THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORS: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS OF THE PRoVINCE oF ST. JosEPH Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington, D. C. 20017 VoL. XXXV JULY, 1971 No.3 THE TRINITARIAN INDWELLING C ATHOLIC THEOLOGY of grace is, traditionally, a theology of nature and grace. From the synthesis of Thomas Aquinas, through the Council of Trent, to theologians like Henri de Lubac and Karl Rahner, grace theology has been mainly concerned with grace as transforming nature, with human nature's capacity for grace, with the problem of the relationship between the natural and the supernatural. The nature-grace problem has, in fact, dominated Catholic theology of grace and justification for a very long time. On the other hand, in a contemporary culture that sees man as a person rather than a member of a species, that sees man in terms of his personhood rather than his human nature, theology tends to understand man more as a person. And this is as it should be. The task of theology is to express Christian faith in terms of the worldview, the outlook, the entire stance of contemporary man. This is not to say that God's word should be distorted as a concession to the times; 369 8?'0 ROBERT :t. FARICY it is simply to say that God's word, if it is to be heard and understood, must be theologically so formulated that it can be addressed. It is to be expected, then, that Catholic theologians try to express the traditionally nature-centered doctrine of sanctifying grace in more modern terms of person and personal relationship. Efforts have been made but they have not been completely successful; and Catholic theology of grace remains today a theology of grace and nature, cut off from the main currents of today's theology-process, eschatology, ecclesiology, theology of community, theology of progress and involvement in the world-and eclipsed by them. This is unfortunate, for Catholic theology badly needs a more personalist theology of grace. For one thing, a personalist framework is needed in order to interpret the New Testament data better and more fully; with few exceptions, the New Testament speaks not of nature being graced but of the Holy Spirit being sent to us, of the Father and the Son dwelling in us, of grace as interpersonal relationship. Again, a personalist theology of grace is necessary not only that the doctrine of grace be expressed in contemporary thought patterns but that the theology of grace might be the foundation for a clearer theological understanding of the relationship between the Christian person and the Christian community, and that it might be the basis for a sounder sacramental theology that sees the sacraments as personal encounters with Christ. Furthermore, Catholic theology of the spiritual life is in real need of a theology of sanctifying grace that can provide the personalist categories for a theology of prayer as interpersonal relationship with God, that can address itself in a personalist way to the problem of prayer and Christian activity, and that can speak more coherently about the Person of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian. Modern attempts to express the doctrine of sanctifying grace in terms of person rather than in terms of nature can be traced back to the seventeenth century to Petau who felt that, to be faithful to Scripture and to the Greek Fathers, THE TRINITARIAN INDWELLING 871 theology had to admit and explain a special union between the Christian and the Holy Spirit; this union he thought to be properly with the Holy Spirit, who is " the sanctifying form, bestowing adoptive filiation by the communication of Himself." 1 In the nineteenth century Scheeben in Germany and de Regnon in France revised and elaborated Petau's ideas on the special role of the Holy Spirit? In more recent years there have been several works on the subject of the Christian's personal relation to each of the Indwelling Persons. In 1949 B. Lonergan treated the question. 3 In the 1950's many theological articles dealt with the specific question of the Christian's personal relations to each of the Indwelling Persons; in particular, a three-cornered discussion took place among P. De Letter, F. Bourassa, and M. Donnelly. 4 At the time of this discussion W. Hill showed that the teaching of Thomas Aquinas is that there are, at the level of habits and operations, personal relations of the Christian to each of the Divine Persons in the Indwelling. 5 Petau, Dogmata Theologica, de Trinitate, VIII, c. 6 (Vives III, 484B-485A) . M. J. Scheeben, The Mysteries of Christianity, tr. C. Vollert (St. Louis: 1946), pp. 154-172; T. de Regnon, Etudes de theologie positive sur la Sainte Trinite, 8rd ser., vol. 2, etude 25, (Paris: 1892), esp. pp. 551-578. Other studies, a little later, are J.-B. Terrien, La grace et la gloire (Paris: 1897), B. Froget, The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit, tr. S. Raemers (Westmister: 1900), and P. Galtier, L'inhabitation en naus des trois personnes (Paris: 1928); these three works all agree in finding Petau, Scheeben, and de Regnon to exaggerate the role of the Holy Spirit in the Divine Indwelling. • Divinarum Personarum (Rome: 1959), pp. 229-289; this outstanding work was printed in Latin, ad usum auditorum, and is not as well known as it should be. 'Some of these articles may be singled out as of special importance: P. DeLetter, "Sanctifying Grace and the Divine Indwelling," Theological Studies, 14 (1958), pp. 242-272, and "Grace, Incorporation, Inhabitation," Theological Studies, 19 (1958), pp. 1-81; F. Bourassa, "Role personnel des personnes et relations distinctes aux personnes," Sciences Ecclesiastiques, 7 (1955), pp. 61-85; M. Donnelly, "Inhabitation of the Holy Spirit," Proceedings of the American Catholic Theological Society, 8 (1949), pp. 89-77. For a thorough treatment of this dicussion, see P. Chirico, The Divine Indwelling and Distinct Relations to the IndweUing Persons in Modern Theological Discussion (Rome: 1960). 5 W. Hill, PrCYper Relations to the Indwelling Divine Persons (Washington: 1955) ; Hill states that " ... the justified soul is related to the Trinity as object 1 2 ROBERT L. F ARICY Most recently there have been several efforts, notably by K. Rahner, J. Alfaro, P. Fransen, and E. Baltazar, to move beyond the scholastic problematic and to consider sanctifying grace and the Divine Indwelling in more personalist categories. Karl Rahner, in particular, has devoted several studies to the problem of how, in the Divine Indwelling, the Christian is related to the Divine Essence and to the Divine Persons. The key notions in these studies are those of " supernatural existential" and" quasi-formal causality." Rahner finds that man has, as the a priori condition of his knowing and willing, a certain openness to an infinite and personal horizon. 6 This existential structure of man's historical nature (the supernaturalexistential) is, in turn, theaprioricondition-andobediential potency for-the gifts of grace and glory. 7 In the union of sanctifying grace God, in a manner of speaking, informs man's nature; this " informing " is brought about by God's efficient causality, but the " informing" itself, which is sanctifying grace, is more according to the mode of formal causality. But since God, although acting somewhat as a formal cause, remains unchanged, Rahner calls God's activity one of quasiformal causality. Thus a hurdle has been cleared. Since the causality in question is not efficient but quasi-formal, and so not necessarily a causality exercised by the Divine Persons and end, and here it is conformed and joined to each of the distinct Persons." (p. ll6) . Four other recent studies of the doctrine of the Indwelling in the writings of Thomas Aquinas are: Robertus a S. Teresia a Jesu Infante, De inhabitatione Ss. Trinitatis (Rome: 1961) ; see also his De habitibus animam trinitati assimilantibus et unientibus (Rome: 1958); G. Leblond, Fils de Lumwre (Saint Uger-Vauban: 1961); F. Cunningham, The Indwelling of the Trinity (Dubuque: 1955); and S. Dockx, Fils de Dieu par grace (Paris: 1948). These five authors (including Hill) arrive at differing conclusions. See J. Triitch, Ss. inhabitatio apud theologos recentiores (Trent: 1949), for a review of the literature up to 1948. 6 See K. Rahner, Spirit in the World, tr. W. Dych (Montreal: 1968), especially pp. 393-408. 7 See K. Rahner, "Concerning the Relationship between Nature and Grace," Theological Investigations, vol. I, tr. C. Ernst (Baltimore: 1961), pp. "Nature and Grace," Theological Investigations, vol. IV, tr. K. Smyth (Baltimore: 1966), pp. 165-188. THE TRINITARIAN INDWELLING 373 acting through the Divine Essence as such, nothing opposes the consideration that each Person has a personal quasi-formal causality in the union of grace. And so a basis is established for a theology of personal relationships, on the part of the Christian, with each of the Divine Persons. 8 This entire explanation, while in some continuity with traditional scholastic theology of grace, remains inadequate. The chief difficulty is this: while showing that the Christian can have a personal relationship with each Divine Person, it does not indicate the kind of relationships, their nature and modality. To name a relationship one of quasi-formal causality is simply to reformulate the question concerning that relationship's modality rather than to answer the question. In the end, any theology of the Christian's relations to the Divine Persons that relies on nature and causality as the keys to explanation must be rejected, not because it is necessarily erroneous but because the very question is one of relationships not between natures but between persons and because it is a question not of causality of the union but of the union itself. This has been seen clearly by some theologians. Juan Alfaro, Piet Fransen, and Eulalia Baltazar have in common that they have stressed the interpersonal relationships involved in the Divine Indwelling by choosing to formulate the mystery in categories that are more personalist and existential than the traditional scholastic categories. 9 This approach, however, remains inade8 See K. Rahner, " Some Implications of the Scholastic Concept of Uncreated Grace," Theological Investigations, vol. I, pp. 319-346, and especially pp. 343-46; The Trinity, tr. J. Donceel (New York: 1970), pp. 34-38. For a critique of Rahner's ideas, see W. Hill, " Uncreated Grace--a Critique of Karl Rahner," The Thomist, 27 (1963), 333-356. 9 J. Alfaro, "Person and Grace," Man Before God, ed. D. Burkhard et al, tr. D. Becker et al (New York: 1966), pp. 174-98; P. Fransen, The New Life of Grace, tr. G. Dupont (Tournai: 1969), pp. 40-57; E. Baltazar, Teilhard and the Supernatural (Baltimore: 1966), pp. 213-64. See also D. Burrell, "Indwelling, Presence and Dialogue," Theological Studies, 22, (1961), 1-17; P. DeLetter, "The Theology of God's Self-Gift," Theological Studies, 24 (1963), 402-22; F. Bourassa, "Presence intentione)le-presence reelle," Sciences Ecclesiastiques, 12 (1960), 307-350, and "Le don de Dieu," Gregorianum, 50 (1969), 201-37. An excellent 374 ROBERT L. FARICY quate to the extent that none of these three shows how a more personalist theology of the Indwelling can be evolved from and consistent with the familiar scholastic explanations. Baltazar, in fact, sees almost no value in traditional theology of grace. 10 Unfortunately, although there has been so much scholarship directed to formulating the doctrine of sanctifying grace in terms of interpersonal relationships between the Christian and the Divine Persons/ 1 this scholarship appears to have made little or no impact on contemporary theology as a whole. One can only guess at the reason. It seems likely that there has not been enough study that tries to bridge the gap between scholastic theory of relations to the Divine Persons in sanctifying grace and contemporary categories of person as in process, growing through social interaction. What must be somehow shown is not simply that the Christian is in relation to each of the Divine Persons but that these relationships are transforming, that they are at the root of Christian growth and development. For this, a theological metaphysics of relation is necessary but not sufficient. The matter can be stated clearly. Traditional Catholic theological categories of person and interpersonal relationship are metaphysical and static; it is in these categories that the Divine Indwelling has been understood. On the other hand, contemporary understanding of person stresses the developmental aspect of person; " person " is not a static category but a dynamic one. Further, personal growth is seen as a function of participation in community; person and community general consideration of the Divine Indwelling along the lines of spiritual theology rather than dogmatic or systematic theology is the series of articles by T. Dubay in Review for Religious, 26 (1967), 203-30, 441-60, 685-702, 910-38, 1094-1112, and 27 (1968), 223-42. 10 E. Baltazar, op. cit., pp. 43-73. 11 The bibliographical references here do not exhaust the literature on the subject. For a general treatment of the work of Petau, Scheeben, and de Regnon, see H. Rondet, Essais sur la theologie de la grace (Paris: 1964), pp. 135-54. For an overall consideration of different theories of the Divine Indwelling, the reader is referred to C. Baumgartner, La grace du Christ (Tournai: 1963), 181-95; and to R. Gleason, Grace (New York: 1962), pp. 123-71. THE TRINITARIAN INDWELLING 875 are intrinsically related. This is the gap that must be bridged; between the Divine Indwelling understood in static categories and the contemporary view of person as in community and in process. Furthermore, the bridge must be built. We cannot simply start over, interpreting the biblical data in some new person-process framework. It is unrealistic to ignore theological tradition as though it did not exist, for it does exist and contemporary theology is its product. What must be done, then, is this: the Divine Indwelling must be explained in terms of personal relationships in keeping with theological tradition, and this explanation must be shown to be open to an understanding of person and personal relation that is dynamic and developmental. This is the purpose of this article. The method to be followed is this. The teaching of Thomas Aquinas on personal relations in the Divine Indwelling will be studied; this will be the major part of the article and will be followed by a reflection which will use Pierre Teilhard de Chardin's ideas on person and community to sketch some directions for a contemporary theology of the Indwelling. Sanctifying grace and the Divine Indwelling. Thomas Aquinas describes God's causation of grace in the soul by a simile: " God is the cause of charity and grace in the soul, both as regards their coming-to-be and their pressun is the cause of light in the air." 12 ervation, just as What is caused is an objective union in which God is present as attainable object of our operations of love and knowledge. 13 In this union of sanctifying grace it is through the virtue of charity that we are united to God as attainable object of our operations, 14 and it is through charity that we attain God as object. The question arises, however: how are we united through charity to God as attainable object? How does De Carit., a. 13; cf. ibid., a. 14. Summa Theol., I, q. 8, a. 3. "Ill Sent., d. 23, q. 1, a. 5 ad 6. See Benedict Endres, O.P., The Contact of Man with God, How Charity Loves God Immediately (River Forest: 1959). 12 18 376 ROBERT L. FARICY God dwell in us through charity as the attainable object o£ our operations? It is not enough to say that God is united to us as the efficient principle o£ the whole union of sanctifying grace. This immediate union to God as agent cause is common to all creatures; everything that exists has God as the immediate cause of the whole and all the parts o£ its being. 15 But God dwells in us in a special way, as attainable object o£ our operations. God is united to us through the virtue o£ charity, prior to any operation on our part, as attainable object; he is united to us so that we can attain him in our operations. But the question is: how is he united to us through the virtue of charity? Before this question can be answered, we will have to examine the relationship between sanctifying grace and the Divine Indwelling, and we will have to consider the roles of the Divine Persons in sanctifying grace. Although God is everywhere, present to and in all things as the cause of their existence, he is present to us in a special way through sanctifying grace. 16 In the gift of sanctifying grace the three Divine Persons dwell in us, begin a new mode of existence in us.17 According to this new way of being, God is present as known in the knower and loved in the lover; God is so present that we can attain him in our operations of love and knowledge. 18 Since God begins to be in a way in which he was not before, there is something created. God is not created and his existence is not created; and his presence is not created locally for he is omnipresent and present by immensity. Therefore, it is the mode of God's existence that is created. 19 Since God is immutable, his new mode of existence is not a change in him but a created effect in us. This new 15 Summa Theol., I, q. 8, a. 3. Strictly speaking, of course, this is not a union; a cause-effect relationship is not really a union. 16 17 Ibid. Ibid., ad 4. Also, q. 43, a. 3, and ad 3; 4 ad !2; I Sent., d. 15, q. 5, a. 1; q. !2 ad 4. 18 Summa Theol., I, q. 43, a. 3. Cf. q. 8, a. 3; q. 93, a. 4; 1-11, q. 110, a. 4; q. 114, a. 1. 19 I Sent., d. 15, q. 1, a. 1 ad 1; d. 17, q. 1 a. 1; d. 30, q. 1, a. 3. THE TRINITARIAN INDWELLING 877 mode of God's existence is one of dwelling in us; it is the Divine Indwelling. And, this new mode of God's existence is one of being united with us; it is the basis, the foundation, of the union that is sanctifying grace. The Indwelling and sanctifying grace are one created effect; they are the foundation of the same union. The word "Indwelling" stresses God's active presence in the union; the Indwelling is the basis of the union seen, as it were, from the side of God. The term " sanctifying grace " stresses the fact that the basis of the union is a created effect in us; sanctifying grace is the basis of the union seen from the side of man. 20 Sanctifying grace is not only a mode of God's being; it is a new mode of being for us as well, a Godlike mode of being, a divinized being, 21 a supernatural existence.22 Sanctifying grace and the Divine Indwelling are, then, one and the same reality, the basis of a union of us to God. We must, of course, consider both aspects, the aspect of " created effect" and the aspect of " Indwelling." 23 But these are only two aspects of one created basis of the union. Sanctifying grace is the foundation of a union of God with us; it is a participation in the Divine Life. Since our nature participates in God's Life and since we are ordered directly to God through our operations, we should expect our immanent operations to participate according to their modes in the Trinitarian life. If we participate in the Trinitarian life at the core of our being, then we should participate in this life in the habits and acts of our faculties. Futhermore, just as sanctifying grace is the basis of a union with God and not a result of the union, so our relations to the Indwelling Persons 20 The distinction between sanctifying grace and the Divine Indwelling is not the same distinction that exists between created grace and Uncreated Grace; obviously, the latter is a real distinction. Sanctifying grace and the Indwelling are both created grace. The word " created," of course, is used in an improper sense here, since grace is not a subsistent thing created out of nothing; it is a perfection educed from a potency. See John of St. Thomas, CurSUII Theologicus, Vol. 4 (ed Solesmes), disp. 38. 38, a. 3, par. 5-8 (pp. 4U-413). 21 II Sent., d. 26, q. 1, a. 3; a. 4 ad 2, et 3; a. 5 ad 1; a. 6 et ad 3 et 4. 22 De Verit., q. 27, a. 3. 28 Summa Theol., I, q. 43, a. 6. 378 ROBERT L. FARICY should have sanctifying grace (or at least charity) as their basis of foundation. It is in the union of sanctifying grace that we participate in the Divine Life, and it is in this union and this participation that our relations to the Persons will be found. Lastly, these relations should be found to be consonant with God's part in the union: as cause of the union and as attainable object, through charity, of our operations. 24 The invisible missions. St. Thomas's teaching on the divine missions of the Word and the Holy Spirit is contained in a highly synthesized form in the Summa Theologiae. We will begin our analysis of the invisible missions by relying chiefly on the Summa, where what is common to the two invisible missions is more apparent than their differences. Later we will refer to the Commentary on the Sentences, where the invisible missions are treated less synthetically but with more detail, so that we may consider more thoroughly the precise differences between the invisible mission of the Word and that of the Holy Spirit. Before we study the invisible missions we should make a comment on the incomplete presentation of the invisible missions in the Summa Theologiae.25 The problem is: why is this presentation incomplete? In question 43 of the Prima Pars, " Concerning the Mission of the Divine Persons," there are eight articles. The possibility and general nature of mission are treated in articles one, two, and eight; invisible mission and grace are treated in the third and sixth articles; the fourth considers whether or not the Father can be sent. The fifth article takes up the question of the invisible mission of the Son. The visible mission of the Son, the Incarnation, is not 24 The formal object of the Indwelling, of sanctifying grace, is that God is attainable object of our knowledge and love. See Francis L. B. Cunningham, The Indwelling of the Trinity. •• Cunningham, op. cit., holds that Thomas teaches an identical doctrine on the Indwelling in the Commentary on the Sentences and the Summa. For a more nuanced view, see W. Hill, Proper Relations to the Indwelling Divine Persons, pp. 41-43. THE TRINITARIAN INDWELLING 379 specifically considered because of the extensive consideration of the Incarnation in the Tertia Pars. The seventh article takes up the question of the visible mission of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. But, and this is the point, the invisible mission of the Holy Spirit is never considered as such; there is no article on the Holy Spirit's invisible mission. Why not? Why did St. Thomas in his treatment of the missions of the Divine Persons leave out a specific consideration of what is certainly a major question as well as a difficult one, the invisible mission of the Holy Spirit? We do not know, of course, and can only speculate. One reason may have been that he thought it too difficult for his students. The Summa Theologiae is a kind of textbook for theology students, not intended to be the ultimate word on all theological problems. The exact nature of the Holy Spirit's invisible mission is a difficult question, especially as regards the connection between the mission and charity. Furthermore, the opinion of Peter Lombard was prevalent at the time, that the Holy Spirit is directly united with our will, and this without any habit or disposition of the will to act as a formal medium of the union. St. Thomas may have thought that to explain the direct connection between charity and the Holy Spirit, as he does in the Commentary on the Sentences, would have confused the students. It is also possible that St. Thomas intended to consider the problem later in the Summa in the context of the Beatific Vision. In this way, he would have been able, had he lived to complete the Summa, to explain the relationship of the "light of glory" with the Word and-at the same time-to explain the analogous relationship of charity to the Holy Spirit. Finally, there is the possibility that Thomas's thought on the precise nature of the Holy Spirit's mission had changed, developed since his Commentary on the Sentences, although there is no indication of this; in this case, his thought might have been not yet adequately formulated for him to present it in the Summa. This last possibility, however, does not seem at all likely, particularly 380 ROBERT L. F ARICY in view of the fact that Capreolus, the earliest commentator on St. Thomas's Commentary on the Sentences, does not hesitate to use the doctrine of " Concerning the Mission of the Divine Persons " of the Prima Pars in his commentary on similar texts in Thomas's Commentary on the Sentences. 26 Thomas states that the whole Trinity dwells in us in sanctifying grace; but, he points out, it is only the Word and the Holy Spirit who have invisible missions to our souJ.27 In the gift of sanctifying grace, the Word and the Holy Spirit are sent to us, dwell in us, are possessed by us. 28 They can have missions because, on the one hand, they proceed from an origin and, on the other hand, they can have a new way of existing in the person to whom they are sent. 29 However, although a mission is temporal and the Divine Person begins a new way of being in us, it is not the Divine Person that changes; the change is in us. 80 The notion of mission, then, includes the eternal procession of the Divine Person and adds the notion of temporal effect in us. 31 Since the Father does not have an origin he cannot be sent; he cannot have a mission; 32 but the Father communicates himself to us in sanctifying grace and dwells in us as do the Word and the Holy Spirit. 88 It is clear that St. Thomas does not consider the invisible missions to our soul as simply appropriated to the Word and the Holy Spirit but that he considers them as belonging personally and properly to the Persons. The Word and the Holy Spirit come to us in a properly personal way; through sanctifying grace we are perfected not only in that we can use 2 °Capreolus, I. Sententiarum, d. 14, q. 1, solutiones ad argumenta contra quartam conclusionem. 27 Summa Theol., I, q. 43, a. 4; cf. I Sent., d. 15, q. !il. 28 Summa TherJl., ibid., 3c and ad 3. 29 Ibid., a. 1. Cf. I Sent., d. 15, q. 1, a. 1. 3 ° Cf. I Sent., d. 15, q. 1, a. 1 ad 1. 31 Summa Theol., I q. 43, a. !il ad 3. Cf. corpus of the article. Also, I Sent., d. 14, q. 1, a. 1 ad !il, ad 3, ad 4, ad 5, and a. !il. 82 Summa Theol., I, q. 43, a. 4. 88 Ibid., ad !il. THE TRINITARIAN INDWELLING 381 grace itself, but we are also so perfected and disposed by sanctifying grace that we can possess and enjoy the Divine Person himself. 34 The missions of the Word and the Holy Spirit cannot be distinguished in the root of sanctifying grace, in the essence of the soul; but they can somehow be distinguished in the faculties of our elevated nature, in the illumination of the intellect and in the warmth of the will.35 It would seem, then, that the fact that the causation of of sanctifying grace is an operation outside the Trinity and so common to all three Persons 36 does not preclude a distinction of the Persons within the union of sanctifying grace. For just as the visible mission of the Word, the Incarnation, is caused by the whole Trinity since it is an operation outside the Trinity, so sanctifying grace is caused by the whole Trinity. But just as it is the Word who has the visible mission and who is incarnate, just as the Word can be distinguished in the effect which is the Incarnation, so can the Word and the Holy Spirit in their invisible missions be somehow distinguished in the effect which is sanctifying grace. The Persons cannot be distinguished in the causation of our participation in the divine life any more than the Persons can be distinguished in the causation of the hypostatic union. But they can be distinguished in the results of the external work of the Trinity in both cases. 37 The divine life in which we participate is the life of the Trinity. In the Trinitarian life there are two processions, that of the Word and that of the Holy Spirit. 38 In the life of the Trinity, as in our own rational life, there are two processions, one in the manner of the intellect, which is the procession of the Word; the other in the manner of the Ibid., a. 8 ad 1. Cf. ad Ibid., a. 5 ad 8. 86 Ibid., ill, q. a. Cf. I, q. 48, a. 8; I Sent., d. 15, q. ad 4; d. 80, q. 1, a. 87 See John of St. Thomas, Cursus Theologicus (ed. Solesmes), vol. 4, disp. 87, 8' 85 a. par. 5-15 (pp. 854-7). 88 Summa Theol., I, q. a. 5. Cf. q. 87, a. 1. 382 ROBERT L. FARICY will, which is the procession of love. . . . Thus, when something understands and loves itself it is in itself not only by identity but also as known in the knower and loved in the lover. . . . By love here is meant proceeding love. 39 In the life of the Trinity, then, God is present to himself not only by identity but as known in the knower, and this is according to the Word. Further, God is present to himself as loved in the lover, and this is according to Proceeding Love, the Holy Spirit. We can apply this to the life of the Trinity as shared by us. There is one common way in which God is in all things by his essence, power, and presence, as cause in effects participating in his goodness. Above this common mode, however, is a special mode which suits a rational creature in which God is said to be known in the knower and loved in the lover. And because by knowing and loving the rational creature attains to God himself by his operations, according to this special mode God is not only said to be in the rational creature but also to dwell in it as in his temple. Therefore no other effect can be the reason that a Divine Person is in a new way in a rational creature except grace. Whence it is said that it is only according to grace that a Divine Person is sent and proceeds temporally. 40 In the Indwelling God is present as known in the knower somehow according to the Word and present as loved in the lover somehow according to the Holy Spirit. The invisible missions of the Word and the Holy Spirit are distinguished according to the intellect and the will or, rather, according to the illumination of the intellect and the warmth of the will. 41 The mission of the Word is attained in the highest gift of the intellect, 42 the gift of wisdom; the mission of the Holy Spirit is attained in charity, which perfects the wil1.43 Thus the two missions can be distinguished according to the gifts of wisdom and charity. God is present to us as known in the •• Ibid., q. 37. I. •• Ibid., q. 43, a. 3. Cf. q. 8, a. 3. "Ibid., q. 43, a. 5 ad 8. C£. I sent., d. 15, q. 4, a. i'l ad 5. '"Summa Theol., I-II, q. 68, a. 7. •• Ibid., I. q. 43, a. 5 ad 2. THE TRINITARIAN INDWELLING 383 knower, and this presence is according to the miSSion of the Word; and the presence of God in us as loved in the lover is according to the mission of the Holy Spirit. For we are so joined to God by grace that we become participators of the Divine Word and of Proceeding Love so that we are able" to freely know God and to rightly love him." 44 We have seen that the invisible missions are temporal processions, that is, they are the eternal processions beginning to be in a new way with respect to us. In the Indwelling, we participate in the divine processions, and this is precisely the note of temporality that is added to these processions: that they are participated in by us. The participation in an eternal procession is not an effect of a personal causality of a Divine Person, for the causation of effects outside the Trinity is common to the three Persons. Our temporal participation in the eternal processions is the result of an external work of the .. Ibid., q. 88, a. 1. The virtue of charity is a participation in Uncreated Charity, in the Holy Spirit, and the gift of wisdom is a participation in the a. a. 8 ad 8) Cf. I-II, q. 110, a. 4; II-II, q. Divine Word. (II-II, q. II-II, q. a. 7; II-II, q. 45, a. 6. Although St. Thomas comparatively often describes the virtue of charity as a participation in the Holy Spirit, he says only rarely, and with a certain reserve, that the gift of wisdom is a participation in the Word. The word " participation," as used by St. Thomas, is an analogous term. As will be shown later, our participation in the Holy Spirit is not of the same order as our participation in the Word. Our participation in the Holy Spirit, created charity, is a real foundation of union with the Holy Spirit; but our participation in the Word, Wisdom, is simply a similitude to the Word, a participation by exemplarity. It would seem that St. Thomas feared that the word " participation," as used to describe the gift of wisdom in reference to the Word, might be taken in too strong a sense, as implying something much more a. ad 1). And since our participation in than exemplarity (cf. II-II, q. the Word is ouly by exemplarity, St. Thomas rarely calls wisdom a participation in the Word; when he does, he is careful to point out that wisdom is simply a similitude to the Word (cf. II-II, q. 45, a. 6, supra). "Participation" is usually taken today to signify some kind of exemplarity. For this reason, and since it is an analogous term, it is used in this article with more liberty, in reference to the role of the Divine Word in sanctifying grace, than it was by St. Thomas in the same context. For a discussion of St. Thomas's use of "participation," cf. John S. Dunne, C. S. C., Participation in the Theology of Saint Thomas, Notre Dame, 1958. 384 ROBERT L. FARICY Trinity: the causation of the union of sanctifying grace. 4 " The result of the causation, the effect, is the created union of grace, by which we-at the level of the essence of our soul-participate in the Divine Essence and by which-in the habits and acts of the powers of our soul-we participate in the processions of the Trinitarian Life, the processions of the Word and the Holy Spirit. 46 The invisible missions and the place of charity in our union with God. It is clear from the teaching of the Summa Theologiae that our participations in the Word and the Holy Spirit are participations of exemplarity. Through wisdom and charity we are made similar to the Word and to the Holy Spirit. 47 This is also clear from the Commentary on the Sentences. 48 But, since by an invisible mission a Divine Person comes to us so that he is possessed by us, it would seem that some other more direct kind of participation is involved. 49 As will be shown, this more direct kind of participation is through charity. This is not stated clearly in the Summa; the synthetic method of the Summa stresses what is common in our participations of the Word and the Holy Spirit, exemplarity; details and differences are often left aside. It is true that the Summa states that created charity is a participation in Uncreated Charity and that the Holy Spirit is given in the gift of charity. 50 There are indications that charity is more than simply appropriated to the Holy Spirit; for example, the virtue of charity is in us " through the infusion of the Holy Spirit who is the Love of the Father and the Son and whose parIbid., I, q. 43, a. 8. Cf. III, q. 23, a. 2. •• Ibid., I-II, q. 110, a. 3 and 4; III, q. 62, a. 1; I, q. 43, a. 3; q. 8, a. 3; I-II, q. 68, a. 7. 47 Ibid., I, q. 43, a. 5 ad 2. •• I Sent., d. 15, q. 4, a. 1 and a. 2. •• Summa Theol., I, q. 43, a. 3, corpus and ad 3; ad 1. See F. Bourassa, "ROle personnel des Personnes et relations distinctes aux Personnes," loc. cit., pp. 151-152: 50 Summa Theol., II-II, q. 23, a. 3 ad 3, 24. 6 and 7; I q. 43, a. 3 ad 2. ' 5 THE TRINITARIAN INDWELLING 885 ticipation in us is created charity itself." 51 Although it is not denied in the Summa that charity is more than simply an exemplary participation in the Holy Spirit and although this seems to be implied, it is not immediately evident. In the Commentary on the Sentences, however, where synthesis is somewhat sacrificed to clarity and detail, it is clear that our participation in the Holy Spirit is more than merely exemplary. Regarding the invisible missions, there is no doctrinal difference between the Summa Theologiae and the Commentary on the Sentences, nor even a difference of perspective. It is true that the Commentary is an earlier work and lacks the authority of the Summa. But the teaching on the invisible missions in the Commentary is fuller and in some respects clearer. For this reason, most of the references in this section will be to the Commentary on the Sentences. Although the Word and the Holy Spirit have in common that each has an invisible mission to the soul and that each begins to be in a new way in the soul, they differ in the way that each is present. Each is present according to the mode of his procession. The mode of the Holy Spirit's procession is different from the mode of the Word's procession; the Holy Spirit proceeds as Love, and the Word as Word. This difference in the modalities of the two eternal processions has a double consequence with regard to the temporal termination of these processions in us in the invisible missions. In the first place, the proper mode of the Holy Spirit's presence is through the gift of charity, and the proper mode by which the Word is present in us is by the gift of wisdom. 52 In the second place, the two eternal processions terminate temporally in us in different ways, according to the proper mode of each procession. This difference between the ways that each Person comes to us in his invisible mission depends on the difference between the eternal processions; but it is a difference more profound than simply the fact that wisdom is a similitude to the Word and Ibid., II-II, q. 24, a. 2. •• I Sent., d. 15, q. 4, a. 1 and 2. 61 386 ROBERT L, F ARICY charity is a similitude to the Holy Spirit. The procession of the Holy Spirit implies a respect not only to the principlefrom-whom of his procession, the Father and the Word, but also a respect to the term-in-whom of procession. The termin-whom of the Holy Spirit's procession is the Father and the Word; but the procession can also, in a temporal procession of the Holy Spirit, terminate in a temporal term as in a termin-whom.53 So the Holy Spirit, in his invisible mission, is in reference to us not only as exemplar to model; he is also in reference to us as to a term-in-whom. The Word, however, proceeds by generation; and generation implies a respect only to the principle-from-whom of generation, which is the Father according to the Word's Divine Nature and his mother according to his human nature. 54 In his visible mission, then, the Word proceeds by generation from his mother as from the principle-from-whom of his humanity. But the Word in his invisible mission does not proceed from us as from a principlefrom-whom; rather, he is present as exemplar to model. 55 When the Holy Spirit comes to a person in his invisible mission, he comes to and is related to that person as to a termin-whom; but what is the relation of the person, the object of the invisible mission, to the Holy Spirit? We are sanctified formally by the virtue of charity, our similitude to the Holy Spirit, and we are truly sanctified because through the virtue of charity the Holy Spirit himself is joined to us. 56 With the gift of charity, the Holy Spirit is given to us so that, through our similitude to him, he dwells in us; we are not only made similar to the Holy Spirit but we are also joined to him through a change in us, created charity, which is the basis of a relation to him. 57 Our relation to the Holy Spirit unites us •• Ibid., d. 14, q. 1, a. 1 ad 1. "'Ibid. •• Ibid., d. 15, q. 4, a. 1 ad 2. As will be clear later on, the Word is united to us as term of union, but through the Holy Spirit, and not by reason of the Word's own proper Personality. •• Ibid., d. 18, Expositio Textus. •• Ibid., d. 14, q. 2, a. 1, sol. 1 and ad 1; cf. d. 15, q. 1, a. 1 ad 1. We cannot have a relation to God except insofar as God is a principle with THE TRINITARIAN INDWELLING 887 respect to us. (d. 18, q. 1, a. 5). However, we can be related to God in two ways: either to God as principle or cause (that is, where there is a habitude of God to us as principle to what is caused or originated), or to God as term. (d. 30, q. 1, a. 2). We are related to God as cause as to an efficient cause, to a final cause, and to a formal exemplary cause (although God is never a formal cause in the sense of an inhering form). (d. 18, q. 1, a. 5) But we can also be related to God as to a term. (d. 30, q. 1, a. 2) Any relation to God as cause is to the whole Trinity. So we are properly related to the whole Trinity as to the cause of charity. "But if we consider the relation of a creature to its Creator as to a term, it is possible that this relation of the creature be to something essential or to something personal." (Ibid.) Words like "sent" and " Incarnation " imply a relation to God as to a cause and a relation to God as to a term. (Ibid., ad 3) . A creature can be related to God as to a term in three ways: " If we consider the relation of a creature to the Creator as to a term, it is possible that such a relation of a creature be to something essential or to something personal. This can happen in three ways. Either according to operation, as someone can understand or name God or fatherhood. Or (secondly) according to exemplarity, as in the creation of things there is a termination in a similitude of the essential attributes, and in the infusion of charity there is a termination in a similitude of the personal procession of the Holy Spirit. Or (thirdly) there is termination according to existence, and this mode is unique in the Incarnation through which the human nature is assumed to the being and to the unity of the Divine Person, not however to the unity of the Divine Nature." (d. 30, q. 1, a. 2). The above text considers relations to God as to a term, either relations to the Divine Essence or proper relations to a Divine Person. These relations can exist by reason of: (1) the natural operation of our faculties, as when we say or understand " God " (and this is a relation to the Divine Essence), and as when we say or understand "Divine Fatherhood" (and this is a proper relation to the Father). (2) according to exemplarity. In creation there is a relation of the thing created to the essential attributes of God, of the Divine Essence, for the created thing somehow mirrors God's essential attributes (and this, then, is a relation to something essential in God, to the Divine Essence). Notice that creation itself terminates in some similitude to the Divine Attributes, and this similitude is the foundation of a reiJ.] relation to the Divine Essence as to a term. Analogously, the infusion of charity terminates in infused charity which is a similitude of the procession of the Holy Spirit. And this similitude of the Holy Spirit (charity) is the basis or foundation, the fundamentum, of a real and proper relation to the Holy Spirit. (3) termination according to esse in the unique case of the Incarnation, in which the human nature is united according to esse to the Person of the Son. The Incarnation, then, is referred to the Trinity as to the principle causing the Incarnation. But it is referred to the Word as to a term of union because it is the Word who is incarnate. In a somewhat analogous way, when we receive the Holy Spirit there is a real relation which is in us and which is referred to the whole Trinity as to a cause and to the Holy Spirit as to a term through a similitude to him. (I Sent., d. 30, Expositio Textus.) Any word that signifies a union with God, whether the Word is "Incarnation," "Indwelling," or "Beatific Vision,.. 388 ROBERT L. F ARICY through the virtue of charity to the Holy Spirit himsel£.58 The virtue of charity is the basis of our union with the Holy Spirit, a union created by the Trinity acting through the Divine Essence. Charity, then, is precisely the uniting bond in our union with the Holy Spirit. This bond of union is itself the Holy Spirit's image in us. The Holy Spirit is the exemplar of the virtue of charity; and he is also a term of the habitual union of charity, united to us as to the other term of the union. 59 There is certain ambiguity in the word " term." A term can be a term-from-whom or a term-in-whom. The Holy Spirit in his invisible mission is to us as to a term-in-whom; that is, he is sent to us. This relation of the Holy Spirit to us as to a term-in-whom is, of course, a relation of reason in the Holy Spirit. When we say that a relation is " in " something or someone, we mean that the foundation or basis of the relation is in that thing or person. Obviously, the basis of the Holy Spirit's relation to us in not to be found in him. it is a created effect in us. Since there can be no change in a Divine Person, there can be no real relation in a Divine Person. If the relation of the Holy Spirit to us as to a term is a relation of reason, what is the real relation that is involved here? It is our relation to the Holy Spirit; since the foundation of the relation, the created effect, is in us, the real relation is said to be in us. Our relation to the Holy Spirit seems to be a real relation as to a term-in-whom. St. Thomas never says expressly that the Holy Spirit is a term-in-whom, although he does say that we are related to the Holy Spirit as to a term. necessarily implies a unitive relation between the two terms of the union, from the very notion of union. An explanation of our union with God should not only explain how the union is caused but also how the terms of the union are united. For this reason, any explanation of our union with God that does not consider God as the term of our union with him, any explanation that relies only on divine causality, whether efficient, final or exemplary, is incomplete. 68 Ibid., d. 14, q. 2, a. 1, sol. 1 ad 2. •• Ibid., d. 80, Expositio Textus: ". . . in creatura est relatio realis ... ad Spiritum Sanctum ut ad terminum pe:r modum exemplaritatis." Cf. d. 15, q. 4, a. 1 ad 2. THE TRINITARIAN INDWELLING 889 For example, " ... in the creature is a real relation ... to the Holy Spirit as to a term through a mode of exemplarity .... " 60 However, Thomas does say that the Holy Spirit is given to us in such a way that we have and possess him in a new way. 61 This seems to indicate that we are related to the Holy Spirit as to a term-in-whom. In our union with the Holy Spirit, then, there is a: (I) relation of reason of the Holy Spirit to us as to a term-inwhom of his invisible mission, and a real relation of us to the Holy Spirit as to a term-in-whom. For purposes of clarity, we can compare our union with the Holy Spirit with the Incarnation. In the visible mission of the Word, the Word is to Mary as to a term-from-whom; that is, he proceeds from Mary as from his mother according to his human nature. This relation is simply the relation of Christ to his mother; it is a relation of filiation. Since filiation is a property of the person and since a Divine Person cannot have a real relation to a creature, the relation of the Word to Mary as to a term-from-whom is a relation of reason. 62 The real relation involved here is the relation of Mary to Christ as to a term-in-whom of motherhood; that is, Mary is the mother of Christ. In the visible mission of the Word there is: (1) a relation of reason (of filiation) of the Word to Mary as to a term-from-whom, and a real relation of Mary (as Mother of God) to the Word as to a term-in-whom. The Holy Spirit, then, is the term of the habitual union of charity. And so, just as the Holy Spirit according to his proper Personality unites the Father and the Word insofar as he is their Love, so does the Holy Spirit properly connect us to God. 63 Ibid. Summa Theal., I, q. 8, a. 3 ad 4; I Sent., d. 15, q. 5, a. 1 and q. 9l ad 4. 62 Summa Theol., Ill, q. 35, a. 5. 68 I Sent., d. 39l, q. 1, a. 3: " Utrum Pater et Filius diligant nos Spiritu sancto." 60 61 The first objection is that this cannot be said, because God's love of us con- 390 ROBERT L. F ARICY So it is clear that for St. Thomas, insofar as charity unites us to the Holy Spirit, it is proper to the Holy Spirit and not appropriated. That is, charity relates us properly to the Holy Spirit and not simply to the Divine Essence as appropriated to the Holy Spirit. A common objection is that, if we are related to the Holy Spirit as to a term of union, then the Holy Spirit must exercise some kind of causality on us; but all causality of God is proper to the whole Trinity, and so we cannot be related properly to the Holy Spirit. The answer is that a term is not a cause, 64 that the Holy Spirit as a term of union does not exercise a causality; he is simply a term. 65 Another common objection is that, if our wills terminated in the Holy Spirit, there would be a hypostatic union of our wills with the Holy Spirit; therefore, it cannot be true that the Holy Spirit somehow assumes our wills as the Word assumed a human nature because we would all be, at the level of our wills, incarnations of the Holy Spirit. This objection is valid insofar as it is against the teaching of Peter Lombard and not against the teaching of St. Thomas. St. Thomas makes somewhat the same objection against Lombard. 66 notes an effect in us, and a divinely caused effect in us is in reference to the Divine Essence, and not to a distinct Person. St. Thomas says: " Contra est quod dicitur Joan. 27, 22: Ut sint unum in nobis, sicut et nos unum sumus. Non enim loquitur ibi de unitate consonantiae, vel amoris, quod est Spiritus sanctus." He specifically answers the objection: "Ad primum igitur dicendum, quod sicut dictum est, utroque modo potest sumi. Si enim sumatur essentialiter, nihil sequitur inconviens; quia Spiritus sanctus non designabit principium diligentium, sed dilectorum. Unde tunc designabitur habitudo ablativi substantive in ipso ablativo, ut dicit Praepositivus. Si autem sumatur notionaliter, nominativus poterit connotare effectum in creatura per modum habitudinis ad terminum, sicut supra dictum est" (d. 80, a. 2); d. 81, q. 8, a. I: ''Ita etiam nexus convenit Spiritui sancto ex modo suae processionis, inquantum est amor Patris et Filii, quo uniuntur, et etiam est connectens nos Deo, inquantum est donum." •• Summa Theol., I, q. 88, a. I ad 2. Cf. I Sent., d. 82, q. I, a. 8. 65 The Holy Spirit is not, then, present in our union with him as what is sometimes called a quasi-formal cause. He is not present in the union as any kind of a cause; he is simply the term of the union. •• I Sent., d. I7, q. I, a. I; cf. I, d. I7, q. 2, a. I. THE TRINITARIAN 391 INDWELLING They say that, just as it is only the Son who united to himself a human nature although there be an operation of the whole Trinity there, so the Holy Spirit unites himself to the will although there be an operation of the whole Trinity there. 67 But, St. Thomas continues, this argument cannot stand. The will is not assumed in a union with the supposit of the Spirit so that the will and the Holy Spirit have one common act. When our will acts, it is our act; actions are of the Whence it cannot be understood that there should be a perfect operation of the will through which it be united to the Holy Spirit unless there is a habit there perfecting the operative potency. Nor can there be a similitude of the act of the will to the Holy Spirit unless there be in the soul a similitude to the Holy Spirit through some form.69 We are not united with the Holy Spirit in a subjective union, in a union in which the terms are united in one subject, in one person. The Incarnation is an example of such a union. In our union with the Holy Spirit the two terms of the union, we and the Holy Spirit, maintain their proper personhoods; it is a union of two persons. The Holy Spirit is not in reference to us as though we were generated with him in a union in which he would somehow " assume " us. The Holy Spirit unites us to himself as a person to a Person. He is habitually united to us but distinct from us. The Holy Spirit does not assume our nature; he is related to us through the virtue of charity in an habitual union of his Person with us. Our union with the Holy Spirit is not a hypostatic union of two natures in one Person but a love union of two persons through the virtue of charity as a formal medium of the union. It is true that the whole Trinity is the cause of the habit of charity; 70 the causation of charity is proper to the Trinity and appropriated to the Holy Spirit because it is a similitude to him. 71 But what is caused is a bond of union, the habit of 61 11 68 Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., d. 81, q. !'l, a. I ad I. 69 Ibid. 10 Ibid. 392 ROBERT L. F ARICY charity, through which the Holy Spirit dwells in us. 72 Charity's causation is proper to the Trinity and appropriated to the Holy Spirit; but as relating us to the Holy Spirit, charity is proper to him. 73 We can call our participation in the Holy Spirit a direct participation. We possess the Holy Spirit as the term of our union with him through the virtue of charity and we are made similar to him. In the union of sanctifying grace God is present to us as attainable object of our operations. God is present as attainable object precisely because, at least logically prior to any operation on our part, we are united to God as to the cause of the elevation of our nature and to the Holy Spirit through the virtue of charity as to a term of union. Because God causes us to be habitually and immediately united through charity to his Essence as it exists in the Person of the Holy Spirit, we can attain God in our operations as he is in his Divine Essence. It should be noted that, although the virtue of charity unites us to the Holy Spirit as to a personal term of union, it orders us to the attainment of God in our operations as he is in his Essence, not only as he is in the Holy Spirit. For God is attained in our operations as our end, as our final cause to be possessed in beatitude. 74 Any causality of God, including final causality, is proper to the whole Trinity as operating through the Divine Essence. It is through the created effect, the virtue of charity, that we are properly related to the Holy Spirit; but this virtue orders us to the Divine Essence as possessed in common by the three Divine Persons as to our end; and the operation of the virtue, the act of charity, unites us immediately to the Divine Essence as common to the whole Trinity. 75 Charity, then, orders us through our "Ibid., d. 15, q. 3, a. 1. 1, d. 17, q. 1, a. 1: "Oportet igitur aliquem habitum charitatis creatum esse in anima, secundum quem Spiritus sanctus ipsam inhabitare dicitur." 7 " Cf. ibid., d. 32, q. 1, a. 3; 1, d. 31, q. 2, a. 1 ad 5; Summa Theol., I, q. 38, a. 2 ad 4. 74 Summa Theol., 11-11, q. 27, a. 5 ad 3; 11-11, q. 26, a. 1. 75 I Sent., d. 31, q. 2, a. 1 ad 5. THE TRINITARIAN INDWELLING S9S operations to the Divine Essence as to our end, as to the principle of our beatitude. 76 And charity relates us properly to the Holy Spirit as sent to us, as given to us, as Gift. 71 Because the Holy Spirit is sent to us as Gift, we can attain God in our operations as the principle of our beatitude. Because the Holy Spirit is given to us, we can give ourselves effectively to God. 78 "Charity signifies not only love of God but also friendship with him, which adds to love a mutual giving of love for love with a certain mutual sharing." 79 Is our participation in the Divine Word more than a participation of exemplarity; do we participate objectively in the Word? No, we participate in the Word only by exemplarity. The Word proceeds by generation, and generation implies a respect only to the principle-from-whom of generation, to the Principle from whom the Word proceeds in his eternal generation and in his invisible mission. 80 The proper Personality of the Word is to be the Generated, the Son or Word; the Word by reason of his proper Personality proceeds from a principle but not to a term. The Word in virtue of his own Personality is in reference to us as exemplar but not as personal term of union as is the Holy Spirit; exemplarity, however, is sufficient to fulfill the idea of the invisible mission of the Word. 81 Although charity is a similitude of the Holy Spirit and wisdom is a similitude of the Word, whereas the virtue of charity unites us directly to the Holy Spirit, the gift of wisdom does not unite us directly to the Word. 82 Although charity IS a Summa Theol., II-II, q. !i!6, a. 1. Cf. I-II, q. 65, a. 5 ad 1. Ibid., I, q. 38, a. !i! ad 4. 78 IV Cont. Gent., c. !ill. 79 Summa Theol., I-II, q. 65, a. 5. Cf. IV Cont. Gent., cc. !ill and !ill!. 80 I Sent., d. 14, q. 1, a. 1 ad 1. 81 Ibid., d. 15, q. 4, a. 1 ad !i!. 76 77 82 Some theologians present as being the doctrine of St. Thomas that the loving knowledge of wisdom that we have in sanctifying grace does terminate immediately in the Word. See, for example, S. Dockx, Fils de Dieu par grace, pp. ll!i!-113. The theory of Dockx has been more fully developed by F. Bourassa: " ... le Verbe et !'Esprit nous sont communiques par le Pere comme termes de nos operations surnaturelles, comme ce par quoi et en quoi Dieu devient objet 394 ROBERT L. F ARICY direct participation in the Holy Spirit, wisdom is a participation only by exemplarity and so an indirect participation in the Word. The gift of wisdom, then, is only appropriated to the Word. 83 Furthermore, the gift of wisdom presupposes charity, 84 for wisdom is caused by charity. 85 That is, our likeness to the Word, our participation in the Word, is caused by our direct participation in the Holy Spirit. 86 It is because wisdom, by which we are made similar to the Natural Son, is caused by our similitude to the Holy Spirit that the Holy Spirit is called the " Spirit of adoption." 87 And it is because charity informs wisdom that the gift of wisdom is said to be a gift of the Holy Spirit. 88 It pertains to the gift of wisdom that we know God through an inclination of the will to God, through a connaturality that comes from the union of our will, in its act of charity, with God as object. We attain God in our intellectual operation by a kind of loving knowledge, as immediate object of our love, and so, in a less immediate way, as object of our intellect. 89 Knowledge according to the gift of wisdom is an inchoation of the perfect vision of beatitude in which we will not de notre connaisance et de notre amour." ("Presence de Dieu et union aux divines Personnes, " Sciences Ecclesiastiques, 6, 1954, p. 21.) " Dans le cas de l'ame sanctifiee (meme l'ame du Christ), la Personne divine selon sa propriete personelle est unie immediatement a la faculte creee, mais du cote de l'objet, comme terme de son operation surnaturelle, et non pas du cote du principe." ("Role personnel des Personnes, et relations distinctes aux Personnes," Ibid., 7, 1955, p. 168.) The theory of Dockx and Bourassa is unacceptable both as the teaching of St. Thomas and in itself. In the first place, the texts of St. Thomas do not say that wisdom terminates properly in the Word; rather, they say that it does not (see references 81, 83, 84, 85, 86). Furthermore, if our intellect, through wisdom, terminated immediately in the Word, we would have a clear perception of the Divine Essence as it exists in the Word; we would have the Beatific Vision in this life. 88 Summa Theol., I, q. 43, a. 5 ad 1. Cf. I Sent., d. 31, q. !'l, a. I ad I. •• Summa Theol., II-II, q. 45, a. 4. Cf. Ill Sent., d. 35, q. !'l, a. 1, Sol. 3. 85 Summa Theol., ibid., q. 45, a. 6 and 2. Cf. I-II, q. 68, a. 8 ad 3; II-II, q. 45, a. 2. •• Ibid., III, q. 23, a. 3. 87 Ibid., II-II, q. 45, a. 6 ad I; III, q. 23, a. 3. •• Ibid., I-II, q. 68, a. 8 ad 3; II-II, q. 45, a.I. 89 Ibid., II-II, q. 45, a. 2. Cf. a. 6 ad 2. THE TRINITARIAN INDWELLING 395 only love God immediately but will see him m his Word as he is in himsel£.90 The purpose of the invisible missions of the Word and the Holy Spirit is to bring us back to God, to join us to God in grace so that we may be joined to him in glory, to order us effectively to our ultimate end. 91 We are incapable of attaining our ultimate end by our unaided natural powers, for only God can naturally operate effectively with himself as object; only God can by nature know and love himself directly. In order to proportion our operations to our final end, God unites himself to us in the union of sanctifying grace so that we not only share in the Divine Being in the essence of our soul but also participate in the Divine Processions of the Trinitarian Life, directly in the Holy Spirit and indirectly in the Word, in our habits and operations. Since our will, by the virtue of charity, is united immediately to the Divine Essence as that Essence exists in the Holy Spirit, we can attain God directly in our acts of love. We are divinized and ordered effectively to complete union with God in glory. Proper relations to the indwelling Divine Persons. Although we are made similar to the Word by the gift of wisdom, it is not through wisdom that the Word unites himself to us but through charity. Although the Word is manifested to us in the gift of wisdom, he comes to us in the cause of wisdom, the virtue of charity. Uncreated Wisdom . . . unites himself to us through the gift of charity and by this reveals mysteries to us, the knowledge of which is infused wisdom. Thus infused wisdom, which is a gift, is not the cause of charity but rather its effect.92 The invisible mission of the Word includes the Word's eternal generation and adds the notion of a temporal effect in us 90 III Sent., d. 14, q. 1, a. 1, sol. 4 ad 1. Cf. ad 2; de Verit., q. 8, a. 16 ad 8. 01 I Sent., d. 14, q. 2, a. 2; d. 15, q. 2 ad 3; q. 4, a. 1 and a. 2 ad 5; q. 5, a. 1, sol. 1 ad 3. •• Summa Theol., II-II, q. 45, a. 6 ad 2. Cf. a. 2. 396 ROBERT L. F ARICY through which the Word is immediately united to us. 93 This temporal effect is sanctifying grace. But the eternal procession of the Word does not terminate temporally in a term-inwhom as does the Holy Spirit's in his invisible mission. Through the virtue of charity the Word comes to us through his ineffable union to the Holy Spirit. It is true that our participation in the Word, the gift of wisdom, is an indirect participation that is simply by exemplarity and that is caused by charity. But, nevertheless, we have a direct personal relation to the Word. For the Holy Spirit relates us immediately to the Father and to the Word. Since we are related directly and properly to the Holy Spirit as to a personal term of union, we are immediately related through him properly to the Word and to the Father. For the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Word as their mutual subsisting Love. 94 The word " ' connecting ' is proper to the Holy Spirit insofar as he is the Love of the Father and the Son in whom they are united, and also as connecting us to God, insofar as he is Gift." 95 " The Father and the Son love us in the Holy Spirit." 96 That is to say, our personal relations to the Word and to the Father are based on our participation in the Holy Spirit. We are related properly and personally, as to a term of union, to the Holy Spirit according to his own proper Personality. The Holy Spirit is Gift, and we are related to him as given to us. The Holy Spirit is Love, and our relation to him is a direct participation of that Love, created charity. The Divine Persons are Subsistent Relations of one Substance, and through a union with one Person we are immediately united properly to the other two Persons. 97 So the Holy Spirit unites Ibid., I, q. 43, a. 2c and ad 3; a. 3 ad 3. Ibid., q. 37, a. I ad 2, ad 3. 95 I Sent., d. 3I, q. a. I. Cf. IV Cont. Gent., c. 2I. See F. Bourassa, "Le don de Dieu," Gregorianum 50 (I969), 20I-237. 96 I Sent., d. 32, q. I, a. 3. 93 9' 97 The Holy Spirit relates us properly to the Father and to the Son, and not simply to one principle of spiration; for, considering the subjects of spiration, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son as distinct, for he is the THE TRINITARIAN INDWELLING 897 us to the Father and to the Word and relates us personally and properly to the Father and to the Word. The Divine Indwelling, then, is of the three Divine Persons as Three, of the Trinity as Trinity. Although the Indwelling is through the virtue of charity, this is not to say that it is only in the virtue of charity, only in our will and not in our entire soul. In the creation of sanctifying grace and charity God actuates our whole soul to union with himself. There is only one union, the union of the three Divine Persons with us; this union is received in our will as the virtue of charity and in our soul as a whole as sanctifying grace. Our union with the Divine Persons terminates through the virtue of charity in the Holy Spirit. Charity is the formal medium of sanctifying grace. 98 The union of sanctifying grace depends upon charity and terminates through charity. That the union of sanctifying grace extend to the essence of our soul is necessary from two points of view: first, that the Divine Persons dwell in us according to our whole being and not simply according to our will; second, from the point of view of our operations. Operations that can attain God are operations of a nature and necessarily presuppose the elevation of that nature. In this sense, charity and all the gifts and virtues presuppose sanctifying grace in the essence of our soul. Just as our effectiveness to operate with respect to natural objects has its root in the essence of our soul, so our effectiveness to operate with respect to God as object has its root in the supernaturally actuated essence of our souP 9 Sanctifying grace makes us exist in a new way so that unitive love of them both. Summa Theol., I, q. 36, a. 4 ad 1: " ... si attendatur virtus spirativa, Spiritus Sanctus procedit a Patre et Filio inquantum sunt in virtute spirativa, . . . Si vero considerentur supposita spirationis, sic Spiritus Sanctus procedit a Patre et Filio ut sunt plures: procedit enim ab eis ut amor unitivus duorum." See F. Bourassa, "Le Saint-Esprit unite d'amour du Pere et du Fils," Sciences Ecclesiastiques, 14 (1962), 375-415. 98 I Sent., d. 17, q. 1, a. 1 ad 1. •• Summa Theol., I-II, q. 110, a. 4 ad 1. 398 ROBERT L. F ARICY we can operate in a new way .100 It is through the union with God that is sanctifying grace that we are able to know and love God in habit and in act. In sanctifying grace, then, we are united to the three Divine Persons in a continuous habitual union. For the virtue or charity relates us properly to the Holy Spirit as to a term, and the Holy Spirit relates us directly and properly to the Father and to the Word. It is the Divine Essence that is the cause of sanctifying grace, of the Divine Indwelling. But the Indwelling itself, as such, although in our whole being down to the essence of our soul, is through the virtue of charity. And the Indwelling, in itself and not in its causation, is properly of the three Divine Persons as Three; the Indwelling is of the Trinity as Trinity and not simply of the Divine Essence as Divine Essence. This analysis of Thomas's doctrine on the personal relations of the Christian to the Divine Persons differs considerably from the conclusions of previous commentators on Thomas's teaching. It is true that some theologians have rejected the idea that Thomas holds a doctrine of merely appropriated relations to the Indwelling Persons; but the conclusions presented in this article differ from these interpretations in the explanation of how we are related to each of the Divine Persons. The traditional interpretation of Thomas's teaching on this matter is that charity is simply appropriated to the Holy 100 Ibid., I, q. 8, a. 3. This seems to correspond perfectly with the theory of " created actuation by the Uncreated Act " of M. de Ia Taille, Recherches de science religieuse, 18 (1928), 253-268. De Ia Taille considers both charity and sanctifying grace as strictly supernatural, as " created actuation by the Uncreated Act." (p. 263) The movement toward the Beatific Vision is made properly by charity, but charity presupposes an even deeper union, sanctifying grace. (p. 258) Sanctifying grace is a union extending to the essence of the soul, in which God gives himself to the soul as term of union. (pp. 254 and 258-9) For discussion, see P. De Letter, "Grace and Divine Indwelling," Gregorianum, 41 (1960), 63-69; and F. Bourassa, "Actuation de l'ame par acte divin," Sciences EccUsiastiques, 10 (1958), 139-166; and "Presence reele--presence intentionelle,' ibid., 1960, pp. 307-50. See also P. De Letter, S. J., " The Theology of God's Self-Gift," Theological Studies, 24 (1963), 402-422. THE TRINITARIAN INDWELLING 399 Spirit, and wisdom to the Word, but that the Holy Spirit has a certain primacy in the Indwelling since it is charity that unites us directly to God and since it is to the Holy Spirit that charity is appropriated (because of exemplarity). For some commentators, this does not preclude distinct relations to the Divine Persons. 101 In the traditional interpretation, however, the question remains as to precisely how we are related to the Indwelling persons in their distinction. The contribution of the analysis of Thomas's teaching that is presented here is also the point of difference from previous analyses: that we are directly and immediately united to the Holy Spirit through charity, and that the Holy Spirit relates us directly and immediately to the Father and the Son. The nature of our proper relations to the Divine Persons. The nature of the invisible missions, and so the nature of our proper relations to the Word and to the Holy Spirit, is manifested in the visible missions of the Word and the Holy Spirit. God provides for all things according to the mode of each. There is, however, a mode connatural to man, that through visible things he is led to the invisible . . . and so it is necessary that the invisible things of God should be manifested to man through visible things. Therefore God shows himself and the eternal processions of the Persons according to some indications, somehow, to men. So it was suitable that the invisible missions of the Divine Persons be manifested according to some visible creatures, 101 Among the traditional interpretations of Thomas's teaching on the Divine Indwelling, the most thorough and the clearest is that of William Hill (Proper Relations to the lnmwelling Divine Persons, especially pp. 98-116). According to Hill's interpretation of St. Thomas, sanctifying grace relates us not to the Divine Essence but to all three Persons in their precise hypostatic distinction one from another. The formal effects of grace, wisdom and charity, are appropriated, by reason of exemplar causality, to the Son and to the Holy Spirit who, nonetheless, are sent in an exclusive sense. Since it is only charity that unites us directly to God as he is in himself, a certain primacy or priority is assigned to the Holy Spirit in the Indwelling. And so the order among the Persons, in which alone they are distinguished, is preserved but inversely-in us, the Holy Spirit leads to the Son who brings us to the Father. 400 ROBERT L. FARICY but in one way for the Son and in another way for the Holy Spirit. For it is suitable to the Holy Spirit, insofar as he proceeds as Love, to be the Gift of sanctification. It is suitable to the Son, however, insofar as he is the principle of the Holy Spirit, to be the author of this sanctification. So the Son was visibly sent as the author of sanctification, but the Holy Spirit as the sign of sanctification. 102 The Word, then, is the author of our sanctification in his visible and in his invisible missions. In his visible mission the Word became our salvation; his actions were salutary for us, as causing grace in us, both through merit in virtue of his humanity and through efficacity in virtue of his divinity. 103 In his visible mission the Word is the cause and the author of our sanctification. 104 In his invisible mission, the Word dwells in us as the author of our sanctification, as sending the Holy Spirit. The Son is the Word, not in just any sense, but spirating Love .... Therefore the Son is not sent according to just any perfection of the intellect, but according to such instruction of the intellect as breaks forth into the affection of love.105 In sanctifying grace we are related to the Word according to his own proper Personality and according to his personal role in the total economy of our salvation. Our personal relation to the Word is not simply an abstract relation without meaningful content. In sanctifying grace we are intimately related to the author of our sanctification who is the cause of our salvation in his visible mission and who continues actively to save us in his invisible mission by sending us his Spirit. We have an intimate personal relation to Christ according to his Divine Personality as our Saviour dwelling in us and actively continuing to save us, to lead us to heaven, as the author of our sanctification. The visible mission of the Holy Spirit to Christ in his 100 Summa Theol., I, q. 43, a. 7. 108 Ibid., III, q. 8, a. I ad I; I Sent., d. I6, q. I, a. 3. 10 • Summa Theol., III, q. 8, aa. I, 5, 6. Ibid., I, q. 43, a. 5 ad 2. Cf. I Sent., d. I5, q. 4, a. 2. 105 THE TRINITARIAN INDWELLING 401 baptism and in his Transfiguration, to the apostles at Pentecost, and to some of the saints in the primitive Church, was as a sign or mark of sanctification/ 06 The visible mission of the Holy Spirit, as a mark of holiness, of the holiness of Christ and of his Church, reveals the nature of his invisible mission and of our personal relation to him. In sanctifying grace we are related to the Holy Spirit as to the Gift and the Love who sanctifies us, who unites us to Christ and to the Father through charity, who is the invisible Principle of the life of the Body of Christ, the Church. 107 The Father, since he has no origin and so no mission, is manifested through the missions of the Word and the Holy Spirit. 108 We are related to the Father as to the Origin of the missions to us of the Word and the Holy Spirit; we are intimately and personally related to the Father as dwelling in us and as sending us his Son as our Saviour and his Spirit as our Sanctifier. Divine Indwelling: person, community, and process. St. Thomas's theology of the Indwelling is based on a metaphysics of being. The problem is to move beyond a metaphysics of being to an understanding of the Indwelling in a framework within which the personal growth and development of the Christian can be seen as dependent on the interpersonal relationships of the Indwelling. The contemporary understanding of person and community that seems most appropriate for such a " transformation of coordinates " is that of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. For Teilhard, what makes a man a person is that he has reflexive consciousness; he not only knows, but he knows that he knows. 109 He knows himself precisely as a knowing subject. Summa Thevl., I, q. 43, a. 7 ad 6. Cf. ibid., ill, q. 8, a. 1 ad 3; III Sent., d. 13, q. fl, a. !'.!, sol. !'.!. 108 The Father is manifested not only through the visible missions of the Son and the Holy Spirit, but also through their invisible missions. Cf. I Sent., d. 15, q. 4, a. I. 109 P. Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, tr. B. Wall (New York: 1965), p. 165. 108 107 402 ROBERT L. F ARICY By virtue of his power of self-consciousness he can associate with other persons, form associations of common consciousness, enter into community. Teilhard understands person and community as correlative concepts. The formula that he uses to work out the relationship between person and community is " union differentiates." 110 Union " does not suffocate nor does it confuse the elements; it super-differentiates them within the unity." 111 In any area of life, whether we refer to the cells of a body, the members of a team, or the elements of any union, union differentiates the elements united. 112 When this principle is applied to a union of persons, differentiation is of the persons as such; it takes the form of personalization. Teilhard writes that " true union, the union of heart and spirit, does not enslave, nor does it neutralize the individuals which it brings together. It super-personalizes them." 113 Union differentiates, and union of persons personalizes. Sometimes we fail to see that union personalizes, Teilhard points out, because we confuse " person " with " individual." We find our true selves not in isolation but by uniting with others. "The goal of our selves, the acme of our originality, is not our individualness but our person; and according to the evolutionary structure of the world, we can find our person 110 Teilhard's thought on the principle that union differentiates is explained in several places in his works. The fullest and clearest explanation is in "The Grand Option," The Future of Man, tr. N. Denny (New York: 1964), pp. 52-57. See also "Esquisse d'un univers personnel," L'energie humaine (Paris: 1962), pp. 79-105; "The Formation of the Noosphere," The Future of Man (New York: 1964), pp. 182-184; Man's Place in Nature, tr. R. Hague (New York: 1966), pp. 114-115; "My Universe," Science and Christ, tr. R. Hague (New York: 1968), pp. 45-46. See also R. Faricy, Teilhard rle Chardin's Theology of the Christian in the World (New York: 1967), pp. 59-68. 111 "L'esprit de Ia terre," L'energie humaine (Paris: 1962), p. 52. Although few commentators have explained at any length the principle that union differentiates, many place it at the heart of all Teilhard's philosophy and theology. For example, see C. Mooney, Teilhard de Chardin and the Mystery of Christ (New York: 1966), p. 46; H. de Lubac, The Religion of Teilhard de Chardin, tr. R. Hague (New York: 1967), p. 149; D. Gray, The One and the Many (New York: 1969), pp. 121 and 157. 11 " The Phenomenon of Man, op. cit., p. 268. 113 "Life and the Planets," The Future of Man, op. cit., p. 119. THE TRINITARIAN INDWELLING 403 only by uniting together." 114 We can see evidence of the differentiating and personalizing effect of union all around us. In any society, as organization increases, specialization does too; in a team of any kind, close teamwork goes with a high degree of specialization, of differentiation, of each team member. In close friendships and in marriage true union of persons brings out the best in each person; the union itself is a source of personal growth. What is essential is that union of persons be a union of hearts, a union by mutual interior affinity that is " center to center, through internal attraction." 115 True union is a union of love, for love is what " brings persons together not superficially and tangentially, but center to center." 116 Love, the bond of personalizing union, is in its highest form Christian charity. Charity is love "in the Christocentric zone of the universe." 117 One illustration, the most sublime, of Teilhard's principle that union of love personalizes is the Trinity. 118 The three Divine Persons are united in the highest form of union possible, infinitely profound, a sharing in one Divine Nature. At the same time, the Divine Persons are infinitely differentiated and distinct. The distinctness of Persons and the degree of union are both infinite; no persons could be more united or more " persons." When we are united with the three Divine Persons, then, we are caught up into an infinitely loving Community. Our union, through the virtue of charity, with the Holy Spirit is a personalizing union. He is Love himself and, in uniting 1 ,. The Phl'fnomemon of Man, op. cit., p. 263. See "Esquisse d'un univers personnel," op. cit., pp. 81-82. 115 "Life and the Planets," op. cit., p. 119. 116 "The Direction and Conditions of the Future," The Future of Man, op. cit., p. 235. 117 Le coeur de la matiere, unpublished essay written in 1950, p. 28. 118 A. Jeanniere finds the principle of differentiating union to be the foundation of all theological analyses of the Persons of the Trinity, " Sur le mal, !'union et le point Omega," Esprit, 32 (1964), 361-366. Teilhard himself has no real theology of the Trinity; his only discussion of the Trinity is very brief, and in the context of his theory of creation, Commemt je vois, unpublished essay written in 1948, p. 19. 404 ROBERT L. F ARICY us to himself, makes himself, through charity, the principle of our life and personal growth. Union with him, and through him with the Father and the Son, is the mainspring of our development and the energy of our fulfillment as persons. Seen in terms of personalizing union, our union with the Divine Persons can be understood as the basis for a theology of prayer that studies our conscious personal relationships with the Indwelling Persons. Prayer can be understood primarily as a conscious and loving relationship with the Holy Spirit, and in and through the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son. Prayer can also be seen as the most important activity of the process of Christian personalization, for it is the activity in which our union with the Trinity is the most explicit, conscious, and human, and so the most personalizing. Further, the Holy Spirit can be better understood as the life and dynamism of Christian community when his role in the Indwelling is better understood. We are one in the Spirit because he unites each of us to the Father and Son, and because he is the source of the Christian development of each of us and so of all of us. We are one because we share one Spirit; and we can grow more in charity and unity because the Spirit we share is a Person in whom we are further personalized and drawn closer together in personalizing union with one another. Again, once grace can be studied in categories of person and process, the way is clear to an integration of theology of grace with contemporary eschatology, with ecclesiology that considers the Church in evolutionary terms as the developing people of God, and with theology of the sacraments as encounters with Christ. Most importantly, there becomes possible a more extended and coherent theology of the Holy Spirit who makes his home in us, 119 who "makes us cry out 'Abba, Father,' " 120 and who together with our spirit bears " united witness that we are children of God . . . and coheirs with Christ." 121 ROBERT L. FARICY, s. J. The Catholic University of America Washington, D. C. 110 Romans 8: 9. 120 Ibid., 15. 121 Ibid., 16-17. THE GOD WHO BECOMES: EcKHART oN DIVINE RELATIVITY An historian of Christian thought who is at the same time persuaded by process philosophy cannot restrain his interest when he comes across a writer who appears, on both internal and external grounds, to offer some continuity between his two concerns. Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-c. 1328) is especially arresting in this connection, particularly so because of his understanding of the relationship between God and the world. One is led to Eckhart on this issue both because of the external characteristics of his writing and because of the religious situation for which his work is an expression and a response. Eckhart qualifies on a number of counts as a writer who might teach a process theologian. He was as speculative as a more or less orthodox Thomist of the 14th century could be. His most speculative and controversial work appears in his activity as preacher and spiritual guide to groups of nuns under his care. The German writings are thus deeply ethical in purpose and are in addition developed in terms of a series of highly erotic images. Speculative, ethical, erotic-all are characteristic of process philosophy. The problem to which Eckhart addressed himself is also one keenly felt by process theology. My construction of that problem is as follows. Eckhart, as spiritual director of Christians with special religious vocations, felt a particular obligation to develop a theology that would at once reflect religious experience and answer its needs. To do this he had to interpret the traditional doctrine of God in such a way that God's relationship to the world, specifically to the soul, became as theologically important as the inner-trinitarian relationships, and the latter as religiously meaningful as God's relationship to the soul. This meant developing the motifs of " marriage," 405 406 JOHN LOESCHEN " covenant," "birthing," or, in the more technically safe language of a later time, God's relationship to the world de potentia ordinata, into senses of meaning as metaphysically profound as divine aseity, unchangingness, omnipotence, as God de potentia absoluta. Eckhart set himself to a task impossible of acceptable solution in his time, of course. But his struggle may serve to educate those of us who are not quite ready to believe that the Christian tradition has been completely unaware of the kind of alternative suggested by process philosophy. I We begin with an appeal very familiar to Eckhart's hearers. The Christian should become free from all images, from selfreliance, even self-awareness, as free and as virginally pure as Christ who endlessly receives from and is borne into the Father. 1 To be this free of Eigenschaften, defining characteristics is to be one with Jesus. 2 It is to be like the Son; nay more, it is to be the same Son in a different body, 3 different only in that the soul, unlike Christ, is created. But still the same Son, since all that God loves he loves in his Son. And to become like Christ means that the Father is birthing his Son in the soul and the soul as the Son. 4 This most basic and fertile of Eckhart's themes, the ecstatic, erotic fusion of the soul with the Son under divine agency, provides the staging area for the first step towards a meta1 DW I, 11.5 ff.; cf. 26.6-8. Citations are from Meister Eckhart, Die deutschen und lateinischen W erke, J. Quint, E. Benz, et a!., eds.; (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1956 -). Material cited not yet available in this edition is from Meister Eckhart, deutsche Predigten und Traktate, J. Quint, ed. and tr.; (Mtinchen: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1963). Citations from the deutschen Werke (DW) and the Quint edition (Q), will include volume, page, and line; from the lateinischen Werke (LW), volume, sermon number, and section. 2 Ibid., 31.4-8; cf. Vladimir Lossky, Theologie Negative et Connaissance de Dieu chez Maitre Eckhart, "Etudes de Philosophie Medievale, XLVIII," (Paris: Librairie philosophique J. Vrin, 1960), p. 191. 3 Ibid., 7Q.l4 ff. • Ibid., 72.8 ff.; 168.12 ff.; 381.5 ff.; cf. Lossky, p. 188. THE GOD WHO BECOMES 407 physics of the relationship of God and the world. For, when God sees the soul as his Son, he pours himself out, he completely gives himself-he mu8t open himself. 5 Now Eckhart moves a little further. Not only is it true that God must bare-and bear-himself to the Son-soul, but God must eternally birth the Son and the soul, whether he wants to or not. 6 Eckhart exhibits the pulsing, upward-arching logic of this frequent theme in a sermon, lU8ti vivent in aeternum: I) the Father births the Word in the soul "and I go further and say"; 2) he births the soul as his Son"; "I go even further"; 3) he births the soul as himself. 7 Already the gracious, de potentia ordinata relationship of God and the soul is developing characteristics appropriate to God's relations in 8e. There is the eternal birthing of the Son and thus the analogous birth in the soul. But the birth in the soul is also eternal and necessary. This means that there is only one birth, and the birth in the soul is of the same profundity as the eternal birth of the Son, for it is the same birth. 8 The arresting feature of the initial development of the birthing motif is Eckhart's introduction of necessity in connection with the relation of God and the world. The grounds for further development of the motif lie in the fact that, as was seen, the soul both is and is not the Son. God must birth the soul a8 the Son, and the soul and the Son. The significance of the divine " must " therefore depends upon which side of the "soul-Son" contrast is emphasized. If the soul is birthed by God as a " formulation of the form," 9 as God in the Son, then the soul can be said to Ibid., 194.2-5. 72.8-11; 109.6 f. 7 109.6-11. • Cf. Shizuteru Ueda, Die Gottesqeburt in der Sede und der Durchbruch zur Gottheit, " Studien zu Religion, Geschichte und Geisteswissenschaft," Bd. S, (Gtitersloh: Glitersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1965), p. 87. • 156.9 fl'. Eckhart's phrase is "Beiwort "-"Wort," but a literal translation would not catch the meaning at all. Cf. Lossky, p. 51, for the use of the verbum rather than loqos reference in this connection. 6 6 408 JOHN LOESCHEN "impose" requirements upon God. 10 God must give himself wholly (i. e., birth his Son) for the soul to be satisfied; 11 its friendship is necessary to God. 12 But now Eckhart's language becomes more controversial. For in the mutual 13 emptying of defining characteristics which is the birthing, the humble man (one void of these characteristics) commands God.14 God must in fact empty himself to the humble man, or else he would cease to be God.15 Now it is clear that the necessities upon God indicated in these texts follow from the identity side of the soul-Son contrast: the soul is the Son, i. e., is God, and so the indicated necessities are not to be understood as " imposed " upon God from the outside, from something other than the divine nature itself. Yet this very language also reflects the inseparable other side of the contrast, i. e., the difference of the soul from the Son, from God. And as Eckhart shifts into this perspective, there begins to emerge the idea that the grounds for divine necessity lie outside the divine nature, that God is in fact really related to something which is not God-the soul. Speaking, for example, of the unity of divine and human wills which characterizes the eternal birth, Eckhart states that God can in no way " eliminate " the soul 16-as though the soul were, in its unity (n.b., not " identity ") with God, a fact to be contended with. 11 Again, not only does God give himself to the soul in the way the soul can receive him, but if the soul will not let God in, God can only stand close by, outside the door.18 Now this may be only a traditional image. Yet in one locus, at least, Eckhart has a " second thought " which may indicate ° For a more exhaustive treatment of this matter, cf. Ueda, pp. 108 ff. 71.7-9; 177.8-5. '" DW II, 46.8 ff. 18 DW I, 98.6 f.; 186.!t ff. "Ibid., !t85.7-9, "gebeden "-to bid; 8!t7.7 ff., "twingen,"-to impress, "vertoeren "-to delude (!); DW II, 8.9 ff., "vaehen "-to seize, " binden,"-to obligate. 15 DW I, !t84.18-15; 287.1-8; DW V, 187.9 f.; cf. Q., 814.16-19. 16 DW II, 1I.!t-7, "uzgesliezen." 17 Cf. Lossky, pp. 44 ff.; 81 f. 18 DW V, !l50.8-5. 1 11 THE GOD WHO BECOMES 409 he may himself have felt his words went beyond the edge of the acceptable. The idea suggests itself: what if we don't "let God in," what if the soul can really limit God's power and presence? Giving is God's nature [nature] and his essence depends upon [sin wesen swebet dar an] giving to us, if we are subordinate. If we are not, and do not receive, then we injure him and kill him.... Eckhart seems to pause in thought for an eternal moment, then continues: " Though we can't do this to him, we still do it to ourselves .... " 19 A tantalizing, albeit merely spectacular moment, perhaps. Less exciting, yet more important for the question about external limits upon God, is the idea that God is neither the object of the soul's love nor the ultimate metaphysical reality. Eckhart says that creatures love the One as God, love God because of the One, and God because he is the One. 20 God as God is not the highest end of creation. 21 There is something beyond God to which the soul is joined, and when it is so joined it has no use for "God." And that "beyond God" or "on account of which, God," is the One. 22 When we shift focus from the soul to the divine pole of the birthing process, we find fuller evidence that the Godworld relationship is at least as metaphysically important as the inner-trinitarian relations in Eckhart's thought. And once more we find suggestions of a real relationship of God to something not identical to himself. Eckhart speaks both of God's passions and the necessities to which God is subject. Because God abhors a vacuum, he must be ceaselessly active, creating, working in the soul, creating himself as the self of the creation and the soul. 28 Before DW I, ff. •• LW IV. xxix, 21 Q., cf. Ueda, p. 22 LW IV, xxix, Q., 23 DW I, ff.; DW V, 485.80 ff.; 486.88-85. 19 cf. also pp. 99, 101 f., for more texts. ff. ff.; 806.6-9; LW IV, xviii, 181; Q., 410 JOHN LOESCHEN creation, in fact, God was not God. 24 Just as the soul's love is necessary to God, so God loves the soul necessarily/ 5 and his love brings him both delight and suffering. His delight upon seeing the Son, the soul as the Son-the delight of a young colt upon seeing an open field in which to gallop!--causes him to reveal himself even before the proper means are available.26 And God also suffers, the greatest suffering being the death of his Son. 27 God is in fact the eminent Sufferer. 28 Nay, more, says Eckhart, his language at this point becoming more daring: suffering is God. 29 One could construe much of this language as merely anthropomorphic, except for the fact that Eckhart relates these same passions to the divine essence or nature. God's highest ideal, says Eckhart, is " to bear," 80 and this birthing exhausts the divine power. 81 Now it is not true to say that for Eckhart the divine nature is such and such and relates to the creation in terms of birthing. Eckhart instead consistently argues that the divine essence or nature itself depends upon this relationship. Eckhart's word is usually "dar an sweben." Thus God's essence or nature "depends upon" his willing the best, 82 giving the greater gift, 38 eternally birthing the Son in the soul. 34 It is characteristic of the Father to bear, and God's Eigenschaft is his essence. 85 God's most essential characteristic, says Eckhart in a Latin sermon, is " to be with us." 86 Let me repeat. Eckhart is not saying that the divine relation Q., 804.88 ff. LW IV, vi, 56. 199.8 ff.; 817.4 ff.; Q., •• DW I, 27 DW II, 8.4-7. 28 DW V, 51.5 ff.; ff.; 29 DW V, 54.1-7; similarly, love is God, cf. Q., ff. 30 DW I, 177.8-5; 180.7; DW II, 84.5f.; 117.1 f.; Q., Sl Q., 896.38 ff. 32 DW I, 63.3 f.; cf. DW V, 38 DW I, 65.7; 66.1 f.; cf. ff.; 77.17 f.; 101.8-11; DW II, •• DW I, •• DW II, DW I, 184.4. ff. •• LW IV, ii, 4; cf. DW I, 24 25 THE GOD WHO BECOMES 411 to the world-birthing-follows from the divine nature but rather that the divine nature depends upon the birthing relation. He is attempting to define and ground the divine nature in terms of its activity and in so doing gives the relation metaphysical parity, at least, with the divine nature. Eckhart is moreover quite conscious of his way of approach. There is much talk among the masters about how it could be that this immovable, intangible, hidden Being upon which the soul is modelled, could be at all related to the soul. And they are thus very distressed as to how the soul should be capable of receiving it. But I say that God's very being as God depends upon the continuing obligation to give himself to whatever can receive him. If he did not give himself, he would not be God.37 God cannot cease to be God, of course. 38 God is his birthing relation, and apart from this relation one cannot speak of God having a "nature." This perspective may be one way of approach to Eckhart's negative language about the divine nature, e. g., that God's nature is to be without nature, 39 or that God is bare, " nudum," in esse.40 But it is just at this point, regarding divine nudity, that we again come to the One as that which is both the reason for and the limit upon the divine relation. God is God only in virtue of his Oneness. His nature depends upon this, and it is the salvation of the soul, for if God were not One, he could not birth the Son. 41 At the same time, the One is the limitation upon the divine for the " essentia " generates neither generative activity: within nor from God. 42 I shall have occasion below to return to this matter. But let me close this section with two quotations from Eckhart in regard to God and the facilitating, limiting, One. The phrases are striking, to be sure, but we should by now have reason to take them somewhat seriously. 87 Q., 312.6-13. ss DW II, 28.1-4; cf. 45.1-3. •• Ibid., 120.2; Q., 306.20-23. •• LW IV, xi. 115; xvii. 169; xviv. 249; cf. Lossky, p. 45. "DW I, 368. 5 f. •• LW IV, xi. 115: "Unde essentia non generat in divinis nee verbum profert." 412 JOHN LOESCHEN The One as facilitating God: says Eckhart, God loves and cleaves to the One.43 The One as limiting God: says Eckhart, Oneness is with God and holds God together and lets nothing through.H II Preliminary consideration of Eckhart's understanding of the relationship between God and the soul has revealed that there are certain necessities associated with each: of the soul upon God by virtue of the soul's identity with the Son; upon God by virtue of the birthing process which is the divine essence. These conclusions are " preliminary " because these two loci of necessity are in fact one: the divine essence as birthing. Moreover, the birthing relation itself, whether approached from the "bearer" or the" borne" side,45 is a relation which, as a whole, is relativized by something else, i.e., the One. In this section I shall investigate the birthing process itself in relation to the One. In a sense this will be but a more intimate look at the divine essence. But it will also bring into clearer view the exigencies of the One upon both God and the soul. Eckhart claims that God and the soul are " alike," even that they are the same. Often the likeness of God and the soul is asserted in terms of being, rather than becoming. Thus body and soul, like man and God, are joined in Being, not in activity. 46 In the innermost part of the soul, the ground of God and man is the same.47 The birthing process itself is possible only because it is out of time, 48 and the soul is like God in that it is formally free, rational, while it is unlike him "DW V, 46.15 f. "DW I, 814.1-8. Lossky indicates the double function of the One as "exclusive," and " inclusive," p. 68; as indicating " puritas " and " plenitudo," p. 118; as transcendent of and immanent in creation, p. '.!61. •• Ibid., 217.'.! fl.; 265.1 fl. •• Ibid., 119.2-7; cf. LW IV, iv.'-!8; cf. Lossky, p. 80. •• DW I, 90.6-8. "DW II, '.!81.1-6; cf. Lossky, p. 247. THE GOD WHO BECOMES 413 in that it is created. 49 While it is clear that it is primarily being rather than becoming which Eckhart associates with God, 50 at the same time the unity of the soul with God is often stated in terms of process. Unity is in the mutual outpouring, ecstasy, 51 in the perfect agreement of wills 52 which constitute the birthing. Again, sometimes the unity is stated in both referents, as when Eckhart says the soul and God have the same life, being, and essentiality. 53 Such varieties of appeal are not problematic, however, because the ultimate ground of identity lies by definition beyond the " being-becoming " split. It lies in the One. It is by virtue of the One, for which all names and no names are appropriate, that Eckhart makes rather striking statements about the soul and God. Thus the birth out of " purity " means " that I become father and birth him from whom I am birthed." 54 The soul is said to be the cause, not only if its own being but also of God's being as God. To this final radicalized language, however, Eckhart adds, "It's not necessary to know this." ! 55 The birthing process upon which the divine essence depends is a process whose terms must be specified more closely. For the soul, as we have seen, is very intimately related to the Son. When it is considered under the formal relationship of " that which is birthed," the soul can in fact be identified with the Son. Similarly " that which births " is specified invariably by Eckhart as the Father. 56 This situation means that it would be an error to construe •• DW I, 13.10 ff.; 54.4 f.; cf. Lossky, p. !M7. •• Cf. inter alia, DW I, 131.4; 134.9 f.; DW V, 116.30 fl'. 61 DW I, 93.6 f.; so also in terms of humility, Ibid., ff.; DW V, 187.1 ff.; and suffering, Ibid., •• DW II, 11.1-7. •• DW I, 106.1-3; LW IV, ix.99. •• DW I, ff. •• Q., cf. also DW I, 40.1 fl'.; DW V. for other "divine" characteristics applied to the soul by virtue of the One. 109.6f.; cf. also DW I, 358.8-10: the name •• Cf., inter alia, DW I, "father" implies "change"; DW II, 84.5 f.: the Father can do nought but bear; DW I, ff.: the Father's name is "to bear." 414 JOHN LOESCHEN God in se solely in terms of being and God's relations ad extra solely in terms of becoming. The Trinity itself is a process of birthing. From certain perspectives the inner-trinitarian birthing is distinguishable from the birthing of God in the soul, the latter being the image of the former. From the perspective of the One, however, there is but one birthing. A look at Eckhart's use of the language of the Trinity should prove instructive in this regard. While Eckhart, following the tradition, can associate various functions or names with the different Persons of the Trinity, his characteristic associations are in terms of the birthing relation. Thus the Father is he who births, the Son, he who is birthed, the Holy Spirit, the love between bearer and borne. 57 Now the interesting feature in this connection is that Eckhart can use the basic analogy in both directions: the Trinity as the image of birthing, and birthing as the image of the Trinity. There are many texts in which the birth in the soul is seen analogously to the eternal birth of the second Person: the Father births the Son in eternity, and just so does he birth his Son in the souJ.58 And there are also many texts in which Eckhart describes the birth in the soul, and then, seemingly as a means of tying in with more familiar theology, assigns one Person of the Trinity as the name for the aspect of the birth process he is describing. Thus the divine work of birthing in the soul-this is the Son. 59 The mutual outpouring of God and the soul in unity-there is the Holy Spirit. 60 This alternation in the use of analogy is possible because, as Eckhart makes clear in many of the hundreds of passages in his works on the " eternal birth-birth in the soul," there is only one birth. 61 But if we do have to come down on one side or the 57 Cf. Lossky, pp. 69, 282 f. 58 DW I, 72.8 ff.; 80.8 f.; 109.1 ff.; 176.3 ff. Cf. Lossky p. 188, for an interpretation based on this use of the analogy. Ibid., 93.5 ff.; 166.11 f.; 171.18 f.; Q., 377.1 f. 61 As Lossky indicates, pp. 62, 225, there is no distinction in divinis between the production of the Trinity and that of the world; it is one eternal, internal creative act. 59 60 THE GOD WHO BECOMES 415 other of the analogy, we would have to conclude that for Eckhart the birth of which he is speaking is ultimately the eternal birth. The divine birth. The eternal becoming of the Trinity. 62 Eckhart's task in his preaching, I suggested, was to make the relation of God and the soul as important as the innertrinitarian relationship. He has done this, on the one hand, by elevating the soul from, as it were, human to divine status, and, on the other hand, by emphasizing the Trinity under the aspects of the eternal birthing relation. But it is just this latter emphasis which led Eckhart into a series of difficulties with the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity. For having not only described the Persons of the Trinity in terms of the birthing process but also, as we saw in the preceding section, defined the divine essence in terms of the birthing relation, Eckhart was faced with accounting for the divine unchangeableness, aseity, simplicity, and so forth. A truly bi-polar understanding of God, such as would be entertained today by some process theologians, seems not to have been possible for Eckhart. Instead, he speaks of the bi-polar relationship between God and the One. The One is the ultimate, and yet God must be the ultimate. But God is not the One. The problem is not capable of orthodox solution. Eckhart attempts to solve it by subordinating the second and third Persons to the Father, by subordinating the Trinity of Persons to the divine nature, and ultimately by separating the Persons and the nature. The Trinity must be subordinate in Eckhart's metaphysics, for the simple reason that it is triune and not simply One. It is neither possible nor advisable in a brief article to launch into a full discussion of the metaphysics of God and the One according to Meister Eckhart. Rather I shall try to keep very close to the guiding question of this essay, i.e., what is the metaphysical status of the God-world relationship, the birth of the Son in and as the soul? Now I have tried to show that •• For a good summary of Eckhart's use of analogy in this way, cf. Lossky, p. 8(t4 f. 416 JOHN LOESCHEN this relationship has metaphysical parity with the inner-trinitarian relations: the divine essence depends upon the birthing relation, and the Trinity of Persons is both the reality of the birthing image and the image of the birthing reality. It would thus be a denial of my thesis to construe the problem of this section to be the relation of God and the One, as though we could keep the birthing relation aside as metaphysically subordinate, and concentrate on whether the One is or is not metaphysically superordinate to God. Rather the problem of God and the One can be construed as follows. " Birthing " is a dialectical process. Its two poles or loci are God and the soul. The birthing process as a whole is moreover related to the One, but this relationship is not dialectical. It is rather the relationship between the image and the real, between time and eternity, between the many and the One. Eckhart says that the soul, with its defining characteristics of reason, will, and memory, is just as close to and as far from the One as is God with his defining characteristics of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. 63 As the birthing process takes place, both God and the soul are sheared, so to speak, of their respective defining characteristics and so are drawn closer to the One. To borrow from the Timaeus, the birthing process, like time, is the moving image of eternity. This construction of the problem in mind, we may without misunderstanding consider one locus of the birthing process, God, in relation to the One. We do so not only because it is the more interesting and critical facet of the problem, but also because Eckhart, orthodox Dominican, had to say of God what he would say of the One. The result was conceptual or at least linguistic confusion, and theological heresy. In apparent opposition to much of what we have heard Eckhart say of God, he also says that God can have no relation to change. He is beyond action and passion; 64 he does not •• There are, of course, significant differences between God and the soul. I shall evaluate these in the concluding section of this study. •• DW I, 1019 ff.; 197.7 f; 358.1-4. THE GOD WHO BECOMES 417 co-exist with images; 65 he is not found in time, bodiliness, or multiplicity; 66 he is omnipotent, perfect, One, and unchangeable. 67 The God whom Eckhart has discussed in terms of the birthing process is now also discussed in terms characteristic of the One. God must be metaphysically ultimate. The relation between the birthing process and the One, as I have construed it, we find construed in Eckhart as a relation between God and himself. The non-dialectical relation between the birthing process and the One appears in Eckhart as the nondialectical relation between the Trinity of Persons and the divine essence. As hard as Eckhart might try to sustain orthodox language concerning the Trinity, 68 he finally must identify the first Person of the Trinity with the One, i. e., it is the Father who is truly God. 69 And this means a subordination among the Persons of the Trinity-a subordination which is expressed in many passages but nowhere more boldly than when Eckhart is speaking of the birthing process. Being is the Father, unity is the Son with the Father, goodness is the Holy Ghost. Now the Holy Ghost takes the soul-the holy city-up into the purest and the highest, and carries it up into his source, that is, the Son. And the Son carries it further up into his source, that is, into the Father, into the ground, into the origin wherein the Son has !].is essence..... 70 In addition to the relative priority of the Father, by virtue of his proximity to the One, or perhaps as another expression of this, we find in Eckhart a priority of the One over the Trinity. 71 Since Eckhart cannot make a clean distinction between God and the One, this priority is usually expressed as the precedence of the divine essence over the Trinity. 12 •• Ibid., ff.; but cf. ""Ibid., 178.4-6; 193.1 f.; DW II, 165.3 ff:; •• DW I, DW V, 38.13 f.; f. •• Cf., inter alia, DW I, 173.1-6; DW V, IIU1 ff.; LW IV, ii.13. •• DW V, 34.13 ff.; f.; LW IV, ii.3 f.; cf. Lossky, pp. 65, !l!l5. 70 DW I, 3W.3-7. 71 Cf. Ueda, pp. · 3!l, 99; Lossky, pp. 343 f., 365 f. 72 Ueda, p. 103: the Trinity remains on the "periphery " of the One. 418 JOHN LOESCHEN The One, the ground or source [Abgrund] of God, 73 is that by virtue of which God is generative; in fact, God's nature and fullness depends upon his being One, as we have seen. It is from the One alone that God receives his Godness. 74 At the same time, the One is the limit upon God: it neither gives to nor receives from God, and it is not the generative cause of divinity. 75 Now, in some of these passages Eckhart is speaking not explicitly of the One but rather of God's unity of being, or his essence. Here we see the tension between the metaphysical priority of the One and the theological priority of God expressing itself in linguistic compromise. Eckhart can say that the One is the " ground " of the Father; he can identify the One and the Father; and he can say that the One itself is birthed by the Father. 76 I think a light can be shed upon this apparent confusion if we recall that the birthing process is an image of the One. More specifically, it is the unity in the birthing process, a process of creation, forming, and joining, and whose author is God, 77 which is the image of the One. Thus the Trinity is both a creature of the One, and the creator of that process of birthing which is the image of the One. The Trinity would thus seem to be removed from the dialectical polarity we ascribed to the birthing process earlier. But at this point we must bring together two of the conclusions of our study so far. Eckhart has defined the divine essence as the birthing relation, and he has subordinated the Trinity to the divine essence. Thus the Trinity is subordinated to the birthing relation. And that is why the analogy can be applied in both directions: the Trinity as the image of birthing, and birthing as the image of the Trinity. Whether expressed as the " unity " of the birthing process or the " essence " of DW I, 18.8 fl'.; DW V, 116.30 fl'.; 238.5. DW I, 368.6 fl'.; DW IT, 67.1 fl'. 75 DW I, 197.4-9; LW IV, xi.115. It is this line of development which leads Ueda to conclude that there is no relation between the divine " substantia" and the Trinity of Persons, pp. 104 fl'. 76 DW V, 30.5 fl'.; cf. 114.13 f. 77 Cf. Lossky, p. 365, for discussion of the Trinity as the dynamic process of the One. 73 74 THE GOD WHO BECOMES 419 the Trinitarian process, the One is the limiting case-even for God. For, while the Trinity is the source of the birthing, the Trinity itself must surrender before that of which the birthing is an image. To quote here only the most famous passage: the " secret place " [biirglein Jis so high and one that God himself neither has nor can look into it. . . . God would have to give up all his divine names and his personal defining characteristics in order to get a glimpse of it. He must lay all these things aside whenever he wants to look into it. And it is just because he is so purely and simply One, apart from every mode and characteristic, that in the secret place he is neither Father nor Son nor Holy Ghost in this sense. Yet he is still a " something," but neither any " this " nor any " that." 78 As in the case of the characteristics of the One and of God, so when he is describing the characteristics of the One and the birthing process Eckhart finds it necessary to keep to " God-language." Thus his own distinction for describing the relationship of the birthing to the One is " Gott-Gottheit." Like the inner and outer man, God and Godness are as far apart as heaven and earth. "God" works, "Godness" does not work; God "becomes;" Godness "is free of becoming." 79 Yet this relationship also, it seems to me, is best expressed by Eckhart in the language of birthing. The following passage, from The Book of Divine Comfort, beautifully expresses the themes we have been considering: the soul and the Trinity as poles of the birthing relation, and the birthing process as an image of the One transcending both God and the soul. The inner-working soul, the son of God, ... is wedded to the One, empty of all content and distinction. In the One it is stripped bare, emptied of every distinction and characteristic. It is One, and there is also One God-Father-Sonand-Holy Ghost. The One saves us, and the farther we are from the One, the less are we sons and the Son, the less perfectly does the Holy Ghost arise in us and shine from us. Accordingly the 78 DW I, 42.1-44.6, in part; cf., among many other texts, DW I, 861.!1-5; LW IV, ix.99; xi.l21; xviv.249. 70 Q., 272.18 fl'.; cf. DW V, 41.5-7; cf. Lossky, p. 342 f. for discussion. 420 JOHN LOESCHEN closer we are to the One, the more truly are we God's sons and Son, the more truly does God-the-Holy-Ghost shine out from us.80 IV To a certain extent this study is an external rather than an internal evaluation of Meister Echkart. That is to say, I have approached Eckhart with questions and sensitivities reflective of a world-view significantly different from his own. Although possibly one could maintain that Eckhart stands in a philosophical tradition of which process philosophy is the major inheritor, it would be a gross mistake to imagine that Eckhart could be interpreted as a process theologian. Yet if one is a process theologian, and an historian of Christian thought as well, he feels a pressing need to discover the extent to which the tradition does and does not permit appropriation for his constructive theological work and the particular issues and constructions which such an appropriation would entail. And it is in answer to these concerns that Meister Eckhart, working out of different metaphysical assumptions for different theological ends, provides the process theologian with a highly instructive example. The results of our look at the German writings of Eckhart may be posed as a question of the relationships that shall obtain among four " elements " : the creation (soul) ; the Trinity of Persons; the divine essence; and the One. Eckhart's theology initially sustains a strictly corresponding relationship between the soul and the Trinity. The generative principle for both is formally identical, 81 the inner-trinitarian relationship is strictly parallel to the extra-trinitarian relationship.82 And the poles of birthing process, the divine Trinity of Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the soul's trinity of faculties, memory, reason, and will, give joint expression to, and are jointly expressed by, characteristics of that birthing •• DW V, 41.18-42.4. Cf. Lossky, pp. 64. 80: it is the One in terms of which the hidden God is revealed as Triune and creative. 81 Cf. Lossky, p. 860. •• Cf. Ueda, p. 104 f. THE GOD WHO BECOMES 421 process. Ultimately, however, Eckhart's metaphysical assumptions and theological commitments prevent him from sustaining a balanced dialectical polarity between the Trinity and the soul. The Trinity is uncreated; the soul is created; the personal, non-numerical distinction in the Trinity is alien to the created order; 88 and that which is in the process of eternal birthing is finally the Trinity, not the Trinity and the soul, but the soul only as participating in the Trinity. As I see it, one reason for this surrendering of polarity is the exigencies of the orthodox doctrine of God, in particular the relationship that is affirmed between the Trinity of Persons and the divine essence. There is precious little room for differing emphases in this matter. If one tries to defend Eckhart's orthodoxy, as does Lossky, one will have to interpret the undeniably dualistic pattern of Eckhart's language as an indication of epistemological, not metaphysical dualism, at the cost of widening the gulf between God and the creation. 84 If, on the other hand, one wishes to pursue the heteronomous features of Eckhart's doctrine of God, as does Ueda, the Trinity of Persons seemingly can be embedded firmly within the language of the birthing process only at the cost of positing a real duality, even a breach, between the Trinity and the essence of God. 85 I share this approach with Ueda, yet I feel he has overlooked a most important aspect of the issue, one which, if sufficiently utilized, would prevent this theological dualism. The key hypothesis of this article is the argument that Eckhart defines the divine essence in terms of the birthing relation. I shall not review the presentation of data here. But if this emphasis is brought into play, the problem of duality within God is considerably diminished, since both the divine nature and the divine Persons may then be seen in reference to the birthing process. This brings us to the third matter, the status of the divine essence. To emphasize, as Eckhart does, the divine nature in sa Cf. Lossky, p. 118. •• Cf. Lossky, pp. 50 ff., •• Cf. Ueda, pp. 108 ff. fi.; ff.; 422 JOHN LOESCHEN terms of its relationship to the birthing process may preclude theological dualism but only at the price of a metaphysical dualism, i.e., a gulf between God and the ultimate, the One. Now theological tradition-and religious need-require that God be ultimate. Thus we find Eckhart giving an additional emphasis to the divine essence, associating it very closely with the One, disassociating it from the birthing process. We thus have what appears to be a "chain reaction" situation among the four elements. If the Trinity is brought more closely into the soul's birthing process, the divine essence must be interpreted in that direction in order to mitigate theological dualism. But this then tends to strengthen the impression of metaphysical dualism. If, on the other hand, one begins with an emphasis on the proximity of the divine essence to the One, he ends up with the Trinity unrelated to the birth in the soul. A third option would be to associate the Trinity with the birthing process, the divine essence with the ultimate, and accept theological dualism. Examples of this can be seen in the late medieval distinction of God's absolute and ordinate powers and in the tradition of discourse reflected in Luther's differentiation of deus absconditus and deus revelatus. Now Eckhart could have avoided this situation had he been prepared to give a truly dialectical interpretation to the relationship of the One to the birthing process; if, in other words, novelty, multiplicity, and becoming had the same metaphysical status as order, simplicity, and being. But in the Platonic tradition it could not be so. And it is this most basic fact which separates Eckhart from process theology. So near and yet so far! For the Whiteheadian, with his system of world, God (consequent and primordial natures) and Creativity, cannot but see Eckhart, with his system of soul, God (Trinity and essence), and the One, as both a valuable colleague and a worthy opponent. JoHN LoESCHEN St. Loius University School of Divinity St. Louis, Missouri HEGEL AND MONASTICISM T O MANY, A REVIEW of Hegel's views on monasticism may seem both trivial and inconsequential. Indeed, the philosopher's understanding of the historical phenomenon was, at best, poor. He was aware that monasticism had its origins in Egypt; 1 however, he does not seem to have been able successfully to integrate this fact into his various schemes of Universalgeschichte, which were able to comprehend ancient Egypt within its purview, even the intellectual Christian Egypt of Alexandria, but not the early origins of monasticism. This blind spot might be ascribed merely to the nineteenthcentury Protestant bias against monasticism or to the lack of accurate historical knowledge of early monastic history; but it is more likely due to the strong influence of Chapter 37 of Gibbon's rationalistic Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 2 which saw in the otherworldliness of monasticism the death of Roman civic responsibility. In Hegel's historical schemes, then, monasticism is largely a phenomenon of the post- Roman mediaeval world; it is even made to characterize the Middle Ages generally. Hegel's views on the subject would, indeed, be both trivial and inconsequential were it not for the perduring influence of Hegel, consciously or unconsciously, on twentieth-century philosophical and theological thought; and more importantly, were it not for the fact that his negative stance regarding monasticism rests heavily upon fundamental principles and 1 G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, ed. C. Hegel, tr. J. Sibree (New York: Dover, 1956), p. 888. 2 For the influence of Gibbon on Hegel's views on the classical world of Rome (though in his Jugendschriften Hegel both agrees and disagrees with Gibbon's rationalism) see T. L. Haering, Hegel: sein WoUen und sein Werk, !i! vols. (Aalen: Scientia, 1968), I, 222-225; also Hegels theologische Jugendschriften, ed. H. Nohl (Frankfurt/ Main: Minerva, 1966), pp. 865-866. 424 GEORGE J. SEIDEL viewpoints in his philosophy and acts as a veritable touchstone for his views on theology and the Christian religion. Hegel's attitude toward monasticism may already be gauged by his views on marriage. In the Rechtsphilosophie ( # # 158-163) he sees marriage as the immediate ethical relationship and the family as the immediate substantiality of spirit. C. J. Friedrich asks rhetorically whether the fact that Hegel was one of the first of the modern philosophers to marry did not have something to do with the broader social view of man, the break from radical individualism and bachelorhood which is exhibited in his thought. 3 Even in his Logic Hegel's emphasis upon the genus over the individual 4 and his view of reproduction as the moment of actual individuality, as that which truly relates the individual toward the objective world, 5 already indicate the direction of Hegel's sympathies. In discussing marriage in the Rechtsphilosophie Hegel goes on to condemn "Platonic love " related, in his view, to a monastic viewpoint which sees the physical as simply negative, separating the godly, the human spirit, from its existence (Dasein) through abstraction. 6 Hegel's use of the term abstract and abstraction should be carefully noted. As I wan Iljin points out, it is contrasted with concrete (con-crescere), a growing together into a concrete synthetic unity. 7 Abstract means the same as "op-posited" (entgegengesetzt) .8 The term Iljin uses to describe the meaning of abstract in Hegel, of course, conjures up Fichte. And in Fichte abstraction means separation, the separation of a content in consciousness op-posed to the one concentrated • C. J. Friedrich, The Philosophy of Hegel (New York: Modern Library, 1954), p. xxxviii. • G. W. F. Hegel, Science of Logic, tr. A. V. Miller (London: Allen and Unwin, 1969), p. 7!l0. • Ibid., p. 769. • G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of Right, tr. T. M. Know (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 194!l), pp. 110-113. • !wan lljin, Die Philosophie Hegels als kontemplative Gottealehre (Bern: Francke, 1946), pp. 10 and 19. 8 Ibid., p. 43. HEGEL .AND MONASTICISM on. This meaning of abstraction is shared by Hegel. In his Logic he discusses the thoughts of pure being and pure nothing-with which abstractions, incidentally, the Logic begins-as abstractions, that is, as the one-sided activity of the negative. In abstracting from (separating out) being, we get nothing; in abstracting from (separating out) nothing, we get being. 9 Abstraction means separation (Trennung). The point is important, for Hegel uses the term abstract to characterize a certain, for him unacceptable, religious way of viewing God characteristic, among others, of monks. Hegel's classic treatment of the medieval monastic movement is found in the section on the " unhappy consciousness " in his Phenomenology of Mind. 10 The problem of the monk, in Hegel's view, is that he realizes himself as a self divided against himself, as a divided nature, flesh and spirit. This is, as we have seen, already to take an "abstract" view. This nature attempts to liberate itself from itself by forcing itself in the direction of the unchangeable, in an attempt to overcome the finite. Up to this point in the dialectic the unchangeable still exists only within the consciousness of the self, which means that no change has really taken place, and the finite has not yet been overcome. But the self soon finds that it is not the unchangeable that is within the self, as was originally thought, but rather that the self is in the unchangeable. This provides a toehold outside the self for the dialectic to move on. But this " toehold " is immediately lost as the problem is thrown onto an entirely different plane since, if the unchangeable is outside the self, then it becomes a beyond (Jenseits), an other. And because it is absolutely unchangeable in relation to the changeable, infinite in relation to the finite, it becomes the wholly and absolutely other. • Science of Logic, pp. 98-100. This beginning abstractly is also characteristic of Hegel's view of history as well as of the proper beginning for the logic. Cf. G. W. F. Hegel, Einleitung in die Geschichte der Philosophie, ed. J. Hoffmeister, 3 ed. (Hamburg: Meiner, 1959), pp. 66, 69-70. 10 G. W. F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind, tr. J. B. Baillie, !ted. (London: Allen and Unwin, 1931), pp. !t51-!t67. 426 GEORGE J. SEIDEL Now, since the self feels itself opposed to this unchangeable, because the object of the self's boundless inward feeling is something external and foreign, something other, wholly other than the self, the self becomes but " an unending yearning after the unending." However, because the self, as something finite, is eternally opposed to this eternally in-finite, its unending yearning can end only in frustration. It becomes an infinite yearning for a beyond which cannot even be found, much less reached. The self realizes this and begins to feel totally alienated from the other, which is no longer merely an other but a wholly unattainable other. In the second stage of the dialectic of the unhappy consciousness the self turns from its course of hopeless frustration to fulfilling its desire through labor, toil, and the enjoyment o£ the outer world. The finite world is there as a gift from God to be used and fashioned and enjoyed. But despite all the work and toil that the monk engages in by using the skills which God has given him, and despite his newly established communion with God in thanksgiving for all he has been given, this activity is still not enough. The monk soon begins to suspect the personal satisfaction and enjoyment which he receives from his toil and labor. The relationship to the Absolute is still outside the relation which the self has to its work and toil, even though the monk may see that labor and toil as done for the honor and glory of the Absolute. Thus, although the self is happy in its work, there are moments when it does not and cannot throw itself into its work, and then the self is thrown back upon itself. It begins to see the enjoyment and satisfaction it takes in its labor and in the fruits of its labor as something connected to a vile flesh which must be mortified. With this concern comes guilt and the necessity for a confessor to guide, absolve from guilt, and put the self, now so unsure of itself, in touch with God. The third stage of the dialectic leads the unhappy consciousness to the utmost point o£ humility. Since neither by an infinite yearning nor by labor and toil can the self reach the HEGEL AND MONASTICISM 427 relation to the Absolute, the self must be nothing. It is nothingness in the eyes of God. The self must be reduced to nothingness through self-abnegation and self-annihilation by means of the vows of religion. However, this solves the problem of the self in relation to the Absolute only by dis-solving the problem. For in the self-annihilation of the self before the Absolute, there is then no more self to relate to the Absolute. The self-realization of the finite self has been renounced in favor of an other-worldliness which denies even the possibility of such self-realization. At this point the tale of the unhappy consciousness ends, unhappily. Hegel's dialectic, of course, moves on. For in this very otherworldliness the self reaches a new stage of self-consciousness. His thought is implicitly reason, because it is a synthesis of consciousness and self-consciousness. He no longer seeks refuge in other-worldliness, fearing or scorning the actual world. He has escaped from his own escapism and into the notion of reason, which is incipiently the Absolute itself. For Hegel, however, the unhappy consciousness as such can end only in despair. It is a ceaseless longing for a mysterious "beyond" forever unattainable. Undertaking the external expression of such religiousness implied by toil and labor giving glory to God did not meet the problem. The God-relationship remains necessarily outside this work-relationship; and the self can never be sure that what is done for God really has anything to do with God at all. The self ends up brooding over itself, recognizing itself as the cause of its own misery. It misplaces the source of the difficulty, localizing it in the animal functions which are to be systematically crushed by asceticism and mortification of the flesh. Such self-annihilation will not do the job. If it does not succeed, the self does not get into contact with the wholly other; if it does succeed, there is no more self to relate to the Absolute other. Two things need to be pointed out in relation to this section of the Phenomenology. In the first place, the expression "unhappy consciousness " blankets what may appear, at first sight, 428 GEORGE J. SEIDEL some rather odd bedfellows. Beyond medieval monks (from which aspect I have presented Hegel's treatment) there are Jews, Enlightenment pietists, Fichteites, and romantics generally. 11 The second thing that should be pointed out, and something which shows deep spiritual insight on Hegel's part, is the way that the failure to reach an unattainable other, and the frustration that ensues, has of plunging the monk into the overactivity of religious toil and labor (" doing the work of God ") as a compensation and solace for religious "failure." Hegel provides us with the etiology of the religious zealot. In his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion Hegel somewhat mitigates his view on religious work, at least in one respect: the finite can be lifted up to the infinite insofar as it would produce works of devotion, that is, worship. 12 Hegel also modifies his views somewhat on the matter of renunciation and the vows. Whereas in the Phenomenology he had seen in the vows the self-annihilation of the self, and hence the impossibility of relating to God in religion, in the Philosophy of Religion he is convinced of the necessary purification of the natural impulses, though still not their eradication. Only the impure content is to be purified. Celibacy is, however, still a false demand, as is poverty, since personal property pertains to man. And obedience, insofar as it would seek to dispense from freedom and conscience, which also belong to man, would make him sink to the level of a " gloomy, will-less creature." 18 Hegel preserves the strongly ethical cast of his thought inherited from Kant and Fichte) in that he refuses to accept u Jean Wahl, Le Malheur de la Conscience dana la Philosophie de Hegel, !l ed. (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1951), pp. 1()..68. Hyppolite sees the section on the unhappy consciousness as the fundamental theme of the PhenomenokJgy, evoking the first philosophy of Fichte, as also Judaism, as well as the Christian Middle Ages. Jean Hyppolite, Genese et Structure de la PM:nomenologie, de l'Esprit de Hegel (Paris: Aubrier, 1946), pp. 184-194. 12 G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, tr. E. B. Speirs, 8 vols. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1895), I, 287. 18 Ibid., I, !l44-245. HEGEL AND MONASTICISM 429 the contrast between morality and holiness; institutions of morality are themselves holy. As he says, "In morality the reconciliation of religion with reality, with secular life, is an actual and accomplished fact." Hence, celibacy, voluntary poverty, or blind obedience as opposed to family life, the active acquisition of goods, or the free rational will are not holy. 14 All this is abstraction; it is not the concrete actual and accomplished fact. And the abstraction, as we have seen, is based upon an abstract view of God, or better, on a view of God as abstract, that is, as separate. It is at this point that we may appropriately return to the other odd bedfellows and their unhappy consciousnesses. What connection could the nineteenth-century romantic conceivably have with the monk and the Jew? The early German romantic Friedrich Schlegel described religion as follows: " Every relation of man to the eternal in the total fullness of his humanity is religion. . . ." 15 But, since the eternal is infinite and unending (unendlich), the relating of the self to that eternal will be unending as well. This means that religion is but the unending yearning (Sehnsucht) after an unattainable infinity. And any such eternal yearning after an unattainable ideal, whether it be the beauty of art or the wisdom of philosophy or the truth of science, becomes religion. If one now returns to the section on the unhappy consciousness in the PhenomeJWlogy with this romantic view in mind, the similarity between the quest of the romantic and that of the monk easily becomes apparent. Perhaps one of the reasons why Hegel so allusively connects romanticism and monasticism lies in the enthusiasm that romantics exhibited toward the Middle Ages. One of the "Ibid., ill, 138-139. As Gregoire notes, for Hegel the Christianity prior to Luther, with the vows of religion, denied the value of family, property, and state. " Le protestantisme, lui, a accompli la grande reconciliation du monde spirituel et du monde tempore! en declarant ' divines' les institutions sociales." Franz Gregoire, Etudes hegeliennes: les Points capitaux du Systeme (Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 1958), p. 335. 15 ldeen (Minor, ed.), # 81. 430 GEORGE J. SEIDEL leading romantics, Friedrich Schlegel, became a Catholic; and Zacharias Werner, author of the drama Martin Luther, even became a priest! The romantic nostalgia toward the Middle Ages (not atypical of Hegel's and Holderlin's nostalgia toward the Greek world), particularly toward a society integrated politically and religiously, can be seen most clearly in Novalis's Christenheit oder Europa, which, though not published until 1826, presented ideas circulating in romantic circles much earlier. But what does the Jew have in common with the monk and the romantic? Judaism shares a similarly abstract view of God, according to Hegel. God is the terrible Lord of heaven and earth who elicits servile fear from a people that is exclusively his; and they must respond down to the smallest detail to the laws of worship and morality designated by God. This necessity of absolute and self-abasing obedience before the Infinite rests entirely upon the " abstraction " of one The Jew thereby stands before his infinite Lord as a finite servant whose essential consciousness consists in self-annihilating himself in pursuit of an unattainable union with the infinite. 17 It might be pointed out that .in Hegel's treatment of Judaism the emphasis on the law and the covenant, which he takes in the harshest and most legalistic sense, is so strong that the prophets and the prophetic tradition in Judaism is almost entirely overlooked. The role of the prophets seems to be no more than explaining the negative element of misfortune as the just recompense for guilt and transgression. 18 What the Jew, the monk, and the romantic have in common is an abstract view of God, a view of God as separate, in a word, as transcendent. However, it is at this point that we must proceed a bit more cautiously, since more than one meaning for the word transcendent (as for the word abstract) Philosophy of Religion, II, Cf. E. L. Fackenheim, The Religious Dimension in Hegel's Thought (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967), pp. 134-138. 18 Philosophy of Religion, II, 16 17 HEGEL AND MONASTICISM 481 is possible. Indeed, Hegel insists that through revelation, and particularly through the Incarnation, God is ". . . no longer a Being above and beyond this world, an Unknown, for he has told men what He is, and this not merely in an outward way in history, but in consciousness." 19 Further, Hegel's " theology " is fundamentally a theology of reconciliation and hence the negation of any sort of separation (abstract or otherwise) between God and an estranged world or a world estranged from its own essential Being. 20 And from this one might simply conclude that Hegel stands totally opposed to any and every form of transcendence for God. But this would not necessarily follow. To be against a certain form of transcendence is not necessarily to be a full blown immanentist. A hint as to the kind of " transcendence " that Hegel is opposing in his treatment on the unhappy consciousness, as also in the sections of his Philosophy of Religion where he treats Judaism or monasticism, may be taken from romanticism and its relation to the philosophy of Fichte. To do a total review of Fichte's thought must be beyond the scope of this essay. Nevertheless, there is one aspect of his thought that must be brought out, namely, the relation between finite and infinite, as it works its way into the romantics and is reacted to by Hegel. The finite, limited, or divided self-one may recall the beginning of Hegel's characterization of the unhappy consciousness as a self divided against itself-is related to the infinite or absolute self as to its ideal self. But, as an infinite or ideal self it always remains beyond the finite self, ever fleeing before its grasp, because the finite self still remains finite and the infinite infinite. Yet each calls up the other, for the finite really ought to attain its infinite ideal self; thus the restless yearning of the finite toward the infinite is itself never-ending or infinite (un-endlich) .21 This is largely Hegel's characterIbid., •• Ibid., 847. 19 21 Science of Logic, p. 141. 432 GEORGE J. SEIDEL ization of Fichte's thought, but it is not entirely untrue to it, and certainty not untrue of the implications of that thought as drawn out by the romantics. Hegel views this infinity which is perpetually beyond the finite, yet which constantly projects ahead of the finite (by the finite merely as its own self-projected ideal?), as a spurious or "bad infinity." What it wants or what it is lacking is resolution or reconciliation. 22 Reconciliation is the negation of this separation, of this division; it means that each recognizes itself, finds itself and its essential nature, in the other. Reconciliation is thus freedom; but it is not something in a state of repose, something which simply is; on the contrary, it is activity. 28 In other words, there is a good as well as a bad infinity. True infinity is a reconciling infinity, an other which, because related to its other as other, passes over togther with itself into the other (" Ubergehen in anderes nur mit sich selbst zusammen ") and thus makes the other the other of itself. 24 What is the difference between this bad sort of infinity or transcendence of Fichte's and that of Hegel? One might simply say that the Fichtean or romantic infinite is an unattained and unattainable one, whereas Hegel's is achieved. This is correct as far as it goes. But what is at issue here are two different notions of transcendence, namely, a transcendence or infinity which is always out ahead of the finite, ever receding before its grasp, and an infinity which is already, at least to some extent, within the grasp of the finite. Or one might describe the difference as that between a realized and an unrealizable eschatology. In other words, perhaps Hegel has been misunderstood. He is not so much against a transcendent diety as against the sort of purely ideal unapproachable transcendence characteristic of Fichte and the romantics. For Hegel 1s •• Ibid., pp. !l25-!l34. 28 Philosophy of Religion, II, 347. •• G. W. F. Hegel, Enzyklopiidie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse (1830), eds. F. Nicolin and 0. Poggeler, 6 ed. (Hamburg: Meiner, 1959)' ## 94-95. HEGEL AND MONASTICISM 433 equally opposed to the fully immanent deity of the "Eleatics," under which rubric he includes pantheisms of various sorts, the subject-less substance of Spinoza, and the Hen kai pan of the former happy trio at Ti.ibingen (Schelling, Holderlin, and Hegel himself) .25 This may succeed in throwing into somewhat sharper light Hegel's allusions to Judaism and monasticism and indicate the anti-romantic spectacles through which he is reading both. For much of the intellectual content of the early German romantic movement derived largely from the fellow-traveling Fichte and Schelling. And Hegel's reaction to this can be seen already in his Fragment of a System, dating from 1800, in which the relation between an unhappy consciousness, such as is later worked out in the Phenomenology, and the philosophical perspective of Fichte and the romantics is already In other words, what Hegel seems to have done is to read a Fichtean and romantic notion of transcendence into both monasticism and Judaism. But, despite the firmly eschatological orientation of both Judaism and monasticism and their common emphasis on the prophetic tradition 27 -it is deeply significant that Hegel largely ignores this aspect of Judaismthe God, both of the Jew and the monk, is not simply eternally "ahead," or even simply the God who dwells in the heavens or in the sanctuary, but the God who is both high above the heavens and yet also in the very hearts of the just, a God wholly transcendent and wholly immanent. It seems that Hegel, in fact, attempted to express this in his own way. And this is, perhaps, the ultimate meaning of Hegelian dialectic. It becomes the very form of divine revePhilosophy of Religion, II, pp. 54-56, 135-139. G. W. F. Hegel, On Christianity: Early Theological Writings, tr. T. M. Knox, (New York: Haxper and Brothers, 1961), pp. 317-319. Cf. Paul Asveld, La Pensee religieuse du jeune Hegel: Liberte et Alienation (Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 1953), p. 211. 27 One might also mention the rabbinic tradition, since the: abbot or spiritual father is understood fundamentally as a teacher in the monastic tradition. It is interesting to note the number of references in the Rule of Benedict, for example, to the Gospel of Matthew, which is more strongly rooted in the rabbinic tradition, as against the more ascetical orientation of Luke. 25 26 484 GEORGE J. SEIDEL lation. 28 It is no accident that the favored gospel in Hegel, as for Fichte and Schelling as well, is that of St. John. 29 John's is the gospel of God as spirit, of freedom, light, life, reconciliation, and love. And this preference for John goes right back to the philosophical interpretation which Hegel gives of that gospel in his early Life of Jesus. 30 But, although this penchant for John may give a particular coloring to Hegel's view of Christianity, it is more than likely that Hegel's negative reaction to the Fichtean and romantic notion of infinity, as infinite striving toward the unattainable, prejudiced a proper Hegelian understanding both of Christianity and Judaism. However, he would have other very good Hegelian reasons for opposing both Judaism and monasticism: the union of the realms of the sacred and secular was, for Hegel, an actual and accomplished fact, and, as far as he was concerned, it was a good thing. But there is a sense in which the God of Judaism and of Christian monasticism is " abstract," that is, separate. This is simply the rich biblically-based concept of holiness-a concept which Hegel could do no more than identify with morality-along with the social implications that such a concept would have in terms of a holy people set apart to hear and heed the word of God. Needless to say, Hegel's strongly organismic view of society is opposed to any such exclusiveness or separateness. Hegel's views on monasticism are not, then, either inconsequential or trivial. They are not trivial because they find their roots deep in his thought and in the deeply Incarnational character of his belief; they are not inconsequential for the simple reason that Hegel's thought has not been without consequence. GEORGE J. SEIDEL, 0. s. B. St. Martin's Abbey Olympia, Washington 28 Iljin, op. cit., p. 200. However, Iljin cautions us that Hegel's theory is not Christian theology, and his speculative "act" is not the activity of Christian piety. Ibid., p. 881. 29 W. A. Schulze, "Das Johannesevangelium im deutschen Idealismus," Zeitschrift fur philosophiache Forschung, 18 (1964), 85-118. •• Ibid., pp. 106 ff; Cf. Hegels theologische Jugendschriften, ed. H. Nohl (Frankfurt/ Main: Minerva, 1966), pp. 78-186. HEGEL, SPINOZA, AND A THEORY OF EXPERIENCE AS CLOSED I N ORDER TO supplant in certain contexts the overworked labels " rationalist " and " idealist," I propose the term "panist." Although aesthetically its introduction represents a regression, conceptually its application affords insight into a similarity obscured by the use of the former terms. By paniMn I mean the ability to comprehend reality by a univocal method. Through the lens of the panist concept we can focus on a kindred systematic feature in the theory of experience of Spinoza and Hegel. I do not, of course, mean to imply that there is not also a consequential opposition between rationalism and idealism. But it is one that has satisfactorily been brought to our attention by historians of philosophy. The claim of this essay is that, due to a drive towards a terminal system expressed by a unique method, both rationalist and idealist close off the possibility of an element of unknowing or indeterminacy in experience. In this respect they are alike panist. The prosecution of a method determines a metaphysical position. The medium is, in this case, an interesting part of the message. By a limited case study approach I shall show how this aim and this method converge to rule out the possibility of affirming experience as open-ended. By a different method, for example, one that admits of the analogy of being, this possibility is open. In the concluding section I shall briefly look at this possibility. But, first, we turn to a key methodological trait in the doctrine of Spinoza. Spinoza and the " more geometrico " Recall the significance of Descartes' mathematical reform of philosophy for the function of the God-concept in Spinoza's system. The temptation to find the significance of mathematics 435 436 LAURENCE FOSS for philosophical method as the ideal of demonstrative science, and thereby to elaborate a philosophy more geometrico, has consequences which, in retrospect at any rate, seem capable of being anticipated. Harness this temptation both to the religious conviction that all things necessarily proceed from the unitary essence of God and the rationalist's quest for a one-to-one mapping of the order of ideas onto the order of things ( Spinoza being both theistic and rationalistic) and it leads inevitably, we might say, to an Ethica More Geometrico Demonstrata. At least it does so in the hands of a rigorously systematic thinker. In Euclidean science every expression, barring an economical number of primitive ones, is-in an older (Aristotelian) terminology-said to be " caused by " the primitive expressions. This is the exemplar deductive system. Ideally, these primitive expressions are maximally economical in number, i.e., they are one in number, such that every proposition of the system is "caused by" the one underived (uncaused) primitive. Given these conditions, the ideal is, for certain minds, too overwhelming to resist. Recall, too, that not until recently was the distinction between a deductive system as an uninterpreted calculus and as convertible into a physical theory drawn. This is a distinction drawn by means of assigning a meaning to the primitive terms and sentences of the systemassigning values to its variables, we would now say. However, these primitives, or axioms, were formally regarded not as uninterpreted symbols but as expressions of truths corresponding with real things outside the systematic context in which the symbols occur. This relationship of theorems to primitives is not simply one of logical (according to a set of formation and transformation rules) of one set of symbols from another set. Rather, it gives expression to a causal dependence (in being) of consequent to ground; the ground is the raison d' etre of the consequent. Thus the logical progression more geometrico of all propositions or ideals from the ultimately single proposition (idea) is reflective of the real HEGEL, SPINOZA, AND A THEORY OF EXPERIENCE 487 progression of all things from the unitary essence of God. The nature of the method which Spinoza chose for philosophy determines, as it were, antecedently the metaphysical lineaments of its solution. At any rate this is my thesis. In Spinoza's hands the philosophical enterprise now resembles an effort to elaborate, from a single fundamental axiom, all its knowledge within a system conceived to be as rigorously deductive and self-consistent as Euclid's Elements-given Hilbert's reformulation. From a modicum of higher level (certain and necessary) principles, and optimally from a single highest level principle, all certainty should follow. To anticipate by one hundred and fifty years the doctrines of one who is shortly to be considered, the syllogistic process may be said to generate the world. 1 When the axiom set comprises but a simple axiom from which every other theorem of the system is immediately or mediately derivable, it is but a relatively short step to subsume the entire body of consequent propositions under the axiom set. Now we may regard it as we regard a validly drawn conclusion of a formal syllogism, viz., the made-explicit which is already precontained in the premises. Furthermore, when this axiom set is conceived in theistic terms, a doctrine of pan-theism is already secured. It should be noted that, historically, the way was paved for Spinoza's doctrine by the Cartesian reduction of s-ubstance from its classical Aristotelian conception as the category of inherence. Previously a variety of attributes combined (it was said) in a unitary concrete entity. With Descartes, s-ubstance is divided disjunctively into infinite, and finite, the latter characterized by just two attributes, spatiality and consciousness (extensio and cogitatio) . Everything else is reduced to modifications of one attribute or the other. The res extensae become modi extensionis; the res cogitantes, modi cogitationis. And all qualities and states of bodies are modes of their spatiality; all qualities and states of mind are modes 1 Substitute for " syllogistic " " dialectic." 438 LAURENCE FOSS of consciousness. In other words, all qualities and states are logically implicated in, or derivable from, the two finite (intermediate level) attributes, minds and bodies. But since in Spinoza's system, intermediate level ideas (substances) are derivable from the unique highest level idea (substance), logically what is to prevent us from substituting for "finite substance " " modification of " or " modes of infinite substance " ? In fact, these latter bear the same relation to infinite substance as the qualities and states of finite substances bear to themselves, namely, logically implicated in or derivable from. It is just this substitution that may be regarded as the methodological crux of Spinoza's pan-theism. This, then, is my contention. As different bodies are distinguished from one another in the Cartesian system only by different modes of spatiality, and different minds only by different modes of consciousness, so, analogously, in the Spinozist system. Following with logical rigor from the more geometrico spatiality and consciousness, though irreducibly distinct, are deprived of their substantiality. Although higher level with respect to their modes, they are themselves merely modes of the highest level idea, the one Substance, the deity or apx-TJ of the world-system. As every conclusion is "caused by " its derivative premises, and as these premises can themselves figure as conclusions derived from their premises, so qualities, modes, attributes, are all implicated in and derived from the one underived causa sui premise which generates the world. This underived premise, itself insusceptible of modification, the uncaused ens realissimum, is the one Substance. This God, pan-theistic, exists only in "things" as their universal essence; and they only in him as modes of his reality; he is both natura naturans AND natura naturata. God is the highest genus and all the differentiae too, both the supreme class and its members! A dialectical turn: Hegel We have reached a term. Next let us describe a second conceptual arc, this time that of the great German theorist HEGEL, SPINOZA, AND A THEORY OF EXPERIENCE 439 whom we have anticipated. Instead of proceeding deductively from the highest axiom downwards, Hegel proposes an inductive (after a sort) methodology in his PhenomeJWlogy of Mind. Methodologically speaking, the role of the Absolute Spirit is similar to the highest axiom in Spinoza, the one modelled geometrically, the other phenomenologically. Through the successive concrete moments of self-consciousness, reason, and spirit, the initial radical differentiation of consciousness gives way in his system to a guiding insight: the world is nothing else than the presence of subject to itself in idea. From the viewpoint of historical geneology we may say that the Cartesian bifurcation of substance into finite and infinite, and of the former into body and mind, furnished a setting for Spinoza's appropriation of this logically untenable dualism into a logically coherent monism. Similarly, according to our reconstruction, the Kantian dualism o£ synthesis-a priori now gives ground before the Hegelian monist juggernaut. Why, we may suppose him to ask, set the a priori over against the very existence which the synthesis undertakes to disclose? Such a resolution can lead eventually only to scepticism as to the existential locus of a priori principles, principles at once exhibiting existence but not a part of existence. With the logical rigor of Spinoza Hegel undertook to remove the ground for such scepticism (scepticism evinced most powerfully by Schulze, among Kant's critics, in the Aenesidemus) by situating the locus of the a priori principles in existence itself. I£ the conversion is successful, the synthesis needs no longer to be regarded as opposing or standing outside the experience synthesized. This is a giant step away from the pervasive dualism in Kant. Synthesis is now made operative within the order of experience and manifests itself consequently only in and through that order. Existence is capable of synthesis because existence is synthesis. The significance of this insight, and specifically of its systematic working out in the Phenomenology, is perhaps better appreciated by the contemporary reader when it is realized that, if it is not the 440 LAURENCE FOSS same insight, nevertheless it invites comparison with that which motivates the semantical analyses of Camap and Quine. Thus compare the use of the notion of language-form in Carnap's essay, " Semantics, Ontology, and Empiricism," 2 and the notion of cultural po8it in Quine's essays collected in From a Logical Point of View. 3 In inductive, or perhaps more accurately, in phenomenological scope, the abstract Spinoza is outdistanced by the encyclopedic German. With detail and precision Hegel traces in the Phenomenology the actual working out of the synthesisa priori in experience, experience considered both onto- and phyla-genetically. Here alone, in accordance with the prescripts of his position, this synthesis can be grasped in its actuality. Its inner form is dialectic, and it is through the dialectic process of continual differentiation by annulment, elevation, and preservation (Aufhelbung) that the increasingly more complex unity of the presence of subject to itself as idea finally issues. Considered dynamically, the moments by which the unity of existence and essence, the conditioned and the unconditioned, is successively realized, and through which the spirit must pass in order to achieve its own unity, may be conceptually isolated. (The language of the Phenomenology gets hairy here; like Galileo having to forge a makeshift calculus in order to express the acceleration law known by his name, Hegel has to forge a system of categories to house his ideas even while formulating these ideas. No extant categorical system was adequate to them.) Further, taken together, these moments comprise the living process of reality within which is generated both the existence and consciousness consuming its object, both the manifold and the forms, in a word the 2 Semantics and the Philosophy of Language, e.d. L Linsky (Univ. of Illinois, 3 (New York, 1963). Quine's caution (p. 103) notwithstanding, in point of end result there is little to distinguish the two aphorisms, "To be is to be rational" and "To be is to be the value of a bound variable." See, e. g., pp. 16-17. HEGEL, SPINOZA, AND A THEORY OF EXPERIENCE 441 world. 4 In consciousness the sensible awareness of particularity, the absence of an appreciation of distinctness of subject and object or of subsumption under class concepts, gives way to perceptive consciousness and effectively admits the logical apparatus of quantification and class-inclusion. The animal reverie of one world is shattered by the subject-object dualism; and the empirical-rationalist antinomies are thus spawned. This is the point of departure of Kant's critique. The dilemma is resolved by the scientific intellect which posits the unconditioned character of the universal (Kant's a priori forms) as the rationale for the sensible manifold. From an initial animal reverie the spirit proceeds dialectically to the dualistic tension of subject versus object, mind versus world, once again to be relieved by a transcendental deduction. Exit Kant. 5 The next moment of synthesis, self-consciousness, is the full realization of the implications of-not quite accurately-the uncertainty relations: the subject is in some real sense the other. 6 By simply existing, one affects, and thereby individually determines, the state of the environing system. There is a constant interaction of energy between observer and observed. When for the singular one spoken of above is substituted the corporate one (the French on or German man), in this case all that exists, it will be understood how the unity of subject and object, of the a priori and existence (or experience), is effected. Only when it "doubles back" upon itself as the condition for the others does the subject emerge fully. The whole order of objects is to be seen as given in and through the subject. Hereupon reason perceives that the world is penetrable by it for the very reason that it is identical with spirit. Thus < Cf. Phenomenology of Mind, tr J. B. Baillie (New York, 1955), Intro., p. 134 fl. 5 It is noteworthy to observe that it is in the first section of Phenomenology, Section A (Consciousness), that Hegel dispatches the Kantian problematic. • Recall the celebrated remark of W. Heisenberg: "The mathematical formulae no longer portray nature, but rather our knowledge of nature." See also his Physics and Philosophy (New York, ch. X. 442 LAURENCE FOSS the philosopher of nature, e. g., Newton, does not discover the laws of nature; he proclaims those laws in virtue of which nature henceforth is to be articulated. Compare prospectively the otherwise cryptic saying of Wittgenstein: ... the fact that it can be described by Newtonian Mechanics tells us nothing about the world; but this tells us something, namely, that the world can be described in that particular way in which as a matter of fact it is described.7 Rather than dominating the world, observant reason is assimilated to the world and becomes continuous with it. Whereupon active reason asserts itself, expropriating the world to its purposes, providing axioms for interpreting the world, and finally constructing the world ab initio. Pan-reason. The world is the world known. The world and the individual This last point needs elucidating. It may be supposed that there are questions both as to what there is and to what one's symbolic forms (including language) put one in the way of: ontological questions and semantical questions. It may be supposed that one can ask whether the entities to which our language forms commit us answer to what there is. But such questions rest on a distinction which gains impetus only on the supposition that there is something independently of us. Thus we might meaningfully speak of there being something, but not for us (any of us), something as it were "already out there now real." The supposition is, of course, given the Hegelian premise, groundless; it involves a distinction without a difference. That this is the case is demonstrated at the dialectical moment of the spirit (below) : this conjectural something, independent of us, is independent simply. In the last analysis we wonder about the force of insisting on this independence. Ex hypothe8i it is something dependent upon, relatable to, not us but some Other, God say, who • Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (New York and London, 1922), 6.842. HEGEL, SPINOZA, AND A THEORY OF EXPERIENCE 443 underwrites the claim. The supposition is intended as an abbreviation for another: "The existence of some thing, at any rate, is not causally dependent on our existence "-whether "our " is taken singly or collectively. This Other, or Underwriter, assures its being, or the possibility of the postulation of its being. The groundlessness of the supposition is thus shown to be consequence of a premise, to be reached dialectically: Intellectually God is ourselves, only supereminently. The stage is set for the final moment of the synthesis, the introduction of spirit. The spirit is but the summation of active reasons. In short, it is the rational world itself. There is no other world; spirit and world are one. This denouement casts historical shades backwards on Averroes' doctrine of a single world intellect; 8 while one of its corollaries is projected forward: the limits of our symbolic forms are the limits of the world. 9 Thus by an inductive-phenomenological process upwards the program of Hegel culminates in a conclusion which, by a deductive movement downwards, Spinoza had proposed (by a different methodology to be sure, and from different theoretical motivations) a century and a half earlier. To wit, and crudely, a panist theory of experience (pan-ism). 8 See also M. McLuhan, " ... might not our current translation of our entire lives into the Spiritual form of information ( ... the memory of a computer) seem to make of the entire globe, and of the human family, a single consciousness. "Understanding Media" (1963), p. 79. • This is, of course, a gloss on Wittgenstein (see Tracfutus 5. 6). But compare the phenomenological doctrine of intentionality: "le rapport du sujet et de I'objet n'est plus le rapport de connaissance dont parlait l'idealisme classique dans lequel l'objet apparait toujours comme construit par le sujet, mais un rapport d' etre selon lequel paradoxalment le sujet est son corps, son monde et sa situation, et, en quelque sorte, s'echange." (Sens, et Non-Sens: Paris, 1948, p. Notwithstanding that Merleau-Ponty professes to transvaluate "classical idealism," his intentional "bond of being" and Hegel's reason are, viewed through the panist concept, sibling. The noetic-noematic intentionality structure suggests a limited panism; though this suggestion needs to be separately worked out and is offered here only by way of a promissory note. 444 LAURENCE FOSS Conclusion: panism and the analogy of being I shall conclude by suggesting how the panist concept may be used to effect a realignment of metaphysical approaches to reality. If it is one form of the ambition of Western metaphysics to give an account of what is, this ambition is generally distinguished by a unique method. For Spinoza it was the syllogistic, for Hegel the dialectical. In these two instances it is also marked by a univocity of essential terms. Once committed to a unique method, the drive is towards the bringing together of everything within the scope of a single concept, Substance (Spinoza), Spirit (Hegel). I have characterized this drive as "panist," and it is thus that methodological commitments monitor the kinds of substantive claims that we can make. Consider the affirmation of mystery in the universe. This might be made on the basis of commitment to a division of faith and reason in accounting for the whole of what there is. For the non-panist this affirmation remains a distinct possibility; not so for the panist. The former can, for instance, invoke the doctrine of the analogy of being. Hereupon the possibility of significant discourse about more than a single realm of experience, e. g., faith, is systematically provided for, whereas principles of method rule this possibility out for the panist. This is a heavy price to pay, one that perhaps finally over-devaluates the benefits of logical rigor and economy of expression that a "panist" method so eminently affords. In the hands of a " critical realist," say Thomas Aquinas. a classical source for much theological and philosophical discussion of analogy/ 0 ultimately the doctrine is based on a division between finite and infinite being. Perhaps the chief merit of the doctrine, when invoked in a theological context, is its ability to suggest syntactical connections between the literal languages of general knowledge, our discussions of finite being, and the nonliteral language of theological systems. These last comprise our efforts at discussions of infinite being. In 10 See G. Klubertanz, St. Thomas Aquinas on Analogy (Chicago, 1960). HEGEL, SPINOZA, AND A THEORY OF EXPERIENCE 445 this way rules for constructing well-formed sentences in one may be expropriated for use in the other. In the end we have, not a literal meaning for the now " well formed " sentences of the latter, but a coherent system of discourse for which a partial interpretation may be sought in the form of " correspondence rules " with experiential claims in the language of our general knowledge. This is all very sketchy and hypothetical but it need not be developed here. 11 The immediate points are (1) that the analogical use of terms leaves the door open for extensions in the meanings of our words when used in novel, and perhaps unsuspected, ways and (2) that methodological commitments preclude the panist from systematically entertaining these possibilities, notwithstanding that at the outset these possibilities are not manifestly uncongenial with his substantive premises. In terms, then, of the absence of what we might call an analogical approach to experience, we may restate the definition of panism, given first in the Introduction, as follows: panism is the philosophical drive towards univocity of expression in accord with the drive towards a final system articulated by a unique method. The admission of something like the analogy of being, whereby essentially different items may be methodically subsumed under the same concept, or at least the possibility of essentially different levels of being may be entertained and consistent languages formulated for talking about them, is incongrous with the systems finally propounded by either Hegel or Spinoza. Thus panism is incompatible with a commitment to a division of faith and reason in accounting for the whole of what there is (Aquinas) -or, from another side, with a commitment to a radical indeterminacy in nature (certain contemporary quantum physicists 12 ) • Such commitments, whether embodied in the Christian insis11 For a development of some of these themes, see F. Ferre, Language, Logic and God (New York, 1961), ch. VI. 10 See, e. g., the balanced account of M. Capek, The Philosophical Impact of Contemporary Physics (New York, 1961), pp. 333-357. 446 LAURENCE FOSS tence on mystery or the physicists' insistence on partial indeterminacy, would seem to necessitate the systematic provision either for an analogous use of terms or for genuine novelty in one's framework for giving expression to that which is but is not fully comprehensible by reason. Claims about certain areas of our experience the validity of which some o£ us would wish to insist upon, quite independently of methodological considerations, e. g., "God is alive and well in Argentina," " Some events are not fully determinate," or, much more generally, "The world is open-ended," would seem, then, to resist the drive towards a terminal system articulated by a unique method. And the panism native to the systems of Hegel and Spinoza helps bring home this point. LAURENCE Fordham University Bronx, New York Foss HOMOSEXUALITY AND MORAL THEOLOGY: METHODOLOGICAL AND SUBSTANTIVE CONSIDERATIONS. T HE DISCIPLINE OF MORAL theology or Christian ethics is in a state of transition today. The changing self-understanding of the Roman Catholic Church has affected moral theology. Moral theology also reflects the contemporary emphases in religious and philosophical ethics as well as the changing mores and life styles of our contemporary world. An area of ethical concern receiving wide attention in the last few years is homosexuality. The militant homophile movement strives to bring the question to the fore and argues for equality for homosexuals in all spheres of life.1 No longer can society at large or the Christian Church ignore the existence of homosexuality or the homophile community. How will the Church, specifically the Roman Catholic Church, respond to these demands? What should be the attitude of the law to homosexuality? The scope of this essay is more narrow: a discussion of the morality of homosexuality and the methodological approaches employed in this consideration. This study should, however, furnish a basis for forming a proper pastoral approach to the homosexual and the homophile community and also indicate an approach to the question of the law and homosexuality. A proper pastoral approach should develop in the light of moral theology, although a Dutch symposium on homosexuality almost ten years ago tried to develop a pastoral approach prescinding from moral theology 1 Richard R. Parlour, et al., The Homophile Movement: Its Impact and Implications," Journal of Rdigion and Health, VI (1967), n 7-234; Foster Gunnison, Jr., " The Homophile Movement in America," in The Same Sex, ed. Ralph Weltge (Philadelphia/Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1969), pp. 113-128. 447 448 CHARLES E. CURRAN because they obviously feared the rigidity of moral theology. 2 A discussion of homosexuality from the viewpoint of moral theology necessarily raises methodological questions for moral theology itself. Christian ethicists have employed different methodological approaches even though they may have arrived at the same conclusion. In considering the morality of homosexual acts this article will also evaluate the different methodologies employed and also raise specific methodological questions which concern the particular topic of homosexuality as well as the entire gamut of topics considered by moral theology. Two important methodological questions for the discipline of moral theology come to the fore in the discussion of homosexuality-the use and place of the Scriptures in moral theology and the role of the empirical sciences in the moral judgment. Methodology and Biblical Data Christian ethics reflects on human reality within the context of Christian revelation, but there have been differences about the exact role and function of Scripture in the discipline of moral theology. In general, Roman Catholic moral theology has approached concrete ethical questions in the light of a natural law methodology which tended to downplay the role of Scripture. The theological manual written by NoldinSchmitt, for example, discusses homosexuality very briefly according to the principles of the natural law and merely refers to three Scriptural texts in a footnote. 3 Very often the general approach to Roman Catholic theology included a few proof texts from the Scriptures which were employed to prove the point which had been founded on natural law reasoning. 4 • A. Overing, et al., Homosexualiteit (Hilversum: Brand, 1961). French translation: Homosexualite, tr. Y. Huon (Paris: Marne, 1967). 3 H. Noldin, S. J., A. Schmitt, S. J., and G. Heinzel, S. J., Summa Theologiae Moralis: De Castitate (36th ed.; Innsbruck: Rauch, 1958), p. 39. • Marcellinus Zalba, S. I., Theologiae Moralis Summa, Vol. II: Theologia Moralis Specialis (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1953), pp. and 378. HOMOSEXUALITY AND MORAL THEOLOGY 449 Protestant theology methodologically gives more importance to the place of the Scriptures in ethical methodology, but a fundamentalistic Protestant approach errs by again using the Scriptures in a proof text fashion without any further consideration. The mainstream of Protestant theology benefiting from the impressive biblical studies begun in the nineteenth century realizes the cultural and historical limitations inherent in the Scriptures themselves. 5 The renewal in Roman Catholic moral theology emphasized the need for a more biblically oriented approach. During and after Vatican II Catholic theology has, at times, gone to the opposite extreme and become almost exclusively biblical to the detriment of its historical self-understanding that the Christian shares much ethical wisdom and knowledge with all men. 6 It can be said that today Protestant and Catholic ethicians share a general convergence in their understanding of the place and function of the Scriptures in moral theology. The Scriptures do not have a monopoly on ethical wisdom and thus do not constitute the sole way into the ethical problem for the Christian ethicist. 7 Obviously the Christian ethicist derives his general orientation from a scriptural base and realizes the importance of particular attitudes and ways of life which are contained in the Scriptures. However, in the case of specific conclusions about specific actions Christian theologians realize the impossibility of any methodological approach which would develop its argument only in terms of individual biblical texts taken out of their context. 8 5 James M. Gustafson, "Christian Ethics," in Religion, ed. Paul Ramsey (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965), pp. 809-825. 6 Recall the arguments proposed at the Second Vatican Council to revise the Declaration on Religious Liberty so that the document might have its primary basis in Scripture. See Richard J. Regan, S. J., Ccmfiict and Consensus: Religious Freedom and the Second Vatican Council (New York: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 117-H!9. 1 John C. Bennett, " Issues for the Ecumenical Dialogue," in Christian Social Ethics in a Changing World, ed. John C. Bennett (New York: Association Press, 1966), pp. 871-872. 8 Josef Blank, "New Testament Morality and Modern Moral Theology," Concilium, XXV (May 1967), 9-22. 450 CHARLES E. CURRAN The hermeneutic problem lies at the center of much theological discussion today. The Scriptures are historically and culturally limited so that one cannot merely transpose a text from the Scriptures to the contemporary circumstances of life. Likewise, theological presuppositions such as eschatology have affected the biblical teaching on certain questions. Today man's knowledge cannot merely repeat biblical texts which may be based on presuppositions which are now known to be false. There is a difference between Biblical ethics and Christian ethics so that one cannot merely equate the two. Biblical ethics contributes data to Christian ethics, but it remains only one aspect, albeit a privileged aspect of the total data of ethical theology. In the question of homosexuality the biblical data has been interpreted differently, and possibly erroneous interpretations seem to have overemphasized the heinousness of homosexual acts. Although Scriptural data forms only one part of theological data, the moral theologian must have an adequate understanding of that data. Christians generally interpret the famous story of the town of Sodom related in Genesis 19: 4-11 as the destruction of the city by God because of its great sinfulness as shown in homosexuality. Recently, D. S. Bailey has revived and revised an interpretation which maintains that the sodom story does not refer to homosexuality or homosexual acts. 9 The word " to know " does not necessarily involve a sexual connotation but rather could be interpreted as a violation of hospitality. D. S. Bailey points out that the first explicit references involving the "traditional opinion" that the Sodomites were annihilated because of their homosexuality appeared in Palestine only during the second century B. C. Six Old Testament references (Genesis 13: 3; 18: Jer. 9 Derrick Sherwin Bailey, Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition (London/New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1955), pp. 1-28. An earlier denial of the traditional homosexual interpretation of the sin of Sodom was proposed by George A. Barton, " Sodom," in Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, ed. James Hastings, XI (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1921), 672. HOMOSEXUALITY AND MORAL THEOLOGY 451 23: 14; Ez. 16: 49-50; Wisdom 10: 8; 19: 8 Ecclus. 16: 8) mention the sinfulness of the Sodomites because of which they were punished, but these texts do not identify the sin as homosexuality. Most contemporary exegetes do not agree with Bailey's position that a new and different interpretation identifying the sin of Sodom as homosexuality only arose in the second century. Perhaps these exegetes are not aware of the in-depth study made by Bailey. The Jerome Biblical Commentary, the Jerusalem Bible, Genesis in the Anchor Bible edition, all indicate that homosexuality is the sin of the people of Sodom because of which their city was destroyed. 10 Although Bailey does not find homosexuality in the sin of the people of Sodom, he still accepts a general condemnation of homosexuality (without the significant heinousness attached to the Sodom story) in the Old Testament as found in two references in the " Holiness Code " (Leviticus 18: 22; 20: 13) . Homosexual acts between men were considered like many other acts to be major crimes punishable by death. 11 The New Testament contains three direct references to homosexuality-Romans 1: 27; 1 Cor. 6: 9-10; 1 Tim. 1:9-10. Paul obviously regards homosexual acts as wrong and a perversion of the meaning of human existence willed by God. Helmut Thielicke, although accepting such a condemnation by Paul, emphasizes that Paul's condemnation of homosexuality does not justify the excessive severity which the Christian tradition has attached to such acts. Thielicke's hermeneutical interpretation points out that Paul's consideration of homosexuality appears only in the context of the more central 10 Eugene H. Maly, "Genesis," in The !Mome Biblical Commentary, eds. R. E. Brown, S. S., J. A. Fitzmyer, S. J., R. E. Murphy, 0. Carm. (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), I, 20-21; La Sainte Bible, traduite en francais sous Ia direction de !'Ecole Biblique de Jerusalem (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1956), p. 25; The JMUSalem Bible, ed. Alexander Jones (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1966), p. 35, merely translates the note from the original French. Genesis: The Anchor Bible, ed. E. A. Speiser (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1964), p. 142. 11 Bailey, op. cit., pp. 57-61. CHARLES E. CURRAN theological affirmation that disorder in the vertical dimension of man's relationship with God is matched by disorder on the horizontal level. Homosexuality illustrates this disorder on the level of man's relationship with his fellow man. Despite the fact that Paul's understanding of homosexuality would have been colored by its acceptance in the Greek intellectual world, the Apostle considers it not in itself but only as illustrative of the central theological point that man's relation with God affects all his other relationships. 12 Thus the biblical data indicates that the biblical authors in their cultural and historical circumstances deemed homosexual acts wrong and attached a generic gravity to such acts, but there appears to be no reason for attaching a special heinousness or gravity to these acts. Methodology and Empirical Data A second important methodological and substantive question concerns the empirical data about homosexuality. The substantive question seeks to discover the meaning of homosexuality in terms of the behavioral sciences such as psychology, sociology, psychiatry, anthropology, etc. The methodological question for moral theology centers on the way in which such data are incorporated into the moral judgment. Different Christian ethicists exhibit different methodological approaches to the use of empirical data in determining the morality of homosexual acts. Karl Barth insists that theological and ethical judgments about sexuality, i. e., the command of God in this matter, must constitute a form of knowledge which rests on secure foundations. But these foundations obviously cannot be the empirical sciences.13 " That man and woman-in the relationship conditioned by this irreversible 12 Helmut Thielicke, The Ethics of Sex. tr. John W. Doberstein (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), pp. 18 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatic: A Selection, ed. G. W. Bromiley (New York: Harper Torchbooks, pp. This small volume brings together Barth's considerations of man and woman which appear in three different places in his Church Dogmatics. HOMOSEXUALITY AND MORAL THEOLOGY 453 order-are the human creatures of God and as such the image of God and likeness of the covenant of grace-this is the secure theological knowledge with which we ourselves work and with which we must be content." 14 The Command of God thus does not involve any consideration of the data of the empirical sciences. On the basis of his "secure theological knowledge" without any reference to concrete experience or the data of science, Barth characterizes homosexuality as the physical, psychological and social sickness, the phenomenon of perversion, decadence and decay, which can emerge when man refuses to admit the validity of the divine command .... 15 From the refusal to recognize God, there follows the failure to appreciate man and thus humanity without the fellow-man. And since humanity as fellow-humanity is to be understood in its root as the togetherness of man and woman, as the root of this inhumanity, there follows the ideal of a masculinity free from woman and a femininity free from man. 16 Barth's position represents a confident and straightforward theological position based on the divine command, although he does remind one counselling homosexuals to be aware of God's command and also his forgiving grace. John Giles Milhaven has approached the question of homosexuality with a methodology quite different from that of Barth, although they both reach the same ethical conclusions that homosexual acts are wrong. 17 Milhaven explicitly claims to be following the methodology of the new morality. The primary and ultimately the only ethical criterion is love which includes " free determination, commitment, of a man or woman to further the good of a certain person " and can be identified Ibid., p. !WO. Ibid., p. !'l13. 16 Ibid., p. !'l14. a 15 17 John Giles Milhaven, Towards a New Catholic Morality (Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, 1970), pp. 59-68. This essay originally appeared as "Homosexuality and the Christian," Homiletic and Pastoral Review, LXVIII (1968), 663-669. 454 CHARLES E. CURRAN with the promotion of human good. 18 " To understand what is good for a person, he, a man of the twentieth century, relies exclusively on experience." 19 Milhaven's man of the new morality turns to the experience of the community. In this case those who have the critical experience are "preeminently the psychologists, psychiatrists and analysts." 20 Although there is no unanimity among experts, the most commonly held opinion is that all homosexuals are mentally ill or neurotic. " Thus a Christian moving in the spirit of the new morality condemns homosexual behavior more severly than one using traditional arguments." 21 The dramatic opposition between the approaches of Barth and Milhaven to the question of homosexuality illustrates the methodological question of the place of the empirical sciences in moral theology. The theological approach of Barth in general does not give enough importance or place to human knowledge in general, let alone the specific empirical sciences of psychology and psychiatry. The Christological monism of Barth prevents any way into the ethical problem from the viewpoint of philosophy and human wisdom, although at times Barth's anti-philosophical rhetoric seems stronger than his actual practice. I would reject any methodological approach which would be so narrowly Christological that it would exclude all human wisdom as helpful for the Christian ethicist. Milhaven's method of relying exclusively on experience, which in this case is preeminently the findings of psychology and psychiatry, also appears too one-sided. Milhaven himself seems to contradict his exclusive reliance on experience near the end of his article, for he alludes to " a second and older way a Christian can answer the ethical question of homosexual behavior." 22 This involves the real but limited role of the pastors and teachers of Christ's body. "For many Christians, heeding the words of their pastors and teachers is a wiser, and therefore more loving response to the question of homosexual behav'"Ibid., pp. 61-62. "'Ibid., p. 65. •• Ibid., p. 62. 22 •• Ibid., p. 68. Ibid., p. 67. HOMOSEXUALITY AND MORAL THEOLOGY 455 ior than reading the evidence of the psychiatrists and psychologists of the secular city." 23 Thus the concluding sentence of the essay appears to stand in contradiction with the approach of one who relies exclusively on experience. Perhaps Milhaven could avoid some of the apparent contradiction by showing that the teaching of the pastors relies on experience, but in the article he does not take this tack. Coming at the end of his article and proposed as a second and older way, this approach seems to stand in opposition to an approach which relies exclusively on experience. From the viewpoint of theological ethics there are problems with a methodology which relies exclusively on experience. The Christian realizes that existing man is beset with the limitations of creatureliness and sinfulness. Likewise, resurrection destiny and Christian eschatology introduce a transcendent aspect by which man is always called upon to go beyond the present. What is presently existing can never become totally normative for Christian ethics with its horizon which includes creatureliness and sinfulness as well as the eschatological pull of the future. Christian ethics knows from its history the dangers of accepting the present experience as normative. On the one hand, experience has all too often canonized the limitations and positive sinfulness of the present. In past history one can think of the Christian attitude toward slavery, torture, scientific development. Just recently we have come to question the consensus experience of Christians on segregation, war, and the status of women in society. Present experience too easily forgets the prophetic aspect of Christian teaching which corresponds with an eschatology which negatively criticizes the present in the light of the future. Too often Christian teaching has lost this prophetic aspect and has unfortunately too easily accepted a morality which is in keeping with present experience. Perhaps one could counter the above theological criticism 23 Ibid., p. 68. 456 CHARLES E. CURRAN by showing that human experience, properly understood, does include all these aspects. I personally would accept an understanding of human experience which can include man's saving relationship to God and all that such a relationship includes. Such experience, however, would have to be related to the full reality of the world around us and could never be reduced to the data of psychiatry, psychology, and analysis. In fairness to Milhaven, the formulation of his method does not call for exclusive reliance on the behavioral sciences themselves but upon human experience. However, in his method in the question of homosexuality, his reliance on these sciences is total to the exclusion of any other considerations of human experience or of historical or scriptural data. The behavioral sciences themselves only furnish data for the final human judgment which, in a sense, relativizes all the judgments of the particular sciences. Ethics can never make the mistake of absolutizing any one of the empirical sciences. These scientific disciplines have a perspective which can never be totally identified with the human perspective. One realizes that in our present existence no action is perfect from every possible aspect. The human judgment precisely involves the hermeneutic by which the findings of the various sciences and disciplines are brought together into the truly human judgment. A mere collection of the data supplied by the human sciences is not sufficient for the human judgment, for often such data will be conflicting. Nothing in our present world can be perfect from every aspect or from the perspective of every science. Perhaps the problems of atomic energy, ecology, and technology remind us of the dangers of absolutizing the perspective of any one science and identifying this perspective with the truly human. Often a hermeneutic problem arises within the confines of just one science when the practitioners themselves are divided on a particular point. This seems to be part of the reality in the question of homosexuality. Thus the individual theologian or person about to make a decision is faced with a HOMOSEXUALITY AND MORAL THEOLOGY 457 dilemma which he is not equipped to solve. If the experts in a given field are divided, how can someone without that particular expertise make a competent judgment? The ethicist cannot merely follow the majority opinion, for history constantly reminds us that majority opinions are not necessarily true. The fact that the methodology proposed and employed by Milhaven lacks a transcendent or prophetic aspect also stands out in his consideration of love. Milhaven begins with an understanding of love defined in terms of promoting human good and then tries to verify from experience if such love is present. However, one could question this understanding of love within the context of Christian ethics. In discussing the meaning of Christian love, also in the context of homosexuality, Roger Shinn insists on an important distinction between Christian love and human love. But the recognition of a cruciform quality in life, despite its history of distortions, is inherent in Christian ethics. It distinguishes the Christian ethic from the most prevalent alternative in Western culture, the ethic of self-realization that extends from Aristotle to contemporary philosophy. 24 Self-fulfillment, in my judgment, cannot be excluded from Christian ethics, but must be viewed in the total context of the Paschal Mystery which sees life through death and joy in sorrow. Although I would not accept the complete divorce of self-fulfillment from Christian ethics, I cannot accept the notion of love proposed by Milhaven which does not expressly call attention to the Paschal Mystery. This notion of love appears to be a carryover from the understanding of and emphasis on love in Protestant liberal theology which has increasingly appeared in Roman Catholic writings in the last few years. Milhaven himself proposes his ethical methodology in the context of a " secular city approach," but theologians are rightly questioning such an approach because it fails to give "'Roger L. Shinn, "Homosexuality: The Same Sex, p. 47. Christian Conviction and Inquiry," in 458 CHARLES E. CURRAN due credit to the transcendent aspect of Christianity as well as the understanding of the weakness and failure of man in the present situation. The concept of love proposed by Milhaven appears to reinforce the judgment that his methodological approach with its exclusive emphasis on empirical sciences does not do justice to the fulness of the Christian vision which sees not only the limitations and sinfulness of the present but also the prophetic and transcendent aspect of the eschatological. Milhaven makes his ultimate moral judgment in the light of the verification of the presence of love through psychology and psychiatry. These are both important aspects which must enter into the moral judgment, but one cannot make a final moral judgment merely in the light of the data from these two sciences. Morality cannot be totally identified with psychology and psychiatry. Some things may be wrong which are not symptoms of neurosis or emotional illness. Likewise, perfectly moral behavior may very well be neurotic. Milhaven in theory relies exclusively on experience, but as a matter of fact, in his article he relies on the data of psychology and psychiatry, although he does not appear to consider or mention much of the literature in the fields of psychology and psychiatry on the subject of homosexuality. With Milhaven, I would insist on the importance of experience and the data of the behavioral sciences for the moral judgment. In the past, Catholic moral theology with its basis in the natural law theory has admitted the importance of human wisdom in contributing to moral theology, but too often an a priori and classical understanding failed to give due importance to the behavioral and human sciences. However, any theology which puts exclusive emphasis in theory or in practice on experience, as viewed only in terms of the behavioral sciences, seems inadequate. What is the psychological and psychiatric data about homosexuality? A first question concerns the etiology of homosexuality. An older, and minority, opinion would make genetic factors the determining element. The more generally accepted HOMOSEXUALITY AND MORAL THEOLOGY 459 theory attributes homosexuality to circumstances in the developing life of the child and person, although there can be a certain conditioning because of genetic factors. Most recently some scientists have revived the theory that attributes homosexuality to hormonal imbalance. 25 The most important and most debated question is the normalcy of homosexuality and homosexual acts. Is it illness, a totally neutral phenomenon, or something created by the prejudices of society? The data remains somewhat conflicting. Freud interpreted homosexuality as a stunted or truncated stage of human sexuality which naturally tends toward the heterosexual. Until recently, the psychologists and psychiatrists generally judged homosexuality to be a pathological condition or an emotional disorder. This opinion probably remains the majority opinion, although the homophile community generally and some other scientists have questioned this older approach represented by such scholars as Albert Ellis, Daniel Cappon, Edmund Bergler, and Irving Bieber. 26 Recently scholars such as Clara Thompson, Evelyn Hooker, Wardell Pomeroy, and others have proposed a more benign opinion about the nature of homosexuality. 27 The theologian is not competent to judge between the conflicting opinions of the various scientists within their own disciplines. However, a review of the literature plus personal experience would seem to indicate that homosexuality does not necessarily make every individual a neurotic or emotionally 25 For a summary of these opinions, see John R. Cavanagh, Counseling the Invert (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing Co., 1966). 2 ° Christian ethicists such as Milhaven and Robert E. Buxbaum (" Homosexuality and Love," Journal of Religion and Mental Health, VI [1967], 17-32) base their negative moral judgment on psychological and psychiatric data proposed by such experts. 27 This favorable approach to homosexuality is frequently documented in the essays in The Same Sex (see Wardell B. Pomery, "Homosexuality," pp. 3-13; Evelyn Hooker, "The Homosexual Community," pp. 25-39). For a summary of the various psychological and psychiatric opinions, see John J. McNeil, S. J., "The Christian Male Homosexual," Homiletic and Pastoral Review, LXX (1970), 750-753. 460 CHARLES E. CURRAN disturbed person. Some homosexuals do seem to live comparatively well-adapted lives in society. The theological ethician must be in constant dialogue with these sciences, but he realizes that even the well-adjusted person can have proclivities and perform acts which are "abnormal" and/or morally wrong. Likewise, the ethician realizes that wrong actions or tendencies do not necessarily point to mental disturbance on the part of the whole personality. The conflicting evidence of these sciences must be viewed in a wider context. Having considered two of the most important methodological questions in moral theology's discussion of homosexuality, this essay turns to the substantive question itself. Within the pale of Christian ethics there appear to be three generic answers to the question. The more traditional approach sees homosexual acts as immoral. A very few Christian ethicists argue that homosexual acts are in themselves neutral. A more sizeable minority has proposed a mediating position which, while not commending such acts, does not always condemn them. The second part of this study will consider the three generic approaches and then spell out in greater detail the mediating position based on compromise morality which I briefly proposed a few years ago. Homosexual Acts are Wrong Different methodological approaches have been employed to arrive at the conclusion that homosexual acts are wrong. Roman Catholic theology in its treatment of theology in general and homosexuality in particular follows the approach and the conclusions of Thomas Aquinas. Right reason is the ultimate moral norm, but right reason builds on the order of nature. In sexual matters, Thomas accepted Ulpian's understanding of the natural as that which is common to man and all the animals. The order of nature which man shares with animal life calls for the depositing of male seed in the vas of the female so that procreation will occur and the species will continue in existence. Thomas and the manuals of moral HOMOSEXUALITY AND MORAL THEOLOGY 461 theology divide the sins against chastity into two categories: the sins against nature (peccata contra naturam) and the sins according to nature (peccata secundum naturam) . The sins against nature are those acts which do not follow the order of nature and thus prevent procreation-pollution, imperfect sodomy, sodomy, and bestiality. Sins according to nature, but against the ordering of reason, include simple fornication, incest, adultery, rape. 28 Thomas's condemnation of homosexual acts follows from his systematic understanding of human sexuality and its purposes in human life. 29 Since Thomas refers to homosexuality as a sin against nature, one might imagine that he attributes a special heinousness to such acts, but the expression " sin against nature " is a technical term incorporating the understanding of Ulpian. The term "sin against nature" includes sexual acts other than homosexual acts and does not argue for a special heinousness in relation to all other sins, although such sins are more grave than other sins against chastity. 30 Until recently Catholic theologians have generally repeated and developed the Thomistic consideration of homosexuality. John F. Harvey, who has written more extensively on this subject than any other Catholic theologian, well exemplifies the best of the older Catholic approach. Harvey in his overall consideration of the morality of homosexuality sorts out three aspects of the question: the responsibility of the homosexual for his condition, the objective morality of homosexual acts, and the subjective responsibility of homosexuals for their actions. 31 Harvey maintains that the homosexual is not responsible for his condition. In an individual case compulsion may diminSumma Theol., II-II, q. 153, aa. 2-3; q. 154, a. 1. Ibid., q. 154, aa. 11-12. 30 Bailey's otherwise fine summary of the Scholastic teaching on homosexuality (pp. 110-120) could be improved by a somewhat more nuanced understanding of the sin against nature. 31 John F. Harvey 0. S. F. S., "Homosexuality," New Catholic Encyclopedia (New York: McGraw Hill, 1967), VII, 117-119. 28 29 462 CHARLES E. CURRAN ish the subjective responsibility of the homosexual for his overt homosexual acts, but Harvey believes that the homosexual can and should be brought to self-control. Harvey's discussion of objective morality begins with the natural law presupposition that the homosexual act, since by its essence it excludes the transmission of life, cannot fulfill the procreative purpose of the sexual faculty and thus constitutes a grave transgression of the divine will. No explicit mention is made of the love union aspect of sexuality, although a brief sentence describes the homosexual act as a deviation of the normal attraction of man for woman. 32 Recently many criticisms have arisen concerning such an understanding of sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular. The older Catholic approach inordinately places all the emphasis on the biological and physical aspect of the sexual act; the procreative aspect becomes the primary and sometimes the only purpose of sexuality. Poor medical and biological knowledge merely heightened the inadequacies o£ such an approach. Likewise, an older approach with its stress on the individual acts did not pay sufficient attention to the condition of homosexuality. Harvey improved on this by indicating that the homosexual is not usually responsible for his particular condition, although he is ordinarily responsible for his wrong homosexual acts. The fact that such an approach based on the natural law either ignored the Scriptural teaching on a particular point or else merely tacked on a few proof texts has already been mentioned. Other approaches have arrived at the same conclusion as the natural law approach followed in Roman Catholic theology; in fact, the vast majority of Christian ethicists have come to this condemnation of homosexual acts. The neoOrthodox approach of Barth and the new morality approach of Milhaven have already been mentioned as illustrations of different methodologies arriving at the same conclusion, although such approaches as well as the natural law approach of the manuals of moral theology have been criticized. •• Ibid., pp. 117-118. Note that Thomas Aquinas proposed the same arguments. HOMOSEXUALITY AND MORAL THEOLOGY 463 Homosexual Acts are Neutral There exists today a comparatively small but significant number of ethicians, including some few Christian ethicists, who would not judge homosexual acts to be wrong. A succinct statement of this position is found in the statement made by the English Quakers: One should no more deplore homosexuality than left handedness. . . . Surely it is the nature and quality of a relationship which matters. One must not judge it by its outward appearance, but by its inner worth. Homosexual affection can be as selfless as heterosexual affection, and therefore we cannot see that it is in some way morally worse.33 Robert W. Wood in his book Christ and the Homosexual was one of the first writers in the area of Christian ethics to adopt such a generic opinion about homosexuality and homosexual acts. 34 Christ and the Homosexual, however, is more of a propagandistic polemic against the way Christians have treated the homosexual in the past and consequently betrays many theological shortcomings and inconsistencies, e. g., a constant confusion between the morality of homosexual acts and the proper Christian attitude towards the homosexual person, a literalistic interpretation of the words of Jesus not to judge another which would really destroy any attempt at Christian ethics. Wood proposes as his thesis that homosexual acts are not always and everywhere wrong, but three reasons indicate that homosexual acts for the homosexual are moral. These three reasons are: (I) Homosexuality is a God created way of protecting the human race on this planet from the suicide of overpopulation; (2) homosexuality makes available opportunities for love for some who are unable to find them in heterosexual relations, a love which truly can be sacramental; (3) 83 Towards a Quaker View of Sex (London: The Society of Friends, 1963), p. 26. •• Robert W. Wood, Christ and the Homosexual Vantage Press, 1960). (New York/Washington: 464 CHARLES E. CURRAN' homosexuality provides an outlet for the expression of the human personality for those who cannot express themselves fully within heterosexuality. 35 Neale A. Secor presents a more adequate theological reasoning as outlined in three hypotheses which he proposes in the context of an open-ended approach. 36 (I) All human sexual identifications and behavior patterns, irrespective of desired gender object, are morally neutral, i.e., avoid making prior ethical judgments regarding sexual behavior on the basis of the object of the sexual behavior alone. (2) No matter what the particular sexual behavior (hetero-homo-mono), the test of sin is whether or not the behavior meets presently understood and approved Christian standards (what God wills for man) for all human relational behavior; i.e., avoid making prior ethical judgments regarding sin on the basis o£ sexual behavior alone. (3) Christian ethical concern for the homosexual exists not because he has a certain sexual proclivity but because he is a person; i.e., avoid making prior ethical judgments regarding concern for people on the basis of sexual behavior alone. 31 In a sense, Secor's three points readily are reduced to the fact that sexuality in itself is neutral and ethical judgments cannot be made on the basis of the object of the sexual behavior alone. Interestingly, Secor implicitly even goes one step further than those who would maintain that the ultimately determining norm is the quality of the relationship. Secor maintains that monosexuality could be moral and thus not against " presently understood and approved Christian standards for all human relational behavior." Can the relationship to self in monosexuality really be expressive of a proper Christian relation? It would be difficult to argue that monoIbid., pp. 151-174. Neale A. Secor, "A Brief for a New Homosexual Ethic," in The Same Sex, pp. 67-79. 37 Ibid., pp. 78-79. For a somewhat similar line of argumentation representing the best reasoning I found in the literature from the homophile community itself, see Franklin E. Kameny, " Gay Is Good," in The Same Sex, pp. 129-145. 35 86 HOMOSEXUALITY AND MORAL THEOLOGY 465 sexuality is an expression of Christian love which should require some type of giving to another. Perhaps Secor is guilty of a contradiction by asserting that monosexuality can be in accord with "standards for all human relational behavior." The difference between the two opinions on homosexuality centers on the meaning of human sexuality; i. e., does human sexuality have a meaning in terms of a relationship of male and female in a procreative union of love? Generally speaking, I accept many of the arguments proposed by those who maintain that human sexuality in the Christian perspective has meaning in terms of the relationship between male and female. The Scriptural data undoubtedly points in this direction, even to the possible extent that the likeness to God is precisely in terms of the sexuality by which man and woman are able to enter into a covenant of love with one another. The Christian tradition has constantly accepted the view that homosexuality goes against the Christian understanding of human sexuality and its meaning. I would agree that historical circumstances could have influenced the condemnation of a particular form of behavior. Likewise, it is possible that the Christian tradition could have been wrong at a particular point. However, there seems to be no sufficient evidence for such a judgment in the case of homosexuality. Despite all the methodological shortcomings and one-sidedness of the natural law approach proposed by Aquinas, it still seems to correspond to a certain human connaturality condemning homosexuality as wrong. Also, the majority of all the data from the human sciences seems to point to the fact that human sexuality has its proper meaning in terms of the love union of male and female. Interestingly, those who argue that sexuality is neutral and all sexuality should be judged in terms of the quality of the relationship fail to come to grips with the accepted fact that most homosexual liasons are of a " one night stand " variety. Thus there is not a sexual union as expressive of a loving commitment of one to another. One might argue that the 466 CHARLES E. CURRAN prejudices of society make such sexual behavior almost necessary for the homosexual, since he cannot easily live in a premanent relationship with a person of the same sex. However, at least those who are arguing in favor of such an understanding of homosexual acts should come to grips with what appears to be a generally accepted fact about the nature of homosexual relationships in our society. No one can deny there are many somewhat stable relationships, but these do not clearly constitute the majority of the cases. 38 There remains another important ethical consideration which also appears in connection with other problems which are posed today in the area of genetics and the new biology. Does sexuality or the sexual union have any relationship to procreation? The position of the hierarchical magisterium in the Roman Catholic Church would argue that every single act of sexual intercourse must be open to procreation. Obviously such an approach gives one a strong rule and criterion to use in condemning homosexual acts or other seemingly errant forms of sexual behavior. However, even many who would accept the moral use of contraception would not deny all connection between human sexuality and procreation. Paul Ramsey, for example, argues that man cannot put asunder what God has put together in terms of the procreative and love union aspect of human sexuality. Ramsey is well aware that there are marital unions in which the couple either do not intend to have children, or are not physically able to bear children, but these are still accepted as true marital unions. Ramsey argues that these couples still realize that love union and the procreative aspects of marital sexuality belong together, 38 The various statistics proposed are naturally fragmentary and incomplete. This paragraph is based on: William Simon and John Gagnon, " Homosexuality: The Formation of a Sociological Perspective," Journal of Health and Social Behaviour, VIII (1967), 177-185. In general, the authors appear to be sympathetic to an acceptance of homosexual behavior, but they conclude from their data: "These data, then, suggest a depersonalized quality, a driven or compulsive quality, to the sexual activity of many homosexuals which cannot be reckoned as anything but extremely costly to them." (p. 181) HOMOSEXUALITY AND MORAL THEOLOGY 467 for they admit that, if either had a child, it would be only from their one flesh unity with each other and not apart from this. 39 Modern developments in genetics raise the possibility that bearing children can and should be separated from the one flesh union of man and wife. In general, I believe that the joining together of the love union and procreative aspects does appear to be the meaning of human sexuality and marriage, but it is evident that neither Scripture nor Christian tradition could respond to the questions raised by the new biology. There does seems to be a strong presumption in favor of such an understanding which cannot be overturned without grave reasons. All too often biologists think that whatever is biologically possible is also humanly possible and desirable. But there are many other important questions from the viewpoint of psychology, sociology, and anthropology which have to be thoroughly investigated before I would be willing to overcome the presumption in favor of the union of the procreative and love union aspects of sexuality. The fact that human sexuality might be neutral and not structured in accord with the union of male and female seems to be compatible with some new trends in Christian ethics and moral theology. Note how often those who favor the morality of homosexual acts will base their theological arguments on premises proposed in other contexts by such authors as Lehmann and Fletcher. However, there seem to be some unacceptable presuppositions in a theological methodology which would presume that man and human sexuality have no meaning in themselves and in their relationships but are completely neutral. Again, this does not mean that one would be forced to adopt the view that the biological and physical structures of human existence understood in an exclusive sense become morally normative for man-a mistake that Roman Catholic theology has made in the past. But one can, and in my opinion should, maintain that there is a certain structuring 89 Paul Ramsey, "A Christian Approach to Sexual Relations," Religine is almost tempted to say, beneath the mask of scholasticism." (p. 101) Debates about grace and nature and about incarnational and eschatological attitudes towards history clearly provided a way to discuss the contemporary problems of humanism, secularism, and Christian social responsibility. In Schoof's judgment, the key principle whose elaboration was to change the climate of theological investigation in Europe was signaled by M.-D. Chenu. Citing Thomas Aquinas's phrase, "the terminus of the act of faith is not the proposition, but the reality," Chenu pointe,d out the only place where the revealed truth was in fact unchangereality of God himself who is the real end of all our judgments about faith which are built up of limited and therefore changing concepts. (p. 196) The parallel insight of St. Thomas, "What is known is adapted in the knower to his mode of knowing" (Summa Theol. 11-11, q. 1, a. 2 ad 2) allows progress of human expression equally well in the development of revelation (Thomas's context) or in the development of the deposit of faith entrusted to the Church (Chenu's context). Together, these two insights of St. Thomas indicate the necessarily limited quality of the concepts of the believer and point beyond them to a fuller-than-conceptual relationship of knowledge with the object of faith in the believer. Almost two decades later, Rahner and Schillebeeckx, working in different theological traditions, contributed another key insight of major importance for a development of a contemporary theological anthropology. " The part played by the Spirit of God, who manifests himself humanly 518 BOOK REVIEWS in the grace of the light of faith, is fundamental." (p. Both Rahner and Schillebeeckx underline the difference of man's consciousness in the world when transformed by the gift of God's personal presence dwelling in the man of faith; this difference is the activity of the lumen fidei. In this way, God's revelation is essentially his communication of himself, and faith's response is a surrender of the believer in his whole self to the divine Person who unveils himself in the gift of faith. Here, on pages of Schoof's text, one can find a good, brief, and simple expression of the role of the " phenomenological horizon " and its function of totalizing the personal exchange between the human believer and the divine Person who reveals himself. In his second, third, and fourth chapters, Schoof approaches the data of the movement of renewal from the perspective of the theological problem of the development of dogma. This problem has been the test case for the most obvious struggles between Roman neo-scholasticism and a new theological approach. This perspective allows the author, when he comes to discuss Vatican II, to concentrate primarily upon the Constitution Dei Verbum on Revelation. He interprets the progressive text which emerged out of the long Conciliar struggle to produce an authentic teaching in the spirit of aggiornamento as a rehabilitation of the work of many theologians whose patient and often frustrated labors had prepared the way for this moment of Vatican II. Their argument, based on material evidence which they had been collecting for years, had always been that revelation and faith had never been enclosed, either in the biblical or eve,n in the medieval tradition, in static, conceptual relationships and that an intellectualistic reduction of this kind contained no more than a fraction of the total wealth of human thought and experience. In the Council, this argument was listened to with increasing attentiveness and finally with consent. (p. The teaching of Dei Verbum marks the reconciliation of the data which started the pursuit of the movement of theological renewal in the nineteenth century with the teaching of the Catholic Church. The data were the data of historical studies and of the dynamism of culturally changing human experience. This argument of Schoof's appears at a time when it can be most useful in the United States. Already, there is a younger generation of theological students for whom Vatican II is old stuff. Especially in the field of the religious education of the young, there seems to be some danger that post-Conciliar ideas and fads will flare up in brief moments of enthusiasm which do justice neither to the history nor to the tradition of the idea's theological expression. Some programmatic attempts to thematize theological study have received too dogmatic and too shallow a reception here. It is more important after the Council-rather than 519 BOOK REVIEWS less-to guard an historical perspective of where we have come from. This work of Schoof's will be an invaluable (and pleasant) tool for the pursuit of this perspective. Schoof's emphasis is upon the living, divine principle of the life of faith and upon its emergence into the global reality of Christian life. The rediscovery of this interior principle was the impetus for the theologians whose work led to Vatican II. The story of the checks and frustrations of these pioneers teaches important lessons about the way in which the triumph of ideas is rooted as much in the march of events as it is in the movement of logical and conceptual relationships. It is a good lesson, too, about the inevitable limitations of man's communication with man in society. Bibliographical notes follow the major sections of each chapter. These bibliographical surveys are a most valuable contribution. The author's annotations clearly indicate the content and promise of the sources cited and Schoof has gone to special pains to direct the readers of this English edition of his text to sources available in our vernacular. Bouillard's Only once does the translation completely falter. On p. "actual" theology should read "up-to-date" theology. Somehow, the French actuelle resisted translation. PAUL J. PHILIBERT, 0. P. Providence College Providence, R. I. Petri Abaelardi Opera Theologica. By ELIGIUS M. BUYTAERT. Corpus Christiarwrum, Continuatio Mediaevalis XI-XII. Turnhout: Brepols, 1969. It is well known that the first edition of theological writings by Peter Abelard appeared in Paris in 1916 (Sumptibus Nicolai Buon, via Jacobea) . The preparation of the texts was the work of Fram;ois d'Amboise (d. 1619) and Andre Duchesne (1584-1640) . The printed copies contain either Duchesne's introduction or that of d'Amboise (PL 178, 71-104). In his Praefatio apologetica (PL 178, 75D) d' Amboise states that he used three manuscripts for the edition of the letters of Abelard and Heloise. The commentaries on the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed, and the PseudoAthanasian Creed are perhaps included in what d'Amboise describes as opuscula varia ex Navarrana bibliotheca. He found Abelard's homilies at the Sorbonne, the commentary on Romans in a manuscript from Mont-Saint-Michel (which Duchesne obtained from J. Sirmond), and the BOOK REVIEWS lntroductio ad Theologiam, today known as Theologia 'Scholarium ', in two manuscripts then preserved at Saint-Victor, Paris. F. d'Amboise's information is much less specific in the title pages of each individual text. One manuscript containing the correspondence (Paris, Bibl. nat. Lat. s. xv-xvi) and the two manuscripts containing the Theologia 'Scholarium' (Bibl. nat. Lat. 14793 and Arsenal have survived; the fate of the others is unknown. A. Duchesne speaks of three additional manuscripts used in preparing the edition of the letters. Only one of them (Bibl. nat. Lat. 3544, s. xv ex.) is known to exist. The disappearance of so many manuscripts somehow increases the value of the 1616 edition and frustrates the work of later editors. Duchesne mentions other contributions to the edition without indicating the manuscripts used. When the entire material was taken over by Abbe Migne, Abelard's dossier included many works unknown to Duchesne and Amboise. In 1717 Martime-Durand (Thes. novus anecd. V, 1139-1359: PL 178, 1330) edited Abelard's Theologia christiana (MS Tours 85) and his Hexameron (Thes. V, 1361-1416: PL 178, 731-784; MS Avranches 135, Four years later, B. Pez added his edition from Mont-Saint-Michel). PL 178,633-678; of Abelard's Ethica (Thes. anecd. noviss. III, MS St. Emmeram near Regensburg). V. Cousin (Ouvrages inedits 3-163) published the Sic et Non in 1836, but Migne (PL 178,1339-1610) preferred the Marburg edition (1851) published by E. L. Th. Henke and G. St. Lindenkohl. To all these texts Migne added the Dialogus or Collationes (PL 178, 1609-1684), edited by F. H. Rheinwald (Berlin 1831), and the Epitome Hermanni (PL 178, 1685-1758), published by the same Rheinwald (Berlin 1835) and, at that time, universally considered a work of Abelard's. As a handy working tool the Migne vol. 178 will never be surpassed. Owing to the initiative of D. Van den Eynde, some of these texts have now begun to appear in the Continuatio Mediaevalis of the Corpus Christianorum where we read that the project comprises five volumes. The last two are reserved to the Sic et Non to be prepared by Prof. D. E. Luscombe, a rather competent Abelardian scholar, who describes the "sheer chaos" of the varieties of the versions of the Sic et Non as an "editorial nightmare" (The School of Abelard, p. 96). The first volume contains the commentary on Romans (pp. 41-430) and the Apologia, previously (1930) edited by P. Ruf. According to Buytaert (p. 350) the " transcript of Ruf is nearly perfect but his punctuation is deficient." This deficiency is clearly apparent in two instances (Ruf, p. 16) , but there are reasons to question some textual alterations in the new edition. Buytaert's insertion of [quod] on p. line 80, disturbs an otherwise faultless sentence. It is hard to understand why Buytaert (p. 364, lines BOOK REVIEWS 187-188) reads habeat . . . sciant uel ament instead of habeat sciat uel amet as found in Ruf (p. 16, lines 13-15) and the manuscript. Since the subject (tam Filius quam Spiritus sanctus) is the same for those three verbs, there is no reason to pluralize them unless it can be shown that the singular used by Abelard is grammatically wrong. To leave one verb in the singular and pluralize the other two is a very questionable interference with the original. In the sentence Sin autem Buyaert dicatur Filium dei esse quamdam potentiam (p. 365, line follows Ruf's error (p. 17, line 11) against the manuscript which reads, in impeccable Latin, Sin autem dicatur Filius dei esse quedam potentia. Abelard's latinity was obviously superior to that of the " corrected " versiOn. Buytaert calls the commentary on Romans commentaria, which sounds like an anachronism caused, it seems, by the strange colophon of MS Angers 68 (commentariorum liber extremus) . In the first half of the twelfth century such titles were either glose (a term actually used in MS Oxford, Balliol Coll. or expositio (found in MS Vat. Reg. lat. and employed by St. Bernard: PL or tractatus. The commentary has come down to us in five different forms (including d'Amboise) and none of the four manuscripts is "without serious deficieincies." (p. 37) The second volume comprises the Theologia christiana (three redactions, all anonymous), the two shorter redactions of the Theologia 'Scholarium' (MSS Tours 85 and Zurich C 61), and the anonymous Capitula heresum the editor Petri Abaelardi. Concerning Theol. christ. IV, 80 (p. revives the unproved thesis that " the brothers " mentioned by Abelard are Bernard and Thierry of Chartres. For the edition of the Capitula E. M. Buytaert used MS Vat. lat. 663, known since 1667 through J. Mabillon and MS Paris, Arsenal In the editor's judgment they are " not exceptionally good " yet give a " satisfactory text " when taken together. (p. 467) This is a strange concession in view of the fact that the editor was aware of a note in J. Leclercq, Etudes sur saint Bernard (1953) where the author mentions "that he knows three more codices." (p. 455) In the Bull. de philos. medievale 8-9 (19661967) 61 J. Leclercq published a list of nine manuscripts containing the capitula. Since Buytaert's edition is dated 1969, one may be inclined to wonder why at least the three manuscripts revealed in 1953 by J. Leclercq-whose courteous cooperation in such matters is well knownwere not used or why the edition was not postponed when Leclercq's enlarged list appeared. It is interesting to note the Abelardian works not projected to appear in the Continuatio Mediaevalis. These works are Abelard's Ethica (to be done by D. E. Luscombe), the letters (to be re-edited by R. W. BOOK REVIEWS Southern), the Problemata Heloissae, the Hexameron, the two Collationes, and the sermons. Hence it would still be rather imprudent to contemplate the discarding of Migne vol. 178. Meantime it may be worthwhile investigating the authenticity of some works that seem to have escaped the students of Abaelardiana. MS Turin, Bibl. naz. 749 (E. V. 9) contains: Abaielardus Petrus, De sacramento altaris (s. xiv), as noticed in G. Mazzatinti, Invent. (Florence 76. MS Berlin, Staatsbibl. Elect. 851 (Theol. fol. 54) , f. contains a Postilla super ecclesiasten petri abaelardi (s.xv), according to V. Rose, Verzeichnis der lat. Handschriften II, (Berlin 1903) 986. The greatest value of the new editions is to be seen in the identification of Abelard's sources with numerous cross references all of which have been done with exemplary thoroughness. Printing errors are rare, though there is considerable inconsistency in the position of paragraph numbers, normally placed at the beginning of the line yet all too frequently found anywhere but in their proper places. Marginal references to the column in Migne (as is the case in many other volumes of the Corpus Christianorum) would have enhanced the usefulness of the edition. NICHOLAS HARING Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies Toronto, Canada Christianity and Comparative Religion. By J. N. D. ANDERSON. Illinois: Inter-Varsity Press, 1970. Pp. $1.95. This is a book which will be appreciated both by Christian theologians as well as by scholars in the field of Comparative Religion. In the 30 page introduction the author takes a very balanced stand on three points of topical interest: 1) the necessity, if any, for a syncretistic approach to the whole subject of religion; the problems raised by the phenomenon of mysticism; 3) the current vogue for dialogue rather than evangelism. The author's stand on these burning issues serves as the sub-structure upon which the entire book is patterned. It is this that leads Anderson to maintain that the historical event on which Christianity is founded is itself without parallel (chapter 2) as is also-in its fullness and essential nature-the salvation which it offers (chapter 3) and the selfdisclosure of God which it enshrines (chapter 4). Such a unique revelation of God to man naturally raises questions regarding the salvation of one who has not heard of the Christ and also about the attitude which a convinced Christian should have towards other religions. Chapter 5 BOOK REVIEWS provides brief though comprehensive answers which are derived from Sacred Scripture. Anyone who reads this book will not fail to notice that it is inspired by the faith of a convinced Christian. It is this that accounts for the very pronounced accent on the uniqueness of Christianity. The word " unique " even figures in the titles of three of the five chapters. Such an attitude would ordinarily cause the book to forfeit the serious consideration of scholars of comparative religion. This book will not meet with such a fate because, even though Anderson admits " I make no pretensions whatever to an attitude of religious detachment," nevertheless, the book shows no evidence of a bias against other religions. Paradoxically, men of other religions will not mistake this emphasis on the uniqueness of Christianity for an air of superiority. They will be impressed by his candid and sincere views in the section on " Dialogue " where he states: The church does not-and must not-apologize for the fact that it regards Jesus Christ as wholly unique; and that it wants all men to know him and to follow him. Its God-given calling is to proclaim the gospel to every creature. Inevitably, men of other religions will, sometimes at least, regard this as a mark of intolerance and arrogance--and we must humbly acknowledge that those who have carried the gospel to men of other faiths have all too often, in their frail humanity, been characterised by a spirit singularly out of keeping with the message they brought. Their attitude should always have been that of St. Paul, who proclaimed with one breath both that all men should accept the glorious news that "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners," and that he himself stood more in need of this salvation than anyone else. . . The imperative duty of the Christian to proclaim the evangel does not mean that he must always indulge in monologue and that there is no place for any form of dialogue with those of other faiths. . . . " The presupposition of genuine dialogue is not that the partners agree beforehand to relativise their own convictions, but that they accept each other as persons. In order to enter into a deep relationship with a person the essential requirement is not that he agrees with me, that I agree with him or that we are both willing to negotiate a coompromise, but rather that I turn to him with a willingness to listen to him, to understand him, to seek mutual enrichment. I do not impose my personality on him but put myself at his disposal with all that I am. As a Christian I cannot do this without reporting to him what I have come to know about Jesus Christ. I shall make it clear that I consider my faith not as an achievement, but as a gift of grace, a gift which excludes all pride, but which obliges me to speak gratefully of this Lord to all who will hear it. I shall be glad also to listen to my partner and may learn much from his account of his spiritual journey. The dialogue will be all the richer, if both of us give ourselves as we are. For the Christian that giving must include witness. It is possible for convinced Christians to enter into true dialogue with convinced Hindus or Moslems or Jews, yes and even Syncretists, without giving up their basic convictions. . . . The fact that Christians believe that they know the source of 524 BOOK REVIEWS divine truth does not mean that they have nothing to learn from men of other faiths." Those of us who have had the privilege, of participating in such conversations have often found ourselves humbled and challenged by the evidence we have seen of true devotion, of unflinching loyalty to the truth as they see it among the adherents of other religions. It is this spirit which permeates the book and makes it a lasting contribution to the personal dialogue between religions. Comparisons with other religions and the numerous references to scholarly works make the book a mine of valuable information. Its crisp and beautiful language supplemented by an abundance of quotations-a sample of which is given above-make reading it a delight. MELVYN REBEIRO Centre of Advanced Study in Philosophy Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. Vi.muism and Sivaism. By J. GoNDA. London: The Athlone Press, 1970. Pp. J. Gonda is a well-known scholar of Hinduism and has more than a dozen scholarly books on the subject to his credit. The awesome scholarpages ship is apparent from the fact that the book under review is of text and 86 pages of notes and references. The book is the outcome of the Jordan lectures given by the author in the University of London in 1969. The general theme of the Jordan lectures endowed by Rev. Louis H. Jordan and dating back to 1951 is Comparative Religion. J. Gonda introduces a new style in comparative religion. Generally, comparison of religions is between two distinct religions. But Vishnuism and Sivaism are not two religions but rather two distinct traditions within Hinduism; nor are they mutually exclusive. In the comparative discussion of these two religious traditions there is throughout the book an implicit third member of comparison, the religious tradition of the West, with which the readers in the West are familiar. This religious tradition seems to be taken as a norm for religious evaluation. This third member of comparison is never explicitly mentioned, but its presence throughout is strongly felt. The very order of topics bears this out. Dr. J. Gonda has his data very clear and well documented. He starts from the historian's point of view and traces in the first two chapters the emergence and slow evolution of the two central deities, Vishnu and BOOK REVIEWS 5fl5 Rudra-Siva, from the Veda through the great epic Mahabharata. Both were minor divinities who in the course of time absorbed the functions of several other gods and finally came to be regarded as aspects of or even identical with the absolute Divinity: "Both Vh;n:,m and Siva are in the epics, ambiguous figures, being on the one hand deities with heroic traits of character and, on the other, rising to supramundane dignity, representing or tending to represent the Supreme Being." (p. Then the book examines the theological groundwork of the two traditions. J. Gonda's main conclusion is that they are substantially the same in spite of divergence in details. The reason is that both of them are rooted in the same earlier stage " in which the germs which had lain in the preceding centuries and from which the various philosophical views or metaphysical doctrines of the future generations were to develop." (p. 18) Certain basic ideas remain constant in both traditions down the centuries: (1) the ultimate goal of all religious quest was to show a way of liberation from suffering, ignorance and death; there is a definite parallelism between the microcosm and the macrocosm, between the individual and the universe; (3) there is a constant endeavor to establish the existence of a Supreme Being as the ground and self of all beings; (4) there is a general tendency "to father religious, philosophical or sociological doctrine upon superhuman authorities " like Krishna, Vishnu, and Siva. These deities are often conceived as savior gods who grant final emancipation to their devotees. But what made these religious traditions really distinct is bhakti or devotion centered on a personal god. This devotional movement appears at a certain stage in the history of Hinduism and is clearly expressed in books like the Bhagavad Gita and the Svetwvatara Upanishad. It is difficult to trace accurately the original source of this devotional current. A majority of scholars ascribe it to the non-Vedic pre-Aryan religious tradition of India. The author suggest that it might have been latent "within the fold of Aryan antiquity." This devotional approach placed the emphasis on the cult of individual divinities representing one or other aspect of the godhead. This highly personalistic worship had to become eventually exclusivistic of other individual divinities. Both Vishnuism and Sivaism acknowledge different personal emanations from the central divinities. The most significant of them is the female divinity, Lakshmi in Vishnuism, and Sakti in Sivaism, identical in reality with the Supreme Being but with the distinctive role of being the source, creative power, and final resting place of all finite beings. An integral part of this theological vision is religious mythology and ritual worship. Though J. Gonda is a faithful reporter of the details of these two aspects, his Western background seems to be a real obstacle in appreciating them properly. Brought up in the rational tradition of 526 BOOK REVIEWS " proving " the existence of God, Gonda cannot understand why Hinduism "does not preach a God who is beyond the world of myth." (p. 20) He does not realize that, for these religious traditions, mythology is not mere folklore but real concrete theological experience. For example, the myth of the Mother Goddess creating all things provides a popular way of presenting the analogy of being, the coexistence of the Absolute Divinity, and the finite world, avoiding at the same time dualism and pantheism. In the chapter on ritual the author evidently misses several cardinal points of Hindu liturgical worship. He is wrong when he says that in the daily religious practice of masses Siva and Vishnu are merely individual members of a group of major divine figures. (p. 62) Any one who visits Hindu temples will easily find out that in the garbhagrha or the central sanctuary only one or other form of the Absolute Divinity is consecrated and venerated. All worship is centered in the one Supreme Divinty. All deities below the position of the Absolute are relegated to the outer courts of the temple. It is dangerously easy to take the elaborate temple worship as the essential part of worship. But in fact, the more elaborate the ceremony the more popular and non-essential it is. The central part of Hindu worship is consecration, in which the authorized priest invokes the Deity to be present in the sacrificial fire or in the special statue of the personal god. Though the common man is primarily preoccupied with his daily needs and takes them to the temple, still he does in no way ignore or neglect the ultimate ideals of worship, namely, liberation from suffering, ignorance and death, the realization of one's identification with the Godhead. The relation between the Great Sanskrit tradition and the Little traditions of local deities and cults is another area of confusion. Indeed, popular fancy tends to run wild and to exaggerate the local feasts and rituals. But what is actually achieved is not a mere coexistence of the two traditions. The Hindu savants who have a good grasp of the tradition and of the meaning of worship have exercised great control over local traditions through appropriate rites, ceremonies, and especially religiuos art. Through these they have intelligently and meaningfully organized the Little traditions as to bring out the relative value and function of particular deities and cults in the context of the worship of the one Supreme Divinity. These fundamental aspects of Hindu mythology and worship often missed by the detached scholar raise serious questions about the validity of the so-called scholarly approach to comparative religion. Can a scholar who examines a religious tradition from the outside really do justice to it? Both Hindus and Muslims have raised serious objections against the interpretation of their religions by comparative religionists of the West. J. Gonda's book is typical in this respect in view of the relatively BOOK REVIEWS scant references to authors from within the two religious traditions, in spite of the constant appeal to their ancient religious texts. How will Biblical scholars look upon an independent commentary on the Gospels by a Muslim or a Hindu? But J. Gonda's book is a mine of information on all the aspects of Vishnuism and Sivaism. Every page bears testimony to the painstaking study of the author. It is a good reference book in the study of popular Hinduism as it is practiced even today. JoHN B. CHETHIMATTAM Fordham University Bronx, New York Teilhard de Chardin: An Analysis and Assessment. By D. GARETH JoNES. Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter-Varsity Press, 1970. Pp. The title of this work is misleading. Although it aims at analyzing the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the still controversial Jesuitpaleontologist, it never really does so. The study is based mainly on secondary sources, notably Christopher Mooney's Teilhard de Chardin and the Mystery of Christ (New York: Harper and Row, 1966), Emile Rideau's Teilhard de Chardin: A Guide to His Thought (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), and N. M. Wilders's An Introduction to Teilhard de Chardin (New York: Harper and Row, 1968). Teilhard's own writings, with the exception of The Phenomenon of Man and The Divine Milieu, are referred to almost not at all. The fact that the " analysis " of Teilhard's writings is really a conglomeration of diverse conclusions from Teilhard's commentators makes this short book somewhat confusing and lacking an over-all point of view. That the author is unusually unaware of what Teilhard has written is evident from the author's assessment of Teilhard's thought. One tends to believe Jones's claim of objectivity and lack of commitment to Teilhard's presuppositions and to accept Jones's own perspective as that of a believing Catholic. But good will on the part of an author is not a substitute for the author's referring to the primary sources of the subject he is studying. Now that most of Teilhard's works have been published, at least in French, there is extensive scholarship being done in the area of Teilhardian studies. Much of this, as far as one can tell, is being done by authors working on doctoral dissertations, or by those who have recently completed doctoral studies but have published little or nothing so far. It seems particularly difficult for such scholars, without well-known names 5Q8 BOOK REVIEWS in the field of theology, to get their studies published; Catholic publishers, given the present low state of the market for Catholic theology books, are understandably hesitant to publish works by unknown authors. This is unfortunate from many points of view. For one thing, the impression might be given that the pamphlets occasionally published, like the one under review, represent the present state of Teilhardian scholarship. This would be a false impression. For the time being, however, anyone who wants to keep up with scholarship in the area of Teilhardian studies is required to seek, not in books, but in the recent theological journals. RoBERT L. FARreY, S. J. The Catholic University of America Washington, D. C. Evolution In Perspective: Commentaries in Honor of Pierre Lecomte du Noily. Edited by G. N. SHUSTER and R. E. THORSON. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970. Pp. 300. $10.00. This anthology is gleaned from papers delivered at a Paris colloque and a later (October, 1967) conference on evolution held at Notre Dame University. It consists of twenty-five papers read by twenty-five different contributors. Dr. Shuster, one of the editors, is not one of the contributors. Of the contributors, sixteen are closely connected with France, either through parentage and/or education. Also, thirteen of the twentyfive are professionals in a scientific, technological, or medical field of endeavor. The whole volume is divided into two main divisions: the first, consisting of fourteen contributions, deals mainly with various substantive issues in evolutionary theory; the second, with eleven entries, is concerned largely with commemorations contributed by people with whom du Noiiy was closely associated in his life and work. The transition from Part One to Part Two is marked in the Table of Contents and Preface but not in the text itself. The papers vary quite a bit in length, with those in Part One ranging from about six to thirty-seven pages, while those in Part Two range from about four to twenty-one pages. The only exceptionally short article, occurring in Part One, is Langan's twopage commentary on a previous paper by Dupre. The purpose of the anthology, as stated by the two editors in their Preface, is to combine scientific, philosophic, and religious knowledge around the two central conference themes of original thinking on man in evolution and (rather belatedly) the work of du Noiiy (1883-1947) with respect to the same subject. The editors also use the Preface for a brief BOOK REVIEWS 529 comparison of du Noiiy with de Chardin and for briefly indicating the contents of the ensuing papers. They note that du Noiiy and de Chardin can be said to agree on the fact of some kind of evolutionary development, that the human brain is the summit of the process, that the future depends upon how man uses his brain, and that man has an ultimate spiritual destiny centered around Christ. The two men differed, however, insofar as de Chardin tended to emphasize collective evolution while du Noiiy emphasized individualism in evolutionary development. The first paper in the work is by S. W. Fox. He is concerned with whether or not a continuing life-process can be started in the laboratory. He believes it can; du Noiiy believed it could not. The paper's main purpose, then, is to show that du Noiiy was wrong. This is attempted by summarizing the research done, especially since 1950, and emphasizing his own research, carried on with Kaoru Harada, on the various ways scientists can produce in a test tube the major ingredients found in a primitive cell. While admitting that a biologist cannot outright synthesize a whole cell, Fox claims that he can and has shown how a simplified cell could have emerged from primitive gases, through the amino acids, and protein-like polymers. This is all it would take to begin an evolutionary process. The organization of this primitive material, due to inherent qualities of proper crystallization under the right conditions, would take care of itself. Once started, the primitive self-replicating heterotroph would evolve ways of synthesizing internally its own ingredients, thus starting evolution on its way. Although the paper gives a good summary of the work done on the laboratory synthesis of basic cell components up to the time of the paper, it still does not seem to really speak to the main point of du Noiiy's objections, namely, that such organizational synthesis could not have taken place in pristine times without intelligent direction. Thorson's contribution, "Evolutionary Parsimony," is aimed at counterbalancing the widespread tendency to overemphasize the diversity of life structures. On the contrary, the author insists, conservatism dominates all levels of biological organization. This can be seen on the molecular level in the low number of actual combinations and sequences of molecular parts, on the level of energy transfer in the two main processes of photosynthesis and oxidation, on the cellular level in the basic " monotony " of cell structures, on the organismic level in the elimination of unnecessary parts and functions, and also on the population and community levels. By emphasizing that living nature possesses variety within relatively narrow limits, and, furthermore, that the variety is fairly stable, the paper is indeed a much needed corrective to many popular accounts of nature that one can find in evolutionary literature. Also, such an overview could be used as an argument for orthogenesis, something that du Noiiy would have favored. 530 BOOK REVIEWS The two following articles are especially interesting and " original " insofar as they do not merely repeat the standard evolutionary stories la Life magazine and so many highschool and college texts. The paper by Pierre Grasse, a French Zoologist, discusses "Some Uncertainties of Evolution." It must not be thought that Frenchmen per se are antievolutionists. On this point, as an aside, one may wish to read a letter to the editor of Science (26 February, 1971} written by G. Pasteur in which he points out that they are not opposed to evolution in general but that they generally do have deep doubts about the mechanisms controlling evolution. Grasse would seem to fit this picture. He begins by emphasizing the facts that modern man can think only in evolutionary terms, that the living world would be unintelligible without some notion of evolution, and that the complications of living forms are not numerous, there being perhaps only twenty to twenty-five principal organizational plans for all of animate nature. There is also in nature great stability within narrow limits. The facts of observation show us not " living matter " but living beings, related in great families, having unity and individuality. For this reason, thinks the author, any talk (such as Fox's) about recreating some primordial protoplasm is ill-founded. To the author, this unity of the biosphere within narrow limits proves the common origin of all living things. This should be especially obvious, he thinks, when one considers that all reproductive mechanisms are basically the same. However, even after all this is admitted, some serious problems remain. Grasse feels that he can speak freely about these problems since the sensible neo-Darwinians are very open-minded about accepting criticisms. He records how some well-known Darwinians have even personally sought out those who could offer well-reasoned critiques. The first problem he mentions is the failure of Darwinians to explain the co-adaptations among the parts of a complicated organ such as the eye or ear (which is more complicated than the eye). The probability that such arrangements among themselves and within the body could have happened by chance is infinitesimally small. Related to the above is the problem of how organisms acquire new characteristics. Any real knowledge about the origin of the gene and its functions is completely lacking. There are also certain inconsistencies, such as why simple cells contain such a relatively high proportion of DNA in relation to higher mammals such as man, which are unexplained. In addition, one of the most troubling aspects of the Darwinian claims is that by and large the history of animate nature shows a great lack of change. Thousands of species undergo continuous mutations but they do not change. Over-all, up until the Triassic age there appears to have been orthogenetic development. Since then, though, there is only residual evolution. "We have slight changes but they are embellishments. The a BOOK REVIEWS 531 plan is unchanged. I would certainly not say that evolution has ended. Yet should you ask me to demonstrate that evolution continues, I would be hard put to do so." (p. 41) The author ends his paper by emphasizing the need to continue the search for the causes of evolution instead of complacently repeating Darwinian slogans. And, when doing so, one should not be too quick in throwing out final causes for, after all, Darwin himself was a great believer in teleology under the guise of the principle of utility. Grasse's paper is followed in the text by a contribution by Morris Goldman, a Johns Hopkins Doctor of Science in biology. Goldman gives his talk the same title as that of an 1863 book by T. H. Huxley, "Man's Place in Nature." The author considers a reconciliation between the religious and secular views of nature to be impossible and wants to show how, try as they may, the secularists cannot find a substitute for the religious view. Yet, as if driven by some irrational compulsion, the secularists continue to develop all sorts of schemes to make men better. Bentley Glass, for instance, is an example of a scientist trying to get an ethics out of the facts of biology. G. G. Simpson is an example of a scientist who admits that ethics cannot be derived from biology, but who is quite willing to invent an arbitary set of ethical goals for himself which happen to be of a "wonderfully American early twentieth century vintage." (p. 49) To take another example, Julian Huxley is a secularist who goes to the extreme of simply dictating a set of very idealistic ethical rules to everyone. Goldman goes on to discuss some difficulties with the secularist view that mankind is an accident of amoral nature. He notes how many species, such as the lemurs, lorises, and tarsiers, though almost a hundred million years old, have changed very little. There are also large gaps lacking any intermediate specimens between the prosimian primates of the Eocene and the simians of the Miocene. What few fragments do exist force biologists to make judgments based largely upon dentition, a very unreliable foundation. To an honest biologist, " the story reconstructed from the tangible evidence, as opposed to speculation, is one of tremendous gaps in the record both of time and space, of tenuous grasping at teeth to establish phylogeny almost to the exclusion of the rest of the body, and of gross discontinuities between forms supposedly related to each other by direct genetic descent." (p. 5B) The author is led by the scientific evidence to question the entire neoDarwinian mechanism. He finds statistical probability all against regarding genetic changes in DNA as the root cause of species change and cannot understand why, when according to their own principles it should be possible, biologists have not been able to evolve in the laboratory higher taxa from among bacteria and protozoans. He is also struck by the BOOK REVIEWS great abandon with which habits are inferred from fossil remains, something which is scientifically impossible. The whole notion of progressive development is also disputed. For instance, which monkeys are the more advanced ones? Old World monkeys, supposedly the more primitive, do not appear in the fossil record until ten million years after the great apes. While the marmoset, a very primitive New World monkey, lacks a last molar, just as is happening to man now. In addition, although completely separated for millions of years, Cercopithecoidea and Ceboidea are still basically the same in structure and habits. Consequently, it would seem that "parallel evolution or common heritage is invoked not on the basis of objectively clear distinctions, but rather on the basis of what will best fit a previous speculation concerning the relationship between the forms involved." (p. 55) However, even granting the stories of the neo-Darwinians, the quick increase in brain size for man is left unexplained. The various theories that have been proposed are shown by the author to suffer insurmountable logical or factual difficulties. In the end, the fact that nature shows great uniformity within narrow bounds is a good reason to believe that mutations must be dangerous if not lethal and that orthogenesis under divine guidance is the more likely scientific theory. The role of finalism in science is now taken up in more detail in the three following papers. In discussing teleology in biology, Chauvin quickly moves from attempting to see the problem as a commentary on du Noiiy or in philosophical terms to attempting to delineate the main outlines of the problem as faced by the biologist. The biologist, he states, must avoid falling into either of the two extremes of nothing but finalist descriptions or nothing but strict mechanistic descriptions, the latter of which he thinks involves affirming a pure chance universe. Both approaches have their place and should be preserved. This discussion leads into the question of the origin of organic machines. The ready answer is neo-Darwinianism. " The neo-Darwinians take a very convenient stand, and I mistrust stands that are too convenient. For them the world has no mysteries. They know all there is to be known about the complete genesis of all organisms. I asure you that I do not exaggerate." (p. 65) Part of the non-mysterious mechanism is the denial of teleology. It is here that Chauvin takes the greatest exception. Although evolution cannot be denied, the special theories of development can and should be criticized. This he proceeds to do using the mutationist models of Fisher and Reicht as his starting point. His objections are several in number. First of all, there exists no firm foundation upon which any mathematical calculations can be made. Futhermore, even if the formulas are regarded merely as tentative trials, they are not really trials because there is BOOK REVIEWS 588 no way one can experimentally distinguish the more accurate from the less accurate. Secondly, there is the whimsical and arbitrary manner in which the parameters are selected. There can be as many important factors as there are biologists, none of whom can be refuted by any other. In this connection the author takes Fisher to task for having said that " selective advantage could by definition be sufficiently slight to escape, again by definition, all our means of measurement." (p. 67) Chauvin finds this attitude on the part of a supposedly reputable scientist impossible to take seriously. The problem of the role of genes in mutations constitutes a third objection. Putting aside the question of how slight mutations could have produced the eye or ear, the author concentrates his attention on simpler cases observed today, especially the cases of the various imitator butterflies. Some edible species can imitate inedible ones and vice versa with great exactitude. Some can imitate vegetation, also with great exactitude. How are these mutations to be explained? To call upon genes is like talking about the soporific power of opium. As a result, the author is forced to conclude that "neo-Darwinism, and in great part the old forms of Lamarckianism, are nothing more than the childhood hypotheses of biology." (p. 69) Chauvin's work is followed by that of Ladriere on the role of finality in a philosophically evaluated cosmology, the longest article in Part One. The issue of mechanism versus finality is again raised. The author believes that, largely through the influence of du Noiiy, teleology has been reintroduced on respectable scientific grounds. To understand how this is possible one must distinguish two types of biological descriptions: those in terms of process and those in terms of structure. Under the first heading the author gives considerable space to outlining the changes that have taken place over the last few centuries with respect to the scientific status of determinism and causality. Merely having principles of connection, which are basic to all sciences, is not sufficient for a causal relation since all causal relations are connections but not vice versa. This, however, should not turn one away from causality, for all principles of reasoning in science are a priori, including those of connection, variation, and conservation. This can only be appreciated by taking the over-view, as did someone like du Noliy. Thus, "The true reason for the intelligibility possessed by particular laws is due not to their applicability to experience but to their conformity to a universal principle. In other words, the understanding of the parts is possible only on the basis of an understanding of the whole." (p. 76) Scientists are usually not explicitly aware of the a priori conditions of their own work. It is up to the philosopher to explain them to the scientist. So it is objectively true that, just as facts have an a priori status as that which is given, so laws presume an a 534 BOOK REVIEWS priori understanding of the whole of nature of which facts are the parts. (d. pp. 77, 86) This theme is maintained throughout the paper. Based upon this view, the author arrives at his definition of finality, namely, "the idea of an influence of the whole on the parts is precisely the idea of finality (at least in one sense of the term)." (p. 86) If one suspected thus far that Ladriere is very much under the influence of Kant and Hegel, the impression is hereafter confirmed. The two models of finality which he thinks worthy of consideration are the Kantian and the Hegelian. For Kant, finality is merely a maxim of judgment, an " as if," the highest formal unity the scientist can achieve. For Hegel, finality is a law of the One or Absolute, the Spirit acting as its own reflection and goal. Ladriere rejects the Hegelian model because Hegel did not bother to study nature first. He thinks that Kant's position is also weak but that it can be reconstituted by adding Hegel's notion of reflection. At this point the author poses two questions to himself: How are the parts affected by the over-all movement of the whole? and Does nature in its very existence require something beyond itself? (cf. pp. 94, 99) The author believes that the universe must be understood in terms of field theory in which each part is a whole, a monad summing up the whole world by means of action. "Thus, each thing is the instantaneous passage of the universe, a center of convergence and divergence, of gathering and scattering; it is the fleeting emergence of the universal stuff, the concresence of duration, the concrete aspect of genesis." (p. 99) He also believes that in order to have freedom within nature, i. e., the power and action of synthesis, it was first necessary to have a freedom from outside of nature as a whole, i.e., creation. From this point on philosophy must step aside and allow revelation to enter. Du Noiiy's views on finality are now treated with more precision in a paper by Meyer. As he points out, emphasizing finality in nature is not a true estimate of du Noiiy's biological work. In fact, du Noiiy had his doubts about the finality of individual adaptations. What du Noiiy really affirmed was a telefinalism, a progressive evolution on the macromechanism on the cosmic level rather than an adaptive-conservative microcosmic level. To understand du Noiiy's mind on the subject one must appreciate the great importance he gave to the role of time, the long term, in his science. If man's imagination is tied to the time he can experience, he will never understand evolution. For this reason the ordinary biologist, who works with small events, is usually an anti-finalist. However, the paleontologist, who has a more direct view of emense time, is usually more open to telefinalism, to that great enveloping curve which carries life forever upward. Du Noiiy's own initial and fundamental intuition into telefinalism, claims the author, came from his research on the development of the new fibers which close wounds. (cf. pp. 114, BOOK REVIEWS 535 184ff) Here du Noiiy could see on a small scale what must be happening on the large scale, namely, the perfecting and, metaphorically speaking, the closing of the gaps in the great pattern of life at an accelerating pace. The selections now shift gears and take on a more eclectic appearance. Morot-Sir's contribution on French philosophy of science gives an interesting glimpse of current French thought. The author emphasizes how even science possesses cultural differences, how there is a diversity of traditions leading to science, and how " for more than a century a sort of intellectual solidarity has been established between positivism and science, as if positivism were the only legitimate theory of science." (p. 118) He also claims that Descartes still remains the great touchstone of French science, at least insofar as the heart of scientific theory is still interpreted by most French scientists as being a problem of mathematical progress. The author sees no contradiction between this general outlook and the French interest in time, life, finality, and consciousness, four topics currently in vogue. His predictions for the future are that the French, and through them the world, will come to a clearer understanding of the facts that there is no pure or culture-free science, that all the sciences must be ultimately unified, and that science itself demands a religious source of faith. In his article on philosophical exigence, Gouhier attempts to say something about the nature of philosophy and the non-philosophical influences on philosophy. It is a mistake, he thinks, to try to compare the history of science with the history of philosophy. The former is relatively unimportant, but the latter shows a constant resurgence of the past into the present. To understand philosophy one must philosophize, and in doing so one learns that there is no philosophically neutral definition of philosophy. The best one can do along these lines is to call philosophy a vision of the world and the attempt to say what is seen. In creating one's vision, though, one cannot leave out science, religion, and culture. This approach seems to have been very congenial to du Noiiy, for he was a unifier who appreciated the differences of different kinds of time, i.e., histories. It seems that what du Noiiy wanted most was to replace Renan's Future of Science with a new work much less narrow-minded in scope. Father Dubarle begins his paper with a brief personal reminiscence about how du Noiiy had helped him realize the possibility of harmonizing science and faith. The same sentiment is implicit in many of the other contributions. However, this general indebtedness does not preclude certain deep felt differences in outlook. Dubarle is especially concerned with whether or not du Noiiy's long range optimism can be sustained under the conditions stated by du Noiiy. Can man really predict his own future, especially that a super-spiritual humanity will emerge? Even though du Noiiy's two main reasons for optimism are well taken, namely, the global 536 BOOK REVIEWS success of evolution up to the present and the fact of Christ as proof of the possibility of a perfected man, the author does not see these as necessitating du Noiiy's telefinalism. Men could just as well choose to regress, and, without God's grace and help they most likely will. The number of the elect is always small, even in global evolution. If mankind counts upon nothing but itself and the spontaneous powers of evolution, the number is bound to become even smaller. The relationship of science and religion is approached from another angle by Paul Weiss. His purpose is to examine the main alternatives in order to show their relative strengths and weaknesses. One way of looking at the relationship is the question-begging one of simply declaring them to be incompatible. Another is the language game approach which makes each enterprise equally legitimate while still being irreconcilable. This view, however, is still only a program and, worse still, tacitly gives preference to common language and the natural sciences as criteria of dependability. The only proper attitude, thinks the author, is that neither science nor religion can reject the other out of hand. To consider both, though, requires a philosophical over-view. It means that both religion and science must be regarded as coming from a " third world " or common source so that each be thought of in such a way that neither is degraded with respect to the other. At times Weiss sounds rather like a follower of Averroes. With respect to the manner of their coming from a common source, Weiss sees two main possibilities: the emergentist view and the substantialist view. Du Noiiy is placed in the former camp as an evolutionary emergentist. The author, however, finds many of his conclusions ill-founded and rejects the former view. He prefers instead the substantialist view, which can be further subdivided into one that emphasizes the facets or abstractions of spatiotemporal things (science) and one that emphasizes the "ultimate realities on which the different inquiries depend and which they explore under limiting conditions." (p. 15!i!) These, as with science and religion, are not mutually exclusive. Although disagreeing with du Noiiy's form of reconciliation, the author nevertheless sees du Noiiy as an example of a reconciling mind. The author himself thinks " the world contains a plurality of substantial beings which are affected by transcendental realities to turn them, among other things, into entities in a cosmos, or into entities which have a sacral status, the one being studied in science and the other accepted in religion." (p. 154) As a commentary and critique upon Weiss's paper Hartshorne writes his "Deity as the Inclusive Transcendence." He feels that something is sorely needed to remedy the classical description of God's relationship to the world. The answer to this need, he thinks, is process philosophy, the view that " the most concrete or determinate units of reality " are not " things or persons passing through successive changes, but momentary BOOK REVIEWS 537 actualities which become or are created, though they do not change. often intiChange is the successive becoming of distinguishable-though (p. 156) Hartshorne mately related and closely similar-actualities." takes his description of process philosophy as applicable to all process philosophers, mentioning in particular the Buddhists, Whitehead, and Peirce. He does not, however, mention Veatch's charge that such a view renders change unintelligible by replacing changing things with a series of creations and annihilations out of that which no longer exists. The author, though, does try to save Weiss's "substance" by claiming a certain genetic (generic?) identity amid processes. "The process view is that the identity is somewhat abstract, and that this abstract reality, like all abstractions, must be defined through the more concrete, momentary actualities and their qualities and relations." (Zoe. cit.) Such a view, he continues, assumes a kind of pananimism and potency in God in a typically Whiteheadian fashion. And, although he uses terms like God is being, God is living, etc., it is clear that the meanings have been altered to suit a Whiteheadian metaphysics. But is this not a revival of some old-fashioned pantheism? No, it is a panentheism, an attempt to give God a personality even though he is no more really real than any other actual entity. As far as the relationship of science and religion is concerned, science has nothing to say about God. It does have a great deal to say about his universe. In doing so science serves a religious purpose. It tells us what God has done. To continually enlarge this knowledge is the " sufficient religious contribution of science." (p. 159) Part One concludes with an essay by Dupre on Dumery's philosophy of religion and a comment thereon by Langan. In an atheistic evolutionary scheme, Dupre begins, higher levels of reality must emerge from lower levels so that the effect must be superior to its cause. Du Noiiy avoided this qualitative leap problem by insisting upon a theistic finalism. But there is another issue not emphasized by Du Noiiy, namely, the old problem of divine causality in relation to human freedom. How can a free man be the result of a divinely guided evolution? According to Dumery, the philosopher must deny God as the cause. Drawing his inspiration from Plotinus, Blonde!, and Husser!, Dumery proposed his theory of actlaw which allows human autonomy only within limits and postulates the absolute end of choice as union with the One. In his doctrine, there is no analogy of being, God is totally other, and unknown by human reason. Man, therefore, needs revelation. Also, nature (science) is of no help in coming to a knowledge of God himself (or is it itself?) . But even revelation must be carefully handled. Dumery admitted that there is an unchanging absolute element within the great relativity of revelation language. Exactly what it is, though, takes much scholarship to discern. In the process of discernment one must not confuse historical facts with religious facts. This does ont mean that the latter falsify 538 BOOK REVIEWS history. On the contrary, although one cannot deny the hard-core facts of history, these alone are not the whole truth. The meaning of history, and especially of sacred history, is given to history by humans. In this regard, Dumery would find himself in accord with the principles of modem exegesis, for instance, as shown in the work of Dulles. In his comment on Dupre, Langan makes several points. He notes that Dupre misparaphrased Demery in one place, that Dumery seems to change character during the paper (from an emanationist in the beginning to a phenomenologist at the end), and that when all is said Dumery cannot avoid being a Hegelian. Hegel's fate was unitelligibility because he tried to teach contradictions. Dumery's fate can be no better. History cannot be objective and subjective at the same time and in the same way; if there are facts, there can be no free rein on interpretation; if the ego creates its own object, the struggle to know history is doomed. The selections in Part Two (pp. 172ff) are much more directed to du Noiiy's personal life. One learns a great deal about du Noiiy as a scientist, friend, and co-worker. Some papers, such as that by Goillot on du Noiiy's instruments and experimental techniques, are accompanied by many fine photographs and diagrams. Others, such as those by Trefouel and Balachowsky, give several insights into the" off the record" du Noiiy. Perhaps the most commemorative, though, is the talk given by Madame du Noiiy. She stresses her husband's perseverance, love of wisdom, open-mindedness, and devotion to his personal and scientific families. Perhaps the best indication of his personal worth is that those who loved him when alive continued to do so after his death. She relates how her husband did not live to know the tremendous success of his work throughout the world. But even after "my husband's death, Millikan-who never passed through New York without coming to see me-repeatedly told me that he always kept Human Destiny beside his bed, right next to the Bible, and referred to it constantly." (p. 242) The Millikan referred to is R. A. Millikan (1868-1953), the 1953 Nobel Prize winner in physics (who should not be confused with R. S. Mulliken, the 1966 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, and also of the University of Chicago). On the whole, this volume is a good work for a seminar in the philosophy of evolution, as well as a source of information on du Noiiy. It provides many starting points for discussions on a wide spectrum of topics. Moreover, insofar as it provides some responsible criticism of neo-Darwinian theory and emphasizes that teleology is not necessarily anti-scientific, it can· be said to live up to its title. The book itself is well constructed with few typographical errors. F. F. CENTORE St. Jerome's College University of Waterloo Canada BOOK REVIEWS 539 The Spirit of American Philosophy. By GERALD MYERS. Vol. VIII of The Spirit of Western Civilization, New York: Capricorn Books, 1971. Pp. $M5. A publisher's brochure explains that the series to which this volume belongs is intended to convey understanding of the " intellectual spirit " of various periods in Western intellectual history from "a contemporary point of view." Selections illustrative of or defining each "spirit" arc offered, with introductory essays arguing the case for their membership in each group. The general effort is not merely to provide anthologies but to advance theses of continuity, of intended or unintended exemplification of some trans-historical Zeitgeist in each period explored. At least in the present volume, no general or specific editorial foreword is offered to indicate the controversiality of such a plan, what might be meant by a " spirit " comprised of all thinkers in one period, or why several generations of scholarly doubts about such a methodology were ill-informed or poorly-grounded. Perhaps the promise of a " contemporary point of view" refers to a case soon to be made for this approach. Apparently, though there is much in American history which " ought to be remembered" by philosophers (preface), we need not remember the dangers of asserting or purifying the Zeitgeist in "its " relation to those out of, alienated from, or differing with the putative " mainstream." Specifically, Prof. Myers's volume argues a case-history approach to two theses: that there is one "spirit" of American philosophy, and that it is characterized by " traditional respect for the individual " and by the effort to define the conditions for the flourishing of same by way of a native Pragmatism. As this work has occupied the entire culture, selections are offered from such technically non-philosophers as Horace Mann, Lincoln, and William Graham Sumner. The book's six sections present evidence, interpretation, and argument to support the two theses in regard to religion, government, morality, education, metaphysics, and recent professional philosophical arguments for pluralism. Discussion must wait as to what could be meant by a pervasive cultural ideology of individualism which is nevertheless pluralistic; my first concern shall be to examine how Prof. Myers presents his case for an American V olksgeist, with special attention to his first section--Qn religion. The notion of a cultural " spirit " begins definition when it is identified with a culture's traditions; the covenant theology of Puritanism surely qualifies in some sense as a tradition in America. But alarm arises as soon as covenant theology is claimed to have provided the Puritans with some sort of value-security such that, with it, a Puritan " can conduct his life with the asurance that he knows what the deity wants of him and that his own finite evaluations have divine recognition." Such a statement 540 BOOK REVIEWS cannot withstand confrontation with the evidence: it is just exactly the suspended quality of the "chosen" in history, their eternally significant challenge and historically flawed capabilities to carry it off which forged the tension and drama of committing themselves to God and each other in order to build the Holy Commonwealth in mutual bond and perhaps even fanatical single-mindedness. "Assurance" and "security," if at all, would occur only insofar as one knew what the community has been called to do; whether any particular person or evaluation of what to think or do was actually obedient to God's will could never be fully known in time. It was just the decline of Puritanism and covenant theology due to increasing security and "Enlightenment " which brought on " divine recognition " and denouement to the drama. Attempting to work some sort of individualism into covenanted theocracy, Prof. Myers exceeds credulity by interpreting the covenanting individual's role as "analogous to the 'businessman'." On what grounds? Because a businessman is continually " negotiating and signing agreements " ! Political contract-theory is confused with legal contract, and both with covenant theology: "Dealing with God and dealing with fellowmen are both of the same pattern." Dealing? What might be, as Socrates asked Euthyphro, the service which man can provide to the gods? Prof. Myers continues, "the American conception of life held that life is a profoundly serious business to conduct " ; yet no pun was intended- he seems literally to mean " business." The Christian humanist logic of Deventer and Cambridge, by which the imitatio Dei became interpreted in the early 17th century as the open drama of " invention " and the mirroring of the Logos in "judgment " so as to " generate" creativity through human artifice modelled on and inquiring into the Divine ways in nature, this philosophical dialectic of the challenge and constructivity of reflection and action, has here degenerated into Prof. Myers's claim that, since man is made in the image of God and can know something of his nature, Puritans therefore believed that " God was a Person with whom man could do business .... " As one might expect by now, Jonathan Edwards comes in for hard times, as he presumably is running headstrong against the V olksgeist with its individualism, security, and optimism. Curiously, although clergy were the colonial intellectual leadership, with whom the laity joined regularly in " erudite discussions of subtle theological problems," (p. 4) Edwards as our " first distinguished philosopher " was dismissed by his congregation, according to Prof. Myers, because his philosophy of religion was complicated and " gloomy," (p. 5) " too harsh to live with and too intricate to reason through." (p. 6) As to why he should be considered distinguished, one can only guess. Why the turning of a deaf ear to Edward's views? Allegedly, because he deviated from covenant theory in denying any BOOK REVIEWS 541 " respite " from the doctrine of original sin. But what is Edward's theory of choice in his Freedom of the Will if not a "subtle" analysis of the act of decision under conditions forever ultimately unknowable? Such a theory is no "respite," perhaps, but surely not fatalistic. For Edwards such acts of choice occur, and can be done well or poorly. That he was fired is a fact; that the V olksgeist has done any better on this issue is at least yet to be proven. What conclusion is to be drawn, then, thus far? Are there two "spirits" in American philosophy, one individualistic and encouraging, the other absolutistic and fatalistic? No, what happens is that Edwards, however "technical" he may have been so as to interest professionals today, lost the audience and therefore " ceased to be a candidate for representing the spirit of American culture." (p. 6) One begins to suspect the emergence, not of essays introductory to various American philosophers at work but to The Ideology of True Americanism. We are not told why the Volksgeist gave up on Calvinism, nor whether there has been a better theory of community than covenant theology, or what the Federalist Papers owed thereto. Curiously, given his concern for individualism, Prof. Myers does not include either Edwards's work or any other American philosopher's work on the issues of freedom and determinism. Prof. Myers sensibly includes Josiah Royce-the selection from The Sources of Religious Insight on how reason proves God-but adheres to to his doctrine of individualism consistently enough to criticize Royce's rejection of individualism as not really American, too narrowly intellectual, (pg. 10) though (graciously) Royce otherwise conforms to orthodoxy. Whitehead, too, is included, arguing that religion is "world-loyalty," that there is no religious consciousness until individuality is "merged" with a whole intuited value of loyalty, such that as universalized it can generate devoutness toward God, self, and others. In what sense can such a view be reconciled with doing " business " with God or with individualism or security? Yet somehow, finally, Royce and Whitehead "represent" the " tradition which is able to explore itself and mark for survival what ought to be preserved." It is? Considerably more space and time would be needed to detail the whole of Prof. Myers's case. Five examples must suffice: the "tradition " calls for government to grant a separate " spirit " to monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic sympathies, yet it is also characteristically interdependent as to factions and ever more tending toward " combination " (pp. ; America's famous Declaration is really one of "Individuality " which we though this is not an orthodoxy or system, all "must" embrace, (p. only a "schema" or "guideline" for experimental approaches to morality, but again there really is a " folk-morality " of the " self-made man and ... [his] hyperbolic concern for individual success" (pg. 114); regard- 542 BOOK REVIEWS ing the alleged American custom of checking our high ideals by pragmatic testing, "it is a fact-and no professor of philosophy, however, gnawing his qualms, can indefinitely refrain from saying [believing?] it at least once in his life-that the spirit of American culture is essentially Pragmatic," (p. 176) presumably thereby exiling all American Trancendentalists, Idealists, and any opponents of Pragmatism; American metaphysics occurs due to the natural disposition of our " religious culture " to provide a speculative frame for individualism, optimism, and " innocence," notwithstanding James's "pure experience," Santayana, Royce, and Whitehead, or such optimism and innocence as that generated by the Watts riots, Newark, Detroit, the Vietnam war, My Lai, Kent State, Jackson State, the Chicago police riots, assassinations, and the obsolescence of most of our institutions; and finally " pluralism " is offered, as the fragmentation of American academic philosophy such that no " official " philosophy can today be pointed up, but still what the Volksgeist will "mark" for "survival" is Nagel's "contextualistic naturalism" because it rejects necessity, characterizes a " loose-fitting universe " and affirms " scientific method " as the " only " philosophical avenue which can be self-corrective. (p. 30!'l) Much remains to be said. Dewey is alleged to reduce everything to " experience," as if he had no efforts at a theory of nature; Brightmen, Boodin, Perry, Sellars, Weiss, Buchler, Lamprecht, Feibleman, and so many others are not even mentioned; the old canard is revived, that American thought is derivative from European models, in disregard of all scholarly efforts at clarification in that regard (one of them by fellow" Spirit" editor Bruce Wilshire on James and European phenomenology). But a sympathetic overview of Prof. Myers's effort must be attempted: occasionally he is aware of the danger of phrases such as " the " spirit of something, though less so of the danger of the term " spirit " in the present meaning. The continuous, dangerous temptation to relapse into dogmatic security and enthusiastic ideologies would allegedly be countered if there "really is" an instinctual American stubbornness toward all intellectual constructs yet to be tried; but neither the record at large nor Prof. Myers's own gathering of the evidence warrant such a hope. As Prof. Herbert Schneider wrote in his History of American Philosophy, " the reader of this story will probably be at least as bewildered as I am in trying to tell what American history teaches or what American philosophy ' stands for '. . .. it is prudent to let others draw the portraits of our ancestral soul and outline the basic dialectic in our national existence. Our past is fully as confused as our present. Its vitality, therefore, must be sought, not in any definable quality or direction of movement, but in that vague yet tangible energy which it exerts when it is faced with new ideas." 543 BOOK REVIEWS There have been many " spirits," more American philosophers than scholars have as yet exhumed, and more in the making. If an optimistic prospect is sought for today's near-despair, almost unrelieved anxiety and shrillness, it would surely be more likely located in the richness, variety, drama, and irresolution of America's philosophic history, variously adaptive or maladaptive as evaluations and evaluators themselves respond or fail under pressure-here, I think, more surely than in attempting to construct a consistent and coherent case for a single philosophische Volksgeist, 1609-1970. One must sympathize with the motivation that this country's history requires and strongly rewards careful inquiry into its philosophical past; reflection as to where we are, how we came here, and whither our needs and capabilities should take us cannot flourish without acutely acquiring in the present that entire past, as well as our scholarly efforts allow. Unfortunately, the present undertaking, in that light, must be assessed as distorting and, at its worst, perniciously question-begging: for if individualism and some reducing of moral judgment and risk to " method " are at the bottom of our present inability to reach each other and covenant anew in common cause, toward liberty a;nd justice, next time, truly for all, then we must hope that Prof. Myers's case is not merely distorted and confused but also false, that is, that we have some actual options. CRAIG wALTON Emory University Atlanta, Georgia Prophets of the West. By JoHN EDWARD SuLLIVAN. New York: Rinehart, and Winston. 1970. Pp. 319. Holt, John Edward Sullivan's introduction to the philosophy of history admirably fulfills its intention. The author has an excellent grasp of source materials in the subject, and if certain areas such as evolutionary theory do not receive more attention, it is perhaps because of the necessary limitation imposed on the author by the wealth of material. The book is divided into four sections. The first begins with Augustine's progressivism, examines the classical philosophies of progress, the dialectical history of Hegel and Marx, and the evolutionary history of Comte and Spencer. The second section entitled (inappropriately, I believe) "Historicism, Complete and Incomplete," treats such figures as Rickert, Dilthery, Croce, and Collingwood. The third considers Spengler, Toynbee, Sorokin, and Kroeber. The 544 BOOK REVIEWS final section treats the humanistic evolutionism of Julian Huxley and the Christian evolutionism of Teilhard de Chardin. The work covers many more figures than similar introductions to philosophy of history by W. H. Walsh and Karl LOwith, although Walsh devotes more attention to the analysis of historical explanation and Lowith concerns himself more than Sullivan with the theology of history. Although somewhat surprised by the limited attention paid to Vico, this reviewer was much gratified to read the splendid section on the muchneglected Wilhelm Dilthey who figured so prominently in the history of ideas for over a half-century. One might object, however, to the characterization of Nietzsche's revival of eternal recurrence as pessimistic. However much he differed from the Greeks in cyclic theory, his theory of eternal recurrence must be considered in relation to his theory of the over-reaching and exultant tl"bermensch. The only serious objection to this excellent book is the omission of any treatment of Greek cyclicism against which the real significance of both secular and religious linear philosophies must be compared. RoBERT PAUL MoHAN The Catholic Univm-sity of America Washington, D. C. The Essential Philo. Ed. by NAHuM N. GLATZER. New York: Schocken Press, 1971. Pp. $8.95. There is a continuous line from Plato to the Fourth Gospel. During the intervening centuries Plato's Idea received many supplementary insights and concepts into itself. In all probability the most significant, from the standpoint of later Christian teaching, was supplied by Philo of Alexandria. Philo was a well-educated Jew, and a well-educated Greek. He was a Roman citizen and the elected leader of the huge Jewish community of Alexandria, in which capacity he visited Rome. He lived in the last quarter of the first pre-Christian century and well into the first Christian century. The exact dates of his birth and death are unknown. Philo was the first Jewish scholar to undertake a somewhat systematic study of the relationship between the Hebrew Bible and some aspects of Greek thought. Being an heir to Platonic concepts, he concentrated on creation, the movement from the noncorporeal to the corporeal, and ideas. He was the first Jew to articulate the universally accepted thesis 545 BOOK REVIEWS among Jewish thinkers that all words dealing with the Godhead in the Hebrew Bible must be treated allegorically, not literally. He accepted " hidden knowledge " in the words of Torah, though he did not explicate any mystical doctrines or ideas himself. Of chief interest to Christians is his personification of the Logos. He tends to identify it with Chochmah (wisdom) in the Book of Proverbs. This synthesis of Logos as Idea and Logos as Wisdom personified bridges well to the beginning of the Gospel according to John. Until now, students who wished to get a good working knowledge of Philo and his thought were limited in reality to Harry A. Wolfson's great and definitive work. Glatzer's anthology is a valuable addition to our literature, especially for those non-specialists who wish to know briefly and in Philo's own words what he was about. The editor's Preface is faultless and happily brief. Twelve selections from Philo's writings constitute the bulk of the book. They are well chosen. The notes are brief and useful. The bibliography is good. We are in debt to Prof. Glatzer and to Schocken Press for bringing out a small volume which closes one large lacuna in the working library of the generalist in religion. The Essential Philo does just that, and well. RABBI EuGENE J. LIPMAN The Catholic University of America Washington, D. C. Ancients and Moderns. Ed. by JoHN K. RYAN. Studies in Philosophy and the History of Philosophy. Vol. 5. Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1970. Pp. 368. The title of this volume is a trifle misleading. True enough, it includes studies of ancient philosophers (Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus) and of modern ones (Kant, Blonde!, Bergson, Husser!, Strawson) . But it also offers a translation of Duns Scotus's treatise on the omnipotence of God (Quaestiones Quodlibetales, VII), and the article on Kant is also on Aquinas. Hence, it contains more than one might expect from the title. The articles are uneven in length. Some are thirteen pages or less: Gregory desJardins, " A Gloss on Republic 487 C," pp. Thomas Prufer, "Aristotelian Themes," pp. 73-78; idem, "Reduction and Constitution," pp. 341-43; Martin A. Bertman, " The Empirical Hedonism of Moritz Schlick," pp. 344-50; John A. Driscoll, "Strawson and the NoOwnership Theory," pp. 351-63. One is eighteen pages: Caroline Canfield Putnam, " The Mode of Existence of Beauty: A Thomistic or Kantian 546 BOOK REVIEWS Interpretation?", pp. 223-41. The rest are thirty-nine pages or more: John K. Ryan, "A Translation with an Introduction of [Bergson's] Quid Aristoteles de loco senserit," pp. 20-72; John E. Pattantyus, " Justice in General and General Justice According to Aristotle," pp. 79-137; Angelita Myerscough, "The Nature of Man in Plotinus," pp. 138-77; Felix Alluntis and Allan B. Wolter," Duns Scotus on the Omnipotence of God," pp. 178-222; Leo J. Zonneveld, "Maurice Blonde!: Action and the Concept of Christian Philosophy," pp. 242-340. Unequal in length, are the articles also uneven in quality? Whenever a competent scholar translates a treatise of an important author, the result is always welcome and valuable. Hence, Ryan's translation of Bergson's Latin dissertation and Alluntis-Wolter's translation of Scotus's Quaestio Quodlibetalis VII make the volume worthwhile. What of the other essays? In view of time and space available, let us sample two of them: desJardins's analysis of Plato and Myerscough's interpretation of Plotinus. In "A Gloss on Republic 487 C," Gregory desJardins is concerned with this sentence: "Just as those who aren't clever at playing draughts are finally checked by those who are and don't know where to move, so they too are finally checked by this other kind of draughts, played not with counters but speeches (inro 1r'ETT£[a, ai5 mVT7J> TLVD> £T£pa>, oflK €v &..U.' €v A6yoL>) and don't know where to move" (Bloom's Translation). To desJardins that sentence means that "in the Republic Adeimantus complains that dialectic is just another game of 7T£TTda with A.&yoL instead of pebbles .... This image serves ... to summarize and clarify the place of definition in dialectical method. For 7T£rrda proceeds, like dialectic, through reciprocal moves to exhibit the opoL of a field." (p. 1) After canvassing several dialogues for information and confirmation, he concludes: A field theory of definition seems to be a natural consequence of the position that, pace Aristotle, no signs are univocal, but that instead meaning varies with context, so that the meanings of any sign in different contexts are at best related only analogically. Plato's use of 1rerrela to illustrate the place of definitions in dialectic would then appear to be no mere curiosity of his imagination, but rather an epitome of his philosophy, as well as a basis for comparing and contrasting him with more recent philosophers. (p. 11) What verdict should be given on desJardin's article? Plato's using the game of draughts to exemplify the place of definitions in dialectics may, in some quarters, allow him to be compared and contrasted with contemporary philosophers. But the statement that its use is " an epitome of his philosophy " is certainly an exaggeration, is clearly questionable and is likely to be downright erroneous. In Republic 487 C Plato is BOOK REVIEWS 547 dealing with dialectics only in actu exercito at best. He deals with it in actu signata elsewhere in the Republic (see 511 B, 531 C-535 D) without comparing it to draughts. The comparison also is lacking in his elaboration in the Phaedrus of dialectics as a process of collection/ division (which replaced the procedure of "naming" he followed in the Cratylus) and in his application of it in the Sophist, Statesman and Philebus. Accordingly, the comparison is hardly as crucial to Plato's thought as desJardin judges. Moreover, he canvassed the dialogues for information and for confirmation of his theory with seemingly little or no regard for their chronological order. For example, in pages fl to 6 he moves from Phaedrus to Republic to Philebus to Seventh Letter to Republic to Euthydemus to Theatetus to Sophist to Phaedo to Sophist to Gorgias to Republic to Euthyphro to Republic to Charmides and so on and on. This random movement would indicate either that he has taken no position on chronology or that he assumes Plato's doctrine to have undergone no development from early to late writings. This last assumption is certainly open to challenge and, unless validated, furnishes a weak foundation for desJardins's view on draughts and dialectics. The upshot of these remarks is that his article is not a complete success. In "The Nature of Man According to Plotinus" (pp. 138-77), Angelita Myerscough attempts first to establish " what Plotinus held the ' highest ' and 'lowest' in man to be," (p. 141) then to discuss what is man's truest self and how soul descended to body, finally to ascertain what is man's destiny. Her attempt is not flawless. She states it was " impossible to examine Plotinus' doctrine chronologically; rather I have attempted to set forth what seems to be his final teaching." (p. 139, n. 6) Although she is in good company in neglecting a chronological examination of Plotinus's doctrines (e. g., see John N. Deck, Nature, Contemplation, and the One [Toronto: University Press, 1967], pp. viii-ix) , nonetheless that neglect can have prevented her from realizing that a doctrinal development occurs rather frequently on various topics. Her claim to set forth " what seems to be his final teaching " runs counter to her mixing early with late treatises (e. g., in a significant section of her article on man's destiny, pp. 169-7fl, she utilizes Enneads I, 6, which is first chronologically). But more serious is her reliance on Stephen MacKenna's translation, which often is inordinately grandiose and on occasion almost unintelligible. MacKenna translates To Kotvov in line fl of I, 1, 5 as " the Couplement of soul and body" (a translation which Myerscough repeats on pp. 141, 14fl, 143, 149). What does "couplement" mean? Plotinus's point in the first sentence of that chapter is quite simple and direct: a living being is either a special kind of body or body-soul together or another and third thing-the product of them both (TO 'wov TO uwp.a ••• TO Tot 6v8£, To Kotvov, lnpov n TptTov "'/f"'/EVTJpivov). Mac- 548 BOOK REVIEWS Kenna's translation of to Koinon as " Couplement " adds unnecessary mystification. Again, he translates II, 3, 9, 31-32 yap tKaaTo>, b as: " For every human Being is of (J-fJI r6 avva(J-Oc{>onpov n, b 8€ avros) twofold character: there is that compromise-total and there is the Authentic Man" (see Myerscough, p. 142). What in the world is a" compromisetotal? " The Greek signifies simply that every man is double: he is some sort of composite, as well as himself. Myerscough's choice of MacKenna is all the more unfortunate in view of the other available translations: Armstrong's in the Loeb Classical Library for the first three Enneads (appearing between 1966 and 1967), Brehier's or Harder's or Cilento's for the last three Enneads. But no matter what translation adopted, she should have checked it with the Greek text. But, these flaws having been noted, one can recommend her study. She is sufficiently aware of secondary literature (with the exception of that in German) . For instance, consider how she handles various controversies. On the central place man occupies in the philosophy of Plotinus she cites Whittaker, Armstrong, Brennan, Carriere, Henry, Moore, Faggin. (see p. 138, n. 1; p. 140, n. 7) On the relation of human souls to World Soul or to Intellect, (see pp. 150-51) she mentions Watkin, Brennan, Brehier, lnge, Capone Braga, Armstrong, Trouillard. On whether or not man is free, (p. 166 sq.) she refers to Whittaker, Clark, lnge, Crocker, Switalski, Kristeller, Trouillard. On the nature of man's union with the One, (p. 169 sq.) she cites Burque, Switalski, Van Lieshout, Crocker, Brennan, Faggin, di Petrella. Although she has achieved few if any original insights, she does provide a clear and adequate over-all view of Plotinus's theory on man, beginning with the soul's origin from higher levels of reality and ending with its return to the One. Her views on this last point merit repeating. Following Maurice Burque, Un probleme plotinien, !'identification de l'ame avec l'Un dans la contemplation (Roma: Pontificia Universitas Gregoriana, 1939) , she concludes: Lost in ecstatic union, the soul is in some manner identified with the One. This union is not a metaphysical loss of self-identity of the soul, nor a physical absorption of the being of the soul in the substance of the First Principle. Examined carefully, Plotinus' doctrine is seen to hold that this mystical union is an intentional union entirely resulting from a noetic dynamism. It is an intuitive vision in which, though there is in one sense no longer a duality, there yet remains ontologically a twoness, ' two in one.' (p. 173) Judging by this study of Myerscough, as well as by Ryan's and AlluntisWolter's translations, we conclude that this volume is worth buying and reading. LEo SwEENEY, S.J. The Catholic University of America Washington, D. C. BOOK REVIEWS 549 Jung, Gods, and Modern Man. By ANTONIO MoRENO, 0. P. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970. Pp. Q74. $7.95. This book examines Jung's concept of religion as an explanation of modem man's loss of religious orientation and it uses insights that are philosophical and theological as well as psychological. In his Introduction the author warns us that the philosopher or theologian may not be able to understand Jung's depth psychology; the implication is that such people are in no positieon to judge Jung's contribution to religious discourse. Despite this caveat, this review is written from a philosophical and somewhat theological point of view. The Jungian psychology of religious belief does raise both philosophical and theological questions that must be faced by those who are studying, writing, teaching, or simply working in the area where religious values are given special attention. This book raises a few questions of its own by virtue of the author's interpretation and presentation of the views of Carl Jung. A starting point might well lie with the title itself. Jung, Gods, and Modern Man does not seem to involve what we think of as "modem man" today. Present-day thinkers are influenced by a wide variety of intellectual forces such as existentialism, behavioral psychology, process philosophy, linguistic analysis, and sociological perspectives as well as the philosophies and ideologies of the past. The value of Jung's insights might well be lost to the contemporary thinker unless they are formulated in a context that is open to the major spheres of intellectual influence at work in society today. From this point of view, Fr. Moreno's book is found wanting simply because it is too remote from contemporary intellectual experience and thus seems to betray Jung's own emphasis on experience. A more basic philosophical and theological question arising from Jung's religious psychology and Moreno's interpretation of it centers upon what might be called the ground of religious faith or the realism of religious experience. A repeated theme of both Jung and Moreno is that myth, primordially, and dogma, consequently, are the objects of faith. So we read on page IIO: "The psychology of religion, Jung points out, is not a question of God at all, but of man's ideas of God." The basic question to be asked about any ideas is whether or not they are realistic, and this question would seem to be just as important to the psychologist or psychiatrist as to the philosopher. One way of identifying the psychotic personality is by judging that his thoughts are out of touch with reality. This does not require that a single philosophical answer be given to the question of just what reality is, but it does require that each of our judgments include some relation to the individual's notion of what reality is. The implication of this is that the basic question about God is not 550 BOOK REVIEWS whether we think that there is such a being but whether the existence of such a being is demanded by our understanding of our own experience. Since this review is to appear in a Thomistic journal and Fr. Moreno makes much use of St. Thomas to support his notion that "Dogmas are the object of faith," (p. 112) it is reasonable to discuss the authenticity of his claim to be simply applying the ideas of Thomas Aquinas. This reviewer has always been irritated by Thomists who shift from the concrete to the abstract in their metaphysical discussions of the transcendentals, not that they have not understood what is involved in such a shift but that their readers and students are often confused. Even St. Thomas made such shifts, but it is clear in his texts (especially in the Summa, I, q. 16 and I-II, q. 1) that he is referring to a concrete being when he uses the term "Prima Veritas." It has been characteristic of Thomism to view reality in the concrete rather than in the abstract, and this is just as true for the realm of faith as for views of this world. The Thomist fundamentally believes God or believes in God as a real, existing being rather than as a projection of man's mind or his unconscious nature. Dogma and myths are expressions of faith rather than objects of faith in the primary sense, even though they may be considered objects of faith in a secondary sense. This sems to be a matter of confusion on the part of Fr. Moreno as it was for the Modernists who ignored the objective for the subjective conditions in our knowledge of God. Even Jung clearly marked off his area of myths from that of pure fairy tales. Fr. Moreno has an excellent chapter entitled "Religion and Myth" which is more realistically orientated than the earlier part of the book and more in keeping with the views of traditional Thomism. This chapter gives the reader a good opportunity to observe some of the ramifications of depth psychology as it can be tied in with the Thomistic notion of creaturely participation in a manner that affirms the religious realism of Aquinas. The effectiveness of Fr. Moreno here is to be found in the way in which he blends both knowledge and love as an interpretation of man's religious situation. All in all, the book offers much food for thought and readers should enjoy the challenges of depth psychology and profit from facing those challenges. RussELL NAUGHTON La Salle College Philadelphia, Penru. BOOK REVIEWS 551 A Wittgenstein Workbook. By CHRISTOPHER CooPE, PETER GEACH, TIMOTHY PoTTS, and RoGER WHITE. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970. Pp. 51. $1.75. Wittgenstein's philosophical works make notoriously difficult reading for the average undergraduate, yet so pervasive is their influence on contemporary philosophy, especially in the English-speaking world, that no philosophy major can afford to ignore them. This workbook, the fruit of five years of experience by members of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Leeds in teaching Wittgenstein to senior undergraduates, provides a promising solution to their problem. It contains some 18 topics considered to be central to Wittgenstein's thought, such as " The Picture- Theory," " Naming," " Truth," " Logic as the Mirror of the World," "Showing and Saying," "Scepticism," "Private Languages," " Following a Rule," "Meaning and Use," " Thinking," " The Mystical and the Ethical," "The Nature of Philosophy," etc. For use either as a teaching aid or as a guide to private study, each topic is provided with a well-chosen set of primary references, a select list of secondary readings, and a series of provocative questions designed not only to pinpoint Wittgenstein's cardinal insights but to weave them into a coherent theme so that the correct answer to each question leads naturally to its successor. The primary references are not only to Wittgenstein's two main works, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and Philosophical Investigations, but also the Notebooks 1914-1916 which throw light on his early work, and The Blue and Brown Books and Zettel which perform a similar function for the Investigations. To counteract the popular belief that Wittgenstein's later philosophy involved the rejection of all or most of his early doctrines, the authors have selected their topics and questions in such a way as to show the continuity of his thought with respect to the core problems that concerned him throughout his philosophical career. To this end they have included among the primary texts references to Philosophische Bermerkungen which in an important sense links the Tractatus and the Investigations as well as to his latest work On Certainty. While occasional reference is made to Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics the authors in the main have tried not to become involved in his philosophy of mathematics where he does not show himself at his best. The secondary references are frequently to Frege and Russell, whose writings so often posed the problems Wittgenstein sought to solve, or to illuminating articles by those who studied under him. Especially helpful are the first two appendices, one of which cross-references passages in Russell's Principles of Mathematics that parallel the Tractatus (" It is clear that the unresolved problems of this work were more significant for Wittgenstein than 552 BOOK REVIEWS the solutions offered in Principia M athematica ") (p. 7) and the other does the same for William James's Principles of Psychology and Wittgenstein's later work. For, as the authors point out, "Wittgenstein regarded James as a classical exponent of the tradition of the philosophy of mind that he was opposing, and James's views are often alluded to, when he is not mentioned by name, in the Investigations and the Zettel." (ibid.) A third appendix, entitled " Whewell and Mill on Types," provides enlightening collateral reading for the topic " Meaning and Use." While teachers well versed in Wittgenstein's thought may disagree at times with the authors' evaluations, if not as to the importance of the topics, perhaps as to the felicity of the particular questions, they would hardly quarrel with their conclusion: " Our experience has shown that seminars based on the discussion of the questions here presented led to more effective participation that the traditional method of discussing a student's paper. We have therefore decided to expose our teaching method to the criticism of a wider public, and should be glad of any suggestions for improving this work-book." For that decision, this reviewer, for one, is grateful. ALLAN B. WoLTER, 0. F.M. The Catholic University of America Washington, D. C. Los "Fundadores" en la Filosoffa de America Latina. Bibliografias Basicas, VII. General Secretariat, Organization of the American States, Washington: 1970. Pp. 208. The division of Philosophy of the Organization of American States (a section within the Department of Cultural Affairs) has always been concerned with the publication of the basic tools for a cultural rapprochement between the different countries of the Americas. The present volume aims at providing pertinent information on the sources of Latin American Philosophy and has been devoted to the " Founders," a group of philosophers who started philosophical activities in many Latin American countries in the last two centuries. A good number of these authors are studied here, covering a period which ranges from 1839 to 1964. There is a short biography and bibliographies of and on each one of the authors studied in the volume. Three appendices at the end of the book are devoted to philosophical developments in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, taking again as starting point the generation of the "Founders." This notion of "Founders" is taken from the Argentinian philosopher, Francisco Romero. The Philosophers included under such denomination BOOK REVIEWS 553 belong neither in the same epoch nor in the same philosophical school, but all of them have in common both the pioneering character of their efforts and the fact that each one started a philosophical movement in his own country. The present volume considers twenty of these authors from seven Latin American countries. They are: Tobias Barreto (Brazil), Alejandro 0. Deustua (Peru), Enrique Jose Varona (Cuba), Silvio Romero (Brazil) , Joiio Mendes Junior (Brazil), Alejandro Korn (Argentina), Pedro Figari (Uruguay), Raimundo de Farias Brito (Brazil), Jose P. Massera (Uruguay), Jose Enrique Rodo (Uruguay), Enrique Molina (Chile), Carlos Vaz Ferreira (Uruguay), Otto de Alencar (Brazil), Amoroso Costa (Brazil), Jose Ingenieros (Argentina), Alberto Rouges (Argentina), Jose Vasconcelos (Mexico), Antonio Caso (Mexico), Coriolano Albertini (Argentina), Leonel Franca (Brazil). Most of these are "philosophers " in the usual sense of the word, others are rather " thinkers " in the broad meaning of the term. The writing of the biographies and the preparation of the bibliographies have been entrusted to eight co-authors from five countries. The general impression is that they have done a very good job. The short biographies are well written and usually dwell on events with some bearing on the philosophical background and production of the philosophers. The bibliographies are complete and well organized. They presuppose a good amount of work in the selection and ordering of the titles. Cross references are suggestive and easy to spot, at least in most of the bibliographies. The three appendices provide comprehensive information of philosophical activities in the countries considered. The over-all impression is that this is a very valuable help for anyone interested in the history and present tendencies of Latin American Philosophy. It can readily be considered the most complete bibliographical information as far as the authors herein considered are concerned. Lms CAMACHO, 0. P. Dominican House of Studies Wll$hington, D. C. BOOKS RECEIVED Ave Maria Press: The Pentecostal Movement, by Edward D. O'Connor, C. S.C. (Pp. 301, $1.95). Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Scientificas: Corpus Hispanorum de Pace. VII De Regnorum Justitia, ed. by Luciano Perefia. (Pp. 350 pts). Doubleday & Co.: Infallible? An Inquiry, by Hans Kling. (Pp. $5.95). Family Life Bureau, USCC: Mixed Marriage: New Directions, by James T. McHugh. (Pp. 36, $ 0.50). Fides Publishers, Inc.: Theology Today Series. 10. The Theology of Inspiration, by John Scullion, S. J. 11. The Theology of Revelation, by Anthony Meredith, S. J. (Pp. 96 & 95, $ 0.95 each). Fordham University Press: Work, Society, and Culture, by Yves Simon. $7.50). (Pp. Harper & Row: Logic for Philosophers, by Richard L. Purtill. (Pp. 441, $9.95); Words About God. The Philosophy of Religion, ed. by Ian T. Ramsey. (Pp. $3.95). Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.: Jesus and Israel, by Jules Isaac. (Pp. ; The Star of Redemption, by Franz Rosenweig. (Pp. 445, $10.00). Institute of Judaeo-Christian Studies: Brothers in Hope. Vol. 5. The Bridge, ed. by John M. Oesterreicher. (Pp. 350, $7.50). Inter-Varsity Press: The Scientific Enterprise and Christian Faith, by Malcolm A. Jeeves. (Pp. 168, Encounter with Books. (Pp. $3.50). Casa Editrice Maccari: Il Rigorismo Etico in Kant, by Antonio Lambertino. (Pp. 377, L. 4. 500). Macmillan: Modern Christian Thought: From the Enightenment to Vatican II, by James C. Livingston. (Pp. 539, $9.95); New Theology. No. 8, ed. by Martin E. Marty & Dean G. Peerman. (Pp $1.95) Marquette University Press: Faith & Reason Revisited. The Aquinas Lecture, 1971, by Francis H. Parker. (Pp. 56, Methuen & Co., Ltd.: Morality and Moral Reasoning, ed. by John Casey. (Pp. $8.00). Mouton & Co.: Cajetan's Notion of Existence, by John P. Reilly. (Pp. 131, Dutch guilders). 554 BOOKS RECEIVED 555 Walter Oleksiuk: Thomism. The Christian Philosophy of St. Aquinas (written in the Ukranian language}, by Walter Oleksiuk. (Pp. Oxford University Press: Henry Sedgwick. Science and Faith in Victorian England, by D. G. James. (Pp. 81, $3.00). Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies: Hugh of Saint-Cher's Theology of the Hypostatic Union, by Walter H. Principe. (Pp. Scarecrow Press: Kierkegaard's Presence in Contemporary American Life, by Lewis A. Lawson. (Pp. $7.50). Schocken Books: The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Studies on Jewish Spirituality, by Gershom G. Scholem. (Pp. 350, $15.00}. Charles Scribner's Sons: I and Thou. Martin Buber, tr. by Walter Kaufmann. (Pp. 185, $1.95) . Tulane University: Tulane Studies in Philosophy. Vol. XIX. Aesthetics I. (Pp. 108, $3.00). The Westminster Press: The Future of Philosophical Theology, ed. by Robert A. Evans. (Pp. 190, $6.95} .