The JANUARY '83 THOMIST
begins with a reexamination of the attempt to reconcile God's existence with the phenomenon of evil and suffering that is all pervasive in
the world. Is such evil inevitable in the light of finite freedom (as Alan
Plantinga argues)? Or could God preclude all evil without doing violence
to created freedom? Theodore Kondoleon argues, against Plantinga, for
the latter, insisting that to admit the principle as a logical possibility not
in fact actually realized, need not be interpreted as telling against the
existence of God.
Following this is a somewhat original reflection on the focal Thomistic
notion of analogy which, when seen as a phenomenon of language rather
than as anal,ogia entis, more closely approximates the preference for dialectical speech about God operative in Reformed Theology. Colman O'Neill
draws out the ecumenical implications of this by suggesting a development
of analogical method into a general hermeneutic for all interpretations of
the Judaeo-Christian tradition, one wherein analogy is concerned with
knowledge already acquired rather than with knowing the unknown.
Next is a stimulating essay by George A. Kendall suggesting that mankind's contemporary sense of alienation is rooted in a refusal of creaturehood. This amounts in fact to an ideology, in sharp contrast to the biblical
view of the struggle for existence as due to the creature's living in a wrong
relationship to their Creator.
Subsequent to this is a piece of historical scholarship from Francis E.
Kelley on an early (late thirteenth century) Thomistic thinker, Robert
Orford, discerning in his writings influences from Giles of Rome, an Augustinian against whom Orford ordinarily reacted in polemical fashion.
Kees de Kuyer then offers a reflecton on Heidegger's search for the
meaning of ground, by way of Leibniz's principle: Nihil est sine ratione.
The implications of this enable Heidegger to maintain that every being
has its source in Being, shedding some light on his constant contention
that " the thoughtworthy is the unthought discovered as the depth dimension of the already thought".
Lastly is a" Review Discussion" of Alan Donagan's Theory of Moral,ity in which Stephen Theron expresses strong reservations on Donagan's
contention that law in morals does not require a divine lawgiver.
Rounding out the issue are reviews of nine recent books of significance,
featuring a lengthy reflection on Jurgen Moltmann's innovative reconcep.
tualization of the doctrine of the Trinity, and reactions to Edward Schillebeeckx's two provocative studies of Christian ministry.
W.J.H.

THE FREE WILL DEFENSE:

NEW AND OLD

O

RIGINATING WITH Augustine (See On the Free
Chmce of the Will, particularly Book III) , the Free
Will Defense (hereafter FWD) is the strategy most
Christian apologists have relied upon to meet the atheologian's
challenge that the existence of evil, acy evil, but particularly
the amount and quality of actual evil, is incompatible with the
existence of God. 1 In its most general or widely accepted form
this defense amounts to the following argument: (1) A universe containing moral free agents who can choose or reject
God as their ultimate good (and i.n which there is also, presumably, a greater balance of moral good over moral evil 2) is
a universe that surpasses in value any universe lacking such
While God, in creating free agents, makes moral
creatures;
evil possible, the free agent is itself, by its own act of choice,
directly responsible for this evil of action which He, God, nonetheless permits for the sake of certain goods to which it is
logically presupposed; and, finally, (3) Aside from moral evil,
1 For some recent discuussions of this subject see Alvin Plantinga, The Nature
of Necessity (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1974), Chapter 9 and God, Freedom
and Evil (New York): Harper Torchbooks, 1974). For the atheologian's side see
II. J. McCloskey, God and Evil (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974). Also see
J. L. Mackie, "Evil and Omnipotence," Mind, LXIV (1955), pp. 200-!?12 and
"Theism and Utopia," Philosophy, XXXVII (1962), pp. 153-158; and Antony
Flew, "Divine Omnipotence and Human Freedom," New Essays in Philosophical
Theology, ed. A. Flew and A. Macintyre (Nfilw York: The Macmillan Company,
1964).
2 In his FWD, at least as he presents it in On the Free Choice of the Will,
Augustine neglects to include this proviso as an essential part of such a defense.
Aquinas, 011 the other hand, seems to have been a little more sensitive to this
point since he, at least, contends that given the existence of angela and their
existence in great multitude the amount of moral good in the universe resulting
from the exercise of free will exceeds the amount of moral evil. On this point see
Summa Theologiae, I. Q. 63, a. 9, c. and ad I.

1

THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

other evils befalling man in this life (as well as in the next)
come under the heading of evil of punishment. 3
At first glance the FWD would appear to reconcile God's
existence with what, from the human standpoint, are the major
forms of evil in the world, and even one contemporary atheologian has felt compelled to remark how "it is a powerful defense, which has satisfied many believers and routed or at least
rattled many sceptics." 4 Nonetheless, the more undaunted of
their number (Flew included) , rather than withdraw from the
attack, have scanned it for possible weaknesses and claim to
have found it vulnerable, even fatally so, in the following two
areas. (I) Granted a universe containing moral free agents
(and in which moral good outweighs moral evil) is superior
in goodness to any universe which would lack such creatures,
still God could have created a universe which would include
free agents but one in which all these agents would always
choose rightly. God could have done this because it is evidently something logically possible and, therefore, God as all-powerful could have brought it about. 5 Clearly, or so it would seem,
Christian teaching evil of punishment includes not
3 According to traditional
only the punishment inflicted because of one's own personal sins but also the
punishment inflicted on all men because of original sin. However, in Plantinga's
FWD (as we shall see) one possible explanation of natural evil, considered evil because it causes human suffering, is that it is due to the evil actions of Satan and
his cohorts. Plantinga claims to find this explanation of natural evil in Augustine
(I do not, but more on this later). Yet to be consistent with Augustine if not
nlso with traditional Christian belief, he would have to allow that such evils
that " natural evil " c>auses would not have befallen man if Adam had not sinned.
4 A. Flew, op. cit., p. 146.
5 As Mackie puts this point: "If God has made men such that in their free
choice they sometimes prefer what is good and sometime' what is evil, why could
he not have made men such that they always freely cho:Joe the good? If there
is no logical impossibility in a man's freely choosing the good on one, or on several occasions, there cannot be a logical impossibility of his freely choosing the
good on every occasion. God was not, then, faced with a choice between making
innocent automata and making beings who,- in acting freely, would sometimes
go wrong; there was open to him the obviously better possibility of making beings
who would act freely but always go right. Clearly, his failure to avail himself of
this possibility is inconsistent with his being both omnipotent and wholly good."
"Evil and Omnipotence," p. 209. The two versons of the FWD that I will ex-

THE FREE WILL DEFENSE:

NEW AND OLD

s

such a universe would give greater testimony to His wisdom
and goodness than a universe in which some (even one) are
permitted to sin and to remain attached to an undue end
thereby forfeiting happiness. Therefore, as infinitely good and
wise, God would be expected to do what is better here and
create a sinless world. Since, obviously, He has not done so,
He must not exist. (Q) The amoun.t of moral evil in the actual world, to say nothing of the great pain and suffering consequent upon such evil, some of which is visited upon the innocent but which has also to include the stern punishment a
divine justice would be expected to mete out to the wicked,
precludes any possible justification for its divine permission.
Therefore, even if this world were the best God could create
(as some have argued, in one form or other, it is), He should
still have refrained from creating it. 6 However, prim.a facie, it
would certainly appear that God could, and therefore should,
have done better. Evidently, then, He must not exist.
A relatively recent and somewhat ingenious version of the
FWD, that proposed by Alvin Plantinga, has been designed to
meet this renewed attack by contemporary atheologians. It
consists chiefly of arguing
(1) possibly God could not have created a world containing
moral agents without also permitting sm

and
amine above have two quite different replies to Mackie's objection. One, Plantinga's, will contend that possibly it was not within God's power to create beings
who would act freely but always go right; the other, Saint Thomas's, will concede
that God could have done this but that it would not necessarily have been the
better thing to do.
6 On this point see McCloskey, op. cit., p. 80. To quote him in part on this
matter: " A wholly good, omnipotent God would refrain from creating a world
in which evil predominated even were this the best possible world he could create.
I suggest therefore that the underlying suggestion that evil is justified if this is
the best of all possible worlds is mistaken." Here McCloskey is obviously addressing himself to the problem of actual evil and it is his considered view that,
in light of the enormity of human suffering and the amount and kinds of moral
evil, this world is not a world that an all-perfect being would have created. But
more on this later.
'

4

THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

(Q) possibly God could not have created a world containing ,a
greater balance of moral good over " broadly " moral evil
than the actual world contains. 7

Since (1) contradicts
(3) (necessarily) God could have created a universe containing
moral agents none of whom would ever sin

and (Q) contradicts
(4) (necessarily) God could have created a universe containing
a greater balance of moral good over broadly moral evil
than the actual world contains,

if both are demonstrably true, then the whole of the atheologian's renewed attack would have been met and soundly defeated. Moreover, since the traditional version of the FWD
(e.g. that to be found in Augustine and Aquinas) would allow
that God could have created a universe containing free agents
and willed (or caused it to be) that none of them would ever
sin, Plantinga's version seems less vulnerable to attack and
thus, if true, would seem to provide a stronger defense if not
also a definitive solution to the problem of evil. 8
In what follows I propose to examine Plantinga's FWD
primarily from the standpoint of its philosophical acceptability.
In this connection I shall argue that, aside from certain theological objections to which, perhaps, it lies even more exposed,
it involves a philosophical mistake with respect to God's
knowledge, one that adversely affects its understanding of His
power, and must, therefore, be rejected as false. I will then
co)lsider the case made against God's existence, based upon
evil, by one contemporary atheologian, namely, McCloskey,
and attempt a solution along traditional, principally Thomistic,
lines.
I. Plantinga's FWD
1. A note on free will. Basic to Piantinga's FWD, as well as
to its other versions, are the following two assumptions. (1)
7 Plantinga includes under " broadly " moral evil any evil resulting from the
morally evil acts of free agents. See The Nature of Necessity, pp. 192-193.
s See, for example, Saint Augustine, The City of God, Book XIV, ch. 27.

THE FREE WILL DEFENSE: NEW AND OLD

5

Certain created beings are free agents, i.e. they are not necessitated (or determined) to this or that particular good
(real or apparent) but have it within their power to determine
for themselves, a;t the very moment of choice, which of two
opposing goods they will have to use or enjoy. (2) The most
significant choice a created free agent can make (one which,
generally speaking, they all must make) is the choice between
a· real and an apparent good, or the choice between moral good
and evil. While neither of these two assumptions entails the
inevitability of moral evil in a God-created universe containing free agents, they do imply the genuine possibility of such
evil in such a universe. However, some contemporary atheologians, in attacking the FWD, have argued that God could
have created man (or any other free agent) so, or of such a
nature, that he would always choose rightly and therefore need
not have risked even so much as the possibility of moral evil
in His universe. 9 One, Flew, actually argues this position from
the standpoint of compatibilism (something which McCloskey
apparently rejects) .10 However, his argument to support this
theory is a curious one and completely fails to prove its point. 11
9 See Mackie, " Theism and Utopia," p. 155. Also see Flew, op. cit., pp. 149157 and McCloskey, op. cit., 118-119. In these references Mackie contends that
" it was logically possible for God to make men such that they would always
freely choose to do good," and McCloskey inquires " Why, then, given the love
a man may have for God and his fellow man, could not men be so made as never
to incline to evil but to incline to acts of love which are good?" However, Flew
argues his position from the standpoint of compatibilism.
10 See ibid., p. 117. To quote him on this point: "It is not possible here to
enter into a discussion of whether we do or do not possess free will. Instead I
simply note what follows if we lack freedom, namely that there would be no
problem of moral evil but a more perplexing problem of physical evil. I shall assume that free will is incompatible with complete determinism."
11 To give Flew's argument here: " to say that a person could have helped
doing something is not to say what he did was in principle unpredictable nor that
there were no causes anywhere which determined that he would as a matter of
fact act in this way. It is to say that if he had chosen to do otherwise he would
have been able to do so, that there were alternatives within the capacities of one
of his physical strength, of his I. Q., with his knowledge and open to a person
in his situation." P. 150. In other words, according to Flew an action can be
said to be free, even though antecedently determined by causes over which the

6

THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

Moreover, if Flew is right about compatibilism, then one may
well wonder how men can be morally faulted for acting the
way they do and God for creating man the way he is. I would
think, then, that the problem of moral evil depends upon a
non-deterministic conception of free will and, therefore, that
an attempt at its solution can equally proceed on the same
premise. However, I am quite willing to concede to the atheologian that freedom of choice need not entail the possibility of
moral evil. One has only to mention in this connection God
and the angels in heaven. 12 Moreover, unlike Plantinga, I am
also willing to allow that God could have created free agents
yet so ordered things that no one would ever sin. But I will
return to this point later in the discussion. Let me for the
moment proceed on the assumption (I believe a correct one)
that, given the actual order of things, for those of us who do
not possess the absolute good or a special privilege of grace,
the possibility of making a morally wrong choice (i.e. a choice
opposed to the divine rule) can always arise. 13 However, the
atheologian could still pursue the present line of attack by asking, Could not God have created a universe containing moral
free agents each one of whom always, and this purely contingently, chooses rightly? Since there would appear to be
nothing logically contradictory in this latter state of affairs, it
can be argued that God should have created such a universe.
It is this particular challenge that Plantinga's FWD principally
intends to meet.
2. Plantinga's FWD and Universal Transworld Depravity.
As I have already noted, Plantinga's version of the FWD
argues that it may not be within God's power to create a world
containing free agents no one of whom would ever make a
morally wrong choice. If this is true, then possibly God should
agent had no control, if the agent,
it to- decide to do the opposite, would
be able to do so. But this is like arguing that a perfectly normal and healthy person even though bound hands and feet is free to walk because if he were unbound
he could do just that!
12 See Summa Theoi., I, Q. 19, a. 9, ad 2, and Q. 62, a. 8, c. and ad 2 and ad S.
1a See ibid., Q. 62, a. 8 and Q. 100, a. 2.

THE FREE WILL DEFENSE:

NEW AND OLD

7

not be faulted for not having done so, or for creating the world
He (supposedly) did create, since, possibly, this was the only
option open to Him consistent with His goodness and His decision to create. We have now to determine how correct Plantinga is in arguing this defense.
To begin with, Plantinga willingly allows that a world containing free agents in which no one ever sins is a possible one
for, evidently, there is nothing contradictory in the notion of a
multitude of free agents all of whom always choose rightly.
What is more, he also upholds the view of God's power which
asserts that it can effect, or bring about, any possible state of
affairs so long as its being brought about does not involve a contradiction. How then, one might ask, can Plantinga possibly oppose the view that God could have created a world containing
free agents but one without moral evil ? But this would be
to overlook the most important weapon in his whole FWD,
namely, free will. For, according to Plantinga, what free
choices free creatures will make in any universe God should
decide to create containing them is something determined by
them, not by God.14 Moreover, and this is his major point, it
is entirely possible that each and every possible free creature
would, if created and allowed to act freely, at least once choose
to do something morally wrong. In Plantinga's somewhat
quaint terminology, they would all suffer from " Transworld
Depravity." Finally, and this point is also important, God, as
omniscient, would presumably know this. 15 Consequently, it
is demonstrably possible that God, even though omnipotent,
cannot create a world which contains free agents but no moral
evil. It would be well to note here how Plantinga's hypothesis
of universal "Transworld Depravity" disposes of the objection, sometimes heard, that God, if He willed to create a universe containing free agents (as His wisdom and goodness
would (seemingly) require Him to do if He willed to create at
14 See The Nature of Necessity, pp. 184, 190. See also God, Freedom and Evil,
pp. 42-44.
15 See ibid., pp. 42-43 and also The Nature of Necessity, p. 180.

8

THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

all) could at least have willed to create only those free agents
who He foreknew would never sin; for, according to Plantinga, th'ere may be no such agents. Let us now see how Plantinga works out his defense in terms of " possible worlds." 16
Among possible worlds Plantinga invites us to consider a
possible world, W, in which a particular free agent, P, in a given
situation, S, is free with respect to a certain action, A. Now
assume that in WP does A. Consider also another possible
world, W1 , which in its time segment up to S is alike in every
respect to W (in other words, let S entail everything that has
occurred in W and W1 up to and including S) ; however, in
W1 P does not do A but the opposite. Which of these two possible worlds, Plantinga might now ask us, do you think God
can actualize? Our initial impulse would be to answer," Either
one, since God is omnipotent and therefore can actualize just
any possible world." Not so, says Plantinga, and here is why.
Suppose that if S were actual P would do A (and God, as omniscient, knows this); then, clearly, God cannot actualize W1.
Suppose, on the other hand, that if S were actual, P would not
do A but the opposite (and God knows this); then, clearly
again, God cannot actualize W. In either case there is a possible world that God cannot actualize. Since examples here are
easy to multiply, one would have to conclude that there are
many possible worlds God, despite His omnipotence, simply
cannot actualize, namely, those worlds which contain free
agents but whose actualizations would entail a contradiction.
Thus, according to Plantinga, God, in deciding to create a
world containing free agents, must be guided by HiEI knowledge
of what choices each and every po8sible free creature would
make i1' created and plar·e<l in any and an circumstances involving an exercise of its free wiU.11 If, on the other hand, God
16 My summary of Plantinga's FWD omits some of its details and presents it
in a less rigorous and elegant manner than the author does. However, I believe
my sketch of it captures all its essential features. For the FWD as Plantinga
argues it see ibid., pp. 169-195 and God, Freedom and Evil, pp. 29-64.
11 To quote Plantinga on this very important point: "The essential point of the
Free Will Defense is that the creation of a world containing moral good is a co-

THE FREE WlLL DEFENSE: NEW AND OLD

9

Himself were in any way to determine which choice (of the
two possible choices open to a certain possible free creature in
a particular set of circumstances) would take place in a universe He should decide to create containing that creature (and
in this way have foreknowledge of it, as some have held), then
He would not be creating an agent which is truly free.
Extending this idea to the moral choices of created free
agents, Plantinga can now argue, concerning a certain possible
free creature, how it is entirely possible that if God were to
create it it would choose, at least once, to do something morally wrong. In other words, possibly God cannot actualize any
possible world containing that possible free creature in which
it does not make a morally wrong choice. Such an agent, again
using Plantinga's words, would be infected with "Transworld
Depravity." Plantinga is now in a position to establish the
main point of his FWD. For assuming what is possible, namely, that each and every possible free creature is so infected,
then in any world God should create containing free agents
each one of these agents would, at least once, go morally wrong.
Hence, Plantinga concludes, possibly God could not have
created a world containing free agents but one without moral
evil. So much for the first part of his FWD.
8. Plantinga's FWD and the actual world as possibly the
best, morally, God could create. However, what the atheologian may still want to argue, and what appears more than
likely, is that God could have created a world containing a
better mixture of moral good and evil than the actual world
contains. Plantinga is able to meet this objection by employing the key notion of his FWD, namely, that God cannot acoperative venture; it requires the uncoerced concurrence of significantly free creatures. But then the actualization of a world W containing moral good is not up
to God alone; it also depends upon what the significantly free creatures of W
would do if God created them and placed them in the situations W contains. Of
course it is up to God whether to create free creatures at all; but if he aims to
produce moral good, then he must create significantly free creatures upon whose
co-operation he must depend. Thus is the power of an omnipotent God limited by
the freedom he confers upon his creatures." The Nature of Necessity, p. 190.

10

THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

tualize just any possible world that includes free agents since
which of these worlds God can actualize depends upon what
choices these possible free creatures would make in an actual
world, something God, as omniscient, presumably knows. 18
Thus he concedes there are many possible worlds containing a
greater balance of moral good over moral evil than the actual
world contains but perhaps God cannot actualize them. To
illustrate this point let us take, for example, a possible world,
W 2 , which contains a greater balance of moral good over moral
evil than Kronos (the actual world). Let us also assume that
up to a certain point in time,
W 2 is in every respect just like
Kronos except that at Ta certain agent, P, chooses rightly with
respect to moral good and evil whereas in Kronos P chooses
wrongly at T (and this is one of the reasons why W 2 is morally superior to Kronos). Since it should now be clear, in light
of what has previously been said, that God could not have
actualized W 2 , we can conclude that there is at least one possible world morally superior to Kronos that God cannot actualize. Perhaps the same is true of all other possible worlds
containing a greater balance of moral good over moral evil
than Kronos contains; perhaps God cannot actualize any one
of them! Hence, Plantinga concludes, possibly God could not
have created a morally better world than the one in fact He
did create.
But, it may be objected, moral evil is not the only evil that
we find in the universe. There is, after all, a great deal of
natural evil. In this category are to be placed earthquakes,
floods, droughts, monstrosities and other natural disorders,
some of which exact a great toll in human suffering. Surely, it
can be argued, God could have created a world containing less
natural evil than the actual world contains and, since (presumably) such a world would be a_ better world, He should
have done so. Plantinga's response to this objection is simply
to say that, indeed, God could have created such a world but
perhaps not at the cost of some moral goodness to be found in

zr,

is See ibid., p. 180 and also God, Freedom and Evil, pp. 42-43.

THE FREE WILL DEFENSE:

OLD

11

the actual world. 19 Here he argues that the balance of moral
good over moral evil in the actual world may entail the amount
of physical evil the latter contains by suggesting that the
world's natural evils and its human persons may be so related
that a greater amount of moral good results from those evils
than would otherwise obtain (i.e. perhaps people can and do
respond to these evils in morally heroic and exemplary ways)
However, he also proposes, as an hypothesis, that natural evils
may be caused by certain malevolent non-human persons
(Satan and his cohorts). While this idea may strike many today, even Christians familiar with their tradition, as strange,
Plantinga claims that it was actually held by Augustine; moreover, it serves the purpose of reducing natural evil to moral
evil, thereby strengthening his F'WD by extending its explanatory power to all evil. 2 ° Consistent with this hypothesis,
Plantinga maintains, are the following two positions: 1) possibly there is a balance of good over evil with respect to the
actions of these non-human persons; and 2) possibly it was
not within God's power to create a world that contains a more
favorable balance of good over evil with respect to the actions
of its non-human persons than the actual world contains. To
sum up Plantinga's response concerning the amount of actua.l
evil: Possibly all the evil in the world is broadly moral evil and
it was not within God's power to create a world containing a
better mixture of broadly moral good and evil than the actual
world contains. 21
19 See ibid., pp.

57-58.
both The Nature of Necessity (see p. 192) and God, Freedom and Evil
(see p. 58) Plantinga refers to certain works of Augustine in which Augustine
supposedly teaches that natural evil is caused by Satan and his cohorts. One
may check these references in vain to find Augustine expressly or explicitly teaching such a thing and nowhere else, to my knowledge, does he maintain this view.
2 1 See ibid., pp. 57-59 and The Nature of Necessity, pp. 192-193. Plantinga defines " broadly moral evil " as the evil resulting from the free actions of moral
free agents and " broadly moral good " as its correlative notion. Thus broadly
moral evil could include not only natural evil but also evil of punishment ! On the
other hand, broadly moral good would include not simply good and meritorious
acts but also the happiness and well-being effected by such acts.
20 In

THEODORE J.

II. Some Cracks in Plantinga's FWD
1. Some theological difficulties. There are, I believe, several
serious theological objections to be raised against Plantinga's
FWD which we might do well to consider here before proceeding to appraise it philosophically. Since Plantinga is, I presume, a believing Christian, these objections will have at least
the force of an ad hominem argument against his position and
should surely dissuade from it those who believe that, in such
matters, faith is the final arbiter of truth. The most obvious
one concerns his hypothesis of universal " Transworld Depravity." This hypothesis is readily seen to be in open conflict with what both Scripture and tradition teach about the
moral actions of Christ and the good angels.22 Thus, contrary
to Plantinga's FWD, God could have created a world containing free agents but no moral evil: He could have done this simply by creating, from among possible free creatures, only the
good angels. There is also the assumption, one basic to Plantinga's FWD, that God cannot be the cause, not even the first
cause, of the acts of choice of finite free agents. Not only does
this position contradict numerous Scriptural passages which
indicate God's control over the choices of His free creatures
but it also denies the Christian doctrine of grace, a doctrine
which teaches, among other things, God's movement of the will
away from evil and to the good (the grace of conversion) .23
22 For a somewhat similar criticism of Plantinga's FWD see Robert Merrihew
Adams, "Middle Knowledge and the Problem of Evil," American Philosophical
Quarterly, 14 (1977), pp. 116-117. However, Adam's "Theological" criticism is
done from the standpoint of the teachings of certain Jesuit theologians who subscribed to the theory of " middle knowledge," a theory which Adams and I see
to be implied in Plantinga's FWD. Adams wants to suggest by his criticism that
one can hold, as these Jesuits did, for a theory of " middle knowledge " without
at the same time admitting the possibility of universal "Transworld Depravity."
However, I think Plantinga is right on this point and Adams wrong. Nevertheless,
Adams has correctly identified in this article what I believe to be the error in
Plantinga's FWD by noting that such propositions as refer to the "conditional
future " free choice acts of possible or actual free creatures are neither determinately true nor false.
za Some of the more significant Scriptural passages acknowledging God's power
over man's will are Prov. ii: I and Phil. i: IS.

THE FREE WILL DEFENSE: NEW AND OLD

Once again, contrary to Plantinga.'s FWD, God could have
created a world containing less moral evil or more moral good
than the actual world contains; He could have done so simply
by working greater miracles of grace. Whether such a world
would be a better world than the actual world is an entirely
different question. From what we have said, any orthodox
Christian, it would seem, would have to regard Plantinga's
FWD, despite its laudable purpose, as one does the proverbial
"gifts borne by Greeks."
A philosophical fault in Plantinga's FWD. Plantinga's
FWD also suffers from what I (and others) have perceived to
be a philosophical mistake relating to God's knowledge, one
which, incidentally, is not without an important precedent in
the history of Roman Catholic theology. 24 As we have seen,
one of the key ideas in this defense is that prior in the order
of explanation to any decision on His part to create-and to
create this world (the actual one) as opposed to some other
possible order of things-God a1ready knows what each and
every possible free creature would choose to do in any conceivable set of circumstances were it actually to exist along
with those circumstances. But here an objection can be raised,
one that strikes at the very heart of Plantinga's FWD. How,
it may be asked, can God possibly know what choice a certain
possible free creature would, in fact, make in a given set of
circumstances were it actually to exist and be placed in those
circumstances? For inasmuch as free will is open to opposites,
it is not in itself determined to either one or the other of the
two opposing choices it can make in any particular situation involving its act of choice. Consequently, some have argued that
apart from a " virtually practical " type knowledge that these
are the choices He would will to exist in this or that particular
2 4 As I mentioned in a preceding footnote Adams also identifies this mistake
in Plantinga's FWD and is, I believe, the first to do so. However, my way of
" attacking " it is, in some respects, different from his and capitalizes on the
Dominican view that the conditional future free choice acts of actual or possible
free creatures are intrinsically unknowable (and that; therefore, propositions about
them are neither determinately true nor false).

14

THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

world He could create for the reflection of His goodness (a type
of knowledge included in His wisdom) , God cannot possibly
know the "conditional future " free choice acts of His possible
free creatures since they are intrinsically unknowable. They
have also maintained, as regards the absolute (as opposed to
the merely conditional) future free choice acts of those possible
free creatures God has actually willed to exist, that God knows
them because He has decreed their existence and is their First
Cause, i.e. He knows, in His eternal lmowledge of vision, which
one of two choices a certain free creature will actually make in
a particular set of circumstances because He has eternally
willed its existence in keeping with His plan for the universe
(He also could have willed the existence of its opposite if He
had willed to create -a different order of things) and at the same
time has also willed to concur with the creature (who is not
always in act) in bringing this choice about.
As those familiar with the history of theological controversy
within the Catholic Church must by now be aware, it was precisely this question, namely, whether the conditional future
free choice acts of possible (or actual) free creatures belong to
the category of things intrinsically knowable (and thus knowable to God), which sparked a prolonged and heated controversy between the leading Jesuit and Dominican theologians of
the 16th century. 25 Briefly, the issue concerned God's so-called
"middle knowledge" (scientia media), a type of knowledge the
Jesuit theologian Molina (d. 1600) thought it both convenient
and appropriate to attribute to God. According to Molina and
his Jesuit followers, God's "middle knowledge" mediates between God's knowledge of simple intelligence, wherein He
knows all things possible to His power but which He has not
willed to exist, and His knowledge of vision, in which He sees,
in a single glance as it were, the whole actual order of things
(from beginning to end) He has wifled to exist, and consists in
25 For a good discussion of the nature of this controversy see Reginald GarrigouLagrange, O.P., The One God, trans. Dom. Bede Rose, 0. S. B. (St. Louis:
B. Herder Book Co., 1944), pp. 449-473; also pp. 637-713.

THE FREE WILL DEFENSE:

NEW AND OLD

15

the knowledge of what each and every possible free creature
would do if created and placed in any particular set of circumstances.26 As might be expected from theologians in those
days, the Jesuits were prepared to support their position with
Scripture and eagerly pointed to such a text as I Kings 28,
wherein we read that God revealed to David what Saul and the
people of Keilah would do should David decide to remain in
that city. This text, the Jesuits argued, clearly demonstrates
that God knows what choices His free creatures would make
even in counter-factual situations and thus that He possesses
"middle knowledge." He possesses such knowledge because He
eternally knows what Saul and the people of Keilah would have
chosen to do if David had remained in that city, even though,
as things turned out, David did not remain in that city.
Before proceeding any further with this discussion perhaps
it would be well to indicate why Molina proposed this theory
of "middle knowledge " in the first place. He did so, apparently, to safeguard human free choice from any prior and determining movement of the will by God (concursus praevius)
and also to soften the traditional doctrine of Predestination.
On the assumption of " middle knowledge " this latter doctrine
could now be explained in such a way as to make the creature,
not God, ultimately responsible for its election to eternal life,
since God would then foreknow, thanks to His scientia media;
those free creatures who would and those who would not merit
salvation by the use they would make of His grace and could
thus plan and act accordingly. It would certainly not be the
case of His freely choosing some but not others for eternal life,
in accord with His plan for the reflection of His goodness, and
then giving grace, ultimately the grace of final perserverance,
as a result of His election. According to Molina and his Jesuit
followers, then, the amount of good God could accomplish in a
world containing free agents would necessarily depend upon
the extent of the cooperation these creatures would give to His
26 For this distinction between God's knowledge of simple intelligence and His
knowledge of vision in Saint Thomas see Summa Theol., I, Q. 14, a. 9.

16

THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

grace-something which God would presumably foreknow in
His " middle knowledge "-so that it would also be true for
them that God cannot create just any possible world. However, it never occurred to these good Jesuits to propose Plantinga's more radical hypothesis ("Universal Transworld Depravity") and likely because of the obvious theological difficulties I have already mentioned.
For their part the Dominicans vigorously opposed the theory
of " middle knowledge," regarding it as a dangerously novel
doctrine, one which entailed a denial of God's ultimate and
complete control over His creatures' actions, specifically those
of His free ones, and, on its theological side, a renewed form
of Pelagianism. 27 They argued that God's knowledge of the
absolute or conditional future free choice acts of His actual or
possible free creatures can only be explained in terms of what
He has actually willed (or would will) to exist in the universe
He has willed (or would will) to create for the reflection of
His goodness, Otherwise explained, i.e. on the Jesuit theory,
God would be knowing something intrinsically unknowableeither that or else, according to what this theory could also imply, the creature's free choice act would actually be determined
(and thereby foreknown) by the circumstandes God would
have prearranged for it. Thus, to return to the Scriptural passage cited above in support of "middle knowledge," the Dominicans maintained that the following proposition
(I) If David were to stay in Keilah, Saul would lay siege to that
city and the people of Keilah would deliver David up to
Saul

can be accepted as true without conceding " middle knowledge " by interpreting it to mean that what is stated in the
consequent is what God would have actually willed to occur if,
contrary to fact, David had chosen to-remain in Keilah.
Moreover, in acknowledging a" physical premotion" (concursus pra'evius) even in the case of an act of free choice, the
21 See Garrigou-Lagrange,

op. cit., pp. 46Q-470.

THE FREE WILL DEFENSE: NEW AND OLD

17

Dominicans were careful to explain how such a movement, or
prior concurrence, does not destroy the will's freedom. Insisting that every finite agent, even the free one, must be moved
to act by God (since the finite agent is first in potency to operation), they also maintained, following Saint Thomas, that
God works in each creature in accord with its nature. 28 As they
would exp}ain it, God, the Self-Existing Being, is the first cause
of the existence of the creature's act of choice, the creature its
proximate (or secondary) cause. Now, to continue this explanation, in this conference of existing God uses the will of the
free agent as an instrumental cause which freely determines
the particular act of choice to be given existence (absolutely
considered the agent could have chosen otherwise). In other
words, God moves it (the created will) on the level of universal
being and goodness while the creature gives determination to
this movement by freely choosing this particular good or its opposite. Thus, He moves the will so that it freely determines itself to this act of choice as opposed to that. Since it is this particular act of choice that God has willed to exist in His universe
(but willed to exist in accord with the creature's free determination) it is therefore, the Dominicans maintained, "foreknown "
by Him. Considered solely in its contingent cause, the future
free choice act of any particular free creature is something undetermined and therefore unknowable. 29 However, considered
28 To quote Saint Thomas on this important point: " Free will is the cause of
its own movement because by his free will man moves himself to act. But it dms
not of necessity belong to liberty that what is free should be the first cause of
itself, as neither for one thing to be the cause of another need it be the first
cause. God, therefore, is the first cause Who moves causes both natural and
voluntary. And just as by moving natural causes He does not prevent their acts
being natural, so by moving voluntary causes He dms not deprive their actions
of being voluntary: but rather is He the cause of this very thing in them; for He
operates in each thing according to its own nature." Summa Theol., I, Q. 83, a.
1, ad 3. (English quotations from the Summa Theologiae appearing in this paper
are from the English Dominican translation by Lawrence Shapcote.)
29 Once again to quote Saint Thomas: " In another way a contingent thing
be considered as it is in its cause; and in this way it is considered as future, and
as a contingent thing not yet determined to one; forasmuch as a contingent cause
has relation to opposite things: and in this sense it is not subject to any certain
knowledge." Summa Theol., I, Q. 14, a. 13.

18

THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

in its First Cause, Who in His eternal knowledge 0£ v1s10n
knows all the things He has willed to exist, in their very presentiality, it is something already determined and thus infallibly known to Him. 30 So much here for this controversy between the Jesuits and the Dominicans.
As we have seen, Plantinga also accepts the theory 0£ "middle knowledge," although he never uses that expression and arrives at his position independently. His sole argument in favor
0£ "middle knowledge" (an argument which the Jesuit philosopher-theologian Suarez also employed 31 ) would appear to be
the following. Every conditional proposition, for example,
(2) If Borg had not injured himself before his U. S. Opens

match with Connors, he would have defeated him instead
of losing the match,
has a contradictory, which in (2) 's case would be
(3) If Borg had not injured himself before his U. S. Opens

match with Connors, he would not have defeated him but
would have lost the match (as he actually did).
Now where contradictory propositions are concerned, one is
true and the other false and God, as omniscient, presumably
knows which one is which. 32 With this in mind, consider the
following proposition:
( 4) If God were to create Peter and place him in the same his-

torical circumstances in which in actual fact He did place
him, Peter would deny Christ.
(4) 's contradictory is therefore
(5) If God were to create Peter and place him in the same his-

torical circumstances in which in actual fact He did place
him, Peter would not deny Christ.
Since one of these two propositions is true and the other false
and since God knows which one is which, He must therefore
possess" middle knowledge."
so See ibid.

op. cit., p. 470.
Plantinga, God, Freedom and Evil, pp. 4fl-43; also see The Nature of
Necessity, pp. 180-184.
31 See Garrigou-Lagrange,

82 See

THE FREE WILL DEFENSE: NEW AND OLD

19

What should be said about this argument for " middle knowledge " ? I think it is unsound and for the following reasons.
(1) It is not at all clear that (2) and (3) and (4) and (5) are
pairs of contradictorily opposed propositions. As a matter of
fact the contradictory of any proposition of the form p ::J q is
a proposition of the form ,...._, (p::J q) , not a proposition of the
form p::J ,.._,q as the argument assumes. That is why propositions of the forms p::Jq and p::J,_,q can both be true, at least
according to Material Implication (M. I.) . For M. I. claims
that if the antecedent of a conditional proposition is false, then
the consequent can be either true or false and the conditional
proposition true (since anything can follow from a false antecedent) .33 Thus, if the common antecedents of (2) and (3)
and (4) and (5) are both false, then (2) and (3) and (4) and
(5) are all true. If one were to assume, then, that God had
not decided to create Peter, or had decided to create him but
not to place him in the actual circumstances in which He did
place him when he denied Christ, what could be said about (4)
and (5)? According to M. I., they would both be true! But
this contradicts the theory of " middle knowledge," according
to which one of these two propositions is true and the other
false regardless of God's decision with respect to Peter. True,
(2) and (3) a.nd (4) and (5) are contradictorily opposed when
their common antecedents are each assumed to be true. However, all that means, say in the case of (4) and (5), is that the
following proposition
33 Wher•e strict as opposed to material implication is concerned, however, it is
not true that any consequent can follow from a false antecedent. For in the
proposition " If I were not alive at this moment, I could not be writing this
paper" the antecedent (as contrary to fact) is false but the consequent necessarily
true. Presumably, however, propositions supposedly the objects of God's "middle
knowledge " would not be propositions involving a relationship of strict implication between the antecedent and the consequent, unless, of course, one were to
acknowledge a determination of circumstances. In the latter case such a proposition as " If God creates x and places him in circumstances y, then x will do A "
would be true if x were determined to do A because of y. While such an explanation would give an adequate account of how such propositions could be true, it
would be fatal to free will.

20

THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

(6) If God were to create Peter and place him in the same historical circumstances in which He actually did place him,
then either Peter would deny Christ or he would not deny
Him.

is necessarily true; it does not mean that (4) and (5) are contradictorily opposed. In other words, to think that because the
law of excluded middle applies to the disjunctive proposition
which is the consequent of (6) when that proposition is taken
in conjunction with its antecedent, it also applies to (4) and
(5) is surely a mistake.
(2) Even where contradictory propositions are concerned,
while it is true that one or the other must be true (or false),
it may not always be the case that either one is determinately
true (or false) -at least so Aristotle thought regarding contradictory propositions about future contingent occurrences. 34
In other words (and this was his view, not ours), in the case
of any two such propositions it is true to say, in accord with
the Law of Excluded Middle, that one must be true and the
other false. However, neither one is determinately-or actually-true (or false) since that has yet to be determined in the
order of reality (as well as in the order of human knowledge).
Assuming a divine foreknowledge, though, then, pace Aristotle,
one of two such propositions is determinately true and the
other false as what is future is already present (and thus certain) to God's knowledge. In the case of God's supposed middle knowledge, on the other hand, we are not dealing with something in the absolute (or actual) future which is already included (as present) in God's knowledge of vision, but with
what would take place as regards a particular act of choice supposing God were to create a certain possible free creature and
place it in particular circumstances. Now, to return to the case
of propositions (4) and (5) above and other propositions like
them, which Plantinga supposes to have determinate truth
value and thus to be an object of God's knowledge I would contend that, unlike Aristotle's propositions concerning future con84 See On Interpretation, ch.

9 19a6-19b4.

THE FREE WILL DEFENSE: NEW AND OLD

21

tingent occurrences, not only do such propositions lack determinate truth value (so that neither one is determinately true
or false) but also they are not even contradictorily opposed.
Plantinga attempts to support the view that such propositions are contradictorily opposed (and God knows which one
is true and which one false) by arguing that counter-factual
conditionals can be shown to have determinate truth value
and that, therefore, for example, in the case of (2) and (3)
above, one is determinately true and the other determinately
false (even though we may not know which one is which) .35
Now if this is true, God could be said to have" middle knowledge" since the class of counter-factual conditionals would include propositions relating to the free choice acts of possible or
actual free creatures. However, I would argue, against this view,
that counter-factual conditionals concerning contingent matters, such as (2) and (3) above, belong to a category of propositions whose truth values are forever undetermined (and that,
therefore, (2) and (3) are not contradictorily opposed) . While
some recent work in logic claims to have discovered a procedure by which counter-factual conditions may be determined
to be true or false, I do not believe that this procedure is
plicable to the case in question nor to every case of counterfactual conditionals. 86 According to this procedure
(7) A counter-factual conditional A-?B is true if either A is impossible of in that possible_world closest to the actual A
and B hold and not A and B.

(7) seems correctly to describe why it is that we are inclined
to accept such a proposition as
(8) If the pilot's parachute had failed to open after he ejected
from his cockpit 3,000 feet above the hard and rocky ground
below, he would not have survived the fall

as true and
ss See Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity, pp. 174-180.
Lewis, Oounterfactuals (London: Blackwell, 1978), Ch. I.

36 See David

THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

(9) If the pilot's parachute had failed to open after he ejected
from his cockpit 3,000 feet above the hard and rocky ground
below, he would have survived the fall

as false. In other words, we think that (8) is true and (9)
false because in the possible world closest to ours (the real
world) , but in which the antecedent of (8) and (9) is true, the
laws of nature which govern our world hold and thus (8) 's
consequent is also true (and (9) 's false) .
While I would hardly deny that some counter-factual conditionals are true, even obviously true (and others obviously
false), I do not believe that they are always true (or false) because of (7) above. Take, for example,
(10) If I were not alive at this moment, I could not be writing
this paper.

(10) is true and its opposite number false but surely not because (10) could only be false in a possible world that is unlike
ours in a certain important or relevant respect. Indeed, there
is no possible world-or at least no possible world in which I
exist and in which I can write papers-in which (10) would
not be true. Furthermore, the possible world analysis of how
such counter-factual conditionals as
and (3) and also (8)
above can have determinate truth value does not allow for the
possibility of either miracles or free will. Yet, if one does allow
for possible departures from natural laws or from habits
acquired by the exercise of free will, then these propositions
are at best only probably true (or false). But God's" middle
knowledge " is not about what is only probably true.
Now regarding (4) and (5) above (and other propositions
supposedly the object of God's "middle knowledge"), while
they need not turn out to be counterfactual conditionals, they
are, nonetheless, at least logically prior to any determination on
God's part with respect to creation, without any determinate
truth value (and therefore cannot restrict God with respect to
the universe He can create) . The reason why they lack determinate truth value has already been indicated: since free will

THE FREE WILL DEFENSE: NEW AND OLD

i8

is open to opposites, what choice a cert!lin possible free creature
would make in a given set of circumstances were it to exist
along with those circumstances is something intrinsically indeterminate and, therefore, unknowable. In a word, there can
be no determinate truth about something indeterminate in being. Plantinga, in arguing his FWD, has argued on the premise
that such propositions are determinately true (or false). Consequently, since his FWD rests upon that false assumption, it
necessarily collapses.
If, then, God knows the future free choice acts of His free
creatures (as He most assuredly does), this can only be because they are already seen by Him, in their very presentiality,
in His eternal knowledge of vision, a knowledge which presupposes His will as causing the existence of all His creaturesand also their actions, as First Cause-in accord with His plan
for the universe. Plantinga would presumably reject this explanation of a divine causal knowledge of the creature's free
choice act since he would see it to conflict with free will. Indeed, his FWD rests on the view that such knowledge on God's
part cannot be causal knowledge since God supposedly has no
control over the free choice acts of His free creatures. In other
words, Plantinga's argument is that if God were in any way the
cause of the creature's free choice act, then the latter would
not be something truly self-determined and therefore free.
However, I do not see why God cannot move the creature's
will, as the first and universal cause, without prejudice to its
freedom. The will, after all, is free to choose or not to choose
(to act or not act). However, when it chooses, it chooses
something reason judges, rightly or wrongly, to be good (e.g.
either the sense pleasure in an act of adultery or the good of
justice in choosing not to commit adultery) . But this movement of the will towards the good, the universal object of the
will, is from God, the First Mover and the Universal Good. As
Saint Thomas explains this point: " God moves man's will, as
the Universal Mover, .to the universal object of the will, which
is good. And without this universal motion, man cannot will

THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

anything. But man determines himself by his reason to will
this or that, which is true or apparent good. Nevertheless,
sometimes God moves some specially to the willing of something determinate which is good; as in the case of those whom
He moves by grace." 87 Moreover, even in God's movement of
the will, by grace, to some determinate good (so that what the
will chooses is what God's movement determines it to), the
will is not forced in any way but consents to the movement.
Indeed, it could be noted in this connection that grace is not
an impediment but an aid to free will (particularly in man's
fallen state).
.
As regards the sinful act of choice, it may be noted here that
God is also its first cause. 38 In concurring with the creature in
giving existence to this act, He permits the defect in the act
(a defect caused by the creature's failure to submit itself to its
proper rule or measure) and permits it for a good purpose.
Thus, He wills the existence of the act, indeed is its first cause,
while permitting its defect. Moreover, since in planning His
universe He has willed to include defective or sinful acts of
choice therein and, to speak even more specifically, to include
certain particular ones, He thereby foreknows them as their
First Cause.
I think I have now made clear why I find Plantinga's FWD,
despite its laudable aim, philosophically unacceptable. For
one, it implies the theory of "middle knowledge," a theory
which holds something to be knowable which is intrinsically
unknowable. For another, it opposes our normal philosophical
inclination to think that God, as Infinite, does have complete
control or power over what kind of universe He would want to
exist should He decide to create one to reflect His goodness
a1 Summa

Theol., I-II, Q. 9, a. 6, ad S.
Thomas explains it: " The act. of sin is both a being and an act:
and in both respects it is from God. Because every being, whatever the mode of
its being, must be derived from the First Being . . . Again every action is caused
by something existing in act, since nothing produces an action save in so far as
it is in act and every being in act is reduced to the First Act, viz., God, as to
its cause, Who is act by His essence." Summa The&., I-II, Q. 79, a. !i!.
as As Saint

THE FREE WILL DEFENSE:

NEW AND OLD

25

and that He therefore can determine what actions of His creatures, particularly His free ones, shall exist in such a universe.
Not so on the theory of " middle knowledge," which would preclude God from creating any number of possible worlds.
III. The Traditional FWD
Since the view of God's power and knowledge which I have
defended in the preceding discussion allows that it is within
God's power to create a world containing free agents acting for
an end freely chosen but a world without moral evil, we have
now to face the question posed by the atheologian, Why, then,
did He not do so instead of creating a world containing, particularly on the human level, such a great amount of moral
and consequent evil? Should He not be faulted for creating
this world when there was available to Him the apparently
much better alternative of creating a world containing moral
free agents yet one free of moral evil (and the consequent evil
of punishment)? Indeed, could He not be faulted for creating
a world containing any evil? As one recent writer has put this
objection, "an all-perfect God as such must prefer the better
to the good, and the best if there is such a thing to the better." 39 While the writer, McCloskey, finally concedes that the
concept of " the best of all possible worlds " is most likely an
incoherent one, he will insist, nevertheless, that for any universe, no matter how good, containing evil there is always a
better one wholly good, one which an all-perfect being would
necessarily create if He were to create at all (since "an allpowerful being would always create the better rather than
the less good world " 40 ) • Many of McCloskey's arguments
throughout this book from which I have just quoted, his most
recent and extensive discussion of the problem of evil, aim
either at demonstrating the inefficacy of certain traditional
solutions to the problem of evil or, more positively, at establishing that while the existence of evil, any evil, is, if not logi89 McCloskey,

40 Ibid., p. 76.

op. cit., p. 81.

26

THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

cally, at least ethically incompatible with the existence of God,
the various forms of actual evil and, in his opinion, its excessive
amount make it even more certain that God does not exist.
In responding to McCloskey's arguments, particularly those
directed against the Thomistic solution to the problem as well
as those advanced to show the ethical incompatibility between
God's existence and evil's, I will follow closely Saint Thomas's
teaching. Necessarily, then, a certain amount of" theological"
material will again enter my discussion since his solution is
partly along theological lines. Fundamental in this connection,
I should mention here, is his position on the question of the
origin of moral evil in our universe. For, according to it, moral
evil would not have arisen in this universe, a universe containing moral free agents all of whom were created good and naturally incapable of choosing anything contrary to the good proportionate to their natures, were it not for the fact that man
and the angels were created for a higher, supernatural end, to
wit, a very sharing of the life or beatitude of God Himself. 41
On this point, then, Thomas would seem to be in complete accord with those atheologians who argue that God could have
created a universe containing moral free agents and seen to it
that none of them would ever choose wrongly; He could have
done so simply by creating man and the angels for a purely
natural end (i.e. for a state of natnral happiness) .42 It should
also be noted that some of the objections atheologians sometimes bring against the existence of God, based upon evil, presuppose certain Christian beliefs, e.g. original sin, the eternal
punishment of the wicked in Hell. Since this last-mentioned
doctrine presents the most serious difficulty, or, at any rate,
the one most keenly felt by most believers concerning the divine permission of moral evil, it seemingly ought not to be
ignored in any full discussion of this problem. Finally in this
regard-and this point has been an extremely important one
41 See Summa

contra Gentiles, Book Ill-2, Ch. 109. See also Summa Theol., I,

Q. 68, a. I, ad 8.
42 See ibid.; see also Summa

Theol., 11-11, Q. 164, aa. I and

THE FREE WILL DEFENSE:

NEW AND OLD

in Christian theodicy-part of the traditional Christian answer
to the question of the divine permission of moral evil involves
the doctrines of the Incarnation and the Redemption.
L The existence of God is not incompatible with the existence of some evil. In his own discussion of the problem of evil
Aquinas makes what I consider a very convincing case for the
view that the existence of some evil is actually necessary in a
God-created universe complete in every way, and in my reply
to McCloskey's objection that an all-perfect creator, if He is to
create at all, is morally bound to create a wholly good world
I will, for the most part, simply be restating it. 43 The solution
he proposes for the problem of evil, generally, can be summarized along the following lines:
(1) The perfection of the universe requires that there be an

inequality among its parts and, therefore, less perfection in
some of them; however, to be included among less perfect
beings are beings which can fail in goodness and, therefore,
at some time (or sometimes 44 ) do fail, God not preventing
4 3 For the relevant texts see Sumnia Theol., I, Q. 22, a. 2, ad 2; Q. 48, a. 2, c.
and ad 3 and Q. 49, a. 2. See also Sumnia contra Gent., III-I, Ch. 71.
44 "Ipsa autem natura rerum hoc habet ut quae deficere possunt quandoque
deficiant." Summa Theol. I, Q. 48, a. 2, ad 3. In this passage Aquinas asserts that
it is of very nature of things which can fail that at some time (or other) they
do fail. Some have objected that this assertion is contradicted by a sound principle of modal logic, viz., " a posse ad esse non valet illatio." A further objection would be that it hardly applies to moral agents, i.e. fallible moral agents,
since not all of them do fail with respect to choosing the good they ought. In
reply to the first objection it can be said that the principle in question is not
meant to apply to the case of corruptible substances; in other words, it seems
perfectly obvious that what can die will die (nothing to prevent it). As regards
the second objection, it can be noted that the term "quandoque," meaning "at
some time (or other)," is not the operative word in this context but rather the
term "interdum " (" sometimes") which Aquinas often employs in the same context. See, for example, the body of the article of the text cited above. See also
Summa Theologiae, Q. 49, a. 2, c. Is it true, however, that in the case of agents
in whom there can be moral failure, there necessarily (or in some instances) is?
One may be willing to grant that instances of moral failure are likel,y to occur
but how maintain, as Saint Thomas's FWD seems to, that such is necessary (God
not preventing it)? No answer other than that already indicated, namely, that it
belongs to the class of things fallible that what can fail sometimes does fail
(nothing preventing it), is provided by Aquinas. But more on this point later.

THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

this lest other good things be hindered thereby
and

(2) While moral evil, unlike evil of nature, is in no way intended by God, not even indirectly, its occurrence (in some
cases) accords with the nature of fallible freedom; and God
permits such failure in some but nonetheless draws good
from it.
f

As we can see, (1) applies more generally to evil of nature and
specifically to evil of fault. It will be a sufficient response
to McCloskey's objection to argue the necessity of natural evil
insofar as that evil contributes indirectly to the perfection of
the universe.
As Aquinas points out, it belongs to God's goodness that He
communicate it, by way of a participated likeness, to every
possible grade of being so that it be manifested completely or
perfectly. 45 Thus it is required that the universe God creates
be a complex whole consisting of material as well as of spiritual
beings. Such a universe is clearly superior in goodness to a
universe consisting solely of the more perfect (viz., spiritual)
grades of being. 46 (McCloskey takes issue with this statement,
seeing it as by no means evident, and I will return to consider
his argument shortly.) Now in a world that includes material
beings and the inequality among such beings required for their
diversity, some evil is bound to occur (nothing preventing it).
To begin with, material beings are by nature corruptible. Containing matter (a potency for form) as an essential part of
their substance, they are naturally subject to substantial
change. Indeed, leaving aside their origin by way of creation,
however that may have occurred, they come into existence by
way of generation and all, individually, eventually corrupt. (In
losing their existence, however, they also lose their goodness
and this, for them, is evil.) Moreover, due to the contrariety
to be found in things, some are naturally injurious and destructive of others. 47 Also to be considered in this connection is the
45 See Summa

Theol., I. Q. 22, a. 4; also see Summa contra Gent., 111-1, Ch. 72

(3).
46 See ibid., III-II,

Ch. 94 (10).
(4).

41 See ibid., ID-I, Ch. 71

THJil FREE WILL DEFENSE: NEW AND OLD

29

natural subordination of the lower orders to the higher whereby
the former serve as means to the latter's end and are generally
unable to resist their powers. 48
At this point it could be objected, with McCloskey, that God
could have seen to it that corruptible beings did not actually
corrupt and arranged things so that the good of individuals
belonging to the lower orders would not have to be sacrificed
to the needs of the higher. 49 One part of Aquinas's reply to this
objection is to observe how it does not pertain to Providence
to destroy nature but to preserve it, the other, to point out
that the good of the whole takes precedence over the good of
the part. 50 Thus, it would be contrary to God's wisdom and
goodness to prevent corruption entirely and, particularly, the
corruption of plants and animals. Such action on God's part
would render the powers of natural substances ineffectual and
prevent the generation of new things (" water lives in the death
of air") .51 It could also be observed that if material things
did not corrupt, then no new individuals (except, perhaps, by
way of creation) would come to partake of the perfection of
the species (or of being) and thus that perfection would not be
as widely or diversely shared as it could be. Finally, for God to
arrange things in such a way that material beings of the lower
orders did not serve as means to the end of those belonging to
the higher orders would be for Him to remove, not only the
order involved in the subordination of the lower to the higher,
but also the entire biological world as we know it. Thus, as
Aquinas aptly observes, it does not belong to Providence to
prevent corruption in the universe lest many good things be
removed thereby .52
4s See ibid., Ch. 69

(17) .
op. cit., pp. 13-14; also pp. 98-99.
50 Summa Theol., I, Q. 22, a. 2, ad 2, also Q. 48, a. 2, ad 8.
51 See Summa contra Gent., Ill-I, Ch. 71 (5).
52 See Summa Theol., I, Q. 22, a. 2, ad 8. It may be objected that our discussion above has ignored what is ordinarily thought of as evil of nature, viz.,
natural disorders, and focused instead upon the evil of corruption, something which,
it could be argued, is not actually an evil since incorruptible being is not naturally
due material substances. However, regarding natural disorders (e.g. monstrosities,
49 See McCloskey,

80

THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

We have argued that corruption contributes indirectly to the
good of the order of the universe. We accept it,as true, therefore, that a universe complete· with respect to all possible
grades of being but containing some evil is superior in goodness
to a universe containing only one grade of being, no matter how
superior that grade, but without evil. McCloskey questions
this value judgment, arguing that it would also imply that a
world containing God alone is inferior to a world containing
God and all the grades of finite being. 53 McCloskey's argument
here clearly involves a false comparison. Contrary to what he
argues, the comparison at issue is not between a world containing God alone, if God can properly be thought of as being
contained in a world without also reducing Him to the finite
level (which, perhaps, McCloskey wants to do to suit the
purpose of his argument) , and a world containing God and
all possible grades of finite being, but rather one between a
(created) world composed solely of finite spiritual beings and
a (created) world containing all possible grades of being. Obviously, an infinite being is not inferior to that same being plus
any multitude of finite beings since the addition of the latter
does not increase or amplify the perfection of being already
found in reality (in God) ; these beings simply share by way of
likeness and in varying degrees the being or perfection of God
Himself. 54 However, once again, the point at issue is not
whether a superior being, an# superior being, is necessarily inearthquakes, floods, and famines) it could be pointed out that they are more the
exception than the rule, that they also happen in a<'cord with natural laws, that
they may have some beneficial side-'!lffects or occasion good, and that they serve to
emphasize by way of contrast what is normal and good. In any event, they hardly
provide what could be regarded as a strong argument against God's existence.
5 3 To quote McCloskey on this point: " The value judgment is not intuitively
evident to me, and indeed, seems intuitively false. I cannot see that a world of
purely spiritual beings is evidently inferior to one of corporeal beings and spiritual
being, nor that one containing parasites and carnivores is superior to one without
such beings. Implicit in the first claim is the contention that a world containing
God alone is inferior to that containing God and all the beings that now exist."
Op. cit., p. 98.
54 On this doctrine of participation by similitude see, for example, Summa Theol.,
I, Q. 6, a. 4 and Q. 44, a. S.

THE FREE WILL DEFENSE: NEW AND OLD

81

ferior in goodness to that same being plus any number of inferior beings, but whether a created world composed solely of
finite incorruptible beings is inferior in goodness to a world
composed of all possible grades of finite being but also containing corruption. We have argued that it is since in that
world-our world-the divine goodness is more extensively
communicated and, moreover, in such a world the higher
(spiritual) beings participate in the administration of divine
providence by helping to direct lower creatures to their ends,
thereby sharing in the divine wisdom and goodness to a greater
degree than they otherwise would.

The existence of moral evil and the traditional FWD.
Assuming that we have satisfactorily established that the completion of the universe requires the existence of some evil, viz.,
evil of nature, we can now proceed to the more serious question, Why moral evil? Here we seem to be faced with an evil
that in no way conduces to the perfection of the universe, let
alone one which could be viewed as naturaUy necessary even
given the existence of every possible grade or order of finite
(and thus fallible) free agent. One would think, therefore, that
Saint Thomas's solution to this particular problem would have
to be worked out along basically different lines of thought from
those followed in his solution to the problem of evil of nature.
However, such is not the case and, except for a few differences
relating to the special nature of moral evil, the divine permission of this kind of evil will be explained in much the same
manner as the divine permission of evil of nature (something
indirectly intended by God) . To begin with, Saint Thomas
would argue that the perfection of the universe requires the
existence of intellectual creatures and thus the existence of
creatures with free will.55 Yet, as already noted, the free will of
any finite agent (with the exception of those who already possess the perfect good (God) or who in this life have been afforded a very special privilege of grace) is capable of sin.56
55 See ibid., Q. 50, a. 1.
56 See ibid., Q.

a. 8; Q. 63, a. l; and Q. 100, a.

THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

This is so, according to Saint Thomas, because the creature's
will must, for the rectitude of its act, be subject to a higher
rule or measure, namely, the divine will ("which itself is not
directed to a higher end and to which the last end of every
creature is to be referred " 57 ) from which it is truly free to
deviate. Moreover, as I have already pointed out, Saint
Thomas, in explaining the origin of moral evil, teaches that the
higher end to which the intellectual creature's will should be directed is a supernatural end-a sharing in the very Life and
Beatitude of God Himself-and one to which it must direct
itself by an act of charity (elevated to a supernatural level by
grace) and from which it can freely turn away. 58 Only within
this context, Aquinas believes, can the possibility of moral
failure on the part of finite free agents, all of whom were
created good and naturally disposed to choose the good due
their natures, be adequately explained. Nor can it be reasonably objected here that, if this is indeed the case, God
should not have created man and the angels for ,a supernatural
end but for a purely natural one instead, since thereby He
would have avoided the possibility of moral failure on the part
of His free creatures. Such an objection implies a value judgment which would have the greater manifestation of the divine goodness subordinated to the good of each single indidual creature; for, so far as the end to which a mere creature
can attain, the divine goodness is maximally manifested in a
universe in which intellectual creatures, though not necessarily
all, come to enjoy the perfect good itself.
However, given the possibility of moral evil in a universe
created by God and containing a multitude of fallible free
agents, must such evil actually take place? To this question
Saint Thomas would seem to have a twofold reply. Considering what pertains to the divine power such evil need not occur
since God could have willed it so that no one of these creatures
would ever fail. Thus, God could have created a universe con57 See ibid., Q. 6S, a. 1.
58 See ibid., Q. 63, a. 3.

THE FREE WILL DEFENSE:

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33

taining the same free agents the actual world contains (i.e. the
various grades of angels and man) but willed that each and
every one of them, in all their choices, be directed to Him as
their supernatural end. (Indeed, I have insisted on this point
almost from the outset.) However, given the fact that every
possible grade or order of finite free agent is represented in the
universe and also the nature of what is fallible, according to
which what can fait in some cases does fail (nothing to prevent it) , then it would seem inevitable that some moral evil
actually take place. 59 :Moreover, Saint Thomas has also observed that liberty of choice with respect to choosing God as
one's supernatural end is better established in the universe when
some from every order of creature with free will ("which in
every degree of creature can be turned to evil ") do choose contrary to the good which is God Himself. 60 Thus, in a universe
complete in every way, the existence of moral evil would, not
unfittingly, be included, not, it is true, as either directly or indirectly contributing to its order or perfection, but rather as
something consequent upon that order (an order in which the
spiritual creature has been summoned to a supernatural end)
and as serving to confirm liberty of choice in finite free agents.
In creating or planning His universe God naturally takes all
this into account. Yet so great is the divine goodness that God
would not permit moral evil to occur in His universe unless
from it He would also draw good and good such as more
than compensates for the evil permitted. 61
Regarding this last-mentioned but most important aspect of
Saint Thomas's solution to the problem of moral evil, namely,
the good which God draws from this evil so as to justify completely its divine permission, Christian apologists (and this
59 See ibid., Q. 48, a. 2, ad 3; also Q. 49, a. 2.
Go See ibid., Q. 63, a. 9, ad 3.

6l See ibid., Q. 48, a. 2, ad 3; also see ibid., III, Q. 1, a. 3, ad 3. To quote just
a passage from this last cited text: " For God allows evils to happen in order
to bring a grea,ter good therefrom; hence it is written (Rom. v. 20): "Where sin
abounded, grace did more abound." Hence, too, in the blessing of the Paschal
candle, we say: " 0 happy fault, that merited such and so great a Redeemer."

34

THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

would include Aquinas) have stressed the following: (1) The
greater manifestation of the divine love in God's redemption of
man, a redemption which brought God to the human level and
encompasses the forgiveness of numerous contrite sinners (who
have been moved by God's grace to repent) and their ultimate
justification by grace; (2) The greater manifestation of the
divine justice in the punishment of the wicked; and (3) The
good accruing to those who love God and who suffer, for His
sake, from the injustice or wrong-doing of others. 62 Since (3)
already presupposes the existence of some moral evil I will
focus my discussion of this part of the solution on (1) and (2).
In (1) 's behalf it can be, indeed has been, argued how much
greater a degree of divine love towards His creatures is manifested in a universe in which God shows His mercy in forgiving
sinners (not all it is true) than in a universe in which no sin
occurs. Certain familiar gospel parables make this very point
and in a very simple yet moving manner. 68 Moreover, when
one considers man's Redemption, particularly the way in
which it was wrought, then the argument becomes even
stronger. Thus Christians throughout the ages have called attention to the fact, perhaps the most decisive point to be made
in the whole of Christian theodicy, that if it were not for
Adam's sin God would not have sent His Son to redeem us. 64
Now while Leibniz may have been wrong (and we shall argue
that he was) in his view that this world is the best possible,
he makes a powerful case for it in his claim that a universe with the Christ (and in which He, Our Redeemer, triumphant over the power of Satan and death, is exalted above all
creatures) is immeasurably superior in goodness to a universe
Q. 48, a.
ad 3; also see Summa contra Gent., 111-1, Ch. 71 (6).
15: 4-10.
64 See Summa Theol., III, Q. 1, a. 3. Aquinas is willing to concede, however,
that the Incarnation might have taken place- even if Adam had not sinned. Indeed, in the first article of this Question he even seems to argue this position (one
held by certain Franciscans and suggested, nowadays, in the " Incarnational
physics" of Teilhard de Chardin). Nonetheless, it would appear to be Thomas's
position that the Incarnation is more fit.ting and necessary because of Adam's fnll.
62 See ibid., I,

63 See Luke

THE FREE WILL DEFENSE:

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35

without the Incarnation. 65 It may be objected here that our
reply to the question, Why moral evil?, has now become much
too theological to convince the atheologian or the sceptic. My
answer would be that our main concern in this discussion is not
to convince the unbeliever but to satisfy ourselves that God's
existence is compatible with the existence of moral evil, even
with the amount of it we find in the actual world.
With regard to (2) Aquinas argues that God's " avenging"
justice, an aspect of His justice (and goodness), would not be
made manifest in His universe were there not sinners to be
punished for their disobedience to His will66 Thus, God, in
planning His universe, decides to include in it some individual
free agents who, in the exercise of their freedom, will choose
contrary to His rule. But He makes this decision based upon
His goodness since from this evil of action (which He wills to
permit) He will draw good, in some cases the ultimate good
of others as well as the good of showing His justice in punishing those who have freely rejected Him. Nor does God do the
creature any injustice if He creates it and does not will it to
merit and attain glory, since God is free to give glory to whomsoever He wills in accord with His plan for the reflection of His
goodness in the universe. Nor does He do it any injustice in
punishing it since the creature turns away from God's goodness
of its own free will. Thus God receives glory from His creatures, not only in the manifestation of His mercy in forgiving
and justifying many who have sinned, but also in the manifestation of His justice in punishing those who willfully refuse
to love His goodness and follow His ways.
65 See Theodicy, trans. E. M. Huggard
(New Haven: Yale University Press,
1952), pp. 129-180. See also Monadology and Other Philosophical; Essays, trans.
Paul Schrecker and Anne Martin Schrecker (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co.,
Inc., 1965), p. 124. Here, in a passage from an essay entitled "A Vindication of
God's Justice," is what Leibniz has to say on this matter: "The strongest reason
for the choice of the best series of events (namely, our world) was Jesus Christ,
God become Man, who as a creature represents the highest degree of perfection."
66 See Summa Theo[., I. Q. 48, a. 2, ad S, and Summa Contra Gent., ID-I, Ch.
71 (6).

36

THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

At this point the atheologian, in this case McCloskey, would
be ready to object that for God to permit His creatures to sin
when He could have seen to it that their choices would always
be good and no one would come to unhappiness, and this in
order to show His mercy in forgiving some and His justice in
punishing others, is unethical by any non-utilitarian (or Kantian) standard inasmuch as it reduces the finite person to a
mere means to an end, something presumably beneath his natural worth and dignity. 67 In reply to this objection, one that
understandably finds much support nowadays, it should be
stressed that the rational or free creature is nonetheless a creature, a finite being, while God, on the other hand, is Infinite,
and that He does not exist for our sake (or convenience) but
rather we for His. Obviously, this does not mean that God can
treat His free creatures capriciously (e.g. by rewarding the
wicked and punishing the virtuous) since that would be to act
contrary to His wisdom and goodness. What it does mean,
however, is that He can (indeed His goodness requires Him to
do so) use His creatures to reflect His goodness and thereby
give Him glory. I think we have now shown how, other things
being equal, God's external glory can be greater in a universe
in which there are free agents but also moral evil than in a
universe in which free agents exist and always choose rightly.
Indeed, I have attempted to indicate how, from the Christian
standpoint, this is in fact the case with respect to the actual
world.
All well and good, the atheologian might remark at this
point, but now explain the traditional Christian doctrine of
eternal punishment, or Hell! Is not this doctrine inconsistent
with the concept of a God supposedly infinite in goodness, love
and mercy? Could not God's justice be adequately manifested
in the universe simply by meting out to sinners, regardless of
the gravity of their sins, only some form of temporal punishment? And would not His infinite mercy require that He ultimately save all? As those conversant with Church history may
67 See McC!oskey,

op. cit., pp. 75-76.

'l'HE FREE WILL DEFENSE: NEW AND OLD

37

know, one prominent early Church theologian, Origen, influenced by Platonism, subscribed to this view-nowdays called
"universalism "-and even some contemporary Christian
apologists have accepted it. 68 Aquinas, however, and I think
we must agree with him here, rejects such a position as clearly
contrary to Scripture. Moreover, he attempts to show in his
theology that the doctrine of Hell is not contrary to reason
'(however strange that may strike us today). In this connection he would first point out that Hell's punishment consists
chiefly in the pain of loss, the loss of the highest and perfect
good (God) .69 He would also argue that the angels cannot possibly be pardoned, or forgiven, even granted God's infinite
mercy. 70 Because of their high degree of intelligence, their clear
and certain knowledge from the outset of the good they wanted
for their end, and, after their choice, their firm attachment to
that undue end, they cannot possibly be withdrawn from it to
repent and forgiven. With man, however, it is entirely different.
Since man's knowledge is much less perfect than the angel's, his
choice much less certain, and his attachment to the good he
has chosen not fixed with much firmness, he can, at least in this
life, be turned away from sin. He is therefore capable of repenting and, if he does, thereby worthy to be forgiven or
pardoned. 71 However, there are men who, in this life, choose to
turn away from God (or from the things of God) and towards
evil ways. Since they have repeatedly declared themselves for
an undue end and have failed to become God-like through
grace, it would seem most unfitting that they should, at any
time, come to the vision of God.
8. A word on actual evil. At this point I believe it has been
satisfactorily established that neither evil of nature nor moral
evil is incompatible with the existence of God. If this is true,
6 8 See

John Rick, Evil and the God of Love (London: Macmillan Co., 1966)

pp. 345-369.
6 9 See Summa

Theol., I. Q. 64, aa. I and £.

10 See ibid., a. £, ad £.
71

See ibid., a. £.

88

THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

then McCloskey's position that the existence of evil, any evil,
is incompatible with the existence of an all-perfect creator is
obviously false. However, most of McCloskey's arguments are
concerned with actu.a], evil, its varieties and amounts, and it is
regarding this evil that McCloskey makes, and evidently intends to make, his strongest case. To this end he attempts to
demonstrate what he sees, or claims to see, as the enormity or
immensity of .actual evil, citing to support his view 1) the various kinds of natural disorders and the toll they exact in human
life and suffering,
the various kinds of diseases affiicting
man, from which not even innocent children are spared, and the
variety of harms they cause, 8) the privations or defects of
mind .and body to which all humans are, at one time or another,
prone but which, apparently for no good reason, affiict some
more than they do others, 4) the pain and suffering caused by
mishaps other than natural disasters, 5) the pain of animals
(who could hardly be said to be under the penalty of sin), and,
finally, 6) the quantity and quality of moral evil.12 In one
sense it is difficult to argue with McCloskey on this point since
the issue involves what one perceives, or at least says he perceives, reality to be. McCloskey apparently sees it to· contain
much more evil than good or, at any rate, to contain amounts
and kinds of evil that exceed what one would expect to find in
a universe created by God. Moreover, concerning moral evil,
McCloskey contends that there is no way of knowing whether,
in the final reckoning, the kinds and amount of good which
result from the exercise of free will will outweigh i.e. morally,
the evil. 73 This objection is directed against the FWD but also
seems aimed at any attempt to demonstrate philosophically
God's existence.
In response to McCloskey's argument here, I would say
that it tends to exaggerate the extent and, in some cases (e.g.
the pain of animals), the intensity of actual evil. Indeed, if
one were to weigh collectively all that McCloskey has to say
1 2 See McCloskey,
73

op. cit., pp. 13-19 for his litany of actual evil.

See ibid., p. 124.

THE FREE WILL DEFENSE: NEW AND OLD

39

on this subject, he would have to conclude that man's life on
this earth is a pretty grim and horrible lot indeed and
that, in the final analysis, it would have been better if he had
never been born. But surely this is not the case and, given
what is the normal situation, all of us would proclaim that life,
on the whole, is good. To this observation the Christian theologian might perhaps want to add that, aside from moral evil,
the actual evils befalling man in this life are all ultimately the
penalty of sin (i.e. original sin, a doctrine which McCloskey
dismisses as " crude ") and thus come under the heading of
evil of punishment. 74 Again, considered in their proximate
causes and manifestations, many of these evils are often the
result of man's actual sins. As for this latter evil and its vast
extent, this too is not without a theological explanation: it too
is due to original sin, or at least to a penalty for that sin, viz.,
the disorder in man's nature whereby the inclination of the
sense appetite resists reason's rule or control.15
Concerning McCloskey's point that it is impossible for anyone to say whether, in the final reckoning, the good wrought by
the exercise of free will will outweigh the evil (which means,
presumably, that there can be no solution to the problem of
moral evil and that, therefore, the jury must remain forever out
on the question of God's existence) , several things may be said
in response. For one, McCloskey assumes throughout his discussion that any attempt at solving the problem of evil cannot
presuppose God's existence without begging the question since
the existence of evil calls into question His existence. To quote
him on this point: " To postulate an all-perfect sufficient reason
in the light of the fact of evil is to beg the question." 76 What
McCloskey is actually saying here is that before one can prove
God's existence one must first solve the problem of evil. But
some theists, in attempting to solve that problem, or certain
14 For a less ad hominem approach to the question of original sin see Summa
contra Gent., IV, Ch.
75 See Summa Theol., TI-II, Q. 164, a. 2.
1a See McCloskey, op. .• p. IL

40

THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

aspects of it, assume God's existence and therefore (according
to McCioskey) beg the question. However, I think McCloskey
is wrong on this point. What one has to show to solve the problem of evil is that the existence of evil (any or actual evil) is
not incompatible with the existence of an all-perfect being.
Now if one can do this by supposing the existence of such a
being, I do not see why this would be a begging of the question. Admittedly, when it comes to actual evil, particularly actual moral evil, my point is valid only if one has, already, a
sound argument for God's existence (something McCloskey is
obviously unwilling to allow). Thus, assuming one is already
convinced by reason that God exists, then McCloskey's argument about our inability to determine whether, in the final accounting, the amount of good resulting from the exercise of
free will will outweigh the evil is completely ineffectual. The
philosophically convinced theist can reply that it will (since
God is infinitely good and wise) . Actually, McCloskey's point
here about the balance of moral good over evil in the final
reckoning is irrelevant to the question whether it can be
demonstrated that God exists. Indeed, it may even be argued
(as Aquinas himself did) that the existence of moral evil paints
to the existence of God rather than disproves it; it points to His
existence since it presupposes a rule which ought to be followed
by man if he is: to attain his end (or true good) , a rule for
which man himself cannot be responsible any more than he can
be responsible for his own nature or end. 77
4. Some final 'l'emarks. We have attempted to show in this
discussion of the traditional FWD that the existence of evilany evil or actual evil, moral evil or physical evil-is not incompatible with the existence of God. With regard to actual
evil, we argued, against McCloskey, that its amount and kinds
cannot be used to disprove God's existence and that the universe, on the whole, contains more -good, indeed much more
good, than evil. Here a final question may be raised concerning our position on actual evil: Are we in effect maintaining
17 See

Summa contra Gent., III-I, Ch. 7l (10).

THE FREE WILL DEFENSE:

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that this universe, with its amount and kinds of evil, is superior in goodness to the same universe without even some actual evil? If we are, then, according to our adversary, we are
subscribing to the view that this world is the best of all possible worlds, since what we are saying in effect is that God
could not have made the world better than He did. 78 If we
are not, then McCloskey would ask us, Why, then, did God
not create the better world, viz., the one with less evil in it than
the actual world? In reply I would first want it noted that I
.agree with McCloskey that the concept of " the best possible
world " is an incoherent one. It is an incoherent one, one to be
placed in the same category as " the largest possible number,"
because for any universe that God creates He could always
create a better one simply by adding more creatures or by increasing the perfection of one, or some, of those in actual existence. However McCloskey is mistaken in his view that those
who hold that the removal of any or some of the world's evils
would result in an inferior universe are necessarily subscribing
to the view that this world is the best possible absolutely. For
what they need simply be holding is not that the world which
God created could not be better absolutely but only that it
could not be better by the removal of any or some of the
world's actual evil (McCloskey's position). As Saint Thomas
observes in this connection: "The universe, this present creation supposed, cannot be better, on account of the most beautiful order given to things by God; in which the good of the
universe consists; for if any one thing were better, the proportion of order would be destroyed ... Yet God could make other
things, or add something to the present creation; and then there
would be another and better universe." 79 Finally, McCloskey
has contended that an all-perfect creator is required to create
the better world and that a world containing less evil than the
actual world is, necessarily, the better world. We have argued,
on the contrary, that the latter part of this statement is false
op. cit., p. 80.
Theol., I, Q. U, a. 6, ad S.

78 See McC!oskey,

79 Summa

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THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

since God would not permit evil in His universe unless He
could and also would draw good from it. As for his premise
that God must (or is morally obliged to) create the better
world, if true that would make it morally impossible for God
lo create (as McCloskey himself recognizes) because, as we
have said, for any world He creates God could always create
a better one. 80 What should be said in this connection is that
God is free with respect to the degree of His goodness He
wishes to have reflected in His universe and that there are
many possible worlds containing a greater degree of goodness
than the actual world contains but that God was not morally
obliged to create any one of them in preference to the world
He did create.
Tm1onoRE

Villanova University
Villanova, Pennsylvania

so See McCloskey, op. cit., p.

J. KoNDOLEON

ANALOGY, DIALECTIC AND
INTER-CONFESSIONAL THEOLOGY *

S

TRICTLY SPEAKING, analogy is a common phenomenon of language, occurring whenever a predicate is
transferred from a proposition where it is obviously at
home to another where, because of the subject of the sentence,
it seems oddly placed. As such, it hardly merits, the dramatic
roles that have sometimes been assigned it in theology, either
by those who mistakenly call it the analogy of being and somehow think they endorse that, or 'by those who see in it a barely
camouflaged claim to Roman supremacy in the church of
Christ.
In inter-confessional discussion it soon becomes clear, however, that wherever the influence of Karl Barth still makes itself felt, even if only as a memory of a starting-point, there is
a deeply experienced feeling that analogy is bound up with
natural theology, with rationalism and with all that is wrong
with Catholic theology. Even if explanations about the true
nature of analogy are received sympathetically and when it is
agreed that the early Barth's Catholic sources were misleading,
there still remains a conviction that analogy, if no longer to be
personified as the anti-Christ, is at least the apple that gives
the barrel of Catholic theology its special and rather disagreeable flavor. This seems to be due in part to the fact that the
metaphysics implied in theological analogy appears to some as
no longer presenting a valid intellectual option; in part also,
* The reflections presented here are developed from a paper read by the author
at a seminar of the " troisieme cycle " held by the theological faculties of the Universities of Fribourg, Lausanne, Geneva, and Neuchatel during the year 1980-81.
The Faculty of Fribourg is Catholic, the other three Reformed. The papers read
are collected in P. Gisel, ed., Analogie. et dialectique, Geneva, Labor et Fides, 198(t.

48

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COLMAN E. O'NEILL, O.P.

and perhaps at a more instinctive level, to a deep distrust of
anything that appears to promote that unwarranted serenity of
spirit which takes refuge in a so-called theology of glory.
A theology of the cross, on the contrary, welcomes the intellectual tool of the dialectic which seems to reflect much more
faithfully the dramatic contrasts of the New Testament as well
as the struggle of Christian existence and the plight of the
world we live in. The very fact that the differences, in terms of
methodology, between Catholic and Reformed theology could
be formulated as a clash between analogy and dialectic indicates the need for further clarification on both sides. It will be
suggested here that it seems to be the case that a theology using analogy can, and ought to, take up the insights of dialectic
thinking, though it is clearly not possible that it should accept
its intuition of reality as the most basic in Christianity. The
clarification that this claim calls for should also be of service
in determining one of the relationships which obtain between
systematic and biblical theology, since this is quite possibly
what the discussion is all about. The key to both these questions will be said to lie in the proposition that the analogical
method can be developed into a general hermeneutic that has
to be called into play in all interpretations of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. This may seem a far call from our opening remark that analogy is a common and simple linguistic phenomenon. There must be more to it than that, so let us define
terms.

Analogy and theological method
Analogy is a particular form of predication, that is, of attributing a predicate to the subject of a sentence. It occurs
only when we have to do with at least two propositions. This
is because it makes sense to speak otanalogical predication only
in the case where the proposition we are concerned with uses
a predicate which, if defined strictly, belongs to a proposition
with a different kind of subject. Evidently, once the subject
of the proposition we are concerned with refers to something,

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THEOLOGY

45

real or imagined, lying outside the realm of ordinary observation, we are going to find analogical predication. This is simply
because the only predicates which come to hand are those
which refer to ordinary observation. Once we apply them to a
non-empirical subject we are using them analogically, whether
we care to use this term or not, and we need to explain what
we are trying to say. Now, the believer, when he is speaking of
God, is talking in this way all the time because he attributes to
God all sorts of predicates which, if they mean anything at all,
derive their meaning from their normal usage when they are
attributed to beings who are not God.
Quite often nowadays it is said that this way of talking about
God in terms of what we know of created things is comparable
to the method of using models, as practised in the theoretical
moments of the empirical sciences. It may, in fact, well be that
theology does sometimes use this method-as, for example, in
ways of envisioning the function of Christ or of the Churchbut this is not what is meant by analogy. The use of models
considered to be pertinent to the subject under study corresponds to argument from analogy, which is a means of formulating hypotheses about the unknown in terms of its supposed
correspondence with the known; this is probably what most
people think of when the method of analogy is mentioned. The
classical theory of analogical predication is something entirely
different. It has to do with the linguistic expression of a knowledge about God that is held, whether rightly or wrongly, to be
already acquired and to be true, even though necessarily imperfect. Those who speak in this way of analogical predication take it as given that there are judgments about God,
whether of faith or of reason, in which, by means of concepts
drawn from the created world, the human person attains the
reality of God himself. All that the theory of analogy is meant
to do is to account for the oddities of linguistic expression
which result from this conviction. As a result it is, on the one
hand, less complex than current theories about theological
which appear to be grappling with the problem of

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COLMAN E. O'NEILL, O.P.

mediating the faith to others; on the other hand it assumes a
claim about our cognitive possibilities which appears relevant
at a time when those who confine themselves to the model
theory seem to be ready to accept that theological statements
are, without exception, to be considered hypotheses which, by
their nature, are reformable.

The basic claim
The theory of analogy is concerned, not so much (if at all)
with the construction of a theological language as with a correct reading of a language which is already to hand; so it is
principally concerned with the primary discourse of faith, as
found in the Scriptures and the creeds of the church; but it
also deals with theological language. The medieval analysis of
these languages, based as it is on the literary rhetoric of the
time, stands in need of further development; but, simple
though it is, it still succeeds in high-lighting a basic principle
of a general hermeneutic.
Shorn of all non-formal elements (in particular of the whole
affair of proper and improper proportionality, which is not
without interest but is extraneous to analogy as such) , the
medieval analysis may be reduced to two distinctions. The
first concerns the ways in which a predicate may be related to
the subject, God, and this gives the distinction between negative, relative and substantial predication. That is: the predicate is denied, explicitly or implicitly, of God (he is not finite,
is immutable); the predicate expresses a relation of the creature to God (he is creator, is savior); or it is the speaker's intention to affirm the predicate of the divine reality itself (God
is good, is a trinity of persons) (Summa theol., I, q.18,a.2) .
The third type of predication claimed as possible is of historic
significance, for it distinguishes this. approach from any form of
purely negative theology, even though it respects the intuition
which inspires the negative approach to God. It is in order to
amplify what is implied in this claim that the second distinction is introduced. This is based on the referent of the

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THEOLOGY

47

cate, on what it signifies. It gives two forms of predication:
The first is termed "proper"; here what is signified by the
predicate is to be found within our normal experience but is
realized fully only in God. The second is termed " metaphorical " predication: it is not " proper ", though it can sometimes
be substantial; what is signified by the predicate is to be found
properly only in a creature but, for one reason or another (it
is largely a matter of the speaker's religious sensibility), it is
attributed to God (ibid., aa. 6 and 8) .
Modern linguistic analysis quite clearly permits theologians
to distinguish many other types of theological statements, but,
by the nature of the case, this will always be in terms of their
anthropological significance. The medieval analysis is exclusively theological in character since it is concerned with the
fundamental possibilities of making statements about God. Its
principal weakness, even on its own terms, lies in its too summary treatment of metaphorical predication, a way of talking
about God which did not greatly interest theologians whose
preoccupation lay with extending the Aristotelian notion of
science into religious discourse. Their treatment of the sacraments shows that they were aware of religious symbolism, but
this had no effect on their discussion of language. We should
probably be inclined today to find at least a certain symbolism
attached to any predicate taken up into religious discourse.
What is essential, if we are to understand the medieval tradition on its own terms, is that room be left, at the heart of the
symbolism, for " proper " predication.

The claim to objectivity: analogy and dialectic
Even though no attempt has yet been made to justify the
claim that proper predication is possible in the language of
faith, it may already be possible to suggest a certain clarification of the relationship between the analogical and the dialectical methods simply in terms of the claims that are being made
for the former. It seems evident that the " dialectic of the
cross " calls up for theologians of the Reformed tradition a vast

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COLMAN E. O'NEILL, 0.P.

network of symbolism which is of vital significance not only
for matters of personal conviction but also for questions of
church order. At the extreme, for those influenced by the German idealist tradition, the symbol appears to shape the very
way in which they approach the mystery of God himself. So
we find the drama of Christian existence, torn as it between
sin and grace, oppression and justice, being projected through
the agony of the human spirit onto the divine source of existence. The existential problem of evil seems then to demand an
ontological negativity within God himself and the dialectical
method appears to have no resources, beyond those of Christian
instinct, to combat this tendency. Now, here the system seems
patently to have soared in speculation far beyond and away
from the dialectical gospel of Paul. I suggest that, in order to
allow faith to control the otherwise unmanageable forces of an
unleashed symbolism, it is essential for theology, in certain of
its judgments, to transcend the symbolism, not in a misguided
effort to eliminate it, but so as to place it in its legitimate
theological context. It does not seem possible to do this if we
do not return to the simple distinction between proper and
metaphorical predication. If we did we could attribute to the
dialectic of symbolism its true theological value in the light of
certain positive affirmations about the God who conceived the
economy of Israel and of the cross. We would be led, I think,
to shift the emphasis in Christology to the manifestation of
love, both human and divine, in the cross of Jesus and to attach the negativity of suffering to the mystery of iniquity which
it is only too easy to explain in terms of man in his opposition
to God. There is a whole style of theology already implicit in
this suggestion for the love of God is taken to be the resolution
of the human dialectic and is held to be already fully achieved
and active in the cross and, by implication, in the church on
earth. (See below, section 4.)
So far from being a curious relic of medieval theology, the
theory of analogy, with its confidence in the possibility of
proper predication, appears to promise the only sure guide

ANALOGY, DIALECTIC AND INTER-CONFESSIONAL

THEOLOGY

49

through contemporary theology's daunting project of opening
itself to the new human sciences, for the latter may be admitted
to theology only if they are scrutinized according to a strictly
theological criterion. The fact that so many present-day philosophers and theologians do not even seem to be aware of,
much less consider, the possibility of proper predication must
be set off against the theological fact that the Christian community takes it for gTanted that the gospel, while it certainly
calls for the commitment of faith, also speaks in a very direct
fashion about God and about his action in the world. The example that must be central to any Christian community's belief is formulated by Peter: " You are the Christ, the son of
the living God " or, in another form, " The Word was made
flesh ". The full significance of these confessions must escape
us (we shall return to this below), but it is the task of the
Christian theologian to defend the legitimacy of faith's attaching to them a literal, non-dialectical and non-symbolic meaning
as a necessary implication of whatever existential demands they
may contain.
The reading suggested of these texts is an example of the
application of the general hermeneutic formulated by the theory
of analogy. It will be seen that it has been placed in the context of the community in which the theologian works and so
it is not a purely philosophical hermeneutic. It certainly can
be elaborated in philosophical terms and a theologian is obliged
to see that it is; and nevertheless it shares in a non-philosophical certitude deriving from the existential situation of the theologian within the community of the Spirit. This influence of
the Christological faith of the community is made even more
precise by the fact that the community is one that celebrates
the Eucharist and believes that, at the heart of all its symbolism, there is some new form of literal interpretation to be given
the words: "This is my body". The God this community is
talking about is the God who makes this statement true. In
a community which underlines the real presence of Christ in
the Eucharist there is found, as common currency, a certain

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COLMAN E. O'NEILL, O.P.

perception of reality which inevitably influences the theologian
and his philosophical intuitions. The ontology which is here at
stake will attempt to formulate the relations which obtain between the creature and the Creator in such wise that a real
presence of Christ in the Eucharist and a real incarnation of
the divine Word are not excluded by the individual's philosophical options. A false question is posed if it is asked whether
this is not an illegitimate intrusion of faith into the realm of
reason. Meaningful questions of this kind can be formulated
only in terms of persons; and as far as persons go, believer and
sceptic, theologian and philosopher, are on equal footing for
both start with some kind of intuition about the nature of
reality. For the believer who philosophizes reality must have
a deeper meaning than it does for the sceptic.
The presuppositions of ana/,ogy: a general hermeneutic

Simple explanations of analogy can easily leave the impression that the method is inspired by an uncritical optimism
about the capacities of the human mind for grasping the mystery of God. This might be the result of the kind of examples
chosen to illustrate the theory; as when we say that there is
analogical predication in the second of the :following statements: " Several people whom I know are good" and " God
is good". Such examples are accurate in formal terms but they
distract from the way that analogy actually works in theology.
They give the impression that the theory is hopelessly compromised by an alliance with "natural theology" whereas, in
fact, it is meant to provide a way of reading the Scriptures and
of constructing a Christian theology. They also conceal the
very real dialectic which enters into theological thinking based
on analogy. In particular, the claim that proper, analogical
predication about God is legitimate -can be justified only if we
analyze the presuppositions of this claim in the realm of ontology and of a theory of religious knowledge. A classical exposition of the presuppositions is found in the Prima Pars of
St. Thomas.

ANALOGY, DIALECTIC AND INTER-CONFESSIONAL

THEOLOGY

51

The question dealing with analogical predication (I, q.13)
is concerned with a formal linguistic analysis but, contrary to
the avowed practice of modern linguistic scholars, this is considered to be feasible only as an application of a preconceived
theory of knowledge which itself is considered as an off-shoot
of an ontology. This is thought of today as putting the cart
before the horse; but the best thing is to see whether the vehicle
will move and only after that look for picturesque metaphors.
In order to grasp the possibilities and the limitations of analogy, it is necessary to trace backwards two steps in St.
Thomas's argument.
In I, q.4, a.3, he asks: Whether a creature can be like God?
The theological character of the question is at once established
by two scriptural quotations: Gen. 1.26: " God said, ' Let us
make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves'";
and I Jn., 3.2: "We shall be like him because we shall see him
as he really is ". The reply to the question appeals to the fact
that the creature, as such, participates in the reality of God;
and here is to be found the immediate ontological justification
for analogical statements about God. But the theological context should not be forgotten; if it is, we are left with a purely
philosophical principle which might be exploited in the construction of just another rationalism. The participation principally referred to is that of a creature, man, whose salvation
and likeness to God are eschatological. The abstract terms we
habitually use to illustrate likeness with God, such as " truth"
and " goodness " should not be allowed to conceal the fact that
our authentic experience of these values is derived from human
contacts; and it is in these terms that we think of God. Both
likeness and participation are dynamic qualities and they will
not be fully achieved until salvation is achieved. Nevertheless,
it is this participation, imperfectly achieved in itself and fleetingly grasped by the theologian, which constitutes the only
justification there is for positive statements about God, whether
in Scripture, in creeds or in theology. This is the only way there
is to break out of a purely negative theology and to transcend

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COLMAN E. O'NEILL, O.P.

the anthropological coils of symbolism. Yet it is a very modest
way and two moments of negativity are implicit in it.
(i) First, the likeness discovered between the creature and
God is situated within that dissimilarity which is at the source
of the whole tradition of negative theology (a.8, replies to difficulties) . It is not necessary, nor indeed is it legitimate, to
appeal at once to the existential dialectic introduced by sin in
order to account for the dissimilarity; this is rather something
that results immediately from the radical distinction which
exists between creature and Creator. It is this dissimilarity
which imposes that genuine dialectic of thought which was
recognized by the tradition when it spoke, however summarily,
of the moment of negation which enters into our thinking about
God: we must deny the limitations of created perfections when
we apply their concepts to God. It would, of course, be false
to imagine that this dialectic results in some form of higher
concept of God that would be purified of creaturely imperfections. The dialectic persists in the form of two judgments, one
positive, the other negative. It is further heightened with the
introduction of the classical moment of" eminence". This does
indeed intend to make a positive statement about the infinity
of God's perfection; nevertheless all that it can do is to deny
the limitations of finitude so that it remains negative. The
whole process involves a dialectic which cannot be eliminated
from analogical thinking.
(ii) There is a second moment of negativity contained in
analogy; it has to do with the very nature of the theological
project, placed as it is under the sign of a salvation which is
eschatological. History shows that theologians who make use
of analogy run the risk of ignoring this limitation whenever
they lay a premium on an intellectualism which has little to do
with the existential condition of the community of believers
and of the theologian himself. The medieval theologians who
elaborated the theory of analogy, for all their confidence in the
intellect, were sufficiently men of faith to understand that the
believer must love God if he is to overcome the deficiencies of
his present knowledge (so, St. Thomas: I, q.l, a.I; q.U, with

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58

its stress on the eschatological dimension of knowledge; q.48,
a.5 ad 2; II-II, q.27, a.4 ad 2). Since that time this appeal to
love has generally been siphoned off into what is known as
mystical theology. It does not dispense from intellectual rigor,
but it has significance for the whole theological project, for it
not only serves to emphasize the fact that unadorned thinking
about God misses the point, but also indicates a valid theological function for the so-called " moral " or existential way to the
affirmation of God and to the doing of theology.
The theme of participation which justifies analogical predication is, in its turn, justified when we take a further backward
step, to I, q.2, a.3: Utrum Deus sit. It is to this article that
reference is usually made for the five classical " proofs " for
the existence of God; and it may well be that philosophers are
justified in making such use of the text-it is up to them to
convince us, should they so care. But the text itself is a theological one and should be interpreted as such. In the context
of medieval theological method, the question asked means:
What is the significance of the affirmation of faith that God
exists? There was no question of even a methodological doubt
concerning the existence of God; medieval theology, at its best,
was far too hard-headed for that. The real intention was to
establish certain theological affirmations concerning the fundamental relations which exist between the creature and the God
who reveals himself in Jesus Christ. Once established, these
affirmations dominate and orientate the entire effort of giving
systematic expression to the truths of faith-they provide, in
fact, the general hermeneutic characteristic of the theory of
analogy.
Since this is a matter of using the resources of human reason,
certain philosophical traditions of quite diverse origins are
brought into play; but they all undergo a radical transformation dictated by the doctrine of creation from nothing; and
this belief of faith imparts to them a unity which was not attributed to them in the philosophies from which they come.
What emerges from all this is that certain forms of causality
are attributed to God with respect to his creatures-final, effi.-

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COLMAN E. O'NEILL, O.P.

cient and exemplar causality-and these are affirmed to connote
the fundamental relations between the two. There is, however,
no claim made to be able thereby to grasp fully the ineffable
mystery of what creation, as an act of God, really is; this is
demonstrated unequivocally when St. Thomas speaks later on
of that same mystery in terms of divine providence and human
liberty. 1 At that point it becomes clear that, even if we find
ourselves obliged to attribute causality to God, it has to be a
totally transcendent causality which requires that we eliminate
from our thinking that kind of quantitative distinction which
we normally associate with " cause " and " effect " and which
implies determinism. The transcendent cause we are talking
about is, as Creator, immanent in human liberty; and this is
very hard to think about since it threatens the consistency of
our basic concept " cause ". When later Thomists insisted on
what they could grasp of the mystery of liberty, they hardened
the basic concept and spoke of "physical predetermination";
this is how theology becomes decadent.
It is in tenns of the three causalities mentioned that participation and then analogy, in its turn, are justified; there does
not seem to be available any other way of breaking out of the
bonds of negative theology or of a purely existential theology.
The error would be if we were to assume that these categories
of causality express adequately our belief in the creator. We
are obliged to attribute causality to God because that is what
is demanded if we are to account for his creatures; but it would
be wrong to think that the precision of these categories which
is carried over to the conceptualization of participation and
finally to the theory of analogy permits us to grasp all that we
mean when we say that God is Creator. The mystery of God
remains intact; all that the theologian does is to put in order,
as well as he may, those resources of human reason which permit him to look towards the Father of Jesus Christ.
1 S. Theol., l,q.19,a.8 and a.5:q.22, a.4,esp. ad S; In Peri Hc1., lib. 14, nn. 16 ft11
esp. n.22.

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55

The role of judgment in faith: Existence, concepts and
judgments.
Current debate about ways of knowing God takes it largely
for granted that what theology must do, if it is to measure up
to modern man, is to elaborate existential ways of approaching
God. Here is a salutary corrective to exaggerated forms of intellectualism that are little more than disguised rationalism,
even though one suspects that what many authors are reacting
against is their own imperfect grasp of what an objective approach to God really is. What arouses suspicion is the fact
that, if a discussion of the question is even considered necessary,
the whole argument turns on concepts, on their inadequacy
when it comes to speaking about God, and on their historical
conditioning. Here there is a fundamental misunderstanding
of what is at stake. To pose the problem in terms of whether
or not our concepts are adequate for expressing the mystery
of God is already to have answered it, because they are not;
and anyone who has ever considered the question admits this;
so this is not the point that needs to be argued about.
This means that there is something wrong with the way the
question is being posed when a contrast is set up between the
analogical and the dialectical methods because the problem
then being set has to do with the concepts used by theologians.
It certainly seems, at any rate, that the dialectical method is
concerned with a. dialectic of concepts or of symbols, even
though the claim would probably be made that this corresponds
to a dialectic in the process of reality. It would also appear to
be true-and this may be the source of the confusion-that
anyone who claims to defend "analogical concepts" is placing
himself on the same terrain and is, presumably, ready to do
battle with the dialecticians on the terms chosen by them. Both
sides would then miss the point because of a failure to grasp
the fundamental intuition of the theory of analogy.
Analogy, we have insisted, is a form of predication. This
means that the basic unit that it considers is a complete state-

COLMAN E. o'NEILL, O.P.

ment which expresses a judgment. Statements certainly incorporate references to those concepts which the theologian attributes to God, but they do so only in so far as the concepts are
taken up into what we may call the dynamism of a judgment,
that is, into a living movement of the human spirit towards the
reality of God. The concepts used are always drawn exclusively
from experience of this world but they acquire a new relevance
when they are given that explicit reference to existence-in
this case the divine existence itself-which a judgment, as distinct from a concept, always achieves. Created reality's participation in God, on which the analogical method relies, is not
the result of our projecting onto reality the logical structure
of our conceptualization. If that were the case, it would be high
time the proponents of analogy adopted one or other of the
much more sophisticated forms of idealism now at hand. But
in fact participation is realized in the innumerable individual
acts of existing which impose themselves on our consciousness;
the way we conceptualize the inner richness of those acts of
existing is secondary from this point of view and it may be
more or less successful. The theory of analogy claims that it
is possible, whether by reason or by the power of the Spirit, to
prolong the movement of our judgment beyond created acts
of existing to the existence of God himself. Unhappily, this is
something that the professional thinker's training causes him
to miss, perhaps because it is so simple. People can be trained
to manipulate concepts; existence they have already found for
themselves.
The act of existing, the obviously real, as soon as it is conceptualized (as we are doing now), is falsified or, at best, only
faintly shadowed. We can certainly grasp it, as we do a butterfly in flight, and hold it living in our own existential act of
judgment; but once we begin to t_alk about it we have transformed it into a pathetic object of study, subject to whatever
measurements our ingenuity can devise. It is attained, that is
to say, not in a concept but in an intellectual act of judgment
rooted in an immediate sense experience; when we put it into

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57

words we use some part of the verb" to be". Obviously, every
existential judgment we make also uses universal concepts
which serve, more or less adequately, to thematize for ourselves
what we perceive to be the concrete content of an individual
act of existing. But such concepts are always abstract, an idealizing of what exists; in this lies their power of generalization
but also their weakness in the face of reality. The judgment,
on the contrary, because it affirms the act of existing of the
individual, constitutes the knowing subject's acknowledgment
of the inexhaustible richness of the other. It is the other who
leads the way, who imposes itself on our knowing; and it always
transcends, simply because it exists, whatever conceptualization we may form of it. The created act of existing, in particular the individual personal existence, is for us a mystery. It is
the irony of the human condition that, when we undertake the
highest task of reflective reason, the elaboration of an ontology,
we necessarily conceptualize and render abstract that very
reality which, because of its utter originality, will not permit
itself to be grasped in such a fashion. The theologian (or, for
that matter, the philosopher) who claims to speak of the divine
mystery should not be unaware of this mystery of created existence which eludes his grasp even before he attempts to raise
his thoughts to God.
The theological theory of proper analogical predication deals
with the very complex phenomenon of complete statements
which express judgments inspired by faith about the reality of
God. It naturally offers an evaluation of the concepts used in
such judgments; but it is principally concerned with the believer's claim that he is really talking about God, which is to
say that his judgment of faith attains God's own act of existing. This is why it is false to place this theory on the same
footing as those which deal only with concepts.

From created existence to the divine act of existing
The fundamental relation between the creature and God is
affirmed when we say that the Creator is the principle of all

58

COLMAN E. O'NEILL, O.P.

created acts of existing. What we are in fact affirming of God is
a two-fold transcendence: we say that he transcends, as principle, that which, even in the created order transcends our concepts; and this we must maintain even as we confess that he
gives himself in his own reality to our act of knowing.
All this is expressed in the apparently simple affirmation of
faith that God exists. However natural it may be for the believer, its epistemological status is extraordinarily complex.
First of all, it is an analogical judgment, for we have transferred
the word " exists " from its natural context where it signifies
an act of existence seized in our inner-worldly experience, with
its reference to sense data, and have placed it in a proposition
whose subject does not belong to that experience. The procedure is a daring one and all the more pregnant with mystery
when we advert to the fact that the normal signification of the
word escapes our conceptual grasp. If we were considering only
concepts we would have to admit that our grasp of God would
be precarious in the extreme. But this is not the case because,
secondly, "God exists" is a judgment and, as such, it would
be meaningless unless in it we are able to open ourselves to the
reality of God of whom we are speaking. Now, it is quite evident that we cannot open ourselves to the reality of God in the
same way that we attain the acts of existence encountered in
daily experience. But there are other ways. The philosopher
who is convinced that he has proved the existence of God will
affirm his conclusion in virtue of the rational force of the argument he has constructed; the judgment affirmed in the conclusion acquires its realism, its openness to the reality of God,
from the conviction which the argument carries. The believer,
on the contrary, makes his affirmation in the power of the Holy
Spirit; the judgment that he forms as he opens himself to the
reality of God is borne up in its realism by the intervention of
the Spirit. The inner mystery of God and his plan of salvation
are simply not realities for us unless in this way God himself
imparts to our subjective judgments that dynamism towards
his own reality which is characteristic of any existential judgment.

ANALOGY, DIALECTIC AND INTER-CONFESSIONAL

THEOLOGY

59

It is now possible to formulate more precisely the general
hermeneutic implicit in the theory of analogy. It is expressed
in the judgment, " God exists '', understood, not as a simple
preliminary axiom of theology, but as a fundamental judgment
which situates the transcendent existence of God with respect
to created existence. As such it exercises a constant dialectical
function with respect to every statement of faith, for no interpretation of such a statement will do justice to the transcendence of God if it is not consciously related to the two-fold
transcendence affirmed in the fundamental judgment. The
theologian must remind himself constantly that the concepts
which are applied to God are realized in him, not simply at the
level of existence (which is why any real thing transcends our
concepts) , but at that summit of reality which is the act of
existing without restriction. The point has been made most
tellingly in the field of philosophy by Etienne Gilson 2 ; it remains valid in theology, where the realism of faith depends on
the Spirit.
The moments of negation and eminence invoked by the
theory of analogy are intended to draw attention back to the
act of divine existing in all its transcendence. A whole series
of judgments is called for, each one correcting the imprecision
of the others, without the possibility of arriving at a definitive
statement. Here there is an evident dialectic but it is not confined to one that is set up between concepts thought of as mutually contrary or complementary; it is not, in its most crucial
stage, a dialectic of ideas at all. It is the dialectic which affects
the human person when faced with the mystery of the divine
reality, a dialectic between all conceptualization as such and
the irreducible reality of God, to which the Spirit opens the
believer and which the theologian can only hold in awe. Once
this dialectic is recognized as the fundamental intuition of the
analogical method, it becomes possible to give a theological
2 E. Gilson, L'etre et l'essence, Paris, Vrin, 1948; a summary reference in
The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (=Le Thommne, 5° ed., 1948),

New York, Random House, 1956, pp. 108-110.

60

COLMAN E. O'NEILL, O.P.

evaluation of another form of dialectic, that which is found
particularly in symbols and in the concepts derived from them.
It still remains true that analogy implies a more positive
evaluation of the capacity of certain concepts to direct our
thematized judgments towards the being of God than seems
to be recognized in systems which appeal exclusively or primarily to a dialectic of concepts. It implies also a more confident acceptance of the truth-value that is given through the
complex mediation not only of concepts but also of metaphors
and symbols, functioning within the judgment of faith. This
is because the idea of participation takes into account both the
transcendence of God and his immanence in creation, in the
Incarnation and in the sending of the Spirit. Creation, reaffirmed in the Incarnation, can supply concepts which direct
towards God the mind of the person who is brought to God by
the Spirit.

Faith judgments of identity
The dynamism of the judgment as it opens the knowing subject to reality is expressed in language by the copula, some
form of the verb " to be"; in the judgment of faith this word
can be pronounced only as a gift of the Spirit. Here there is
something that merits the special attention of the theologian.
Whether he is involved in textual and historical research or in a
project of systematization, the theologian is concerned almost
exclusively with the meaning of concepts, images and metaphors; and this preoccupation becomes particularly evident at a
time when the community is asking for new ways of expressing
the faith. It is for this reason that so much is heard today of
" models," which are conceptual constructs put forward as possible thematizations of the mysteries. The creative thought that
goes into all of this can only too easily overlook the fact that
the verb " to be " constitutes a special case when statements of
the tradition are being examined. It can be treated as though
it expressed just another concept, just another perspective on
reality which could quite easily be put in another way. The

ANALOGY, DIALECTIC AND INTER-CONFESSIONAL THEOLOGY 61

analytic method largely used by the theologian, which works
reasonably well for concepts, has a way of asserting itself like
this even when the statements being considered move out of the
irealm of conceptualization into that of the unique relationship
with reality given in the judgment.
In its strongly existential sense (it may have other senses
but these need not detain us) the verb "to be" indicates that
the speaker is affirming that the referents of both subject and
predicate of his statement are united, not simply by logical
juxtaposition, but also, and primarily, in one reality which exercises its own unique act of existing. The speaker, if he is
being serious, has some reason for making such an affirmation
even though he may be quite unable to say how it is that what
he is talking about is the way he affirms it to be. Now, it is
clear that the Christian tradition makes statements having this
strong existential character. In such cases the theologian is
guilty of an elementary fault of logic, but one with devastating
consequences, if he fails to advert to the unique significance
of the verb " to be " as understood by the tradition he claims
to be speaking for. It might be difficult to draw up a full list
of such " limit propositions " where " to be " has this sense and
where the Christian faith is immediately engaged. Evidently
the Scriptures cannot supply an answer since they themselves
pose part of the problem. The believer will be led to assume
that the Holy Spirit makes other provision at the appropriate
times for indicating which propositions are of this kind; the
Christian communities do in fact make such an assumption in
more or less explicit fashion.
The central example for all traditions could hardly be other
·than: "You m·e the Christ, the son of the living God". As
far as concepts and images go, it is evidently true that both
subject and predicates provide an inexhaustible field of enquiry
and meditation. Equally, the fact that they are brought together has a limitless existential significance in terms of Christian life. But the broad signification of the terms, as understood
in the Christian tradition, can be made clear to anyone and so
can the claim being made by means of the " are ". We can

COLMAN E. dNEILL, O.P.

make the confession our own only in the power of the Spirit.
If we do, we know that we are talking about one and the same
person possessing both kinds of characteristics; and arguments
that profess to demonstrate that this is not the case or even
that it is the case will not make any essential difference to our
confession because they will be conceptual while it is more. As
far as the assent of faith is concerned we can only surrender
ourselves to the mystery of the divine reality showing itself in
Jesus Christ. Within the Catholic tradition a similar mysterious simplicity attaches to the words" This is my body". Conceptual analysis, if left to itself, is going to miss the point of
statements of this kind. The tradition-or the teaching office
of the church-fulfils its function if it simply reiterates the
judgment of faith.

Analogy, dialectic and theological style
It is not analogy as such which is characteristic of a certain
theological tradition, for it is difficult to envisage any theology
conscious of its epistemological status which could ignore the
need to justify the believer's unusual use of ordinary language;
and to pose this problem is to recognize that the believer uses
language analogically, even if this term is not adopted.
Where the real difficulty lies is revealed in the expression
analogia entis, the analogy of being, a misnomer usually employed unreflectively by those who do not accept the method
or, if they do, have not quite grasped it. This shows that what
is at stake is a particular justification for analogical predication
in statements of faith, namely, the metaphysical doctrine of
participation. It is in virtue of the participation of created
beings in the creative act of divine existing that a theology may
lay claim, with all due reserves, to justify proper predication
of God.
The participation on which analogy rests is a two-way street.
It can permit the formulation of a general hermeneutic for interpreting statements of faith in such wise that the divine

ANALOGY, DIALEC'l'IC AND INTER-CONFESSIONAL

THEOLOGY 68

transcendence is not compromised; but it also points the way
to a reaffirmation of the values of creation and so to an authentic humanism. The immanence of the divine Son is seen
to imply a restoration by the Spirit of what was given by God
in his act of creation but was refused by sin. The whole mystery is precisely that of the immanence of God in mankind.
A theology that acknowledges participation will therefore
present its own special way of looking at the Christian life for
it will be a theology whose principal thrust is concerned with
the Spirit who can progressively transform the sinner in the
measure that one who is justified by grace acknowledges the
divine goodness, with all that that implies, as the dominant
inspiration of his life. It is within these perspectives that a St .
.Thomas could build his anthropology round the doctrine of the
image of God which finds its future fulfilment in the vision and
love of God. This is the context too of his moral theology which
is structured by the articulation of the theological and moral
virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Here, vocation to the
beatific vision is seen as taking on its present ethical obligations
according to the terms of the gospel beatitudes; sin and the
negative commandments appear only as the negative side of
grace.
A theology of this kind is, in principle, capable of opening
itself to any genuine insights of Christian experience. This is
because its fundamental intuition points to the most universal
and the most concrete phenomenon of reality-the act of existing itself. It is totally subordinated to the mystery and the
revelation in Christ, for this is the way in which God has chosen
to exist in the world. For this reason, too, it is open to the
intuitions of a theology of the cross with the dialectic that that
implies. For St. Thomas, the cross of Christ, though he speaks
of it with all the pathos of medieval spirituality, finds theological significance only when interpreted in the light of the
goodness of God who chooses this way of communicating himself historically to sinful man. Still, the place for a dialectic
remains; but it is significant that St. Thomas finds it in the

COµµN

JD• p'NEIµ, O.P.

treatise on the sacraments in which those who believe the word
of the gospel are united with Christ precisely in their existential
condition where sin and suffering still exercise their power. The
dialectic is an only too real fact of the Christian community's
existence; but when it is projected onto the incarnate Son it
can no longer retain the same significance, for he was without
sin. Indeed, so far as his loving commitment to the Father and
to us is concerned, all is positive. The negativity of his sufferings cannot be accounted for in terms of his individual person
unless perhaps we were prepared to say that he was, like so
many other human beings, a victim of historical circumstances.
It is only when those who believe in him are brought into
actual union with him that a true element of negativity makes
itself felt, for then the influence of sin becomes an active agent
in a dialectic which is the developing mystery of Christ among
us. His sufferings are drawn into the dialectic only when we,
who are both justified and sinners, add our own sufferings to
them, making up what is wanting to them in our own persons.
If he is artificially seen as an isolated individual, then it will be
said that he suffered simply because that was the way his message was received by the political and religious interests of his
time. But if he is seen, as he ought to be, as one whose significance depends on his being actually received and acknowledged
in faith, then his sufferings will not be isolated from those of
believers or, indeed, from those of the world; and then the suffering can become an integral part of the development of the
image of God in mankind as it seeks to overcome sin and its
consequences, for this cannot be done without suffering. The
true dimensions of the kenosis of the Son are to be discovered
only when he, the original image of the Father, is seen as here
and now drawing all men to himself, within the complexities of
our human existence, marked as it is by the reality of sin,
This very summary interpretation of the scholastic teaching
on Christ's "satisfaction" is intended to indicate how an approach based on analogy, which stresses love as the key to
Christ's saving activity, can be opened out to a dialectical ap-

.ANALOGY, DIALECTIC AND INTER-CONFESSIONAL THEOLOGY 65

proach. 8 But this is possible only if the dialectic is confined to
the existence of believers and is not permitted to touch the
person of Christ himself. The interpretation is evidently based
on a development of Col., UM. It could be further developed
in terms of the Eucharist where Christ's saving activity is at
work and where his members unite their sacrifice with his; in
the Eucharist the dialectic is more real than it could have been
on Calvary since grace is here found in direct confrontation
with sin and its consequences.
No theology conscious of its pastoral function can ignore the
dialectic of the Christian life. But it should turn to it only
because it has already received a message which speaks positively of the grace of God and one which, if words mean anything, presents an objective statement about the divine plan
of salvation. A purely existential message would not be existential since, lacking all objectivity, it would not present a
valid possibility of life. A purely dialectic approach to the message, though it claims to be existential, appears to be obliged
to place in brackets, as unattainable, the whole ontology which
is implicit in the claim to objective knowledge about God. It
seems that it does this because its proponents are concerned to
maintain a dialogue with European agnostic philosophy. The
Reformed tradition, it would appear, has resources which cannot be confined in so narrow a compass; the New Testament
certainly has. Its totally uninhibited openness to God can be
maintained in theology only if the theologian is prepared to
open himself again to being, to the living butterfly, full of existence but so easy to crush. The alternative is to think about
thinking about God and that discovers reality only when the
one who is doing the thinking is God himself.
COLMAN

E. O'NEILL, O.P.

University of Fribourg
Fribourg, Switzerland
s The theme is developed by R. Cessario, O.P., Christian Satisfaction in
Aquinas. Towards a Personalist Understanding, Washington, D.C., University
Press of America, 1982 (a doctoral dissertation presented at the University of
Fribourg).

ALIENATION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE:
BIBLICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL VIEWS IN CONTRAST

E

VERY SERIOUS effort to understand the human
condition has led to the formation of a myth of the
Fall, a myth which expresses the understanding that
the actual condition we find ourselves in is not that of our genuine, normative human reality but is rather a condition of
separation or alienation from that reality, a flawed mode of
existence in which existence is a struggle, in which existents
are set in conflict with one another in consequence of their separation from true being. Thus emerge two concepts which play
key roles in our understanding of ourselves: 1)
the struggle for existence. The reflection on the human condition will therefore attempt to ask and to answer three questions:
1) What is the nature of alienation ? That is, from what are we
alienated ? What is the nature of the genuine reality of our
existence and how does our actual existence differ from it ?
2) Concretely, how does our actual existence as struggling
existents derive from this primary alienation ?
3) Given the etiology of the struggle, how can we hope to overcome or transcend it ?

The present discussion will attempt to contrast two radically divergent answers to these questions: 1) that found in
the Jewish and Christian scriptures and in the view of the world
grounded in these scriptures and the revelation they attest;
2) that provided by characteristically modern ideologies, such
as Marxism, contemporary radical libertarianism, etc. 1 The
1 For a more complete exposition of the concept of ideology presupposed here,
see my article "Ideology: An Essay in Definition" in Philosophy Today, Vol.
XXV, Number S/4, Fall, 1981, pp.

66

ALIENATION AND THE STRUGGL'I\) FOR EXISTENCE

67

fundamental inadequacy of these ideologies for dealing with
the problem will be a central theme of the present essay.
I

The Bible is quite clear both on the source of alienation and
on the primary human reality preceding alienation. The account of creation given in Genesis tells us that God created the
world in six days and that at the end of each day he looked
upon his work and saw that it was good. When he had reached
the end of the six days, culminating in the creation of man,
he looked at all his creatures and saw that they were very
good. Thus it is overwhelmingly clear from the account that
the fault does not lie in man's creaturely state as such, that is,
in his condition as a distinct and separate existent who is in
no way identical with God, the absolute, the Ground, or whatever, but who receives his distinct individual existence as a
gift from the Creator. This status of creatureliness is in fact
his true and genuine reality, a reality which the Creator can
pronounce to be very good. It is in fact the effort of the creature to abolish his creatureliness which the Bible sees as the
source of the Fall. In the Genesis account, man is persuaded
to eat the forbidden fruit by the argument that in so doing he
will become as God, i.e., as the Creator, that he will no longer
be in the position of receiving his existence as a free gift from
God but will acquire the ability to confer existence on himself.
Thus, in his genuine, creaturely human existence, in his primary
right relationship to God, man receives his existence from God
as a wholly free gift, a gift in which he takes joy, enabling him
to live eucharistically, in thanksgiving. When this right relationship is lost, when man seeks to transcend his creaturehood,
existence becomes, no longer a gift to rejoice in, but rather
something which one must try to bestow on oneself, and thus
something we must struggle for in competition with other creatures. Hence man must earn his bread by the sweat of his
brow, woman must bring forth in sorrow, etc., all existence
becomes something one must fight for, even against other crea-

68

GEORGE A, KENDALL

tures who become one's enemies because they too are struggling
for existence. One notes the change immediately in the passage
(Genesis 8: 12-18) in which Adam and Eve present their excuses for their sin. Adam blames it on the woman, the woman
in turn blames it on the serpent. We see already the breakdown
of solidarity among creatures, the end of mutual support, etc.
It is every creature for himself. Thus man's attempt to abolish
his creaturehood leads directly to the struggle for existence.
Because it is not creaturehood but man's negation of his
creaturehood which eventuates in his alienation and in the conversion of his life into a struggle for existence, the Biblical
images of the overcoming of the struggle (classically found in
the Sermon on the Mount) involve a reaffirmation of creaturehood, not its negation. For example, the following passage is
central:
Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you
shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you
shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than
clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap
nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being
anxious can add one cubit to his span of lifer And why are you
anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they
grow; they neither toil nor spin; yet I tell you, even Solomon in all
his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes
the grass of the fields, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown
into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, 0 men of little
faith? Therefore, do not be anxious, saying, "What shall we eat?"
or "What shall we drink?" or "What shall we wear?" For the
Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly Father knows
that you need them all. But seek first his Kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.
Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will
be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the
day. (Matthew 6: 25-34, RSV)
·

Here we are told, not that the needs which we struggle to satisfy are wrong or illusory, but that, in a right relationship to
God, these needs will be satisfied by the Creator's free gift.

.ALIENATION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE

69

Anxiety is to be overcome by accepting existence as a gift, i.e.,
by returning to full creaturely status. Similarly, in the passages exhorting us not to resist evil, we are told, in effect, that
if we exist in a right relation to God, our existence can no longer
be something we struggle to defend against the various forces
which would seek to take it away from us, but is rather something to be accepted from the Creator without anxiety or
defensiveness.
For the Christian, therefore, overcoming his alienation and
terminating the struggle for existence is a matter of the slow
progress in the life of grace by which he becomes increasingly
able to die to himself (i.e., to his pretensions to be more than
a creature) and thus to give up the struggle for existence so
that he can receive his existence as a gift from God. " For
whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his
life for my sake and the gospel's will save it (Mark 8: 35) ."
For the Christian, therefore, the end of the struggle for existence comes when he can give up the struggle, not when he can
can give up existence understood as a gift from the Creator.
(It must be understood, however, that for the Christian this
giving up is the work of grace and cannot be realized as a social
and political project to be somehow forced on the earthly city,
as, e.g., pacifists try to do, thus engaging in their own kind of
struggle for existence.)
In summary, for the Biblical perspective, alienation and the
struggle for existence emerge from the negation of creaturehood
and are to be overcome, through grace, by the reaffirmation
of creaturehood.

II
The ideological understanding of alienation, in contrast, can
best be understood in terms of the idea of a kind of fall from
potentiality into actuality. To exist as an actual, particular
creature, embedded in a network of relations, commitments,
responsibilities, etc., is seen as alienation from one's true being,
which is universal and unlimited (e.g., for Marx, man's

70

GEORGE A. KENDALL

" species-being") . To be an actual existent distinct from some
sort of "All" or "One" is to be alienated, cut off from one's
true being. A couple of representative passages from the writings of ideologues may help to illustrate this. Marcuse, commenting on Freud, makes the following remarks:
.... Phantasy (imagination) retains the structure and the tendency of the psyche prior to its organization by the reality, prior
to its becoming an " individual " set off against other individuals.
And by the same token, like the id to which it remains committed, imagination preserves the memory of the subhistorical past
when the life of the individual was the life of the genus, the image
of the immediate unity between the universal and the particular
under the rule of the pleasure principle. In contrast, the entire
subsequent history of man is characterized by the destruction of
this original unity: the position of the ego " in its capacity of independent individual organism " comes into conflict with " itself
in its other capacity as a member of a series of generations." The
genus now lives in the conscious and ever renewed conflict among
the individuals and between them and their world. Progress under
the performance principle proceeds through these conflicts.2
Similar passages can be cited from the young Marx:
In estranging from man (I) nature, and (fl) himself, his own active functions, his life-activity, estranged labour estranges the
species from man. It turns for him the Zife of the species into a
means of individual life. First it estranges the life of the species
and individual life, and secondly it makes individual life in its
abstract form the purpose of the life of the species, likewise in its
abstract and estranged form. 3 Estranged labour turns thus: (3)
Man's species being, both nature and his spiritual species property,
into a being alien to him, into a means to his individual existence:'
... The proposition that man's species nature is estranged from
him means that one man is estranged from the other, as each of
them is from man's essential nature. 5
Now it is obvious that such passages offer monumental difficulties to interpretation, but what -one clearly senses, with the
2 Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (New York, 1962), p. 129.
a Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 (Moscow, 1961),
pp. 74-75.
4 Ibid., p. 76.
s Ibid .. p. 77.

ALIENATION AND. THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE

71

aid of a little spiritual discernment, as underlying them is an
animus against individual existence as such insofar as the latter
is seen as implying, in some sense, a loss of universal substance.
What such writers struggle against is the simple, obvious reality of common sense that to be a particular existent is not
to be any other existent. Ohe detects, in these writings, not
merely a reaction against the extremes of atomistic individualism in advanced industrial society, but a generalized opposition to particularity as such, to the fact that, e.g., to be a
particular human being precludes being universal humanity.
Now what needs to be clarified here is precisely what it
means to be a particular, individual human being. First of all,
to be a particular human being means to be an actual human
being, i.e., to have given up being merely a potential human
being. But one becomes an actual human being in the encounter with others in the course of which one makes commitments, takes on responsibilities, becomes embedded in a network of relations which define, that is, delimit, what one is.
Thus to be an actual, particular being is to be defined and
limited, to have given up the unlimited realm of the potential
for the limited realm of the actual.
But selfhood in this sense, as a limited structure emerging
out of the limiting encounter with others and with an order of
existence of which one is a part and no more, is an object of
bitter hatred for characteristically modern ideologies. Nowhere
is this more clear than in the rash of " liberationist" ideologies
which have grown up like weeds in the past generation, of
which feminism is a typical example. Such ideologies again and
again repudiate actual selfhood in favor of a potential selfhood
which they see as true selfhood. Ideologues committed to such
views spend their lives fantasizing about the infinite potentialities which would be open to them if only a repressive society had not forced them into this or that role, e.g., forced
them to be women, or to be men, etc. Now actual selfhood is
the selfhood acquired when one is actualized by the encounter
with objects, and its opposite is a kind of potential " selfhood"
which is in reality pure subjectivity. A pure subject is open

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GEORGE A. KENDALL

to infinite possibilities-an actual self is not, it is limited by
the possibilities it has actualized in the process of becoming a
self. The essential subjectivism implicit in the " liberationist"
movements is well illustrated by the insistence, on their part,
that everyone be referred to and treated solely as a " person,"
that is, that all charaderistics which differentiate people (cultural, sexual, ethnic, etc.) be simply ignored (in other wnrds,
that "humanity" or" personhood" be made a univocal term,
an issue to be discussed later) . But since it is precisely by
virtue of such attributes that one is an actual human being
rather than merely a potential one, what the liberationists are
really insisting on is that everyone be thought of purely as a
potential, not an actual, human being. But a purely potential
human being is a pure subject, so that what we are really
being asked to do is to see and treat everyone solely as a
pure subject. But the pure subject is a negation of selfhood,
since to be a self is to be an "impure" subject, a subject actualized in various ways, e.g., by culture, by social roles which
culture assigns in various ways to various individuals, in general, by commitment and responsible action emerging from the
actualizing encounter with others. Where for the Christian
freedom or wholeness implies the ability to act and exist as a
particular, actual creature limited and bound by a network of
relations rooted in the created order of being, for the " liberationist " freedom or wholeness means openness to infinite possibilities, it means the total absence of any closure or limitation
of the personality, it means spending one's life confronting
limitless possibilities without ever acting so as to limit them.
For the Christian this is not freedom but paralysis of the will
and hence slavery.
It is clear, then, that for ideologues creaturely existence as
such is the root of alienation and consequently the struggle for
existence occurs solely because there are existents, because there
are creatures, not because creatures live in a wrong relation to
their Creator. The distinction between the two understandings
becomes clear enough when we compare their respective visions
of how the struggle for existence is to come to an end. For the

ALIENATION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE

78

Christian, it is the struggle, not existence, which is to end,
when creatures learn to accept their existence as a gift and,
in this joyful acceptance, affirm, not negate, their existence.
In contrast, for the ideologue, the struggle for existence will
end with the abolition of creaturely existence, with the swallowing up of the particular, individual self in the infinite sea
of pure potentiality, pure subjectivity, which, in the last analysis, is a form of nothingness.

III
But the contrast presented above in outline is in need of
more technical clarification. At the center of the ideologue's
rejection of particular, creaturely existence is the belief that
such a creaturely existence involves the loss of universal existence. Hence at the center of the problem of alienation is the
ancient problem of universals, and just how one understands
universals and their meaning will be determinative of how one
understands the relation between universal and particular existence so central to the problem of alienation.
Now it is clear that universals can be looked at in three ways:
I) As univocal, i.e., as applying in an identical way to a multitude of particulars;
2) As equivocal, i.e., as merely homonymous;
3) As analogous.

The equivocal or homonymous notion of the universal term
need not concern us here. What is crucial is the contrast between the univocal and analogous understanding of the universal.
Clearly, for ideological thought, the universal is always univocal and thus it can only be imperialistic in its pretensions,
tolerating nothing which would limit it. The univocal universal
must subsume all particulars under some -common something
which is identical for all. But the only thing we can find which
is truly identical for all members of a class is some potentiality
shared by all. As soon as we introduce actuality, we introduce
diversity, because actuality comes into being when universal

74

GEORGE A. KENDALL

potentiality is actualized and limited. Thus to get at what all
existents in a species share identically we must remove all actuality and hence reduce all the particulars to pure potentiality
in which there can be no particular. Thus universal humanity
must assume the form of a kind of universal human potentiality
because it can only be found when we remove from it everything which is particular and hence actual. Thus particular
existents within the species must be abolished, e.g., there can
be no men and women but only " persons." If humanity is to
be univocal, it must swallow up all diversity, since the latter
can be understood only as the loss of universality and hence
as alienation, as illusion.
In contrast, for the analogous concept of the universal which
is always central to the Christian vision of the creation whether
or not it is theoretically articulated, this type of conflict between universal and particular is not inherent in the very
structure of things. The concept of the analogia entis 6 does
not require the presence of any one something which all particulars share in common in an identical way. Rather, what
holds particulars together, what makes them part of a class of
some kind, whether that class is the human species or the creation as a whole, is the diversity of relations which all have to
a common term, i.e., to God, who is the prime analogate. Ultimately, a particular creature has its particular form by virtue
of a relation it has to its Creator which we may call imaging.
Each particular creature images the Creator in a unique way
built up out of the network of relations, limits, etc., in which
that creature has its roots and out of the tension to image the
Creator which is in a sense the creature's essence qua creature.
An example may help to illustrate this. If we were to take the
6 The problem of the analogia entis cannot, of course, be treated in any depth
in the present context. Of particular value as a source for this issue is James F.
Anderson's work, The Bond of Being: An Essay on Analogy and Existence (New
York, 1949). Etienne Gilson's The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy is also an invaluable source on this problem. The present discussion attempts to point only
to certain elemental concepts which the author sees as central to the present issue,
and should not be read as if it were an attempt to deal adequately or completely
with the problem of the analogy of being.

ALIENATION AND THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE

75

variety of images of Christ which we find in churches, we would
find almost no limit to their diversity and we would be hard
put to find any one something which all had in common. But
the relation which each has to the one term, Christ, draws
them into the same class, however diverse the relations are.
Thus the creation could be thought of as the universal community of images of the Creator. Universality is not, in this
context, some univocal something which swallows up all particulars in identity, but is rather understood as community,
which draws together all the particulars by virtue of their
shared but diversified relation to the Creator. Universality,
understood as community, in no way militates against particularity but rather requires it. In the community, each particular has its own unique and distinct existence but belongs
to all the others by virtue of its imaging the same Creator.
Thus, for Christians, universal humanity can be understood as
the community of human icons of Christ. In a right creaturely
relationship to God, individuation implies no loss of universal
existence but rather is a condition for it.

IV
Ideology thus emerges, in the context of this problem, as a
hatred of creaturely existence as such. In summing up this
theme, it seems somehow appropriate to follow Plato's practice
of presenting a myth. It has been suggested by theologians that
Satan's sin was not a rejection of God as such, but an insistence on having God on his own terms, not on God's. One suspects that the key to Satan's rebellion, thus understood, may
lie in his attitude to the creation. One might speculate that
Satan's zeal for God was such that he willed that God should
be God wholly in and for Himself, without creatures who are
other than God and who, in Satan's view, in some way lessen
or limit God's glory. But in fact, God freely chose, not to be
God in and for himself only, but to be God with and for the
creation. This understanding of the matter is summed up with
particular clarity by Karl Barth:

76

GEORGE A. :KENDALL

God's deity is thus no prison in which He can exist only in and
for Himself. It is rather His freedom to be in and for Himself but
also with and for us, to assert but also to sacrifice Himself, to be
wholly exalted but also completely humble, not only almighty but
also almighty mercy, not only Lord but also servant, not only Judge
but also Himself the judged, not only man's eternal king but also
his brother in time. All that, rather, is the highest proof and
proclamation of His deity. He who does and manifestly can do all
that, He and no other is the living God. 7

To will that God be God wholly in and for himself is to will
that God be God otherwise than as he has freely chosen to be
God, and is thus to rebel against God in the name of God.
And with this rebellion goes a hatred of the creation, a hatred
of the splendid multiplicity of creatures each imaging God in
its own unique way and deriving its form from this imaging.
Since the imaging is the source of all form, the rebellion involves a hatred of all form, a desire to unform all creatures
and thus to reduce them to the closest possible approximation
to nothingness. And thus ideologues, in their endless efforts to
abolish all form, to abolish all creaturely existence, to draw all
things back into pure potentiality, manifest only too clearly
whose servants they are. And there is no inconsistency in the
fact that they are themselves creatures, because their efforts
to abolish form extend even, perhaps especially, to themselves;
they ceaselessly work, and with considerable success, to unform
and deform themselves, seeking the nothingness before all creation as their telos. Indeed, it seems to be precisely with themselves that they are most successful, reducing themselves to
distorted shadows of the God-imaging creatures they were
meant to be.
The ideological understanding of alienation and its transcendence is thus fundamentally destructive. It negates existence, warring against the joy in existence which holds the
creation together.
GEORGE

Lansing, Michigan
T Karl

Barth, The Humanity of God (Atlanta, 1978), p. 49.

A. KENDALL

THE EGIDEAN INFLUENCE IN
ROBERT ORFORD'S DOCTRINE ON FORM

S

OMETIME BETWEEN the years 1277 and 1279, the
English Franciscan William de la Mare wrote a polemical work entitled: Correctivwni fratris Thomae. 1 The
purpose of this treatise was to safeguard the orthodoxy of those
young Franciscans who might have been reading the writings
of Thomas Aquinas. The Franciscan Chapter of Strasbourg
held in 1282 ordered that the friars have this book before them
while reading Aquinas. We know of three Dominican responses
to William's Correctivum which were written at Oxford, each
being identified by its opening word, viz., Quare, Sciendum and
Quaestione.2 The second of these, whose full title is: Correctorium Corruptorii Sciendum is ascribed in MS. Madrid Bibl.
Real. VII, H. 5 (now University Salamanca 1887) to a certain
Guillelmus Torto Callo Anglici. On fol. 89v is the explicit
statement:
Here ends the correction of the corruptor by brother William of
Torto Collo, an Englishman, Master of Theology, of the Order of
Friars, Preachers.

This same man, Torto Collo, also wrote a work against Henry
of Ghent which is found in MS. Vat. lat. 987, fol. lr-128v, but
in this work against Henry his name is written Colletorto. On
fol. 128 in a contemporary hand are the words:
1 For a discussion of this work, its dates and the events surrounding its appearance, see my The Quaestio Disputata de Unitate Frirmae by Richard Knapwell,
(Paris, 1982), pp. 165.
2 All these works are available in editions. Le Oorrectorium Corruptorii ' Qucire ',
ed. Palemon Glorieux (Kain, 1927); Le Correctorium Oorruptorii 'Sciendum ', ed.
Palemon Glorieux (Paris, 1956); Le Correctorium Oorruptorii ' Quaestione ', ed.
Jean-Pierre Muller (Rome, 1954) .

77

78

FRANCIS E. KELLEY

and here are notations in the margins of these titles or articles by
Master Robert of Colletorto, so that one might see how he (i.e.,
Henry) contradicts himself.

Despite the difference in the way the name appears, i.e., Torto
Collo and Colletorto, internal evidence makes it clear that one
and the same man wrote both works. We might note also that
the author of contra dicta H enrici, viz., Robert Colletorto, made
several references to a responsorium ad corruptorium, and in
one of these references he said it was his own responsorium:
but because Henry does not oppose what I have written concerning this matter in my response to the corruptor, I do not care to
deal with what he says here.3

Colletorto or Torto Collo also wrote another treatise, against
Giles of Rome, entitled Reprobationes dictorum a fratre Egidio
in primum Sententiarum which is extant in one manuscript,
viz., MS. Merton Q76.4 Although the latter work is anonymous
in the Merton manuscript, a comparative examination of Reprobationes fratris Egidii, contra dicta Henrici and Sciendum
shows that one man wrote the three works.
A comparison of what we read in the three treatises in connection with the relationship of the intellect to the will makes
it clear that Torto Collo is the author. Is the intellect the su.,
perior faculty in man; or is the will? If the question be set in
these precise terms, it might have seemed an odd or perhaps
trivial thing to he asking. But the implications of the question
for the scholastic were far-reaching. The way he discussed the
point depended largely on how he stood regarding the broader
question of that time concerning the role of philosophy in the
Christian scheme. The excessive rationalism of the so-called
a " Sed quia Henricus non opponit se ad ea quae ego scripsi circa materiam
istam in responsorio ad corruptorium, ideo non _curavi tractare quae sic recitat ",
MS. Vat. lat. 987, fol. 122rb. P. Bayerschmidt shows that the respomcmum in
question is Sciendum, Robert von Colletorto, Verfasser des Correctoriums • Bciendum' ", Divus Thomas (Freiburg im Breis.) 17 (1939), pp. Sll-S!!6.
4 RobeTt d'Orford Reprobationes dictorum a fratre Egidio in Primum Sententiarum, ed. A. Vella (Paris, 1968).

THE EGIDEAN INFLUENCE .IN ORFORD

79

radical Aristotelians brought on the strong counter-measures
of the Church and University authorities. The debate over the.
relative superiority of intellect and will did not reflect this conflict in its entirety, but it formed an important element in the
dispute. The opposition to those who stressed unduly the excellence of the rational element in man is reflected in some of
the propositions condemned at Paris in 1277:
40. That there exists no higher calling than to give oneself to

philosophy.
That the intellect, man's highest perfection, is entirely abstract.
144. That every good possible to man consists in the intellectual
virtues.
145. That there is no question subject to rational inquiry which
the philosopher should refrain from disputing and deciding,
for arguments are derived from external reality. But Philosophy in its several areas deals with all external reality.5
121.

Aquinas, in his efforts to remain consistent with Aristotelian
principles as he understood them, insisted that the rational and
true and therefore the intellect enjoyed an ontological priority
over the good and the will.6 Of St. Thomas's view William de la
Mare said:
To us this seems to be false and to pave the way for many other
false things even if it does not appear to be directly contrary to
the Faith or to upright living.7
For support William relied heavily on the authority of St.
Augustine and St. Anselm, without however neglecting to cite
and interpret Aristotle and the Commentator in accord with
what he took as the Augustinian position. In Sciendum, Torto
Collo arranged his main response under three headings. In
5 Chart. Univ. Paris, I, pp. 545-552.

For St. Thomas's position see Summa Theol., I, 82, 8; 11-11, 28, 6, ad lum;
Contra Gent., III, c. 26; Quaest. Disp. de Veritate, q. !l!!, a. 11. R. Macken discusses the ' intellectualism ' of St. Thomas in relation to the ' voluntarism ' of
Henry of Ghent in " La volonte humaine, faculte plus elevee que l'intelligence
selon Henri de Gant", Recherches de TMologie ancienne et medievale, 4!! (1975),
pp. 5-51; see especially pp. 41-51.
1 In Quare, p. 161.
6

80

FRANCIS E. Di.LEY

fact he started out as if we were going to hear two lines of
argument:
but a faculty can be considered in two ways: either as a kind of
power, and this would be in comparison to its activity, for a power
is what it is from its relation to activity; or, these faculties can be
considered in relation to their terminating objects. 8

In following out his scheme, however, which is taken from
Aquinas, he added a third argument:
Again, the same thing is clear if [the faculty] be compared with
the essence of the soul.

The first and third arguments follow closely what St. Thomas
had written in the Summa Theologiae 0 ; the second argument,
which appears to be original, is verbally identical with what is
found in the oontra Egidium:
For since the essence of the soul is one and the faculties are several,
and there is progress from one to many according to a certain
order, of necessity there exists an order among the faculties of the
soul. According to the order of nature perfect things are prior to
the imperfect, but according to the order of generation it is the
other way round. But by the order of nature the intellect comes
before the will . . . Therefore, simply speaking, in this way the intellect is the higher faculty .10

In the later oontra Egidium Torto Collo referred to this place in
Soiendum and quoted from it verbatim. 11
In Quodlibet 1, 14, Henry of Ghent said that if we had to
compare the two faculties then we ought to say that the will
enjoys a pre-eminence over the intellect. His conclusion was:
Therefore it must be said without qualification that in the entire
kingdom of the soul the will is the superior power; and thus [it is
superior] to the intellect. 12
s Sciendum, p. 148.
Them., I, 8!e, S.
10 Sciendum, pp. 148-149.
11 Reprobationes contra Egidium, p. 51.
12 "Absolute ergo dicendum quod voluntas superior vis est in toto regno animae;
et ita ipso intellectu ", Quodlibeta Magistri Goethals a Gandavo, I (Paris, 1518,
vol. 1), fol. llr.
0 Summa

THE EGIDEAN INFLUENCE IN ORFORD

81

In the main response to Henry found in contra H enricum Torto
Callo directed the reader to what he had already written m
Sciendum:
The solution as to how the intellect is a higher faculty than the
will is sufficiently set forth in Responsorio contra Corruptorem,
question 34, and it is found in super II Sent., distinction 33. There
also are found the solutions to all the arguments repeated here.
Therefore I shall pass over them briefly. For in that place it was
shown how the intellect is a higher and nobler faculty than the
will be comparing them to the activity, habit and object. 13

As we have seen, in Sciendum Torto Callo compared the faculties "to the act, to the essence and to the object". The slight
discrepancy between " to the essence " and " to the habit "
does not disturb the parallel. The next words in contra Henricum, viz., " in that place also the answer to the authority of
Anselm when he calls the will ' mistress ' " 14 is a reference to the
first objection in Sciendum: " To the first opposing argument,
it must be said that when Anselm says ... " 15 And his following words against Henry, viz., "It is also clear there how the
intellect moves the will and vice versa [how] the will [moves]
the intellect " 16 are again a reference to what he had already
said in Sciendum. The four remaining points in contra Henricum have their counterparts in Sciendum as well:

is

There also is the answer to the argument concerning Charity. 17
There also is answered the last argument placed here. 18 To the
13 " Solutio qualiter intellectus sit altior potentia quam voluntas satis declaratum
est responsorio contra corruptorem, quaestione 34, et ponitur super 2 Sent., distinctione 33. Ibi etiam ostensum est solutiones ad omnia argumenta quae hie
replicantur. Ideo brevius est pertranseundum. Ibi enim ostensum est quomodo
intellectus est altior et nobilior potentia quam voluntas comparando eas ad actum
et ad habitum et ad obiectum ", MS. Peterhouse 129, fol. 6va; MS. Vat. lat. 987,
fol. 7vb.
14 "Ibi etiam responsum est ad auctoritatem Anselmi cum vocat voluntatem
dominam '', ibid.
15 Sciendum, p. 149.
1 6 " Patet etiam ibidem quomodo intellectus movet voluntatem, et econverso
voluntaa intellectum '', MS. Peterhouse 129, fol. 6va; MS. Vat. lat. 987, fol. 7vb.
17 In Sciendum the reply to the fourth objection dealt with the question of
charity: "To the argument relating to charity ... ", p. 150.
18 The reference here is to Henry's argument that the will's object (bonum) is

FRANCIS E. KELLEY

argument: it is more noble to love God than to know Him, the
response is found in article 89.19 How reason commands the will
is explained in Responsorio ad Corruptorem, question 55,2° and it
is found in super II Sent., distinction 88.21

After this reference he elaborated on what appeared in contra
Egidium:
Therefore I say it is true, the will moves the intellect to its activity.
But it should be recognized when we say this that we do not mean
the will moves the intellect to its act of understanding pure and
simple, for were we to take the latter meaning then the act of will
would come before the very first act of understanding, and this is
not true, for we will only what we know, as the blessed Augustine
says: nothing is loved unless it is known. [When we say the will
moves the intellect] this must be taken as referring to a special
act of understanding. Taken in this special sense, there are two
aspects requiring our consideration, namely, the activity itself and
the determination of the activity, or to say it another way, 'to
understand ' and ' to understand this particular thing '. In a similar way, in the special act of willing [there are two aspects], viz.,
' to will ' and ' to will this particular thing '. Therefore, in the special act of understanding the activity itself is the result of willing,
for the activity comes about by virtue of a mediating habit, and
a habit is something we put to use when we will to do so. However the determination of this activity does not come from the will,
but from the species l or idea] which is the form in the intellect of
the thing being understood. For through the mediation of the
idea of man I understand what a man is, and through the idea of
better or 'higher' than the intellect's object (verum). The point here is that
verum is not bonUJn. In Sciendum the reply to the last argument took this point
under consideration: " it must be recognized that since the true is a kind of
good ... ", p. 150.
19 In Sciendum see article 50: "To the other argument, when it is said ... to
love God is more noble than to know Him, it must be said ... ", pp.
20 See Sciendum, article 55: " Whether to command is an activity of the reason ", pp.
21 " Ibi etiam responsum est ad argumentum de Caritate.
!bi etiam soluta est
ultima ratio quae hie ponitur. Ad illud: diligere Deum est nobilius quam cognoscere, responsum est articulo 89. Quomodo autem ratio imperat voluntatem, patet
in resp0118orio ad corruptorem, quaestione 55, et habetur super II Sententiarum,
distinctione SS.", MS. Peterhouse. 129, fol. 6va; MS. Vat. lat. 987, fol. 7vb.

THE EGIDEAN INFLUENCE IN ORFORD

88

horse, what a horse is. With the will the reverse is true. For since
the will is the seat of liberty, though not its cause-as will be made
clear in the next question-and since action flows from this seat,
therefore the will acts freely. But even though it can only will
after what is known determines it to will this or that, in the sense
that reason proposes this or that to the will, the will itself is not
however forced to will this or that-this will become clear. 22

The cross references and parallels here are sufficient for us to
say that one man, Torto Collo, wrote the three works.
Although the different spellings of the second name is of no
significance, the author's first name is William in one manuscript ascription and Robert in the other, and this is most significant. Palemon Glorieux, in the introduction to his edition of
Sciendum prefers William as the correct given name and dismisses the ' Robert' found in the Vatican manuscript as an
error. 23 His reasoning for this choice places great emphasis on
the fact that the Stam.-; Catalogue has a correctorium under
William Macclesfield's name and not under Robert Orford's.
22 " Dico igitur quod ' voluntas movet intellectum ' verum est quantum ad exercitium actus. Hie tamen sciendum est quod cum dicitur voluntas movet intellectum quantum ad exercitium actus, hoc non dicitur intelligere quantum ad exercitium intelligendi simpliciter, quia secundum hoc, primum intelligere praecederet
actus voluntatis, quod falsum est; cum nihil volumus nisi quod cognoscimus,
secundum beatum Augustinum: nihil amatur nisi cognitum. Sed hoc debet intelligi
de actu intelligendi speciali. In hoc enim speciali actu intelligendi vel intelligere
sunt duo considerare, scilicet exercitum actus et determinationem actus, ut in intelligere et intelligere hoc. Similiter, in speciali actu voluntatis sunt velle et velle
hoc. In hoc ergo speciali intelligere, exercitium actus est a voluntate, quia actus
elicitur mediante habitu. Habitus autem est quo utimur cum volumus; determinatio autem actus non est a voluntate, sed a specie quae est forma rei intellectae
in intellectu. Mediante enim specie hominis intelligo hominem, et mediante
specie equi, equum. Econverso est de voluntate. Cum enim voluntas sit subiectum
libertatis, quamvis non sit causa, ut patebit in quaestione sequenti, et subiecti est
agere, voluntatis est libere agere. Sed quia nihil potest velle nisi per cognitum
determinetur ad volendum hoc vel illud, ex hoc quod hoc vel illud a ratione sibi
proponitur, non tamen necessitatur ad volendum hoc vel illud, ut ibi patebit ",
MS. Peterhouse IQ9, fol. 6va; MS. Vat. lat. 987, fol. Sra.
23 " Tout inviterait ainsi a abandonner la candidature de Robert d'Erfort et,
dans ces conditions a considerer cornrne errone sans doute le prenorn que la notice
du Vatican a attribue au Tortocollo, auteur du traite contre Henri de Gand ", p.
17.

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FRANCIS E. KELLEY

Two observations are in order here. First, we must remember
that the absence of a certain work under one's name in an early
catalogue might mean nothing more than that it is incomplete
in the given instance. There s reason to think this is the case
with Robert Orford and a correctorium, for the later chronicler
John Bale assigns to him a Protectorium Thomae Aquinatis. 24
Second, one must bear in mind also that all we are sure of from
Stams is that William Macclesfield wrote one of the correctoria;
which particular one he wrote is in no way hinted.
The same Stams Catalogue which Glorieux cites as an argument against Robert Orford having done Sciendum attributes
to him the other two works:
contra dicta HIN [RICI] de Gaude [GANDAVO], quibus impugnat Thomam, contra primum Egidii, ubi impugnat Thomam. 25
But what of the ' William ' written in the Madrid manuscript?
D.A. Callus gives an interesting explanation for this. 26 The
name William might not in fact designate the author but rather
the author's adversary, viz., William de la Mare. The three
line colophon in MS. Madrid, fol. 89va is:
Explicit [in mag. correctorium] corruptorii fratris Guillermi de
Torto Collo anglici magistri in theologia ordinis fratrum predicatorum,
According to Callus, this might very well have been a four-line
colophon in the copy the scribe used, so that reconstructed it
would read:
Explicit [ correctorium] corruptorii fratris Guillermi [de Mara
anglici magistri in theologia, Robertil de Torto Collo anglici magistri in theologia ordinis fratrum predicatorum,
The scribe's significant mistake in omitting and then correcting
later his omission by including the important word correctorium
24 Scriptorum lllustrium

Maiori.s Brythannie Catalogus (Basel, 1557), p. 824.
Denifle (Archiv fiir Literatur-und Kirchengeschichte
des Mittelalters, 2, 1886), p. 60.
26 Bulletin Thomiste, 9 (1954-1956), p. 658.
25 Catalogus Stamsensis, ed.

THE EGIDEAN INFLUENCE iN ORFORD

85

in conjunction with the easily possible homography suggested
by Callus, is an inviting supposition. While an element of
doubt remains, we are safe in saying that these three works,
one of them being the correctorium corruptorii Sciendum, very
probably belong to Robert Orford.
Emden puts Orford down as a Franciscan. 27 This is a slip,28
for there can be no doubt he was a Dominican. His name is in
the Stams Catalogue which lists only Dominicans and he is
identified as a Preacher in MS. New Coll. 92 and MS. Worcester 46. 29 From .MS. Assissi we know he acted as respondens
in two disputations: one, with a certain ' Clif ', and on another
occasion with Alan Waker:field who was the 17th Franciscan
regent Master at Oxford. 80 He also preached a sermon there
on February 22, 1293, whether as a Master or not we do not
know. 81 From Stams we know he became a Master at some
point, but the date of his inception is not known.
In vi·ew of his writings against Giles of Rome and Henry of
Ghent, Vella suggests Orford may have spent some time studying at Paris. 32 The Dictionary of National Biography states
it as a fact:
Afterwards he was at Paris where he wrote in support of Thomas
Aquinas against Henry of Ghent and Giles of Rome. 33

If he did so, then his departure from Oxford and later return
would have paralleled the moves of his confrere, William Mac127 A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford to A.D. 1500, ii (Oxford, 1958), p. 1401; Biographical Register of the University of Cambridge to 1500
(Cambridge, 1963), p. 435.
2s The source of the slip could be the ambiguous sentence in Oxford Theology
and Theologians ca. A.D. 1282-1302, Little-Pelster (Oxford, 1934), p. 12, where,
in speaking of Orford a reference is made to the Franciscans lists.
29 Oxford Theology and Theologians, p. 163.
so Ibid., pp. 105; 112. See also Thomas Eccleston, Fratris Thomae vulgo dicto
de Eccleston Tractatus de Adventu Fratrum Minomm in Angliam ed. Little
(Manchester 1951), p. 53.
31 Oxford Theology and Theologians, pp. 168; 181.
3 2 Reprobationes contra Egidium, pp. 12-18.
as DNB, 42, p. 252.

86

FRANCIS E. KELLEY

clesfield.84 It is easy to understand a decision of the Dominican
superiors to have arranged such a trip for these two enthusiasts
in the interest of peace as well as for their own welfare. Orford's concern with these two Paris masters, however, in and
of itself is not enough to suggest a sojourn in Paris. There was
plenty of interest in Giles and Henry at Oxford, at least among
these early Thomists, making the Paris trip for Orford a superfluous conjecture. 35 Indeed, in the earliest work we have from
him, viz., Sciendum, Orford reveals his familiarity with Giles.86
While the Paris sojourn lacks sufficient evidence, there is a clue
that Orford might have spent some time at Cambridge. If, as
Pelster says, the first 15 quires (with the exception of 11 and
rn) of MS. Assissi 158 originated in Cambridge, since in the
fifth quire Orford's name appears as reS'pondens,81 it follows
that he was there at that time. At any rate, he is back at Oxford, if he ever left, by ca. 1285 responding under Alan Wakerfield.
In article 31 of Sciendum entitled: "Whether in man there
exists only one substantial form", Robert Orford presents his
basic argument in defense of the unity thesis. 38 The core of
his argument appeals to a distinction drawn between the ' form
of the part ' and the ' form of the whole ' in the way they give
' substantial existence ' to a substance. It is possible, he says,
to view substantial existence in two ways: in part, or in its
entirety. For example, we can speak of ' man ' as a single complete entity, and corresponding to this is substantial existence
in its entirety. Or we can speak of the' arm' or' toe', each of
which is a part of the composed substance 'man', enjoying an
existence in a sense its own. It is perfectly acceptable to say
there are several substantial forms in the one composed sub84 See F. Kelley, The Thomists and their opponents at Oxford in the last part
of the thirteenth century (unpublished D.Phil.- thesis Oxford Univ., 1977), MS.
Bodleian D.Phil. d. 6!!58, p. 58.
85 Ibid., p. 168.
36 See infra, pp. 88sqq.
37 Oxford Theology and Theologians, p. l!l.
sap, 187.

THE EGIDEAN INFLUENCE IN ORFORD

87

stance, if by so saying we refer to the ' forms of the parts '
which give partial substantial existence.39 But if one were to
hold that there is more than one form of the whole substance
giving total substantial existence to the composite, then he
would be wrong. Indeed, to say such a thing implies a contradiction, for it amounts to saying that one thing is many things.4°
Orford's argument here is most unusual, at least for a Thomist. Throughout the discussion he is referring to existence, and
emphasizing the way form gives existence. The most remarkable thing of all is the way he draws the distinction between
total substantial existence and partial substantial existence
which, he says, corresponds to and is ' given by ' the form of
the part and the form of the whole. One looks in vain for anything resembling this in the writings of St. Thomas. F. Roensch
says that Orford here " bases his rebuttal of the pluralist view
on St. Thomas' Commentary on the Metaphysics",4 1 but what
Orford says in the argument just considered is not at all what
St. Thomas has in the place Roensch cites. It is true, Aquinas
uses the terms ' form of the whole ' and ' form of the part ',
but he uses them in an entirely different meaning from Orford's.
By ' form of the whole ' St. Thomas means the nature taken
in abstraction from the individual, as for instance when one
speaks of ' man ' in general. This usage corresponds exactly to
what he elsewhere calls total abstraction. 42 By ' form of the
89" Dare autem esse simpliciter, scilicet esse substantiale,
contingit dupliciter,
vel partiale vel totale. Esse autem plures formas in re aliqua quae dant esse substantiale partiale non est inconveniens, immo necessarium est; cum enim ex non
substantiis non fiat substantia, partes substantiae sunt substantiae; unde Philosophus in Pra.edicamentisvult quod manus et pes quae sunt primae substantiae non
sunt accidentia, quia non sunt sicut accidens in subiecto, sed sunt substantiae quae
sunt sicut partes in toto ", Sciendum, p. 138.
40 " Si loquamur de esse substantiali totali et de forma quae <lat esse substantiale
totale, sic impossibile est esse plures formas in una re; quia cum a forma sit
denominatio, illa substantia esset non unum totum sed plura tota, quod est implicatio contradictionis, nam una res esset plures res ", ibid.
41 Early Thomistic School, (Dubuque, 1964), p. 29?3.
42 See for example, Expositio 8'!iper librum Boethii de Trinitate, ed. Decker
(Leiden, 1955), q. 5, art. 3; Summa Theol., I, 85, 1. See also J. Weisheipl, Friar
Thomaa d'Aquino, p. 185.

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FRANCIS E. KELLEY

part ' he means simply any individual instance of the nature,
e.g., Socrates or Callias. He does not at all mean, as Orford
does, the form of the entire individual composed substance,
e.g. Socrates on the one hand, and the form of the 'part', say
Socrates' arm on the other:
Whence there exists another opinion which Avicenna follows; and
according to this [opinion J the form of the whole, which is the
very nature of the species, differs from the form of the part, as a
whole from its part: for the nature of the species is composed of
matter and form, but not from this form and from this individual
matter. From these latter the individual, say Socrates and Callias,
is composed. 48

Orford's entire procedure here does, however, resemble closely
what Giles of Rome has in his Theoremata de esse et essentia.44
Indeed, the distinction between ' form of the part' and ' form
of the whole ' as giving partial existence and total existence is
one of the central concepts running throughout the entire treatise. He introduces the distinction in theorem VIII and resorts
to it repeatedly in IX, XII and XVI. Hocedez says that the
way Giles returns to this point in the treatise might make us
think that he was afraid the reader was not understanding it. 45
Theorem VIII is entitled:
All material things have in them a form of the part and a form of
the whole, and since form causes existence we can see that in material things a twofold existence is found. One of them is existence
pure and simple, the other however is not existence pure and simple, but can be called a mode of existence. 46

The point Giles stresses here is that although we can and do
speak of the ' existence of the form of the whole ' and the ' existence of the form of the part ', we should not imagine that there
are two 'existences', simply speaking. In strict parlance there
Thomas, In Metaph., lib. VII, lect. 9, n. 1469, p. 358-359.
Aegidii Romani Theoremata de esse et essentia, ed. Hocedez (Louvain, 1930).
45 Ibid., Introduction, p. (24) •
46 Ibid., p. 39.
43 St.
44

THE EGIDEAN INFLUENCE IN ORFORD

89

is one existence, viz., the ' existence of the form of the whole '.
The ' existence of the form of the part ' is correctly understood
as ' mode ' of existence. His doctrine is summed up in the conclusion of theorem VIII:
But were existence to be caused by and made to flow from each
and every form, as we said in our proposal, it might seem to follow from this that in material things a double existence would be
found; one which flows from the form of the part, and another
from the form of the whole. But as will appear from what follows, the existence flowing from the form of the part is not a thing
really differing from matter and form; thus such an existence is
a kind of mode of existence rather than existence pure and simple.
The existence flowing from the form of the whole is really different
from the essence or nature. Therefore, when in speaking about
existence we say that material things are composed not only of
matter and form but also of essence and existence, existence is not
taken here as something caused by the form of the part but as it
flows from the form of the whole. Thus what we said in the
theorem is correct, viz., that if one posits a double existence in
material things because of the double form, then one of these is
existence pure and simple, as that flowing from the form of the
whole; the other however is not existence in a proper sense, but
could be called a mode of existence as flowing from the form of
the part. 47
Orford has taken the conceptual arrangement as well as the
terminology from Giles and turned it to his purpose in arguing
for the unity of form. Just as the existence of the form of the
part is not an existence in and of itself distinct from the existence of the form of the whole, but is rather a mode of that
existence-this had been Giles's basic position-by an extension, Orford argues: the form of the part (giving partial existence, as Giles had said) is not something in and of itself distinct
from the form of the whole (giving total existence); rather it
participates in the form of the whole:
Therefore there exist several partial substantial forms of this kind
in the total composite, and insofar as the form of the whole is
nobler, a greater plurality of partial forms is required ... But they
47 Ibid., pp. 45-46.

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FRANCIS E. KELLEY

do not give any kind of existence-the form of the whole prevents
this-rather they participate in the form of the whole.48
The Egidean influence is unmistakable. Though Orford
would later attack Giles on matters ranging from the serious
to the trivial,4 9 here we find in his early work, Sciendum, clear
indications that he favors the Augustinian's understanding of
existence. And he applies Giles's concepts, most interestingly,
in order to defend the Thomistic position regarding the hylomorphic theory.
Like Sutton and Knapwell, Orford saw the importance of the
non-terminated dimensions for the proper understanding of the
unity thesis. It is no surprise, therefore, to find in Sciendum a
lengthy discussion of the dimensions. 50 Most of what we read
here is verbally identical with portions of the opuscule De
natura materiae et dimensionibus interminatis ascribed by some
scholars to Thomas Aquinas. 51 This is one of a list of seven
opuscules whose authorship has been debated. The titles are:
De instantibus
De natura verbi intellectus
De principio individuationis
De genere
De natura accidentium
De natura materiae et dimensionibus interminatis
De quatuor oppositionibus
Mandonnet accepts as authentic opuscules of Aquinas only
those contained in the official catalogue which, he says, is the
work of Reginald of Piperno, composed not long after the
saint's death in 1274.52 The intrusion massive of apocrypha
48 Sciendum, p.
49 I

188.

hope to deal with this extensively in a later article.
50 The discussion occurs in article 29: " Whether in spiritual substances there
can be a numerical difference without a specific difference", pp. 126-138.
51 De natura materiae et dimensionibus inferminatis, (Divi Thomae Aquinatis
Opuscula Philosophica), ed. Marietti (Rome, 1954), pp. 131-145.
52 Des Ecrits Authentiques de S. Thomas d'Aquin, (Fribourg, 1910), pp. 40sqq.
The list of St. Thomas's writings as given by this catalogue is on pp. 20-Sl. See
also Mandonnet's article, "Les 'opuscules' de saint Thomas d'Aquin ", Revue
Thomiste, 10 (1927), pp. 122-151.

THE EGIDEAN INFLUENCE IN ORFORD

91

took place, according to Mandonnet, shortly thereafter and
received sanction in the catalogues of Starns (13a), Ptolemy
of Lucca (UH7) and Bernard Gui (1319) . These seven opuscules represent the original intrusion of apocrypha and they
appear in a late thirteenth-century manuscript described as
'edited by brother Thomas of the Order of Preachers '.M The
authors of these catalogues, says Mandonnet, took ' brother
Thomas ' to be Aquinas, but this was a mistake since the opuscules are wanting in the official catalogues, and in any case
they contain doctrines alien to the thought of Aquinas. 54
A note in a fourteenth-century hand alongside one of the
opuscules, viz., De instantibus, in MS. Vat. lat. 806, fol. fl5: "I
believe this treatise De instantibus was edited by brother
Thomas Sutton the Englishman " led Mandonnet to believe all
seven might be Sutton's. This, he thinks, is confirmed by the
character of the works. The author is interested in defending
Aquinas's doctrine as Sutton often did, and the emphasis on
logic points to Sutton as well, who was ' un tres fort logicien '.
Grabmann disagrees with Mandonnet, insisting that these
seven opuscules certainly belong to Aquinas. 55 Their absence
from what Mandonnet calls the official catalogue does not prove
them to be apocryphal, but merely shows that the catalogue
is incomplete. The addition of the later catalogues which Mandonnet claims were erroneous should be presumed as having
been well founded and a supplement to the original attempt to
compile a complete list of St. Thomas's writings. 56 The note in
the Vatican manuscript is not a good hypothesis, for three of
the other opuscules in the same manuscript, viz., De natura
generis (fol. 3r-llr), De natura accidentis (fol. 15v) and De
principio individuationis (fol. 16v) are ascribed to Aquinas. 51
53 MS.

Avignon 251, fol. lr-SOv.

54 " Enfin, la doctrine de plusieurs de ces opuscules, sinon de tous, est inassimilable

a celle de saint Thomas.", "Les' opuscules' ", p. 151.
55 Die Werke

des Hl. Thomas von Aquin, (BGPM, 22, Heft 1-2, 1949), pp. 246-

247.
Mandonnet's ' exclusiveness-theory ', see ibid., pp. 58-91.
the debate on the authorship of these opuscules see also J. Weisheipl,
F'l'i!P Thomas cl'Aquino, pp. 408-404.
56 Regarding
51 For

FRANCIS E. KELLEY

Glorieux, the editor of Sciendum, suggests in the introduction to his edition that if the De natura materiae does not belong to Aquinas, it might well be Orford's. 58
From internal evidence we can say with a high degree of
probability that of the seven opuscules at least the De natura
materiae does not belong to Aquinas but to Robert Orford. The
main thrust of the opuscule, and the central part of it found
in Sciendum, is an attack against Averroes's view concerning
the non-terminated dimensions. Chapter four opens with the
words:
Therefore it is clear from what has been said that Averroes was
mistaken in his book De substantia orbis when he said the nonterminated dimensions pre-existed in matter. 59
After a number of arguments designed to show why Averroes
was wrong, the author introduces a 'more reasonable opinion'
which someone has advanced. 60 This more reasonable view has
it that the non-terminated dimensions do not have primary
matter as the subject. It was in saying this that Averroes
made his mistake. Rather, the non-terminated dimensions have
as the subject the composite made up of matter and form. In
order to understand this properly, we must distinguish between
'form' considered as the genus (i.e. 'body') and 'form' taken
as 'specific' or 'more complete.' To form in sense one correspond the non-terminated dimensions; to form in sense two follow the dimensions as terminated:
Thus others say, more reasonably, that the form of the second
genus, that is to say 'body', when it joins with matter gives to
it a kind of incomplete existence which is a preparation for actual
and complete existence resulting from another more complete
form. Therefore these people say that the three non-terminated
ss Sciendum, introduction, p. rn. J. Wyss, in the introduction to his edition
De Natura Materiae (Textus Philosophici Friburgensis, Fribourg, Suisse, 1953)
says we cannot say who in fact wrote the work, but it was certainly not St. Thomas.
59 De nat'l!ra materiae, ed. Marietti, p. 134; Sciendum, p. rn7.
so " Ad cuius evidentiam sciendum est quad quidam alio modo et rationabilius
eas posuerunt quam Averroes", De natura materia.e, p. 138; Sciendum, p. 129.

'l'HE EGIDEAN INFLUENCE IN ORFORD

98

dimensions exist in matter through the incomplete form; afterwards they receive their termination by reason of another more
complete form. Accordingly, these people do not say that primary
matter is the subject of these dimensions, as the Commentator
had said; rather, it is the composite made up of matter and subform.61

This 'more reasonable opinion' which Orford refers to here is
none other than Thomas Sutton's in Quodlibet I, 10:
it does not follow that primary matter is the subject of accidents,
but the composite made up of matter and form, so that matter
along with the generic form constituting ' body ' is the subject of
non-terminated quantity, and matter along with the inferior generic
form is the subject of the other less common accidents, and so on,
always descending until we reach the specific form. And the specific form with matter is the subject of all the terminated accidents,
precisely as they are terminated. 62

Since the author of De natura materiae refers to Sutton's
Quodlibet I, 10 it follows that Aquinas could not have written
the opuscule, for Sutton's work was written after the saint had
died.
The following considerations favor Orford as the one responsible for De natura materiae. After having presented Sutton's
opinion, the author found fault with it, and the delicacy in the
way he disagrees, i.e., Sutton's view is 'more reasonable' even
if mistaken, sounds very much like the rebuke by an admirer.
More importantly, the very inclusion of the central portion
of the opuscule in Sciendum with no hint that it is borrowed
from another is strong evidence that this dissentient admirer
of Sutton is none other than Robert Orford. The account taken
of Sutton's opinion regarding the important problem concerning the unity of form is almost what one might have expected
a1 Sciendum, p. rn9; cf. De natura rnateriae, pp. 138-139.
62 Thomas von Sutton

Quodlibeta, ed. Schmaus-Gonzalez Haba (Munich, 1969),
p. 75. For a full discussion of Sutton's doctrine regarding the dimensions see my
Expositionis D. Thomae Aquinatis in Lib1'0s Aristotelis De Generatione et Corruptione continuatio per Thomam de Sutona (Munich, 1976), introduction, pp.

94

FRANCIS E. KELLEY

from the youthful Oxford Dominican. Like Knapwell in
Quare,63 Robert Orford in his opuscule and in the section of it
borrowed for Sciendum was most attentive to what Sutton
had said about the dimensions. But between Knapwell and
Orford there is a difference in the way they regarded Sutton's
opinion. Knapwell quoted from Sutton at great length without any word of criticism. Indeed he confessed that he personally found difficulty in following Sutton's method of arguing.
Orford on the other hand, after having summed up Sutton's
doctrine in Quodlibet 1, 10, went on to object against it:
But these people are mistaken, for it is impossible to have several
substantial forms mutually related to one another in matter. 64
Orford's main critique of Sutton is, interestingly, much like
Sutton's later critique of himself. That is to say, Sutton's
earlier two treatments of the Averroist 'dimensions,' and
especially the one in Quodlibet 1, 10, reflected more logic than
natural philosophy, and hylomorphism is a thesis pertaining
to the latter. The explanation in Quodlibet 1, 10 is similar to
what Roger Marston has in his second Quodlibet, q. 22. Etzkorn, not surprisingly, finds it convenient to describe Marston's
position in terms of logic:
The above may be expressed in the language of the logician as follows; the subject of generation, it will be remembered, is the generic individual, e.g., the grade of life-matter couplet.
As long as the process of generation is in progress, this generic
individual remains incomplete. Once the process of generation is
terminated, viz., when the terminus ad quem is reached, the generic
individual is completed by the terminus ad quem, viz., the specific
individual.65

In his opuscule Contra pluralitatem formarum Sutton replaced the earlier emphasis on logic with one following the
principles of natural philosophy .fJ 6 Orford' s critique in De
sa See my Expositionis D. Thomae Aquinatis, pp. 1-18.
64 De natura materiae, p. 139; Sciendum, p. 129.
65 "The Grades of the Form according to Roger Marston OFM ", Franziskanische
Studien, 44
p. 447.
66 See my E:t7potitioni8D. Thoma1 Aquinati1, pp.

THE EGIDEAN INFLUENCE IN ORFORD

95

natura materiae and Sciendum resembles Sutton's own progression from Quodlibet 1, 10 to the later Contra pluralitatem
formarum in that it warns against the danger oi confusing
rational with real distinctions:
Therefore from what has been said it is clear that to place nonterminated dimensions in matter in a way that they come before
substantial form, is impossible, unless we are dealing only with
our understanding of things-the way mathematicians proceed.
But we shall speak about this later. 67
After having rejected Sutton's explanation of the dimensions
as it appeared in Quodlibet 1, 10, Orford presents his own
position. The key to the proper understanding of the dimensions is found in the way we understand existence. Prior to
actual existence, the dimensions are non-terminated; with the
reception of actual existence they are terminated. In order
to illustrate this, Orford draws a parallel; just as the essence
of the substance gets its termination through existence, so the
essence of the accident which is 'dimension' receives its
termination through existence:
From what has been said it is easy to see how the dimensions are
said to be non-terminated. Just as the essences of things are terminated by their existences which are 'formal' in the highest degree; but before they are called ' essences ' they are not thought of
as actual, nor terminated-so also, the aforementioned dimensions
are non-terminated before they actually exist. And alt.hough [the
dimensions] actually exist in man as in a subject, their proper
characteristic being to ' measure ' when they actually exist, nevertheless they enjoy only potential existence and they do not actually exist in the thing on which they depend as their originating
source, i.e., the subject. 68
Like Sutton in his final discussion of the question, Orford
objected to the use of pure logic as a way to explain the dimensions. Unlike Sutton, however, who worked out his final
solution using principles of natural philosophy, Orford resorted
· 67 De natura materiae, p. 186.

as ]bid., p. 140; Sciendum, p. 182.

96

FRANCIS E. KELJ,EY

to metaphysics. In this place Orford is givmg us his own
thoughts, and in so doing he is departing somewhat from his
avowed purpose, for Sciendum like the other correctoria had
for its objective the defense of Thomas per Thomam. In this
most important question, however, the English Dominican took
the liberty of a personal digression, borrowing from his fuller
treatment found in the De natura materiae. We can say fur.
ther, his development of the way existence is to be understood
in Sciendum and the opuscule is consistent with what he later
wrote in his treatise against the Quodlibet questions of Henry
of Ghent. 69 In these early works as in the later one against
Henry, his understanding of existence is Egidean in tone. It
is this fact which causes certain scholars to find it difficult to
include the De natura materiae among the works of St. Thomas.
M.-D. Roland-Gosselin, for example, says:
Cette breve analyse suffit a montrer que le De natura materiae
propose une theorie parfaitement originale et dont les oeuvres
authentiques de saint Thomas ne portent pas la moindre trace.
Sur un point tres important-Ia relation de Ia forme a I' esse-elle
contredit les fondements memes de la metaphysique thomiste.70
He suggests that the De natura materiae is very likely the
work of an early disciple of St. Thomas. He does not, however,
mention Orford as a possibility, nor does he make note of the
dependency on Giles of Rome.
Orford believed that the reason for all the trouble over the
unity thesis was due to the fact that most people attributed
to St. Thomas a theory which in fact he never upheld. In his
Contra Henricum he said the entire debate over the question
was rooted in a complete misunderstanding of what Aquinas
intended when he advanced this doctrine. The latter's main
concern had been nothing more than to correct the error of
Avicebron who taught that the forms in any existing thing
took their number from the predicates attributed to it:
69 See my " Two early Thomists: Thomas Sutton and Robe.rt Orford vs .. Henry
of Ghent", Thomist: vol. 45, 1981, pp. 855-860.
10 Le 'de ente et essentia' de S. Thomas d'Aquin (Paris, 1948), p. 182.

THE EGIDEAN INFLUENCE IN ORFORD

97

Therefore it should be recognized that everything said on this
matter concerning the unity of form in man results from an ignorance of brother Thomas's own opinion. As I have often said in
other quodlibet questions, brother Thomas everywhere tried to
refute the opinion of Avicebron about the plurality of forms.
Avicebron established the number of forms in accord with the number of predicates. 71
John Pecham, says Orford, had it all wrong; St. Thomas never
denied there was a plurality of forms in the way the archbishop
thought he had done. Pecham thought Aquinas had insisted
there could be no other form in man except the rational soul,
whether we take such other forms 'according to existence' or
'according to essence.' It is a mistake to take St. Thomas this
way:
From the foregoing it is clear that the unity of form condemned
in England is not the kind of unity brother Thomas taught. But
these people, noticing only a few points and making pronouncement with ease, falsely attributed an opinion to him. According
to them, there exists in man no substantial form other than the
rational soul, neither according to existence nor according to
essence, but [there exists] only the rational soul and primary matter-and this is not true. From this misconception follow the condemned articles and not from the unity of form as taught by
brother Thomas, as we have said. Therefore, since the diffuse
criticism against this erroneous sort of unity has nothing to do with
the opinion of brother Thomas, I do not care to deal with it; for
I do not wish to uphold anyone's fiction. 72
71 " Sciendum est igitur quod quidquid loquitur in ista quaestione de unitate
formae in homine totum est ex ignorantia opinionis fratris Thomae. Sicut enim
saepe dictum est in aliis quolibet[is], frater Thomas ubique nititur destruere
opinionem Avicebron de pluralitate formarum. Posuit enim Avicebron numerum
formarum secundum numerum praedicatorum ", MS. Peterhouse, 129, fol. 63ra;
MS. Vat. lat. 987, fol. 9lva.
12 " Ex his patet quod unitas formae condempnata in Anglici non est ilia unitas
quam frater Thomas tradit, sed ad pauca respicientes et de facili pronuntiantes
falso ei imposuerunt, quia secundum eos omnino nulla forma est in homine nisi
anima rationalis, neque secundum esse neque secundum essentiam, sed sola anima
rationalis et materia omnino prima, quod est erroneum. Et ex hac opinione sequuntur articuli condempnati, non ex unitate formae quam tradit frater Thomas, ut
dictum est. Quia igitur ea quae diffuse contra tenentes istam unitatem erroneam

98

FRANCIS E. KELLEY

The last few lines of this text imply that Orford regarded
Knapwell's explanation of the unity thesis as having been unrepresentative of what St. Thomas taught. Pecham's 'diffuse'
criticism of what Knapwell had said did not touch Aquinas,
and for this reason Orford says he will not bother to go into
the matter. He has no intention of trying to support an
imaginary position.
The only way Orford could say this interpretation of Aquinas
was the wrong one, was that he was convinced St. Thomas's
understanding of the unity theory could be fully and properly
grasped only by employing the Egidean doctrine of essence and
existence. That is to say, 'according to existence' there could
be but one form; ' according to essence ' there could be several.
What is merely implied here became explicit in the De natura
materiae:
Therefore we are guilty of no contradiction if we say there are
several forms in a thing, provided [we say] existence pure and
simple does not flow from them. A plurality of substantial forms
in a single thing is ruled out only because of the substance's existence pure and simple. Thus it is clear, and the Philosopher shows
it to be so, that to imagine several substantial existences in one
thing is impossible; the only form posited in the thing is that
which existence follows. The other [forms] are not like this. 73

But Giles himself did not have the unity of form right. His
doctrine on the real distinction between essence and existence
was correct, but he failed to apply it, as he might have done,
to explain hylomorphism. Instead of doing this, Giles fell into
the same error as Knapwell and Sutton (i.e., in Quodlibet 1,
10); that is, the three men tried to respond to the theological
objections advanced by the pluralists with a recourse to the
Averroist non-terminated dimensions.
in nullo tangit opinionem fratris Thomae, ideo non curavi ea ponere; nolo enim
fictionem cuiusque sustinere ", MS. Peterhouse 129, fol. 6Sra; MS. Vat. lat. 987,
fol. 91 vb. P. Bayerschmidt in Die Seins-Und-Formmetaphysik des Heinrich von
Gent in ihrer Anwendung auf die Ohristologie (BGPM, 36 Heft 8/4, 1941) reads
the last five words as follows: "nolo utrisque factionem sustinere ", which is
erroneous and obscures the meaning. (p. 296)
711 DtJ natura 1714tMia,e, p. 142.

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THE EGIDEAN INFLUENCE IN ORFORD

Again [Henry] says that some, when they posit one form in each
thing, extend the identity of ' body-as-substance ', calling it ' bodyas-substance' because matter in company with the non-terminated
dimensions remains one and the same in the living and dead substance having its substantial parts with the parts of the dimensions ... it is in this way that they explain how there is one and
the same 'body-substance ' in the living and dead thing-and he
[i.e., Henry] rejects this opinion. I agree with his rejection. This
was the opinion of brother Giles.74

Robert Orford, who so often appears hurried in his exposition
of theological and philosophical points, 75 in this particular discussion took more care. Although, as a Thomist, he shared the
general viewpoint of his confreres Thomas Sutton and Richard
Knapwell, he criticized what they had said regarding the unity
of form. His preference for the direction Giles of Rome had
taken in metaphysics did not prevent him from registering
his objection to the way the Augustinian had explained the
hylomorphic theory. One may or may not see merit in Robert
Orford's philosophic analysis of this controverted question, but
there can be little doubt that, when he took the time to do it,
this English Thomist added new elements to the development
of scholastic thinking at Oxford.
"FRANCIS

E. KELLEY

Franciscan Institute
St. Bonaventure University
St. Bonaventure, New York

74 " Item quod dicit quod aliqui ponentes unam formam in unoquoque extendunt
identitatem corporeitatis substantialis ut dicatur corporeitas substantialis, quia
materia sub dimensionibus interminatis manet eadem in vivo et mortuo, habens
partes suas substantiales sub partibus dimensionum ... et sic est idem corpus
substantia in vivo et mortuo, et illam opinionem reprobat. Concedo illam reprobationem. Haec enim est opinio fratris Egidii heremite ", MS. Peterhouse 129,
fol. 63ra; MS. Vat. lat. 987, fol. 9lvb.
75 Glorieux notes this characteristic in his introduction to Sciendum, p. 9, and
A. Vella says the same trait runs through his work against Giles of Rome, see
Reprobationes contra Egidium, p. 28.

THE PROBLEM OF GROUND IN THE
PHILOSOPHY OF MARTIN HEIDEGGER

U

KE EVERY philosopher Heidegger wants to get to the
bottom of things, indeed not merely to the roots but to
the ground in whch these roots are located, out of which
they arise. He describes this fundamental realm in many different ways, yet the actual term ground is clearly one of his
favorites. 1 The term is inherited from tradition and speaks
loudly in Leibniz's principle: nihil est sine ratione (Nichts ist
ohne Grund) .
It comes then as no surprise when in V om W esen des Grundes
(1928) Heidegger turns to this principle in his search for the
essence of ground. What does come as a surprise is that the
principle does not seem to be very helpful. One could say that
the principle is a statement about a being in reference to something called ground (omne ens habet rationem) . Yet the question-what is this ground-receives no answer. Hence the content of the principle is almost totally irrelevant to the study
in hand.
Nevertheless the principle is of some help. It points us in
the direction of further investigations. It would seem from
Leibniz's own words that the principle arises out of the very
nature of truth and this allows Heidegger to conclude:
The more originally we seize upon the problem of the essence of
truth ... the more persistent must the problem of ground become.2
1 Heidegger published two works containing the term ground in their title. This
study is primarily based on these works. Vom Wesen des Grundes, (19£8). (Bilingual edition, The Essence of Reasons, tr. T. Malick, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969). Quotations will be taken from this bilingual edition and
hereafter the work will be refeITed to as WG.
Der Satz vom Grund (Pfullingen: Neske, 1957), Dritte unveriinderte Auflage, 1965.
Hereafter as SG.
2 WG. p. 18 "Je urspriinglicher wir uns daher des Wesens der Wahrheit bemiich-

100

'l'HE PROB:t.I!T.M OF GROUNP IN HEIDEGGER

lQl

:More originally? Yes, for the notion of truth of Leibniz is the
truth of assertion, the truth of a predicate belonging to a subject. In Being and Time of the previous year Heidegger had
already shown at length that truth understood in this way is
based on more original truth. 8 The treatment here is basically
a repetition. With it we land in the domain of truth and the
problem of ground. The principle of Leibniz hardly features
any more. What then is truth for Heidegger and how is it related to the problem of ground?
The truth of assertion, of agreement between subject and
predicate, demands a pre-predicative knowledge of being. It
is only when there is a manifestation of being that there is a
basis for the truth of assertion. This pre-predicative manifestness of being, called ontical truth,4 is not the result of a judgment or assertion but comes about
in our situating ourselves in the midst of being, through our moods
and drives, as well as in conative and volitional kinds of behavior
toward being that are grounded in the way we find ourselves
situated. 5

It is immediately evident that the beings we thus encounter
are not all of the same kind: a stone is not a man. The particular manifestness of any being is therefore guided by the
more basic Being of a being. This disclosedness of Being Heidegger calls ontological truth. 6
The ability to recognise this distinction between being and
Being (Ontological Difference) is only found in Dasein. Indeed it defines Dasein. It constitutes the very essence of Dasein
and receives the name transcendence. 7 Thus via truth the
quest for the essence of ground becomes the problem of transcendence.
tigen, um so aufdringlicher muss <las Problem des Grundes werden." I prefer the
term ground to the translator's reasons.
a M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trs. J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1967) pp. 256-278. Hereafter SZ (Sein und Zeit).
4WG. p. 20.
5 WG. p. 21.
ewG. p. 22.
1 WG. p. 28.

102

KEES DE KUYER, C,SS.R.

The transcendence referred to is nothing else than the Beingin-the-world of Being and Time. It is called transcendence
because it involves a surpassing (Uberstieg) of being towards
Being. This needs some explanation.
It is clear from what has been said so far that transcendence
concerns the manifestness of being prior to any assertion or
judgment. It is a pre-predicative awareness. Here Dasein is
aware of itself precisely as self and other beings as not-self.
Yet the not-self is not considered in its individuality, this rock,
this tree, but precisely in its totality, all the non-self. What we
have here therefore is Dasein's relationship to everything which
is not itself. I£ then both Dasein as self and everything else is
surpassed in transcendence, where then does this surpassing
land, what is the "toward which" of this surpassing? The
world, says Heidegger. 8 The world not as a totality of things
but as the llow of being in its totality. In other words the
world as it appears to us. Heidegger demonstrates how this
may differ from age to age and from person to person. 9 He
sums up by saying:
As a totality, world "is" no particular being but rather that by
means of and in terms of which Dasein gives itself to understand
what beings it can behave toward and how it can behave toward
them .
. . . If the world is that, in surpassing to which, selfhood first arises,
it is also that for the sake of which Dasein exists.... But that for
the sake of which Dasein exists is itself. World belongs to selfhood;
it is essentially related to Dasein. 10
Hence Dasein's transcendence, its Being-in-the-world, is a forming of the world in which Dasein and everything else can become manifest. And inasmuch as Dasein is essentially possibility, 11 freedom lies at the basis of any projected world.
SWG. p. 40.
n WG. pp. 48-84.
10 WG.

p. 85.
69 and throu!:hout.

11 SZ. p.

THE PROBLEM OF GROUND IN HEIDEGGER

103

Freedom alone can let a world govern and " world " Dasein. 12 As
transcendence freedom is the origin of ground in general. Freedom
is freedom for ground. 13

Ground therefore comes about in transcendence. It is not so
much· a thing as a process: the threefold strewing of ground
by laying-claim, taking-possession and founding. 14 l£ transcendence is the Being-in-the-world of Being and Time, then it
is easy to see that the three ways of grounding correspond to
the existentialia understanding
(Verstehen), state-of-mind
(Befindlichkeit) and discourse
The new names are due
to the fact that here they are specifically related to the problem
of ground and indeed a relationship to ground is heard in each
one of them.
The laying-claim is nothing else than the projection of a
world as spoken of above. Yet Dasein cannot project any old
world, as it is equiprimordially limited by the beings in the
midst of which it finds itself (taking-possession) . One could
say that Dasein grounds by projecting a world, but that this
simultaneously demands that it has " a foothold in being, or
has gained 'ground'." 15 In other words, Dasein's facticity
limits its possibilities. Put in other terms, Dasein is not a creator; its freedom is finite.
Heidegger warns against an ontical interpretation at this
stage and his own words express this best:
the project of world makes a preliminary understanding of the
Being of being possible and yet is not itself a relationship of
Dasein to being. Dasein, because of its preoccupation with being,
can find itself disposed by and in the midst of being, though indeed never without a disclosure of world. But its preoccupation
12 WG. p. 108.

13 WG. p. 104. "Die Freiheit als Transzendenz ist ... der Ursprung von Grund
ilberhaupt. Freiheit ist Freiheit zum Grunde."
14 WG. p. 104. "Griinden als Stiften ... als Boden-nehmen ... als Begriinden."
The English terms in the text are not those of the translator but are taken from
W. J. Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1968) pp. 164-165.
15 WG. p. 109.

104

KEES DE KUYER, c.ss.R.

is not a way of behaving toward being. On the contrary, both
Dasein's understanding of and its preoccupation with being-in
their unity ... -make intentionality transcendentally possible.16
Laying claim and taking-possession do not exhaust the nature
of transcendence as Being-in-the-world. The third way of
grounding, entitled founding, is equiprimordial. In Being and
Time the third existentiale was called discourse and was described as "the articulation of intelligibility " 11 underlying all
interpretation and assertion. Similarly we read in connection
with founding:
In founding, the transcendence of Dasein takes charge of making
the manifestation of being possible, i.e., it takes charge of the
possibility of ontical truth. 18

Just as discourse underlies all interpretation and assertion, so
founding underlies all ontical truth, all " proving" of ontical
propositions. It precisely makes the question "Why?" possible, says Heidegger. 19 In other words, in its factical behavior
DaS'ein is often asking "why?", and it is precisely founding
which makes this transcendentally possible.
It is obvious that founding must be seen in relation to layingclaim and taking-possession and that the "why" must arise
out of that. We have seen that in laying-claim Dasein projects
a possible world. Dasein does this as situated in the midst of
being. The "why" arises precisely in this world reigning as
the way of existence for Dasein. This " why " implicitly contains " a preconceptual understanding of what something is, of
how it is, and even of Being ". 20 As containing this understanding of Being the " why " has the ultimate answer and lays the
foundation for all questioning. It is in this way that we find
founding in transcendence.
Inasmuch as the manifestness of being depends on the understanding of Being founding lies- at the basis of all ontical
1a WG. p. ns.
11 sz. pp. 9l08-9l04.
18 WG. p. llS.
19 Ibid.
2o WG. p. 116.

THE PROBLEM OF GROUND IN HEIDEGGER

105

truth and every kind of behavior toward being. Yet not
founding alone but as related to laying-claim and takingpossession in the unity of transcendence.
Heidegger is now confident that he can spell out what is
meant by the title of his essay:
The essence of ground (Wes en des Grundes) is the threefold transcendental dispersion of grounding in the project of world, preoccupation with being, and the ontological founding of being.n
It is clear therefore that the whole question of ground is linked
with Being and truth for Heidegger. Yet, as we saw before,
truth as disclosedness is due to Dasein being essentially transcendence and in this transcendence Being rules. The actual
rule of Being depends on what possibility is projected, hence
on Dasein's freedom. This causes Heidegger to make such
statements as:

Freedom is the origin of the principle of ground. . . . Freedom is
the ground of ground.22
Naturally freedom is not ground in any of the three ways mentioned above but the source of the grounding of transcendence.
Of itself, however, it is groundless. Dasein has no control over
the £act that it is in the midst of being as "free" and that
transcendence " as a primordial happening " 23 is its very essence. ';Ve have here the overtones of Sartre's famous" doomed
to be free ".
Hence we finish up with a groundless freedom which in transcendence lets ground reign due to the ontological difference
between Being and being. This latter is then expressed at the
ontical level in the principle of ground of Leibniz.
Though fascinating and full of insights this presentation of
the essence of ground does not satisfy me totally. Even though
Dasein is freedom and projects its possibility, it is simultaneously limited by the beings in the midst of which it finds itself.
It would seem therefore that ground is to be thought more
21 WG.

p. 121.

22 WG. p. 123 and p. 127.
2s WG. p. liD.

106

KEES DE KUYER, c.ss.R.

originally still. Moreover, why "is Dasein thrown among beings as free ' potentiality for being ' " ? 24 If Dasein finds itself
precisely as thrown one could very well ask in Heideggerian
terminology-whence was it thrown? 25

* **
Heidegger himself became dissatisfied with this early work
and said so explicitly when he tackled the problem again in
Der Satz vom Grund (1957) .u It could be said that in this
work we possess the final thought of Heidegger. All the dominant themes of his later years are to be found in this work,
and at the end of it one is practically reduced to silence.
Whether the latter is true in fact I leave to the reader to decide.
Relying on his later insights that "language is the house of
Being" 21 and that the thoughtworthy is the unthought in the
already-thought, 28 Heidegger once again uses Leibniz's principle: Nihil est sine 1·atione (Nichts ist ohne Grund) as the
approach into this whole area of ground. The evaluation of the
principle here differs considerably from that of 1928, as we
shall see.
Any attempt to query the principle, to test its validity soon
proves futile. The principle asserts its authority continually.
It is a fundamental principle of all human thought, and Heidegger even suggests that it is the basic principle of all principles. 29
Be that as it may, it would seem that no further progress is
possible. And yet it is by no means evident why this principle
has such a hold over us. We just take it for granted and give
no further thought to it. Why not?
24 Ibid.
25 See also James Buchanan, "Heidegger and the Problem of Ground'', Philosophy Today, Vol. XVII, 1973, pp. 232-245. This is an evaluation of the early
Heidegger, though no reference is made to WG.
2s SG. pp. 48; 84.
21 M. Heidegger, "Brief iiber den 'Humanismus'"
in Wegmarken, (Frankfurt:
Klosterman, 1967) p. 145.
2s SG. pp. 158-159.
29 SG. p. 21.

THE PROBLEM OF GROUND IN HEIDEGGER

107

Because our relationship to what is closest to us is dull and stupid.
For the road to that which is closest to us is for us humans always
the longest and hence the most difficult.30

That in itself is not enough to daunt Heidegger. Even if the
principle is totally clear in all its applications, what is not clear
is where the principle comes from, whence it speaks to us. That
is worthy of investigation. In other words, the principle does
not tell us much about the nature of ground, and maybe we
will discover more when we examine the principle's source and
origin. The principle states something about every being,
namely that it has a ground. Typically Heidegger hopes to get
beyond that to the source of every being-Being itself. With
a play on words which is so much his own, Heidegger reminds
us that the German Satz does not only mean principle but also
leap 31 and that it is this leap which will turn the principle from
a principle of being into a principle of Being. Such a change,
given the dominance of this principle in our thinking, will naturally affect the nature of our thinking as well.
Heidegger makes much of his way (Weg) into the problem
and stresses its importance. 32 Yet the way as such makes little
sense unless you already have some idea as to where you will
finish up. For example, you have to be familiar with what the
later Heidegger understands by Being and the Being-Dasein
relationship before you can have any insight into what he terms
some of the major steps along the way. In this regard Heidegger's imagery of ways and paths is not always consistent.
It is proposed that there are five major steps along the way
leading us into the realm of ground, though it is only with
hindsight that these steps become intelligible. This is due to
the fact that the way is not a passage away from one area to
so SG. p. 16. " ... weil unser Verhiiltnis zum Naheliegenden seit je stumpf ist
und dumpf. Denn der Weg zum Nahen ist fiir uns Menschen jederzeit der weiteste
und darum der schwerste."
si SG. p. 96.
s2 Explicit references to this point are made in 8 of the 18 lectures. It nevertheless continues to sound somewhat forced and in part at least reflects the Jiattll'e of the work: class lectures rather than a composition for publication:

108

KEES DE KUYER, C.SS.R.

another area but rather a depthing of something. Nothing is
left behind, but the unthought is discovered as the depth dimension of the already-thought. Heidegger's own approach is
the best illustration.
The first three steps along the way concern the principle of
ground as it appears in the writings of Leibniz.
1) Why is it that a principle which is so all-pervasive in hu-

man life has taken two thousand three hundred years to be
formulated? 33 When considered as a principle of being
there is no answer to this question. But if we are speaking
about a principle of Being then it is subject to the dispensation (Geschick) of Being: in this long 'incubation period ' Being shows itself as hiding its essence.
2) On that premise the actual formulation of the principle by
Leibniz and the role attributed to it (highest first principle)
would seem to shatter the hiddenness of Being. On the contrary, says Heidegger, it is precisely the liberated power of
the principle as a principle of being (every being must have
a reason or ground) that hinders the appearance of the
principle as a principle of Being.
3) Leibniz's description of his principle as' grande, magnum et
nobillisimum ' is regarded as stressing that the principle is
not an abstract law of thought but a reality ruling every
aspect of human life-this incessant demand to furnish a
reason. Heidegger suggests that insight into this fact may
be gleaned when as a principle of Being the principle will
announce that Being and ground belong together, speak the
same language as it were.
The last two steps along the way apparently abandon the principle as understood by Leibniz. Here we find a typical example
of Heidegger's 'retrieve' (Wiederholung) or thinking the unthought in the already-thought. The way into this is a statement which seems to oppose the principle of ground.
aa The stress is here on the actual formulation of the principle; not on its de facto
employment.

THE PROBLEM OF GROUND IN ·HEIDEGGER

109

4) If one formulation of Leibniz's principle can be-' nothing
is without why' (Nichts ist ohne Warum), then the poet
Scheffler gives us something else to think about:
The rose is without why; it blossoms because it blossoms; It thinks
not upon itself, nor does it ask if anyone sees it. 34

What we have here is not a lack of ground (it is present in the
because) but a lack of the demand to furnish the reason or
ground. The ground itself appears here in a rather startling
manner. It is not beyond the blossoming but the blossoming
itself. Here then we have an inkling of Being and ground being
the same. Yet the insight is difficult to maintain at this level
inasmuch as the statement concerns a being (the rose) and
the language of Being is scarcely audible.
5) The final step on the way is the so-called leap by which we
leave the realm of beings and land in the realm of Being.
This comes about by a new accentuation of Leibniz's principle.35 Heidegger would have us hear more than 'every
being has a ground'. In the statement 'nothing IS without GROUND ' we hear a certain harmony of IS and
GROUND. 'Is' naturally indicates in some way the Being
of that which is (Sein des Seiendes) . This shows that the
principle is not merely a principle of being but also a principle of Being. That is the point of the new or second accentuation of Leibniz's principle.

What does this principle say? It says:
To Being pertains such a thing as ground. Being is of the nature
of ground ... Being is in itself as grounding. 36

With this we land in the realm of Being. Being as Being grounds
and hence every being has a ground. Yet how does ground
pertain to the essence of Being? Heidegger goes on to show
that Being and ground pertain essentially to each other and
USG. p. "68.
n SG. pp. 89-98.
89 SG:
90. "Zurn Sein gehort dergleichen wie· Grund. Das Sein ist grundartig,

p.

grundhaft . . . Sein west in sich als griindendes."

110

KEES DE KUYER,

c.ss.R.

concludes " Being and ground: the same." And if this is the
case then Being itself can have no ground, hence: " Being:
Abyss (groundless)."
All of this is due to the leap accompanying the second accentuation of Leibniz's principle. Moreover it is when we make
this leap that we meet for the first time the real region of
freedom. 37 Naturally we find here a treatment of the DaseinBeing relationship as understood by the later Heidegger. 88 It
brings out the belonging together of man and Being in a relationship in which the initiative lies with Being as dispensing
itself (Geschwk). This is something which cannot be understood in categories of representational thinking or in the realm
where Leibniz's principle rules as a principle of being. It also
means that the leap does not take us to a new place but to the
region where we already are. This is another way of saying
that it lands us in the to-be-thought as the deeper dimension
of the already-thought. It will demand a new way of thinking,
indeed a new language. 39
What exactly is this to-be-thought and how does it shed
light on the problem of ground? It is the saying of the principle: 'Being and Ground: the same'. As outlined in ldentitiit
und Diff erenz, Heidegger always regards identity as a cobelonging not as a uniformity. Identity must be regarded as
a co-belonging which simultaneously holds two things together
and apart. This is now to be applied to Being and ground.
An examination of what we mean by the terms ' Being ' and
'ground ' does not lead anywhere. It says no more than what
we already know and thus gives no insight into this question
of identity. The way out of the impasse is a consideration of
the Latin rather than the German form of the principleprincipium reddendae rationis sufficientis-in which ground
(Grund) is seen to be the translation of ratio. In an almost
s1 SG. p. 157.
as This is brought out very well by John D. Caputo in "The Rose is without
Why", Philosophy Today, Vol. XV, 1971, pp. S-16.
a0 Heidegger wonders at times whether this will be possible. M. Heidegger,
ldentitiit und Differems, (Pfullingen: Neske, 1957), p. 66. Hereafter ID.

THE PROBLEM: OF GROUND IN HEIDEGGER

111

incredible analysis of the word ratw Heidegger comes up with
the following conclusions. 40 As derivative from the verb reor,
ratio carries two meanings, namely ground and reason as faculty of understanding. He illustrates this by moving from reor
as meaning ' to consider as ' to rechnen as ' to calculate '. In
the process ratio becomes ' calculation '. Yet ' calculation ' has
a double meaning: calculation as activity and calculation as
the calculated. How this double meaning can manifest itself
as ref erring to both ground and faculty of understanding is
shown in the following:
In calculation something is presupposed ... that which determines
that a thing is the way it is. This presupposed ... determines ...
the calculated of the calculation; thus ratio is the basis ... i.e. the
ground. In presupposing calculation presents something as something. This presentation of something as something is a bringing
before oneself ... in which one perceives what lies before ... and
according to which one calculates. Calculation, ratio as such a
perceiving is understanding (Vernunft, Reason) .41

This in turn is linked with the philosophy of Kant. Kant, according to Heidegger, is precisely the one who answers the
demand of the principle of ground most rigorously, i.e. the
furnishing of a sufficient reason. Returning to our startingpoint, Being and ground: the same, we now have Being and
ratio: the same. That it should be like that Heidegger attributes to the dispensation of Being in this particular.· period of
Western thought, the period of representational thinking. 42
It would seem that we have reached an impasse here. How
40 SG. pp. 165-175. Heidegger has often been criticized for the violence he does
to language. Such violence would seem inevitable if one is to lay bare the unthought in the thought. After all, taking language at face-value is precisely to
remain in the realm of the already-thought.
41 SG. p. 174. "In der Rechnung wird etwas unterstellt, ... das, woran es
gerade schon Iiegt, dass es mit einer Sache so steht, wie es steht. Das so Unterstellte, ... ist <las, woran es Iiegt, ... das Gerechnete der Rechnung; die ratio ist
somit die Basis ... , d.h. der Grund. Das Rechnen stellt im Unterstellen etwas als
etwas vor. Dieses Vorstellen von etwas als etwas ist ein Vor-sich-bringen ... und
in 8o1Chem Vor-nehmen veminimt; ... worauf und womit gerechnet wird .
Dai Rechnen, die ratio ist als.solches V:ernehmen,die Vemunft."
4Z SG. p. 176.

112

KEJ!lS DE KUYER,

c.ss.n.

can one get beyond representational thinking if this is precisely
due to the dispensation of Being? To my mind Heidegger never
explains this satisfactorily. His own 'solution' seems to lie in
a return to earlier thought as the realm whence present thought
has come. The implication is that we can find there a greater
wealth than in our de facto present thought. It does not seem
a solution, however, if the development, poor though it may
be, is precisely due to the initiative of Being.
To put this present impasse in different words: we have here
Being and ratio: the same, the height of representational thinking, be it as a principle of Being. In an attempt to bring this
back to more original thought, Heidegger regards ratio as a
translation of the Greek logos and concludes to-Being and
logos: the same. 43 The search for ground, therefore, has come
via ground (Grund) and ratio back to logos. The new problem
is the co-belonging of Being and logos.
A translation is never a simple matter, it never quite captures the original. Just as ground does not capture the full
extent of ratio, so ratio may not fully capture logos. So what
does logos mean and how does it pertain to Being?
Logos can be regarded as indicating the same kind of thing
as rat£o, thus justifying the translation. 44 Yet logos says more
than the Latin ratio and this is only apparent when we think
logos in the way the Greeks thought it. Heidegger's analysis
of logos and legein as 'gathering together' and ' letting-liein-front-of' (Vorliegenlassen) and its connection with language
is a familiar theme. 45 In its particular application here we read:
legein and logos are the letting-lie-in-front-of what is present in
its presence. Logos also means the said i.e. what lies-in-front-of

such, what is present in its presence. We say: the being in its
Being. Logos names Being. But logos as that which lies-in-front43 Heidegger admits that his conclusion is not -found as such in any Greek literature but maintains that it captures Greek thought and foreshadows its further
development as found in Latin (ratio) and German (Grund). SG. p. 177.
44 SG. pp. 178-179.
Its most detailed exposition is to be found in the essay entitled "Logos ". M.
Heidegger Vortriige und Aufsiitze (Pfullingen: Neske, Dritte Auflage, 1967) Teil
Ill, pp.
Hereafter VA.

•5

THE PROBLEM OF GROUND IN HEIDEGGER

118

of is at the same time the basis on which other things lie and rest.
We say: the bottom, the ground. Logos names the ground. 46

Here too then we discover the co-belonging of Being and
ground. Indeed "Logos names Being and ground simultaneously ". 47
How far has this helped us in relation to the problem of
ground? The co-belonging which sounds in Leibniz's principle
is now brought back to the dawn of Western thought. One
would have thought that this co-belonging of Being and ground
as present in Greek thought would have become clarified in
later developments. Not so, says Heidegger. He explains this
by means of the dispensation (Geschick) of Being in terms of
alethe£a.48 In its self-revelation Being also remains hidden. It
is suggested that what remains hidden is precisely this mutual
belonging of Being and ground. 49 This retreat or concealment
of Being consists precisely in the appearance of ground in its
many forms (arche, ratio, causa, principle, etc.). Being therefore dispenses itself to man in such a way that it hides its essence behind the thick veil of rationally understood ground
and of causes in its various forms. Heidegger pointed out early
in the piece that at this level where ground reigns supreme (the
realm of Leibniz's principle as a principle of being) there is no
insight into the nature of ground. The only insight possible
then would have to be in the realm of Being where the leap
landed us. In this realm we find that Being and ground are the
same (logos) but in a mutual belonging which historically appears as a difference.
While Being " is " dispensationally identical with ground, in
46 SG. p. 179 " legein und der logos sind das Vorliegenlassen des Answese,nden
in seinem Anwesen. Logos ... meint zugleich das Gesagte, ... , d.h. Vorliegende
als solches, <las Anwesende in seinem Anwesen. 1Vir sagen: <las Seiende in seinem
Sein. Logos nennt das Sein. Aber logos ist als <las Vorliegende, als die Vorlage
zugleich das, worauf anderes liegt und beruht. Wir sagen: der Boden, der Grund.
Logos nennt den Grund."
47 SG. p. 180. "Der logos nennt zumal in Einem Sein und Grund."
48 Again a constant theme of Heidegger and the topic of an essay: "Aletheia ",
VA, Teil III, pp. 58-78.
Mi SG. p. 188.

114

KEES DE KUYER,

c.ss.n.

itself it is groundless. After all the second part of Leibniz's
principle of Being says: 'Being: abyss.' But why is Being
groundless? Because every form of grounding, even selfgrounding would reduce Being to some kind of being. 50
Surely we go against aU logic here. How can one possibly
reconcile 'Being and ground: the same' and 'Being: abyss.'?
Quite simply Heidegger tells us that logical thinking has been
left behind. With the leap comes a new way of thinking-a
thinking in which for the first time the to-be-thought is Being
as such. 51
Is there any more that can be said? What is the thought of
this new thinking? Heidegger takes up a saying of Heraclitus
and compares Being to child's play:
The child plays because he plays. The ' because ' sinks into play;
there is no ' why ' ... There is only the game itself ... but this
"only" is everything, the One, the Unique. 52

Hence the conclusion of the later Heidegger to the problem of
ground reads as follows:
Being as grounding has no ground; it plays as non-ground of every
game which dispenses Being and ground to us. 53

* * *
One is tempted to say that the conclusion of both V om Wesen
des Grundes and Der Satz vom Grund, though almost thirty
years apart in publication, is identical-a groundless ground.
Yet there is an enormous difference. In the first instance this
groundless ground is affirmed of a being, Dasein, whereas in
the second instance it is affirmed of Being as such.
It was inevitable that Dasein could not be the ultimate solution. It is Dasein which in its threefold grounding lets Being
50 SG. p.

185.

51 Ibid.
52 SG. p. 188. "Es spielet, weil es spielet. Das "Weil " versinkt im Spiel. Das
Spiel ist ohne "Warum " .... Es bleibt nur Spiel ... Aber dieses "nur" ist
Alles, das Eine, Einzige."
53 SG. p. 188. "Sein als griindendes hat keinen Grund, spielt a1s der Ab-Grund
jenes Spiel, das als Geschick uns Sein und Grund zuspielt."

THE PROBLEM OF GROUND IN HEIDEGGER

115

and beings reign. Yet the very structure of Dasein's transcendence imposes limits on what can actually reign as Being, as
world. Hence there would seem to be something which restricts Dasein as " freedom for ground." Precisely because
Dasein is finite it encounters reality with which it has to reckon.
One could say Dasein does not create in its transcendence, it
interprets, it gives meaning. All its grounding is, therefore,
subject to what it encounters, despite the fact that it projects
its own' for the sake of '. 54 There is something more primordial
54 WG.

p. 107.

than the transcendence or freedom of Dasein, even though it
only appears in transcendence. Or, looking at it from a slightly
different angle, Dasein is unique in its relationship to Being,
yet is not the source and origin of its own Being.
It is not surprising therefore that in his later years Heidegger regards Being as such as ultimate foundation: Being and
ground: the Same. We have seen that this is not regarded as
a uniformity. If you like, the terms Being and ground may not
be interchanged at will. Rather, as abyss Being dispenses itself
as ground. A note of warning should be sounded here. A mere
reading of Der Satz vom Grund could lead to an hypostasized
notion of Being. That is definitely not Heidegger's intention.
Being is always the Being of beings. More precisely, as spelled
out in the essay Das Ding, it is the Event of Appropriation
(Ereignis) in which earth and heaven, mortals and gods mutually define each other (das Geviert) .55 The grounding here is
due to Being itself as Event of Appropriation. The " why " or
"wherefore" receives no answer, however, it is the secret of
Being. It plays because it plays.
The last lecture of Der Satz vom Grund finishes with a sentence which is practically an invitation:
The question remains, whether and how, hearing the moves of this
g!lme, we play along and enter into that game. 56
55 VA. Tei! II,

pp. 37-55.
188. "Die Frage bleibt, ob wir und wie wir, die Satze dieses Spiels
horend, mitspielen und uns in das Spiel fiigen."
56 SG. p.

116

KEES DE KUYEl't, C.SS.R.

I admit a great reluctance to play along. It seems tantamount
to rejecting the drive to intelligibility which accompanies all
my searchings. I am reluctant to throw that overboard. In
that case I am forced to review once again why Heidegger
arrives at his conclusion.
There is a great appeal in Heidegger's invitation to break
out of representational and rationalistic thinking. He equates
this with thinking Being as such (not as a being) which leaves
behind the rules of logic. Yet to what extent is this possible
without denying the quest for intelligibility? Can one really
speak about Being as such without speaking of the Being of
beings? Obviously not, as Heidegger himself admits. Yet he
seems to want to give certain characteristics to Being which are
not shared with any being. While every being is grounded,
Being is groundless. And if Being always dispenses itself as
ground in some way or other (Being and ground: the Same)
then one gets the impression that this groundlessness of Being
functions in some way as basis or ground for the various dispensations.
In the earlier works Being can only appear within the possibilities of Dasein for Heidegger. That state of affairs is naturally totally acceptable. There is no other way. When in the
later works the initiative is granted to Being rather than to
Dasein, it is still true that it can only appear within Dasein's
possibilities. Is it perhaps this relationship of Dasein to Being
which casts a special light on Heidegger's position?
Dasein not being the creator of Being, but only its interpreter, lets Being emerge in a certain way. In that sense the notion
of aletheia as explained by Heidegger seems to fit very well.
Dasein never grasps reality totally. Yet that does not mean
that reality itself "is" in that way. True, one can say that a
being does not exhaust Being and hence there is a certain concealment. But the later Heidegger claims to have reached the
realm of Being as such and this is explained in terms of aletheia:
groundless ground in which Being appears as ground (Being
and ground: the same) and hides its groundlessness (Being:

THE PROBLEM OF GROUND IN HEIDEGGER

117

abyss). Is this not a transference of the limitations of Dasein
upon Being? And how can this be valid when it is acknowledged that Dasein is not self-explanatory and must have its
origin elsewhere?
Put differently, can Dasein in its finitude ever understand
Being as infinite? Heidegger does not speak this language. It
reminds him of the onto-theological thinking of metaphysics
in which he sees Being as ultimately identified with the highest
being.57 Yet unless one arrives at Being as plenitude, as ground
in its own right, we are left with groundlessness. But Dasein
could not project such a notion of Being. Indeed, but in the
later Heidegger Dasein is asked to be attentive to Being so
that beings may become manifest. We are invited to think
Being itself. Why should this be limited to beings as they
appear to us? Why should we stop here? Why not follow the
drive of our intellect and ask why things are as they are till
we reach the ultimate ground of all that is? I might never know
the full implications of Being as plenitude, understand its nature fully, but I can conclude that it is the ground of all that is.
A ground which is not subject to further groundlessness, but
grounded in itself i.e. so fundamental that it itself suffices, needing no further foundation.
As J. Buchanan pointed out so well:
An ontological analysis presumes-indeed must so presume-that
Being itself is grounded and that moreover there is a belonging together established between Being and the entity under analysis. 58

If Dasein as groundless ground did not suffice, then Being as
abyss will not suffice either. It merely reiterates the same problem and gives no answer to the problem of ground.
KEEs DE KuYER, C.Ss.R.
Yarra Theological Union
Box Ilill, Australia.
s1 ID. pp. Sl-67.
58 James Buchanan, "Heidegger and the Problem of Ground", Philosophy Today,
Vol, XVII, l973, p. !!44.

THE MORAL LAW AND THEISM

A Review Discussion*

I

N THE THEORY OF MORALITY Professor Donagan
rejects Professor Anscombe's contention that law in
morals requires a divine lawgiver. 1 His chosen aim and
method both require him to rebut this contention in his first
pages at the same time as he tries to ground " common " morality upon the Judaeo-Christian tradition. I do not think he
succeeds, as I hope to show by detailed consideration of his
argument.
He begins by quoting the Stoic theory in words of Diogenes
Laertius. To be morally good is
to be in accordance with Nature, that is, in accordance with the
nature of man and that of the universe, doing nothing which the
universal law is wont to forbid, that is, the right reason which
pervades all things and is coextensive with Zeus.
He adds a piece of Cicero:
(Before there was a written law) reason (ratio) existed, having
sprung from the nature of things, impelling (men) to right action,
and summoning (them) from wrongdoing. This reason began to
be law, not when it was written down, but when it originated; and
it originated simultaneously with the divine mind. Hence the true
and supreme law having to do with commanding and forbidding
is the right reason of Jupiter the highest (De legibus, II 4, 10,
quoted as in Donagan op. cit. p. fl).
In Stoic theory, Donagan then says, "the relation between
Nature and reason is hard to disentangle ... Nature, as a principle distinct from reason, became 1ess and less important to
*Alan Donagan: The Theory of Moral,ity (Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1977).
1

G. E. M. Anscombe, "Modern Moral Theology", Philoaophy XXXlll, UMS.

118

THE MORAL LAW AND THEISM

119

the later Stoics . . . What mattered was that the ' true and
supreme law' was held to be both willed by the highest of the
gods and enjoined by reason."
Now this development, insofar as Donagan appears to
endorse it by saying " Nature is extraordinarily elusive," is disquieting. For in the Cicero passage reason appears to be justified through "having sprung from the nature of things," a
predicate which seems at the least to be closely related to his
other predication, that reason "originated simultaneously with
the divine mind." As Donagan says, " the divine law expresses
the divine mind, which is necessarily rational."
But having all but jettisoned Nature, Donagan now, and
with greater ease than would otherwise have been possible,
relegates the divine mind to second place, in preparation for
jettisoning it too in favor of reason. For he says of the two
characteristics of the supreme law, viz. being willed by the
highest of the gods and being enjoined by reason, that "although inseparable, they are distinct; and from the point of
view of moral philosophy, the one that is fundamental is rationality" (p. Q) • This, it seems to me, is Donagan's crucial
move, whereby he turns on to a Kantian or rationalist path,
parting company with Professor Anscombe and, I shall argue,
with much that he assumes supports him in his venture.
We may note first that Donagan speaks of the law as enjoined by reason, thus making reason a dual authority with the
highest of the gods, before going on to state that this characteristic, of having the authority of reason, is the one fundamental" from the point of view of moral philosophy." Clearly
he means that reason is the authority for the law, for if this
were not so why should it be of note that it is enjoined by
reason? The true and supreme law is enjoined also by most
people's grandmothers, but the testimony of these ladies is
sadly despised.
He makes reason, then, into a supreme authority. But in
Cicero's text reason is not an authority for the law. It simply
is the law, and the authority for reason as law is its originating

120

with the divine mind. It seems to me that Cicero is more sound
here. For what is practical reason apart from the principles
and laws which express it and constitute it in action, which
actualize the capacity which it is? For Donagan can't here
mean by reason exclusively the capacity to reason, since a capacity can't enjoin anything.
One may note that Donagan says the divine law " expresses
the divine mind," not that it is merely enjoined by it. For
that would make it less clear that this law is "necessarily
rational," like that mind. But the " true and supreme law"
of human life is no less necessarily rational, while to say that
this law is "enjoined by" reason, rather than that it "expresses" it, suggests that this law is then guaranteed by something else, viz. reason.
But if the law is reason, then such law, such reason, either
justifies itself or requires further justification. Cicero justifies
reason as springing from "the nature of things " or, apparently
equivalently, if we deny that it could have two origins or
springs, " originating simultaneously with the divine mind."
Cicero, that is, did not think reason justified itself. But Donagan thinks "rationality" is fundamental.
But what does he mean by saying it is fundamental from
a certain point of view? If we are dealing with rationality in re,
as the context suggests, and not just with a leading concept
or explanatory model, then, it seems to me, such a real element
is either fundamental or it is not (to the moral law). It can't
merely be fundamental " from the point of view of moral
philosophy."
That is, either rationality is self-guaranteeing or it requires
to be shown that it needs a certain relation to the divine mind
if it is to serve as a guide to truth. Otherwise Donagan seems
to be saying that even if rationality is not self-justifying it is
in any event our ultimate criterion in moral philosophy.
In fact Cicero did not say, as Donagan seems to suggest,
that the divine mind is necessarily rational, but that reason is
divine, and therefore law. This is the crux. If he, and the

THE MORAL LAW AND THEISM

Judaeo-Christian tradition, were saying the former, then Donagan might plausibly suggest that we can just lop off the religious bits of the tradition for secular purposes. He and they
would be committed to the same ultimate reliance on human
reason, or on the law as we have it. But since they are saying
the latter he cannot do this.
Furthermore, moral philosophy would be a pretty poor affair
if it were merely a matter of working out what it is to act
rationally, while imposing what amounts to a taboo on the
question why one should be rational. If, for example, reason
were a product of blind forces the question of whether it is
good to follow rationality arises, even although it be granted
that such a question only arises itself within that rationality.
Reason might be the ladder one kicks away. (In Graham
Greene's Brighton Rock Ida Arnold knows right from wrong,
but is ignorant of "good and evil", of what is at stake. Her
ignorance of the divine sanction condemns her to pharisaism.
She pursues the ethical so long as it is "fun".)
Cicero, in saying that reason is divine, is in line here with
a part of the tradition Donagan is expounding but which he
seems to ignore. It is a theory about the nature of moral agents
which he does not mention in his section " Human Beings and
their World" (pp. 32-36) where he simply says that one of
the two fundamental presuppositions of the Hebrew-Christian
tradition is that " Man, considered as a moral agent, is a rational animal."
Here he stresses, rightly, man's essential animality, according
to this tradition. But its more central claim, as Hebrew-Christian, is that man is made in the "image and likeness" of God
(Genesis 1, v.Q6). This likeness, it being agreed that God is
not animal or embodied like us, is hence spoken of as " in the
soul", a phrase understood as including reference to rationality. The reason generally given why this soul, and hence
reason or mind, is like to God is that, like Hirn, it is a spirit,
though with a difference (The English Jerusalem Bible has a
note that"' likeness', by excluding the idea of equality, weakens the force of ' image ' " . . .) .

122

STEPHEN THERON

By a spirit, I would wish to argue, is understood a being
open to reality as it is, not shut up in a limited cognitional
environment, but having a capacity for truth. This is essentially Cicero's claim. How it sees things, if functioning as properly as its nature enables it, is how things are. This is the
foundation of the possibility of philosophy and science as understood by Western man and perhaps by any man. But this
only comes about if reason is spiritual and thus like to God,
supreme Spirit, so that it can truly be measured by things (see
them as they are) as God measures them (makes them as they
are) . Here the effect is like its cause but differs infinitely from
it just as effect, which God in no sense is. Hence there is no
implication that God is just one of a class of spirits, any more
than divine existence can be placed beside created existence.
But though all spirits (save God) are caused, this is not part
of the definition of spirit, and so their divine cause can be
called a spirit too. 2
This is the positive tradition of spirit of which immateriality
is merely the negative condition. Aristotle argued that if there
were a material organ of cognition it would " get in the way "
of this openness to union with its object in knowledge which
is mind, spirit. And so there comes about the opposition of
spirit and matter, which however is softened if we note that in
the same system matter is only differentiated from spirit by its
being potential to it.
There is a real problem concerning how someone who rejects
accounts like this can claim authority for reason in, say, ethics.
Dogs, after all, are as confident in their barking. I cannot tell
whether Professor Donagan would reject an account of the
spirituality of the reason, though parts of his last chapter suggest a different account, whereby human reason becomes an
end for itself simply because it is not by nature held to any
other end. But I can see nothing there implying reason's spirituality or openness to knowledge.
2

Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theol., I q.44, a.1, ad lum.

THE MORAL LAW AND THEISM

123

My point here is that the ignoring of spirituality in the sense
described is not methodologically justified, since in the tradition Donagan claims to expound it is not taught that law expresses the divine mind which is necessarily rational and therefore law. If reason were not in the divine image its practical
operations might still be in legislative form, but these dicta
would no more be law than are New Year resolutions.
Perhaps Donagan omitted the spirituality of reason from
his list of presuppositions, its being in the divine image and
likeness, because he did not feel it would command such wide
assent as the other two presuppositions. Yet recognition of
it would have prevented enlistment of this tradition in support
of a non-theistic neo-Kantian theory of moral law such as he
offers. Even if he thinks Miss Anscombe is wrong (sc. about
Kant and about the " religious" nature of moral law) he
should, I think, have seen that she rather than Kant continues
the tradition he cites. Here I am arguing both that this is so
and that the tradition on this point is right.
The spirituality of reason is argued for in a compelling way
by Professor Josef Pieper. 8 Pieper first discovers a contrast
between the " world of work", of means and ends, and the
" beyond " this to which philosophizing, theoria, carries us. He
then asks " what sort of a world lies beyond" and how the two
" worlds " are related. He says that, however they are related,
"both belong to the world of man" (p.83). Next then," What
kind of a world is man's world? "
Pieper's questioning revolves round the sense of "in" in
which one might say that all that lives, all that exists even,
is "in" the world. He introduces a perhaps unusual concept
of a relationship, arguing that it is " a link established from
inside to something external; relations can only exist where
there is an ' inside ', where there is that dynamic centre from
which all activity springs," for " one cannot . . . speak of the
s Josef Pieper: Leisure the Basis of Culture, Chap. 2, " The Philosophical Act "
(New York: Mentor-Omega Books, 19.52); German original: Was heisst Philosophieren.

STEPHEN THERON

' inside ' of a stone with reference to the disposal of its parts."
" The ' inside ' is the power by virtue of which a relation to
something external is possible; inwardness is the capacity to
establish relations and to communicate." He then relates this
concept to that of a world: " world means the same thing as a
range of relations. Only a being capable of having relations
... -and this in its turn means a living being-has a world."
Thus, he wants to say, although a stone is in the world, it
does not have a world in the sense we meant when asking about
"man's world", or even a plant's world.
For, argues Pieper, "there is a fundamental difference between relations thus conceived and the relation which results
from the proximity of stones in a heap by the roadside . . .
That form of relation is ... different from the relation between
a plant and the nutriment it draws through its roots out of the
ground, for then the relation is not solely spatial ... it is a real
relation ... in the active reflexive sense of relating itself: the
nourishment in the ground and in the air is absorbed and assimilated into the sphere of the plant's life by the dynamic
centre of the plant, and its power of establishing relations. All
that constitutes the plant's range of relations makes its world.
A plant, in fact, has a world, and a stone has not" (p.84) .
We might assume that the idea of a particular creature's
world was the same idea as that of an environment, in which
the creature is confined but to which it is perfectly adapted.
To have a world seems to exclude establishing relations with
the world. But it is not impossible for a being to have a world
coextensive with the world.
Pieper points out that some creatures have a wider power of
establishing relations in this sense than others. Thus a plant
" does not extend its spatial world beyond the sphere of touch
... The animal's capacity to establish relations is greater in
so far as it is capable of being sen-sibly and sensually aware; "
in fact, "'to be aware' of a thing is an entirely new mode of
relating itself to a thing, unknown in the plant world, a new
manner of relating itself to the 'outside'." Nevertheless, ani-

THE MORAL LAW AND THEISM

125

mals are as securely imprisoned inside their respective environments as are plants. They all live in a " selected, partial world "
or" environment', which may well be more limited even than
the animal's" surroundings"; thus jackdaws are unable to perceive motionless grasshoppers.
Now there is no denying that man too has his environment,
that sphere in the world which is specifically human. But is
he imprisoned within it? Is he even perfectly adapted to it?
This, in connection with Pieper's question "What is philosophizing?", is where we see the point of Plato's example of the
Thracian maid laughing at Thales when he fell down a well
(Theatetus 147). Thales was at that moment star-gazing and
not adapted to his environment. But by the same token he was
not imprisoned within it. For he was a philosopher. But to
be a philosopher or scientist is also proper to man.
H we ask what is the field or world which corresponds to
" the form of knowing peculiar to man " Pieper answers that
" the capacity for spiritual knowledge has always been understood to mean the power of establishing relations with the
whole of reality, with all things existing." This is what is meant
by the proposition omne ens est verum. " ' A thing is true '
means: it is known and knowable, known to the absolute spirit,
knowable to the spirit that is not absolute."
Is then man's world the whole of reality coordinated to intellect? Only in so far as he is spirit, says Pieper. "But not
only is he not pure spirit, he is finite spirit; ... the essence of
things and their totality is not given to him fully ... but ' in
hope ' .... The really human thing is ... to preserve our apprehension of the universality of things in the midst of the
habits of daily life."
Nature seems in a sense to be not so much disposable as the
central pin in the Stoic conception as represented by Donagan's
two citations.
To have sprung from the nature of things or to be in accordance with Nature might indeed seem to apply as much again
to the barking of dogs as to reason. But then these predicates

126

STEPHEN THERON

would not signify, for what is meant rather seems to be nature
considered as a unified whole and even as the unifying principle
of that whole. In this way right reason " pervades all things
and is coextensive with Zeus." In calling this reason merely
right, and not specifying it as divine, Diogenes Laertius implicitly claims reflected divinity for human reason, which is as
such, when it is right, " in accordance with Nature," " Nature "
signifying how things are, a condition determined in turn by
the divine reason.
So if Nature is dropped from this triad we are left with the
"true and supreme law," Donagan's "Stoic ideal," being both
willed by the gods and enjoined by reason, these predicates no
longer in any kind of ordered relation, but clashing like alternative authorities, so that he goes on to say that "the content
of the divine law can be ascertained by natural reason, and its
force appreciated, without any direct reference to the gods at
all " (p. 3, my underlining) .
He seems to miss Cicero's point from the outset, viz. that
reason is law because its source is divine; that is, the divine
law or mind and not de facto rationality is " fundamental".
Donagan says that the contrary of this, for which he argues,
is less evident to " strict monotheists ... who take all divine
commands, whether or not they form part of the supreme divine law, to express divine providence and wisdom."
This is very odd, perhaps confused. There seems no call to
introduce here the distinction between what Aquinas called
lex aeterna (Donagan's "the supreme divine law") and what
he called lex divina (including "divine commands" such as the
Old Testament ceremonial precepts, not part of lex aeterna).
If reason is justified by originating from the divine mind, i.e.
if lex naturalis participates in lex aeterna, then lex divina
scarcely need come into it. In any case the suggestion that " a
god's arbitrary pleasure " need not "express divine providence
and wisdom " is quite unacceptable.
Of course that rationality rather than divine law is fundamental is less evident to theists. It is not evident at all, since

THE MORAL

127

their position is that it is only in virtue of rationalitis imaging divine reason that it can be a foundation at all. Donagan is
not in a position to claim that divine law is rational if he means
by that that it is according to human reason and not just that
law and intellect coincide in God. For he can't know the former,
though the latter may appear deducible from the concept of
God. A theist however can claim to know, by argument, that
human reason mirrors divine, rather than vice versa. Donagan
does not seem to be taking the idea of God functionally at all
in his argument. But then he cannot claim it is a divine law
of which reason ascertains the content and appreciates the force.
Thus it is certainly true, as we saw, that it does not follow
from the " genuine divine law that all men should obey the
gods" that "everything the gods command is divine law" if
by "divine law" is meant eternal and natural law or the law
of right reason. But this proves nothing, for Donagan does not
make human reason self-guaranteeing or even show that it was
so for the Stoics.
We may further agree with his principle that " A divine
command expresses divine law (.<tc. lex aeterna) if and only if
it expresses divine reason" (my parenthesis). We may also
agree that " human reason is in principle adequate for the direction of human life " (p. 8) , depending on how we interpret
this unclear sentence.
We may also agree that "so far as it has to do with the
regulation of human life, the content of the divine law can be
ascertained by human reason," for Cicero's argument was precisely that what reason ascertains is the divine law. But Donaagan adds as part of his conclusion that the " force " of this
divine law can be "appreciated, without any direct reference
to the gods at all."
One is puzzled as to what an indirect reference to the gods
would be. In any case Donagan needed his first premise:.__"A
divine command expresses divine law if and only if it expresses
divip.e
"-irt order to conclude that what it is that human reason can ascertain the content of is the divine law, but

li8

STEPHEN THERON

if it ascertains it as such then here we have a direct reference
to the gods. If on the other hand the content is ascertained
without knowledge as to what it is the content of, then what
is being said apart from that reason ascertains what it ascertains, which is to say nothing and leaves us simply with the
assertion of the second premise (on p. 8) , that reason is adequate for the regulation of human life?
In this case the first premise too must be taken as preliminary to that and really meaning that a divine command expresses divine law if and only if it expresses reason, i.e. if it
tallies with the conceptions of that reason of ours which is
adequate for living. For otherwise it would be, we saw, merely
a theological premise about the priority of intellect to will in
God with no connection with Donagan's second premise, or at
best yielding the conclusion that the content of the divine law
is ascertained as divine and hence as having the force of "divine " by natural human reason, and this is the conclusion
Donagan does not want. He wants to say it has the force of
divine law without reference being made to its divinity.
It is in any case hard to see that Donagan's conclusion ("the
content of the divine law can be ascertained by natural human
reason, and its force appreciated ") " follows " from his premises, since they have no middle term in common unless by
divine reason he means the same as human reason, but then,
we have seen, he has no warrant for asserting that reason can
ascertain the content of the divine law. But then how can one
claim that what reason ascertains can be appreciated as having
the force of divine law ("and its force appreciated")? How,
from what Donagan tells us, can one claim that it has the force
of law at all?
So Donagan has not shown, as he claims, that " it was a
mistake for Professor Anscombe to contend that morality can
intelligibly be treated as a system of law only by pre-supposing
a divine lawgiver."
STEPHEN THERON
Universi,ty of the Witwater8rand
Johannesburg, South Africa.

BOOK REVIEWS
The Trinity and the Kingdom. By JURGEN MoLTMANN.
Harper & Row, 1981. pp. xvi + 256. $15.00.

San Francisco:

Jlirgen Moltmann's The Trinity and the Kingdom is a provocative,
challenging and highly idiosyncratic piece of work. The book is provocative
and challenging, because it boldly sets out to abolish some of the most
fundamental assumptions of Christian doctrine as we have known it historically in the West. Such elemental topics as monotheism, creation ex
nihilo, and the divine lordship over history are radically transformed as
the author fixes single-mindedly and intently on the one theological idea
which apparently matters to him more than anything else: the suffering
of God. God's suffering becomes the master concept before which everything else must yield; and the excessive fashion in which this project is
carried out leads to some extraordinary results. The real strengths of this
book, in my opinion, center around themes (such as Christ's resurrection)
we have heard Moltmann sound before. The book's new material, which
might be described as a systematic enlargement upon the deviations of
Moltmann's theology, unfortunately leaves much to be desired, although
it does raise some extremely important questions.
I will summarize my reservations about this work under three heads:
method, tritheism and panentheism.
Method. It is dismaying to watch Moltmann pursue his theology without any serious methodological reflection. He seems to proceed by sheer
intuition, and in this book more than ever before the result is a kind of
methodological mishmash. When Moltmann wants to appeal to experience
to validate a theological claim, he appeals to experience. When he wants
to invoke the testimony of Scripture, he does so. When a general philosophical definition makes sense to him, he brings it in. When he needs a
more specifically theological argument, he does not hesitate to construct
one. In short, the procedure is rather arbitrary.
Let me give some examples. The problem with Schleiermacher, Moltmann argues at one point, is not that he appealed to religious experience
to validate his theological claims, but that he didn't do it well enough.
Moltmann, too, wants to appeal to religious experience, not only claiming
that the Trinity is "revealed " to faith by the experience of suffering, but
but also that from suffering faith can even know how we ourselves are " experienced " by God (pp. 8-5) . Moltmann simply states these bewildering
ideas and moves on. Unlike Schleiermacher he has no carefully considered

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BOOK REVIEWS

method which might perhaps provide them with some backing. Such
claims are apparently meant to be self-evident.
Or again, take Moltmann's use of Hegel's definition of what constitutes
a person. Moltmann is particularly impressed by Hegel's idea that to be
a person means to give oneself entirely to a counterpart different from
oneself and then to find oneself through participating in the life of this
other. (Never mind that elsewhere Moltmann sharply criticizes the logically connected Hegelian idea of 'the self-identical subject " as an instance of bourgeois individualism.) The idea of coming to oneself by
expressing and expending oneself in others is continually commended as
the real meaning of human love and subjectivity (pp. 5, 9, 57 and 174).
Now the remarkable thing about this idea is the way Moltmann goes on
to use it theologically. Applying it directly to the Trinity, he ends up
making the doctrine of the perichoresis sound merely like the instance of
a class (pp. 173ff.) . Thus is one of the most mysterious of all Christian
doctrines levelled down to a more or less intelligible psychological experience. Such unfortunate movements from the general to the particular are
commonplace in Moltmann's book, but their rationale is never discussed.
More positively, on the other hand, one is almost as likely to find the
argument moving in the opposite direction, from the particular to the
general, if that should happen to suit the author's purpose. Thus, at least
from time to time, we find Moltmann making good on his assertion that
" ultimately we must always see to it that the liberating force of the
biblical witness is preserved and not obscured " (p. 65) . He does not,
for example, allow any general philosophical or psychological considerations
to obscure the biblical witness to Christ's resurrection and its consequences.
On this point Moltmann remains uncompromising: "Anyone who sees the
risen Christ is looking in advance into the coming glory of God. He perceives something which is not otherwise perceptible, but which will one
day be perceived by everyone " (p. 85) . " The Old Testament idea of the
ressurrection of the dead already resists every form of spiritualizing interpretation " (p. 128) . Here it is the particularity of the biblical witness,
however difficult or contrary to our experience it may be, which Moltmann
takes as the basis for constructing his general understanding of Christian
hope.
How rarely Moltmann still continues to think in this way may be gauged
from the second chapter of his book, which represents, if anything does,
the methodological core of his discussion. Here we are given a theological
tour of those writers, ranging from the relatively famous to the wholly
obscure, whom Moltmann regards as his true predecessors in discovering
the significance of the suffering God. The section is mainly descriptive,
and, while the tone seems largely favorable, it is difficult along the way tQ
out just how Moltma.nn wantS to evaluate the concepts he finds in

:. ..

BOOK REVIEWS

131

these writers. This difficulty is no small matter, considering the fact that
many of them, though philosophically familiar, are quite bizarre (e.g.,
creation as. God's " self-humiliation," incarnation as necessary to God's
being, God as the object of redemption and compassion, etc.}. Moltmann's
fateful attraction to such ideas soon emerges, however; for while he first
introduces them descriptively, before long he is using them normatively.
One notes that this transition to norm from description receives no conceptual justification-a detail which symptomizes the more general problem that, methodologically, Moltmann's discussion almost invariably ends
where it ought to begin.
Tritheism. " As the history of theology shows," we are told, " there
has never been a Christian tritheist" {p. 243). If this is true then one
can only conclude that Moltmann is vying to be the first. Despite the
evident scorn with which he anticipates such a charge, The Trinity and
the Kingdom is about the closest thing to tritheism that any of us are ever
likely to see. That Moltmann has finally succumbed to the tritheistic
temptation long latent in his theology can be seen not only from his constructive proposals, but also from the drift of his polemics.
The polemics are a rec:l key; for when it comes to the doctrine of the
Trinity, where one stands-the extremity of one's position-can often be
ascertained not only by what one criticizes, but also by what one fails to
criticize. Moltmann adamantly and explicitly rejects in principle every
important trinitarian position found in the history of Western theology.
One finds nothing comparable-indeed one finds nothing at all-from him
about any potential dangers in the alternative positions of the theological
East. Is it not already rather revealing that, according to Moltmann, the
danger of tritheism has really never existed (cf. p. 144}?
It is not necessary, however, to rest our case on general suspicions.
Whereas a more careful doctrine of the Trinity would attempt to do equal
justice to both God's oneness and God's threeness, Moltmann consistently
pits them against one another, as if the doctrine of the Trinity were intrinsically opposed to monotheism. Thus he warns us against the " danger
of monotheism " (p. 164) , portraying a monotheistic understanding of
God as the antithesis of any trinitarian one (cf. pp. 18, 69 & 74), and not
failing to throw in the aside that monotheism is " always patriarchal "
(p. 165) . The Thomistic idea of God as " supreme substance " is dismissed
as cosmologically outmoded (p. rn) , while the more Augustinian idea of
God as a single and singular subject is linked up with Cartesian and then
with German idealism so that the idea of an " absolute subject " can be
discarded as nothing more than the " archetype " of bourgeois existence
(p. 14f.) . Barth's doctrine of the Trinity is described as " a late triumph
for the Sabellian modalism which the early church condemned" (p. 139),
and Rahner's reinterpretation of the Trinity is said to end "in the mystic

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BOOK REVIEWS

solitariness of God" (p. 148). The point here is not only that such judgments as these amount to little more than dubious caricatures. The point
is that this is exactly how we would expect the world of Western theology
to look to a fairly extreme, if sophisticated, tritheist.
One's misgivings along these lines are only confirmed when one turns to
what Moltmann calls " the trinitarian concept of person " (p. 18) . It
seems that such a " person " must be an independent subject capable of
separate actions and relationships. Thus Moltmann is prepared seriously
to ask of Rahner why it should be open to misunderstanding and wrong
to think of the trinitarian persons " as three different ' personalities with
different centers of activity' " (p. 145). For, as Moltmann would have it,
the Son (like the Father) " is a subject of his own" (p. 86); and the
Spirit, too, must be regarded as an " independent subject of his own acts "
(p. ms) . On this view one must never speak of " one, identical divine
subject " (p. 18) , but instead of " the co-workings of the three divine
subjects: Father, Son and creative Spirit" (p. 94). Nor is one permitted
to " degrade " the trinitarian persons into mere " modes of being " (p.
139), but must rather regard them as " individual, unique, non-interchangeable subjects . . . with consciousness and will " (p. 171) . They can be
said to share a " common divine substance " (ibid.) , but cannot in any
sense be said to constitute a single, self-identical subject. One can only
wonder why Moltmann, having gone this far, should still want to eschew
the proper label for his position.
The clincher that we are dealing with an actual case of tritheism may
be found in Moltmann's conception of the divine unity. God's oneness,
as presented by Moltmann, is strictly a function of God's threeness:
" ... we must dispense with both the concept of the one substance and
the concept of the identical subject. All that remains is: the unitedness,
the at-oneness of the three Persons with one another ... " (p. 150) . In
other words, God's unity is no longer numerical, and all that Moltmann
has left is a harmonious set of relationships among the three trinitarian
persons. Their unity, he says, " lies in their fellowship, not in the identity
of a single subject " (p. 95, italics original) . Or to put it another way,
their unity is merely historical. Together they constitute a common history
in which they " combine or work together according to a single pattern "
(p. 94). Or finally, what amounts to the same thing, the divine unity is
found in nothing but the periclwresis of the three persons. As Moltmann
says in a tritheistic turn of thought which as such leaves nothing to be
desired, if the unity of the three persons is seen as anything other than
perichoretic, " then Arianism and Sabellianism remain inescapable threats
to Christian theology" (p. 150).
Two observations may be offered in conclusion. First, Moltmann
claims that his concept of trinitarian unity is " a concept •.. capable of

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183

being thought " (p. 19). That is, he has devised a doctrine of the Trinity
which, as he says, is free from " impenetrable obscurity or insoluble riddle "
(p. 161). The only remaining question is whether this intelligible and
extremely rationalized version of the doctrine can any longer be said to
correspond to the church's historic affirmation that God is not only three,
but also one. In other words, hasn't Moltmann effectively and forcibly
eliminated the true mystery of the Trinity?
A second and closely related question concerns the sense in which it
still remains meaningful for Moltmann to speak of" God" in the singular.
Having rejected the ideas of " one substance in three persons " of " one
subject in three modes of being," Moltmann's alternative proposal is apparently " three persons in one process." In that case it would seem to
follow that " God " in the singular could only properly be used to designate the process, not a person-at least not an active, self-identical person
whose being as such somehow encompasses the three members of the
Trinity. Yet, as if by some sort of atavistic hangover from rejected modes
of thought, Moltmann persists in using the term " God " in precisely such
an active, self-identical sense. What are we to make for example of a
statement like this: " The Son is not identical with God's self " (p. 86) .
What, for Moltmann, could possibly be identical with " God's self" ? If
" God " is properly a process not a person, can God even be said to have
a " self " ? Or what about this: " In the incarnation of the Son the triune
God communicates himself wholly and utterly " (p. ml) . What can the
word " God " possibly mean in this sentence? How can a process engage
in an activity like communication, and how can it have a " self " to communicate? Won't l\foltmann for the sake of consistency simply have to
stop using the term " God " in the active voice, or else rethink his hasty
dismissal of the single, self-identical divine subject?
Panentheism. Whereas "pantheism " usually designates the idea that
God's being and the world's being completely coincide, the less familiar
" panentheism " implies a more differentiated position whereby the world's
being is somehow included in the being of God, but God's being is not
exhausted by that of the world. The great problem with panentheism,
from the standpoint of Christian theology, has always been either that it
seems to make God ultimately responsible for whatever evil there is in
the world, or else that it seems to regard God and the world as somehow
inherently conditioned by one another, thereby obliterating the divine
freedom implicit in the biblical witness to God as_ Creator and Lord. In
working out his new position, which he openly acknowledges as " panentheism," l\foltmann unfortunately manages to escape neither of these
liabilities.
The question would be straightforward if one were justified in extracting
a coherent picture from the jumble of different things which Moltmann

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BOOK llEV.U:WS

happens to say in this regard. As it is, the picture is partially confused
and confusing with lots of loose ends and rough edges. Nonetheless, the
general drift of discussion is clear, despite the fact that Moltmann seems
from time to time to shrink back from the full consequences of the panentheism he claims to espouse.
Let us begin with Moltmann's discussion of God as Creator, turning
later to his treatment of God as Lord. The first thing to notice is Moltmann's peculiar sympathy for the traditionally suspect doctrine of emanation: "It is ... wrong to polemicize continually against the neo-Platonic
doctrine of emanation in considering the Christian doctrine of creation "
(p. ll3; cf. p. 54) . Although he never explains why not, Moltmann seems
to hold that there is nothing incompatible between the traditional idea of
creation ex nihilo and the emanationist idea of creation " in God." But
when the latter is supposed to mean that the " difference" (not distance)
between Creator and creature is somehow "bridged" by the Spirit (ibid.),
one cannot help suspecting that perhaps the Creator/creature difference is
going to get rather blurred.
The next thing to notice is a whole cluster of statements implying that
God is inherently conditioned by the world. In marked contrast to the
idea of creation ex nihilo, the idea of creation in deo seems to entail the
notion of a closed system in which God cannot create the world without
·at the same time severely diminishing his own being. The Creator, we
are told, "has to concede to his creation the space in which it can exist"
(p. 59), and this concession involves "a limitation on God's part, not a
de-limitation" (p. 110). Just how drastic this limitation really is becomes
clear with the statement that the act of creation is something God " suffers
and endures " (p. 59) , that it is " a self-humiliation on God's part, a
lowering of himself into his own impotence " (p. llO; cf. p. 27) . One can
only say that a greater distance than this from the grandeur of the Genesis
creation account would be hard to imagine. Moltmann's proposal of a
cosmically impoverished Creator is as unabashed as it is biblically remote.
By a related train of thought Moltmann maintains that God created
the world to satisfy an inner personal need. It must be noted, however,
that Moltmann's defense of this idea approaches incoherence by requiring
the conjunction of apparently incompatible ingredients. Thus, to speak
abstractly for a moment, we are asked to accept the implausible constructions that necessity is freedom, that deficiency is superabundance, and
that love motivated compulsively is love given freely. The ideas of necessity, deficiency and compulsion in God are clearly panentheistic. Yet
unless they can somehow be redefined to mean freedom, superabundance
and uncompelled love, Moltmann cannot possibly hope to keep his theology Christian. However, since the argument does not rise above the
level of merely asserting that the incompatible is coinpatible, one. is left

nooK REVIEWS

135

with the impression that Moltmann's " Christian panentheism " is a contradiction in terms.
Let us be more specific. Stripped of apologetic wording, the claim is
simply that the world was created to satisfy God's needs. The argument
goes something like this: God is love. God's love requires an object. Without an object to love, God would enter into self-contradiction and would
therefore cease to be God. God, who is not self-sufficient in love, therefore
creates the world out of "longing" for a personal counterpart (see pp.
53f., 57ff., 99, 105ff.; cf. pp. 33 & 45f.). The fatal move here, of course,
is the idea that God's love requires something external, that it is not
self-sufficient, and that it compels God to choose between creation and
self-contradiction. How, then, can we follow Moltmann when he says that
it is " axiomatic " for God to love the world freely (p. 107) , that this
love flows not from deficiency but from " superabundance " (pp. 23 & 45) ,
and that the creation arises from divine freedom, " not out of compulsion " ? (p. 58) . Having espoused the panentheistic notion that God
inherently needs the world, Moltmann's ambivalent attempt to Christianize
it is simply not convincing.
Finally, and most disappointing of all, one finds more than once a dark
suggestion in Moltmann that God as Creator is responsible for the existence of evil. For what, after all, does Moltmann really mean when he
describes creation as" the tragedy of divine love " ? (p. 59, italics dropped) .
Is the creation "tragic" for God, because (as suggested at one point)
God needs " to clear his conscience" of the guilt incurred by creating evil
and suffering along with the world? (cf. p. 40). Or is it" tragic," because
God is actually to be described as " a process which contains the whole
pain of the negative in itself" (p. 57) , so that " evil must already have
come into existence with God ... , not merely with creation, let alone with
the Fall ... "? (p. 34; cf. p. 51). Or is it perhaps " tragic," because God
cannot create the radically imperfect world without also becoming its
victim and thereby requiring " deliverance " ? (pp. 28, 56 & 60) . With
this book one never knows. Suffice it to say that there are enough such
ominous, if undeveloped, hints to give one serious pause.
Given this kind of outcome in his view of God as Creator, Moltmann's
treatment of God as Lord should come as no surprise. It must be remembered that, despite a certain amount of vague and elusive language, the
basic thrust of Moltmann's thought is toward an ontically closed system
in which two counterparts, God and the world, mutually limit, assist and
suffer with one another (cf. p. 56). However, this closed system is conceived of as dynamic rather than static. Though ontically closed it remains eschatologically open, God and the world being caught up in the
same complex process of suffering and deliverance. In this context two
points about.God as Lord are especially salient.

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:BOOK REVIEWS

First, as part of the one dynamic process, God's being and therefore
God's lordship are radically eschatologized. "Eschatology," we are told,
" ... is what takes place in God's essential nature" (p. 92). Even the
doctrine of the immanent Trinity is said to be " part of eschatology "
(p. 161). While Moltmann is never terribly clear about just what all
this might mean, his language obviously implies that God will not fully
be God until the eschaton. Until then it would seem that God's essential
being as God-God's lordship-is subjected to a two-fold historical process, consisting not only of suffering but also of self-realization. Even
though Moltmann wants to deny the latter (p. 166) , it is hard to see
why divine self-realization is not actually required by the logic of his
eschatological utterances. Moreover, God may perhaps be "the Lord of
the coming liberty of the universe" (p. 71), but it is difficult to see how
a God whose being is so completely implicated and submerged in the
eschatology of present earthly suffering can in the meanwhile be affirmed
as the active though hidden Lord of history.
God's lordship begins increasingly to look as if it has been evacuated of
content, for on these terms it does not seem possible unequivocally to
affirm God's present lordship over evil at all. Indeed, if God will not fully
be God and Lord until the eschaton, then the eschaton itself would seem
to be cast increasingly in doubt. Can we really believe that this essentially
impoverished, tragic and self-humiliated deity is finally going to sway the
future after all? From this angle even the great strength of Moltmann's
theology of hope begins to look more and more tenuous.
Secondly, in Moltmann's hands God's lordship is not only eschatologized;
it is also sentimentalized. Within the mutual conditioning of the closed,
panentheistic system, God and humanity begin increasingly to take on
each other's characteristics as the majesty of God's lordship is allowed to
dwindle down to the dimensions of mere friendship. God is our cosmic
friend, and in the name of freedom it is better to talk about friendship
than lordship, because, we are told, " freedom does not mean lordship; it
means friendship " (p. 56) . " Lordship " increasingly becomes a pejorative
term, with all sorts of unhappy associations like "servitude," "domination," even "possessive individualism" (pp. 56, 88 & 231). "Lordship"
is also defined in sharp contrast to God's "fatherhood," for in God's kingdom, we learn, God is " not the Lord " but " the merciful Father" whose
kingdom involves " no servants and no obedience," only " free children,"
and " free participation " in love (p. 70) .. Once again it is hard to avoid
the conclusion that God's lordship is being evacuated of real content, this
time at the eschatological goal rather than along the way. The problem
of course is not that Moltmann speaks of God's " fatherhood " and " friendship," but that he insists on doing so by giving God's lordship short shrift.
Yet the one set of concepts without the other can only lead to mere
seutimentality.

BOOK REVIEWS

137

When Moltmann's doctrine of the Trinity is mixed together with his
eschatology and with his panentheism, then one may note the further
result that it is not only God who inevitably dwindles, but humanity
which also inflates. The inflation of humanity may be seen as the peculiar
consequence of Moltmann's doctrine of the " open Trinity." It seems that
ultimately the unity enjoyed by the three trinitarian persons is not to be
restricted to them alone, for the unity of the triune God is " open,''
"inviting," and even "communicable " (p. 149)-the latter adjective in
this case being the most crucial. In the great consummation " the new,
free and united human race " will not only enter into a new relationship
with God, but will actually, we are told, "enter into the trinitarian relations of the Son, the Father and the Spirit " (p. 122, italics added) . " All
people and things then partake of the ' inner-trinitarian life ' of God "
(p. 127) . The creation which at first brought so much divine humiliation,
impoverishment and suffering will at last become the vehicle of " God's
eschatological selfcdeliverance " (p. 60) and of " the feast of the divine
joy" (p. 59) as God's " creative love" finally " communicates itself by
overcoming its opposite" (p. 106). God finally makes "human nature in
its entirety ... part of his eternal life" (p. 121) as the divine Son " throws
open " to all humanity "his relationship of sonship to the Father " (ibid.).
Given the essentially communicable nature of the trinitarian unity, it is
perhaps not surprising to find Moltmann at last writing explicitly about
"the birth of God in the soul " (p. 211) and about the idea of salvation
as "deification" (theosis), in which humanity will find itself gathered
"finally, wholly and completely" into the open Trinity's eternal life (p.
213). It is surprising, however, to find Moltmann criticizing Hegel for
making the " deification of world and humanity " into a "necessary conclusion " (p. 107) ; for it is not at all easy to see how Moltmann has
avoided this conclusion himself.
One closes this book as if awakening from a bad dream. Why should
Jiirgen Moltmann, in my opinion perhaps the most promising of all contemporary theologians, have allowed his theology to wander down such
tangled and impossible paths? Before attempting to answer this question,
let me make a few quick observations about my own critique. In spite of
everything I cannot quite bring myself to believe, at least not yet, that
Moltmann really wants to adopt the positions which appear in this book.
For one thing he keeps shrinking back from them, and for another there
are too many conflicting cross currents-more than I have been able to
do justice to here-which somewhat scramble the picture I have presented.
I have simply tried to clarify the dominant trends in order that some of
their shortcomings and dangers might he writ large. Yet I cannot help
hoping that the book reads too much like someone thinking out loud in
public to be taken as Moltmann's last word.

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Furthermore, anyone who reads the book will realize that my review
sidesteps much of Moltmann's argumentation against positions which
conflict with his .own. This omission has been deliberate. Although I do
not usually find the polemical sections convincing (and it would take
a much longer essay to explain why not) , the point I want to emphasize
is that the.se sections generally function in lieu of any direct defense of
the position Moltmann finally ends up with himself. But it would be
fallacious to suppose that even a successful critique of competing positions
would count as an adequate argument for one's own alternative viewpoint.
That is why I have attempted to ask about the viability of Moltmann's
constructive proposals apart from any extensive consideration of his corresponding polemics, even if that meant (as it did) that I had to draw
upon theological concepts (such as "God's self-sufficiency ") which
Moltmann thinks he has done away with.
Finally, despite the welter of confusion, there are a number of interesting ventures and conceptions in this book which at least deserve to be
mentioned. Although the results are uneven, Moltmann does make some
useful suggestions about how to think of the divine act of creation from
a trinitarian standpoint (pp. lllff.). He introduces a much needed
corrective to Western theology when he emphasizes the personal rather
than merely relational character of the Holy Spirit (pp. 168ff.) , and one
might add that perhaps even his most "tritheistic " formulations ought
to be regarded as being more nearly corrective than constitutive. Above
all, Moltmann provides a very thoughtful and provocative discussion of
the Filioque, which is promising in the avenues it seeks to open up for
reconciling the traditional trinitarian differences whch still sadly separate
the churches, East and West (pp. 178ff.). One could perhaps be more
enthusiastic about such hopeful sections were they not themselves so
thoroughly overshadowed by the problems already discussed.
Let us return, then, to the question as to why Moltmann should have
ended up on the paths where we have found him. Two reasons can perhaps
be suggested, the one material and the other more formal. The material
reason, if one may put it this way, is rooted in Moltmann's deep, impassioned sense of personal anguish in response to the atrocities of innocent
suffering, atrocities which have become all too commonplace in our
century and our contemporary world. One of the great strengths of
Moltmann's theology has always been the profundity and honesty by
which it confronts the difficulties which gratuitous suffering poses for our
understanding of God. At the heart of Moltmann's meditation on these
difficulties has been the insight that the victims of atrocity are not aloof
from God, for God in Jesus Christ has made the sufferings of the world
his own, and that therein lies the great if mysterious hope that somehow
those whom Jesus Christ has incorporated into his wounded body will

139
one day be given a share in his risen body as well. By this time, however,
Moltmann's theology has taken such a drastic twist that even God seems
primarily to be regarded as a victim, and the cross of Christ to be more
important as a symbol of human victimization than as the real accomplishment :of our forgiveness (p.
. In short, the deficiencies of Moltmann's
newer theology seem to stem, at least in part, from an inordinate
preoccupation with the mystery of innocent suffering.
The more formal reason is closely related to the first. Moltmann's
earlier theology used to speak very powerfully about " the pain of the
open theodicy question." This meant that the question of innocent suffering was eschatologically open, and that it could only be answered by God.
It meant that evil was regarded as an "impossible possibility," and that
both God's power and God's love as testified by Scripture were affirmed.
It also meant, however, that a great deal had to remain incomprehensible
and shrouded in irresolvable mystery. By contrast, Moltmann's more
recent theology must be interpreted as a press away from mystery toward
a greater degree of rational intelligibility. l\foltmann now suggests that
he wants " to offer a universal explanation of suffering in the world " (p.
50). His newfound panentheism, which is essentially an exercise in rationalism, serves this very purpose. It severely restricts God's lordship
arid power so that the existence of evil can be made to seem more intelligible. Regardless of how one evaluates this enterprise, the point to see
is that Moltmann is moving toward a more rationalist theological picture.
If he does not change this course, it will be interesting to note if he can
still manage to avoid the traditional bane of rationalism, which almost
always ·seems to know what evil is good for, and therefore why evil is not
evil. In any case, it was another real strength of Moltmann's earlier
theology that it not only let evil be evil, but also let God be God.
GEORGE HUNSINGER

New Brunswick Theological Seminary
New Brunswick, New Jersey

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Ministry: Leadership in the Community of Jesus Christ. By EDWARD
ScIIILLEBEECKX. Translated by John Bowden. New York: Crossroad, 1981. Pp. 165. $12.95.
Minister? Pastor? Prophet?: Grass-roots Leadership in the Churches. By
LucAS GROLLENBERG, EDwARD ScHILLEBEECKX,et. al. Translated by
John Bowden. New York: Crossroad, 1981. Pp. 102. $8.95.
In introducing the book Minister? Pastor? Prophet? Lucas Grollenberg
states that the essays presented reflect " the particular situation of the
Roman Catholic church in Holland, but [they discuss] a problem which
concerns the whole of the Roman Catholic church " (p. 1) . Therefore he
is pleased to offer these essays for the reflection of English-speaking readers, and also to make Roman authorities more aware of the need to reconsider ministry on the basis of what is actually happening in "grassroots " communities. He summarizes the questions raised by asking why
only celibate men may be ordained, why men and also women from local
communities may not be ordained, especially. those who already exercise
leadership responsibilities, and why each local community does not have
"the right to an ordained minister" (p. 1). These questions also preoccupy Edward Schillebeeckx in his work Ministry. In fact, this work is
an expansion of his essay contained in Minister? Pastor? Prophet? which
also appears in a somewhat different version in Right of the Community
to a Priest, Concilium, Vol. 133 (New York: Seabury, 1980). The four
papers which comprise the collection Minister? Pastor? Prophet? were first
published in Tijdschrift voor Theologie (no. 3, 1979), having been presented at a conference on ministry held at Nijmegen earlier that year.
This background information is important to bear in mind, especially
because it is not so clearly stated in the Schillebeeckx volume and many
statements found there are made clearer by recalling the origin of the
work. However, this particular religious and cultural context does not so
dominate or determine the argumentation offered that the books offer little
insight for the wider church. In fact, the situation of other local churches
is kept in mind throughout. This is seen most clearly in the first essay
in the Minister? Pastor? Prophet? volume by Jan Kerkhofs, containing a
statistical review of the shortage of priests throughout the world. This
essay also contains some reflections on the situation of those who wish to
continue to function as married priests or as women priests. The first
part of this article (also found in Concilium, no. 133 in an abridged form)
is more helpful than the second, which contains some oversimplifications
and unexplained judgments. The author concludes by stating that any
ministry in the future must require ministers to bear personalized responsibility for the ministry, that ministers serve as members of a pastoral

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team, and that the " criterion is always that of functioning within and
from a community in the light of the gospel " (p. 20).
The second essay by Anton Houtepen reflects on present-day problems
in ministry from a theological perspective. Many of the author's observations are insightful, making this essay worth serious consideration.
Houtepen argues forcefully that the tradition of the church on ministry
shows that service to the paradosis is the specific feature of the pluriform
"ministry " in the church. As such, there should be a reintegration or
reemphasis given to the unity of catechesis, liturgy, and diakonia as essential aspects of the one ministry. Too much differentiation causes splintering of those elements which together comprise service to the handing-on
of the gospel. " Gospel-community and life-style, worship and service
form one event of paradosis in the New Testament .... " (p. 24). "Ministerial service is there to provide appropriate help in the direction of
God's kingdom. This includes message and life-style, preaching, worship,
.
and help in all kinds of distress " (p.
In offering insights from other disciplines on " religious leadership "
J. J. A. Vollenbergh maintains that a new paradigm, that of the selfgoverning group, offers real possibilities for developing the ministries of
helper, prophet, and witness in the church. He calls for an "integrated
leadership," and a collegial approach to ministry. In commenting on the
virtues of "restrained leadership" the author remarks parenthetically:
" It is therefore somewhat paradoxical that progressive groups hope to
get Rome's power behind them" (p. 53). "Neither the simplicity of the
concept of hierarchy nor an· insufficiently thought out adoption of democratic forms of leadership will help us out of the [present] impasse" (p.
55) • In this present situation collegiality is a desired model for exercising
leadership and responsibility.
While each of these three essays may be considered sketchy, sometimes
offering ideas that are more provocative than cogently argued, nevertheless, they do contain helpful ideas about ministry and the context within
which to consider ministry in the church today. In fact, the insights noted
here are so important for developing the notion of ministry that one
wonders why they are not found in Schillebeeckx's Ministry. While one
can understand their absence in Schillebeeckx's essay in the collection of
articles (since these papers were first presented together at the ministry
congress), the fact that they are not emphasized (or are even ignored) in
the book is among the work's major flaws.
In the Foreword to Ministry, Schillebeeckx notes that from among the
seventeen articles on ministry he had written over a twenty-five year
period, four articles (from
formed the starting point for this
book. " It was not niy purpose to work up all this material into what
then . . • would have been called ' a complete theology of ministry ' ••

BOOK REVIEWS

(p. v). What he does provide is a book of fil.ix chapters (of unequal length)
in which he gives great emphasis to the New Testament data on ministry
and the church's first thousand years of experience with ministry. The
second millenium is sketched very briefly (pp. 5!?l-65), the account ending
with the teaching of Trent on ministry. The third chapter discusses continuity and divergence between the first and second millenia (pp. 66-74).
In comparison with what follows in the next chapters, these comprise the
more helpful part of the book. The second part deals with the tension
between actual church order and alternative practices in ministry (chapter four), a hermeneutical clarification (chapter five), and some perspectives on the future with detailed description of and reference to the 1971
Synod of Bishops (chapter six) . This second part of the book deserved
more careful composition and editing, especially since the hermeneutical
clarification (chapter five) could have been presented earlier in the book
and .in that position have been freed from its defensive tone. It appears
to have been added to justify the proposals offered in the book's final
chapter. It would have been more helpful if incorporated into the Introduction as part of the explanation of how the author used arguments
from the tradition to deal with the present state of ministry in the church.
In addition, the book's structure is flawed by the absence of sections on
the Second Vatican Council's treatment of ministry and post-conciliar
statements on ministry (e.g., the revised rite for the institution of readers
and acolytes in Ministeria quaedam, or the restored .diaconate in Ad
pascendum.) To give an extended treatment to the 1971 Synod (pp. 105130) and to deal with these very significant documents only in passing is
curious.
The subtitle of the American edition " Leadership in the Community
of Jesus Christ" reflects indirectly the main concern of the book, the
person of the ordained minister in the church today. "Ministry" here
is about the ordained ministry. The subtitle of the English edition of the
book: " A Case For Change " (London: SCM Press) reflects a main
argument throughout: that married men and women should be allowed
to be ordained so that grass-roots communities enjoy their " right " to
celebrate eucharist regularly. There are times when this latter concern
is so dominant that it tends to obscure the clarity and precision seen in
the scriptural and historical sections of the book. In fact, this single
issue recurs so frequently that one wonders whether the English subtitle
is not a more accurate description of the work.
In spite of these structural flaws, this book makes an important contribution to the ongoing consideration of the ordained ministry in the
contemporary church. Since this is a book by Schillebeeckx, we should
highlight the contributions made in the sections on theological method
exegesis. !le states: " without critical recollection of the
and

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143

whole of the church's past, our modern questions are not in themselves
normative either, although they are part of the picture. Only in a
ally critical pastoral, practical and theological confrontation between the
preselilt and the past is a truly Christian answer possible" (p. 2) . The
issue he raises concerns whether the practice of ministry " is shaped primarily by theological criteria, or on the basis of non-theological factors.
Or more precisely, whether it is formed from theological reflection on new
human and cultural situations" (ibid.). He implies that it is because of
largely non-theological (or at least not theologically normative) criteria
that the ordained ministry is reserved to celibate males.
Because. of the complexity of the New Testament data on ministers
and ministry, some conventional treatments often give more weight to
the former and delineate the pluriformity of those involved in ministering.
Schillebeeckx tries to avoid this pitfall in concluding his important treatment of these data by recalling the church's apostolic mission, and that
apostolicity requires that the community be aware that it is carrying on
the cause of Jesus, that the gospel is its foundation document and norm,
that this community stands under the norm of being disciples of Jesus,
that proclamation, liturgy, and diakonia are characteristics of the church,
that local communities are bound to other communities in love, and that
ministry is service rather than a status or state (pp. 34-7) . What tends
to be obscured even here is the mission of the church as witness in the
world. That the ministry is in service to communities under the Word of
God is clear, but that this implies witness in the marketplace is not· so
clear. Without this broader context ministry itself could be understood on
its own and in a self-contained fashion. This would destroy another aspect
of the apostolicity of the church and of ministry within the community.
It is for this reason that the inclusion in chapter six of a letter of Latin
American priests to Pope John Paul II (of July, 1980) is helpful. It was
written prior to the Holy Father's journey to Brazil and it called for the
church to recommit itself to the poor of Latin America. This is a helpful
reminder of the church's prophetic and apostolic nature. This apostolic
and prophetic stance should be recalled as the church considers its structures of ministry. The Pauline exhortation to build up the Body of Christ
here receives its appropriate and necessary context.
While it is later in the book that Schillebeeckx will argue for the ordination of married and celibate men and women, this point could have been
made in this earlier section by the use of sociological criteria and evaluation of the situation of New Testament communities. Determining why
men, both married and unmarried, were chosen for the ministry at this
time, and why women were not, does seem to depend on the kind of
"non-theological " factors noted above. A sociological review of these
data would have been helpful:

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In concluding this section Schillebeeckx states that " this survey shows
that as far as the New Testament is concerned the community has a right
to a minister or ministers and to the celebration of the eucharist. This
apostolic right has priority over the criteria for admission which the church
can and may impose on its ministers. . . . This apostolic right has priority over the church order which has in fact grown up and which in other
circumstances may have been useful and healthy .... " (p. 37). What
is curious here is the limited conclusion drawn on the basis of this body
of evidence about New Testament ministry. In addition, there is nothing
said about the criteria for presidency at eucharist. Even if we grant the
truth of Schillebeeckx's statement as it stands, there are other issues that
are not dealt with which are important for clarity of argument and expression. In fact, in another section the author seems to caricature one
obvious criterion: education. " In that case the vitality of the community
in terms of the gospel is the deciding factor, not the availability of a body
of priestly manpower, crammed full of education in one place or another"
(p. 41). One should recall that one of the advances made at Trent was
the requirement of seminary education; the state of clergy education/
formation at the time was chaotic. Another criterion for liturgical presideRcy would appear to be connected with holiness and spirituality, factors
also underscored in seminary formation.
In sketching the context for liturgical celebration, Schillebeeckx emphasizes the intrinsic connection between liturgical presidency and leadership
in the life of the community. On the basis of the early church's experience he argues for a more obvious and essential link between the community leader and the community celebrating. This is because " the active
agent of the eucharist was the community " (p. 50). This is an important
statement, not only to help Schillebeeckx's argument that the local community has a right to its minister, but also for a proper theology of
eucharist; the locus of celebration is the community with a variety of roles
functioning within it.
The treatment of the second millenium of the church's life is the briefest
and the least comprehensive. This is unfortunate since it is here that a
certain " privatization " and individualism of the ministry takes place.
Helpful here, in addition to the importance of law and the influence of
feudalism as noted, would have been a more detailed description of the
changed context for doing theology, including the important role philosophy played in this period. What also mars the author's argument about
the requirement of celibacy is the fact that it is mentioned in this section
for the first time and then only in an incomplete way. The historical
evolution of this requirement is only dealt with here by way of flashback.
In offering an alternative practice for the ordained ministry Schillebeeckx notes that today " laity are allowed to engage .in pastoral work aa

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much as possible but are refused the sacramental institution to the ministry which goes with this " (p. 85) . He questions whether this is sound
theological development, for he sees that " it maintains the exaggerated
sacral view of the priesthood .... " It can be argued on the basis of
sacramental theology that what one could call a "refusal of ordination"
is, in fact, a way to emphasize the theology and reality of baptism where
a complementarity of community members together take joint responsibility for building up the body of Christ. Not all have to be ordained,
just as not all have the same function, gift, or charism. In fact, an exaggerated view of the priesthood in certain circumstances may well be a
reason for limiting the number of ordinations. Ordination should never
replace the primary locus of communal identity, ministry, and responsibility-baptism.
Despite the critical comments we have made, this book is a helpful
contribution to the expanding literature on the church's tradition of ministry. Because it concerns the ordained ministry it would be especially
helpful for those ordained, for candidates for ordination, and for use in
courses on the theology of ministry. It d.oes raise many important questions about ordination today, and it challenges assumptions about its
present shape based on the church's past. In this way it also offers a
challenge for its shape in the future. It is an appropriate contribution
from the pen of one who intended to challenge and evaluate, rather than
offer " a complete theology of the ministry."
KEVIN

w. IRWIN

Fordham University
Bronx, New York

A Century of Moral Philosophy. By W. D. HUDSON.
Martin's Press, 1980. Pp. 198. $18.95.

New York: St.

Hudson, a Reader in Moral Philosophy at the University of Exeter, offers
us a concise, clear, and readable account of the course of British moral
philosophy over the last hundred years. His work is not encyclopedic but
seeks rather "to trace what seems to me to be the most important thread
of argument and counter-argument in this branch of philosophy" (p. ii).
In eight chapters,, Hudson traces the development 9f metaethical argument
with major stress on two schools of thought, intuitionism and utilitarianism.
He presents the basic arguments made by the various philosophers, details
the objections offered by their critics, and often gives his own opinion as to
the strengths and weaknesses of the different positions.
The first chapter presents the intuitionism and utilitarianism of one

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hundred years ago. Intuitionism emphasizes that "moral properties are
objectively real and intrinsic to the actions or states of affairs which they
Human beings have a faculty, referred to as concharacterise." (p.
science, which enables them directly to discern what is right and what is
wrong. A very important exponent of the intuitionist position was William
Whewell of Cambridge, who argued that this moral faculty was reason and
who offered significant criticisms of utilitarianism. On the other hand,
utilitarians such as Jeremy Bentham and J. S. Mill sought to establish an
objective and external standard of morality with their principle of utility.
"Their utility principle laid it down that, if an action brings about in sum
more pleasure than pain, its moral value is positive; if more pain than
pleasure, negative; and if an equal quantity of both, neutral" (p. 10).
Their principles contrast significantly with those of Whewell and the other
intuitionists.
The following chapter exposes and analyzes Henry Sidgwick's attempt to
forge a union between these two disparate positions. On the basis of both
logical and psychological arguments, Sidgwick seeks to show that utilitarianism answers the intuitionists' question of what is good while intuitionism can justify the utilitarians' principle that we ought to aim at
general happiness. Sidgwick's method, however, was not without its problems and led him into a quandary regarding practical reason. Yet "he raised
many of the questions which were to preoccupy moral philosophers during
. Two other lines of thought of the period·
the next hundred years" (p.
are represented by Sidgwick's contemporaries T. H. Green and Herbert
Spencer. Green presented a Hegelian point of view and thought that to
understand morality a person must see its basis in metaphysics. Spencer
believed that " the study of evolution provides the appropriate basis for
ethics " (p. 57) . Hudson is quite critical of both and believes their contribution to the ongoing discussion was in pointing to areas in need of
further analysis and understanding.
The fourth chapter deals with G. E. Moore's teleological intuitionism.
Moore gave direction to modern moral philosophy in winning " general
assent for the proposition that ethics stands alone" (p. 74). It was Moore
who gave the name " the naturalistic fallacy " to all attempts to define
the good. Moore is normally regarded as Mill's most incisive critic, though
recently that criticism has been called into question. In general, Moore
and other intuitionists of his time believed that certain truths were selfevident although they didn't agree on what these truths were. The main
objection raised to their " view that ethical intuition gives us immediate
of moral truths . . . is the lack of any independent check upon
it " (p. 10£) .
Hudson proceeds from discussing Moore to an analysis of the emotive
theory of moral meaning proposed by A. J. Ayer, C. L. Stevenson, and

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147

others. This theory holds: "If we say, 'This is good,' that 'serves only
as an emotive sign expressing our attitude to this, and perhaps evoking
similar attitudes in other persons, or inciting them to actions of one kind
or another '" (p. 108). While this theory dealt with the mysteriousness
and failure to direct action of previous intuitionist theories, it also proved
inadequate on a number of counts, especially the fact that discourse which
influences another person is not necessarily moral discourse.
The central place in modern moral philosophy is occupied by R. M.
Hare's prescriptivism, a theory which contrasts in many ways with emotivism. In Hudson's opinion " it is the most clearly stated and comprehensively argued of contemporary ethical theories " (p. 126) . For Hare,
moral judgments are distinctive in that they possess the two logical features of prescriptivity and universalisability. This analysis of moral judgment leads Hare to conclude that a judgment is not moral unless it is in
accord with the principle of utility. A major defect in his prescriptivism
seems to be " that it allows a:ny content at all to go through as a moral
judgment provided it fulfills the formal conditions, which Hare calls
'necessary ingredients' " (p. 150).
The seventh chapter considers two versions of the view that there is a
restricted content to morality. "By saying that its content is restricted
I mean that, in our moral judgments, it makes good sense to express approval (or disapproval) of certain things but not of others " (p. 153) .
Here Hudson discusses the morality grounded in human wants proposed
by Mrs. Philippa Foot and that grounded in tradition proposed by R. W.
Beardsmore and others.
The final chapter concludes that, just as they were one hundred years
ago, intuitionists and utilitarians are still at odds. Hudson believes that
the contemporary neo-intuitionism really began with a paper presented
by Miss G. E. M. Anscombe in 1958. lntuitionism has revived in a renewed form and holds that not all moral convictions are logically reducible to the principle of utility. To ignore intuitions is to "misrepresent the
nature of morality " (p. 171). On the utilitarian side, Hare has recently
offered a model which speaks of intuitive or level-I thinking and critical
or level-2 thinking. He believes that his prescriptivism encompasses both
levels and thus provides a theory which includes all the essential elements
of moral thinking.
Hudson's interesting and detailed presentation provides a stimulating
view of the last century of moral philosophy. It perhaps could be improved
by giving a little more attention than it does (2 pages) to Rawl's theory
of justice, especially since this theory converges in some ways with the
data on psychological development presented by Lawrence Kohlberg and
his colleagues. More importantly, while Hudson seems to be sympathetic
to Hare's most recent theory, it would have been helpful if Hudson had

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stated his own position toward the end of the book, if for no other reason
than to stimulate the reader to a personal critique and synthesis.
Hudson's work also might prove helpful in stimulating thought on the
state of Catholic moral theology. Currently there is a widespread move
to embrace a theory of proportionate reason which is consequentialistic in
nature and seems to be akin to utilitarianism. While the debate over this
proposed move is intense and complex and thus cannot be related in a
simplistic way to Hudson's work, yet the century of debate in philosophical ethics offers insights into the contemporary debate in Catholic circles.
Certainly, there is a need for a clarification of the philosophical presuppositions of the move to proportionate reason. Likewise might not the difficulty of measuring consequences which Whewell raised long ago be raised
against any new consequentialistic theory? Furthermore, won't the problem of content raised above against Hare also have to be dealt with in
any new system? Will the departures from moral rules for proportionate
reasons not lead to the vitiation of such rules (see p. 174)? These and
other serious questions arise as one seeks to relate the century of debate
in philosophical ethics to the current controversy in Catholic moral theology. If Hudson's work is any indication, this complex debate will be
long lasting, if not everlasting.
JOHN
CROSSIN, O.S.F.S.
DeSales School of Theology
Washington, D.C.

w.

Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science. By MARY
HESSE. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980. Pp. xxvi +
271. $22.50.
This volume can be looked at in two ways. It might be seen as simply
a collection of reprinted essays by a philosopher of science widely respected
in English and American academic circles. Or it might be seen as more,
as a relatively coherent compendium of the most important pieces in the
developing corpus of one of the first and most influential female philosophers of science in our day. Two things favor the more pretentious claim.
Appended to the collection of essays is a complete bibliography of work
by Hesse-the sort of bibliography most- often found in collections of
authors whose published works the editors think important enough to list
in full. And, the feminist aspect aside, the works chosen from that bibliography do represent a judicious selection of essays calculated to display
the current state of thinking in the intellectual development of an independent· thinker in philosophy of science with a distinct enough perspec-

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tive to warrant the attention of historians of twentieth-century philosophy
of science. In any case, the volume will here be treated as such a major
statement rather than as a mere collection of essays.
The distinctiveness of Hesse's approach and of the volume shows up
best not only in the inclusion of Part IV," Science and Religion" (which
includes just the final chapter), but in the central role that chapter plays
in the unfolding synthesis sketched out in the volume.
Parts I and II, " The Historiography of Science," and " Objectivity and
Truth," represent what, in recent years, Mary Hesse has come to be known
for in philosophy of science circles. The final chapter in the second part,
for instance, was presented at the 1976 Philosophy of Science Association
The presentation
meeting and is readily available in PSA 1976, volume
is clear and precise-and dry. The viewpoint expressed is sympathetic
toward the newer movements in philosophy of science. As Hesse herself
sums up the situation: "The papers ... in this collection all address
themselves in one way or other to a critique of . . . empiricist presuppositions, and try more positively to steer a course between the extremes of
metaphysical realism and relativism" (p. xiv}. In Hesse's view, recent
developments in philosophy of science-she associates them principally
with Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend, and Stephen Toulmin, as well as
W. V. Quine-only serve to reinforce the untenability of scientific realism.
One chapter in this earlier part of the volume stands out as demonstrating Hesse's openmindedness. In " The Strong Thesis of Sociology of
Science," Hesse shows herself to be remarkably open to the theory referred to in the title of the chapter. And that thesis-in Hesse's reconstruction of it: " the view that true belief and rationality are just as much
explananda of the sociology of knowledge as error and noncrationality "
(p. 81 )-is indeed a strong one for advocates of logical empiricism in its
traditional form to swallow. Larry Laudan in Progress and Its Problems
(1977}, for instance, even while pushing empiricism about as far as it can
go, concludes with a chapter on rationality and the sociology of knowledge
which resolutely and with some harshness restricts sociology of knowledge
to what Landan calls the " arational." Hesse subjects the strong thesis
to extremely probing criticism, but in the end she finds that it " survives "
(p. 45) -and in any case she shows much more openness to it than Laudan
(and, all the more, still narrower traditional empiricists).
to flirt with radical antiAnother indication of Hesse's
empiricism is to be found in chapter 9, "Habermas's Consensus Theory of
Truth." There, in considering empiricist objections to Jiirgen Habermas's
version of Frankfurt School neo-Marxism, Hesse admits: " If the consequences of the consensus theory of truth for theoretical science are properly understood, it must be concluded that the ' objectivity ' of theories
is a.a bitdly off the claimed objectivity of value judgments "-the hams

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of the empiricist objection (p. 224) . While this chapter again displays
Hesse's openness (plus rigorous criticism), in the end she does not agree
with Habermas's version of a consensus theory of truth. In passing it is
worth noting that this is not the most lucid chapter in the book-several
better interpretations of Habermas are now available-and Hesse seems
to find it difficult to translate Habermas's ideas into the uncongenial
standard language of Anglo-American philosophy of science.
Returning to " Science and Religion " and the distinctiveness of Hesse's
approach, we might do well to quote portions of her own summary as
given in the introduction: "In 'Criteria of Truth in Science and Theology,'
I consider some . . . consequences of [earlier chapters] . . . for the perennial science/religion debate. Like most philosophical debates that have
presupposed empiricist analyses of science, this one takes on a different
complexion when empiricist presuppositions are rejected " (p. xxii) . To
set the problem, Hesse asks herself the question, " What is the status of
theological claims to ' knowledge ' of the world in, for example, doctrines
of creation ... ? " And she answers: " I conclude that these claims are
ideological in the same sense that comprehensive theories in the human
sciences are ideological, that is that they incorporate evaluations of their
subject matter " (p. xxiii) . Then, with implicit reference back to her
earlier claims about the status of scientific theories, Hesse concludes: " In
this sense theological claims . . . rejoin the same category as scientific
cosmologies, when these are themselves understood as the framework of
social communications. . . . Thus science/religion debates can be re-engaged
at a different level" (p. xxiii). Finally, this is Hesse on science: "I have
argued that there are no defences except [a] pragmatic criterion against
the relativity of scientific theories, and . . . the pragmatic criterion permits a permanent plurality of conceptual frameworks " (p. xxiv) ; and on
religion: "In the case of postulated moral or ideological absolutes there
is no empirical test procedure with which to contrast the appropriate mode
of knowledge .... But it does not follow, any more than it does from
the pluralism of scientific theory, that there is no non-relative truth in
these domains " (p. xxv).
Where does this leave Hesse? In the actual chapter devoted to science
and religion (as opposed to the introductory summary relied on here},
she makes these points much clearer. One example, related to the cultural
relativism of her view: " Should the theologian be alarmed at the apparent
rejection of the notion of perennial truths of which he has often been
regarded as guardian? ... It does not at all follow that perennial insights
of the proper theological kind cannot be captured, however fleetingly and
obscurely, in the appropriate expressions of each culture, any more than
it follows that the linguistic variance of physical theories prevents the
fo.cts that underlie experimental control of nature lµi.ving
and

BOOK REVIEWS

15i

perennial character" (p. 252}. Again: "What I have said about the
nature of theological assertion is ... perhaps the most important intellectual task facing the Church. I believe that the . . . criteria for ' goodness ' of theological assertion lie primarily in the areas of meaning and
value judgment, and not in the area of empirical fact " (p. 253) -especially if " fact " is understood in an outdated empiricist fashion. Finally,
Hesse concludes the chapter and the book on this note: " Fundamental
theological disputes may well break out again [in the current intellectual
climate], but this will be a sign of health, because it will show theology
being again incarnated in its own time, and even perhaps differently in
each of the many and deeply distinct social systems of our time. We shall
not create the successors of Augustine and Aquinas overnight, but if we
are faithful to our own concerns, in his own good time God may " (p. 254) .
In short, we have here a first-rate thinker carrying as far as she can
the insights of the new philosophy of science of Kuhn and Quine (and
others}, who is willing even to face the consequences of these views for
religious belief. (Hesse goes further than others in being open even to
Continental influences, such as that of Habermas or the social thinker
Emile Durkheim.} Many theologians and religious philosophers will be
uncomfortable with the cultural relativism she sees implicit in these views.
But she has issued her challenge forthrightly, and they would be well
advised to take it up with the same openness, honesty, and rigor she has
displayed.
PAUL T. DURBIN
University of Delaware
Newark, Delaware

Commentary on the Gospel of John, Part I. By SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS.
Translated by J. A. WEISHEIPL, 0.P., and F. R. LARCHER, O.P.
Albany, N.Y.: Magi Books, 1980. Pp. 505. $35.00.
Fr. Weisheipl is responsible for the Introduction and Notes of this volume and, seemingly, for most of the translation-at least that is what the
explanatory statement, "translation of J. A. Weisheipl with F. R. Larcher"
implies. At any rate, the work comes with the authority of the author of
Friar Thomas d'Aquino: His Life, Thought and W9rk-and that is approbation indeed. This, the first of two volumes, covers Jn 1-7.
In his masterly introduction, Fr. Weisheipl explains that the commentary is a reportatio, that is to say, the gist of a professor's lectures. In
our case the reporter is Reginald of Piperno, Thomas's faithful socius;
Moreover, there is evidence that this reportatio was revised by Aquinas

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himself. There may be even more to it than that. There are indications
that the commentary on the first five chapters of the gospel is not a
reportatio at all but an expositio: the text of the lectures. All in all, this
commentary is an impressive witness to Aquinas's exegetical skill and
theological acumen.
Weisheipl carefully points out that the commentary is typically medieval,
lacking the unction, colloquialism, and informality of patristic commentaries, and suggests that it is easier to read Augustine's commentary on
John than that of Thomas. An apt observation. But as one whose formal
theological formation was in the scholastic tradition, I find it easy to read
Thomas. What Weisheipl implies, and correctly, is that fewer and fewer
find it so.
There is no doubt that, for a man of his time, Thomas's exegetical
competence is remarkable. He sought out the literal sense of the text.
And though, of course, he commented on the Vulgate text, he knew some
Greek; he knew of variant Greek readings and the precise meaning of
certain words. His text of Jn 1:3-4 read: "All things were made through
him, and without him nothing was made. What was made in him was
life". He was aware that the punctuation in the Greek was different and
cites Chrysostom as an authority. " Chrysostom is held in such esteem by
the Greeks in his explanations that they admit no other where he expounded anything in Holy Scripture. For this reason, this passage in all
the Greek works is found punctuated exactly as Chrysostom did, namely,
' And without him was nothing made that was made ' " (p. 58) . Or,
again, on Jn 3: 3 (" Unless one is born again, one cannot see the kingdom
of God ")-" Note that the Greek reading is not ' again ' but anothen i.e.
'from above', which Jerome translated as 'again' in order to suggest
addition. And this is the way Jerome understood the saying 'unless one
is born again'. It is as if he were saying: Unless one is reborn once more
through a paternal generation " (p. 185) . In fact anothen is one of the
consciously ambiguous Johannine double expressions, meaning " again "
and "from above". But Aquinas was on to something.
As a medieval exegete, Thomas made much of the " spiritual " sense.
This spiritual sense-as the sensus plenior or "fuller sense "-found a new
lease of life some decades back; for a while I viewed it with some favor.
It is no longer in vogue-and rightly so. God has spoken in human words
and we must respect the human conditioning of Scripture. Recourse, in
our day, to " spiritual " exegesis would be a betrayal of our hard-won
understanding of the message of the biblical writers. An example here of
the " spiritual" sense (on Jn 2: 1): "The place too is appropriate. For
' Cana ' means ' zeal ' and ' Galilee ' means ' passage '. So this marriage
was celebrated in the zeal of a passage, to suggest that those persons are
most worthy of union with Christ who, burni1,1g with the zeal of a con$Ci-

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153

entious devotion, pass over from the state of guilt to the grace of the
Church ". A nice thought-but hardly that of Jn 2: 1.
I have given an example of " spiritual " exegesis. In fairness-and, more
importantly, to give an indication of the calibre of the commentary-I
include some details of the comment on Jn 3: 16-18 (pp. 199-202). Aquinas
asserts that the greatness of God's love is shown from four standpoints:
1. from the person of the one loving: God; 2. from the condition of the
one who is loved: the world (man, a bodily creature of the world); 3. from
the greatness of the gift: his only begotten Son; 4. from the greatness of
its fruit: eternal life. And we find a shrewd answer to the question: Did
God give his Son with the intention that he should die on the cross? " He
did indeed give him for the death of the cross inasmuch as he gave him
the will to suffer on it" (p. 201).
Aquinas notes that the statement: " God did not send his Son into the
world to judge the world " (v. 17) seems to conflict with 9: 39-" I came
into this world to judge ", and answers: " There are two kinds of judgment. One is the judgment of distinction, and the Son has come for this
in his first coming; because with his coming men are distinguished, some
by blindness and some by the light of grace. The other is the judgment
of condemnation; he did not come for this as such " (p. 202) . And he
goes on, commenting on v. 18: "Now he proves what he had said, as
though by a process of elimination, in the following way: ' Whoever will
be judged will be either a believer or an unbeliever. But I have not come
to judge unbelievers, because they are already judged. Therefore, from the
outset God did not send his Son to judge the world. So first he shows
that believers are not judged. Secondly that unbelievers are not judged ' "
(p. 202). This sober exegesis displays a shrewd touch which is maintained
as long as the commentator sticks to the literal sense.
All the same, one has to be aware that theological presuppositions can
cloud exegesis. Take the comment on 5:5 ("Unless one is born of water
and the Holy Spirit, one cannot enter the kingdom of God ") . Thomas
begins well. "It is necessary that the one generated be generated in the
likeness of the one generating; but we are regenerated as sons of God, in
the likeness of his true Son. Therefore it is necessary that our spiritual
regeneration come about through that by which we are made like to the
Son; and this comes about by our having his Spirit " (p. 187) . But when
he goes on to the necessity of water for this regeneration, he makes heavy
weather. "Water, too, is necessary for this regeneration, and for three
reasons". First, because of the condition of huiiian nature. Man is of
soul and body-·therefore in order that the flesh be regenerated, it is necessary that something bodily be involved. " Secondly, water is necessary
for the sake of human knowledge": man knows spiritual things by means
of 11ensible things: water, the mr,ans of external cleansing, suggests an

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interior and spiritual cleansing. " Thirdly, water was necessary so there
might be a correspondence of causes". In the sacraments there should
be something corresponding to the Word and something corresponding to
the body. "Spiritually speaking, this is water when the sacrament is baptism, so that through it we may be conformed to the death of Christ,
since we are submerged in it during baptism as Christ was in the womb
of the earth for three days: ' We are buried with him by baptism ' (Rom
6: 4) ". Thomas, in fact, holds for an absolute need of baptism for salvation, though he distinguishes three forms of baptism: by water, by blood,
and by desire. And he accepts, too, that unbaptized children do not enter
the kingdom of God (p. 189). Our better understanding of the gospels
saves us from such a constrained interpretation of God's saving grace. We
are reminded that even the most genial theologian is subject to the worldview of his time.
Weisheipl adds to Thomas's purpose of determining the literal sense
and explaining the spiritual sense of the gospel the refutation of error and
the confirmation of the Catholic faith. In these concerns, too, he was a
man of his time. What does emerge is Aquinas's impressive knowledge
of the Latin and Greek Fathers. And, all the while, his distinctive scholastic theology is in evidence. Thus, his comment on 6: 55 (" Whoever eats
my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life ") is an instance of the
scholastic method at its most typical. "Now our Lord proves that this
spiritual food has power to give eternal life. And he reasons this way:
Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. Here he does
three things: first he gives his major premise; secondly the minor premise,
which he proves (v. 58); and, thirdly, he draws his own conclusion:This is the bread which came down from heaven " (pp. 887f) . Thomas
then continues, over three pages, to expound each of the members of the
syllogism.
Fr. Weisheipl finds it necessary not only to explain the scholastic method
but to provide, in an Appendix, lengthy notes on the scholastic notions of
"Nature" and "Person", on the scholastic doctrine of Trinity and Incarnation, and on Thomas's doctrine of the Hypostatic Union. Today
such notes are wholly necessary: scholastic theological language is no longer
current. The great scholastics, however, and supremely Aquinas, have enduring value. That is why this translation of Thomas's Commentary on
John is important. It is essential, though, that it be kept in perspective.
Frankly, as a twentieth-century exegete, I find it of no more than marginal
interest in my striving to understand the -Fourth Gospel.
I recall how, repeatedly, throughout my theological studies, especially
in Rome, I had been assured that in Aquinas's writings we find the answers to the problems of all time. Even. then I could see that there was
something odd in the assumption that a thirt(;!enth-century theologian was

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adequate for the twentieth century. Had theology stopped short in· the
Middle Ages? I regret, then, the final sentence of Fr. Weisheipl's Introduction: "For our guide [in the study of John] we can have none better
than the Angelic Doctor, whom Jesus loved". The pietas is, perhaps,
understandable. But I, also a brother of Friar Thomas, find many more
penetrating insights in the classic commentary of Rudolf Bultmann.
A sour note. It is a great pity that W eisheipl has gone out of his way
to drag in Hans Kling-whom he evidently misunderstands (p. 482) . It
is distasteful (to put it very, very mildly) to find Kling branded a heretic
(p. 479). A medieval theologian may be excused his lavish bestowal of
the epithet "heretic ". A modern writer ought to be more circumspect.
That said, I warmly commend the industry of Frs. W eisheipl and Larcher. They have given us a splendid translation of a major exegetical work
of the thirteenth century. It is right that we should be reminded of our
heritage. But we must keep our balance.
While preparing this review I happened to be reading Edward Schillebeeckx's Christ. His lengthy (pp. 305-432) exposition of Johannine thought
is truly impressive. Indeed, the exegetical expertise of this systematic
theologian throughout his two Jesus-books is awe-inspiring. For me, it is
most encouraging that, in our day, a brother of Friar Thomas d'Aquino,
a preeminent theologian, has given us a major exegetical study. This is
the Thomistic tradition that appeals to me.
WILFRID HARRINGTON,

O.P.

St. Mary's, Tallaght County
Dublin, Ireland

Les perfections du Dieu de Jesus-Christ. By BERTRAND DE MARGERIE, S.J.
Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1981. Pp. 489. NF 114, Cent. 30.
" Every scribe that is trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old " (Mt.
18: 52). This logion could be an apt motto for this remarkable book.
Seminary professors, their students, and scholars in general are often reluctant today to present or to read a tract De Deo uno in traditional form;
yet the feeling is growing that more substantial fare is needed than has
been given in many places. While Fr. de Margerie ·did not write this as
a textbook, we can best describe it as providing a comparably solid yet
new treatment of that basic topic.
The author describes his work thus: " A volume that does not pretend
to he .... philosophical, but theological. It is not a manual of theodicy.

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Our intention is not to reply to questions which reason . . . could pose
about the origin and goal of the world; the God of whom the philosopher
speaks is not yet the God who speaks of Himself to the believer.... "
For the approach is to be basically Scriptural. 'Nor is this book "apologetics . . . but it is, and means to be, an apology within the fold of the
faith." Again, it is " not a book of fundamental theology; it does not
pretend to treat the rational preliminaries of faith, but rather that which
the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of Jesus Christ, has
revealed about His ways of acting and about His Being."
As a result, the table of contents is far from reproducing the old line of
theses. Instead we find these chief topics: the incomprehensible God makes
Himself known; the theology of Atheism; the evolution of the biblical
notion of God; the revealing and revealed God is Being and Love; in respect to the idolatry of polytheism and pantheism, the revealing God is
simple, one, unique, and jealous; the omniscient and prescient knowledge
of God, the illuminator of man.
The second group of chapters, on the action of God, considers: God the
Creator, origin and end of the universe; the God who reveals is immanent,
present everywhere; the revealed God is the eternal, the faithful, the absolute future of man; He is mercy and patience; He is the all-powerful will
to save us; Redemptive Providence, Wisdom, and the sanctifying sanctity
of the living God; God who predestines the just, reprobates obstinate
sinners without ever predestining them to sin.
In the final chapters we meet with some very different topics, not often
explored: the beauty of God, the interconnection of the divine perfections,
in which human virtues share; God without limits: neither finite, nor indefinite, but infinite; the joy of God within Himself, in man, and in the
world.
It is within each chapter that we find the nova et vetera. The treatment
is basically Scriptural, but not in the old mode of just citing proof texts:
passages of various lengths are adduced as parts of biblical themes, and
are treated in accord with the findings of modern exegesis. Where appropriate, we find also ancient pagan philosophers along with modern speculators. Then there are the Fathers, but again it is not just a matter of
quoting proof passages without analysis here either. Rather, there is a
careful discussion of each passage. The case is similar with documents of
Councils and Popes. At the end of each section come the thoughts of
leading recent writers on the topics involved. Here too we do not find
snippets, or the kind of footnote so common in scholarly works which accumulate a large bibliography without citing anything, still less discussing
it. Rather, everythng is carefully examined, and integrated into the entire
treatment.
The list of authors in the inc:lices rl)veals unusual breadth. Sts. Augus-

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157

tine and Thomas are used often enough to call for separate indices for
each. But other authors of every stamp appear frequently, especially
K. Barth, who comes in seventy times. Others of various persuasions are
found several times, such as Y. Congar, A. Feuillet, Garcia Cordero, R.
Garrigou-Lagrange, G. M. Garrone, E. Gilson, P. Van Imschoot, M. J.
LaGrange, X. Le Bachelet, J. Maritain, K. Rahner, M. Scheeben, F.
Schleiermacher, A. Sertillanges, F. Thonnard, P. Tillich, H. Urs von
Baltassar.
The breadth of erudition is matched by similar broadmindedness. When
Fr. De Margerie cites Catholics like Suarez, Scotus, and St. Bonaventure,
it is not, as so often happened in the past, just as examples of rejected
opinions. Rather, positive contributions are drawn from them. The same
is true of many Protestant authors as well. Without accepting everything
in them, of course, Fr. De Margerie often draws on the very real insights
they show. For example, on pp. 327-39 he finds special help in the works
of E. Brunner, K. Barth, and F. Schleiermacher. Brunner relates the wisdom of God to the order of the universe; Schleiermacher defines divine
Wisdom as, " the principle that orders and determines the world in view of
the self-communication of God shown in the redemption." Barth prefers
to say that Wisdom is the divine self-communication that orders and determines the world in relation to itself.
Some of the remarks on atheism are striking. Thus on p. 86: "It is
true ... that it is difficult to know if a human person is really an atheist:
how can we know, in many a case, which God they are denying? Christians have always denied false gods. If today, because of a deformed
presentation of God offered by [some] Christians, men reject a God that
does not exist such as He is presented: who can blame them for it? .••
Since the testimony of the Gospel is addressed always to a man who
already knows the living God implicitly, and in so many ways, a man who
has been solicited by so many actual graces, the word will have always
the sense of a recollection. It will be, in fact, ... a tender cry addressed
to the memory . . . inviting him not so much to discover God as to remember Him." In this vein, note 115 at the end of that chapter urges
us: "Let us notice that St. Alphonse de Ligouri, a doctor of the Church,
promised to criminals condemned to death that if they would accept and
unite their death to that of Christ in expiation of their sins, they would
have salvation, together with a great reward for their great merit. . . . They
would become, in other words, workers of the eleventh hour .... [SimilarlyJ atheists could be innocent, and dispose themselves, under the action
of grace, to a hopeful faith, and to justification, and they too could, in
receiving it at the last hour, deserve an abundant eternal reward: Hebrews
11:6 is illuminated by Heb. 10:85."
Striking too hi the last sentence <;>f chapter 6, in which, after a new

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· BOOR: REVIEWS

.and stimulating discussion of Augustinian illumination, the author adds:
" I am corruptible, changeable, material; but in the bosom of the omniscient Consciousness of God, I have, mysteriously, an uncreated being,
immaterial, eternal, towards which I tend." He means, of course, the
Divine Idea of me to which I should conform.
This is one of the passages in which the author tries to carry out the
wish expressed by Paul VI (cited in note 4 on p. 9) when the Pope said
that the pastoral aspect of the work of theologians is more urgent today
than ever; or the author's promise in the introduction: " Our book conveys then to the reader an experience, indirect, but savory, of the living
God, so as to let himself be transformed by the perfection that God
reveals to him, and in which he believes. The theology that we propose
.is, in a Bonaventurian way, an anticipation of the vision, and a traveling
towards it." The opening chapter, "The incomprehensible God makes
Himself known", is an instance. That chapter draws much, inter alia, on
the path shown by the Pseudo-Dionysius: God is best known by unknowing-or on the paradoxical utterance the author cites from St. Augustine:
"We must not even call God ineffable, for when we say this, we say
something "-whereas He is best known by the way of unknowing.
Again, on pp. 806-07, the author draws on Pius XII and Emile Brunner,
" ' By the Omnipotence of God, even the very obstacles that spirits and
free wills oppose to Him are so many means to lead them to cooperate
tawards higher ends', wrote Pius XII in 1989. Emile Brunner, in his turn,
says very well: ' In the person of His Son, God abandoned Himself to the
opposition of men, and in that abandon revealed justly the unique character of the Almighty, which no human thought could discover. God is
to such an extent sovereign over the course of the world that He makes
use of the maximum resistance to His will to accomplish His revelation,
and to unfold His power.'"
Finally, the last two chapters open up new ground in exploring two
themes that have been largely ignored by others: the Beauty of God and
the Joy of God.
In the introduction, the author tells us this book developed from giving
several courses at universities and seminaries in the United States and
Portugal. So a seminary professor could well draw on it for a rich, fresh,
new presentation of what used to be De Deo uno. At the same time it is
to be warmly recommended to the general reader, who can use it to enlarge his knowledge by the rich multiplicity of sources that are laid under
contribution, and even, in many passages-,as a book to spark contemplation.
WILLIAM

Loras College
Dubuque, Iowa

G. MOST

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159

Being Qua Being: A Theory of Identity, Existence, and Predication. By
PANAYOT BuTCHVARov. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1979. Pp. 274, with index.
The author conceives this work as an essay in proto-metaphysics, that
discipline which inquires what it means to be a world or to be in a world.
He argues that the concepts of existence, identity, essential predication,
and accidental predication are fundamental notions which we employ in
understanding any world as such. These are, as it were, the transcendental
characteristics of any world qua world, applying to any entity in a world
as such. He begins his treatment of proto-metaphysical problems with the
historically familiar puzzle of the apparent distinctness of identicals--for
example, the identity in distinctness of the Morning Star and the Evening
Star. He holds that one of two possible approaches to solving this problem is inevitable: either the appearance of distinctness is a mere appearance and must be explained without misrepresenting what is asserted in
the identity claim; or there is somehow a real distinction which must be
explained without denying true identity statements. The author opts for
the latter alternative. And his theories of existence and predication follow
upon this option.
He distinguishes between formal identities, those of the form A=A, and
material identities, those of the form A=B, urging that the latter are
paradigmatic and the former degenerate expressions. In order to sustain
his option and the division of identities into formal and material he adopts
an ontology of entities and objects. According to the author, a thing is
an entity, a reale, in terms of the limits of its identifiability. All real things
can be indefinitely identified by means of true material identity claims.
(The converse, that all indefinitely identifiable things are real, is more
difficult to establish inasmuch as fictitious entities also seem indefinitely
identifiable.)
By contrast an object, which is logically prior to an entity, is anything
that may be referred to, singled out for attention, classified, or subsumed
under a concept. Thus while many objects are also entities, many are not.
Although the author refrains from a Meinongian adoption of impossibilia,
many merely intentional objects are permitted ontological status of a sort.
The explanation of the puzzle about the Morning Star's being identical
with the Evening Star despite the apparent difference is found by interpreting material identity statements as being about one entity and at the
same time about two objects both of which are that entity. Thus the
apparent distinctness in a true material identity claim is founded in a
real distinctness in the objects which serve as its terms, while the identity
truly affirmed is founded on the fact that the two really distinct objects

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are but a single entity; in the case of the Morning and Evening Stars, the
two objects are the one planet Venus.
The distinction made by the author between object and entity, however,
is one which the reviewer questions. Two theses of the author give rise
to this query. (1) "The apparent distinctness of material identicals is
simply their real distinction as objects " (p. 44) . (2) " The distinction
between objects and entities is not a real distinction, a distinction between
classes of things, but a distinction of reason, a distinction due solely to the
application of concepts " (p. 45). Now, if both (1) and (2) obtain, we
would be saying that, while object A differs only in reason from entity B
and entity B differs only in reason from object C in a true material identity
statement of the form A=C, the difference between A and C themselves
is not rational but real. Whence arises this real distinction? If A and C
differ from B only in reason, how do they differ from each other except in
reason? And if A and C are identical with B in fact, how are they not
identical with each other in fact?
The difficulty would appear to be that a real difference, a difference of
the type usually invoked in the case of real entities, is what is claimed
oii behalf of objects which are logically prior to real entities and which
do not differ really from the entities to which they point as objects. Would
this not be, however, to enshrine these supposed objects as entities, terms
of real identity and diversity? And would we not also be obliged to conclude from such enshrinement that, contrary to (2) , the distinction between objects and entities was a distinction between two sorts of entities,
that is, a real distinction? If so, then the author's proto-metaphysics and
the theory of redication resting upon it would be altered in their most
fundamental aspects.
On the other hand, would not an effort on the author's part to maintain
that the distinction between objects and entities is merely rational imply
that a merely rational distinction existed between two appropriate objects?
If so, then the author would be driven back to the first of the two alternative approaches to solving the problem, the one he has eschewed: that
the appearance of distinctness is a mere appearance to be explained away,
And this would be sufficient to render much of the rest of the protometaphysics unsound.
NICHOLAS INGHAM,

Providence College
Providence, R.l.

O.P.

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161

The Will. By BRIAN O'SHAUGHNESSY. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1980. Vol. I: pp. lxvi
+ 368; $6!2.50.

+ 259; $57.50. Vol. 2: pp. xxiii

Recent analytical philosophers have been reluctant to talk about the
will as such. Nor have they favored philosophy of mind which begins
from the consciousness of subjects. Their questions have been largely
about behavior and the grounds which it provides for the ascription of
psychological states. Brian O'Shaughnessy's book is therefore refreshingly
unusual. It is certainly analytical, but it moves 'from-within-to-without '
and is much concerned to insist on the reality of the will as " a forceladen psychological item that is altogether different from a mode of consciousness: a sui generis irreducible psychological phenomenon that is
literally as old as the hills" (Vol. I, p. !xiii). William, says O'Shaughnessy,
" is spirit in motion " (Vol. I, p. Ii).
Now all that may sound like Cartesian Dualism; but O'Shaughnessy is
certainly not defending any general and sharp dichotomy between mind
and body. He is actually offering ' a dual-aspect theory' of bodily actions,
according to which voluntary actions can be viewed as both physical and
psychological. In O'Shaughnessy's view, all physical actions are identical
with some striving or other; but this does not mean either that tryings
are purely mental or that physical actions are nothing but biological events.
We have, says O'Shaughnessy, " absolutely no choice but to opt for this
thesis: that in some sui generis and non-stipulative sense of ' psychological ', physical actions rate as psychological " (Vol. 2, p. 137) . He therefore distinguishes between " the merely psychological and the properly
mental sub-sector of the psychological "-i.e., "between the non-mental
psychological and the mental psychological " (Vol. 2, p. 138) . And this
distinction entails a denial of the view according to which we move voluntarily by virtue of psychological events set in an ' inner world ' which cause
physical activity. According to O'Shaughnessy, neither dualistic nor materialistic theories do justice to the nature of voluntary action. We need
an account which can somehow allow for both the mental and the physical
elements which together constitute an action as voluntary.
O'Shaughnessy's book is a long and complex thing with which it is impossible to deal adequately in the space of a book review. One can, however, stress that the quality of its argument is extremely high and that
the book as a whole is very impressive. Its chief value lies, I should say,
in its detailed treatment of a large range of issues relevant to its subject
matter, and in its sophisticated efforts to handle these in a way that strikes
a credible balance between competing views which fail to recognize both
the mental and the physical nature of bodily action. Deep reflection on
voluntary action calls for rigorous discussion of numerous problems, and

162

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O'Shaughnessy shows himself keenly aware of the fact. He also shows why
one should deny that voluntary actions are either wholly incorporeal or
irreducibly physical.
In short, then, The Will is a text to be warmly recommended. In its
current form it is wildly expensive; so we must hope for a cheaper edition
as soon as possible.
BRIAN DAVIES,

Blackfriars
Oxford, England

O.P.

BOOKS RECEIVED
L'Age d'homme: Meditations Kantiennes by Philibert Secretan. Pp. 204;
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Catholic University of America Press: Ethica Thomistica: The Moral Philosophy of Thomas Aquinas by Ralph Mclnerny. Pp. 129; $8.95.
The Three-Personed God by William J. Hill, O.P. Pp. 354; $37.95.
Delacroix: Womanhood by Raoul Mortley. Pp. 119; $14.50 (Australia).
Desclee-Bellarmin: Problemes et perspectives de theologie fondamentale
edited by Rene Latourelle and Gerald O'Collins. Recherches theologie 28. Pp. 482; $20.
Fortress Press: Beyond Dialogue: Toward a Mutual Transformation of
Christianity and Buddhism by John B. Cobb, Jr. Pp. 176; $8.95.
Christian Theology: An Introduction to its Traditions and Tasks
edited by Peter C. Hodgson and Robert H. King. Pp. 368; $15.95.
Faith and the Mystery of God by Maurice Wiles. Pp. 160; $6.95.
Metaphorical Theology by Sallie McFague. Pp. 240; $11.95.
University of Fribourg: La Fondazione Teologica della Legge Naturale
nello Scriptum super Sententias di San Tormnaso d'Aquino by Angelo
Scola. Studia Friburgensia, N.S. 60. Pp. 298; Fr. 55.
Matthias Grunewald-Verlag: Unfehlbarkeit und Geschichte by Ulrich
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Hackett Publishing Company: Hippias Major by Plato, translated with
commentary and essay by Paul Woodruff. Pp. 232; $19.50. A
Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge by George
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Harvard University Press: Wittgenstein on Rules and Private La:nguage
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Holmes & Meier: The Secular Mind: Transformation of Faith in Modern

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Europe. Essays Presented to Franklin L. Baumer. Edited by W.
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University of Iowa: Interpreting Kant edited with an Introduction by
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Maggioli: La Scienza degli Occamisti by Francesco Bottin. Studi di filosofia e di storia della filosofia 4. Pp. 362; no price given.
University of Minnesota: Consequences of Pragmatism by Richard Rorty.
Pp. 237; $29.50 cloth, $11.95 paper. The Foundations of Knowing by
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Universidad de Navarra: Los Lugares Teologicos de Melchior Cano en los
Commentarios a la Suma by Juan Belda Plans. Pp. 897; no price
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Paulist Press: Problems and l'm·spectives of Fundamental Theology edited
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Pilgrim Press: Rational Theology and the Creativity of God by Keith
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Prentice-Hall: Political Philosophy: A History of the Search for Order by
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Sheed & Ward: Introductory Theology by Zoltan Alszeghy and Maurizio
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Scholars Press: Lonergan W orlcshop Vol. III edited by Fred Lawrence. Pp.
199; no price given.
St. Benno-Verlag: Glaube, Werke und Sakramente in Dienste de Rechtfertigung in den Schriften von Berthold Pilrstinger by Gerhard Marx.
Erfurter Theologische Studien 45. Pp. 570; no price given.
State University of New York: The Spirit of American Philosophy by John
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University Press of America: On to the World of Freedom by Francisco
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Language and Meaning by James F. Brown. Pp. 280; $24 cloth,
$11.75 paper.
Westminster Press: God Has llfony Names by John Hick. Pp. 144; $7.95.
Reality and Evangelical Theology by T. F. Torrance. Pp. 168;
$8.95. Theological and Philosophical Inquiry: An Introduction by
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