emphasizing contact with Christ in the Eucharist.4 Much recent reflection on the Eucharist has sought to deemphasize the substantial presence of Christ and emphasize his presence in other ways. Michael C. McGuckian, for example, argues that the Western emphasis on Christ’s presence in the Blessed Sacrament has damaged the understanding of participation in the heavenly liturgy and obscured other ways in which Christ is present, such as in the bishop presiding and the proclamation of the word. He claims that “those other presences surpass the presence in the elements in their personal quality, their dynamic force and their effect on our 2 3 4 Leo Elders, “La présence de saint Ambroise dans les écrits de Thomas d’Aquin,” Nova et Vetera 94 (2019): 77–102. Andrew Hofer, O.P., review of Thomas Aquinas and His Predecessors: The Philosophers and the Church Fathers in His Works by Leo Elders, The Thomist 83, no. 1 (2019): 133. In Summa theologiae [ST] III, q. 79, a. 1, resp., Thomas quotes both Ambrose and John Chrysostom. Chrysostom says, “When we desire it, He lets us feel Him, and eat Him, and embrace Him.” Joseph Wawrykow expresses some hesitation regarding this citation, since the accidents of Christ’s body are present, not according to their own mode, but according to substance (ST III, q. 76, a. 4, ad 1). As Wawrykow notes, however, “What matters here—and Aquinas quotes John without reservation, without my quibble—is the intimacy of the encounter that the Eucharist provides: one is eating him, embracing Christ” (“The Greek Fathers in the Eucharistic Theology of Thomas Aquinas,” in Dauphinais, Hofer, and Nutt, Thomas Aquinas and the Greek Fathers, 289). For comments on Wawrykow’s quibble, see Alexis Torrance, review of Thomas Aquinas and the Greek Fathers edited by Michael Dauphinais, Andrew Hofer, O.P., and Roger Nutt, The Thomist 81, no. 1 (2021): 158. Except where otherwise indicated, all English translations of the Summa will come from Summa theologiae, vols. 13–20 in Latin/English Edition of the Works of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. Laurence Shapcote, O.P., eds. John Mortensen and Enrique Alarcón (Lander, WY: Aquinas Institute for the Study of Sacred Doctrine, 2012). Latin citations will be drawn from the texts at corpusthomisticum.org. The Christ Who Meets Us in the Sacraments 105 spirits and are not to be undervalued.”5 Looking at Thomas and Ambrose, we will see that Christ’s substantial presence in the Eucharist is preeminently personal, dynamic, and efficacious for our spirits. Colman O’Neill’s masterful work of sacramental realism, Meeting Christ in the Sacraments, provides an entrée into such a study. The title derives from Ambrose. In his work A Defense of the Prophet David to Theodosius Augustus, Ambrose reflects on Psalm 51. Suddenly, in the middle of confessing his sins, David foresees the cleansing sacrament of baptism. In prophetic wonder, he cries out, “face-to-face you have shown yourself to me, Christ; I have discovered you in your sacraments.”6 Even prior to their institution, David prophetically glimpses what the sacraments of the Old Law prefigure. In this vision, David sees “no longer in shadow, nor in figure, nor in type,” but meets Christ in his sacraments.7 For Ambrose, the sacraments are real encounters with Christ. As O’Neill puts it, “Christ, who was worshipped from afar, comes near and touches the believer; and at his touch power goes out from him.”8 For 5 6 7 8 Michael C. McGuckian, S.J., “The Eucharist in the West,” New Blackfriars 88 (2007): 148. Gilles Emery, O.P., has shown how contemporary emphasis on the relationship between the Eucharist and the Church need not conflict with, but actually flows from, the emphasis on the real substantial presence of Christ; see Emery, “Le fruit ecclésial de l’Eucharistie chez S. Thomas d’Aquin,” Nova et Vetera 72 (1997): 25–40. Therese C. Scarpelli translated the article, which appeared in English as “The Ecclesial Fruit of the Eucharist in St. Thomas Aquinas,” Nova et Vetera (English) 2, no. 1 (2004): 43–60. Ambrose, De apologia prophetae David 12.54: “Faciam ad faciam te mihi, Christi, demonstrasti; in tuis te invenio sacramentis.” Latin citations of Ambrose are taken from the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum volumes. This new English translation comes from Brian P. Dunkle, S.J., trans., St. Ambrose: Treatises on Noah and David, The Fathers of the Church 140 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2020), 138. As Dunkle notes in his introduction, Ambrose understood David as the prophetic author of the Psalms, whose poetry “reveals the coming of the Word in Christ” (17) so that the life of David “guides the audience to Christ and to the virtues of courage and repentance” (18). While Thomas knew some of Ambrose’s treatises on the patriarchs (see Elders, “La présence,” 78), he does not appear to have known this work or this passage. For a study of Ambrose’s use of the patriarchs in his preaching, see Marcia L. Colish, Ambrose’s Patriarchs: Ethics for the Common Man (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2005); Colish, “Classicism and Catechesis in the Patriarch Treatises of Ambrose of Milan,” Rivista di Storia della Filosofia 61, no. 1 (2006): 9–42. Apol. David 12.54. Ambrose frequently speaks of the Christian sacraments as older than and prefigured in the ceremonies and historical events of the Jewish people. For a thorough study, see Craig Alan Satterlee, Ambrose of Milan’s Method of Mystagogical Preaching (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2002), 198–99, 214–19, 257–59. Colman E. O’Neill, O.P., Meeting Christ in the Sacraments, rev. ed. (New York: Alba House, 1991), 74. 106 Damian Day, O.P. Thomas, too, one meets Christ in the sacraments.9 While all the sacraments apply the merits of his Passion,10 the Eucharist is the locus par excellence for meeting Christ, since the whole Christ is there contained.11 The encounter is both personal and powerful. While the language of meeting or encountering Christ in the sacraments may seem to echo modern phenomenological philosophy, Thomas grounds the encounter in a realism of the Incarnation.12 His treatment of the encounter with Christ in the sacraments flows from his treatment of the Incarnation.13 Guy-Thomas Bedouelle summed up O’Neill’s approach, which reflects Thomas’s, as simply stressing, again and again, “that sacramental realism implies that the Church draws its life from the dynamism of the Incarnation itself.”14 I argue that Thomas, in drawing his sacramental realism from the Incarnation, employs Ambrose as a key authority. First, I examine Thomas’s knowledge and use of Ambrose’s works. Second, I study how Thomas appeals to Ambrose in explaining Christ’s assumption of a full human nature as a profound encounter. Third, I show how Ambrose supports the fittingness and truth of the Incarnation in Thomas’s treatment of the mysteries of Christ’s life.15 Fourth, I argue that, building on the reality of the Incarnation, Thomas turns to Ambrose regularly in his treatment of 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 ST III, q. 60, a. 6, ad 3: The sacraments of the new law “flow from Christ Himself, and have a certain likeness to Him.” ST III, q. 61, a. 1, ad 3: “Christ’s Passion is a sufficient cause of man’s salvation. But it does not follow that the sacraments are not also necessary for that purpose: because they obtain their effect through the power of Christ’s Passion; and Christ’s Passion is, so to say, applied to man through the sacraments.” ST III, q. 76, a. 1, resp.: “It is absolutely necessary to confess according to Catholic faith that the entire Christ is in this sacrament.” It is interesting to note that Edward Schillebeeckx concludes his influential work on Christ and the sacraments with the citation of Ambrose that gave O’Neill’s work its title; see Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963), 222. For a substantial analysis of Schillebeeckx’s work, with particular attention to the influence of contemporary philosophers, see William J. Hill, “Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter with God,” in Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America, New York June 22–25, 1964 (Washington, DC: Catholic Theological Society of America, 1964). ST III, q. 60, prol.: “After considering those things that concern the mystery of the incarnate Word, we must now consider the sacraments of the Church which derive their efficacy from the Word incarnate Himself.” Guy-Thomas Bedouelle, O.P., preface to O’Neill, Meeting Christ in the Sacraments, v. Jean-Pierre Torrell comments that Augustine and Ambrose serve as the primary sources for Thomas’s treatment of the mysteries of Christ’s life in ST III, qq. 27–59; see Torrell, Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 262–64. The Christ Who Meets Us in the Sacraments 107 the Eucharist to support the form, matter, change, real presence, and effects of the sacrament. Through all of this, Ambrose focuses the attention on the person of Christ who comes to the Church through the sacraments.16 Aquinas on Ambrose: Knowledge, Sources, and Authority Thomas discusses the authority of the Fathers in the first question of his Summa theologiae. Since sacra doctrina argues from authority, Thomas must distinguish between the authority of revelation and the authority of the Fathers.17 While he understands theology to use the divinely revealed authority of Scripture as definitive (ex necessitate argumentando), the authority of the doctores is only probably (sed probabiliter).18 This does not mean that the Fathers are merely decorative.19 The Fathers, however, help Thomas anchor his “doctrinal elaborations in the solid foundation of the most authentic tradition of the Church and of showing the underlying unity of all authentic Christian thought.”20 Thomas does not undertake a historical study of the Fathers. Rather, he studies the mysteries of the faith revealed in Scripture with the Fathers.21 While, in some sense, the theology of Thomas could 16 17 18 19 20 21 My argument about Thomas’s use of Ambrose in connecting the Eucharistic presence of Christ with the Incarnation parallels many of Kenneth J. Howell’s observations about John Chrysostom’s preaching; see “The Eucharist and the Life of Christ in the Preaching of John Chrysostom,” Nova et Vetera (English) 19, no. 3 (2021): 791–824. As Howell argues, Chrysostom understood that, through the Eucharist, “the believer of his time is able to experience Jesus Christ in his humanity in the same way that Christ was present on earth” (797). Reception of the Eucharist “is the fulfillment of the Incarnation” (803). Thomas does not use the term “Fathers of the Church.” Instead, he uses various titles— such as sancti doctores—to designate authorities. For overviews of these titles, see Elders, “Thomas Aquinas and the Fathers of the Church,” 338–39; Juan Jose de Miguel, “Los padres de la iglesia en la criteriologia teologica de Santo Tomás de Aquino,” Scripta Theologica 7, no. 1 (1975): 130–32. ST I, q. 1, a. 8, ad 2. For a discussion of the authority of the Fathers for Thomas, see Elders, “Thomas Aquinas and the Fathers of the Church,” 339–42. In examining Thomas’s use of John Chrysostom, Dunkle notes the “relatively decorative” nature of some citations, following Ignaz Backes’s classification of some patristic citations as decorative for Thomas. Dunkle also points to the limits of such classification, as outlined by Elders. See Brian Dunkle, “Thomas Aquinas’s Use of John Chrysostom in the Catena Aurea and the Tertia Pars,” in Thomas Aquinas and the Greek Fathers, 158 and note 39; Backes, Die Christologie des hl. Thomas v. Aquin und die griechischen Kirchenväter (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1931), 56–66; Elders, “Thomas Aquinas and the Fathers of the Church,” 345–46. Elders, “Thomas Aquinas and the Fathers of the Church,” 345. Elders, “Thomas Aquinas and the Fathers of the Church,” 345. 108 Damian Day, O.P. be called ad mentem patrum,22 Andrew Hofer’s phrase ad mentem Dei cum sanctis more accurately captures Thomas’s focus on the object of sacra doctrina.23 In his use of the Fathers, Thomas demonstrates an awareness of the particular strengths of each. Especially in the Summa theologiae, Thomas assigns particular Fathers to “fields in which they have a special competence.”24 Thomas’s use of Ambrose shows his sensitivity to areas where the bishop’s contributions are particularly helpful in shedding light on the mysteries of the faith. He lists Ambrose among the sancti,25 doctores,26 antiqui doctores,27 sancti pontifices,28 and expositores sacrae scripturae,29 and places his opinions among the opiniones sanctorum.30 The appellation expositores sacrae scripturae is particularly important for Thomas. In an early sermon, Thomas claimed that, among the doctores, Ambrose “was best at allegorizing [Sacred Scripture].”31 Ambrose was not well cited by medieval exegetes.32 The exception was Ambrose’s commentary on the Gospel of Luke.33 This commentary serves as Thomas’s principal source for his Catena on Luke, which references Ambrose over five hundred times.34 But Thomas also cites Ambrose’s commentary in the Summa. In the tertia pars, Thomas has frequent recourse to this work, especially in his treatise on the mysteries of Christ’s life (qq. 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 Marcus Plested, Orthodox Readings of Aquinas, Changing Paradigms in Historical and Systematic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 20. Hofer, “Conclusion: Reading Thomas Aquinas and the Greek Fathers Together for the Renewal of Theology,” in Thomas Aquinas and the Greek Fathers, 307–11. Elders, “Thomas Aquinas and the Fathers of the Church,” 346. ST III, q. 21, a. 4, ad 1. ST III, q. 27, a. 4, ad 2. ST II-II, q. 14, a. 1, resp. ST II-II, q 185, a. 6, ad 2. ST I-II, q. 69, a. 2, resp. I am indebted to de Miguel for cataloging the different titles that Thomas applies to the different Fathers in “Los padres de la iglesia,” 131–32. ST I, q. 66, a. 1, resp. Sermo puer Iesus III in Thomas Aquinas: Academic Sermons, trans. Mark-Robin Hoogland (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010), 100. As Ezra Sullivan notes, Thomas explains the necessity to “open our ears” to many teachers because “a single person cannot be an expert in every field. Rather, God lavishes diverse graces upon different people” (Sullivan, “The Church Fathers’ Influence on Aquinas’s Account of Habitus,” in Roszak and Vijgen, Reading the Church Fathers with St. Thomas Aquinas, 181). Since the commentaries of Ambrosiaster were incorrectly attributed to Ambrose, he was, however, mistakenly considered a commentator on the Pauline epistles. See Gilbert Dahan, “Les Pères dans l'exégèse médiévale de la Bible,” Revue des Sciences philosophiques et théologiques 91, no. 1 (2007): 114–19. Elders, “La présence de saint Ambroise,” 102. The Christ Who Meets Us in the Sacraments 109 27–59), but also in his treatises on the Incarnation (qq. 1–26) and on the sacraments (qq. 60–90). The question of Thomas’s knowledge of and access to the writings of Ambrose is a complicated one. Thomas may have gained temporary access to his major works.35 He does cite roughly twenty of Ambrose’s writings. The most important of these, for the current study, include his commentary on Luke, De sacramentis, De mysteriis, and De fide ad Gratianum Augustum. It is unlikely, however, that Thomas possessed manuscripts of most of these works. Rather, he seems to have collected passages contained in other sources. Much of De sacramentis, for instance, likely came to Thomas through Lombard or Abelard.36 Thomas’s access to De fide has a more interesting history. In recovering the acts of the Third Council of Constantinople, he found Pope Agatho’s Epistle I, which contained passages from Augustine and Ambrose. With this expanded access to Ambrose’s De fide, Thomas was able to use “Ambrose as a champion source,” as Corey Barnes puts it, in his treatment of the wills of Christ in ST III, q. 18.37 The complicated history of Ambrose’s textual reception means that Thomas also sometimes falsely attributes passages from other sources to Ambrose. In addition to the Pauline commentaries of Ambrosiaster, the most important misappropriations for this study involve questions on the Eucharist and on penance. Following Lombard, Aquinas attributes some comments on Hebrews about sacrifice to Ambrose. The passages actually come from John Chrysostom.38 Another 35 36 37 38 Elders notes that certain theologians such as Albert and Thomas made the effort “to see the works of the Fathers with their own eyes and did not hesitate to travel to different monasteries to consult rare manuscripts.” He therefore suggests that “at some time during his life Aquinas himself read the main works of the Latin Fathers, although he may not always have had them to hand while writing or dictating his treatises or summae. He could rely on his fabulous memory, though, for references” (“Thomas Aquinas and the Fathers of the Church,” 343). Whether this would have included these works of Ambrose is unclear. Thomas Humphries, “‘These Words are Spirit and Life’: Thomas’ Use of Augustine on the Eucharist in Summa Theologiae, III, 73–83,” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 78, no. 1 (2011): 62–64. Corey L. Barnes, Christ’s Two Wills in Scholastic Thought: The Christology of Aquinas and Its Historical Contexts (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2012), 176. For the importance of these works of Ambrose for Thomas on the question of Christ’s two wills, see especially 7, 126–28, 132–35, 174–76. ST III, q. 83, a. 1, resp., ad 1. See Bruce D. Marshall, “The Whole Mystery of Our Salvation: Saint Thomas Aquinas on the Eucharist as Sacrifice,” in Rediscovering Aquinas and the Sacraments: Studies in Sacramental Theology, ed. Matthew Levering and Michael Dauphinais (Chicago: Hillenbrand, 2009), 48. For a discussion of how these passages came to be attributed to Ambrose through Gratian, see Wawrykow, “The Greek Fathers 110 Damian Day, O.P. passage offering a definition of penance comes from a pseudo-Augustinian work.39 The majority of Thomas’s most important citations of Ambrose in the tertia pars, however, are authentic. As Elders points out, it is difficult to articulate with precision the influence of Ambrose on Thomas because citations of the bishop are sprinkled throughout Thomas’s writings.40 That being said, Thomas clearly considers Ambrose a special authority on certain topics. While Thomas appeals to Ambrose for such topics as virginity and modesty,41 religious life,42 the mysteries of Christ’s life, and his knowledge and will, the bishop’s principal contributions come in the treatment of the cardinal virtues43 and the Eucharist.44 Ambrose’s authority is most crucial in Thomas’s treatment of the Eucharist. Appeals to Ambrose build on Thomas’s earlier citations to show the Eucharist as the Christ who comes to meet and save us. Ambrose on the Mystery of the Incarnation in the tertia pars In his treatment of the Incarnation, Thomas appeals to Ambrose in order to affirm the full humanity and full divinity of Christ. In the first question 39 40 41 42 43 44 in the Eucharistic Theology of Thomas Aquinas,” 286n41, 290 with notes 54–55, 299n88. As Wawrykow points out, Thomas invokes the Greek Fathers especially for the unique presence in the Eucharist, the change, “and most notable, to portray the encounter with the eucharistic Christ in striking fashion, to make clear the immediacy and poignancy of the encounter and the spiritual benefits of fruitful reception” (285– 86). There is something ironically fitting about Ambrose, who is accused of plagiarizing Greek writers, having such passages falsely attributed to him since Thomas also uses Ambrose to emphasize precisely these points. For Ambrose’s potential knowledge of Eastern mystagogical sermons, see Edward J. Yarnold, “Did St. Ambrose Know the Mystagogic Catecheses of St. Cyril of Jerusalem?,” Studia Patristica 12 (1975): 184–89. ST III, q. 89, a. 2, obj. 2. Interestingly, neither Lombard nor Gratian has this definition. Thomas also uniquely attributes it to Ambrose rather than Augustine, as most other medieval commentators do; see Jörgen Vijgen, “The Patristic Sources of Thomas’ Treatise on Penance,” in Roszak and Vijgen, Reading the Church Fathers with St. Thomas Aquinas, 413–14. Elders, “La présence de saint Ambroise,” 78. See, Elders, “Thomas Aquinas and the Fathers of the Church,” 362. For Thomas’s use of Ambrose in his writings on religious life, see Andrew Hofer, O.P., “Aquinas’s Use of Patristic Sources in His Theology of Religious Life,” in Roszak and Vijgen, Reading the Church Fathers with St. Thomas Aquinas, 298, 306–307, 309–11, 313. For a treatment of Ambrose’s theological understanding of virtue, see J. Warren Smith, Christian Grace and Pagan Virtue: The Theological Foundation of Ambrose’s Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Smith, Ambrose, Augustine, and the Pursuit of Greatness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020). See Elders, “La présence de saint Ambroise,”102. The Christ Who Meets Us in the Sacraments 111 on Christ’s knowledge, Ambrose furnishes the sed contra authority showing that the reality of the Incarnation means Christ must have human knowledge. Thomas quotes Ambrose’s De incarnationis dominicae sacramento: “God assumed the perfection of human nature in the flesh; He took upon Himself the sense of man, but not the swollen sense of the flesh.”45 The perfection of human nature requires human knowledge. Thomas appeals to Ambrose to show that Jesus’s full humanity means his possession of human knowledge and even a certain advance or growth in wisdom.46 As the great opponent of the Arians, however, Ambrose also supports Christ’s full divinity. When discussing whether Christ is a creature, Thomas again turns to Ambrose in the sed contra. Ambrose asks, “Was Christ made by a word? Was Christ created by a command? . . . How can there be a creature in God?”47 In these crucial questions, Thomas draws on Ambrose to uphold the reality of Christ’s divine and human natures. Ambrose’s greatest contribution in Thomas’s treatment of the Incarnation, however, involves the union with and effects upon humanity that follow from the affirmation of his full humanity and divinity. Ambrose helps Thomas show the identification with us that Christ assumes. In the question on the defects of the soul that Christ assumed, he quotes Ambrose on Christ’s sorrow. In the sed contra, Ambrose says that “as man He had sorrow; for He bore my sorrow. I call it sorrow, fearlessly, since I preach the cross.”48 Ambrose, and Thomas with him, grasps the personal, salvific import of the theologically orthodox articulation of the Incarnation. His affirmation is deeply personal and experiential precisely because metaphysically and ontologically exact. Thomas greatly appreciates Ambrose’s way of formulating Christ’s assumption of the human will and passions as my or mine. Hence, Ambrose serves as a key source for Thomas’s articulation of Christ’s two wills and two operations in qq. 18–19. Ambrose’s De fide and Augustine’s Contra 45 46 47 48 ST III, q. 9, a. 1, sc. ST III, q. 12, a. 2, sc. Thomas again appeals to De Incarnationis. For a treatment of Thomas’s adoption but modification of Ambrose and John Damascene on the question of Christ’s advance in wisdom, see Kevin Madigan, “Did Jesus ‘Progress in Wisdom’? Thomas Aquinas on Luke 2:52 in Ancient and High-Medieval Context,” Traditio 52 (1997): 179–200. For another treatment of the complexity of Thomas on this question, see Simon Francis Gaine, O.P., “Christ’s Acquired Knowledge according to Thomas Aquinas: How Aquinas’s Philosophy Helped and Hindered His Account,” New Blackfriars 96 (2005): 255–68. ST III, q. 16, a. 8, sc. ST III, q. 15, a. 6, sc. 112 Damian Day, O.P. Maximinum episcopum Arianorum—a work influenced by De fide49—help distinguish the human and divine wills.50 Thomas found these two works in Pope Agatho’s letter with the conciliar acts of Constantinople III. He sees in this pairing of the anti-Arian works of Ambrose and Augustine the well-balanced Christology harkened back to in the Council that tackled questions relating to Christ’s wills.51 In the sed contra of q. 18, a. 1, Thomas quotes both De fide and Ambrose’s commentary on Luke. In order to understand Christ’s prayer in the garden, he cites Ambrose’s interpretation: “As He assumed my will, He assumed my sorrow”; and on Luke 22:24 he says: “His will, He refers to the Man—the Father’s, to the Godhead. For the will of man is temporal, and the will of the Godhead eternal.”52 Combined with his references to Constantinople III in the corpus of the article, the appeal to Ambrose establishes that Christ’s assumption of a perfect human nature means that he shares all that we have, including a human will.53 Ambrose plays a similar role in the following article (q. 18, a. 2). The sed contra again quotes De fide: “Mine is the will which He calls His own; because as Man He assumed my sorrow.”54 In the rest of the sed contra and in the corpus, Thomas reasons that this assumption of our nature and will means the assumption of all that naturally pertains to human nature. Since sorrow belongs to the sense appetite, this means that Christ has a will of sensuality (voluntas sensualitatis). Article 1 of question 19 extends the treatment of Christ’s two wills to the question of two operations. Again, Ambrose’s authority supports the two operations of Christ.55 The affirmation of Christ’s two operations is necessary to safeguard the integrity of Christ’s two natures.56 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 See Barnes, Christ’s Two Wills, 128; Brian E. Daley, S.J., “The Giant’s Twin Substances: Ambrose and the Christology of Augustine’s Contra sermonem Arianorum,” in Augustine: Presbyter factus sum, ed. Joseph T. Lienhard, Earl C. Muller, and Roland J. Teske (New York: P. Lang, 1993), 477–95. Barnes, Christ’s Two Wills, 7. See Barnes Christ’s Two Wills, 176: “That Ambrose and Augustine defend Christ’s human will in works countering the Arians testifies to their well-balanced Christologies, aware of the dangers greeting all who stray too far in emphasizing Christ’s humanity or divinity. Such a balanced Christology finds an eager inheritor in Thomas Aquinas, who happily follows Agatho in calling Ambrose and Augustine to aid.” ST III, q. 18, a. 1, sc. In ST III, q. 21, a. 4, ad 1, Thomas makes a passing reference to Ambrose, listing him among authorities who attribute Christ’s prayer in the garden to his natural human will. ST III, q. 18, a. 2, sc. The citation matches exactly the text of Ambrose, De fide 2.7. ST III, q. 19, a. 1, sc. Thomas accurately reflects the text of De fide 2.8. ST III, q. 19, a. 1, resp. The Christ Who Meets Us in the Sacraments 113 In these articles, Ambrose provides the sed contra authority that supports the full implications of Christ’s assumption of human nature for his human will. But Ambrose also provides a sort of rhetorical appeal by teasing this out in terms of “my will” and “my sorrow.” Christ comes to meet us bearing a fully human will, bearing our sorrow. Ambrose and the Mysteries of Christ’s Life Ambrose appears regularly in Thomas’s treatise on the mysteries of Christ’s life. Thomas often enlists Ambrose to support the fittingness of various episodes in Christ’s life, such as the virgin birth,57 birth from an espoused virgin,58 the manner of the angelic appearance,59 the order of the Annunciation,60 taking his body from a woman,61 the presentation in the temple,62 his baptism,63 his temptation,64 and women being witnesses of resurrection.65 He is also called on to resolve apparent problems or contradictions in the Scriptures such the genealogy of Jesus66 and the order of his resurrection appearances.67 Ambrose assists Thomas in fleshing out the life of the fully divine and fully human Christ. With the bishop’s help, Thomas shows the truth and realism of the Incarnation. In using Ambrose to demonstrate the fittingness of Christ taking his body from a woman, Thomas articulates several key insights. This birth shows the truth of the Incarnation, according to Ambrose, who says, “you will find [in Christ] many things according to nature and many beyond nature. According to the condition of nature, he was in the womb . . . but it was above the condition of nature that a virgin should conceive and a virgin give birth so that you might believe that he was God who was renewing nature; and that he was 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 ST III, q. 28, a. 2, obj. 1, ad 1, and ad 2. The first objection and its reply cite Expositio evangelii secundum Lucam 2:35. The ad 2 references the Ambrosian hymn Intende qui regis Israel. ST III, q. 29, a. 1; Ambrose, Exp. Luc. 1:26–27. Thomas names Ambrose six times in the corpus and also cites him in the ad 2 and ad 3. ST III, q. 30, a. 3, ad 3; Ambrose, Exp. Luc. 1:11. ST III, q. 30, a. 4, ad 2, ad 3; Ambrose, Exp. Luc. 1:34; cf. Hexameron 5.20.65. ST III, q. 31, a. 4, resp; Ambrose, De Incarn. 6.54. ST III, q. 36, a. 3, ad 5; Ambrose, Exp. Luc. 2:25. ST III, q. 39, a. 1, resp; Ambrose, Exp. Luc. 3:21. ST III, q. 41, a. 2, resp., ad 2; Ambrose, Exp. Luc. 4:1. ST III, q. 55, a. 1, ad 3; Ambrose, Exp. Luc. 24:22. ST III, q. 31, a. 2, ad 3; a. 3, ad 2 and ad 5; Ambrose, Exp. Luc. 3:25; Exp. Luc. 3:23. ST III, q. 55, a. 3, ad 4; Ambrose, Exp. Luc. 24:49. 114 Damian Day, O.P. man who according to nature, was being born of man.”68 Thomas appreciates Ambrose’s idea that the mysteries of Christ involve something both natural and supernatural. He references the same passage a few questions later. 69 This principle echoes Ambrose’s previous assistance regarding Christ’s human and divine wills. The Christ we encounter in the events of his earthly life is surrounded by and contains both the natural and the supernatural. And this is salvific. Picking up the implications of Christ assuming “my will/sorrow,” Thomas employs Ambrose here to indicate that when Christ comes in two natures, he comes to renew our nature. Ambrose appears throughout this treatise to show the soteriological import of the way that Christ comes to us. In ST III, q. 40, Thomas articulates an important principle: “Christ’s action is our instruction.”70 The question concerns Christ withdrawing from the crowds to pray. Thomas cites Ambrose, who explains that Christ instructs us in virtue by his example.71 Thomas quoted a more expanded version of Ambrose’s reflection in his question on Christ’s prayer.72 In coming to us in order to renew our nature, Christ teaches us by his example how to live like him, a life both natural and supernatural. Christ’s leading by example directs us to the sacraments. When discussing the fittingness of Christ’s baptism, Thomas looks to Ambrose twice. Christ was baptized to cleanse the water, but also to set us an example. For, Ambrose says, “this is justice, that what you wish another to do, you first do yourself, and encourage others by your example.”73 As Ambrose sees Christ’s life instructing and leading to the sacraments, so Thomas’s treatment of the mysteries of Christ’s life flows into his treatment of the sacraments. Ambrose and the Sacraments At first glance, Ambrose’s role in Thomas’s treatment of baptism seems significant. Thomas refers repeatedly to a citation allegedly from a commentary of 68 69 70 71 72 73 ST III, q. 31, a. 4, resp. (trans. mine). ST III, q. 33, a. 4, resp. ST III, q. 40, a. 1, ad 3. For a treatment of Thomas’s understanding of all of Christ’s actions as instructive, see Richard Schenk, O.P., “‘Omnis Christi Actio Nostra Est Instructio’: The Deeds and Sayings of Jesus as Revelation in the View of Thomas Aquinas,” in La doctrine de la revelation divine de Saint Thomas d’Aquin: Actes du Symposium sur la pensée de Saint Thomas d’Aquin, ed. Leo Elders (Vatican City: Pontifical Academy of Saint Thomas, 1990), 104–31. ST III, q. 40, a. 1, ad 3. The quotation is taken from Ambrose’s commentary on Luke 6:12. ST III, q. 21, a. 1, ad 1. ST III, q. 39, a. 1, resp. (trans. mine); Ambrose, Exp. Luc. 3:21. The Christ Who Meets Us in the Sacraments 115 Ambrose on Rom 11:29.74 Unfortunately, the attribution is spurious. This restricts Ambrose’s influence to the questions of baptism in the name of Christ,75 baptismal anointings,76 and most interestingly, salvation by baptism of desire.77 Ambrose’s most significant contribution to Thomas’s sacramental theology comes instead in his treatment of the Eucharist. In his treatise on the Eucharist (ST III, qq. 73–83), Thomas appeals to Ambrose about twenty times. As Thomas Humphries has shown, Thomas uses Ambrose and Augustine as “dueling authorities” in these questions.78 In Thomas’s day, the nature of Augustine’s view of the Eucharist—figurative or realist—was hotly debated and often contrasted with Ambrose’s realism. Thomas, therefore, intentionally constructs his treatise on the Eucharist as a sort of disputation between the two authorities.79 Through this approach, he reveals them to be mutually reinforcing rather than mutually exclusive. Or, in Humphries happy phrasing, Thomas presents the dueling authorities “not as two swordsmen fighting to the death, but two banjos on a front porch calling each other to develop a particular melody.”80 The form of a summa, with its debate-like questions, facilitates this melodious back and forth. Humphries’s observations capture well Thomas’s use of Ambrose. Ambrose provides the Angelic Doctor with firm support, emphasizing the reality of Christ in the Eucharist. Paralleling and building on Ambrose’s authority in establishing the reality of the Incarnation, Thomas now uses Ambrose to help show how the Christ who came among us at the Incarnation and in his earthly life comes to us now in the Eucharist. De sacramentis serves as Thomas’s most important Ambrosian source on the Eucharist, although he occasionally cites De mysteriis.81 Both these 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 ST III, q. 68, a. 5, sc; a. 6, sc and ad 1; q. 69, a. 2, sc. ST III, q. 66, a. 6, obj. 2, obj. 3 and ad 2. ST III, q. 66, a. 10, ad 2. ST III, q. 68, a. 2, resp. Thomas cites a brief, but moving passage from Ambrose’s De obitu Valentiniani: “I lost him whom I was to regenerate: but he did not lose the grace he prayed for [quem regeneraturus eram amisi, veruntamen ille gratiam quam poposcit, non amisit].” Humphries, “‘These Words are Spirit and Life,’” 63. For the role of Ambrose and Augustine in these controversies, see James F. McCue, “The Doctrine of Transubstantiation from Berengar through Trent: The Point at Issue,” Harvard Theological Review 61, no. 3 (1968): 385–430. Humphries, “‘These Words are Spirit and Life,’” 63. Both In both ST III, q. 74, a. 8, resp., and q. 75, a. 3, obj. 2, Thomas cite a passage from De mysteriis 9 that he attributes to De officiis. ST III, q. 75, a. 4, resp., cites a passage from De myst. 4 that Thomas thought came from De sacr. The sed contra of q. 76, a. 1, presents an apparent problem: Thomas attributes to Ambrose’s De officiis the following: “in illo sacramento Christus est.” This citation serves as the only authority Thomas cites 116 Damian Day, O.P. works consist of mystagogical sermons for the newly baptized.82 In them, Ambrose directs the newly baptized to develop a spiritual sight that allows them to see in and through the sacramental rites the spiritual realities that they encounter. Ambrose responds directly to the confusion and uncertainty the new initiates may experience through the encounter with what appear to be common water or bread and wine.83 One must develop the eyes of the heart to see the reality.84 These mystagogical sermons represent Ambrose’s attempt to train the spiritual eyes of his newly baptized. He does so as a master expositor of Sacred Scripture and a master rhetor.85 Thomas employs Ambrose’s scriptural and rhetorical skill to help us see Christ coming to meet us in the Eucharist. In Thomas’s treatment of the Eucharist, Ambrose appears as an authority on the matter,86 the change,87 Christ’s presence in sacrament,88 the 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 in his crucial article about the whole Christ contained under this sacrament. In his discussion of Ambrose in Thomas’s treatise on the Eucharist, Elders does not mention this citation, suggesting he considers it incorrectly attributed (see, “La présence de saint Ambroise,” 96–98). The passage is authentic and actually comes from De myst. 9.58: “in illo sacramento Christus est, quia corpus est Christi.” For studies of Ambrose’s catechetical and mystagogical preaching, see Satterlee, Ambrose of Milan’s Method, throughout; Humberto S. Medeiros, “The De Mysteriis and De Sacramentis of St. Ambrose,” PhD diss. (Catholic University of America, 1952); Gérard Nauroy, “Deux lectures de la liturgie du baptême chez Ambroise de Milan: Du témoignage brut à son elaboration littéraire,” in Littérature, rites et liturgies, ed. Emmanuel Godo (Paris: Imago, 2002), 13–39; Christine Mohrmann, “Le style oral du De sacramentis de saint Ambroise,” Vigilae Christianae 6 (1952): 168–77. The authenticity of De sacramentis, while long doubted, is now generally accepted. See, Mohrmann, “Observations sur le ‘De Sacramentis’ et le ‘De Mysteriis’ de saint Ambroise,” in Ambrosius Episcopus, vol. 1, ed. Giuseppe Lazzati (Milan: Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 1976), 103–7; Satterlee, Ambrose of Milan’s Method, 20–29. For a study of the centrality of the Eucharist specifically, see Raymond Johanny, L’Eucharistie, centre de l’histoire du salut chez saint Ambroise de Milan (Paris: Beauchesne, 1968). Georgia Frank, “‘Taste and see’: The Eucharist and the Eyes of Faith in the Fourth Century,” Church History 70, no. 4 (2001): 619–43. Ambrose, De sacr. 3.2. For an example of Ambrose’s scriptural explanation of the sacramental rites, see a pair of articles by Jean Daniélou on the use of the Song of Songs: “The Canticle, A Song of Sacraments,” Orate Fratres 3 (1951): 97–103; “The Canticle, A Song of Sacraments (II),” Orate Fratres 4 (1951): 161–65. For a treatment of Ambrose’s rhetorical approach, see Brian P. Dunkle, Enchantment and Creed in the Hymns of Ambrose of Milan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 74–84. ST III, q. 74, a. 6, resp. and ad 1; a. 8, resp. ST III, q. 75, a. 1, sc; a. 2, sc; a. 3, obj. 2; a. 4, resp.; a. 7, obj. 3; a. 8, sc. ST III, q. 76, a. 1, sc. The Christ Who Meets Us in the Sacraments 117 accidents,89 the form,90 the effects,91 and daily reception.92 Ambrose serves as the sed contra authority in one of the central articles of the treatise: q. 76, a. 1. The brevity of the citation is matched only by its clarity: “Christ is in this sacrament.”93 As Thomas will explain in the first line of the corpus, “it is absolutely necessary to confess according to Catholic faith that the entire Christ is in this sacrament [quod totus Christus sit in hoc sacramento].”94 Ambrose provides the succinct affirmation of the Church’s teaching on the real presence. The whole Christ comes to us in this sacrament. In the previous discussion of the change, Ambrose’s authority emphasized that Christ truly comes to us through the change of the elements.95 In the first article, Ambrose, paired with Hilary, provides the sed contra: “As the Lord Jesus Christ is God’s true Son so is it Christ’s true flesh which we take, and His true blood which we drink.”96 This important citation highlights several key ways in which Thomas uses Ambrose. The bishop both affirms the real presence of Christ and indicates the way in which he comes to us: as food and drink. Thomas turns to Ambrose several times to support these insights. In q. 75, a. 2, Ambrose again appears in the sed contra, affirming that, after the consecration, the elements “are to be believed to be nothing else than the body and blood of Christ.”97 An objection in the following article uses him again to affirm a real change.98 Thomas is discussing whether the substances of bread and wine are annihilated by the consecration. Ambrose’s objection allows him to reemphasize the conversion of the substance of bread into that of Christ’s body in his reply. Ambrose makes another appearance in the succeeding article to show how such a change is possible. His answer 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 ST III, q. 77, a. 6, obj. 1. ST III, q. 78, a. 1, sc and ad 4; a. 2, obj. 2; a. 4, sc. In q. 83, a. 4, obj. 1, Thomas briefly refers to Ambrose’s understanding of the words of consecration as deriving from Christ himself. ST III, q. 79, a. 1, resp.; a. 4, resp. ST III, q. 80, a. 10, resp. ST III, q. 76, a. 1, sc. ST III, q. 76, a. 1, resp. Humphries notes the pattern of citations from Ambrose and Augustine in this question: “When Thomas asks about the real presence, Augustine is cited as the authority behind the objecting arguments, while Ambrose is cited as the contrary authority. Instead of choosing one over the other, Thomas reconciles them in his responses” (“‘These Words are Spirit and Life,’” 64–65). ST III, q. 75, a. 1, sc. ST III, q. 75, a. 2, sc. Thomas appears to take this citation, which does not exactly match a passage from Ambrose, from Gratian. It may reflect De sacr. 4.4 or De myst. 9.54 (see Humphries, “‘These Words are Spirit and Life,’” 75n41). ST III, q. 75, a. 3, obj. 2. 118 Damian Day, O.P. harkens back to Thomas’s use of Ambrose in explaining Christ’s birth.99 In the corpus, Thomas explains how the Eucharistic change is beyond nature. He looks first to Ambrose: “It is clear that a Virgin begot beyond the order of nature: and what we make is the body from the Virgin. Why, then, do you look for nature’s order in Christ’s body, since the Lord Jesus was Himself brought forth of a Virgin beyond nature?”100 Thus, the Incarnation, as illumined by Ambrose, furnishes the basis for understanding how Christ comes to us in the Eucharist. Only the power of God makes possible such a unique encounter in the sacrament. As Ambrose stresses the necessity of God’s power, he likewise expresses how that power operates through the word of Christ. Christ comes to us in the Eucharist through the power of his own word. As a brief citation in one objection puts it, the sacrament “is made by the words of Christ.”101 Thomas had cited Ambrose in question 16, affirming that Christ is not a creature because he was not created by a word, but creates by his word.102 In Thomas’s treatment of the Eucharist, Ambrose shows the efficacy of the words of Christ with respect to the Eucharist.103 Thus in question 78, on the form of the sacrament, Thomas turns to Ambrose several times. The sed contra of the first article contains one of his longest citations of Ambrose: “The consecration is accomplished by the words and expressions of the Lord Jesus. Because, by all the other words spoken, praise is rendered to God, prayer is put up for the people, for kings, and others; but when the time comes for perfecting the sacrament, the priest uses no longer his own words, but the words of Christ. Therefore, it is Christ’s words that perfect this sacrament.”104 Thomas’s corpus expands the ideas contained in the sed contra citation. He emphasizes that only God can cause such a change. This means that Christ speaks through the person of the priest uttering his words. Through his words spoken by a priest, Christ comes and makes himself present. In q. 78, a. 4, Ambrose helps explain how this power of God communicated through the words of Christ operates instrumentally. The sed contra citation of Ambrose draws a parallel comparison between the power of Christ’s word to create ex nihilo and its power to change a creature into 99 100 101 102 103 104 ST III, q. 31, a. 4, resp. ST III, q. 75, a. 4, resp. ST III, q. 75, a. 7, obj. 3; Ambrose, De myst. 9.52. ST III, q. 16, a. 8, sc. In ST III, q. 78, a. 2, obj. 2, Thomas cites a passage of Ambrose (De sacr. 4.4) in which he draws a connection between Christ’s word creating the heavens and earth and his word consecrating the sacrament. ST III, q. 78, a. 1, sc. The Christ Who Meets Us in the Sacraments 119 something else.105 Since the words are spoken in the person of Christ, Thomas writes, “they receive their instrumental power from him.”106 In the words of consecration, we hear Christ speaking to us his efficacious word, the word that renders him fully present. Ambrose helps Thomas explain the soteriological import of the way in which Christ comes to us in the Eucharist. In this sacrament, we meet Christ as our food and drink. Thomas employs Ambrose’s reflections on the Eucharist as spiritual food and drink to explain the effects of the sacrament. In the question on the matter of the sacrament (ST III, q. 74), Ambrose witnesses to the Church’s practice and shows the fittingness of the matter in relation to the sacramental effects. Following Lombard, he cites a passage actually from Ambrosiaster which argues that the sacrament is offered under the species of bread for the health of the body and under the species of wine for the health of the soul.107 Although not authentic, the idea is not totally alien to Ambrose’s thinking.108 In explaining why water is added to the wine, Ambrose supplies the fourth reason, one drawn from the effect of the sacrament—eternal life: “The water flows into the chalice, and springs forth unto everlasting life.”109 The reply to the first objection further expands his reflection on this passage from De sacramentis. Thomas notes that Christ’s sacrifice is signified by both the offering of Melchizedek and the water flowing from the rock in the desert (1 Cor 10:4).110 Thomas turns to a particular passage from De sacramentis twice to explain that the Eucharist provides spiritual nourishment. In Thomas’s question on the accidents which remain (ST III, q. 77), Ambrose appears in an objection that claims the species cannot nourish the body. In the citation, Ambrose describes the Eucharist as “the bread of everlasting life, which supports the substance of our soul.”111 The point is the spiritual effect of the sacrament. Thomas’s reverential reading of Ambrose in his reply explains how Ambrose, in using the word “bread,” refers to Christ’s body, the mystical bread. Hence, he explains, Ambrose meant that this substance (Christ’s body) “is not 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 ST III, q. 78, a. 4, sc. ST III, q. 78, a. 4, resp. ST III, q. 74, a. 1, resp.; Peter Lombard, Sentences IV, d. 11, a. 4, no. 1. Cf. Ambrose, De myst. 9.58; De sacr. 5.3. ST III, q. 74, a. 6, resp. ST III, q. 74, a. 6, ad 1. In a. 8, resp., Thomas also uses Ambrose to argue that it is better not to add a large quantity of water. Thomas cites Ambrose to affirm that nothing remains after consecration except the body and blood. See Ambrose, De myst. 9.54. ST III, q. 77, a. 6, obj. 1. The citation reproduces nearly exactly the passage from De sacr. 5.4. 120 Damian Day, O.P. changed into man’s body, but nourishes his soul.”112 Thomas turns again to this passage in the corpus of his first article on the effects the sacrament. He distinguishes four ways in which one can consider the effect of the sacrament. The third way considers the Eucharist from the way it is given—as food and drink. Thomas asserts, therefore, that “this sacrament does for the spiritual life all that material food does for the bodily life, namely, by sustaining, giving increase, restoring, and giving delight.”113 He cites Ambrose, as quoted above, and Chrysostom as his authorities. Christ comes as saving spiritual food and drink to nourish our souls. Further, Ambrose provides Thomas with significant justification for meeting Christ in this sacrament daily. When Thomas considers whether the Eucharist forgives venial sins, he affirms this both with respect to the sacramentum ipsum (sacramentum tantum) and the res sacramentum. Given as food and drink, the Eucharist restores the spiritual energy of charity lost through venial sins, just as natural food restores the energy lost through activity. This is why, Thomas argues, Ambrose says that the Eucharist is received daily “as a remedy against daily infirmity.”114 Meeting Christ daily in the Eucharist, we receive the remedy that restores the health of our souls. On the question of daily reception itself, Thomas makes much the same point, again with Ambrose’s help. The sed contra authority gives strong and straightforward support to daily reception: “This is our daily bread; take it daily, that it may profit you daily.”115 Thomas attributes this quotation to Augustine, but it actually comes from Ambrose.116 On the side of the sacrament itself, which gives health, daily reception is profitable. Hence, Ambrose says, “if, whenever Christ’s blood is shed, it is shed for the forgiveness of sins, I who sin often, should receive it often: I need a frequent remedy.”117 Thomas cites the same quotation again when considering daily reception on the side of the recipient. He then continues the citation: “So live as to deserve to receive it daily.”118 Thomas’s point is that only the lack of a proper 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 ST III, q. 77, a. 6, ad 1. ST III, q. 79, a. 1, resp. ST III, q. 79, a. 4, resp. Rather than an exact quote, this is a paraphrase or summary faithful to the meaning of De sacr. 5.4. ST III, q. 80, a. 10, sc. I altered the translation slightly. Ambrose, De sacr. 5.4: “If it is daily bread, why do you take it once a year, as the Greeks are accustomed to do in the East. Take it daily, that it may profit you daily! [Si cottidianus est panis, cur post annum illum sumas, quemadmodum Graeci in oriente facere consuerunt? Accipe cottidie, quod cottidie tibi prosit!]” (trans. mine). I am grateful to Andrew Hofer, O.P. for pointing out this further hidden influence of Ambrose. ST III, q. 80, a. 10, resp. ST III, q. 80, a. 10, resp.; Ambrose, De sacr. 5.4. The Christ Who Meets Us in the Sacraments 121 disposition impedes daily reception. One should receive whenever properly disposed. Christ comes daily to heal, forgive, and nourish in the saving food and drink of the Eucharist. Ambrose helps Thomas develop his theological support for daily communion.119 Conclusion For Thomas, Ambrose represents the tradition that hands on what the Church has received about the Eucharist. From Ambrose, along with other authorities, Thomas receives the Church’s faith regarding the matter, form, change, real substantial presence, and effects of the Eucharist. Thomas’s understanding of Christ coming to us in the sacrament involves the interpretation of Christ’s words in Scripture mediated through the tradition of the Church. As Reinhard Hütter has recently written, “the ecclesial mediation of the divine faith that sacred theology entails renders theologically moot the necessity of trying to reconstruct Jesus’ Aramaic diction during the Last Supper—a reconstructive process whose results are unavoidably provisional not only due to their varying degrees of probability but also to their inherent surpassability by alternative construals.”120 The same could be said of attempts to reconstruct Eucharistic theology more broadly. That the faith is received through the Church as witnessed to by authorities such as Ambrose shows the parameters, but also the stability of the Church’s teaching. Attempts to circumvent the tradition embodied in figures like Ambrose or Augustine or Thomas, to move beyond their “restrictive” articulations, are misguided. There is no need, as one recent article argued, to shift the emphasis from the presence of the “substance of Christ’s body to the personal presence of the risen self of Christ, in and through the matter of the eucharistic bread and wine.”121 As Ambrose helps Thomas show, Christ’s substantial presence is preeminently personal. The same person, fully God and fully human, who 119 120 121 For the distinctive nature of Thomas’s theology of daily reception and his influence on St. Ignatius of Loyola on this point, see Andrew Hofer, “Frequent Communion for the Greater Glory of God: Thomas Aquinas and Ignatius of Loyola,” in Ignatius Loyola and Thomas Aquinas: A Jesuit Ressourcement, ed. Justin Anderson, Matthew Levering, and Aaron Pidel, S.J. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming). Hofer discusses the influence of Ambrose on Thomas’s theology of daily reception. Reinhard Hütter, Aquinas on Transubstantiation: The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2019), 13. For such an attempt, see Bernard P. Prusak, “Explaining Eucharistic ‘Real Presence’: Moving beyond a Medieval Conundrum,” Theological Studies 75, no. 2 (2014): 258. 122 Damian Day, O.P. came to us in the Incarnation, who lived among us as one of us, comes to us personally because he comes to us substantially present in the Eucharist. Thomas’s incorporation of Ambrose in the tertia pars, especially in his treatment of the Eucharist, represents another example of the ways “in which Thomas tried to bridge the gap between the pastoral teachings of the Fathers, often expressed in literary style, and the rigorously scientific theology of the scholastics of his day.”122 In drawing on Ambrose’s mystagogical preaching about the sacraments, Thomas does just that. The insights and rhetorical flare of Ambrose’s preaching are taken up in the vision Thomas announces at the beginning of the tertia pars: Forasmuch as our Savior the Lord Jesus Christ, in order to save His people from their sins (Matt 1:21), as the angel announced, showed unto us in His own Person the way of truth, whereby we may attain to the bliss of eternal life by rising again, it is necessary, in order to complete the work of theology, that after considering the last end of human life, and the virtues and vices, there should follow the consideration of the Savior of all, and of the benefits bestowed by Him on the human race.123 Christ himself shows the way to salvation, he shows himself to be the way, and he shows us himself. That reality of his presence through the Incarnation continues sacramentally, above all in the Eucharist. Thomas realized that Ambrose grasped this truth and witnessed to it eloquently. As Romanus Cessario comments, Ambrose saw that the sacraments permit us to “enter into contact with the eschatological reality already, in a sense, accomplished in Christ.”124 For, there, Christ comes to meet us face-to-face. 122 123 124 Elders, “Thomas Aquinas and the Fathers of the Church,” 337. ST III, prol. Romanus Cessario, O.P., Introduction to O’Neill, Meeting Christ in the Sacraments, xiv. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2024): 123–134 123 Reason, Passion, and Metaphysics in Bonaventure: Against Hylomorphic Enthusiasm Matthew J. Dugandzic St. Mary’s Seminary and University Baltimore, MD Introduction Contemporary commentators on Aquinas’s understanding of the passions all agree that reason is supposed to be the ruler of the passions, but they disagree on the character of this rule. Some would ascribe a high degree of freedom to the passions, such that, even though reason is overall the ruler of the passions, sometimes the passions are right to resist this rule.1 Others argue that the passions ought to obey reason slavishly, such that, if any passion is to be virtuous, it must result from “reason’s immediate control, . . . [that is,] reason now commanding this or that passion.”2 Many other thinkers would fall somewhere in between these two positions at various points, such that giving a full account of the range of these positions would be quite complicated, but these scholars could also be placed neatly into two categories according to how they would answer the following question: Are virtuous passions only those that arise in response to reason’s immediate command, or can other passions be included, such as those that, for example, without 1 2 G. J. McAleer, for example, says that the passions must “consent” to reason’s rule and that it is sometimes a good thing for the passions to rebel against reason’s rule, since “sometimes this unruliness is a rejection of the false rule of reason” (Ecstatic Morality and Sexual Politics: A Catholic and Antitotalitarian Theory of the Body [New York: Fordham University Press, 2005], 38). Giuseppe Butera, “On Reason’s Control of the Passions in Aquinas’s Theory of Temperance,” Medieval Studies 68 (2006): 133n2. 124 Matthew J. Dugandzic being explicitly commanded to do so by reason, prompt reason to do this or that, or even inform reason about some aspect of an object?3 Until recently, most scholars of Thomas Aquinas would have held the latter position, that the passions sometimes have some positive roles to play in the virtuous life even when they arise in the absence of an immediate command from reason.4 In recent years, however, the number of scholars who maintain the former position, holding that any passion that does not arise in response to reason’s immediate command is not virtuous, has been growing.5 3 4 5 The language of “prompting,” for example, can be found throughout Nicholas E. Lombardo, O.P., The Logic of Desire: Aquinas on Emotion (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011). For “informing” reason, see 106, where Lombardo says that “virtuous passions impart “affective knowledge” that assists moral decision making,” and also McAleer, Ecstatic Morality, 37–38, where he discusses the “moral knowledge” that the passions can share with reason. For a more cautious approach to the ability of the passions to prompt reason to act and to furnish it with “affective knowledge,” see Robert Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature: A Philosophical Study of Summa theologiae Ia 75–89 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 262–63. Examples of scholarship in addition to McAleer’s that can be placed in this second camp include: Marie-Dominique Chenu, “Les passions vertueuses: L’anthropologie de saint Thomas,” Revue philosophique de Louvain 13 (1974): 11–18; Chenu, “Body and Body Politic in the Creation Spirituality of Thomas Aquinas,” in Western Spirituality: Historical Roots, Ecumenical Roots, ed. Matthew Fox (Notre Dame, IN: Fides/Claretian, 1979), 193–214; G. Simon Harak, S.J., Virtuous Passions: The Formation of Christian Character (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1993), 90–98; Pasnau, Thomas Aquinas on Human Nature, 263; Jean Porter, Moral Action and Christian Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 172–73; Elisabeth Uffenheimer-Lippens, “Rationalized Passion and Passionate Reality: Thomas Aquinas on the Relation between Reason and the Passions,” The Review of Metaphysics 56, no. 3 (2003): 544–57; Jeffrey Hause, “Aquinas on the Function of Moral Virtue,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 81 (2007): 9–10; Romanus Cessario, Moral Virtues and Theological Ethics, 2nd ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 63–66; Robert Miner, Thomas Aquinas on the Passions: A Study of Summa Theologiae Ia-IIae 22–48 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 106–8; Craig Steven Titus, “Passions in Christ: Spontaneity, Development, and Virtue,” The Thomist 73 (2009): 72–73; Fiona R. Barker, “Connaturality and the Cogitative Power: A Thomistic Account of the Influence of Culture on Moral Formation” (PhD diss., St. Louis University, 2011), 79; Lombardo, Logic of Desire, 13, 41, 69, 132; Martin Rhonheimer, The Perspective of Morality: Philosophical Foundations of Thomistic Virtue Ethics (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2011); Paul Gondreau, The Passions of Christ’s Soul in the Theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Providence, RI: Cluny Media, 2018). Examples of scholarship in addition to Butera’s that can be placed in the first camp include: Steven Jensen, “Virtuous Deliberation and the Passions,” The Thomist 77 (2013): 193–227; Daniel D. De Haan, “Moral Perception and the Function of the Vis Cogitativa in Thomas Aquinas’s Doctrine of Antecedent and Consequent Passions,” Reason, Passion, and Metaphysics in Bonaventure 125 My aim in this article is further to bolster the case of those who hold that, for Aquinas, the only passions that are virtuous are those that arise from reason’s immediate command. I will do this by criticizing an argument that is commonly used by those who oppose this position, and which I refer to as “hylomorphic enthusiasm.” Generally speaking, the logic of hylomorphic enthusiasm goes like this: Aquinas’s understanding of the relationship between passion and reason is rooted in his hylomorphic view of the unity between body and soul, which unity implies that, for him, reason and passion have something of a collegial relationship, whereby reason rules the passions not despotically, but as a ruler who, though in charge, is nevertheless interested in hearing what his subjects have to say. Paul Gondreau, for example, says that, in Aquinas’s view, reason rules over the passions as in a “constitutional monarchy,” in which “citizens submit to the supreme authority of the monarch, yet without relinquishing all their political rights and privileges.”6 For Gondreau, Aquinas’s characterization of the relationship between reason and passion was unique for his time, and was due to his similarly unique “hylemorphic [sic] metaphysics of human nature.”7 Bonaventure, on the other hand, did not share this hylomorphic view of the relationship between body and soul, but was rather a substance dualist, and so, consequently, he thought that reason cannot rule the passions politically, but can only “‘tame’ the passions by a kind of exterior imposition, or forced ‘submission to reason’ [obtemperat ratoini)].”8 In sum, the position of the hylomorphic enthusiasts is this: Aquinas’s hylomorphic view of the unity of body and soul implies a collegial view of reason’s rulership over passion, while Bonaventure’s more dualistic view of the relationship between body and soul implies that reason could rule the passions only despotically, rather than politically. There are a number of premises, both implicit and explicit, in this argument. For the sake of focusing this paper, I will choose to focus on two. First, I will focus on the explicit claim that Bonaventure held a dualistic view of the relationship 6 7 8 Documenti e studi sulla tradizione filosofica medievale 25 (2014): 290–330; and Nicholas Kahm, Aquinas on Emotion’s Participation in Reason (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2019). Gondreau, Passions of Christ’s Soul, 240. I am focusing on Gondreau here as an example of someone who subscribes to what I call hylomorphic enthusiasm. Similar arguments can be found in Chenu, “Les passions vertueuses,” 12; Chenu, “Body and Body Politic,” 216–19; Bonnie Kent, Virtues of the Will: The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth Century (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1995), 212–16; Titus, “Passions in Christ,” 72–73; and Lombardo, Logic of Desire, 100. Gondreau, Passions of Christ’s Soul, 236. Gondreau, Passions of Christ’s Soul, 243. 126 Matthew J. Dugandzic between body and soul; I maintain that Bonaventure’s understanding of the relationship between body and soul is no more dualistic than Aquinas’s. Second, an implicit premise of hylomorphic enthusiasm is that having a hylomorphic or dualistic view of the relationship between body and soul neatly corresponds, respectively, to a political or a despotic view of the character of reason’s rule of the passions. My conclusions regarding Bonaventure’s view of the relationship between body and soul challenges this premise, since, if it is granted that Bonaventure and Aquinas think differently about how reason rules the passions, and if my conclusion is correct that they do not think much differently about how the body and the soul are related to one another, then it follows that the relationship between Aquinas’s or Bonaventure’s metaphysics and their view of the relationship between reason and passion is not as clear as would be implied by hylomorphic enthusiasm. That is, whatever differences there might be between Aquinas and Bonaventure on the relationship between reason and passion, these differences are not due to any differences in their respective metaphysical views. Body and Soul in Bonaventure What exactly is the charge against Bonaventure? That is, in what way is his view of the relationship between body and soul dualistic? Bonnie Kent explains this characterization of Bonaventure’s views quite clearly. For Aquinas, as she puts it, “the rational soul is both the form of the body and the form of the composite, so that it is the same form that makes the body to be a body and makes the soul and body together to be a human being.”9 Bonaventure and most Franciscans in his day thought that the body had existence from its own form, separate from the rational soul. Thus, “the relationship between body and soul is not as close in Franciscan thought as it is in Thomism.”10 In other words, Aquinas thought that the rational soul was the only substantial form of the body, but Bonaventure thought that the body had its own form, which made it to be a body, in addition to the rational soul. Putting it this way does indeed seem to imply that Bonaventure thinks of the body and soul as two separate things, rather than a closely united composite, which might indeed imply that, for Bonaventure, the spiritual faculties of the soul cannot work with the organs of the body as immediately as they can for Aquinas. But, of course, this conclusion might 9 10 Kent, Virtues of the Will, 215. Chenu argues similarly in “Passions vertueuses,” 12, and his argument is cited in Titus, “Passions in Christ,” 67n12. Chenu also makes a similar argument in “Body and Body Politic,” 219. Kent, Virtues of the Will, 215. Reason, Passion, and Metaphysics in Bonaventure 127 follow only if the initial description of Bonaventure’s understanding of the relationship between the body and soul is correct. This section will argue that a proper understanding of Bonaventure’s metaphysics shows that there is no more “distance” (as Kent might put it) between the body and the soul in Bonaventure’s thought than in Aquinas’s and, consequently, that Bonaventure’s understanding of the relationship between body and soul does not imply that reason’s rule of the passions must be despotic. I will begin by focusing on the claim that Kent makes that, for Bonaventure, the body has (at least) two forms, one form that makes the body to be a body and another that makes it to be part of the composite whole that is the human person. For this, I will turn to an examination of Bonaventure’s account of the composition of corporeal substances.11 Bonaventure elaborates his understanding of how corporeal substances are composed of matter and form within the context of discussing the six days of creation. According to Bonaventure, the first thing that God created was prime matter, such that prime matter existed before light or any distinct beings.12 This matter was formless, insofar as it had the potential to be informed by all kinds of corporeal forms. But for Bonaventure, this potential to be informed is itself a capacity, which, in Bonaventure’s metaphysical system, “is to it as a form.”13 Clearly, this understanding of prime matter is already different from Aquinas’s, for whom prime matter is not something informed, but is merely a principle.14 In addition, for Bonaventure, prime matter was extended in space, and was therefore also located in space, which 11 12 13 14 I would like to thank the participants in the 2018 Pinckaers Symposium for their helpful feedback on an earlier version of the arguments presented here. I would also like to acknowledge the impressively thorough work of John Francis Quinn, whose treatment of Bonaventure’s philosophy was immensely helpful in guiding me through Bonaventure’s texts. See John Francis Quinn, The Historical Constitution of St. Bonaventure’s Philosophy (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1973). The work of D. Thomas Graf, OSB, though quite dated, was also helpful in locating the key texts in Bonaventure’s corpus (De subiecto psychico gratiae et virtutum secundum doctrinam scholasticorum usque ad medium saeculum XIV, vol. 2, De subiecto virtutum cardinalium [Rome: Herder, 1934]). See Bonaventure, In II sent., d. 12, where Bonaventure discusses “the production of the corporeal creature with respect to the material principle” (“de corporalis creaturae productione quantum ad principium materiale”). Bonaventure’s Latin is taken from the Quaracchi edition of his Opera omnia; translations are my own. Bonaventure, In II sent., d. 12, a. 1, q. 1, concl.: “est sibi pro forma.” Compare, for example, Aquinas, ST I, q. 66, a. 1, which contains Aquinas’s own treatment of the six days of creation, wherein he asserts that “prime matter . . . in itself does not have any form.” 128 Matthew J. Dugandzic implies that it is a bodily substance occupying space.15 Nevertheless, prime matter is not a complete substance for Bonaventure. It is still quite indeterminate, having incomplete form. As Bonaventure puts it, prime matter is not really something, but it also it is not really nothing. Rather, it is “something that is midway between something and nothing.”16 Thus, Bonaventure states: “Though [matter] does not in and of itself have the act of form, it nevertheless has the capacity for form and exists for form.”17 Moreover, matter has an “appetite that is directed to form as its substantial perfection,”18 and that “disposes [it] . . . for the introduction of form.”19 When matter and form are combined, they are “made one.”20 This combination of matter and form is accomplished by means of “mediating dispositions,” which remain in the composite of matter and form after matter and form have been combined, since they themselves are perfected thereby.21 These mediating dispositions between matter and form are also called rationes seminales, which is the term that Bonaventure uses when he discusses how matter and form come to be united.22 For him, form is educed out of matter by means of the rationes seminales. These rationes seminales are effectively inchoate essences that are co-created with matter and that may later 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 Bonaventure, In II sent., d. 12, a. 2, q. 3, concl. Bonaventure, In II sent., d. 3, p. 1, a. 1, q. 1: “aliquid quod est medium inter aliquid et nihil.” Bonaventure, In II sent., d. 1, p. 1, a. 1, q. 1, resp. ad 1: “etsi non habeat de se et in se actum formae, ipsa tamen capacitas formae est ei pro forma.” Bonaventure, In II sent., d. 1, a. 3, q. 2, ad 1: “appetitus materiae ordinatur ad formam, tamquam ad perfectionem substantialem.” Bonaventure, Coll. in Hex, sermo 2,: “disponit . . . ad introductionem formae.” Bonaventure, In I sent., 1.3.2, ad 1: “fit unum.” Bonaventure, Collationes in Hexaemeron, sermon 2: “mediantibus dispositionibus non quod illae dispositiones perimantur, sed magis perficiantur.” Compare with Aquinas, ST I, q. 76, a. 6, where, speaking of soul and body, Aquinas rejects the position that the soul is united to the body by any mediating dispositions in that the soul is understood as the substantial form of the body. But if the soul were looked at only as the motor of the body, then the idea of there being mediating dispositions between the soul and the body seems more plausible. Aquinas understands the rationes seminales differently, though his account is harder to piece together because he does not always use the term rationes seminales even when this concept appears to be operative in his thought, as in the case of his commentary on creation in ST I, qq. 65–74. For an analysis of Aquinas’s understanding of the rationes seminales, see Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P., “The Metaphysics of Evolution: From Aquinas’s Interpretation of Augustine’s Concept of Rationes Seminales to the Contemporary Thomistic Account of Species Transformatism,” Nova et Vetera (English) 18, no. 3 (2020): 945–72. Reason, Passion, and Metaphysics in Bonaventure 129 be educed from matter.23 This means that the seminal reasons are simultaneously active and passive. They are passive in that they do not, of themselves, educe substantial forms, but they are active in that “they cooperate with an agent” in educing a substantial form.24 Consequently, created agents can educe new forms in matter without themselves being creators. That is, created agents can actualize the potencies, the seminal reasons, that inhere in matter, but without thereby causing a new substantial form to exist.25 Thus, for Bonaventure, the creation of corporeal bodies is a process of successive eduction of forms from matter by means of rationes seminales. Starting with prime matter, one of the most basic forms to be educed from matter is the forma elementaris, that is, the form of the basic four elements of earth, air, fire, and water. Once formed, these elements can be mixed together, by means of the forma mixtionis, which gives rise to the basic inanimate corporeal bodies that one encounters in everyday life. Now, such a corporeal body is not suitable for information by a soul, or a forma vitae. For this, it needs a further degree of organization, which is provided by the forma complexionis. It is this form, the forma complexionis, that makes a body suitable for information by a soul, that is, capable of supporting the activities of life.26 Now, with this background information on Bonaventure’s understanding of the eduction of substantial forms from matter, I can discuss the problem at hand: whether a human being has multiple substantial forms. At first glance, it can indeed sound this way. Regarding the preparation of Adam’s body for ensoulment, for example, Bonaventure says that “the forma elementaris is united to the soul by means of the forma mixtionis, and the forma mixtionis disposes to the forma complexionis.”27 Reading this makes it sound like the human person, the composite of body and soul, retains a number of lower forms. Consequently, Bonaventure seems like a pluriformist. There is a sense in which this is true. Clearly, on the basis of this text, Bonaventure does think that a number of forms are present in a human being in some sense. But this sense needs to be clarified. While Bonaventure does, as here exemplified, speak of lower forms remaining in matter when 23 24 25 26 27 This doctrine is found throughout In II sent., d. 18, but a. 1, q. 3, ad 6, is particularly helpful for making this specific point. Conrad J. O’Leary, O.F.M., The Substantial Composition of Man According to Saint Bonaventure (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1931), 53. Bonaventure explains this doctrine thoroughly in In II sent., d. 7, p. 2, a. 2, q. 1, concl. For Bonaventure’s explanation of these forms, see In III sent., d. 18, a. 1, q. 3. Bonaventure, In II sent., d. 17, a. 2, q. 2, ad 6, “Forma elementaris unitur animae mediante forma mixtoinis, et forma mixtionis disponit ad formam complexionis.” 130 Matthew J. Dugandzic that matter is united to higher forms, he does not mean to say that all of these forms coexist in the matter in the same way. This would imply that every corporeal body is an accidental aggregate of elements, which is not the case for Bonaventure. Rather, as Bonaventure explains, “the more posterior and the higher a form is, the more noble [it is], since the anterior [forms] are material with respect to the posterior.”28 From Bonaventure’s account of substantial change, it is clear that, for him, matter has both active and passive qualities. As such, it is not inconsistent with his terminology to refer to one form as “material” with respect to a higher form. What, then, would it mean to say that the forma complexionis is “material” with respect to the rational soul? In Bonaventure’s theory of generation, the body is prepared for ensoulment by a power contained within the semen, but it is the rational soul that serves as the principle of all the person’s activities, including life, sensation, and reason.29 However, the rational soul needs to inform a body that is suitable for it. This suitability comes from the forma complexionis, which, for example, ensures that the body has organs that the sensitive faculties of the rational soul are able to use.30 Nevertheless, note that these faculties are faculties of the rational soul. Bonaventure argues that that the rational soul, being created by God and not educed from matter, has both sensitive and rational faculties, which means that the two sets of faculties are powers of the same soul.31 So, although the forma complexionis does prepare the body for ensoulment, once the body is ensouled it is the rational soul that serves as the principle of life, sensation, and rational activity. Thus, when Bonaventure says that the forma complexionis is “material” with respect to the rational soul, he means to say that the forma complexionis is needed in order to render the body suitable for ensoulment, but no more. That is, once the body is ensouled, the forma complexionis has no other function to perform. This conclusion is further borne out by a consideration of what happens to the body after a person dies. When the soul leaves the body at death, the body corrupts. It disintegrates back into its component parts, which can later 28 29 30 31 Bonaventure, In II sent., d. 15, a. 1, q. 2, ad opp. 4: “Quanto forma posterior et ulterior, tanto nobilior, pro eo quod anteriora sunt materialia respectu posteriorum.” Bonaventure, In II sent., d. 31, a. 1, q. 1. Bonaventure explains this position thoroughly here. He also, notably, refutes the opinion that man has two souls, one rational and one sensitive, that operate in concert. He here argues rather that, if man is to be considered essentially one, then he has one perfection, one principle of operation, and therefore one soul. Bonaventure, In II sent., d. 31, a. 1, q. 1. Bonaventure, In II sent., d. 31, a. 1, q. 1. Reason, Passion, and Metaphysics in Bonaventure 131 give rise to new substances, such as maggots.32 What this shows is that the forma complexionis, though it does prepare the body for ensoulment, does not suffice to sustain the body in existence after the departure of the rational soul. Furthermore, this shows that the antecedent forms that prepare the body for ensoulment are merely preparations. Once the body receives the rational soul, the rational soul is its unique substantial form, serving as the body’s unique principle of unity and operation.33 In sum, these conclusions show that it is a mischaracterization of Bonaventure’s anthropology to say that the body has its own form in addition to the rational soul.34 Indeed, the body needs a form to prepare it for ensoulment, but once ensouled, the body has only one substantial form, which is the rational soul. Without the rational soul, the human body is no longer a body, but rather a mass that disintegrates back into its component parts. It therefore seems more proper to say that the forma complexionis renders the body suitable to receive its substantial form, and not to make the body to be a body, properly speaking. There is, however, an additional problem. Although none of the hylomorphic enthusiasts draw attention to this matter, the soul, for Bonaventure, is a substance composed of matter and form. This might seem to add some “distance” (as Kent might put it) between the body and the soul. Bonaventure considers the soul a hoc aliquid; does this not mean that the soul has some substantial independence from the body, which would constitute it as a separate thing with a merely accidental relationship to the body? As I will now argue, the answer to this question is no, and showing why this is the case will help to show just how “close” the soul is to the body in Bonaventure’s thought. To begin, it is important to ask why Bonaventure thinks that the soul, 32 33 34 Bonaventure, In IV sent., d. 43, a. 1, q. 3. It should be noted that Bonaventure’s account of generation is, on the whole, compatible with Aquinas’s, once their differences in terminology are accounted for. Aquinas also speaks of the preparation of the body for ensoulment in terms of a succession of forms, wherein each one replaces the one that came before, and the one that came before remains virtually present in the substance. Rather, therefore, than speaking in terms of forms that are “material” with respect to a substantial form, as Bonaventure does, Aquinas uses the language of virtual presence, but they overall seem to mean the same thing. See ST I, qq. 76 and 118, for Aquinas’s account of the preparation of the body for ensoulment. Moreover, Bonaventure is quite clear, as noted above, that a human being has one and only one substantial form. He is in no sense a pluriformist. For defense of Bonaventure from the charge that his a pluriformist of one kind or another, see chapter 3, “The Problem of Plural Forms” (219–319), in Quinn, Historical Constitution. 132 Matthew J. Dugandzic which is spiritual, has matter. His answer mostly has to do with the distinctions between act and potency and between essence and existence. The soul has both active and passive principles of operation. Passive principles are on the side of matter, not form, so the soul, for Bonaventure, has matter. In accord with what was revealed above about Bonaventure’s way of speaking of antecedent forms being “material” with respect to higher forms, this manner of speaking coheres with his metaphysical language. “Matter” for Bonaventure refers to something that is passive with respect to something else. Consequently, the soul, since it has active principles in addition to its passive ones, also has form. What Bonaventure says in particular is that the soul subsists, that it exists as a kind of thing. This means that it has both essence and existence. The formal principle is what gives it its essence, and the material principle determine existence. Therefore, the soul has both matter and form.35 Bonaventure, of course, clarifies that the soul’s matter is spiritual matter, not corporeal matter, in that it does not have extension and it is incorruptible.36 The soul is therefore clearly different from the body, which is made up of corporeal matter. But how does the soul differ from an angel, which would also be composed of form and spiritual matter? Bonaventure argues that the difference is that the soul has an essential property called unibilitas or “the aptitude [of the soul] to unite with the body,” which “is not accidental to the soul, but rather essential to the soul. And so it cannot be separated from it.”37 This is because it is the nature of the rational soul to be the substantial form of the body.38 As such, the soul cannot vivify just any body, but only a human one. Similarly, while an angel can inhabit a body, it does not thereby make that body human.39 Since the rational soul is the substantial form of the body, it gives being to the whole body and all of its parts, which means that the whole soul is present in each part of the body.40 It is because of this unibilitas that Bonaventure says that the soul is not united to the body immediately, but through a mediating disposition, which is this unibilitas. But this should not be taken to imply that the soul is united to the body accidentally. Bonaventure clearly says that man “is made 35 36 37 38 39 40 All of these arguments are found in Bonaventure, In II sent., d. 17, a. 1, q. 2. Bonaventure, In II sent., d. 17, a. 1, q. 2. Bonaventure, In III sent., d. 5, a. 2, q. 3: “unibilitas sive aptitudo uniendi cum corpore non est animae accidentalis, sed est ipsi animae essentialis, et ita non potest ab ea separari.” Bonaventure, In II sent., d. 1, p. 2, a. 3, q. 2 Bonaventure, In III sent., d. 5, a. 2, q. 3. Bonaventure, In I sent., d. 8, p. 2, a. 1, q. 4. Reason, Passion, and Metaphysics in Bonaventure 133 essentially one by the vivified body and the vivifying soul.”41 Furthermore, though he speaks of body and soul as substances in their own right, he also says that, when united, they form one person with one nature.42 Clearly, then, despite being composed of matter and form, the soul has an essential disposition to be united to the body, such that its existence is incomplete unless it is so united. This conclusion is made particularly clear from Bonaventure’s consideration of personhood, and in particular the question of whether the separated soul is a person.43 Bonaventure thinks that the separated soul falls short of meeting all of the requirements for being a person, which include incommunicability. The soul is not incommunicable, “because it has the appetite and the aptitude to be united to the body for the sake of constituting a third [thing].”44 Consequently, the soul is not a single, unified thing in the sense that a person would be; that is, the separated soul is a less complete kind of thing than is the composite of soul and body together.45 Given these considerations, along with Bonaventure’s frequent assertions that the rational soul is the single substantial form of the body that endows the composite of body and soul with life, sensation, and intellection, it does not seem that there is any more “distance” between the body and the soul in Bonaventure’s thought than in Aquinas’s. Therefore, whatever differences there may be between Bonaventure and Aquinas on how each understands reason’s rule of the passions, these differences are not corollaries of their respective metaphysical views of the relationship between body and soul. Conclusion This essay has attempted to make a modest contribution to the ongoing discussions regarding Aquinas’s understanding of the relationship between reason and passion. Some scholars, whom I have called the “hylomorphic enthusiasts,” have argued that Aquinas’s political, rather than despotic, view of reason’s rule of the passions is due to his underlying hylomorphic understanding of the relationship between body and soul. Those who make this 41 42 43 44 45 Bonaventure, In II sent., d. 26, a. 1, q. 3, ad 4, “fit unum per essentiam ex corpore vivificato, et anima vivificante.” See, for example, Bonaventure, Breviloquium II, ch. 10, and Breviloquium VII, ch. 7. The position that he lays out here appears in nuce in In II sent., d. 1, p. 2, a. 1, q. 2, sc 1. See Bonaventure, In III sent., d. 5, a. 2, q. 3. Bonaventure, In III sent., d. 5, a. 2, q. 3: “. . . quia appetitum et aptitudinem habet ut uniatur corpori ad constitutionem tertii.” This point is made clearly in In III sent., d. 5, a. 2, q. 3, where Bonaventure considers whether, in the hypostatic union, Christ assumed a human nature or a human person. 134 Matthew J. Dugandzic argument frequently use Bonaventure as a foil, arguing that Bonaventure’s substance dualism entails a despotic view of reason’s rule of the passions. I have argued that Bonaventure is not a substance dualist. That is, Bonaventure does not think of the body as having its own form, separate from the rational soul, which would make the body to be separate substance from the soul, and might imply that the spiritual faculties of the soul are not able to work closely with the organs of the body. Rather, I have argued that, for Bonaventure, the rational soul is the unique substantial form of the body, and is, consequently, the sole principle of a human being’s rational and sensitive operations. Consequently, if Aquinas and Bonaventure have disparate views on the way in which reason rules the passions, whatever differences there may be are not due to their respective metaphysical views. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2024): 135–158 135 Picking Up the Pieces of a Shattered Culture: Abandoning Sartre for Aquinas R . E. Houser University of St. Thomas Houston, TX I expect to die in my bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. Then his successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the Church has done so often in human history. —Francis Cardinal George (2010) Here I propose to present a feature of the ethics of Thomas Aquinas, his ethical doctrine of virtue, concentrating on the four cardinal virtues—justice, prudence or good practical judgment, courage, and temperance. Plato first selected them as the four premier virtues, but they go back at least to Homer, for whom wily Odysseus exemplified prudence, warlike Achilles courage, old Nestor justice, Penelope and Telemachus, Odysseus’ wife and son, temperance. And I offer them as central to living the morally good life required to “rebuild civilization” in an America that so fair and judicious a man as Cardinal George could call a “ruined society.” To see the need for Thomas’s solution, we must begin with the problem. Now, all societies depend upon the deep and fundamental ideas of the most important thinkers, prophets and sages, saints, and yes, even philosophers. Their ideas “trickle down” to influence regular folk, like you and me, those who whose hard work actually makes a society thrive, or die. And when those fundamental ideas change, the moral principles of those who embrace those ideas change, and consequently their actions change, and as a result the wider society in which they live changes, for better or worse. Such effects can now be felt across America 136 R. E. Houser by all; but most of us are unaware of the primary intellectual agents of these changes, since they operate at the level of fundamental ideas, not politics or business or day-to-day life. And often their originators have died before the ideas reach full cultural force. So, ignorance of history makes it difficult to deal with present problems caused by those ideas. My first conclusion will be that a major cause of the current coarsening of our culture is the group of ideas of the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, even though most Americans have never heard of him, and most of those who recognize his name have not read his works carefully enough to see the connection. Why Sartre? In the honors program at my university, I had a bright young lady of Muslim heritage who had gone to a lycée, one of France’s elite classical secondary schools. “Did you read the classics?” “Yes.” Expecting Montaigne or Pascal, I asked, “Who?” Her answer: “Sartre.” So let us begin with the theory and practice of Sartre and his long-time lover Simone Beauvoir, whose book The Second Sex was an intellectual spark for the women’s liberation movement. Then we turn to some real-life examples of Sartrean influence on ourselves and American culture. Finally, for the best remedy for non-Christian and Christian alike, I recommend Aquinas’s doctrine of virtue, when taken in its full scope. Sartre’s Ethics of Absolute Freedom In 1946, the year I was born, Sartre gave a lecture to a meeting of French librarians, which became his most popular book, Existentialism is a Humanism. There he laid out the core of his thought about God, humans, and their ethical behavior. Here I arrange his main ideas in an order that facilitates comparison with Aquinas, beginning with his view of human ontology and proceeding to its impact on the four cardinal virtues. Human Ontology Sartre turned his back on the traditional metaphysical view that every creature is an individual substance defined by a nature or essence it has in common with all other things of that type. In his “first principle of existentialism,” Sartre skips over other animate things, plants and animals, and compares humans to inanimate objects: Let us consider . . . a book or a paper-cutter: here is an object made by an artisan whose inspiration came from a concept. . . . One cannot postulate a man who makes a paper-cutter but does not know what it is used for. Therefore, let us say that, for the paper-cutter, essence Picking Up the Pieces of a Shattered Culture:Abandoning Sartre for Aquinas 137 . . . precedes existence. . . . And when we conceive God as the Creator, . . . the concept of man in the mind of God is comparable to the concept of paper-cutter in the mind of the artisan. But atheistic existentialism, which I represent, . . . states that, if God does not exist, there is at least one being in whom existence precedes essence, a being who exists before he can be defined by any concept, and this being is man. . . . This means, first of all, that man exists, turns up, appears on the scene, and, only afterwards, defines himself, . . . [since] he himself will have made what he will be. Thus, there is no human nature, since there is no God to conceive it. Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be, after this thrust into existence.1 If there is no God, however man might be “thrust into existence,” and Sartre is conveniently unconcerned with the cause of this “thrust,” then there is nothing to cause one man to have an essence in common with all others. So what is a man at first? A sort of “locus of freedom” to choose and act’ and in acting to create his own essence. This is an implausible but powerful idea that is still very much with us. Beauvoir, a better writer, put the same point more concretely: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”2 She did not say “becomes more a woman,” but says simply “becomes a woman,” because she is not really a woman from birth, even though born with a female body. This principle underlies many of the social changes that have come about over the seven decades since Sartre delivered his lecture. Let us now turn to its impact on his ethics, which is built on this ontology. I arrange it in terms of the four cardinal virtues, in order to facilitate comparison with Aquinas, though Sartre rejected those virtues. Prudence The traditional virtue of prudence is skill in applying general moral principles to perform morally good actions, principles that cover all humans, not just ourselves. When Sartre denied the existence of God, he also denied a common human nature. “So, in the bright realm of [moral] values we have no excuse behind us, nor justification before us. We are alone, with no 1 2 Leonard Kennedy, “Jean Paul Sartre: The Human Person is Freedom,” in Images of the Human: The Philosophy of the Human Person in a Religious Context, ed. Hunter Brown and Leonard Kennedy (Chicago: Loyola, 1995), 512–13. Janine D. Langan, “Simone de Beauvoir, The Human Person as Co-Existent,” in Brown and Kennedy, Images of the Human, 537–59. 138 R. E. Houser excuses. . . . This theory is the only one which gives man dignity, the only one which does not reduce him to an object,” because dignity is based on our full freedom to act as we see fit. So, “the ultimate meaning of the acts of honest men is the quest for freedom as such,” that is, absolute freedom from all external constraints.3 Immanuel Kant had faced the same problem: how do we ensure that our moral decisions are based on principles broader than our own selves, since morality involves an “ought” that goes beyond self-interest, and yet still remain free? To solve it Kant devised his “categorical imperative”: to act well morally we must “universalize our [personal] moral maxim,” treating it as though a universal law for how any good person should act in your situation. Here is Sartre’s more radical version: In creating the man we want to be, there is not a single one of our acts which does not at the same time create an image of man as we think he ought to be. . . . This helps us understand . . . anguish, forlornness, and despair [which are at the core of the human condition]. Anguish means the man . . . realizes that he is not only the person he chooses to be, but is also a lawmaker who, at the same time, is choosing for all mankind as well as himself. . . . Forlornness means . . . there is no explaining things away by reference to a fixed and given human nature.4 There is no common moral code coming from God or based on human nature to consult. So each of us must create our own moral laws; and in doing so, we must take God’s place and legislate for the whole of humanity. There is no guarantee, however, that all will agree about the laws they have created; in fact, the opposite is true. So, how can conflict be avoided? Sartre’s only answer is that our personal actions must be “authentic,” that is, in accord with the moral law we ourselves have created. There is no other more objective basis for criticizing someone’s actions than “Did he act in accord with his own principles?” Sartre’s first ethical mistake, then was that each individual has to create his own moral rules, ones which also would cover all other humans. But what about the actual effects of our actions on others? Here the dictatorial dynamic of Sartre’s hyper-freedom came to the fore in his own life, with unhappy results in the areas covered by the other three cardinal virtues. 3 4 Kennedy, “Jean Paul Sartre,” 516–20. Kennedy, “Jean Paul Sartre,” 514–16. Picking Up the Pieces of a Shattered Culture:Abandoning Sartre for Aquinas 139 Temperance Both Sartre and Beauvoir5 were intellectually precocious and rebellious children, raised by strongly religious mothers whose views they thoroughly rejected. Both raced through their schools with the highest marks and met in Paris in 1929, he being twenty-four and she twenty-one, while preparing for the French state exam called the agrégation, required for teachers. They virtually tied for first place, but the judges awarded it to Sartre, thus making Beauvoir herself the second sex in their personal relationship, a position that never changed. That same year, they initiated their sexual relationship, which their conception of freedom required must remain “open” to other lovers. Both taught for years in a series of lycées, which was surprisingly important. Sartre took many lovers, but only women; Beauvoir both men and women. In addition to those Sartre found for himself, Beauvoir supplied Sartre with a series of female students from the lycées where she taught, until 1943, leaving under threat of legal action from a girl’s parents. Their sexual lives, then, were intemperate and infertile, and would prove a model for deep social change in Europe and America. Its primary intellectual source is Sartre’s “first principle,” what might be called his “create your own essence kit.” Sartre’s conception of temperance for himself consisted not in controlling his own desires, its classic meaning, but in figuring ways to fulfill those desires without suffering any consequences, like Plato’s Gyges, whose magic ring hid him from suffering the consequences of his immoral actions.6 Courage After World War II, Sartre was much applauded as a French resistance fighter against the Nazis, based on the superb trilogy of war novels he wrote from 1945–1949, The Roads to Freedom. Did he not have to experience combat in order to describe it so well? Well, no. He helped found a resistance group, Socialism and Liberty, a collection of Parisian intellectuals; but after lengthy discussions about taking up arms, they gave up the idea, since “none of us felt qualified to make bombs or hurl grenades.” So Sartre stayed in Paris, writing not fighting. In May of 1944, one month before D-Day, he even obtained permission from the Nazis to put on his play No Exit, one of many disparagements of Christianity, and Catholicism in particular, which offers a vision of life after death. The main characters are locked eternally in a room whose lesson is that “hell is other people.” Sartre’s intellectual courage, then, 5 6 On their lives, see Ronald Hayman, Sartre: A Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987); Deidre Bair, Simone de Beauvoir: A Biography (New York: Touchstone, 1990). Plato, Republic 2.359–61. 140 R. E. Houser was more audacity in attack than seeking truth, and his moral courage was unreal in war and a carefully crafted illusion in peace. It would prove a model for left-wing academics and many others. Justice We have already seen an intimate form of injustice, when Beauvoir played Pandar in providing girls for Sartre. After the war, their extreme conception of democratic freedom at the personal level led them to espouse socialism at the political level, an incongruous but quite usual conjunction repeated over and over again by the heirs of Karl Marx, from Vladimir Lenin to our own “cancel culture.” In 1954, Sartre visited the Soviet Union, where he found “complete freedom”; in 1955 they were photographed with Mao Zedong attending a Chinese communist rally; and in 1960 they met with Castro’s butcher, “Che” Guevara. But they took care never to call themselves “communist,” only the more intellectually respectable “socialist” or “Marxist,” a distinction without a real difference in action. American Scenarios Let us now turn from Sartre and Beauvoir to some of the consequences of their ideas in contemporary American society, again arranged according to the four cardinal virtues. Prudence In 1964, upon learning I would enter the University of Texas honors program, my high-school civics teacher, a UT grad, warned me it was “filled with liberals.” My favorite memory of what “liberal” then meant was after an anti-war protest outside the Texas state capital building, when my first philosophy professor, John Silber, then dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and later president of Boston University, and my medieval history professor, a recent PhD from Cal Berkeley, walked the three miles from the capital to the UT campus in strenuous debate, followed by a couple hundred students, including myself, hanging on every word. The transformation of American liberalism from free exchange of conflicting ideas, with reason the ultimate judge, to silencing opposing views, is but a reflection of the journey Sartre and Beauvoir took, from seemingly the most open-minded principles to totalitarian political conclusions. Such changes verify Plato’s insight that extreme democrats and egalitarians inevitably embrace authoritarianism and Picking Up the Pieces of a Shattered Culture:Abandoning Sartre for Aquinas 141 tyranny, where force prevails and reason fails and the false good of the ego wins out over the true good of the community.7 Courage My first six school years were in Denver, Colorado, during the early 1950s. My grandmother sent me beautiful lead Civil War soldiers she bought in London on her trips there, and my best friend and I fought battles with them in my back yard. (Not one broke.) I commanded the Confederates and he the Yankees. In that post–World War II period, for us soldiers on both sides were brave Americans, though we understood the Civil War was, at least in part, about slavery, which was a bad thing. We celebrated the greatness of generals on both sides, the kind who inspired our fathers in World War II. This was quite the opposite of the recent riots of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, with wholesale toppling of statues of American warriors and statesmen, even including Abraham Lincoln, who emancipated the slaves, and the subsequent slaughter of policemen. We call this “cancel culture,” but it is not really “culture’” at all; it is culture’s antithesis, where one faction tries to annihilate another, much as Sartre’s ethics tried to annihilate an ethical tradition that goes back as far as Socrates, Homer, and Moses. Temperance The most powerful and widespread result of Sartreanism is in the area of sexual morality. Here Sartre’s “first principle,” that existence precedes essence, is a fundamental but usually unrecognized source of the sexual revolution of the 1960s, the mainstreaming of homosexuality in the 1990s, the endorsement of “gay marriage” by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2015, the separation of psychological gender from physical sex, and the consequent idea of one changing one’s gender at will. Such are logical consequences of Sartre’s notion of the self-creation of the human essence. In the last case, a person deemed to have “gender dysphoria,” a sad and sometimes real condition, feels the opposite “gender” from his (or her) inappropriate body. Such a person desires, and sometimes chooses, to change the birth body through surgery, rather than the alternatives: accommodating psychological feelings to the body we have been given, waiting for natural resolution which occurs in the majority of cases,8 or just living with the difference. Having surgery is based on a contradiction. It is at once a radical break with one’s natural body, yet at the same time an attempt to return to 7 8 Plato, Republic 8–9. Leonard Sax, Why Gender Matters (New York: 2005), 277. 142 R. E. Houser the complementarity of psychological gender and bodily sex. The body after such surgery, however, is only superficially complementary to the psyche, for it cannot perform its natural sexual function, truly reproductive acts. We might call sex change operations, then, “the revenge of nature.” They are engendered by a quite understandable and natural desire to achieve the complementarity or identity of gender and sex; but one’s own actions put that natural desire out of reach. The most heinous form of this war against nature is when physicians perform such operations on children, following the decision of adults. For, here the one whose body is affected is not the person who makes the decision for surgery. This is a dictatorial decision, in reality a form a child abuse, one even worse than sexual molestation, where there is at least a hope of the child recovering. It exemplifies how Sartrean hyper-freedom for oneself inevitably engenders injustice toward others, and moral degradation to oneself, because the Sartrean principle, while professedly libertarian, is intrinsically despotic. Justice Even worse than deforming the body of a child is killing the innocent in the womb. As often happened in their relationship, Beauvoir’s actions here were more personal and hazardous, Sartre’s more self-serving and literary. In his novel The Age of Reason (1945), Sartre’s main character pays for an abortion for his mistress. In 1971 Beauvoir signed the Manifesto of the 343, prominent French women who publicly admitted they had abortions, and called for its legalization. Almost certainly, the child she aborted had been hers and Sartre’s, a direct consequence of their principles. Since existence precedes essence and the human essence is created by one’s actions, according to them, while it is sad to terminate what might have been a human, still what was killed had not yet acted enough to attain a human essence. The next year, this Sartrean inference provided a central but unacknowledged foundation for the reasoning of the American Supreme Court in the 1972 Roe v. Wade decision. The so-called “fetus” (a misuse of the Latin term when the nature of the thing is dropped, since the “fetal” pigs one dissected in biology were still pigs), while still in the womb, was thought not yet to have performed actions sufficient enough to constitute it a human essence worthy of legal protection. So when has it done enough? At this point, the Court committed a logical blunder. That point is birth, the justices said. But, even on Sartrean principles, this conclusion is nonsense. For, the process of birth is not an action taken by the fetus. It is the mother who is acting, pushing the “fetus” out. The “fetus” is being acted upon, a passion in Aristotelean terms, the opposite of an action. So if a thing’s Picking Up the Pieces of a Shattered Culture:Abandoning Sartre for Aquinas 143 action is what creates its essence, and birth is not an action performed by the “fetus,” birth cannot possibly add something to make it human. It is simply being moved from one place to another, from inside to outside the mother, which results in its first cry, which is indeed its own action, but not its first. In their rush to judgment, then, the Court were not even logical Sartreans. Their desires got in the way of their own logic, a mistake typical of Sartre and Beauvoir, and their intellectual progeny. Aquinas: Human Nature and Virtues Unlike Sartre, Thomas Aquinas based his ethics on the essence or nature common to all existing humans. For how could humans be utterly unlike all other living and sentient creatures, which are individuals having natures in common with others of the same species or genus? All caterpillars have the same nature, as do all cottonwoods and collies, whether described generically or specifically. Human nature includes the ontological components a theory of virtue requires: a nature common to each individual human, who is a substance composed of two fundamental principles: matter (a complex organic body) and substantial form (an intellectual soul). The soul uses the body to perform practical actions employing its four natural powers: intellect, will, emotion or “irascible appetite,” and desire or “concupiscible appetite.” Repeated actions affect not just others but also ourselves, forming skills in our soul’s powers technically called habits, because we still “have” (habemus) them far past the fleeting time of our actions, for good or bad. Aristotle used them to lay out a hierarchy of six “moral states,” three good and three bad. Those of us in the large mediocre middle lack developed habits, which makes good action a struggle, while the allure of pleasure makes bad action easy. Those with the moral strength to do good are “continent” (egkrates), superior to the weak “incontinent” (akratos) who act immorally. A few rise to develop habits of “virtue” (arete), which make them superior to the “continent” because they readily do good, while the many who develop habits of “vice” are worse than the “incontinent” in readily doing bad. Aristotle completed his picture with two moral extremes. Rare is the man of “superhuman virtue, heroic and divine,” like Homer’s Hector, “men who become divine by excess of virtue” and “do good because of a god”; and at the bottom of the moral scale is the utterly vicious man, who is like a “brute animal,” also rare and “found chiefly among barbarians.”9 In his short disputed question De 9 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 7.1.1145a15–32 . See Eudemian Ethics 8.2.1248a24–b2, on god as source of “divine” virtues. At Nicomachean Ethics 7.51148b15–31, even 144 R. E. Houser virtutibus cardinalis (DVC) and his huge Summa theologiae (ST), particularly in the secunda pars, which were written contemporaneously, Thomas elaborated Aristotle’s hierarchy, with important emendations.10 In DVC, a. 1, Thomas asks, “Are prudence, justice, courage, and temperance four cardinal virtues?” Unlike Sartre, he began by explaining the “way of life” (vita) appropriate to human nature, by contrasting three levels of knowledge we can attain: In a human we find, first, a sensitive nature in common with the brute animals; second, practical reason (ratio practica), which is proper to the human level of reality; and finally, theoretical and intellectual understanding (intellectus speculativus), which is not found as perfectly in a human as it is in angels, but according to a kind of participation.11 Animals below us act based on sense experience of individual things in the world around them; humans abstract from experience universal concepts, especially “good” and “bad,” to reason their way to actions; angels above, and God even more, understand not by discursive reasoning but through immediate, intuitive insight, which we also have, but to a much lesser degree. Therefore, the way of life of intellectual contemplation [vita contemplativa] is not properly human, but superhuman, while the way of life of pleasure, confined to sensible goods, is not human but “bestial.”12 Consequently, the properly human way of life is the active life, which consists in living out the moral virtues. Therefore, these virtues are properly named cardinal, on which in a manner of speaking the whole of our moral life turns, and on which, like a set of principles for such a life, it is founded.”13 10 11 12 13 Greeks can be “brutish,” where Aristotle, following Plato, condemns “pederasty.” In Summa theologiae [ST] I-II, q. 68, aa. 1–2, Aquinas uses “divine” virtues to explain gifts of the Holy Spirit (see note 41 below). On the importance of Aristotle in Aquinas’s ethics, see Leonard Ferry, “Aristotle in Aquinas’s Moral Theory: Reason, Virtue, and Emotion,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 87 (2013): 167–82. On virtues and gifts in Aquinas’s moral theology, see Romanus Cessario O.P., Introduction to Moral Theology (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001). Aquinas, De virtutibus cardinalis [DVC], a. 1, resp. Latin text is from the Marietti edition, as emended by five manuscripts, described and translated in R. E. Houser, The Cardinal Virtues: Aquinas, Albert, and Philip the Chancellor (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2004). See Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.5.1095b20, on “the life of the cow.” Aquinas, DVC, a. 1, resp. Picking Up the Pieces of a Shattered Culture:Abandoning Sartre for Aquinas 145 Our moral life, then, is like a door, which “turns” on four “hinges” (cardines), which is why these virtues are called “cardinal.” They give us sure criteria for distinguishing good from bad actions, something impossible for Sartre and those caught unknowingly in the Sartrean morass, and the moral character readily to do the good and avoid the bad. The hedonistic “life of the cow” is below us, an angelic life is above us, and an active life based on the four cardinal virtues is “natural” to us, but does not come without effort. The Twofold Character of the Cardinal Virtues The very first “objection” in article 1 of DVC supports the rigorist moral views of classic thinkers from Plato to the Church Fathers, who said each good action requires all four cardinal virtues working together—a view which made virtue almost heroically difficult to achieve—over against Aristotle, who recognized the four cardinal virtues and many more besides and accepted the empirical truth that we can have one moral virtue without another. Thomas replies with a distinction that finds room for both senses of the cardinal virtues, using the differences between genus and species and between form and matter to explain them. Thomas reinterpreted the classic thinkers to mean “these four terms signify the generic [generales] modes of the virtues,” which describe only the four “different formal aspects of virtue [rationes formales virtutis],” leaving off their “matter” or area of operation. So he gave them new, more universal names. Prudence becomes “directive knowledge” (cognitio dirigens); justice becomes “correctness [rectitudo] producing equity”; courage becomes “resoluteness [firmitas] of mind,” and temperance becomes “moderation [moderatio] restraining appetites.” Consequently, “without all these conditions dovetailing together [concurrant], one of them by itself is insufficient to produce the true character of virtue [veram rationem virtutis]” found in individual moral action; all must be present together.14 “But other thinkers, like Aristotle . . . speak about the four virtues under consideration in so far as they are specific [speciales] virtues,” that is, habits “limited to their proper matter.”15 Prudence rationally “applies practical precepts well” in individual moral actions. Through justice, we “act well in common with others for good.” Temperance moderates our actions in areas where “pleasure attracts our passions most strongly, those connected with touch.” And courage helps us face “the greatest danger, death.”16 14 15 16 Aquinas, DVC, a. 1, ad 1. Aquinas, DVC, a. 1, ad 1. Aquinas, DVC, a. 1, resp. 146 R. E. Houser Thomas’s distinction between generic and specific cardinal virtues allows him to embrace the strengths while avoiding the weaknesses of both Platonists and Aristotle, with important results. First, the range of the cardinal virtues now extends as broadly as Plato’s, but does not require a “vision of the Good” in the present life for us to understand and use them. Second, Thomas offers a comprehensive explanation of the multitude of specific virtues and vices he knows from Aristotle and others, by structuring it using the generic cardinal virtues and three theological virtues, set out in secunda pars of the ST. In their generic sense, “the four virtues are understood to signify general conditions of virtue, so all the [great number of ] special virtues are reduced to these four [virtues], as species are reduced to their genera,”17 on the model of an individual like Socrates being both human in species and animal in genus. This includes the four special cardinal virtues, to be sure, but also the vast number of other specific virtues. Third, Thomas’s approach gives us knowledge of vices as well as virtues. Since all truly human actions are done to attain a good end, the four “general conditions of virtue” lay down requirements or “formal aspects” (rationes formales) for any action to be good generically,18 that is, an action we think good. Meeting these conditions means an action will attain its end, which makes it teleologically good; but this does not guarantee it is morally good, since the end or the means to it can be bad. This is why Thomas says there can be a “good” or “prudent” robber in this generic sense, because his means may succeed in stealing, but his end is morally wrong.19 We can think Sartre good, but only in this minimal way. Fourth, distinguishing the generic cardinal virtues from the specific cardinal virtues and the many other specific virtues allied with them explains how we can act morally in one specific area but not in another, the normal human condition. Special prudence exists in the intellect and “commands” our body to act morally; with special justice in the will, we act “under moral obligation” (debito modo) toward others; special courage helps us face morally our greatest fear, death; and with special temperance we can control morally our strongest natural desires, those “of the body,” that is, for food and drink, which preserve ourselves, and sex, which preserves our species.20 Exercising each of these three moral virtues requires prudence, but not the other two 17 18 19 20 Aquinas, DVC, a. 1, ad 5. Aquinas, DVC, a. 1, resp. Cf. ST I-II, q. 65, a. 1, resp. Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 47, a. 13, resp. Aquinas, DVC, a. 1, resp. Cf. ST I-II, q. 61, a. 3, resp. Picking Up the Pieces of a Shattered Culture:Abandoning Sartre for Aquinas 147 moral virtues. This is how we can be just but cowardly, courageous but intemperate, at the specific level of these virtues and vices. In ST I-II and II-II, Thomas looks down from the “general” virtues in order to unfold under them the vast number of “special” virtues and vices. But in DVC he looks up, not down, and sets out his own version of Aristotle’s hierarchy of virtues, from lowest to highest, also inspired by St. Augustine who says: “We make a ladder for ourselves of our vices, if we trample those same vices underfoot.” Climbing the Ladder of the Virtues After distinguishing the general from the special cardinal virtues in article 1 of DVC, where the general ones produce teleologically good actions through the connection of all four virtues working together, in article 2 Thomas looks more closely at the special cardinal virtues, which generate morally good actions. As the first step in arranging them in a hierarchy, as rungs on Augustine’s ladder, Thomas asked if special cardinal virtues “are so connected that whoever has one virtue has them all,”21 as was true for the general cardinal virtues. His “response” begins with two crucial distinctions adopted from Aristotle.22 Perfect virtues are connected to each other, while imperfect virtues are not necessarily connected. As evidence of this one should understand that since virtue is what renders a human good and his deed good, that virtue is perfect which renders a human deed perfectly good and so the human himself good. But that [virtue] is imperfect which renders a human and his deed good, not absolutely but only in some particular way. Now human actions are good absolutely when they attain a rule guiding human actions.23 Here Thomas first distinguishes “perfect” or “perfected” (perfecta) virtues, so called because they are habits that facilitate moral actions, from “imperfect” 21 22 23 On development of virtue, see Craig S. Titus, “Moral Development and Making All Things New in Christ,” The Thomist 72 (2008): 233–58. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 6.13.1144b14–17. Aristotle’s “principal” virtues are moral habits, while his “natural” virtues are natural inclinations. Thomas calls them “perfect” vs. “imperfect” virtues. At 6.5.1140a25–28, Aristotle distinguishes a person prudent “for living a whole life well” from one prudent in some particular area, like “health or physical strength.” Thomas calls the first good “absolutely” (simpliciter), the second good “in some particular way” Aquinas, DVC, a. 2, resp. Cf. ST I-II, q. 65, aa. 1–2. 148 R. E. Houser virtues, which have not developed into habits. The connection of virtues he mentions here is not of one moral virtue with another, since one can be courageous but intemperate, but of a moral virtue with a “rule” (regula) which, speaking broadly, determines whether an end is good, and specifically determines the means to attain the end toward which the moral virtue inclines us. One rule is “right reason” (recta ratio) attained through the virtue of prudence; the other is the “primary measure, transcending all, and this is God,” whom “a human attains through charity.” Such “rules” are necessary to perform morally good actions, since we must use them to determine the means of achieving a good end. The second distinction is between what Aristotle said is good “for living a whole life well,” which Thomas calls an action which is good “absolutely” (simpliciter), and what is good only in a “limited” (determinatum) or “particular” (particulare) area, like being “healthy or strong.”24 Achieving moral goodness is a lifelong effort because virtues are persisting habits built on the powers of the soul we have by nature. A fully virtuous action, then, is one whose virtues are “perfect” because they are good habits, not “imperfect,” and they generate actions that are “good absolutely,” that is, for a whole life, not in some “particular” way. Taken together, Thomas constructs his “ladder of virtues” using these two criteria: imperfect versus perfect virtue—that is, a natural capacity versus a formed moral habit—and particular versus absolute virtue, virtue in a particular and limited area versus virtue for the whole of life. Altogether Imperfect or “Natural” Virtues The first level of virtue, which we wouldn’t normally call virtues but they were for some Latin and Greek writers, are “altogether imperfect,” for two reasons. First, they are “imperfect” because not developed habits, only extraordinarily strong natural “inclinations.” Thomas’s example is Job, who said: “From infancy compassion grew with me, and came forth from the womb with me” (31:18; Vulgate; trans. mine). But compassion is a feeling that can go bad, not a habit. So Thomas adds a second example, from Pope Gregory the Great, of a naturally fast racehorse. If “blinded,” its speed would be “more destructive the faster it runs.” Second, such so-called virtues are not “absolute” or lifelong, but a “limited” feature of our lives. Consequently, they fall short of true moral virtue on both counts.25 24 25 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 6.5.1140a25–30. Examples are Aristotle’s. Aquinas, DVC, a. 2, resp. Picking Up the Pieces of a Shattered Culture:Abandoning Sartre for Aquinas 149 Perfect but Not Absolutely: The Acquired Cardinal Virtues At the second level are the cardinal virtues identified by the philosophers, which Thomas explains using the same two distinctions. Such virtues are “perfect,” since they are formed habits that remain and can grow in their subject powers in the soul, after we first have developed them: prudence in the intellect, justice in the will, courage in emotion or “irascible appetite,” and temperance in desire or “concupiscible appetite.” The three moral virtues fix our appetites on good ends, and prudential rational thought determines the means to that end. In the face of adversity, for example, a courageous person will want an ethical end, say, to defend himself, but he must use prudence to decide how to do so, and then engage his will to produce an action. Without prudence, one does not know how to act virtuously or do so readily; and without a moral virtue, one does not want the morally good end.26 This is why prudence is the “rule” for making concrete moral judgments, working in combination with one of the three moral cardinal virtues or their many “parts.” Such virtues, then, are “perfect” (perfectae), because they are formed habits connected with each other. Are the goods such virtues achieve also “absolute” (simpliciter), directed to the whole of our life? Aristotle thought so, since our lifetime ends with death; it is all we have. But Thomas said life extends beyond the grave, because of the immortality of the soul. The virtues of the philosophers, then, “are perfect in a way, in comparison with the human good, but they are not perfect absolutely [simpliciter], because they do not attain the first rule, which is the ultimate end of human life,” namely, beatitude “in our heavenly homeland [in patria].”27 Virtues that seemed absolute to the philosophers, in reality are not; but in no way are they useless. Under them we can attain true moral goodness. “So it is clear that the acquired civic virtues, about which the philosophers spoke, are ordered only to perfection in [our present] civic life, since they are not ordered to attaining celestial glory.” “Perfect” because formed habits, they are downsized to our present life here and now, and so are “limited” (or “particular”) in extension.28 The acquired cardinal virtues, however, do open up the possibility of progress to higher levels of virtue, though by themselves they cannot achieve them. Once we recognize both the majesty and poverty of the “civic” virtues, whose good is here and now, it becomes possible to move beyond the philosophers. “For in doing what is within his ability, a human prepares himself 26 27 28 Aquinas, DVC, a. 2, resp. Aquinas, DVC, a. 2, resp. Aquinas, DVC, a. 4, resp. 150 R. E. Houser to receive charity from God.” Our actions do not cause charity in us, but can “dispose us” to receive charity from God. And then, “just as acquired virtues increase through the acts by which they are caused” by us, “so also the infused virtues increase through the action of God, by whom they are caused.”29 Prudence, then, can open us to faith; justice can open us to charity; courage and temperance can open us to hope. So we are not yet finished with our climb.30 Three Virtues Absolutely Perfect: The Theological Virtues Moving higher, the third level consists in “absolutely perfect virtues, which are combined with charity, for these virtues make a human action absolutely good, reaching as it were all the way to our ultimate end.” Here we find “a second [and higher] rule, which is like a primary measure, transcending all; and this is God,” loved through charity, which Thomas defines as “friendship with God.”31 This rule provides the believing “wayfarer” (in via) with a higher end, beatitude in our “heavenly homeland” (in patria), which he desires through charity, present in the will. But love is impossible without knowing what is loved. And while some can know with certitude through reason that the human soul, for example, is immortal, or that God exists, knowing the contours of heavenly beatitude is beyond the reach of our reason. So charity is impossible without additional, divine aid, in the form of the two other virtues. Faith, which exists in the intellect, provides knowledge that God is our final end in this robust sense; and hope gives us the strength to surmount obstacles on the way to this higher end. Since God, the object of hope, is a spiritual being, hope cannot reside in the sensible appetites of emotion and desire, like temperance and courage do, but like charity it must exist in our “intellectual appetite,” the will, as faith must exist in the intellect.32 Faith, hope, and charity, then, are “theological” virtues for two reasons. First, God is now understood and loved as our ultimate end, beyond earthly happiness. This is why the good the theological virtues enjoin is “absolute,” 29 30 31 32 Aquinas, DVC, a. 2, resp. See also De caritate, a. 11, resp. Defending the importance of the acquired virtues, see Brandon Dahm, “The Acquired Virtues are Real Virtues: A Reply to Stump,” Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers 32 (2015): 453–70. As skeptical of acquired virtues, supporting the gifts over them, see Mark Jordan, “Democratic Moral Education and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit,” Journal of Religious Ethics 44 (2016): 246–59. Aquinas, DVC, a. 2, resp. Aquinas, DVC, a. 2, resp. See also ST II-II, q. 4, a. 7, resp.; q. 17, a. 6, resp.; q. 23, a. 6, resp. Picking Up the Pieces of a Shattered Culture:Abandoning Sartre for Aquinas 151 for they cover both our present life and a higher life in union with a higher end. Second, God must be the efficient cause of these virtues, which are completely new habits, unlike “acquired” virtues, which are developed out of preexisting dispositions and experience. And as “infused” in us by God, they are “perfect” virtues, that is, habits present in the soul.33 Four Virtues Absolutely Perfect: The Infused Cardinal Virtues At this point, we can ask if the three theological virtues eclipse the need for the four cardinal virtues and all their many subdivisions. They do not, for there is a parallel between the theological virtues and the infused cardinal virtues. “Whoever possesses prudence must necessarily also possess the moral virtues; and in a similar way, whoever has charity must necessarily have all the other virtues, as well”34 —not just some, but all. As prudence is to the moral virtues, so charity is to the complete range of virtues: “Therefore, it is necessary that along with charity are poured out forms that are habits readily generating actions toward whatever charity inclines us. But charity inclines us toward all virtuous acts, because, as it concerns the final end, it also includes all the acts of the virtues.”35 The three theological virtues, then, are not the end, but merely the beginning of the life of faith. To explain charity’s “rule” over the other virtues, Thomas here compares it to “military generalship, which governs” all military skills, as Aristotle had said.36 Charity, then, envelops all the other virtues in acting for the sake of the ultimate end, found only in heavenly beatitude. If so, are the “acquired” cardinal virtues annihilated and then replaced by utterly new “infused” cardinal virtues? By no means, since grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it. The ultimate end of the “civic” cardinal virtues, the common good of the political community, is not destroyed but perfected when God is seen as the higher and ultimate end of all men, indeed, of all creation. This was the fundamental principle guiding King St. Louis IX of France, whom Thomas knew personally, and who died (1270) on crusade at the same time Thomas was delivering DVC at the University of Paris. Louis made France into the first true nation-state, but a Christian nation whose political institutions would foster civic virtues that feed into and are perfected by the religious life of her subjects,37 the model 33 34 35 36 37 Aquinas, DVC, a. 2, resp. See also De caritate, a. 3, resp; ST II-II, q. 23, a. 8, resp. Aquinas, DVC, a. 2, resp. Aquinas, DVC, a. 2, resp. Aquinas, DVC, a. 2, resp. See also Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1.1.1094a9–16. Andrew W. Jones, Before Church and State: A Study of Social Order in the Sacramental Kingdom St. Louis IX (Steubenville, OH: Emmaus Academic, 2017), esp. 152 R. E. Houser for all later “integralists,” but quite contrary to Sartre’s conception of France. Consequently, charity, even more than prudence, leads us to act according to the cardinal virtues. The “civic” cardinal virtues, then, are raised to become “infused,” no longer acquired virtues. Before the theological virtues are “infused,” they already can exist as “acquired” virtues, each with its own character (ratio). Through “infusion” they are not created but transformed by a new end, which correspondingly perfects them as habits in the soul. This is why Thomas’s last word on the subject draws an analogy between their ends, not their beginnings: It is clear that the acquired civic virtues the philosophers described are ordered only to fulfilling humans in their civic lives, not as they are ordered to seek heavenly glory. . . . But the cardinal virtues, as they are infused by grace and as we now speak about them, fulfill a human in the present life as ordered to heavenly glory.38 The Gifts of the Holy Spirit In the ST, for magisterial completeness in charting out the “wayfarer’s” road, Thomas connects to the theological virtues and infused cardinal virtues another mode of perfection, the “gifts” of the Holy Spirit,39 which he explicitly interprets as correlative to the highest of Aristotle’s six moral states: According to the philosophers [read Aristotle], not everyone who had the acquired moral virtues also had “heroic or divine virtues.” But in the ordering toward the ultimate supernatural end, to which our reason moves as it is in a way and imperfectly informed by the theological virtues, this movement of reason is not sufficient without some instigation and motion of the Holy Spirit coming from above. . . . Therefore, in order to seek this end, it is necessary for a human to have the gift of the Holy Spirit.40 The theological virtues reveal the existence of this superlative end, and our intellect and will respond using the now infused cardinal virtues to adjust 38 39 40 ch. 8, “The Spiritual and the Temporal” (219–48), and ch. 15, “The Most Christian Kingdom” (449–54). Aquinas, DVC, a. 4, resp. Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 68. The “beatitudes” (q. 69) and “fruits” (q. 70) are not “habits,” but “acts,” and so are omitted here. Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 68, a. 2, resp. See note 9 above. Picking Up the Pieces of a Shattered Culture:Abandoning Sartre for Aquinas 153 our aims and desires to this higher end, but “imperfectly.” We need further divine aid, which comes in the form of the “gifts [dona] of the Holy Spirit.” These are first enunciated by the prophet Isaiah (11:1–2) as attributes of some messiah who would save the Jewish people from the wrath of the Assyrians and usher in a time of peace where “the wolf will lie down with the lamb,” and Christians understood Isaiah to have prophesied the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, who had seven attributes the Holy Spirit then gifts to “wayfarers.” And there shall come forth a stem from the root of Jesse, and there shall arise a flower from this root. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest over him: the spirit of wisdom and of intelligence; the spirit of counsel and fortitude; the spirit of knowledge and of piety. And the spirit of the fear of the Lord will fill him.41 Ever attentive to language, Thomas notes that they are not called “gift” here, but “spirit,” because they come “from divine inspiration” of the Holy Spirit, and they engender a new “spirit” in our actions. The higher the mover, the more perfect must be the disposition in the subject of motion proportioned to it; as we can see that a student must be more perfectly disposed in order to learn a higher teaching from his master. . . . Therefore, there must be in a human higher perfections . . . whereby he is so disposed that he becomes readily [prompte] moved by divine inspiration.42 The function of these gifts is to engender in us these “dispositions” to “readily” accept divine aid for attaining our ultimate end, a task beyond our own natural powers. This is why “the gifts sometimes are called virtues, following the common definition of virtue. But they have something that goes beyond the common definition of virtue, since they are a kind of divine virtue perfecting a human as moved by God.”43 To explain the gifts, Thomas comes back repeatedly to an analogy between the rational level, where reason guides the moral virtues which in turn order our appetites correctly, and the revealed level, where the Holy Spirit infuses 41 42 43 Isa 11:1–3 in the Vulgate: Et egredietur virga de radice Iesse, Et flos de raidce eius ascendet. Et requiescet super eum spiritus Domini: Spiritus sapientiae et intellectus, Spiritus consilii et fortituinis, Spiritus scientiae et pietatis; Et replebit eum spiritus timoris Domini (trans. mine). The first five terms parallel Aristotle. Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 68, a. 1, resp. Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 68, a. 1, ad 1. 154 R. E. Houser in us the gifts by which we “readily” follow the Spirit. The gifts, then, are “a kind of habit whereby a human is perfected for readily obeying the Holy Spirit,” analogous to the way “moral virtues are a kind of habit whereby our appetitive powers are disposed readily to obey reason.”44 Compared to the lower virtues, “the gifts exceed the common perfections of the virtues, not in their kinds [genus] of operations, . . . but in their mode of operating, in which a human is moved by a higher principle,” namely the Holy Spirit.45 In the Latin Vulgate Bible, the very names for the first five gifts are the same as Aristotelian virtues. So Thomas divides the gifts into those that perfect “reason” and those perfecting our “appetitive power,” taking care to “make clear that these gifts extend to all those things to which the virtues extend, intellectual as well as moral.” In the “speculative” employment of reason, we “apprehend truth” through the gift of “intellection” (intellectus), which gives us insight into principles, as Aristotle said, while we make “correct judgments about truth” through “wisdom” (sapientia), which draws conclusions derived from those principles. In using “practical” reason, we apprehend truth about particular actions as a result of “counsel” or deliberative reasoning’ while “practical reason is perfected through knowledge [scientia]” of the principles whose proven conclusions produce actions.46 The other three gifts concern our appetites. “The appetitive power [virtus] about those things that concern another,” like the virtue of justice, “is perfected through piety,” which concerns our relation not just to God, but to men, as well. The other two gifts concern appetites directed at ourselves. Against the fear of dangers our appetitive power is perfected through [the gift of ] fortitude. And against disordered desire of pleasures, we are perfected through fear, as it says in Proverbs (15:27): “In the fear of the Lord let all turn away from evil,” and in Psalm 118, “In fear of you pierce my carnal desires, for I fear your judgments.”47 Thomas then concludes his organization of the gifts: “In this way it is clear that these gifts extend to all things to which the virtues extend, both intellectual and moral virtues,”48 whether acquired or infused. Let me add that the “gifts” also can be organized in relation to the three theological virtues. “Faith is evidence of things unseen” (Heb 11:1) and is 44 45 46 47 48 Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 68, a. 3, resp. Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 68, a. 2, ad 1. Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 68, a. 4, resp. Aquinas, ST, I-II, q. 68, a. 4, resp. Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 68, a. 4, resp. Picking Up the Pieces of a Shattered Culture:Abandoning Sartre for Aquinas 155 further perfected by four intellectual “gifts”; “science” deduces practical conclusions; “counsel” (consilium) applies them to practical actions; “intellection” (intellectus) applies them to speculative demonstrative principles; wisdom (sapientia) includes both speculative principles and demonstrated conclusions. These four gifts, then, perfect faith in a way analogous to how their namesakes perfect unaided human reason.49 Charity is further perfected by the “gift” of piety. This is why charity is the “rule” governing a “wayfarer’s” life.50 Hope reveals two further gifts, “courage” and “fear of the Lord.” The acquired virtue of “courage” opens the “wayfarer” to “hope” for an eternal reward, and hope leads to a higher, positive infused “courage” to pursue that mysterious “peace which passeth all understanding.”51 “Hope” also is perfected by “fear of the Lord,” not merely “awe”—which is an awful translation. Here Thomas does not shy away from logic by trying to turn fear (a negative) into hope (a positive). We hope for beatitude, but hope’s flip side is fear of God, since “there may come to us from him some evil, . . . the evil of punishment [poenae]. But this is not evil absolutely, only in a certain respect; and, absolutely speaking, it is good.” This is not a paradox. In doing evil, we lose sight of our ordination to the good, so punishment is designed to re-order us to that good. “So the evil of punishment is indeed an evil, as the privation of some particular good, yet absolutely speaking it is a good, in so far as it derives from our order to the last end,” God himself.52 Here we see the profound effect of using philosophy in theology. Thomas treats three distinct kinds of virtues or formed moral habits: the four acquired cardinal virtues, which can open us to the three infused theological virtues, which transform the rational cardinal virtues into infused cardinal virtues. And these in turn, can open us to receive the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, habits of a sort best understood as “perfections.” And Thomas adds the beatitudes and the fruits of the Holy Spirit, which are neither full virtues nor habitual perfections present in us, but are acts we perform. By couching his analysis of these religious ideas using the philosophical notions of virtue, habit, perfection, and act, Thomas managed to produce a theological explanation which is the best aid I know of for us, living in Cardinal George’s time of “ruin.” 49 50 51 52 Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 8, aa.1–2 (intellection); q. 9, aa.1–2 (science); q. 52, aa. 1–3 (counsel). Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 45, aa. 1–3 (wisdom); q. 101, aa. 1–4 (piety). Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 139, a. 1, resp. (courage); q. 19, a.11, resp. (fear). Aquinas, ST II-II, q. 19, a. 1, resp. 156 R. E. Houser The Cardinal Virtues In Patria With the last article of DVC (a. 4), we arrive at the ultimate end: “Will the cardinal virtues remain with us in our heavenly homeland [patria]?” Should they not “pass away,” as do the theological virtues of faith and hope, with charity alone remaining? Thomas replies that the cardinal virtues are different, arguing from Aristotle’s dictum that “virtue involves the ultimate end [ultimum] of a power.”53 The “ultimate end” of the “civic virtues” of the ancients was personal and civic happiness in this life, which is why Cicero reportedly said virtues would be useless in heaven.54 By contrast, “the ultimate end of divine power is not understood in relation to lower things, but in relation to something higher, the infinitude of God’s own power.”55 Lying between these two extremes is a different case, where “different ultimates fall within one line of motion.” This is true of the “infused” cardinal virtues. Thomas illustrates with an Aristotelian example, the art of “building construction [ars aedificatoria], where the ultimate result is the completed form of a house.” The motions of “laying a foundation,” “erecting columns,” and “finishing” the roof are all different and have their own ultimate ends; but they all are parts of “skill in building construction [which] is one and the same skill,” since the “ultimate end” of all three is the finished building. Here “some of the actions produced differ in species, but the virtue is the same.”56 Thomas then concludes his treatment of the cardinal virtues by comparing their three different levels, using this notion of differing ultimates operating in one line of motion. At the low end are the acquired cardinal virtues. “Where there is specifically the same ultimate, there will be the same species of virtue, which will produce the same kind of action,” such as acquired “temperance in me and in you, which achieves the same ultimate result, moderating the pleasures of touch.” At the high end are God’s cardinal virtues, which are the exemplar causes of ours. Their “ultimate end . . . is not understood in relation to lower things,” like human virtues, “but in relation to . . . the infinitude of divine power. . . . Therefore, divine courage is his unchanging character, temperance the divine mind’s focus on itself, prudence is the divine mind itself; and the justice of God is his eternal law.”57 Consequently, “not only in the action the virtues produce, but in the virtues themselves,” acquired and divine cardinal virtues “necessarily differ in species.” 58 53 54 55 56 57 58 Aristotle, On the Heavens 1.11.281a1015. As reported by Augustine, De trinitate 14.9.12, and cited by Thomas at the beginning of his “response.” Aquinas, DVC, a. 4, resp. Aquinas, DVC, a. 4, resp. Aquinas, DVC, a. 4, resp. Aquinas, DVC, a. 4, resp. Picking Up the Pieces of a Shattered Culture:Abandoning Sartre for Aquinas 157 The infused cardinal virtues lie in the middle. “Where the ultimate ends of virtue differ in species, but its motion falls under one line, so that from one we arrive at the other, then some of the actions differ in species, but the virtue is the same.”59 Thomas then adds his own example. The acquired virtue of courage produces “one ultimate result before battle, . . . moving forward to battle, another during battle, . . . standing one’s ground, . . . and a third in victory,. . . rejoicing.”60 Same virtue, but different acts of courage. “Therefore, if the ultimate result which the wayfarer’s virtue attains is ordered to the ultimate result virtue in heaven attains, it necessarily follows there is specifically the same virtue, though it produces different actions.”61 So Thomas concludes: Therefore, it is necessary to reply: These cardinal virtues have the very same habit here and there, though their actions are different. For here they produce acts appropriate to those moving in the direction of their ultimate end, while there they will produce actions appropriate to those already resting in that ultimate end.62 Thomas, however, does not describe those actions in heaven, but humbly contents himself with quoting Augustine: Justice will consist in submitting to the rule of God, . . . and prudence is neither preferring nor even equating any other good with God, while courage will be to cling as closely as possible to God, and temperance will be to enjoy nothing hurtful at all.63 Conclusion For Sartre and gullible Sartreans everywhere, human life consists in climbing a ladder while you are still making it—something that is, well, quite impossible. Such a life, encased in one’s own ego, is doomed to failure, even in our relations to those we try to love most, like Sartre in his love for Beauvoir, a failing many of her female friends tried to get her to face, but she never would. 59 60 61 62 63 Aquinas, DVC, a. 4, resp. Aquinas, DVC, a. 4, resp. Aquinas, DVC, a. 4, resp. Aquinas, DVC, a. 4, resp. Thomas, DVC, a. 4, resp., quoting Augustine, De civitate Dei 14.9.12. 158 R. E. Houser For Aquinas, the ladder is already built; it is enfolded in the human nature common to us all, if only we can find it and climb as well as we can. The ladder comes in two sections, the rational and the revealed. If we stop at the rational level, such a life is tragic but capable of real moral accomplishment, as the Greeks saw. But Thomas’s ladder stretches beyond to faith, so with help we can climb the higher section as “wayfarers” equipped to deal with the Sartrean degradations around us, perhaps repeating the prayer written by Pope Leo XIII in the nineteenth century, when faced with the twin errors of overweening capitalism and revolutionary socialism, a prayer that has again become popular at the end of Mass: “St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.” Such a life is devoted to the best in human accomplishments, not the ones where, as Marx said, “the animal becomes human and the human becomes animal,” so prevalent now among his socialist followers, here and elsewhere. Our current choice, then, is stark: Sartre or St. Thomas. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2024): 159–186 159 Technology and Our Relationship with God Anselm Ramelow, O.P. Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology Berkeley, CA God’s Original Plan and the Fall Technology may appear to be a very secular thing, but to assume that technology can be understood without God would be a mistake. Technology is deeply involved in our relationship with God. This involvement is, moreover, profoundly ambivalent.1 To begin with the positive side of this ambivalence: the growing awareness of the dangers of technology should not lead Christians to think that technology is necessarily a bad thing. It is, in fact, not even merely a “necessary evil.” Rather, we can find in the use of technology an unfolding of our God-given rational nature. If we believe that God “made us in his image and likeness,” then this quite directly implies two things: (1) God is a maker (he made us), and (2) since he made us in his image and likeness, we are makers as well. The making of technology thus reflects our dignity as made in the image and likeness of God.2 Accordingly, the Church has been more positive towards the development of technology than one might expect, and some of our technologies (e.g., agricultural, architectural, and time-keeping technologies) have their roots in medieval monasteries.3 1 2 3 I would like to thank (in no particular order) Ted Peters, Jordan Wales, Albert Borgmann, Edward Feser, Noreen Herzfeld, Wolfgang Koch, Brian Green, Eric Salobir and Marius Dorobantu for comments on an earlier version of this paper. Remaining weakness are my own. Noreen Herzfeld, Technology of Religion (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton, 2009), 10–17. For some examples, see Brian Patrick Green, “The Catholic Church and Technological 160 Anselm Ramelow, O.P. We should therefore expect that Adam and Eve, had they not fallen, nevertheless would have become makers of technology in some form or other. They would have exhibited inventiveness and tool use, though perhaps not a tool use focused on warding off evil (which did not exist in Eden), but concerned with promoting positive forms life, such as tools of art and communication. Art and communication technologies are, like all tools, means to an end; but these in particular contain their ends in themselves. In Aristotelian terms, their making (poiesis) concerns a praxis (such as “making conversation”). That is why we sometimes forget to list such technologies among our typical examples of technologies. We forget, for example, that, among the technologies of communication, language as a physical tool (sounds or written marks) is an obvious example. And it is a prelapsarian feature: the book of Genesis has Adam naming things before the Fall. In doing so, Adam echoes God’s own creative “technique” of speaking or calling things into being.4 Even in its oral form, language is a matter of human making and a technology of communication. In paradise, communication would not have been merely instrumental, not merely a means, but an intrinsic good, embodying knowledge and intersubjective communion. Other forms of prelapsarian technology, however, are a matter of speculation. And whether or not one agrees with Jacques Ellul’s thesis that there was no such prelapsarian technology,5 the ambivalence of technology is clear from the very beginning as well. This is at least what we see in the book of Genesis. For, as a matter of biblical record, it was Cain and his descendants who founded cities and developed technology (e.g., Tubal-Cain as the “forger of all instruments of bronze and iron” in Gen 4:22). And the history 4 5 Progress: Past, Present, and Future,” Religions 8 (2017): 106. He relates here that the contemporary (and earlier) ecclesial condemnations concern rather technologies of warfare and human reproduction, or else the “technocratic paradigm” (in Laudato Si’), but not technology as such. An exception may be Gregory XVI forbidding railways and gas lamps in papal states. Even Yuval Noah Harari acknowledges the innovative role of the Church in the Middle Ages: the Church ran monasteries like companies and there pioneered archives, timetables, catalogues, etc.—in short, it developed data processing just as the companies in Silicon Valley do now (Homo Deus—A Brief History of Tomorrow [New York: HarperCollins, 2017], 276–77). Jacques Ellul, “Technique and the Opening Chapters of Genesis,” in Theology and Technology: Essays in Christian Analysis and Exegesis, ed. Carl Mitcham and Jim Grotes (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984), 123–37, at 131. According to Ellul, this would have arrogated to man the honor God, whose perfect and complete work (“he saw that it was good”) would have been contradicted by a claim of progressive unfolding through human co-creation. For Ellul, there were no (technological) means or mediations in paradise because everything was im-mediate (“Technique,” 127–29). Technolog y and Our Relationship with God 161 of these urban civilizations does not display the best part of human behavior. But if, as we have said, technology is not necessarily a bad thing, then this must be a corruption of technology. What might this corruption consist in? I want to suggest that it consists precisely in the corruption of our relationship with God, from which technology can never abstract and in which it is, for better or for worse, embedded. Unsurprisingly, therefore, as technology progresses, this relationship becomes more and more explicit, and it does so in a paradoxical way: initially, it is an attempt to put humanity in charge and control, to replace our need for reliance on God by allowing us to play God ourselves. But in our current situation, particularly with the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, the roles appear reversed: rather than putting humanity in charge, technology in turn is increasingly in control—to the point of becoming itself a god or idol that rules human life. As a result, we only end up having replaced one God with another. This will be explained in what follows. Early Modern Motivations and their Consequences Beginning in the seventeenth century especially, philosophers such as René Descartes and Francis Bacon expressed a desire to undo the consequences of the Fall. But they did not aim at repairing our ruptured relationship with God. Rather, they only hoped to eliminate the consequences of that rupture, and to do so, not with the help of God, but by means of technology. The goal was—in Descartes’ words—to become “masters and possessors of nature” again, just as we were in Eden.6 Illness, famine, mortality, and labor7 as consequences of the Fall were to be overcome, not by God, but by the new machines that a new science was to make possible. Not by accident therefore do these machines themselves gain religious overtones. As Nikolai Berdyaev observes: “Modern man believes in the might of technology, of the machine, and sometimes it would seem, that this is the one thing, in which he still believes.”8 6 7 8 René Descartes, Discourse on Method, part VI. Labor as laborious, that is. For, according to Thomas Aquinas, “in paradise [work] would have been pleasant on account of man’s practical knowledge of the powers of nature” (Summa theologiae [ST] I, q. 102, a. 3). Nikolai Berdyaev, “The Spiritual Condition of the Contemporary World,” Journal Put' 25 (1932): 56–68. We should also note that technology in this form developed only on the background of Christianity. Romano Guardini explains this through the Christian experience of world-transcendence (Die Technik und der Mensch [Mainz: Matthias Grünewald, 1981], 74–75). Friedrich Schiller and G. W. F. Hegel also took Christianity to be at the root of the disenchantment of the world, while others like Lynne White 162 Anselm Ramelow, O.P. The modern mathematical science that is at the service of this development is itself, as Martin Heidegger noticed, the result of a technological interest.9 As a form of knowledge invested in controlling the contingencies of life, this new science is in direct contrast with a reliance on God’s grace and providence. Albert Borgmann has pointed out that it is a science of control which seeks out only the necessary and deterministic features of nature, those that make things predictable so as to be used and commodified. Grace, history, and providence, on the other hand, are the realm of the contingent. They cannot be controlled and are therefore left outside of this new science. They typically become relevant, manifest, and thematic only where technological control fails.10 If this is true, then modern science and technology by their very nature lead to the occlusion of God’s intervention in our lives. It illustrates that technology is never spiritually neutral, but always involves our relationship with God. This was always true, but it becomes even more obvious in the modern age, even though—or precisely because—it attempts to replace this relationship by technological control. In the words of Berdyaev: For a long time they regarded technology as a most neutral sphere, something religiously indifferent, something furthermost removed from spiritual questions and therefore something innocent. But this period has past, though not all have noticed it so. Technology has ceased to be neutral. The question about technology has become for us a spiritual question, a question about the fate of man, about his relationship to God.11 Problematic as this development may be, we should hasten to add that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with using technological means to alleviate the consequences of the Fall. There is, for example, nothing illegitimate about using medicine against illness, and agricultural technologies against famine; the Church has always found this praiseworthy.12 Such burdens ought to 9 10 11 12 took it as the root of the world’s exploitation (on White, see Herzfeld, Technology of Religion, 92). Humanity arrogates to itself the transcendence that Christianity had taught to be a feature of the Creator. For a possible reintegration see our last part of this article. Echoed, e.g., in Laudato Si’ on “the scientific and experimental method, which in itself is already a technique of possession, mastery and transformation” (§106). Albert Borgmann, Power Failure: Christianity in the Culture of Technology (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos, 2003), 65–80. What may be lost here is also a sense of gratitude. Berdyaev, “The Spiritual Condition.” See, again Green, “The Catholic Church and Technological Progress.” Technolog y and Our Relationship with God 163 be made lighter by technology. Some burdens, however, are good burdens that we should carry rather than eliminate by technology:13 caring for one’s neighbor, for example, or learning to live with those who are annoying or boring, or the hard training for good skills and tasks, and building virtue—all of these we could not or should not outsource to technology. Eliminating these efforts or avoiding them by technological means would make us lose something about ourselves. Nor would we want to use technology to medicate grief or the dark night of the soul. These burdens are essential to our relationship with God and neighbor—that is, to the relationships destroyed by the Fall; they can be repaired only by taking up these burdens. Moreover, among those burdens that we may legitimately hope to alleviate by technology, some may prove to be beyond our efforts because of a lack of available technology—and this lack in turn may in some cases be beyond remedy in principle, as is most likely in the case of death. As Robert Spaemann noticed, all medical doctors are familiar with the unavoidable entropy of life and with the fact that ultimately all their efforts always end in failure.14 This failure and its acceptance may be more important than we think, yet modern technology seems to struggle with the acceptance and acknowledgement of its own limits and finitude. It is precisely at these limits that God comes into view again, the God who alone can save us. God, however, cannot be used like yet another machine. For he does not dispense his help in any controllable way. Praying for a miracle is not like pushing a button on a machine; it is rather like a conversation with a person. And this conversation itself may be more important than anything we can hope to attain by it in this world. For it rebuilds the very relationship that at bottom is the real issue. Thus while technology wants to turn everything into a controllable “standing reserve” (Heidegger), it is good for us to accept our limitations as—to use technological language—“features, not bugs.” Even if we were able to construct a technological paradise for ourselves, this alone would not reestablish our relationship with God. We may think that it would give us at least the leisure to think more about God. But technological entertainment will likely preempt this by filling our leisure time with diversions. And all the ease of life that technology produces may rather subvert the 13 14 Here I take some inspiration from a personal communication from Albert Borgmann. Robert Spaemann, “Genetic Manipulation of Human Nature in the Context of Human Personality,” in Human Genome, Human Person and Society of the Future, ed. J. Vial Correa and E. Sgreccia (Vatican City: Vatican Library, 1999), 340–50, at 350. Doctors who cannot accept this often end up promoting what they cannot prevent: euthanasia is the result of feeling the need always to do something, one way or the other. 164 Anselm Ramelow, O.P. divine pedagogy that we see displayed in salvation history, which is in so many ways an education in the awareness of our dependency on God. For the learning of patience and trust in divine providence is at issue, and that can be more important than any (otherwise desirable) improvement of our physical condition. Technology just on its own may be a testimony merely to our cleverness, but not necessarily to our moral goodness. Jean-Jacques Rousseau may be right in thinking that it in fact makes us worse, morally speaking. Technology itself may not have the moral neutrality that we assume. It may be not only that the user determines the morally good or bad use, but that the technology all by itself implies certain uses of a particular moral quality.15 Usually, we would think here of technology that is intrinsically evil in all its possible uses, but we could also imagine the opposite: could technology not be used to make us morally better? Perhaps there are technologies that have an exclusively good use built into their structure (e.g., into their algorithms)? Technologies of self-surveillance and of the “quantified self ” come to mind, controlling not only external nature but also our own human nature.16 Yet, while such technologies may make us better on a number of levels, we should not expect them to help us build virtue or become morally better.17 They would be at best neutral or indifferent with regard to our redemption. In fact, it may even be detrimental to our redemption, if it distracts us from God and from the right kind of efforts we need to make in our lives—for example, by relegating our moral choices to “morality apps.” In other words, original sin is not a technological problem. It is not a computer virus, nor a genetic defect that could be fixed by technology. Only love can save us, as Ted Peters notes: “Increased intelligence would be quite capable of increasing the destructive force of evil. Increased love, regardless of its accompanying level of intelligence, increases compassion, peace, and harmony. Love is redemptive.”18 Peters elsewhere quotes John Polkinghorne: “An ultimate hope will have to rest in an ultimate reality, that is to say, in the eternal God himself, and not in his creation.”19 This hope, as Pope Benedict XVI noted 15 16 17 18 19 This is a point that is currently emphasized by various authors; a well-known example is Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?,” in The Whale and the Reactor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 19–39, as well as the work of Bruno Latour as a whole. Shannon Vallor, Technology and the Virtues: A Philosophical Guide to a Future Worth Wanting (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 188–207. Vallor, Technology and the Virtues, 188–207. Ted Peters, “The Ebullient Transhumanist and the Sober Theologian,” Scientia et Fides 7 (2019): 97–117, at 104. Ted Peters, “Artificial Intelligence, Transhumanism, and Frankenfear,” in AI and Technolog y and Our Relationship with God 165 in Spe Salvi, is not to be found in technology: Karl Marx’s classless society, even though it provides for all of our needs by means of the technology taken over from the capitalists, is not automatically going to make us into better people (§§16–23). Human freedom is capable of evil in that utopian state just as much as Adam and Eve were in the garden of Eden, which, after all, was a perfect state as well. In the end it is a matter neither of the body nor of the mind, but of the will; and the will cannot save itself, with or without technology.20 The Divinization of Technology While these questions have been with humanity for a while, more recently, matters have taken a paradoxical turn: initially we see how modern technology is used to reduce our dependency on God by eliminating contingencies and threats. But the result seems, paradoxically, to create a new dependency on the very technology that promised to put us in control.21 At the same time, technology takes on features of the divine, confirming Ellul’s thesis that the technological desacralization of traditional religion makes technology itself (as a “universal mediator”) into the sacred. Lewis Mumford similarly notes how, in the early modern age, mechanics becomes the new religion and the machine its “new Messiah”: in the early modern utopias the machine replaces Plato’s virtues as well as Christian grace and redemption.22 Yuval Noah Harari even suggests that currently religion prospers more in Silicon 20 21 22 IA: Utopia or Extinction?, ed. Ted Peters (Adelaide, South Australia: ATP, 2018), 15–42, at 42. Suggestions of “moral enhancement” by gene technology (see Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu, “The Perils of Cognitive Enhancement and the Urgent Imperative to Enhance the Moral Character of Humanity,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 25 [2008]: 162–77) misunderstand the very nature of moral action and its evaluation (even while they do understand that cleverer is not morally better). This is not a topic that can be addressed here. We may become so dependent on machines that turning them off would amount to suicide (see Peters, “Artificial Intelligence, Transhumanism, and Frankenfear,” 16, quoting Bill Joy). Already earlier, industrial machines were operating autonomously (Hegel’s selbständige Werkzeuge, the early paradigm being the mechanical clock). They too dominated the life and labor of the factory workers (processes of deskilling can be found then as they are experienced now). For a while now, technology has also “colonized the Lifeworld” ( Jürgen Habermas’s term) and become “autonomous” and emancipated itself from human decision-making; see Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (New York: Vintage, 1964), 133–34. Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (1934) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 45, 58. 166 Anselm Ramelow, O.P. Valley than in Islam and Fundamentalism, with technology promising peace, happiness, prosperity, and even eternal life.23 The technological utopia of this-worldly control thus has its own eschatology, as it replaces the heavenly Jerusalem of Christianity with its own idea of such an ultimate culmination point of technological progress. Theologians themselves have at times embraced this vision, as even secular authors will now invoke Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin’s anticipation of a global “noosphere.” Teilhard seems to have considered this noosphere to be at least in part the result of human technology.24 While unknown in Teilhard’s time, the internet has now indeed spun its web into a worldwide sphere of connectivity that enlarges human consciousness to the point that the planet itself seems to develop a global self-awareness.25 Marshall McLuhan expected such a universal self-consciousness from information technology as well, particularly in combination with space travel: after the moon landing, TV cameras captured a view of earth from the moon for a global human audience, and this was, as it were, a reflection of the planet back onto itself, a suggestion of planetary self-consciousness.26 The heavenly 23 24 25 26 Harari, Homo Deus, 356–37. Even earlier, the late-nineteenth-century Russian Orthodox ascetic Nikolai Fedorov argued—inspired by Darwinism—that humans could direct their own evolution to bring about the resurrection. For a suggestive account, see Meghan O’Gieblyn, “God in the Machine: My Strange Journey into Transhumanism,” The Guardian, April 18, 2017. Another early example is E. M. Forster’s 1909 short story “The Machine Stops” (originally published in The Oxford and Cambridge Review, and later in the 1928 Forster collection The Eternal Moment and Other Stories), which eerily anticipates so much of the contemporary scenario (including social media), but which also anticipates a reemergence of religion in which “The Machine” takes on divine features, after it initially had destroyed religion: “Those who had long worshipped silently, now began to talk. They described the strange feeling of peace that came over them when they handled the Book of the Machine, the pleasure that it was to repeat certain numerals out of it, however little meaning those numerals conveyed to the outward ear, the ecstasy of touching a button, however unimportant, or of ringing an electric bell, however superfluously. ‘The Machine,’ they exclaimed, ‘feeds us and clothes us and houses us; through it we speak to one another, through it we see one another, in it we have our being. The Machine is the friend of ideas and the enemy of superstition: the Machine is omnipotent, eternal; blessed is the Machine.’ . . . The word ‘religion’ was sedulously avoided, and in theory the Machine was still the creation and the implement of man.” Brett T. Robinson found an early anticipation in R. W. Emerson: “Our civilization and these ideas are reducing the earth to a brain. See how by telegraph and steam the Earth is anthropologized” (Brett T. Robinson, Appletopia: Media Technology and the Religious Imagination of Steve Jobs [Waco: Baylor University Press, 2013], 7). Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey 2001, in its final shots, seems to envision a new birth Technolog y and Our Relationship with God 167 realm, the “starry sky above” that Immanuel Kant could still invoke, ceased to be the transcendent realm of gods or angels; it became the sphere of human technology. The orbit of heavenly bodies moved by angels was now replaced by the orbits of artificial satellites; they now govern our fate and observe us with increasingly all-seeing eyes, mimicking divine omniscience.27 Meanwhile, on earth, Facebook and other applications display similar aspirations to quasi-divine omniscience and algorithmic governance of our fate and choices (not without the use of facial recognition software). And yet, in the end, we need to remind ourselves that it is still we who are looking at ourselves, playing God with the help of our technology.28 Our eschatological moment also features an electronic Pentecost. In the biblical Pentecost, the Holy Spirit overcame the linguistic separation of humanity—a separation that had resulted from technological ambitions described in the story of the tower of Babel in Genesis 11, where humanity yet again grasped for heaven on its own terms. In contrast with the biblical Pentecost, the modern technological Pentecost hopes to heal the wound caused by these technological ambitions with the help of the same technological means that inflicted it in the first place.29 Global connectivity and 27 28 29 of the planet in this kind of return to and reflexivity on itself. The photo “Earthrise” from the astronauts of the moon landing turned the gaze from earlier outward looking space exploration in the 1960s back to the fragility of earth; see Catherine R. Osborne, “From Sputnik to Spaceship Earth: American Catholics and the Space Age,” Religion and American Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 25 (2015): 218–63. In popular culture, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series experiences a renaissance. Asimov envisions an all-knowing “psychohistory” predicting future events. All-knowing technologies are also anticipated in Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon, of whose paradigmatic role Michel Foucault has made us aware in Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan, (New York: Vintage, 1995), 195–230. This, too, mimics God’s-eye view, but now as an aspiration for humanity. Marshall McLuhan, “At the Moment of Sputnik the Planet Became a Global Theater in Which There Are No Spectators but Only Actors,” Journal of Communication 24 (1974): 48–58; McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extension of Man (New York: Signet, 1966), 258; McLuhan and Wilfred Watson, From Cliché to Archetype (New York: Viking, 1970), 9 (see also some of his lectures). As an externalization of our nervous system, electronic media give us an “instant, total field awareness”: “in the electric age, we wear all mankind as our skin” (Understanding Media, 56). McLuhan was influenced by Teilhard (see Osborne, “From Sputnik to Spaceship Earth,” 260). The global net suggests a view from nowhere, because we perceive from everywhere at once, implying a quasi-divine objectivity, an intellectus archetypus (Kant) which is constitutive of reality, suggesting that here reality and appearance (virtual reality) coincide. Only the real God can call that technologically simulated perspective into question. It is potentially a showdown between two competing ultimate perspectives. Even in inner-worldly terms, this may not be promising. Hans Jonas notices that 168 Anselm Ramelow, O.P. AI translation programs promise to overcome the linguistic and cultural separation and alienation even without God’s Holy Spirit. But just as the biblical Holy Spirit is also the life-giving soul of a community—the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ—so here, too, some quasi-mystical body is to be constituted when all of humanity will connect in cyberspace as a global “hive mind.” In the words of Peters: “One’s cybermind would be in community with all other cyberminds, a variant on Teilhard’s noosphere. One might even celebrate a new higher level of community.”30 And so, in a quasi-Joachimite eschatology, we may witness ourselves participating in the outpouring of an electronic substitute for the Holy Spirit. But this substitute has a rather different character. For, of course, the Holy Spirit is indeed spirit, not matter. God is not a “force” or electricity, but a personal being, a creator spiritus who transcends his creation. A material and technological substitute, on the other hand, would not transcend the physical universe. In theological terms, the implied religious aspirations would be pantheist and of one piece with the physical world. Hence, this outlook would not have a place for a relationship with a transcendent God. And, as we will see, excluding this relationship may even be the very point. Moreover, the “divinity” that is to replace the transcendent God would be an evolving god, similar to the god of G. W. F. Hegel or of process theology. And just as Hegel’s god needs our finite consciousnesses to become self-conscious, so here, too, the growing god of this quasi-pantheist religion is expected to gain some kind of self-consciousness: according to some, the global connectivity promises that this computer network will become self-aware and transcend its human makers.31 AI will eventually supersede the power of its creators. It will be so much more intelligent than us that it will, effectively, become a god. With the Internet as its nervous system, the world’s connected cellphones and sensors as its sense organs, and data centers as its brain, 30 31 technology is less likely to fulfill our eschatological aspirations and more likely to lead instead to the destruction of the planet and the human race. Hence, even for secular minds, the biblical mandate to be good stewards of creation is now obvious, according to Jonas (“Technology as a Subject for Ethics,” Social Research 49 [1982]: 891–98, at 895). Peters, “Ebullient Transhumanist,” 108. I have argued elsewhere that only God can make true makers; true creativity can be found in human artists, but not in computers, or else we need to give them copyright and baptize them. Like God, however, we can pro-create other makers. All creation is preceded by pro-creation (“Can Computers Create?,” Evangelization and Culture 1 [2019]: 39–46). Technolog y and Our Relationship with God 169 this new deity will be as omniscient and omnipotent as any previous vision of God.32 The growing technology of neural networks fosters the expectation that machine learning will become autonomous and self-upgrading, outpacing even human innovation and resulting in a “Singularity.” Now, “self-upgrading” as a form of reflexivity suggests something like “strong AI” and that self-consciousness could be the property of material entities like machines.33 While this assumption can and needs to be challenged philosophically, what concerns us here is the religious imagination that drives the development of such expectations and that affects our relationship with God. The Singularity is, once more, a secular and technological eschaton, now replacing earlier utopias. Such a global internet, having become self-conscious, would be the true providential agent of future history, and many, including perhaps Teilhardians and other theologians, seem to welcome this coming god.34 Nor do the religious overtones even depend on the assumption of machine consciousness of the kind we have just discussed. According to Harari, the religion of “dataism” supersedes human beings precisely because it supersedes consciousness and self-consciousness as something that is merely a clumsier kind of data processing mechanism. In dataism, the ultimate entities are not human persons, but data, and data flow is the ultimate value. “Life” as a value just consists in the flow of information, to which everything else is subordinate. Hence the imperative (or quasi-divine commandment) to share one’s own data with everyone else. Even now, humans are merging with that 32 33 34 Galen Beebe and Zachery Davis, “When Silicon Valley Gets Religion,” quoted in Peters, “Artificial intelligence, Transhumanism, and Frankenfear,” 38. For a philosophical discussion, see David J. Chalmers, “The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis,” Journal of Consciousness Studies 17 (2010): 7–65. Chalmers takes, for the most part, a positive view of the possibility. Jaron Lanier implies that the Protestant variant of this theology is something like an electronic rapture into the Singularity (Who Owns the Future [New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013], 125). Steve Jobs, on the other hand, sought his religion in India, and indeed, new-age and eastern religions had a home in Palo Alto since the 1980s (213). There are also Mormon and Buddhist versions of transhumanism (Peters, “Ebullient Transhumanist,” 110–11). Nick Bostrom’s “Simulation Argument” envisions something like a “naturalistic cosmogony” with nested simulated realities, each having its own gods or people running the simulation, rewarding and punishing behavior therein. Since inhabitants of each simulation try to create simulations of their own, this notion may potentially appeal to Mormons (who tend to be interested in transhumanism as well); see Bostrom, “Are We Living in a Computer Simulation?,” The Philosophical Quarterly 53 (2003): 243–55, at 253–54. 170 Anselm Ramelow, O.P. flow and feeling elevated states of consciousness by being participants in something greater—a quasi-religious experience in which one’s own existence is confirmed (“I share, therefore I am”). Not that human experience matters. It is as outdated as humanistic politics and democracy (which even now is incapable of keeping up with technological developments). The flow of data merely uses human beings and their politics; it may eventually also discard them as outdated forms of data processing. Already in our own time, human conscious decision-making is increasingly bypassed by automated algorithmic mechanisms, which know us and our desires better than we know ourselves. In the past, humanism declared God to be a figment of our imagination; now dataism declares human imagination itself to be merely the product of our biologically based algorithms. As our biology becomes outdated as a data processing system, so the flow of data becomes independent from human consciousness and affectivity.35 Harari lays this out in rather cynical formulations—which helps to highlight what is at stake for humanity.36 Even if the “internet of all things” did not eliminate human consciousness altogether, it would certainly not bring human consciousness in contact with the reality of a transcendent Other. It would isolate our consciousness from reality altogether and keep our conscious life entrapped in the parallel world of the internet. Our consciousness would live and move and have its being not in God, but in cyberspace, in a metaverse, in virtual reality. Something about our relationship with reality is askew in this picture. And this is not as new as one might think. It is the apex of a long historical development that began with the seventeenth-century attempt to control reality technologically and scientifically, as we saw earlier. Modern science began by reinterpreting reality as something susceptible to our mechanical manipulation, by taking reality itself to be a mechanism (initially with God as the increasingly remote clockmaker in the background). Accordingly, we assume that we have understood what reality is once we are able to make a machine or robot that perfectly simulates this reality.37 Reality and simulation become indistinguishable, even conceptually. Reinterpreting 35 36 37 Harari, Homo Deus, 372–98. Only in the very last few pages of the book does Harari indicate that he may not necessarily support this development (Homo Deus, 399–402). This includes our own reality. According to Mumford, the machine is created in our own image and likeness, but devoid of our humanity’s flesh and blood. It is really only an image of our own power, i.e., of the thing that interests us most and that equates our life with work—and what other life do machines know? (Technics and Civilization, 51–53). Technolog y and Our Relationship with God 171 reality in this way means to understand it relative to our needs (for control), as an object existing only relative to our own subjectivity. And indeed, in Descartes, unless there is a God who is not a deceiver, reality may as well be our dream, a mere appearance or virtual reality. Again, appearance and reality become indistinguishable. The resulting unreality of reality38 can be witnessed early on in a growing epistemological skepticism which turns everything into appearances and leaves reality inaccessible: Descartes’ dream problem, George Berkeley’s idealism, Kant’s noumena. Today this skepticism is recast in technological terms as Nick Bostrom claims that perhaps we are really living in a virtual reality simulation. God the Creator, then, is replaced by the mad scientist who orchestrates this simulation—foreshadowed already in Descartes’ genius malignus. For Berkeley; it was still God who orchestrated the appearances; now, as God is dropped entirely, we or our technology are responsible even for that part. We supposedly live in our own or another human being’s technological creation, not in reality. Reinterpreting reality as relative to our needs, to our technology, or to our consciousness, has thus already been around for a few centuries and only now ends in an attempt to replace reality altogether. And this, too, has a prehistory. Harari seems to suggest that already with the beginning of agriculture, a more direct, animistic contact with nature disappeared, and that the gods of the new cities were understood to mediate between humans and nature. Animals, plants, and nature were silenced and became a mere backdrop of life or are even cruelly exploited with the help of the gods.39 What is specific to the modern development is that the scientist now takes the place of the gods as the mediator between us and nature. They know what nature really is and how it can be made to serve our needs by means of technology.40 On the level of material culture, and particularly since the industrial revolution, technology has begun to seal us of from nature as well. Ortega y Gasset and others have noticed this as early as the late 1920s.41 While, as Mumford notes, the 38 39 40 41 “Robert Spaemann’s Entwirklichung der Wirklichkeit” (“Wirklichkeit als Anthropomorphismus,” in Grundvollzüge der Person: Dimensionen des Menschseins bei Robert Spaemann, ed. Hanns-Gregor Nissing [Munich: Institut zur Förderung der Glaubenslehre, 2008], 13–35, at 29). Spaemann liked to quote (critically) Hume’s claim that “we never take a step beyond ourselves.” Harari, Homo Deus, 90–94. Harari also points out that the modern version features its own variant of the Fall story: Newton’s apple falling from another tree of knowledge. Here, even snake and God are silenced, only Newton remains; and he is not punished but enlightened by knowledge and praised (Homo Deus, 77 and 98). José Ortega y Gasset, “Meditación de la tècnica” [1939], trans. Helene Weyl as “Man 172 Anselm Ramelow, O.P. earliest completely artificial environments may have been the mines of the early modern age,42 it was only in the later nineteenth century that chemistry produced plastics and other artificial substances that constitute much of the modern environment.43 In our day, this culminates in the fabrication even of biological life, namely in artificial organisms constructed by genetic manipulation.44 Moreover, it now promises us a completely artificial reality by means of a nanotechnology that is subject to our every wish and whim (the so-called “utility fog”45). Or else, we can live in Facebook’s Metaverse, a virtual reality according to our own image and liking—though controlled by its own “Lords of the Cloud.”46 In all of this, technology affects our relationship with God. While for Descartes God had to guarantee our access to reality and the natural world, the opposite is true as well: it is this natural world that normally also gives us access to God. Nature as a product of its maker can be regarded as God’s manifestation. But as we are sealing ourselves off from nature, we become isolated and alienated from nature’s God as well.47 The more we make and live exclusively with substances not found in nature (by means of chemistry and nanotechnology), the less we find access to God in his creation. Instead, we will soon be facing only ourselves in the realm of our own productions, which, as we have said, are defined by our purposes, and therefore fit comfortably within a frame of reference defined only by ourselves. And here is where we may entertain a certain hermeneutics of suspicion: 42 43 44 45 46 47 the Technician,” in History as a System and Other Essays towards a Philosophy of History (New York: Norton, 1941), 87–161. See also Berdyaev’s transferal from the “organism” to “organization,” which begets a “tendency towards suicide” (“Spiritual Condition”) Between about 1928 and 1932 (published sometimes a few years later), quite a number of prominent authors suddenly produced treatments of technology, e.g., Karl Jaspers, Oswald Spengler, Ortega y Gasset, Mumford, Guardini, and Berdyaev. Mumford, Technics and Civilization, 69–70. Mumford, Technics and Civilization, 229–35. Earlier, the production of clear glass helped create the artificial environment of the hothouse, now encompassing the natural, organic world (124–25, and 258). Science itself takes place in the artificial environments of the laboratory. Hans Jonas, “Ethics and Biogenetic Art,” Social Research 71 (2004): 569–82. Ray Kurzweil, The Age of Spiritual Machines (New York, Penguin, 1999), 145. Jaron Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget (New York: Vintage Books, 2011), 85, 94–99. Thus perhaps making earth into an isolated “silent planet” under the rule of Lucifer, as in C. S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet, the first book of his celebrated Space Trilogy. Ironically, as Mumford explains, the separation from nature’s cosmic and sacred time occurred due to the invention of mechanical clocks used by monks for their prayer time (Technics and Civilization, 12–22). Clockmakers were the first machinists, as clocks, unlike tools, operate on their own (134). Technolog y and Our Relationship with God 173 if God is Being Itself, and therefore the most real being of all, are we then perhaps, by replacing “real reality” with virtual realities of our own making, not actually trying to avoid God himself ? Are we afraid of real and true otherness—most especially that of God, but also that of our neighbor? And was it perhaps this motivation that drove the whole development from the beginning? It will still have to be seen whether alternate realities like the Metaverse will allow for places where God and his revelation can be spoken of. In principle, it is hard to imagine this metaverse as a place in which God could become present by an incarnation. God’s Incarnation is, after all, something like Alfred Hitchcock making a cameo appearance in his own movies: it would break the illusion and let otherness, the reality of the author, back in. Yet are we not rather seeking distraction and isolation from this otherness in a metaverse or other forms of virtual reality? While God’s Incarnation is hard to imagine in virtual reality, religious experiences may appear more promising, because they are more subjective to begin with. And they have indeed become the subject of the quest for technological surrogates. This quest, however, may amount to a performative self-contradiction: can anything not caused by God be an experience of God? Much as Ray Kurzweil can fantasize about technologically induced “religious experiences” (by brain stimulation), these are not forms of a personal encounter with an Other, nor true forms of self-transcendence.48 Any manipulation does as such preclude a personal encounter, if such encounters by their nature must happen in a free gift of the self. This gratuitous freedom is most especially required if the other person in question is God, because God by his very nature transcends any grasp of ours and can be encountered only in his own gift of grace. How indeed could grace become subject to our technological manipulation if it is always freely given? Thus, a real encounter cannot be our production. All we can make are only appearances and simulations. Attempting to produce religious experiences on our own will only keep God and an encounter with him further away. In this way, technology once more does not heal, but rather cements the rift between God and us. The “fault line” between us and God only gets larger, perpetuating the distrust that led Adam and Eve to grasp the fruit in the first place and subsequently made them hide from their Creator. This is still our situation—only that, instead of hiding behind fig leaves, we now hide in virtual reality.49 48 49 In fact, Kurzweil’s own experiments only feed us back our own “musical” brain wave signals (Age of Spiritual Machines, 151–53). Cyberspace aims at creating a heavenly Jerusalem without God: “Software engineer Michael Benedikt envisions cyberspace as a place where ‘we would enjoy triumphs without risks and eat of the tree and not be punished, consort daily with angels, enter 174 Anselm Ramelow, O.P. But there is, again, a paradoxical twist that we can observe in our own days: what was then simulation or virtual reality now becomes itself the one true reality on which we depend—namely, once we live under the rule of the “Singularity” which we have discussed earlier. This Singularity promises to take on a life of its own and to subject us to its own designs, in short: to become a new god or first cause in our life. Parallel with this development we, can currently observe an odd turn among philosophers, a turn which also reverses the early modern philosophical beginnings. In the seventeenth century, Descartes and Bacon and others eliminated formal and final causes from their ontology, which they considered to be a form of anthropomorphism. Only human beings were taken to have ends and purposes, not nature. Interpreting all reality mechanistically eviscerated nature of its claim to contain animated and spontaneous entities of its own. Animals and other beings were considered mere machines without a subjective life of their own, and therefore of much lesser reality than the human beings who therefore could turn them into mere tools. Yet now, in an odd turn, we suddenly invest even what really are mere machines with subjective states and consciousness, thinking of robots as having a subjective mental life of their own. Accordingly, some philosophers are now even wondering whether robots should receive rights and protections.50 But how is this not even worse than the allegedly animistic projections that philosophers had been mocking earlier, when it came to nature?51 And at the same time, the very beings that engage in this kind of projection (namely, we ourselves) are subjected to reinterpretations through 50 51 heaven now and not die; . . . [it is] the Heavenly City, the New Jerusalem of the Book of Revelation. Like a bejeweled, weightless palace it comes out of heaven itself, . . . a place where we might re-enter God's graces, . . . laid out like a beautiful equation.’ Eternity as a never ending video game” (Herzfeld, Technology and Religion, 75). Yet the video games of cyberspace (played preferably in invincible “God-mode”) are typically games of destruction. At the same time, their almost instantaneous feedback loop suggests that appearance and reality, subject and object, become one, a “fusional loop of subject and object,” a man-made representation taking on features of the real presence of something made by God (Thomas Zengotita, Mediated [New York: Bloomsbury, 2005], 197–98). Nick Bostrom and Eliezer Yudkowsky, “The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence,” in Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence, ed. William Ramsey and Keith Frankish (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 316–34; David Gunkel, “The Other Question: Can and Should Robots Have Rights?,” Ethics and Information Technology 20 [2018]: 87–99). Kurzweil even envisions computers as going to their own kind of worship (Age of Spiritual Machines, 153). This is still a biblical theme as well: “Ah! you who say to wood, ‘Awake!’ to silent stone, ‘Arise! Can any such thing give oracles?” (Hab 2:19). Technolog y and Our Relationship with God 175 the mechanistic reductionism used earlier on nature—thus reducing the human mind to a “carbon-based computer.” Subject and object of the early modern age are reversed: machines are elevated to a status beyond nature, while we are reduced to mere mechanisms. This will certainly help to set the stage not only for a personalization of machines, but for their divinization. For, we increasingly depend on them as an object of their machinations and relate to them more and more as mere docile and subservient subordinates. Who, after all, still understands all the algorithms that run our lives?52 Yet, in this our new subordination, can we really trust this new “god”? After all, it is not clear that this new godhead will be benevolent.53 Unlike the God of the theological and metaphysical tradition, we are not dealing with the pure act of a spiritual being, a being that must be good by its very nature. The computer servers that run the algorithms of this new “god” are still material mechanisms. They originated as our tools, and most tools by their nature can be used for good or ill. And so, even if this particular tool were to gain some kind of autonomy, its moral indeterminacy would remain.54 Unsurprisingly, therefore, some futurists anticipate that the Singularity may turn against us. It may, for example, eliminate us as harmful parasites from earth. Some environmentalists may even welcome this for ecological reasons. Others like Harari anticipate that we will be discarded as an outdated mode of data processing. All that may be left to us at that point may be to choose to surrender our will-to-life— that same will by which we originally developed our machines, and to which we now submit for our own elimination. It would be an elimination by our own creations, the original subject of technology now being overcome by its object. Or, in the words of David Tracy: “The object cannot think. The subject will not. We began as technical agents of our willful destiny; we seem to end as technicized spectators at our own execution.”55 Dystopian fantasies of this sort do abound, 52 53 54 55 Even in the teams which develop the algorithms at Google, nobody understands the whole of it (Harari, Homo Deus, 398). This ambivalence in the Singularity religion is noted also in Lanier, Who Owns the Future? 193. We prescind here from the discussion of whether technology is neutral or intrinsically value-laden, as many authors have claimed (from Ellul to Langdon Winner and many others). The non-neutrality may always imply a social or political context. On the ultimate level, this context will disappear, including even the very user and designer (according to the idea of a Singularity). It may, however, still be driven by what this entity is programmed to optimize (and it is not clear what could or would change that ultimate setting, or how it could change that setting by itself). Quoted in Ted Peters, “Progress and Provolution, Will Transhumanism Leave Sin Behind?,” in Transhumanism and Transcendence: Christian Hope in an Age of 176 Anselm Ramelow, O.P. and they are, of course, not entirely new; they begin with then golem, with Frankenstein’s monster, and the sorcerer’s apprentice. Others, however, will not surrender, and rather try to forestall such developments. This may, for example, be achieved by upgrading humanity itself, in a kind of arms race with artificial intelligence (this seems to be the idea of Elon Musk56). Yet, for all this, they only repeat another version of the story of the Fall: grasping at the fruits and powers of a god who appears to be untrustworthy (and in this case actually is). For transhumanists,57 this grasp aims not only at undoing the consequences of original sin (e.g., overcoming death by uploading ourselves into a computer58), but even at introducing the qualities of the resurrected bodies into our life on earth by remaking ourselves with “superpowers.”59 Such an approach can sometimes 56 57 58 59 Technological Enhancement, ed. by Ronald Cole-Turner (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2011), 63–86, at 78. For David Bentley Hart, however, the god of transhumanism turns out to be a god of human sacrifice (“The Anti-Theology of the Body,” The New Atlantis 9 [2005]: 65–73). But it is also Harari’s idea (see Peters “Ebullient Transhumanist,” 103). Transhumanists are the inverse of the “inhumanists” (the term of Robinson Jeffers). The latter see humanity only as a destructive parasite on planet earth (hence perhaps welcoming such a Singularity). Thus, nature either becomes an “untouchable taboo” or an object of abuse (Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate [2009], §48). In neither case is there a God-given meaning to life: we either have to create it ourselves, or else there is none at all and we must be nihilists. Kurzweil is a typical example; see also Herzfeld, Technology and Religion, 64–69. Entrance into eternal life would be open not to the saints, but to the rich. Or else the rich prefer to prolong their real biological life and leave virtual reality as a cheap option for the poor (Lanier, Who Owns the Future?, 330). Some have speculated that avoiding death may be to avoid God’s “particular judgment” (related clashes can be found in Zoltan Istvan’s novel Transhumanist Wager). If so, then this attempt is, of course, illusory, because even this prolonged life ends at the latest with the heat death of the universe as a whole (or, theologically, with the Last Judgment). Avoiding death is not a new desire: Mumford suggests that even the earlier invention of recording devices promised a new form of immortality (Technics and Civilization, 244–55.), and we may wonder whether the current promises are really different in kind or only in degree. An upgrading of our nature was first envisioned by Pico della Mirandola in 1486—as a mandate from God himself. For John Locke, we own what we make or work on, and since God makes us, we are his property. Now, however, we begin to make or remake even ourselves (in our own image and likeness). This is a further appropriation of a divine prerogative that pushes God further out of the picture. Zengotita points out how this vision of self-made man continues through Comte, Marx and Nietzsche; it is celebrated by Donna Haraway, but abhorred by Heidegger as nihilistic (Mediated, 272–75). Disturbingly, if we make and therefore own human beings, then we also may claim the right to unmake what we have made. Technolog y and Our Relationship with God 177 take on strangely Manichean forms. After all, replacing reality with virtual reality is also a verdict on the materiality of the body: the claim is that our body can be replaced, as our true identity consists of nothing but patterns of information processing that are not bound to any particular computer or material substratum into which they are uploaded. In order to illustrate this, Nick Bostrom oddly appeals to the Catholic notion of purgatory, which he misunderstands as a way of purifying the separated soul from its body (rather than from its sins).60 Yet others suggest, curiously, that this transhumanism could be a form of self-transcendence.61 But Christian self-transcendence has to do with self-sacrifice, with moral self-transcendence, and with surrender to God. Christian self-transcendence is, in other words, the very opposite of technological self-elevation. Surrender to God in fact seems to be replaced with the aim of becoming identical with God.62 Another, quite contrary way of dealing with the untrustworthy god of the Singularity is again a kind of submission. But in this case, it is not a surrender to our own extinction and mistreatment.63 Left with the task of making sure that this Singularity will be benevolent, Anthony Levandowski—an engineer of self-driving cars—suggested that we worship this entity so as to placate it. His (recently disbanded) church of AI, the “Way of the Future” was to anticipate the “Transition” to this Singularity in worship so as to get it to be on our side.64 This is a startling idea, yet not exactly new. In fact, since we are still dealing with a technology that human beings have made, this is literally 60 61 62 63 64 Nick Bostrom, “Human Genetic Enhancements: A Transhumanist Perspective,” The Journal of Value Inquiry 37 (2003): 493–506, at 495–96; he is also trying to address the problem of personal identity with this analogy. On the body, see also Peters, “Ebullient Transhumanist,” 109. Bostrom’s nested proliferation of simulations within simulations (see note 33 above) may also remind us of the gnostic emanations of aeons. Vallor, Technology and the Virtues, 233. Vallor, Technology and the Virtues, 233. Submission here is not childlike, but calculating. At the same time, technology, with its deskilling, is indeed also infantilizing us (unlike true childlikeness, which aims at growing up). Lanier describes a growing attitude of guilty fearfulness, akin to superstition: people blame themselves rather than the computer, if something goes wrong, or if it is hard to use. They also work anxiously on the upkeep of their social media presence, “avoiding the ever-roaming evil eye of the hive mind” (and there is only one such hive mind, thus without any possibility of emigration); and like God (but unlike money), computers never forget (You Are Not a Gadget, 35; see also Who Owns the Future, 70, 29–31). “This new deity will be as omniscient and omnipotent as any previous vision of God. In the face of such power, Levandowski believes, humans will merely submit and pray to be spared” (Beebe and Davis, “When Silicon Valley Gets Religion,” quoted in Peters, “Artificial intelligence, Transhumanism, and Frankenfear,” 38). 178 Anselm Ramelow, O.P. a page out of the Old Testament: it is a case of people “worshipping the work of their own hands” (Isa 2:8), worshipping an entity that presumably is not even conscious or self-conscious, and hence literally “deaf and dumb.”65 In other words, it is a form of idolatry, though in the case of a “Singularity,” it is a kind of monotheist idol.66 Worshipping an idol will typically either reflect our own tone-deafness for God or make us deaf and dumb ourselves (Ps 115:9–8: “Those who worship them will become like them”). It is a deafness that results from making something that is essentially a means or tool into an end in itself, thus turning us back upon the ends that are definable within the scope of this technology and making us lose sight of the true end.67 At the same time it is, again, the paradoxical inversion of the starting point in which our means for controlling nature now control us and take on features of animation and divinization that we had excluded from nature.68 Technology in the Church Coming down from these eschatological speculations to our own daily lives, we find them invaded by technology even now. This includes our religious life-world.69 Pandemic restrictions have made us accustomed to worshipping 65 66 67 68 69 Eric Salobir suggested in conversation that “Alexa” is not deaf and dumb anymore, but listens to our wishes and fulfills them (e.g., by ordering pizza). But Alexa does, of course, not literally hear, but only reflects our wishes and preferences and interests. Nevertheless, these devices may function like the Roman penates or household gods that are oracles, provide for household needs, and connect the family to the larger world. Such devices are just the way we like our gods. Like Moses descending out of the cloud on Sinai, we may even download the Singularity’s commandments and instructions from the “Cloud” onto our “tablets.” Short of a global mind, companies like Apple now aspire to be themselves such a larger whole with a “spirituality” of their own, and with algorithms creating the groups of the elect. “You are either saved or damned, #BlessedByTheAlgorithm or #Cursed by it” (Linda Kinstler, “Can Silicon Valley Find God?,” New York Times, July 16, 2021). See Francis, Encyclical Letter on Faith Lumen Fidei ( June 29, 2013), §13. Typically, its place is then taken by opaque sensual desires that can be satisfied precisely by the commodities that technology provides. I find elements of this also expressed in Borgmann, Power Failure, 81–94. Grace becomes gratification (127). Some of this paradoxical inversion has been noticed earlier by Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer in their Dialectics of the Enlightenment, though they have no account of the theological dimensions of that problem. The colonization of the life-world by technology also implies, sort of in the reverse, that our private sins, committed in our life-world, also affect the rest of the world more than before, amplified and spread by technology. Can our vices in turn be technologically Technolog y and Our Relationship with God 179 on computers, through live-streaming and other means. The one true mediator has himself become mediated by technology, and nobody seems to think much of it. Quite to the contrary, there was, in the 1950s, a vigorous debate among theologians as to whether it could ever be permissible to show Mass on TV. Spaemann, for example, commented critically on the voyeuristic character of this technology (calling it, with Jean Cocteau, the “art of the keyhole”).70 Ellul, too, notes the desacralizing character of this voyeurism: Technique worships nothing, respects nothing. It has a single role: to strip off externals, to bring everything to light, and by rational use to transform everything into means. More than science, which limits itself to explaining the “how,” technique desacralizes because it demonstrates (by evidence and not by reason, through use and not through books) that mystery does not exist. Science brings to the light of day everything man had believed sacred.71 Long before the pandemic, this had been water under the bridge. Mass was even then shown on TV and technology has had its own way of invading our faith life. But with the recent increase in technical mediation, perhaps now the question may arise again.72 For, why would we not accept live-streamed 70 71 72 counteracted by drugs in the water, brain implants, or genetic engineering? See the article by Persson and Savulescu, and my comments above. See, for example, Robert Spaemann, “A Keyhole for Unbelievers? The Public Character of Cultus and the Broadcasting of the Mass on TV,” Communio 45 (2019): 629–36 [originally “Ein Schlüsselloch für die Ungläubigen? Die Öffentlichkeit des Kultes und die Fernsehübertragung der Messe,” Wort und Wahrheit 9 (1954): 165–68]. Perhaps relatedly, Zengotita notices that birth and death are the only events which cannot be technologically “mediated” (Mediated, 42–45, 289). The first and last moments of life confront being itself—before and after any possible technological mediation and reflection (and therefore they uniquely confront us with God). The same may be true for the sacramental real presence of the death of Christ. Filming the sacrifice of the Mass may be as perverse as filming someone’s death, Spaemann suggests. A critique of Protestant televangelists (not exempting the venerable Bishop Fulton Sheen) can be found in Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death (New York: Penguin, 1984), 114–24; for Postman this is blasphemy and idolatry (as the medium becomes the message). Ellul, Technological Society, 142–43. The issue may perhaps also be witnessed by the need for guides of proper etiquette for watching mass on a computer. Questions arise as to what is implied in using the very same computer (as a “multistable” medium [Don Ihde’s term]) for looking at quite different kinds of things, religious as well as everyday features, and perhaps even obscene things. Cf. Wis 15:7–8: “[The potter] fashions out of the same clay both the vessels that serve for clean purposes and their opposites, all alike; . . . With misspent toil 180 Anselm Ramelow, O.P. liturgies as the “new normal”? Why indeed are computer-mediated, live-streamed Masses still correlated with a suspension of the Sunday obligation rather than with its alternate fulfillment? What is wrong with using technology in this context? After all, since writing is a communication technology, is not Sacred Scripture itself a technological mediation of revelation?73 As an initial response, we may need to remind ourselves that language, as we had said earlier, is a prelapsarian technology. Moreover, it is only one of the ways in which the divine Word becomes present at Mass. The sacrament of the Eucharist makes the divine Word present not just in a linguistic technology, but literally “in person.” The readings of Scripture are a witness to this more primary form or “prime analogate” of God’s real presence. Accordingly, Scripture’s primary biotope, the context in which alone it can be understood, continues to be the Eucharist.74 Echoing the Incarnation, Scripture has its most authentic place in its “in-person” proclamation (within which its status as Sacred Scripture was historically determined in the first place). The real presence of the Eucharist remains a point of reference for all the forms in which divine revelation arrives in our lives. The Eucharistic presence itself has a telling structure. For example, while many things have artificial substitutes and near-perfect imitations in virtual reality, food is not one of them. Much as we technologically commodify eating into forms of fast food, we cannot escape the necessity of eating. There are no virtual substitutes for it. Even brains in the vat, which otherwise live in cyberspace, still have to receive nutrition. Noting this, we can ask: is it only by accident that God chose the medium of food to become present in person? Or was it because it was a congenial medium for his own real presence, precluding its virtualization? That eating is possible only in person is the most obvious obstacle to an electronic mediation of God’s Eucharistic presence; one cannot receive communion from a screen.75 Here, as often, the 73 74 75 he molds a meaningless god from the selfsame clay.” A similar irony is in Isa 44:12–17, where idols are made of leftover firewood. In fact, Lanier suggests that Wikipedia emulates Sacred Scripture by putting together snippets from anonymous authors, all the while pretending to be the one true text of the world which incarnates God’s non-perspectival point of view (You Are Not a Gadget, 32). It, too, is perhaps a technology that finds its proper place only in a “focal practice,” such as a shared meal; Albert Borgmann, “Focal Things and Practices,” in Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 196–226. Mumford discusses the adulteration of food in the time of the industrial revolution (Technics and Civilization, 179). Today, we genetically alter our food—and we have yet Technolog y and Our Relationship with God 181 Catholic faith proves itself to be relevantly and helpfully countercultural. The Catholic belief in the real presence is not just about a technologically transmitted piece of information, or a mere memory, or a projection of our imagination. As Spaemann noted, early modern naturalistic forms of painting anticipated as a technique the virtual realities of later times, and they developed historically in a parallel with the Protestant virtualization of the sacramental real presence (i.e., as a mere memory or mere symbol).76 The ministers of this sacrament, too, must be really present. Priests cannot administer the sacraments over the camera or other technological devices; they need to be present in person. And more generally, there must be a deeper reason for why the Church does not want Masses to be celebrated with technological replacements for live music, or with electric candles and recorded homilies, nor even with iPads instead of printed missals. God as Being Itself does not live in ephemeral virtual realities or mere appearances.77 And that he is sacramentally present means that he is really present, rather than virtually or by technological mediation. Short of the beatific vision, though, this real presence will retain a paradoxical structure. As such, it is in fact the exact inverse of virtual reality. Eucharistic adoration may be the clearest example of this inversion. It is an inversion of appearance and reality.78 In virtual reality, nothing is real and all is appearance. Faced with God in the Blessed Sacrament, on the other hand, we can see the real presence only with “the eyes of faith”; it does not appear. Hence, in virtual reality, nothing is real and all is appearance; in Eucharistic adoration nothing appears, but it is All Reality. Nothing appears, yet God’s presence is already as real as it will be in heaven when he will also appear to our sight. In other words: The Eucharist is a direct antidote to the contemporary obsession with virtual reality. 76 77 78 to raise the question how much wheat may be altered until it ceases to be valid matter for the Eucharist. Robert Spaemann, “Was heißt: ‘Die Kunst ahmt die Natur nach’?,” Philosophisches Jahrbuch 114 (2007): 247–64. He sees modern art reversing this trend (e.g., Cristo, Walter de Maria). God also is personal, and as Spaemann argues, persons are either real or nothing; there are no possible or imagined persons (Personen. Versuche über den Unterschied zwischen “etwas” und “jemand” [Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1996], 77–78). Herzfeld makes a related point about the encounter with icons in Technology and Religion, 85–90. It is worth noting that, for Kant, the very distinction depends on God’s intellectus archetypus, which is why Richard Rorty, with Nietzsche, rejects this distinction, while others celebrate the unfettered opportunity of technologically mediated self-creating (Zengotita seems more positive about this in his oral statements than in his book Mediated). 182 Anselm Ramelow, O.P. Can Technology Be Redeemed? We cannot hope that technology would redeem us; this would indeed make technology into an idol. Instead, technology is itself in need of redemption. And what the redeeming of technology means is for technology to take its proper place in the plan of God. But for that, God’s own place needs to be reasserted first. What these proper places are, respectively, can be made visible through the paradoxical development that we have described earlier: The original sequence, as found in paradise, is this one: God → man → human work/product.79 The next step is that God drops out of the picture: [God →] man→ human work/product. This seems to begin as early as Cain and his offspring. But it is only with Bacon and Descartes that the focus on secondary causes and the creation of a “secular space” as separate from God becomes an organized program.80 The final step, which we witness today, is the resurrection of religion within technology, and it takes the form of a divinization of technology: 79 80 A further differentiation could be introduced within human life if we consider the hierarchy of contemplation, action, and making. Before there is a turn towards prioritizing making, there is a problem in (moral) action, i.e. the Fall, which possibly results from an even earlier aberration in the act of contemplation—perhaps as a form of non-consideration or inattention to the rule (as Jacques Maritain suggests in St. Thomas and the Problem of Evil [Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1942], 23–43). This would suggest that (apart from grace) a recovery of the contemplative dimension of life would be a key for redeeming technology as well (see Laudato Si’ §112). Abandoning God for the world may, however, be preceded by an abandonment of the world—not by God, but by the theologians that characterize him as a deus absconditus, beginning in the fourteenth century. Modern man then eventually becomes a maker on the model of this God, a God who is a maker of the nominalist, voluntarist kind, and whose wisdom is not revealed in his works, but only his arbitrary will. Hence, getting the image of God as maker right will likely also correct our own ways of making. It would also require us to overcome the nominalism of this fourteenth-century outlook (which is still with us): if there are no universal features in reality that make the world intelligible, then all of our conceptualizations of reality are “the workmanship of our mind,” as John Locke has it—reality is, then, our construct. In other words: every nominalist has lived in virtual reality, long before modern technology. Technolog y and Our Relationship with God 183 Man → work/product → “God.” Since there will always be a God, he now reappears, but at the other end of the spectrum. What becomes apparent in this trajectory is that, once we forget that we are God’s work, God becomes our product, an idol. But like any idol, it subjects us, even though it is our own product.81 And this is not new. It is, for example, what the Book of Wisdom seems to have in mind. In chapter 15, it describes how the potter makes from dead clay a figure of God, forgetting that he himself was made from clay by God in the beginning. And while God could breathe life into Adam, the potter cannot do this with the deaf and dumb idol he made. In making an idol, he forgets not only God, but also himself. He forgets not only God, but that he himself is more than his work. We need that reminder more than ever: idols cannot hear and see; nor can “artificial intelligence” be intelligent or conscious, let alone self-conscious. The Book of Wisdom also explains the reason: human products lack the breath of God because human beings themselves do not have their breath from themselves (but only as “borrowed” from God), and therefore cannot pass it on: For it was a mere human being who made them, one living on borrowed breath who fashioned them. For no one is able to fashion a god like himself; he is mortal, and what he makes with lawless hands is dead. For he is better than the things he worships; he at least lives, but never his idols. (Wis 15:16–17) Hence, our making must not be “lawless”; it must be subordinate to God’s making as giving it its ultimate goals and ends. In this way, the hope in Laudato Si’ for another use of technology may be fulfilled, one where “the desire to create and contemplate beauty manages to overcome reductionism through a kind of salvation which occurs in beauty and in those who behold it” (§112). But it requires us to reverse the above sequence and remind ourselves that we are God’s creation first, and that we are makers only because God first has made us—namely, in his image and likeness. The telos is to become godly indeed, but not a self-determined 81 A similar thought in Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York, London: Doubleday, 1966), 71: “If technology remained in the service of what is higher than itself—reason, man, God—it might indeed fulfill some of the functions that are now mythically attributed to it. But becoming autonomous, existing only for itself, it imposes upon man its own irrational demands, and threatens to destroy him.” 184 Anselm Ramelow, O.P. homo deus.82 It is true that technology must remain subordinate and at the service of man. But this will happen only when man himself is at the service of God, and when we realize that we are made makers.83 Such a properly subordinated technology is not outside of the biblical vision. It is important to note this well, so as not to overreact to the modern world of technology. We have observed earlier that we have spun ourselves into a cocoon of technology, including into artificial materials. In isolating ourselves from nature, we have isolated ourselves from the God of nature. In reaction, we may now be tempted to go “back to nature,” back to the garden of Eden, by leading a “green” lifestyle. And this may be good as far as it goes—though in isolation from further considerations it tends to turn not only against technology, but against its maker as well, against God’s image and likeness. The real image of our redemption, however, can be found in the Book of Revelation, and it is not a garden, but a city, the heavenly Jerusalem. Here, our redemption even picks up the technology of Cain (e.g., Tubal-Cain’s metalwork of musical instruments: the seven trumpets). In fact, this heavenly Jerusalem appears to be nothing less than a purely artificial environment. No animals are mentioned, and the only plants are the trees of life (and even those may be understood symbolically). The rest is inorganic matter—and artificial inorganic matter at that. The conflagration of the cosmos and its elements described in the second letter of the apostle Peter creates a new heaven and a new earth even in its material substrate. The “technological” application of fire (important in hominization and in the industrial revolution) persists in its product: earth becomes like jewels and pearls; water becomes like glass. And the result of this transformation is a good thing, for it is an elevation of these materials, as St. Thomas Aquinas explains.84 It corresponds to the elevated state of our own resurrected body, for which it creates an appropriate environment.85 Like our modern sleepless cities, there will be no night. But here the light is not artificial, electric light; it is the light of God himself. And this, then, may give us a further clue for redeemed technology: it must be a gift from God. The new elements in 82 83 84 85 By contrast, see Harari, Homo Deus, 21: “Having raised humanity above the beastly level of survival struggles, we will now aim to upgrade humans into gods, and turn Homo sapiens into Homo deus.” Peters rightly compares this, yet again, to the tower of Babel (“Ebullient Transhumanist,” 98). Wolfgang Koch suggested in conversation that this is a participation in divinity, a mingling similar to that of wine (“work of human hands”!) and water at Mass (symbolic of humanity and divinity). See Aquinas, ST III, Supplement, q. 74, a. 5; q. 91. Aquinas, ST III, Supplement, qq. 82–85. Technolog y and Our Relationship with God 185 heaven are not made in human furnaces, but in God’s own fire.86 Only God can change elements; we can only use them. The heavenly Jerusalem was not built by Cain and Tubal-Cain, but by God, for it “comes down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband” (Rev 21:2).87 This bride is, of course, the Church and this may supply our imagination with some additional orientation. Unlike Adam and Eve, we do not live in the Church naked, but clad with baptismal garments, i.e. in the technology of clothing (Rev 21:2)1.88 But like the garments that God made for Adam and Eve (Gen 3:21), this is a gift, the gift of grace. Grace does not destroy nature, but presupposes it and lifts it up. This is also how a redeemed technology must operate. Our instrumental causality begins in God as the principal agent and it must elevate, not destroy, the nature that he has made. The Book of Wisdom contrasts the dead idols made from wood with another kind of wood: For blest is the wood through which righteousness comes about; but the handmade idol is accursed, and its maker as well: he for having produced it, and the corruptible thing, because it was termed a god. (Wis 14:7–8) The wood that is meant here is the wood of Noah’s ark, and the ark surely is an image of a God-inspired technology.89 God instructs Noah how to build it (as he does later with the Ark of the Covenant). But the ark is also a prefiguration of the Church. And the Church, too, has its maker: Jesus, the son of the carpenter Joseph, whose tool was a piece of dead wood which became the tree of life. For “the Father and I are still at work” ( John 5:17). Jesus in collaboration with his Father (and analogously with his foster father, St. Joseph) is the model for our making and technology. We, too, need to collaborate with the Father, in Christ. This applies also for the technology of language, of communication. If, 86 87 88 89 According to Aquinas, the fire is qualitatively, but not numerical identical with earthly fire (for, the latter is also cleansed), and it acts as instrumental cause of God’s action (ST III, Supplement, q. 74, a. 3, ad 1 and ad 2). When the Israelites conquer and settle the promised land, they do not build cities, but they take them over from others, somehow as a gift from God. This includes David’s conquering of Jerusalem. Is there a way in which we can “conquer” modern technology in a similar mode? Perhaps. But it may still include the “woes” of the Book of Revelation, as it also may include destructions like that of Jericho. The Church is itself both a body (the mystical body of Christ) and clothing (namely, architecture as an analogue to clothing). Unlike the gods from whom Prometheus must steal the fire, God does not begrudge us our technology; he is even willing to teach it to us. 186 Anselm Ramelow, O.P. as we have said, Adam’s naming of things continues the creative speaking of God, then Jesus, the second Adam and the Word of God itself, is the ultimate model for our use of language. If technological devices such as Twitter do not accommodate this use of language, then we ought to revise them. The models for all of these kinds of “media” and technical mediations are the liturgical rites and sacraments of the Church. In them, the minister of the sacrament is appropriating the words of the Son (in persona Christi), who, with the Father, is still at work. Made on this model, our productions do not become idols, but icons of God’s presence. However, here too we need to begin from the right end of things. The model does not suggest that we introduce secular technologies into the celebration of the sacraments,90 but rather the opposite: allowing the reimagination of our technologies to be inspired by these celebrations, making them more liturgical as well. When Jesus instituted the sacraments, he took into his hands the work of human hands—bread and wine—and elevated it supernaturally. Human beings cannot do the same except in persona Christi. Sacraments are an exception, but nevertheless also a model. There is no algorithm that will tell us how to follow this model in the rest of our lives. The following of Christ is not itself another technology that we could figure out. We must trust him, we must talk to him, and we must follow him. Then our technologies will follow him as well. 90 This was an unfortunate idea of the 1960s, when faith and science were brought together, e.g., by celebrating Ascension Thursday with rocket and telescope installations (Blase Schauer) or by designing chapels as laboratories for liturgical “experimentation” (the laboratory as another technological metaphor); see Osborne, “From Sputnik to Spaceship,” 234–35. This has it precisely backwards. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2024): 187–214 187 Deaconesses and Ritual Impurity Catherine Brown Tkacz Ukrainian Catholic University Lviv, Ukraine Bishop White Seminary Spokane, WA Cultural diversity underlies the differences between deaconesses of the East and of the West.1 In the West, women were recognized by their faith as able to catechize others and to assist women at baptism; in some parts of the East, only a deaconess could take these roles. Again, only in some areas of the East, women at certain times were not permitted to enter the church building, but deaconesses could take the Eucharist to these housebound women. In religious life, corresponding differences existed. In the West, nuns were fitted by their vows to take various roles in the Liturgy of the Hours; in the East, in some areas, only a diaconal abbess could take these roles. In remote monasteries which might lack a priest for some time, the diaconal abbess could distribute pre-consecrated communion to the community. Long has cosmic dualism been recognized as a trait of the Eastern groups that had deaconesses. Now another trait can be identified: 1 Extensive bibliography on deaconesses is cited in full in the notes below and includes studies by Butler, Fitzgerald, Fresnillo Ahijón, Gryson, Hauke, Kalsbach, Karras, Macy, Martimort, Menke, Schäfer, Schaefer, Theodorou, Tkacz, Vagaggini, Wijngaards, and Zagano. Also of note are: the report of the Commission Théologique Internationale, “Le ministère des diaconesses,” in Le Diaconat: évolution et perspectives (Paris: Cerf, 2003), 34–43; The Diaconate: Sacramentality, Ministry, and the Question of Women’s Ordination, special issue of The Thomist 85, no. 4 (2022); and, for sacramental theology, Sara Butler, M.S.B.T., “Women Deacons and Sacramental Symbolism,” New Diaconal Review 6 (2011): 39–49, and New Diaconal Review 9 (2012): 4–13. Any English translation not otherwise attributed by citation from an English edition is original. 188 Catherine Brown Tkacz apparently the groups which retained the Levitical laws of ritual impurity were the ones that needed the gender-specific ministry of deaconesses. Examining the theological and cultural context in which that office arose helps explain this varied history. Next, the Western deaconess is most clearly limned by comparing the pertinent Latin ceremonies. This also sheds unexpected light on how the Roman Catholic Church protected the property rights of consecrated women. The Context in Which Deaconesses Arose Jesus taught a new doctrine: the call to sanctification: “Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matt 5:48). Again, he commanded them to imitate him, to take up their cross daily and follow him (Luke 9:23). The post-Gospels New Testament continued to suggest ways for the believer to imitate Christ (for example, Heb 13:10–15). These teachings ground the doctrine that every human person is called to be holy and like Christ. To ensure that his followers knew that this vocation to holiness concerns women equally with men, Jesus demonstrated and emphasized the spiritual equality of the sexes throughout his time on earth.2 In an unprecedented way, he provided balanced examples of male and female in his interactions with men and women, in his healings, resurrection miracles, parables, and prophecies.3 In contrast, in the Old Testament and in the Jewish Haggadah, 2 3 Even when he was in utero: both Elizabeth and John responded to the gestating Lord (Luke 1:39–45). See also Simeon and Anna at the Presentation (Luke 2:29–32, 34–38). For examples, see healings (Mark 1:23–26, 29–31; Matt 8:14–15), resurrection miracles (Matt 9:18–19, 23–25; John 11:1–45), parables (Matt 13:31–33; Luke 13:18–21; 15:4–10), and prophecies (Matt 24:17–19, 40–41; Luke 17:30–35). For discussion of these and other passages, see Catherine Brown Tkacz, “Jesus and the Spiritual Equality of Women,” Fellowship of Catholic Scholars Quarterly 24, no. 4 (2001): 24–29. For the professions of Peter and Martha and the healing of the Hemorrhissa and the leper, see below. Early Christian art depicted such balanced events; see Tkacz, “The Doctrinal Context for Interpreting Women as Types of Christ,” Studia patristica 40 (2006): 253–57, at 255–57. On spiritual equality, see also Patricia Ranft, Women and Spiritual Equality in Christian Tradition (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998); Sara Butler, M.S.B.T., “Embodiment: Women and Men, Equal and Complementary,” in The Church Women Want: Catholic Women in Dialogue, ed. Elizabeth A. Johnson (New York: Crossroad, 2002), 35–44; Tkacz, “Deaconesses and the Spiritual Equality of Women,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 108 (2013): 5–44, at 6–17; and Mary Healy, “Women in Sacred Scripture: New Insights from Exegesis,” in Ruolo delle donne nella Chiesa (Vatican City: Vatican Library, 2017), 43–54. The contrary claim, that Jesus was “patriarchal” and demeaned all his female followers including his mother as “whores,” Kathleen E. Corley bases entirely on citing Deaconesses and Ritual Impurity 189 paired male and female examples are “quite rare.”4 While Tannaite Jews “exempted” women from reciting Shema and other acts of ritual worship and required only domestic devotions, Jesus elicited a public profession of faith from a woman as well as from a man—Peter ( John 6:69) and Martha of Bethany ( John 11:27)—and hers proves to be fuller.5 This dynamically demonstrated the spiritual equality of the sexes, and Eustathios of Antioch, Chrysostom, Augustine, and others praised Martha for teaching the faith.6 From the start, both men and women were instructed in the faith, baptized, and received communion.7 Women also participated with men in evangelizing others. This began at Jesus’s presentation in the Temple, his first public appearance, when the prophetess Anna announced the coming of the Messiah (Luke 2:36–38). The Samaritan woman evangelized her community: as soon as she learned of Jesus through conversation with him, she actively instructed others, so that many believed in him “because of the woman’s testimony” ( John 4:28–30, 39–42). The evangelical work of Priscilla was reported, with the account of her teaching a man (Acts 18:2, 26). That is, Christians interacted without a strict segregation of the sexes. When the apostles learned of neglect of the Greek widows, they obviously did not think that only other women could respond to this social need, for the apostles appointed men to do so (Acts 6:1–6).8 Contrast this to the Jewish understanding of the roles of men and women. In the Temple, only Jewish men were allowed inside; women were relegated to the women’s court. This segregation continued in medieval synagogues.9 4 5 6 7 8 9 Matt 21:31–32 without quoting it (Women and the Historical Jesus: Feminist Myths of Christian Origins [Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge, 2002], 4, 142, and throughout). That passage recounts Jesus’s praise of male and female sinners—tax collectors and the prostitutes (οἱ τελῶναι καὶ αἱ πόρναι)—who repented at the preaching of John the Baptist and are “going into the kingdom of God.” Tal Ilan, Mine and Yours Are Hers: Retrieving Women’s History from Rabbinic Literature, Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums 4 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 269, 272. On the Tannaite “exemption,” see Elizabeth Shanks Alexander, Gender and Timebound Commandments in Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), esp. 180, 195, 199–200, 210. Catherine Brown Tkacz, “Singing Women’s Words as Sacramental Mimesis,” Recherches de théologie et philosophie médiévales 70 (2003): 275–328, at 300–301; Tkacz, “Jesus and Spiritual Equality,” 26–27. For example, see Acts 2:41–2, 8:12, and Tkacz, “Jesus and Spiritual Equality,” 27–28. As Ambrosiaster and others noted; see José-Juan Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam seu consecrandam: el diaconado femenino en el occidente medieval (Madrid: San Dámaso, 2016), 231. Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, cod. Heb. 37, fol. 114, dated 1434, has 190 Catherine Brown Tkacz Likewise, as noted above, the Tannaite Jews “exempted” women from public worship. In Christian churches, however, men and women worshipped together and came to the sanctuary to receive the Eucharist. In the words of the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, women had “new standing”: their new place was “in the sacred space itself.”10 In most of the Church, therefore, a solution came naturally when a pastoral problem arose with baptism. Initially baptism was of nude adults.11 How could the Church safeguard the modesty of the women being baptized and of the men baptizing them? Part of the answer was to build baptisteries with curtains, one with an opening through which the priest or deacon could reach to lay his hand on the head of the female baptizand and pronounce the baptismal formula.12 The rest of the answer was for a baptized woman to assist her. Faith fitted the baptized woman to do this: relatives, servants, and widows could provide pre-baptismal anointing and help the newly baptized woman don a white garment.13 In some areas of the East, however, by the third century, certain groups permitted only deaconesses to assist female baptizands as part of a ministry exclusively to women.14 That is, in this regard, all other women of faith were deprived of their freedom. Moreover, the same cultural groups at times restricted various religious actions by women; most seriously, they limited women’s reception of the Eucharist. Whereas in most churches women could 10 11 12 13 14 a miniature showing the synagogue service: men and boys at the front, women and girls in back. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, The Spirit of the Liturgy, trans. John Saward (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 73. Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church: History, Theology and Liturgy in the First Five Centuries (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Co., 2009), 36, 855, 857, and throughout. Tkacz, “Deaconesses and Spiritual Equality,” 23. Tkacz, “Deaconesses and Spiritual Equality,” 23–24, 26–27. Absent a Christian community, a catechumen could assist (Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church, 432). On the Didascalia, see Aimé-Georges Martimort, Les diaconesses: essai historique, Bibliotheca ephemerides liturgicae subsidia 24 (Rome: C.L.V., 1982), 31–54; on the Apostolic Constitutions, see 55–72 and Pauliina Pylvänäinen, Agents in Liturgy, Charity and Communication: The Tasks of Female Deacons in the Apostolic Constitutions (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020). Also, canon 17 from the First Synod of Dvin in Armenia (527) excluded women other than deaconesses from assisting at baptism; see C. J. von Hefele and H. Leclercq, Histoire des conciles d’après les documents originaux, 11 vols. in 21 (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1907–1952), 2.2:1078. Canon 41 in The Canons of Marutha identified deaconesses as women whose role was “to fulfill the rite of the ministry of baptism only”; see Sebastian P. Brock, “Deaconesses in the Syriac Churches,” One in Christ 54, no. 1 (2020): 147–57 (ninth paragraph). Deaconesses and Ritual Impurity 191 engage in catechesis, assist at baptism, and teach, a few churches in the East with a strong separation of the sexes lacked these practical expressions of spiritual equality. For nearly a century, it has been known that the groups with deaconesses also rejected the Incarnation of Christ.15 A common feature of many heretical Christologies is cosmic dualism, which entails the belief that only the spiritual is good and that matter is inherently evil.16 In their focus on the transcendence of God, these groups considered it blasphemous to think the divine would in fact have become human. Many of the groups that found the Incarnation problematic also strongly segregated the sexes socially.17 Consequently Syrians, Copts, Paulinians, Armenians, and other monophysites had deaconesses. As Manfred Hauke observed in 1982, “The appearance of deaconesses thus presupposes patriarchal conditions.”18 In these churches, deaconesses provided social services to women, as deacons did for men. There women were not permitted to speak to a cleric, but they could speak to a deaconess who would relay their concerns. Pregnant women were forbidden to go to church, and as the Didascalia indicated, it would have been considered scandalous for a man to visit their homes.19 Therefore a deaconess would take communion to her. Note that these churches were committed to providing the Eucharist to housebound women, at least at Easter.20 It was evidently because the deaconess had this limited role with the Eucharist that her blessing took place within the sanctuary itself.21 Given that the deaconess served women exclusively, it 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Adolf Kalsbach, Die altkirchliche Einrichtung der Diakonissen bis zu ihrem Erlöschen (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1926), as noted by Manfred Hauke, Women in the Priesthood? A Systematic Analysis in the Light of the Order of Creation and Redemption, trans. D. Kipp (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988), 441. On Paulinian deaconesses, see canon 19 of the Council of Nicea (325). Michael Maher, “Dualism,” in The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: Robert Appleton, 1909). For additional discussion and references, see Benedict M. Ashley, O.P., The Way Toward Wisdom: An Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Introduction to Metaphysics (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), esp. 335. It may well be that cosmic dualism, with its distrust of the material aspects of creation, entailed for many a distrust of women. Hauke, Women in the Priesthood?, 440­–44. Didascalia 3.12, in the Latin translation of Franz Xaver Funk, Didascalia et Constitutiones Apostolorum, vol. 1 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schoeningh, 1905), 208. The fifth-century monophysite Testamentum indicates that deaconesses dispensed communion, only during Easter, to pregnant women who did not attend church; see Msgr. Roger Gryson, Le ministère des femmes dans l’Église ancienne (Gembloux, France: Ducolot, 1972), 119. Tkacz, “Deaconesses and Spiritual Equality,” 33. 192 Catherine Brown Tkacz evidently seemed reasonable to restrict to her the role of assisting at the baptism of a woman. Yet this leaves a question: Why did some dualists groups not have deaconesses? Clearly, dualism alone did not make deaconesses necessary. In the East, the Ethiopians rejected the Incarnation, yet they did not have deaconesses. In the West, dualism had many adherents, yet the Marcionites and Arians did not have deaconesses. Levitical Laws of Ritual Impurity A new line of research suggests that deaconesses were needed in groups that retained the Levitical laws of ritual impurity for women.22 Such customs as barring menstruating and pregnant women from church began in some groups within early Christianity.23 In some areas, these restrictions continue; in 1980 the Orthodox Church in America found it necessary to reject them: Ideas that women with their menstrual periods should not receive holy communion or kiss the cross and icons, or bake the bread for the eucharist, or even enter the nave of the church, not to speak of the altar area, are ideas and practices that are morally and dogmatically indefensible according to strict Orthodox Christianity.24 Universally Christians had the doctrine of spiritual equality, yet this was in practice partly curtailed in those Eastern Christian groups which kept and even extended Levitical laws of ritual impurity. It is now possible to suggest both why the Church as a whole did not 22 23 24 My research on this new hypothesis began while serving on the Commissione di Studio sul Diaconato Femminile, 2020–2022. Preliminary findings were in my presentation on “Women and the Diaconate” at the Ukrainian Catholic University, Center for Women’s Studies, Lviv, September, 20, 2021, and my seminar on “Deaconesses in Context” for permanent deacons and their wives in the Diocese of San Diego, November 13, 2021. On barring pregnant women, see Gryson, Le ministère des femmes. Chrysostom decried customs such as barring menstruant women from church as unworthy of Christians and superstitious; see Vassa Larin, “What Is ‘Ritual Impurity’ and Why?,” St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 52, no. 3–4 (2008): 275–92, at 291. Orthodox Church in America, Women and Men in the Church: A Study of the Community of Women and Men in the Church (Syosset, NY: Department of Religious Education, Orthodox Church in America, 1980), 42–43; discussed by Lawrence R. Farley in Feminism and Tradition: Quiet Reflections on Ordination and Communion (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2013), 177. Deaconesses and Ritual Impurity 193 observe the laws of ritual impurity and also why some groups retained them. Significantly, Jesus had set aside the impurity laws when he healed the woman with the flux of blood.25 Note that Matthew introduces her in terms of her impurity, as “bleeding woman” (9:20; γυνὴ αἱμορροοῦσα). The Synoptic Gospels recounted her healing with details that contrast Levitical law. A woman with unnatural bleeding was to sequester herself, to touch no one, and to let no one touch her, and when well again, to remain sequestered for a week and then make sacrifice, including sacrifice for sin.26 The verb ψαύω (“touch”) is used in several ritual laws forbidding contact with the ritually impure.27 Yet the bleeding woman deliberately touched the Lord’s garment, and in the very instant of her touch, he healed her. Insistently, the verb ψαύω is reiterated three to five times, in each of the accounts of her healing.28 Jesus praised her, calling her “Daughter” and declaring that her faith had healed her. Notably, he did not direct her to comply with Levitical law, although he had enjoined that upon the lepers he healed.29 Also, although she had touched him, he did not consider himself unclean. By the end of the account, she had become “the woman” (ἡ γυνὴ) because ritual impurity had ended (Matt 9:22). Given the role of the article in Koine Greek to elevate a word or phrase into a title, as in “Son of Man,” it is possible Matthew presents the healed Hemorrhissa as representative of “Woman.”30 Jesus’s followers received this “new, transfigured understanding”31 as freeing Christians from impurity laws, and this led to the lessened segregation of the sexes evident in the Acts of the Apostles. Notably, some of the groups which retained impurity laws still maintain them. An Orthodox women’s conference in Istanbul in 1997 requested that the hierarchy consider anew some ancient customs such as 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 Matt 9:20–22; Mark 5:25–34; Luke 8:43–48. See also Lev 15:27–30. Gregory the Great and others taught that this healing ended the impurity laws; see note 38 below. Lev 15:25–31 (“sin offering” in v. 30). See Lev 15:5, 7, 11, 22 (man with seminal emissions); 5:21, 23 (menstruant woman); 5:27 (woman with unnatural bleeding). For touching, see Matt 9:20–22. esp. 20–21; Mark 5:25–34, esp. 27–28 and 30–31; Luke 8:43–48, esp. 44–47. For lepers, see Matt 8:2–4, Mark 1:40–43, Luke 5:12–14. Cf. Lev 13:1–16, 45–46; 14:1–32. On this new sense of the article, see Samuel Sandmel, “Son of Man,” in In Time of Harvest: Essays in Honor of Abba Hillel Silver, ed. Daniel Jeremy Silver (New York: MacMillan, 1963), 355–67, at 355. Carrie Frederick Frost, “A Theology of Motherhood” (PhD diss., University of Virginia, 2015), 178. 194 Catherine Brown Tkacz the presentation of infants and the 40-day rule for childbirth, the prayer for miscarriages, abortions and post-partum mothers, and expectations pertaining to the reception of communion. Some of us feel these practices and prayers do not properly express the theology of the church regarding the dignity of God’s creation of women.32 In 2008, these practices were directly correlated with Levitical impurity laws. Russian Orthodox nun Vassa Larin, now a professor at the University of Vienna, focuses on “the theological and anthropological implications of ‘ritual im/purity.’” Explicitly prescinding “from egalitarian concerns,” she posed theological questions: What is the meaning of abstaining from communion during menstruation? What does this say about the female body? What is the meaning of not setting foot in church after giving birth to a child? What statement is being made about childbirth? Most importantly, is the concept of “ritual im/purity” congruent with our faith in Jesus Christ?33 Her documentation of the role of ritual im/purity in many Orthodox churches since the sixteenth century includes the report that, while today some Russian Orthodox continue to forbid menstruating women from entering the church, “in Russia, however, women are generally allowed to come to church during menstruation, but cannot receive Holy Communion, kiss icons, relics, or crosses, touch prosphora or the antidoron, or drink holy water. In parishes outside Russia, as far as I know, women usually only abstain from going to communion.”34 Current even now are prayers at the birth of a child “asking forgiveness for the mother and everyone who touched her.”35 Larin concludes that belief in “ritual im/purity” does more than restrict women: it constitutes “depreciation of the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ and its salvific consequences.”36 The following historical sketch suggests why it was only in the East that ritual impurity laws regarding women survived. During apostolic times, certain groups of Jews who became followers of Christ enjoined circumcision 32 33 34 35 36 Document included in Orthodox Women Speak: Discerning the Signs of the Times, ed. Kyriaki Karidoyanes Fitzgerald and Aruna Gnanadason (Geneva: WCC, 1999). Larin, “What is Ritual Impurity?,” 277. Larin, “What is Ritual Impurity?,” 275. Larin, “What is Ritual Impurity?,” 289. Larin, “What is Ritual Impurity?,” 292. Deaconesses and Ritual Impurity 195 on Gentiles who would follow Christ (Acts 15:1–2). The nascent Church prayerfully and authoritatively set aside any such requirement (Acts 10–15).37 Similarly, certain Eastern Christian groups with Semitic backgrounds evidently retained Levitical laws of ritual impurity. Communities of Jewish heritage had observed these laws for generations and apparently found them still a reverent expression of piety. Western groups, however, with no affinity to Judaism and certainly no cultural tradition of following Levitical laws, evidently did not adopt them. As a result, in the West, even in dualist groups, deaconesses were not needed in the parishes. This was positive for women. Women in Latin churches could speak directly to clergy; no deaconess was needed as an intermediary. Women while menstruating or pregnant were free to worship in church, so no deaconess was needed to take the Eucharist to pregnant women in their homes. Indeed, Pope Gregory the Great taught that menstruating women and women newly delivered may attend church and receive Holy Communion, and he explained that Jesus’s actions (as with the Hemorrhissa) had set aside the Levitical laws of ritual impurity.38 Also in the West, as long as adult baptism was the norm, female baptizands were assisted by a variety of Christian women, because they were recognized as qualified to prepare the baptizands in the faith and to assist at the sacrament; again, no deaconess was needed. For instance, Gennadius of Marseille cited widows and nuns as well able aperto et sano sermone docere (to teach with clear and wholesome speech), instructing women for this sacrament.39 Although modern scholars who want women to be ordained suggest that the lack of deaconesses in the West shows a misogynistic restriction of women, the opposite is true: deaconesses were evidently not needed in the West because of the proper recognition of women’s capabilities there.40 37 38 39 40 Tkacz, “Deaconesses and Spiritual Equality,” 18–19. Libellus Responsionum, I.27. Q. VIII, quoted in Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum libri quinque, ed. and trans. Bertram Colgrave (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969), 90, 92. Gennadius of Marseille, Statuta Ecclesiae antiqua, par. 100 (Martimort, Les diaconesses, 194). Hauke observes: “Since more liberal circumstances prevailed in the West, the office of deaconess [was not needed] there” (Women in the Priesthood?, 441). For the claim of misogyny, see, for example, Mary M. Schaefer, Women in Pastoral Office: The Story of Santa Prassede, Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 208, 173. 196 Catherine Brown Tkacz Eastern Deaconesses Cultural conditions, then, made it “greatly necessary” (maxime necessarium) for Eastern groups to have deaconesses while the Roman Church did not need them.41 Their ministry was exclusively to women and only outside of the Divine Liturgy; they had no liturgical role. Thus, unlike the male deacon, deaconesses were members of the laity, as noted by the Council of Nicea.42 Correspondingly, the Greek rites for ordaining a deacon and consecrating a deaconess are markedly different.43 A second kind of deaconesses also existed in the East: abbesses in remote communities where clergy was unavailable for several days at a time. To insure that these nuns could pray the Hours and receive the Eucharist regularly, the Church instituted diaconal abbesses. In fifth-century Syria, such monophysite abbesses had the widest range of duties: they could distribute already-consecrated communion to their sisters and read the Epistle and Gospel at services in the monastery.44 The pre-consecrated host 41 42 43 44 See Didascalia 3.12: maxime necessarium (Funk ed., 1:210). See canon 19 of Nicaea I on Paulinians (Tkacz, “Deaconesses and Spiritual Equality,” 38). Silently Karl Heinrich Schäfer and Cipriano Vagaggini amended the canon, changing “clergy” to “other clergy,” implying that deaconesses were clergy; see Schäfer, “Kanonissen und Diakonissen: Ergänzungen und Erläuterungen,” Römische Quartalschrift für christliche Altertumskunde und Kirchengeschichte 24 (1910): 49–90, at 68–69, and Ordination of Women to the Diaconate in the Eastern Churches: Essays by Cipriano Vagaggini, O.S.B., ed. Phyllis Zagano (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2013), 23. Vagaggini’s change here is critiqued in my book review in Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 110, no. 1–2 (2015): 309–12, at 310. See Tkacz, “Deaconesses and Spiritual Equality,” and Tkacz, “Deaconesses and the Church’s Affirmation of Women,” Josephinum Diaconal Review 9 (2019): 38–39. The rites are in L’eucologio Barberini gr. 336 ( ff. 1–263), ed. Stefano Parenti and Elena Velkovska, 2nd rev. ed. (Rome: C.L.V., 2000), items 161–62 (deacon, pp. 170–72) and items 163–64 (deaconess, pp. 172–74). See also Martimort, Les diaconesses, 149–50, 249. Significantly, the newly ordained deacon distributes communion immediately, but the newly consecrated deaconess left the sanctuary (L’eucologio Barberini, item 162, §13). Theodore Balsamon, Patriarch of Antioch, confirmed this in Responsa 35 (PG, 138:988). The deaconess took the Eucharist only to housebound women, pace Kyriaki Karidoyanes FitzGerald, Women Deacons in the Orthodox Church: Called to Holiness and Ministry (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press 1999), 102; Valerie A. Karras, “Female Deacons in the Byzantine Church,” Church History 73, no. 2 (2004): 272–316, at 286–87, 309; Schaefer, Women in Pastoral Office, 287. Hauke, Women in the Priesthood?, 442–43. See also Kalsbach, Die altkirchliche Einrichtung, and Ignatius Rahmani, “Chapitres qui furent écrits de l’Orient, leurs questions furent presentées aux saints Pères et elles reçurent les réponses suivantes,” Studia Syriaca 3 (1908): 5–33, at 33. Deaconesses and Ritual Impurity 197 was reserved at the side of the sanctuary on the proskomedia table, so they could gather it without approaching the altar.45 Disregard of this by some caused the Council of Laodicea to reaffirm, “The women ought not to approach the altar.”46 In sum, certain Eastern churches that retained the Levitical laws of ritual impurity for women had deaconesses of two kinds. Deaconesses in the local churches assisted with baptism of adult women, as well as catechesis for women and works of practical charity for them, such as home care for the sick. Diaconal abbesses in the monasteries were commissioned to serve in the absence of men in the Divine Office in roles that usually clerics filled. In clearly defined circumstances, each kind of deaconess had the authority to give pre-consecrated communion exclusively to women. This is significant evidence of the Church’s commitment to provide the Eucharist to women when it was not possible for a deacon or priest to do so. Deaconesses in the West? In Western parishes, a variety of women did the work assigned in the East to deaconesses. Scholars have examined diverse documents, seeking evidence of Latin deaconesses.47 In Rome, Africa, and Spain, records listing all Church roles lack them.48 Pope Cornelius cited several roles from priests through widows, including exorcists and porters, but no deaconesses. They are also absent from Mass prayers listing every group within the Church to be prayed for: “Oremus et pro omnibus episcopis, presbyteris, diaconibus, subdiaconibus, acolythis, exorcistis, lectoribus, ostiariis [porters], confessoribus, virginibus, viduis [widows], et pro omni populo sancto Dei.”49 Only in some female monasteries were there deaconesses, and they are not attested before the Middle Ages. 45 46 47 48 49 The canon of 1736 asserts, “in no way were they permitted” (nullatenus permittuntur) to approach the altar to offer communion to the nuns, even in the absence of a priest or deacon (Martimort, Les diaconesses, 177). On services with pre-consecrated communion, see Jean Leclercq, “Eucharistic Celebrations without Priests in the Middle Ages,” Worship 55 (1981): 160–68. Council of Laodicea, canon 44 (45) (Périclès-Pierre Joannou, Discipline général antique, Fonti 9, 2 vols. in 3 [Grottaferrata: Tipografia Italo-Orientale, 1962–1964], 1.2:148). Jacob of Edessa emphasized that “a deaconess has absolutely no authority in the altar space” (Brock, “Deaconesses in the Syriac Churches,” eighth paragraph). For instance, see Samuel Klumpenhouwer, “The Deaconess: New Sources in Medieval Pastoralia,” Logos 21, no. 1 (2018): 19–39. Martimort, Les diaconesses, 187–90, 193. Paul de Clerck, La prière universelle dans les liturgies latines anciennes (Munster: Aschendorff, 1977), 136–39. 198 Catherine Brown Tkacz Well-attested, however, is an unrelated use of the word diacona, exclusive to the West: the term designates the continent wife of a deacon. In Gaul and Rome, when a married man was called to become a deacon, priest, or bishop, then continence was enjoined upon both husband and wife, and the wife was identified by a feminine form of the husband’s office: diacona and diaconissa; presbytera and presbyteria; episcopa and episcopissa.50 The couple would continue to live under one roof, but without sexual relations. Church documents specifying penance for a deacon and diacona who failed to remain continent obviously refer to a deacon’s wife.51 Also, a cleric’s mother could be identified by the feminine form of his office. Thus Theodora, the mother of Pope Paschal, episcopus of Rome, was styled episcopa.52 Could a deacon’s sister also call herself diacona? That might explain an abbreviated votive inscription naming a brother and sister, Dometius and Anna, each as DIAC.53 A single prayer for a diacona is found in the Gregorian Sacramentary (ca. 685), absent any rite: “Exaudi, Domine, preces nostras.” It focuses on giving a good example: “Hear, O Lord, our prayers, and upon this your servant [Name] send forth the spirit of your blessing, so that, endowed with the celestial reward, she may be able to acquire the grace of your majesty, and by living well she may offer an example to others.”54 The prayer also occurs 50 51 52 53 54 Jean Morin, Commentarius de sacris Ecclesiae ordinationibus, secundum antiquos & recentiores, Latinos, Graecos, Syros et Babylonios, new ed. (Amsterdam: Stephanum Lucam, 1695), 144; Martimort, Les diaconesses, 201–02; Schaefer, Women in Pastoral Office, 220; Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam, 405–6. For example, see canon 20 of the Council of Tours (Corpus Christianorum Series Latina [CCL], 148A:184); Martimort, Les diaconesses, 200–201. See inscriptions in Figures 2.7 and 2.8 in Schaefer, Women in Pastoral Office, 106, 107. Although Schaefer would posit an entire sixth-century “Roman diaconate of women” from this one votive inscription (Women in Pastoral Office, 219), Martimort finds interpreting it and the few other sixth- and eighth-century inscriptions “precarious,” given their ambiguity (Les diaconesses, 202). In Greek and Latin, evidently “diaconate” was never used collectively of deaconesses. “Exaudi, Domine, preces nostras, et super hanc famulam tuam illam spiritum tuae benedictionis emitte, ut caelesti munere ditata et tuae gratiam possit maiestatis adquirere, et bene vivendi aliis exemplum prebere” (Martimort, Les diaconesses, 203). It also appears solo in the Leofric Missal from the tenth or eleventh century (Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam, 105–6). Though absent from the thirteenth-century Pontificale Romanum de la Curia, it reappeared once more with mention of a diacona in the Pontificale Romanum of 1497 (Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam, 62–63, 385). The Exaudi prayer continued to appear solo as “oratio ad diaconam faciendam” in later MSS; see The Gregorian Sacramentary: Under Charles the Great, edited from three manuscripts of the ninth century, ed. H. A. Wilson, Henry Bradshaw Society 49 (London: Henry Bradshaw Society, 1915), 139. In contrast, that same sacramentary Deaconesses and Ritual Impurity 199 in the consecration of an abbess and, in the masculine gender (famulum), as an alternate collect in the ordination of a deacon.55 Notably, the Exaudi lacks mention of office, service, or ministry, all included in the full rite for the deacon in that sacramentary.56 Though some scholars would construe the Exaudi prayer by itself as an ordination, their translations “do violence to the text.”57 As a stand-alone petition, outside of any ceremony, however, the prayer could have been used for a “diacona” in the sense of the spouse of clergy. A lengthy, rubricated ceremony for a diacona is attested by the tenth century. It has been claimed that the Roman diacona was the equivalent of the Roman deacon.58 Those who assert this point to a few similarities between the rites for the two groups.59 Yet these rites differ substantially, even in their titles: Ad diaconam faciendam but ordo elegendi diaconi. That difference matches the coherent differences between the diacona and the deacon. To show this requires a detailed analysis of the pertinent rites, beginning with the rite for clergy. The Pontifical Romano-Germanicum has a composite ordo for all grades of clergy: at one Mass, the bishop could ordain subdeacons, deacons, and priests (rite XVI).60 The first obvious point is this: if the Church had considered deaconesses to be clergy, they would surely have been ordained during that 55 56 57 58 59 60 has developed rites for “Ad ordinandum presbyterum” (6–7) and “Ad ordinandum diaconum” (7–8). The Exaudi prayer for deacon (Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam, 163, 174, 420–21); for abbess:, see rite XXII (“Ordinatio abbatissae canonicam regulam profitentes”), §3, in (Le Pontifical romano-germanique du dixième siècle [hereafter PRG], ed. Cyrille Vogel and Reinhard Elze, vol. 1 (Vatican City: Vatican Library, 1963), 48. The rite for the deacon mentions officium, trinis gradibus, officium diaconii, electis, and a prayer to be worthy to succeed de inferiori gradu (Wilson, Gregorian Sacramentary, 7). “Violente al texto” (Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam, 157; amid analysis of the Exaudi prayer [149–60], critiquing Schaefer, John Wijngaards, and Gary Macy on 156–57). For instance, by Gary Macy and Schaefer, as noted in the following discussion, as well as John Wijngaards, Women Deacons in the Early Church: Historical Texts and Contemporary Debates (New York: Herder & Herder, 2002), and Phyllis Zagano, Women: Icons of Christ (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2020), xiv–xv. Although Macy acknowledges in a note that the rites for deaconess and deacon “differ significantly,” he stresses “some similarities”; see Gary Macy, The Hidden History of Women’s Ordination: Female Clergy in the Medieval West (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 73n136. Rite XVI (“Ordo qualiter in romana ecclesia presbyteri, diaconi, vel subdiaconi eligendi sunt”; PRG, 1:20–36); for the deacon see §§1–4, 9–20 (pp. 20–22, 24–28), and “Orationes pro ipsis ad missam,” §4 (pp. 36–37). See also Karl-Heinz Menke, “Die 200 Catherine Brown Tkacz same Mass. Their absence from the Mass of ordination shows that they were not ordained as clergy, but rather were blessed or consecrated to their state. Also, even the rite for lower offices in the Church—cantors, porters, lectors, exorcists and acolytes (rite XV)—shares three notable features with the ordination of clergy: an election of the candidates, followed by the prostration of the bishop as well as the candidates during a litany, and then overt reference to the candidate’s officium.61 For clergy, reference is to both the officium and ministerium of the deacon and priest, as well as the three grades of office (rite XVI). The importance of the election— of ascertaining that the candidate is worthy in character—is emphasized in some manuscripts: the first rubric stipulates that the election at the ordination on Saturday is preceded on Wednesday and Friday by specific scrutinies of character “to see if the candidates are worthy to perform the labor” of holy orders.62 In contrast, the rite for the diacona (rite XXIV) lacks all three features: the election, prostration with the bishop, and blessing specifically for office. Because the men who are to be ordained will serve the Church in various ministries, their character is of grave importance.63 Thus, the Church requires an election of all candidates, even for the lesser offices (cantors, porters, lectors, exorcists, and acolytes).64 For a deacon or priest, even the title of the ordo uses the word eligendi and the detailed election includes the public exchange at Mass between the archdeacon, certifying that the man is worthy with respect to the burden of this office, and the pontifex, formally electing him (eligimus).65 In contrast, the character of the diacona is not examined and she is not elected. This again indicates that the diacona in the West is less substantial than the Eastern deaconess: canon 19 of Nicaea I required examination of the character of Paulinian deaconesses, evidently because they could participate in the catechesis of other women, a substantial and theological duty.66 61 62 63 64 65 66 triadische Struktur des Ordo und die Frage nach einem Diakonat der Frau,” Theologie und philosophie 88 (2013): 340–71. Rite XV (“Ordo qualiter in romana ecclesia sacri ordines fiunt”; PRG, 1:13–19). For election, see §§2–4; for prostration, see §5; for officium, see §§ 9, 16, 19, 22. “Scrutandi sunt ipsi electi secundum canones, si sint digni hoc onus fungi” (CCL, 199C:316). See Arthur Westwell, “The Ordines of Vat. Lat. 7701 and the Liturgical Culture of Carolingian Chieti,” Papers of the British School at Rome 86 (2018): 127–52, at 135–36. For Frankish concern that clergy “should be properly examined prior to ordination,” see Westwell, “The Ordines of Vat. Lat. 7701,” 136. Rite XV, §§2–4 (PRG, 1:13–19). Rite XVI, §1 (PRG, 1:20–36, at 20–21). For the Paulinians, see canon 19 of Nicaea I (see note 42 above). Deaconesses and Ritual Impurity 201 After the deacon’s election, “then the pontifex prostrates himself with the archdeacon before the altar with those whom he is consecrating, and the scola chants the litany” (rite XVI, §2). The litany completed, “ipsi electi [the elected men] go forward and the pontifex blesses those who are vocati [called] to that office” (§3). Next the bishop places his hand on the head of each man as he is being consecrated ad ministerium (“to ministry”; rite XVI, §9). The bishop announces to the people that the candidate is prepared for diaconatus ministerio (the ministry of the diaconate) and for the leviticae benedictionis ordine (the order of Levitical [i.e., diaconal] benediction; §10). Next the bishop prays God to deign to bless and sanctify and consecrate the stoles to be used by the leviticae . . . gloriae ministris (§11). A second prayer follows, asking God to make the candidates worthy ad officium diaconatus (§12). The next prayer is “Exaudi, Domine, preces nostras,” asking God to enable the candidate, “by living well to offer an example to others” (§13). The fourth prayer refers to tribus gradibus ministrorum (“the three ranks of ministers”), calling the candidate to officium diaconi (“office of deacon”) and the opus ministerii (“work of ministry”) and citing his possibility, in Christ, of succeeding de inferiori gradu (“from the lower rank”), that is, to become a priest or bishop (§14). The bishop then bestows on the deacon two objects representing his work. First the bishop blesses the stola and places it over the man’s shoulder, declaring: “Receive your stole, fulfil your ministry, for God is powerful so that he may increase his grace to you.”67 Next the bishop gives the deacon the Gospel book, saying: “Receive the power of reading the Gospel in the church of God as much for the living as for the dead, in the name of the Lord. Amen.”68 The stole and the Gospel book are visible attributes, their meaning emphasized by the bishop’s public references to the deacon’s ministry and to his authority to read the Gospel in God’s church. The deacon is then clothed with the dalmatic, exchanges the kiss of peace (osculum) and stands at the bishop’s right hand as the Mass continues (rite XVI, §19). That is, he at once begins the liturgical work of his diaconal ministry. A fifth prayer asks God that “sped along through your worship, they may readily grow to be pure ministers for your holy altars.”69 This prayer cites the example given by beato Stephano. A sixth prayer for the new deacon(s) 67 68 69 “Accipe stolam tuam, imple ministerium tuum, potens est enim Deus ut augeat tibi gratiam suam” (§15). “Accipite potestatem legendi evangelium in ecclesia dei tam pro vivis quam pro defunctis in nomine domini” (§17). “Ut tuis obsequiis expediti sanctis altaribus tuis ministri puri accrescant” (§18). 202 Catherine Brown Tkacz and priest(s) is offered, indicating that the Mass is offered “for your servants whom you have deigned to promote to the grade of priesthood or diaconate” (presbiterii vel diaconatus gradum).70 When a Latin rite for making (faciendam) a diacona is found in the tenth century, it proves to be significantly different from the ordination rite just reviewed. It has, however, an overlooked feature that is affirmative of female autonomy: its final rubric protects the property rights of the woman. The ritual as a whole, however, is a “pastiche”: it cobbles together elements from the consecration of a widow and that of a virgin.71 The blessing of the Western diacona is located amid rites for religious women. Like those rites, that for the diacona has no reference to any ministerial role. Moreover, it lacks any theologically rich prayer such as found in the first invocation in the Eastern consecration of a deaconess.72 Although the orarion or stole has a role in the Eastern deaconess’s gender-specific ministry—it was worn when she gave communion to housebound women—in contrast, for the diacona the stole appears to be a part of her religious habit. The Western rite may even be an antiquarian’s attempt to express in Roman idiom what was known of Eastern deaconesses.73 In any case, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scholars concurred that, in the West, the rite for a deaconess was “purely ceremonial.”74 Ad diaconam faciendam In the pontifical from Saint-Alban de Mayence (950), the rite Ad diaconam faciendam (rite XXIV) is placed before the consecration of a widow.75 Two 70 71 72 73 74 75 For this prayer, see §4 in rites XVII, “Orationes pro ipsis ad missam” (PRG, 1:36–37). Martimort, Les diaconesses, 212, 213; “pastiche” is Schaefer’s term (Women in Pastoral Office, 281). I am grateful to Jonathan Roger Hayes and Simon Stehr for their bibliographic assistance with this section. The prayer’s invocation correlates the Virgin Birth with the sanctification of the female as well as the male: Ό Θεὸς ὁ ἅγιος καὶ παντοδύναμος, ὁ διὰ τῆς ἐκ παρθένου κατὰ σάρκα γεννήσεως τοῦ μονογενοῦς σου Υἱοῦ καὶ Θεοῦ ἡμῶν [ὁ] ἁγιάσας τὸ θῆλυ, καὶ οὐκ ἀνδράσιν μόνον, ἀλλὰ καὶ γυναιξὶν δωρησάμενος τὴν χάριν καὶ τὴν ἐπιφοίτησιν τοῦ ἁγίου σου Πνεύματος· . . .—“O God, holy and omnipotent, Who through the birth in the flesh of Thine only begotten Son and our God from a Virgin, sanctifieth the female, and granting not only to men but also to women the grace and inspiration of the Holy Spirit . . .” (Parenti and Velkovska, L’eucologio Barberini, item 163, par. 3 [pp. 185–86]). See also Tkacz, “Deaconesses and Spiritual Equality,” 31–32, and “Deaconesses and Affirmation,” 45, 47. Martimort, Les diaconesses, 215, 217, 219. For example, Jacques Goar, O.P. (1647), and Joannes Pinius, S.J. (1746) (Martimort, Les diaconesses, 253, 248, 252). On the title as honorific, see Farley, Feminism and Tradition, 140–41. Rite XXIV, “Ad diaconam faciendam” (PRG, 1:54–59, with lections on 55). The Deaconesses and Ritual Impurity 203 lections are specific to the diacona, one that suits a virgin and one that suits a widow; neither points to ministry. The Epistle is 1 Corinthians 6:15–20, focused on bodies as members of Christ, a text fitting for consecrated chastity. The Gospel is John 3:27–30, which identifies Christ as the Bridegroom, the basis for one of the richest metaphors lived in female religious life. The Alleluia verse declares, “The Lord clothes her with a stole of glory.”76 In contrast, in the ordination of a deacon, the Epistle is St. Paul’s description of the character of a deacon (1 Tim 3:8–14).77 The faciendam begins with a litany of the saints, during which the candidate prostrates herself before the altar (rite XXV, §6). Then the bishop offers the brief prayer discussed above: “Exaudi, Domine, preces nostras.” The bishop does not lay his hand on the diacona’s head. Next the diacona receives a blessing, one specific to widows in the Gallican books: “Deus qui Annam filiam Phanuelis vix per annos . . .” (§8; cf. Luke 2:36–37).78 Four items were given to the diacona: stole, veil, ring, and crown or wreath. The stole is also received by the deacon, the veil by both widow and virgin, and the ring and crown by the virgin.79 In the West as in the East, for the woman the stole is around her neck.80 This placement indicated that, in the West as in the East, she was not to chant the litanies as deacons do.81 The words of the Roman bishop when he placed the stole on the diacona 76 77 78 79 80 81 “Consecratio viduae que fuerit castitatem professa” is rite XXV (1:59–62). For the full verse—“Amavit eam dominus et ornavit eam stolam glorie induit eam”—see the Cantus Database for Latin Ecclesiastical Chant, cantus.uwaterloo.ca/chant/219789. Ordo rite XXXIV, in Les ordines romani du haut moyen âge, 5 vols., ed. Michel Andrieu, Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense 24 (Leuven: Peeters, 1931–1961), 3:601–13, at 605. The fact that this Epistle is not used at the making of a diacona accords with Farley’s analysis: St. Paul’s discussions of bishops and of deacons are parallel, and central in each Paul treats the character of the man’s wife: Feminism and Tradition, 141–42. Nonetheless, modern scholars who seek women’s ordination construe v. 11 as referring to deaconesses; see Jennifer H. Stiefel, “Women Deacons in 1 Timothy,” New Testament Studies 41, no. 3 (1995): 442–57. If that were so, why was that Epistle not read at the making of a diacona? Rite XXV, §8; see also §14. See also Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam, 216–21. Misleadingly, Schaefer introduces the phrase traditio instrumentorum to imply a parallel between the deacon’s stole and the diacona’s ring and wreath (Women in Pastoral Office, 283–84, 287). Indeed, as Martimort notes, a rubric indicates that, in the future, it is to be worn with the length of it under her tunic (§1), while during the ceremony, the bishop put the orarion around her neck (§9), on top of her tunic (Les diaconesses, 212). Misconstruing these directions, Schaefer holds that the bishop put the stole on her outside the church before Mass, so that she could place it under her tunic before entering (Women in Pastoral Office, 136–37). Tkacz, “Deaconesses and Spiritual Equality,” 30. 204 Catherine Brown Tkacz echoed his words over the virgin’s veil, which he calls “the clothing of eternal joy” (indumentum aeternae iocunditatis).82 To the diacona, the bishop would intone, “May the Lord clothe you with the stole of joy” (Stola iocundatis induat te dominus), echoing the Alleluia verse. This points to the woman’s relationship with God, rather than assigning any duty to her. Thus, for the diacona, the stole is part of her garments of consecration. At once the reference shifts from virgin to widow: whereas the bishop puts the veil upon the virgin’s head (rite XX, §16), the widow ipsa veils herself (rite XXV, §10), and likewise the diacona ipsa veils herself (rite XXIV, §10). The next elements, though, are absent from the rite for the widow: the diacona, like the virgin, receives a ring and a wreath. They evoke the consecration of the virgin and her spiritual marriage to the Lord, also recalled in the antiphon, Ipsi sum desponsata (Ps 44:5).83 The diacona is mentioned again only after the Eucharistic consecration, in a rubric. Then, as in the Eastern rite, she received communion (rite XXIV, §24).84 The rite concludes with a significant rubric, notable as evidence of the Church’s concern to protect the autonomy of women who chose religious life outside the cloister. Lest anyone misconstrue a woman’s consecration as her relinquishing her property, the rites for widow and virgin secure protection to her through the final rubric. That rubric also concludes the rite for a diacona. Even if that ceremony is a scholarly construct, the presence of this rubric shows a basic ecclesiastical commitment to protect single women. Strikingly, these are practical safeguards. The rite for the diacona ends thus: “After the Mass, the bishop confirms peace for her by pastoral edict [bannum],85 so that she may possess her things [sua] with security and undisturbed.”86 The diction—“pastorali banno,87 cum securitate, 82 83 84 85 86 87 Rite XX, “Consecratio sacrae virginis quae in epiphania vel in albis paschalibus aut in apostolorum nataliciis celebratur” (PRG, 1:38–46, at §6 on 1:40). The widow’s habit is called indumenta sanctitatis or indumenta benedictionis (rite XXV, §§4–5). For the antiphon, see rite XXIV, §10, and rite XX, §19. Although some assume that the diacona distributed communion to the congregation, nothing in any written source or artwork supports this (see note 43 above). J. Parisot, O.S.B., attests the sense “edict” (bannum) here (“Les diaconesses,” Revue des sciences ecclésiastiques 80 [1809]: 193–209, at 205). See also Charles du Fresnes Ducange et al., Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitas (Paris: Niort-Favre, 1883– 1887), who include “Bannum mittere super rem, aut personem aliquem,” i.e., give protection to. “Post missam episcopus ei pastorali banno pacem confirmet, ut sua cum securitate et quiete possideat” (PRG, 1:59). The spelling ei is an obsolete form of the dative, eo. Variants among the rubrics regarding women are auctoritate pastorali and bannum episcopalem. Deaconesses and Ritual Impurity 205 quiete, possidere”—was standard for indicating Church protection of just ownership from presumptuous seizure, used by, for example, Gregory of Tours,88 the archbishop of Lyon,89 and in bulls.90 This is also seen in the concluding rubrics of other rites for individual women.91 These rubrics attest the Church’s commitment to protect women from wrongful seizure of their person or property. This Christian regard for single women contrasts the cultural norm of marginalizing and exploiting them.92 Surprisingly, some commentators, without mentioning that this rubric is in rites for other women, assert far different meanings for it concerning a diacona.93 John Wijngaards renders it thus: “After the mass the bishop confirms her peace with a pastoral embrace [!] so that she may possess her peace with security and quiet.”94 Evidently Wijngaards wants to suggest a parallel between the bannum after Mass and the kiss (osculum) of peace exchanged within the Mass by the newly ordained deacon and the bishop. However, bannum is a legal term and does not mean “embrace.” Also, although Wijngaards translates sua as if it were suam and were referred to pacem in the first clause, clearly sua must be neuter-plural-accusative here and mean “her [things]” or “her [possessions].” More seriously, Mary M. Schaefer invents a wide-ranging clerical ministry. Without quoting or translating the rubric, she asserts that it establishes a “pastoral jurisdiction.”95 Further, she claims that the diacona is thereby “commissioned to a specific ‘charge’ or ‘title’” and has richly varied service.96 Such assertions load the final rubric with claims about ministry that are absent from the rite itself. 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 Gregory of Tours, Historia ecclesiastica Francorum 4.20 (PL, 71:499, 500). “Burchardi Lugdunensis ArchiEpiscopi charta pro Monasterio Insulae Barbarae, Anno 979,” in Origines Guelficae, vol. 2, ed. G. W. Leipnitz (Moringen, 1751), 143–44. Jean Hubert, “Abbaye exempte de Déols et la Papauté (Xe–XIe siècles),” Bibiothèque de l’École de chartes 145, no. 1 (1987): 5–44, at 32. Rite XXV, “Consecratio viduae que fuerit castitatem professa: (PRG, 1:59–62, at 62). The two rites for a virgin include one for a monialis virgo (rite XX, §27 [PRG, 1:38–46, at 46]). René Metz analyzed this rubric in La consécration des vierges dans l’église romaine: Étude d’histoire de la liturgie (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1954), 213–14, 310. The other rite (XXIII, §18) is for a virgin who will continue to reside in her own home (PRG, 1:51–54, at 54). See also the rite for a virgin in the Pontificale Lexoviense (Toulouse, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 119, fol. 104). Most Rev. Thomas A. Daly, bishop of Spokane, private communication, March 1, 2022. Or they quote the Latin without translation (Macy, Hidden History, 137). “Pontifical of St. Alban Benedictine Monastery, Mainz,” translation by John Wijngaards, at womendeacons.org/minwest/vienna701.shtml. Schaefer, Women in Pastoral Office, 284. Schaefer, Women in Pastoral Office, 287, 285. 206 Catherine Brown Tkacz Comparison of the Rites Compared to the Eastern deaconess, the Western diacona (if she existed) had a lesser role. Nothing in the rite or in the Western comments suggests that the diacona had any duties or service to the Church or to any individual parish; the prayers for her never mention service. No account of duties for a Western deaconess is known, early or late.97 In contrast, the deaconess in the East had a clear range of practical charity for women and could be involved in their catechesis and baptism. A signal role of the Eastern deaconess was her capacity to give pre-consecrated communion exclusively to women housebound due to impurity laws. In the West, no such restriction existed, and no diacona had that role. Moreover, compared to the Latin rites for the consecrated virgin and widow, that for the diacona is less developed and not even fully coherent, suggesting that it may be an antiquarian construct. Moreover, the numerous differences between the ordination of a Latin deacon and the rite for the diacona were visible and audible to the congregation. An initial detailed election of the deacon concludes with the bishop proclaiming to the people that he elects (eligimus) “this man for the order of the diaconate.” In contrast, the word eligere is never used of the diacona, even in a rubric. Also, the bishop places his hand on the man’s head for the opening prayer, but he does not do so with the woman.98 The bishop and archdeacon join the male candidates in prostration before the altar, but do not join the candidate to be a diacona; here, too, she is unlike the clergy but like the widow and virgin.99 When the bishop bestows the stole on the deacon, he commands him: “Receive your stole, fulfil your ministry.” To the diacona, the bishop issues no imperative. Instead, he prays, “May the Lord clothe you with the stole of joy.” The focus on the ministry of the deacon permeates his ordo; five of the six prayers treat his office, ministry, and grade within holy orders. In contrast, no prayer for the diacona mentions any of this. Notably, diaconus and diaconatus recur in the prayers over the deacon, but in the rite for the diacona, the word diacona appears only three times, always in the rubrics.100 Only one, optional prayer for a deacon, the Exaudi, lacks reference to ministry and instead focuses on living so as to be a good example.101 Significantly, “it 97 98 99 100 101 A point also made by Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam, 402. Schaefer dismisses this as unimportant (Women in Pastoral Office, 283, 285). Prostration of the diacona (rite XXIV, §6), virgin (rite XX, §11), and widow (rite XXV, §6). Martimort, Les diaconesses, 214. In one MS—The Pontifical of Egbert—that prayer’s rubric notes: “alia benedictio diaconi sive diaconissae” (Two Anglo-Saxon Pontificals (The Egbert and the Sidney Deaconesses and Ritual Impurity 207 has no reference to any ministerial task.”102 As Gabriel Ramis notes, it is a blessing, not a prayer of ordination.103 Although advocates for female ordination attach great “importance” to the use of that prayer for a diacona, because, “but for a change of gender, it is the very same prayer” found in the ordination of a deacon,104 the prayer could readily be used for any Christian. Thus, the evidence indicates that the ordination of a deacon and the consecration of the diacona are “entirely different.”105 This is consistent with the reality of their roles, for he has a ministry, both liturgical and pastoral, but she had none. Religious Women and the Divine Office In the West, the deaconess served only in a monastic setting.106 Different religious orders in East and West have had different ways of assigning roles to members of their communities in the Liturgy of the Hours. The Church has respected this individuality.107 These women’s autonomy in governing 102 103 104 105 106 107 Sussex Pontificals), ed. H. M. J. Banting [London: Boydell, 1989], rite on 24–26, comment in 25n55). Although Macy construes the masculine throughout the rite as generic (Hidden History, 70), the MS specifies masculine and feminine where intended (Banting, Two Anglo-Saxon Pontificals, 114). “No hace referencia a tarea ministerial alguna” (Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam, 171). Gabriel Ramis, “La consagración de virgenes y viudas en los Pontificales Romanos,” Ephemerides Liturgicae 110 (1996): 97–140 at 127: Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam, 74, 143 et passim. Schaefer, Women in Pastoral Office, 269; see also 287. Farley, Feminism and Tradition, 145; Jean Galot, S.J., Mission et ministère de la femme (Paris: Lethielleux, 1973), 61. Martimort properly identified as fallacieuses the claims by Evangelos Theodorou, Vagaggini, and Gryson that both deacon and deaconess were ordained (Les diaconesses, 248). Although Schaefer claims the rites are “substantially the same,” she ignores the absence of election, divergence in the prayers, etc. (Women in Pastoral Office, 287). See also Martimort, Les diaconesses, 204; Manfred Hauke, “Die Geschichte der Diakonissen—Nachwort und Literaturnachtrag zum Standardwerk von Aimé-Georges Martimort über die Diakonissen,” in Der Diakonat: Geschichte und Theologie, ed. Hauke and Helmut Hoping (Regensburg: Pustet, 2019), 361–94, at 385. Thus, in 1687, the Congregation for Sacred Rites confirmed “their customs and holy observance” (suoi costumi e santa osservanza) in a few Carthusian women’s monasteries (Decree 2321, Ordinis Carthusianorum, “Circa usum stolae et manipuli per monialibus,” cols. 1284–86, at 1285–86, in Analecta Juris Pontificii: Decreta authentica Congregationis Sacrorum Rituum, years 1663–1700, in Analecta ecclesiastica, ser. 8, vol. 4, part 2 [Rome, 1866], cols. 1137–388). See also Barozzi’s pontifical, cited in note 121 below. 208 Catherine Brown Tkacz their communities included their election of their own abbesses.108 The abbess herself has “a specific genus of authority that is distinctly nonpriestly, yet which is conceded only to certain consecrated women, not to the laity in general.”109 In the medieval West, a deaconess-nun, or the nuns of the community in turn, or a prioress or diaconal abbess might take specific roles in praying the Office.110 Nonetheless, no free-standing rite exists in the West to consecrate a nun-deaconess for performing certain parts of the Liturgy of the Hours in community. The roles of deaconess-nun are known mainly by comments in treatises and rubrics providing historical remarks. Notably, even diaconal abbesses in the West did not have the full range of roles attested in the East: if, due to the absence of a priest, a Carthusian women’s monastery could not celebrate Mass, they were to recite the Psalter.111 That is, unlike the Syriac diaconal abbess, the Carthusian abbess was not authorized to distribute pre-consecrated communion in such circumstances. A few late-medieval historical notes posit the prior existence of nun-deaconesses: Guillaume Durand, thirteenth-century bishop of Mende, recounted: “Formerly the veil of ordination was given to a deaconess in [a nun’s] fortieth year so that she might read the Gospel during nocturns [i.e., Matins].”112 Notably, the deaconess’s authority to read the Gospel was limited to Matins in the monastic community.113 The Dominican Durand de Saint-Pourçain (†1332) reported that the deaconess had been blessed but not ordained, and could “read the homily during Matins, but not however the Gospel during Mass or minister around the altar at the Mass as is fitting 108 109 110 111 112 113 Sara Butler, M.S.B.T., and Jenna Cooper, “Ecclesial Roles Unique to Women: Some Reflections,” The Thomist 85, no. 4 (2022): 625–48, at 635. Butler and Cooper, “Ecclesial Roles Unique to Women,” 635–39, esp. at 638. They find the abbess the heir of the deaconess: 638–39. See, for example, J. H. Gallée, “De regel der Windesheimsche Vrouwenkloosters,” Archief voor Nederlandsche Kerkgeschiedenis 15, no. 3 (1895): 250–322, esp. 266–67. By the fifteenth century, the hebdomadary read the Gospel, so again no deaconess was needed (Martimort, Les diaconesses, 305, 231–37). Statuta antiqua, par. 26 (Rafał Witkowski, “Moniales Cartusienses: Mało znany rozdział historii monastycyzmu [Carthusian Nuns. A Little-Known Chapter in the History of Monasticism],” Scripta minora 2 [1998]: 157–74, at 165–66). “Reciting the Psalter” meant just that and did not mean “pray the Liturgy of the Hours,” which the nuns already did. “Velum ordinationis olim dyaconisse in quadragesimo anno dabatur ut posset legere evangelium in nocturnis” (Guilelmus Durandus, Rationale divinorum officiorum 2.1.48 [Naples: Josephum Dura Bibliopolam, 1859]; see Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam, 313, 361, and Martimort, Les diaconesses, 220–21). Schaefer aggrandizes Matins into “the divine office” as a whole (Women in Pastoral Office, 306–7). Deaconesses and Ritual Impurity 209 for the deacon.”114 In fact, however, no known antique pontifical assigned any role to a deaconess.115 In Durand’s pontifical, between two rites for monastic women, he records De ordinatione diaconissae.116 Yet it is in the imperfect tense, recording either prior practice or what he theorized had been prior practice, done formerly (olim). After the Epistle was read, the woman was to prostrate herself while the bishop would pray. He would offer two prayers, “Exaudi, Domine, preces nostras” and a prayer concerned with preserving the woman’s virginity, “Famulam tuam, Domine”: “Lord, may the guard of your piety protect your servant, so that, with you protecting, she may guard spotless the purpose of holy virginity which she received, inspired by you.”117 He would then give the woman a stole and instruct her: “Receive the authority to read the Gospel at Vigil and to begin the Hours in church in the name of the Lord.”118 For the rest, the reader is directed supra. Justly, Aimé-Georges Martimort concludes this is likely to be “a mere archeological reminiscence.119 In the fifteenth century, there appear both a short rite assigning roles to a deaconess in one pontifical and, in another, an addition to the consecration of a virgin, both dependent on Durand. The pontifical of Perugia first, in the array of rites for women, inserts Durand’s comments about the former role of deaconesses (Diaconissa olim; fol. 35v). Later, on a blank folio, was added De ordinatione dyaconisse (fol. 45).120 It tersely assigns reading during the Office to her. This version has the bishop deliver to her the librum evangeliorum and authorize her to read it during Matins. Then she kisses the bishop’s hand. That is the entire rite. No orarion, veil, ring, or crown is mentioned. Clearly, the candidate is already a nun. 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 “Legere homiliam in matutinis, non autem evangelium in missa vel ministrare circa altare in missa ut diacono convenit” (Durand de Saint-Pourçain, In IV sent., d. 25, q. 2 (Venice, 1571), fol. 364v; see Martimort, Les diaconesses, 232). “Reading the homily” meant, of course, not the nun’s own composition but the sermon provided to be read that day. Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam, 349. Le Pontifical du Guillaume Durand in Le Pontifical romain au moyen-âge [hereafter PRMA], ed. Michel Andrieu (Vatican City: Vatican Library, 1940), rite XXII in vol. 3; see and Martimort, Les diaconesses, 231–43 (text on 234). “Famulam tuam Domine tue custodia muniat pietatis ut virginitatis sancte propositum quod te inspirante suscepit, te protegente illesum custodiat.” “Accipite potestatem legendi evangelium ad vigilias et incipiendi horas in ecclesia in nomine Domini.” “Un simple souvenir archéologique” (Martimort, Les diaconesses, 221). Perugia: Rome, Vat. Chigi C. V. 148 (PRMA, 3:253). See Martimort, Les diaconesses, 234–35; and appendix 10 (“Fórmula de Entrega del Libro”) in Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam. 210 Catherine Brown Tkacz Although the pontifical of Giovanni Barozzi, bishop of Bergamo (†1466), lacks a rite for a deaconess, its consecration of a virgin recounts a previously used option, followed by a rubric of historical detail explaining that no longer are deaconesses made (fiunt): “And if [the bishop] will have made some one of these a deaconess, then after the crown has been given, let [him] give to her the book of homilies, saying, Receive the power of reading the Gospel with the homily in the church of God.”121 The rubric explains: “At this time deaconesses are not made, but commonly in whatever place the hebdomadarian reads the Gospel, or another [nun], according to the custom of her monastery.”122 Thus, this too is a report that, in the past, certain nuns had been commissioned to read the homily assigned to the day, during their community’s service of Matins. Note again the Church’s respect for the variety of customs of different religious orders. Reading the homiliary during communal service of Divine Office did not entail extemporaneous preaching and never extended into taking this role in the parishes.123 The rites of blessing indicate this clearly. Among thirteenth-century theologians stating the distinctions were Raymond of Pennafort, O.P., St. Bonaventure, O.F.M., Duns Scotus, O.F.M., and Ricardus de Media Villa.124 Petrus de Tarantasia (Pope Innocent V) was explicit: “The woman who was competent to read the homily in Matins, however not to minister during Mass, or to chant the Gospel, was called a deaconess, not according to the character of the Ordo, but from similarity of action.”125 Such testimonies continued.126 121 122 123 124 125 126 “Et si aliquam earum fecerit diaconissam, data corona, det ei librum omeliarum, dicens: Accipe potestatem legendi evangelium cum omelia in ecclesia Dei” (Rome, Vat. Lat. 1145, fols. 50–59v, at 59v; PRMA, 3:223); see Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam, 336–37. “Hoc tempore non fiunt diaconissae, sed communiter in quocumque loco ebdomadaria legit evangelium, vel alia secundum consuetudinem monasterii sui.” It was only the violation of this by certain abbesses in Castille in 1210 who “presumed, reading the Gospel, to preach publicly” (“legentes evangelium praesumunt publice praedicare”) that Pope Innocent directed the bishops to curtail by asserting their apostolic authority (Innocent III, Letter to the bishops of Palencia and Burgos, in In quinque decretalium libri commentaria, 5 vols. in 2, tit. 38, canon 10, ed. Henricus de Segusio [Venice, 1581]); see also Martimort, Les diaconesses, 228, 251; pace Schaefer, Women in Pastoral Office, 166. Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam, 34n750. “Diaconissa vocatur non a charactere Ordinis, sed a similitudine actus, illa mulier cui in matutines competebat legere homiliam, non tamen in missa ministrare, vel Evangelium cantare” (Petrus de Tarantasia, In quattuor libros Sententiarum commentaria, IV, q. 3, “De idoneitate Conferentis Ordines,” “ad. 2, de Diaconissa”; see Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam, 340n750). For the classic statement “Mulier in missa ministrare non potest” (“A woman cannot Deaconesses and Ritual Impurity 211 Later evidence of rituals diminished. The Pontificale Romanum of 1485 lacks reference to a deaconess.127 In the 1497 pontifical, after the rite of the consecratio virginum, a rubric explains an aspect of that rite for a few (nonnullis) monasteries which formerly had deaconesses: the bishop would hand the breviary to the woman, saying, “Receive the power of reading the Office and beginning the Hours in church.”128 Since 1595, deaconesses are not mentioned and the bishop’s words are slightly revised: “Receive the book, so that you may begin the canonical Hours and read the Office in church.”129 The pontificals of Perugia and Barozzi and the Pontificale Romanum since 1497 show the rite for deaconess to be “a mere capacitating, a giving of a faculty, which is not necessary for the task, since it is done without it.”130 Diaconal Abbesses Unique evidence of a rite commissioning a diaconal abbess in the West has been clarified by José-Juan Fresnillo Ahijón.131 Six such abbesses are attested around tenth-century Rome, and Atto of Vercelli and others considered “abbess” to be equivalent to “deaconess,” yet no rite had been known.132 When the pontifical of Arles (first half of the fourteenth century) was catalogued (1937), the final section of the consecration of an abbess was 127 128 129 130 131 132 minister in the Mass”), see, for example, Hugh of St Cher, O.P. (thirteenth century), De utilitate misse cum dicentium necnon profectu eam audientium deque periculis eam negligentium (Rome 1475), fol. 18v; Gebhard Truchseß von Waldburg, Tractatus de administratione sacramenti eucharistiae et de celebratione Missae, ex canonibus & probatis authoribus (Dillingen: S. Mayer, 1559), fol. 97v; and Laurentius Petius, Epitome sacramentorum (Venice, 1575), fol. 19v. Arcadius Pankowsky concludes that the deaconess’s blessing did not “give the power of public preaching in the church, ministering at the altar, sacrificing, or conferring the other sacraments” (De diaconisses: commentatio archaeologica [Ratisbon: George Joseph Manz, 1866], 13). Martimort, Les diaconesses, 235. “Accipe potestatem legendi officium et incipiendi horas in ecclesia” (Pontificale Romanum, ed. Jacobus de Lutiis and Johannes Burchandus [Rome: Stephan Plannck, 1497], fol. 76; quoted by Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam, 349n777). “Accipite librum, ut incipiatis horas canonicas et legatis officium in ecclesia” (Martimort, Les diaconesses, 236). “Una mera capacitaciόn, un dar facultad, que no es necessaria para la tarea, pues esta se realiza sin ella.” José-Juan Fresnillo Ahijón, “El diacon(is)ado femenino en la Edad Media,” Liturgia y Espiritualidad 49 (2018): 692–704, at 704. Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam, appendix 7 (476–77) reproduces fol. 38v and portions of fols. 41v–42v (transcription and analysis on 344–48). Martimort, Les diaconesses, 205–7, treating the diaconae abbatissae Euphemia, Odocia, Alvisida, Eufrosina, Agatha and Sergia. Atto, ep. viii (PL, 134:114). See also Fresnillo Ahijón, “Diacon(is)ado femenino,” 695; Abelard, Epistle 8 to Heloise, no. 25: Fresnillo Ahijón, Ad diaconam faciendam, 333; Pierre de la Palud (†1342): Martimort, Les diaconesses, 231. 212 Catherine Brown Tkacz incorrectly reported as a separate rite.133 Fresnillo Ahijón examines the manuscript afresh, studying the large initials beginning rites, colors of inks, scribal hands, and the consistent use of the term consecrator in this manuscript to mean “bishop,” showing that the passage in question on folios 41v–42 is not the title of a new ordo, but a rubric: “For consecrating a deaconess, let the consecrator say over her this prayer.”134 The “Exaudi . . .” prayer follows. Then the consecrator is to give her the orarium, offering the prayer for preserving her virginity, “Famulam tuam, Domine, tue custodia muniat pietatis.” Notably, once again the stole is linked with chastity, not with any ministry. For the rest of the rite, the bishop is then directed to the things “said and done in the blessing of consecrated virgins.” Carthusian Nuns Although it has little to do with the “real history of deaconesses,”135 a late tradition of a small subset of Carthusian nuns had a sui generis addition to their consecration which parallels some activities that other religious houses assigned to deaconess-nuns. Specifically, in a few Carthusian monasteries, consecrated virgins had a role in the Eucharistic liturgy itself: they sang the Epistle at the conventual Mass. On rare occasions, the abbess could sing the Gospel there.136 The Statuta antiqua of 1271 stipulated that such rare lections were their sole role: the sisters “may never serve at Mass.”137 The bestowal of items is attested only for two Flemish houses, in Bruges in 1480 and in Gosnay.138 The bishop was to place, briefly, insignia on the virgin at the end of her consecration. He placed the maniple on her right arm, saying, “Wait for the Lord” (Ps 6:14). Then he placed the stole around her neck, saying, “Take the yoke of the Lord upon you” (Matt 11:29). Note that this exhortation is entirely different from that when the deacon receives the stole: to him the bishop commands, “fulfill your ministry” (“imple ministerium tuum”). For the Carthusian nun, next the bishop placed a cross on her shoulder, saying, “Deny yourself and take up your cross daily” (Luke 133 134 135 136 137 138 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de france, Lat. 1220, fols. 38v–42 (Victor Leroquais, Les pontificaux manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France, 4 vols. [Paris: Protat Frères, 1937], 2:119). “Ad consecrandam diaconissam dicat consecrator super eam hanc orationem.” Martimort, Les diaconesses, 243. Pace Schaefer, who implies these could be public services (Women in Pastoral Office, 163). “Nec unquam serviant ad Missas” (Witkowski, “Moniales Cartusienses,” 165). Les éditions des Statuts de l’Ordre des Chartreux, ed. Hubert Elie (Lausanne: F. Rouge & Cie., 1943), 149. Most Carthusian monasteries lacked these extra features (Martimort, Les diaconesses, 238–39). Deaconesses and Ritual Impurity 213 9:23). The bishop was at once to retrieve (retrahat) the cross, and likewise the rubric continues, “let the stole and maniple be taken from the virgin” (“stola et manipulus tollantur a virgine”).139 Only on three occasions could these virgins wear the stole and maniple: their consecration, its fiftieth anniversary, and their death.140 Thus, and significantly, these women did not wear them when they sang the Epistle. That is, for them the stole was not a liturgical garment, but an honorific symbol.141 Abbesses also had a conditional faculty: reading the twelfth of a set of lections at Vigil where the twelfth was a Gospel, but only if no clergy were present.142 Conclusion In the East, some parishes and some female monasteries had deaconesses. In clearly defined circumstances, each kind of Eastern deaconess had the authority to give pre-consecrated communion exclusively to women. In contrast, in Western parishes, a variety of women assisted with the catechesis and baptism of women, and women’s access to communion was unimpaired by impurity laws, so deaconesses were not needed. Comparing the ordination of a Roman deacon and the faciendam diaconam shows clearly that the diacona was not clergy. Instead, the similarities of her faciendam to the consecration of virgin and widow identify her as religious or paramonastic. An intriguing recovery of this essay has been clarifying that all these women’s rites protected their property rights, a practical measure showing respect for female autonomy. Within the monasteries, nuns and abbesses could fill roles in the Divine Office and even conventual Mass without being installed as deaconess. In short, the deaconess in the East had a substantially different ministry from the deacon, while in the West the deaconess cannot be said to have had a ministry at all. From the start, the Church was committed to ensuring that women were catechized and baptized and received communion equally with men. While Jewish women could not enter the Temple proper and were exempt from reciting the Shema, Christian men and women stood together in 139 140 141 142 Brussels, Bibl. Royale Albert Ier, MS 8425, fol. 287v (Martimort, Les diaconesses, 239–40). Decree 2321, Ordinis Carthusianorum, col. 1285 (see note 107 above). The same seems to be the case with the stole worn by the diacona, for it is worn beneath her tunic (see note 80 above). Annales ordinis Cartusiensis, VIII, ed. Carolus Le Couteulx, vol. 5 (Monstrolii: Typis Cartusiae S. Mariae de Pratis, 1889), 383; Martimort, Les diaconesses, 239–41; Witkowski, “Moniales Cartusienses,” 164 and note 47. Schaefer mistakes the abbess’s faculty as unconditional (Women in Pastoral Office, 306–7). 214 Catherine Brown Tkacz worship and came to the sanctuary to receive the Eucharist. In those Eastern churches that retained impurity laws, women’s access to baptism required the assistance of deaconesses, and if a woman was housebound due to impurity rules, then her access to the Eucharist was again made possible by a deaconess. Absent those laws, the West simply did not need deaconesses. Christian women were recognized by virtue of their faith as able to assist at the baptism of other women, to catechize them, and so on. And that historical finding is again affirmative of women. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2024): 215–220 215 On David Bentley Hart’s Account of Tradition Matthew Levering Mundelein Seminary Mundelein, IL In Tradition and Apocalypse, David Hart argues that “the concept of ‘tradition’ in the theological sense, however lucid and cogent it might appear to the eyes of faith, is incorrigibly obscure and incoherent.”1 This claim coheres with the New Testament scholar Ernst Käsemann’s notion of apocalyptic, as set forth in Käsemann’s well known rhetorical questions— to which he answers in the negative—“Has there ever been a theological system which has not collapsed? Have we been promised that we should know ourselves to be in possession of a theologia perennis?”2 For Käsemann, Christian theological “continuity” (if such there is) consists in “the hope of the manifestation of the Son of Man on his way to enthronement”3— Easter hope. Hart follows his own version of this path. Hart contends that he does not intend to overthrow the truth of the Nicene Creed.4 But he bemoans the claims of various Christian communi1 2 3 4 David Bentley Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse: An Essay on the Future of Christian Belief (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022), 1. I also discuss Hart’s book toward the end of my Newman on Doctrinal Corruption (Park Ridge, IL: Word on Fire Academic, 2022), and the present reflections are intended to clarify and expand upon my remarks there. Ernst Käsemann, “The Beginnings of Christian Theology,” in New Testament Questions for Today (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 82–107, at 107. Käsemann, “Beginnings,” 107. For another recent Orthodox theology that is indebted to Käsemann, see John Behr, John the Theologian and His Paschal Gospel: A Prologue to Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), especially ch. 2. It will be clear that not only Albert Schweitzer, but even more Martin Heidegger stands in the background of Käsemann’s apocalyptic interpretation of the New Testament. See Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 109. 216 Matthew Levering ties—Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant—to have faithfully communicated the Gospel: “All Christian communions of any size or duration have their distinctive traditionalisms, their myths of continuity amidst rupture and rupture amidst continuity, their claims of doctrinal pedigree and of allegiance to the authority of the Christian past.”5 Hart rejects all such ecclesial claims of dogmatic continuity and fidelity. Theologically, he deems it impossible for anyone “to say with absolute finality what the one true tradition is.”6 Historically, he thinks it impossible to discern any “rational unity within the course of Christian tradition that one could confidently claim has been sustained intact amid the flux of times and cultures.”7 There are certain rhetorical emphases that stand out as Hart describes his own constructive view of Christian “tradition.” He states that tradition is “the constant creative recollection of a promise whose fulfillment and ultimate meaning are yet to be unveiled”—not in the sense that the Church awaits the fullness that is to come and that dogmatic propositions, while true, are always inadequate to divine realities, but in the stronger sense of appealing to “a future apocalyptic horizon where the tradition’s ultimate meaning is to be found” and rejecting “any reduction of that final revelation to whatever formulations of belief happen to be available at any given stage of doctrinal development.” Hart depicts Christian tradition as an active transmission of a gift that remains fundamentally hidden and unknown. He invokes the image of “the impartation of a gift that remains sealed, a giving always deferred toward a future not yet known.” There is a giving, but this giving is “always deferred,” its future is “not yet known,” and the gift itself “remains sealed.” Hart argues that the “gift must remain sealed until the very end, so that the glory will not dissipate into ordinary time, whose atmosphere is incapable of sustaining and nourishing it.” Time—history—cannot sustain or nourish the divine gift, and so it must be “sealed” until the end of time; and yet it can be known “in and as” ever-changing, historical tradition.8 Tradition accomplishes this handing on of the sealed gift, says Hart, through its “ceaseless flow of . . . intertwining variations.” Hart adds with regard to historicity and to “the animating impulse of the tradition”: “Once that vital force has moved on to assume new living configurations, the attempt unnaturally to preserve earlier forms can achieve nothing but . . . the perfumed repose of a cadaver.”9 The “earlier forms” that once 5 6 7 8 9 Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 42. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 141. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 19. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 139–40. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 140. On David Bentley Hart’s Account of Tradition 217 contained the “vital force” must constantly be reconfigured within tradition’s “ceaseless flow.” Hart pictures a destabilizing “play of tension and resolution, stability and disintegration,” and he holds that we must possess a “positive desire for moments of dissolution” if we are to be faithful to “whatever is most original and most final in a tradition.” Only thus can whatever is “most imperishable in a tradition . . . be fitfully perceived, or at least sensed,” by those few persons spiritually and intellectually able to do so. By comparison, I would suggest that the core realities of faith can be much more than “fitfully perceived” or “sensed”; I think dogmatic formulations serve, in the assent of faith, to make the realities of faith knowable as true. In addition, I would argue that “dissolution” is not applicable to the core meaning of a true dogma. Hart sums up: “Only in that ceaseless flow of construction, dissolution, and reconstruction is what is truly imperishable in the tradition intuitable.”10 I deny the implications of this rhetorical claim, because it seems clear that dogmatic teachings such as those of Nicaea and Chalcedon are “truly imperishable” and can be known as such by believers without an ongoing “ceaseless” flow inclusive of real “dissolution.” By means of the above images of fluidity, obscurity, concealment, dissolution, and so on, Hart portrays a Christian “tradition” that will be intelligible only to those with eyes to see, and that is not currently intelligible to any Church (Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant). Although he occasionally refers to “stability” and “dogmatic deposit,” he so joins these terms to disintegration and deferment that the “deposit”—insofar as it goes beyond an apocalyptic “vital force”—can bear little weight. As noted above, Hart argues that the “living tradition” is “essentially apocalyptic” in the sense of being knowable only “in light of God’s final disruption of the historical (and cosmic) future.”11 He adds that tradition’s “abiding truth never suffers itself to be reduced to mere propositional certitudes, but rather testifies to itself in large part by its power to disorder even the temporal forms it has assumed in the course of its pilgrimage through time.”12 In this disorder, rupture, and rejection of any reduction to “mere propositional certitudes,” there is somehow an “abiding truth”—one that somehow makes itself known (though not to any Church, whether Orthodox, Catholic, or Protestant) by disordering its own “temporal forms.”13 10 11 12 13 Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 140–41. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 142. There are resonances here with Karl Barth, Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P., and others. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 143. For similar directions, see Karl Rahner, S.J., “Yesterday’s History of Dogma and 218 Matthew Levering Whatever his intentions may be, it seems to me that Hart opens the door to the rejection of the propositional content of the Church’s dogmas. Celebrating “the living tradition’s often chaotic and disruptive vitality,” Hart argues: “From the time of Jesus himself to the present, there has always been a struggle within the tradition between the guardians of religious and social stability and the apocalyptic ferment of the Gospel. But, of course, the Gospel is nothing if it is not apocalyptic.”14 Hart suggests that we cannot really know what kinds of changes or even seeming reversals of our current understandings of dogma may be in store. He affirms that the Nicene tradition itself “exists as handed over to that abiding end [the eschaton], and so as handed over to future elaboration, reconstruction, adaptation, and reconceptualization. It would be foolish . . . to suppose that one could foresee the forms it might yet assume, the accords it might yet strike, the discoveries it might yet make—both within and beyond itself.”15 It follows logically that 14 15 Theology for Tomorrow,” in Theological Investigations, vol. 18, God and Revelation, trans. Edward Quinn (New York: Crossroad, 1983), 3–34; Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P., “Towards a Catholic Use of Hermeneutics,” in God the Future of Man, trans. N. D. Smith (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1968), 1–49. For a quite different path, see Schillebeeckx’s collection of his pre-conciliar writings on divine revelation: Revelation and Theology, vol. 1, trans. N. D. Smith (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967). See also Hans Urs von Balthasar’s persuasive response to Rahner’s “Yesterday’s History of Dogma and Theology for Tomorrow” in Balthasar, New Elucidations, trans. Mary Theresilde Skerry (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 74–87. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 131. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 130. See Rahner, “Yesterday’s History of Dogma and Theology for Tomorrow,” 30–31: “The history of dogma and theology remains history: that is, in the last resort unpredictable and not under the control of human beings or of the Church’s authority. . . . In the Christian view it is true that the history of faith and dogma is under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and certainly has its supreme entelechy in that Spirit; but the Spirit is effective in this history because he is also the secret and, for us in the last resort before the end of history, the inscrutable innermost principle of history as such. That is why it is not possible to make unambiguous and secure prognoses for the future history of dogma and faith. In view of the ‘single line’ course of this history, we are certainly bound to assume that truths once grasped with an explicit and absolute assent of faith in the Church cannot simply be ‘forgotten’ again, since the Church’s ever present sense of faith reasons the same only by retaining also the memory of its own history. But this tells us little in regard to the future about the existential and consequently theological status which such a truth will retain concretely in the Church’s sense of faith and in its practice. . . . We cannot really foresee the future history of dogma and theology. If however we attempt with a little futurological imagination to form a picture of humanity in the coming centuries, to envisage its quantitative, economic, sociological, mental, and political changes, there can be no doubt that the Church’s history of faith and dogma will bring with it changes which we can scarcely imagine today.” On David Bentley Hart’s Account of Tradition 219 tradition might go so far beyond itself, and assume such new forms, as to be unrecognizable: “Christianity is filled with an indomitable and subversive ferment, an inner force of dissolution that refuses to crystallize into something inert or stable, but that instead insists upon dispersing itself into the future ever again, to destroy what confines it and to start anew, to begin again in the formless realm of spirit.”16 This apocalyptic element, emphasizing vital force, subversion, dissolution, dispersion, destruction, and beginning again in “the formless realm of spirit,” is consonant with Alfred Loisy’s emphases regarding development and tradition. No wonder, then, that Hart expresses some sympathy with Loisy. Like Loisy, Hart deems that Jesus of Nazareth had no special knowledge; Jesus preached the imminent arrival of the kingdom, which failed to arrive. Hart deems that Loisy’s positions are, “by the standards of today’s serious Catholic scholarship . . . at most only slightly provocative, and for the better part not even that.”17 Correctly, Hart perceives that Loisy’s views have been widely adopted in the contemporary theological academy. As Hart says, today Loisy “might be comfortably ensconced in some Catholic university’s department of theology, and even perhaps regarded as a little on the conservative side theologically.”18 For Hart as for Loisy, Jesus did not reveal much propositional content, but what he did reveal was his “apocalyptic consciousness, subsisting entirely in a moment of absolute interruption.”19 Jesus, says Hart, was “a man of his time and had surely not walked through the Galilee and Judaea of late Graeco-Roman antiquity like a demigod with some perfect consciousness of the future history of the church or of the full catalogue of later Christology.”20 What Jesus offered his followers was his apocalyptic “absolute interruption.” Hart subtitles his book An Essay on the Future of Christian Belief. Taken at face value, Hart’s proposals would imperil the future of Christian belief. For Catholics, John Henry Newman’s and Maurice Blondel’s understandings of dogmatic development have been moved forward by Yves Congar and Joseph Ratzinger (among many others) and have been secured by the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum.21 Hart’s rhetoric in Tradition and Apocalypse, much of which 16 17 18 19 20 21 Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 137. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 67. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 68. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 136; cf. Hart’s summary on 135. Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 67–68. For discussion, see Andrew Meszaros, The Prophetic Church: History and Doctrinal 220 Matthew Levering will sound familiar to Catholics who have followed the debates from Loisy onward, should function as a guide for how not to proceed with respect to the theology of tradition. Development in John Henry Newman and Yves Congar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Guy Mansini, O.S.B., “Newman and Ratzinger and the Development of Dogma,” in John Henry Newman and Joseph Ratzinger: A Theological Encounter, ed. Emery de Gaál and Matthew Levering (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming). Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2024): 221–223 221 General Introduction Ever since the publication of Darwin’s work in which he proposed the framework of the theory of evolution, his suggested model of species transformation became the subject of a vivid analysis and debate concerning its metaphysical presuppositions, as well as both philosophical and theological consequences. Questions concerning the relation between evolution and creation remained actual along the transition from Darwinism to neo-Darwinism, to twentieth-century evolutionary synthesis, and to the most recent transformations of the latter. One particular aspect of this discussion brings into consideration the tradition of the classical Aristotelian-Thomistic system of philosophy and theology, asking whether it is capable of receiving the theory of evolution and to what extent such an encounter might be beneficial for both sides of the conversation. A number of important works on this topic have been published over the course of more than one hundred and fifty years of the history of the evolutionary theory. Among more significant contributors, we should mention Mortimer J. Adler, Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, F. F. Centore, William E. Carroll, Michael Chaberek, John N. Deely, Charles DeKoninck, Joseph Donceel, Ryan Fáinche, Étienne Gilson, James R. Hofmann, Marie-Dalmace Leroy, Norbert Luyten, Jacques Maritain, St. George J. Mivart, Ernan Mc Mullin, Antonio Moreno, Raymond J. Nogar, Fran O’Rourke, Edward T. Oakes, Mariusz Tabaczek, Gerard M. Verschuuren, and John Augustine Zahm. This issue of Nova et Vetera brings to the English-speaking reader an important debate that took place after the publication of the Polish translation of Thomistic Evolution: A Catholic Approach to Understanding Evolution in the Light of Faith by Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P., James Brent, O.P., Thomas Davenport, O.P., and John Baptist Ku, O.P. The debate was inspired by the afterword to the Polish edition of the book, written by Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. A critical evaluation of this text was offered by Tabaczek’s confrere, Michael Chaberek, O.P. At the invitation of the Polish Annals of Philosophy, Tabaczek wrote a response to Chaberek’s critique. We 222 General Introduction publish English translations of all three texts. We hope they will contribute to the rich and ongoing conversation concerning the relation among Aristotelianism, Thomism, and the theory of evolution. Works by Aristotle, St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas Cited in This Interchange Aristotle Metaphys. = The Metaphysics. Translated by W. D. Ross. In The Basic Works of Aristotle, edited by Richard McKeon, 681–26. New York: Modern Library, 2001. Phys. = The Physics. Translated by R. K. Gaye. In The Basic Works of Aristotle, edited by Richard McKeon, 213–94. New York: Modern Library, 2001. Augustine Gen. ad lit. = De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim. Translated by John Hammond Taylor. In The Literal Meaning of Genesis. New York: Newman Press, 1982. Aquinas De ente = De ente et essentia. Vol. 43 of the Leonine edition, 131–57. English translation: Aquinas on Being and Essence: A Translation and Interpretation. Translated by Joseph Bobik. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1965. De pot. = Quaestiones disputatae de potentia Dei. Turin: Marietti, 1965. English translation: On the Power of God. Translated by English Dominican Fathers. Westminster, MD: Newman Press, 1952. De princ. = De principiis naturae. Vol. 43 of the Leonine edition, 39–47. English translation: The Principles of Nature. In Selected Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, edited and translated by Robert P. Goodwin, 7–28. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965. In I–III de an. = In Aristotelis librum de anima commentarium. Vol. 45/1 of the Leonine edition. English translation: Commentary on Aristotle’s De anima in the Version of William of Moerbeke and the Commentary of St. Thomas Aquinas. Translated by Kenelm Foster and Silvester Humphries. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951. In I–XII metaphys. = In Metaphysicam Aristotelis commentaria. Turin: Marietti, 1926. English translation: Commentary on The Metaphysics General Introduction 223 of Aristotle. 2 vols. Translated by John Rowan. Chicago: Regnery, 1961. In I–VIII phys. = In octo libros physicorum Aristotelis expositio. Turin: Marietti, 1965. English translation: Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics. Translated by Richard J. Blackwell, Richard J. Spath, and W. Edmund Thirlkel. Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1999. In I–VIII sent. = Scriptum super libros sententiarum. Edited by S. E. Fretté and P. Maré. Vols. 7–11 of Opera omnia. Paris: Vivès, 1882–1889. English translations original. Q.D. de an.= Quaestio disputata de anima. Edited by J. Robb. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1968. English translation: Questions on the Soul. Translated by James H. Robb. Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1984. SCG = Summa contra gentiles. 3 vols. Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1961–1967. English translation: On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: Summa Contra Gentiles. Translated by Anton C. Pegis et al. 4 vols. Garden City, NY: Image, 1955–1957. ST = Summa theologiae. Rome: Editiones Paulinae, 1962. English translation: Summa Theologica. Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. 3 vols. New York: Benziger, 1946. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2024): 225–237 225 Afterword to the Polish Edition of Thomistic Evolution: A Catholic Approach to Understanding Evolution in the Light of Faith by Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P., James Brent, O.P., Thomas Davenport, O.P., and John Baptist Ku, O.P.*1 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Rome, Italy Translation: Monika Metlerska-Colerick *1 Along with this translation of my Afterword to the Polish Edition of Thomistic Evolution: A Catholic Approach to Understanding Evolution in the Light of Faith (1st ed. 2016) by Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P., James Brent, O.P., Thomas Davenport, O.P., and John Baptist Ku, O.P., this present issue of the English edition of Nova et Vetera also contains Michael Chaberek’s critique of it in translation, “Where do Substantial Forms Come From?—A Critique of the Theistic Evolution of Mariusz Tabaczek,” on 239–54. This journal issue also includes a translation of my response to Chaberek, which was originally published in Polish as Mariusz Tabaczek, “Ewolucja a dzieło stworzenia—odpowiedź na polemikę Michała Chaberka z teistycznym ewolucjonizmem,” Roczniki Filozoficzne [Annals of Philosophy] 68, no. 4 (2020): 217–49, while his critique was published as Michał Chaberek, “Skąd pochodzą nowe formy substancjalne?—Polemika z teistycznym ewolucjonizmem w ujęciu Mariusza Tabaczka,” Roczniki Filozoficzne [Annals of Philosophy] 68, no. 4 (2020): 199–215. The English translations were sponsored by the Templeton Foundation (Grant ID 61360 Thomistic Evolution and the Defense of Faith and Reason: Engaging Catholic Families, Philosophers, and Theologians). Some of the original Polish bibliography references were changed and updated to make the text more relevant for an English-speaking audience. All three pieces have undergone minor editing to conform to the journal’s style. Citations of all three use the page numbers of the publications in the present journal issue, and abbreviations for the references to the works of Aristotle, Augustine, and St. Thomas, including published critical editions and English-translation editions used in citations, can be found in the bibliography section of the introduction to the interchange in the present journal issue. 226 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. Thomistic Evolution: A Catholic Approach to Understanding Evolution in the Light of Faith, by Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P., James Brent, O.P., Thomas Davenport, O.P., and John Baptist Ku, O.P., is an intriguing attempt at a comprehensive approach to the question of theistic evolutionism from the perspective of Thomistic tradition. The breadth of the approach offered by the authors, starting with the problem of the relationship between reason and faith and subsequently reaching to the foundations of the philosophy of nature, natural theology, and theology of creation, as well as biblical exegesis, provides an appropriate introduction and background for the analysis of a thesis suggesting that it is possible for God to create new species of living organisms (including the Homo sapiens sapiens species) through the processes of evolution. The comprehensible manner in which the discussed questions are presented renders the book accessible to a wide audience. Although one should agree with the main thesis formulated by the authors of Thomistic Evolution regarding the possibility of God expressing his creative power through the emergence of new species of living beings by way of evolution, it also has to be noticed that the arguments they present do not always take fully into consideration certain significant difficulties that arise along the way and the resulting necessity to broaden and adjust the ideas of the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition to present-day standards in order for it to engage in a dialogue with contemporary science. In the absence of such broadening and adjusting, one might arrive at an overly simplified view of things in which St. Thomas himself would easily come to agree with the main assumptions of theistic evolutionism. Our aim, thus, is to reveal a more profound level of the complexity of the debate regarding the Thomistic view of creation and evolution. St. Thomas and Evolutionism On the one hand, Brent’s intuition seems justified that the Thomistic definition of creation as being dependent on God in existence (depicted in chapter 7) is compatible with both the image of the world in which various kinds of species are immutable and the image of the world in which they are subject to change. On the other hand, we cannot forget that St. Thomas himself perceived forms of species as permanently fixed in the moment of the first member of a given species coming into existence and—consequently—not being subject to any future alterations. Hence, reproduction, according to Aquinas, serves as a continuation of species without the introduction of any significant variations: “Nature produces like from like. Now the thing generated is like its generator in Thomistic Evolution: A Catholic Approach to Understanding Evolution 227 species and form. Therefore the form is produced by the action of the generator and not by creation” (De pot., q. 3, a. 8, sc 4). This quotation from Questiones disputatae de potentia points us towards the theological question of creation. Here, we must emphasize that, according to St. Thomas, at its origin, the world was perfect as to the number of created species. Hence, “something can be added every day to the perfection of the universe, as to the number of individuals, but not as to the number of species” (ST I, q. 118, a. 3, ad 2).1 It is true that Aquinas allowed for the arising of new animal species through putrefaction caused by the power of the sun, as well as through the crossbreeding of already existing species (see ST I, q. 73, a. 1, ad 3, a portion of which is quoted by Austriaco in chapter 24). However, the emergence of new forms of animal organisms in this way by no means implies or anticipates the theory of their descent from a common ancestor by way of evolutionary transformation. Nor is it a manifestation or expression of the most basic rules governing nature, but rather an exception and a departure from their regularity. Indeed, regarding the question of creation, St. Thomas says that “it is impossible for any creature to create, either by its own power or instrumentally—that is, ministerially” (ST I, q. 45, a. 5, corp.).2 Elsewhere, Aquinas adds that “the corporeal forms that bodies had when first produced came immediately from God, whose bidding alone matter obeys, as its own proper cause” (ST I, q. 65, a. 4, corp.). It seems that there is no easy transition from these statements to the thesis formulated by Austriaco, in which he speaks of God who “had chosen to create through his creatures” (see chapter 22). Delegating the power of creation to contingent beings is clearly inconsistent with St. Thomas’s theology. In other words, attempting to define the evolutionary process as one of the many physical processes within which God, as the first cause, acts via secondary causes, may lead to an overly cursory treatment of the fundamental difference between creation understood as sustaining beings in existence and as continuing the existence of various forms of species by way of begetting new descendants within the same species, and creation understood as deriving an entirely new form of being (a living organism) out of nothing (ex nihilo). Is it therefore true—as some believe—that the dialogue between Thomism and evolutionary thought can be held only at the expense of a compromise with regard to the most important questions concerning the 1 2 See also De pot., q. 5, a. 5. See chapter 17, where Ku mentions this principle, providing additional reference points to the works of St. Thomas. 228 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. Thomistic understanding of the nature of living organisms, as well as the essence of the dogma of creatio ex nihilo? Not necessarily. One of the most significant points, in this context, is the proper understanding of the metaphysical foundations underlying St. Thomas’s thought, which allows for a creative application of the Scholastic method, free from following Aquinas’s original thought in an inflexible manner. Even though certain important aspects of Thomistic metaphysics and ontology are discussed or evoked in the particular chapters of Thomistic Evolution, they call for further development and elaboration. Understanding Material and Formal Causes An absolutely fundamental question is that of the proper understanding of the idea of the four causes which Aquinas derives from Aristotle.3 We will focus here predominantly on the material and formal causes, which are crucial for determining the essence (including the species-defining essence) of each contingent being—both inanimate and animate. Davenport’s presentation of the above-mentioned causes (chapter 5) appears to be constrained to the most basic and introductory approach which defines matter and form as, respectively, physical structural units (molecules, atoms, electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, gluons) and their shape or organization (structure). The above definition is, however, insufficient, even if Thomistic Evolution is a popular science publication. While searching for categories appropriate for describing and classifying each contingent being in his commentary to Aristotle’s Metaphysics (see In V metaphys., lec. 3, no. 779), St. Thomas himself distinguishes at least four levels of understanding material and formal causes: (1) In the most intuitive view of reality, form appears as a geometrical shape assumed by physical matter (at this point, Aristotle gives the example of a silver goblet or a bronze statue). (2) The situation is somewhat different when many entities unite to co-form one thing. This process can take place in three different ways, linked to the three levels of defining formal and material causation: (2a) entities which make up a whole can be united merely by their placement (arrangement) in time and space (unity secundum ordinem), such as men in the army or houses in a city; (2b) entities making up a whole can be united by contact, a particular form of binding (bond) (unity secundum contactum et colligationem), such as parts 3 See Aristotle, Phys. 2.3.194b24–195a2, Metaphys. 5.21013a24–1013b2, and Thomas Aquinas, In I phys., lec. 15, no. 132; In II phys., lec. 5, no. 183; In V metaphys., lec. 2, nos. 763–64, 774. Thomistic Evolution: A Catholic Approach to Understanding Evolution 229 of a house; (2c) in some instances, unity as described in point (b) is accompanied by an essential change of a component (alteratio componentium), that is, a substantial change resulting in the occurrence of a new substance (exemplified by living beings). From our perspective, the most interesting level of material and formal causation is presented in the last point—(2c)—which implies a substantial change in the process leading to the emergence of a complex entity. This kind of change takes place when substances existing thus far lose their original identity and simultaneously become a being with an entirely new identity. What we touch on here is the most profound level of transformation possible, moving deeper than the accidental, geometrical, or dynamic restructuring of components which maintain their own identity and a relative autonomy within a given (inorganic or organic) whole. What is more, the same kind of transformation occurs at the lowest level of material complexity where elementary particles transform into one another (vel emerge from the quantum vacuum or vanish in it). Also, here we are dealing with loss of identity and entities of an entirely new essence coming into existence. What is required for the aforementioned substantial change not to become the annihilation of one entity and the creation of a new entity ex nihilo is the principle of continuity (i.e., something that is able to endure substantial change without being a substance), as well as the principle of novelty. In Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, these functions are assumed by, respectively, primary matter (PM)—understood as a metaphysical (hence empirically unverifiable) principle of potentiality—and by substantial form (SF)— understood as a metaphysical (hence also unverifiable from an empirical perspective) principle serving as the actualization of primary matter. In other words, the reality of the universe is founded on two complementary metaphysical principles: the principle of potentiality—the idea that something can exist in the first place and be subject to change—and the principle of actuality, which makes a given entity what it is and endows it with its proper identity.4 A significant consequence of viewing the essence of things, as well as their 4 See Phys. 1.9.192a25–33; 2.3.194b24–28; Metaphys. 7.31029a20–21; 9.71049a24. Regarding PM, in reference to the example of the bronze statue used by Aristotle, St. Thomas states: “We should notice, too, that some matter has a composition of form, for example bronze. For, although it is the matter with respect to the statue, the bronze itself is composed of matter and form. Therefore bronze is not called prime matter, even though it has matter. However, that matter which is understood without any form and privation, but rather is subject to form and privation, is called prime matter by reason of the fact that there is no other matter before it. This is also called hyle, [which means chaos or confusion in Greek]” (De princ., no. 14). 230 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. permanence and changeability, from the perspective of hylomorphism (from the Greek words ὕλη [hylē], meaning matter, and μορφὴ [morphē], meaning form) is the concept of PM’s disposition. As a principle of potentiality— as pure potentiality—PM can theoretically “become” anything (become formed or actualized by any given SF). In practice, the actualization of PM by a particular SF in a given being disposes it to be formed by another SF—specified to a lesser or greater degree—in the process of subsequent substantial change.5 Thus, for instance, the actualization of PM by the SF of the chemical element sulfur (16S) disposes it to be formed—in subsequent substantial change—by the SF of sulfur dioxide (SO2) or hydrogen sulfide (H2S) rather than, for example, of orthophosphoric acid (H3PO4). In other words, the disposition of PM ensures the hierarchy and the order of beings in nature and in the changes they are subject to.6 The Work of Creation7 In what way does the complex and highly speculative metaphysical reflection presented here contribute to comprehending Thomistic approach to evolutionary theory? In order to understand its significance, it is worth referring to the distinction—mentioned by Ku (in chapter 17), but not elaborated on in his analysis—between the three stages of the work of six days depicted in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis. St. Thomas, in keeping with the literal meaning of the Bible, describes creation (opus creationis) as the work which took place only on the first of the six days. He names the work of the 5 6 7 See Q.D. de an., a. 9, corp.: “From the fact that matter is known to have a certain substantial mode of existing, matter can be understood to receive accidents by which it is disposed to a higher perfection’ so far as it is fittingly disposed to receive that higher perfection.” See also SCG III, ch. 22, no. 7; In II de an., lec. 7, no. 315; De pot., q. 5, a. 1, corp. and ad 5. Analogically, in the case of the accidental form (which changes not the identity of a substance, but its accidental features), actualization of PM formed by the SF of water (H2O) by the accidental form (AF) of ice disposes it to be formed anew—in the process of accidental change—by the AF of liquid water or the AF of water vapor (sublimation). Neither of the above changes simultaneously affects the substantial identity of water (i.e., the actualization of a given “portion” of PM by the SF of water). Ideas presented in this and remaining sections were further developed in Mariusz Tabaczek, “What Do God and Creatures Really Do in an Evolutionary Change? Divine Concurrence and Transformism from the Thomistic Perspective,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 93, no. 3 (2019): 445–82, and Tabaczek, “The Metaphysics of Evolution: From Aquinas’s Interpretation of Augustine’s Concept of Rationes Seminales to the Contemporary Thomistic Account of Species Transformism,” Nova et Vetera (English) 18, no. 3 (2020): 945–72. Thomistic Evolution: A Catholic Approach to Understanding Evolution 231 following two days as the work of distinction (opus distinctionis), and of the last three days as the work of adornment (opus ornatus).8 Focusing on the work of creation, Aquinas states that it resulted in the origination (ex nihilo) of the primitive matter of entities, which already at the starting point of the history of the universe was the PM formed by the SFs of elements (in line with the views still valid in his times, St. Thomas here distinguishes between earth, water, air, and fire).9 Accordingly, as Aquinas points out, the subsequent stages of origination of more complex beings, which he refers to as production (productio), are, in a sense, mediated by more basic forms of contingent beings. This is so not in the sense, however, that they might have a creative potency consisting in the derivation of beings from nothingness (ex nihilo)—only God possesses such power—but in the sense that they might derive a new kind of beings from the potentiality of PM. It is earth— St. Thomas reads in the Book of Genesis—that brought forth plants: the green grass and fruit-bearing trees. It is water that produced the abundance of swimming beings, as well as birds (although there is no straightforward information in the Bible that birds emerged from the water, this is what St. Thomas thinks). It is earth that brought forth all kinds of living beings: cattle, amphibians, and various types of wild animals (see Figure 1). Figure 1. The distinction between the three stages of the work of six days as depicted in Gen 1. In this context, it becomes clear that, rather than the traditional, more literal interpretation of the account of creation as formulated by St. Basil 8 9 See ST I, q. 65, introduction; 66, aa. 1–2. St. Thomas uses the term “creation” again in his description of the origin of man. See ST I, q. 66, a. 1, ad 2. 232 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. the Great, St. Ambrose, or St. John of Damascus, the theory that is closer to St. Thomas’s view is the concept of rationes seminales (i.e., seminal reasons) put forward by St. Augustine (see Ku’s discussion in chapter 16). Following Augustine’s train of thought, Aquinas argues that plants and trees might have been produced (productio) in their causes: Therefore, the production of plants in their causes, within the earth, took place before they sprang up from the earth’s surface. . . . In these first days God created all things in their origin or causes, and from this work He subsequently rested. Yet afterwards, by governing His creatures, in the work of propagation, “He worketh until now.” Now the production of plants from out the earth is a work of propagation, and therefore they were not produced in act on the third day, but in their causes only. (ST I, q. 69, a. 2, corp.) The situation is similar in the case of fish and birds, speaking of which Augustine says that on the fifth day “the nature of the waters produced them . . . potentially [potentialiter]” (ST I, q. 71, a. 1, corp.), as well as in the case of land animals whose “production was potential” as well (ST I, q. 72, a. 1, corp.).10 The Metaphysics of Evolutionary Changes Needless to say, the stand taken by Augustine is not identical to Darwin’s theory of evolution. The concept of rationes seminales implies that everything has been, in a sense, included in primordial matter which was the result of the original act of creation. Thus, new species of inanimate and animate beings are merely revealed in the course of the history of the universe (it remains debatable whether the theory of rationes seminales signifies a metaphysically understood potentiality or can be defined in terms of a physical presence of the “seeds” of future beings). From Darwin’s perspective, this theory is insufficient, since, in his opinion, evolution entails absolute novelty and not the mere revealing of entities which had already somehow been in existence. However, when rationes seminales are interpreted in the context of the key principles underlying Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics and ontology, as an expression of the potentiality of PM, then the thesis of the absolute novelty of the species newly emerging in the history of the universe can be 10 St. Thomas refers to the concept of rationes seminales also on other occasions; see quotes from In sent. and ST mentioned by Ku in chapter 17; see also de pot., q. 4, a. 2, ad 28, and ST I, q. 69, a. 2, corp. Thomistic Evolution: A Catholic Approach to Understanding Evolution 233 defended. In accordance with the same principles, we can perceive evolutionary change as a series—consolidated by natural selection—of contingent (accidental) changes in the structure of genetic material (DNA). These changes are reflected in the morphology and physiology of a given organism, or a line of organisms of a given species. They result in a gradual alteration of PM’s disposition, leading to a specific moment in which the PM formed by the ovumSF and spermSF—during the course of a substantial change arising from their joining together—is not disposed to being formed by the SF typical of parents belonging to species S1, but to being formed by the SF of a new/other kind, belonging to species S2. Such a form is educed (educatur, from Latin educere) from the PM’s potentiality (see Figure 2).11 Ovum SF = substantial form Sperm PM = primary matter New organism S1 S2 = species 1 and 2 Figure 2. Model representation of the final stage of an evolutionary change The above-discussed process is of a polygenic character, a result of many mutations (the effects of which are regulated by natural selection). Consequently, capturing the moment in which a species actually changes is extremely difficult, probably even impossible, which, however, does not rule out the possibility of it occurring. In sum, for Aristotle and St. Thomas, species exist in reality and are immutable, as well as eternal, in the sense that each is defined in reference 11 See Aristotle, Metaphys. 7.8.1034a1–9); Aquinas, De pot., q. 5, a. 1, ad 5. It is worth noting that both the question of the definition of species, as well as the problem of specifying the unit being subject to evolutionary changes, are lively debated in biology and philosophy of biology. See, e.g., Marc Ereshefsky, “Species,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, summer 2022 ed., plato.stanford.edu/ archives/sum2022/entries/species/; Richard A. Richards, “Species and Taxonomy,” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Biology, ed. Michael Ruse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 161–88; David N. Stamos, The Species Problem, Biological Species, Ontology, and the Metaphysics of Biology (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2003); Robert A. Wilson, ed., Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays (Cambridge, MA: Bradford, 1999); M. F. Claridge, A. H. Dawah, and M. R. Wilson, eds., Species: The Units of Biodiversity (London: Springer, 1997); Marc Ereshefsky, ed., The Units of Evolution: Essays on the Nature of Species (Cambridge, MA: Bradford, 1992). 234 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. to SF, which determines the fact that a given species is what it is and displays certain permanent features, the permanent principles of motion and rest (mutability and permanence), action and reaction.12 These forms are a realization of exemplary ideas in God’s mind which actualize corresponding and properly disposed PM.13 At the same time, each species exists only as realized (instantiated) in specific, individual, and changeable organisms immersed in time. Hence, the essential intrinsic properties of species are immutable, whereas their realization in nature is changeable and diversified (it is manifested on the level of accidental properties of organisms belonging to the same species). This fact enables intraspecies variability, as well as the occurrence of evolutionary processes and the emergence of new species, that is, deriving new SFs from PM, which is pure potentiality. The Causality of God and of the Creatures in Evolution With regard to concursus divinus naturalis—the “cooperation” between the causality of God and that of his creatures in the process of the emergence of new species by way of evolution—the model I have proposed above does not negate the principle that only God can be the Creator. Inanimate and animate beings involved in the causally polygenic evolutionary change become not so much the secondary causes of deriving the first representative of a newly formed species out of nothing (ex nihilo) or the causes of its existence and essence as such (in se), but rather the secondary/instrumental causes of its SF being educed from the potentiality of PM and of the fact of its coming into existence in space and time.14 Such interpretation calls for elaboration and/or further specification of the stance taken by St. Thomas, at least as far as four of its essential aspects are concerned: (1) recognizing the possibility of the emergence of 12 13 14 These principles apply to numerous features of organisms, their morphology and physiology, in a way that gives space for dynamism and change (we observe a fair amount of permanently defined changes in a living being in all major biochemical pathways). I offer a fuller definition of species in my Theistic Evolution: A Contemporary Aristotelian-Thomistic Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 81. See ST I, q. 15, aa. 1–3. It needs to be underscored that, according to St. Thomas, PM is also created (see ST I, q. 44, a. 2, corp.). At this point, it is worth adding that the term “cooperation” does not fully convey the analogical character of the causality of the creatures in relation to the causality of God. It suggests, in fact, that both of them act in the same ontological order. Meanwhile, God’s causality should be referred to as action which originates in the transcendent order of causation—in which the primary cause (the principal one) acts through the secondary and instrumental created causes manifesting their action in an immanent order of causation. Thomistic Evolution: A Catholic Approach to Understanding Evolution 235 new species, that is, acknowledging that the perfection of the universe can increase every day not only in terms of the number of individual beings, but also as regards the number of species; (2) emphasizing the fact that God’s initial act of creation is limited to the derivation of matter of the lowest degree of complexity out of nothing (ex nihilo); (3) recognizing the fact that the processes of chemical, biochemical, and biological evolution belong to the work of adornment (opus ornatus), whose subsequent stages spread out across the entire history of the universe and, therefore, are not limited to a finished and past time period; and finally (4) acknowledging that God’s direct intervention in the creation of the first representatives of plant and animal species (with the exception of man) is not necessary. The above changes seem to be justified within the Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical and theological system, which proves its flexibility and applicability within the context of contemporary scientific knowledge (in this case, particularly in the field of biology). Thomism and the Evolution of the Human Species Applying the aforementioned model of the theory of evolution from Thomistic perspective to the problem of the origins of the human species allows one to avoid certain difficulties which emerge in the otherwise accurate and intriguing analysis presented by Austriaco (see chapters 19–28). Strictly speaking, humans, rather than being “spirit–matter composites” (see chapter 24) are material beings whose actualizing principle is their immortal soul (the category of “spirit” in St. Paul’s anthropology stands for spiritual, and hence supernatural, life and differs from the soul—see, e.g., 1 Thess 5:23).15 In other words, as viewed within the Aristotelian-Thomistic school, man is not a mereological composition of two separate substances, body and soul, but a homogeneous corporeal substance whose SF is the immortal soul. What is more, it needs to be underlined that the appropriate correlate of the human soul as SF (on the most profound level of the analysis of being) is PM; hence, man can be defined as an immortal soul actualizing PM in the organic human body (see Q.D. an., a. 9, corp.). The above definition highlights the unity of the human being, as a consequence of which the human body cannot exist without the human soul. Thus, even if colloquially death is referred to as the separation of the soul from the body, sensu stricto— from a metaphysical point of view—death is a substantial change as a result of which a subsistent (that is, existing autonomously—as an exception among the SFs of all the other contingent beings) human soul comes into existence, 15 See the corrected version of this view in Tabaczek, Theistic Evolution, 224-25. 236 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. as well as a corpse, which is no longer a human body (despite its striking resemblance to one).16 It becomes evident, in this context, that the analogy suggested by Austriaco (see chapter 24) of the soul and the body “fitting” together like a lock and key, illustrates the relation of the soul as SF to PM only to a somewhat limited extent.17 The problem discussed here is crucial for the appropriate understanding of the question of the origin of the human species via evolution (assuming that it is indeed how man came into existence). Austriaco (chapter 24) states correctly that, in the course of evolutionary processes, matter was prepared for being formed by the human soul. Nevertheless, he does not mention in this context that, in a strict sense, this preparation of matter refers to a philosophically defined PM: namely, PM that, by way of polygenic evolutionary changes, became properly disposed to being formed by the soul of the first man, which was created directly by God ex nihilo (and such was also the origin of the souls of all descendants of the first parents). Here, a lack of precision in metaphysical analysis might result in a dualistic view according to which the human body originates through evolutionary changes, whereas the human soul, that enters it, originates from God. Unfortunately, such remarks appear, among other places, in several official statements delivered by the Church with regard to evolution (see Pius XII, Humani Generis, §36, and John Paul II’s 1996 Message to the Members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences). From the perspective of divine omnipotence, it is not impossible for the Creator to have caused a substantial change as a result of which the first immortal human soul actualized PM that was, prior to this—immediately before the above-mentioned change—formed by the SF of a fully grown hominid (Homo sapiens), thereby giving rise to a new species of Homo sapiens sapiens. Such a change, however, should not be interpreted in terms of the soul entering or joining the body of the hominid that, after all, must have had its own SF. On the contrary, it would have to be interpreted as a radical substantial change as a result of which the PM formed by the SF of an adult Homo sapiens would be formed anew by the SF of an adult Homo sapiens sapiens. We must admit that a transformation of this kind appears to be inconsistent with the fundamental intuition of Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, according to which the substantial change that accompanies the emergence of a new descendant of the same 16 17 See In II de an., lec. 1, nos. 225–26. Moreover, what needs to be pointed out is the rather imprecise, if not erroneous, character of the thesis formulated by Austriaco, who also in chapter 24 states that “our soul, unlike the rose soul or the kangaroo soul, is immaterial.” In line with the principles of classical metaphysics, every soul—be it plant, animal, or human—as SF, is immaterial. Thomistic Evolution: A Catholic Approach to Understanding Evolution 237 species, or the first representative of a new species, occurs in the moment of their conception. Nevertheless, it seems that it would be appropriate (to employ an argument ex convenientia, often used by St. Thomas) for the origin of the human species to have occurred exactly in this manner, through the actualization of properly disposed PM by the first immortal human soul (SF of the Homo sapiens sapiens species) at the time of the conception of the descendant of parents belonging to the Homo sapiens species. The first scholar to have pointed this out, simultaneously providing a correct, in our opinion, interpretation of evolutionary changes as viewed within the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition (in the context of the evolution of humankind), was the French Dominican Marie-Dalmace Leroy (1828–1905).18 His position, formulated in a period of far-reaching caution and skepticism towards the theory of the evolution of the human species on the part of the Church, did not receive a suitable reaction from philosophers and theologians active at the turn of the twentieth century. Even at present Marie-Dalmace Leroy is not given the attention he deserves. Conclusion Summing up our discussion, it should be emphasized that the views expressed above are fundamentally compatible with the key theses presented by the authors of Thomistic Evolution: A Catholic Approach to Understanding Evolution in the Light of Faith. At the same time, we sincerely hope that we have managed to provide a broader picture of the complex challenges that the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition must face on encountering the theory of biological evolution. As already mentioned, the challenges and difficulties in question do not disqualify classical thought. On the contrary, they serve as a most emphatic demonstration of its flexibility and relevance in the context of contemporary natural sciences. 18 See M.-D. Leroy, L’évolution restreinte aux espèces organiques (Paris: Delhomme & Brigue, 1891). Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2024): 239–254 239 Where Do Substantial Forms Come From? —A Critique of the Theistic Evolution of Mariusz Tabaczek*1 Michael Chaberek, O.P. En Arche Foundation Warsaw, Poland Translated by Monika Metlerska-Colerick Introduction The question posed in the present article is whether it is possible to be a proponent of theistic evolution and, at the same time, of the metaphysical *1 This article was originally published in Polish as Michał Chaberek, “Skąd pochodzą nowe formy substancjalne?—Polemika z teistycznym ewolucjonizmem w ujęciu Mariusza Tabaczka,” Roczniki Filozoficzne [Annals of Philosophy] 68, no. 4 (2020): 199–215. This issue of the English edition of Nova et Vetera also includes both an English translation of Tabaczek’s original Afterword (to the work cited in note 2) and a translation of his reply to my critique (“Evolution and Creation—A Response to Michael Chaberek’s Critique of Theistic Evolution,” on 255–84 of the present journal issue), which was originally published in Polish as Mariusz Tabaczek, “Ewolucja a dzieło stworzenia— odpowiedź na polemikę Michała Chaberka z teistycznym ewolucjonizmem,” Roczniki Filozoficzne [Annals of Philosophy] 68, no. 4 (2020): 217–49. The English translations were sponsored by the Templeton Foundation (Grant ID 61360 Thomistic Evolution and the Defense of Faith and Reason: Engaging Catholic Families, Philosophers, and Theologians). Some of the original Polish bibliography references were changed and updated to make the text more relevant for an English-speaking audience. All three pieces have undergone minor editing to conform to the journal’s style. Citations of all three use the page numbers of the publications in the present journal issue, and abbreviations for the references to the works of Aristotle, Augustine, and St. Thomas, including published critical editions and English-translation editions used in citations, can be found in the bibliography section of the introduction to the interchange in the present journal issue. 240 Michael Chaberek, O.P. principles elaborated by St. Thomas Aquinas. The authors of Thomistic Evolution: a Catholic Approach to Understanding Evolution in the Light of Faith, recently published in Polish, imply that Aquinas’s doctrine was not only compatible with the idea of biological macroevolution, but also—on some level—endorsed it.1 In his “Afterword” to the above publication, Mariusz Tabaczek points out certain deficiencies in the argumentation provided by its authors, simultaneously underlining that he agrees with the book’s principal thesis. I will not examine the book by the American Dominicans in this article because I have already addressed their arguments in full in my book entitled Aquinas and Evolution,2 where I demonstrated that it is impossible to be both a proponent of theistic evolution and a follower of the philosophical views proposed by St. Thomas. In his “Afterword,” Tabaczek presents a contradictory thesis. He claims that being both of the above is possible, provided that one modifies St. Thomas’s teaching in four “essential aspects.” The very approach of this kind already raises doubts. After all, if St. Thomas’s doctrine indeed needs to be modified in order to reconcile his thought with evolution, it suggests that, in fact, it cannot be reconciled with it. Therefore, perhaps the problem comes down to asking whether the four points of incompatibility indicated by Tabaczek really constitute an “essential” part of Aquinas’s doctrine? If it is not the case, they might be omitted or modified. If, however, they relate to certain essential elements of Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, disregarding them equals denying St. Thomas’s teaching and, consequently, makes it impossible to reconcile it with theistic evolution. In order to settle the problem, I devote the first part of my article to determining whether the points presented by Tabaczek refer to the essential elements of Aquinas’s discourse. In the second part of my text, however, I move to a more important point, namely the fact that theistic evolution encounters many more problems in the context of Thomistic metaphysics. Since I have already addressed this matter in several places,3 I limit the scope 1 2 3 Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, James Brent, O.P., Thomas Davenport, O.P., and John Baptist Ku, O.P., Thomistic Evolution: A Catholic Approach to Understanding Evolution in the Light of Faith (Tacoma, WA: Cluny Media, 2016). Michael Chaberek, Aquinas and Evolution: Why St. Thomas’ Teaching on the Origins Is Incompatible with Evolutionary Theory, 2nd ed. (British Columbia: Chartwell, 2019). Michael Chaberek, “Classical Metaphysics and Theistic Evolution: Why Are They Incompatible?” Studia Gilsoniana 8, no. 1 (2019): 47–81; Chaberek, “The Metaphysical Problem for Theistic Evolution: Accidental Change Does Not Generate Substantial Change,” Forum Philosophicum, 26, no. 1 (2021): 35–49; Chaberek, Knowledge and Evolution: How Theology, Philosophy and Science Converge in the Question of Origins (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2021), 114–31. Where Do Substantial Forms Come From? 241 of the second part of my article to only one such problem: the emergence of new substantial forms (new species) via the mechanism of evolution. Thus, the object of the present analysis is to examine whether the solution suggested by Tabaczek provides an explanation to the problem of the origin of new substantial forms in theistic evolution. Commentary on the Four Points of Incompatibility According to Tabaczek, the teaching of St. Thomas can be reconciled with theistic evolution under the conditions of: (1) recognizing the possibility of the emergence of new species, that is, acknowledging that the perfection of the universe can increase every day not only in terms of the number of individual beings, but also as regards the number of species; (2) emphasizing the fact that God’s initial act of creation is limited to the derivation of matter of the lowest degree of complexity out of nothing (ex nihilo); (3) recognizing the fact that the processes of chemical, biochemical, and biological evolution belong to the work of adornment (opus ornatus), whose subsequent stages spread out across the entire history of the universe and, therefore, are not limited to a finished and past time period; and finally (4) acknowledging that God’s direct intervention in the creation of the first representatives of plant and animal species (with the exception of man) is not necessary.4 Ad (1) and ad (3). Points 1 and 3 boil down to the same idea, since they are both concerned with the fact that evolution continues, whereas from the Christian perspective, the divine work of creation had already finished. Therefore, if one adopts theistic evolution, the Christian truth of God completing his creative work with the creation of man has to be rejected. The problem is that the above is not a philosophical truth, but a strictly religious one, that is, revealed by God. Obviously, scientific research, such as that conducted in the fields of geology and palaeontology, can provide some historical details, but does not, on its own, provide an explanation for the origin of the world, species, and man. It is at this point that we uncover that theistic evolution is not so much conflicted with Thomistic metaphysics per 4 Mariusz Tabaczek, “Afterword to the Polish Edition of Thomistic Evolution A Catholic Approach to Understanding Evolution in the Light of Faith,” 234–35. 242 Michael Chaberek, O.P. se as it is with something of a more fundamental character—the Christian faith as interpreted by the Church over the centuries. The truth regarding creation as completed is not an idea encountered only in the writings of Aquinas, although—as in the case of the other truths of faith—he expresses it in a very accurate manner. St. Thomas says, for example, that, after creation was completed, new individuals of particular species can still emerge, but new species cannot.5 Of course, it needs to be continuously borne in mind that what we refer to in discussions of macroevolution is the idea of species understood more broadly than merely as biological species. We mean entirely new natures, as different as a dog, cat, horse, or a monkey. St. Thomas repeats in accord with the Bible and traditional theology that creation is finished exactly in terms of the emergence of such absolute innovations of this kind. It needs to be noted that also the natural sciences point to devolution and entropy, rather than the arrival of essential innovations in the world. What we do observe in nature is merely speciation, the development of biological species. A process of this kind can be traced both in laboratories and in nature. Still, the development of new races, varieties or strains does not prove the emergence of entirely new forms of life. In fact, speciation takes place mainly through devolution, the biological impoverishment of a population.6 Therefore, the above claim of theistic evolution not only stands in opposition to the Christian truth defended by St. Thomas, but is at odds with the facts of nature. Ad (2). The second point is baseless, because Aquinas does not state anything other than the things identified by Tabaczek as a point of incompatibility. For St. Thomas, the first act of creation (prima creatio) is precisely the bringing out of nothing of a certain primordial matter of an indefinite form. He assigns the shaping of that matter to the second act of creation (secunda creatio), the work of distinction and the work of adornment.7 Also, the scientific view of the formation of the world demonstrates the gradual increase of the complexity of beings taking place over the course of time. Such a vision corresponds to the theological concept 5 6 7 See ST I, q. 118, a. 3, ad 2: “Something can be added every day to the perfection of the universe, as to the number of individuals, but not as to the number of species.” A thorough analysis of this process can be found in Michael Behe, Darwin Devolves (New York: HarperOne, 2019). St. Thomas distinguishes between the first creation and the second creation, i.e., the supernatural shaping of the world over the course of time to which the Book of Genesis refers as the six days. The second act of creation is divided into the work of distinction (opus distinctionis) and the work of adornment (opus ornatus). See ST I, qq. 65–74; De pot., q. 3, a. 18, obj. 12 and ad 11; q. 5, a. 9, ad 8. See also In II sent., d. 12, q. 1, a. 5, corp.; d. 15, q. 1, proem. Where Do Substantial Forms Come From? 243 of the second act of creation (opus distinctionis, opus ornatus). Thus, also in this case we can see that—with regard to its essential aspects—the traditional Christian doctrine is consistent with data provided by contemporary science. Ad (4). The fourth point is no different from points (1) and (3), since the conviction that new species are still emerging means simply that the work of creation is not finished. Thus, the response given to points (1) and (3) is applicable also in this case. Nonetheless, I examine point (4) separately because its author makes another common mistake here, which consists in confusing the work of creation with divine intervention. Let us briefly explain what the nature of that mistake is. Intervention (Latin inter-venio, to come between) signifies God’s involvement in a certain sequence of cause and effect in order to change its outcome. For instance, during the Annunciation, God, employing a secondary cause (enacted by Archangel Gabriel) comes to the Virgin Mary to change the story of her life and, simultaneously, the course of human history. Similarly, various miracles of healing, in which human fate is altered thanks to God’s supernatural action, can be counted as interventions. Making the sun stand still over Gibeon was also an instance of divine intervention, owing to which the Israelites were able to gain a full victory, as was the Miracle of the Sun in Fatima, as a result of which many atheists willingly converted. Nevertheless, there is no intervention in the work of creation, since the divine act of creation is not interfering with a chain of cause and effect, but rather initiating a sequence of that kind. Intervention entails the existence of causes and effects, whereas creation does not entail any existence (or implies nothingness). As long as there was no species, there was also no chain of cause and effect it might have been involved in. Creating a particular species was not a case of intervention, but of introducing a new kind of being. Obviously, once created, a new species is immediately involved in numerous cause-and-effect chains. This is why God speaking to the prophet through a donkey’s mouth represents divine intervention, but the creation of the equine species does not. What also needs to be questioned, with regard to point (4), are the grounds on which Tabaczek limits God’s direct creative action to only two moments: the first act of creation (creatio ex nihilo) and the creation of the human soul. As already stressed, science does not provide information on how species emerged, but only informs us that they did. Palaeontology may indicate to us when particular species came into existence, and even provide us with their numbers and the amount of time that had passed before they became extinct. Nevertheless, science does not give us an explanation on the origin of species. Therefore, there is no available scientific data that 244 Michael Chaberek, O.P. would require limiting God’s creative action to merely two points in time. On the other hand, not even the Bible limits divine acts of creation to the first creation (prima creatio) and to the creation of the human soul. After all, it refers both to the development of the world and to the creation of species and the first human body. Thus, the limits set by Tabaczek are entirely arbitrary—they are neither grounded in scientific data nor based on theological premises. They are a result of an attempt to subordinate Christian faith to the theories of evolution. The problem is that, within the framework of consistent naturalism, the creation of the world (in the sense of its absolute beginning) is also rejected, and so is the creation of the soul. Consequently, on this point, theistic evolution is incompatible both with traditional Christian faith and with consistent evolutionary theories.8 The Problem of the Origin of New Substantial Forms One of the fundamental elements of classic metaphysics is the division of being into substance and accidents. In the simplest terms, substance signifies what an entity is, whereas accidents indicate its traits, what it is like. Accordingly, we can distinguish between two types of change—the substantial one, in which it is the essence (substance or nature) of an entity that changes (an entity ceases to exist and is replaced with a new entity), and the accidental one, in which an entity continues to be what it is and only its accidents change (i.e., its properties and various characteristics). By definition, the accidental change does not alter the essence of a being: it cannot make a being cease to be itself. Should an entity lose its essence as a result of change, it is not through the accidental, but the substantial one. This fundamental principle of Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics poses a difficulty for theistic evolution. This is because, within evolution viewed as a regular process of nature (which is how evolution is understood in theistic evolution), all changes are merely accidental. The often evoked “evolutionary change” of this kind is that of genetic mutations, which—consolidated by natural selection—are supposed to result in the origin of new organic structures, and eventually also new species (keep in mind that we mean 8 By “traditional Christian faith” we mean the teachings of the Church on the act of creation exactly as they were presented before the era of theistic evolutionism, i.e., until the beginning of the twentieth century. The above teaching was articulated in a theological treatise De Deo creante (often under the title De Deo creante et elevante, since it also incorporated the doctrine of original sin). The foundations of the above teaching can be found in the texts of authors such as Camillo Mazzella, Joseph Pohle, Christian Pesch, P. Boyer, P. Mannens, Adolphe Tanquerey, and others. Where Do Substantial Forms Come From? 245 new taxonomic families, or the so-called “natural species”). Therefore, the accumulation of a series of accidental changes in subsequent generations would result in a substantial change. Nevertheless, in the light of Thomistic metaphysics, it is impossible, because accidental changes always remain on the level of accidents and cannot produce a new nature. Thus, either theistic evolution is logically contradictory (assuming that an accidental change is simultaneously the substantial one), or it completely negates the existence of substance in a strict metaphysical sense. This is precisely the problem encountered by the proposition formulated by Tabaczek, who provides the following explanation for evolution: We can perceive evolutionary change as a series—consolidated by natural selection—of contingent (accidental) changes in the structure of genetic material (DNA). These changes are reflected in the morphology and physiology of a given organism, or a line of organisms of a given species. They result in a gradual alteration of PM’s disposition [PM = primary matter],9 leading to a specific moment in which the PM formed by the ovumSF [SF = substantial form] and SF—during the course of a substantial change arising from their sperm joining together—is not disposed to being formed by the SF typical of parents belonging to species S1, but to being formed by the SF of a new/other kind, belonging to species S2. Such a form is educed (educatur, from the Latin educere) from the PM’s potentiality.10 It is worth pointing out that the solution suggested above does not introduce anything new into the discussion concerning St. Thomas and evolution. It had been already put forward nearly a century ago by Charles De Koninck, and in more recent times the argument was modified by Michael Bolin, who pushed it to the limits.11 Since Tabaczek introduces certain biological elements to this otherwise metaphysical argument, my response is divided into two parts. I address philosophy first and then move to the biology included in his argument. 9 10 11 It should be pointed out that Tabaczek makes an imprecise use of the term “primary matter.” Primary matter with a disposition is a designated matter (materia designata), and it is a type of matter that—together with form—makes up an individual entity. Tabaczek, “Afterword,” 233. I respond to this argument in Aquinas and Evolution (2nd ed.), 45, 78–80. 246 Michael Chaberek, O.P. Philosophical Challenge for the Proposed Solution Incorrect Understanding of Substance Thomists who claim that new substantial forms can originate as a result of accidental change make one of two possible mistakes. Both errors stem from an incorrect understanding of Aquinas’s interpretation of substantial form. In the first scenario, Thomistic evolutionists formulate a claim approximately to this effect: “If we cut off a chicken’s head, we introduce an accidental change which, nonetheless, leads to a substantial change, since the essence of the chicken is lost. The chicken changes into chicken meat, an entirely different nature. Apparently, accidental change can result in substantial change after all.” What we are witnessing in this instance, however, is substantial form (i.e., the species form) being mistaken for the individual form of a given being. Actually, killing a particular chicken does not in any way alter the chicken species. It only causes the loss of a chicken’s substantial form, the one existing in this one chicken, the individual form. Various accidental changes alter the individual form of a given being, but what remains unchanged in the being in question is its substantial form, which determines its belonging to a given species. If, however, the changes introduced to an individual being exceed certain limits, resulting in matter losing its proportion to form, form will fade away and a given being will cease to exist. All the same, it does not lead to the emergence of any new species, but merely to the annihilation of an individual member of a particular species. The above mistake is also made by Tabaczek, who expressly rejects the existence of substantial form in specific individuals. In the light of his interpretation, the substantial form exists in the mind of God and it becomes realized only in particular beings as changeable individual forms.12 This approach is closer to Plato’s interpretation, whereas in the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition the substantial form of a given species really 12 See Tabaczek, “Afterword,” 233–34: In sum, for Aristotle and St. Thomas, species exist in reality and are immutable, as well as eternal, in the sense that each is defined in reference to SF, which determines the fact that a given species is what it is and displays certain permanent features, the permanent principles of motion and rest (mutability and permanence), action and reaction. These forms are a realization of exemplary ideas in God’s mind which actualize corresponding and properly disposed PM. At the same time, each species exists only as realized (instantiated) in specific, individual, and changeable organisms immersed in time. Hence, the essential intrinsic properties of species are immutable, whereas their realization in nature is changeable and diversified (it is manifested on the level of accidental properties of organisms belonging to the same species). Where Do Substantial Forms Come From? 247 exists (in re) in every individual being. Therein lies differentia specifica of the Thomistic approach, referred to as moderate realism (opposed to various kinds of idealisms). Thus, in order to reconcile evolution with metaphysics, Tabaczek de facto forsakes Thomistic metaphysics, since moderate realism— the real existence of species within individuals—constitutes the very core of Aquinas’s metaphysics and its fundamental cognitive assumption. In the second scenario, Thomistic evolutionists maintain—in summary— that: “When we add salt to water, we obtain brine. Adding salt is an accidental change; however, water and brine are two different substances.” One could provide many examples of this kind. Freezing water results in it changing to ice and appropriate nuclear reactions transform an atom of lead into an atom of gold. Tabaczek, in turn, gives the example of sulphur changing into sulphur dioxide, and sulphur dioxide changing into hydrogen sulphide.13 All of the above are instances of accidental change. Therefore, apparently, accidental change can lead to the emergence of a new substance. However, in this case, evolutionists forget about the analogical meaning of substance and mistake it for things that can be hardly called substances in the metaphysical sense. Substance is the most definite, most distinct, and most indivisible. That is why, in the strictest sense, only God is a substance, because he is the most simple, indivisible, definite, and distinct and, in the ultimate sense, he exists. Everything else is a substance only by way of participation. St. Thomas assumes a hierarchy of substances, which in descending order extends from angels, past humans, animals, and plants, to compounds and elements. Hence, elements are substances only in a very weak sense, to the degree that they, in fact, cannot be referred to as such. They are, precisely, elements, negations of substance, because they are most divisible, mixed, and indefinite. The first real substances, on the level of complex entities, are plants, and even more precisely, only the species of the so-called higher animals (or “perfect species”) are substances in the strict sense (St. Thomas exemplifies them with a lion and a man, hence one can infer that what he means are all mammals—probably also birds and reptiles). Since elements are not substances, no changes occurring within them are, strictly speaking, substantial ones. Obviously, in everyday speech we refer to sulphur and hydrogen sulphide as two different substances, but the colloquial use of the word “substance” cannot be confused with its metaphysical meaning. On the level of changes which occur within elements 13 See Tabaczek, “Afterword,” 230. In support of this thesis, Tabaczek quotes Q.D. de an., q. 9, corp. However, the quote cannot be used in the context of evolution, because what St. Thomas refers to at this point is ontogenesis, whereas biological evolution involves phylogenesis. 248 Michael Chaberek, O.P. and compounds, no innovation emerges. For instance, the formation of crystals—which for theistic evolutionists is probably the best example of the so-called “emergence”—does not result in any innovation whatsoever. What is manifested in changes of this kind are merely certain physical properties of elements which are present in them all the time but do not become apparent under different conditions. In contrast, the process of biological macroevolution would result in entirely new substantial forms, such as a cat, an eagle, or a whale. And an innovation of such kind cannot come into existence due to accidental change. A new type of nature has to start existing as a certain whole, by creative act, instantly, because it is a new substance in the metaphysical sense. As a side note to the present discussion, we should add that Thomistic evolutionists often argue against the so-called “reductionism” in biology which regards living organisms as machines, the sum of their parts. Thomists recognize that organisms are more than that and that they cannot be reduced to the sum of their parts because living beings have an immaterial principle of their operation, which is the substantial form. We should notice, however, that one cannot coherently state that organisms are not a sum of their parts and maintain, at the same time, that they emerged in the course of evolution, which is an accumulation of minute changes. After all, if the emergence of new species is determined by subsequent biological components being added to old species, the logically inferred conclusion should be that organisms indeed are a compilation of parts. Incidentally, the said reductionism in biology stems precisely from assuming that evolution can explain the emergence of biological diversity. Thus, Thomists adopting evolutionism have no grounds to reject mechanistic reductionism in biology, since they themselves presuppose it. Faulty Understanding of the Disposition of Matter Another well-known argument appearing in Tabaczek’s reasoning is that new substantial forms (new species) emerge—as it were—spontaneously, when matter determined by one form acquires a disposition to assume a new form.14 Again, this argument stems from a mistaken understanding of the Aristotelian-Thomistic hylomorphism. According to St. Thomas, matter is actualized by form, but not in such a way that there is a certain disposition of matter that can change independently 14 Most probably the first to propose this solution was Charles DeKoninck, “The Cosmos: The Philosophic Point of View,” in The Writings of Charles De Koninck, ed. and trans. Ralph McInerny, vol. 1 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), 256–321, at 278–83. Where Do Substantial Forms Come From? 249 from the form.15 The first disposition of matter is its quantity, since there has to be an appropriate quantity of matter for a given form. However, matter does not determine itself—it is the form that provides the whole designation (the entire actuality of matter). When a disposition changes and a new species emerges, it is because the form changes. Hence, it is not that, in a certain being, under given form, the disposition of matter is changing independently until, eventually, matter assumes a new form. Should that be the case, disposition might play the part of form, and form would be redundant. Some of Aquinas’s statements explicitly contradict the solution proposed by Tabaczek: The difference of form which is due only to the different disposition of matter, causes not a specific but only a numerical difference: for different individuals have different forms, diversified according to the difference of matter. (ST I, q. 85, a. 7, obj. 3) Forms are not consequent upon the disposition of matter as their first cause; on the contrary, the reason why matters are disposed in such and such ways is that there might be forms of such and such kinds. Now, it is by their forms that things are distinguished into species. Therefore, it is not in the diversity of matter that the first cause of the distinction of things is to be found. (SCG II, ch. 40, no. 3) In the interpretation presented by Tabaczek,16 a new substantial form appears like a rabbit out of a magician’s hat as soon as matter acquires a suitable disposition. In his approach, what serves as the active (actualizing) factor is not form anymore, as St. Thomas maintains, but matter. Thus, 15 16 See the following passages from St. Thomas: “Dispositions of matter remain with the substantial form” (In I sent., d. 1, q. 4, a. 2, corp.); “Form and matter must always be mutually proportioned and, as it were, naturally adapted, because the proper act is produced in its proper matter. That is why matter and form must always agree with one another in respect to multiplicity and unity. Consequently, if the being of the form depends on matter, its multiplication, as well as its unity, depends on matter, but if this is not the case, then the form will have to be multiplied in accordance with the multiplication of the matter, that is to say, together with the matter and in proportion to it; yet not in such a manner that the unity or multiplicity of the form itself depends upon the matter” (SCG II, ch. 80, no. 8); “So long as the matter’s disposition to the form remains, the form itself remains, and when the disposition goes, the form also goes” (In I de an., lec. 9, no. 13). Note that the fact that a lack of disposition of matter necessitates the departure of the form does not imply that the presence of disposition of matter necessitates the arrival of a new form. See Tabaczek, “Afterword,” Figure 2 on 233. 250 Michael Chaberek, O.P. Tabaczek’s view boils down to a view that matter reshapes itself into new forms on its own. This is the essence of materialism, but has nothing to do with Thomistic metaphysics. Invoking the idea of concursus divinus in this context does not solve the problem, since divine cooperation relates to the order of providence and not the order of creation. Concursus divinus explains the way in which God cooperates in the natural events occurring in the already formed world. The emergence of species, on the contrary, refers to the order of creation, the supernatural and direct action of God aimed at forming the world. Moreover, the very concept of concursus divinus is as alien to Aquinas as the idea of creatio continua. Incompatibility with Biological Findings In the light of Tabaczek’s approach, new species emerge as a result of the accumulation of numerous genetic mutations: The above-discussed process is of a polygenic character, a result of many mutations (the effects of which are regulated by natural selection). Consequently, capturing the moment in which a species actually changes is extremely difficult, probably even impossible, which, however, does not rule out the possibility of it occurring.17 It is an empirically confirmed fact that new biological species can develop by way of microevolution; therefore, there is no denying that to a very limited extent the above view is correct.18 However, as we have already pointed out, in the debate on evolution, the dispute does not concern the origin of the minor changes, but of the entirely new life forms—like the ones found on the taxonomic level of genus or family. And, should species be defined thus, Tabaczek’s approach faces at least two problems of a biological nature. 1. First of all, it is not true that any kind of mutation brings about evolution. For evolution to progress, even by the smallest of steps, a mutation 17 18 See Tabaczek, “Afterword,” 233. The capacity and limitations of Darwinian evolutionary processes have been described by Michael Behe. Behe shows numerous examples of evolutionary processes making a few steps forward by creating some organic change that provides some adaptive advantage. However, Behe also shows why the same mechanism is unable to produce any novel genes or proteins. See Behe, Darwin’s Black Box (New York: Free Press, 1996); Behe, The Edge of Evolution (New York: Free Press, 2008); Behe, Darwin Devolves (New York: HarperOne, 2019). Where Do Substantial Forms Come From? 251 has to cause a change that would—at least—result in the enhancement of a certain function, or the development of a new one, beneficial for the survival of an organism. Only in this situation will a mutation be visible to natural selection, which is governed by a paradigm of preserving the things that give a competitive advantage. An advantage of this kind is not provided by just any mutations. As stated by Michael Behe, in many cases, such an advantage is of relative nature and stems from the destruction or deterioration of a given function. In particular circumstances, a mutation like this can prove “beneficial” (just as breaking off car mirrors and throwing away car seats can result in the car becoming lighter and fit for winning a short-distance race), but mutations of this kind do not lead to the emergence of any biological innovations. In fact, what they result in is the degeneration and extinction of species (devolution), which can be actually observed in nature. Consequently, scientists posed a question regarding the type of mutation which might push evolution forward so as to produce any biological innovation. It transpires that it would have to be a mutation causing the development of a new protein or a new function within it. In order to do so, scientists located two relatively simple proteins (Kbl and BioF) belonging to the same family, that is, serving the same kind of a biologically different function. The conversion from one such protein to another would, theoretically, constitute the shortest evolutionary step (i.e., a change smaller than the one in question would not be visible to natural selection). Subsequently, researchers examined which changes should be introduced to the DNA for the expression of the gene encoding Kbl2 to alter to the degree sufficient for the protein to serve the function of BioF2. It appears that it requires at least seven nucleotide substitutions. We know, however, that mutations occurring in the course of one generation are most often single, less frequently double, and never triple. Statistically, an event of this kind could take place in an E. coli after 1030 generations, which vastly exceeds the time of the existence of the world.19 Thus, a mutation able to cause the development of the most minute biological innovation, meaningful from the perspective of the emergence of species, would never be possible to occur. 19 Douglas Axe and Anne K. Gauger write: “We estimate that some 1030 or more generations would elapse before a bioF-like innovation that is paralogous to kbl could become established. This places the innovation well beyond what can be expected within the time that life has existed on earth, under favorable assumptions. In fact, even the unrealistically favorable assumption that kbl duplicates carry no fitness cost leaves the conversion just beyond the limits of feasibility” (“The Evolutionary Accessibility of New Enzyme Functions: A Case Study from the Biotin Pathway,” Bio-complexity, 2011, issue 1, 1–17, at 12). 252 Michael Chaberek, O.P. Another example is the research conducted on amino-acid sequences producing functional proteins. It transpires that, out of all possible sequences, the functional ones, those that have any biological meaning, may be as rare as 1 in 1077.20 What does this mean? It is more or less as if each atom in the entire universe stood for a chemically possible structure, but only one atom in the whole world possessed any biological function. (Obviously, there are many more such functional structures, but that is because all atoms in the world are by far outnumbered by chemically possible structures). What do these results say about Tabaczek’s claim that species differ to a mere marginal extent, in a manner which, supposedly, renders the conversion from one to another an “empirically elusive” moment? Scientific evidence demonstrates the exact opposite. There is a chasm between species filled with the possible organic structures which, nonetheless, cannot form living organisms. The same fact is confirmed on a macroscale, on the level of species, because we do not find “intermediate species” in the fossil record. Species emerge—as it were—out of nowhere, in a fully developed form, and remain unaltered over the millions of years of their existence (stasis). Therefore, scientific data contradicts theoretical assumptions regarding a gradual conversion of one species into another and, thereby, renders theistic evolution a theological theory that diverges from facts. 2. Secondly, genetic mutations cannot change whole organisms, which would be required within macroevolution, since DNA is not the only source of information in a cell. Essentially, DNA can be divided into regulatory and coding regions. The coding regions provide cells with information on how to produce proteins, and the regulatory ones, in turn, inform of the quantity and time in which proteins need to be produced. This, however, is merely the beginning of the life process. It can be compared to building a house: DNA sends information on the amount and type of material to be delivered to the building site, but it does not specify how to arrange such material into a three-dimensional structure. As Stephen Meyer points out: 20 Douglas Axe, “Estimating the Prevalence of Protein Sequences Adopting Functional Enzyme Folds,” Journal of Molecular Biology 341, no. 5 (2004): 1295–315. It needs to be explained that Axe’s research covered a relatively select group of protein folds leading to active enzymes. However, the author himself points to more general conclusions that can be drawn from these findings. From the perspective of our argumentation, it is irrelevant what degree of extrapolation might be assumed for the research in question, because even narrowing the conclusion down to the actually examined structures sparks a difficulty which is the crux of our argument. This stems from the fact that all living organisms of higher-level species need many active enzymes to perform their basic life functions. Where Do Substantial Forms Come From? 253 Other sources of information must help arrange individual proteins into systems of proteins, systems of proteins into distinctive cell types, cell types into tissues, and different tissues into organs. And different organs and tissues must be arranged to form body plans.21 Ultimately, the number and type of mutations taking place in DNA is irrelevant, because even an infinite number of mutations cannot produce epigenetic information necessary for the development and life of each organism. In the light of such findings, the genocentric, reductive optics of biological evolutionism falls apart. Let us remark that, typically, theistic evolutionists say that their theory is “better” because it is compatible with science. Nevertheless, whenever authors writing from this perspective draw on scientific research (if at all), they refer to findings which concern only slight changes within particular species. They do not mention studies that might confirm the occurrence of macroevolution.22 We might wonder, therefore, whether theistic evolution is compatible with science or with one specific theory presented in science, or maybe with just a philosophical idea of evolutionism which serves as a 21 22 Stephen C. Meyer, Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design (New York: HarperOne, 2013), 276–77. For instance, Austriaco, the main author of Thomistic Evolution, refers to his own experiments, in the course of which, as a result of a series of coordinated mutations, it is possible to ensure that a lizard does not form a pair of limbs at its developmental stage. According to Austriaco, this research is supposed to demonstrate how evolution might have led to the emergence of the first snakes out of lizard-like ancestors. Nonetheless, even though the cited research outcomes display the essential part played by genes in certain biological functions, and demonstrate the contemporary possibilities of genetic manipulation, they fail to illustrate macroevolution—for at least three reasons. First of all, the mutations in question are a series of coordinated mutations in the course of which biologists act towards a particular aim, and during the entire process the damaged lizards are kept alive artificially and reproduced artificially. Therefore, changes of the above kind would not be possible outside of the laboratory, without access to specialized equipment and genetic engineers supervising each step of the process. Secondly, the final outcome of the experiment, i.e., mutants, are not capable of living independently, hence they would not be able to serve as an evolutionary link. Thirdly, the loss of limbs is—at best—an example of devolution, i.e., a biological degradation, not the emergence of any biological innovation whatsoever. Austriaco’s experiments confirm the claims of classical metaphysics—accidental changes in a lizard result in a mutated lizard, or a dead lizard (should the number of alterations lead to matter losing its proportion to form). But they will never result in a lizard transforming into another natural species, such as a snake. See Nicanor P. G. Austriaco, “In Defense of Thomistic Evolution: A Response to Chaberek,” Public Discourse, March 7, 2018, thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/03/20975. 254 Michael Chaberek, O.P. filter to examine scientific data putting a one-sided interpretation on it. One can look at the same data differently, namely through the lens of the classical Christian idea of creation, and there is nothing that one could find incompatible with it. Hence, rejecting evolutionism does not entail (as Tabaczek suggests) rejecting science, but merely contradicting one of the theories proposed by scientists which is not exactly in accord with many well-known facts. Conclusion Theistic evolution became widespread in Thomistic circles only in the second half of the last century. Before that, Thomists unanimously defended the classical doctrine of creation by drawing upon the classical metaphysics elaborated by Aquinas. It was not until Western culture became dominated by the evolutionary paradigm that Thomists have also modified their stance. They started to advocate the thesis that St. Thomas’s teaching was compatible with the idea of species transformism through natural evolution. From its very onset, however, the new approach encountered difficulties stemming from the principles of Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics. Thus far, scholars adopting the perspective of Thomistic evolution have failed to explain how accumulation of accidental changes over the course of evolutionary development might lead to the emergence of new substantial forms. We will not find a solution to this problem in the studies authored by contemporary Thomistic evolutionists either. Thus, at this stage, we need to conclude that St. Thomas’s teaching cannot be reconciled with the idea of biological macroevolution, which collides not only with some individual doctrines elaborated by Aristotle or St. Thomas, but with the very foundations of classical metaphysics. Not only does theistic evolution deny the divisions in being (e.g., substance–accidents), but it also strays from the moderate realism which forms the foundations for the entire Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy. At the same time, we should add that the present article is not aimed at assessing the veracity of Thomistic metaphysics, nor the legitimacy of theistic evolution. The question posed in this study simply concerns the compatibility of Thomistic metaphysics with the metaphysics of theistic evolution. We have demonstrated that there is a fundamental incompatibility between these two metaphysics. Evaluating which one of them deserves to be endorsed within the contemporary cultural, scientific, and theological context lies beyond the scope of this article. Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2024): 255–284 255 Evolution and Creation—A Response to Michael Chaberek’s Critique of Theistic Evolution Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas Rome, Italy Translated by Monika Metlerska-Colerick Introduction Michael Chaberek’s critique of my “Afterword” to the Polish edition of Thomistic Evolution: A Catholic Approach to Understanding Evolution in the Light of Faith is essentially focused on three points. First of all, Chaberek questions my thesis supporting the compatibility of evolutionary theory with the Christian faith in creation. Secondly, he discounts the possibility of reconciling evolution with the Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical tradition. Finally, he provides arguments undermining the theory of evolution as the best scientific explanation for the diversity of species observable in the world.1 Because I do not undertake an analysis 1 Both my Afterword (in English) to the Polish Edition of Thomistic Evolution: A Catholic Approach to Understanding Evolution in the Light of Faith (1st ed. 2016) by Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco, O.P., James Brent, O.P., Thomas Davenport, O.P., and John Baptist Ku, O.P. and Chaberek’s critique of it, “Where do Substantial Forms Come From?—A Critique of the Theistic Evolution of Mariusz Tabaczek,” are published in this issue of the English edition of Nova et Vetera, on 225–37 and 239–54, respectively. My response was originally published in Polish as Mariusz Tabaczek, “Ewolucja a dzieło stworzenia—odpowiedź na polemikę Michała Chaberka z teistycznym ewolucjonizmem,” Roczniki Filozoficzne [Annals of Philosophy] 68, no. 4 (2020): 217–49, while his critique was published as Michał Chaberek, “Skąd pochodzą nowe formy substancjalne?—Polemika z teistycznym ewolucjonizmem w ujęciu Mariusza Tabaczka,” Roczniki Filozoficzne [Annals of Philosophy] 68, no. 4 (2020): 199–215. The 256 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. of strictly biological problems in the “Afterword,” in the present response I will concentrate on the first two points only.2 I trust that engaging in a discussion with Chaberek’s views in this respect provides an opportunity to broaden and clarify my position regarding the issue which is the subject of our dispute. To begin with, I would like to stress that, in exploring the topic from the perspective of the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition of philosophy and theology, I am moving in the sphere of possible interpretations and new approaches. Therefore, I do not treat the aforementioned tradition in an inflexible and dogmatic manner.3 2 3 English translations were sponsored by the Templeton Foundation (Grant ID 61360 Thomistic Evolution and the Defense of Faith and Reason: Engaging Catholic Families, Philosophers, and Theologians). Some of the original Polish bibliography references were changed and updated to make the text more relevant for an English-speaking audience. All three pieces have undergone minor editing to conform to the journal’s style. Citations of all three use the page numbers of the publications in the present journal issue, and abbreviations for the references to the works of Aristotle, Augustine, and St. Thomas, including published critical editions and English-translation editions used in citations, can be found in the bibliography section of the introduction to this interchange in the present journal issue. I would like to express my thanks to the editors of the Polish Annals of Philosophy for inviting me to respond to Chaberek’s critique of my take on theistic evolutionism. I would also like to express my gratitude to Krzysztof Ośko, O.P., for his valuable remarks and suggestions, as well as the shared reflection on some of the questions addressed in the present text. I further develop ideas presented here in Mariusz Tabaczek, “The Metaphysics of Evolution: From Aquinas’s Interpretation of Augustine’s Concept of Rationes Seminales to the Contemporary Thomistic Account of Species Transformism,” Nova et Vetera 18, no. 3 (2020): 945–72; Tabaczek, “Does God Create through Evolution? A Thomistic Perspective,” Theology and Science 20, no. 1 (2022): 46–68; and in my latest monograph entitled Theistic Evolution: A Contemporary Aristotelian-Thomistic Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023). Without attempting to defend the theory of evolution on the ground of the natural sciences, I would only like to point out the basic methodological weakness of Chaberek’s argument. He bases his rejection of the macroevolution theory on the authority of science, claiming that his position is supported “with many facts discovered by contemporary science” (my translation from his original critique, “Skąd pochodzą nowe formy substancjalne?” [215], translated in this issue of Nova et Vetera as “with data provided by contemporary science” [243]). At the same time, the examples he gives are not so much a demonstration of facts, as their interpretation carried out by authors centered around the milieu of the proponents of the intelligent design theory—a minority group among scientists. Thus, the only conclusion which can be drawn from his argumentation is that, although there is a broad consensus as to the theory of evolution among scientists, one can indeed come across scholars who have some objections against it. At this point, it is worth mentioning that an article taking issue with the thesis put forward by Chaberek has been recently published in Theology and Science, touching Evolution and Creation 257 The Definition of Creation I should start my response to Chaberek’s critique by invoking the definition of creation as elaborated by Aquinas. After all, it seems that the disagreement referred to in the present article focuses, to a large extent, on the comprehension of the divine act of creation. My views on this matter are not, in my estimation, a significant alteration of the teaching of St. Thomas. Rather, they are an attempt at drawing conclusions from some of his intuitions regarding creation, which appear in various sections of the body of his work.4 According to St. Thomas, the word “creation” (creatio) has two crucial and inextricably linked meanings: (I) creation in an active sense (divine action) and (II) creation in a passive sense (receiving divine action). Within the scope of the first meaning, St. Thomas distinguishes between: (Ia) the primary act of creation, defined as bringing the entirety of being into existence out of nothing (ex nihilo), without any prior existing matter, and (Ib) maintaining contingent beings in their existence and essence. The consequence of (Ia) and (Ib) is contingent beings’ full dependence on God regarding what they are and the fact that they are (exist), which determines the essence of creation in the passive sense (II). Regarding (Ia), St. Thomas—in a neo-Platonic vein, in support of the claim that nothingness cannot be the object of God’s action in the act of creation—states that “we must consider not only the emanation of a particular being from a particular agent, but also the emanation of all being from the universal cause, which is God; and this emanation we designate by the name of creation” (ST I, q. 45, a. 1, corp.). It is worth adding here that, according to St. Thomas, the matter, which is the result of the act of creation, is not indefinite, as is assumed by Chaberek when he refers to creation as the bringing out of nothing “of a certain primordial matter of an indefinite form.”5 On the contrary, Aquinas states explicitly that “primary matter was not created altogether formless, nor under any one common form, but under 4 5 on some of the questions addressed by me in the present response; see James Hofmann, “Some Thomistic Encounters with Evolution,” Theology and Science 18, no. 2 (2020): 324–46. Unlike my adversary, I believe that both the argumentation and the language used by St. Thomas Aquinas are not always fully precise, clear, and coherent, which is inevitable in the case of an author of a body of work of a magnitude similar to that of St. Thomas’s, especially if we take into account the development of his thought over the course of his scholarly path, and the specificity of the method of practicing theology he employed. Chaberek, “Where do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 242 in the present journal issue. From the metaphysical point of view, the substantial form (SF) cannot be indefinite. Its essence relies on designation (being designated). 258 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. distinct forms” (ST I, q. 66, a. 1, corp., ad 2), enumerating, at this point, the forms of the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. In reference to (Ib), St. Thomas defines the divine act of maintaining contingent beings in existence and essence (in the fact that they are, as well as in what they are) as conservatio rerum. What is more, even though he emphasizes that “the preservation of things by God is a continuation of that action whereby He gives existence” (ST I, q. 104, a. 1, ad 4), Aquinas does not employ the currently popular concept of continual creation (creatio continua). It seems that another concept, appearing within the theology of creation, is closer to his philosophical thought, namely that of conservatio a nihilo—preserving contingent beings from slipping into nothingness. Regarding (II), St. Thomas—stressing the crucial role of contingent beings’ dependence on God in existence—claims that this fact is of the utmost importance for our understanding of what creation is. We read in De potentia, q. 3, a. 3, corp., that “creation is really nothing but a relation of the creature to the Creator together with beginning of existence.”6 Formulated thus, the primary act of creation appears to be—to some extent—subordinate to the relation of the created being’s dependence on God. Prima creatio is only the beginning of the existence of matter, whereas the essence of being created is the relation of the originated matter’s (as well as, let us add, of the immaterial beings’, i.e., angels’) dependence on the Creator secundum totam substantiam.7 6 7 In response to objection 6 of the same article, St. Thomas explains: “Creation denotes this relation [of being dependent on God in existence] together with inception of existence: hence it does not follow that a thing, whenever it may be, is being created, although its relation to God ever remains. Yet even as the air as long as it is light is illuminated by the sun, so may we say with Augustine (Gen. ad lit. viii, 12) that the creature, as long as it is in being, is made by God. But this is only a distinction of words, inasmuch as creation may be understood with newness of existence or without.” It should be emphasized yet again that even if we wanted to speak of the continual creation of a given contingent being, it should be understood as a continual dependence on God in existence, not as an occasionalist notion of a continual creation anew ex nihilo together with all the changes which, only in the eyes of the observer, might generate an illusion of the continuity of such a being’s existence in space and time. At this point, it is worth noticing that, while mentioning the status of being created in terms of (II), St. Thomas most often speaks of the dependence on God in existence as if omitting the fact of being dependent on God in essence. Assuming that the existence of created beings is not identical with their essence, the definition of creation in terms of (II) seems to be much more accurate, as a dependence on God in relation to the entire substance of a thing (both in terms of its existence, as well as essence). Among the few places, in which Aquinas argues in the above-mentioned way, see ST I, q. 45, a. 3, sc, where he speaks of creation, “whereby a thing is made according to its whole substance” Evolution and Creation 259 Evolutionary Processes and Creation Keeping in mind St. Thomas’s understanding of the divine act of creation in terms of (I) and (II), let us turn to Chaberek’s criticism of the interpretation I suggested in the “Afterword” for concursus divinus naturalis, that is, the “cooperation” between the causality of God and that of his creatures in the origination of new species by way of evolution, understood within the Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophical and theological system. As stated in my “Afterword,” I am of the opinion that, as such, this “cooperation” calls for an elaboration or clarification of St. Thomas’s original position, at least in four of its essential aspects: (1) recognizing the possibility of the emergence of new species, that is, acknowledging that the perfection of the universe can increase every day not only in terms of the number of individual beings, but also as regards the number of species; (2) emphasizing the fact that God’s initial act of creation is limited to the derivation of matter of the lowest degree of complexity out of nothing (ex nihilo); (3) recognizing the fact that the processes of chemical, biochemical, and biological evolution belong to the work of adornment (opus ornatus), whose subsequent stages spread out across the entire history of the universe and, therefore, are not limited to a finished and past time period; (4) acknowledging that God’s direct intervention in the creation of the first representatives of plant and animal species (with the exception of man) is not necessary.8 Chaberek suggests that (1) and (3) are inconsistent with the ideas of Aquinas and with classical theism, accusing me of stating that “evolution continues,” whereas “from the Christian perspective—the divine work of creation had already finished.” This objection would be justified if we assumed that evolutionary processes are indeed of a creative character. I admit that words to that effect appear several times in the article that I published in the American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, as well as in the introduction to my “Afterword” in the book written by the American Dominican friars.9 But a careful reading of both texts points to the direction my reflection is headed, namely toward drawing a fundamental distinction 8 9 (secundum totam substantiam), and De potentia, q. 3, a. 2, obj. 2, where creation is understood as an act “whereby a thing is made as to its entire substance” (per quam fit [res] secundum totam substantiam suam). See also In II sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 2, sc. See Tabaczek, “Afterword,” 234–35. See Mariusz Tabaczek, “What Do God and Creatures Really Do in an Evolutionary Change? Divine Concurrence and Transformism from the Thomistic Perspective,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 93, no. 3 (2019): 462–66, 480–81; Tabaczek, “Afterword,” 226. 260 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. between, on the one hand, evolutionary changes and the formation of new kinds of inanimate and animate beings from already existing matter, and, on the other hand, the divine act of creation, which results in—as already mentioned—the origination of the most simple material substances and of purely spiritual beings (angels) out of nothing. In other words, the processes of the continuous transformation of matter, as a result of which new beings emerge, whether belonging to the already existing natural kinds or originating new natural kinds, are not creative processes sensu stricto, but belong to the work of divine governance of the world (gubernatio). Were we to define them as creative processes, it would need to be immediately added that this is only in a metaphorical or analogical sense.10 In this way, my approach becomes essentially different from the stance taken by many theistic evolutionists who generally treat the processes of evolution as creative per se or refer to them as creatio continua, the latter of which is also inadequate in light of the theology of Aquinas, for whom creatio continua (a term that he himself does not employ) would signify maintaining contingent beings in existence (conservatio a nihilo) and not the formation of new beings from preexisting matter.11 Consequently, we should consider inadequate and incorrect the view—popular among theistic evolutionists that the causal action of the already existing beings within evolutionary processes is participation in the divine act of creation. This view stands in clear contradiction to St. Thomas’s position, as for instance when he says: “So therefore it is impossible for any creature to create, either by its own power or instrumentally—that is, ministerially” (ST I, q. 45, a. 5 corp.).12 10 11 12 St. Thomas agrees with the statement that the lack of a determined SF signifies nonbeing, but only in some respects. As a consequence, he is of the opinion that we should distinguish generation, “whereby a thing is made as to a part of its substance” (meaning a specific form, whose lack is a nonbeing, in some respects), from creation, “whereby a thing is made as to its entire substance” out of complete nonbeing (De pot., q. 3, a. 2, obj. 2). For example, we could cite the views expressed by Denis Lamoureux, who claims that “the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit created the universe and life through an ordained, sustained, and [divine] design-reflecting evolutionary process.” While formulating his ideas, Lamoureux states that the word order in the term “theistic evolution” is not the most fortunate one, because it “places the process of evolution as the primary term, and makes the Creator secondary as merely a qualifying adjective.” Hence, he suggests that the terms “theistic evolution” and “theistic evolutionism” be replaced with “evolutionary creation” and “evolutionary creationism.” See Denis O. Lamoureux, “Evolutionary Creation: Moving beyond the Evolution versus Creation Debate,” Christian Higher Education 9, no. 1 (2009): 28–30. In De pot., q. 3, St. Thomas devotes a whole article (8) to answering the question “whether God works in nature by creating; and this is to ask whether creation is Evolution and Creation 261 In this context (2) does not appear to be a baseless statement, as argued by Chaberek,13 if we assume that (in keeping with Aquinas’s intuition expressed in his commentary on the Hexameron in the Summa theologiae) the emergence of plants and animals (as well as inanimate beings) is not a fruit of the creative act (they do not come into existence ex nihilo), but rather is a result of the substantial changes occurring in the already existing matter. As I have stressed in my publications on more than one occasion, it is of considerable significance that, when referring to opus distinctionis and the accompanying emergence of plants, and when referring to opus ornatus and the accompanying emergence of animals, St. Thomas makes use of the category of productio or formatio rather than creatio. This last category appears again in reference to the origin of man, which indeed is of a creative character, as regards the bringing forth into existence ex nihilo of the human soul that forms the primary matter (PM) in the organic human body.14 13 14 mingled in the works of nature.” Addressing a problem posed thus, Aquinas states in sc 1: “The work of creation is distinct from the work of government and that of propagation. Now that which is done by the action of nature belongs to the works of government and propagation. Therefore creation is not mingled with the work of nature.” My view on this issue is clarified and elaborated on in Tabaczek, “Does God Create through Evolution?” Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 242. Man, indeed, is a being of a special kind. Both his coming to existence (origin) and his death differ from the creation or coming to existence of contingent beings, as well as from all of the changes they can be subject to. The creation of man differs from the creation of primordial matter, which—not being a change—consists in bringing out into existence ex nihilo both the primary matter (PM) and the SFs of elements in the state of substantial composition (on coming to existence, PM is formed by the SFs of elements). In the origin of man (the first parents and all of their descendants), we speak of the divine act of creation which is simultaneously accompanied by change. God creates ex nihilo the human immortal soul, which during the substantial change—i.e., fertilization—forms the PM underlying the gametes. As such, they cease to exist on giving rise to a new organism. The death of a human, on the other hand, is not an ordinary substantial change in which the SF of substance S1 ceases to form the PM which underlies it, which, in turn, becomes simultaneously formed by a new substantial form of substance S2. As a result of death, PM becomes indeed formed by a new SF, or rather many substantial forms of the substances that can be found in a corpse which strikingly resembles an organic human body, and is characterized by an accidental unity. At the same time, the Christian faith teaches us that—in contrast to the SFs of all the other inanimate and animate contingent beings—the human soul, crossing the boundary of death, continues to subsist, maintaining the substantial character and the individual identity that is a continuation of the identity of the human being which this particular soul used to animate. As a consequence, it appears that the human death should be treated as a separate category of change, situated, as it were, between the substantial and the 262 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. Of course, St. Thomas is not entirely precise and consistent in this regard. In his works, we come across places where, in reference to both the primary work of creation and the context of the origin of man, he makes use of the category of productio, and also places in which he describes opus ornatus in the categories of creatio.15 That is why the aim of (2) is to draw a clear and decisive distinction between the divine act of creation (opus creationis) and the processes in the course of which new beings emerge from the already existing matter (opus distinctionis and opus ornatus). In my opinion, such clarity is what Chaberek’s reasoning also lacks when he introduces the concepts of prima creatio and secunda creatio, referring to the latter as the shaping of a “primordial matter of an indefinite form.”16 It needs to be observed that the shaping of the already existing matter is a change, whereas St. Thomas stresses clearly and distinctly that creation is not a change. What is more, such an understanding of creatio—which, as such, is ex definitione a divine act—would imply God’s direct intervention in the natural causal chain, which is rightly criticized by Chabarek when he says that “there is no intervention in the work of creation.”17 The same remark also serves as a response to the question concerning point (4), which is about “the grounds” on which I limit “God’s direct creative action to only two moments: the first act of creation (creatio ex nihilo) and the creation of the human soul.”18 My suggestion for introducing 15 16 17 18 accidental change. What approximates it to substantial change is the fact that the nature of the individual substance, which “passes” through it, undergoes a radical change. The thing that approximates it to the category of accidental change, on the other hand, is the fact that the identity of the same individual who “experiences” it is maintained. This indicates the unique metaphysical status of the human being. For instance, in ST I, q. 45, a. 4, ad 3, we find a definition of creation as a production of the whole being (creatio est productio totius esse). In the introduction to question 90 of the same pars of the ST, while enumerating the points he is to address in it, St. Thomas speaks of “production of man [Adam] as such” (de productione ipsius hominis), both as regards his body and his soul (de productione hominis quantum ad animam . . . quantum ad corpus viri). He uses the same category in reference to the origin of the first woman (quantum ad productionem mulieris). In reference to the human soul, Aquinas also uses the term “making” (utrum anima humana sit aliquid factum), putting it together with creating (supposito quod sit facta, utrum sit creata). At the same time, when in De pot., q. 5, a. 9, ad 8, St. Thomas mentions opus ornatus, which, in line with the reasoning presented above, is not creation sensu stricto, he refers to it as “the work of creation whereby the earth was adorned with animals and plants” (opus creationis per ornatum animalium et plantarum). Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 242. Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 243. Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 243. Evolution and Creation 263 a limitation in this respect is a consequence of being consistent in my use of St. Thomas’s definition of creation, and is not grounded in science—in terms of relating to the natural sciences and being an attempt to “subordinate Christian faith to the theories of evolution”—which is what Chaberek implies.19 At the same time, with reference to the scriptural argument that he formulates at this point, it needs to be noted that, although Genesis indeed speaks of the “shaping of the world,” there is no mention there of the “creation of species and the first human body.”20 A close reading of the Genesis’s first creation narrative demonstrates that the term “creation” does not appear in relation to the origin of all species of plants and animals. It can be found, however, in the opening verse, in the context of the primary act of the creation of matter of the lowest possible degree of actualization.21 Furthermore, in the description of the origin of the human body, there is no mention of creating, but of the “making” of Adam and Eve (Gen 1:26), 19 20 21 Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 244. What should be noted here is the recurrent trait of Chaberek’s texts, and one typical also for anti-evolutionist circles, namely the ease with which methodological naturalism is identified with the ontological naturalism proper to the natural sciences, and in an extreme variety of that (Chaberek uses the name “consistent naturalism”). Reasoning of this kind is a far-reaching simplification which does not take into account the complexity of the discourse within the natural sciences, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of the particular fields of natural science, or of these in relation to theology. Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 244. “Let the earth grow plant life. . . . Let the waters swarm with living things, and let birds fly above the earth up in the dome of the sky. . . . Let the earth produce every kind of living thing: livestock, crawling things, and wildlife” (Gen 1:11, 20, 24). It is true that, while relating the emergence of fish and birds (Gen 1: 21), the author employs the term “creation” (“God created . . .”); however, it seems that this term should be interpreted along with St. Augustine, in reference to the concept of the potentiality of matter. This interpretation stems directly from the Old Latin edition of the Book of Genesis, available to Augustine, in which the second description of creation (as translated to English in Douay-Rheims) begins in the following way: “These are the generations of the heaven and the earth, when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the heaven and the earth: and every plant of the field before it sprung up in the earth, and every herb of the ground before it grew” (Gen 2:4–5). It is worth noting that this translation is closer to the Hebrew text than modern translations. The concept of the creation of beings before they appeared on earth can be applied to both plant and animal species. In the same vein, St. Augustine writes about the origin of man thus: “There can be no doubt, then, that the work whereby man was formed from the slime of the earth and a wife fashioned for him from his side belongs not to that creation by which all things were made together, after completing which God rested, but to that work of God which takes place with the unfolding of the ages as He works even now” (Gen. ad lit., VI, 4). 264 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. or of forming the first man “from the topsoil of the fertile land” and of the woman being “fashioned” with the rib taken from Adam” (Gen 2:7, 22). All of the above should be interpreted in the categories of change, the object of which is preexisting matter.22 Returning to St. Thomas, it is worth noting, at this point, that he himself does not draw a precise distinction between prima and secunda creatio, as is suggested by Chaberek, who says: “St. Thomas distinguishes between the first creation and the second creation, i.e., the supernatural shaping of the world over the course of time to which the Book of Genesis refers as the six days.”23 Analyzing the references to St. Thomas’s works that accompany the argument provided by Chaberek, we notice that what is actually mentioned in De potentia, q. 3, a. 18, ad 12, is “the making of creatures” (factione) in terms of their formation (formatione) and “not as to their first creation” (prima creatione). In his reply to the eleventh objection of the same article, prima creatione is similarly distinguished from formation (formatione). In the collection of texts in the commentary on the Sentences II, d. 12, q. 1, a. 5, where the subject of creation appears indirectly, Aquinas refers only to the fact that “through the work of creation [opus creationis] the whole creation [creatura] was established with regard to its formless being [esse suum informe].” There is no mention here of the distinction between prima and secunda creatio, and opus ornatus is once again described in terms of production.24 De potentia, q. 5, a. 9, ad 8, is an exception, because here, as I have already pointed out (see note 15 above), St. Thomas indeed speaks of “the work of creation whereby the earth was adorned with animals and plants,” Nevertheless, in order to be consistent with the above-mentioned definition of creation given by Aquinas, it needs to be acknowledged that, here, the term “creation” in reference to opus ornatus has an analogical meaning. Does the Origin of a New Species Require Divine Intervention? Distinguishing the work of creation (opus creationis) from the changes occurring within the already existing matter that result in the emergence of new kind of beings, St. Thomas refers to St. Augustine’s idea, expressed in his 22 23 24 Needless to say, this change is accompanied by the creation of the human soul ex nihilo (see note 14 above). Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 242n7. As far as I know, St. Thomas never uses the concept of secunda creatio as a separate one and in contrast to prima creatio. The status of an unformed esse should be understood in the categories of existing in the potentiality of a primitive matter, which, simultaneously, is of a substantial character. Evolution and Creation 265 De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim, that we should acknowledge that “God made everything together without any moments of time intervening” (Gen. ad lit. 5.11). Augustine then adds: “When God made all things together, [the world] had all things which were made in it, . . . not only heaven with sun, moon and stars, . . . but also the beings which water and earth produced in potency and in their causes before they came forth in the course of time” (5.21). In other words, in its first instantiation, the world was in a seminal state (see 5.40–41). Obviously, what St. Augustine makes reference to is the Stoic concept of rationes seminales, seminal reasons, through which he expresses his metaphysical intuition regarding the potentiality of matter.25 As we know, in the Summa theologiae’s commentary on the Hexameron, St. Thomas follows the intuitions of St. Augustine, as noted in my “Afterword.”26 What is especially challenging for both theologians is determining whether the actualization of rationes seminales occurs spontaneously in favorable environmental conditions, or whether it requires God’s direct intervention, which is—let it be stressed once again— nevertheless not of a creative character, but rather an expression of the special action of divine providence and divine governance of the world (gubernatio). Having considered both possibilities, St. Augustine states that they should be adopted simultaneously, also adding that man most certainly originated as a result of supernatural intervention on the part of God.27 Aquinas claims that the origination of plants can be perceived to be a 25 26 27 St. Augustine makes use also of other terms to refer to the seminal reasons: causales rationes, rationes primordiales, primordia causarum, and quasi semina futurorum. Tabaczek, “Afterword,” 232. In his theology of creation, Aquinas refers to two interpretational traditions of the Hexameron: (1) the more literal one, which he ascribes to St. Ambrose (this tradition was also followed by St. Irenaeus of Lyon, St. Gregory of Nazianzus, St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Basil the Great), and (2) the allegorical one, associated mainly with St. Augustine (this tradition was also followed by Athenagoras of Athens, Tertullian, St. Bonaventure, Albert the Great, and, among the later authors, Roger Bacon, and Nicolas Malebranche). The reading of St. Thomas’s works leaves no doubt that St. Augustine’s proposition is closer to his views. See ST I, q. 71, a. 1, corp.; ST I, q. 72, a. 1, corp.; De pot., q. 4, a. 2, ad 28; In IV sent., d. 48, q. 2, a. 1, ad 3; ST I, q. 62, a. 3, corp.; q. 74, a. 2, corp., ad 1 and ad 2. St. Augustine, in the spirit of Platonic dualism, differentiates the origin of the human body, which he describes in terms of formation, from the origin of the human soul, which is the result of creation ex nihilo. With reference to all the other organisms, Augustine states: “We must conclude, then, that [they] were created to exercise their causality in either one way or the other: by providing for the ordinary development of new creatures in appropriate periods of time, or by providing for the rare occurrence of a miraculous production of a creature, in accordance with what God wills as proper for the occasion” (Gen. ad lit., VI, 14). 266 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. result of propagation (propagatio), which belongs to the domain of God’s governance of the world (gubernatio), and therefore takes place as part of the natural processes to which matter is subject: “When [Genesis] says, let the earth bring forth vegetation, plants yielding seed (Gen 1:11), we are not to understand that at that time [on the third day] plants were produced [producere] in their proper nature. Rather, at that time the earth was given the germinative power [virtus germinativa] for the production [ad producendum] of plants in the work of propagation [opere propagationis].”28 The question of Aquinas’s views regarding the first representatives of animal species is a more complex one. On the one hand, in the Summa theologiae, St. Thomas appears to follow St. Augustine, saying that, “at the first beginning of the world the active principle was the Word of God, which produced animals from material elements, either in act [in actu], as some holy writers say, or virtually [virtute], as Augustine teaches”—which, as with the case of plants, can be interpreted as an actualization that does not require direct divine intervention.29 On the other hand, St. Thomas asserts that “the first human body was of necessity made [formaretur] immediately by God,” while his soul “can be made only by creation.” Aquinas adds that this way of coming into existence “is not true of other [i.e., non-human] forms,” which can be interpreted as a claim at least allowing for the possibility of new animal species emerging by way of a spontaneous actualization of the potentiality of matter by substantial forms (SFs) proper for a new natural kind.30 Nonetheless, one might say that what St. Thomas means at this point is the origination of SFs belonging to the already existing natural kinds, which would not relate to the emergence of new species. Indeed, in another passage, Aquinas states that “the first hypostases were immediately created by God, such as the first man, the first lion, and so forth.”31 Interestingly, in the very same place, St. Thomas simultaneously stresses that creatures cannot be causes, or exercise “causality over the whole species, as the sun is 28 29 30 31 In II sent., d. 14, q. 1, a. 5, ad 6. He continues here: “But to others it seems that at that time plants themselves were produced [productae] as well [as actualized]. In either of these approaches, however, the production of plants fittingly pertains to the work of distinction. For it is sufficient for their sprouting [pollulatio] that they have the power of heaven in place of a father and the power of earth in place of a mother, as the Philosopher says.” See also De pot., q. 4, a. 2, ad 28 (by Vincentius Castronovo). Obviously, the power of heaven, i.e., the celestial bodies, is, according to St. Thomas, a source of a special kind of causality—it does not seem, however, that Aquinas identifies it with the action of God himself. ST I, q. 71, ad 1. See also In II Sent., d. 14, q. 5, ad 6. ST I, q. 91, a. 2, corp.; q. 90, a. 2, corp. In II sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 4, corp. Evolution and Creation 267 a cause in the generation of a man or a lion,” which, once again, brings up the question concerning the character of the causality of celestial bodies (see note 28 above). If we assume that they are secondary causes, then this text from St. Thomas would suggest that they could be the causes of the origin of entire classes of beings (new species). All of the above indicates the complexity of the topic, which does not receive an unambiguous and reliable answer (or interpretation) in the works authored by St. Thomas. This is why the general statement proposed by Chaberek, who attributes to Aquinas a thesis which suggests that the “shaping of the world over the course of time” is an entirely “supernatural” and “direct” action of God, appears to be a serious and unjustified simplification.32 Aristotelian-Thomistic Substantialism Moving to the domain of strictly metaphysical reflection, I would first like to address certain concerns formulated by Chaberek with respect to my understanding of substance—both in the individual aspect and in terms of species membership. I admit that my approach in this regard, as presented in the “Afterword,” is not sufficiently clear and precise.33 Therefore, I would like to state explicitly that what I mean by “substance” is an autonomously (in contrast to accidents and parts) existing individual.34 A material substance understood thus—metaphysically speaking—is a compound of PM and SF, the latter of which is the principle actualizing matter and determining what a given being is. A substance is further specified by accidental forms (AFs), which modify it “following upon” the SF and are of a “complementary” character in relation to the SF (ST I, q. 7, a. 3, corp.).35 As far as belonging 32 33 34 35 See Tabaczek, “The Metaphysics of Evolution.” In “What Do God and Creatures Really Do in an Evolutionary Change?” (475–77), I reflect on the possibility of God’s direct intervention being necessary for the occurrence of speciation. It would consist in God granting unity to a complex network of cause-and-effect relationships within such a change. Regarding the role of the causality of celestial bodies in St. Thomas’s approach, also in the context of biological evolution, see Brian T. Carl, “Thomas Aquinas on the Proportionate Causes of Living Species,” Scientia et Fides 8, no. 2 (2020): 223–48. Among other things, on account of the limited size of that text and its popular-science character. See ST I, q. 3, a. 5, ad 1. “Primary substance” (substantia prima) understood thus needs to be distinguished from “secondary substance” (substantia secunda), which is nature in a general meaning. From the theological point of view, each individual being is a realization of an exemplary idea in the mind of God: “As an exemplar, . . . it has respect to everything made by God in any period of time” (ST I, q. 15, a. 3, corp.). Thus, according to Aquinas, exemplarism 268 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. to a particular species is concerned, in line with Aristotelian-Thomistic essentialism, it is determined by the fact that the SF of a given individual being is always the SF of a specific type, which means that it is characterized by certain strictly defined features and dispositions, that is, the principles of motion and rest (mutability and permanence), action and reaction.36 Hence, species exist in reality, yet not as separate entities, but as specific ways of being and acting, realized in individual and changeable organisms immersed in time. Species realism understood thus is fundamentally different both from the extreme realism presented by the Platonic school, in which universals (i.e., species) are treated as separate entities, and from nominalism, which treats them as useful fictions. Chaberek’s position on this matter appears to suggest that beings belonging to the same species have numerically one SF present in them, but what is lacking in his reasoning is an explanation of how such “being present in” is supposed to operate. It would appear that what speaks for the above interpretation is Chaberek’s distinction between “the individual form of a given being, . . . [which is altered by] various accidental changes” and the “substantial form, . . . [which is what] remains unchanged in the being,” together with his accompanying assertion that “the substantial form of a given species really exists (in re) in every individual being.”37 This statement proves that Chaberek fails to understand what moderate realism is, in accordance with which there is no such category as the SF of a species, and one and the same being cannot possess two forms: an individual and a substantial/generic one (whichever way they should be understood, Chaberek does not provide a clear definition). Along the same lines, in rejecting the concept of biological macroevolution, Chaberek defines it as resulting in “entirely new substantial 36 37 is of an individual character—it is not generic (species-oriented). At the same time, it needs to be stressed that exemplars are not identical to the SFs of particular beings. See Gregory T. Doolan, Aquinas on the Divine Ideas as Exemplar Causes (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008). The point of departure for such an understanding of the metaphysical approach to moderate realism regarding species is the observation of nature through the senses, which indicates that certain sets of individual beings have the same structure, or better still, the same set of key features determining their individual identity (whereby one and the same individual cannot change their species membership). As a consequence, the general names, given on the basis of discovering a specific structure or a set of features, express the essence of individual beings, which we classify as a separate systematic category. Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 246–47. Evolution and Creation 269 forms, such as a cat, an eagle, or a whale.”38 A similar way of thinking is also visible in his criticism of theistic evolution based on the example of a chicken’s death, when Chaberek claims that the death of a single chicken does not change the chicken species.39 One must agree that the death of an individual chicken does not alter the essence that we recognize in particular chickens while forming a concept of a chicken. However, it does not follow that the inalterability of the content of the concept of “chicken” calls for the existence of an SF of a chicken species which would differ from the individual SFs of particular chickens. The mistake that Chaberek makes at this point consists in hypostatizing concepts and attributing to substantial form the characteristics of a universal. In this way, his views converge with the stance taken by Plato, which Chaberek wants to avoid.40 In this context, we should bring up one of Chaberek’s key criticisms of my approach: “The above mistake is also made by Tabaczek, who expressly rejects the existence of substantial form in specific individuals. In the light of his interpretation, the substantial form exists in the mind of God and it becomes realized only in particular beings as changeable individual forms.”41 In formulating this criticism, Chaberek refers to the following statement from my “Afterword” regarding the SFs: “These forms are a realization of exemplary ideas in God’s mind.”42 Responding to this charge, I would first point out that what Chaberek assigns to me is a thesis I do not support. 38 39 40 41 42 Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 248. Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 246. At this point, it is worth referring to the approach to this problem suggested by Giovanni Reale, who highlights Chaberek’s mistake with even greater clarity: “Yet it is appropriate to point out that the Aristotelian eidos has two aspects: one of these is metaphysical as we have seen, the other is the aspect that we may call logical. The Stagirite does not analyze and emphasize the two aspects and their relative differences, but he moves in various instances from one to the other without giving any sign of difficulty. We note also that for linguistic reasons we emphasize the differences because once again we are forced to translate eidos in two different ways: sometimes with the term form and at other times with the term species. In what concerns the metaphysical aspect of eidos, that is to say the form, Aristotle correctly states that it is not a universal. But what of the eidos in the logical sense of the species? Evidently the species is precisely eidos insofar as it is conceived by the human mind. And therefore it could be said that as the metaphysical structure or the metaphysical Principle, the eidos is not a universal; instead as it is conceived and constructed by the human mind, it becomes a universal. But let us repeat when Aristotle is concerned with emphasizing the first point he does not focus on the second aspect” (A History of Ancient Philosophy II: Plato and Aristotle, trans. John R. Catan [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990], 284). Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 246. Tabaczek, “Afterword,” 234. 270 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. Saying that SFs are realizations of ideas in God’s mind is not equal to claiming that they exist in God’s mind. Secondly, the argument put forward by Chaberek relies on the incorrect distinction that he draws between the hypostatized SFs and the individual forms, which he superimposes on my concept of SF.43 In the context of the definition of substantialism, I would like to point to yet another crucial detail of Chaberek’s argumentation. What I find completely incomprehensible is his thesis that “accidental changes alter the individual form of a given being.”44 In the classic version of substantialism, each being possesses numerically one individual SF, which is not, in any way, subject to change over the entire course of a given being’s duration (existence). The only things that can alter are its accidental forms. Additionally, at this point, Chaberek makes the currently common mistake of describing causation via the post-Humean categories of causal events. According to him, what alters the “individual form” of a being are the “accidental changes.” Such language is alien to classical philosophy, in which causality (that is, being a cause) belongs to the domain of entities (substances), not events. Analogical Character of Being a Substance Another significant aspect of Chaberek’s stance on substantialism has to do with how to understand the analogical character of being a substance. From the outset, Chaberek stresses that this fact helps us to distinguish substances from “things,” which “can be hardly called substances in the metaphysical sense.”45 From his subsequent argument, I conclude that his use of the colloquial expression “can be hardly called” derives from his understanding of analogy as an exclusion criterion. As a consequence, it seems that what we are looking at in the ontology proposed by Chaberek are two separate classes of material beings: substances and “things” that are not substances. Needless to say, the question that arises immediately is one concerning the metaphysical status of “things.” If they are not substances, what are they? Unfortunately, Chaberek leaves this highly important point unclarified. In this regard, Chaberek appears to be following the footsteps of a group of natural philosophers who propose to assign the status of substance only to 43 44 45 Incidentally, the objections raised by Chaberek are mutually exclusive. While criticizing my position, he states that I separate the individual form from the substantial one, situating the latter in God. At the same time, he maintains that it is the very same mistake made by theistic evolutionists when they identify individual form and SF in the immanent order of the created world. Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 246. Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 247. Evolution and Creation 271 living organisms (humans, animals, plants) and elementary particles. We can use the example of Andrew G. van Melsen, who, adopting natural coherence in space and time as the criterion for a substance, claims that all inanimate beings with levels of organization higher than that of an elementary particle are the aggregates of elementary particles.46 Chaberek’s ontology lacks the precision of van Melsen’s position, as well as a clear definition of the status of the beings classified as “things” that are not substances. Denying the status of being a substance to elementary particles (on his view “they are . . . elements, negations of substance”), Chaberek calls into question the ontological status of their combinations in inanimate nature.47 The same question regards lower animals and plants, which are also denied the status of being a substance by Chaberek (contrary to van Melsen). Returning to the question of the range of the class of beings characterized as substances, Chaberek first comes to the conclusion that it essentially constitutes a one-element set (a unit set). The only substance “in the strictest sense” is God. Giving God the status of substance, Chaberek—referring to the neo-Platonic doctrine of participation—simultaneously decides to extend the set of substances to practically all beings, claiming that “everything else is a substance only by way of participation.” However, he does not clarify in what and how the said “everything else” (irrespective of how the meaning and scope of this colloquial expression should be understood) is supposed to participate. In the subsequent steps of his reasoning, Chaberek decides to narrow down the class of substances once again. Having stated first (without any textual references) that, according to St. Thomas, the class of substances “extends from angels, past humans, animals, and plants, to compounds and elements,” Chaberek adds that “elements are substances only in a very weak sense, to the degree that they, in fact, cannot be referred to as such.”48 Hence, among substances, one could count angels, all animate beings, and all inanimate beings (compounds), with the exception of elements (earth, water, air, fire).49 46 47 48 49 See chapter 4 of Andreas Gerardus Maria van Melsen, The Philosophy of Nature, 3rd ed. (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1961). Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 247–48. Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 247. Speaking of compounds, Chaberek does not specify which compounds he refers to. As we know, the category of compounds in medieval nomenclature is different from the contemporary concept of a chemical or biochemical compound. Once again, Chaberek leaves us without providing a necessary definition. Probably, Chaberek classifies elements as belonging to the class of “things” that are not substances. Yet again, he does not take the opportunity to define their ontological status. 272 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. Still, Chaberek does not stop there. Going further, he states: “The first real substances, on the level of complex entities, are plants, and even more precisely, only the species of the so-called higher animals (or ‘perfect species’) are substances in the strict sense (St. Thomas exemplifies them with a lion and a man, hence one can infer that what he means are all mammals— probably also birds and reptiles).”50 Thus, it transpires that, according to St. Thomas (at least in Chaberek’s interpretation), substances in the strict sense are only mammals, birds, and reptiles, which should be counted as “perfect species” (although there is no explanation in Chaberek’s text of what such perfection is supposed to consist in).51 When Chaberek speculates that birds and reptiles also belong to the “perfect species,” we find no indication as to why this should be assumed. Referring to the criteria of definitiveness, distinction, and indivisibility as the determinants of what constitutes a substance,52 Chaberek does not mention how they should be applied to defining the ontological status of these, as well as other types of material beings. After all, with respect both to all species of plants and animals and to artifacts, aggregates, and even elements, we can by all means speak of degrees of definitiveness, distinction, and indivisibility. Therefore, the fact that Chaberek denies some of these beings the status of a substance is arbitrary and unjustified.53 Chaberek adds that the distinction, which he assigns to Aquinas, refers to “complex entities,” but he does not explain what kind of complexity he means. Is it the mereological composition described by empirical sciences, that is, the composition of artifacts and aggregates from simple inanimate beings, and the composition of living organisms from organs, tissues, cells and biomolecules, and so on? Or is it rather the metaphysical complexity? In the case of the mereological composition—setting aside the question of reducing complex beings to the sum of their parts, which is inconsistent with the Aristotelian-Thomistic approach—the boundary proposed by Chaberek is arbitrary and marked by ignorance of natural sciences. After all, what are 50 51 52 53 Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 247. St. Thomas appears to define the aforementioned perfection in relation to the diversity of organs: “Perfect animals have the greatest diversity of organs; plants, the least” (SCG II, ch. 72; see also ST I, q. 76, a. 5, ad 3; q. 76, a. 8). It must be admitted that a criterion defined thus is not very precise. Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 247. In other words, when defining substance as what is “most definite, most distinct and most indivisible,” and the beings that are not substances as “most divisible, mixed and indefinite,” Chaberek does not specify the limits of definitiveness, distinction from other beings, or indivisibility, all of which, in his estimation, designate the scope of the substance class. Evolution and Creation 273 the grounds on which one might assume that reptiles are still substances (e.g.,, they are complex enough to have the status of being a substance), whereas amphibians, fish, lower animals, and the aggregates of inanimate beings are not? In the case of the metaphysically understood complexity, it needs to be pointed out that, for St. Thomas, a complex being is every being in which PM is actualized by SF (see De ente, ch. 2). Consequently, each material contingent being, according to Aquinas, has the status of substance (or of substance aggregate, in the case of mixtures and artifacts), in light of which the limitation introduced by Chaberek, along with his division into substances and “things” that are not substances, again proves to be a division that is arbitrary and devoid of any explanatory reasons (let us recall that Chaberek does not clarify the ontological status of “things” that are not substances).54 As a result, in an attempt to refer to the analogy of participation (internal attribution) employed by St. Thomas in his theological reflection, Chaberek effectively causes its collapse, because the way in which the above analogy is constructed consists in a particular feature (perfection) of the primary analogate being present (to some extent) in the secondary analogates. In the case of the status of being a substance—in connection to the analogy of being (analogia entis) as presented by Aquinas—it should be stated that this perfection can be predicated of contingent created beings in reference to God, who is the necessary “simple substance which is first” (De ente, ch. 1).55 Meanwhile, Chaberek understands analogy as an instrument allowing him to distinguish a class of beings that is granted the substance status, from 54 55 Experts on Aquinas’s thought admit unanimously that, apart from humans, all animals and plants, as well as elementary particles (elements), the status of substance is also possessed, according to him, by—characterized by internal coherence—the aggregates of the latter, e.g., bronze. In In I de an., lec. 1, no. 218, Aquinas concedes the substance status to inanimate beings: “Man and wood and stone are natural bodies, but a house or a saw is artificial. And of these the natural bodies seem to be the more properly called substances, since artificial bodies are made out of them.” See also Edward Feser, Scholastic Metaphysics: A Contemporary Introduction (Heusenstamm: Editiones Scholasticae, 2014), 164–71; Eleonore Stump, “Substance and Artifact in Aquinas’s Metaphysics,” in Knowledge and Reality: Essays in Honor of Alvin Plantinga, ed. Thomas M. Crisp, Matthew Davidson, and David Vander Laan (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), 63–80; Michael J. Dodds, The Philosophy of Nature (Oakland, CA: Western Dominican Province, 2010), 29–39. In light of the above, the ontology proposed by Chaberek departs from that proposed by St. Thomas to a significant extent. When assigning the status of substance to God, one cannot forget that, as understood by Aquinas, God is simultaneously outside of all categories, including generic categories, and among them the genus of substance: “God is not in the genus of substance” (Deus non est in genere substantiae; ST I, q. 3, a. 5, ad 1). In other words, the 274 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. the other beings, which he classifies as “things” that are not substances. At the same time—let us reiterate—the question of what these “things” actually are remains unanswered.56 Natural Species and Biological Systematic Categories There is an alternative taxonomy that we come across in Chaberek’s texts, in which he refers to the so-called “natural species,” defining the phrase in the following way: Natural species—natural kinds of living organisms, such as dogs, cats, cows, and horses. From a theological perspective, natural species could be identified with “kinds” mentioned in Genesis 1. From a metaphysical perspective, a natural species includes organisms that share the same nature. In this context “nature” is defined by Aquinas as “the essence of a thing as it is ordered to the proper operation.” From the same metaphysical perspective, natural species can be seen as living beings (composites of form and matter) that share the same substantial form. From the biological perspective these are organisms that belong to one taxonomic group of family or genus.57 Without going into the intricacies and metaphysical difficulties of 56 57 status of being a substance in the case of God is incomparable to the status of being a substance of any other contingent being. In his argumentation, Chaberek provides a number of examples from the field of chemistry and physics (changes of the state of aggregation, crystallization, etc.), while making use of inconsistent and imprecise terminology. Denying the status of substance to beings which he classifies as “elements” and chemical “compounds”—within the ontology he proposes, they probably belong to the class of “things”—Chaberek claims that, at the same time, they are subject to accidental changes (“Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 247). Keeping in mind that AFs serve the function of additionally specifying SFs, it is easy to notice the internal inconsistency of such a stance. Chaberek also refers to the category of emergence, once again without making an attempt at explaining what he understands by it. Such an attitude is indicative of a significant dose of ignorance on the part of my adversary regarding complex metaphysical studies in the area of the philosophy of chemistry, and in reference to the concept of emergence, especially in the context of the debate on the metaphysical criteria of being a substance as understood by contemporary natural sciences. See Howard Robinson, “Substance,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2020), ed. Edward N. Zalta, spring 2020 ed., plato.stanford.edu/Archives/spr2020/entries/substance/. Chaberek, Aquinas and Evolution, 21. See also Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 244–45, 253n22. Evolution and Creation 275 the above definition (e.g., defining “species” as a kind, as a collective set, or in reference to two separate taxonomic levels of family and genus), it should be pointed out that the concept of natural species gained popularity among Catholic theologians studying the theory of evolution at the turn of the twentieth century, in the context of considerable skepticism towards evolutionary theory on the part of the Church, as well as a negative assessment of the stance taken by theologians such as John Augustine Zahm, C.S.C. (1851–1921), and Marie-Dalmace Leroy, O.P. (1828–1905). After the year 1950, and particularly after the Second Vatican Council, when the climate of the dialogue between theology and natural sciences had changed, the theory of natural species was rejected as irreconcilable with the data provided by biological sciences. Otherwise, it would mean “freezing” the discussion of all evolutionary changes taking place on the level of an organism’s family or genus, which appears to contradict the fossil record. The concept of natural species is opted for by Erich Wasmann, Hermann Muckermann, Joseph Gredt, Richard P. Phillips, Mortimer Adler, Anthony C. Cotter, and Charles Kingsley (among others).58 Where Do the SFs of the First Representatives of New Species Come From? Turning now to the philosophical aspects of the theology of creation in its relation to the theory of evolution, I would like to address the question posed by Chaberek in the title of his critique: “Where do substantial forms come from?” The very way in which he formulates the problem is inadequate, pointing once again to his incorrect understanding of moderate realism. What Chaberek clearly has in mind is the origin of the “SFs of species,” regarding which we have already stated that they do not exist as a separate ontic category within the system of Aristotelian-Thomistic philosophy. Keeping in mind the subject of our dispute, I suggest modifying the question 58 James Hofmann analyzes the history of the “natural species” concept, giving references to the works written by all of the authors mentioned in the main body of the text: “Erich Wasmann, S.J.: Natural Species and Catholic Polyphyletic Evolution during the Modernist Crisis,” Journal of Jesuit Studies 7 (2020): 244–62. Referring to the same category of natural species, Chaberek does not make reference to its historical roots, or critical assessment. The forthcoming collective work prepared under a grant that sponsors the translation of my polemic with Chaberek includes also my article entitled “Essentialist and Hylomorphic Notion of Species and Species Transformation,” in which I focus on the relevance of the essentialist approach to a complex debate regarding the definition of the biological species. In Theistic Evolution, 170–74, I also offer a more detailed criticism of the category of “natural species,” as defined by Chaberek. 276 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. by placing at its center the problem of the origin of the SFs of the first representatives of new biological species. In an attempt to answer the question posed thus, one should first address the issue of the origin of new SFs in substantial changes, in which beings belonging to already existing species originate. Since SF determines the identity and the manner in which an individual material being functions, it is evident to St. Thomas that the new SFs are the actualizations of the potentiality of matter. The term employed by Aquinas here is “bringing out” or “educing” (Latin educere) SFs from the potentiality of primary matter in a substantial change: “It is not correct to say that the form is made in matter, rather should we say that it is educed from the potentiality of matter [de materiae potentia educatur]” (De pot., q. 3, a. 8, corp.).59 Asking about the efficient cause of this process (change), Aquinas distinguishes between two levels of agency, mentioning: (1) the operation of “an incorporeal principle on which the form directly depends” (implicitly, this principle being God), and (2) agency of “a corporeal agent whose action consists in moving something” (De pot., q. 5, a. 1, corp.). Thus, the SFs of the newly emerging beings, even though their first and ultimate cause is God, are not “educed” by him from the potentiality of matter directly, but are derived through secondary causes.60 Transferring this general model to the philosophy of biology and the changes occurring within the developmental lineage of living organisms, it needs to be stated that, in the process of reproduction, they do not pass on 59 60 See also De pot., q. 3, a. 4, ad 7 and ad 14; a. 8, ad 10. See De pot., q. 5, a. 1, corp.: “Lower corporeal agents are . . . transmuting [disponunt] matter and educing the form from the potentiality of matter [educunt formam de potentia materiae]. Hence the form of the thing generated depends naturally on the generator in so far as it is educed from the potentiality of matter, but not as to its absolute existence [in this aspect they are dependent on God].” See also In II sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 4, ad 4, where, in (1) a polemic with position that assumes “hiddenness” (latitationem) of forms in matter and states that “generation is through aggregation or separation or through alteration alone,” as well as with (2) the Plato-oriented opinion voiced by Avicenna, who claimed that “all forms are from an intelligence and that a natural agent is nothing but what prepares matter for the reception of a form,” St. Thomas opts for (3) the solution proposed by Aristotle, in line with which “all forms are in potency in prime matter, but not actually, as those who posited hiddennesses said. He also said that a natural agent produces not the form but the composite by leading matter from potency into act, and that this natural agent in its action is, as it were, an instrument of God himself acting, who created [condidit] even the matter and gave it potency to the form. Hence, maintaining this opinion, it is not necessary for what generates to create a form or to make something from nothing, since it makes not the form but the composite.” Evolution and Creation 277 their own individual SF (in which case they would cease to exist), and do not copy or multiply it, but instead, acting (teleologically) as efficient causes, they “bring out” (“educe”) from the potentiality of matter the SF proper to the specific biological species to which they belong. This takes place during the process of substantial change, the result of which is the origination of a new living organism. In the case of sexual reproduction, the change in question consists in the fusion of gametes (i.e., fertilization), as a consequence of which the gametes cease to exist and a new organism comes into existence. Given the fact that gametes are separate beings, it can be suggested that they are secondary (instrumental) causes in relation to parental organisms. Taking into consideration St. Thomas’s conviction, which follows St. Augustine’s thought, that new types of being (first instantiations of new species) come into existence as a result of changes occurring within the preexisting matter, it needs to be stressed that their SFs are also “educed” from the potentiality of this very same matter.61 If we assume that what lies at the foundation of formed matter is the PM understood as pure potentiality, then the range of the SFs that can be “educed” is also unlimited, at least in some sense (in reality, what limits it is the disposition of the PM, which I will discuss in greater detail below). The proposition put forward by Chaberek—who appears to be claiming that the emergence of a new species requires God to create ex nihilo a new “SF of a species,” which begins to form numerous individuals of a newly formed species—is an extremely Platonic one, and therefore alien to Aristotelian-Thomistic thought. What is more, even if we assume that what is necessary for the first representative of a new species to come into existence is God’s direct intervention—which we have seen above to be held by both St. Augustine and St. Thomas—such an intervention should be understood as the actualization of matter, that is, “educing” the first SF of a new type from the potentiality of matter, not its creation ex nihilo.62 The above-mentioned distinction between two levels of agency helps 61 62 Here, the causal agents are God and the secondary causes, whose operation (movement, broadly understood) leads to a substantial change, in which the above-mentioned SF of a new type is “educed” from the potentiality of matter. Therefore, it is not true that, in my approach, “a new substantial form appears like a rabbit out of a magician’s hat as soon as matter acquires a suitable disposition, [where] what serves as the active (actualizing) factor is not form anymore, . . . but matter” (Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 249). Here, the exception being, needless to say, the origin of man, whose SF (the rational soul) is indeed created ex nihilo in the moment of his conception, primarily on account of its crucial intellectual and volitional dispositions, which transcend matter (understood not so much in relation to PM, as in relation to corporeality), and its 278 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. us to adapt to the context of speciation an essential aspect of St. Thomas’s view which regards distinguishing between (1) being the cause of “educing” a particular type of SF from the potentiality of matter in the order of secondary causes and (2) being a (primary) cause of a given species per se (treated as a universal). Aquinas observes that, in bearing offspring of the same species, parental organisms, being the causes of the fact that the SF proper to the species they belong to “is in matter” (“in other words . . . that ‘this matter’ receives ‘this form’”), are not at the same time the cause of this type of SF understood per se (as such). Otherwise, in the universal aspect of the specific type of the organisms they are representatives of, they would be their own causes. Put differently, while “the ‘becoming’ of the effect . . . depends on the [material; corporeal] agent,” both the SF of a newly formed being (as belonging to a specific type of substance) and its existence depend on the agency of an incorporeal cause, on which they depend in their essence. This cause is God.63 In the case of speciation, it should be recognized that the parental organisms of a specific generation of species S1, being their offspring’s efficient causes, bring about the actualization of matter, or it functioning in a way determined by the SF of a new type, that is, proper to the new species S2. At the same time, they should not be treated (also as participating in speciation understood polygenically) as the causes of a new type of SF understood per se (as such). In this respect, the first and only cause is God. The Role of the Disposition of Matter in Speciation Returning to strictly metaphysical reflection, it is worth noticing that the question of “educing” (eductio) SFs from the potentiality of matter is closely related to St. Thomas’s concept of its proper disposition. Speaking of the corporeal (material, hence contingent) efficient cause, Aquinas observes that, as such, it not only “induces form” (formam inducit), but also “adapts 63 status of substantial distinctness (i.e., being capable of subsisting in a state, in which it does not actualize PM in an organic human body). See De pot., q. 3, a. 8, ad 7. See ST I, q. 104, a. 1, corp.: “Now it is clear that of two things in the same species one cannot directly cause the other’s form as such, since it would then be the cause of its own form, which is essentially the same as the form of the other; but it can be the cause of this form for as much as it is in matter—in other words, it may be the cause that ‘this matter’ receives ‘this form.’ And this is to be the cause of ‘becoming,’ as when man begets man, and fire causes fire. Thus whenever a natural effect is such that it has an aptitude to receive from its active cause an impression specifically the same as in that active cause, then the ‘becoming’ of the effect, but not its ‘being,’ depends on the agent.” See also SCG II, ch. 21, no. 8; III, ch. 65, no. 4; ST I, q. 13, a. 5, ad 1. Evolution and Creation 279 [disposes—disponit] matter” (De pot., q. 5, a. 1, corp.). While clarifying and elaborating on my views in this regard, I would here like to stress that we should differentiate between the disposition of PM as such (let us call it “remote disposition”) and the disposition of PM formed by a given SF (let us call it “proximate disposition”). The former refers to the scope of SFs which the PM can receive in general, whereas the latter refers to the scope of SFs which the PM can receive in the next substantial change. In Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, the remote disposition of PM (as a metaphysical principle of pure potentiality) is unlimited, while its proximate disposition is determined by the SF which actualizes it at the given moment. In connection to the above, Chaberek is correct when he claims that, since “the reason why matters are disposed in such and such ways is that there might be forms of such and such kinds,” the disposition of matter as such cannot change “independently from the form.”64 At the same time, it needs to be added that we should take into account not only the substantial form, but also the accidental forms. Since AFs belong to a specific substance and are inextricably linked to it, they can also affect the proximate disposition of PM. Consequently, as a result of changes of AFs, the proximate disposition of PM, influencing the direction and scope of its future possible actualizations, can undergo a change without the change of substance itself. Moreover, it should be stressed that, in the case of living organisms, the changes of AFs can be of a permanent character, passed on from generation to generation (the length of limbs, coloration, etc.), which, in the long term, can lead to their accumulation (the actualization of PM by the SFs of subsequent descendants within the developmental lineage L of species S1 is accompanied by additional specification by the same type of AFs).65 In this context, a new meaning is given to the idea expressed by Aquinas, who claims that properly disposed matter “is something that has an aptitude or adeptness to act” (In IV Sent., d. 49, q. 3, a. 2, corp.). Elsewhere, St. Thomas points out that, “from the fact that matter is known to have a certain substantial mode of existing, matter can be understood to receive accidents by which it is disposed to a higher perfection, so far as it is fittingly 64 65 Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 248–49. See also SCG II, ch. 40, no. 3. Consequently, Chaberek’s accusation in “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 249, that in my opinion, “in a certain being, under given form, the disposition of matter is changing independently until, eventually, matter assumes a new form” (irrespective of how one should understand the colloquial and metaphysically imprecise claim of being “under the form”) is groundless. In his interpretation of accident, Chaberek completely ignores the existence of AFs and their relation to SFs. 280 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. disposed to receive that higher perfection” (De an., q. 9, corp.). In his commentary on Aristotle’s De anima, Aquinas adds that “everything in a lower form of existence is inclined to the maximum possible assimilation to the higher form” (In II de an., lec. 7, no. 315). Accordingly, it needs to be stated that St. Thomas’s conviction of the properly disposed (secondary) matter’s “tendency” toward its underlying PM being actualized in subsequent substantial changes by the SFs of the new type, including the SFs of an increasingly higher kind, does not apply only to his views on human embryology, but can be recognized as a principle that is gener­ ally binding in his metaphysical system.66 This observation appears to render the model of evolutionary changes proposed by contemporary representatives of the Aristotelian-Thomistic school entirely justified and coherent.67 The Character of Speciation Let us attempt to describe speciation in terms of Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics, that is, in the context of understanding the phenomena of permanence and mutability of material beings in relation to the categories of potentiality and actuality, as well as substance and accidents. I suggest defining speciation as a series of complex accidental and substantial changes within the developmental lineage L of a given species S1, occurring on a specific (often large) area and over significant periods of time.68 As a result, the 66 67 68 See SCG III, ch. 22: “And so, the more posterior and more perfect an act is, the more fundamentally is the inclination of matter directed toward it. Hence, in regard to the last and most perfect act that matter can attain, the inclination of matter whereby it desires form must be inclined as toward the ultimate end of generation. Now, among the acts pertaining to forms, certain gradations are found. Thus, prime matter is in potency, first of all, to the form of an element. When it is existing under the form of an element it is in potency to the form of a mixed body; that is why the elements are matter for the mixed body. Considered under the form of a mixed body, it is in potency to a vegetative soul, for this sort of soul is the act of a body. In turn, the vegetative soul is in potency to a sensitive soul, and a sensitive one to an intellectual one. . . . Therefore, the ultimate end of the whole process of generation is the human soul, and matter tends toward it as toward an ultimate form.” See also Q.D. de an., q. 9, corp. Chaberek notices correctly that my views on the philosophical and theological aspects of the theory of evolution are a continuation of the interpretative tradition elaborated in the environment of contemporary Thomism, which I mention in my publications, referring to, among others, the works authored by Antonio Moreno, Fran O’Rourke, William E. Carroll, or Étienne Gilson. Chaberek accuses them all of an erroneous understanding of Aristotelian-Thomistic hylomorphism. The present article is an attempt at providing a response to this criticism. Apart from genetic mutations, one should also mention other accidental changes crucial for speciation, such as genetic recombination, gene transfer, genetic drift, and Evolution and Creation 281 PM actualized by the SFs of gametes of a particular type of male and female organisms of species S1 within L (or by the SF of the original organism/cell in the case of reproduction by division) becomes disposed to being formed by the new kind of SF of species S2 in the subsequent substantial change accompanying the production of offspring (or the organism/cell division). At the same time, one should note that substantial changes accompanying the begetting of offspring are changes of a special kind. They result in the emergence of new organisms whose SFs are of the same type as the SFs of parental organisms (or the SF of the original organism/cell in the case of reproduction by division). In the case of speciation, the last substantial change of that type, completing the entire process of interspecies transformation, differs from the others. It results in the origination of an organism whose SF is generically different from the SFs of parental organisms (or the SF of the original organism/cell in the case of reproduction by division). Speciation understood thus appears to contradict the classical principle stating that, within the reproductive process, causes (parents) of a specified type lead to the origination of a descendant that resembles them.69 In addressing this difficulty, it needs to be observed that, in line with the theory of biological evolution, a newly emerged first representative of species S2 is, in most aspects and dispositions, similar to the organisms of the preceding species S1, which it is descended from.70 Nevertheless, the fact 69 70 epigenetic modifications (i.e., permanent nongenetic changes which affect DNA expression). The additional factors are the geographical, ecological, and reproductive barriers, as well as natural selection, which strictly speaking is not so much a cause, as a determination of a greater reproductive success of the organisms that are better adapted to the environment governed by the principle of the survival of the fittest. All of these factors refer to a living organism which, by nature, strives towards preserving life (maintaining homeostasis) and producing offspring (breeding). Thus, while analyzing evolutionary changes, apart from efficient causes, one should also take into consideration the teleological aspect—not so much in the context of the question concerning the aim of all evolutionary changes from a global perspective (this kind or reflection belongs to the domain of metaphysics and theology), but rather in reference to the organism, which is their subject (within a population it belongs to). This principle constitutes a specific variant of a broadly understood principle of proportionate causality, which appears in many places in the works of Aristotle and Aquinas. Here are some examples: “The begetter is of the same kind as the begotten” (Metaphys. 7.81033b30); “No effect exceeds its cause” (ST II-II, q. 32, a. 4, obj. 1); “Every agent produces its like; . . . effects correspond proportionally to their causes” (SCG II, ch. 21); “The order of causes necessarily corresponds to the order of effects, since effects are commensurate with their causes” (SCG II, ch. 15). Within the theory of evolution, it is argued that, owing to the specificity of speciation mechanisms and the low population of the so-called intermediate species, they were not preserved in the fossil record. Hence, in the common understanding of evolutionary 282 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. that the parents and their offspring belong to two different species calls for the introduction of a certain modification to the interpretation of classical metaphysics. This modification consists in the weakening of the principle “like begets like” by acknowledging that resemblance in origination should not be understood as an absolute and strict qualitative identification of the SF of the parental organism and the SF of the offspring, but as a proportionate proximity of these organisms’ substantial forms. What is worth noticing here is that St. Thomas himself allows for the possibility of deviating from the “like begets (produces) like” principle: Sometimes, however, the effect has not this aptitude to receive the impression of its cause, in the same way as it exists in the agent: as may be seen clearly in all agents which do not produce an effect of the same species as themselves: thus the heavenly bodies cause the generation of inferior bodies which differ from them in species. Such an agent can be the cause of a form as such, and not merely as existing in this matter, consequently it is not merely the cause of “becoming” but also the cause of “being.” (ST I, q. 104, a. 1, corp.) In light of the above passage, it becomes clear that St. Thomas admits that there exist many efficient causes which do not produce effects resembling them in terms of species. Still, with reference to the example of celestial bodies, one can attempt to argue in support of Aquinas’s claim that effects of this kind are always ranked ontologically “lower” than their causes, while speciation, as defined above, entails the possibility of originating an organism which is ontologically “higher,” possessed of new and metaphysically “more perfect” dispositions in comparison to its direct efficient cause.71 Bearing in mind the difference between biological and ontological perfection (e.g., biologically speaking, the population of butterflies can be much better 71 changes (based on the comparison of forms which were preserved in the fossil record), species are significantly different from one another. In reality, the differences between immediately adjacent, phylogenetically related taxa are not radical. At the same time, one needs to remember that an argument formulated in such a way does not directly stem from the cited fragment of the Summa theologiae. It is also worth noting that St. Thomas’s interpretatively challenging claim that being “the cause of a form as such, and not merely as existing in this matter” (i.e., being “not merely the cause of ‘becoming’ but also the cause of ‘being’”) might point at least to some extent to the supernatural (divine?) character of the causality of celestial bodies as understood by Aquinas. Such interpretation, however, would stand in opposition to his radical criticism of the neo-Platonic concept of the “intermediaries” in the divine act of creation (see also note 28 above). Evolution and Creation 283 “equipped” in the context of a specific ecological niche dominance than the population of elephants, which are more perfect from the metaphysical perspective), it needs to be underlined that the polygenic character of speciation enables us to realize that the amount of information “put” into this process on the level of its numerous causes remains adequately proportionate to the amount of information “contained” in the ontological “endowment” of the first organism of the newly emerged species S2.72 Returning to Chaberek’s critique, it should be pointed out that one of the fundamental errors in his argumentation consists in reducing speciation to the last of the aforementioned substantial changes, that is, the one which results in the emergence of an organism whose SF differs from the SFs of parental organisms. Therefore, he fails to consider the crucial aspects of the complexity and polygenicity of the processes of interspecies transformations which determine their distinctiveness and their irreducibility to mere accidental changes.73 Furthermore, in the interpretation of Chaberek, accidental changes cannot lead to substantial change, which—let us stress it once again—within the reductive approach to speciation that he takes, would be not so much a change finalizing the causally polygenic speciation (thus being one of the many steps on the way to its occurrence), but speciation per se.74 At the same time, Chaberek admits that a series of accidental changes can indeed lead to changing the disposition of matter that will enable the occurrence of a substantial change, which he describes as “the annihilation of an individual 72 73 74 This well-known argument appears in the analysis of the metaphysical aspects of evolutionary changes carried out by Benedict Ashley, Norbert Luyten, or Leo Elders (see Tabaczek, “What Do God and Creatures Really Do in an Evolutionary Change?,” 475–76). In his polemic, Chaberek claims that, in theistic evolutionism, an evolutionary change is understood as a process within which “all changes are merely accidental” (“Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 244). In light of the presented metaphysical analysis, it is obvious that what occurs as an integral part of the process of speciation are not only accidental changes, but also numerous substantial changes, which consist in giving birth to subsequent descendants in a given developmental line L. While formulating this particular objection, in relation to the already mentioned example of killing a chicken ( “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 246), Chaberek commits the logical fallacy of extension (the straw man argument). Even though the example itself is not a false one—by cutting a chicken’s head off, a man is indeed the cause of a substantial change by modifying some accidental features, which changes the disposition of matter, thus enabling the occurrence of the change in question—making use of this example as an argument for evolution, in the meaning it is given by Chaberek, or even interpreted similarly to what Chaberek demonstrates, is a mistake that none of his opponents makes. 284 Mariusz Tabaczek, O.P. member of a particular species.”75 Leaving aside what Chaberek has in mind when speaking of annihilation,76 one should ask about the reason for limiting the processes that change the disposition of matter in such a way as to enable the occurrence of substantial change only to the processes of decomposition, in which the newly originated substances are situated lower on the scale of metaphysical perfection. The arguments provided in the present article indicate that a similar scenario involving changes in the disposition of PM might just as well bring about a substantial change, in which the newly formed substance belongs either to the same natural kind as the efficient cause(s) or to a different (including a new one) natural kind, whose individual representatives can be situated on the same or a higher level of metaphysical perfection. Obviously, the range of the degrees of perfection is, in this case, limited by the disposition of matter, as well as the type of action and the level of complexity of the web of causal factors. Conclusion The theory of evolution is still recognized as a theory which, in the realm of natural sciences, best explains the origins of the diversity of species of inanimate and animate beings that can be observed in the world. Like any scientific theory, it is subject to continuous analysis and verification, both in purely empirical terms and in the context of metaphysical presuppositions and conclusions that can be formulated on its basis. The aim of the present article has been not so much to defend the theory of evolution as to point out that, should it be true, it is not incompatible with classical philosophical and theological thought. I have attempted to prove this in response to the objections to and the criticism of my views formulated by Michael Chaberek. I trust that the arguments presented here help to demonstrate the relevance of Aristotelian-Thomistic thought in the context of contemporary natural sciences. 75 76 Chaberek, “Where Do Substantial Forms Come From?,” 246. While asking whether God annihilates anything, Aquinas observes that nothing is “entirely reduced to nothingness,” since it would not serve the manifestation of God’s might, but would rather be contrary to it, given that the might and benevolence of God are to the highest degree manifested exactly in maintaining beings in existence (see ST I, q. 104, a. 4, ad 1). What we encounter in a substantial change is not so much an annihilation of being, but rather its transformation, as a result of which a specific “portion” of designated matter (materia signata) ceases to be formed by SF1 and begins to be formed by SF2, or by two or more SFs of various kinds (e.g., in the case of the death of an organism). Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2024): 285–311 285 Book Reviews Benedict XVI: A Life. Volume 2, Professor and Prefect to Pope and Pope Emeritus 1966–The Present by Peter Seewald, translated by Dinah Livingstone (London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2021), viii + 568 pp. What better way to spend Pope Benedict XVI’s ninety-fifth birthday (which turned out to be his last) than by visiting his birth house in Marktl am Inn at his birth minute—4.15 AM! In addition to five Finnish pilgrims, twenty or so local grandmas and grandpas attended the now-traditional early morning prayer, which this year fell on Holy Saturday, the very liturgical day on which Joseph Ratzinger was born and baptized. Other destinations on a do-it-yourself Ratzinger pilgrimage included Freising (studies and ordination), Regensburg (professorial years), Altötting (favorite Marian sanctuary), childhood villages and towns (Tittmoning, Aschau am Inn, Hufschlag, Traunstein), and of course Munich (seminary and episcopal years), with beer, good food, and Apfelstrudel at the Augustiner Klosterwirt. Such a trip is highly recommended, even though there were no Ratzinger books in the “Theology” section of University of Regensburg’s bookshop, reflecting his persona non grata status in German academia. In Altötting, however, Peter Seewald’s magnificent biography was on offer, as well as icon-like pictures of Pope Benedict and candles with his image on them— good for both admirers and critics! In English, Seewald’s biography is divided into two volumes (for my review of volume 1, see Nova et Vetera [English] 20, no. 3), the second one comprising three parts: (1) professor, (2) prefect, and (3) Pope. The book was certainly worth the wait and does not disappoint: the research and analysis are excellent, the style is enjoyable, and interesting new details are revealed, such as the “endless outbursts of crying” and “violent quarrels with cardinals” of “popess” (as the housekeeper was called in the curia) Ingrid Stampa, who “kept Ratzinger’s diary, edited official speeches and even decided who could meet the Holy Father” (351). As a journalist, Seewald is especially strong on the German press coverage 286 Book Reviews of Ratzinger. During his time as archbishop of Munich, “Ratzinger took part so frequently in the public debate that the Süddeutsche Zeitung feared that it would be a ‘big shock’ for millions of Upper Bavarian Catholics if his name did not appear in any edition of the four Munich daily papers” (109). Ratzinger’s predominantly negative media image seems to stem to a great extent from the actions of Hans Küng. Asked about the cancellation of Küng’s missio canonica at a youth event in 1979, Ratzinger said off the cuff that it was right, since Küng was actively disputing essential doctrines of the Catholic Church (128). The comments were published without authorization, which led to Küng accusing Ratzinger of “falling back on pre-conciliar customs of heresy-hunting, insinuation and defamation” (129). After the publication of Vittorio Messori’s The Ratzinger Report in 1985, Küng “crashed in with a sweeping blow in the Hamburg weekly Die Zeit” (170), not failing to bring up his “litany of complaints: the ‘case of Galileo,’ the ‘Chinese rites controversy,’ ‘putting all the most important European thinkers on the Index (Descartes, Kant, Sartre etc.),’ ‘9 million victims of witch trials’” (171). According to Seewald, this momentous article, ending with the claim that Ratzinger was “afraid of the truth more than anything else,” provided the endlessly reproduced media image of the prefect. Seewald singles out the Bild journalist Andreas Englisch as a striking example of the kind of deliberate manipulation typical of so-called expert reporters. After Benedict XVI’s election, Englisch admitted with apparent remorse that, in previous reporting, in order to make John Paul II’s “light shine more brightly,” he had “needed an enemy to make the story more dramatic” (192). Seewald continues: “However, Englisch had no scruples about later applying his business model to books about Pope Francis, whom he raised almost to heaven, in order finally to shove the retired Benedict XVI down to hell” (192). Another Hamburg-based newspaper, Der Spiegel, ran a whole series of unfavorable cover stories on Pope Benedict—“The Unworldly One” (2005), “The Remote One” (2009), “The Infallible One” (2010), “The Incorrigible One” (2011), and “The Exhausted One” (2012)—“as if it was a matter of killing off a dangerous wild beast” (290). But when one of the writers, Alexander Smoltczyk, actually took the time to read the encyclical Deus Caritas Est and to listen to Benedict’s speeches, irritation turned to interest, and he changed his mind: “This pope has got something. He can’t be simply dismissed with the usual suspicions” (290). An even more spectacular success was the conversion of the British media during Benedict XVI’s apostolic journey to England in 2010. Having “fretted and fumed as usual” before the visit, and despite protests led by the famous atheist Richard Dawkins (who had suggested the Pope should be arrested Book Reviews 287 on arrival), the press finally turned around (442). “Britain learned to love the pope,” the Sunday Times wrote in an article titled “Rottweiler? No, he’s a holy granddad,” though the biography retranslates this from the German as “saintly grandfather” (443). As an aside, such tiny mistakes in the book are relatively insignificant, though the translator and editors should have double-checked the established English for “hermeneutics of break” (44), which should be “of rupture,” and “Faith and Church Constitution” (85), which should be “Faith and Order.” The official English title of Redemptor Hominis is The Redeemer of Man (not “Humanity”), and the original of John Paul II’s Theology of the Body was of course not in German (212). The Joint Statement on the Doctrine of Justification should be the Joint Declaration (436), and finally, the correct translation of Benedikts Kreuzzug is “Benedict’s Crusade,” not “Benedict’s Way of the Cross” (448), though with the Williamson affair (380–89), abuse scandal (414–32), and Vatileaks (470–86), a book with the latter title could doubtless also be written. Returning to Ratzinger/Benedict’s oft-forgotten successes, the following books should be mentioned. Ratzinger’s 1968 Introduction to Christianity reached its tenth reprint in a few months and has since become a classic read by millions around the world in “seemingly unending editions” (41). Another sensation that has reached millions was the 1985 The Ratzinger Report, whose original Italian edition of seventy thousand copies sold out in a few weeks (173). Similar success was seen with Seewald’s first interview book from 1996, The Salt of the Earth, which was translated to over thirty languages (224). Most importantly, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, coordinated by Ratzinger and published in 1992, sold more than half a million copies in three weeks and finally reached a figure of over eight million, making it—in the words of John Paul II—one of the “most important events in recent church history” (210). From the time of Benedict’s pontificate, special attention should be given to his 2006 encyclical Deus Caritas Est, which made even Der Spiegel and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung enthusiastic. Seewald comments: “The dogmatist had amazed his public and confounded all negative expectations” (353). Furthermore, the 2007 book Jesus of Nazareth was “the largest ever first edition of a religious book” in German (one hundred and fifty thousand copies). It sold more than three million worldwide (369). Burkhardt Menke, editor and publisher of over eighty of Ratzinger’s books at Herder, said the Pope worked like a “Catholic Lutheran” (365): “Like Luther, he put the reality of God’s relationship [sic; i.e. relationship with God] at the centre’” (366). In a similar vein, Heinz Joachim Fischer wrote: “Since 288 Book Reviews Martin Luther no German figure has made such an impact on the Catholic Church as Joseph Ratzinger” (194). For his part, pastor Jans-Martin Kruse from Rome’s Lutheran Kristuskirche called Benedict “a model for Lutherans,” and at the end of the pontificate, Free Church pastor Rolf Schwärzel wrote: “Quite a few orthodox believing Protestants, Lutherans, Evangelical Christians and representatives of confessing communities respect Benedict highly for his witness to Christ, which they themselves could subscribe to word for word” (519). Another clear strength of Seewald’s biography is the use of material from personal interviews with the Pope, some of which have never been published before. In this volume, we learn that the student rebellion in Tübingen in 1968 was emphatically not a “trauma” for Ratzinger and that he never had difficulties with his students (33). Moreover, contrary to rumors, Ratzinger and Karl Rahner did not remain unreconciled until the latter’s death, but “remained in contact” (126). There are also enjoyable everyday details to satisfy the curious. We are told that Ratzinger’s monthly salary was ten thousand marks (about five thousand U.S. dollars) as archbishop of Munich, but less than half of that as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome (155). In 1991, Ratzinger suffered two strokes and begged John Paul II to let him retire: “But he said ‘No, no, no, that won’t do’” (210). Moving into the apostolic palace after John Paul II, Benedict XVI ordered a thorough renovation, especially removing the worn-out carpets: “A floor is a floor and a carpet is a carpet. . . . There was not even a guest toilet” (293). At the end of the book, there is an afterword which includes new questions put to the Pope Emeritus in late 2018, many of which he preferred not to answer in order to avoid “interfering in the work of the present pope” (533). However, we are informed that his inaugural sermon’s petition “Pray for me that I don’t flee in terror from the wolves” referred to “ostensibly humanist ideologies” which declare “socially excommunicated” anyone opposing “homosexual marriage” (534). Benedict also further explained and defended the idea of “Pope Emeritus” (536–37), comparing it to the custom of Bavarian peasants to hand their farmhouses on to the next generation. “This means that the spiritual side of being a father endures, whereas the rights and duties change. . . . I am extremely grateful to the Lord that Pope Francis’s warm and generous attitude towards me has made it possible to implement this idea in practice” (537). The last words of the book deal a well-deserved blow to those fans of Benedict—and Catholic social media are full of them—who act on their inclination to criticize and ridicule Pope Francis at every opportunity: “As you know, my personal friendship with Pope Francis has not just continued but grown stronger” (539). Think Book Reviews 289 about that for a moment. Insulting Pope Francis is insulting a dear friend of Pope Benedict. To conclude, let us go back to 1977. Joseph Ratzinger wrote to his friend Siegfried Wiedenhofer: “I have something dreadful to tell you, something awful has happened. I have been appointed as bishop of Munich. And I have accepted” (98). Seewald asked Ratzinger whether this was the “end of your personal happiness and all your dreams,” And “the pope’s voice expressed a melancholy resignation as he answered: ‘You could say that. Yes’” (99). To mark the transition, Ratzinger took for his episcopal coat of arms the Moor and bear symbols from the thousand-year-old tradition of the bishops of Freising. The Moor symbolized for him “the universality of the church,” while the bear, in the story of St. Corbinian, is a “beast of burden” which, having killed the saint’s horse, is forced to carry his things all the way to Rome, and Ratzinger connected this with St. Augustine’s interpretation of Psalm 73, where Augustine sees himself as a “beast of burden,” the burden being the episcopal office (104). And indeed, though not foreseen at this point, Ratzinger would carry that burden all the way to Rome. But before that, as the newly elected archbishop of one of the most influential sees in Europe, Ratzinger got to move into the Holnstein Palace, furnished with Baroque statues and Rococo furniture. He left the apartment as it was, except for one thing. “The only new thing was the teddy bear from his childhood, who sat in his own chair in the bedroom” (105). Now, need I explain why after “Ratzinger and reindeer” (which was small but a success), the next Helsinki Ratzinger conference in 2024 is nicknamed “Benedict and bears”? (See benedictandbears.wordpress.com for updates!) Peter Seewald has preliminarily accepted to speak. But in any case, read the brilliant biography. Emil Anton Vantaa, Finland The Light That Binds: A Study in Thomas Aquinas's Metaphysics of Natural Law by Stephen L. Brock (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2020), xv + 277 pp. Fr. Stephen L. Brock is arguably one of the most important contemporary contributors to the Thomistic understanding of natural law. Hence, the publication of his updated and revised doctoral dissertation on the topic 290 Book Reviews of the metaphysics of natural law in St. Thomas will be gladly received by Thomistic scholars and moral theorists alike. In The Light That Binds, Brock’s central task is to explain the metaphysics of the promulgation of natural law in man. Put differently, although extant literature on natural law may be useful for action analysis—why lying is always wrong, say—less attention has been paid to the way in which natural law has been promulgated by God and is present in the human intellect. What literature is available, either as an explanation of St. Thomas or as criticism of the same, has failed to do Aquinas justice, so Brock argues. The book comprises seven chapters and an introduction. In the first chapter, Brock’s central goal is to survey the ways in which (especially more recent) commentators of Aquinas have distorted the sense in which natural law constitutes genuine law, as well as the relationship between natural law and God. For, there is a line of thought on natural law, particularly prominent in the “new natural law” tradition, according to which the principles at the heart of the theory do not fully satisfy the four criteria of legitimate law given by Aquinas. Rival views have natural law constituting a real law, but in virtue of an epistemically explicit reliance on God as lawgiver, among other distortions. Figureheads surveyed in the chapter include Dom Odon Lottin, Ernest Fortin, and Francisco Suárez, among others. In the second chapter, Brock outlines and defends his positive view regarding the legal status of the natural law by way of continued discussion of Lottin, particularly Lottin’s contention that St. Thomas was heavily influenced by a mid-thirteenth-century Franciscan tract, De legibus et praeceptis. Brock argues that St. Thomas conceives of natural law as having an even closer relationship to eternal law than is posited by the earlier Franciscan tract, and the rest of the chapter is largely focused on unpacking this close relationship. In sum, natural law is law because it involves a rational ordering by God of our intellect to the goods of our nature, a human participation in an eternal ordering of all things to their ends (i.e., the eternal law). We need not discover the source of the ordering—namely, God—in grasping the first principles of his ordering, as Brock explains here and elsewhere. But the strictly legal status of the principles requires that natural law comes from a legitimate authority, among other essential elements. Chapters 3 and 4 tackle the more human side of the metaphysics of natural law. More concretely, in these chapters, Brock explains the wheres and the whats of our possession of the natural law. For, not all ordering of objects to ends implies the sort of normativity we see in the natural law. Brute animals, among others, have natural inclinations too, and yet they are not governed through these instinctual drives by a natural law. Natural law Book Reviews 291 is present preeminently in the human intellect, Brock argues, and is not to be confused with the prerational drives that we share as part of our animal nature. God instills these rational drives—the light, as it were—into reason in such a way that an individual can grasp its force autonomously, as basic conceptional truths about what right and wrong consist in (72). Here it would have been nice for Brock to reflect briefly on how Aquinas’s views on moral knowledge fit within his broader epistemological commitments, as the natural (conceptual) knowledge of right and wrong at first glance shares common ground with the Franciscan tradition on divine illumination as found in figures such as St Bonaventure. Elsewhere Brock drops hints of how this harmonization of Aquinas’s epistemology might be done, in discussing how the goods to which we are inclined by the divine light naturally elicit a sort of response from us (131, cf. 169), namely an intellectual inclination to see these objects or ends as goods to which we are properly ordered. Although we appear to have divinely instilled innate knowledge regarding goodness, for Aquinas, the manifestation of such knowledge may require prior knowledge and consideration of the physical world, particularly related to the ends of our nature. Still, it appears that, in the case of moral knowledge, what God has instilled into the intellect is what grounds the knowledge that these ends are good. This may be a necessary corollary of the attributive nature of goodness, yet I find myself wanting to read more on this point, though it is understandable—given the focus of the book—that Brock omits a more thorough analysis. The discussion of moral knowledge also includes a rather important suggestion of normative significance worth flagging: “The inclinations of the powers toward their proper objects (which is by divine ordination) are right, but they are right because the objects are good, and if reason judges them to be right, it is in light of its understanding that the objects are good” (131; emphasis original). Given the context of this discussion, Brock may not intend normative rather than merely epistemological implications. Still, this seems to suggest a sort of Thomistic consequentialism, such that the destination is of greater moral weight than the journey, so to speak. To use an example, one reason why we might judge an idealized form of in vitro fertilization (IVF), one that does not involve the unnecessary conception of multiple embryos or a sin against nature, to be wrong is that it subverts the drives of human nature such that the end is achieved circuitously, abandoning the natural powers and being achieved by artificial means. The satisfaction of the power is prima facie a more fundamental good than the achievement of the end to which it aims, and disconnecting an end’s achievement from the power oriented toward its attainment might plausibly be seen 292 Book Reviews as dehumanizing for the agents whose powers are circumvented. (Never mind, of course, the dehumanizing aspects of a person being conceived in an artificial way.) In other words, when conception is an achievement of our nature, an end achieved through the natural function of our powers, that intuitively appears to be of a primary moral significance. Hence, powers should be supplemented but not subverted, even if the good end is the same. At first glance, Brock’s statement implies that, as the end is the same in both idealized IVF and conjugal relations (namely, conception), they should have an equal share in the goodness conferred by the common good end. The underlying principle at odds with Brock’s suggestion here has been largely unexplored in the literature on the natural law. One might posit “orientationist” alternatives that ground the goodness of our powers’ natural expressions not so much in the achievements toward which they are aimed, but in the propriety of a power ordered to its intrinsic end. On such an account, the ends to which our powers naturally strive partially explain what the natural function is but do not play (at least an exclusive) role in conferring onto that proper orientation its goodness. In other words, a rival account might be sketched according to which ends play more descriptive than prescriptive roles, and such a view may have an easier time explaining some intuitions, such as that about IVF above. Brock’s suggestion regarding the primacy of the ends in explaining the goodness of our actions, if I understand it, is interesting and provocative. I hope it may stimulate ongoing discussions among theorists of natural law, as both alternatives have prima facie merit. In the fifth chapter, Brock explains how Thomas grounds the intellectually apprehended goods in human nature, such that practical reason apprehends the goods as goods for us as human beings. Hence, knowledge of human nature forms part of the known norms of natural law, a point that is important to bring out in contrast to the new natural law tradition, which eschews (descriptive) metaphysical considerations from relevance in the normative realm. Throughout the book, Brock engages the Humean considerations that motivate the alternative moral grounding and rejection of the classical theory characteristic of the new natural law. The remaining two chapters detail how it is that this light, revealed to us in the inclinations of our nature, bind us with the force of law without requiring the immediate apprehension (or judgment) that they arise from a divine lawgiver. As a law, the precepts of natural law carry with them a natural sanction—namely, remorse of conscience. Brock’s discussion of such remorse is particularly interesting, for it is this side of the conscience which fits closely with the contemporary notions and discussions of conscience as Book Reviews 293 a sort of inner tribunal (following Immanuel Kant) or personal judge (for, e.g., Joseph Butler and John Henry Newman) of one’s actions. Brock argues that, for St. Thomas, this subjective phenomena of (painful) felt guilt is “the punishment proper to natural law”—it is not the only punishment, but it is natural law’s “immediate and connatural sanction” (207, 212). In this way, Brock does the Thomistic tradition a service by faithfully extending St. Thomas’s more cerebral discussion of conscience to the commonplace subjective elements that have preeminence today, showing how the metaphysics at work in Aquinas can make deep sense of what is otherwise treated as nearly a brute fact about moral psychology. The universality of this phenomena is closely connected with the universality of the law itself, and in the last chapter, Brock tackles this topic in relation to the special revelation contained in the Decalogue. In due course, Brock also situates his read of Aquinas in the context of reads from G. E. M. Anscombe and Peter Geach, among others. The Light That Binds must be considered a central text for those seeking deep understanding of Thomas’s theory of natural law. Although the subtitle refers to a metaphysical analysis, this should not put readers off; the text does not contain weighty hylomorphism or analysis of substances. Brock offers a unified account of what natural law is, considered not so much through the lens of normative theory as through that of metaethics. Although Brock engages a relatively limited number of contemporary scholars, the exposition of St. Thomas on the points in question has intrinsic, perennial value and is a necessary addition to the collections of those working in natural law. Brock is to be commended for his insights and contribution. Brian Besong Saint Francis University Loretto, PA Origen and Prophecy: Fate, Authority, Allegory, and the Structure of Scripture by Claire Hall (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 195 pp. Origen’s (AD 185–255) surviving corpus is studied by scholars across the disciplines of theology, philosophy, and classics. Drawing from each of these fields, in Origen and Prophecy, Clare Hall applies Origen’s self-proposed tripartite exegesis of Scripture, in which verses can be read at a “somatic, psychic, or pneumatic level,” to his conceptualization of prophecy 294 Book Reviews (193). Hall’s argument examines the “landscape of pagan, Jewish, and early Christian religiosity” and considers the “whole range of Origen’s corpus” in relation to “wider structures and themes in his work” (4, 25). In doing so, Hall presents a compelling analysis embedding Origen’s system of exegesis and theology of prophecy within the intellectual history of prophecy in the late classical and early Christian world. In her first few chapters, Hall explores Origen’s definitions of prophecy in relation to its Jewish and Greco-Roman influences and his system of scriptural exegesis. Hall remains cognizant of terminology used by classical authors as she describes Origen’s word choice, noting, for instance, that he varies his language most when the prophetic validity of the author is in question (9–12). She summarizes Greek, Roman, and Jewish conceptualizations of prophecy, then turns to Scripture and early Christian texts, all of which shape Origen's own “notions of wisdom, knowledge, and prophecy” (20, 29). Hall argues that Origen’s On First Principles and homilies on Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers are underlaid by a coherent exegetical system. Further, she explains, Origen’s Commentary on the Song of Songs applies this same system to other forms of knowledge, including prophecy, which has a future-telling sense, a moral sense, and a mystical and revelatory sense (27, 50, 39–45). In her analysis, Hall provides insight into the philosophical and theological foundations for the “revelatory potential of allegory” as understood by Origen and other early Christian authors and carefully distinguishes Origen’s own beliefs from the tenets of Origenism (30–31). To strengthen her argument, Hall cites a plethora of secondary scholars on Origen, including Caroline Bammel, Gunnar af Hällström, Robert Hauck, and Ilaria Ramelli (18–25). In her next few chapters, Hall unfolds Origen’s system of distinguishing between true and false prophets and his advocacy for the unity of prophecy within Scripture in his response to Marcionism (199, 149–52). Chief among Hall’s insightful contributions, however, is her treatment of the complex interrelation of prophecy and human autonomy: within Origen’s framework, how does providential foreknowledge permit human free choice? To approach an answer, Hall traces the emerging conception of free will as “freedom of decision” among Greek authors such as Aristotle, Chrysippus and the Stoics, the Platonists, the Epicureans, and Alexander of Aphrodisias, who, she argues, laid the groundwork for Origen’s “innovative narrative understanding of free will” in the context of “epistemological considerations surrounding prophecy” (55–71, 75). These sections of her book present a striking glimpse into early Christian departure from the Greek classical tradition, and her exploration of Origen’s defense of both free will and Book Reviews 295 divine foreknowledge opens the door to further research on his theology of conversion and the relation between grace and nature (75–85, 91). While the entirety of her work is thought-provoking, some elements of Hall’s presentation of Origen’s theology may be open to a critical response by patristic scholars. Throughout her work, Hall consistently characterizes Origen’s spiritual readings of Scripture—and prophecy—in direct opposition to its literal readings. For instance, she writes that, for Origen, just as “some verses do not have a somatic reading and cannot be taken literally,” some prophecies are intended to be read as “stumbling blocks or riddles for the exegete to ponder,” rather than accurate or “coherent” predictions of the future (193, 53). Additionally, Hall ties Origen’s insights on prophecy in the Old Testament to his depiction of Christ as the “ultimate content of all somatic, psychic, and pneumatic prophecy” (190). In doing so, she states that Origen held Christ’s bodily Incarnation as “equivalent” to the Logos’s incarnation in Scripture: “Origen understands scripture as directly analogous and even equivalent to the incarnate Christ—that is to say, in the same way in which Christ is incarnate in a human body in the world, so too is Christ incarnate in the ‘flesh’ of scripture” (183). Her thought-provoking analysis, carefully grounded in an examination of classical and late-antique tradition, is certain to engage readers and inspire further research into early Christian conceptions of knowledge, prophecy, exegesis, human autonomy, Christology, and soteriology. Milanna Fritz University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, IN Cross and Creation: A Theological Introduction to Origen of Alexandria by Mark E. Therrien (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2022), xxii + 303 pp. Although Origen of Alexandria has been misrepresented and maligned since his own lifetime, allies have always arisen to defend him in his stead. Especially after the French Catholic reappraisal of Origen’s theology in the twentieth century, the once-dominant interpretation of Origen as a Platonist dressed in Christian garb no longer holds sway among most scholars. As Mark Therrien notes, however, traces of a “metaphysical reductionist” interpretation of Origen, propounded most notably by Adolf 296 Book Reviews von Harnack, still influences Origenian scholarship (89). Therrien’s book vigorously opposes this line of interpretation and provides a rereading of crucial passages in Origen’s On First Principles (Peri archōn) and his Commentary on John. In addition to presenting a fresh interpretation of these texts, Therrien also offers an introduction for those who are encountering Origen’s theology for the first time. Rather than prefacing with biographical remarks, this book dives straight into Origen’s major theological texts, allowing the reader, as Henri de Lubac put it, “to see Origen at work.” Therrien operates under the principle that Origen is above all a biblical theologian whose speculation is driven primarily by his commitment to exegesis rather than Platonic presuppositions. Thus, his reading of various controversial excerpts of Origen, particularly from the Peri archōn, pays close attention to the biblical verses that Origen cites, which operate not as mere ornamentation but as the indispensable mechanics of his theology. This book is divided into eight chapters, each of which presents a “fundamental pillar” of Origen’s thought: God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, eschatology, the soul, the world, the Cross, and deification. Drawing attention to the first two cycles that comprise Origen’s Peri archōn, Therrien treats the first cycle as authoritative to Origen’s system, since it is here that Origen presents the Church’s teaching in a more dogmatic form prior to the zetetic approach of the second cycle. Chapter 1 highlights the anti-Valentinian polemic that contextualizes Origen’s account of divine incorporeality and the possibility of genuine knowledge of God. Following the insights of Cyril O’Regan, Therrien notes that an extreme apophaticism led the Valentinian Gnostics to “assimilat[e] God to creaturely categories,” as seen in their account of various deities emanating from God as if by a material transfer of substance (36). For Origen, only the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are absolutely incorporeal, and it is their absolute incorporeality that separates the Trinity from all creatures. Despite this fundamental distinction between the Trinity and creation, Origen affirms that a limited knowledge of God is possible for rational creatures with the caveat that, whenever God is likened analogically to a created reality, the dissimilarity is always greater (38). Therrien contends that, unlike the Gnostics, Origen envisions the material world as the positive and even necessary means for creatures to derive knowledge of God. Chapter 2 focuses on Origen’s Christology, especially the primacy of Christ’s title “Wisdom,” which the author accounts for by explaining the logic behind Origen’s exegesis of John’s Prologue and Prov 8:22. Long before the Arian controversy of the fourth century, Origen insisted that God is eternally Father and thus generates the Son from all eternity. Origen has often been characterized, however, as arguing that God’s eternal status as Creator Book Reviews 297 necessarily entails the existence of creation ab aeterno. Therrien points out that such a reading conflates Origen’s two distinct notions of creation: the foreknown existence of creatures as “sketched and prefigured” in Wisdom from all eternity and the concrete, substantial existence of creatures that begins in time (60). The investigation of Origen’s pneumatology in chapter 3 shows how Ps 103 (in the Septuagint) informs Origen’s notion of the Holy Spirit as Creator. For Origen, creation is not simply a past event, but is instead a dynamic process: “Created beings must, so to speak, achieve what they are through a process of growth” (79–80). By looking through the lens of eschatology, what creatures ought to be as sanctified participants in divinity, one sees that Origen’s understanding of the Holy Spirit’s activity of sanctification is integral to the act of creation. Thus, contrary to the claim that Origen understands the work of the Holy Spirit exclusively in terms of sanctification rather than in creation, Origen’s considers the Holy Spirit to be Creator precisely as Sanctifier. Chapters 4 and 5 reassess critical passages from the Peri archōn that are often categorized as references to the soul’s preexistence and putative fall into embodiment, notions that many have taken as the governing notion for Origen’s theology as a whole and his evaluation of the material world in particular. While Therrien concedes that Origen postulates the soul’s existence and sin before birth into this world, he argues that this notion served only as a hypothesis for Origen and that its importance to Origen’s theological system is too often overstated. Instead, the author asserts one of his central theses, namely, that eschatology rather than protology is at the heart of Origen’s theology. According to this reading, Origen’s maxim “the end is like the beginning” should be understood as, “the end determines the beginning” (112). Perhaps in an effort to correct the perceived exaggerations of opposing accounts of Origen’s thought, Therrien does not examine the anti-Gnostic polemic that drove Origen to posit preexistence or antecedent merits as part of his theodicy, which harmonizes the disparate conditions of rational creatures with the justice and goodness of the Creator. Nevertheless, Therrien’s corrective reorients the interpretation of passages such as Peri archōn 2.8.3, which are otherwise liable to be read exclusively in terms of a primordial fall. The author here identifies an easily missed yet crucial distinction between Origen’s non-evaluative, synonymous usage of “mind” or “soul” to refer to ontological categories and the Pauline usage of “psychic” or “soulish” (psychikos) to indicate an existential state in opposition to the spiritual (pneumatikos). These chapters further develop a second major thesis that runs throughout this book: for Origen materiality per se is integral to the 298 Book Reviews constitution of all creatures and will not be dispensed with in the eschaton. Against the metaphysical reductionist reading, Therrien argues that Origen’s view of eschatological unity is both fundamentally ecclesiological and deeply Pauline, wherein the unity and diversity of individuals coexist as members of one body with one head: Jesus Christ. In chapter 6, Therrien wrestles with Origen’s discussion of the “casting-down” of the world (katabolē kosmou) in Peri archōn 3.5.4, arguing that “there is perhaps no text in Origen’s corpus that seems to validate the metaphysical reductionist interpretation more than this one” (145). Attending to the unique New Testament usage of katabolē (“creation”; “casting-down”), Therrien argues that Origen’s primary focus is on the existential condition of attachment to sin rather than on cosmological speculation, although he notes that Peri archōn 3.5.4 “makes several comments that clearly refer to preexistence” (171). Yet, Origen believes that the world in which humans find themselves is one of combat with demonic powers. Humans are delivered from subjection to this world not by a flight from corporeality, which would be impossible for creatures—but by participation in the Cross (see 179). Chapters 7 and 8 highlight one of the most neglected, yet one of the most pivotal aspects of Origen’s thought: salvation through the Cross and its relevance for human deification. In these two chapters lies the core of Therrien’s reconstruction of Origen’s Christology, which is grounded in the foregoing discussion on the eschatological status of matter and individuality. Since Christ is the archetype of all humans, the assumption and preservation of his human body and soul within the divine life indicates the eschatological integrity of redeemed and deified humankind. The redemption of humans, and even the final reconciliation of all creatures to God (Origen’s famous notion of apokatastasis), does not occur by metaphysical necessity, but by the free decision of creatures to share in Christ’s obedience to the Father. For Origen, the love of Christ for humans manifested on the Cross is a revelation of the Father’s philanthropia, the love which the Father not only has but indeed is. Since Origen conceives of deification as nearly synonymous with the contemplation of the Father, the Cross, as the supreme revelation of the Father’s philanthropia, is the source of deification for those who place it at the center of their life and thought. Like all excellent scholarship, Therrien’s book inspires its readers to “return to the sources” and take up Origen’s On First Principles and Commentary on John afresh. Therrien’s book is a well-defended portrayal of Origen as a biblical theologian and, above all, as a witness to the Christian faith. Although this book is subtitled as an introduction to Origen’s theology, Therrien’s careful reading of Origen in conversation with secondary Book Reviews 299 scholarship will also be of great value to scholars and students of patristic theology. At the same time, Therrien’s direct and clear manner of conveying complex theological themes renders this book an ideal introduction to two of Origen’s most daunting and yet most rewarding texts. The reader who navigates these two major works of Origen with Therrien as a guide will gain a firm vantage point from which the whole of Origen’s writings can be engaged. Jean-Paul Juge Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA The Achievement of David Novak: A Catholic–Jewish Dialogue, edited by Matthew Levering and Tom Angier (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2021), 360 pp. The Achievement of David Novak: A Catholic–Jewish Dialogue, edited by Matthew Levering and Tom Angier, brings together twelve essays on various aspects of Novak’s thought along with a response to each essay by Novak himself. The topics themselves concern whether Jews and Christians worship the same God, suicide, natural law, Pope Pius IX, justice, the sanctity of human life, and supersessionism. Its contributors include senior scholars as well as those at the beginning of their careers. Each essay, arising from some aspect of Novak’s vast corpus, is replied to by Novak himself. These replies are instructive, for they show a great teacher at work, responding with nuance and charity to criticisms and always moving the conversation forward in illuminative ways. Levering opens the volume with a contribution about Novak as a master of Jewish–Christian dialogue, indeed, “the greatest master of Jewish–Christian dialogue who has ever lived” (1). Levering highlights the intellectual pedigree of Novak, whose teachers included Abraham Joshua Heschel, Leo Strauss, Yves Simon, Louis Dupré, and Germain Grisez. Jews are called to live according to the revelation to which they are accountable. Christians are called to live according to the revelation to which they are accountable. Neither Jews nor Christians should hold the other group accountable for their distinctive revelation, but neither Jews nor Christians should hide or minimize what they have to offer to the other. Princeton’s Robert P. George interviews Novak, revealing something of the origin story shaping decades of dialogue between the rabbi and 300 Book Reviews Catholic interlocutors, perhaps the most influential of which was Germain Grisez, Novak’s dissertation director in the early 1970s at Georgetown University and a colleague in founding the “new natural law” school, along with George’s own dissertation director, John Finnis. Melanie Barrett’s essay highlights the importance of natural law, a key theme in Novak’s work, for a pluralistic and secular milieu. She cites him saying, “Jews ought to encourage non-Jews to pray in public in order to show how much they believe the world, including the political order, is dependent on God” (48). Such public prayer creates more opportunity also for Jews to express their faith in public. Invoking Gottlob Frege’s distinction between sense and reference, Francis Beckwith tackles the question of whether the Trinitarian God is the same God as the God of Abraham. Cassius Clay and Mohammed Ali have the same reference, though different senses. Like Novak, Beckwith believes Catholics and Jews worship the same God. John Berkman returns to the subject of much of Novak’s early writing, suicide. Berkman’s chapter seeks to explore the similarities and differences between Jewish and Catholic views on the topic. Novak’s dissertation exploration of Plato’s, Aquinas’s, and Kant’s views was supplemented by his experience working as a rabbi and hospital chaplain at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, DC, a facility that specializes in treating mental illness. One of Aquinas’s arguments against suicide is that it is contrary to proper love of self. In his response to Berkman’s essay, Novak highlights that the command “to love your neighbor as yourself ” could mean “as you love yourself ” or “as you yourself are loved by God” (118). David Elliot, a former student of Novak’s, responds to quasi-Marcionite attacks on the manualist tradition by what might be called the “beige moral theologians” of the 1970s. He highlights Novak’s insight that “our terror of God’s power is mostly sublimated into our reverence for God’s wisdom. . . . It should reappear only when we are tempted to stand up against God in contempt rather than standing before him in awe” (134). Tom Angier, one editor of The Achievement of David Novak, treats the difference between a more typically Scholastic approach to natural law grounded in metaphysics and Novak’s theologically formulated approach. But Novak replies, “I tried to argue that natural law, in my view, is not derived from theological premises, but rather theology gives natural law a more satisfactory ontological status than does philosophy” (161). Douglas Farrow considers how people of faith, both Jewish and Christian, can challenge the legal and political prominence of an ethics of autonomy and replace it with an ethics of dignity. Novak, in turn, traces the rejection of Book Reviews 301 traditional religious grounding of public morality back to “the archetypical modern Jewish heretic, the seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza” (177). A natural-law ethic can, however, allow Jews, Christians, and Muslims to be proactive citizens in a “multicultural, democratic society in good faith.” Rita George-Tvrković examines issues of inter-religious dialogue of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Should Christians and Jews speak of Mohommed as a prophet? Might he be a prophet in a localized sense that he brought monotheism to the Arabs? Does respect for an individual with a different religious tradition require adopting the language that they use about their tradition? Matthew Levering, the other editor of The Achievement of David Novak, provides a theological and historical examination of the case of Edgardo Mortara, a Jewish child removed from his family following his baptism without his parents’ permission. Against some Catholic critics, Levering provides six reasons for considering the actions of Pope Pius IX as both imprudent and objectively unjust. This judgment does not call into question the authority of the papal office. Levering points out, “God has willed to mediate his revelation through the instrumentality of sinful human beings. . . . The followers of Jesus have always been sinners” (215). Nor does the personal holiness of Pope Pius IX mean that he was incapable of enduring lapses in practical judgment. Interestingly, Levering also cites the work of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, “who points out that Jews, including Jews who convert to Christianity, have been among the prominent advocates of persecution of Jews” (218). Daniel Philpott’s contribution highlights the biblical idea of justice as more than giving to each his due, but rather right relationships and human flourishing. “Justice as due, in its modern forms, includes rights but excludes virtues like generosity, solidarity, mercy, care, and compassion; contrasts retribution sharply with mercy; focus on exterior action, not interior motives; and claims to be public while the other virtues are private. Biblical justice, by contrast, is wider and encompasses more” (244). Thomas Slabon’s chapter considers the relationship between faith and reason, the Jewish inheritance and Greek inheritance highlighted in Novak’s Gifford Lectures entitled Athens and Jerusalem. “This paper begins by retracing Novak’s radical response to Tertullian’s dichotomy [What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?]: the relationship is not to be understood as a conflict between reason and revelation but rather between two (sometimes competing) revelations about which philosophy and theology reason” (253). Christ the mediator ends up, in Slabon’s reading of Augustine, completing the Platonic project. 302 Book Reviews Christopher Tollefsen’s essay treats possible exceptions to the sanctity of life such as capital punishment, self-defense, and a divine command like the one given to Abraham to take Issac’s life. Tollefsen calls into question the claim of Aquinas that the death penalty can be ethically justified because the wrongdoer has lost his dignity in committing capital crime. Tollefsen writes: “If ‘dignity’ claims are intended to summarily capture certain truths about what it means to have a particular sort of nature, then one can lose one’s dignity, if one initially has it, only by losing that nature. But losing one’s nature just is ceasing to exist as the sort of thing one must be if one is to exist at all: it is to go out of existence altogether. This thought is impossible to sustain of a criminal who is the abiding subject of the drama of crime, investigation, apprehension, trial, conviction, and punishment, as even Aquinas’s language, which refers to ‘he’ throughout, makes clear” (299). In the final essay of the volume, Thomas Joseph White, O.P., distinguishes five different versions of supersessionism, some of which Jews and Christians both accept, but others that divide Jewish and Chrisitan thinkers. Certain forms of supersessionism have a relevance that unites Jews and Christians. White writes: “Today Jews and Christians alike face two other forms of non-biblical supersessionism. Each is opposed to the other, in a certain sense, and both are opposed to core elements of Judaism and Christianity. I am referring here on the one hand to Islam and on the other hand to post-Enlightenment secular liberalism” (323). The Achievement of David Novak: A Catholic–Jewish Dialogue highlights the wide-ranging scope of the rabbi’s thought, as well as the insights that can be gleaned when colleagues, even of different religious traditions, speak together in friendship. No one interested in Catholic–Jewish Dialogue should ignore this volume. Christopher Kaczor Loyola Marymount University Los Angeles, CA Christian Social Ethics by Elmar Nass (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022), 512 pp. In his extraordinarily comprehensive work, Elmar Nass, professor for Christian social sciences and societal dialogue at the Academy for Catholic Theology of Cologne, Germany, delivers with what he promises Book Reviews 303 in the title of this great opus: it is a real guide to Christian social ethics, including both its foundations and numerous fields of current application. Although the book was first published in Germany and some application parts refer rather to specific discussions in the Teutonic area, as the author himself says in the preface, his general intention to provide a “universal socio-ethical basis for argumentation” and the ambitious attempt to “make this work a starting point for globally effective Christian social ethics” (xiv) are fulfilled, as the book undoubtedly speaks to the universal questions of social ethics, while it invites a search for concrete solutions to regional problems by implementing the corresponding criteria and basic principles. Indeed, the original German perspective, in which the growing emphasis on the ultimate authority of human sciences in theology often leads to a Cinderella-like existence of genuine Christian traditions and proposals based on Revelation, may be understood as a productive challenge which incentives Nass’s efforts to re-create a “substantive ethics” that is marginalized in the postmodernity (xviii). However, these efforts are not destined to flow into a kind of restoration or a mere archaeological appreciation of former Catholic propositions. Nass struggles rather for adequate answers corresponding to the present, but answers deeply rooted in the conviction that Christians still have something to say to the world based on their own timeless knowledge. Hence, it is understandable that, in the short introduction, the author first sets out the postmodern contexts of ethical tasks and, while dealing with secular orientations of the present, calls for an ethics that derives from respective views of humanity and society. For Nass, there is no reason to exclude the religious point of view from this dialogue. On the contrary, his anti-secularist programmatic statement—“Imagine there is a God” (xix)—is both courageous and provocative in a scientific world that forbids theology to give orientations to all the people, with the excuse of alleged lack of universalizability. In doing this, Nass complies with Jesus’s mandate to the disciples to be “leaven” in Matt 13:33 and light and salt of the earth in Matt 5:13 and following (xx). The rationale for addressing and advocating “substantive Christian social ethics” is its rationality and the author’s trust in the “healthy democratic culture of debate” (xx), which is, however, understood in terms of dialogue around common values and positions rather than based on mere rules of secular discourse ethics. The chosen Catholic perspective is thereby situated in an ecumenical context and directed to a real dialogue with other competing ethics, both religious and secular, including the disposition to better understanding of one’s own views. Out of this approach, Nass will propose some applications of Christian principles of social action. 304 Book Reviews These purposes determine the clear structure of the work, consisting of three main parts, divided in thirteen singular chapters. Part 1 (“The Mission”) revives a concept which—at least under this specific term— is almost completely removed from mainstream theological debates in Germany, especially in ethical context. “Christians are in the world, but not of the world” (1)—that is how Nass begins his argumentation in favor of an indispensable missionary calling within Christianity. In my opinion, it is this part of the volume that deserves the most attention, as it expresses a sound, self-confident Christian awareness of being enabled and invited to do something good for the rest of the world, while starting from one’s own metaphysical basis. Nass presents Christian social ethics without any inferiority complex, as if it were something to be hidden in the twenty-first-century world or as if Christians were compelled to merely repeat what the secular world permits them to say. Consequently, Nass addresses from a Christian perspective the question of goodness as a presupposition of ethics, (3–9), before he gets to the explicit Christian mission as “sanctification of the world” (11–33), accepting the facticity of ethical plurality in the present but simultaneously exhibiting the Christian answer to social issues as a stringent reasoning which is capable of serving as a moral compass not only for resolving particular dilemmas but also for evaluating alternative models of ethics, starting from a comprehensive view of human dignity that is based on creation. In this context, determined by an inclusive understanding of the call to holiness, Nass reflects on the objectivity of goodness and its foundation in God, while both eschewing a normative relativism and acknowledging that “finding objective truth remains a dynamic process” (20). Some other basic questions of Christian social ethics follow: humanity, responsibility, values, and social principles (common good, personhood, solidarity, and subsidiarity). All these considerations amount to a normative Christian humanism which is clearly centred on the indestructible human dignity given by God. In the third and the last chapter of part 1, Nass analyzes the possible contributions of other Christian denominations in dealing with social questions based on the Christian message, giving another proof of his strong dialogical approach. The ecumenical obstacles are not denied, but are transcended to some extent on ethical topics. Nass principally sees other confessions as allies in contrasting some attempts to suppress religion in the postmodern world with the Christian mandate to “sanctify the world” (26). Nass names some forms of secular opposition, such as idolization of the market, belief in political discourse in the sense of Jürgen Habermas, absolutized belief in reason in the tradition of the French Revolution, and collectivist societal visions. In a nutshell, “Christians and Book Reviews 305 Christian ethics deserve a voice, and no apologies should be made even for public declarations of faith,” as they open sources of transcendence (55). In part 2 (“In Dialogue”), Nass uses the common foundations of normative Christian humanism, as identified in part 1, to examine the extent to which Christian social ethics (which relies on these foundations) may cooperate with other models of understanding social issues which originate from non-Christian sources. In particular, he explores the lack of a generally accepted definition of human dignity to be effectively protected by society. Christianity’s view of humanity facilitates the identification of violations of human dignity. A special feature of this part of the volume is Nass’s courageousness of criticizing other ethical concepts, joined with the positive purpose to affirm what is good in them from the Christian point of view, for “the main aim is to explore the extent to which other religious and secular ethics can justify unconditional human dignity as the basis of social ethics” (60). With this in mind, Nass proceeds to revise a number of pertinent ethical models, guided by the idea of “building relevant bridges” according to the criteria of transcendence and responsibility (61): from Islam, through Judaism and Buddhism, to humanism in Immanuel Kant, Amartya Sen, and Adam Smith. Nass criticizes the different forms of ethics beyond normative humanism, such as “normative relativism, postmodern discourse ethics, and the socio-ethically relevant features of systems theory” (95), which deny the recognizability of an objective truth. In this section, Nass’s criticism focuses on the consequences of such approaches, especially in terms of disregarding of the weakest links in the societal chain. This provides useful arguments for Christians concerned with the non-Christian approach to social issues that very often dominate the public discourse, due to their current cultural hegemony. Finally, Nass reflects on the possibility of establishing a world authority to ensure the exercise of unconditional human dignity. He concludes that a normative humanism is needed which would include an objective understanding of human rights to be introduced to “popular sovereign constitutions as a yardstick for their legitimacy by the global authority” (121). The third and largest part of the book concerns diverse fields of “application” of the socio-ethical principles set out in the previous parts. The most impressive thing is Nass’s ability to address a great number of controversial issues. However, this is probably also the place where the author’s approach could be most criticized, since scholars will disagree on these controversial topics. Some chapters or sections require more prior knowledge than others (e.g., “Currency,” the fourth section in chapter 11, “Economy and Economic Order”), and it could be asked if they go beyond the scope of “a guide to 306 Book Reviews Christian social ethics.” The specific contents of this part are intended as proposing “Christian orientations” for concrete fields: environmental ethics, social justice, just war (peace), family, work, education, organ donation, death, economic ethics, property system, social market economy, currency, behavioral economic, leadership and organizational culture. This approach leaves a wide scope for further discussion, and the different points of view are summarized at the end of each section under “consequence and compass.” The last small section of part 3 concerns “future issues” and introduces some useful ethical observations for several questions that are becoming more and more relevant today. The most emphasized of them is digitalization, including some dilemmas such as use of humanoid robots in care of elderly people with dementia or telemedicine. Other questions are mentioned only by name (e.g., autonomous weapon systems, demographic development, and the future of social systems). A particular advantage in the book is the evident but non-excessive presence of Church teaching in its full complexity, including the magisterium of all recent pontificates, without giving the impression of being a mere presentation of the current positions of Catholic Church. The papal teachings support Nass’s guiding idea of a Christian normative humanism. To sum up, the author demonstrates that he is able “to show a logically stringent path from a good value rationale via the formulation of corresponding values and their compatibility with alternative positions to concrete proposals for solutions that at the same time remain open to dispute” (320). He manages to hold a constructive dialogue with non-Christian normative humanisms based on accurately analyzed commonalities, and not merely on a desire for social harmony. Nass also convinces the reader by his comprehensive knowledge of such different authors as Erasmus of Rotterdam and Habermas. He does not fear to question recognized approaches (e.g., discourse ethics) and to affirm approaches that are currently disregarded (e.g., natural law). He accepts the challenges given to Christian social ethics by a rapidly changing society, always trying to extract good insights from any ethical model while holding firm to his guiding premise: the concept of humanity based on transcendence and the call to holiness. Andrzej Dominik Kuciński Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith Rome Book Reviews 307 Primacy of Christ: The Patristic Patrimony in Joseph Ratzinger/ Benedict XVI’s Analogy in Theology by Vincent C. Anyama (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2021), xii + 263 pp. In the famous dispute between Erich Przywara and Karl Barth, Przywara held the view that the analogy of being is the “formal principle of Catholic thought,” whereas Barth maintained the position that the analogy of being is the “invention of the Antichrist.” The recent work of Fr. Vincent Anyama presents how the theology of Joseph Ratzinger, with this emphasis on the primacy of Christ, under the influence of the Church Fathers, contributes to the discussion revolving around the role of analogy within theology. Gottlieb Söhngen, one of Ratzinger’s mentors and teachers, had appeased Barth with his argument of a Christocentric “analogia entis within an analogia fidei” (2–3). Anyama argues that Ratzinger has taken up the mantle of his mentor in appropriating his Christocentric synthesis of the analogy of faith and reason via his study of Augustine. The unique contribution of Anyama’s work is that his study of Ratzinger takes the reader beyond the typical presentation of Ratzinger as an Augustinian and Bonaventurian theologian. Anyama’s work engages the patristic influence of Origen, Gregory of Nyssa, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Tyconius, Justin Martyr, and Maximus the Confessor in addition to the significance of Augustine in Ratzinger’s theology. Anyama’s study is concerned with addressing Ratzingerian scholarship in two different areas. First, he wants to address what is an inadequate assessment of the patristic influence upon Ratzinger’s theology in the scholarship of Peter Fletcher and Peter Kucer. Second, he intends to address varying questions relating to Ratzinger’s use of analogy in the work of Peter McGregor, Justin Kizewski, Peter Kucer, and Gabino Bilbaco (235). Anyama explicitly notes that he relies upon a “hermeneutic of continuity” that is limited to the continuity between the patristic heritage and Ratzinger’s theology (13). Anyama limits the scope of his study on Ratzinger’s use of analogy by adopting the patristic categories utilized by Justin Kizekski in work God-Talk: (1) faith and reason, (2) image and participation, and (3) God-talk (12). These categories will frame the structure for part two of the book (chapters 3–5), whereas the first part of the book (chapters 1–2) focuses on the general patristic understanding of analogy and the Church Fathers quoted by Ratzinger. Jesus Christ is the Incarnation of the logos of the Father. The Church Fathers use “wisdom” and logos in reference to both philosophy and the Christian faith. In the thought of Origin, Christ is the one unique Logos, 308 Book Reviews who is both the source and ultimate end of the many words (logoi) of natural reason (26). As the eternal Logos, Jesus Christ is the consummate Image, whereas the human person is an “image of the Image” via the rational soul in the theology of Clement of Alexandria (33–34). This line of patristic thought will become important later on in Anyama’s work as he addresses the theme of the primacy of Christ within Ratzinger’s thought. Creation in the image of God is distinct from the notion of likeness to God within much of patristic thought. In the thought of Irenaeus and other Fathers, likeness is “understood as assimilation of creatures into God,” which is a participation of the creature in the life of God via the gift of grace and the life of the Spirit (46–47). The notions used by the Fathers, which are underscored by Anyama, are the identification of reason as “seeds of wisdom” (Origen) and “Seeds of the Word” ( Justin Martyr). The analogy between pre-Christian philosophy and the Christian faith will be a frequent theme in the writings of Ratzinger, who will begin his inaugural lecture at the University of Bonn with an insightful reflection upon the God of philosophy and the God of faith. When Anyama begins the second part of the book, he focuses on the thought of Bonaventure because of the prominent influence he had on Ratzinger’s emphasis upon the primacy of Christ. Bonaventure’s preference for Christ as the Logos in the order of faith and reason continues to find resonance within the theology of Ratzinger. Commenting upon the similarities and differences between Bonaventure and Augustine, Anyama notes that “Bonaventure builds on Augustine’s dialogical character of word, which prioritizes the interior logos over its outward manifestation voice.” Yet distinct from Augustine, Anyama argues that “Bonaventure makes more explicit the full historical implication of the analogy between human intelligible word and the divine Logos” (139). Bonaventure’s understanding of the primacy of the Logos and his development of Augustine’s illumination theory, which proposes Christ as the light from which faith and reason emanate, will shape Ratzinger’s approach to modern theology. Modernity, beginning with the late Middle Ages, gave birth to the opposition between reason and faith, in Ratzinger’s view. Anyama argues that Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers represent the philosophical argument against the premodern complementarity between philosophy and theology, whereas Martin Luther and Barth represent the theological rejection of philosophy (148–50). The rejection of philosophy within theology in Barth has contributed to a “progressive Kantian philosophical replacement of metaphysics with history” (149). Consequently, Ratzinger has argued in his work Principles of Catholic Theology that the need to comprehend the Book Reviews 309 mediation of history within ontology is one of the central crises in contemporary theology. Drawing upon the Fathers and Bonaventure, Ratzinger is able to argue for the primacy of Christ the Logos, who is the source of light for both faith and reason (philosophy). The Incarnation has brought philosophical logos to its fruition in a personal Logos, who can be known and loved. Anyama uses Ratzinger’s well-known reflection on the concept of the person from Communio to demonstrate how the “logos of Greek philosophy is by ascent of thought in search of the essence of Being, while the Logos of faith descends as the Word in relation to being” (158). In Anyama’s estimation, Ratzinger is able to use the Christian conception of Logos as a remedy to the self-imposed limitation upon reason by modernity, which has implications for politics, law, and ethics. Following the influence of Augustine, Ratzinger emphasizes Trinitarian love as his central analogy for the notion of image. The human person has been created in the image of Christ as the eternal Logos, and hence he is made for the loving dia-logos with the eternal Thou. With Irenaeus, who characterizes Adam as the “scheme” (dispositionem) or “copy” of the Incarnation, Anyama notes that Ratzinger understands the human person “as image of the definitive Image” (176–77). Origen and Ratzinger share the notion that love is the highest degree of knowledge, and hence is the supreme way to know God. This is a key point that leads Anyama to argue that the term “heart” is a univocal concept because “Christ possesses an immediate vision of the Father.” Consequently, Anyama concludes: “What the heart of Christ knows univocally about God, the hearts of believers receive from his words by analogy of participation” (182). The knowledge and love of the believer of the pierced heart of Christ is a key encounter, which can lead to the gift of salvation because it enables the believer to participate in the self-giving love of God. Participation, likeness to God, and discipleship are best summarized for Ratzinger in Gregory of Nyssa’s explanation of participation as “following.” Anyama argues that the notion of following Christ in Ratzinger consists in “learning from him how God intends for his creature to participate in him” (184). The Logos has primacy because he embodies the authentic way of being and becoming a human person. Christ is the definitive Adam. The personalist dialogical anthropology of Ratzinger and his understanding of participation are developed throughout his work on eschatology. Contrary to Patrick Fletcher in Resurrection Realism, who notes a discontinuity in Ratzinger’s appropriation of Platonic thought, Anyama favors a view of continuity predicated upon the influence of Augustine’s dialogical notion of image and participation and the consistency of Ratzinger’s presentation 310 Book Reviews of patristic anthropology of the heart with his dialogical eschatology of participation (185–91). Eternal life is a participation of the human person in the eternal dia-logos between God with man in Christ. Both Augustine and Origen enable Ratzinger to note that the participation of the believer in the heart of Christ is already an eschatological participation in the resurrected life. Finally, the development of Ratzinger’s theology of image and participation culminates in his development of the theological notion of communion. Succinctly, Anyama notes that communion is “a synthetic analogy describing God’s unique descent to humanity, humanity’s spiritual ascent to the transcendent God, and humanity’s union with one another” (197). In light of the primacy of Christ and his Incarnation, the Holy Eucharist becomes the privileged place of participation and communion in the life of God. In his final chapter, on “Ratzinger’s Primacy of Christ in God-Talk,” Anyama emphasizes that Ratzinger follows the patristic tradition on the Christocentric unity of Scripture, Tradition, and worship. Drawing upon Benedict XVI’s 2006 Regensburg lecture, Anyama outlines Ratzinger’s proposal to restore the primacy of the truth in three ways. First, contrary to the self-limitation of reason, the analogy of reason can and should be used to speak well of God. Second, the view that truth is made should be countered with the notion that the truth (the logos) has been given and should be humbly received. Finally, we should give witness to the Logos in word and deed, contrary to the reigning relativism (208). Anyama highlights the affinity between Ratzinger and Clement of Alexandria and Gregory of Nyssa in his commentary analogical nature of naming God. With the Fathers, Ratzinger distinguishes the limits of philosophy to make declaration about God and the primacy of Christ and his grace to name God (209–10). With respect to revelation via Scripture, Anyama highlights Ratzinger’s critique of an exegetical method limited only to a purely historical-critical method. First, the words of the sacred Author become merely human words instead of divine speech. Second, the unity of Scripture can be undermined with the limited study of individual books in their historical context (216–17). Christ as the definitive Logos and a hermeneutic of faith which is carried out in prayer and culminates as worship can lead a fruitful reception of God’s word. The divine condescension which takes places in Christ’s proclamation of the Gospel is itself a model for evangelization. Anyama highlights that, for Ratzinger, we need to follow God’s method of evangelization, which is one of humility and simplicity (232). This is a critical reminder for all of us who work in service to academia. God-talk must be translated to the faithful so they might experience the joy that comes from participation and communion with the incarnate Logos. Book Reviews 311 Anyama’s work served as his dissertation at the Gregorian University. Consequently, its shortcomings are related to the characteristics that may be essential for a dissertation, but should be revised when published in book form. The typical status quaestionis could have been shortened or omitted to focus on the main ideas he was going to address in the work. The structure of the book could benefit from either leaving out the chapter 2, on “The Fathers whom Ratzinger Quotes,” or integrating some of the quotations or ideas throughout the text. Finally, a more robust conclusion could have honed in on the implications of the arguments presented for the grace and nature analogy. A surprising lacuna is that there is no engagement of Ratzinger’s inaugural lecture at the University of Bonn in the chapter on faith and reason. Also a treatment of Cyril’s Christology may provide fruitful insight into Ratzinger’s engagement with neo-Chalcedonian Christology. Anyama’s book is highly recommended because we get an in-depth treatment of patristic influence on the theology of Joseph Ratzinger. Ratzingerian scholars such as Joseph Lam and Patrick Fletcher have limited their scope to the Augustinian impact upon Ratzinger’s theology. Anyama offers a deep dive into the patristic Ratzinger’s theology. Anyama’s work is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the discussion of analogy within theology. In light of Anyama’s work, we can conclude that the analogia entis is not the Antichrist, but a way of receiving the revelation of the Father’s Logos in Christ for the sake of the salvation of all of humanity. Roland Millare St. John Paul II Foundation Houston, TX