DOGMA AND HERESY REVISITED:
A HEIDEGGERIAN APPROACH

I

N APPL YING a particular philosophical perspective. to a
theological problem, one must be careful to avoid forcing
theological data to conform to an ontology. It is easily
assumed that since ontology provides a general account of being (and theology deals with being), ontology can account for
the being which is of concern to theology. This view supposes
that being is intelligible; between a coherent ontology and a
critically reflective theology there should be no contradiction.
Indeed, without such a presupposition theology could never be
in dialogue with other branches of learning.
A theology of revelation, for example, depends upon a particular account of human being and reflects some underlying
ontological scheme. Is this not what happens in Paul Tillich's
"method of correlation"? Tillich analyzed human being in a
way that exposes its openness to and need for revelation; revelation is complementary to human being in its natural,
estranged existence.1 Karl Rahner and Ray Hart have made
similar moves: anthropology undergoes a transposition to become theological anthropology. 2 For Bernard Lonergan, philosophy anticipates theology as the higher viewpoint on God,
human being, and the world.8
But there is a difficulty. By approaching theology by way of
philosophy, does the "structure" of revelation get interpreted
in advance through a metaphysical anthropology? To some
degree, it does; attempts to describe revelation primarily in
biblical rather than philosophical categories bear witness to this

Tillich, Systematic Theology, 8 vols. (Chicago, 1951), 1: 59-66.
Karl Rahner, Hearers of the Word, trans. Michael Richards (New York,
1969), and Ray Hart, Unfinished Man and the Imagination (New York, 1968).
8 Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (New York,
1957) , chapter !20.
1 Paul
2 See

509

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WILLIAM REISER, S.J.

difficulty. 4 One could maintain that revelation has already
transformed human being so that ontology reflects a nature
which lies under grace; religion and the question about God
belong to the existential condition of human being. For Rahner, general revelation has already occurred as the historical
manifestation of God's universal salvific will.5 But it is Rahner's ontology that renders his view of revelation intelligible.
He proceeds (as many theologians do) on the supposition that
ontology discloses universal features of human being; his philosophical account of human being is therefore universal. 6 But
the same philosophical account could be supposed by any religion, for the description itself is indifferent to determinate religious community; it describes human nature as such.
An alternative approach is to start with human existence as
concretely modified ,by a particular, determinate religious community.7 Human nature is always located in determinate contexts which are provided by specific histories, languages, and
cultures. Thus, while temporality is a feature of human being
as such, the temporality of a Buddhist world view and that of
a Christian world view may be different. 8 It is a little misleading to talk about human nature in universal terms because
what exist are actual, historical, and culturally concrete people; this cultural concreteness is manifested through language,
social structure, and tradition. Human nature does not exist
in a detached sort of way. One uncovers what human nature
means by searching in the direction of greater concreteness
rather than in the direction of greater abstraction.
4 See the" Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation"
(Dei Verbum) in The
Documents of Vatican II, ed. Walter Abbott (New York. 1966), and volume S of
the Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, ed. Herbert Vorgrimler (New
York, 1969), pp. 155-272. Also, Gabriel Moran, Theology of Revelation (New York,
1966).
5 Karl Rahner, "History of the World and Salvation-History"
and "Christianity
and the Non-Christian Religions," Theological Investigations, volume 5, trans.
Karl-H. Kruger (London, 1966), pp. 97-184.
6 See Karl Rahner, Spirit in the World, trans. Wm. Dych (New York, 1968).
7 See Edward Farley, Ecclesial Man (Philadelphia, 1975), pp. 57-64.
8 Farley, pp. 92-98. Also, see John B. Cobb, Jr., The Structure of Christian Existence (Philadelphia, 1967) .

DOGMA AND HERESY REVISITED

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Edward Farley refers to the way in which abstract features
of human being are concretely modified in determinate social
contexts as the "principle of positivity." If Farley's principle
is applied to an analysis of revelation, then one should begin
reflecting from the side of concretion rather than from the
formal and abstract side of ontology or metaphysical anthropology. Revelation will be understood in terms of the way in
which human existence has been redemptively modified by a
particular historical community of faith.
With these concerns in mind, it is with some reserve that I
draw upon the philosophy of Martin Heidegger to discuss the
notions of dogma and heresy. Yet his thinking is theologically
attractive, perhaps because his description of truth as the revelation of Being sounds religious. A better reason is that his notion of truth permits us to speak of a continuing revelation
without implying that revelation develops. Needless to say,
neither Heidegger's analysis of Dasein nor his analysis of truth
is particularly Christian. But the notion of truth underlying a
great deal of Christian theology has not been especially Christian either. Thus from time to time it has heen important to
recall the richness of the biblical notion of truth over those of
the western epistemological tradition. 9

I. The Nature of the Event of Revealing
The way in which the devcelopment of dogma has been conceived and explained in Roman Catholic theology has been insufficient to carry the weight of a non-propositional view of
revelation. 10 Scripture and revelation are not equivalent terms;
scripture consists of written statements, but revelation (in its
9 See, for example, Walter Kasper, Dogma unter dem Wort Gottes (Mainz, 1965),
and Ignace de Ia Potterie, La Verite dans Saint Jean, 2 vols. (Rome, 1977).
10 The problem, as I see it, is that a theory of dogmatic development presupposes
a theology of revelation, and a theology of revelation rests upon a notion of truth.
While most contemporary theologies of revelation have been adjusted in terms of
a non-propositional understanding of truth, theories of dogmatic development tend
to rely on a notion of truth which is propositional. See, for instance, Georg Soll,
Dogma und Dogmaentwicklung (Freiburg, 1971), and Jan Walgrave, Unfolding
Revelation (Philadelphia, 1972) .

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WILLIAM REISER, S ..T.

primary mode) is non-propositional because the original occurrence of truth is always non-propositional. Similarly, revelation and dogma are not equivalent; like scripture, dogma might
be said to represent divinely communicated truth, not in
terms of the verbal statements themselves ibut as expressing an
encounter with the God of Jesus Christ. Revelation is the event
of God's self-disclosure, and this event must be repeated
(though not always in the same way) if later generations are
to discover God and not just the information which Christians
have about him.
Although the Christian revelatory event does not survive as
scriptural propositions and creedal statements, that event does
occur linguistically. That is to say, the divine encounter happens in and through language, but the event of self-disclosure
cannot be contained in statements like water in a glass. The
prominence of hermeneutics in contemporary theology indicates the importance of this insight. 11 If truth is conceived as
the coming to presence of Being, as an occurrence of meaning
rather than as a mental conformity to a state of affairs, then
both scripture and dogma can be treated as potential instances
of revelation in the Heideggerian sense.12 But is the Heideggerian notion of revealing analogous to the way theology conceives the revelation of God? One might answer with a qualified yes, particularly if one is sympathetic to the apophatic
tradition within Christian theology. 13
11 See, for example, Robert W. Funk, Language, Hermeneutic, and Word of God
(New York, 1966); Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York, 1972), pp.
158-178; and Raymond E. Brown, "Hermeneutics" in The Jerome Biblical Commentary, ed. Raymond Brown, Joseph Fitzmyer, and Roland Murphy (Englewood
Cliffs, 1968), pp. 605-628.
12 There are other means of divine revealing besides dogma and scripture; for
example, sermon and sacrament also mediate God's presence. Dogma and heresy
are not comparable terms because heresy includes the falsification of dogma as well
as the misuse of scripture, sermon, sacrament, and theology. On the relation between Heidegger's notion of Being and Christian theology, see two important essays:
James Robinson, "The German Discussion of the Later Heidegger", and Heinrich
Ott, "What Is Systematic Theology? " in James M. Robinson and John B. Cobb,
Jr., eds., The Later Heidegger and Theology (New York, 1968), pp. 8-76, 77-111.
1a See Harvey Egan, " Christian Apophatic and Kataphatic Mysticisms," Theological Studies 89 (1978), 899-426.

DOGMA AND HERESY REVISITED

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1. Heidegger: The Revealing of Being
Heidegger tried to give an account of Being which moved
behind the cultural and historical determinations of western
metaphysics since the Greeks, a procedure which he referred
to as one of destroying the history of metaphysics " historiologically ". 14 This move was repeated each time he meditated on
the philosophy of thinkers like Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and
Plato, in order to retrieve their thinking experience of Being.
He understood Being as the pervasive foundation of all thinking and of all history; human history could be viewed then as
the ongoing human response to the manifestations of Being. It
is human destiny to be called by Being, and history should be
understood in terms of what has given or disclosed itself to us.
Conversely, history consists of what man has or has not allowed
to become manifest. But it is Being which makes history possible because it is the concrete yet hidden presence which makes
Dasein to be what it is.15
For Heidegger, therefore, the history of Being and the history of the human race are insepara;ble. His account of Being
is not like the systems of Plato and Aristotle, another philosophy which theology could appropriate. It is not a metaphysics of being which remains indifferent to historical times
and places, as applicable to Christianity as it is to Buddhism.
Basically, Heidegger's account of Being is not an ontology.
Being is what shows itself, and truth is the unconcealed. There
will never be a time when Being will be totally revealed, for
Being is not the unknown gradually making itself intelligible.
Being is not mind (nous). Thus human history, which is also
14 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York, 1962), p. 4lff.
15 William Richardson writes: "Let us say, then, that Being sends itself, or
e-mits (sich schiclct) itself to Dasein. It sends itself to Dasein, therefore Dasein is
part of the process; Dasein is com-mitted (Schicksal,) in the e-vent. Taken together,
this e-mitting of Being and com-mitting of Dasein may be described as a unified
e-v·ent and called 'mittence' (Geschick). This is thee-vent out of which the ontological difference issues forth." See " Heidegger and God-and Professor Jonas,"
Thought 40 (1965), 35.

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WILLIAM REISER, 1'!.J.

the history of Being, is nothing other than the history of the
occurrences of the ontological difference between Being and
beings; it is the thinker's task to articulate what has revealed
itself to or hidden itself from historically existent Dasein.

2. Revelation and Christian Experience
The major doctrinal claim of Christian faith is that the unseen God has communicated himself to his creatures in and
through Jesus Christ. The evidence for this claim has to be
evaluated in terms of the way in which human beings have
been transformed by that communication. In other words, the
meaning of revelation for Christian faith is understood in terms
of the achievement of redemptive existence. Redemption continues to occur as one is incorporated into the believing community, hears the scriptural proclamation, remembers and
celebrates the founding events of Christian faith, and grows in
self-transcending love. For the Christian, redeemed existence
appears to be a determinate possibility of human being. It does
not simply parallel the attainment of enlightenment in Buddhist existence, for example, since Buddhism represents a different modification of human possibilities.
The meaning of revelation, therefore, is primarily understood
from the experience of Christian existence; the principle of
positivity commits us to such a position. Just as Being is what
has disclosed itself to historically existent Dasein (and can be
observed from Dasein's history), so also the divine self-communication is known through what has shaped and transformed the members of a religious community. What matters
are determinate occurrences rather than universal principles
or a priori structures of human being. Both in Heidegger's
thought and in Christian theology the process of revelation is
determinate and historically positive. But the process of revelation in Heidegger's thinking always involves a coming to pass
of the ontological difference, and so we shall suggest that God's
self-disclosure in scripture and dogma involves a coming to
pass of the theological difference. This is the basis of the claim
that revelation is a broader category than scripture, tradition,

DOGMA AND HERESY REVISITED

515

or dogma. The main difference between Heidegger and Christian theology on the matter of revelation does not lie so much
in the notion of revelation itself as in the £.act that Heidegger's notion of Being is not equivalent to the Christian notion
of God.

II. The Relation between Dogma and Revelation
It would be helpful to distinguish revelation as process from
revelation as content. For Heidegger, revelation is simply the
process in which Being comes to presence; Being reveals itself
as non-objectifying presence. In Christian theology we speak
of God's self-communication as revelation. The content of
revelation is thus God himself, and the process of his revealing
consists of the words and deeds (or the event) in which the
divine presence and purposes are known. Since revelation
comes to expression in words, scripture and dogma pertain to
the process of revelation rather than to its content. In Heideggerian terms, Being comes to presence as Saying, that is,
linguistically. But to say that God is the content of revelation can be misleading because God never becomes an object
of which we take possession: God is, in principle, not-to-begrasped (' aKa-ra>.:rprrov)•16
Verbal statements derive from an original meaning-event.
Even the biblical narrative remains the verbal expression of an
initial revelatory experience which somehow ,becomes available
to the reader because the written text continues to mediate
16 Gregory of Nyssa wrote: " ... the one who is going to associate intimately
with God must go beyond all that is visible and (lifting up his own mind, as to a
mountaintop, to the invisible and incomprehensible) believe that the divine is there
where the understanding does not reach." See The Life of Moses, trans. Abraham
J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson (New York, 1978), p. 43. Would it be outside
of the question to see a connection between Heidegger's claim that Being comes to
presence as Saying, and the Christian claim that God -is the one who has a Word?
That Word cannot be objectified by human thinking, and so God never becomes
an object in relation to the human subject; God is "there", but never as an object,
not even an unreachable object. See Heidegger, The Piety of Thinking, trans. James
G. Hart and John C. Maraldo (Bloomington, 1976), pp.
Also, see Peter
C. Hodgson, Jesus: Word and Presence (Philadelphia, 1971) pp. 110-130.

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WILLIAM REISER, S.J.

God's 11aving presence. When truth is regarded as the unconcealed (Being disclosing itself in a language event), then the
reading of scripture, preaching, and sacrament will be accompanied by a hermeneutic of faith. That is, the chief homiletic
task on these terms will appear to be one of interpretation.
But when one views revelation as propositions to be accepted
as correct information about divine things, then the chief homiletic task will be to teach sound doctrine and to repeat the
traditional formulations of belief.
Revelation as process refers to the event of God's coming to
presence historically. Because God addresses human beings,
the form of that address respects human historicality and linguisticality. The particular events in which God made himself
known become part of a community's corporate experience and
memory. Written texts record the primordial faith experience;
songs, poems, and narratives represent symbolically transformed accounts of God's saving action. They testify to the
human awareness of a God whose presence is always a gift. 11
According to Heidegger, the derivative nature of human assertions makes the retrieval of meaning imperative. 18 In terms
of his later thought, to understand the history of the revealing
and concealment of Being requires foundational thinking in
order to recover what was granted to past thinkers and which
continues to call upon us to think. 19 The moment of disclosure
(revelation) is not independent of the moment of interpretation (hermeneutics). Now, dogma also has a derivative character. If the meaning of a dogma is to be retrieved, an effort
at foundational thinking (conceived in theological terms) is
called for. Otherwise dogma will lose touch with the ground
in religious experience from which it arose. To put the matter
in other words: thinking is foundational as it thinks Being and
1 1 See Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, trans. William Dych (New York,
1978), pp. 44-68.
lB Being and Time, section 33, pp. 195-203.
19 See What is Called Thinking?, trans. J. Glenn Gray and F. Wieck (New York,
1968) and the "Memorial Address" in Discourse on Thinking, trans. John Anderson and E. Hans Freund (New York, 1966).

DOGMA AND HERESY REVISITED

517

theological reflection becomes foundational as it thinks God.
And as thinking Being is more than conceptualization about
beings, so theological reflection is called to be more than a matter of clarifying one's concepts about religious things.
1. Dogma as a Moment of the Theological Difference

What comes to expression in dogma, and where do new dogmas come from? Let me sketch two possible answers, one fairly straightforward and the second somewhat complex. The
simple answer would run as follows:
Truth comes to expression in dogma, or conversely, dogmas
enunciate religious truths. Since dogma is related to scripture
and to revelation (both of which are grounded in a divine initiative), dogmas could be called divine truths. And where do
they come from? Throughout the history of the Christian religion, we note that the great Church (through councils) or local
churches (through synods) found it necessary to affirm the
meaning or understanding of their faith. Sometimes the logic
of that faith challenged the Church to reflect deeply on what it
believed. At other times the Church had to face questions
which called for a comprehension of its belief in the light of new
circumstances; what, for instance, was the status of baptisms
performed by heretics? Dogmas then arose out of the press of
history as the Church met challenges, controversy, and new
cultural and social conditions. Since the Spirit guides the
Church, bringing it to the fullness of truth, dogmatic truths are
a sign of the Spirit's action. Denial of one of these truths would
constitute heresy. Often enough, however, what turned out to
be heresy coexisted for a time alongside orthodoxy. But once
a threat to the proper understanding of faith was perceived,
those who continued to cling to their unorthodox belief were
called heretics. The ultimate reason for dogmatic development,
therefore, is historical, social, and cultural process. The norm
of authenticity would consist of apostolic faith as it persists in
scripture, the tradition, the teaching office, and the senaus
fidelium.

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WILLIAM REISER, S.J.

A more theological description of dogmatic development
would start by distinguishing the concretely, historically revealing God from the multiple ways in which that revealing
occurs. In none of these ways does the divine reality come so
totally to presence that the difference between created and
uncreated being vanishes. Even in the person of Jesus this
difference is not eliminated. In other words, no finite expression of the divine self-disclosure exhausts the reality of God.
In fact, the finite expression is revelatory only as long as in and
through it the divine reality becomes and remains present. The
way Being emerges out of its hiddenness pertains to the ontological difference; Being is itself the clearing apart from which
beings would always remain concealed. Yet even in the concealment of beings, Being reveals itself as the clearing which
makes disclosiveness possible. But the event of presencing can
be lost; beings can become concealed through forgottenness or
dissimulation. 20
The theological difference recognizes that finite being appears as finite only by relation to its infinite ground. To develop the analogy, it could be said that uncreated being is
somehow always present whenever finite being manifests itself
precisely in its finiteness. Finite being appears as something
other than it actually is when the theological difference is forgotten. The created is mistaken for the uncreated and a basic
deception occurs. Out of this dissimulation sin is made possible; finite being conceals its own finiteness and one begins to
behave accordingly. The fault or rift in human nature appears,
in a Heideggerian context, as the tendency to forget the theological difference.
Dogma is an instance of the theological difference. No single
dogma can pretend to express the whole of divine reality.
20 This is the main idea behind Heidegger's notion of truth.
See Being and
Timei, section 44, pp. 257-273, and also "On the Essence of Truth," trans. R. F. C.
Hull and Alan Crick, in Existence and Being (Chicago, 1949). The German version of this important essay, "Vom Wesen der Wahrheit," appears in Wegmarken

(Frankfurt, 1967) . A translation of the fourth edition of the essay was prepared
by Jdhn Sallis for Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell
(New York, 1977), pp. 117-157. Also, see W. B. Macomber, The Anatomy of
Di8illusion: Martin Heidegger's Notion of Truth (Evanston, 1967).

DOGMA AND HERESY REVISITED

519

While dogma represents an instance of divine self-disclosure,
dogma always remains but a sign or symbol whose meaning depends upon a divine revealing. Dogma signifies a particular
event of God's coming to presence and therefore also draws attention to its own intrinsic limitation. Dogma's essentially
finite nature is signified by its historical particularity, its necessary containment in propositions whose meaning stands ever
in need of retrieval, and its restrictiveness (for dogma can
never be a total self-disclosure of God). When its basic finiteness is forgotten, dogma dissimulates; dogma appears as something other than it is when one regards dogma as absolute and
the truth it proposes to express as immutable. If the historicity
0£ dogma is forgotten, what is finite lets itself become unhistorical: dogma as truth about God becomes a deception and
the divine reality is no longer revealed but hidden. Consequently, dogma will appear as dogma (and thereby as finite)
only within the theological difference.
1

2. Dogma as the T emporalizing of Revelation
Dogma is disclosive 0£ religious meaning when it stands in
the clearing which is God's saving presence. Neither scripture,
tradition, nor creedal statement is coextensive with that presence. (There is no attempt here to explain or justify the existence 0£ scripture or dogma, but only to indicate the relation
between dogma and revelation-a relation which also obtains
between revelation and scripture.) Now, i£ there is to be development of dogma, then revelation must be continual. Let
us examine in what sense this is the case.
Historicity is a feature both 0£ the dogmatic formulation and
0£ the revealing action 0£ God. The sense in which God can
be said to have a history depends on the view one adopts 0£
the nature of Christian revelation and, .by that very fact, 0£
the nature 0£ God. Timelessness, at any rate, is not a feature
of human being. Whatever Dasein touches is thereby temporalized.zi
21 Being and Time, sections 67-71, pp. 888-4)!8. The implications of temporality
for theological method are carefully worked out from a perspective of the sociology

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WILLIAM REISER, S.J.

But temporality does not automatically connote develop.:
ment. If this were so, then Being could be said to develop; in
Heidegger's thinking, such is not the case. Within a Heideggerian context one would more appropriately talk aibout the
temporalizing of revelation than about the development of
dogma, for through Dasein's historicality revelation is temporalized. The presencing of Being is necessarily historical. 22
The idea that a formula can capture a timeless essence, a universal and necessary truth, and always and everywhere faithfully articulate that truth, contradicts the basic historicity of
Dasein. Words change their meanings, old meanings become
senseless in later contexts, and contexts shift according to cultural, social, political, and geographic conditions. Words are
not one thing and meaning another. The historicity of words
is intrinsically connected with the historicity of the what-is
which reveals itself. Therefore, the very process of coming to
presence is an historical one. Indeed, if it is Being that makes
revealing possible (for Being is pure presence), then Being cannot be conceived except as· time. 28
The phrase "temporalizing of revelation" (instead of "development of dogma ") helps to illumine the theological side
of the process. The non-theological side simply describes development as a process from the less differentiated state to a
of knowledge by Edward Farley.

See his treatment

of "ecclesial duration" in
(Philadelphia, 1982),

Ecclesial Reflection: An Anatomy of Theological Method
pp.

22 Richardson says: " Dasein is finite transcendence
andi its ultimate meaning
(that is, the source of its unity) is time. As transcendence, Dasein is continually
passing beyond beings to Being, that is, continually coming to Being in such a
way that Being is continually coming to Dasein. This continual coming is Dasein's
future. But Being comes to a Dasein that already is, andi this condition of already-having-been-this
is Dasein's past. Being, then, comes as future to Dasein
through Dasein as past. Finally, because Being _comes to Dasein it renders beings
manifest, that is, renders them present to Dasein and Dasein to them. That is
Dasein's present. Now the unity of future-past-present of Dasein constitutes the
unity of time so that the source of unity of Dasein is the unity of time itself "
(art. cit., pp. 33-34).
2 8 Heidegger, On Time and Being trans. Joan Stambaugh
(New York, 11172),
pp.

DOGMA AND HERESY REVISITED

59ll

more differentiated one. On this showing, there has been theological development because theology, like every intellectual
enterprise, behaves logicaily. This development has been both
contingent (because development is often prompted by historical events, the appearance of certain persons, the discovery of
ancient manuscripts, the questions posed by successive cultures
and various disciplines) and directed (because dominant questions have guided certain kinds of inquiry and research, and
generated new areas of interest; related insights give way to
viewpoints; higher viewpoints emerged and theological schools
or traditions were formed). The history of dogma has been
part of the history of theology. It too bears traits that are at
once contingent (like the birth of Arius) and directed (the
context of thought established by the prevailing winds of
Augustine's doctrine of grace). Sometimes the Church came
to confess in later centuries what was accepted implicitly in
earlier ones (the appropriateness of infant baptism, for example), and sometimes the later Church confessed doctrines
which were outside the purview of apostolic consciousness
(Mary as the mother of God).
Yet none of this means that later faith is more "developed"
than the faith of the first disciples. The theological problem in
the history of Christian faith, which the word " development "
does not settle, concerns God's role in that history. Dogmatic
development cannot be reduced to the logical, historical progress of Christian ideas. 24
A formal solution to the problem posed by development has
to affirm two things. First, the revelatory events which constituted Christian faith during the apostolic generation are
closed. Secondly, revelation continues in and through the ensuing history of the Church. God continues his address through
the determinate forms of scripture and cult and in conjunction
with that lived experience which keeps a tradition alive. These
affirmations represent the consensus of Catholic theologians
2 4 See Karl Rahner, "The Development of Dogma," Theological, Investigations,
volume 1, trans. Cornelius Ernst (London, 1961), especially pp. 51-58.

522

WILLIAM REISER, S.J.

who have written on dogmatic development. 25 How are the
affirmations to be brought into harmony?
While it is true that many later doctrines are not precisely
located in scripture, it does not follow that they are not revealed. For they come to presence at that place where Christian religious forms (like scripture, preaching, and liturgical action) meet life experiences which are different from those of the
disciples. It is not that the later Church put questions to scripture which scripture never raised, but that the Gospel addresses
people in situations not envisioned in the life-world of the
evangelists. Dogma arises out of a revelatory setting because
the Gospel has been proclaimed in a determinate situation and
heard there. It would not be incorrect, therefore, to speak of
the " there " of the Gospel as Heidegger spoke of the " there "
of Dasein. In both cases, the basic feature of the " there " is
that the " there " is hermeneutical.
Heidegger claimed that Being calls forth thinking by giving
itself to thought. There is a facticity about the history of
thought which stems from Dasein' s thrownness, the sheer
" givenness " of its there, and the specific way in which Being
at any moment presents itself to thought. Dasein necessarily
temporalizes the giving and the giving encounters Dasein in the
specific historical, social, and cultural situation of its there.
While Being does not develop, it cannot be thought of apart
from time. In Dasein' s temporalizing, Being reveals itself in
beings (even the being of dogmas); entities disclose themselves
in the Lich tung (clearing) , but Being always remains concealed.
25 This point is based on a consideration of the ontological difference in Heidegger
and the social-phenomenological principle of determinateness in Farley's Ecclesal
Man. The ontological difference always occurs concretely and determinately. The
same point is made by another route in David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order
(New York, 1975) . He argues that there are two sources for theology in a revisionist model of doing theology today, namely, Christian texts and common
human experience and language (p. 4Sff.) . Tracy carries the idea much further
in The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism
(New York, 1981), pp. 99-229. Also, see Gerald O'Collins, Fundamental Theology
(New York, 1981), pp. 99-102.

DOGMA AND HERESY REVISITED

528

What then is to ,be said about the notion of development?
Development is one of the ways in which Being discloses itself
as it rbestows itself on thought. The revealing events continue
without implying that one day, when all possible objects have
been inquired about, Being itself will be totally manifest. Such
a conclusion would entirely miss the point of the ontological
difference. Similarly, it would be inappropriate to think of
dogmas as adding to the Christian inventory on divine things
to the point where nothing further is to be known a;bout God.zs
This idea would completely miss the point of the theological
difference. As we shall see shortly, the precarious feature
rubout dogmas (as about all beings) is that they conceal as well
as disclose; what is concealed is ontologically far more noteworthy than what is revealed.
The revealing of Being is not to be understood in terms of
development or cumulative differentiation, but in terms of bestowal (what gives itself to thought) and temporalizing. This
is not to deny the phenomenon of development which is so obvious in organic process and the growth of understanding. Development is one of the ways in which Being manifests itself.
But Being manifests itself this way because Dasein temporalizes from within the context in which it is thrown. By analogy,
the temporalizing of revelation
the whence of new
dogmas. But revelation as content does not develop; this would
be a misleading description of what revelation is in theological
terms. Nevertheless, divine revealing assumes a history because
we temporalize the saving, eventful action of God.
Because the factors surrounding the emergence of each
dogma are so historically contingent, the history of dogma is
skewed along the axis of particular time-bound concerns. But
if dogma is related to revelation, and if Christian revelation
2 6 " A man may know completely and ponder thoroughly every created thing and
its works, yes, and God's works, too, but not God himself. Thought cannot comprehend God. And so, I prefer to abandon all I can know, choosing rather to love
him whom I cannot know. Though we cannot know him we can love him. By love
he may be touched and embraced, never by thought." The Cloud of Unkrwwing,
ed. William Johnston (New York, 1973), p. 54.

524

WILLIAM REISER, S.J.

is seen as having occurred originally in a specific historicalcultural context, then a basic concern has already appeared
and persists in the revelation event itself. The divine concern
was insinuated into a particular history, culture, language, and
social setting.
Can one accept the original event and dispense with the subsequent dogmatic history? That is a thorny question. The
meaning of the original events is not reached apart from the
intervening tradition, and thus the subsequent history is not
dispensable. 27 However, the tradition itself is relativized by its
constant reference to revelation, by the manner in which the
divine reality comes to presence throughout the centuries.
Thus it is not dogma which is binding but revelation, and it is
imperative to note that revelation does not reside above history
as some timeless essence against which Christianity through
the ages judges itself. There is no Christianity apart from its
various historical incarnations. Revelation is the coming to
presence of divine reality in detenninate historical settings.
When the process becomes content, we recall that the only content to be known is what has become historically and concretely manifest and not a timeless essence.28
Two paradoxes might help to summarize these remarks. It is
as correct to say that God moves slowly through history as to
say that history moves slowly through God. It is as correct to
say that human beings are the shepherds of God as to say that
God shepherds the human race. 29 In revelation the divine presence becomes temporalized in a way accommodated to historical process and the dynamics of tradition. But it is the divine
21 This has been well explained and defended in Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and
Method (New York, 1975), pp. M5ff. and passim.
2s A further point could be added, as Maurice Wiles does: " True continuity with
the age of the Fathers is not to be sought so much in the repetition of their doctrinal conclusions or even in their building upon them, but rather in the continuation of their doctrinal aims." See The Making of Christian Doctrine (Cambridge,
1967)' p. 178.
2 9 See Heidegger's essay, "Letter on Humanism," Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York, 1977), pp. 198-!'l4!'l, esp. p. fl!'ll: "Man
is the shepherd of Being."

DOGMA AND HERESY REVISITED

525

saving presence which makes history or tradition revelatory,
and human beings must tend that presence if the tradition is
to remain alive.
Finally, what calls forth dogma in the first place? Development is not the answer, for development is only a characteristic
of the way Being discloses itself. Nor is the question answered
by saying that human beings need dogma in order to clarify
their belief and give definition to their faith. In most instances,
dogmas were called forth by the presence of heterodoxy. Dogmas were enunciated in the face of heresy.30

III. Heresy: The Matter of Divine Conceahnent
The errors of heretics and blasphemers force us to deal with unlawful matters, to scale perilous heights, to speak unutterable words,
to trespass on forbidden ground. Faith ought in silence to fulfill
the commandments, worshiping the Father, reverencing with him
the Son, abounding in the Holy Spirit, but we must strain the poor
resources of our language to express thoughts too great for words
in daring to embody in human terms truths which ought to be
hidden in the silent veneration of the heart. 31

Taking Hilary of Poitiers at his word, it would not be farfetched to claim that the history of Christian faith has been as
much the history of heresy as the history of dogma. Athanasius
may have been of the same mind, for it was the Arians who
forced him to adopt non-scriptural language against his better
judgment. 32 And Pope Callistus at least initially believed that
30 See my article, "An Essay on the Development of Dogma in a Heideggerian
Context," The Thomist 89 (1975), 471-495. Also, What Are They Saying About
Dogma? (New York, 1978).
31 St. Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate, Book 2, as cited by Maurice Wiles, op. cit.,
pp. 82-88.
32 De decretis nicaenae synodi, 82. Lonergan draws attention to this in The Way
to Nicea (Philadelphia, 1976), p. 14. Also, see J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian
Creeds (London, 1972, 8rd ed.), pp. 242-262. The recent work of Robert C.
Gregg and Dennis E. Groh,· Early Arianism: A View of Salvation (Philadelphia,
Hl81), presents the Arian controversy in a different historical light. I find the
study attractive because it forces one to re-consider the appropriateness of the
heresy and dogma labels which were brought to bear upon a sensitive and influential christological problem.

526

WILLIAM REISER, S.J.

Sabellius had a better scriptural case than Hippolytus. Had
they been content to live with the trinitarian ambiguities of
the New Testament, Tertullian would have been without a
cause. 83
The history of heresy has not always been the journey from
the unknown to the known, from what was uncertain and ambiguous to what was authoritative and clear. In the Middle
Ages, for instance, the orthodox starting point was generally
clear, but social and historical factors clouded that clarity and
paved the way for a gradual dissimulation:
We have to explain how a doctrine like that of the poverty of
Christ can so change its import that while its apostle, St. Francis,
was canonized, its more extreme followers were, less than a century
later, persecuted and finally condemned: why what for Innocent
III was spiritual reform became for John XXII doctrinal error.
These are questions that focus upon Christian society; they can
only be answered by considering heresy as a part of it. 84

Heresy in the early Church had different proportions from
heresy in the Middle Ages. A faith struggling to define its identity, to answer questions never raised before, and forced to witness to the Gospel through martyrdom, stands in a different
position from a faith established and institutionalized, and
which found itself compromised 1by the standards of the world
it was supposed to save.
But it was heresy that moved the Church to define and pronounce, the only alternative in a world of orthodoxy which was
incapable of grasping the possibility of dissent. 85 Yet it would
be hard to imagine a development of dogma apart from heresy,
for heresy indicated movement, questioning, speculation, history, and life. Dogmatic development is indebted to the Spirit
which guides the Church in all truth (John 16: 13), but that
does not automatically place heresy behind the lines of the
enemy of truth. Sometimes, indeed, it does. Then again, it
ss See J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (New York, 1959), pp. 121-125.
Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages: The Relation of Heterodoxy to
Dissent c.
2 vols. (New York, 1967), 1:4-5.
ss Leff, op. cit., I: 47.
84 Gordon

DOGMA AND HERESY REVISITED

527

was not always easy to distinguish the hero from the villain.
Bishops were not above treachery to win the orthodox cause,
and the Inquisition was an irreligious method of safeguarding
the integrity of the Gospel. If one does resort to force in order
to protect the truth, does dissimulation become inevitable? Accounts of dogmatic development are essentially theologies of
revelation; we want to show now why heresy should not be
omitted from that theology.

1. Heresy as Untruth
Heidegger's analysis of truth, based on his interpretation of
the Greek word 'aA.¥kia, includes the notions of unconcealment
(truth as the coming to presence of what-is) and concealment
(untruth as the hiddenness from which what-is shows itself but
from which beings are never permanently released). Beings
are wrested from their hiddenness by Dasein, in whose " there "
they show themselves. Un-truth is not error, although it is the
condition for its possibility, since error involves taking something to be what it is not; what it is remains hidden.
Heresy itself is not un-truth but an indication of the hiddenness of Being; and because beings cannot be permanently
released from their concealment, dogma too can dissimulate
and conceal what it is supposed to manifest. When viewed
theologically and not just sociologically, heresy represents
theological un-truth inasmuch as one who thinks heresy testifies to the fact that the mystery of God is " naturally " hidden
and cannot ,be seen without a revelation. Because of the theological difference, Being never comes completely and definitively to presence; it is disclosed as that which makes the manifestness of beings possible. Because of the theological difference, individual revelatory events can disclose the divine presence but in none of them does divine _reality manifest itself
wbsolutely. Dogma is thus significant not only for what it
proposes to say abeut God but also for what it must leave unsaid. In short, dogma draws attention to what remains concealed, and heresy discloses the fact that God's concealment is
the way by which mystery is revealed and preserved.

528

WILLIAM REISER, S.J.

The " unsaid " feature of dogma refers to two things. First,
no generation of Christians totally grasps revealed truth: there
is no hypothetical quantity of truths awaiting human discovery. Christianity exists only in its historical
In this case, the unsaid refers to what is simply outside the
faith-consciousness of a particular age. Secondly, the unspoken
also refers to the intrinsic limitation of words, concepts, and
symbols. A dogma is an event which occurs within the focus
of faith; no dogma brings divine reality fully to presence. What
is significant, therefore, is that reality which one still does not
and cannot know. The theological term designating this aspect
of dogma is called mystery. 86
Mystery applies to other modes of divine presencing too.
For example, the unsaid element in scripture consists of the
power of the text to generate new meaning in a wide variety
of historical and cultural contexts. The language of scripture
may appear more symbolic than the language of dogma, for
dogmatic formulation intends a certain precision of meaning.
But dogmas have sometimes been known as mysteries or symbols of faith. Such terminology attends to the intrinsic limitations of our language and thinking, as well as to the way God
always exceeds the capacity of our words and ideas about him.

Heresy and divine hiddenness. Before one proceeds to portray heresy as an error, one must reckon with the fact that God
never reveals himself totally. The difference between creator
and creature cannot be abrogated, and the creature lives authentically when it remembers that difference. When the difference is forgotten, religious experience grows faithless and a
form of idolatry arises in terms of dogmatic fundamentalism.
Heresy usually designates what is contrary to orthodox belief, but until belief is clarified a situation exists in which the
truth has not been formally and officially recognized. Where
does the truth reside during this unclarified stage? The community is experiencing something like the poet's experience
86 Rahner, "The Concept of Mystery in Catholic Theology," Theological Investigations, volume 4, trans. Kevin Smyth (London, 1966), pp. 36-73.

DOGMA AND HERESY REVISITED

529

with language as it struggles with the " unsaid " of faith. 37
What is this like, and what is the connection between heresy
and hiddenness?
There is a moment before the divine coming to presence
when religious understanding lies in need of illumination, the
moment in which the community struggles to articulate its
faith. The dogmatic proposition reflects the achievement of
thinking wherein the Church grasps its faith reflexively. But
in the moment before clarity is realized, heresy (which often
is only recognized as such afterwards) signifies that divine saving reality has not yet come to presence. Heresy indicates the
hiddenness (though not necessarily the absence) of God. This
is not to equate heresy with hiddenness. Heresy is the sign
within a religiously ambiguous situation that the divine reality
has not yet revealed itself.
Hiddenness is not merely a passing feature of God's nature.
God will not be less hidden once the obscurity of faith is removed. Hiddenness is not quantitative; nor is it an essentially
secret dimension of divine reality, as if God for his own sake
had to preserve an impenetrable and inscrutable part of himself. God is indeed impenetrable, because the ,divine reality
cannot be figured out or manipulated, logically deduced or fixed
in propositions. Divine hiddenness is (to use Heidegger's expression) "authentic untruth"; it is transcendent. Hiddenness manifests itself in the theological difference. Therefore,
even after a dogma has been affirmed through reflexive faith,
God is not less hidden than before. When a community forgets
this fact, dogma is apt to become heresy, not as untruth, but
as error.
Heresy as untruth thus draws our attention to a pervasive
dimension of divine reality. Even when heresy is rejected and
orthodox belief is officially confessed, the heretic remains as
evidence of the authentic untruth of God.
It is important to note that I am not speaking of heresy and
37 See Heidegger, Poetry, Langitage, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter
York, 1971), pp.

(New

530

WILLIAM REISER, S.J.

dogma in moral terms, implying that heretics are people of bad
faith and the orthodox have good faith. I am merely attending to the situation which heresy presupposes, namely, the
hiddenness of God.

2. Heresy as Error
If we have correctly argued the case for concealment, does
it follow that heresy is inevitable? To answer this we must
understand the situation in which the Church finds itself before
dogma is articulated. Every new historical and cultural situation demands that revelation occur anew. From our side it
means that the saving acts of God have to be retrieved. From
God's side, as it were, the new setting requires him to manifest
himself in a fresh act of meaning. When the community has
not yet stepped into the " there " of the Gospel either because
the revelatory event has not been completed or because faithlessness has prevented the community from hearing the divine
address, then we have the pre-condition of heresy.
Now revelation is not a private affair. Revelation happens
in the life of a people as they search the way in which God is
present in their historical existence. God discloses himself in a
socially determinate setting, and the way he addresses people
at one age will differ from the way he addresses them in another. Heresy too is a moment in the life of a community, even
though it often appears first on the lips of a single person.
Heresy presages the repetition of the saving power of God and
prepares people to hear the divine address. What compels
human beings to seek out the divine presence anew? The hiddenness of God and the human need to exist authentically, that
is, to live in the presence of God. The divine address occurs
differently in different times and places, and as long as the
mode of address has not been understood, heresy as untruth
will appear. For human beings will struggle to hear how God
is speaking to them, and in that struggle they often name him
the wrong way. But by doing so they ultimately call attentioR
to the community's need to hear again the divine word, aµg
thereby they signal the divine concealment.
.

DOGMA AND HERESY REVISITED

.581

The waywardness and inauthenticity which accompany historical existence cannot be avoided; authentic existence is not
accomplished apart from the struggle with one's own fallenness. One way in which fallenness manifests itself is through
what Heidegger calls " calculative thought ". 88 Instead of accepting and allowing the grant of Being to thinking, one engages in the manipulative and calculative thinking so characteristic of technological society. The grant-character of Being
is forgotten. Casting this insight in religious terms, one could
say that revelation is a divine grant, the gracious self-communication of God. The grace-character of revelatory events is
liable to be forgotten, however, as we become historically removed from the immediacy of those events. Dogma is an instance of the revelatory occurrence. It instantiates how God
addressed the community at a certain time and place within its
history. But dogma's relation to revelation can be forgotten,
and it is then seen no longer within the horizon of grace but
as a propositional truth conveying information about divine
reality.
Dogma therefore can dissimulate. Instead of appearing as a
revelatory moment within a horizon of grace, it appears propositionally and appeals to the calculative tendencies of human
beings. Truth is no longer viewed as having grasped us; truth
is regarded as something of which we have acquired possession.
In this dissimulation, dogma becomes error insofar as the one
holding the verbal formula no longer stands in the truth.
Error can arise from another corner. In attempting to calculate the divine, to get a handle on divine truth, one forgets
the essentially gracious nature of the revelatory event. The
theological difference is overlooked. Heresy as untruth founded
on divine concealment becomes heresy as error. Once the con38 In addition to the "Letter on Humanism," see "The Nature of Language" in
On the Way to Language, trans. Peter D. Hertz (New York, 1971). "But because
we are caught in the prejudice nurtured through centuries that thinking is a matter
of ratiocination, that is, of calculation in the widest sense, the mere talk of a
neighborhood of thinking to poetry is suspect. Thinking is not a means to gain
knowledge. Thinking cuts furrows in the soil of Being" (p. 70).

WILLIAM REISER, S.J.

cealment is forgotten, a dissimulation takes place. The dissimulation, moreover, is not a mode of the divine being but the
result of that fallenness by which we are led to mistake what is
not true for what-is. Thus, a dogma which is confessed apart
from the horizon of grace may be inadvertently accepted as
true, but this truth has lost its foundation in authentic existence.
;
It is paradoxical that divine concealment is necessary if
there is to be a divine disclosure. But concealment is basic to
the theological difference. Apart from the difference God will
not be manifest as God. Concealment or mystery precedes the
revelatory event which occurs in the horizon of grace; mystery
prevents a premature closing of the mind to reality.
Divine reality, we might say, "tabernacles" itself in the face
of human waywardness, calculative thinking, and error: not
only is the divine presence concealed hut the fact of concealment is forgotten. Still, the divine presence do,es not cease; it
persists as concealed and as forgotten. While unseen, divine
concealment remains the condition (though not the cause) of
error. Divine reality withdraws from any human attempt to
control it by tabernacling itself, and from the hiddenness of its
presence we are called back to the truth.
3. The Truth of Heresy
Our inquiry has led us to observe that concealment is the
condition for the possibility of heresy, but we should note that
concealment and dissimulation are not the same. Concealment
refers to the fact that God never comes totally to presence to
the finite spirit, but it is not in the divine nature to appear as
what it is not, that is, to dissemble. However, from an ontological viewpoint dissimulation would be impossible if concealment had not occurred. From a theological viewpoint, divine
reality is never totally transparent to the creature; this condition makes error possible. In Heideggerian terms, Dasein as
falling and as inauthentic does not stand in the pure light of
Being. Beings then sometimes appear, not as they are, but in
ways in which Dasein forces them to appear. Thus, they hide

DOGMA AND HERESY REVISITED

583

themselves in their being; in the dissimulation Being conceals
itself. In other words, Dasein stands in the truth and in the untruth of Being.
To some degree, heresy is inevitable, but the sense of heresy
ought not to he restricted to its classical forms in the early
christological and trinitarian controversies. Heresy includes all
the ways in which the divine presence as concealed appears to
human beings as disclosed. In heresy, God is understood or
grasped in ways in which he is not; the reason for this mistaken
grasp lies with the creature. The inevitability of heresy stems
from Dasein' s forgetfulness, which here means primarily a forgetting of the divine hiddenness. Heresy can assume a variety
of forms: it may appear as Arianism or Pelagianism, or as a
widespread materialism, or as any of the other false gods by
which authentic existence is compromised. Common to every
form of heresy is a failure to hear the divine word.
But heresy cannot and should not be equated with bad faith,
and here I am referring to the one in whom heresy comes to
expression. The label " heretic " usually connotes evil intent,
an implication which may or may not be accurate. Yet it is
one thing to misunderstand the divine address and bring it to
inadequate or even to erroneous expression; it is quite another
to close one's ears against God's revealing word.

Heresy and bad faith
We have been presupposing that God continues to speak to
the believing community; our business is responding with a
readiness to listen, to discern that word, and to allow the divine
presence to manifest itself. Now, when an individual is misled
by a desire to hear that address in his own way (thereby shaping it according to his own pre-conditions), or when someone
refuses to submit what he thinks he has heard to the community's discernment (since revelation is not a purely private
affair), then he has indicated in his own being, somewhere in
his own personhood, a refusal to allow the divine address on
its own terms. This unwillingness might show itself as a visible
obstinacy, or it may he buried in those recesses of mind and

534

WILLIAM REISER, S.J.

heart where true intentions are not so easily identified. In
either case we have instances of heresy as bad faith.
According to Karl Rahner, heresy occupies a unique position in Christianity because of the Christian religion's "very
radical attitude to truth." 39 Since God's word is authoritative,
Rahner argues, it demands obedience. Heretics are those who
violate the relation of obedience to God's word, to the revelatory event which is his truth. Heresy can exist only where
there has first been a community, that is, a union of hearts and
minds in the Spirit. The malice of heresy consists in its disrupting the Spirit's unifying action in fostering and promoting
community.
Rahner is more concerned with the acts of the heretic than
with the notion of heresy, however. He notes that, contrary to
what most people think, judgment is not a purely interior matter, for all judgments somehow influence the sphere of human
action. The erroneous judgment which heresy represents will
eventually affect the actions of the heretic and the disruption
of community will be enlarged. But Rahner realized that
heresy does not originate in error pure and simple; it begins in
an experience of the truth. He writes:
Furthermore, even in heresy itself there is concealed a dynamic relation to the whole of Christian truth. Not, of course, in as much
as it is simply and formally an error and nothing else. But error
does not exist in this abstract purity in individual heresies as they
are actually propounded. Historically effective and powerful heresies are not simply assertions deriving from stupidity, obstinacy
and inadequate information. Rather are they rooted in an authentic and original experience moulded by some reality and truth. It
is quite possible, and it is probably so in most cases, that that
reality and the truth it contains was not yet seen and experienced
in orthodox Christianity with the same explicitness and intensity,
depth and power (though, of course, it was not denied and was
always perceived and expressed in some way), as it was given to
and demanded of that person to see it at his moment in history.
But he then brings this genuine experience to accomplishment in
39 Rahner,

403.

On Heresy, trans. W. J. O'Hara, in Inquiries (New York, 1964), p.

DOGMA AND HERESY REVISITED

585

the form of an error. Just as evil lives by the power of the good
and can only be willed in virtue of the will to the residual good
which persists in the evil, and without which it could not even be
evil, but simply nothing, which cannot be the object of the will,
so it is too in the relation between the truth affirmed and experienced and the error actually brought to expression. Even thii!
error lives by the truth. And a great plenitude of error has undeniably a great content and possesses a great motive power, and
these impel toward the one truth, the truth which the heretic has
perhaps already, in fact, attained in the Christian truth which he
expressly confesses by his retention of the name of Christian. 40

I have tried to explore that relation between truth and error
from the side of the notion of heresy, explaining why heresy
and error are not coterminous, and steering away from a full
consideration of the subjective acts of the heretic. If the root
meaning of obedience is listening and responding, then disobedience means turning a deaf ear to God's word and failing
to respond.
With Rahner, I would also urge that heresy is rooted in an
experience of the truth. Heresy arises with the very nature of
revelation because of the bond between truth and untruth; God
never comes totally to presence in revelatory events. But if
heresy divides community, does it not become intrinsically malicious? To answer this, we must bear in mind that our chief
concern has been with the underlying condition for the possibility of heresy in the concealment of Being. If heresy has in
fact helped the Church to perceive and to appropriate its faith
by provoking a need for self-clarification, then heresy has
played an important role in the process of revelation. Heresy
divides community and is plainly malicious when individuals
stubbornly refuse to entertain the prospect that they have misunderstood or misrepresented the divine word spoken to their
age. In their efforts to name the divine word, such people have
actually witnessed to divine concealment.
40 Rahner, Inquiries, pp. 434-435. Also, see his article, "Heresies in the Church
Today?" in Theological Investigations, volume rn, trans. David Bourke (London,
1974), pp. 117-141.

536

WILLIAM REISER, S.J.

The saving side of heresy
Heresy as untruth calls attention to the theological difference
and thus establishes the creature upon the earth; it allows God
to be God. Basically, heresy as untruth misapprehends the divine address, but not as the result of someone's deliberation.
The misapprehension occurs, and it figures into the overall
process of revelation. The process of revelation presupposes a
lack of illumination or a situation of confusion and obscurity.
This situation is analogous to the poet's search for the right
word. He is not faulted when the word does not come or when
the wrong word is selected; blame does not enter the question.
Often the poet strikes the right word at once but occasionally
the sound of the wrong word prepares the way for recognizing
the word which fits. Heresy as untruth is compatible with an
authentic search for God, even when the search issues in an apprehension and expression which the Church rejects. This
might be called "authentic heresy".
Heresy as error is of a different sort. Since it arises from a
closure to the divine address, such heresy pertains to the inauthentic modes of human existence. The heresy which results might be called "inauthentic heresy".
Whether in good faith or in bad faith, the heretic reminds
the Church that the divine presence cannot be contained by
any finite expression of its truth-not by a scriptural word, a
creedal formula, a dogmatic definition, or a sacramental rite.
Precisely because of the theological difference, the divine reality does not allow itself to be controlled or calculated, or enclosed by a finite utterance. If the heretic needs to be warned
against struggling too hard to name what resists being named,
then the orthodox have to be cautioned against a facile and
merely verbal enunciation of what the community has once
heard. What matters is not the articulation of the truth, nor
the definition of what constitutes authentic faith. What is important is the ability to hear an ongoing revelation, to remain
open to the word which God continually speaks to human beings. The notion of heresy, as I have conceived it here, should

DOGMA AND HERESY REVISITED

587

make clear how limited and finite our expression of uncreated
truth has to be. In heresy, God is" protected" against the assault of human pretensions to hav.e grasped him. The truth of
heresy is that heresy calls forth truth.

ConclusU>n
Heidegger's notion of Being is not equivalent to the Christian notion of God. For one thing, Christians do not understand God as the essentially hidden one but as the one who
desires to reveal himself. Nevertheless, the transcendence of
the Christian God is hardly without mystery. Furthermore,
the Heideggerian notion of Being is not personal (and the theological application of "person" to God is analogous), but it
would be incorrect to interpret Heidegger as meaning that Being "prefers" concealment. Concealment occurs because of the
ontological difference. The Christian God is known, not as the
essentially concealed one, but as the content and the process
of revelation. The two notions seem to agree about the utter
grace of revelation and about the fact that neither Being nor
God can be reduced to the creature's " there " and contained.
Dogma needs to ·he understood in terms of a theology of divine revealing which acknowledges the historical, cultural, and
linguistic limitations upon revelatory events. The development
of dogma is not an exclusively historical process, for in the
process of development the God who reveals himself comes to
presence again. Once the event of presencing is forgotten, however, dogma recedes into a meaninglessness akin to the state of
a tool whose purpose is no longer known, a language which is
no longer spoken, or the portrait of a stranger.
The dogmatic word, like the scriptural word, depends upon
hermeneutical process for the coming to presence of meaning.
On the one hand, the basic meaning event for Christian faith
happened in Jesus Christ, with all the finality and determinateness of an historical occurrence. But that event also carried
high symbolism; it established the horizon within which the
rest of history was to be understood, at least for Christians.
This is why Christian theology teaches that revelation is closed.

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WiLt.!AM rull15E1R, S.j.

On the other hand, the emergence of dogma signified the
openness of Christian faith to fresh occurrences of meaning; it
has to interpret itself anew for each generation. In a Heideggerian context, the moment of truth is the coming to presence
of Being linguistically and historically. When the meaningfulness of the event is lost, however, dogma dissimulates in the
same way that beings (Seiendes) are liable to dissimulation.
The possibility of a recovery of meaning implies that revelation still takes place. The occurrence of dissimulation serves as
a humbling reminder of our dependence upon that grace. As
Origen said:
But we affirm that human nature is not sufficient in any way to
seek for God and to find Him in His pure nature, unless it is helped
by the God who is object of the search. And He is found by those
who, after doing what they can, admit that they need Him, and
shows Himself to those to whom He judges it right to appear, so
far as it is possible for God to be known to man and for the human
soul which is still in the body to know God. 41
WILLIAM REISER,

S.J.

College of the Holy Cross
Worcester, Massachusetts

41 Origen, Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge, 1965), Book 7: 42,
pp. 430-431.

AQUINAS AND SOME SUBSEQUENT THINKERS
ON THE RENEWAL OF UTOPIAN SPECULATION

.
I

N STUDIES THAT DEAL with utopia and the utopian

mode of thought it is not uncommon to find scholars class
together under the heading of utopian such distinctly different kinds of literary expressions as prophetic writings in the
Judaeo-Christian tradition on the one hand, and works which
present a picture of an ideal political structure on the other.*
However, as I have attempted to demonstrate elsewhere, the
thinking that underlies prophetic literature and that which
characterizes projections of ideal societies are significantly different in what they have to say about the nature of man, about
his place in history, and thus also about his relation to political
thought. 1 The primary difference between these kinds of ex-

* A section of this paper was read at the Patristic, Mediaeval, and Renaissance
Conference held at Villanova University in October 1980.
1 As traditionally used the term utopia refers to works which present a descriptive picture of an ideal State or commonwealth. Today however it is applied to any
work containing elements of what is called utopian thought; that is, any social,
intellectual, political, religious, or philosophical theory that speculates about the
possibilities of man's achieving the good life in the future. This search for synthesis
has resulted in classifying as utopian such distinctly different kinds of expression
as religious writings (Old and New Testaments, Augustine's The City of God),
political and social tracts outlining plans for restructuring social arrangements
(Marx's Communist Manifesto and Condorcet's Sketch for the Historical Picture
of the Progress of the Human Mind), writings that set forth a plan for the redesigning of cities (Antonio Averlino's Treatise on Architecture and Bruni's Laudatio Florentinae Ui·bis), and fictional works presenting a picture of an ideal commonwealth (More's Utopia and Bacon's New Atlantis). Thus in the tendency to
focus on similarities-in this instance on the fact of the conceptualization of the
'good life '--critics have ignored basic and, it can be argued, irreconcilable differences. For regardless of what form utopias take, or however much they differ in
underlying assumptions and working principles, they have in common several basic
propositions: they deal with ideas about achieving an ideal telos in this world; they
are not founded on supernatural truths; and they are not brought about by revelation or by divine intervention. Further discussion of this point may be found in
Dorothy F. Donnelly, "The City of God and Utopia: A Revaluation," Augustinian

589

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DOROTHY F. DONNELLY

pression can be summed up this way-in prophetic writings
the belief is that man and human destiny are controlled by
omnipotent forces outside of time; in utopian writings the assumption is that man himself, through his use of reason, is
capable of controlling and arranging human affairs and, therefore, the history and destiny of mankind. And it is this basic
contrast in point of view which explains why in the centuries
from the Greek period until the Renaissance there appeared no
utopian writing. 2 Medieval thought not only did not lend itself
toward engaging in speculation about aehieving the ideal life
in this world, it was in many respects a mandate against utopianizing. Because it encompasses so much, the term 'Medieval thought ' is of course as ambiguous as the terms ' Greek
thought ' and ' Renaissance thought.' Rather than referring to
a single perspective to which every thinker, from Augustine
to the Renaissance, subscribed, it covers a wide range of systems and attitudes. Thus it would be no more accurate to select one thinker, like Augustine or Thomas Aquinas, as typifying Medieval thought than it would be to say that Bacon or
Hobbes is representative of seventeenth-century thought. Yet
it is generally recognized that there existed a common framework within which nearly all Medieval thinking was carried
on. And it is here, as Gordon Leff puts it, " that the thought
of the Middle Ages must be sharply distinguished both frorn
the classical thought of Greece and Rome and from modern,
post-Renaissance thought. This framework was provided by
Studies, 8 (1977), 111-128; Raymond Ruyer, L'utopie et les utopies (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1950); and Dirko Suvin, "Defining the Literary Genre of
Utopia," Studies in the Literary Imagination, 6 (Fall 1978), 121-145.
2 Augustine's The City of God is often spoken of as an example of utopian writing during the Middle Ages. However, utopia is a mode of thought which deals
solely with man's temporal condition and the _nature of utopia is that it promises,
through the establishment of an ' ideal ' State, the ' good life ' in this world. The
fundamental proposition in Augustine's thought is the doctrine of Divine Providence.
In his exploration of this thesis in The City of God Augustine develops a comprehensive philosophy of universal history the ultimate end of which is the fulfillment
of God's promise to mankind, the attainment of an ideal supernatural state of existence. See note number one above and the following discussion in the text.

AQUINAS

AND UTOPIAN

SPECULATION

541

the Christian faith; it was regulated by Church authority; and
it was largely sustained by ecclesiastics." 8 There were of
course many sources of Medieval thought, but it is well known
that the dominant influence on the Medieval outlook was
Augustinianism. Augustine's concept of the order of the universe, of the nature of man, and his view that the purpose of
this life is a preparation for a world outside of time, framed a
conception of the plan and structure of the world that most
thinkers in the Middle Ages accepted without question. And,
as we shall see, this point of view strongly discouraged, indeed
in many ways mandated against, utopian speculation.
It is in the thought of Thomas Aquinas that we find the
emergence of those kinds of ideas which give rise to utopian
writings. Greatly influenced by the Aristotelian revival of the
thirteenth century, Aquinas proposed radically new ideas about
the order of the universe, the nature of man, and the role of
the state in human affairs. For our purpose the most important feature of Aquinas's thought is that he was the first
Medieval thinker to reaffirm the classical idea of the integrity
of the polis and, concurrently, to reconstruct the notion of political philosophy. Rejecting the Augustinian notion of the state
as a consequence of sin and therefore a remedial instrument
provided by God for man's salvation, 4 Aquinas argues that the
state is founded upon the nature of man himself. This paper
studies the relationship between such elements of Thomistic
thinking and the essentials of utopian thought. It examines
Aquinas's views on the order of the universe, and, more specifically, his ideas on the place the state has within this scheme
of universal order. We shall see that while Aquinas himself
does not engage in utopian speculation, he offered an interpretation of the order of the universe and the nature of man which
was a primary influence on the reappearance in the sixteenth
century of the utopian mode of thought. The emphasis here is
s Gordon Leff, Medieval Thought: St. Augustine to Ockham (Maryland: Penguin
Books, 1958), p. 11.
4 See Donnelly, pp. 117-120, et passim.

542

DOROTHY F. DONNELLY

on a consideration of the contrast in outlook between Aquinas
and Augustine in their views on the notion of order and the
nature of man. This approach will more clearly show that the
final result of much of Aquinas's thought is that it served, in
the utopian tradition, as the bridge between Plato's Republic
and Thomas More's Utopia.

I
The idea that order is an essential of reality has persisted as
a dominant mode of thought throughout history. It is thus not
surprising to find a preoccupation with the notion of order in
both Augustine and Aquinas. " The peace of all things," according to Augustine, " is the tranquillity of order. Order is the
distribution which allots things equal and unequal, each to its
own place." 5 And for Aquinas, " Divine Providence imposes
order on all things, and thus the Apostle says truly (Rom. xiii.
I) that ' the things which are of God are well ordered.' " 6 In
Aquinas's view, " to take order away from creatures is to deny
them the best thing that they have, because, though each one
is good in itself, together they are very good because of the
order of the universe." 7 The Thomistic notion of order, like
Augustine's, is a system which serves to organize realms of being__.God, angels, man, and demons-into a hierarchy of structures imposed by Divine Providence. And the order appointed
by Divine Providence includes all things. As Aquinas puts it,
"all things that exist are seen to be ordered to each other";
and in Augustine's words, "nothing can exist outside order."
Yet the systems of order developed by Aquinas and Augustine
differ significantly. Whereas Augustine's notion of order is
characterized by contrast and dichotomy, an order issuing in
two different universal societies, on the one hand, and in a
5 Aurelius Augustine, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (New York: Random
House, 1950), Book XIX, Ch. 13, p. 690.
6 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra Gentiles, in The Basic Writings of Saint
Thomas Aquinas, trans. and ed. Anton C. Pegis, 2 vols. (New York: Random
House, 1945), II, Book III, Ch. 81, p. 158.
7 Summa contra Gentiles, II, Book III, Ch. 69, p. 126.

AQUINAS

AND UTOPIAN

SPECULATION

548

supreme ideal other world which inherently rejects this world
on the other, for Aquinas order consists of two hierarchically
different yet complementary orders, the natural order and the
supernatural order.
This is not the place to go into a discussion of the complex
subject of the extent of the influence of Greek philosophy on
the development of Augustine's thought and, in turn, on the
thought of the Middle Ages.8 But there is one aspect of Plato's
philosophy that greatly influenced Augustine which we need
to have before us as the background for what is to follow. In
Greek thought, as everyone knows, there was a preoccupation
with the attempt to establish a relationship between the order
and constancy of the world of ideas and the flux and impermanence of the world of the senses. That part of Platonism
that had the most significance for Augustine was the explanation it offered of reality: its view of an otherworldly source of
truth; its view of the dualism of existence-the supernatural or
intelligible opposed to the phenomenal and sensible world; and
its view that man must transcend the sensible world to reach
the ideal realm. In other words, the theory that reality consists of an 'otherworldly ' realm and a ' this-worldly' realm. 9
Plato's well-known views on this subject can be summarized
8 In The City of God Augustine presents a lengthy discussion of contemporary
philosophical thought in which he challenges the ideas of Varro, Pythagoras, and
Porphyry, among others, but, he points out that " it is especially with the Platonists
that we must carry on our disputations on matters of theology, their opinions being
preferable to those of all other philosophers " (Book VIII, Ch. 5, p. 248). And
from Augustine's point of view the philosopher who was most acceptable was Plato,
for it is he who "approaches [most] nearly the Christian knowledge" (Book VIII,
Ch. 11, p. 255).
9 For an excellent discussion of the historical development of the theme of " otherworldliness" and "this-worldliness" see Arthur 0. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of
Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (New York: Harper and Row, 1936). Of
Plato's influence on this mode of thought LoV'ejoy says: "Plato ... is the main
historic source of the indigenous strain of otherworldliness in Occidental philosophy
and religion, as distinguished from the imported Oriental varieties. It is through
him, as Dean Inge has said, ' that the conception of an unseen eternal world, of
which the visible world is but a pale copy, gains a permanent foothold in the
West ' " (p. 35).

544

DOROTHY F. DONNELLY

simply as follows. For Plato there are two realms of being, one
the phenomenal realm, and the other the realm of Ideas and
Forms. The phenomenal world is characterized by impermanence-things come into being and pass out of being-and the
ideal realm is characterized by permanence and timelessness.
The ideal realm is the realm of ultimate reality, of pure unchanging ' forms ' or ' ideas ' which are absolute and eternal and
which constitute an order of reality that transcends earthly
existence. This transcendent realm of eternal ' universals,' or
' essences,' stands in contrast to the sensible world where everything is but a reflection of the ideal and where all phenomena
are transitory. The sensible world is a manifestation of the
realm of the unchanging world of Ideas; it is, therefore, the
realm of the ideal which informs and constitutes reality. And,
because they are immanent, the unchanging ' universals ' or
' essences ' can be known through the faculty of reason by disengaging it from sensible experience. Thus the transcendent
world of ultimate reality alone provides certainty; the ideal
Forms and Ideas have their own existence and their own order,
and they are the source of all other forms and ideas, and of
order in the phenomenal world. Platonic otherworldliness thus
deals with the idea of a world of eternal essences which correspond to the phenomena of this world.
Augustine, as already noted, accepted totally the Platonic
idea of an ideal otherworldly realm. But Augustine modified
the notion to make it conform to his Christian beliefs. Thus
the conceptual center in Augustinian thought is the idea of a
God who brought into being the phenomenal world and all of
its creatures, a supreme being who arranged the order of the
universe and whose providence guides and directs all creatures.
This underlying proposition of creation as the act of the free
will and choice of an otherworldly personal supreme being is
sharply different from anything in Plato's thought and, not unexpectedly, it leads to a concept of an otherworldly realm that
is unlike Plato's world of Ideas and Forms. 10 In Augustine
10 While it is generally recognized that as Plato's thought developed he became
more interested in the theological implications of his Theory of Ideas, his views

AQUINAS AND UTOPIAN

SPECULATION

545

Plato's transcendent world of universals becomes a completely
other and absolutely transcendent realm, and a realm profoundly different in kind from the sensible world. The Augustinian ideal other world is perceived as the realm of a creatorGod (rather than a realm of qualities and values) who exists
in his own right, who alone is supreme (" Since God is the supreme existence, that is to say, supremely is, and is therefore
unchangeaible, the things he made he empowered to be, but not
to be supremely like himself" 11 ), and with whom those who
have been so predestined shall, in an existence beyond historical time, enjoy eternal peace. Augustine's realm of the ideal is,
then, completely dissociated from the sensible world; it is a
world that is in its characteristics totally different from the
categories of human thought and experience. Thus unlike
Plato's ideal world which becomes intelligible through the faculty of reason, the reality of Augustine's otherworldly realm
cannot be known solely through the processes of the mind;
rather its existence is accepted, finally, on faith: "There are
many things which reason cannot account for [but] which are
nonetheless true," and these things " we do not hesitate to say
we are bound to believe." 12 There is, then, no correspondence
between the supernatural realm and the phenomenal worldon the contrary, there is a distinct dichotomy between them.
nonetheless remained sharply different from the Christian outlook. Plato, as Gordon
Leff observes, " accorded no place to a creator; there was no explanation of the
way the forms came into being or whither they led; there was no sense of movement
or development, but simply a timeless process without raison d'etre; there was no
eschatology: the soul itself pre-existed and migrated to different bodies, but it never
met a last judgment or an eternal life" (pp. 13-14). See also Lovejoy, pp. 41-48,
and Karl LOwith, Meaning in History (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1949),
Ch. IX. In this chapter of his work LOwith discusses the fundamental difference
between the Christian and the classical view of the world, focusing particularly on
Augustine's treatment of the concept of time in The City of God. According to
LOwith, Augustine's "final argument against the classical concept of time is ... a
moral one: the pagan doctrine is hopeless, for hope and faith are essentially related
to the future and a real future cannot exist if past and future times are equal
phases within a cyclic recurrence without beginning and end" (p. 168) .
11 The City of God, Book XII, Ch. 2, p. 882.
12 The City of God, Book XXI, Ch. 5, p. 769; Book XXI, Ch. 6, p. 771.

546

DOROTHY F. DONNELLY

Thus rather than ,being a reflection or a manifestation of the
ideal realm this world is for Augustine its antithesis.
Now any concept of otherworldliness must always take into
account this world, and it must inevitably say something about
the nature of the phenomenal world; consequently, it will also
make either a direct or an indirect statement about the value of
this world. We have seen that for Plato the phenomenal world
corresponds in each of its ' particulars ' to the realm of the
ideal. In Platonic thought all of the diverse aspects of naturephysical, moral, aesthetic-are projected into another realm of
being where they are exempt from passage and change. Plato's
otherworldly realm of Ideas and Forms is, to use Arthur Lovejoy's phrase, a "detemporalized replica of this world." 13 Thus,
rather than devaluing this world, Plato's world of Ideas and
Forms is, in truth, a glorification of the sensible world. At the
same time, the correspondence which Plato establishes between
the two realms exalts mankind, for it is through contemplation,
that is, through the use of the faculty of reason, that the ideal
can be known. And the value of striving to know the truth of
the ideal, as Plato demonstrates in the Republic, is that it informs us of that which man should aspire to achieve in this
world. The Platonic ideal realm, then, is instrumental to terrestrial ends, to an ideal in this life, not to an end outside the
phenomenal world.
Augustine proposes a quite different point of view. Augustinian eschatology explains the relationship between the ideal
realm and this world through the doctrine of Divine Providence; it describes the sensible world as completely dissociated
from and the antithesis of the ideal realm; and it characterizes
the nature of man through the tenets of original sin and grace.
In Augustine the idealization of the ideal realm is so extreme
that his other world goes beyond all modes of human thought
and experience, and it is so highly valued that it inherently
dismisses this world as having no legitimate value in its own
right. Thus for Augustine the dichotomy between the two
18 Lovejoy,

p. 88.

AQUINAS AND UTOPIAN SPECULATION

547

realms of being is the categorical division between the divine
and the created. And the link between the two realms is not
intelligibility, as with Plato, but grace. The Platonic idea that
knowledge of the supernatural can be known through intellectual speculation is transformed in Augustine to the idea that
knowledge of the actuality of the other world is dependent
upon faith. The starting point for Augustine is the rejection of
the phenomenal world and the identification of the sole value
of existence with a world which is both the antithesis of this
world and outside of time. Thus so far as this world is concerned, its value is that it is the preparation for the next; and
so far as man is concerned, his purpose is to seek redemption
from original sin and achieve salvation through God's grace.
The value of striving to know the truth of the ideal otherworldly realm in Augustinian thought, as he demonstrates in The
City of God, is not that it informs us about an ideal that can
be achieved in this world but rather that it reveals what may
be attained beyond time. Thus unlike Plato's theory that the
ideal realm is instrumental to terrestrial ends, the Augustinian
proposition is that the ideal realm is instrumental to an end
outside the phenomenal world.
In view of these underlying differences in thought on the
value of the otherworldly realm, it is not surprising that we
find in Augustine a total departure from the classical notion
of order and, in turn, of the role of the state, or res publica, in
human affairs. Like Plato, Augustine believes in the immutability of an order which acts by law.14 In Augustine however,
the order of the universe is a providential order provided for by
God, who created nature and man: " God can create new
things-new to the world, but not to him-which he never before created, but yet foresaw from all eternity" (XII.20.405).
Underlying the world of change is an order (ordo) which does
not admit of change, an order that is abiding and eternal, an
order that created the spiritual world and the phenomenal
1 4 See The City of God, Book XI, Ch. 10; Book XII, Ch.
the text by Book, chapter, and page number.

Hereafter cited in

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DOROTHY F. DONNELLY

world, an order that is in all creation and which composes part
to part ' according to the order of nature.' Augustine also accepts the Platonic idea that the cosmos is dualistic; but again
he departs significantly from Plato in his views on the nature
of that dualism. Whereas for Plato dualism is conceived of as
constituting spatial and non-spatial realms (the realm of phenomena and the realm of Forms or Ideas) which' exist apart
from • each other,15 in the Augustinian concept of order the universe is pervaded by two modes of being-symbolized by the
City of God and the city of man-that encompass and transcend spatial and non-spatial phenomena; in other words, two
realms which co-exist not only in the physical but at the same
time in the non-physical world. Not unexpectedly, this shift in
perspective on the concept of order resulted in a new explanation of the meaning of' membership' which was to have a profound impact on the notion of political association and, in turn,
on the theory of political obligation.16 In Greek thought the
idea of universal order had centered on the relationship between the individual and political order, that is, in the belief
in an intrinsic connection between human perfectibility and
the polis; in Augustinian thought, however, the notion of universal order focuses on the relationship between the individual
and two universal societies-the civitas Dei and the civitas
terrena. These two distinctly different yet interacting universal societies are the conceptual center of Augustine's intricate
pattern of universal order. Thus whereas Plato in the Republic
presented a description of an ideal commonwealth in which the
organic relationship between the individual and political order
had achieved its ideal fulfillment, Augustine himself tells us
that his purpose in The City of God is to present a descriptive
15 For an insightful discussion of Platonic thought see Francis MacDonald Cornford, Platc>'s Theory of Knowledge (New York: Humanities Press, 1951).
16 Sheldon S. Wolin, Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Western
Political Thought (Boston: Little, Brown, 1960), presents an excellent discussion
of the revolutionary challenge to the idea of ' membership ' posed by the disintegration of the Greek polis. Wolin traces the change in the meaning of membership
from the Hellenistic period down to the Roman writers of the early Christian era.
I am indebted to Wolin's chapters on "Space and Community" and "Time and
Community."

AQUINAS

AND UTOPIAN

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549

analysis of the way God works, and that his method is to do
this within the context of an inquiry into the " origin, and
progress, and deserved destinies of the two cities (the earthly
and the heavenly, to wit)" (XI.1.346).
Because Augustine rejects the classical belief in the intimate
connection between human perfectibility and the political
order, he stresses in The City of God that civitas is not synonymous with res publica or the state. Whatever the opposing
terms may be-City of God and city of man; heavenly city or
earthly city;. love of God and love of this world; love of the
flesh and love of the spirit; the soul and body-they always refer to members of a society, or civitas, who are distinguished
not by social or political arrangements nor by allegiance to any
earthly polity but, rather, by the commitment of their love:
Two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love
of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of
God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories
in itself, the latter in the Lord. For the one seeks glory from men;
but the greatest glory of the other is God, the witness of conscience. This one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says
to its God, "Thou art my glory." (XIV.9l8.477)

The Augustinian point of view is that two commitments have
produced two cities or societies into which all mankind is divided: the members of the society of God are devoted to divine
truth, those of the earthly society reject God and love the
things of this world. And central to this theory of two cities
is the notion of a society that is at once a mystical community
and a temporal community. In Augustine's scheme, the underlying order of the universe manifests itself in two societies,
both of which are universal-the human race, in other words,
has been divided into two peoples:
This race we have distributed into two parts, the one consisting of
those who live according to man, the other of those who live according to God. And these we also mystically call the two cities,
or the two communities of men. (XV.1.478)

There is, then, a fundamental difference between Plato's doctrine of Ideas or Forms that exist in the spiritual realm of the

550

DOROTHY F. DONNELLY

ideal and the universal and which exist apart from the realm of
phenomena, and Augustine's concept of the relationship between the spiritual and phenomenal worlds. In Augustinian
thought the ' two societies ' into which all human creation has
been divided exist apart not only from God but from each
other, and each society in turn exists simultaneously in both
the spiritual and the phenomenal worlds. Platonic dualism in
Augustinian thought thus takes on another dimension. While
the immutable order exists independent of the realm of change
there is another kind of dualism within the spiritual world and
the phenomenal world, and it is this dualism which Augustine
distinguishes by the names ' city of God ' and ' city of man.'
These two cities, according to Augustine, ' originated among
the angels.' Thus each society is " composed of angels and men
together; so that there are not four cities or societies-two,
namely, of angels, and as many of men___,butrather two in all,
one composed of the good, the other of the wicked, angels or
men indifferently" (XII.1.380). The members of the civitM
Dei in their mortal existence live in ' union with the good
angels ' and those of the civitas terrena live in ' company with
the bad angels.' Further, it is ' preordained ' that all men are
members of either the civitas Dei or the civitas terrena and that
the members of each society belong to that society not only in
time hut also in eternity. The appointed end of human history
is therefore the attainment of a telos outside of historical timethe ultimate destiny of the members of the civitas terrena is to
' suffer eternal punishment with the devil ' and of the members
of the civitas Dei to ' reign eternally with God.' CivitM terrena,
or the 'earthly city,' is thus a universal category used by Augustine to illustrate a type of life; it is not a term used in reference to the state. For Augustine human history is determined
by Divine Providence; hence, it is not in the 'natural order '
of things for mankind to control events in this world. It is for
this reason that at no point in his voluminous work does Augustine talk about specific social and political arrangements or
about a theory of politics.
Yet Augustine, since he is articulating a scheme of order that

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encompasses all of creation in all of its phases and manifestations does, nonetheless, put forth a theory about the role of the
state in human affairs and about the relationship between the
individual and secular political order. The answer to what
Augustine's views are on the place the state has in human affairs lies in the principle that the two universal cities " are in
this present world commingled, and as it were entangled together" (XI.1.346). The state is itself part of God's divine
providence and, as such, has a definite purpose and specific role
in human history. Indeed, Augustine wonders how anyone can
believe that " the kingdoms of men, their dominations and
servitudes, [were left] outside of the laws of His providence"
(V.11.158). On the contrary, he says," we do not attribute the
power of giving kingdoms and empires to any save to the true
God, who gives happiness in the kingdom of heaven to the
pious alone, but gives kingly power on earth both to the pious
and the impious"
Augustine does not reject the
state entirely; rather he conceives of it as part of God's universe and therefore as an integral part of human history. 11 Yet,
if the meaning of existence is an ultimate telos outside of time,
and if the only common agreement mankind has is to love and
honor God, what function can the state have and, moreover,
what responsibility can the individual have to it? Although he
devotes considerable attention to this complex subject in his
text, Augustine's argument can be summarized in this way:
the function of the state is to maintain peace, and the state
fulfills this purpose because it has the authority and the power
to maintain order. And the individual's responsibility to the
state is to be obedient. Unlike the Platonic idea that justice is
the sum of all virtue, and that it is founded on man's will and
reason, obedience is the virtue, according to Augustine, that is
" guardian of all the virtues in the reasonable creature, which
1 7 Tertullian, for example, argued not only that the state had no legitimate claim
on the individual but further that the interests of the individual and the interests
of the state were inherently antithetical. Augustine, on the other hand, does not
reject the state absolutely; rather, he conceives of it as an integral part of God's
universal scheme. See The City of God, Book 19.

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DOROTHY F. DONNELLY

was so created that submission is advantageous to it, while the
fulfillment of its own will in preference to the Creator's is destruction" (XIV.12.460). Thus because the two cities, or two
societies of men, are intermingled in time, God included the
state in his Divine Providence for the purpose of maintaining
peace. More specifically, it is part of God's universal scheme
that the state exists in order to maintain peace so that the
citizens of the civitas Dei will be afforded the opportunity to
pursue their goal of loving and honoring God. Thus the virtue
of the temporal state is that it provides and maintains a
' remedial order ' which makes possible a ' temporal peace.'
And, although a temporal peace is not comparable to the true
peace found only in the City of God beyond time, it is, as Augustine explains, " not to be lightly esteemed, ... for as long as
the two cities are commingled, we also enjoy the peace of Babylon " (XIX.26.707) .
In Augustinian thought the sole value of the state is that it
ensures order and therefore peace in the temporal world: " The
whole use, then, of things temporal has a reference to this result of earthly peace in the earthly community, while in the
city of God it is connected with eternal peace" (XIX.14.692).
From Augustine's point of view, if God had not created the
state, anarchy would reign and men would destroy each other
because of their propensity toward ' love of self ' rather than
'love of God.' The corrective to this inevitability is a state
conceived of as a remedial instrument which is itself part of
God's divine scheme. Sheldon Wolin has summarized Augustine's attitude about the state this way: " To the degree that
a political society promoted peace it was good; to the degree
that it embodied a well-ordered concord among its members it
was even hetter; to the extent that it encouraged a Christian
life and avoided a conflict in loyalties between religious and
political obligations, it had fulfilled its role within the universal
scheme." 18 Thus the state is absolutely necessary; and because
it is part of God's divine scheme, its instruments are God's
18

Wolin, p. lfl5.

AQUINAS AND UTOPIAN SPECULATION

553

earthly instruments for man's possible redemption. And that is
why the citizen is impelled to accept and obey the laws of civil
authority-political
and social arrangements are of divine
rather than human origin and in being subservient to the state
the individual is, in fact, being subservient to the will of God.
In the context of the Augustinian concept of order, then, the
state is the product of Divine Providence not of man's reason
and will; it is divinely appointed and is that part of the total
ordo of creation which directs mankind toward its predestined
end.

II
The culmination of Augustine's system with its underlying
proposition of a providential plan controlling human destiny
and its reliance upon faith rather than reason was to spell the
end to a concept of the state as the product of man's nature,
and hence to utopian speculation, and to substitute in its place
a doctrine of theological order which made the political order
subservient to an otherworldly personal God. Thomas Aquinas
was the first Medieval thinker seriously to question this outlook. Influenced not by the ideas of Plato but by the revival
which began in the second part of the twelfth century of the
writings of Aristotle, the contrast and dichotomy of Augustine's
system of order gave way in Aquinas to a concept of order
based on the idea of two hierarchically different yet complementary orders, the natural order and the supernatural order.
Like Augustine's, the Thomistic notion of order is a system
which serves to organize realms of being into a hierarchy of
structures imposed by Divine Providence. And again, as in
Augustine's system, in Aquinas's thought too God has created
two realms of being. But whereas for Augustine there is, on the
one hand, the dualism of the spiritual realm and the phenomenal realm, and on the other the notion of a dualism of two
modes of being within the spiritual and phenomenal world
which he distinguishes as the mystical societies of the ' city of
God ' and the ' city of man,' for Aquinas there are only two
orders, the natural order and the supernatural order. And in

554

DOROTHY F. DONNELLY

Aquinas the natural and supernatural orders are not opposite
orders in conflict with each other but, rather, they are different
orders with different operating principles.
One hierarchy is one principality-that is, one multitude ordered
in one way under the government of one ruler. Now such a multitude would not be ordered, but confused, if there were not in it
different orders. So the nature of a hierarchy requires diversity of
orders.19
Hierarchy means a sacred principality. Now principality includes
two things: the ruler himself and the multitude ordered under the
ruler. Therefore because there is one God, ruler not only of all
the angels but also of men and all creatur.es, so there is one hierarchy, not only of all the angels, but also of all rational creatures,
who can be participators of sacred things ....
But if we consider the principality on the part of the multitude ordered under the ruler, then principality is said to be one according
as the multitude can be subject in one way to the government of
the prince. And those that cannot be governed in the same way
by a ruler belong to different principalities .... Now it is evident
that men do not receive the divine illuminations in the same way
as do the angels; for the angels receive them in their intelligible
purity, whereas men receive them under sensible signs. Therefore
there must needs be a distinction between the human and the
angelic hierarchy. 20

In contrast to Augustine, Aquinas makes a distinction between
the 'human and the angelic hierarchy,' and this distinction results from the fact that ' things that are diverse do not come
together in the same order.'
The conceptual element which enables Aquinas to achieve a
reconciliation between the dualism of opposing orders is his
view of the relationship between grace and nature. From
Aquinas's point of view grace does. not do away with nature
but rather perfects it: " Hence we may say that for the knowledge of any truth whatsoever man needs divine help in order
1 0 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I, Q. 108, Art.
of Saint Thomas Aquinas, II, p. 997.
20 Summa Thoologica I, Q. 108, Art. I, II, p. 995.

in The Basic Writings

AQUINAS

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SPECULATION

555

that the intellect may be moved by God to its act. But he does
not need a new illumination added to his natural light in order
to know the truth in all things, but only in those that surpass
his natural knowledge." zi Thus although there are different
operating principles in nature and grace, these principles do not
oppose each other. As Walter Ullmann has observed, "the
traditional gulf between nature and grace was bridged by
Thomas. There was no ambiguity in his thought about the efficacy of nature itself and of natural law-both did and could
operate without any revelation or grace or divine assistance,
because they followed their own inherent laws and these latter
had nothing to do with grace." 22 It is this outlook that made
it possible for Aquinas to conceive of a dualism of two hierarchically different orders which, although they operate on different principles, are not opposed to each other since they function on two different levels.
Aquinas's thought was, as mentioned earlier, greatly influenced by the Aristotelian revival of the thirteenth century.
The main tenet of Aristotle's doctrine that is relevant to our
topic, and which should be briefly summarized here, is his view
of the relationship between nature and the state. In Aristotelian thought nature is conceived of in teleological terms: "Nature does nothing superfluous," and " Nature does nothing in
vain." 28 For Aristotle the laws of nature brought forth man's
reasoning capacity; man's reason, in other words, is linked
with his nature. Thus whereas what distinguishes " animals is
their blind obedience to their natural proclivities, [what characterizes] man is the employment of his will and reason by
which the laws of nature are expressed." 24 Aristotle's ideas on
the relationship between the laws of nature and man's reason
Theologica I-II, Q. 109, Art. 1, II, pp. 980-81.
Ullmann, A History of Politiccil Thought: The Mid,dle Ages (Maryland:
Penguin Books, 1965), p. 182. I am indebted to Ullmann's study of the influence
of Aristotelian thought on the political ideas of Aquinas. For a full discussion see
esp. pp. 167-178; Ch. 7.
2s Quoted in Ullman, p. 168.
24 Ullman, p. 168.
21 Summa

2 2 Walter

556

DOROTHY F. DONNELLY

culminated in his view of the state as the product of nature,
the result of the working of the laws of nature, not the result of
an act of creation. The laws of man's nature "determine him
to live in a self-sufficient, independent, autonomous community, the state, without which man could not exist ... and within
which he could achieve his own perfection." 25 In brief, since
man's reasoning capacity is the instrument through which nature operates, the state is the natural product of the laws of
nature. Thus it is the citizens of the state who articulate the
will of nature and who, therefore, possess the natural right to
participate in the government of the state. Aristotle, however,
draws a distinction between man and the citizen, and this conceptualization is one that Aquinas follows very closely. According to Aristotle, " it is evident that the good citizen need
not necessarily possess the virtue which makes him a good
man." 26 Thus in Aristotelian thought the citizen is seen as governed by principles which relate to the political order, whereas
man operates on principles related to ethics. This dichotomy
between man and the citizen is of crucial importance in the
thought of Aquinas.
The leading idea that Aquinas derives from Aristotle is the
view that man is by nature a political animal. Aquinas returns
again and again to this theme. In one place he says there is a
threefold order in man-divine law, reason, and political authority. If man were by nature a solitary animal, the order of
reason and that of divine law would have been sufficient. But
since " man is naturally a social and political animal, a third
order is necessary by which man is directed in relation to other
men among whom he has to dwell." 27 Aquinas's doctrine of the
political nature of man is based on the idea that because man
operates not by instinct but by reason social organization is
necessary in order that he may achieve his purpose as a rational being. This interdependence of reason and social organization is explained by Aquinas as follows:
2s tnlmann,

p. 168.

26 Quoted in lnlmann,

21 Summa

p. 169.
Theologica I-II, Q. 7!l, Art. 4, II, p. 574.

AQUINAS AND UTOPIAN SPECULATION

557'.

Man, who acts by intelligence, has a destiny to which all his life
and activities are directed; for it is clearly the nature of intelligent
beings to act with some end in view.... When we consider all that
is necessary to human life, it becomes clear that man is naturally
a social and political animal, destined more than all other animals
to live in community .... Other animals have a natural instinct for
what is useful or hurtful to them .... Man, on the other hand, has
a natural knowledge of life's necessities only in a general way. Being gifted with reason, he must use it to pass from such universal
principles to the knowledge of what in particular concerns his wellbeing. Reasoning thus, however, no one man could attain all necessary knowledge. Instead, nature has destined him to live in society .... The fellowship of society being thus natural and necessary to man, it follows with equal necessity that there must be
some principle of government within the society. 28

Because man is born with a common vague notion, rather than
a particularized instinct, of what is necessary in life, he applies
reason to universal principles in order to learn what in particular concerns his well-being. But since no one individual
could acquire all the knowledge that he needs, nature has destined him to live in collaboration with his fellow beings. That
it is inherent in man's nature to live in cooperation with others
is proven by the fact that man alone is endowed with reason
and with the capacity for speech. It is nature, then, which determines that man is 'destined more than all other animals to
live in community'; and as reason is the principle in the individual which directs him toward his end, the state is the directive principle in the community which guides ' social beings '
toward their telos.
For Aquinas man is a political animal because he is by nature a social being; as a member of human society man forms
associations to ensure his well-being. And of all the associations men can form, the most perfect is the state for it alone
has the capacity of ensuring the achievement of man's needs.
Among communities there are different grades and orders, the highest being the political community, which is so arranged to satisfy
2 8 Thomas Aquinas, On Princely Government, in Aquinas: Selected Political Writings, trans. and ed. A. P. D'Entreves (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1948), pp. 8-5.

558

DOROTHY F. DONNELLY

all the needs of human life; and which is, in consequence, the most
perfect. For since all things which serve men's needs have the
fulfillment of this purpose as their end, and since ends are more
important than the means thereto, it follows that this unity which
we call a city takes preeminence over all smaller unities which the
human reason can know and construct. 29

The state, then, is the most perfect of all human associations.
And as a product of nature, on the one hand, and as an end in
itself, on the other, the state has its own natural laws of operation. The state thus pursues aims that are inherent in the nature of man. These aims, however, can be achieved only if
there is a distinction between the natural order and the supernatural order, a distinction between the citizen and the Christian.
We must note that government and dominion depend from human
law; hut the distinction between the faithful and infidels is from
divine law. The divine law, however, which is a law of grace, does
not abolish human law which is founded upon natural reason. So
the distinction between the faithful and the infidel, considered in itself, does not invalidate the government and dominion of infidels
over the faithful. 30

In Aquinas's view the state has a value of its own, independent
of religion. The state is the product of nature; the Church is
the product of divinity. The state is a matter for the citizen
only; the Church is a matter for the Christian only. Although
both the state and the Church are manifestations of the hierarchical order imposed on all things by Divine Providence, the
nature of a hierarchy requires, as we have seen, ' diversity of
orders,' and orders that are 'diverse do not come together';
thus, according to Aquinas, ' there must needs be a distinction
between the human and the angelic hierarchy.' Now it is precisely this kind of distinction that Augustine does not make in
2 9 Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Politics of AristoUe, in Aquinas: Selected
Political, Writings, p. 197.
80 Summa Theologica II-II, Q. 10, Art. 10, quoted in Aquinas: Selected Political,
Writings, pp. 153-55. See comment in note 31 below on Aquinas's views on the

relationship between the state and the Church.

AQUINAS AND UTOPIAN SPECULATION

559

his definition of a society. On the contrary, for Augustine the
society of the civitas terrena and the society of the civitas Dei
include both men and angels.
Thus Aquinas gives the term civitas, or society, a new meaning. In the Thomistic conception of the order of the universe
men do not share membership in universal or mystical societies. Rather, they belong to a natural society which is the
product of natural reason. If, however, the individual is a
Christian, then he is also a member of the corpus mysticum.
Thus the two types of membership that Aquinas identifies are
the civitas and the corpus mysticum, both of which are given
the name of ' perfect communities,' one the natural, the other
the supernatural. But each of these communities, since they
function on different operating principles, are self-sufficient and
independent, and the Christian owes allegiance to each of them.
Both the spiritual and the temporal power derive from the divine
power; consequently the temporal power is subject to the spiritual
only to the extent that this is so ordered by God; namely in those
matters which affect the salvation of the soul. And in these matters the spiritual power is to be obeyed before the temporal. In
those matters, however, which concern the civil welfare, the temporal power should be obeyed rather than the spiritual, according
to what we are told in St. Matthew (XXII,U) " Render to Caesar
the things that are Caesar's." 81

Unlike Augustine's_idea that the state is a consequence of sin
and that it is therefore a remedial instrument provided by God
for man's salvation, Aquinas's view is that the state is founded
upon the nature of man himself: "The fact that man is by nature a social animal ... has as a consequence the fact that man
is destined ·by nature to form part of a community which makes
a full and complete life possible for him." 82 In Aquinas, as
81 Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, in Aquinas:
Sdected Political Writings, p. 187. In Aquinas's thought the Church has an indirect
power in temporal matters but it exercises its authority in temporal affairs only
in so far as they relate to the supernatural. In his introduction D'Entreves presents
an insightful study of Aquinas's political thought that should be consulted for a
discussion of Aquinas's views on the relationship between the Church and the state.
82 Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, in Aquinas: Selected Political Writings, p. 191. For an extended discussion of Aquinas's use of

560

DOROTHY F. DONNELLY

Gordon Leff puts it, " there was no need to seek an historical
justification for the state, it was organically part of man. Sin
became merely a by-product of human imperfection to explain
injustice, not the state itself." 38
The difference between the prevailing Augustinian viewpoint
and Aquinas's outlook is the difference between a system of
order that inherently rejects the value of the phenomenal
world and substitutes in its place an otherworldly ideal realm of
existence, and a system of order that emphasizes the natural
necessity of the temporal world on the one hand, and the idea
that the temporal world has as its goal its own perfection on the
other. And Aquinas achieved this reaffirmation of the value of
the temporal realm through his conceptualization of a dichotomy between the natural order and the supernatural order,
and through the distinction he makes between the citizen and
the Christian. In Aquinas's thought man is viewed from two
different perspectives-from the perspective of the individual
as a citizen and from the perspective of the members of the
corpus mystioum. By thus absorbing Aristotle's ideas on nature and on man as a political animal Aquinas " effected in the
public sphere ... the re-birth of the citizen who since classical
times had been hibernating." 34 And the reaffirmation of the
concept of man as a political animal resulted in the appearance
of a philosophy of politics. In Aquinas's words:
Those human sciences which are about the things of nature are
speculative, while those which are concerned with the things made
by man are practical sciences.... If we are to perfect the science
of human wisdom, or philosophy, it is necessary to give an explanation of all that can be understood by reason. That unity which
we call the city is subject to the judgment of reason. It is necessary, then, for the completeness of philosophy, to institute a discipline which will study the city, and such a discipline is called
politics or the science of statecraft. 85
the term society see I. Th. Eschmann, " Studies on the Notion of Society in St.
Thomas Aquinas," Mediaeval Studies, 8 (1946), 1-42.
88 Leff, p. 251.
84 ffilmann, p. 176.
83 Commentary on the Politics of Aristolle, pp. 195-97.

AQUINAS ANb UTOPIAN SPECULATION

561

Thus the reassertion in Aquinas of the idea of the political nature of man leads to a renewal of the classical belief in the harmonious integration of the individual with the political order.
Political philosophy, according to Aquinas, is the study of that
knowledge which concerns itself with the government of the
state, and it has its own intrinsic value because it is the expression of a natural order.
In its views on the distinction between the natural order and
the supernatural order, and in the separation of faith from reason, Aquinas's philosophy easily lent itself to speculating about
an absolute dichotomy between this world and any ' other
world ' that could be conceived. And such speculation soon
emerged. "This appeared as the thesis that there was a natural law which was in any case valid and persuasive enough
without any recourse to divinity, simply because the natural
law was reasonable in itself." 86 It is this outlook-the view
that man is endowed by nature with the capacity to create the
'perfect community ' in this world without reference to the
idea that he is directed in this effort by a supernatural realm
of order-that we find in utopian thought. Yet before the notion that man can control and direct events in the temporal
world could take hold, it was necessary that a greater distinction be made concerning the relationship between the natural
order and the supernatural order. For it is clear that while in
Aquinas's thought the state is viewed as self-sufficient and independent, it is, finalJy, only relatively autonomous. In his
doctrine of the duality of existence, based on the idea of the
dual directions of the natural order and that of the supernatural order, Aquinas consistently maintains the view of the
primacy of the supernatural order: the ultimate purpose of rea86 Ullmann, pp. 184-85. On the effect of Aquinas's political ideas Wolin observes:
"In insisting, as Thomas did, upon the vital role of the political order, in seeking
to define the distinctive laws by which it was ruled, the unique common good which
it served, and the kind of prudence proper to its life, there was a heavy price to
be paid, even though the terms were not fully revealed for several centuries. Thomas
had not only restored the political order to repute; he had given it a sharpness of
for several centuries" (p.
identity, a clarity .of .character, that hll4 b,e!!:ii.

189).

562

DOROTHY F. DONNELLY

son is to support faith; the ultimate value of natural law is that
it participates in eternal law; and the ultimate worth of the
state is that it shares in that hierarchical order imposed on all
things by Divine Providence. The natural order is a secondary
cause and only an instrument. A. P. D'Entrcves explains it
this way: " The natural order, which comprises and sufficiently justifies political experience, is for St. Thomas only a condition and a means for the recognition of a higher order, as natural law is hut a part of the eternal law of God .... Nature requires to be perfected by grace. The action of the state, as
part of the natural order, must be considered in the general
frame of the divine direction of the world, and is entirely subservient to that direction." 87 This view of the order of things
was seriously challenged by fourteenth-century writers. In
order to understand more precisely Aquinas's relationship to
the utopian tradition, we must briefly consider two works of
the fourteenth century that show the role that Thomistic
thought played in giving shape to two ideas significant to
utopian conceptualization-the notion of a fully autonomous
temporal order and the concept of truth as two-fold. One of
these works is Dante's De Monarchia, the other is Marsilius of
Padua's The Defender of Peace. Both the Monarchia and
The Defender of Peace foreshadow the end of modes of thought
which propose that there exists an intrinsic relationship between political order and the order of a supernatural other
world on the one hand, and a fundamental connection between
faith and reason on the other.

III
Dante's aim in De Monarchia is not to discuss the way in
which Divine Providence operates but rather to explain the
function and purpose of temporal government. His concern, he
says, " is with politics, with the very source and principle of all
right politics, and since all political matters are in our control
[emphasis added], it is clear that our present concern is not
a1 Aquinas: Sefocterl Political Writings,

p. xv.

AQUINAS AND UTOPIAN SPECULATION

568

aimed primarily at thought but at action." 38 Dante thus directs his attention to the proper order of things in the temporal world, a world man ' controls.' The main idea in the
M onarchia that we want to focus on here is the view it presents
of the independence of the temporal order, the state, from any
hierarchical system of supernatural order. Like Aristotle and
Aquinas, Dante believes that man is by nature a social and
political animal and that the state, or from his point of view
the 'universal monarchy,' has a rational and natural foundation.
An individual man has one purpose, a family another, a neighborhood another, a city another, a state another, and finally there
is another for all of mankind .... We should know, in this connection, that God and nature make nothing in vain, and that whatever
is produced serves some function. For the intention of any act of
creation, if it is really creative, is not merely to produce the existence of something but to produce the proper functioning of that
existence .... There is therefore some proper function for the whole
of mankind as an organized multitude which can not be achieved
by any single man, or family, or neighborhood, or city, or state.
(I.3.6)

And he ,explains his conception of the relationship between the
temporal and supernatural realms this way:
I maintain that from the fact that the moon does not shine brightly
unless it receives light from the sun, it does not follow that the
moon itself depends on the sun. For one must keep in mind that
38 Dante Alighieri, De Monarchia, trans. Herbert W. Schneider, introd. Dino
Bigongiari (New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1949), Book I, Ch. 2, pp. 4-5; hereafter
cited in the text by Book, chapter, and page number. The separation of the secular
from the spiritual, and of faith from reason, that we find in both Dante and Marsilius, and later in many fourteenth-century thinkers, is often ascribed to Averroism.
Averroes (1126-1178) argued that faith and reason operate at different levels and
that they do not inform each other. Although Aquinas was influenced by Averroes
in his separation of faith and reason. Aquinas's purpose was better to harmonize
philosophy and theology. Averroes, on the other hand, denied an ultimate harmony
between faith and reason. Following Averroes, in Dante and Marsilius also the
emphasis is on separation not synthesis, and, on the notion that there exist two
ends, which are achieved by different means, for the human being. See also the
discussion below on Duns Scotus, pp. 570ff.

DOROTHY F. DONNELLY

the being of the moon is one thing, its power another, and its functioning a third. In its being the moon is in no way dependent on
the sun, and not even in its power and functioning, strictly speaking, for its motion comes directly from the prime mover. (III.4.5960)

Thus although the temporal order may be enhanced by the
' light of grace,' it receives from spiritual power neither its being, nor its power or authority. Dante's view of the autonomy
of the political order is based on the idea that man aspires to
two beatitudes, one on earth, the other in heaven.
Twofold are the ends which unerring Providence has ordained for
man: the bliss of this life, which consists in the functioning of his
own powers, and the bliss of eternal life, which consists in the enjoyment of that divine vision to which he cannot attain by his own
powers.... These two states of bliss, like two different goals, man
must reach by different ways. For we come to the first as we follow the philosophical teachings, ... and we come to the second as
we follow the spiritual teachings. (III.16.78)

The attainment of the ' bliss of this life ' and the ' bliss of
eternal life' is, then, accomplished by different means. The
former is reached through the exercise of the ' moral and intellectual capacities '; the latter is achieved by ' following the
spiritual teachings which transcend human reason.' The two
ends that ' unerring Providence ' has ordained for men are independent and the paths to their attainment have nothing in
common. The temporal world and its authority' come directly,
without intermediary ' from God. Thus Dante, unlike Aquinas
and Augustine, who place this world within a hierarchical system of order in which the supernatural order is supreme, rejects
the view that nature and the state are means for the attainment of a higher order. His main thesis is that man possesses
the natural right and the intellectual capacity to realize the
achievement of the' blessedness of this life'; man's autonomous
reason, ' his own powers,' makes it possible for him to pursue
the ends of humanity. The critical distinction that Dante
makes is that the corpus mysticum is not, as in Aquinas, a complement of nature; rather it too comes directly from God-

AQUINAS

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Christ, the founder of the corpus mysticum, expressly stated
that" his kingdom is not of this world" (ill.15.77). Man pursues a twofold aim, as a citizen a this-worldly end, if a Christian, a supernatural telos; and these ends are fulfilled in separate orders and are attained by separate means.
Yet Dante's conception of the state is, as we see, still linked
with the idea that its origin is traceable to God. It is in The
Defender of Peace that we first find the appearance of the idea
that the temporal world is fully autonomous. The main premises put forth by Marsilius are, first, that the state is a product
of reason and that its purpose is to make possible the ' sufficient
life'; second, that political authority is necessary in order to
'moderate' and' proportion' men's actions; and third, that the
sole source of legitimate political power is the ' will and consent' of the people. For Marsilius, as for Aquinas and Dante,
man is by nature a social and political animal, and it is, therefore, according to nature that men form associations. In his
words, ' man is born composed of contrary elements ... and he
is born bare and unprotected:
As a consequence, he needed arts of diverse genera and species to
avoid the afore-mentioned harms. But since these arts can be exercised only by a large number of men, and can be had only through
their association with one another, men had to assemble together
in order to attain what was beneficial through these arts and to
avoid what was harmful. But since among men thus assembled
there arise disputes and quarrels, ... there had to be established in
this association [that is, the state] a standard of justice and a guardian or maker thereof .89
Again, society and politics are a necessity of nature; the state
is the product of man's reason and is the most perfect association men can form: " The things which are necessary for living and for living well were brought to full development by
man's reason and experience, and there was established the perfect community, called the state" (I.8.11-12).
89 The Defender of Peace, trans. and introd. Alan Gewirth (New York: Harper
and Row, 1956), Discourse I, Ch. 4, p. 13; hereafter cited in the text by Discourse,
chapter, and page number. For a comprehensive analysis of The Defender of Peace
see Gewirth's extended introductory essay.

566

DOROTHY F. DONNELLY

For Marsilius the state is seen, following Aristotle, as an end
in itself and as existing in order that man may achieve the good
life. And since ' diverse things are necessary to men who desire
a sufficient life, things which cannot be supplied by men of one
order or office, there had to be diverse orders or offices of men
in this association" (I.4.14). To live and live well involves
'moderating and proportioning' man's actions and passions.
The state is thus a ' perfect community' whose functional
'parts' are collectively able to provide for all of man's human
needs.
For just as an animal well disposed in accordance with nature is
composed of certain proportioned parts ordered to one another and
communicating their functions mutually and for the whole, so too
the state is constituted of certain such parts when it is well disposed and established in accordance with reason. . . . Tranquillity
[is] the good disposition of the city or state whereby each of its
parts [is] able perfectly to perform the operations belonging to
it in accordance with reason and its establishment. (l.9l.9)
Since man does not receive " entirely perfect from nature the
means whereby these proportions are fulfilled" (I.5.16) , it is
necessary to use reason in order to ' effect and preserve ' the
proper proportioning of his actions. Thus the parts of the state
are established in accordance with reason and experience, and
their purpose is to ensure the well-ordered tranquillity of the
perfect community.
The most significant departure in thought in Marsilius, in
effect, is his notion of order. As noted above, for Aquinas and
Dante the temporal world, althought a product of nature
and of man's reason, is still linked with an otherworldly divine
realm; consequently, this world, for Aquinas, requires perfection by grace, and for Dante, is enhanced by ' the light of
grace.' :F:or Marsilius on the other hand, the temporal world is
sufficiently justified by nature and requires no ' perfecting ' by
divine grace. There is, in other words, no integration of temporal order and divine order in Marsilius's thought. 40 In The
4 0 Marsilius does not categorically deny that there is a state of eternal bliss but
rather that its existence, or the ' means thereto,' cannot be proven by rational

AQUINAS

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Defender of Peace the concept of order is not used in the cosmological sense that we find in Plato and in the Augustinian
tradition, who interpret the phenomenal world as either governed or guided by divine supernatural order. On the contrary,
when Marsilius uses the term order he always refers to the way
in which men relate to each other according to some kind of
temporal association or membership. 41 The notion of order in
The Defender of Peace refers solely to the "order of the parts
of the state in relation to.one another" (I.15.67). Thus in the
Marsilian concept of order there is no dualism of orders; rather
there is only one order and that is the order of the arrangement
of things in the temporal world. For Marsilius order consists,
then, not in man's relation to an ideal otherworldly realm but
in the relationship between the individual and the various parts
of the state. From Marsilius's point of view order has to do
solely with the idea of that harmonious interrelation whereby
each part 0£ the state " can perfectly perform the operations belonging to it in accordance with reason and its establishment "
(I.2.9). In abandoning the concept of cosmological order as the
sustaining principle in all orders, and by insisting that the temporal order is not linked to a transcendent order, Marsilius emphasizes the notion of the radical autonomy and self-sufficiency
of the political order and, concurrently, the idea that the ultimate aim of human acts is the good life in this world. The distance between this doctrine and that of Augustine is obvious;
for Augustine the state is nothing more than a remedial instrument, for Marsilius it is an end in itself.

IV
In works such as De M onarchia and The Def ender of Pea,ce,
then, we find the expression of the kinds of ideas that make it
means. The link between the temporal and the divine, in other words, is solely a
matter of faith and has nothing to do with natural reason. The idea of some relationship between Divine Providence and the order of the temporal world is a complex issue in The Defender of Peace. For a discussion of this point see Gewirth,
pp. xlvi-lxv.
41 See Gewirth, pp. lxxiv-lxxv,

568

DOROTHY F. DONNELLY

possible to speculate about man's achieving the' good life' in
this world, a viewpoint that encourages utopian speculation
and the writing of utopian literature. The utopian mode of
thought is characterized, as was stated earlier, by a reliance
upon reason, an emphasis on achieving a natural telos in this
life, and a concept of order that concerns itself with the temporal world. So long as the order of this world was linked to a
supreme supernatural being, and so long as man's temporal
end was joined with a telos beyond historical time, utopian
thought was rejected. It should be emphasized, however, that
the transition from an otherworldly to a this-worldly orientation, from Augustine's eschatological 'ideal society' to Thomas
More's conceptualization of an 'ideal commonwealth,' is more
complex than a shift in a world-view perspective. Bound up
with the revision in thought on the relationship between the
temporal realm and the supernatural realm was a fundamental
change in outlook regarding both the connection between faith
and reason and the view toward nature. Greatly influenced by
Aristotle, Aquinas made a supreme effort to synthesize the two
main traditions inherited from the Middle Ages-the classical
thought of Plato and Aristotle, and the Christian teachings of
the Scriptures and Augustine. And the major idea he introduced in order to achieve this synthesis was his view of faith
and reason as distinct and yet complementary. Yet although in
the writings of Aquinas reason is given an unprecedented
status, the basis of Aquinas's system is, nevertheless, that reason is aided by 'divine grace'; faith, to put it another way,
supplements reason. According to Aquinas all things proceed
from, and are sustained by, Divine Providence. Thus even
though for Aquinas Divine Providence manifests itself in two
distinctly different orders, the natural order and the supernatural order, the former is not separate from the latter; on
the contrary, the natural order completes that 'order imposed
on all things by Divine Providence.' The temporal world and
reason are thus linked to the supernatural realm and they are,
ultimately, governed by supernatural law and by faith. The
truth of any proposition, for Aquinas, depends, finally, not

AQUINAS AND UTOPIAN SPECULATION

569

upon its correspondence with reason and natural law, but upon
its being compatible with faith and eternal law. In Aquinas
faith is directed toward manifesting the truth of revelation; so
far as knowledge is concerned, its chief aim is to show that reason leads to faith. Typical of thirteenth-century thought,
Aquinas's view too is that faith is ultimately the guiding principle in human affairs.
Yet the demarcation Aquinas made between faith and reason, and the distinction he drew between the natural order and
the supernatural order, were a clear departure in thought from
the traditional Medieval view of the relationship between this
world and a supreme supernatural world, and the connection
between knowledge and spiritual illumination. In Aquinas, although there always remains a link between two realms of being and between two modes of comprehension, the temporal
world and reason have, nevertheless, their own domain and
their own legitimate purpose. Aquinas's view is that faith deals
with those divine truths that cannot be comprehended by reason, and reason deals with human truths. Unlike Augustine,
who regards truth as inseparable from revelation and as entirely dependent upon grace, Aquinas sees the sensible world,
or nature, as the source of all rational knowledge. Reason, in
other words, begins with the senses and belongs to the phenomenal rather than the supernatural realm; human knowledge,
therefore, can be known through natural phenomena and experience. Man's nature makes it possible for him to comprehend rational knowledge without the aid of divine grace; divine
grace added to natural knowledge enables him to know also
the truths of revelation. In thus drawing a distinction between
faith and reason, Aquinas effected a beginning of a revolution
in thought that later gave rise to the proposition that reason
could stand in its own right, wholly independent of faith.
This is the point of view found in both the M onarchia and
The Defender of Peace. The central idea in these works, as we
saw earlier, is that reason, and the temporal world, are independent of Divine Providence. In the late thirteenth and early
fourteenth centuries, then, we come to a period in history when

/j7()

DOROTHY F. DONNELLY

many thinkers are attempting to disengage reason completely
from faith and, at the same time, to dissociate the phenomenal
world from a hierarchical system of supernatural order. For
example, in the thought of one of the major thinkers of the
period, Duns Scotus, we find a new definition of the relation
between faith and reason. Rejecting Aquinas's concept that
faith and reason are complementary, Duns Scotus's view is that
there can be no rational explanation of Divine Providence.
Reason is limited to knowledge of the phenomenal world and it
cannot confirm revelation. Theological truths, since they are
in.capable of demonstration by natural perceptions, lie outside
the realm of rational comprehension. Revelation, then, is
strictly a matter o:f faith. For Duns Scotus the connection that
Aquinas had made between faith and reason is abandoned and
he substitutes in its place the idea that " each is self-contained.
. . . The natural and the supernatural are not merely on different planes but without a meeting-point; since they deal with
different truths they cannot inform one another." 42 In Duns
Scotus the emphasis is on the difference rather than on the
harmony between faith and reason. Faith and reason are two
entirely separate realms of understanding: faith deals with
supernatural truths, reason concerns itself with natural experience. Reason cannot confirm revelation-knowledge acquired
through natural phenomena cannot go beyond the phenomenal
world. In Duns Scotus's thought matters concerning Divine
Providence are not a subject of reason, but of faith alone.
Rather than attempting, as Aquinas had attempted, to reconcile theology with the demands of rational inquiry, Duns
Scotus broke the link between the truths of revelation and
those of natural knowledge. Duns Scotus resolved the conflict
between two incompatible orders-the natural realm and the
supernatural realm-by proposing that truth of revelation and
truth of reason are two distinctly different kinds o:f truth-they
do not inform each other, and they must be kept separate.
42 Leff, p. 258. I owe much of my discussion here about the thought of Duns
Scotus to Leif's analysis of his ideas; see pp. 255-272 for an extended treatment.

AQUINAS AND. UTOPIAN SPECULATION

571

From the fourteenth century onwards, when the attempt to reconcile theological doctrine and natural knowledge was abandoned, the characteristic feature of thought was the notion of
truth as not one but two. 43 The effect of this demarcation between faith and reason and the conception of truth as two-fold
was a revolution in thought in the interpretation of man's relation to the natural order.
In conclusion, the common outlook that informed the Medieval attitude toward the natural order was that it had been assigned an inferior and subordinate status within a hierarchical
system of divine cosmological order. Aquinas was the :first
Medieval thinker to challenge seriously the Augustinian notion
of the natural order as a consequence of sin and the notion of
the state as a remedial instrument provided by God for man's
salvation. Aquinas argues that the natural order operates on
its own principles and that the state is founded upon the nature of man himself. Yet although Aquinas's interpretation of
the order of the universe and the nature of man was a primary
influence on the emergence of those kinds of ideas which give
rise to utopian writings, his concept of theocentric order, like
Augustine's, served, :finally, to glorify the supernatural and the
divine. It was during the humanistic movement of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries that the Medieval way of interpreting
43 The changing concept of the relationship between faith and reason was not, as
it might seem, an attempt to refute theological doctrine. On the contrary, the
tenets of Christianity were as fundamental for Dante, Marsilius, and Duns Scotus
in the fourteenth century as they were for Augustine in the fifth, and, indeed, as
they were, for example, for most seventeenth-century thinkers. In his study of
seventeenth-century thought Basil Willey points out that "it was one of the characteristics of the seventeenth century that no English writer of the time, whatever
his philosophical views might be, could explicitly abandon the assumption that the
universe rested upon a basis of divine meaning. Further, all thinkers of that century, with but one or two exceptions, assumed the truth in some sense of the
specifically Christian doctrines, and the supernatural ·status of the Bible. The
Seventeenth Century Background, (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1965), p.
111. Although a quite different spirit animates the thought of the seventeenth
century, it is out of the fourteenth-century background that most thinkers of the
later period resolve the conflict between two incompatible worldviews by proposing
that truth is two-fold.

572

DOROTHY F •. DONNELLY

the world disappeared and a different manner of perceiving it
emerged. The main feature of the change that occurred was a
shift in perspective from an otherworldly to a this-worldly
orientation. This shift in outlook resulted in a new view of the
relationship between man and nature. In its broad outlines,
Renaissance humanism is characterized by a confidence in nature-a belief in the certainty of reason and in man's capacity
to control the natural world. Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century
thinkers, while they did not abandon their belief that a divine
meaning underlay the universe, gave up the traditional conception of order as a divine hierarchically arranged system in
which the natural order is subservient to the supernatural
order. The concept of order in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in brief, is one that focuses on the harmonious relationship of things within the natural order rather than on the connection between natural order and supernatural order. This
new notion of order, and the new concept of reason as two-fold,
led, not surprisingly, to a new vision of the world and of man's
place in it; it led also to the appearance in the sixteenth century
of the first modern example of utopian writing-Thomas
More's Utopia.
DOROTHY

llnivei·sity of Rhode Island
Kingston, Rhode Island

F. DONNELLY

RICOEUR'S CONTRIBUTION TO
FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY

F

UNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY as an essential dimension of the total theological project is specifically the
rational justification of hope (1 Peter 3: 15) .
The imperative for a new fundamental theology has been
issued by Karl Rahner as formal-fundamental theology, Bernard Lonergan as foundational theology, Johannes Metz as
practico-political theology and Wolfhart Pannenberg as theological anthropology .1
The exigency for a new fundamental theology has arisen with
the advent of historical consciousness in which the traditional
conception and universal acceptance of established authority
has become questionable. Authority, whether biblical or
ecclesial, brought to historical consciousness is rendered problematical. Whether kerygmatically proclaimed or magisterially
promulgated, the universal claim to aibsolute truth of Christianity is not ipso facto acceptable but debatable.
A new fundamental theology would differ from the old fundamental theology in that its justification would be founded, not
on the self-assertion of extrinsic authority, but upon radical
experience and critical reflection. It is characterized by the
passsage from a naive faith through critical self-appropriation
of its integral presuppositions toward a post-critical, second
naivete.
The project of this paper is an exploration in and a delineation of the thought of Paul Ricoeur, at once by vocation a
1 Cf. Karl Rahner,
Theological Investigations I (Baltimore: Helicon, 1961),
pp. 17-21; Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Herder and
Herder, 1972), pp. 131, 267-!W8; Johannes B. Metz, Faith in History and Society
(New York: Seabury), esp. pp. 8-81; Wolfhart Pannenberg. Basic Questions in
Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), p. 90.

578

574

PETER J. ALBANO, C.M.

philosopher and by confession a Christian of the Reformed tradition, as a substantial and significant contribution to a new
fundamental theology.
This project I propose to pursue from a threefold perspective. The first, Construction,,,presents Ricoeur's philosophical
anthropology in the light of the necessary conditions requisite
to a fundamental theology: the second, Confrontation, presents
Ricoeur's response to the critique of religion by the masters of
suspicion, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, in a hermeneutic of the
recovery of meaning as a dialectical apologetic of hope; and
third, Concentration, presents Ricoeur's thought on the question of God, the possibility and limitation in knowing and naming the Mystery as the ground of hope.
.. ,tJ

I. Construction
The necessary conditions requisite in the construction of a
fundamental theology are that man be a being in hope, i.e., the
essentially free other of God's possible self-communication, as
the existentially exigent desire for the salvific Other and as
the eschatologically reconcilable openness to the absolute
Mystery. Man is fundamentally the intersection within of
freedom, fault and transcendence that constitutes his being as
hope.
That there is a correspondence between Ricoeur's basic
project of the philosophy of the will and the requisite themes
of a comprehensive theological anthropology appears in the
outline of that project:
Vol. 1: The Voluntary ancl the Involuntary: Freedom ancl
Nature
Vol. II: Finitude and Culpability: Pt. A: Fcillible Man; Pt.
B: The Symbolism of Evil
Vol. III: The Poetics of Transcendence
The project is unfinished. Volumes I and II are completed;
Volume III, presently in process.

RICOEUR's CONTRIBUTION TO FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY

575

I. FREEDOM

Man, essentially structured, is for Ricoeur the free other of
God's possible self-communication.
He is incarnate freedom. He is a conscious being-in-theworld. In Freedom and Nature, Ricoeur undertakes a pure
phenomenological investigation, an eidetic description of man's
essential being. He brackets, in the manner of Husserl's epoche,
the existential experience of fault and the symbolic projection
of transcendence. The abstraction is necessary to provide an
understanding of man in his fundamental possibilities proffered
equally and universally to innocence and fault. It represents,
as it were, a common keyboard of human nature on which
mythical innocence and experiential guilt play in different
ways. 2
Ricoeur describes the reciprocity of freedom and nature in
man in a dialectical mediation. The separation of body and
soul as thought by the Cogito, an epistemic dualism, is overcome through a dialectical reintegration. The Cartesian split
of man into res cogitans and res extensa is re-thought in its
fundamental unity. The three moments of the voluntary, decision, action and consent, are progressively and reciprocally
related to the corresponding instances of the involuntary, motivation, movement and necessity. 3
A dramatic doctrine of double negation opens at the heart of
man. Necessity negates freedom as finitude of character, formlessness of the unconscious and contingency of life. Freedom.
responds to this structure of radical limitation by a refusal
affirmed in a wish for totality, transparence and sufficiency.4
This double negation as the inner dynamic or essential conflict has its projected resolution not in the premature synthesis
of the Stoic posture of negation of nature and identification
with the Logos nor in the Orphic submergence into metamor2 Paul Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature, trans. with an Introduction by Erazim V.
Kohak (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), p.
s Ibid., pp. 37-443.
4 Ibid., pp. 444-469.

576

PETER J. ALBANO, C.M.

phosis within the endless process of life in an affirmation and
celebration of the Nietzschean and Rilkean innocence of radical becoming, but in the eschatological hope of an anticipated
reconciliation through. the patient, lived-tension of dwelling
with necessity among creatures ...
Admiration is possible because the world is an analogy of Transcendence; hope is necessary because the world is quite other than
Transcendence ... Admiration says the world is good, it is the
possible home of freedom; I can consent. Hope says: the world is
not the final home of freedom; I consent as much as possible, but
hope to be delivered of the terrible and at the end of time to enjoy
a new body and a new nature granted to Freedom. 5

Man is understood as a freedom, not creative ex nihilo, but
motivated, incarnate, contingent, i.e., finite: a merely human
freedom. 6
Man, essentially structured as phenomenologically understood, is open in hope for a possible, integral realization in
authentic human freedom as the other of God's possible selfcommunication.
2. FAULT

Man is existentially, for Ricoeur, the exigent desire of the
salvific other.
In Volume II of the Philosophy of the Will, Ricoeur
phenomenologically elucidates and explicates the transcendental conditions of the possibility of actual fault, Fallible
Man, and herrneneutically engages the experience of existential
distortion as expressed in symbol and myth, an investigation
and interpretation of the language of the avowal of fault, the
confession of guilt, The Symbolism of Evil.
(a) Man, essentially constituted, for Ricoeur, is a fallible
freedom.
Man is a being of possible self-disruption. He is constituted
fallible in being distended within between the finite and the in5 Ibid., pp. 469-481, esp. p. 480.
s Ibid., pp. 482-486.

RICOEUR'S CONTRIBUTION TO FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY

577

finite. He is an unstable mixture, a radical disproportion in
being. He is within himself being and non..,being. It is this
fundamental disproportion between the finite and the infinite
that is the profound human structural condition for the possibility of actual fault. 7
The analytic of man's essential possibility of fault as located
in the open disproportion of his desire for the infinite and its
finite realizations is reflected in the pre-philosophical symbolics
of Plato, the rhetoric of misery in Pascal and the prophetic
passion of Kierkegaard. 8 It is conceptually articulated in the
transcendental description· modeled after Kant in the respective theoretical, practical and affective spheres of human being.
In the theoretical (theoria) dimension of his being, man as
speculative thinker, the finite-infinite tension manifests itself
as the inner dialectic of infinite verb and finite perspective between saying and seeing, between meaning and appearance. 9
The projected synthesis of understanding and sensibility is
the object as mediated by the transcendental imagination. It
is a resolution not in himself but in the other as thing. 10
The verb is the transcendent dimension of the unlimited,
a transgression of the given, as saying is more than seeing,
meaning more than appearance. The perspectival point of view
is the ineluctable initial narrowness of one's openness to the
world. The ' here and now ' of bodily existence is the zero origin
of one's own historical being in the world. Man as thinker,
therefore, is the open, unfinished interrelation of finite perspective and unlimited horizon.
In the practical (praxis) order of his being, man as doer,
the finite-infinite tension reveals itself as the dialectic of character and happiness.
Character is the limited openness of man's inherited field of
total motivation which as original is unalterable. Happiness is
7 Paul Ricoeur, Fallible Man, trans. Charles Kelbley (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1965), pp. 3-12.
s Ibid., pp. IQ-25.
9 Ibid., pp. 25-57.
lo Ibid., pp. 57-71.

578

PETER

ALBANO, C.M.

the transcendent horizon of the will anticipated in every action
as its fulfillment. 11
The projected synthesis of character and happiness is the
person as mediated through respect for humanity. Respect
mediates the desire of sensibility (pleasure) and the obligation of reason (duty) in its orientation toward action. The
commensuration of virtue and happiness is its necessary ideal
anticipated but never universally realized in this world. 12
Man, therefore, in his practical being is the unresolved adequa tion of virtue and beatitude, of the limitation of character,
the indeferable demands of the moral law and the infinite horizon 0£ happiness.
In the affective (thumos) order, man as profound feeling, the
finite-infinite tension discloses itself between the vital (bios)
and the spiritual, between desire (eros) and its transitory perfection in pleasure, and happiness, its transcendent horizon. 18
The dominant passions of having (Habsucht), power (Herrsucht) and value (Ehrsucht), necessary for self-constitutive
affirmation, are concretely realized in a situation of conflict.
Their innocent fulfillment is an unrealizable ideal. For what is
one man's will to possession, domination and recognition is invariably another's dispossession, subjection and denigration.
Although we know these fundamental quests empirically through
their disfigured visages, greed, arrogance and vanity, we understand these passions in their essence only as a perversion of . . .
We must even say that what we understand at first are the primordial modalities of human desire which are constitutive with respect to man's humanity; and it is only later that we understand
the ' passions ' as departure, deviation, downfall, in relation to
these primordial quests. No doubt the understanding of the primordial first, then of the fallen in and through the primordial, requires a kind of imagination of innocence or a ' kingdom ' wherein
the quests for having, power and worth would not be what they
in fact are. But this imagination is not a fanciful dream; it is an
'imaginative variation,' to use a Husserlian term, which manifests
Ibid., pp. 72-105.
Ibid., pp. 106-121.
13 Ibid., pp. 122-161.
11

i2

RICOEUR'S CONTRIBUTION TO FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY

579

the essence by breaking the prestige of the fact. In imagining another state of affairs or another kingdom, I perceive the possible,
and in the possible, the essential. The understanding of a passion
as bad requires the understanding of the primordial by the imagination of another empirical modality, by exemplification in an innocent kingdom. 14

The perfection of passion in the moment as pleasure often
fixates the inescapable and inexhaustible desire for happiness.
The necessity for life-satisfactions and the elusive, ineluctable
dream for a spiritual fulfillment is the conflict situation structured in the dynamic heart of man.
Each of the constitutive, disproportional tensions of the
finite-infinite dialectic in man as theoretical, practical and affective is a progressive interiorization and intensification of the
radical tension at the heart (thumos) of human existence in its
totality.
Man in his fragile constitution is a freedom that is fallible.
The fault is an existential possibility, not an essential necessity;
Man, fundamentally good, is susceptible in his freedom and
finitude to radical evil. For in his essential being he is in
'fault,' that is, in constitutive disproportion of the finite and
infinite within himself.15
The predicament of man constitutes his unique disposition:
an unfinished freedom as the principle of self-creation. This
is at once the dignity and the responsibility of being humanthe possibility of glory and tragedy and the principle of heroism
and hubris, of greatness and defeat.
(b) Man, existentially experienced and expressed, for
Ricoeur, is a 'fallen ' freedom.
Man experiences himself in a situation of bondage. His is a
servile will. He expresses his bound freedom in symbol and
myth.
Ricoeur, in The Symbolism of Evil, elucidates man's 'fallen'
predicament and his consciousness of fault as expressed in the
14 Ibid., pp.
15 Ibid., pp.

esp. p. 170.
208-224.

580

PETER J, ALBANO, C.M.

primary symbols of stain, deviation and guilt and in the symbolic myths of the origin of evil, creation, tragedy, exile and the
Adamic myth.
Phenomenological investigation under Husserl's influence
and transcendental analysis under Kantian aegis now become
a hermeneutical exploration, descriptive and dialectical, a
phenomenology reminiscent in performance of the Hegelian
model. The necessary indirection from expression to experience
to existence is because the ' fall ' is not an ontological structure
of man's being but an historical 'happening,' not a necessary
law of his being but an accidental event, i.e., a possibility actualized, albeit somewhat inevitable and universal.
Stain is the analogue of defilement; deviation the analogue
of sin; and burden, the analogue of guilt. There is a movement
from a magical conception of evil as imposition (stain) to a
communal experience as a broken relationship (sin) of man before God to a self-conscious personal interiorization as guilt.
There is an historical development in consciousness of evil as
an objective infliction toward a subjective implication of responsibility, from an external impingement to an internal appropriation. The latter negates yet includes the · former in
freedom. The concept of a servile will is formed: a will freely
bound by itself .16
The structure of myth is symbol written large. The structure of myth provides, as the symbols of evil could only suggest: a temporal orientation as historical movement from the
origin of evil to its end, concrete universality and an ontological exploration of the enigma of human existence in narrative,
dramatic form.17
Ricoeur focuses upon the myths of Occidental civilization.
He structures the distinctive myths of the origin of evil into
the cosmogonic (creation), the tragic, the orphic (the exiled
soul) and the Adamic.
16 Paul

Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan (New York:

Harper and Row, 1967), pp.
:p lbid., pp. 16H

RICOEUR'S CONTRIBUTION TO FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY

581

The creation (cosmogonic) myth locates the beginnings in a
primordial chaos or violent act. The tragic places the inscrutable blindness and hardness of heart in the primordial design of
a ' Wicked God.' The philosophical myth of the exiled soul depicts the original contamination of the spirit as the flesh in
which it is imprisoned. The cosmogonic, tragic, and orphic
myths, therefore, locate the origin of evil outside of 'man.18
In the Adamic myth alone does evil originate with man.
Creation is primordially constituted good. It is the act of a
transcendent God who is essentially good.
The Adamic myth, however, not only negates but also includes the dimension of the Evil Other within its comprehension. In the symbol of the serpent, evil as always already there,
evil as the seduction of man, is enigmatically disclosed. Man
is, therefore, the victim as well as the agent of evil. The crucial
difference of freedom, however, is sustained. 19
Ricoeur vindicates his option for an ethical vision of life in
which evil and freedom are interrelated as opposed to the
tragic vision of life in which evil and nature are identified. The
tragic dimension is transcended but retained in the ethical as
an inner constitutive moment in a total vision of reality. The
mystery of iniquity, the enigma of evil, remains but with a critical difference: the parameters of a comprehensive understanding of man must dialectically include freedom and nature. This,
Ricoeur articulates, as a freedom bound by itself beyond selfsalvation. Sin is freely self-incurred (habitus) . It is, as it
were, a ' second nature.'
Ricoeur rejects Augustine's symbolic dogmatization and
allegorical explanation of the universality of sin through the
concept of an inheritance biologically founded and the Hegelian system of the dialectical rationalization of the absurd fact
of evil as universal necessity. Neither a dogmatic, allegorical
explanation nor a gnostic speculation renders the mystery of
iniquity intelligible. 20
Ibid., pp, 175-210, 211-281, 279-305.
Ibid., pp. 232-278, 806-346.
2 0 Paul Ricoeur, "The Hermeneutics of Symbols and Philosophical Reflection,"
International, Philosophical, Quarterly 2 (1962), pp. 191-218, esp. pp. 209-218.
18
19

PETER J. ALBANO, C.M.

Ricoeur describes man's predicament, his essential disproportion and existential distortion. He articulates man's conscious self-awareness of his predicament from his experience as
avowed in the language of confession, expressed in symbol and
narrated in myth.
The question yet remains: How does man cope with his predicament? How does he handle his problematical being?
With each diverse mythical interpretation a respective mode
of deliverance from evil is envisioned. In the myths of primordial chaos salvation is through an active participation in
and contribution toward the preservation and promotion of
the order of the universe within the environment of an ever
imminent threat of disruption. Man identifies his being with
the future of being on the side of the gods who establish order
out of chaos. Ritually he re-enacts the original drama of violence and creation in the perennial festival cults of the birth,
death and re-birth of nature. 21
In the tragic myths deliverance from the original ambiguity
of hubris is defiance of, and defeat by, the gods or in the refusal-acceptance of fate. The heroic resistance and resignation
to the inexorable is liturgically re-enacted in the theatrical
spectacle. It is an aesthetic deliverance in the sympathetic
catharsis of tragic beauty in terror and pity. The tragic pathos
is an affective yet impotent emotion of participation in which
nothing of the misfortune is changed. The participant is transformed without altering his doom through a purification of
tears by the transcendent beauty of song.
Nevertheless, tragedy opens the law of suffering for the sake
of an understanding that has the power of redemption: the
recognition and acceptance of human limitation. 22
In the orphic myth of the exiled soul deliverance is through
gnosis. "Know thyself" is the beginning of salvation.
After the fall of the soul into the body of the earthly in which
it is both punished and educated, the process of recovery begins
21 The

S11mholism of Evil, pp. 191-206.
227-231.

22 Jbid., pp.

RICOEUR'S CONTRIBUTION TO FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY

583

through the discipline of the senses and the askesis of desire.
Released from the prison of bodily existence, the soul seeks the
repose of reunification with its divine origin. 28
In the Adamic myth deliverance is eschatological. The Kingdom of God is projected as the locus of the anticipated rectification. The promise is borne by a remnant people for a suffering servant, a Messiah. The recovery of innocence is the act
of a human-divine liberator. 24
These mythical projections of the end of evil correspond to
alternative modern Weltanschauungen descriptive of man's
comportment to his problematical condition of disproportion:
Teutonic mysticism, tragic existentialism, platonic idealism,
marxist utopianism and Christian transcendentalism.
' Teutonic ' mysticism is the disposition of participation in
the becoming and the grandeur of the divinity. The ecstatic
meontic mysticism of Boehme and the philosophical system of
Hegel (and perhaps, Whitehead), would be indicative of this
mode of comportment to the Universe.
Tragic existentialism is the heroic resignation to the inevitable human predicament of fault as identical with the structure of Existenz. Man is by natme guilty (Jaspers) or
'thrown' into the world to die (Heidegger) or condemned to be
free, 'a useless passion' (Sartre).
Dualistic idealism, whether Platonic or Buddhist, is the will
to other than what is the real, innocent, incarnate mode of being human: contemplation of formE', askesis of the senses, the
self-mastery of Yoga, the determination of Nirvana, etc ....
The Marxist and the Christian attest to the disproportion
with the human condition of essential possibility and its existential distortion. Deliverance is achieved for the Marxist in
the revolutionary self-transformation of the structures of society; for the Christian, ultimately in the gift of God awaited
for in a believing love that reaches forth in hope.
The power of the Marxist utopianism is broken by the
2a Ibid., pp. 800-805.
24 Ibid., pp.

584

PETER J. ALBANO, C.M.

humanly invincible radicality of evil in the world. Man, existentially self-expressed and interpreted, as problematical and
questionable to himself, is only an exigent desire for the salvific
Other:
... I cannot understand my own behavior. I fail to carry out the
things I want to do, and I find myself doing the very things I hate.
When I act against my own will, that means I have a self that
acknowledges that the Law is good, and so the thing behaving in
that way is not my self but sin living in me. The fact is, I know
nothing good living in me-living, that is, in my unspiritual selffor though the will to do what is good is in me, the performance is
not, with the result that instead of doing the good things I want to
do, I carry out the sinful things I do not want. When I act against
my will, then, it is not my true self doing it, but sin which lives
mme.
In fact, this seems to be the rule, that every single time I want to
do good it is evil that comes to hand. In my inmost self I dearly
love God's Law, but I can see that my body follows a different
law that battles against the law of sin which lives inside my body.
What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body
doomed to death? (Romans 7:

The symbolism of evil gives rise to the symbolism of salvation:
Adam prefigured the One to come, but the gift itself considerably
outweighed the fall. If it is certain that through one man's fall so
many died, it is even more certain that divine grace, coming
through the one man, Jesus Christ, came to so many as an abundant free gift. The ·results of the gift also outweigh the results
of one man's sin: for after one single fall came judgment with a
verdict of condemnation, now after many falls comes grace with
its verdict of acquittal. If it is certain that death reigned over
everyone as the consequence of one man's fall, it is even more certain that one man, Jesus Christ, will cause everyone to reign in life
who receives the free gift that he does not deserve, of being made
righteous. Again, as one man's fall brought condemnation on everyone, so the good act of one man brings everyone life and makes
them justified. As by one man's disobedience many were made
sinners, so by one man's obedience many will be made righteous.
When law came, it was to multiply the opportunities of falling, but
however great the number of sins committed, grace was even

RICOEUR'S CONTRIBUTION TO FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY

585

greater; and so, just as sin reigned wherever there was death, so
grace will reign to bring eternal life thanks to the righteousness that
comes through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 5:

The dialectical structure and content of the text reflects the
existential situation of this fundamental experience, the ontological feeling of Angst and Beatitude:
Perhaps this clash has no other import than the distinction between the via negativa and the via analogiae in the speculation on
being. If being is that which beings are not, anguish is the feeling
par excellence of ontological difference. But Joy attests that we
have a part of us linked to this very lack of being in beings. That
is why Spiritual Joy, the Intellectual Love and the Beatitude,
spoken by Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza and Bergson, designate,
under different names and in different philosophic contexts, the
only affective ' mood ' worthy of being called ontological. Anguish
is only its underside of absence and distance. 25

The symbolics of sin imply as their inverse a symbolics of
salvation, a poetics of transcendence. It is to the symbolics of
liberation and the foundation of Joy that we now tum our attention, to the poetry and possibility of transcendence in
freedom and beatitude: the third constitutive condition for the
possible explication of an authentic Christian anthropology.
3. TRANSCENDENCE

Man, to be eschatologically reconcilable, must be open to the
infinite. Man as the projection of the poetic imagination is
ontologically reconcilable. In the poetic Word, for Ricoeur, is
the promise of liberation.
Ricoeur's Poetics of the Will is unwritten. There are, however, numerous essays and a substantial study, The Rule of
Metaphor, as groundwork toward the construction of a Poetics.
The f<X!us of the problematic is this: If God is to communicate himself, it must be in Word and Spirit. The presupposition is man, a hearer, the one to whom the communication is
to be made.
The Word is the objective presence of God's self-communication in history. The Spirit is the subjective condition of
25 Fallible Man, p. 161.

586

PETER J. ALBANO, C.M.

God's self-acceptance in man, the attunement of man as' ontological ear' to receive effectively the Word.
The question is this ontological structure of man as the open
possibility for God's self-communication. In Fallible Man the
finite-infinite tension of disproportion was elucidated. In the
Symbolism of Evil man's conscious self-expression before the
Holy as being guilty was articulated. How does one now approach the question of transcendence toward the silent Mystery and its possible revelatory self-communication as the
Grace of reconciliation, as Forgiving Love?
One approach would be comparable to Jaspers' s Transcendence. Another would be Heidegger's fundamental ontology.
With whatever differences in their religious thinking, both Jaspers and Heidegger, nevertheless, are similar in their language
approach to Being. Whether it is the historical reading of the
cypherscript of Being or being On the Way to Language there
is the pursuit of a direct ontology of comprehension.
Ricoeur, while not definitely excluding Jaspers's and Heidegger's approach, prefers to move in a more indirect manner.
The way to Being for Ricoeur is language itself. The detour
through the linguistic sciences as a counterfocus to an existential phenomenology of language must be undertaken. The
sciences as a methodological diagnostic do constitute for
Ricoeur an inner moment within the dialectical, comprehensive
understanding of language which progressively includes linguistic elements within structures and structures within processes.
The consideration of language entails critique: the limits of
the expressible. As Kant thought to define the limits of reason,
so Wittgenstein sought to determine the limits of language.
The quest is not so much to justify the intelligible in what may
be reasonably comprehended but the justification of the intelligibility of what one may rightly say or hear signified. It is
this critique of language that constitutes the exigency operative
with Ricoeur's methodological detour: the justification of religious language.
. .
Man is ontologically a hearer
a speaker of the word. As
listener, man
competent to .receive with comprehension the

RICOEUR'S CONTRIBUTION TO FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY

587

word of another. As embodied subject, he is given in his spirit

to receive the word spoken by the other as mediated through
the body of sound. He is the incarnate hearer of an incarnate
word spoken.
What is heard is greater than what is seen. As a word can
communicate the global gift of oneself, so there is more formally communicated than formally stated.
As speaker, man transcends the receptivity of the other
through an act of signification. He goes beyond the impression
of image sounds toward the significative expressiveness of giving meaning. To speak is to say something to someone.
Although grammar is the presupposition and condition for
speech, the event of speech is greater than the constitution of
grammatic elements.
Grammar (la langue) is an object of science, a system of
signs that is the virtual possibility of speech. Speech (la
parole) is a mode of presence, an act of saying. Grammar is
constitutive of the structure of system; speech, an instance of
discourse. The word mediates between this structure as possibility and speech as event. 26
Grammar as a state of structure is prior to history. Speech
as an event of freedom is generative of novelty. Grammar is
a formal institution whose elements are related in mutual dependence constitutive of an organic unity of whole enveloping
parts. Speech is the substantial happening of something new
through free combinations of elements. Grammar is a finite
order of discrete entities whose aim is sense; speech is an open
relation to a world whose aim is referential: saying something
about something. 21
Grammar is a neutral instrument, an organon, an autonomous entity of internal dependencies in advance of an ideal
sense: the science of language, semiology. Speech is an open
event that includes the limits of grammar and transcends it in
an act of communication: someone speaking to someone about
26 Paul Ricoeur, "Structure, Word and EV'ent," The 0011;/Uct of Interpretatiom
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), pp. 79-98.
·21 Ibid.,. p. 118f; Cf. also, Rule of Metapk!W (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1977), pp. 216-247.

588

PETER J. ALBANO, C.M.

something. It looks toward meaning as advanced m usage:
semantics. 28
Man is also a reader and a writer of the word. As writer,
man fixes the event of speech. The written word achieves a
certain distanciation from the author, the particular situation
and the specific audience of the original event of discourse.
The text realizes a certain transcendent independence and coherence of its own, its distinctive quality of permanence
through fixation of sound in print. It is thereby relatively dissociated from the intention of the author, the ostensive reference and immediate addresses of the original occasion of
speech. 29
As reader, man finds himself confronted with a possibility
given to him by the text as structurally mediated for his personal appropriation. The imaginative variations on reality that
literary works communicate is the paradigm of, and invitation
to, creative participation in its power of transformation.
What a literary text discloses is a possible mode of being-inthe-world (Heidegger), a form of life (Wittgenstein) or Lebenswelt (Husserl) . What a poetic text places before man is a
projection of his ownmost possibilities. Through a cancellation of a first order reference that is demonstrative and denotative, literature is the condition 0£ the possible revelation of
a second order of reference which reaches beyond the world of
everydayness that functions on the level of manipulatable objects to a world of depth possibilities. Man understands himself as open in freedom for the possible prof erred him in the
text. 30
The textual word, spoken and heard, written or read, is not
only the mediation of speaker and listener, writer and reader,
but also between the ideal of logical sense and the preconceptual depth-experiences of life and its creative possibilities. As
28

Ibid., p. mo; Cf. also, RM, pp. 101-183.

2 9 Paul

Ricoeur, " The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a
Text," Social Research 43 (1973), pp. 530-553; and Paul Ricoeur, " The Hermerteutical FunctiOn of Distai1ciati0n," Philosophy Today 17 (1973), pp. 129-141.
so Paul Ricoeur, "The Hermeneutical Function of Distanciation," p. 140f. and
Paul Ricoeur, "The Philosophy and Religious Language," Journril of Religion 54
(1974)' p. 79f.

RICOEUR'S CONTRIBUTION TO FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY

589

such the word is more than one element in a closed system of
signs. It is also an integral element in the open instance of discourse. It is more than a fixed logic: it is a free happening.
The word mediates between the structure of system and the
openness of event.
The mystery of the word is in the creative power of expressiveness. In the expression is the initial moment and inaugural
intention of transcendence:
It is perhaps the emergence of expressiveness which constitutes the
marvel of language. Greimas put it very well: ' there is perhaps a
mystery of language, and this is a question for philosophy, there
is no mystery in language.' I believe that we also can say that
there is no mystery in language, the most poetic symbolism, the
most sacred, operates with the same semic variables as does the
most banal word in the dictionary. But there is a mystery of language; it is that language says, says something about being. If
there is an enigma of symbolism it lies completely on the plane of
manifestation, where being's equivocality comes to be said in the
equivocality of discourse. 81

The structure of the word is not simple but complex. As a
sign it may have more than one meaning. The symbol is polyvalent, multiple in its vectors of significance. It is not a deficient word but a ' surcharged ' word. It is neither pathological
nor ornamental. It is indicative of the constitutional, problematical function.of all language. It is an instance of the fulness
of language, a pregnant word. It is irreducible to a simple conceptualization but bears a surplus of meaning and import.
The dimensions of the word are three: structural, existential
and ontological. As structural, every word in language of calculated ambiguity is subject to an analytical demystification.
As existential, every word of discourse is open to reconstitution
of meaning. As ontological, the word discloses a possible mode
of being-in-the-world and opens an exploration into the relationship of man to the saered. 82
a1 Paul Ricoeur, "The Problem of the Double-Sense as Hermeneutic Problem
and as Semantic Problem," The Conflict of Interpretations (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), pp. 62-78, esp. p. 78.
82 Paul Ricoeur, "Existence and Hermeneutics," CI, pp. 8-24.

590

PETER J. ALBANO, C.M.

The poetic word, born in the metaphorical process which by
discerning and implying resemblance in spite of difference,
transfers to another by self-negation meaning proper to itself.
Through this semantic innovation, metaphor breaks with ordinary descriptive language in a power of predication that communicates what is not said, evokes what is not seen and makes
present what is absent. Through the suspension of a first order
reference and the reconstruction of its significance anew upon
prior ruins, metaphor serves as a heuristic fiction in the redescription of reality. This indirect reference, built in, through
and on the de-struction of the direct, empirical order reference,
constitutes the primordial reference in that it discloses the deep
structures of reality in which we originally dwell.33
It is in the context of limit-experiences, suffering and death,
struggle and guilt, that symbols are born as expressions of the
possibilities of their transcendence, constituting threshold disclosures of reconciliation, freedom, forgiveness, peace, new
life ...
The poetic imagination is the ground of the transcendent
word. The productive imagination enables the play of resemblances to emerge in a predicative assimilation of creative synthesis. Deep feelings sustain and complete the poetic imagination as fundamental mood and reality attunement in the projection of new possibilities of being in the world. Feeling as a
primal order intentional structure is the point of our insertion
in the world in a non-objectifying manner. This ontological
dimension of feeling as original resonance with reality, more
cognitive than emotional, is our being in touch with the richness down within things. 84
Ricoeur, therefore, discovers in language the meaning of man
and the way to ultimate reality. Man is hearer and speaker,
reader and writer of the word. As language man is the Gram33 Paul Ricoeur, "Creativity
in Language," Philosophy Today 17 (1978), pp.
97-lll, esp. pp. 105-111; "That Fiction 'Remakes' Reality," The Journal of the
Blaisdell Institute XII (1978), pp. 44-62.
84 Paul Ricoeur, " The Metaphorical Process as Coguition, Imagination
and
Feeling," Critical Inquiry 5 (1978), pp. 143-159.

RICOEUR'S CONTRIBUTION TO FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGY

591

matik of God's self-communication. For he is the open available structure in which the Word becomes event: the word as
the infinite use of finite means.
Man evinces a dynamic depth-dimension of freedom, creativity and transcendence in his driving will £or wholeness. In
the poetic word man moves through his existential predicament
toward his hoped-for fulfillment. It is a word first addressed
to him, spoken in his very being on the way. It is the word of
another as promise become his own project.
The poetics of transcendence is to be founded upon a logic
of hope. Ricoeur adumbrates this in a pregnant commentary
on Paul's Romans 5:
Three formulas present themselves to my mind, which express
three connections between the experience of evil and the experience of reconciliation. First, reconciliation is looked for in spite
of evil. This ' in spite of' constitutes a veritable category of hope,
the category of contradiction. However, of that there is no proof,
but only signs; the milieu, the locus of this category is history, not
logic; an eschatology, not a system. Next, this 'in spite of' is a
' thanks to;' out of evil the principle of things brings good. The
final contradiction is at the same time a hidden teaching: et1:am
peccata, says Augustine as an inscription to Claudel's Satin Slipper,
if I may put it that way ... The third category of this meaningful
history is the 'how much more' (polloi mallon). This law of
superabundance englobes in its turn the ' thanks to ' and the
' in spite of.' This is the miracle of the Logos; from him proceeds
the retrograde movement of the true; from wonder is born the necessity that retroactively places evil in the light of being. What in
the old theodicy was only the expedient of false-knowing becomes
the intelligence of hope. The necessity that we are seeking is the
highest rational symbol that this intelligence of hope can engender.85

Man is being in hope. May we name the ground of hope, the
highest rational symbol that this
of hope can engender, God?
In conclusion I would re-affirm my contention that Ricoeur
does provide rich resources £or the construction of a £undaas Paul Ricoeur, "The Hermeneutics of Symbols and Philosophical Reflection,"

Cl, p. 814.

592

PETER J. ALBANO, C.M.

mental theology. He elucidates an understanding of man as
essentially the free other of God's self-communication existentially exigent for the saving Other and eschatologically projected as reconcilable.
Man is finite freedom, a freedom actually in bondage to itself, a freedom open to the liberating power of the Other. He
stands in freedom before the incomprehensible mystery of the
Other in anguish and in hope.
The fundamental text of which Ricoeur's philosophical anthropology seems but an extended commentary is Romans 8:
I think that what we suffer in this life can never be compared to
the glory, as yet unrevealed, which is waiting for us. The whole
creation is eagerly awaiting for God to reveal his sons. It was not
for any fault on the part of creation that it was made unable to
attain its purpose, it was made so by God; but creation still retains
the hope of being freed, like us, from its slavery to decadence, to
enjoy the same freedom and glory of the children of God. From the
beginning to now the entire creation, as we know, has been groaning in one great act of giving birth; and not only creation, but all
of us who possess the first fruits of the Spirit, we too groan inwardly as we wait for our bodies to be set free. For we must be
content to hope that we shall be saved ... it is something that we
must wait for with patience.

Ricoeur's Philosophy of the Will is an anthropology of freedom in hope. The Voluntary and the Involuntary presents the.
freedom-nature dialectic whose process is the human project in
hope. Fallible Man elucidates the finite-infinite disproportion as
the condition of the possible tension of anticipation and frustration. The Voluntary and the Involuntary and Fallible Man
present the structural possibilities and limitations of man constitutive of his being in hope. The Symbolism of Evil explicates
the self-negation of man that affirms the necessity of hope. The
poetics of transcendence negates the prestige of the fact of
existential distortion, justifies the disclosure power of symbolic
expressiveness and proj.ects the eschatological fulfillment of the
human spirit in hope.
PETER J. ALBANO, C.M.
· St. John's UniverSity
Jamaica, New York

THEOLOGY AND AUTHORITY:
REFLECTIONS ON
THE ANALOGICAL IMAGINATION*

I

A Review Discussion

N A tour de force on theological method, David Tracy's
Analogical Imagination presents theology as a de-privatized form of discourse, addressed to the three interrelated
publics of society, academy and church. Christian systematics
as reflection on the classic religious event of Jesus Christ is
played out in the interpretative perichoresis of three mutually
self-correcting theological orientations: manifestation, proclamation and prophetic/apocalyptic. As the book unfolds, Tracy
not only describes but illustrates the process by which theologians arrive at interpretations of religious classics which are
relatively adequate to both originating experience and contemporary situation. One can only stand in awe before this
achievement in which Tracy's creative powers of organization
and synthesis - his own analogical imagination - manifest
themselves on every page. The prose, though often tortured, is
always clear. I noted with approval the moves in the direction of more rage and less order, i.e. the fuller integration of
"negativity," which this work makes in contrast to Tracy's
previous Blessed Rage for Order (New York, 1976).
The following remarks are not a review. Rather they are
addressed to a specific and hence limited question about the
tensions in the relationship of the Christian systematic theologian to the two publics of church and academy. If I understand Tracy's intricate sociological and theolOgical portrait of
the theologian correctly, theology, even Christian systematics,
*David Tracy: The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture
of Plurali8m (New York, Crossroad, f981). Cf. Book Review Section.

598

594

WILLIAM L. PORTIER

does not require the theologian's personal belief (belief understood in a confessional sense as contrasted with basic faith) in
order to be theology. As henneneutical reflection on publicly
available classics (texts, people, art, etc.) and their correlation
to the human situation, it can be done by anyone who can read
and think and who is even mildly sensitive to the universal
ambiguities of the human condition. If carried on with intelligence and integrity in the academy and presuming the ecumenical interplay of orientations mentioned above, theology
so conceived will eventually correct itself and arrive at relatively adequate interpretation. (See, for example, p.
Conspicuously absent from this account, therefore, is the need
for any corrective to this dialectic as applied from without by
some fonn of church authority however the latter may be conceived. Although such an understanding of theology may appear as a radical departure from fides quaerens intellectum, it is
a faithful portrait of the new understanding of their task which
many Catholic theologians-Hans Kiing and Edward Schillebeeckx are only the most prominent among them-have
worked out with varying degrees of explicitness over the past
ten years. 1
This portrait both reflects and attracts that portion of my
divided self which is defined in relation to the academy. At the
same time, that area of my own concrete subjectivity which
sees itself in relation to the Church, the Roman Catholic
Church in my particular case, sends out monita which cause me
to balk at the wholehearted embrace of Tracy's position which
my academic self would prefer. One of the purposes of these
l}eflections, therefore, is to help me discern whether these
warnings from my ecclesiastical self signal a mild personal
pathology or a genuine theological difficulty. Although I have
raised the issue of the relationship of church authority to the
free inquiring theologian from my own Catholic context, I do
not thereby intend to limit these reflections to church authority
1 For a development and further nuancing of this position, see William M. Shea,
"The Subjectivity of the Theologian," Tlwmist, 45 (April, 1981), pp. 194-218.

THEOLOGY AND AUTHORITY

595

as it presently functions in the Roman Catholic Church.
Rather, I wish to pose to Tracy's project a much broader ecumenical-theological question. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's recent investigations of Kiing and Schillebeeckx, and the subsequent revocation of the former's canonical teaching mission, have highlighted this issue for Catholic
theologians. Nevertheless the recent past also yields up several
examples of the correction of theological opinion by church
authority in other communions. In St. Louis, Missouri Synod
Lutherans purged the Concordia Seminary faculty of those professors whose interpretations of biblical inerrancy were at odds
with that of the synod. In Washington, D.C., the Anglican
pastor of St. Stephen and the Incarnation Church, William
Wendt, was tried before an ecclesiastical court for his refusal
to obey the " godly admonition " of his bishop in the matter
of allowing an irregularly ordained woman priest to celebrate
the Eucharist in his church. In Baltimore the situation differed
somewhat. Local congregations withdrew in protest from the
United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. over the church's
failure to withhold Presbyterian credentials from Mansfield
Kaseman because of his beliefs about the divinity and bodily
resurrection of Christ. Although the latter two cases do not involve professional theologians, all of the examples cited suggest the possibility that church authority may exercise some
sort of corrective function over theological opinion.
Although each of the actions described above would have different constitutional and canonical grounds in the minds of the
church leaders who performed them, I believe that a common
thread unites them all. What Pope John Paul II, Jacob Preus,
Bishop William Creighton and the dissenting Presbyterians of
Baltimore share in common is some form of the belief that the
Church has a mission from Jesus Christ t_o teach in his name.
Only some form of appeal to this mission could ultimately
justify the kinds of actions described in the examples above.
An individual's theological opinions would then be open to correction on the part of church authority if it could be shown that
these ·beliefs were indeed an obstruction to the mission the in-

596

WILLIAM L. PORTIER

.dividual was supposed to be carrying out. It is my judgment
that such a belief, to wit that the Church has been commissioned by Jesus Christ himself to preach the gospel in his
name-with all the various qualifiers that could be placed on
the understanding of this mission's nature and on how those
who carry it out derive and exercise their office in the Churchis a widely recognized ecumenical-theological conclusion
thought to be grounded in scriptural warrants.
The correct perception of this belief as some form of appeal
to divine authority accounts for the modern antipathy toward
Christianity's claim to be in some sense a revealed religion.
From the modern point of view, actions of church authorities
such as those described above appear as invasions of privacy
which interfere with freedoms of inquiry and religion which are
basic to the Enlightenment heritage. And well they might be,
even if one were to accept the above belief. In any case, I
wonder how the publics of academy and church can be easily
related as long as significant portions of church continue to hold
some form of this belief. Either they are mistaken in this belief and theology is something very much like what Tracy describes, or something else is the case.
The question to which the Analogical Imagination gives
rise in my mind is this: can the truth claim involved in this
widely-held Christian belief be warranted on inner-theological
grounds ? If theology could, for example, falsify this belief on
the basis of publicly available warrants, then the issue of theology's relation to authority in the Church would in principle be
solved (as I suspect Tracy already believes it to be). If, on
the other hand, this belief must be allowed to stand as part of
a legitimate interpretation of the event and the situation, i.e.
its relative inadequacy could not be convincingly shown, then
Tracy's conception of the nature of theology might have to be
revised in order to accomodate the implications of this belief
as a theologically warranted truth claim. The alternative to
posing this question is to allow this belief to remain a private
matter for individual theologians who, as members of one denomination or another, personally accept some form of this be-

THEOLOGY AND AUTHORITY

597

lief. To adopt this alternative, however, would be to jeopardize
the very drive to publicness which motivates Tracy's project.
In view of its methodological implications, I can't help but
wonder why Tracy does not treat this question explicitly. It
is hard to believe that the question never crossed his mind. If
it had, and he had answered it affirmatively, the proposed conception of theology would have allowed for it. Another possible
explanation for its absence could be that Tracy already regards it as publicly settled in the negative. If this were the
case (and I suspect, though I do not know, that it is), then it
would be legitimate to ask about the grounds. In either case,
the question about the relationship of theology and church
authority deserves to be asked and answered precisely as a public theological question.
Since Tracy has not explicitly taken up this question, I am
left to speculate about its possible answers given the basic
framework of the book. I must admit at the outset that I do
not have a clear notion of the answer. Presupposing the
Church's commission from Jesus Christ to teach in his name as
a widely held, though possibly erroneous, Christian belief, and
one that I share, I wish to consider what might be involved in
" critically mediating " that belief. I want to emphasize that
it is not my intention to present all the arguments and the
evidence that would be required to warrant this belief theologically. Rather I will explore the difficulties and possible
avenues of approach which such arguments would entail. I
will assume that if this belief could be warranted, the possibility
of some form of authoritative correction of theology-always
in the service of the gospel-would be its negative implication.
The forms in question as well as the evangelical appropriateness
of their juridical nature would be subject to debate, as in all
the examples above.
What is at issue here finds an apt illustration in the wellknown case of Hans Kiing. Depending on the answer to the
question I have posed above the Kiing affair is either about
whether any church authority, however it may be conceived,
can in principle correct a theologian, by whatever process that

598

WILLIAM L. PORTIER

may be done, or it is about the appropriateness of exercising
the " service " of correction in this particular case and in these
particular forms, e.g. the issue of due process.
Perhaps the first difficulty one encounters in trying critically
to mediate this belief is the possibility that its empirical correlate, if I may use such a term to refer to any idea that Jesus
of Nazareth historically intended to found a church and endow
it with a mission, may have already been falsified by the results of historical investigation. If Jesus was mistaken about
the imminent arrival of the Kingdom-and this is the conventional wisdom of biblical studies in the academic establishment-it would be difficult to conceive of his " founding a
church," not to mention his endowing it with the office of teaching in his name. 2 Because of his care to distinguish between the
" historical Jesus " and the " actual Jesus " as well as his perfervid refusal to use the historical Jes us " as norm or standard
of theology" (p. 319) , I do not think this difficulty would
place a major obstacle in the way of Tracy's giving an affirmative answer to the question I have posed. Although I have
some reservations about his use of this distinction (it seems
too convenient for avoiding hard questions), I will assume it
for the sake of discussion. What avenue of approach might a
theologian take in attempting to deal with this difficulty? Beginning with his early reflections on ius divinum and continuing up through his more recent thoughts on the " provenance" of the Church from the death and resurrection of Jesus,
Karl Rahner has provided a possible approach to this problem
which is both reasonable and not clearly (at least to my mind)
incompatible with the project Tracy has proposed. 3 Without
2 Karl Rabner faces this difficulty squarely in Foundations of Christian Faith,
trans. by William V. Dych (New York: Seabury, 1978), pp. 326-9. In discussing
the question of the Church's origin in Jesus, it ·would seem methodologically sound
to avoid undue emphasis on either the Jesus of the earthly ministry or the resurrected Christ to the exclusion of the other. In this connection, Rabner, for example,
speaks of the " historical and risen Jesus." Ibid., p. 326.
a For Rahner's early reflections on ius divinum in Catholic theology, see Theological Investigations, V, trans. by Karl-H. Kruger (London: Darton, Longman &
Todd, 1966), pp. !?19-48. The same territory is covered in more summary fashion

THEOLOGY AND AUTHORITY

599

passing final judgment on Rahner's alternative, we can at least
conclude that its existence allows us the logical space needed
to pursue the question further.
Beginning with what Tracy calls the working canon of the
New Testament based on the foundation of the earliest apostolic witness, and assuming the " provenance " of the Church
from Jesus' death and resurrection as explained by Rahner, for
example--or some alternative solution to the first difficultyit would be possible to build a historical case for an office of
teaching, with what has been called the apostolic " service of
correction," as an indispensable part of the Church. 4 In making such a case, one need not appeal solely to the clear and wellknown examples of late Catholicism. The familiar missionary
mandate of Mt
for example, however historians may account for its origins, is intended by its place in the gospel to
reach back into the ministry of Jesus who "taught with authority."
in Chapter VII of Foundations of Christian Faith. Rahner breaks some new ground
in his essay entitled, "The Provenance of the Church in the History of Salvation
from the Death and Resurrection of Jesus," in Karl Rahner and Wilhelm Thlising,
A New Christology trans. by David Smith and Verdant Green (New York: Seabury Press, 1980), pp. 18-41. To reiterate, I am not here defending Rahner's approach but simply pointing to it as one possible and reasonable avenue of approach
to this difficulty. The reader is obviously free either to accept Rahner's position
(either in toto or with modifications) or to reject it (either by proposing a more
adequate alternative solution or judging the difficulty to be insuperable). In the
latter case, the discussion of theology and church authority would logically be
concluded. In any case, the reader is not free to ignore this difficulty.
4 The term is used by Raymond Brown in Priest and Bishop, Biblical Reflections
(New York: Paulist, 1970), pp. 32-3. For a more comprehensive treatment, see
Joseph Fitzmyer, "The Office of Teaching in the Christian Church According to
the New Testament," in Paul C. Empie, T. Austin Murphy, and Joseph A. Burgess,
eds., Teaching Authority and Infallibility in the Church, Lutherans and Catholics
in Dialogue, VI (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1980), pp. 186-212, and the critical reply
by John Reumann, pp. 213-231. As with the reference to Rabner above, I am here
making a v·ery limited claim. If the reader is willing -to entertain the hypothesis
that belief in the Church's mission to teach in Jesus' name is worthy of critical
investigation, the next difficulty to arise would have to do with whether such a
mission, which clearly should be conceived of in a predominantly positive way, also
includes some negative or corrective aspect. If any such negative corrective function as an aspect of teaching office in the church should be ruled out on either
speculative or historical grounds, the discussion of theology and church authority,
in the terms that I have proposed it, would be at an end.

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WILLIAM

L. PORTIER

Although I am not an exegete and do not have the requisite
skills to build such a case myself, it seems to me that the general validity of something like it is a necessary presupposition
of the various bilateral ecumenical dialogues among Christian
confessions. At issue in the dialogue is not the principle of a
teaching office or authority in Christ's Church as an indispensable part of its make-up, but the question of how to structure such offices so that they will be in genuine service to the
gospel. I am thinking in particular of volumes V and VI of
the Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue. They represent for me one of
the most dramatic examples of theology as the self-correcting
ecumenical dialectic Tracy describes. 5 Reading them never
fails to inspire my own imagination with visions of the great
ecumenical and truly catholic Church of Christ for which I
hope and pray. Given the encyclopedic character of Tracy's
notes, I was disappointed to find nary a reference to the bilateral dialogues. It is true that they relate for the most part
to systematic concerns which the book doesn't address. On the
other hand, the questions of authority and teaching office which
they discuss have profound methodological implications. In
view of this, failure to consult them seems a serious omission.
The findings and common statements of the ecumenical dialogues to which I have referred now find themselves in the
limbo to which the inaction of present church authorities has
relegated them. This brings us back to the question of church
5 In their common statement on " Teaching Authority and Infallibility in the
Church," the Lutheran-Catholic dialogue participants in the United States affirmed:
" that there are Ministries and structures (n. 66: e.g. ecumenical councils and
synods) charged with the teaching of Christian doctrine and with supervision and
coordination of the ministry of the whole people of God, and that their task includes the mandate for bishops or other leaders to ' judge doctrine and condemn
doctrine that is contrary to the gospel'"; (n. 67: Augsburg Confession, 28: 21). See
Empie, Murphy, Burgess, eds., Teaching Authority and Infallibility, p. 31. In addition to the essays by Fitzmyer and Reumann mentioned in note 4 above, this volume also contains essays by Eric W. Gritsch and Warren Quanbeck which are
pertinent to the discussion at hand. See also the essays by Arthur Carl Piepkron,
Warren Quanbeck and George Lindbeck in Paul C. Empie and T. Austin Murphy,
eds., Papal Primacy and the Universal Church, Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue, V (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1974).

THEOLOGY AND AUTHOIUTY

601

authorities as they now exist in their imperfect, semper reformanda but plausibly legitimate forms, as well as their recent attempts to correct theologians. Let us assume for the sake of
discussion that the New Testament case referred to above is
plausible. This would mean hypothetically that historical
scholarship can establish the meaning and meaningfulness of
New Testament language about Church authority. If you accept the New Testament faith, in other words, you would accept some form of Church authority too. How would this hypothetical conclusion affect theology as Tracy describes it?
First of all, university theologians, working out of basic
faith, would remain personally untouched by this conclusion
except insofar as they would have to recognize it as a truth
claim belonging to confessional Christianity. Christian systematic theologians, whether speaking primarily to Church or
university, would have to integrate this hypothetical conclusion into their conceptions of their tasks as theologians. Thus a
Catholic theologian like Tracy might become concerned about
the relationships, both positive and negative, between theologians and bishops. 6 At the extreme negative limit of the relationship between theologians and bishops in the present structures of the Catholic Church, for example, looms the possibility
of an episcopal correction or censure which would seemingly
violate the integrity of the theological process as Tracy describes it. On the other hand, the Christian systematic theologian with confessional beliefs is, on my hypothesis, committed
to this possibility on the basis of warrants which, if not clearly
public in the broadest sense of self-evident to all, are more than
dogmatically mediated and, therefore, to some degree critical.
The possibility of this situation would introduce a serious
ambiguity into the notion of public as used with simultaneous
reference to both church and academy. This may point to a
6 Edward Braxton's
The Wisdom Community (New York: Paulist, 1981),
Chapter 5, provides some useful reflections on this relationship. Although he works
with explicit reference to Tracy's notion of public theology, Braxton is more of a
church-oriented theologian than Tracy and this makes for interesting contrast.

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WILLIAM L. PORTIEli

more traditional kind of separation (privatization?) between
university and ecclesiastical theology than Tracy wants to
have. I am not sure whether or to what extent such a possibility would sabotage Tracy's project of a genuinely de-privatized theology. In the end, in other words, after all the talk of
pluralism a!ld publicness, church theology would ultimately
have to appear authoritarian and therefore private in the eyes
of university people.
If I may digress for a moment, this difficulty points to a certain arbitrariness in Tracy's use of the term publio. In a book
written about theology as public discourse in the United States,
I was surprised at the lack of references to the works of evangelical Protestant and conservative Catholic thinkers (Ralph
Mcinerny is the lone exception). Doubtless some evangelicals
and conservative Catholics are the very fundamentalists and
dogmatists for whom Tracy reserves the sole Greeley-esque display of temper in the book (p. 451). Others, however, are
precisely the people who would push the issue of church authority in a public discussion. To the extent that their claims
are purely dogmatic and their supernaturalism totally unreflective, such people define themselves out of any public discussion. But in many cases, their appeal is precisely to the greater
relative reasonableness of their positions. The examples of
Carl Henry or Germain Grisez on certain issues in fundamental
theology, e.g. God, revelation, miracles, come into my mind. 7
Such authors point critically to what they regard as the gratuitous assumptions upon which rests the entire enterprise of the
liheral theological tradition which has come to dominate university theology in the United States. Such claims deserve to
be adjudicated. How can a theology which claims to be public
and pluralistic ignore these voices? In the name of modernity
7 See, for example, Germain Grisez, Beyond the New Theism: A Philosophy of
Religion (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975). This work presents arguments in the public forum for a theism which is neither classical in the
strict Aristotelian-Thomistic sense nor neo-classical in Hartshorne's sense. As such
it deserves the attention of all those who claim to be interested in questions of
fundamental theology.

THEOLOGY AND AUTHORITY

603

or contemporary culture? Perhaps. But similar criticisms
voiced by undergraduates who have never heard of Carl Henry
or Germain Grisez lead me to suspect otherwise. It is difficult
for me to avoid the conclusion that these positions are part of
the logic of the contemporary religious discussion simply as a
matter of fact.
Perhaps Tracy does not personally regard such a critique of
the dominant tradition as a legitimate alternative. Even if this
were the case, however, a radical suspicion of the position of
privilege occupied by form and redaction criticism in New
Testament studies at established universities, for example,
should have at least sociological, if not theological, significance
for the critically aware dominant tradition which Tracy represents so eloquently. To ignore such a radical form of criticism seems to place arbitrary restraints on the self-correcting
process of public theology. It courts the risk of limiting this
process to a clubbish enterprise for those with respectable liberal credentials and their guests. This would be to succumb to
that peculiar form of dogmatism which is the present occupational hazard of university theology. In this connection, I discern a hopeful sign in the fact that Karl Barth and neo-orthodoxy in general receive a more sympathetic hearing in Analogical Imagination than Tracy was disposed to give them in
Blessed Rage for Order.
To return more explicitly to the matter at hand, one would
certainly expect that church authorities would make theological rather than dogmatic contributions to the dialectic of
theology. In the case of Hans Kiing's interpretation of papal
infallibility, for example, historical, philosophical and theological arguments make a more effective reply than disciplinary actions or appeals to the dogmatic definition of Vatican I.
One could grant this point easily enough and still ask whether
such appeals to authority can be excluded on theological
grounds. If they could be so excluded, it would mean that the
discussion had returned to the public forum, thereby accounting
for the relationship between theology and authority within the
framework of the Analogical Imagination. Authority as such

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WILLIAM L. PORTIER

would have no role in the self-correcting theological process. Its
contributions would have no privileges that those of other
theologians do not enjoy. 8
Let us suppose that the conversation between church authorities and theologians in Roman Catholicism, for example,
should actually become " free, fraternal and open." 9 The
Spirit-guided theological process which Tracy proposes still requires time to carry itself through. Let us suppose further that
a theologian or group of scholars at the CDF in Rome were to
publish a learned reply to Schillebeeckx's recent historical arguments for the concept of ministry from below, claiming to have
refuted it. Only the time required for sufficient scholarly debate could successfully adjudicate this claim. But what if prolonged debate were to be inconclusive, or, more to the point,
what if legitimate church authorities judged that it would be
unwise, for reasons of charity, prudence, etc., to allow the selfcorrecting theological process to run its course? What if these
authorities were to ask-however fraternally or dogmatically
makes no difference in the end-that Schillebeeckx refrain
from teaching or publishing these opinions? This was precisely
the fate of the American Jenuit John McNeill and his opinions
on the moral question of homosexuality. McNeill complied.
s A similar position is suggested in the following excerpt from a " Declaration
of 1,360 Catholic Theologians on the Freedom of Theology" (1968): "We are
well aware that we theologians can commit errors in our theology. However, we
are convinced that erroneous theological opinions cannot be disposed of through
coercive measures. In our world they can be effectively corrected only by unrestricted, objective, and scholarly discussion in which the truth will win the day
by its own resources. We affirm with conviction a teaching office of the Pope and
the Bishops which stands under the word of God and in the service of the Church
and its proclamation. But we also know that this pastoral ministry of proclamation
ought not to constrain or impede the teaching of the theologian." For the complete
text, see Leonard Swidler, ed., Kung in Conflict (Garden City, New York: Image,
1981), pp.
The above citation appears on p.
Apart from a very general
appeal to evangelical freedom in the opening paragraph, the warrants offered for
the above position are not properly theological. The discussion I am trying to
promote in this essay is about whether there are or can be any such warrants.
The
9 For the source and context of this description, see Peter Hebblethwaite,
New lnquisiticm? The Case of Edward Schillebeeckx and Hans Kung (New York:
Harper & Row, 1980), p. 91.

THEOLOGY AND AUTHORITY

605

Can such silence or submission be theologically justified or does
it always constitute an act of intellectual dishonesty, a sacrificium intellectus which subverts the integrity of the theological
process? Can it ever be anything more than an accidental part
of that process?
In this connection, I am alternately scandalized and deeply
moved by the minority bishops at Vatican I and their eventual
reception of the dogmatic definition of papal infallibility. Their
real historical and theological objections were never answered
in their own lifetimes. And yet history has brought them a
certain measure of vindication. In our own century, the same
appears to be true of the pre-conciliar proponents of the nouvelle theologie in France as well as of John Courtney Murray
in the United States. The same may be true of McNeill or
Robert Drinan.
Is it possible that these may be examples of critically mediated faith in the church's mission to teach in the name of
Jesus, or are they at worst arbitrary failures of nerve or at best
private decisions better left unquestioned in the public forum?
Are they necessarily a tragic waste of intellectual energies and
careers, -as they must appear from the freedom of inquiry perspective of the Enlightenment, or can such submissions to apparently arbitrary exercises of authority be done with a degree
of intellectual integrity? Must such submissions always be deplored or can we admit that they represent a legitimate theological and not just personal possibility? Must submission to
church authority on an issue that has not been decided by free
and rational debate always be at odds with the freedom of inquiry so priz,ed by academics, including those of the theological
variety? It appears that this is the case, at least in the abstract. But time has made me suspicious of such abstract
either/ors.
In the concrete, individual theologians are left to judge
whether in their cases church authority's exercise of its service
of correction has indeed been in the interests of the gospel. It
seems difficult to exclude on theological grounds the possibility
that it may be. As in the classic case of Luther or the more

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WILLIAM L. PORTIER

recent case of Kling, theologians may conclude that the gospel
is better served by dissent. They may, on the other hand, on
the basis of a critically mediated faith in the Church's teaching
mission-or even for the sake of charity or order-judge that
they should " submit." Theologians who can no longer muster
sufficient supernaturalism to consign the fate of their work, in
the spirit of Gamaliel (Acts 5: 38-9) , to the hands of God, may
at least trust sufficiently in the truth of their findings to trust
simultaneously-a paradoxical and ultimately eschatological
trust to be sure-in this particular and imperfect manifestation
of the church's mission to teach in Jesus' name. In any case,
my purpose here has been to consider the possibility that exercises of ecclesiastical authority in regard to theological opinion
cannot be dismissed a priori as unwarranted interference in the
integrity of the academic process.10
For whatever reason, Tracy has not explicitly considered this
possibility in his book. Future consideration of this possible
negative limit case of the theologian's relationship to the two
publics of academy and church may perhaps nuance Tracy's
sociological and theological portraits of the theologian, thereby
clarifying his own self-understanding as a Catholic theologian.
Such a clarification would be a service to other theologians
presently struggling with the notion of theology as public discourse. Should Tracy choose to ignore this possibility, he
would take the chance of exaggerating the tragic-heroic aspect
of a theologian's" risks" (e.g. p. 406)-as typified in the nearmelodramatic case of Kling-thereby exacerbating the very
isolation and de-publicization of the theologian which he decries. Without a consideration of this possible negative limit,
10 As the language of the previous sentence is intended to suggest, I suspect that
any resolution of this question about the relationship between theology and church
authority will turn on related issues in fundamental theology. I mean such issues
as the meaning to be attributed to statements about God acting in history, e.g.,
the statement that the Spirit is guiding a process of theological inquiry. In some
contemporary frameworks for thinking about God, notions of the Spirit guiding a
process of inquiry or leading the Church into the truth by circuitous routes, e.g.,
apparently arbitrary or even erroneous exercises of authority, would be very diffi11ult if not impossible to entertain.

THEOLOGY AND AUTHORITY

607

the self-correcting theological dialectic Tracy describes could
easily be mistaken for a species of the darwinism with which
those in positions of privilege have always been too comfortable. Short of the eschaton, the self-correcting process Tracy
envisions must remain an ideal. Some form of the possible
negative limit case I have described seems unavoidable if history is any indicator. I believe that this is as true in the case of
the Reformation communions as it is in that of Roman Catholicism.11
In raising the possibility of the theological legitimacy of the
correction of theological opinion by ecclesiastical authority, I
do not wish to appear ungrateful (or naive) in the eyes of my
teachers. They have secured a welcome measure of independence and respect for theology as an autonomous discipline in
the academy. In my own peers, however, reared as we have
been in the relative luxuries bequeathed to us, I sense a corresponding need to clarify the relation of the theology we practice to the Church from which we have come and to which
we return in worship and service. The negative limit case I
have described represents a possible aspect, a small but not
insignificant aspect, of that relationship. This essay represents
my own efforts toward this clarification. I cannot claim to have
solved the question of the relationship of academic theology
and church authority as a theological problem. I hope that I
have posed it intelligently. Perhaps in the end the belief that
the Church has a mission to teach in Jesus' name will have to
be abandoned on critical grounds. Perhaps the conclusion that
ecclesiastical censures of theological opinion have nothing to do
with any such mission may eventully impose itself. Either or
both of these conclusions would have to justify themselves by
11 Questions about the mode of reception of and the status to be accorded to
ecumenical statements of agreement or theological consensus have given the Reformation Churches a certain impetus for raising questions about authoritative teaching in the Church. For a case in point, in a context which repeatedly emphasizes
the primarily positive role of the Church's teaching mission, see" The Authoritative
Teaching of the Church, A Workshop Report from the German Democratic Republic," Ecumenical Review, 33 (April, 1981), pp. 147-65.

608

WILLIAM L. PORTIER

the force of theological argument. Any semblance of an uncritical appeal to the deeply ambivalent Enlightenment notion of
freedom of inquiry would be unsatisfactory. I hope that in a
future work David Tracy will train his considerable talents and
resources as a theologian on this question about the relationship between church authority and academic theology.
WILLIAM

Mount Saint Mary's College
Emmitsburg, Maryland

L. PORTIER

HOMOSEXUALITY AND CHRISTIANITY:
A Review Discussion *

The traditional Christian condemnation of homosexual practice, under increasing challenge from Protestant sources since
the groundbreaking work of Derrick Sherwin Bailey (1955) ,1
was not significantly contested among Catholic scholars until
a few years after the " lively debate " had erupted over
Humanae Vitae (1968) .2 By 1976, some revisionary Catholic
proposals concerning homosexuality had provoked a reaction
from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. 8 The
silencing of pro-gay theological advocate John McNeill, S.J.,
attracted some further notice the following year. 4 But despite
frequent predictions-some fearful, others hopeful-the 1970s
ended without the Catholic Church being nearly as agitated
over homosexuality as it had been over contraception a decade
earlier.
One might account for this by pointing out that, even in
traditional Catholic thinking, the moral evils of contraception
*John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexucdity: Gay People in
Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). Pp. 424; $27.50 (cloth), $9.95
(paper).
1 D. S. Bailey, Homosexuality and the Western Christian Tradition (London &
N.Y: Longmans, Green and Co., 1955; reprinted, HamdBn, ShoeString Press.
Inc., 1975).
2 The quoted phrase was used by Paul VI to characterize the Humanae Vitae
controversy, which he hoped would "lead to a better understanding of God's will."
(Letter to Congress of German Catholics, August 80, 1968; AAS, LX [1968), 575.)
a Declaration on Certain Questions concerning Sexual Ethics (Persona Humana,
December 29, 1975; AAS, LXVIII [1976], 84-85).
4 McNeill's book, The Church and the Homosexual (Kansas City: Sheed, Andrews and McMeel, 1976), was originally published with ecclesiastical approval; but
within a year this approval was rescinded and the author was prohibited from further writing or public speaking on the subject.-See Origins, VII, #14 (Sept. 22,
1977)' 218-219.

609

610

.BRUCE A. WILLIAMS, O.P.

and homosexuality are not simply equatable. But given the
underlying logic which has been common to both condemnations notwithstanding their specific differences, the disparity of
contemporary attitudes regarding these condemnations is hardly understandable on strictly moral grounds. 5 A more pertinent
explanation may be found in the observation that homosexuality, unlike contraception, dir·ectly and personally affects a
rather decided minority who are not viewed favorably by most
other people.
This becomes even more evident when the focus is shifted
from the church to society at large, where legal and extra-legal
intolerance of homosexuality is still widely conspicuous. While
it might be argued that this manifests a residual Judaeo-Christian concern for the integrity of the procreative family, such an
argument is not easily tenable inasmuch as other practices traditionally seen as inimical to familial values-not only contraception but divorce and even adultery-have gained considerably broader acceptance in Western culture. Ronald Bayer of
The Hastings Center (New York), noting that the "sexual
revolution " of the 1960s did not significantly transform social
attitudes toward homosexuality, remarks: "The abhorrence of
homosexual practices, so deeply rooted in the Western cultural
tradition, had taken on a force of its own and could not collapse merely because conditions were ripe." 6
5 This disparity seems to have had repercussions also in the realm of pastoral
judgment. San Francisco Archbishop John R. Quinn, while president of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, told the World Synod of Bishops in Rome
(Sept. 29, 1980) that in regard to contraception, "the moral issue as such has
been resolved by many " American Catholics who regularly receive the eucharist
while refusing to observe papal teaching; although he was greatly disturbed at
this situation in terms of its ecclesiological implications (and this was his major
point), he clearly indicated that he considered the eucharistic communion of these
non-conforming Catholics to be in good faith. But in his pastoral letter on homosexuality, issued only months earlier, the same prelate offered no similar allowance
for eucharistic participation in good faith by actively gay Catholics; on the contrary, he insisted that " homosexual persons who wish to receive the eucharist must
be honestly following the moral teachings of the church or at least seriously striving" to do so.-See Origins, X, #7 (July 3, 1980), 112; #17 (Oct. 9, 1980), 264-266.
6 Ronald Bayer, Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics of Diar
gnosis (N.Y.: Basic Books, Inc., 1981), p. 7.

HOMOSEXUALITY

AND CHRISTIANITY

611

John Boswell and His Critics
The historical roots of this persisting societal hostility are the
subject of John Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance, and
JI omosexuality. For Boswell, a medieval historian at Yale
University, theological and moral issues are not of direct concern but his work does involve these matters to a considerable
degree. His thesis is that modern social intolerance of homosexuality, while ostensibly reflecting moral abhorrence derived
from Judaeo-Christian influence, is actually based on other
factors essentially unrelated to this religious heritage. In making his case, Boswell develops the following line of argument:
-Anti-homosexual attitudes have no credible foundation
either in Scripture or in any of several classical notions of
" nature."
-For more than a millennium, gay people in Christian society were not significantly censured (with isolated exceptions)
and even maintained a vibrant subculture at the dawn of the
High Middle Ages.
--,From the thirteenth century, gay people along with other
minorities (notably Jews) became the victims of rising intolerance, concomitant to both the general cultural thrust toward
uniformity and the xenophobia accompanying the crusades
against heretics and non-Christians.
-Thomas Aquinas's anti-homosexual teaching gave this intolerance a theological/philosophical rationale, which in turn
worked authoritatively to shape ecclesiastical and social policy
in the form it has essentially retained into the present.
Boswell's work has been highly publicized. Upon publication it was promptly greeted with enthusiastic notices which
praised its breadth of scope, abundance of detail, impressive
historical and linguistic erudition, and readable style in both
the text and the copious footnotes. 7 But later reviews, while
1 Paul Robinson in The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, Aug. 10, 1980),
pp. 12-IS; Jean Strouse in Newsweek (Sept. !t9, 1,980), pp. 79-81. The popular gay
monthly Christopher Street carried a similarly laudatory review by author Wallace
Hamilton (Sept. 1980, pp. 50-55).

BRUCE A. WILLIAMS, O.P.

also acknowledging these merits of the book, were more critical
of its thesis and argumentation. In The New York Review of
Books, a generally positive review nonetheless suggested that
Boswell's purported findings of homosexuality in medieval
writing were exaggerated to the point of special pleading. 8
Several gay critics charged the author with fallaciously trying
to exculpate the Christian church of anti-homosexual persecution.9 This accusation was subsequently repeated in a Commonweal review, which also faulted Boswell's analysis of Scripture.10 Still later, from other Catholic sources, Boswell was
criticized in more detail for his scriptural interpretations as well
as for his treatment of Aquinas, 11 and also for distorting the
concepts of " nature " in both classical and medieval philosophy
so as to discount their legitimate moral relevance in shaping
social disapproval of homosexuality. 12
There is, to be sure, a great deal wrong with Boswell's work.
Even the severest critics to date have not exposed its defects in
sufficient detail. The present review cannot do so either, although some of the more objectionable faults will be indicated
presently. But in this reviewer's judgment, as will then be explained, even the book's most serious flaws do not substantially vitiate its central thesis. The hostile reviewers, who have
inadequately specified Boswell's mistakes, have also largely
failed to appreciate the main issue he raises.
8 Keith Thomas, "Rescuing Homosexual History," The New York Review of
Books (Dec. 4, 1980), pp. 26-29.
9 Warren Johansson et al., Homosexuality, Intolerance, and Christianity: A Critical Examination of John Boswell's Work (Gay Academic Union, P.O. Box 480,
Lenox Hill Station, New York, NY 10021). Pp. 22; $2.00. See also Michael Bronski, "Gay History: Setting the Record Straight," Gay Community News Book
Review (Nov. 15, 1980), pp. 1-6.
1o Louis Crompton, "The Roots of Condemnation", Commonweal (June 5, 1981),
pp. 338-340.
11 See John Harvey's review in Linacre Quarterly (Aug. 1981), pp. 265-275.
12 Glenn W. Olsen, " The Gay Middle Ages: A Response to Professor Boswell,"
Communio (Summer 1981), pp. 119-138. Au advance summary of this review,
somewhat less temperate in tone, appei\red in the Fellowship of Catholic Scholar1
Nr;w1lr;tter (M11r.
PP· 18-19,

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AND CHRISTIANITY

613

Scripture
Debate continues among Christian scholars as to whether
biblical statements about sexuality are merely occasional and
fragmentary, or whether they constitute a coherent development of teachings premised on God's creative design as set
forth in Gen. 1-2.13 Boswell does not seriously consider the
latter alternative. Attempting to dismiss the relevance of
creation doctrine, he remarks that an account of human origins
would naturally have spoken exclusively of heterosexual union
since this alone can produce offspring (p. 105) ; he takes no
notice of the two distinct creation narratives, the earlier of
which (Gen. 2: 4b-25) explains sexual differentiation and union
in terms of male-female complementarity in "one flesh" without mentioning procreation. In similarly arbitrary fashion,
Boswell asserts (pp. 114-117) that all NT references to sexuality are simply ad hoc responses to situational questions, not
recognizing that both Jesus and Paul expressly cite the Genesis
" one flesh " doctrine (Mt. 19: 4-6; Mk. 10: 6-8; I Cor. 6: 16;
Eph. 5:31).
As regards homosexuality, therefore, the various biblical
comments are treated by Boswell as isolated data and subjected to negative prooftexting. This enterprise yields very unconvincing results:
a) The author concurs with D. S. Bailey that the Sodom
legend of Gen. 19 concerns a sin of inhospitality which includes
no indication of homosexuality. In adopting Bailey's interpretation, Boswell does not advert to the crucial difficulty which
troubled even John McNeill, viz., the anomaly of denying that
the Sodomites' demand to " know " the male strangers bears a
ls The former view, adopted by Anthony Kosnik et al. in Human Sexuality
(N.Y.: Paulist Press, 1977), was strongly criticized by George Montague in his
comments on the Kosnik volume (America, Oct. !l9, 1977, pp. !i84-!l85). Recent
Protestant defenses of the integral view of biblical sexual teaching include Don
Williams, The Bond that Breaks: Will Homosexuality Split the Church? (Los Angeles: BIM, Inc., 1978), and Richard Lovelace, Homosexuality and the Church:
Crisis, Conflict, Compassion (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1978).

614

BRUCE A. WILLIAMS, O.P.

sexual meaning while readily admitting such a meaning for the
same expression in reference to Lot's daughters just three
verses later. 14 Boswell's subsidiary argument, i.e. that other
OT denunciations of Sodom are silent on homosexuality, is likewise neither original nor persuasive. What is particularly exceptionable is his effort to corroborate his position by a highly
selective appeal to the Bible de Jerusalem. He cites one footnote in this renowned French edition (at Gen. 19: 8) which
concedes the sacred obligation of hospitality a precedence over
the honor of women in primitive Hebrew thought; 15 he does not
mention that the immediately preceding footnote, as well as
the textual translation (at v. 5), confirms the homosexual interpretation of the Sodomites' designs on Lot's male guests. 16
b) Proceeding to the Levitical condemnation of male homosexual activity (Lev. 18: 22, cf. 20: 18) , Boswell makes several
unacceptable assertions in attempting to discount its relevance
for formative Christian thought (pp. 100-105). This proscription, he claims, is a purely cultic ordinance; in the Septuagint,
which was the most pertinent text for early Christians, the
Hebrew toevah (" abomination ") is here translated by
bdelygma which is exclusively a cultic term; this material was
in any case generally unknown to Gentile Christians, since
pagans knew scarcely anything about Judaism except its peculiar dietary laws. Each of these points must be contested: contemporary Jewish scholarship tends to confirm the perennial
moral import of this Levitical condemnation; 11 frequently in
LXX, and also occasionally in NT, bdelygma or some form
thereof occurs in the contexts of fraud, injustice, and general
op. cit., pp. 1-28; McNeill, op. cit., pp. 42-48.
Bible de Jerusalem (new rev. ed.; Cerf, 1973). The footnote, correctly
quoted by Boswell (p. 95, n. 8), reads: L'honneur d'une femme avait alors moins
de prix ... que le devoir sacre de l'hospitalite. 16 In the text, the Sodomites' demand " that we may know " the male strangers
is translated pour que nous en abusions. The footnote to this verse, cross-referencing Jdg. 19 as well as Leviticus, comments: Le vice contre nature, qui tire son nom
de ce recit, etait abominable aux Israelites.
1 7 See Bernard J. Bamberger, Leviticus (The Torah: A Modern Commentary,
14 Bailey,

15 La

Vol. Ill; N.Y.: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1979), pp. 189-191.

HOMOSEXUALITY

AND CHRISTIANITY

615

wickedness;18 Paul's instructions in passages like I Cor. 10 and
Gal. 3-4
that his pagan converts were considerably
familiar with OT material.
c) Boswell's position on Rom. 1: 26-27 (pp. 107-113)-again
coinciding with the views of Bailey and McN eill-is that
s
censure does not refer to the erotic behavior of homosexual
people acting as is "natural" for them, but only to heterosexual people wantonly indulging lusts in excess of their own
"natural" inclinations. 19 This interpretation is consistent with
Boswell's summary rejection of Genesis creation theology as a
possible reference point for Pauline thought, supplemented by
his later observation that contemporaneous philosophical traditions concerning nature and natural law did not entail the
disapproval of homosexual practices per se (pp. 128 ff.). However, assuming that Roman society in apostolic times was in
fact not given to sexual wantonness although it did accept
stable homosexual relationships (as indicated in a previous
chapter, pp. 80-82, 87) , then it is exceedingly difficult to make
sense of Paul's remarks here as Boswell understands them. If
the condemnation of Rom. 1: 26-27 is consciously directed
against an atypical pervert minority in society, it could hardly
serve to illustrate the general reign of sin in pagan culture
(which is, as Boswell recognizes, the major theological point of
this entire Pauline passage). But if the charge of lustful perversion is made (falsely) against society as a whole, then Paul
must have been either mendacious or crassly ignorant of his
cultural environment.
d) Appendix One of Boswell's book ("Lexicography and St.
Paul," pp. 335-353) argues elaborately that the terms malakoi
and arsenokoitai in I Cor. 6: 9 (and arsenokoitais in I Tim.
1: 10) do not connote homosexual practices and were not so understood by even the most anti-gay Christian commentators
before Aquinas. The common term malakos (" soft") , it is oblBBroad usage of bdelygma occurs frequently in Proverbs (see 8:7, 11:1, 15:8-9,
16:2, 17:15, 29:27). See also Dt. 25:16; Is.1:13; Jer. 7:10. In NT, see Lk. 16:15;
Tit. 1:16; Rev. 21:27.
1 9 See McNeill (following Bailey), pp. 41-42, 58-56.

616

BRUCE A. WILLIAMS, O.P.

served, bears a wide diversity of meanings in both classical and
NT Greek, whereas the more obscure compound term arsenokoites ("male"-" bedmate") as used by Paul most probably
refers to male prostitutes engaging in various sexual activities
not necessarily with other males. Among all of Boswell's scriptural discussions this is the most original and suggestive, although his analysis is far from probative and is subject to objection at various points. 20 In any event, one must again protest Boswell's misuse of the Bible de Jerusalem in support of his
case (p. 338, n. 7); that Bible does indeed translate I Cor. 6: 9
without indicating homosexuality, but in I Tim. 1: 10 (contrary to Boswell's assertion) arsenokoitais is rendered by les
homosexuels.

Christian Tradition
The chapter on Scripture, preceded by a three-chapter section offering " Points of Departure," is followed by five chapters which survey post-biblical Christian attitudes toward
homosexuality through the mid-twelfth century. This discussion, which comprises by far the largest portion of Boswell's
book (150 pages), takes in ecclesiastical and civil legislation,
theology and preaching, and popular literature. What the author seeks to demonstrate here is that gay people in Christian
Europe were rarely subjected to Viery strong moral or legal
censure during this period, whereas the writings of some respected churchmen as well as romantic poets reveal homosexual
attraction and/or sympathies.
·20 As regards I Cor. 6: 9, Bailey concluded that malakoi and arsenokoitai denote
men who are, respectively, the passive and active partners in homosexual contact
(op. cit., p. 38). Don Williams argues contextually that malakoi must convey a
sexual meaning since it is listed immediately between " adulterers " and arsenokoitai
-and the meaning must be narrower than general sexual laxity so as to avoid
redundancy with pomoi, which heads the same Ii.st-whereas arsenokoitai itself, if
restricted to male prostitutes, would be incongruously the only specialized term in
a list which otherwise refers to general categories of sinners (op. cit., pp. 83-84).
Johansson maintains that Paul's arsenokoitai is a clear allusion to the LXX rendering of the Levitical anti-homosexual injunctions (op. cit., pp. !'l-3) .-Among Boswell's Catholic reviewers cited above, none seriously challenges him on this point:
Crompton is simply "unconvinced," Harvey concedes " for the salre of argument,"
and Olsen (FCS Newsletter) finds that Boswell is here "at his best."

HOMOSEXUALITY

AND CHRISTIANITY

617

Critical observations on this aspect of Boswell's work have
been varied. Some (gay sources especially) , as already noted,
dispute his generally benevolent portrayal of the earlier medieval church. Others have chailenged him on significant details
-finding, for example, that his alleged evidence for homosexual
proclivities in major figures like Anselm and Aelred is flimsy. 21
In any case, it is appropriately observed that none of Boswell's
ecclesiastical sources expresses moral approval or indifference
regarding homosexual activity: all explicit moral references to
the subject are negative-although they do vary widely in
both their argumentation and their severity-whereas none are
positive or simply neutraI. 22
The assessment of historical and literary materials is legitimately debatable in large measure; but Boswell's rather evident
misinterpretations in certain instances tend to confirm the impression that his over-all picture, while perhaps generally
sound, is quite overdrawn. For example:
a) Boswell is intrigued by the fact that anti-homosexual remarks in some ancient and medieval Christian sources alluded
to such animals as the hare, the hyena, and the weasel, inasmuch as the physical structure and conduct of homosexual activities among men was thought to be reflected in peculiar
anatomical and/or behavioral characteristics of those animals.
This comparison was applied variously: the Epistle of Barnabas conjectured that the Israelites had been forbidden to eat
the above animals (cf. Lev. 11) so as to avoid acquiring their
sexual abnormalities; conversely, a few early medieval spokesmen castigated or ridiculed homosexual men by assimilating
them to said animals. Boswell would have it that the sources
in question professed to abhor homosexuality because of its
supposed association with anomalous brute animals (see pp.
137-143, 306-307). Surely he makes too much of the matter.
However one appraises this analogy and its different uses, there
should be no mistaking what it essentially was: viz., a meta21 Thomas,

op. cit., p. !!9; Olsen, Communio, p. 186; Harvey, op. cit., pp. 270-!!71.
op. cit., pp.

22 Cf. Harvey,

618

BRUCE A. WILL!AMS, O.P.

phor by which some authors sought to illustrate what they regarded as the baseness of homosexual practices.
b) Augustine (Confessions 3.8) is misconstrued as considering homosexuality unnatural only in the sense that it is unlike
the familiar and customary sexuality of most people (pp. 150151) . The saint's Latin text, given in the footnote (n. 57) but
not translated, shows how seriously Boswell has distorted his
views. Homosexual actions (qualia Sodomitarum fuerunt) , for
Augustine, are contra naturam in such wise that they should
always and everywhere be detested and punished (ubique ac
semper detestenda atque punienda sunt) . Even if all peoples
practiced these actions (quae si omnes gentes facerent) , they
would be held criminally guilty under divine law for conducting
themselves in a manner contrary to God's creative design
(divina lege ... quae non sic fecit homines ut se illo uterentur
modo). As a conclusion to these observations, Augustine remarks: " To be sure, right relations between us and God are
violated when the very nature which he created is defiled by
the perversity of lust." 23 Then, by way of distinction from
these unnatural vices which are universally criminal regardless
of cultural mores, Augustine speaks of actions which are crimes
only against social custom (quae autem contra mores hominum
sunt fiagitia); without giving examples of such actions, he
merely comments that they should be avoided according to
what diverse customs dictate (pro morum diversitate vitanda
sunt) .-Boswell, completely missing Augustine's broad distinction between these two categories of crimes, would reduce the
first category (which includes homosexual practices) to the
second.
c) Sometimes, in his eagerness to downplay moral disapproval of homosexuality during the earlier Middle Ages, Bos23 Violatur quippe ipsa societas quae cum Deo nobis esse debet, cum eadem
natura, cujus ille auctor est, libidinis perversitate polluitur. Boswell misreads libidinis
perversitate as simply " carnal desire," and accordingly finds confirmation of his
view that the " nature " which is defiled is not common human nature but the
individual's personal constitution; otherwise the entire human race would always
be alienated from God, he argues, since c;:arnal desir4' is common to all people.

HOMOSEXUALITY

AND CHRISTIANITY

619

well reaches for supporting evidence which turns out to be
counterevidence. Trying to depict the attitude of some writers
as indulgent to the point of casualness, he cites the satirical
poet Walther of Chatillon as holding that God simply " laughs
at" clerics who commit sodomy (p. 236) . In the footnote (n.
100), Walther's Latin is given-qui in celis habitet, irridebit
eos-followed by a remark attributing this verse (unlike many
others) to the poet's original composition, thus revealing Boswell's failure to recognize it as a quotation from Ps. 2: 4 (Vulgate) which expresses God's scorn toward those who conspire
against him and his anointed. Later on (p. 303, n. 2) , the
author likewise misses Aelred's allusion to a similar concept in
Ps. 31(32):9-sicut equus et mulus, quibus non est intellectus
-mistaking this as a morally neutral reference by Aelred to
homosexual behavior among horses and mules.

Thomas Aquinas
The formal teaching of Thomas Aquinas on homosexuality
is viewed ,by Boswell as a rationalization of popular hostility
thinly disguised as objective moral evaluation (pp. 315-328).
Aquinas's reprobation of homosexual behavior as" unnatural"
is denied credence on the grounds that it is patently fallacious
and even in conflict with his own admission, made parenthetically in a different context, that some people are " naturally"
inclined to such behavior.
Boswell of course has no difficulty in showing that terms like
" nature," "natural," and " against nature " are used in diverse
senses by Aquinas; it is also true that Thomistic moral discussions involving those terms do not always explicate which precise meaning is operative. But while this makes for a degree
of difficulty in interpreting some of Aquinas' argumentation, it
does not engender fallacy unless the key term is used equivocally within a given argument. Not only does Boswell never
succeed in showing this, but he compounds the hermeneutical
problems by failing to appreciate the explicit definitions and
distinctions which Aquinas does offer, and by introducing
equivocations of his own:

620

BRUCE A. WILLIAMS, O.P.

a) In discussing Aquinas's most formal treatment of the
"sins against nature" (II-II, 154, 11-U), Boswell purports to
find several discrepancies. Allegedly these articles lack any coherent notion of the " nature" which the sins in question violate, and none of the several likely possibilities seems particularly relevant to homosexuality. The various suggested meanings " are many and inconsistent, ranging from the ' nature '
of the venereal act to the ' order of nature.' ' Human nature '
is the most prominent ... " (p. 828, n. 72) .24 Actually, in a. 11
(resp.) , these are not three different definitions as Boswell indicates here but only one: a sin against nature is that which
repugnat ipsi ordini naturali venerei actus qui convenit humanae speciei; evidently enough, the repugnance spoken of is
verified inquantum impeditur generatio prolis (cf. a. 1). Again
quite clearly, this precise meaning is what governs the statement that sins such as fornication and adultery non repugnant
humanae naturae (a. 11, ad 1) ; so taken, this is not inconsistent
with Aquinas's earlier observation (a. 2) that fornication isin a broader sense-contra naturam humanam (pace Boswell,
pp. 828-824).
b) I-II, 94, 8 ad 2 similarly explains a two-fold meaning of
contra naturam, viz., according to whether something is opposed to human nature in its distinctively rational dimensions
or in its biological dimensions shared with lower animals.
Homosexual acts, Aquinas declares, are called " unnatural " in
a specialized sense according to the second meaning of contra
naturam, whereas the first meaning would make all sins (of
whatever kind) " unnatural " as such. Boswell, correctly quoting this passage but missing the import of its distinction entirely, finds Aquinas guilty of circularity for " argu [ing] that
homosexual acts are immoral because they are immoral." (p.
824; cf. p. 828)
c) Terms such as "unnatural," "against nature," and "be24 In the same footnote, Boswell suggests that the last of these meanings echoes
Augustine, "who doubtless influenced Aquinas on the matter, but Thomas's position is markedly different." This statement, of course, reflects Boswell's misunderstanding of Augustine as pointed out above.

HOMOSEXUALITY

AND CHRISTIANITY

621

yond (or exceeding) the natural " are apparently regarded by
Boswell as synonymous; in fact, " unnatural " appears as a
translation of both non naturalis (p. 325) and contra naturam
(p. 328). Not surprisingly, Boswell is unable to discover how
Aquinas could logically view homosexual practice as any more
unnatural than celibacy (pp. 825-826).
d) Aquinas's acknowledgment that some people connaturally enjoy homosexual behavior (I-II, SI, 7) likewise suffers from
oversimplification. Boswell misreads this text as affirming " a
sort of ' innate ' homosexuality " which comes about " naturally" in some fashion, like the heating of water (p. 326) . Actually the point of the article is to explain how some pleasures
can ·be "unnatural"
(innaturales, contra naturam) even
though pleasure would seem by definition to be agreeable to
nature (connaturalis). The heating of water provides a general analogy to show how pleasures which are " unnatural " for
human beings according to their specific nature (simpliciter
loquendo) can be "natural" for some persons in peculiar circumstances (secundum quid and per accidens) .25 Aquinas proceeds with a variety of other examples, not mentioned by Boswell, to show that this can arise from very diverse kinds of
contingencies. His final illustration, which cites homosexual
practice along with bestiality and cannibalism, simply remarks
that these activities become connaturally pleasurable to some
men "from custom" (propter consuetudinem)-a qualification which Boswell ignores. 26 Aquinas's point here may or may
not be significant for the contemporary discussions of homosexual orientation; but at the very least, it certainly does not
2 5 Aquinas states the water analogy tersely: sicut huic aquae calefactae est naturale quod calefaciat. The evident sense is that water is not "naturally " (simpliciter) a source of heat, but a given body of water which has been heated will,
in its turn, "naturally" (per accidens) givie heat to another object in contact with
it.-Boswell's understanding of the example is somewhat imprecise: "although
water is not 'naturally ' hot, it may be altogether ' natural ' for water under certain
circumstances to become hot." (p. 326)
2 s This important qualification has also been missed by other commentators,
e.g.,
McNeil! (op. cit., pp. 97-98), and Gerald Coleman, Homosexuality-An Appraisal
(Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1978), p. 82.

622

BRUCE A. WILLIAMS, O.P.

affirm any sort of "innate" homosexuality. Nor is it in conflict with his previously cited moral condemnations of homosexual practice.
" In the end," states Boswell,_" Aquinas admits more or less
frankly that his categorization of homosexual acts as ' unnatural ' is a concession to popular sentiment and parlance."
(p. 828) None of the texts discussed comes anywhere near to
making this evident. What is painfully evident, as one reviewer
comments, is that Boswell has presented a " grotesque caricature" of Aquinas's thought. 21 No less grotesque is the further
claim that Aquinas's ideas about homosexuality gained authoritative status in conjunction with the later medieval church's
insistence " that everyone accept in every detail not just the
infallible pronouncements of popes and councils but every
statement of orthodox theologians." (p. 880)

Morality, Church and Society
Most regrettably, by his considerable distortions as instanced
above, Boswell tends to harm the credibility of the sound and
important message he wants to communicate. Gay people and
churchpeople alike urgently need to understand that the Christian moral tradition is not, and never was, an authentic warrant for the homophobia that has been all too widely manifested in church and society into the present. This central message remains largely unaddressed by Boswell's hostile and progay reviewers, who are evidently threatened by any suggestion
that they should cease regarding the church as their enemy, as
well as by some of his Catholic reviewers who seem defensively
preoccupied with vindicating official church teaching. Critics
from both groups have mainly contented themselves with
pointing out Boswell's mistakes, which he has obligingly provided for them in abundance.
Nevertheless, despite his overkill, Boswell's message is duly
validated. In the face of his ample evidence concerning the unevenness of ecclesiastical and civil legislation on homosexuality
21 Harvey,

op. cit., p. 278.

HOMOSEXUALITY

AND CHRISTIANITY

623

through the first twelve centuries of Christendom, it should not
be possible for anyone to continue believing that the harsh repression in later medieval and modern periods expresses perennial Christian teaching. And while moral objections to homosexual practice are not (as Boswell pretends) the sheer fabrications of hostile cultural prejudice, in all likelihood this false
impression will be effectively dispelled only when those upholding traditional Christian morality commit themselves unequivocally to the elimination of homophobic intolerance in both
the ecclesisastical and civil realms. Specifically, the authenticity of the Catholic moral position can hardly escape suspicion
while pastors remain unwilling to treat gay people with the
same empathetic concern which they are increasingly disposed
to show toward other problem groups of believers (contraceptive married couples, and the remarried divorced) and refuse
to support their legitimate protests against social discrimination.
It may be of particular interest to pursue Boswell's comparison-acknowledged as " convincing " by one of his severest
Catholic adversaries 28-between the fortunes of gay people and
Jews throughout the history of Western Christendom (pp. 1516, 273-278) . At various times, Boswell notes, both of these
minorities have simultaneously been subjected to social persecutions which were ostensibly religious crusades. One could
proceed further from this observation and ask whether, or to
what extent, more recent Christian efforts to overcome antiSemitism might furnish instructive models for dealing with
homophobia.
Both cases clearly call for a critical reappraisal of theological
sources, beginning with the Scriptures themselves. As with
anti-Jewish materials in the NT, it can be admitted that explicit biblical comments on homosexqality (particularly in
Leviticus and Romans) largely reflect the social perspectives
and/or polemical interests of the inspired writers. These ad hoc
cultural factors do not of themselves account for the biblical
2s Olsen, Oommunio, p. 126.

624

BRUCE A. WILLIAMS, O.P.

condemnation of homosexual practice, since such practice
would be fundamentally disapproved anyway in terms of the
" one flesh " heterosexual anthropology of Genesis; but they
can be seen to have aggravated the expression of this condemnation in a way which furnished a specious religious warrant for subsequent homophobic manifestations in Christian
society. 20
Post-biblical theological development requires similarly critical examination. Boswell has egregiously erred in minimizing
the consistency of Christian teaching against homosexual behavior, viewing the earlier instances of such teaching as isolated exceptions within a general pattern of benign toleration
tinged even with amusement. But he has nonetheless impressively shown that expressions of moral opposition to homosexuality, from subapostolic times through much of the medieval period, were far from uniform as to their use of Scripture,
their methods of argumentation, and their severity of censure;
and he is quite plausible in proposing that in some of the most
extreme examples of severity (e.g. Chrysostom, Peter Damian) , prejudice is a more relevant factor than objective
theological or ethical evaluation.
Finally, despite Boswell, the Thomistic position cannot be
simply written off as nonsensical so as to leave it with no other
explanation save the thirteenth-century recurrence of homophobia; but in the end, it must be conceded, Aquinas does seem
to characterize homosexual practices with an exceptionally
harsh opprobrium beyond what is strictly entailed by the main
lines of his natural-law argumentation (see II-II, 154, 12) . In
this area as in so many others, the historical context in which
2 9 The problem of NT anti-Jewish polemics has been addressed cautiously by
the Catholic magisterium (Vatican II, Nostra Aetate, #4), and much more radically
in recent years by Rosemary Ruether, Faith and' Fratricide (N.Y.: Seabury Press,
1979), ch.
pp. 64-116. On the homosexual question, a moderate reassessment of
the theological significance of biblical condemnations (particularly Romans) has
been proposed by Helmut Thielicke, The Ethics of Sex (trans. Doberstein; Grand
cf. Joseph Fuchs, Human Values and
Rapids: Baker Book House, 1975), pp.
Christian Morality (trans. Heelan et al.; Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1970), pp.
!!9-30.

HOMOSEXUALITY

AND CHRISTIANITY

625

Aquinas formulated his thought must be granted its due
weight. It is entirely legitimate to suppose that his over-all
attitude toward homosexuality was influenced by the resurgent
societal hostility of which Boswell speaks, in much the same
way that his rationale for inflicting the death penalty on heretics (II-II, 11, 3)-coherent in itself although arguably somewhat inconsistent with his genera.I perspectives on conscienceis to be understood in reference to the prevailing assumptions
of his ecclesiastical and political milieu.80
As these reflections suggest, the satisfactory assessment of
homosexuality in church and society will require an adequately nuanced insight into biblical and other theological sources
along with an appreciation of historical and other empirical
data. Although Boswell is careful at times to moderate his
claims, this reviewer's impression is that he has succumbed to
the temptation of trying to prove too much through historical
and literary analysis without sufficient theological expertise.
His book should not persuade anyone that a consistent Christian tradition of moral opposition to homosexual practice is
either non-existent or vacuous. But a judicious reading should
lead responsible people to the realization that this tradition,
taken as a whole, does not provide the warrant commonly attributed to it for the homophobic hostilities which persist in
Christian and secular society.
BRUCE A. WILLIAMS,

O.P.

St. John's University
Jamaica, New York

30 On this latter question see the well known critique of Aquinas by Eric D'Arcy,
Conscience and Its Riqht tQ Freedom (N.Y.: Sheed and Ward, 1961), especially
Part m, pp. 147-180,

BOOK REVIEWS
The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism. By DAVID TRACY. New York: Crossroad, 1981. Pp. xiv + 467.
$24.50.
The Analogical Imagination (hereafter, AI) is the second volume of one
of the most ambitious theological projects in the world. In a trilogy of
texts, David Tracy is proposing a massively original agenda for theologythe most original, I think, ever proposed by an American Catholic theologian. He bega:q with a book on fundamental theology (Blessed Rage
for Order [New York: The Seabury Press, 1975]); a third volume will be
on practical theology. AI is an exercise on and in systematic theology, outlining what is rightly called a " complex theological strategy " (xi) . In
fact, it is only Tracy's demand for genuine dialogue in theology that moves
me from analyzing this complexity to evaluating what I take to be its key
moves. On this score I will {to use one of Tracy's favorite expressions)
risk the proposal that AI is more successful at displaying the Culture of
Pluralism than it is as Christian Theology; the analogical imagination,
despite its considerable usefulness as a formal device, does not adequately
assemble the central issues of a systematically theological agenda.
The overall movement of the book is clear. Part I is "an exercise in
fundamental theology designed to show the truth status of the claims of
systematic theologians" (85 [n. 31]). Tracy does this by sketching social
(c. 1) and theological {c. 2) portraits of the theologian and proposing the
artistic classic as the analogue for getting at issues of meaning and truth
in systematic theology (cc. 3, 4, and 5). Part II is Tracy's actual exercise
in systematic theology {98 [n. 117]) . Here he elaborates the hermeneutical
principles which yield an interpretation of the Christian Classic, " the event
and person of Jesus Christ" (cc. 6 and 7). This classic is critically correlated with the emergence of "the uncanny " in the Contemporary Situation
(c. 8). Tracy then proposes a threefold grid (Manifestation, Proclamation,
and Praxis) for understanding Christian responses (c. 9) and concludes
with a summary proposal of his own Christian analogical imagination (cc.
10 and 11).
The details of AI are much more difficu1t to summarize. One way to
handle this problem is to move backward through the book's " four principal steps " {xi), summarizing and offering some constructive criticisms.
First, the analogical imagination works like this. A theologian picks some
primary analogue {focal meaning, paradigm) and other things which" constitute the whole of reality" (God, self, other selves, society, history:,

BOOK REVIEWS

627

nature). Tracy's own proposal is that "the concrete focal meaning for a
Christian systematics is the always-already, not-yet event/gift/grace of
Jesus Christ" (428; cp. 182, 817, 822, 408, 480). This focal meaning can
be" mediated" through Manifestation, Proclamation, and/or Praxis. Next,
the analogical imagination shows the similarity in difference within and
between the analogues-their order and perhaps harmony, their variety
and intensity (including dialectical negations). Tracy does exactly this,
summarizing the ways different mediations of the Christ-event affect views
of God, self, and cosmos. But, he insists, all three mediations are necessary
if we are to take account of the full reality of the Christ-event, the alreadynot-yet power of God' .s love, the agapic transcendence of the self, and the
full reality of the world (429-88}. Finally, the analogical imagination risks
the self-exposure of putting these similiarities-in-differences in the public
forum (c. 11).
The analogical imagination proves enormously useful for classifying several hundred theologians. Where, some might ask, are the classic theological topics periodically mentioned (e.g., grace, creation, redemption, eschatology, sacraments, faith, revelation, etc. [872-378])? Because Tracy is
more interested in the " second order " language of analogy than in first
order religious language (408), the" basic grammar" of any" assemblage"
of topics (373) remains at best implicit. Tracy's scheme could perhaps be
applied in useful fashion to classic arguments over predestination, creation,
preservation, justification, deification, etc., by making the issue of history
a topic distinct from God and self and world. But, until this is done, it
will prove difficult if not impossible to compare Tracy's systematic theology
to the systematic texts of a Thomas or a Calvin, a Tillich or a Barth.
Of course, Tracy's aim is not to present a complete systematic theology
but to exhibit " the kinds of basic moves " needed in such a theology (444
[n. 41]}. Whether the analogical imagination can be brought to bear more
directly on other topics depends on the meaning and truth of Tracy's focal
meaning. Most of Part II is devoted to explicating this prime analogue:
the event and person of Jesus Christ in the immediacy of experience mediated by the tradition (which is normed by the expressions of Scripture},
developed and corrected by historical and literary and social criticisms, and
correlated with our present situation (!W8-241}. Given this way of putting
the matter, it will prove useful to take chapters 6 through 9 as answers to
three questions: How can the immediacy of the Christ-event avoid a kind
of intuitionism ("I simply experience Jesus as Christ now.") P How can
the claim that the "dangerous memory" of Jesus is " mediated " avoid
skepticism over whether we do " immedi!J.tely" experience Jesus as the
Christ? Finally, how can the Christ-event (immediate or mediate) be theology's focal meaning without collapsing the "person " of Jesus into that
event? Tracy's answers to these questions are provided in an original read-

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ing of both the New Testament (cc. 6-7) and the Contemporary Situation
(cc. 8-9).
Using historical and social and especially literary critical methods, Tracy
proposes that an interpreter must hold together six Scriptural genres: proclamation and narrative, symbol and reflection, apocalyptic and doctrine
(264-87) . Each of these genres merits its own analysis and evaluation. I
know of no Catholic theologian who has taken the alternative solutions to
the problem of the diversity of Scripture as seriously as Tracy. Indeed, the
diverse genres are a kind of precedent for the style of "mixed genre" which
Tracy elsewhere claims is paradigmatic for systematic theology. 1 Further,
another reason for Tracy's lack of attention to classical theological topics
is that such attention is peculiar to one systematic genre. In any case, the
reading of the New Testament is only part of the case Tracy makes for
the Christ-event as primary analogue. The material unity of a christology
is provided by historical and literary methods; but the formal unity is provided by the " basic pattern " of situation-event-response in Scripture,
Tradition, and the Contemporary Situation (305, 318) . The Contemporary
Situation is characterized by the fact that there is no one fundamental
question (341, 346). But Nietzsche, Marx, Freud, and Heidegger suggest
that "homelessness ... is one, perhaps the most familiar, kind of experience
expresin our situation " (358). This leads Tracy to focus on
sions of "the uncanny" (362f), ultimately proposing H. Richard Niebuhr's
" Christ the transformer " as " the key " to the transformation of situation
and responses (374-76). Contemporary theologies are then read as responses to this Situation (c. 9).
What, in sum, is the Christ-event? It is the inseparable set of relationships involved in the person of Jesus experienced in the present Situation
and mediated by Tradition and Scripture. In other words, the Christ-event
is the relationship between Jesus, the self, community, world, Scripture,
Tradition, etc. There is clearly more " event " than "person " of Jesus
Christ in these central chapters. In fact, the emphasis on the internal relations of the various participants in the event is so great that one sometimes
wonders what differences generate the need to speak analogously of them.
How, one might ask, can Jesus Christ "transform" situation and response
if christology is so shaped by Scripture, Tradition, and the Contemporary
Situation? If Tracy cannot answer this question, the person of Jesus Christ
will be merely a function or a variable of the event, dependent solely on
the event's mediacy or immediacy; in this- case, there would be no way to
prevent someone from reshuffiing Tracy's primary and secondary analogues,
making the person and/or event of Jesus Christ subject to a vision of God,
selves, cosmos, or history.
1 See "Review Symposium. David Tracy's The Analogical Imagination," Horizons. The Journal of the College Theology Society 8 (# 2, Fall, 1981), 880.

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However, I think that Tracy does address if not answer this question in
Part I of AI. The foundations for his claims about Scripture and the Situation are a set of claims about "the classic" in general (c. 3) and the religious classic in particular (cc. 4-5). Tracy claims that these chapters are
" the heart of the argument of the entire book " (xii) . Here we find, next
to "the event and person of Jesus Christ," the second most important
concept in AI: disclosure: AI is based on a disclosure theory of truth (6263, 68, 195) . The Christ-event is a disclosure. The different genres of
Scripture are held together by their disclosive character. The different
mediations of the event trade on disclosure. The emphasis on disclosure
also accounts, I believe, for the often unruly style of AI. All of these
are backed by an aesthetic theory of disclosure and share its strengths and
weaknesses.
Tracy explains " disclosure " in the context of a claim that systematic
theology is hermeneutical, i.e., the interpretation (not repetition) of a
tradition given us by our historicity and finitude (99-100, 103). The
hermernmtical paradigm is an aesthetic experience which includes all the
"elements basic to the total situation of any work of art" (artist, art
work, the world created and the audience) . Tracy proposes five major
steps in the interpretation of any classic (151-52 [n. 107]) but centers on
the " realized experience " of the reader as " the first and final criterion of
relative adequacy" (107, 111, 118, 118, 121). In fact, a "classic" is an expression of the human spirit which " discloses " a truth about our lives so
compelling that we cannot deny it " some kind of normative status " (108) .
My own way of understanding what Tracy is doing here is this. When
we call something aesthetically apt (e.g., beautiful, harmonious, unified,
ordered, etc.), we are neither ascribing qualities to an object nor projecting
something onto the art work (cp. 110-112). Both of these moves would
deny the internal relation between all the elements of the realized experience. In the standard categories of some meta-aesthetic theories, Tracy is
an aesthetic relationalist rather than an aesthetic objectivist or subjectivist.
Indeed, the primary role of the notion of disclosure is to rule out aesthetic
objectivism and subjectivism while retaining the truth of both in an event
which internally relates all the elements of aesthetic experience. Thus, a
classic is not something that is normative, valuable, and important independently of my experience; neither is a classic merely a dispensable instrument of some independent experience. A classic is what it is only in a
disclosive meeting between subject and object. The notion of disclosure
(like the notion of revelation [185 (n. 34), 193]) is, on this reading, an
ellipsis for this whole set of relationships.
Now I am not unsympathetic to a kind of aesthetic relationalism. But
it seems to me that relationalist aesthetic theories focused on disclosure
have two weaknesses. First, subject and object can be so internally related

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that each becomes a function of the other; second, subject and object can
only be apprehended in the " moment " of disclosure and never in the narrative continuity which Tracy himself claims is so crucial to personal identity
And this, I think, is precisely what happens in Tracy's vision of
the event and person of Jesus Christ. First, the person sometimes becomes
merely a variable dependent on one or more features of the event (e.g.,
Scripture, Tradition, personal experience, the Situation). Second, and more
often, the event itself becomes a dimensionless occurrence (an "event/
gift/grace") unrelated to its cumulative history.
Another example of this occurs when Tracy applies his theory of the
classic to religious classics (cc. 4-5) . A religious classic is " an event of
disclosure, expressive of the ' limit-of,' ' horizon-to,' ' ground-to ' side of
' religion ' "; it is a disclosure of " the whole of reality by the power of the
whole" (163). When realized experience of the religious classic promotes
' preverbal participation,' Tracy calls the expression " Manifestation "; when
it promotes ' verbal participation,' Tracy calls it " Proclamation " (203) .
It is thus via the notion of disclosure that Manifestation and Proclamation
become" the main rubric for the present thought experiment" (205). Now
some might want to question a theory of religion focused on the metaphor
of " limit "; others might question the distinction between pre-verbal and
verbal disclosive experiences. But the main point here is that a disclosure
theory of religions reiterates the weaknesses of the disclosure theory of art.
Perhaps such difficulties could be overcome by linking the person of Jesus
more directly to the Trinity (443 [n. 30], 444 [n. 41]) and explicating the
Christ-event on a modern version of the medieval aesthetics of grace. But
the theory of disclosure makes it difficult to know how this might be done.
Why use such a notion of disclosure? Theology, Tracy argues in the first
two chapters, must be public. But theology's public is both complex (because it includes Society, Academy, and Church) and ambiguous (because
theology's central subject matter is God) . Indeed, it is the publicness of
God which calls for a division of theological labor on the basis of " distinct
models for truth" (62): fundamental theology (using an experiential model
of truth [63]), systematic theology (using the disclosure theory of truth
criticized above [68]), and practical theology (using a transformation model
of truth [71]). All these ki!lds of theology share a commitment to interpreting a religious tradition and the religious dimension of the situation,
critically correlating these two, and putting that correlation in the public
forum using their distinct but overlapping models of truth (58-62).
I find this a very rich view of the theological profession. Questions of
meaning rather than truth are central at this point. In brief and in the
process terminology Tracy sometimes prefers, " correlation " (despite
Tracy's careful qualifications 88 [n. 44]) too easily suggests that the pub"
licity and privacy (sic) of actual entities are related to each other and

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631

eternal objects in a single way instead of in the many ways that compel
Whitehead to have twenty-seven categories of explanation. It is not that
" correlation " may not be a fit description of one moment of the theological task; and it can clearly be useful as a way to read history, to make
various pedagogical points, and even to organize a book. But is it unfair
to suggest that a genuinely pluralistic methodology will prefer a changing
and variously ordered set of "sources" (e.g., Revelation, Scripture, Tradition, Experience, etc.) rather than one or two? In this context one would
not so much " correlate " these data as " bring them to bear in different
ways " on various issues. There would then be less need to rely on a disclosure model of truth, for " truth " would not be constituted by a single
" event " but by a whole way of life from and in and toward Jesus Christ.
Such a view would also encourage theologians to spend less time discussing
criteria and more time bringing such criteria to bear on the whole range
of classic Christian credenda and agenda.
However, with this last paragraph I may have already exceeded the
limits of a brief review. Tracy would have every right to insist on seeing
a developed alternative. On the other hand, the constructive criticisms may
matter very little: the conversation itself, as Tracy insists, is what is important. AI is written with such modesty, breadth of knowledge, and sense
of complexity that it is the best among the rare works that try to tackle its
subject matter. The comments offered here are parasitic on that fact.
JAMES J. BUCKLEY

Loyola College
Baltimore, Maryland

Multiple Echo. By CORNELIUS ERNST, O.P. Edited by Fergus Kerr, O.P.,
and Timothy Radcliffe, O.P. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1979.
Pp. 238. £8.95.
This book is a posthumous collection of occasional pieces, edited by two
of Ernst's former students, Ernst himself having died very unexpectedly
in 1977 at the age of 53. This review is by one of his former colleagues. I
lived in the sames houses of the English province as he did from 1950 to
1966, during which time we were first students together and then lectors
in the house of philosophy at Hawkesyard. So my reaction to these essays
will be colored by a different kind of familiarity from that of the editors.
First of all a few words about the work of the editors. Their short introduction is simply about Cornelius Ernst and his thought, and says nothing
about how they themselves set about their editorial work. We don't know,

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I don't know, whether we have here a selection of his articles and essays,
or a complete collection of them. They are not arranged chronologically
in the order in which they were composed; we are not told what the principle of arrangement is. Perhaps it doesn't matter. It is rather odd that we
should first have a table of contents, which gives no indication of where
or when the essays first appeared, and then a table of " Original Sources",
which practically repeats the contents, giving this information. That is,
no doubt, a publisher's decision. I would have appreciated a rather longer
introduction, including a more ample memoir of the author. But the one
substantial criticism I have of the editors is for their choice of quotation
from a notebook of his, written in 1972, with which they begin their introduction, and which is reproduced in the blurb. The first two sentences of
this quotation are, "Ultimately, I cannot accept the framework of experience demanded and presupposed by the orthodox ecclesiastical tradition.
I think I must face this, with consequences I can't foretell".
Now the immediate inference from these two sentences is that Cornelius
Ernst was having difficulties about the Catholic faith. True, " orthodox
ecclesiastical tradition " is not the same as " Catholic faith ", but they are
clearly connected, and that phrase "with consequences I can't foretell",
has an ominous ring about it. It is very probable that when he wrote
these words he was having doubts at the very least about the orthodoxy
of his faith (and he was not the kind of light-hearted fellow who treats
" orthodoxy " as a boo word and "heresy " as a hurrah word}. It seems
to me even more probable that it was this hint of unorthodoxy and trouble
with the faith that caught the attention of the blurb composer.
But this spicy suggestion of unorthodoxy is wholly alien to the content
of these essays, and to the basic thought of Cornelius Ernst. As the editors
say on the last page of their introduction, " the central conviction of his
own Christian experience " can be stated in his own words from his critique
of Robinson's Honest to God: "the very grace-life in us is a conformation
to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ". Their introduction as a
whole certainly does justice to its subject, but their opening quotation from
his notebook does not.
The essays themselves reveal a man of quite formidable intelligence and
a daunting range of reading. It is for this reason that I must confess myself
to be a wholly inadequate reviewer for assessing the content of the work,
being to all intents and purposes illiterate in most of the philosophical and
aesthetic pastures in which Ernst appears to have browsed so extensively.
Kant, Levi-Strauss, Heidegger, Schopenhauer, Chomsky, Wittgenstein,
James Joyce, Leavis, Rilke--and a host of others; these are to me splendid
names and no more.
I shall therefore confine myself to reflections on the quality or style of
these essays and of the intellect from which they spring. Formidable indeed

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683

it was. It was impossible not to be often a little frightened by Ernst; but
important not be panicked. For of course his intellect, though formidable,
was finite and so, to use a more telling synonym, limited. It was analytic
in its power rather than synthetic, more critical than systematic, destructive
indeed rather than constructive. I am not saying at all that he had a
simply negative mind; he destroyed with the Lord and not with the devil,
pulled down illusions, half-truths, sophistries in an entirely positive commitment to the truth. But construction, in the sense of putting things
together, of a lucid arrangement of parts, of a sequence of arguments, even,
leading to a firm conclusion-this was not his intellectual strong point. Of
hardly any of these essays can it be said, in my opinion, that it is well
constructed.
This is perhaps the most obvious explanation for the disappointing output of so learned and obviously professional a theologian: the translation
of the first volume of Rahner's Theological Investigations (1961), a little
book on grace, The Theology of Grace (1974), and the occasional publications collected here. Even though he died at the early age of 53, one is
tempted to say, of such a man, "Is that all? ". The excuse offered by his
editors, of the "heavy burden of teaching, in lectures and tutorials", is
hardly sufficient. Perhaps it is not fair to compare anyone in this field
with St. Thomas, but he died at the even earlier age of 49, and almost certainly carried an even heavier burden of teaching; and it was precisely the
burden of teaching that contributed to the flow of written works; as it does
in the modern situation, we must suppose, with people like Rahner, or
Schillebeeckx, or Kling.
The comparison with St. Thomas may be unfair, but for all that it is
a propos, because I think it is one that Ernst, without any arrogance or
conceit, made himself. " Why cannot I ", I think he asked himself, " or
any other theologian of the
century do for Catholic theology what
Aquinas did in the 13th? " This is basically the question he is asking in
the first of the essays printed here. The answer he gives, in effect, is that
we live in such a different world from that of the 13th century, one so
infinitely more complex and indigestible.
But this is not an altogether sufficient answer. In this talk (it was given
as a talk on Radio 3, the highbrow channel of the B.B.C. home service)
the speaker reveals an amiable and entirely unreprehensible envy of St.
Thomas for two qualities of his work, his clarity and his synthetic power;
qualities for which the work of Cornelius Ernst is not outstanding. The
objective answer Ernst gives to the question will no doubt explain why
we cannot realistically hope to find another modern Aquinas arising amongst
us today. But it will not excuse him or other theologians and philosophers
from attempting to make some sense of, find some meaning (to use his
own favorite word) in, the world we live in and experience in the
century.

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I think it has to be said that Ernst tended to shy away from the synthetic, constructive task. Not that he was in any sense a kind of nihilist
or radical sceptic and thought the task in itself impossible. He was certainly
no 20th century Qoheleth. But he busied himself rather too much with
the preliminaries, with method. About it he has some excellent things to
say, notably the following in the essay on Theological Methodology, an
article contributed to Sacramentum Mundi: "The rediscovery and appropriation of the literary complexity of the NT writings is the absolutely
primary prerequisite of any theologizing today if we are to overcome the
split between ' exegesis ' and ' theology ' and avoid certain misguided forms
of ' biblical theology ' (neither biblical nor responsibly theological) due to
the uneven growth of the Catholic mind for many centuries" (p. 80). But,
still, a kind of over-scrupulous fussing about method can, and did I fear in
the case of Cornelius Ernst, inhibit the production of much actual substance.
At the root of his 'synthetic weakness' there was, possibly, a certain
lack of confidence in his own formidable intellect. He was completely aware
of his intellectual capacity-and by no means unaware that his unusually
powerful mind tended to be at the service of, rather than in complete control of, a passionate and in some ways savage temperament. So he was, very
properly, rather afraid of himself (of his intelligence) and thus unsure of
himself.
Clarity, as I have suggested, was not usually his strong point, and is
certainly not the hallmark of these essays. The same is true of a number
of great minds, of Rahner for instance, who cannot forbear to submit most
of his sentences to the death of a thousand parentheses. But with Ernst
obscurity does not spring from any tortuous quality of his mind. Rather,
I think he tended to compensate for that self-mistrust, and that awareness
of the power of his feelings over his mind made him yield to the temptation
to parade his learning. Take the essay for example on " Metaphor and
Ontology in Sacra Doctrina" (reprinted from The Thomist, incidentally,
where it was first published in 1974) . Dealing as it does with the way St.
Thomas develops the ideas of Pseudo-Dionysius (another case of a powerful mind swathing itself in obscurity), it is bound to be difficult. But the
interruption of the argument of the essay in the middle with " A note on
Latin metaphora" (pp. 62-64) is sheer erudition for erudition's sake, and
hence obscurity for obscurity's sake.
It is a saving grace, however, that the author is aware of such faults,
and occasionally almost pokes fun at himself over them. Thus one of his
favorite words, and of its nature, so it seems to me, an obscure word, is
"ontology" or "ontological". It's a good big word that can mean almollt
anything or nothing. And somewhere, perhaps in this very essay, after
using it to tie up in knots the sense of what he is saying-he is discussing

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685

St. Thomas-he admits that St. Thomas himself never used the word. Three
cheers for St. Thomas, say I! St. Thomas, in fact, is never pretentious,
Ernst often is. But again, he knows it. One essay, "Wrestling with the
Word" is a sermon followed by an account of its preparation. After reading about a page of the second part I said to myself, " This is sheer pretentiousness"; I felt it about the sermon too. Then almost on cue Ernst
begins his next paragraph " I am afraid that much of this must seem pretty
pretentious, in view of what actually emerges and has actually emerged in
this case " (pp. 206 / 7) . The pretentiousness is at once more than half
redeemed.
This tendency to learned obscurity is a pity, because Ernst could command a splendid clarity when he really put his mind to it. That was usually when his mind and his feelings were working in uninhibited harmony at
the task of criticism. Then he could focus that formidable intellect with
the clarity and force of a water cannon-not lethal but terrifyingly effective. Here are some of his happier and more memorable remarks:
"In his preface Laurentin notes (Mary's Place in the Church, 1965) the
view that the Marian problem today is primarily an ecumenical one, in the
sense of being something to be soft-pedalled .... The view seems to arise
from a mistaken notion of Catholic ecumenism, which is not primarily a
tactic of ingratiation [my italics] but a cooperative search for the plenary
ecclesial sense of the whole" (p. 118).
" It seems to me that the central task of Christianity in this new era is
the sacralization of the central theme of this era: revolt " (p. 169) .
"I do not believe Christianity is about authority " (p. 46).
" Seminary philosophy must always tag on uneasily behind, never quite
able to catch up, uncertain whether it ought to adopt a posture of lofty
sophistication or one of progressivistic radicalism; all this because it lacks
the very conditions of originality, a kind of permanent wallflower at the
dance of life" (p. 128).
In "The Primacy of Peter: Theology and Ideology", he admits that he
has only recently (in 1969) discovered the history of the papacy, and
writes " I must record that the effect of this reading has been one of deep
shock. . . . It is not the depths to which the papacy has sunk, but the
heights to which it has climbed which raise the most searching questions
for the Christian conscience. I have been bound to ask myself whether
the papacy has not done more harm than good to the Church of Christ.
From the time of Victor and the paschal controversy to the present day,
with very few exceptions, a violent, intolerant dominativeness has been a
characteristic mode of papal utterance and behavior. Great, even saintly
men seem to have been the victims of a cruel, un-Christian system " (p.
173) . He goes to say that, as he wishes to remain a Roman Catholic, the
Christian justification of the papacy becomes for him a matter of urgent

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and acute concern. That he did remain a convinced, believing Roman
Catholic there is no doubt-but increasingly a highly critical one, which is
entirely as it should be.
EDMUND HILL, O.P.
St. Augustine's Seminary
Roma, Lesotho
Africa.

Violence and Responsibility. By JoHN HARRIS. New York: Routledge &
Kegan Paul, 1980. Pp. vii & 177. $20.00.
The inscription on this book is from Wittgenstein's " A Lecture on
Ethics ": " If a man could write a book on Ethics which really was a book
on Ethics, this book would, with an explosion, destroy all the other books
in the world." As Harris sees it, the explosive potential of his book lies in
the fact that a simple moral truth which virtually everyone accepts-that
we should not harm other people-has implications which challenge many
of our basic beliefs and which make very disturbing demands. This norm
is held to have these theoretically and practically significant implications
because failure to prevent harm is just as bad as actually inflicting it. Our
responsibility for what Harris calls " negative actions " is the same as our
responsibility for positive actions.
Among the precedents Harris cites is the New Testament account of the
Last Judgment: there Christ excludes from the Kingdom those who failed
to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and so on. But Harris's position is
not that of Christian morality. He has no time for considerations about
the order of charity, different sorts of responsibility, and so on. In fact,
Harris's position is so far from the common morality of the Hebrew-Christian tradition that it includes the denial of the prohibition of intentionally
killing the innocent. Harris's homogenizing of moral responsibility is the
reason for his rejection of the traditional prohibition of killing: such killing
might be necessary for saving lives. Since we are as responsible for the lives
we fail to save as for those we terminate, we should kill when-other moral
considerations being equal-killing will cause fewer deaths than the refusal
to kill. So, the explosive potential of Harris's book is real enough.
However, if good arguments are needed to detonate philosophical explosions, Harris's book must be judged a dud; For his arguments are remarkably weak and the gaps between what he does show and what he claims
to show are big ones indeed.
The core of Harris's argument is a polemic against the thesis that there
is a moral difference between negative and positive actions-and, in par-

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687

ticular, against the thesis that there is a difference between killing and
letting die. Harris begins this polemic by seeking to show that people cause
the harm they could but do not prevent.
The argument for thls conclusion is a critique of positions in which the
causal responsibility for non-doings is limited to those non-doings in which
there is a failure to do what is expected, or normal, or required by a role
the person has. Some damaging, but, in my opinion, remediable, criticisms
are directed at the positions of D'Arcy, Casey, and Hart and Honore. It is
dear that these writers are interested in the use of causal language relevant
for determining that a person's not doing something is a failure or omission
for which the person is responsible. The focus on expectations, normality,
and roles is meant primarily to provide a standard by reference to which
not doing something can be judged to be a failure. It is not clear whether
Harris is trying to show that any non-prevention of preventable harm is
a failure to do what is normal or expected or required by any role a person
might have, or whether he thinks that the standards established by expectations, roles, and so on have no place in defining a failure.
On either reading Harris's argument establishes very little. If no expectations are in place, then a failure is simply not doing something, and
negative causality, while broad in extent,, has little explanatory utility or
moral relevance. If the requirement to prevent harm if one can is built
into every decent role or set of expectations, then Harris's strategy is undercut. He uses the notion of negative causality as part of his definition of
negative action; negative actions are said to be cases of negative causality
in which the agent knows or ought reasonably to know that his doing
something would prevent something else from happening and that he could
do the preventing action. If negative causality is itself normatively defined,
it would seem to involve some knowledge of the morally interesting norms,
making the difference between negative causality and negative action to
be negligible. Even more important, the norms defining causality would
need to be defended-and, in particular, Harris's interpretation of the requirement to prevent harm when one can as being as stringent as any other
norm.
It seems to me, however, that the main shortcoming of Harris's discussion of negative causality and negative action is his failure to deal analytically with the relevant kinds of possibility expressed in his liberal uses of
" could " and its cognates. In the discussion of negative causation,
" could " would seem to refer to physical possibility; his uses suggest sufficient causal conditions-sufficient, that is, for preventing. But this is by
no means clear.
No attention is paid to the distinction between agent causation and event
causation; in particular, Harris seems to assume that it makes no difference
to one per8on's negative agency for an event that some other person de-

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liberately chose to bring about. Likewise, Harris does not raise the
question of how the sense of " could " used to describe choosing. freely is
related to other more straightforwardly causal uses of the word. The possibility involved in making a free choice is not obviously reducible to natural
ability or to causal possibility: the person deliberating faces alternatives
for action; he or she could do either but cannot do both. Having chosen
one the person could have done the other-but not, of course, if the person
had chosen as he or she did.
If Harris addressed such questions as these, I believe he would have been
led to deal with the objection that his definition of negative action lumps
together a rather heterogeneous collection of things for which-at least
apparently-the character of our responsibility is vastly different. Minimally, Harris would have to distinguish between deliberate choices not to do
something and other non-doings for which we are in some way responsible
even though they are not deliberate. On the face of it, the responsibility
for what we deliberately choose not to do is different from failures to do
things which we do not choose not to do but simply overlook. In the
former-where our choice is not to do something-we are just as responsible
for the non-doing as for a positive initiative we choose to undertake. But
in the latter case, the person who fails to act is regarded as negligent or
irresponsible, and such ascriptions of responsibility are different from ascriptions of responsibility for what we choose to do or not to do.
Harris would, of course, reject such distinctions as these as irrelevant
for determining what one's actions objectively are. He would perhaps admit
that differences like these are important for determining the blame or liability for one's negative actions. But this move merely begs the question
in favor of a consequentialist account of human action in which considerations about choice, intention, and so on are held to be irrelevant because
the objective states of affairs brought about are assumed to be what is
normally essential. Of course, Harris does introduce knowledge into his
definition of negative action. But we are not told why knowledge of what
one can do is part of the definition of action and not what one chooses or
intends as well. After all, lack of knowledge of what one could do can also
be construed as an excusing factor-it often is. Knowing what one is doing
or can do might just as well be a part of assessing the person or his character as a part of assessing the act itself. But, if even knowing is excluded
from the definition of acts, it is all too clear that action thus defined is not
what moral norms direct and evaluate.
Although Harris does not address the question why knowledge is part
of the definition of human action but choice and intention are not, he does
conduct an extended polemic against the use of intention in defining actsand, in particular, against its use in distinguishing positive from negative
acts.

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This polemic overlooks two essential points-namely, (I) that those who
use intention as part of the definition of action do not deny that we are
responsible in some way for the non-intended features and consequences of
our acts and (Q) that this position does not involve the plainly false claim
that " killing is of its very nature morally worse than letting die." The
claim is that some cases of letting die are not cases of intentional killing,
and that some are cases of intentional killing-and thus just as bad as or
worse than other cases of intentional killing.
Harris (p. 50) admits that there is plausibility in the view that we do
not intend the natural consequences of our acts, but thinks we should
conclude " that ' intention ', which leads to such sophistical arguments, is
not much help in determining responsibility or in distinguishing the moral
quality of different actions with the same or similar consequences." The
allegation of sophistry is not sustained; several difficult applications of the
double effect doctrine are simply asserted to be sophistical. What Harris
seems to mean by this charge is that these applications are counter-intuitive.
But it is by no means clear that the handling of borderline cases in ethics
should be intuitive. What is more, these counter-intuitive applications of
the double effect doctrine are the result of applying some very commonsensical notions to very difficult cases. By contrast, Harris's own position
is an enormous affront to common moral intuitions-a point he almost
gleefully acknowledges. In fact, Harris is very critical of those who appeal
to intuitions and moral feelings. The spirit of his argument is quite rationalistic. It is all the more troubling, therefore, that he is willing to appeal in
effect to moral intuitions when it suits his argument.
Harris goes on to criticize the moral framework of absolutism within
which the doctrine of double effect usually functions. He concludes that
this framework is not an intelligible moral perspective, but shows only his
own incomprehension of it. In the course of this discussion he raises an
important qusetion: " How intelligible is a morality which recognizes that
human life is in some sense valuable, indeed recognizes it as very valuable
indeed, and yet is prepared to sacrifice literally any amount [sic] of lives so
that one person shall not have to bring about the death of one other intentionally? " The answer Harris proposes shows what his question suggests: that consequentialist considerations are the only intelligible moral
reasons he can think of. He suggests that part of the answer might be that
it is good states of mind that matter morally, and not life itself. He objects
to this suggestion that a person is not " entitled to assume that there are
no good states of mind among those who must be sacrificed to keep his own
pure." But one who is convinced there are some choices one should never
make is not simply substituting a consequentialism of states of mind for
a consequentialism of extramental states of the world. Such a person might
be convinced that the proper stance towards human values like life includes

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not ever choosing to harm these values. If this view is irrational, it is not
simply because it is not consequentialist.
Harris goes on in the same vein to suggest that the double effect doctrine might assume that the states of mind which will be sacrificed are all
good, and likely to worsen. Thus, the double effect doctrine is as rational
as the action of those South American Indians who killed their newly
baptized babies so that they would die in the state of grace. Actually,
Harris's view should be that the double effect doctrine is less rational than
the Indians' killing of the babies since it involves the plainly false assumption that the states of mind to be sacrificed are good. This is hardly
serious philosophical criticism.
In short, this book raises serious questions but does not present compelling answers to them. More than anything else, it reveals the necessity
for serious analytical work in the theory of human action and in related
areas of moral psychology.
JOSEPH

M. BOYLE, JR.

The Center for Thomistic Studies
University of St. Thomas
Houston, Texas.

Identity and Essence. By BARUCH A. BRODY. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1980.
Eminently readable and carefully argued, Identity and Essence successfully
combines a purely formal definition of identity, a version of the Leibnizian
doctrine of the identity of indiscernibles, with an Aristotelian theory of essences. Brody develops this position through a sustained, often critical,
consideration of the prominent alternatives presented by his contemporaries.
The reasoning is compact, never superfluous, and always insightful, even if
not always convincing in every respect.
Brody begins by defending the adequacy of a general theory of identity.
He challenges the assumption that " the truth conditions of claims concerning identity may vary as the type of entity in question varies," e.g., physical object, person, or property (4). For any entities to be identical, it is
necessary and sufficient that they have all of their properties in common.
By definition, x = y = def. [ (F) (Fx s:= Fy) ]. Brody takes a property to
be anything that is had by an object, even only a single object. To establish the relatively more controversial point that having all properties m
common is sufficient for identity, Brody offers the following proof:
" (i ) Suppose that a and b have all of their properties in common
(ii ) a certainly has the property of-being-identical-with-a

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(iii) so, by supposition, does b
(iv) then b = a" (9).
With its construal of identity itself as a property, this proof and thus the
definition it is supposed to help establish appear circular. Most of chapter
one is devoted to refuting these and other objections to the general theory.
Taking a cue from Carnap, Brody argues that his definition of identity is
not circular, but impredicative. ' Identity ' does not occur in the definiens
(' the relation which holds between x and y just in case they have all of
their properties in common ') , Brody insists, nor must the relation of identity be understood to understand the definiens.
Brody's definition is satisfactory from the perspective of coming to know
that two objects are identical. Less convincing, however, is the claim that
his general theory is non-circular. I leave aside the problem of relating his
definition and proof to one another as well as the question of the legitimacy
of construing identity as both a relation and a property. The crucial issue,
on Brody's own terms, is whether' sharing a property' can be understood
without presupposing the relation of identity to be defined by that phrase
(in conjunction with other phrases) . Brody is right in insisting that the
definition, like its application, requires knowledge of neither all of the objects' properties nor their identity-properties. However, even the meaning
of' sharing a property' presupposes the relation of identity. Brody's theory
is meant to apply unrestrictively to objects and properties. Suppose, then,
that x and y have property F in common or, in other words, Fx and Fy.
To assert that x and y have F in common can only mean that there is an
identity between the F that is predicated of x and the F that is predicated
of y. (The difference between univocal predication in ordinary discourse
and such predication in formal logic, I am supposing, is precisely the strict
identity of predicates with the same name in the latter, e.g., Fx, Fy). Since
his theory of identity thus applies to properties as well as objects, Brody's
definition is circular.
After defending the adequacy of his theory for identity through time,
Brody concedes that his general theory begins with names for enduring
objects. In chapter two Brody turns to Strawson's demonstration that enduring objects are ontologically prior to momentary objects and to Carnap's
and others' program of constructing enduring objects from momentary ones.
Though it would provide a sound basis for his reliance on names for enduring objects, Brody rejects Strawson's alternative .. There is, Brody rightly
argues, insufficient warrant for the privileged status Strawson accords a
spatial-temporal framework. The argument that there is no important connection between ontological commitment and identifiability, as Brody also
maintains against Strawson, is less compelling. However, Brody does convincingly dispute any epistemological or psychological need for executing
the constructionist program. In effect, he argues that there is no compelling

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reason not to begin with names of enduring objects in articulating a theory
of identity.
In chapter three, Brody turns to the implications of his general theory.
Traditional views that spatial-temporal continuity provides a necessary or
a sufficient condition for physical objects' identity become hypotheses
(hypotheses apparently disconfirmed by the movement of some subatomic
particles). Claims that bodily continuity or memory continuity are the
conditions for personal identity suffer a similar fate. Brody also takes on
Quine's flattening of differences between sets and properties. Sets having
the same membership are identical while properties with the same extension
may be nonidentical. For example, property F with the same extension as
property G might have a condition for its application not shared by property G. Such a condition, then, would be a property not possessed by F and
G in common and hence, F ;;.e G. A comparable argument, Brody demonstrates, is unsuccessful for sets. If two sets have the
membership,
fulfillment of a condition for membership in one set is sufficient for membership in the other set. Lastly, Brody considers the implications of this theory
for current discussions of events and actions. Davidson's condition for the
identity of events and actions (viz. that they have the same causes and
effects) and Kim's condition (viz. that they have identical objects, time,
and property) are alike necessary but insufficient, on Brody's theory, since
events and actions may differ in other properties. As Brody points out, the
advantages of his general theory in this regard are quite patent. With Kim
one can agree that swinging the bat is not identical with hitting the home
run and with Davidson that adverbial modification (swinging the bat
quickly) does not introduce a new event (or action).
If the first half of Brody's book reads like a new version of ' logic without
metaphysics,' the perspective is altered in the second half as he turns to
Aristotelian theories of change and essence to complete his theory of identity. Aristotle's distinction between substantial and accidental change is,
Brody argues, " based neither upon conventions nor on our way of classifying objects, is applicable without any difficulty in many cases, and is applicable to both concrete and abstract objects " (76) .
Brody develops his essentialism in relation to the much-discussed concept
of possible worlds. Kripke's theory of rigid designators, as names for persisting objects, does not eliminate the need for an account of trans-world
identity, Brody argues, since those designators themselves presuppose that
identity. Names for persisting objects (i.e.,-names for objects across worlds)
are constructed from names for enduring objects (i.e., objects through
time, which Brody takes as primitive) and a theory of cross-world identity.
Yet Brody also argues for the failure of de dicto re-interpretations and
tames the celebrated shrew of possible worlds by defining essential properties in terms of alternative pasts and futures. Unlike Leibnizian essential-

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ism, these essential properties (which, in effect, are eternal properties) are
' kind ' and not individuating properties. Here the link with the classical,
Aristotelian version of essentialism is completed. Objects having some
property essentially, which no object has accidentally, form a set that is a
natural kind.
While Brody considers perfectly respectable the notion that essential properties can be empirically discovered, he admits to fundamental epistemological diffculties with claims of substantial changes and essences, difficulties
involving the broader problem of scientific explanation. With certain qualifications, Aristotle's distinction between reasoning whose middle term
designates an essential property (knowledge of ' reasoned fact ') and reasoning whose middle term designates merely a concomitant property (knowledge of ' fact ') supplies, in Brody's view, what is lacking in a covering law
model of explaining scientific laws and particular events. Claims about essential properties are empirical hypotheses, whose reasonableness is proportionate to the explanatory value of the claim and to the inability to explain
otherwise the possession of that property.
With his theory of essentialism in hand, Brody turns to its relation to
his account of identity. 0 1 and o2 are identical only if each has property P
essentially. The introduction of this additional necessary condition for
identity is justified precisely inasmuch as essentialist claims are justified.
Hence, Brody argues, the essentialist condition is not subject to the challenges brought by him against the introduction of other additional conditions for identity, such as spatial-temporal continuity. Moreover, this additional requirement is not incompatible with the general theory of identity,
but merely completes it. According to that general theory, if 0 1 at t 1 has P
and 0 2 at t 2 has not-P, 0 1 and 0 2 may yet be identical as long as o2 at t 1 has
P and 0 1 at t 2 and has not-P and they have their other properties in common. However, the additional requirement by Aristotelian essentialism is
that 0 1 and 0 2 must each have P essentially, which means, among other
things, that 0 1 must have P at ti and t 2 and 0 2 must have P at t 1 and t 2 •
The additional conditions for identity required by Aristotelian essentialism
might seem superfluous, especially if it is overlooked that the general theory
of identity applies to entities at any given time. The additional requirement
of having essential properties in common as well is a condition for identity
through time. One interesting corollary of this marriage of identity through
time with essence seems to be that two entities which have only accidental
properties and have all their properties in comrrion can only be identical
at a single time.
DANIEL

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D. C.

0. DAHLSTROM ..

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St. Thomas Aquinas on the Existence of God: Collected Papers of Joseph
Owens, C.Ss.R. Edited by JoHN R. CATAN. Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1980. Pp. Q91. $Q9.00; paper, $9.95.
Joseph Owens is a prominent exponent of the primacy of existential act as
the key to the text and thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. These Collected
Papers are major articles written during the period from 195Q to 1976, reprinted in this sequence: I. "Aquinas as Aristotelian Commentator"
(1974); Q. "Aquinas on Knowing Existence " (1976); 3. " Judgment and
Truth in Aquinas" (1970); 4. "The Accidental and Essential Character of
Being in the Doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas " (1958); 5. "Diversity and
Community of Being in St. Thomas Aquinas" (1960); 6. "Aquinas and
the Five Ways" (1974); 7." The Conclusion of the Prima Via" (195Q/53);
8. " The Starting Point of the Prima Via" (1967); 9. "Actuality in the
Prima Via of St. Thomas" (1967); 10. "Immobility and Existence for
Aquinas" (1968); 11." Aquinas on Infinite Regress" (196Q). The editor's
arrangement is thus designed to present first background material, then the
explicit treatment of the subject indicated by the volume's title. The title
chosen may raise unmet expectations since fewer than half of the pages
focus on the theme of God's existence and most of these concern St. Thomas
on the argument from movement. Essay 6 simply draws the broad outline
of the five ways in the Summa, and Essay 11 on infinite regress amounts
merely to an extended note. The volume is poorly edited, moreover, since
it is inadequately cross-referenced and not well indexed, and there are numerous typographical errors that distract the reader and occasionally make
the text itself unintelligible. The author's reputation as interpreter of St.
Thomas's thought well warrants this one-volume collection of reprints, but
one may still regret that it does not appear in more discriminating format.
As to the contents of the volume, the Owens version of St. Thomas represented by these reprinted essays is presumably well known. No review
could summarize them without injustice to the densely argued development
of the author's interpretation of St. Thomas. This review comes from one
who flatly rejects that interpretation. But the review will address only one
issue; the use made of texts to sustain the following: existence as the starting point of the demonstration of God's existence; existence as accidental
predicate in all created beings; judgment as the immediate grasp of existence. The following statements concerning the title of the volume seem to
be fair indications that these are indeed key elements in the Owens version
of St. Thomas.
In a reflection on the theological setting and character of St. Thomas's
thought and writings, Owens wonders whether revelation is necessary to
turn the human mind to existence, then remarks on the proof of God's
existence: "Once that focus is attained one is aware of existential actuality

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as an aspect immediately known and therefore able to serve as an operative
factor in the starting point of a genuinely metaphysical demonstration " (p.
191). With regard to the five ways in the Summa tkeologiae, they begin,
as Owens puts it, " from existents that possess being in accidental fashion
and proceed from there to existence that subsists. All function on the ' existence ' side of the 'essence-existence couplet.' They are, accordingly, five
different ways of incorporating the one basic demonstration" (p. 141).
" All five can be understood as starting from observed sensible things in
which existence is other than nature and as proceeding to existence identified with nature, which is the Judeo-Christian God as named in Exodus"
{p. 137). Thus "subsistent existence as reached from the actual existence
of sensible things appears at once as identical with the creative and provident God of the Christian creeds " (p. 262, note 88) . The statements incorporate the key elements mentioned and imply the relevance of the
meaning of existence and its apprehension to the demonstration of God's
existence. - They are descriptive assertions that seem to permit a concentration on these elements and do not involve an unfair quotation of the author
out of context.
The first element is existence as the starting point of the five ways in the
Summa {la, 2, 8) . In the case of the prima via: " Against the metaphysical
background of St. Thomas the very wording of the text ' some things are
being moved in this world ' requires the actuality of the motion to be understood as actual through existing. The wording, emphatically enough,
is not confined to the nature of motion or the concept of motion. It expresses the existence of motion in the visible world" (p. 174) . In the
following paragraph, the context of which is a denial that this view anticipates the real distinction between essence and existence, Owens remarks:
" Whether it is expressed in the wording ' Some things are being moved in
this world ' or ' motion is going on in this world ' or any such equivalent
phrasing, the judgment that motion exists is made" (p. 175). The first
response to the use of texts on this point is that the grouping of words " the
existence of motion " simply has no meaning to anyone familiar with St.
Thomas's usage. It is not being excessively loose to see via ad esse as St.
Thomas's own paraphrase for motus; Owens even refers to texts indicating
that paraphrase (p. 276, note 20) but is undaunted by them. What does
the ease of the via ad esse mean? Equally puzzling questions could emerge
from a play between " the act of existence of motion " and the definition
of motion as actus existentis in potentia inquantum kuiusmodi. What is the
existence of the actuality of the existent that is not merely potential nor
completely actual? " Some things are being moved in the world " is the
translation of (certum est et sensu constat) aliqua moveri in hoc mundo.
" Motion is going on in this world " is not really the equivalent phrase. To
give the meaning of motus or moveri in " existential " terms it would be far

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more precise to view movement itself as a kind of esse, i.e., an incomplete
esse or actuality and the actuality of the incomplete as such. It is the
cdiqua, the subjects, that "exercise " this incomplete actuality. In either
the substantial or the accidental line, the subjects are not fully existent;
this is what their moveri expresses. Such considerations would seem to be
rudimentary and clear from the language, namely, that the subject of motion est in potentia and requires as mover ens in actu. Owens, of course,
dismisses a response of this kind. That dismissal ii:; evident in his own interpretation (on p. 173) of the Aristotelian definition of motus already
given, but that interpretation eliminates the subject from the explanation of
the definition: "It [motion] is always in process to further actuality as long
as it is motion " (p. 173; cf. " the actuality of the motion . . . as actual
through existing ") . The focus on the " existence of motion " is also claimed
to be part of St. Thomas's rising above the Aristotelian view of the universe.
Thus " in his Commentary on the Physics St. Thomas is careful to note
that in the Aristotelian procedure the description of motion is antecedent
to the question of its existence in things, even though the existence of motion in general is a presupposition of natural philosophy " (p. l 7Q) . The
texts substantiating these statements are given on pp. Q75-Q76, notes 13
and 14. The text quoted in note 13 is: "In praecedentibus enim libris
Aristoteles locutus fuerat de motu in communi, non applicando ad res; nunc
autem inquirens an motus semper fuerit applicat communem considerationem motus ad esse quod habet in rebus" (In VIII Phys. lect. l, AngeliPirotta no. 1975); in note 14, "Est igitur communis suppositio in Scientia
Naturali quod motus habeat esse in rebus" (ibid. no. 1976). Presumably
the emphases have been added; what has been omitted, however, is quite
interesting. The enim in the first text refers to the context, namely, St.
Thomas's point that in the passage being expounded Aristotle is answering
a "tacit question." The question is ·subsequent to the passage in note 13,
namely, why the consideration of the existence of motion is not dealt with
before the consideration of its eternity. The reply to the question is that
all who have discussed the nature of reality have affirmed the existence of
motion. Omitted from note 14 is the reason why the existence of motion
is a general presupposition in natural science: " Unde de hoc non est quaerendum in scientia naturali. Sicut nee in aliquia scientia movetur quaestio
de suppositionibus illius scientiae." No great metaphysical issue is implied
here; merely a rudimentary methodological canon, namely, that its praecognita are not proved by any science (see 1n I Post. Anal. lect. 1) . The
answer to the tacit question amounts in fact to certum est et sensu constat
cdiqua moveri in hoc mundo.
Their summary treatment in Essay 6 applies to all five ways the general
interpretation that their starting point is existence. Thus in tracing the
historical source of the tertia via as arguing from the contingency of exist-

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ence, Owens writes (p. 136): " The version expressly attributed to Avicenna
states the contingency of things in the regular Thomistic observation that
their existence is over and above their essence. ' Because seeing that being
is something besides the essence of a created thing, the very nature of a
creature considered in itself has a possibility of being' (De Pot. V, 8, c
... ) ." The Quaestio disputata de potentia quoted here is concerned with
the possibility of "all things being reduced to nothingness"; Avicenna is
among those whose opinion is recalled on the meaning of possibilia esse et
non esse. The text recites first Avicenna's opinion on the phrase, then
Averroes's, mentioning that the second seems more acceptable (rationabilior) than Avicenna's. Then with "Dupliciter, ergo," a phrase connoting his usual procedure when resolving differing opinions, St. Thomas
lays out the meaning of possibilia esse et non esse, which in fact coincides
with the sense that the phrase has in the tertia via (pace those who see it
as an argument from factual contingency). This argument proceeds from
the connatural material composition of the beings of experience that is an
intrinsic " possibility " toward existence and nonexistence, i.e., to come into
being and to pass away. Nor does the De potentia text serve to show
Avicenna as its source. The point need not be labored. The manner in
which the Owens interpretation uses the De potentia text seems distressingly like a case of special pleading.
The second element to be considered is existence as accidental predicate,
a point covered by the phrase " existents that possess being in accidental
fashion " in the description of the five ways. It is developed in the longest
essay in the volume: " The Accidental and Essential Character of Being
in the Doctrine of St. Thomas Aquinas " (pp. 52-96) . The function of the
essay is to show St. Thomas's focus on existence and to that end the development of the accidental character of existence is of fundamental importance. On this point the author quotes the following text in Latin (p. 54) ,
which brings out, in its refutation of Avicenna, the radical equivocity of
being as both accidental and essential: " Similiter etiam deceptus est ex
aequivocatione entis. Nam ens quod significat compositionem propositionis
est praedicatum accidentale, quia compositio fit per intellectum secundum
determinatum tempus. Esse autem in hoc tempore vel in illo est accidentale
praedicatum. Sed ens quod dividitur per decem praedicamenta significat
ipsas naturas decem generum secundum quod sunt actu vel potentia" (In
X Metaph. lee. 3; ed. Cathala Spiazzi no. 1982). The Owens reading could
be represented graphically as follows: "ESSE IN HOC TEMPORE VEL
ILLO est accidentale praedicatum "; it would more properly reflect the
point of the text to put the emphasis graphically in this way: " ... secundum quod SUNT ACTU VEL POTENTIA." For the meaning of the first
statement is that the tense in which a subject is thought of or spoken of is
incidental to its real being; it is not a statement about the accidental quality

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of existential act. This is not the first place in the Metaphysics commentary
(and certainly not the only place in his works) that St. Thomas uses the
distinction employed here, the distinction in meaning between ens as standing for the composition made by the mind and ens as standing for the nature
of things that are, actually or potentially. If the first is used as a predicate,
it applies the term " being " to a subject in a sense that is accidental to
that subject. " Accidit autem unicuique rei quod aliquid de ipso vere
affirmatur intellectu vel voce. Nam res non refertur ad scientiam, sed e
converso." If being as it stands for things as they exist actually or potentially is used as a predicate, then something of the real nature of the subject
is being expressed. " Esse vero quod in sui natura unaquaeque res habet
est substantiale. Et ideo cum dicitur, 'Socrates est ' si ille Est primo modo
accipiatur, est de praedicato substantiali. Nam ens est superius ad unumquodque entium, sicut animal ad hominem: Si autem accipiatur secundo
modo, est de praedicato accidentali" (In V Meto. lect. 9, no. 896). Whatever belongs to ens as it stands for the composition of the intellect, including
the tense in which that composition is cast, is accidental to the subject
simply because its being known is accidental to the reality known: " Hoc
esse non est in re " (In III Sent. d. 6, q. 2,art.2) .
This reading of the text from In X Meta. does not admit that its focus
is on existential actuality in a determined time or, as Owens puts it: "The
sense of being that the intellect expresses when it joins subject and predicate
by means of the verb ' is ' depends on something accidental. It depends on
a definite time. But to be in this or that period of time is certainly something accidental to created nature as such. In this sense being is accidental
to a created thing " (p. 55) . The accidental sense of being as it stands for
the composition made by the mind is thus transferred into meaning the
accidental character of being as attributed to any created reality. The
further step is made to assert that St. Thomas reduces existence as accidental in every created being to the existence attained by the mind's act
of composing or dividing: " The being that is expressed by the truth in a
proposition is accordingly viewed by St. Thomas as consequent upon the
actual exercise of being in the thing. The proposition is true because the
thing happens to be in this or that way. Being as true follows upon actuality that is the common requirement of every substance and every accident. If this requirement is something accidental to the thing, what follows
it will likewise be accidental. There is no difficulty in ranging both under
the heading of being as an accidental predfoate" (p. 58).
The following text is offered in support of the way St. Thomas interprets
Aristotle on the accidental senses of being (p. 58) : " Ideo autem dicit quod
hoc verbum EST consignificat compositionem, quia non earn principaliter
significat, sed ex consequenti; significat enim primo illud quod cadit in intellectu per nwdum actualitatis absolute; nam EST, simpliciter dictum,

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649

significat in actu esse; et ideo significat per modum verbi. Quia vero actualitas, quam principaliter significat hoc verbum EST, est communiter
actualitas omnis formae, vel actus substantialis vel accidentalis, inde est
quod cum volumus significare quamcumque formam vel actum actualiter
inesse subjecto, significamus illud per hoc verbum EST, vel simpliciter vel
secundum quid: simpliciter quidem secundum praesens tempus, secundum
quid secundum alia tempora (In I Periherm., lect. 5; ed. Leonine no. 22 [ed.
Spiazzi, no. 73]) ." Owens then explains the import of this text. " When
being is signified in verbal form, and so according to conditions of time, it
expresses principally, according to this interpretation, the actuality that
the intellect understands as basic in the thing. It presents itself to the intellect by way of actuality in an absolute manner, and not hypothetically
or conditionally. It means that the thing actually is or exists, according
to the time in question. That actuality, signified in this way by the verb,
is however the actuality of every form whatsoever. Such being is the actuality of every substantial form or act, and also is the actuality of every
accidental form. Substance and accidents have in common the requirement
of being actuated by the further actuality that is expressed in the verb
' to be.' When one wishes to express in a proposition, then, that any form
or act whatsoever is actually present in a subject, one uses the verb 'to
be'" (p. 58). A small point is omitted from the Perihermeneias text
quoted, its conclusion: " Et ideo ex consequenti hoc verbum EST significat
compositionem.'' Unhappily for the subsequent Owens interpretation the
concluding statement reminds the reader of the context of the whole paragraph and that context is essential even to the meaning of the terms. The
general context in this work of logic is a consideration of the terms of a
proposition; the specific issue is what verbs have in common with nouns
(see In I Periherm. lect. 5, no. 15/no. 66). According to St. Thomas, Aristotle establishes that nouns and verbs do have common characteristics in
regard to two points: " Et primo per hoc quod verba significant aliquid,
sicut et nomina; secundo, per hoc quod non significant verum vel falsum,
sicut nee nomina " (ibid. no. 16 /no. 67). The text cited by Owens is connected with the second point. St. Thomas introduces the argument establishing this as follows: " Sed si est, aut non est, nondum significat, idest
nondum significat aliquid per modum compositionis et divisionis, aut veri
vel falsi. Et hoc est secundum quod probare intendit" (ibid. no. 18/no.
69). Verbs alone, including the verb" to be," do not yet signify that something exists: " non significant rem esse vel non esse " ( ibid.) . This whole
context underlies both the opening line of the text Owens quotes: " Ideo
autem <licit quod hoc verbum EST consignificat compositionem, quia non
earn principaliter significat, sed ex consequenti," and the conclusion Owens
omits: " Et ideo ex consequenti hoc verbum EST significat compositionem.''
The text is not talking about " being signified according to the conditions

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of time " nor is " the thing actually is or actually exists according to the
time in question " in any way justified as a paraphrase. The text is about
verbs as words; the proper translation of tempus or tempora is a grammatical term: tense. Nor does the text say that being presents itself to the
mind ... " by way of actuality in an absolute manner and not hypothetically or conditionally." The term absolute is not taken in contrast to hypothetically or conditionally but in contrast to compositionem in the first line
of the text quoted and at issue throughout the context. The force of absolute is simply that a verb, including the verb " to be," does not signify
composition, its signification is not involved in but " absolved " from composition; like a noun, it does not signify that a thing is or is not, but only
connotes composition to the extent that it connotes a subject. Even the
language of the context provides a key to the meaning of absolute in the
following: "Uncle talis consignificatio compositionis non sufficit ad veritatem
vel falsitatem: quia compositio in qua consistit veritas et falsitas non potest
intelligi nisi secundum quod innectit extrema compositionis " (ibid. no. '%-0 /
no. 7'%-) . Since the verb does not yet of itself " tie together" the extremes,
its signification is not yet " bound up " with composition. In view of the
actual meaning, not to mention the simple translation, of this text, the
following question with which Owens introduced the quotation hardly deserves a ringing affirmative reply: "Does St. Thomas, then, understand
that the verb ... signifies both the being that is actually exercised by the
thing and the composition that is found in judgment? " (p. 58) .
After establishing to his own satisfaction how the accidental sense of
being for St. Thomas refers to actual existence and to what the mind attains
in composing and dividing, Owens in the same context shows how St.
Thomas also transcends Aristotle: " For St. Thomas ... the an est is asking precisely ' Does the thing exist? ' The being that answers such a question is accordingly an accidental predicate, whether it is the existence
actually exercised by the thing in reality or whether it is the composition
made by the intellect in forming a proposition" (p. 59). There can be no
doubt of the many ways in which St. Thomas transcends Aristotle; there
is real doubt that St. Thomas would recognize the Aristotle that Owens
presents on the point at issue. No mention is made of the fact that the four
senses of being treated by Aristotle in the Metaphysics have as their context the issue of eliminating from the scientific discourse of first philosophy
any meaning that is purely incidental (Metaphysics IV, ch. I. 1003a3'%-).
Nor is there any hint that the Posterior Analytics II, ch. 1, is dealing with
the nature of demonstration and that the four questions are those that pose
a scientific problematic and that they are all questions about finding a
middle term. They are not questions pure and simple that would be raised,
or neglected, in an analysis of any being. To present Aristotle's handling
of the question an sit detached from its function as a question about a

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middle term is to set up a straw man. All the scientific questions involve
the unknown, and the unknown can only be reached conclusively through
demonstration. Aristotle did not pose the question of a medium of demonstrating the existence of the experienced nor did he presume the question
to be solved by the knowledge of the quid sit, the essence. But that is the
ridiculous Aristotle portrayed by setting aside the context of the Posterior
Analytics.
The third major element to be considered is judgment as apprehension
of existence; it is implied in the description of the five ways by the phrase
" existential actuality as an aspect immediately known." The use of texts
on the accidental quality of being already indicates the correlation alleged
between existence exercised accidentally and the sense of being as standing
for the mind's composition. Owens stresses the distinctive character of the
mind's knowledge of existence in this way: "Mentioned but rarely, yet
asserted too plainly to leave any doubt about its meaning and importance,
is his [St. Thomas's] teaching that a thing's being is known through a different operation of the mind from the one through which the thing's nature is
conceived. Instead of being presupposed or assumed, the sensible thing's
being is known, is apprehended, is understood directly through the activity
of judgment" (p. 176). For the, presumably, key words of St. Thomas's
all too plain assertions, a series of texts is cited in the notes, p. 277, notes
29 and 30. One is 2a2ae. 83, 1 arg. 3 (quoting Aristotle on the two acts of
the mind) : " Secunda vero est compositio et divisio, per quam scilicet apprehenditur aliquid esse vel non esse." Given the methodology of the
Summa, it seems to be straining a bit to view an " objection " as a strongly
asserted position. A second text is from In III De anima lect. 4, no. 629.
The passage involves the exposition of Aristotle's refutation of an identity
between sensation and thought. The following words are quoted: " Intellectus enim habet iudicare et hoc dicitur sapere et apprehendere et dicitur
intelligere" (p. CJ,77, note 30). Since the text goes on to discuss how sapere
and iudicare are attributed to certain higher animals on the basis of natural
instinct, it is difficult to see it as a momentous pronouncement about judgment. A third text is from the commentary on the Metaphysics, quoted (p.
CJ,77, note 30) as follows: " ... secundum hanc operationem intellectus
aliquid intelligere" (In IV Metaph. lect. 6, ed. Cathala, no. 605). Although
rendering the passage ungrammatical, perhaps the ellipsis points are needed
to make the text say that on the basis of the mind's second operation it
understands something. The text is part of a discussion of the primacy of
the principle of noncontradiction in the development of the human mind
and reads: " Et quia hoc principium, impossibile est esse et non esse simul,
dependet ex intellectu entis ... ideo hoc etiam principium, est naturaliter
primum in secunda operatione intellectus, scilicet componentis et dividentis.
N ec aliquid potest secundum hanc operationem intellectus aliquid intelligere

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nisi hoc principio intellecto." Italics have been added to indicate the words
covered by Owens's ellipsis; the nisi hoc principio intellecto are not even
honored by an ellipsis. Such a manipulation of a text is a peculiar way to
establish an element "basic to the understanding of St. Thomas's metaphysical procedures," one that " enables him to reason differently from his
predecessors and from other metaphysicians " (p. 176) .
With regard to the object of judgment, Owens notes: " Judgment accordingly apprehends existence as an individual actuality at a definite moment
of time" (p. 29). The accordingly indicates a consequence based on two
texts. The first quoted is this: "everything has existence and individuation in the same respect" (Q. de An. a.2 ad 2m). The last phrase translates
secundum idem and anyone looking at the context will see that it refers to
the principle or source of individuation. The second text makes it clear,
according to Owens, that " the existence has its actuality only in a ' now '
and is variable from the instant to instant in time (In I Sent. d. 19, q. 2,
a. 2, Solut .... ) " (p. 29). The point of the text is a comparison of the
"now" of eternity, aeviternity, and time. That it supports Owens's use
only in a material and incidental sense may be overlooked. He then, however, subsumes with another text: "Judgment, in consequence, is 'the apprehension in the cognitive power, proportioned to the existence of the
thing' (In I Sent. d. 19, q. 5, a. 2, Solut .... ) . It is specifically adapted to
the highly individual and temporally located existential synthesis" (p. 29).
The Sentences text, on whether all things are true by uncreated truth, in
fact states: "Ratio veritatis in duobus consistit: in esse rei et in apprehensione virtutis cognoscitivae proportionata ad esse rei." The subject of the
statement is not judgment but the ratio veritatis. The substitution is not
a paraphrase or a free translation but a misquotation.
The adaptation to the individual and temporally located existential synthesis is such that Owens describes judgment as " the dynamic intellective
act by which synthesizing existence is being grasped"; or as an act in which
" the object of the cognition is an actual existential synthesizing taking
place before its gaze " (p. 47) . The existential synthesizing is, of course,
esse in its accidental sense, to which esse as standing for the mind's composition corresponds. The claim, it will be remembered, is that St. Thomas
conjoined the two meanings. The knowledge of existence as factual synthesis requires also the knowledge of the nature of what it actualizes.
Thus: " But to apprehend anything in either way the two different types
of intellection have to work simultaneously._ This takes away the strangeness of the tenet that actual existence in sensible things consists in a synthesis. It comes into the mind first of all as actuality without qualification,
i.e., absolutely (In I Periherm. lect. 5, no. 73 [e. Spiazzi]). Only subsequent
philosophical study shows that it consists in a composition " (p. 28). The
relevance of the Perihermeneias text to Owens's position has already been
examined.

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This review has questioned the use of texts in support of fundamental
elements in the Owens version of St. Thomas's thought. Acceptance of the
texts as supportive would seem to require ignorance of St. Thomas's language, usage, methodology, and epistemology, both philosophical and theological. The kind of proof-texting involved is probably required in order
to transform the historical " order of exercise" of St. Thomas's work into
a philosophical " order of specification." Maritain made the distinction as
a caution long ago. Its present relevance is that in the order of specification
proper to St. Thomas's own thought and use, even in theology, subsistent
esse and the composed structure of all other beings are intelligible to the
human mind solely as conclusions. Owens disregards this fundamental point
and its implications in favor of an existential focus. Thus the " essenceexistence couplet" becomes a synthesis of nature and existential facticity.
The knowledge corresponding becomes a synchronization of the conception
of essence and the nonconceptual grasp of factual existence going on before
the mind's gaze. This review does not dispute Owen's right to philosophize
inventively; but to expound St. Thomas's texts inventively hardly
cates the resulting interpretation of St. Thomas's thought.
THOMAS c. O'BRIEN
Washington, D.C.

Experience, Reason and God. Edited by EuGENE THOMAS LoNG. Washington, D. C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1980. Pp. 188.
$17.95.

This book, Volume 8 in the series Studies in Phuosophy and The History
of Philosophy, is a collection of essays representing the reflections of certain
prominent Anglo-American (mostly American) philosophers of religion on
the subject indicated by its title. As it turns out, this topic proves too broad
to control effectively, for not only is allowance made by the editor for
separate treatments of the roles of experience and reason in man's putative
knowledge of God but also the meaning of " experience " is afforded a relatively wide latitude. Consequently, although this is not unusual with volumes of this type, the book turns out to lack any truly unifying philosophical theme. Nonetheless a number of its essays, particularly the earlier ones,
do manage to address themselves to what the editor had indicated might
be the central issue of the volume, namely, the role of experience (here
· understood in a very special sense which becomes clear later) in justifying
religious knowledge or belief. Regarding this proposed thematic point, Long
· argues in his brief Introduction (and he will be joined in this argument by

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a number of the contributors) that "experience" has been frequently,
particularly in empiricist circles, equated with what is subjective or purely
intra-mental, in which sense it has come to be viewed as opposed to reason
and the two regarded as representing two mutually exclusive, or irreconcilably separate, claims to religious knowledge or belief. (It was an attempt
to overcome this impasse, the editor informs us, that led to the idea for this
volume.) However, it is Long's contention that when "experience " is
construed in a broader, " being-in-the-world" sense, one truly consistent
with its ordinary meaning, then experience and reason may be seen, not as
separated or opposed, but as mutually allied in support of religious knowledge or belief. Since not all the essays that follow (there are twelve) are,
in this reviewer's opinion, of equal interest or value, nor concern themselves
with the theme just noted, this review will be deliberately selective in its
task of reporting upon the various contributions to the volume, though some
effort will be made to mention, however briefly, each one.
In the lead-off essay," Experience, Analogy and Insight," John E. Smith
considers the question of what might properly serve as a firmament for
theology in the wake of the decline of classical metaphysics. According to
Smith, the theologian must have an accessible plane on which to project
the insight he seeks to express about the divine reality: and a framework
of concepts and principles together with this projection plane is what Smith
calls a " firmament." After reviewing the theological firmaments of the past
and then considering some more recent trends of philosophical and religious
thought as possibly providing a suitable candidate for the theological instrument he seeks (all of which he rejects for one reason or another), Smith
proposes that we look to " the resources to be found in experience as a
medium of expression or firmament, together with a metaphysics of selfhood that is required by a conception of experience taking into account all
that happens in actual experiencing" (p. 11). In arguing, in this context,
the case for experience, Smith points to the fact that religious insight exists
in an experiential mode before it comes to full articulation in a conceptual
system. He also believes that the recent upsurge of the mystical, the exotic,
and the occult, coupled with the interest in meditative traditions and the
myriad forms of spontaneous spirituality, "all testify to the need for the
experiential participation in a power that transcends merely human and
finite concerns." In proposing experience as the appropriate theological
firmament Smith would have us consider the following three points: I) it
should be conceived in its full breadth and depth, which means rescuing it
from its captivity at the hands of classical British Empiricism (this, Smith
says, involves giving up the theory that experience is a tissue of subjectivity
of which we are immediately aware); !!) Religious insight can be made
intelligible only by analogies drawn from experience; and 8) Experience
needs to be provided a status as a distinct level of being having an integrity

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of its own and shown to involve a metaphysics of self-hood which can serve
as a theological firmament for projecting the idea of God. The remainder
of the essay is basically an explanation of the last two of these three considerations.
In the next essay," Religious Experience,'' Hywel Lewis proposes a view
of religious experience at variance with its usual understanding as something subjective, or primarily emotional, or belonging to the sphere of
" paranormal " phenomena, thus continuing a trend of thought already
found in Long and Smith. According to Lewis, at the core of religious
experience is " an enlivened sense of the being of God ... as involved in
the being of anything at all" (p. 21). This enlivened sense of a supreme
transcendent reality is, he suggests, based upon an implicitly causal argument for God's existence, or on the insight that no finite explanation can
account for the things that we directly experience. Thus, as Hywel describes it, religious experience involves a decidedly cognitive element which
removes it from the subjective, an awareness of the mystery of a Transcendent Being known to exist. Having made this crucial point, Hywel then
proceeds to discuss some additional features of what he regards as authentic
religious experience. For one, while it entails an intimate awareness of the
presence of the Infinite, it does not reject the reality of the finite and succumb to pantheism. (Hywel returns to this point later in the essay and
acknowledges there the problem caused by the historical positions, varying
in degrees of sharpness on this issue, different from his own; however, he
will still insist that the problem must be faced and not settled lightly in
order to assure "easy accommodation and good will.") For another, it
recognizes the Transcendent Being as ultimate perfection and involves it
in all evaluations. Apropos at this point, Hywel contends that while religious experience is not required for an ethical life, those who have it are
especially aware that it is in the voice of their own consciences that the
voice of God is most distinctly and significantly heard. What is more, he
believes that the enlivened sense of the transcendent carries with it a refinement of moral sensitivity and is responsible for the most impressive moral
advances in ethical principles through the ages. What is not a feature of
authentic religious experience, according to Hywel, is that it be entirely
free of error, for sometimes those who possess it confuse their own limits,
or those of their age or society, with what comes from God. As he observes
in this connection, " what we have to be constantly heeding is the intertwining of genuine religious disclosure and insight with other too fallible
aptitudes and interests of finite creatures " (p. 27). Finally, Hywell suggests that the assessment of the truth of a particular religion must, in the
last analysis, go back to the profoundest appreciation of the subtle interlacing of normal sensitivity with divine intimations, and concludes: " If
this adds up, in the available evidence about Jesus and his background, to

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the central affirmations of the New Testament and traditional Christian
thought, so be it-it is what I myself think" (p. 30) .
In the third essay," God in Experience and Argument," John Macquarrie
intends to show how these two basic and apparently opposed approaches
found in philosophies of religion (viz., experience and argument) actually
need each other in order to be complete. After noting seven forms of experience (among them he includes the aesthetic, the moral, and the scientific)
which could be broadly described as " religious," Macquarrie mentions two
fundamental characteristics that he believes are present either in primary
religious experience or in those which could be said to have a religious
dimension. They are intentioncility and ultimacy. By "intentionality" he
refers to that quality of religious experience which draws the person outside
himself and relates him to a larger reality; by "ultimacy," to that quality
whereby it points beyond the immediate and the relative to the deepest
reality which both embraces and transcends finite realities. Thus, it is only
in a well constructed theism, Macquarrie contends, that one finds the most
adequate and satisfying way of accounting for these experiences of intentionality and ultimacy which lie at the very foundation of religion. However, since he admits that a religious experience may be an illusion, even
though it can seem overwhelmingly convincing to the person involved and
may also be understood as having a reference to a reality beyond oneself,
he acknowledges that, in itself, it is not sufficient but needs the support of
argnment. Regarding this latter point, Macquarrie distingnishes two types
of argument which can support and have supported religious belief: one is
the purely rational, the extreme case of which is the " ontological " argnment; the other, the empirical, which is any argnment based upon causality
and taken from one's observation of the world. He concludes with an explanation why, where it is a question of proving God's existence, preference
should be given to the empirical type of argnment.
Three of the next four essays are concerned, in one way or another, with
the role of argnment (reason) in religious belief. In "Proof and Presence,''
Frederick Crosson argnes that religious faith does not presuppose argument
and suggests, conversely, that any adequate argument for God's existence
may already presuppose belief in the conclusion. He also maintains that
Aquinas's position here has been historically misunderstood: that the latter
did not hold that the credibility of revealed truths requires a prior demonstration of God's existence but only that the so-called " preambles " are
logically necessary conditions to the articles of faith (not to the act of believing) . In " The Logical Roles of the Arguments for God's Existence,"
Bowman Clarke considers certain historical statements of the teleological,
ontological, and cosmological arguments from the standpoint of their logical
form but generally prescinds from the question of their soundness or validity. In "Right and Wrong Cosmological Arguments,'' Frank Dilley takes

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657

issue with certain versions of the cosmological argument, notably Richard
Taylor's, and proposes what he considers a good one. Briefly, he contends
that God's existence cannot be inferred from the mere fact that there are
perishable beings, since such beings can point to the existence of something
necessary, viz., matter, which is not God and which, as something necessary,
can presumably account for its own existence. Nor can it be inferred, he
argues, from the fact that there are beings which are not logically necessary
(for even God may be conceived not to exist). His conclusion is that the
Aristotelian form of the argument, namely, the one that argues to the existence of God (the perfect being) as the ultimate final cause required to
explain the movement of perfection-seeking imperfect beings (beings composed of potency and act) is the only acceptable version. In the first of
these four essays, "Finding God in the Tradition," Thomas Langan discusses the nature of Tradition and the role it has to play in the enrichment of
one's faith.
Of the volume's remaining five essays two have to do at least broadly
with the relationship between faith and reason and three with the roles of
analogy, metaphor, or natural imagery (in Dupre's case, also that of presence) in religious knowledge. In " Science, Religion and Experience," Frederick Ferre discusses certain epistemological considerations relating to science and theology. Having defined knowledge as " what we would have ...
if our best warranted beliefs never needed to be corrected " or as " the
ideal limit of warranted assurance in the conceptual reliability of our beliefs " (p. 100), Ferre goes on to consider what would constitute "warranted assurance" in science and theology. According to Ferre the sort of
warrant evidentially relevant to the descriptive purpose of science is intersubjective sensory verification, whereas, regarding its explanatory purpose,
it is conceptual coherence, i.e., " the ability to draw together our thoughts
concerning not only the phenomena in question but also the larger range
of beliefs and concepts that constitute the scientific background of the
scientific community." Ferre suggests somewhat similar criteria of warranted assurance for theology: 1) where it is a question of the articulation
of the mythos of the believing community, the standard is one of appropriateness, something to be judged in terms of the degree of acceptance,
by the faithful, of the theologian's articulation; and 2) where it concerns
its interpretative power with respect to human experience, the standard is
that of theoretical coherence, (or " the capacity to provide both internal
wholeness and grounds for additional unification of thought "). Finally,
while Ferre insists that, if the theologian's claims are to be made with
warranted assurance, they must be fully conversant with, and relevant to,
our most reliable source of data about the empirical order (i.e., science as
descriptive), he also maintains that so far as science's explanatory function
is concerned the theologian can, when conflict does arise, be critical, since

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not only is the scientific vision a partial one but it is also highly corrigible
both in principle and in practice.
In" Unless You Believe You Will Not Understand," James Ross explores
the various meanings that can be given to the famous Augustinian directive.
In "Irreducible Metaphors in Theology," William P. Alston argues that
metaphorical language in theology, if it is to be meaningful, cannot be ultimately irreducible but must be grounded in literal predicability which may
and can include analogy (in its Thomistic sense). In" Negative Theology
and Affirmation of the Finite," Louis Dupre discusses the role of divine
presence in religious knowledge and contrasts it with the traditional doctrines of analogy and the via negativa. Finally, in" Natural Imagery as a
Discriminatory Element in Religious Knowledge," Kenneth L. Schmitz
considers what role natural imagery has to play in religious discourse and
demonstrates, among other things, how it is inextricably embedded in the
scripture, liturgy, piety, and thought of biblical religion.
While, in this reviewer's opinion, there is much in this volume that is
interesting fare, there is also much to disagree with philosophically. Particularly distressing to this reader were Ferre's definition of knowledge
(blatantly too narrow, since not all knowledge is an ideal goal and some
knowledge, e.g., our knowledge of first principles, is incorrigible) and his
stated criterion of descriptive scientific truth (viz., " intersubjective sensory
verification," which presupposes knowledge of other subjects, which, in
turn, presupposes the validity of one's senses) . Moreover, having raised
the question, Do we have any demonstrations in the case of God? (cf. p.
Crosson engages in a lengthy ignoratio elenchi type argument in which
the reader is given much scientific information but not the answer to the
question at issue. Finally, while the editor had promised the reader that
all the contributors were one in opposing fideism, this reviewer did not find
this statement particularly true in the case of Crosson or Dupre.
THEODORE J. KoNDOLEON
Villano·va University
Villanova, Pennsylvania.

The Theologia Germanica of Martin Luther. Translated and edited by
BENGT R. HOFFMAN. New York and Toronto: Paulist Press, 1980.
Pp. xiv +
Toward the end of the year 1516 Martin Luther discovered a handwritten
manuscript by an anonymous author, a short book of meditations dealing
with the meaning of the Christian's life in God and in the world. Adding

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659

a preface, describing this work as reflecting " the true solid teaching of
Ho1y Writ," and some marginal notes as a commentary, he arranged for its
printing and publication at Wittenberg. In the same preface Luther conjectured from the manuscript's content that the author was the " illumined
Doctor Tauler of the Preaching Order." In 1518 Luther discovered another
manuscript of the same work, a longer version, which he concluded was the
complete work. His enthusiastic approval was no less intense, and he had
this also printed at Wittenberg under the title Eyn Deutsch Theologia.
Before Luther's death in 1546 his 1518 version ran !!O editions. The Latin
title Theologia Germanica made its first appearance in the Swiss edition of
1557, and in the course of time became the commonly accepted title.
Bengt R. Hoffman has translated into English Luther's 1518 version, and
happily it has been included in the collection of the Classics of Western
Spirituality published by the Paulist Press. His translation is smooth and
readable. He also provides the reader with critical notes and commentary.
The introduction to the translation is informative and especially helpful
in solving some of the literary and historical problems connected with the
Theologia Germanica. He dates its composition around the 1850's, describes
the religious situation of the 14th Century, and identifies the author as a
member of the Friends of God movement, and a disciple of Tauler. Luther's
hi.tuition, therefore, was not far from the truth. He takes care in arguing
the superiority of Luther's 1518 text over other extant manuscripts, particularly the 1497 Wiirt:i;burg manuscript, the source of previous English
translations. To emphasize this point he titled his translation the Theologia
Germanica of Martin Luther.
Hoffman's main purpose, however, is theological. He takes this occasion
to reiterate the thesis previously proposed in his Luther and the Mystics
(Augsburg/1976; The Thomiat 48, 8, 1978) . The enthusiasm with which
Luther in 1518 approved some theological themes of the Theologia Germanica, remained characteristic of him in later years as the Reformer, and,
in fact, he appropriated them into his own understanding of the Gospel of
grace. To grasp fully the richness of Luther's doctrine of justification by
faith his spiritual and doctrinal " kinship " with the mystical tradition of
St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Johann Tauler, and the Friend of God of the
Theologia Germanica, must be taken into account. Hoffman insists that for
Luther " the other side " of justification is sanctification, that Christ in his
saving work is not only a reality " for us," but also a reality " in us," transforming us, even while remaining sinners, into " little Christs." He argues
for such a view of Luther in the introduction and critical notes. In the
Preface Bengt Hagglund of the University of Lund, Sweden, speaks of the
Theologia Germanica as a book of " abiding value, not only as a historical
testimony from an influential stream of medieval thought, but also as a
usef1:1l guide to a deeper understanding of Christian faith and the founda-

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tions of a Christian mode of life." This fact alone gives Hoffman's translation importance. The theological issues raised by him, however, give it
added importance for contemporary Lutheran /Roman Catholic dialogue.
WILLIAM A. NEWMAN, O.P.
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D. C.

Socrates and Legal Obligation. By R. E. ALLEN. Minneapolis: University
148.
of Minnesota Press, 1980. Pp. xiv

+

That the problem of legal obligation is at least as old as Socrates is well
known to philosophers, classicists, and legal historians. It is indeed a difficult problem, subtle and nuanced. R. E. Allen, philosopher and classicist,
has written a short, but carefully researched and cogently argued, assessment of how Socrates wrestled with this problem in the Apology and the
Crito. Allen's purposes are simple, but far-reaching-to clarify the Apology
and to indicate how the Crito is a fundamental statement of the grounds
of legal obligation. He accomplishes both aims.
As an introduction to his own translation of the Apology, Allen presents
four essays that serve to unravel a different strand of Socrates's defense.
We are given not only a fine discussion of the method of persuasion used
by Socrates at his trial, but also a good overview of the structure and function of late fifth-century Athenian law courts. Because Socrates's concern
was to honor truth rather than merely save his life, his rhetoric transcended
the pleading for mercy so characteristic of Athenian defendants. Allen contends that the Apology should be accepted as an essentially accurate description of this circus-like trial that was supposedly part of an adversary
system of justice. Because the Athenian court could, and did, decide not
only what the facts were but also what the law was, Allen's conclusion is
that " the Athenian version [of the adversary system] allowed justice to be
administered by an organized mob " (80).
Allen offers three essays as an introduction to his translation of the Crito.
His careful philological treatment of the concepts of harm and injury sheds
much light on his analysis of the dialogue's two major themes-it is wrong
to do injury or act unjustly, and it is right to abide by just agreements.
The importance of fidelity to the legal order _itself, not merely blind obedience to particular rules, is the focal point of his discussion of the subdialogue between Socrates and the Laws of Athens. As such, there can be
legal obligation not simply because the law is force but because it is the
force of law (IOI). We are aptly reminded of the dilemma once faced by
Antigone. Allen concludes that "Socrates goes to his. death, finally, not
to avoid breaking a promise, but to avoid doing of wrongful harm" (99).

BOOK REVIEWS

661

Students of comparative law and legal history will undoubtedly enjoy
Allen's brief discussion of the medieval writ of Assumpsit (once brought
against a defendant not primarily because he had broken a promise, but
because he had done wrongful harm in attempting to carry out his agreement with the plaintiff) as a common law ancestor of the modern law of
contract.
Allen's translations of the Apology and the Crito are smooth and clear.
Appropriately subdivided, they are a joy to read and are fine additions to
the ever-lengthening list of translations of Plato's dialogues. Because Allen
also subdivides the introductory essays and appends to the entire volume
a selected bibliography, an index of passages cited, and an index of names,
the need for an index of topics is obviated.
This is a book which should be read by all students of philosophy, classics,
legal history, and comparative law. It is appropriate reading not only for
insight into the problem of legal obligation but also for careful reflection on
two of the most fundamental of Plato's dialogues. It is indeed a remarkable addition to the short shelf of genuinely significant interdisciplinary
studies.
STEPHEN J. SELEMAN
Boston College Law School
Newton Centre, Massachusetts.

Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, Vol. IV. Edited by IAN KER
and THOMAS GoRNALL, S.J. Oxford: The Clarendon Press; New York:
Oxford University Press, 1980. Pp. xv + 4rn. $55.00.
Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, Vol. V. Edited by THOMAS
GoRNALL, S.J. Oxford: The Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1981. Pp. xv + 423. $65.00.
The projected thirty-one volume edition of Newman;s letters and
diaries nears completion with the publication of these two volumes, the
twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth to appear. As the first of those covering the
Oxford Movement, these two volumes will undoubtedly contain the most
familiar letters of the whole series, many of them having been seen already
(at least in part) in various studies both of Newman and of the Oxford
Movement. Nevertheless, to have them all, and to have them in full, alongside significant letters to Newman and relevant public documents, is something for which scholars should be grateful.
The leitmotif of Volume IV (July 1833-December 1834), the tension of
Church-State 'relations, expressed itself for Newman in events as nationally
significant as the suppression of the Irish bishoprics and the .
for
admillsion of dissenters to Oxford, and as parochial as the " scrape " result..

BOOR'. REVIEWS

ing from his refusal to marry in church the unbaptized Ms. Jubber. The
result was that Newman found himself beginning "to be a Radical practically " (35), determined that " the Church shall not crumble away without my doing in my place what I can to hinder it " (302) . The letters give
full scope to the various facets of Newman's response: sometimes bold
("Men are made of glass-the sooner we break them and get it over, the
better-52) or idealistic (" What is it to those who follow the Truth,
whether their cause succeeds in their actual lifetime or not? We are laboring for that which is eternal, for that which must succeed at length
166); at other times unsure ("for attacks make one timid "-253) or
weary ("0 that we had one Bishop for us! ... this is what Satan has been
toiling at this 300 years ... and now his day is coming "-312) . Overall,
however, Newman would seem to have agreed with Samuel Rickards's judgment that the situation was " frightful: not because the enemies of the
Church are so strong, but because its friends, if one may so say, are no
friends at all" (119) .
Volume V (Liberalism in Oxford, January 1885-December 1886) continues Newman's challenge to a "Church of England" whose "very title
is an offence . . . for it implies that it holds, not of the Church Catholic
but of the State" (801-2). The controversy over the appointment of R. D.
Hampden as Regius Professor of Divinity is documented at great length,
as is the debate over Subscription to the Articles. The latter will obviously
be of interest to those concerned with the question of the " ethics of belief"; through it all the complex character of Newman's opposition to
change in subscription reveals interesting aspects of his view of the relation
between faith and reason. Moreover, the volume offers a fine complement
to the Apologia account of the development of Newman's attitude to Rome.
It traces that development from the recognition that " certainly we cannot
stand as we are," for (though rationalism and Roman Catholicism are "intelligible ") the " piebald system, which at present is thought so delightful
and promising, is ' neither fish, flesh, nor good red herring,' and cannot
stand the sifting of controversy " (184-5) , through the conclusion that
" My heart is with Rome, but not as Rome, but as, and so far as, she is the
faithful retainer of what we have practically thrown aside " (802-3), ending in the printing of the Prophetical, Office. Finally, in addition to the
ecclesiological interests which this volume shares with the previous one,
there is evidence of a significant theological concern on Newman's part
which will make this volume of interest to a- wider audience. This concern
takes the form of scattered comments on or discussions of (for example)
the relation between nature and grace, Christological themes, and the
Spirit.

M. JAMIE FERREIRA.
University of Virginia
0 harlotte8ville, Va.

BOOKS RECEIVED
University of Brussels: Theolinguistics edited by J. P. van Noppen.
Tijdschrift Vrije Universiteit Brussel N.S. 8. Pp. 379; 500 F.
(Belgian).
University of California Press: The Critical Circle by David Couzens Hoy.
Pp. 182; $5.95.
Catholic Publications Bureau (Colombo): Creation and Evolution by
Hilary Crusz. Pp. 81; no price given.
Catholic Hospital Association: Health Care Ethics: A Theological Analysis
by Benedict Ashley, O.P. and Kevin O'Rourke, O.P. Second Edition. Pp. 483; no price given.
Cistercian Publications: Letters from Ireland 1228-1229 by Stephen of
Lexington, edited with an introduction by Barry W. O'Dwyer.
Cistercian Fathers Series no. 28. Pp. 229; $24.95.
Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press: Gerald of Wales 1146-1223 by
Robert Bartlett. Pp. 246; $46. The Philosophy of Robert Grosseteste by James McEvoy. Pp. 560; $74.
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas: Corpus Hispanorum de
Pace IX, XXI & XXII: De Bello contra Insulanos: Intervenci6n de
Espana en America by Juan de la Pena, edited by L. Perena, V.
Abril, C. Baciero, A. Garcia, J. Barrientos and F. Maseda. Pp. 667.
De Legibus VII & VIII by Francisco Suarez. Pp. 267, 178. No
prices given.
Cornell Universi!ty Press: Interfaces of the Word by Walter J. Ong, S.J.
Pp. 352; $22.50 cloth, $8.95 paper.
Crossroad: Religion and the One: Philosophies East and West by Frederick
Copleston, S.J. Pp. 281; $17.50.
Eerdmans: Foundations of Dogmatics, Vol. I by Otto Webber, translated
by Darrel L. Guder. Pp. 659; $27. Karl Barth/Rudolf Bultmann
Letters 1922-1966, translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Pp. 192;
$13.95.
Fortress: The Triune Identity by Robert W. Jenson. Pp. 208; $16.95.
Garland: Biathanatos: A Modern-Spelling Critical Edition by John Donne,
edited by Margaret Battin and Michael Rudick. Pp. 350; $50.
Greenwood Press: Augustinian Bibliography 1970-1980 by Terry L. Miethe.
Pp. 218; $35.
Harper and Row: A Letter of Consolation by Henri J. M. Nouwen. Pp.
96; $6.95. The Love of Christ: Spiritual Counsels by Mother Teresa
of Calcutta, edited by George Gorree and Jean Barbier. Pp. 115;
no price given.

668

664

BOOKS RECEIVED

Indiana University Press: Role Playing and Identity by Bruce Wilshire.
Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, 7. Pp. 301;
$24.95.

Laval University: V erite et Ethos: Recueil commemoratif dedie a AlphonseM arie Parent edited by Jaromir Danek. Pp. 405; no price given.
University of Navarra: Cristo Hija de Dias y Redentor del Hombre edited
by Lucas F. Mateo-Seco, et. al. III Simposio Internacional de
·
Teologia. Pp. 1020; no price given.
University of Notre Dame: God of Faith and Reason by Robert Sokolowski. Pp. 192; $15.95 cloth, $6.95 paper. Relativism: Cognitive and
Moral edited by Jack W. Meiland and Michael Krausz. Pp. 272;
$20 cloth, $8.95 paper.
Oxford University Press: Avatar and Incarnation by Geoffrey Parrinder.
Pp. 296; $8.95 paper. The Bible in America: Essays in Cultural
History edited by Nathan 0. Hatch and Mark A. Noll. Pp. 191;
$19.95 cloth, $6.95 paper. Biblical Ethics and Social Change by
Stephen Charles Mott. Pp. 254; $17.95 cloth, $6.95 paper. The
Christian Fathers by Maurice Wiles. Pp. 190; $4.95 paper. Divine
Revelation and the Limits of Historical Criticism by William J.
Abraham. Pp. 222; $24.95. John Henry Newman: His Life and
Work by Brian Martin. Pp. 160; $19.95.
Pilgrim Press: Abortion: The Moral Issues edited by Edward Batchelor.
Pp. 246; $15.95 cloth, $8.95 paper.
Pontificia Accademia di S. Tommaso: Atti dell'VIII Congresso Tomistico
Internazionale VI & VII: Morale e Diritto nella prospettiva tomitica and L'uomo e il mondo nella luce dell'Aquinate. Studi Tomistici' 15 & 16. Pp. 342; L. 20,000. Pp. 350; L. 20,000.
Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies: Mediaeval Philosophy by Armand Maurer. Revised edition. Pp. 455; $19.95.
Rowman and Littlefield: Sports and Athletics: Philosophy in Action by
Joseph C. Mihalich. Pp. 224; no price given.
St. Martins Press: The Marxist Philosophy of Ernest Bloch by Wayne
Hudson. Pp. 289; $27.50.
University of St. Thomas (Angelicum): Le Mayen mauvais pour obtenir
une fin bonne by N. Hendriks. Pp; 311; L. 10,000. La Teologia
Morale nella Storia e nella Problematica Attuale: Miscellanea p.
Louis Bertrand Gillon, O.P. by Dalmazio Mongillo, O.P., et. al. Pp.
506; L. 40,000. ll "De Subiecto Theologiae" (1297-1299) di
Remigio dei Girolami, O.P. by Emilio Panella, O.P. Pp. 89; L. 6,000.
Sant'Alberto Magno: l'uomo e il pensatore. Pp. 132; L. 6,000.
Problemi di Storia e di Vita Sociale by Raimondo Spiazzi, O.P.
et al. Pp. 212; L. 8,000. Problemi e Prospettive della Scuola nella
Comunita' Europea. Pp. 224; L. 8,000.

BOOKS RECEIVED

665

Seabury: St. John of the Cross: Reflections- on Mystical Experience by
Alain Cugno, translated by Barbara Wall. Pp. 153; $13.95. St.
Teresa of Avila by Stephen Clissold. Pp. Q7Q; $8.95. The Spiritual
Life: Learning East and West by John H. Westerhoff III and John
D. Eusden. Pp. 134; $13.95.
Southern Illinois University Press: Creative Interchange edited by John A.
Broyer and William S. Minor. Pp. 566; $Q7.50.
State University of New York Press: The Quest for Wholeness by Carl S.
Vaught. Pp. Ql3; no price given.
University Press of America: Christian Satisfaction in Aquinas: Towards a
Personalist Understanding by Romanus Cessario, O.P. Pp. 390;
$Q3.50 cloth, $13.Q5 paper. Expectant Creativity: The Action of
Hope in Christian Ethics by Vincent J. Genovesi, S.J. Pp. 179!;
$9!0.50 cloth, $9.50 paper. History of Philosophy in the Making:
Essays in Honor of James D. Collins edited by Linus J. Thro. Pp.
340; $Q3.Q5 cloth, $IQ.Q5 paper. Personal Decisions by H. Paul
LeMaire. Pp. QQO; $Q0.75 cloth; $9.75 paper.
University of Toronto Press: Foundations of Religious Tolerance by Jay
Newman. Pp. 184; $Q5 cloth, $8.95 paper.