FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY AND THE DYNAMICS OF CONVERSION I N ONE of his better known essays, Bernard Lonergan points out that theology is entering a new age and cannot continue to be what it has been since the sixteenth century.1 Whereas it used to be a deductive science resting on premises taken from Scripture and church documents, it has become a predominantly empirical discipline, resting on data, which have to be interpreted by complex processes and techniques. This new theology, if it is not to be the dupe of every fashion, needs a new foundation. In seeking such a foundation, Lonergan, building on the analogy with other empirical disciplines, concludes that it is possible for a science to have identity and unity even though all its laws and conclusions are subject to revision. What the scientist relies on ultimately is his method. By method Lonergan means a set of recurrent and related operations leading to cumulative and progressive results. Although methodology can to some extent be set forth in explicit rules, mastery of method requires long experience of the way the science operates. Each science is a particular dynamic way of generating knowledge. Applying these principles to theology, Lonergan then points out that the empirical theology of today is a reflection on religion. The foundation is not a set of objective statements but rather the subjective reality of the persons who reflect upon their religious experience, and especially upon the basic process we call conversion. 2 Conversion, for Lonergan, means a radical 1 B. J. F. Lonergan, "Theology in Its New Context," A Second Collection (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1974), pp. 55-67. •Elsewhere Lonergan states: "As oonversion is basic to Christian living, so an objectification of conversion provides theology with its foundations," Method in Theology (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972), p. 130. 175 176 AVERY DULLES, S.J. shift in a person's apprehensions and values, accompanied by a similar radical change in oneself, in one's relations with other persons, and in one's relations to God. The subject of theology, then, is the person undergoing conversion to God. Conversion, as an ongoing process, is for Lonergan correlative with living religion. Reflection on conversion, he contends, can supply the new theology with the foundation it needs-a foundation which is concrete, dynamic, personal, communal, and historical. Religious conversion manifestly possesses each of these five properties. My aim, in the present essay, is not to analyze the nature of theology in general but rather to reflect upon the aims and methods of a single specialization, fundamental theology. The notion of fundamental theology is much controverted in recent literature. Some authors seem to look upon it as a kind of philosophy of religion; some as a strictly rational apologetic for Christianity; some as a generalized reflection on the categories of religious discourse, and some as an introduction to theological method. Karl Rahner has distinguished between " fundamental theology " and a " formal theology of foundations "; and then again he has made a distinction between both of these disciplines, it would appear, and what he calls a" firstlevel reflection" on Christian faith. 3 I have no desire to dispute the terminology of Rahner or any other authority, but I intend in these pages to set forth, as simply as I can, my own conception of fundamental theology as a reflection on the structures of religious conversion and, more specifically, those of conversion to Christianity. * * * The assignment of the fundamental theology, as I understand it, is to show how the decision to become a Christian can be a responsible exercise of human freedom. In order to carry out this assignment, I shall contend, the theologian will 3 K. Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith (New York: Seabury, 1978), pp. 8-14. See also his article, "Formale und fundamentale Theologie," LTK 9 4:!'l05-6. FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY AND CONVERSION 177 have to adopt categories of thinking which would not be available apart from revelation and faith. He will have to look on reality empathetically from the believer's point of view and to experience faith, as it were, from within. Christian faith, in my estimation, cannot be justified by public criteria offered in common human experience. It might be thought that by linking fundamental theology with conversion I am limiting the scope of the discipline so that it deals only with the initial approach to faith on the part of one who has hitherto been a nonbeliever. I would argue, however, that conversion is a continuous process demanded at every stage of the Christian life, and that fundamental theology is therefore of existential import to all believers. Being a Christian is not a static condition, for no believer has faith fully and securely in hand. Christianity, as Spren Kierkegaard well knew, is something to which we are constantly called, and the response to that call demands that we be ever and again extricated from the unbelief that threatens to engulf us. The concept of fundamental theology just proposed will gain in clarity if contrasted with another, more familiar to most Roman Catholics. Fundamental theology is traditionally defined as that discipline which seeks to demonstrate the credibility of the Christian message and of the Church's claims by the unaided light of reason. This project, it seems to me, is flawed in three respects. First, this discipline, by calling for demonstration, reflects a rationalistic understanding of reason as a faculty that possesses within itself, independently of experience, the principles needed to deduce unassailable conclusions. As I shall later contend, reason always operates within a fiducial framework. I accept John Henry Newman's thesis that creative intellectual achievements are never attained or justified by way of deduction or explicit proof. Second, the standard fundamental theology is unrealistic insofar as it demands that the proofs be constructed by the light of reason alone, without the illumination of divine grace. 17'8 AVERY DULLES, S.J. This seems to me to be an artificial distinction, inapplicable in practice. The presence or absence of grace can never be verified by empirical tests. We never have the right to assume that our reason is operating by a purely natural light. To the Christian theologian it seems far more probable that reason, whenever it seriously engages itself with religious questions, is motivated by a God-given attraction to the salvation which theology understands as God's gift to us in Jesus Christ. That motivation affects the way in which questions are posed and in which evidence is assessed. Fundamental theology, if it is to consider what human reason actually does in reflecting on religious questions, must investigate the dynamics of a power that is open to the attraction and illumination of grace. The theologian cannot agree in advance to throw away what is, to his mind, the key to the phenomenon under investigation. Third, the standard definition fails to elucidate what is meant by a demonstration of credibility. This involves either too much or too little, according to whether or not it implies that the truth of Christianity must be positively demonstrated. If reason alone can achieve this demonstration, then faith would seem to be superfluous; it could at most reduplicate what reason can do without it. If fundamental theology has to stop short of establishing the truth of the Christian faith, it fails to show the rationality of the decision by which one decides to embrace it, for it seems unreasonable to commit oneself decisively to that which is probably false. In asserting that fundamental theology must study not only the preambles of faith but the dynamics of faith itself, I deliberately set out to pierce the supposedly impermeable wall between reason and faith. I hold that reason is at work not only in the approach to faith, but in the very act of conversion, and indeed in all the mental activity of the believer. Fundamental theology necessarily operates within the circle of faith, for the Christian believer cannot conceive of authentic religious conversion apart from the gracious self-communication of God and the gift of faith, which is known only from within the FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY AND CONVERSION 179 faith-commitment. To attempt any explanation of Christian faith ·which draws only upon data derivable from universal experience is to foreclose the very possibility of a satisfactory account of faith. To persons untouched by a grace-filled Christian experience, I submit, Christian faith can only appear as exorbitant and irrational. At best, it would be dismissed as an overcommitment. * * * In what follows I shall reflect on the process of conversion in two phases, which I distinguish for purposes of orderly presentation, although in actual practice the two are concurrent and mutually interdependent. I shall speak of conversion first from the standpoint of the individual who comes to a decision of faith and second from the standpoint of the believing community which mediates the action of God bringing about conversion. While pastoral theology commonly treats of the second phase, it has been generally neglected by fundamental theology. To study faith as though it were a purely individual decision, uninfluenced by the impact of the community of faith, would be as foolish as to try to account for marriage by an investigation of a solitary individual, without regard for the interaction between the two prospective partners. Fundamental theology, I suggest, must ask not only how we get to God but how God comes to us. It must maintain a theological as well as an anthropological focus. J_,ooking at the process of becoming a Christian from the first of these two standpoints, I would insist that it must be seen as conversion. This term, as we have already seen, with Lonergan's help, signifies not just a change or development but a radical transformation, involving a transvaluation of all values. The convert apprehends differently, says Lonergan, because he has become different. 4 Michael Polanyi likewise describes conversion as a self-modifying act whereby one passes to a radically new way of seeing things. He speaks of the con•"Theology in Its New Context," p. 66. 180 AVERY DULLES, S.J. version needed to accept an irreducibly new scientific theory, such as those of Freud, Eddington, Rhine, and Lysenko. 5 The justification of religious faith presents problems similar to those encountered in justifying a scientific revolution. 6 The new outlook is not simply deducible from, or reducible to, anything knowable outside the framework it provides. It is separated by a logical gap from any other faith or ideology. No one who has not undergone a conversion is in a position to affirm that the conversion is an authentic one. And the believer, in making this affirmation, is expressing his or her own faith. Any conversion, religious or other, is problematic. It may be asked on what grounds the process and the resulting act of faith are held to be responsible rather than blind or arbitrary. Before giving my own answer to this question I should like to mention two solutions which seem to me to be inadequate. One group of theologians, perhaps including Lonergan himself, seems to hold that conversion occurs not in the very acceptance of the Christian message but in a more fundamental act of faith which is made possible by an interior gift of grace accessible even to the unevangelized. In order to have an experience of grace, or of the love of God poured forth into our hearts, these theologians would say, one does not need to have heard the gospel or the name of Jesus Christ. An accepting response to the workings of grace, as we experience these in our own lives, is or includes an act of divine and saving faith. Christian belief, in this perspective, is viewed as a particular thematization of the basic transcendental conversion, and hence not as requiring a new conversion for its acceptance. This theory of basic or transcendental faith in my opinion contains much truth. I personally hold that the grace of God is at work everywhere, and that a fundamental act of saving faith is within reach of every human being. But I am also 5 M. Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (New York: Harper Torchbooks ed., 1964), pp. 150-51. 6 Cf. T. 8. Knhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2nd ed., 1970). FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY AND CONVERSION 181 convinced that the gospel message, with its good news of what God has actually done for us in Christ, adds something which basically alters the structure of faith itself. Christianity tells us what we could never have spun out of our own private consciousness, namely that God has appeared on earth in the person and career of Jesus of Nazareth. The gospel enables us to relate to God in a new way, thanking and trusting him because of what he has actually done for us in the incarnate life, death, and resurrection of his Son. Those theologians who treat faith simply as a transcendental experience of God, taking place in the inwardness of the human spirit, tend to minimize the historical element in the Christian religion and to overlook the crucial role of mediation through the living community of faith. I conclude, therefore, that to come to Christian faith from any other stance, even from the theistic faith of Judaism, is a radically new discovery requiring that kind of heuristic process here described as conversion. The early Christians, in controversy with the Jews, appealed to the Hebrew scriptures as proof texts, but in fact they were reading these Scriptures in a new way, in the light of the Christ-event, and hence were not giving deductive or syllogistic arguments. The Old Testament, indeed, teaches us to look in history for the work of a God who loves and saves, but the Christian interpretation of the Old Testament is a "new hermeneutic " which takes its starting point in the Christ event as the key to the meaning of the Scriptures rather than interpreting Jesus in the framework of the previously accepted Jewish categories. A second school of fundamental theologians, at the opposite extreme, speak as though Christian conversion could be effected by demonstrative reasoning from historically accessible facts. This position corresponds to what I have already described as the traditional fundamental theology. In the early modern period, from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth, apologetics, in a deluded quest for objectivity, sought to establish the credibility of the Christian religion by means of historical proofs. Any reasonable man, it contended, looking at the data 182 AVERY DULLES, S.J. of history, would be obliged to admit that God had authenticated the prophets, Jesus Christ, and the Christian Church by prophecies and miracles. From this it followed that the Christian religion must be accounted a true revelation. This positivistic approach was unsuccessful because it oversimplified the process of establishing the existence of fulfilled prophecies and miracles, including the resurrection of Jesus. As Hume conclusively showed, the academic historian, without the guiding light of religious presuppositions, will look upon error or deception in the accounts as far more likely than the actual occurrence of events such as the resurrection of a dead body. Since the end of the nineteenth century, a host of Christian apologists have pointed out the inadequacies of the positivist approach. Henri Bouillard speaks for this newer tendency when he writes: "No historical proof could suffice to establish that these facts [i.e., miracles] manifest the presence of God and the advent of his Kingdom, unless these are spiritually discerned from the standpoint of a personal commitment." 7 Mere facts, viewed in the perspectives of positivistic historiography, would be incapable of bringing about a conversion. For positivistic historiography has its own principles which prevent it from acknowledging any such thing as a divine activity in history. The decision of faith, therefore, must rest on a conversion process in which the data of history function in a different manner, still to be described. Granted the insufficiency of the two approaches just outlined, 'vYe are left with the apparent irrationality of the decision of faith. If it cannot be grounded either in a commonly accessible transcendental faith or in rationally demonstrable historical events, how can conversion be distinguished from a blind and irrational leap into the dark? How can authentic faith be distinguished from fanaticism or delusion? One may begin by retorting the objection against the objector. How does the nonChristian justify the nonacceptance 7 " De l'apologetique Les QuatTI! Flr:uW3 1 a la tMologie fondamentale," Dieii connu en Jesus Christ, Ed. du eeuil, 1973), 57-70, P· 69, FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY AND CONVERSION 188 of the Christian message? Careful scrutiny, I believe, can make it apparent that every intellectual stance, including all religions and all secular ideologies, rests upon a multitude of unspecifiable and unverifiable assumptions, and in that sense may be called a " faith." Agnosticism is itself a faith, insofar as it implies the assertion that we lack the capacity to attain sure knowledge about the transcendent. Although one may hold with Locke that it is unreasonable to be certain of anything about which we lack immediate evidence or demonstrative knowledge, this very principle is itself an act of faith, incapable of being made immediately evident or of being demonstrated from what is immediately evident. In point of fact, every worldview, including positivism and skepticism, rests upon a matrix of presuppositions too complex and subtle for enumeration, let alone for proof. As Polanyi shows at length, no intelligence can operate outside a fiduciary framework. 8 Whenever we judge or decide, we commit ourselves to something which could conceivably be false. Everybody, then, operates on some faith or other, and each faith is, in the nature of the case, incapable of being cogently proved. In real life choice is between rival faiths, and there is no neutral ground from which to adjudicate their opposite claims, for every set of criteria itself presupposes some faith or other. Alternative systems, in religion as in the sciences, threaten each other, since the unbelief of people whom we respect imperils our own convictions. Each faith therefore propagates itself by seeking to win converts. It must overcome or die. Practically speaking, however, there are norms which operate even in the case of conversion. Most people do have some criteria which serve as a rule of thumb for choosing among conflicting creeds. Some of these rules are so basic that they are almost inseparable from the inherent structures of the human mind. For example, few if any of us would defend a conviction that arose through simple inattention to data, so that it could be corrected by closer attention. Without fearing con8 Personal Knowledge, p. Q66 et passim. 184 AVERY DULLES, S.J. tradiction from others whose judgment we respect, we can reject certain systems as incoherent, superstitious, or fraudulent. But, having eliminated what is manifestly illusory and unhelpful, we are left with a number of systems of acknowledged competence-those which are regarded as credible and enlightening by people whose judgment we esteem. At a second stage in selecting a faith for ourselves, I submit, we employ practical or pragmatic criteria. We eliminate as personally unacceptable those creeds which, in our estimation, would fail to enhance the quality of our lives. While the question of higher or lower quality cannot be mechanically measured, most of us would agree that qualities such as charity, joy, peace, patience and the like are preferable to their opposites. To one who has experienced them, these qualities are self-validating. St. Paul made use of criteria such as these in instructing the Galatians regarding the kind of conduct that befitted Christians (Gal 5: 22) . Similar criteria, I believe, can be applied to the choice between rival faiths. We are rightly inclined to accept a faith whi('h promises to bring openness, generosity, mutual concern, and freedom to individuals and to the social body. We shy away from faiths that seem to foster hatred, misery, narrowness, violence, anger, impatience, and the like. Still a third set of criteria focuses on those benefits which we expect specifically from a religion. People turn to religion, if at all, because they are looking for an escape from their situation of guilt and alienation and from the ever-present menace of death. Further, they expect religion to shed light on questions of ultimate meaning and to provide a coherent set of purposes and values for their lives. The religions differ notably from one another in their ability to furnish or credibly promise these benefits. A shift from one religion to another is frequently motivated by a judgment regarding the relative capacities of the two faiths to offer these specifically religious values. In short, we may say that the chief criterion for a viable religious faith is its ability, or apparent ability, to satisfy those FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY AND CONVERSION 185 hungers of the human spirit which cannot be satisfied apart from faith. The concrete experience of these hungers will vary from person to person and from culture to culture; but there seems to be a generic huma.n drive to be known, valued, and loved; to be drawn into communion with others; to be delivered from death and from the threat of final absurdity. A faith which offers even a provisional glimpse of ultimate meaning and abiding value will normally have great power to attract believers. Christians are convinced that the perception of God obtainable through Jesus Christ is able to provide these benefits more effectively than any other faith. * * * Thus far I have spoken as though conversion were the achievement of the solitary individual, dispassionately pondering the claims of different faiths and ideologies, which come into view as potential objects of choice. I have not shown how such deliberation brings rubout what Lonergan and others refer to as a conversion, a total transformation of the very person who accepts the faith in question. This aspect of conversion can better be seen if we begin at the other end of the process and ask how it is that God brings a potential believer to the point of personal transformation. For it is certain that the kind of transformation required by religious conversion, if it is to be authentic, must be the work of God. We cannot convert ourselves by our own unaided powers. Looking at this process from the point of view of faith, the Christian theologian will have good reason to suppose that God operates immediately in the depths of the human psyche, arousing selfless love, boundless hope, patience and gratitude of a kind that simply cannot be accounted for by any set of contingent circumstances. By responding to interior graces of this kind, a person may be raised to a very high degree of personal perfection. In this way an unevangelized person may be brought to a kind of nonobjective or transcendental faith, deserving of the utmost respect. 186 AVERY DULLES, S.J. In the present paper, however, I am concerned with the process by which people are brought to explicit Christian faith, that is to say, to an acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Such a conversion, as is evident, commonly occurs through the ministry of the Church, which as a community of faith brings the message and the person of Christ within reach of potential believers. The Church makes its impact through committed testimony and through the symbolic embodiment of that testimony in the lives of Christians. Let me briefly touch on each of these two styles of impact. It can scarcely be doubted that testimony, and indeed verbal testimony, plays an essential role in the transmission of Christian faith. For, as we have already noted, Christianity is an essentially historical religion. It looks upon a certain man, a certain series of events, at a certain time and place in the rather distant past, as the primary mediator of the message of salvation. No one can profess Jesus Christ as Savior, as incarnate Son, and as risen Lord, without dependence on Christian proclamation, either oral or written. How does the proclaimed word bring about conversion? Words can be used to convey information, but mere information does not convert; it simply fits into previously existing thought categories, or if it fails to do so, it is ordinarily rejected as false. Words can also •be used for discursive argumentation; but argument, even though it may convince, does not convert, for it necessarily appeals to the premises and presuppositions of the persons to whom the argument is directed. In inducing a person to accept a new faith, we have to dispose our hearer to accept new categories of thought and speech which previously seemed strange and incomprehensible. Religious testimony is singularly well suited to achieve this precise effect. As an expression of personal conviction, testimony draws its power from its appeal to the trustworthiness of the speaker. Any believer who proclaims a definite faith engages himself as a witness to what he affirms; he guarantees by his person the integrity and soundness of the message. To FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY AND CONVERSION 187 accept the testimony is to accept the witness as a person; to reject it, conversely, is to reject the witness as a person. When we bear witness to our religious faith we make an offer of friendship; we expose what is most intimate and vulnerable in ourselves, most subject to ridicule and rejection. Trustingly we invite others to enter into a personal communion of shared faith, a communion constituted by a network of interpersonal relations. Whoever accepts such religious testimony becomes a member of a new community and is changed as a person by that very fact. In the light of these considerations we can easily see how religious testimony paves the way for conversion. In order to be genuinely open to the testimony of another, the hearer must put aside any natural tendency to judge and criticize the message according to a previously given set of expectations. The responsive listener, out of love and respect for the person of the witness, will seek to enter the latter's cognitive perspectives, to see the world from the witness's point of view. Through empathy it will be possible for the hearer to imagine what reality must look like to the speaker, and this vision, once grasped, may seem far more attractive than anything the hearer could have conceived apart from this testimony. Fundamental theology, therefore, cannot neglect the crucially important factor of testimony. It must grapple with the difficult problem of drawing the line between credible and incredible testimony. Since religious testimony has the power to upset our expectations, we must beware of setting up rigid criteria, such as those conventionally used by academic history and by courts of law, both of which necessarily operate by rules which apply to common and repeatable situations. Still, criteria there are. The more extraordinary and unexpected the message, the more guarantees we normally demand from the witness. Where a claim to divine revelation is made, the criteria are similar to those already outlined for the choice of a religion. On the one hand, we must consider whether the message is evidently absurd or whether it can be explained away as simple confusion, 188 A VERY DULLES, S.J. legend, fraud, or the like. On the other hand, we must consider whether the message has illuminative and transformative power, whether it brings promise of reconciliation with God, and does whatever else a divine revelation is supposed to do. As regards the witnesses, we shall seek evidence of their sincerity, their competence, their conviction, and the importance they attach to their message. We shall ask whether their testimony is corroborated by a plurality of independent witnesses. We shall also look to see what effects the message has had on the lives of those who already believe it. Are they more generous, joyful, open, and courageous than nonbelievers? H so, we shall have reason to suspect that by believing them we might ourselves achieve a richer and better life. Because testimony is intimately connected with the person of the witness, credib1e testimony is never a mere matter of words. This is especially the case with testimony to religious faith, which touches the person at the deepest level. A witness to a revelation is not credible without being at least in some measure transformed by the message itself. If we are to bear effective witness to Jesus as risen Savior we must be joyful, hopeful and courageous; otherwise it will be apparent that our faith is not deeply and sincerely held. On the other hand, even a faith that is rather weakly held can be impressive in its own way. The most important thing will be the hearer's estimation of what effects the message would be capable of having on one who did fully accept it. Most Christian missionaries hold forth the examples of Christ and the saints, and are reluctant to propose themselves as examples of what Christian faith can do for people. Christianity propagates itself, then, not only by explicit, or verbal, testimony, but even more importantly by implicit, or factual, testimony-that is, by the testimony of transformed lives. In the measure in which faith is truly accepted, its adherents become living symbols of the creed they profess. The power of salvation takes over their existence and shines forth in their persons and in their actions. Such a transformation is FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY AND CONVERSION 189 particularly impressive when it is beyond expectation and when it defies the general patterns of human behavior. Paul was able to claim for himself that the life of Jesus was manifest in him, even when he was being given over to death for Jesus's sake (2 Cor 4: 7-11). A peace which is not troubled even amid danger and afiliction can be a potent reminder of the transcendent power of divine grace. The rationalistic apologetics of recent centuries was perhaps misguided in its attempts to prove that miracles were antecedently possible. If miracles could fit into the framework of what we already regarded as possible, they would be powerless to effect a conversion. The whole point of miracles, if one may put it in this way, is that they are beyond what we would have deemed possible. They shake us up and bewilder us, so that we acknowledge that our previous horizons were too narrow. The possibility of miracles, if it can be established at all, can only be established in the light of the conviction that miracles have occurred. :Miracles, moreover, are most convincing when intrinsically connected with the message they accredit. The miracles of Jesus were not mere proofs that whatever he said should be believed; they were a way of telling his audience that the Kingdom he proclaimed was already being inaugurated. They were a kind of visible word. In the course of its history, Christianity has relied less on physical miracles, which are relatively remote from its message, than on the moral miracle of transformed lives. Such lives visibly embody the salvation which verbal proclamation promises and describes. In order to complete the line of thought in which we are presently engaged, it would be necessary to engage in some consideration of symbol. Symbol, as understood in contemporary religious thought, might be described as a sign which embodies a message and manifests the presence of the reality it signifies. A symbol, unlike a mere sign, communicates by inviting people to participate in what the symbol means, to inhabit the world which the symbol opens up, and thereby to discover new horizons, with new values and goals. Symbols, therefore, do something to us. They shift our center of aware- 190 AVERY DULLES, S.J. ness, and thereby change our perspectives and values. Symbols, therefore, have the kind of transformative power that is needed for conversion to come about. Without symbols, no revelation could be effectively communicated. The message concerning Jesus Christ, then, must not only be spoken or written. It must also be symbolically enfl.eshed in actual life. This happens, to a greater or lesser extent, in the Church, and every church is under judgment to the extent that it fails to incarnate the gospel in its actual practice. The successful proclamation of Christianity does not require, in the first instance, a better theory of apologetics. It does require that Christians be seriously committed to their faith, so as to make the churches living and corporate signs of the presence of Christ in the world. According to many contemporary ecclesiologists, with whom I align myself, the Church, in its basic reality, is a symbol or sacrament of Christ. For the Christian believer the translation of the gospel into practice is not something extra, over and above the process of conversion. It is part and parcel of the conversion itself. As I have repeatedly insisted, conversion is not a mere change of ideas or objectives. More fundamentally, it is a transformation of the person who is converted. The believer becomes a different being. The convert acquires a new identity, a new self, and for this reason it is customary for Christian converts, in baptism, to take a new name-a Christian name, signifying this new identity. The new identity is one that each Christian shares with others. It is the corporate identity of the Christian community, into which the individual is integrated as an extension of his own self. He sees and hears no longer with his own eyes and ears alone, but with those of the Church to which he now belongs. He thinks its thoughts and it thinks in him. His faith is a participation in the faith of the Church, to which he submits as the rule of his own believing. He knows what the community knows, not with mere spectator knowledge, whereby one gazes at something, but by an inner familiarity, through FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY AND CONVERSION 191 indwelling, somewhat as we know our own bodies. The more completely the believer dwells in the community of faith and relies upon it, the more lively will be his sense of the Christian faith, and the better will he be able to discern what is and is not consonant with faith. The more he makes the faith of the community his own, the better will he be able to see the deficiencies in the ways that Christians have previously expressed their faith, and the more creative he will be in adapting Christian doctrine and symbolism to new and unprecedented situations. Paradoxically, commitment to the Church is a normal prerequisite for competently criticizing the Church. In these last paragraphs I have passed quite deliberately from the individual to the ecclesial dimension of conversion. I would insist that no Christian conversion is complete unless it situates the convert solidly within the community of faith. But it is equally important not to stop with the ecclesial. The Church does not subsist in itself, nor is it intelligible in itself. It subsists in Christ. Christian initiation, therefore, is initiation into Christ, whose body the Church is. Baptism sacramentally symbolizes both a death to one's former self (the self of the isolated stranger) and a rebirth to new life in Christ, the life of the People of God. In the words of Paul, quoted by Lonergan in his essay on conversion, " If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away and, behold, the new has come " (2 Cor 5: 17) .9 The Christian already lives by faith in the transformed universe of the eschatological future. To extend this line of consideration to its logical conclusion we should not stop with Christ. We should have to discuss the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, who alone can account for the inner conviction with which Christians accept the person and teaching of Christ. The Spirit gives power and efficacy to Christian proclamation and arouses a positive response in the hearts of those who are called to believe. The full conviction of Christian faith is not achieved without both the outward and the inward testimony of the Holy Spirit. By reception of the Spirit 9 Cf. Lonergan, "Theology in Its New Context," p. 66. AVERY DULLES, S.J. the individual is incorporated into the Church, the Body of Christ. William James treated religious faith as though it were a hypothesis to account for certain peculiar experiences. At a certain point, when one is moving in a tentative way toward faith, one's religion may in fact be nothing more than a hypothesis. But so long as one looks upon it in this light one has not as yet been converted. A hypothesis is a tentative explanation which one is prepared to discard as soon as a better explanation is forthcoming. A religious faith, on the other hand, claims us totally, so that we are no longer in a position to discard it without loss of our new identity. As Polanyi remarks in answer to James, "a religion exists for us only if ... it carries us away. It is not in any sense a 'hypothesis'." 10 We do not so much grasp the faith as allow ourselves to be grasped by it, so that we are at its disposal rather than its being at ours. Our mind functions in a new way as God's thoughts break into it and possess it. It is possible, of course, for us to lose our faith, but such a loss, if we really had faith, would mean a shattering of our selfhood and of our world. * * * It may seem at this point that I have gone far beyond the proper limits of fundamental theology. If fundamental theology ought not to draw upon Christian doctrine, I have indeed transgressed the limits. But I hope that I have also succeeded in showing that the restriction is unwarranted, because it is quite impossible to account for Christian conversion, or to show the reasonableness of faith, in terms of merely human and created factors, and without reference to the Christian doctrine of God. The reasonableness can be sufficiently explained to the believer, but only from within the circle of faith. A nonChristian can see the coherence of the Christian explanation only if he or she is willing to accept the Christian doctrines in a hypothetical way, at least for purposes of the discussion. 10 \I). M. Polanyi and H. Prosch, Meaning (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1975), 180. FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY AND CONVERSION 193 If the basic thesis of this paper is correct, it is a mistake to attempt, with certain theologians, to make Christian conversion plausible on terms other than those of Christianity itself. Every effort to account for Christian faith without the powerful interventions of God's Word and God's Spirit is in the last analysis foredoomed to failure. Such efforts, although well intended, necessarily end by giving the impression that faith, insofar as it is specifically Christian, must be either a tenuous conjecture or a fanatical overcommitment. It may be possible to show a nonChristian why one might use Christian symbols as a way of talking about one's boundary experiences, but the use of Christian symbols is not yet an act of Christian faith. To justify Christian faith one would have to show that it is proper to believe, with the firmness of faith, that Jesus really is what the New Testament and the creeds say that He is. Fundamental theology, as I understand it, should not try to make Christian faith plausible to persons who have no experience of the gospel. It would be more to the point to show why the decision of Christian faith must seem irrational from a nonChristian perspective. Such a demonstration would have real value. The more reasonable faith is made to appear, by the standards of common human rationality, the less vividly does the Church-the community of faith-appear as a sign of revelation. Only if faith is allowed to manifest itself as the miracle it really is, and as a scandal to nonbelievers, can it shatter their preconceptions and lead them toward conversion. AVERY DULLES, S.J. The Catholic Unive1'Sity of Ame1ica Washington, D.C. THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THE THEOLOGIAN When freedom is really understood, it is not the power to be able to do this or that, but the power to decide about oneself and to actualize oneself.1 -Karl Rahner A OD DEAL OF the very best theological writing in the past few years has had to do with method in theology, the taSik of theology, and the relation of the theologian to the church. 2 I take these to be issues in fundamental theology or, perhaps better, issues fundamental to theology. The question raised here falls in the same arena: why and to what extent is self-reflection vital to theological reflection? In order to answer my question I must risk the charge that I am willing to return theology to a private and pietistic exercise, for I am convinced that some attempts, otherwise entirely praiseworthy, to support theology's public and academic character run the opposite risk of abstracting theology from its existential practice and conditions. I fear that theology Foundations of Christian Faith (New York: S.eabury Press, 1978), p. 88. •For important statements from a variety of perspeclives, see: P. Tillich, Systematic Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965) I; Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Seabury Press, 1972); Schubert Ogden, "The Task of Philosophical Theology" in Robert Evans, ed., The Future of Philosophical Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster PreGs, 19'71) pp. 55-84, and "What is Theology?" in Journal of Religion 44 (1978), pp. 22-•W; Van A. Harvey, "The Alienated Theologian," in Evans, pp. 113-148; David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order (New York: Seabury Press, 1975); Gordon Kaufman, An Essay on Theological Method (Missoula, Montana: Scholars' Press, 1973); John Connolly, "The Task of Theology," Proceedmgs of the Catholic Theological Society of America 29 (1974), pp. 1-58; Karl Rahner, "Reflections on Methodology in Theology," in Theological Investigations (New York: Seabury Press, 1974) 11:68-114; Robert Doran, Subject and Psyche: Ricoeui·, Jung, and the Search for Foundations (District of Columbia: University Press of America, 1977); Thomas Omen, " The Preunderstanding of the Theologian," read at the Karl Rahner Symposium, Marquette University, 1970. 1 194 THE SUB.TECTIVITY OF THE THEOLOGIAN 195 may become the speech of professors who do not realize that they are confessors as well. On the other hand, while I both recognize the ecclesial roots of theology and rejoice in its connection with and service to the ecclesial community, I am equally concerned that the roots and service not be taken to relieve theologians of personal and individual responsibility for believing what they believe and, especially, for unsparing criticism of it. I fear that theologians may become once again mere spokespersons for the ecclesial community and its liturgical and administrative leaders. The concern that dictates this essay, then, is that the theologian not evaporate in the cloud of demands on the part of the academy for abstraction from the personal conditions of faith and belief or in the cloud of the church's demands for the sacrifice of critical intelligence in its service. 3 This essay, therefore, is in part about the believing of the theologian. At the outset, however, I wish to make one point in order to avoid misunderstanding. Belief is in one important way absolutely unimportant to theology. 4 What I believe to 3 I think that theology answers for itself its questions on its methods, tasks, and relations with the church, including the relation between theology and beliefs. The assumption I made throughout this essay and nowhere herein argue is this: the intellectual autonomy of theology is inviolable just as it is in any other science or discipline. Theology is not subject to " authority " any more than is philosophy or philology. I am aware that this position has considerable implications for the theology of revelation and Catholic thrologies of church office and order. One of the concerns of this paper is to suggest that theology is nonetheless religious and to propose that its link to the church be other than that of authority and obedience. 4 The nature of belief and believing is itself a complex issue. I am taking belief here in a rather commonsensical and traditional sense, an assertion of a state of affairs which on.e thinks true but for which one does not have conclusive evidence. Whatever else need be said about religious beliefs, specifically such as noting their symbolic character, their mediating function with regard to faith and affectivity, their performative meaning, and so forth, I think that they are intended by believers to be cognitive as well. And, with regard to their cognitive function, I do not think that they are self-evidently true or self-validating, except in the sense in which William James claims that faith creates its own verification in action; see W. James, Essays on Faith cmd Morals (Ohio: Meridian Press, 1965), p. 96ff. For clarifying discussions of the distinctions between faith and beliefs, see Lonergan, "J3e)ief: Today's Issue" in A Second Collection, ed. F. Crowe (New York: Sea- 196 WILLIAM M. SHEA be true is not true because I believe it or because anyone else believes it. Neither my beliefs nor ·anyone else's can £unction as their own evidence. I may not be entirely clear precisely how the beliefs of the church should £unction in theology; indeed, I sometimes wonder about the very status of these beliefs. But I am clear that I may not argue in theological discussion that my belie£ or the church's belie£ grounds the truth 0£ belie£. Nothing is true because it is believed; rather, it is believed because one thinks it true. Theology, then, may be a search for the reasons that lead to and support belie£, that is, for the contextual intelligibility of beliefs. Theology cannot any longer, if it ever did, suppose that what is delivered is true because it is delivered. For example, for a variety 0£ reasons or " causes " I believe that Jesus 0£ Nazareth is physically no longer dead. I do not know this, but I believe it, and believing will exercise considerable influence on the way I think about the Christian message; so also shall my realization that I only believe it, do not know it, can be mistaken in both my belie£ and my interpretation of the Christian message. The fact of the matter, both for myself and as far as I can see £or Christian theology, is that Jesus is liable still to be dead. No effusion 0£ faith, no magisterial or homiletic rhetoric, no dogmatic pronouncement can eliminate this "fact of the matter." Whatever the certainty that the tradition ascribes to the "assent 0£ faith," a belief remains a belie£ and does not become knowledge in hac lacrymarum valle. Another example: I think that few 0£ us are in a position to make the judgment that God exists. Most 0£ us believe that God exists and hope so, but few 0£ us know so. Perhaps we are all dazzled-even convinced for a few moments--'by the proofs offered by those who seem to know God exists. 5 But when we turn from the book to the eerie landscapes 0£ Io or Titan, to bury Press, 1975), pp. 87-99; and Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Faith and Bdief (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979). 6 I am so dazzled and convinced whenever I read the 19th chapter of Lonergan's Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (New York: Philosophical Library, 1957). In my clearer moments I think my problem has to do with ai:i inadequate differentiation of consciousness. THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THE THEOLOGIAN 197 the horror of Aushwitz, to the world of pain within and without (none of which can counter transcendental arguments, of course), the dazzle dims and we know that we do not know. And when we know that we do not know, theology becomes a significantly different matter. I would never challenge the wisdom of Vatican I's declaration on the possibility of a knowledge of the existence of God, except to comment that I am glad that I myself can at least believe and hope. 6 To use Rahner's words: 7 Every answer is always just the beginning of a new question. Man experiences himself as infinite possibility because in practice and in theory he necessarily places every sought after result in question . . . Man is not the unquestioning and unquestioned infinity of reality. He is the question which rises up before him, empty, but really and inescapably, and which can never be settled and adequately answered by him. For myself at least, the "results " which must be questioned include every belief; and prominent among the questions which perhaps may never be settled I must place this one: " Is there an Unquestioned by which my emptiness shall in fact be filled?" The point of this initial digression is simple enough. While they may not argue legitimately that what the ecclesial community believes is true because believed, theologians must know what they believe, why, and with what degree of assent, and this for the sake of clear theological reflection and communication. The theologians' beliefs and a statement of those beliefs are crucial to theology, whatever the beliefs may be. As we all know, the beliefs of theologians play an enormous part in what they think and how they think it. Not enough attention has been paid to this fact, although everyone in the theological community supposes it. It can even be supposed that those theologians who view theology as a discipline wholly and solely proceeding under the criteria of philosophy and the rele6 On Dei Filius at Vatican I, see Lonergan's Method in Theology, p. 320ff; on the knowledge of God, see essays in Collection: Papers by Bernard Lonergan (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), pp. 84-95 and A Second Collection (New York: Seabury Press, 1975), pp. 117-133. 7 Rahner, Foundations, p. 32. 198 WILLIAM M. SHEA vant human sciences have themselves beliefs of various sorts that impinge upon their theological work. My business here, however, is with a broader subject than simply the question of the beliefs of the theologian, nor do I presume to offer any solution to the problem of the relation between belie£ and theology. Rather, I want first to maintain that theological reflection necessarily includes self-reflection and that such self-reflection is the fundamental moment in fundamental theology. Second, I wish to point out that such reflection is not exhausted by a reflection on " common human experience" as that is expressed in culture, nor by reflection on the Christian witness embodied in historical remains, but includes as well the theologian's own experience and witness. Third, it will be argued that the matter to be reflected upon embraces the subjectivity of the theologian in its full rangeintellectual operations, valuational stand, religious life, faith, and beliefs. }""'ourth, I claim that the self-reflection includes a retrieval and understanding of one's affectivity, state of psyche, even what we once called the state of soul. And, finally, I propose that this self-reflection is a condition for honest and fruitful theological reflection, is crucial methodologically for fundamental theology, and must be carried out by the fundamental theologian as a matter of conscience. II Theology can be defined as reflection on the meaning and truth of a religion in a culture. 8 J\fajor interpreters of theology agree that there are two foci of attention in theological reflection, no matter how the relationship between them is conceived: the religious message in its various forms, and the cultural situation in which the message is proclaimed and in which, in modern, pluralistic culture, there are available a variety of alternative messages. 9 In addition, some interpreters suggest that there are two basic or constitutive questions for theology, See Lonergan, Method in Theology, xi, 170, £67, 331-355. •The two are masterfully stated by Tillich in Systematic Theology I, pp. 3-70. Whether Tillich's formulation is adequate is questioned by Tracy, pp. 45-46. 8 THE SDBJECTIVITY OF THE THEOLOGIAN 199 one regarding the meaning, the other the truth of the message. 10 \Ve may make a further distinction between those interpretative disciplines such as exegesis, historical theology, doctrinal or "confessional" theology, and systematics on the one hand, and that discipline or "moment" within disciplines or fields called fundamental theology. Although fundamental theology is concerned as well with the meaning of the message and rightly relies on the interpretative disciplines for clarification of meanings, its main objective is the validation of the claims of the message in relation to the truth of other claims. Its main modes of argumentation are dialectic and metaphysics; that is, fundamental theology clarifies meanings and their ground by contrast with other meanings and argues for the truth of one, usually by some form of appeal to experience. 11 In addition to tackling the question of the truth of the religious message, fundamental theology has the responsibility for a reflective cbrification and systematic interrelation of the objectives, the data, the methods, and the modes of argument proper to the othel' theological disciplines and to itself. It attempts to answer such questions as: What is it that the special theologies are trying to achieve? What are their aims and hopes in terms of theory and practice? What kinds of discourse, texts, behaviors supply their subject matter? What are the intellectual or discourse procedures proper to them? For example, are story-telling, paradox, parable, wisdom saying, prophecy, homily, confession, syllogism, phenomenological description, and metaphysical deduction all valid and acceptable forms of theological argument? In addition, then, to the content questions of fundamental theology, such as questions on the meaning and truth of the basic claims of the Christian witness regarding human existence, there are also " methodological " questions such as whether See, for example, the third and seventh chapters of Tracy's book. This implies that the truth of explicit beliefs is a matter of relative adequacy; the "appeal to experience" falls under the criteria of adequacy. I must add that I do not intend here to make an adequate distinction between subjects or fields in theology but only to set off fundamental questions from others in order to place my own inquiry here as fundamental. 10 11 flOO WILLIAM M. SHEA theology is possible as a responsible human activity, how such reflection is best carried out, and what exactly it is that the theologian reflects upon and for what purpose. But, reflection upon the conditions under which theology is a responsible activity involves reflection upon the one who wishes to engage in such a task. 12 Let me, then, briefly and schematically raise questions and pose answers on the necessity of self-reflection to theology. First, what is self-reflection? It is the objectification in concept and appropriation in decision of the theologian's own subjectivity. Such self-reflection I take to be a preoccupation of modern philosophy from Kant to Lonergan, with its profitable sidetrips and complements in romantic idealism, marxist political and economic analysis, the methodological concerns of empiricism and positivism, the turn to experience of naturalism, existentialism, and phenomenology, and the reflection on "games" by the linguistic analysts. 13 How is such reflection to be accomplished? By a combination of available reflective methods, some of them not readily recognized as reflective by the members of the academic guild. First, there is the transcendental reflection of such :figures as Marechal, Rahner, Lonergan, and Coreth, et al.; 14 then, reflection on one's "place" and biases implied in the social criticism of the Frankfort School; 15 next, the interpretative ap12 Once again we find with Feuerbach, Bultmann and Rahner that theology is anthropology-with quite different theoretic frames and outcomes in each case. See L. Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1957); R. Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology (New York: Scribners, 1958); and Rahner, FoundatifYnll. 18 For a history and interpretation of the " turn to the subject " from the point of view of contemporary transcendental philcisophy, see: E. Coreth, Metaphysics, ed. J. Donceel (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968), pp. 17-44; and O. Muck, The Transcendental Method (New York: Herder and Herder, 1968). "On transcendental reflection see Coreth and Muck; for the best example in philosophy of religion see Rahner, Hearers of the Word (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969); for the transcendentalist critique of Kant's incomplete turn to the subject, see J. Marechal, A Marechal Reader, .ed. J. Donceel (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970) . 15 On social criticism see Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfort School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923-1950 (Boston: THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THE THEOLOGIAN 201 proaches to imagination and feeling in Freud, Jung, and the existentialist depth therapists; 16 again, the reflections of recent commentators on "story" which involve forms of autobiographical self-understanding in J. Dunne, M. Novak, J. Shea, et a:l.; 17 and finally, the classical disciplines of spiritual direction and examination of conscience. 18 What is the point of the reflection? Theological reflection is, if anything, reflection on human experience, for which a condition of understanding is the theologian's own experience. Theologians, if they are to come to understand the experience and speech of others, must come to understand their own experience and speech. While the need for this analysis and appropriation is not peculiar to theology (it is important to all the humanities), it is especially necessary for theology, a discipline concerned with interiority and with transcendent meaning, for what is :finally at stake in the theologian's reflection is the theologian's irrteriority and intentional relation to the transcendent. I say this because I think that the tum to the subject of modern thought is irrevocable and that, in the light of it, only dogmatic and heteronomous meaning can be found in religious languages by the theologian who has not taken that tum. Little, Brown & Co., 1973) and Jurgen Habermas, Theory and Practice (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973) . 16 See S. Freud, "The Origin and Deveiopment of Psychoanalysis" in J. S. Van Teslaar, ed., An Outline of Psychoanalysis (New York: Modern Library, 1925), pp. 21-70, and The Interpretation of Dreams (New York: Modern Library, 1950); on Freud, Jung and dreams see Charles Rycroft, The Innocence of Dreams (New York: Pantheon Books, 1979); and the relevance of psychological theory to the foundations of theology see Doran, op. cit.; on existential therapy, see J. F. T. Bugental, Psychotherapy and Process: The Fundamentals of an Existential-Humanistic Approach (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1978). 17 J. Dunne, Search for Time and Memory (New York: Macmillan Co., 1969); M. Novak, Ascent of the Mountain, Flight of the Dove (New York: Harper and Row, 1971); for the interplay nf imagination and self-understanding, see J. Shea, Stories. of God: An Unauthorized Biography (Chicago: Thomas More Press, 1978) and R. Haughton, Tales from Eternity: The World of Fairytales and the, Spiritual Search (New York: Seabury Press, 1973). 18 On the contemporary return, in Catholic circles, to the traditional disciplines, see W. J. Connolly, "Contemporary Spiritual Direction," in Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 8 (1975), pp. 97-124. 202 WILLIAM M. SHEA Ineluctably, the theologian understands that possible stands are many but only one is occupied; that responsibility must be taken for that stand, and that the stand cannot be supplied by any other-not by a class, a guild, a friend, a hierarch, a tradition. One is given a stand as a birthright, but one must win it again for oneself or find another. Nor is the theological stand entirely explained by the considerations now common in fundamental theology's methodological side, by considerations of objectives, methods, models, and data. These are, in significant part, explications of the stand but, as we shall see, the stand is more than they. The theological "world" of the theologian includes these as it does because that world is founded on a self-understanding, the understanding of a person as well as of a profession. In fact, all objectives, methods, models, and data are subject to revision and have been revised again and again; but the principle of their revision is not themselves but the revisor and the revisor's self-understanding. 19 The stand is arrived at through more or less adequate, more or less critical, more or less controlled reflection. It is arrived at not simply by reflection on objectives, data, models and methods-although these are more easily spoken of-but, more importantly, by reflection on the self and its relation to these. Moreover, the stand is a matter of decision and not of understanding alone. One does not simply "find" oneself-or, if one does, the position is now the position of a finder and not a place " given," for which one has no responsibility and to which there is no alternative. The theologian not only understands, but decides where to stand. 20 19 I do not mean that one arrives at an understanding of oneself nondialectically and directly apart from one's dealing with issues of objectives, methods, and with data; nor do I mean that there is a temporal progression from self-understanding to the understanding of data. I only mean that the self understood is not coterminous with the objectives, methods, and data of the study of religion or of theology. I am suggesting, however, that one put oneself among the data to be understood. In that case, understanding of religion and self will function dialectically. 20 Theories of genetic, cultural, and behavioral conditioning notwithstanding, Barth was not born a neo-orthodox dogmatist, Bultmann was not shaped into a THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THE THEOLOGIAN 208 The theologian does not escape the conditions of ordinary existence where decision in even the most important matters is i'lluminated by the reasons marshalled, yet surrounded by shadows unaccounted for. The shadows are thrown by the theologian's own subjectivity. They are not ordinarily obj.ecti:fiedin a theology, yet they are of inestimable importance in its formation and for an understanding of it. The shadows include values, feelings, emotional states, what is often called the "unconscious," the superego, id, persona, ego-consciousness, unspoken fears, experienced but unknown longings, resentments, hopes, dreams, beliefs, life objectives, and so forth. Thus, the thesis: Self-reflection is required in theological reflection. The very stand from which theology is carried out is itself to be understood and appropriated. This is a fundamental moment for all theology, and is best connected with the methodological responsibilities of fundamental theology. The alternatives to systematic self-recovery are horrendous, among them confusion on basic distinctions between imagining, thinking, knowing, and believing; unillumined, uncriticized and voracious biases; ideological use of religious language and theological concepts; evasion of personal responsibility for one's believing and thinking; and subjection of theological reflection to nonreflective criteria (" authority ") . III Fundamental theology includes a reflection on one's own experience and on one's own witness to the meaning of that experience. First, it is impossible to understand what is common in " common human experience " unless the " common " includes one's own experience. Second, it is impossible to understand a religious witness unless one is a witness, and very Heideggerian demythologizer by his German Lutheran background, nor Rahner trained by the Jesuit counterparts of B. F. Skinner to be a transcendental dialectrician. They became what they became by understanding and deciding, and the basic insights and judgments and decisions had to do with themselves as well as with their cultural situation. Q04 WILLIAM M. SREA difficult to understand unless one recognizes that fact and what one's witness is. It is a truism 0£ hermeneutics that the text and the theologian must share in common at least a question i£ the text is to be understood and respoken in interpretation. 21 However, that the text and the interpreter, or the believer and the theologian, must have a question in common is not all that may be said. It may be asked whether the question pops full-blown into the head 0£ the theologian. Why such a question exists for this person, why this person has the very question which leads to theology, is not at all explained by the £act that the question is also the question 0£ others. It is far from being the question 0£ all persons. It remains this person's question about the meaning 0£ human existence and rubout the truth 0£ the witness to that meaning. To question the existential conditions 0£ the origin 0£ this question is as necessary as addressing the more obvious issue 0£ the question's intention. Dogmas and doctrines and even churches have their history and so their contexts for interpretation; so do the questions put by theologians. The experience which may well give rise to the theological question is, indeed, common-thus we have religions. But that it gives rise to a question which constitutes the theologian as a theologian is not usual or ordinary, even i£ its possibility in experience is common. The question 0£ the meaning of human experience can arise other than verbally or notionally, or other than as a matter 0£ distracting and even absorbing intellectual play, only if for the theologian existence and experience have become a serious and central intellectual concern. Thus, the meaning of human experience is a problem of and about the 21 The classic expressions in theology remain those of R. Bultmann. See his essays in H. W. Bartsch, ed., Kerygma and Myth (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961) and "Is Exegesis without Presuppositions Possible?" in S. Ogden, ed., Existence and Faith: the Shorter Writings of Rudolph Bultmann (New York: Meridian Books, 1960), pp. 289-9!96. For Lonergan's discussion, see Method in Theology, chapter seven. THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THE THEOLOGIAN theologian's own life and not merely a question about the life and language of others. Again, a theologian's question rubout the meaning and truth of the religious witness can arise other than verbally or notionally only if in fact the theologian's life is no longer a brute, unquestioned fact, but a question to which an answer and its witness must be given in one way or another, and in fact is given. As it was religion and theology which gave rise to the university and the divinity school, and not vice versa, so it is the personal wrestling with the meaning of the theologian's own existence that gives rise to academic, theological question and inquiry, and not vice versa. The uncommitted or only " intellectually " committed theologian is either a :figment, an anomaly, or a sinner. 22 Theology, like philosophy, is never merely a profession, but is always, when it is authentic, a form of confession to the meaning of human experience. Even if in the individual case the theologian cannot take an explicitly religious or confessional stand, stiH that stand is a confession and requires understanding. The theologian's word and work are unavoidably in the human experience named "common," and are unavoidably a witness to its meaning. Although we may distinguish theology from religion as we distinguish theory from common sense experience, they should not be separated. 23 It is the very same self who speaks in both worlds. The theological " self " is, in fact, the pretheological " self " now criticized, refined, and clarified by reflection on itself in relation to culture, witnesses, and theologies. This self remains, even while it speaks theologically, a pretheological self, one who speaks a witness to the meaning of human experience in every word and action. The links between and the influence of the pretheological on the theological voice is what 22 That a theologian can be committed to the questions of theology and the meaning of religious faith and imagination while disaffected from traditional belief and theological solutions, see Harvey's essay and his The Historian and the Believer (New York: Macmillan, 1969). 23 See Lonergan's discussion of common sense and theory in Insight, pp. 173-190. 206 WILLIAM M. SHEA must be brought to explicit conceptual knowledge by the theologian. The " world " of religious experience and language interpreted by the theologian, then, is the theologian's own world. It is true that theology is theory about the world of belief and action, and is a distinctive speech not to be identified with belief and action. Yet for all its distinctiveness, theoretic speech does not remove the theoretician from that world or from the necessity of a stand in that world. The word of religion is a word about "salvation "-however that term may be understood by the theologian under the variety of methods and criteria. The world about which the theologian speaks is the world spoken about theologically. Can any theologian think that the term "salvation" applies to others, that reflection on the meaning of God is on what God means to others alone? The theological self, then, is not an abstract, " academic " self-unless, God forbid, that is the only self of whom one can speak! The theological self can only be a self in relation to and in various degrees of participation in traditions of witness. The self who speaks theologically is the self who lives and dies, suffers and rejoices, hopes and fears, does good and avoids evil-and all this always in one or another community of witness. This is the accessible self, the self to be mediated in fundamental reflection, even if one grants that the self cannot be wholly mediated. 24 The self-recovery aimed at is for the sake of theory, but the self recovered is not a theoretic self. The self to be recovered is the passionate self who reflects. " Thyself " in " know thyself " is none other than the theologian's own concrete self, the subject of experience and the subject who bears witness. To claim, then, that theology is reflection on religion in a culture can be misleading unless it is kept clear that the culture is the theologian's and that the theologian is religious.25 So Rahner asserts in Foundations. See, for example, pp. 17-19 and 85-87. I do not suggest that one cannot understand a culture or a religion other than one's own. It may be enormously difficult to do so, but the modern cultural sciences and ecumenical efforts prove the possibility. 24 25 THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THE THEOLOGIAN 207 IV To reflect on method in theology is also and inescapably to reflect on one's subjectivity. In the first place, theologians must " know the business," the procedures, the canons, the modes of inquiry, the rules of evidence of their field. They must be able to distinguish when their judgments are possibly, or probably, or evcen certainly true. They must understand their " place " in the field, what their expertise is, how their specialty is related to and limited by the specialties of others, how their judgments fit the judgments of others, how to state what they know in such fashion that no responsible person in the field w-ill misunderstand their meaning and the extent and weight of their claims. To put the matter bluntly, the theologian is responsible for theological speech, and the responsible person does not shoot from the hip. The difference between missing and hitting the mark is, in large part, an understanding of the accepted and public procedures and rules applicable to the theological realm of discourse. But, especially in fundamental theology, an understanding and appropriation of the operations that account for the structure of theological discourse, its procedures and rules, is requisite. Method in theology rests on the method transcendental to human experience-on what Lonergan calls "transcendental method" and Dewey "the method of intelligence." 2'6 This method, grounding and correcting all methods, is available to the theoretician only in selfreflection. ·what Lonergan calls " intellectual conversion " is no luxury in theology; it is fundamental to the theological enterprise. 27 Secondly, the possibility of this intellectual self-appropriation rests on moral self-appropriation. The search for truth is 26 See the first chapter of Method of Theology for Lonergan's discussion of transcendental method. Dewey's appeal to the "method of intelligence" is constant in his work; for his best theoretic construction, see Logic: The Theory of lnquiry (New York: Holt, Rhinehart, and Winston, 1938). 27 Method in Theology, pp. 238-239. 208 WILLIAM M, SHEA a moral act, and search for self-understanding is itself a moral act, as are the evasion of truth and the flight from self-understanding. Nor should the search for truth in self-reflection, while it is carried out for the sake of theoretic understanding of religion, be separated from the rest of the theologian's moral devotion. Reflection and the pursuit and implementation of value in action cannot be separated one from the other, for devotion to truth and its requisite self-understanding entail a devotion to other values-from values transcendentally stated as the "good " and the " beautiful," to categorial values such as peace, honor, probity, purity of life, and faithfulness in love. The values of the theologian qualify the theologian's search for truth. Unfortunately, we tend to make theory suit uncriticized practice, the desire for truth serve lesser and ignoble desires, method bend to the need of the moment. Mammon in its many shapes, sarx in its enticements, put their claims to theoretical reflection. These remarks can be interpreted as a homily, I suppose. I do not mean them so. Rather, they embody a philosophical and theological anthropology. I am not claiming that the theologian must discover this or that specific set of values or surrender to an authoritative arbiter of values. I am claiming that valuing is unavoidably influential in reflecting. On the one hand, valuing is inextricably bound up with religious language, for religious speech is related to human action, and action is for or against value. Thus, religious language is itself a moral language, and a condition on the understanding of that language is the moral life and self-understanding of the theologian. On the other hand, theory itself, as a form of human life, is moral. It is bound by its canons and by values. What the theologians individually will come to understand is conditioned not only by their intellectual ability and by their grasp of their intellectual subjectivity, but also by their attention to and critical evaluation of their own values-or the lack thereof. Now, theologians wish to do good and avoid evil, prefer justice to injustice, know that purity of heart is better than THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THE THEOLOGIAN 209 impurity. We also suspect that the understanding 0£ these values depends on the moral state 0£ the inquirer, and that there is a profound relationship between acting and thinking such that not only is thinking a condition upon acting but acting is a condition upon thinking. Fundamental reflection includes not only reflection on the foundations 0£ ethics, but a reflection on the theologian's moral life in relationship to thinking. Horace Bushnell, whose reflections on method in theology remain a signal achievement 0£ American evangelical thought, puts the relationship between moral sensibility and theology this way: ... truth is to be gotten by a right beholding of the forms or images by which it is expressed. Ingenuity will miss it by overdoing; mere industry will do scarcely more than muddle it; only candor, a graciously open, clean candor will :find it. We can take the sense of its images only by offering a perfectly receptive imagination to them, a plate to fall upon that is flavored by no partisanship, corrugated by no bigotry, blotched by no prejudice or passion, warped by no self-will. There is nothing that we cannot make out of them, by a very little abuse, or perversity. They are innocent people who can never vindicate themselves when wronged, further than to simply stand and wait for a more ingenuous beholding .... We want, in fact, as a first condition, a mind so given to truth that our love and reverence shall open all our sympathies to it and quite indispose us to any violent practice on its terms. 28 Thirdly, theologians are unavoidably religious persons. There are many stands toward ultimate meaning possible, but no stand at all is impossible. That theologians are religious persons in this sense is obvious; so is everyone else. Theologians settle in relation to the ultimate, however the ultimate is thematized in symbol and concept. Even though they do not carry the meaning 0£ an absolutely transcendent, Dewey's "Democracy" and Marx's" Classless Society," are nonetheless 28 " Our Gospel a Gift to the Imagination," Building Eras in Religion (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1881), pp. 9!66-9!67. For his major statement on the method of theology, see the "Preliminary Dissertation on the Nature of Language, as Related to Thought and Spirit" in God in Christ (Hartford: Brown and Parsons, 1849), pp. 9-117. QIO WILLIAM M. SHEA symbols of the ultimate or ideal condition of human experience as much as the " Kingdom of God " is. Now their individual stands must be explicated and appropriated by theologians precisely as their own and for the sake of their theoretical understanding of the witness of others. In this context, conversion means the explication of one's stand on these matters and an appropriation of it as one's own, a personal settling for the sake of the theoretic settling. Theory a.bout religion is theory about stands and witnesses in word and action to the ultimate meaning of human experience. While we all settle in relation to that meaning (even by refusing to settle), the theologian enters the religious world of meaning in order to interpret it as well. The possibility of entering it is accepting it as one's own, just as one must do to enter the world of the child and the madman in order to interpret it. While one need not accept the truth or the adequacy of the witness of another, how shall anything but confusion in interpretation result if the very fact of one's own relation to the ultimate and the content of one's own witness to it is not adverted to, not understood insofar as it can be, and not appropriated? How shall interpreters interpret Augustine's " Our hearts shall never rest," if they know not their own restless hearts and fail to bring them to the text? They may, for example, mistake Augustine to be self-seeking. How shall they understand "until it rests in Thee " unless, with Augustine and religious persons, they know what it means to rest? They may take him to be irresponsible. Theology as a logos on theos will fail in theologians who have not come to terms with their own mythos on theos. The question whether one must understand one's own human experience and one's witness to the meaning of human experience ii one is to understand another's is a form of the question of the relation between theory and practice. As it is usually and acceptably phrased, the function of theory in philosophical reflection is "critical," that is, it attempts to uncover the presuppositions, the logic, and the objectives of ordinary experi- THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THE THEOLOGIAN 211 ence and language, and to expose them to a cooler intelligence. We want to understand human life in order to live it better. It is practice that demands theory, practice that gives rise to it and waits upon it (when it can afford to!). But it is essential to ask this question: whose practice? Theirs? On the contrary, a critical understanding of Christian practice is possible on the grounds that it is the theologians', at least in this sense: that they share with the " text " they study not necessarily its stand and witness, but a stand and witness. 29 Theologians' own " practical " stands in common human experience and their witness to it brought them to the theoretic question in the first place. The theologians' growing understanding of this £act and its content in their own existence is essentially tied to the dialectic that may result in an understanding of another's experience and witness as well.30 Finally, it must be asked whether the affections of the theologian in response to the symbolic witness condition the understanding of the meaning of the witness and the judgment on its truth. They do. I cannot understand the relative adequacy of Moloch, of the Phoenician witness to human experience, if I have not felt the fear of the ultimate and something of its smoldering and brooding power; nor Kali, unless I have once suspected that the divine may prove ins.atia:ble; nor the eternal return and its confluence of despair and hope if I ignore my sexuality and death; nor "God is my rock and my fortress," unless I appropriate my own hope £or a rock, my own need of a fortress. The theologian has a stand, a religious stand, and needs to 29 By text I mean any cultural presentation of religious meaning, from sacred book to ritual behavior. 80 My understanding of theory and practice relies on that of John Dewey; see R. Bernstein, Praxis and Action: Contemporary Philosophies of Human Activity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), pp. 165-229; and John E. Smith, Purpos.e and Thought: The Meaning of Pragmatism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978); for Dewey's own statement, see The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action (New York: Capricorn Books, 1960). 212 WILLIAM M. SHEA understand and accept it. The theologian brings a religious self to the theological conference table. The temptation of " academic " discourse in theology and religion study is not that it is theoretic or that, for the sake of theory, religious convictions will be "bracketed." Rather, it is that affections and convictions may not be recognized and may hover behind one's seat at the table, may thread their way unnoticed through " objective " discourse. Theology may easily become a speech hollowed out, distant rather than theoretic, the speech of the experts who know nothing of what they speak because they fear the surrender and liberation of their own hearts which religion brings and, more importantly for our purposes here, who know neither their own fear nor what it is they fear. Theology has often enough in the past spoken with loud and dogmatic voice, a voice intent upon covering its own emptiness and making itself safe; it can now be the voice, insistent and controlled, pretending to be expert on the love of a God whom it fears and wishes to quiet. The reflection called for if this abstraction is to be avoided is a reflection on one's life lived in relation to the divine, or, if one prefers, in the face of death. First, then, thinking in its fundamental moment should be thinking on and appropriation of one's own thinking. Second, thinking, if it is to be responsible, is a valuing of truth. But truth is one among many values. For thought to be truthful in the long run, the life lived must be lived for values. Theory requires its foundation in moral conversion, and so theology for its own reflective clarity and probity requires a continuing moral self-reflection. Finally, reflection on religion is reflection on a witness to the ultimate. No self escapes such ultimates or avoids a stand, not even the theorist when theorizing. In order for the witness to the ultimate to be understood, there is required a recognition and acceptance of the fact, meaning, and truth of one's own witness. 31 31 My debt to Lonergan for the concepts of intellectual, moral, and religious conversion and their relation to theology is evident; see Method, pp. 237-!M4. THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THE THEOLOGIAN v Feelings qualify religious subjectivity. Human beings feel the world before they know it. They not only sense objects, but interact with them on the level of afiectivity before they even know their names. The infant is not an organ, but an organism. Its world is not a melange of shapes and colors to be gazed at, but a world of filling and emptying, warming and chilling, pleasure and pain, safety and danger, a world of reaction to and action upon things which are felt and "placed" by feeling. This is no less the case for the adult. Human beings feel themselves before they know themselves. They work before they know what the workings are. They dream and hope and cherish and decide and create before they know what it is to do these things. They feel themselves doing them before they turn and ask what they are doing. In fact, it is conceivable that persons may go on doing without asking questions about themselves at all. I merely mean to point out that the subject is prior to the theory of subjectivity. The possibility of such a theory is in part constituted by the fact that the subject is present to itself in consciousness. Finally, persons feel God before they know God. Saints are not saints because they have five ways to demonstrate the existence of God. Before the five ways "all men" call God God. How is this possible? How is God "known" before being known? God is " known " in affection and disaffection through a curious dialectic of feeling, of presence and absence, of need and desire, of wonder and fear, even of love and hate. The world, the self, and God are first felt and only then questioned and understood. "Knowing" God and knowing what kind of God God is is first of all, and perhaps finally, a matter of feeling. 32 82 By " feeling " here I mean one's presence to one's cognitional and volitional intentions of being. While self-presence is conscious as experience, it may not be known. And, although it is transcendental to human experience, it differs qualitatively from culture to culture, class to class, person to person. 83 Method, p. 65. 214 WILLIAM M. SHEA In addition, reflection is qualified by feeling. The "reasons that the heart has " that shoot out their tendrils well beyond what the reasons of the mind allow are feelings. Feelings condition the course of theoretic reflection, from attention through judgment, positively and negatively, augmenting and limiting. If this is not evident from a reading o.f classical and contemporary theologians-indeed of any interpreters of human meaning-then little is. Who could read Tillich, Altizer, Ogden, or Barth, for example, without agreeing with Lonergan that feelings represent the "mass and momentum " of human living? 33 What qualifies and conditions both religious stand and theoretic labor ought, so far as possible, to be understood and appropriated by the theologians whose life it is to think on stands. No less than the psychiatrist, no less than the literary critic, the theologian needs self-knowledge if knowing of the object is to be objective. Feelings must be identified and accepted as one's own, if their influence on one's theological reflection is not to be subterranean. Thought transcends immediate feeling, but thought is not without feeling-and feeling ought to be understood, appropriated, and, where necessary, purified and disciplined if theology is to make its proper way. Now this recovery is possible; feeling can be reflected upon and understood and appropriated. The most obvious, methods are the psychotherapy of Freud, the dream analysis of Jung, and the more recent existential and humanistic psychologies. With them we may turn to the dreams of need and desire, where longings and fears repressed in waking consciousness make their appearance in their appropriate symbolic "tales." However, the images of the dream are not the only signals of feeling, nor does psychology provide the only methods of recovery. I will mention two other" places" where one's feelings may be raised and pursued by the theologians: their history and their prayer. 34 81 One's imaginsychic conversion more adequately than I have done or can do in his Subject and Psyche. 216 WILLIAM M. SHEA VI While it is argued persuasively by some that without orthodox Christian belief, theology may still be good theology, 36 it should not be argued that without reflection on one's intellectual operations, one's values and one's stand on ultimacy, theology may still be a fully reflective and so authentic form of theoretical speech and understanding. As long as theology aims at being a fully reflective form of understanding, no aspect of the theologian's subjectivity can be overlooked in the quest for a theoretic understanding of the meaning of the divine in human experience. Retrieval of intellectual subjectivity is a moral exigence. Again, like all speech and understanding, theology is governed by moral and aesthetic values. It seeks the truth and attempts to articulate the truth well. While it no doubt is conditioned by its historical and cultural situation, it aims at self-transcendence in knowing and valuing. Reflection is intrinsically ordered against the lie, against obfuscation and obscurantism, against all personal and group bias. The truth must be told and this is a moral matter. And theology means to speak with the aesthetic qualities proper to theory: directness, simplicity, clarity, logical order, accuracy, careful and systematic use of terms. Thus, language, as the instrument for the discovery and expression of truth, must not be ill-used. It too is a moral matter. Theological reflection is not constituted as authentic by its objectives, data, methods, modes of argument. It is so constituted by performance, in the thinking and speaking of an authentic human being and the authentic human being is, on the level of fully reflective activity on human meaning, the self known and possessed. The recovery of the self in fundamental theological reflection is thus a matter of conscience; it is a salvific or graced work. By the very fact that it demands moral authenticity as well as intellectual autonomy, theology thereby 86 Schubert Ogden, "What is Theology?," pp. 36-38. I do not think that this means that with orthodox Christian faith theology cannot be good theology. THE SUBJECTIVITY OF THE THEOLOGIAN 9ll7 refutes and rejects the claim that it is merely a "work" and not " faith." It exists, at bottom, because its practitioners have care for human beings, themselves, and for God. If the Christian tradition has anything at all to teach us, it is that care is impossible without grace. Now the selves recovered will be various in their grasp of the nature and exigencies of intelligence, the values worth valuing, their stands on ultimacy, and the development and forms of their affectional subjectivity. I am not arguing for a specific theory of intelligence, set of values, stand on ultimacy, or norm for affectional complexion. No self, not the atheist or the manic depressive, is closed out of the theological enterprise. I am arguing that the person who speaks theologically needs to be a recovered self, that this recovery is essential to theology and possible for the theologian, that the moment of recovery is best located in fundamental theology, and that the recovery is a prime moral exigence for theological reflection. This position is implicit in the Christian theological tradition, I think, although in the past it usually took the form of the claim that the theologian must be a believing and practicing member of the church. Even now, when some theologians view themselves as believing and practicing members of the academic guild and are less often and directly subject to ecclesiastical authority, still we recognize the indissoluble connection between the theologian's work and the life of the church. The leaders of the church surely recognize the connection even when, on occasion, they wrongly construe it to be that between subject and superior, or question and answer; in this case we find calls to agreement or silence. In the persons and cases of H. Kling and E. Schillebeeckx we find both the theologian's deeply held convictions of autonomy and connection, and the call of authority to obedience. But if the theologian is now autonomous and no longer a spokesperson in ecclesiastical livery, how are we to conceive the relation between the church and the theologian? If the administrative leaders of the church no longer may guide or set limits to theological reflection, has £18 WILLIAM M. SHEA the church anything to say to the theologian? Yes, in my view it does. For the theologian the church has a paranetic application of the gospel: "Know yourself as you truly stand before God and in the world if you would speak truthfully and well of both." Under such a religious word theology remains a work of faith and a graced life. This we have long believed and, even while we reinterpret and reconstruct the belief, there is no need to abandon it. WILLIAM M. SHEA Unive1sity of South Florida Tarnpa, Florida SEEKING FOUNDATIONS FOR FAITH: SYMBOLISM OF PERSON OR METAPHYSICS OF BEING? "Theology is the happy result of a daring trust in the coherence of faith and reason." 1 Much of the uneasiness posed for the contemporary critical thinker hy the phenomenon of Christianity stems from the awareness that Christian existence is predicated on a commitment that seemingly breaks continuity with man's secular existence in the dipolar domain of nature and history that he has humanized in the mode of contemporary culture. Somewhat surprisingly, this discomfiture does not so easily surface in any study of the period of antiquity or the medieval era, and one can but wonder why. These earlier epochs of Christianity emphasized the transcendence of God more readily and more radically than do we, and they thematized that transcendence from within an exacting intellectualism. True enough, this was done prior to the rise of historical consciousness and preceded today's all-pervasive secularity. But the feeling persists that this goes only part way towards explaining why and how earlier modes of Christian thought were able to maintain faith and reason in such a delicate balance. One clue lies in the refusal of early Christian thought to allow the transcendence of God to collapse into what the Stoics meant by apatheia, in which God remained at an ontological remove from the world, impassive and indifferent to its plight. The stress upon God's utter transcendence of the world was always complemented with an insistence upon his creating, knowing, loving and saving action in that world even to the point of assuming its history as his own in the human life of Christ and in the Spirit-directed life of the believing commu1 M. D. Chenu: Faith and Theology, transl. D. Hickey, (N.Y., Macmillan, 1968), p. 80. QQO WILLIAM J. HILL, O.P. nity. The real theological question was how the two-the transcendence and the immanence of God-were brought together. The answer usually lay in viewing God as the Pantocrator whose transcendence was such that he planned and carried out all things (moral evil excepted) in the oikonomia. In the Patristic period the categories used were Christian adaptations of sometimes Stoic, but more usually Platonic, notions. The advantage they offered is that they possessed a symbolic power that enabled believers to speak of the world as a vast sacrament of God everywhere present and operative in the depths of his creation. All reality, nature and history, bespoke the transcendent because the metaphysics at work nurtured within itself a symbolism. What was uncovered to the human spirit was a logos structure and a mysterious dynamism of symbol-both of which pointed the way to God. The thought forms borrowed from Platonism engendered a rich symbolic vision in Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, and (less successfully) Dionysius. The statements of belief worked out in the early Councils were called symbola because they were intended as a locus of encounter with God. For the Greek Fathers, the world and the Bible were two differing symbolic forms of the Logos of God from which the soul began its mystical ascent to God. For Bonaventure in the Middle Ages, the Word is the supreme exemplar cause containing all divine ideas, and moreover is present within the soul as the illuminating ground of all the truth to which it attains. 2 But, if Medieval theology vindicated its foundations by discovering the isomorphism between the Logos of God that came to expression in his historical revelation addressed to faith, and the logos-structure of the real as God's creation that lay open to reason, it can be questioned whether this is any longer an option for theology in the post-Enlightenment, post-critical period. On the contemporary scene this has been thrown into further jeopardy by Heidegger's" overcoming" of metaphysics 2 Cf. Bonaventure's ltinerarium Mentis in Deum and his De Reductione Artis ad Theologiam. SEEKING FOUNDATIONS FOR FAI'.I'H in uncovering the "onto-theo-logical" character of Western thought. The influence of this on foundational questions in contemporary theology has been massive. Its implication that the Greek discovery of logos was a mixed blessing--0n one hand, it led to a concern for existents; on the other, it resulted in a neglect of being itself. Both Plato and Aristotle were philosophers of essence: the former sought the pure Forms reflected in things, the latter focused on ousia to discover the being and intelligibility inherent within things. With Descartes, in the modern era, this forgetfulness of being was furthered to where it culminated in the introduction of a dichotomy between the existent and its representation in the mind. The Cartesian fissure between soul and body as substantia oogitans and substantia oorporea meant isolating an abstract realm of ideas from a concrete world of sensations; it set a whole new problem for philosophy in seeking the origins of thought from within a radical subject-object dichotomy. Its immediate implication for theology was that religious faith could no longer find its anchorage in reason's encountering of the real. Subsequent theology had the option of casting its lot with Descartes and Spinoza and treating the content of faith rationalistically, or traveling the distinct route that leads from the restrictive empiricism oi Hume to the fideism of Kant. Reason, at any rate, was loosened from all experiential contact with the real, and theology could only repudiate experience and its symbolic modes of expression entirely, or accept the limitations of an empiricism that deems the object of theology unknowable and so only postulated by practical reason (Kant) or by feeling (Schleiermacher's Gefuhl) . Heidegger, however, viewed his own project as overthrowing what had previously been a neglect of Being (Sein) in the pursuit of the beingness (Seiendenh!eit) of the beings. His urging of the " ontological difference " found surprising confirmation in the concerns of the later Wittgenstein who writes of originating language in a way that suggests Heidegger's Being Itself at least in this that both possess an ontological priority over WILLIAM J. HILL, O.P. the natures and being of things. Religious language, for Wittgenstein, has a meaningfulness of its own that derives from nothing more basic than language itself as a phenomenon of life. The meaning in question arises solely from the use of language in the particular " language game " being played. It does not reflect a prior intelligible structure to reality itself; the truth factor then is not embedded in any correspondence of what is said to some actual state of affairs (as if knowing were analogous to seeing), but solely in its adequacy to meet and deal with an ever changing state of affairs (so that knowing is more adequately grasped as analogous to acting) . What Heidegger and Wittgenstein seem compelled to say is that any search for the foundations of religious faith in the structure of the real is not only impossible but ill-advised. They repudiate all metaphysical underpinnings of faith; Barth and Bultmann represent a differently nuanced version of this basic stance in repudiating all historical foundations for Christian faith, the former by appeal to an ahistorical Urgesohfohte, the latter by recourse to existential " decision ". In all these cases, we are a long way indeed from the Greek Fathers in the third and fourth centuries, and from Bonaventure and Aquinas in the thirteenth. It is Aquinas who finally offers a conceptual clue as to what was at work all along in the Classical achievement, namely the distinction between faith and reason which allows to the latter in principle the capacity to grasp the causal relation of the world to its creative cause. By contrast, Heidegger and Wittgenstein would have us believe that the search for theological foundations is illegitimate to begin with. It may be so. The Medievals never exaggerated the distinction between faith and reason into a separation, much less an opposition. Christian theologians today find it next to impossible to appropriate that distinction otherwise than in the misleading light of the divorce of faith from reason that is the history of modern religious thought. What may well explain the Medieval accomplishment is a common rooting of both faith and SEEKING FOUNDATIONS FOR FAI'.l'H metaphysics in experience; something alien to modern man. For them, it was an experience that went unthematized into a theory of experience, partly because there was no felt need to do so, and partly because the resources with which to do it were lacking at this time. The Consequences for Foundation.al Theology Once thought (by which is meant ultimately some form of metaphysics) is precluded as a:ffording a grounding for religious belief, the sole alternative is recourse to some form of experience. But experience by itself is ambiguous and its meaning turns on interpretation. To avoid a subtle re-entry of reflective thought in grounding faith, contemporary theology has chosen rather to risk a great deal on personal commitment of the subject. This assumes many forms: some variation on Kant's postulate of practical reason, or on Schleiermacher's Gefiihl (e.g. Tillich's Ultimate Concern), or response to a divine word that escapes history, as in Barth's Urg.eschichfJe,.or Bultmann's Geschichte as a demythologized interpretation by the believer of his summons to authentic existence. It can legitimately be asked, too, if Lonergan's "conversion" does not reduce to this also, since intellectual conversion, though critically mediated, is itself sublated by the religious conversion. This latter is explained only as " the love of God flooding the heart " and its occurrence does not observe the axiom nihil amatwm nisi praecognitum.8 This is not entirely clear of the aura of voluntarism, in spite of the fact that the language of faculty psychology gives way to that of horizon analysis. Thus, for Lonergan, meaning (including that which might undergird belief) is an act of the subject who intends it (in the drive to self-transcendence) rather than something embedded in the objects experienced. Rahner's V orgriff makes his thought cognate to that of Lonergan in that the intellect's pregrasp of Infinite Being ulti8 Bernard Lonergan: Method in Theology (N.Y., Herder & Herder, 1972), pp. 105, 122; on sublating conversion, p. 248. 224 WILLIAM J. HILL, O.P. mately derives from an ontologically prior surrender of love. 4 There is an alternative, it is true, to grounding faith in the commitment of the subject; it lies in the objectivity of a radical historicity. Gadamer's Truth and Method has shown the impossibility of pursuing Husserl's earlier defense of presuppositionless thought, and has convincingly argued for man's coming to awareness from within an historical tradition and a culturebearing language. But Gadamer's vision is not without theological problems of its own. The interpreter's preunderstanding, delivered to him by the tradition in which he stands, does supply to some degree the bases for his act of faith. Also, the fact that the horizon of the investigator is a moving one that alters as it "fuses " with the alien horizon of the historical text may explain that the hermeneutical circle is not a vicious one. But there is no escaping the finitude and temporality of the understanding that emerges from all this (even Gadamer himself insists upon it), and so the history of which the investigator-believer becomes part remains always radically relative and can have no absolute point of reference. The vector into the open future, while ever transcending present history, can never intend anything beyond the finite and the temporal, even asymptotically. Pannenberg attempts to supply this lack in Gadamer by grounding the hermeneutical act in the unity of world history (Universalgesc,hichte). To Gadamer's objection that this marks a return to Hegel, to the absorption of history into philosophy, Pannenberg replies that this can he avoided by the awareness 4 Karl Rahner: "The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology," Theol. Investigations, IV, " ... knowledge, though prior to love and freedom, can only be realized in its true sense when and in so far as the subject is more than knowledge, when in fact it is a freely given love", p. 43. What Rahner means to say is that human knowing is by way of anticipating Absolute Being, something achieved by a surrender to it in love as Absolute Mystery. Cf. also Hearers of the Word, Chap. 8; " In final analysis, knowledge is but the luminous radiance of love; ... As an inner moment of knowledge it is both its condition and its ground"; pp. 40 & 41 respectively in the translation by Joseph Donceel in A Rahner Reader, ed. G. A. McCool, N.Y.: Seabury Press, 1975. SEEKING FOUNDATIONS FOR FAITH that history can be one and universal only in its end that is not yet realized. Thus, we do not yet know such history in its universality and will not know it before its consummation. This final consummation of things cannot be derived from the present course of history, nor is it some telos towards which history is tending. Paradoxically, without being itself actual, it comes to us out of the future which thus enjoys ontological priority over the present, and determines that present retroactively. We know the unity of world history only provisionally, in anticipating its end; it is the event of the Resurrection of Jesus that vouchsafes to us that anticipation, by lifting as it were the veil of history. Pannenberg is quite sanguine on the objectivity, and so public availability of this understanding, for all men: "because this future is not alien to reason, but is rather its origin from which it implicitly always derives, faith cannot stand in opposition to reason." 5 For all its impressiveness, this theological adaptation of Gadamer's thought suffers two difficulties: i) first, it is an idiosyncratic view of history that seemingly distinguishes between history in itself that is somehow finished and so can determine the present, and history as it concretely comes to actualization within the parameters of our time, and ii) secondly, it amounts in the end to an ontologizing of history. In summary, the two consequences for foundational theology of the overcoming of metaphysics are the two flights to personal commitment on one hand, and to a radical historicity on the other. In the former, there seems missing an element of objectivity, one that is cognitive in kind (the subjective experience of man knowing replaces the objective experience of what is known); in the latter, history is transformed covertly into ontology, a move in which it is difficult to see how history is any longer historical. 5 Wolfhart Pannenberg: "Faith and Reason", Basic Questions in Theology, II, transl. by G. H. Kehm (Phil., Fortress Press, 1971), p. 64. WILLIAM J, HILL, O.P. The Positive Gain: A Symbolism of Person Whereas Heidegger is clear that his thought says nothing for or against the theological question, which is the question of God, he does observe in Identity and Difference that his critique of the onto-theo-logical structure of Western thought is meant to open man to at least the possibility of the true God as opposed to the idols of thought. 6 Here his project is not unlike that of Kant in disallowing knowledge in order to make room for " faith ". Heidegger spells this out by way of the analogy he suggests for theological thinking: namely, that theology is to God as philosophy is to Being (Sein) .7 The turning aside from the existents to make room for Being's coming to pass in the beings it lights up is not too far removed from what the believer intends with the category of divine revelation. Indeed, Heidegger's Se,in is described in terms traditionally reserved for the divine: it casts itself into Dasein in a gift-like (fate-like?) fashion; in itself it lies beyond the grasp of Dasein and can be experienced only as it makes known the beings, yet it ever transcends them without assuming any thinglike identity as the Transcendent, as itself a being. Wittgenstein's thought (as noted earlier) bears surprising parallels to this line of thinking, in a quite different context. What cannot be gainsaid is that there have been positive gains for Christian theology in this new direction given to speculative thinking. For one thing, it does check a rationalism which, while not running rampant in theology, must be acknowledged to have been at work covertly at least in some quarters. For modern Catholi<' theology this was most evident 6 Martin Heidegger: Identity and Difference, transl. J. Stambaugh (N.Y., Harper & Row, 1969), pp. 72-73. 7 Cf. James M. Robinson: "The German Discussion of the Later Heidegger", The Later Heidegger and Theology, Vol. I of NiJw Frontiers in Theology, ed. J.M. Robinson & J. B. Cobb, Jr. (N.Y., Harper & Row, 1963), p. 43, who indicated that Heidegger himself introduced this analogy at the 1960 meeting of the old Marburgers, an analogy of which the theological work of Heinrich Ott has made constructive use. SEEKING FOUNDATIONS FOR FAI'.I'H in the method (largely developed in the wake of the Baroque theologian, Christian Wolff) of using propositions of faith as premises for reaching new conclusions through the rigorous application of a formal logic, both deductive and inductive. Looking back from a present vantagepoint, one can see that the Neo-Scholastic revival was not free from a certain conceptualism that gave epistemological underpinnings to this rationalistic emphasis. More importantly and positively, however, the new way of posing the Being-question drew explicit attention to the phenomenon of historical consciousness, to the rooting of meaning in experience. It pointed the way to a recovery of literature (especially sacred literature) and its symbolic modes of expression from its absorption by philosophy. On similar grounds, it obviated the temptation to confuse religious beliefs with their theological understandings. Heidegger, moreover, believed himself to be reversing a direction first taken as early as Socrates and Plato; his retrieval (Wiederholung) of the origins of genuine thought is meant to be, not another metaphysics, but the overthrow of all metaphysics. This, if it be taken seriously, means something radical where the search for foundations to religious faith is entered upon. If it need not mean that faith lacks all foundations, or even such as are publicly verifiable, it does mean that it is vain to seek such in any logos-structure to the ontic (the "onto-theo-logical ") order, in the realm of the beingness of the beings. Rather, if there be any such foundations, they come unbidden to consciousness out of the Unknown (das Nichts) assuming forms of temporality and historical finitude which are ever being transcended as man is released into the future. This shift in thought from a metaphysics of being or becoming to an ontology of existence, with its transcendental dimension and the marked turn to the subject, is well caught by Thomas Munson; his expression "A symbolism of person " comes close to the mark as a descriptive phrase. 8 This conveys s Thomas N. Munson: Religious Consciousness and Experience (The Hague, :Martim.1s Nijhofl', 1975) . WILLIAM J. HILL, O.P. that what is being explored is the domain of consciousness, with obvious centrality given to experience wherein the context of life, history, and culture prevail over the forms and structures of reason. The implication, for theology, is one of the origins of religion lying beyond the ordered intelligibility to which reason has access. Theology, in so reflecting, is able to break out of the Platonic mould in which it came to birth culturally and to which traditionally it has been beholden; that is, it is not restricted to what it can know in and as idea. Some major consequences of this are: an acceptance of love as capable of taking the human spirit beyond what it is capable of when love is viewed as always measured and limited by prior cognitive achievement; an allowance for novelty and unpredictability beyond the phenomenon of order; an awareness of the priority of the future over the past whereby the present is appropriated less as determined by the past than as something continuously being recreated in the light of a projected future. The play of consciousness here is markedly creative in kind and more closely approximates aesthetic activity than that proper to science. The resulting expressions, both cognitive and linguistic, are symbolic rather than literal in kind, leaning towards the image rather than the concept. The stance of consciousness is one that puts into relief its receptivity towards reality as it gives itself to man, as over and against the concupiscence of reason to control and manipulate. At least the sublating of knowledge by love at work here bespeaks man's being drawn into the place of encounter where he is not only less concerned with imposing his ideas on reality, but even less concerned with registering what has already come to appearance than with being gifted with a new and deepened awareness of the richness of reality. Speaking metaphorically, Munson suggests that it is more a matter of hearing than of seeing, something closer to the experience of music than of painting. 9 The sort of knowledge that comes to the fore is one that resists absolutizing; it helps • Ibid., Chap. III, esp. p. 80. SEEKING FOUNDATIONS FOR FAITH explain the random element in things and events; it coheres with man's sense of his own rootedness in freedom. The source of this pre-logical knowing is itself Mystery, but in the positive rather than negative sense of the term; only the believer is able to name it "God". The ambiance that best nurtures man's enriching encounter with it is less thought than silence; its most proper language is not science but prayer. The Christian, caught up in this kind of awareness that expresses itself as a symbolism of person, understands that knowing God is something more than knowing about him. The Need for a Recovery of Metaphysics The positive gains of this cannot be gainsaid, above all that heightened sense of the divine transcendence (recommended to us by Kierkegaard's insistence upon the" infinite qualitative difference ") . But insofar as what is mysteriously encountered is thematized by way of a phenomenology of consciousness and expressed in a symbolism of person, there is some problem as to how this " given " can be dealt with in the objective domain of public discourse-where surely the theological enterprise belongs. This is not to suggest that whatever foundations for faith can be articulated by way of a symbolism of person can be dismissed as entirely subjective-not at any rate in the sense in which Heidegger speaks of " subjectity " since Descartes. Still, the objective, scientific examination to which they are open is a qualified one that ultimately cannot get beyond the flight to commitment, or contents itself with pointing out (with Wittgenstein) what sort of language game is being played and what are the corresponding rules of grammar to be observed. If something can be said for the meaningfulness of such language, usually on the basis of usage, little can be done to verify truth-claims. This raises the problem of the cognitive character of the theological act; theology's statements are truly acknowledged to be " expressive ", but it is not so clear that they are genuinely " assertive ". This calls into question whether or not a symbolism of person by itself can uncover adequately Q30 WILLIAM J. HILL, O.P. the foundations of faith, since the affirmations of the believer clearly intend to assert something about a real state of affairs over and against the subject and his language. One clue to the inadequacy 0£ any symbolism of person lies in the elusiveness of the very term "person ". To protect it from collapsing into pure randomness it is commonly conceived in conjunction with "nature" as its correlate. The distinction -person/nature-would appear to be an irreducible one; it is for example unnegotiable in any talk about the Trinity that would avoid dissolving the doctrine. The notion "person" even as taken metaphysically is of itself relational. Psychologically taken, it is rooted in the exercise of freedom wherein one makes oneself to be the sort of person one is on the basis of one's free decisions, one's chosen relationality to others. But within the human sphere this self-positing is tethered down to within the ambit of human nature, to the finite range of relationshiips the latter makes possible. Even within divinity, Christian tradition speaks of three Persons of one nature (though that nature is not to be thought of as a fourth element in the godhead behind the Persons, as both Aquinas and Karl Barth are at pains to insist). It is the nature that accounts for the structure or range of intelligibility within which the person achieves itself in free self-relating. If the latter is the domain of freedom, the former bespeaks the realm of what is not contingent and could not be otherwise than it is--even (conceptually speaking) in God, where the divine nature means that the trinitarian relations cannot be finite or temporal, cannot be meaningless or loveless, etc. But if natures are laid hold of in concepts (so that it is the logos-structure of the real that is isomorphic to the ideas of the mind) , this excludes the divine nature which cannot be circumscribed by any finite concept and so remains conceptually unknown and unknowable. Moreover, as long as one remains within a metaphysics that sees being in terms of essence, it is not clear how even the intelligibility within the transcendental concepts (goodness, truth, life, knowledge, love, etc.) SEEKING FOUNDATIONS FOR FAITH 231 can offer a cognitive perspective onto God. Thus, of themselves, neither Platonic eidos nor Aristotelian ousia bespeaks the divine. But need this mean the jettisoning of all metaphysical knowledge in the interest of the creative free-play that characterizes knowing by way of a symbolism of person? If the remote origins of the forgetfulness of Being to which Heidegger's " ontological difference " calls attention lie with Plato's idea (reducing knowledge to remembrance) and with Aristotle's ousia (reducing knowledge to abstraction of form)-is not an alternative approach possible? Being not as Essence, nor Facticity, but as Act Another route, at any rate, was first suggested by the Arabic commentators on Aristotle, whose Islamic faith led them into a misinterpretation of Aristotle. 10 Much later, Aquinas's Christian faith was able to supply him with an insight into the character of existence as something other than mere "givenness " explained as the will of Allah. The origin of this was his Christian belief in God as the Transcendent One who is not part of the world but the ground of the world which he summons out of nothingness and sustains in being. This initiated the move in thought from concern with a domain of essence (grasped in the concept) to that of existence (achieved in the judgment); the latter understood as manifesting a different level of intelligibility entirely. Theology was then able to thematize its understanding of God in terms of the pure act of Be-ing, once the mystery of finite being was grasped, not as mere 10 The misunderstanding turned on the Arabs reading into Aristotle's text from the Posterior Analytics II, I (89b 33) concerning the difference between knowing " that something is " and " what something is", the quite different distinction between the copulative and the existential functions of the verb "to be". Aristotle himself, however, was not here (or elsewhere) touching on the distinction between essence and existence, but meant merely to differentiate between noting that a subject of inquiry was something in itself on one hand, and ptecisely determined as a particular kind of thing as au object of demonstration, on the other. For a detailed consideration of the interpretation of Aristotle by the Arabic commentators, see Le.elie Dewart: The Foundations of Faith (N.Y., Herder & Herder, 1969), chap. 3. 232 WILLIAM J. HILL, O.P. facticity, but as the exercise by existents of an act whereby they participated in the unparticipating pure act of "to be " (Esse) . Such a move surmounted the immanentism of Aristotelian naturalism on the one hand, and the mere positing of a realm of trans.cendent Forms in Platonic symbolic thinking (which reduces to a form of" faith") on the other. Here faith is finding its so capable of verifying the meaning and truth claims of its language by way of public discourse-in an act that is truly metaphysical. But not, it must be noted, with any version of the metaphysics that Heidegger set himself to overcome, i.e. the metaphysics of subjectivity deriving from Descartes in which reason in effect imposes its own structures upon the real order. It is rather a metaphysics that has its origins in concrete historical experience, experience wherein finite being, in its very otherness from the knowing subject, reveals itself as neither groundless, nor as grounding itself, but as real only in its grounding in the pure subsisting act of" To Be". Metaphysics Rooted in Experienc;e:the Intuition of Being Heidegger's Sein, while not the Transcendent, is transhistorical and so transcending, and comes gift-like (fate-like?) to Dasein as a primal thinking out of which originates all subsequent thinking about entities in their on tic (existentiell) state. Rahner's Vorgrifj plays a similar role, supplying what the philosopher knows as the horizon of being, and what the believer names God, as the Absolute Mystery towards which the human spirit strives; it is the background and telos against which all categorical knowing and loving occurs as a limited thematization of what is seized non-objectively in the pregrasp. Cognate to this, also, is Lonergan's "insight" into the phantasm which, in the context of the dynamic structure of consciousness in its drive towards self-transcendence, releases the inexhaustible intelligibility of the transcendental " notions" (being, truth, goodness, etc.) of which categorical concepts are particularized expressions. SEEKING FOUNDATIONS FOR FAI'.l'H What this serves to draw attention to is that in some sense conceptual thinking is a derivative from a prior state of preconceptual awareness, rooted in the immediacy of life experience. But-as an alternative to Heidegger's" primal thinking", Rahn er' s V orgriff ,. and Lonergan' s " transcendental notions" what is here suggested is simply the intellect's intuition of real existence in a non-conceptual dimension to the single unified act of knowing that always includes the conceptual.1 1 What this implies, however, is the priority of existence over essence, not solely in the sense of being more ultimate in the ontological order, but also in the sense of being the first thing understood by the intellect. Aquinas makes very clear that being is what first of all comes to be in the human intellect. 12 He literally calls this awareness " intuition ", identifying it as the mode of knowing proper to spirit; that man's spirit is incarnate spirit seemingly demands the qualification that the connatural mode of knowing in his case is "abstractive intuition ". 13 This is so because all intellectual contact with the real is mediated by 11 The implications of this theory of an objective dynamism of intelligence have been worked out in detail by the late Dominic M. DePetter; cf. "Impliciete intuitie ", Tijdschrift v. Philosophie, I, 1989, pp. 84-105. Unfortunately, none of his work is available in English translation; a development of his theory can be found, however, in Edward Schillebeeckx: "The Non-Conceptual Intellectual Dimension in Our Knowledge of God According to Aquinas ", Revelation and Theory, Vol. II, transl. N. D, Smith (N.Y., Sheed & Ward, 1968), pp. 157-fW6. Jacques Maritain, earlier in Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry (Washington, Pantheon Books, 1958), had written of the preconscious life of the intel1ect wherein " ... reason indeed does not only articulate, connect, and inf.er, it also sees; and reason's intuitive grasping, intuitus rationis, is the primary act and function of that one and single power which is called intellect or reason", p. 75. 12 Summa Theol., I, q. 5, a. 2: "Primo autem in conceptione intellectus cadit ens, quia secundum hoc unumquodque cognoscibile est quod est actu, ut dicitur in IX Meta.". 18 Aquinas uses the term "intuition" explicitly of angelic knowing (S. Theol., I, q. 58, a. 8); human knowing is rational rather than purely spiritual but remains the knowing of spirit in matter and so retains an intuitional element. This is true especially in that what inaugurates the rational process is an immediate awareness of first principles which can only be by way of an intuitional act, which Aquinas attributes to an immediate awareness• of real beings insofar as they have being (cf. S. Theol. I, q. 79, a. 7), itself an intellectual intuition that spontaneously and pre-reflectively consummates the act of sensing. 234 WILLIAM J. HILL, O.P. way of sensing the entities of this spatio-temporal world, but as long as one is speaking of synthetic knowing, i.e. of an awareness of existence in the conceptual grasp of essences that are really existent, such contact with the real is operative from the very beginning and constitutes the intellect's intending of the real order-thus retaining an intuitional character. This occurs only on the pre-reflective level, and amounts to an implicit intuition of finite being in its dynamic origin from and telos towards the unparticipating Act of Being. Exactly how this occurs epistemologically is a question that lies beyond the confines of this brief essay. Suffice it to say for present purposes that prior to the grasp of being in its formal structures in a reflective abstractive act (yielding the concept of essence) there is a grasp of things in their existential reality by way of a pre-reflective judgmental act that spontaneously consummates the sense intuition of spatio-temporal entities, in which the act of " to be " of the entities of the world is lived intentionally by the intelligence as its own act of "to know". Only subsequently is this thematized as the idea of being that is achieved reflectively in the science of metaphysics. Rahner, of course, attempts to say something very much like this but in the differing philosophical categories of his " pre-grasp ". The differences (and, as I think, advantages) to the alternate explanation offered here is that it does not demand recourse to an a priori, though non-objective, grasp of Infinite Being as the transcendental condition of knowing categorical realities, but can content itself with allowing an intuitional dimension to a posteriori knowing in which finite being is grasped in its analogical unity relative to a Pure Act of Be-ing as its Source and Ground. The only a priori element lies in the very structure of intelligence itself as isomorphic with reality so as to allow for that intentional identity which constitutes the mystery of knowing, and not in any " content " to intelligence, even non-objective and pre-conceptual in kind. Thus, ultimately, the dynamism at work here is that of the being which is known rather than of the knowing itself; it is an objective and SEEKING FOUNDATIONS FOR FAITH 235 cognitive dynamism, not a subjective and conative one. What the two explanations have in common is an anthropologica1, and so experiential, rooting of a genuine metaphysics. A Reservation: the Objectifioation of God Granting an implicit intuition of being, however, requires understanding that all human knowledge is at the same time conceptual. If the former remains the well-spring of what has here been called a symbolism of person, the latter dimension calls for an extension of thought into a metaphysics of being. This suggests that theology, in using the resources of metaphysics, does in fact objectify God in the concepts it uses and in so doing reduces God to within the world of finitude. In dealing with this objection, it should be noted at the very outset that the being which is primordially intuited, and then elaborated into the metaphysician's idea of being in all its analogical range, is finite being. The intelligible content then of all our concepts, including the transcendentals, remains finite, and so there is no question of their circumscribing or representing properly the divine. What they do provide is a perspective from which it is possible to discourse meaningfully and truthfully about the divine; their finite intelligibilities offer us a means of naming God in the judgment that he is the Source and Ground of the perfection or value in question in lieu of any proper concept representing God. Still and all, this does depend upon an exercise of thought that only occurs by way of a subject-object dichotomy. Yet Heidegger's search was for a primal thinking that was precisely antecedent to all differentiation of subject and object. There is one serious warning in this objection for the metaphysical tradition that views being as act: it cautions against the encroachments of conceptualism from which that tradition needs constantly to purge itself. Nonetheless, it needs to be noted that on the reflective level thought cannot occur otherwise than by a process of objectification. This is not to reduce everything that is known either to the status of a thing, or of an idea 236 WILLIAM J. HILL, O.P. subject to the intellect's manipulative control. It is rather rooted in knowing reality as other than oneself as the knower, and constitutes consciousness's act of throwing (from ob-jicere) the intelligibility it seeks in relief over against its horizon of understanding. As Pannenberg has noted, all explicit knowledge is objective "since every definite content is grasped in distinction from one's own subjectivity and other contents ". 14 All talk about the "non-objectifiability" of God, then, is merely a way of noting that the concept used is not subject to manipulation by reason. It is not meant to imply another sort of autonomous, privileged experience and language that is immediate and so escapes objectification. Where our knowledge of God is concerned, at any rate, it is naive to suppose that one can escape the limitations of objectifying thinking by fleeing to a realm of existential thinking; to speak of the divine in such existential terms is seemingly only a way of conveying that God does not exist in reality as finitized by the mind's objectifications of him. Foundations for Faith Where does all this lead us where the question of foundations to faith is concerned? The overcoming of metaphysics has had as its effect the attempt to seek such foundations either in the personal commitment of the subject or in the objectivity of language that has no ontological ground beyond itself (language is here seen as a mode of life, in the sense of an acting that sets its own norms rather than finding them in reality as antecedently known) . But the religious knowledge which arises in these ways, and which perhaps can best be characterized as a symbolism of person, for all its richness and even indispensability, needs to be complemented by, and tethered down in, a metaphysics of being. It is misleading to suggest that the categories of being, seized in a genuine metaphysics, block off the personal act of " listening " to the ultimately real that lies be14 Wolfhart Pannenberg: Jesus, God and Man, transl. L. L. Wilkins & D. A. Prieb (Phila. Westminster, 1968), p. 175, n. 146. SEEKING FOUNDATIONS FOR FAITH yond concepts, or impede the facing of a future that is fully such in remaining open and unforeseen. Were this the case, it would imply that man is open to the mystery of things only in his personhood and not in his nature; it would equate freedom with irrationality suggesting that the latter can be gained only by jettisoning a major function of intellect; it would tend somehow to disjoin spirit from bodiliness and from concrete existence in the spatio-temporal cosmos. Heidegger's analysis of Dasein shows that man's very ontological structure involves a relationship to Being and its summons, in virtue of which man is the shepherd of Being. True enough, Being always unveils itself out of nothingness (das Nichts), so that it conceals itself even as it unveils itself; thus Being itself never appears as such, is rather " no thing", but only the horizon in which the beings appear. Rahner transforms this, however, to where the Vorgriff terminates at the Absolute and the Holy which is the divine. Still, for both thinkers, man is in the stance of openness towards Being out of which there occurs an originating manifestation of the ultimately real, and so of the Sacred (literally and religiously for Rabner, metaphorically and in a profane sense for Heidegger). A certain uneasiness with the degree to which this emphasizes the a priori element, exaggerating the pre-conceptual aspectin knowing to the detriment of reason's a posteriori contact with real existents-one is like a pilot in an airplane at night or in fog, flying by controls 15-had led to espousing a somewhat different metaphysics in this essay. It is one in which a conceptual grasp of the essences of existing things includes an implicit non-conceptual intuition of the being of things (their actus es8endi) as participating in a subsisting act of Be-ing. It is cognate to the thinking that has come into prominence since Heidegger, however, in that it views Being as the ultimately real that makes its claim upon man; moreover, it does 15 The image is that of Sean de h-Ide writing in "Rahner and Lonergan", Irish Studies, Spring, 1976, p. 67. 238 WILLIAM J. HILL, O.P. so in a way that precedes reflective knowledge and also retains an ontological priority over all conceptual thinking, thus bespeaking the original unity of the subject and object of knowledge. Concretely considered, this call of Being to man through the beings is nothing less than the summons of God. It is God inviting man to believe through the structures of nature and the events of history. Formally speaking, the distinction between nature and grace has to be maintained, i.e. between what man is capable of on his own resources (not without God, it should be noted, but apart from God's self-communication), and what man becomes capable of in virtue of God's selfcommunication. As freely coming from God, the former benefits are given to man as his own; the latter are bestowed on man as a sharing in what in itself remains proper to God, and so come only through the saving events of concrete history as a transformation and transfinalization of man's natural existence. The revelatory intelligibility of these events is manifest, of course, only to the " light " of faith, but that is something formal by itself that demands the events themselves as supplying" content". Still, nature and grace are but two inseparable dimensions to one concrete and integral order of human existence. Human nature exists only historically, and God's will to save, which is universal, has sublated all of history into salvation history. The truth is that God would not have created man had he not intended to destine him for real union with himself. Thus, we can echo Tertullian's phrase, anima humana naturaliter Christiana est; or with others among the Fathers understand that " the Logos Incarnate walked on earth in his own footprints". It is God's olaim upon men, then,. that is the ontological root of the "natural" desire for God. The reality of this appetite within man, that is to say, within consciousness and so within experience (though not necessarily reflectively so), founds man's basic stance vis-a-vis God which is one of openness to revelation-whether such revelation, which is thereby universal, be heeded or not. But that revelation is real SEEKING FOUNDATIONS FOR FAITH only as mediated through the cosmos on the one hand (in a " natural " revelation wherein God retains a certain anonymity), and through salvation history on the other (in a covenantal revelation wherein God both manifests and communicates himself as Trinity). But the former so-called" natural" revelation in actual fact takes place only within the ambiance of grace -because it does not occur apart from God's offer of salvation addressed to human freedom, by way for example of moral choices implicitly regarding ultimates. When it occurs, however, among those who are explicit believers, then (and in all probability only then) it affords the foundations for eliciting an act that is properly called " natural theology ". What is affirmed thereby-formally speaking as an act of reason but from within an ambiance of faith-is, on different levels, at once something believed and something that functions as the rational ground for believing in the Triune God of a historical revelation. As so functioning, faith is illuminating reason so as to free the latter for its proper role of discerning the meaning of what faith confesses, including the gl"ounds for believing itself, without collapsing the act of faith itself into a rational act. The advantage to a theology that proceeds in this way is that it allows faith to reach into the domain proper to metaphysics. It does so only insofar as the latter illumines the Ground of existence that the believer alone names God. Moreover, it does so for its own (i.e. theology's) purposes and so transposes metaphysical thinking into the perspective of another wisdom, but it does so by leaving intact and not violating the methods and procedures proper to the discipline it enlists in its own cause. Metaphysics is thereby left a rational discipline which rationally grounds the act of believing in historical revelation. Thus, if theology is to seek the foundations of faith, seemingly knowledge by way of a symbolism of person needs the complementarity provided by a metaphysics of being. This is only to say that, against Ritschl's hope, " theology cannot dispense from, or be construed in isolation from, some overall 240 WILLIAM J. HILL, O.P. metaphysical scheme ". 16 There are other ways of saying this: that faith needs a juncture within man to be the place of its insertion, of its donation, one which it elevates and transforms but which itself can only be in the domain of reason; or that history, concerned with events that are by definition contingent, needs structures that are not al'bitrary and which are supplied by nature-if history is not to collapse into mere randomness. This complementarity of the historical and the natural (by which is meant not the physical alone but the metaphysical also) means that there is no need to ontologize history, making the future retroactive, as Pannenberg appears to do; nor to hypostasize Tradition as is suggested by Gadamer's project. Another advantage to this mode of thinking is that it clearly leaves history free of all covert implication of sity. This latter remains a suspicion that persists in all systems of thought that bear a Hegelian stamp. Even Rahner's theology, while explicitly defending the freedom of the Incarnation and so the eternal utterance of the Word in God, is not without the suggestion that, by the very nature of things, that Word is eternally spoken in order to be uttered in time to men, as a sort of divine self-enactment. Insisting upon the dialectical relationship between history and nature (thus between a symbolism of person and a metaphysics of being, as modes of knowing) makes it clearer that God's revelation reaches into both domains. Langdon Gilkey has pointed out the curious tendency to think of nature as the sphere of the scientist, and history as the sphere of the theologian.17 Yet the meaning of God's acting in history finds at least a point of reference in his acting as the author of creation. History is saved thereby from being reduced to the interpretation of events by men. The Logos becomes flesh (as St. John tells us) and not data for human interiority as it is constitutive of meaning (which is at least an implication of Lonergan's 1• James Richmond: Theology and Metaphysics (N.Y., Schocken Books, 1970), p. xi. 17 Langdon Gilkey: Reaping the Whirlwind (N.Y., Seabury, 1976) ,p. 336, n. 4. SEEKING FOUNDATIONS FOR FAI'l"H 241 thought). None of this need imply that the occurrence of meaning is anything other than an immanent act of consciousness. But it does mean allowing history to be precisely history, with the consequence that the events of God's acting in the world assume the character of what Walter Kasper calls an underivable historical event of love. 18 By this is meant God's love which is always creative and summons us to a future that remains open, but which is rooted in God's being and wisdom and so avoids arbitrariness and all decline into voluntarism. What God has definitively done within history in raising Christ from the dead has set the omega point for history. But the way to that eschatological consummation lies across a vast uncharted and still open, worldly future in which God's love responds creatively to man's freedom. But the basic horizon for understanding all that God has done and will do in transcendent freedom lies in the intelligibility of being seized by the intellect in its finite modes as providing a true cognitive perspective onto the divine Ground in which alone it is actual. Here Christiam faith finds the rational foundations for its own believing in the God who is confessed on the basis of his selfmanifestation and self-communication-and beyond this the conceptual resources for a deepening understanding of that confession. But this is by no means adequate for the restless search for understanding unleashed by the act of faith. Beyond this lies an appeal to that mode of knowing indigenous to faith that we have characterized in a most general way as a symbolism of person, a knowing which finds expression in the evocative language of symbol and myth. The kind of knowledge that faith puts. one in pursuit of looks at once to silence and to speech. Plato's absorption with the Forms to be contemplated, or in Aristotle's case to be abstracted from things, began a tradition that did not tend to give place to the former. Munson, at any rate, is quite right in noting that for both Hume and Descartes silence is disqualified as rational experience, whereas Walter Kasper: Jesus the Christ, transl. V. Green (N.Y., Paulist Press, 1976), p. 183. 18 WILLIAM J, HILL, O.P. for the Medievals it was a necessary component of thought. 19 The silence to which one is hrought by faith, however, is not empty but a silence in which there sounds the word. If this be so, it calls into question James J\1ackey's suggestion that theologians should set aside the category of revelation and content themselves with that of faith. 20 Perhaps a contrary suggestion is not out of order: has not the time come to repudiate Kant's doing away with knowledge in order to make room for faith, or in its contemporary versions to make room for commitment or for language as ultimates? One argument for this is the belief in two modes of God's presence in our midst-as Pneuma and as Logos. WILLIAM J. HILL, O.P. The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. Op. cit., p. 82. James P. Mackey: "Divine Revelation and Lonergan's Transcendental Method in Theo1ogy '', Irish Theol. Q., Jan., 1973, p. 17; this grounds Mackey's proposal that theology deal with the past "not in order to read God's mind but in order to receive the spirit by which to build the future", p. 19. 10 20 PRAYER AND SACRAMENT: A ROLE IN FOUNDATIONAL THEOLOGY P ARTIALL Y FOR methodological reasons which I hope will become evident in the course of this essay and partially because autobiographical issues may provide context for the conceptual positions which follow, I should like to describe two formative personal influences upon the theological issues addressed in this paper. They concern cultural unity and criticism: the experience of monasticism and the process of doctoral dissertations. The narrowness of the loci may also excuse some of the occasional naivete in the succeeding remarks made about theological method. My undergraduate career was taken as part of a monastic environment. I am not and was not a monk, but a diocesan seminarian. Monks taught me, heard my confessions, commiserated in my failures and rejoiced in my successes. Friends entered the monastic community to which we were so proximate, and friends left that same community for occasionally mysterious reasons. Monastic spirituality and quotidian existence permeated the walk-ways, the folk-art of the surroundings, and the experience of the classroom. Over the years, as I have reflected upon that time, I find that my personal integration into that environment produced a certain vision: a unity of life in which upon occasion prayer, thought, and action (both internal catechesis and external evangelization) achieved integration. Not that there were not mistakes or disasters (or that there still are not), but that the ambiance engendered a vision of the whole. Indeed, I suspect that is precisely what cenobitic communities were meant to accomplish during their earliest provide a vision of a societal whole in which praxis informed thought, and thought grew from religious and secu243 244 STEPHEN HAPPEL Iar praxis. Religion (whether thought or action) was not divorced from experience, but informed the whole. It may not be an experience which the urban world of ' modernity' recognizes, indeed that world may think it slightly retrograde; but it was nonetheless a unified experience. In its best moments it occasioned a personal epiphany of how culture and religion interact to form a meaningful whole. In time, I spent a number of years working on a dissertation which outlines the theological development of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge never lost the belief that a cultural unity could become available in the post-Enlightenment and postrevolutionary period. A product of both the 18th century German and British Enlightenment and of the French revolution, Coleridge spent an entire life trying to organize his insights into epistemology, aesthetics, metaphysics, ethics, religion, and theology. He was deeply aware that religion operates within a culture, and that it could not be a purely private affair. Indeed, his final published work, On the Constitution of the Church and St.ate according to the Idea of Each (1880) synthesized just this public level of religion and culture. From a period in 1795 when he lectured on religion as a critic of political life until his final days, Coleridge was not interested in resurrecting Christendom, but in recognizing that the formation of the new society should require religion to play an integral role. Although Coleridge himself occupied only a fragmented present instead of his envisioned whole (yet achieving far more than he permitted his auditors to see) , he offered at least this reader a reaffirmation of the vision of cultural unity in which emotion and thought, prayer and action, religious symbols and criticism could remain public and significant for the cultural whole. Religious groups would become a social minority, but they could contribute an important element in the formation or transformation of culture. The problems Coleridge articulated perdure. We still wish a community of critical believers, those who can accept the PRAYER AND SACRAMENT: FOUNDATIONAL THEOLOGY religious symbols of a particular tradition and yet can thoughtfully reformulate that tradition in such a way that the symbols are not volatilized. The symbols must have an authority which is not simply human agreement, and yet are available to human criticism. So the Words of the Scriptures must be at once the Word of God addressing society, and yet the product of social forces; the personal presence of the authoritative divine Speaker and yet a text to be read like any other. Sacrament must be both a congeries of images, words and gestures which can be re-formed, shaped by historical creativity, and yet the Presence of an Other who shapes, forms, and creates the maker of the gesture. This personal set of contexts perhaps indicates how the question of Foundational Theology cannot be for me a private conceptual operation of the thinker, the uninvolved act of the theologian, nor the symbolic act of an individual/community without sociocultural matrix. The theologian is already within a believing, prayerful, community of discourse, a particular culture, and a scholarly group of inquiry. The three cannot be detached even if the questions can be distinguished. Foundational theology does not ask its questions simply on the level of scholarly inquiry-but must recognize the confessional discourse and the particular culture of each expression. The essay which follows is an attempt to articulate some of the conditions under which the inclusion of these issues can be addressed in theological method. I do not pretend that the issues articulated are exhaustive, nor that the conditions set out here are the only ones which must be fulfilled if foundational theology is to be done. What I would argue is that without the resolution of these questions, there will remain serious lacunae in contemporary theological method. What follows will therefore be highly programmatic: programmatic in the sense that its positions are tentative theses for further probation, and that its positions are in some way normative for the achievement of foundational theology'. With some considerable effort, their elaboration might provide schema for theological and cultural synthesis. Q46 STEPHEN HAPPEL After a brief description of Coleridge's understanding of the critical role religious institutions play in cultural synthesis and the goal of a critical praxis which it envisions, I will describe three phases of the problem of foundational theology which I think crucial: 1) the possibility of Praxis as locus of Interpretation; 2) Sacrament as Praxis; and 3) Foundational Theology and the inclusion of Sacrament as Text. The goal of the essay will be to argue that sacrament must be included within the discussions of Foundational Theology, and that sacrament can be included while that discipline remains truly critical. A. Critical Praxis as Human Goal: Coleridge's "clerisy" Coleridge describes society as an interlocking dialectic of geographical, economic-commercial, and critical interests, embodied during his lifetime in the landed aristocracy, urban merchants, and the church in charge of education. 1 Above all three is a philosopher-ruler who takes upon him or herself the conscientious obligation to maintain the possible interaction of all. He argued that each element of the " ideal state" had a specific role to play in the accomplishment of " cultivation ". Cultivation, as opposed to mere consumerism (civilization) , is at least initiated by a group within society called the " clerisy " who are in charge of the harmonious and organic development of humanity. In the idea(l) state, authentic freedom would be realized for all citizens. It is important to get clear what Coleridge means by the word "Idea" since it affects the function of the clerisy. Idea is a knowledge of the " ultimate aim" of political and personal discourse; but it is also a knowledge by ultimate aim, since Idea appears as the dialectic of human self-transcendence. There are the " ideas " of reason, as in Kant; but the Idea is Reason (as in the critics of Kant). And what occurs in one 1 The discussion which follows is an interpretation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, ed. Kathleen Coburn and Bart Winer; vol. 10, On the Constitution of the Church and State, ed. John Colmer (Princetou1 N.J.; University Press, 1976), pp. 15 ff. PRAYER AND SACRAMENT: FOUNDATIONAL 'fHEOLOGY !'l47 is a paradigm for society. 2 In political experience, Coleridge stresses that the Idea need not be reflectively available; rather it is experienced as an operative power. Indeed, the ideal society, truly cultivated political freedom, might not be realized. But the Idea of this society does concretely appear in human communities, primarily in its moral "oughts". The Idea (l) working its own way in human politics claims one's knowledge, action, and even religious assent. These appear, however, in the language of " vision '', which is of " essentially the same character" as the Imagination of the poet and philosopher. The guardians and explorers of the vision, the communicators of the goal inherent in the whole, are the clerisy. It is they who teach and invite others into an integrated intelligible um verse. Although the clerisy is a differentiated group within society, they are not an elite dictating ends to an unknowing ignorant mass. 3 Their fundamental tasks range the entire spectrum of disciplines; their goal remains a public "time-consciousness": they guard the past for the present, and perfect the present in the light of the future. They must teach law, medicine, music, military and civic architecture, sciences and mathematics, and especially theology because it is the " interpretation " of all other languages. They must themselves be religious, giving evidence of their own participation in what they teach. Indeed, it is through religious symbols that they will teach since no one can assume that everyone will or can become philosophers. Religion does not offer an uncritical arbitrary set of symbols 2 Coleridge remarks in a late notebook: " The Individuality conformed with the Sociality of Man ... he is neither a solitary, nor a; gregarian, but the identity of the states of which these are shadows and semblances. Man is a federative Being ... and it is a necessary consequence of this intenser Individuality that Man is by his constitution a religious creature" BM Add. MS. 47529 (NB 34,), fo6. llv-rn [ca. 1827]. 8 Several misconceptions concerning Coleridge's thought (e.g. the a-historicality of ideas and the nature of religion) led Ben Knights in his The Idea of the Clerisy in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1978), p. 63, to maintain that the clerisy is a technical elite. That Coleridge was interpreted in this fashion is true; that it is a true interpretation is less clear. 248 STEPHEN HAPPEL by which the intellectual elite governs the herd; rather religion portrays in its own medium the identical educational meaning achieved through critical thought. Individual human freedom, societal inter-action, is established by the clerisy when it draws the potential divinity from human beings. Ultimate human freedom is grounded in the divine freedom; and had it been left to philosophers to achieve it, the world would have been abandoned to empirical unconscious absurdity long ago. Society, for Coleridge, is ultimately dependent upon the religious notion of freedom and religion's capacity to offer a critique of society through its vision of the whole. But the Christian Church is not to be identified with the clerisy. It was, Coleridge believed, a "happy accident" that the clerisy in England happened to be Christian. Indeed, Coleridge's example of the medieval church is instructive. He did not altogether approve of the Roman church; yet despite ecclesiastically retrograde elements, the idea of freedom eventually worked its way into the social fabric by abolishing slavery; and the idea of a future life sustained the basis of all affective and thus moral existence. Coleridge's example is helpful for two reasons. Not only does it make clear that the clerisy's affiliation is not a "natural" or " philosophical " religion, but also that the particular ecclesiastical tradition might be corrupt and still convey the transformative power of freedom. For Coleridge, Christianity began in the redemptive process initiated in creation with temporality; the Church may be the" sustaining, correcting, befriending Opposite of the World"; but it is an embodiment. The ecclesial body should criticize or focus the beneficent and humanizing aims of the state. It is not an alternative state; its: only power is that of the persuasive weight of Idea. This overview of Coleridge's opinion should be sufficient to indicate in what way the goal of societal living is not thought but critical action. 4 All the activity of human beings, the inter• The interpretive language of this paragraph is influenced by Matthew Lamb's understanding of method in political theology, expressed in his His.tory, Method and PRAYER AND SACRAMENT: FOUNDATIONAL THEOLOGY locking systems of society, education, economy, family lineage and agriculture, religion, and government, are meant to provide the occasion for, and embodiment of, authentic freedom. Thought (the clerisy) functions not as an end in itself, but as a moment within a total societal process. Moreover, for Coleridge, thought itself is based upon appropriation of one's own developing cognitive praxis and its interrelationship with doing the good and apprehending value by feeling. 5 Thus, the very origins of thoughtful inquiry in the state are dependent upon the emancipatory praxis of the individuals who make up the "clerisy ". Theory is not self-grounded; concepts produce only the dry dust of the understanding; rooted in Reason (the practical thrust of self-transcendence), they acknowledge their origin in the authentic praxis of subjectivity. Now what is even more evident about Coleridge's interpretation of " Church " and State is that Christianity is in dialogue with the whole; it is at once to be identified with the ideal Society, and to be differentiated from it. The "happy accident " which makes the clerisy Christian in England could make it Buddhist in Asia! Thus the process of collaboration required of the internal elements of the state to produce the idea (l) state will also be required at the international level as well. The ideal is not produced theoretically, or mentallybut practically, by the interplay of the various concrete states with their permanent, progressive, and critical moments. Critical praxis of society is also the process by which the good of freedom will be accomplished. Theology: A Dialectical Comparison of Wilhelm Diitlwy's Critique of Historical Reason and Bernard Lonergan's Meta-Methodology (Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1978), esp. pp. 1-54 and his "The Theory-Praxis Relationship in porary Christian Theologies," Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society "J America (Washington, D.C., 1976), vol. SI, pp. 149-178. 5 This goal was an ongoing integrative process for Coleridge which would oruy end in his Opus Maximum on the Divine; but see the rewritten version of The Friend, ed. Barbara E. Rooke, 2 vols. (London: Routledge, Kegan, Paul, 1969). 250 STEPHEN HARREL B. Praxis as a text for Interpretation From this brief outline of Coleridge's understanding of society, it should be clear that I have considered concrete praxis as a text worthy of interpretive procedures. It should also be clear that I believe that interpreting praxis involves the thematization of one's own performances as interpreter. Accordingly, I shall need to indicate certain directions of my understanding; the first, concerning Praxis as text for Interpretation, the second, the engagement of the interpreter in the articulation of Interpretation. It will be useful to do so through a dialogue with Paul Ricoeur, and some extensions required by the notion of sacrament. 1. Praxis as Text: on meaningful action In Ricoeur's ongoing attempt to circumscribe and describe the character of human freedom, the notion of language has taken center stage. 6 Ricoeur distinguishes between discourse and language (la langue) .7 Discourse is the sort of text which when oral is situated and immediate and when written distanciated from its original speaker and situation; language (as in de Saussure) is the system or structure of speech. Thus, spoken/oral discourse always occurs in (la) a specific time and place, "refers" (2a) immediately to its speaker (when we listen to someone, we do not ask whether a human being is talking, except in irony); (Sa) ref.ers to a world "outside" the linguistic utterance; and (4a) addresses itself to other subjects, 6 The reasons for this are not primarily due to a "shift" in Ricoeur's thinking, but to methodological options taken in the early phases of Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, trans. Erazim V. Kohak (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1966). See the helpful doctoral dissertation of Camille Zaidan, " Ricoeur's Conception of Language and its Implications for Foundational Theology: an Analytic Study of His Works on Language from 1959 to 1975" (S.T.D. dissertation, The Catholic University of America, 1980). 7 The exposition and interpretation of Ricoeur is centered on his article, "The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action considered as a Text," Social Research 8(1971)3: 529-562. PRAYER AND SACRAMENT: FOUNDATIONAL THEOLOGY by assuming that someone understands. Writing fixes the discourse in such a way that the (lb) "meaning" is loosened from its original spatio-temporal situation (indeed, the "said" is irrelevant or unintelligible if it cannot be re-present-ed in another space/time). Writing thus (2h) dissociates the original intention of the speaker from the text; for the sake of a new reader, writing relativizes the focus of the original speaker. I can read a text, whether the original speaker is present or absent, living or dead, honest or dishonest, etc. (3h) The world to which the written text refers is no longer simply the ostensive situation indicated by the original speech, but a wider world common to all possible readers. And (4b) writing creates a universal audience; it is no longer this particular person to whom I speak, but all who can read with some understanding. Ricoeur argues that this notion of a spoken and written text may be applied to human action as well. So actions as they occur include all the self-referential, existential aspects of the oral word; when fi:x;ed in histories or social research into behavior, they acquire the formal character of written discourse. One can ascertain the noematic structure of individual actions, the " meaning" of an activity; one can distance oneself from the original intention of the actor; indeed, the act works its own consequences irrespective of what the original actant intends; human actions refer to a world outside themselves; and they eventually go beyond their initial inter-subjective reference. Now I would maintain that these two general notions distinguishing spok!en and written discourse offer a provisional argument for permitting reflection upon action in scientific procedures. Action can be fixed, so that it can be discussed as a "whole "; it can be detached from its original situs, so that it can be said to have "meaning", a content, not totally determined by its original ac.tant; and it contains the memories and anticipations of other actions in structural traces which can be outlined. Such an action can be dissociated from its 252 STEPHEN HARREL original inter-subjective context, and discussed without the existential trammel of the original communicative intent. 8 To be able to understand such meaningful action, one would need the same spiralling interpretive procedure at one's command as is necessary for a written test: from guess to validation and back again. One begins with a naive level of belief that the action to be understood makes " some " sense, and over the course of the interpretation determines just what sense is meant. The level of interpretive involvement for a text is determined by the levels of meaning encountered in the text itself. The reader in some sense becomes writer of the text, even if the new writer (the reader) is understanding the text in ways the old reader of the word (the original writer) would not totally comprehend. 2. The Praxis of Interpretation of Action: Sacrament Now it seems that this interpretive procedure must also apply to meaningful action, perhaps even more clearly so. Either to understand an historical action or to sort out its meaning will require some level of enactment upon the part of the new " reader " of the action. In the process of validation of the action as a meaningful text, the new actant will perforce engage the levds of the text's (the action's) structural possibilities. "How much" engagement (from guess to validation= from imaginative trial to existential performance?) remains a question; but some level of analogous or participatory performance seems required for understanding the act. (Must the anthropologist at least imaginatively believe it possible for him/herself or social body to engage in rites of initiation? Does the anthropologist need to perform or " undergo " the rites 8 Multiple ironies occur if one applies here the following passage from Pirandello: " When a character is born, he acquires at once such an independence, even of his own author, that he can be imagined by everybody even in many situations where the author never dreamed of placing him; and so he acquires for himself a meaning which the author never thought of giving him." L. Pirandello, " Six Characters in Search of an Author," Naked Masks, ed. E. Bentley (New York: Dutton, p. PRAYER AND SACRAMENT; FOUNDATIONAL THEOLOGY 253 him/herself to understand? What measures the level of understanding required of the en-actment?) The issues involved in interpreting action as a meaningful text are sharpened by applying them to sacrament. Sacraments as written texts can be studied in much the detached way that Ricoeur describes. As a ritual, they remain a structure detached from particular places or times or better applicable to an infinite series of places and times (le) ; and they announce a common referential world (3c) _.but their insistent inclusion of pronomial "shifters" (2c-I, you, we, etc.) name a specific Object of address (4c-Y ou, God) and occasionally during the course of action make the subject (I, we, you) the transitive object of action by the Subject addressed. 9 The inter-subjective context, while in principle universal in its " horizontal " refer,ence (all human beings or all Christians), is quite limited in its "vertical" reference (God, Christ, Spirit). Moreover, existential engagement of the individual (s) in the performance of the act is required for understanding the meaning of the act itself. If a fundamental descriptive element of the " meaningful action " known as sacrament is the intersubjective context (God and the finite I), then some performative thematization of that context seems required for understanding and validation of reference. Thus sacrament presents the theory of action as text with two problems: it refuses to ignore the original or originating speaker (Christ, the Father) and requires the performance of the new listener. This is obvious, of course, when the sacramental text is performed in the community-then it is parole (in the classic linguistic sense) ; it is oral discourse, situated in space-time; ostensively revealing a particular human (and divine?) world; " immediately " identifying both speaker and Addressee. Yet as written text, as prayer-text, it remains in9 Ricoeur's recent work on this topic (e.g. "Philosophie et Langage," Revue Philosophique 103 (October-December, 1978), 449-463) still would find it difficult to account for what James calls the "transaction" in prayer; see below on "testimony". Q54 STEPHEN HARREL transigeant, adamant to any facile erasure of the inter-subjective context. It does not simply offer the possibilities of a way of being-in-the-world which appear as imaginative ("as-if") options, but as de facto address between .... 10 At this stage in our investigations, we have argued that critical praxis is the goal of human experience; that action can be an adequate object of reflection; and that some correction of recent thought on action is required by attending to the character of a specific religious language known as sacrament. It should be clear, therefore, that correlation between the worlds of the religious and the secular is not simply accomplished by noting questions raised by experience (oral, written, action) and answered by religion (preaching, scriptures, sacrament). There is always bi-polar critical correlation: each pole of the dialectic is affirmed, adjusted, or overturned. Thus in turning to Foundational theology, we note that inclusion of action as a text for interpretation does not automatically validat·e a particular set of actions or their meaning. It is initially to argue that action has as primordial place as concept in the material for Foundations. By asserting that sacrament is the action which best expresses conversion, we are not excluding the symbol-dialectic which would include non-Catholic sacraments; the religious actions of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, etc.; and the symbolic acts of all those who believe themselves converted to truth, justice, and love. Conceptual arguments for the validity of the referents of religious Foundations would require an accompanying argument based upon the socio-political interplay of such meaningful actions in the past and present. C. Foundational Theology and the inclusion of sacrament as text The modification of Foundational theology which follows is 10 See Ricoeur's earlier text, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth: The Texas Christian University Press, 1976), pp. 84-37, and the use made of this material in David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralis.m in Theology (New York: Seabury, 1975), esp. pp. 13lff, PRAYER AND SACRAMENT: FOUNDATIONAL THEOLOGY 255 dependent upon Bernard Lonergan's articulation of Method in theological studies. 11 By Foundations, Lonergan means that thematization of basic positions which emerges from a dial,ectic of opinions or judgments entertained. Not all opinions or judgments can be simultaneously held; some must be rejected simply for the sake of coherence; other differences are exclusive. The basis for the acceptance or rejection of fundamental positions is conversion: intellectual, moral and religious. Often it is religious conversion-" falling in love with God " which mediates the other two. It is this experience of conversion which is the Foundation of theology. I. Foundations and Self-involvement Lonergan has remarked in his articulation of the nature of foundational theology that " conversion is not a set of propositions that a theologian utters, but a fundamental and momentous change in the human reality that a theologian is." 12 I find myself in agreement not only with the description of change in the being of theologians, but also with Lonergan's insertion of conversion within theological method. Yet the inclusion of the praxis of conversion has created problems for some contemporary thinkers. To be critical is to exclude the involvement of the thinker in the understanding, validation/ verification of the objects of religious discourse. 13 Thus one assumes that what remains "interest", the "illocutionary force " of discourse, the language of " testimony ", or what we 11 See B. J. F. Lonergan, Method in Theology (London: Darton, Longmans, & Todd, 1972), esp. pp. 235-293. 12 The comments which follow emerge from Lonergan's interpretation; see :Method in Theology, p. 270. 13 See D. Tracy, "Lonergan's Foundational Theology: an Interpretation and a Critique," Foundations of Theology: Papers from the International Lonergan Congress, 1970, ed. Philip McShane (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1971), pp. 197-222, and his own constructive project in Blessed Rage for Order, esp. pp. 172-191. See Tracy's and Schubert Ogden's remarks in the Proceed:ings of the Catholic Theological Society of America 29 (Chicago, Ill., 1974), pp. 59-75, on the nonnecessity of faith for the theologian. 256 STEPHEN HARREL might call the unravelling of "tone" (in Frege's sense) is a cardinal error in theological method. 14 I would argue that this exclusion of the performance of the individual or social group in thought about religion is merely a last gasp of the Enlightenment notion of rationality. It is to believe or assert that the standards of thought which require an uninvolved spectator can apply to religious language. Not only does this seem fundamentally inapplicable to primordial religious speech and gesture, but it is probably a tation of other scientific speech as well. Not only is critical praxis the goal of thought; it is the procesis. Reflection always includes a self-involving moment. Some level of faith is required of the thinker about religion; some self-explicative context is always at issue in religious texts. Moreover, it is precisely this self-implicating moment of discourse which is represented in the self-referential and inter-subjective character of language. Conversion-language and its explication give us a vocabulary/grammar for including the inter-subjective character of religious speech/gesture. What is this language of conversion? I would argue that the originative language of conversion is fundamentally prayer. 15 Again it will be helpful to articulate this position in relation to Ricoeur. 14 The marshalling of these vocabularies in a single line is a strategy to confront their matrix common in Kant's rejection of the mediate knowledge through inner sense of the " transcendental unity of apperception." So Jiirgen Habermas, KnrYWledge and Human Interests, trans. J. J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon, 1971), pp. 200212, 30lfl'.; John R. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 64-71; P. Ricoeur, "Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation," Harvard Theological Review 70 (Jan.-Apr., 1977) 1-37; and M. Dummett, Frege, Philosophy of Language (London: Duckworth, 1973), pp. 2-3, 83-89. For Kant, see I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reas-on, trans. N. K. Smith (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1965), pp. 152ff. 15 I believe that it is possible to offer a structural phenomenology of various primary texts on conversion, both Catholic and Protestant, which could substantiate this claim; for an example, see The Cloud of Unknowing, ed. William Johnston (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1973), pp. 94ff; for a contemporary description and invitation, see Douglas V. Steere, On Listening to Another in The Doubleday Devotional Classics, ed. E. Glenn Hinson, 3 vols. (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978), III, 204-257. PRAYER AND SACRAMENT: FOUNDATIONAL THEOLOGY 257 In facing the question of subjectivity in language, Ricoeur has recently argued that the languages of revelation assist philosophers in this task of reflection. 16 Indeed, he believes that it is only by recognizing that the notion of truth is not aclequation to "things out there", but manifestation through text of ways of being in the world that the subjectivist interpretation of hermeneutics and metaphysics can be overcome. The myth of a self-constituting transcendental Ego can only be exploded when the philosopher includes within reflective discourse the symbolic language of " testimony". Testimony is, for Ricoeur, a language of historical contingency which confronts the autonomy of a text with appropriation of that text. Testimony is the" letting go (depouillemJent) of the self" before a text and its meaning. It is both an ethical and a speculative act. Consciousness recognizes that there is an originary basis of its founding, that upon which it is dependent. This is especially true of symbols and thoughts which encounter the unjustifiable, the evil in experience. Testimony confers believability upon such symbols or ideas. Finally, the self-implication of testimony may escalate to "martyrdom", in which the witness and those things said or seen by the witness become interchangea;ble. Ricoeur has drawn these notions of testimony from his reflection upon the various genres of manifesting-language particularly in the Jewish Scriptures. Thus he believes that there is I) the founding discourse of the prophet, in which a double author of speech and writing is implied, and whose literary genre remains the oracle. Then successively emerge 2) narration of salvation in which story is the focus, and only secondarily " who " is telling the story; 3) prescriptive language which draws the narrative into practice and instruction; 4) wisdom language which overflows the framework of the covenant of election to include all human limit-situations, especially suffer1 • See P. Ricoeur, "Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation," Harvard Theological Review 70 (Jan.-Apr., 1977), 1-37, for the discussion which follows. £58 STEPHEN HARREL ing (e.g. Job); and 5) hymnic discourse, such as the psalms in which the inter-subjective relation or encounter is "celebrated", and language about the divine invokes the presence of the divine. Now Hicoeur argues that only a generative poetics will be able to "order " these various analogues of revelatory language 11 ; but he clearly believes that prophecy is the prime analogue. This is "inspiration" from a first person to a first person. Although I find this analysis enormously helpful in overcoming the usually abstract notions of " revelation " by its emphasis upon the genres of literary expression, I believe that a " generative poetics " would indicate not that prophetic discourse is the originative religious language, but that the language of address, the language of prayer, is primordial. It is not the " I " or Transcendental Subjectivity which speaks in the " i " of the finite; but the " Thou " who is discovered as addressing the "I" in the" l's" address of the" Thou" which founds religious discourse. 18 Prayer founds prophecy and narration, not vice-versa. Now I am aware that my alternative is no more than an assertion; but I have said that this essay is heuristic, and the validity must remain in its consistency as a whole, its proof in the later elaboration of the program. As Ricoeur maintains, a generative poetics iS> still to be accomplished. I nonetheless believe that it will be possible to recover a non-psychologist, non-romanticist (as opposed to certain Romantics) hermeneutics which will account for the selfimplicating subject in religious (and non-religious) discourse. But in theology at least, and theological method in particular, the religious language of self-implication, namely prayer as the expression of conversion, is crucial. As William James was acutely aware, the notion of prayer, an "audacious saying of 17 Ibid., p. 15; for a particular interpretation of " generative poetics ", see Erhardt Giittgemann's "Generative Poetics", Semeia 6 (1976), esp. pp. 18 For a revised idealist proposal on this topic, see S. T. Coleridge's reinterpretation of Jacobi in his "Essay on Faith", The Complete Works of Samuel Tayleniens. The differences from the writings of Leo XIII are striking. 5 One very significant aspect of anthropology which will not be discussed here concerns the relationship between anthropology and eschatology and Christology. Before the Second Vatican Council Catholic social teaching accepted a distinction and at times almost a dichotomy between the natural and the supernatural. Grace, gospel and the Kingdom of God had little or nothing to do with life in the world. Contemporary Catholic social ethics strives to overcome that dichotomy as illustrated in liberation theology. The emphasis now rests on the one history in which God is offering freedom from sin and from all the other forms of oppression in the political, social and economic orders. In the light of this understanding one can readily see that the social mission of the Church is a constitutive dimension of the preaching of the gospel and of the Church's mission for the redemption of the human race as was pointed out in Justice in the World (n. 6), the document released by the Second General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, November 30, 1971. For my discussion of this most significant development in Catholic social teaching, see my " Dialogue with Social Ethics: Roman Catholic Social EthicsPast, Present and Futur.e," in Catholic Moral Theology in Dialogue, paperback ed. (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1976), pp. 111-149. 6 To facilitate a further study of the papal and Church documents, references will be given to readily available English translations. For the documents from the time of Pope John, see The Gospel of Peace and Justice: Catholic Social Teaching Since Pope John, ed. Joseph Gremillion (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1976). References will include the page number in Gremillion as well as the paragraph numbers of the documents which generally are the official paragraph numbers found in the original and in all authorized translations. Thus the present reference is: Octogesima Adveniens, n. 'i!'i!; Gremillion, p. 496. Another readily available compendium of Catholic Church teachings on social ethics is Renewing the Face of thl'J Earth: Catholic Documents on Peace, Justice and Liberation, ed. David J. O'Brien and Thomas A. Shannon (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Image Books, 1977). CHANGING ANTHROPOLOGICAL BASES The Church at the time of Leo was fearful of freedom and equality and looked on the majority of people as the untutored multitude who had to be guided or directed by their rulers. 7 Pope Leo condemned the " modern liberties." Liberty of worship goes against the " chiefest and holiest human duty" demanding the worship of the one true God in the one true religion which can be easily recognized by its external signs. Liberty of speech and of the press means that nothing will remain sacred, for truth will be obscured by darkness and error will prevail. There is only a right and a duty to speak what is true and honorable and no right to speak what is false. A like judgment is passed on liberty of teaching. Finally liberty of conscience is considered. The only true meaning of the freedom of conscience is the freedom to follow the will of God and to do one's duty in obeying his commands. At best the public authority can tolerate what is at variance with truth and justice for the sake of avoiding greater evils or of preserving some greater good. 8 Leo XIII was certainly no supporter of civil liberties and the modern freedoms. Leo XIII not only did not promote equality as a virtue or something to be striven for in society, but he stressed the importance of inequality. Inequality is a fact of nature. There are differences in health, beauty, intelligence, strength and courage. These natural inequalities necessarily bring about social inequalities which are essential for the good functioning of society. In short, the inequality of rights and of power proceed from the very author of nature. Leo had a view of society as a hierarchical organism in which there are different roles and functions to fulfill, but in which all will work for the common good of all. 9 7 References to the encyclicals of Pope Leo XIII will be to The Church Speaks to the Modern World: The Social Teachings of Leo XIII, ed. Etienne Gilson (Gar- den City, New York: Doubleday Image Books, 1954). Thus the present reference is: Libertas Praestantissimum, n. 23; Gilson, p. 72. 8 Libertas Praestantissimum, nn. 19-37; Gilson, pp. 70-79. See also Immortale Dei, nn. 31-42; Gilson, pp. 174-180. • Quod Apostolici Muneris, especially nn. 5, 6; Gilson, pp. 192, 193. 288 CHARLES E. CURRAN According to Leo: In like manner, no one doubts that all men are equal one to another, so far as regards their common origin and nature, or the last end which each one has to attain, or the rights and duties which are thence derived. But, as the abilities of all are not equal, as one differs from another in the powers of mind or body, and as there are many dissimilarities of manner, disposition and character, it is most repugnant to reason to endeavor to confine all within the same measure, and to extend complete equality to the institutions of civil life.10 Inequalities and some of the hardships connected with them will always be part of human existence in this world which is marked by the presence of original sin. To suffer and to endure is the lot of people. People should not be deluded by promises of undisturbed repose and constant enjoyment. We should look upon our world in a spirit of reality and at the same time seek elsewhere the solace to its troubles. 11 Leo XIII likewise does not call for the active participation of all in social and political life, but rather he has a very hierarchical view of civil society which follows from the inequalities mentioned above. Leo's favorite word for the rulers of society is principes. The very word shows his hierarchical leanings. The citizen is primarily one who obeys the divine law, the natural law and the human law which are handed down by the principres. Leo even quotes the maxim, qualis rex, taiis grex, which indicates the power of the ruler over all the citizens in practically every aspect of life.12 The citizens are called by Leo the untutored multitude who must be led and protected by the ruler. 13 At best, authority appears as paternalistic, and the subjects are children who are to obey and respect their rulers with a type of piety. 14 Leo was fearful of the liberalistic notion of the sovereignty of the people, which really meant that ffomanum Genus, n. !26; Gilson, p. 130. Rerum Novarum, nn. 18, 19; Gilson, pp. !214, 215. 12 Murray, The Problem of Rdigious FreedMn, pp. 55, 56, 18 Libertas Praestantissimum, n. 23; Gilson, p. 72. 14 lmmortale Dei, n. 5; Gilson, p. 163. 10 11 CHANGING ANTHROPOLOGICAL BASES the people no longer owed obedience to God and God's law in all aspects of their public and private lives. 15 In this authoritarian and paternalistic understanding, there is not the distinction between society and the state which had been present in classical thought but then lost during the period of a:bsolutism. Leo's theory is that of the ethical society-state in which the total common good of the society is entrusted to the rulers. Society is constructed from the top down with the ruler guarding and protecting the untutored multitude from the many dangers of life just as the father has the function of protecting and guiding his children in the family. 16 Leo's denial of liberty, equality and participation can be somewhat understood in the light of the circumstances of the times in which he lived. The pope was an implacable foe of liheralism, which in his mind was the root cause of all the problems of the modern day. Liberalism substitutes foolish license for true liberty. The followers of liberalism deny the existence of any divine authority and proclaim that every human being is a law unto oneself. Liberalism proposes an independent morality in which the human being is freed from the divine law and authority and one can do whatever one wants. Leo consequently attacks those forms of government which make the coHective reason of the community the supreme guide of life in society. They substitute the decision of the majority for the rule of God. God and God's law are totally removed from society. 11 Behind Leo's fear of equality lurks the same individualism present in liberalism. For Leo, society is an organism. Human beings are by nature social and called to join together in political society for the common good. To live in society is not a restriction on individual human freedom,. for by nature all of us are socal. Each one has a different function to play in the hierarchically structured organism which resembles the orgaImmortale Dei, n. 31; Gilson, pp. 174, 175. Murray, The Problem of Religious Freedom, pp. 55-57. 17 Libertas Praestantissimum, n. 15; Gilson, pp. 66, 67. 10 10 CHARLES E. CURRAN nism of the human body with all its different parts but each functioning for the good of the whole. Leo fears an understanding which sees society merely as a collection of equal individuals, for this would destroy any social fabric and true social ordering. Participation is also looked on as a threat, for this could readily be confused with the demands of liberalistic license and destroy the organic unity of society in which each person has his or her God-given function to perform. In the context of Leo's understanding of the untutored multitude, there could be little or no room for participation. In general, Leo rightly recognized some of the problems of liberalism and individualism. However, his only solution was to turn his back totally on all the developments which were then taking place in the modern world. His solution to the problem was a static, hierarchically structured, authoritarian, and paternalistic view of society. At the very least, Leo lacked the prophetic charism to sort out the good from the bad in the newer developments which were taking place in the nineteenth century and to find a place for the legitimate demands of liberty, equality and participation. 18 The picture emerges of a static and hierarchically structured society governed by the law of God and the natural law under the protection and guidance of the ruler who directs a11 to the common good and protects his subjects from physical and moral harm. This explanation of Leo's approach shows the tremendous gulf which exists between his understanding of anthropology and that proposed by Pope Paul VI in Octogesima Advenkns. However, one can trace some of the major lines of the developments which occurred from Leo XIII to Paul VI. Even in Leo XIII there are some aspects pointing in a different direction, but they are found mostly in his 1891 encyclical Rerum Novariim on the rights of the worker. In his political writings Leo especially argues against a totalitarian 18 For similar judgment on Leo's approach to liberty, see Fr. Refoule, "L'Eglise et !es libertes de Leon XIII a Jean XXIIl," in Le Supplement, n. 125 (mai 1978, CHANGING ANTHROPOLOGICAL BASES 291 democracy with its emphasis on majority rule and its lack of respect for divine and natural law, but he always upheld the basic rights of individual human beings, which might be abused because of the totalitarian democracy. In Rerum Novarum he stresses even more the rights of the individual worker and his approach is less authoritarian and paternalistic. In R'erum N ovarum against the danger of socialism Leo recalls that the human being is prior to the state and has natural rights which do not depend on the state. 19 The right to private property is based on our nature as rational and provident beings. Every individual has the right to marry. Marriage is older than the state and has its rights and duties independently of the state. 20 The state has an obligation to intervene to protect the rights of the workers, for public authority must step in when a particular class suffers or is threatened with harm which in no other way can be met or avoided. 21 Moreover, workers themselves have the right to organize into unions and associations to promote their own rights and interests. 22 Here appears the basis for participation in the shaping of one's own destiny. In Rerum N ovarum Leo repeats his teaching on inequality. The condition of things inherent in human affairs must be borne with. These conditions include natural differences of the most important kinds-differences in capacities, skills, health and strength. Unequal fortune is a necessary result of unequal conditions. 23 However, Leo -appears to admit a basic equality of all to have their rights recognized and protected by the state. In fact the poor and badly off have a claim to special consideration.24 As one would expect, Leo upholds the rights of the individual against socialism. In tension with his other emphases Leo's writings show differing degrees of recognition of some Rerum Novarum, n. 7, Gilson, pp. 208, 209. Rerum Novarum, nn. 6-12; Gilson, pp. 208-211. 21 Rerum Novarum, n. 36; Gilson, pp. 224, 225. 22 Rerum Novarum, nn. 49-51; Gilson, pp. 231-233. 28 Rerum Novarum, n. 17; Gilson, pp. 213, 214. 2 • Rerum Novarum, n. 37; Gilson, pp. 225, 226. Here I disagree with Camp who 19 20 on page 32 seems to deny in Leo a basic equality of all before the law. Q9Q CHARLES E. CURRAN freedom, equality and even of incipient participation as anthropological concerns. Pope Pius XI (19QQ-1939) remains in continuity with his predecessor Leo XIII. Liberalism lies at the root of the problems of the modern world. The principal cause of the disturbed conditions in which we live is that the power of law and respect for authority have been considerably weakened ever since people came to deny that the origin of law and of authority was in God the creator and ruler of the world. Liberalism has even fathered socialism and bolshevism. Pius XI insists on the importance of natural law and a hierarchical ordering of society based on it. In Quadragesimo Anno on the fortieth anniversary of Leo's encyclical Rerum Novarum, Pius XI continues the discussion of justice and the economic order, insisting on the dignity and rights of the individual and also on the social nature of human beings. Here again the two extreme approaches of individualism and socialism are rejected on the basis of an anthropology which recognizes the dignity and rights of the individual as well as the social aspects of the human person. 25 However, contact with different forms of totalitarianism brought to the fore an emphasis on the defense of the rights, dignity and freedom of the individual. (There has been much discussion in the last few decades about the relationship of the Catholic Church to fascism, nazism and communism. Without entering into the debate, it is safe to generalize that the Catholic Church was much more fearful of the left and showed itself more willing to compromise with the right.) Pius XI defends the transcendental character of the human person against materialistic and atheistic communism. Communism is condemned for stripping human beings of their liberty and for robbing the human person of dignity. 26 Now the Church becomes the pro25 References to the encyclicals of Pope Pius XI will be to The Church and the Reconstruction of the Modem World: The Social Encyclicals of Pope Pius XI, ed. Terence P. McLaughlin (Garden City, New York: Doubleday Image Books, 1957). McLaughlin, "Introduction," pp. 6-15. 26 Divini Redemptoris, n. 10; McLaughlin, pp. 359, 370. CHANGING ANTHROPOLOGICAL BASES fl93 tector of human freedom and dignity. In Non Abbiamo Bisogno, Pius XI even defends the freedom of conscience with the recognition that he is speaking about the true freedom of conscience and not the license which refuses to recognize the laws of God. 21 The development continues in the pontificate of Pope Pius XII (1939-1958). The historical context of the struggle against totalitarianism remains, but the significant role of Christian Democratic parties in Europe adds an important new dimension. In his Christmas radio message in 1944, Pope Pius XII insisted on the dignity of human beings and on a system of government that will be more in accord with the dignity and freedom of the citizenry. This emphasis on the dignity and freedom of the human being also calls for greater participation and active involvement of all. The human being is not the object of social life or an inert element in it, but rather is the subject, foundation and end of social life.28 In the light of these historical circumstances and of a theoretical insistence on the centrality of the dignity of the human person, Pius proposed an understanding of the state remarkably different from that of Leo XIII. As John Courtney Murray lucidly points out Pius XII abandoned Leo XIII's ethical concept of the society-state and accepted a juridical or limited constitutional state. For Leo there is no distinction between society and the state, for the state is hierarchically ordered with the rulers having the function of guarding and protecting the illiterate masses in every aspect of life. By emphasizing the dignity, freedom and responsibility of the individual person, Pius XII clearly accepts a limited view of the state which sees it as only a part of society with a function of defending the rights of human beings and of promoting the freedom of 27 For a further explanation of this change in the light of opposition to totalitarianism especially from the left, see G. B. Guzzetti, " L'impegno politico dei cattolici nel magistero pontificio dell'ultimo secolo con particolare riguardo all'ultimo ventennio," La Scuola Cattolica 194 (1976), 192-!inO. 28 Radio message, December 24, 1944; Acta Apostolicae Sedis 37 (1945), ll-12; 22. 294 CHARLES E. CURRAN the people. The state has a limited juridical role and does not act as the parent who guides the entire lives of his or her children. No longer is the state understood in terms of the relationship between prin0ipes and the untutored multitudes. The rulers are representatives of the people, and the people are responsible citizens. 29 Despite these significant changes in the importance of the dignity of the person and the recognition of limited constitutional government, Guzzetti still detects an air of the aristocratic about Pius XII's approach. 30 Also on the matter of inequalities in society Pius advances over Leo, but still insists that natural inequalities of education, of earthly goods and of social position are not obstacles to brotherhood and community provided they are not arbitrary and are in accord with justice and charity. 31 The short pontificate of John XXIII (1958-1963) with its convocation of the Second Vatican Council had a great impact on Roman Catholicism. In the area of social ethics John in his two encyclicals, Mater et Magistra and Pa0em in Terris, defends human dignity in the midst of the ever increasing social relationships and interdependencies which characterize our modern world. Paum in Terris gives the most detailed statement in the papal social tradition of human rights based on the dignity of the person, but also adds the corresponding duties thereby avoiding the danger of individualism. The dignity of the human person requires that every individual enjoy the right to act freely and responsibly. The dignity, freedom and equality of the human person are highlighted and defended, but many of the assumptions of an older liberalistic individualism are not accepted. 32 There is one fascinating development even within John's own Murray, The Problem of Religious Freedom, pp. 59-65. Guzzetti, La Scuola Cattolica 194 (1976), 202. 31 Radio message, December 24, 1944; Acta Apostolicae Sedis 37 (1945), 14. •• Pacem in Terris, nn. 8-34; Gremillion, pp. 203-208. See David Hollenbach, Claims in Conflict, pp. 62-69. 29 80 CHANGING ANTHROPOLOGICAL BASES writings. The papal social tradition consistently emphasized that life in society must be based on truth, justice and love. John XXIII repeated the importance of this triad in Mater et M agistra in 1961.33 However, in 1963 in Pacem in Terris a fourth element was added: a political society is well ordered, beneficial and in keeping with human dignity if it is grounded on truth, justice, love and freedom. 34 Even in John there was only a later recognition of the fundamental importance of freedom alongside truth, justice and love. From the first encyclical of Leo XIII on the question of economic ethics there was some recognition for participation and responsibility, especially in terms of the workers' right to form organizations and unions to promote their own interests. John XXIII recognizes there is an innate need of human nature calling for human beings engaged in productive activity to have an opportunity to assume responsibility and to perfect themselves by their efforts. Participation of workers in medium size and larger enterprises calls for some type of partnership. 35 Two documents of the Second Vatican Council are most significant for our purposes-the Declaration on Religious Freedom and the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World. It was only at the Second Vatican Council that the Roman Catholic Church accepted the concept of religious liberty-a concept which was anathema to Leo XIII. However, the council is careful to show that its acceptance does not stem from the tenets of an older liberalism ,and indiff erentism. Religious liberty is not the right to worship God as one pleases, but rather the right to immunity from external coercion forcing one to act in a way opposed to one's conscience or preventing one from acting in accord with one's conscience. The basis for religious liberty is stated very distinctly in the opening paragraph-the dignity of the human person which has been impressing itself more and more deeply on the con83 Mater et Magistra, n. 21Q; Gremillion, p. 188. •• Pacem in Terris, n. 35; Gremillion, p. 208. 36 Mater ct Magistra, nn. 82-103; Gremillion, pp. 161-165. £96 CHARLES E. CURRAN science of contemporary people and a corresponding recognition of a constitutional government whose powers are limited. A limited gov;ernment embraces only a small part of the life of people in society, and religion exists beyond the pale of the role of civil government. 36 The council brings out all the implications of a limited constitutional government which in principle had been accepted by Pius XII. The Roman Catholic Church thus became a defender of religious liberty even though in the nineteenth century Pope Leo XIII stood as the most determined opponent of religious liberty. The dignity of the human person serves as the cornerstone of the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World-Gaudium et Spes. The first chapter of the theoretical Part One of the document begins with the dignity of the human person and its meaning and importance. Authentic freedom as opposed to license is championed by the conciliar document. In earlier documents there was a great insistence on the moral law as the antidote to any tendency to license. Now the emphasis is on conscience-the most secret core and sanctuary of the human person where one hears the call of God's voice. The shift from the role of law which is traditionally called the objective norm of morality to conscience which is called the subjective norm of human action is most significant in showing the move to the subject and to the person. Of course the document stresses the need for a correct conscience, but the impression is given that truth is found in the innermost depths of one's existence. 37 Gaudium et Spes gives much more importance to equality than some of the earlier documents. Inequalities are still recognized, but now the existence of inequalities -appears in subordinate clauses with the main emphasis being on equality. For example: " True, all men are not alike from the point of view of varying physical power and the diversity of intellectual 36 87 Dignitatis llumanae, nn. 1, 2; Gremillion, pp. 337-889. Gaudium et Spes, nn. 12-22; Gremillion, pp. 252-261. CHANGING ANTHROPOLOGICAL BASES 297 and moral resources. Nevertheless, with respect to .the fundamental rights of the person, every type of discrimination, whether social or cultural, whether based on sex, race, color, social condition, language or religion, is to be overcome and eradicated as contrary to God's intent." 38 "Moreover, although rightful differences exist between men, the equal dignity of persons demands that a more humane and just condition of life be brought about. For excessive economic and social differences between the members of the one human family or popul111tion groups cause scandal, and militate against social justice, equity, the dignity of the human person as well as social and international peace." 39 There is also a call for responsibility and participation. The will to play one's role in common endeavors should be encouraged. The largest possible number of citizens should participate in public affairs with genuine freedom. 4-0 A greater share in education and culture is required for all to exercise responsibility and participation. The active participation of all in running the economic enterprise should be promoted. 41 The juridical and political structure should afford all citizens the chance to participate freely and ·actively in establishing the constitutional basis of a political community, governing the state, determining the scope and purposes of different institutions and choosing leaders. 42 In the light of this line of development, the teaching of Pope Paul VI in Ovtogesima Adveniens on the eightieth anniversary of Rerum N ovarum does not come as a total surprise: " Two aspirations persistently make themselves felt in these new contexts, and they grow stronger to the extent that people become better informed and better educated: the aspiration to equality and the aspiration to participation, two forms of man's dignity 38 Gaudium et Spes, n. 29; Gremillion, p. 266. ••Ibid. •• Gaudium et Spes., n. 81; Gremillion, p. 267. 41 Gaudium et Spes, n. 68; Gremillion, pp. 804, 805. •• Gaudium et Spes, n. 75; Gr.emillion, pp. 810-812. CHARLES E. CURRAN and freedom." 43 Such an anthropology stressing freedom, equality and participation should have significant methodological consequences for Christian social ethics. Historical Consciousness Before considering the methodological consequences of this new anthropology, historical consciousness, which affects both anthropology and methodology, should be considered. Historical consciousness, which is very pronounced in Octogesima Adveniens but clearly absent from the documents of Leo XIII, gives great significance to historical conditions, growth, change and development. and has often been contrasted with a classicist approach. In the area of methodology, the classicist approach emphasizes the eternal, the universal, the unchanging and often employs a deductive methodology. The historically conscious approach emphasizes the particular, the individual, the contingent and the historical and often employs a more inductive methodology. 44 The importance of historical consciousness becomes very evident in the deliberations of the Second Vatican Council on religious freedom. Pope Leo XIII had condemned religious liberty. Perhaps the most pressing question facing the f.athers of Vatican II was how to reconcile Leo's condemnation with the acceptance of religious liberty less than a century later. John Courtney Murray in his writings on religious liberty provided a solution. One has to interpret Leo in the light of the circumstances of his own day. Leo was struggling against a continental liberalism with its denial of any place for God in society and its acceptance of an omnicompetent state with no recognition whatsoever of the divine law or of natural law. In reaction to this approach Leo called for the union of Church and state as the way of rightfully recognizing and protecting 43 Octogesima Adveniens, n. !'l!'l, Gremillion, p. 496. "Bernard Lonergan, "A Transition from a Classicist World View to Historical Mindedness," in Law for Liberty: The Role of Law in the Church Today, ed. James E. Bicchler (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1967), pp. 126-133. CHANGING ANTHROPOLOGICAL BASES the role and function of the Church. However, the constitutional understanding of the separation of Church and state was not based on a continental liberalism but on a notion of a constitutional government which claimed only a limited role for itself in the life of society. The constitutional understanding did not deny a role or a place for religion in society; the role and function of religion existed beyond the pale of the limited scope and function of the state. Murray's historically conscious hermeneutic distinguished the polemical-historical aspect of Leo's teaching from the doctrinal aspect. There has been no change in the doctrinal. The recognition of historical consciousness provided the key to the problem of development and change in the Church's teaching. 45 Murray made a remarkable contribution by his historical hermeneutic. In retrospect it is both easy and necessary to criticize Murray's theory as too benevolent. One should admit some error in the Church's teaching in the nineteenth century and even some doctrinal discontinuity and evolution in the teaching on religious liberty. The acceptance of historical consciousness in our understanding of anthropology also has important methodological ramifications in the papal social teaching. The earlier teachings were deductive, stressing immutable eternal principles of natural law. However, a more inductive approach began to appear in the 1960s. The encyclical Paoem in Terris is divided into four major parts: order among people, relations between individuals and public authority within a single state, relations between states, relations of people in political communities with the world community. Each part concludes with a section on the signs of the times-the distinotive characteristics of the contemporary age. 46 There was much debate about the term" signs 45 John Courtney Murray, "Vers une intelligence du developpement de la doctrine de l'Eglise sur la liberte religiense," in Vatican II: La Liberte Rdigieuse (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1967), pp. 11-147; Murray, "Religious Liberty and the Development of Doctrine," The Catholic World 204 (February 1967), 277-283. 46 Pacem in Terris, nn. 39-45; 75-79; 126-129; 142-145; Gremillion, pp. 209-210; 217-218; 227-228; 231-232. 300 CHARLES E. CURRAN of the times " at the Second Vatican Council. Early drafts and versions of the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World gave great importance to the term. In the final version " signs of the times " was used sparingly because some Council fathers did not want to use a term whose biblical meaning was quite different-the eschatological signs of the last days. 47 However, in the second part of the Pastoral Constitution which treats five problems of special urgency in the contemporary world each consideration begins with an empirical description of the contemporary reality even though the terminology " signs of the times " is not employed. Such an approach gives greater emphasis to the contemporary historical situation and does not begin with a universal viewpoint and deduce an understanding applicable to all cultures and times. Methodological Consequences The anthropology of the papal social teaching by the time of Octogesima Adlveniens in 1971 stresses freedom, equality, participation and historical mindedness. The methodological consequences of such an anthropology are quite significant and show a remarkable change from the methodology employed in the earlier documents. The earlier approach highlighted the universal, all-embracing character of the teaching. In the economic realm there appeared especially with Pius XI in 1931 a plan for the reconstruction of the social order in accord with what was called a theory of moderate solidarism. Pope Pius XI was much more negative about the existing abuses and injustices of the socia1 order than was Leo XIII. Undoubtedly the problem of the depression influenced Pius's negative judgment a.bout the existing social order and the call for a more radical reconstruction of society according to a solidaristic model based in general on the guild system with its intermediary institutions bringing together both workers and owners. The Pope 47 Charles Moeller, "Preface and Introductory Statement," in Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, V: Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modem World, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler (New York: Herder and Herder, 1969), p. 94. CHANGING ANTHROPOLOGICAL BASES 301 continued to condemn laissez-faire capitalism and the opposite extreme of socialism. In place of these two systems, Pius XI proposed a third way which would eliminate the bad features of extreme individualism and extreme socialism while giving due importance to the personal and social nature of the individual person. This third way, although somewhat vague in its development and detail, was thought to be a universally applicable plan. 48 Pius XII continued in the same line as his predecessor with emphasis on reconstruction and not merely on reform. Pro:fossional organizations and labor unions are provisional and transitory forms; the ultimate purpose is the bringing together and cooperation of employees and employers in order to provide together for the general welfare and the needs of the whole community. Pope Pius XII also distinguished his reconstruction plan from mere co-management or participation of workers in management. Pope Pius XII originally continued in the footsteps of his predecessor, proposing a universally applicable plan of reconstruction deduced from the principles of the natural law and corresponding in significant ways to the guild system of the middle ages. However, after 1952 Pius rarely mentioned such a plan of reconstruction. 49 In Mater et Magistra Pope John XXIII merely referred to Pius Xi's orderly reorganization of society with smaller professional and economic groups existing in their own right and not prescribed by public authority. 50 In John's encyclicals, in the conciliar documents and in Paul's teaching there was no further development of Pius Xi's plan for social reconstruction. Reasons for the abandonment of a plan of social reconstruction applicable throughout the world can be found in the later documents themselves. These documents recognize the complexity of the social problem and historical and cultural differences which make it difficult for a universal plan to be Quadragesimo Anno, nn. 76-149; McLaughlin, pp. 246-274. Camp, The Papal Ideology of Social Reform, pp. 128-135. 50 Mater et Magistra, n. 37; Gremillion, p. 150. 48 49 302 . CHARLES E. CURRAN carried out in all different areas. Mater et M agistra emphasized the complexity of the present scene, the multiplication of social relationships, and many new developments in the field of science, technology and economics as well as developments in the social and political fields. 51 The social questions involve more than the rights and duties of labor and capital. In Populorum Progressi,o Pope Paul VI early in his encyclical stated that today the principal fact that all must recognize is that the social question has become world-wide. 52 The complexity of the question increases enormously when one brings into consideration the entire world and the relationship between and among countries, especially poor nations and rich nations. The approach of the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World by beginning with the signs of the times also called for doing away with a deductive methodology resulting in an eternal, immutable plan of God for the world. At the same time as Pius XI and Pius XII were talking about a program of reconstruction according to solidaristic principles of organizaition, the term " social doctrine " was used by these popes to refer to the official body of Church teaching consisting of the principles of the economic order derived from the natural law and the plan of reconstruction based on them. Pius XI distinguished this social doctrine from social and economic sciences. The social doctrine contains the immutable truths taught by the popes, whereas social science is the area for research and scholarly enterprise. Precisely the authoritative nature of the doctrine distinguishes it from the empirical social sciences of economics or sociology. 53 Such an approach was called for by some Catholic sociologists who claimed that the major of their argument was supplied by authoritative Church teaching, the minor came from their scientific research; and from these one drew the conclusion. 54 Pope Pius XII freMater et Magistra, nn. 46-60; Gremillion, pp. 152-156. Populorum Progressio, n. 3; GremilHon, p. 388. 58 Quadragesimo Anno, nn. 17->22; McLaughlin, pp. 224, 225. 54 Paul Hanly Furfey, Fire on the Earth (New York: Macmillan, 1936), p. 8. 51 52 CHANGING ANTHROPOLOGICAL BASES sos quently speaks about Catholic social doctrine. According to Pius XII the earlier papal teaching became the source of Catholic social doctrine providing the children of the Church with directives and means for a social reconstruction rich in fruit. 55 Socia] doctrine is the authoritative teaching proclaimed by the hierarchical magisterium, deduced from the eternal principles of the natural law, and distinguished from the contribution of the empirical sciences. Both the term" social doctrine of the Church" and the reality expressed by it, namely, a papal plan or ideology of social reconstruction, gradually disappear from official Church documents after Pope Pius XII. Later references are to the social teaching of the gospel or the social teaching of the Church. Gone is the vision of the universal plan deductively derived from natural la.w and proposed authoritatively by the Church magisterium to be applied in all parts of the world. No longer will there be such a separation between ethically deduced moral principles and the economic and social analysis of the situation. Rather one now begins with the signs of the times and with an analysis of the contemporary situation and not with some abstract principle divorced from historical reality. 56 Octogesi,ma AdV'eniens with an anthropology insisting on personal freedom, equality, participation and historical consciousness employs a methodology quite at variance with that employed in the early papal documents. Early in the document Pope Paul VI recognizes the wide diversity of situations in which Christians live throughout the world. In the face of such diversity it is difficult to utter a unified message or to put forward a solution which has universal validity. The Christian communities themselves must analyze with objectivity their own situation and shed on it the light of the gospel and the Calvez and Perrin, The Church and Social Justice, p. 3. Bartolomeo Sorge, " E superat-0 il concetto tradizionale di dottrina sociale del1a Chiesa?" La Civilta Cattolica 119 (1968), I, 423-436. However, I disagree with the assignment of roles which Sorge gives to the hierarchical magisterium and the laity. See also Sorge, "L'apporto dottrinale della lettera apostolica 'Octogesima Adveniens,'" La Civilta Cattolica 122 (1971), 417-428. 55 56 804 CHARLES E. CURRAN principles of the teaching of the Church. It is up to the Christian communities with the help of the Spirit in communion with the bishops and in dialogue with other Christians and people of good will to discern the options and commitments necessary to bring about the urgently needed social and political changes. 57 Rather than a universal plan based on natural law, Pope Paul VI recalls the importance and significance of utopias. Utopias appeal to the imagination of responsible people to perceive in the present situation the disregarded possibilities within it and to provide direction toward a fresh future. Such an approach sustains social dynamism by the confidence that it gives to the inventive powers of the human mind and heart. "At the heart of the world there dwells the mystery of man discovering himself to be God's son in the course of a historical and psychological process in which constraint and freedom as well as the weight of sin and the breath of the Spirit alternate and struggle for the upper hand." 58 The methodological changes are quite significant. There is no universal plan applicable to all situations, but rather Christians discern what to do in the midst of the situation in which they find themselves. What to do is not determined by a deductive reasoning process based on the eternal and immutable natural law. Rather, a careful and objective scrutiny of the present reality in the light of the gospel and oi the teaching of the Church is central to the discernment process. Commitments and options are discerned in the situation itself. The approach is dynamic rather than static. The appeal to utopias, imagination and the mystery of the human person at the heart of the world all testify to a less rationalistic discernment process. There is also a call for the individual in the Church to be self-critical, thereby recognizing the dangers that might come from one's own presuppositions. Octogesima Adveniens concludes with a call to action. 59 All Octogesima Adveniens, n. 4; Gremillion, p. 487. Octogesima Adveniens, n. 37; Gremillion, p. 502. 59 Octogesima Adveniens, nn. 48-52; Gremillion, pp. 509-511. 57 58 CHANGING ANTHROPOLOGICAL BASES 305 along the Church's social teaching has called for action, but the call is now more urgent and more central to the very notion of the social mission of the Church. The importance of responsibility and the urgent need to change structures call for the active involvement of all. Once again emphasis is on the concrete and the need to take concrete action despite the fact that there can be a plurality of strategic options for Christians. Both the anthropology and the methodology employed in Octogemma Adveniens call for a different understanding of the role of persons in the Church itself and in the social mission of the Church. An older approach, especially associated with the concept of Catholic Action proposed by Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII, saw the function of the laity to carry out and put into practice the principles which were taught by the hierarchical magisterium. Now that there no longer exists a clear cut dichotomy between the deduced principles and the concrete commitments and options, so too there no longer can exist this total dichotomy between the role of hierarchical magisterium and role of the laity in the Church. As is evident even in this document, the whole Church must discern what options are to be taken in the light of an analysis of the signs of the times and in the light of the gospel even though there remains a distinctive role for the hierarchical magisterium. No longer are the laity the people who receive the principles and the instruction from the hierarchy and then put these plans into practice. All in the Church have a role in discerning and in executing. 60 Contemporary Catholic social ethics mirrors and at times even goes beyond the approach and methodology employed in Octogemma Adveniens. David Hollenbach has recently em00 The understanding of eschatology mentioned in footnote 5, which tends to overcome the dichotomy between the supernatural and the natural and the Church and the world, also influences the position taken here. For a refutation of a distinction of planes approach in the social mission of the Church, see Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Press, 1973), pp. 53-58. For an approach which still tends to distinguish too much between the teaching role of the hierarchy and the .executing role of the laity, see the articles of Sorge mentioned in footnote 56. 306 CHARLES E. CURRAN ployed a similar methodology in his attempt to revise and retrieve the Catholic human rights tradition. 61 Political and liberation theology shows some of the same tendencies but even goes beyond the methodological approach of Octogesima Adveniens. Critical reason insists on the importance of action. Praxis becomes primary in many of these approaches, and theology becomes reflection on praxis. For many liberation theologians true theology can only grow out of praxis. 62 At the very least, the methodology of Catholic social ethics is thus greatly changed from the time of Leo XIII especially in the light of changing anthropological understandings. II. SOCIAL ASPECTS OF ANTHROPOLOGY Another important aspect of anthropology concerns the social nature of human beings. Catholic social ethics has consistently recognized the social nature of human beings. As a result Catholic social ethics looks upon the state as a natural society, for human beings are called by nature to live in political society. In some Christian ethics the origin of the state is grounded on human sinfulness. The power and coercion of the state are necessary to prevent sinful human beings from destroying one another. 63 Pope Leo XIII follows in the Catholic tradition by his insistence that the state is a natural society. Human beings with their inequality and differences come together to achieve what the individuals as such are not able to accomplish. Leo's understanding of political society as an organism and an organic whole with individuals carrying out different functions shows that the state is based on human nature and does not exist merely on the basis of a contract made by discrete individuals.M David Hollenbach, Claims in Confiict. Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation; Juan Luis Segundo, The Liberation of Theology (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1976). 69 For an authoritative study, see Heinrich A. Rommen, The State in Catholic Thought (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1945). 64 Gilson, pp. 11-15. 61 62 CHANGING ANTHROPOLOGICAL BASES 307 The papal social teaching in the last century has recognized both the legitimate rights of the individual and the social nature of human beings. The Catholic approach to the economic problem traditionally has condemned the two extremes of individualistic capitalism and collectivistic socialism. Throughout its history Catholic social ethics has tried to uphold both the personal and the social aspects of anthropology. However, there have been varying nuances in the approach over the years. This section of the essay will now consider two significant questions in which there has been a development in giving more importance to the social aspects of anthropology-private property and socialism. Private Property Pope Leo XIII recognized the misery and wretchedness pressing so urgently upon the majority of the working class because of the hardheartedness of employers and the greed of unchecked competition. To remedy these ills the socialists do away with private property. However, Leo's solution is the opposite. Everyone has a right to private property. The dignity of the individua1 will be protected if one is able to have one's own property and thus make oneself secure against the vicissitudes of the industrial order. Private property protects and promotes the security of the individual and of the family. By investing wages in property and in land the worker has the hope and the possibility of increasing personal resources and of bettering one's condition in life. However, the most important and fundamental fact for Leo is that private property is a demand of the natural law. The human being is distinguished from animals precisely through rational nature because of which one has the right to possess things in a permanent and stable way to provide for the future through private property. By virtue of labor and work the human being makes one's own that portion of nature's field which he or she cultivates. The principle of private ownership is necessarily in accord with human nature and is conducive 308 CHARLES E. CURRAN in the most unmistakable manner to the peace and tranquility of human existence. The right to private property of the individual is strengthened in the light of human social and domestic obligations, for it provides security for the entire family. The first and most fundamental principle to alleviate the impoverished conditions of the masses is the inviolability of private property. 65 There are a number of interesting facets about Leo's defense of private property as the solution to the misery of the working masses. First, Leo's solution indicates the rural and preindustrial perspective with which he approached the problem. Private property for Leo is usually the land and one's right to the fruits of the labor which has been expended in cultivating the land. If one possesses one's own land, then one can provide food and basic necessities for one's family no matter what the vicissitudes of the industrial order. Human dignity is preserved and human needs will he met if the workers can own and work their own plot of land. This solution obviously fits better in an earlier time and in a more agrarian situation. Its practicality as a reasonable solution in the industrial era of the late nineteenth century is open to serious question. Second, Leo does not deal realistically with the most significant aspect of private property existing at that time-the abuse of private property by the rich at the expense of the poor. The failure to recognize this fact in the very first part of the encyclical and to deal with it realistically marks a definite lacuna in Leo's approach. The real problem of the day concerns especially the ownership of the goods of production, since abuses on the part of those who own the goods of production contributed greatly to the economic woes of the worker. Leo reminds the rich of their obligation to share with the poor, but such a reminder does not go to the heart of the problem. Third, and somewhat connected with the two previous observations, Leo justifies private property only on the basis of 66 Rerum Novarum, nn. 5-15; Gilson, pp. 207-213. CHANGING ANTHROPOLOGICAL BASES 809 labor. No other titles are mentioned by Leo in Rerum Novarom to justify ownership. The single title of labor again shows the rural vision which Leo brought to the question and does not take into consideration the many problems of abuse through inheritance and other ways of acquiring private property. In Quod Apostolic.i Muneris Leo held that inheritance was a valid means of acquiring wealth but did not justify this title. 6 Leo's discussion of the titles to private ownership is very incomplete and again fails to deal with the real abuses and problems of the times. Fourth, Leo's teaching on private property disagrees with that proposed by Thomas Aquinas. Thomas Aquinas discusses the question of private property in two articles. 67 First he responds affirmatively to the question whether the possession of external things is natural to human beings. God created all reality and ordained that the lower creation serve the higher. Dominion over external things is natural to humans because as a rational creature made in the image and likeness of God the human being is called to use external goods to achieve his or her end. But then in a second question Thomas discusses the right to possess something as one's own with the power of procuring and disposing of it. Human beings have the right to private ownership which involves the procuring and disposing of external goods. This right is necessary for human life for three reasons: 1) Individuals are more solicitous about procuring things that belong to themselves alone and are not owned in common. 2) A more orderly and less confusing existence will result from private property. 8) A more peaceful state of existence ensues when everyone is content with one's own things. However, with regard to the use of private property human beings are to use external goods as though they were common and not proper because these goods should serve the needs of all. Thomas Aquinas's teaching on private property differs from Leo's on a number of significant points. Thomas clearly dis•• Quod Apostolici Muneria., n. 1; Gilson, p. 190. 67 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Thedogiae, Ila Ilae, q. 66, aa. 1 and 310 CHARLES E. CURRAN tinguishes between a generic dominion that belongs to all human beings to use erternal things and the specific type of dominion in the system of private property. In Leo's discussion in the beginning of Rerum N ovarum this distinction seems to be almost entirely lacking. 68 In fact, the argument based on rational human nature, which Thomas uses to prove the generic dominion of all people over the goods of creation, is employed by Leo to argue for the rights of private property in the strict sense. Thomas's arguments for the right to private property in the strict sense are not really based on human nature as such; but, rather, the three arguments given are all grounded in the existenoe of human sinfulness. If it were not for human sinfulness, there would be no need for private property in the strict sense. Elsewhere, Thomas maiintains that in the state of innocence there would be no need for the strict right of private property. 69 Thomas makes the right to privat:e property in the strict sense instrumental and sees it in the light of the more general right of all human beings to the use of external goods. Likewise, he bases his argument for private property in the strict sense primarily on human sinfulness and not on human nature as such. Later on in his encyclical, Leo does recognize the social aspect of property and the fact that the use of private property is to be common in accord with Aquinas's teaching. From this communal use of property he derives the duty of charity, not of justice except in extreme cases, to give one's superfluous goods to the poor. Leo's differences with Aquinas's teaching on private property seem to come primarily from what was introduced into the scholastic tradition by Taparelli d' Azeglio in the nineteenth century. 70 68 For an interpretation which sees Leo in greater continuity with Aquinas, see Calvez and Perrin, The Church and Social Justice, pp. 259-268. 69 Summa Theologiae, la, q. 98., a. I ad S. • 0 Leon de Sousberghe, " Propriete, 'de droit naturel.' These neoscholastique et tradition scholastique," Nouvelle Revue Theologiq_ue 72 (1950), 582-596. See also Camp, The Papal Ideology of Social Reform, pp. 55, 56. CHANGING ANTHROPOLOGICAL BASES 311 It is interesting to note that John A. Ryan, the major figure in Catholic social ethics in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, proposed an instrumental understanding of the right to private property understood in the strict sense. Ryan's argument makes explicit some of Thomas's presuppositions and clarifies the whole meaning of an instrumental understanding of private property. For Ryan, who considers the question primarily in terms of the ownership of land, the first thing to be said about the goods of creation is that they exist to serve the needs of all human beings. Ryan accepts private ownership in the strict sense as what he calls a natural right of the third class. A right of the first class has as its object that which is an intrinsic good such as the right to life. A right of the second class has as its object that which is directly necessary for the individual, such as the right to marry. A right of the third class has as its object not what is directly necessary for the individual but what is indirectly necessary for the individual because it is necessary as a social institution providing for the general welfare. Private ownership in the strict sense provides better for the general social welfare than any other institutional arrangement about the distribution of property. This necessity is proved empirically and inductively. If socialism or some other system would better serve the general welfare, it should be adopted. 71 Ryan's position with its clear and careful relativization of the right to private property in the strict sense would find an echo in the later papal social teaching. In Rerum N ovarum Pius XI gave more stress to the social function of property. He notes the right to private property exists not only so that individuals may provide for themselves and their families but also so that the goods of creation which are destined by the creator for the entire family of humankind 71 John A. Ryan, Distributive Jus.tice (New York: Macmillan, 1916), pp. 56-60; Reginald G. Bender, "The Doctrine of Private Property in the Writings of Monsignor John A. Ryan" (S.T.D. dissertation, The Catholic University of Amet·ica, 1973). CHARLES E. CURRAN may serve their God-given purpose. 72 However, precisely how private property accomplishes this purpose is not developed. In addition, Pope Pius XI neatly covers one of Leo's lacunae in Rerum N ovarum by asserting that ownership is acquired both by labor and by occupancy of something not owned by anyone, as the tradition of all ages as well as the teaching of his predecessor Pope Leo clearly states. 73 No footnote or reference is made to where Leo makes that statement about occupancy. There was some evolution in the teaching of Pius XII and later in John XXIII. John recognized the realities of the modern industrial society and the importance of professional skills, education and social insurance and security as ways of protecting the dignity of the individual worker. However, he hastens to add that despite all these modern developments the right of private property including that pertaining to goods devoted to productive enterprises is permanently valid. 74 It appears there is still a tendency to give absolute rather than relative or instrumental value to the right of private property understood in the strict sense. 75 Gaudium et Spes and Populorum Progressio made more clear the distinction between the generic right of dominion which belongs to all human beings and the right to private property in the strict sense. Gaudium et Spes begins with the recognition that the goods of creation exist to serve the needs of all. '° Quadragesimo Anno, n. 45; McLaughlin, p. 284. Quadrngesimo Anno, n. 52; McLaughlin, p. 287. «Mater et Magistra, nn. 104-109; Pacem in Terris, n. 21; Gremillion, pp. lti5, 166; 205. 75 Here and in the following paragraphs I am basically following the analyDi3 of J. Diez-Alegria, "La lettura de! magistero pontificio in materia sociale alla Ince del suo sviluppo storico," in Magistero et Morale: Atti def, 3° congresso nazionale dei moralisti (Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane, 1970), pp, 211-256. For an analysis which disagrees with some of Diez-Algeria's conclusions especially his denial of the contemporary validity of an approach based on common use and private possession, but which agrees with the material proposed here, see Angelo Marchesi, " II pensiero di S. Tommaso d'Aquino e delle enciclice sociali dei papa sul tema della proprieta privata in una recente analisi di P. Diez-Alegria," Rivista di Filosofia NeoScholastica, 62 (1970), 884-844. 73 CHANGING ANTHROPOLOGICAL BASES 813 Each of us has a right to a share of earthly goods sufficient for oneself and one's family. Whatever forms of ownership might be, attention must always be paid to the universal purpose for which created goods exist. 76 After affirming the principle of the universal destiny of the goods of creation, Populorum Progressio maintains that all other rights including that of private property and free commerce are to be subordinated to this principle. 77 Here we have the same teaching as that proposed earlier by John A. Ryan. All must admit that in the course of one hundred years the official Catholic teaching has relativized the right to private property in the strict sense and called attention to the need to judge all property institutions in accord with the universal destiny of the goods of creation to serve needs of all. Socialism There has also been a change in the attitude of the papal teaching to socialism. Pope Leo XIII in the first year of his pontificate issued the encyclical Quod Apostolici Muneris which pointed out the errors of" that sect of men who, under various and almost barbarous names, are called socialists, communists or nihilists." 78 These people deny the supernatural, the plan of God, God's law and the role of the Church. They assert the ·basic equality of all human beings and deny that respect is due to majesty and obedience to law. They support a revolutionary doctrine, oppose the indissolubility of marriage and deny the natural law right of private property. In Rerum Novarum in 1891, Pope Leo XIII returned in a somewhat systematic way to a discussion of socialism and considered especially its denial of the right of private property which is against the law of God 76 Gaudium et Spes, n. 69; Gremillion, p. 305. For an in-depth analysis of the teaching of Gaudium et Spes on the distribution of the goods of creation, see E. Lio, et Morale e beni terreni; la destinazione universale dei beni terreni ne/1a Spes (Rome: Citta Nuova, 1976). 77 Populorum Progressio, n. 22; Gremillion, p. 394. 78 Quod Apostolici Muneris, n. l; Gilson, p. 189. 314 CHARLES E. CURRAN and of human nature. However, Leo overemphasized the strength of socialism and its force as a worldwide conspiracy. Also he failed to recognize the moderate strands of socialism which were then existing in many parts of the world. 79 Pope Pius XI in 1931 in Quadragesimo Anno recognized the differences existing between a more violent socialism called communism and a more moderate form of socialism which rejects violence and modifies to some degree, if it does not reject entirely, the class struggle and the abolition of private ownership. Obviously communism with its unrelenting class warfare and absolute extermination of private ownership stands condemned. But what about moderate socialism which has tempered and modified its positions? Has it ceased to be contradictory to the Christian religion? " Whether considered as a doctrine, or an historical fact, or a movement, Socialism, if it remains truly Socialism, even after it has yielded to truth and justice on the points which we_ have mentioned cannot be reconciled with the teachings of the Catholic Church because its concept of society itself is utterly foreign to Christian truth." 80 Socialism like all errors contains some truths, but its theory of human society is irreconcilable with true Christianity. 81 However, in his portrayal of moderate socialism he wrongly seems to characterize such socialism as sacrificing the higher goods of human beings to the most efficient way of producing external goods. 82 In the 1930's Pope Pius XI concentrated most of his attacks on communism, as seen in his later encyclical Divini Redemptoris of March 19, 1937. In other parts of the Catholic world there was even a greater recognition of the changes in moderate socialism. The British hierarchy made it clear that the Labor Party in Britain was not condemned for Catholics. 83 In the United States John A. Camp, The Papal Ideology of Social Reforni, pp. 56, 57. Quadrayesimo Anno, n. 117; McLaughlin, p. 260. 81 Quadragesimo Anno, n. 120; McLaughlin, p. 261. 82 Quadragesimo Anno, n. 119; McLaughlin, p. 260. 83 Peter Coman," English Catholics and the Social Order," Ampleforth Journal 81 (1976)' 47-57. 79 80 CHANGING ANTHROPOLOGICAL BASES 315 Ryan, while acknowledging the teaching and practical conclusion of Pius XI, pointed out there were only two questionable political platform of the Socialist Party and planks in the even these could be interpreted in conformity with Catholic principles. 84 In the aftermath of the Second World War, the rise of communism led to the cold war in which the Roman Catholic Church stood squarely against communism. Roman Catholicism underwent persecution in communist countries in Eastern Europe. However, a thaw began with the pontificate of Pope John XXIII in 1959 under whose reign there emerged what was often called" the opening to the left." In Pacem In Terris, without directly referring to communism, John pointed out the need to distinguish between false philosophical teachings on the nature, origin and destiny of human beings in the universe and the historical movements which were originally based on these teachings. The historical movements are subject to change and evolving historical circumstances. In addition these movements contain some elements that are positive and deserving of approval. Work in common might be possible to achieve economic, social, political and cultural ends. Great prudence however is required in these common enterprises. "It can happen, then, that meetings for the attainment of some practical end, which formerly were deemed inopportune or unproductive, might now or in the future be considered opportune and useful." 85 Pope Paul VI in Octogesima Adveniens built on, made explicit, and carried further the distinction between philosophical teaching and historical movements proposed by John XXIII. Both a liberal and a socialist ideology exist, but there are also historica1 movements. There are different kinds of expressions of socialism-a generous aspiration and seeking for a more just society; historical movements with a political organization and 84 John A. Ryan, A Better Economic Order (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1935)' pp. 133, 134. 86 Pacem in Terris, nn. 159, 160; Gremillion, pp. 235, 236. 316 CHARLES E. CURRAN aim, and an ideology which claims to give a complete and selfsufficient picture of human beings. In Marxism there are also various levels of expression: I) Marxism as the practice of class the collective union of political and economic struggle; power under the direction of a sing.le party; 3) a socialist ideology based on an historical materialism; 4) a rigorous scientific method of examining social and political realities. While recognizing all these different levels of expression, it would be illusory to forget the link which binds them together. The document then describes the liberal ideology with its erroneous affirmation of the autonomy of the individual.8'6 In the midst of these encounters with the various ideologies, the Christian must discern what is to be done. " Going beyond every system, without however failing to commit himself concretely to serving his brothers, he will assert, in the very midst of his options, the specific character of the Christian contribution for a positive transformation of society." 87 This presentation is remarka;ble in many ways. Both the liberal and Marxist ideology as complete and self-sufficient positions on human nature and destiny are rejected. However, with due prudence and discretion one could opt for a Marxist analysis of social reality provided that one recognizes the danger of its connection with Marxist ideology. As mentioned in the first part of this study the Church's teaching is not proposed as a third approach. There is no mention of the social doctrine of the Church but rather only the principles which help one to discern the concrete options that are to be taken. The option of a Marxist sociological tool is open to the Christian provided that one recognizes the danger and does not become imprisoned in an ideology. This marks the greatest openness in a papal statement to the Marxist position. The development in the understanding of Marxism and socialism in the papal documents did not take place in an his•• 87 Adveniens, nn. 26-35; Gremillion, pp. 498-501. Octogesima Adveniens, n. 36; Gremillion, p. 501. CHANGING ANTHROPOLOGICAL BASES 317 torical vacuum. In the 1960's discussions between Christians and Marxists began. Once Christian theology gave greater importance to eschatology and the relationship between the Kingdom of God and this world, there was ample room for dialogue with Marxists about improving the lot and condition of human beings in their earthly existence. Christian theologians also recognized that the Marxist's critique of religion as the opiate of the people called for a response. Political theology as a fundamental theology examining the context of revelation called for a deprivatization of theology and a greater emphasis on the political and social dimension of human existence and of theology. On the practical side especially in Latin America some Catholics struggling for social change found themselves working hand in hand with Marxists for particular social goals. The 1979 meeting of the Latin American Bishops Conference at Puebla has revealed some of the tensions connected with liberation theology and Marxism in South America. Groups of Christians for Socialism began forming in Latin America in the 1970's. But with the return of more repressive regimes these groups have often been scattered. However, in Europe there are small but apparently significant groups of Christians for Socialism. 88 Meanwhile, changes also occurred in Marxism. The differences between Russian and Chinese Marxism became evident, as did differences between Moscow and the Eastern European countries. In theory some Marxists called for a humanistic Marxism which gives more importance to the person and also recognizes the importance of the participation of the person in deciding one's future. Euro-Communism also flourished for a while but now seems to have become less important. In these contexts both in theory and in practice some Christians have been trying to discern how they could cooperate with Marxists and even share some of their approaches, especially in terms of 88 Peter Hebblethwaite, The Christian-Marxist Dialogue: Beginnings, Pres.ent Status and Beyond (New York: Paulist Press, 1977). 318 CHARLES E. CURRAN a sociological analysis of the ills of society. 89 However, many Catholics still remain opposed to any socialist option. This study has attempted to trace significant developments in the anthropology present in Catholic social ethics. Significant changes have occurred in the personal aspects of anthropology culminating in an emphasis on freedom,. equality, participation and historical mindedness. At the same time the social aspects of anthropology have been stressed as illustrated in the changing attitudes towards private property and socialism. In a sense the perennial challenge of social ethics is to do justice to both the personal and the social aspects of anthropology. However, this challenge now exists in a new context. Christian social ethics building on the present developments must strive to respond to that demand of recognizing the social aspects of human existence and at the same time highlighting the freedom, equality, and participation of all within an historically conscious perspective. CHARLES E. CURRAN The Catholic University of America Washington, D.O. 8 ° For an attempt to show that Christianity is compatible with a humanistic vocialist option, see Gregory Baum, The Social Imperative (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), especially pp. BOOK REVIEWS The Siirvival of American Innocence: Catholicism in an Era of Disill1isionment, 1920-1940. By WILLIAM M. HALSEY. University of Notre Dame Press, Pp. 230 + xv. $16.95. William M. Halsey has written an excellent brief survey of Catholic intellectual life in the twentieth century. It is filled with intellectual nourishment and substance, judiciously ordered and pleasant to read. He has chosen a strong central idea-the idea of " American innocence "-around which to organize ten useful summary chapters. The idea is strong enough to illuminate the originality both of the American experience and of the distinctively Catholic appropriation of that experience. The conceptual center and the passionate focus of Catholics in America have not been exactly like those of Protestants or Jews, and Halsey helps to bring such differences to mind, not so much by making the comparisons himself as by trying to get the Catholic story clear. More than most available histories, this is an intellectual history. It is strongest in its treatments of literature and philosophy, less strong in history, weakest in theology, sociology, the law, and economics. Four of the chapters summarize the work of several writers and trends, while focussing tightly on the book's central theme. Individual chapters on Michael Williams, George N. Shuster and F. Scott Fitzgerald are unusually good. Two chapters on the rise of Thomism in America are particularly rare and useful, although literature rather than philosophy is Halsey's strong suit. His way of approaching Thomism-for its cultural significance -is perhaps more illuminating than a more philosophical analysis might have been. Halsey underestimates, however, how liberating Thomism was for most of us, especially in Maritain's work on the arts and on politics, and in Lonergan's sense of probabilities, the" heuristic " dimension of being, the concreteness of insight, and the relentless drive to ask questions. Halsey thinks Thomism was like " reinforced concrete." For many of us it was more like yeast in dough, like endless questions to ask. Excellent vignettes are scattered throughout the book. I was particularly glad to see the credit given Robert C. Pollock of Fordham; I regret the omission of Frank O'Malley of Notre Dame and Francis X. Sweeney of Boston College, of John Dunne, David Tracy, David Burrell, and Bernard Lonergan. The intention of the book is not, however, to be encyclopedic but thematic. The idea of " innocence " is a good one. Through it, Halsey can focus on tides of optimism, hope, confidence, idealism-and, by contrast, on tugs of 819 320 BOOK REVIEWS realism, pessimism, despair, disintegration. I had not thought of American Catholicism in quite this light. It is stimulating to do so. On the other hand, intellectual history suffers an inherent weakness through concentration upon written texts. I have long thought that one of the important contributions of Catholic culture to the American way of life lies in the profound sense of death, tragedy, limits and even meaninglessness which Catholic peoples carry with them. Perhaps this sense was communicated through the black Requiem mass, the Lamentations of Holy 'vVeek, the confessional, even through the omnipresent crucifix and daily sign of the cross, and through the dreadful symbolism of the Eucharist itself. Our faith is a terrible faith. The "Salve Regina" is hardly a hopeful hymn. The experience of the mines, the mills, the building of the railroads and bridges and tunnels was hardly radiant with optimism. Yet, on reflection, it seems true enough that the depths of realism and tragedy nourished by the Catholic people-experienced often in large, turbulent familieshave, indeed, been relatively absent in the American Catholic intellectual tradition. To this extent, our people are still far deeper and richer in their lives than are the writings of our intellectuals. Permit me to use " Kojak " as an example. Kojak never suggests that New York City will be a better place when his work is done. Other murders and evils will occur, just as they have in Athens, Constantinople, Salerno. One needn't believe that good will triumph. It is enough to do one's best each day. Life may not get better. But even at its worst there are beauties in it. The sensibility of the show is complex, humane in its pessimism, Mediterranean in its realism: Catholic of a sort. The Catholic people, I think, have a more complicated sense of " innocence " than our intellectual life yet does. Consider politics in Chicago, Bridgeport, Jersey City, South Philadelphia. As for Thomism, two things must be said. The body of work to be mastered is so vast that a certain formalism is inevitable; pity the poor teacher who must outline a course even on a single topic, let alone upon more than one writer or idea. Secondly, the turn away from a philosophy of being toward a concentration upon Scripture studies, as has happened in schools of theology for the past twenty years, has produced disastrous fruits. Young theologians leap from the universe of biblical times to the contemporary world with little sense of history, and with little sense of philosophical complexity. So many of them appear to be dangerous simplifiers. The breadth, depth, and balance of the Catholic mind at its best-trained both in history and in the sweep of philosophical disciplines-has been lost for now nearly an entire generation. Ironically, many themes of the thought of Aquinas were never more relevant, more illuminating, more countercyclical than at present. The thirteenth century parallels ours as a time of disintegration, novelty, encounter with Islam, corruption, turmoil. BOOK REVIEWS By showing us where we have been, Halsey helps us to raise the question: What next? He has done a good piece of work. In such work, even its faults stimulate. The book would serve very well for assignment in courses on American Catholicism in this century, were it available in paper. MICHAEL NOVAK American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research Washington, D.C. Principles of Biomedical Ethics. By ToM J. BEAUCHAMP and JAMES F. CHILDRESS. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. Pp. 314. The Concise Dictionary of Christian Ethics. Edited by BERNARD STOECKLE. New York: The Seabury Press, 1979. Pp. Principles of Biomedical Ethics is a co-authored book so well integrated that one cannot detect the separate contributions. Perhaps a Formgeschichte expert might unravel the threads. Beauchamp and Childress are frequent fare in the Hastings Institute and Kennedy Institute publications. This latter-day review (August, 1980) still finds the work of current interest and value for those who are engaged in the study and in the daily ambiguity of the ethics of medicine and health care. The opening sentence of the preface (ascribed to both authors) sets the purpose and parameters of the work: " This book offers a systematic analysis of the moral principles that should apply to biomedicine." Too many books in this over-blooming field concentrate on a biomedical ethical casuistry. It is the lack of this book's proposed systematic analysis that may even contribute to the burgeoning burden of books whose thrust is to draw individualized solutions or decisions flowing from the situationally oriented cases that are studied. The penchant for proposing particularities may well be because this is the market for a clientele whose education is based on the problem oriented approach to patient care. There are eight chapters, two appendices, and a reasonably detailed index in this well conceived and executed work. Its individual contribution is primarily in chapters three through six where the authors deal with their assessment of the significant principles of biomedical ethics: the principles of autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence and justice. Appropriately this is preceded by a discussion of morality and ethical theory and is followed by a specific application of the last principle, that of justice in its commutative form, to the area of the patient-physician relationship. BOOK REVIEWS Biomedical ethics is not a unique speciality. It is ethics applied to the biomedical field with perhaps some special problems consequent upon the ever expanding technology that affects and afflicts this area, that is, moral reasoning applied to specialized moral dilemmas, a reasoning subject to the usual procedures of " doing ethics". Beauchamp and Childress prescribe a descending order from theories, to principles, to rules, to judgments and specific actions. Ethical theories should stand the test of internal consistency and coherence, of comprehensive completeness. There ought to be no more principles or rules than are necessary, and yet the system must be complex enough to account for the whole range of moral experiences. And it must account for what we really do. Moral guides need to be final or overriding, universalizable and socially oriented. Beyond this could come " why ought an ought to ought " or metaethics. Beauchamp and Childress did not intend to and do not enter that preserve. Utilitarian and deontological theories are taken apart and reassembled. The basic contrast presented is between " rule utilitarianism" and " rule deontologism ". Act utilitarianism and act deontologism are dismissed along with a rejection of the outright situational ethics of a Joseph Fletcher. If one ignores the " straw men " a good case can be made for either system with Beauchamp(?) or Childress(?) somewhat favoring act deontologism. As in theological dogmas, so in ethical principles there are hierarchy and interdependence. For our authors and for very many others this basic principle is autonomy. The very basis of morality is autonomy, here defined: "Autonomy is a form of personal liberty of action where the individual determines his or her own course of action in accordance with a plan chosen by himself or herself". Autonomy is not antinomian. It can coexist with authority and the authority of moral traditions. " The legitimacy of any command is regarded as contingent upon the command's not exceeding the limits of autonomously designated authority." Freedom from constraint necessitates a freedom from the constraints of ignorance. And the literature is replete with the requirements for informed consent. Too frequently, unfortunately, what is attended to is an informed consent that will stand the test of the legal risks of malpractice suits. It should be said that Beauchamp and Childress do a creditable job in exploring informed consent in its ethical dimensions-especially when they explore the distinct elements of information and consent, the disclosure of information and comprehension on the one hand and the voluntary consent and competency on the other. In disclosure the medical profession opts for that which is operative in the biomedical profession; the court seems to demand that which a reasonable person would want to know; the ethical position would call for what the individual patient or subject would reasonably want to know. The authors find difficulty with, and would hedge very carefully, any intention of non-disclosure. Most literature in the field takes up the question of paternalism under autonomy. Here it is postponed into the BOOK REVIEWS treatment of the authors' third principle, the principle of beneficence. The refusal of treatment, the subject of current legislative attempts in several states, is discussed in the context of existing laws and court cases. No distinctively different insights appear except the casting of a reasonable doubt upon any universal inappropriateness of intervention. Intervention seems to be the more desirable response to a suicide attempt. " Our analysis of suicide leads to this conclusion: that there are good reasons for suicide in some circumstances, but that suicidal action may be cowardly or even morally wrong in other circumstances." Is this view and a possible consequent intervention " paternalism " ? Gerald Dworkin says: " By paternalism I shall understand roughly the interference with a person's liberty of action justified by reasons referring exclusively to the welfare, good, happiness, needs, interests, or values of the person coerced." Does the principle of beneficence necessarily lead to paternalism? If we have a" duty to help others further their important and legitimate interests when we can do so with minimal risk to ourselves", what are the limits of that duty? This is the implicit contract underlying the necessary give and take of social life-the reciprocity of moral obligation. The Hippocratic dictum " primum non nocere " is the foundation of the second principle, the principle of non-maleficence dealing with intentional harm and the risks of harm, the legal and moral standards of due care. Several troublesome concepts are dealt with. Without opting for it an understanding treatment of the principle of the double effect is presented along with its current nuances of proportionality (McCormic et al.} . The significance of intentionality in this principle is noted. Without an awareness of the part that intentionality plays one can easily see why this principle cherished in Catholic circles is often criticized as " ethical gamesmanship ". The principle of the double effect leads into the question of the difference or lack thereof between killing and letting die. James Rachels in the New England Journal of Medicine makes a strong case for the lack of distinction and the conclusion is almost valid in the invented case that he presents. Again intentionality plays a large part and as our authors say: " Even if the distinction between killing and letting die is sometimes morally irrelevant, it does not follow that it is always morally irrelevant. The fact that the difference does not show up in every sort of case does not mean that it is morally unimportant for all cases". Whether it's the thin edge of the wedge or the slippery slope syndrome there is some validity to the attempt to show either rational consequences to an action or the prediction of potential consequences. Under the topic of cessation of treatment the authors continue finding difficulty with the terms ordinary and extraordinary treatment and suggest aptly that we label treatment as optional or obligatory-anyway it's a different labelling. And if the patient is incompetent who decides? Family first is generally best. 324 BOOK REVIEWS All of this in the name of fairness, because that's distributive justice (Rawls). Justice is based on shortages, i.e. if everything were superabundant and readily available with little or no effort, each could get his due or his need or his desert or his want or his desire. There would be no need of justice or ethics. But, since this is not so, " equals ought to be treated equally and unequals unequally," says Aristotle. What theory of distribution will you use? It will depend very much on what you consider the relevant differences between the equals and unequals. And take care that you are aware of the frequent conflict between " established relevancy " and " justifiable relevancy ". Differences can be relevant only if classes of persons in question can be held responsible for their differences. In this just distribution there must be macro-allocation priorities, in the distribution of which a micro-allocation system must be developed. The last two chapters are less " ethical " and more interpersonal and in this case specifically address the physician rather than the broader health care personnel. The physician-patient relationship because of its justice implication, because of respect for the dignity of both sides of the medical enterprise, calls for the prima facie duty of fidelity. The authors here seem to soften further their stand on paternalism. In a recent workshop William Gaylin of the Hastings Institute makes a case for a partial rehabilitation of paternalism. Confidentiality is analogous to non-disclosure with some of the same societal caveats in a contractual reference whose agent is the company physician. Does the patient realize that? A just world can be a cold and well nigh cruel world. Witness the disturbing " vibes " of a " law and order " mentality. Beauchamp and Childress, in the chapters on ideals, virtues and integrity, try to palliate the pains of obligation by the prospect of supererogatory works which might flow from what a person is. Who should I be? Is this Hauerwas in Character and the Christian Life? Pace. The authors do a welcome decrescendo from the pervading intensity of the book. The appendices cover case studies and present various codes of ethics. The cases are referred to in the text and are very useful. All in all this is a book to be read and kept. But now The Concise Dictionary of Christian Ethics. This is a frustrating book. Read the jacket description and the preface, and then look for the book they describe. The jacket speaks of " more than one hundred central articles and supplementary definitions .... " There are only eightyfive listed in the table of contents. There is no index. It's like fishing in a murky aquarium. Cross-references are found within the text but their use is strange. Abortion rates only a cross-reference to Birth Control, where it gets four or five lines. Atheism is not even found as a cross-reference but is reasonably well treated under the title Godlessness. Dissent, not cross-referenced, is found in the body of the article on Resistance within which revolutionary resistance and assassination find justification. It is BOOK REVIEWS 325 difficult to perceive what kind of systematic was at work in the selection of articles. It is surely concise if it can explore Christian ethics in eighty-five main articles. One can dismiss the other articles, unsigned and assigned in globo to nine, presumably English-speaking contributors. Sample: Trade UnioTh-A labor union, or organization of those working in the same trade, vocation, and so on, in order to protect their basic conditions of work, payment and living conditions, against exploitation and abuse. Altruism-Non-egotistical interest in and concern for the happiness and ultimate salvation of others. Chastity-The inner readiness of a person fully to accept his sexuality, to acknowledge the sexual drives in their total personal and social context and to integrate them fully into the totality of human life. This reviewer needed a " second take " on that one. It seems like a " neat virtue ". There are no indications which articles are translated from the German except from the split infinitives and frequently ponderous sentence structure, Misprints or misspellings abound: oes for owes hep for help huamn for human socities for societies shoes for shows inseperable for inseparable prising for prying Matatis mutandis for mutatis mutandis staus quo for status quo obediance for obedience whever for whenever Even in the bibliographies H. Rahner becomes H. Raliner and it's Berkowicz and then Berkowitz. Another distressing feature is the bibliographies. Of the eighty-five major articles thirty-one have no bibliographies at all. Some of the three-line definitions include bibliographies. Some bibliographies are sparse and of ancient vintage. All of the above speaks of editorial negligence. In presenting this work the editor, or someone, titles it Christian, and this agrees with the editor's account of its Christian-ness in the preface. Recourse to Scripture is infrequent. It is worthy of note that, whenever the word " church " is mentioned, the subsequent documentation always proves it to be the Catholic Church. Why not call it A Brief Abridgment uf Some Topics in Catholic Ethics? But then there would be difficulties in a statement like the following from Marriage:" The will to marry is therefore the pre-requisite for full sexual relationship". BOOK REVIEWS As brief and as few as the articles are, there are some transparent biases, bad ones and good ones. Capitalism is replete with negative indicators as compared with the treatment of Socialism, Communism and Marxism, e.g. " Marxism thus offers to Christians the possibility of being ' doers of the word, not hearers only '." A bright view shines through such topics as Cou,rage, Happiness, Hope, Joy, Leisure, Pleasure. Timely topics include Addiction, Development Aid, Euthanasia, Human Dignity, Liberation, Marriage, Military Service, Racism, Sex and Sexuality, Suicide, Theft and Hostages. An environmental concern is seen in Environment, World, etc. Continual frustration results from the fact that there are noble nuggets lost in the husks. A better treatment of sin is found under Guilt, Conscience, Norms, Godlessness than under its own title Sin. On topics comparable with Beauchamp and Childress, as in Euthanasia, Suicide, Sexuality, it is easier to find the weakness or strength of the " Christian " position in Beauchamp and Childress. There are some very good things said about prayer and lexically under Spirituality. There is a good social orientation in all of the articles, but something must have been lost somewhere in translation when the definition of Social Gospel is: " A liberal Protestant notion which sees sin as inherent in evil social systems, and the kingdom of God and a truly human this-worldly social goal not only as compatible but often as one and the same thing." wALTER A. MARKOWICZ Wayne State University School of Medicine Detroit, Michigan The Unconditional in Human Knowledge: Four Early Essays (1794-1796), by F. W. J. SCHELLING. Translation and commentary by Fritz Marti. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1980. Pp. $18.50. This volume collects and explicates Schelling's first philosophical writings, the fledgling attempts, inspired by Fichte, at turning Kantianism into a systematic philosophy. Though they served the reading public as a popularization of Fichte's arid Science of Knowledge and brought the two philosophers into an uneasy master-disciple relationship that would last twelve years, the essays manifest independence of thought and voice many of the themes that later appear in Schelling's mature systems. Taken together, they compose a sustained and lucid meditation on the spirit of Kant's philosophy and provide an interesting glimpse into the philosophic community's disarray after his attack upon metaphysics. Kant had to be read, understood, and then answered or assimilated. For Fichte and the young Schelling in particular the task was to weld the three Critiques together into a system-a ' Critical Philosophy' they believed implicit in Kant's BOOK REVIEWS writings, but undeveloped. Yet barely had the programme been formulated when Schelling began looking back beyond Kant toward Spinoza, raising the question of whether metaphysics had a future after all. " On the Possibility of a Form of All Philosophy" (1794) is a drily logical little treatise which attempts to deduce the three Principles of Fichte's H'issenschaftslehre-the 'I ', the ' not-I ', and the empirical ego wherein' I' ='not-I '-from the formal properties of an axiomatic system. lVfore interesting are the closing pages, wherein a criticism of Kant leads to the proposal that the Critique of Pure Reason be systematized on the basis of the question that Kant forgot to ask, viz. the possible unity of Reason and Understanding. " Of the I as the Principle of Philosophy " (1795) offers extensive argumentation for, and elucidation of, Criticism's transempirical but nontranscendent system-principle, the absolute I. The essay's chief task is demonstrating that an unconditional principle for systematizing our knowledge can be neither objective nor subjective (the way the empirical ego is), but must be 'metasubjective,' characterized by the spontaneity, independence and freedom of the rational I. It is difficult to explicate the postulation of an I that cannot appear in consciousness or as consciousness; the enduring temptation for novice readers of Kant and post-Kantian idealism alike is to reify transcendental subjectivity, turning it into some extraworldly mental thing, some individual Mind that somehow gets ' attached ' to minds like ours. Schelling is quite clear that to assert the absolute I is not to make a transcendent assertion, noi· is it to point to an object in empirical consciousness, nor to the empty logical subject (" I think ") given in empirical consciousness, nor to any idea. To assert the absolute is to indicate the spontaneous self-constituting activity (whether you name it ' thinking ' or ' being ') within which empirical consciousness and the objectivity juxtaposed to it first become possible, and also to indicate that it is one. Only an I is one because it thinks itself; only an I is because it is a thinking. In the course of the essay, Schelling waxes a bit metaphysical and attributes predicates such as ' absolute reality,' 'absolute substantiality ', and ' absolute causality ' to the I, though in the cautious manner of the tradition of "Negative Theology." It was moves such as these that motivated Fichte himself to re-do this introductory elucidation in the 1st and 2nd" Introductions" to the Science of Knowledge in 1797. " Philosophical Letters on Dogmatism and Criticism " (1795) marks a significant departure from Fichte's vision of Critical Philosophy, for Schelling now argues that Kant did not intend the Critique to be a refutation of dogmatism (objectivistic metaphysics). Basically an essay in methodology, the Critique provides a canon for measuring both dogmatism (the attempt to explain the world from things) and criticism (the attempt to explain the world from experience and from human action) . There is simply no theoretical refutation of a dogmatism like Spinoza's, for it is superbly con- 328 BOOK REVIEWS sistent and, if it metaphysically explains all reality through an arch-object, it practically demands the surrender of action, the extinction of the illusion of freedom, and ultimately the abolition of the self in the anwr intellectualis dei. As for the semiconsistent dogmatists like the Kantian theologians of Tiibingen who employ Kant's moral postulates (God, afterlife, happiness as moral reward) to conceal the self-abolition that comes along with objectivistic metaphysics, they can be refuted only practically. One can only point out to them, says Schelling, that they have surrendered freedom and autonomy, that their very moral existence is annihilated in their objectifying use of these postulates. The last point makes clear that, despite apparent departures from Fichte's standpoint, Schelling stands fast with him in the conviction that the center of gravity of Kantian philosophy is what Kant himself called " the primacy of practical reason." The "New Deduction of Natural Right" (1796) is the most thoroughly Kantian of the essays. First, willing and human freedom are given an ontological foundation: "Be! in the highest sense of the word; cease to be yourself as a phenomenon; endeavor to be a noumenon as such." From the difference between individual will and general will, Schelling distinguishes ethics from the sphere of right. Ethics makes willing absolute (and preserves freedom without limits) by identifying the individual will with the general, while right identifies the general will with the individual. The whole content of the concept of right turns out to be freedom and its preservation. Schelling expels the concepts of "natural law" and " natural right " from the proper domain of right, for freedom does not appear within nature, nor does will. In nature only physical power (coercion) and phenomenal causality appear. Fritz Marti has done the reader a splendid service by providing a wealth of texts from Fichte and Kant in the notes, and a great deal of lucid terminological clarification as well. Illuminating too is his use of citations from Descartes and Augustine to explain the self-constituting nature of the I. His aim in the introductions and notes is simply to elucidate the philosophical issues Schelling raises, and to make them both intelligible and plausible-no easy task when the issues are the non-objectivity of God, the self-active nature of reason, and the reality of freedom. The only difficulty with this approach is that in conflating texts of Fichte, Schelling, and Kant, he tends to blur their historical differences. The translations themselves are generally clear and quite readable; oftentimes the original texts are not. There is definite merit in the way Marti has crafted short, straightforward English sentences out of the sometimes byzantine convolutions of Schelling's periods. At times, Marti's translation of individual terms is starkly literal: Rendering " unendlich " as ' nonfinite ' rather than ' infinite ' seems odd, and it is hardly a justification to cite Hegel's distinction between the 'good' and the 'bad' infinite. " Grundsatz " and " Satz " are given a misleading technical ring in being BOOK REVIEWS rendered as ' axiom ' and ' theorem ' in the first essay. However, I must applaud Marti's use of ' I ' for