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. XXXVIII

JANUARY, 1974

No.1

In Commemorationof the Seventh Centenary
of the Death of St. Thomas Aquinas
1274-1974

ODE TO THOMAS
There was a man
Sent from God
Whose name was
Thomas
Aquinas.
He was not a
Doubting Thomas
You might even call
Him
Believing Thomas.
He was not the
True Light
But he did build
An edifice
That housed a lot of people
For a lot of years.
He looked at
Motion
And inferred
A motor.
He looked at
Effect
And saw
A cause.
He knew
That nothing
Never was.
He reasoned a
Best.

4

PASTOR LEWIS CHAMBERLAIN

He saw Someone
At the Helm
Of things.
He balanced
It all.
And leveled it
And built
One spacious
Room
For debate.
Reason worked there
As did the Philosopher
Also Dionysius
We must confess
But not as architects
But helpers.
The house was
Built on the
Ground
Of the isness
Of things
The Truth of the
Scriptures
And the reality
Of God.
It was a good
House
All things are good.
It was a sturdy house
There was allowance for
Stress and
Strain.

ODE TO THOMAS

It was a house that
Long endured
And survived many
An earthquake.
The roof pointed
Toward Heaven
All things desire God.

It was no sin
To call it good
There is one goodness
Yet many goodnesses.
God was in it
God is in all things
And innermostly
But God was not
.Enclosed_ by it.
God was also in
The ground around
And the sky above.
It was not meant to
Be an eternal house
Eternity is not the same
As the now of time.

It was a place where
Men thought
Thoughts
After God
The ultimate beatitude
And saw God
By grace.

To see God is not
To comprehend God

5

6

PASTOR LEWIS CHAMBERLAIN

But they saw the
House and the grounds
And the sky
And Something Else.
The Son lived
There
As Lord
The Son is not less.
And the Spirit
As Love.
Faith was discussed there
A mean
And things unseen.
But it was First
The dwelling place
Of
HE WHO IS
The infinite ocean of substan<'<'
Whose being knows no
Past or future
As Augustine says.

It was built in an
Age
When great houses
Were an ideal
Something greatly
To be desired.
The light of Aquinas
Is waning
His house
Is crumbling.

ODE TO THOMAS

His certainties
Don't seem
So sure
Or certain
He's probably glad.
For in the end
He knelt down
And worshipped
Like Thomas.
The Disciple.
pASTOR LEWIS CHAMBERLAIN

Meneely Presbytm-ian Church
Dallas, Texas

1

THE GULF IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY:
IS THOMISM THE BRIDGE?

If, working within my self-imposed limitations, I were to make no
reference whatsoever to existentialism, I could not justly be rebuked. For one thing, it has been quite without influence on the
main trends in contemporary British philosophy; for another thing,
in so far as it has been discussed, existentialism has been taken
seriously as a stimulus to ethico-religious thinking, rather than as a
metaphysics. Professional philosophers, for the most part, dismiss it
with a contemptuous shrug.
Yet there would be a certain cowardice in ignoring it completely,
welcome, in some respects, as that decision would be. Existentialism
lies on the periphery of British philosophical consciousness; it stands,
for British philosophers, for Continental excess and rankness. To
sketch its ramifications, then ... may at least bring into sharper
focus that fundamental opposition between British and LatinTeutonic philosophy on which I have several times insisted, but in
somewhat general terms.
Thus run the opening paragraphs of the chapter on Existentialism and Phenomenology in Dr. John Passmore's amazingly
comprehensive work A Hundred Years of Philosophy. And,
given the situation to which he draws attention, it is perhaps
more surprising that he should mention existentialism and
phenomenology at all in his work than that he should feel it
necessary to apologize for doing so. He goes on to say that the
accusation of insularity might well be common to both sides,
though he clearly thinks it applies far more to the Continentals
than to the British: " whereas the British philosopher knows
his Descartes, his Leibniz, his Kant, the Continental philosopher is likely to be almost wholly ignorant of Berkeley, Hume
and Russell." Passmore continues:
The fact we have to live with, then, is that if most British philosophers are convinced that Continental metaphysics is arbitrary, pretentious and mind-destroying, Continental philosophers are no
8

THE GULF IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY

9

less confident that British empiricism is philistine, pedestrian and
soul-destroying. Even when existentialism reflects certain aspects
of British empiricism-as in its emphasis on contingency-it does
so in the manner of the distorting mirrors in a Fun Fair; what
seemed eminently rational and ordinary suddenly looks grotesque.
(op. cit., Penguin ed., pp. 466:ff)

It is perhaps noteworthy that the contrast which Passmore
draws is between what he describes as "British" and " Continental " philosophy respectively; no direct mention is made of
American philosophy, which can certainly not be called
" British," though it might make an even better claim than
French and German philosophy to the adjective " Continental."
And it may well be that philosophy in the New World is somewhat broader in its scope and sympathy than philosophy in
either of the two divisions of the Old, though I think for the
most part it tends to conform to the " British " type. As far
as the rest of the English-speaking world is concerned, philosophy as a professional discipline in academic institutions manifests little more than a series of variations on the theme of
linguistic empiricism, though a convenient loophole is provided,
for those who wish to indulge any leanings towards the romantic
and the enigmatic without compromising their reputation for
professional integrity, in the obscurer aphorisms of the later
Wittgenstein. Only in departments of Philosophy of Religion
in the often despised faculties of Theology is it usually possible
to find any serious consideration of either existentialism or,
still more rarely, of scholasticism. (In passing we might note
that in those rare circles in which there is a genuine interest in
medieval scholasticism it is almost invariably an interest in
scholastic logic and not in metaphysics. And, of course, it is
always respectable to study the history of anything, even of
scholastic metaphysics.) And even Passmore, with all his
encyclopedic comprehensiveness, makes only passing references
to Marxism, the one philosophy which, in our own time, has
moulded the mode of life of something like one third of the
human race.
One of the very few attempts that have been made to bridge

10

E. L. MASCALL

the gap between those whom, with apologies to American
readers, I shall still venture to call the British and the Continentals was the conference on Analytical Philosophy which
was held at Royaumont in 1959. Its success was, to say the
most, limited. A reviewer of its published records wrote as
follows:
This is the record of a dialogue that didn't come off, a dialogue de
sourds . ... The will to dialogue seemed to be absent with some of
the "Oxonians." This may well have been due to the contempt in
which " Continental" philosophers are often held at Oxford, which
hardly accords them the status of worthy interlocutors. But, except
for one case, this cannot really provide the explanation. The root
of this reluctance seems to lie more in the fact that the Continental
questioners wished to discuss matters which are rarely discussed at
Oxford and usually thought to be a waste of time .... The questioners naturally wanted to bring the discussion to matters of
methodology to the philosophical justification of the procedures of
the school. And this is not a popular subject of discussion at Oxford.
Indeed it rarely needs to be raised, since Oxford has lived for so long
in a state of cultural solipsism, out of communication with rival
schools, that it rarely meets a challenge which would require clarification. (C. M. Taylor, Philosophical Review, Ithaca, N.Y.,
LXXIII [1964], pp. 132-5, cit. Istvan Mezaros in Bernard Williams
and Alan Montefiore edd., British Analytical Philosophy, London
and N.Y.C., 1966, p. 312).

The success of the Royaumont conference seems, thus, to
have been very limited indeed, and it was in the hope of salvaging something from the wreck that there was published in
1966 a volume of essays edited by Messrs. Bernard Williams
and Alan Montefiore with the title British Analytical Philosophy. An editorial note tells us that "this book was originally
planned and written with a Continental audience in mind," but
it does not represent any kind of attempt at dialogue or manifest any readiness of the British to learn from the Continentals;
as its title indicates, its real purpose was to educate the natives.
In an appended essay by Mr. Istvan Mezaros, the only Continental represented, the question of the possibility of a dialogue
is raised. While giving a conditional Yes to the question, the

THE GULF IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY

11

writer showed his Yes to be very conditional indeed: " It would
be foolish " he wrote " to base hopes for the success of a dialogue on a passing mood " and he listed a number of problems
which confronted him when he came from Hungary and Italy
to teach philosophy in Britain and which, as he said, "are
likely to cause much headache to all those who were not brought
up in the school which dominated British philosophical thinking during the past two decades." (op. cit., p. 313) Among the
problems which he specified the foremost was that of unrecognized preferences. British philosophers, he alleged, took
Plato, Hume, Mill, Moore, and Wittgenstein as the natural
choice which needs no justification whatsoever.
That Aristotle as a 8ystematiser is neglected, that great philosophers
like Diderot are completely ignored, that Hegel only appears as a
kind of evil spirit, that there is little inclination to deal with or even
to recognise problems raised by Marx, and that existentialism is
hardly taken notice of, all this cannot matter if you believe that
your orientation is so natural and unbiased that it shouldn't even be
called a choice. Thus, rival claims must be dismissed not with concrete arguments but en bloc as manifestations of the "metaphysical
muddle" that keeps one from recognising the natural choice. (op.
cit., pp. 313f)

Whatever effect the symposium had in educating the Continentals, there has certainly been very little sign of a reciprocal
education of the British. Developments have indeed taken
place since 1959 and indeed since 1966, and notably the appearance of an interest in Wittgenstein that has almost reached the
condition of a cultus, but British philosophy has shown no
signs of departing from the linguistic empiricist position. It
was characteristic but depressing to hear a highly respected
senior British philosopher in a recent radio-interview dismissing
successive criticisms of his outlook with the casual remark that
he was not really interested in them.
The history of modern British philosophy-and, in view of the
dominance of Oxford philosophy in the English-speaking
world, this is practically the history of Oxford philosophy-is
remarkable and intriguing. Until well into the present century

E. L. MASCALL

Oxford was the home of philosophical idealism in the grand
manner. In spite of nonconformists such as Cook Wilson and
Collingwood, the great names of T. H. Green, B. Bosanquet
and F. H. Bradley dominated the scene. However, shortly before the Second World War a remarkable reversal took place, so
much so that when, shortly after the War, the present writer
was approached in Oxford by a foreign student of philosophy
who was looking for the school founded by Green, there was
really no one to whom one could direct him. Logical positivism
appeared, with its apostle in the brilliant young A. J. Ayer, and,
when its inadequacies became painfully evident, was reborn in
linguistic form in the shape of logical analysis, therapeutic
positivism, and linguistic empiricism. In spite of their considerable differences from one another these all manifested a dogmatically empiricist temper for which any kind of metaphysic
was nonsensical mumbo-jumbo. Now the interesting thing
about this development is that, while it took root in Oxford
and proliferated so as to crowd out almost every other philosophical plant, its origins were not in Oxford at all. They were
partly in Austria in the Vienna Circle of Schlick, Carnap, Neurath, and their associates, but still more in Cambridge in such
figures as G. E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell,
and C. D. Broad; A. N. Whitehead should be included but for
his idiosyncratic later development. Now the background of
the Cambridge philosophers was mathematics and physical
science; it is not by chance that symbolic logic was largely a
Cambridge growth. But the background of the Oxford philosophers was classics and ancient history. (Oxonians who talk of
the tremendous intellectual discipline of the Greats School are
sometimes surprised to discover another place where people
talk of the tremendous intellectual discipline of the Mathematical Tripos.) And somehow or other, in spite of its excessive
growth, the movement has never seemed quite at home at Oxford. Richard Bentley said that claret would be port if it could,
and of more than one Oxford philosopher one has sometimes felt
that he would have been a symbolic logician if he had learnt the
technique. Oxford philosophers, like the radical physicalists

THE GULF IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY

18

of the Vienna Circle, often assert that science provides their
ideal of rigid intellectual procedure, but it is not always evident
that they are familiar with the procedure of actual scientists
and the way in which scientists think. They certainly moved
very rapidly from a concern with alleged knowledge about the
real world to a concern simply with the way that words are
used about it. Wittgenstein's logical atomism, according to
which linguistic statements biuniquely pictured the physical
world, admittedly showed itself to be inadequate, but the concern which he had with the relation of language to reality was
a respectable thing, and he shared it with Russell and Broad.
This phase of his thought, the phase which produced the Tractatu.s Logico-Philosophicus, is commonly ignored at Oxford as
the youthful sowing of wild oats; it is his later linguistic writings, with their oracular and enigmatic character, that are venerated as the words of the master. And the Oxford philosophers
have as little use for Russell as, in his later days, he came to
have for them.
Any generalizations such as those made above are, of course,
subject to qualifications. Oxford philosophers are not all alike,
and even in Oxford itself the nonconformists are to be found.
What is nevertheless true is that Oxford philosophy as a whole,
and British philosophy in general, have become both monochromatic and static. Even in the great days of idealism there
were flourishing non-idealist schools and there was a general
recognition, both among philosophers and among the mass of
intelligent people, that philosophy was concerned with real
issues of importance to the human race. This can hardly be
said today. From time to time there are signs of a stirring;
there are indications that philosophers themselves are not entirely satisfied with what they are doing. In 1963 Professor
H. D. Lewis gathered together, under the title Clarity is not
enough: Essays in Criticism of Linguistic Philosophy, nineteen
papers by outstanding professional philosophers, many of whom
were themselves highly competent in the field of linguistic
analysis. However, like the volume British Analytical Philosophy in 1966, it seems to have had little impact on philosophers

14

E. L. MASCALL

in general; more than the croaking of a number of voices in
different parts of the wilderness is needed to start a movement
of repentance.
These remarks are not meant to imply that linguistic analysis is in itself a disreputable occupation. On the contrary, it is
of the highest importance, for there is no virtue in muddled or
hazy thinking; I shall later on suggest that the existentialists
would do well to pay heed to it. But one cannot live permanently on disinfectants. As Dr. M.ezaros writes in the essay
from which I have previously quoted:
There are many other factors than simply conceptual confusion
which give rise to serious philosophical disagreement. And whereas
in the case of conceptual confusions the only rational proceeding is
to give up conceptually confused positions and to adopt the opponent's views, which are free from such confusions ... , in cases
when those other factors are involved, and this is mutually recognized, real-life dialogue becomes possible, on the basis of the understanding that there are no easy, and certainly no automatic,
solutions.
And he adds, significantly in view of contemporary ideologies:
Premature burial is one of the salient features of philosophical development, no doubt due to the wishful thinking associated with the
death of the presumed enemy. Twentieth-century treatment of
ideology is an outstanding example of premature burial. What is
often forgotten during the attempts at this burial, so characteristic
of our times, is that an anti-ideological position is by no means
necessarily less ideological than a more or less openly ideological one.
The N eopositivist programme was to bring to an end ideological
approaches to philosophical problems. Ironically, what it achieved
was create a powerful case for their resurrection. ( op. cit., pp. 333f)
One might add that, in the hands of such linguistic specialists
as Dr. Noam Chomsky, linguistics appear to have metaphysical
overtones or consequences, which the linguistic analysts among
the philosophers seem to have overlooked.

* * * * *
Turning now to the other potential but reluctant partner in
the wished-for-dialogue, it is not altogether easy to characterize

THE GULF IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY

15

by one or more common properties the variety of outlooks
that go by the name of existentialism. In 1961 a pupil of the
present writer, the Rev. Dr. F. Temple Kingston, published
an impressive doctoral thesis which was mainly devoted to the
question whether the theistic and atheistic French existentialists
had anything but the name " existentialist " in common. Was
the movement a reaction against Christian orthodoxy as such,
or was it an attempt to recover certain Christian insights which
Christians themselves had largely forgotten? If it was the
former, how are we to explain the Christian existentialists, such
as Kierkegaard and Marcel? If it was the latter, how are we to
explain the atheist and antitheist existentialists, such as Sartre
and Simone de Beauvoir? Is it possible, in view of their radical
opposition, to consider Christian and atheistic existentialism
as two species of the same genus? Or is it only by a misleading
and equivocal use of words that the same label-" existentialism "-has been applied to both? And, granted that there can
be a Christian existentialism, is it essentially Protestant or is
there a genuinely Catholic type which can appeal to authentic,
if perhaps partly forgotten, principles of traditional, and even
of Thomist, philosophy? Dr. Kingston's own conclusion was
that " existentialism, ... as a whole, is to be regarded as a new
and valid school of philosophy which has a positive contribution to make in the development of human understanding," but
that "nevertheless, it is not to be regarded as something entirely new; for . . . it has deep roots in the wisdom of philosophers of the past." 1 However, he detected radical defects in
atheistic existentialism and, while seeing the appeal of existentialism to French Catholics as largely due to a reaction against
the domination of French Catholic thought by an essentialist
and Cartesian type of Thomism, he saw the insights of existentialism as fully compatible with the existential type of Thomism
expounded by J. Maritain, E. Gilson, and the present writer.
Whether " existence " means the same thing to a Thomist as to
an existentialist, Christian or atheistic, is perhaps another question.
1

French Existentialism: a Christian critique (Toronto, 1961), p. 194.

16

E.L.MASCALL

It would perhaps be interesting to trace the ancestry and
descent of modern existentialism from Kierkegaard through
Jaspers and Heidegger to the present day, keeping in mind the
fact that Heidegger himself, although everyone describes him
as an existentialist, has repudiated the term and has described
his own position as "fundamental ontology." Space being,
however, limited, it will be better to concentrate on the principal features which contemporary existentialism manifests, insofar as such a protean and fluid outlook can be seen to have any
general features at all. A complete investigation, even one
which confined itself to existentialists who professed to be
Christians, would have to enquire into the existentialist elements in Emil Brunner, Reinhold Niebuhr (who, after a period
of great prominence, has fallen into a strange and undeserved
neglect) and, above all, the enigmatic and controversial figure
of Paul Tillich. It would also have to account for the way in
which some of the most vigorous and original theologians in
the Catholic tradition today, such as Karl Rahner, Eduard
Schillebeeckx and John Macquarrie (not a Roman Catholic)
have deliberately adopted a Heideggerian idiom for their discussions in the conviction that it is both more adequate than
that of traditional philosophical systems to interpret and systematize the Christian mysteries and also (perhaps more surprisingly) that it provides a more hopeful medium of communicating with contemporary men. Nevertheless, in spite of
all differences, there is, I think, an outlook and attitude which
is common to a great many theological writers today to whom
the term "existentialist" can be legitimately applied, and its
main characteristics can be fairly simply and briefly stated,
though neither simplicity nor brevity are typical of the writers
themselves. First, there is a determination to find truth and
value in the lives of human beings rather than in the world as
a whole, and especially to concentrate upon such basic features
of human existence as insecurity, guilt, and death. Second, in
spite of the universality of the features just mentioned, there
is an emphasis upon the unique experiences and decisions of
the human individual rather than upon generalization about

THE GULF IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY

17

the human race and species as a whole: existentialism has an
ontology of the individual rather than of the species. Thirdly,
existentialism sees significance as residing in a man's decisions
rather than in his awareness; it has an epistemology of will
rather than of intelligence, of volition rather than of knowledge.
Anthropocentrism, individualism, voluntarism: these, as I see
it, are the basic features of the existentialist outlook.
The attractiveness of the existentialist attitude is obvious,
and it operates on all levels of moral earnestness. On the lowest
level it can appeal to the most disreputable side of fallen human
nature: who is more anthropocentric, individualist, and voluntarist than the beatnik, the gangster, the political dictator or
the Buchenwald jailer? And the appalling range and efficiency
of modern organs of power-political, psychological, physiological, and technological-make the dangers of this kind of
existentialism greater than they have ever been in the past.
Nevertheless, the anthropocentrism can be manifested in a selfsacrificing concern with the needs of individual persons and in
a refusal to retire into lofty generalizations about a vaguely
defined human nature or human race. The individualism can
express itself in a heightened sense of responsibility for one's
individual actions and in a refusal to shelter behind moralistic
but inapplicable generalities. The voluntarism, too, can be a
recognition that knowing the truth is no substitute for doing
what is right and that it is upon the rectitude of our wills that
we shall be judged and not merely on the correctness of our
opinions. Nevertheless a pure existentialism (and by this I
mean one that is only anthropocentric, individualistic, and voluntarist and which is not backed by a concern for truth as
such) is totally incapable of discriminating between its own
manifestations. No doubt much moral theology in the past
has seen its task as simply the application of general principles
to particular examples and has tended to overlook the unique
features of every individual man and of every individual human
act. No doubt much traditional metaphysics has failed to
grapple with the problem of individuality in general and human
individuality in particular. Nevertheless, an outlook which

18

E. L. MASCALL

stakes everything upon individual human decision has no criterion for judging between one decision and another, for
assessing one as good and another as bad, or even one as less
bad than another. It is credibly said that in some theological
seminaries the wholesale and enthusiastic adoption of situation
ethics has led to alarming consequences. Nevertheless, decent
existentialists do exercise both intellectual and moral discrimination; the question is whether, in doing so, they are faithful to
pure existentialist doctrine. And when all is said and done we
must be grateful to existentialists for correcting a tendency,
which has been far too strong in traditional ethical discussions,
to determine moral problems simply by general rules without
consideration of the unique features of the individual situation
and the unique character of the individual human agent and to
give exclusive attention to comparatively trivial issues. It has
been said, without excessive exaggeration, that Catholic moral
theology has been chiefly concerned with clerics forgetting
whether they have said their office, and academic ethical discussion with giving up one's seat to a lady in a North-Oxford
bus. 2
Nevertheless, I doubt whether it is its anthropomorphism,
individualism, and voluntarism which leads most British philosophers to reject existentialism as unworthy oftheirnotice on the
rare occasions when they condescend to cast a glance at it; it is
much more the excessive obscurity and imprecision of the language in which it is commonly expounded. This is, of course, a
failing to which German language is particularly vulnerable;
it has led the extremely sympathetic translators of Heidegger's
Sein und Zeit, for example, to quote considerable passages in
footnotes in the original language, and such an observation as
the following is not uncommon:
In these two sentences there are no less than six feminine nouns
which might serve as the antecedents of the pronouns ' sie ' and
'ihr' in their several appearances. We have chosen the interpreta2 Some of the material
in this and the preceding paragraph is taken from an
article published in Religious Studies, II (Cambridge 1966), pp. 1 ff.

THE GULF IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY

19

tion which seems most plausible to us, but others are perhaps no less
defensible (Being and Time, Trans. J. Macquarrie and J. Robinson,
London 1962, p. 394).

Nevertheless, French and English existentialist writers are not
always much more lucid than their German fellows. Dr. John
Macquarrie is, theologically, outstanding for his orthodoxy,
but his discussion as to whether God is better described as
" Being " or as " a being " and his exposition of creation in
terms of "letting-be" have baffled many of his readers. 3 Nor
is it easy to follow them in their conviction that they have discovered an idiom that will commend their thought to ordinary
educated men and women at the present day. I find it difficult
to follow Dr. Macquarrie in his belief that modern man will
find the assertion " Being is gracious " more appealing or intelligible than the old-fashioned assertion "There is a God." 4
Linguistic empiricists in their ultra-Cartesian devotion to clarity have sometimes forgotten that the inevitable consequence
of their view that knowledge must be clear and distinct is that
if there is any sphere of reality that by its nature cannot be
known clearly and distinctly it cannot be known at all; physical
objects, other persons, and God will alike be eliminated. 5 On
the other hand, existentialist writers seem often to revel in
obscurity and ambiguity; in another place I have quoted a paragraph from the important thinker Fr. Emerich Coreth (not in
fact one of the obscurest of existentialist writers) which evokes
no less than seven questions about obscurities and ambiguities. 6
It is usually, though not always, possible, with some hard work
and good will, to extract an intelligible content from even the
more turgid passages of existentialist works, but I cannot see
existentialists being taken seriously by British philosophers
unless they make more effort to express themselves clearly and
rely less upon the cumulative effect of mountainous masses of
intimidating verbosity. It is perhaps a criticism of both parties
Principles of Christian Theology, ch. v. (London, 1966).
• Cf. J. Macqnarrie, Siudies in ChTistian Existentialism. (Lone' on 196G), p. II.
5 Cf. my Words and Images
(London 1957), pp. 74 fl'.
6 Cf. my The Openness of Being
(London 1971), p. 81.

3

20

E. L. MASCALL

that, while British philosophers seem unable to write more than
a fifteen-page article on any topic, most Continental philosophers seem unable to write less than a five-hundred-page
treatise.
If confining oneself within the limits of linguistic empiricism
is like trying to exist on a diet of disinfectants, abandoning
oneself to the existentialists is like gorging oneself with overrich and overcooked delicacies; and it is a moot point whether it
is better to die of starvation than of coronary thrombosis.
Having said enough about both the British and the Continental philosophers to alienate the sympathies of both schools,
I shall now make what both will probably consider the outrageous suggestion that a bridge between them may be found
in a stance that, in its broad features, may be described as
Thomist. But here a caution must be uttered.

* * * * *
There has appeared on the Continent in recent years, though
it has been almost unknown to the English-speaking world, a
school of thought which has acquired the name of Transcendental Thomism and of which the leading names are those of
Karl Rahner, Johannes Metz, and Emerich Coreth, though
perhaps an even more important figure is that of the Canadian
Jesuit Bernard Lonergan. The first three of these are Germans
who have been strongly influenced by Martin Heidegger; they
write in a conspicuously Heideggerian idiom. Lonergan, who
has a different background, does not. The origin of the movement is to be found in the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Marechal, who
back in the nineteen-twenties was trying to develop a postKantian form of Thomism which would take account of, and
be immune to, the transcendental critique of the Sage of Konigsberg. The question therefore arises whether Rahner and his
colleagues are basically existentialists or are only post-Kantian
Thomists who have adopted, wisely or unwisely, an existentialist structure of words and concepts. (This is, I believe, a
valid and meaningful question, however much weight one gives
to the maxim Le 8tyle, c'e8t l'homme.) My judgment is that

THE GULF IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY

they are not genuine existentialists but somewhat off-beat
Thomists in existentialist clothing, and I am confirmed in this
view by the fact that their position is, in its broad outlines,
shared by Lonergan, in whom there are no traces of existentialism at all. For a fuller discussion of their position I would
refer to chapters four and five of my Gifford Lectures The Openness of Being. (I mention in a footnote a point on which I would
wish to make a correction. 7 )
Whether or not the German-speaking Transcendental Thomists are to be judged as having brought about a reconciliation
between existentialism and Thomism, it is not they that I have
chiefly in mind in suggesting that Thomism may provide a
bridge over the gulf that separates existentialism from linguistic empiricism. I doubt whether in fact existentialism and
linguistic empiricism can be reconciled at all, lying as they do
at opposite extremes of the philosophical firmament. What I
would argue is that Thomism in its basic features, as distinct
from minor details and from later developments in the Thomist
tradition, takes full account, or at any rate can be brought to
take full account, of the genuine insights embodied in these two
extreme positions. (I would interject that, like anything else in
7 On p. 91 of my book I accused the Transcendental
Thomists of feeling bound
to justify the validity of knowledge before allowing themselves to indulge in the
luxury of knowing, and I suggested that this might be one cause of their prolixity:
" Once you have refused to assume the reliability of your apprehension of beings
other than yourself and have postulated that the objects of your perception are
prima facie states of your own mind, you are launched on the endless process
of trying ineffectually to escape from the prison of your own subjectivity." Fr. J.
Donceel, in a kind and appreciative review in The Irish Theological Quarterly,
XXXIX (1972), pp. 194 ff., has pointed out that Marechal himself held that
human intelligence reaches reality at once and that a philosophy which denies
this will never be able to reach it at all: " What Marechal has in mind when ...
he adopts the starting point of Kant is to show that this starting point is selfcontradictory, that it assumes implicitly what it rejects explicitly, so that, even if
we adopt it for argument's sake, we are still ultimately led to an affirmation of
the Absolute." Lonergan, too, has said: " Critically grounding knowledge isn't
finding the ground for knowledge. It's already there. Being critical means eliminating the ordinary nonsense, the systematically misleading images and so on;
the mythical account" (P. McShane, "An Interview with Fr. Bernard Lonergan,
S. J." in Clergy Review LVI, p. 422 [Ware, Herts. 1971], p. 422).

E. L. MASCALL

human history, Thomism is a growing and developing thing,
while not all developments in Thomism have been necessarily
desirable ones.) I have described the food offered for consumption by linguistic empiricism and existentialism as consisting
of disinfectants and of over-rich and overcooked delicacies
respectively. More tactfully, one might say that linguistic
empiricism has concentrated upon clarity at the expense of
content, while existentialism has concentrated upon content
at the expense of clarity. Neither of them does justice to the
situation of human beings as intelligent knowing subjects in a
world of intelligible objects. For the logical empiricists, heirs
as they are of David Hume, the mind tends to fall out of the
picture altogether; in Professor Gilbert Ryle's famous but misnamed book The Concept of Mind statements which would
normally be taken as descriptive of mental states and experiences are reinterpreted as descriptions of overt observable
bodily behavior, though it is very difficult to see who there is
left to observe it; in the last resort interest in either the subject
or the object of perception tends to vanish and all that remains
is to discuss the logical structure of the descriptions. The
existentialists, on the other hand, tend to get so bogged down
in the predicament of the human subject, as it tries to cope
with the situation in which it has been thrown and with the
anxiety to which that situation subjects it that it never manages to produce an intelligible account of the world at all. Perhaps the most extreme example of the condition to which unrestrained subjectivism can reduce a philosopher is provided
by Dr. Leslie Dewart's books The Future of Belief and The
Foundations of Belief in which he ends up by committing
philosophical hara-kiri on his own epistemological doorstep; I
have discussed his exposition in detail in chapter eight of my
book The Openness of Being. In their very different ways both
the linguistic empiricists and the existentialists abandon the
Thomist principle that truth consists in the conformity of the
mind to reality-adaequatio intellectus ad rem-and behind
them both lies the Kantian doctrine that the object of human
perception is inevitably and unconsciously manufactured by

THE GULF IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY

28

the experiencing subject. There is something ironical in the
fact that the phase of empiricism which began with Locke and
came to its climax with Hume and which claimed to be inspired by the achievements of experimental science ended up
by eliminating from the realm of human knowledge not only
God but the physical world as well. Dr. A. Boyce Gibson, in
his Theism and Empiricism, has placed at the head of his catalogue of " the Misadventures of Empiricism " the " empirical
misadventure" which has virtually identified perception with
sensation. It is remarkable that the one doctrine of perception
which modern philosophers hardly ever discuss, and of which
most of them seem to be altogether ignorant, is the one doctrine which empirical science needs and which, in practice, it
unreflectively assumes. And this is, in its central features, the
doctrine of St. Thomas. It holds that perception is an activity
in which sense and intellect are both involved. This does not
mean that in perception there are really two acts performed by
two different subjects, a sense which senses and an intellect
which understands. There is one subject, the human being,
who in one act of perception senses by his senses and apprehends by his intellect, the sensible impression being the objectum quo and the intelligible extramental thing the objectum
quod. Provided this basic formulation is accepted, its elaboration and decoration, as we find them in St. Thomas and in
modern Thomists such as Jacques Maritain and Etienne Gilson,
while they can be illuminating and helpful, are of secondary
importance; the central thesis can stand without them. It is,
however, pertinent to notice that when Karl Rahner, in his
major work Spirit in the World, sets out to develop his Transcendental Thomism in an existentialist idiom, he opens his
discussion by printing in full the article of the Summa Theologiae in which St. Thomas maintains that the human intellect
cannot know anything through the intelligible species which it
possesses without turning to the sensible species through which
they have been acquired. And Bernard Lonergan, in his massive volume Insight, builds up the vast structure of his account
of human knowledge on the foundation of the primary fact

24

E.L.MASCALL

that, as the title of the book suggests, the human mind, the
intellectus, is able to penetrate beneath the sensible and phenomenal surface of things to reach and appropriate their intelligible essence. Only the Thomist doctrine of perception
would seem to be able to offer to the linguistic empiricists a
coherent and persistent subject of mental experience and at
the same time to rescue the existentialists from the morass of
their own subjectivity by providing them with a world which
is not just an alien and hostile menace of anxiety but is an
intelligible and manipulable home.
For, correlative with the Thomist doctrine of the understanding mind is the Thomist doctrine of the object understood. As I have written elsewhere:
To know a being is not to achieve some kind of external contact
with it analogous to the impact of one material object on another.
It is to achieve a real union with the being, to get it "into one's
mental skin " or, from another aspect, to become identified, however
imperfectly, with it. This is what is implied by the scholastic assertion that in knowledge the knower becomes the thing known, not
entitatively but "intentionally." This is ... highly mysterious, but
it is a fact. It pertains inchoatively, on the level of pure sensation.
even in sub-human animals, but it is on the level of spirit that this
capacity to penetrate other beings, not physically but none the less
really, reaches its full manifestation, and it comes to its climax in
the mutual communication of spirits with one another. In us
humans, compounded as we are of spirit and matter, it is not only
mysterious but extremely complex. There is nothing in the intellect
that was not first in the senses, the mind spontaneously turns to
sensible representations, but, simply as mind, as intellect, as spirit, it
can (intentionally) "become" all things. Nihil in intellectu quod
non prius in sensu; mens convertit se ad phantasmata; mens
quodammodo fit omnia: there well-worn tags are not statements of
a theory about knowledge, they are a description of what human
knowledge is. (The Openness of Being, p. 190)
In suggesting that Thomism may do something to bridge the
gulf between linguistic empiricism and existentialism, I do not
assume that Thomism is incapable or unneedful of improvemertt. It is, for example, sometimes alleged that Thomist
metaphysics, with its emphasis upon the notion of substance,

THE GULF IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY

is far too static in its outlook to do justice to a world which is
dynamic and changing and that it is necessary to discard the
notion of substance altogether. The allegation may be true
about a great deal of Thomism and even to some degree about
the Thomism of St. Thomas himself, but I find it difficult to
see how one can do without the notion of substance, which,
after all, is the accepted equivalent of the Greek O'U8ia or
"being." What is desirable, I suggest, is not to discard the
notion of substance but to interpret it in more dynamic terms.
The most obvious fact about the world is that it is neither a
Parmenidean iceberg nor an Heraclitean mush but a baffiing
and complicated complex of stability and fluidity; Whitehead
at least saw this. And I think that the leading Thomists of all
schools have recognized this. Gilson's emphasis upon existence
(esse), as an act which is affirmed in a judgment and not an
essence which is grasped in a concept, is a significant example. 8
Rahner's doctrine of spirit as " a power which reaches out beyond the world and knows the metaphysical " (Spirit in the
World [London, 1968], p. liii) , Coreth's affirmation of man's
radical impulse to ask and to go on asking questions (Metaphysics [N.Y.C., 1968] passim), Lonergan's exposition of man
as a being whose power to know and to love can be ultimately
satisfied only by one whose being is that of an unrestricted act
of understanding (Insight [London, 1957] passim, Method in
Theology [London, 1972] passim), the general insistence of
the Transcendental Thomists that man is radically endowed
with an urge for self-transcendence and that his cognitive and
affective horizon is nothing less than infinite and unrestricted
reality-all these manifest a dynamic understanding of both
man and God. Neither the Neo-Thomism of Gilson and Maritain nor the Transcendental Thomism of Rahner, Coreth, and
Lonergan can be fairly accused of a static or antiquarian outlook.

* * * * *
The foregoing discussion has been inevitably incomplete and
8

Cf. Le Thomisme, 5me ed. (Paris, 1945), pp. 52, 62.

E. L. MASCALL

inadequate. Nothing has been said, for example, about Phenomenology, which, though often associated with existentialism,
is really quite distinct from it and is equally ignored in British
philosophical circles. Nor have I discussed the process-philosophy of A. N. Whitehead, who is almost as completely neglected, in spite of his earlier association with Russell and the
Cambridge empiricists. And I am very conscious that much
more detailed attention to particular problems would be needed
to vindicate any claim of Thomism to be the peacemaker in
the philosophical cold war. I hope, nevertheless, that I have
raised an issue which is worthy of consideration. I began this
discussion with some quotations from Dr. John Passmore; I
will conclude with a quotation from Dr. Louis Dupre, from a
preface in which he was introducing to the American public a
work, The Problem of God, by the French philosopher Henry
Dumery:
His name is virtually unknown in America. This obscurity seems to
be due to the silence which separates Anglo-Saxon from Continental
philosophers. Most of the time one group acts as if the other did not
exist or was not worth talking to. Yet both pay dearly for this
neglect, for the absence of any significant dialogue between the two
Western traditions is one of the major reasons that philosophical
discussion more and more spins around itself far from the real world.
To the ordinary intellectual, philosophy seems to be the business of
a group of inbred academic coteries which have removed their
interests to a distance sufficient from those of ordinary mortals to
be safe from any outside criticism. What ought to be the most
stimulating of all disciplines has turned into an esoteric game
totally irrelevant to what really matters in life (The Problem of
God, [N.Y.C. 1968] p. ix).
Whether or not Thomism can bridge the gulf, the gulf is
surely there!

E. L. MASCALL
King's College
London, England

LITTLE ERRORS IN THE BEGINNING

I

N HIS INTRODUCTION to De Ente et Essentia St.

Thomas Aquinas remarks that "a little error in the beginning leads to a great one in the end." He is here rephrasing an observation made by Aristotle in De Caelo, I, 5:
"The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later
a thousandfold."
The insight thus expressed is applicable to mathematics and
the experimental sciences and, in fact, to all human enterprises
as well as to philosophy, but I am going to concentrate upon
its significance for philosophy. I am also going to try to show
that many of the problems characteristic of modern philosophical thought have resulted from the failure to correct little
errors in the beginning.
Methodologically, the rule would appear to be a simple one
to follow. When you disagree with a philosopher's conclusions,
regard them as untenable, or find them repugnant to common
sense, go back to his starting point and see if he has made a
little error in the beginning. A striking example of the failure
to follow this rule, and one with disastrous consequences for
philosophy in the last 150 years, is to be found in Kant's response to Hume. Hume's skeptical conclusions and Hume's
phenomenalism were unacceptable to Kant, even though they
awoke him from his own dogmatic slumbers. But instead of
looking for the little errors in the beginning that were made by
Hume and dismissing, as unfounded, the Humean doctrines and
conclusions that he found unacceptable, Kant felt it necessary
to construct a vast piece of philosophical machinery, designed
by him to produce conclusions of an opposite tenor.
The intricacy of the apparatus and the ingenuity of the design cannot help but evoke admiration, even from those who
are suspiCious of the sanity of the whole enterprise and who

27

MORTIMER J. ADLER

find it necessary to reject Kant's doctrines and conclusions as
well as Hume's. Though they are opposite in tenor, they do
not help us to get at the truth, which can only be found by
correcting Hume's little errors in the beginning and making a
fresh start from correct premises that lead to conclusions that
are neither Hume's nor Kant's.
What I have just said about Kant in relation to Hume
applies also to the whole tradition of British empirical philosophy following Locke and Hume. All of the philosophical puzzlements, paradoxes, and pseudo-problems that linguistic and
analytical philosophy and therapeutic positivism have tried to
eliminate, by the invention of philosophical devices designed
for that purpose, would never have arisen in the first place if
the little errors in the beginning made by Locke and Hume had
been explicitly rejected instead of going unnoticed.
I will presently comment on these particular errors as well
as discuss some others. But, first, I would like to call attention
to the two ways in which little errors in the beginning occur.
In some cases, they are made because something that needs to
be known or understood has not yet been discovered or learned.
Such mistakes are, of course, excusable, however regrettable
they may be. In other cases, the errors are made as a result
of culpable ignorance-ignorance of an essential point, an insight or distinction, that has already been discovered and expounded.
It is mainly in this second way that modern philosophers
have made their little errors in the beginning. When they are
made in this way and then perpetuated by the same ignorance
that accounts for their origin, they are ugly monuments to
failures in education-failures that have one or both of the
following sources: on the one hand, corruptions in the tradition of learning, like the corrupt and decadent scholasticism of
the 15th and 16th centuries, the effects of which are so evident
in the writings of Descartes, Hobbes, and Locke; 1 on the other
1 Though the 15th and 16th centuries were the centuries of Cajetan and Jean
Poinsot, their work exerrcised little influence on current scholastic thought, and
none outside it.

LITTLE ERRORS IN THE BEGINNING

29

hand, an attitude of antagonism toward or even contempt for
the past-for the achievements of those who have come before.
Both of these causes are operative today. Contemporary
philosophers are, for the most part, vastly ignorant of the great
works in the philosophical tradition prior to the 17th century.
Many students of philosophy in our universities, graduate as
well as undergraduate, spend most, if not all, of their time,
reading books and periodical articles written in this century,
for the most part limited to the last forty or fifty years. They
may have to pass examinations in the history of philosophy,
but this seldom requires them to make a thorough study of the
texts of even 17th and 18th century writers, much less anything
earlier than that. How, then, can we expect a correction of the
little errors in the beginning that have beset the whole of modern philosophy, especially those errors which have resulted
from an ignorance of insights and distinctions that were once
known and expounded but which are no longer taught and cannot be learned by the reading of modern or contemporary
works?

IT
Within the compass of this short essay, I cannot do more
than indicate some of these little errors and comment briefly
on their consequences. Such an abbreviated treatment may
give the impression that the story of modern philosophy is
nothing but the story of these errors and their consequences.
To forestall that impression, I would like to call attention to the
fact that in my book, The Conditions of Philosophy, and elsewhere in my writings, I have noted that ancient and mediaeval
philosophy had their share of little errors, and that modern
philosophy has advanced in important ways beyond ancient
and mediaeval thought. 2 However, in the pre-modern periods
of philosophy, respect rather than contempt for one's predecessors was the order of the day; hence errors of the culpable
sort-the sort I am mainly concerned with in this essay-char2

See op. cit., New York, 1955:

Chapters 14-16.

80

MORTIMER J. ADLER

acterize modem thought to an extent unparalleled in earlier
periods.
In this section, I am going to deal, first, with errors in logic
and in the theory of knowledge and of truth; and then, second,
with errors in practical philosophy-in ethics and politics. These
matters I have treated at length in The Conditions of Philosophy/ The Time of Our Lives, 4 and The Common Sense of Politics.5 In Section III to follow, I am going to deal somewhat
more extensively with an error that work in progress at the Institute for Philosophical Research has convinced me can be regarded, in terms of its effect on modem thought, as the single
most disastrous error; and I will also touch on a number of other
errors closely connected with this basic error in the psychology
of cognition.
1. Leibniz and Locke laid the groundwork for Kant's famous
distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments. According to Locke, propositions are either trifling or instructive. They
are trifling-mere tautologies-either when they state identities
(e.g.," a law is a law," or" right is right and wrong is wrong")
or when the predicate is contained in the meaning of the subject as that is defined (e.g., "lead is a metal," or "gold is
fusible ") . While true, such propositions are uninstructive:
they add nothing to our knowledge. In addition, such truth as
they possess requires no support from other propositions offering evidence or reasons, as compared with instructive propositions that do require such support.
It is the second type of trifling or uninstructive proposition
that Kant, as before him Leibniz, treats as an analytic judgment-one in which the predicate is contained in the definition
of the subject. In contrast, synthetic judgments are, for Kant,
expressed by propositions in which the predicates lie entirely
outside the meaning of the subjects as defined. The distinction
between analytic and synthetic judgments being, for Kant,
• Ibid. See pp. 187-140.
• New York, 1970.
8 New York, 1971.

See Chapters 9-11, 18-14, 16.

LITTLE :ERRORS IN 'rHE :BEGINNING

exhaustive, he is then confronted by the following dilemma:
either all synthetic judgments are a posteriori, requiring the
support of evidence or reasons that can be stated in other
propositions; or some are a priori and have certitude in and of
themselves.
I need not recount in detail all the steps in the controversy
about synthetic judgments a priori which have eventuated in
the currently prevailing opinion that none exist, and that the
only tenable distinction is between verbal truths or mere tautologies (Locke's two types of trifling propositions and Kant's
analytic judgments) , on the one hand, and truths about matters
or fact or real existence (Locke's instructive propositions and
Kant's synthetic judgments a posteriori), on the other. This
is accompanied by the now generally accepted assertion that
the latter are always conclusions that must be supported by evidence and reasoning. They cannot, therefore, have incorrigible
certitude, because the supporting propositions are always themselves synthetic and need similar support. Hence, if an infinite
regress is to be avoided, any argument for the truth of a synthetic proposition must either rest ultimately on postulates,
which can always be denied, or at least on evidence and reasons
that are intrinsically questionable.
The little error in the beginning, made by Locke and Leibniz,
perpetuated by Kant, and leading to the repudiation of any
non-verbal or non-tautological truth having incorrigible certitude, consists in starting with a dichotomy instead of a trichotomy-a twofold instead of a threefold distinction of types of
truth. In addition to merely verbal statements which, as tautologies, are uninstructive and need no support beyond the
rules of language, and in addition to instructive statements
which need support and certification, either from experience or
by reasoning, there is a third class of statements which are
non-tautological or instructive, on the one hand, and are also
indemonstrable or self-evidently true, on the other. These are
the statements that Euclid called "common notions," that
Aristotle called " axioms " or " first principles," and that mediaeval thinkers called " propositions per se nota."

:M:O:RTIMERJ. ADLEit

One example will suffice to make this clear-the axiom or
self-evident truth that a finite whole is greater than any of its
parts. This proposition states our understanding of the relation between a finite whole and its parts. It is not a statement
about the word " whole " or the word " part " but rather about
our understanding of wholes and parts and their relation. All
of the operative terms in the proposition are indefinable. We
cannot express our understanding of a whole without reference
to our understanding of its parts and our understanding that it
is greater than any of its parts. We cannot express our understanding of parts without reference to our understanding of
wholes and our understanding that a part is less than the whole
of which it is a part.
When our understanding of an object that is indefinable
(e.g., a whole) involves our understanding of another object
that is indefinable (e.g., a part), and of the relation between
them, that understanding is expressed in a self-evident proposition which is not trifling, uninstructive, or analytic, in Locke's
sense or Kant's, for no definitions are involved. Nor is it a synthetic a priori judgment in Kant's sense, even though it has
incorrigible certitude; and it is certainly not synthetic a posteriori since, being intrinsically indemonstrable, it cannot be supported by statements offering empirical evidence or reasons.
The contemporary denial that there are any indisputable
statements which are not merely verbal or tautological, together with the contemporary assertion that all non-tautological statements require extrinsic support or certification and that
none has incorrigible certitude, is therefore falsified by the
existence of a third type of statement, exemplified by the axiom
or self-evident truth that a finite whole is greater than any of
its parts, or that a part is less than the finite whole to which
it belongs. It could as readily be exemplified by the self-evident truth that the good is the desirable, or that the desirable
is the good-a statement that is known to be true entirely from
an understanding of its terms, both of which are indefinables.
One cannot say what the good is except by reference to desire,
or what desire is except by reference to the good. The under-

LITTLE ERRORS IN THE BEGINNING

88

standing of either involves the understanding of the other, and
the understanding of both, each in relation to the other, is
expressed in a proposition per se nota, i.e., self-evident or known
to be true as soon as its terms are understood.
Such propositions are neither analytic nor synthetic in the
modem sense of that dichotomy; for the predicate is neither
contained in the definition of the subject, nor does it lie entirely
outside the meaning of the subject. Axioms or self-evident
truths are, furthermore, truths about objects understood, objects that can have instantiation in reality, and so they are not
merely verbal. They are not a priori because they are based on
experience, as all our knowledge and understanding is; yet they
are not empirical or a posteriori in the sense that they can be
falsified by experience or require empirical investigation for
their confirmation. The little error in the beginning, which consists in a non-exhaustive dichotomy mistakenly regarded as
exhaustive, is corrected when we substitute for it a trichotomy
that distinguishes (i) merely verbal tautologies, (ii) statements of fact that require empirical support and can be empirically falsified, (iii) axiomatic statements, expressing indemonstrable truths of understanding which, while based upon
experience, do not require empirical support and cannot be
empirically falsified.6
Before leaving this subject, I would like to comment briefly
on an error that is ancient and mediaeval, not modem, in origin.
It is the ancient and mediaeval conception of what the Greeks
called " episteme " and the Latins " scientia." The error consists in the over-simplified view that a science is an organized
body of knowledge which consists solely of axioms, or self-evident truths, and propositions that can be rigorously demonstrated by deduction from them as conclusions, using only
axioms as the ultimate premises or first principles. No such
• It would be a further mistake to regard this trichotomy as exhaustive. There
are, in addition, (iv) postulates or assumptions that, while not self-evident, are
asserted without proof or support of any kind and can, therefore, also be denied;
and (v) statements, expressing truths of understanding which, not being axiomatic
and indemonstrable, can be supported by reasoning.

84

MORTIMER J. ADLER

body of knowledge exists, either in the sphere of mathematics
or in that of philosophy, neither of which involve empirical
investigation of any sort; a fortiori, no such body of knowledge
exists in the sphere of what we now call " empirical science."
While this mistaken conception of science is stated by both
Aristotle and Aquinas, it is not put into practice by them when
they expound their own philosophical doctrines. Aristotle's
Metaphysics, for example, is not set forth as a deductive system
in which conclusions are deductively developed from and demonstrated by a small number of axioms or self-evident truths
that function as its first principles. Nor is the doctrine of De
Ente et Essentia expounded in that way. The actual exemplification of this erroneous conception of science is to be found
only in the works of modern philosophers-in the way in which
Descartes and Spinoza attempt to expound their doctrines as
deductive systems: and in Kant's illusions about Euclidean
geometry as the model of deductive science.
fl. Closely connected with the little error about analytic and

synthetic judgments as an exhaustive distinction is another
little error that has the most far-reaching consequences for
moral philosophy in modern times, resulting in the total abandonment of normative ethics by those who treat all statements
about good and bad, or right and wrong, as non-cognitive or
emotive. This error consists in the failure to distinguish two
radically different modes of truth.
If all truth is of the same sort, involving some correspondence
between what is asserted and what is the case, then only descriptive propositions (or " is-statements ") can be either true
or false. Normative propositions (or "ought-statements")
obviously cannot be either true or false; for, in the first place,
the statement that something ought or ought not to be done
cannot correspond with what is or is not the case; and, in the
second place, an ought-statement cannot be established as true
on the basis of a series of is-statements that are true by virtue
of their correspondence with what is the case; nor can oughtstatements, when categorical, be reduced to is-statements. Since

LITTLE ERRORS IN THE BEGINNING

35

normative propositions cannot be either true or false, they
must be interpreted in some other way, and the criteria for
accepting or rejecting them must be entirely different from the
criteria applicable to statements that claim to be knowledge.
With obvious and significant exceptions, such as Jacques
Maritain, not a single modern writer in the field of moral
philosophy is cognizant of Aristotle's and Aquinas's distinction
between speculative and practical truth (i.e., the mode of truth
appropriate to descriptive propositions or is-statements, on the
one hand, and the mode of truth appropriate to normative
propositions or ought-statements, on the other) . If, instead of
making this little error in the beginning, due to ignorance, they
had recognized that a statement about what ought to be done
can be true or false by virtue of its conformity or non-conformity with right desire, thus having a mode of truth quite different
from the truth or falsity of descriptive statements by virtue
of their conformity or non-conformity with what really is the
case, non-cognitive or emotive ethics might not have come into
being as the only solution of the problem of what to do about
statements that are not about matters of fact and do not describe any objects whatsoever by saying what they are or are
not.
Avoidance of that error would not, of course, have been sufficient by itself to save moral philosophy in modern times from
all its serious mistakes. Reference to right desire indicates
another little error that need not have been made if modern
writers had been cognizant of the distinction between natural
and conscious, or elicit, desire. In the absence of this distinction, it is impossible to differentiate between the real and the
apparent good-the former, that which ought to be consciously
desired because it is good and because its goodness consists in
its satisfying a natural desire (or need); the latter, that which
is regarded as good only because it is consciously desired (or
wanted) , whether or not it satisfies a natural need. Right desire, then, consists in consciously desiring what one ought to
desire-that which is really good because it satisfies a natural
desire.

86

MORTIMER J. ADLER

As I have already pointed out, it is self-evident or axiomatic
that the good is the desirable and the desirable the good. But
the desirable can be either (i) that which ought to be desired
whether or not it is in fact desired, or (ii) that which is in fact
desired whether or not it ought to be desired. So the good can
be either (i) that which is really good because it is naturally
desired (needed) , whether or not it is consciously desired
(wanted) or (ii) that which appears to be good because it is
consciously desired (wanted) whether or not it is naturally
desired (needed) . Given these two distinctions, the one with
regard to the desirable, the other with regard to the good, the
axiom that the good is the desirable generates another selfevident truth, namely, that we ought to desire everything
that is really good for us and nothing else. Desiring that which
ought to be desired because it is really good is right desire; and
any ought-statement then becomes true if the desire that it
prescribes conforms to this standard of right desire.
An understanding of the foregoing would have saved modern
thought from all its fruitless discussion of the so-called " naturalistic fallacy," as well as from the non-cognitive or emotive
interpretation of normative statements or value-judgments.
But still another little error made in modern thought must be
corrected to save it from another blind alley in ethics-that of
naturalism, which tries to reduce all value judgments to statements of fact, all normative judgments to descriptions. This
error consists in a failure to recognize a distinction between the
two senses in which an end can be proposed as the ultimate or
final goal and as the criterion for judging the moral value of
anything that is proposed as a means.
This distinction is best exemplified by the difference between
temporal happiness, on the one hand, and eternal beatitude, on
the other. When eternal beatitude is proposed by Aquinas as
a final end, it is also conceived as a terminal end-an end that
can be reached and in which, when reached, one comes to rest.
But when temporal happiness is proposed by Aristotle as a
final end, it is not conceived as a terminal end, for in the course
of this temporal life there is no achievement or any state of

LITTLE ERRORS IN THE BEGINNING

37

being in which we can come to rest; there is no moment of
which we are compelled to say "Stay, thou art so fair!" Temporal happiness is a final end only in a purely normative sense.
It is that sum of real goods or totum bonum which can be
achieved only successively and only in the course of a whole
life, not at any one moment nor even at any one period
of one's life. Thus conceived, temporal happiness cannot be
enjoyed as a psychological experience; it is not an end that can
be reached and rested in.
Failing to understand this distinction between a final end
that is terminal and one that is purely normative, and mistakenly supposing that a final end must be terminal, the naturalist denies that there is any final end in this life. In consequence, every end must be regarded as a means to some further
end; all normative judgments become hypothetical rather than
categorical; and it is in this way that they are all reduced to
statements of fact. That something either does or not serve
as a means to something else as an end is a matter of fact; if,
then, everything is a means to something else, and nothing is
an end itself, then all statements about means to be chosen are
hypothetical (if you wish to attain a certain end, then choose
these means); and all statements about ends to be sought must
be converted into statements about them as means to further
ends.
Two other errors closely connected with the one just mentioned consist in mistakes concerning happiness-mistakes
which, in my judgment, could have been avoided by a careful
reading of Aristotle's Ethics. One is the mistake of conceiving
happiness as the highest good or summum bonum; for the highest good is only one good in an order or set of goods, and no
one good can be identified with happiness, for then one could
achieve happiness while still lacking many other goods, in which
case happiness could not be a normative final end. Having it,
one might still desire other things. To be a final end that is
normative, not terminal, happiness must be conceived as the
totum bonum, the whole of real goods successively achieved in

38

MORTIMER J. ADLER

the course of a lifetime, not simultaneously possessed at any
one moment.
The second error is the mistake of conceiving happiness in
psychological instead of in ethical terms, as a hedonic state of
satisfaction, enjoyed at one moment and not at another, instead
of as a purely normative goal that has no existence at all as an
object of experience or as a state of being that can be enjoyed.
Making this error, Kant imposes upon all subsequent thought
the false diremption between a deontological and a teleological
ethics-the one an ethics of categorical oughts or obligations,
the other a merely pragmatic or utilitarian calculation of means
and ends, or desires and satisfactions.
Avoiding all these little errors that beset modern thought
in the field of ethics, a sound moral philosophy not only can
be, but also must be, both deontological and teleological. Happiness as the sum of all real goods is the normative final end
that ought to be pursued as the object of right desire, and
everything else is good in proportion as it serves as a means
constitutive or productive of this end-a good human life as a
whole.
One of the errors already mentioned has consequences for
political philosophy as well as for ethics. It is the failure to
distinguish between natural needs and conscious wants, together
with the related failure to distinguish between real and apparent goods. The only basis for natural rights lies in natural
needs. A man has, by nature, a right to that which, by nature,
he needs for the fulfillment of his categorical obligation to lead
a good human life. When I know what is really good for me,
because it answers to my natural needs, I also know what is
really good for everyone else, because they are of the same
nature; and it is thus that I know what every man can claim
as his natural right.
It is precisely this understanding of natural rights that is
lacking in modern political philosophy. The absence of it leads
to all kinds of philosophical contortions and confections in
contemporary efforts to deal with the problems of justice, as

LITTLE ERRORS IN THE BEGINNING

39

witness the recent book by Professor John Rawls on this subject.
Another little error should be mentioned. It occurs in J. S.
Mill's Utilitarianism and is not noticed by many of his followers. On the one hand, Mill proposes that the individual
should pursue his own happiness as an ultimate end. On the
other hand, he also proposes that each of us should work for
the general happiness, or the greatest good of the greatest
number, this too as an ultimate end. But it is impossible for
there to be two ultimate ends not ordered to one another; and
if one is subordinated to the other, then both are not ultimate
ends.
This error on Mill's part might have been avoided if he had
known and understood the distinction between bonum commune
hominis and bonum commune communitatis, and their relation
to one another. Because each man as a person is an end not a
means, and in relation to human beings the state is a means
not an end, the good that is common to and shared by all men
as men (the bonum commune hominis) is the one and only
ultimate end or final goal in this life. The good that is common
to and shared by all men as members of the political community
(the bonum commune communitatis) is an end served by the
organized community as a whole, and a means to the individual happiness of each man and of all. The individual by
himself cannot work directly for the general happiness or the
happiness of all; he can do so, indirectly, only by working with
others for the good of the political community, which is itself
a means to the happiness of each and everyone, including himself.

III.
Of all the little errors in the beginning that have plagued
modern philosophy since its start, the most serious is the one
that was made in the psychology of cognition. The most compact expression of it is to be found in the Introduction to John
Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The error
originated with Descartes, not with Locke, but it was the in-

40

MORTIMER J. ADLER

fluence of Locke's psychology on Berkeley and Hume, and
through Hume on Kant, that led to all the many times multiplied errors that, as Aristotle and Aquinas warned, spring from
a little error in the beginning.
In the last paragraph (#8) of his Introduction, Locke writes:
What "Idea" stands for ... Before I proceed to what I have
thought on this subject, I must here in the entrance beg pardon
of my reader for the frequent use of the word idea, which he will
find in the following treatise. It being the term which, I think,
serves best to stand for whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks, I have used it to express whatever is meant
by phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it is which the mind can
be employed about in thinking ... I presume it will be easily granted
me that there are such ideas in men's minds; every one is conscious
of them in himself; and men's words and actions will satisfy him
that they are in others. Our first inquiry then shall be, how they
come into the mind.

A careful reading of this paragraph will disclose a number
of points. (1) It is evident that Locke went to school at Oxford
with tutors who were scholastics, for it must have been thus
that he acquired such terms as "phantasm" and "species"
and learned that they stood for factors in the cognitive process.
Either he was a poor student or his scholastic instructors were
poor representatives of that tradition, for it is also clear from
the passage quoted that he did not learn the most important
things that the tradition could have taught him about the
cognitive process.
(2) It is evident that Locke uses the word" idea" to stand
for something private: the ideas in one man's mind are not
identical with the ideas in another man's mind. Each man has
his own. Each of us is conscious of his own, and can directly
apprehend only his own ideas. Each of us must infer from
their speech and actions that other men have ideas in their
minds too.
(3) What each of us directly apprehends-the objects of
our apprehension, says Locke-are always and only our own
ideas. But Locke also implies that these ideas come into our

LITTLE ERRORS IN THE BEGINNING

41

minds from without. As Book II of the Essay makes amply
clear, the ideas in our minds, the objects we directly apprehend,
are caused by things outside our mind-real existences of one
sort or another that we cannot directly apprehend. In fact, as
many passages reveal, Locke believes in the real existence of
Newton's world of bodies in motion, ultimately composed of
imperceptible atomic particles. It is the action of these on
our corporeal organs that somehow produces the ideas that are
the objects of our minds whenever we are engaged in thinking.
(4) As the passage quoted indicates, and as the rest of the
Essay fully substantiates, Locke makes no distinction between
the sensitive powers and the intellectual powers, merging them
into one cognitive faculty, which he calls " understanding" or
" mind." Though he uses the term " abstract idea " instead of
" concept," an abstract idea for Locke is a product of the same
faculty that produces what others would call "sensations " and
"perceptions" or "phantasms." If he had used the word
" concept " instead of " species " in the paragraph quoted, we
would read him as saying that both phantasms (or percepts)
and concepts are ideas, without any differentiation between
them.
The points made in (3) and (4) above reveal the presence
here of two little errors, not one. The first is the error of regarding ideas as the objects that we directly apprehend when
we are conscious-thinking or dreaming. The second is the
error of failing to distinguish between sense and intellect as
cognitive powers which, while they are cooperative in the cognitive process, do not operate in the same way and do not
contribute in the same way to whatever knowledge we are able
to achieve. These two errors together led to the nominalism
of Berkeley and Hume; to the idealism of Berkeley and the
phenomenalism of Hume; to Kant's efforts to extricate philosophy from these horrors, by trying to circumvent them with an
ingeniously confected theory of mind instead of by correcting
the little errors from which they arose; to all the riddles and
perplexities of later empiricism concerning the subjective and
the objective, concerning our knowledge of the external world,

42

MORTIMER J. ADLER

concerning the logical construction of "objects" that we cannot directly apprehend from the sense-data that we do directly
apprehend, concerning the referential meaning of any words
that do not have directly apprehended items, such as sense-data,
for their referents; and so on.
To avoid the solipsism that is inherent in Locke's premises,
along with the extreme skepticism which Hume sees as a conclusion from those premises but which he tries to avoid, it is
necessary to regard ideas-the only objects we directly apprehend-as somehow representations of real existences that we
cannot directly apprehend. Both Locke and Hume, each locked
within the world of his own ideas, have no hesitation in talking
about a world of things that are not ideas-an independent
world of nature or reality that would exist and be whatever it
is regardless of the existence of the human mind and its cognitive acts. How regarding the private ideas in my own mind
as both its directly apprehended objects and also as representations of things that cannot be directly apprehended enables me
to have knowledge of or even a rational belief in an independent
world of real existences is a mystery that has remained unsolved. And the futile attempts to solve it have produced a variety of other embarrassments and perplexities that have riddled philosophy in the 19th and 20th centuries.
In The Great Ideas Today for 1973, there is an essay by
Professor W. T. Jones on modern philosophy which begins by
calling attention to the little error about ideas as both objects
of the mind and representations of things, and which traces all
the consequences of this error in the serpentine turnings and
twistings of modern thought to extricate itself from its traces.
Professor Jones, I must add, fails to suggest how the error
could have been avoided in the first place. I quote the following paragraphs from this essay's opening pages.
When Kant's Critique of Pure Reason was published in 1781, the
dominant philosophical school was a form of metaphysical and
epistemological dualism. According to this way of thinking there
are two sorts of entities in the universe: minds and material objects.
A mind knows objects (and other minds) by means of mental

LITTLE ERRORS IN THE BEGINNING

43

states (variously called 'ideas,' 'representations,' 'impressions,')
that are caused by these objects and resemble them. Despite
differences on many points, the Lockeians and Cartesians agreed
that the mind is directly acquainted only with its own states; that is,
its ideas are its only means of access to the outside world.
The difficulty with this view, as Hume pointed out, is that if the
mind knows only its own states, its own states are all that it
knows ... Similarly, if we have access only to ideas, we can compare ideas with each other but never with the external reality they
claim to represent. Indeed, we can never even know that an external world, or that other minds than ours, exist.

Professor Jones then goes on to show that Kant, instead o£
correcting the errors made by Descartes and Locke, and instead
o£ rejecting the problems raised by Hume, all o£ which flowed
£rom those errors, tried to circumvent Hume's conclusions by
philosophical inventions specifically designed £or this purpose.
Post-Kantian thought, both in the 19th and 20th centuries, is
not only a record o£ diverse reactions to Kant's inventions but
also a record o£ sel£-de£eating attempts to solve problems that
would not be problems at all i£ the errors initially made by
Descartes, Locke, and Hume had been corrected.
From that false start modern philosophy has never recovered. Like a man who, floundering in quicksand, compounds his
difficulties by struggling to extricate himself, Kant and his successors have multiplied the difficulties and perplexities o£ modern philosophy by the very strenuousness-and even ingenuity
-o£ their efforts to extricate themselves £rom the muddle le£t
in their path by Descartes, Locke, and Hume. The only way
out o£ the debacle o£ modern philosophy is to go back to its beginning and try to make a fresh start.
That fresh start involves an alternative to the error committed by Descartes and Locke. We can find that alternative
compactly expressed in a single paragraph o£ the Summa Theologiae. In q. 85, a. 2 o£ Part I Aquinas rejects the error o£ those
who, in the objections, say that sensible and intelligible species
are that which we perceive and understand. On the contrary, he
writes: " The intelligible species is to the intellect what the

44

MORTIMER J. ADLER

sensible image is to sense. But the sensible image is not what
is perceived but rather that by which sense perceives. Therefore the intelligible species is not what is understood but that
by which the intellect understands."
The simple distinction between that which is apprehended
and that by which it is apprehended (the quod and the quo of
apprehension) corrects the error of Descartes and Locke. It
should be noted at once that I am here referring only to the
first act of the mind-its percepts, memories, imaginations,
and concepts, not to the second act of the mind-its perceptual
and conceptual judgments. The first act of the mind, in which
sense and intellect cooperate while remaining distinct, is that
of simple apprehension, in which there is neither truth nor
falsity, and hence no knowledge in the strict sense of that term.
The second act of the mind, involving the composition and
division of judgments, is subject to the criteria of truth and
falsity. It is only here that we can have knowledge and do
have it when our judgments are validated as true.
It is not enough to see that the distinction between the quo
and quod of simple apprehension removes the error made by
Descartes and Locke in regarding ideas as the objects apprehended and also as representations of the things about which
we seek to make true judgments and thus come to know. It is
also necessary to understand what is involved in rigorously
adhering to the view that ideas (percepts, memories, imaginations, and concepts) are always and only that by which we
apprehend, never that which we apprehend, when our sensitive and intellectual faculties perform their first acts, usually
in conjunction.
The first thing which must be understood is that the products
of our mind's first acts-its percepts, memories, imaginations,
and concepts-are totally unexperienceable, uninspectible, unapprehensible. We can never experience, inspect, or examine
them; for they are always and only that by which we apprehend whatever it is that we do apprehend, and never that
which we apprehend. For the moment I am going to use the
word "object" to name that which we do apprehend, thus

LITTLE ERRORS IN THE BEGINNING

45

sharply distinguishing objects from ideas, ideas being that by
which we apprehend objects. I will presently have something
further to say about objects of apprehension in relation to the
order of real existences concerning which we seek to make true
judgments and have knowledge. However, I must call attention at once to the negative point that the objects of the mind's
apprehensions are in no sense representations of the things
we know.
In the order of things sensible, through our sensitive powers
and their first acts, we experience perceived objects but never
the percepts whereby we perceive them; remembered objects,
but never the memories by which we remember them; imagined
or imaginary object;;, but never the images by which we imagine
them. In the order of things intelligible, through our intellectual powers and their first acts, we apprehend objects of
thought but never the concepts whereby we think them. The
objects thus presented to us by the first acts of the mind exist
intentionally as presented, whether or not they exist in reality
and whether or not, when they do exist in reality, they exist
in the same way as that in which they exist intentionally as
intended by ideas-the intentions of the mind.
In the order of things sensible, the objects we experience by
the acts of our sensitive powers may have existed but no longer
exist (as is the case with things remembered); or may have no
real existence at any time (as is the case with purely imaginary
objects, or objects produced by hallucinosis). So, in the order
of things intelligible, the objects of thought, being universal
and so having no real existence as such, may or may not have
instantiation in the realm of real existences; or they may be of
such a character that they cannot have instantiation in reality
(as is the case with entia rationis).
The second thing which must be understood is that a trichotomy of ideas (the quo's of apprehension), objects (the quod's
of apprehension), and things (the quod's of knowledge) replaces the dichotomy of ideas (the quod's of apprehension) and
things (the quod's of knowledge). In the trichotomy as well
as in the dichotomy ideas are mental existences-completely

46

MORTIMER J. ADLER

private, each man having his own. But in the trichotomy, as not
in the dichotomy, the objects of apprehension, not being ideas,
are public, not private.
Two or more men, as ordinary discourse amply confirms, can
talk about one and the same object which is before their minds
because each has an idea that presents it to him. The ideas in
the minds of two men are two mental existences which, while
two existentially, are one in intention; and so the two ideas are
that by which the two men intend one and the same object as
an object of discourse. Furthermore, the object intended by
the two ideas does not, like the ideas, have mental existence,
for then it would be the same as an idea. The mode of existence
of the object is intentional, neither mental nor real.
An entity may have both intentional and real existence; it
may have intentional existence without having real existence
or even without being able to have real existence; or it may have
real existence without having intentional existence. But when,
as in the case of veridical perceptions, one and the same entity
has both real and intentional existence, the object that the mind
apprehends (which has intentional existence as presented to
the mind by a percept) is not a representation of the thing
(which has real existence whether or not it is perceived). It
is the thing-as-perceived. Similarly, in the intellectual order,
the universal object of thought that the mind apprehends
(having intentional existence as presented to the mind by a
concept) is not a representation of an existent universal. When
that universal object has instantiation in reality, it is the thingunderstood-as-being-of -a-certain -kind.

IV
I have said enough to indicate what is involved in making
a fresh start by rigorously adhering to the distinction between
that which is apprehended (objects) and that by which they
are apprehended (ideas); the distinction between that which
is apprehended and has intentional existence (objects) and that
which is apprehensible and has real existence (things); the

LITTLE ERRORS IN THE BEGINNING

4'7

distinction between apprehension and knowledge (the first
and second acts of the mind) ; and the distinction between sense
and intellect (the apprehension of singular and universal objects) . All of these distinctions were lost or obscured in the
tradition of modern philosophy that began with Descartes and
Locke, giving rise to the consequences to which I have called
attention.
I do not mean to suggest that the philosophical development
that would follow from this fresh start would be without difficulties or even certain embarrassments of its own. Some of the
problems to be solved will be noted by a perceptive reader of
the brief statement that I have made about what is involved
in the new departure. There are others that may not be so
apparent.
One, for example, that should have been observed is the problem whether, even in the so-called reflexive acts of understanding, ideas are objects of apprehension. Aquinas appears to
think that the intelligible species, which " is the form by which
the intellect understands," may also be, secondarily, an object
that it understands reflexively. When the intellect turns back
upon itself, he writes, " it understands both its own act of
understanding and the species by which it understands. Thus
the intelligible species is that which is understood secondarily,
but that which is primarily understood is the thing, of which
the intelligible species is the likeness" (Zoo. oit.) . This, I think,
is an error and one that can be avoided by distinguishing two
ways in which a universal object of thought (not the concept
whereby we apprehend it) can be considered: in the first intention, either as instantiated or as oapable of instantiation;
in the second intention, either in and of itself, without regard to
instantiation, or as incapable of instantiation.
Problems that may not have become apparent in the brief
statement that I have made concern the threefold distinction
in modes of being (mental, intentional, and real existence); the
peculiar character of the identity between thing and object,
which consists in a special type of existential inseparability;
the difference between things as having an existence independ-

48

MORTIMER J. ADLER

ent of mind in general, objects as having an existence that is
not independent of mind in general but only of individual
minds, and ideas as having an existence that is dependent on
individual minds; the status of entia rationis; and, most difficult
of all, the relation between the first and second acts of the mind
in the case of veridical perceptions through which the object
perceived is known at once to be an entity that has real as well
as intentional existence.
Work that Dr. John Deely and I have been doing for some
years now at the Institute for Philosophical Research gives us
reasonable assurance that all these problems can be satisfactorily solved, by taking advantage of distinctions, insights, and
formulations explicitly achieved in the tradition of Aristotle
and Aquinas, especially in the contributions of Cajetan and
Jean Poinsot, and by developing points that are either not
touched on or are only implicitly there. The results of our work
will be published by the Institute under the title, Some Questions about Language.
MoRTIMER

Institute for Philosophical Research
Chicago, lllinoi8

J. ADLER

THE MEANING OF SACRA DOCTRINA IN
SUMMA THEOLOGIAE I, q. 1

T

HE SUMMA THEOLOGIAE of St. Thomas Aquinas
was the outcome of a personal
experience of trying to teach theology to beginners. It was
conceived and begun at Rome in 1266, continued at Viterbo
and Paris, and left unfinished at Naples on Dec. 6, 1273. In the
brief span of eight very active years Thomas wrote one of the
masterpieces of Catholic theology. Thomas never taught the
Summa in any classroom in any studium or university. It was
intended as a handbook to give beginners all the essentials of
scientific theology. Thomas never dreamt that his handbook
would one day replace the Sentences of Peter Lombard in the
classroom. But never could he have condoned the practice
that obtained in certain institutions in the past of giving primacy to the Summa over that of Sacred Scripture. In the
Middle Ages the Bible alone served as the official text of the
Master. 1 Today, of course, the science of theology-nay, rather,
the wisdom of theology-has become so vast that the Summa
is not enough; but this does not mean that it should be discarded. Its pages still contain the most lucid exposition of the
Catholic faith in terms of the scientific principles involved, the
scriptural, patristic, and cultural sources on which they depend,
and an order of presentation intended to lead the beginner from
point to point, from truth to truth.
Thomas was about forty years old when he was assigned to
open a studium for the province of Rome in 1265. The provincial chapter of the Roman province met at Anagni on Sept. 8,
1265, following the general chapter at Montpellier. At Anagni
1 H.
Denifle, "Quel livre servait de base a l'enseignement des Maitres en
Theologie dans l'Universite de Paris," Revue Thomiate, (1894), 149-161.

49

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JAMES A. WEISHEIPL

the capitular fathers, including Friar Thomas, decided to establish a studium for the province at Santa Sabina in Rome:
We enjoin on Friar Thomas d'Aquino in remission of his sins to
establish a studium in Rome, and we direct that there be provided
for the brethren who are with him for the sake of study, sufficient
clothing from the priories of their origin. If, however, those students
are found negligent in study, we give Friar Thomas full authority to
send them back to their respective houses. 2

Since Thomas attended this chapter in his capacity as preacher
general, he would most certainly have taken part in the discussion before a decision was reached. Very likely Thomas
himself suggested this turn in the history of the Roman province. At any rate, he was chosen to open the first studium in
the province of Rome at Santa Sabina on the Aventine hill.
This priory was one of the oldest in the Order, having been
given to St. Dominic by the Holy See in 1221; the spacious
basilica was designed by the same architect who designed Santa
Maria Maggiore in fifth-century Rome.
The studium that Thomas was asked to open was not to be
a " general studium," but simply a " provincial studium." Only
the general chapter of the Order had the right to open a general
studium where all subjects were taught and to which students
from all houses of the Order could be sent. At that time the
Order had only four general studia: Paris, Bologna, Oxford,
and Cologne (which Albert had been asked to open in 1248).
Thomas's task was to teach young Dominican students of the
Roman province the elements of theology through lectures and
disputations. Thonias taught in Rome only two short years;
in the summer of 1267 he was assigned to Viterbo, where Pope
Clement IV had been residing for some months. During the two
academic years in Rome, Thomas presided over the disputed
questions De potentia and De malo. It is also possible that,
following the example of Albert, he lectured on the De divinis
nominibus of pseudo-Dionysius. There is not the slightest evi2 Acta
Capitulorum Provincialium Provinciae Romanae (1243-1344), ed. T.
Kaeppeli, O. P., Monumenta Ordinis Praedicatorum Historica (hereafter MOPH),

XX,

THE MEANING OF " SACRA DOCTRINA "

51

dence that he taught philosophy here or anywhere else. Four
years later, the Roman province established its first studium
artium (philosophy) at Perugia, where Friar Matteo of Lucca
was lector. 3
There is strong evidence that Thomas tried at first to teach
part of the Sentences of Peter Lombard before realizing how
difficult a book it was for beginners in theology. At that date,
the Sentences was the basic text for bachelors in theology, and
Thomas had spent four years lecturing on it at Paris (1'25'2-56).
Moreover, Thomas is said to have read the Sentences privately
when he was confined to his parental home at Roccasecca at the
age of nineteen or twenty. 4 The four books of the Sentences
were considered the beginner's text in theology, an obligatory
text for bachelors, who lectured on it anywhere from one to
four years before incepting as master in theology.
According to Tolomeo of Lucca, " while at Rome " Thomas
revised the first book of his commentary (the Scriptum) on the
Sentences. This revision would have been the result of his attempt to teach the Sentences to Dominican novices. Tolomeo
adds, "I saw this [book] once at Lucca, but then someone
took it away and I never saw it again." 5 Bernard Gui, one of
the early biographers of Thomas, refers to this testimony when
he says:
While at Rome [Thomas] also wrote a commentary on the first
book of Sentences, as witnessed in the chronicle of the Lord Friar
Tolomeo, Bishop of Torcello, who was his disciple and pupil, declaring that he had seen it in the priory of Lucca, but which cannot be
found now because it is believed to have been secretly removed and
so not multiplied.6
Both Tolomeo and Bernard make it clear that the book in
question was a revision, distinct from the commentary then in
Ibid., MOPH XX, 36.
William Tocco, Hystoria beati Thomae de Aquino, c. 10, Thomae Aquinatis
Vitae Fontes Praecipuae, ed A. Ferrura, 0. P. (Alba, 1968), p. 40.
5 Tolomeo
of Lucca, Historia Ecclesiastica, lib. 23, c. 15, Thomae Aquinatis
Vitae Fontes Praecipuae, ed. cit., p. 368.
6 Bernard Gui, Legenda sancti Thomae Aquinatis, c. 53, ibid., n. 124, p. 189.
3

4

JAMES A. WEISHEIPL

circulation, since they list the well-known Scriptum in four
books separately in their catalogue of Thomas's works. If
Thomas did try to teach the Sentences in the Roman studium,
he quickly realized the difficulty of teaching it to young minds,
the "beginners" in theology. Therefore, "while teaching in
Rome" at Santa Sabina, he conceived a plan to instruct beginners in theology, a plan that was to take form as the Summa
Theologiae.
It would seem that Thomas had the idea of writing a Summa
But many authorities believe
for beginners as early as
that he did not begin it until IQ66, before or during his second
year of teaching in Rome. The First Part of the Summa was
completed at Viterbo before November
when he left for
Paris and his second term as Regent Master there.
In the prologue to the Summa Thomas states that it belongs
to the doctor of Catholic truth to instruct not only advanced
students (as in a studium generale) but also beginners, as St.
Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians: "As to little
ones in Christ, I gave you milk to drink, not meat" (I Cor
3:
. Therefore, his intention in this work is "to present
those things that pertain to the Christian religion (ad Christianam religionem) in a manner befitting the education of beginners." He then goes on to indicate the obstacles he hopes to
overcome in his new presentation:
Students in this science have not seldom been hampered by what
they found written by other authors, partly on account of the
multiplicity of useless questions, articles, and arguments; partly also
because the things they need to know are not taught according to
the order of learning [secundum ordinem disciplinae] but according
as the plan of the book might require or the occasion of disputing
[disputandi] might offer; partly, too, because frequent repetition
brought weariness and confusion to the minds of listening students.
Anxious, therefore, to overcome these and other obstacles, we will
try, confident of divine help, to present those things pertaining to
sacred doctrine [ea quae ad sacram doctrinam pertinent] briefly
and clearly insofar as the matter will permit.
7 I. T. Eschmann," A Catalogue of St. Thomas's Works:
Bibliographical Notes,"
in E. Gilson, The Christutn Philosophy of St. Thomas Aqui008 (New York: Random
House, 1956). p. 887.

THE MEANING OF " SACRA DOCTRINA "

58

In the mind of Thomas current works of theology were unsuitable for beginners because (1) they were too verbose and detailed, (2) they were all unsystematic, and (8) they were too
repetitious and wearisome because they were unsystematic and
unscientific. Not only were the Sentences of Peter Lombard
a prime example of these deficiencies, but the Scriptures themselves lack a logical order. The Sacred Scriptures, while most
suitable to proclaiming the Word of God, were not intended
to be a systematic presentation of all the divine truths needed
to train beginners in theology, particularly in scholastic theology.
The Sentences of Peter Lombard and the numerous compendia, summas, and treatises of the 12th and 13th centuries
tried to reorganize the truths of faith, following the order of
the articles of the Apostles' Creed, but these too were insufficiently scientific, at least in the mind of Thomas. Melchior
Cano, writing in the 16th century, found little to praise in
Lombard's Sentences: "Besides the word 'distinctions' into
which the books are divided, you will find almost nothing distinct or correctly and orderly distributed. You could call it a
congestion of testimonies rather than a disposition and order
of discipline." He complained that the three divine Persons
are treated (Bk. I) before the essential attributes of the One
God (Bk. IV) ; and that the virtues are analyzed in Bk. III,
whereas some of the vices are discussed in Bk. IV. "Consequently, for scholastics who clung to its vestige, everything is
confused and almost chaotic." 8
In his Summa Thomas followed a strictly logical and scientific order, inherited from Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. Each
question has its logical place in the whole, and each article has
its proper place in the question; even the objections are posed
in a logical order. Nevertheless, Thomas did not reject entirely
the order of the Creed or contemporary sentences, summas, and
compendia. Following the suggestion of Alexander of Hales 9
8 Melchior Cano, De locis theologicis, lib. 12, c. 2, n. 4 (Rome, 1900), III, IS.
• Alexander of Hales, Glossa in Quatuor Libros Sententiarum Petri Lombardi,
ed. Quaracchi 1951, I, Introitus, n. 8, p. 4.

54

JAMES A. WEISHEIPL

he divided the three parts of the Summa ultimately into two
vast visions of God: the exitus of all things from God (I) , and
the reditus of all things, particularly man, to God as to his
ultimate goal (II- III) . In broad outline, the first and third
parts of the summa follow the order of the Creed and Peter
Lombard's Sentences: Trinity, creation and creatures, Incarnation, redemption, sacraments, and last things. The second part,
the unsurpassed tribute to Thomas's genius, is unique in
medieval literature; in it, he discusses man's search for true
happiness through virtue, law, and grace in much the same way
as Aristotle had discussed man's search for temporal happiness
in Nicomachean Ethics.
As is clear from the prologue to the Summa, Thomas wanted
to present a comprehensive vision of " sacred doctrine " for
beginners, a handbook suitable for novices. We can say that in
the first part Thomas succeeded admirably; he had discussed
all the issues in other works much more difficult for beginners.
However, the second and third parts are far from being a
" simple " introduction; Thomas himself matured considerably
in the writing of these parts. A comparison between the Fourth
Book of the Summa contra Gentiles, where Thomas discusses
Christ's Incarnation, the sacraments, and the four last things,
and the third part of the Summa Theologiae will bring out fully
the development of Thomas's thought in theology. Almost
nine years had elapsed between these two writings, and Thomas
had learned much during that interval. The development between Thomas's commentary on the Sentences and the Summa
Theologiae is even more striking; almost fifteen years had
elapsed between the beginnings of both of these works.
The very first question of the Summa is an introduction to
the whole of sacra doctrina, or Christiana religio, which is analyzed throughout the three parts. Strictly speaking, as we
shall see, this first question is not an introduction to the Summa
or to scholastic theology; it is rather an introduction to the
subject matter, the doctrine possessed by every Christian and
studied by every theologian. This apparently simple question
has been the subject of heated debates among theologians and

THE MEANING OF " SACRA DOCTRINA"

55

commentators. Thomas himself surely did not think that the
first question of a beginner's handbook would cause so much
controversy and misunderstanding. The crux of the controversy is the meaning of sacra doctrina as it is used throughout
the first question (entitled " de ipsa sacra doctrina ") . Commentators have tried to understand the meaning of the expression as it is applied to the various articles in the question.
The net conclusion has been, generally, that the expression
changes meaning throughout-sometimes meaning "Christian
faith," sometimes " theology," and sometimes " Sacred Scripture." But such an oscillation of meaning within a single question goes contrary to every canon of method outlined in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics and contrary to common sense.
In the prologue to the first question Thomas says, " In order
to encompass our purpose within certain limits, we must first
examine sacra doctrina itself, what it is, and to what does it
extend." He says that there are ten questions (i.e., articles)
which must be raised:
1. the necessity of this doctrine.

2. whether it is knowledge (science).
3. whether it is one or many.
4. whether it is speculative or practical.
5. its comparison with other sciences.
6. whether it is wisdom.
7. what is its subject.
8. whether it is argumentative.
9. whether it should use metaphors or symbolic expressions.
10. whether the sacred writings of this doctrine must be
expounded according to many senses.
Scholastic commentators pounce on articles two to eight as an
introduction to their own specialty, namely, scholastic "theology." But they express noticeable bewilderment and embarrassment over the first article, which seems to be about faith,
and the last two articles, which seem to be about Sacred Scripture, which for them is not theology properly so-called but only
an important locus for theology.

56

JAMES A. WEISHEIPL

Major Commentators on the Question
The first prominent commentator on the Summa was the
Dominican Cardinal Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1469-1534). His
commentary on the first part of the Summa was finished in
1508 and first published with the text of St. Thomas at Lyons
in 1540.10 In the first question St. Thomas asks whether there
must exist another doctrine besides the philosophical disciplines.
He replies that there must exist a sacra doctrina received
through revelation, since without it man would not know or
pursue the supernatural goal to which God has ordained man;
even the few truths that man can know about God through
human reason must be revealed from on high because only a
few men ever reach them by reason after long experience, and
even then with an admixture of many errors. Cajetan's comment is that in this question sacra doctrina cannot mean either
faith or theology. 11 It cannot mean "faith" for two reasons:
Thomas would have been asking the same question twice, once
here and again in II-II, q. 2, a. 3, which is incongruous; and,
secondly, the term would then be used equivocally in the following articles, for the following articles are most assuredly
not about " faith." On the other hand, the term cannot mean
"theology," for then it would follow that faith without theology
is not sufficient for man's salvation-which is obviously not
true. Cajetan therefore concludes that in article one, " sacred
doctrine " is not to be taken to mean " faith " as opposed to
theology, nor "theology " as distinguished from faith, but
rather knowledge (cognitio) revealed by God, either formally
or virtually, abstracting from its aspect of being believed or
scientifically known (a ratione crediti et sciti) .
In the second article Thomas asks whether sacra doctrina
is scientia. For Thomas, sacred doctrine is " science," but one
that is subalternated to the knowledge (scientia) that God has
of himself and that the blessed in heaven have of him. That is,
10 A. Michelitsch,
Thomistenschriften II: Commentatoren zur Summa theologiae
des hl. Thomas von Aquin (Graz-Wien,
p. 4.
11 Cajetan, In I Sum., q. 1, a. I, ed. Leon. n. V.

THE MEANING OF " SACRA DOCTRINA "

57

just as the science of music believes and accepts as true the principles conveyed by arithmetic, so sacra doctrina believes the
principles revealed by God. Cajetan interprets the word
scientia in the Aristotelian sense of an intellectual habit concerning conclusions demonstrated from principles. Since, for
Cajetan, scientia cannot be about principles but only about
conclusions, " sacred doctrine is here taken to mean revealed
doctrine ut est conclusionum." 12 Cajetan is explicit in holding
that the supposition of sacra doctrina here is identical with that
demonstrated in article one as necessary. It is simply contracted to signify the intellectual habit concerning conclusions,
which Aristotle called " science." The point of the second article
is " Whether sacra doctrina, which we have proved necessary
[in article one] has the aspect of scientia regarding its conclusions." In the course of his commentary on this article, it becomes clear that this aspect of sacra doctrina is what all theologians have come to call" theology," i.e., scholastic theology.
This understanding is made even more explicit in his commentary on articles three to eight. Cajetan seems to express no
surprise about the last two articles, dealing with Scripture.
For him, sacra doctrina is simply the revealed doctrine found
in Sacred Scripture, which employs metaphors on occasion,
and which contain truth under various senses. The significant
point about Cajetan's commentary is that the meaning of
sacra doctrina is not used equivocally throughout the ten articles but merely contracted as a genus is contracted to one of
its species. In other words, for Cajetan, sacra doctrina in article one is a generic term abstracted from its specific applications as "faith" and as "theology"; subsequent articles use
the term as contracted to one of its species, namely" theology."
The Spanish Dominican Domingo Banez (1528-1604) does
not show the slightest interest in discussing the logical sequence
of the first question. 13 Rather, he is interested in defending
the conclusions of each article against the heresies of the ReIbid., q. 1, a. !'l, n. I.
Bafiez, Scolastica Commentaria in I Partem Summae, q.l, ed. Luis Urbano,
Biblioteca de Tomistas Espafioles, vol. 8 (Madrid, 1934), pp. 7-99.
12

13

58

JAMES A. WEISHEIPL

formers. Commenting on the first article of question one he
insists that personal acceptance of divine revelation by each
adult is necessary for salvation. But he also insists on the
necessity of scholastic theology in the Church. 14 He interprets
article two onward in terms of scholastic theology; and he treats
the articles as though they were of equal importance. He shows
no hesitation in discussing articles nine and ten but insists on
the role of the scholastic theologian to interpret Sacred Scripture. Although Baiiez shows no interest in the logical structure
of the question, it would seem that for him the entire first
question (with the exception of part of article one) is about
scholastic theology.
The commentary of the secular priest, Francis Sylvius
(1581-1649) , of Louvain, also maintains a univocal meaning
of sacra doctin.a thoughout the first question. But, like Baiiez,
he held that the phrase meant the intellectual habit of theology.15 He argued that, since articles two to eight are clearly
about theology, so must article one be about theology. The
obvious difficulty is that, in this case, theology would be necessary for salvation, as proved in the first article. Sylvius argued
that, although the whole perfection of " theology " is not necessary for salvation, some part of it is necessary. This part of
theology, namely, the principles revealed by God (faith), is
necessary for salvation; therefore " theology " is necessary for
salvation. It is not necessary for mankind to know revealed
truth as principles of theology but only to know them in themselves. Even the last two articles of this question are about
the habit of theology, for they are concerned with the sources.
Sylvius is one of the first influential commentators to interpret
and defend sacra doctrina as the habit of scholastic theology
derived from principles of faith. Despite the many intrinsic
difficulties of Sylvius's interpretation of the text of Thomas,
he tries to be consistent in understanding the whole of the question as concerned with one and the same subject.
14
15

Ibid., pp. ll-12.
Sylvius, Opera Omnia, I, q.1, a.1 (Antverpiae, 1714).

THE MEANING OF " SACRA DOCTRINA "

59

The first commentator apparently to deny the univocity of
the term sacra doctrina in the first question is John of St.
Thomas of Lisbon (1589-1644). For him, the first article is
about faith precisely as it offers probative principles to the
theologian for scientific theology (a. 2). The general term
sacra doctrina includes not only strictly scientific theology but
also deductions and opinions that are merely probable. 16 But
in the common use of the term sacra doctrina can be taken as
probative and scientific deductions from the truths of faith,
and in this sense it is identical with "theology." 17 John of
St. Thomas's principal concern in his commentary is to show
that scholastic theology is truly scientific. 18 In his view, the
first article is about doctrine in the wide sense, including both
scientific and probable conclusions from principles of faith;
articles two to seven are about theology as a true science; articles eight and nine are again about theology as a doctrine
(including both scientific and probable conclusions) ; and article
ten is about Scripture as a source for theology.
Charles Billuart of Douay (1685-1757), upon whom many
later authors depend, notes the difficulty in interpreting the
first article of the Summa. 19 The problem is whether sacra
doctrina is to be understood as faith, or theology, or sacred
doctrine in general, abstracting from faith and theology.
Billuart professes to follow the teaching of John of St. Thomas
and Sylvius in maintaining that sacra doctrina in article one is
neither about faith nor about something common to faith and
theology but is about theology itself. Billuart rejects the view
of Cajetan and Marco Serra about the first article and maintains that it must be understood in the same way that articles
two to eight are intended to be understood. Since articles
two to eight are about theology as a science, more excellent
16 John of St. Thomas, Cursus Theologicus, I, q.1, Disp. II, a. 1 (Paris:
1931), p. 348, n. 4.

Desclee,

Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 252-256.
19 C.
R. Billuart, Summa Sancti Thomae hodiernis Academicarum moribus
accomodata (Paris, n.d.), pp. 2-20.
17
18

60

JAMES A. WEISHEIPL

than all others and a wisdom-none of which can be said about
" faith " or about some reality abstracted from "faith " and
" theology "-it follows that Thomas intended this article to
establish the necessity of some part of theology for salvation.
For Billuart, even the last two articles in the question are to be
interpreted as relating to theology, for Sacred Scripture constitutes a good part (bona pars) of theology; but he does not
further comment on them.
Enrico Buonpensiere (1853-1929) , claiming that the interpretation of Cajetan is closer to the mind of St. Thomas/ 0
insists that the object of article one is" the certain knowledge
[certa cognitio] of truths possessed by the supernatural light
of revelation." But he goes on to say that Christians are bound
to accept not only the revealed truths themselves but also all
"conclusions rigorously deduced from the articles of faith."
Buonpensiere seems to distinguish "supernatural faith" from
theologia revelata. This latter, which contains the conclusions
rigorously deduced from articles of faith, could not be said to
be necessary for the salvation of individual men but " necessary only for the whole community of the faithful." Thus,
" theology is subsumed [reducit] under sacra doctrina as the
less under a greater universal." For this reason the term sacra
doctrina (a generic term) is used in the title of the first article,
and not some such term as " science," "opinion," or " faith."
However, for him, articles two to five consider the deductions
from such principles as are revealed, that is, the conclusions
precisely as such that can be made by the theologian. The
method the theologian uses is argumentation (art. 8) from the
loci theologici, the most important of which is Sacred Scripture
(art. 9-10) .
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (1877-1964) is a more confusing commentator on this question than were his predecessors. 21
" 0 H. Buonpensiere, Oommentaria in I P. Summa Theologiae (De Deo Uno)
(Rome, 190!!), p. IS.
21 R. Garrigou-Lagrange, De Deo Uno: Oommentarium in Primam Partem B.
Thomae (Paris, 1988), p. 86.

THE MEANING OF " SACRA DOCTRINA"

61

At the outset he divides the first question of the Summa into
five sections with an appendix:
1. the necessity of sacred doctrine (an sit) .
2. the nature of this doctrine in three articles:

a. whether it is a science (a. 2);
b. whether it is one science (a. 3);
c. whether it is speculative or practical (a. 4).
3. its excellence with respect to other sciences (a. 5-6) .
4. its subject or proper object (a. 7) .
5. its method, "whether it is argumentative, wherein is discussed in general the intrinsic and extrinsic loci theologici
and also the use of metaphors and finally the use of Sacred
Scripture in theology" (a. 8-10) .
Garrigou-Lagrange agrees with Cajetan that the first article is
not about scientia theologica but about sacra doctrina, which
abstracts from " faith " and " theology ." He also agrees that
only faith is necessary for the salvation of individuals, but he
argues along lines already proposed by Banez, Sylvius, and
Buonpensiere that scientific theology is " necessary " for the
" Church collectively taken." 22 In the response to the second
objection, where Thomas concludes that " the theology that
pertains to sacra doctrina is generically distinct from that theology which is acknowledged as part of philosophy," GarrigouLagrange already sees a hint of scientia theologica.
All the commentators on St. Thomas's Summa I, q. 1, including Cajetan, interpret article one in terms of articles two to
eight, which seem to be about the intellectual habit of scholastic theology structured along systematic lines of human
science. All commentators also agree that article one is somehow about revealed truth that is necessary for salvation, and
that scientific theology is not necessary in the same way. Hence
the difficulty of reconciling the first article with the five subsequent articles, which are presumed to be about scholastic
theology, such as elaborated by Thomas himself throughout
the Summa. The last two articles seem all the more incongru•• Ibid., p. 88.

62

JAMES A. WEISHEIPL

ous, following, as they do, seven articles on the science and wisdom of theology. M.-D. Chenu goes so far as to say that the
introduction of these two questions on Scripture was merely a
concession made by Thomas to the usage of the age and that the
internal logic of Thomas's theory would in the course of time
eliminate them. 23
One recent reconsideration of the meaning of sacra doctrina
in the first question was made by Gerald F. Van Ackeren,
S.J. 24 For him, sacra doctrina is an "action," a process of instruction that is equivalent to " Catholic education." 25 This
divine action of instruction not only is necessary for salvation
but is also an operation of science (in the teacher), which is
both speculative and practical and has God as its subject. It
extends to all things that have a relation to God as their principle and end. And " in so far as sacred doctrine involves the
exposition of the sense of God's word it is also an operation of
the art of literary criticism" (i.e., biblical exegesis) .28 For
Van Ackeren, following Y. M.-J. Congar/ 7 sacred doctrine is
the process of Christian instruction derived from God and extending to all human beings and not just the domain of theologians and clerics. Although doctrina is derived from the
verb docere (" to teach ") , it is not considered a body of truths
revealed by God but simply as a process that begins in the
teacher, whoever he may be, and terminates in the mind of the
listener. The original acceptance of this divine teaching is faith
in the mind of the listener. It is necessary for the beginner to
have faith: Credere enim accedentem and Deum (Heb. 11: 6) .
But . this teaching grows through the efforts of prophets,
apostles, the teaching Church, theologians, preachers, catechists, teachers, and others, so that in the mind of the listener
this primitive acceptance grows into science and supernatural
•• M.-D. Chenu, La theologie comme science au XIII• siecle [pro manuscripto]
(Paris: Vrin, 1948), p. 125; cf. also p. 86.
•• G. F. Van Ackeren, Sacra Doctrina: The Subject of the First Question of the
Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas (Rome: Catholic Book Agency, 1952).
•• Ibid., p. 120.
•• Ibid., p. ns.
21 Ibid., pp. 49-52.

THE MEANING OF" SACRA DOCTRINA"

68

wisdom that is of the Holy Spirit and embraces everything that
has to do with man's growth that leads ultimately to the beatific
VISIOn.

For Van Ackeren, the first article has to do with the original
imparting of supernatural truth; the listener must first accept
this teaching through faith. "Hence this instruction begins in
imparting knowledge which is accepted on faith, leads on to
science and wisdom, and has its ultimate term and resolution
in the vision of God himself." 28 The second article is to be
understood as scientia in fim·i; " it is science in the process of
its formation." 29 Thus the term sacra doctrina " may very
well retain the sense we found it to have in the first article, i.e.,
instruction of divine things through revelation." 30 The third
article speaks of sacra doctrina as a single habit of science; Van
Ackeren interprets this wording to mean a unity of knowledge
in the mind of the teacher instructing the pupil and an eventual
acquiring of this habit in the mind of the listener. 31 Articles
four to six, according to Van Ackeren, can be taken either as
" the operation induced by the teacher in the disciple by way
of revelation," in which case scientia is understood as the operation of science, or " analogously as a habit of science." 32 Article
seven must be understood as the subject of this divine action,
explained in article one. 33 The unifying principle of the first
seven questions is said to be "ACTION, sacred instruction in
divine things." Rather than being extraneous, articles nine and
ten have to do with God's manner of instructing mankind
through metaphor and through various senses of Sacred Scripture, "the sacred writing of this instruction." 34
Consequently the only basic unity this first question has for
Van Ackeren is the unity of instruction, an instruction that
begins in faith on the part of the listener and grows to science,
to wisdom, and finally to the vision of God himself. The term
" Catholic education," therefore, is the only satisfactory modern
translation of the term sacra doctrina. 85
Ibid., p. 85.
Ibid., p. 91.
30 Ibid., p. 96.

Ibid., p. 101.
Ibid., p. 105.
33 Ibid., p. 112.

28

81

29

32

•• Ibid., p. 115.
35 Ibid., p. 120.

JAMES A. WEISHEIPL

Van Ackeren's originality consists in seeing the whole first
question of the Summa as a process of instruction through revelation. While there is much to recommend this interpretation,
particularly since it restores a unity of meaning to sacra doctrina, it does not seem to consider the historical context in which
Thomas wrote the text, nor the method actually used by him.
Rather than being a PROCESS, or an ACTION, sacra doctrina
seems to indicate the content of this instruction. But, to my
mind, this content should not be taken to mean scholastic
theology or any other artificial structure in the mind of the
theologian. All the commentators on this first question evaluate article one in terms of articles two to eight. A far different
picture is obtained by the reverse process of interpreting articles two to ten in terms of article one. This is what Van
Ackeren has tried to do, but he is, I think, overly concerned
about the role of teacher and student, to the neglect of the
content of instruction, and the division of the first question.

Division of the First Question
There can be no doubt that Thomas himself grew in learning
between his Commentary on the Sentences and the first part
of the Summa. Nevertheless, an examination of the parallel
question in the commentary should shed some light on the
meaning of sacra doctrina in the Summa. Every good introduction to a new book should, in scholastic procedure, declare three
the nature, or quod
things: (1) the an sit of the subject,
quid est, of that subject, and (3) the method, or modality of
that subject. Although Thomas takes up only five questions
(articles) in the opening prologue of the Scriptum, these five
parallel the ten articles in the first question of the Summa.
For the manifestation of this sacra doctrina, which is conveyed in
this book, five questions must be asked: (I) its necessity; (2)
supposing that [sacra doctrina] exists, is it one or many; (3) if it
is one, whether practical or speculative; and if it is speculative,
whether it is wisdom, or science, or understanding; (4) it subject;
(5) its method (de modo).

THE MEANING OF " SACRA DOCTRINA "

65

These questions can be arranged schematically as follows:
an sit (art 1.)

is it one doctrine or many (art. 2)
is it practical or speculative (art. 3, ql. 1)
quid sit \ is it science (art. 3, ql. 2)
is it wisdom (art. 3, ql. 3)
is God the subject of this science (art. 4)
de modo (art. 5)

The logical deficiencies of this division are obvious. One cannot ask whether sacra doctrina is one or many until some logical genus has been established for it, such as " science." Similarly, the question of whether it is practical or speculative does
not arise until we know that it is a science of some sort, of a
kind that can be divided into practical or speculative. Further,
one cannot ask whether this doctrine is wisdom until it is compared with all other sciences. Finally, Thomas's consideration
of its modality is too narrow, and the "artificiality" of its
method is extrinsic to the doctrine. Moreover, Thomas seems
to consider sacra doctrina in this work as both theology in the
mind of the theologian and as revealed doctrine in the heart of
the believer.
None of these deficiencies are to be found in the division
given in the Summa:
whether sacred doctrine exists; an sit (art. 1)
is it knowledge (art. 2)
is it intrinsically one (art. 3)
search for generic is it both speculative and pracquid sit
definition
tical (art. 4)
is it the highest knowledge (art. 5)
is it wisdom (art. 6)
specific difference (art. 7)
is it demonstrative (art. 8)
de modo { is it symbolic and poetic (art. 9)
is it pluralistic in meaning (art. 10)

JAMES A. WEISHEIPL

When Thomas taught at Paris as master for the first time
(1256-59) he had as his bachelor Friar Annibaldo d'Annibaldi
(d. 1272), who was of a noble Roman family. Annibaldo's
commentary on the Sentences was written while he was bachalareus Sententiarum (probably 1258-60) under Thomas. For
many centuries this commentary was erroneously supposed to
have been written by Thomas himself as a gift to his noble
friend, who later was created Cardinal by Urban IV in 1262.
There are many insights to be found in Annibaldo's commentary
that can shed light on Thomas's own meaning. However, it
must first be noted that Annibaldo's division of his first question into seven articles leaves much to be desired:

!

whether it is a science (art. I)
what is its subject (art. 2)
. Is
. WIS
. dom ( art. 3)
wh ether It
its comparison with other sciences (art. 4)
who is a fitting listener (art. 5)
{
de modo who can be its teacher (art. 6)
how should it be taught (art. 7)

'd .
quz szt

The deficiencies of this division can readily be identified. Annibaldo omits the very first question that should be asked: an sit.
The questions concerning wisdom and the comparison with
other sciences should precede the specific difference of the subject matter, which is God and all things related to him. The
question of method is reduced to the manner of instructing,
even though the last article (art. 7) does discuss the many
senses of Scripture.
The most basic canon of method to keep in mind when trying
to understand the nature of sacra doctrina in the Summa is
quite simple and even obvious. If the first question is about
the necessity of a reality, that is, its an sit, then the second
question asked involving quid sit must be about the same
reality discussed under an sit. In other words, to ask quid sit
of a reality other than what was proved to exist defies all the
elements of logic. Cajetan was perfectly aware of this ele-

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67

mentary canon, as we have seen, in his discussion of the second
article: "Whether sacra doctrina, which we have proved necessary, has the aspect of 'science' regarding its conclusions."
The reality proved to be necessary for salvation must be the
same reality about which we ask quid sit, namely, whether it is
scientific (art. 2), one (art. 3), speculative or practical (art. 4),
the highest of all sciences (art. 5), and a true wisdom (art. 6)
that has God himself as its subject as well as its author (art. 7) .
The approach Thomas uses to determine the nature of sacra
doctrina is supremely reasonable, for every search for a definition (venatio definitionis) must begin with its most generic
aspect, narrowing it down to its immediate genus and its specific difference. Consequently, the specific definition of sacra
doctrina is wisdom (art. 6) about God as he reveals himself
(art. 7) .
Furthermore, it must be the same reality proved necessary
in article one, shown to be of such and such a nature, and as
having a specific modality, which must be examined. It would
be absurd to ask about the modality (de modo) of something
other than what has been considered. Every science has a
modality proper to itsel£.36 Sacred doctrine is no different.
Being what it is, the intrinsic modality of sacra doctrina must
be argumentative (art. 8), metaphorical and poetic (art. 9),
and pluralistic (art. 10) because God is the author of the doctrine revealed, the Sacra Scriptura huius doctrinae. A careful
analysis of Thomas's actual text reveals clearly the unity of
that concept called by St. Thomas sacra doctrina or religio
Christiana.
Analysis of Question One
The first article of question one is clearly a question of an sit.
There are only two ways of knowing the an sit of anything:
direct perception, in which case there is no need for demonstration, or by demonstration of its necessity through cause or
effect. Here Thomas asks whether it is necessary for there to
36 See J. A. Weisheipl, "The Evolution
of Scientific Method," in The Logic of
Science, ed. V. E. Smith (New York: St. John's University, 1964), pp. 59-86.

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JAMES A. WEISHEIPL

be another teaching (doctrina) over and beyond the philosophical disciplines. On the one hand, (obj. 1) the human mind
should not venture into areas beyond its ability (Eccl. 8:
;
and (obj.
the philosophical disciplines, since they are about
all being, encompass everything man needs to know. On the
other hand (sed contra), divinely inspired scriptures exist
(II Tim. 8: 16), which are not studied in the philosophical
disciplines. Therefore, some doctrine exists other than and
beyond the philosophical disciplines. In the body of the response Thomas argues that the " theology which pertains to
sacred doctrine " must exist because God has ordained man to
an ultimate end that is beyond the comprehension of reason
(Is. 64: 4). If man is to attain this ultimate goal ordained for
him, he must know both it and the way toward it. Consequently, this knowledge is necessary for man's salvation; therefore it exists. Moreover, the few truths man can know about
God through philosophical reason are difficult to come by for
mankind, for only a few philosophers ever reach them, after
long investigation, and with admixture of many errors. Therefore, it is necessary that there be a sacra doctrina received
through revelation. In reply to the objections Thomas notes
that, while man should not inquire about things beyond his
ability to know, he can and should accept by faith those things
that God has made known, for" it is in these things that sacra
doctrina consists." Finally, the word "theology" signifies any
knowledge about God, which can be had in part by philosophy
(natural theology) and in full by revelation. Here Thomas uses
the term " theology " in its strict etymological sense of knowledge about God (sermo de Deo); the theology that pertains
to sacred doctrine is generically different from the theology
attained imperfectly by reason.
Strictly speaking, no science demonstrates its own existence
or subject. However, Thomas is not trying to demonstrate the
existence of revealed truth from arguments of reason. Rather,
he assumes the total existence of revelation and shows that
from one truth another truth can be demonstrated. That is,
from man's supernatural end one can demonstrate the existence

THE MEANING OF" SACRA DOCTRINA"

69

of revelation; this is a propter quid demonstration by way of
final causality. Granting that man has a supernatural end, it
follows that the way to that end must be revealed, which revelation must be accepted by man through faith. Both the cause
(ultimate end) and the conclusion (existence of revelation)
are truths of faith, but there is a necessary connection between
them. This argumentation alone shows that sacra doctrina is
scientia.
In the second article Thomas raises the question whether the
sacra doctrina, demonstrated to be necessary in article one, is
scientia, that is, knowledge through causes. There are two
obvious difficulties. Science, as Aristotle defines it, is knowledge through per se nota causes, but none of the causes in
revelation are per se nota, since faith is not given to all men
(II Thes. 3: 2). Moreover, Aristotle showed that there cannot
be science of individuals as such but only about universals; but
sacra doctrina is the salvation-history of man's relation to God
shown in individual men: therefore, sacred doctrine cannot be
called" science," or" scientific knowledge." On the other hand,
St. Augustine calls it a science and says " it alone is credited
with begetting, nourishing, protecting, and making robust the
healthiest faith." 37
In the body of the article Thomas does not demonstrate or
show that sacra doctrina is a " science " but immediately proceeds to explain how it is subalternated to the knowledge God
has of himself and to the knowledge the blessed in heaven have
of him. Neither here nor in the Scriptum does Thomas argue
to its scientific character. He presumes that the fact is obvious
from the internal nature of faith, namely, the relations between
causes and effects. However, Annibaldo d'Annibaldi argues
that all science is knowledge of truth through causes. 38 He
insists that " some conclusions are deduced from principles,
just as the Apostle Paul proves the final resurrection of mankind from the fact that Christ rose from the dead (I Cor.
De trinitate, lib. 14, c. 7, PL 42, 1037.
Annibaldo d'Annibaldi, In I Sent., q. I, a. I, in Opera Omnia S. Thomac
Aquinatis (Paris: Vives), 30, 3.
37

38

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JAMES A. WEISHEIPL

15: 12) ." Since Christ's resurrection is the cause of our resurrection, this latter statement is a true conclusion within the
realm of sacred doctrine. Both facts-Christ's resurrection and
man's final resurrection-are known by faith, but St. Paul
argues that Christ's resurrection is the cause of our final resurrection. Thomas uses this same example in article eight when
discussing argumentation in sacra doctrina. Therefore, any
causal relation within revelation itself is sufficient to give sacra
doctrina the title and character of "science" in the Aristotelian
sense, which is the full sense of the word.
Because of the indoctrination derived from Descartes and
the mathematical sciences scholastics have tended to think
only in terms of " theological conclusions " deduced from truths
of faith, as though a scientific conclusion demanded a proposition of faith, a proposition of pure reason, and a conclusion
outside the confines of revelation. Whatever the theologian
may deduce in this way is of little significance, even though the
conclusion may or may not be definable by the Church. The
most important " conclusions " in sacra doctrina are those
which are themselves a matter of belief. Within the vast body
of doctrine revealed by God there are innumerable truths which
depend causally on other revealed truths. Among the many
truths of faith, some are selected for their pivotal character
and are called " articles," or "principles," on which other truths
depend. All truths depending on these " articles," or " principles," are true scientific conclusions, so that the entire sacred
doctrine revealed by God can be called " scientific." The argumentation that Thomas uses in the first article of the Summa
is an obvious case in point. Similarly, God became man in order
to redeem us; there are two natures in Christ because he is
God-man; Christ's redemption is the cause of our salvation;
Christ's arguments against the Pharisees, Paul's argumentation
in his letter to the Hebrews and to the Galatians, and the fulfillment of prophecies are all examples of scientific rationality
and rational argumentation involving causal relations.
Thomas's choice of the term "science" to designate sacra
doctrina in the second article is to classify this doctrine in the

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71

widest possible genus of some relevance. It indicates the rationality, the reasonableness, the coherence of revelation. The
alternative is to call faith irrational, absurd, and incoherent.
Once it is shown that sacred doctrine is intrinsically a" science "
in Aristotle's sense of the term, one can proceed to discuss its
specific nature, as Thomas does in the subsequent articles. It
has nothing to do with the science of scholastic theology, which
is no more than a highly sophisticated habit acquired in the
mind of the theologian. While it is true that the "scientific "
character of sacra doctrina, proved to exist in article one, makes
it possible for the theologian to develop his own mental habit
of theology, sacra doctrin.a should not be confused with the
esoteric mentality of the scholastic theologian. The second
article of the Summa has almost next to nothing to do with
proving the scientific character of scholastic theology. However, if sacra doctrina can be called a " science," it follows that
scholastic theology itself is also a " science," but the two realities should not be confused. As we have indicated, sacra doctrina can and should be called " theology " in the etymological
sense of being knowledge about God (sermo de Deo), which the
humblest Christian has by faith, but it is not to be confused
with the acquired habit of scholastic theology. In reply to the
second objection in the second article Thomas explicitly identifies sacred doctrine with Scripture: sacra scriptura seu doctrina.
Within the first two articles Thomas has identified sacra doctrina, sacra scriptura, and theologia, all of which are for him
true " science " in that they manifest causal relationships.
The two objections Thomas raised with regard to article
two are easily met. The principles of sacra doctrina are the
articles of faith, which are known fully to God himself, and
seen clearly by the blessed in heaven. In itself there is no
difficulty in seeing how a conclusion of faith can be derived
from an article of faith, for the principles virtually contain all
their conclusions. The problem is with the article itself, which
is used as a principle of demonstration because it is accepted on
faith and not direct understanding. However, the "article,"
which for us is a matter of blind faith, is directly known to

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JAMES A. WEISHEIPL

God and the blessed. Therefore, the scientific aspect of divine
revelation is subalternated to the knowledge God has of himself and to the knowledge the blessed in heaven have of him.
Aristotle has an elaborate doctrine of subalternated sciences,
such as astronomy, harmonics, optics, and mechanics. Each of
these accepts as given certain principles demonstrated in the
higher science of mathematics. If subalternated sciences are
to be called "science" for the causal knowledge they bestow,
so should sacra doctrina which is founded on divine revelation.
With regard to the second objection, salvation-history is indeed full of individuals whose life and works are narrated in
Scripture. But for Thomas, these individuals are "examples"
for our own lives and witnesses to the truths they proclaim for
all to hear; consequently, their message is universal and their
example is universal.
In the third article Thomas asks whether this sacred doctrine which is a" science" is one or many sciences. On the one
hand, there is no genus to include creator and creatures that
are discussed in sacred doctrine. Moreover, sacred doctrine
tells us about angels, man, and moral conduct, all of which
are discussed in separate philosophical disciplines. Therefore,
there can be no unity of object. On the other hand, Sacred
Scripture speaks of sacred doctrine as though it were one science
(Sap. 10: 10) . Thomas simply states that the unifying factor in
any science is the ratio formalis objecti, which is God's revelation of himself, a topic that will be taken up again in article
seven on the subject of this science. In the Summa both the
revelata and the revelabilia are united in the formal unity of
its object, which is the Word of God in Sacred Scripture. In
the Sentences Thomas argues in a more Platonic manner: the
higher the science, the more unified it is. This argument is repeated by Thomas in his reply to the second objection.
Thomas's argument in the Sentences that sacred doctrine considers all revelabilia analogically as related to one subject, God,
is utilized in his reply to the first objection.
Since all human sciences are either practical or speculative,
Thomas asks in the fourth article whether sacred doctrine is

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78

practical. It would seem so, because the constant emphasis
in Scripture is" Be doers of the word, and not just listeners"for example, in James 1:
Moreover the whole of Scripture is
divided into the Old and New Law; but law pertains to moral
science, which is practical. On the other hand, sacred doctrine
is principally about God, who makes men and is not made by
them.
From the arguments pro and con it is clear that sacra doctrina is both speculative and practical. But for Thomas, as
opposed to Bonaventure and others, sacred doctrine is more
formally speculative, for divine revelation tells us more of
divine things than of human actions. In the intellectualism of
Thomas it is the intellectual vision of God in heaven that is
more fundamental and radical than the affection that follows
upon VISIOn.
Since sacred doctrine is both speculative and practical, embracing both in the divine light (divino lumine) of its formal
object, it would seem that it is higher than all other sciences.
However, all the other sciences rest on dignitates or per se nota
principles, which are evident and certain, while divine revelation rests on principles of faith which are sometimes doubted
by the believer. Moreover, the lower science always borrow
from the higher, as music borrows from arithmetic; but theology borrows much from the human sciences; therefore sacred
doctrine is an inferior science. On the other hand, the tradition
of the Fathers is that human science is only a handmaid of
theology: ancilla theologiae. Thomas replies that sacred doctrine is both speculative and practical, and under both aspects
it transcends the human speculative and practical sciences. As
speculative it is more certain than all the other sciences, which
are known through the fallible light of human reason, while the
certitude of sacred doctrine is derived from the infallible light
of divine knowledge. Moreover, the kind of truth known in
sacred doctrine far transcends all human truths. As a practical
science, sacred doctrine directs man's life to the highest goal of
all, eternal beatitude. Any doubts about the principles of faith
arise from the weakness of our intellect, not any deficiency in

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JAMES A. WEISHEIPL

revelation. 89 For Thomas, this science borrows truths from
other sciences to manifest more clearly the higher truth of revelation; what it borrows are not principles but examples that
are better knowable to the weak human intellect. In all of its
borrowing sacred doctrine remains indubitably the highest of
all sciences.
If sacred doctrine is the highest of all knowledge man can
possess in this life, the next logical question to ask is whether
it is, in fact, a wisdom. On the one hand, a knowledge that
obtains its principles by revelation, that cannot prove the principles of the other sciences, and that involves rational inquiry,
does not deserve the title of "wisdom." On the other hand,
Scripture itself often refers to this knowledge as a wisdom.
For Thomas, sacred doctrine most fully deserves the title of
" wisdom," for it ponders the highest cause of all,
God, and it directs man's life in attaining the highest goal,
namely, eternal beatitude. Since this science is derived from
God's own wisdom, it does not depend on principles discovered
by the lower sciences; its task is not to prove the principles of
lower sciences but to judge their veracity, since no truth can be
contrary to divine truth. But it must be noted that the wisdom
of divine revelation searches out its causes through rational
inquiry, and is distinct from the gift of the Holy Spirit called
"wisdom," which instinctively grasps divine things without
inquiry. Therefore, sacra doctrina is the highest wisdom man
can have in this life, for it is a way of life, a Christian philosophy by which man can live to the highest of his ability.
Having determined the proximate genus of sacra doctrina,
Thomas raises the question of its specific difference in article
seven. He asks whether God is the subject of this science. The
subject of a science plays the same role in knowledge as a for•• In this passage Thomas cites the view of Aristotle, who says that the least
knowledge of higher things is more desirable than the most certain knowledge of
inferior things. De part. animal., I, 5, 644 b 31. This work was translated anew
b:v William of Moerbeke from the Greek and completed at Thebes on Dec.
Thomas knew and used this translation in his Summa contra Gentes, II, which
was written in
Nevertheless in this passage of the Summa, written in
Thomas refers to the older version of XI De animalibus.

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75

mal object plays in specifying a power of the soul or a habit.
" A subject is to a science as an object is to a power of the soul
or to a virtue." Thus a man or a stone is related to vision in
that both are colored; consequently, being colored is the proper
object of the sense of sight. Everything discussed in sacred
doctrine is discussed sub ratione Dei, either because everything
pertains to God himself or is related to him as principle and
end. Therefore the formal object of this science is God. Moreover, all the articles of faith pertain directly to God, but these
articles are themselves principles of sacra doctrina; therefore
God is the formal subject of sacra doctrina.
Here Thomas notes that some of his contemporaries would
specify the formal subject in a different way. Peter Lombard,
for example, calls it" reality and its symbols"; Hugh of SaintVictor calls it "the works of restoration"; Robert of Melun,
Gilbert of Poitiers, Robert Grosseteste, Robert Kilwardby, and
others preferred to designate the subject as the" whole Christ,"
i.e., his mystical body. That is to say, some would specify the
subject as Christ, the mystical body, the restoration of man,
or some other reality. Thomas does not deny that these are
worthy subjects of sacred doctrine, but he insists that all of
these are ultimately related to God himself, Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit. Even a Christocentric theology is ultimately about
God, for " Christ as man is our way of going to God." 40 Hence,
for Thomas, the whole of sacred doctrine is centered in the
Godhead, the beginning and the end of man's knowledge in
faith and his life in wisdom. Consequently, the definition of
sacra doctrina is simply wisdom (art. 6) about God (art. 7)
in faith, derived from divine revelation (art. I).
Having arrived at a satisfactory definition (quod quid est)
of sacra doctrina, Thomas must consider its intrinsic modality
(de modo). Since sacred doctrine is a science (art. 2), its intrinsic modality must be probative (art. 8); since it is a wisdom beyond our grasp (art. 6), it must employ metaphorical
and symbolic language (art. 9); because it is about God (art.
•• Summa Theol., I-ll, Prol.

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JAMES A. WEISHEIPL

7), it must be scriptural (art. 10). The intrinsic modality of
any science is derived from its very nature and origin. 41 Since
sacred doctrine is derived from God through revelation, its
entire character will have the imprint of God speaking to man
in the words of men. Far from being a " concession to the usage
of the age," the last two articles are essential to the modality
of sacra doctrina. God's way of speaking to men is imprinted
in the Sacred Scriptures; and the Scriptures are imprinted in
the minds of men through faith, which is itself a quaedam

impressio deitatis.
In article eight Thomas asks whether sacred doctrine is
" argumentative," that is, whether it adduces proofs on its own
behalf. On the one hand, it would seem that, as long as it is
a matter of faith, there is no room for rational argumentation.
Secondly, if sacred doctrine adduced proofs, it would either be
from authority or from human reason; but arguments from
reason have no bearing in matters of faith, and arguments from
authority are the weakest of all philosophical proofs. On the
other hand, St. Paul exhorts Titus to exhort in sound doctrine
and to convince his opponents of the truth (Tit. 1: 9). For
Thomas, proofs are used in two ways in sacra doctrin.a: to
argue from one truth of faith to another, because it has been
shown to be a science (art.
and secondly, to refute those
who would contradict the faith of believers by showing the
fallacy in their reasoning. No lower science argues to defend
its principles. But sacred doctrine is a wisdom (art. 6); therefore, it not only argues to conclusions but also defends its own
principles. When arguing against Jews and heretics, the principles admitted by them can be used effectively to prove the
veracity of the whole faith. When arguing against nonbelievers,
one can do more than show the verisimilitude of belief and
oppose arguments against faith, knowing well that the contrary of truth can never be demonstrated.
In his reply to the second objection Thomas goes to great
lengths to show the importance of authority in matters of
41

Cf. J. A. Weisheipl, op. cit., pp. 61-68.

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77

belief. While this kind of evidence is weakest in philosophy,
as Boethius rightly states, it is the highest and most forceful
of all arguments for believers. Even the statements of philosophers and poets may be used in sacred doctrine, as St. Paul did
(Acts 17: 28) . But the statements of philosophers in no way
demonstrate the articles of faith or the truths that flow from
it. All truths by whomsoever spoken can be used in obsequium
fidei. Since the time of Melchior Cano (c. 1505-60) , theologians have discussed the ten loci theologici in relation to
Thomas's reply to his second objection, but such an excursus
theologicus pertains to theologians investigating the sources of
their argumentation.
In the ninth article Thomas asks whether sacred doctrine
should use metaphors or symbolic language. On the one hand,
metaphors and poetic language are not befitting the noblest of
all doctrines; such language befits poetry, the least of all disciplines. Further, such language beclouds the hidden truth
that sacred doctrine intends to teach. Finally, if poetic language and symbols are to be used, they should be only of the
highest and noblest kind. On the other hand, the Prophets and
Christ used parables, poetry, and metaphors in their teaching.
For Thomas, Sacred Scripture uses such language both out of
necessity and out of convenience. The text of Scripture is the
Word of God in the words of men, for God speaks to man in
terms easier for him to understand; the sublimity of this doctrine requires that wisdom clothe herself in metaphors and
symbolic language for three reasons: (I) lest there be error in
our conception of the divine, the language most remote from
the reality should be used; (2) " understatement is more to the
point with our present knowledge of God," lest we think that
our speech and thought really represent him; and (8) "divine
matters are more effectively screened against those unworthy
of them." In Sacred Scripture God takes into account man's
nature, which is to arrive at intellectual and spiritual truths
through the senses and bodily images. In other words, metaphorical language is most accessible to most people, and at the
same time there is less danger of confusing symbol with reality.

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JAMES A. WEISHEIPL

Consequently, symbolic language lies at the very core of sacred
doctrine: it is the language God himself uses to communicate
with men in Sacred Scripture. This modality is intrinsic to
sacra doctrina because God himself instilled it out of necessity
and out of consideration for human weakness.
On first reading, the tenth (and last) article of question one
seems to be out of place, or an afterthought, as though Thomas
could not find a more appropriate place to discuss the senses
of Sacred Scripture. Chenu, as has been mentioned, claimed
that the internal logic of Thomas's theory would soon eliminate articles nine and ten from the consideration of sacra doctrina. While this elimination did occur among the more influential commentators, the importance of these articles in a
question devoted to understanding sacra doctrina is not thereby
diminished. The importance of article ten is that it expresses
the most fundamental intrinsic modality of sacred doctrine.
Since the Scriptures are " the holy writings of this doctrine,"
namely, sacra doctrina, their uniqueness imposes a fundamental
characteristic on the whole of sacred doctrine. The intrinsic
modality of Sacred Scripture is also the modality of sacra doctrina seu theologia, which terms are synonymous with Sacra
Scriptura.
In the body of this article, Thomas makes three points. First,
God is the author of Sacred Scripture; consequently, everything
in Scripture is inspired by God, who cannot deceive or be deceived. Second, the literal sense of Scripture is what God and
the human author intended by the words; this is the only sense
that can be used in theological argumentation. Third, only
God can give to persons and events narrated a spiritual sense,
which is of three kinds, allegorical, moral, and anagogical. The
allegorical (or typical) sense is the sense in which Old Testament figures and actions typify those persons and events that
are narrated in the New Testament. The moral (or tropological) sense is the sense in which those things pertaining to
Christ or those who prefigured him are signs of what we should
carry out. The an.agogical sense is the sense that refers to things
that lie ahead in eternal glory. Where the spiritual sense is in-

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79

dicated in one passage, its historical or literal sense is explicitly
manifest elsewhere. The interesting point is that only a work
inspired by God could have a spiritual sense, a sense that carries us beyond the historical and literal meaning of the text.
No human text can have a spiritual sense, for no human can
preordain that figures and events of one generation prefigure
later figures and events. This modality is intrinsic to sacra
doctrina and is indispensable for understanding the reality
proved in article one of this question.
We have seen that, for Thomas, sacra doctrina as explained
in question one is necessary for salvation. This doctrine is not
incoherent and absurd but has an intrinsic rationale wherein
one truth of faith is the reason for another truth, also accepted
on faith; this intrinsic rationale renders this doctrine "scientific" even in Aristotle's sense of the term. Having opted for
the scientific character of sacra doctrina, Thomas shows that it
is one, both practical and speculative, higher than all other
sciences known to man, meriting the title of "wisdom"; this
wisdom is about God as he reveals himself to us in historical
tradition, Sacred Scripture, the teaching of our forefathers, and
in the innermost recesses of the heart. It is a unique doctrine,
which is reasonable to one who has faith; it is also clothed sometimes in metaphorical language; and above all, it is scriptural.
This kind of doctrine is not to be identified with scholastic
theology, which is an artifact, but with the glimmer of light
given to all who believe in him. In other words, sacred doctrine
is that wisdom about God by which we lead our life to eternal
glory. This is the wisdom of Sacred Scripture; it is the wisdom
of the saints. There is no higher wisdom in this life.
I have tried to show that the meaning of sacra doctrina is
used consistently throughout the first question of the Summa.
I have tried to show also that articles two to ten should he
interpreted in terms of article one (an sit) , not vice versa, as
the major commentators have done; and that sacra doctrina is
not to be identified with scholastic theology but with the original revelation of God to man, and can be called " theology "
only in the etymological sense of the term as Sermo de Deo,

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JAMES A. WEISHEIPL

which every believer has. The sophisticated intellectual habit
of scholastic theology, discussed by the commentators, is consequent upon sacra doctrina being what it is, namely, a wisdom
about God which is accepted in faith. This " wisdom about
God " is intrinsically characterized and modified by certain
modalities-scientific argumentation, metaphorical and symbolic language, and many senses given to Scripture by God,
the author of Holy Scripture. In this view, the whole first
question of the Summa is consistently about one reality, sacra
doctrina, described by St. Thomas with logical precision-beginning with an sit, going on to an investigation of its nature
(quid sit), and terminating with its intrinsic modality (de
modo). Not a single question is out of place or irrelevant to
the topic, for Thomas had in mind the many beginners who
would read his book, the Summa Theologiae.
JAMES

Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studie11
Toronto, Canada

A. WEISHEIPL, O.P.

SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS AND THE INFALLIBILITY
OF THE PAPAL MAGISTERIUM

(Summa Theol., II-II, q. 1, a. 10)

1. How St. Thomas situates the question; special vocabulary

T

HE TREATISE on faith, which introduces the II- II,
commences with a question" De obiecto fidei." This
object is first set in its purest theological character, as
we consider the formal object, in all its transcendence and its
absolute simplicity: " nihil est aliud quam veritas prima," it is
uniquely the First Truth that we contemplate. If we consider
faith in its material object, we accept "ipse Deus," God himself, and many other realities, "multa alia," but only in the
relation they bear to God, " in ordine ad Deum."
This material object of faith is particularized in a carefully
ordered series of truths believed (articles) (a.6), which are
drawn together and summarized in a creed or symbol (a.S);
and it even takes within its scope the bases of such a formulation of doctrine in a creed.
The present study arises from the concluding questions that
St. Thomas sets himself to answer: "Who has the authority
to draw up a symbol?" The authentic title of the article is the
one given by St. Thomas in the prologue of the first question:
" cuius sit constituere symbolum? " The actual titles of the
articles in our editions are drawn from the first words of the
first objection. The question thus reads: "Utrum ad Summum
Pontificem pertineat fidei symbolum ordinare?" Constituere
here signifies: to fashion, to make an organic whole of a number of elements. As a rule, St. Thomas prefers to use the verb
ordinare in this context. 1
1 For one or the other word, cf. J. Defferrari and M. I. Barry, A Complete
Index of the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas (Baltimore, 1985) . Better

81

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YVES M.-J. CONGAR

Since we have begun to discuss vocabulary, we shall explain
St. Thomas's use of certain crucial terms here, before proceeding to discuss the question in depth.
Editio symboli, Edere symbolum, is to publish, to promulgate,
to publicize, to put into circulation. But equally it means to
compose. Edere symbolum was a classic expression. 2
Sententialiter determinare: the Leonine edition favors this expression (cf. Preface, p. xxii s); the other editions often have
"finaliter." According to Du Cange, sententialiter is equivalent to " per judicium," the fruit of an act of judgment. Accordstill, Du Cange and A. Blaise--H. Chirat, Dictionnaire latin-frant;ais des Auteurs
chretiens (Strasbourg, 1954). We point out three interesting uses of ordinare: Giles
of Rome, who was a student of St. Thomas, De ecclesiastica potestate, 1a pars,
c. 1 (ed. R. Scholz, Weimar, 1929), p. 5: end of 1301: "ad summum pontificem
speetat ordinare fidei symbolum ... diffinitivam dare sententiam. . . . Sed quid
sententialiter sit tenendum ... ad solum summum pontificem pertinebit." Jerome
of Ascoli, sent by the pope to Constantinople, in a report addressed to Gregory X,
doubtless in 1273, writes on the subject of the Greeks: " dicunt dominum papam
non habere potestatem ordinandi vel disponendi de statu fidelium vel ecelesiarum
sine consensu !III patriarcharum Graecorum" (ed. H. Finke, Konzilienstudien zur
Oesch. des 13, Jahrhunderts. Ergiinzungen u. Berichtigungen zu Hafele-Knopler
"Conziliengeschichte." Bd V u. VI, Munster, 1891), p. 118. William of Ockham,
Dialogus I, 1, c. 5 (ed. Goldast), p. 403: "Summus pontifex debet sacrarum
litterarum habere notitiam, et in sacris canonibus debet esse peritus, et ideo
symbolum ordinare et articulos fidei recte distinguere spectat ad ipsum."
2 Thus a baptismal
catechism of the 9th century edited by A. Wilmart (Rev.
Benedictine, 1947), p. 197: "sancti apostoli ... hoc symbolum ediderunt "; St.
Anselm, De Processione Sancti Spiritus, c. 22 (PL 158, 317 CD on the addition
of the Filioque): "novum edere symbolum "; Gloss on the Sentences of Cod.
lat. 1206 of the library of Troyes, I Sent., d. 11, n. 165: "Quod in missa cantatur,
hoc simbolum in concilio Niceno editum est" (cited by A. Landgraf in Mediaeval
Studies 8 [1946], 55) . A Summa contained in the Cod. Royal British Museum
9 E XII (fol. 150) says: "Ad corroborationem autem veritatis subicimus hie
simbolum fidei, quod adversus errores magistri Gileberti Porete editum est dictante clarissimo Clarevallis abbate Bernardo .. ," (cited by A. Landgraf in
Bernard von Clervaux Monck und Mystiker, hrsg. v. J. Lortz. [Wiesbaden, 1955],
pp. 56-57; compare Godfrey of Clairvaux, De condemnatione Gilberti Porret., 8:
" providere oportel'e, cum capitulis illis Gilberti episcopi, suae et fidei symbolum
mitti" (PL 185, 591); Simon of Tournai, Expositio super Simbolum: "Omnes
vero [apostoli] unitati fidei providentes ne scinderetur, simbolum ediderunt in
quo ea que nobis credenda sunt, id est articuli nostre fidei, proponuntur." (ed.
J. Warichez in Les Disputationes de Simon de Tournai [Louvain, 1932], p. 300.
St. Thomas also speaks of "edere articulos fidei" (IV Sent., d. 17, q. 8, a. 1,
qcla. 5; cf. also Ill Sent., d. 25, q. 1, a. 1, qcla. 8).

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ing to Giles of Rome, who heard St. Thomas lecture, and is in
thorough agreement with the Leonine reading, the doctors, the
theologians, can compose treatises "per viam doctrinae," in
their role as teachers, " sed quid sententialiter sit tenendum,"
but if it is a case of a judgment which states with authority
what must be held, " ad solum Summum Pontificem pertinebit."
(supra, footnote I)
St. Thomas himself speaks of the " sententia quam papa in
iudicio profert" (Quodl. IX, 16). The term sententialiter, however, is rather rare in his writings. 3
Finaliter determinare could have another sense, that of the
right to speak the last, definitive word on a subject after the
Pope had taken counsel with the bishops and theologians. 4
Applied to the faith of Peter, and eventually of his successor,
finaliter, set in the context of the prayer of the Savior for Peter:
" that your faith may not fail " (Lk. 22: 32) , had a still further
sense: that of final indefectibility of a faith that might experience its moments of weakness. 5 Yet there is nothing of this
notion in the text of St. Thomas.
3 Among the ref·erences which Blaise-Chirat
give, the most interesting is Tertullian, De carne Christi, 18 (CSEL 70, 235): "Et ex quo magis credere congrueret carnem factum verbum nisi ex carne ... ? vel quia ipse dominus sententialiter et definitive pronuntiat: Quod in carne natum est, caro est (Jn. 3: 16) ."
Herve Nedellec, a protagonist of thomism, writes in 1319 that he has recourse
to the pope to " sententiare qui credendum et quid agendum " (De potestate
papae [Paris, 1507]), p. 369. Gui Terre, the first true theoretician of pontifical
infallibility, before 1328, cites our article with sententWliter ( Questio de magisterio .. .. , ed. B.-., Xiberta [Munster, 1926]), p. I 0.
4 It is in this sense that Msgr. Thomas Michael Salzano, 0. P., bishop of Tanis,
cited our text in the First Vatican Council, 63rd General Congregation, 2 June
1870 (Mansi 52, 409); he next cited the famous passage of St. Antoninus: "utens
concilio (or consilio) ... "
5 This is what one finds, for example, in St. Albert, In Lucam 22: 32: "Ego
rogavi pro te, loan. XVII, II, Pater, serva eos quos dedisti mihi de mundo. Ut
non finalitcr deficiat fides tua. Hoc argumentum efficax est pro sede Petri et
successore ipsius, quod fides cius non finaliter deficiat" (ed. Borgnet, 23, p. 685),
and somewhat further on (p. 686b): "Et quia non finalis fuit Petri casus."
Raphael of Pornaxio, in 1434-1435, to whom P. Creytens (Arch. Fratrum
Pmed. 13 [1943], 108-137) restored a De Potestate Papae et Concilii Generalis,
edited by J. Friedrich (Innsbruck, 1871) under the name of John of Torquemada,
I" pars, Cone!. II, p. 14: "Firmiter itaque sperare debemus in Christo quod,

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But if we take, as is done here, the word finaliter as it is conjoined with determinare, the sense can be the same as sententialiter determinare. This very usage can be found in the works
of Cajetan, that unquestionable defender of papal prerogatives,
who, in his turn, preferred to use sententialiter. 6
Determinare is the term habitually employed by St. Thomas
to signify "define." This latter word was used to designate
juridical decisions. 8 We find it in the profession of faith proclaimed by the Emperor Michael Paleologus at the Council of
Lyons in 1274; this statement of belief is very close to the doctrine of article 10. "Likewise, this Roman Church ... as, above
all the others, it is bound to defend the truth of faith, must
also define, by its judgment, questions which may arise to the
detriment of faith." " Ipsa quoque Romana Ecclesia ... sicut
quemadmodum hactenus, sic etiam in futurum suac ecclesiae contra quaecumque
finalia pericula providebit ( ... ) Non finaliter praevalebunt "; Concl. XII, p. 47:
" Licet enim ad tempus Petrus a fide cediderit, eius tamen fides finalitcr non
defecit."
6 In De comparatione auctoritatis Papae et Concilii (1511), c. IX
(ed. V. M.
I. Pollet [Rome, 1936], nn. 131, 132), p. 67: "in sentcntialiter auctoritative
definiendo " ... " ad ipsum spectat determinare finaliter de fide ... ut S.
Thomas ... probat." In De divina institutione Pontificatus Romani Pontificis
(1512), (ed. P. Lauchert in Corpus Catholicorum 10 [Miinster, 1925]), p. 83:
" ut errare non posset sententialiter difliniendo de fide christiana."
7 Cf., for example, Summa
Theol., II-II, q. 11, a. 2, ad 3: "in quibusdam ad
fidem pertinentibus, quae nondum erant per Ecclesiam determinata.
Postquam
autem essent auctoritate universalis Ecdesiae determinata ... "; Ill Sent., d. 24,
q. 1, a. 1: "Ea quae pertinent accidentaliter ad fidem non sunt de necessitate
salutis, nisi postquam determinata fuerint per praedicationem et doctrinam ";
de Veritate, q. 14, a. 11, ad 2: "Quousque instruatur per eum cuius est dubia
in fide determinare "; Contra errores Graecorum, Pars II, c. 36: " quod ad eum
[Pont. Rom.] pertinet determinare quae sunt fidei" (ed. Leonina, 1967), p. A 102;
de Potentia, q. 10, a. 4, obj. 13: "in praemissa concilii determinatione," and
ad 13: "determinaverunt quod in Christo sunt duae voluntates," "sententiam
Leonis papae, quo determinavit . . . ," "ex determinatione principalium conciliorum," "in determinatione quinti concilii "; Summa Theol., III, q. 19, a. 1,
c. fin.: "in sexto synodo ... in cuius detcrminatione dicitur ... "; q. 78, a. 1,
ad 1: "praedicta verba Innocentii sunt opinative magis dicta quam determinative";
Quodl. IX, c. 16: "haereticus iudicatur qui sentit contra determinationem conciliorum ( ... ) Magis est standum sententiac papae, ad quem pertinet determinare de fide, quam in iudicio profert ... "; In Rom., c. 14, lect. 3.
8 Gratian,
"in Causis difliniendis" (dictum before C. 1 D. XX: Friedberg,
col. 65).

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prae ceteris tenetur fidei veritatem defendere, sic et si quae de
fide subortae fuerint quaestiones, suo debent iudicio definiri."
(Mansi,
DS 861)
In the quarrel concerning poverty, which, as Br. Tierney has
shown, was the occasion for the first formal affirmations of infallibility, both Pope John XXII and Ockham used "define"
in the sense we accept today. 9 Determinare was part of the
current jargon of the schools in regard to the theological disputations, which the Master brought to a conclusion in determining where the truth lay. But undoubtedly there was a more
profound reason for St. Thomas's use of the term, a reason
closely linked to his theology of Revelation and of the object
of faith.
For St. Thomas, faith itself is simple and its object or formal
motive is likewise simple, namely, adherence to the Uncreated
Truth. The material object of faith is, by nature, per se, the
teaching on the happiness to which we are called, and, secondarily, everything found in Scripture. 10
Like all the medieval theologians, St. Thomas discuses, with
a great deal of latitude, the distinction, the organization, and
the implicit or explicit character of the different " articles " of
this material object. It is the domain of successive clarifications, either already clearly seen on the level of Revelation, or
that of the determinationes these articles receive, in the course
9 Jean XXII, Constitution
Quia vir reprobus (Bullar. Franeisc., t. V), p. 449.
Ockham, "Disc.: ... ad quos (ad theologos videlicet vel canonistas) principaliter pertinet definire quae assertio catholica, quae heretica est censenda. MAG:
Ad interrogationem tuam propositam respondeo quod hoc verbum definire plures
habet significationes de quibus ad propositum duae videntur pertinere. Contingit
enim aliquid definire auctoritate officii et sic definire quae est assertio haeretica,
quae catholica censenda, ad summum pontificem spectat et concilium generale.
Aliquando contingit definire per modum doctrinae quo modo magistri in scholis
quaestiones definiunt et determinant ... " (Dialogus, I, 1, 1, Goldast), p. 899.
Yet elsewhere Ockham uses the words definitio and determinare equivalently:
" An princeps pro suo succursu, sc. guerrae, possit recipere bona ecclesiarum, etiam
invito papae," c. 6 (in Opera politica, t. I [Manchester, 1940], p. 254, I. 25 s.a.) .
1 ° Cf. Summa Theol., II-II, q. 1, a. 6, ad 1; a. 8; q. 2, a. 4 and a. 7; already in
II Sent., d. 12, q. 1, a. 2; III Sent., d.
q. 1, a. 1, qcla. 1 and ad 2, qcla. 2, ad 8;
de Veritate, q. 14, a. 8, resp. to objs.; Summa Theol., I-II, q. 106, a. 4, ad 2.

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of the Church's life,11 from the very necessity of making certain
points of belief more precise, or of opposing heresies.
This is the task of the sancti (that is, the Fathers), the
Councils, the Popes. St. Thomas speaks of this task in the three
last articles of the First Question, as well as in numerous
parallel places. 12 It is always a case of guarding the unitas
fidei: a unity that extends through the whole Church, and also
in its historic life, going back to the" Fathers" and the Apostles.
The very movement of this First Question upon the object of
faith is precisely a passage from the simple-transcendent, where
all truth is found but implicitly so, to the situations where the
truth of this very object is made explicit, by visible human
means, under the Providence of God.13
2. Argumentation and Doctrine

In the tenth article St. Thomas successively presents two
arguments, both of which conjoin the data of tradition and of
theological reasoning but in such a way that the first argument,
which is centered in the Sed contra, confines itself to a simple
conclusion from historical fact, while in the second argument
he sets himself to expose the probative " ratio " for his assertion.
A. " SEn CONTRA, the Creed was drawn up by a general council.
Now such a council cannot be convoked otherwise than by the
Sovereign Pontiff, as stated in the DECRETALS (dist. XVII, cans.
4,5) . Therefore, it belongs to the authority of the Sovereign
Pontiff to draw up a Creed."
The question raised was particular: in light of the movement,
11 Ill Sent., d. 25, q. 2, a. 2, qcla. 1, ad 5: "Sic fides implicita
explicatur in
articulis fidei determinatis. Et haec explicatio completa est per Christum "; cf.
Summa Theol. II-II, q. 1, a. 7. Compare the Expositio in Primam Decretalem
(Firmiter): "cum multi sint articuli fidei ... , fundamentum tamen totius fidei
est prima veritas divinitatis .... "
12 See IV Cont. Gent., c. 76; de Potentia, q. 10, a. 4, ad 13; Summa
Theol.,
II-II, q. 11, a. 2, ad 3. Compare in terms of unity of the Church IV Sent.,
d. 24, q. 3, a. 2, qcla. 3.
18 Cf. our article, ad 1. This is what St. Thomas calls sacra doctrina, cf. our
study cited in n. 58 below.

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sparked at once by faith and historic circumstances, toward
ever more precise determinations of the object of faith, St.
Thomas asks: under whose authority does the publication of a
(new) Creed come. History shows that it was that of the councils. In the Decretals (dist.XV, can 1: Friedberg, 34) Gratian
reproduced a text from the Hispana, attributed to St. Isidore,
in which it is evident that the progressive determination of belief against errors was the task of the councils. A tradition
existed whereby every council must proclaim the faith, either
before or after the promulgation of disciplinary canons. The
councils held in the East formulated their Boros (terminus,
de/initio) , while accepting the Creeds of Nicea and Constantinople and eventually adding new definitions oplCop,EY) and
new anathemas. 14 In the West, the preference was for the
declaration of the faith to precede the formulation of disciplinary canons/ 5 Abelard believes that each of the first four
14 Thus the III Council of Constantinople
against monothelism (680-681) reproduced the Nicaeo-Constantinopolitan
symbol (Actio XVIII in Mansi 11, 633).
But, as the devil always pursued his machinations, the Council adds anathemas
and develops the christology of the Tomos of St. Leo and of the Council of
Chalcedon (col. 635 s; cf. Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. J. Alberigo
et al., Herder, 1962, p. 100 s.). The II Council of Nicaea, 787, defines &ptoe by
taking up again first the symbol of Nicaeo-Constantinople
(in the text given
by Mansi, with the Filioque!), then the anathemas of the preceding Councils
against the heretics and by adding to them its anathemas against the iconoclasts
and by defining (opl!:ofJ-ev) the doctrine on images (Actio VII, in Mansi 13, 373 s;
COD, p. 110 s.). The IV Council of Constantinople which reestablished the
patriarch Photius, 870, gives, as "Opos (Terminus) an abundant commentary in
which the definitions and anthemas of the previous Councils are situated (Actio X
in Mansi 16, 179 s.; COD, p. 136 s., Latin text only). Cf. F. Dvornik, The
Photian Schism, History and Legend (Cambridge, 1948), p. 195; Le Schisme
de Photius. Histoire et Legende (Paris, 1950), p. 276.
15 This seems to us to proceed from the following documents:
Pelagius II in 586:
" omnes namque novimus, quod in synodo nunquam canones nisi peractis definitionibus fidei, nisi perfectis synodalibus gestis habeantur, ut servato ordine, cum
prius synodus ad fidem corda aedificat, tunc per regulas canonum mores ecclesiae
actusque componat" (MGH, Ep. II, 462, 26s.). The IV Council of Toiedo, 633,
proemium: " Et quoniam generale concilium agimus, oportet primum nostrae vocis
sermonem de Deo esse, ut post professionem fidei sequentia operis Dei nostri
vota quasi super fundamentum firmissimum disponantur"
(PL 84, 364-365;
Mansi 10, 615; Concilios Visigoticos e Hispano-Romanos, ed. J. Vives (BarcelonaMadrid, 1963), p. 187; XIV Council of Toledo, 684, c. 4 (PL 84, 507; Mansi 71,
1088; Concilios, p. 433).

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councils had composed a Creed: " cum unumquodque illorum
conciliorum proprium composuerit atque instituerit symbolum." 16
It was a rather common practice to unite the formulation of
a creed with conciliar action. 17 There also existed at the same
time a canonical tradition according to which it devolved on
the Pope to determine, and to bring to conclusion the questions
touching on the faith. 18 This tradition had very ancient Roman
roots, but it seems to have been re-emphasized among the
canonists by the intervention of Alexander III against those
who rejected the Sacred Humanity of our Lord (Decretal Cum
Christus, to the archbishop of Rheims, 1177, DS 750).
The IV Council of the Lateran, with its c. Firmiter (A. Hauck thinks that
Innocent III wanted to place the Council also in the line of the great ecumenical
councils: "Die Rezeption und Umbildung der allgemeinen Synode im Mittelalter,"
in Hist. Vierteljahrsschrift 10 [1907],
pp. 469-470). St. Thomas begins
his commentary on Firmiter by showing why " decenter fidei doctrina praemittitur ( ... ) Convenienter ergo Christi Vicarius propositurus mandata pacifice
gubernatur, titulum de fide praemittit." The Council of Lyons of
will place
also at the head of its constitutions a " De summa Trinitate et fide catholica"
(Mansi
81; COD, p. 190).
16 lntroductio
ad theologiam, lib. II (PL 178, 1075 D); Theologia ch1-istiana,
lib. IV (178, 1301 D). L. Ott has shown that the Epistola synodica of St. Cyril
was taken for a symbol of the Council of Ephesus: " Das Konzil von Ephesus
(431) in der Theologie der Friihscholastik," in Theologie in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Festgabe M. Schmaus, hrsg. v. J. Auer u. H. Volk (Miinchen, 1957),
Gratian (C 80 D.II and C 39 D.V de cons.: Friedberg 1346 and
pp.
cites equally a symbol of the Council of Ephesus; likewise Roland Bandinelli (Die Sentenzen Rolands nachmals Papstes Alexander Ill, hrsg. A. M. Gietl,
Freiburg i. Br. [I89I], p. 34.
17 This arises, in St. Thomas,
from de Pot., q. IO, a. 4, ad I3; Summa Theol.,
I, q. 36, a.
ad
(cf. below n.
II-II, q. I, a. IO. But St. Thomas always
unites pontifical authority to the act of the council.
18 Thus the Summa "Et est sciendum"
(118I-1185, region of Sens), ad D.XL
c. 6 (cited by J. M. Moynihan, Papal Immunity and Liability in the Writings
of the Medieval Canonists [Rome, I961], P. 65); Huguccio, Summa, ad D.XVII
c. 3 (1188-1190); John the Teuton (t
Glossa ord. ad C. XXIV q. I c.
Glossa ord. ad X. 1, 7, I, s.v. lnstituta.
s.v. Quoties; Bernard of Parma (t
Cf. J. A. Watt, The Theory of Papal Monarchy in the Thirteenth Century (Fordham, I965), pp. 75-I05; Br. Tierney, Origins of Papal Infallibility 1150-1350
(Leiden,
p.
This will be a point of the profession of faith pronounced
by Michael Paleologus at Lyons in
(Mansi
71; D. 466; DS 861).

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Basically, St. Thomas umtes the two data, in placing the
councils under pontifical authority.
In the ninth article of this First Question, the Sed contra
and the reply to the third objection show that St. Thomas is
here considering the Nicene-Constantinople Creed. However,
we are convinced that he is likewise considering other possible
statements of belief, and even that he does not exclude from
his consideration a profession of faith such as the canon
Firmiter of the fourth Lateran Council (1215, DS 800-802),
which was made the first Decretal of the collection of St. Raymond of Pefiafort, published by Gregory IX in 1234. What
leads us to this conclusion is, first, the tremendous influence
which the Lateran Council exercised during the thirteenth century and thereafter; the Church's life has been strongly marked
by it. Second, the fact that the canon Firmiter has often been
considered to be a fourth official Creed, and even has been
called such. 19 Clearly, St. Thomas does not do this but, some
time after 1261, at the request of an archdeacon of Todi, Geoffrey of Anagni, he wrote a commentary on this first Decree
which served as a basis for the theological "renewal" of
priests. 20 It is true that, in the reply to the third objection of
10 Thusly by Jean the Teuton,
Gloss on the Decretals: "!stud [Firmiter] potest
appellari quartum symbolum et ita sunt modo quatuor Evangelistae" (cited by
R. Foreville, "Latran I, II, III et Latran IV" in Hist. des Conciles, 6 [Paris,
1965], p. 275 n.); the bishop of Exeter, before 1237 (cf. M. Gibbs and J. Lang,
Bishops and Reform, 1215-1272, with Special Reference to the Lateran Council
of 1215 [Oxford, 1934], p. 110; William of Meliton (t 1260), Opusculum super
Missam (ed. W. Lampen, Quaracchi, 1931), p. 35; Bernard Bottoni (t 1266) in
Gregorii IX Decretales cum Glossis (Paris, 1509), fol. IV•; Benedict of Alignano
(cf. M. Grabmann, "Der Franziskanerbischof Benedictus de Alignano (t 1268)
und seine Summa zum Caput 'Firmiter' des IV. Laterankonzils," in Kirchengeschichtliche Studien P. M. Biehl ... dargeboten [Kolmar, 1941], pp. 50-64;
later Duns Scotus, Ordinatio (Operis Oxoniensis) IV d. 11 q. 3 n. 15 (ed. Vives
17, p. 376), a particularly interesting text because it situates Firmiter in the
sequence of the Athanasium, Nicaea, and the Apostolicum, as a progressive
explication.
20 See our article "Saint
Thomas et les Archdiacres," in Revue Thomiste 57
(1957), 657-671. The identification of the addressee has been made by A. Dondaine, "Jacques de Tonengo et Giffredus d'Anagni auditeurs de S. Thomas," in
Archivum Fratr. Praedicat. 29 (1959), 52-72. The commentary of St. Thomas is

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article 10, St. Thomas does not acknowledge the Creed
attributed to Athanasius as an official statement of belief and
prefers to accept it as an exposition of doctrine " per modum
cuiusdam doctrinae"; but elsewhere he calls it a creed and
acknowledges its liturgical usage, after the Apostles' Creed and
the Nicene. 21
Third, this dogmatic chapter held further interest in that it
was attributed to the Pope: " Innocentius in concilio generali "
-thus states the first Decretal, a statement with which St.
Thomas's doctrine here is in full agreement. In his commentary
on Firmiter he writes: " convenienter ergo Christi Vicarius .... "
The publication of an official Creed (that of Nicea, eventually of the others) was done in a general council: St. Thomas
does not say "by " but rather "in " a council, for such an
undertaking has to pass from the council to the Pope. Actually,
such a council can be assembled only by the Pope's authority.
St. Thomas refers to Gratian, the " Denzinger " of his day
(dist. XVII, cans. 4,5, Friedberg, cols. 51-5Q). The fourth
Canon is attributed to Pelagius, but it comes from PseudoIsidore (See the annotations of Friedberg here). Evidently,
St. Thomas could have called on other authorities. 22 For him,
the councils are entirely dependent on the authority of the Pope,
for it is he who brings them into being by convoking them. 23
found in the classic editions, Parma XVI, p. 300 s.; Vives XXVII, p. 424 s.;
Lethielleux, Opusc. IV, p. 324 s.; Marietti, Opusc. theol. I, p. 417 s.
21 Cf. III Sent., d. 25, q. 1, a. 1, qcla. 3, ad :it, ad 3, ad 4 ("in Prima dicitur ").
In the third objection of our article St. Thomas says " quod in Eccclesia cantatur."
As a matter of fact, it had been sung from the 8th century onward on Sundays,
and sometimes every day, in certain churches; cf. Diet. Theol. Oath. I, col. 2186.
22 We have cited some from Nicholas I, from Pseudo-Isidore,
those anterior to
Nicholas I in L'Ecclesiologie du Haut Moyen-Age (Paris, 1968), pp. 212-213; see
also Gregory VII, Dictatus Papae XVI and the texts cited in the note by E.
Caspar, Gregorii VII Registrum, p. 205. This was the common teaching of the
canonists: Huguccio; Glossa Palatina (cited by Br. Tierney, Foundations of the
Conciliar Theory, p. 77), Summa "Prima primi uxor A de" and Summa Duacensis
(cited by J. M. Moynihan, op. cit., pp. 82 and 86). This point will cause difficulty for the solution of the crisis of the Great Schism by way of council; a reply
will be made by recurrence to epicheia.
23 Cf. Summa
Theol., I, p. 36, a. 2, ad 2, where this curious assertion touching
the addition of the Filioque is found: " In quodam concilio in Occidentalibus

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It has been noted elsewhere, on one hand, that the Popes
did not convoke the seven ecumenical Councils, which we accept in common with the Eastern Churches; and on the other,
it has likewise been noted, in consequence, that the primacy of
the Bishop of Rome does not require that the right of convoking councils be reserved to him. 24
On the basis of the argumentation of the Sed contra the
impression might be given that St. Thomas reduces the authority of a council to that of the Pope. But where precisely
does the truth lie?
First of all, it is certain that St. Thomas does not subordinate the Pope to the Council, that he does not reduce the Pope's
authority to that of the Council. The Summa article under
study already gives certain indications of his views on this subject. But the reply to the 13th objection of the 4th article in
Question 10 of the De Potentia addresses itself directly to the
problem:
Just as a later council has the power of interpreting the Creed published by an earlier one ... , so also the Roman Pontiff can do this by
his own authority; by his authority alone a council can be brought
together, and to him appeal can be made from a council. ... Nor
is it necessary for a universal council to be convoked to make such
an explanation, since the dislocations of wartime sometimes prevent
it from taking place.

He then gives an example showing that, if a universal council is manifestly impossible, there might sWl be a conciliar
partibus congregato, expressum fuit auctoritate Romani Pontifice, cuius auctoritate
etiam antiqua concilia congregabantur et confirmabantur." This information came
from Contra Graecos of an anonymous Friar Preacher of Constantinople, edited
in 1252 (PG 140, 502 BC: cf. A. Dondaine, "'Contra Graecos,' Premiers ecrits
po!emiques des Dominicains d'Orient," in Archiv. Fratr. Praedicato 21 (1951),
320-446, p. 390 s.); de Pot., q. 10, a. 4, ad 13; Contra impugnantes, c. 4 (Opusc.,
ed. Lethielleux, t. IV, p. 56) .
24 Cf.
F. X. Funk, " Der riimische Stuhl und die allgemeinen Synoden des
(Paderborn, 1897), t. I, pp. 39-121. Criticism of St. Thomas on this point:
Christlichen Altertums," in Kirchengeschicha. Abhandlungen u. Untersuchungen.
J. Hergenriither, in his continuation of the Conciliengeschichte of Hefele, t. VIII.
Freiburg i. Br., 1887, p. 713; H. Kling, Strukturen der Kirche, Freiburg i. Br., 1962,
p. 295.

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assembly. St. Thomas consigns the editio of a new official
Creed to the Pope's authority but working in concert with a
council. 25 The thirteenth century did not set council against
Pope; it saw them rather conjoining their authority; that of the
Pope had its proper origin, its supreme degree.
From the point of view of inerrancy in the faith, however,
this quality is always attributed to the Ecclesia universalis.
If it is applied to the Pope, it is applied insofar as he is a personification or a figure of the universal Church. This is clear
on three counts. First, from the formal statements, which are
so common among writers on the subject that it is scarcely
necessary to give any particular references. According to them,
" nothing false can come under faith," " the universal Church
cannot err." ·26 It is true that we can also find the assertion
that the Roman Church has never erred in the faith, but by
this expression " Roman Church " is understood the universal
Church, or the Pope and the Cardinals. At the time of St.
Thomas, we never find such an affirmation applied directly to
the Pope, not, of course, as a private person, but as a hierarchic
individual considered apart.
On the contrary, we frequently encounter a very deceptive
expression. There was the famous " nisi deprehendatur a fide
devius," passed on by Gratian as the view of the martyr St.
Boniface. 27 I do not know whether St. Thomas ever cited this
25 Albert the Great, asking himself if one could make new symbols, express new
articuli, answers: " Si urgeret necessitas adhuc posset Papa convocato concilio
peritorum, et invocato Spiritu Sancto, aliquid quod implicite continetur in symbolo Apostolorum, explanare et ponere inter articulos explicitos," III Sent., d. 24,
a. 8, ad 7 (Borgnet 28, p. 464). See also our L'Eglise de S. Augustin a l'epoque
moderne (Paris, 1970), p. 217.
26 References
in our L'Eglise de S. Augustin ... , p. 244. St. Thomas, III
Sent., d. 25, q. 1, aa. 2 and 4; IV, d. 20, q. 1, a. 3, sed c.; Quodl. IX, cc. 8 and
16; Summa Theol., II-II, q. 2, a. 6, ad 3; q. 5, a. 3, ad 1; q. 11, a. 2, ad 3;
III, a. 83, a. 5: " Ecclesiae consuetudo, quae errare non potest, utpote Spiritu
Sancto instructa." For the principle "fides non potest subesse falsum," cf. II-II,
q. 1, a. 3; q. 4, a. 5.
27 C. 6 D. XL (Friedberg
146). The text really comes from Cardinal Humbert
of Silva Candida: cf. A. Michel, "Humbert von Silva Candida (t 1061) bei
Gratian. Eine Zusammenfassung," in Studia Gratiana I (Bologna, 1953), pp.
83-117.

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text, nor am I aware that Bonaventure did so, or even that
St. Thomas ever made arty allusion to the case of Pope Anastasius who was considered, after his treatment by Gratian,
(dist.XIX, cans.S-9) a classic example of a heretical Pope.
Second, the text of Lk.22: 32: " I have prayed for you that
your faith may not fail," was cited in favor of the indefectibility of the universal Church. 28 But it was also, although rarely,
cited in favor of the inerrancy of Peter and his successors (cf.
for example, Albert the Great, cited above, fn. 5) .
Third, the passage was thus very easy from the inerrancy or
the indefectibility of the Church to the expression of the
Church's faith by the universal and supreme public authority
that presides over the Church. It is precisely this kind of passage that is found in St. Thomas.
Thus a Christian cannot be excused from the vice of error if he
assents to the opinion of any teacher that is contrary to the manifest testimony of Scripture or is contrary to what is publicly held
on the basis of the Church's authority. (Quodl. III, 10)
If we consider Divine Providence which directs his Church by the
Holy Spirit, so that it may not err, just as Jesus promised in
Jn.16: 13 ... , It is certain that for the judgment of the universal
Church to .err in matters of faith is an impossibility. Hence, we
must stand by the decision of the Pope rather than the opinion of
other men, even though they be learned in the Scriptures. For he
Pope has the right and duty to determine concerning the faith, a
determination he indicates by his judgment. (Quodl. IX, 16) 29
28 Thus Huguccio,
ad C. 7 D. XIX, a soliditate Petri, and Summa ad Dist.
XXI ante c. 1; John the Teuton, Glossa Ordinaria ad Dist. XIX, c. 7, ad
C XXIV q. 1, c. 9 and other decretists cited by Br. Tierney, Foundations of the
Conciliar Theory. The Contribution of Medieval Canonists from Gratian to the
Great Schism (Cambridge, 1955), p. 35, n. 1, and Origins of Papal Infallibility
1150-1350 . . . (Leiden, 1972), p. 34 s.; Albert the Great, IV Sent., d. 20, a. 17,
arg. 4 (Borgnet 29, 850); Bonaventure, IV Sent., d. 20, p. 2, a. 1, q. 2 (ed.
Quaracchi, IV, 532) Comm. in Ev. Lucae (VII, 227 and 552; Tierney, op. cit.,
p. 91); St. Thomas, IV Sent., d. 20, q. 1, a. 2, sed. c.; Summa Theol., II-II,
q. 2, a. 6, ad 3; De ratione fidei, proem. In sequence, Olivi and even Gui Terre,
the first to have spoken of inerrancy or infallibility for the papal magisterium
(Tierney, op. cit., p. 117 s. and 241, n. 2, and 245, n. 3).
29 With J. Isaac
(Arch. Hist. doctr. litt. du Moyen Age 16 [1947-1948], 145186) and, in spite of P. Glorieux (Mel. de Science relig. 3 [1946], 235-268), we
hold for the authenticity of Quodl. IX attested to very early and firmly by the
manuscript tradition.

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The custom of the Church has very great authority and ought
always to be jealously observed in all things, since the very doctrine
of Catholic doctors derives its authority from the Church. Thus,
we ought to abide by the authority of the Church rather than that
of Augustine or Jerome or of any other doctor. (Summa Theol.,
II-II, q. 10, a.12)
Thus some doctors seem to have disagreed either with reference
to matters that have no bearing on faith, whether they should be
explained thus or so, or they disagreed regarding certain matters of
faith which were not then determined by the Church. But, after
their determination by the authority of the universal Church, if
anyone should pertinaciously call such a decision into question, he
would be considered a heretic. This authority resides principally in
the Sovereign Pontiff. For we read in the Decretals (dist. XXIV,
qu. 1, can. 12, Friedberg, 970) : " Whenever a question of faith is
in dispute .... " (ibid., q. 11, a. 2, ad gum")

Principally can have a very strong sense and signify the
source of a quality in which others participate in derived
fashion; or it can possess a relative sense, which expresses a
greater intensity, a superior degree, or rather, the superior
degree. It is rather this second sense that we should give to
the present text. In any case, both in the Secunda-Secundae
and in the Quodlibetum St. Thomas first indicates the authority
of the Church, then passes on to that of the Pope as representing the Church's authority in its highest concrete realization.
Thus, in proceeding from the views of other contemporary authors, or those younger than he, such as Godfrey of Fontaines,
Olivi, etc., is not Cajetan correct in beginning his commentary
on article 10 with the question: "Does the author (St. Thomas)
identify the authority of the universal Church, a General
Council, and the Pope"?
I believe it is necessary, if we are to grasp clearly the fund of
ideas implied in this ecclesiological view, to have recourse to
the idea of representation such as was current in the time of
St. Thomas and which we can excerpt from his writings. There
are several good studies available on this subject. 30
30 E. Lewis, "Organic
Tendencies in Medieval Political Thought," in American
Political Science Review 32 (1938), 849-876 (cf. 866-867); G. de Lagarde, "L'idee

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The term " representation " is susceptible of a number of
senses, all of which have in common the notion of some one or
some thing standing in place of another person or thing. This
may be effected by way of figure or symbol, by way of delegation or mandate. It may likewise be effected under the aegis
of the public authority joining together a given community and
personifying it.
This last sense is inscribed in the very spirit of Catholicism,
with its organic vision of the Church, a reality at the same time
sacramental and social. Theologically, the notion of the pope
being able, in certain stated cases, to incorporate, to translate
personally, the infallibility of the Church, implies this sense of
things. Yet this sense was vibrant at the time of St. Thomas,
who, for his part, has filled it with the substance of communitarian ideas, such as that of the spirit of his own Order's legislation, which was so congenial to these notions. 31
For St. Thomas, the head of a community, the king with
regard to his kingdom, the emperor to his empire, the bishop
to his diocese, the Pope to the universal Church, was the
persona publica of that community. 32 He represented it and
de representation dans les oeuvres de Guillaume d'Occam," in Bull. of the lnternat.
Committee of Historical Sciences (dec. 1937), pp.
id., "La structure
politique et sociale de !'Europe au XIV• siecle," in L'Organisation corporative
du Moyen Age a la fin de l'Ancien Regime (Louvain, 1939), pp. 113-117; La
Naissance de l'esprit la¥que au declin du Moyen Age, t. IV (Paris,
p.
s.,
147, s.; in the later reprint of the same work, t. V, Ockham et son temps (LouvainParis, 1963), cf. p. 66 s.; A. Darquennes, De Juridische Structur van de Kerk
volgens S. Thomas van Aquino (Louvain, 1949), pp. 127-154; "Representation
et Bien commun," in Etudes presentees a la Commission internat. pour l'Histoire
des Assemblies d'Etats, XI (= IXe Congres internat. des Sciences histor. Paris,
1950) , (Lou vain, 1952) , pp. 33-51.
31 On these ideas cf. E. Barker, The Dominican Order and Convocation. A Study
of the Growth of Representation in the Church during the Thirteenth Century
(Oxford, 1913).
32 Commenting
on the " qui tenet nunc teneat donee de medio fiat," he understands it of the Roman Empire and says that it can be understood of Nero, not
as to individuality, for he is dead, but "prout est persona publica Imperii Romani"
(II Thess., c.
lect.
The bishop is "persona publica." (IV Sent., d.
q. 1, a. 4, sol. I). For an application to the Pope of the idea of representation
one can confer John of Torquemada, faithful disciple of St. Thomas, Summa
de Ecclesia. II. De Summo Pontifice, c. 75.

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YVES M.-J. CONGAR

bound it together: " what the ruler of the state does, the state
is said to do;" 83 " the prince dons the person of the multitude." 84 But it is not only of the ecclesia or congregatio fidelium
that the Pope bears the representation (vices gerit) ; he bears
the representation of Christ in his pastoral charge of the universal Church. 85 Basically, the Pope bears a twofold representation, that of the Church and that of Christ.
St. Thomas says this of every priest in the celebration of the
Eucharist: 36 he represents the Church, inasmuch as he performs
the expression of faith, which is the public cult; he represents
Christ, in view of his "power" to consecrate. 87 As we have
seen, St. Thomas holds that the Pope personally incorporates
the auctoritas of the Church; in promulgating a Creed he simply
causes the faith of the Church to be expressed: " the confession
of faith is drawn up in a creed in the person, as it were, of the
whole Church, which is united together by faith" (a.9, ad 3).
But the Pope does this with his own authority, by the title of
33
34

Summa Theol., I, q. 75, a. 4, ad 1; cf. de Malo, q. 4, a. 1.
Cf. Summa Theol., 1-11, q. 90, a. 3 c; q. 97, a. 3, ad 3. To understand this

medieval sense of the organic link between a collectivity and its head, a link
which is the foundation for the representation-personification,
see P. MichaudQuantin, "Collectivitks medievales et institutions antiques," in Antike und Orient
im Mittelalter (Miscellanea Med., 1), hrsg. von P. Wilpert (Berlin, 1962), pp.
239-252; " La conscience d'etre membre d'une universitas," in Beitriige zum
Bewusstsein des mittelalterlichen Menschen (Misc. Med., 3), (Berlin, 1964), pp.
1-14; Universitas. Expressions du mouvement communautaire dans le moyen-age
latin (L'Eglise et l'Etat au Moyen Age, XIII), (Paris, 1970).
35 " Oportuit
ut [Christus] committeret qui loco sui universalis Ecclesiae gererct
curam" (IV Cont. Gent., c. 76, § Si quis autem); Summa Theol., 11-11, q. 88,
a. 9, ad 3: " Geret vices Christi"; q. 39, a. 1; q. 88, a. 12, ad 3.
36 On the one hand, " potest gercre actus totius Ecclesiae qui consecrat eucharistiam quae est sacramentum universalis Ecclesiae" (IV Sent., d. 24, q. 2, a. 2,
ad 2); on the other hand, "in offerendo gerit figuram Christi in Ecclesia" (d. 24,
q. 3, a. 2, obj. 3). Compare Summa Theol., III, q. 82, a. 6 and a. 7, ad 3, the
recites the collect of the Mass "in persona totius Ecclesiae "; q. 80, a. 12,
ad 3, he offers the chalice and consumes the blood "in persona omnium"; q. 83,
a. 5, ad 12, the server at Masses without a congregation "gerit personam totius
populi catholici."
37 This results
from the uses of expression " in persona Christi," " in persona
Ecclesiae," which B.-D. Marliangeas has collected in La Liturgie apres Vatican II
(Unam Sanctam 66), (Paris, 1967), pp. 285 and 286.

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vices gerens Christi, the one standing in Christ's place. Thus
there is bound together in him a double representation, that of
the faith of the Church and that of the authority of its head,
Christ.

B. The body of the article. St. Thomas offers us in the course
of a carefully presented discussion the "ratio," according to
the "disputatio magistralis in scholis" traced out by him, in
the Quodlibetum IV, 18. This" ratio" holds for the necessity of
assuring unity of faith in the Church; more precisely, of a faith
that bears within itself a definite content of judgments and
assertions, which St. Thomas illustrates by St. Paul's exhortation: "all of you speak the same thing" (1 Cor. 1: 10). To
assure this goal it is necessary that disputed questions that
might arise on points of faith be concluded or defined by an
authority which is imposed on the entire Church, or rather, as
St. Thomas says, " by him who presides over the whole Church,"
the Sovereign Pontiff. According to the law, "the more important and more difficult questions " are to be referred to the
Pope. St. Thomas cites the same section of the Decretals that
he quoted in the Sed contra, namely, a decretal of Pope Pelagius Il. 38 This text is in reality a false decretal of PseudoIsidore/9 but it was fabricated from portions of the famous
letter of Pope Innocent I to Victricius of Rouen (a. 404; DS
211) 40 St. Thomas could have invoked other ancient and authentic testimonies or even the decretal M aiores ecclesiae
causas of Innocent III (DS 780-81), which he never cites, even
though it figured in the collection of Gregory IX. 41 But he does
38 D. XVII C. 5 2 (Friedberg 52):
"maiores vero et difficiliores questiones (ut
sancta synodus statuit et beata consuetudo exigit) , ad sedem apostolicam semper
deferantnr ."
39 Ed. Hinschius, p. 724; PL 72, 743 C
(Jaffe 1051). Other texts of Pseudolsidore on the "causae mai01-es" in our Ecclesiologie du Haut Moyen-Age (Paris,
1968), p. 229, n. 12.
40 Ep. 2 (PL 20, 473).
See note a of Coustant. The council invoked is that
of Sardica which was confused, at Rome, with Nicea.
41 C. 3, X, III, 42 (Friedberg
II, 644). Cajetan invokes this decretal for the
question of the sacramental character (Com. in lllam, q. 63, a. 1, n° II; a. 2,
n° VI; q. 68, a. 7, n° VII.

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YVES M.-J. CONGAR

quote Lk.22: 82: "I have prayed for you ... ," to justify the
canonical disposition reserving to the Pope of Rome the judgment of difficult cases.
The same reasoning is encountered in the Contra Gentiles,
IV, c. 76, 8, where, with an additional urgency, he argues from
the fact that Christ could not fail to assure what was necessary
to the Church which he loved, a reason of fittingness which is
frequently employed during the thirteenth century. 42 St.
Thomas's argumentation is reproduced almost to the letter by
Giles of Rome who heard him lecture at Paris. 48 Since Giles,
it has been repeated without end by other writers.
The question whose answer was sought was: " Who has the
right to propose a creed?" St. Thomas has shown that a new
promulgation of a creed was necessary "in order to set aside
the errors that may arise" (a.9, ad 2; a.lOc). For him, the
question is settled, since errors are combatted by a " nova
editio symboli," and the Pope has the task of promulgating a
creed, since he possesses the universal and supreme authority
" to decide the truths of faith so that they may be held by all
with unshaken faith," and even, more generally, "all other
matters which concern the whole Church, such as to convoke
a general council and other things of the sort." The idea that
the Pope alone can impose on the entire Church what must be
held by all was current in the West in the thirteenth century.
It is on this basis, for example, that Innocent IV and Hostiensis
justify the reservation to the Pope of the right of canonizing
saints, a right promulgated by Gregory IX in 1284 in the
Decretals.44
The kind of subordination of the councils to the authority of
the Sovereign Pontiff, which, as we have seen, the Sed contra
effected, was necessary for the effectiveness of the demonstration of the conclusion by reason of the fact that the Creeds,
•• Cf. J. A. Watt, The Theory of Papal Monarchy in the Thirteenth Century.
The Contribution of the Canonista (Fordham, 1965), p. 97.
•• In the first chapter of his De ecclesiastica postestate (fin 1301) , ed. R. Scholz
(Weimar, 1929; reprinted 1961), p. 5.
•• Cf. E. W. Kemp, Canonization and Authority in the Western Church (London,
1948)' pp. 108-109.

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that of Nicea in any case but verified of the others as well, had
been promulgated by councils. But St. Thomas does not envisage that the council, independent of the Pope, received subsequently by " the Church," might be precisely this instance
thanks to which are realized both the " one faith " and " all of
you speak the same thing," which is the position of the Eastern
Orthodox Church.
The West unduly ignored this other part of the Church. It
lived, moreover, on the conviction and the evidence that unum
corpus could not exist without unum caput, that the reason for
the unity of the body is the unicity of the head. 45
With customary frankness Pere Bainvel remarked, a propos
of the text of the Contra Gentiles: "Actually, this argument,
directly and by itself, demonstrated only the necessity of a
supreme authority, not of a monarchic one. St. Thomas felt no
need to distinguish between them." 46 But the Greeks did make
the distinction; they conceived of a collegial head, made up of
the council or of the five Patriarchs, a unity of consensus and of
communion. 47

C. Is this doctrine of St. Thomas identical with the doctrine
of the infallibility of the magisterial acts of the Roman Pontiff?
The text that we are studying was cited by several Fathers at
the First Vatican Council as a testimony of tradition in favor
of papal infallibility. 48 This was done by Msgr. Zunnui Casula,
bishop of Ales and Terralba, who noted in concluding his remarks: " The Church which depends on the ' sententia Petri '
cannot depend on a fallible Peter! " 49 Other bishops com45 References in our L'Eglise de S. Augustin
a l'epoque moderne (Paris, 1970),
p. 218, n. 15. Cf. St. Thomas, IV Cont. Gent., c. 76; Summa Theol., I, q. 60,
a. 1; II-II, q. 39, a. 1 (theology of schism); III, q. 8, a. 4.
46 J. Bainvel, "L'Idec
de l'Eglise au Moyen Age. L'enseignement theologique:
saint Thomas," in La Science catholique, 13• annee, n° 11 (October 1899), pp.
975-988; p. 982, n. 1.
47 Cf. our work cited above, n. 39: p. 84 s, p. 265, s.
48 We here profit from the excellent article of P. U. Betti, "Assenza dell'autorita
di S. Tommaso nel Decreto Vaticano sull'Infallibilita Pontificia," in Divinitas 6
(1962)' 407-422.
49 Mansi 51, 102!t D.

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YVES M.-J. CON GAR

mented on the finaliter reading, which we have noted earlier. 50
Some bishops adduced the Quodlibetum IX, 16, together with
article ten here. 51
But the bishops of the Minority also cited the tenth article,
or they referred to it to support the idea that the Pope eventually promulgates a definition of faith in council, and so conjointly with the episcopate. 52 Msgr. Monferrato, bishop of
Casale, replied to them on June 80, 1870 by citing the text of
the De Potentia. 58
Since the definition of July 18, 1870 St. Thomas has often
been presented as a witness for the defined doctrine, 54 even as
one who could be identified as the first responsible for its eventual definition.55 But what was lacking in article 10, which,
50 Thus Msgr. Trocchi of Forll
(!U.5.1870) who sets down the equivalencies:
finaliter = inappellabiliter = infallibiliter (Mansi
181 AC); Msgr. Salzano of
Tanis
6. 1870) (Mansi
409 CD, 410 BC).
51 Thus
Msgr. Legat of Trieste, who cites St. Thomas through Antoninus
6. 1870), (Mansi
876 with note 5); Msgr. Meurin, titular bishop of
Ascalon and vicar apostolic of Bombay, who is the most documented (remarks
1146) .
on ch. IV of the Constitution, Mansi
•• Thus Msgr. Maret (8. 6. 1870), summarized allusion (Mansi
484 D-485 A);
Msgr. Ketteler
restoring St. Thomas to the famous text of St.
Antoninus (Mansi
898 BC); Msgr. Moriarty
6. 1870), (Mansi
AB). Cardinal Guidi (18. 6.1870) cited St. Thomas and added, but without
746 D).
imputing it to his master, "facta ioquisitione, etc." (Mansi
•• Mansi
946 BC.
•• We cite especially the quite extensive study of F. K. Leitner, Der hl. Thomas
von A quia iiber daa unfehlbare Lehramt des
(Inaugural Diss.), (Freiburg
i. Br.,
196 pp.
55 Janus (Dollinger)
was unrelentiog in affirmiog that Thomas had introduced
ioto dogma the teachiog of the jurists (?) on the pope and his iofallibility by
broadeniog beyond measure the role which the faults contained in the Libellus
would have played io St. Thomas, about which work Urban IV in U61 requested
his appreciation (Der Papste und daa Concil [1869]; French translation by A.
Giraud-Teulon under the title La Papaute. Son origine au Moyen Age et son
developpement iusqu' en 1870 [Paris, 1904], p. 117 s. (reference to our article
io n. 899). A. Harnack followed Janus, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, t. III,
Aufl. [Freiburg in Br.], p. 897; 4. Aufl. [Tiibiogen,
p.
citation of
our article io a note. It is by iotention that, save for one reference, we have
not had recourse to the Contra errores Graecorum, for, from the de Potentia
St. Thomas
io any case well before the redaction of our article
ceased to make any appeal to it. It is allowable to think that he conceived doubts
about the full authenticity of a certain number of its texts. Critical edition of

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when supplied, would enable us to read in it the actually defined doctrine? First of all, the term "infallible": Cardinal
Guidi noted this absence. For he rightly fought against a statement presenting the person of the Pope as infallible; but, with
fifteen other Fathers, he proposed a formula equivalent to the
one eventually adopted. 56
It was not that the terms infallibilis, infallibilitas, infallibiliter, were unknown. St. Thomas uses them, and they appear in
the writings of his contemporaries. 57 For him they always
the Contra enores Graecorum and the Libellus by Fr. Dondaine (Rome, 1867),
see p. A 9; see also Bulletin Thomiste, t. X, p. 79.
56 Namely,
"by divine assistance is preserved from error ... " (Remarks on
ch. XI of the schema, Mansi 51, 10Z8).
57 We note,
for example, Gregory IX, letter Si memoriam beneficiorum, Z3. 10.
1Z36 (Potthast 10Z55), who recalls to the emperor the great examples of the
past " ubi infallibilis solutionis conclusio ... accipitur "; St. Bonaventure, Sermo
de Trinitate (Opera, IX, 356b), who gives as argument in favor of the Church
" infallibilitas oraculorum." A consultation requested of St. Thomas in 1Z71 by
a "lector of Venice," then to Thomas and to Robert Kilwardby by John of
Vercelli, General of the Order, includes among its questions "An infallibiliter sit
probatum angelos ·esse motores corporum caelestium apud aliquos? " (letter to
John of Vercelli). The reply of each of the two theologians comprises several
times the words infallibiliter, infallibilis. See J. Destrez and M.-D. Chenu in
Melanges Mandonnet, t. I (Bibliotheque Thomiste, XIII), (Paris, 1930), respectively pp. 103-189 and 191-ZZZ; Opera, ed. Parma XVI, pp. 164 and 169.
Speaking of St. Thomas himself, we note, in the autograph of the Commentary
on the Sentences, III, d. Z3, q. Z, a. 4, qcla. 1, ad Z, the correction from immutabilis to infallibilis relative to the "Veritas prima"; cf. B.-D. Dupuy, "Le magistere de l'Eglise, service de Ia parole," in L'lnfallibilite de l'Eglise (Chevetogne,
1963), pp. 53-97 (p. 85, n. 87).
In the Summa alone, for which we make use of the Defferrari-Barry Index,
one find infallibilis 14 times, infallibilitas twice, infallibiliter 18 times. lnfallibilis
is applied 4 times to divine truth, twice to Providence, three times to the regula
fidei which is the doctrina Ecclesiae (II-II, q. 5, a. 3), once to hum!llll knowledge
because coming from God, but not to negotia humana (once), once to the ordo
of the status innocentiae. lnfallibilitas is applied once to the conclusions of the
demonstrative sciences, once to the dispositions put in us under the divine motion.
lnfallibiliter three times is said of divine knowledge (or through Revelation) of
future contingents, once of the dispositions of Providence, once of that which the
Holy Spirit works, once of predestination, twice of the fruit of grace or merit,
once of natural knowledge but not of human knowledge of contingent things
(once) nor of the motion of the means toward the end (once) unless ... (once),
three times to qualify what can render perfect an act on the part of the intellect,
then of the will.

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YVES M.-J. CONGAR

qualify the absolute character of certitude arising either from
the uncreated Spirit (the First Truth, God, his Providence, the
Holy Spirit) or from what comes from God and is guaranteed
by him (through the teaching of the Church, prophecy, natural
innate knowledge, order, fruit of grace) or as the conclusion of
a rigorous demonstration or of the perfection assured to the act
of the intellect or of the will.
The fact that St. Thomas qualifies the teaching of the Church
with a regula infallibilis shows that perhaps he might have been
able to apply the word to the magisterium of the councils or of
the Pope. But what he does qualify thus is the objective content
of truth which proceeds from divine Revelation or from the
First Truth: "the First Truth as it is manifested in the Holy
Scriptures and the teaching of the Church, which proceeds from
the First Truth." 58 This statement sums up the very movement of the First Question of the treatise on faith.
It is a fact that St. Thomas has not spoken of the infallibility
of the papal magisterium. Moreover, he was unaware of the
use of magisterium in its modern sense. Article 10 does not go
beyond a theology of the papal function-a theology for which
St. Thomas follows the ideas of his day, without pushing them
as far as Bonaventure did-but of a criteriology of faith viewed
in its objective aspect, the content and the manner of achieving it.
St. Thomas does not even expressly say that the Pope, in
his role of supreme interpreter of Christ's teaching," non potest
errare." Perhaps it is possible to deduce that from his teaching,
but the reasoning process must be supplied by us. For it is not
certain that St. Thomas would have said it; or, if he did, he
might well have added a condition to the
•• Summa Theol., 11-11, q. 5, a. S, c and ad 1; compare q. 6, a. 1; Q. diap. de
caritate, a. IS, ad 6: "Formalis ratio objecti in fide est Veritas prima per doctrinam Ecclesiae manifestata." For this entire conception of St. Thomas see our
study, "Traditio und Sacra Doctrina bei Thomas von Aquin," in Kirche und
Vberlieferung (Festschrift J. R. Geiselmann), (Freiburg i. Br., 1960), pp. 170-!UO;
French text in Eglise et Tradition (Le Puy-Lyon and Paris: Mappus, 1968),
pp. 157-194).
•• What causes us to advance this is the texts where St. Thomas says that

INFALLIBILITY

OF THE PAPAL MAGISTERIUM

108

If the Pope has the power" to decide matters of faith authoritatively, so that they may be held by all with unshaken faith,"
then clearly the dogma of Vatican I necessarily follows. Or at
least it would have been necessary to foresee one instance
where St. Thomas rejected the Vatican dogma. This is how the
Conciliarists, and, to a certain degree, the Gallicans, read St.
Thomas; yet he did nothing of the sort.
He even goes so far as to suggest (Quodl. IX, 16) the idea of
a particular charism proper to the office of the Sovereign Pontiff: "even though Caiphas was an evil man, still, because he
was High Priest, .... " (cum Caiphas, quam vis nequam, tamen
quia Pontifex .... " 60
Thus, it is legitimate to see, here in article 10, a first statement of what would soon become the theological idea, and, six
centuries later, the dogma, of the infallibility of the Pontifical
magisterium.

D. A further question must be answered: Does not St.
Thomas's reasoning in article 10 succeed only in founding this
charism of teaching in the jurisdictional authority of the Pope,
or at least in the area of governmental guidance (regimen) ?61
Is it not to the Pope as the supreme court of judgment (" the
more important and more difficult questions that arise in the
Church ") , as the supreme governor (" who presides over the
whole Church ") , that St. Thomas attributes an authority of
teaching without further recourse?
ecclesiastical superiors would no longer have the value of a rule if they themselves departed from the first rule (III Sent., d.
q.
a. 1, qcla. 4, ad 3;
compare Summa Theol., II-II, q.
a. 6, ad 3), that one gives credence to the
successors of the Apostles " nisi inquantum nobis annuntiant ea quae illi in
scriptis reliquerunt" (de Verit., q. 14, a. 10, ad 11), that prelates, finally, are
subject to fraternal correction and that the latter will be public if a question of
a.
qcla. 3, ad 1; Summa Theol., II-II,
faith is found at stake (IV Sent., d. 19, q.
q. 33, a. 4,
60 Thomas cites this text relative to charisms
(I Cor., c.
lect. I) and adds
to this occasion the maxim of Ambrosiaster (PL 17,
B), so often recalled by
him and by others in the Middle Ages: " Omne verum a quocumque dicatur,
a Spiritu Sancto est."
61 This is what R. Sohm says, Kirchenrecht, t. II
(Miinchen-Leipzig, 1923) ,
p. 110. The same is to be found in W. Elert, R. Jelke.

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YVES M.·J. CONGAR

This question could just as well be raised on the basis of a
text such as the following, drawn from his Commentary on the
chapter Firmiter of the fourth Lateran Council: "Fittingly,
therefore, as the Vicar of Christ is about to propose commands
by which the Church, founded by the preaching of the Apostles,
is governed in peace, it (Firmiter) first sets forth a section about
faith." And does not St. Thomas write elsewhere: " Teaching
is directed to the government of the people as to its end."? 62
It would be wrong to argue from such texts in order to reproach St. Thomas for making the function of teaching into
something unreasonably juridical. We must place ourselves in
the perspective of St. Thomas himself, which is at the same time
so formal and rigorous and yet so broad. For him, gubernatio
covers the whole activity by which a created or established
reality is maintained in the truth that constitutes it and is
directed to its goal. 63 But the Church is founded by faith, it is
the " congregatio fidelium," according to a traditional definition
to which St. Thomas gives a sense that is very precise and very
rich in his synthesis. 64 Thus, the historical realization of this
" effectus gratiae " embraces, under the transcendent and infallible gubernatio of God, the First Truth who communicates
himself in revealing himself, all the providentially disposed
mediations of this communication, the prophets, sacred writers,
Christ, the Apostles, and then, dependent on them, the Councils, Popes, doctors ... , St. Thomas does not make of jurisdiction the basis of the charism of teaching but simply relates the
power of imposing the formula of a new Creed as a universal
rule of belief to the degree of jurisdiction that belongs to the
one " who presides over the whole Church."
02 We hope to return
to this question elsewhere. The commentary on canon
Firmiter says: "Unitas Ecclesiae est praecipue propter fidei unitatem. Nam
Ecclesia nihil est aliud quam aggrcgatio fidelium." See A. Darquennes, "La
definition de l'Eglise d'apres saint Thomas d'Aquin," in L'organisation corporative
du Moyen Age ala fin de l'Ancien Regime (Louvain, 1943), pp. 1-53; our L'Eglise
s.; note
of the work
de S. Augustin a l'epoque moderne (Paris, 1970), p.
cited above, note 54.
63 I Cor., c. U, lect. 3.
"'See our study cited above, n. 58. One of the most significant texts is Compendium Theologiae I, 147.

INFALLIBILITY

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105

We may, therefore, state that article 10, and other passages
such as Quodl. II, 7, whose teaching is reproduced in II-II,
q.2, a.6, ad 3, q.10, a.12, and Quodl. IX, 16, marks a stage in
the movement which replaced the distribution of areas of competence made by Gratian,-the primacy of "those who study
the divine Scriptures," for a scientific exposition of the Scriptures and the primacy of the Pontiffs " in matters to be defined," 65-by the privilege of Papal authority, which even
tended to become uniquely competent in matters pertaining to
the articuli fidei.
It seems certain that the popular heresies of the twelfth century and the organization of their repression have played a role
in this process: doctrinal questions have become juridical
cases. St. Thomas treats the act of defining matters of faith
as a judgment which must be made by the Sovereign Pontiff
" to whom the more important and more difficult questions that
arise in the Church are referred." He joins in the Pope both
judicial and doctrinal competence.
This union does not necessarily make of the magisterium
simply an exercise of the power of jurisdiction; St. Thomas also
associates judicial and doctrinal competence with the priesthood, and his conception of the power of the keys is strongly
sacramental. But it does grant to the person with
jurisdiction the exercise of the magisterium inasmuch as it takes
the form of a judgment and of an order of supreme public authority.
YVEs M.-J. CoNGAR,

O.P.

Le Saulchoir,
Paris, France

65 Gratian,
saying before c. 1 D. XX (Friedberg 65). For the ensemble of the
question, cf. Ch. Munier, Les Sources patristiques du Droit de l'Eglise du VIII•
au X Ill siecle (Mulhouse, 1957), pp.

RIGHT REASON IN CONTEMPORARY ETIDCS

0

NE OF THE MOST important themes in the practical thinking of Thomas Aquinas is recta ratio. It seems
to me to be much more central in Thomistic ethics than
the concept of naturallaw. 1 Following a brief outline of what
right reason meant to Aquinas, I propose to examine three
typically contemporary approaches to ethical reasoning m
order to suggest their relations to Thomistic right reason.

Aquinas on Right Reason
One of the best works to read, so as to get some appreciation
of what St. Thomas was really doing in his ethics, is his Disputed Questions on the Virtues in General.2 What we find there
is a self-perfectionist theory of the good life for man. The first
five articles analyze man in terms of a highly developed moral
psychology. Four operative powers (not faculties) in man are
regarded as capable of moral perfection: the possible intellect
(roughly, the understanding in Lockean terms), will (that is,
intellectual appetite) , irascible sensory appetite, and concupiscible sensory appetite. Each of these four psychic powers is
considered to be a passive operative potency-as distinguished
from an active operative potency (such as the agent intellect
or the cognitive sense powers). Active potencies are not improved by use; they are initially as perfect as they ever will be;
such active potencies are faculties. However, passive operative
powers are metaphysically imperfect in their original state and
their use brings an added ability (habitus, habilitas) to their
1 See my History of Ethics
(New York: Doubleday, 1968), pp. 97-99; also my
forthcoming article: "Is Aquinas a Natural-Law Ethicist?" in The Monist (1974).
2 De virtutibus in communi (in Quaestiones Disputatae, vol. II, Turin:
Marietti,
1953). The Virtues ( in General), trans. with introduction and notes by John
Patrick Reid, 0. P. (Providence: Providence College Press, 1951).

106

RIGHT REASON IN CONTEMPORARY

ETHICS

107

original power. Hence their initial state of potency is open to
development into the condition known as virtus, that is, the
state of a fully perfected operative power of man. 3
Emphasis must be placed on Thomas's view that the process
of moral self-perfecting is not exclusively a volitional event
but is a fourfold personal development. With all due respect
for the unity of human consciousness, and for the fact that man
and not his powers is the real moral agent, Aquinas insists that
there are four different powers directly involved in the growth
of moral character. Virtue is not simply a matter of training
the will. The possible intellect is perfected by the virtue of
prudence; intellectual appetite (will) is perfected by justice
(and in the supernatural order by charity); irascible appetite
is perfected by fortitude; and concupiscible appetite is perfected
by temperance. Will, of course, is involved in all moral actions
-but so is intellect, as used in the process of practical reasoning and in the making of practical judgments. 4
Each of the four moral potencies is born in a state of imperfection, with an inborn inclination toward some specific perfection. Through his intellect man desires true knowledge
(both speculative and practical), through his will he desires
the good-in-general as presented by intellectual cognition,
through irascible appetite he desires the sensory good of security from dangers, and through concupiscible appetite he
desires sensory pleasures. These innate human inclinations may
be perfected either in the direction of virtue or of vice. Virtue
is both a metaphysical and a moral perfectant; vice is only a
metaphysical perfectant. What distinguishes the virtuous
habit, for St. Thomas, is its agreement with reason. Man is
marked by rationality as his specific difference: to become a
morally perfected human being is to develop all four moral
powers in accord with right reason. This is how he explains the
moral function of right reason:
8 Cf. G. P. Klubertanz,
Habits and Virtues (New York: Appleton-CenturyCrofts, 1965); and my essay: "Habitus in the Thomistic Metaphysics of Potency
and Act," in Essays in Thomism, ed. R. E. Brennan, 0. P. (New York: Sheed
and Ward, 1942), pp. 101-109.
'De virtutibus in communi, a. 5, c.

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VERNON J. :SOURKE

The good for anything whatever consists in the fact that its action
is in agreement with its form; now the form proper to man is that
which makes him a rational animal; consequently, it must be that
a man's action is good from the fact that it is in accord with right
reason, for the perversion of reason is repugnant to the nature of
reason. 5

There is little doubt that the moral thinking in Thomas's
Disputed Questions forms the background for the Second Part
of his Summa of Theology. Thus the noted treatise on habits
and virtues, in the Summa, represents a reworking of the Questions on the Virtues in General.6 In the Summa we are presented with a mature explanation of the process of self-perfection in the four moral potencies, as outlined above. What is
different in the Prima Secundae of the Summa is the insertion
of a treatise on good and evil in human actions, prior to the
treatises on virtues and the much later section on laws. 7 In
this treatment of moral good and evil we learn the meaning of
"right" in the expression right reason.
In effect, Thomas claims that man is so constituted in his
nature that he automatically tends toward the goal of beatitude. This does not mean that he always works for this end;
he may work against it, but in doing so he is running counter
to the basic thrust of his rational nature. Man's sensory inclinations toward pleasure and bodily security share in the
over-all tendency of his intellect and will toward union with
the perfect good. Morally good acts are means that advance
man toward attainment of this goal of reason; morally bad
acts take man away from this goal. Good actions have a
generic perfection in their being; they have specific objectives
5 Sententia
Libri Ethicorum, II, lect. £ (ed. R. A. Gauthier, 0. P., Romae:
Commissio Leonina ad Sanctae Sabinae, 1969), vol. XLVII (1), p. 80: "Cuius
ratio est quia bonum cuiuslibet rei est in hoc quod sua operatio sit conveniens
suae formae; propria autem forma hominis est secundum quam est animal rationale;
uncle oportet quod operatio hominis sit bona ex hoc quod est secundum rationem
rectam, perversitas enim rationis repugnat naturae rationis."
6 Summa Theologiae, 1-11, qq. 49-67 (Ottawa:
Studium Generale 0. Pr., 1941),
vol. II, 964b-1 066b.
•" De bonitate et malitia humanorum actuum," in Summa Theol., I-II, qq.
18-£1 (Ottawa ed., vol. II, 8£la-84la) .

RIGHT REASON IN CONTEMPORARY

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109

that are suitable to the formal nature of man; they are surrounded by circumstances that are appropriate to a human
agent in a given situation; and they are rationally directed
toward a fitting end. Thus man's actions may have a fourfold goodness that can be appraised by reasoning: first, an
ontological good based on the fact that every action is the
actuation of some potency (this is why even a bad action may
look desirable and may produce some good results) ; second, a
specific good deriving from the intention of a suitable objective
(thus teaching someone is formally different from wounding a
person) ; third, a concrete good stemming from a context in
which all the significant conditions of the action are reasonably
acceptable; and fourth, an over-all intention in the agent which
directs the whole action toward an end that is ideally good. 8
For a more complete account of the theory of moral circumstances, we must turn to the Disputed Questions on Evil, 9
where Thomas shows at some length that he is as much aware
of the importance of the concrete context of moral activity as
any advocate of situation ethics. He insists that certain types
of human actions (such as murder, adultery and theft 10 ) are
the kinds of things that are not fitting for a human being to do.
These are so judged universally and not as singular actions. In
the concrete, individual moral actions are not judged by simply
putting them under some ethical rule. Real moral action occurs
under individual conditions that modify the unique character
of this action. These conditions of the moral situation include
8 After devoting successive articles from 1 to 4 to these types of moral goodness,
Thomas sums it up: " Sic igitur in actione humana bonitas quadruplex considerari
potest. Una quidem secundum genus, prout scilicet est actio, quia quantum habet
de actione et entitate, tantum habet de bonitate, ut dictum est. Alia vero secundum
speciem, quae accipitur secundum objectum conveniens. Tertia secundum circumstantias, quasi secundum accidentia quaedam. Quarta autem secundum finem,
quasi secundum habitudinem ad bonitatis causam" (ibid., q. 18, a. 4 c).
• Quaestiones Disputatae de malo, q. £, aa. 6-9; no complete English version
exists but the corpus of the key article 6 may be read in my Pocket Aquinas (New
York: Washington Square Press, 1960), pp. £04-£06.
1 ° For these examples, ibid., a. 6. Note that examples given by modern situationists of a " good " act of adultery would not in some cases qualify as formal
acts of adultery.

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VERNON J. BOURKE

various aspects of the conscious dispositions of the agent (how
much he knows about what he is doing, how he feels about it,
and what he really wills to do), as well as many aspects of the
performance of the extra-mental, or outward, action. These
circumstances are summed up under the terms: " who, what,
where, by what means, why, how and when." 11 Obviously, the
consideration of a proposed action from all these points of view
requires much effort of human reason. One becomes able to
manage this complexity by forming skilful habits of practical
reasoning. Using one's intellect in this process of rational examination is what Thomas means by right reason, viewed subjectively, within the moral agent. He has no doubt that the
ultimate court of appeal in regard to the moral goodness or evil
of a given human action is what he calls eternal law, or God's
Ratio. 12 However, God's eternal law is only partly known by
men. Thomas sees this human participation in divine wisdom
as happening in several ways: through ordinary reasoning about
the data of natural experience, through supernatural instruction, and through divinely infused knowledge. 13 Philosophical
ethics employs only the first of these modes of communication,
as is quite clear from the opening lecture of St. Thomas's course
on the Nicomachean Ethics. But in any case, man's acceptance
of the meaning (i.e., the ratio in the sense of definitive conception, or the intelligibility) of any ethical judgment, whether
directly received from God or indirectly reasoned out from ordinary experiences in life, must consist in the correct use of human understanding. This is the subjective and personal side
of recta ratio.
Ibid.: "Quis, quid, ubi, quibus auxiliis, cur, quomodo, quando."
Deformitas autem actus est per hoc quod discordat a debita regula rationis
vel legis Dei" (ibid., a. c). Similarly, Summa Theol., I-II, q. 19, a. 4 c. states:
" Quod autem ratio humana sit regula voluntatis humanae, ex qua eius bonitas
mensuretur, habet ex lege aeterna, quae est ratio divina." This theme, that right
human reasoning is a sharing in the perfect Reason of God, is continually reiterated
in the De Malo and the Summa Theologiae.
13 " Haec autem est ratio unde bonum et malum in actibus humanis consideratur secundum quod actus concordat rationi informatae lege divina, vel naturaliter,
a. 4 c).
vel per doctrinam, vel per infusionem" (De Malo, q.
11

12 "

RIGHT REASON IN CONTEMPORARY ETIDCS

111

When a man thinks discursively about what he should do in
order to live well, his process of reasoning may terminate in
two different kinds of judgmental conclusions. On one level
of practical reasoning he reaches judgments about generic or
specific kinds of actions. These judgments are not individual
decisions to act or not to act. One may conclude one line of
reasoning with universal judgments such as: " Talking is a
generic activity that is morally indifferent: it is neither good
nor bad"; or" Helping other persons in distress is a specifically
good kind of action"; or "Malicious killing of innocent people
is a specifically bad kind of action." Such judgments are ethical
in content, but they are not, on this level, applied to individual
actions. They are generalized conclusions about what some
contemporary ethicists call moral practices.
Ethics, moral philosophy, and every kind of moral instruction (I have never seen the term" moral theology" in the writings of Aquinas) deal with this sort of universal knowledge.
Thomas is insistent in all his writings that the objects of human
understanding are primarily universal meanings. But there is
another level of practical reasoning whose discourse terminates
in judgments as to whether this act is good or bad, to be done
or not to be done. This level of reasoning ends with singular
judgments such as: "I must tell this man that he has a flat
tire, so that he will not be harmed"; or "It would be bad for
me to kill Joe now, on the pretense that he might try to kill
me sometime." Judgments of this individual sort lead to, direct, and immediately precede external moral actions. These
singular judgments are not teachable; they can only be made
by the moral agent for himself; and they are not part of the
subject-matter of ethics.
There are, then for Thomas Aquinas, two levels of practical
discourse. Ethical reasoning is always general in character: it
cannot attempt to judge my actions, or your actions, but its
function is to formulate rules of action. Such rules may be
viewed as precepts of natural law, but they are not innate
items of knowledge, nor are they the property of some institution such as the Catholic Church, or the Osservatore Romano.

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VERNON J. BOURKE

Natural laws, in this ethical sense, are simply those general
ordinances of human behavior that have been discovered by
human reasoning. At least, this is what Thomas Aquinas thinks
that natural moral laws are. 14
Since the term "natural law" embraces a wide diversity
of meanings, it may be wise to drop the use of this expression,
as we have already seen. In point of fact, the theme of right
reason covers all that is helpful in natural law teaching-and a
good deal more.

The Objective Aspect of Right Reason
Another side of recta ratio is extremely important, but it cannot be fully developed here. This is because it presupposes a
whole metaphysics, a general theory of reality. That is to say,
right reason is not merely a correct process of practical reasoning: there is an objective ground for its moral rightness. To
express this point as neatly as possible, may I turn to the arithmetic meaning of ratio? The understandable relation of S to 5
is not a figment of my imagination, or an arbitrary construct
within my mind. This ratio is an objective meaning which can
be grasped by any number of intellects and which can be misunderstood by the person who does not really know its significance. Extending this relational definition of "ratio," let us
think of the ratio of father to son, of milk to human nutrition,
of Lot's wife to Solomon. These are all meaningful ratios: the
relationship of their terms is constituted by the juxtaposition
of one item with another item, either on the basis of their natures (what kind of items they are), or in terms of some knowable circumstance (such as the fact that Solomon was not married to Lot's wife). Clearly the ratio between milk and human
nutrition is suitable and good, in terms of man's health and
provided there are no other adverse circumstances. However,
u " Et huiusmodi propositiones universales rationis practicae ordinatae ad actiones
habent rationem legis" (Summa Theol., I-II, q. 90, a. 1, ad
Later, Thomas
applies this to natural law: " Dictum est enim supra [i. e. in the passage quoted
above] quod lex naturalis est aliquid per rationem constitutum, sicut etiam propositio est quoddam opus rationis" (ibid., q. 94, a. 1 c).

RIGHT REASON IN CONTEMPORARY ETmCS

118

the ratio between sulphuric acid and human nutrition is not
suitable, in the light of the same sort of consideration. Thinking in terms of man's well-being we know that the first ratio
is good and the second is bad. All the kinds of actions that are
morally good for man to do are grounded on similarly suitable
ratios.
·
David Hume, of course, challenged this, but he was simply
wrong. His claim that one cannot move by reasoning from" is"
to " ought " is due to his inability to understand what is real
and what objective relationships are. Recta ratio has an ontological basis. 15 It is not enough to ground an ethics on purely
psychological indications; for, as Aquinas says:
Human reason (ratio humana) in itself is not the rule of things
(regula rerum) but rather the principles naturally implanted in it
are, for they are the general rules and standards (mensurae) of all
man's actions, for which natural reason (ratio naturalis) is the rule
and standard, although it is not the standard of physical events in
nature. 16

In the third book of the Summa contra Gentiles we see this
objective and realistic aspect of right reason at its clearest. 17
Thomas is there examining the meaning of divine providence,
and he describes all things in the universe as products of the
ratio Dei, the creative mind of God. Everything that exists,
or can exist, has a meaningful relation to its ratio, or formal
archetype, in the divine mind. God's architectonic plan for all
creatures is eternally present in his Reason. This ratio Dei
extends not only to the initial moment of bringing the universe
into existence but over the whole dynamic development of
created things throughout the course of time. Infra-human
creatures share in this divine plan of governance, because it is
built into their natures. Thus, salt forms crystals with characteristic angles, oak trees produce acorns and not beans, dogs
15 On this point see: Henry B. Veatch, For an Ontology of Morals: A Critique
of Contemporary Ethical Theory (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1971), especially chapters VI and VII.
16 Summa Theol., I-ll, q. 91, a. 8, ad !l.
17 The whole of Book Ill is involved but especially chapter 97.

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VERNON J. BOURKE

seek meat to eat-but these typical activities flow automatically
from their natures.
Human creatures naturally and instinctively tend toward
what is good for them, also, but human freedom requires men
to reason out the detailed means that will enable them to
achieve a good life. The process of right reasoning rests on an
accurate knowledge of all the things that man encounters and
uses in his morallife. 18 The Summa contra Gentiles adds another dimension to the objectivity of right reason by its stress
on the Christian belief in divine exemplarism. It was an important dimension for the Jewish and Moslem scholars of
Aquinas's day. It is not a borrowing from Hellenic philosophy,
as some pseudo-scholars argue today; Christian exemplarism
has its roots in the Book of Genesis and the Gospel of St. John.
Of course, the objective side of recta ratio is presented in all
the writings in which Aquinas expounds his metaphysics. It is
too much to attempt to digest the teaching of his commentaries
on Aristotle's Physics and Metaphysics, the brief but significant
treatises On the Principles of Nature and On Being and Essence,
and the magistral discussions of the relation of finite beings to
divine Being in the First Part of the Summa of Theology.
Two points seem most significant for ethical studies in all
these metaphysical writings. The first is Thomas's emphasis
on the finality of all created things, and especially of man.
That all men are naturally ordered to one supreme end is essential to the teleological procedure of Thomistic right reason.
This cardinal claim takes us beyond the scope of this article.
I think, however, that later Scholasticism lost its awareness of
the metaphysical finality of man-and this loss contributed to
the degeneration of teleological ethics and right reason in
Renaissance and modern philosophy .19
The second major feature of Aquinas's metaphysical groundwork for his teaching on right reason is his view that all finite
18 ]11 Cont. Gent., cc. 111-112 (Romae:
Apud Sedem Commissionis Leoninae,
1934), ed. manualis, pp. 363-365.
19 Thus Francis Suarez
(De anima, V, 3, 8) regarded the end (causa finalis)
as a cause only metaphorically.

RIGHT REASON IN CONTEMPORARY

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beings belong in definite species and thus have distinctive formal natures. Practical thinking must include some knowledge
of this fact: there are different kinds of things. One can use
water to put out fires but not gasoline. Thomas did not think
that ethical judgments can be deduced from a definitive knowledge of human nature. He did think that ethical discourse
requires reliable knowledge of all the kinds of things that men
meet with in their moral activities. A dog is not a tree, a pig is
not a man, sulphuric acid is not milk; these and similiar items of
practical knowledge form the experiential basis for Thomas's
ethics. 20

Good Reasons Ethics
In nomenclature, the contemporary theory that might seem
closest to Thomistic right reason is the ethics of " good reasons." 21 The most prominent proponent of this type of ethics,
R. M. Hare, calls this approach prescriptivism. It developed as
a reaction to emotive ethics which maintained that the only
meaning in ethical statements is the expression of favorable or
unfavorable feelings, plus some possible effort to exhort other
persons to agree or act in accord with these feelings. As such,
emotivisim was almost completely subjective in character. In
the long run, emotive ethics had nothing to teach, for all people
have emotions without being taught how to do so. Diametrically opposed to emotivism is descriptivism or nco-naturalism.
20 No one appreciated
this better than my late colleague, G. P. Klubertanz;
see his essay, "The Empiricism of Thomistic Ethics," Proceedings of the American
Catholic Philosophical Association, XXXI (1957), 1-24.
21 Leading advocates include: Kurt Baier, The Moral Point of View (New York:
Cornell University Press, 1948); Stuart Hampshire, "Fallacies in Moral Philosophy," Mind, 58 (1949); Stephen Toulmin, An Examination of the Place of
Reason in Ethics (Cambridge: University Press, 1950); J. 0. Urmson, "On
Grading," Mind, 59 (1950), 145-169; and R. M. Hare, The Language of Morals
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), Freedom and Reason (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1963) and Essays on the Moral Concepts (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of California Press, 1972). For criticism: H. B. Veatch, "Good Reasons and
Prescriptivism in Ethics," Ethics, 80 (1970), 102-111; W. D. Hudson, Modern
Moral Philosophy (New York: Doubleday, 1970), pp. 155-248; and Ronald Lawler,
Philosophical Analysis and Ethics (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1968), chap. 4: "Good
Reasons in Ethics," pp. 46-64,

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VERNON J. BOURKE

As one supporter of this view suggests, ethical naturalism maintains " that certain kinds of facts or features are necessarily
relevant criteria of moral evaluation." 22 Briefly, the descriptivist holds that you can derive " ought " from " is." 23
In relation to the extremes of emotivism on the one hand
and descriptive naturalism on the other, good reasons ethics
attempts a middle view. Where the complete subjectivist would
say that no rational argument could be offered to support
ethical evaluations, the prescriptivist will assert that a variety
of " reasons " may be offered, but these reasons do not demonstrate the truth of an ethical conviction in the way that scientific arguments, for instance, support a scientific conclusion.
Actually, the reasons brought forward by prescriptivists may
be quite diverse in character. Thus Stephen Toulmin usually
appeals to the accepted social conventions in a given society.
Kurt Baier seems to hold that there is more of a factual basis
for ethically sound reasons. J. 0. Urmson suggests that moral
standards result from established conventions, just as different
grades of apples are set up and used to determine their value
and price. Hare, however, thinks that " giving a reason for any
action involves reference (explicit or implicit) to a rule, maxim
or principle." 24 It is the fact that an ethical utterance is rulebased, in some special evaluative manner, that distinguishes
ethical discourse from scientific or fact-based reasoning.
This appeal to rules or evaluative standards is the feature of
good reasons ethics that allies it with right reason. The prescriptive approach implies a logic and a reasoning process in the
background of ethical judgment. Advocates of good reasons
ethics, as well as Thomists, see some use for the practical syllogism.25 However, the reasons of prescriptive ethics lead to
•• G. Warnock, Contemporary Moral Philosophy (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1967), p. 68. See also Philippa Foot, "Moral Beliefs," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 59 (1958-1959), pp. 83-104.
23 On this whole problem issuing from David Hume, see the essays in W. D.
Hudson (ed.), The Is-Ought Question (London: Macmillan, 1969).
•• Essays on the Moral Concepts, p. 15.
•• Thus Aristotle falls among the predecessors of good reasons ethics; see R.

RIGHT REASON 1N CONTEMPORARY ETHICS

117

judgments about actions rather than about rules. As indicated,
the ethical rules used by prescriptivists come from a variety of
sources but not from practical reasoning to universal precepts.
There is little more in common between the two theories:
right reason requires the support of a realistic metaphysics,
while prescriptivism is anti-metaphysical. In the long run,
nearly all the advocates of " good reasons " rely on linguistic
usage in their basic arguments. This is why prescriptivism
remains almost exclusively a British theory. It needs a setting
in a long-established society, where games and their rules are
respected, where laws and decency are generally accepted
values. This feature becomes quite evident in Hare's discussions of race prejudice. He is appalled by Hitler's actions
against the Jews and by Apartheid in South Africa. Hare knows
that nothing would prevent a Nazi philosopher from giving as
a" good reason" for extermination the accepted claim in Nazi
Germany that Jewish people were corrupting influences. This
sort of thing infuriates Hare-and properly so. But on a prescriptivist basis there is little that he can do beyond categorizing Nazi ethicists as " fanatics." 26 Such name calling hardly
settles the question.
Since there is a fundamental weakness in the attempt to
ground ethics on individual choices of standards, or even on
social conventions, good reasons ethicists usually attempt to
use some form of universalization as a test of ethical validity.
This test is not peculiar to good reasons ethics, however, and it
deserves separate consideration in the next section of this
article. Our conclusion to this brief review of good reasons
ethics is that this school is far removed from the ethics of right
reason. As one British critic remarks, if evaluation rests solely
on personal choice, then prescriptivism must hold that " in the
end there are no reasons at all." 27
Dewey (ed.), Problems of Ethics (New York: Macmillan, 1961), pp. 433-435,
quoting chap. 7 of Aristotle's De motu animalium.
26 Freedom and Reason, chap. 9: "Toleration
and Fanaticism." Lawler, Philosophical Analysis, pp. 84-88, provides a criticism.
21 G. Warnock, Contemporary Moral Philosophy, p. 67.

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VERNON J. BOURKE

The Test of Universalizability
Immanuel Kant made famous the principle that one should
act in such a way that his action could become a universal
maxim for all. This imperative was an extension of the golden
rule, long recognized in ancient and medieval ethics. The notion
that generalization is a way of justifying practical judgments
has become prominent again in several types of contemporary
ethics. 28 We have noted that it is employed by prescriptivists,
such as Hare, to bolster their position. 29
If the test of universalizability be taken in a rather formal
sense, that is, as a logical procedure of checking the validity
or correctness of an ethical statement, then it bears little similarity to right reason. An extreme version of this sort of thing
is found in Braithwaite's discussion of the theory of games. 30
He considers a problem involving two musicians, Matthew a
trumpet player and Luke a pianist, who live in the same house
and must decide how many evenings each may fairly play. The
trumpeter is not disturbed by piano playing but the pianist
is by trumpeting. After about fifty pages of complex mathematical computations, Braithwaite decides that Matthew is
entitled to play on twenty-six nights in the month and Luke
is only entitled to play on seventeen! 31 It is difficult to see
what bearing this has on ethics.
Another much discussed problem in game theory is the socalled Prisoners' Dilemma. Two guilty men are separately
questioned: if neither confesses, each will be imprisoned for one
year; if one confesses and the other does not, the confessing
prisoner will go free and the other will get ten years; if both
28 Marcus
Singer, Generalization in Ethics (New York: Knopf, 1961) presents
an exhaustive study of this approach.
29 See Hare,
Freedom and Reason, pp. 10-30; and Essays on the Moral Concepts, pp. 13-28.
30 R. B. Braithwaite,
Theory of Games as a Tool for the Moral Philosopher
(Cambridge: University Press, 1955).
31 Note
that some of these sessions coincide within the month. Braithwaite
admits that other solutions are possible. Cf. A. K. Sen, Collective Choice and
Social Welfare (San Francisco: Holden-Day, 1970), pp. 118-122.

RIGHT REASON IN CONTEMPORARY

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119

confess, they will get five years each. 32 From the over-all point
of view of both prisoners, their best decisions would seem to
be not to confess. From the point of view of society as a whole,
their best decisions would seem to be to tell the truth, that is,
both confess. Various " solutions " to this problem are proposed, on the basis of probability theory and game strategy.
It may be considered also from the viewpoint of universalizability: each prisoner may ask himself, " what would result if
everyone in such a position did as I propose to do?" 33
In any event, calculative procedures of this type presuppose
some already established goal, or system of values, some sense
in which the game of life may be won. The real difficulty in
contemporary ethics is that there is no general agreement among
ethicists as to how one wins this game. Mathematical theories
in the field of ecoof decision-making originated in the
nomics.34 It was accepted that monetary profit is the supreme
goal in this field. Parallel efforts to use mathematical calculation to ground ethical values have had little success. 35 This is
not what right reason means.
In connection with studies of utilitarian procedures another
basic difficulty has come to the fore. When the classic British
utilitarians developed the test of the " greatest good for the
greatest number," what were they attempting to do? Were
they providing a principle for the justification of individual
deeds (act utilitarianism), or were they presenting a method
of testing more specific ethical precepts which could be used in
tum to judge any number of individual actions (rule utili32 R. D. Luce and Howard
Raiffa, Games and Decisions (New York: Wiley,
1957), chap. 5, for a full discussion of this problem.
33 R. F. Hopkins,
" Game Theory and Generalization in Ethics," Review of
Politics, 27 (1965), 491-500. Numerous articles on the ethical significance of the
Prisoner's Dilemma appeared in the journal, Ethics, during the past fifteen years.
•• Consult J. von Neumann, "Zur Theorie der Gesellschaftsspielc," Mathematische
Annalen, 100 (1928), 295-320; and the classic work by von Neumann and 0.
Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1947).
35 Thus,
James M. Buchanan, "Ethical Rules, Expected Values, and Large
Numbers," Ethics, 76 (1965), 1-13, assumes the principle of utility as the established ethical standard.

ao

VERNON J. BOURKE

tarianism)? 86 Some scholars now think that J. S. Mill and his
associates were attempting to judge individual acts-and others
feel that he aimed to establish rules for the determination of
utility. 37
From what we have seen about Aquinas's right reason theory
it should be evident that this theory cannot be interpreted as
an act-ethics. When Thomas discusses the reasoning that precedes personal decision regarding an individual action he always
keeps this sort of practical discourse quite distinct from the
study of moral philosophy. As used in Thomistic ethics, recta
ratio is different from the prudential discourse that leads to
right action. 38 An act-ethics attempts to extend the domain
of ethics into the order of personal moral judgments. This does
not seem to me to be within the field of ethics. Universalization
has a role to play, especially in the area of inter-personal dealings, what the Thomist will call the field of justice. It does not
provide an ultimate test of moral good or evil, however.

The Classic Greek Heritage
Contemporary ethicists pay a good deal of attention to Aristotle and the whole tradition of Greek ethics. 89 Thomistic
36 One of the first to point out this difference was J. J. C. Smart, "Extreme
and Restricted Utilitarianism," The Philosophical Quarterly, 6 (1956), 344-354.
Smart's extreme position has come to be called act-utilitarianism and his restricted
theory is now called rule-utilitarianism.
87 A useful gathering of articles on both points of view is: Contemporary Utilitarianism, edited by M. D. Bayles (New York: Doubleday, 1968).
38 Thus, de Virtut. in Comm., a. 6, ad 1 explains: "sed prudentia plus importat
quam scientia practica: nam ad scientiam practicam pertinet universale judicium
de agendis, sicut fornicationem esse malam, furtum non esse faciendum, et hujusmodi . . . Sed ad prudentiam pertinet recte judicare de singulis agibilibus, prout
sint nunc agenda." For Thomas's fuller explanation of the sphere of moral
philosophy, consult Sententia Libri Ethicorum, VI, lect. 4 (ed. Leonina, vol. XLVII,
2, pp. 344-347). Cf. Wolfgang Kluxen, Philosophiches Ethik bei Thomas von
Aquin (Mainz: Matthias-Grunewald, 1964), pp. 35-61.
•• Representative studies are collected in J. M. E. Moravcsik (ed.), Aristotle:
A Collection of Critical Essays (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor, 1967). R. A.
Gauthier's edition, translation, and commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics
(Aristote, L'Ethique a Nicomaque, 3 vols., Louvain-Paris: Nauwelaerts, 19581959) has stimulated a renewal of French scholarship.

RlGH'.l' REASON IN CON'.l'EMPORARY E'l'IDCS

121

ethics has its roots in the Greek respect for reason in human
life. There are notable differences, however, between the orthos
logos of the Nicomachean Ethics and the recta ratio of St.
Thomas. Aristotle's God is not personal, not providential, has
no role in man's moral activities. There is no distinct power of
will in Aristotle's psychology; for him, choice is an act of intellectual preference. 49 There is no habit of first practical principles (synderesis) in Aristotle's ethics. Nor does Aristotle
have a theory of moral law: his treatment of the morally just
(the dikaion), in the fifth book of the Nicomachean Ethics, is
not legalistic at all. Nor is there an eternal law in Aristotle:
his theos is not a ruler. All these differences indicate the important changes that Aquinas introduced into his version of
right reason.
One contemporary ethicist who knows the Greek tradition
is Mortimer Adler. He recently published a book providing a
new formulation of Aristotelian ethics. 41 Adler stresses the
moral psychology and the theory of natures in Aristotle, but
he pays little attention to the right reason theme. In a way, of
course, his emphasis on " common sense " is a valid reworking
of the role of the phronimos (the man of good practical judgment) in the Nicomachean Ethics. Moreover, Adler restates
the Aristotelian theory of natural inclinations in terms of the
pragmatic concept of basic human needs: " the real good is the
good that is correlative with needs, and the apparent good is
the good that is correlative with wants." 42 Certainly, Adler's
common-sense ethics is a step in the right direction, if one is
looking for recent versions of right reason, but it seems to pass
very quickly over the objective and metaphysical aspects of
recta ratio.
•o Cf. Bourke, Will in Western Thought (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1964),
pp. 80-88.

"The Time of Our Lives. The Ethics of Common Sense (New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1970). "When I first thought of writing this book, I conceived it as little more than a re-writing of the Nichomachean
• • ."
(p. 285).

•• Ibid., p. 94.

VERNON J. BOURKE

Curiously, a new book professing to espouse ethical voluntarism and to reject rationalism does a good job of treating
the end-directed nature of man. 43 Like Adler, Richard Taylor
insists that "men have needs, desires, and goals," and this is
a basic fact of human nature. 44 It is not that all men have one
final end, as in Thomistic ethics, but that there is a Dewey-type
purposiveness in the moral agent. Yet Taylor's view of man
takes will, rather than reason, as the distinctive core of human
personality. Reason is concerned, as Taylor sees it, with the
determination of moral means and not with ends as such. Conation, the natural thrust of the human will toward appropriate
objectives, supplies the over-all direction to a good life. Taylor's
" voluntarism " is not a theory of arbitrary rightness externally
imposed on moral agents. It is a recognition of the teleological
tendency of man's nature. From this point of view, Taylor's
ethics comes rather close to the idea of right appetite in
Aquinas's teaching. Although he emphasizes the rule-character
of ethics, Taylor appears to minimize the role of practical reasoning.45
Such a position is alien to the irrationalistic voluntarism of
some recent versions of existential ethics on the European
continent and different from the equally irrational emotivism
of early versions of analytic ethics in England. In a book that
deserves to be better known, Georges Kalinowski gives a very
good historical survey of the opponents and defenders of reason
in ethics. 46 Among those in Kalinowski's book who see ethical
judgments as intellectually demonstrable truths are Aristotle,
Thomas Aquinas, and Thomas Reid. 47 In fact, Kalinowski
gives a high place to Reid, when he says:
his precisions concerning the character of primary moral knowledge
(evident moral propositions) and secondary moral knowledge (de48 Richard
Taylor, Good and Evil. A New Direction (New York: Macmillan,
1970), p. 15: "In the pages that follow, then, I am going to develop a conception of moral voluntarism."

44 Ibid., p. H!O.
•• Ibid., p. 132.
•• Le Probleme de la verite en morale et en droit (Lyons: Emmanuel Vitte, 1967) .
H Ibid., pp. 129-149.

RIGHT REASON IN CONTEMPORARY

ETHICS

123

ductive moral propositions) very successfully complete the rather
inadequate (because vague in their generality) explanations of
Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. 48

The last part of Kalinowski's book offers his own exposition
of how ethical propositions may be demonstrated by practical
reasoning. His discussion of the details of reasoning to normative conclusions is quite as impressive as anything to be found
in British studies of ethical discourse. But his interest falls in
the area of the logic and rhetoric of such procedure. Kalinowski
makes little use of the moral psychology and ontology of
Aquinas (of which he is fully aware, however) but rests his
arguments on a realistic theory of values which owes a great
deal to German axiology from Brentano to Nicolai Hartmann.
The sequence of his thinking (from initial evaluations, through
norms, to imperatives) is also not unlike Hare's analysis of
moral reasoning. In his emphasis on the personal and subjective aspects of right reasoning, Kalinowski is an important
contemporary exponent of right reason ethics.
One of the ablest American defenders of the life of reason
is Henry B. Veatch. 49 In his most recent work, Veatch criticizes
the course of both phenomenological and analytic ethics and
argues that something like Aristotle's metaphysics is needed
as a ground for ethical discourse. 50 Very modestly, he admits
that he has not developed this ontology as yet. However,
Veatch points to the Thomistic theory of potency and act as a
possible framework for a theory of self-perfection in man.
Henry Veatch is particularly successful in his criticism of
Hume's version of the is-ought problem. 51 Basically, Hume
" has no eye for values " and is thus quite unaware of the
ethical implications of factual situations. Veatch argues conIbid., pp. 146-147.
Rational Man. A Modern Interpretation of Aristotelian Ethics (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1964) .
5 ° For an Ontology
of Morals. A Critique of Contemporary Ethical Theory
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1971).
51 Ibid., pp. 131-135. Mortimer
Adler (op. cit., pp. 85 and 95-97) is also very
critical of Hume but holds that G. E. Moore's version of the naturalistic fallacy
points to an error in logical procedure.
48
49

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VERNON J. BOURKE

vincingly that " certain descriptions necessarily involve prescriptions." 52 All of which indicates that ethics cannot be
isolated from a comprehensive view of reality and a realistic
epistemology.
As a general conclusion to this investigation of right reason
and twentieth-century ethics, two things stand out. First of
all, present-day Thomists are not making the contributions to
this field that one might expect. True, some of the thinkers
mentioned above are well-informed students of the thought of
Aquinas: but one wonders why most of them are not found in
the ranks of the Roman Catholics. In the second place, many
Catholic thinkers who regard themselves as Thomists, in some
new and special sense, are actually advocating ethical procedures incompatible with the metaphysics of Thomism. It is
impossible to ground a right reason ethics on idealistic ontology
or on a sense-data epistemology.
VERNON J. BoURKE

St. Louis University
St. Louis, Missouri

"1

lbid., p. 120.

METAPHYSICAL FINALISM OR CHRISTIAN
ESCHATOLOGY?

'lJ

HE TITLE of this essay expresses a disjunction in the
orm of a question. But is that disjunction a complete
ne? Does it exclude any third possibility?
A number of respected scholars seem to think so. What is
more, they present Thomas Aquinas as one who opted for metaphysical finalism. His choice is described as having unduly
restricted the eschatological dimension in his own theologizing
and that of his followers.
The fact is, however, that such an assessment is by no means
self-evident or apodictically demonstrated. A contrary position is possible logically and better grounded historically. Some
questions which seem at first sight to allow an answer only in
the form of " either ... or," permit a reply of "both ... and."
The one posed in the title of this essay is a good example. In
addition, careful textual analysis indicates that Thomas
Aquinas was not impaled on either horn of the dilemma under
consideration. He strove repeatedly to show that the infraterrestrial finalism of Aristotle and a Christian eschatology
minimizing grace in the present are not the only options. There
is another, which includes the truths each of these world-views
brings into focus. His conviction and the efforts it inspired
led him to develop a theory of participated eternity in the
beatific vision.
This essay has a number of purposes. It will seek to elaborate on the two positions that have already been alluded to.
In so doing it will argue in favor of the second. It will likewise
try to show that the view of Thomas Aquinas regarding the
relation of the present to the future deserves a fair hearing
from practitioners of Christian eschatology in 1974.

125

126

CARL J. PETER

Part I
Thomas and Theologians of Hope
Is it really true? Are serious scholars of the opinion that the
disjunction expressed in the title of this essay is an iron-clad
one, working to the theological discredit of Aquinas? The facts
can speak for themselves.
In what is his major work to date, Jiirgen Moltmann observes that Martin Luther once had a flash of inspiration regarding the pursuit of knowledge from the standpoint of eschatological hope. 1 Saint Paul had written of the earnest expectation of the creature (Romans 8: 19) . The Reformer said that
phrase provided an important perspective, and he proceeded
to describe it by way of contrast. Philosophers and metaphysicians focus attention on the present qualities and quiddities of things; the Apostle on the other hand invites us to fix
our gaze on their future. But to accept that invitation, Moltmann notes, one must have recourse to a kind of understanding
and discourse that rely very much on hope and that may be
called "expectation thinking." 2 For creative action springing
from faith is impossible without new thinking and planning
that spring from hope. 3 The sort of thought he is referring to
is conditioned and inspired by the New Testament; he will later
describe it as radically different from the mind-set of Thomas
Aquinas. But he makes this point in his own way.
His reference to Luther does not indicate that he regards
the Reformer as offering a ready-made solution to the central
problem of eschatology today, namely, the relation of the present to the future. Furthermore, he says that Protestant philosophy did not grasp the importance of the distinction Luther
had made in this scholion on Romans. 4 But the fact remains.
1 Ji.irgen Moltmann,
Theology of Hope (New York: Harper and Row, 1967),
p. 35. In Luther's works the text referred to can be found in Romerbrief, Weimar,
t. 56, p. 371.
2 Moltmann,
ibid.

• Ibid.
•Ibid.

FINALISM OR CHRISTIAN ESCHATOLOGY?

127

Moltmann does think Luther suggested a contrast between
eschatological discourse and another type, one more concerned
with essence, operation, actio, passio, and movement.
Luther's remarks in the 16th century are a precedent Moltmann invokes to clarify his own position in the 20th. Luther
thought Paul was espousing a future-oriented mode of thought.
Moltmann thinks that same approach is badly needed in contemporary theology. To put it in somewhat different terms,
he says Luther reflected on Paul's words and caught a glimpse
of a world-view determined by promise. But what does that
mean?
He contends that the dimension of a future which actively
impinges on man's present is overlooked in current descriptions of Revelation. That dimension has biblical roots which are
visible in the Old Testament and deserve more attention than
they often receive from theologians. Without that same dimension, Christian Faith and Hope become more reflective
than creative. In a world-view influenced primarily by promise,
the predominant form of thought is not one based on the pattern of present experiences, their repeated occurrence, their
ever clearer understanding, and adequate expression. All these
are rather characteristics of thought dominated by logos. But
what he means positively by the thought-form determined by
promise is not easily determined. To find an answer to this
question at least in his major work one must gather clues
carefully.
These he does provide. He notes, for example, that a worldview based on promise is inseparably connected with the categories of expectancy-remembrance and assurance-imperilment. 5
Its key terms are thus more creative of the future than photographically reflective of the past or expressive of the present. 6
As a result truth is more than the equation of the human mind
and present reality; it must reckon with the not-yet. 7 The restlessness characteristic of man does not arise because the soul,
• Ibid., p. 58.
• Ibid., pp. 18, UO.
• Ibid., p. 85.

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CARL J. PETER

as for Aristotle, is always in potency to becoming more than
it actually is. The reason is to be found elsewhere; namely, in
the fact that the future issues a summons surpassing the powers
of mankind at any given moment. Clarity in thought and expression has its importance but is not the antecedent condition
required for responsible human action. On the contrary, it is
often sought as the long-term result of an on-going effort sustained by hope. Such clarity in other words is to be expected
at the end and not the outset of many intellectual undertakmgs.
In philosophical terms, promise as distinct from logos provides a horizon toward which we move and which in turn moves
along with us, one which invites us to press further ahead. 8 This
sort of understanding and discourse originally gave Christians
the ability to influence world events significantly. It can do
the same thing once again today if restored to its rightful
place so as to bring believing hope into secular planning.
No effort will be made to judge whether Moltmann is correct
in arguing that promise is the fundamental category for understanding the biblical message. Others have already done that. 9
What is more important here is to note that he exaggerates the
difference between discourse based on logos and that based on
promise. What he says positively of the contribution Christian
future-talk can make to theology and secular thought is a point
well made. But he unduly separates promise from logos in the
process. Because he does not advert to the fact that they frequently blend into each other, he makes them sound incompatible. In fact they are often both found in varying degrees
in mature thought. But clearly the contrast between the two
is not something peripheral to his major contention. This can
be easily shown.
He calls attention to the finality or goal-seeking one can
8 Ibid., pp. 106, 125.
• John Macquarrie, for example, notes that we need presence as well as promise
and then suggests that eternal life may turn out to be the most useful concept
for integrating the various aspects of eschatology. Cf. "Eschatology and Time"
in The Future of Hope (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), p. 123.

FINALISM OR CHRISTIAN ESCHATOLOGY?

129

observe in man and the cosmos. That is what one should understand by finalism in the title of this essay. There is a type of
thought and planning which rest on the assumption that the
goal-seeking experienced in the past and present provides the
only realistic glimpse man has of the shape of the future. But
that type of thought is logos-dominated and somewhat at odds
with the New-Testament view of things. 10 Often man understands on the basis of predictable stimulus-response patterns in
reality. Christian Faith and Hope, on the other hand, involve
a somewhat different perspective. They focus attention on
what can happen in the future because against all odds God
can make happen what man does not expect. In this view of
history the decisive factor is located not in the past or present
but in the future. 11
The foregoing shows how Moltmann contrasts Christian
eschatology with metaphysical finalism. And the latter is what
he finds in the works of Thomas Aquinas.
This he says explicitly in his essay " Theology as Eschatology " which was originally read at the Duke Symposium of
1968 and now appears in the volume entitled The Future of
Hope. There Moltmann describes the principal difference between the Aristotelian-Thomist idea of God and that of the
New Testament. The former uses finis ultimus to describe God
whereas the latter presents the Deity as the One who is to come
(Deus adventurus). The God who is the final end draws things
to himself while he who is to come transforms things beyond
what is anticipated or expected. Here, Moltmann notes explicitly, is the difference between the theology of hope of
Thomas and an eschatological theology which wishes to develop the apocalyptic thought-forms from the New Testament.12 He goes on to say that Karl Rahner in dialogue with
Marxism and Teilhard de Chardin in an exchange with science
make God the extrapolation or point of convergence of world
Moltrnann, ibid., pp. 17, 173-4, 180.
Ibid., p. 180.
12 Moltrnann,
"Theology as Eschatology"
Herder and Herder, 1970), p. 13.
10

11

in The Future of Hope (New York:

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CARL J. PETER

movements. The God who is to come is rather anticipated in
the contradictory movement of the world as the one who will
negate the negative. 13
The fact is undeniable that Moltmann sees Aquinas opposed
to eschatological thought based on the New Testament and
basically adhering to a type of finalism which minimizes the
future and its God, who is coming to surprise man in many
ways. Is God the goal toward which the energies and dynamism
of the present world are moving and which they already somehow anticipate? Moltmann clearly says NO but thinks Thomas
says YES. Does such finalism eliminate eschatology in all but
words and diminish the difference between the now and not
yet? Moltmann says Yes and sees the disjunction with which
this essay begins as one that catches Thomas Aquinas without
an answer and on the wrong side, namely, that of finalism over
against eschatology.
In this country Carl Braaten in a very helpful book has carried the discussion somewhat further. Christian eschatology
is not, the reader is told, metaphysical finalism if the Christian
doctrine of the future is to be developed in line with the NewTestament thought-forms. 14 Edward Schillebeeckx is said to
have "stumbled" onto the same path as Rahner by making
eschatology arise out of extrapolation from the present. Then
the judgment Moltmann made earlier regarding Thomas
Aquinas is repeated verbatim/ 5
Braaten does not leave the matter rest here. He goes on to
point out a very serious difficulty. Theology, he thinks, must
still decide whether Aristotle or Jesus is to teach man how God
relates to the world. In this regard it is a well-known fact that
one who exalts the future excessively over the present may
wind up leaving the latter God-forsaken. Moltmann feels the
pinch this time. Taken literally, some of his judgments regarding past and present would demolish the proleptic eschatology
13

Ibid.

" Carl Braaten, Christ and Counter-Christ (Philadelphia:
p. 11.
10 Ibid., p. !U.

Fortress Press, 1972),

FINALISM OR CHRISTIAN ESCHATOLOGY?

181

on which the Christian message is founded. Braaten recognizes this difficulty very explicitly. 16
Finalism is too much; it seems to make the end (when it
comes) an afterthought or anticlimax. But if, on the other
hand, that end is not present at all by way of anticipation, then
what is it that Christians believe happened under Pontius
Pilate on Calvary and later on the third day? To be sure
Thomas Aquinas does not seem to offer much hope of providing an exit from the dilemma as far as Braaten is concerned.
Either a Christian holds to past and present events as sufficiently touched by the future to reflect it somehow or he does
not. If one does, then God's future collapses into the present.
If one does not, then literally Moltmann is right and the world
is at present God-forsaken. 17 Langdon Gilkey, however, has
pointed out how utterly unattractive that position is for the
Christian who takes seriously what has happened to the world
and has already been realized by Jesus Christ. 18
Put quite simply, with all his emphasis on natures and finalities, Thomas Aquinas is being presented today as unable to
express how different the heavens and earth we await will be
from those we now experience after Jesus Christ. This essay is
written to contest that charge. It will hopefully advance the
eschatological dialogue that has been initiated so creditably
and suggestively by Jiirgen Moltmann.
At this point it may help to note that, although apparently
unknown to Moltmann, the same text which he cited from
Luther caught the attention of Yves Congar as well. The latter
pointed out that the confidence in reason manifested by Aquinas
might well endanger the unique, original, and transcendent
character of Christian realities. 19 In context Aquinas is conIbid., p. 18.
Ibid., pp. 9, 10, 18.
18 Langdon Gilkey, " The Universal and Immediate
Presence of God " in The
Future of Hope (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970), p. 95.
19 Yves M.-J. Congar, A History of Theology (Garden City:
Doubleday, 1968),
pp. 111!-3. This is a much revised and expanded form of the article "Theologie"
that first appeared in Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique XV/1, 1946. Already
in the earlier edition Cougar referred explicitly to Luther as fearful of the dangers
16

17

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CARL J. PETER

trasted on this score not with the eschatologists of the 20th
century but with the Augustinians of the 12th and 13th.
Congar expressed the view that Saint Thomas surmounted the
danger in question by giving the datum of Faith the commanding position in his systematic thought. 20 But can that basic
assessment be further specified and applied to the matter under
consideration in this essay? The answer is affirmative. Thomas
reckoned with the promises God has made and has yet to fulfill. He did so, however, not merely by giving the benefit of
any doubt to the truths of Faith but in a systematic way and
theologically. He made use of rational constructs current in
his day, modified them to a certain extent (to fit the measures
of the Faith-data), and used them to make sense out of God's
Word in human language. In the process he introduced the
category of participation. What has not been noted is that in
his doctrine of participated eternity he took a consistent position throughout his life regarding the relation of the present
to the future under God. The concepts are different, but in
many ways his concerns and those of contemporary eschatologists are so similar that the failure to note this heretofore may
indicate that too few people take him seriously any more. This
is unfortunate because he has much to offer that might be of
help in resolving the difficulty of finalism versus eschatology.
Could participation of the kind he proposed be a third possibility?
Part II
Participated Eternity and Thomistic Eschatology
In considering the potential Thomas's thought has for contemporary eschatology it is necessary to have a point of departure. In this instance it will be a pair of studies dealing with
inherent in Aristotelian thought because of the importance attributed to the natural
as an autonomous world of being and discourse; cf. " Theologie," 415. But it was
only in 1968 (after Moltmann), that Cougar introduced Luther's words from the
Romerbrief to corroborate the point.
2 ° Cougar, ibid., p. ll3.

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133

the time-eternity relationship in his writings. 21 Both onginated in doctoral dissertations dealing with complementary
aspects of the matter. The year was 1964, a time that was
somewhat bleak in terms of prospects for Roman Catholic
theologians choosing topics related to the thought of Aquinas.
Biblical studies were having a long-deserved revival with the
encouragement of the Magisterium. Indeed, the Second Vatican Council was at the time preparing to say that study of the
Bible should be the soul of theology. 22 Scriptural categories
were supposed to have a freshness and concreteness by virtue
of the images that accompanied them and made them vividly
attractive. Perhaps it says something of Roman Catholic
scholars that they could be undergoing such a conversion intellectually so close to the time when the Death-of-God theology
would germinate as a reaction to biblicism in American Protestant circles. But the fact is incontrovertible; that is the way
things were at the time.
Oscar Cullmann was still exerting considerable influence
with his arguments for the category of resurrection rather than
immortality to describe what the Christian hopes for. 28 He
had also proposed a view of Christ in terms of time as far and
away superior to one that diminished salvation-history by introducing eternity as a central notion. 24 On the Roman Catholic scene Leslie Dewart would shortly point to the phenomenon
of hellenization, which he would view as negatively as Cullmann
had. The going asumption of the day (and one that influenced
publishers as any fledgling beginning to write knew only too
21 Carl J. Peter,
Participated Eternity in the Vision of Gocl-a Study of the
Opinion of Thomas Aquinas and His Commentators on the Duration of the Acts
of Glory (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1964), Analecta Gregoriana Vol. 141;
The Doctrine of Thomas Aquinas regarding Eviternity in the Rational Soul and
Separated Substances (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1964).
22 Dei Verbum IV, 24.
28 Oscar Cullmann, Immortality
of the Soul of Resurrection of the Dead (New
York: Macmillan, 1958).
•• Oscar Cullmann, Christ and Time (Philadelphia:
The Westminster Press,
1950). This work was originally published in 1946 but its contention regarding
time and eternity was repeated later. Cf. Oscar Cullmann, Die Christologie des
Neuen Testaments (Tubingen: Mohr, 1957).

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CARL J. PETER

well) , was that Catholic doctrine and theology had tragically
become too closely connected with classical forms of culture.
As a result, a massive salvage operation was deemed imperatively necessary. Thomas Aquinas and his thought were surely
regarded as unhelpful if not antithetical to the effort. To write
of his eschatology at that time meant running the inevitable
risk of being charged with marching to a piper of an age that
was long-since dead.
There were, of course, voices on the scene that made one
wonder. James Barr was far from sure that Cullmann and his
School were correct. Indeed in his view biblical thought was
complex enough so that to dismiss immortality and eternity
as alien to it was a serious over-simplification. 25 In other words,
despite the fashion of the hour there was reason to wonder
whether the Bible was all that antithetical to thought of God,
Christ, and man with a supertemporal dimension. In dialogue
Cullmann himself admitted that he had exaggerated. 26 But
what he said originally set the tone for much popular theologizing among English-speaking Catholics. Had Kasemann
been listened to, his ideas regarding the contradictions present
within the New Testament might have occasioned more
nuancing. 27 But unfortunately that was not to be. Even a
careful reading of Bultmann's Gifford lectures (given at Edinburgh and entitled History and Eschatology-the Presence of
Eternity) might have suggested that biblical categories may
not be enough to explain what the moment of decision is all
about for the Christian. But then, perhaps more than now,
•• James Barr, Biblical Worda for Time (London: SCM Press, 1962).
•• Cf. "Cullmann and His Roman Catholic Critics" in Scottish Journal of
Theology 15 (1962), p. 41. This article is a translation of a reply by Oscar
Cullmann, which originally appeared in Choisir 9/10 (1960).
•• Ernst Kasemann, " The Canon of the New Testament and the Unity of the
Church" in Easays on New Teatament Themea (London: SCM Press, 1964).
The contradictions Kasemann sees in the New Testament seem often enough to
owe their existence to his understandable desire to deal a death blow to the
harmonizing tendencies that can be so disastrous for biblical studies. Still greater
familiarity with his position might have been a helpful corrective for attitudes
speaking in an oversimplified fashion of the biblical view of time; the exclusively
temporal perspective of the New Testament, etc.

FINALISM OR CHRISTIAN ESCHATOLOGY?

185

curiosity regarding things theological was piqued to an intense
pitch among Catholics in the United States. And careful analysis o£ texts was not the forte o£ many who were writing the
books that sold. Between the now and not-yet Bultmann recognized an immense difference. Nevertheless he was convinced
that the cross o£ Jesus had already affected each rww with
something o£ the not-yet that Christians hope for. Obviously,
concern with time and eternity was not wholly alien to the
theology o£ the scholar who fostered demythologizing with the
hope o£ giving Faith a £air chance by removing needless obstacles to hearing God's Word. But the total mood o£ the hour
gave the thought o£ Thomas Aquinas little chance o£ winning
a fair hearing.
Still the encouragement o£ scholars like Juan Alfaro and
Bernard J. F. Lonergan strengthened in the author o£ this essay
a resolve to make a try with Aquinas. It might help to determine what categories the latter used to describe the difference
between the time in which man now lives and the future all
can hope for because o£ Jesus Christ. That resolve led to the
two dissertations mentioned previously and their subsequent
publication. The first studied the implications o£ participated
eternity in the beatific vision while the second analyzed eviternity in the rational soul and separated substances. The first
is more concerned with Thomas's eschatology. It came directly
to grips with the pressing question o£ how man is related in
his temporal existence to the future mansions he hopes to dwell
in because o£ Jesus Christ.
The conclusions were submitted to the scholarly community
in due time and in proper form. But it may help to summarize
briefly one or two that are particularly appropriate because o£
the interpretation currently given by Moltmann to the thought
o£ Aquinas.
First, Thomas saw a radical difference between the time in
which man lives presently and the future open to him in the
beatific vision o£ God in the Kingdom. Normally the contexts
in which he treated the matter were those where he was considering God's eternity; man's final end; hope; knowledge o£

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CARL J. PETER

contingent futures; and the Last Things. Much of what he
wrote assumes that the soul of man exists in a state of separation from matter between the time of death and the general
resurrection. 28 He also accepted the existence of angels and
the preexistence of Christ. 29 He was likewise convinced that
whatever Aristotle held, the world did not always exist. 30 In
all of these contexts he was constrained to face the question of
a duration different from that of man here and now. 31 He did
28 Karl Rahner has proposed a view that speaks not of separation
but of a new,
positive relation to matter. Cf. On the Theology of Death (New York: Herder
and Herder, 1961). Heinrich Ott has noted that the interim-situation
of the
dead (before the parousia) is not simply a subject for discussion between Roman
Catholics and Protestants but as well a matter that may direct attention to the
relation of past, present, and future. Cf. "Philosophical Theology as Confrontation" in The Future of Philosophical Theology (Philadelphia:
The Westminster
Press, 1971), pp. 164-5. Neither will endorse the view that rejects as mythology
any attempt to describe the state of man after death.
29 Piet Schoonenberg has argued that the Decree Firmiter of the Fourth Lateran
Council (D. S. 800) presupposes but does not directly affirm the existence of
created spirits. Cf. God's World in the Making (Pittsburgh:
Duquesne University
1964), p. 9. Thomas Aquinas made no such distinction. As to the preexistence of Christ's humanity in God's eternity, confer the differing views of
Hans Kling, Rechtfertigung (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1957), pp.
and
A. Hulsbosch, God in Creation and Evolution (New York: Sheed and Ward,
1965), pp. 69-87. But preexistence affects also the Trinity. In 1966 Piet Schoonenberg posited a real change in God by virtue of His real relations to us; this he
recalls and reiterates in The Christ (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), pp.
83, 85. Of a Trinity in God from eternity and by necessity he thinks we as
creatures can make no statements either in the affirmative or in the negative (ibid.,
p. 86) . He seems to think that real, mutual relations between the Trinity in
its eternity and the world in time are impossible without positing some change in
God. The author of this essay has argued elsewhere to the contrary. Cf. "Divine
Necessity and Contingency:
a Note on R. W. Hepburn" in The Thomist 33
(1969), pp. 150-61.
80 Was Aristotle
personally convinced of the world's eternity?
Or were his
arguments for that position simply an effort to point out the inconclusive character
of the reasoning proposed by contemporaries who held the contrary? Thomas
Aquinas offered now one interpretation and now the other. Cf. In octo libros
16; In duodecim libros MetaPhysicorum Aristotelis expositio L. VIII, c. 1,
physicorum Aristotelis expositio L. XII, c. 6, l. 5; Summa Theol., I, q. 46, a. 1, c.;
de Pot., q. 3, a. 17, c.
81 In a favorable
review of Participated Eternity in the Vision of God, James
S. Preus describes as misleading the use of duration in the work's sub-title. Cf.
Church History 36 (1967),
Perhaps that is a fair criticism given that

FINALISM OR CHRISTIAN ESCHATOLOGY?

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so without hesitation. Surely no one would deny that rational
conviction regarding personal survival after death helps to
explain his position. But basically he considered the timeeternity relation not simply from the point of view of first
principles philosophically but as well from that of sacra dootrina 82 and therefore theologically. 83 What he was about in this
instance was what theologians of the present day call systematics. He did not call it that, of course. But when Bultmann
uses Heideggerian categories and Moltmann has recourse to
Bloch's notion of Zukunft, they are doing what Thomas Aquinas
did earlier for Hope when he spoke of the Christian life by
comparing the ideas he inherited from Augustine, Boethius,
and Peter Lombard with those he learned from Aristotle. He
duration is often taken to mean the protracted character of existence. But for
Thomas the term stood as well for an intrinsic quality or character of a being,
namely, the degree of its resistooce to cessation. Cf. Summa Theol., I, q.10, a. 2, c.
•• Gerald Van Ackeren's study is still an indispensable tool for understanding
what Thomas was about in the Summa Tkeologiae, where so much of the treatment of participated eternity is to be found. Cf. Sacra Doctrina. The Subject
of the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas (Rome: Gregorian University
Press, 1952). See also Per Erik Persson, Sacra Doctrina (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1970) with the corresponding reviews in Interpretation 25 (1971), 519-20 and
Speculum 47 (1972), 789-91.
•• Protessor Fernand Van Steenberghen described Participated Eternity in the
Vision of God as theological through and through; cf. Revue Philoaophique de
Louvain 67 (1969), p. 491. Leo Sweeney, S. J. assessed it quite differently. He
did find in it " careful textual exegesis," but he faulted it on two counts. First,
it failed to explain what Thomas meant ontologically by participated eternity
in the Vision of God. And secondly, it was not the kind of theology that Maurice
de Ia Taille provided a model for in an article written in 1928. Cf. The Tkomiat
84 (1970), 159-61. As to the first criticism, one might have thought that the
first two chapters would have qualified as an ontological consideration, with their
detailed analysis of participated eternity as related to the constitution of creatures
by act and potency. As to Sweeney's second objection, the work was intended
to be an historical study of speculative theology concerned with eternal life. Does
such theology have a future? The author said in conclusion he thought it did
(ibid., pp. 270-1). He knew that such a suggestion would look like wishful thinking
if not preceded by " careful textual exegesis." Today he still maintains that the
textual interpretation and the reference to future application are theological efforts
in the strict sense of the term. But, to be sure, his approach was definitely and
consciously different from that of de la Tallie. He would regard such a model as
more than a trifle behind the times either for analyzing texts of Thomas Aquinas
or in its view of what theologizing should entail.

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CARL J, PETER

was engaged in a believer's quest to understand Faith in life
everlasting.
He accepted the 25th chapter of Saint Matthew's Gospel
with the judgment scene involving good and bad destined for
their respective eternal recompense. He also relied on Saint
Paul when the latter contrasted our knowing now through
Faith with the perfect knowledge that is yet to come. The First
1ohannine Letter also exerted an influence with its reference
to God's sons who do not grasp at present what they will be
when they see God (or Christ), as he is. Aquinas was aware
in all this that he was dealing with images to describe the future
that Christ had promised. That future was a mystery that was
intelligible but not fully comprehensible and surely not fully
controllable. As God was radically different from man in all
things, it followed that his eternity or permanence in being was
likewise. There was current an accepted definition of that
divine duration, one that Thomas inherited and sought to
clarify. 34 But he noted repeatedly that the definition in question described God in his duration negatively, that is, by removing the imperfection present in the duration of finite beings
and arising either from limitation 85 or from mutability. 36 What
man is now as temporal cannot be so purified conceptually as to
arrive at an adequate idea of divine perfection in any order,
and that of duration is no exception. But man as temporal is
still a being and indeed more than the being of a moment. In
both regards he bears a resemblance to his Maker. This expresses the biblical truth that he is God's image.87 Philosophically that resemblance is at the root of God-talk by way of
•• Boethius had provided the accepted definition: " lnterminabilis vitae tota
simul et perfecta possessio." Cf. Philosophiae Consolatio, L. V, prosa 6, 4; CCL
94, p. 101; P. L. 68, 858.
•• I Sent., d. 8, q. 2, a. 1 and 2.
•• Summa Theol., I, q. 10.
•• Thomas held that after Original Sin man's nature is essentially intact and
human. He could easily have agreed with Karl Barth when the latter wrote:
" Man has not fallen lower than the depth to which God humbled himself for
him in Jesus Christ. But God in Jesus Christ did not become a devil or nothingness." Cf. K. D. IV/1, pp. 480ff. (Tr. G. W. Bromiley).

FINALISM OR CHRISTIAN ESCHATOLOGY?

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analogy. Such discourse does not permit man to calculate from
his present status of perfection just who God is. Nevertheless it
warrants his saying that radical exclusion from being does not
do God justice either. But how was Thomas to describe that
partial similarity of God and man in the midst of their radical
diversity? Or even better why would he be concerned to describe it to begin with?
I submit that he had the same concern as Carl Braaten when
the latter wishes Altizer and Moltmann would not engage in
theological overkill. 38 Neither Aquinas nor Braaten is happy
with the assertion of so radical a difference between the future
and present that there is now no ground for hope as a result of
what happened to and was done by Jesus of Nazareth. Thomas
wished to employ categories which would help explain that one
could never obtain a complete picture of what the future would
be like simply from the images the New Testament gave of it,
because the latter were themselves taken from the present. But
he wanted as well to indicate that the future kingdom of God
is already operative somehow and that there are certain traces
of it in the life of men here and now because of Jesus, concretely
in the virtues and especially in Charity. 39 It is for this reason
that I say he was engaging in systematics rather than exegesis or
philosophy in this area of thought.
By that I mean this. He was reflecting on his Faith and its
implications. He was not concerned with grasping what worldviews that Faith had generated previously (although he sometimes alluded to these as in the case of Origen) . He rather
wished to say how as experience and expression from the past
that Faith was to be understood in the present-his present.
That meant effectively having recourse to the going kinds of
contemporary understanding in the arts, sciences, and philosophy. In other words, like other Christians of his day he be38 Carl Braaten, Christ and Counter-Christ (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1972),
p. 18.
•• Summa Theol., I, q. 12, a. 6 c.: "Unde intellectus plus participans de lumine
gloriae perfcctius Deum videbit. Plus autem participabit de lumine gloriae qui
plus habet de caritate."

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CARL J. PETER

lieved in life everlasting and wished to achieve for himself and
others an understanding of that Faith in more contemporary
terms-the task of the systematician. 40 Like other human
beings today, as then, he derived his understanding of crucial
issues of life and its meaning from a number of sources. As a
Christian he professed a Faith that had a positive influence on
the way he posed and answered questions about right and
wrong; truth and falsehood; reality and appearance; life, death;
and the hereafter both for the individual and for the community.
But he approached these same issues through other avenues as
well and the latter he traversed in the light of a reason possessed by other human beings without his religious conviction
and the perspective it generates. He sought to understand both
what he shared with all others because of humanity and what
he shared with some others because of his Christian Faith. This
effort set up a mutual relation between two sources of enlightenment, that is, between reason and Faith with each at once
clarifying and being clarified by the other. When it came to
relating the present to the future, Aquinas proceeded systematically. He attempted to understand his Christian Faith;
that involved situating in a larger horizon the world-view
arising from his religious convictions. But how precisely did he
do this?
Participated Eternity-a Theological Construct
The term participated eternity was one Thomas did not coin.
He found it already on the academic scene when he arrived.
But after him it was never the same again. He gave it a precise, technical sense in his eschatology when he used it to designate one aspect of the beatific vision. If any of his predecessors
gave it that same meaning before him, this is a fact yet to be
discovered. 41
•• At lea.st respected practitioners see that a.s the function of systematics. Cf.
John Macquarrie, Principles of Christian Theology (New York: Cha.s. Scribner's
Sons, 1966), p. 85; and Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York:
Herder and Herder, 197!1!), pp. 835-40.
u He is, as a result, not an arbitrary choice with which to begin an historical
study of subsequent theology dealing with life everlasting.

FINALISM OR CHRISTIAN ESCHATOLOGY?

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To be sure, Augustine provided some grounds for later development in the line Thomas actually followed. 42 But that
does not explain, much less anticipate in recognizable form,
the doctrine of the participated eternity that Thomas ascribes
to man in the vision of God. Effectively this was the personal
contribution of Aquinas, not a creatio ex nihilo, to be sure, but
definitely a new turn of thought. Before him the commonly
accepted terms for designating duration and its measure were
time, eviternity, and eternity. A fourth-participated eternity
-was not infrequently added and made to designate realities
that were properly measured by one of the first two of the
triad. It described something special about those realities, usually their long duration or the fact that they were thought to
be without end. It was also applied to man's final state of
beatitude. Thomas had his own insight precisely here.
He did not hesitate to apply the term duration analogously
to God, angels, and men. He believed (and the word is employed in the strict sense) that in the coming age man would
truly live but in a way that would be radically different both
for body and for soul. For those who serve their neighbor (and
Christ in him) , it would involve knowing and loving not as
man does now but as God does. It would also involve a share
on man's part in God's duration: a participation in eternity not
possible before death. So one of the ways in which Thomas
used the term participated eternity was in describing the difference between man's permanence in being now and in the
world to come. To the same term, which he knew from a theological tradition, he had recourse in describing other things
besides the beatific vision, usually those of notable duration.
But there was a special meaning he himself gave to participated
eternity. And in so doing he took a position which neither made
the future a mere projection of the present nor destroyed that
future's hold on the present in some form of dualism. To put it
somewhat differently, his doctrine of participated eternity in
•• His distinction between cognitio matutina and cognitio vespertina in the
angels was already classical at the time of Aquinas.

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CARL J. PETER

the beatific vision was an effort to avoid either member of the
disjunction this essay expresses in its title.
Because of the connotations of participated, the term may
sound Platonic. But the meaning Thomas attaches to it draws
much more from Aristotle and the latter's theorem of act and
potency. That will be evident after the following considerations.
Duration refers to a dimension of the act of esse or existence;
time, eviternity, and eternity stand for different types of existence (that of men, angels, and God) as well as their respective
measures. The closer a being comes to enjoying existence unlimited by any potency that is yet to be actuated, the more it
is assimilated to divine existence and duration. The creature
most approaching the divine perfection in this regard is the
angel, who differs from man by virtue of its incorruptibility.
Still, even a finite spirit has operations that are not all at
once, that involve succession in knowledge and choice. For
Thomas one thing is clear. If man and the angel become more
like God in the beatific vision, then somehow they must transcend their natural condition of change involved in succession.
That implies a great deal.
Man's very existence is successive because of the fact that,
despite his immortal soul, he is dependent on and affected by
the movements of stars and planets. Thus his permanence in
being or duration is measured by the cosmic time of Aristotle,
which numbers non-simultaneous moments in everything that
is subject to the influence of the heavenly bodies as they
traverse their paths around the earth. But man is likewise a
being characterized by succession in his vital operations of
assimilation, sensation, and rationality. For example, he attends now to one thing and now to another; he learns and
acquires habitual mastery of certain areas that are subject to
recall. All this involves an ever-continuing series of before's
and after's. In this sense Augustine had a broader notion of
time than Aristotle; convinced beyond doubt of the reality of
the spiritual world, he saw time as a distinguishing mark of
creaturehood. Even the angels have successive thoughts and

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choices like man; as a result both are in a time that for want
of a better term may be called psychological rather than cosmic.
It refers to and measures a duration marked by succession in
the order of spiritual operation. Only God is not temporal when
time is understood in this way.
For Thomas eternity is totally simultaneous life without
beginning or end. Only God is completely without any succession, which is the consequence of potency in all other beings.
The more unactuated potency is eliminated, the more a creature
approaches God in his duration or eternity. Because man is
mortal, his existence is connected with cosmic change and dependent on it. The angel's is not; as a result the latter shares
more in God's eternity. Man is discursive. The angel is not.
Hence in the order of operation man may learn, forget, and
learn again. The angel has no such stream of experience. Man
may make a choice and take it back to the extent that he can.
The angel cannot. Still, both know and love successively and
not all at once. Neither can overcome the law of its being,
which is succession, on its own efforts. Nor can they even have
an adequate, positive idea of what knowledge and love without
succession would be like. What is more, nothing they can do
on their own resources will let them achieve such perfection. If
it comes, it is through God's grace. Such a duration, in which
knowledge and love are not successive, is what Thomas means
by the beatific vision of God; its totally simultaneous character and endlessness are what he makes participated eternity
stand for. In other words, the term refers to the ultimate perfection of which angels and men are capable in the order of
knowledge and love; knowing and loving in a way akin to God's,
that is, without before and after endlessly. That duration is
radically different from what both enjoy outside God's gift of
himself as ultimate grace in his kingdom, when he unites himself with both directly and immediately as Truth and Good.
Such duration is worlds different from the now of man even
after Jesus Christ. All the now's in history added together and
purified of imperfection to the n'th degree do not give one the
share in eternity God offers to all who will love him. This is

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CARL J. PETER

hardly a metaphysical finalism that makes the future the icing
on a cake which is already basically complete. Thomas opted
for participated eternity precisely because he knew this was a
way to let the future which is God's remain different from and
more than the Providence at work now and in the past.
But he did not make that future vision so different from
man's life now that it has no reverberations in the present.
Even with Faith man cannot arrive at a precise calculation of
the future from the present; extrapolation does not give a positive view but denies the imperfection of the now to postulate
a new and better not-yet that God has in store for those who
love him. But it is not as if the present were God-forsaken. At
least not for Thomas. For him man's future share in God's
eternity is somehow begun now. And as for those who think
this makes Thomas a rationalist, he has a word in this context
that shows the inadequacy of any such assessment. The light
of glory is the technical term he uses to designate the change
that takes place in man after death in the beatific vision, that
is, when God communicates himself to the human mind directly
and no longer merely through images. Is that change in any
way connected with what happened earlier on this planet?
Thomas answers in the affirmative. 43 But what is it in the
present that is somehow continuous with the light of glory?
For Thomas it is Charity. Those who love now will see God;
those who love in time will share his eternity. Charity is thus
the connection between present and future for Thomas; through
it God's kingdom is prefigured in an otherwise bleak present.
Radical dualism is avoided without collapsing the future into
the present. The kingdom that is to come has a hold on the
present and offers a foretaste of itself in Charity. The latter
becomes the nexus between this life and that to come.
Talk of angels may not be everyone's cup of tea even in days
when concern for the occult is obvious on all sides. Neither can
'"Summa Tkeol., I, q.l!l, a. 6 c. The textual references verifying statements
about the position of Saint Thomas described in the final section of this essay
can be found in the first two chapters of Participated Etemity in the Viaion
of God.

FINALISM OR CHRISTIAN ESCHATOLOGY?

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we take geocentrism or Aristotelian physics seriously. But
Thomas Aquinas is done an injustice if he is described as having
no real Christian eschatology because of his commitment to
reason and its power to grasp finality present in men and the
cosmos. Revelation brings a perspective that is indispensable
in his view. With Bultmann, he knows man's limitations when
it comes to grasping the meaning of history as a whole. 44 But
he is also convinced that Revelation offers a set of images giving what God proposes as a glimpse of the future and its influence on man now. He used participated eternity to describe
one aspect of that future and its relation to the present. In
this way he sought to understand life everlasting by comparison
with experiences open to almost any human being. His procedure is instructive for the efforts of contemporary eschatologists. One cannot avoid dualism as a Christian without paying
attention to the doctrine of God's Providence at the present
moment and the presence of the Spirit, who inspires Charity
in the here-and-now with lasting effects reaching beyond the
grave. These Faith-convictions Thomas sought to express by
means of a philosophy, which in context meant relying on
Aristotle's doctrine of act and potency. The result was a comprehensive view of man and the future. Aquinas was a medieval
and loses his identity if he is presented as unconditioned by the
oversights and limitations of his day. But this was a medieval
who in his own way came very creditably to grips with a problem facing eschatologists of our day as well. For that fact alone
he deserves much more serious attention from our contemporaries than he is receiving.
CARL J. PETER

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D. C.

44 Rudolf Bultmann,
pp. 154-5.

History and Eschatology

(New York:

Harper, 196!!),

DOES THE WORLD MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO GOD?

I

F GOD IS INDEED the Lord of History so that the human
enterprise is somehow his project, and if that project in
its genuine historicity and precariousness is contingent and
can fail, then what the world is and becomes must of necessity
affect God. If such be the case, men are no marionettes merely
acting out in a kind of " shadow-screen " world what has been
predetermined from the very beginning. On the contrary, in.
some sense our choices then seemingly determine God, making
him to be the kind of God he now is and will be. But then is
God any longer God? Or have we not simply (as Engels sees
Hegel doing) :
onto the throne self-consciousnessprodded
hoping to see the old time God ungodded? 1
Seemingly, the above envisagement means the concept of
God must embrace contingency and temporality, qualities heretofore understood as precisely non-divine, as constitutive of
the creature in its very creatureliness. Why, then, is this not
to call into jeopardy the principle of the infinite qualitative
difference?
Theologians in the Catholic tradition have, until recent date,
remained largely immune from the urgency of the question.
Such is no longer the case; the problematic can no longer be
avoided due to the speculations of a large array of thinkers
with a common commitment to the categories of Process Philosophy-thinkers representing philosophically a Neo-Classical
Metaphysics and theologically a Post-Liberal Protestantism. 2
1 Words put into the mouth of Hegel in hell by Engels in his satirical poem
" The Triumph of Faith."
2 An
excellent, detailed and up-dated bibliography is available in Process
Philosophy and Christian Thought, edited by D. Brown, R. E. James, Jr., and

146

DOES THE WORLD MAKE A DIFFERENCE

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147

Nonetheless, the essays which have thus far appeared are clearly
programmatic in kind, tentative probings towards solutions
rather than definitive statements, leaving the question an open
one and warranting still another sifting of the problem. 3

The Solution of Dipolarity
At the very forefront of all contemporary efforts to come to
grips with the problem stands Whitehead's principle of a dipolar God. A real duality is introduced within God who is
viewed as immutable in a primordial nature and ever-changing
in a consequent nature. In the permanency of the former God
seeks fluency, in the fluency of the latter he seeks permanence.
The primordial nature is conceived as a " mental " pole wherein
God " prebends " all values, thereby making such values availG. Reeves (Indianapolis and N. Y.: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971), pp. 475-489. After
Whitehead's Process and Reality (Macmillan, 1929; Free Press Edition, 1969)
which stands at the origin of the present discussion, special mention should be
made of the following: Charles Hartshorne, "The Di-Polar Conception of Deity,"
The Review of Metaphysics, XXI (1967); W. L. Reese and E. Freeman, eds.,
Process and Divinity, Philosophical Essays Presented to Charles Hartshorne
(La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1964); H. N. Wieman, The Wrestle of Religion with
Truth (N. Y.: Macmillan, 1927); Bernard E. Meland, ed., The Future of Empirical
Theology (U. of Chicago Press, 1969); John Cobb, Jr., A Christian Natural
Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1965); Schubert Ogden, The Reality of God
(N. Y.: Harper and Row, 1966); Norman W. Pittenger, God in Process (S. C. M.
Press, 1967); Ralph E. James, The Concrete God (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,
1967); Lewis S. Ford, "The Viability of Whitehead's God for Christian Theology,"
and Robert C. Neville, "The Impossibility of Whitehead's God for Christian
Theology," Proceedings: Amer. Catholic Phil. Ass. (Washington, 1970); Daniel D.
Williams, The Spirit and Forms of Love (N. Y.: Harper and Row, 1968); Alix
Parmentier, La Philosophie de Whitehead et le probleme de Dieu (Paris: Beauchesne, 1968).
3 In addition to the suggestiveness in much of the work of Teilhard de Chardin,
the following studies have recently appeared in English: Karl Rahner, "On the
Theology of the Incarnation," Theological Investigations, IV; Piet Schoonenberg,
Man and Sin (University of Notre Dame, 1965), esp. p. 50; Martin D'Arcy, "The
Immutability of God," and Walter Stokes, "Is God Really Related to the World,"
both in Proceedings: Amer. Catholic Phil. Ass., 1965; John Robertson, "Does God
Change," The Ecumenist (May-June, 1971); Anthony K;elly, "God: How Near
a Relation," The Thomist, 34 (1970); Joseph Donceel, "Second Thoughts on the
Nature of God," Thought (Autumn, 1971); and W. Norris Clarke, "A New
Look at the Immutability of God," God Knowable and Unknowable, ed. R. J.
Roth (Fordham University Press, 1978) .

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WILLIAM J. HILL

able to the " living occasions " which constitute this worldhere, God is eternal, infinite, but not actual. The consequent
nature is conceived as a "physical " pole wherein such values
are rendered actual, but dependent upon their prior actualization in the world-here, God is temporal (everlasting) , finite,
but fully actual. What Whitehead has done, quite simply, is
to extrapolate the potency-act principle characteristic of all
finite being and project it upon the concept of God, whereby
" God is not to be treated as an exception to all metaphysical
principles, invoked to save their collapse, (but rather as) their
chief exemplification." 4 Indeed, God is a " derivative " notion,
in the sense that he is demanded to explain genuine novelty in
the world. Every actual occasion in the world is a new mode
of feeling (physical prehension) for values provided by the past,
by its ancestors-but only God's prehension for it of values
unavailable out of the past allows for creative advance rather
than merely some new transformation of old values. But in
the process God is necessarily affected thereby, achieving a
higher mode of actualization of those same values in his consequent nature. God is thus that dimension to total reality
wherein all achieved values are preserved, values which in the
world are mere moments of a pure flux and so constantly
perishing. 5 All perfections are rescued from ever perishing and
are guaranteed endless advance in God's harmonious synthesizing of the actual perfections of his consequent nature
with his prehension of the Infinite Forms in the primordial
nature. Whitehead carries the process one step further; God
pours back into the world (in an act Whitehead calls superjective) the actual values now harmoniously synthesized within
himself. As an act of his consequent nature such values are not
ideal but physical, not mere "lures for feeling" (which the
primordial nature offers) but content for actual entities. This,
put into a religious context, is God's love for the world, his
• A. N. Whitehead: Process and Reality (New York, 199!9); Free Press edition,
New York, 1969, p. 405.
5 " The consequent nature of God is the fluent world become ' everlasting ' by
its objective immortality in God.'' Whitehead, loc. cit., p. 409.

DOES THE WORLD MAKE A DIFFERENCE

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saving of what he did not create. 6 Still, in the final analysis:
" Both (god and world) are in the grip of the ultimate metaphysical ground, the creative advance into novelty. Either of
them, God and the World, is the instrument of novelty for the
other." 7
Apart from obvious difficulties in reconciling Whitehead's
God both with the Creator God of the Judaeo-Christian tradition and with the Incarnate God of Salvation-History, three
brief but critical observations should be made by way of indicating how radical is the departure from Classical Theism in
this suggested alternative to it.
(I) First, the infinity ascribed to God in his primordial nature is in fact nothing more than pure possibility; it is not an
actual infinity at all. Distinguishing mental and physical poles,
as Whitehead does, means that the former is unbounded only
at the cost of being unreal; its ideal values disappear into a
Platonic world and can be realized only as physical and thereby
as limited. To declare that God is eternal (primordially) is then
no more than to negate of him the limits of temporality; it is
to take the concept of time, despoil it of all actuality, then
project the remainder upon God. But this is only a spurious
infinity; it is non-actual timelessness and not the purely actual
embracing in eminent simultaneity of past, present, and future.
In Whitehead's world every actual entity includes in itself
potency, not as delimiting its actuality but as a perfection-as a
referent beyond itself driving the world on to constant novelty.
In God this potency is simply inexhaustible; only in this negative sense is he infinite. Divine infinity, then, is not that of pure
form but like that of the formal cause of the composite outside
of its matter, i.e., the form as ideal and so lacking all actuality .8
6 Whitehead
notes that God " saves the world as it pass·es into the immediacy
of his own life. . . . He does not create the world, he saves it ... with tender
patience leading it by his vision of truth, beauty, and goodness. Loc. cit., p. 408.
7 Loc. cit., p. 411.
8 John Cobb in A Christian Natural Theology gives to Creativity in Whitehead's
system an infinity similar to that of Aristotle's prime matter (p. £06); the Eternal
Objects (in God's primordial nature) then possess the infinity proper to formal

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WILLIAM J. fiLL

(2) Second, God's love for the world, conceived either ideally
as offering lures to feeling or physically as superjecting content
for actual entities, is Eros and not Agape. The motive for the
love in the final analysis is the self-fulfillment of the Divine
Lover. God is at least morally obligated to bring the world
forward in that process whereby he of necessity interacts with
it. God acts upon the world precisely to derive values from it,
values which perdure only in himself. The initiatives of God
cannot, in this account, be seen as purely altruistic, benefiting
the beloved for the latter's own sake. 9 This is not the understanding of God's love that is grounded in viewing him as
Creative Act.
(3) Third, (mentioned here because it will serve to highlight a counterpoint to be made later in this study) is the difficulty of giving any genuine meaning to the notion of personhood, either divine or human. Allowing unity of self-identity
only to individual occasions which are constantly perishing,
Whitehead construes persons as special kinds of societies of
such occasions, no more than the continuity in a succession of
ordered moments of experience. In their actual existence God
and men are actual entities rather than persons. 10 The latter
notion obviously cannot express any sort of perduring substantial self-identity. But neither, on the other hand, does it allow
for any genuine existential self-constituting. While each actual
entity does subjectively determine itself (including, in Whitehead's panpsychism, infra-human ones), it does so only to
causes, but these are forms lacking all actuality, thus: " The eternal objects
express pure possibilities." (p. 209)
9 Thus Whitehead
is reluctant to call God "creator," for this as an appeal to
the free initiatives of God's will suggests to him arbitrariness; he " prefers to
speak of God and the temporal world as jointly qualifying or conditioning creativity." Cobb, op. cit., p. 204.
10 "It is clear that Whitehead himself thought of God as an actual entity rather
than as a living person." (Cobb, op. cit., p. 188, italics are his own) Cobb attempts
here to introduce personhood into God by presenting God's consequent nature
as " temporal," whereas Whitehead consistently prefers to speak of it as " everlasting." Even if this be a legitimate " correcting" of Whitehead, it still leaves
God as a person only in the non-substantive sense in which Whitehead will allow
that men are persons.

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become instantly a mere objective datum for succeeding occasions. Thus self-constitution dissolves in a flux of continual
surrender to succeeding occasions in which the original self
disappears; the person is lost in a sea of pure process. At bottom, this would appear to be a result of Whitehead's reduction
of love to mere relationality and of the freedom radicated in
love to mere contingency. Failing to distinguish between the
entitative and intentional orders of being, he sees love as little
more than a relation to mere data selected from past perished
occasions. True enough, Whitehead does distinguish between
physical and mental poles of an actual entity, but even the
latter allows only for feeling the attraction of ideals that are
totally non-actual; there is no " intending " of the actually real,
no commitment to an actual other on which basis the person
can constitute itself in perduring self-identity. The relationality
here is contingent (in the sense that it need not be as it in fact
is) but not genuinely free (in the sense of a perduring selfdetermination that is entirely from within) . Decision, in Whitehead's system, determines what data is to be handed on; it.
does not determine who the person is to be. An assumption, in
what is to follow in this study, will be that personhood is
achieved by a self-positing in acts of love arising out of freedom.

Alternate Explanation: A Presuppo8ition
I would like to theorize here that latent in the thought of
St. Thomas, but entirely undeveloped there, is the discernment
of a radical distinction within the concept and the reality of
being. The explicit basis for this is St. Thomas's clear distinction between the entitative and the intentional orders, which
mirrors the difference between viewing reality in cosmological
terms or in anthropocentric ones.11 In man who is part of the
11 J. B. Metz has made rich theological use of this insight in his book Christliche
Anthropozentrik (Munich: Kosel, 1962). Recently, he has developed it in an
article "The Theological World and the Metaphysical World" (Philosophy Today,
X, 4, 1966) stating that the thought of St. Thomas "goes far beyond a thematic
enrichment of Greek metaphysics. It changes the whole horizon of the understanding of being and self. . . . Thus we see in the Christian metaphysics of
the middle ages the beginning of the great change from Greek cosmocentrism to

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WILLIAM J. IDLL

cosmos and yet gifted with the capacity of transcending it,
these two orders coalesce, remaining inseparable but distinct;
in God the two merge into real identity, distinguishable only
conceptually. To entertain this is to suggest that there is some
faint premonition within the theological corpus of Aquinas of
what surely has been the major development in the history of
Western thought, the so-called Copernican Revolution, namely,
the turn to subjectivity inaugurated with Descartes' " Cogito,"
transformed into both epistemological and metaphysical theory
by Kant, and carried into Idealism by Fichte, Hegel, and more
contemporaneously, Hiisserl. This, of course, is discernible
only in the light of what has in fact happened in the realm of
speculative thought subsequent to St. Thomas, but if one is
willing to grant at least some unity in Western man's continuing endeavor to think being, then it becomes more plausible
that some clue as to what was to come appears in the thought
of a metaphysician as original as Aquinas. Perhaps the richest
and most explicit exploitation of the distinction at issue here is
to be found in Heidegger's "Ontological Difference," namely,
his distinguishing within Dasein of the existenziell and the
existenzial dimensions, or of the ontic and ontological orders. 12
anthropocentrism, from objectivity to subjectivity, or better from an objectively
on tic to a transcendental-ontological understanding of, the subject, from nature to
history, from abstract to concrete univ,ersality, from the static thing in space to
the person in time." (p. 259) Leslie Dewart in his book The Foundations of
Belief (N. Y.: Herder and Herder, 1969) and Richard Hinners in an article
"The Future of Belief: A Response," (Continuum, Spring, 1967) view this as
only an attempt to fit newer categories of thought into a Hellenic and Thomistic
mold. But it would seem closer to the truth and to offer richer promise to view
the newer thought structures as emerging out of older ones by a dialectic natural
to thought, in which what is new retains continuity with what came before. At
least on the point at issue here, newer conceptualities do not so much replace
older ones as complement them, and the former gain in intelligibility by retaining
the latter as their matrix. This outlook brings to mind Heidegger's " step backwards " into the tradition, to discover something that was not said precisely in
what was said. As one very general illustration, it would be anachronistic to
deny that St. Thomas's doctrine of being is ahistorical; at the same time, his
understanding of being (esse) as act does point the way to discovering its
historicity.
12 Being and Time
(trans!. by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, N. Y.: Harper
and Brothers, 1962), pp. 82-88.

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Here, man as finite transcendence is first of all a being among
beings, albeit a privileged one. Yet within that on tic structure,
and inseparable from it, is a distinct a priori structure whereby
human consciousness is open to the Being (Sein) structure
within the beings (das Seiendes), is itself the place (Da) of
that "lighting-up " process which is the coming to pass of the
event of Being (Sein), and so becomes the locus of meaning.
St. Thomas remotely parallels this in his understanding that
meaning is a phenomenon that occurs only within the domain
of intentionality, wherein man transcends the beingness that he
shares with infra-human realities. The theological uses of this
distinction were occasioned for him by the felt tensions between the intelligibility inherent within Aristotelian metaphysics and a quite distinct intelligibility experienced in the
faith-response to Christian revelation, which latter did not
entirely yield to the expressive power within the conceptual
categories of the former. There came a point at which their
"carrying power" was not quite adequate to the Mystery, to
what was in the end a personal encounter with a living TriPersonal God. More specifically, the distinction is at work
within the context of his theology of God, most fully developed in the Prima Pars o£ the Summa Theologiae. Noteworthy
here is the transition from reflecting upon the unity of God's
to reflection upon his threeness of personality.
nature (qq.
(qq.
In working out his doctrine of the Trinity he in
fact moves to a new level of reality where the notion of personhood is allowed to come center stage, a notion distinct from
essence-existence and bespeaking pure relationality (" esse
ad ") to the personally Other as its correlate. True enough,
when a Divine Person is conceived as a (Subsisting) Relation,
both aspects of the concept "relation" have to be preserved,
namely, esse in and esse ad, but the former designates identity
with the divine essence whereas the specific character of relation resides in the esse ad, the sheer reference to the other. On
this assumption a person existing in isolation, i.e., without other
persons, becomes, both within Divinity and humanity, meaningless.

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WILLIAM J. HILL

God as One Immutable Nature
Any comparison of Divine Nature (conceived with Aquinas
as the sheer unreceived Act of Being) to natures of the world
issues in the necessary conclusion that the relation of the former to the latter cannot be real in God and so is achieved only
as a consideration of the mind. 13 There are two distinct kinds
of relation possible here, and St. Thomas is clear that neither
may be affirmed as real on God's part. The ultimate reason
in both cases is simply that the ontological fundament of such
relationality is the potency-act structure indigenous to finite
reality and totally excluded from Divinity.
Transcendental Relation. The first instance of such relation
derives from a certain radical relativity on which basis the beingness of some entities is essentially incomplete and cannot be
fully grasped save in reference to something else towards which
they stand in necessary and dependent relationship, e.g., matter
to form, body to soul, faculty to formal object, etc. Here the
ground of the relationship is not any mutual interacting of
realities upon one another but is the very reality itself as essentially relative to some other. Since this ranges over all the categories, such relations are called " transcendental." 14 The inappropriateness of incorporating them within God is that this
would allow: that God is inconceivable apart from the world;
that he is ontically dependent upon something other than himself; that the creative act is not free; that the creature no
13 St. Thomas:
Summa Theologiae, I, q. 13, a. 7: " ... manifestum est quod
creaturae realiter referuntur ad ipsum Deum; sed in Deo non est aliqua realis
relatio eius ad creaturas, sed secundum rationem tantum, inquantum creaturae
referuntur ad ipsum."
14 Scholastic thinkers preferred to designate these as " relationes secundum dici "
(e. g., Summa Theol., I, q. 13, a. 7, ad I) to convey that such were absolute
entities which, however, could ooly be defined in terms of their reference or order
to something else, e. g., a faculty in order to its formal proper object; these were
relative, in other words, in terms of their definability. At least a logical distinction
prevails between designating such as " transcendental " and as " secundum dici."
Kevin O'Shea has called attention to Rahner's tendency to call " transcendental "
what are in fact "predicamental " relations (" Divinization: A Study in Theological Analogy," The Thomist [Jan., 1965], p. 11, note).

DOES THE WORLD MAKE A DIFFERENCE

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longer is fully contingent in existing. In short, it would be to
subordinate God to a " whole " prior to and more ultimate than
himself. This, seemingly, is exactly what the thought of Whitehead leads to-a subordination of God to Pure Creativity as a
larger process involving himself and lesser beings of the world.
Predicamental Relation. More exactly to the point here,
however, is an entirely distinct category of relations-those
grounded in God's causing, knowing, and loving of the world,
granting that such a world is not a necessary correlate to God
but something really summoned into existence by pure creative
act. 15 On such an assumption God could not fail to be related
to the world, nor could the relationship be reduced to an accidental self-relating by God; rather it must be essential to God
(as Creator), resulting in a presence to the creature of his very
substance and not merely of his activities. But the concepts of
causality, knowledge, and love here (in St. Thomas's Christian
adaptation of Aristotelian metaphysics) are entirely analogical,
expressing that such activity in God is Pure Actuality. It stands
transcendent to a finite universe wherein activity is a transition
from potency to actuality; God's acting is not mutation or
change. The ensuing relations then, grounded upon such activity, cannot be real, for "real" in this sense would bespeak
15 For the purposes of the present study it will suffice to give express consideration only to predicamental relations that might be founded upon divine causality.
Scholastic thought in fact elaborated an intricate treatment of this Aristotelian
predicament, founding such relations also upon the accidents of quantity and
quality and (somewhat more obscurely) upon the generic and specific similarity
or dissimilarity between one substance and another. Indigeneous to such understanding was an insistence upon three really distinct elements in every such
relation: the subject related, the term to which related, and the fundament of
the very relating. The latter might be found in both subject and term, thus
accounting for mutually real relations, or only in the subject, in which case the
relation would be real there and purely of reason in the correlate. Illustrative of
the latter is the knower-known relationship, which is a real perfection in the
knower and nothing at all in the intrinsic being of what is known. St. Thomas
consistently teaches that relations established between God and world are nonmutual, i.e., real only in the latter. Thus, it follows that God's knowing and
loving of the world, by contrast to such activity as finite, is, in its creativeness,
a perfecting of the creature so known and loved and nowise any enhancement
of God's own intrinsic reality.

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WILLIAM J. IDLL

some alteration intrinsic to God's being, some increment (or
diminution) of his own reality. If God is the Pure Act of being,
he is already all that can be. For him to become in his nature
something that he already is not is to render him patient of an
alien causality, thus homogeneous with the finite and the creaturely; no longer Creator and thus no longer God. Denying
the reality of the relations in question is then indispensable to
preserving God's genuine transcendence, to understanding him
as answering to what the Greek Fathers called ".A.gen£tos."
Relation, as here used, is one of Aristotle's categories of finite,
being, i.e., predicamental relation, and St. Thomas means no
more than that such a categorical concept must be denied of
God. Essentially taken, in its own specific character, relation
expresses only" reference to" some other; to be real, however,
that essence requires an act of existing, and this is its accidental
inherence in the entity so related. 16 The "esse ad," if abstracted
from the "esse in," bespeaks no imperfection and so can be said
of God (as happens in the Trinitarian Relations), but then
one is no longer speaking of predicamental relation, and the
realness of the relations has to be sought elsewhere.
None of this, however, implies that God does not really
cause, know, and love the world. It is only to say that causing
(as something of the ontic or entitative order) and knowing
and loving (as something of the intentional order) can be conceived of as in a pure state wherein the agent acquires no newness of being thereby. It affords some clarity, nonetheless, to
recognize that the case is somewhat different in the two orders.
Pure Causality. For God to become a cause is quite simply
16 This is the point of St. Thomas's insistence in Summa Theol., I, q. !!9, a. 4
that person in God signifies either relation " per modum substantiae " or equally
("similiter etiam ") essence "per modum hypostasis." He means to say, in short,
that relation is not a pure medium between two extremes but must inhere in one
term even though its formal character consists in a habitude or reference to the
other term. When predicated of God, the esse in of relation signifies not inherence
in the essence but identity with the latter. Thus, when real (namely, Trinitarian)
relations arc said of God, the concept involved is unique in its analogicity and
is not the transfer to God of either the concept of predicamental or transcendental
relation merely stripped of all connotations of finiteness.

DOES THE WORLD MAKE A DIFFERENCE

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157

for an effect to begin to be; the latter alone is the beneficiary
in the altruistic bestowal upon it of being. The realness of the
transaction lies entirely on the side of the effect, serving as the
basis for extrinsically denominating God as really causing. Thus
for God to really cause is for the effect to really come to be.
But this implies no transformation intrinsic to God; extrinsically, however, he can be designated differently than before,
namely, as Cause.
Knowing and Loving. Still, somehow or other God with a
creation and God without it are not entirely the same thing,
and it appears overly facile to dismiss this as exclusively on the
side of the creature. There remains the possibility of intrinsic
difference in God's knowing and loving; difference which need
not bespeak any transmutation of his being. No entitative
transition from not-knowing to knowing or from not-loving
to loving is implied. But God does freely determine himself to
know and love this actual world rather than any of the other
infinite number of possible worlds. Out of the multitude of
divine ideas known by a scientia simplicis intelligentiae as possible, one is in fact known by a scientia visionis as actual; 17
moreover, this latter involves the "specifying" of an act of
divine love which is not the case in God's knowledge of possibles. Ultimately, God is choosing, in unqualified freedom, to
so specify himself. But the point is that there occurs a determination within God as knowing and loving, on which basis he is
other, relatively speaking, than he would be had he determined
himself in some other way.
True enough, the divine knowing and loving constitute in
real identity the divine nature and as such do not found real
predicamental relations to the world. But considering the intentional order formally as such, wherein God constitutes or
posits himself as the kind of knower and lover he is fact is, an
17 St. Thomas adverts
to the distinction in ibid., I, q. 14, a. 9; the science of
simple intelligence being God's knowledge of his own essence as imitable in an
infinite number of ways, whereas the science of vision is his intuition of those
realities he has called into actual existence-past, present, and future.

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WILLIAM J. HILL

entirely different concept of relation comes into view-one
whose basis is not extrinsic to God but intrinsic.

God as Three Subsisting Inter-Relations
In the tract on the Trinity, thinking upon natures is surmounted by thinking upon persons, which latter within God are
related one to another really and mutually, without any causal
dependency whatsoever, so that in fact a Divine Person is formally that very relationality itself as subsisting. This involves
no illogical compromise of the Divine Simplicity whatsoever
because the relationships are nowise those of natures. There is
no abandonment of the basic understanding of being (as ens)
when Thomas moves into the discussion of the Trinity-there
remains in God but one nature which is itself one act of existing, really identical with each and with all three of the Persons
of the Trinity. But there is the conceptual rise to another realm
of reality, to that of pure "relation" as mere subsisting "esse
ad "-which is not then Aristotle's category of relation as either
an accident of a nature or a nature itself considered relationally.
Reality here, if compared to the Divine Essence, is that essence
in total identity, but of itself it is pure reference to its correlates and in its own formal concept simply does not bespeak
any comparison to essence at all. The Father in God is not a
Relation to his own Divinity but a Relation to the One who is
his Son and to the One who is their Spirit. This explains the
difficulty experienced by the Scholastics in allowing that the
Subsistent Relations in God and all that pertains to the Trinity
could be considered, in a strict and formal sense of the word, as
perfections of God.18
Within God it is the intentional order of knowing and loving
that grounds the real distinctions constituting the Trinity of
Persons. Such real distinction is entirely relational, and the
question under exploration here is whether or not such rela18 Among Thomists-Capreolus,
Cajetan, and Ferrariensis deny that the Subsistent Relations bespeak perfection logically distinct from that of the Divine
Essence; the opposite opinion is held by John of St. Thomas.

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159

tions might not be extended analogously to explain the rapport
of Divine Persons to human persons. The implication of this
will be the possibility of allowing God as Tri-Personal to be
really and intrinsically related to men as forming a community
of persons, without involving any immutation of his nature.
Knowing and loving in God are eruptions within Being
whereby it is Self-Manifestive and Self-Unitive. But the Trinity
cannot be adequately understood as the mere inner-relatedness
within a nature or of a nature. This is a way of thinking with
which Augustine struggles in his De Trinitate; it led PseudoDionysius in an inverse approach to overstress the distinctions
of the Persons, making them more than relational, in his De
Divinis Nominibus. 19 What enables St. Thomas to avoid such
an impasse is his key concept of" notional act." Unlike Durandus and Suarez who view the Trinitarian processions as emanations of nature, Thomas looks upon them as genuine
"actiones." 20 As such, they are acts: i) of Persons (as prin19 Augustine began his De Trinitate
about the year 407 and then around 41
discovered the use of "relation" by Gregory of Nazianzus in Trinitarian disputes
with Eunomius (also probably similar uses of "relation" by Didymus the Blind).
From this time onward Augustine employs two categories in speaking of God:
"essence " and " relation," this practice replacing his earlier one of speaking only
of "substance" in God. However, he does not work out a doctrine of notional
act (this is to be a later discovery of Aquinas), and so the Augustinian tendency
is to conceive the Divine Nature itself as essentially three-relational. Augustine
can thus explain distinction within God but is hard put to explain subsistent
distinctness, which makes it easier to understand why he tends to be ill at ease
in using the category of " persona " which had become traditional since the time
of Tertullian. Pseudo-Dionysius, on the other hand, begins with God as Father,
the " fons divinitatis," and seeks an explanation of the origin of the Son by the
former's generative activity, suggesting that the Nature is already subsistent in
the Father prior (logically) to his generative act. Paul Vanier in his Theologie
Trinitaire chez S. Thomas D'Aquin (Montreal: Institute D'Etudes Medievales,
1953) has noted the two distinct tendencies in Aquinas's own teaching: a Dionysian
influence in the De Potentia and an Augustinian one in the later Summa Theol.
Vanier, however, overstresses the difference; there is textual evidence (e. g., the
even earlier Commentary on the Sentences) to support the view that there is
less a development here in Thomas's thought than an effort to reconcile the
approaches of Eastern and Western Trinitarianism.
•• Durandus understllill.ds the Trinitarian processions, somewhat in the spirit of
Origen, as emanations of the Divine Nature, prior logically to Divine Knowing

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WILLIAM J. HILL

cipia quod) , ii) which are intentional in kind, i.e., tending beyond themselves, iii) and tending to what is other than the
intending principle, but iv) not other in essence, only in pure
relationality. As " notional," such activity both constitutes
and makes known the "principles" (originating and originated) which are revealed as pure relations (mere esse ad) ,
which while subsistent (esse in) are yet distinctly subsistent,
thus answering to the concept of " person." The underlying
explanation is that knowing and loving constitute personal
dynamisms that ontologically demand the personally " other."
This is clearer in the case of love bespeaking as it does a drive
towards union; less clear in the case of knowledge which terminates rather in intentional unity. But if one averts here to the
necessary order between them, to the character of knowledge
(as only one dimension to spirit) as grounding and making
possible love, then knowledge itself demands the really other,
and Loving (In Petri Lomb. Sententias [Venice, 1571], Lib. I, Dist. 6, Quest. !'l).
Suarez, with Molina, similarly argues against assignrng to the processions the
formality of operation in any proper sense and conceives of them in terms of
natural emanations on the plane of intellection, i. e., as something resulting from
operation much as properties issue from essences (Opem Omnia, Tome I, Vives ed.
[Paris, 1856], De Trinitate Personarum, Lib. I, Cap. 5, n. 7 and 8; Cap. 8, n. 5).
Scotus, by contrast, agrees with Augustine and Thomas in seeing the processions as
immanent actions bnt differs from them in affirming that, while such activity is
of the intellect and the will, it is not knowing and loving as such but distinct
activity that is formally productive in kind, namely, dicere and spirare (Opera
Omnia, Ordinatio, Vatican ed., C. Balic, 1950, Lib. I, Dist. 2, Pars 2, Quest. 4,
n. 326: " dicere non est aliquis actus intelligendi formaliter; est tamen aliquis
intellectus ") . For Aquinas, the processions do arise from a certain fecundity of
the Nature, but a Nature that is the Pure Act of Subsistent Knowing and Loving,
so that the fecundity is by way of genuine activity that requires persons as
originating principles. Intellective and volitional activity in God is itself formally
"productive" (cf. Summa Theol. I, q. 27, a. 3 and 5), not causally, however,the Persons are not to be understood as agents of efficient activity-but in the
sense of grounding the pure relation of each Person to the others; the Persons are
thus understood as principles of notional activity. Materially considered, these
actions are knowing and loving, common prerogatives of the Nature, but formally
considered as notional they are acts exclusive to one or another of the Three;
only in the Father, for example, does "to know" become "to speak the Word"
(cf. ibid., q. 41, a. 5: "Et ideo potentia generandi significat in recto naturam
divinam sed in obliquo relationem.")

DOES THE WORLD MAKE A DIFFERENCE

161

not as known (where the distinction could be merely logical)
but as utterance or as word. 21
At this point, it becomes possible to speak of the three Subsistent Relations in God as three distinct Inter-Subjectivities.
This, seemingly, offers richer possibilities than Rahner's view
of the Persons in God as " three distinct modes of divine existing." 22 Obviously, however, it cannot be understood ontically,
in terms of the Divine essence-existence but only ontologically
in terms of the self-determination radicated in Divine knowing
and loving. This transition in thought categories must be made
since one cannot mean here distinct psychological subjects, as
if the Trinity implied three distinct centers of consciousness in
God. 23 All that can be said here is that, for example, the Son
is Another One (not another entity) distinct from the Father
only in terms of pure relationality; he is everything the Father
is in exact identity except Fatherhood, and that is the Father's
pure relationality to his Son. The person then lies outside of the
area of definability (thus the use of proper names for men)
and is identifiable in terms of his determining relationship to
others and their determining relationship to him. Clearly, this
is to take personhood in its most formal sense and so to abstract
from the consideration that human personality also renders
the common nature to exist in an individualized way (due to
that nature's materiality) .
The category of subjectivity is appealed to here on the
grounds that selfhood is self-positing and self-creative precisely
in its free relating of self to others. Ultimately this rests upon
a certain creative spontaneity of freedom; differently, however,
in God and in men. In God, the categories of necessity and
freedom are only analogous to their incidence on the finite
21 Seemingly,
this rests ultimately in the mysterious metaphysics of knowledge
as assimilation.
22 The Trinity
(N. Y.: Herder and Herder, 1970), p. ll3. Cf. p. 101, Note:
"We consciously give up here the explicit use of the concept of person .... "
23 There can, of course, be only one real consciousness
in God. ". . . The three
subjects are aware of each other through one consciousness which is possessed in
a different way by the three of them" (B. Lonergan: De Dea Trina [Rome: 1964],
Vol. II, p. 193).

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WILLIAM J. ffiLL

world. In the former each Divine Person knows and loves the
Other Two by a knowing and loving that is infinite, completely
necessary, and identical for all of them. Thus the personal distinctness, while grounded on knowing and loving, must be
grasped formally in terms of a self-communication within those
immanent activities whereby, for example, the Father " makes
himself " to be Father by the giving of all that he is to the Son,
save his very Fatherhood, which is what he constitutes himself
to be personally in virtue of his generative act. The "eruptions"
within Being as Pure Act whereby it is self-manifestive (as
Logos) and self-unitive (as Pneuma) are then on this showing:
i) necessary, both in the sense that they could not not be, and
in the sense that the terms can only be respectively Logos and
Pneuma; and yet at the same time, ii) free, without thereby
being contingent, in the sense that nature in God, while never
under impulsion from without, is not mere spontaneity either
but is always conscious and willed activity. The Father wills
to generate the Son whom he could not not generate. Such
generation is within God a real self-relating, and as radicated
in divine love it is, in its unexactedness, self-gift. Each Divine
Person " posits " the Others as over and against himself and
thereby posits himself in his hypostatic identity. What all of
this bases itself upon is the understanding that the Christian
revelation of the value of freedom as radically constituting
personhood enables it to function as a category that surmounts
the Greek dichotomizing of reality into contingency and necessity.

The Relationality of Divine and Human Persons
If one grants that the creature is necessarily a similitude of
God, though only analogically so (at the same time denying
the inverse of this), then seemingly personhood in the finite
realm is also definable in relational terms. The human "persona " is then a distinct and unique relationality within the
commonness of human nature. Obviously, such a relation is
not itself subsistent but rather renders an individualized nature
to subsist. The actual exercise of personality is thus always
causal, i.e., operative only in and through the nature. But such

DOES THE WORLD MAKE A DIFFERENCE

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163

psychological activity is in fact the embodiment of a prior
metaphysical uniqueness reducible to pure relationality. To
exist humanly then is to be outside nothing and outside one's
causes as a particular kind of reality, (namely, nature), and at
the same time (if the nature be capable of intentionality and
thus of personhood) to be a relationally distinct instance of
that nature. This relational distinctness is first of all ontic but
over and above this is ontological. That is to say, it is radically
the uniqueness of an individual existent human nature, capable
of knowledge and love, but beyond this it is a uniqueness constituted by the actual exercise of consciousness consummating
itself in free decision on which basis the self makes itself to be
the inimitable self it is. On this ontological level, rooted in the
order of intentionality formally considered, the person is selfpositing and self-creative. He makes himself to be who (not
" what") he is relationally to others.
When God creates, then, he ultimately brings into existence
someone capable of dialogic relationship to himself, namely,
finite persons who, gifted with transcendence whereby they do
in fact surmount their involvement in the world as cosmos, are
called to inter-subjective, inter-personal relationships with the
Divine Persons. Such relationships however, radicated in freedom, are self-determining and self-defining. This allows one to
say that in this sense God is determined by the community of
human persons. That is, his willing to enter into relationships
with men, who as persons determine themselves to be the kind
of persons they are vis a vis God, is on his part a willingness to
be determined on this ontological level of freedom and personhood, without any corresponding mutation or determination
on the level of nature. The relationality here is real in a mutual
sense, though clearly the reality in question is of another order
than that founded upon Aristotle's category of relation as the
accidental alteration of a substance.
The import of all this is that creation is a prolongation to the
realm of matter, to the domain of space and time, of the innerTrinitarian processions. God's creative act is ultimately the
calling into being of finite "others" who are further called

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WILLIAM J. IDLL

(though only in a gratuitous consummation of nature by
grace) to inter-subjectivity with the Uncreated Persons of the
Godhead. He causes to exist a universe at whose apex stands
the human person summoned to appropriate his nature in such
fashion as to constitute himself in freedom as " who " he is,
both before other men and before God. All the activities of his
nature, including the free activities, originate with God as predetermining First Cause. But, at the core of this, is a self-positing that is not activity but the precondition to activity as free.
What is involved here is saying that the human person is not
of itself active but always through the mediacy of its nature;
the person is thus the " term " of its nature, but it is in its
pure relationality something else besides. This means that God
enters into real relationship with men as so self-constituting,
without any causal dependency on the part of the Divine N ature being thereby asserted. Still, these relationships do " determine " God (though only because he has so willed to be
determined by creating finite persons in the first place) in the
sense that such relationality is in part defined by the "other "
to which it relates.
This is most clear in the Incarnation where God is now not
merely the Lord of history (as was Yahweh in the Old Testament) but enters himself (not as nature but as Person) into
history. There he unveils himself and offers himself to men as
the kind of God he chooses to be towards us, i.e., as One who
waits upon man's free return gift of self. Thus God's free entrance into history means in a genuine sense his submission to
that history (without any abandonment of the prerogatives of
his uncreated nature). What man does then, his history, does
make a difference to God as dialogic partner with him. In
terms of God's total otherness to the world this demands allowing that his omnipotence and sovereign freedom are such that
he can will to subject himself to conditions of finiteness and
temporality without any sacrifice of his transcendence in the
domain of nature and causality.
WILLIAM J. HILL, O.P.
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D. C.

BOOK REVIEWS
The History of the Dominican Order. Vol. II: Intellectual and Cultural
Life to 1560. By WILLIAM A. HINNEBUSCH, O.P. New York: Alba
House, 1973. Pp. 474. $9.75.
This second volume of Fr. Hinnebusch's four volume history of the
Order of Preachers portrays with great clarity the intellectual and cultural
aspect of the Order during the first three centuries of its existence. It is an
intellectual history of the Order to 1500, the like of which has never before
been written. All the elements in it have been discussed by serious scholars
in Europe and in America, but never before have the elements been brought
together in this form either in English or in any other modern language.
The breadth of knowledge indicated in the extensive and exhaustive footnotes, the profundity of understanding indicated in the analysis of ideas,
the empathy of feeling indicated in its portrayal of saintly lives and the
Dominican ideal, all tend to make this the best book of its kind in any
language.
In the first three chapters the place of study in the ideal of St. Dominic
is brought out in Dominican constitutions, organization of priories and
studia, and their role in the life of the Church. Although careful attention
is given to various studia and their curriculum, there are still many obscure
points. Was the master of theology at Saint-Jacques the same as the
lector of the priory? Who attended the master's lectures? How did this
work out at Saint-Jacques where there were two masters? The role of
the lector in an ordinary priory is perfectly clear, but it is not so clear
what the situation was in a studium.
After discussing the contribution of Dominicans to biblical studies in
the Middle Ages (ch. 4), the achievements of Albert the Great and
Thomas Aquinas are brought out in the context of their age (ch. 5) .
While the description of Albert's contribution in particular stands out
as a gem in this volume (p.
, Thomas's contribution (pp.
and the development of Thomism (ch. 6) are discussed adequately,
though not profoundly.
The discussion of books and libraries in the Dominican Order (ch. 7)
might better have served as chapter four, and the pastoral writings of
Dominicans (ch. 8) might better have been amplified in the context of
non-Dominican pastoralia of the period. To me the most stirring chapter
in this volume deals with the Northern Dominican spiritual writers,
especially the German mystics (ch. 9), while the following chapter on

165

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BOOK REVIEWS

Italian Dominican writers of spirituality (ch. 10) sympathetically describes
many Dominicans whose names are not even known to English readers.
The final chapter is a splendid presentation of other Dominican writers:
historians, encyclopedists, scientists, and humanists.
The treatment throughout is sympathetic, and the scholarship is impeccable. This volume is worthy to be translated into other modem
languages, which should not be difficult as the style is quite straightforward,
if not wooden at times. One would like to have seen a conclusion to the
last chapter and a more vigorous conclusion to the whole volume. The
impression one gets is that Fr. Hinnebusch petered out at the end of his
Herculean labors.
There are numerous typographical errors in the volume; I counted more
than two dozen. Among the more serious and remediable errors are to
be noted that Costa ben Luca is the author of On the Difference of Spirit
and Soul and not of On Death and Life (p.
; on p. 80, line 6 should
be deleted as a repetition of line 9; p. 144, fn. 85-86, there is misplacing
of linotype; p.
line 18, either " and " is wrong or a line is missing;
makes no sense.
p. 146, line
One point, however, that should be noted is not a typographical error.
Fr. Hinnebusch maintains with Mandonnet that Thomas was cursor
biblicus from
(p. 188) , and at the same time admits that Friars
were normally dispensed from this duty because of equivalent studies in
their own priories. I think we must maintain today that Thomas was
never cursor biblicus at Paris, nor was Albert, for that matter (p. 124).
to lecture on the Sentences for
Thomas came to the Paris studium in
four years; Albert came to Paris in
likewise to lecture on the Sentences.
That a work of this magnitude should have so few errors of history
or typography is a tribute to the profound scholarship and care of the
author. No source is too ancient or too modem, too scholarly or too popular,
too speculative or too mundane to be neglected by the author. While the task
of filling a conspicuous lacuna in the English language is most pressing,
it is, no doubt, a work of love for the Dominican Order that urges Fr.
Hinnebusch on to the completion of his task . We eagerly look forward
to volume three and its discussion of the Reformation period.
JAMEs A. WEISHEIPL,

Corpus Christi College
Oxford, England

O.P.

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167

Aquinas' Proofs For God's Existence. St. Thomas Aquinas on: "The
Per Accidens necessarily implies the Per se ". By DENNIS BoNNETTE.
The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972, Pp. 203. Guilders 34.50.
Toward the end of his Preface to Metaphysics, after reflecting briefly
on certain compact metaphysical dicta, Jacques Maritain implicitly ventured the hope that fellow realists might tap the rich veins in other
metaphysical axioms. In this judicious, thoroughly documented piece of
sound Thomistic scholarship, Prof. Bonnette engages in the sort of meditation suggested by Maritain as he explores the further reaches of the
metaphysical principle, " The per accidens necessarily implies the per se."
His examination weights the role of the principle in substance and accident,
natural change, knowledge, and the classic five ways (the space allotted
to this last, over 75% of the book, justifies his title). Obviously, he is not
cultivating virgin territory, but a fresh perspective, bolstered by skilful
technical elaboration, helps illuminate terrain that may seem, to some,
overworked to the point of infertility.
Part I deals with matters prior to the proofs for God. The implication
of the per se in the per accidens is first verified in the substance-accident
relation. An accident is, except by vicious abstraction, unthinkable and unsayable apart from its subject. This demand for the inclusion of primary
being in the ratio of qualified being bespeaks a special case of the reduction
of the per accidens to the per se. Accidents can be adequately subjectified
only in substance because the finite number of accidents blocks an appeal
to an infinite series and, more importantly, because when detached from
their subject accidents are existenceless. Thus every "accident is termed
per accidens because existence is not proper to its essence." But it is
in searching for the principles of process that Aquinas explicitly invokes
the dictum, "Everything which is per accidens is reduced to that which
is per se." It is not enough to settle the Eleatic crux by arguing that
something comes to be from being and nonbeing in a per accidens manner.
We have to turn to primary matter as a per se principle of being-in-themaking, and at this point there emerges the reason for the need for the
reduction: the per accidens cannot enter into the make-up of a thing; only
the per se constitutes a nature. The principle, furthermore, is significantly
at work on the sensory and intellectual planes. Concomitant with and
reducible to per se sensibles are per accidens sensibles, whose direct intellectual grasp is assigned to the cogitative power. According to Bonnette,
here following his mentor, Joseph Bobik, the mind first lays hold of being
taken as something-there, with the result that all other natural concepts are
resolved into this analytically primary notion and must be considered
per accidens in this sense. Corresponding to the role of being in the first
operation is the function of the principle of noncontradiction in the second

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operation. Because their intelligibility hangs on this " firmest principle "
that is per se, all other propositions are rated per accidens. In the third
operation immediately known propositions enjoy a per se status. Insofar
as they are caused by these indemonstrable propositions, i.e., come to be
per aliud, conclusions are taken to be per accidens statements.
To support these unexpected cases of reduction Bonnette turns to De
Pot., q. 10, a. 4: " ... whatever things are in anything per se either
belong to that thing's essence, or flow from its essential principles ...
everything that is in anything per accidens, because it is extrinsic to its
nature, must be found in that thing by reason of an exterior cause." Conclusions, it is true, are coercively true propositions in virtue of the mediately
necessitated link between subject and predicate, but inasmuch as they
are produced by indemonstrable premises, known per aliud, they are
counted per accidens. If the per aliud is equivalent to the per accidens,
we are bound also to designate as per accidens concepts concretely other
than being and propositions dependent on "A cannot be non-A." Thus
far we have been dealing with the per accidens in a relative sense, i.e.,
under the aspect of the accidental (as correlative with the substantial)
and the knowable. Now it is necessary to shift to the per accidens signifying "something by intrinsic nature dependent in the order of existence."
What is absolutely per accidens depends upon another, an efficient cause,
for its very being. Only what is utterly independent is absolutely per se;
or in Gilson's words, " Strictly speaking, only God is ens per se." These
distinctions set the stage for analysis of proofs of God in the light of
the per accidens-per se reduction strategy.
Bonnette first analyzes, as a propaedeutic to the five ways, the proof
for God in De Ente along with certain key notions. Guardedly accepting
as convincing this early instance of Aquinas's reasoning about God,
Bonnette grounds the argument upon the distinction between essence and
existence and pivots it on the demand of per aliud beings for a per se
cause. Beings whose existence is from without, whose existence is per aliud,
must be deemed per accidens with reference to what exists per se. While
Bonnette's "sole concern " (which is, in fact, a primary, not a sole, concern) lies in applying his key principle, he does feel it obligatory to
scrutinize certain structural parts of the ways. Though Aquinas's final
stand on the possibility of an infinite multitude remains a moot point,
he does not rely, it seems clear, on this concept to establish the untenability of an infinite regress. As Bonnette shrewdly remarks, Aquinas
argues not that a first cause has to exist because an infinite regress is
impossible but the reverse: an infinite regress is inadmissable because a
first cause has to exist. Proper causality is a second indispensable concept.
A proper cause exhibits two principal features: Its causation springs from
its nature, as, e.g., with the sculptor sculpting a statue; and its causing
is simultaneous with the effecting of an event. These two conditions

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guarantee the cogency of the ways in an eternal world and leave room for
an infinite series of incidentally related causes.
With the things in motion representing the per accidens factors, the
main problem in the first way is to establish that a series of moved
movers cannot go on indefinitely. While perceptively noting that the
first mover of I Cont. Gent., c. 13 is a self-moving mover (whereas Summa
Theol. I, q. 2, a. 3 terminates in an absolutely unmoved mover), Bonnette
ably comments on the four arguments nailing down the impossibility of
an infinite regress and seems especially impressive in handling the demonstration of the falsity of " Every mover is moved." In answer to Victor
Preller's contention that a series of causes acts successively, over
a stretch of time (as manifest apparently in inertia, in which case things
once moved are self-moving), Bonnette shows, with acuity, that the
causing of what is being effected occurs in the ongoing process itself, so
that in inertia a body inasmuch as it is undergoing constant change has
to be moved by another. Like the first way, the second leads the per
accidens data of natural experience back to their per se source. The second
way begins with causes whereas the first takes its start from effects. Two
additional differences seem signficant: motion implies efficiency, but the
reverse is not true, since, for instance, a skyscraper causally depends on
the immobility of its foundation; and whereas in the first way the movers
are causes of becoming, those in the second way produce secundum esse.
The rejection here of an infinite causal regress, Bonnette points out, rests
on the expanded analysis of In II Metaphys., lect. 3. Against Stephen
Weber's view that the totality of causes is only a fiction of the mind
needing no extramental explanation, Bonnette persuasively argues that,
since each member of the series is explainable by its predecessor, then the
causation running through all of the members is explainable by none of
the members. After subscribing to Cajetan's refutation of his own subtly
put case for an infinity of intermediaries, Bonnette finds arguments of
Banez and John of St. Thomas inadequate in that they bear on physical
movers rather than causes of being. Contemporary Thomistic commentators concur in seeing the intermediaries as causal channels betokening a first
cause. On Bonnette's reckoning, the intermediaries form a per accidens
set operating in virtue of an ultimate, because per se, causal source. In
the third way the key metaphysical principle is given a double application.
The possibles with which the proof begins receive their existence per
accidens, and the finite necessity supporting the possibles is derived and
therefore per accidens also. Bonnette edits out semper (because it results
in a nonsequitur) so that we are to reatd one much-controverted line:
"But it is impossible that all things that are be of such a kind." Yet
he prefers to leave undetermined the meaning of the much more perplexing line: " If therefore, all things are possible not to be, then at
one time nothing was in existence." On the hypothesis of temporal

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creation possibles could not have pre-existed their beginning in time. Or,
supposing an eternal world, as Maritain and Gilson do, all possible beings
would come to be and pass away in an infinite time. The sense of necessity
in the finite order is also left unresolved. It can be referred to separated
intelligences or to a quality of existence (Gilson) within things. Whatever
one's decision here, the necessity that is borrowed or per accidens must be
traced back to what is necessary per se. In accord with prominent
Thomists like Garrigou-Lagrange, Maritain, and Gilson, Bonnette takes
"the degrees which are found in things" to signify the transcendentals.
The somewhat puzzling reference to "the maximum in heat" is dismissed
as a physical metaphor, an unfortunate intrusion of a now outmoded theory
of the elements into strictly metaphysical reasoning. The being, true, and
good we encounter are participations of absolute perfection. A common
perfection shared in various modes must arise from one cause: the multiple
or per accidens demands a supreme being that holds its perfections per se.
Indeed, if participated being implies composition of essence and existence,
the fourth way is, in its essentials, a sophisticated reproduction of the
sketchy analysis in De Ente. In the fifth way also per accidens factors
make a double appearance. The things finalized in the universe make up
a per accidens order requiring an orderer or per se cause; and within this
order are chance events which are per accidens from the side of the effect.
Bonnette takes seriously the real possibility of a series of subordinated
intelligences or orders (a series which, while not adverted to, seems implicit
in the proof; but a series hardly ever elaborated by modern commentators),
and nicely presents four arguments cancelling out a series of final causes
going on endlessly. However numerous the finalizing agents involved,
they must depend on a top or per se ordering intelligence.
Even this short survey of Prof. Bonnette's work seems enough to indicate
the discernment and precision he brings to his task. But, however arresting
and valuable his reflections and however welcome his judicious reworking
of old ground, some may be left with the uncomfortable impression that
his central claim is afflicted with failings, some of which seem fatal. It
is not easy to lend credence to a position that stretches the application of
the term per accidens so far that all other propositions are made per
accidens with respect to the principle of noncontradiction, necessary conclusions curiously become discursively incidental, and the whole universe
is deemed per accidens in reference to the first cause. Underlying this bold
extension of per accidens is the largely unsupported assumption that the
per aliud is absolutely identifiable with the per accidens. The fact that
Aquinas never once uses per aliud and per accidens interchangeably in
the five ways or the other domains Bonnette investigates raises the
suspicion that at the heart of the book there lies an illicit conversion:
the reducibility of the per aliud to the per se is not convertible with or
equivalent to the reducibility of the per accidens to the per se. Closer

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171

inspection of the principal, indeed perhaps the only, text on which Bonnette
bases his controlling thesis discloses an allied illicit conversion. According
to De Pot., q. 10, a. 4 (quoted above), the per accidens, because extrinsic
to a nature, can rise only from an exterior cause. But the converse of this,
which is Bonnette's reading, does not necessarily hold. It is not true that,
whenever an extrinsic cause is operating, what it causes must be per
accidens in reference to the entity affected; nor should an instrument be
reduced to a per accidens factor simply because it is subordinate. Bonnette
rightly underscores the proper causality involved in the five ways, but
unfortunately he fails to recognize that his insistence on a chain of essentially subordinated causes, i.e., a scale of per se causes, runs flatly
counter to his view that these causes are, at bottom, sheerly per accidens
elements. To put it in another way, if nature is the source of per se
causation (as expressed in the fourth mode of the per se or in the causal
dictum, Omne agens agit simile sibi: the doctor heals, man thinks), then
an action springing from a nature cannot be anything but per se caused
even though it may be triggered extrinsically by another or higher agent.
The tendency to blur the lines between intrinsic and extrinsic factors also
renders dubious Bonnette's equating of per accidens with " something by
intrinsic nature dependent in the order of existence" and his description
of the absolutely per accidens as "what depends on an efficient cause for
its existence." These definitions, of course, collide head on with the decisive text in De Pot., q. 10, a 4: for if the per se means what belongs
"to that thing's essence" or flows "from its essential principles," the
absolutely per accidens surely must mean what is extrinsic to the nature
without formal reference to the order of existence or efficiency. The fact
that an angel or human soul has a caused existence and is subject to
hypothetical annihilation does not turn it from a necessary into an intrinsically contingent being. So, analogously, the dependence of a finite being
on a first cause in the line of existence does not automatically forfeit its
per se status and transform it into a per accidens entity. Like necessity,
the character of being per se has its roots in the nature of a thing.
The failure to sharply circumscribe the scope of the per accidens flaws
the application of Bonnette's reduction principle to various domains. It
seems doubtful, first, that all of the categorically accidental can be reduced
to the merely incidental. In a context that sets apart per se attributes
from the per accidens, Aquinas speaks of per se accidents (Summa Theol.,
I, q. 3, a. 6), language that coincides with the authoritative De Pot., q. 10,
a. 4's accrediting per se status to what follows upon essential principles.
Too, after maintaining that substance is ens per se, Bonnette oddly endorses
the opinion of Gilson that strictly God alone is ens per se. Indeed the
very text cited by Gilson (Summa Theol., I, q. 3, a. 5 ad 1) expressly
makes the opposite point, that substance signifies an essence that properly
has per se existence (but it would be misguided to say that substance

BOOK REVIEWS

signifies just ens per se). Second, while without a doubt being as primarily
known pervades all other concepts, Aquinas never invokes the per se-per
accidens model to describe the resolution into being, for dependence is
explicable in terms other than the per accidens. And as regards the third
operation, it does less than justice to conclusions to put them down as
per accidens. Surely, if effects pre-exist in their causes and bear their
stamp, the necessity within the premises has to be communicated to a conclusion. Labelling conclusions per accidens, moveover, runs the risk of
suggesting that Aristotelian entailment is akin to material implication
with its bare factual conjunction. It seems incongruous, further, that immediately known propositions regarded as per accidens (in relation to the
principle of noncontradiction) are accorded a per se role in the third operation. Third, to return to the unhappy extrusion of perseity from finite
causation, it seems arguable on Bonnette's terms that a series comprising
per accidens beings evincing only per accidens causation cannot be reasonably barred from taking the road of infinite regress. Again, some may
detect in the restriction of perseity in being and causation to God alone a
possible flirtation with a diluted brand of monism or Bradleyan idealism.
A few other difficulties merit attention. First, the provocative suggestion
that the cogitative is an " intellectual faculty " deputes abstraction to
a strictly sensory power (albeit the highest among the senses) , besides
not squaring with In I Meta., lect. 1, 18 which takes experience, the content
of the cogitative, as raw material for intellection. The cogitative does
quasispeculatively focus on this (man), but the nature within the brackets
eludes its grasp. Second, causation can admittedly occur without motion
in the spiritual order, but motion, not immobility, seems to accompany
the support a foundation efficiently provides for a skyscraper. From the
angle of efficiency, the lack of motion is a perceptual illusion; the forces
in building and foundation are in a dynamic standoff, no less active than
two sides in a stalemated tug-of-war. In addition, there is nothing in
the second way that confines its causation only to secundum esse; univocal
causes, the starting point, exercise a causality secundum fieri. Third, the
insertion of semper into a disputed part of the third way does not necessarily introduce a nonsequitur, since the point about generables always
enters not as a matter of fact but as a supposition from which inconveniences follow. Again, neither of the hypotheses Bonnette backs supply
warranty for the perplexing claim that, in a world with only possibles,
at one time nothing existed. On the hypothesis of a creation in time, which
Aquinas did not think demonstrable, the proof would suffer a loss of
analytical rigor and slip a notch down to the dialectial level. On the other
hand, given an eternal world, there would be no exhaustion of possibles,
for generated beings emerge without end out of things corrupted. Moreover, if this proof does not demand a class of separate intelligences or
at least .some· strictly .necessary beings (a stand that Bonnette offers as

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173

one live option) , then the parallel with the second way explicitly drawn
by Aquinas unaccountably breaks down. In general, Bonnette understandably betrays an uneasiness in grappling with the sticky obscurities of
the third way. A less servile and more healthily skeptical stance toward
some of the prestigious authorities he leans on might have helped furnish
some glimmer of alternative routes of understanding. Fourth, it seems
curious that the physical basis or setting, put in bold relief in the other
ways, is embarrassedly dropped from the fourth way as a foreign body
polluting a strictly metaphysical context. One wonders whether the physical content is perhaps more than a mere example; and hence whether its
exclusion radically alters the formal character of the proof. Finally,
Bonnette's excellent handling of the fifth way skips over one important
step. He never tries to show why an ordination must be a preordination
i. e., why natural tendencies must be grounded in intellectual intentions.
The paradoxes that elsewhere dog the inflation of the per accidens-per se
principle prove troublesome once more. After chance is reduced to a per
se cause, the series of agents operating for an end, we are inconsistently
told, must be considered per accidens also. What is undoubtedly per se
is suddenly transmuted into something per accidens, a switch that invalidates the original reduction of chance to a finalized operator. The
incoherence is dissolved in this as in earlier instances by sharply demarcating the per aliud from the merely per accidens.
Thus principally because it practically wipes out the proper natures and
per se operative capacities of finite beings, Bonnette's wide-ranging application of the per accidens-per se relation seems overextended and somewhat extravagant. Yet apart from whatever verdict one passes on its
central theme, this volume remains a discriminating study marked by
sober metaphysical insights and analyses that deserves and will well repay
careful reading.
JoHN M. QuiNN, O.S.A.
Villanova University
Villanova, Pennsylvania

Language, Truth, and Meaning. Papers from the International Lonergan
Congress 1970. Edited by PHILIP McSHANE. Notre Dame, Indiana
Univ. of Notre Dame Press,
Pp. 843.
This is the second volume of papers to be published from the International Lonergan Congress, held in Flordia in 1970. The title is a good
indication of the topical unity of this volume, in contrast to the first one,
Foundations of Theology (1971).
This collection of papers is a vindication of the hopes of the sponsors

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of the Congress, that such a meeting of scholars from " diverse traditions,
perspectives and involvements " would facilitate " a critical dialogue with
a living seminal thinker." (Foundations of Theology, p. xiv) The purpose
of such a dialogue was to promote collaboration. And surely Bernard
Lonergan is extraordinarily apt as a focus for such collaboration, for his
great achievement has been to provide an account of the structures of
human intentionality, which may serve as the basis for interrelating all
the diverse forms of human knowing.
This collection of responses and reactions to the work of Lonergan should
be of great help to readers who are already somewhat familiar with the
basic thrust of Lonergan's thought. These papers serve to clarify his
project-both by setting it in a larger context and by criticizing it from
the viewpoints of other important thinkers. The contributions are diverse,
as the editor notes:
Some articles aim at directly presenting an aspect or application of Lonergan's
view, a second group of articles are critical of points within Lonergan's position
and a third are comparative, relating Lonergan's approach to recent efforts to
elaborate a more sophisticated theory of meaning and of the Geisteswissenschaften.
(p. I)

To this third group belongs Matthew Lamb's long, demanding, but
very rewarding paper, "Wilhelm Dilthey's Critique of Historical Reason
and Bernard Lonergan's Meta-Methodology."
(pp. 115-166) This paper
would be the most helpful one to begin with, even though the alphabetical
ordering of the contributors places it in the middle of the book. It is helpful because it identifies clearly the cultural crisis to which Lonergan's
work is such an astonishingly perspicacious response.
The comparison of Lonergan with Dilthey is far from arbitrary, for
Lamb shows convincingly that Lonergan is dealing more successfully with
the same problematic that absorbed Dilthey all his life: how to relate
the natural sciences and the human sciences, or-more broadly-how to
ground a rigorous understanding of all the multifarious activities and
products of the human mind: the arts, the sciences, religions, etc. Dilthey
sought to do this by examining the source of all these historical manifestations of mind, i.e., by examining the dynamism and movement of mind
itself in history.
In the first part of his paper Lamb relates this project of Dilthey to
the theme of the Lonergan Congress: ongoing collaboration. He observes:
The idea for this congress grew out of the need experienced on all sides today
for inter-disciplinary communication and collaboration. The problems of contemporary man and his world are far too vast and complicated for any one mind
or specialised community of research to handle. . .. collaboration is not a luxury
but an urgent necessity. Yet the pressure of the need seems matched only by
the difficulty in satisfying it. Communications and collaboration call for some

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commonly shared ground of understanding and language, some co=only
cepted norms of verification and evaluation . . . (p. 116)

175
ac-

Lamb sees "Dilthey's desire to explicate a critique of historical reason ... as an attempt to uncover the conditions of the possibility of such
collaboration." In a detailed, thoroughly documented exposition of Dilthey's
thought Lamb shows how this attempt was vitiated by Dilthey's inadequate
cognitional theory.
. . . his failure did not come from his desire for scientific objectivity nor from
his attempt to relate this objectivity with the certainty of inner experience-as
Gadamer maintains-but from his uncritical conception of this Lebensgewissheit
as the mere givenness of self-presence. (p.

Lamb's exposition of Dilthey's attempt is sympathetic, in that he accepts
the legitimacy and necessity of interrelating all the diverse kinds of human
knowing and activity. But his critique of Dilthey points to the need for
a more adequate cognitional theory. He sees the work of Lonergan as
providing just this.
. . . broad inter-disciplinary communication and collaboration . . . is possible
only if history itself, in its spontaneous and reflective manifestations, is grounded
in certain open and dynamic structures of conscious intentionality.
(p.
The significance of a confrontation between Dilthey and Lonergan lies in the
ability of meta-method to carry through the starting point of Dilthey to a
thematisation of interiority, which is then capable of returning to the worlds of
science and spontaneous history in a methodological manner. (p.

Lamb goes on to give a brief over-view of Lonergan's account of the structures of human intentionality, in order to substantiate the claim that
Lonergan provides a basis for ongoing collaboration.
Meta-method is grounded in a self-appropriation which is a heightening of
consciousness, a making one aware of the basic patterns or structures operative
in any instance of human conscious activity. It is a discovery . . . of the world
of interiority. (p. 147)
. . . in the measure that one is aware, not only of the patterns of experience, but
of their open and dynamic sources in conscious intentionality, one has initiated
a whole new control of meaning. (p. 149)

He quotes the well-known words of Lonergan:
Thoroughly understand what it is to understand, and not only will you understand the broad lines of all there is to be understood but also you will possess
a fixed base, an invariant pattern, operating upon all further developments of
understanding. (Insight, p. 748)

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There is, of course, a danger in referring to Lonergan's project in so
brief and elliptical a fashion. This may conceal the reviewer's own lack of
" self-appropriation " and may also conceal from the reader the full dimensions of what Lonergan invites the reader of Insight to do. The fact is,
that there is no simple, brief way of communication what Lonergan is
about. It took him over 700 pages in Insight, and even this lengthy discourse had as its purpose simply to invite the reader to a heightening of
his own consciousness, so that he might become reflectively aware of his
own operations as a knower.
. . . the dynamic, cognitional structure to be reached is . . . the personally
appropriated structure of one's own experiencing, one's own intelligent inquiry
and insights, one's own critical reflection and judging and deciding. The crucial
issue is an experimental issue, and the experiment will be performed not publicly
but privately. It will consist in one's own rational self-consciousness clearly and
distinctly taking possession of itself as rational self-consciousness. Up to that
decisive achievement, all leads. From it, all follows. (Insight, p. xviii)

The editor of this volume, Philip McShane, expresses in his Introduction the same note of caution about the difficulty of assimilating Lonergan's
method. Speaking of the "well-defined shift to interiority," he writes:
" if I may be personal, the task of shifting adequately into that novel
horizon is one I find decades-long." (p. Q)
One does not want to seem unduly esoteric in thus stressing the need
for personal assimilation of Lonergan's approach. And yet, it is clear
enough that some kind of " exercise in interiority " is indispensable for
understanding what Lonergan is really about, and for judging the scope
of his " meta-method " as a fixed base for relating diverse patterns of
human knowing and conscious activity.
For those who have not yet achieved "self-appropriation"
(and most
of us will no doubt fall into this category), the present volume may serve
as a stimulus to carry out the experiment that Lonergan invites us to.
In particular, Lamb's paper indicates the great relevance of Lonergan's
meta-method to our present cultural situation. Not only do we need a
basis for communication and collaboration among the diverse disciplines
but we also must deal with the challenge of historical relativism. For
it is characteristic of our experience to be keenly aware of the limitedness
and historical conditionedness of all our institutions and concepts. Dilthey,
according to Lamb, was finally unable to overcome this historical relativism.
Lonergan, on the other hand, seems to promise a way of overcoming it
without denying the historicality of human existence.
Historicism is overcome, not by renouncing the claims of scientific objectivity, as
Gadamer proposes, but by relating them to the open and dynamic structures of
interiority. (p. 145)

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177

... relativism is overcome, not by appealling to timeless concepts nor by invoking
the authority of tradition, but by adverting to the virtually unconditioned
normativity of the sources of all meaning in history. These sources are the basic
horizon as historicality. (p. 157)
Once again, it is unsatisfactory to refer so briefly to Lonergan's fundamental
notions. " Basic horizon " would have to be explained at some length.
But this is neither possible nor appropriate in a brief review.
At any rate, the apparent relevance of Lonergan to the problem of
historical relativism is, on the face of it, a powerful reason for letting him
invite us to the self-appropriation of our rational self-consciousness. This
motive is especially urgent for the theologian, who is confronted with the
immense hermeneutical task of appropriating his tradition faithfully but
critically. Lonergan has spelled out the relevance of his approach for
theology in his Method in Theology.
Lamb sums up his thesis neatly in the following conclusion:
Lonergan's meta-method provides the foundations for an ongoing collaboration
inasmuch as it has succeeded in thematising the related and recurrent operations
or structures of human historical interiority. No sphere of human historical activity
is foreign to its methodical interests. It has effectively appropriated the sources
of both the scientific and historical revolutions in contemporary consciousness
so that it is able to be both factually ongoing-not appealing to a now defunct
classical normativity-and simultaneously critical. Where Dilthey has sought to
attain the creative sources of all historical objectifications in an experienced
interiority which, despite his own intentions, could not ground scientific objectivity
or a dialectic, Lonergan succeeds by adverting to the self-transcending dynamisms
of inner experience or human interiority. (pp. 160-161)
I have commented at some length on Lamb's paper because it is so
central for understanding Lonergan's contribution to the Congress's ideal
of ongoing collaboration. But there are other papers in the volume which
also deserve close reading. In particular, Frederick Lawrence has an illuminating comparison of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Lonergan: "Self-Knowledge in History in Gadamer and Lonergan." Lawrence sees Lonergan's
work as " the most radical and comprehensive fulfilment to date of the
intentions of the 'ontological tum.'" (p. flOO)
If no words better characterise the achievement of Lonergan than transcendental
and foundational, so, too, no other scholar to my knowledge has reflected so
diligently upon the concrete reality of the consciousness which I have called
the new hermeneutical focus: the consciousness of the subject as subject. (p.

Lawrence gives a clear, readable account of Gadamer's "expose of
hermeneutic consciousness," (p. 191) then goes on to give an over-view
of Lonergan that shows how he uncovers the fundamental structures of
human conscious activity. Lawrence finds a parallel in the way both

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Gadamer and Lonergan get at structure of human consciousness that are,
in some sense, trans-cultural and trans-historical.
I think it is safe to say that Gadamer affirms that his transcendental and
foundational reflection has revealed a theory of Verstehen that has an invariability
through all historical periods, although he is supremely aware of the dependence
of his own explication on particular historical conditions, e.g., historical consciousness.
So also Lonergan's transcendental
this non-historical sense. (p.

method is a passage to a self-knowledge in

The fruit of this achievement is a kind of " universal viewpoint," in
Lonergan's sense. (Cf. Insight, pp. 564-568.}
Basic method, by going to the roots of protean human potentiality, has a radical
if finite competence, whether it is a question of analysing the human development
from global compactness through the entire field of past, present, and future
differentiation; or of integrating without reducing symbolic-mythic and theoreticsystematic modes of human activity without abolishing either or substituting one
for the other; or of passing judgment on human advance and regression.
This radical swing back to the fundamental structures of subject as subject
via transcendental method affords a factual (potentially)
differentiated and
normative viewpoint with regard to the concrete reality of appropriation of
historical self. (p.

Lawrence also comments on the power of Lonergan's " basic method "
to distinguish and integrate the various " functional specialisations " that
are operative in the hermeneutical task. ". . . he projects a truly explanatory scheme of functionally interlocking ' hermeneutical ' specialisations." (p. 209) Lonergan develops this with great clarity in his Method
in Theology. And Lawrence notes that this line-up of functional specialities
has a wider application than Christian theology. It seems that it applies
to any task of appropriating and interpreting a tradition .
. . . the structure of functional specialties emergent from Lonergan's methodological
reflection upon the W endung zur Idee within the Christian religion has a relevance
which extends far beyond the properly theological task. (p.

Two other papers that are especially interesting have to do with myth
and symbol. Garrett Barden, in " The Intention of Truth in Mythic Consciousness," develops Lonergan's distinction between mythic consciousness
and critical consciousness. He shows how only critical consciousness
achieves the truth that is intended in mythic consciousness. This is not,
however, simply a rejection of symbol and myth as ways of relating to
reality. To make this clear, he refers to Lonergan's notion of "mysteries"
as " dynamic images which make sensible to human sensitivity what human
intelligence reaches for or grasps." (Insight, p. 548)

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179

What is to distinguish mystery from myth? Clearly it is not the dynamism
of the symbol on the psychic level but the nature of the link between image
and interpretation. The mystery can be distorted into myth when the imaginative
integration is allowed unduly to interfere with the proper finality of intellect.
(p. 25)

This distinction of Lonergan between myth and mystery seems to be
overlooked by David Rasmussen in his interesting comparison of Lonergan
and Paul Ricoeur: " From Problematics to Hermeneutics: Lonergan and
Ricoeur." After a lengthy exposition of Ricoeur's work in hermeneutic
phenomenology, in which he shows the importance of symbol as both invitation to thought and guide to thought, he turns to a criticism of what
he calls Lonergan's "hermeneutic of demystification." He thinks that
Lonergan has an intellectualist bias which demands the reduction of symbol
and myth to critical understanding and explanation. Rasmussen insists
on the need for a " hermeneutic of recollection or reintegration," which returns to the symbol after thought has reached its limits. Symbols are
capable of carrying a multivalency of meaning that is impossible for
reflective thought. For this reason, symbols are able to express the concrete
reality of human experience, whereas reflective thought must sacrifice
depth for the sake of clarity. Rasmussen's criticism of Lonergan on this
point seems to me to stem from an inadequate comprehension of Lonergan's
nuanced account of the different forms of consciousness and of knowing.
And he fails to take account of the important distinction noted above,
between myth and mystery.
Other papers compare Lonergan with Whitehead, Dewey, and Heidegger.
Patrick Heelan has an excellent paper on "The Logic of Framework
Transpositions," which applies Lonergan's approach to the history of
science, and tries to deal with the fact of successive models or frameworks
(e.g., Kepler and Newton), of mutually exclusive frameworks, and of
complementary frameworks. This approach would appear to have an
analogous application in fields other than the physical sciences, most
notably in theology.
Lonergan himself is given the opportunity to respond to these papers.
His responses are relatively brief, but very much to the point. His longest
response is to Bernard Tyrrell's paper on "The New Context of the
Philosophy of God in Lonergan and Rahner," which ends with some questions about Lonergan's concept of philosophy and specifically, of the
philosophy of God. Lonergan takes the occasion to clarify once again
his approach to cognitional theory, epistemology, and metaphysics.
Language, Truth, and Meaning is a demanding book, not only because of
the level of thought of the papers contained in it but perhaps even more
so because it presupposes a familiarity with the thought of Bernard
Lonergan. It is an invitation to grapple with a thinker of major stature,

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stimulated by the reactions and observations of scholars from various
fields of expertise and interest. It could, for some readers, be an exciting
book, because it reveals something of the fruitfulness of Lonergan's thought
for ongoing collaboration among different disciplines. It gives a hint of
the unifying and integrating power of Lonergan's approach to the sometimes bewildering diversity of human patterns of consciousness and ways
of knowing.
WAYNE L. FEHR, s. J.
Yale University
N61JJ Haven, Conn.

Analogy and Philosophical Language. By DAVID BURRELL, C.S.C. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1978. Pp. 278. $10.00
The author calls analogous terms " a privileged set of expressions "
that will be language clues telling " us about the world." (p. ix) Since
language is so active, we should " do " philosophy rather than construct
a philosophical doctrine. The guidance of Heidegger and Wittgenstein, but
especially the latter, is sought since "their aim is remarkably similar: to
return language to its ordinary uses, to think being by allowing it room
to speak." (p. 4)
A study so totally devoted to analogy inevitably ends up mainly as
an historical investigation, which Father Burrell concedes late in the book.
(p. 194} Before considering the contributions of Plato, Aristotle, Scotus,
and Aquinas, he evaluates a countercontribution from Cajetan, who actually thought he was reintroducing analogy after many ages of neglect
by philosophers and theologians. Hence, the limitations of Cajetan's classic
on analogy are duly censured.
The working hypothesis of the book is " ... to argue that the tendency
of the philosophic traditions stemming from Aristotle to distinguish a set
of expressions as analogous has proven to be a .useful strategy." (p. 81)
The chapters on Plato, Aristotle, and Scotus are highly informative and
move the author's argument along convincingly. His largest section deals
with St. Thomas plus an additional chapter contrasting the positions of
Aquinas and Scotus. A few observations seem in order.
Approaching the problem somewhat differently from Father Schillebeeckx's essay" The Non-Conceptual Intellectual Dimension in Our Knowledge of God According to Aquinas," Father Burrell comes to the same
conclusion. Analogy dpes not give us any concept of God but does indicate
a manuductio, a leading on to grasp a notion of God, which is Schillebeeckx's
reaching out for the notion of God. The suggestion is also friendly to
Wittgenstein's thoughts on "guiding." But Father Burrell parts company

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with Father Schillebeeckx on the distinction res significata and modus
significandi Schillebeeckx distinguishes the res significata and ratio concepta. Burrell does not refer to Schillebeeck's work and in the end they are
still saying rather the same thing, namely, we have no concept of God
or his attributes but we do have some straining towards that knowledge
coming to us from creation and the impetus of the will. Hence, we are not
agnostics nor symbolists.
Before leaving Father Burrell's consideration of Aquinas on analogy,
we might note that his assumption that, since "Aquinas left no coherent
statement about analogous usage," it follows "that he thought a unified
theory of analogous usage impossible or useless, or both" (p. 198) is
unwarranted. A strong case can be made from the writings of Aquinas
that he had a clear, definite theory on analogy in mind even though
he never developed it ex professo. We have not uncovered it completely
until recently partly because Cajetan's theory was considered as the
authentic Thomist position.
The final section of the book is Father Burrell's own proposal on analogy.
He feels we should try to make our use of language a more effective tool.
Logic helps. So can analogy. Two extremes are to be avoided: the
paradigm of proportionality:
a: b: : c: d and the vast land of models and
metaphors. Appraisal terms seem to fit the analogical schema. The
transcendentals are such appraisal terms. If appraisal, then we eventually
look for a standard for such appraisal. We have none although we do
appraise. In fact, since we do appraise, we must be making the standards
through our own judgment and discrimination.
As the author moves into theological usage providing an ontological
and a semantic interpretation, the traditional teaching of St. Thomas
tends to surface, although the explanations involved will convince mainly
those who find grammar and language somehow directing our arrival at
truth. The constant use of analogy in language by all people in every
area indicates that analogous language is a fact, and respectable. We
decide to speak in this way, we employ analogies representing perfections,
and so we end up again with the transcendentals and appraisal terms,
such as one, being, true as well as just, fruitful, and genuine. The process
is endless and that is the doing of philosophy. Father Burrell has composed a persuasive volume which accepts analogous language as part of
life, indeed, a key role in thinking and speaking.
RAYMOND SMITH,

Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D. C.

O.P.

BOOK REVIEWS

JosiAH THOMPSON. Kierkegaard. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. Pp.
312. $8.95.
Professor Thompson is already known for his study of Kierkegaard's
pseudonymous works as well as for his edition of the Kierkegaard volume
in the Anchor series, "Modern Studies in Philosophy." In the present
work he offers us a well-documented and eminently readable biography
of SjiJren Kierkegaard which exhibits Thompson's mastery of the Danish language, his patient research, and, it must be added, his powerful imagination
as well. For much of the book is an imaginative reconstruction of scenes
and events from Kierkegaard's life, based on memoirs and public documents in addition to Kierkegaard's own papers, many as yet untranslated.
The author casts new light on several old Kierkegaardian issues. He
points out, for example, that the famous eulogy which Martensen preached
at Bishop Mynster's funeral, occasioning Kierkgaard's final and fatal controversy with the state church, actually used, and in Kierkgaard's mind
abused, a term "witness to the truth" (Sandhedsvidne) which at that
time could be found in no Danish dictionary since it was a recent
Kierkegaardian coinage. This gives an added note of poignancy to the
ensuing polemic.
Regarding Kierkegaard's feud with the satirical journal Corsair, Thompson indicates how Kierkegaard retrospectively turned what had been mainly
an accident of timing and at most a literary spat into a heroic crusade
against the " plebs."
More important than new light on biographical material, however, are
Thompson's observations on three general aspects of Kierkegaard's life
and work, viz., the use of pseudonyms, the doubleness of consciousness,
interrelated. Concerning the use of
and the life of imagination-all
pseudonyms, in addition to the standard observations as to the significance
of their translations and the method of indirect communication, Thompson
notes the kind of doubling that characterizes Kierkegaard's relation to his
pseudonyms:
For precisely in the same way that the pseudonyms maintain their distance from
their imaginative creations does Kierkegaard maintain his distance from the
pseudonyms. He tells us he is absent from their compositions, that in their works
his own voice is silent. And it is true that the views of the pseudonyms are
not Kierkegaard's. If anything, they are the views he has outlived or outthought.
(p. 145)

The central focus of the pseudonymous writings, Thompson tells us, is not
ethics or religion or aesthetics, but the dialectic of the life of imagination itself. These works constitute a literature of self-reference, a kind
of bad infinity, commenting repeatedly upon the imaginative act involved in their own creation. Their aim is to demonstrate the failure of

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188

all human projects and the particular vanity of philosophy as they manifest
the inherent volatility and duplicity of human consciousness.
This concept of doubleness is the second general aspect of Kierkegaard's
theoretical position which Thompson illuminates. He points out that in
Danish the morpheme tvi, "two," appears in the words "doubt" (Tvivl),
"despair" (Fortvivlelse), "scepticism" (Tvivlesyg), and "ambiguity"
(Tvetydighed)-all indicating a doubling of consciousness, a lack of coincidence of consciousness with itself. Since Kierkegaard considers doubt
an essential attribute of consciousness, this basic doubling can never
be avoided or consciousness itself would cease. Rather, is must
be retained but " put out of circuit " through belief. Thus Johannes
Climacus argues that " in the certainty of belief there is always a negated
uncertainty."
(p. 173) Accordingly, we can highten consciousness by
intensifying the " contradiction " which our belief holds together. It is in
this manner that Kierkegaard works his way through the contortions of a
German idealist analysis of consciousness to Tertullian's credo quia
absurdum. To simply write this off as either fideism or criterionless choice
is to miss the point.
Finally, Thompson offers a particularly valuable discussion of the primacy
of the life of imagination in Kierkegaard's work. Throughout his adult
years Kierkegaard considered himself to be life's observer who treasured
experiences solely for their memories. As he wrote in his diary on a trip
to the country: "Greetings to you mighty Nature, with your fleeting
beauty. It is not you I desire, it is the memory of you." (79) Always
at one remove from reality, the role of ironist suited him perfectly.
Rightly does Thompson liken Kierkegaard to the Beaudelaire of Sartre's
portrait who could never forget himself, who was always watching himself
watch, a player on his own stage. Kierkegaard's observing mind transformed everything into images. His penchant for thinking with images,
for trying to experience the world as if it were an image, forms the basis
of that aesthetic temptation to poeticize existence which he spent the
final years of his life struggling to overcome. Most of his writings reveal
this poetic enterprise. Aptly, therefore, did Louis Mackey entitle his excellent study Kierkegaard: A Kind of Poet. Only toward the end of his
life did Kierkegaard succeed in breaking the bonds of imagination by
engaging himself without reserve in a religious project destined to make
of him that witness to the truth he so sternly refused to acknowledge
in the deceased Primate of the state church.
The biography of some, perhaps most, philosophers is incidental to the
comprehension of their thought. The works of Spinoza and Hume, for
example, orb like space capsules outside the heavy atmosphere from which
they were launched. Kierkegaard's thought, on the contrary, is more like
Augustine's. It demands that we view it within the passionate, earth-bound
environment that gave it birth. In fact, failure to respect their respective

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intellectual life-situations has resulted in a falsification of the thought of
each, making Augustine a proto-Jansenist and Kierkegaard a "criterionless"
Christian, the latter apparently Alasdair Macintyre's view.
Professor Thompson's biography will serve as a pleasant introduction to
Kierkegaard's thought. Sensitively written, yet balanced and well informed, it affords a wealth of insight to the general reader while leaving
him with the desire to encounter Kierkegaard in his own works-whatever
the possessive adjective may mean to that poetic ironist or his captivated
public.
THOMAS R. FLYNN
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D. C.

The Concept of Peace. JoHN MAcQUARRIE. New York:
1973. Pp. 82. $4.95.

Harper & Row,

The admirable quality of this little book is its realistic and modest tone.
Macquarrie knows his thoughts will not solve the problem of war; they do,
however, make a firm and modest path into the thicket, and they give the
reader a firm and modest hope that efforts towards peace are very much
worth making. No cynicism here, no polemics, no bitter denunciation, no
wild hopes; rather calm analysis, intelligence, Christian wisdom, and
modesty.
Biblically peace, or shalom, is completion, fulfilment, wholeness. In
Western thought peace, eirene or pax, is truce, an interlude in the everlasting state of war, a fragile agreement in the course of the unremitting
struggle between conflicting interests. In Chinese thought peace, or ping,
is harmony, balance, the taking up of conflict into an equilibrium of forces.
Macquarrie thinks the biblical concept is closest to the reality we seek
but our understanding of it must include the presence of tensions and
conflicts, otherwise peace loses its dynamic character. In the New Testament, "Christ is our peace," that is, Christ as the new humanity, the new
community coming into being, a community of alienated groups for whom
Christ " has broken down the dividing walls of hostility " by bringing
them into his own body (cf. Eph. 2: 14f). The work of Christ, a work
of reconciliation, is costly, requiring atonement and sacrifice. Peace is not
easy to find.
What of violence and the recent rise of guerrilla warfare? Macquarrie
is again realistic. While he clearly sees the indiscriminate character of
some of it as wrong, " directed at everybody in general and nobody in
particular " and in the long run not productive of good results, he expresses
a deep Christian sympathy for oppressed peoples. He rejects, however, any

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attempts to make Christ a revolutionary. Still, Christians feel it necessary
at times to use violence. Its use must be very circumspect, willing to submit to some sort of test similar to the " just-war " test of the classical
moralists: that there be a just cause; that violence be truly the ultima ratio;
that proper authority be behind it (the clear will of the people when the
overthrow of a government is in question) ; that it be feasible; that there
be a proportion between the good achieved and the evil permitted; that
reconciliation, not further oppression, always be intended.
Metaphysically, peace is more primordial, more at the root of human
nature, than war is. But to achieve it in oneself and in the world, one
must believe in grace, atonement, and resurrection. One ought also do
at least four things: be an agent of reconciliation in situations of conflict in one's own life; be politically and socially responsible; exercise
restraint in his material standard of living; pray.
Many things are not in this book: a discussion of nuclear war; an
appreciation, or criticism, of recent peace movements; a strong emphasis
on non-violence. Still, Macquarrie's aims are modest. The total effect of the
book is optimistic. It leaves those dedicated to peace with the distinctive
feeling that they can do something and that what they do, no matter how
modest (like the book itself) , will not be in vain.
THOMAS

R. HEATH, O.P.

Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D. 0.

Theology Today Series. Notre Dame, Indiana: Fides Publishers, 1972.
13. The Theology of God. By Andrew Lascaris, O.P. 36. The
Theology of Angels and Devils. By Ron VAN DER HART. Pp. 90 &
86. 95¢ each.
The First Vatican Council teaches that much about God can be known
by natural reason. This is no new teaching: St. Thomas Aquinas held
that the fact that God exists can be demonstrated from his effectsand offered the famous five ways to prove it. Yet we know that whatever
Vatican I or St. Thomas may say, there are many today for whom the
word " God " is an embarrassment. They do not see the logic in any
jump from the things of the world to the existence of a God to account
for facts that science can explain perfectly adaquately. The Theology of
God is primarily addressed to such people.
Fr. Lascaris's thesis is that we need a new way of bringing God to people;
rather, an old way in a new form. We, as Christians, see the limitations
of any philosophical proof. In abstract, metaphysical categories, God

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remains remote. Because he created me, I can argue that he will conserve
me in existence. But is he interested in me as a person? Would he answer
my prayer if I prayed to him? And if he would answer, what type of
answer would it be: would his answer be one of comfort and promise, or
would he point to my sins and leave me? If knowledge from the things
around us were the only knowledge we could have about God, it would
be very inadequate. But this is not the only knowledge we can have
of him.
We know of God-and his love-from the Scriptures. We must begin
with this. The Bible tells us that after their sin Adam and Eve hid from
God out of fear. And men have feared God ever since: afraid of what
they might have to give up if they surrender themselves to God's love.
Salvation for man is to believe God loves him and to renounce himself
to the point of surrendering fully to that love. It was that God so loved
the world that he sent his Son. Christ attracted men, in love, to himself,
so that having found Christ they might realize that God was not one
to be feared. In confidence, they could follow Christ, and with him
approach the Father-to find that he was their Father too.
Few today are aware of all this. Tell people that God loves them,
they will say that this is too good to be true. It is merely a metaphor,
surely. But the tremendous thing is that it is true. A preacher is like a
lawyer going to people to say that they are entitled to a great fortune
and telling them to claim it.
I feel, however, that in The Theology of God the author tells only half
the story about God. Despite the approach to God through the Scriptures,
the danger is very real today that we end up with God as an abstraction
and not as a person. This will not be due entirely to difficulties of understanding; moral factors are involved. Discovering God is not like discovering a mathematical formula. A personal God is a demanding God. And
modern man can be happy with the notion of God he picks up " walking
miles with a group of young people in Holy Week, carrying together
a wooden cross to some unimportant village, drinking beer in numerous
pubs, singing new and old songs in the evening, sleeping on the floor of
a church hall where the heating does not work, pricking blisters, carrying
one another's rucksacks, listening to the story of Jesus, breaking bread
together .... and enjoying it all tremendously."
(p. 86) But, unless
the God we present to him is a God who intervenes, intrudes in all the
facts and events that go to make up his life-a God " pulling at the other
end of the cord " as C. S. Lewis puts it-he has not found God.
But will those who need this book read it, and will those who read it
find anything excitingly new? Let us hope so. For, within the terms of
reference the author has chosen for himself, he has some valuable things
to say on the theology of God.

* * * * *

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187

The growing scepticism about the existence of angels is not so much
due to new arguments that have been brought forward to disprove their
existence as to a failure to see that they have any relevance for the contemporary Christian. Fr. van der Hart makes an honest effort to come
to grips with this problem. He suggests that angels still have a real
(though marginal) relevance for Christian life as representatives of the
sphere of the sacred that man spontaneously recognizes as enfolding his
life.
The last chapter is particularly interesting. However, one is surprised
to find no reference to the development of the theology of angels in the
Christian Church, the riches of which have been indicated by such scholars
as J. Danielou. Frequent and illuminating references are made to the
Jewish apocryphal writings, and the author is able to trace a growth
in the theology of angels right up to Christian times. But why stop
there? Has the Spirit ceased to be active in the Church after New
Testament times? Why, for example, give so much emphasis to the
angelology of the Book of Enoch, and omit all reference to the angelology
of Origen? And what of the teaching of the Church? To say (p. 10)
that the main text on the existence of angels is that of the Fourth Lateran
Council surely does not dispense one from taking into account other
important declarations of the magisterium, right down to Pius XII and
Paul VI. These criticisms may seem a little unfair, since it was perhaps
not the author's intention to give a complete theology of angels and
devils. But then why the misleading title?
The same criticism, in fact, could be made of a number of other books
in this series. They do not present us with " Theology Today " on the
topics in question but rather with certain aspects of these topics. This
book would have been more aptly entitled " The Pre- Theology of Angels
and Devils."
ANTHONY MORRIS, O.P.
NoEL MoLLOY, O.P.
St. Charles' Seminary
N agpur, India

A Rejoinder to Armand A. Maurer's Review of The Thomism of Etienne
Gilson. A Critical Study by JoHN M. QUINN.
The task of a reviewer is a demanding one. It is particularly so when
the work analyzed challenges views to which the reviewer is himself
committed. For then the most scrupulous balance and objectivity are
called for with respect to both the work under immediate scrutiny and the
positions under attack. It may be questioned whether in his review of

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Fr. John Quinn's book, The Thomism of Etienne Gilson, (The Thomist,
April, 1978) Fr. Armand Maurer meets these requirements. In general,
he does not adequately and justly present the criticisms made by Fr.
Quinn, nor does he adequately and justly present the views disputed by
Fr. Quinn. All this our rejoinder will make clear as we follow the order
used by Fr. Maurer.
1. Christian Philosophy. (i) On the question of the autonomous status
of Gilson's Christian philosophy Fr. Maurer first simply restates what
Fr. Quinn, along with others, takes to be a confusion in Gilson and
ignores the salient features of Fr. Quinn's critique. That critique, Fr.
Maurer holds, is rooted in a failure to grasp Gilson's claim that the
Christian philosophy of St. Thomas is " a part of theology,'' to be used
for " theological purposes." In fact, it is precisely to this claim that Fr.
Quinn objects, noting that such a " philosophy " is not philosophy at all
but theology; that this " philosophy " must be distinguished from genuine
philosophy, i.e., speculation specifically independent of theology; and that
viciously abstracting this " part of theology " from its theological framework and misnaming it are not enough to transmute it into philosophy;
however truncated at Gilson's hands, it remains theology. To bolster his
point Fr. Maurer then presents, in utterly misleading fashion, a remark from Gilson that any philosophy is Christian if it "considers the
Christian revelation as an indispensable auxiliary to reason." But what
is at issue here is the reverse: Gilson's teaching that Christian philosophy
is reason absorbed into the scheme of revelation to serve as its auxiliary.
(ii) Fr. Maurer objects to the use of the model of mathematical physics
as a way of understanding Gilson's view of the relation between philosophy
and theology, denying that, "as the author claims," it is found in Gilson.
But Fr. Quinn makes no such claim, for he simply offers it as one interpretation of Gilson's ambiguously stated intent and offers another interpretation
that Fr. Maurer chooses to disregard. (iii) Fr. Maurer rejects the assertion
of Fr. Quinn that Gilson endows St. Thomas, in his role of commentator
on Aristotle, " with the narrow textual method and withdrawn posture
of a modern scholar," citing as proof Gilson's words that commenting on
Aristotle was for St. Thomas " a study of philosophy in depth and in its
manifold disciplines." (The Philosopher and Theology, p. 198) However,
Fr. Maurer neither mentions nor cites the far more decisive passage in
Gilson on which Fr. Quinn bases this judgment. In that passage Gilson
states that, "as Aristotle's expositor," Thomas, among other things, "is
a polytheist," posits " no divine providence with respect to singulars,"
and holds to " no personal immortality of the soul " (Elements of Christian
Philosophy, p. fl8fl, n. 6). Nor does Fr. Maurer even allude to the passages
from various commentaries that Fr. Quinn offers by way of countering
Gilson's views.
fl. Metaphysics and Philosophy. (i) It is Fr. Quinn's claim that Gilson

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189

has effectively reduced theoretical philosophy to metaphysics by stripping
natural philosophy of its proper functions and assigning them either to
metaphysics or to modern physics. On Gilson's reckoning finality, e.g.,
is a strictly metaphysical issue, and the whole domain of nature is consigned
to the physicist and biologist. Fr. Quinn documents this in part by showing
that Gilson in quasi-Wolffian fashion inverts the natural order of learning.
Fr. Maurer's way of confuting this is to assert that " Gilson follows St.
Thomas's pedagogical order, placing mathematics first, followed by the
philosophy of nature, ethics, and finally metaphysics." True, we do find
Aquinas's littera on this order in n. 3 of Gilson's Thomas Aquinas and our
Colleagues, but in his corresponding text Gilson, instead of expressly endorsing this order, replaces the philosopher of nature with the physicist,
leaving metaphysics as sole representative of theoretical philosophy. More
important, we might ask where Gilson actually proceeds in accordance with
this order. Elements of Christian Philosophy passes up a golden opportunity to use it and instead offers the standard Gilsonian theologicalmetaphysical order (God, being, man, society) that places psychology and
ethics after metaphysics. (ii) Fr. Maurer deals with neither part of Fr.
Quinn's argument proper concerning the empty role assigned the philosophy
Fr.
of nature by Gilson. In The Philosopher and Theology (p.
Quinn notes, Gilson hands over the communia naturalium, the Thomistic
domain of philosophy of nature, to the modern physicist. As late as 1969
Gilson was still implicitly invoking the Bergsonian distinction between
metaphysics or philosophy and modern science: " Pour le philosophe la
nature est ce que le physicien et le biologiste disent qu'elle est " (Linguistique et philosophie, p. 10). As for the imperialism of metaphysics with
regard to the philosophy of nature, Fr. Quinn quotes among others a
passage from God and Philosophy (p. 140, n. 19) in which finality in nature
is accorded a metaphysical status. Design in organisms " lies outside the
nature of their physico-chemical elements," so that " it transcends the
physical order; hence it is transphysical, that is, metaphysical, in its own
right." Nothing, let it be observed, is said of that finality, that natural
appetite in form and matter, which is the proper concern of the natural
philosopher. Significantly, Fr. Maurer makes no attempt at all to show
where Gilson's scheme maintains the integrity of philosophy of nature.
(iii) In answer to an apparent charge of Fr. Quinn that in Gilson's
teaching being is empirically unascertainable Fr. Maurer quotes part of
a sentence from Gilson to the effect that the metaphysician draws his
data from sense perception. However, sentence and context in Fr. Quinn
show that he was objecting to Gilson's view (expressed in
(pp.
Being and Some Philosophers, p.x: being "can only be seen- or overlooked ") that the being studied in metaphysics is empirically ascertainable.
Fr. Maurer compounds th1s misreading of Fr. Quinn with a peculiar neglect
of Gilson's assertions, for just prior to the l)ortion that Fr. Maurer quotes

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Gilson correctly remarks, " ... its object (being) should be grasped beyond
sense and imagination" (Thomas Aquinas and our Colleagues). This, of
course, clashes with his stand in Being and Some Philosophers (as it does
with the teaching found in The Spirit of Thomism, p. 66: "We know
existence by seeing, touching or hearing it) , but the obligation to cite ;t
is clear. (iv) Against Fr. Quinn's claim that Gilson reduces theoretical
philosophy to metaphysics Fr. Maurer argues that Gilson distinguishes
philosophy of art from metaphysics. For one thing, this reply presupposes
that Gilson is wholly consistent in this regard. Apart from this, we might
well ask whether any Thomist would view a theory of art, a theory of
productive activity, as properly speculative.
3. Cognitive Existentialism.
(i) While remaining silent about Fr.
Quinn's thorough counter-analysis of Gilson's view that existence is inconceivable, Fr. Maurer finds fault with Fr. Quinn's claim that Gilson has
a "fondness for metaphysical intuition " and notes Gilson's explicit denial
of any intellectual intuition, particularly that of being. Oddly, Fr. Maurer
once more scissors out part of a quotation. Fr. Quinn speaks of Gilson's
" fondness for metaphysical intuition or its equivalent." One or the other
is surely found here: the human mind " goes straight to what is perhaps
the very core of reality" (Being and Some Philosophers, p. fl01). And
in a passage already noted from the same book: being " can only be
seen-or overlooked." The Spirit of Thomism (p. 67) tells us: the common
man is " usually right when it comes to fundamental intuitions concerning
the very essence of reality." (ii) The last sentence from Gilson would,
one might think, give Fr. Maurer pause before chiding Fr. Quinn for
speaking of esse as "a form of reality." Like Gilson in this one passage,
and as he explicitly notes, Fr. Quinn apples "quiddity" and "form" only
in a broad sense to existence, with the reminder that existence is really the
act of the form or the nature. It is only fair to note that Aquinas was not
himself squeamish about treating existence in terms of form. Thus we find:
"existence itself is the most formal of all things" (Summa Theol, I, q. 7,
a. 1). And: "Existence is more intimate in any one thing and deeper in
all since it is formal as regards all those that are in a thing" (ibid., q. 8,
a. 1). Even more to the point are these words from De Pot., 7, 2, ad 9,
cited by Gilson in Le Thomisme, 6th edition, p. 176, n.54: "esse ... est
aliud secundum essentiam ab eo cui additur determinandum."
Gilson's
comment is: "On notera ici l'energie de !'expression."
4. Ways to God. (i) Far from missing "the thrust of Gilson's distinction between the first and second ways based on the difference between
moving and efficient cause " Fr. Quinn shows that, as Gilson inconsistently
admits, Aquinas never tolerated such a distinction; he then gives four
reasons for doubting that the first way formally appeals to finality. (ii) Fr.
Maurer contends that, after disputing Gilson's account of how a thing
can move itself, Fr. Quinn offers the same account. This is a puzzling

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comment. Fr. Quinn explicitly accepts the (rather standard) view of
self-motion as based on one part's moving another but questions the
mechanics of the illustration offered by Gilson, and, apropos of Gilson's
presentation of self-motion as " this impossible thing " that " seems to be
happening," observes that this is a strange way to explain the reality in
question. (iii) Fr. Maurer dismisses the charge that Gilson founds the
third way " not upon physical possibles but abstract metaphysical notions
of possibility and necessity " and points out that Gilson sees the proof as
starting from " the visible fact that certain things are born and others
die" (Elements of Christian Philosophy, p. 72). But a convenient ellipsis
spares Fr. Maurer from recording that it is Gilson himself who identifies
the visible facts with the abstract notions: " For him (Aquinas), to start
from possibility and necessity, two supremely abstract notions, really
means to start from the visible fact that certain things are born and others
die." Fr. Quinn, on the other hand, insists upon a distinction between
the absolute possible and the physical possible and holds that it is upon
the latter that the third way is based.
A final point. We are told by Fr. Maurer that had Fr. Quinn studied
the 6th edition of Le Thomisme we would have been spared some of his
misinterpretations. Unfortunately no instance is given of a " misinterpretation " that such a study would have forestalled. Thus the main lines of
Fr. Quinn's critique of Gilson's Thomism remain substantially unanswered.
JOHN

Marquette University
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

D. BEACH