YVES CONGAR: A LIFE FOR THE TRUTH*

(

FOR THE TRUTH "-this is the subtitle of
a book by Jean Puyo (Jean Puyo interroge le Pere
Congar, Paris, 1975) in which he publishes a series
of conversations, in the course of which Father Cougar speaks
of himself, explains the choices that he has made and provides
a context for his work.
" A life ... "-an existence unified by an interior drive that
is ceaselessly reactualized, without breaks or turning back,
without discontinuity; despite the variety of activities and
publications, a single furrow that has always been patiently
plowed. To speak of a life is above all to speak of a heart in
the biblical sense of the term. As unassuming as he may be,
Father Cougar has nonetheless disclosed here and there a few
aspects of his spirituality by evoking the thanksgiving of the
Per ipsum, which dominates his prayer, as well as his familiarity with the psalms and his love of the liturgy.
A life, if it is profound, is never without trials. There is no
easy life except one that is removed from reality. As far as
Father Cougar is concerned, at least a few of his trials are quite
well known-his imprisonment during World War II, the suspicion that he came under from his brothers in the faith, his
exile, and his inexorable illness. These things he speaks of
without making much of them, and he does not like attention
to be drawn to them.
A life is also a question of activity. What more fruitful activity than his! Intimately linked to a regular teaching assignment (at the Saulchoir, both at Kain and at Etiolles, from
1931 to 1939 and from 1945 to 1954), to speaking engagements, to participation in conciliar commissions, his consider*Editor's note: This sketch of Father Congar is a slightly revised version
of an article which appeared in Ohoisir ( 1980). The translation is by Boniface Ramsey, O.P.

505

506

ANDRE DUVAL, O.P.

able written output (his bibliography, from 1924 to 1984, lists
about 1500 titles) is the result of a labor ceaselessly pursued
with a perseverance that has triumphed over sickness rather
than letting itself be determined by it. If theology is a profession, the vast number of his publications proceeds to a great
degree from a rigorous professional awareness, which demands
that what has been begun must be seen through to the end,
thait a file that has been newly opened must be permitted to
yield some conclusions. Not to lose a minute of the time that
God has given, to work as hard as one's strength allows-all
of this gives this religious the right to speak realistically of
the vow of poverty.
" A life for ... the truth." What verb is missing here? A
life for the sake of defending the truth? For the sake of researching it? For the sake of receiving it?
Def ending it? The critical manner in which Father Congar
taught apologetics at the beginning of his professional career
could not but immunize him further against a form of combative intellectuality that was not to his taste in the first place.
In such a large corpus are there not at least a few lines of
polemic? And what has he not done, on the contrary, for the
sake of opening up Catholic theology to ecumenical dialogue?
Nor is he one of those who make of research as such an end
in itself, preferable to contemplative possession. Father Congar
is a man who was born with certitudes and who lives with
certitudes. In his case the critical function of the theologian
has always been exercised within a receiving of, an assimilation
of, an intimate harmony with the datum of the faith. For him
the truth is received from the hand of God and from the hands
of his fellow human beings, in a fraternal communion with
all believers, those of yesterday and those from before then,
going back to the Apostles and as far as Abraham, and with
those of today as well-in that receptive and critical attention
to the research and the thought of others, borne witness to by
hundreds and hundreds of book reviews.
Receiving the truth? Yes, but also being at its service by ex-

YVES CONGAR: A LIFE FOR THE TRUTH

507

ploring its demands, by making it develop its fruits, by preparing a way for it.
"A life for the truth." Isn't the word " truth " too abstract,
too atemporal? To say that for Father Congar the truth wears
concretely the face of Jesus Christ is not false, to be sure, but
it is not typical of him. For him the truth is rather like a place,
a homeland, or perhaps a patrimony-the patrimony of a people, the people of God.
If he likes to use the words of Madame Swetchine-" I have
loved the truth as one loves a person "-it is because for him
the truth is the Church of God.
To quote him: " As for me, I live in the Church." "I am
the Church, I love the Church .... I am a man rooted in it."
"This Church that I love." "The Church of God, my mother."
Let us say then: " A life for the truth of the Church of
God "-for the sake of receiving, deepening, casting light upon
the truth that the Church transmits ("If the Church had not
existed for twenty centuries, would we have the Gospel today?"), for the sake of the truth of the life of the people of
God and of the Church's institutions. Here one touches the
point of convergence of the works of the theologian and the
apostolic intensity of the Friar Preacher.
Father Congar likes to repeat the saying: "Everything begins with the seed." Two reminiscences from his youth tell us
what he means when he says: "' As for me, I live in the
Church." At Sedan, under the moral oppression of the German occupation of Alsace-Lorraine during World War I, the
parish church seemed to him to be " the only free place." In
his mother's library he discovered and read Clerissac's Mystere
de l' Eglise. Two seeds had already been sown; their fruitfulness did not cease developing for more than a half-century. J.t
was in the heart of the local Christian community that the
young Congar experienced the feeling of finding himself in his
human dignity; he had already seen the Church as a place
where people were brought together, as a sign of the freedom
that all are called to rediscover in the friendship of God. From
the time of his adolescence on, Clerissac also revealed to him

508

ANDRE

nuv AL, o.P.

the Church as mystery, as a reality whose most important
aspect is invisible, and he saw the Church as a gift of God, as
the active presence of Jesus Christ, whose body it is. Clerissac
may have been unfamiliar reading to most boys of Congar's
age, but he familiarized Congar with the ideas that he would
find later again as part of the Dominican theological tradition.
The Esquisses du mystere de l'Eglise of 1941, along with Pius
XII's encyclical Mystici Corporis of 1943, were a remote preparation for Lumen Gen.tium of Vatican II.
A few titles indicate the progress of his development. In
1935, as a young professor at the Saulchoir, Father Congar
edited the theological conclusion of an investigation conducted
by Vie intellectu'elle on the reasons for contemporary unbelief.
A bad image of the Church, too often considered exclusively as
a juridical authoritarian institution, was not the least significant issue that this analysis illuminated. This perception
brought about a resolution of great importance, namely the
decision to start a scientific collection in which historical research and reflection on the faith would contribute to the renewal of ecclesiology. Inaugurated in 1937, Unam sanctam,
which almost at once published Father de Lubac's Catholicisme
and a little later Father de Montcheuil's Aspects de l'Eglise,
can today count about eighty volumes; more than twenty commentaries on the documents of Vatican II can be found among
them.
desunis, the first title in the collection, was at one
and the same time the attainment of a goal and a point of departure. It marked Father Congar's penetration into an area
where, up until then, few Catholic theologians had dared to
venture. How did he get there? He himself has recounted the
beginning and the difficult progress of his ecumenical vocation
from the time of his " call," which he became aware of during
his preparation for ordination. to the priesthood in February
1929. He has spoken of his careful attention to persons and to
movements, his personal relationships in the different
Churches, the fruitfulness of his discovery of the great theologians of the nineteenth century, like Moehler, and of the

YVES CONGAR: A LIFE FOR THE TRUTH

509

twentieth, like Karl Barth. Some conferences at the Basilica
of Sa.ere Coeur on Montmartre for the Unity Octave in January 1936 were the occasion for him to assemble his research
and to define the " principles of a Catholic ecumenism."
Chretiens desunis is the outcome of that reflection. Father
Congar is one of those whom we have to thank for the fa.ct
that ecumenism has become less and less the somewhat dangerous specialty of only a few and that it has become, rather,
a dimension of theology and a permanent pastoral concern.
Tracing out one of the paths that would lead to the founding
of the Secretariat for Christian Unity in 1960, Chretien.!!
desunis was in that sense a point of departure. But it was such
in another sense as well, inasmuch as for the author it inaugurated a period of suspicion that would endure up until the
eve of Vatican II.
In glancing over Father Cougar's bibliography for the years
that immediately follow his imprisonment in Germany (19401944), one is struck by the amount of notes published in the
weekly Temoignage chretien; there were twenty-five in 1946,
thirteen in 1947, and so on. In this exceptional, to quote him,
" ecclesial climate of freedom rediscovered, . . . of a marvelous
creation on the pastoral level," Father Congar made an effort
to stay in contact with the Christian people whose life is the
proper object of the historical investigations and of the theological enterprise which resulted in two great works-Vraie et
fausse
dans l'Eglise (1950) and Jalons pour une
theologie du lafoat (1953). Numerous themes and orientations
from here would reappear in the documents of Vatican II.
But the Council had not yet occurred, despite the need for
it! In addition to the annoyances and vexations to which the
Dominican theologian was subject for a number of years from
the Roman authorities, in February 1954, in the midst of
the worker-priest affair, still more spectacular measures were
taken against him. He was forbidden to teach and underwent
an exile for several months in Jerusalem, Rome and Cambridge, before being given a fixed assignment at Strasbourg
from 1956 to 1968. These "dark years" were a time of pa-

ANDRE DUVAt., o.P.

tience--of that " active patience " about which Father Congar
has written so beautifully in Chretiens en di<iiogue (Paris,
1964, pp. lvi-lvii). Some valuable writings came from thisLe Mystere du Temple (1958), in which ecclesiology explores
its biblical roots, and La Tradition et les traditions (1960,
1963), which represented research done before the Council was
announced in January 1959 but which found stimulation and
additional topical value in the Council's having been called.
The Council? For Father Congar it was a time of spiritual
and intellectual mobilization. He believed too much in the
Holy Spirit to dismiss the possibilities of participation that
were offered to him, as limited as they may have seemed at the
beginning. Was it not, as he asked, "more true to be within
and to work there than to criticize from without? " Little by
little he came to be deeply engaged in the preparation of some
of the most important texts-Lumen Gentium, especially the
second chapter on the people of God, and the documents on
revelation, on the Church in the modern world, on ecumenism,
on religious liberty, on the missions and on the priestly
ministry.
The bibliography of the sixties bears witness throughout to
the same intense labor. On the scientific level it was a question of setting up files to justify the directions proposed in the
conciliar commissions. On another level it was a question of
associating the Christian people with the event that was taking place, of making them grasp what was happening, of explaining the decisions and of preparing to carry them out. Is
not the "reception" of a council as important as its having
been convoked?
The sunny days following Vatican II passed quickly by,
and now we are more than ever in the midst of the storm. Although limited in his ability to move about and to make contacts by reason of an illness that he had previously suffered
from but that was aggravated since 1967, Father Congar continues to take part actively in the work of the International
Theological Commission, of which he has been a member since

YVES CONGAR: A LIFE FOR THE TRUTH

511

its founding in 1969, to participate in colloquiums, to give conferences. In so doing, his intention has not been to portray
himself as an outside witness in the face of the conditions in
which the Church must today confront its future, even if he
speaks as one who is able to claim a special position on account
of his long experience. His place on the editorial board of
Corwilium is a sign of his willingness to associate himself with
the most recent theological research.
Real understanding of what one lives through is only possible to a person who is capable of locating the present in the
flow of what has come before. " Everything is historical," says
Father Congar. It is this perception which underlies the works
of the history of ecclesiology to which he has devoted the past
few years. It was following the historical method, applied to
the development of an article of faith, that he pursued the last
great task to which he gave himself, and which is now
finished-Je crois au Saint Esprit (Eng. trans.: I Believe in
the Holy Spirit, 3 vols., 1983). To believe in the Holy Spirit,
to believe in the Church of God: it is all one. The mystery is
scrutinized here at its roots, in response to a long-term personal
desire, namely the profound search for an encounter with the
living God. But once again it is the case that this " atemporal "
project meets up with actual life, confronting different movements of renewal, with respect to which Father Congar is
not uncritical but which he nonetheless regards with real
sympathy.
Father Congar continues to work for twelve or thirteen hours
a day, according to his gifts, his means, his vocation, which are,
as he says, those " of a Christian who prays and of a theologian
who reads a lot and who takes many notes."
Everything that Father Congar and his work stand for may
be summed up in these few words that he has spoken of himself: " For my part, I keep going so that the Church may advance."

ANDRE DuvAL, O.P.
Oouvent Baint..J acques
Paris

IMAGES OF LIBERATION:
JUSTIN, JESUS, AND THE JEWS

H

OW DO THE various things a theologian says hang
together? What sort of coherence is to be sought in
the writings of a theologian? If these questions are
asked descriptively, then the answer must be that different
theologians in different periods have achieved .coherence and
unity in quite different ways. The writings of Karl Rahner and
those of Martin Luther each come together to form comprehensive visions of the Christian life and message; yet the two
differ not just in the content of their vision, but also in the
ways the varying things each says interrelate to form coherent
unities. When we approach the writings of a theologian and
ask what sort of coherence and unity holds together the various things said, we must be open to the many forms coherence
and unity can take.
The search for coherence and unity can be specially difficult
with some of the early Fathers. If one's paradigm of theological coherence and unity is Aquinas or Schleiermacher, the writings of Justin Martyr or Ignatius of Antioch may seem to be
a welter of implausible connections and hidden contradictions.
The problem, however, might be more in the choice of paradigm than in the writings themselves. One might conclude
that Justin or Ignatius is playing Aquinas' game poorly, when
in fact they are playing a subtly different game. A mistake in
soccer is not necessarily a mistake in rugby. We may decide
that soccer is a better game than rugby, but that decision can
only be made when we see that rugby is not simply soccer
poorly played.
In this essay I will ask what unity and coherence can be
found in the statements of one patristic theologian, Justin
Martyr, on one particular topic, the redemptive significance of

5H

JUSTIN,. JESUS, AND THE JEWS

513

Jesus. My argument is that at the center 0£ Justin's understanding 0£ Jesus as savior is neither a theory nor a single controlling motif, but a set 0£ images which interpret the central
Christian narratives. These images are not deployed at random, but fall into patterns 0£ mutual interpretation. As these
patterns are laid bare, the peculiar unity and coherence 0£ what
Justin has to say on this subject will become clear.
This analysis is not disinterested. ' System ', ' theory ', and
'concept' have not been universally popular terms in modern
theology. A return to a greater concentration on image and,
more recently, on narrative has been called £or. Can contemporary theologians learn something from Justin about the possibilities and dangers 0£ a greater focus on image and narrative, especially in Christology? This essay will show that they
can, especially in connection with certain images prominent in
Justin and the New Testament and prominent again today.
The essay has three parts. In the first part, I will develop
some very formal interpretive tools with which to approach
Justin. In the second part, Justin's discussion 0£ Jesus's redemptive significance will be examined. Finally, some inherent
dangers in Justin's soteriology (and any structurally similar
one) will be examined. These dangers come to light in Justin's
harsh statements about .Jews.

I
As I have already intimated, Justin does not have a" theory

0£ atonement " 0£ an Anselmic sort. Rather, as with many
early Fathers, we meet in Justin's writings an initially bewildering variety 0£ images and metaphors that embody his interpretation 0£ Jesus. First or even second glance does not uncover any comprehensive structure organizing these images.
What is the interpreter to do in the face 0£ this variety? Simply repeating that the early Fathers were not systematic
theologians is not enough. We must ask whether apparently
divergent and merely juxtaposed statements are structured in

514

MICHAEL ROOT

ways not the less subtle for being different from those of Barth
or Calvin. But how do we dig out whatever structures of coherence might lie within Justin's discussion? We will need interpretive tools that are sufficiently formal so that they will be
open to the unexpected and yet sufficiently concrete to provide guidance.
A first step in the development of such tools is the recognition that the touchstone to which all Christian soteriologies relate is a narrative, the story of Jesus. If a soteriology does not
in some way identify that narrative or the events within it as
redemptive, the question can reasonably be raised why that
soteriology is called Christian. The next step is to ask, how
does one go about interpreting a narrative or events within it
as redemptive? One approach is to explain certain general
principles that will account for the redemptive connection between the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and the fate of
the Christian. Or one might seek to expand the story, to fill in
the background events, consequences, and inner details of the
story so that the believers can see how the story is a story of
their redemption. I would argue that most" theories of atonement" are combinations of these two approaches. One can,
however, take a quite different approach, neither expanding nor
explaining, but focussing or concentrating. For this approach,
images capable of focussing a particular understanding of the
story can be important. David Bailey Harned has argued:
"Images and stories are correlative: the latter interpret images in ways that relieve them of their ambiguities, while the
former crystalize the significance of narratives for the exercise
of the self's choice and agency." 1 A particular image, e.g.,
lamb of God, is given specificity by the full story of Jesus.
What it concretely means to be the lamb of God is spelled out
by the narrative of Jesus' passion. Conversely, the redemptive
1 Oreed and Person<,il Identity:
The Meaning of the Apostles' Oreed (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981), p. 9. A fuller discussion of image and narrative is in his Images for Self-Recognition: The Christian as Player, Sufferer,
and Vandal (New York: Seabury Press, 1977), pp. 129-163.

JESUS, AND THE JEWS

515

significance of crucial events in the story is focussed by the
image. The image points to particular contexts of interpretation (e.g., the sacrifioial cult) within which the salvific meaning of the story becomes evident. If pursued consistently, an
image or group of images may lead to the sort of expansions
or explanations of the story I described above. In many situations, however, an author may feel no need to pursue such an
expansion. The author may simply utilize the image without
explication in the confidence that the reader will grasp the interpretation crystallized in the image.
While this discussion of narrative and image is sketchy and
requires further elaboration and defense, it will suffice for our
needs. When we now approach Justin we find that his
cussions of Jesus and salvation operate with images that focus
the story rather than with larger narratives that expand it or
with principles that explain it. Many early Fathers operate in
the same way. 2 So if we are to uncover the structure of Justin's
soteriology, we must uncover the structure within or among
these images. To do this, we need an additional interpretive ·
category, that of a metaphor system.
G. B. Caird has contended that metaphors often fall into
systems. A metaphor system is " a group of metaphors linked
together by their common origin in a single area of human observation, experience or activity, which has generated its own
peculiar sub-language or jargon." 3 An example would be use
of the jargon of sports to discuss politics. When the metaphor
systems at work in a particular text are brought to light, we
can better grasp the interplay among images within a system
and the possible interplay among systems.
Although Justin's images are not metaphors in the strict
2 See H. E. W. Turner, The Patristic Doctrine of Redemption: A Study of
the Development of Doctrine During the First Five Oenturies (London: A. R.
Mowbray, 1952), p. 26, and Hastings Rashdall, The Idea of Atonement in
Ohristian Theology (London: Macmillan, 1919), p. 173.
Westminster ..
s The Language and Imagery of the Bible (Philadelphia:
1980)' p. 155.

516

MICHAEL ROOT

sense,4 they are like metaphors in implying an interpretation
by linking the story of Jesus with a particular interpretive
context. We can thus ask, do Justin's images fall into systems
of the sort Caird describes? That question can only be answered, of course, by looking at Justin's writings.

II
When we look at the images Justin uses to express the significance of Jesus we find that they fall into three large groups
or systems. First, Jesus is pictured as a teacher, the one who
brings "an eternal and final law" (Dial 11,2) .5 Second, Jesus
is pictured by images drawn from armed struggle and conquest. He is the one who has liberated humanity by defeating
the demons that hold us captive. The third group is not quite
a metaphor system in Caird's sense. The images do not come
from "a single area of human observation, experience, or activity," nor do they so clearly indicate a particular context of
interpretation. Rather, this group is made up of a significant
number of remarks about the saving power of Jesus' death and
of the blood shed on the cross. As will be seen, this third group
is the hardest one to fit within the structure of Justin's thought.
While these three groups can be distinguished in Justin's
writings, they are not merely juxtaposed there. The groups
interrelate in complex ways. The most obvious connection is
the way Justin uses images of Jesus as teacher to interpret images of Jesus as conqueror of the demons. Central to the
human predicament for Justin is the power over humanity held
4 Justin's
images are not metaphors since they are to be taken literally.
(See Caird, pp. 66ff.) Jesus is not like a conqueror; he is a conqueror.
5 References are only to the commonly accepted extant works, the First and
Second Apologies (I Ap and II Ap) and the Dialogue with Trypho. The text
used is that of J. C. T. Otto, S. Justini Philosophi et Marturis Opera (Jena:
F. Manke, 1847), with paragraph divisions taken from Die iiltesten Apolo·
geten, ed. Edgar J. Goodspeed (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1914).
The English translation cited is by Marcus Dodds, George Rieth, and B. P.
Pratten in The Ante-Nicene Christian Library, Vol. 2 (Ellinburgh: T. and
T. Clark, 1867).

JUSTIN,. JESUS, AND THE JEWS

517

by the fallen angels and demons, descendants of the illicit
unions described in Genesis 6 between angels and human
women.6 But how do the demons hold this power over humanity? Justin states that following the fall of the angels and the
birth of· the demons
... they afterwards subdued the human race to themselves, partly
by magical writings, and partly by fears and punishments they occasioned, and partly by teaching them to offer sacrifices, and incense, and libations, of which things they [i.e., the fallen angels]
stood in need after they were enslaved by lustful passions . . .
(II Ap 5,4).

Note that the hold demons have on humanity is a mental
hold. 7 Not only does it originate in deception, but also its continuing existence is dependent on the preservation of deception, as can be seen in the way the demons respond to the
prophecies of Christ. They invent new deceptions to confuse
humanity about the identity and uniqueness of Jesus (I Ap
54). For Justin, the crucial human problem is that humans
are dupes. They are held captive by lies, not force.
Yet if dupes, then are they morally accountable for their
bondage? Justin's answer is ambiguous. On the one hand, he
clearly asserts that in principle humans, as free rather than
fated beings, are morally responsible. He is adamant in his support of free will and his opposition to notions of fate (II Ap
7,3). He explicitly draws the conclusion that only because
s The role of the demons in Justin's understanding of the human problem
is well described in Henry Chadwick, "Justin Martyr's Defense of Christianity," Bulletin of the .Tohn Rylands Library, 47 ( 1965), 288. See also
L. W. Barnard, Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 107 and Erwin R. Goodenough, The
Theology of Justin Martyr: An Investigation in the Conceptions of Jj]arly
Christian Literature and its Hellenistic and Judaistic Influences (Jena,
1923; rpt. Amsterdam: Philo Press, 1968), p. 231. I agree with Eric Osborn,
Justin Martyr, Beitrage, zur historischen Theologie, 47 (Tiibingen: J. C. B.
Mohr, Paul Siebeck, 1973), p. 57, that there is no significant difference in the
demonology of Justin's various writings. What minor differences there may
be do not affect the analysis of this essay.
1 On the role of false teaching
in the demons' hold over .humanity, see
Asborn, pp. 58£., and Goodenough, p. 202.

518

MICHAEL ROOT

our acts are free can they be either praiseworthy or blameworthy (I Ap 43). Thus, those who will suffer for their sins
will suffer justly (II Ap 7, 5-6). Nor does Justin seem to hold
that this freedom was lost in a primeval fall. Although he
speaks of " ... the human race, which from Adam had fallen
under the power of death and the guile of the serpent," he immediately adds," ... and each one of which had committed personal transgression (1Tapa 1"r1v lSul.v eKao-rov avrwv 1TOV7Jpwo-a
µhov, Dial 88,4) ." 8
On the other hand, however, it is not clear that Justin holds
the mass of humanity, at least prior to the incarnation, accountable in practice for its state. Though he rejects fate,
Justin does contend that in a post-fall world the sinner's captivity to demons is well nigh inevitable. In discussing why
Christians baptize, he states:
... we have learned from the apostles this reason. Since at our
birth we were born without our knowledge or choice, by our parents
coming together, and were brought up in bad habits and wicked
training (iv Uhai cf>avAois Kat 'll"WfJpa'i> avaaTpocf>a'i>]; [we baptize] in
order that we may not remain the children of necessity and of
.., ayvoias
• , p,evwp,w
,
) , bu t may become
.
(µ:q' avayK'Y)>
, ,
,
TeKva
fl-'YJO€
ignorance
the children of choice and knowledge (7rpoatpea€ws Kat
•••
(I Ap 61, 10).

The demons' hold over the human mind is realized in a conditioning from childhood that the sinner cannot break. Now
vice "leads captive earthly-minded men (SovAayooyei
TWV av0po)1T<.t>V)" (II Ap 11,7) . Those held in this
way are less condemned by Justin than pitied. He concludes a
comparison of Jesus' life with the immoral escapades of the
Greek gods with the comment: " Those who believe these
things we pity (eAeOiJµ,ev), and those who invented them we
know to be devils" (I Ap 25,3). This passage is typical of
s On the continuing freedom of mankind, even under the demons, see Goode·
nough, p. 231, and Adolf Harnack, History of Dogma, Vol. 2, trans. Neil
Buchanan, Theological Translation Library, 7 (London: Williams and Norgate, 1896), p. 216, n. 2.

JUSTIN,; JESUS, AND THE JEWS

Justin's attitude to pre-incarnation
goes so far as to conclude:

paganism.

519
Goodenough

Here [in the demons] is the cause of all sin. God made man of
such a nature that he would normally have chosen the right, and
lived by the guidance of the Logos fragment within him. But even
if one does choose so to live, he cannot long unassisted continue to
act in a way pleasing to God. The demons are so powerful in their
seductiveness that they must be destroyed, or man must be
equipped with power greater than he normally has, if he is not
sooner or later to become their victim.9
At least prior to Christ, bondage to demons is more an evil
humanity undergoes than an evil it performs. 10
If the human predicament is a function of being duped by
the false teaching of the demons, Jesus liberates from the
demons precisely through his true teaching. In Dialogue 83,4,
Justin interprets the scepter in Psalm 110: 2 with which the
Lord will rule over his foes as ". . . the word of calling and
for all nations over which demons held sway."
This scepter of his teaching leads people away from the falsehoods with which the demons bound them. " And His strong
word has prevailed on many to forsake the demons whom they
used to serve, and by means of it to believe in the Almighty
God." Another Old Testament passage, Psalm 68: 18, is treated
similarly: ". . . it was prophesied that, after the ascent of
Christ to heaven, He would deliver ( aixµ,aAwTeveai) us from
error and give us gifts. The words are these: ' He ascended up
on high; He led captivity captive; He gave gifts to men.'"
(Dial 39,4) . The verb aixµ,aAwTevw, with its strong connotations of battle and wartime captivity, is applied to deliverance by Jesus from error. What we have here is one image
9 Goodenough,

p. 252. See also Harnack, pp. 226f.
distinction is developed by David Kelsey, "Struggling Colleg1ally to
Think about Evil: An Interpretive Essay," Oooasionai Papers, Institute for
Ecumenical and Cultural Research (Collegeville, Minnesota), 16 (Sept.,
1981). The lack of emphasis in Justin's writings on responsibility for following the demons prior to Jesus is reinforced by his use of Genesis 6 as a story
of the entrance of evil into the world. See II A.p 5.
10 This

520

MICHAEL ROOT

system, Jesus as teacher, interpreting another, Jesus as conqueror of the demons. Jesus frees from the demons by bringing the true teaching that liberates us from their falsehoods.
That for Justin Jesus liberates by teaching is not a new insight. Harnack made a similar observation in the nineteenth
century. 11 A further nuance in Justin's position is missed, however, if one thinks he is playing Anselm's game. If one thinks
Justin is spelling out in a halting, haphazard way a. theory of
atonement, one will conclude from the preceding discussion that
Justin is constructing an early example of a moral influence
theory. 12 But Justin is not involved in theory construction.
He is engaged in a different sort of interpretive procedure,
whereby theological assertions are made and arguments won
through the interplay of images that color each other and collectively interpret the story of Jesus. If we do not look for
comprehensive theories but for the patterns by which images
and the systems they form interact, we will see that not only
does the teacher system interpret the conquest system, but also
connotations from the latter color the former. This reverse interpretation can become visible when we ask why is Jesus'
teaching able to liberate from the duplicity of the demons?
Certainly part of the reason Justin gives has to do with the
presence in Jesus of the fullness of the Logos, lacked by earlier
teachers, and with the prophecies Jesus fulfills that indicate to
all humanity his special status. 13 Yet there are also other reasons, reasons that have to do with power. Jesus confuted the
Pharisees by " the power of his strong word " (Dial 102,5) .
This is not merely an odd turn of phrase. At the end of the
story of his conversion in the early chapters of the Dialogue,
Justin commends " ... the words of the Savior. For they
possess a terrible power in themselves
yd-p n
ev
and are sufficient to inspire those who turn aside from
the path of rectitude with awe " (Dial 8,2) . In the next
11 Harnack,

p. 185.
p. 200, comes close to interpreting Justin in this way.
13 These two aspects are discussed in Harnack, pp. 184, 219f.
12 Rashdall,

JUSTIN,. JESUS, AND THE JEWS

521

chapter he refers to these words as ". . . filled with the spirit
of God and big with power
'TTVEvµ,aroi; 0Efov Kat Svvaµ,Ei
f3pvovcri)" (Dial 9,1) . One of the reasons the words of Jesus
can break through the deception of the demons is the power
they contain.
The connections in Justin's thought among truth, power,
and Jesus are complex. Jesus as the incarnate power of God is
an important theme in Justin's Christology. 14 In Justin's
epistemology ultimate truth is beyond proof. The prophets
witness to " the truth above all demonstration (avwrf.pw 7Ta<T'Y}'>
a7To8EigEwi;)" (Dial 7,2). For such a scheme, the power to convince is finally not located in arguments, but in the truth,
which precisely as truth contains power. 15
The goals of this essay do not require a full mapping out of
these connections. What is important is the shift in meaning
such terms go through when they are used in the context of
the liberation of humanity from the demons. The power of
Jesus's words provides a point of contact between Jesus as
teacher and Jesus as conqueror. This contact is made when
Justin speaks of the power of Jesus's words being directed not
just toward humanity, sweeping clean their hearts and minds
of lies, but also toward the demons themselves. In this context the idea of power is not explicated in terms of illumination
but in straight-forward terms of struggle and defeat, especially
in the context of exorcism in the name of Jesus. The name
Jesus is "the name of power." This name is so captivating
that in I Samuel 6, when the Philistines sent back the ark of
the covenant on a cart, the cows pulling it go to the fields of
a man named Joshua (i.e., Jesus). The power of the name
draws them (Dial 132,8). The power of this name is what
conquers the demons. "For we call him [i.e., Jesus] helper
il4 'See, e.g., the role of the power of God in the virgin birth, I Ap 33,4.
Power as a christological theme for Justin is explored in Jean Danielou,
Gospel Message and H ellenistia Oulture, A History of Early Christian Doctrine before the Council of Nicaea, Vol. 2, trans. John Austin Baker (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1973), pp. 164f., 350.
15 See Osborn, pp. 71£ and Chadwick, p. ll95.

MICHAEL ROOT

and redeemer, the power of his name even the demons do fear;
and at this day, when they are exorcised in the name of Jesus
Christ, crucified under Pontius Pilate, governor of Judea, they
are overcome " (Dial 30,3) .16 Exorcism by the name of Jesus
is a foretaste of the eschatological victory, when the demons
will finally be destroyed. "[This] name every power dreads,
being very much tormented, because they shall be destroyed by
him" (Dial 111,2) ,17
This power of Jesus over the demons evidenced in exorcism
through his name enters into his activity as teacher. Not only
does the power of Jesus illumine our minds and hearts, but it
also drives away the demons who continually try to block
such illumination with new deceptions and seductions. " And
though the devil is ever at hand to resist us, and anxious to
seduce all to himself, yet the Angel of God, i.e., the Power of
God sent to us through Jesus Christ, rebukes him, and he departs from us" (Dial 116,1). Thus, Jesus is not just liberator
as teacher; he is also effective teacher as liberator. He can
teach because he destroys the demons who spread falsehood.
The power to illumine is conjoined with power to destroy the
spreaders of darkness.
We do not have here a "theory of redemption" nor even
perhaps a motif in Aulen's sense. What we do have are two
image systems used in mutually interpreting ways. Jesus frees
us from demons by teaching the truth, but the power of his
teaching is bound up with his conquest of the demons who
deceive. 18 In this mutual interpretation, connotations mix and
blur. The odd reference in Dialogue 8, to the" terrible power"
of Jesus' words can be seen as just such a mixing of the connotations of teacher and liberator. Justin is not constructing a
theory of the sort one finds in Cur Deus Homo. Rather he is
also II Ap 6,6; Dial 85,2.
also II Ap 6,5; Dial 45,4; 91,4; 100,6; 125,4.
18 Thus,
to describe Justin's teaching as simply "moralistic," as done,
e.g., by R. S. Franks, The Work of Christ: A Historical Study (1918; rpt.
London: Thomas Nelson, 1962), p. 12, is to ignore a major aspect of what
Justin says.
16 See
17 See

JUSTIN, JESUS, AND THE JEWS

523

playing a literary symbolic game with its own subtlety and
coherence.
This mutually interpretive relation between images of Jesus
as conqueror and images of Jesus as teacher is aided by structural parallels between the two image systems. An image system has its own informal logic, and the informal logics of these
two systems are similar in three ways, each important for my
analysis. First, for both image systems, Jesus overcomes an obstacle external to himself (ignorance, demons) which remains
external to himself throughout the process of redemption.
Jesus does not take upon himself our ignorance and bondage.
It is hard to see how these images as Justin uses them could
interpret Jesus "made sin" for us.19 Second, both imply an
understanding of sin as a form of captivity, either to ignorance,
demons, or both. When conjoined with Justin's tendency to absolve (a.t least pre-Jesus) humanity of complicity in its plight,
this understanding reinforces the picture of evil as something
undergone by humanity, rather than something it performs or
undertakes. This similarity leads to a third. Both image systems leave unaddressed the problem of guilt, or rather, address it only by tending to dissolve it. As we will see below,
Justin is concerned with this problem, but its solution has
strikingly little to do with Jesus.
These two images systems are both examples of what we can
call liberation images. In both cases the plight of humanity is
understood as bondage and Jesus is redeemer by liberating
humanity from that bondage. Liberation images of this. sort
dominate Justin's soteriology. In the next section, I will note
some pitfalls in such a dominance. Now, however, we must
look at the third set of images that Justin uses to talk about
the redemptive significance of Jesus, images connected with the
the cross and the blood there shed.
These images do not fall into a system in Caird's sense. Un111 Note, e.g., Justin's insistence
(Dial 94,5; 96,1; 111,2) that Jesus' death
on .the tree of the cross does not imply that he himself is cursed by God, as
one might deduce from Dt. 21 :23.

524

MICHAEL ROOT

like the groups already discussed, this group does not clearly
imply a context of interpretation. Justin continually speaks of
Jesus' suffering for us on the cross and our being cleansed by
his blood without providing explanations or images: that would
clarify just how all this occurs. At times, the death of Jesus
seems to be expiatory,. along the lines of a christological reading
of Isaiah 53: " ... you had crucified him, the only blameless and
righteous man,-through whose stripes those who approach
the Father by him are healed" (Dial 17,1) .20 He is even
spoken of as taking upon himself our curses (Dial 95,2; but see
note 19) . At one point, Jesus' death is typologically connected
with the passover sacrifice: "And that lamb which was commanded to be wholly roasted was a symbol of the suffering of
the cross that Christ would undergo" (Dial 40,3) .21
Significantly, Justin also ties the cross to the conquest of
the demons. In the argument with Trypho, Justin calls attention to Exodus 17: 16 (LXX) : "For with a secret hand the
Lord wages war upon Amalek to all generations." Where was
God's hand concealed in its struggle with evil? In Jesus. "You
can perceive that the concealed power of God was in Christ
crucified, before whom demons, and all the principalities and
powers on earth, tremble " (Dial 49,8) . Earlier Justin had
referred to the power of the Father given to Jesus " ... by
v.irtue of which demons are subdued to his name and to the
dispensation (oiKovoµJ,q,) of his suffering"
(Dial 30,3) .22
Justin never spells out, however, the role of the cross in the con20 See also Dial 43,3. Yet note that in I Ap 50 Is. is cited at length, but
only to show that Jesus's rejection by the Jews and death had been foretold.
No soteriology is extracted from the text; however, compare the use of Is.
53 in Dial 13. That Jesus suffers for or on behalf of humanity, is often repeated by Justin, Dial 63,2; 95,2; 103,8; 134,5.
Justin can find types of the cross in very unlikely places, e.g., the reference to the horns of a unicorn in Dt. 33 : 17 ( LXX) . See Dial 91.
22 Daniigou, p. 165, contends that Justin
is utilizing a Jewish-Christian
typology of the cross as power. He cites his earlier discussion of this typology
in The Theology of Jewish Christianity, The Development of Christian Doctrine before the Council of Nicaea, Vol. 1, trans. John A. Baker (Chicago:
Henry Regnery, 1964), pp. 27lf.

JESUS, AND THE JEWS

525

quest of the demons nor how it relates to the power of God in
Jesus. I cannot find any coherent pattern tying together the
various things Justin says about the redemptive value of the
cross.
A similar diversity characterizes Justin's talk about the
blood of Christ. Sometimes the blood seems to be salvific by
cleansing or washing those who believe (I Ap 32,7; Dial 13,1) .23
At other times, the blood is connected with the blood on the
doorposts during the Passover which averted the Angel of
Death (Dial 40,1; 111,3). And on one occasion, his blood is
likened to the blood shed at a circumcision that seals the covenant (Dial 24,1). Again, Justin deploys a variety of images
and ideas without any apparent unifying pattern. There are,
however, connections with the idea of the power of God. On
four occasions, Justin states that Jesus's blood does not derive
from his human ancestors, but from God (I Ap 32,11; Dial
54,2; 63,2; 76,2) . On two of these occasions, Justin directly
connects the blood of Jesus with the power of God: " ... Moses
has predicted that the blood of Christ would be not of the seed
of man, but of the power of God " (Dial 54,2) . That his blood
comes from the power of God seems to be the source of its
cleansing power. In his christological explication of Genesis
49.11, Justin states: "For this 'washing his, robe in the blood
of the grape ' was predictive of the passion he was to endure,
cleansing by his blood those who believe on him. For what is
called by the Divine Spirit through the prophet ' his robe ' are
those men who believe in him in whom abideth the seed of
God, the Word. And what is spoken of as ' the blood of the
grape ' signifies that he who should appear would ha.ve blood,
though not of the seed of man, but of the power of God"
(I Ap 32,11) .24 All we have here is a juxtaposition of the
23 Justin frequently
cites Gen. 49: 11 ( " ... he shall wash his robe in wine,
and his garment in the blood of the grape.") in relation to cleansing by
Jesus's blood. See I Ap 32; Dial 54; 63,2; 76,2.
24 In the other two texts, the blood of Jesus is connected with the will of
God (Dial, 63,2) or simply with God {Dial 76,2).

526

MICHAEL ROOT

cleansing power of Jesus' blood and its derivation from the
power of God. Nevertheless, such a juxtaposition should not
be ignored, especially in a theologian such as Justin. There
certainly appears here to be a connection, however unexplicated, between the two ideas.
On Justin's discussions of the cross and blood of Christ, my
conclusions are similar to those of other commentators. 25
Justin says a variety of things about the cross and the blood,
but it remains unclear how they hang together or how they fit
into the wider pattern of this theology. The sort of pattern of
mutual interpretation evident in the image systems of conqueror and teacher is not evident here.
Two further comments, however, need to be made. First,
the most promising link within Justin's discussion of cross and
blood is the connection with the power of God. This link also
pulls these images into the picture of Jesus as liberator. The
cross and the blood of Jesus as embodiments of the power of
God come to be interpreted in the context of Jesus as liberator
from the demons and from whatever stains us. They are pulled
away from what would appear in the history of theology to be
their more natural interpretive context, the picture of Jesus
as reconciler. Liberation and reconciliation can be contrasted
in terms of the sort of evil each addresses. 26 Liberation is concerned with evil as bondage to a power that holds one captive,
an evil one undergoes rather than undertakes, suffers rather
than performs. Reconciliation addresses an evil one has oneself undertaken and performed and not merely suffered or undergone, an evil that is a guilt and not a bondage. Reconciliation in this sense does not play a determinative role in Justin's
picture of the work of Jesus. As shown above, Justin tends to
depict evil prior to Jesus as a bondage humanity has suffered.
The dominance of liberation images in Justin's soteriology
25 See, e.g.,

Barnard, pp. 123f.
distinction between liberation and reconciliation is developed in my
"Dying' He Lives: Biblical Image, Biblical Narrative, and the Redemptive
Jesus," Semeia, forthcoming.
·
2a This

JUSTIN,. JESUS, AND Ttt'.E JEWS

meshes with his picture of the human predicament. Justin uses
reconciliation images already in the tradition, but they remain
for the most part unintegrated into the wider patterns within
his writings. They are integrated only when connections can
be made that reinterpret the images in the direction of Jesus
as liberator. The pattern of liberation images remains at the
center of Justin's theology.
Second, to the degree that reconciliation does find a place
in Justin's theology, it is not so much a work of Jesus as of the
Christian's repentance and baptism. The Christian receives the
forgiveness of sins in baptism. 27 Justin describes baptism as
"this laver of repentence and knowledge of God" (roil
A.oVTpov ...
p,eTavo[ac; Kat
yvwcrewc;; Dial 14,1) . In the extended discussion of baptism in I Apology 61, Justin again
calls baptism " illumination" (cpwncrµ,oc;) and states that the
name of God the Father " is pronounced over him who chooses
to be born again and has repented of his sins" (61,10). Justin
habitually connects baptism with repentance: the redeemed
are the baptized who have repented. 28 He will even on occasion attribute redemption to repentance without explicit reference to baptism. 29 Of particular interest here is the last argument Justin makes against Trypho. In response to the anticipated objection that the wicked are not responsible for their
21 See I Ap 61,10. In Dial 54,1, Justin does refer to receiving remission of
sins (
aµapT1cpv) through the blood of Christ without any reference to baptism. Dial 13,1 implicitly connects baptism with faith in the blood
of Christ, but the nature of the connection remains unclear and Dial 14,1-2 dis·
cusses the purifying power of baptism without reference to Jesus. I Ap 32,7
speaks of being washed in Jesus' blood without reference to baptism. That
the power of baptism is in some way tied to Jesus is clear from Dial 86,6
" ... our Christ, by being crucified on the tree and by purifying with water,
has redeemed us," but that way is not spelled· out, particularly in relation to
the repentance baptism demands.
28 E.g., " ... by water, faith, and wood, those who are aforeprepared
and
who repent of the sins which they have committed, shall escape from the im·
pending judgment of God." (Dial 138,3).
29 E.g., "But the Gentiles, who have believed on him and have repented of
the sins which they have committed, they shall receive the inheritance along
with the patriarchs and the prophets, . , . (Dial 26,1).

528

MICHAEL ROOT

wickedness, he reverts to his general principle that angels and
humans both sin freely. They are guilty not only of falling into
sin but also of remaining there, since they always could have
repented.
So that if they repent, all who wish for it can obtain mercy from
God: and the Scripture foretells that they shall be blessed saying,
'Blessed is the man to whom the Lord imputeth not sin;' that is,
having repented of his sins, that he may receive remission (MmJ'LV)
of them from God (Dial 141,2).

The example of David is cited, who was forgiven of his sin in
relation to Uriah only when he repented with mourning and
weeping. The content and context of this discussion make clear
that repentance alone, without baptism, is being spoken of.
Repentance brings forgiveness, without reference to baptism or
Jesus.
In addition, on at least one occasion repentance is seen as
the means of reconciliation for those who apostasize after
baptism. In Dialogue 47, Trypho asks Justin about Christians
who keep the Law. In the middle of a surprisingly qualified response, Justin states: " And I hold further that such as have
confessed and known this man to be Christ, yet who have gone
back from some cause to the legal dispensation and have
denied that this man is Christ and have repented not before
death, shall by no means be saved" (Dial 47,4). The obvious
implication is that those who do repent can be saved. Repentance is the means by which the sin is forgiven.
Of course, we should not treat these sentences as the summation of Justin's thought on the subject. Nevertheless, they
do point to a basic pattern. Despite the occasional references
to forgiveness through the blood of Christ, the basic pattern of
Justin's theology places greater emphasis on reconciliation
through the Christian's repentance and holy life. To the degree
that past sins are a barrier between the individual and God,
the barrier can be removed by repentance. The Christian's dependence on Jesus for reconciliation with God is limited. Jesus

JUSTIN,. JESUS, AND THE JEWS

529

is the liberator from ignorance and the demons. The center
of gravity in Justin's discussion of reconciliation and forgiveness, however, is not in the work of Christ but in the repentance of the believer. That reconciliation images play a marginal role in Justin's talk about the work of Christ is thus understandable. Humanity's deepest need is for liberation rather
than reconciliation. To the degree that reconciliation with God
i·s required, it can be accomplished by the Christian's repentance, the inner logic of which can be explicated without reference to Jesus.
Justin does not have a theory of atonement. Nevertheless,
there is a definite pattern to the central images he uses to express the meaning of Jesus' death. This pattern is shaped by
the relation of mutual interpretation that binds together the
image systems of Jesus as conqueror and Jesus as teacher.
These image systems both utilize liberation images which imply a particular understanding of the human predicament.
Only tenuously related to this pattern is Justin's talk about
the cross and blood of Jesus. I have shown that the marginality of such discussions within Justin's theology is not accidental, but a function of his understanding of guilt and
repentance.
Part of the goal of this essay is now accomplished. Justin's
discussions of the redemptive work of Jesus do have their own
coherence, though it is a coherence embodied in patterns of
images rather than in more abstract conceptual reflections. As
I said earlier, I am also interested in what light Justin's theology can throw on modern theological discussions and options.
Justin's picture of the work of Christ, like that of some contemporary theologians, is heavily weighted toward images of
liberation. Can Justin's use of these images tell us anything
about the particular opportunities and pitfalls they present?
In answering that question, I must first look at one of the less
attractive aspects of Justin's writings, his attitude toward the
Jews.

530

MICHAEL ROOT

III
The modern reader of Justin cannot help but be struck by
the vehemence of Justin's abusive attack on the Jews, especially Jewish leadership. While Justin's attack lacks some of the
maliciousness of later Christian writings, 30 his comments are
still harsh. The Jews are Leah to the Christian Rachel, weakeyed "for the eyes of your souls are excessively weak" (Dial
134,5). The law is given to the Jews strictly because of their
hardness of heart (Dial 18,2). The sacrificial cult is set up by
God because he sees the innate tendency of the Jews to make
sacrifices to idols (Dial 19,5-6). God commands that the Jews
be circumcised so that after they have slain the prophets and
Jesus, they may be more easily detected and punished (Dial
16,2). The destruction of Jerusalem is the just desert of the
Jews (Dial 110,6) .
A full exploration of Justin's attitude toward the Jews is beyond the scope of this essay. 31 I am interested only in showing
that these attitudes are reinforced by the pattern of liberation
images that dominates Justin's soteriology. The relation of
reinforcement is not idiosyncratic to Justin's theology, but
points to a danger inherent within the dominance of soteriology
by liberation images.
To uncover the relation between Justin's soteriology and his
attitude toward the Jews we must return to the demons. As
was shown above, the fundamental hold the demons have over
humanity is a mental hold, created and perpetuated by false
teaching. Once the identification of the demons as false
teachers is established, the reverse conclusion easily suggests
so Ben Zion Bokser, "Justin Martyr and the Jews," Jewish Quarteriy Review, 64 ( 1973), 204 concludes: "Justin stands midway between the New
Testament and the rabid anti-Jewishness that eventually became part of
Christian culture."
a1 Fuller discussions can be found in Bokser, who concentrates on Justin's
use of the Bible, and A. Lukyn Williams, Adversus Judaeos: A Bird's-eye
View of Christian Apologiae untii the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1935), pp. 31-42, which focuses exclusively on the Diafogue
with Trypho.

JESUS, AND THE JEWS

531

itself: false teachers are tools of or in league with the demons.
Justin explains parallels between Christianity and mystery
cults· as the attempts by the demons to produce pseudo-faiths
that will confuse possible believers: " those who presided over
the mysteries of Mithras were stirred up by the devil . . ."
(Dial 78,6) .32 The Samaritan magicians, Simon and Menander,
and the heretic Marcion were all " put forward" (7Tpoe{3a'A.AoVTo)
by the demons (I Ap 56,1; 58,1). Were it not for the slanders
spread by the demons, far more would heed the Word (I Ap
10,6). The persecutors of the Christians act at the instigation
of the demons (I Ap· 5,1; Dial 39,6) .
Foremost among the "false teachers" for Justin are the
Jews. 33 Since he accepts the authority of the Hebrew scriptures, Justin cannot dismiss the religion of the Jews as a
demonic invention as he does other religions. Rather, he uses
the special relation between the Jews and God as a reproach
to the Jews. Unlike the Gentiles, the Jews" ... were called to
conversion and repentance of spirit, while they .[the Gentiles]
were in a sinful condition and laboring under spiritual disease "
(Dial 30,1) . That despite this advantage the Jews again and
again stray from God shows their unusual spiritual blindness.
They seem to have an innate tendency toward idolatry. What
else could explain the erection of the golden calf by the very
generation that had seen the mighty acts of God (Dial 20,4)?
God instituted the temple only because the Jews needed it to
keep them from the temples of idols (Dial 22,11). The cult
and the law, however, are not enough to keep the Jews out of
mischief, as the prophets attest. "The senseless Jews" are the
ones the demons instigate to inflict sufferings on Jesus (I Ap
63,10) .34 And the Jews are still at work, falsifying the biblisee also Dial 70,l and I Ap 66,4.
attitude is much more conciliatory toward Jews who are not
teachers. They are more sinned against than sinning. See Dial 9,1; 38,2,
and Paul J. Donahue, "Jewish-Christian Controversy in the Second Century:
A Study in the Dialogue of Justin Martyr," Diss. Yale University 1973, Chap.
9, "The Rabbis."
34 Bokser, p. 204, notes the way Justin places the entire blame for the
crucifixion on the Jews, none on the Romans.
a2 On Mithraism,
33 Justin's

MICHAEL ROOT

cal texts to remove messianic prophecies that clearly point to
Jesus (Dial 71-73) . Justin lays out the elements for the full
demonization of the Jews and partially constructs such an interpretation himself.
The dominance of liberation images in Justin's soteriology is
not itself the cause of Justin's attitude toward the Jews, but
it does set up a structure that supports such an attitude. 35
Most importantly, it supports a sharp distinction between the
liberated to whom guilt does not attach and the lost who are
still dupes or agents of the demons. As noted, liberation images
tend to depict evil as something undergone and suffered rather
than undertaken and performed. When this tendency is combined with other aspects of Justin's thought, the result is a
theology that ascribes to Gentile converts little moral or religious accountability for their pre-Christian lives, a theology
that implies little complicity in one's former sin. What complicity there may have been has been wiped away by one's
own repentance and holy life. This repentance is fundamentally one's own act; it can be explicated without reference to
Jesus. Justin's theology gives little indication that the Christian's holiness is dependent on Christ. Rather, Christians for
Justin are holy in and of themselves in a straightforward, undialectical way. 36 A chasm then opens between the Christians
who are not in complicity with evil and the non-Christians.
Bokser notes that Justin makes extensive use of the moral reproofs of the prophets, but these reproof,s are always directed
outward at non-Christians. 37 The evil ones are without, not
within.
as As Hans von Campenhausen, The Formation of the Christian Bible, trans.
J. A. Baker (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1972), pp. 97f., and, in much
greater detail, Theodore Stylianopoulos, Justin Martyr and the Mosaic Law,
Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series, 20 (Missoula, Montana:
Scholars Press, 1975) argue, Justin's anti-Jewish polemic was part of a larger
salvation-history scheme developed with the Marcionite challenge in mind.
as Note the way righteousness is ascribed to Christians in I Ap 10; Dial
41,4.
37 Bokser, p. 210.

JUSTIN,. JESUS, AND THE JEWS

533

Of course, the absence of internally directed moral exhortation may be related to the externally directed genres of the
works by Justin that are extant. Nevertheless, this absence fits
into the dominant pattern of liberation images. Internally directed exhortation raises questions about past and present
complicity in evil. The problem of an evil with which we are
in collusion, an evil that does not simply come from without
but to some degree springs from within, is not a problem liberation images handle easily. What does it mean for me to be
liberated from the evil that is me? This problem is precisely
the one that reconciliation images address. I must be reconciled with God, neighbor, and self because I have not merely
been captured by their enemies but have aided and abetted
their enemies. The line between the righteous Christian and
the demonic unbeliever becomes less decisive. We have all
sinned and need to be reconciled.
Of course, a soteriology that balances liberation images with
reconciliation images will not guarantee that Jews and other
non-Christians are not demonized. Nevertheless, we can recognize the way an exclusive reliance on liberation images supports
the identification of some group outside of one's own community as the embodiment of evil in the world. The evil ones
might be Jews or secular humanists or capitalists. The natural
next step, within this range of Biblical images, is to demonize
the perpetrators of evil, to identify them with the Biblical
powers of darkness. Such demonization can dehumanize the
other and blind one to one's own evil. Justin's comments on
Jews is an early example of just this dynamic.

IV
In this essay, Justin Martyr has emerged as an object lesson
of two sorts. First, he shows us that the coherence of a theological position need not be embodied in an overarching conceptual structure, but can be created through patterns of
images. We must always be sensitive to the differing and complex ways theologians can attain coherence in their writings.

5$4

MICHAEL ROOT

Second, Justin alerts us to pitfalls within certain ways of
utilizing Biblical images that crystalize the redemptive meaning of Jesus. Images have their own logic. They :fit together
far more easily in some ways than in others and the patterns
they fall into imply conclusions we may find ourselves drawing
despite ourselves. The danger Justin exemplifies is one that is
not irrelevant to an age that with justification finds the biblical images of liberation compelling. 38
M1cHAEL

RooT

Lutheran Theological Southern Semilnary
Columbia, South Oarolilna

ss I received helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay from James
Cutsinger, Scott Hendrix, and Douglas Johnson.

IMMORTALITY AND THE POLITICAL LIFE
OF MAN IN ALBERTUS MAGNUS

T

HE LONG YEARS from the death of Augustine to the
ediscovery of Aristotle in the West witnessed the deelopment of Roman Law, the Gelasian theory of temporal and spiritual power, the theory of medieval monarchy ws
found in people like John of Salisbury, and the establishment of the feudal structure itself. Likewise, the establishment and growth of the religious orders created a new type of
organization which was to provide many ideas for civil political practice. From the standpoint of political theory, these
years are not of major significance when compared to the
Greek, Augu,stinian, or the great scholastic theories. Nevertheless, the development of the feudal pattern with its ever
growing confusion between the realm of the spiritual and the
realm of the temporal emphasized a problem of great significance for political theory. 1
Plotinus and Augustine, the last truly great pagan philosopher and the first universal Western Doctor of the Church,
both had, to a greater or lesser degree, emphasized the contemplative order and its primacy. But there proved to be a danger
in overemphasizing the importance of the next life for man.
This world, wherein man was to work out his salvation, which
to be sure was not political in its essence, could very easily be
ignored or simply rejected. All of society's energy could be
placed in attaining the next life. Since the solution of Plotinus
became practically irrelevant in Western society as a real
1 See Heinrich A. Rommen, The State and Catholic Thought (St. Louis: B.
Herder Book Co., 1945), pp. 521-36; Charles Howard Mcllwain, Growth of
Political Thought in the West (New York: Macmillan, 1932); R. W. and
A. J. Carlyle, A History of Medieval Political Thought in the West (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1928), 6 vols.

535

JAMES V. SCHALL, S.J.

movement, the terms of the emphasis became exclusively
Christian. The danger of the Christian over-emphasis on the
next life, as someone like Hannah Arendt would suggest, was
that politics would be undermined. The danger of the Christian message was that it
make the political life of man
on earth irrelevant. 2 The only thing that mattered was, in an
extreme view, the next life.
Hannah Arendt's contention raises one of the most significant and perplexing questions in political theory, namely, the
relationship between personal immortality and the public life.
Arendt suggested that the contemplative life, especially in its
Christian context, cut off the very life-blood of the political
order as the Greeks saw it, that is, the hope of an earthly "immortality " and the record of heroic deeds and words. For the
Christian, such things were merely vanity because his kingdom
was not of this world. 3 But does the Christian belief in immortality in its own terms, both as resurrection and as an explanation of personal continuity until this restored condition, necessarily render the deeds of this world transitory? Or is it what
ultimately renders them possible in their own right? Certainly, one can point to trends in Christian history which would
seem to suggest the former alternative. Yet, another interpretation of the importance of the contemplative life or immortality can be held. Indeed, it was the contention of Aristotle that
politics needed speculative rectitude before it could exercise its
own proper function. This was so because political life might
easily become a search for immortality in this life if politics
did not recognize the limits of this life and the nature of the
contemplative order.
2 Hannah Arendt, The Hurnan Condition
(Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday
Anchor, 1959), pp. 20-21, 50.
a Ibid., pp. 286-90. In this connection, I found the discussion of Fr. Benedict T. Viviano, 0. P., on "The Kingdom of God in Albert the Great and
Thomas Aquinas," (The Thornist, October, 1980), pp. 502-22, to have missed
the central significance of Albert's (and Thomas's) work in political theory.
Viviano's study, for all its caution, still seemed to imply that the Kingdom
of God was to have a political embodiment on earth and that neither Albert
nor Thomas could see this because of their own concern about Joachim of
Flora's theses.

POLITICAL LIFE OF MAN IN ALBERTUS MAGNUS

537

Thus, when Christianity defined the ultimate good for man
as personal immortality (resurrection, in its fulness) in the
next life, it really freed the political order from disordered subservience to the contemplative order. It destroyed the illusion
that the politics of this life was the proper tool to "construct",
if not to substitute for, an immortality in the next, which
endeavor was to become, in the words of Leo Strauss, " the
modern project." 4 Christianity did, of course, insist that politics had to recognize in the individual a destiny beyond politics, a destiny that did not deny Aristotle's notion that man
was a political animal in his very form or being. What is important to realize is that man does have a drive for immortality and that this drive will be fulfilled somehow, legitimately
or illegitimately. What the Greek experience proved was not
that man needs this desire for immortality to drive him to
establish a human city in this life, but rather it proved that
if this desire for immortality is confined to this life, under the
terrestrial conditions natural to life on earth, it will eventually
overturn the limits of existing political order in the search for
something beyond it. Man will seek to fulfill his ultimate desires by the political life, which of its essence cannot meet them,
especially if he does not know from his theoretical philosophy
or theology that earthly life as such cannot fulfill these desires.
Yet, at the same time, realizing that his ultimate desires can
and must be completed elsewhere, something Augustine taught
Christian political theory as he reflected on Plato, man can
now be free for the great deeds and works and actions which
are proper to the political life.

Albertus Magnus
In this general framework, Albertus Magnus makes his contribution to political theory. 5 For Albertus Magnus-the
4 Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press,
1964), Chapter I.
5 For a description
of the life of Albert, see James A. Weisheipl, O.P.,
"Albert the Great and Medieval Culture," The Thomist, (October, 1980), pp.
481-500; see also Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d'Aquino: His Life, Thought, and
Work (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974); pp. 38-47, and passim.

538

JAMES V. SCHALL, S.J.

Aristotelian commentator-does not join the tradition of political Augustinianism which would tend to downgrade the temporal order in favor of exclusive interest in man's last end.
Rather Albert maintained man's last end to be his highest
goal-and in this he would agree with the whole Christian
position-but he also elevated the temporal sphere as such in
the very process of achieving the last end. Albert thus belonged to the school which believed that God is glorified and
exalted by praising nature and nature's institutions, not vice
versa. He was willing to give all credit and honor to nature as
such because he did not believe that the theologian's primary
task was to explain what can be disclosed by reason. Non, enim
hie theologice loquimur is a refrain occurring in Albert's commentaries and discussions of nature. 6
St. Albert deserves a place in political theory because he was
the first great theologian who recognized and counteracted the
danger that could arise from Augustine and Plotinus, namely,
the absorption of the practical (ethical, economic, and political) by the contemplative. But at the same time, he did not
go to the extreme of the post-Aristotelian and modern philo6 Albertus Magnus, Liber VI JiJ'thicorum, Trac,t. II, Caput XVIII, Operum
Omnium (Parisiis: Apud Ludovicum Vives, MDCCXC), Vol. VII. p. 434.
Hereafter, quotations from this edition of Albert will be as follows: Ethicorum, 1. VI, t. ii, c. 18, Vol. III, p. 434. All English translations in the text
are the author's.
The following passages are also pertinent in revealing Albert's attitude:
" NihiD ad me de miraculis, cum ego de naturalibus disseram." De gen. et
corrupt., I. I, t. I, c. 22, Vol. IV, p. 363. "Si quis nobis objiciat de virtutibus infusis a Deo, quas theologi praedicant et laudant, dicimus quod nihil
ad nos: quia jam non de theologicis, sed de physicis disputamus." Ethicorum,
I. I, t. vii, c. 5, Vol. VII, p. 114.
Albert's own attitude towards Aristotle and other authors can best be
judged from the following passages: " Dixit aliquis forsitan nos Aristotelem
non intellexisse et ideo non consentire verbis ejus et ad illum dicimus, quod,
qui credit Aristotelem fuisse deum, ille credere debet quod numquam erravit:
si autem credit ipsum esse hominem, procul dubio errare potuit sicut et nos."
Physicorum, I. VIII, t. i, c. 14, Vol. III, p. 553. "Dicendum quod parum
mihi videtur curandum de dictis Bedae, ubi non loquitur de fide et de moribus: quia ipso naturas ignoravit." In IV Sent. d. 44, a. 7, ad 2, Vol. XXX,
p. 555.

POLITICAL LIFE OF MAN IN ALBERTUS MAGNUS

539

sophers who tend to subsume the speculative back into the
practical.7 Here, Albert was true to Aristotle and Augustine.
Perhaps nothing reveals more clearly the extent to which
Albert sensed the central importance of the issues here raised
in political philosophy than his Introduction to his Commenta'MJ on Aristotle's Politics. For this Introduction begins with
nothing less than a proof of the immortality of the soul:
Ptolemy in the Almagestus says that he is not dead who is vivified
by science, nor is he poor who is dominated by intellect or who
possesses something understood. The reason of this dictum, however, is that which Alfarabi says in his book, de lntellectu et Intelligibili, namely, that all philosophers truly place the root of immortality in the intellectus adeptus. For according to that intellect, the rational soul extends itself to the principles of incorruptible truth. Nor is it possible that he be mortal who possesses
incorruptible truth. The reason for this is that, as Aristotle
says in VI Ethics, everything which is in something, is in it according to the power of that in which it is, and not according to
the power of that which is in it. And therefore, if incorruptible
truth is in the intellectus adeptus, it follows that it itself is
incorruptible. 8
7 See the following articles: James V. Schall, "Post-Aristotelian
Philosophy
and Political Theory," Oithara, (November, 1963), pp. 56-79; "Cartesianism
and Political Theory,'' The Review of Politics, (.April, 1962), pp. 260-82;
"Political Philosophy and Christianity," Center Journal, (Fall, 1983), pp.
47-66.
s Ptolemaeus in Almagesto dicit, quod non est mortuus, qui scientiam
vivificavit; nee fuit pauper, qui intellectui dominatus est, sive qui intellectum
possedit. Ratio autem dicti est quod dicit .Alfarabius in libro de Intellectu
et Intelligibili, quod omnes Philosophi radicem immortalitatis vere posuerunt
in intellectu adepto: secundum enim illum intellectum extendit se anima rationalis ad principia incorruptibilis veritatis: nee potest esse quod mortale
sit, quod subjectum est incorruptibilis veritatis. Quia dicit .Aristoteles in VI
Ethicorum, quod unumquodque quod in aliquo est, est in eo secundum potestatem ejus cui inest, et non secundum potestatem ejus quod inet: ideo si
incorruptibilis veritas est in intellectu adepto, oportet quod et ipse incorruptibilis sit." Politicorum, 1, I, c. 1, Vol. VIII, p. 6.
Gilson in his discussion of .Alfarabi noted the following analysis of the
intellectus adeptus in medieval philosophy: "In his (Alfarabi's) De intelleotu et intellecto, which frequently appears in medieval manuscripts after
those of Alexander and of Alkindi, and before that of Albertus .Magnus,
Alfarabi distinguishes four meanings of the word ' intellect': 1) the in-

540

JAMES V. SCHALL, S.J.

Albert, in other words, introduced a political treatise, a treatise
on Aristotle's Politics, by first proving that the souls of the
members of the political community are immortal and therefore destined for something beyond politics. 9 Albert, consequently, was not of the opinion that the Christian belief in
personal immortality was out of place in commenting on Aristotle, nor that the belief in immortality necessarily rendered
political life insignificant. He discussed great deeds and words
as a very normal and necessary aspect of human life and found
no fault with Aristotle on this point, which he should have
done if Christianity made this order merely transitory.
A further aspect of this use of immortality to introduce a
tellect in potency with regard to the knowledge it can acquire; 2) the intellect in act with regard to that knowledge while acquiring it; 3) the acquired
intellect ( intellect1ts adeptus), that is, the intellect considered as already
possessed of that knowledge; 4) and finally, the agent intellect, a subsisting
spiritual being, who presides over the sublunary world and confers both forms
on its matter and actual knowledge on all its intellects." Etienne Gilson,
History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (New York: Random
House, 1955), pp. 186-87.
For a general discussion of the authenticity of the work and the place of
politics in Albert's commentaries and thought, see the following sources: G.
Meersseman, Introductio in Opera Omnia B. Alberti Magni (Burgis: C.
Beyaert, 1932), p. 71; M. Rohner, "Kommentar des hl. Albetus Magnus zur
Einfiihrung in die PoUtik des Aristotles," St. Albertus Magnus Festschrift
(Frei burg: Sonderheft des Divus Thomas, 1932.
For a discussion of the question of immortality in Aristotle himself, which
deserves its own treatment, see Henry Veatch, Aristotle (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 197 4), pp. 92-93; 126-27; Werner Jaeger, Aristotle
(London: Oxford, 1948), pp. 40-52; John Herman Randall, Aristotle, (New
York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 14-15. See also R. G. Mulgan,
Aristotle's Political Theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1977); John B. Morrall,
Aristotle (Political Thinkers, No. 7) (Boston: George Allen & Unwin, 1977).
9 In this sense, I found Father Leonard Ducharme's essay "The Individual
Human Being in Saint Albert's Earlier Writings," in Albert the Great,
edited by F. J. Kovach and R. W .. Shahan (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1980), pp. 131-60, to have missed perhaps the importance of
Albert's teachings for the very subject under discussion, namely the importance of the concrete individual being. This is
however, one must carefully distinguish political life on this earth, i=ortality of the soul, and
resurrection, each of which, in any Christian context, is directly concerned
with the individual human being, with Tom, Mary, and Socrates.

:POLI'l'.'ICALLIFE 0.11' MAN IN' ALBERTUS MAGNUS

541

treatise on politics must be noted. Albert has no difficulty in
using a proof for immortality in a commentary which professed
to present Aristotle's thought alone.10 The point is not that the
proof of Alfarabi which he used here is Aristotle's proof, but
that the concept of immortality does fit Aristotle. Indeed, immortality is the real key to unraveling the somewhat confusing way Aristotle presented the good .of the contemplative
order and the good of the practical order. Both are goods of
man, it is not a question of one or the other-a conclusion
which must necessarily result if it is assumed that Aristotle
had no concept of immortality or that the passages which
might seem to indicate that he did are considered insignificant.
Aristotle's idea, of course, is not that of resurrection, the Christian solution which is known from revelation, but of the soul as
separated from the body after death, but operative fully during life. Interestingly enough, all of Albert's commentaries proceed on this basis. The proof taken from Alfarabi proves only
the immortality of the soul, not the resurrection of the body.
The use of immortality in Albert's Commentary. on the Politics presupposes a whole psychology, metaphysics, and ethics
in which he developed the main lines of his analysis of Aristotle. The central theme in Albert's philosophy is, indeed, immortality. Immortality is to Albert what the One is to Plotinus, the Unmoved Mover is to Aristotle, doubt to Descartes,
changelessness to Plato and Augustine. Immortality is fhe
thread that constantly links his thinking into an intelligible
whole. Albert's problem, consequently, became one of explaining how and why men are immortal. His mode of procedure
. •10" Nee ego dixi aliquid in isto libro, nisi exponendo quae dicta sunt, et
rationes et causas adhibendo. Sicut enim omnibus libris physicis, numquam
de meo dixi aliquid, sed opiniones Peripateticorum quanto fidelius potui exposui. Et hoc dico propter quosdam inertes qui solatium suae inertiae
quaerentes, nihil quaerunt in scriptis, nisi quod reprehendant: et cum tales
sint torpentes in inertia, ne soli torpentes videantur, quaerunt ponere maculain in electis. Tales Socratem occiderunt, Platonem .de .Athenis in .Academiam fugaverunt, in .Aristotelem machinantes etiam . eum exire. compulerunt .... " Politicorum, b. VIII, cone., Vol.. VIII, pp. 803-04. (May I say
that this paragraph is a masterpiece of scholarly impatience!)

54!2

JAM:ES V. SCltALL, S.J.

was primarily one which centered around knowledge, both from
the aspect of nature and God and from the structure of man
needed to explain this phenomenon of knowledge.
In the first place, it is necessary to recognize that for Albert,
as for Aristotle, the speculative order is made and is intelligible. Man discovers an intelligibility.
There are three essential parts of real philosophy, which philosophy, I say, is not caused in us by our own work, as moral science
is caused, but rather it is caused by the work of nature in us.
These three parts of philosophy are physics, metaphysics, and
mathematics. n

This position placed Albert squarely in opposition to later concepts of nature which would hold that intelligibility is something imposed on nature by man's mind and analysis. Indeed,
as the following passage suggests, the knowledge God has of
the universe is the same type of knowledge that modern science seeks, knowledge by making.
When God, however, is called infinite, he is called such by a denial
of anything limiting him and measuring him outside of his infinity, because certainly it is impossible to limit him by place or
time or by some intellect understanding him. He is fully inexplicable-that is, to understand him perfectly belongs to no one
but himself .... Thus God whose knowledge nothing escapes
knows all things infinitely. And this happens because his knowledge is not caused by the things known, but rather it is the cause
of all known things. And therefore by knowing himself to be the
cause of them, he himself knows the things infinitely .... Whence
11 " Cum autem tres sint partes essentiales
philosophiae realis, quae, inquam, philosophia non causatur in nobis ab opere nostro, sicut causatur scientia moralis, sed potius ipsa causatur ab opere naturae in nobis: quae partes
sunt naturalis sive physica, et metaphysica, et mathematica .... " Physicorum,
1, I, t. i. c. 1, Vol. III, p. 2.
For an excellent discussion of Albert's metaphysics, see Louis de Raeymaeker, "Albert le Grand, Philosophe," Revue neoscholastique de philosophie,
XXXV ( Fevrier, 1933), pp. 5-36. See also Gilson, History, pp. 277-94; Anton
C. Pegis, St. Thomas and the Problem of the Soul in the Thirteenth Century
(Toronto: St. Michael's College, 1934), pp. 77-120; Maurice de Wulf, History of Medieval Philosophiy, trans. E. C. Messenger (3rd. ed.; London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1938), pp. 98-110.

POLITICAL LIFE OF MAN IN AJ,BERTUS MAGNUS

543

he does not understand a thing through the intellect passing over
the thing known except insofar as he understands himself. Our
knowledge, however, is not the cause of the things known, but
rather is caused by ·the things known and therefore it is necessary for our intellect to pass over the things known and
understood. . . .12

Albert, therefore, based his philosophy on the Aristotelian
idea that every work of nature is a work of intelligence. 13 It is
in discovering this already present intelligibility that man rises
above the physical.
But Albert was a vigorous realist in spite of the many neoplatonic elements that are obvious in his system. 14 " It seems
ridiculous," he wrote, " to demonstrate whether nature exists.
For it is most manifest to us that there are many natural things
in which the afore said principle of motion and rest are
12" Deus autem cum dicitur infinitus,
dicitur a negatione finientis ipsum
et numerantis extra infinitum: quia videlicet impossible est ipsum finiri loco
vel tempore vel intellectu capienti ipsum, propter quod est plane inenarr·
abilis, hoc est, quia eum perfecte intelligi non convenit nisi a seipso. Est
tamen ipse finiens se, quia tantus est, quantus ipse se intelligit.
Deum
cujus scientiam nihil effugit, illa infinita omnia scire: quod ideo contingit,
quia sua scientia non causatur a scitis, sed potius est causa omnium scitorum.
Et ideo sciendo se esse causam ipsorum, ipse scit infinita: et ideo scientia
infinitorum in ipso est per unum quod ipse est qui sibi finitus est: unde ipse
non intelligit rem per intellectum transeuntem super rem intellectam nisi
quantum intelligit seipsum. Nostra autem scientia non es.t causa scitorum,
sed potius causatur a rebus sci tis: et ideo oportet nostrum intellectum esse
transeuntem super scita et intellecta .... " Physioorum, 1. I, t. iii, c. 4, Vol.
III, pp. 54-55.
On the relation of modern science, theology, and particularity, see Stanley
Jaki, The Road of Science and the Ways to God (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1978).
1s" Incipientes igitur a generatione animae accipimus propositionem ...
quod omne opus naturae est opus intelligentiae." de Natura et Origine Animae,
t. i, c. 1. This opusculum is contained in the new critical edition of St.
Albert's works, which are in the process of being published. Alberti Magni
Liber de N atut:a et Origine Animae Operum Omnium, ed. Bernhard us Geyer
(Cologne: Aschendorff, 1955), Vol. XII, p. 3. This phrase appears often in
Albert's commentaries.
14 See de Wulf, p. 103. See also Arthur Schneider, Die Psyohologie Alberts
des Grossen. Band IV, Heft 6: Beitriige zur GesohioMe der Philosophie dlltt
Mittelalters (Munster: Aschndorff, 1906),

544

JAMES V. SCHALL, S.J.

found.
" 15 Albert's ultimate existent is always Aristotle's
first substance, the real things.
You should know, however, that that which has an individual nature and is called an individual substance, such as the natural thing
and also the supposit of nature as it is sometimes called, both is
called first substance and substance. It is called an individual substance, however, according as there is in it a collection of individuating notes which cannot be found in anything else; for thus
it is singular and incommutable. 16
This thorough-going realism is the basis of what may well be
Albert's most important and significant metaphysical insight,
namely, his analysis of the types and loci of universals. He
never doubted that individual, concrete beings are the true
realities.
There are three types of universals. One is before the thing itself,
one in the thing, and one after it. That which is ante rem, indeed,
is one in itself, the principle and formal cause of the thing from
which many things are formulated. That which is in re is the nature of the thing, as form is called the nature of a thing, but it is
nature by one reason, universal by another. For the nature of a
thing by the fact that it is, is the quiddity and essence of a thing:
it is universal, however, through the fact that it posits an essential similarity of subjects. The universal post rem is a product of
abstraction. It is not universal except by abstraction. And it is
not abstracted except through existing things from which it is
abstracted. This universal, however, is called universal through a
relation to many and therefore this kind of universal is said to be
an accident by the PhilosopheT.17
15 "iRidiculum
autem videtur esse demonstrare an sit natura. Manifestum
enim est nobis, quod multae sunt res naturales in quibus praedictum motus
et quietis principium invenimus .... " Physicorum, 1. II, t. i, c. 6, Vol. III,
p. 102.
16 " Debes autem scire quod id quod habet naturam, et substantia individua
dicitur, ut res naturae et etiam suppositum naturae aliquando vocatur, et
vocatur substantia prima, et vocatur substantia. Dicitur autem individua
substantia secundum quod est in eo. collectio individuantium quae non possunt
et.I alia reperiri: sic enim singulare est et incommutabile." Physicorum, 1.
II, t. i, c. 4, Vol. III, p. 99. In this context, see also again above, Ducharme,
ibid.
17 " ••• Intellige quod triplex est universale.
Unum quidem ante rem, et
unum in re, et unum post rem. Illud quod est ante rem, est unum quidem in se

POLITICAL LIFE OF MAN IN ALBERTUS MAGNUS

545

However, Albert's peculiar theory of how reality must itself
be constructed in order to explain intellection leads him to a
theory of knowledge which defines man simply as an intellect
whose main task is to shed all material adjuncts so that man
can know the pure intelligible objects without interruption.
There is another impediment to speculation of truth due to
the very mode of our birth. For although man as man is only
intellect, nevertheless, the intellect in man according to its being
is derived from imagination and sense and other corporeal powers
which do not permit to it a pure contemplation of truth. 18
Albert did not believe that the pure speculative knowledge man
seeks belongs to this soul in this life, except perhaps fleetingly.
principium et causa formalis rei, ex quo multa formantur. Illud autem quod
est in re, natura rei est, sicut forma natura rei dicitur: sed ab alia est
natura, et ab alia universale. Natura enim rei per hoc quod est rei quidditas
est et essentia: universale autem per hoc quod ponitur essentalis similitudo
subjectorum. Post rem autem universale est abstractionis.
Illud enim non
est universale nisi abstractione: non abstrahitur autem nisi rebus existentibus a quibus abstrahitur. Hoc autem universale, universale dicitur per relationem ad multos: et ideo istud universale a Philosopho accidens dicitur:
ab accidentali enim relatione naturae simplici accidit quod multis est."
Ethioorum, 1. I, t. v, c. 12, Vol. VII, pp. 72-73.
" ... Plato posuit in omni re triplex esse universale. Unum quidem ante
rem, quod erat causa rei formalis secundum esse praecedens, quia separatum
ipsum esse posuit. Secundum in re, quod erat forma adhaerens ei una in
multis et de multis: et hoc unum dixit Plato in essentia unum et in esse
naturae et formae in omnibus. .Aristoteles autem in ratione dixit unum, et
in essentia et esse plura. Tertium autem dixit esse post rem. Quod est intentio universalis in anima: et sic dixit etiam quod anima communis et universalis erat ante omnes animas, et erat eausa ipsarum per quam habent
diffiniri et esse: et secundum hoc esset una universalis illius. ratio de omni
anima. E:t hoc esse non potest, quia in philosophia prima habet ostendi id
universale nullum esse omnino, sed omne universale ut universale sumptum
esse aut nihil rei procedens rem, aut esse post rem, sicut est intentio abstiracta de particularibus."
De Anima, 1. I, t. i, c. 4, Vol. V, po ..'124. See
also Metaphysioorum, 1, V, t. vi, c. 5, Vol. VI, pp. 361-62; 1. VII, t. v, c. i,
Vol. VI, pp. 472-73.
13" Est autem aliud impedimentum
theoriae veritatis ex ipso modo nativitatis: quoniam licet homo secundum quod homo solus intellectus sit, tamen
intellectus in homine secundum esse trahitur ab imaginatione et sensu et
aliis corporeis virtutibus non sinentibus eum pure contemplari theoriam veritatis." M etaphysioorum, 1. II, t. i, c. 12, Vol. VI, p. 130.

546

JAMES V. SCHALL, S.J.

However, it is this effort to explain how the natural soul can
achieve contemplation in a perfect state at all that Albert,
like Aristotle, sought to demonstrate a permanency of soul
without the body. Further, we should note again that this is
not the specifically Christian question of the resurrection of the
composite body and soul, but the Greek question which, like
the Christian discussion of the status of the soul after death
and before the resurrection, sought to define man in terms of
what becomes of man immediately after death.
Plato maintains that souls are perpetual and that they have descended from similar stars. Aristotle (with whom Albert agreed)
does not hold this ... but rather that souls are caused to be in a
body although some of these (souls) remain after death and others
do not .... 19

Thus when Albert discussed speculative truth as opposed to
practical truth, the proper life of the composite, he attributed
it not to humanity but to some divine element. "For this
speculation of our intellect (metaphysics) does not exist in that
which is human but in that which exists in us in a certain
divine manner." 20
The fact that pure speculative knowledge exists in m11n,
therefore, must be attributed to something other than human
nature as such .
. . . Every man by nature desires to know. Since there is no vain
will be for the purpose of inquiring about the
desire, this
principle inclining to knowable things. As a result this desire will
be the first principle of knowing. . .. But everything which is in
many by reason of one rationality of genus or species existing in
them is in some one principle which is the first cause of all things
in which it exists.21
,19" Plato dicit animas esse perpetuas et descendisse a comparibus stellis:
et hoc non dicit .Aristoteles ... sed potius causatas in corpore, licet quaedam
sint post mortem manentem, et quaedam non. . .. " Physicorum, I. VIII, t.
ii, c. 8, Vol. III, p. 585.
20 "Haec
enim speculatio intellectus nostri non existit in eo quod est
humanus, sed in eo quod ut divinum quodammodo existit in nobis." Metciphysicorum,. I. I, t. i, c. 1, Vol. VI, p. 2.
21 " ••• Omnes homines natura scire desiderant:
et cum non sit vanum
desiderium, erit hoc desiderium ad inquirendum de scibilibus inclinativum

POLITICAL LIFE OF MAN IN ALBERTUS MAGNUS

547

What Albert did, then, was to base his thought on immortality
on the fact that the soul knows universals which are timeless
and changeless, that such knowledge has to be caused by what
is itself changeless and timeless, and that therefore man's soul
must be immortal. 22
principium, et per consequens erit id desiderium primum sciendi princ1pmm. . . . Omne quod est in multis per unam rationem generis vel speciei
in illis existens, est in aliquo uno principio quod est prima causa omnium in
quibus existit." M etaphysioorum, 1. I, t. i, c. 4, Vol. VI, p. 8.
22 " The object of the intellect is universal and despoiled of all relation to
time and change. Only a facultjy of the same type could have such an object.
Therefore, since the intellect is above time and change, it and its subject the
rational soul are immortal." George 0. Reilly, The Psychology of Saint Albert
the Great (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1934), p. 40.
Albert also used the following proofs for immortality: " Sed intellectus
possibilis quo est omnia intelligibilia fieri, est substantia quaedam separata,
et videtur non corrumpi aliquo modo corporis corruptione. Quod sic demonstratione probatur: accipitur enim a praehabitis intellectum esse potentiam
intellectuali forma determinatam ad ens in natura quod est ante corporeitatem. Omnis enim potentia qua est aliquid fieri, si debeat esse aliquid in
natura, necesse est quod sit per formam dantem esse illi rei naturali distincta et determinata .... Intellectus autem possibilis est potentia qua est
omnia fieri secundum intellectum .... Oum ergo sit in natura ista potentia,
ipsa forma quae est intellectualitas determinata est et distincta: ergo est
substantia quaedam separata: quia omne separatum in genere substantiae
habens potentiam et actum in seipso, est substantia: habetur autem per
praehabita, quod ipsa est incorporea ante quantitatem corporis et contrarietatem secundum naturam existens, licet non praecedat ipsum tempore. Inde
arguitur sic: nihil eorum quae secundum naturam sunt praecedentia quaedam
alia, corrumpuntur corruptione eorum quae sequuntur ipsum: intellectus
autem sive anima intellectualis sic se habet ad corpus physicum: ergo impossible est corrumpi corporis physici corruptione." De Anima, 1. I, t. ii, c.
9, Vol. V, p. 165.
" ... Incorruptionis causa est esse per naturam ante corporeitatem et contrarietatem, et quod intellectus est substantia ante utrumque per natura
existens: et ideo habet esse perpetuum et incorruptibile, et aliam vi tam
necesse est substantiam istam habere post mortem." Ibid., I. II, t. i, c. 8, Vol.
V. p. 205.
The rational powers of the soul work without any corporeal instrument;
because of this they also work on all things in a universal manner. For the
intellect understands all things, and reason reasons, about all things, and
the will is free to convert itself to what it wishes ....
But it should be understood that the rational soul is in a body of a man
and is the perfection of it according as he is man. His perfection according
to his humanity does not have a restriction to any part of man, but rather

548

JAMES V. SCHALL, S.J.

Alw11¥s in Albert's speculative discussions we find this idea
that man as man is intellect, not the composite. And if this is
so, then it seems that he has no real place for this life. But, as
we have suggested, Albert's concern for immortality is what
leads him to define man as intellect. And from a strictly
philosophical point of view, this alone is eternal, not the composite. Whenever Albert spoke of man in this life, however,
he admitted, in fact insisted, on his composite nature, except
when he spoke of speculative knowledge, which can be achieved
to some extent already in this life. Speculative knowledge, as
such, is always eternal in Albert's analysis, no matter where it
is experienced.
Albert seemed often to combine the Aristotelian notion of
soul with the Platonic. 24 He is Aristotelian when talking of
origins of knowledge. He is Platonic when talking of the soul's
pure contemplation .
. . . The intellect is separate from all that which is, and has nothing in common, although according to the being which it has from
the conjunction of continuity and time, it is determined to one.
. . . Intellect in itself is separate from sensitive and vegetative
powers....
is in that which freely and universally understands and wills. For this reason man is divided from all others whose genus in nature he shares. It is
precisely insofar as this soul is the perfection of an animate thing that it
comes into the consideration of the natural philosopher. . .. And also
[Aristotle'] says that " to desire" and " to sense " men shares with other
animals of the same genus. But to be a man as such, he is only intellect.
2a " ••• Vires autem rationalis animae operantur sine aliquo corporis instrumento, propter quod et circa omnia universaliter operantur. Intellectus
enim de omnibus intelligit, et ratio de omnibus ratiocinatur, et voluntas
libera est convertendi se ad quod voluerit. . . .
"Sed intelligendum est animam rationalem esse in corpore hominis, et esse
perfectionem suam secundum quod est homo: et secundum quod est hominis
perfectio, non habet affixionem cum hominis aliqua parte, sed potius in eo
quod libere et universaliter intelligit et vult, dividitur ab omnibus aliis cum
quibus in natura generis communicat,. et in quantum talis anima perfectio
est animati, venit in considerationem naturalis philosophi. ... Et etiam dicit
concupiscere et sentire homines cum aliis animalibus communicare secundum
communionem generis: esse tamen hominis in quantum homo est, solum intellectu est." Ibid., 1. I, t. i, c. 1, Vol. V, p. ll8.
24 See Gilson, Histor'y, pp. 283-89; de Wulf, p. 103.

POLITICAL LIFE OF MAN IN ALBERTUS MAGNUS

549

Whatever is in intellect is universal. ... The intellect, however,
according to every mode of its potency is universal, existing always and everywhere, through the fact that it is determined
neither to the now, nor to this particular thing. 25
Albert's constant effort in psychology and metaphysics is to
explain speculative knowledge-first, how the world must be
shaped to know it, secondly, how the mind must be conceived
in order to understand the world. The agent and especially the
possible intellect are used to demonstrate how the mind can
know universally. Albert's discussion of these two powers is
both profound and complex. 26 The so-called intellectus
adeptus, the mind actually knowing, is the main basis of
thought on the soul's immortality since the soul actually knowing knows universally and is therefore immortal; a material object cannot contain a spiritual reality.
The important aspect of Albert as far as this discussion is
concerned is not the content and adequacy of his physics,
metaphysics, and psychology. Albert, even while stressing the
primacy and autonomy of the speculative order, while acknowledging that the practical order is ordained to the contemplative, still insisted upon the autonomy and independence of man
in this life to develop an adequate human condition. It is in
this light that Albert's commentaries on the Ethics and Politics of Aristotle assume significance. Albert believed that there
is a happiness of man qua man. And the happiness of man qua
man is a proper task of this life. The speculative happiness is
divine, beyond man, yet something he should strive for and
25 " ••• Intellectus
... separatus est ab omni eo quod est, et nulli nihi1
habet commune, quamvis secundum esse quod habet ex conjunctione continui
et temporis sit determinatus ad unum.
" ... Intellectus secundum se a sensitive et vegetative separatur ....
". . . Quidquid est in intellectu, sit universale. . . . Intellectus autem
secundum omnem modum potentiae suae universalis est, ubique et semper
existens, per hoc quod nee ad nunc nee ad haec determinatus est." l!lthicorum,
1. VI, t. ii, c. 17, Vol. VII, p. 429.
26 See Schneider, p. 342 ff. See De Anima, 1. III, t. ii, c. 19, Vol. V., pp.
366-67. Tracts ii and iii of the De Anima are devoted to the intellect.

550

JAMES V. SCHALL, S.J.

which he will eventually attain, but it is not some sort of
earthly city merely reorganized.
In classic Greek philosophy, the objection was raised by
Solon, as Aristotle relates, that no man could really be judged
happy until his death because of what fortune and injustice
and sickness could do to man in old age. (This story was
originally in Herodotus and its theme taken up again by both
Socrates and Cicero) . In commenting on this objection, Albert with Aristotle pointed out that death is not really perfective of life but its destruction. As a result, there is a kind of
happiness and perfection in this life such as Aristotle described
it. We can call such a life happy, and we do not have to wait
until death to describe such a life as happy. Why? Here Albert, it would seem, put his finger on the heart of the problem.
" We call such men happy as men," he said, " to whom does
not belong (by nature) supercelestial and divine beatitude, because to tha.t state man is not able to arrive by means of
those things which are the property of man as such." 27 Thus,
the virtue and happiness of man as such are found " neither in
temperance nor fortitude nor justice," but rather in prudence,
" the perfect virtue of man in so far as he is man." 28 Albert
arrived at this conclusion because he considered this virtue to
be the one which ultimately directed all human acts to the
human good as opposed, but not contrary, to a divine good.
Only prudence, however, contemplates and rules and orders all
things according as they are referred to a human good. Therefore,
this (virtue) alone is the perfect virtue of man in so far as he is
man .... It follows of necessity that the operation which is happiness is according to the virtue which is called prudence. 29
21 "Tales autem dicimus ut homines quibus non competit supercoelestium
beatitudo et divina: quia ad illam homo non potest attingere ex his quae
hominis sunt." Ethioorum, 1. I, t. vii, c. 15, Vol. VII, p. 120.
28 "'\Et quia nee temperantia
nee fortitudo nee justitia perfecta virtus
hominis est, relinquitur quod prudentia est perfecta virtus hominis in quantum homo." Ibid.
z9 " Sola autem prudentia omnia contemplatur
et regit et ordinat secundum
quod ad humanum bonum referunt. Igitur ipsa sola est perfecta virtus
hominis secundum quod homo est .... Sequitur de necessitate quod operatio
quae est felicitas, sit secundum virtutem quae dicitur prudentia." Ibid.

POLITICAL LIFE OF MAN IN ALBERTUS MAGNUS

551

This kind of happiness proper to man in this life is quite distinct from the happiness proper to man's status as immortal,
a status which derives from man as intellect. (The status of
whole man as resurrected, clearly,. will be properly a "City of
God", as Augustine said, but this ought not to be confused
with some perfect ordering of the earthly city in this life.)
According to the Peripatetics also the intellect is separate from the
sensible as the incorruptible from the corruptible, as Aristotle
says. And since happiness belongs to the incorruptible part of the
soul, it seems that death which does not affect the incorruptible
part of the intellect, takes away no happiness from the reason and
intellect, but rather it increases it in so far as it removes the impediments of the moral life which frequently impede the rational
and intellectual operations. 30
Speculative happiness increases with death because the intellect is completely free to view its proper object.
Albert's description of the proper activity of the separate
soul-an activity, incidently, quite uninspiring in human
terms-showed quite clearly that he placed true happiness of
the speculative life of man not in prudence, the life proper to
man in this life, but in the knowledge open to the speculative
intellect .
. . . The intellectus adeptus is the root of immortality .... That
intellect, however, of its very nature is always in contemplation of
the most admirable, most stable, and most pure theoremata to
which it is susceptible and whose proper image it is. In these
things, however, happiness is most complete, as Aristotle says. It
is clear from all these things, however, that the souls which by
virtue and knowledge have seized this understanding have happiness after death. 31
30" Secundum Peripateticos
etiam intellectus separatur a sensibili sicut
incorruptibile a corruptibili, ut dicit Aristotles. Et cum felicitas sit secundum
partem animae incorruptibilem, videtur quod mors quae non afficit incorruptibilitatem intellectus, nullam adimat rationi et intellectui felicitatem,
sed potius augeat in quantum removet impedimenta vitae moralis, quae
frequenter impediunt rationis operationes et intellectus." Ethicorum, 1. I,
t. vii, v. 17, Vol. VII, p. 133.
a1 ". • • Intellectus
adeptus radix
immortalitatis. . . . Ille autem intellectus de sui natura semper est in contemplatione admirabilissimorum,

JAMES V. SCHALI,, S.J.

The knowledge which the intellect has both in this life and
after death is called wisdom. And this differs from prudence
and politics.
Prudence, therefore, and politics differ in subject matter from wisdom in the fact that wisdom is of the most honorable things.
Prudence and politics, however, are not of the most honorable
things but about those things which apply man to human
intercourse.32
Albert thus held with Aristotle that man is not the highest
thing in the universe. "Prudence, however, is about human
goods and things achievable by us about which we can also
take counsel." 33 Wisdom deals with " universals; it is theoretic
and architectonic. Those things, however, which are about
singulars are usable and practical." 34
Prudence, then, is the virtue which deals with human action
because it takes into consideration the changing nature of the
human world. " For prudence is active. Action is about
singular things since it exists in individuals, that is, in circumstances surrounding human affairs and operation." 35 Prudence, as opposed to wisdom, " seems to be about those things
which are proper to man existing only through himself," . . .
" about those things which are beautiful and just and good
for man per se and not accidentally." 36 Since, however, as
firmissimorum, et purissimorum theorematum, quorum ipse propria imago
est et susceptivum. In his autem felicitas potissima est, ut dicit Aristoteles.
Patet igitur ex omnibus his, quod animae quas virtute et scientia hunc intellectum adeptae sunt, felicitatem habent post mortem." Ibid.
32" Prudentia
ergo et politica secundum subjectum different a sapientia
eo quod sapientia honorabilissimorum est: prudentia autem et politica non
honorabilissimorum, sed de his quae conferunt homini ad conversationem
humanam." Ibid., 1. VI, t. 11, c. 21, Vol. VII, p. 437.
33 " Prudentia autem circa humana bona est per nos operabilia, de quibus
etiam est consiliari. ... " Ibid., 1. VI, t. 11, c. 22, Vol. VII, p. 439.
34 " Quae enim circa universalia
est, theorica et architectonica est: quae
vero circa singularia, usualis est et practica." Ibid., 1. VI, t. iv, c. 1, Vol.
VII, p. 454.
35" Prudentia
enim activa est: actio autem circa singularia: quia in
singularibus est, hoc est, circumstantiis circumstantibus negotia et operationes humanas." Ibid.
36 "Prudentia quidem·est circa ea quae sunt pulchra et justa et bona homini
per se, non secundum accidens .... " Ibid., 1. VI, t. iv, c. 1, Vol. VII, p. 454.

POLITICAL LIFE OF MAN IN ALBERTUS MAGNUS

553

Aristotle said, a man who does not need others is either a beast
or a god, prudence itself cannot be perfective " without economics and the state .... Man alone cannot provide for himself. But he needs to live politically among citizens in exchanges and distributions and to have a home." 37 Man is dependent on the home and the state even to achieve the prudential good he is capable of.
The private good cannot be disposed of sufficiently except through
economics, nor can the economic good be achieved except through
the civil good. And if without the civil, economics tends to its
proper good, it will not be clear what sort of good is disposed,
nor what will lead to the highest perfection of man. 88

This analysis which provides both for a good of man in this life,
a prudential and political good, and a good in the next life, a
speculative good, necessitated that Albert evolve a theory
which provided for the interrelatedness of each good and its
place in a hierarchy. It is only by keeping the desire for ultimate perfection in the next life free from the equally legitimate
drive for the kind of complete good open to man in this life
that Albert could provide for both facets in man.

The Active and Contemplative Life
Albertus Magnus was quite clear on the fact that " there is
no perfect sufficiency (for man) except in a combination of all
things pertaining to the city." 39 But what about this sufficiency; how " sufficient" must it be? This is the question
whether the active life which is pursued in the city or
37 " ••• Quia perficere non potest sine oeconomica et sine urbanitate ....
Homo secundum se solus, conferens. sibi providere non potest. Sed oportet
quod inter cives civiliter vivat in commutationibus et distributionibus, et
domesticam casam habeat." Ibid., 1. VI, t . .ii, c. 24, Vol. VII, p. 442.
38 "Bonum ergo privatum non potest disponi sufficienter, nisi per oeconomicum, nee bonum oeconomicum ordinatur nisi per civile: et si sine civili
oeconomica proprio bono intenditur, manifestum non erit qualiter bonum
hoc disponatur, quod ad optimum perfectum hominis perveniat." Ibid.
39 " ••• Perfecta sufficientia non est nisi in collatione omnium pertinentium
ad civitatem."
1. III, c. 4, Vol. VIII, p. 231.

554

JAMES V. SCHALL, S.J.

the contemplative life which is philosophical is more to be
chosen. Some people say that " only the active life is the life
of man." 40 Albert's general way of solving this dilemma in his
Aristotelian commentaries is based upon his contention that
the contemplative life, while it reaches its perfection only
after death, nevertheless can to a certain extent also be
achieved in this life, but this is not possible to many men.
Wherefore, since the highest good of man is the speculative reason or theoretical intellect, the highest which can be achieved according to it is simply the highest. And he says " those who can
achieve it " because not everyone can achieve the contemplation
of wisdom. For these (latter) they should strive for what they
can achieve in the active life.41

But Albert did not hold that a man in this life can be totally
excluded from the active life no matter how contemplative he
is. He still remains a man.
Still there is no man who may not have his own activities outside
the common ones and any man may have the vocation of thinking and meditating about the highest things. From which it is
clear that the contemplative life is not wholly absolved from action. Thus, there can be a happiness of the contemplative as of the
active life.42
4() ". • • Dicunt enim, quod sola vita activa est vita hominis. . . ." Ibid.,
I, VII, c. 2, Vol. VIII, p. 633.
41 "Unde cum summum hominis sit ratio speculativa
sive intellectus theoreticus, optima quae potest sortiri secundum illum, illa sint simpliciter optima. E.t dicit quae potest sortiri, quia non omnium est sortiri contemplatione sapientiae, et illos oportet eligere melius ad quod possunt pertingere
in activa vita." Ibid., I. VII, c. 13, Vol. VIII, p. 722. It will be noted that
this is the exact point wherein the problem of revelation and its relation to
the question of ultimate beatitude for each person of the human species
arises. The clear grasp of this issue is fundamental for any political
philosophy. This is, as Aquinas especially understood (I-II, 91, 4). where
philosophic questions are addressed by revelational questions or statements.
Political philosophy asks in what sort of city can both metaphysical questions
be asked and revelational questions be listened to.
42 "Adhuc non est homo qui non habeat proprias
actiones praeter communes, et quilibet hominum habet vocationem cogitandi et meditandi de illis:
ex quo pa.tet quod contemplativa non est omnino absoluta ab actione: et sic
potest esse felicitas secundum contemplativam sicut secundum activam."
Ibid., I. VII, c. 2, Vol. VIII, p. 641.

POLITICAL LIFE OF MAN IN ALBERTUS MAGNUS

555

This conclusion brings up the question of the active and contemplative good which lies at the very heart of political
philosophy.
Albert followed an intellectual path on which he sought to
treat the good proper to man as such, the good of prudence
and politics, as one of the greatest dignity and worth, while,
at the same time, he recognized that man's ultimate personal
good must lie beyond the order of this life, though not necessarily excluding the whole person. In this light, it is of great
interest to see how Albert defined and explicated the proper
good of man as man.
. . . The good of man is the good which when achieved and not
impeded according to its proper and connatural habitus can act
according to its own and its connatural operations of which it is
master, whether we consider man as he is in himself or according
as he is by nature a civil animal. 43
When Albert followed this line of thought, as was generally
the case in the First Book of the Ethics, he described the
proper good of man as man insofar as he belongs to this
earth-a property Albert considered quite legitimate and necessary. Now this kind of life has a proper good. "Man, however, through all things which are proper to man insofar as
he is man is proved to seek some good." 44
When Albert defined what this good is, he did not include
the speculative virtues.
Therefore, if the good of each thing is what each thing desires
by nature, it follows that the good of man insofar as he is man is
that which he both intends and does through all things which
are proper to man. All these things which are proper to man according as they are referred to specifically human operations are
art, doctrine, action, and election. The good of man insofar as
43 " ••• Bonum hominis est bonum cum quo adepto et non impedito, secundum proprium et connaturalem habitum potens est operari proprias et
connaturaies operationes, quarum ipse est dominus, sive consideretur ut homo
est in se, sive consideretur prout est animal civile per naturam." Etkicorum,
1. I, t., iii. c. 1, Vol. VII, p. 31.
44" Homo autem per omnia quae hominis sunt in quantum hono est, aliquod
bonum probatur appetere," Ibid., I, I, t. iii, c. 2, Vol. VIII, p. 32.

556

JAMES V. SCHALL, S.J.

he is man, therefore, is what he intends and achieves by art, doctrine, action, and election. 45

Man as such is a composite of body and soul so that "the good
of man is not only the good of the soul but also the good of
the body related to the good of the soul." 46 And for this good,
man, the living composite, simply does not suffice to provide
for all his own needs. 47
The effort of man to achieve happiness belongs both to man
as intellect and man as composite and therefore man has " two
ends ... one of action, the other of contemplation." 48 These
two ends are related: " ... it is clear that the happiness operative in the state is ordained further to contemplative happiness
which is the highest of all goods." 49 Yet, this presents a serious
problem. The very nature of the political end seems to be selfdestructive, for " ... there is nothing in human works which is
not imperfect." 50 Moreover, since no man can possess all the
goods needed for this active happiness, it seems vain to seek for
this good of the city and life on earth.
From the fact that all good things are required for perfection, and
the combination of all good things cannot be in one man, for no
one is a carpenter, a breadmaker, and a shoemaker, it seems that
no one can be perfect. This some strive to prove from the dictum
of Boethius ... that "beatitude is the perfect state completed by
the aggregation of all good things." But there is no man in whom
45 "Si
ergo bonum uniuscujusque est quod unumquodque appetit per
naturam, oportet quod illud bonum hominis sit in quantum homo est, quod
per omnia quae hominis sunt et intendit et operatur. Omnia autem quae
hominis sunt prout ad operationes humanas referatur, sunt ars, doctrina,
actus, et electio." Ibid.
46 " ••• Et bonum hominis non est tantum bonum animae sed etiam bonum
corporis ad bonum animae relatum." Ibid., pp. 32-33.
4'1 Ibid .. See also ibid., I, I, t, v. c. 7, Vol. VII, p. 66.
48" In duplici ergo facie acceptus intellectus,
necesse est quod duos fines
habeat: unum scilicet operationum, et alterum contemplationum." Ibid., 1.
I, t. vi, c. 1, Vol. VII, p. 85.
49 " ••• Gonstat quod felicitas civilis operativa ulterius ordinatur
ad feli·
citatem contemplativam quae est ultimum omnium bonorum." Ibid.
5o " ••• Nihil ergo in humanis operibus quod imperfectum non sit." Ibid.,
1. I, t. vi, c. 2, Vol. VII, p. 87.

POLITICAL LIFE OF MAN IN ALBERTUS MAGNUS

557

such a perfect state for the aggregation of all good things exists.
Therefore, it seems in vain to seek for a perfection which cannot
come to man. 51
Albert answered the problem by pointing out that we must define the type of goods obtainable by man's desires:
There is a simple perfection and a perfection according to one's
status. Simple perfection, however, which simply lacks nothing is
proper only to God. But perfection secundum statum is twofold,
particular and universal. Particular perfection is when without impediment of his office or his art or of his status, a man attains an
ultimate good, after having omitted nothing from all those things
which are ordained to this ultimate good. Thus we call a carpenter
and a doctor perfect. We call that perfection universal to which
nothing is lacking to the end which is simply the end of human
affairs .... Beatitude, therefore, so understood is the state or act
perfected by the aggregation of all goods and whose perfection man
is capable of. This very perfection is good and attainable by man. 52

It is in following this discussion that Albert saw the necessity
of always talking about the good proper to man in terms of
social relationships.
The human good, however, in its highest state is not considered
in this that man lives a solitary life for himself alone, but that he
live sufficiently both with parents, and children, and wife. And
51 "Praeterea,
ex quo omnia bona ad perfectionem requiruntur, et omnium
concursus non possit esse in uno: nemo enim est qui sit faber, et panifex,
et coriarius, et sic de aliis similibus: videtur quod nemo possit perfectus esse.
Hoc quidam nituntur persuadere ex dicto Boetii . . . quod beatitudo est
status omnium bonorum aggregatione perfectus. Non est autem homo in quo
talis status sit ex omnium bonorum aggregatione perfectus. Frustra igitur hie
videtur quaerere de perfecto quod homini convenire non potest." Ibid.
52 "Est snim perfectio
simpliciter, et perfectio secundum statum. Perfectio autem simpliciter, quod simpliciter nihil desit, non nisi in Deo sit.
Perfectio autem secundum statum dupliciter est, scilicet particulariter, et
universaliter. Particulariter quidem perfectus est, quando sine impedimento
sui officii vel suae artis vel sui status attingit ultimum, nihil omisso de omnibus his quae ad ultimum ordinantur: et sic dicimus fabrum perfectum et
medicum perfectum. lJniversaliter autem dicimus, cul nihll deest ad finem
qui simpliciter ultimus est humanorum .... Beatitudo igitur sic intellecta,
status vel actus est omni um bonorum aggregatione perfectus: et hujus perfectionis homo perceptibilis est, et ipsa perfectio bonum est operatum ab
homine." Ibid.

558

JAMES V. SCHALL, S.J,

generally speaking, he should live with friends and citizens for
sufficiency because man by nature is a man that he might live for
himself, and by nature a conjugal and domestic animal that he
may live with parents and children and wife, and by nature man
is a civil animal that he might live with friends and citizens. 53

All these elements belong to a humanly sufficient life, but " the
sufficiency of man is not simple because complete sufficiency
belongs to God alone." 54
Since, however, man needs both types of happiness, contemplative and active, Albert felt impelled to consider more
carefully the distinction between them. Man does not simply
want to know what happiness is in itself, but he needs to see
it '" in comparison to his own task." 55 " ••• We do not seek
happiness except according as it is a good achieved and possessed by us. This will be manifest if the work of man is taken
according as he is man." 56 Does man like other things have
any proper task which belongs to him alone, or is man by nature an otiosum quid, something that has no specific task?
The interrelatedness of man's own organs, his intellect, art, all
reveal some final purpose-" it seems therefore there is1 some
task of man as such." 57 Albert then defined this task of man
58" Bonum autem humanum in optimo statu quo non consideratur
in hoc
quod vivat sibi soli vitam solitariam, sed quod vivat sufficienter et parentibus
et filiis et uxori: et universaliter loquendo, quod vivat amicis et civibus ad
sufficientiam: quia homo et natura homo est, ut sibi vivat: et natura conjugale animal et domesticum, ut parentibus et :tlliis et uxori vivat: et ut
amicis et civibus vivat, natura civile animal homo est." Ibid., 1. I. t. vi, c.
3, Vol. VII, p. 88.
54 " Sufficientia enim hominis non simpliciter est, quia sufficientia simpliciter
soli Deo convenit." Ibid.
55 " ••• Sed in comparatione ad opus nostrum .... " Ibid. I, I, t. vi, c. 5,
Vol. VII, p. 89.
56 " ••• Quia nos non quaerimus felicitatem nisi secundum quod operatum et
possessum a nobis bonum est. Hoc autem forte fiet manifestum si sumatur
opus hominis secundum quod homo est." Ibid.
57 ". • • Videtur hominis secundum quod homo aliquod opus est." Ibid.
" ... Nihil es.t otiosum vel vanum in natura." Politicorum, 1. I, c. 6, Vol.
VIII, p. 43. " Quaeramus igitur utrum prcibabile sit quod tectoris sive
tectonici, hoc est aedificatoris, et coriarii, et alioru:in artificum, sunt opera
quaedam et actus pfoprii, hominis non secundum quod homo ullum sit

POLITICAL LIFE OF MAN IN ALBERTUS MAGNUS

55!'J

according to his powers. He found the highest task of man to
be the task of reason. 58 But while the work of reason is proper
to man both in the active and the contemplative life, both as
prudence and as wisdom, the work proper to man in his composite state is prudence and politics. 59
In comparing these two lives in the Tenth Book of the
Ethics, Albert based the superiority of the contemplative life
on the somewhat dubious though classical theory of self-sufficiency.
. . . Since the practical intellect refers to particular things in which
human operations exist, the cognition of the practical intellect is
estimative and conciliative. Because of this it does not have a pure
intellectual operation. The speculative intellect, however, is most
divine and not practical. The highest operations of this intellect
will be contemplative happiness ....
The wise man, however, existing in speculation according to himself alone, can speculate and have perfect felicity. The wiser he
is existing alone in himself, the better he is able to contemplate
(because then he needs neither doctor nor director from the fact
that he is perfect to himself) .... Likewise, civil happiness itself
is perfect in itself relative to the citizens and is ordered to happiness of the citizen in order that each, having returned to himself,
might intend wisdom.60
et actus proprius secundum quod homo est, ita quod homo naturaliter sit
otiosum quid secundum naturam, nullum habens opus." Ethicorum, 1. I, t. vi,
c. 5, Vol. VII, pp. 89-90.
58 " ••• Tune opus hominis semper est rationis opus •.. " »thicorum, 1. I,
t. vi, C. 7, Vol. CII, p. 93.
s0 See ibid., 1. I, t. vii, c. 15-17, Vol. VII, pp. 129-33.
'60 "Et ideo cum intellectus
practicus ad particularia referatur in quibus
sunt operationes humanae, cognitio intellectus practici aestimativa est consiliativa.
Propter quod intellectualem et puram non habet operationem.
Speculativus ergo intellectus divinissimus est et non pranticus: et illius optima operatio felicitas erit contemplativa. , , .
. . . Sapiens autem in speculatione secundum seipsum solus existens, potest speculari, et facultatem habet perfectam: et quanto utique sapientior
est, secundum seipsum solus existens, melius potest speculari. . . . Similiter
et ipsa civilis felicitas perfecta quidem est in seipsa, relata tamen ad cives
ipsos, ad beatitudinem civium ordinatur, ut unusquisque sibiipsi redditus,
intendere possit sapientiae." Ibid., 1. X, t. ii, c. 2, Vol. VII, pp. 625-26.

.560

JAMES 'V. SCHALL, S.J.

The use of self-sufficiency as a criterion in determining qualitative perfection in both social and speculative philosophy, while
very Greek, must be carefully employed. In the above passage,
Albert, while not as clear as might be desired, did seem to
recognize the limits of the self-perfection criterion. For he used
it only with respect to impediments. The main thing is the
object achieved either by society or speculation, not the mere
fact that the operation to achieve it is unimpeded, and the
main "objects" in reality are persons, human or divine. 61
Albert's ultimate analysis of action and contemplation
showed, it seems, that he leaned heavily on his doctrine that
the speculative intellect " totus homo est." 62 " The highest
and most delightful good for man is life according to speculative intellect, for this especially is man." 63 But Albert was,
with Aristotle, quite prepared to •admit that such a life is beyond man, yet still to be pursued as much as possible, a position that will have tremendous ramifications for the relation of
classical, Christian, and modern political philosophy. 64
Such a life, however, which is according to speculative operations
is better than man. I call, however, the life of man that which is
according to the operations of man. For man is two men according to the intellect, namely that by which he is connected to
God ... having nothing of the brute in him, and that according
to inquisitive reason according to which he is joined to time and
continuity according to which also man excells the beasts. According to this latter, however, he has nothing that is not human.
61 See James V. Schall, "The Totality of Societzy: From Justice to, Friendship," The Thomist (.January, 1957), pp. 1-26.
62J"'· •• Intellectus totus homo est," Ibid., 1. X, t. ii, c. 3, Vol. VII, p. 628.
63 "Homini
ergo et optimum et delectabilissimum est vita secundum intellectum speculativa: haec enim maxime est homo." Ibid.
64 See James V. Schall, "The Supernatural
Destiny of Man," Modern Age,
(Summer/Fall, 1982), pp. 411-15; ibid., "Metaphysics, Theology, and Political Theory," Political Science Reviewer, (Fall, 1981), pp. 1-26; ibid.,
"Revelation, Reason, and Politics: Catholic Reflections on Strauss," G-regorianum, Roma, ( 1981), #2, pp. 349-66; #3, pp. 487-98; ibid. "Displacing
Damnation: The Neglect of Hell in Political Theory," The Thomist, ( J anuary, 1980), pp. 27-44; "Mcinerny's St. Thomas Aquinas," Teao_hing Political
Science, (Summer, 1983), pp. 195-98.

POLITICAL LIFE OF MAN IN ALBERTUS MAGNUS

561

Therefore, to live according to the speculative intellect is above
man. For according to that intellect he does not live according as
he is man, but he lives according as there is something divine in
him. And as such a life differs from the life of the composite which
is mixed with continuity and time, so also differs the operation
which is according to wisdom and intellect from that life which
is according to another virtue. This virtue, however, is prudence
consisting in the electing reason dealing with particular things.
If therefore the intellect is divine when compared to man, it fol-

lows also that the life of the intellect is divine compared to human
life.65

The happiest man in Albert's eyes is still the one who devotes
himself to the contemplative· life, even in this life. But still in
a secondary sense, a man can be called happy who lives a prudent (ethical and political) life.
Secondarily, however, he is happy who has perfect operations according to the other virtue which is the highest of inquisitive reason. This is the moral virtue . . . for according to this are human
operations. . . . Moral virtues, however, to which prudence is
joined are all about the passions. The passions, however, are of
the composite. And the human virtues concern the composite ....
Nor does it belong to man, as Hermes Trismagistus says .... Such
an operation is not human but divine happiness. 66
65 " Talis autem vita quae secundum operationes
speculationis est, melior
est quam vita hominis. Hominis autem dico vitam quae secundum hominis
est operationes. Homo enim duo homines est secundum intellectum, scilicet
secundum quern Deo connexus est (ut dicit Hermes Trismagistus)
nihil
hrutale habens in seipso: et secundum rationem inquisitam, secundum quam
tempori et (continuo) conjunctus est, secundum quam quidem etiam homo
est excellens bestias. Secundum autem eamdem nihil nisi humanum habet.
Vivere igitur secundum intellectum speculativum supra homines est. Secundum enim illum intellectum non vivit secundum quod homo est, sed vivit
secundum quod aliquid divinum in ipso est. Et quanto differt tale vivere a
vivere compositi quod continuo et tempori commixtum est, tanto differet etiam
operation quae secundum sapientiam ·et intellectum est, a vivere illo quod
secundum aliam virtutem est. Haec autem virtus est prudentia in ratione
electa consistens, et circa particularia negotians.
" Si ergo intellectus divinum est, quando comparatur ad hominem, sequitur
etiam quod intellectus vita sit divina comparata ad vitam humanam." Ibid.,
p. 627.
66" Secondario autem et ille felix est, qui secundum aliam virtutem quae
rationis inquisitivae ultimum est, habet perfectas operatones. Haec autem

562

JAMES V. SCHALI.1, S.J.

Albert, then, incorporated into his thinking both kinds of happiness, the happiness attainable in this life and the highest
type of life open to man which he thinks to be the contemplative life. (This, it should be recalled, is a philosophical position as such, not directly yet dealing with the revelational answer to this question) .
Conclusion

The general significance of Albertus Magnus in political
theory now seems more clear. He represents historically a
trend in Christian thought that eventually was to gain predominance, at least until the modern problem of Christianity
with political philosophy itself, the present problem of both
political philosophy itself and the relation of Christian revelation to it. 67 This trend reacted against the Augustinian tradition by seeking to show that the individual and political good
of man in this life was a valid and legitimate good, though not
the highest, this in agreement with Augustine. Man exalts
God by most fully accomplishing the tasks of nature, without
confusing nature with God or denying his own personal, individual transcendent relation to God. Albert sought a theoretic balance which attempted to account both for the finiteness and limitedness characteristic of this life and for the drive
for personal immortality that is philosophically man's very
strongest urge and desire, a drive which if not placed in an
adequate intellectual context, including that of revelation, will
destroy the type of order open to man on earth. The origins
of all contemporary ideological political theory lie, intellectually, here.
virtus moralis est . . . secundum hanc enim sunt operationes humanae. . . .
Morales autem virtutes, quibus copulata est prudentia, omnes circa passiones
sunt. Passiones autem compositi sunt. Compositi autem virtutes humanae
sunt. . .. Vita autem et operatio intellectus speculativi a passionibus et
composito separata est. Nee convenit homini, ut dicit Hermes Trismegistus,
nisi secundum maximam aversionem intellectus a corpore. Talis igitur operatio et felicitas, non humana, sed divina est." Ibid., pp. 628-29.
67 See James V. Schall, Christianity
and Politics (Boston: St. Paul Editions, 1981); Redeeming the Time (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1968).

POLITICAL LIFE OF MAN IN ALBERTUS MAGNUS

563

Albertus Magnus, too, recognized that there was a priority
in these orders. He did not even suggest that the happiness
available in the temporal city is absolutely perfect. But neither
did he suggest that it is not a worthwhile and normal goal for
man. It is this balance and practicality which characterized
Albert's endeavor in political philosophy. He did not suggest
that man can attain ultimate happiness without immortalitywhich, of course, he cannot. Nor did he suggest that the" immortality " and sufficiency obtainable by the works, deeds, and
words of the temporal city could replace personal immortality
(or resurrection) . On the other hand, by reason of the fact
that immortality is something strictly proper to man in a permanent state only in another life, (or if "this life" only as
transformed by the terms of revelation) , Albert was able to
distinguish goals proper to this life which did not substitute
for immortality properly so-called. Politics and economics and
prudence could now be politics and economics and prudence.
They do not have to be metaphysics and theology, as they
became in systems which do not recognize this very important
distinction between the earthly immortality Hannah Arendt so
well described in The Human Condition and the personal immortality beyond this life, though still directly related to the
singular being beginning existence in this life.
If a shortcoming in Albert's analysis arises, it would appear
to be primarily in the fact that he is too ready to make the
contemplative life which can be had in this life simply equivalent to the contemplative life in the next. As a result, he will
talk as if contemplation of "theoremata" fully interested a
human being in some absolute sense. Yet, speaking as a philosopher, this was probably as far as he could go. Along with
this, he spoke too uncritically of the self-sufficiency of contemplation and did not appear to make a p1'ace for others in
his theoretical order-though many of his discussions of friendship in this life were quite remarkable. However, his insistence
that the proper object of speculation was God meant ultimately that he was not concerned merely with abstractions.

564

JAMES V. SCHALL, S.J.

Albert did see the necessity of communal life on earth, yet
his tendency was to minimize this aspect insofar as it was
relevant to the contemplative order. Thus, Albert had maintained in his commentaries that the speculative order was the
highest because of the "theoremata" that the intellect contemplated. This position, even though it may only be an expansion of Albert's view of Aristotle, still seemed to jeopardize
the primacy of other persons both divine and human in the
hierarchy of the contemplative as well as of the practical order.
In this respect, Augustine's City of God was not open to the
temptation of making the realities of the contemplative order
abstractions rather than persons. However, since Albert here
was primarily commenting on Aristotle, his analysis again emphasized the point at which revelation is directed to Aristotle,
to the philosopher. Christian philosophy can only arise when
we already have the questions asked which Aristotle posed,
the questions reposed so well philosophically by Albertus
Magnus.
The outstanding significance, much neglected, of Albert remains. He was the first great Christian thinker to realize the
relationship between immortality and the proper life of man
on earth in a context which gave adequate place to this, the
political life and to the next. Albert, in other words, realized the
wonderful paradox that the human and political life, to remain
human and political, somehow must recognize the place of the
contemplative order, that politics without metaphysics and
theology, in its own fashion, becomes itself a metaphysics and
a theology, becomes an attempt to create "what is", but by
criteria other than the "what is" of primary being. It is for
this reason, as Albert saw, that the Christian emphasis on immortality, as seen through the doctrine of resurrection as particularly addressed to philosophy, is the real basis of political
theory, because, at the same time, it accounts for the uniqueness of the individual person, his concreteness, and insists that
politics can only achieve a limited goal in this life.
Ultimately, immortality after death is not "political" in

POLITICAL LIFE OF MAN IN ALBERTUS MAGNUS

565

the normal sense of that term, however much it may have to
do with friendship, contemplation, and the encounter with ultimate being. The "moderation" that Professor Leo Strauss
looked for in classical theory, in the end, is only guaranteed
when we also account for medieval philosophy and political
philosophy. Albertus Magnus, along with Thomas Aquinas,
remains our primary guide here, even for contemporary political philosophy.
JAMES

Georgetown University
Washington, D.O.

v. SCHALL, S.J.

AQUINAS AND JANSSENS ON THE
MORAL MEANING OF HUMAN ACTS

D

URING THE 1970s the eminent Louvain moral theologian, Louis Janssens, published two lengthy and
very influential articles analyzing the moral meaning
of human acts: "Ontic Evil and Moral Evil" 1 and "Norms
and Priorities in a Love Ethic." 2 In both these essays, but particularly in the first, J anssens argued that his own position,
which he explicitly identified with that developed by Peter
Knauer, Josef Fuchs, Richard McCormick, and Bruno
Schiiller,3 was supported by and grounded in the thought of St.
Thomas Aquinas on the structure and moral meaning of human
acts. In 1982 Janssens published an essay called "St. Thomas
Aquinas and the Question of Proportionality." 4 In this essay,
too, Janssens maintained that Aquinas endorsed the view that
has come to be known as proportionalism, namely, that one can
rightly intend to do " antic " or " pre-moral " evil for a proportionately greater or higher " antic " or " premoral " good.
Commenting on this third essay, Richard McCormick noted
that in it Janssens made it "utterly clear ... how traditional
is the notion of proportionality." 5
The principal purpose of this paper is to examine Janssens'
claim that the teaching of St. Thomas supports proportionalism
1 Louv·ain Studies 4.2 (Fall, 1972), 115-156; reprinted in Readings in Moral
Theology, No. 1, Norms and the Oatholio Tradition, ed. Charles E. Curran
and Richard A. McCormick, S.J. (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), pp. 40-93;
hereafter referred to as OE, with references to the essa.y as it appeared in
Louvain Studies.
2 Louooin Studies 6.3 (Spring, 1977), 207-238; hereafter referred to as NP,
a NP, 237-238.
referred to as QP.
4 Louvain Studies 9.1 (Spring, 1982) 26-46; hereafter
s Richard A. McCormick, S.J., "Notes on Moral Theology: 1983," Theologioal Studies 45.l (March 1984), 92.

566

AQUINAS AND JANSSENS ON TltE HUMAN ACTS

567

and to provide a critique of his interpretation of St. Thomas.
I believe that in his 1982 essay Janssens was more faithful to
the thought of St. Thomas than he was in his earlier papers.
Although he did not himself call attention to it, in his 1982
essay Janssens offered significant correctives to his earlier
analyses of Aquinas, without, however, abandoning his own
position and, indeed, once more insisting that Aquinas accepted
proportionalism.
Since Janssens claims that his own normative position is supported by St. Thomas, I will, in the first part of this paper,
provide a summary of Janssens' own views on the morality of
human acts and nature of moral norms so that this position
can be clearly understood. In the second part I will present
J anssens' interpretation of Aquinas in his 1972 and 1977
articles and show why this interpretation is quite inaccurate.
In the third part I will call attention to what I believe are
significant corrections made by Janssens of his own analysis of
St. Thomas in his 1982 paper. But in this part I will also show
that in this third essay J anssens persists in attributing proportionalism to Aquinas and that his doing so is erroneous and inconsistent with the view of St. Thomas as presented by
Janssens in this essay. A brief conclusion will then be given.
1. Janssens' Understanding of the Moral Meaning of Human

Acts and of Moral Norms
According to Janssens on tic evil, also called " premoral disvalue," 6 is "any lack of fulfillment which frustrates our natural urges and makes us suffer." 1 Examples of ontic evil are
" hunger and thirst, pain and suffering, illness and death,
neuroses and psychoses, ignorance, error, violence, segregation,
etc." 8 The opposite of antic evil is antic good, illustrated by
"life, bodily or psychic health, pleasure and joy, friendliness,
a Janssens uses the expression
the phrase " premoral disvalue."
1 OE, 134.
s NP, 211.

"ontic evil" in OE, while in NP he uses

568

WILLIAM E. MAY

the cultural values of science, technique, art, etc." 9 Ontic evil,
which is a natural consequences of our limitation, is implicated
in everything we do. This leads to an inevitable ambiguity in
all human action, because every choice, even morally good
choices, necessarily sacrifices some good and thus involves
ontic evil.10
Given the inevitable presence of ontic evil in everything we
do and the ambiguity in every choice, it follows that human
action would be impossible were we morally obligated to avoid
all ontic evil or premoral disvalue. Thus the question arises,
"when and to what extent are we justified in causing or allowing ontic evil?" 11 In answering this question Janssens first insists that we should never will ontic evil for its own sake. An
action is always immoral when ontic evil is the end of the inner
act of the will, " if by end is meant that which definitely and
in the full sense of the word puts an end to the activity of the
subject." 12 The reason why this is so is that ontic evil, when
willed in and for itself, "makes the.end of the acting subject
into an immoral end, which, as formal element, contaminates
the totality of the action with its malice." 13 Here we have one
of the cardinal claims of Janssens concerning the moral meaning of human action. The end of the inner act of the will, i.e.,
the end the agent has in view in acting, the end for whose sake
the action is ultimately undertaken, is the formal determinant
of the morality of the action as a whole: if the end of the inner
act of the will is evil, then the entire act will be evil; if this end
is good, then its goodness will be communicated to the entire
act and the entire act will be morally good.14
In emphasizing that the end the agent has in view is the
formal element determining the morality of human action, however, Janssens is not proposing a merely subjective criterion,
9 NP,

210.
134; NP, 212.
11 OE, 139.
12 OE, 141.
1s OE, 142.
HOE, 142.

1-0 OE,

AQUINAS AND J ANSSENS ON THE HUMAN ACTS

569

nor is he inattentive to the concrete act that the agent wills
in order to achieve the end he has in view. First of all, for an
action to be morally good, the end intended by the agent must
be something truly good, not merely apparently so. Moreover,
in addition to an objectively good end that the agent must intend as the final terminus of his action, it is also necessary that
the means chosen to attain this end, that is, the external act,
must be in due proportion to that end. If the means or external act, what Janssens calls the material element of the
human act, is not adequately proportioned to the end, then the
action will be, as a whole, morally bad. And the means is not
in due proportion to the end if it contradicts the end the agent
intends. Obviously one can judge whether or not the external
act or means is proportionate only by relating it to the end.
Thus no moral judgment of the moral goodness o'r badness of
the external act can be made without taking into account the
end toward which it is ordered. 15
This does not, however, require that the means chosen by
the agent-which, for Janssens, is the external act considered
as a material event in the physical world 16-must be ontically
good. The means may indeed involve antic evil, and the evil
entailed may be rightfully intended by the agent if willing and
intending this evil can be justified by a proportionately higher
or greater antic good. Thus Janssens writes: "it can be right
to intend an antic evil as end of the inner act of the will, if that
end is not willed as a final end, but only as a fiinis medius et
proximus to a higher end." 17 And again: " an action admitting
or causing a premoral disvalue is morally right when it serves
a higher premoral value or safeguards the priority given to a
lesser premoral disvalue." 18
Because the means chosen by the agent can include an ontic
1s OE, 142, 148-149.
10 OE,

142, 148-149; NP 210, 216, 231, 232-233.
141.
1s NP, 217. Cf. NP, 231: "Even when the material content of an action involves a premoral disvalue, the whole action can be morally right, when we
have a proportionate reason for admitting or causing the :premoral disva,lue."
11 OE,

570

WILLIAM E. MAY

evil willed and intended by the agent as a proximate end to a
proportionately greater ontic good intended by the agent as
a. final end, Janssens insists that" it is impossible to pronounce
a judgment on an exterior action which contains ontic evile.g., to kill somebody, to utter a falsehood-if this action is
viewed only as a factual and actual event (S'ecundum speciem
natura.e) and without paying attention to the end of the inner
act of the will," tha.t is, to the end tha.t definitively terminates
the action undertaken by the subject. 19
This analysis of the meaning and structure of human action
and of the interrelationship between ontic and moral evil within human action leads Janssens to conclude that our basic
moral obligation is to promote and realize ontic goods or premoral values as much as possible. 20 In conflict situations, i.e.,
in situations where premoral values are unavoidably connected
with premoral disvalues, our moral obligation is "to choose
the alternative which indicates our preference for the lesser
premoral disvalue or for the higher premoral value." 21
In addition to providing this basic moral norm, J anssens distinguishes between formal norms and concrete, material norms.
The former, which are expressed in morally evaluative language or in virtue (vice) language, assert what our moral dispositions ought to be or no.t to be (e.g., one ought to act justly,
chastely, etc., and one ought not to act unjustly, unchastely,
rn OE, 148. Cf. NP, 231: "It is impossible to make a moral judgment
about the material content of an action without considering the whole act:
material content (aotus externus, what is done), the situation or, classically,
the circumstances and the foreseeable consequences. A judgment about moral
rightness or wrongness is only possible with respect to that totality, because
only concerning that whole is it possible to argue whether or not it expresses
the priority of the lesser premoral disvalue or the higher premoral value."
20 NP, 213.
21 NP, 214. This normative proposal obviously assumes that ontic goods or
premoral values can be arranged in a hierarchy that is objectively valid.
Janssens himself recognizes this. However, in NP, 229-230, where he explicitly
raises this issue, he does not even try to show how the ontic goods are to be
arranged in an objective hierarchical order. He simply asserts that the
studies of humanist psychologists like Abraham H. Maslow can be very
helpful,

AQUINAS AND J ANSSENS ON THE HUMAN ACTS

571

etc.) Such formal norms are absolute in character and have no
exceptions. However, they do not determine the concrete content of our actions, i.e., they do not specify the concrete actions one must do in order to be just, chaste, etc., nor do they
specify the concrete actions one must avoid in order not to be
unjust, unchaste, etc. 22
Concrete, material norms have both a descriptive and a
normative function. Unlike formal norms using evaluative language (e.g., to murder), concrete, material norms use only descriptive terms (e.g., to kill). However, even though these
norms are couched in morally neutral and merely descriptive
terms, they embody a normative judgment " with respect to
a. series of actions described in this way ... according as the
material content (what is done) involves or ca.uses premoral
values or dis-values. The concrete material norm prescribes
actions realizing premoral values; it forbids those which contain premoral evil." 23
Norms of this kind are relative. They are binding for the
most part, but in principle they admit of exceptions. Janssens
puts the matter this way: " an action admitting or causing a
premoral disvalue is morally right when it serves a higher premoral valu.e or safeguards the priority given to a lesser premoral disvalue .... In other words, we can have a proportionate reason to depart from the norm. Consequently concrete
material norms are relative in the sense of conditioned. They
are not binding, if there is a proportionate reason why the case
at issue is not governed by them." 24
Janssens acknowledges that some concrete material norms,
for instance, the norm proscribing rape or the violent imposition of oneself on another in genital sex, are " practically or
virtuously (sic) exceptionless." Nonetheless, even concrete actions proscribed by norms of this kind, for instance rape, would
be morally justifiable if there is some premoral value or ontic
22 NP,

207-209.
216.
24NP, 217.

23 NP,

572

WILLIAM E. MAY

good sufficiently great to serve as a proportionate reason for
willing a concrete material act involving such ontic evil. 25
The foregoing account is, I believe, a fair and accurate summary of Janssens' views on the moral meaning of human acts
and of moral norms. His claim is that these views are found
in St. Thomas; this claim will now be examined.
2. Janssens' Interpretation of St. Thomas in "Ontio Evil"

and " Norms and Priorities "
Here I will first summarize J anssens' very lengthy analysis
of St. Thomas in his " Ontic Evil and Moral Evil " and then
comment critically on the analysis he provides in this centrally
important paper. Since much that he says in this essay is repeated in " Norms and Priorities," in the discussion of the
latter essay attention will focus on a key passage from St.
Thomas, not considered in "Ontic Evil," that, Janssens claims
in "Norms and Priorities," clearly shows the acceptance by
Aquinas of the proposal that one can rightly intend ontic evil
if willing such evil is justified by a proportionately greater
good.
A.I. Janssens' Analysis of Aquinas in" Ontic Evil"
At the beginning of this essay Janssens calls attention to two
schools of thought in the Middle Ages concerning the structure
and morality of human acts. The first, which was championed
by Peter Lombard and subsequent theologians influenced by
him, stressed the importance of the object of the act of choice
in determining the morality of human action and held that an
object could be morally evaluated "by itself (in se), without
reference to the agent." 26 The other, which had been suggested
25 NP,

217-218.
115. Theo Belmans, in his analysis of St. Thomas and critique of
Janssens, pertinently observes that rather than saying "without reference to
the agent" it "would be more precise to say, 'without reference to the contingent end held in view by thG agent and motivating his choice.'" See his
Le Sens Objectif de Z'Agir Humain: Pour Relire la Morale Oonjugale de Saint
Thomas, Studi Tomistici 8 (Vatican City: Libreria Edi trice Vaticans, 1980),
p. 360, n. 140.
26 OE,,

AQUINAS AND JANSSENS ON THE HUMAN ACTS

573

by Anselm of Canterbury and developed by Abelard, emphasized the role the human subject plays in giving moral meaning
to his actions by ordering them to an end. It was this second
point of view, Janssens maintains, that was adopted by
Aquinas and systematically articulated by him. 27
In Abelard's thought, as Janssens notes, our external actions
are in themselves morally indifferent and become morally good
or bad by reason of the intention from which they proceed. 28
And, J anssens continues, " without any doubt Thomas thinks
along these lines." 29
Why is this so? This is so, Janssens says, because for St.
Thomas the formal determinant of the morality of human action is the end of the inner act of the will of the agent: Finis
enim dat speciem in moralibus. 30 And by end Janssens means
(and says St. Thomas means) the end that the agent has in
mind in choosing a particular means (external action) , i.e., the
end for whose sake the agent is acting and for whose realization the means are chosen and willed.81 It is this end, the end
of the interior act of the will for whose sake the means are
chosen, that " is the determining and decisive factor " in
human action. 32 Obviously,. if this end is bad, the entire human
act is morally vitiated. 33
21 OE,

115.
123, n. 39. Here Janssens cites a passage from Abelard's Dialogus
inter philo.9ophum, Judaeum et Ohristianum (PL 178.1611-1684, at 1652B):
"Quaedam etenim bona aut mala ex seipsis proprie et quasi substantialiter
dicuntur, utpote virtutes vel vitia: quaedam vero per accidens et per aliud,
veluti operum nostrorum actiones, cum in se sint indifferentes, ex intentione
tamen ex qua procedunt bonae diountur vel malae. Unde et saepe cum idem
a diversis agitur vel ab eodem in diversis temporibus, pro diversitate tamen
intentionum, idem opus bonum dicitur atque malum." Emphasis mine. For
an appraisal of Abelard challenging that of Janssens, cf. Belmans, Le 8ens,
pp. 19-35, especially pp. 20-25.
29 OE, 123, n. 39.
ao This is a constant refrain in Janssens essay. Cf. OE, 119, 120-121, 123,
124, 126, 142, with references to Summa Theologiae (hereafter ST), 1-2, 1
int.; 1, 3 and ad 2; 8, 2; 18, 6; 20, 1, ad 3; 2-2, 43, 3.
81 OE, 151: "Something becomes an end insofar as the subject aims at it."
82 OE, 121.
sa OE, 125, citing ST 1-2, 19, 3, ad 2 and 19, 7, ad 2.
2s OE,

574

WILUAM :E. MAY

However, as Janssens notes, a concrete human act, in addition to including an inner act of the will and its end, also includes "an exterior event (actus externus) ." 84 How are the
exterior act or exterior event and the inner act of the will interrelated, and how is the morality of the exterior act to be
evaluated?
In answering the first of these questions J anssens stresses
that for St. Thomas the external act and inner act of the will,
although distinct, are integral parts of one unified human act,
and the act is given unity by the end of the inner act of the
agent's will. External act and inner act of the will are related
as matter to form. Thus "the end which is the proper object
of the inner act of the will is the formal element; the exterior
act, as means to this end, is the material element of the very
same human act .... And, as the f onna determines the specific
being of a reality, so the end of the interior act of the will specifies the concrete totality of the human act." 35
Precisely because the end of the inner act of the will, i.e., the
final end for whose sake the action is undertaken, is the formal
element specifying the whole human act, Janssens maintains
that in the thought of St. Thomas it is simply impossible to
make a judgment about the morality of the external act without relating that act to the end of the inner of the will. Thus
Janssens writes:
For this reason [namely, that the end of the inner act of the will
is the formal element whereas the exterior act is the material ele·
rnent] he [Thomas] reacts sharply against those who are of the
opinion that the material event of an act can be evaluated morally
without consideration of the subject of the inner act of the will or of
the end. As h-e sees it, an exterior action considered as nothing
but the material event (secundum speciem naturae) is an abstraction to which a moral evaluation cannot be applied. This objectevent becomes a concrete human act only insofar as it is directed
towards an end within the inner act of the will. Only this cona4 OE, 120.

as OE, 120-121, commenting

1-2, 8, 2 and 1-2, 1, 3 ad 2.

on ST 1-2, 17, 4 and referring as well to ST

AQUINAS AND JANSSENS ON THE HUMAN ACTS

575

crete totality has a moral meaning. It is the end of the inner act
of the will which specifies the malice or the goodness of the act. 36

Janssens acknowledges that according to St. Thomas the external act is specified by its object. 37 But he denies that this
means that the exterior act can be judged morally good or bad
without reference to the end of the inner act of the will, precisely because the end of the inner act of the will is always the
formal element while the exterior act with its object is the material element of human action. 38 It thus remains true that the
end of the inner act of the will is the formal determinant of the
morality of the whole human act. If this end is bad, as we
have seen, the entire act will be morally wicked. And if this
end is good, then " the entire action is necessarily good ... if it
concerns a real intentio finis which involves the effective will to
realize an end for its own sake and also as reason and cause of
the action." 39
Although the end of the inner act of the will is the formal
and specifying factor whereas the exterior act is the matter
given specification by this end, it does not follow, Janssens ins!ists, that for Thomas any exterior act can be rightly used as a
means to a good end of the subject. Although exterior acts, as
material events, cannot be the subject of moral evaluation until
they are related to the end that the agent has in view in choosing them as means, there is nonetheless the need for these exterior acts to be properly proportioned to the end that the
agent intends, and only if they are can they be apt matter for
morally good acts. If the exterior act is not proportionate to
the agent's end-and it is not if there is some contradiction between the external act and the end-then the exterior act is not
fit matter for the whole human act and this whole act will be
morally wrong. But, Janssens insists, Thomas teaches that one
can determine the proportion of the exterior act to the end
as OE, 123, with reference to ST 1-2, 1, 3, ad 2.
37 OE, 124, referring to ST 1-2, 18, 2,4,5,6,7,8; 20, 1,2,3,
as OE 124, referring to ST 1-2, 18, 6 and a,d 2.
a9 OE, 126,

576

WILLIAM E. MAY

only by relating the exterior act to the end. It is impossible
to judge whether exterior acts are, of themselves, proportionate
or not to some end of the agent, i.e., whether they are fit matter for morally good human acts. 40
The exterior act or means chosen, then, must be proportioned to the good end of the agent if the whole human act is
to be morally right. Only when it is proportioned in this way
can the formal element, the end, communicate its moral goodness to the material element of the whole human act, the exterior act or means. 41 And so long as the exterior act is proportioned to a good end of the agent, it can be formed by the
goodness of the end even if the exterior act involves evil or
premoral disvalue. Janssens believes that this is clearly the
position taken by St. Thomas, and that it is illustrated by his
teaching on justifiable kinds of killing.
In killing in self defense, " killing my assailant," which is an
ontic evil, " does not exceed the bounds of what I must use as
a means to my end," namely, the preservation of my own
life.42 In defending himself, the agent cannot, Thomas teaches,
intend the death of the assailant as an end,48 but his death can,
in Janssens' understanding of Aquinas, be properly intended as
a proportionate means that one can choose to protect the good
of one's own life, which serves as the end or formal element in
the act of self-defense.44 Since killing and the death it causes
are ontic evils or premoral disvalues, it follows that in his
teaching on self-defense St. Thomas is saying that one can
choose an ontic evil or will it as a means to a proportionately
greater ontic good.
Similarly, ontic evil is willed and even intended in the killing of a criminal by one who has public authority. Although St.
Thomas taught that a private individual could not intend the
4o OE, 126-128, with

reference to ST 1-2, 4, 4; 18, 5, ad 3; 18, 4 and ad 2.
129.
42 OE, 133, with reference to ST 2-2, 64, 7.
43 OE, 139-140, with reference again to ST 2-2, 64, 7.
44 OE, 133, 139-140.
41 OE,

AQUINAS AND JANSSENS ON THE HUMAN ACTS

577

death of an assailant in defending himself from attack, he did
grant that a person authorized by the community, for instance,
a policeman, can rightly intend the death of an assailant, an
ontic evil, as a proximate or intermediate end (finis medius et
proximus) "which serves a higher goal, viz., the safeguarding
of the common good (finis principalis) ." 45 Both in self-defense and in the publicly authorized killing of criminals antic
evil or premoral disvalue is involved and intended. In self-defense killing is willed as a means to an end, while in publicly
authorized killing such killing is intended as a proximate end to
a more principal end. In both cases the doing of antic evil is
justified by a proportionately greater antic good.
The foregoing pages have summarized Janssens' interpretation of the thought of St. Thomas on the structure and moral
meaning of human acts in his influential essay, "Ontic Evil
and Moral Evil." His major claims in this essay are: (1) St.
Thomas, following Abelard, refused to allow a moral judgment
on the moral goodness or badness of external acts considered
in themselves; their moral worth can be known only when they
are related to the end that the subject has in view in choosing
them as means; and (2) St. Thomas accepted the normative
proposal that one may rightly intend and will antic evil if
doing so is justified by a proportionately greater antic good.
A.2. Critical Commentary on This Interpretation

of Aquinas

Janssens' interpretation of St. Thomas, while challenging
and helpful in some respects, must be rejected, for reasons to
be set forth in this section, as a serious misinterpretation of the
Doctor Communis. In particular, it is necessary to repudiate
Janssens' claims (a) that Aquinas must be viewed as a latterday disciple of Abelard who opposed the view that certain sorts
of exterior acts, specified by their objects, could be judged
morally wicked without relating them to the ends that human
agents have in view in choosing them as means, and (b) that
Aquinas adopted the proposal that one can rightly will or in4° OE,

132-133, referring to ST 2-2, 64, 7.

578

WILLIAM E. MAY

tend ontic evil for the sake of a proportionately greater ontic
good. The reasons why Janssens' claims are mistaken will be
amply set forth in this section.
But Janssens is correct in insisting that for St. Thomas there
is no posibility of giving a moral judgment about a human action without relating such action to a human subject. 46 Human
acts are not " things," " out there." They are not material or
physical events in the world of nature but are, as Janssens
rightly emphasizes, personal actions of human subjects, abiding within them. As St. Thomas himself put the matter,
"agere ... est permanens in ipso agente." 47
Janssens is also right in saying that for St. Thomas it is not
possible to give a moral judgment about the exterior act considered as a material event or as a physical performance in the
world of nature. 48 Thomas clearly distinguished between the
natural species of an exterior act (e.g., killing, sexual intercourse) and its moral species (e.g., just punishment for a
criminal vs. murder or the killing of a person who maintains
his/her dignity; 49 the conjugal act vs. an act of adultery 50 ) •
But what Janssens ignores, as we shall see, is that for St.
Thomas the·exterior act as specified by its object, i.e., the subject matter with which it is concerned, is an intelligible good or
bad grasped by reason and willed by the agent and as such having a moral goodness or badness independent of its ordering to
46 OE,

116.
1-2, 57, 4.
48 OE, 123.
49 ST 1-2, 1, 3, ad 3 (on killing as a natural species and justified killing
of a criminal.)
It should be noted that Janssens, OE, 124, refers to ST 1-2,
1, 3, ad 3 to support his claim that the end intended by the agent (which,
remember, for Janssens is the final end for whose sake an action is undertaken) specifies the act. But note that in this text Thomas clearly distinguishes between proximate and remote ends and insists that the proximate
end, not remote ends, gives the act its moral species. We shall return to this
matter later.
50 ST 1-2, 18, 5, ad 3 (on the moral difference between exercising procreative powers) (the act secundum speciem naturae) and exercising procreative
powers with one's own spouse (the marital act) and exercising procreative
powers with the spouse of another (adultery).
11 ST

AQUINAS AND J.ANSSENS ON THE HUMAN ACTS

579

an end. In addition, as we shall also see, while the external act
as specified by its object constitutes a means that the agent
can will by the will act of choice, it can also be regarded as a
proximate end of the inner will act of intention and thus morally specifying this inner act of the will.
Before turning to texts from Thomas supporting the claims
made above, however, it is first important to call attention to
a key principle undergirding Thomas' entire analysis of the
morality of human action. This is the principle, which Thomas
took from Pseudo-Dionysius, that for a human act to be morally good it must be integrally so, whereas for an act to be morally bad any deficiency of the goodness that ought to be present
in it suffices. This principle, usually expressed summarily as
bonum ex int egra causa, malum ex quocumque def ectu, is
central to Thomas, teaching. He refers to different forrnula.tions
of this principle in several places in the questions of the Prima
Secundae concerned with the morality of human acts, 51 and,
without explicitly formulating the principle or calling attention to its Dionysian source, provides an explanation of its
crucial importance in the very first article of the first question
on the morality of human acts. There he writes:
1

Since it is of the very essence of the good that it be fullness of
being, if there is something lacking to anything pertaining to its
fullness of being, that being cannot he called good unreservedly but
only relatively, to the extent that it is a being .... Thus we must
say that every action possesses goodness to the extent that it has
being; but to the extent that there is lacking to it anything of the
fullness of being that ought to be present in human action, to that
extent the action lacks goodness and is thus said to be bad; for
instance, if there be lacking to the human act its measure according to reason, or if it should lack its due place or something of
this kind. 52
51 In ST 1-2, 18, 4 ad 3 Thomas puts the principle
this way: "Quilibet
singularis defectus causat malum, bonum autem causatur ex integra causa."
In 1-2, 18, 11, obj. 3 he writes: "malum causatur ex singularibus defectibus."
In 1-2, 19, 6, ad 1, he says: "bonum causatur ex integra causa, malum autem
ex singularibus defectibus."
52 ST, 1-2, 18, 1: "quia de ratione boni est ipsa plenitudo essendi, si quidem
alicui aliquid defuerit de debita essendi plenitudine, ne dicetur liinipliciter

580

WILLIAM E. MAY

From this it follows that the whole human act is morally
vitiated if there is lacking to it anything that ought to be
present. Thus it is true, as Janssens holds, that one cannot
give a moral judgment about the whole human act without taking into account the end for whose sake the agent acts, because
if this end is wicked then its wickedness is communicated to
the entire act, no matter what good might be present in the
act by virtue of the goodness of its object and circumstances.
But similarly, this means that the whole human act will be
morally vitiated if either its object or circumstances are bad,
despite the goodness of the end for whose sake the act is intended and done. Thus if one knows that the object of the exterior act is bad, one knows that the entire act is morally
vitiated, even if one does not know the end for whose sake the
external act, as specified by its object, is chosen as a means.
Janssens fails to take this into account.
What is the teaching of Thomas about exterior acts?
Janssens, as we have seen, consistently holds that the exterior
act is to be identified with a material event, morally neutral
in itself (the act secundum speciem naturae) and given moral
significance only by the end for whose attainment it is chosen
as a means. While an exterior act, so considered, might be disproportionate to its morally specifying end, one can, Janssens
insists, know this only by relating the act to the end.
For St. Thomas, on the other hand, the exterior act is first
and foremost a voluntary, i.e., willed act, and as such already
in the moral universe. It includes a physical performance or
material event but is not to be identified with this. Why? It
is not to be so identified because the exterior act, as willed by
the subject, is already related to the acting person whose will
is either morally good or bad by reason of the moral goodness
bonum, sed secundum quid inquantum est ens .... Sic igitur dicendum quod
omnis actio, inquantum habet aliquid de esse intantum habet de bonitate;
inquantum vero deficit ei aliquid de plenitudine essendi quae debetur actioni
humanae intantum deficit a bonitate, et sic dicitur mala, puta si deficit ei
vel determinata quantitas secundum rationem, vel debitus locus, vel aliquid
huiusmodi."

AQUINAS AND JANSSENS ON THE HUMAN ACTS

581

or badness that the exterior act, as specified by its own proper
object, already has.
Thomas is clear on this." There is," he writes," a twofold activity in a voluntary act, namely the inner act 0£ the will and
the exterior act, and each 0£ these has its own object. The end
is properly the object 0£ the inner act 0£ the will, whereas that
with which the exterior act is concerned is its object. And
... the exterior act receives its species from the object with
which it is concerned." 53
The proper object morally specifying the exterior act, moreover, is not a material event, the matter from which (materia
ex qua) it is made up; rather it is the intelligently understood
subject matter with which the exterior act is concerned (the
materia circa quam) .54 Thomas explains what this means. A
human act, he notes, is not like a " thing " in the world 0£ nature and given its form, and through its form its species, by
nature. Human acts, as proceeding from human intelligence,
are given their forms, and through their forms their species, by
human reason, which measures or rules human actions. 55 This
intelligently constituted " form " is the " object " 0£ the external act. The subject matter (proper object) of the external
act, in other words, can be understood by the subject
judged by him as being either in conformity with or disconformity from normative principles 0£ practical reasoning, the
" measure " 0£ human acts, and as so understood and judged it
gives to the external act its " form " or moral species. Thus,
for St. Thomas, '"to use one's own goods " is an exterior act
5s ST 1-2, 18, 6: "In actu autem voluntario invenitur duplex actus, scilicet
actus interior voluntatis, et actus exterior. Et uterque horum actuum habet
suum obiectum. Finis autem proprie est obiectum interioris actus voluntarii;
id autem circa quod est actio exterior, est obiectum eius .... actus exterior
accipit speciem ab obiecto circa quod est."
54 ST', 1-2, 18, 2, ad 2: "obiectum non est materia ex qua, sed est materia
circa quam; et habet quodammodo rationem formae, inquantum dat speciem."
55 ST 1-2, 18, 10:
"sicut species rerum naturalium constituuntur ex
naturalibus formis, ita species moralium actuum constituuntur ex formis
prout sunt a ratione conceptae." See also 1-2, 18, 5; 19, 3 and 4, and 94,
1 and 2.

582

WILLIAM E. MAY

considered as a factual event (using something) now morally
specified by an intelligible object (one's own goods) that is
judged to be harmony with reason and thus morally good on
this account, whereas " to take what belongs to another " is
an exterior act (taking something) now morally specified by
an intelligible object (that belongs to another) that is judged to
be opposed to reason and hence morally bad. 56 Similarly, "to
use one's generative powers with one's own spouse" is an external act considered as a material event (using one's generative powers) now morally specified by an intelligible object
(with one's own spouse) that is judged to be in harmony with
reason and on this score morally good, whereas "to use one's
generative powers with the spouse of another " is the same external act considered as a material event (using generative
powers) but now specified morally by an intelligible object
(with the spouse of another) that is judged to be contrary to
reason and hence morally wicked. 57
Moreover, St. Thomas insists, in passages that Janssens
simply ignores and that cannot be reconciled with his interpretation of Aquinas, that the first goodness of a human act
comes from the object of the external act and that the first
badness of human action derives from the same source. 58 In
fact, Thomas explicitly teaches, contrary to Janssens' interpretation of him, that the goodness that human acts have by reason of the good ends for whose sake they are chosen and upon
ST 1-2, 18, 2.
1-2, 18, 5 ad 3: "actus coniugalis et adulterium, secundum quod
comparantur ad rationem, differunt specie, et habent effectus specie differentes: quia unum eorum meretur laudem et praemium, aliud vituperium et
poenam. Sed secundum quod comparantur ad potentiam generativam, non
differunt specie . . ."
58 ST 1-2, 18, 2: "Primum autem quod ad plenitudinem
essendi pertinere
videtur, est id quod dat rei speciem. Sicut autem res naturalis habet speciem
ex sua forma, ita actio habet speciem ex obiecto. . . . Et ideo sicut prima
bonitas rei naturalis attenditur ex sua forma, quae dat speciem ei, ita et
prima bonitas actus moralis attenditur ew obieoto convenienti . . . puta uti
re sua. Et sicut in rebus naturalibus primum malum est si res generata non
consequitur formam specifioam . . . ita primum malum in aotionibus moralibus est quod est ew obiecto, sicut accipere aliena."
56

57 ST

AQUINAS AND JANSSENS ON THE HUMAN ACTS

583

which they depend as final causes is a further source of goodness in human action iii addition to the " absolute goodness inherent or intrinsic in them." 59
At this point it will be very helpful to examine the teaching
of St. Thomas in the first three articles of question 20 of the
Prima Secundae, where he is explicitly concerned with the
moral meaning of exterior acts. Janssens calls his readers' attention to the third article, and in particular to the response
to the third objection, where St. Thomas stresses that the exterior act and inner act of the will form a unified whole, and
according to Janssens this shows that for St. Thomas the
source for the morality of the entire unified human act is the
end for whose sake it is done. Yet Janssens ignores the teaching found in the body of this article and in the previous two
articles. If we read them we find that one of the major points
that St. Thomas makes in them is that there is a twofold source
for the goodness or badness of exterior acts. One source (which
J anssens considers to be the exclusive source) is the end to
which the exterior act is ordered; but the other source is the
intelligibly understood subject matter (proper object) of the
exterior act, a source that can be and must be taken into account and one that provides a moral specification of the human
act independent of the end for whose sake the agent might will
the exterior act.
In article 3 of this question Thomas indeed teaches, as
Janssens notes, that the exterior act and the inner act of the
will go to malrn up one unified human act. But he goes on to
say-and it is this part of his teaching that Janssens fails to
consider-that at times an act that is one by reason of its being
unified in a single subject can have different sources for its
goodness or badness and at other times there can be a single
source for its goodness and/or badness As an example he considers the unified act of taking medicine in order to preserve
59 ST 1-2, 18, 4: "Actiones
autem humanae, et alia quorum bonitas dependet ab alio, habent rationem bonitatis ex fine a quo dependent, praeter
bonitatem absolutam q·uae in eis existit."

584

WILLIAM E. MAY

one's health. If the medicine is bitter to the taste, its whole
goodness derives from the good end, health, toward which the
taking of bitter medicine is ordered. On the other hand, if the
medicine in question is delicious, then there is a double source
of its goodness, namely its delicious taste and its ordering to
the good of health. Now it is true, Thomas acknowledges elsewhere,60 that some external acts as specified by their proper
objects, for instance, to pick up a stick, are morally indifferent,
and the entire goodness or badness of such specified external
acts is derived from the end for whose sake they are done.
But this is not true of all external acts as spcified by their objects. Consequently, as St. Thomas points out in the article
concerned with the sources of the goodness or badness of
external acts,
when the exterior act has an intrinsic goodness or badness, namely,
one given to it by reason of its matter [i.e., its materia circa quam
or object] or circumstances, then the goodness [or badness] of the
exterior act is one thing while the goodness [or badness] of the
will derived from the end is another. Thus it is that the goodness
[or badness] of the end present in the act because of the willing
of the end is communicated to the exterior act, and the goodness
[or badness] of the matter and circumstances is communicated
to the act of the will.61

Earlier, in the first article of the same question, Thomas had
stressed that the exterior act is indeed ordered to an end and
that the goodness or badness it has by reason of this ordering
is, of course, communicated to it by the end intended (this is
the aspect of Thomas' thought on which Janssens focuses).
But he likewise had insisted (and this is something Janssens
simply ignores) that "the goodness or badness which an exterior act has in itself,. by reason of its due matter and due cir60 ST 1-2, 18, 8.
61 ST

1-2, 20, 3: "Quando autem actus exterior habet bonitatem vel malitiam seaundum se, scilicet secundum materiam vel circumstantias,
tune
bonitas exterioris actus est una, et bonitas voluntatis, quae est ex fine, est
alia; ita tamen quod et bonitas finis ex voluntate redundat in actum exteriorem, et bonitas materiae et circumstantiarum
redundat in actum
voluntatis."

AQUI;NAS AND J ANSSENS ON THE HUMAN ACTS

585

cumstances, is not derived from the will but rather from reason." He had them concluded that, " if the goodness of the
exterior act is considered insofar as this derives from the reason grasping and informing it, this goodness has a priority over
the goodness deriving from the will." 62
Moreover, in the second article of the same question Thomas
had explicitly asked whether the entire goodness or malice of
the exterior act depended on the will. This, remember, is
Janssens' thesis and the claim he makes about the teaching of
Aquinas. But in answering this question Thomas had this to
say:
In the exterior act a twofold goodness or malice can be considered;
one according to due matter and circumstances; the other according to its ordering to an end. Now that which pertains to it according to its ordering to an end totally depends on the will. But
that which pertains to it according to its due matter and circumstances depends on reason, and on this depends the goodness of the
will insofar as the will itself bears on this.

Then, in concluding this article Thomas stressed once more
that an act is morally good only if it is integrally so and that it
is morally wicked if any good that ought to be found in it is
lacking. He then said: " Therefore, if the will is good both
from it5 proper object and from its end, it follows that the exterior act is good. But it does not suffice, in order that an exterior act be good, that there be the goodness of the will which
comes from the intention of an end; but if the will is evil either
from the intention of the end, or from the act willed, it follows
that the exterior act is bad." 63
These texts, which Janssens simply fails to consider, clearly
show that for the Common Doctor the exterior act is not sim62 ST 1-2, 20, 1: "Bonitas
autem vel malitia quam habet actus exterior
secundum se, propter debitam materiam et debitas circumstantias,
non
derivatur a voluntate, sed magis a ratione. Unde si consideretur bonitas exterioris actus secundum quod est in ordinatione et apprehensione rationis,
prior est quam bonitas actus voluntatis."
63 ST 1-2, 20, 2: " in actu exteriori
potest considerari duplex bonitas vel
malitia: una secundum debitam materiam et circumstantias; alia secundum
ordinem ad finem. Et illa quidem quae est secundum ordinem ad finem, tota
dependet ex voluntate. Illa autem quae est ew debita materia vel circum-

586

WILLIAM E. MAY

ply a material event, that for him this act as specified by its
proper object can be judged morally good or bad independently
from its further ordering to an end, and that the human willand through the will the person-is morally wicked in willing
an exterior act judged to be evil by reason of its specifying object, no matter what further good end the agent may have in
view and toward which he might order the exterior act.
Both in " Ontic Evil " 64 and later in " St. Thomas and the
Question of Proportionality " 65 J anssens uses the teaching of
St. Thomas in q. 18, a. 6 of the Prima Secundae as a major support for his claim that no moral judgment about the exterior
act may be made without referring it to the end toward which
it can be directed. Thus it is here necessary to comment on
the way Janssens interprets Thomas' thought in that important article. The question at issue is whether an act has the
moral species of good or evil from its end, i.e., from the end
for whose sake the external a.ct, specified by its object, is undertaken. Thomas clearly teaches that a human act is specified
morally by the end that the agent intends, noting that just as
the exterior act is specified by its object, so the inner act of
the will is specified by the end that the agent intends and toward which the exterior act is ordered. Thomas goes on to say,
and it is to his teaching here that J anssens appeals consistently
to support his basic claim, that the species of a human act is
given formally by its end and materially by the object of the
external act. Thomas then gives an example, taken from
Aristotle, that Janssens refers to as if it clinched his argument,
namely, that a person who steals in order to commit adultery
is more an adulterer than a thief. 66
stantiis, dependet ex ratione, et ex hac dependet bonitas voluntatis, secundum
quod in ipsam fertur.
64 OE, 124 ff avd passim.
65 QP, 31. Since I am here showing why this critical aspect of Janssens'
analysis of Aquinas is erroneous, it will not be necessary to return to it when
we come to examine new fea.tures in Janssens' QP.
as ST 1-2, 18, 6: " ... quod est ex parte voluntatis se habet ut formale ad
id quod est ex p\Lrte exterioris actus: quia voluntatis utitur membris ad

AQUINAS AND JANSSENS ON THE HUMAN ACTS

587

It is certainly true that for Aquinas the exterior act as specified by its object is subordinated to the end intended by the
agent and that the agent's end is like a form that can give shape
to the objectively specified external act chosen as a means
toward that end (it is for this reason that an act, otherwise
good, is morally vitiated as a whole if it is done for a bad end,
something we have already seen). But the teaching of Thomas
in article 6 of question 18 can be rightly understood only in
its context, and the fuller context is provided by what he says
in article 7 of the same question; and Janssens ignored this
context. In article 7 Thomas first notes that there can be a
disparity of moral species, i.e., of moral good and bad, and of
different types of moral badness, between the object of the
external act and the end when the external act as specified by
its object is only accidentally and not essentially related to the
end. In such instances, Thomas teaches, the morally specifying
difference "which comes from the object is not of itself determinative of that which comes from the end, nor conversely."
Thus, the person who steals in order to commit adultery commits two disparate moral evils in one act, i. e., both theft and
adultery. 67
Similarly, if an external act as specified by its object is morally wicked, for instance, theft or the taking of what belongs
to another, it can never be morally specified differently by an
end in a morally disparate species. As Thomas says, "an act
pertaining to the same species by reason of its object can be
subordinated to an infinite number of ends, for instance, theft
can be subordinated to an infinite number of ends, good or
agendum. . . . neque actus exteriores habent rationem moralitatis, nisi inquantum sunt voluntarii.
Et ideo actus humani species formaliter concideratur secundum finem, materialiter autem secundum exterioris actus.
Unde Philosophus <licit in V Ethic. quod ille qui furatur ut committat
adulterium est, per se loquendo, magis adulter quam fur."
67 ST 1-2, 18, 7: " ... quando obiectum non est per se ordinatum ad finem,
differentia specifica quae est ex obiecto non est per se determinativa eius quae
est ex fine, nee e converso. Unde una istarum specierum non est sub alia, sed
tune actus moralis est sub duabus speciebus quasi disparatis. Unde dicimus
quod ille qui furatur ut moechatur, committit c;luas malitias in uno actu."

588

WIJ,LIAM E. MAY

bad," but it still remains a morally evil deed, specifically the
act of theft. 68
Only when the objectively specified external act is essentially
related to the end is there a common moral character to the
entire act (whether good or bad). Moreover, when it is so
related, Thomas teaches, the specifying difference given to the
entire act by its end is contained under the specifying difference
given to the entire act by the object of the external act. In
other words, the more specific moral character of the entire act
is determined, not by the end toward which the already specified external act is ordered, but by the morally specifying object of the external act: " the specific difference coming from
the end is more general and the difference coming from the
object essentially ordered to such an end is specific with respect
to it." 69 Thus, an act as a whole specified by the morally
good end of beneficence is more particularly specified as an act
of almsgiving if this is the objectively specified external act one
chooses in order to do good to one's neighbor; similarly, an act
as a whole specified by the morally bad end of injustice is more
specifically specified as an act of mayhem if one chooses to be
unjust by willing an external act specified as mayhem by its
proper object.
One may wonder how the teaching of question 18, article 7
is to be reconciled with the teaching in article 6. In article 6
Thomas had taught that the specification of the whole huma.n
act coming from the end of the agent was formal with respect
to the specification coming from the object of the external act.
In article 7 he taught that the specification coming from the
object determines, i.e., makes more specific, the moral species
derived from the end. But is not the genus less formal than
68 ST 1-2, 18, 7, sed contra: "actus eiusdem speciei ex parte ohiecti potest
ad infinitos fines orclinari; puta furtum ad infinita bona vel mala."
69 ST 1-2, 18, 7: "Si vero obiectum per se ordinetur ad finem, una dictarum
differentiarum est per se determinativa alterius .... differentia specifica quae
est ex fine est magis generalis, et differentia quae est ex obiecto per se ad
talem finem ordinato est specifica respectu eius."

AQUINAS AND J ANSSENS ON THE HUMAN ACTS

589

the species, the thing to be determined less formal than what
gives it particular determination? Thomas himself raises this
question in one of the objections to the position he takes in
article 7 and answers it in this way: " difference is compared
to genus as form to matter inasmuch as it makes the genus
actually be. But the genus can also be regarded as more formal than the species insofar as it is more absolute [i. e., unlimited] and less restricted ... and in this sense the genus is the
formal cause of the species." 70 And this is the sense in which
the end of the agent is more formal than the object of the act.
Now that we have seen the sense in which Thomas teaches
that the end of the agent is formal with respect to the objectively specified external act, and now that we have seen that
for Thomas there can be a disparity of moral species between
the end intended by the agent and the objectively specified external act, we can see that the way J anssens put to use the
teaching of St. Thomas in question 18, article 6, is simply not
correct.
But not only did Thomas, contrary to Janssens.' interpretation of him, hold that one can give a moral judgment of the
external act as specified by its object without relating that
object to the end toward which it can and must be subordinated, he likewise taught that the exterior act as specified by its
object and as such the possible object of the will act of choice
of means. as distinct from the will act of intending an end can
also be regarded as an end and as such the object of an intending will. Joseph M. Boyle, .Tr., has already shown this
quite clearly in an article devoted to explaining what Thomas
meant by the expression, "outside the scope of one's intention "
(praeter intention.em) . The following citation from Boyle, with
internal references to pertinent Thomistic passages, suffices to
make this important matter clear:
10 ST 1-2, 18, 7, ad 3: "Ad tertium dicendum quod differentia comparatur
ad genus ut forma ad materiam, inquantum facit esse genus in actu. Sed
etiam genus consideratur ut formalius specie; secundum quod est absolutius,
et minus contractum. . . . Et secundum hoc, genus est causa formalis speciei,
et tanto erit formalius, quanto communius."

590

WILLIAM E. MAY

. . . for Aquinas the object of an act which is chosen very often
becomes an end and as such the object of an intention. Three textual considerations show this. First, Aquinas argues that one may
intend not only the ultimate end but also intermediate ends. One
intends the end insofar as it is a term of the motion of the will.
"Term" may be taken in two ways: as an ultimate term and "as
something in between which is the starting point of one part of
the motion and the end or term of another. Thus in the motion
whereby one goes from A to C through B, C is the ultimate term,
but B is a term though not an ultimate term. And there can be
intention of both" (1-2, 12, 2).
Second, there are various texts in which objects are said to be intended which could not be ultimate ends and which are very often
chosen as means. Aquinas argues that it is possible to intend two
things at once. One of the ways this is possible arises when the two
intended objects are related to one another. After referring to ST
1-2, 12, 2, the text just discussed, he says: "However, someone intends at the same time both the proximate and the ultimate end,
as (when he intends) both medicine and health" (1-2, 12, 3) ....
Third, the object of the external act which must be brought
about-at least in many instances-if the choice of the means is
to be effective stands to the will as a quasi-end (1-2, 20, 4; 72, 3, ad
2) which must be intended by one who intends to perform such an
act (1-2, 73, 3, ad 1). This object, which must be brought about
if there is to be an external act, is identical with the means chosen
except that in the former case it is a state of affairs to be realized
in the world outside one's choice whereas in the latter case it is a
state of affairs selected from among alternatives as more useful
for achieving one's intended end .... In sum, the means insofar as it
is an obj-ect of choice is not the object of intention. But an act that
has been chosen as a means is also an end and so far forth is
intended. 71
In brief, St. Thomas taught that the means chosen (the exterior act as specified by its object) can also be related to the
subject as an end, proximate as distinct from more ultimate,
of an intending will. This has definite bearing for many moral
issues discussed by St. Thomas and for a proper understanding
of his thought, as will be seen when we come to a discussion of
n Joseph M. Boyle, Jr., "Praeter Intentionem in Aquinas," Thomist 42.4
( 1978)' 649-653.

AQUINAS AND JANSSENS ON THE HUMAN ACTS

591

his teaching on self-defense and the killing that can be justified in self-defense.
It has now been demonstrated, in my opinion, that one of
Janssens' principal claims about Thomas' thought on the structure and moral meaning of human acts is false, namely, Janssens' contention that for Aquinas one cannot give a moral
judgment of the exterior act unless this act is related to the
end the agent has in view in choosing it as a means. Thomas
was not Abelardian.
Janssens' second cardinal claim is that Thomas agrees with
him in holding that it is morally permissible to intend or will
ontic evil for the sake of a greater ontic good. This claim is
closely related to the first, insofar as J anssens argues that for
Thomas an external act causing what Janssens calls ontic evil
or premora1 disvalue can be chosen, hence willed, as a means
toward an end incarnating a higher ontic good or premoral
value. As we have already seen, however, for St. Thomas an
exterior act specified by an evil object cannot be so used, since
the evil specifying this act is morally significant insofar as the
will bears upon it, i.e., wills it. Thus there is already reason
to question this second claim of Janssens. However, Janssens
seeks to support this claim by invoking the teaching of St.
Thomas on killing in self-defense and on the killing of an assailant by a person who is publicly authorized to do so (e. g., a
policeman). In the first instance-killing in self-defense-Janssens claims that according to Thomas a person may choose to
kill an assailant (an ontic evil) as the means to defending his
own life (a proportionately greater ontic good). Thus Janssens writes: " killing my assailant does not exceed the bounds
of what I must use as means to my end." 12 In the second
instance-the publicly authorized killing of a criminal by a
public officia.I-Janssens claims that Thomas is saying that an
ontic evil (the killing of the criminal) is intended as a finis
medius et proximus to the proportionately greater ontic good
of protecting the common good as a finis principalis. 78
12 OE,

1a OE,

133.
141.

WILLlAM E. MAY

It is of course true that Thomas justifies killing in self-defense
and the publicly authorized killing of criminals, including the
intentional killing of a robber by a public official and the intentional killing of enemy soldiers in a just war that has, as just
war, been undertaken on the part of those who are charged
with the common good. The issue is whether Aquinas' justification of these deeds requires him to assent to the proposition
that one can intend an ontic evil for the sake of a proportionately greater ontic good.
Since other writers have taken up these positions of St.
Thomas in great detail and have shown that they do not depend on the proportionate good thesis that J anssens accepts
and seeks to attribute to St. Thomas, 74 my analysis of them and
of Thomas' thought in them will be somewhat brief.
Janssens asserts that in justifying the killing that takes place
in legitimate self-defense St. Thomas, while insisting that a private person may not intend the killing or death of the assailant
as an end (either proximate or final) , says that this killing
may be choosen as a means, i. e., as the exterior act ordered to
an end of the agent, in this case, the preservation of one's life.
To see whether Janssens' way of understanding the thought
of Aquinas here is correct, it is important to ask, first, whether
the means chosen, i. e., the exterior act as specified by its object,
is not also, for Thomas, a proxima,te end of an intending will;
and second, whether Thomas sees as crucially important the
non-intending of the killing of an assailant by a private individual as distinct from the intending, as a proximate end, the
death of a criminal by an individual who is publicly authorized
to protect the common good.
As far as the first point goes, Thomas clearly teaches that
th'e object of the external act, "although it is the matter with
which the act is concerned, nonetheless has the meaning of an
74 See, for instance, Germain G. Grisez, "Toward a Consistent Natural Law
Ethic of Killing," American Journal of Jurisprudence 15 ( 1970), 64-96;
Patrick Lee, "The Permanence of the Ten Commandments," Theological
Studies 42.3 ( 1981), 422-443, especially 437-441.

AQUINAS AND JANSSENS ON THE HUMAN ACTS

593

end insofar as the intention of the agent bears upon it." 75 What
this means, as we noted earlier in referring to Boyle's study of
praeter intentionem in Aquinas, is that for Thomas the means
chosen as a way to pursue effectively the end for whose sake an
agent is acting (the further or more remote end) is also to be
regarded as a proximate end of an intending will.
As far as the second point goes, Thomas insists, in his article
on self-defense, that the one defending himself cannot intend
to kill his assailant, whereas a publicly authorized individual
can intend the death of a criminal as the proximate but not
remote end of an act undertaken in defense of the common
good. In this article, too, he insists that the act of self-defense,
like all human acts, is specified by what is intended, not by
what is not intended. 76
If we put these two Thomistic teachings together, we see that
St. Thomas, in holding the killing caused by an act of selfdefense is morally justifiable, is not saying that the means one
chooses to defend oneself includes the killing of the assailant
(which is what Janssens wants to have him say). In fact,
Thomas explicitly states that the killing of the assailant is an
effect of the act one chooses. Another effect of the act is the
preservation of one's own life. But the act chosen as a means
toward the intended effect of self-preservation and intended as
a proximate end to the further end of preserving one's own life,
is not the killing of the assailant. Rather it is, as Aquinas explicitly says, " the act of defending oneself," while the death
of the assailant or his killing is simply an effect of this morally
75 ST 1-2, 72, 3 ad 2: "obiecta, secundum quod comparantur
ad actus exteriores, habent rationem materiae circa quam; sed secundum quod comparantur ad actum interiorem voluntatis, habent rationem finium." 1-2, 73,
3, ad 1: "obiectum, etsi sit materia circa quam terminatur actus, habet
tamen rationem finis, secundum quod intentio agentis fertur in ipsum."
76 ST 2-2, 64, 7: "nihil prohibet unius actus esse duos effectus, quorum
alter solum sit in intentione, alius vero sit praeter intentionem. Morales
autem actus recipiunt speciem secundum id quod intenditur, non autem ab
eo quod est praeter intentionem, cum sit per accidens. . . . Sed quia occidere
hominem non licet nisi publica auctoritate propter bonum commune . .
illicitum est quod homo intendat occidere hominem ut seipsum defendat."

594

WILLIAM E. MAY

specified act. 77 In short, for Aquinas the external act chosen
as a means to preserve one's own life is not, as Janssens says,
the killing of the assailant, but the act of defending oneself.
No evil is chosen as a means to an end.
St. Thomas does teach that public authorities can intend to
kill a criminal and that one who is authorized by public authority (e.g., a policeman, soldiers) can intend to kill assailants
and enemy soldiers. 78 But does it follow, as Janssens claims,
that by holding this Thomas agrees that it morally permissible
to intend an ontic evil (the killing of criminals, etc.) as a proximate end to the proportionately greater good of preserving
the society? It does not, because for Aquinas the killing on
public authority of criminals is not something evil. Whether
one accepts his position or not, Aquinas does not justify such
killings as the doing of an evil for higher good but as the doing
of good for a good purpose. Such killings, in his judgment, are
good because they are the just or condign punishment reasonably required to rectify the injustice done by criminals, robbers, enemy soldiers, etc. Such individuals, for St. Thomas,
are human beings who threaten the well-being of a community
just as a diseased member of the human body threatens the
well-being of the living person. 79 Such persons, according to
Aquinas, have by their own choices descended to the level of
11 ST 2-2, 64, 7: " ex actu igitur alicuius seipsum defendentis duplex effectus sequi potest; unus quidem conservatio propriae vitae; alius autem
occisio invadentis."
78 ST 2-2, 64, 7: " illicitum est quod homo intendat occidere hominem ut
seipsum defendat, nisi ei qui habet publicam auctoritatem, qui, intendens
hominem occidere, ad sui defensionem, refert hoc ad publicum bonum, ut
patet in milite pugnante contra hostes et. in ministro iudicis pugnante contra latrones."
79 ST 2-2, 64, 2: "omnis autem pars ordinatur ad totum ut imperfectum ad
perfectum. Et ideo omnis pars naturaliter est propter totum. Et propter
hoc videmus quod si saluti totius corporis humani expediat praecisio alicuius
membri, puta cum est putridum et corruptivum aliorum, Iaudabiliter et
salubriter abscinditur.
Quaelibet autem persona singularis comparatur ad
totam communitatem sicut pars ad totum. Et ideo si aliquis homo sit periculosus communitati et corruptivus ipsius propter aliquod peccatum, laudabiliter et salubriter occiditur, ut bonum commune conservetur."

AQUINAS AND J ANSSENS ON THE HUMAN ACTS

595

beasts, 80 and because they have, their killing on public authority is by no means something evil that one intends for a further
good but is rather a good ordered to the further good of protecting the community. Aquinas in no way justifies these
killings by the reasoning Janssens says he does.
B. 1 Janssens' Interpretation of Thomas in "Norms and
Priorities "
In this essay Janssens is more concerned with a straightforward presentation and defense of his own position, the one
summarized in the first part of this essay, than with an analysis
of St. Thomas. Yet in this essay Janssens wants to show
readers that his own position is supported by that of Aquinas.
To do so he provides an analysis of Aquinas along the lines of
that given in " Ontic Evil." Again, he seeks to show that for
St. Thomas (1) it is not possible to offer a moral judgment
about external acts (which, again, Janssens identifies with a
material event) without relating them to the end for whose
sake they are willed and that (2) it is morally licit to intend
a. premoral disvalue (ontic evil) for a greater premoral value
(ontic good).
To show that this is the thought of Thomas Janssens appeals
to a passage in the 9th Quodlibetal Question, q. 7 a. 15. Janssens provides the following comment on the relevant section
of this article of St. Thomas:
St. Thomas illustrates this view [i.e., Janssens' own] by considering a series of actions the material content of which is killing a
man ( occidere hominem) . He emphasizes that homicide involves
a serious disorder (occidere hominem vel percutire in se deformitatem quamdam importat) , but that this disorder can be outweighed by circumstances which make the whole action a right
so ST 2-2, 64, 2, ad 3: "homo peccando ab ordine ratione recedit; et ideo
decidit a dignitate humana ... et incidit quodammodo in servitutem bestiarum ... Et ideo, quamvis hominem in sua dignitate manentem occidere
sit secundum se malum, tamen hominem peccatorem occidere potest esse
bonum sicut occidere bestiam; peior enim est malus homo quam bestia et
plus nocet."

596

WILLIAM E. MAY

one (aliae circumstantiae possunt supervenire ita honestantes
actum, quod praedictae inordinationes totaliter evacuuntiir). In
a more general way he adds: "There are some actions which, absolutely considered, involve a certain deformity or disorder, but
through which good can be effected by reason of particular circumstances, as the killing of a man ... involves a serious disorder
in itself, but if it be added that the man is an evildoer killed for
justice's sake ... it is not sinful, rather it is virtuous." It is obvious that in this text Thomas speaks of the material content of
an action ( actiones absolute consideratae) independently of its
real circumstances, that the disorder to which he points is not
moral wrongness (which could never be counterbalanced) but
what we would call a premoral disvalue, and that by the outweighing circumstances (circumstantiae honestantes actum) he
means that the whole action, considered in all 'its elements (circumstantiae) is morally right because there is a proportionate reason to justify the causing of a premoral disvalue. 81
B. 2. Critical Commentary on This Interpretation

of Aquinas

The key issue here concerns the accuracy of J anssens' analysis
of this passage from Quodlibet 9, 7, 15. Does St. Thomas
teach here that it is morally right to intend a lesser premoral
disvalue for the sake of a proportionately higher or greater
premoral value, as Janssens claims, or is he to be understood
differently?
To answer this question it is first important to note a key
difference between the thought of St. Thomas and that of
Janssens and other proportionalists.
According to Janssens
premoral evil is present in the exterior act chosen as a means
to a proportionately greater good. Janssens claims that according to Thomas the " premoral " evil present in the act of
killing a human being remains in the act that Thomas justifies,
that this evil is chosen and to this extent intended, but that
it is not " moral wrongness " but rather a " premoral disvalue,"
the intending of which is justified by "outweighing circumstances." Thomas does not say this at all. In fact he says that
by reason of the circumstances the act is rendered morally good
81 NP,

232, citing from Quodlibetal

Question 9, q. 7, a.15.

AQUINAS AND JANSSENS ON TH:fil HUMAN ACTS

59'(

and that the disorder or evil present in it independent of the
consideration of its circumstances is completely taken away
(aliae circitmstantiae possunt supervenire ita honestantes actum, quod PRAEDICTAE INORDINATIONES TOTALITER EVACUUNTUR). In other words, for St. Thomas the
acts he justifies morally do not have present in them any inordination or evil. Janssens, however, wants to have St. Thomas
say that the evil present (premoral evil, in Janssens' view)
remains but that willing it is justified by "outweighing circumstances." Note that Thomas does not speak of the goodness of circumstances outweighing the disorder in the act willed.
Rather, he seems to be speaking of a moral disorder in an act
of killing or hitting, and he seems to be saying that because
of relevant circumstances a new kind of act is willed, one in
which the moral disorder is completely missing.
Properly to understand what Aquinas is saying here, we must
note that for him circumstances surrounding an exterior act
can, at times, " enter into the principal condition of the object
of the act i. e., the exterior act as given moral significance by
its specifying object, and that insofar as this is the case, the
circumstances give to the act its moral species." 82 Consider
this teaching in relation to the present case. For Aquinas an
external act of killing, to the extent that the object or subject
matter with which it is concerned is known by human intelligence to be a human person (rather than an ant, say), is so
far forth a morally disordered or morally evil act. Thus, in this
passage by "deformity" or "inordination" Thomas does not
mean premoral disvalue but rather moral evil. However, an
external act thus specified can be given a different moral object
and hence become specified by reason as a morally good act,
if a circumstance that "enters into the principal condition of
the object " is present and understood. Thus in the passage
under consideration, for Aquinas the morally wicked killing of
s2 ST 1-2, 18, 10, ad 2: "circumstantia manens in ratione circumstantiae,
cum habeat rationem accidentis, non dat speciem; sed inquantum mutatur in
principalem conditionem obiecti, secundum hoc dat speciem."

598

WILLIAM :El. MAY

a human being is changed, by its new specifying object, into a
morally good act of justly executing a criminal.
Thus this passage in no way supports Janssens' claim. In
addition, another passage from the very same article is directly
contrary to the interpretation that Janssens has been giving of
St. Thomas, but Janssens, in this essay, in no way refers to
this passage, even though it is juxtaposed to the text from
which he cites. In the text under consideration Thomas distinguishes between four types or kinds of actions (distinguished
by their objects). Some are those that are morally indifferent
by reason of their object, such as picking up a stick from the
ground, and these acquire moral significance only by reason
of the morally good or bad end to which they can be ordered.
Another type consists of the acts about which Janssens is here
concerned, namely those which are morally disordered to the
extent that the object with which they are concerned can be
judged contrary to reason but that can receive a different
moral object by reason of circumstances that enter into their
" principal condition." A third type of action consists of those
specified by their moral object in such a way that they are
secundum se or intrinsically good, e.g., giving alms; such
actions, if ordered to a morally wicked end, such as vainglory,
are then vitiated by the moral wickedness communicated to
them by the wicked end, but by reason of their objects they
are good. A fourth type of human action-and this is what I
wish to stress here-consists of actions" that have a deformity
inseparably connected with them, such as fornication, adultery,
and others of this kind, that in no way can become good." 83
In Quodlibet 9, 7, 15, Aquinas is affirming, not denying, that
there are certain kinds of exterior acts specified by their objects
that can be judged to be contrary to human reason, and no
circumstances can so enter into them that their principal condition is changed, and they can be justified by no end for whose
ss Quodlibetal Question 9, q. 7, a. 15: " Quaedam enim sunt quae habent
deformitatem inseparabiliter
annexam, ut fornicatio, adulterium, et alia
huiusmodi, quae nullo modo bene fieri possunt."

AQUINAS AND JANSSENS ON THE HUMAN ACTS

599

sake the agent might will them. This clearly stated position of
Aquinas is absolutely incompatible with the proportionalism
that Janssens espouses and that he seeks, unsuccessfully, to
attribute to St. Thomas.
3. Janssens' Interpretation of Thomas in" St. Thomas and the

Question, of Proportionality"

In this part it is not necessary, as it was in the second part,
to separate presentation of Janssens' analysis and critical commentary. Reasons for this will be evident as we proceed.
This third essay of J anssens is a most interesting and fascinating one, although it is also frustrating at times because of
ambiguities and inconsistencies in it. In my introduction I said
that in this paper Janssens was more faithful to Aquinas than
he had been in the essays already examined, although he did
not abandon his own position and although he continued to
assert that Thomas supports the claim that one can intend
ontic evil for the sake of a proportionately greater ontic good.
In this paper Janssens once again insists that Thomas accepts proportionalism. To show that he does, Janssens again
makes use of the passage from the Quodlibetal Question 9, 7, 15
that we have already examined, providing in this essay the
same interpretation that he had in "Norms and Priorities,"
namely that in it Thomas is saying that the ontic evil of some
actions, e.g., killing, "is made morally good by outweighing
circumstances " and " proportionate reasons." 84 Since the interpretation Janssens provides of this passage has already been
shown to be erroneous there is no need here to go over the
meaning properly to be given to it.
But what is truly remarkable about this third paper of Janssens is the fact that in it he provides a much more faithful
presentation of Aquinas than he had in his 1972 and 1977
essays. He first of all acknowledges that for Thomas external
acts as specified by their objects have moral significance, one
84 QP,

39-40.

600

WILLIAM E. MAY

given to them by
In fact, in this paper he does not
limit his discussion of Quodlibet 9, 7, 15 to the section concerned with actions that have a deformity annexed to them
absolutely considered-the kind we have already examined in
some detail and to which he still appeals, erroneously, to make
Thomas a proportionalist. Rather he explicitly takes into
account the other three types of actions described in this article
by St. Thomas, including those morally wicked by reason of a
deformity inseparably annexed to them that can never be
changed, no matter what end they may be ordered to, into
morally good acts (e.g., fornication, adultery) .86 In addition,
in this paper Janssens also notes that for St. Thomas the object
of the external act chosen as a means to an end that the agent
has in mind is also to be regarded as a proximate and hence
morally specifying end of the intending will.87 After noting this,
J anssens says, " from all this we already know that an action
which is evil because of its object or proximate end can never
become good by reason of a good remote end." 88 Finally, he
explicitly says that certain sorts of acts, specified by their objects or proximate ends, are always wicked, and among them he
includes the act of rape. 89
I submit that J anssens, by acknowledging all this, has significantly modified (to the good) his interpretation of St. Thomas
and that by doing so he adopts a position in this essay that is
not compatible with the position he had set forth in " Ontic
Evil" and " Norms and Priorities." On this matter it is instructive to note that in "Norms and Priorities," when discussing the difference between formal norms couched in morally
evaluative language (and thatare unexceptionable) and concrete
material norms couched in descriptive language (and that are
85 QP, 36, with references to In II Sent., d. 36, q. I, a. 5; De Malo, 7, 4;
ST 1-2, 18, 4.
86 QP, 39. Incidentally,
in this essay Janssens fails to note that the source
is Quodlibetal Question 9. He refers simply to Quodlibetal Questions, 7, 15.
87 QP, 42-43, with reference to De Malo, 2, 3; ST 1-2, 72, 3 ad 2.
88 QP, 42, with reference to ST 1-2, 1, 3, ad 3 and QP, 44.
sD QP, 40-41.

AQUINAS AND JANSSENS ON THE HUMAN ACTS

601

relative and open to exception in the presence of a greater ontic
good) he had explicitly taught that the norm proscribing rape
was a concrete material norm. Although he said that a norm
of this kind is " virtuously (sic) exceptionless," he nonetheless
held that the sort of act it proscribes could be chosen and would
be a morally good one if there were some proportionately greater
ontic good present that could outweigh the evil of rape. 90 In
the present paper on the other hand, he says that rape is an
action evil by reason of its object or proximate end and that it
can never become morally good by being ordered to a further
good end. 91
Despite these significant changes which, in my opinion, are
all major improvements in his presentation of Aquinas, it must
be remembered that in this paper he still tries to make Thomas
out to be a proportionalist by using the passage from Quodlibet
9 (and we have already seen that his analysis of this passage is
incorrect). Moreover, in this paper Janssens introduces needless ambiguity into his analysis of Aquinas. It will be recalled
that in his earlier papers he had claimed that for St. Thomas
no judgment could be made of the exterior act (which in those
papers he had identified with a material event) until it had
been related to the end of the agent, and by end he meant not
the proximate end intended by the agent, nor the final end of
all human action, but the end that definitely brings the action
to its terminus, i.e., the end for whose sake the means are
willed.92 In the present paper, after setting forth correctly
Thomas' teaching on the moral significance of the external act
as specified by its object, he then says: " the real question St.
Thomas asks is whether, according to reason and faith, the
object of an external action is able to be proportioned to the
ultimate end," 93 and by ultimate end he means our blessed
union with God. He again leaves readers with the impression
9o NP,

217, 218.
40-41.
92 OE, 141.
ns QP, 38.
91 QP,

WILLIAM E. MAY

that the proportionality of the external a.ct to its end is the
key moral issue with respect to its moral character, and I
wonder whether this is the crucial issue for Thomas. But what
makes the matter ambiguous is that readers may think that
here Janssens is presenting the same point that he had been
pushing in his earlier papers, and this is not the case.
Moreover, Janssens at times seems to be claiming that the
actions that can never be made right must be understood as
specified by objects already described in morally evaluative
language and not in merely descriptive terms. He makes much
of the fact that St. Thomas, following Aristotle, agrees that
certain terms such as adultery already contain a morally evil
connotation. Janssens' implication is that by the term adultery
Aquinas meant an external act of genital sex specified as unjustifiable genital sex with the spouse of someone else rather
than as genital sex simply with the spouse of someone else.94
In fact, after referring to Thomas' careful use of language,
Janssens calls attention to a passage from St. Augustine's
treatise on The Lord's Sermon on the jf aunt where the great
Father had discussed the action of a woman in Antioch. 95 Her
husband, who had been cast into prison and was going to be
killed by a certain day unless he could repay a large loan,
permitted her to accept the offer of a rich man who promised
to pay her the money needed to save her husband's life if she
would have sex with him. Janssens believes that in this passage
Augustine is wondering whether " extramarital intercourse
(concubitus) is still adultery (adulterium) when the wife would
be obligated to do this for the sake of her husband himself and
with his consent." 96 Janssens then leaves readers wondering
whether the sorts of actions that St. Thomas judges to be
always wrong, no matter what ends they may be done for,
94 QP, 40, with references to ST 2-2, 66, 7, obj. 2 and 3; Quodlibetai Question 8, 6, 14.
95 St. Augustine,
The Lord's Sermon on the Mount, l, 16, 50 (in Ancient
Christian Writers, Vol. 5, translated by John J. Jepson, Westminster, Md.:
Newman Press, 1946, pp. 59-61.).
0s QP, 41.

AQUINAS AND J ANSSENS ON THE HUMAN ACTS

603

are actions already described in morally evaluative language
(adultery or murder) and not actions described in morally
neutral and merely descriptive language (genital sex with someone who is not one's spouse, the killing of innocent human
beings). The issue is left ambiguous.
St. Thomas is not ambiguous here. He surely regarded adultery as a term connoting a morally bad act, but he clearly
understood that this morally evaluative term is correctly applied
to an external act whose proper object is known through descriptive, not evaluative terms, and which, as so described, is
judged contrary to the requirements of reason. The external
act is that of having coition and it is specified by the object
with someone who is not one's .<rpouse. Thus the moral norm,
couched in descriptive language, that it is wrong for a married
person to have coition with someone who is not one's spouse
is, for St. Thomas, a binding norm of morality with no exceptions; and another way to describe the act in question is
to call it adultery. Thomas consistently maintains that" coition
by a married person with someone who is not one's spouse "
describes an external act specified by a morally wicked object
that one can never, for any reason, choose rightfully to do. He
consistently contrasts the act so described (which he also calls
by the name adultery) with an external act specified by a
morally good object, namely, the act of having "coition with
one's own spouse," which is also properly termed the marital
or conjugal act. 97 The ambiguity Janssens leaves on this matter
is not in Thomas.
Moreover, Augustine, in the passage from his commentary on
the Sermon on the Mount, is not trying to make a distinction
between adulterium and concubitus, as Janssens asserts. He
97 De Malo, 2,4 " cognoscere mulierem suam, cognoscere non suam."
Cf.
ST 1-2, 100, 8, ad 3, where St. Thomas insists that Hosea, who had sometimes been charged with fornication or adultery because he slept with a
woman of fornication whom he had divorced and who had then married another man, was by no means committing adultery precisely because the woman
with whom he had relations was his own spouse, given to him by God, the
author of marriage.

604

WILLIAM E. MAY

clearly recognizes it as adultery or fornication, and he explicitly
says that "out of this story I make no argument of any sort."
He does wonder whether one would be as ready to condemn
the woman as one would be if one were not familiar with the
conditions under which she acted. 98 In actuality, the woman
is prostituting herself for her husband and he, unfortunately,
is letting her do so. In a work written later in his life as a
bishop, Contra 1.1endacium, where he launches a sustained
attack on the kind of thinking that Janssens advocates, Augustine explicitly holds that if one tries to justify lying, i. e., declaring as true what one believes to be false or as false what
one believes to be true, for a noble purpose (e.g., to convert
heretics, as Pollentius,. to whom he addressed this fascinating
work, was arguing) , then one has in principle justified doing
anything, including such morally wicked deeds as fornication
and adultery. And that by adultery Augustine understood
coition with someone who is not one's spouse is clear from what
he says:
:For if blasphemous lies ... are just simply because they are told
with the intention of discovering hidden heretics, by that token
adulteries can be pure if they are committed with the same intention. What if one of the shameless Priscillianist women cast an
eye upon the Catholic Joseph and promised that she would show
him their hiding places if he granted her favor? What if it were
certain she would keep her promise if he consented? Shall we suppose that he ought to do it? Or shall we understand that goods of
that kind are not by any means to be bought at such a price? 99

The structure of moral thought in Augustine's Contra Mendacium is totally at odds with the Abelardian view and with
the proportionalist vision of Janssens. And, it should be noted,
this teaching of Augustine was clear to St. Thomas and accepted
by him. In fact, it is to Augustine's teaching in Contra
M endacium on the intrinsic wickedness of certain sorts of
98 St. Augustine, The Lord's Sermon on the Mount, 1, 16, 50 (p. 61 in Jep·
son's translation).
99 St. Augustine, Contra Mendaoium, 7, 17 (in Fathers of the Ohuroh, translated by Harold B. Jaffee, New York: Wagner's 1948, p. 142).

AQUINAS AND .fANSSENS ON THE HUMA:N' ACTS

605

choices that St. Thomas appeals in the very question where he
insists that the goodness of the will, rather than being the
source of the moral goodness of exterior acts, depends on the
moral goodness of exterior acts as specified by their proper
objects; 100
Thus J anssens' efforts in his 1982 essay to make St. Thomas
appear as a forerunner of contemporary proportionalism are
not supported by a careful study of relevant Thomistic texts.
Conclusion

A patient examination of the teaching of St. Thomas on the
structure and moral meaning of human acts shows us that for
him it is possible, indeed necessary, to make a moral judgment
about the exterior act as specified by its object without relating
this to the end that the agent has in view in choosing the
external act as a means. Thomas was not Abelardian; he supported the anti-Abelardian thesis that certain kinds of actions
specified by their objects and describable in nonmora.I language
(e. g., to have coition with someone who is not one's spouse,
to kill a human being preserving his dignity-and surely babies
are among these 101 ) are of themselves (secundum se) morally
wicked and can never be justified by relating them to any end,
however noble, that the agent may intend. Our examination
also showed us that Aquinas never taught that one could do
ontic evil for the sake of a greater ontic good, despite Janssens'
efforts to make him say this.
Thus the examination here has shown that the cardinal
claims made by Janssens about Thomas in his "Ontic Evil"
and " Norms and Priorities " are not supported by the Common
Doctor's teachings. It is good that in his final paper Janssens
provides a more accurate picture of Aquinas' moral thought.
But it is unfortunate that in it he continues to attribute the
100 ST

1-2, 20, 2.

101 ST 2-2, 64, 2, ad

secundum se malum."
Commandments.''

3: "hominem in sua dignitate manentem occidere (est)
Cf. ST 2-2, 64, 6, and Lee, " Permanence of the Ten

606

WILLIAM E. MAY

proportionalist thesis to Aquinas, and it is also unfortunate, in
my opinion, that Janssens continues to champion this way
of making moral judgments. J anssens' basic moral normative
proposal is that in choosing one ought to choose the alternative
promising the greater proportion of good over evil. 102 As others
have shown, this proposal assumes that the goods and bads
among which comparative assessment must be made for a
choice of this kind to be possible can be commensurated, and
this assumption is erroneous. 103 St. Thomas, in proposing a
guide for making good moral choices, held that one should
choose in such a way that one loves both God and neighbor,
i.e., wills for the neighbor the goods of human existence. 104
There is a world of difference between Aquinas' normative proposal and the proportionalist proposal of Janssens. I think it
suffices, in conclusion, to say that Janssens has, unfortunately,
influenced many with an interpretation of St. Thomas that is
simply erroneous.
WILLIAM

E. MAY

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

102 NP, 214: "choose the alternative
which indicates our preference for
the lesser premoral disvalue or for the higher premoral value."
1oa On this see Germain G. Grisez, The Way of Our Lord Jesus Christ, Vol.
1, Christian Moral Principles (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1984), pp.
141-171; John M. Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1980), pp. 112-118.
Hl'4 ST, 1-2, 100, 3, ad 1; cf. 98, l; 99, 1, ad 2; 99, aa 2-3. On this see
the comments of Grisez, Christian Moral Principles, pp. 183-184.

THE ESSENCE OF CATHOLICISM:
PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC PERSPECTIVES

X

'HOUGH YVES CONGAR has many claims to distinction, he could hardly be designated more appropri·
ately, in my judgment, than by the title doctor
catholicitatis. No theologian of our century has so enriched
and clarified the concept of catholicity. Catholicity, to be sure,
is not the same thing as Catholicism, but the two terms must
be related unless the term "catholic" is a pure equivocation. I
deem it fitting, therefore, to offer to Father Congar, with affection and esteem, the following reflections on Catholicism. As a
historian of ecclesiology he will appreciate my reasons for
approaching this question through the great thinkers who have
already addressed the subject, and as a pioneer of Catholic
ecumenism he will understand my purpose in seeking to draw
insights from both Protestant and Catholic theologians. Ideally,
I should also survey what Orthodox thinkers have had to say
on the theme, but because of the limitations of my own knowledge and of the space at my disposal, I have thought it better
to restrict my attention to Protestant and Catholic authors.
I shall open my survey at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, when philosophers and theologians in Germany started
to look for an underlying essence of Catholicism beneath the
manifold appearances. In the first part of the article I shall
discuss the views of Catholicism proposed by Protestants or,
more precisely, by members of churches stemming from the
Reformation, including Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican. In
the second part I shall summarize some views of Catholicism
elaborated from the Roman Catholic side. Then in a final part
I shall attempt, with the assistance of the teaching of Vatican
Council II, to draw some conclusions about the nature of
Catholicism.
607

608

AVERY DULLES, S.J.

I
Taking the Protestant views chronologically, one may suitably begin with the philosopher Georg W. F. Hegel.1 For him
Catholicism was characterized by an external or objectifying
view of the divine presence in history. Catholics, according to
Hegel, depict Jesus as objectively present in the sacraments,
and especially in the Eucharist, which is adored as if Christ
were still present in palpable form on earth. Hegel adds that
Catholics divinize the Church as an institution and accept its
teachings as coming from God. In Catholicism, Hegel believes,
the holy is identified with a particular institutional embodiment. As a consequence Catholics set the sacred over against
the secular, Church against State, and clergy against laity.
While Hegel respected the power of Catholicism to preserve the
objective content of the Christian message, he deplored the
dualism and alienation which he regarded as intrinsic to
Catholicism. Protestantism, he believed, was better able to
achieve a personal, subjective appropriation of Christian revelation, even though in its existing forms Protestantism ran the
risk of dissipating the doctrinal content of Christianity.
Hegel's views of Catholicism were to a great extent followed
by his contemporary, Ferdinand Christian Baur, who accused
Catholics of crudely identifying the ideal essence of the Church
with its historical manifestations. 2 According to Baur, therefore,
the Catholic Church was incapable of historical consciousness.
It conceived of itself as perpetually the same rather than as
undergoing real historical changes, and thus it attached transcendent value to its own dogmas and structures. Yet it sur1 See G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History
(New York:
Colliers, 1901), pp. 377-426; idem, The Ohristian Religion. Lectures on the
Philosophy of Religion. Part III. Oonsummate, Absolute Religion (ed. P. C.
Hodgson. Missoula, Montana: Scholars Press, 1979), esp. pp. 334-44.
2 See P. C. Hodgson
(ed.), Ferdinand Ohristian Baur on the Writing of
Ohurch History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), passim; idem,
Der Gegensatz des Katholicismus und Protestantismus nach den Principien
und Hauptdogmen aer lleid.;m Lehrbegriffe {Tiibingen: L. F. Fues, 1834),
esp. pp. 367-438.

THE ESSENCE OF CATIIOLICISM

609

passed Protestantism,. he believed, in its capacity to find
absolute truth in the Christian dogmas. Baur looked forward
to a future synthesis that would incorporate the best features
of both Protestantism and Catholicism.
A still more benign view of Catholicism was taken by another
early nineteenth century German Protestant theologian, Friedrich Schleiermacher. In his classic work, The Christian Faith,
Schleiermacher presented Christianity as a single faith institutionalized in two concurrent forms, neither of which could claim
total adequacy. The basic difference between the churches, he
believed, is that for Catholics the individual's relationship to
God is made dependent on a relationship to the Church,
whereas in Protestantism the order of relationship is reversed. 3
The opposition between Catholicism and Protestantism, however, is merely relative and is destined to be overcome. In his
own theology Schleiermacher so emphasized the social nature
of the Christian religion that in some respects he seemed to
lean toward Catholicism as he defined it, but on many
particular points he argued against the Roman Catholic
dogmatic formulations.
The ideas of Hegel and Schleiermacher, combined with others
derived from Friedrich Schelling and Philipp Marheineke, were
introduced into the United States by the German Reformed
theologian, Philip Schaff. Shortly after his arrival in this
country in 1844, he delivered a controversial inaugural lecture
at Reading, Pennsylvania, in which he contended that Catholicism embodies the principle of authority and law, whereas the
principle of Protestantism is that of free justification through
the gift of faith. Either principle taken by itself, he declared,
is one-sided and incomplete. "The true standpoint, all-necessary
for the wants of the time, is that of Protestant Catholicism, or
genuine historical progress." 4 He was hopeful that in the new
a F. D. E. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1963), sec. 24, pp. 103-108.
4 Philip Schaf (sic), The Principle of Protestantism
as Related to the Present State of the Church (Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: German Reformed
Church, 1845), Thesis 83, p. 187.

610

AVERY DULLES, S.J.

nation of his adoption the reconciliation of the two branches
of Christianity might be effected, inaugurating the final epoch
of Church history.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the intellectual climate in Germany shifted from idealism to liberalism,
which gave clear preference to Protestantism as the superior
form of Christianity. Unlike the idealists, who looked upon
Catholicism as the more primitive stage, the liberals saw
Catholicism as a lapse from an initial state of ecclesial grace.
Theologians such as Albrecht Ritschl, Adolf von Harnack,
Rudolph Sohm, and Ernst Troeltsch all reflected deeply on the
origins of Catholicism. They agreed that primitive Christianity,
in its pre-Catholic phase, was practically oriented, experiential,
free, and spontaneous. Catholicism they saw as a later development arising from Greek and Latin cultural influences, which
transformed Christianity into a religion of dogma and law,
priesthood and ritualism. Sohm in particular accused Catholicism of attributing divine authority to the human institution,
and even Troeltsch, who was much more cautious, accused
Catholicism of materializing and externalizing the Christian
religion and binding the original spiritual and inward idea
indissolubly to a clerical and sacramental organization. 5
Protestantism, for the liberals, was a return to the simplicity
and purity of the original gospel. Harnack found this in the
teaching of Jesus, which was allegedly centered on the fatherhood of God, the infinite value of the human soul, the higher
righteousness, and the commandment of love. 6 The French
theologian, Auguste Sabatier, showed in detail how Catholicism
had degenerated by embracing, in historical succession, the
dogmas of "Church, tradition, supernatural priesthood, episco5 E. Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, vol. I (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 91-94. The views of Sohm are
conveniently summarized and assessed in A. Harnack, The Constitution of
the Ohurch in the Fi1·st Two Centuries (New York: Putnam, 1910), Appendix
I, pp. 175-258.
6 A. Harnack,
What Is Christianity?
(New York: Harper Torchbooks,
1957)' pp. 63-7 4.

THE ESSENCE OF CATHOLICISM

611

pate, and papacy." 7 The infallibility dogma of 1870 was for
Sabatier the logical consummation of this departure from the
pure religion of the spirit, a religion without external authority
of any kind.
In England the situation was more complex. In 1833 the
Oxford Movement was launched with the explicit intention
of proving that the Church of England was not Protestant but
Catholic. According to Tractarians such as John Keble and
Edward Pusey, Protestantism was an inclined plane that could
lead only to rationalism and unbelief. Catholicism, with its
principles of dogma, priesthood, and sacramentality, was needed
to resist the onslaughts of secularity and free thought. Catholicism, these Anglicans maintained, exists in three distinct forms:
Greek, Roman, and Anglican. The Roman form was clouded
by errors and corruptions, but retained the essential patrimony
of the ancient Church. 8
Since the Tractarian Movement the Catholic party in the
Anglican movement has passed through several distinct phases. 9
In the wake of World War I the Lux Mundi movement, under
the leadership of Charles Gore, promoted a liberal and critical
version of Catholicism. In 1933, on the centenary of the Oxford Movement, Norman P. Williams and others maintained
that the Church of England had never been anything but
Catholic. Williams developed the concept of a " Northern
Catholicism," that would group the Church of England with
churches such as those of Scandinavia and peacefully coexist
with other forms of Catholicism, namely the Eastern and the
Southern. 10 A more conservative type of Catholicism was re7 A. Sabatier, Religions of Authority a.nd the Religion of the Spirit (New
York: McClure, Phillips, 1904), p. 15.
s See E. B. Pusey, The Church of Engla.nd a Portion of Christ's One Holy
Ca.tholic Church a.nd a Means of Restoring Visible Unity. An Eirenicon (New
York: Appleton, 1866).
9 A good account of the developments is given in A. M. Ramsey, An Era in
Anglica.n Theology (New York: Scribner's, 1960).
1 -0 N. P. Williams,
"The Theology of the Catholic Movement," in N. P.
Williams and C. Harris (eds.), Northern Ca.tholicism (London: SPCK, 1933),
pp. 130-234.
.
.

612

AVERY DULLES, S.J.

vived after World War II. In a report entitled Catholicity,
commil!lsioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1945, a
group of Anglo-Catholics under the chairmanship of A. M.
Ramsey identified Catholicism with "the undivided wholeness
of the primitive Tradition " and called for " constancy in Scriptures, Creeds, Sacraments, and Apostolic Succession." 11
Inspired in part by Anglo-Catholicism, high church movements arose within Lutheranism in Scandinavia and Germany.
Some Lutherans sought to shed the Protestant label. Nathan
Soderblom, Wilhelm Stiihlin, and Friedrich Heiler, among
others, called for " evangelical Catholicism " or at least " evangelical catholicity." In a lengthy work entitled Catholicism:
I ts Idea and Appearance 12 Heiler praised Catholicism for its
adherence to the full patrimony of the faith, for its ability to
incorporate all that is humanly and naturally good, and for
its capacity to transcend the differences between disparate cultural and ethnic groups. But the weakness of Catholicism, he
held, was its openness to so many contrasting elements, many
of them not specifically Christian. Catholicism, in his view,
could not be authentically Christian unless its universalism
were balanced by evangelical concentration, and this balance
he found wanting in the Roman Church.
Heiler spoke for many in asserting that the Roman Church,
by its absolutistic claims and despotic behavior, had deserted
Catholicism and turned itself into a sect. But this was not the
opinion of all high church Lutherans. In the 1950s a small
group, including Hans Asmussen and Max Lackmann, contended that there could be no true Catholicism without union
with Rome as the visible center of the universal Church. The
papacy, they argued, could properly be critized but not disu E. S. Abbott and others, Catholicity: A Study in the Oonfiiot of the
Christian Traditions of the West (Westminster, Eng.: Dacre, 1947).
12 F. Heiler, Der Katholizismus:
seine I dee und seine Erscheinung ( 1923;
reprinted Munich and Basel: E. Reinhardt, 1970). For the views of Stiihlin
see W. Stlthlin, "Katholizitiit, Protestantismus, und Katholizismus," in H.
Asmussen and W. Stiihlin (eds.), Die Katholizitiit der Kirche (Stuttgart:
Evangelisches VerlQ.gswerk, Hl57), pp. 179-204.

THE ESSENCE OF CATHOLICISM

618

carded. The intention of the Reformers, as they interpreted it,
was not to form a new church but to reform the existing Church.
That intention could not be fulfilled until evangelical Christians
and Reformation principles became integrated into the Roman
Catholic Church. 13
Karl Barth, perhaps the most influential Protestant systema tician of the twentieth century, reflected profoundly on the
Protestant-Catholic relationship from a Reformed Christian
standpoint. 14 He held that the substance of the Church, though
distorted in Roman Catholicism, is better preserved there than
in liberal Protestantism. Catholicism upholds the divinity of
Christ and his presence and activity in the sacraments and in
the teaching of the Church. But it neglects the Word of God
and consequently fails to take sufficient account of the sinfulness of the Church and its need for mercy. Catholicism exaggerates the value of human effort, the continuity between
nature and grace, the holiness of creatures, and especially the
holiness of the Church. God's word in Scripture is used as a
source for proving the doctrines of the Church but not for
controlling and correcting the Church. In Catholicism, moreover, catholicity is presented in sheerly quantitative terms and
is thus musunderstood.
Concerns such as Barth's asserted themselves at the First
Assembly of the World Council of Churches at Amsterdam in
1948. According to the Assembly Report the " deepest difference " among the member churches lay between two contrasting ways of understanding the Church. The " catholic "
view attached primary importance to the visible continuity of
the Church and to apostolic succession in the episcopate. The
"protestant" view, on the contrary, stressed the initiative of
the Word of God and the response of faith; it accepted the
13 See H. Asmussen et al., The Unfinished
Reformation (Notre Dame:
Fides, 1961), notably the contribution of M. Lackmann, pp. 66-112.
14 K. Barth, "Roman Catholicism:
A Question to the Protestant Church,"
in his Theology and Church (London: SOM, 1962), pp. 307-333; aleo here and
there in his Church Dogmatics.

614

AVERY DULLES, S.J;

doctrine of justification by faith alone. This fundamental
cleavage, according to the Assembly Report, constituted "a
hard core disagreement between total ways of apprehending the
church of Christ." 15
Paul Tillich, who rivals Barth for eminence in the field of
Protestant systematics, had a similar point of view on the
merits and defects of Catholicism. 16 Drawing on the thought
of nineteenth century idealist philosophers, notably Schelling
and Hegel, he portrayed Christianity as involving a perpetual
tension between two dialectically opposed elements, the priestly
and the prophetic. The Catholic Church, thanks to its sacerdotalism, best preserves what Tillich called the Catholic substance. But the Protestant churches, more prophetically
oriented, were in his judgment better equipped to combat an
unhealthy divinization of the sacraments and institutional
structures, to which Catholics accorded a sacred status. By
his insistence on the " Protestant principle," as a rejection of
all absolute claims made on behalf of finite realities, Tillich
sought to combat the tendency to regard human persons and
institutions as unambiguous embodiments of the divine.
Tillich's dialectic between the Catholic substance and the
Protestant principle has been taken up by many other theologians of the Lutheran and Reformed traditions. Jaroslav
Pelikan, for example, argues that the Lutheran Reformers combined a Catholic respect for tradition, liturgy, and dogma with
a Protestant aversion to authoritarianism. Pelikan himself espouses the kind of " evangelical catholicity " he attributes to
Luther. The essentials of Catholic Christianity, he believes,
can be retained without union with the Church of Rome. 17
15 W. A. Visser 't Hooft (ed.), The First Assembly of the World aounoil
of Ohurches (London: SCM, 1949), p. 52.
1a P. Tillich, "The Permanent
Significance of the Catholic Church for
Protestantism," Protestwnt Digest 3 ( 1941) 23-31; also Tillich's The Protestant Era (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1948), passim; and his Systematic
Theology, vol. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1963), passim.
17 J. Pelikan, Obedient Rebels: Catholic Substance and Protestant Principle
in Luther's Reformation (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), esp. pp. 193206.

THE ESSENCE OF CATHOLICISM

615

Langdon Gilkey, an American Baptist theologian influenced
by Tillich, gives the Catholic Church high credit for its ability
to maintain community among its members and continuity
with the ancient tradition. He praises in Catholicism its ability
to use sacramental symbolism involving the whole person.
Finally, he respects the way in which Catholicism has combined
faith with sober rational reflection. But he sees Catholicism as
threatened by modern secularity. He therefore calls for a new
secularized form of Catholicism, purified from its traditional
sacralism and supernaturalism. Protestantism, he believes, has
had greater experience in the effort to integrate modernity
with the Christian tradition. Gilkey's book on Catholicism,
though published in 1975, shows traces of the confident secularity of the 1960s.18
It is not easy to construct a composite picture from the
authors thus far surveyed. On some points there seems to be
rather general agreement. Catholicism is the religion of authority and law, of dogma, priesthood, and sacrament. To this
many theologians add the features of tradition and apostolic
succession.
The merit of Catholicism is found in its ability to .command
unquestioning loyalty from its adherents and thus to protect
the substance of the faith against erosion. Some praise the
international and supratemporal character of Catholicism and
its consequent ability to establish communion among believers
separated in space and time. Among the defects of Catholicism
Protestant authors mention its lack of immediacy to Christ,
its preoccupation with externals, its authoritarianism, its supernaturalistic dualism, its tendency to self-deification, and its
deafness to the challenge of the gospel.
Regarding a number of points there is disagreement. The
idealists and liberals, as already noted, differ about whether
Catholic or Protestant Christianity is the more primitive. Depending on their point of view, Protestant critics judge Catholicism to be either too static (Hegel, Baur) or too fluid (Harnack,
1sL. Gilkey, Catholicism Confronts Modernity (New York: Seabury, 1975).

616

AVERY DULLES, S.J.

Heiler) . There are sharp differences of opinion about the relationship between Protestantism and Catholicism. Both the
liberals on the left and the Tractarians on the right hold that it
is necessary to choose between Protestantism and Catholicism,
though they disagree about which of the two ought to be
chosen. Mediating theologians hold that either without the
other is incomplete and that a kind of Protestant Catholicism,
or evangelical catholicity, is to be cultivated. Some mediating
theologians, while seeing value in both Catholic and Protestant
Christianity, hold that the two cannot be harmoniously synthesized. Rather, they must be held in tension as polar opposites.
Finally, our authors disagree about how Catholicism is
related to Rome. Some hold that Rome represents one of
several forms of Catholicism, perhaps the one best suited to
the "southern " mentality. Others, looking on Roman Catholicism as a sectarian distortion, question whether the terms Roman and Catholic are really compatible. Still others see Romanism as the most intense and consistent realization of Catholicism.
This last group embraces some who deplore Catholicism (Sabatier) and others who approve of it (Lackmann).
II
Roman Catholics in Germany, who began to reflect on the
essence of Catholicism about the beginning of the nineteenth
century, were, like their Protestant colleagues of the day,
strongly influenced by the Romantic movement in art and
literature as well as by the philosophical speculations of Hegel
and Schelling. They extolled the organic vitality and poetic
splendors of Catholicism as remedies for the individualism and
rationalism of the Enlightenment.
Johann Sebastian Drey, the founder of the Catholic Tiibingen
school, held that the essence of Catholicism consists in the
subordination of the individual to the Church as a whole, with
its living tradition and its institutional authority. Catholicism
is the Christian system that best retains the original impulse

THE ESSENCE OF CATHOLICISM

617

of Christianity thanks to its sacramental rites, its ethos of
mutual love, and its divinely instituted hierarchy. 19
In response to the contention of Schleiermacher and others
that Christianity must appear under a double form, Drey argued that such duality )llight be accepted but that Protestantism could not claim to be the second form, for its principle of
private judgment was destructive of all churchly reality. The
second form of religion for Drey was mysticism, which allows
the Church to stand but prevents it from degenerating into
lifeless mechanism. Mysticism guards against the absolutization
of external forms by emphasizing the primacy of interior religion.20 Wherever the Church is in good health, Drey maintained, mystical religion is a vital force. Protestantism itself
originated in a kind of eccentric, exaggerated mysticism, but
it went awry by doing away with the external forms which are
the necessary vehicles of interior grace. By dissolving the connecting links between the modern Christian and the gospel
Protestantism compelled the contemporary believer to reconstruct Christianity according to arbitrary principles taken from
philosophical speculation rather than from the living heritage
of faith.
Drey's disciple, Johann Adam Mohler, carried the thought
of his master one step further. Catholicism, he declared, is the
form of Christianity that fully accepts the Incarnation, which
is, as Drey had recognized, the fundamental Christian mystery.
" The visible Church," wrote Mohler in a famous passage,
" ... is the Son of God himself, everlasting by manifesting himself among men in a human form, perpetually renovated, and
eternally young-the permanent incarnation of the same, as in
Holy Writ, even the faithful are called the body of Christ." 21
19 See the selections from Drey in J. R. Geiselmann
(ed.), Geist des Ohristentums und des Katholizismus (Mainz: Matthias-Grunewald, 1940), pp. 83388. The most important of these selections is Drey's essay, "The Spirit and
Essence of Catholicism."
20 Ibid., pp. 125-26, a selection from Drey's Tagebuch for Jan. 15, 1815.
21 J. A. Mohler, Symbolism; or, Exposition of the Doctrinal Differences between Catholics and Protestants as Evidenced by their Symbolical Writings
(New York: E. Dunigan, 1844), p. 333.

618

AVERY DULI ...ES, S.J.

Thus the Church, he concluded, is not merely human. It is at
once human and divine.
For Mohler, as for Drey, Protestantism was an unauthentic
form of Christianity. Luther and Calvin, he held, made a fatal
separation between the invisible Church of the saints and the
visible Church of history, looking upon the former alone as
holy and upon the latter as a merely human, adventituous
association. As a result of this fatal flaw, Protestantism gradually lost the sacramental and dogmatic heritage handed down
from antiquity.
Mohler's Protestant colleague on the faculty of Tiibingen,
Ferdinand Christian Baur, wrote a book-length reply to Mohler,22 but in this response he defended not the Protestantism of
J_,uther and the Reformation but a dialectically progressive
religion that owed more to philosophical speculation than to
Christian revelation. Baur's work was not well received by his
fellow Protestants, and Mohler was able to reply to it confidently.
About the time that Drey and Mohler were at the height of
their careers, John Henry Newman was beginning to say many
of the same things quite independently in England. In the
1830s he was associated with John Keble and Edward Pusey
in the high-church Tractarian Movement, mentioned earlier in
these pages. He attempted to convince his fellow Anglicans that
the Thirty-Nine Articles should be interpreted in a Catholic
sense, as affirming the dogmatic and sacramental heritage of
ancient Christianity, rather than in a Protestant sense. His
interpretation, however, was widely rejected by his coreligionists. Increasingly, as he studied the patristic age, he became
convinced that the English Church, in its present condition,
lacked the mark of catholicity. It was an isolated national
Church out of communion with the main body of the Church
Catholic, in a situation analogous to that of ancient heresies
such as Dona.tism and Monophysitism.
22 F. C. Baur, Der Gegensatz ... (supra, note 2). The history of the controversy is recounted in Joseph Fitzer, Moehler and Baur itn Oontroversry,
1832-1838 (Talahassee, Florida: American Academy of Religion, 1974).

THE ESSENCE OF CATHOLICISM

619

Newman's view of Catholicism may best be gathered from
his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, composed
on the eve of his conversion. Here he depicts Christianity as an
idea that, like other living ideas, can be assimilated only through
prolonged experience and meditation. Centuries were required,
according to Newman, to disclose what was concretely implied
in the Incarnation, which Newman, like Drey, and Mohler,
took to be the central Christian doctrine. 23 Catholicism, the
sole authentic form of Christianity, was perpetually living and
therefore developing. Its sacramental rites, hierarchical structures, and dogmatic formulations took on continually new forms
in response to changing situations. True to its incarnational
character, the Catholic Church should seek not to stand apart
from the world and its history but rather to appropriate all
the sound values of human cultures, including those of the
pagan religions.
Protestantism, with its appeal to Scripture alone, impressed
Newman as an impoverished form of Christianity. Even the
Church of England, though it accepted the dogmas, sacraments,
and hierarchical forms of the patristic Church, seemed to Newman to he stunted, since it had no living principle of development. Only the Roman Catholic Church, with its infallible
teaching office, seemed capable of keeping pace with the times
while simultaneously holding in check what Newman referred
to as "the suicidal excesses" of freedom of thought. 24
All in all, Newman's organic, developmental model of Catholicism closely resembles that of the Catholic Tiibingen theologians, Drey and Mohler, although, as I have said, he seems
not to have been significantly influenced by these authors.
The next group of Catholic theologians who seriously grappled
with the idea of Catholicism were the Modernists at the turn
of the century. Alfred Loisy, the leading French Modernist,
23 J. H. Newman, Essay on the Development of Ohristian Doctrine (Garden
City: Doubleday Image, 1960), pp. 59, llO, 310.
24J. H. Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1864)
(Garden City: Doubleday
Image, 1956), p. 323.

620

AVERY DULLES, S.J.

was an intense admirer of Newman. He made use of Newman's
organic, developmental ecclesiology in order to refute liberal
Protestants such as Harnack and Sabatier, whom he accused
of religious individualism and of a static, nonhistorical conception of Christianity. Harnack's efforts to reconstruct the
religion of Jesus were in Loisy's estimation a pitiful effort to
repristinate the remote past. " To reproach Catholicism for all
its developments," wrote Loisy, "is to reproach it for remaining
alive." 25
The leader of the English Modernists, George Tyrrell, as a
convert to Roman Catholicism, despised Protestant liberalism
and, like Loisy, tended to ridicule it He celebrated Catholicism
as the religion that stands closest to the oldest, deepest stream
of collective human experience, capable of assimilating the
fruits of pagan religiosity and of satisfying the mystic need of
conscious communion with the suprasensible world. 26 " Catholicism," he wrote, " is more nearly a microcosm of the world of
religions than any other known form." 27 for in it we find nearly
every type of religious expression, from the lowest to the highest, straining towards unification and coherence. By comparison
Protestantism in its various forms seemed to Tyrrell to be an
artificial, incomplete form of religion, one that had been impoverished by separation from the natural religious process.
Loisy and Tyrrell, of course, both had their difficulties with
Rome, and on occasion they bitterly denounced the church
authorities. Rome, they believed, was too restrictive and was
misguided in its efforts to withstand modernization. In principle, however, they conceded that centralized authority in the
Church was a necessity. Tyrell, at least, continued to hope for
a. better day when Rome's current excesses would be corrected.
Another English Catholic Modernist, who always remained
25 A Firmin
(pseudonym for A. Loisy), "La tMorie individualiste de la
religion," Revue du Olerge frangais 17 (Jan. 1, 1899), p. 212.
26 G. Tyrrell, "Reflections
on Catholicism," Through SoyUa and Charybdis
(London: Longmans, Green, 1907), chap. 2, pp. 20-84.
21 G. Tyrrell,
Christianity at the Crossroads (1909) (London: Allen &
Unwin, 1963), p. 167.

THE ESSENCE OF CATHOLICISM

621

in good standing in the Church, was the Baron Friedrich von
Hugel. Like his friend Tyrell, he wrote extensively of the excellence of Catholicism, which he regarded as the fullest and
richest form of religion, distinguished from all others by its
balance and inclusiveness. 28 In a major study of St. Catherine
of Genoa, von Hugel contended that Catholic Christianity
holds in balance the three elements of religion-the institutional, the intellectual, and the mystical. Mysticism itself, he
maintained, cannot flourish except in tension with the historical and institutional embodiments of the spirit. A distinguishing mark of Catholicism, in his view, was its perception that
faith and spiritual experience must always begin with the
senses.29
For the Modernists, then, Catholicism was a religion of
irreducible complexity, rooted in the depth of the human psyche, and able to appeal to the whole person-body and soul,
mind and emotions. The German Lutheran, Heiler, was strongly
influenced by the Modernists. He praised the universalism and
inclusiveness of Catholic Christianity but, as mentioned above,
he wished to see it subordinated to the simple message of the
gospel.
In his justly famed work, The Spirit of Catlwlicism, the
German Catholic theologian, Karl Adam, responded to Heiler
in 1924.30 Heiler, he conceded, had said many true things, but
had missed the essence of Catholicism, which is discernible only
to those who live within the community of faith. Seen from
within, Catholicism may be called the religion of affirmation
rather than of denial, of wholeness rather than of selectivity.
28 F. von Hiigel discusses the characteristics
of Catholicism in his Essays
and Addresses on the Philosophy of Reli,qion. First Series (London: J. M.
Dent & Sons, 1921), pp. 227-41, 242-53; Second Series (London: J.M. Dent
& Sons, 1926), pp. 245-51.
29 F. von Hugel, The Mystical Element in Reli,qion as Studied in St. Oatherine of Genoa and Her Friends (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 2nd ed., 1923),
vol. 1, pp. 50-82; vol. 2, pp. 387-89.
30 K. Adam, The Spirit of Oatholicism
(Garden City: Doubleday Image,
1954), esp. chap. 1.

AVERY DUI.LES, S.J.

The Church, in its inmost reality, is a communion of persons
in the life that was brought into the world through Jesus Christ.
The life of grace, moreover, is expressed and communicated
through tangible institutions, such as hierarchy, dogma, and
sacraments, which are not to be
off as merely human
contrivances, still less as unchristian distortions. Adam thus
rejected the charge made by Harnack and others that Catholicism set divine value on merely human institutions.
The next major contribution to our theme comes with the
so-called " new theology " that arose in France on the eve of
World War IL Yves Cougar launched a new epoch in the
history of our subject by his ecumenical study, Divided Christendom, published in French in 1937. In this and many subsequent works Cougar broke with the static, quantitative understanding of catholicity that had long been current in Catholic
apologetics, and opted for a dynamic, qualitative understanding.
By catholicity he meant the plenitude of truth, redemptive
power, and spiritual vitality that Christ communicates to the
Church through the Holy Spirit. The catholicity of the Church,
Cougar stated, "is the dynamic universality of her unity, the
capacity of her principles of unity to assimilate, fulfill and
raise to God in oneness with Him all men and every man and
every human value." 31
The Catholic Church, according to Cougar, can properly
claim to be catholic, for it possesses the full deposit of faith,
sacraments, and ministry. Non-Roman Christianity is deficient
in catholicity, at least insofar as, lacking union with Rome, it
is separated from the center of visible unity and apostolic
authority. Cougar, however, did not deny that the division
of Christians into separate communions and confessions deprives even the Catholic Church of certain human values and
experiences which, if incorporated into it, would greatly enhance
one aspect of its catholicity, the fullness of its Christian life.
While identifying catholicity primarily with plenitude, Cougar
a1 Y. Cougar, Divided Ohristendom (London: Centenary Press, 1939), pp.
94-95; French original, Ohretiens desunis (Paris: Cerf, 1937), p. 117.

THE ESSENCE Ol!' CATHOLICISM

expressed reserve about the widely current view that, whereas
Catholicism seeks plenitude, Protestantism is more conspicuous
for purity. Catholicity, he remarked, is inseparable from the
other classical " marks " of the Church, and hence from holiness,
which implies purity. The Council of Trent, for this reason,
expressed its concern for the purity of the gospel.32 The contrast between Catholicism and Protestantism, for Cougar, is
rooted especially in their divergent conceptions of apostolicity.
In the very year that Cougar published his Divided Christendom the French Jesuit, Henri de Lubac, completed the first
edition of his Catholicism, a work drawing extensively on
Augustine and other patristic writers. Protestantism, de Lubac
objected, unduly separates the human organization of the
Church from the invisible body of Christ. Anticipating the
Second Vatican Council, de Lubac depicted the Church as the
sacrament of Christ-i. e., the sign that renders him really and
actively present in every place and time where the Church is
present.
The Church, being catholic, is truly universal. It is at home
everywhere, and everyone should be able to feel at home in it.
In de Lubac's words:
Nothing authentically human, whatever its origin, can be alien to
her .... To see in Catholicism one religion among others, one system among others, even if it be added that it is the only true
religion, the only system that works, is to mistake its very nature,
or at least to stop at the threshold. Catholicism is religion itself.
It is therefore the very opposite of a "closed society." 83

This survey would be incomplete without mention of one
more living author, Hans Urs von Balthasar, who studied under
de Lubac from 1933 to 1937, and who in 1943 translated
32 The Council of Trent in its fourth session ( 1546) laid down principles
for attaining the puritas ipsa Evangelii (DS 1501). See Y. Congar,
" Comment l'Eglise sainte doit se renouveler sans cesse," Sainte Eglise
(Paris: Cerf, 1964), pp. 152-54.
33 H. de Lubac, Catholicism:
A Study of Dogma in Relation to the Corpo·
rate Destiny of Mankind (London: Burns, Oates, and Wal!lhbourne, 1950),
p. 153.

AVERY DtrLL1ilS, S.3.

Catholicism into German. Influenced both by de Lubac and
by the German Jesuit, Erich Przywara, von Balthasar advocates a tension-filled " Catholicism of fullness." The concept
of pleroma, he points out, was a major theme of the New Testament and one that continued to appear in the writings of the
Fathers. Catholicism is the fullness of the incarnate love of
God, which in Jesus Christ divests itself of all possessiveness,
and thereby opens itself to every positive and authentic human
value. To be Catholic, for the Church, means to receive the
fullness of God paradoxically present under the forms of poverty
and nakedness, the signs of total and selfless giving.34
Catholic Christianity, according to von Balthasar, could not
exist at all unless it were realized in an exemplary way at two
salient points-as life and as institution. It became life when,
through Mary's loving and believing acceptance of God's plan,
the divine Word took on human flesh. The Incarnation itself
already implies, in nucleus, the existence of the holy immaculate Church. Secondly, von Balthasar asserts, the continued
existence of the Church requires an organ of unity that can
keep the community as a whole faithful to the gospel. This
organ is the apostolic college with the see of Peter at its center.
The holiness of Mary and the authority of Peter are complementary aspects of the same mystery, and in John, the disciple
of love, the two are reciprocally mediated and conjoined.
The Catholic Church, von Balthasar admits, is always menaced by sin and always in need of reform. But unless it possessed the gifts of holiness and truth, it would have within it
no principle by which to effect reform. Personal holiness should
never be played off against the visible structures of the Church.
According to von Balthasar, these structures are the condition
of possibility of personal union with Christ. Christ's presence
34 M. Kehl and W. Lliser (eds.), The Von Balthasar Reader (New York:
Crossroad, 1982), pp. 7-9, 247-61. The latter passage is a selection from von
Balthasar, "Die Absolutheit des Christentums und die Katholizitiit der
Kirche" in W. Kasper (ed.), Absolutheit des Ohristentums.
Quaestiones
Disputatae 79 (Freiburg: Herder, 1977), pp. 131-56.

THE ESSENCE OF CATHOLICISM

625

is institutionally mediated by hierarchical office, tradition,
sacrament, and canon law. The empirical Church, immersed
in the ambiguities of history, is the only real Church. We
cannot turn from it to any separate, invisible, purely spiritual
Church. The Church that we see about us, with all its defects,
is itself the Church of the saints.
In the past few years several Roman Catholic theologians
have tried to summarize in brief compass the salient features
of Catholicism. For Richard McBrien Catholicism is, above
all, the religion of radical openness to all truth and value; it is
characterized by a" both-and" rather than an" either-or." Its
distinctive qualities may be clarified with reference to three
theological foci: sacramentality, mediation, and communion.
As the sacrament of our communion with Jesus Christ, the
Church communally mediates the grace of God as given in
Christ. Many of the characteristics of Catholicism are also
found in other Christian communities, but they are present in
the Catholic Church in a unique configuration. 85
Robert Imbelli looks on Catholicism as being preeminently
the religion of sacramental consciousness. This consciousness
has been concretely expressed in a variety of cultural forms,
but all such expressions are governed by certain foundational
sensitivities or dimensions, which Imbelli enumerates under
five headings: the corporeal, the communal, the universal, the
cosmic, and the transformational. Authentically Catholic language, says Imbelli, is " both-and " rather than " either-or."
But it is not promiscuously syncretistic, for it subjects itself
to the Incarnate Word as norm. 36
The Roman Catholic theologians included in the present
survey, in contradistinction to many of the Protestants, tend
to define Catholicism more in terms of its organic vitality than
in terms of its institutional features. Its life, they declare, is
3oR, P. McBrien, Catholicism (Minneapolis:
Winston, 1980), pp. 11691186.
36 R. P. Imbelli,
"Vatican II: Twenty Years Later," Commonweal, vol.
109, no. 17 (Oct. 8, 1982) 522-26.

626

AVERY DULJ,ES, S.J.

rooted in the Incarnation. Christ's life is communicated to the
faithful through the gift of the Holy Spirit. As an analogous
continuation of the Incarnation, the Church may be called the
body of Christ or the sacrament of our encounter with Christ.
The superabundant richness of the divine life demands a multiplicity of historical expressions. Catholicism is therefore
marked by a tension-filled unity in variety. The Catholic idea,
moreover, demands time for its assimilation. Hence the Church
is seen as developing through the centuries in an essentially
continuous way, thanks to the abiding gift of the Spirit as its
divine principle of life.
On several points Catholic authors do not agree. For instance,
there are two views on the question whether Catholicism demands a counterbalance to prevent it from becoming one-sided.
Drey speaks of an equilibrium between Catholicism and mystiC'ism, but von Hiigel holds that the mystical is itself a dimension of Catholicism. The majority of Catholic authors take a
preponderantly positive attitude toward the non-Christian
religions, but some, such as von Balthasar, look on these other
religions with suspicion as merely human and partly distorted
efforts to attain the divine.
Those who discuss the relationship of Catholicism to Rome
are generally in agreement that there can be no authentic Catholicism except in union with the bishop of Rome. A few tend
to speak as though Rome were the source and origin of all
authority and unity in the Church, but most of the authors
we have examined look on Rome rather as the center and
touchstone of unity and authenticity in the Catholic commumon.
Just as the Protestant authors we have examined are prone
to emphasize the deficiencies of Catholicism, so the Catholics
tend to depict Protestantism in rather unflattering colors.
Many, holding that Protestantism is founded on a partial rejection of the divinely given Christian substance, conclude
that it is necessarily incomplete and one-sided. A recurrent
charge is that Protestantism, failing to appreciate the logic of

THE ESSENCE OF CATHOLICISM

627

the Incarnation, separates the visible Church from the invisible
community of grace. Some Catholic authors add that Protestantism, lacking an organic principle of continuity and authority, confronts its members with the necessity of choosing between an archaistic repristination of the religion of Jesus and
an arbitrary modernization based on the fashions of the moment.

III
With the help of the authors we have surveyed and that of
Vatican II we may now be in a position to draw some conclusions about the essence of Catholicism as seen from a Roman
Catholic perspective.
Theologically speaking, it would be a mistake to seek any
essence or idea of Catholicism that differs from that of Christianity itself. As Newman insisted, the idea of Christianity,
rightly understood, is itself Catholic. Vatican II, in its Constitution on the Church, stated that the Church of Christ,
"constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists
in the Catholic Church ... " 37 This statement, in my judgment,
implies that Catholicism has identically the same essence as
the Church of Christ," which in the creed we avow to be one,
holy, catholic, and apostolic." 38 Wherever these essential properties of Christianity are integrally present, there is the
Catholic Church. Catholicism, consequently, is not just one
of several legitimate Christian types, nor does it need to be
offset, for its own protection, by some countervailing type of
Christianity.
The Church of Christ, however, is not exclusively identical
with its Roman Catholic realization. Other Christian churches
and communities may strikingly embody certain aspects of the
Church of Christ. By comparison with these other communities,
Catholicism may be said to have certain distinctive attributes.
a1Vatican II, Lumen gentium, no. 8; in W. M. Abbott (ed.), Documtmts of
Vatican II (New York: American Press, 1966), p. 23.
as Ibid.

628

AVERY DULLES, S.J.

This can be better appreciated if we consider how the four
attributes mentioned in the creed (one, holy, catholic, and
apostolic) are characteristically understood from the Catholic
and Protestant points of view.
With regard to unity, Catholicism from the Counter Reformation down to the most recent times has particularly stressed
a visible unity that transcends all divisions of class, language,
culture, and nationality. In the sixteenth century the churches
that broke away from Rome became organized on a national or
territorial basis and were in many cases governed by the
political authorities. The Catholic Church, for its part, insisted
on a religious unity that cut across all political frontiers. In
Counter Reformation Catholicism very little scope was given
to individual differences among local and regional churches,
which were viewed as mere parts or districts of the universal
Church. Catholicism gave its members a powerful sense of
belonging to a single religious community, but the doctrines and
precepts of religion were proposed in an abstract style rather
unrelated to the circumstances in which the faithful lived. The
result was an unhealthy dualism between religion and day-today existence. Vatican II, seeking to remedy this situation, resuscitated the doctrine of the local and regional church and
began to insist on what has since come to be called inculturation. Catholic unity was described by the council as one in
which "each individual part of the Church contributes through
its special gifts to the good of the other parts and of the whole
Church." 39
Meanwhile the Protestant and Anglican churches, which had
suffered from a lack of worldwide communion, began to emerge
from their national and linguistic isolation. In the twentieth
century there has been a new emphasis on "world confessional
families" and on membership in worldwide ecumenical organizations. Thus the search for a variegated unity that overcomes
the divisions between particular geographically defined groups
39

Lumen gentium, no. 13; Abbott ed., p. 31.

THE ESSENCE OF CA'l'HOLICISM

6Q9

without eliminating healthy distinctions is increasingly shared
by Catholics and Protestants alike.
The second major difference consists in the understanding of
holiness. Protestantism in its classical and orthodox forms,
which continue to be influential, holds that believers are holy
through faith, which lays hold of the incomparable merits of
Jesus Christ, but that they remain sinful in themselves and
hence incapable, even with the help of grace, of moving themselves toward God, before whom they must stand as passive
recipients. Catholicism, by contrast, takes a more optimistic
view of human nature as essentially sound and as capable of
being healed and transformed by the power of grace. It
accordingly sees the Church as intrinsically holy, in spite of the
lapses of its members. Pius XII expressed this position in the
rhetoric of his day:
The living Mother is spotless in the sacraments, by which she gives
birth to her children and nourishes them; she is spotless in the
faith which she has always preserved inviolate; in her sacred laws
imposed upon all, in the evangelical counsels which she recommends, in those heavenly gifts and extraordinary graces by which,
with inexhaustible fecundity, she generates hosts of martyrs, virgins, and confessors. But it cannot be laid to her charge if some
members fall weak or wounded ... 40

In spite of the somewhat triumphalistic disclaimer of the
Church's responsibility for the failures. of its delinquent members, this passage reflects an authentically Catholic sense of the
continuing holiness of the Church. Giving thanks for the gifts
of the Holy Spirit, the Church celebrates the memory of the
saints and seeks, by invoking them, to place itself under their
influence.
To Protestant sensitivities these attitudes may seem Pelagian
or at least Semi-Pelagian. In some strains of Catholic theology,
we may admit, the goodness and autonomy of nature and the
transforming efficacy of grace have been so emphasized that the
40 Pius XII, Mystici corporis (1943)
1957), no. 81, p. 35.

(New York: .America Press, 3rd ed.,

630

AVERY DULLES, S.J.

need of repentance and forgiveness has been minimized. Here
again, Vatican II has sought to curb the exaggerations to which
the Counter Reformation gave added impetus. The recent
council stated that the Church, "embracing sinners in her
bosom, is at the same time holy and always in need of being
purified, and incessantly pursues the path of penance and
renewal." 41 By recovering this penitential outlook Catholicism
has achieved a better balance and has done justice to some
Protestant themes without abandoning the doctrine of the
abiding holiness of the Church.
What must be said about the third mark, catholicity, has
been anticipated, in some measure, by the preceding remarks
on unity. Narrowness and particularism have no place in the
true Church of Christ. As we have seen, catholicity means more
than numerical or geographical inclusiveness. To be qualitatively catholic the Church must be receptive to the sound
achievements of every race and culture. Catholicism pays
respect not to the mind alone, nor only to the will and the
emotions, but to all levels and aspects of human existence. Not
content with what is naturally sound, it seeks to embody and
transmit the full content of Christian revelation and the full
heritage of authentic tradition.
We have seen how Tyrrell, Heiler, and Adam, from their differing perspectives, focus on inclusiveness and universality.
They are inclined to regard Catholicism as a paradoxical
complexio oppositorum in which nature and grace, faith and
reason, tradition and progress, word and sacrament, spirit and
institution, cross and glory are brought into a dynamic synthesis. In contrast to the Catholic "both-and," Protestantism
is characterized as standing for an "either-or."
This very inclusiveness has given rise to criticisms from the
Protestant side. Some complain, as we have seen, that Catholicism is too complicated and that it lacks focus. This charge
deserves careful consideration. It must be admitted that
41 Luman

gmtium, no. 8; Abbott ed., p. 24; cf. Unitatis redintegratio, no.

6; Abbott ed., p. 350.

THE ESSENCE OF CATHOLICISM

631

Catholics, in their scrupulous concern for completeness, often
fail to see the forest for the trees. They find it difficult to speak
of Christ without feeling that they must bring in Mary, the
saints, the sacraments, the pope, and a thousand other considerations that are not, by any sane standard, of comparable
importance. They are therefore at a disadvantage in the task
of evangelization.
Vatican II took cognizance of this difficulty. It spoke, in a
somewhat enigmatic sentence, of the "hierarchy of truths,
[which] vary in their relationship to the foundation of the
Christian faith." 42 Several modern theologians have pleaded
for a development of doctrine by way of simplification rather
than by way of further complexity. It is important that every
article of belief be seen in relation to the heart and center of
the Christian message, which is surely God's work in Jesus
Christ. Such concentration, far from being reductionistic, can
point up the meaning and importance of the "subordinate" or
"derivative" doctrines.
The final property of the Church of Christ, subsisting in the
Catholic Church, is its apostolicity. Protestants have tended t-0
define apostolicity as adherence to the gospel, as set forth in
Holy Scripture. From a Catholic point of view this is necessary
but not sufficient. A living apostolic authority belongs permanently to the Church. The threefold deposit of apostolic faith,
sacraments, and ministry is seen as developing in continuity
with what was initially given in apostolic times. The Church's
binding doctrines are intended to articulate, in an authoritative
manner, what is implied by Christianity itself. The sacraments
are seen as ways in which the Church actualizes its own essence
as an efficacious sign of God's grace in Jesus Christ. The apostolic ministry, in turn, is a divinely empowered body of pastors
who perpetuate the supervisory functions of the apostles themselves in the public direction of the Church. As priestly figures
the hierarchy sacramentally represent Christ, the great high
priest.
42 Unitatis

redintegratio, no. 11; Abbott ed., p. 354.

632

AVERY DULLES, S.J.

Protestant writers sometimes object that the heavy machinery of ecclesiastical mediation in the Catholic Church tends to
impede rather than assist the living relationship of the individual believer to Jesus Christ. In their eyes Catholicism has often
appeared to be the religion of law, ritual, and dogma, but not
the religion of the Spirit. They speak in this connection of
heteronomy and alienation. To a great extent these charges
are based on the impressions of outsiders who have no inner
experience of Catholic prayer and devotional life, but in some
segments of Catholicism, especially perhaps in the nineteenth
century, there has been an overemphasis on obedience and conformity to ecclesiastical commands and regulations. Twentieth
century Catholicism, especially under the star of Vatican II,
is more conscious that the institution is not an end in itself, but
that it must express and mediate the Spirit. Without diluting
the institutional aspect, the council accented the values of personal freedom, inner appropriation, and active participation.
This new look has disappointed some Catholics who would
prefer an objectivistic, authoritarian form of religion, of the
kind that Hegel found in Catholicism, but many others are
relieved by the shift away from the defensiveness and rigidity
of the Counter Reformation.
The question of the relationship between Catholicism and
Rome may fittingly be discussed under the heading of apostolicity. In some Catholic ecclesiologies prior to Vatican II the
primacy of the pope was so emphasized that romanitas, in
effect, became a fifth mark of the true Church, swallowing up
the other four. Complaints were heard, especially from nonRoman Catholics that catholicity was being explained in such
a way that it resided in the pope alone. Some rejected the
authority of Rome because they saw no other way of escaping
from the excesses of papalism.
Here again, Vatican II has helped to restore the balance. It
contextualized the papal primacy by setting it in the framework
of episcopal collegiality. In contemporary theology it has become clear that Rome does not and cannot by itself alone

THE ESSENCE OF CATHOLICISM

633

possess the fullness of catholicity, and conversely that the other
bishops and churches cannot be fully Catholic without being in
union with Rome. In the absence of the Roman center the
college of bishops and the communion of churches would lack
their center of unity and apostolic authority. But without these
other bishops and churches, Rome would be like a head without
a body, like a center without a circumference.
In the perspectives of some two centuries of ProtestantCatholic discussion the clarifications brought to the concept of
Catholicism by Vatican II seem eminently sane. The council
was faithful to the traditional self-understanding of the
Catholic Church, and yet spoke in a way that took account of
certain justified criticisms that have come from the Protestant
side. The achievements of Vatican TI would have been impossible without notable historical scholarship and ecumenical
openness on the part of the council Fathers and their theological experts. Only when the full history of Vatican TI has been
written will it become apparent how large a contribution was
made by Yves Congar.
AVERY DULLES,

The Oatholio University of America
Washington, D.O.

s. J.

SOTERIOLOGY IN THE NUCLEAR AGE

I

T IS AN ESPECIAL PLEASURE to contribute to a collection of essays honoring Yves Congar. In the course of
a long and varied, consistently courageous and immensely
fruitful theological career, Pere Congar has certainly done more
than any other writer to raise the consciousness of the laity
concerning their calling to an active role in the Church. He
has done this not only in the work entitled The Laity in the
Church but throughout his writings, concerned with the authentic appropriation of tradition, with a deeper understanding of Church,. with a critical assessment of theology and its
methods throughout history, a real love of the liturgy, with
the bitter issues of poverty and power in the Church, with
ecumenism and with the issues of the redemption in the world
at large.
In all of this, the awakening sense of responsibility of lay
Christians has led inexorably to larger questions than have
traditionally been discussed under the rubric of dogmatic (or
even, latterly, systematic) theology. An awakening sense of
vocation among the laity has of course raised many and sometimes painful questions within the Church, but what seems to
be even more significant is the degree to which it has turned
the eyes of Christians outwards to the world at large. We have
begun to ask questions about salvation in terms of liberationrescue and freedom from all that is experienced as divisive,
frightening, dehumanizing, cruel, unjust, oppressive, destructive of hope and destructive of the future. We have begun to
ask questions that look for the links between redemption and
creation, between revelation and the discernment of sin, between the tasks of the Church and the possibilities of the
world. The inspiration of Pere Congar's impressive and lonely
early work in ecumenism has swept us on into ever wider fields

634

SOTERIOLOGY

IN 'fHE NUCLEAR AGE

635

of ecumenism beyond the boundaries of the Christian Churches
into a quest for conversation with other faiths and even with
Marxist humanists.
The focus of all of this has really come to the question of our
understanding both of the goal and of the process of redemption/ salvation.1 There is a strong logic in the development;
once we begin to think of Church in less ritual, institutional
terms and in more existential, all-embracing community terms,
questions that were not being asked much before, now begin
to be not only important but urgent. While ritual assures me
of grace, and grace which is outside my experience assures me
of salvation which is beyond death and outside history and
therefore also outside experience, there is more reason to ask
how one may be sure the ritual is really working to produce
grace than to ask what we can know about the nature of grace
and salvation themselves in our lives and societies. As soon as
we look into history to try to understand how the Church came
to have its present structures and assumptions, and as soon as
we try to move into an authentic dialogue with outsiders,
ritual and institutional structures move from the center of the
stage and become relative to the enterprise. At this stage the
questions about the essential nature of the enterprise become
extremely urgent.
This seems to be what has in fact happened. Since those
post-World War II days in which Pere Cougar became so involved in the role of the laity in Church and redemption, the
development of technology has ruthlessly challenged our assumptions about human life and history in the northern
hemisphere, and the increasing concentration and polarization
of political and economic power in the world has challenged the
understanding of the mystery of redemption in the southern
hemisphere. Psychology and the human sciences have combined with the philosophies of existentialism and of phenomenology to make all of us ask some hard questions and come to
1 This is evident in all the socio-critical theologies, but most noticeably so
in those that identify themselves as liberation theologies.

636

MONIKA K. HELLWIG

the realization that our more convention,<tl, more clerically
ecclesiastical theology was incapable of answermg those questions. One might say that there has been a laicization, even a
seularization, of theology, both in the questions which it addresses and in the manner in which it deals with those questions.
Ever since the end of World War II, with its tragic atomic
bombing of the Japanese cities, we have had to ask our questions in the light of a new apocalyptic which is coming closer
and becoming more universally threatening. 2 The evolutionary
optimism generated by a maturing technical control of the universe and its resources gave us the varieties of process theology
based upon the scientific thought of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
and the philosophical thought of Whitehead. Although these
process theologies continue to develop, the question was asked
from the beginning: do they deal with the evident reality of
sin in the world and its human history? As our technology
threatens greater and greater destruction, not only through
nuclear disaster but also through ecological imbalance, exhaustion of resources, and inability to deal with waste, it is
evident that the redemption has not simply transformed and
assimilated the natural processes of the world.
That first wave of laicized, secularized theology was based
upon a scientific optimism that has proved treacherous. It
has strong parallels with the clerical-ecclesiastical style of
theology that preceded it. Just as the latter was based on the
" Constantinian " assumption that existing Church structure
and Christendom had already incorporated the larger aspects
of redemption, leaving only the saving of individual souls as
the continuing task, so the former was based on a kind of
technical-scientific triumphalism. The continuing threat of
tragedy, born of greed and lust for power, insistently challenges
such a perspective. It reveals a theology that places too much
emphasis on the Incarnation as divine transformation of sin2 The ·.American Bishops'
recent pastoral letter, The Ohallenge of Peace
(Origins, vol. 13: No. l); amply illustrates thi.8.

SOTERIOLOQY tN '.rH.E NUCL:EAR AGE

6S7

ful human situations, understanding that transformation as
having already happened and requiring no further conversion
of relationships and structures in the public sphere. 3
The continuing laicizing and secularizing thrust of theological thought has been moving beyond both kinds of triumphalism, the ecclesiastical and the scientific-technological. It has
moved according to the exigences of human suffering on a large
scale in the contemporary world. Things are not, in fact, getting better and better for most of the millions of human persons in the world. For many of them, things are becoming more
and more hopeless by ordinary rational calculations. And we
live in an era in which statistical and social analysis makes it
possible to understand how and why things are getting more
desperate for large segments of the world's population. In
economic terms it can be described as free enterprise fueled by
the profit motive (unrestricted capitalism). In human terms
it can be described as a quest for pleasure, status and power,
and for security in privileged access to these to the exclusion
of others (selfishness, greed) . In theological terms it must
ultimately be described as sin, individual and structured, original and actual, episodic and habitual. 4
It is, perhaps, not accidental that the first thrusts in this
direction came from post-war Germany, confronted with
Marxist theories of redemption for the shattered society that
waited to be rebuilt. The " theology of hope" proposed by
Moltmann and Pannenberg was a quest in the first place for a
soteriology that could have meaning in that context. It was,
therefore, in the second place a protest against any style of
theology that was triumphalist in its locating of redemption in
the past. The dynamic of Marxist soteriology is precisely that
it locates the redemptive struggle in the present and locates its
s Of. the essays assessing the contemporary structures of society in Thomas
E. Clarke, ed., Above Every Name: The Lordship of Christ and Social Systems (N.Y.: Paulist, 1980).
4 Of, e.g. Brian Mahan & Dale Richesin, eds. The Challenge of Liberation
Theology: a First World Response ( (N.Y.: Orbis, 1981).

688

MONIKA K. HELLWIG

faithful followers at the heart of that struggle, in need of personal conversion and called to participate in the conversion
of the structures of society from selfishness to a care for the
common good of the whole. It was this confrontation that led
Moltmann to the rediscovery that the good news of Christian
faith is and continues to be primarily a message of hope for
the future, based upon the promissory events of the past.
Moreover, it implied a worldly component to the hope implied
in the gospel.
The important insights which remained rather safely general
in the writings of Moltmann and Pannenberg nevertheless
pointed the way towards a more practical and therefore also
more abrasive challenge to Christian practice and theory. As
taken up by J. B. Metz and later by Hans Kung, this addressed itself in the first place to the structures and uses of
power by and within the institutional Church. J.B. Metz has
consistently addressed the question whether in the redemption
of the world's values, relationships, expectations and structures, the concentrated power of the institi.Itional Church can
be used positively as a tool of grace, speaking on behalf of the
poor, the oppressed and powerless, the excluded. Hans Kung
appears in the course of his writing career to have come more
and more to question whether a powerful institutional Church
can possibly resist the corruption of the world's understanding
of power, its uses, its means of self-defense and its means of
self-perpetuation. It is the question of power and poverty in
the Church which Pere Congar himself has addressed-a question very much in the tradition of the mendicant friars since
their foundation in the context of mediaeval beginnings of city
culture with its margination of the " useless ".
It is obvious that all of us must somehow address the question both from the positively hopeful and from the negatively
critical stances, both from the perspective of J. M. Metz and
from that of Hans Kung. It is equally obvious that in the
northern hemisphere and in the prosperously capitalist countries we have been extremely reluctant to do so. The vanguard

SOTERIOLOGY

IN THE NUCLEAR AGE

639

in soteriological thinking has really been in the countries of the
Third World, largely in the southern hemisphere in situations
which we have until recently considered to be missionary territory and theologically naive. Indeed the accusation of political and theological naivete has constantly been levelled at the
constructive theologies that have emerged from that situation.
But that may be because we of the wealthy north have not
begun to understand either the reality of sin in the world or
the full extent of political possibilities in the power of the poor,
which is basically the power of community. 5
It is if course the liberation theologians who have really
tried to take the laicizing, secularizing trend of Christian
soteriology to its logical conclusion while still remaining within
the Christian tradition. That means observing the sufferings
of the human community and analyzing the circumstances and
causes of those sufferings in order to try to understand the patterns of alienation. It also means distinguishing between nature and culture, between what is God-given and what is
humanly contrived, in order to try to try to judge rightly what
frustrations and sufferings are a matter of growth and development in the history of the human community, and to isolate
those sufferings that should never be because they result from
contradiction of God's will for the human community. In this
way one arrives at a concrete definition of sin in the contemporary world.
There is a certain maturity in soteriology when it can proceed by correlation of lived experience in our time with revelation as interpreted and formulated in our classic scriptures. 6
This was already the case, of course, in the existentially based
s This has recently been explored in a number of books: G. Gutierrez,
The Power of the Poor (N.Y.: Orbis, 1983) ; James Hug, ed., Traaing the
Spirit: Communities, Social Action, and Theological Reflection (N.Y.:
Paulist,, 1983); etc.
6 Cf. Daniel Durkin, ed., Sin, Salvation and the Spirit (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1979). Cf. also, E. Schillebeeckx and Bas van Iersel, eds., Jesus
Christ and Human Freedom (N.Y.: Herder, 1974) for various aspects of that
correlation.

640

MONIKA K. HELLWIG

theologies of such great theologians of the twentieth century as
Paul Tillich and Karl Rahner. But in these cases the analysis
of present experience was heavily introspective and rather individualistic, and was based on the experience and the consciousness of economically and culturally privileged persons
and societies. What is important in the new wave of liberation theologies is that the analysis of lived experience in the
contemporary world is based upon the experience of large populations who are usually not heard and who are best placed to
testify concerning the sufferings of the human community. For
this reason, liberation theologies, whether they come from the
Third World nations, or from racial minorities in the wealthy
nations, or from women, have a special claim to be heard when
they speak about the reality of sin.
What is revealed about the reality of sin throws much new
light on the traditional Christian doctrine of original sin-that
state of sin which affects all of us from the first moment of our
existence just because we are members of the human race in
this particular history as it has in fact happened. Analysis of
our present situation in the world shows that the impressions
we absorbed before we reached any capacity for critical thought
become an inevitable part of our consciousness and expectations
and evaluations, and that it is extremely difficult to rise above
them and judge them by higher criteria. And these absorbed
assumptions which seem to us to constitute the God-given
order of things, include racism and other prejudices, traditional
antagonisms, fears, hatreds and exclusions of other people, assumptions concerning the natural rightness of the privileges
and advantages that we have, even when these are evidently
at the expense of other peoples and when they were evidently
acquired unjustly in the first place by those who went before
us and left us their legacy. 7
What is revealed about the reality of sin in the contemporary
1 One powerful and particularly
intractable example of this is explored in
depth and from many angles in Alan T. Davies ed., Anti-semitisni and the
Foundation8 of Christianity (N.Y.: Paulist, 1979).

SOTERIOLOGY IN THE NUCLEAR AGE

641

world, therefore, necessarily looks beyond the specific actions
of individual persons and looks at the whole configuration of
those situations and circumstances that frustrate human life
and inflict needless suffering on people. This is the juncture at
which social analysis of the situation becomes theologically
relevant. Such major disasters as the holocaust of the Jews in
the Hitler era, the bombing of the Japanese cities, the saturation bombing of German population centers, the napalming of
the Vietnamese people and countryside, the wholesale massacres in many parts of the world, and the starvation of whole
populations while food is plentiful elsewhere and means of
transportation easily available-all these demand more than
simple retrospective self-righteous condemnation from pulpit,
rostrum or writing desk. What they demand is a very careful
inquiry, by collaboration of many disciplines, laying bare the
configuration of attitudes, actions and motives by which such
horrors came about.
The analysis of situations such as the above, in which the
blame cannot really be laid at the door of any individual or
series of individuals because each is acting according to an
understandable compromise in difficult dilemmas, has led to the
notion of systemic evil or structural sin. The term has been
ridiculed in some circles with the comment that structures do
not sin although people do. While this is true, structures do
embody the attitudes, actions and relationships of people in
such a way that they acquire an existence of their own which
in turn controls what those people can do. Where they embody
selfish and greedy and cruel attitudes, actions and relationships,
they acquire a hold over persons which is a servitude to sin, a
literal enslavement in sinful patterns, which certainly justifies
calling the structures sinful.
What we can learn from the liberation theologians is an approach that also has more universal applications. The analysis
of situations of poverty and oppression of particular populations and classes, can also point the way to a method of analysis
of larger human situations such as the present nuclear threat-

642

MONIKA K. HEJ,LWIG

situations which are also widely diffused in their responsibilities
and their possible solutions, because they do not rest on particular individuals but on a subtle and complex network of felt
needs and perceptions of fact and of attitudes and responses to
the perceived threats.
What is important in this is not only the analysis of the
oppressive and divisive forces that constitute sin because they
destroy people, but the fact that it offers the foundations for
discerning what is salvific. It enables us to see the practical
content in the notion we have of the process of redemption. If
we are able to trace the structures that oppress back to the
forces that implement greed and the quest for power and status,
then ·we are also able to construe in social, economic and
political terms the demands of the gospel in which human salvation is unfolded.
If we apply this, for instance, to the nuclear crisis, we need
an analysis of the fears that prompt the assent of the American
people to ever greater allocation of scarce resources to stockpiling weapons of destruction so far beyond what would be
practically us ah le even in total war. Next, we need an analysis
of who and what structured groups profit from a war economy,
and by what chain of economic transactions they profit. But
all of this is still the beginning or first half of the inquiry. What
we need to find out after that is how to deal with the fears, and
how to restructure the economy so as to find jobs for those
displaced and to rechannel the resources. Inasmuch as such a
process is a matter of reconciliation and justice and community
it is the work of the redemption, though it is frankly secular in
its character.
A similar example is that of world hunger. We begin, certainly, with a necessary distinction. The failure of the rains
and the consequent withering of crops is not sinful unless it
has been brought about by human sin. In itself the situation
is God-given, but it is also a vocation to those who have to
share what they have. Starvation side by side with the resources to prevent it in the modern world is certainly gravely

SOTERIOLOGY

IN THE NUCLEAR AGE

643

sinful by any traditional standards. Yet it is not enbugh to
say so, because no one will come forward to acknowledge
responsibility. As a matter of fact often demonstrated in the
recent past, everyone will have an excellent reason for disclaiming responsibility, and most of those who do so will be speaking
in good faith. What is required is an elaborate and technically
competent analysis by people with the necessary qualifications
in a variety of fields, to show just what the structures are that
block the flow of necessary food and supplies to those in desperate need. Again, this is the first half of the project. The
other half is to determine what actions can change or adjust
the process so that the hungry are fed. That change may have
many aspects, ranging from better information and better attitudes on the part of those who have the resources or control
their disposition, to technicalities in the organization of production and distribution and transportation. Again the secular
aspects of this are an integral part of the redemption, because
they contribute to conversion of structures from selfishness and
exclusion to community and charity.
Another and far more complex example is that of the
sufferings of peasant communities from oppressive regimes and
continual warfare in Central America. Destruction and killing
are sinful, but in each concrete case those who do it will answer
that they are def ending the freedom of the people or the peace
and order of the society or even that they are acting in immediate self-defense. An analysis of the sinfulness of the situation
involves going beyond the actions of the individuals to look at
the structure of the country, its divisions, and their relation to
the national and international economy. An elaborate investigation is needed to show where self-interest and greed, the
desire to buy goods cheaply and sell services dearly, the drive
to control markets and preserve privileges and advantages,
trigger the chain of transactions and relationships that eventually cause the poverty and extreme deprivation, the oppression
and fear and violence that constitute the evil situation.
Whenever such an analysis is made, it tends to surprise and

644

MONIKA K. HELLWIG

anger us by tracing the chain back far enough to show how we
ourselves are involved in it, and what we ourselves must renounce or change in order to contribute to a change in the
structures that oppress and destroy. But the important part
of the analysis is not to show what is wrong and to make us
feel guilty. Rather it is the discernment of the pressure points
from which structural change can be initiated. Personal and
individual conversions are certainly needed to implement
change. But the conversion must also be carried out technically through the change of structures. This also is the
redemption at work.
A significant cause, but also in turn a significant effect of
this shift towards a more worldly and concrete understanding
of our doctrine of redemption from sin, as redemption from
selfishness and for love of God and others, has been a continuing dialogue in the public forum. The present nuclear, ecological and political world crisis has brought Christian soteriology
to terms with very basic human issues of survival, justice and
peace. It has brought our soteriology into conversation with
other religious traditions and with Marxist and other traditions
of humanism. 8 In this it offers an unprecedented moment of
opportunity.
MONIKA K. HELLWIG
Georgetown University
Washington, D.O.

s See, for example, the essays collected by Gerald Anderson and Thomas
StraMky, eds,, Okri&t's LordaMp Mui Religious Pluralism (N.Y.: Orbi&, 1983).

BEYOND PROCESS THEOLOGY?
A REVIEW DISCUSSION *

A. Is Our Need for a" World Theology"?

J

OHN COBB subtitles his recent book, Beyond Dialogue,
" toward a mutual transformation of Christianity and
Buddhism." This assumes, of course, that such a transformation is desirable. Furthermore, those who are to be transformed are primarily a few theologians. Thus, it remains a
question whether dialogue between such elite groups can in any
way be said to amount to a" transformation" of Christianity.
More than that, do sizeable numbers of Christians in fact desire such a " transformation "? And if so, is a dialogue with
Buddhism the best and most desirable means, since surely other
sources of transformation exist. Cobb offers us as evidence of
the need for transformation that " Christian confidence in
Christian superiority has eroded " (p. xii) . That may be true,
but does this mean that Christianity needs transforming or
just some of its practitioners? Cobb thinks the source of our
confusion lies in Christology. That is, we are not so sure who
Jesus was and whether his offer of salvation is exclusive. Cobb
sees it as an advantage that in dialogue one does not seek to
convert. But in response we must ask: Why should Christians really no longer seek conversion?
The immediate problem with Cobb's proposed dialogue is
his admission that the dialogue has been primarily with Zen
and Pure Land Buddhists, which means that this involves a
relatively limited group of the world's religions. He proceeds
in Chapter I to a brief review of Christian history on the question of the exclusivism of Christian doctrine and adopts a
*John B. Cobb, Beyond Dialogue.

(Philadelphia:

645

Fortress Press, 1983.

646

FUEDERICK SONTAG

" revisionist " history of the missionary effort, branding it as
unconcerned with " the positive value of the religious traditions
of the people to whom they were directed " (p. 15) . Such an
evaluation is of course one sided, since many returned missionaries are models of understanding of the cultures within which
they labored. More important, however, is the question of
whether Cobb is too Western in his own approach. That is,
is Christianity primarily a matter of doctrinal assimilation?
The unaddressed issue in all this is: What is Christianity? If
it is doctrine, that is one thing. If at its core it is not, the situation is quite another. Then to argue superiority of doctrine is
irrelevant.
In our relationship to others, is our aim in Christianity talk
and understanding? Or, should it perhaps be of service to the
needs of others wherever it appears. If so, this would make the
discussion of doctrine far less important. To paraphrase Marx:
The aim is not to understand other cultures but to free people
from suffering. If this is true, the ' Christian ' is he who relieves suffering, whatever culture or doctrinal background he
comes from. Perhaps the point is not to listen and discuss but
to serve, in which case dialogue may be too intellectual an approach. Cobb does suggest that we might serve other religions
rather than proselytize (p. 30), but his exclusion of conversion
ma.y be needlessly restrictive. At this point Cobb's universalism
emerges: He thinks religion now has beome truly universal " as
worshippers of all the gods interact" (p. 34). But in point of
fact, this happens in only a small percent of the cases. The
vast majority know little or nothing of religions other than
their own. Is one God really revealed in all religions, as Cobb
supposes (ibid.)? That is an immense assumption left unanalyzed.
Cobb opts for a reconsideration of religion based on a global
view (p. 36). But we have to ask him: (I) How many will
really follow this course; and (2) is this a realistic or even a
possible goal? Perhaps no such thing as "global theology" is
available. But he does not argue the issue. Cobb wants us to

BEYOND PROCESS THEOLOGY?

647

" assimilate the elements of truth in all other traditions" (p.
41), but this involves vast assumptions about what' truth' is
like and whether all religions are compatible or rather involve
basic incompatibilities and irreconcilable conflicts. What we
need to do is to examine his rather romantic assumption about
the compatibility of all traditions. Perhaps God preferred to
put basic choices to us rather than to allow a vast synthesis.
Can we recognize that some religions are non-theistic and say
this forces one to choose? Cobb wants us to enrich our lives and
purify our faith by learning from other religions. We may approve of such a goal, but is inter-religious dialogue the only
way to this?
'' Beyond dialogue " aims at mutual transformation, Cobb
tells us (p. 48) . But what else might offer us this transformation; could it be found in the spiritual disciplines within our
own tradition? More important, will the dialogue of a few
people really amount to or produce a transformation of Christianity? That seems like a rather romantic and perhaps over-'
intellectualized notion of how religions move. And are all religions and people really open to such dialogue? Somehow I
doubt it. Cobb thinks Buddhists have " a depth of insight into
the nature of reality which we lack " (p. 51) . Granted that
their perspective might be different, does this really amount to
something we lack? That premise needs proving. Can Buddhists really "incorporate Jesus Christ into their Buddhism"?
I doubt if it is that easy. For instance, Cobb tells us that
Buddhists (each and every one?). " apprehend the true reality
as Nirvana or emptiness " (p. 55) , but is it so simple that all
Buddhists do so universally and in the same way?
More important, do we really have a framework within
which we can assimilate all religions? Hegel thought so and
Cobb agrees, but it just might not be possible. Cobb seems to
share a quaint confidence that all understanding can be put
within the covers of a book. What if God and religion defy
such an assimilation process? Of course, ironically, Zen denies
the intellectual approach and discourages dialogue as an ap-

648

FREDERICK SONTAG

proach to its training. Cobb feels that Western Christians
have not understood the .notion of 'emptiness,' but Christian
mystics, particularly Meister Eckhart, have been talking this
way for some time. However, it is true that modern Western
rationalists have ignored this. One issue is whether the contrast Cobb finds so instructive is available within our own
tradition if we revive what may have been lost for a time.
Cobb sees Buddhism as trying to teach us not to cling to
anything, not even to Christ. But all Buddhists do not accept
this Zen goal, and can we learn non-attachment from other
sources: as well as Zen Buddhism? Of course, at this point it
becomes apparent that everything depends on what you mean
by" God." When Cobb says," Christians can appropriate the
vision of ultimate reality as Emptiness without weakening belief in God" (p. 114), we find all the problems wrapped up in
one sentence. The question of " not weakening " is not the
primary question. The issue is whether God as Christians
know him is really like the Zen experience. After all, all notions about God may not be either compatible or enlightening.
More than that, does such an " appropriation " strengthen our
notion of God, not just not weaken it, and are there any other
or even better ways to do this within our own tradition? Has
Cobb picked Buddhism arbitrarily without making the case
that this is our best way to come to God today?
After· all, in our own tradition we find Meister Eckhart
speaking of experiencing God as a "wasteland," and St. John
of the Cross describing his dark night of the soul as a route to
God. Perhaps, then, our best insights do not come by going
to views not a part of our own tradition. This of course does
not exclude anyone from exploring Buddhism who finds it enlightening. But Cobb has been speaking as if such cross-cultural exploration is a must, perhaps even a necessary way, and
that something in our present world has made this mandatory.
But it is just this central assumption which has been taken for
granted and not demonstrated or argued. Rather than being
the broad universalism which Cobb assumes his approach rep-

BEYOND PROCESS THEOLOGY?

649

resents, could it be a narrow provincialism that looks for its
increased vision in fashionable exotic places rather than at
home?
Cobb does justify his approach by saying it is "an attempt
to ' Buddhize ' Christianity in the belief that Christ calls us
to such an effort" (p. 119). That is fine if true, but where is
the evidence that this is the primary task Christ calls us to?
A reading of the New Testament reveals many injunctions of
Jesus, but can any be interpreted in that way? I do not see
quite how. We surely are called to love and to serve Buddhists
as our neighbors, and that would seem to involve deepening
Christianity in order to complete the task. Of course, Cobb
would probably reply that this deepening of Christianity is just
what he aims for by going " beyond dialogue." But such a
claim only brings us back to the central unargued thesis that
dialogue with the particular form of Buddhism Cobb has
picked will do this. He stresses " Pure Land " which is quite
similar to Christianity in many ways, rather than picking
Iranian Muslim fundamentalism. What about the hard cases,
those less easily rendered compatible?
This is not to deny that Cobb finds dialogue with congenial
forms of Buddhism a deepening experience. But it is to say
that his argument should be for each to find his or her own
path to spiritual deepening in a way that leads to increased
love and service and perhaps by avenues closer to home. After
all, we have the ancient recommendation that, if you have lost
God, the best place to look for him is at the place where your
sense of divinity was lost. " The heart of Buddhist truth may
not be contradictory to the heart of Christian belief" (p. mo),
but does that prove that Buddhism is every person's road to
increased spirituality and Christian service? After all, increased intellectual enlightenment or sophistication, which
Buddhism may well lead to, does not seem to be the goal of
the New Testament's call.
Metaphysically speaking, Cobb's central unproven assumption is that: " In this way we can embody that Truth which

650

FREDERICK SONTAG

leads to ever new truths rather than falsify it by presenting
our limited truths as if they were the Truth" (ibid.). But
everything depends on what ' truth ' means and whether there
is such a thing as one 'Truth' which embraces all truths.
Idealists and Hegelians have thought so, but it is equally possible that there is no way to reconcile or merge all truths, but
rather that the only task set before us is to choose one way
from among the many. Furthermore little in the Christian
gospel urges world-wide intellectual synthesis, so the issue resolves down to be whether this exotic quest for philosophic
synthesis in fact improves Christian spirituality and clears the
road for greater Christian service. That has been assumed but
not argued. Can we serve another without appropriating his
road to truth or necessarily assuming that our way of intellectualizing doctrine is superior? I think so.
Perhaps Cobb has not removed intellectual arrogance as he
hoped to but simply put it on a broader basis. There is no
reason why the Christian should assume that his doctrine is
intellectually superior, but turning Christianity away from
sophisticated intellectualizing, not toward ever more grandiose
projects, might be the best way to lay that tendency to rest.
To say this need not demean the theological task, which remains necessary, but it would argue that cross-cultural theological dialogue may not lead to the spiritual humility necessary for Christian service abroad. To put Christianity on a
course that requires immense intellectual sophistication is to
close that path to the average Christian and to restrict us to
an esoteric few. After all, Zen Buddhism in no way promises
enlightenment to all but merely to the few. Pure Land is of
course more universal, but is there really much in it to enrich
Christian experience precisely because it is so similar?
Ironically, by insisting on the necessity to study and to
practice other religions (all or just those most compatible?),
Cobb may involve Christians in even greater quarrels rather
than less. Must we argue out the " world religion " thesis before we can get on with the business of deepening Christianity?

BEYOND PROCESS THEOLOGY?

651

If so, such a path is likely to remain the province of small
groups of intellectuals. On the other side, will all Buddhists
agree with John Cobb's presentation and thesis or will they
simply start arguing, thus compounding the intellectual quarrels of which we already have plenty within Christian history.
If Cobb's path in fact increases intellectual quarrels rather
than resolving them, it sadly continues one major sin of
Christianity by placing " being a Christian " on the basis of
whether one accepts the details of some elaborate and intricate
theological set of doctrines.
Cobb has not offered his book as a personal confession that
he has found Buddhism a path to his own deeper spirituality,
then urging each Christian to find his own spiritual discipline.
Rather, he presents it as a course somehow necessary for all,
but that is a thesis likely to produce a host of arguments rather
than uniting Christians in their work. To say this is not to
advocate a return to religious wars but to ask realistically if a
uniting of theories is really going to take place. If it is not,
then to make religious growth dependent on it perhaps blocks
growth rather than increases it. Like the Marxist classless
state and the horizon, " one world religion " many recede further into the distance every time we seem to be getting close.
Cobb finds Pure Land Buddhism's formulations remarkably
congruous with Whitehead's (p. 126), but this only unites two
slim strains of the world's religions and not all by any means.
We can put the whole issue symbolically: Are the Jews
" God's chosen people," and did Christians inherit this same
burden and responsibility, double-edged as that sword has
proven to be? Does God speak to all people equally, or is he
capable of selected special individuals and peoples? To say
this does not mean that God cannot appear in diverse forms,
but it would mean that we are back to the hard task of trying
to locate God's primary disclosure. Cobb is right that this
often leads to arrogance, Christian or Jewish. But is that the
way we must understand God in spite of its difficulties? Cobb
offers no argument that we should not, except that he prefers

FREDERICK SONTAG

to be rid of the burden of carrying a special message. Yet, what
is the evidence that God has chosen the easiest or simplest
way for us? And where is the evidence that God operates universally? Our world seems unavoidably hierarchically ordered.
Much as some find this painful to admit, this need not be used
to justify every rigidity and intolerance. To be gifted with a
special message should not so much be taken as making one
superior but merely as placing him or her under an aweful
burden for which God will hold such a one accountable.
By divesting Christianity of its claims to uniqueness Cobb
has made our task easier, except for the vast odyssey of exploring every religion in the world, since there is no logical
stopping point to dialogue unless we pick only those quite like
Christianity such as Pure Land. On the other hand, does this
rob us of the drive to tell others our story, which means to
spread love outside our own tribe? Cobb paints missionary
work as culturally destructive. But in addition to the question
of whether that is accurate, as previously indicated, what about
the sacrifice and service that characterizes Christian missionary
effort. Will we still feel under the same obligation to " tell
and serve "? Has God called us to a strange and dangerous
special task from which we should not hide? Granted that we
have at times confused Jesus' message with our particular culture, perhaps the answer should be to call us back to a true
Christian transcendence of culture in service.
As far as systematic theology goes, perhaps the most interesting point to note is that it is only on p:a.,ge 126 that process
theology comes in. In spite of the fact that Cobb says process
has similarities to Pure Land Buddhism, there does not seem
to be anything peculiar about process thought which demands
inter-religious dialogue. True, Cobb and others are concerned
to show that Whiteheadian-derived thought can account for a
wide variety of data, but is that a project Christianity dictates,
or does it come from a secular concern to find a single world
embracing philosophy, an urge derived from Hegel and Marx?
Cobb wants to tell us that Amida Buddha is Christ (p. ms),

BEYOND PROCESS THEOLOGY?

653

but that involves a difficult metaphysical notion of identity
which is difficult to prove when all that we are sure of is certain similarities, not an identity. And even if it were true, what
are the implications for other less congenial world religions.
Cobb's statement also assumes that Jesus is best understood
through elaborate intellectual processes, which is at best a
doubtful assumption.
If recent Western Christians have lacked a sense of mysticism, which may be true, this can be found in some Eastern
religions which treat reason more cavalierly than modern
Westerners. But it is also present in our own tradition from
the Gospel of John to the Church Fathers and on down to
the modern transcendentalists. In Whitehead Cobb has chosen
a naturalistic metaphysical base, so that this ironically may be
the reason why he must turn to Zen to find reason transcended,
when Dionysius, Eckhart or Cusa could do the same. Since
Whitehead consciously sets out to outmode earlier metaphysics, this may be the cause of the thinness of Christianity
placed on that basis, thus forcing us to look to other less: rationally conceived Gods to find a way to interpret Christianity.
But why not accept the original Protestant task of Christianity as it is drawn primarily from the Gospels?
, but we have to ask:
Cobb idealizes Buddhism (see p.
Given religious wars in Buddhist countries, is it Buddhism in
its ideal that is so tolerant rather than actual Buddhist history,
just as Christianity is often better in theory than in the record
of its practice? To say, for instance, that" the level of morality
in Buddhist societies is high " (p. 133) is surely far too general
and unspecific to be very helpful. Again, Cobb says in selfdepreciation that" Buddhist disciplines have been far more refined and effective than Christian ones " (p. 135) . But what
about Western mysticism and the highly refined spiritual disciplines flowing from it. Certainly many modern Christians
have thrown away spiritual discipline. But if we now realize
our lack, why not study the Taize community, read St. John
of the Cross, or join a Cistercian order? Yet Cobb reverts to

654

FREDERICK SONTAG

his early-modem naturalism by saying that Christianity will
become vigorous by extricating itself from its mythical and
parochial past, when ironically this may be the very source of
our problem in its lack of mystical depth.
Cobb's conclusion (pp. 140-43) amazingly returns to visualize missionary work as preaching. If so, this doctrinal and intellectual emphasis may be our problem. Why not adopt the
goal of witnessing by healing the sick and feeding the hungry?
Mother Teresa has done this, and we all recognize it as
authentic Christian witness, and we do not debate whether she
should merge Christian theology with Hinduism. We must
first learn and listen and transform our intellectual outlook,
Cobb argues, but to say that is to beg the question by placing
Christianity in an intellectual mold at the outset. The sin of
Western Christianity may well be to demand theoretical conformity, a tendency which Cobb ironically encourages, rather
than releasing us to form our own understanding of what it
means to be Christian. Cobb has not freed us from our tendency to argue doctrine as central but merely puts it on a wider
scale, one even less likely to produce agreement.
If it is Christianity's mission to become a universal faith,
does that really require a merging of theory systems, or does
our universal call mean to go out to serve all regardless of their
theories. True, Christianity cannot fulfill its mission by being
parochial, as Cobb suggests. But does that mean to realize a
" universal meaning of Christ," or does it mean to go out and
serve the needs of all regardless of prior agreement in doctrine.
Our "most pressing Christian mission " is and always has been
the mission of self-transformation, we are told. Cobb is right.
But what is the evidence that men and women are primarily
" born anew " by studying Buddhism? Of course, that may be
true for some, Cobb included; there is no need to deny that.
But in the history of Christian revivalism, what has provided
the widest and most profound change in the most people? I
deny that " our mission is to display the universal meaning of
Christ," if to do that means a reconciliation of world religions.

BEYOND PROCESS THEOLOGY?

655

But I agree if it means to display discipleship by loving and
serving one another, as Jesus instructed.
In a Postscript (pp. 145-50) Cobb takes up the charge that
he has simply " appropriated what he had already learned from
Whitehead." And it is true that, if we examine the world's
religions by looking for our cousins, we cannot be said to have
accomplished much by way of expanding horizons or reconciled
the world's religions by focusing on those most like us. Cobb
testifies that he has found himself transformed by his encounter with Buddhism. Perhaps that is because he had selected a philosophic basis of naturalism and so could not
deepen Christianity except by moving far away from that philosophical base. Others might testify to prayer as transforming,
or the experience of unmerited love and forgiveness, or meeting
the Moonies. Why should Buddhism be our prime transformer?
Studying "heresies" (that is, departures from traditional
doctrines) has crystalized the meaning of Christianity for us
down thorugh the ages. But that does not in itself argue for
a blending of doctrines. You may thank the instructor in other
religions for making you realize what you are or are not supposed to be and believe. Cobb, of course, in a way argues that
thesis, but he ties it to questionable assumptions about merging
world religions. He ends by testifying to his faith in the usefulness of the Whiteheadian system to assimilate world religions. However, since this is not concretely demonstrated,
Cobb's faith turns out to lie primarily in the adequacy of
Whitehead as an intellectual base. Whitehead, he says, wants
" to formulate a conceptuality through which every type of
human experience could be understood." But isn't that true of
every great system, which leaves the question of the particular
usefulness of Buddhism as an unproven item of faith.
Except for Marxist or Hegelian assumptions of truth as comprehensiveness, even if we can interpret every phenomenon,
does that mean we have reached some final Truth? What if our
intellectual and conceptual differences are fundamental and so

656

li'REt>:Elltc:KSONTAG

cannot all be reconciled? Whitehead is romantic and " oneworld," but God may have given us a less soluble puzzle to
deal with. We must face the fact that God may not be the
supreme rationalist. Certainly Zen's anti-intellectual discipline
teaches that. Cobb thinks Christianity will emerge from the
quest for .world truth " different from what the West now
knows." That remains to be seen, but the evidence is slight.
We need to step back and ask if such a change is Christianity's
primary need. Perhaps it is the naturalist metaphysical base
we first need to escape from and return to one which allows
transcendence. Why does Cobb accept transcendence from the
East and reject it from his own heritage?
B. What Does It Mean for Theology To Be' Political'?
If we do not learn much about process theology from John
Cobb's encounter with certain forms of Buddhism, except that
he still retains his metaphysics as a faith, it is otherwise with
Process Theology As Political Theology.* Here he explicitly
states that he does not think process theology has adequately
responded to political theology (p. xii) . Thus Cobb has
process theology under review, and he begins by admitting
that the discussion of freedom has remained "somewhat abstract-in relation to actual practice in political life" (p. ix) .
Our major questions will be: (1) Is this abstractness
overcome in his response; and
is the "political theology"
that results political in more than word? Cobb announces that
his aim is "to become a political theologian in the tradition of
process theology" (p. xi) , but he bases this primarily on the
work of Johann Baptist Metz and Dorathee Stille. In doing
this he recounts the history of the "Chicago School," from
which his own theology has descended.
Cobb wants to set theology "in the context of the entire
history of life on this planet" (p. xiii) , surely a wide context.
But in appraising his overcoming of the problem of theological
*The Westminster
this edition.

Press.

Philadelphia,

1982. .All page references are to

BEYOND PROCESS THEOLOGY?

657

abstractness, consider the following sentence: "She calls instead
for strengthening of personal self-hood and the prizing of selfrealization and personal fulfillment which express themselves
in creative spontaneity and fantasy" (p. 9) . Unless we move
beyond this, surely this is 'political' in a very strange sense of
the word. However, clearly Stille ties 'political' to universalism
when she says, "There is no individual salvation" (p. 11). If
that is the meaning of 'political,' all kinds of presuppositions
are involved, and such theology may not be very direct in its
guidance in political affairs in the usual sense of the word. It
seems that 'political theology' turns out to mean to "seek the
salvation of all humanity" (p. 14). But Cobb goes further and
says it cannot be limited to humanity (p. 16) . (The ants,
too?)
In his discussion of the Chicago School (Chapter II), Cobb
clearly shows the emergence of process thought from the early
Social Gospel. In this case, it will be easy to predict that ' political theology' will turn out to be a new form of the social gospel
in Whiteheadian terms. When he comments on the "growing
sense among the public of the irrelevance of the Bible" (p. 21),
his assumption of modern naturalism is evident. But has this
tendency continued so that "theology must be formulated in
terms of the social mind of the time" (p. 23) . Cobb reports
that Henry Nelson Wieman was a naturalist who rejected all
forms of supernaturalism (p. 28). This being the case, will
"political philosophy" be tied to this naturalism? If so, a host
of questions are raised. And when Cobb outlines Charles Hartshorne's aim to define God so as "to remove the possibility of
doubting the reality of that to which it refers" (p. 30), we
know this can only be a naturalism. Transcendence always
allows doubt.
Cobb also reports on Hartshorne's 'panpsychism,' which will
become crucial in Cobb's later certainty that all of nature must
be saved, since on that basis a clear distinction between nature
and human nature cannot be made decisively. All nature's feeling will be absorbed in God as well as human feeling. Thus,

658

FREDERICK SONTAG

process theology must reorient itself, Cobb says, to the goal
of "the indivisible salvation of the whole world" (p. 41).
Political theology of this kind turns out to rest on a metaphysical naturalism and universalism. As such, it must do without
absolutes (p. 48) . Cobb criticizes the socio-historical school
for failing to offer a satisfactory way of thinking about God,
which places the central issue on forming such an adequate
conception. That is theology's ancient task. Cobb is clear that
Stille rejects theism without compromise (p. 66) . Thus, the
issue is whether process theology can fill this vacuum. Cobb
then describes the Whiteheadian God (p. 75), but we must
still ask if this will do the job Christianity stands in need of.
Cobb agrees to reject the notion of the fulfillment of history
symbolized in the notion of the Second Coming and God's
transformation to make all things new (p. 77) . Given this
naturalistic rejection of eschatology, it is easy to see that
'political theology' will mean another form of the social gospel
and the resting of the project on human shoulders. Here,
is perhaps the crucial issue which Christians must consider. Cobb agrees that he has "no assurance that our efforts
for justice will succeed or even that human history will long
continue" (p. 78) . In this case, political theology involves the
modern naturalist's rejection of the transcendent, which assumption surely transforms traditional Christianity. Cobb
wants to ground his political concerns in an eschatological hope.
But in Whiteheadian terms this comes to mean that God will
incorporate and preserve human history in his own nature as
memory. That is 'eschatology' in a radically different sense.
Our resurrection must be in God, Cobb reports (p. 81). This
means to preserve the memory of natural and historical events,
not to transform the world or to reverse death. The resurrection of Jesus turns out to be God's memory of Jesus' life and
work. Cobb reports that "human soul is the flow, of personal
human experience, and as far as we know it is the locus of
supreme value on this planet" (p. 98). We have to ask him
how this western stress on the self can be reconciled with the

BEYOND PROCESS THEOLOGY?

659

Zen transcendence of self he has come to appreciate. The two
do not seem compatible. Cobb assumes that "there is an emerging sense of co-humanity with all people" (p. 98) . But this is
to base political theology on a very abstract plane and a
questionable base. Cobb concludes that we must "encourage
growth of the sense of world community" (p. 98) , but this
follows only if we first accept a nest of abstract assumptions.
Process theology proposes " that diverse interests and ideals
.be united in higher synthesis in the present" (p. 105) . "The
aim must be a progressive creative transformation of society."
But to say this depends on a coherence theory of truth and a
romantic vision, rather than on any hard assessment of political
reality. "The goal one holds before both parties can be a
creative synthesis of their aspirations" (ibid.). But what if
Hegel's dialectic is wrong and this is not possible? Political
theory so based would prove not to be very practical and only
one more example of the philosopher/theologian living in an
abstract world that does not square with the world before us.
When Cobb reports that "it is persuasion that introduces the
possibility of creative synthesis of the new with the old which
is the mark of health, development and growth," we have to
ask whether this force is sufficient to accomplish much or
whether Mao is right that power comes only from the barrel of
a gun.
Cobb vows: We will undertake vigorously to affect the
course of events creatively, and that by means of persuasion.
That is "nice work if you can get it," but what if the powers
operative in Machiavelli's world outclass you and render such
effort too weak to be effective? And when we are told that
"process theology as an ecological theology is concerned about
the whole course of nature" (p. 126) , we must ask: All
creatures equally? But more important, is the talk of philosophers or theologians really likely to change the course of the
world? Does what theology says change public policy? Surely
that is a questionable assumption which we cannot make without serious investigation. "Our God-given imagination can

660

FREDERICK SONTAG

provide us with a vision of a possible future that is much
more sustainable than our present world" (p. 130). True, but
will thinking make it so? What is the evidence?
'Faith' turns out to be "the memory of all the ways in which
God has acted to relativize the world and transform it" (p.
140). Unless we believe that progressive evolution will overcome evil, the record of destructive evil in the world to date
would not give faith much room for optimism about a new future, that is, if God is bound to continue the present process
without radical transformation. Cobb poses the issue when he
says: " The need now is to renew the Christian interpretation
of history without presupposing a fulfilling End " (p. 144). That
surely has been the goal of all natural theologies, but we must
first decide if we want to rewrite traditional Christian belief,
eliminating the center of the Christian hope for a transformed
world in which evil is finally contained. If we human beings
are on our own, our past record does not offer much hope for a
different future.
If as he says "working for the true benefit of the privileged
is in itself positive" (p. 148), Cobb has gone against the Marxist conviction of the need for revolution to break old structures. He has put his hope on the Enlightenment of the middle
classes. He wants to elicit "solidarity with the oppressed"
(p. 149), but can this be accomplished by a romantic
evolutionism? Cobb ends by saying that "The Biblical vision
of the world and of the relation of God to the world is not
mechanical but ecological" (p. 156) . That may well be true,
but the Biblical view is also one grounded in the conviction of
God's transcendence of nature and thus his power to transform
it. Christianity has announced that God has promised to do
so by his raising of Jesus from the dead, although that
consummate day is not yet here. In order to recapture this
vision, perhaps the time has come to go "beyond Process
Theology" and its base in a metaphysical naturalism.
Cobb focuses on the inadequacy of the vision of God which
has hampered the " political theology " he has explored, His

BEYOND PROCESS THEOLOGY?

661

own brand of " process theology " is centered on a Hartshornian notion of God which is novel. The issue now is whether
it is not adequate to the task of providing theology with the
vision of God needed to make Christianity a viable intellectual
alternative in the present day. I say "viable intellectual
alternative" because, important as their work is, theologians
should never be so arrogant as to assume that Christianity
succeeds or fails by their work. Preachers bear more responsibility for that, along with the Holy Spirit and the needs that
open humanity to religious committment from time to time.
And these often move against the prevailing intellectual climate
of the da.y rather than with it, as the Enlightenment assumed,
and hoped.
FREDERICK SONTAG

Pomona College
Claremont, Caliiornia

BOOK REVIEWS
Theological Investigations. Volume XIX. Faith and Ministry. By KARL
RAHNER. Trans. Edward Quinn. New York: Crossroad, 1983. Pp.
304. $19.50.
The Practice of Faith. A Handbook of Contemporary Spirituality. By
KARL RAHNER. Edited by KARL LEHMAN and ALBERT RAFFELT.
Trans. Robert Barr et al. New York: Crossroad, 1983. Pp. 316
xv. $19.50.

+

The nineteenth volume of Theological Investigations (T.I.) completes
the English translation of volumes thirteen and fourteen of Rahner's
Schriften zur Theologie (S.z.T.). S.z.T. XIV was to have been the final
volume of Rahner's writings (S.z.T. XIV, p. 7), but the publication of
a fifteenth and a sixteenth volume will keep English translators busy for
some time. Edward Quinn has produced' a fine translation, despite wellknown difficulties with Rahner's technical and ordinary language.
Rahner's recent death will surely give rise to a number of competing,
posthumous readings of his theology-based largely, I suggest, on which
of the several kinds of Rahner's occasional articles are given hermeneutical priority. To cite some topics from T.I. XIX, is the "real" Rahner
the Rahner of "foundations of Christian faith" (3f), eternity and time
(169f), the problem of evil (194f), the historical Jesus (24f), theology
and the natural sciences (16f), and similar efforts in philosophical
theology? Or is the real Rahner concerned more centrally with the broad
outlines of essential Christian teachings, even when they have to do with
the technicalities of the status naturae lapsae (39f), angels (235f), Mary's
virginity (218f), the Sunday precept (151f), and purgatory (181f) ? Or
is the real Rahner concerned with those practical issues primarily neither
philosophical nor doctrinal but "pastoral "-concerned with the spiritual
condition of our basic communities (159f), our worship (141f), our
pastoral ministries and work ( 73ff), our priests ( 103f; 117f), our women
(211f)? All of these, surely. But which Rahner norms the others? Or, if
there seems to be no need to ask this question, will Rahner have bequeathed a textual corpus equally subject to a number of readings?
Given this problem, Lehmann's and Raffelt's collection of sixty-five published and unpublished pieces from Rahner's sundry writings provides the
best single place for anyone, whether rudus or peritus, to gain access to the
" spirit" of this man. Organized around the themes of faith and hope
and love, this anthology offers a superb icon of Rahner's characteristic
weave of appeals to deep-seated affections, Church teaching, and meta-

BOOK REVIEWS

663

physical vision. As the editors note ( p. xiv), it is not always easy to see
why one selection was included under faith and another under hope or
love. But the focus on these virtues yields a new angle on Rahner, even
for those already familiar with most of the articles individually. The
" spirituality" of the subtitle is experience of and reflection on our
(Rahner supposes) self-transcendence into holy mystery-a self-transcendence which yields diverse and conflicting spiritualities (pp. 19-20;
cp. T .I. XIX, p. 103). Rahner's resolution of this diversity and conflict
is evocative description of the "circle," the "synthesis" (pp. 7, 87, 141,
136) of our self-transcendence in spirit and matter and God's self-impartation in Word and Spirit. Is there really a "circle" here-or does
Rahner have a "starting point" (e.g., "transcendental experience")
If it really is a "circle" does Rahner end up eompromising self-transcendence or self-impartation-or is the circle a sui generis synthesis, foreI suspect something like these
shadowing a new Catholic
questions will divide us for some time to come. Lehmann and Raffelt
have done an excellent job of seeing to it that the debate includes not
simply esotericists but all "those concerned with the practical molding of
their faith, and who wish to make use of reflection and meditation in
order to do so" (p. xiv).
JAMES J. BUCKLEY

Loyola College in Maryland
Baltimore, Maryland

The Glory of the Lord: .A Theological .Aesthetics, I: Seeing the Form.
By HANS URS VON BALTHASAR. Translated by Erasmo LeivaMerikakis. Edited by JOSEPH FEssro, S.J. and JOHN RICHES.
San Francisco, Ignatius Press and New York, Crossroad Publications, 1983. $35.00.
This book is the first volume· of a planned seven-volume translation of
I-Ierrlichkeit, the most sustained and comprehensive theological enterprise
by a Catholic scholar in this century, and one which must rank with the
classic theological achievements of the Catholic past. On the Protestant
side, only Barth's Church DogmaUcs matches its range; in fact the association of the two is inescapable. Von Balthasar's 1950 study of Barth's
theology is by that giant's own judgment the best appreciation of his
work, and it is patent in the present book that von Balthasar's own
synthesis is in continual dialogue with Barth's.

664

BOOK REVIEWS

Von Balthasar presents his theological aesthetics as the single possible
resolution of the dilemma wrought for our time by the rationalist isolation of God, man and the world and the consequent disintegration of the
spiritual life by its submission to the rationalist criterion of immanent
reason. This dilemma, the proximate issue of the Cartesian reduction of
truth to concepts, of freedom to randomness and of space and time to
pure quantityJ finds theological expression in the kind of rationalist
analysis fidei that forces a choice between a Baroque voluntarism, in which
the will supplements the insufficient evidence of the revelation, and the
"Augustinian illuminism" which transposes the verum of faith's object
into a bonum which would offer surcease to the cor inqitietum of the believer. This rationalism dissociates the integral unity of the spiritual life
into dissonant fragments whose reintegration is thereafter the impossible
task of a philosophy whose criterion of truth is now necessitarian, and a
theology whose historicity has become its opacity to reason. Knowledge
thus becomes loveless and sterile, and love becomes the freedom appropriate to atoms in the void, a blind striving, an innate dynamism. The
same logic which has isolated love from knowledge, and philosophy from
theology, continues to fragment reality into the objective and the subjective and cannot permit their reunion except under the rationalist rubric
of necessity. Thus the transcendentals themselves are rationalized: unity,
goodness, truth and even beauty are deprived of the freedom by which
being itself is lovely and loved. Within the maze thus elaborated, contemporary theology is trapped, to wander blindly; it has traded light for
logic. Von Balthasar proposes that only a theological aesthetics is capable of orienting theology toward the reality which is Christ, because only
if the existential and personal unity of the faith-response to the revelation is postulated-a postulate equivalent to the primacy of beauty over
the otherwise rationalized transcendentals-the motive for the faith, the
verum of the revelation, will not be seen to possess that intrinsic lumen
by which alone the either-or of a Baroque faith of blind obedience or a
post-Kantian faith of immanent intellectual dynamics may be transcended.
It is only when the truth is beautiful, when its form is intrinsically luminous, that its objectivity is evident, evidenced; it is only when that inner
lumen of the form of the Revelation, the f orma Christi, illumines the believer that his belief is not blind, but is vision, even the inchoate vision of
the risen Lord. Finally, it is only when the f orma Christi, the union of the
humanity and the divinity in the person of the Son, is indivisible that the
form is thus intrinsically luminous; the form of Jesus who is the Christ
transcends all forms, all images, all signs, as their perfection and their
ontological ground, and is unsurpassable: only if this be postulated at the
outset is a theological aesthetics possible. Otherwise, a nirvana-like abolition of all form as the price of union with the divine is inevitable.

BOOK REVIEWS

665

Von Balthasar begins his argument with an extended introduction, in
which he proposes as a most fundamental axiom this indissoluble unity
of the form of Christ, a form which by its own inner light is beautiful,
but which can be known, seen, to be beautiful only in faith-a faith constituted by the personal and existential appropriation of that beauty, and
a simultaneous enrapturement by it, in a kind of double ekstasis. He then
reviews the relative-only relative-failures
of Protestant and Catholic
theologians (Barth, Nebel, Hamann, Chateaubriand, Scheeben) so to
order their theological understanding, while recognizing in them praiseworthy and valuable attempts to transcend, by way of aesthetics, the rationalism of their time.
The bulk of the book, some five hundred and fifty pages, is divided into
two sections of about equal length, the first standing to the last as a fundamental to a dogmatic theology, the two inseparably related as the active
vision of the f orma Christi in faith is inseparable from the passive rapture of the believer by the beauty of the form. The first section begins
with a consideration of the light of faith, the lumen which is not other
than the glory of Jesus as the eternal Son illumining those who believe
because they have seen his splendor. This light is the "subjective evi;dence" of faith, a glory objectively inseparable from the historical concreteness of J esus's life, death and resurrection, but as received subjectively through the mediation of the archetypal experience of the Apostles, of
Mary, of the Church, but also through the mediation of the entire homogeneous history of God's admirable commercium et connubium with humanity, a history which reaches its unsurpassable finality in the Incarnation.
This experience is " dogmatic," not merely psychological or subjective
awareness in the believer, but a "privileged participation in Christ's allsustaining experience of God," and therefore an entry into the f orma
Christi which is the only form the Church possesses. Von Balthasar then
develops a theology of experience as the medium of the reception of the
revelation which deserves rather more attention than it has received by
the more recent exponents of such theology. This section closes with an
examination of the theology of the " spiritual senses," tracing this doctrine from Origen through Bonaventure to Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises;
again, the author is intent here upon the material historicity, the unity of
the humanity and divinity in the luminous form of Christ, and alerts the
reader to certain tendencies toward its idealization in medieval spirituality. The entire first section is written with a continual anticipation of
points to be elaborated further in the following section, " The Objective
Evidence" (of faith), which takes up for consideration the concretely
manifest-in-history splendor of the Lord. The author continually warns
the reader against any isolation of the subjective and the objective lumen
or evidence of the f orma Christi,

666

BOOK REVIEWS

This second section, which we have seen related to the prior as dogmatic
to fundamental theology, as objectivity to subjectivity, is concerned with
the historical facticity and concrete density of the glory of God in the
revelation who is Christ, a revelation-event which cannot be seen in its
wholeneGs, in its intrinsic rightness and harmony, without its being recognized for what it is. Its wholeness and inner integrity is precisely that in
which the glory of the eternal Son is objectively evident, in a form which
that glory illumines, permitting it to be seen only as it is, as the revelation of the Triune God. In this vision of the Trinity, the believer finds
himself transfigured in a transfigured world; as his personal unity is no
longer monadic but is now covenantal and in the divine image, so also
the unity, the truth, the goodness of the world are transformed, to image
the Trinity. Truth is now gratuitous, historical and free; the goodness of
being is its sacramentality, and its beauty, founded in the unsurpassable
splendor of the Christ, loses its former melancholy, being assured of the
love which alone can ground its loveliness. The New Creation is then attuned to the Redeemer; it has no form but his. Von Balthasar stresses
that the hiddenness of the revelation (e.g., the "messianic secret") is
indispensable to the beauty, the evidence, of the form of Christ; to recognize this is to begin to understand the Christian transfiguration of the
beautiful, to begin to undertake a theological aesthetics.
This final section begins with a showing of the necessity for the historical objectivity of the form of the revelation, the f orma Christi, and
proceeds to find in this form the center of being and the meaning of history. The author then goes on to discuss the mediation of this, form by
the Church, and its attestation : divine, cosmic, and historical; here the
basis for the theology of history is provided. It is not possible to summarize this material; any appreciation of it demands that it be read and
reread, studied, meditated and labored over. Somewhere during this engagement with this extraordinary work, the reader will realize that what
has been accepted by him heretofore as theological writing will simply
not bear comparison with wha.t he now confronts. Von Balthasar was engaged upon this work at about the time that Karl Rahner announced the
demise of the theological book; we are fortunate· that his old companion
did not much attend the proclamation.
An adequate critical entry into the problematic areas of von Balthasar's
aesthetics may await the -publication within the near future of the entire
translation of H errlichkeit. Such reservations as occur to this reader bear
upon the treatment of the nature-grace relation, which seems to need a
more integrated ontological account than is furnished; such an account
wou1d however move toward the sort of systematization which von
Balthasar profoundly mistrmits. 'Whether in the long run coherence can
be achieved otherwise is a matter which may be deferred.

667

BOOK REVIEWS

It is appropriate to conclude by congratulating the publishers upon
their translator and editors, and the theological community upon the
availability in English at long last of a masterpiece whose range and
power rebuke the triviality of most of what passes for Catholic theology
today.
DONALD

J. KEEFE, S.J ..

Marquette University
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

The God of Faith and Reason. By RoBERT SOKOLOWSKI. Notre Dame,
London: University of Notre Dame Press. 1982. Pp. 172. No price
given.
In his most recent book, The G.od of Faith and Reason, Robert Solokowski seeks to highlight certain views he evidently regards as particularly
distinctive of authentic Christian philosophy and/ or theology. Foremost
among them the author would rank the absolute and major real distinction between God and the world-a distinction he will argue is completely unknown in ancient pagan thought-although he will also emphasize,
in somewhat less pronounced fashion, the harmony between faith and reason and grace and nature, where the former of each of these two pairs
is seen to complete or perfect the latter. In his attempt to stress what is
certainly a Christian view of the radical distinction between God and the
universe Sokolowski finds the· Anselmian argument especially valuable,
apparently not so much because he believes it is a sound argument (although he does) as because he sees it as perhaps the first to imply the
premise that God, as " that being than which no greater can be thought,"
must, if lfo exists, be so completely independent of the world that He
would not be leastwise diminished in being or in goodness if it-the
world-did not exist. As he will express this last point (and do so several
times), " God plus the world is not greater than God alone."
Since Sokolowski believes that Christianity is best understood in its
specific uniqueness by being contrasted with paganism (he offers two reasons for this opinion : ( 1) the fact that modern Western thought, as an
aftermath to Christianity, has been in some ways colored by it, and (2)
the apparently less obvious one that whereas pagan thought managed to
recognize the order of natural necessities, this insight has become obscured in our post-Christian era, thus blurring the distinction between
grace and nature and even compromising the integrity of the latter), he
begins his argument by contrasting the Christian concept of God's re-

668

BOOK REVIEWS

lationship to the world with that to be found in ancient Greek philosophy.
According to him, the god or gods of pagan Greek philosophy were viewed
as belonging to the world over which they were thought to exercise some
causal influence. Thus he observes that no matter how Aristotle's God is
described, as the unmoved mover or as the self-thinking thought, he is
part of the world and it is obviously necessary that there be other things
besides himself, whether he is aware of them or not (p. 16). As Sokolowski will indeed suggest later, the reason why Aristotle (and the other
Greek philosophers) saw the world as necessary is that, lacking a doctrine of creation, they assumed its existence. A similar point is made
with respect to Plato's "theology " : " Even the One or the Good is taken
as ' part' of what is; it is the One by being One over, for, and in many,
never by being one only alone by itself" (p. 18). Nor, finally, does
Plotinus's philosophy escape this criticism for, as Sokolowski remarks
concerning the One, "it too cannot 'be' without there also being its reflections and its emanations in the other hypostases of the Mind and the
Soul and in the things of this world" (p. 18).
Obviously, what Sokolowski has carefully constructed here is the thesis
that a metaphysics of creation is philosophically (and theologically)
mandatory if beings other than God are to be considered completely unnecessary and His causal agency is to be seen as absolutely free or
gratuitous. To quote him on this point: "And the world must be understood appropriately as that which might not have been. The world and
everything in it is appreciated as a gift brought about by a generosity
that has no parallel in what we experience in the world" (p. 19). Such
is the view of reality that Sokolowski finds clearly expressed in orthodox
Christian teaching, a teaching whose speci\11 function, he argues, is the
Church's. To support this Christian viewpoint that God, as the Creator,
is radically separate from the world the author will, on occasions, resort
to the Thomistic concept of God as Unlimited Existence or ipsiim esse
subsistens (cf. p. 41, for example). Sokolowski sees this Christian sense
of God as absolute (infinite) being as enabling Christian culture to transcend the limitations of other historical cultures, all of which are limited
by their view that the " ultimate " is somehow part of the whole and not
really distinct from it
The author carries his contrast between the Christian and the pagan
view of reality further when in the middle sections of the book-sections
6 and 7-he treats, successively, of natural and theological virtue in order
ultimately to focus upon the Christian distinction between grace and nature . In his discussion of natural virtue Sokolowski takes Aristotle's
ethics as his guide to what is naturally good in human action. Following
Aristotle closely, he carefully distinguishes between various states ()£
moral character: between the temperate and the continent man, between

BOOK REVIEWS

669

the weak and the wicked man, as well as between those two opposite extremes that fall · outside ordinary or normal human behavior, viz., the
godlike and the brutish. In discussing further Aristotelian distinctions
relating to the moral life Sokolowski delineates the role of the virtue of
prudence and the relationship between moral character (and moral
knowledge) and conduct. In light of the above distinctions he will criticize
Kant's ethics for failing to recognize the possibility of the virtuous as
opposed to the merely continent man and for placing the moral value of
the human act entirely in the intention of the agent rather than also in
the external act itself. He will also oppose Kant's ethical theory for describing morally good behavior as basically a matter of conforming the
will to universal law and recommend as an antidote to such an abstract
approach to virtuous action the Aristotelian notion that the morally good
man is the rule and measure of human acts. As a final, Parthian shot at
Kant's ethics Sokolowski observes that the rejection of the possibility of
virtue entails the rejection of its opposite, vice, with the consequence that
immoral becomes identified with acting against one's better judgment (or
with moral weakness) and thus the need to guard against it by sound
moral education possibly becomes less urgent. Finally, our moral goodness or wickedness, Sokolowski would emphasize in this context, is not
something private (or wholly internal) but public and it is indeed understood, viewed, and valued as such.
Returning to his earlier theme Sokolowski notes, in his section dealing
with theological virtue, how the possibility of a supernatural life for man
is, indicated even on the natural level by the gift of creation, since the
apparent excess of generosity and the extreme goodness and independence
of God (who does not need to create) evidenced thereby renders natural
virtue inappropriate. However, Sokolowski cautions against the view that
because of this calling to a supernatural life natural virtue must be replaced by a natural inadequacy of weakEess of will, for what is good by
nature remains good and is enhanced by grace. As he expresses what,
for him, is an extremely important point: " The stability of. character
that natural virtue provides and the example and measure that it furnishes continue within the context of grace, Natural virtue does not
achieve grace but it remains natural virtue. It is not turned into selfcontrol or weakness" (pp. 76-77). Making yet another opportune comparison with Greek philosophy, Sokolowski goes on to observe that,
whereas Aristotle accepted the general human condition of proneness to
sense pleasure and self-indulgence as something given and apparently
without any explanation, Christianity recognizes that the inclination to
choose what is contrary to reason and actual wickedness itself are not
something natural but the result of original sin. Moreover, he notes,
within the context of a doctrine of creation wicked action becomes sinful
but, also, within the context of a doctrine of Redemption there can be

670

BOOK REVIEWS

liberation from wickedness or sin, something unknown to pagan Greek
philosophy or religion. In discussing the differences between the natutal
and theological (faith, hope, and charity) virtues, Sokolowski reaffirms
the orthodox teaching, according to which the latter virtues are the gift
of participating the supernatural life of God Himself and the increase in
such virtues is the effect of grace as well as of one's own doing. Quoting
Aquinas, he mentions yet another difference between the theological and
natural virtues, namely, that while the possession of the natural virtues
may be privately and publicly known, such is not the case with the former
virtues since usually one cannot know or be absolutely certain that he
possesses grace. Still citing Aquinas, Sokolowski continues to point out
other differences between the theological and infused moral virtues, on
the one hand, and the natural virtues on the other: (1) the infused virtues, since they enable man to act rightly with respect to God, his supernatural end, are perfect virtues whereas the natural virtues are not; (2)
the infused virtues are with us from the beginning of our life of grace
but the natural virtues are acquired through repeated acts; and (3) the
infused virtues are compatible with the dispositional after-effects of previously acquired vices and are lost through only one mortal sin. However, what Sokolowski would perhaps want noted most in his discussion
of supernatural virtue is his view that the infused and natural virtues are
not in the least incompatible and can be found integrated in one and the
same human agent.
Since the later sections of this book deal mainly with theological topics,
they are best left for those to analyze who claim some theological expertise. (This reviewer was disturbed, however, by one statement of theological significance made by the author on page 127, where he asserts that
the doctrine of the Incarnation emphasizes the integrity of Christ's human
being (my italics); perhaps he meant to say here Christ's human nature
since, presumably, Christ's being (act of existence) is divine). Suffice it
for me to say that they continue to explore its major theme, viz., the
Christian sense of the real distinction between God and the world. However, one of these later sections-" 9. That Truly God Exists "-does merit
some comment since in it Sokolowski returns to the Anselmian argument
for some additional considerations. In this discussion he will criticize (1)
Transcendental Thomism for assuming a Christian understanding of the
world as finite when it argues to God's existence from the premise of being
as wholly intelligible (according to Sokolowski this approach neglects to
give due recognition to pagan mythical and philosophical thinking, which
simply accepts limitation without seeing it as something that need be
transcended; however, one might ask whether the same criticism could not
be directed against the Anselmian argument, towards which Sokolowski
shows a marked deference) and (2) Barth's interpretation of Anselm's

BOOK REVIEWS

671

argument, an interpretation which views its major premise as a command
to philosophical agnosticism concerning God's nature. More important
philosophically, however, is Sokolowski's attempt to justify the argument's
conclusion. Here he simply invokes the premise that, if God is possible,
He must be actual, thus joining the company of Scotus and Leibniz both
of whom saw the nerve of the argument to reside in establishing God's
possibility.
While this reviewer found much in this book to recommend it for reading, he also discovered a number of things to object to in addition to
those already noted. For one, there is the occasional labelling of Anselm's
argument as a " proof " even before the question of its soundness has
actually been discussed or resolved (e.g. " But these contrasts with other
positions still do not answer the question whether Anselm's proof works
ac;; a proof." p. 113). For another, there is the uncritical acceptance of
the argument's soundness merely on the basis of the premise (a questionable one) that if God is possible, He must actually exist. True, he does
refer the reader, in a footnote, to Scotus's statement of the argument, but
this is hardly a philosophical procedure and leaves unsettled the question
of the soundness of Scotus's argument that what cannot be caused and is
possible must actually exist (since otherwise it could not exist). One final
thing about Sokolowski's discussion of Anselm's argument that this reviewer found questionable, aside from the relatively great importance he
seems to attribute to it (after all, Augustine also understood God as that
being than which no greater can be thought and as He Who most truly
Is and Who can be without the world which He freely creates) is his
apparent position, that Anselm has actually shown that the non-existence
of God is not thinkable (p. 5). Obviously, Anselm has shown no such
thing since it is not something that can be shown. Finally, what I must
also object to is his view, found also, I believe, in Plato and Hegel, that
in order to possess knowledge of one thing we must have contrasted it to ·
its opposite or negation. Thus, to quote an instance of this thinking:
" When we wish to think theologically about faith, therefore, we must
contrast faith to unbelief" ( p. 5). I believe, however, that such a procedure is not always necessary and can entail circularity. ·what is perhaps true here isi that one thing may be better known and appreciated
when contrasted to its opposite, e.g. virtue to vice, health to disease, or,
more generally, good to evil. On the whole, however, the author must be
commended for offering some interesting and instructive insights on the
nature of the natural and the infused virtues and for pointing out some
of the important implications of the Christian distinction between God
and the world.
THEODORE J. KONDOLEON

Villanova University
Viilanova, Pennsylvania

BOOK REVIEWS

Religion: If There is No God ... On God, the Devil, Sin and other
Worries of the So-Called Philosophy of Religion. By LESZEK KOLAKOWSKI. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. pp. 235.
$19.95.
Leszek Kolakowski is probably best known for his work on Marxism,
especially 1'oward a Marxist Humanism and (to borrow Sidney Hook's
appropriate adjective) the magisterial three-volume Main Currents of
Marxism. He has, however, written on a wide range of more strictly
philosophical and religious issues, from positivism and phenomenology to
mysticism, and the present work makes generous use of earlier discussions
to explore some of the quandaries that beset the attempt to understand
the fate of religion in the modern age.
Perhaps the best entree to this engaging book is through its curiously
elaborate subtitle. Beginning at the end, we note that the venerable
philosophy of religion is only "so-called," a qualification. evidently designed to express the author's good-humored admission of uncertainty in
the face of an impossible topic. "I am never sure what religion, let alone
philosophy, is." he writes, " but whatever religion is, it includes the history of gods, men and the universe" (p. 9). It is not surprising that, in
some 230 pages of very readably printed text, we get a considerably
abridged version of that chronicle.
The gentle poke at philosophy of religion may also be meant to call
attention to Kolakowski's distance from the cumbrous academic posture
that commonly deadens serious discussion of such topics. This shows itself even in the book's format; instead of footnotes and attendant
paratus oriticus, numerous quotations from a variety of sources are interspersed in bold type throughout the text to illustrate the matter at
hand.
In fact, Religion is atypical in several respects. Its tenor is rigorously
critical-it is philosophical in the best sense of the word-yet it remains
sensitive to the claims of specifically religious discourse, refusing
throughout the temptation to "explain" religious concepts by extra-religious categories. " The questions I am going to examine," Kolakpwski
writes, "will be discussed on the shallow assumption that what people
mean in religious discourse is what they ostensibly mean" (p. 16). He
is refreshingly free of that hermeneuticaI hubris that gilds so much
scholarly work today, the attitude that the thing to be interpreted is
really a disguised or alienated or repressed or incomplete or effaced version of something else. Such interpretative tactics have the virtues of
being often compelling and of enhancing the im:(lortance of the inter-

BOOK REVIEWS

673

preter. But, besides saying more about the interpretative theory than the
thing interpreted, they tend to be ideological in the sense that they insulate
the discussion from any reality not already accommodated by the theory.
As Kolakowski notes,
On the assumption that people can be, or that more often than not
they are actually bound to be, unaware of their own motivations or
of the genuine meaning of their acts, there are no imaginary, let
alone effectively known, facts which might prevent a stubborn monist
from being always right, no matter how the fundamental principle of
understanding is defined. Monistic reductions in general anthropology or 'historiosophy' are always successful and convincing; a
Hegelian, a Freudian, a Marxist, an .Adlerian are, each of them, safe
from refutation as long as he is consistently immured in his dogma
and does not try to soften it or to make concessions to common sense;
his explanatory device will work forever. (p. 208)

Further, the book is learned, drawing with easy co=and on pertinent
sources and arguments, but not pedantic; even when examining the rarest
theological nicety, Kolakowski's nose for balderdash and sense for what
is really at stake in a controversy give it a straightforward, eminently
sensible air. And finally, what is most unusual, Religion is gracefully
written in precise, accessible language (Kolakowski's polite disclaimer
about his English in the acknowledgement is superfluous : would that more
native speakers wrote as well).
Though it is not entirely clear what audience Kolakowski had in mind
here (many arguments proceed at a rather sophisticated level), Religion
would seem to be intended partly as a somewhat personal introduction to
the subject for the interested non-specialist: a well-informed, analytically astute yet nonetheless distinctly individual response to some classic
problems in philosophy of religion. Among the "worries" that preoccupy
Kolakowski are the perennial problem of reconciling God's omnipotence
and benevolence with man's free will and propensity to sin (a tension he
describes in Main Currents of Marxism as "the essence of Christianity,"
I, p. 403), the consequences of nominalism, the ontological argument for
the existence of God, the cognitive status of mystical illumination, the
"truth claims " of religious discourse as compared with scientific discourse, and sundry other engimas. There is a good deal about God in
this book, something about sin, but, for explicit consideration of the devil,
the reader will want to consult Kolakowski's irreverently witty refiecr
tions in The Key to Heaven and Con·versations with the Devil (published
together in English by Grove Press, 1972).
Discussions of particular topics are of course quite brief, sometimes to
the point of sketchiness. But Kolakowski's habit of lucid exposition and
knack for neatly distilling the essential points from complex arguments
make his excursions into even rather esoteric territory rewarding. Consider, for example, his meditation on the shattering effects of nominalism

674

BOOK REVIEWS

and voluntarism. The orthodox view holds that God's omnipotence is one
with his essence, that His will is not separable from who or what He is.
This means that God's power does not contravene the perfect order He
establishes. Because possibility signals a lack of being, God never confronts possibility; He already is all that He can be. To the unsettling
questions, ·" Could God create a stone so heavy He could not lift
" Could God will that two plus two does not equal four?" " Could God
commit suicide?"-to such voluntaristic queries the tradition replies
" no." There are things that God " cannot" do, though the negative here
does not token any incapacity but rather underscores the absolute identity
of God's will and being. As Kolakowski points out,
When we say that God cannot, for instance, abolish the rules of
logic or of ethics, the word " cannot," like all the other words we
employ to picture Him, has a meaning different from its common
usage ("I cannot lift this stone," "I cannot speak Japanese," etc.).
Far from referring to a person's contingent inability to perform an
action, it signifies God's plenitude of being. . .. when saying He
"cannot" do something, we simply reaffirm His omnipotence. He
"cannot" stop being almighty. (pp. 30-31)
But if God's omnipotence is interpreted to mean that everything depends merely on His arbitrary decree and that therefore everything, including the rules of logic, including even God's goodness, could be otherwise, an abyss opens up between God and the world. For with this
thought truth and goodness themselves become radically contingent. Since
God is not bound by his own rules, intelligibility is sundered from its
divine anchor; the world no longer expresses an intrinsic order but is subject to the inscrutable vacillations of divine whim. " The theory," writes
Kolakowski,
which made logical, mathematical, and moral laws dependent en·
tirely on God's free and arbitrary decree was, historically speaking,
an important step in getting rid of God altogether .... the nomi·
nalist tendency to devolve responsibility for our logic and ethics on
the Creator's arbitrary fiat marked the beginning of His separation
from the universe. If there is no way in which the actual fiat can
be understood in terms of God's essence, there is simply no way from
creatures to God. Consequently, it does not matter much, in our
thinking and actions, whether He exists or not. ( p. 23)
Paradoxically, what began as a pious attempt to do greater justice to the
attribute of divine omnipotence ends in effect by banishing God. " God's
essence and existence were divorced in such a way that He has become in
fact, though not in doctrine, a deus otiosus who, having issued His laws,
then abandoned the world" (p. 23).
Though the prospect of such abandonment provides Kolakowski with
something of a leitmotif for his inquiry, the real interest of this book lies
more in its general approach to the phenomena of religion than in its
rehearsal of this or that theological dispute. Recognizing that " cqn-

BOOK REVlEWS

675

ceptualization and experience move in opposite directions on the path of
knowledge" (p. 199), Kolakowski is careful to avoid the intellectual's inveterate tendency to view religion as a collection of facts to be ascertained or propositions to be validated. In his view, science and religion
represent distinct and fundamentally incompatible ways of understanding
the world, neither of which can justifiably be reduced to the other. " Two
irreconcilable certitudes collide with each other,'' he writes, "the certitude of philosophers resting on the criteria of coherence and the certitude
of believers and mystics who participate in a myth or the reality the myth
refers to" (pp. 150-151). "Each of the two colliding ways of seeing the
world,'' he notes later, "has its own rules of validity and each rejects the
other's criteria' (p. 210).
In thus segregating religion from science, the sacred from the secular,
Kolakowski at the same time denies any W eltanschauung, including that
of scientific rationality, a monopoly on truth or meaning (cf. pp. 79 &
213). "From time immemorial," he observes, "people have been asking,
in one way o-r another, 'what are we for?' and 'what is our life for?',
and it hardly extinguishes their curiosity to say that it is forbidden by
such or another philosophical school on the ground of its norms of
meaningfulness" (p. 221).
While we may wonder whether such curiosity is the exclusive prerogative of religion, Kolakowski is surely correct that it is, in the relevant
sense, meaningful, and it is disappointing to find so intelligent a writer as
J. M. Cameron concluding his review of this book with the tired suggestion that such questions, resting " on a mistake in philosophical
grammar," are meaningless (The New York Review of Books, September
23, 1982). "What reasons," asks Kolakowski, "can be adduced for holding that the rules normally followed in testing and in provisionally accepting scientific hypotheses define implicitly or explicitly the limits of
wha1i is meaningful or acceptable" ( p. 50; cf. also p. 80) ? Indeed, as
he points out, the question of meaning (as distinct from, say, the question of validity or efficacy) does not even get raised from the standpoint
of objective, scientific thought. Science, Nietzsche wrote in The Genealogy
of Morals, "never creates values"; its prestige lies rather in the enormous power it gives man over nature, the power to predict and control
phenomena.
;
Responsible science and scholarship are unthinkable without the En:
lightenment demand that inquiry be guided by the ideal of objective,
prejudice-free knowledge, an ideal that requires a firm distinction between " fact" and " value." But religion, understood as " the socially
established worship of the eternal reality" (p. 12), presents itself not as
a repository of statements about " what is the case" but as a living expression of a community's self-understanding. "Religion," writes Kolakowski,

676

BOOK REVIEWS

is not a set of propositions, it is the realm of worship wherein understanding, knowledge, the feeling of participation in the ultimate
reality (whether or not a personal god is meant) and moral commitment appear as a single act, whose subsequent segregation into
separate classes of metaphysical, moral and other assertions might
be useful but is bound to distort the sense of the original act. (p.
175; cf. also pp. 206 & 218)

It follows that "in the religious realm, the fact/value distinction either
looks different from the way it looks in secular life or does not appear at
all" (p. 184). Hence, fundamental moral and religious problems are
practical, not speculative. In an observation worth volumes of " philosophical ethics," Kolakowski notes that "we do not assent to our moral
beliefs by admitting ' this is true ' but by feeling guilty if we fail to
comply with them" (p. 193). ("A noble character," Schopenhauer once
wrote, "was never formed by a study of ethics.")
Similarly, the formation of religious belief owes more to rituals of
initiation and conversion than to a disinterested weighing of options.
" People are initiated in the understanding of a religious language and
into worship through the life of a religious community, rather than
through rational persuasion" (p. 182; cf. 178). What we call "faith"
is not an intellectual conviction formed after a dispassionate examination of the relevant data but an attitude of unqualified trust that blends
understanding and belief in an affirmation of the unity and order of a
divinely wrought cosmos; it is "not an act of intellectual assent to certain statements, but a moral commitment involving in one invisible ["Indivisible " must be meant; this is not the only such misprint in the book]
whole both intellectual assent and infinite trust, immune to falsification by
facts " ( p. 54; cf. also pp. 33-34). (In one sense, faith is immune
not to falsification by facts, but to facts tout court; because it refuses the
"fact/value distinction," faith never encounters such a thing as a
"fact.")
The issue, then, is not whether religion is " true " but whether it works,
whether it succeeds in providing a means of coping with the frailty,
suffering, and loss that inevitably permeate human existence. The presiding spirit throughout this discussion is Mircea Eliade, the only author
Kolakowski explicitly cites as an important influence (p. 9). In The Myth
of the Eternal Return, Eliade, discussing the tendency of religious man
to depreciate time and history, insists that
it is not our part to decide whether such motives were puerile or
not .... In our opinion, only one fact counts: by virtue of this view,
tens of millions of men were able, for century after century, to endure great historical pressures without despairing, without committing suicide or falling into that spiritual aridity that always
brings with it a relativistic or nihilistic view of history.

Religion thus appears first of all not as theology but as theodicy, as an
attempt to give meaning to a world saturated with evil and suffering (cf.

BOOK REVIEWS

677

p. 35). " The world endowed with meaning," Kolakowski claims, is " the
gift par excellence of religion" (p. 159). For how, Eliade asks, "can
man tolerate the catastrophes and horrors of history-from collective deportations and massacres to atomic bombings-if beyond them he can
glimpse no sign, n{) transhistorical meaning; if they are only the blind
play of economic, social, or political
"
Nor need such questions be confined to the vagaries of social-political
life; they can be raised to encompass the whole of existence. Objectively,
as Kolakowski notes in a passage reminiscent of Schopenhauer or
Nietzsche, the history of the universe is the story of the ultimate "defeat
of Being by Nothingness: matter, life, the human race, human intelligence
ar.d creativity-everything is bound to end in defeat; all our efforts, suffering and delights will perish forever in the void, leaving no traces behind " ( p. 36). The implacable guarantor of this futility is time, and at
bottom religion's power depends on the consolation it offers against the
ineluctable encroachments of time. Pervading all forms of worship, writes
Kolakowski, "we detect the same inspiration ... a desire to escape the
misery of contingency, to force the door to a kingdom which resists the
voracity of time" (p. 184; cf. also pp. 152 & 36-37).
This brings us at last to the first, most pregnant part of Kolakowski's
subtitle, " If There is No God ... " The ellipsis adumbrates what is perhaps the central concern of the book. Summing up the problem with
Dostoyevski's famous slogan, " If there is no God, everything is permissible," Kolakowski contends that " permissible" has epistemological as
well as moral implications: without God, the foundations of our intellectual as well as our moral life collapse; we no longer have an absolute
standard of truth or an unshakeable warrant for values.
In one sense, this merely restates Nietzsche's analysis of the disintegration of the " Platonic-Christian " tradition. A corollary of our reflective, scientific culture, this disintegration undercuts the horizon of
myth that nourishes traditional cultures, robbing man of his cognitive
and moral center. Nietzsche spoke in this context of "the death of God"
and predicted the rise of nihilism in its wake. But where Nietzsche saw
this as good reason to call into question the value of the traditional notion of truth (to what extent, he wondered, was it the source of the prob, Kolakowski assumes the traditional notion of truth and argues
that without God man is bereft of truth.
This leaves him in a familiar but, at this point in the history of ideas,
highly controversial position. For example, it implies "that the legitimate
use of the concept ' truth ' or the belief that 'truth' may be predicted
[sie: 'predicated' must be meant] of our knowledge is possible only on
the assumption of an absolute Mind" (p. 82; cf. also p. 155). Kolakowski
returns to this again and again : " the predicate ' true 1 has no meaning
unless referred to the all-encompassing truth, which is equivalent to an

678

BOOK REVIEWS

absolute mind" (p. 89). While it is not always clear when he is speaking
in propria persona and when he is pleading the case of religion, Kolakowski never really deviates from the contention that we have either to
accept an absolute or condemn ourselves to untruth; the choice is " either
God or a cognitive nihilism" (p. 90). We have, he writes, "two irreconcilable options," radical phenomenalism, " an ontological nihilism
banning the very idea of existence from the society of intelligible entities or the admission that the question of existence leads to necessary
existence" (p. 96). In default of such an admission, according to Kolakowski, man is exiled from meaning altogether : " If the course of the
universe and of human affairs has no meaning related to eternity, it has
no meaning at all" (p. 158).
He takes an analogous position on ethics. " The very idea of dignity,
if it is not a whimsical fancy, can be founded only in the authority of
an indestructible Mind" (p. 214). "Human dignity," he argues.
is not to be validated within a naturalistic concept of man. And so,
the same either/ or recurs time and again; the absence of God, when
consistently and thoroughly examined, spells the ruin of man in the
sense that it demolishes or robs of meaning everything we have been
used to thinking of as the essence of being human: the quest for
truth, the distinction of good and evil, the claim to dignity, the claim
to creating something that withstands the indifferent destructiveness
of time." (pp. 214-215)

These are strong claims. In part, I believe, they emerge as a response
to Kolakowski's suspicion of modern man's Promethean aspirations to
power and control. Throughout Main Currents of Marxism, for example,
Kolakowski argues that Marxism, growing out of a " Promethean
humanism" (I, p. 5), involves a "self-deification of mankind" and reveals in its excesses "the farcical aspect of human bondage" (III, p.
530). More generally, his nostalgia for the traditional, religious view of
man springs from a recognition that the typically modern celebration of
human autonomy and self-assertion obscures man's irremediable finitude
and dependence on something beyond his control. Thus, he explains, if
'humanism ' is taken to imply the infinite perfectibility of man or that
man is the sole creator of values, then religion " any religion, religion as
such, is' anti-humanist' or anti-Promethean. The very phenomenon of the
Sacred and the very act of worship express man's awareness of his lack
of self-sufficiency, of both an ontological and a moral weakness which he
is not strong enough to overcome alone" ( p. 202). Reminding us of our
incurable weakness, religion, he writes, "teaches us how to be a failure "
(p. 40).
On the other hand (and this represents a distinct line of argument),
Kolakowski's position is tied to his foundationalist approach to ethics and
epistemology. If, as he suggests, the problem is to provide a foundation

679

BOOK REVIEWS

" for a rational normative code," then, to be sure, one needs recourse
either " to an innate moral insight or to a divine authority " ( p. 189).
But does ethics need a foundation'! Kolakowski's own "practical"
orientation to ethics might suggest otherwise. Similarly, his epistemology,
indebted in its essentials to the early Husserl (cf. p. 82), remains faithful
to its Cartesian legacy: if truth isn't indubitable, it isn't truth, and (in
the absence of an infallible eidetic intuition) only God can provide the
requisite foundation for certainty. But need we subscribe to this notion
of
Man may well be incapable of absolute truth, but does that
condemn him to utter untruth? As Kolakowski notes, access to such truth
is not necessary for the development of science, " which requires norms
of acceptability and not of truth in the transcendental sense " (p. 84).
Nor is it necessary for the cogency of ordinary language. Why, then,
admit the either/or? Isn't there a middle ground that recognizes that
man's claim to truth is limited but nevertheless, within those (quite specifiable) limitations,
"Once upon a time," Nietzsche wrote in
an early fragment,
in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed
into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which
clever beasts invented knO"lving. It was the most arrogant and
mendacious minute of world history, but nevertheless only a minute.
After nature had drawn a few breaths the star cooled and solidified,
and the clever beasts had to die . . . They died, and in dying they
cursed the truth. Such was the nature of these desperate beasts who
had invented knowing.
This would be man's fate if he were nothing but a knowing animal.
The truth would drive him to despair and destruction: the truth that
he is eternally condemned to untruth. But all that is appropriate
for man is belief in attainable truth.

" If There is No God . . .": by substituting an ellipsis for Dostoyevski's
original conclusion, Kolakowski boldly asks us to entertain the pronounce-ment as a question. But the effect of his reflections is to deny the challenge that the ellipsis articulates. In his effort to salvage the truth for
the gods, Kolakowski threatens to deprive man of even the homely, " attainable " truths the gods had always granted him.
ROGER KIMBALL

Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut

680

BOOK REVIEWS

Homosexuality ana the Christian Way of Life. By EDWARD A. MALLOY,
C.S.C. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1981. Pp.
365. $24.00 cloth; $13.25 paper.
A growing number of Christian authors remain persuaded of the soundness of the church's historic opposition to homosexuality, but also recognize a need to engage the revisionary challengers in open and serious
dialogue instead of attempting to suppress them. Edward Malloy's book
is the first of this kind by a Catholic scholar, and it is notably different
from recent works by conservative Protestants (e.g., Richard Lovelace
and Don Williams) arguing essentially the same thesis. By contrast with
these latter, whose predominant emphasis is scriptural with varying degrees of bias against scientific or experiential reflection as a source of
ethical wisdom, Malloy devotes the first half of his volume to a discussion of homosexuality in terms of contemporary experience and scientific
writing. His task in this section is to establish an understanding of "the
Homosexual Way of Life," which he then examines (in Part II) according
to theological criteria which include moral analysis along with biblical
data.
The two opening chapters offer a definitional and historico-cultural
framework. Rejecting the invert/pervert distinction as ambiguous and
question-begging, Malloy adopts the concept of quasi-exclusive erotic attraction to the same sex as providing a working definition of adult homosexuals while allowing for considerable behavioral and psychic variation
among individual gay persons. His brief historical sketch concludes that
even relatively tolerant cultures, including ancient Greece, "declined to
accept homosexuality as a normal or desirable behavior pattern" (35).
Proceeding to address the problem of stereotyping, Malloy repudiates the
caricature of gay persons as generally either imitative or hostile in regard to the opposite sex; he acknowledges that " the majority of homosexuals seem to be relatively indistinguishable from the average citizen"
(38). But he ends his discussion by questioning ("on the basis of the
available evidence") the extent of the potential for opposite-sex friend,
ship among homosexual people and taking concerned note of the overt
sexual hostility discernible "primarily in the lesbian movement" at
present (41). In ensuing chapters of Part I, Malloy accepts the Kinsey
statistics on homosexuality as essentially reliable and then reviews competing etiological theories, vigorously opposing the "sickness" modellargely because, in his view, it undermines ethical analysis-and opting
for " a multidimensional explanation " which recognizes the influence of
" biological, psychological, sociological and experiential factors ' 1 con-

BOOK REVIEWS

681

tributing to what is ("we are fairly sure") essentially a "learned" disposition (98).
A chapter descriptively surveying gay social institutions and usages
from anonymous enpredominantly in the male subculture-ranging
counters and casual settings (baths, bars) through more stable involvements in partnerships, friendships, and gay organizations (homophile
political and religious movements)-concludes with skepticism about the
viability of committed partnerships for most homosexuals and with an unresolved question as to whether the other alternatives just listed " are
basically a form of :flourishing or a form of coping" (137). In the next
chapter, "Homosexuals and the Civil Law" (misprinted" Civil War"
in the table of contents), Malloy considers " the effort to win basic civil
rights for homosexuals a step in the right direction," explaining that " it
is possible to embrace a moderate policy of legal reform without abandoning the values of the Judaeo-Christian sexual ethic" (155, 160). Closing
the first section of his volume with a chapter entitled " The Homosexual
Way of Life," Malloy portrays this as " a pattern of social organization " ultimately based on " commitment to unrestricted personal sexual
freedom," which thus undermines "any attempt to enforce sexual standards of a more restrictive sort, whether based on political, social or religious grounds" (181). He acknowledges, however, that individual homosexuals can be committed to other values which motivate them to pursue
a relatively restrained or even celibate sexual lifestyle while participating
in social dimensions of the gay subculture (165, 175).
The theological and ethical reflections comprising Part II begin with a
review of scriptural material. As regards the loci classici in both OT and
NT, Malloy declines to eliminate all anti-homosexual meaning from these
passages (as some revisionary exegetes have attempted to do) but admits
that they cannot properly be used as prooftexts to validate an absolute,
universal condemnation of homosexual behavior. He takes favorable note
of efforts by Barth and other more recent Protestant commentators to
support the traditional condemnation by appealing to a broader scriptural
focus (such as the Genesis doctrine of creation) but does not specifically
commit himself to this approach. Ultimately Malloy acknowledges that
the moral issue as nowadays posed-i.e., concerning the legitimacy of a
stable, loving sexual relationship between constitutionally homosexual
partners-" never seems to have presented itself" to biblical authors " or
Jesus for that matter" (207-208). Nevertheless, he submits, the Bible
maintains its role as an essential and privileged (though not exclusive)
informer of Christian ethical reflection provided it is read " as a whole
rather than selectively " with due regard for the ethical pluralism it contains ( 204-205).
For Malloy, the consistent witness of Christian tradition against homosexuality (including the traditional interpretation of scriptural data)

682

BOOK REVIEWS

does not foreclose further discussion but does impose on rev:is10nary
theologians a burden of proof which they have yet to sustain. Quickly
reviewing the major patristic and medieval components of this tradition,
Malloy then turns to an analysis of the present theological controversy.
Considered first are contemporary efforts of the Catholic magisterium and
its theological adherents to restate the natural-law teaching. Here Malloy
endorses the objection to homosexual actions based on their radical incapacity for procreation-in terms which nonetheless allow for the possibility of giving some qualified approval to contraceptive practices within
marriage (225-226)-but he appears even more favorably impressed
with the " powerful " argument based on the symbolism of male-female
complementarity in the psychological as well as physical realm (234).
Efforts to articulate a compassionate traditional morality by comparing
homosexuality to disorders such as alcoholism are discounted by Malloy
in virtue of his rejection of the "sickness" model (236).
Turning. to revisionary proposals, first in their more moderate forms
and then in progressively extreme versions, Malloy finds that moderate
revisionism compromises authentic Christian standards without satisfying
the affirmation needs of gay people, whereas the more radical proposals
involve an increasingly overt attack on the basic perspectives of historic
Christianity. Within the radical category, in his view, "the heart of the
homosexual dialectic " is represented by those whom he characterizes as
" sexual anarchists " demanding the " abandonment of the oppressive,
sexist structure of heterosexual marriage " ( 283) . In the end, both his
empirical depiction of the gay lifestyle and his analysis of the implications of its theological rationale leave Malloy " unable to reconcile the
homosexual way of life with the Christian way of life" ( 362). This does
not, however, prevent him from approving a measure of flexibility in the
church's posture toward her gay members : e.g., the advisability of some
form of pastoral support for stable homosexual couples " cannot be de>cided in advance" (359); the Dignity organization, despite its considerable ambivalence in terms of authentic moral teaching, can in several ways
" serve a useful function in the Catholic Church " ( 355).
While the positions summarized above are effectively argued for the
most part, several problems arise. One concerns the questionable labeling
of various moralists whose views Malloy exemaines. For instance, Philip
Keane is assigned to the "non-revisionist" category along with John
Harvey, even though Keane has much less in common with Harvey than
with " moderate revisionists" such as Helmut Thielicke and Charles Curran. Actually Malloy criticizes Keane and these moderate revisionists in
much the same way, arguing that their concern for pastoral compassion
leads them to excessive vagueness and relativity in their ethical reasoning; but at the same time he appears unenthusiastic about Harvey's

BOOK REVIEWS

683

"either/or approach" with its unqualified demand for "a life of continence " based on " a rigorous program of prayer and spiritual direction," even though this approach "has the appeal of consistency" (220222, 248-254). Moreover, Malloy himself recognizes that gay couples committed to a permanent and exclusive relationship " offer the best hope for
the preservation of Christian values by active homosexuals,'' and suggests
that some kind of positive pastoral involvement with such people could
be warranted (359). So in the end it is not easy to identify a significant
practical difference between Malloy's policy and that of the moderate
revisionists, who likewise view homosexual activity as per se deficient
notwithstanding their readiness to accommodate constitutionally gay
couples in stable unions.
Again, some other authors including Richard Woods are placed in the
" radical revisionist" camp under the heading of " ecclesial integrators "
who urge the church toward "a non-judgmental, fully participatory acceptance " of her gay members in the expectation that " with a longer
experience of equality of membership, the question of a homosexual ethic
will surely be solvable" (275). This, complains Malloy, "buys into the
civil pattern of ' live and let live' too easily" so as to undermine the
church's magisterial and disciplinary functions (279). But in view of
Malloy's own acknowledgment that the church's traditional moral teaching is not exempt from re-examination, and his acceptance of a legitimate public role for Dignity in contributing to the ongoing discussion,
he could perhaps afford to view Woods's approach more benignly; the two
authors might not be quite as far apart in practice as they would appear
to be in theory.
At the level of theory itself, the major problem with this book has to
do with its controlling concept of " the Homosexual Way of Life,'' a
notion which is of dubious informative value both in itself and in the use
which Malloy makes of it. In even proposing to formulate such a unitary
concept, the author appears insufficiently impressed with evidence of
wide diversity in homosexual attitudes and lifestyles as brought forward
in the 1978 Kinsey Institute study, Homosexualities (128f, 140-141). Notwithstanding his introductory self-warning, Malloy proceeds to define
this concept
by way of stereotype; he heavily emphasizes negative features of the gay subculture such as intemperance, gossip and
curiosity, jealousy and authority problems (174-181), after having quickly
discounted the positive significance of other features such as high levels
of creativity and esthetic sensibility (166-167) and without ever mentioning the considerable religious sensitivity of many gay people. To be sure,
Malloy has perceptively identified and criticized many reprehensible elements of gay life. Yet even these valid observations cannot properly be
used to corroborate an absolute and universal condemnation of same-sex

684

BOOK REVIEWS

venereal activity, given the author's admission that not all sexually active
gay people are participants in "the Homosexual Way of Life "; but
taken as a whole, his book appears to insinuate this very fallacy.
Finally, one searches through Malloy's work in vain for any real sense
that the church has dealt poorly with her gay members whether in the
expression of her moral position or in the realm of pastoral application.
Although at one point the author does propose " to take seriously the
valid criticisms of the traditional formulation " of moral teaching ( 286),
he nowhere specifies what he thinks these valid criticisms are. His qualified support of pastoral flexibility and reformed civil legislation similarly
omits any reference to the destructive effects of conventional ecclesiastical rigidity in these areas. Still more tellingly, there is no discussion
whatever of that irrational revulsion and hostility toward gay people
which is nowadays commonly termed "homophobia." The conservative
Protestant authors mentioned in the opening paragraph of this review,
whose theology is less nuanced than Malloy's, nonetheless far surpass him
in recognizing that a radical confrontation with homophobia in church
and society is indispensable to the credibility of any Christian moral
teaching or pastoral ministry in regard, to homosexuality.
As an original examination of the homosexual issue within a theologically traditional Catholic perspective, this book is a valuable contribution.
Malloy offers a comprehensive interdisciplinary review of contemporary
literature, writes very lucidly (although the presentation is marred by an
extraordinary number of misprints), and deals with authors of different
persuasions-gay apologists, relativistic social scientists, and revisionist
theologians-in a generally conciliatory and non-polemical manner. In
practical matters, his approach is cautious but sufficient to lay the groundwork for significant progress in pastoral ministry and social/legal reform. At the more theoretical level, both the practitioners and the scholarly defenders of homosexuality should take Malloy's criticisms seriously.
He is correct in charging the revisionists with the heavier burden of proof,
and his argument-for all its abovementioned drawbacks-does accomplish the objective of showing that they " have not made their case"
(viii). In short, this book presents a worthy challenge to the revisionists,
even though it falls far short of definitively refuting them.
BRUCE

University of St. Thomas,
Rome

A. WILLIAMS, 0.P.

685

BOOK REVIEWS

Wittgenstein: To Follow a Rule. Edited by STEVEN HoLTZMANN and
CHRISTOPHER LEICH. (International
Library of Philosophy.)
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. Pp. xiii
250.

+

Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations was published in 1953, and
despite the continuing appearance of -0ther major "late" works, such as
the recently published Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology, the
tenor of his later philosophy has been unmistakeable for decades. Yet
basic interpretative questions about the nature of his work remain in
dispute. What is the relevance of the later Wittgenstein to the problems
with which philosophers have traditionally been concerned¥ Does he redefine the issues about mind and body, language, knowledge, and perception? Does he ignore these issues, pushing them aside in the construction
of an edifying philosophical discourse f Or does he, albeit obscurely, con! rant the traditional problems in their traditional forms 1
Such questions as these range far beyond the interpretation of Wittgenstein. The nature of philosophy itself-always a matter of contentionhas received unusually extensive and unusually able attention in the last
few years. Major books by Cavell, Nozick, Rorty, and Putnam are representative of this concern. As conceived and practiced by the contributors
to this volume, philosophy is a domain of determinate problems to be
confronted. And whatever their differences in the exegesis of Philosophi'cai lnvestigwtions 139"'242, they are agreed in finding the text to be
Wittgenstein's systematic treatment of certain central, perennial philosophical issues.
Steven Holtzmann and Christopher Leich have collected essays originally presented at a colloquium in Oxford in Spring, 1979. Following an
introductory piece by the editors, the eight essays are grouped into sections dealing successively with the interpretation of Philosophical Investigations 139-242, the implications of Wittgenstein's arguments in those
passages for the possibility of formal semantic theory, the implications of.
those arguments for the controversy between cognitivism and non-cognitivism in ethics, and their implications for the philosophy of the social
sciences. These seemingly disparate topics are linked by the idea that the
apparently piecemeal argumentation of the central problems of Philosophcal Investigations in fact contains "a single underlying set of powerful
arguments" (xi-xii) offering general considerations -0n "global issues in
metaphysics and epistemology." Thus the book has a two-fold program:
first, to present and argue a systematic Wittgensteinian position on rules
and rule-following, and, second, to discuss the implications of that systematic view for the topics mentioned.

686

BOOK REVIEWS

Arguing in their introductory essay that Wittgenstein displays an inexpungeable anthropocentrism in the notion of objectivity, the editors discuss first, whether Wittgenstein held the "majoritarian '.' view that a.
word's meaning is fixed by the consensus of a majority of speakers, and,
second, whether his insistence that public practice determines what constitutes a reason for an action or an interpretation lands ethics in cultural
relativism. Their contention in each case is " No." In the first instance
a rather tortuous argument concludes with the assertion that reading
Wittgenstein as holding the "majoritarian" view depends on understanding him to be attempting to refute general scepticism. This they deny,
but without elaboration. In the second instance, eager to avoid the
"highly conservative implications" (23) of cultural relativism, they attempt to show that Wittgenstein's anthropocentrism offers the possibility-yet to be worked out-of rationality and objectivity in ethics.
The first essay in Part One is Gordon Baker's detailed exegesis of
Philosophical Investigations 143-242. He acknowledges that portions of
this text strike some readers as a " hitherto unknown kind of madness "
(58), but argues that it contains Wittgenstein's portrayal of rule-following as the use of instruments of measurement-a needed corrective to the
still-prevalent tendency to think of linguistic rules of sublime or transcendently authoritative. So, argues Baker, Wittgenstein clears away a
mistaken picture of rule-following in order to show that such activities,
though not mechanical or automatic, are yet objective. He resists the notion that Wittgenstein's view disposes of objectivity by explaining it as
merely psychological, relative, voluntarist, or behavioristic. Rather, " by
eliminating the illusion that anything stands in need of theoretical explanation, it preempts the place occupied by any possible theory of rulefollowing " ( 58).
Replying to Baker, Christopher Peacocke takes issue with him on two
points: the interpretation of Wittgenstein's claim that rule-following is a
practice (PI 202) and the implications of that claim for the possibility
of formal semantic theories. While Baker finds Wittgenstein's emphasis
on the indefiniteness of rules, Peacocke finds that emphasis on the more
radical notion that rules do not exist, and hence cannot be followed by an
individual without reference to some public community. But on either
reading, claims Peacocke, Wittgenstein's views, if correct, do not entail the
impossibility of formal semantic theories.
In Part Two Crispin Wright and Gareth Evans contribute essays which,
respectively, articulate the Wittgensteinian grounds for scepticism about
the project of constructing formal semantic theories, and defend the
project against that scepticism. In the spirit of the private language argument, Wright observes that there is no such thing as private rule-following; hence, there can be no private objectivity. The force of this con-

BOOK REVIEWS

687

tention is to show that anything we could call knowledge can exist only
within "a solicitable community of assent" (104), and that an appeal to
a private knowledge of semantic rules must be incoherent. Various commentators have pointed out that this kind of attack on private language
may also be applicable to public language, since there is " absolutely
nothing we can do to make the contrast active between the consensus description and the correct description" (105). Wright faces this consequences squarely: a community of assent cannot go right or wrong" rather, it just goes" (106). It is not because publicity affords a check
against reality that public language and knowledge are coherent notions,
but because public assent constitutes meaning and knowledge. Thus the
contrast between public and private knowledge is sufficient to demonstrate
the incoherence of the latter.
In his second section Wright brings this conclusion to bear on the
Davidsonian project. He asks: "How can there be such a thing as a general, correct, systematic description of a practice which at any particular
stage may go in any direction without betrayal of its character. There
is simply nothing there systematically to be described" (114). Thus,
while there may be the possibility of producing a " modest " theory which
simply describes the linguistic capacities of speakers, any theory offering
a richer causal explanation faces the charge of incoherence in its appeal
to the speaker's tacit command of private knowledge.
The late Gareth Evans undertakes to defend semantic theory against
Wright's attacks. Concerned that Wittgensteinian arguments may turn
some philosophers into "intellectual Luddites," he distinguishes between
two sorts of talk about the tacit knowledge of speakers. In the absence
of a semantic theory, such knowledge could only be an unstructured assembly of dispositions, while semantic theory transforms it into a set of
interdefined dispositions potentially capable of causally explaining competence. However, such dispositional states should not, he says, be construed as " knowledge " in the ordinary sense, as they lack the wide and
varied patterns of deployment typical of knowledge properly so-called.
Finally, Evans takes up the question "whether there is any sense in
which the theorist of meaning provides an explanation of the speaker's
capacity to understand new sentences" (134). The theorist need not
make such a claim, according to Evans, but the theory is necessary if such
a claim is to be made. The essay closes with a challenge to the Wittgensteinian " Luddites:" Is any explanation of speaker's competence possible at all, and, if it is, mustn't it take the form of a theoretical statement about the regularities linking old linguistic uses with new ones f
That is, mustn't there be semantic theory after all, unless we admit that
linguistic capacities are inexplicable?
In Part Three John McDowell and Simon Blackburn take up the relevauce of Vvittgenstein's arguments to ethics. McDowell questions whether

688

BOOK ru:Jvmws

the typical non-cognitivist argument-analyzing value judgments into a
descriptive component and an attitudinal response-can really be carried
out. Even our descriptions of the world are grounded in " a congruence
of subjectivities," so the distinction needed by the non-cognitivist is removed. We recoil, says McDowell, from the vertigo of this idea into the
notion that psychological mechanisms ground our objective factual judgments. But this notion proceeds from the platonic idea that we can occupy
a vantage point outside human judgments in order to observe their
grounding, an idea that Wittgenstein's arguments show to be illusory.
McDowell's claim that an untenable platonic realism underlies non-cognitivism leads on to the view that relinquishing meta-physical realism
"makes space for realism, in a different sense, about values" (154).
Such a " realism in a different sense " is frankly anthropocentric, but
stands midway between platonic realism and relativism. Whether such
a middle ground can be established, and whether it ought to be called
any sort of realism, remain to be determined, but McDowell's basic cha.1lenge stands: Isn't non-cognitivism simply a reflection of the moribund
fact-value
Blackburn's reply defends a Humean "projectivism,''
(he eschews
"non-cognitivism ") and attempts "to earn, on behalf of the projectivist,
a right to use the concepts of truth and objectivity which delude people
into realism" (166). He argues that the distinction needed to make projectivism work can be grounded in the presence or absence of consensus.
Further, he argues that McDowell's neglect of the consensual dimension
of Wittgenstein's arguments makes it impossible for his " realism of a
sort " to coordinate the open-endedness of moral disputes with the
propriety of retaining convictions that " we" are right and " they " are
wrong. Blackburn insists that projectivism need not relegate morality to
the domain of taste, that it need not result in indeterminism-that is, an
unresolvable plurality of incompatible attitudes, that it can yield an adequate analysis of the commissive dimension of moral judgments, and
that it can avoid the absurdity of making moral truths depend on the
presence of certain attitudes rather than others. These features provide
the sense in which, according to Blackburn, the projectivist may lay claim
to concepts like " true" and "reasonable " without falling into either a
platonic or an anthropocentric realism.
In defense of his position Blackburn articulates a succinct characterization of the later Wittgenstein qualified by this concise reservation:
"the trouble is that he (Wittgenstein) never seems to have really dispelled the relativistic and sceptical implications of his thought" (185).
Seeing the relativistic, consensus-based strand of the later Wittgenstein
as a residue left in an anthropocentric but "quasi"realist '' weave, Blackburn hints at an appropriation of that work as a continuation of

BOOK REVIEWS

689

Humean themes, including a usable distinction between the sorts of objectivity attainable in descriptions and in value judgments.
Part Four comprises essays by Charles Taylor and Phillip Pettit. Addressing the problem of Verstehen, Taylor criticizes a position he calls
"vulgar Wittgensteinianism." VW insists that the language of explanation must be the language of social agents themselves, and that their selfunderstanding must be incorrigible. The dilemma familiar at least since
Winch's The Idea of a Social Science then becomes the focus of discussion. Understanding rules out the objectivity and realism demanded of
scientific explanation, while the attempt to gain objectivity forfeits understanding in favor of ethnocentric reinterpretations. But VW offers an
apparent solution by pointing out that both sides of the dilemma seek a
definitive stand on the evaluative and ontological commitments of the
social forms under inquiry, while in fact we should recognize such apparent commitments as "utterances which play an essential role in this
(or that) way of life " ( 203). Here Taylor alludes to the Wittgensteinian
point that explanations end in actions and social forms, not in items of
cognitive or evaluative assent. Yet-and this has been thought to be the
core of the later Wittgenstein-this takes us to the thesis that forms of
life are incorrigible, which implies the infallibility of a cultural consensus,
taking us again to the dilemma of Verstehen.
We seem to be left, says Taylor, with " an almost mind-numbing relativism" (205). But there is a "non-vulgar Wittgensteinianism" which
consists in dropping the notion of the incorrigibility of a cultural consensus in favor of further investigations based on the idea that " the
adequate language in which we can understand another society is not our
language of understanding, or theirs, but rather what one could call a
language of perspicuous contrast" (205). Such a language would yield
formulations of both cultural forms in relation to "some human constants at work in both." Verstehen is still central, but without the dilemma-producing assumption of incommensurability. It is a shame that
this sketch of " non-vulgar Wittgensteinianism" occupies only Taylor's
concluding few pages. His proposal retains the significant gains of
Wittgenstein's insistence on the centrality of cultural forms without
posing that all our inquiries must end (and our spades be turned) with
the appeal to " This is what I do." Taylor offers hints for avoiding both
the radically conservative and the radically relativistic implications many
have found in the later Wittgenstein.
The concluding essay in the volume is an attempt to clarify, and, to a
degree, to extend, Taylor's contribution. Pettit characterizes Taylor as a.
"non-relativist" and a "humanist,'' and reviews the strategies available
to those wishing to oppose such a position. He defends a non-relativistic,
humanistie account of evaluative realism by isolating and abandoning two
notions he regards as unfairly bound up with realism about values: the

690

BOOK REVIEWS

idea of a contingent connection between assertability and truth, and the
idea of objectivism. These ideas, he argues, are "unnecessary and undefended," ;and need not be included in a defense of realism. He concludes that Taylor's arguments "may reasonably persuade us to remain
faithful to the literal interpretation of evaluations, and in that sense to
profess evaluative relativism" (237). In an unfortunately brief application of this conclusion to the philosophy of the social sciences, Pettit
reaffirms his support of Taylor's suggestion that evaluative realism makes
possible "a dimension of critical interaction (in) cross-cultural interpretation " ( 241) .
Readers interested in finding arguments in Wittgenstein's texts, and in
bringing those arguments to bear on traditional philosophical topics, will
find this volume both germane and challenging. Those who are convinced
that Wittgenstein's work has radically reoriented the problems of philosophy will be impatient with these essays, while those who seek edification
may find only an occasional glimmer.
JOHN CHURCHILL

Hendrix College
Conway, .Arkansas

Cei·tainty: A Refutation of Scepticism. By PETER KLEIN. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1981. Pp. 230.
'l'his book consists of a single, rigorous argument against the most
plausible forms of general scepticism. It argues against: Direct Scepticism (No person, S, can know that p, where "p " stands for any empirical, contingent proposition); Iterative Scepticism (S cannot know that
S knows that p); and Pyrrhonian Direct Scepticism (There are no better reasons for believing S can know that p than there are for believing
S cannot know that p).
The sceptic argues that some condition necessary for knowledge cannot possibly be fulfilled for empirical propositions. Descartes's evil
genius argument is the most famous example of this approach. Updated
versions are the "Googal " and the "terrible Dr. 0 " hypotheses. For example, the latter is that Dr. O, an evil super-scientist, has invented a
machine called a " braino." w·hen the " braino cap " is placed on the head
of a subject, it affects his brain so as to produce whatever hallucinations
the " braino's " operator desires, which may be as complete, systematic,
and coherent as wished. The hypothesis is that I am actually plugged
into the braino and experience nothing but its artificial stimuli.
Such a hypothesis, the argument continues, is logically possible. But,

BOOK REVIEWS

691

if a belief is completely justified, then those with which it conflicts are
unjustified. Now, none of the evidence we possess for empirical
tions (perceptual evidence) makes the "Dr. 0" hypothesis (or the
" Googal " or " Evil Genius " hypotheses) logically impossible. Therefore, the sceptic concludes, our beliefs in empirical propositions cannot
be justified.
Klein shows that the argument implicitly supposes the following basic
epistemic maxim : " In order to be justified in believing that p, S must
be justified in rejecting either the contrary of p, or what would defeat the
evidence for p." This epistemic maxim may be understood in various
ways.
First, the supposition may be that " a prerequisite of S's being justified in believing that p, is that S be justified in denying the contrary of
p." In this case, before I can know there are rocks (say), I must be
justified in rejecting the contrary of this belief, e.g., that an evil scientist
is causing me falsely to believe there are rocks. Klein calls this the " Contrary Prerequisite Elimination Principle."
Klein has little trouble showing this principle to be invalid. The detective, for example, scarcely need disprove every logically possible candidate before he proves that so-and-so was the murderer-excluding key
suspects, or even sometimes directly proving the murderer's identity, will
suffice.
A second interpretation of the sceptic's argument would be: Before S
is justified in believing that p, S must be justified in denying all the defeaters of the evidence S has for p. By " defeater" is meant a proposition which, when joined to the evidence for p, neutralizes its evidential
value. This principle, however, entails the Contrary Prerequisite Principle (refuted above), and so by modus tollens is also refuted. (Klein
also considers modified versions of the Contrary Prerequisite Principle
(104-109), but finds them defective or not supportive of the sceptic's conclusion.)
The third interpretation embodies what Klein calls the "Contrary Gonsequ.ence Elimination Principle." This seems the most plausible way of
interpreting the sceptic's arguments, since the principle is itself true.
Nevertheless, Klein argues, it provides no real support for sceptic's
conclusion. According to this principle, " For any propositions, x and y,
(necessarily) if y is a contrary of x, then, if S is justified in believing
that x, then S is justified in believing that noty." Here it is asserted, not
that S must eliminate the contraries of p before he is justified in believing that p, but that if S is justified in believing that p then S is also justified in believing the negation of any contrary of p.
Klein accepts this principle (indeed, to strengthen the sceptic's case he
argues for it at length). Using this principle, one can set out the sceptic's
argument as follows:

692

BOOK REVIEWS

Sl.1 If S is justified in believing that p, then S is justified in believing that there is no epistemically malevolent mechanism (evil
genius, Googal, etc.) making S falsely believe that p.
Sl.2 S is not justified in believing that there is no epistemically malevolent mechanism making S falsely believe that p .
. ·. S is not justified in believing that p (by modus toUens).
Klein shows that the apparent strength of this argument derives from
overlooking the doubtfulness of Sl.2. What is the evidence that S is not
justified in believing that there is no epistemically malevolent mechanism
making him/her falsely believe that p Indeed, if Sl.1 is true, then if
S were justified in believing that p, then S would also be justified in
denying Sl.2. That is, it is open to the nonsceptic to argue that there is
no epistemically malevolent mechanism making him falsely believe that p,
precisely because p is justified for S. In response to this argument, the
only recourse for the sceptic is to argue by some other route that S is
not justified in believing that p-which is what his original argument was
supposed to show. In other words, to defend his argument the sceptic
must presuppose the very conclusion the argument seeks to prove. So the
Contrary Consequence Elimination Principle, while true, is just as useful to the nonsceptic as it is to the sceptic.
The fourth way of interpreting the epistemic maxim assumed by the
sceptic's argument Klein calls the "Defender Consequence Elimination
Principle." That is: If S is justified in believing that p, then S is justified in rejecting any defeater of the evidence for p. Klein argues that
this principle is false (and that even if true it would be useless to the
sceptic).
On this interpretation the sceptic's major premise would be:
S2.1 If S is justified in believing that p, then S is justified in believing
that there is no epistemically malevolent mechanism which could
bring it aboitt that S believes falsely that p.
Then, since S is not justified in believing that there is no such malevolent
mechanism, it follows that S is not justified in believing that p (by
modus tollens).
Klein uses examples to show the Defeater Consequence Elimination
Principle false. E.g., on the basis of Ms. Reliable's character and the fact
that she has called to confirm her 2 :00 p.m. appointment, S is justified
in believing that Ms. Reliable will keep that appointment. However, a
defeater of S's justification for that belief would be the proposition that
Ms. Reliable will receive a phone call just prior to 2 :00 p.m. in which she
is told that her apartment has burned down.
Clearly, S has no justification for rejecting that defeater. S's evidence
for p (that she will keep the appointment) does not touch the question
negation of all
whether she will receive a phone call. While p implies

nooK REVIEWS

698

contraries of p, it does not imply the negation of all the defeaters of the
evidence for p. Hence, being an instantiation of the false Defeater Consequence Elimination Principle, S2.1 is false, and so this last way of interpreting the sceptic's argument does not save it either.
Klein's argument, then, is that on any interpretation, the sceptic's argument fails to prov.ide reasons for the proposition that S cannot know that
p, i.e., Direct Scepticism. If his arguments are sound, in this first part
Klein has refuted Direct Scepticism and established that: There is no
good reason for believing that there are no occasions where S does know
that p.
Klein's next step is to show that there are good reasons to belie'Ve that
S sometimes knows that p. This step will refute Pyrrhonian Direct Scepticism and provide premises for the rejection of Iterative Scepticism.
First, there can be good reasons to believe that S sometimes knows that
p. The sceptic may wish to argue that (1) absolute certainty is essential
to knowledge, and (2) absolute certainty involves the impossibility of the
falsity of one's belief. That is, he may wish to insist that, if S knows
that p, then S's justifieation for p cannot, in principle, be defeated. Since
it seems that empirical propositions are by nature defeasible, this move
would establish scepticism. Klein's task here is to show that defeasibility
is not incompatible with absolute certainty.
Klein holds that, if S knows that p, then although the justification is
defeasible, there is no real chance of it being defeated. He must explicate
the distinction between logical possibility of being in error as opposed to
real chance of being in error. Klein holds that: "some of our justifications are such that they do in fact guarantee our beliefs in the actual
world, although they do not guarantee those beliefs in all possible worlds"
(135).
He argues, in fact, that an empirical, contingent, proposition, p, can
be as certain as a tautology, say (p v -p). He distinguishes between
certainty in the actual situation (which we can have about an empirical
proposition) and c-ertainty in more situations than the actual one. It is
true that tautologies in a sense have stronger evidence for them, but only
in the sense that they are certain in more situations (every possible one).
Yet what counts is certainty in the actual situation. And if p is true,
justified, believed, and its justification is in fact nondefective, then p is
just as evidentially certain as ( p v -p). The logical possibility of p's
justification being defeated is irrelevant to evidential certainty.
With this step, Klein has removed the obstacles to recognizing the
evidential value of our perceptual experiences (and other types of evidence, such as testimony of others). The next step in the argument, the
assertion that we do have good reasons for believing that S sometimes
knows that p, is taken simply by pointing to the perceptual and other
perience we have. Hence, if under normal perceptual conditions I see

694

BOOK REVIEWS

that the table in my room is brown, or use a spectroscope to determine
its color, etc., then I have confirming evidence that it is brown. It is true
that there could be defeaters for this evidence (say the spectroscope is
broken or the light is in fact not normal). But if there are no defeaters,
and the proposition is true, then I have evidential certainty of it and'
know it.
These considerations answer Direct Scepticism. The extensions of the
argument to counter Iterative Scepticism and Pyrrhonian Direct Scepticism are easily made. Klein has shown that: There is a good argument
for the claim that S sometimes knows that p. The existence of such an
argument refutes Pyrrhonian Direct Scepticism. Knowledge of that argument makes Iterative Scepticism implausible (though Klein grants, as he
should, that it is more difficult to know that one knows than it is simply
to know).
The argument is rigorous, precise, and, in my judgment, successful.
This book is a model of how philosophy should be done.
PATRICK LEE

Centt'r for Thomistic Studies
Univet·sity of St. Thomas
Houston, Texas

Evet·ything That Linguists Have Always Wanted to Know about Logic,
But Were Ashamed To Ask. By JAMES D. MCCAWLEY. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1981. Pp. xiv
508. $35 (cloth);
$12.50 (paperbaek).

+

Most people, perceiving the title of this book, will find it attractive. At
first this reviewer was so affected. But, as I carefully read the early
chapters and even more as I read the later ones, I became convinced that
most of the author's earlier promises were not being fulfilled. In vain
did I wait for linguists to raise all those queries. Nor· were there any
noticeable signs of their erubescence.
In the six-page Preface to his erudite work, McCawley willingly and
candidly admits that it wa.s with reluctance that he decided in 1974 to
write this textbook, which he considered so important and necessary for
his special students. From his overall frame of reference the contemporary textbook situation in this area of. study appeared to be in serious
need of a much better text than any then available. For "none matches
very well my conception of what a course in logic for linguists should
provide, . . . in the analyses of linguistically interesting natural language

BOOK REVIEWS

695

examples." Although McCawley was quite resigned to the harsh reactions
to be expected from some of his academic peers, especially among contemporary formal logicians who share neither his doctrinal views nor his
personal and unconventional methods, his own self-satisfaction was to
have first consideration. He was to be well prepared to provide any
apologia his ideal textbook would need, regardless of the source of negative criticism. Yet despite this attitude (tending to what in England is
labelled " cheekiness "), McCawley does seem to imply in the Preface
that he would welcome any serious suggestions for emendation.
From merely glancing over the Table of Contents one can see that
there are fourteen chapters of varied lengths, usually about thirty pages.
More importantly, one can see that one will be exposed to most of the
salient features of logic and linguistics, from the first chapter on the
subject-matter of logic and subsequent ones on the many major kinds of
logic, on to those dealing with the difficulties to be overcome in achieving
clarity of meaning in most truth-valued assertions, and on to the last
chapter on Intensional Logic, Montague Grammar, and Quantification.
As a fellow author in the field of logic texts I can be quite sympathetic
with McCawley's self-satisfied feelings about having this "ideal" book
published. Such a feat usually calls for much planning and tedious labor,
and it is seldom easy to accomplish while carrying a regular college
" teaching load " (despite the opinions of too many in academe who talk
much but seldom, if ever, get around to putting their own sagacious insights into print). But, since McCawley asks his serious readers for suggestions that might enable him to provide a better textbook in the future,
here are a few of the more important ones that I can make. (1) He
should avoid, in this pragmatic work for his students of linguistics, giving such a jaundiced view of logic; this is hardly fair to a large segment
of genuine formal logicians. (2) He should mention, at least in passing,
some of the basic principles of order that guided him in choosing what
to cover in the book since he is dealing with two intellectual disciplines
which have their own proper objectives and principles. (3) He should
come to grips, as openly and as honestly as he can, with some of the really
knotty common problems of logicians and linguists in the marginal areas
of supposition, truth, and existential import as they relate to predication
and certitude.
N othwithstanding some shortcomings, we-logicians
and linguists
alike-should be grateful to McCawley for lowering the barriers that
have separated the two areas, so that further ecumenical endeavors may
result in the future. It is also only fitting and fair to offer a "well done "
to the University of Chicago Press for an almost flawless typographical
job.
In conclusion I would remind logicians and linguists that any form of
language, whether natural (everyday) or artificial (formal), is in itself

696

BOOK REVIEWS

neither an end nor an absolute-and that, as McCawley says more than
once, their correspondence proves to be inexact, especially as to the
nuances of the one and their absence in the other. To expect anything
else is unrealistic.
D. c. KANE, O.P.
Providence College
Providence, Rhode Island

Giovanni Pieo della Mirandola, Symbol of His .Age: Modern Interpretations of a Renaissance Philosopher. (Travaux d'Humanisme et
Renaissance CLXXXV).
By WILLIAM G. CRAVEN. Geneve:
Librairie Droz, 1981. Pp. 174.

It is nearly impossible to approach the figure of Pico della Mirandola,
the famous Florentine philosopher and theologian of the Renaissance,
without considering the many different interpretations of his life and
work. For this reason it is perfectly understandable why Craven conceived the idea of using historiography itself as the principal axis of his
book. Scholars of the history of thought have tried to penetrate the intellectual world of this thinker, and their approaches have centered on
three themes : his vision of man and the place assigned to him in the
universe; his theological and religious outlook; and (not without relation to the first two themes) his attack on astrology, an attack seen as an
assertion of human liberty in such a manner (according to certain
authors) as to favor the development of scientific thought.
In 1937 the great Italian historian, Eugenio Garin, emphasized the desire for harmony and synthesis as the predominant element in Pico's reflection. Avery Dulles reminds us by the title of his work, Princeps Concordia&, that Pico bore the title, " Count of Mirandola and Prince of
Concord." And this title may very well have been a premonition. For in
his De Ente et Uno did not Pico wish to reconcile Plato and Aristotle?
In this perspective the Cabbala is seen as playing the role of the unifying
factor of thought and knowledge. Craven, however, judges that this
would be overestimating its importance. Another author of the same
period, Eugenio Anagnine, also underscored the role of the Cabbala in
Pico's thought but gave it an entirely neoplatonic meaning.
On the other hand, Avery Dulles in 1941 pointed out the affinities of
the doctrine of Pico with scholastic teaching, while Ernst Cassirer discovered in the Oratio de' hominis dignitate a manifestation of symbolic
thought-not in the sense that the universe is seen as a system of signs
after the manner of the astrologers, but from the viewpoint of the process
of human freedom deciphering the universe,

BOOK REVIEWS

697

In successive interpretations Pico della Mirandola was portrayed in
various ways. According to Giuseppe Saitta he became a forerunner of
idealism, revolting against his own era. He was a humanist-critic and
subversive according to Engelbert Monnerjahn. Yet Giovanni di Napoli,
relying heavily on the Heptaplus, saw him as faithful to the Church's
teaching, and Henri de Lubac in the most recent contribution to the subject sees him as faithful to patristic doctrine.
It is comprehensible therefore that such a diversity of interpretations
led the author in search of a clarification. It is true that these approaches,
though at times complementary, are more often dialectically opposed. The
authors support their interpretations by refuting others, and affirm their
own in rejecting others. Yet, despite the many trends, the overall image
which is currently accepted by historians of all views appears to be so
shaped by Garin and Cassirer that all the authors, for example, take it
for granted without reviewing the reasons that the assertion of human
dignity, made from the time of the Oratio, is central in Pico's thought.
It is precisely this "given" that Craven challenges in his second
chapter. Did Pico della Mirandola really present a new vision of man'
Relying on the historiographical studies already mentioned and on other
more specialized studies, e.g., the highly respected works of Kristeller, the
author sets out to prove that the reclaiming of man's .dignity is neither
primordial nor essential in Pico's thought. This dignitas hominis, which
is incidentally a post mortem subtitle added by Pico's nephew, GianFrancesco, is much more an assertion of moral philosophy, somewhat
rhetorical at that, than a specifically metaphysical thesis. What must be
recognized as necessary is to situate the Oratio· in its historical context
and to see the text in its entirety, not using merely a limited number of
often-cited passages.
The examination of Pico's famous theses which were condemned in
1487 (13 of 900) along with their refutation by Pedro Garsias, Bishop
of Barcelona, exposes the reader to various sectors of theology. On each
point, e.g., transubstantiation or the question of Origen's salvation which
P. Henri Crouzel has studied in the context of the confrontation of Pico
and Garsias, Craven describes the different interpretations which have
been put forward. As for himself, he does not believe that the sequence
of events in Pico's case was directed by a spirit of rebellion against the
Church. Craven thinks that Pico's condemnation must be essentially explained by the mistrust that Rome evinced in the face of the ambition of
Pico's undertakings along with his immoderate theological encyclopaedism,
and also by the prejudice against the stilus parisiensis which the Florentine had adopted.
Chapter four deals with the relations between God and man. After
Cassirer's undiscerning account, which nearly makes Pico a Promethean
hero, the author intends to acquit Pico of the frequent accusation of

698

BOOK REVIEWS

Pelagianism. The argumentation seems to be judicious except for the
proposition that his ascetical writings argue against the Pelagian accusation (pp. 85-87). After all, Pelagius was a moralist inclined towards extreme asceticism as an expression of human action.
The two chapters which follow treat the questions of syncretism and
universalism-here Craven examines Pico's relationship to the Cabbalaand rationalism and gnosticism. Do the texts support the theologicalphilosophical system ascribed to Pico 7 Is his alleged tendency towards
pantheism not simply a reprise of neoplatonic participation 7 Here there
may be " a clear case where the assertion of originality rests on ignorance
of what was traditional" (111).
Craven therefore invites his reader to return to the texts themselves
and to an understanding of the thought of the period, and to go beyond
the sometimes almost lurid interpretations of Pico which historians have
presented. Such an interpretation might render him "surprisingly unremarkable,'' a victim of his commentators' anachronistic expectations.
So arguing concerning Pica's attack on astrology, which is not really
connected with human free will, the author pronounces his " martyrdom
at the hand of historians" (p. 164). He consequently asks us to pay
greater attention to Pica's texts, something which requires a certain intellectual asceticism. But he raises above all the hermeneutical problem
of history. Asking "that Pico should be allowed to be himself" (p. 162)
is perhaps calling for what we can never fully achieve. Still, we should
try.
GUY BEDOUELLE, O.P.
Albertinum
Fribourg, Switzerland

Newman and the Gospel of Christ. By RODERICK STRANGE. Oxford University Press: 1981. Pp. 179. $39.00.
Newman never wrote a systematic Christology. Consequently, the
Cardinal's interpretation of the history and significance of the Church's
Christological doctrine must be derived from his sermons, lectures, essays,
letters, books, and tracts. Father Roderick Strange has diligently sifted
these many sources to provide a useful summary of Newman's writings
on Christ. Strange's book, which was originally presented as an Oxford
doctoral thesis (under the direction of the late eminent Newmanist, Father
Stephen Dessain) is organized topically. There are chapters which treat
of the divinity and psychology of Christ, and of the doctrines of the incarnation, atonement, and i·edemption. Sandwiching these theological
themes are the opening ·and closing chapters which raise and repudiate

BOOK REVIEWS

699

the charge of Newman's contemporary, Thomas Arnold: that Newman
neglected the person of Christ in favor of an " idolatrous " concentration
on the Church, the sacraments, and the apostolic ministry. Newman,
Strange has little difficulty in showing, emerges unscathed from Arnold's
obtuse polemic against the Tractarians.
Nonetheless, it remains difficult to assess the actual theological character
of Newman's conception of Christ. A summary of his opinions and arguments, or a miscellany of texts drawn from his various writings, leaves
unanswered the question whether Newman's Christology possesses an underlying historical or conceptual unity. In attempting to answer this
question, which is forced on him by the method of his own study, Strange
turns to Newman himself for help.
In the Grammar of Assent, Newman described the Athanasian Creed as
the "most simple and sublime, the most devotional formulary to which
Christianity has given birth ". Strange argues that Newman's Christology
was remarkably consistent throughout the fifty years of his writing career
because Newman followed the lead of the Fathers, especially Athanasius.
At an obvious level, Strange's thesis is plausible. Newman was not a
metaphysician, nor was his Christology developed within the context of
an explicit metaphysics. Rather, Newman was an astute historian, devoutly interested in the Christology that emerged from the great Pat.ristic
controversies. Newman, however, was not an antiquarian merely interested
m historical controversies; he firmly held that the orthodox doctrines of
the Fathers were theologically normative and religiously salutary for his
own period.
Against the anti-dogmatic biases, shared alike by the liberals and the
evangelicals, Newman defended the necessity of the Church's doctrine.
This defense of the doctrinal patrimony of the Church derived naturally
enough from Newman's first important historical study, written in 1833,
The Arians of the Fourth Century. Newman's exceptional awareness of
the historical factors involved in doctrinal development is already evident
in this early book. Neither it nor an essay on the same subject written
forty years later, " The Causes of the Rise and Successes of Arianism,"
oversimplifies the genesis of orthodox doctrine. Newman saw clearly that
Arianism, as well as other heterodoxies, have their antecedents, and to some
degree their causes, in the ambiguities of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. Nor,
for that matter, did Newman suppose that Nicea solved all problems.
Post-Nicean orthodoxy retained fundamental theological tensions.
Newman allowed, contrary to certain interpretations of the Athanasian
Creed, that orthodox patristic theology maintains both the unity of the
divine nature (hence the equality of the divine persons) and the "monarchia" or "principatus " of the Father (hence the distinction, even the
" subordination " of the Son and the Spirit). This tension, as Newman
portrayed it, expressed not a logical contradiction but a religious

700

BOOK REVIEWS

mystery. It is not a logical contradiction since the Trinity cannot be conceptually grasped as a formal whole; it is a religious mystery since faith
assents to the truth of the whole Trinitarian reality in a series of selfcorrecting propositions and images.
Strange discerns that this pattern, the use of one image or proposition
to balance another, frequently appears in Newman's own Christology.
But the pattern, taken as a method for resolving the tensions between
various doctrines, suffers from definite limitations. Newman's discussion
of the unity of manhood and godhood is a good example of such limitations. Concerned about the rationalist reduction of Christ to His humanity, Newman occasionally over-emphasized His divinity. In this vein, he
could write that Christ "was not man in exactly the same sense in which
any one of us is a man (Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 6, 62)," or,
in a phrase more objectionable to modern ears, that Christ's human nature was "without personality of its own (Select Treatises of St. Athanasius, Vol. 2, 426) ." Strange concedes that such statements "fail to account for the humanity of Christ in a satisfactory manner ( 47) ."
Of course, Newman was not a crypto-monophysite or a docetist, and
Strange does not accuse him of being so. Newman was concerned with
the unity of the person of Christ. Phrases which, if read casually, seem
to diminish Christ's humanity are, in fact, reassertions of a basic tenet
of Alexandrine theology. In Christ, there was only one divine person who
assumed a human nature. Although the Alexandrines, Cyril perhaps excepted, had been reluctant to apply physis to the humanity of Christ in
the same sense that it could be applied to the divinity of Christ, Chalcedon
and Newman distinguished between person ( hypostasis) and nature
(physis) and allowed that Christ had two physeis, divine and human.
Arianism and Apollinarianism seem antithetical heresies, the former
denying the divinity of Christ, the latter the humanity of Christ. But
Newman grasped what later scholarship has confirmed : Arianism is tied
conceptually to Apollinarianism, whatever be the historical chronology of
Apollinarian denial of an authentically human intellect in Christ's human
nature. The Arian fusion of the 'divine Logos with human sarx also ef ..
fectively eliminates the humanity, albeit not the creaturely status of
the two systems. For the Arian, in his own fashion, exaggerates the
Christ. But to deny the integral humanity of Christ is to undermine
soteriology. Newman, following the pattern of self-correcting images and
propositions, often noted that redemption consists in the assumption of
human nature: Mary is the Mother of God. No other image could make
the point more forcefully.
What, then, is the status of Christ's
Newman struggled with
the question and finally preferred Athanasius's answer: Christ's humanity is the instrument ( organon) of His divinity. "As the soul sees and
hears through the organs of the body, so the Son of God suffered in that

701
human nature which he had taken to Himself. (Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 6, .61) ." But here again the analogy needs to be corrected.
The Alexandrine theologians admitted that Christ suffered but not that
He had a human soul. Newman's analogy, that Christ's divinity is related
to His humanity as soul is to body, is similarly defective; in Strange's
words, the Logos is " always immediate, swamping the activity of the soul
( 69) ." But Newman, unlike the Alexandrines, acknowledged the human
soul of Christ. Since the humanity of Christ was an " attribute'' of His
divinity, Christ was not subject to ordinary human ignorance. This latter
claim, according to many contemporary theologians, jeopardizes the integral humanity of Christ. Newman, since he allowed that ignorance is a
consequence of sin, faithfully adhered to the patristic teaching and even,
mistakenly, regarded it is a binding dogma.
Nonetheless, a contemporary theologian should find congenial much of
Newman's Christology. Newman, for example, emphasized the unity of
redeemed humanity with Christ, the immediacy and priority of the Holy
Spirit (i.e., uncreated grace) in the process of man's redemption, and
the distinct salvific roles in the economy of the Trinity. On these issues,
. Strange finds that Newman's position is "the one sought by more recent
scholarship (156) ."
Contemporary theologians, then, can consult Strange for a summary of
Newman's Christological opinions. But the usefulness of a compendium is
always balanced by a certain theoretical shallowness. Strange's book is
vulnerable to the criticism, given the current fascination with theological
method, that it merely serves up the dead letter and not the living thought
of Newman. Newman was the1 father of those theologians interested in
the historical and conceptual development of doctrine. And it can hardly
be denied that Newman's own theological method is an important key to
his theory of doctrinal development. But Strange provides little help, and
likely will occasion some frustration, for those eager to pursue things
..methodological.
DENIS J. M. BRADLEY
Georgetown University
Washington, D.C.

702

BOOK REVIEWS

l'he Popes and European Revolution. By OWEN CHADWICK. Oxford:
The Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1981.

Pp. 646. $84.00.
l'he Papacy in the Modern World. By J. DEREK HOLMES. New York:
Crossroad, 1981. Pp. 275. $14.95.

In 1769 Clement XIII died, causing Horace Wal pole to wonder when
the cardinals would elect "the last Pope." More than two centuries
later the last Pope is with us still-evidence of the adaptability and durability of the office. Both of these books support G. K. Chesterton's
pointed claim that, just when the Church seemed to be going to the dogs,
it was the dog that died.
Owen Chadwick describes with characteristic mastery the changes
which overtook the papacy and the Catholic Church as a result of the
French Revolution. His findings, always informative, are occasionally
surprising and come by way of a method which is at times unusual. Professor Chadwick's general approach is to describe this upheaval from the
point of view of the Catholic countries ultimately affected by the Revolution: Austria, Spain, Italy, and especially the Papal States. He does this
by first supplying the pieces of a large and complicated puzzle: the state
of the Church before the Revolution. The mass of research here is staggering and, at times, excessive. If there is a weakness in the book it is
the barrage of minute details concerning Processions, Bells, Witchcraft,
German hymns, and Feast Days-history from the " bottom up"-which
is too unwieldy for a book of this sort. On the other hand some details,
most notably those concerning the value of money, are left unexplained.
Thus the reader is given prices, possessions, and incomes variously in
scudi, ducats, florins, livres, and gulden without so much as a hint as to
what-these things are worth.
Such defects, however, must not cloud our vision of the genius found
in the later chapters. Professor Chadwick is at his very best in discussing
the Pope, the fall of the Jesuits, and the Revolution itself. These chapters
are superbly written and display a necessary blend of criticism about and
sympathy with a Church under pressure. Chadwick's treatment of
J ansenism is typical. Long stigmatized as a rigid and backward elite,
J ansenism receives a fair hearing in this book and is shown to be a
widespread reform movement, taking on different forms in different
countries. It sought to learn the Fathers; to move toward a vernacular
liturgy; to correct abuses in sermons, stipends, and (amazingly) the reception of communion. It suspected new devotions like that of the Sacred

BOOK REVIEWS

708

Heart, and attempted to redirect endowments away from cult and masses
into pastoral care (p. 394).
Chadwick's thesis is that the papacy changed after the French Revolution, but not necessarily because of the French Revolution. The Pope
became less political, though some unhappy associations were to remain
throughout the nineteenth century; he became more spiritual, and more
spiritually powerful; he began to recognize secularization as the only
workable way of life. Napoleon was partly responsible for this change
because of the use he, tried to make of the Pope: " For private policy he
raised the Pope so that men saw how Popes were still needed to make
Emperors, and then turned the same Pope into a confessor who survived
the image of martyrdom ( p. 513) ."
Yet much of the change was coming despite the Revolution, despite
Napoleon. As many changes came to the Church at Trent because of the
urgency of Reformation, so also many changes came to the papacy almost
before their time, precipitated by the urgency of Revolution. These
changes, it seems, would have come about in their own good time, and
were merely hastened by the rush of events. " Revolutions do much.
Afterwards they are seen not to have done quite so much as the revolutionaries thought (p. 611) ."
Professor Chadwick begins the book with a note of thanks to Lord
Acton, who would indeed be proud of the general excellence of Church
History studies in this century, and of the particular achievement of this
fine book.
Derek Holmes brings to a conclusion his '"trilogy" about the papacy
since the French Revolution, the first two books (More Roman than Rome
and The Triumph of the Holy See) being concerned, as the titles suggest,
with Ultramontanism. The scope of this latest effort is broader and less
manageable, being a summary of the Popes from Pius XI to John Paul I.
Professor Holmes's forte is critical summary, and this is displayed with
great skill in his description of the problems occurring between the Popes
and dictators. In this regard he is unstinting in his praise of Pius XI,
and reserved in his estimate of Pius XII. It is a difficult, and frequently
an unfair, exercise to look back in time and ask, " What should have been
done'" It is very easy for us today to say, for example, that the United
States should not have sold steel to Japan in the 1930's; we have the
benefit of knowing the outcome. For this reason Professor Holmes avoids
a simple judgment on Pius XII and his dealings with Nazi Germany.
The author simply supplies the background, explains the complexities
and various pressures, and suggests possible reasons for the action of the
Pope. Holmes is selective in the best sense of the word: he chooses facts
which are representative, and spares nothing which might be embarrassing
or damaging. Furthermore, he is fair. His conclusion about the reign
of Pius XII might well be that of Oweri Chadwick, pronounced on the

704

BOOK REVIEWS

administration of another diplomat: "Consalvi failed because the problems were insoluble, not because he lacked wisdom."
The book would have been best ended with the reign of Pius XII, giving it more cohesion and thematic unity. Instead, Holmes tacks on a
hasty and superficial assessment of the pontificates of John XXIII, Paul
VI, and John Paul I. Printing shortcuts also mar an otherwise excellent
book: the Index includes only proper names, and the footnotes are
Bellocian, i.e. there aren't any.
When Pius XII was crowned in 1939, the German ambassador was
heard to remark about the ceremony, " Very moving, but it will be the
last." These two books, in their different ways, suggest that the "last"
may be a long time in coming; that the papacy is in intimate union with
the Church; and that not rationalism, not revolution, not totalitarianismno, not even the gates of hell-will prevail against it.
JOHN VIDM.AR, O.P.
Ohio Dominican College
Columbus, Ohio

Beyond Dialogue: Toward a Mutual Transformation of Christianity and
Buddhism. By JOHN B. CoBB, JR. Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1982. Pp. 176. $8.95 (paper).
In an age of recognized pluralism and of increasing affirmation of the
integrity of cultural traditions, there is also found, and not surprisingly,
another and perhaps counter effort to move beyond cultural boundaries
to the establishment of new patterns of understanding which reflect instead the accessibility and vulnerability of one system to another. John
Cobb's new book is just. such an effort. Clearly written for a Christian
audience and not, for instance, in spite of chapter 6, for a Buddhist one,
Beyond Dialogue has as its hope a contemporary Christianity with "a
Christology which avoids both imperialism and relativism" (p. viii). The
achievement of this, which would rectify the oftentimes authoritative posture of historical Christianity, can be done, argues Cobb, by moving beyond
mere conversation between positions of fixity to a point in which each
partner in conversation is ready and willing " to hear in an authentic way
the truth which the other has to teach us ... [and] to be transformed by
that truth" (p. ix). One is, in other words, so open and vulnerable to another way that one risks conversion, but, instead of one's being converted,
one's own tradition, at least as one has appropriated it, may be transformed
(perhaps even radically) by the new insights gained from another. His
stance, therefore, is that "dialogue has missional goal" (p. 50). While

a

BOOK REVIEWS

705

Cobb's vision and intent are commendable-for, as he points out, the
health of any religious tradition is bolstered by contact with another (p.
x) as is shown by the history of religion-his treatment of Buddhism is
a bit thin and at times misdirected, and his subsequent discussion of the
implications for Christianity does not fulfill his initial promise, pal"ticularly in the area of Christology.
Perhaps the most appealing aspect of this book is Cobb's description
of an authentic posture for religious man. He is not calling for a believer so firm and established in his faith that he is immune from refutation or, for that matter, from the appeal of non-traditional wisdom, but
rather a believer so trusting in truth, and in particular the truth of his
own tradition, that he can open himself up to have that vision of truth
re-formed. He would be one who, having heard the truth of a religion
not his own, could not remain the same (p. ix). This stance is intriguing,
intellectually as well as psychologically. Not only is this the lesson about
religious change we find in history, but in a world such as ours today, in
which traditional systems seem helpless in responding to disorder and
meaninglessness, such openness to new symbolic patterns is welcome (pp.
84-85). The dangers of this stance, however, must be kept in mind. A
pluralistic society is not an atraditional or acultural one; rather, it is one
in which groups live together with an unanimity of thought but with an
acceptance and affirmation of the right to exist and authenticity of other
systems. A stance beyond dialogue may not only undermine the integrity
of cultural traditions, but also result in worldviews so vague and universal
they become acceptable to no one.
Cobb's treatment of Buddhism, while thoughtful and sympathetic, is
often one-sided, selective, and ahistorical. Although he notes that he is
not an historian of religion and does not have a scholar's knowledge of
any tradition outside Christianity (p. xi), such an extensive treatment
of Buddhism as intended here certainly requires a more thorough analysis
of doctrine and text than appears in these pages. Moreover, it is clear
throughout, and by his own admission, nay intention, that Cobb wants to
treat only Mahayana Buddhism as found in Japan, and in fact of the
Japanese schools only Zen and Pure Land, and indeed, chapter six reveals, really only Pure Land. Why then does this book make claims for
the whole of Buddhism and, since this question is also appropriate for
the other partner in dialogue, the whole of Christianity7
Had Cobb been more sympathetic to Theravada, for example, certain
omissions would not have been made. In his four-fold scheme depicting
"the center of Buddhist wisdom" (p. 76), categories chosen and worded,
it seems, not because they are central to Buddhism but in order to fit
Cobb's discussion of Christianity, point 1 on the cessation of clinging is
unmindful of the three marks of existence. In stating that in Buddhism,
"the heart of the analysis is that we suffer because we are attached to

706

BOOK REVIEWS

things" (p. 77), Cobb deftly leaves out half the formula: we suffer
( dulclcha) because we are attached ( tanha) to things which are transitory ( anicca). In addition, throughout his treatment of the issue of
Nirvana, though Cobb is indeed cognizant of the problems of interpreting
Buddhism as annihilationism, he does not ever really raise, in response to
this, the technical referent of the extinguishing effects of the experience
of Nirval'.,la, viz. karma. Karma is relegated, most unfortunately, to issues
of the periphery (p. 76) and does not receive here the analysis it should;
otherwise we would not have statements like the " issue of responsible
freedom is not a traditional Buddhist one" (pp. 105-106). Nirvai;ia, we
should note, is the extinguishing of the karmic quality of one's actions,
and is therefore the initial experience of freedom from causal ties, which
results from insight into the nature of experience, particularly the idea
of the self. Furthermore, in his discussions on the. self, while Cobb does
point out, quite appropriately, that for Buddhism the experience of wisdom is a realization that the self is merely an idea, for the most part his
language on the subject of the self betrays western categories and in so
doing misrepresents the Buddhist material. Phrases like " the dissolution
of self as the realization of true self" (p. 81) and "the theoretical dissolution of the substance of self" (p. 108) suggest an annihilation of
something not there to begin with, which Cobb most certainly does not
mean, as most of his material points out. What should be made clear
here is that the Buddhist analysis of the self is based upon the view of
man as a " sentient being,'' an entity bound by and responsive to his experience as a body, and that all notions of the self, ego, individual, and
personality are the result of one of the five khandhas, aggregates of bodily
experience. Discussion of the personal and substantial self as anything
other than conditioned by the body is therefore inappropriate and would,
in the Pali tradition, be greeted by the Buddha's silence.
Finally, since Cobb does focus some of his analysis upon the issue of
Emptiness (in part, as a response to John Hick) and upon the equation
of Nirva:r;ia and Sarhsara, it is important to note the omission of the implications of Nagarjuna's dialectic for the teaching itself. For instance,
Zen is significant in the history of Buddhism because of its de-emphasis,
indeed rejection, of book learning, textual traditions, and the very notion of Dharma as doctrine in all its implications. Cobb's discussion of
Emptiness should take more seriously than it does, for example on p. 79,
this adoctrinal " tradition " of Buddhism which begins in the Buddha's
silence and culminates in the Ch'an school in China. It would certainly
facilitate the discussion of social ethics (pp. 132-136), given that ethical
norms are so often tied to broad social institutions (seriously undermined
by the "'bracketing" function of the Emptiness doctrine), and it would
explain the prominence of aesthetics in the Zen tradition.

BOO'.K. REVIEWS

707

Examples of items that should have been covered can be coupled with
other observations: that, for instance, except for the discussion of Pure
Land, there is little real concern for sectarian differences in Buddhism,
and that broad generalizations are made about Asian traditions which
apply, in fact, only to small parts of them, e.g., "[in] Hindu India ...
the world of action and passion is there, of course, but it is a world of
secondary reality or even illusion" (p. 84). Nevertheless, Cobb's historical surveys of Christianity's response to other religions and western
interpretations of Nirval).a and his assessment of current theological
trends on the " other religions " issue are engaging and informative and
treat the various positions with empathy and sensitivity. Moreover, he
continually calls to our attention, and quite rightly, that aspect of Buddhism elaborated particularly in the Mahayana theory of dharmas: a
mindfulness especially attuned to the present; for, as he says, "the herenow is complete and perfect in itself" (p. 94).
Cobb's critique of other theologians interested in Christian-Buddhist
dialogue focuses on their tendency to be theocentric rather than Christocentric, and he responds with an assurance that " Christocentric Christians
will be . . . confident that dialogue will not destroy our Christocentrism "
(p. 45). When he finally does turn to the issue of Christ, however, and
to the parallels and possible mutual appropriations between Christ and
Amida (Amitabha) Buddha, for instance, the specialness and historic
uniqueness of Christ for Christians is lost. To say " that Amida is
Christ ... [and] that Christians can gain further knowledge about Christ
by studying what Buddhists have learned about Amida" (p. 128) is not
only to undermine the centrality of history and individuality in the Christian tradition but to deny to Christians, at whatever point in time, the
right to define and delimit by and for themselves what they mean by
Christ, just as the reverse process denies that same right to Buddhists.
This is not to say that religious traditions cannot be influenced, but it is
to remove the obligation for them to be all-incorporative.
By way of conclusion, the larger issue of the purpose of Cobb's endeavor
should be raised. While the benefits that accrue from openness to other
traditions both in general global responsiveness and in the deeper understanding of one's own particular faith are significant-and Cobb's very
effort to achieve such openness should be highly applauded-the results
of the process and the appropriateness of the questions raised need to be
seriously examined. Dialogue that moves beyond itself to the transformation of the traditions involved is not appropriate when the traditions
emerge weakened, distorted, or with their peculiar integrity otherwise impaired. Moreover, it may be that the central issues of a religion in this
generation, or even in this century, are other than theological accommodation with whatever additional religions it may meet. In the case of
Buddhism, for instance, the issue may be less how to Christianize its doc-

708

BOOK REVIEWS

trine, though this may in time take place, and more how to respond to
changes in the social, economic, and political spheres that have been
made necessary by the global forces of modernization. More to the point
in Buddhism, then, would be the ideological appropriateness of social
welfare movements such as Sarvodaya in S'ri Lanka and political movements such as Soka Gakkai in Japan. Efforts like Cobb's may be useful
in the long run as economic changes bring about conflicts in value systems, but such efforts must be made with great care and be grounded in,
and continue to insure, the integrity of the cultural systems involved.
ELLISON

Trinity College
Hartford, Connectfout

B. FINDLY

BOOKS RECEIVED
Beauchesne: .Actiwlite D'Eric Weil edited by Le Centre Eric Weil.
Nouvelle Serie, No. 43. Pp. 432; no price given. Le Droit by J. F.
Catalan et al. Philosophie series, No. 9. Pp. 204; no price given.
Maitre Eckhart: Metaphysique du Verbe et Theologie Negative by
Emilie Zurn Brunn and Alain de Libera. Nouvelle Serie, No. 42.
Pp. 249; no price given.
The Catholic University of America Press: Metaphysical Themes in
Thomas .Aquinas by John F. Wippel. Studies in Philosophy and
the History of Philosophy, No. 10. Pp. 293; no price given.
Origen: Spirit di: Fire by Hans Urs von Balthasar and translated
by Robert J. Daly, S.J. Pp. 416; no price given.
University of Chicago: The Christian Tradition Vol. IV: Reformation of
Church and Dogma ( 1300-1700) by J aroslav Pelikan. Pp. 425;
$27.50.
Christendom Publications: The Universal Primacy of Christ by Francis
Xavier Pancheri, O.F.M. and translated by Juniper B. Carol,
O.F.M. Pp. 144; no price given.
Crossroad : Foundational Theology: Jesus and the Church by Francis
Schussler Fiorenza. Pp. 326; $22.50.
Editorial San Esteban: Consagrado A Dios En La Clasei Obrera by F.
Suazo. Ariadna, No. 3. Pp. 201; no price given. Los Derechos
Humanos En Francisco De Vitoria by Ramon Hernandez. Biblioteca Dominicana, No. 4. Pp. 234; no price given.
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.: God, Action and Embodiment by
Thomas F. Tracy. Pp. 184; $11.95.
Fortress Press: Christian Dogmatics, Vol. I di: II edited by Carl Branten
and Robert Jenson. Pp. I:569/Il:621; no price given.
Michael .Glazier, Inc. : Biblical and Theological Reflections on the Challenge of Peace edited by John T. Pawlikowski, O.S.M. and Donald
Senior, C.P. Theology and Life Series, Vol. 10. Pp. 295; $8.95.
Teaching .Authority in the Early Church by Robert B. Eno, SS.
Message of the Fathers of the Church, No. 14. Pp. 168; $12.95
cloth, $7.95 paper.
Gujarat Sahitya Prakash: Towards Christian Reunion by Luis M.
Bermejo, S.J. Pp. 316; no price given.
Harper & Row: On Love And Happiness by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
Pp. 100; $9.95. The Story of Christianity, Vol. I: TM Early
Church to the Dawn of the Reformation by Justo L. Gonzalez. Pp.
448; $12.95.

709

710

BOOKS RECEIVED

Notre Dame Press: Reason and Right by Garth Hallett. Pp. 192; $16.96
cloth, $8.95 paper.
Ohio University Press: Logic .And The Objectivity of Knowledge: Studies
in Husserl's Early Philosophy by Dallas Willard. Series in Continental Thought, No. 6. Pp. 277; $29.95.
Oxford/Clarendon: .A History of Philosophy by Anders Wedberg. 3
Volumes, 1982-84. No price given.
Oxford University Press: Freedom and Morality and Other Essays by
A. J. Ayer. Pp. 182; $19.95. Free Will .And Responsibility by
Jennifer Trusted. Pp. 195; $24.95.
Paulist Press: The Reason For Our Hope: .A Theological .Anthropology
by Richard R. Viladesau. Pp. 115; $10.95. The Schillebeeckx Case
edited by Ted Schoof, O.P. Pp. 135; $7.95.
Princeton University Press: The Complet@ Works of .Aristotle, Vols. I &
II edited by Jonathan Barnes. Bollingen Series LXXI 2. Pp.
I:1250/II:1236; .$75.00 each. Theodic11 in Islamic Touhght: The
Dispute Over .Al-Ghazali's ''Best of .All Possible Worlds" by Eric
L. Ormsby. Pp. 309; $30.00.
Regnery Gateway: The Ultimate Weapon by Philip F. Lawler. Pp. 126;
$8.95.
Scholars Press: The Beginning .And The Beyond: Papers From The
Gadamer .And Voegelin Conferences edited by Fred Lawrence. Vol.
4. Pp. 131; $13.50.
State University of N.Y. Press: .An Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of
Religion by Raymond K. Williamson. Pp. 388; $44.50 cloth,
$14.95 paper.
Texas Tech University: Pierce's Conception of God: .A Developmental
Study by Donna M. Orange. Pierce Studies, No. 2. Pp. 96;
$20.00.
University Press of America: 1'he Politics of Heaven tf; Hell by James
V. Schall. Pp. 360; $23.50 cloth, $12.75 paper.
Villanova University: Remediarium Conversorum: .A Synthesis in Latin
of 'Moralia in Job' by Gregory the Great by Peter of Waltham
and edited by Joseph Gildea, OSA. Pp. 492; $25.00.

THE GENERAL INDEX TO THE THOM/ST
VOLUME 48 (1984)
INDEX OF AUTHORS.
PAGE

Ashley, Benedict, M., O.P., Christian Moral Principles: A Review
Discussion
Austin, William H., Theology and Natural Science : Beyond the
Truce 7 A Review Discussion .
Buckley, James J., Retrieving Trinitarian Teaching
Carr- Wiggin, Robert, God's Omnipotence and Immutability
Corrigan, Kevin, A Philosophical .Precursor to the Theory of Essence
and Existence in Thomas Aquinas .
Dulles, Avery, S.J., The Essence of Catholicism: Protestant and
Catholic Perspectives
Duval, Andre, O.P., Yves Cougar: A Life For the Truth .
Fatula, Mary Ann, O.P., Dogmatic Pluralism and the Noetic Dimension of Unity of Faith
Fuller, Reginald H., The Historical Jesus: Some Outstanding Issues
Gallagher, Kenneth T ., " Meaning " and " Mental Process ": Some
Demurrals to Wittgenstein
Guerriere, Daniel, How Does God Enter Into Philosophy?
Hellwig, Monika, Soteriology in the Nuclear Age
Ingham, Nicholas, 0.P., Attribute and Act .
Johnson, Elizabeth A., C.S.J., The Theological Relevance of the Historical Jesus: A Debate and a Thesis
Magno, Joseph A., Beyond the Self-Referential Critique of Determinism
May, William E., Aquinas and Janssens on the Moral Meaning of
Human Acts .
Peterson, John, ·Kant's Dilemma of Knowledge and Truth
Portier, William L., Edward Schillebeeckx as Critial Theorist
Root, Michael, Images of Liberation: Justin, Jesus and the Jews
Schall, James V., S.J., Immortality and the Political Life of Man
in Albertus Magnus
Scheffczyk, Leo, Christology in the Context of Experience: On the
Interpretation of Christ by E. Schillebeeckx .
Sontag, Frederick, Beyond Process Theology? A Review Discussion
Uniacke, Suzanne M., The Doctrine of Double Effect .
W erpehowski, William, Political Liberalism and Christian Ethics:
A Review Discussion

450

433
274

44
219
607
505
409

368
249

165
634
52
1
74
566
241

341
512
535

383
645

188
81

INDEX OF BOOKS REVIEWED
PAGE

Altizer, Thomas J. J., et al.: Deconstruction and Theology (Michael
J. Kerlin)
Beauchamp, Tom L. & Alexander Rosenberg: Hume and the Problem
of Causation (Paul T. Durbin)
Brentano, Franz: The Theory of Categories (Andrew J. Burgess)
Brezik, Victor B., ed.: One Hundred Years of Thomism (Thomas
C. O'Brien)
..
Chadwick, Owen: The Popes and European Revolution (John
Vidmar) .
Cobb, John B., Jr.: Beyond Dialogue: Toward a Mutual Trans-.
formation Of Christianity and Buddhism (Ellison B. Findley)
Cook, Michael J.: Th& Jesus of Faith (Lewis S. Fiorelli, O.S.F.S.)
Craven, William G.: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Symbol of His
Age: Modern Interpretations of a Renaissance Philosopher
Crosson, Frederick, ed.: The .Autonomy of Religious Belief (John
Whittaker)
de Margerie, Bertrand: The Christian Trinity in History (William
J, Hill, O.P.)
•.
Ferreira, M. Jamie: Doubt and Religious Commitment (Jeremy E.
Miller)
Feuerbach, Ludwig: Thoughts on Death and Immortality (Charles
A. Wilson)
Harrod, Howard L.: The Human Genter (Paul Trainor)
Hendrix, Scott H.: Luther and the Papacy (Eric W. Gritsch)
Hennesey, James: .American Catholics (Robert Oris)
Henry of Ghent: 0 pera Omnia Vols. V and XIV: Quodlibets I tf: X
(Stephen D. Dumont) .
Holmes, J. Derek: The Papacy in the Modern World (John Vidmar)
Holtzmann, Steven & Christopher Leich, eds.: Wittgenstein: To Follow a Rule ( J. Churchill) .
Kenny, Anthony: Faith and Reason (Hugo Meynell}
Klein, Peter: Certainty: A Refutation of Scepticism (Patrick Lee)
Kolakowski, Leszek: Religion: If There is No God ... On God, the
Devil, Sin and other Worries of the so-called Philosophy of
Religion (Roger Kimball) .
Kovach, Francis J. & Robert W. Shahan, eds. : Albert the Great:
Commorative Essays (Laura L. Landen, O.P.)
Malloy, Edward A., C.S.C.: Homosexuality and the Christian Way
of Life (B. A. Williams, O.P.)
Martland, Thomas R.: Religion as Art (Roger Kimball)
McCawley, Jamefil D.: Everything That Linguists Have Always
Wanted to Know about Logic, But Were; Ashamed to Ask
(Dennis C. Kane, 0.P.)

461

119
493
473
702
704
139

696

128
297
309
327
125
143
157
470
702

685
303
690

672

323
680
133

694

INDEX OF BOOKS REVIEWED
PAGE

Nelson, Robert: Pascal: .Adversary and Advocate (A. J. Krailsheim.er)
Newton-Smith, W. H.: The Rationality of Science (Raymond
Dennehy)
Nowell, Robert: .A Passion for Truth (Donald W. Buggert, 0.
Carm.)
O'Brien, T. C., ed :. St. Thomas .Aquinas: Summa Theologiae: General Index (Claudia Carlen, I.H.M.)
O'Meara, Dominic J., ed.: Studies in .Aristotle (Alfred R. Mele)
Piolante, Antonio, ed.: .Atti dell' VIII Congresso Tomistico Internazionale> (Thomas C. O'Brien)
Posner, Richard A.: The Economics of Justice· (William J. Finan,
O.P.) .
Purtill, Richard L.: C. S. Lewis's Case for the Christian Faith
(Marianne H. Micks)
Quine, W. V. 0.: Theories and Things (Nicholas Ingham, O.P.)
Rahner, Karl: The Practice of Faith: A Handbook of Contemporary
Spirituality ( J. J. Buckley)
Rahner, Karl: Theological Investigations: Vol. XIX: Faith and
Ministry (J. J. Buckley)
Simon, Michael A.: Understanding Human Action (Alfred R. Mele)
Sokolowski, Robert: The God of Faith and Reason (T. J. Kondoleon)
Stout, Jeffrey: The Flight from Authority (Patrick Lee)
Strange, Roderick: Newman and the Gospel of Christ (Denis J. M.
Bradley) .
Swinburne, Richard: Faith and Reason (M. Jamie Ferreira)
Swindler, Leonard, ed.: Kung in Conflict (Donald W. Buggert, 0.
Carm.)
Sykes, Stephen & Derek Holmes, eds. : New Studies in Theology,
vol. I (Michael Root)
Taylor, Mark C.: Deconstructing Theology (Michael J. Kerlin)
Urs Von Balthasar, Hans: The Glory of the Lord: A Theological
.Aesthetics I: Seeing the Form (D. J. Keefe, S.J.)
White, Morton: What Is and What Ought to be Done (John P.
Reeder, Jr.) .
Wiles, Maurice: Faith and the Mystery of God (Avery Dulles,
S.J.)
Wojtyla, Karol: Love and Responsibility (Stephen A. Dinan)

498
478
149
475
318
473
489
147
302

662
662
121
667
483
698
305

149
137
461

663
314

116
463