THE PROTREPTIC STRUCTURE
OF THE 'SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES'

I

N A TYPICAL ACADEMIC preface or accessus, the
medieval exegete asked a number of questions about the
work to be studied. These included questions about its
intention, utility, order, authenticity, title, and position in the
hierarchy of studies. 1 More succinctly, the exegete could give
an account of the book's matter, intention, order, and mode. 2
Aquinas himself used exactly such abbreviated patterns to begin his commentaries on Isaiah, 3 Jeremiah, 4 and Lamentations.5 A modified and expanded accessus opens each of the
Aristotle commentaries. Because he was a.dept at teaching,
Thomas did not find it necessary to provide such schematic
introductions to his own major works, though echoes of an
accessus may be heard in them. 6

1 See Richard
William Hunt, "The Introductions to the 'Artes ' in the
Twelfth Century," in Studia mediaevalia in honorem ... R. J. Martin
(Bruges: "De Tempel" [1948]), 85-112; compare especially Hunt's "Type
C," pp. 94-97. Greek antecedents to the medieval philosophic prefaces are
considered in Edwin A. Quain, "The Medieval accessus ad auctores,'' Traditio, 3 ( 1945), 215-264, especially pp. 243-256, with a summary chart on p.
250.
2 See Robert of Melun's pattern as in Hunt, "Introductions,"
p. 96.
3 Postilla super Isaiam, prol., EL 28, p. 3, line 6; EB 5, 51, col. l: auctor,
modus, material. Except as noted, references to Thomas's works will be to
the Leonine edition (EL), published by various houses in Rome since 1882
under the direction of the Leonine Commission, and to the edition compiled
by Robert Busa (EB) as a supplement to the Index Thomisticus, that is,
Sanoti Thomae Aquinatis Opera Omnia (Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt: FrommanHolzboog, 1980). Busa's edition contains the best texts available as of about
1972, including the texts prepared for the Leonine Commission to that date.
4 Postilla
super J eremiam, prol., EB 5, p. 96, col. l : auctor, materia,
modus, utilitas.
5 Postilla super Threnos, prol., EB 5, p. 122, col. 2: auctor, modus, utilit-is,
materia.
6 See the discussion of prologue to the Contra Gentiles in section 2, below.

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The absence of an explicit accessus has hampered the reading of more than one book by Thomas, but especially of the
so-called Summa contra Gentiles. In what follows, I would
like to put exegete's questions about that work's intention,
order, mode, and disciplinary position; I will also touch on its
utility and title. What makes it difficult to address these headings can be stated as a single question: How is the reader
meant to be engaged by this avowedly persuasive work? By
taking up this question about the Contra Gentiles, I hope both
to prepare for further readings in it and to disclose something
of Thomas's larger pedagogical project. 7
1. The Circumstances
The circumstantial evidence concerning the Contra Gentiles
seems to invite a fallacy of authorial intention. On the basis
of this evidence, the work has come to be classified as a missionary manual and to be included in histories of missionary
activity. 8 I would like to suggest that the evidence in no way
1 The arguments
that follow assume the usually accepted chronology for
Thomas's writings, such as it is found in James Weisheipl, Friar Thomas
d'Aquino (augmented ed., Washington: Catholic University, 1983). I thus
reject the elaborate reasonings presented in Pierre Marc's richly annotated
edition of the Contra Gentiles, I (Turin: Marietti, 1967), by which he would
advance the time of composition to the second Parisian regency. For a specific but abbreviated rejoinder to Marc, see the review by Clemens Vansteenkiste in Angelicum, 45 ( 1968), 353-355, and fuller criticism in the unsigned
review for Rassegna di letteratura tomistica, 2 (1970), #67, pp. 51-56. The
proposal to re-date the Contra Gentiles to the second Parisian regency was
not new; see the rejection of it in Pietro Castagnoli, "La data di compozisione della Summa c. Gentiles di S. Tommaso," Divus Thomas [Piacenza],
31 ( 1928), 489-492, especially pp. 491-492. Marc's re-dating has not won
general consent; consider the summary chart for works published ten years
after Marc in Rassegna di letteratura tomistica, 14 ( 1981), p. 49. One favorable vote can be had in Thomas Murphy, "The Date and Purpose of the
Contra Gentiles," H eythrop Journal, 10 ( 1969), 405-415.
s See, for example, Berthold Altaner, Die Dominikanermissionen
des 13.
Jahrhunderts ... (Habelschwerdt: Frankes Buchg., 1924), p. 94, note 31;
Martin Grabmann, "Die Missionsidee bei den Dominikanertheologen
des 13.
Jahrhunderts," Zeitschrift fur Missionswissenschaft,
1 ( 1911), 137-146, particularly pp. 140-142; Dionys Siedler, "Des hl. Thomas von Aquin und die
Mohammedanermission
. . .," Pastor Bonus, 42 ( 1931), 370-376, especially

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175

decides the genre of the Contra Gentiles. Even if they are
accurately reported, the circumstances do not make sense of
obvious features in the work's structure and so require further
qualification.
In a. narration of the deeds of James I of Aragon, as part of
a reminiscence of St. Raymond of Pena.fort, the Dominican
chronicler Peter Marsilius recounts a story about the composition of the Contra Gentiles. 9 Peter's text was finished on
April 2, 1313; the frame for the story of St. Raymond is a narrative about Christmas, 1274, but the story itself lies even further back-that is, more than 40 years before the date of
writing. At that time, Peter says, Raymond asked brother
Thomas to compose a work " against the errors of unbelievers
(contra infidelium errores)" as an aid in conversion. "That
master did what the humble rogation (deprecatio) of such a
father required; and he composed (condidit) a. summa called
'con.tra Gentiles; which is believed not to have any equal for
such material (pro illa materia) ." 10 There have been some
textual questions about this passage, but none is unanswerable.11 Let the text stand as received. It is obvious from context that the story is introduced in order to give evidence of
Raymond's zeal for conversions and to show his influence
within the order. Since the story is not repeated in the contemporary lives of Raymond or in any of the canonization
proceedings for Thomas, it is presumed that Peter was relying
pp. 370-371; Thomas Ohm, "Thomas von Aquin und die Heiden- and
Mohammedanermission,"
in Aus der Geisteswelt des Mittelalters, ed. A. Lang
et al. (Munster: Aschendorff, ( 1935), II, 735-748, especially pp. 738-739;
Mathias Braun, "Missionary Problems in the Thirteenth Century . . .,"
Catholic Historical Review, 25 ( 1939), 146-159, especially p. 157; J. M. Coll,
" San Raymundo de Pefiafort y las missiones del norte Africano en la Edad
Media," M issionalia H ispanica, 5 ( 1948), especially p. 423; Robert I. Burns,
"Christian-Islamic
Confrontation
in the West: The Thirteenth-Century
Dream of Conversion," American Historical Review, 76 ( 1971), 1386-1434,
especially pp. 1408-1410.
9 The text is discussed
and quoted extensively in Marc, I, pp. 72-77 and
612-613.
10 Barcelona, Bihl. centr. MS 1018, f. l 79r, as quoted in Marc, I, p. 73.
11 The issues are summarized in Marc, I, pp. 74-76.

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MARK D. JORDAN

on a local legend from the Dominican house in Barcelona,
where he had worked with Raymond years before. We have,
then, a unique attestation for what seems a bit of local
hagiography. It has been argued that Peter would not have
invented this story because there were many among his
readers who would have had first-hand knowledge of the events
mentioned. 12 This argument is weakened, it seems to me, by
remembering that flattering inventions are less likely to be
contested than scurrilous ones and by comparing this tale with
the sorts of things being told, less than six years later, in the
canonization proceedings for Thomas.
Let us assume, however, that we have here, not a pious invention, but a. luckily preserved fact. The difficulties now begin in earnest. The first difficulty is simply to know what
Peter means and, particularly, what he intends by the phrase
"such material (illa materia) ." What is the 'matter' or material of the Contra Gentles? To speak more practically,
where exactly does it fit in the complicated organization of the
Dominican missionary effort? Peter's story could be taken as
saying at least three different things: that the Contra Gentiles
is a book to be given to potential oonverts; that it is a manual
for the field training of missionaries; and that it represents a
reference work in which all the errors of unbelievers are
treated compendiously. Of these three readings of materia, it
seems to me that only the third has any plausibility and even
it creates difficulties. But let me take them in order.
The Contra Gentiles is clearly not intended to be placed in
the hands of potential converts. From the first line and then
on every page thereafter, Thomas's rhetoric is the rhetoric of
one Christian speaking to another. This is seen in Scriptural
and magisterial quotations, in a presumption of acquaintance
with Christian letters, and even in the use of the first person
plural. More precisely, Thomas argues in the prologue that
1 2 Burns,
"Christian-Islamic
Confrontation,"
p. 1410. See also Alvaro
Huerga, "Hip6tesis sobre la genesis de la ' Summa contra gentiles' y del
'Pugio fidei,'" Angelicum 51 (1974), 533-557, especially pp. 551-552 and
556.

THE ' SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES '

177

the mysteries of Christian faith ought not to be presented
argumentatively before non-believers for fear of making them
think that faith depends only on such weak arguments. 13 But
it is precisely these arguments that are presented as part of
the plan of the fourth Book. 14 How could Thomas have intended, then, that the book be placed into the hands of nonbelievers, without giving them offense and exposing Christian
faith to scandal?
It is no more likely, I think, that the Contra Gentiles was
intended for field training of Dominican missionaries. This
can be seen externally and internally. Externally, the Contra Gentiles would be an odd missionary manual precisely by
Dominican standards of the thirteenth century. There are
counter-examples enough in the life of St. Raymond himself.
Raymond was not only engaged in founding schools for
Oriental studies within the Dominican order, as Peter narrates,
but he also figured prominently in public debates with nonChristians. In 1263, for example, Raymond helped to set the
rules for a debate between the Dominican Paul ' the Christian' and Rabbi Moses hen Nachman of Gerona. 15 This Paul
was a convert from Judaism and his strategy was to argue
from a detailed knowledge of rabbinical writings that the
messiah had already come, that he was prophesied to be both
divine and human, and that his advent had destroyed the laws
and ceremonials. 16 This same strategy of refutation from within the opposing tradition was used by Dominicans in cam13 References to the Contra Gentiles will be given parenthetically
as from
Marc's edition, II-III (Turin: Marietti, 1961). The citations will list book,
chapter, and unique section numbers. Marc's edition reproduces that of the
EL vols. 13-15 (Rome: Commissio Leonina [Riccardus Garronus], 1918-1930),
in which any defects of method (e.g., with regard to stemmatics and eUminatio codicum) are largely remedied by reliance on the autograph.
14 .As Thomas himself says, I.9.#56:
"solventes rationes adversariorum, et
rationibus probabilibus et auctoritatibus, quantum Deus dederit, veritatem
fidei declarantes."
15 Robert
Chazan, "The Barcelona 'Disputation'
of 1263: Christian
Missionizing and Jewish Response," Speculum, 52 ( 1977), 824-842, especially
p. 826.
16 Chazan, "Barcelona 'Disputation,' " p. 826.

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paigns of Jewish conversion through the IQ50s and 1260s in
Spain and France. 17 They dealt similarly with the Cathars
and allied heretics. 18
Very much the same devices and emphases figured in Dominican preaching to Islam. Here a central figure was another
Raymond, Raymond Marti (Martinus, Martini) .19 As early
as IQ50, Marti appears in Tunis as founder of an Arabic
school. In IQ67, he published the Capistrum Judaeorum, a detailed attack on Judaism in the line of the internal criticism
practiced by Paul ' the Christian '. In 1278, Marti presented
the Pugio Fidei, an attack on both Islam and Judaism. This
work has figured prominently in the history of the Contra
Gentiles because it borrows directly from Thomas. 2° Far from
11 See Robert Chazan, "Confrontation
in the Synagogue at Narbonne ... ,''
Harvard Theological Review, 67 (1974), 437-457.
1s See Frangois Sanjek, " Raynerius Sacconi O.P., Summa de Catharis,"
Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum,
44 (1974), 31-60; compare Thomas
Kaeppeli, "Une somme contre les heretiques de s. Pierre Martyr ( ? ) ,''
Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 17 ( 1947), 295-335. In the prologues
edited by Kaeppeli, it is interesting to note the remarks on recourse to
ra tiones na turales in controversy with heretics (pp. 301-302 ) ; com pare Contra Gentiles, I.2.#llb.
19 See
generally Andre Berthier, "Un ma!tre orientaliste
du XIIIe
siecle .. .," Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, 6 (1936), 267-311, especially
pp. 295-312 on Raymond's " method."
20 These resemblances
led Miguel Asin y Palacios to argue that Thomas
had plagiarized portions of the Pugio; see his " EI Averroismo teol6gico de
Santo Tomas de Aquino," in Homenaje a don Francisco Codera .. ., ed.
Eduardo Saavedra (Zaragoza: M. Escar, 1904), 271-331, especially pp. 320323. The charge was refuted almost at once by Luis G. A. Getino on the
basis of chronology; see Getino, La "Summa contra gentes" y el Pugio
fidei ... (Vergara: El Santisimo Rosario, 1905), pp. 8-19 generally, with
replies to objections on pp. 19-27. The question of borrowings between
Aquinas and Marti assumed a different form with Marc's re-dating of the
Contra Gentiles. Marc asserts a dependence of SCG I cap. 6 on Marti's
Capistrum Judaeorum; see Marc, I, pp. 65-72, and Burns, p. 1409, who
adopts the thesis or re-dating apparently on the basis of Murphy's summary
article. There is also the thesis of prior exchange between Aquinas and
Marti in Jose Maria Casciaro, El dialogo teologico de Santo Tomas con
musulmanes y judios, el tema de la profeoia y la revelacion (Madrid: CSIC /
" Francisco Suarez," 1969), p. 44; J. I. Saranyana, " La creaci6n ' ab
aeterno.' Controversia de Santo Tomas y Raimundo Marti con San Bonaventura," Scripta Theologica [Pamplona], 5 ( 1973), 147-155. These hypo·

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confirming Thoma.s's missionary intention, however, the borrowings show how little Thomas could be used in direct missionary activity. Marti's dependence on Thomas is confined
almost entirely to the first Part of the Pugio. That part,
which constitutes only ten percent of the whole, is intended to
combat the errors "of the naturalists and the philosophers." 21
In it, Marti uses Thomas chiefly to combat errors arising from
the reading of Aristotle and his followers. Thomas supplies
most of Marti's argument on the eternity of the world, God's
knowledge of singulars, and the resurrection of the dead. 22
When it comes to a detailed consideration of the claims and
counter-claims of sacred writings, or to the intricacies of dogmatic theology, borrowings from Thomas almost disappear.
For the expert missionary, then, Thomas's Contra Gentiles
wa.s useful in the philosophical criticism of Peripatetic or other
philosophical controversies. In short, it was precisely the nonmissionary parts of the Pugio Fidei which benefited most from
a reading of the Contra Gentiles.
These comparisons ad extra may be confirmed internally
by the very few explicit remarks Thomas makes in the Contra
Gentiles about Islamic religion. In the ' prologue ' to the work,
which comprises the first nine chapters of book I, there
are two pertinent passages. The first, in chapter 2, makes
Thomas's excuses for not being able to deal with particular
errors. He is not familiar with them, he sa.ys, nor can he proceed against all adversaries on the basis of common Scriptural
authorities (I.2. #10-lla) . Thomas mentions the "Mohammedans and pagans " as not sharing any Scriptural authority
with Christians. The second passage, in chapter 6, contrasts
the sober motives for accepting Christian revelation with the
theses become necessary only if one rejects the simpler explanation that
Marti borrowed from Thomas in his Oapistrum just as he would do later and
at length in the Pugio.
21 Raymundus
Martinus, Pugio Fidei adversus Mauros et Judaeos, ed.
Joseph de Voisin (Leipzig, 1587; rptd. Farnborough: Gregg, 1967), pp. 192253.
22 Marc provides an exhaustive
summary of the textual relations in I, pp.
62-65.

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improper persuasions to various erroneous opinions. Thomas
describes the inducements offered by Mohammed, namely
"carnal pleasures" and easy living, promised in colorful
fables without the supporting evidence of miracles or previous
prophecy, and to a credulous and isolated people (I.6. #41).
It is obvious that this description depends on no very detailed
knowledge of Islam. But that is because Thomas's source is
not contemporary Dominican research; it is the century-old
Summula. of Peter the Venerable. 23 Some readers have seen
here a "singular discretion" on Thomas's part as he reduces
Koranic religion to the preaching of violence, perhaps in order
to justify the Christians' crusades. 24 It seems much simpler to
suppose, as Thomas has admitted, that he knew very little
about Islamic belief, or, indeed, about the course of Islamic
civilization. 25 How, then, could he write a paradigmatic missioner's manual for an order that prided itself on detailed
acquaintance with the languages and beliefs of its adversaries?
It was not only the ideal of the order. We have from
Thomas himself at least two short works that consider the possibilities for argument against those outside Latin Christendom. The first is the Contra errores Graecorum, written as
Thomas was finishing the last book the Contra Gentiles; the
second is the letter De rationibus fidei contra Saracenos,
Graecos, et Armenos. 26 This letter seems to have been written
perhaps a year later, just after completion of the Contra
23 The Summula is edited in Migne, PL 189, cols. 651-658; for the parallels
to Thomas, see especially cols. 653D-655C, and compare Peter's Letter IV.17
to Bernard (PL 189, cols. 321-345). For the composition of Peter's anthology
of Islamic writings, see Marie-Therese d'Alverny, "Deux traductions latines
du coran au moyen age," Archives d'histoire doatrinale et litteraire au moyen
age, 16 (1947-48)' 69-131, especially pp. 69-71, 74-79.
24 Simone Van Riet, "Le Somme aontre les Gentils et la polemique islamochretienne," in Aquinas and Problems of His Time, ed. G. Verbeke and R.
Verhelst (Louvain: Publications Universitaires, 1974), 150-160, especially p.
158.
25 See the conclusions
of Louis Gardet, " La connaissance que Thomas
d'Aquin put avoir du monde islamique," in Aquinas and Problems, 139-149,
esp. p. 140.
26 See Weisheipl, Friar Thomas, p. 389, #63, and p. 394, #72.

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181

Gentiles. In both of these pieces, Thomas is textually scrupulous within the limits of his knowledge and cautious about overstepping those limits. In the treatise against the Greeks, for
example, Thomas explains that passages in the Fathers may
appear doubtful either because of the development of doctrinal articulateness or because of the difficulties of translation.21 In the De rationibus, he repeats charges against the
infidels only as claims made by this correspondent; he also reminds him that no one ought to attempt a demonstration of
the truths of the faith. 28
The Contra, Gentiles is not a manual for detailed training of
missionaries-and so we are reduced to the third possibility,
that it was intended to provide a reference book of philosophical arguments against the conceptual errors instanced in unbelievers, to be read by Christians who live in intellectual contact with them. But even here the story of St. Raymond's request must be re-understood, always assuming that it is true.
Perhaps Thomas received such a request and wrote what he
could, within the limits of his knowledge; that is, he wrote a
foundational work that would undergird any detailed missionary attack. Perhaps he already had a work of comprehensive
pedagogy in hand which he adapted for Raymond's sake, adding topical references in the prologue and elsewhere. 29 There
is other evidence that Thomas struggled to find a pedagogical
form that would provide an organic unity to the teaching of
Christian truth; Raymond's request might easily have been
subsumed in that larger pedagogical search. 30 In any event, a
21 Contra

errores Graecorum, prologue, EL 40, page A71, lines 16-71.
fidei ... , cap. 1, EL 40, p. B57, esp. 11. 25, 27, 41, 49;
and cap. 2, EL 40, p. B58, 11. 1-22.
29 Unfortunately, we lack those pages of the autograph which would allow
one to see Thomas's re-writing of the first nine chapters. Such traces of the
first redaction as are preserved in the ' pA' manuscript tradition provide
only a few variants for chapters 1-4, none of which are substantive. See the
critical apparatus in EL 13, pp. 3-23, and the summary remarks, p. xvi.
30 Thomas is reported to have re-worked a commentary
on the first Book
of Sentences; he obviously abandoned that expository pattern for the more
lucid structure of the Summa theologiae. See Weisheipl, Friar Thomas, p.
359, for Tolomeo of Lucca's report, and the prologue to the prima pars of
the Summa.
2s De rationibus

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MARK D. JORDAN

fundamental work structured according to the needs of Christian pedagogy is difficult to call missionary, except in that sense
in which every Christian reader is constantly being called to
conversion. Any number of works, including the Summa
theologiae, have been used as foundations for missionary activity. Such uses have not drawn them into the class of missionary manuals. Nor, indeed, does it help much that something be classed as ' missionary ' unless one can give a very
precise account of its place in missionary activity. So the suggestions of circumstantial evidence have run aground. We
must turn from them to the work itself in order to find the
proper entry into the Contra Gentiles.
2. The Prologue
On opening the Contra Gentiles, the careful exegete would
want first to consider the meaning of its title. Unfortunately,
here too there is some uncertainty, as is not unusual with
medieval academic works. The title Liber or Summa contra
gentiles appears in early lists from the Parisian stationers, in
the first writings by ' Thomists ,' and in the catalogues of
Thomas's works. 31 In early copies of the work, however, there
appears the title Liber de veritate catholicae fidei contra
errores infidelium and variants of it. 32 Either title is easily derived from the text of the second chapter, where Thomas says
" we propose as our intention to show, in whatever little way
31 For catalogues
from c. 1292 to 1375 with the title Contra Gentiles or
some variation, see Anton Michelitsch, Thomas-schriften, I ( Graz and Vienna:
Styria, 1913), pp. 101 (#46), 102 (#82/251), 104 (#127/295), 105 (#131/
299), 107 (#175/1372), 109 (#245/192), 110, (#254/200), 111 (#285/232),
112 (#311/1559), 115 (#75), 127 (#14), 134 (#4), 137 (#), 140 (#30),
143 (#6), 145 (#4), 149 (#4), 156 (#3). The title Liber de veritate catholice fidei appears in some of the later catalogues: see Michelitsch, pp. 104
( #117 /286), 106 ( 165/1083), 110 ( #268/214). Henry of Hereford, whose
catalogue is dated 1292-1294, gives the conflated title Summa contra gentiles
de veritate catholice fidei; see Michelitsch, p. 125 ( #76). For a Parisian
stationers' list of 1286, see Denifle and Chatelain, Ohartularium Universitatis
Parisiensis, I (Paris: Frs. Delalain, 1889), #530, pp. 644-649, especially p.
646 ("Summa fratris Thome contra Gentiles").
32 See, for example, JJJL 13, p. xii.

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183

we can, the truth offered by the catholic faith (veritatem quam
fides catholica profitetur), eliminating contrary errors" (I.2.
#9). He then goes on to speak of the "errors of the Gentiles
(errores gentilium)" (I.2. #10). Whether the book is a liber
or a summa is not decided by the text (as it is elsewhere). The
title summa, even if authentic, would prove too equivocal for
settling the issue of the work's purpose. In the thirteenth century, ' summa' covers a number of very different works, beginning with the simplest of collections. The decision among
the various titles must be set aside, then, except insofar as
the catalogue title raises a question about the meaning of
' gentiles.'
M. M. Goree argued more than fifty years ago that the
'gentiles ' of Thomas's title referred immediately to the Parisian exponents of heterodox Aristotelianism. 83 His evidence for
the claim came from a Parisian document of 1277, which speaks
of the ' gentiles ' of the Arts f acuity in this sense, and from the
correspondences between heterodox views condemned in 1270
or 1277 and positions mentioned by Thomas. The arguments
are unconvincing. Goree cannot establish any direct connection
between the coinage in the document and Thomas's use of the
term, nor can he show that the correspondence of views is anything but the effect of a common philosophical problematic.
Goree does raise the issue, however, what Thomas might mean
by speaking of ' gentiles' in the prologue.
Elsewhere in the Contra Gen.tiles itself, the positions ascribed
to the 'gentiles' are those of ancient Greek philosophy. Thus,
the " gentiles " are misled by the " first natural philosophers
(primi philosophi naturales)" into holding a. view that the
heavens are animated by divinities (I.20. #189-198). They use
this error to defend their idolatry (I.27. #258). The" gentiles"
83 M. M. Goree, "La
lutte 'contre Gentiles' a Paris," in Melanges
Mandonnet . .. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1930), I, 223-243, particularly pp. 228-233;
see also his retrospective remarks on the work in Bulletin Thomiste, t.3/an.7
(1930), ##1203-1206, pp. [179]-[187]. Gorce's argument was attacked on
its characterization of a persistent 'Latin Averroism' by David Salman,
"Sur la Jutte contra Gentiles de S. Thomas," Divus Thomas [Piacenza], 40
( 1937)' 488-509.

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MARK D. JORDAN

were also those who held for some species of the world's eternity and, thus, for a circular time (II.38. #1150; IV.82.
#4171) . Thus, when Thomas says in the prologue that the
"ancient teachers (antiqui doctores)" of Christendom could
attack errors in detail because they had been " gentiles " or
were in conversation with them, he is thinking of such writers
as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome-men who lived as or
among the Hellenized pagans of late antiquity.
The same usage is found in others of Thomas's works and
in reportationes of his teaching. Thomas speaks of the gentiles
as exponents of pre-Christian learning. He writes that 'the
Greeks ' is used metonymically for all gentiles, since all received worldly wisdom from the Greeks. 34 He singles out the
Platonists as specially to be recognized among the gentiles for
positing a providence, though he holds that the gentiles generally recognized the existence of God. 35 Most interestingly,
however, Thomas is reported as speaking about " gentiles " in
the present tense and distinguishing them both from the
(Byzantine) schismatics and from the (Islamic) infidels: "in
the North (in Aquilonari) there are still many gentiles 1 and in
the East many schismatics and infidels (schismatici et infideles." 36 To summarize, 'gen.tiles' means for Thomas, historically, pre- or extra-Christian man and, metaphorically, the
human mind under the tutelage of nature. The highest moment of this tutelage comes in Greek philosophy. How, then,
are we to understand an argument made by Thomas "contra Gen.tiles"? It is an argument that corrects the natural
errors of mind (taking ' nature ' most strictly) and that is
particularly concerned to correct the errors of the philosophers.
Is this suggestion borne out in the work's prologue?
34 Super I ad Oor., cap. 6 lect. 3, EB 5, 499, col. 2; Super ad Rom., cap. 1
lect. 5, EB 5, 445, col. 3, and lect. 6, EB 5, 446, col. 1.
35 Sent. de Oael., lib. 1 lect. 4 no. 5, EB 4, 26, col. 1; Sent. libri Ethic., lib.
9 lect. 10 no. 3, EB 4, 223, col. 3; Postilla super Psalmos ps. 21 no. 23, EB
6, 78, col. 3.,
36 Postilla super Psalmos, ps. 48 no. 1, EB 6, 120, col. 2. On the reliability
of this text, see Weisheipl, Friar Thomas, pp. 368-369, #26.

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185

The prologue begins, in the first chapter, with an Aristotelian explication of a Scriptural verse in praise of wisdom.
The explication connects this verse and other passages in
Scripture with Aristotle's hortatory depiction of wisdom at the
beginning of the Metaphysics. Thomas continues, in the second chapter, by arguing the utility of wisdom and by announcing his intention to set it forth, despite difficulties. This is a
standard topic in philosophical prologues, as is the claim that
wisdom demands expression. 37 But how is wisdom in fact to be
set forth? The next chapters, 3 through 8, answer this question in general; the 9th chapter draws specific compositional
divisions from the general remarks. The whole prologue constitutes an extended but implicit aceessus, in which chapter 2
gives the statement of intentio while the remaining chapters
describe the modus in relation to the materia. The understanding of the materia depends upon a distinction between
two types of truth in regard to God, a distinction which has
occasioned as much feuding as did the possibility of a missionary motivation.
The most recent round of the debate can be said to have
begun in 1924 when Guy de Broglie argued from the " general
economy" of the Contra Gentiles, as proposed in the prologue,
to a formal distinction between philosophical and theological
truths. 38 De Broglie's motive was not to comment on the
Contra Gentiles so much as to extract a polemical conclusion
from it in regard to the natural desire for God. But De Broglie
takes Thomas as promising that the first three books of the
work will deal only with "religious truths accessible to reason
alone," thus constituting " a Christian philosophy which ·will
have its own consistency." 39 De Broglie was answered in37 See Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature
and the Latin Middle
Ages, tr. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University, 1953), pp. 8385 and 87-88.
as Guy de Broglie, "De la place du surnaturel dans la philosophie de saint
Thomas," Reoherohes de soienoe religieuse, 14 (1924), 193-246 and 481-496,
15 ( 1925) 5-53. The most pertinent remarks fall in the first two installments.
39 De Broglie, p. 207; cf. pp. 206-209, 482.

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stantly by M. Blanche, who argued that the Contra Gentiles
was an apologetic, hence theological work, which treated of
everything under the formality of the revealed. 40 But Blanche's
brief comment was only the first round. 41
In the next year, R. Mulard, while rebutting De Broglie's
main thesis at length, agreed with Blanche on the apologetic
character of the Contra Gentiles and added confirming evidence from its manner of citing Scripture. 42 Maurice Bouyges
followed in the same year with a summary of the debate and
a proposal that the Contra Gentiles be regarded as a missionary
apologetic structured by reference to the sensitivities of a nonChristian readership. 48 All specifically Christian matter is
transposed into the fourth book, while all matter common to
Christians and non.,,Christians is arranged progressively in the
first three books. For Bouyges, the distinction is not a formal
division between two types of propositions logically characterized with regard to their demonstrability; it is an apologetic distinction between the " discussable and non-discussa.ble" or between what is and is not " susceptible ... of being
established and defended, in different degrees, before nonChristian partisans of supposedly revealed religions." 44
40M, Blanche, "Note" (appended to a report of a lecture by de Broglie),
Revue de Philosophie, 24 ( 1924), 444-449.
4'1 Indeed, there were really two debates, one concerning the natural possibility for beatitude (together with such related notions as ' obediential potency'), the other concerning the distinction of two truths in the Oontra
Gentiles. I will here notice only the second debate. For a bibliography of the
first, see M. Matthys, "Quid ratio naturalis doceat de possibilitate visionis
beatae secundum S. Thomam in Summa contra Gentiles," Divus Thomas
[Piacenza], 39 (1936), 201-228, at p. 201, note 2. Matthys himself provides
a rigorous but falsely schematic reconstruction of the argument for the two
truths; see his pp. 203-213.
42 R. Mulard, " Desir nature! de connaitre et vision beatifique," Revue des
sciences philosophiques et tMologiques, 14 (1925), 5-19. See also Mulard's
review in the Bulletin Thomiste, t.l/an. 2 ( 1925), ##195-196, pp. [192][195], though Mulard there adds nothing further with regard to the structure
of the Oontra Gentiles.
43 Maurice Bouyges, "Le plan du Oontra Gentiles de S. Thomas,"
Archives de Philosophie, 3 ( 1925), 320-341 or 176-197 in the separate pagination of this special volume.
44 Bouyges, "Le plan," p. 191 (of the separate pagination),

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Bouyges's hypothesis was substantially accepted in a general
review of the debate published in 1930 by Balthasar and
Simonet. 45 Since then, the tendency has been to argue for a
wider audience and a larger intention-to which points I will
return below .46
It seems to me that none of the positions taken with regard
to the two truths is entirely fair to the text, though Bouyges
may come closest-not when he invokes the missionary character, but when he points to the rhetorical motivation of the
division. Read in context, the famous division separates two
possibilities for effective persuasion. The division is introduced, in chapter 3, with an allusion to Aristotle's doctrine
about the different ways disciplines can produce conviction
(I.3. #13) . Since the wise man's teaching of truth is for the
sake of its being apprehended, of its producing reasonable conviction, the question of the degree of conviction possible in any
45 N. Balthasar and A. Simonet, "Le plan de la Somme contre les Gentils
de saint Thomas d' Aquin," Revue neo-scolastique de philosophie, 32 ( 1930),
183-214, especially pp. 185 (note 1), 186-188, 203. Balthasar and Simonet
consider as well the views of De Broglie, Blanche, and Mulard, as well as
those of M. Berten in "A propos de la Summa Contra Gentiles," Criterion
[Barcelona], 4 (1928), 175-183. Compare the reviews by H.·M. Feret in
Bulletin Thomiste, t.3/an.7, ##86-87, pp. [105]-[112].
46 With the 1950 edition of his Introduction,
Chenu holds that the Contr"l,
Gentiles is a theological apologetic, but also a deeply historical work, engaged in the concrete reality of the confrontation between Christianity and
Islam; compare Introduction a l'etude de Saint Thomas d'Aquin (3rd ed.,
Montreal: I.E. M., and Paris: J. Vrin, 1974), pp. 247-251. Gauthier argues,
to the contrary, that the intention of the work is the supra-historical "intention of wisdom"; see his "Introduction historique," pp. 87-99. Michael
B. Crowe seems to combine Goree, Bouyges, and Chenu, saying that the work
aims at two missionary fronts, the one foreign and the other domestic; see
"St. Thomas Against the Gentiles," Irish Theological Quarterly, 29 (1962),
93-120, especially pp. 104, 106. In a persuasive essay, somewhat at odds
with his introduction to the English translation of the Contra Gentiles,
Anton Pegis sees Thomas as transforming the Aristotelian project by ordering it to the Incarnation; see "Qu'est-ce que la Summa contra Gentiles,"
L'Homme devant Dieu: Melanges . ... de Lubac (Paris: Aubier, 1964),
especially pp. 172, 181-182. Quintin Turiela argues that the work is intended
to show educated believers the truth of what they hold by faith; see his
"La intenci6n de santo Tomas en la 'Summa contra Gentiles,'" Studium
[Madrid], 14 (1974), 371-401.

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MARK D. JORDAN

subject-matter is most important. The division is recalled
again when Thomas says that there is a twofold mode of truth
"in what we confess (confitemur) of God" (1.8. #14). The
first truths" exceed every power of human reason"; the second
truths are those to which " natural reason can also reach."
These latter truths were " demonstratively proved " by the
philosophers, "led by the light of natural reason" (I.8. #14).
Note here that reason is said not to exhaust, but to touch these
accessible truths-and so we must understand the demonstrative proofs of the philosophers not as Cartesian reductions,
but as exemplary forms of rational instruction. To say that the
philosophers proved them demonstratively is to say that they
constructed fully rational pedagogies leading to these conclusions. Thomas stresses that some truths quite obviously exceed the power of human pedagogy because men do not now
know God's essence and stand low in the hierarchy of created
intelligences (1.8. #16-17) . He adds that they have a daily experience of error about sen.'!i,blethings (1.8. #18) .
This argument is amplified in the next chapter when Thomas
concludes that truths of the second class a.re fittingly proposed
to man for belief because of the weakness of human speculation. If even naturally accessible truths were left solely for
philosophic demonstration, only a few would come to know
God, and that after a long time and with much admixture of
error (I.4. #28-25) . These arguments, which are ex convenientia, are adapted by Thomas from several sources, but especially from a longer list in Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed.47 Here they are introduced to secure the point that the
divine clemency acted well (" salubriter ") in providing its
human pupils with a revelation even of naturally accessible
truths (I.4. #26) . The converse argument is made in the next
47 For a schematic analysis of the six texts in which Thomas treats this
question, see P. Synave, "La revelation des verities divines naturelles d'apres
saint Thomas d'Aquin," in Melanges Ma,ndonnet (Paris: J. Vrin, 1930), I,
327-370, particularly pp. 328-352. Synave concludes that the Contra Gentiles
marks Thomas's mature re-formulation of Maimonides's five reasons (pp. 350351). But the dependence on Maimonides is still unmistakable; compare the
charts on pp. 333 and 344.

THE ' SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES'

189

chapter, where Thomas defends God for having revealed truths
that exceed human reason altogether. He argues, first, that
nothing will be desired or sought unless it is known. His examples are the promises of the Christian religion and the moral
persuasion of ancient philosophy. The philosophers had to
persuade men to leave sensual pleasures for more estimable
ones ("honestatem ") by showing them that there were goods
more powerful than the sensory; there are higher pleasures in
the exercise of active or contemplative virtues. Thomas gives
no specific illustration and there is none to be found in Maimonides's discussion of preparatory disciplines. 48 Indeed, the
reference to ancient philosophy is added by Thomas himself.
He here summarizes the project of 'Gentile' persuasion to the
philosophic life and to striving towards participation in the divine. As if to emphasize that Greek origin, Thomas takes
three auctorita.tes in this chapter from Aristotle-and then
confirms them with two from Scripture.
The concern for justified persuasion is continued in the sixth
chapter with its distinction between sober and frivolous conviction (I.6. #36-41); in the seventh chapter, with analogies
between divine and human teaching (I.7. #43); and in the
eighth, with its remarks on the usefulness and the delight of
exercise in the pursuit of what exceeds present capacity (I.8.
#49). But persuasion stands forth most clearly in the final
chapter of the prologue, the ninth, where Thomas draws the
compositional conclusion from the doctrine of the two modes
of truth.
Those truths which can be reached by the labor of reason, he
says, should be set forth by demonstrative reasons, "by which
the adversary can be convinced" (I.9. #52) . The higher
48 Maimonides,
Dux seu director dubitantium aut perplemorum, ed. A.
Giustiani (Paris, 1520; rptd. Frankfurt: Minerva, 1964), I.33, f. 13r-v. On
the peculiarites of this Latin version, which reproduces that used by Thomas,
see Wolfgang Kluxen, "Literargeschichtliches
zum lateinischen
Moses
Maimonides," Recherches de theologie ancienne et medwvale, 21 ( 1954), 3250, especially 32-35; and Kluxen, "Die Geschichte des Maimonides im lateinischen Abendland .. .," in Judentum im Mittelalter, ed. Paul Wilpert (Ber·
lin: de Gruyter, 1966), 146-166, especially pp. 156-157.

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truths cannot be reached by such demonstrative reasons and
so one ought not to try to " convince the adversary" by their
means, but only to address or resolve his difficulties (l.9. #52).
Indeed, the only way of " convincing the adversary " in such
cases is by the authority of Scripture, divinely confirmed by
miracles (1.9. #53) . In regard to such higher truths, one will
only advance verisimilitudes for the exercise and comfort of
the faithful, not "for convincing adversaries" (1.9. #54).
Thomas proposes, then, first to show forth those truths which
faith proffers and which reason can also investigate, using
authorities from the Philosophers and the Saints-" so that
these truths might be confirmed and the adversary convinced "
(1.9. #55) . He will then turn to the higher truths, in order to
" resolve the reasons of the adversaries " and to declare the
truth of the faith by probable arguments and Scriptural authority (1.9. #56) .
I have here reproduced Thomas's language, even at the risk
of illustrating faulty repetition, in order to show that the
phrase 'to convince an adversary (or adversaries)' recurs five
times in three short paragraphs. The structure of the Contra
Gentiles as Thomas proposes it is phrased in terms of a rhetorical or pedagogical efficacy. But who is to be persuaded and
about what? The audience is not the ' adversary ' himself, not
the prospective convert. Thomas wants to show rather how
an adversary could be convinced. To whom will he show
this? He will show it to believers who are concerned with the
persuasion of unbelievers-that is, to all thinking believers
whatever. The means by which he shows it to believers-this
is a second order of persuasion, a higher rhetoric, by which he
teaches those who would persuade. More exactly, it is an
anthology of exemplary arguments divided by a distinction in
persuasion. This is the conclusion of the prologue and, I think,
of the debate over the two truths.
Still, in order to teach believers about what can and cannot
be demonstrated, Thomas must undertake a persuasive clarification of the truth of faith. As it teaches believers how to persuade, the Contra Gentiles must also persuade believers to be-

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come habituated in the whole of Christian wisdom. The work
recognizes a distinction between the realm in which reason can
be persuaded by demonstration or probable arguments and one
in which reason can be addressed and exercised but not probatively persuaded. It offers this recognition to believers who accept and ought rightly to understand truths in both realms.
How is such a general rhetoric for believers to be constructed?
It would seem tha.t answers to this question about structure
can be had by comparing Thomas's proposed compositional
pattern with its generic antecedents.
3. TheGenre
Two suggestions towards generic antecedents are provided
immediately in the sources used for the prologue itself. The
first is the explicit auctoritas of Aristotle's Metaphysics the
second is the implicit reliance on Maimonides's Guide. I will
take them in order.
Since Jaeger, modern readers have known of the connection
between the first two chapters of the Metaphysics and Aristotle's Protreptikos. 49 They have thus known, though they
have not always appreciated, that the opening of the Metaphysics stands in a long line of similarly motivated philosophic
writings. The genre of philosophic protreptic was used for a
millenium after Isocrates. 50 Extant or partially extant members of the genre would include entire Platonic dialogues and
sections in them (such as the conversation between Socrates
Jaeger, Aristotle (2nd ed., Oxford: Clarendon, 1948), pp. 68-71.
surveys of the history of protreptic in ancient philosophy, see Paul
Hartlich, "De exhortatione a Graecis Romanisque scriptarum historia et
indole," Leipziger Studien fur classischen Philologie, 11 ( 1889), 207-336;
Paul Wendland, Anaa;imenes von Lampsakos. Studien zur altesten Geschichte
der Rhetorik ... (Berlin: Weidmann, 1905), pp. 71-101; Martinus Mesotten,
" De wijsgerige protreptiek voor Aristoteles," Philologische Studien [Louvain], 4 ( 1932-33), 161-189; Michel Ruch, L'Hortensius de Oiceron: Histoire
et reconstitution (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1958), 15-27, but especially pp. 1518, Ingemar During, Aristotle's Protrepticus: An Attempt at Reconstruction,
Studia Graeca et Latina Gothoburgensia ([Copenhagen:] Acta Universitatis
Gothoburgensis [Almqvist & Wiksell], 1961), pp. 19-27.
49 Werner
50 For

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MARK D. JORDAN

and Clinias in the Euthydemus) , the Protreptikos of Posidonius, Cicero's Hortensius, the 90th of Seneca's Epistulae
morales1 Iamblichus's Protreptikos, and the 24th oration of
Themistius. The genre was so widely adopted that it invited
reflection and systematization. The treatises by Posidonius
and Iamblichus are not so much protreptics as anthologies of
protreptic commonplaces. Moreover, the works so far mentioned are only those that would seem to fall under the strictest definition of philosophic protreptic. There are many other
sorts of writing that could be taken as having a similar persuasive end. Among those would be the long line of works contrasting the other arts, especially rhetoric, with true wisdom.
Another group of titles would be those surveys of learning that
introduce a philosophic teleology into the paideia of the arts.
Finally, one might want to consider as protreptics to philosophy the formal admonitions to contemplative piety, such as
Porphyry's letter to his wife, the Pros Markellan.
It is difficult to state a precise definition of protreptic that
would bind together these different works, whether of the
strict or loose sense. The ancient authors themselves offer
various definitions, but each expresses a prescription rather
than a description. Nor can it be said that the end envisaged
for protreptic persuasion was the same for all, since the notion
of the end varied crucially with philosophic school and at least
technically with author in a school. Still, one can specify the
term 'protreptic' in this way. A protreptic was originally a.
persuasion to the study and practice of some art or skill; for
philosophic writers, it became an exhortation to the practice
of the philosophic art, which required virtues of inquiry and
contemplation. The existence of a protreptic genre shows that
beginning the practice of such virtues required persuasion, that
this persuasion was undertaken against competing claims, and
that the character of the persuasion was meant to secure the
character of the virtues practiced after it.
Of the long list of ancient protreptics, only the smallest fraction was known to Thomas. He knew at first hand from Cicero

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a number of works, but not, of course, the Hortensius. 51 He
might have gathered some sense of Cicero's protreptic from
the remarks on wisdom in De officiis 52 or from those on philosophy in the Tusculan Disputations. 53 Seneca enjoyed a wide
reputation for moral teaching among Latin readers in the rnth
century, but figures in Thomas chiefly as an authority on the
wise man's conquest of passions. 54 It might seem more likely
that Thomas would have learned of ancient philosophic protreptic through its appearances in Christian writers, from both
their descriptions and their imitations. Thomas speaks no
judgment about the Conifessions' praise for Cicero and seems
not to have noticed the protreptic structure of such early
Augustinian works as the Contra Academicos. He did not have
Clement of Alexandria, whose Protreptikos and Paidagogos are
Christian revisions of philosophic exhortation. Thomas's reexample of Christian protreptic, is confined to logical and technically theological matters. References to the Consolation do
not advert to its drama. These particular misses in the reading of protreptic are made easier, perhaps, by Thomas's generally harsh judgment on rhetoric. 55
Still, Thomas may be said to understand the importance of
51 Clemens Vansteenkiste,
" Cicerone nell'opera di S. Tommaso," Angelicum,
36 (1959), 343-382, especially pp. 378-379.
52 For example, De offi,ciis, l.4.I3, l.6.I8-I9, l.44-I55-I56.
53 For example, Tusculanarum
Quaestionum, 1.4.7-8, 2.1.I-2.5.I3, 3.l.I-3.3.7,
4.1.1-4.3.7, 5.1.1-5.5.11
54 See, for example, Super Sent. I d.46 a.4 obj.I, II d.33 q.2 a.2 sc.2, III
d.I5 q.2 a.2 qc.I obj.2 and d.35 q.2 a.I sol.2. There are other references on
moral matters (such as the naturalness of death) and on miscellaneous bits
of ancient culture. Seneca is cited only once in De veritate and then for a
definition of 'idea' ( q.2 a.IO sc.l). He is never cited explicitly in the Contra
Gentiles. I leave aside the question, how far this decrease might signify a
different judgment on Seneca and how far it is the result of Thomas's
tendency to simplify his handling of auctoritates after the Sentences-commentary. On Seneca's wider importance for the twelfth century, see KlausDieter Nothdurft, Studien zum Einfiiiss Senecas auf die Philosophie und
Theologie des zwolften Jahrhunderts (Leiden: E. J. Brill, I963).
55 There is an interesting exception in the Contra impugnantes
Dei cultum,
ps.3 c.5, where Thomas defends the utility of rhetoric in the setting forth of
divine teaching.

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MARK D. JORDAN

beginning philosophic practice rightly. For example, he applies
the Ciceronian model of the exordium to the opening of Aristotle's De Anima and its remarks on delight in learning. 56
There is no such explicitly rhetorical approach to the Meta.physics, but there is a sense of its persuasive purposes. In his
commentary on the Metaphysics, finished some ten years after
the Contra Gentiles, Thomas paraphrases at length Aristotle's
remarks on the desirability of wisdom. 57 More summarily,
Thomas says that the purpose of Aristotle's prologue is to show
the dignity and end of metaphysics. 58 In works prior to the
Contra Gentiles, Thomas frequently appeals to these same
chapters to secure the lofty characterization of wisdom. 59
Thomas sees that Aristotle begins the Metaphysics not just
with a designation of the study, but with its praise.
Even so, the problem of persuasion in Thomas requires a
thoroughgoing transformation of ancient protreptic. Most
philosophic protreptics presume citizenship and move from it
to the call of philosophy, variously conceived. In Thomas's
protreptic, what is presumed is Christian baptism, membership in the Church. His call is not to conversion, but to progress in the practice of Christian wisdom. This means that his
persuasion, as compared to the philosophic, has a delayed beginning and no presently attainable end. The protreptic of
Christian wisdom is internal to faith but thus co-extensive
with the status viae.
Of course, the Christian transformation of persuasion to
wisdom Thomas could see in many places-and he practices
it not only in the Contra Gentiles. There are what might be
called sapiential exhortations in a number of Latin academic
56 Super

De an., lib. 1 lect. 1 n. 2, EB 6, 6, col. I.
Met., lib. 1 lect. 1, nn. 1-4 and 23-24, EB 4, 391, cols. 1-2, and nn.
f3-24, EB 4, 392, col. 2; lib. 1 lect. 2 nn. 1-8, EB 4, 393, cols. 1-2; lib. 1
lect. 3 nn. 2-14, EB 4, 394, cols. 1-3.
58 Super Met., lib. 1 lect. 4 n. 4, EB 4, 394, col. 3.
59 See, for example, the commentary on Boethius's De Trinitate,
q. 2 a. 2
ad Im (ed. Decker [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1960], p. 88, line 1) ; q. 5 a. 1 ad
2m (Decker 167.13); q. 5 a. 4 sc 3 (Decker 192.17); q. 6 a. 4 obj. 3 (Decker
224.13-14).
57 Super

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works familiar in the Parisian schools-consider Hugh of StVictor's Didascalicon,60 Gundissalinus's De divisione philosophiae,.61 and in William of Auvergne's De universo. 62 Among
works of mendicant authors prior to rn60, such prologues can
be found in Robert Kilwardby's De ortu scientiarum 63 and in
Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum. 64 What is
perhaps most interesting, Thomas himself uses such a prologue
based on the fourfold division of wisdom for his scriptum on
the Sentences of Peter Lombard; 65 a very similar topic is
treated in his inaugural lecture as regent master of theology. 66
Still, these Latin antecedents are no more helpful than allusions to the Metaphysics in specifying the structure of persuasion to be undertaken in the Contra GentilRs. While
Thomas may share with them the faith in a revealed wisdom,
he construes differently the consequences for teaching that
faith. What is still required is to see how a specific notion of
persuasion to revealed wisdom is connected to a specific compositional structure.
60 Hugh of St-Victor,
Didascalicon, I.I, ed. C. H. Buttimer (Washington:
Catholic University, 1939), p. 4.
s1 Dominicus Gundissalinus,
De divisione philosophiae, prol., ed. Ludwig
Baur (Munster: Aschendorff, 1903), pp. 1-19.
62 William of Auvergne,
De universo, I prol. & cap. 1, as in Opera omnia
(Paris, 1674; rptd. Frankfurt, Minerva, 1963), I, pµ. \93-1\94.
63 Robert
Kilwardby, De ortu scientiarum,
cap. 1, ed. Albert Judy
([London:] British Academy, and Toronto: P. I. M. S., 1976), pp. 9-10.
64 Bartholomaeus
Anglicus, De proprietatibus
rerum, praef. (Frankfurt,
1601; rptd. Frankfurt: Minerva, 1964), pp. 1-2. Examples of such prefaces
after the Contra Gentiles would include such diverse works as Gilbert of
Tournai's De modo addiscendi, cap. 2, where it has a specifically pedagogical
purpose, and the anonymous Compendium philosophiae edited by Michel de
Bouard (Paris: Broccard, 1936), pp. 121-122.
65 Scrip tum super Sent., I prol., ed. P. Mandonnet,
I (Paris: Lethielleux,
1929), pp. 1-5.
66 See the Breve principium, l!JB 3, 648, col. 2, to 649, col. 3. Grabmann
approaches the prologue to the Summa theologiae by comparison with other
prologues in the genre, especially that of Robert of Melun; see his Introduction to the Theological Summa of St. Thomas, tr. J. S. Zybura (St. Louis
and London: B. Herder, 1930), pp. 60-63; and the Geschichte der scholastischen Methode (rptd. Graz: Akad. Druck- u. Verlaganstalt, 1957), II, 340358, for the text from Robert and Grabmann's comments on it.

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I turn to the second source in Thoma.s's prologue, namely,
Maimonides, with whom Thomas would seem to share both
acceptance of revelation and familiarity with the Aristotelian
tradition of wisdom. Are there structural parallels here? The
suggestion gains plausibility because Maimonides seems most
to have affected Latin academic circles through Albert and
Albert's students, including Thomas. 67 Of course, Thomas disagreed with Maimonides on a number of issues having to do
with the transparency of human knowledge about God,
Maimonides usually taking the more negative view.68 But how
did Thomas stand with regard to Maimonides's persuasive project in the Guicle?
The Guide begins, in Thomas's Latin version, with a blessing on a nameless student and a dedicatory epistle to him. The
student is beloved because he so earnestly desires wisdom,
though his prior training had not adequately prepared him
for its study. 69 Maimonides is writing the Guide to complete
the hierarchy of learning which has again been interrupted.
There follows an invocation compounded from one verse of
Psalm 143 and two verses from Proverbs. 70 Maimonides then
begins his proemium with a plain statement of intention: the
Guide is meant to explain the difficult locutions of the
prophets. 71 After stressing that he does not write for all,
Maimonides says more fully: " the intention of this whole book
is that the law be understood by the way of truth (per mam
67 See Kluxen,
"Maimonides und die Hochscholastik,"
Philosophisohes
Jahrbuoh, 63 (1955), 151-165, especially pp. 157-165.
68 See Kluxen,
"Maimonides and die Hochscholastik,"
pp. 163-164; and
Leo J. V. Elders, " Les rapports entre la doctrine de la prophetie en S.
Thomas et le 'Guide des egares' de Maimonide," Divus Thomas [Piacenza],
78 (1975), 449-456, and in Aotas del Quinto Oongreso Internacional de
Filosofia Medieval (Madrid: Ed. Nacional, 1979), I, 677-684.
69 Maimonides, Duw, f. 2r: "Anima tua preciosa fuit in oculis meis propter
vehemens desiderium tuum in acquirendo sapientiam .... Et dixi in corde
meo: fortassis amor illius erga sapientiam amor major est quam apprehensio
intellectus ipsius."
10 Psalms 143 :8; Proverbs 8 :4 and 22: 17.
11 Maimonides, Duw, f. 2r: "Istius libri prima intentio est explanare diversitates nominum quae inveniuntur in libris prophetarum ... "

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veritatis). For the intention of this book is to purge (experg'efacere) the mind of the just man ... " (f. 2r). Maimonides follows with remarks on the appearance of truth in Scripture,
which shows forth its secrets briefly and through the veil of
symbols. Any teacher wishing to expound such matters must
replace Scriptural symbolism with deliberate brevity and obscurity. Maimonides ends with specific instructions to the
reader, including remarks on seven reasons for the semblance
of self-contradiction in a work.
The prologue of the Contra Genti"les may be said to agree
with the opening of the Guide in its emphasis on wisdom, in
its desire to complete a hierarchy of knowledge, and in its subjection of philosophical study to Scripture. The Contra Gentiles disagrees with the Guide crucially on private and public
in spiritual teaching. There is no device of dedication to a
single student in Thomas, though this was a common topic in
prefaces; nor is there any long analysis of esoteric writing. On
the contrary, Thomas begins with a Scriptural quotation that
emphasizes the public and disputatious character of wisdom.
(Thomas's opening citation is also taken from Proverbs 8,
though not from Maimonides's verse.) Moreover, Thomas's
doctrine of the double mode of manifesting truth may be said
to replace Maimonides's more elaborate and pessimistic hierarchy of minds in relation to divine radiance. 72 Maimonides
writes obscurely for the just; Thomas writes publicly for the
community of believers.
If Thomas's prelude seems at once to echo and to reverse the
project of the Guide, a comparison of the two structures is
even more ambiguous. It is possible to take the first seventy
chapters of the Guide 5 to delete most of the short sections that
gloss particular scriptural locutions or passages, and then to
match the remaining chapters with some plausibility against
the topics of Contra. Gentiles, I. Thus, the use of remotion to
establish negative truths about God's simplicity corresponds
12 See Maimonides, Dum, proi. ff. 2v-3r. Maimonides offers something like
the doctrine of two modes of truth in DU11J, I.30, f. llr.

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MARK D. JORDAN

to the reiterated emphasis in the Guide on God's incomparable
incorporeality. 73 More particularly, Thomas's chapters on remotion (14), the metaphysics of divine simplicity (21-22), and
divine incorporeality (20, 27) find direct correspondences in
the Guide (respectively, 34 and 57; 56; 54 and 75) . Again,
Thomas's treatment of the divine names (30-36) corrects a
similarly explicit treatment in the Guide (26, 51-52, 59-59,
and 60-63 for the scriptural particulars). The main tenets of
divine knowledge, divine causality, and divine life are also
established in the Guide's first book (respectively 67, 68, and
45).
But these correspondences, which are explicable in many
ways other than as direct imitation, also conceal great differences. First, as is clear in my choice of chapters, the Scriptural
hermeneutic of the Guide is lacking in Thomas as a compositional motive. Thomas is not concerned in the Contra. Gentiles
to gloss the obscurities of Scripture, except incidentally. 74
Second, the order of the Guide is not followed by the Contra
Gentiles, as regards either sequence or division of topics. To
take the obvious example: Thomas begins the argument of the
first book with a consideration of demonstrations for the existence of God; Maimonides treats of them only at the beginning
of the second book and then in the context of divine creation.
Again, Maimonides tends to treat attributes of life before
those of intellect and causality or will. Thomas's order is just
the reverse. Thomas may be interested in Maimonides on the
divine names, or Maimonides against anthropomorphisms, or
Maimonides on specific details of the Islamic Aristotle, but he
does not seem to be following either Maimonides's structure or
his general conclusions.
73 Of course, Maimonides
is not the only source of the insistence against
anthropomorphism.
Thomas knows of it from many patristic sources, such as
Augustine, De Trinitate, I.1.1·3, ed. W. J. Mountain (Turnhout: Brepols,
1968), pp. 27-31; and John Damascene, De fide orthodoma, cap. 1, tr. Burgundio of Pisa, ed. E. M. Buytaert (Louvain and Paderborn: F. Schonigh,
1955)' pp. 1-2.
74 For example,
I. 42. #353b: "Quae quidem consuetudo loquendi etiam
in Sacra Scriptura invenitur, dum sancti angeli, aut etiam homines vel
iudices, dii nominantur ... "

THE ' SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES'

199

There is one peculiarity in the structure of the Guide, however, that points towards the central feature in the structure
of the Contra Gentiles. Maimonides ends with the following
sequence of topics: providence, prophecy, the rationality of the
Torah, and the implications of God's law for human life. So,
too, the Contra Gentiles, in all of its divisions, ends with depictions of the human good. The structure of the Contra Gentiles, as of the Guide, is not so much a descending deduction as
an ascending exhortation. Here, indeed, the Maimonidean
auctoritas helps to disclose Thomas's pedagogical structure.
The end of the wisdom promised in the prologue of the Contra
Gentiles is an act, an exercise of life. The structure for offering
such a wisdom is not that of deduction to the last particular,
but rather the tracing of a route by which one can be led to
the highest end. The highest purpose of the work is not
apodictic but epideictic, not demonstrative but hortatory. In
short, it is a protreptic to the contemplation of God; it is an
ascent to God through the world and law which culminates in
the 'practice,' that is, the possession of the wisdom of a vision.
The protreptic of the Contra Gentiles shares with ancient protreptics the use of persuasive devices as an introduction to the
practice of contemplative virtues; it shares with Maimonides
the structural suggestion that such virtues are completed beyond the simply natural by means of divine exhortation. This
hypothesis of protreptic structure must now be connected,
however briefly, to features in the work beyond the prologue.
4. Protreptic Structure

If the Contra Gentiles is a protreptic work, it ought to be
possible to find in it the structures and devices of persuasion
to an end. 75 Now the most obvious persuasive structure is the
75 This
claim has already been made by Guy H. Allard in his "Le
'Contra Gentiles' et le modele rhetorique," Lavai Theologique et Philosophique, 30 (1974), 237-250. Allard compares the structure in Thomas with
the Ciceronian paradigms for deliberative discourse. I differ from Allard
both in regard to the importance of any particular rhetorical paradigm and
in his emphasis on the political.

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MARK D. JORDAN

ascent to the human good in the first 63 chapters 0£ the third
Book. The argument rises from a general assertion 0£ teleological order (chapters 1-16), through the thesis that God is the
end of all and 0£ intellectual substances particularly (17-26) ,
to a. comparison 0£ contemplation with all other possible claimants to human happiness (27-47). Thomas ends with a technical analysis 0£ the contemplation 0£ God in beatitude, but
reminds the reader that this fulfills the philosophic longing
for highest contemplation (48-63; compare 41-44 on the opinion 0£ the philosophers about contemplation) .
This ascent contains several features 0£ classical and Christian protreptic. There is, first, the synkrisis or comparison
with alternate goods, in which contemplative wisdom emerges
as most valuable (27-36). Thomas has already remarked that
this weaning away from the seduction 0£ alternative pleasures
is the important persuasive work 0£ the philosophers. (I.5.
#29c). More specifically, Thomas must rule out the possibility
that happiness consists in the exercise of the political virtues or
of the arts-just as Greek philosophic protreptic had to keep its
hearers from accepting as final the rival pedagogies 0£ the
sophists and the poets. Thomas also offers, in second place, a
criticism of alternative descriptions 0£ wisdom (41-44). This,
too, is a kind 0£ synkrisis, a comparison 0£ alternative claims to
the possession of philosophic wisdom. The Greek equivalent
would be an examination 0£ the rival schools. But Thomas
adds, in third place, an evocation 0£ the good to be attained in
beatitude; he writes three lyrical chapters in which he shows
how the vision 0£ God makes men eternal participants in divine life (61-62), even as it fulfills every human desire for
knowledge, virtue, honor, fame, wealth, pleasure, immortality,
and community (III.63. #2378-2383) . Thomas ends this
peroration by juxtaposing the Aristotelian and Scriptural
praises of wisdom, so that the reader might see the one perfected in the other (III.63. #2383) .
But the third Book does not stop with that evocation-and
it is important that it not do so. Thomas turns with the briefest of connecting passages to a long consideration of provid-

THE ' SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES'

201

ence. The treatment of providence is required precisely to assure the reader that the distant end of contemplation, which
so little resembles our life here, is within the power of the ruler
of this cosmos. God the end is also God the 'governor' or
'ruler' of the mea.ns.76 But His providence is not coercive.
The second thesis of the treatment of providence is that
human agents are free from the coercion of celestial bodies (8487) and separate substances (88-89); they may follow God
without fearing fortune or fate (91-92). At much greater
length, Thomas analyzes the divine providence over intellectual
creatures (111-113) in order to show the necessity of God's
teaching them (114-129) and the usefulness of God's counsels
for them (130-139). The culmination of the treatment of
providence comes in the argument for man's need of divine
grace in attaining the end already proposed (147-163). The
book ends with a chapter on election and reprobation that
emphasizes man's freedom under or within God's glory. The
last line of the book is a doxology from Romans (11: 35-36).
This doxology is the seal on the doctrine that the human end
cannot be obtained without God's help.
Now it seems to me that this hortatory structure of the
third Book finds echoes both earlier and later in the Contra
Gentiles. I have not attempted to establish it in any detail
for the third Book, and will not to do so for the others. I
would like, nonetheless, to point out a few of the most salient
structural devices. The transitions in the Contra Gentiles are
by no means as explicit or as detailed as those of the later
Summa,1 where the most striking beauty is a comprehensive
series of pedagogical connections. But there are moments of
transition in the Contra Gentiles which disclose something of
its underlying structure. I begin with those in the first Book.
At the end of the prologue, Thomas writes that the first
76 Thomas says exactly this in his prologue to exposition of Job, which is
contemporary with Oontra Gentiles, II-III; see Weisheipl, Friar Thomas, p.
368, #25. Thomas writes that the denial of providence is the destruction of
all virtue and the fostering of vice; see Empositio in Job, prol., EL 26, 11.
41-48, EB 5, 1, col. 1.

MARK D. JORDAN

thing to be demonstrated is God's existence, " without which
every consideration of divine things is removed" (I.9. #58).
The last of the demonstrative arguments concludes that
there is someone " by whose providence the world is governed "
(I.13. #115) . The existence of God is not a fact only, but a
force over human life. There follows the via remotionis, which
establishes the negative properties about God, especially his
simplicity (14-28). It is in turning to God's perfection that
Thomas must treat again of the divine names, in order to secure resemblance between God and creatures (28-36). More
specifically, he must show that his protreptic speaking about
God is not" in vain" (I.36. #301). The protreptic motivation
makes it appropriate that the center of the first book should
describe God's understanding, willing, and living. God's understanding makes him the final end for intellectual creatures;
God's willing grounds providence; God's life is that to which
men are called. The last section of the first Book concerns the
divine life (97-102); the last chapter argues that God's beatitude exceeds every other beatitude (I.102). There is both a
rejection of false happiness (I.102. #849) and a doxology here,
too: "Ipsi igitur qui singulariter beatus est, honor sit et gloria
in saecula saeculorum" (I.102. #850).
The second Book aids the protreptic by establishing God's
causality over creation and man's essential place in the hierarchy of intelligences. The preface promises as much. In justifying the consideration of creatures as part of Christian wisdom, Thomas offers four arguments. The first is that creatures
imitate divine wisdom and so produce wonder and reflection
(II.2. #859) . The second argument holds that the consideration of creatures leads to fear and reverence of God (II.2.
#860); the third, that it kindles in man the divine love (II.2.
#861). The fourth argument shows that meditation on creatures gives a certain similitude of divine wisdom (II.2. #862) .
The consideration of creatures is also useful in destroying those
errors about God which prevent contemplative ascent to himby deifying matter, by exaggerating creatures, by exalting
necessity, by debasing human teleology (II.3. #865-868).

THE 'SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES'

203

Each of these eight reasons is directly connected to the protreptic. Each supposes that the purpose of the work is to bring
about a right ordering in the active pursuit of the divine. The
considerations proposed hasten pursuit; the errors rejected are
those that would prevent it. This is confirmed in the second
Book's last section, which treats of the highest created intellects, the separated substances; the last lines here are another
doxology to the divine mind (II.IOI. #1860) . In the Books
leading up to the third, then, Thomas frequently points towards the persuasion towards the highest good as a gracious
gift from its possessor.
The structure of the fourth Book is usually set out rather
prosaically as follows: the Trinity (2-26), the Incarnation (2755), the sacraments (56-78), and the final resurrection together with the last judgment (79-97) . But notice these structural peculiarities. The discussion of the Trinity is introduced
under the rubric of ' generation ' in God; it is meant to show
how far God's life is like that of other living things (IV.2.
#3354c; compare IV.26. #3629, "in living things (viventibus) "). The discussion ends with a reiteration of the similitude
which links human thought to the Trinitarian processions
(IV. 26. #3631-2). The treatment of the Incarnation ends
with the question of convenien.tia (IV.53-55) .77 The positive
arguments for its appropriateness begin with the assertion that
God's incarnation is the most efficacious help for man's attainment of beatitude (IV.54. #3923) . The same reasoning appears in other arguments and in the replies to the objections.
The sacraments are introduced and treated as the application
and manifestation of Christ's role in human healing (IV.56.
#3962). The last of the sacraments to be treated is matrimony, which is justified as extending through time man's
search for the good (IV.78. #4119, 4124). It goes without saying that the resurrection and the last judgment are concerned
quite literally with the end of human life-indeed, of the whole
11 See the opposite order in Summa theol. III, where the treatment of convenientia ( q. 1) precedes the treatment of the manner of the Incarnation
(qq. 2-19).

Q04

MARK D. JORDAN

of human history. Although such topics frequently appear at
the end of comprehensive theological works, Thomas here provides not only a designation of human life after resurrection,
but a description of it (8£-88). Some of the hypotheses may
seem extraordinary, but their point is to convince the reader
that all human desire will be fulfilled in the city of the glorified
(see especially IV.86). The last chapter of the entire work
begins with these words, "Thus when the last judgment has
taken place, human nature will be constituted completely in
its end" (IV.97. #4Q85). The chapter ends with the divine
proclamation of eternal joy and exultation (IV.97. #4Q9Q).
It would be possible-indeed, necessary for a complete argument-to carry out such structural analyses in much greater
detail and to show how far other reasons, such as traditional
arrangement, might account for the features mentioned. But
let me simply enunciate that large task and then suggest that
the protreptic character of the Contra, Gentiles can also be discerned at closer range-for example, in the locutions by which
auctoritates are introduced, in the arrangement of multiple
arguments for a single point, and in the choice of those particular topics to be treated at length. I will be able to give
only a few examples under each heading, in order.
Thomas's consistent locutions for introducing Scriptural
authorities were already mentioned by Mulard in the debate
over De Broglie. Mulard's point was that the locutions showed
a separation between philosophical argument and theological
authority. 78 It seems to me that the use of the locutions is
more complicated, at least before the fourth Book, where they
begin to sound more like rubrics for proof-texts on controverted
doctrinal issues. In the first three Books, the locutions are
clearly not meant to adduce Scriptural texts as syllogistic
premisses in a philosophic demonstration. The repetition of
" also (etiam) " shows that the citations which they introduce
are supplements to the arguments. 79 More interesting, I think,
18 Mulard,

79 See

"Desir naturel," p. 8.

I. 14. #119, 39. #323, 44. #380, 50. #428, 67. #566.

THE ' SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES '

205

are the verbs which are used in these locutions: the authority
of Scripture or of the faith is said to "confirm" a truth, 80 to
" give testimony " to it, 81 to " agree " with it, 82 to " harmonize" with it, 83 to "profess" it, 84 to "confess" it, 85 to teach
it, 86 to "commemorate" it, 87 to "attest" it, 88 to "show" it, 89
to "proffer" it, 90 and to "protest" it. 91 These verbs suggest
that the citations are meant to add both evidence and emphasis. They add more evidence, because the Scripture already
counts as true for the Christian reader. They add emphasis,
because the Scripture is supremely authoritative and beautifully moving. But the most interesting locutions are those
which use a causal connective: Scripture says something or
faith holds something beca.use of the reasons enunciated in the
chapter. 92 Here we see the protreptic connection between rational and authoritative persuasion. The reader has been led
through a series of arguments; he has also been reminded that
the same doctrine is found in the authorities of his faith. The
80" Quod etiam
auctoritas Sacrae Scripturae confirmat" (I. 14. #119;
compare 39. #323, 47. #402, 60. #505, 65. #539 [" firmatur "], 68. #574,
75. #646, 78. #666, 91. #764, 97. #815).
81 "Huie autem veritati Divina .Auctoritas
testimonium perhibet" (I. 15.
#126; compare I. 43 #370, 57. #484, 66. #554); "testimonium affert" (I.
55. #464).
82 "Huie autem veritati
demonstratae concordat Divina .Auctoritas"
(I.
20. #188).
83 "His autem Sacrae Scripturae
auctoritas consonat" (I. 58. #493; compare 70. #610).
84 "Hane etiam veritatem Catholici Doctores professi sunt"
(I. 22. #212).
85 "Hane autem veritatem etiam fides catholica confitetur"
(I. 44. #380;
compare 72. #626).
86" Hoc etiam auctoritate
Scripturae canonicae edocemur" (I. 50. #428).
87 "Sacra Scriptura aliquando similitudinem
inter enum et creaturam commemora t " (I. 29. #271 ; com pare 91. #7 65 ) .
88 "Cui etiam sententiae
attestari videtur Scripturae Sacrae auctoritas"
(I. 49. #417).
89 "Quod autem Deus futura contingentia
sciat, etiam auctoritate Scripturae Sacrae ostenditur " (I. 67. #566) .
90 "Quam Scriptura Sacra profitetur"
(I. 82. #698).
91 "Eius etiam beatitudinem
Sacra Scriptura protestatur" (I. 100. #835).
92 ''Et inde est quod ... " (I. 29. #271) ; "hinc est quod ... " (I. 37.
#308, 40. #328, 41. #334, 56. #472, 61. #514, 99. #827) ; "propter quod
dicitur ... " (I. 38. #315).

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MARK D. JORDAN

complete persuasion to wisdom is accomplished when the
reader sees that the intelligibility of argument leads into the
intelligibility of Scripture. The reasons of the rational pedagogy pass over into the motives of Scriptural teaching.
It is in the sequence of arguments that the second sort of
microscopic evidence for a protreptic structure can be found.
In general, the Contra Gentiles is remarkable for not following the patterns of an academic dispute or an academic commentary. There are some sections, especially technical ones,
in which Thomas falls back on the devices of the quaestio;93
much more rarely does he carry out a proper lectio.94 The
typical chapter in the Contra Gentiles has a short introduction
or enunciation followed by a series of arguments that ends with
confirming auctoritates or historical specifications or both. The
arguments are not interdependent in any obvious way. It is
possible to reduce them by clustering them around certain
basic premisses, but this is a static classification. Much more
interesting is to notice that the arguments are variously cumulative in persuasive effect. First, to show that the same conclusion can be derived from very different premisses is to make
it more plausible. Second, readers who are not convinced by
one argument may be convinced by another. Thomas sometimes varies his starting points in the hope of casting a wider
argumentative net. Third, more obviously, there is sometimes
a progression in the arguments such that the last are more
comprehensive or penetrating than the first. A single passage
will have to serve as illustration. In II.16, Thomas offers
twelve arguments for creation ex nihilo, that is, with no preexisting matter. The first argument depends on a rule against
regression in natural causes ( #933) ; the second through the
fifth invoke some principle of universality in effect and cause
93 See especially
I.10-11, II.61/69, II.74-75, II.80-81, II.88-89, III.5-6,
III.8-9, III.54, III.69, III.108-109, III.131/134, III.132/135, III.136-137, IV.4.9,
IV.IO, IV.16/23, IV.25, IV.40/49, IV.51-52, IV.53-55, IV.62-68, IV.80-81. Note
the preponderance of such sections in the fourth Book. This is due to the
procedural limitation of answering objections against the mysteries of faith,
as in I.9. #56.
94 See especially II.61, 78.

THE ' SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES '

(#934-937) ; the sixth through the ninth stress disanalogies or
disproportions between matter and divine creation ( #938941); the tenth and eleventh argue from God as first being
(
. Or one might say that the principles are: no regression ( #933), universality of causation ( #934-935), peculiarities in the causation of being ( #936-937) , peculiarities in
the reception of effects by matter (#938-940) , and asymmetrical relationships (#941-943) . On either account, there
is a movement in the chapter from physical causality through
its expansions and distensions to basic ontological relations.
Note too that the arguments will appeal to readers of the
Physics, the Metaphysics of both Aristotle and Avicenna, and
the Liber de causis.
The third and last level at which to look for evidence of the
protreptic structure comes with the selection of topics to be
treated at length. One can see principles of selection at work
on the surface of other Thomist works. Thus, in the Sentences,
the selection is determined remotely by the Lombard's text
and directly by the tradition of commentary on it. In the
large Summa., by contrast, Thomas says explicitly that the
principle of selection is pedagogical concern for beginners.
What is the equivalent principle of economy in the Contra
Gentiles? The missionary hypothesis would explain the selection of topics here on the basis of the confrontation with Islam.
Goree would explain it as a reaction to the ' Latin Averroists.'
It seems, in fact, that the selection is made in relation to the
aim of persuasion to the practice of Christian wisdom, i.e., in
relation to a protreptic. Those topics are treated extensively
and most technically which have a direct bearing on persuasion to the highest good. This can be verified by looking to
points of apparent distension in the text.
One of the most obvious of these is the lengthy refutation in
Book II of false views about the human intellect (for example,
73-78) . Thomas treats these views extensively not
out of a technician's delight in detail, or from love of correction, but because man's possession of the highest good depends
on the individuality of intellects. The fashionable denial of

MARK D. JORDAN

that individuality requires extensive correction if the readers
are not to be prevented in advance from accepting the protreptic's persuasion. Thus, the conclusion of the arguments
against separation or unicity of intellects serves as a premiss
in the first, syllogistic proof for human immortality (11.70.
#1598). A similar reading can be given to the technical analysis of the beatific vision (111.51-60) . Coming at the end of
the ascent to the highest good, these chapters carry great
weight. They must show that God can be contemplated directly, but only by his gift-otherwise the rest of the third
Book will be otiose. If there is no direct contemplation, the
protreptic has no end; if there is no need for grace, the protreptic is in no way Christian. Similar reasoning directs
Thomas's technical emphasis on divine cognition of singulars
(l.63-71), on human freedom from creaturely determination
(Ill.84-88), and so on. It would not be difficult, in a complete reading, to explain the seemingly distended sections on
grounds of likely error in the readers and of importance in
the persuasion to the highest good.
At three more microscopic levels, then, the Contra Gentiles
shows signs of a protreptic motivation. It uses authorities, arranges arguments, and chooses technical disputes with an eye
on persuasion towards the practice of complete Christian wisdom. There are, of course, many other texts and several other
levels at which the same reading could be applied. Indeed,
the extent of its application would be limited just by Thomas's
success in ordering the composition around his highest purpose.
This accessus to the Contra Gentiles has argued that its
structure is protreptic. The work is concerned to persuade its
readers to the practice of the virtues of Christian wisdom, both
acquired and infused. Now persuasion to the practice of a
virtue will be sterile unless it can offer the opportunity for that
practice. It is a distinguishing principle in Aristotle that
virtues, including intellectual ones, are acquired by practice.
The best Aristotelian protreptic, then, would not only exhort
but engage; it would speak about the virtues to be acquired
even as it provided exemplary occasions on which to imitate

THE 'SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES '

Q09

those virtues. Here, too, Thomas succeeds in constructing the
Contra Gentiles. The work presents the virtues of Christian
wisdom above all by requiring that its readers practice themin following its structures, in learning its locutions, in discovering the order of its arguments, in understanding its technical
digressions. Perhaps most helpfully, the Contra Gentiles applies in hundreds of particular arguments the intelligible principia which are the seeds of speculative virtue. In this way, the
protreptic structure is not only an exordium to wisdom, but a
school for it.
MARK D. JORDAN

University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

THEISM:

AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL

DEFENSE

I

T IS MY PURPOSE in this essay to articulate reasons
which seem to me capable of convincing anyone for whom
the question is an open one 1 that we are warranted in
holding that there is a God, i.e., a Being, at least legitimately
thought of as a person, who is the source of all being and value
and hence capable of resolving all our moral and epistemic
conflicts (which is not to say that he has in fact done so) .2
The strategy of this argument is to employ a version of the
moral argument as a springboard from which to develop an
analogous argument from the normative character of metaphysical and epistemological principles.

I.
I begin with a version of the moral argument for the existence of God. Ethics does not merely designate some states of
affairs as good or bad; it designates some actions as obligatory
or forbidden. To some forms of human activity, which otherwise would be regarded only as less than ideal, it annexes what
Roger Casement called an "awful No." The interpretation of
such imperatives is an important issue: religious believers tend
to interpret them as the commands of God, and this way of
interpreting them affects the way believers approach moral
issues.
I now argue that this interpretation of moral imperatives,
while not the only possible one (and in fact somewhat one1 This

restriction, of course, is more formidable than it appears.
argument has ancestors at least as far back as Pascal. The present
formulation was suggested by Leszek Kolakowski, Religion (New York,
1982), esp. pp. 82-90, 188-197, where he discusses the maxim "If God does
not exist, then everything is permitted." Kolakowski, however, reaches an
agnostic conclusion.
2 This

210

THEISM:

AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL

DEFENSE

sided), is at least as attractive as any alternative. If God does
not exist,3 some other interpretation of moral imperatives will
have to be found: most probably, this interpretation will vary
from context to context, and from moral requirement to moral
requirement. 4 But, if God does exist, it is plausible to interpret
moral requirements as divine in origin. And the plausibility
of a religious interpretation of moral imperatives gives us at
at least some reason for asserting that there is a God.
What is distinctive in religious ethics arises from the belief
that union or communion with God is the highest good for a
human being. Putting this claim at the center of the theistic
case has a number of implications. Friendships, loves, and
loyalties among human beings are at once sources of obligation, ways of coming to recognize obligations already present,
and motives for doing what is right. The same may be said of
a human being's relationship to God.
The good of God's friendship has a double aspect, as God is
believed to be both the source of our existence and our Supreme Good. On the one hand, to stand in a proper relationship with God is to be at peace with oneself; one's relationship to God is in this respect parallel to, though more profound and intimate than, one's relationship with one's parents
or one's country. On the other hand, union or communion with
God can stand as our highest end-not as our only end, but
as an end that, since it takes precedence over all other ends in
cases of conflict, can establish an order among goods that
would otherwise form a chaos of conflicting considerations.
And since God is not only the Supreme Good but also the
Creator of all lesser goods, the pursuit and enjoyment of such
goods within the limits established by God can be brought into
systematic harmony with the pursuit and enjoyment of a right
relationship with God.
s If there is a God, the supposition of a world without him is an absurdity.
But we can still explore the implications of a possibly absurd hypothesis, as
is done in the construction of arguments by reductio ad absurdum. (I owe
this point to Robert M. Adams in conversation.)
4 For discussion
relevant to this possibility, see my essay "Relativism."
Monist, July, 1984.

PHILIP E. DEVINE

The most persistent objection to a theistic interpretation of
moral norms is that it represents a version of the doctrine that
might makes right: hence the notion that, for the theist, moral
norms are orders backed with the threat of Hell-fire. The only
possible answer is that power and goodness are not separable
in God as in human beings: in the words of Peter Geach, "all
the divine attributes, if thought out, coincide; God's power and
knowledge and will and truth are all one." 5

II.
Other interpretations of moral imperatives run into difficulty. If moral requirements are self-imposed, it is hard to distinguish morality from inclination. Treating the demands of
morality as universal in scope does not help matters. If I dislike the custom of putting ice in beer, I can wish that no one
ever put ice in beer; the wish is both costless and pointless. To
link moral imperatives to matters of human importance is to
raise the issue, what makes a matter one of human importance? Human beings disagree about how much importance
should be accorded human sexual behavior, for example. Those
who hold that to insist on bizarre (or simply non-utilitarian)
moral principles is to have failed to rise to the level of critical
thinking raise the issue: What makes critical thinking morally or otherwise imperative? 6 And any stronger interpretation
of morality as a set of universal imperatives, say one that requires that one do something to secure the observance of one's
imperatives, fails to cover all cases: for example, my belief that
Nero did wrong in having his mother killed.
Another interpretation of moral imperatives treats them as
stating the will of society, expressed through such institutions
as blame and punishment. We can formulate a conventionalist
theory of the right as follows: Actions are right or wrong as
the relevant community approves or condemns them, having
considered all appropriate facts and arguments. What counts
5 Providence

and Evil (Cambridge, Eng., 1977), p. 81.
at R. M. Hare, Moral Thinking (Oxford, 1981).

6 This clause is directed

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as the relevant community, and what the ethics of collective
deliberation may be, are for the moment at least open questions.
But the social interpretation of moral imperatives neglects
the two points at which appeals to individual conscience become inescapable: when the voice of society is divided, and
an individual must decide for himself what version of society's
requirements to accept; and when an individual, as has happened with persons conventionally regarded as very admirable,
is moved to reject the dominant voice of society and insist instead on moral standards of his own. (Admiration for Socrates
is conventional within our society.) In both these cases it is
possible to appeal to conventionally recognized principles in
support of one's position, but such principles can also be used
to support positions one rejects. A changing society is therefore in constant risk of dividing into a multitude of subsocieties and sub-sub-societies, even apart from the divisions already created by such facts as social class. Hence to regard
society as the author of morality is to risk a grim choice between immobilism and chaos.
Mora.I imperatives may also be thought of as immanent in
the facts themselves. Since I do not believe in a metaphysical
chasm between fact and value, I cannot exclude such a reading of moral imperatives as impossible. But while facts impose demands, these demands conflict, and the resolution of
such conflicts requires some principle not itself immanent in
those facts. Life is to be preserved and pain eased, but the
moral problem of euthanasia cannot be resolved without invoking some higher-order principle establishing a relationship
between these requirements.
Some find in history a pattern so clear and persuasive that
only one morality remains tenable when that pattern has been
seen. But anyone who retains the least moral sensitivity will
sometimes find it necessary to affirm evaluations neglected by
history, and there is no reason to believe that the moral standards of future society are necessarily to be preferred to those
of our own. Trotsky could consign defeated opponents to the

PHILIP E. DEVINE

trashcan of history, but when he himself was defeated and
killed, different images came to the fore. Trotsky's widow said
of her dead husband: " The arms fell just as the arms in
Titian's' Descent from the Cross.' " 7
Another rival to theistic accounts of the nature of moral imperatives is the ideal observer theory: roughly the belief that
moral imperatives express what a perfect Being would approve
or condemn if such a Being existed. The question here is the
force of the counterfactual " would." It is hard to see how it
could be causal, and if it is logical the ideal observer theory
reduces to some version of the claim that moral imperatives
are immanent within the natural or social facts.
Kant provides the alternative to a theistic interpretation of
moral imperatives most popular among philosophers, but he
purchases ontological economy at the price of logical oddity.
His Categorical Imperative is imposed by the agent upon himself, but in such a way that the differences of temperament, inclination, and social affiliation among agents do not produce a
variety of codes. He views morality as a set of commands detached from any authority, hanging, so to speak, in metaphysical midair. Insofar as he bases his ethics on some aspect of
human nature, such as autonomy or rationality, the problems
of the naturalistic tradition recur, even apart from the special
difficulties that arise from Kant's placing the root of morality
in the noumenal realm.
I cannot claim to have exhausted all possible nontheistic explanations for the binding force of moral imperatives. But I
have said enough to place the burden on the atheist either to
develop a plausible account of ethics without God or to argue
against the existence of God and then conclude that, since God
does not exist and not everything is permitted, some other interpretation of moral imperatives is possible, even if a particular atheist is not able to provide it.
Thus theistic interpretation of ethical norms is the most
7 Natalya Sedova, Vie et Mort de Leon Trotsky.
The Prophet Outcast (London, 1963), p. 508.

Quoted in Isaac Deutscher,

THEISM:

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plausible. But this conclusion supposes that there is a God,
and, more fundamentally, that the concept of God is coherent
and intelligible. Doubt on the latter score does not arise only
from application of external criteria, but also from within
theism itself. For the whole thrust of theistic argument is so
to stress the radical difference between God and other beings
as to raise the issue how such a Being, if He existed, could be
intelligibly talked about by human beings at all. If God exists,
the peculiar character of religious language arises from the peculiar epistemic position of believers who must, in this life at
least, approach the object of their belief, as St. Paul puts it,
through "a dim reflection in a mirror."

III.
The crucial objection to the moral argument is that morality
must find its place in the world as it is, and that, apart from a
desire to make sense of morality, belief in God is irrational or
at best groundless. But, when one considers the normative
character of epistemic principles, including those which determine what utterances are held to be intelligible, the moral
argument for the existence of God can be generalized to evade
this problem. While norms governing our beliefs and claims to
know are strictly speaking moral norms only in special circumstances, such as when the interests of others are involved, still
a quasi-moral condemnation of those who nurse irrational beliefs is implied in such expressions as " superstitious " and
"flaky."
An example of a rationality norm held by nearly everyone
is that the simplest hypothesis consistent with the data should
be accepted. But the interpretation and application of this
norm varies from person to person and from group to group:
an atheist will maintain that simplicity requires that the possibility of a causal agent outside the sequence of events governed by natural law be excluded, while an agnostic will simply
decline to assert the existence of such an agent and a theist
will maintain that simplicity either permits or requires the
assertion of God's existence.

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PHILIP E. DEVINE

Now consider a metaphysical and epistemological perspective that excludes the existence of God. Adherents of that perspective may regard it as the merest common sense, derivable
in unproblematic fashion from the natural sciences or from
everyday experience. But in fact there is no experience without
an a priori structure, and natural science and everyday experience exclude belief in God only when their a priori structures
are so construed as to exclude it. The question has an irreducibly normative aspect: ought we so construe the norms of
rational belief as to exclude, permit, or require belief in a
Creator?
With the question of rationality cast in this normative mold,
we are entitled to ask, as we are with moral norms strictly
speaking, what is the source of requirements that, expressly or
by implication, condemn belief in God as irrational. To condemn this question as a pseudo-question is to invite the inquiry, by what authority a philosopher or group of philosophers forbids a question that many human beings, not all of
them professional philosophers, have asked.
For those who do not believe m God, the most plausible answer to such questions is that the norms of rational belief are
taught and upheld by some individual or group, such as the
scientific community, which has assumed that authority. This
answer corresponds to conventionalist understanding of ethical
imperatives, considered above. It follows that norms of rational belief serve only the members of the groups that uphold
them. Those who belong to an intellectual community that
affirms the existence of God, and who thus reject the legislation of the Vienna Circle or other such groups, can be stigmatized as deviants or condemned as rebels, but cannot be in any
useful sense be regarded as intellectually wrong. A common
rhetorical addition, that secularism is the wave of the future,
does not help the atheist's case.
The strict atheistical position is not the conventionalist one
just considered, but affirms the universality of rationality
norms-grounded in human nature or hanging in metaphysical
midair-that exclude belief in God. (An example is the read•

•

•

THEISM:

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217

ing of the requirement of simplicity so as to exclude even the
possibility of a transcendent agent.) But the source of such
norms is as obscure as is God, and hence it is not plausible that
the existence of such norms could be regarded as an intelligible
possibility, and the existence of God not. Yet it is here that
the consistent atheist-including the variety of atheist for
whom " God " is a word without sense-must rest his case:
that there are norms, whose source cannot be explored, that
expressly or by implication preclude belief in God.
Those who regard the norms of rationality as having probative force independent of any further authority can take
two different positions. One refers to the role of rationality
norms in conversation; sometimes at least appeal to them persuades. But one needs to distinguish persuasion by appeal to
the norms of rationality from other, often more effective, conversational tactics, such as scandal about opponents, implicit
blackmail, or the use of professional authority to intimidate.
Another claims that the norms of rationality carry their
normative power within themselves, and need no further support. This move is plausible only insofar as the norm in question has not been seriously challenged, and particularly fails
to carry conviction when a norm is invoked to dislodge deeply
held beliefs such as the existence of God.
On the other side, believers appeal to an authority higher
than themselves, i.e., God, who will judge between them and
unbelievers. If they are right, they are right; if they are not
right, they are not wrong either, except on standards that turn
out to be as mysterious as their beliefs. Hence anyone for
whom belief in God is a real possibility has every reason to
believe in God.

IV.
The key issue, for any argument for the existence of God, is
what attributes the God has whose existence is said to be
established by it. Thus an advantage of St. Anselm's "ontological " argument is that there can be no serious doubt that,
if sound, it establishes the existence of God, as understood by

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PHILIP E. DEVINE

Christian and other believers. (This is not to say that it provides an adequate ha.sis for a Christian or other religious belief, or even that St. Anselm is entitled to assert, on his premises, that the concept of God makes sense.) 8
The argument presented here implies the omnipotence and
omniscience of God. These amount to the same thing: that a
given proposition is true is equivalent to its being certified as
such by God, who is the ultimate Source of all Being and the
Judge of all disputed questions. Likewise, God is omnipotent
and omniscient with respect to questions of value. That a
given state of affairs is good, or a given action is right, and
that it is commended by God, are equivalent propositions.
God's perfect goodness follows from these premises, unless one
can give an intelligible account of moral weakness in the absence of temptation, or of motiveless moral perversity.
A range of complex issues concerns the relationship between
a proposition, p, and the (equivalent) position that God
chooses or believes that p. One is the question of human free
choice: are there states of affairs, such as these involving
decisions, which, though infallibly known, are not decreed by
God? Another concerns the relationship between the proposition that a given action is right, or a given state of affairs
good, and the (equivalent) proposition that God commends
that action or state of affairs.
Attention needs to be given to the nature of the claim that,
of two logically equivalent propositions, one is nonetheless
prior, in a sense other than that human beings reason from one
to the other. Thus theists will reason from the taking place of
an event, even one involving sin, to the conclusion that it was,
in some sense, God's will that it should occur, while the doctrine that our sins are foreordained by God has been a source
of much scandal. I am inclined to query the quasi-temporal
relations suggested by priority claims and to assert that the
truth of p, and God's certification of that truth, are not only
logically equivalent but logically simultaneous. (This conclus I discuss these issues in my essay, " The Religious Significance of the
Ontological Argument," Religious Studies, 11 ( 1975), 97-116.

THEISM:

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219

sion may require qualification for free agency, but I cannot
explore this possibility here.)
In dealing with the issue of logical priority and logioal
simultaneity, we must be careful to distinguish it from the
order in which a particular (or even a typical) reasoner will
reach a given pair of conclusions: this order will vary with the
circumstances of the person reasoning. And in dealing with
a pair of logioally equivalent propositions, there is no point in
asking the truth of which is a. condition of the possibility of
the other: the relationship is mutual. Accordingly, the nature
of the relationship of logical priority or simultaneity that may
be held to exist between the propositions that p is true, and
that God chooses or believes that p; and the propositions that
p is obligatory, and that God commands that p, is a question
for further reflection.
Another way of making clear what is meant by logical priority is in terms of concepts rather than of propositions. If
the natural numbers are defined by repeated applications of
the successor relation, then it is plausible that zero should be
logically prior to one, one to two, and so forth. If God is defined as, among other things, a morally perfect being, then the
concept of moral perfection (and thus also of moral goodness)
is logically prior to that of God. But there is no reason to suppose that concepts need be defined in any particular order, nor
that the most convenient order is necessarily the most intuitive. All truth-functional connectives can be defined in terms
of not-both or neither-nor, but it is not intuitively plausible
that these concepts are logically prior to negation or implication.
Thus, the label that some may attach to my account-" a
divine command theory of ethics and epistemology "-fails
to fit well. While moral and epistemic norms get their
warrant from God, it does not follow that it is possible that,
should God so decree, it would be right to torture babies, or
that, should God so decree, self-contradictory propositions
would be true. Still, the principles that exclude such putative
possibilities get their warrant from God.

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PHILIP E. DEVINE

The warrant from God that attaches to moral and epistemic
principles can be considered from two points of view. From
our point of view adherence to such norms is an aspect of
friendship with God. The pursuit of truth is thus a. religious
exercise even when the subject matter of such truth is in no
way specifically theological. From God's point of view, it is an
aspect of His creation of the universe. And God, in creating
the universe, determines also what nonactual possibilities there
are. As St. Thomas Aquinas puts it, Divine Providence arranges that what will come about necessarily will come about
necessarily, and that what will come about contingently will
come about contingently as well.9
Moral and epistemic norms may have the appearance of
commands insofar as they address human beings who would
prefer not to observe them. But if we consider them from
God's standpoint they are neither independent of Him nor subject to His arbitrary will. What C. S. Lewis says of moral
norms is true of epistemic and metaphysical standards as well:
" God neither obeys nor creates the moral law." 10 The centml
feature of this conclusion is that there is in God no priority
among wisdom, goodness, and power: God's perfection includes all of these without differentiation, though human beings may for their purposes emphasize one rather than another
of them. Likewise God is the Creator both of the structural
features of our world and of the particular things within it,
although in a somewhat different mode.
Another way of formulating this conclusion is as an answer
to Lewis Carroll's question in "What the Tortoise Said to
Achilles." What requires us to move from p and if p, then q
to q-what is sometimes called " the hardness of the logical
must "-arises from God. Or more precisely it is God who supplies the imperative quality of logical and epistemological imperatives, and in so doing makes possible the distinction between truth and error. 11
9 Summa

Theologiae, Ia, Q. 22, a. 4.
Christian Reflections: Walter Hooper, ed. (Grand Rapids, 1967), p. 80.
11 I am here indebted to Gary Gutting.

10

THEISM:

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221

A further issue is whether my argument in fact establishes
the existence of a personal God at all, or rather only of a
Truth, both moral and metaphysical, transcending human purpo·ses and conventions, which those philosophers broadly called
"Platonists" have been concerned to affirm, and these called
"pragmatists" to attack. 12 Friendship with God could be interpreted as knowledge of such Truth, and life in accordance
with its requirements. The existence of such a Truth is an implication of my argument: God's version of the true and the
good is normative for human beings, and can claim to provide
an objective and universally binding resolution of all moral,
metaphysical, and epistemological disputes. The issue is what
further content the concept of God, as it issues from my argument, has beyond this.
A partial answer is that the existence of a Truth transcending human purposes and conventions has more than merely
intellectual importance, at least for philosophers. To be a
philosopher rather than a lawyer is to be concerned, not only
with persuading others or even oneself, but with reaching a
Truth that, in principle at least, is independent of what any
human being believes. At least as a regulative ideal, belief in
such a Truth is essential to the activity of attempting to discover arguments and doctrines that will command the assent
of rational people generally, as distinct from persuading particular audiences at particular times and places. And something more than a regulative ideal may be necessary if a
philosopher is to persevere in his efforts despite the formidable
obstacles, both intellectual and material, to his efforts.
Beyond this the issue is in part one of picture preference.
I find the picture of a Person whose determinations resolve
questions of being and value more satisfactory than that of a
Truth hanging in metaphysical midair; others no doubt will
12 See Richard
Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton,
1980) and Consequences of Pragmatism (Minneapolis, 1982). For a pointed
popular formulation, see his "The Fate of Philosophy," New Republic, Oct.
18, 1982, pp. 28-34. Rorty takes it for granted that religious belief is not
an open possibility.

PHILIP E. DEVINE

disagree. One consideration lies in my disbelief in a metaphysical chasm between fact and value. If one believes in
truth as physical fact, on to which values must somehow be
projected, it is easier to believe in truth independent of any
mind (not only of any finite mind) than if one regards cognition in its every aspect as evaluative. The argument offered
here can be briefly characterized as one from the normative
chamcter of rationality: because standards of truth and knowledge call upon us to hold beliefs we may prefer to reject, and
to reject beliefs we may prefer to retain, it always makes sense
to ask what stands behind such norms, besides the desires and
attitudes of their adherents.
The most fundamental question is whether God will uphold
or reject our purposes, hopes, and convictions, including the
persons in whom these purposes, hopes, and convictions reside. Very little follows from my argument on this point. It
is self-defeating to believe in total depravity, i.e., that every
human thought, including this one, is hopelessly removed from
truth. And it is within God's power to transform radically the
conditions of existence, so that the life of human beings will
greatly improve, and the truth only dimly glimpsed by us now
can be more clearly known. But the question of the extent to
which God will favor us is a matter outside the domain of
philosophy, and within that of religion.
PHILIP E. DEVINE

St. Cloud State University
St. Cloud, Minnesota

*Earlier versions of this paper were read at a colloquium at Loyola Marymount University in July, 1983, and to two meetings of the Society of Christian Philosophers in March 1984. I am indebted to the participants in these
meetings, and especially to James Hanink and Linda Zagzebski, for their
comments.

WILFRED SELLARS: A THOMIST ESTIMATE

T

WO SALIENT FEATURES of Sellars's philosophy are
is conviction that, as he puts it, 'Science is the measre of all things, of what is that it is, and of what is not
that it is not '; 1 and his opposition to what he calls 'the myth
of the given '. 2 I shall argue that these features are in fundamental conflict with one another, and, further, that the philosophy of Aquinas provides resources for a resolution of the
problems which give rise to the conflict. Sellars has himself
given an estimate of Thomism, which he treats with some respect, as making common cause with him in its repudiation of
'idealism', but which he ultimately finds wanting. 3 A treatment of Sellars from the Thomist point of view may thus be
not without interest. Sellars by no means capitulates to modern anti-metaphysical fashions; in fact his view of the role of
philosophy has a refreshingly old-fashioned ring about it.
'The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated', he says, 'is
to understand how things in the broadest sense of the term
hang together in the broadest sense of the term.' 4 This could
of course be heartily endorsed by any recalcitrant metaphysician, including the Thomist.
What case is there for saying that a high veneration of science, as liable to tell us the truth about things, is in basic
conflict with the view that ' the given ' is a myth? That there
is some prima facie case is clear enough, when one considers
the reasons for supposing that science is apt to tell us the
truth about the matters with which it deals. Scientific method
1 W. C. Sellars, Science, Perception
and Reality (London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul, 1963), 173. All references not otherwise assigned will be to
that work.
2 140, 161, etc.
3 4lff.
4 1.

223

HUGO MEYNELL

is a matter of propounding and testing hypotheses; and to test
a hypothesis is to appeal to facts or to phenomena which are
as they are whether one maintains the hypothesis or not. That
is to say, they are in some sense 'given ', in that it is not up
to the investigator whether they are so or not; he has to look
and see whether they are so. Why do the oxygen theory of
combustion, and Rutherford's theory of the atom, form a part
of science, in a wa.y that the phlogiston theory of combustion
and Thomson's theory of the atom do not? The obvious answer is, that there is a substantial range of data or (merely to
replace Latin with English) 'givens' which go to confirm the
former pair of theories as likely to be true, the latter pair as
likely to be false. It is not unfashionable at present to regard
' science ' as merely a conglomerate of propositions stated as
true by those prestigious persons called 'scientists' in their
professional capacity. If this is so, it appears arbitrary to
maintain that these propositions are liable to be true, let alone
that' science is the measure of all things'. One may, however,
regard the propositions constitutive of science as essentially
the result of the application of a method, and liable to be true
of the matters with which it deals because and insofar as the
method has been followed. But it seems impossible to characterize the method without reference to what is in some sense
given. The investigator, insofar as he is scientific, cannot merely invent pointer-readings, or say that the marks left by recording-pencils are just what he would choose; he has to take
such things as they are 'given'.
The considerations which I have just advanced suggest that
this topic is of some importance-a point which seems worth
making, since the topic of ' the given ', and of the ' sense-data '
in which it is often supposed to consist, has a very musty air
about it, having been so much frequented by philosophers of
a couple of generations ago. But short of some ' given', whatever it is held to consist in, in relation to which knowledge
claims in science and elsewhere may be tested, I do not see
how one is non-arbitrarily to adjudicate between real knowledge and knowledge falsely so called, or between science and

WILFRED SELLARS:

A THOMIST ESTIMATE

fl9!5

pseudo-science. ' Pragmatism ' does not really provide a viable
alternative here; that action a has result b, successful or otherwise, in circumstances c, is just one kind of ' given ' of which
those seeking knowledge have to take account.
Why then does Sellars object to 'the given', and how does
he propose to dispense with it? As to the former point, there
seems to be no valid strictly logical process, as any number of
recent philosophers have pointed out, by which one can infer
from the occurrence of any aggregate of private data to the
existence of any real object in the public world. Consequently,
it is argued, knowledge of such data cannot be the basis for
knowledge of that world; 5 and one cannot ' analyze ' any statement about the public world in terms of statements about such
data. ' It just won't do to say that x is red is analyzable in
terms of x looks red toy.' 6 Also, if such irreducibly private experiences existed, it is impossible to see how we could use our
essentially public language to refer to them. How could anything look red unless in the first place something really was
red, to supply some basis for the implicit comparison? Also,
there is something offensive to the rational and scientific mind
a.bout the notion that certain statements, to the effect that one
is enjoying particular sense-experiences, are indisputable and
self-validating; 7 such claims are much too redolent of mysticism.
But Sellars's attention is mainly devoted to the latter question, of how we can dispense with such data in accounting for
knowledge and for science, as I have already briefly argued
that we cannot. His suggestion amounts to the following: (i)
There is a hidden propositional claim involved in every report
about sensation; (ii) This propositional claim is about the
public world; (iii) Such a propositional claim never merely
asserts the occurrence of a. ' given' or datum; it is thus subject to public dispute like other propositional claims. One is
inclined to say, Sellars concedes, that a remark like 'It looks
5 Cf. 14.

6142.
1

Cf.

HUGO MEYNELL

green ' reports ' a minimal fact, on which it is safer to report
because one might be mistaken' than if one roundly asserts
that it is green; for example, ' the fact that the necktie looks
green to John on a. particular occasion'. But he rejects this
account, as committing him to a ' given ' in the form of sensedata. The heart of the matter, says Sellars, is that experiences
always contain propositional claims, which one may or may
not endorse. 8 '" X looks green to Jones' differs from "Jones
sees that x is green " in that whereas the latter both ascribes
a propositional claim to Jones and endorses it, the former
ascribes the claim but does not endorse it ... To say that " x
looks green to S at t" is, in effect, to say that S has that kind
of experience which, if one were prepared to endorse the proposition it involves, one would characterize as seeing x to be
green at t.' 9
What is envisaged here is Jones having an experience and
making a judgment about the world in accordance with it, and
someone else, say Smith, endorsing that judgment or not endorsing it. Jones, let us say, sees the necktie for the first time
in a poor light, and says it is green, whereas Smith, who has
seen it in a good light, and knows it to be blue, does not endorse his statement. However, there is a crucial possibility
which Sellars neglects: that Jones himself may fail to endorse
his experience, in the sense of committing himself on the basis
of it to the statement about the public world which it would
normally license. Suppose Jones has himself previously seen
the tie in more favorable circumstances. He may then very
well say something like, ' This tie looks green to me, though I
know very well that it is blue'. What I believe has contributed
to Sellars's misapprehension of the matter is that 'This tie
looks green to me' very often implies, if only tentatively, tha.t
the thing concerned really is green, and so would look green
in more favourable circumstances. But he neglects the other
possible meaning of the sentence, where there is a mere report
B 144.

9 145-6.

WILFRED SELLARS:

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227

of sensation, and no such implication about the public world,
where, for example, the sufferer from jaundice complains,
'That chest of drawers looks yellow to me, though I know perfectly well that it is white'.
Sellars does imagine someone in the sort of situation which
I have described, saying-' I don't know what to say. If I
didn't know that the tie is blue ... I would swear that I was
seeing a green tie and seeing that it is green '. 10 If the subject
of this example doesn't know what to say, then he ought to
know; Sellars has an interest in his not knowing what to say,
since admission that there could be a mere report of sensation
which did not somehow include, even if tentatively, a. claim
about the public world, would involve him in acknowledgement of some kind of a ' given '. The conventions of language
in fact provide the subject with several ways of expressing
himself-' It looks green to me a.t the moment, though I know
perfectly well that it's really blue'; or 'I have an experience
as though of a green tie, though I have overwhelming reasons
for thinking that the experience is deceptive'; and so on. In
a.n extreme case, for example, when Jones's brain is being
stimulated in the relevant areas by means of electrodes, and he
knows this, he might say,' I have a visual impression as though
of a green necktie two feet before my eyes, though I know very
well there is nothing really there but empty space '.11
Those who believe that experiences, or sense-data, provide
foundations for knowledge, have to face the objection that
(for example) if there were not green things, we would not be
able to talk at all of-the expression is a somewhat bizarre
one, for all its currency in philosophy a few decades agogreen sense-data. But granted that we can talk of real green
objects in the public world, we can also, by more or less a.d hoc
modifications of the language which we employ for this, talk
of experience as of green objects, of experience such as would
10 143.
11 For

ingenious discussion of examples of this kind, and convincing argument for the claim that there are sense-data, see J. R. Smythies, The Analysis of Perception (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1956), 70ff.

HUGO MEYNELL

normally license talk of green objects but does not in this case
owing to special circumstances, and so on. It is liable to be
objected that, if talk about sense-data depends on talk about
physical objects in the manner which I have just sketched,
sense-data could not in any useful sense be the foundations of
knowledge. But this, I think, would be a mistake. The fact
is, I believe, tha.t language about physical objects which one
obE:erves is foundational in one sense and thait sense-data are
foundational in another. We could not speak truly and with
good reason about real physical objects, in other words gain
knowledge of them, unless we enjoyed experience a.s though
of physical objects. Such experience in general licences talk
about real physical objects, enables us to make justified true
judgments about them; but in special circumstances, as we
discover, it does not. When asked to say what I see in an
ordinary room which I have just entered, I may confidently
state that I see a table; but having just the same experience
in a psychology laboratory, I may warily declare that I enjoy
visual experiences as of a table, suspecting that later experience may confirm the possibility that, this place having the
reputation that it does, there will turn out to be no table there.
As Sellars says, 'if there is a logical dimension in which other
empirical propositions rest on observational reports, there is
another logical dimension in which the latter rest upon the
former '. 12 So far as the metaphor of' foundations' leads us to
overlook this, it is certainly misleading. However, altogether
to reject it seems to have the far more dangerous and paradoxical result which I mentioned at the beginning of this paper,
that there remains no sufficient criterion for distinguishing between science and pseudo-science, or between legitimate claimants and mere pretenders to the title of knowledge.
It is a misleading way of expressing the manner in which
sense-data may reasonably be said to be the foundations of
knowledge, to say that knowledge that there are observable
physical objects in one's immediate environment is founded on
12 170.

WILFRED SELLARS:

A THOMIST ESTIMATE

229

knowledge that one is undergoing certain sense-experiences. If
knowledge is a matter of justified or grounded true judgment,
that we are undergoing this or that experience seldom rises to
the level of knowledge. Having the relevant set of experiences,
we usually make a spontaneous judgment that the public state
of affairs which we are apparently so justified in asserting is
the case. The judgment merely that we are having certain experiences, and so knowledge of the matter on the definition just
given, is a comparatively sophisticated achievement, which we
learn as a result of reflection on the phenomena of error and
illusion, or through a certain kind of philosophical training. 13
It may be asked how sense-data could be in any sense the
foundation of empirical knowledge, if there is no strictly logical
route from any set of statements about sense-data to any set
of statements about physical objects, or vice versa. The answer is, I believe, that statements about physical objects and
events can be related to sense-experiences as their ultimate
grounds, without the connection being in any strict sense logical. This is most obvious in the case of historical events, where
it seems quite evident that it is one thing (say) to claim that
George Washington was the first President of the United
States, another thing to set out the grounds available in experience to persons in the twentieth century for this claim.
Thomists and idealists have always emphasised the active role
of the human intellect is coming to know the real world; this
has tended to lead idealists, though not Thomists, to be doubtful or at least equivocal about the reality of that world prior
to or independently of human thought about it. Thomists, in
common with empiricists, emphasize that knowledge starts
with experience; but they also maintain that, due to the functioning of what Aquinas called the intellectus agens (which
amounts to the questioning and hypothesizing aspect of the
mind) , we can get to know of, or make justified true judgments about, states of affairs (like the existence of electrons,
13 Cf. Hugo Meynell, 'Scepticism
435-6), for a discussion of this point.

Revisited'

(Philosophy,

October 1984,

230

HUGO MEYNELJ_.

Julius Caesar and God) which cannot, at least now in the case
of the second, be direct objects of experience. 14
Bernard Lonergan has pointed out 'the isomorphism of
Thomist and scientific thought ', 15 with the scientist's observations related to his hypotheses as the ' matter ' of the Thomist
to his ' form ' and the hypotheses of the scientist related to his
verifications as the Thomist's 'essence' to his 'existence '. 16
There is furthermore an 'intentional ' relation for the Thomist
between the contents of the mind and the real world which
the mind comes to know; in other words, the world is just what
the mind a.ims at knowing so far as it strenuously applies itself to questioning the phenomena of experience. 17 A Thomist
might thus well agree, on his own terms, with Sellars's dictum
that ' science is the measure of all things ', on the ground that
when the presuppositions of science are clarified and generalised, they will be found to issue in a Thomist metaphysics or
overall account of reality. Just as the 'intellectus agens' 'abstracts ' the ' quiddities ' or ' essences ' of things from the world
of common experience, so the scientist gets at the real nature
of things, or at least moves towards doing so, by the active
propounding and testing of hypotheses. Though logic in a
strict sense is an important aspect of this process, the process,
as Hume, Popper and others have conclusively shown, cannot
possibly be reduced to it. But once the nature of this process
is clarified, it may easily be seen how our knowledge of the
world might in an important sense be ' grounded ' in the sensedata. constitutive of experience, without being truth-conditionally related to statements regarding such experience. (The
murder of Edward II of England in the fourteenth century
14 See Aquinas, Disputationes,
X de Veritate, 6: Summa Theologiae I, Ixxix,
4; lxxxvii, I. Thomas Gilby, St. Thomas Aquinas. Philosophical Tea;ts
(London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1951), 627, 645, 662.
15 See B. Lonergan, Collection
(London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1967),
142.
16 Jbid., 143-6.
11 See Anthony Kenny, Aquinas
(Oxford and Toronto: Oxford University
Press, 1980), 79-81.

WILFRED SELLARS:

A THOMIST ESTIMATE

231

could not conceiva.bly be a matter of any experience which
might be enjoyed by a historian in the twentieth century; but
for all that, such experience may well be relevant to establishing that this event occurred, and of what nature it was.)
Sellars will have it that it is a false dilemma, that knowledge
must either have' foundations' which themselves need no support, or that it is just a set of mutually-reinforcing propositions. ' Empirical knowledge, like its sophisticated extension,
science, is rational, not because it has a foundation. but because
it is a self-correcting enterprise which can put any claim in
jeopardy, though not all at once.' 18 However, it is ha.rd to see
what the view that knowledge is self-correcting, or indeed that
it is empirical, amounts to, unless a particular kind of ' given '
is assumed in deference to which the corrections are made.
Moreover, unless some restrictions are put on the criteria according to which science is to be 'self-correcting', the possibility is left open that the opinions of scientists will be just as
scientific if they are' corrected' due to bribery or career prospects. That no individual observation-claim ought to be sacrosanct must indeed be acknowledged; observations should not
be taken seriously unless repeatable. But to acknowledge that
individual fragments of ' the given ' have very little weight in
themselves by no means implies that appeal to 'the given'
has no place in science or epistemology. To take a parallel
case, that it may be rational to suspect the report of any one
witness, in deference to a consensus of other witnesses, by no
means entails that all appeal to witnesses is mistaken or a
sham. In the long run, I believe, the dilemma which Sellars
tries to stigmatize as false is a true one; short of a ' given ' of
some kind, no adequate justification of most knowledge-claims
is possible.
It is a main task of philosophy, according to Sella.rs, to fuse
the common-sense and the scientific conceptions of the world
and humankind within it into a single coherent view.19 The
18170.
194-5.

232

HUGO MEYNELL

Thomist is perfectly capable of doing this; reality or ' being '
consists of existing essences, to be grasped as to how they are
and that they are by the ' agent intellect ' acting upon appearances. If 'essence ' is the aspect of reality to be grasped by
hypotheses, and' existence' is that which corresponds to their
verification, and ' potency ' that which is equivalent to the experience which both suggests each hypothesis and provides the
means of testing it, then Thomist metaphysics is at once presupposed and vindicated by a scientific method whose essence
is progressively to discover reality by the verification 20 of
hypotheses in experience.
How far do Sellars's own philosophical principles enable him
to fulfill the task which he sets for philosophy? He finds the
Thomist tradition wanting, notably in its view that the intellect, in order to reflect reality, must be immaterial. 21 He remarks on the temptation to maintain that speech reflects the
world because the thought which it expresses does so; he will
have it that the opposite is the case.22 This leaves him with
the problem of how speech might be explained as reflecting the
world, without any appeal being made to thought. Let us suppose, he says, that a robot emits radiation which is reflected
back from its environment in such a way a.s to correspond to
the structure of that environment; and that it moves about
'recording its "observations", enriching its tape with deductive and inductive " inferences " from its " observations" and
guiding its" conduct"' accordingly. We might then allow ourselves to talk about the robot in human terms as finding out
more and more about the world. 23 What would be the analogue
of our knowledge of, say, lightning, on the tape inside the
robot? It would be 'the correspondence of the " place " of a
certain pattern on the tape in the system of patterns on the
20 Karl Popper would not like this way of talking; but I believe the disagreement between this position and his would be merely verbal. Instead of
'verification', he would speak of 'corroboration '.

2'141.
22 31;
23 53.

cf. 199-200.

WILFRED SELLARS:

A THOMIST ESTIMATE

233

tape to the "place" of the flash of lightning in the robot's
spatio-temporal environment'. At that rate there is no need
to postulate ' the absolute nature lightning existing immaterially in the robot's electronic system', in the manner of
Thomism. 24 Only material entities are in question here; the
relevant pattern on the tape means the same as our word
'lightning' due to its similarity of role in the robot's behaviour
to that of the word ' lightning' in ours. 25
Sellars draws from this what he regards as an important
moral for our conception of the nature of our own inner states,
and in particular of our thoughts. Descartes, among many
others, considered that we had non-inferential knowledge of
these inner states of ours, including our thoughts and sensations. But the upshot of these reflections is that to know our
inner states as thoughts and sensations of things in the world
is to know them in a role, rather than in themselves. This
leaves open the possibility, which is the only one really compatible with science but that the Cartesian conception would
exclude, that in themselves they are states of the human organism as investigated by neurology. As to the intellect itself,
' I submit that as belonging to the real order it is the central
nervous system ... There is no absurdity in the idea that what
we know directly as thoughts in terms of analogical concepts
may in. propria persona be neurological states'. 26
I believe this conception of human knowledge and its relation to the world, ingenious as it is, to be subject to the disadvantages of all consistently materialist accounts of knowledge. There is a conceptual crevasse, which Sellars has by no
means managed to bridge, between an entity's reaction to its
environment at a particular place and time, and its knowledge
of a world vastly extended in space and time beyond that environment, and which exists and is as it is largely prior to and
independently of the entity and its reactions. Admittedly, we
are stimulated to get to know the world by the need to react
24 54.
25

57.

26 58-59.

HUGO MEYNELL

adequately to our environment if we are to survive and
prosper; but this does not imply tha.t the knowledge is ultimately reducible to the reaction. Consequently, Sellars's ingenious and complex account of the building up of a pattern
of reactions does not begin to explain that acquisition of
knowledge which he set out to explain. Furthermore, Sellars
will have it that the analogues in the robot's tape, brought
about by interaction with its environment, to elements in tha.t
environment, may fairly be compared to a picture of it. But,
it may fairly be asked, in virtue of what is a picture of something a picture of it? It seems to me, only by virtue of a subject's intended use of it as such. The simple fact is, I believe,
that material object or complex a means material object or
complex b only by virtue of being or having been intended to
do so by some person or persons. Certainly, one can imagine
limiting cases where one such object or complex can mean another, when not specifically made or formed to do so. Thus a
chimpanzee might scrawl random pencil-marks on a sheet of
paper, which turned out to be usable as a map of Medicine
Hat, Alberta. But it would not be in any sense a map of that
town, nor would its lines represent its streets or its blobs its
buildings, until someone had hit on the idea of using them as
such. (One way out of the difficulty might be to say tha.t patterns in our brains and elements of our speech pictured the
real world, when properly used by us, due to our being programmed for this purpose by our Creator; but I doubt whether
Sellars himself would be much pleased by such a solution to
his problem.) When one attends to these facts, Sellars's
learned talk of ' projection ' and ' isomorphism', and allusions
to recent developments in the science of cybernetics, 27 are like
so much whistling in the dark. The sequence of marks ' $713 ',
appearing directly after you have pressed a series of buttons
outside your bank, means that you have a balance of $713, by
virtue of the fact that someone has programmed a computer in
such a way that it should mean this. In fine, meaning presup27 52, 57, 59.

WILFRED SELLARS:

A THOMIST ESTIMATE

235

poses persons, and cannot be explained exhaustively in terms
of structural analogies between sets of physical objects and
events.
If the mental cannot be explained in terms of what is material, is it possible to explain the material in terms of what is
mental, or do we simply have to put up with dualism? In the
relevant sense, I believe that the material can be explained in
terms of the mental; and that Thomism, at least when expanded to take into account the transcendental considerations
which have tended to preoccupy philosophers since Kant, is
able thus to explain it. As I have already said, reality, for the
Thomist, consists of potency, form and act; which are the
analogues in reality of the experience, the envisagement of
possibilities, and the verification of some of these possibilities
as so, by which the human mind comes to know reality. We
spontaneously believe, and tend to confirm by rational investigation, that there are two overall types of being, that which
is thus to be known as not itself knowing, and that which is to
be known as itself knowing; these constitute the material and
spiritual aspects of the world. Thus, briefly, matter and the
material can be accounted for as an aspect of that which is to
be known by mind or the spiritual, whereas mind cannot be
accounted for as exhaustively constituted by matter, for all
the ingenuity of Sellers and others who have tried to show that
it can.
Sellars clearly thinks his own account of the manner in
which thought and speech reflect the world to be commended
as a means of laying the ghost of idealism. 28 This raises the
questions, for what reason, and in what sense of the term, does
Sellars object to idealism; and in what sense he is right in objecting to it. The reasons for which he is right to object to
idealism, I believe, regard precisely those aspects of it in which
it is opposed to Thomism. However, I think it can also be
shown that his own account of knowledge and reality is defective so far as it fails to bring out the way in which the mind
28

Cf. 42.

HUGO MEYNELL

as it were constructs the reality which it comes to know, as
emphasized in their different ways by both Thomists and
idealists, who are at one in stressing the active role of the intellect in coming to know. In what sense, if at all, is Thomism
as I have described it an 'idealist' doctrine? It is so, in the
sense that it gives an account of what is real, including that
which is material, as what is to be known by the human mind.
But it is not so, in that it by no means denies, or implies the
denial, that what is thus to be known exists largely prior to
and independently of the human mind which thus comes to
know it. Indeed, we have excellent reasons, as the result of
the operations of our minds, to suppose that a world of things
existed millions of years prior to the existence of human minds
which could gain knowledge of it. Sellars is quite correct to
object to any form of idealism which implies denial of this
fact. However, it remains a question whether and how far
such a world, which can be adequately characterized in general terms only as what a mind might discover, could exist
prior to and independently of mind as such. 29 And, of course,
it has been characteristic of Thomists to assert that at least
one spiritual being exists prior to the material world, accounting for its existence and its overa.11 nature and structure. 30 Let
us distinguish between idealism (a) and idealism (b), the view
that the material universe has no existence apart from the
human mind, and the view that the universe has no existence
apart from mind as such. Sellars would repudiate both
idealism (a) and idealism (b), and is quite correct in seeing
Thomists as united with himself in opposing idealism (a). But
his own repudiation of idealism (b), which would be maintained by Thomists, seems to depend on an account of how
mind might be exhaustively explicable in terms of matter in a
certain state of complexity, which I have already argued to be
inadequate.
29 For an account of idealism which makes these distinctions
with admirable clarity, see H. B. Acton, 'Idealism' (Encyalopaedia of Philosophy
[New York: The Free Press, 1967], Vol. IV), llOf.
so Cf. Summa Theologiae, I, ii, 3.

WILFRED SELLARS:

A THOMIST ESTIMATE

237

That the Thomist account of knowledge is 'oversimplified '
ma.y well be true, insofar as it was originally formulated by
a thinker innocent of our modern information on the actual
complexities of the process of acquiring knowledge. But the
important question is whether it is correct, and an improvement on rival theories, so far as it goes; no Thomist worth
his salt would deny that it is subjeot to supplementation in
the light of investigations which have occurred since the
thirteenth century. The facts seem to be these: (1) By means
of scientific investigation we come to know of an intelligible
world, existing prior to and independently of ourselves, which
explains what we observe in the 'world' of common experience; (2) The former seems to be the 'world ' which is ultimately real; (3) This 'world' is to be known by active inquiry into the data of experience, in which inquiry grasps
' quiddities ' or ' essences ' (examples would be ' phlogiston ',
' oxygen ', ' aether ', and ' electron ') , some of which tend to be
verified in experience as 'existent'; (4) This process through
which by means of the ' active intellect ' we come to grasp the
real 'essences ' of things is progressive and cumulative, and is
not to he achieved all at once. (1) and (2) are propositions in
support of which Thomism, Sellars and the scientific worldview all concur, though, as I argued earlier, Sellars's aspersions
on ' the given ' make it impossible to show why these propositions are true. The cumula.tive and progressive character of
science, alluded to in (4) , was certainly not fully grasped by
Aquinas or by classical Thomism; in this sense and to this degree, Sellars is quite right in calling the Thomist theory of
knowledge oversimplified. But this is by no means to impugn
the central and essential Thomist insight expressed by (3),
especially when the failure of Sellars a.nd others to set out an
adequate alternative is taken into account.
HUGO MEYNELL

University of Oalgary
Alberta, Oanada

MEISTER ECKHART AND THE" ETERNAL BIRTH":
THE HEART OF THE PREACHER

W:

HEN ONE HEARS the name of Meister Johann
Eckhart, one thinks immediately of the mystic. But
Eckhart was more than that. The Rhine mystic
was also a German Scholastic, Dominican priest and prior,
teacher and preacher. If one imagines Eckhart only rapt in
mystical trance and lost to the world, then one perhaps underestimates his involvement with the people who constituted his
parish and who gathered together each week to hear his
homilies.
Of the hundreds that Eckhart doubtless delivered in his lifetime, only a few of these sermons survive to our day. 1 At the
heart of the sermons that we do have, however, there emerges
a singular theme which utterly absorbs this mystical
preacher-what he calls the " Eternal Birth." It is clearly the
focus for his own experience with God, and it serves· as well as
the focal point for much of his homiletical work.
The " Eternal Birth " is an exciting and profound concept
for virtually any modern reader, made more difficult perhaps
due to the absence in Eckhart's sermons of any systematic or
comprehensive statement about it. If one is to gain some insight into this mystical thesis, then, one must immerse oneself in the extant homiletical material, lifting out relevant
references to the Eternal Birth as they occur, bringing together these related statements into a meaningful and organized whole. This is the starting challenge behind the written
sermons are included in Raymond Blakney's classi1 Only 28 of Eckhart's
cal translation of Eckhart's work (Meister Eckhart. New York: Harper and
Row, 1941), which serves as the principal source for this article. All references that follow cite the number of the sermon per Blakney's arrangement,
followed by the page number in the book.

238

MEISTER ECKHART AND THE" ETERNAL BIRTH"

239

work here, the result of which will hopefully be a clearer and
more complete view of what Eckhart understood by this great,
interior possibility.

ECKHART'S STARTING POINT-TWO" GIVENS"
Two fundamental facts, in Eckhart's view, constitute the
background for understanding the occurrence of the Eternal
Birth. The first has to do with the virtually insatiable hunger
that human beings experience for God. Humans unavoidably,
universally, find themselves in a lifelong search for the only
food that will ultimately satisfy them, and that food is God.
The second has to do with God's irresistible tendency, in turn,
to give Himself freely and fully to His creatures. They that
hunger for God will inevitably be fulfilled. And Eckhart is as
certain of that as he is of the reality of his own firsthand experience of God. God gives Himself to human beings in a perfectly intimate manner. In the Eternal Birth, He bursts forth
from within their inner life. Each of these two basic points
merits some consideration.
To begin, Eckhart identifies the pronounced human penchant for God as "irasc.ibilis ", defining this quality as the
"upsurging agent" in the soul.2 Irascibilis inspires the human
being on that perennial search for That Which will fill and fulfill. " As it is the property of the eye to see form and color and
of the ear to hear sweet sounds and voices," Eckhart maintains, " it is the property of the soul ever to struggle upwards
by means of this agent." 3 Once this irascibilis manifests itself
within the personality, there is engendered within the self a
driving restlessness, a restlessness that is concluded only when
one has returned to the Origin of all. "So sweet is God's comz XIV, p. 163. Eckhart's choice of words is a bit baffling at first sight
actually. The Latin word "irasci""bilis" has as its root the word "ira," denoting "wrath". It seems incongruous to associate a heated wrathfulness
with the soul's inherent drive to seek out God. But consistent with this
meaning Eckhart later speaks of the soul's determined struggling, crashing, and even stormin.Q of heaven itself in search of its Source.
B[bid.

240

ROBERTS. STOUDT

fort," Eckhart preaches, " that every creature is looking for
it, hunting it .... Their very existence and life depend on their
search for it, their hunting it." 4
The soul, in short, experiences God as the final answer to
human existence, the matter of ultimate concern in one's life.
There is a God-shaped vacuum at the center of things. The
soul intuitively understands, if only subliminally, that nothing
is more important than God. The whole of life is oriented in
a God-ward direction. At greater length, Eckhart writes:
Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, secretly
all nature seeks God and works toward him .... Nature's intent is
neither food nor drink, nor clothing, nor comfort, nor anything
else in which God is left out. Covertly, nature seeks, hunts, tries
to ferret out the track on which God may be found .... (The soul)
can never rest until it gets to the core of the matter, crashing
through to that which is beyond the idea of God and truth, until
it reaches the in principio, the beginning of beginnings, the origin
or source of all goodness and truth. 5
Elsewhere, he adds:
... The human spirit ... can never be satisfied with what light it
has, but storms the firmament and scales the heavens to discover
the spirit by which the heavens are driven in revolutions and by
which everything on the earth grows and :flourishes.6
By their very basic nature, in other words, human beings are
spirit in profound search of their spiritual Ground.
Eckhart's second basic premise is that the inner drive of
humans to find God is matched by God's own passion to give
Himself to them. Human irascibilis is met with Divine love
and self-disclosure. It is in the very nature of God to make
this gift of Himself. Indeed, Eckhart views God as being virtually powerless to do otherwise. God's love for the creature
is so abundant and so complete that He freely gives the best
that can possibly be given-the gift of Himself. It is a favor
that is given in a moment of exquisite birth. "The supreme
4
5

x, p. 145.
xv, pp. 168-169.

a XXI, p. 192.

·MEISTER ECKHART AND THE " ETERNAL BIRTH "

241

purpose of God is birth," Eckhart begins. " He will not be content until his Son is born in us. Neither will the soul be content until the Son is born of it ". 1 Elsewhere, he declares," The
Father can do nothing but beget and the Son nothing but be
begotten." 8 Aga.in, he adds, "All of God's efforts are directed
to reproducing himself." 9
Eckhart characterizes this mutual affinity that the soul and
God experience for one another on the basis of the imago Dei.
The human soul craves for its origin, for the Source out of
which it was spawned. And God pours Himself into the soul
because it is comprised of the very stuff of divinity itself. God
gives Himself to tha.t in the human being which is exactly like
Himself. So, Eckhart teaches:
The temple in which God wants to be master, strong to work his
will, is the human soul, which he created and fashioned like himself.... He made the human soul so much like himself that nothing else in heaven or on earth resembles him so much. 10

"God and the soul are so nearly (related) to each other that
there is really no distinction between them," Eckhart instructs
elsewhere.11 The common denominator between the two is that
in the creature which is the very image of the Creator. Eckhart suggests:
By nature, the soul is patterned after God himself. This pattern
must be adorned and fulfilled by divine conception, and no other
creature except the soul is adapted to such a function. In fact,
whatever the perfection that may come to the soul ... it cannot
come except by birth. 12

Because of the imago, the soul, unless it chooses otherwise, is
destined to break through to eternity. The human soul is
tailored for no purpose other than the Eternal Birth at the
1 XII,

p. 151.

s xxr, p. 194.
oxx, p. 189.
10 XIII,
11

p. 156.

xxv, p. 214.

12 II

p. 103.

ROBERTS. STOUDT

hand of God. " It is the soul that is especially designed for the
birth of God," Eckhart states confidently, " and so it occurs
exclusively in the soul." 13 In the soul, God is generative, procreative.
This identity between soul and God leads Eckhart to affirm
repeatedly that God is an immediate and intimate aspect of
human experience. Some persons may assume that God is far
away, a transcendent Lord distantly removed from the created
order. But, for Meister Eckhart, nothing could be further
from the truth of his own experience. This Lord, for him, is
so incredibly in love with that created order that He personally invests Himself in it. In the human soul, by virtue of the
imago Dei, God is already fundamentally present, and, through
that imago, God in His totality is available to the creature.
Eckhart counsels:
You need not look either here or there. He is no farther away than
the door of the heart. He stands there, lingering, waiting for us to
he ready and open the door and let him in. You need not call to
him as if he were far away, for he waits more urgently than you
for the door to be opened.14
Similarly, Eckhart adds:
... God is very anxious at all times to be near to people, and to
teach them how to come to him, if they are only willing to follow him. Nobody ever wanted anything as much as God wants to
bring people to know him.15

A PROBLEM
There seems to be a dilemma of sorts here. If the human
soul and God are so close in nature and essence, then why does
not everyone already know this Eternal Birth for themselves?
If God is indeed already so immediate, if God is already present in person within the human soul, then how can persons be
rn Ibid., pp. 103-104.
p. 121-122.
15 VI, p. 132.

14 IV,

MEISTER ECKHART AND THE" ETERNAL BIRTH"

243

so estranged from their Divine Ground? If God is already
within us, then why must we search Him out? 16
It is the paradox of the mystical path that, simultaneously,
one is inches from the Divine goal and yet light-years away
from it. Eckhart states, " ... Nothing is as near to me as God
is. God is nearer to me than I am to myself." 17 In this pair
of statements, we have the entire conundrum set before us:
God is immediate and present, but we are distant and lost.
God is already awaiting our arrival at the ultimate goal, but
we are still wandering around in desperate search of it. God
and the soul are breathing as one, but we have forfeited the
experience of this unity in favor of our egos. In short, because
we are basically strangers to our own divinity-impregnated
cores, we sense ourselves to be strangers as well to God. In
reconnecting with our own inner depths, in rediscovering our
authentic self, we arrive also at God, who has been there all
the while. This spiritual issue constitutes the focus for another part of Eckhart's remarks, as follows:
Nobody ever wanted anything as much as God wants to bring
people to know him. God is always ready, but we are not ready.
God is near to us, but we are far from him. God is within; we are
without. God is at home; we are abroad. 18

This problematical distance is resolved, then, as the person
again sinks deeply back into himself, back to that bedrock of
the self which yet bears the Divine imprint, back to the wellsprings of the personality itself. This requires, above all else,
a radical inward orientation, an orientation away from the lure
of external, empirical reality and in towards the rich darkness
and fertile silence within. "Not to be accustomed to inward,
spiritual things is never really to know what God is!" Eckhart
exclaims. "To have wine in your cellar and never to drink it,
is not to know whether it is good or bad." 19 He concludes acp. 225.
p. 129.
1s Ibid., p. 132.
19 xxv, p. 216.
16 XXVII,

17 VI,

244

ROBERTS. STOUDT

oordingly, "A person finds his goal in the divine nature, and
it is within himself." 20 In another place, he explains graphically:
The soul has two eyes-one looking inwards and the other outwards. It is the inner eye of the soul that looks into essence and
takes being directly from God. That is its true function. The
soul's outward eye is directed toward creatures and perceives
their external forms, but when a person turns inward and knows
God in terms of his own inner awareness of him, in the roots of
his being, he is then freed from all creation and is secure in the
castle of truth. 21

The Eternal Birth is to be approached from within the inner
life of a person. If one is to receive that birth into eternity,
one, to the exclusion of all that is exterior, must remain attuned to the deeper life. Eckhart provides some detail relative to this spiritual psychology:
It is the aim of all God does that the agents of the soul should
be redirected inward, toward himself.... If the soul is scattered
among its agents and spread out in externalities ... then its inward action is feebler because scattered forces do not fulfill (their
mission) . Therefore if the inward work of the soul is to be efficicient, it must recall its agents and gather them in from their dispersion to one inward effort.22

Elsewhere, he adds:
If you are to experience this noble birth, you must depart from all
crowds and go back to the starting point, the core (of the soul)
out of which you came .... You must leave them all: sense perception, imagination, and all that you discover in self or intend to
do. After that, you may experience this birth-but otherwise notbelieve me!23

The ability to experience God's new birth is related to the
individual's determined ability to withdraw himself away from
all that otherwise lures him out of himself. If he can reclaim
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 II,

p. 105.

2s IV, p. 118.

MEISTER ECKHART AND THE " ETERNAL BIRTH "

that energy which ordinarily would be channelled externally,
i£ he can integrate all that energy into a singular focus upon
his inner Ground, then the ultimate and the eternal can come
to birth in him. This emptying out 0£ the lesser and the superficial, therefore, is critical to the mystical process.

MAKING ONESELF A DESERT
God's nature, it seems, is very simple. In fact, it is simplicity and irreducible unity itself. And in order for the individual to receive God's Eternal Birth, he must become as
simple and unified as God is. The usual complicatedness,
sophistication, and plurality must give way to an emptiness,
an emptiness that God will find and fill with Himself. Anything other than this inner, expectant nothingness interferes
with the spiritual process. Interior poverty precedes the birth
into eternity. Eckhart asserts:
As it is, we have to turn from one thing to the other and therefore we cannot pay attention to one without depriving the other.
. . . If then the soul goes out to attend to external activities, it
will necessarily be the weaker in its inward efforts, and for this
birth in the soul God will and must have a pure, free, and unencumbered soul, in which there is nothing but him alone, a soul
that waits for nothing and nobody but him. 24

The state that the soul ordinarily finds itself in is typified by
divided attentions and therefore divided affections. God, who
is unity, calls the human soul from this interior £ra.gmentation
and flux to something superior-to Himself.
Stated differently, there is a positive correlation between the
lack 0£ inner distractedness and the capacity for singularity 0£
focus upon God. The simpler, the emptier one's soul, the
greater the energy and concentration that one can bring to
God. The more that one exclusively centers in on God, the
more one becomes God's. The more that one becomes God's,
the more one becomes like God. And the more that one becomes like God, the greater the opportunity for the Divine
24 II,

pp. 106-107.

246

ROBERT S. STOUD1'

Birth. The mystic suggests, " Be like a desert as far as self
and the things of this world are concerned." 25 " Where the
creature ends," he counsels elsewhere, " there God begins to
be. God asks only that you get out of his way . . . and let
him be God in you." 26
This image of the desert reappears at various places in
Eckha.rt's sermons, always with the implication that, to the
degree that one evacuates himself of all personal content, one
is filled with the content of the Son. In finding that space
within the human which is akin to the Divine nature-simple,
uncluttered, unfettered, free-God fills it with Himself. Eckhart muses:
In this likeness or identity God takes such delight that he pours
his whole nature and being into it .... It is his pleasure and rapture to discover identity, because he can always put his whole nature into it-for he is this identity itself. 21

Where God discovers emptiness, He fills it personally. Where
God discovers the human desert, He sows it with Himself.
"Remember that God may not leave anything empty or void,"
he preaches. "That is not God's nature. He could not bear
it. ... God, the master of nature, will not tolerate any empty
place." 28
Meister Eckhart coins a word to describe this radical
emptiness, this stark desert of the self. He terms it "Unwizzen," literally "unknowledge," with translator Blakney preferring to render the German "unconsciousness" or "unselfconsciousness." In either case, it signifies that state of personality which is devoid of all personal will, activity, and even
thought and imagination. It is emptiness indeed, emptiness
that is also clarity. It is like water allowed to set until it comes
to a perfectly tranquil state, where a.II the particles suspended
in it slowly, ineluctably, precipitate out. Eckhart exhorts,
25 III,
26

p. 115.

v, p. 127.

21 XXIII,
28 IV,

p. 205.
p. 122.

MEISTER ECKHART AND THE" ETERNAL BIRTH"

"Yes, truly. You could not do better than to go where it is
dark, that is, unconsciousness." 29 He adds:
God acts without instrumentality and without ideas. And the
freer you are from ideas, the more sensitive you are to his inward
action. You are nearer to it in proportion as you are introverted
and unself-conscious.30
The relationship is clear, then-the more self-aware one is, the
less conscious of God one can be. Hence, as Eckhart puts it
tersely, "If God is to get in, the creature must get out." 31 Unself-consciousness, in other words, is synonymous with Godconsciousness.
If the soul is to know God, it must forget itself and lose (conscious-

ness of) itself, for as long as it is self-aware and self-conscious, it
will not see or be conscious of God. But when, for God's sake, it
becomes unself-conscious and lets go of everything, it finds itself
again in God, for, knowing God, it therefore knows itself and everything else from which it has been cut asunder, in the divine perfection.82
To put one's ego-self behind one is to open oneself up afresh
to God. To lose oneself is to find God. "If you really forsake
your own knowledge and will, then surely and gladly will God
enter with his knowledge shining clearly," Eckhart states elsewhere. "Where God achieves self-consciousness, your own
knowledge is of no use ... " 33 Providing an excellent summary
of his notion of unself-consciousness, he submits:
Therefore, how profitable it is to pursue this potentiality, until
empty and innocent, a man is alone in that darkness of unselfconsciousness, tracking and tracing (every clue) and never retracing his steps! Thus you may win that (something) which is
everything, and the more you make yourself like a desert, unconscious of everything, the nearer you come to that estate .... The
genuine word of eternity is spoken only in that eternity of the man
who is himself a wilderness, alienated from self and multiplicity. 34
20 Ibid.,

p. 119.

30 I, p. 100.

31 II, p. 104.

82 VI, p. 131.
88 IV, p. 119.
84 Ibid.,

p. 120.

248

ROBERT S. STOUDT

This unself-consciousness, this sacrificial journeying into the
desert of the self, this willing abandonment of all that is individual is the necessary precondition for receiving the universal
and the eternal into oneself. God can come in His fullness only
when His room in one's soul is emptied, swept, and readied to
welcome Him. Eckhart proposes," ... If you wish (to experience the Eternal Birth) , you must drop all other activities and
achieve unself-consciousness, in which you will find it." 35

THE DESERT OF THE SELF-A TOUCHSTONE
In seeking God in the desert of the soul, one is oriented away
fmm selfishness, away from narrower, self-centered concerns,
needs, and preferences. The resultant state is one of passive
obedience to God's will alone and of disinterestedness with regards to one's individual affairs or state. This state of disinterestedness (German, " Abgescheidenheit ") is the fruit that
naturally emerges from the re-acquired simplicity of the soul.
It is the very antithesis of the former multiplicity of the self,
undisciplinedly tom in so many directions.
The whole of life ordinarily is directed at the avoidance of
pain and the securing of personal pleasure and gain. Here in
the simple ground of the soul, however, pain and personal
profit inspire neither repulsion nor attraction. In fact, neither
extreme holds any meaning at all. Only God shines within
one's consciousness with pre-eminent significance. Eckhart
describes:
The soul itself is so simple that it cannot have more than one
idea at a time of anything. When attention is directed to the idea
of a stone, the idea of an angel cannot also be entertained. . . . To
think of a thousand angels is no more than thinking of two-and
even more, no more than thinking of one. Thus, a person cannot
be more than single in attention. 36

The more like a desert one becomes, the simpler, the singler,
one grows.
35 I, p. 106.
86

xxv, p. 215.

MEISTER ECKHART AND THE" ETERNAL BIRTH"

9!49

The natural enemy of the Eternal Birth is interior duplicity-double-mindedness,
double-heartedness.
Such division
within the self is incongruous with the nature of God, whose
simplicity has been described earlier. But it is also incongruous
with the mandate of monotheism, which implies that nothing
else should rival God in importance within one's life. Singularity of personal focus, then, frees one from the problems created
by duplicity. It liberates one instead to an existence of infinite simplicity.
Resting quietly in that simplicity, one manifests a natural
disinterestedness towards all that otherwise-distracting and
disorienting multiplicity. Human existence thus becomes as
simple as the soul itself, as simple as God. " There in the inmost core of the soul, where God begets his Son," Eckhart declares, ". . . . it is one and unanalyzable .... To live by this
pure essence of our nature, one must be dead to all that is
personal." 37 From this simpler, inner core, all in life assumes
absolutely equal value. Eckhart further explains:
The soul that is to know God must be so firm and steady in God
that nothing can penetrate it, neither hope nor fear, neither joy
nor sorrow, neither love nor suffering, or any other thing that can
come in it from without. . . . Likewise, the soul ought to be
equidistant from every earthly thing, so that it is not nearer to
one than to the other and behaves the same in love, or suffering,
or having, or forbearance; toward whatever it may be, the soul
should be as dead, or dispassionate, or superior to it. 38

Individual will or choice is supplanted by the omniscient,
gracious will of God, will that can be confidently trusted and
obeyed. "If God is to be your Lord," Eckhart proposes, "you
must really be his servant, but if you work only for your own
ends, to secure your own bliss, then you are not his servant." 39
If God is one's Lord, then whatever that Lord gives to oneprosperity or adversity, ease or trial, smooth roads or rough
roads-is to be accepted and embraced in the same even37 V, pp. 125-126.

38 VI, p. 130.
39 XVII,

p. 174.

250

ROBERT S. STOUDT

spirited fashion. This is the dispassionate character of disinterestedness. Eckhart declares, " When you get rid of selfishness
... then whatever your lot, whatever touches you, for better
or worse, sour or sweet, none of it is yours, but it is all God's
to whom you have left it." 40 Elsewhere, he takes up the same
theme again:
Be sure as God lives, that (whatever your lot in life) it is necessarily the best and that nothing could be better. Even if there
is something that seems better to you, it should not; for, since
God wills it this way and not otherwise, it must necessarily be
best for you. Let it be sickness, or poverty, or hunger, or thirst, or
whatever God ordains or denies, gives or withholds: it is best for
you.41
To accept what God gives is far better than to struggle for
something that one would choose for oneself. That personal
choosing and struggling suggest an adversary relationship
with God-the hyperactivity of the fragmenting human ego
and the lack of inner trust in God's grace and wisdom.
Disinterestedness, then, implies a radical will-lessness on
one's own part. One wills only what God wills for one, whatever that may specifically be. Eckhart insists:
He who gives up to God his own will, captures God and binds him,
so that God can do nothing but what that person wills! Give your
will over to God, and he will give you his own in return, so fully
and without reserve, that the will of God shall be your own human
will.42
In emptying out one's own desires and anxieties, in becoming
that desert in which God will burst forth, the absence of one's
individual will means nothing less than the presence of God's.
Eckhart therefore exhorts:
Above all, claim nothing for yourself. Relax and let God operate in
you and do what he will with you. The deed is his; the word is
his; this birth is his, and all you are is his, for you have surrendered
40 III, p. 114.
41 XIX, p. 183.
42 XVII, p. 175.

MEISTER ECKHART AND THE" ETERNAL BIRTH"

Q51

self to him. . . . Then at once, God comes into your being and
faculties, for you are like a desert, despoiled of all that was
peculiarly your own. 43

When the soul becomes pliable, God, through the Eternal
Birth, works it into a new form. Adam is refashioned into
Christ.
Where the self-center perishes, the God-center flourishes in
birth. One dies to oneself, and the Son bursts forth from within. This is possible only for them who have both eyes focused
singularly on God and on nothing else. " The person who has
denied himself and all else, who seeks his advantage in nothing, and who lives without assigned reasons, acting solely from
loving-kindness," this mystic concludes, " is one who is dead
to the world and alive in God, and God is alive in him." 44

EMPTINESS AND THE WORD
When the person abandons the disrupting pursuit of ego's
every whim and fancy, the physical senses can be withdrawn
from their preoccupation with and attachment to externals.
When the faculties of the personality are reintegrated into a
fine point of focus upon God, the common identity between
the soul and God can be re-established. And when one becomes an unself-conscious desert, devoid of personal will or desire, when the fruits of disinterestedness are consequently
manifested, the spirit of the individual is characterized by a
great stillness, an unperturbable silence. And in this profound
quiet, beyond the ordinary cacophony of one's conflicting and
competing passions, the Eternal Birth transpires within one.
Since the interior state of the soul is depicted as one of
quietude, the movement of God within this silence is said to
be a Divine "speaking" and a human "hearing." Eckhart
asks his audience what a person should do in order to obtain
this Birth from above. Should one exercise one's imaginative
capacities and think strenuously about God? Or should one
43 III,

p. 115.
p. 193.

44 XXI,

252

ROBERT S. STOUD'!'

simply rest in this darkness and this stillness, devoid of all
thought and reflection? He answers himself by stating that
" the best life and the loftiest is to be silent and to let God
speak and act through one." 45 Elsewhere, he maintains,
" Therefore, if God is to speak his word to the soul, it must
be still and at peace, and then he will speak his word and give
himself to the soul. ... " 46
The sustained silence, of course, is the means of leaving undisturbed the fundamental simplicity of the soul. Any effort
on one's own part breaks this interior peace and calm. Such
effort is actually rather pretentious, to say the least. One cannot do anything consciously to aid in God's process. The Birth
is God's initiative, God's effort, and God's final accomplishment. The human being, therefore, can do no better than to
remain passively receptive to what God is achieving in His
own way and His own time. "If anyone is speaking in ·the
temple of the soul, Jesus keeps still, as if he were not at
home .... " Eckhart visualizes, adding, "If Jesus is to speak
in the soul and be heard, then the soul must be alone and
quiet." 47 In that perfect emptiness of the self's core, then, God
speaks, and, in speaking, assimilates the human self into Himself.
In Eckhart's opinion, the Eternal Birth is best characterized
as hearing, because hearing, even on the physical level, is essentially a passive process. In seeing, by contrast, one is very active, eyes darting from object to object, noting, observing,
surveying, scrutinizing. But in hearing, rather than initiating
or managing any such active process, the individual simply
sits quietly and receives whatever is available. In seeing, I go
outside myself in search of objects. I am filled with externalities. But in hearing, I withdraw from the external world, settle
deep within myself, and give attention to the subtle Voice that
lovingly whispers there. In hearing, I am the receiver." Hearing brings more into a man .... " Eckhart concludes. " For the
45 I, p. 99.

46 Ibid.
41 XIII,

p. 159.

MEISTER ECKHART AND THE" ETERNAL BIRTH"

253

power to hear the eternal word is within me, and the power to
see will lea.ve me; for hearing I am passive, and seeing I am
active." 48
That which is heard in the silence of one's interior chamber
is the Logos, the Word of God, the Son who is that eternal
Word. In the desert of this radical quietude, this Word is received, and, in the very act of being received, transforms the
human being into something wondrously new. Eckhart indicates, " It is in the stillness, in the silence, that the word of
God is to be heard." 49 Again, he adds, "In that core (of the
soul) is the central silence, the pure peace, the abode of the
heavenly birth, the place for this event: this utterance of
God .... Here God enters the soul with all he has and not in
part." 50 The hearing and the birth are simultaneous occurrences. In the act of hearing God's eternal Word from deep
within the labyrinth of the soul, the individual inherits this
Eternal Birth. " He who hears and that which is heard are
identical constituents of the eternal Word," Eckhart suggests.51 And the person who is graced to receive this birth professes, along with this mystic, that " the same One, who is begotten and born of God the Father, without ceasing in eternity, is born today, within time, in human nature .... " 52

CHRIST AS ARCHETYPE
While not specifically well-developed in any of his extant
sermons, Eckhart's Christology includes some fascinating insights. In alluding to the Eternal Birth as the blossoming forth
of the Divine Word from within, Eckhart is obviously thinking
of Christ as that Word. But in what precise sense is that
Christ within? What relationship does that "Christ within"
bear to the Jesus of history? And in what sense are the desert48 II, p. 108.
49 I, p. 107.

50 Ibid.,

p. 97.

51 XXIII, p. 203.
52 I,

p. 95.

ROBERTS. STOUDT

core of the human soul and the divinity of Christ to be identified with each other?
In the course of his homiletical materials, Eckhart skillfully
works his way through these difficult issues, not by reducing
the divinity of Christ, but by elevating the humanity of people. In short, our human nature is not as poor and degrading
as we might ordinarily think. Our authentic human-ness, in
Eckhart's opinion, shares the very essence of that Christ. As
the Word emanates from within, we are awakened, as it were,
from our artificial self to our genuine self, selfhood which we
have in common with Christ. Eckhart's point is "not only
that God became man," as he says, " but that he has taken
human nature upon himself." 53
This is not to say, of course, that God is anthropomorphic,
but that man is "theo-morphic" or "Christo-morphic," so to
speak. Humans in their essential, inner nature are bearers of
this primordial, pristine stuff of God. All that Christ was, in
his full humanity, is mine as well in my own fullness. Christ's
divinity, then, represents, not a departure from his humanity,
but rather a climactic fulfillment of that humanity. Divinity
and the fullness of being human are one and the same. And
this fullness is both my birthright and my calling, both my
point of origin in life and my final destiny. The Eternal Birth,
then, is nothing less than the re-discovering, the recovering,
the re-releasing of this given, inner potentiality. "I say emphatically," Eckhart argues," that all the worth of the humanity of the saints, of Mary, the mother of God, or even Christ
himself, is mine too in my human nature." 54
Another way of presenting this mystical intuition is to understand Christ as a sort of spiritual archetype, a prototype of
that which I am fundamentally already and of that which I
am being called to become completely through the love of God.
"Why did God become man?" Eckhart asks his audience,
answering himself, " So that I might be born to be God-yes58

v, p. 125.

54 Ibid.

MEISTER ECKHART AND THE " ETERNAL BIRTH "

255

identically God." What Christ did was to show me the route
to my own goal and to show me what that goal is-namely,
to be one again with my Source, just as Christ was and is.
Eckhart concludes this line of thought by adding, " And God
died so that I, too, might die to the whole world and all
created things." 55
The life and death of Jesus, then, are poignantly illustrative
for human beings-evocative, universal symbols for the route
that all of us must individually travel on our way back to God,
on our path to wholeness and holiness. Christ's lot is my lot.
Christ and we a.re more than just Lord and servants. We are
intimate associates on the same journey. We are brothers.
The final message is that " we should be identical Sons. All the
Son has he has from his Father, being and nature, so that we,
too, might be Sons in the same sense." 56 In another of his
sermons, Eckhart declares, " When the Father begets his Son
in me, I am that Son and no other .... Thus we are all in the
Son and are the Son." 57 He summarizes his Christocentric
anthropology with these words:
Essentially, humanity ranks so high that, at its best, it is like
angelic Being and is related to the Godhead. The ultimate union
that Christ had with the Father is something to which I am
eligible-if I can put off the' this and that' and be human. 58

Our problem, in short, is not that we're " only human," but
that we're not fully human, that we're not human enough.

ETERNAL BIRTH AS THE OMEGA POINT
The Eternal Birth is the actualization of the imago Dei resident within the human personality. It is the coming to birth
of the Divine Son within the human soul. Each one of these
final words here is important to Eckhart's meaning-within
the human soul. This birth is achieved deep within the interior
55 XXI,

p. 194.

56[bid.
57 XIX, p. 186.
5sXVII, p. 177.

256

ROBERT S. STOUD'!'

life of persons, at the very roots of the self, where in the wilderness of the soul, personal self and Universal Self are one,
where humanity attains its consummate goal in perfoction and
divinity. "The Father begets his only begotten Son and the
soul is reborn in God," Eckhart preaches. "Whenever this
birth occurs, it is the soul giving birth to the only begotten
Son." 59 The human soul, then, is forever pregnant with the
possibility of the Eternal Birth, for
the eternal Father is ceaselessly begetting his eternal Son, and the
agent (in the soul responsible for this event) is parturient with
God's offspring and is itself the Son, by the Father's unique
power.60
While Eckhart's preaching on this point sounds radical and
even shocking, it follows logically from what he has already set
forth. Since there is that in the human soul which already
possesses the nature of God and since, in hearing that Divine
voice within, the human being assumes the fuller nature of
the Son, there is perfect identity that is discovered to exist between the person and Christ. Eckhart's experience leads him
to assert boldly: Christ and I, we are one; God and I, we are
one! In the sterile desert of self-forgetfulness, in the barren
wilderness of unself-consciousness, this is the ultimate realization. Speaking for himself, Eckhart states:
God has begotten (the Son) in my soul. Not only is the soul like
him and he like it, but he is in it, for the Father begets his Son in
the soul exactly as he does in eternity and not otherwise .... The
Father ceaselessly begets his Son and, what is more, he begets me
as his Son-the self-same Son!61
He elaborates:
Therefore the heavenly Father is my true Father, and I am his
Son and have all that I have from him. I am identically his Son
and no other, because the Father does only one kind of thing,
making no distinctions. Thus it is that I am his only begotten
59

xxv, p. 212.

60 XXIV,
61 XVIII,

p. 209.
p. 181.

MEISTER ECKHART AND THE " ETERNAL BIRTH "

Son.... If, therefore, I am changed into God and he makes me
one with himself, then, by the living God, there is no distinction
between us.62
In being remade in God, we receive and are received into
that being which is the very antithesis of distinctions, dichotomy, and plurality. The soul in its very core is opposed to
nothing else and includes all else. It is not a " this, here " opposed to any " something, over there." It is simultaneously atone with all that is, including God, and it is therefore identifiable with all, including God. Thus, Eckhart's conclusions
are inevitable-if I am born into the One, I am one with the
One, and I become the One. " Some simple people imagine
that they are going to see God as if he were standing yonder
and they here," he begins, " but it is not to be so. God and I:
we are one." 63 In another sermon, he picks up again on the
same theme, suggesting that, " in bursting forth I discover that
God and I are one. Now I am what I was and neither add to
nor subtract from anything, for I am the unmoved Mover, that
moves all things." 64
Eckhart, of course, is not claiming any special divinity for
himself. In speaking of his own experience and of the conclusions that he has derived from those mystical breakthroughs,
he is implying that what is true for him is the same for all
people. At the heart of hearts of every man and woman, there
is that fertile desert in which God awaits and into which God
lovingly woos us. The Eternal Birth is the ultimate step in
our growth, therefore, the existential goal for all humans, the
omega point towards which the irascibilis yearns and in which
it finally secures its rest. Eckhart summarizes this point, "To
this end I was born, and by virtue of my birth being eternal,
I shall never die. It is of the nature of this eternal birth that
I have been eternally, that I am now, and shall be forever." 65
62 Ibid.

as Ibid., p. 182.
64 XVIII,

65 Ibid.,

p. 232.

p. 231.

ROBERTS. STOUDT

Flowing in that stream of the eternal, beyond the bifurcations
of time and space, one takes on the nature of eternity itself.
Transcending that manacled part of my physical self, there
is that in me which lives only in eternity, where everything
that already was, and is, and will be exists simultaneously. In
the pure and simple core of my soul, I am already rooted in
that eternal Now-moment. Eternity is the ground out of which
I have grown. It is the same Ground to which I am called
ultimately to return.
This characteristic of the eternal in the Divine Birth is a
very significant one. In hearing God's Word within, in blooming into something new, one is carried out of linear time and
into eternity. "Flat" time, as it were, gives way to the "fullness" of time. Human existence is no longer typified by
length but by depth. "The fullness of time is when time is
no more," Eckhart defines. " Still to be within time and yet to
set one's heart on eternity, in which all temporal things are
dea.d, is to reach the fullness of time." 66 Full time is pregnant
time. It is far more than simply a sequence of past-presentfuture. It is all present-the dea.d and the living and the notyet-born, the near and the far, the many and the One. It is all
contained in the Now-moment of eternity. It is here, in this
Now-moment that the Eternal Birth takes place. And when
one arrives at this final resting point, " ' here and there ' cease
to be, and creatures are forgotten, (and) being shall be fulfilled." 67

IN SUM
In the end, what one finds in Eckhart the preacher is a
passionately mystical man. There is no surprise in that, of
course, but the fact that mystical insights are so openly shared
with his hearers is a significant clue into Eckhart the man.
Johann Eckhart, precisely because of his experience into God,
reaches out to people with a candid vitality and force that may
be unmatched in the Church, calling parishioners and religious
s1 Ibid.,
66 XII,

p. 153.
p. 151.

MEISTER ECKHART AND THE" ETERNAL BIRTH"

259

of every age from the many and to the One, a.way from the
distractions of many-ness and much-ness to the healing wholeness of the Origin itself. "That is the way the soul is made
pure," he teaches, " by being purged of much divided life and
by entering upon a life that is (focused on) unity." 68
Eckhart's own singularity of intent illustrates the way for
us and demonstrates that it can be accomplished, that persons
are capable of quietly rising above the fragmentation of their
age and of tasting eternity itself. The Kingdom of heaven is
indeed within. One's inner life is pregnant all the time with
it. Eckhart's call as preacher is to this eternal Kingdom within the soul, where humans receive both their fullness as creatures and the fullness of their Creator. But the route there is
very challenging, and none but the bra.vest make such a
journey. "As I have often said," Eckhart concludes, "'The
shell must be cracked apart if what is in it is to come out; for
if you want the kernel, you must break the shell.' " 69
ROBERT

Harrisburg, Pennsywama

68 XVI,

69 XI,

p. 173.

J?· 148.

s. STOUDT

GROUNDED IN THE TRINITY:
SUGGESTIONS FOR A THEOLOGY OF
RELATIONSHIP TO OTHER RELIGIONS

"In our age, when every day humankind is being drawn closer
together and the ties between various peoples are increased, the
Church attentively considers what is its relationship to non-Christian religions." Nostra Aetate #1.

cr,nE DECLARATION ON THE Relationship of the
_J_ r;hurch to Non-Christian Religions, in spite of its checkered history at Vatican II, was a monumental achievement. Yet since its origin and initial importance was as a
statement concerning the Catholic Church's relationship with
Juda.ism, and since the document's teaching concerning the
other religions is inchoate, the theological implications and
ramifications of a positive view of other religions have been
scarcely explored, even though a voluminous literature on the
subject has appeared since the Council. While N ostra Aetate
opened the gate, the path as yet can be dimly seen. On the
one hand, it definitely resituated the discussion for Catholic
theologians; on the other hand, it is true that it "confined itself to making polite remarks." 1 The task of the theologians,
especially of those engaged in a theology of the history and
relationship of religions, is to move beyond polite remarks into
a discussion which can be controversial, polemical, and, a.t
times, acrimonious since the discussion must be faithful to the
faith confessed by the Church in its creeds and open to God's
action in the religions.
The discussion has two phases. The first is somewhat
S.J., in Walter
1 W. A. Visser't Hooft, quoted by Robert A. Graham,
Abbott, S.J., ed., The Documents of Vatican II (New York: Guild Press,
1964)' p. 659.

260

A THEOLOGY OF RELATIONSHIP

TO OTHER RELIGIONS

261

apriori: granted the profession of Catholic faith, what are the
presuppositions and bases within that faith upon which a
theology of the history and relationship of religions can be developed? 2 This discussion takes place even before the second
phase consideration of the aposteriori data of the history of
religions. Of course, this second phase in turn may perhaps
lead to a reconceptualization of the apriori phase of the discussion.3 This reconceptualization would not be so much a revision or shifting of Christian belief as much as a precision of .
terminology and a contextualization of Christian faith within
the religious history of humankind.
The following paper is a contribution to both phases of the
discussion, with an emphasis on the apriori, reapproached after
consideration of the aposteriori data. Its main concern is not
a. theology for dialogue, which may be thought of as a contemporary conversation with other religions as they now are.
Rather it views the religions from the perspective of their history in order to say something about their relationship, understood in faith, to Christianity. 4 These histories, including
those of so-called 'dead ' religions, have a relationship to salvation history. Therefore the discussion will be akin to a
theology of history, which illuminates the present self-understanding of the believer within the Christian community. The
2 For
two important examples of this apriori discussion see: Karl
Rahner, "Christianity and the Non-Christian Religions," Theological Investigations V (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1967) ; from a quite different perspective, see Hans Urs von Balthasar, "Catholicism and the Religions,"
Communio V, #1 (Spring 1978).
a For an example of the aposteriori discussion, see: Raimundo Panikkar,
The Unknown Christ of Hinduism: Towards an Ecumenical Christophany,
revised and enlarged edition, (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1981).
4 Vernon Gregson analyzes
concisely the process leading up to dialogue,
from a Lonergan perspective : " Dialectics come to full term will be dialogue
not only with the past but with present exponents of different traditions."
" The Historian of Religions and the Theologian: Dialectics and Dialogue,"
in Matthew L. Lamb, Creativity and Method: Essays in Honor of Bernard
Lonergan, S.J. (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1981), p. 151. I
would go further: At full term dialogue comes to a decision which establishes a relationship.
This relationship is also understood as a basis for
dialogue.

262

DANIEL P. SHERIDAN

format will be to offer certain themes in thesis form with explanations.
1. Catholic theology should take full account of the data. of
the religious sciences, especially of the history of religions.
This has been said so often it seems redundant to say it
again. 5 Yet the context in which such a thesis is presented
often determines its precise meaning in a way different from
what I am suggesting here. In this thesis, I am suggesting
that, apriori, the theologians be open to listening to this
data, to allowing the aposteriori dafa to speak, to bear a word
which can only come from the Father in whom the theologian
already believes. Yet this word from the Father will emerge
from a unique context in a religious tradition which can only
be known by studying the tradition in all its breadth. This
particular word cannot be known apart from listening to the
aposteriori data. Hence the theologian should not, on the one
hand, confuse the distinct quality of that word from the
Father in that tradition with any other word from the Father
in a different tradition, nor, on the other hand, disperse its
profound unity with every word coming forth from God. These
words are different in their actual expression and, at the same
time, profoundly unified in their origin from the Father. In
view of the Father's revelation in Christ, the entire history of
humans within this cosmos is revelatory, the unveiling and
disclosure of God's words, to the person of faith who listens to
and hears what God may speak. There is a singular claim of
having heard the word, ' Christ ', as the revelatory word from
the Fa:ther to the Christian. From this revelation flow exclusive claims. If we may here allow the use of the word, ' exclusive', as an adjective, the belief in its substance is inclusive
5 Cf. "The great mission of our times is to create the global human tradition for the first time. Until this generation, mankind has lived in distinctive traditions, even though they influenced each other to a certain extent.
But from here on each of us must accept the totality of the human tradition as our own personal tradition." Thomas Berry, "The Word Inspires
Us: Interreligious Dialogue," Cross Currents, XXIV, #2-3 (Summer-Fall
1974), p. 248.

A THEOLOGY OF RELATIONSHIP

TO OTHER RELIGIONS

263

of ail' revelations' which are related to the Primary Analogue,
Christ. Exclusive here means universal inclusion based on the
particular claim of a revelation in Christ. 6 This universal inclusion is an intention to listen everywhere and everytime in
view of Christ without a gratuitous pre-assertion of what it is
that may be heard of what God speaks in the other traditions.
The aposteriori history of religions finds that the ' religions '
and ' spiritual traditions ' do not function on the same level in
regard to the human predicament nor do these traditions activate similar levels of human possibility before the real within
time and space, and beyond time and space. God's words
spoken through this variety will be various without being disunified. If you have listened to one religion, you have not
heard what God is speaking in other traditions.
The word, ' religions ', used in the plural is expressive of
realities in time and space which are not univocal. Further
these realities are not precisely analogical either, rather they
are homologous. 7 Only sometimes are they homomorphous 8
and homophylous 9 in certain respects. Yahweh is not to Tao
as Brahman is not to Nirvana. Indeed, these are complex relationships. For the believer in Christ, God is speaking different
words having different values in different contexts. Hence a
claim for one does not include a claim for the others. However, we can see that they operate homologously in their different contexts. For example, Yahweh and Tao as concepts
differ. They are homomorphous as to centrality within their
distinct traditions but the evolutionary origin, place in the organic structure of differing cultures, function in the system of
each as to time and space, ultimacy and transcendence, etc.,
s "There are unique claims, but Christianity and Christ have exclusive
claims only because everything is included. In other words, the inclusion,
the universal inclusion, is what makes for the exclusion, and I do not myself accept what might be called exclusive claims." (Berry, p. 255.)
7 Homology: similar function in a dissimilar system.
s Homomorphy: similar form.
9 Homophyly:
same origin within an evolutionary process. I am here only
raising the possibility of a common origin. What origin might mean is so
amorphous in this context as to render the concept almost meaningless.

264

DANIEL P. SHERIDAN

are different. Hence the homology rather than analogy. There
may be a common ' ancestor' (homophyly) yet its remoteness
renders them more dissimilar than similar in this respect.
There is a resemblance here of realities otherwise unlike.
Yahweh and Tao are central to their different traditions
(homomorphy) ; they may, granted certain dubious presuppositions about the origins of' religion', have a common ancestor
(homophyly); they are in other very important respects dissimilar, more unlike than like (analogy). This is true not only
of single concepts like Yahweh and Tao but of entire traditions. This kind of dissimilarity rules out appeals to ' general
revelations ' in a theology of relationship to other religions.
Such a theology of relationship should adhere to Raimundo
Panikkar's homology principle of hermeneutics: " Any interpretation given from outside a tradition has to meet all the requirements of and at least phenomenologically coincide with
the self-interpretation given from within." 10 A facile equation
of two concepts like Yahweh and Tao would violate the
Israelite's interpretation of Yahweh and the Taoist's interpretation of Tao. However, the establishment of a relationship
between two religions must go beyond this principle. The relationship is established from within one religion, from its own
premises, toward the other religion. Thus the relationship is an
extension of self-interpretation and must be one-sided in the
experience of the one and not the other. The homology principle then must not be taken to preclude the establishment of
a relationship from one religion to another which the second
religion may not grant on its own premises.
For the theologian, the aposteriori data disclose such dissimilarity as to render the concept of ' religion ', when used
plurally as ' religions ', dangerously overextended. 11 If the theo10 Raimundo, Panikkar, "Indology as a Cross-Cultural
Catalyst" (privately circulated), p. 3.
11 I accept Wilfred Cantwell Smith's critique of the concept in The Meaning and End of Religion (New York: New American Library, 1964). His
notion of cumulative traditions is valuable, see pp. 139-153. Less useful is
Smith's notion of faith.

A THEOLOGY OF RELATIONSlIIP

TO OTHER RELIGIONS

logian should use a conceptual grid not appropriate to the
data, the possibility will arise whereby what God has not
spoken will be heard by mistake. A narrow concept of ' religion ' is here useful. 12 This concept of religion may be distinguished from' spirituality '. 13 A religion is a mode of human
culture which deals with the problematic of the human predicament by an appeal to the transcendent (cf. Ps. 42) or in
response to a call from the transcendent (cf. Ex. 3). A
spirituality is a mode of human culture which deals with the
problematic of the human predicament immanently within
human resources. These functional definitions describe ways
of dealing with and transforming the human predicament.
Taxonomically, we need not have the pre-understanding that
all humans have had the option within their culture of a religion (as so defined), e.g., Chinese traditions like Confucianism
may be predominantly spiritualities (as so defined) .14 These
definitions are based neither on transcendental experience nor
on religious experience. In this context, religious experiences,
encounters with the sacred, would be understood as supportive, but not foundational, for both religions and spiritualities. 15
The adjective, 'religious', referring to the sacred, is different
both connotatively and denotatively from this stipulative use
of the noun religion.
Category formation in the area of religious studies is extremely problematic. The above attempt at definition is aimed
at avoiding that category confusion where a category like religion is conceived in a theistic context and then extended to
non-theistic cultures. Also each of these words carries a nor12 Reserved for explicit theisms.
In this way we can avoid reductionism
with regard to the various non-theisms and allow them to have their word.
13 I use 'spirituality'
for lack of a better term. This usage has been
suggested in the works of R. Panikkar, M. Eliade, E. Cousins, and T. Berry.
The refinements are my own.
14 Also, the presence of 'gods' need not be indicative
of a religion according to these definitions.
15 cf. Louis Dupre, "The Transcendent
and the Sacred", in Transcendent
Selfhood: The Loss and Recovery of the Inner Life (New York: Seabury
Press, 1976), pp. 18·30.

Q66

DANIEL P. SHERIDAN

mative weight which hinders insight and understanding.
Therefore I propose these two terms, religion and spirituality,
which are symmetrical as modes of culture, but asymmetrical
in regard to what may or ma.y not be beyond human possibility.
For the Christian believer God has spoken through both
religions and spiritualities. But those words are not symmetrical. There is an asymmetry in God's revelatory dealings
Apriori, God's dealings are revelatory.
with humankind.
Aposteriori, God speaks different kinds of words. A religion
will have a certain kind of relationship to Christianity, a spirituality a different kind of relationship. Hermeneutical instruments and taxonomies more subtle than those now in common
use should be developed. That suggested here is an attempt
to allow the religions and spiritualities to be ' other ' and to be
related to Christianity precisely as other. The usual taxonomy
which sees 'religion ' as practically universal has been formulated in a Christian and post-Christian context, which often
presupposes as connatural to all cultures what may only be
found in some and thus is inserted in other cultures gratuitously. For example, Christian concerns such as ultimacy, revelation, the supernatural, etc., are conceptually presupposed to
be relevant elsewhere. As a result, especially in regard to
spiritualities, like the many forms of Buddhism, there is a
tendency to see theism or realities akin to theism where it is
not present. These instruments are unlmowingly reductionistic
in defining the other in theistic terms. Or the opposite may
happen where theism is reduced conceptually to non-theism.
Hence the person of faith should discern the asymmetrical
variety of God's words to humankind and be able to discover
a word from God even where it has not been explicitly heard
by the other tradition.
Q. For Catholic theology, the discussion of a theology of relationship to other religions and spiritualities is better placed
unthin the mystery of the Trinity revealed in Christ than as a
function of salvation or as a problem of ecclesiology. All too
often this discussion is reduced to the theological task of ex-

A THEOLOGY OF RELATIONSHIP

TO OTHER RELIGIONS

plaining the dictum, " outside the Church, there is no salvation." This task may be considered to have been accomplished
with relative adequacy at Vatican II in the Documents on the
Church, on Ecumenism, and on the Relationship to Non-Christian Religions. There has also been a lengthy discussion of
Rahner's theology of the universal salvific will of God and of
the anonymous Christian. Unfortunately, most of these discussions have not been in a Trinitarian context. 16 In contemporary theology the focus may now shift from the ecclesial
salvation of the non-Christian to that of the revelatory significance of the religions and spiritualities of humankind within
the heart of Catholic systematic and dogmatic theology. This
theology will be informed, according to the analogy of faith,
by the doctrines of salvation and of the Church. Each dimension of theology leads to the mystery of the Trinity which must
eventually bear the weight of the conclusions of a theology of
salvation and of the Church.
The task of a theology of relationship to other religions and
spiritualities is to make our understanding of the Trinity economic for the oikumene of humankind in its entire history. If
the Father has spoken, that word spoken is human, indeed,
a human being. This human being, Jesus Christ, is the culmination, even the surpassing by superabundance, of the Father's
creation of and direction of a receptivity for him within the
cosmos. The cosmos as such is not so self-contained as to preclude the further event of a Word, Jesus Christ, being spoken
by the Father. This human being Jesus Christ, as divine Word
from the Father, is the revelation of an entelechy for the cosmos, which once known is seen to be beyond the cosmos's
original entelechy.
Within the history of the cosmos, the emergence of the
human occurs with the development of culture. Culture, functionally understood, is a human answer to the predicament of
human awareness of being finite in time and space. Culture
10 An important exception has been Raimundo Panikkar.
See The Trinity
and the Religious Experiences of Man (New York: Orbis Books, 1973) .

268

DANIEL P. SHERIDAN

mediates to individual human beings both meaning and experiences of the sacred. These mediations, the traditions of religion and of spirituality, are particular, specific, and discrete.
Cultures embodying meaning and mediating experiences of the
sacred have been both religions and spiritualities. Religions
emphasize human striving, spiritualities human initiative. Yet
the process of "cosmic receptivity", productive of that quality of human finitu<le which allows the human to perceive that
something is lacking within the cosmos, also renders the
Speaker unheard. The Speaker of this original cosmic word is
often not heard. He is the Father, Crea.tor, the font of the
sacred and the source of meaning, yet relatively unknown (cf.
Acts 17.). The Speaker may not be known precisely as
Speaker or Creator, unless he speaks a greater Word, incarnate in Jesus Christ, which is then actually heard in faith by
the Christian.
This Word of the Father is Christ in the entirety of his
human reality. The incarnate Son is the Concrete Absolute,
he toward whom and through whom all meaning (for the
Christian) flows. This Word, the Concrete Absolute, is incommensurable with the possible cosmic respectivity for him. The
Word made flesh is a revelation of the Father completely and
definitively within the finitude of time and space. The particular vehicle of the Father's expression is the human life and
death of Jesus. The resurrection reveals that his life was the
particular vehicle of the Father's expression. Only with this
Word is the possibility of that prior word of cosmic receptivity
revealed fully. By this Word spirituality is transformed into
religion, religion is transformed into a response to God's pursuit of the human. These transformations are embodied in an
historical religion, Christianity, which in its Catholic form
seeks to understand its relationship to the other religions and
spiritualities. Human initiative in spirituality and human
striving in religion is dialectically negated, yet affirmed as the
Father's Word made human allows a way to return to God.
The human beings have a. means, incommensurable with their
initiative and striving, to strive for God in love with all heart,

A THEOLOGY OF RELATIONSHIP

TO OTHER RELIGIONS

Q69

mind, and soul. Yet the initiative and striving are vindicated
at another level in this dialectic. They are incorporated
within the 'revealed religion', founded on God's prior initiative and striving.
The key word here is incommensurable. The initiative of
the Speaker-Father is incommensurable with the human striving. In view of faith, the absolute ooncretization of the Word in
Jesus is incommensurable with the sociological realities of the
religions and spiritualities. 17 There was no need from the
human side for the Father's initiative, no need for the Word,
or for a ' new ' religion. The spiritualities and religions were
relatively adequate in their historical contexts, yet through the
Paschal Mystery of Jesus, the death vindicated in his resurrection, there is a salvation. This salvation, affirmed in the
Creeds as a resurrection to a new life in Jesus, gives entitlement to the claims of the spiritualities and religions to be
themselves in their precise particularities. It also transvalues
these entitlements for the believer present on the Church. As
Peter Schineller says: "From the insights gained into the
boundless love of God revealed in and through the life, death,
and resurrection of Jesus, we dare to speak of the universal
saving will of God." 18
We also dare to speak of the continuing presence of the
Spirit of Jesus Christ, the sanctifying presence of the Father's
will to save. 19 The Spirit is the proleptic presence of the end
of the history of humankind within that very history. The
Spirit of Jesus Christ is present as entelechy in which all the
initiatives and strivings of the spiritualities and religions are
mutually inherent in the finality of Jesus, God's Word present
17 Indeed
as human these religions and spiritualities,
including Christianity, are comparable in the full sociological sense of the term. Incommensurability is a theological judgment made on the quite different grounds
of a response in faith to the Father's initiative.
18 Peter Schineller,
"Discovering Jesus Christ: A History we Share" in
Leo J. O'Donovan, ed., A World of Grace: An Introduction to the '/'hemes
and Foundations of Karl Rahner's Theology (New York: Seabury, 1978), p.
101.
19 Cf. Karl Rahner, Foundations
of Ohristian Faith (New York: Seabury,
1978), pp. 316-318.

Q70

DANIEL P. SHERIDAN

and yet to come. This Spirit is manifest, manifold, and hidden,
disclosed to the believer in the particularities of the spiritualities and religions. The presence of the Spirit of Jesus Christ,
the Word of the Father, is the basis for a theology of relationship with other religions and spiritualities. The presence of the
Spirit of Jesus Christ transvalues the particularities of the
religions and spiritualities, giving them a Triune significance
for the Christian: first, precisely, in their particularity as
founded in the Father's creative act of making actual the
cosmic receptivity for human evolution, they are from the
Father; second, as human initiatives and strivings, they are
taken, without mixture and without separation, into the concretization of the divine and the human in Jesus Christ; third,
in their moving to an end, an omega., drawn by the Spirit of
Jesus Christ, they are the ordinary vehicle for the Father's
offer of salvation.
3. Catholicity is a dialectical sign of the presence and the

lack of presence in the religions and spiritualities of the singular events of the Paschal Mystery, i.e., the absolute presence
of Trinitarian love. In the events of Jesus's living and of his
death are grounded the unique particulars of the Father's
total salvation history. The concrete particularity of each religion and spirituality receives significance within this salvation
history. There is a complex analogy here of inclusion in, and
of exclusion from, the Unique Event. The inclusion in the
Christ event of each religion's and spirituality's participants as
in some way already Christian does not render the historical
particularity of their non-Christian (or not-yet-Christian, or
perhaps not-ever-to-be-Christian) experiences any less unique.
The uniqueness and particularity are not postulated in their
own right (for the Christian) but rather as a genuine expression of the Father's revelatory actions among these specific
people and therefore in and through the concrete particularity
and uniqueness of Christ.
Catholicity is a mark of a community as the vanguard of
the Father's people. This community is the extension in time
of Christ and shares in his task of being a light to the peoples.

A THEOLOGY OF RELATIONSHIP

TO OTHER RELIGIONS

271

In the words of Yves Congar, the catholicity of the Church is
"the dynamic universality of her unity: the capacity that her
principles of unity have for assimilating, fulfilling, exalting,
winning for God, and reuniting in him each and every man,
every value." 20 This catholicity affirms the universal salvific
will of the Father in which the Father is at work and present
at every time and pla.ce. On this basis it affirms the hope
that all will be saved and joined to Christ. Aside from Christ
there is no patent reason either to affirm that there is a salvation or that it is a universal possibility. Of course, the religions and spiritualities each offer a transformation of the
human predicament. But from the Christian point of view
these transformations are either not as ultimate as is salvation or are not grounded in historical fact a.s is salvation. This
last statement is based on the insight that 'salvation' may not,
apart from Christ, be gratuitiously affirmed as immediately
available to all humans. Salvation is not an obvious reality
derived from the general experience of human beings. Although it may be understood as one of a variety of transformations of the human predicament, salvation, resurrection in
Christ, cannot thereby be equated with these other transformations.
Catholicity is an aesthetic which appreciates the particularity and uniqueness of each religion and spirituality: " all things
counter, original, spare, strange" (Hopkins). Awe before the
fathering forth of God's beauty in the initiatives and strivings
of humankind is praise of God. Not only is there a universal
presence of the triune God but it is through the parts of the
whole history of humankind. Catholicity should acknowledge,
respect, and expect differences and variety among the religions
and spiritualities. In each is a gifted word from the Father,
waiting to be heard. These words are gifts to the Son, and
thus to us. Catholicity affirms that the Father has spoken differently and to different extents in humankind's traditions.
2-0 Quoted

1965), p. 76.

in Louis Bouyer, Diationary of Theology

(New York: Desciee,

272

DANIEL P. SHERIDAN

Sometimes the Christian community is not able to hear a word
and is called to growth. Sometimes it does not in fact hear the
word which the Father has spoken. The laments of non-Christians from Julian the Apostate to Chief Seattle that it is a
strange kind of God who would talk to some of the people
only some of the time should give pa.use to the believer. These
laments reveal that the message of the Gospel may have been
preached in dissonance with the previous revelations of the
Father. Sins against Catholicity are common, almost unavoidable. If the preaching of the Word means that people must
abandon some of the words they have previously heard from
God, then something is lacking in the preaching. Perhaps what
is lacking is the patience to listen in faith since listening must
precede preaching.
However, at times, in truth, Catholicity listens and hears no
word since it finds that the Father, in that time and place, has
not yet allowed the Word, which he has indeed spoken, to be
heard precisely as Word of the Father. Catholicity finds that
in some times and places God has not yet spoken the Word in
such a way that it might be heard, even when in faith it sees
the presence of the Spirit of Jesus Christ in the entelechy of a
tradition toward Christ. Even in not hearing, there is a word
in the silence of God. 21 In the aposteriori data of the history
of religions and spiritualities this silence of God must be respected. The silence is perceived because of the Christian's
faith in the Word made flesh. As silence it grounds both God's
freedom and the human's: God may not yet have spoken, the
human may not yet have heard or may not yet have listened.
This silence, as the not hearing because not listening of
humans, is from the human side the reason why the Cross of
Jesus was possible. Yet the greater ground for the Cross is
God's free redemptive love. This love overwhelms as does a
great work of art which is both simple and subtle.
4. In meeting the concrete grace of Christ in each religion
and spirituality we cannot but be changed as we h:ear God's
21 Cf. Daniel P. Sheridan,
"The Silence of God in Early Buddhism",
Studies in Formative Spirituality, I, #2 (May 1980) pp. 245-255.

A THEOLOGY OF RELATIONSHIP

TO OTHER RELIGIONS

273

revelation and are graced by his expeeted and unexpeeted deeds
and words. We will be forced to deepen our understanding of
God's triune activity in history. In addition we cannot but
change others as we witness to our faith in Jesus Christ. There
is indeed a certain convergence of religions and spiritualities
but it is not the whole story and may be accidental. Failure
in mutual metanoia is to be expected since the concrete grace
of Christ is revealed in the Cross and death of Jesus. The
measure here is not historical progress. History itself can be
the Cross for the community which extends Christ in time.
The extension is not an organic and continual penetration into
human society and history since sometimes fidelity to the Word
may demand retreat from society and from' history'. The history of salvation and world history, on one level, have the same
scope and extent. On another level, dialectically they may be
in opposition. The aposteriori data disclose a tragic dimension
to many meetings of Christianity with the religions and
spiritualities.
5. There is a need to rethink the relationship of Hebrew
religious traditions and history to Christian. faith in view of
a theology of relationship to other religions and spiritualities.
Faith has appropriated the Hebrew religious experience and
history through acceptance of the Old Testament canon and
through an acceptance of the rev-elatory quality of the history
of Israel. Homologously, there might be a future appropriation of the scriptures of other religions and spiritualities.
Homologously, Christian faith can recognize the revelatory
quality of the histories of humankind's communities. The history of Israel has a privileged but complex place in Christian
theology. Already in contemporary theology, Post-New Testament Judaism is being reevaluated as a. locus of God's presence
and activity. Without arguing for symmetry between Israel
and Judaism, and the other religions and spiritualities, we can
see that the case of Israel and Judaism must not be seen as a
separate question but rather as an integral part of the theology
of relationship.

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DANIEL P. SHERIDAN

6. A theology of relationship based on the speaking of the

Father in and through the Son affirms the mutual inclusivity
and mutual inherence of the finalities of the religions and spiritualities of humankind. This affirmation is not made because,
as is so commonly said, all religions are in some way the same.
That is patently false. That kind of an affirmation allows no
value to the particularity of each of the religions and spiritualities. Rather, the finalities of each are caught up in a single
finality, the consummation of all in the Son in an act of praise
to the Father. The final meaning of any given tradition in history, of course, cannot be known until the end of the story.
Hence, the affirmation here is that the Spirit of Jesus Christ is
present in each as an en telechy. This en telechy is affirmed in
faith, not empirically. But the entelechy will be seen through
the eyes of faith in the definiteness attached to each religion
and spirituality by their participants. To the extent that
each tradition's entelechy differs, so does the presence of the
Spirit vary. This presence is transcendental, as Rahner emphasizes, but it cannot be excluded, as he states, that the presence
might be discovered to be actually present in history. Therefore, " there is no reason to exclude such discoveries a priori,
nor to judge them in a minimalistic way to be merely a negative contrast to Jesus as the eschatological and unsurpassable
savior". 22 I might add that there is no reason to maximalize
such discoveries either. Both minimalization and maximalization are leveling and do not allow to each religion and spiritually its proper particularity.
The affirmation of inclusivity and inherence of finalities
recognizes in each religion's and spirituality's particularity differing and conflicting truth claims, ermrs, and discontinuities.
It is clear that theology cannot relate to each tradition in the
same way or in general. In interreligious dialogue, the presence
of a third tradition is needed to insure a proper context. For
example, Christian-Zen dialogue needs the presence of a
Vaishna va theist. Otherwise the discussion becomes narrow,
22 Rahner,

Foundations,

p. 321.

A THEOLOGY OF RELATIONSHIP

TO OTHER RELIGIONS

275

perhaps, in this example, focusing Christianity to its apophatic
dimensions. All dialogue must be ecumenical in the sense of
the entire oikumene of religious traditions. Particularly, it
should include traditions like Islam which make concrete historical claims in a way analogous to Christianity.
This thesis's main thrust is that the Christian should humbly
listen to and should allow the historical data to speak what
words they bear. Words from God may be heard or not heard.
Even the not hearing, what might be called listening to the
silence of God, is disclosive since it may be not just a silence
in which God is not heard, but a silence in which God may not
(yet) have spoken. The listening anticipates an entelechy, a
potentia obedientialis, a receptivity, toward a word which
will be spoken at the consummation.
This affirmation of inclusivity and inherence with its
corollary of listening makes possible an authentic and nuanced
kerygma. Such a kerygma. is the sowing of the seed in a soil
(the particular religions or spiritual tradition) which is known,
respected, and loved. The theology of relationship here described is primarily an economic Trinitarian theology of
history.
7. The theology of relationship to other religions and spiri-

tualities involves listening to and correlation of the four
sources of words of the Father to humankind, and sublation of
them to the Word, the Concrete Absolute, Jesus Christ. God
speaks, the human person listens. The human is one who may
listen for and hear God's word. Often the order is reversed:
having heard the Word, the Christians realize that they have
been listening. From the fact of hearing, God's previous silence
is clarified as the stillness before the Word. From the fact of
hearing, the anguish of the human predicament is then understood as having been a straining to hear. Having heard the
Word, the Christian recognizes the four words of God spoken
to the human that the Word might be heard. 23 God has
23 For the idea of the 'four words of God' I am indebted to Thomas Berry,
although the form of the idea as presented is my own.

276

DANIEL P. SHERIDAN

spoken in the word of the cosmos, heard and studied in cosmology and the sciences. God has spoken in the word of the
human heart, heard and studied in psychology, anthropology,
and philosophy. These two words, of the cosmos and of the
human heart, explain the importance of meta.physics which
unites in single understanding the concerns of the word of the
cosmos and the human heart. God has spoken in the word of
the history of humankind and in the history of each person,
heard and studied in history and autobiography. God has
spoken in the word of the scriptures of humankind, heard in
proclamation, reading and study. These two words explain the
importance of hermeneutics.
For the Christian the context for properly hearing each of
these words is the event of the Word become flesh, crucified,
and gloriously risen, witnessed in Scripture and in the life of
the Church. Apart from the Word's communication of the
Father's redeeming love, the person might not have listened
within these four words for any such reverberations of God's
'Vord. Then the words of cosmology, anthropology, history,
and hermeneutics would not have spoken of God, and the people would have heard the silence of God. Because the Word
of God is freely spoken, such a silence would have been not just
a silence in which God is not heard, but a silence in which God
has not (yet) spoken.
The Father's Word in its various forms is spoken to a person who may listen. In view of the Trinitarian circumincession, it is the very premise for that person's existence. Where
the Father is there is the Son and the Spirit. If the Word is
not spoken, the person's existence is at stake. If the Word is
not concretely spoken in the life and death of Jesus, the salvation of that person, resurrection in Christ, incommensurable
though it may be with that person's existence, would not occur.
Such a dual silence, of a person's not hearing and of God's not
speaking, would frustrate human existence and the possibility
of this salvation. Other ways of transformation would then be
sought. In Christian experience both the Word of the Father
in the event Qf Christ. and in the Scriptural witness to it and

A THEOLOGY OF RELATIONSHIP

TO OTHER RELIGIONS

ii,77

then the various words of God are mutually inhering. They
resonate to each other. Their historical order proceeds from
hearing the Word of the Father, Jesus Christ, to listening to
these four words of God, while their logical order is reversed.
In order to properly hear the Word, one must first have listened for that Word mediated through the four words. This is
another way of stating the problematic of Christian philosophy
in relation to theology. The human being, in Rahner's terms,
is a ' spirit in the world ' and ' hearer of the Word '. The one
is a precondition of the other.
The model of the correlation of the four words sublated in
the Word of the Father, which is concretized in Jesus Christ,
allows a broadly based relationship to the religions and spiritualities. Each of these religions and spiritualities has a cosmological, anthropological, historical, and scriptural component. These words are revelatory (both by presence and by
absence) to the Christian and challenge the Christian to listen
more carefully. That they are God's words demands that they
be correlated. That they are asymmetrical, that is different
from ea.ch other, and from the Word heard in Christian faith,
demands a sublation to that Word.
In the contemporary situation where Christianity and the
religions and spiritualities are present to each other, Christian
theology is called to a greater development and clarification.
The classicism of theology, which has been questioned so well
by Bernard Lonergan, was too simple a correlation and sublation of the four words before the Word. 24 A broader and deeper
correlation opened up through relationship with the religions
and spiritualities rela.tivizes both the classical correlation of
traditional theology and also the kinds of correlation being
made by much of contemporary theology in view of ' the covenant with modernity '.
The differences between religion and spirituality, e.g., between theistic Hinduism and non-theistic forms of Buddhism
24 Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology
1972)' p. 338.

(New York: Herder and Herder,

278

DANIEL P. SHERIDAN

on the issue of human initiative, make more difficult the correlation among themselves and with Christianity, and their
sublation to Christ. Because the Word heard by the Christian
is particular and concrete, the correlation and particularly the
sublation are peculiarly the Christian's task. However, the
participants of the other religions and spiritualities may have
their own homologous tasks.
8. Finally, we must beware of premature conclusi-Ons si,nce
the task is just begun. In a sense the task for the Christian is
global Trinitarian patristics, an ecumenical ressourcement.
The spiritual and religious history of humanity is one and a
heritage and resource for the Christian. The Father wills the
salvation of all, the offer is real. The Father has spoken concretely in the Word of Jesus Christ. Hence there is a universal
salvific will based on the particular Word of Jesus Christ
which was preceded by the four words of cosmos, human
heart, history, and scripture. Within this context the religions
and spiritualities are being met with existential force. A
theology of relationship includes an aesthetic to help us to
appreciate, respect, and listen to other traditions, a dramatics
of exchange and conversion for us both as human beings and as
Christians; and a theologic to help us to understand the overwhelming love of the Father for us all. 25 This love distinguishes us human beings (it raises us up and separates us) as
it is concretely expressed in the event of Christ's life, death,
and resurrection; as it guides in the living Torah; as it is embodied in the emigration of Muhammad; as it enlightens in the
Buddha's encounter with sorrow and nothingness; as it teaches
in Confucius's words about human authenticity; as it watches
the Tao of the seasons; as it celebrates in the mythic sublimity
of Krishna's sport among living beings.
DANIEL P. SHERIDAN

Loyola University
New Orleans, Louisiana
2s Cf. Hans Urs von Balthasar's
logic of revelation.

project for an aesthetic,

dramatic,

and

SACRAMENTAL REALISM:

AN EXCHANGE*

A REVIEW

HE BOOK UNDER REVIEW, Colman O'Neill's secnd major work in sacramental theology, has been writen under a double handicap. In the first place, it is a
number of a series intended for the general reader, and the
format imposed by tha.t intention is simply incompatible with
the author's declared ambition of providing a theory which
may serv·e as the structuring or systematic principle of a general theology of the sacraments and so of theology across the
board. Such a project is highly specialized, requiring a lengthy
historical introduction and an extended synthetic development, responsive by anticipation to a criticism incapable of
reduction to such conventional indictments as juridicalism
and impersonalism. That O'Neill accepted these limitations
and strove to work within them is understandable; few publishers would consider publishing a "theological book" today
which was not thus circumscribed, and it may be thought better to publish something than nothing at all, the evident alternative. Nonetheless the burden he has accepted is an impossible one.
The second element of handicap under which the author
labors is self-imposed, that of a traditional Thomist philosophical metaphysics, which vainly attempts to match the monadic
cosmological logic of Aristotelian metaphysics to the trinitarian, historical and covenantal truth of a good creation, and
thinks to find in the esse-essence distinction of St. Thomas the
device by which this radical incoherence may be overcome.
*Colman O'Neill, O.P., Sacramental Realism: A General Theory of the
Sacraments. Theology and Life Series 2. 'Vilmington, Del., Michael Glazier,
Inc., 1983. 224 pp.

279

QSO

DONALD J. KEEFE, S.J.

For O'Neill, the ground for doing theology is provided by our
creation in the divine image, which is of the Father, the One
God alike of Judaism, Christianity and Islam who, it is supposed, may be known in principle apart from the Christ. This
poses for O'Neill, although he does not recognize it, the impossible systematic problem of relating cosmos and covenantal
history. It does no good to speak of the cosmic Christ until
the primordial quality of that adjective is acknowledged, and
with this, the fact of our creation in Christ, the Lord of history. This acknowledgement immediately rules the old metaphysics of the natural creation out of court, as Rousselot saw
seventy years ago, and it is time that systematic theology took
his insight to heart, for there is no other basis upon which a
systematic theology may be founded. Short of this, the long
futility of the dispute De auxiliis will continue to haunt any
Thomist theologian, however much he devotes himself to more
fashionable causes.
O'Neill's abiding concern is the justification of the sacramental realism without which Catholic orthodoxy is undone,
and he is alert to any dilution of this realism, whether by the
reduction of Catholic sacramentaiism to subjectivity, or by its
reduction to servility. On balance, it is to dangers of the latter
that he is the more alert; taught by a. personalist Thomism, he
is intent upon the autonomy of the worshiper, and under the
tag of juridicalism poses to himself the perduring dilemma of
Hegel: how to appropriate responsibly a salvation worked by
another. His solution is supported by a weighty theological
tradition: the union of Christ and the faithful is in that " one
body " which assures both identity with the will of Christ and
the personal autonomy of the individual. How this is done is
not further set forth, although it is of course the heart of the
systematic problem. O'Neill wishes to understand 'one body '
union of Christ and believers as meaning ' one person,' which is
to urge a unity between Christ and Christian hardly supportive of the latter's autonomy. A closer attention to the covenantal interpretation of tha.t union, i.e., as of "one flesh" of
Eph 5 rather than "one body" (for the " Body" which is

SACRAMENTAL

REALISM:

AN EXCHANGE

the bridal Church is so only in the " one flesh " of her union
with her Head, the Christ-who is not a member of the
"Body") would have provided the systematic base for developing the trinitarian structure of the Christ-Church union,
and thus for transcending Hegel's rationalist dilemma. However, O'Neill is in good company here: under Neo-Platonic
auspices, Origen, Ambrose, and Augustine, to name only the
founders of that theological tradition, have all underwritten a
communication of idioms which confuses the personal unity of
the hypostatic union with the covenantal unity of the ChristChurch union, as Paul never did. The consequence is of course
an oscillation between a N estorian Christo logy and a Christomonist, monophysite ecclesiology, neither of which provides a
place for a Catholic theologian to stand. However, only a truly
historical metaphysical theology, one gmunded in the historicity of the Church's worship, can avoid this ancient mistake; it
is otherwise inescapable. The logic of O'Neill's philosophical
metaphysics has found it with no assist from Philo.
Had O'Neill not found himself forced by the logic of his systematic disinterest in the covenantal-marital structure of the
historical good creation to choose between juridicalism and
autonomy, certain further difficulties might also have been
avoided. For instance, O'Neill is not at ease with the Servant
Christology which is basic to the Catholic Eucharistic liturgy;
its representational and sacrificial imagery seems to him vulnerable to the charge of juridicalism and impersonalism until
purified of such connotations by a species of demythologization. While O'Neill insists upon the fundamental points of
sacramental orthodoxy, the logic of his revision of the notion,
e.g., of sacrifice of the Mass, tends ineluctably toward the reduction of its realism " to the category of word " that he is
most determined to avoid. After a discussion of the difficulties raised by the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist as the
the sacramental representation of Christ's sacrifice upon the
Cross, O'Neill concludes:
It seems better simply to affirm the real presence of the risen
Christ, worshipping and giving the Spirit, in the Eucharistic bread

282

DONALD J, KEEFE, S.J.

and wine, and to speak of sacrifice only in terms of the community's worship as it is united to that of Christ.
Perhaps this language can be given an orthodox interpretation,
but it is also on its face equivalent to the Lutheran doctrinal
position, which also knows a " real presence," but not a historical one (i.e., one that is also an event, whether of sacrifice
or transubstantiation)
and which requires in consequence a
nonhistorical worship in a nonhistorical Church. The Lutheran
refusal of the ex opere operato is latent in O'Neill's metaphysics. Such a. consequence could hardly be further from O'Neill's
mind, but the confusion, ecumenical and otherwise, which such
language as that cited can arouse is considerable. The Lutheran denial of the sacramental representation of Christ's sacrifice in the Mass is the fans et origo of the Reformation; that it
contradicts the Catholic tradition has been settled for four
centuries. A Catholic sacramental theology which can contemplate limiting the sacrifice of the Mass to the "sacrifice of
praise " needs rather more work.
At bottom, O'Neill's mistake is derived from the cosmological stance of the Thomist metaphysics, in which structure
is more important than event, because event comes under the
cosmological indictment of the material singular, viz. that
apart from a priori reference to a timeless essential form it is
in se meaningless, even if it be the sacrifice of Christ-which
O'Neill accordingly subordinates to the higher intelligibility of
a cosmic " real presence ". While admitting that
there is a reason for speaking in Catholic theology of a " moment"
in which Christ, already present in sev·eral ways, begins to be
present sacramentally, (cf. 6.4); and this constitutes the clearest
objective distinction that can be made between word and sacrament. (115)
he nevertheless appeals to the " cosmic role " of Christ to
ground this distinction:
To appeal to the unique power of the risen Christ in his cosmic
role is sufficient to mark out the newness of baptism and the Eucharist in relation to the ministry of the Word. (sec. 6.4; p. 161)

SACRAMENTAL

REALISM:

AN EXCHANGE

283

It would not be difficult to multiply such examples of the
impact of a radically nonhistorical metaphysics upon O'Neill's
notion of realism and upon the orthodoxy of his eucharistic
theology. This metaphyiscs simply stands in the way of his
sacramental realism, as it has done for that of many others.
It would be tedious, even were this the place, to recite the
inooherencies this version of Thomism imposes upon the
theologian, but in a review of a work of this importance for
Catholic worship as well as for Catholic theology, the antihistorical impact of its unsystematic and merely nominally theological merger of cosmos and covenant should be pointed out,
for it cannot but lead Catholic theology into those dead ends
whose issue four centuries past was the Reformaition denial
of sacramental realism, a pessimism which has since haunted
the western world. It is not by recourse to such nonhistorical
and pseudo-systematiac devices, however time-honored, that
Catholic sacramental theology may be renewed, but only by a
total systematic reliiance upon radical novelty of the new creation, the New Covenant, as the single and unique prius upon
which theology must stand if it is to stand at all. This historical confidence is explicit in the worship of the Mass, and
must be equaUy explicit in any theology which that worship
sustains.
DONALD J. KEEFE,

Marquette University
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

S.J.

A RESPONSE

It is relevant to recall that Donald J. Keefe (=DK) is the
author of Thomism and the Ontological Theology of Paul
Tillich (Leiden, NL, 1971), which contains a chapter entitled
"Thomism-A 'Questioning Theology'" (pp. 43-184). In
this he puts forward an interpretation of Thomism that appears to be influenced by the transcendental method of the
Marechal school and by a Barthian-type theology of the Word
but is primarily the fruit of his personal speculation. The starting-point of an ontology of the subject is taken by DK to be
striotly theological: the believer's act of faith in Christ. The
"substantial actuality of humanity" is quite literally to be
achieved in this act of faith. The act is to be understood as a
participation in the truth who is Christ (the act's formal object) and as the self-knowledge of the believer as he participates in, and is actualized by, the revelation (the act's material object). In this very specific sense "men are created in
and by the Incarnate Word". "Thomism," states DK, "cannot separate the affirmation of contingent participation in substantial truth [by the act of faith] from the [ontological]
affirmation of contingent participation in substantial existence,
for the two identify" (pp. 60, 62) .
Reality (so I interpret) is not simply thought; it is, directly
or indirectly, participation in Christ by faith. Thus:
The Incarnation, the creation of the man Christ, is the creation
of humanity, whose contingent, existential act of intellectus is the
actuality of the cosmos [ ... ] . The formal cause of this intellectus
is the created actuation of Christ's human nature, His intrinsic
essence-Esse correlation. In no other way can the existential contingency of man and the created universe be understood by
Thomism (p. 88) .

DK is aware that other Thomists have not discovered this
doctrine in the text of Aquinas. The fact seems to be that St.
Thomas himself gave a false lead with his "decision to place
the agent intellect in the individual, for then the individual is

284

A RESPONSE

complete in the order of intellectus, and thus in the order of
substantial actuality " (p. 85) . When, going further, Thomists
abstract from the hypothesis of faith in Christ they abstract
from esse. They attempt to set up an autonomous philosophy;
but it is condemned to be one that views the contingent existent as positively intelligible and thus as " a. necessary conclusion of logic". An essentialist deduction of a "natural"
Creator, who creates by necessity, ensues (p. 57) . When this
understanding is imported into theology the supernatural becomes simply " an accidental perfection of the natural substance " and so is reduced to the natural. Philosophy now decides what revelation must be. The natural virtues are seen
as already doing most of the work of the theological virtues,
faith and charity; the latter are to be used only occasionally
" so that they ma.y be relied upon at the crucial hour of death "
(pp. 58-59) .
This is too rapid an allusion to what I think is the main
thrust of DK's highly personal and subtle views on what constitutes Thomism, authentic and inauthentic. His review
makes it clear that my Sacramental Realism does not fall
within the former category. I agree with his judgment; his account of Thomism had no .influence on my essay. Nor could
any amount of work on my part bring me to try to repair this
omission. On the other hand, I should be unhappy if this
meant that I was to be classed with DK's false Thomists. I
can only plead that my understanding of the metaphysics of
St. Thomas derives from the interpretation of what he meant
by esae given, over the past fifty years or so, by realist philosophers (E. Gilson, C. Fabro, J. Owens and many others; a review of the authors in: A. McNicholl, THE THOMIST 88
48 [1979] 507-580). Oddly enough, I sympa[1974],
thize with DK's desire to restore the theological context of St.
Thomas's thinking. Still, this was a. theologian who was held
in high esteem by his contemporaries in the faculty of arts at
Paris because of his commentaries on Aristotle, and who spent
a good part of his energies, during his second period of teaching in Paris, combatting Averroism.

286

COLMAN E. O'NEILL,

O.P.

Given the highly systematic character of DK's synthesis, it
is quite ,impossible to enter into debate about particular points.
No single element of the massive structure can be discussed
without putting in question the whole. This no doubt accounts
for the bland assurance with which is proposed what is, after
all, an eccentric version of Thomism and the tradition. It may
account too for the need to censure in an extravagant way anyone who sees things differently. In spite of this, a few comments on points raised in the review seem necessary.
Probably the most fundamental insight that the Catholic
tradition has to offer .in ecumenical discussion is its awareness
of the values of creation as ontologically presupposed to the
cosmic drama of sin and justification in Christ. Sacramental
practice and ecclesiological theory are living witness to this;
moral theology depends on it; the autonomy of the human
sciences and politics derives from it. This requires theological
analysis of the Christ-event but does not in any way set aside
its existential priority. It is one of the basic tenets of St.
Thomas's theology that the supernatural order is to be defined
in terms of the beatific vision, that is, in terms of the Blessed
T11inity as the wholly gratuitous end promised and proposed to
humanity. His whole theology is dominated by consideration
of this end which imparts an inner dynamism to those who are
created in the image of the triune God and who will be like
Him because they will see him as he is. In a word, the human
person, as image, is capax summi boni (Summa theol., I, q. 93,
a. 2, ad 3) . It is this which confirms St. Thomas's philosophical confidence in human reason within the faith (ibid., q. IQ).
It is this which determines the relation between grace (including the theological virtues) and nature (ibid., q. 1, a. 2, ad Q);
for a final cause unifies formal causes (thus seen as distinct
though coordinated) and presupposes an efficient cause corresponding to the end (cf. ibid., q. 5, a. 4). All this analysis
provides the realist coordinates within which the integral
meaning of the Christ-event is sought. The systematic method
used subsumes the biblical theme of crerution in Christ under
the doctrine of the creative Trinity, thematized in terms of

A RESPONSE

287

participated esse. Karl Barth, with his polemic against "natural theology " and the first Vatican Council (Dogmatik, I/I,
sec. 26), offers a developed covenantal theology. In its positive elements it constitutes an essential element of any Christian theology. But if it is to be safeguarded against anthropomorphism (which, paradoXiically, was what Barth most abhorred) , it needs to be situated in a wider context of reflection
in which are established the basic relations that subsist between the creature and the creative Trinity. To suggest that
St. Thomas understands the mystery of Christ in terms of
formal causality alone is to make him an idealist, which he was
not. Nor do I think that the distinctive character of the
Catholic tradition can be expressed in terms of idealism.
A second remark: There is a tension, even within the Pauline
writings, between the "one person " theme of union with
Christ and the "covenantal unity" symbolized by marriage. I
do not think it is irreconcilable. For DK to suggest that the
former is "hardly supportive" of Christian autonomy seems
to be a case of allowing sys,tem to prevail over the New Testament together w,ith a strong patristic, medieval and contemporary tradition. The " one person " theme is first of all symbolic, and, whether one accepts it or leaves it aside, it is not
ging to settle the "de auxiliis" controversy which betrayed
quite another approach to the mystery. In any case, I make
quite plain the distinction between the Head and the body,
particularly when speaking of the Eucharist, in view of which
(following St. Augustine) I was interested in developing the
theme. It is in the same sacramental context (which I consider an .indispensable dimension of Christology) thait I took
up such traditional notions as "merit", "satisfaction" and
"sacrifice". DK calls the result "demythologizing"; I take
this to be a negative judgment. I should prefer to say thait I
attempt to explore the significance of these Christian symbols
which, at least in the neo-scholasticism at the turn of the present century, were understood in a less than personalist fashion.
They should not be isolated from their Trinitarian background.
If they are, I persist in cailing the outcome juridical thinking.

288

COLMAN E. O'NEILL, O.P.

I was specially ,interested in pointing out the inadequacy of the
theory of " vicarious satisfaction;" this was a preliminary to
interpreting the "for you" of the words of institution and to
the whole theology of the sacrifice of the Mass. It is my belief that there are popular ways of understanding this sacnifice,
not least among Catholics, that constitute a genuine obstacle
to ecumenical discussions. The theology of the Counter Reform does not seem to me to meet the difficulty. I am open
to correction on the theory I offer, but not, I am afraid, from
a reviewer who fails to notice what I say about transsubstantia.tion.
As DK correctly perceives, ,it is impossible to construct a
general theory of the sacraments without calling on a whole
theology and without some emphasis on theological method.
These are aspects of the project which are frequently neglected
in contemporary monographs on the sacraments. I was hoping
to call attention to them and to the need for a realist metaphysics. The theme of the book is one of systematic theology;
I think there is enough history in it for its purpose.-! have
to say a final word in defense of my publisher: the "Theology
and Life Series " was set up after he had read my typescript.
He is not really the daunting figure DK imagines.
COLMAN E. O'NEILL, O.P.

University of Fribourg,
Switzerland

BOOK REVIEWS
Galileo and His Sources: The Heritage of the Collegio Romano in Galileo's
Science. By WILLIAM A. W .ALLACE. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1984. Pp. xii + 371. $42.50.

In the past two decades we have seen a proliferation of studies on
Galileo and his influence in philosophy and modern science. Wallace's
latest work, Galileo and His Sources, is actually the third book he has
devoted to this subject, the two previous being Galileo's Early Notebooks
(Notre Dame: 1977) and Prelude to Galileo (Reidel: 1981). It represents
the summit of his achievement, and indeed makes an invaluable contribution toward understanding all of Galileo's writings and the sources from
which they ultimately derived. This is especially true with respect to the
early Latin notebooks of the famous physicist, usually ignored by scholars
on the basis that they are irrelevant to an understanding of his major
later writings and the " new science " of motion.
Wallace's assessment is quite different. The first part of his volume is
devoted to studying these Latin notebooks and exploring the tradition
within which they originated. For Wallace, such research is indispensable
for understanding and evaluating Galileo's later work. After years of
investigation he has discovered that the early notebooks, containing questions on logic and methodology as well as questions on the universe and
the elements, show remarkable parallels with manuscript notes of lectures
given by Jesuit professors at the Collegio Romano in the last decades of
the sixteenth century. Galileo was undoubtedly influenced by the teaching of these men, most of them in their mid-twenties, whose philosophical
position he characterizes as that of "progressive Aristotelianism." Wallace documents their influence in an original and remarkable analysis
of their surviving lecture notes, showing how they were appropriated by
the young Galileo when writing his logical and physical quesions. Perhaps the most significant of Wallace's discoveries is that Galileo composed these notes in the period between 1588 and 1591, while he was
already teaching mathematics and astronomy at the University of Pisa
or actively preparing for that post-and not while he was a student either
at the Monastery of Vallombrosa or at the University of Pisa, as previously
had been thought. This makes the logical and physical questions practically contemporaneous with Galileo's writing of his early treatises on
motion, preserved in another Latin manuscript usually dated ca. 1590,
which has long been seen as preparatory to the analysis of local motion
given in his Two New Sciences of 1638.

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Such painstaking textual research occupies the first two parts of the
volume, in our opinion its most valuable contribution. Here the scholarship involved in Wall ace's scrutiny of these sources is simply extraordinary,
involving as it does knowledge of paleography as well as the intricacies
of scholastic logic and natural philosophy. Every possible extant source,
most of them in manuscript, is analyzed, explained, and compared in
detail with Galileo's own notes-all in his own hand and thus of undoubted
authenticity.
The first chapter of the first part deals with Galileo's logical questions,
actually 27 queries arising from Aristotle's treatment of demonstration and
its prerequisites in his Posterior Analytics; the second, with 25 additional
questions relating to matters treated in Aristotle's De caelo et mundo and
his De generatione et corruptione. The amount of data uncovered, its
organization and careful evaluation, would alone suffice to make this
volume a signal contribution to Galileo studies. Subsequent researchers
in this field simply cannot afford to ignore it. And not only is it important for understanding Galileo's contribution to early modern science;
it is also of value for intellectual history generally, for, Galileo studies
aside, ·Wallace's examination of the writing of these Jesuits at Rome is
itself a positive (and quite unexpected) contribution to the histories of
natural science and natural philosophy.
The second part of the volume expands the textual analyses of the first
part to explore in fuller detail the logic and natural philosophy being
taught at the Collegio Romano and how these impacted on the methodological problems raised by the prospect of a " new science " of local motion.
In other words, Wallace here proposes to reconstruct the philosophical
background for which Galileo was indebted to the Roman Jesuits. He
shows clearly that Galileo tried to develop a science of motion based on
the ideals of scientia and demonstratio set forth in Aristotle's Posterior
Analytics, and how certain prerequisites in the form of suppositiones were
necessary to assure the validity of demonstrations in such a contingent subject matter as local motion. All of these problems " were far from irrelevant to the concerns that dominated his [Galileo's] later life." (p. 110)
A detailed examination of problems relating to local motion constitutes
the second chapter of this part (pp. 149-219). Here Wallace claims that
" Galileo's interest in local motion was not unconnected with the logic
and natural philosophy he had carefully studied and excerpted from the
notes of Jesuit professors." (p. 149) To document this statement he
analyzes the teachings on motion contained in the lecture notes of the
Jesuits whose teachings he has explained in the preceding three chapters.
Then he complements the survey "by detailing developments in the science of mechanics that took place outside the Collegio [but] . . . could
he part of the tradition that influenced Galileo's final drafting of the
Two New Sciences." (p. 150) This docmnentation ranges through a variety

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of primary sources : scientists and philosophers such as Menu, Valla,
Vitelleschi, Rugerius, Tartaglia, Guidobaldo del Monte, Blancanus, and
Guevara are studied and their possible influences on Galileo assessed.
Part three of the volume deals with Galileo's science in transition, that
is, his science before and after 1610, the year in which he recorded his
discoveries with the telescope for which he is famous (pp. 219-335). This
part attempts to trace the influence exerted by the conceptual structure
explained in the first two parts on Galileo's subsequent work. According
to Wallace, these materials continue to recur in Galileo's writings in surprisingly consistent ways that have hitherto been overlooked. "Actually,
his philosophical stance turns out to be more scholastic, and much more
nuanced, than has been suspected." {p. 220) Wallace supports this judgment with extensive analyses, suggesting "that Aristotelian concepts as
set forth in the physical questions and their supporting works provided
an enduring background for Galileo's studies of motion." (p. 277)
The second chapter of this part deals with Galileo's later science, that
developed after 1610 (pp. 287-335). By that time Galileo's science of
nature, based as it was on experimentation and mathematical reasoning,
had already taken definitive shape. Wallace deals here successively with
the Copernican debates, the Two Chief World Systems, and the Two New
Sciences. This section, though based on Galileo's actual texts in Latin
and Italian, does not invoke the original research found in the previous
sections. But the author's explanations of the philosophy, science, mathematics, and experimentation recorded in Galileo's later writings proves
to be illuminating. In a clear and systematic way he evaluates Galileo's
mature thought, his contributions and the rigor of his treatment, which
have made him the Father of Modern Science.
For Wallace, even the work of his later period is " in accord with the
goals and methodological canons outlined in the Posterior Analytics,
particularly when interpreted along lines pioneered by the Jesuits, as
opposed to the textual orthodoxy of the Aristotelians in the Italian universities." {p. 339)
This study does not attempt to minimize the originality or the inventiveness of Galileo, for "[t]hese innovations, clearly more than the seedbed
from which they sprang, are what earn for him the title of Father of
Modern Science." (p. 339) As Wallace sees it, Galileo's originality lies
chiefly in two areas: "in the mathematical techniques he perfected to
make the new physics possible, and in the experimental methods he devised to make such techniques practicable in the study of local motion."
(ibid.) These insights, implemented in countless ways, represent Galileo's
unique contribution to the science of mechanics, transforming that science
" into a nuova scienza on which the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth
century was soon to be erected." (p. 347).

BOOK REVIEWS

Wallace admits that his study leaves many questions unanswered. His
treatment may not be exhaustive from this point of view, and yet the
volume is worth every penny of its price. It really is a fascinating book.
The reader goes from surprise to surprise, following a rigorous exposition of facts and principles that leads to conclusions themselves inescapable. The volume will prove of value to scientists, historians,
philosophers, and all scholars interested in the complex ramifications of
the Italian Renaissance.
To bring this review to conclusion we propose the following question.
Does Wallace prove his thesis 'I Does the new science of motion stand in
essential continuity with the ideals laid out in Aristotle's Posterior .Analytics? We believe that it does, but this is bound to be the subject of
future controversy, as Wallace himself foresees (p. 347). Whether the
thesis is demonstrated or not, however, the book stands on its own merits.
Wallace's research is so interesting, so well documented, so well written,
so appealing, and so original that we recommend the book unreservedly
to everyone.
ANTONIO MORENO, O.P.
Graduate Theological Union
Berkeley, California

The Point of Christology. By SCHUBERT OGDEN. New York: Harper &
Row, 1982. Pp. 191. $14.50.

Schubert Ogden is recognized as a leading American theologian. Two
of his works, Christ without Myth and The Reality of God, have had
substantial impact on contemporary theological thought. This present
work, The Point of Christology, contains Ogden's Sarum Lectures given
at Oxford in 1980-81.

A. .Authenticating Our Existence
As the title indicates, Ogden is not interested solely in determining
the content of Christology, although he does that, but rather in making
" a critical inquiry into the point of all such doctrinal formulations"
(p. xi). In other words, before Ogden takes up the question of who
Jesus Christ is he explores the underlying question why one would formulate a Christology or be concerned with Jesus in the first place. Ogden
is asking what might be termed the meta-Christological question.
Ogden sees the need for such a study because he believes that both
traditional and present revisionary Christology contain inherent weaknesses that can only be eliminated if such a prior question is addressed
and answered. Besides rejecting a mythological world view inherited

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293

from the New Testament and a metaphysical system which can no longer
be maintained, Ogden believes that traditional Christo!ogy is concerned
too exclusively with the question of " Who is Jesus " in himself (cf. pp.
6-14). He also believes that contemporary revisionary Christology takes
as its own this same presupposition that Christology is primarily concerned with Jesus in himself (cf. pp. 15-19).
In examining the question of the point of Christology, Ogden asserts
that Christo logy should deal not only with who Jesus is in himself, but
also with J esus's meaning for us and who God is in relation to us (cf.
pp. 23-28). These latter two concerns are fundamental to any true
Christology (cf. p. 29).
Ogden proceeds to argue that the question underlying any Christology
deals with our authentic existence as related to and sanctioned by ultimate reality, i.e. God (cf. pp. 30, 34, 38-40, 64-65). Christo logy is "fundamentally a question about the ultimate meaning of our own existence "
(p 64). Whatever one states about Jesus must be seen from this point
of departure. Christology must be what Ogden calls "existential-historical ", that is, it must be a statement about Jesus (historical) that is
primarily concerned with our authentic existence (existential) in relation to ultimate reality (God). Ogden states: " The Christological assertion must be an assertion about both the ultimate reality and ourselves,
in that it asserts conversely both that the ultimate reality which authorizes
the authentic understanding of our existence is the God who is decisively
revraled through Jesus and that the authentic self-understanding that
is implicitly authorized by ultimate reality is the faith in God of which
Jesus is the explicit authorizing source" (p. 42). Christology thus deals
with God's authentication of our lives revealed through Jesus and our
faith self-understanding as being affirmed by God also revealed through
Jesus. Jesus (and thus the point of Christology) makes explicit that God
is for us and that we in faith can acknowledge that our existence has
purpose and meaning.

B. No Ultimate Need for the Jesus of History
Having established that this is the ultimate purpose of Christology,
Ogden believes he has alleviated a number of Christological problems.
He now readily admits that it is impossible to return to the historical
Jesus as such. The closest we can come is in the earliest witnesses within
the Gospel tradition, but these remain "witnesses " and do not take us
back to Jesus himself. What they bear witness to as historical fact may
be more or less true. However, it does not ultimately matter to Ogden
whether or not they put us in touch with the historical facts, for what
but the "existential-historiessential is not the "empirical-historical"
<'al," that is, who .Jesus was perceived to be by these witnesses and how
their perception of Jesus confronted them and changed their lives. Since

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the point of Christology concerns the authentification of our existence in
relationship to God, what Jesus says or does in the empirical and historical sense does not finally matter as long as historically he is perceived
as confronting people's lives. It is the confronting and revealing perception that is really at stake here.
Even though the earliest witnesses may have presumed that they were
speaking of the historical Jesus as he is in himself, " Their assertions all
had to do with the meaning of Jesus for us as he still confronts us in
the present . . . Because this is so, I contend that the Jesus to whom the
earliest witnesses point as 'the real locus of revelation ' is the existentialhistorical Jesus, and therefore neither the empirical-historical Jesus nor
their own witness of faith, save insofar as it is solely through their witness that this event of revelation is now accessible and continues to take
place" (pp. 59-60).
Because the subject of the Christological assertion is Jesus in his
meaning for us, not Jesus in his being in himself, whether he did
or did not imply a claim for the decisive significance of his own
person has no bearing whatever on the appropriateness of this assertion. Whether he implied any such claim or not, the fact remains
that what those to whom we owe even the earliest Christian witness
meant in so speaking of him is the one through whom they themselves have been confronted with such a claim and who still continues to make it through their own witness to faith (pp. 60-61).

Within this Christologieal setting, Ogden holds that Jesus does not
have to actualize perfectly what he himself reveals:
have established
that the conditions of asserting a Christological predicate in no way
require that Jesus has perfectly actualized the possibility of authentic
self-understanding'
(p. 87). In addition, Ogden asserts that Jesus does
not necessarily have to have a perfect self-understanding that he is "the
one through whom the meaning of God for us is made fully explicit
... " ( p. 77, cf. pp. 64-85). What is important is that we are confronted
with and believe the self-authenticating truth that God is for us. For
Ogden, Jesus in himself is not of ultimate significance; what is important
is the message of truth which others perceive coming from him.
C. Jesus reveals God's Boundless Love-We are Now Free to Love

What then is the message that confronts us through Jesus and which
authenticates our lives in relation to ultimate reality? Ogden states, "The
essential point (of the Gospels), as I should put it, is that Jesus meant
love . . ." ( p. 119). Through Jesus, " God was confronting his hearers
with the gift and demand of boundless love and thus with the possibility
of authentic existence in faith" (p. 120). Jesus still means love today
and so this revelation of God's boundless love is present, now demanding
a response from us (cf. p. 122). To accept and respond to God's love

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295

sets a person free " both from and for oneself and all of one's fellow
creatures" (p. 123). Ogden later reinforces this by stating "Specifically,
the claim that God as ultimate reality is boundless Jove means primarily
that we ourselves are free to exist and act in love in relation to all our
fellow creatures" (p. 144). Ogden concludes his study by specifying
and developing the social and political aspects of this freedom to love
explicated in Jesus Christ.
One could summarize Ogden's work by stating that the point of Christology is to determine the authentification of our existence in relation to
God. Jesus does this by explicitly revealing that God, as boundless love,
is for us and that we are thus free to love one another.
It is possible to respond to Ogden in various ways. For example, one
could challenge his understanding of the historicity of scripture or his
critique of classical metaphysics and its relationship to traditional Christology. However, it seems appropriate to take up Ogden's primary question concerning the point of Christology and the Christology that issues
from it.
D. Recognizing the Reality of the Fall
In answering the question of the point of Christology, Ogden maintains that it has to do with the authentification of our existence. In
proposing that Jesus reveals God's boundless love for us and our constant relation to him, Ogden presupposes that our relationship with God
is already established and that this relationship is the way it should be.
He would mention that God is and always was for us, that he loves us
constantly, and that our lives are inherently worth living. We need only
to allow God's love to enable us to love others. According to Ogden, what
,Jesus does is to make known and thus to verify this established status
qiw relationship between ourselves and God. In so doing, man's relationship to God does not change in kind, but only in degree in the sense that
we now know what our relationship is and this gives us greater freedom
and confidence to live out the consequences of such a relationship. This
is hm·dly the full point of traditional Christology or soteriology. Ogden,
as do many contemporary Christologists, fails to grasp a number of
very critical Christian beliefs concerning Jesus and his significance.
The first truth Ogden fails to acknowledge is the reality of the fall of
man. One of the truths that Jesus reveals is that prior to his life, death,
and resurrection, and the outpouring of his Holy Spirit and prior to
our own repentance and faith in him, we are literally God's enemies (cf.
Lk 13:3,5). "There is no just man, not even one; there is no one who
understands, no one in search of God. All have taken the wrong course,
all alike have become worthless; not one of them acts uprightly, no not
one" (Ps 14 :l, also Rm 3
According to Paul, "All men have
sinr..ed and are deprived of the glory of God" (Rm 3 :23).

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It is true that God is always for us. It is true that he always loves us.
However, it is also true that because of the sin of Adam, we have become
children of Satan; we are slaves to sin; we are at enmity with God (cf.
Jn 8 :44, Gal 4 :3, Rm 5 :10). Our sin is an affront to the very justice
and holiness of God and is an insult to the very boundless love that God
constantly has for us. Thus, man's situation before God prior to the
salvation offered through Christ is not a positive one that only needs to
be revealed and verified, nor is it basically a good relationship that can
now become better. What Jesus reveals is that apart from him and the
salvation he brings, our relationship to God is absolutely broken. We are
unable to know God personally, and cannot experience his intimate love
as a Father. His Spirit does not dwell within us. We cannot live by the
power of the same Spirit. We are ruled by our passions and are corrupt
because of our resentment, bitterness, and hatred. Inherent in the biblical
language and images is the truth that our sin has cast us outside the
love and friendship that God so much desires us to share. Our relationship with God and the life that we live differs in kind from the relationship we should have with God and the life that we should live. Without
God's initiative, without his mercy and love, without his plan of salvation in which an entirely different kind of relationship with God is established, each of us wou1d have nothing other than eternal damnation. This
is neither exaggerated rhetoric nor mythical language which needs to be
demythologized but the truth that God has revealed to us about our
desperate need for salvation.
Ogden also fails to grasp that the salvation demanded by our "present"
state is more than that of obtaining knowledge and verification of an
already good situation. God has to do more than tell us that he loves us
and that we should love him and one another. God has to initiate and
establish a wholly new and different kind of relationship with himself.
There has to be a change not just in the way we perceive reality, for
reality itself has to be radically changed. God has to make it possible
for us to become his friends. He has to overcome sin and death, and
obtain for us eternal life.

E. The Full Significance of Jesus and His Salvation
Secondly, Ogden hardly touches upon the true significance of Jesus.
He is able to do away with the historical Jesus because he does not believe that the person of Jesus is as important as the "truth" he reveals.
Ogden erroneously believes that as long as the " truth" is known, the
manner or way it becomes known is of little importance. However, Christianity recognizes that salvation is far more than telling us that " God
is in his heaven and all is well with the world."
Christian revelation proclaims that despite the harsh reality of our
sinful state God in his love sent his Son to redeem us. " Yes, God so

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loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believe in him
may not die but may have eternal life. God did not send the Son into
the world to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through
him (Jn 3 :16-17, Cf. 1 Jn 4:9). Jesus himself as the Incarnate Son of
God is the Father's solution to the problem of man's slavery to sin, death,
and Satan. His eternal Son came into the world in order to change our
relationship with God, thus enabling us to become his sons and daughters.
An inspired prophet or some wise philosopher could proclaim some religious "truth", but only God can actually destroy powers of evil beyond
man's control and establish an entirely new type of relationship with
himself. The traditional doctrine of the Incarnation, that Jesus is God
the Son existing as man, is essential for accomplishing the work of salvation that needs to be done.
Jesus's love was revealed not only in the historical act of the Incarnation, but also in the historical event of his death and resurrection. He
came into our midst precisely for this reason. Paul declares:
At the appointed time, when we were still powerless Christ died
for us godless men. It is rare that anyone should lay down his
life for a just man, though it is barely possible that for a good man
someone may have the courage to die. It is precisely in this that
God proves his love for us: that while we were still sinners, Christ
died for us (Rm 5 :6-8).

Jesus is God's justice so that we might be just. "All men are now
undeservedly justified by the gift of God, through the redemption wrought
in Christ Jesus " (Rm 3 :23). Man's sin is primarily an arrogant affront
to the very holiness, sovereignty, and justice of God. Jesus, in offering
himself on the Cross, rectified the infinite wrong done to Almighty God
who loved his children as a true father. Jesus's death allowed that love
of the Father to be poured out once more into our hearts through the
Holy Spirit (cf. Rm 5 :5). "We are at peace with God through our
Lord Jesus Christ " (Rm 5 :1). We have been "justified by his blood "
and "saved by him from God's wrath" (Rm 5 :9).
This is the Good News of the Gospel and Ogden seems completely unaware of this truth. The blood of Christ, the blood of the eternal Son, has
washed us clean of sin and guilt. He has enabled us once more to stand
justified and holy before God the Father. " It is in Christ and through
his blood that we have been redeemed and our sins forgiven" (Eph 1 :7).

F. An Entirely New Kind of Relationship with God
Thirdly, Jesus's death and resurrection must have an impact on the life
of each human person. When a person repents of sin and puts faith in
Jesus Christ a whole new reality develops. Ogden again is not cognizant of this great change which occurs because Christians participate

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in and experience a whole new life which comes to them through the
indwelling Holy Spirit. The Spirit unites the believer to Jesus Christ
und through him to the Father. Men and women are brought into the
life of the Trinity only through the Spirit; it is not simply a part of
being a human person; it is not part of the status quo reality into which
we are born. "I solemnly assure you, no one can enter into God's kingdom without being begotten of water and Spirit. Flesh begets ilesh.
Spirit begets spirit" (Jn 3 :5-6).
Paul proclaims that through faith the love of God has been poured
out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us
(Rm 5 :5). This new experience of God's love, this new relationship with
him as an intimate Father, is unique to the Christian. Only those who are
united to Christ and share in his Spirit are incorporated into this relationship of love. Again Ogden fails to acknowledge this truth. For him
everyone is in a loving relationship to God which only needs to be recognized.
This life in the Spirit transforms us into new creations. Christians
must lay aside their former way of life to acquire "a fresh, spiritual
way of thinking." They "must put on that new man created in God's
image, whose justice and holiness are born of truth" (Eph 4:22-24).
Jesus empowers Christians to overcome sin in all of its forms and to
think and act as sons and daughters of the Father. Christ does not leave
us helpless in sin and vulnerable to the wiles of Satan, but enables us to
live lives worthy of our calling (cf. Eph 4 :1).
Faith in Jesus also assures us of our own resurrection. Ogden does not
touch upon this central reality. Human death has been conquered by
the bodily resurrection of Jesus. " I am the resurrection and the life,
whoever believes in me though he should die, will come to life; and whoever is alive and believes in me will never die" (Jn 11:25-26). The Spirit
of Jesus dwelling in us not only guarantees freedom from sin and Satan,
hut is the seal to our resurrection (cf. Eph. 1:13-14). "If the Spirit of
him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, then he who raised
Christ from the dead will bring your mortal bodies t-0 life also, through
his Spirit dwelling in you" (Rm 8:11).
The significance of all of this is that Jesus does more than give us a
new perspective on life. He does more than help us see the present condition in a new way. He actually brings about an entirely new situation
in which he, as God incarnate living in space and time, is central. It is
in him, in his very own person, that his new situation is established. He,
himself, is the way, the truth and the life (cf. Jn 14 :6). We have access
to a whole new relationship with God in and through Christ and with it a
life that differs in kind from the one we were naturally born into. "He
came and 'announced the good news of peace to you who were far off,

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and those who were near'; through him we both have access in one Spirit
to the Father. This means that you are strangers and aliens no longer.
No, you are fellow citizens of the saints and members of the household
of God" (Eph 2 :17-19).
G. The Uniqueness of the Person of Christ

Lastly, we see then that Jesus, the Incarnate Son, is the center and
source of salvation and the newness of life. Jesus-in and of himself and
in what he has done-is unique among all religious leaders. Other founders
of religious and wise men, such as Buddha, Mohammed, Plato, and Aristotle, are not important in and of themselves. Rather, what they have
said, taught, or practised is what may be significant. For Ogden, and
for many contemporary theologians, Jesus is placed on a par with such
as these.
Jesus, however, is radically different. Jesus, the historical individual
who now reigns in glory, is of the utmost and absolute significance, not
only in the past, but also in the present and the future. Who he is and
the effect of his life, death, and resurrection have eternal significance for
all people of all ages. His Spirit has been poured out upon the world
from him, and because of his death and resurrection. Only in him do we
have forgiveness of sin. In him alone are we sanctified. Solely in him
do we have eternal life. Of no other can such claims be made. " There
is no salvation in anyone else, for there is no other name in the whole
world given to men by which we are able to be saved" (Acts 4:12).
Paul proclaims the primacy of Christ.
He is the invisible God, the first born of all creatures. In him
everything in heaven and on earth was created, things visible and
invisible, whether thrones or dominations, principalities or powers;
all were created through him, and for him. He is before all else
that is. In him everything continues in being. It is he who is head
of the body, the church; he who is the beginning, the first-born of
the dead, so that primacy may be his in everything. It pleased God
to make absolute fullness reside in him, and by means of him to
reconcile everything to his person, both on earth and in the heavens,
making peace through the blood of his cross (Col. 1:15-20).

A Christian is one who is convinced that Jesus Christ alone is Lord and
Savior; there are no others.
The point of traditional Christology and the content of classical Christology as just outlined when compared with the work of Ogden illustrates the sterility and narrowness of his proposal. The good news of
the Gospel has a depth, importance, and urgency not found in his book.
The solution to the weaknesses within contemporary Christology, as
exemplified in Ogden, however, does not lie solely in better academic
treatises, necessary as these are. Rather, the full solution resides in

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God's people coming to honest repentance and mature faith in Jesus.
Through faith the Spirit will bring to life the reality of Jesus and his
salvation. Then God's people, and their theologians, will be able to bear
witness to and write about what they have seen and heard (cf. 1Jn1 :1-3).
THOMAS WEINANDY, O.F.M., CAP.
Mother of God Community
Washington, D.C.

Faith According to Saint John of the Cross. By KAROL WOJTYLA. Translated by Jordan Aumann, O.P. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1981.
Pp. 276.

This work, though only recently published in English, was written in
1946-1948 as a doctoral dissertation. It was directed by the renowned
Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, and presented at the Angelicum University
in Rome. Originally composed in Latin, the work was speedily translated
into several modern languages upon W ojtyla's election to the Papacy in
1978, and thus it is now available in English.
The subject is the thought of St. John of the Cross, the sixteenthcentury Spanish Carmelite known as reformer of his order, as mystic,
as poet, and honored also as Mystical Doctor of the Church. W ojtyla thus
traces "the nature of the virtue of faith as described in the writings of
St. John of the Cross" (p. 29) through the latter's tetralogy: The Ascent
of Mount Carmel, The Dark Night of the Soul, The Spiritual Canticle,
and The Living Flame of Love.
The author points out that John of the Cross defines faith as " a certain and obscure habit of the soul" (Ascent II, 3, 1). In analyzing this
phrase, W ojtyla indicates that in Scholastic thought " 'habit' signifies
a certain perfection of a faculty ordained to operation " (p. 70). To
say, then, " that faith is a habit signifies that it is a certain perfection
of the intellect, ordained to a particular mode of operation" (ibid.).
And yet, in the ordinary experience of faith, this operation is never exercised, for it would entail full intelleetion of the propositions believed.
And thus faith is, as the definition has it, obscure, for it is always characterized by laek of full intellectual comprehension of the matter believed. At the same time, faith makes the understanding certain, or gives
it certitude, for it presents truths to which we may fully assent.
The obscurity of faith is a central motif in the thought of the Carmelite
reformer. In the consideration of this concept, W ojtyla points out that
in ordinary human cognition the intellect tends to unite its objects to
itself according to its proper intentional modality. In order for this to

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occur, though, the external senses first perceive the object, the internal
ones then form a phantasm of it, and subsequently the agent intellect
illumines the intelligible species. It is the latter that is understood by
the knowing power or passive intellect, which then assimilates the object
to itself. In the case of theological faith, propositions concerning God's
existence, his nature, his attributes, the Trinity of Persons, and the like,
are received by the external senses, yet the internal sense faculties have
no capacity to construct commensurate phantasms. The agent intellect
is consequently unable to educe the corresponding intelligible species. The
subject is moved to assent by the power of the theological virtue of faith,
which is infused, while remaining in darkness.
Nonetheless, in the configuration of the virtue of faith, the element
of light predominates over that of darkness. If faith is darkness subjectively, because of the limitations of the knowing powers, it is pure
light and resplendence in the objective order, being supernatural and
possessing " essential likeness" to God (pp. 38-45; reference is made
to Ascent II, 8, 3 and ibid., 9, 1). And thus the mind, being granted true
yet incomprehensible propositions, as well as the grace to adhere to them,
is guided in the darkness as by a blinding light. This darkness of faith
can be said to be experienced by all believing Christians.
There is a still greater darkness linked with faith, however, compared
to which the former one is only an evening twilight : the " dark night "
spoken of by John of the Cross, a most rigorous ascetico-mystical programme undertaken by the soul in its striving for union with God. As
W ojtyla notes, "faith ... because of its intimate proportion of likeness
to divinity, penetrates the intellect intimately but obscurely with an unlimited form or species and is therefore in opposition to the natural
tendency of the intellect. In order that this opposition be effective, the
privation of the intellect is necessary" (p. 142). Throughout this ascent
toward mystical communion, thus, the faculty of the intellect is placed
its natural
in perfection as it produces emptiness in itself
object. And "together with the negation of the clear, particular species
received by the intellect, there is an affirmation of the divine form as
known in its unlimited darkness" (p. 143). To put it another way, the
soul must walk in faith, must confirm itself in faith. for it is this virtue
that is "the proper and proportionate means" of union (Ascent II, 9, 1).
But faith in its purity forbids that any creatu:re be substituted for God.
Things sensed, felt, known, or imagined must all be banished from man's
rognitive and affective faculties. Even intellectual apprehensions of
supernatural origin must be rejected, for these are received in a way
that is connatural to man and therefore incommensurate with God. ConsPquently, in prayer, the greater the darkness of the intellect in its natural
oprrations, the purer is the faith and the greater is the approximation
to God.

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The stage in which the subject purifies himself through the exercise
of abnegation is called "the active night of the soul." It is followed by
the " passive night,'' in which purgation is effected, not by the natural
pc;v;rers of the subject, even elevated by grace, but by supernatural infusion of the act of contemplation itself into the rational powers. This
act of contemplation is brought about in the order of efficient causality
by faith, which " contains in its internal structure the very substance of
all the degrees of contemplation possible in this life" (p. 169}. It intervenes, further, " not precisely as a virtue but so far as through faith
the intellect participates in the light of divine knowledge" (ibid.). When
an exceedingly advanced degree of purification is achieved, the subject
comes into mystical communion with " the Son of God, who is communicated to the soul in faith" (Ascent II, 29, 6). Sharing through
vivified faith in the Divine Wisdom, the soul participates at once in the
generation of the Word, "terminus of the knowledge in which God,
knowing himself exhaustively and comprehensively, expresses his own
infinite perfection in the person of the Son " ( p. 172). We are told,
though, that these intimate and transforming mystical communications
are experienced by the subject without intellectual enlightenment, for
the Mystical Doctor, in W ojtyla's assessment, is consistent in his doctrine regarding "the excessive light of faith" and "the subject that
remains in darkness" (p. 200).
It should be pointed out that the treatises of the Carmelite reformer
are not principally speculative but practical, concerned with guiding
souls to perfection and union with God. Although he relies on Scholastic
terminology, John of the Cross does not develop speculatively many concepts to the fullest. On the other hand, Wojtyla, in his thoroughly speculative commentary, disengages the texts pertinent to the particular issue
of faith, and answers potential questions. One point which he establishes
re!=mlutelv is the unity of the one absolutely supernatural and infused
virtue of faith, which is irreducible to any purely human construct or
psychological state. It is believed that W ojtyla's mentor, GarrigouLagrange, encouraged a development along these lines in order to refute
a thesis which had been put forth earlier by Jean Baruzi in Saint Jean
de la Croix et le probleme de l'experience mystique (Paris, 1924; 2nd
ed, 1931). This author endeavored to establish a polarity between " dogmatic faith," expressed in propositions proposed to the faithful for belief, and "mystical faith,'' understood by Baruzi as a "universalization
of
intellect" in which the mind transcends by its own natural powers
certain limited modes of conceptualization. Wojtyla establishes that such
a thesis has no foundation in the thought of John of the Cross, who
taught. to the contrary, that "faith, which is the basis of mystical knowlcdgoe, <'onsists obj.ectively in the truths revealed by God and proposed for
belief by the Church", and that "adherence to the revealed truths in-

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volves the same supernatural impulse that produces the loftiest mystical
experience " ( p. 181).
Nonetheless, some of W ojtyla's interpretations of the thought of John
of the Cross could he given further precision. He asserts with insistence
that faith is the means by which the intellect is joined to God, and further, that this virtue moves the subject to adhere to the propositions which
express the content of faith. And finally he asserts that it is by this
adherence that the intellect is united with God, who is made present to
the knowing power intentionally though obscurely (see, among other,
pp. 66, 67, 104, 207-9, 259). If we read the Sanjuanist texts with care,
however, we will find that the majority of them do not state that faith
joins the intellect to God, but that together with the other two theological
virtues, it joins the soul to God. Faith is " ... the proximate and proportionate means for the soul to be united with God" (Ascent II, 9, 1).
" The soul ... is united with God ... by faith." And a few lines above
in the same text, reference is made to " the three theological virtues, faith,
hope and charity . . . through which the soul becomes united with God "
(Ascent II, 6, 1).
This is not to say that there is no particular link between the faculty
of understanding and the virtue of faith. There is, indeed, and it is
plemented by corresponding relationships between the will and charity,
and between memory and hope. What the Carmelite mystic tells us is
that the soul cannot be joined to God except through its rational powers,
for it is through them that it operates. Union with God must thus be
by means of acts of knowing, loving, and remembering. As the human
rational faculties are incapable of attaining their proper supernatural
ends on their own power, they are each purified and endowed with a
higher modality by the corresponding infused theological virtue. It is
stated that "the thrE>e theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity-which
are related to the three powers as proper supernatural objects, and through
which the soul is joined with God according to its powers-cause the same
l'mptiness and darkness in each respective faculty: faith in the intellect,
hope in the memory, and charity in the will." Consequently, "the soul
is joined . . . by faith according to the intellect, by hope according to
the memory and by love according to the will " (A.scent II, 6, 1). The
l'xercise of the theological virtues, therefore, does perfect and uplift
the faculties. But the union with God is of the soul, according to the
o-peration of its faculties, and by means of the theological virtues.
Focusing upon the union between the soul as such and God leads to an
exnanded understanding of the nature of this communion. By conceiving
of it as being between the knowing power and God, W ojtyla is led logically
t.o stress intentionality. For indeed. the only assimilation which the faculty
of intellection can effect is an intentional one. Thus arises Wojtyla's
emphasis upon the communication of " substance understood," and upon

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intentional-presence-though-in-darkness.
But this does not quite do justice to the thinking of the Mystical Doctor. His doctrine takes its point
of departure from the belief that the theological virtues are derived from
sanctifying grace, which also endows the subject with a certain participation in the Divine Being. The principles are articulated by Aquinas
in the Summa Theologiae, I-II, 110, 3, where he states that by the gift
of grace it is given to the soul to participate in the Divine Nature; and
in I-II, 110, 4, where he says that by the possession of the theological
virtues the subject is made to participate in the vital actions of God.
The Carme1ite Doctor, on his part, corroborates Thomas's statements with
texts to the same effect. In .Ascent II, 5, 4, and Spiritual Canticle, 11, 3,
he speaks of a communication of the Divine Being to the soul in and
through grace; and in Spiritual Canticle, 1, 6, of an essential and presential indwelling of the Trinity in the intimate being of the soul.
It should also be pointed out that in the texts dealing specifically with
communication of God in faith it is made clear that He does not communicate himself in and through the darkness, but that He is hidden
underneath the darkness (.Ascent II, 9, 1). In the couplet of adjectives
light/ darkness, Wojtyla associates light with the propositions of faith,
nnd ca.lls this aspect the objective dimension of faith; and darkness with
the human experience thereof, rightly called the subjective dimension.
Yet both the propositions of faith and the human inability to comprehrnd them pertain to the human mode of operation of the virtue of faith.
But the soul is placed in communion with God by the operation of the
virtue of faith according to its supernatural mode, in a way that is totally
imperceptible by the subject and independent of his psychological experience (see .Ascent II, 9, 1 and 3). What we have here is a true communion
of persons, beside which a notion of mere intentional presence becomes
pallid. In the Sanjuanist texts the communion is vital, moral, psychological, and metaphysically actual, without being, however, a union of essence.
It is effected supernaturally by grace. And from the perspective of this
presence of God in the soul of every baptized, believing Christian, it is
seen that the entire mystical life is a development of this imperceptible
yet real communion. Development, however, only takes place in the subject rec.eiving and not in the object received. Through relentless purifl.cation and confirmation in virtue, the soul comes to have a certain experience of God, but. only because He was already there. We find the
terms somewhat inverted in the presentation of W ojtyla, in which God
said to be made present to the soul in and through his being known in
darkness.
In Wojtyla's assessment, it is " 'naked faith' that perhaps best ex.rmplifies the fundamental concept of the virtue of faith according to St.
John of the Cross. It is a faith that lacks all consolation and is without

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any light from above or below. It is a faith that is manifested as the
unwavering constancy of the intellect in its adherence to God" (p. 201).
The author likewise is insistent that "the entire journey to union with
God is enveloped in the darkness of faith; darkness covers all the steps
of the soul to God ... " (p. 144). The texts of the Carmelite doctor, however, seem to indicate that at the summit of the mystical ascent the soul
experiences a relative enlightenment which allows a certain intellectual
perception, a certain intuition, of the object of faith. Such experience
is an effect of what is called the " actual union according to the faculties,"
which is temporary, and which stands in contrast to the more permanent
habitual union in which intellective darkness prevails (Spiritual Canticle,
26, 11). As W ojtyla himself indicates, in the passive night of the soul,
" an infused, supernatural modality replaces the human, natural modality
... " (p. 186). Thus it is that the jubilant soul who has surmounted all
the rigorous nights of purification can claim: " ... I sallied forth from
my human operation and mode of acting to God's operation and mode
of acting . . . My intellect departed from itself, changing from human
and natural to divine. For, united with God through this purgation, it
no longer understands by means of its natural vigor and light, but by
means of the Divine Wisdom to which it was united" (Dark Night II,
4-, 2). At this stage the soul must still abide in faith. It is, however, "a
most enlightened faith" (Living Flame, 3, 80), making manifest in some
measure the presence of God. A faith like night, yes, but night " at the
onset of the rising dawn . . ." (Spiritual Canticle, 15). The experience
a prelude of the full vision of glory, which the saint compares to the
bright light of mid-day.
Our contemporary commentator of John of the Cross emphasizes the
unity and continuity in the latter's doctrine of faith. He observes that
it is the same formal cause that is present in contemplation at any level:
a sharing in the knowledge of God himself, which participation is one
with faith (pp. 169 and 190). This unity, nonetheless, can be stressed
even further and seen in the still broader context of a unity of the
communication of God to the soul. If what He communicates through
the theological virtues is his very Being, as the Carmelite Doctor indeed
teaches, then the participation in the divine knowledge which is granted
through faith, and the sharing in God's love which is given through
charity, are none other than touches of that very same substance of God.
In one of his most rapturous passages, John of the Cross tells us that
the Divine Being present in the soul is like a flame which enlightens and
kindles jointly (Living Flame, 3, 49). It is a simple substance, in other
words, which refracts upon contact with the complexity of the human
subject. The cognitive power is touched by the Divine Substance under
the modality of the virtue of faith, and the will is touched by the same

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Divine Being as communicated charity. Faith under its numerous modalities is always constituted objectively by the same reality, the participated
life of God. This is the case whether it be the faith infused at baptism,
the faith which gives the necessary impetus to assent to the formulation
of revealed truth, faith experienced in its obscurity in the active night
of the soul, faith as the ray of contemplation which purifies in the passive
night, or the faith which illuminates at the summit of mystical union.
And this virtue of faith is only one of three modalities under which the
transcendent Deity penetrates the soul, the other two being hope and
charity. All three jointly permeate the soul, each purifying its corresponding faculty, bringing the subject into intimate embrace with the already
possessed Triune Divinity.
Although W ojtyla does not emphasize these last-mentioned points, this
in no way detracts from the merits of his study. The monograph is indeed filled with numerous keen insights into the thought of the Mystical
Doctor, which can be enriching both to the beginner and to the expert
in mystical literature. By his ascension to the Papacy, John Paul II has
enabled this work to reach a wider audience with its light upon the figure
and thought of Saint John of the Cross.
ELIZABETH WILHELMSEN
Wheaton College
Norton, Massachusetts

Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis.
By RICHARD J. BERNSTEIN. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983. Pp. xviii + 284. $27.50 (cloth); $9.95 (paper).

Richard Bernstein's great talent as a writer has been to bring together
intellectual currents which appear to flow in opposite directions. In
Praxis and Action, he explored the developing consensus about the inadequacies of the Cartesian " spectator view of knowledge" and a!:>out
the importance of agency in knowing as well as living, while in Restructuring Social and Political Theory he went beyond this largely negative
project to argue that such diverse philosophical traditions as linguistic
analysis, Marxism, phenomenology, and critical theory were actually
creating new and convergent paths through the problems of the age.
But, as he says in the introduction to Beyond Objectivism and Relativism,
he has since come to se.e the themes of the earlier books as "gravitating
toward the complex network of problems concerning the character, dimensions, and texture of human rationality and irrationality." Thus he

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finds himself in the midst of the "rationality debates" and trying to
handle the spectre of relativism which haunts twentieth century culture.
His solution turns on recognizing that this spectre springs, in great meassure, from the pursuit of an impossible objectivity.
Contemporary philosophy of science provides the entree for the argument. At the dawn of the Enlightenment, Rene Descartes promised in
the Discourse on Method that the demon of doubt would be banished if
only we learned how to order our thoughts correctly, and it became a cultural given that human beings could reach sure and immutable knowledge of things and persons through the application of sound method.
Of course, this given has, like all others, had its nay-sayers, but the
0pposition has usually come from the romantics least interested in science itself. In the last quarter century, however, it has centered among
philosophers who have studied the history of science with care and sympathy. The most obvious point of difficulty was with the social sciences
when thinkers like Peter Winch noted the strange predicament of Western
anthropologists trying to study other societies with methods foreign to
the people under observation. If the scientific approach had limited value
in bridging the gap between ways of perceiving, it looked as though the
social sciences had lost their claim too have universal validity, and, by
common acceptance, their claim to be sciences. Next Thomas Kuhn's
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions brought the challenge into the
donrnin of physics, which usually stood as the very model of a science.
Whatever his ambiguities and inconsistencies, he demonstrated that physics
had no neat line of progress in which independent scientific methods led
to new theories whose pure truth replaced the errors of old theories. Scientific revolutions seemed, after Kuhn, to be more like the changes in
religious world-views and even the methods themselves to be imbedded in
the theories they supported. Many readers could see the spectre of
relativism, with skepticism breathing close behind. Bernstein, for his
part, argues that the efforts of the Winches and Kuhns serve only to
undermine an illusory science and that they herald a new understanding
of objectivity and of science.
Four figures guide Bernstein toward this new understanding: Hans
Georg Gadamer, Jii.rgen Habemas, Richard Rorty, and Hannah Arendt.
Gadamer's Truth and Method challenges the concept of a presuppositionless access to reality. Rather we interpret the world through a process
of play among ourselves and between ourselves and it. The rationalists
were wrong to dismiss tradition and prejudice out of hand as obstacles
to faithful judgment since the play Gadamer invokes requires tradition
and prejudice. One can say as much without denying the Enlightenment
insistence that intelligence pass judgment on all givens. The difference
iR that intelligence is inseparable from the creative historical action which

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embodies it. Intelligent practice is a communal activity, and Bernstein
sees the needed hermeneutics as involving more social critique than Gadamer offers. And so he shifts the discussion to Habermas's search for the
conditions of communication among people. This second focal thinker may
exaggerate the transcendental nature of these conditions, but he is right
in stressing that real communication requires freedom and trust and that
these in turn require profound changes in the social order. From this
vantage, Rorty's deconstruction of " philosophy as the mirror of nature"
may qualify not just as a negative achievement but as a demand for a
pluralism based on respect for the differences of human beings and their
cultures. Finally the historical character of all foundations based on birth
into particular societies and on struggle within them is the special emphasis of Arendt. Bernstein takes all four as bringing us to the recognition that new arguments alone will not overcome the dichotomy between
objectivism and relativism. We can do so "only if we dedicate ourselves
to the practical task of furthering the type of solidarity, participation,
and mutual recognition that is founded in dialogical communities."
Beyond Objectivism and Relativism is a valuable contribution to the
"rationality debate." Bernstein analyzes issues of importance not ,inst
for professional philosophers but for people at large. In doing so he
provides us with an interesting and perceptive history of ideas; and, as
ever, he draws the insights of Gadamer, Habermas, Rorty, and Arendt
into a synthesis with its own integrity. The writing is clear and eloquent,
and he does much to set us on what I think to be the right track as he
unravels and restores the bonds connecting science, interpretation, and
praxis. Nonetheless, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism has a serious
weakness linked t-0 the very method which has made his books notable
so far. As I have remarked, his achievement has been to bring disparate
thinkers together and to illuminate important matters by playing them
against each other and by uncovering their unsuspected harmonies. What
happens unfortunately is that he becomes entangled, nowhere more than
here, in the elegant web he spins. On every page, name jostles name and
ir1ea jostles idea, and the reader starts to wish that the author could break
through the texture of thrust and counter-thrust and simply talk about
the " things themselves " using his own independent perceptions and arguments. A unique synthesis is in the making here, and it requires its own
justification. Truth, for example, is an important concept in the present
book, and we uncover no truth-theory proper to it and at most allusions
to the shape it might take. How can we get beyond relativism and obwithout such a theory? It would also help to have much more
in the way of illustrations for the interpretative and communicative process
at work. Without them, the treatment remains abstract, and the stress
on other writers' contributions ends up casting a veil over the process.

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309

Cutting loose is never easy, but Bernstein must do so and abandon a
formula which has served him well if he is to prove himself a philosopher
of the first rank.
MICHAEL J. KERLIN
La Salle University
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Relativism: Cognitive and Moral. Edited by JACK W. MEILAND and
MICHAEL KRAUSZ. Notre Dame and London: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1982. Pp. 272. $20.00.
Relativism is different from skepticism. Where skepticism holds that
it is impossible for us to know the truth, relativism redefines truth. Instead of truth being the same for everyone, there is only truth which
varies with each society or each conceptual scheme or even each person.
In other words, relativism holds that truth is always and only truth for
some person ( s) or point of view and never truth which is objective and
universal regardless of social, historical, intellectual, or personal circumstance. Relativism does not deny that we can know the truth, but the truth
we can know is only relative truth-truth which is not the same for everyone.
The two best known forms of relativism are cognitive and ethical
relativism. The former applies to all knowledge claims. The latter is
confined to claims of moral knowledge. Together they constitute the chief
concern of Messrs. Meiland and Krausz, who seek through this collection
of essays to illustrate the range, depth, and importance of relativistic
doctrim:s. Meiland and Krausz consider the selections chosen as constituting " some of the best and most interesting work done on relativism
during the last decade" (p. 9).
The central questions that cognitive relativism faces are: (1) What
justifies the claim that truth is only
(2) Is the claim that all
truth is relative
(3) What exactly does it mean to say that
truth is relative or always a truth for'! Each of these questions is addressed by an essay in this volume.
Nelson Goodman's essay, "The Fabrication of Facts," attempts to
:mswer question (1). He argues that since w.e can have no access to things
aside from our knowledge of them the notion of an independently existing
reality is empty and hence the attempt to understand truth as a " corTespondence" with such a reality is fruitless. We would do better, Goodman claims, to focus on world-versions instead of the world. If our
version of the world offends no unyielding beliefs and is self-consistent,
then our version of the world is true. Of course, there are other versions

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of the world which against a different set of unyielding beliefs would be
true also. There are many truths, for there is no way that we can compare our version of the world with the world as it really is. We only
know via some conceptual framework, and the conceptual framework we
use depends on our purposes or habits. So truth is ultimately something
relative.
There is much that needs to be said in reply to Goodman, especially
regarding his claim that perception cannot serve to differentiate a correct
from an incorrect version of the world. It must suffice for now to note
a rather glaring non sequitur in Goodman's argument. From the proposition that we have no access to things aside from our knowledge of them,
it does not follow that we cannot know what things really are; and, if
this is so, it certainly does not fol1ow that the notion of an independently
existirg reality is empty. This argument assumes that our manner of
knowing constitutes a barrier to reality. Why7 Simply noting, as Goodman does, that human interests and needs play a role in the development of conceptual schemes does not show that there is some barrier
between us and the real. Human knowing does indeed "start somewhere,"
and we cannot claim to know everything in all its detail all at once. We
cannot be said to know sub specie aeternitatis. But this only shows that
man is the measurer of all things, not the measure of all things. Though
there is certainly more to this issue than can be discussed here, there does
seem to be a rather fundamental error in Goodman's argument for relativism.
Maurice Mandelbaum's essay, "Subjective, Objective, and Conceptual
Relativism," answers question (2) affirmatively. In this well-written and
extremely important essay, Mandelbaum argues that relativism, no matter what form it may take, cannot provide sufficient evidence for itself
If the evidence prewithout regarding the evidence nonrelativistically.
sented on behalf of the relativist thesis is regarded as sufficient only
within the relativist conceptual framework, then sufficient evidence for
the relativist thesis will not have been presented to the person
who does not share the relativist conceptual framework, and there will
be no reason why the person should accept (or consider) the relativist
thesis. If, on the other hand, the evidence presented on behalf of the
relativist thesis is regarded as sufficient outside the relativist conceptual
framework. then an appeal is being made to evidence that the relativist
thesiR denies exists, and the argument involves a contradition.
Meiland and Krausz offer helpful and informative introductions to
every essay in this volume and in their introduction to Mandelbaum's
essay make two suggestions as to how the relativist might extricate
himself from 1\fandelbaum's dilemma. First, in offering arguments "the
relativist need only presuppose statements which are true-for-the-person-

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811

(p. 32). The relativist need not appeal
being-persuaded-or-convinced"
to .evidence that is sufficient in a nonrelativist sense. Thus, for the nonrelativist to become persuaded of the truth of relativism all that is necessary is that he regard the evidence as sufficient to make relativism true-forhimself. He does not need to suppose that relativism is true independent
of some person(s) or conceptual framework. The evidence need not be
nonrelative. Second, the relativist purpose in giving arguments need not
be one of persuasion. Arguments could have other purposes than persuasion. They could, for example, be used to present a view in a logically
ordered way so that one's audience could come to " better understand "
that view (p. 32).
To insist that the relativist should have the same purposes in argument as the nonrelativist might is misguided. It is an example of
a practice often followed by absolutist objectors to relativism-the
practice of requiring the relativist to adopt ends and to satisfy
standards which are appropriate to absolutism and then declaring
relativism refuted when relativism fails to live up to the mark.
Relativism may be more appropriately considered as a world-view
which generates its own goals and standards. (p. 32)

In other words, the purpose of argumentation for the relativist need not
be the demonstration of the truth of the relativist thesis but somthing else.
Meiland and Krausz's suggestions do not, however, succeed in saving
the relativist from Mandelbaum's dilemma. First, saying that the evidence presented on behalf of the relativist thesis need only be regarded
by the nomelativist as sufficient to make relativism true-for-himself and
nothing more amounts to saying that the nonrelativist is not a nonrelativist
and already accepts the relativist thesis. It must be remembered that if
the relativist thesis applies to itself-to its own articulation-then
no
matter what evidence is presented on its behalf, no matter how powerful
that evidence might be, that evidence can only be considered sufficient
within the relativist conceptual framework, and the nonrelativist, by
definition, does not share this framework and thus has no reason to regard
any evidence presented for the relativist thesis as sufficient. If the relativist seeks to offer evidence that will be sufficient to persuade the nonrelativist, he must use evidence that is eapable of establishing relativism's
truth independent of the relativist point of view. But this means that the
relativist must use what he claims does not exist and is thus caught in a
contradiction. It is true, as Meiland and Krausz state in their second sug<gestion, that the relativist can avoid this difficulty by giving up the goal
of persuasion-at least, rational persuasion. This, however, only means
that the relativist is caught on the other horn of Mandelbaum's dilemma,
for there is no longer any reason why the nonrelativist who is interested
in knowing the nature of truth should take the relativist seriously. Meiland
and Krausz imply that the nonrelativist might seriously consider the

noo:K RJJiVIEWS
relativist's arguments so as to " better understand " what relativism involves. It is, however, very difficult to see why the nonrelativist would be
interested in "better understanding" the relativist thesis, for it has already been admitted that the relativist cannot present any evidence sufficient to persuade the nonre!ativist of the relativist's account of truth.
Furthermore, it is very unclear what " better understand " would mean
in such a context. Now, it might be objected that the nonrelativist is
unfair in refusing to consider seriously the relativist's argument, for he
is requiring the relativist to adopt ends and standards he need not hold.
But there is nothing unfair r.bout this. Relativism claims to generate its
own goals and standards, but this is only for those who accept it. Those
who ar.e nonrelativists and interested in knowing the nature of truth are
in no way obligated to treat the relativist's argument "fairly," i.e., seriously. There are no standards to which the relativist can appeal in order
to have the nonrelativist consider his arguments. This illustrates one of
the unfortunate consequences of relativism.
Chris Swayer's essay, "True For," answers question (3). He claims
that any philosophically interesting form of relativism must not equate
'true for' with 'believes that'. If someone's believing something makes
it true for him, then our notion of true for does not come close enough
to truth to be of any philosophical interest at all" (p. 95). Yet this
gap between believing P and the truth of P can be preserved by a relativistic doctrine if it claims that truth is relative to a conceptual framework. When we say that "P is true for Smith," we mean that P is true
according to the criteria implicit in the conceptual scheme employed by
Smith, and this is distinct from saying that " P is believed by Smith."
In this way, Swoyer sees relativism as avoiding being regarded as merely
a confused way of talking about belief and maintaining its candidacy
as a theory of truth.
Swoyer distinguishes between two forms of relativism-a strong sense
and a weak sense. If truth is relative in a strong sense, there is something which is true in one conceptual framework, but false in another.
If truth is relative in a weak sense, there can be things that are true in
one framework, but inexpressible in another. What sentence S in framework F 1 is about has no counterpart in framework F 2 • Swoyer then
argues against relativism in the strong sense : if two conceptual frameworks are indeed different, then it is most difficult to see how the same
thing could be true in one conceptual framework and false in another,
for if the different conceptual frameworks help to constitute " different
worlds," how can a sentence in one conceptual scheme be about the same
thing as a sentence in another conceptual
The claim that sentence S is true in conceptual framework F and false in conceptual framework F 1 cannot be true, for the relativist cannot say what it is that is
true (and false) in a relativ.e sense. Of course, if the different conceptual

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schemes are not so radically different as to prevent reference to the same
thing in different conceptual schemes, viz., translation between conceptual
schemes is possible, then it becomes problematic to continue to claim that
truth is relative to a conceptual scheme. As Meiland and Krausz put the
problem,
But now suppose that such a translation were possible. Then the
statement "S is true in framework F 1 and false in framework F 2"
is either absolutely true or relatively true. If it is absolutely true,
the game is up because the notion of relative truth is parasitic upon
the notion of absolute truth; if it is relatively true, then we are
using the notion of relative truth to explain itself, resulting in no
enlightenment. {p. 83)

Interestingly enough, Swoyer does not see this criticism of relative
truth in the strong sense as applying to conceptual relativism-the claim
that the world we know and experience is partially constituted by our
conceptual framework. In other words, relative truth in the weak sense
is not affected by Swoyer's argument. This is so because Swoyer disassociates conceptual relativism from a problematic doctrine of truth.
He claims that there might be alternative conceptual frameworks and
indeed things which resist translation from one framework to another,
but this does not imply that the same thing is true in one framework and
false in another. "By giving the relativist benefit of doubt at nearly every
stage, we have seen that his claims that our knowledge of the world is
colored by our concepts, that these might have been quite different, and
the like, do not lead to the conclusion that truth is relative in a strong
sense" (p. 106).
Swoyer's argument against relativism in the strong sense is most ingenious. Yet what is curious is that he rejects a parallel argument by
Barry Stroud against relativism in the weak sense. Stroud claims that if
two allegedly different conceptual frameworks allow for translation into
each other, then we do not discover anything radically different or new
in the " worlds " presented by these conceptual frameworks, and so the
frameworks are not really so different. Swoyer replies that, even if we
grant that translation between conceptual frameworks is possible, this
does not make relativism in the weak sense false. There is a difference
between the expressibility and the accessibility of concepts, and the mere
fact that we can translate from one conceptual scheme into another does
not mean that we can think about the world in the same way. "There is
a difference between having the ability to express certain things and
actually being able to use these things directly in one's thought" (p 104) ·
But this difference does not seem as great as Swoyer contends. First,
there are cases of people doing what he says cannot be done. It is often
noted that people who master a foreigu language really well are able to
think in that language and need not translate everything they read or

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BOOK REVIEWS

hear into their mother-tongue before they understand what they read or
hear. Second, the fact that human interests and needs play a role in the
development of conceptual schemes, e.g., the snow-dweller's account of
snow as compared with the nonsnow-dweller's reflects the former's greater
concern for the features of snow than the latter's, does not prove that
our concepts or language play an active role in molding reality. As was
noted in the case of Nelson Goodman's essay, this only shows that human
knowing " starts somewhere " and cannot (and need not) claim to know
from God's vantage point. Human knowledge can be partial and still
pertain to the world as it really is. Third, Swoyer interprets concepts in
a Kantian fashion. He assumes that the mode of human cognition affects
the content of that cognition. He does, of course, share this assumption
with most contemporary epistemologists, but he does not argue for this
assumption. Neither does he consider how a view which treated concepts
as intentions mig·ht affect the issue.
Ethical relativism claims that moral judgments are true only relative
to the standards held by some individual ( s) or community or society or
generation or culture. Ethical
is a doctrine about the nature
of moral judgments. It makes no moral claim and hence does not refer
to itself. Ethical relativism need not involve cognitive relativism. So
it can claim to be true in a nonrelativist sense. Three central questions
that ethical relativism faces are: (a) What justifies the claim that ethical
judgments are only relatively
(b) Can an ethical relativist consistently make ethical judgments?
( c) Can an ethical relativist have
moral beliefs of his own?
Gilbert Harman's essay, "Moral Relativism Defended," attempts to
answer question (a). Harman argues that there is a type of moral judgment which can be explained only if one assumes that morality arises
when a group of people reach an implicit agreement or tacit understanding about their relations with one another. Harman thus argues for a
yersion of eihical relativism by claiming that a certain type of moral
judgment "makes sense only in relation to and with reference to one or
another such agreement or understanding" (p. 189). Though Harman
makes no explicit statement on whether there is a way to determine which
set of principles agreed upon by a group of people is objectively correct, he does imply that there is no objectively true moral code that exists
D.part from human agreement.
The type of moral judgment that can only be accounted for by assuming a version of ethical relativism is what Harman calls "inner judgments." Inner judgments say that someone morally ought to do X or
morally ought not to do X. Inner judgments imply that the preson whose
actions are being judged is capable of being motivated by relevant moral
considerations. It would be "logically odd," Harman notes, to use the

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moral ' ought ' in reference to an agent's action if the agent cannot be
motivated by it. One can, of course, offer an evaluation of the situation,
" X would be a good thing to do " or " X would be a bad thing to do,"
but it would be a contradiction by implication to say of someone that he
or she ought to do X or ought to avoid X if that person is not capable
of being motivated by these judgments. Harman asks us to consider the
example of some contented employee of Murder Incorporated who was
raised to respect all members of the "family" but have contempt for the
rest of society and is given the assignment to kill a certain bank manager.
Though we might be able to point out some practical difficulties and thus
in that way persuade him that he should not kill the bank manager,
It would be a misuse of language to say of him that he ought not
to kill [the bank manager] ... or that it would be wrong of him

to do so, since that would imply that our own moral considerations
carry some weight with him, which they do not (p. 191, emphasis
added).

Indirect moral judgments make sense only if the person who judges and
the agent whose actions are judged share certain motivating attitudes.
Harman claims that shared motivating attitudes are the result of an
implicit agreement or tacit understanding. He presents this claim as the
only hypothesis he knows which can account for a puzzling aspect of
our moral views-namely, why it is that most us think it is worse to harm
than not to help someone. Harman argues that, if we see morality as a
compromise based on implicit bargaining, then this attitude becomes understandable.
The rich, the poor, the strong, and the weak would all benefit if all
were to agree to avoid harming one another. So everyone could
agree to that arrangement. But the rich and the strong would
not benefit from an arrangement whereby everyone would try to do
as much as possible to help those in need. The poor and the weak
would get all of the benefit of this latter arrangement. Since the
rich and the strong could foresee that they would be required to
do most of the helping and that they would receive little in return,
they would be reluctant to agree to a strong principle of mutual
aid. A compromise would be likely and a weaker principle would
probably be accepted. ( p. 196)
Other views of morality, Harman contends, do not account for this moral
view. So he claims that he has presented the only explanation that will
account for this moral view and in that way made a case for his version
of ethical relativism.
Three things immediately come to mind when considering Harman's
argument for ethical relativism. First, the claim that it makes no sense
to judge what people ought or ought not to do if they are not capable of
being motivated by these judgments is ambiguous. Certainly, the em-

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BOOK REVIEWS

ployee of Murder Incorporated would have no motivation to follow our
judgment that he should not kill the bank manager, but this does not mean
that he could not become so motivated. " Ought implies can" is true,
but this does not mean that a human being cannot radically change his
worldview from the one he has been taught. If the employee can choose
and think for himself, then it is in principle possible to persuade him of
the error of his ways. An advocate of objective moral knowledge sees this
as the point of moral education. As long as it is possible for the employee
of Murder Incorporated to change his ways, it would be legitimate to say
of him that he ought not to kill the bank manager. Second, the question
of why we ought to keep our implicit agreements and tacit understandings
looms large; for, according to Harman's view of morality, there is no
standard to which one can appeal in order to say that one ought to keep
his agreements and understandings. Harman is, however, unimpressed by
this question. He notes that to agree is to intend to do something, and,
when we intend to do something, we are motivated to do it. Hence there
is no problem as to why we would keep our agreements or understandings.
But we can still ask why would one intend to abide by certain principles.
Granted that once we intend to do something, we have a reason to do it,
why would we develop the intention in the first place' Harman's answer
seems to be that this would be determined by bargaining. But why ought
one to bargain 7 It seems that Harman would say that we just do, and
this is ultimate. If so. then bargaining should be more fully explained.
Third, could not an advocate of objective moral knowledge offer a theory
of natural rights which claimed that not harming others was the necessary
precondition for a society in which the achievement of human fulfillment
would be possible and in this way attempt to account for the moral view
that it is worse to harm others than to refuse to help them' Certainly,
such an approach to morality is not Harman's, but there are many theories
which purport to offer such an account of natural rights-especially as
developed by libertarian political theorists. Harman should, at least, say
something about theories of this sort.
Bernard Williams in his
"An Inconsistent Form of Relativism,"
answers question (b) negatively or, at least, as regards what he calls
"vulgar relativism." He notes that "the central confusion of relativism
is to try and conjure out of the fact that societies have differing attitudes
and values an a priori nonrelative principle to determine the attitude of
one society to another; this is impossible" (p. 173). Yet Williams in his
essay, "The Truth of Relativism," does contend that there is a way in
which an argument against interfering with other societies can be made
from a relativist perspective. "Appraisal relativism" holds that in
order genuinely to appraise a system of moral beliefs we must be able
really to confront that system of beliefs. This means that it must be

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817

possible for us to live within that system of beliefs and be able to compare these beliefs with our own beliefs. Furthermore, the system of
beliefs to be evaluated must relate to our concerns, and the evaluation
must not be one in which we have nothing at stake. If we cannot really
confront a system of moral beliefs, then we cannot make a genuine appraisal of that system and thus cannot be justified in claiming that system
of beliefs to be defective. Hence, we could not be justified in interfering
with that system of beliefs on the basis of such judgments.
"Williams presents a novel and most interesting form of relativism,
assuming that that label still applies. Still, it is hard to see why one
must be able to live within another system of beliefs in order genuinely
to appraise it. Meiland and Krausz in their introduction to Williams's
essay note that it is possible for someone with a moral ideal to be concerned with a system of beliefs, have something at stake in regard to
those beliefs, and still not be able to live within that system of beliefs,
e.g., a businessman whose ideal is to contribute to economic growth condemning the moral beliefs of a Samurai in medieval Japan because they
deal solely with duty, loyalty, and honor and make no room for economic
achievement. It seems that the businessman's interest and concern is
quite real even though it is no longer possible to live within the Samurai's
system of beliefs. More work by "Williams regarding the conditions for
genuine appraisal seems necessary.
Philippa Foot's essay, "Moral Relativism," deals with, among other
things, question ( c) and answers it affirmatively. Foot finds the claim
that the ethical relativist can have no moral beliefs of his own to be
false because the claim confuses ethical relativism with moral skepticism.
The ethical relativist does not deny that moral judgments can be true.
It is, however, only relative truth that he can believe, for relative truth
is all that one can expect from moral matters. But as Foot asks: "Why
is it not enough that we should claim relative truth for our moral judgments, taking it as truth relative to local standards or to individual standards, according to our theory of moral
( p. 161). Hence,
ethical relativists can be understood as having moral beliefs of their ownthat is, beliefs that certain propositions are true.
Foot is correct insofar as she notes that the ethical relativist can believe in relative truths, but, if one recalls that the ethical relativist need
not be a cognitive relativist and thus can have a nonrelative conception
of truth, then ethical relativism does seem to involve moral skepticism.
Ethical relativism denies that moral judgments cr.n be true in a nonrelative
sense. So moral judgments cannot qualify as instances of knowledge as
non moral claims can. Therefore, an answer to question ( c) depends on
whether a case for cognitive relativism can be made. If cognitive relativism
is true, then the ethical relativist is not a moral skeptic. If cognitive

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relativism is false, then there is a very real sense in which the ethical
relativist is a moral skeptic and would not be able to believe any moral
truths, that is, have any moral beliefs of his own. Whatever practical
difficulties an ethical relativist would face when confronted with the fact
that he cannot believe that any course of action is better than any other
need not be considered here, but it certainly does not seem to be a comfortable situation.
Jack W. Meiland and Michael Krausz's Relativism is an excellent book.
Besides the essays discussed here, there are essays by Davidson, Doppelt,
Lyons, and Harrison. There is also a useful bibliography and helpful
index. The importance of the articles, together with the well-written
introductions that the editors provide, makes this a book that evry philosopher should have at hand.
DOUGLAS B. RASMUSSEN
St. John's University
New York City, New York

From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again: A Journey in Final Causality,
Species, and Evolution. By ETIENNE GILSON. Translated by J. Lyon.
Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984. Pp. xx
+ 203 + Index. $23.00 (cloth).
This work is a translation of Gilson's D' Aristote a Darwin et Retour:
Essai sur Quelques Constantes de la Biophilosophie (Paris: J. Vrin, 1971).
The work has been rendered into very readable English by John Lyon,
who has also done yeoman service in his completions, augmentations, and
corrections of Gilson's original set of notes, tasks which sorely needed
doing. There is also an Introduction by S.L. Jaki, providing a brief
uverview of Gilson's career, philosophical interests and methods, and
the contents and purpose of the work.
Why the long delay in making this work available to English-speaking
readers f I can see several reasons that might be offered for not bothering to translate the work at all. It lacks the strict coherence and integrity
of intellectual development we are so used to finding in Gilson's written
material. The central and longest (58 pages) chapter, Chapter Three,
" Finality and Evolution," for instance, could easily stand as a separate
rssay, as is true of some of the others. Also, Gilson is not as cautious
in this work, when it comes to giving evaluations of the intentions of
various authors, as he has been in the past. The harsh judgment he
passes on Malthus, for example, does not seem fully justified, something
noted by Lyon (p. 181). In addition, soon after its appearance in French,
the work was outdated in certain ways. By the middle 1970s, Darwinian

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319

scholarship was witnessing a new outburst of activity, such as the
publication of Darwin's early notebooks, the re-evaluation of Darwin's
supposed atheism, and the debate (which still continues) over punctuated
equilibriumism and gradualism in which Gilson's work does not participate.
However, in my opinion, these reasons for not publishing the work in
English are by and large irrelevant. Its main strength, after all, is its
powerful x-ray vision approach to certain constant problems in the philosophy of animate nature. I see two main themes in the book. One is
the emphasis upon the fact of teleology in nature, a fact to which those
who verbally denounce
(usually because they misunderstand
it in the first place) are forced to return over and over again. The other
is the role of anthropomorphism in the rational evaluation of the relationship between art and nature.
In an earlier work, God and Philosophy, Gilson had pointed out that
anthropomorphism in natural theology was really not such a bad thing,
because it is quite unavoidable, and in fact serves the very fundamental
purpose of preserving a minimal personalism (the essential presence of
intellect and will) in our understanding of superhuman beings. Chapter
Four of God and Philosophy is very much concerned with anthropomorphism and teleology in contemporary thought, and the present work
can be viewed as an expansion, up-dating, ru1d development of that
chapter in reference to the history of modern (1750-1970) biology.
Roughly speaking, the work under review pictures Aristotle's four
causes as being divided up, so to speak, among three levels of enquiry,
the scientific, philosophical, and theological, each with its own special
set of problems to be addressed and answered. The scientific level is
that of sensually verifiable observation. On this level the material and
agent causes are of special importance insofar as they are used actually
to explain the operation of organism.3. Gilson fully appreciates why so
many scientists seem to be so congenitally opposed to final causality. As
scientists they want to know precisely and exactly how an organism, and
all of its parts, operate so as to achieve its goal. Simply to speak about
the aim or purpose of an organism and leave it at that would be, from
the scientific viewpoint, quite fruitless. To do 1vhat they want, though,
means that they must necessarily emphasize material and motor causes.
This does not, however, in the least mean that teleology is not there, in
in the organism, to be observed, witnessed, and seen. Even though
we cannot literally see a final cause per se, "we can speak of it with
assurance because the effects which we require it to account for are visible, tangible, and perceptible with an obviousness equal to that which
we have for extension and movement: they are the very structures of
these organic beings" ( p. 122). No naturalist or biologist could possibly
deny this fact.

BOOK REVIEWS

This is certainly true of Darwin himself. The typical textbook version
of Darwin as an anti-teleological atheist is not the real Darwin, according Gilson. The philosophy of evolutionism should be kept separate from
Darwinism, which Gilson, like Asa Gray in the last century, equates
with the doctrine of natural selection and nothing more. " The Darwinism
of evolution does not belong to actual history, but to mythological history" {p. 71). This mythology was created by people such as Huxley
who wanted to use Darwin for their own ends. But, as someone in direct
contact with the facts of nature, Darwin could no more tear himself away
from teleology than could Newton (another "mechanist"), who berated
his fellow scientists for inventing mechanical hypotheses in a vain attempt
to explain everything in such a fashion {p. 27).
Darwin's problem was not the fact of teleology but its explanation.
He was trapped in an intellectual vise which allowed for only two alternatives: Either the transformationism
and mutability of species or the
theological doctrine of special creationism. He felt forced to choose the
former. If, however, he had been raised in a different intellectual atmosphere the whole evolution vs. religion dilemma never would have arisen
in the first place.
In any case, even if only by default, Darwin ended up in the evolutionistic camp and now seems destined to remain there forever, at least
in the popular mind. Scientists will continue to be hopelessly confused
about teleology, grasping it dearly in one hand, while desperately attempting to throw it away with the other. What they should be doing instead,
thinks Gilson, is, as good observers, admitting its existence, while, as
good thinkers, leaving its explanation to others.
On the philosophical level the formal cause is of special importance.
Here, also, we have a confused situation. Rather than admit the truth
of hylomorphism and the immutability of species, thinkers will turn to
any device under the sun, however irrational. Bergson, for instance, even
though doing a great deal to restore the respectability of teleology in
philosophy, first had to go through a long painful process in which he
took for granted a false form of teleology. According to Gilson: '"It
was not Bergson who invented inadequate finalism, wherein living beings
only change in order to realize predetermined ends; but he ought pel'haps to have made an effort to comprehend true finalism, that of forms
immanent in nature and working from within to incarnate themselves
there by modeling matter according to their law" (p. 99). Thus an acorn
becomes an oak rather than a daisy. There is also the example of the scientist W. M. Elsasser, who, on the basis of his knowledge of twentieth
century quantum mechanics, knew full well that no purely mechanistic
model of homogeneous matter could explain heterogeneous organisms,
and who consequently decided that the situation called for two different
kinds of matter (p. 115).

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Closely related to the foregoing, and, strictly speaking, another issue
scientists should steer clear of, is the problem of universals (species). If
there is one problem which has always been very dear to Gilson's heart
it is this one. "This is the celebrated problem of the universal, and it
is fashionable to make fun of the Middle Ages for having reduced philosophy to this problem. But the Middle Ages only said that all the rest
of philosophy depended on the response made to this problem, which is
the case" (p. 39). ( C'est le celebre probleme des Universaux, et il est
de mode de moquer la moyen age pour y avoir reduit la philosophie, mais
le moyen age a seulement dit que tout le reste de la philosophie depend
de la reponse fait ace probleme, ce qui est vrai-Fr. ed., p. 65.)
The important point, philosophically speaking, is that species cannot
change. A changing species is a contradiction in terms. "To say that
species are fixed is a tautology; to say that they change is to say that
they do not exist" ( p. 144). The issue is of such central importance that
it will not go away, even for those who wish it would. Species, like final
causes, are a fact of nature, yet they cannot be explained via any sort of
mechanistic means. Darwin himself is a prime example of someone who,
qua scientist, had to talk about species, but who, qua inept philosopher,
had to deny their existence in order to allow for their transmutation.
But how can " fixed " species be reconciled with the fossil record'! Cer-·
tainly not via transformism, or via the superior coming from the inferior.
Gilson, rea 1izing that Aristotle's hylomorphism must be modified, wants
to think in terms of one species replacing another, not changing into
another. With respect to Aristotle: "It is assuredly necessary to loosen
up Aristotelian fixism, but that ought to be possible since it is less a
question of a position born of reflective choice than of a fixism, so to
speak, by inadvertence. It is not forbidden to think of the [substantial]
form as an inventive and at the same time conservative formula" (p. 101).
With respect to the appearance of new species, Gilson seems to agree
with Paul Lemoine that there are an infinite number of forms virtually
contained in nature, ready to come forth under the right conditions, some
of which might be man-made. Gilson states: " The situation has thus
changed less since Aristotle than one would think, since it is still a question today of 'drawing forms from the power of matter' where they are
found in potency" (pp. 129-130). (La situation a done mains change
depuis Aristote qu'on ne le dit puisqu'il s'agit encore aujourd'h1,1,ide "tirer
les .formes de la puissance de la matiere" ou elles se trouvent virtuellement-Fr. ed., p. 208.) Is this the doctrine of the eduction of forms'!
And in Gilson'!
As far as anthropomorphism is concerned, it is philosophically justified as long as we are careful about separating its essential from its accidental elements. Human beings are a part of nature; mother nature works

BOOK REVIEWS

in and through us. There is no reason to suppose that the thoughts of
her children do not reflect her own. The artistic, being in man, is also
in nature. In other words, teleology, rather than necessarily being an
illegitimate projection of human thoughts into nature, could just as well
be a projection of nature into us. And intelligence, which exceeds the
limits of abstract ideas, is one its most important manifestations.
In any event, anthropomorphism cannot be avoided. The whole mechanistic orientation is not its negation but a prime example of it in operation.
All machines are necessarily teleological. Chance cannot be called upon
to explain the laws of nature any more than it can be used to explain
the spring in a watch. The main difference between art and nature is
that in art the agent is external to its art, while in nature it is internal.
When an artist (or artisan) makes something he is doing what nature
does, but usually in a way that is not as good and dependablP- as nature.
This is the more profound meaning of the saying that art imitates nature.
'l'his is even true in the creations of the mathematicians. What could be
asks Gilson. But does this make it unmore human than
natural f Not at all. "The more science becomes mathematical, the more
anthropomorphic it is " ( p. 134).
Even Darwin could not escape anthropomorphism, despite his protestations about the strictly metaphorical meaning of the term "selection."
In fact Darwin argues from human activity to nature via an anthropomorphic analogy, namely, the actions of many human breeders acting
independently of each other and unconsciously working for the same goal
is to the actual production of improved creatures as the actions of many
unconscious natural forces always tending towards better creatures is to
the actual production of the wonderful array of creatures filling in the
"polity" of nature. Moreover, nature does it better.
According to Gilson, Darwin's logic runs like this: " If one can describe
artificial selection as being as unconscious as natural selection, the latter
benefits forthwith from the quasi-experimental certitude which we have
of the former. For this to be the rase, it is necessary that nonscientific
artificial selection should be unconscious; therefore it is " ( p. 155). The
only problem, of course, is that it isn't. Without the right to be anthropomorphic Darwin's own mechanism of natural selection would be completely unintelligible, even in science.
On the theological level, which would be primarily interested in the
ultimate final causes of man and nature, Gilson has very little to say. In
his view, the solution to the problem of evil, for instance, is really not
the proper subject matter of the present work. Neither must the naturalist
be concerned with the final end of nature. Creationism is not necessarily
connected to teleology, and "Finalism does not even require that the
phenomena of life tend toward a 'preconceived' end. Whether in fact
they do or not is up to the theologians to decide " (p. 120). As we have

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323

learned from Paley's blunder, it is best to keep theology separate from the
philosophy of nature.
By way of critical comment on this work, two points come to mind. I
wonder, first of all, whether or not it is really historically accurate to
identify Darwinism with nothing more or less than natural selection. I
think there is more of the evolutionary evangelist in Darwin than Gilson
is willing to admit. He does mention in passing that Darwin may have
been merely substituting one indemonstrable theology or another, but he
then immediately abandons the point in order to return to his previously
stated position (p. 149).
The other point is Gilson's inability to see nonreductionist materialism
as a possible position between reductionism and Aristotelianism. Anyone who cannot live with mechanism is regarded as a crypto-Aristotelian.
Elsasser, for example, who has all the earmarks of a nonreductionist
materialist (the inability to reduce biology to physics, the real existence
of hierarchical order in nature, etc.), is taken as occupying a middle
position between vitalism and mechanism, which is in principle at least,
as far as Gilson is concerned, the hylomorphic view (pp. 116-119).
To
this is certainly a work which every serious philosopher
should read, especially those interested in the philosophy of science and
nature. In doing so, the reader can also look forward to another dozen
or so examples of Gilson's dry, understated Gallic humor, e.g., "It is not
superfluous to examine this old doctrine of chance, already rejected by
Aristotle, under one of its modern forms. How should we know otherwise
whether it has not become true in the
(p. 107). "We say
that primitives take a watch for an animal, but only the genius of Descrates
has been able to take animals for watches" ( p. 123). Gilson always did
appreciate Chesterton.
The books itself is very nicely printed and bound; I found only two
or three typographical errors.

F. F. CENTORE
University of Waterloo
Waterloo, Ontario