THOMAS AND THE UNIVERSE
STANLEY L. JAKI

Seton Ha,ll Uni1;ersity
South Orange, New Jersey

F

EW SUBJECTS MAY appear so discouragingly vast as
Thoma's and the Universe. Few have pmduced a work
vaster, let alone deeper, than did Thomrus. As to the
universe, its Viastnessas well as its depth ·are succinctly stated
in Newman's Idea of a University:" There is but one thought
greater than that of the universe, and that is the thought of
its Maker." 1 There is in aiddition the vastness of the history
of the notion of the universe and the .large number of Thomas'
interpreters, not all of them immune to prolixity. At any rate,
Thomas' best known
interpreters offer, as will
be seen shortly, at most a brief chapter or a subsection of it on
Thomas and the universe with very little on the universe as
such.
A possible reason for this is that in rthe vast writings of
Thomas there is no chapter or question on the universe as
suoh. By as such I mean the very core of the notion of the
universe, or its 'being the totality of consistently interacting
things and their very unity. Thomas, as will 1be seen later, is
not iat all silent on this point. Brut if one tries to focate his
relevant dicta hy looking through the detailed fables of contents in, say, the Para:na edition of his works, one is not given
much guidance. No different is the cruse when one looks
through the subject indices. Entries under "universum" are
almost as scarce as hen"s teeth. As to entries under " mundus,"
they .are of no great help on the worild or universe as such.
Authors who let their publishers undertake the compilation
of the subject index of their books will p11obably agree that the
1J. H. Newman, The Idea, of a, University
Co., 1888), p. 462.

545

(London: Longmans, Green &

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STANLEY L. J AKI

result is very unsatisfactory in most cases. Few reaiders can
really sense the nuances of an author's real concerns, especially
if, like Thomas, he has many important concerns. There is in
addition the effect of the climate of thought. Under ordinary
circumstances one does not pay attention to the air one
hreathes in, and much less writes about it extensively, though
one still can make incisive though brief references to it.
In the intellectual atmosphere surrounding Thomas, the
reality o[ the universe :as such 'Was taken to he a most obvious
fact. There were debates whether the universe was eternal or
temporal; whether it was uncreated or created out of nothing
or out of some prime matter; whether any creature could he
given a creative power; whether the unive11se was governed
providentially; whether it was properly ordered; whether anything occurred in it :by chance or thy accident; whether it was
absolutely or relatively the best; whether it could have been
otherwise; whether it was necessarily spherical; whether it
could move or not-but nobody .felt the need to discuss ·at
length whether there was a universe, .that is, a totality of consistently intemcting things 1aH of which verged toward unity.
Democritus' claim aibout a large number of universes was,
of course, known, but just a;s well known was the illogicality
of it. Either those universes interructed with one ,another, and
in that oase they clearly formed one :single universe, or they
were unknowaible to one another in the 'absence of such interaction. 'lihe arguments Aristotle offered 2 on behalf of the
unicity of the universe were widely adhered to even in the latter half of the 17th century. The idea of the plurality of worlds
that came then into vogue l1ested largely on taking planets and
stars for worlds, though hardly ever with the intent of destroying the notion of the universe as a totality.
The spontaneous acceptance of a real universe remained part
and parcel of Western consciousness until Kant's Critique of
Pure Reason began to make a real impact through the rise of
Neo-Kantiani:sm fil'om the 1870s on. Reaction to that impact
2 Aristotle,

On the Heavens, Bk I, ch. 8-9.

THOMAS AND THE UNIVERSE

547

within Catholic philosophical circles, ·and in particular -among
the Thomists and their freshly born N eothomist kind, is a subject still to he studied in detail. It seems, however, that no
close look W:as taken in those circles at the centrality which
Kant's attack on the validity of the notion of the universe occupies in his ,strategy of agnosticism. Usu.ally ignored in the
same cireles we:ve ;also the "scientific" threats posed to the
unity of the universe in precisely those times or the five decades between 1870 and 1920.8
The scientific situation, though not the scientists' perception, drastically changed in the 1920s, or the very decade during which General Relativity :became widely known. Even today there is no strong awiareness of the fact that Einstein's
chief a;chievement in General Relativity was to restore credi1hilityto the notion of the universe. He did ·so hy providing the
first contmdiction-free scientific account of all gravitationally
interacting things in the concluding or fifth memoir on General
Relativity published in 1917. Einstein himself paid no immediate attention to the
that in •a sense he discovered for
science the universe as ·such, ;and that hy the same stroke he
disoredited Kant's claim that science was the ohief disproof
of the credi!hility of the notion of the universe. 4 This pivotal
1

s .A case in point is the· Oosmologie by D. Nys, of the lnstitut Superieur de
Philosophie in Louvcain, which grew between 1903 and 1929 from a onevolume work into a four-volume opus and influenced many Neothomist
writers. The book is a philosophical account of the scientifically investigiated
processes in the universe but wholly void of any reference to astronomy, let
alone to the cosmos as such. Far less imitated was another major Catholic
work from that period, K. Gutberlet's Kosmos (Paderborn: F. Schoningh,
1908). Though it contains interesting discussions on the optical paradox of
an infinite universe, the universe as such is not discussed there. Such is
hardly a progress from Christian Wolff's Oosmologia (1730), the first major
work with that title which, in spite of its Leibnizian biases, influenced for
the rest of the eighteenth century many Catholic writers of textbooks of
philosophy as well as their Protestant counterparts sympathetic to Scholasticism.
4 Einstein revealed only around 1950 his awareness of the foct that the
cosmology of General Relativity may be supportive of natural theology. See
for details my Oosmos and Oreator (Edinburgh: Scottish .Academic Press,
1978), pp. 51-3.

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STANLEY L. J AKI

oontriibution of General Relativity was equally ignored hy
Eddington, Born, Pauli, Weyl, and other foremost early interpreters of Generial Relativity for the broader scientific public.
Wearing the opaque glasses of the Kantian categories, they
could hardly see the new cosmologica.1landscape for what it
really was.
Something very different should have come from first-rate
Cathnlic
on relativity, such as the Abbe George
Lemaitre and Sir Edmund Whittaker. Had they pointed out
the bearing of General Relativity on the notion of the universe,
better-grade Thomists would have taken notice. This is especially true of Pius XII who in writing his famous address of
1951 on modern science and the proofs 0£ the existence of
God 5 was advised by Whittaker, a prominent member of the
Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The pope, who quoted from
Whittaker's Space and Spirit, credited modern science not for
its having reinstated the universe into intellectual respectability; rather, the pope praised modern science for its ha.ving,
"in a marvelous degree, fathomed, verified, deepened beyond
all expectation" the "wonder of being of the world around
us," namely, "the mutrubility of things, including their origin
iand their end; and the teleological order which stands out in
every corner of the ·cosmos." 6
As happens all too nften, the focusing of attention on particulars, however valuable and telling, distracted from perceiving the overriding importance of the whole. The pope
made much of entropy, galactic red-shift, and radioactive decay .as supports o.f the creation of the universe in time. Such
a support ean never amount to a strict argument. Physics can
never infer from any actual physical state, however remote in
the past, to a state which is nothing. Not that the pope offered
a strict argument. He would have been the last to abandon
Thomas' .standpoint about the impossibility to prove or dis5 The Proofs of the Flwistenoe of God in the Light of Modern Science
(Washington, DC: National Catholic Welfare Conference, n. d.).
6 Ibid., p. 5.

AND THJ!l UNIVERSE

prove either the temporality or the eternity of the universe.
But the thrust of his address was unmistakably in favor of the
view that physical science strongly suggests a temporal beginning for the cosmos about 5 billion years ago.
That today cosmologists speak of rn or 18 billion years is by
far the least important change to note. Already a difference of a mere million years or two is beyond human susceptibility. The same is even more true when it comes to very
short time spans such as ,a hundredth of a second, to say nothing of a millionth of a second. Yet it is on processes taking
place in time units far shorter than a millionth of a second that
modern scientific cosmology focuses its investigations. The
phases most intensely scrutinized are in the range between
10- 35 to 10-43 seconds, and if the gravitational force will be
quantized, research might push beyond the present barrier of
10- 43 seconds or Planck's time. In other words one of the most
important facets of modern scientific cosmology is that by
spanning almost 70 orders of magnitudes ralong the space-time
parameter it is very suggestive of an over-arching totality underlying a vastness that defies imagination.
What all this has to do with Thomas will he clear shortly.
For a moment let us take a look at some of Thomas' best
known
interpreters. There is a chapter on" God
and the Universe" in Fr. D' Arcy's well known presentation of
Thomism hut the chapter contains not a wo1.1d about the universe as such. 7 Even more tantalizing is Fr. Copleston's
Aquinas. There the ,chapters" The World and Meta.physics"
and " God and Creation " cover eighty pa:ges, almost a third
of the entire hook. But a mere look at the index, which does
not contain the words "universe" and "world," should be
enough of ,a warning that the chapters in question would also
be void of those two topics. The warning is folly justified by
Copleston's sentence that concludes the chapter "The World
1

1

7M. C. D'.Arcy, Thomas Aquinas (London: Ernest Benn, 1930), pp. 177-90.
The first subsection, entitled "The Physical Universe," (pp. 191-7), of another chapter, "Nature and Man," is mostly a discussion of hylemorphism.

550

STANLEY L., JAKI

and Metaphysics," a phrase that emphasizes Aquinas' destruction of the world as ·a, " quasi-entity," as a " pseudo-Absolute,"
and not his commitment to " things which in their inter-reiatedness form the world." 8
To he sure Aquinas had to .battle many doctrines for which
the ,world was 'an •aJbso1ute. But did he say ras little rubout the
interrelatedness of things that forms the world as Fr. Copleston's neglect Oif that Thomist ·worLd would suggest? Or did
that neglect have for its source Fr. Copleston's sympathies
for Fr. Marechal ·and for the latter's reading-astonishingly
aprioristic reading--of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel? None of
these luminaries were rea1ly in .fove with the universe, unless
it was the universe of their own ideas.
A re1w tantalizing glimpses into the universe as such were
offered to the English-speaking world in Fr. Sertillanges' Founr
da:tiom of Thomistio Philosophy ,as he :brought his chapter on
crea.tion to a close with 1a 1oo:uple of pages on the unity oi£ the
universe. There he quoted Thomrus' ,argument :from the
Summa (I, 47, 3) that things that come from God must have
a relation with one another. He also mentioned Thomas' rejection of the multiplicity of universes on the ground that numbers as such are valueless, whereas a oreated universe must
have the v.alue of a single overriding purpose. 9
By comparison, Maritain's St. Thomas Aquinas: Angel of
the Sohools, given to the English readership in the same year
of 1931, should seem very disappointing. It contains a chapter
on Thomas the "Wise Architect," hut ha11dly a wol\d about
the all-encompassing ·a;rchitecture which is the universe. Maritain's remark there that "the world which is struggling to be,
•struggling to emerge in the future, is not a world of positivism
ibut .a world of meta.physics," is not followed by a discussion
of the manner in which Thomas makes the physical world ap1

s F. C. Copleston, Aquinas (Penguin Books, 1957), p. llO.
Foundations of Thomistic Philosophy, tr. G. Anstruther
(London: Sands & Co., 1931), pp. 129-30.
9 A. D. Sertillanges,

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THOMAS AND THEJ UNIVERSE

pear in a. metaphysical light, 10 possibly because Thomas is
silent on a struggling and emerging universe.
Even more disappointing is Gilson's The Spirit of Thomism,
the distillation of half-a-century-long reflections of a great
Thomist. The second of its chapters is entitled, " The Master
Plan of Creation." There Gilson states: "The Universe is an
ordered whole, a hierarchy of heings, and 1although each particular being is good in ,itself, their general order is better still,
since it includes, over and wbove the perfection of each individual thing, that of the whole." 11 This is indeed an accurate
paraphrase of what Thomas states in Part II, ch. 45, of the
Summa contra Gentiles:" For each thing in its nature is good,
hut all things together are V'ery good, hy reason of the order
of the universe which is the ultimate and noblest perfection
in things." 12
Possibly, in his The Spirit of Thomism, four .fairly popular
lectures, Gilson wanted to spare his audience some deeper
aspects of Thomas' dictum in that chapter about the "plurality of :goods" as !being "better than a single finite good." Yet
Thomas' views on the unity or profound coherence of those
goods, so ·Large in number, is not given justice in Gilson"s larger
syntheses of Thoma;s' thought. Surprising as it may seem, in
Gilson's The Christian Philosophy of St. Thom,a,s Aquinas the
chapter entitled "The Universe of St. Thomas " contains not
a word about the universe as such. There Gilson recalls that
aiooording to Thomas the uniV'erse is not the best possible
world, that it is not eternaJ, that it is not necess acy, but
1

1

1Q J. Maritain, St. Thomas Aquinas: Angel of the Schools, tr. J. F. Scanlan
(London: Sheed and Ward, 1931), p. 61. Maritain had little use for cosmology as he discussed the bearing of modern physical science on metaphysics
in his chief work, The Degrees of Knowledge. ·See my article, " Maritain and
Science," New Scholastiaism 58 ( 1984), pp. 267-92.
11E. Gilson, The Spirit of Thomism (New York: Harper Torchbook, 1966),
PP· 40-1.
12 Quoted from On the Truth of the OathoUc Faith. Summa contra Gentiles,
Book Two: Oreation, tr. J. F. Anderson (Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1956), p. 139.

STANLEY L. JAKI

he ignores Thomas' emphatic assertions 'about the unity of the
universe. The chapter on " The Corporeal World," though it
contains the tantalizing phra;se, " The entire world is but a
unique instrument in the hands of the Creator," is about substantial fo:rims, change, :and secondary causality. Noil' does
Gilson exploit the enormous hearing on the cosmological argument of Thomas' dictum (which he quotes there) that "to
underestimate the actions proper to things is fo slight divine
goodness." 13
No more :satisfactory in this :respect is
Elements of
Christian Philosophy, :which contains his most detailed discussion of Thomas' five ways of proving the existence of God.
There he notes at the very start that because the " proof is
not necessarily tied up with it [Aristotle's own cosmography],
it" applies to 'any universe wherein there is some change perceptible to sense." Gilson is quick to assert rubout the first
wiay from motion that " it is independent 0:f any scientific
hypothesis" :as to the structure of the universe. 14 He amplifies
his distancing the five ways from science with the remark that
" science simply takes the existence of the world for granted." 15
But then, although he states in the same breath that " the
existence of a world of changes in itself is a problem and that
it is up to the metaphysician to formulate this problem, to discuss it, and to solve it," he does not extend this precept to the
universe as a totality.
To see the importance of this latter point, one should only
think about the crucial role which the impossibility of a regress
to infinity holds in any of the five ways, but in particular in
the first and thfod ways that together constitute the cosmo13 E. Gilson, The Ohristian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. L. K.
Shook (New York: Random House, 1956), pp. 180 and 182. The quote is
from SOG III. 27.
14 E. Gilson, Elements of Ohristian Philosophy (Garden City, NY: Double·
day, 1959), p. 67.
15 Ibid., p. 68. There is practically
nothing on the universe as such in
Gilson's The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. E. Bullough (1937; New
York: Arno Press, 1978),

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THOMAS AND THE UNIVERSE

logical rargument. For is the impossibility of an actually realized infinite quantity a mere scientific hypothesis? Furthermore, can the regress to infinity he made independent of the
notion of an rall-enoompassing tot1:1Jlityand still he used as part
of proofs that must first prove that totality to he real if the
metaphysical inference f:vom it should really reach the Ultimate
Reality?
In justice to Gilson, Thomas insists very much on the hierarchical,organization o.f all things, which is, of course, an aspect
o;f their unity. Thomas delights in referring to the ascending
ladder leading from mere matter through plants and animals to
humans and to pure spirits. Gilson is right in emphasizing that
Thomas' universe is man-centered and for strictly theological
reasons. It shows 'Something of Gilson's intellectual courage
that he was not ashamed of restating those reasons at a time,
1968, when astronomers delighted in slighting man as an insignificant .1:1Jccidentin an even more insignificant corner of the
universe. The quick and complete turn-around of the scientific
consensus on man's position in the universe (through the
fol'IIllulation of the anthropic principle, 0if which more later)
was not yet visible in the early 1970s when Gilson could have
ihad a golden opportunity to il'escue Thomas' man-centered
universe from ·scientific obloquy with a reference to that principle.16 Nothing, of course, can or should he done about
Thomas' geocentric universe, or t11bout his emphatic endorsement of the Aristotelian subordination of sublunary to superlunary matter. Thomas ·speaks approvingly o.f the empyrean
heaven as the highest form of purely material entity. The
physical universe of Thomas is fully consonant with Aristotelian physics and a faithful mirror of Ptolemaic astronomy and
and cosmology. Thomas sees no difficulty in reconciling Gen1

1

1

16 In a lecture series given by Gilson around 1970 on teleology and modern
science published subsequently as D'Aristote a Darwin et retour (1974). See
English translation by J. Lyon, with my introduction, From Aristotle to
Darwin and Back Again (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
1987).

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STANLEY L. J AKI

esis I with the Ptolemaic world view,17 a point noted also by
Gilson.18
Of course, the universe as seen by Thomrus, the metaphysician, is .anything but Aristotelian or Ptolemaic by necessity.
That God had a free choice among an infinitely large number
of possible universes is a very clear teaching of Thomas, but
no less clear is that he sees the Ptolemaic universe as a universe that exists most fittingly. He goes along with Aristotle' s claim that it is best for the universe to be spheric.al
and, as is well known, tries valiantly to make it appear that
Aristotle did not really mean that the universe was necessarily
spherical and eternal.
Tha.t Thomas nowhere dwells iat length on the totality or
unity of things ,as 'Such has obviously much to do with the fact
that he lived before the telescope. The pre-telescopic universe
as seen by the naked eye appears very much a unity, a spherical totality. This is not to suggest that the telescope immediately disposed of :a neatly visua.Iizable totality of things.
Long after his first great successes with the telescope that
showed enormous quantities of stars everywhere, Galileo still
advocated the idea of ,a spherical universe enclosed within a
fairly wide ,shell of istars.19 Such 1a picture of the universe, and
even more so the one pivoted on the idea of a sphere of fixed
stars, readily evoked •a comprehensive system in which all
ve1'ged into unity. For 'Such is the mentaJ impruct 0£ an over•all physical situation confined to a sphere.
All this graphically illustrates both the ,advantaiges and the
disadvantages of living in •a particular age or phase of intellectual or 'Scientific history. Our respective advantaiges 1and disadvantaiges with respect to the universe will be discussed later.
17 As shown by Thomas' lengthy commentary on the six-day creation in the
Summa theologiaa
by his much shorter "Postilla seu expositio aurea in
Librum Geneseos" in Opera omwia (Parma edition), vol. XXIII, pp. 1-133.
1s Gilson, The Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, p. 187.
19 See Dialogue Oonaernilng the Two Ohief World Systems-Ptolemaic
and
Ooperniaan, tr. S. Drake (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962),
pp. 325-6.

THOMAS AND THE UNIVERSE

555

As for Thomas, the view natural to him of the universe as a
closed sphere offered the adv1antage of never doubting rubout
the whole or totality as suich. The disrudvanta;ge was that he
did not extensively discuss it as he almost took it for granted.
Almost, in a restricted sense of course. As a Christian, as a
saint, Thomas knew that the universe was the greatest of all
gratuitous gifts. Not surprisingly, his most penetrating discussion of the unity of the universe is, as will be seen shortly,
theological with an emphasis, 'as one may ,expect, on knowing
truth, which is always to know unity in diversity. While this
hardly appeals to modern minds fascinated hy what appears
on the sufilruce (quantities in particular) , it alone can rescue
modern scientific iciosmologistsfrom taking the universe for a
creation of their minds.
rt is one thing to be right rubout the manner in which true
knowledge resolves the problem of the one versus the many;
it is another to make things known, and especially the vastness of things insofar as they constitute a real universe. The
restricted sense tin which Thomas seemed to take the universe
for granted concerned its obviousness. And he could assume
the same on the part of any and 1all, Christian, Jew, and
Muslim. Herein lies the source of not an essential, hut still a
strategic, weakness of his five ways. '.Dhey do not contain explicit emphasis on the totality of contingent things, whether
they move, display their limited perfections, or ,act for a purpose. In this respect even Aquinas' ibest students failed to go
heyond their master 1as they systematically ignored important
pointers given hy him whereby those ways can he endowed
with ·a strength strategically meaningful for the modern mind.
Owing to that lack of emphasis a potential threat was in
store to his proofs when the sphere of the fixed sta;rs, or at lerust
an imaiginary spherical shell .containing all stars, proved to be
an illusion. This was still to happen when in 1616 John Donne
coined the phrase" all coherence gone." 2 ° For ·almost its first
1

1

1

20 J. Donne, An Anatomie
of the World. The First Anniversary:
all in peeces, all cohaerence gone; All just supply, and all Relation."

"'Tis

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STANLEY L. JAKI

hundred years, Copernican.ism stood for a spherical universe.
The incoherence of things haid been celebrated for at least fifty
years for politico-social reasons 21 before the vision of a univ:erse with no distinct <boundariesat immensities began to suggest to John Donne ·an incoherent state of affairs. Categoriea.I 1assertionsof a strictly non-circumscript or infinite universe
were few and far between even a .century and a half after
Donne, whatever the growing incoherence on the social scene.22
This gmwing social sense of incoherence ih.ad Jittle if ·anything to do with the i:fact that repeated references were maide
from the late 17th century on to the contradictory character
of the idea of an ·infinite homogeneous universe. Bentley,
Halley, Hartsoeker, Cheseaux, Bailly, 01bers, Struve, and the
younger Herschel were the scientists who faced up to the prob:lem over 150 yeairs and looked the other way :almost the very
saane moment, 23 and so di•d a.U others in the learned world. The
idea of :an infinite homogeneous universe ibegan to establish
itself as a cultural tenet only from the mid-19th century on.
Accompanying this trend wais the 1gmwing belief that such a
universe was so natural 1as to exist naturally, that is, without
an extracosmic cause. The ascendency of positivist and materialist ideologies played an important il'ole in that development.
There is no reference to this complex of factors in the long
discussions leading at Vatican I to the solemn decla:vation that
th11ough considerations of the visible world man can with eertainty reaich the conclusion aibout the existence of a Creator. 24
Nor 1could those rewding that declairation receive any hint
about that point from icosmologistsworking in the decades before Einstein. At any rate, their universe was not a true uni21 As amply documented in V. Harris, Ali Coherence Gone (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949).
22 Very telling in this respect is the reluctance of the author, most likely
D' Alembert, of the article "Infini " (in Vol. VIII ( 1765), p. 702, of the liln·
oyclopedie) to attribute infinity to the universe.
:28 For details see my The Paradox of Olbers' Paradox (New York: Herder
& Herder, 1969) .
.24 Oollectio ampli8sima conoiliorum (Mansi), Tome 50, cols. 277 -340.

THOMAS AND THE UNIVERSE

557

verse. They were ,wont to divide it into two parts: one finite
and observable, the other infinite and ,forever unobservable. 25
The observaible part was restricted to the Milky Way which
until the early 19fl0s was believed to be the main plain for
the distribution of all
nebulae.
The theological literature is almost as disappointing as the
cosmological insofar as the universe as such is concerned. It
is enough to take a quick look either at the Dietionnaire de
theologie catholique (DTC) or at the Dictionnaire apologetique de la foi catholiqwe (DAFC) on " creation," and " univers." Thel"e is nothing on the universe in Garrigou-Lagrange's
article thel"e on "Dieu" or in its book-form enlavgement well
known in English tmnslation, although it is pivoted on the
proof from motion. 26 Moreover, Garrigou-Lagrange wanted to
clarify as much 1as possible his concept of motion from the
scientific viewpoint. 21 But he showed no concern whatsoever
about the totality of motion insofiar ,as this could he clarified
from science. Yet as his hook went through 11 editions over
forty years and most important developments took place in the
science of cosmology, he did not seire on the support those developments offered for a strengthening of that proof.
By focusing on the problem of motion as central in the
demonstration of the existence of God, Garrigou-Lagrange certainly followed Thomas Aquinas. He did the same hy not emphasizing the universe, although he did not have Thomas'
justification for that. Unlike in Thomas' time, there was,
25 See ch. viii, "The Myth of One Island," in my The Milky Way: An
Elusive Road for Science (New York: Science History Publications, 1972;
paperback reprint, 1975).
2& In vol. I of DAFO the article covered cols. 941-1088. It appeared as a
book, Dieu, in the same year, 1910, and saw another edition within a month.
The English translation appeared in 1936 in two volumes.
21 He did so through correspondence
with Pierre Duhem that began in
1907 ,and went on for seven years. For details, see my essay, " Le physicien
et le metaphysicien: La correspondence entre Pierre Duhem et Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange," in Actes de Z'Academie NationaZe des Sciences, BelZes-Lettres
et Arts de Bordeau1JJ, 12 ( 1987), pp. 93-116; "The Physicist and the Metaphysician," in The New SchoZasticism, 63 ( 1989), pp. 183-205.

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STANLEY L. JARI

around 1910, enormous confusion-scientific as well ,as philosophical-about the universe. The scientific confusion culminated in the acceptance of a universe split into an ohservaible
and a non-observable pa,rt. Attention to the entirety of the
w;as meanwhile drawn hy the increasing recognition,
since the middle of the 19th century, of the cosmological relevance of the law of entropy.
The philosophicaJ 1confusion was the intermingling of Hegelian, evolutionist, materialist, and pragmatist i:dews about the
universe. As for the Neokantians, they kept recalling Kant's
rather hollow dictum that the universe could at most be a
regulating idea for practical purposes, even if it was, ontologically :speaking, as Kant claimed the bastard product of the
metaphysical cravings of the intellect. The Hegelians wrote
books on oo,smology in which not a word was related to the
real cosmos.28 The materialists tried to save the eternity of
the universe vis-a-vis entropy. 29 The evolutionists, such as
Heribert Spencer, tried to derive the ,aJCtual inhomogeneity od:
the universe from its hypothetical primordial homogeneity .30
The pragmatists, such ,as William James, failed to note the
irony that while they ,were busy denouncing the irrationality
of creation out of nothing, they saw nothing irrational in
plural universes; 81
Against that confusion even the feebleness with which
Catholic philosophers professed the universe ,as such hll!d to
2s As, for instance, J. M. E. McTaggart's Studies in Hegelian Oosmology
(Cambridge: University Press, 191H).
2 9 A pioneer ,and chief of them in that respect was none other than F.
Engels in his The Dialeotios of Nature, where Kelvin and Clausius, the main
formulators of the law of entropy, are the target of rude invective.
so Spencer did so mainly in his First Prinoiples (1864) and received from
H. G. Wells devastating criticism which deserves to be quoted for its conciseness: "He [Spencer] believed that individuality
(heterogeneity)
was
and is an evolutionary product from an original homogeneity, begotten by
folding and multiplying and dividing and twisting it, and still fundamentally it." First and Lo,st Things (London: Watts & Co., 1929), p. 30.
a1 W. James, A Pluralistic Universe (London: Longmans Green, 1909), p.
29.

THOMAS AND THE UNIVERSE

559

appear a strong and clear voice. A major witness in this respect is The Education of Henry Adams, his autobiography
written in the third person. After having dabbled in fifty educations all over the world, Henry Adams felt startled if not
plainly chaotic. Since only some unitary vision offered escape
out of the ohaios, Henry Adams iound himself faced with a
choice between Church and Science. The unitary vision presupposed a universe which was insisted upon only by the
Church. Modern science (we are around 1910) guaranteed no
unity. In Henry A drums' very words, " the Church alone had
'asserted unity with any conviction." He .also noticed something of the role of Thomas. " Modern science offered not a
vestige of proof, or a theory of connection between its forees,
or any scheme of .reconciliation between thought and mechanics while St. Thomas at ileast linked together .the joints of
his [cosmic] machine." 32
A Henry Adams, who had ears ,around 1910 for the hardly
voluble yet sufficiently clear voice of the Church about cosmic
unity, would hear it even today in spite of the fact that many
Catholics fail to tune in on it. His surprise, of course, would
be enormous on finding the unity of the universe loudly proclaimed hy ·science for about the past seventy years. It is possible that as a non-scientist he would become overly perplexed
hy some scientific voices that dissent from the cosmology of
Geneml Relativity and from the ever move startling cosmological implication of the 3° K cosmic background radiation
discovered in 1965. Here let his remarks about Thomas' unification of the universe be illustrated in two ways: first by a.
summary of Thomas' fundamental argument .for the unity of
the universe; second by listing some pcractically forgotten gemlike remarks of Thomas about that unity.
The first or theological pa.rt of that ·argument begins with
God in .whom the one is identical with !being 1as such. Since
creation is a communication o[ the criches of that being, it has
1

1

1

1

a2 See Modern Library

edition, New York, 1931, p. 430.

560

STANLEY L. JAK.1

to reflect unity even in multiplicity. The reason for that multiplicity is that through it God';s 1goodness may he evident as
fully as possible: " The whole universe together pairtidpates in
the divine goodness more perfectly, and represents it better
than any single creature whatsoever." In this theological argument on hehaH of the unity of the universe Thomas sees in the
universe a reflection of the unity of the Holy Trinity. As a
created reaHty, the univ;erse shows the person of the Father.
"As a :form and species the universe reflects the Word. According as it has relations of order, it reflects the Holy Ghost,
inwsmuch a:s He is love, because the order of the effect to something else is from the will of the Creator." And since all creatures aire ordered to the 'Same source, they must 1be mutually
ordered among one another and " hence it must be that all
things should belong to one world." 83
The second part of that £undamental argument relates to
the act of knowing truth, that is, the universal in each and
every thing, which is the very 1basis for having trust in knowing reliably the universe of things. The third part relates to
the objection that matter, being formless in itself, would tend
to indeterminate infinity and exclude thereby unity. The answer of Thomas, who, as was already noted, e1q>licitly states
that a multiplicity of universes cannot he truly created, has
two aspects. 34 One relates to the rationality of God's creative
action, which no less than any rational human ·action, must
have a specific end that cannot he on hand in the case of a
multiplicity equivalent to aibsolute disconnectedness. The
other aspect is that matter is not a separate object of creation.
It is co-created with the things or substances. ]'or Thomas
corporeality is ne-ver a substantial form. He warns in fact
against the reification of pure extension as a substance, while
he retains dimensional quantity as the principle of individuation. With this he cuts off the possibility of a world-building
1

1

s3 These passages

are from ST I, 47, 1.
I follow the discussion of L. J. Eslick, 'The Thomistic Doctrine of
the Unity of Creation," New SoholastiaWm 13 (1939), pp. 49-70.
S4 Here

THOMAS AND THE UNIVERSE

561

either in the Cartesian or in the Hegelian manner. Those unable to appreciate the -abstractness of Thomas' distinctions
should at least admire them against the very concrete debacles
which Cartesian 1and Hegelian wodd-huildings unfailingly
triggered and are still triggering, ·as will ibe seen shortly, within
scientific cosmology.
Now something 1aibout the gems that sparkle about the universe as such here and there .in Thomas' vast writings. They
should have been noticed by Thomists of the stature of
Garrigou-Lagrange though not hy that new brand of them
who call themselves transcendental Thomists. Were they
called Aquikantists, hecause of their delusion that Aquinas and
Kant can he :£used together, their disinterest in the real universe would more readily give itself away. To find those gems
one may he 1greatly helped by the over 50 volumes, each huge
in itself, of the computer-produced Index Thomisticus. A mere
look at the more than 3000 entries there under universum and
mundus 35 ·should .at least suggest that the universe was not at
all secondary in Thomas' thinking where the decisive perspective is always theological. Severed from that perspective not
a few of his statements on the universe may even appear as
markedly lacking in originality.
He was not original in saying that the universe was created
out of nothing and in time, that God oould have created a better universe, that 1oreation implied infinite power which was
therefore not communica,ble to any creature. Others before
him had insisted that creation did not require the pre-existence of any kind of matter, that creation was an instantaneous
act and related to the ·entire being of any existent, that rea1Son
could demonstrate the fact of creation, that the universe was
truly 1a totality of all existents other than God, and that it
was fully harmonious and created for the sake of man. Thomas,
of course, said all these things with extraordinary incisiveness
1

35 See vol. 14 and 22 of Section II in Indw Thomistious, ed. R. Busa
(Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1975).

562

STANLEY L. JAKI

and with an unfailing ·ruwareness of the fact that the truth
1about the universe is also 1a truth about God.
In view of Thomas' notion of theology as an articulation o[
the authoritative eoclesial message, no surprise should be felt
at his emphatic reference, at the ,start of his commentary on
Genesis,36 to the definitions, dogmatic and disciplinary, of
Lateran IV, or the Decretalia as he called them. Although " in
principfo " could mean hoth the principle which is God who
makes heaven and earth, as well as a strict temporal beginning, the ":fumiter credimus" of the Decretalia settles for
Thomas the choice for the latter interpretation. Thomas' special commentary on the Decretalia 37 that hegin with a formal
Creed is probably the most .informative contemporary appreciation 0£ the dogmatic weight Catholic consciousness attriibuted from the very start to that document. He would have
as little patience with present-day Catholic " murmuring "
against taking the temporal :beginning of the universe for less
than a dogma as he had with :some of his crypto-eternalist
contemporaries. At any rate, in Thomas' eyes the temporality
0£ the universe strengthens, as win he seen shortly, the unicity
of the universe.
And so does the Decretalia' s special insistence on the unicity
of the Creator which took care, according to Thomas, of the
Manicheans, Catha.rs, and others, who claimed also a creator
of evil. There is an infinite separation ,between the Creator as
meant by Thomas and the imperfect evolving God of Whitehead 1and of process theologians following in his £ootsteps, who,
precisely because they themselv:es are evolving with everything else, can ;provide no fimn footing for any statement, including the one about the evolving of everything. The immediate creation of all ,by God, as stated in the Decretalia 1 answered, according to Thomas, the Menandrians, who attri1

ss" Postilla

seu expositio

aurea in Librum Geneseos," in Opera, vol.

XXIII, pp. lff.
ar "In Decretalem.
vol. XVI, pp. 303-4.

Expositio ad Archidiaconum

Tridentinum,''

in Opera,

THOMAS AND THE UNIVERSE

563

1buted to •angels the creation of this wodd, and also answered
Origen for whom the creation of the material world came only
when a place of punishment wa:s required for rebellious spiritual creatures. The provision rubout creation in time answered
Aristotle's claim about the eternity of the world and Anaxagoras, (Plato's?) views according to which this world was
created in time hut matter existed since eternity and was not
made by God. Hence also the Decretal,ia's clause de nihilo.
Thomas' exposition of the Apostle's Creed is characteristic
of his fondness for quoting the Scriptures in the manner of a.
friar zealous in preaching. His personal excitement about the
subject is usually conveyed through scriptural quotations, but
not always. Only a thinker thoroughly seized hy the beauty,
dignity, and goodness of the universe because of its having
oome out of the hands of an infinitely wise and good Artificer
would say, as Thomas does, that it is to he rbelieved that all
these things are from one God " who giv;es his own being and
norbility to each thing." 88 In speaking of the nobility of each
thing ·and of the universe, Thomas is once more true to his
prructice, difficult to •appreciate in this age of inflated phraseology. Whereas a modern author would fill 1a chaipter or two
with unusual nouns, verbs, and adjecti\i;es to celebrate the universe, Thomas, to do the .saime, uses hut a ,few words, taking
each, ihoweV'er simple and familiar, in its fullest significance.
Only a mind •seized by the goodness of God could feel a sort
of transport on hearing the universe presented as the best because it was a whole, though its parts represented different
degrees of goodness. 39 Thomas' universe included not only man
but purely spiritual rbeings too, yet he also held that all lower
creatures were essential for the goodness, beauty, and perrfection of the universe. It wrus rubout that entire universe that
Thomas stated: "The perfection of the totality (universitas)
of creatures consists in its similitude to God," a similitude
which could not he meaningful if it lacked a thorough unity. 40
1

S8 "In

Symbolum Apostolorum ex:positio," in Opera, vol. XV, p. 401.

89 ST I, 47, 2.
<10

BOG- II, 46 and 45.

564

STANLEY L. J AK1

According to Thomas, God's own intrinsic order and harmony
was reflected in the order pervading the universe which was
its very perfection. The unity of the universe was in Thomas'
very words, the effect o[ the unity o[ God's mind! 41 This is
why the order of the universe could not be a result of chance
but had to ,be intended and willed by God himself.42
For Thomas the univ;erse as God's work was so comprehensiv;e that "outside" it there was only God's own eternity. 43
Since, therefore, the universe was the only manifestation of the
one God, there could be nothing inordinate, that is, non-unitary, in it. God's single purpose for the universe could not
be undermined hy moral evil,44 and much less by physical
evil. The latter's handling by Thomas is characteristic of his
readiness to see matters, however particular or trivial, in that
br:oa;dest perspective which is the foll cohesiveness of the univ:erse. Thus, in commenting on the passage in Matthew's
gospel on the nominal price of sparrows as a symbol of their
expendability, he brings up the inte11dependence of animal
species, with the feeding of cats on mice as an exa;mple, which
takes plaice, Thomas declares, " for conserving the good of the
universe. It is the order of the universe that one animal should
live on another." 45 Rodent exterminators would not he wrong
in choosing Thomas for their patron saint in witness to his
universal relevance.
That the universe loomed supreme in Thomas' thought can
be gathered from his statement that all creatures were proportionate to the universe itself. 46 The creation of the entire universe together was, according to Thomas, a view more consonant with the perfection of God, as well as with the unity
of the universe, than successive creations. 47 For this reason
41 Comm. de Div. nom. cap. 13, in Opera, vol. XV, p. 401.
42 BOG II, 39.
43 SOG II, 32.

20, 1, in Opera vol. VII/I, p. 210.
in Matt. ev., cap. X, 2, Opera, vol. X, p. 104.
46ST I, 56.
47 Quest Disp. Pot. 3, 18, in Opera, vol. VIII, p. 74.

44 3 Sent

45 Oomm.

THOMAS AND THE UNIVERSE

565

afone, the idea of a steady-state universe, in which hydrogen
atoms are steadily emel'ging out of nothing (without a Creator,
of course) as well as the Popperian idea o[ 1an "open universe" 48 (where endless universes successively " realize " themselves) would have ibeen an abomination for Thomas. He
would tear his garments and oo¥er his head with ashes on being told about mathematical tricks whereiby entire universes
are claimed to have been produced in the ba;sement of laboratories.49 On hearing the related claim that the" Universe could
ibe the last free lunch," 50 he would cry " blasphemy " especially
for the failure of most Catholics WTiting about cosmology to
protest 1against a 1colossal sacrilege.
Countless are the passages in which Thomas t11aces the
goodness of the universe to its ordel"liness and harmony. While
praise of the incomparable value of the universe as uttered by
Pla.to, Aristotle, and Plotinus is suggestive of cosmos-worship,
Thomas' encomiums of the universe are expressive of the depth
of his worship of the God of the universe. Being a genuine
worship, its object's reality implies the reality of the universe
as a supreme pointer to God. This is why Thomas most
naturally makes the distinction between the " universe as a.
mere name and as a thing " 51 in ol"der to cut short a priori objections. Clearly, he would know how to cope with those for
whom God himself is no more than an idea of their own, because in Kant's aprioristic istyle they take the universe for a
mere regulative idea that, in fact, regulates nothing and noibody. Perhaps their sole interest in Thomas' dicta on the universe would be the logical force with which he al"gued time
and a.gain that the universe has to be one as long as one meant
what one said by uttering that word.
In that ·respect Thomas was fully at one with Aristotle, with
1

48 K. R. Popper,
The Open Universe: An Argument for Determiinism
(Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982), pp. 129-3(}.
49 .A. H. Guth of MIT as quoted in M. M. Waldrop, "The New Inflationary
Universe," Science 219 (Jan. 28, 1983), p. 337.
50 .A. H. Guth as quoted in The New York Times (.April 17, 1987), p. C4.
51 I Sent 44, 1, in Opera, vol. VI, p. 354.

566

STANLEY L. JAKI

whom he was so reluctant to disagree as to suggest that Aristotle did not perhaps categorically hold the world to be eternal.
Equally polite was Aquinas' disagreement with Aristotle on
the creation of each individual soul. Thomas was not ready to
deny categorically that Aristotle's Prime Mover was deprived
of aJl personal character. No favorruble interpretation could, of
course, he given by Thomas of Aristotle's denial of creation
out of nothing. Apart from these four pivotal points Thomas
readily espoused Aristotle's teachings, philosophical and scientific. But no particular page in Aristotle could inspire what
may be the most intriguing pages Thomas has written on the
universe. To be sure, the muple of pages, or the ·body of article
17 of q. 3 in De potentia,52 are suffused throughout with deep
respect for the nature of things and therefore distinctly Aristotelian. Aristotle's middle :voad in epistemology imposed respect for reality. In Thomas• case that respect was immensely
strengthened by his viewing each and every thing as endowed
with a nobility that 1aocrued to it through its having been
created .by God himself.
Those pa1ges also show a Thomas who .for the sake of truth
is ready to concede as much as possible to his. opponents. In
answering in general the objections, thirty .altogether, aimed
at proving the eternity of the world, Thomas ibegan, of course,
with a reference to the truth of the Catholic £aith ·which states
"we must hold firmly that the world has not always existed."
Being a l'evealed truth, it cannot be "effectively a.ttacked by
any demonstration based on phyisics " nor by any philosophical argument. Were an al'!gument of the latter kind possible,
it would intl'!oduce into God a necessity other than the one
which alone is compatible with God, namely, his cons.istency.
It is the free choice of God's will in producing such and such
a thing that assmes its ·existence in .all its specificity.
The validity of this last consideration seems at first to be
contradicted by Thomas with respect to the universe. He states
s2 See English translation in On the Power of God, tr. English Dominican
Fathers (Westminster, Md. 1952), vol. I, pp. 219-34, especially pp. 225-28.

THOMAS AND THE UNIVERSE

567

that whereas a particular thing has always a correlation to
other particular things, the universe cannot be correlated to
another universe. What is therefore the source of the specificity
of the universe ,as such? Thomas first 1ooncludes that the
Creator's will is the ,sole reason why " the heaven is of such
and such a sire and not greater." He invokes ,the aiuthority of
RaJbbi Moses (Maimonides) to the effect that " no reason can
ibe assigned to account for the great distance of this star from
that one, or for any other phenomena that may be observed
in the disposition of the heavens, except the design of God's
wisdom."
Thomas may seem to have momentarily overlooked the fact
that stars and other phenomena of the heavens were not the
universe itself and therefore subject to the method of correlation which he had just used a:s the explanation of the ructual
quantity or suchness of things. Actually, he is quick to admit
the sam.e a1bout the universe itself which he had just put in a
class different from particular things in proof of his enormous
reverence for the uniqueness of the universe. Thus Thomas
declares: "We should grant that the nature 0if heaven is not
wholly indifferent to quantity, or that it has no capacity for
any other than its present quantity." He seems to he content
with the p:mviso that ,even if ,a specific quantity is suited to
the particular actually existing universe, that universe still
cannot ,be necessary.
This proviso, which manifests Thomas' eagerness to do
justice both to the empirical and the metaphysical, should
scientific cosmolseem prophetic in the light of
ogy. In the latter, extraordinarily narrow margins are recogniz·ed for the viariability of the total mass of the universe if it
is to issue in the actually observed one and not in something
unimaginably different. Those narrow margins for the quantity of total mass imply nothing less than that even the specific
time-span of the universe is part of its actual nature or suchness.
1

1

568

L. J'AXl'.

What is particularly scientific, 1as if :by anticipation, in
Thomas' remarks is that he was more willing to grant a natural
quantity to the universe than a time natural to it. For him
time, together with place, was, unlike quantity (or mass),
"ext:mneous to a thing." Such was one of Thomas' reasons for
arguing that the finiteness or infinity of the time-span of the
universe could not be demonstrated. In Thomas' eyes cosmic
time depends more immediately on God's free choice than does
the quantity of cosmic matter as the latte,r is mediated by the
material nature chosen by God for the cosmos. The balance
tilted in favor of cosmic time over cosmic matter will appear
to he subtly present even in the concluding phrase of the body
of the article under discussion, provided the place where
Thomas puts the words, "the mere will of God," is not taken
for a mere accident: "The appointing of a [cosmic] measure to
time depends on the mere will of God, who decreed that the
world should not exist forever but should have a. temporal
beginning, just as He willed that the heaven should not he
greater or smaller than it is."
The objection that this intentional imbalance is contrary to
the equal footing on which space and time are put in relativity
can easily be answered. The impotence of physics, relativistic
or not, to handle but a very narmw aspect of the reality of
time was admitted, however reluctantly, by none other than
Einstein a:s he tried in 1922 to cope with Bergson's objection
in terms of 'a rather lame ·excuse that what he had said about
time he had said merely as a physicist. 53 Years later he was
brooding over the plain ina;bility of physics to cope with the
reality of the Now and refused to- iaccept Carnap's facile solution that time centered on the Now was a purely subjective
experience.54
1

53 A discussion with leading French philosophers
at the Sorbonne, April
6, 1922, see Bulletin de la Societe frangaise de philosophie 17 ( 1922), pp.
101-2.
54 See Carnap's recall, in his " Intellectual
Autobiography " of his conversations with Einstein during 1952-54, in P.A. Schilpp (ed.), The Philosophy
of Rudolf Oarnap (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1964), pp. 37-8.

THOMAS AND THE UNIVERSE

569

Physicist-cosmologists who today try to fathom the moment of creation and even peek heyond it by mere physics,
provide startling evidences of the fact that time su:btly escapes
as the now, so important an element of time,
escapes the ,framework of physics. Those physicists who would
not hand over to metaphysics the moment of creation out of
nothing have to fall back on a nothing which is not really
penfect vacuum that precedes
nothing. I mean the
in some cosmological theories the Big Bang. Once more the
Copenhagen pseudophilosophy of quantum mechanics is called
upon to do the trick. All laymen will be dazzled by technical
references to the creation and annihilation of virtual particles
in that vacuum. Laymen with some sensitivity for logic may
not readily ,swallow references to statistics as proofs that the
foregoing process will assure the riandom accumulation of virtualities so great as to spill over into realities equivalent to an
entire universe. Any layman should blame only himseH if he
feels no contempt ,for the blunt phrase of a leading cosmologist:
"Perhaps the reason that there is something instead of nothing is that [the] nothing is unstable." 55
Clearly, when the nothing is to be taken for something and
vice versa, one is faced with a flippancy that is nothing short
of plain intellectual anarchy or of rank hubris. The sixty or
so years of modern scientific cosmology that witnessed not a
few contemptuous remarks rubout what is truly 1beyond the material world have, not illogically, also witnessed not a few cases
of a rudely high-handed attitude toward material reality. Compared with that high-handedness the old materialistic insistence on the eternity of matter should seem an almost reverential attitude steeped in humility.
Thomists will be able to cope with this situation only if they
emulate Thomas in his reverence for reality. Above all they
55 Quoted in J. S. Trefil, The Moment of Oreation (New York: Macmillan,
1983), pp. 205-6. The physicist in question is Frank Wilczek of the University of California at Santa Barbara.

570

STANLEY L. J AKI

should ha'V'e very clear notions of the sinistrous threats posing
as so many supports. The chief of these threats is the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics that has grown
into a cosmic philosophy tantamount to an all-pervasive climate of thought. Within its milieu either the nothing is
turned into something, or thel'e will be as many worlds as
there are observers, or all things fade into the grey gamut of
irrational randomness.
This last remark owes something to Chesterton, who saw
deeper than anyone else into the true repulsiveness of Darwinism insofar as it is distinct from mere ibiological evolution.
The really repulsive thing on visiting a zoo after reading Darwin was, so Chesterton a,rgued, not the possibility that one
might encounter one's paternal or maternal ancestors, but the
realization that all things could vanish into the grey gradations
of a universal twilight. 56 That there are things or substances
has always been the ,standing or falling p11opositionof Thomism, the only philosophy truly geimane to that touchstone of
Catholic faith which is the dogma of transubstantiation.
1

Almost at the same time when the marvelous science of
quantum mechanics was
and straitjacketed by
its Copenhagen philosophy, Chesterton 'Wl'Ote his St. Th01nas
Aquinas, still the finest portrayal of Thomism. There he offered
not only 1a plethom of penetrating insights about Thomism
but also a cosmic diagnosis and a cosmic prophecy. He did not,
of 'course, know about quantum mechanics but he certainly
knew that if one diagnosed basic ,symptoms, one could sharpen
one's vision for diseases not yet catalogued. The true nature
of complementarity, the guise in which the antiontologisrn of
the Copenhagen philosophy of quantum mechanics is often
presented, was in fact described in that book which made a
Gilson think that there was nothing more for him to write on
56 G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1925),
p. xvii.

THOMAS AND THE UNIVERSE

571

'f.homas and Thomism, 57 a book that contains the prophetic
passage:
I have pointed out that mere modern freethought has left everything in a fog, including itself. The assertion that thought is free
[of truth] led first to the denial that will is free; but even about
that there was no real determination among the Determinists. In
practice, they told men that their will was free though it was not
free. In other words, Man must live a double life; which is exactly
the old heresey of Siger Brabant about the Double Mind. In other
words, the nineteenth century left everything in chaos; and the
importance of Thomism to the twentieth century is that it may
give us back a cosmos.58

But if Thomism is. to live up to that challenge, Thom.is.ts
must not imitate the best
interpreters of Thomas
in treating modern scientific cosmology as if it did not exist.
They should try to be experts in it, or at least appreciate the
crucial ·contributions: it can make on behalf of that Thomism
whose sole purpose is to serve the Catholic faith. 59 By .achieving a contra.diction-free account of the totality of gravitationally interacting things, modern scientific cosmofogy implicitly
discredits the wry heart of Kantian agnosticism, the calling
into doubt of the intellectual respectability of the notion of
the universe. In addition, by showing over the mind-boggling
span of 70 orders of magnitude .a most specific universe,
modern scientific cosmology provides a, powerful illustration
of the contingency of the universe. Like any specific thing,
the specific univ;erse, too, has to be the result of a choice
among a great many possibilities. But since the universe is
the totality of things, the choice for its specificity can only
be looked for " outside " that totality where only God can he
found. Finally, within that cosmology there emerged the an1

1

57 For quotations
of Gilson's statements from 1929, 1933, and 1966 see
my Ohesterto-n: A Seer of Soienoe (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press,
1986), pp. 19 and 126-7.
58 G. K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1933),
p. 204.
59 See my God and the Oosmologists (Edinburgh:
Scottish Academic Press;
Washington: Regnery-Gateway, 1989).

STANLEY L. JAKI

thropic principle, a most reluctant recognition of man's centrality in the universe. Therefore even some Thomists, overly apprehensive about sounding unpopular, should no longer hesitate to echo their fearless master's dictum 60 that the universe
was created for the purpose that many may praise the Creator.
Once Thomists have .familiarized themselves with these
great •contributions of modern scientific msmology, they will
ibe able to do what is intellectua.lly far easier .but morally far
more difficult. It is to resist academic and cultural pressures,
the lure of pleasing their secularisrt peers. They must guard
aigainst beooming opportunists if they are to seize their great
historic opportunity which is to save the cosmos from many
scientists, led alone from countless trendy theologians capable
of talking only of their steadily shrinking anthropocentric
world. They can confidently appeal to many a statement of
Thomas as they proclaim the unique reality of the universe,
that supreme witness of the One God.

ao Analyzed by Gilson with customary finesse in The Spirit of Thomism,
pp. 40-41.

CREATOR AND CAUSALITY: A CRITIQUE OF
PRE-CRITICAL OBJECTIONS
ANDREW BEARDS

University of Oalgary
Calgary, Alberta

I

N SOME QUARTERS arguments ias to the existence or
non-existence of God are still regarded as intellectually respectaible. Indeed, interest in such arguments is not restricted to those with a strictly philosophical or theological
training. Every so often one may observe some specialist from
the physical sciences taking an interest in the philosophical
discussion of cosmological issues. Such has been the case with
the recent contributions of the physicist Paul Davies. 1 However, such contributions are likely to invite from the philosopher the response that the generalized notions which the scientist attempts to transpose from the particular field of his
scientific interest are the very notions which feature in the
current debates on the philosophy and methodology of the sciences. Such debates bring into question the status of these
scientific notions and therefore render any putative generalized
or even metaphysical application of them problematic.
Discussions of natural theology, then, often appear to be
conducted in a manner which tends to take too much for
granted with regard to the terms employed. The notion of
causality, central to such ,argumentation, is a case in point.
Often enough a simple ":billiard hall" image of causal interaction seems to he all that one is required to keep before the
mind in order to follow the lines of argument involved, he they
or aiga.inst the postulation of a First Cause. Thus, in the
often referred to r:adio .debate on the existence of God between
1 Paul

Davies, God and the New Physics (New York: T'ouchstone Books,

1984).

573

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ANDREW BEARDS

Bertrand Russell and Fl1ederick Copleston, Russell simply
averred that he did not feel compelled to accept that a causal
chain extended heyond the ·World to some First Cause. For,
indeed, if one imagines a line of billiard halls transmitting momentum one to the other, there is nothing unintelligible about
picturing a first !billiard hall initiating the process apparently
unaided. Hume has surely taught us that much.
If one is to heed the present debates raging in that arena
known as the philosophy of science (by which term one can
understand epistemology, metaphysics and virtually ·any other
topic tr:aditiona1ly designated philosophical), then one can .be
forgi¥en for asking how the question as to the existence of God
could he raised in an intelligiible manner. For if one is to agree
with Richa1d J. Bernstein's assertion that contemporary philosophy manifests, in the ma.in, 1a rebellious attitude to the
"father figure,, of the methodical Descartes, 2 then one can be
equally well impressed by the fact that this " rebellious spirit"
is no Jess informed iby a respect for the Kantian attempt to
descry the parameters of valid human knowing. And was it
not the Kantian achievement to have dispelled the oibfuscation
of metaphysics, thereby eliminating the grounds which were
helieved to have substantiated a rational affirmation of the
existence of God?
The term 'Pre-Critical ' in the title of this essay is, therefore, intended as an e¥ocation of the Kantian demand for a
critical v;alidation of the terms employed in philosophical argumentation. However, I shall attempt to advance the thesis
that the Kantian enterprise does not, in fact, result in a happy
resolution of the problems which it sets for itself. This is, of
course, a thesis which could 'be proposed f.rom a number of
divergent philosophical standpoints. It is my intention to
argue here, however, that the work of the philosopher Bernard
Lonergan provides ,a more satisfactory method for the carrying through of the critical endeavour to validate epistemologi2 Richard J, Bernstein, Beyond Objectwism and .Relatwism (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1983), p. 18.

CREATOR AND CAUSALITY

575

cally the philosophical ,statements we propose. I believe it is
the merit of Lonergan's work to have developed positions on
the hasis of an explication of the exigences operative in criticism itself, such that any criticism of this explication will he
rbut an example of an incoherent criticism ,attempting to invalidate its own procedures. 3
In what follows I shall attempt to develop the above-mentioned argument to the effect that Kant, for all his effort to
carry through the critical programme, must, for the most part,
,he regarded a:s " Pre-Critica1l" in terms of the position adopted
here. In the mur:se of this 1argrnmentI will outline a notion of
causality which, I suggest, does succeed in validating a rational a:ffirmation of God's existence .
.Awa.re of Kant's propensity for 1the use of geographical
metaphors in the description of his philosophical aims, we may
say that the critical validation of philosophical terms which he
envisaged was to ,be made on the basis of the terrain most directly ruccessihleto us; the terrain of our own cognitional procedures. By the care£ul mapping out of this native territory
Kant hoped to curtail forays into the distant and fantastic
domains of metaphysics which miuld not he shown to be critically verifiable on the hrusis of any experience aiccessi!bleto us.
Kant's Transcendental l!dealism has come in ,for criticism
from philosophers as diverse ais Hegel, Bolz,ano, Straw:son and
Lonergan. However, these philosophers have not denied the
validity, in principle, of what Kant attempted to do, ,as might,
say, a devotee of the later Wittgenstein. Their criticism has
been directed, rather, at indicating points at which Kant has
not succeeded in his attempt to 'gl1ound critically philosophical
assertions on the basis of cognitional data immediately accesssible to us.
One example of this is
position on our ability to
affirm the existence of a transcendental ego that is distinct
s The most compendious exposition of Bernard Lonergan's philosophy is to
be found in his book, Insight: A Study of Human Understandilng (London:
Darton, Longman and Todd, 1957).

576

ANDREW BEARDS

from the other objects of our experience which, Kant informs
us, we can 1affirm as existing but not know the nature of. The
problem here is that if we cannot know anything rubout the
nature of the transcendental "I", then how are we to affirm
rationally that the noumenon which is the source of our experiences of >the phenomenal ego is itself to ;be designated "ego",
and thereby he differentiated fmm the unknowruble things-inthemselves of the outer world?
Richard Rorty has recently made a great deal of the fact
that most of Western philosophy's 1atJtempts to set forth an
account of human knowing have 1been dominated by the idea
that ·knowing is a kind of 'looking' or mirroring. This, of
course, is also an observation made hy Heidegger. Less well
known, perhaps, is the stress placed on the danger of understanding knowing on the analogy af looking iby such philosophers ias J. Mareohal, E. Col'eth and Lonergan. These writers
would argue rthat the " knowing as looking'' notion became
particularly well established through the wo11k of Duns Sootus
and othel'ls: in the Middle Ages and that it has remained the
dominant epistemological model since that time. And Kant,
according to 1this Hne of argument, was in no way exempt from
the influence of these mediaev1rul developments. The result of
this type of critique would, however, not ibe an account of
knowing purely in terms of its cultural and social foundations,
critique, hut would aim at providas is the case with
ing a validated critical .realism (which would, on Lonergan's
account at any mte, still give due weight to the historical and
social factors involv·ed) .
While I cannot hope to reproduce here in •any detail such
arguments regard[ng the effect the "looking " analogy has had
on Kant'1s epistemology, I will ruttempt to indicate some incoherences which arise in his position .which, I believe, are on
further analysis trareable to the operation of that analogy in
his thinlcing.
It may ibe ·questioned whether Kant differentiates clearly
enough between ' objectivity ', in our knowing, as !l."ational as-

CREATOR AND CAUSALITY

577

sent and 'ohjectivity ' as the sensiblie experience of objects.
For some cruder forms of empiricism, of oour:se, there is not
much of a. distinction to be made. But whatever Kant was he
was icertainly not a crude empiricist.
Kant, that something is: the case, that it exists, is known by the understanding
when there is some filling of the empty forms of space and
time. The understanding may then make the type of judgement which is not the merely logical, analytical judgement,
which refers. to the union of. swbjeot and predicate in the concept of the object, but a synthetic judgement which relates
the concept to the o:bject given in the, previously, empty form
of spaiceand time.
According to Lonergan, however, Kant's account does not
explicate clearly enough the factors involved in a rational act
of affirming something to be the case. There is insufficient attention given to the criteria which we spontaneously employ in
order to answer such questions as "is it so?", "am I ·sure?",
"is iit probaibly, or certainly the case?" In contemporary science we stiU require the data presented to our senses in order
to perform any investigation and to verify any hypothesis.
However, the entities, the existence of which is claimed to be
probrubly verified by the modern scientist, are entities which
could not be the objects
human sensible experience. There
is an inferential process at work, often long and complicated,
which hegins froon the evidence of the data, or objects of sense,
and moves towards a, normally, probable verification of the
existence of certain entities, systems and the 1ike.
The Kantian would, no doubt, argue ·at some length that
such fructors may, in some modified fashion, he included within
Kant's scheme of things. But to provide a test case, as it were,
to show the inadequacy of Kant'.s notion of objectivity we may
briefly point to an incoherence within the Kantian account itself. Kant avers that, in a very limited way, we can lmow what
is the case. For we can know that things-in-themselves exist.
But it is obvious that for Kant it is no less the case that we
cannot know what these things-in-themselves are. For Kant

578

ANDREW BEARDS

it is a fact that our knowing is thus restricted. Hut if this is
the ease, is a fact, how does this fact itself ·become known in
the way in which a fact has to ·become known for Kant: by a
filling of the empty categories of time and space? How could
this fact of the limitation of human knowing " show up " as
some kiind of sensible datum in these categories?
This 1brings me to the topic of a self-destructive incoherence
which Lonergan, 1among others, helieves can he identified at
the heart of the Kantian enterprise. For Kant, as I have just
stated, we can know the existence of things-in-themselves but
not what these things are. We are incapable of knorwing the
nature of 'anything. But this position lands itself in incoherence. For in making the judgement that we can know that
there are things hut not what they are, we are affil'IIIlingsomething to be the case with regard to our knowing. We are asserting something about the nature of human cognition. However, the solution here is not to tum to the Hegelian critique
of Kant since that position merely compounds Eant's incoherence. The Hegelian affirmation that we only know appearance,
not what is so, is itself a claim to know what is the case; it is
1a claim to have <avoided the errors of others who have mistaken, or will mistake, this appearance for what is the case,
for reality. Such a position entails the seM-destructive affirmation "it is so that I cannot know ·what is so."
It may he asked where the acknowledgement of the incoherence of these positions leads us. What does our criticism of
them imply? Let us briefly ·attempt to sketch out some of the
procedures which have been operative in our criticism of them.
To hegin with, we must have had some sensible experience
in the process of coming to question the validity of these
theses of Kant and Hegel. We will have had to have had ocular
or auditory or even, if we were so unfortunate as to have had to
resort to reading Braille, tactile experience in the course of becoming acquainted with their texts. But in the process of trying to understand those texts a second level of operations
would come into play. Such operations involve the raising

CREATOR AND CAUSALITY

579

and answering of questions as to rthe meaning of what one has
read. On this level o[ operations one would he 1involved in attempting to he as intelligent as one could, hoping to enjoy the
insights which enaible the .arguments of the texts to become
intelligible to one. However, tbeyond these two levels, of sensiible experiencing and .attempting to understand, one may
identify a third level which is characterized by the raising of
such qruestions as " are they right? ", " is what they say the
case? ", and one's attempt to give some answer to these questions, he it probrubleor certain.
Looking a little more closely at this third level of operations, we may rbe able to tease out :f:urther the implications o[
our judgement as to the incoherence of the positions which we
claimed were those of Kant and Hegel. The hypothesis, idea,
that " I cannot know what is the case" proves to be incoherent
once I claim that this is no " mere " hypothesis, but is the case.
It may be obser¥ed that the understanding of the meaning of
this idea, or hypothesis, is something which takes place on the
second level, rthe " understanding " level, of the cognitional
operations I have identified. However, the incoherence of the
position only emerges when we raise the "is it so?" type of
question and answer this question in the affirmative. In the
raising of that question evidence or reasons are demanded
which are required to he sufficient for an affirmative or negative answer; or for a judgment to the effect that the hypothesis
pro:basblyis, or probahly is not, the case. In fact, the evidence
sufficient for a negative judgement in this case is supplied by
rthe experience of affirming it to he the case that " I cannot
know what is the case." Of course, as in any investigation,
one needs to advert to the evidence: people do affirm it to be
the case that they don't know what the case is. Attentiveness
and some ingenuity are required to advert to the fact that implicit in all such judgements is the intention of claiming to
know what is the case. But the experience in which such an
intention is manifest is simply given in one's own consciousness whenever .one raises the question " is it so? " and answers
1

580

ANDREW BEARDS

this in some judgement. One either does or does not ask and
ans:wer such questions, and the evidence that one does so is
p1.1ovided hy questioning whether one does ·so and by giv[ng
some answer to that question.
It has been argued that the attempt to affirm that " it is the
case that I do not know what is the case " is incoherent. But
to say that this position is incoherent is to know ·that it is not
tihe cruse because there is evidence which shows that it is not
the case. That evidenoe is p11ovided hy taking the hypothesis
"I cannot know what is the case" and affirming it to be the
case. By so doing I pmvide in that very claim an instance of
what the p11oposition states there are no instances of: knowing what is 1so. That instance provides reason sufficient for me
to judge that the Kant an:d Hegel positions are not correct, do
not assert that which is the case. By the same token, then,
that I judge these hypotheses not to he the case, i.e. there is
sufficient reason to know that they are not the case, I can
affirm that my knowing that they are not the case is a genuine
instance of knowing what is the case, since for my judgement
·there is sufficient reason. Moreover, it is impossible to ·gainsay
this latter judgement. Bor if any attempt to challenge it were
not a statement about what is so, then it would be no objection
at all; and if it were a claim to know what is the case, then it
would simply fa.11 into the category o.f judgements which our
judgement ruled to be incoherent (all judgements of the type
" it is so that I cannot know what is so") • By parity of reasoning, then, I can know that any other hypothesis or idea is
not merely an hypothesis or idea if, in the course of raising
and answering the question "is it so?", there is found to be
sufficient .reason to affirm. that it, the hypothesis in question,
is the case.
I would suggest that the va.rious elements which were identified above as constituting factors within the three stages of
coming to know pass this test. For one may raise ·the question
as to whether what has been stated here is a " mere " hypothesis or is, in fact, the case. And I ·would further suggest that
1

CREATOR AND CAUSALITY

581

the very raising and answering of that question provide the
evidence for a.n raffirmative answer. For any attempt to disagree with what ha;s ibeen maintained here will involve some
sensible experience of what I have written. It will involve
questions as to the meaning of what I have written and insights into that meaning. Finally it will involve questions as
.to whether what I have written is so, or probably so. These
questions, in tum, will receive answers on the basis of the
sufficiency of evidence, reasons, which may be discovered, and
that evidence is provided by the data which all disputants
have access to and ·without which there would be no debate:
their conscious ·ex'Periencesof seeing and hearing, questioning
and understanding, 1affi:rnningand denying.
What, then, is the relevance of all this to the understanding
of ca;usality? A first answer to this question is that if one is
not a;ble to estaiblish that our knowing is a knowing of what is
the case, of reality, then any attempt to demonstrate the existence of oa.uses, and indeed of some Fir:st Cause, will he easily
dismissed 1by those who are convinced of .the position tha.t one
cannot reaHy esta;blish the existence of anything. My second
answer, howeVoer, is to draw attention to what has emerged as
a roourrent theme ·in the last few paragraphs: the requirement
of sufficient reason.
The notion of 1sufficientreason, or causality, which I believe
ma.y be critically validated can he simply •stated as follows:
There must he sufficient reason for the existence of any x or,
negatively, if there is not sufficient reason for something to be
the case then it is not the case, i.e. it is a mere hypothesis or
idea. The easiest way to verify this notion of causality is to
attempt to doubt it. Thus, in any •attempt to argue against
wha;t I ha.ve here claimed to :be the case, one will attempt to
show that there is insufficient reason to affirm that it is the
case; or there 1is sufficient reason to affirm that what I have
said is not the case. One may, perhaps, bring forward arguments against 1what I have argued before with regard to the
attempts made rby Kant and Hegel to say that we cannot

58fl

.ANDREW BEARDS

know what is so. But aigain, aill such arguments will be to the
effect that there is insufficient reason for what I have claimed
is the case to he the case; and if the challenge to my position
is not such ,a claim then ·it is, obviously, no objection at all.
'This demand for sufficient reason has been at work throughout all that was said above about the inadequacy of the positions of Kant and Hegel. For it was argued that their various
versions of the thesis " I cannot know what is so " are not, in
fact, the case, because in asking and answering the question as
to whether they were so, we found sufficient reason to say that
they were not so. Such an affirmation necessarily affects a
great number of other theses which we find throughout their
work. When assessed on the ibasis of what we have argued
here, such theses will be modified as to the degree of probability which may be assigned to their being so, or not so. For
the degree of probability that something is or is not the case
is ,a measure of the sufficiency of reasons which we can give
for ,affirming the existence or non-existence of anything (we
may, of course, express this by saying that there must be reason sufficient for a prohwble judgement).
Tihe objection may be made that it is no doubt correct to
say that there must be sufficient reason for our judgements as
to what is so or not so, but this does not entllli[ that there must
be sufficient reason for what exists. Howev;er, if one suspected
that this ohj ection was simply the l\jautian position once more
rearing its head, one would be right. The objection, once again,
contains the seeds of its own destruction. For, the objection is
to the effect that there is not sufficient reason for the notion
of causality outlined a;bove to ,be the case; on the contrary, it
is asserted, there is sufficient reason to affirm that it is the
case, or prolbaibly is the case, that . . . etc. Indeed, the key
element to grasp in all affirmations which differentiate between
"my cognitional po1wel1S" and" the world" is that they have
the same objective and employ the same criteria in arriving
at that obj.ective. The objective is " knowing wha,t is so " and
the criteria operative include the \l."equirementtha:t there be
1

1

583

CREATOR AND CAUSALITY

sufficient reason for one's affirmation of what is so. In this
way one may note that all ·differentiations rbetween an "inhere " mind •aD!d an " out-there " ·world, aN the usua;l paraphernalia of the notorious "bridge," if they are not to be ungrounded a;ssumptions, must pass ia common test which itself
shows them to be, as it were, of secondary importance: the
affirmation of their heing the case is seen to he an aspect of a
criterion of objectivity which renders meaningless the problem
of trying to get from 1a " .subjective " mind " in here " to an
"objective " world "out there."
If it is undeniable, then, that there must be sufficient reason for that ·which is the case, it is not very difficult to griasp
the necessity of there existing that which provides sufficient
reason for the existence, not only of everything else, but also
of itself. And to paraphrase St. Thomas Aquinas, that is what
men and women are apt to name " God." For I have argued
a1bove that we can know the existence of such things as visual
and auditory
the intelligent operations of asking
questions, having insights, ·formulating hypotheses; and the
rational operations of asking "is it so?", weighing the evidence, ·and making a judgement. Further, there ·are innumeraJble other oibjects in our experience which we may affirm to
exist on the basis of the sufficiency of evidence ·available. However, none of these existents or occum-ences, which we can
know, provide sufficient rea:son for their being so. It is the
case, as a matter of fact, that I ask and answer questions, and
that I am at present experiencing the use of what is known
as a keyboard. But if these fracts are not to remain facts without there being sufficient reason for their 'being facts, there
must be beings which provide that sufficient reason. And since
the postulation of some kind of infinite regression would still
not provide sufficient reason for what is the case, would, in
other words, :be an irrelevancy, there must exist that which
provides reason sufficient for its own existence.
To examine a little further some of the implications of the
notion of causality and of the cosmological argument I have
1

584

ANDREW BEARDS

argued for, let us trurn to a well known vignette from the history of philosophy. John Stuart Mill relates that his father
disabused him of the idea that the existence oif God might be
susceptible to rational proof by pointing out that if one were
to argue that every being must have a cause, then one could
the
pose the question "Who caused God? " However,
viewpoint of the argument I have outlined here it would appear strange that, far from soothing young Mill's doubts,
Jaimes Mill's argument did not 1excite further questions on the
part of his keen-witted son. For to argue that there must be
a sufficient reason for everything, including God, is to admit
the <force of the argument that completely sufficient reason
must exist, and to aidmit that premise is to aicknowledge that
there must exist that which pil'ovidessufficient reason, not only
for other beings, but for itself.
The basic difficulty would 1appear to 1be, rthen, that we do
not enjoy direct insight into· the nature of something which
provides sufficient reason for its own existence. However, the
limitations of human knowin1g a.ire surely not in question. And
if they were, the very bet that one asks the question demonstra;tes that one does not know everything a1bout everything.
II, then, one makes a rational judgement to the effect that one
does not know everything, on the basis of the evidence that
thel1e are still further questions that one can ask, then in the
same moment that one confirms the limitations of one's knowledge, one also confirms that, despite that limitation, one is
aware thlllt there is the requirement that whatever turns out
to he the case requires sufficient J.1eason for its ibeing so. For one
only affirmed that it was the case that one did not know
everything already because one knew the sufficiency of evidence for this being 1so, provided iby the activity of asking further questions.
But if one rudmits that We do not enjoy direct insight into
the narbure of something which provides sufficient reason fur
its own existence, might it not :be the case that such a thing is
an a.bsuvdity, an impossirbility? This question, however, re1

CREATOR AND CAUSALITY

585

quires, in its turn, an elucidation of what one might mean by
"impossibility" and "absurdity." Whifo the question is too
large to be •gone into in detail here, at least it should be evident from what has been argued above .that part, at least, of
what one means by the term " impossible" is that it is impossible for something to he the case without there being sufficient reason for it to be the case; a notion which, as I ha.ve
argued, we cannot coherently deny. If that is so, then the impossibility is rather of the non-existence of something which
p:vovides sufficient reason both for its own existence and for
the existence of other beings. For if God were an impossibility
Be would not exist; hut if God did not exist there would not
be sufficient reason for anything to exist; and if there were not
sufficient reason for anything to exist then there would be
nothing. However, since we have sufficient reason to affil"lD.
that the conclusion does not obtain, we are also required to
affirm that God must exist and is, therefore, not an impossibility.
r •believe, then, that the notion of causality which has been
outlined in this essay does provide grounds sufficient for the
affirmation of the existence of what is normally termed God.
That notion of causality, or sufficient reason, may be critically validated through advertence to the fact that it is operative
in one's knowledge of reality, in .all one's attempts to state
what is or is not the case. Such a vindication of causality does,
I believe, provide the kind of generalized notion of causality
which Professor Hepburn, in a reply to a paper by P:mfessor
Meynell,4 .averred •was demanded by the cosmological argument, but which he could see no way of justifying.
If the argument here has been that one can arrive at what
might be tel"lD.ed·an a '[Yl'iori validation of a generialized notion
of causality, still the term 'a '[Yl'iori,' with its many historical
associations, should be used advisedly. By an 'a priori' validation. of causality what is not meant is some ' inner look ' at
4 Ronald Hepburn, 'Remarks ' in Reason and Religion, S.C. Brown (oo.)
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), pp. 72-77.

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ANDREW BEARDS

,a supposed innate idea, nor some ascent into a noetic heaven.
What is meant is what is understood by adverting to the operation of the demand for sufficient reason in our coming to
know what is the case. And since any attempt to disagree with
what I have written here will be an attempt to argue that there
is not sufficient reason for that which I have stated is the case
to be in fact the case, the notion of causality I have outlined
should not be too difficult for any rational person to verify.

ARISTOTELIAN PREDICATION, AUGUSTINE,
AND THE TRINITY
GEORGE RUDEBUSCH

Northern .Arizona University
Flagstaff, Arizona

C

HRISTIAN FAITH proclaims that its God is one.1
It also denies thait the Father is the same as the Son,
or that ,the Holy Spirit is the same as either the
:Bather or the Son; for this reason Augustine and traditional
Christian faith proclaim that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
are three. 2 Here faith ends and theological explanation begins.
For it will ibe asked, perhaips hy heretics, but also perhaps
by sincere Christians such as Augustine himself: 3 " Three
what?" or" Thl"ee who?" To answer this, we must say" three
somethings" (tria quaedam) or fall into heresy.4 The Latin
answer is to say that the three somethings are persons, the one
something a substance or essence.5 It is this answer that
lAugustine typically cites Deut 6.4 to establish this, e.g. 7.4.7, PL 42, p.
941. All references are to De Trinitate unless otherwise indicated; and unless otherwise indicated all English translations are from Stephan :McKenna,
C.SS.R., De Trin4tate: The Trinity, The Fathers of the Church, vol. 45 (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1963).
2" The true faith proclaims that they are three, when it teaches
(dioit)
that the Father is not the Son, and that the Holy Spirit ... is neither the
Father nor the Son," 7.4.7, PL 42, p. 939.
8 Heresy is certainly one of the sources of the doctrine of three persons,
one essence: "there was need of a thorough explanation of the Trinity against
the snares and errors of the heretics," 7.4.9, PL 42, p. 941. But there is no
reason to believe that it must be a heretic who asks the question " Three
what?" at, say, 7.4.7, PL 42, p. 939 or 7.6.11, PL 42, p. 943.
4 "[Human feebleness] could not say that they were not three somethings,
since by denying this Sabellius fell into heresy," 7.4.9, PL 42, p. 941.
5 Augustine tends to use the term 'substance',
perhaps in deference to
convention, but he in fact prefers ' essence' on the grounds that ' substance',
strictly speaking, is improper, 7.5.10.

587

588

GEORGE RUDEBUSCH

Augustine wished to defend and make rus intelligible as possible.
I

The Aristotelian model of predioatiion. In the first four
chapters of the Ca.tegories, Aristotle ouNines the theory of
predicrution within which Augustine worked. The theory is
built upon the notion of a. 'this here' (tode ti), that is, some
individual to which we can point and say, " This here! " 6
Augustine's examples are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Imaigine yourself, then, pointing to some individual. Aristotle's categories are determined by the questions we might
ask about this individual. If we ask, " What is it? " we want
to know its ' whatness ' or substance. 1"1he answer may be " a
man " or " an animal." If we ask, " How big is it? " we want
to know its 'how-much-ness' or quantity. The answer may
be" six feet tall" or" two hundred pounds." In the same way,
we have categories telling what sort it is (quality) , when it
is (time), where it is (location), to whait it is (relation), and
the rest, descrihed in the .fourth chapter of the Categories.
If we move up and down within the downward-branching
tree of any category, we find genera and species. For example,
in the category of substance, ma.n is a species of the genus
animal; in the category quality, white is a species of the genus
co:fm. Looking up from Aibraham, Isaac, and the rest of
the individuals who live at the very ·bottom of the substance
tree, we find that we can make a number of' vertical' predications. Eig. ".A!braham is a man," "Abraham is an animal,"
and, most generally," Abraham is a substance." Likewise, we
can say "Man is an ·animal" and "Man is a suibstance." In
Aristotle's terminology, the predicates man, animal, and substance are 'said m' the species and individuals below them
(Caty. ia20-22). I shall call this sort of predication' vertical'
or ' said of ' predication.
If we move sideway;s across from one 1category tree to the
6 Qui etiam

digito praesens demonstrari possit, 7.6.11, PL 42, p. 944.

PREDICATION

AND THE TRINITY

589

next, we move from the substance tree to the various other
categories, where we find, for example, the quality white, the
relation brother, and the action cutting. With these other
categories we can make 'horizontal' predications, such as
".A:braham is white," "Aibraham is a brother," or "Abraham
is cutting." ' Hori2'ontal ', or, to use Aristotle,'s expression,
'present in ' predication, must he distinguished from Augustine's 'accidental ' predication, as 'We shall see.

II
The statement that God is three persons is not a case of
'present in• predioation. Augustine wa:s trying to make inte1ligible the doctrine that God is one substance ibut three persons. He was working with an Aristotelian model, 7 acco11ding
to which predication is of two kinds, vertical or horizontal.
The statement " God is a substance " appears to be a case o:f
vertieal predication; it is certaiinly not horirontal. It would
be tempting for Augustine to a11gue that when we speak of
God ,a:s Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are making horizontal
predicaitions, for these are all relations. This is plaiusible in
the ·Cruse of 'Fruther' and 'Son' (5.5.6), while for Augustine
' Holy Spirit ' is a rela,tional term because the Holy Spirit is
a "gift" proceeding from the Father and the Son (5.11.12).
In that way we would have the following easy explanation of
the doctrine of the Trinity. .Aibrahamis one man, yet his roles
as .father, son, and husband are three distinct relations. Because calling Abraham a man is a vertical predication, while
calling him father, son, and husband are horizontal, there is
no difficulty in understanding how he is substantially one and
yet, relationwise, rthree.8
7 On Augustine's
familiarity with Aristotle's Categories, cf. Roland J.
Teske, S. J., "Augustine's Use of 'Substantia' in Speaking about God,"
The Modern BchooZman 62, March 1985 (147-163), p. 148 n. 1, p. 150 n. 15.
s For the notion of a type distin<Jtion underlying this claim, see Joan
Kung, " Aristotle on Thises, Suches and the Third Man Argument," Phronesis
26.3, (1981) 207-247.

590

GEORGE RlJDEBUSCH

Augustine rules out this easy
in 7.6.11. Although ' Father ', ' Son ', and ' Holy Spirit' are said of God
relationa.lly, not substantially (thus horizontally not vertically) , nonetheless ' person ' is not said of him relationally.
Augustine's reason appears to be that re1ations involve twop!ace (or more) predicates, yet 'person' is a one-place predicate:
What the,n? Shall we call the Father the person of the Son and the
Holy Spirit, or the Son the person of the Father and the Holy
Spirit, or the Holy Spirit the person of the Father and the Son?
But nowhere do we find the word " person " commonly used in
this sense, and in this Trinity when we say the person of the
Father, we mean nothing else than the substance of the Father
(7.6.ll, PL

p. 943).

In any case, Augustine .believes that the question " Three
what? " (ras oprposed to " Three where? " or " Three when? "
or "To wha,t three? "-"Which ask for place, time, and relation, respectively) requires vertical predication in its answer:
"Since it is asked 'Thvee what?' or 'Three who?' we are
driven to try to find a specific or generic name" (7.4.7, PL
42, p. 989 [trans. mine]). This rules out the easy explanation. 9
Thus, for Augustine, to 1call God ra person is not to make a
predication. And so, if our talk of God involves
standaiid predication, it would seem to follow that both predications, " God is one substance " and " God is three persons,"
must be verlical. But there are problems with saying the
predications are vertical.

III
The sta;f;ement that God is three persons is not a oase of
vertiool predioation. Augustine reduces the verticaJ.-predicration
9 For contrasting interpretations
of the predicate 'person', see A.C. Lloyd,
"On Augustine's Concept of the Person," in Augustine: A Collection of Oriti.
cal IDssays, R. A. Markus, ed. (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Anchor,
1972), pp. 203-204; and William Riordan O'Connor, "The Concept of the
Person in St. Augustine's De Trinitate," Augustinian Studies 13 ( 1982), pp.
136-137.

PREDICATION

AND THE TRINITY

591

hypothesis to absurdity in 7.4.8 by considering para.Uel arguments.
The following, he says, is a good argument:
(1) a. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are three animals.
b. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are of the same nature (i.e.
human).
c. Therefore, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are three men.

Here the conclusion follows by a principle which Augustine
states as follows: "Where there is no difference of nature,
there things that are more in number are so e:A"Pressed generically, that they can ,also he expressed [as more in number]
specifically." 10
Since (1) is a good argument, so should the following be,
says Augustine:
(2) a. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three persons.
nature
b. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are of the
(i.e. divine) .
c. Therefore, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three Gods.

But (2) c is heresy.
Again, he igives a dilemma. ' Essence ' is either a specific
name or a generic name. If a specific name, then argument
(2) again applies (rerplace ' God ' with ' essence ') and again
leads to heresy. But if ' essence ' is a generic name, consider
the following good argument:
(3) a. Man and constellation and angel are called essence,s.
b. Man is not the same as constellation, and angel is neither
man nor constellation.
c. Therefore, man and constellation and angel are called
thre,e essences.

Here the conclusion follows by the principle of the plurality
10 Sed ubi est naturae nulla diversitas,
ita generaliter enuntiantur aliqua
plura, ut etiam speoialiter enuntiari possint [so. aliqua plura], 7.4.7, PL 42,
p. 940 (Dods trans., in The Works of Aurelius Augustinus, ed. Marcus Dods,
vol. 7 [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark Co., 1871-1876]).

GEORGE RUDEBUSCH

of the non-identica1l,which Augustine aicceptsfor individuals or
species under a genus.11
Just ais (3) is a good argument, so should the following be,·
say s Augustine:
1

(4) a. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are called essences.
b. The Father is not the same as the Son, and the Holy Spirit
is neither the Father nor the Son.
c.
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are called three
essences.

But (4) c .leadsto heresy.
The heretical conclusions follow only i[ we assume that the
predications there made of God are vertical. Augustine concludes that vertical predications of God cannot 1be made. Re
draw:s this conclusion by saying that when the mind looks for
a generic or specific name to predica.iteof God, no such name
occurs .to it. 12
The inoompleteness resiiltJ. Since Augustine's al1g'Ument
mles out either vertical o:r horfaontal predications of the term
' person ', he is left with no standard way of predicating this
term of God. But Augustine continues to ®cceipt as true the
doctrine tha,t God ,jg three persons yet one substance. Thus
Augustine concludes that standard Aristotelian predication is
incomplete, in the sense that it cannot express all theological
truths: " God is more truly thought of than spoken of, and he
more truly is than is thought of." 13
This incompleteness result is one source of Augustine's repeated theme of the poverty of human language,14 with as a
11" For when we say that Jacob is not the same as Abraham, and that
Isaac is not the same as Abraham or Jacob, then we certainly acknowledge
that they are three, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," etc., 7.4.7, PL 42, p. 939.
12 Neque ooourrit animo, 7.4.7, PL 42, p. 939. Augustine seems to draw
this same conclusion again at 7.6.11, PL 42, .p. 943, line 44-1 p. 944, line 25,
though the passage is obscured by the uncertainty of what Augustine means
to "omit," cf. 943, line 45; 944, line 10.
1s Verius enim oogitatur Deus quam. dioitur, et verius est quam oogitatur,
7.4.7, PL 42, p. 939 (trans. mine).
14 See e.g. 5.9.10, PL 42, p. 918: "When it is asked three what, then the
great .poverty from which our language suffers becomes apparent."

PREDICATION

AND THE TRINITY

593

result 1an ineffability of the divine (see e.g. 7.4.7, PL 42, p. 939,
lines
Thus Augustine gives up the task of finding some
conventional meaning to the claim " God is three persons." Instead he tries to give an explanation in terms of the conditions
under which that claim is uttered. 15 His explanation states
that, in discussing the Trinity, language is not being used in a
·standard ·way; we must instead speak enigmatically (in aenigmate) , " so that :we can in :some way get across (fa,ri) what we
can in no way get out (effari)" (7.4.7, PL 42, p. 939 [trans.
mine]).
God and the categories. If the predications involved in stating the truths of the Trinity are not standard, what are they?
Standaoo predication a:pplies to things falling under any of the
various categories, but Augustine sometimes seems to suggest
that God is above the categories. He says, for example, that
" the ovcertowering height of the divinity exceeds the capacity
of conv:entional [categories of] expression." 16 He describes God
as "1good without quality, great without quantity, creator
without need, presiding without posture, containing all things
without possession, whole evcerywhere without place, eternal
without time, making mutable things without any change oif
himself, and undergoing nothing" (5.1.2). In this list of nine
kinds of attributes, Augustine explicitly mentions eight of the
nine non-substantial categories: quantitatis, qualitatis, loous,
temporis, situs, habitus, facere, and pati. (There is one cate•gory he does not mention, relativum, giving .instead a species
of that category, indigentia.) 17
But Augustine cannot locate God entirely above the cate15 Diotum

est tamen, Tres personae, non ut iliud dioeretur, sed ne taoeretur
quid tres), 5.9.10, PL 42, p. 918; plaouit ita dici, ut
dioeretur aliquid oum quaereretur quid tria sint, 7.4.7, PL 42, p. 939.
16 Erocedit supereminentia divinitatis
usitati eloquii facultatem, 7.4.7, PL
42, p. 939 (trans. mine).
11 In "Augustine's
Use of 'Substantia '," p. 151, Teske claims that these
"are clearly the last nine predicaments [i.e. categories]." But in that case
Augustine's substitution of the specific relation indigentia for the genus
relativum needs explanation. Augustine elsewhere is careful to use the
broader term relativum, e.g. at 5.7.8, PL 42, p. 916, lines 11-13.
(so. oum quaeritur

594

GEORGE RUDEBUSCH

gories of speech. First of all, God most truly is a substance
thus he cannot be a;bove that category. 18 To be sure,
Augustine states tha.t God is difforent from all other substances, which are "susceptible of accidents, by which a
change, great or small, is brought about in them." 19 For God
alone is an iimmutruble substance (incommutabilis substantia,
It is for this reason that God is incapable of taking any
sort of accident. 20 Indeed God is even incapable of taking" inseparable accidents" (5.4.5), for that class of things is limited
to presence in what comes and ceases to be.
At this point, it may be tempting to say that for Augustine
God is in the category of substance, but ahove ,all other categories; thus that no horizontal predications are possible of
God. But this modified position rulso must be .ruled out. For
Augustine, the term ' accident ' does not include all which is
present in (horizontally predicated) , hut only what is changeably present in a substance. He does allow horizontal predication of God, hut only of what is unchangeably present in him.
For Augustine claims that, although nothing can be predicated
accidentally of God, nonetheless not everything that is predicated of him is done so according to substance (secundum
substantiam 1 which appears to mean vertical predication in the
category of substance) .21 For we can predicate of God "according to relation" (dicitur enim ad aliquid: Aristotle's expression is pros ti) . Now a p11edicationof God occording to relation would seem to be a horizontal predication. Augustine
states that such a horizontal predication is not ' accidental '
on the grounds that the relation is eternal. 22 It follows tha.t
1s Cf. Teske," .Augustine's Use of' f!ubstantia '," p. 155.
accidentia, quibus in eis fiat vel magna vei quantacumque mutatio, 5.2.3, PL 42, p. 912.
20 Deo autem aliquid ejusmodi acoidere non potest, 5.2.3, PL 42, p. 912; cf.
5.5.6, PL 42, p. 913, line 59 p. 914, line I.
:21 Nihil in eo seoundum aocidens dioitur ... ; nee tamen omne quod dioitur,
seoundum substantiam dioitur, 5.5.6, PL 42, pp. 913-914; cf. 913. lines 10-12.
22 Non est accidens: quia et ille semper Pater, et ille semper Filius, 5.5.6,
PL 42, p. 914.
10 Oapiunt

PREDICATION AND THE TRINITY

595

being oha.ngeably present in .a :substance is a necessary condition, in Augustine's terms, for being an cwcident. And it is also
sufficient: "everything is an aiccident which can .be lost or
lessened" (5.5.6, PL 42, p. 914).
Thus, concerning horizontal predication, Augustine in efiect
draws a distinction between what is changeahly present in and
what is unchangeaibly present in. Only the former is impossible
God, the latter is possible. As we have seen, Augustine's first example of such a predication is in the category of
;velation: " something can be said of him in regard to relation
(dicitur enim ad aliquid)" (5.5.6, PL 42, p. 914). Again, after
pointing out that the categories of position, habit, place, and
time cannot be present in God (presumably because of God's
incorporeality) , ·Augustine states that the categocy of ·action is
properily predicated of God, "that perhaps may .be said of God
in the truest sense of the term (verissime dicatur)" (5.8.9,
PL 42, p. 917).
Since God truly is a substance, and truly acts and relates,
it seems that we can conclude that these at least are oases of
vertical and horizontal predication. 28
1

IV
An Aristotelian, non-standard form of predication. There
are other non..,standard predications that are available, which
Just as
2a Before we do so, there is a further problem for the interpreter.
Augustine denies that there are any accidents of God on account of God's
immutability ( 5.8.9), Augustine ·also wants to deny that God is ever a substrate on account of God's simplicity (7.5.10). Augustine seems clearly
enough to state that a substrate is that in which non-substantial categories
are present, i.e. anything capable of being the subject of a horizontal predication. For he gives this definition: "Subsist ere: de his enim rebus recte
intelligitur, iin quibus subjectis sunt ea quae in aliquo subjeoto esse diountur,"
7.5.10, PL 42, p. 942 (cf. Aristotle's description of being present in, Oatg. 2).
In the same place he says that " if God is a substrate ( si subsistit) , • • •
then there is something present in him ( iinest in eo aliquid) as in a subject." For Augustine, there is an unacceptable consequence:
He is no longer simple; his being, ·accordingly, would not be one and the
same with the other qualities that are predicated of him in res.pect to
himself, as for example, to be great, omnipotent, good, and any other
attributes of this kind that are not unfittingly said of God (7.5.10).

596

GEORGE RUDEBUSCB

do not require placing God totally a1bove the categories of
speech. Standard predication is either horizontal or vertical.
In neither case may primary substances, i.e. those individuals
at the bottom of the substance tree, be predicated of anything
else. But in Metaphy-sfos 7.3 Aristotle allows for a different
kind of predication: " The predicates other than substance are
p11edicated of substance, while [primacy] substance is predicated of matter" (1029a23-24, Ross/Barnes trans.).
For .example, " This earth, air, fire, and water is flesh and
bone," and " This flesh and bone is Socrates." These are not
cases of vertical pl'edication, for .although Socra,tes' species is
man, the species of flesh and hone is not man.
Augustine ·seems to accept this sort of predication as a model
£or predications rubout the Trinity.
We do not use these terms [' essence ' or ' substance '] according to
genus and species, but as it were according to matter that is common and the same. Just as,. if three statues were made of the same
gold, we should say three statues one gold;
we should not be
calling gold the genus and the statues the species, nor gold the
species hut statues the individuals (7.6.11).

The unity of God's essence, on this model, will be what Aristotle called unity of su:bstratum. 24
But this model, too, has problems." We can say three statues from (ex) the same gold, for to 1be gold is one thing and
to he statues is another thing." 25 "But we do not say three
persons from (ex) the same essence, just as though essence
were one thing and person another." The disanalogy ·between
the talk of God and the physical model is that in the model to
be the matter is not the same as to he the form, yet with God
no such distinction can be drawn. In addition, in the physical
model one matter can take innumerable forms 1but God's es'24Cf. Met. 5.6 1016a17-24. This accords with the interpretation of Harry
A. Wolfson in The Philosophy of the Ohuroh Fathers: Fa,1,th, Trilnity, Incarnation, 3d ed. (Harvard U. P., 1976) pp. 314, 350-352.
25 This is McKenna's translation,
except that I have translated em eodem
auro as "from the same gold," in order to maintain Augustine's parallel with
e{J) eudem essentia, "from the same essence" (7.6.11, PL 42, p. 945).

PREDICATION AND THE TRINITY

597

sence ca.n take only rbhree persons: "in the essence of the
T,rinity no other person whatsoever can exist in -any way from
the same essence." Finally, in the model, "in statues of equal
size, there is more gold in three together than in one, less gold
in one than in two. But in God it is not so; for the Father, the
Son, and the Holy Spirit together is not a greater essence than
the Father alone, the Son alone, or the Holy Spirit alone." But
Augustine seems t.o want to keep this model a.nd ascribe these
discrepancies to the physicality of the model, not to a failure
of the predication to be of this non-standard matter-form kind:
" The sensual man does not perceive [how these discrepancies
a.re pos1sible]. For he cannot think except in terms of bulk or
space, whether large or smaill, for phantasms or, as it were,
images of bodies flit aJbout in his mind" (7.6.11).

A DIFFERENT METHOD; A DIFFERENT CASE:
THE THEOLOGICAL PROGRAM OF JULIAN HARTT
AND AUSTIN FARRER
WILLIAM M. WILSON

University of Virginia,
OharlottesvUZe, Virginia,

W

RITERS COVERING the work of Julian Hartt or
Austin Farrer-the :llew that there
find that the hest introduction is a straightforward
acknowledgement that what is to come is unique. Basil Mitchell, for instance, has said that no matter how one catalogues
contemporary theologians, a footnote will be needed, reading
" and then of course there is Austin Farrer." 1 Likewise, David
Kelsey has said that Hartt's work "is not identi:firuble as a
variant on any of the options on the present scene." 2 Those
already aicquainted with Hartt and Farrer will no dorurbt agree
with the sense o[ these assessments; but if they have heen
carefol students they will demand, nev,ertheless, a slight qualification: Hartt ,and Farrer .are unique as a party of two. Farrer
is a " variant " on Hartt; Hartt belongs down in the footnote
aibout Farrer.
But from the claim that these two are unique it does not
follow that their wo:vk is something akin to those bold " new
theologies " fashioned from the innocent's quest for a faith untouched hy either the hands of tradition or the perplexities of
our time. Farrer's: anchorage in tradition is obvious throughout his writing and clearly stated in the preiface to his first
1 ' Austin Marsden Farrer,'
A Oelebmtion of Fa,ith, ed. Leslie Houlden
(London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1970), pp.13-14.
2" Christian
Sense Making: Hartt's 'Theological Method and Imagination,"' The J owrna,Z of ReUgion Vol. 58 ( 4), October 1978, p. 428.

599

600

WILLIAM M. WILSON

work. There he said that he was " possessed hy the Thomistic
vision" and w:as incapable of "thinking it wrong." 3 As to
novelty, he had this to say:
. • . it is indeed absurd to propose new grounds for belief in the
existence of God. The belief has stood for more than
years if
we are to speak of the essentials of transcendental theism. If belief has been reasona9le it has had a reason, and our only business must be to draw this out and restate it.4

It is .fair to say, to 1be sure, that Farrer "drew out" and "restated " that reason in a. way unlike that of any other contemporary Thomist. There are some who would deny him even
the label. 5 And it is in this sense that Mitchell's statement
about him must remain: If " transcendental," " Neo-," and
" traditional " Thomist are three current categories, Farrer is
a footnote to them.
Hartt, unlike Farrer, has ne,ver labeled himself, hut none of
his readers can miss his hostility to any pretense to novelty,
even to those which have become our standard fare.
The good ship theology (has taken) on a radioactive cargo, its
company attracted by the dynamic and dazzle of it all.
Historicism, several varieties of analysis, Secularism-what a
promising manifest! 6

The " spirit of the age " is not to illuminate the gospel, according to Hartt, rather it is the gospel which illuminates the
spirit of the age.7
s Finite and Infinite: A Philosophical Essay, <Second Edition (London:
Dacre Press, 1958), p. XI.
4lbid., p. 3.
6 See, for instance, the review of Finite and Infinite by Gervase Matthew,
O.P., in BZackfriars, January 1944, p. 33. For a careful assessment of the
nature of Farrer's Thomism see E. L. Mascall's E1Cistence and Ana.fogy (Hamden, Conn: Anchor Books, 1967), Chap. 7, pp. 158-181. I do not intend in
this essay to assess Farrer as a Thomist. Rather, as will soon be clear, I
intend to show that, when seen in light of Hartt's thought, Farrer's work in
general is ,a unique theological option and one which perhaps dissolves the
disputes among the others.
6 The Restless Quest (Philadelphia:
The Pilgrims Press, 1975), p. 9.
1 Ibid., p. 10.

JULIAN HARTT AND AUSTIN FARRER

601

However, in having so qualified Mitchell's and Kelsey's assessments, it cou1d .be further arg1Ued that we have uncovered
the sole-a.nd trivial-point of wgreement: viz., ;both have a
keen regard for tradition and will settle for no easy compromises in handing it on to an unfriendly culture. There is
truth in this rejoinder. Indeed, Hartt and Farrer would be the
first to contend that there are deeply rooted differences between them-differences which are readily apparent on the
mere surface of the page. Stylistically, Farrer, an Anglo-Catholic, works between the elegant and the iconic, while Hartt
has a straight ...forwa;rd line, voiced in the high homiletical refmins o[ the American prairie parson. In matters of substance,
Hartt shows an unmistakable :sympathy for perhaps the most
noticed theologian of their day-Barth, whereas Harnack
spoke ,for F.arrer when he said that he simply had no " antenna" for the man. They greatly disagree also on Barth's
favorite-Anselm.
Hartt wrote a brilliant doctoral dissertation on the "ontological" argument, 8 and traits of Anselm's
thought can be found throughout his later published writing.
Farrer':s sole (and gratuitous) word on the matter, however,
is" heresy." 9
Hut these differences reflect but an unarguable point: The
two were not in league, nor was there ever any attempt on
their part (except for two articles of Hartt's) to trade on the
work of the other. In fact, the link between the two may be
detected in their greatest difference: Hartt is a polemicist.
Nobody is his "variant" (to cite Kelsey's 11ema.rk again) because the course he set for himself not only 'Sails against the
tide of all current opinion, 1and every " spirit of the age," but
also pauses for a brief moment of refutation at every beacon.
He counsels the hermeneut here, throws grains of salt at the
form critic there, draws a sword on the historicist and sends
down judgment on the ·enemy of metaphysics. Throughout
s "The Ontological Argument for the Existence of God"
Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University, 1940).
D Fi'lllite and Ir1:fi1111Ue, p. 12.

( un,published

WILLIAM M. WILSON

his journey he has his own desbiny in mind, hut one sees this
author, nonetheless, to he one who seems to think of theology
as a thing which !above all needs to he freed r.ather than attained or reached. The result is that his primary contribution
is to that field of disputes, theological method.
Farrer is the exruct opposite. He flies in haste to a quickly
announced goal and his attention to method is almost perfunctory. The first line of his first hook, for instance, reads, " The
possibility of a certain type of study follows excellently from
its successful prosooution and
from any other argu10
ment."
As a result his moves are often unpredictable and
his accomplishment rather difficult to assess or even to explain
to a generation accustomed to theologies which must he based
on a methodological skirmish and capped with a methodological flourish. And it is just here in this difference, or so I
should like to show, that a connection between the two can be
found. As method is linked to practice so is Hartt linked to
Farrer. What Hartt wants to free, Farrer freely performs.
But my intention for this essay, however, is not simply to
point out and probe a theological allegiance. Rather, it is to
show how the threads we oan find between the two may be
wo¥en together to form a unique theological program which
can at least stand on its own among the rest i!f not dissolve
the disputes separating them. (For Thomists there is a side
attraction in this; for the major dispute we will look at has
those who claim to be the true pensioners of the Angelic Doctor on both sides) ;11 By way of introduction, I shall attempt
to explain the reasons Hartt a:nd Farrer are currently footnotes
iby offering a cursory sketch of reasons both declined to join
the ranks. The next section will introduce HarWs method to
our current discussions. The final one will argue that the
ground Hartt cleared gives methodological setting to Farrer's
theology.
11> Ibid.,

p. 1.

11 But see note 5 above.

JULIAN HARTT AND AUSTIN FARRER

603

I. The Uniqueness of Hartt and Farrer
In a recent encydopedia entry, David Kelsey arranges a useful chart of contemporary theology according to the answers
given to " the array o:f decisions theologians must make in the
course of doing theology." 12 According to Kelsey, theologians
must decide the subject matter o:f theology, the importance o:f
cultural context, the 1wudience, the significance of the theologian's vantage point, the goals o:f theology and the best
means o:f accomplishing them. For our purposes o:f identifying
Hartt and Farrer, however, we need concentrate only on the
first and the last-the question o:f subject matter and the question o:f the hest means £or attaining theological ends. The
latter (being the last question the theologian must face) best
:identifies the overall mind o:f the theologian at work. Thus,
against the standard answers given here, I shall try to place
Farrer. The former, being the furthest removed from actual
practice, is the best gauge for reading Hartt's mind on method.
According to Kelsey, theologians on the springboard of ruction choose to be either " :foundationalists " or " antifoundationalists." The former, as the badge implies, requires that the
" network oif Christian theological proposals " be grounded in
a theologically neutral and self-evident proposition in order to
convince those outside the faith (as well as those within it)
that the faith is intelligible, coherent, and/or true (whatever
the goal may be) .18 Antifoundationalism is a bit more of a
misnomer. This party is not so much opposed to " :founding "
or grounding a system of discourse as it is against the prejudice
that nothing, especially religious .belief, is sufficiently accounted for until a bedr:ock of neutral and self-evident fact is
:uncovered. Drruwing on the work of cultural anthrnpologists,
linguistic philosophers and historians of science, antifoundationalists ·argue that systems of disoourse a:ve not rooted in a
12 'Method,
Theological,' The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology, eds., Alan Richardson and John Bowden (Philadelphia:
The Westminster Press, 1983), p. 363.
la Ibid., p. 366.

604

WILLIAM M. WILSON

common soil of adjudication, but rather are internally coherent, sustained by a. " deprth grammar " which is unique to
them. Like the child who can never point to the moment it
began to learn its native tongue, so the ·Christian cannot point
to the clear md distinct fact which sprung his £aith. As learning is a function of languaige, so the ability to indicate things
which are clear and distinct is a function of the system in
question.
Farrer stands in neither camp. Agruiust foundationalism, he
claimed that the " founding, steadying, invigorating, illuminating and enriching" light of [aith is a result of "assuming
God's existence in relating (one's) life to· Him." 14 Children
are not taught the terms of an ancient oriental religion and
then shown its cogency against a background of disinterestedness; they al'e "smiled aind talked" into it by their "sainted
grandmothers." More to Farrer's point, foundationalism is
based on a viciously circular argument: In order to begin the
search for foundations, one must already have posited the
truth of the reality in need of support or else the claim that the
foundation is solid-is true in a basic way for a.U people-will
itself be in need Oif foundation. It is a game, Farrer said, which
mrbelief can play e:reellently and at the expense of theism. A
doctrine of substance, for instance, is the proper foundation for
a worild taken to be a hierarchy of substantial causes, but if
the world is assumed to be a mere " uninspired simplicity,"
then a doctrine of phenomena-ol'dered-hy-rule is all the support which is needed, and is, so to speak, more clear and distinct, more irreducible, than one of substance. 15
But these remarks do not -rule out the kind of account
.foundationalists seek, e.g., a rational account (as Farrer put
it) of what is" there for the mind." 16 His co:ntention is simply
that, given the strategic role played by •such •accounts, the
14Faith and Speculation (New York: New York University Press, 1967),
p. 11.
15 Finite and Infinite, p. 9.
::t6 Ibid.

JULIAN HARTT AND AUSTIN FARRER

605

theist cannot pretend to be neutral in his rendition. Indeed,
against all manner of anti-foundationailism, Farrer went on to
argue that the theist must offer such an account and he must
"exhibit his account ... so that others may recognize it to be
what they themselves apprehend.''1 7 He need only he cautiorus
and have let the "rabbit of theism" out of the "ha,t" of ·an
allegedly impartial cosmology.
But why a" rational acooUIIlt" at all if it is not to have the
force of unanswerruble proof? Because, Farrer argued, God is
unique; unique not only in the sense that he possesses a singular set of characteristics, but in the sense that all the characteristics he has are unique to him. If God is known, then,
the knowledge must have .been gained through an .apprehen•sion of him existing through, in and with all else. In other
words, whereas a foundationalist contends that a constrnal
of the world as finite " supports " the idea of the infinite,
Farrer argues that in the very idea of the infinite, some definitive ordering of the finite world must already be bound to it
or else the infinite cannot be said to be known at all. To put
the case in antiffioundationalist terms, if there is a infinite, then
a rendition of rfinitude must he ·its "internal structure."
Thus, even though we are " smiled and trulked " into faith,
the theologian must assume, said Farrer, that the believer has
"mrude ·an assumption" about the world, 1better, has run implicitly the course of a " grid of hard thinking " 18 a.bout the
world, if the thought of God has become so second nature.
Accordingly, Farrer argued, the 'l'ole of the theologian is to explicate these " 1believingthoughts " and attempt to show that
the world !hound to theism is cogent, and, finally, the only one
we know. This last task indeed will involve a bout with rival
systems on all foonts, but the battle cannot be won on the assumption that the theist's world is in and of itself irreducible
or clear and distinct. For it is a world of definitively theistic
construal; its intelligibility is a function of its 1being the struc11 Ibid.

isQ-odlsNotDead

(New York: Morehouse-Barlow

Co., 1966),p.125.

606

WILLIAM M. WILSON

ture which demonstrates the manner in which God is apprehended. The goal of theology, then, is not to "guarantee assent " .but to augur run apprehension.
From this quick account of Farrer's thought we can see that
he .bears the earmarks of the current options hut finally eludes
them both. He is after a bedrock of hard fact in theism, but
he acknowledges that this account is not the " support" of
belief but rather its internal grid. Like the foundationalists,
Farrer stakes coo.viction on this kind of rudimentary evidence,
but unlike these theologians, he does not pretend that it will.
guarantee assent. Instead, he is more like an antifoundationalist in strategy, decreeing that assent is a function of the faith.
Nonetheless, his claim that theism is bound to a definitive
metaphysical system results in a denial of the antifoundationalist's basic premise that systems of discourse are mutually integral and exclusive: " Theism is not just one of several ways
of construing the same phenomena rwhich other systems exclude." The hegemony of foundationalism is not lost on
Farrer: " This extra term, God, implies a certain system in the
rest which are ordered towards Him as the garden at Hampton
Court is ordered towards the central window of the rpalace."19
We can see that Hartt arrives at the same vision of the
theo1o·gicaJenterprise ood policy for achieving goals by attending to his critique of matters closer to the concerns of method-the subject matter of theology. Under this heading Kelsey
lists again two candidates: the doctrines of the faith which
command obedience and the symbols or narrative through
which God is enoountered. 20 Ha.rtt's reading of the options is
roughly the same. He separates doctrine and obedience into
distinct categories with "encounter," then, being a third. 21
But either list will have Hartt as a footnote, for he cites them
to argue that these options must entail each other as parts of
Finite and Infinite, p. 9.
Theological," p. 364.
21 Theofogicai Method and Imagination
1977), Chapter 3, pp. 45-83.
J.9

:20 " Method,

(New York: The Seabury Press,

JULIAN HARTT AND AUSTIN FARRER

607

one larger subject. For instance, according to Hartt, if God is
to be obeyed one must have already encounte11edhim, and if
the encounter is to result in something more than the report,
in
words, " I'm all shook up hut in a wonderfully creative way," 22 then ooe must know something of the doctrines
concerning him.
In a more serious vain, Hartt argues that the first candidate,
doctrine, concerns the " grand patterns " of God's historical
action: God is the Lord of a covena111t; He is the Lord in His
Kingdom. Under such patterns, dogma holds, God's 'action
through time is witnessed. But the patterns are not, says
Hartt, simply heuristic devices for church teaching; they are
historical; they are the patterns of an agent. Thus, if a pattern is seein, God "speaks"; an agent, a personal intention, is
encountered. The second option, then, is at work integrally in
the first. Our ensuing obedience (the third option) to the
oom.mandments made by God registers that we have in fact
claimed the relationship between .patterns and agent to be
real. As Hartt puts it, the question which follows encounter,
"What must I do now?", signals the recognition (say)
" God wa:s i111 Christ;" " and he dwelt among us." 23
This "obediential truth claim," then, is an ontological assertion. The three forms of faith outline a " situation," a
"state of affairs apprehended as having certain structural
features," which is unique to singular faith as the bind of the
three .fonns.24 Had Hartt limited his concepti001 of faith to
any one of the three forms then he could not make this claim,
:for then faith would he simply a teaching believed, a meeting
acknowledged or a person trusted. In other words, the event
of .faith would have been but one eveint in an ontological struc22 Ibid.,

p. 50.

23 "Theological

Investments in Story: Some Comments on Recent Developments and Some Proposals." Journal of the American Academy of Religion,
L/II (April, 1984), p. 123.
24 "The Situation of the Believer," from Faith and Ethics: The Theology
of H. Richard Niebuhr, ed. Paul Ramsey (New York: Harper Bros. 1957), p.
235.

608

WILLIAM M. WILSON

ture of the world availrubleto anyone. But he has linked worldly patterns to the divine agent. Thus,
we do not first hear other things, other voices and then the . . .
voice of the Lord. We do not move from a situation defined as
[emphasis
interfinite into a situation defined as
mine]. 25

No, the finite-infinite structure is original and absolute, and
it must be known to be so, not me11ely presumed or thought to
be so-or else the overlap of the three forms constitutive of
the subset (" person who believes ") would make no sense and
we would once a1gain have three diverse notions of faith. Faith
in the singular can only .be an actual construal of the world or
a viewing of things by incessantly relating " all things in ways
appropriate to their belonging to God " 26 ••• that is, by oibediooce.
Thus Hartt and Farrer differ from their colleagues in similar
ways. What Farrer claimed we must assume as apologists,
Hartt has .found to be the very subject matter of theology.
Both claim that belief and a definitive construal of the world
go hand in hand and cannot be separated with impunity. To
the importance of their brand of theism we now turn. First
we will hear Hartt's counsel on method to theologians at
work, foundationalists as well as their adversaries. Then we
will consider
theology as a "response" to Hartt's
voice.

1

II. Julian Hartt's Theological Method
The state of the current controversy between foundationa1ists and antifoundationalists, against which we will read Hartt,
is best reached, perhaps, by noting a change in one of the
names. If " antifoundationalism" implies more of a reaction
against something than a movement with an appeal of its own,
then the new name, "post-liberalism" implies that what it
reacted against has now been surpassed or moved beyond.
pp. 235-236.
The Restless Quest, p. 90.

2s Ibid.,
26

JULIAN HARTT AND AUSTIN FARRER

609

Indeed, the post-liberal progr:am in many ways seems to have
taken Alasdair Macinty.re's recent metaphorica:l prophecy that
in the ruins of Western civilization we a.wait a "new St.
Benedict" 27 quite literally. Stanley Hauerwas, for instance,
has written that " Christian ethics should not begin with an
attempt to develop strategies designed to make the world more
just, but with the formation of a society shaped and informed
by the truthful character of the God we find revealed in the
stories of Israel and Jesus." 28 In doctrinal theology, George
Lindbeck claims that doctrines do not primarily register independent and universal truths nor symbolize the inner feelings of a general " authentic " human life. He holds, instead,
that doctrines are the rules or grammars constitutive of communal speech and action. Doctrines, for Lindbeck, mean what
they make. They do not represent trnths which can he stated
more precisely in philosophical terms; they render, and thus
as .statements :they represent, a community. 29 This concern
for closure is not lost on the apologist. On the contrary, Ronald Thiemainn has recently argued that the woeful history (if
not the forgotten project) of apologetics is largely a result of
ignoring just these sorts of non-foundational claims. The
theologian who spends as much time examining the nature of
faith as devising a strategy to spread it should see, according
to Thiemann, that God is not " extrinsically related to Christian helief and practice." 30 God does not, so to speak, do
things which could prove the gospel; what he does is the gospel,
and so it follows, for Thiemann, that one may discover the
coherence of the faith only amidst the interrelations of such
claims already rut work.
Thus the " post-liberals " do not advocate an inward turn
21 After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theology (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), p. 263.
·28 A Oommunity of Oharaoter: Towards a Oonstruotive Ohristiwn Social
FJthio (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), p. 92.
.29 The Nature of Doctrine (Philadelphia:
The Westminster Press, 1984.).
ao Revelation and Theology: The Gospel of Narrated Promise (Notre
Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985), p. 81.

610

WILLIAM M. WILSON

at the
of the biblical command to render the faith intelligible to any interested outsider. Rather, they advocate the
turn so that a faith which is irreducibly communal may be
properly rendered. But it remains that along with this correction goes a serious veaippraisal, perhaps a tempering, of the
traditional goals of apologetics. For if faith is a badge of membership, ii belief is a grammar and the mission an acquired
:skill, then " spreading " the faith is,. according to Thiemann, a
matter of " rational persuasion," 31 or according to Lindbeck,
"a matter akin to catechesis. 32 Il belief is a function of practice, then any case designed for the non-beHever must admittedly be, a.s Barth would have it, a "secular parable " of
the actual route of assent. It must be ad ho<J, and adjunctive,
always an afterthought of the believing mind, not a restatement of clear belief.
Post-:liberalism ,also argues that this point need not depend
solely on their account of the nature of faith. It can equally
be shown by demonstrating that the foundationalist's program
of translating the faith into an independent dialectic ha.s an
inbuilt defect. According to Thiemann, foundationalism holds
that the pattern of inferences supporting a set of beliefs is
not ultimately justified "until we have discovered a selfevident, non-inferential belief, i.e., a belief that must be universally accepted as true." 33 But this task, Thiemainn claims,
must fail in that the arguments .for this extraordinary, noninferential belief inevitaibly conflict with the arguments for the
ordinary beliefs. He proves his point with the following inconsistent triad and explanation.
1. X intuits the self-caused nature of y entails X non-inferentially knows that y is a first caiuse.
The ability to know first causes is given in the moment
of discernment, independent of a conceptual f11aime.
31 Revelation

and Theology, p. 75.
of Doctrine, p. 132.
ss Revelation and Theology, p. 132.

a2 The Nature

JULIAN HARTT AND AUSTIN FARRER

611

3. The ability to know facts of the form x is is a skill
acquired through the use of a conceptual frame.
Foundationalists want to affirm all three propositions, but they
cannot without using the word know equivocally. If knowing that
y is a first cause is a fact of the form x is
then it follows from
proposition 3 that it is depende.nt on a conceptual frame. But if
that is the case, then proposition
must be denied, and then the
foundationalist's case crumples altogether. If the foundationalist
then a different account of x
insists on affirming proposition
intuits the self-caused nature of y must be given from that offered
in proposition 1. But it is difficult to conceive of such an account
that continues to uphold proposition 3, while still claiming that
intuition is a form of knowing. 34

In theological foundationalism, the extraordinary cause in 1)
is the prevenience of God',s grace generally said, according to
Thiemann's historical studies, rto be "intuited " by the believer. Hence, according to the above, any argument for this
mode o[ knowledge hy way of revela.tion must conflict with
the accounts of knowledge enclosing the faith in general. The
foundation, that is, contradicts what it is meant to support.
'.Dhe argument that the intractaibility of revelation rules out
theological foundationalism, of course, does not hegin with
Thiemann. Lindbeck claims it as a theological warrant for his
own sociological analysis of doctrine and reports that it extends back through Luther to Aquinas.
Aquinas' use of reason does not lead to foundationalism or natural
theology of the modern type. Even when he is most the apologist,
as in demonstrating the existence of God, his proofs are, by his
own account, ' probable arguments ' in support of faith rather
than parts of an independent foundational enterprise ... Similarly
(Lindbeck's own) approach need not exclude an ad hoc apologetics, but only one that is systematically prior and controlling ... " 35

Post-liberalism, then, is based on a positive thesis (faith
is irreducibly a public enterprise), a negative thesis. (founda84Jbid.
35 The Nature of Doctrine, p. 131.

612

WILLIAM M. WILSON

tionalism is mortally ill) , and an appeal to tradition. Hartt
has no serious contention with any of these. Indeed, an abiding affinity with anyone who holds that faith is (to use Ryle's
terms) more a matter of "knowing how" than "knowing
that," can be seen in the following passage.
Suppose (the believer), were (asked to) present ... to the philosophical atheist, say, reasons that are presumably clear and cogent
whatever the course of life may be. That would be tantamount to
demanding that the believer should stand aside from
course of
life he believes springs from and leads even deeper into association
with God and enter an arena in which re.ason alone is sovereign.
How can he do that without betraying his belief? How can he do
that without compromising his belief that God alone, rather than
reason, is truly sovereign in his mind and spirit as well as cosmos
and history? 36

How can he do that without supposing that his faith is expressive of something which can be adjudicated on neutral
grounds? But Hartt also notes that a case is nonetheless being
mounted in the believer's practiCe; it is one which doubtless
the atheist will squint at as readily as he does a life in which
a Lord is held more sovereign than reason, but one upon
which the believer still might base his full justification.
The case the authentic believer is committed to making assumes
the form of a personal justification rather than simply the vindication of a truth claim.37

For" Hartt, this is the .fundamental reason the ·believer may
waive the philosopher's particular demand. It is allowed, that
is, not on the principle that the believer can make but a qualified case given his f.aith in God's priority; rather, it is allowed
because his £aith in God's priority is after an entirely different
kirul of case.
We can best gra.sp the way this move differentiates Hartt
£rom the post-liberals by stating initially what he has not done.
Hartt's substitution of "personal justification" for a "mere
36 Theologiaal
81 Ibid.

Method and Imagination, p. 10.

JULIAN lL.i\.RTT AND AUSTIN FARRER

61$

vindication of a truth claim " perhaps brings to mind a case
John Hick made some twenty years rugo.38 When faced with
a charge that religious claims are meaningless because believers
are unahle to verify them empirically, Hick argued that, given
the nature and context of religious beliefs, such verification can
only be made at the eschaton. When the validity of the religious life is challenged hy philosophers, Hick seemed to be saying, as one might suppose Hartt to 1be saying, then " personal
justification " can stand for the " vindication of truth claims.''
But this response presupposes that the philosophical atheist.
and the believer agree on the nature Oif the test religious (and
all other) claims must pass-it must he one of ,empirical verification. Hick, that is, meets the challenge hy qualifying
"empirical " in Jight of the 11eality to which religious language
points. But Hartt does not meet the-challenge; he waives it,
and in so doing he avoids the obvious error Hick commits in
wanting to he sufficiently distant from the philosopher in order
to propose the idea of " eschatological verification," yet sufficiently in league with him to win philosophical assent.
The most renowned, if not the most decisive, version of this
error is that Hick has sought to pass philosophical muster by
pointing to future events for the justification of religious beJiefs while it is the very terms governing those events which
are under philosophical fire and which force the theist to point
to the future. 39 Put mme simply, if there is a problem with
the beliefs nows how can those problems be avoided simply by
speaking in the future tense? And, although Hick's case does
not have all the earmarks of foundationalism, this criticism
registers Thiemann's point that an account of the epistemological framework governing the faith (in Hick it is empiricism)
will necessarily conflict with an account for knowledge by way
of 11evelation.
as" Theology and Verification," Theology Today XVIII (April 1960).
89 For a thorough
survey of the discussion of Hick's thesis see Basil
Mitchell, The Justification of Religious Belief (New York, New York: Oxford
University Press), Chaps. I-II.

614

WILLIAM M. WILSON

Thus, Hartt declines Hick's strategy for good reasons,
among them being anti-foundationalist's reasons. In fact,
Hartt's central maxim for theological method anticipates
Thiemann's warning. This maxim reads:
As methodologist the theologian does not make ontological claims.
It is not up to him as methodologist to lay out the structures and
powers of being. As methodologist his exhaustive: concern is with
the structures, rules, and warrants of Christian theological discourse.40

This point cautions the theologian to practice some kind of
ontological restraint lest he be overpowered by the charge that he
has simply defined and structured his enterprise to accord a clear
and certain victory for his beliefs . . . to fashion a theological position impregnable to philosophic assault. 41

The ontological :belief Hartt w:ants fuilldamentally to be re1strained is the belief in God's prevenient griace. Thiemann has
already shown the merit of this counsel. In considering
methodically the proper forms of a theological case, Thiemann
demonst:vated that, if God's priority is used as the foundation
for a systematic theology, the case will Jook forced; the foundation, which (as Hartt has said) is meant to " accord a clear
and certain victory" will necessarily conflict wiith the disinterested systematic it is meant to 'Support. Hick's case has
shown the coillSequencesof a lack of restraint: (eschatological)
grace oonflicts with the alleged empirical truthfulness of the
faith.
But Hartt's maxim not only anticipates Thiemann's case,
it also undergirds it as maJ.::im; and, as we will see shortly, this
maxim will equally undercut the policy post-Hberals erect on
the ruins of foundationalism.
A foundationalist, we have seen Thiemann argue, wants to
show the universal validity of the faith, which has already
been conceptually framed, by " founding" it upon a mode of
4o Theological
41 /bid.

Method and Imagination,

p. 16.

JULIAN HARTT AND AUSTIN FARRER

615

knowledge which (to refer back to the second proposition of
the inconsistent triad) is independent of any conceptual
frame-to a mode of knowledge in which what is known is
known " at the moment of discernment." Thiemann then
claims that this desire for universality is a death wish, for the
two accounts of knowledge (the one structuring the faith and
the one founding it) conflict. Thiemann detects a conflict, but
Hartt's maxim entails the reason the conflict is bound to occur. Hartt calls for " ontological restraint" in the development of cases. An example of what he wants restrained is
found in proposition I of the inconsistent triad. There we see
that what is known in a moment of pure discernment is a
"self-caused" being, ooe whose priority reigns even in the relation oif knowing him. This, the move to provide a catch-all
foundation, Hartt would aT1gue, must be restrained or else the
foundation of the case will be one of the claims of the faithpart of what is to be assayed will have a part in the assaying.
Now from this lack of restraint one can predict the conflict
Thiemann finds. For the foundationalist, we can see if we heed
Hartt':s rule, does not have a clear distinction at all between
the systematizied faith and its solid warrant. Rather, both
parts of the case ,are components of the faith. Thus, in giving
separate accounts of the two pal'lts of the case, the foundationalist is really giving conflicting accounts of the faith. Given
the distinction between system and foundation, the foundationalist must ,say that one is conceptually framed, the other
not. B:ut this cannot he allowed in that rbhe foundation is as
much ·a Christian claim as those which ave framed. As proposition 3 of the triad rwould leads us to 1believe, the foundation
must be one of the "X is p " assertions governed hy a conceptual frame; hut on the foundationalist's own terms it cannot be one of those assertions; it is their (unframed) foundation.
Now to an extent, this criticism of foundaitionalism which
Harlt's maEm entails may be said to add fuel to Thiemann's,
Lindbeck's and Hauerwas's drift toward Christian closure. For
1

616

WILLIAM M. WILSON

it implies that, if one tries to fashion the whole faith into an
artful dialectic, one will fail. But in locating the reason the
foundationalist's conflict is inevitable, Hartt has also loca.ted
the reason for denying the assumption that the drift is toward
an ad hoc case. The post-liberal simply sees that the foundationalist's case fails, whereas Hartt sees that it is set up to
fail. Thus Hartt simply gives advice on method: do not use,
he says, part of what you believe to wammt or in any other
way to govern the form of the case you make. He sees, that is,
that a "foundationalist's case" is self-supporting, that it has
no real foundation at all, given its method. The post-liberal,
on the other hand, in being uncritical of the method, simply
says that cases cannot be foundational, they cannot be universal. And then, in ignorance of the maxim, in assuming thait
this is an ineluctable consequence of apologetics, he commits
the very same error in calling for an a.d hoc case. He takes an
ontological claim, the priority of God or the preveniency of
grace, and from it dictates the form Christian a.rgument must
take.
The upshot of this journey with Hartt between the Scylla
of foundationalism and the Charybdis of post-liberalism, is that
the preveniency of grace, the priority of God, is the believer's
ontological claim. It is what the believer " talks about;" 42 it
is not, that is, the foundation of what he " talks about " nor a
principle to qualify the demand that he make a full account
of what he " talks about." Perhaps the first thing we should
notice about this result of Hartt's maxim, or, better said, the
first thing Hartt would want us to notice, is that it renders
the true contours of belief so that the proposals unique to it
can now be heard. He has robbed the belief of the hope that it
might be translated into, and proba.ted as, a philosophical position; denied it the right to rest on grace as the foundation of
its validity; and denied that revelation is a warrant for
aibridged aprpeals. When Hartt speaks of " the believer" he
42 "Dialectic,
Analysis and Empirical Generalization in Theology," Orozer
Quarterly XXIX (January, 1952), p. 13.

JULIAN HARTT AND AUSTIN FARRER

617

has in mind the psalmist ta.unted by unbelie-£ to produce any
clear sign that the life of faith is in any way cogent. In Hartt's
reckoning the best .believer's name is "standfast," or "desert
wanderer " who knows this side of hope that a death in the
desert is the reward of faith. 48
This rendition of the full existential plight of faith is at the
center of Hartt's thought. It indicates that the claims of belief
and the construal of the world, this " desert " ol'deal, go hand
in hand. In the introduction we saw that this theme, for
Hartt, is the subject matter of theology. Faith is a "worldview " of an original " finite-infinite situation" which is exacted
in the " truth claim " of obedience which has, in turn, so constructed the world in the intention to be loyal. And this is the
!'eason Hartt waives the s]mptic's demand that belief enter the
" oourts of reason." Faith is rwt an implicit foundational appeal nor warrant for an ad hoo appeal which might cushion
faithful construal against the taunts of unbelief. Rather what
the believer is doing, Hal'tt asserts, in his struggle to find God,
in his plight for " personal justification," cowtitutes his vision
of God and world together.
But this in no way means that belief has nothing to say to
the skeptic. It means only that what it does have to say cannot be uttered, as we heard Hartt say earlier, by " compromising " those beliefs upon entering the " courts oif !'eason." Indeed, if faith is the act of construal which gives rise to the
finite-infinite situation, then faith has very much to say. The
task of the spokesman for faith, the theologian, Hartt argued,
is to bring the drift of the believing mind to foll " conceptual
specialization " and this is the task which we sha11 shortly see
Farrer attempting to perform. 44 But before turning to Farrer's
case, it is best to examine more closely the meaning of Hartt's
claim that an intention to construe the world towards God so
that one might obey is not separable from, or is the bind on,
the union of the finite and the infinite. This can be done by
43 Theologiaal
44 Ibid.,

p. 18.

Method and Imagination, p. 37.

618

WILLIAM M. WILSON

tackling a question which has been lurking in the discussion
so far: Why should a claim which is acknowledged to be a belief nonetheless be a truth claim? Let us show Hartt's answer
by taking the question in this order: I) why does Hartt call
belief a truth claim? 2) why does he call belief a truth claim?
I) Hartt acknowledges that belief need not be a claim; belief may be, as it is commonly assumed, the mere profession of
an unaccountable opinion. As a good example of " credo,"
Hartt calls such professions "creditable" beliefs.45 The mere
"public avowal" of an "interior assent" credits us or is a
credential by which the public knows us to be a Christian, an
a.theist, a Buddhist. But belief, Hartt reminds us, has a far
different, though nonetheless common, usage. This different
usage occurs in the phrase (generally spoken in Babylon) "I
am prepared to believe." 46 In the first case, " belief " implies
that the assertion is tied simply to the person making it, and
not to any warrants or tests for its validity. But the phrase
" I am prepared to believe " qualifies this personal tie. It does
not mean to say that the tie is to the person at the expense of
warrants or tests; rather it says that the person is tied to the
consequences necessarily inV'olved in making the claim.
2) In this sense, believing and claiming or asserting are not
mutually exclusive. Also, in this sense, "belief" registers tha:t
what is being claimed is a " worldview," a "framing proposition." 47 To claim a worldview of any kind, Hartt argues, is,
in part, to .be "prepared " to construe the world according to
it. Knowing and construing the world accordingly go hand in
hand.
Put another way, a claim rubout the world which is held to1gether
by the faithful intention and aJbility so to construe the world ought not incite our skepticism. Nor, he adds,
should we be skeptical of the web of inferences, woven by faith,
which bind the outlook. Ha;rtt confirms that faithful construal
·45 Ibid.,

p. 96.

46 Ibid.
47 Ibid.,

p. 154.

619

JULIAN HARTT AND AUSTIN FARRER

is rational by repeating a commonplace in logic. lnference is
the art o[ drawing conclusions; it is an addition to, or an " enrichment" of, an antecedent statement. 48 Deductions, implications, inductions are formal patterns of reasoning, based on
what is contained in the antecedent, heading towards a conclusion. Accordingly, Hartt argues that, given this logical distinction between inference a:nd the rormal patterns, which, so
to speak, guarantee their conclusions, inferences ought not be
judged on the basis of the degree of formality by which they
are reached; rather, they ought to be judged on the basis o£
their ability to tie the" fogitiv<e" items of experience together
reliably a:nd critically. If a sound conclusion is reached from
a textbook syllogism, it is the mind which has drawn it. And
if, to use Hartt's example, the conclusion "Smithfield is a
crook " is drawn from the antecedent statement, "Smithfield's
conduct bears looking into" when said with a sneer, it is that
same mind at work;49 It would he pointless to trust Smithfield
simply because no formal reasoning between the antecedent
and the conclusion can occur.
]jf, then, there is any cogency to 1worldviewing,to "preparing to believe," then inference is its logical instrument. For example, the prophet Hosea, to cite Hartt's example, establishes
a " route " of such inferences when he advances from an
antecedent anticipation of being blessed to a present certainty
of being cursed. He does so again when he argues that if
Israel repents its otherwise certain doom will be averted by
God's mercy. 50 The first inference adds to the antecedent recognition of God's bounty the further recognition that when sin
arises in the covenant the bountiful God will be then a wrathful God "by definition" (though no formal reasoning can
reach that conclusion) . The second inference aidds to this
antecedent the further conclusion that a God of 1bounty-wrath
will avert his dreadful course if, as Hartt puts it, Israel "ex1

4s Ibid.,

p. 88.

49 Ibid.
50 Ibid.,

p. 89.

620

WILLIAM M. WILSON

poses its wounds " in testimony to its change of heart. The
prophecy, then, maps the actual contours of the worldview for
the contemporary body of faith. Its force is the recognition
that even in the noise of Assyrian saber rattling Israel must
"prepare to believe"; even in this situation there is a way to
·he faithful and so to lay hold on the historical events surrounding the covenant. In this way, the worldview is upheld by
intending to uphold it; and the intention is rationrul; it is an
envisagement of the world so as to conclude upon the proper
course of trust and :fidelity.
So another reason to be clea:r on the meaning of inference is
to guard aigainst the supposition that Hosea is making a. mere
conclusion based on the shaky, if not superstitious, " formal "
counsel that good times can always he had from bad if one
repents. Such suppositions cast aspersions on the power of the
reasoning displayed by the likes of Hosea; and they :fla1grantly
misread the biblical testimony. Assyria did flee in light of the
Baibylonian threat, but that threat also had its eye on the
chosen tribes. And the prophets did not check their powers of
formal reaisoning; they reread the heart of the people and the
lay of their world, and concluded on the path of faith: the
good figs will be captives in Babylon. 51
Hartt's· overall al1gument, then, amounts to, the sta;tement
that a methodic investigation of faith itself warrants the idea
that grace is the structure of the believer's claim. To claim
faith is to claim a situation
finite-infinite, the center
of which is that claim. The ·grounds, or the foundation, for
knowing God are inseparable from the ontological situation in
which he is in fact known. That is the meaning of sola gra;tia.
Yet in this rendition of grace, perhaps especially in this
rendition of grace, one can easily see the motives for tempering
the hopes of devising a universal case for Christian truth.
For if " faith" indicates an ontological structure which proviides its own knowability then it must be a claim for which
51 J er 24. 4-6.

JULIAN HARTT AND AUSTIN FARRER

621

only an ad hoo, probable or adjunctive ca;se can be made. H
the link, that is, between assent and the situation assented to
is subsumed in the situational-ontological structure called
"preveniency," then how can the faith, the assent, ever be
fully justified? But the very asking of these questions indicates that this ad hoc route must he denied. The questions
stem from an ontologica,l claim, from the claim which is to be
assayed.
But these questions do :forecast the unique nature of a
theistic case, as Hartt sees it, perhaips its oddity: it will be one
which in part must justify a structure in which assent is subsumed. Better, the case will need to show how the rationale of
the situation systematically rejects the pertinency of knowing
the nature of this link. This will be the major hurdle for
Farrer, our apologete, to jump. But in regard to the present
concern, method, Hartt argues that it is fallacious to assume
that a sound case is one which guarantees assent, leave aside
the notion that a case is a poor one if it cannot so guarantee.
For instance, was Descartes's cogito an " assen table" structu:ve? No doubt he thought so; but Kant, Hume and Russell
did not assent to it; Ryle aJbused the argument. Structures
are not " assentaible;" they are more or less analytically cogent
and ranging from more to less to not at all, we assent to them.
In other words, as Hartt wrote, in building a case "Analysis is the prius . .. of dialectios." 52 Dialectic is the art of convincing, which is perfomned either by showing that the opponent's proiposition is but part of our larger whole or by showing that his proposition is self-contradictory when viewed
against the back-droip of ours. But success in either performance is not in and of itself a guarantee of the veracity of our
opposing proposition. As Hartt sa;id, "at some point one must
put his own house in order." One must show that the system
accounts for a sufficiently inclusive range of data, that it is
formally consistent and, most imporlantly, that it chavts " the
52" Dialectic,

.Analysis and Empirical Generalization in Theology," p. 17.

WILLIAM M. WILSON

patterns to which reasons will fit in order to form a reasonable
and persuasive whole." 58 This is analysis, the purifying 0£ a
position. And this is the real proving 0£ a position. To prove
" something is to test it for its value (probus means ' good ') .
Thus ore is assayed, land titles are proved up . . ." 54 To
demonstrate is, from the Latin, " to point clearly "; to elucidate
is to " shed light " on the range of phenomena in question.
Analysis is the constant and relentless arranging of a battery
of relevaint concepts into a map for the reasons involved in
asserting that a proposition is right. Dialectics is the dramatic
build-up of a ploy to sho:w that another proposition cannot
possibly be right.
Thus, analysis is the prius of dialectics in another sense. We
must not simply ha.ve our own house in order to show how,
and not simply that, another case is wrong; dialectic is the
tool by which the analyzer tests his own case for strength.
" Dialectic is (simply) the critical instrument for discovering how
tight the analytical case is ... A case can never be established by
dialectic, but it may
clarified by dialectic. And this is its proper
logical role, whatever its psychological effects may be." 55

I take this to be a highly relevant passage, not simply as a
statement about proper method, but primarily as ,a principle
and a promise that theology by its very nature is always in
conversation with the world. As a statement about method,
the passage claims that the dialectics launched hy theology
upon the world were initially employed by theology in " putting its QIWil house in o:rder." As such, they are not polemics
from an alien party; they are the very "critical instruments "
theology has used in assessing its own cogency. As it were,
they are to be seen a.s the most fitting invitation to join in
proper business.
Hartt wrote this passage in
at which time he greatly
ss Ibid., p. 15.

p. 25.
.Analysis and Empirical Generalization in Theology," p. 17.

54 TheologioaZ Method, and Imagination,

55 "Dialectic,

JULIAN HARTT AND AUSTIN FARRER

6fl8

feared that church theologians were converting the content of
the faith into a "dialectical apparatus for siege warfare." 56
That is, he feared that church theologians, in seeing their
primary task to be one of winning oomnerts, had transformed
the content of the faith into positive and negative dialectical
hooks to catch the world; and though he did not doubt the
power and ingenuity of these polemics, nor the rectitude of
.their final judgments, he lamented greatly the strategy. It
promised, in part, that theology could " become virtua.Ily
synonymous with polemic and counter-polemic and with all
the hues and cries of partisanship." 57 But the real problem
w:as that the content of the faith could become so misshapen
that it would become but one ideology among the rest. " Thus
the doctrine of sin begins to take its place along side the
Freudian contribution of rationalization and the Marxist free
will offering of the ideology of class economic interest." 58 The
result would be that " dialectical warfare " would no longer be
a use£ul tool of Christian proclamation, but its defining purpose. And, like the nation that transforms all of its butter
into guns, the church would have no sustenaince for itself or
its captives. It would have devised a constitution for a makeshift republic if not for a bellicose nation. In this scenario
" theological success," Hartt said, would be " unf orgiv:ably
confusing." 59
Given the recent theological trends briefly surveyed at the
outset of this section it could be argued that Hartt's prophecy
has to an extent been born out. Some theologians do seem
content to let theology's lot he the trench it has dug for itself
in a chaotic world. Yet the prophecy has been disoonfinned
by this same trend in the denial that the content of belief is
in any way identical to the
appeals it uses to
win over the world. On this second point Hartt would applaud
rthe learning of the lesson that what one thinks is true and the
1

56 Ibid.
57 Ibid.

58[bid.
59 Ibid.

62'4

WILLIAM M. WILSON

methods employed to get others to think likewise are not at
all the same thing and cannot be mixed with impunity. But
he would scoff at the no,tion that this recognition is the kind
of thing upon which rto stake out party lines. Any case which
is molded merely to persuade, catecheticize or allure is ad hoc
and adjunctive because it is essentially incomplete, because it
is essentially dialectical. Christians stake their claim to the
whole world; and their vision of the world is what dialectics
must test in the analysis of their claims. Then dialectics can
be wielded upon others.

III. Austin Farrer's Case for the Validity of Theistic Belief
In the discussion of Julian Hartt's proposals on theological
method, three central points were made. 1) The case of faith
is one 0£ personal justification by God, which means that,
faith is the active construal of a unique worldview which is
moving towards complete conceptualization. 3) The role of the
theologian is to enhance this conceptualization by analyzing
the world view, which will include an elucidation of the ontological structure unde11girdingthe claim that knowledge of God
:resides sola gratia. In short, Hartt has said that the believer
does not figure his way from a finite situation into a finiteinfinite situation. Mundane patterns, divine rugent and human
responses are locked together originally in the e¥ent of singular
faith. A cogent aiccount of this situaition is the business of
theology.
These points of method, Farrer presupposes in simply considering the possibilities for making a theistic case. He claims
that the theologian cannot reason his way from finite to infinite because the God of theism (though not perhaps the God
of the philosophers) is unique. He cannot be classed, and not
simply because " He alone exemplifies certain special characteristics," but primarily because " He shares no identical characteristics with anything else." 60 Hence, there can be no in1

60

Finite a,n.d Infinite, p. 7.

JULIAN HARTT AND AUSTIN FARRER

ference from finite effect to infinite cause because even to have
located an effect as a possibly divine one entai:ls tha;t one has
already apprehended, and thus has implicitly posited, God's
unique nature. Any a posteriori argument, that is, begs the
question, rgiven the uniqueness of God; and since by hypothesis nothing is prior to Him in existence, any a priori argument must likewise fa.il.61
The result, FaITer concludes, is tha;t if God is known He
must be known simply as the agen.t-of-his_,effects;in Ha.rtt's
terms, the situation of knowing God is originally finite-infinite.
Hartt would also ma;intain that this metaphysical phrase,
agent-of-his-own-effects, is but a universa;lization of the notion
that the worldview ri.n which all things are ordered to and from
God is known and maintained by a £aith£ul intention so to
order all things. Farrer has these thoughts 1as well. Agent-ofhis-own-effects he translated as " the .acts in which we attend
to Him are the acts in which He is known to work in us.'' 62
Thus, for both theologians, there is a structure to the world
different from those philosophers engender, which is known by
the active faith of the believer .. Farrer caHed this structure the
rudimentary " category " of theism; he set it forth thus:
Does not the religious mind naturally think of God as exercising
two distinct activities toward His creatures? The first by which
He puts and keeps them thexe, the second by which He takes up
an attitude toward them, brings Himself in a manner on their
level, in so far as he no longer creates or alters their being, but
admitting them to be what they are, allowing them a self-standing
reality that He leaves inviolate, proceeds to act towards them.
Conversely, those to whom God shows his love, to whom He reveals Himself, are only there to be loved, to receive revelation, in
so far as a prior act of God's will has constituted and continues to
constitute their being from moment to moment ... Ideally it is
very possible to entertain the idea of the God of Spinoza,. whose
Befog issues in the existence of all things, but who takes up no attitude of love or help to what He has made: He may be loved,
61 Ibid.
02 Faith and Speculation
Press, 1967), p. 34.

(New York, New York: New York University

WILLIAM M. WILSON

but does not love in return. This is le Dieu des phuosophes et des
savants: but it is precisely the advance that religion makes beyond
such metaphysics, that it adds to God's first or creative activity
His second, or personal. 68

Divine 1cause and worldly effect, divine rugent and worldly
pattern, creation ex nihil,o and a providence which fits intending ·faith " like a glove " go hand in hand. In the ,words of one
of his homilies,
1

... for the thought of God goes with our every motion, divine care
clothes us like the atnosphere. And yet his thought for us
not constrain us; what he creates is liberty. To enter into God's
plan for us is to be more sovereignly ourselves . . . to create,
through us is his design.M

Thus Hosea inforred God's designs by finding the pa.th for
Israelite freedom. And despite the difficulties which await the
elucidation of such a ca;tegory, the ibenefits a;ccompanying ,any
success are immense; ifor then any difficulty, as Farrer argued,
"advanced as a problem (allegedly) burdening the Christiain
faith," such as the relation between knowledge and grace, " can
he shown to he merely the particular application of .a .fundamental antithesis" hasic to the faith. 65 Indeed, this is the
"great advantruge" already cited, which this category has over
that of "le Dieu des phi"losopheset savants." Not only does
it turn its back to the fatal temptation to infer God from the
world, but by seeing God as simpJy
it
states that the structures oi the world of rfaith are not " burdensome" to the analyzer, but are in fact categorical.
Farrer also al'lguedthat if the idea of creation is entertained,
ordained world seen iby so orderthis " double agency
ing the world-is our only possible category. Contemporary
1

68 "A

Return to the New Testament Christological Categories," Theology,

26 ( 1933)' p. 309.
64" Predestination,"
The Bri!nk of Mystery, Ed. C.C. Conti (London:
SPCK, 1979), p. 99.
65 "A Return to New Testament Christological Categories," p. 313.
66Faith and Speculation, Ohaps. VII-XI.

JULIAN HARTT AND AUSTIN FARRER

627

physics teaches that entities, things in themselves, are pockets
of energy systems. To be is to act, or contrariwise," for energy
not to act is not to be." Thus, " if God creates energies he
creates energies-in-act " such that it would not be possible to
separate God's creation of them from " that act by which they
are." 61 It cannot be entertained, save iby mythology, that God
creates entities which he then allows to go free, for there is no
such thing as an entity, which is not always "going free." And
even if it could be entertained we would soon find the idea
absurd. If anything does not have the requisite self-being to
be an "ongoing" one, i£ it is in some putatively formal, nonactive, created stage, then it has not enough self-being to start
out on the " ongoing" phase. On the other hand, if it does
have enough self-being to get started, why would God need
to withdraw from it in order to let it get started? 68
Thus Farrer ,found two reasons for .beginning with the believer's notion of an original union of the finite and infinite.
God cannot be derived from the world; and with our current
V'iew of reality, there can 1be no gap between God's creative act
and the life of his creatures. But this harmony is the boon as
well as the hane. Why should anyone entertain the idea of
creation if the action of the creator is virtually identical to
that of the creature? What difference could it possibly make
to say that God creates thing's if ,what he creates is their selfconstituting action?
The question, "What difference does it make? " does not
pertain simply to the task Farrer has set for himself. It is the
rhetorical device of the logical positivists-who reigned in
England when Farrer's career began__.who claimed the skill of
overruling all metarphysics hy showing that any account of
" things as they m<e in themselves " adds nothing to, or " makes
no difference to," any account of mere phenomenal regularity.
A discussion of Farrer's self-defense on this primary issue will
help us understand his particular claims for double agency.
1

s1 Ibia., p. 82.
68

Ibia., p. 83.

628

WlLLIAM M. WlLSON

First it must ibe noted that Farrer did not deny the central
appeal of the logical positivists .
. . . it is expected of us to pronounce the formula: 'I disbelieve
in metaphysics.' Let us seize the present opportunity to make this
orthodox renunciation and secure our standing in the philosophical
fold. Let metaphysics mean the deliverances of a pure reason or
pure intellection having no bearings on any but word behavior,
and we renounce it with all our heart. 69
He did not contest the criterion for significance, that is, he
contested the assumption at bottom that any articulation of
things as they are in themselves fails the test. If hy "behavior" we mean ,simply our reactions to simple regularity,
shunning,
actions such as (to use Farrer's list)
avoida,nce or coping, then pl'opositions a;bout things as they
are in themselves in fact make no difference.7° But it is no
mere coincidence, he reminds us, that mom.I hehavior " has
never been far out of sight when metaphysical interest has been
lively." 71 (Aristotle, Plato, Spinoza a;nd Leiibniz al'e his cases
in rpoint). There are kinds of comportment, of which morality
is the paradigm, Farrer said, which distinguish a "thing "
from its regular efiect upon us such that any ,articulation of
as an independent entel'prise would be significant or difference making.
Having noted the two sets of behavior and the ways in which
one gives rise to an interest rin phenomenal regularity, the
other to propositions a:bout realities, Farrer alleged that the
whole debate between phenomena.lists and " realists " was
largely a result of confusing the behaviors .
. . . it is not difficult to construct a history of mental confusion
which will account for the birth of a lively interest in the substance question by way of a critical reaction to that confusion. For
the relations of the ' phenomenal ' propositions . . . relevant to
anticipation and manipulation with ' real ' propositions expressing
substantial differences relevant to choice of aims, are delicate
69 Finite
10 Ibid.,

n Ibid.

and Infinite, p. 75.
p. 87.

JULIAN HARTT AND AUSTIN FARRER

69l9

enough, as all philosophical debate witnesses: each type is liable
to invade the territory of the other, animism overthrows phenomenal regularity, phenomenal regularity overthrows will and
worth, and with each trespass vital behavior interests are affected,
whether it is scientific manipulation or moral rationality that finds
itself denied its proper language and cramped in its proper exercise.72

Note his claim that the confusion is mutual. Positivism may
have denied the Tealists their proper territory, hut their initial motives were sound. They were trying to gain back the
"regularity" rightfully theirs from the realists who, in the
confusion over sets of behavior, had usurped rit in order to
render our knowledge of reality regular and formal. The question of difference making was their ploy. They knew that regularity belonged to them and, accordingly, asked the realists to
tell them one difference between the regularity of the alleged
thing's phenomenal show and the thing itself.
So Farrer, a. realist, took the question as an opportunity to
reexamine the grounds for knowledge of reality. He found
that
. . . the thing in itself can't be well symbolized by a sense phenomenon of any sort: for sense phenomena always arise out of an
external contact between the thing and us, they are always phenomena of it; they represent its impact on us rather than on what
it itself is or does.78

His :formulated doctrine of reality is based on the last phrase:
a thing is what ,it does. More precisely, entities are activities,
nexuses of energy, which have no "form" or regularity of
their own. They " strike " a pattern of action in their incessant ·contact with another (which then likewise strikes a pattern). Moral activity takes this specified pattern to be the
sign of agency; " scientific manipulation" makes a rule of the
pattern for its own puriposes.
72 lbid.
73 "Metaphysics
and Analogy," Refteotwe Faith, Ed. C.C. Conti (Grand
Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1972), p. 89.

630

WILLIAM M. WILSON

Given this reformulation of the nature of meta,physics, the
particular question addressed to double agency-what difference does it make to speak of God if his a,ction is virtually
identical to that of his crea.tures?-should a,lso be reformulated. If reality is the field of mutually enga,ged activity, the
question should read, " Where then is the singular and unique
pattern of God's activity?-or-" Where is the unique action
of his' causing them to act as they do'?"
Farrer answered by claiming that, for the believer, any one
pattern hetrays a duplicity of a,gents. On the one hand, a
specific pattern is noted, a determina.te nexus is a,pprehended;
but on the other, the pattern or the nexus is of sheer determining action. The child, Farrer always reminds us, asks of
some common occurrence, " why is it so? " In so asking, the
child is distinguishing the particularity of the occurrence from
its generality as an occurrence of energy which, ex hypothesi
has no formal pattern of ,its own. All beings, that is, are activities; ibut no one of them is the explicit instance of activitya freely evolving pattern o[ action-in and of itself, for all
strike their form, pattern or diagram in a mutual effect. Where,
then, the believer, the child, in some way asks, is that pure
determining action itself which we note in our patterns and
diagrams. What is tha.t action which is not to be subsumed under our diagrams or patterns, but ,which our dfagrams or patterns nonetheless designate?
Such questions ,axe Farrer's metaphysical versions of the believer's inability to separate God and world. In a world of activity the idea of ,God is made out in 1such a way that the nature of the link or " causal joint " :between the finite and infinite is simply not an issue. In dogmatic .terms, given an active rworld, God is simply known in the radical freedom of his
own life with the world.
Yet it can be obviously
that F.arrer is also simply
expressing the fallacy of uncritical 1belief. Has he not affirmed
with his left hand what he has denied with his right? He has
said, in ;response rto the positivists, that activities are alrways
1

JULIAN HARTT AND AUSTIN FARRER

631

patterned; .but now he says that, in the midst of these patterns,
we also apprehend one which is not patterned. Must he not
admit that this " sheer determining action " is simply a verbal
abstraction?
Farrer attempted to overturn this accusation (which he
often addressed to himself) by arguing that his critic has fallen
into the error, previously mentioned, of confusing our rules
for phenomena with our patterns of activity. The critic, that
is, has assumed that what Farrer meant by " pattern " is that
standard, that regula, hy which we sort out and rgovern what
we perceive; and thus the critic has chaTged that pattern is a
fixed nature, a standard " way for something to be " such that
Farrer could (fallaciously) abstract from it. But by pattern
F1arrer meant no such :thing. A pattern [s the " specifiable"
form, the "diagrammati21able " !l'esult of the contact made hy
one nexus of ene:vgy upon another (and vice-versa).
The real order of things is diagrammatizable, not diagrammatic;
the diagrammatic unity is in the mind (and rule-bound), not in
the world.74

The idea of douible agency, then, rshould Tead, the real order of
the world is diagrammatizable; but however significant of
real individual entities these diaigmms :are, they are hut diagrams of a tH-ee determining action.
But perhaps the hest way to 1grasp the difference between
Farrer and his critic is to cite Farrer's countercharge that the
critic, in confusing real and phenomenal propositions, has
fallen into the workaday but nonetheless erroneous conviction that " things are the way they look." And if things are
the way they look, then it must be assumed that " reality"
is something seen from no point in space and instance in time.
The critic has fallen, that is, into an " old myth," the "great
Newtonian fiction." 75 On the other hand, Farrer has rejected
this myth; he has said that realities do not coexist " hy ab1

1" Faith and Specula.tion, p. 150.
n Ibid.

632

WILLIAM M. WILSON

solute position." Rather, they "coexist hy constituting a field
of conditions for any single piece of organized agency." 76 And
from this pronouncement it must follow that there is no such
thing as the :world, no pa;ttern of action called "the world pattern." Rather, "the world" is a fieJd of a million million real
things which become what they are within this field of interaction. Hence, there is no world diaigraim; there are a million
million diagrams, each one sorting out the field into a ·focus for
individual action.
To ,answer finally the question, " what is the diagram or
palttern by which we demark the activity of God? " we need
but refer hack to Hartt. It is a (perspectival) " view" of the
world, a worldview, a coherent chart of a personal situation
such that one can act faithfully. For Farrer has said that God
does not diagram a world for us to live in.; he designs a context for each one of us to act in by creating the entities of the
"world" which exist hy so acting together. That is God's
grand dia,gram. God sets the " world " so that there is always
the possibility, even in Babylon (as Hartt said), to "tie life
and world together."
Farrer felt that in this :a;nalysisthere is nothing for the nonbeliever to object to. He has asserted nothing hut the gray
" hurly-hurly " of physical activity behind our perceptions.
But he has also done it in such a way that the reasons confirming theism can he located. A determining agent, can, with
effort, be made out ( and it takes effort to make out any agent,
,as we ha.ve seen) ; and the question of the link or causal joint
of his agency is systematically discarded, in that the worldview
is one of activity. A "free determining act" and the "determinate action" occur simultaneously.
Dialectic, of course, can be fully employed. All forms of it
will trade on the basic question: :can the hurly-burly of physical action itself give rise to stable patterns from which, in
which and towards which, we act? How can it do that when
1

76 Ibid.

WILLIAM M. WILSON

633

it is not any kind of formal enterprise? But assenting on the
basis of such questions is not itself religious helief. Faith occurs when a person sees an agent at work in a11 others and
especially in that person's own action of attending to them.
Then the case, as Hartt said, is to maintain the spittle for that
kind of life. Analysis, Farrer has said, can show the coherence
of that kind of life; :but only that kind of life forecasts the
worldview Farrer hB>s analyzed.

BETTI AND THE HERMENEUTICS

OF DOGMA

THOMAS GUARINO

Seton Hall University
South Orange, New Jersey

I. The Traditional Response to the Question of Historicity.

I

T IS BY NOW a truism to· speak of historicity as the
horizon within which both theological thought and languaige 'emerge. The finitude of the inquirer, the forestructure of understanding, and the historical distance between text
and interpreter ·are themes: which dominate contemporary
Catholic thought. '.Dhis, however, is not an entirely new
phenomenon. Since becoming aware of the invariant structures
of temporality, Catholic theology has sought to develop some
rapprochement between the apparent antinomies of the universal truth-claims proffered .by the Church's dogmatic statements and the necessary constraints and " localizations " dictated by the realities of culture, time and language. The question has ibeen: How can the Church continue to ho1d for the
actual cognitive penetration seemingly called for hy her dogmatic statements 'given the ,striking limitedness of the philosophical, sociological, linguistic and cultural horizons within
which such statements are wrought?
The solution to this question has, from the nineteenth century onwards, taken the form of some type of distinction between plurality of context and identity of content, between a
variety of oonceiptual frameworks a:nd a single undergirding
affirmation. This accommodation may he found, in an anticipated sense, in Newman's notion of the subsistent Idea as well
as in
theological formulation of unity amidst multiplicity.1 Unfortunately, this incipient distinction was quickly
1 Cf.

J. H. Newman, An Essay on the Development of Ohristian Doctrine,

635

636

THOMAS GUARINO

lost to Catholic theology. In the first place, Aeterni Patris" defined " a particulair eonoeptual system as optimum, thereby reducing the possibility of seeing the distinction actually " exercised ". Secondly, the plurality of conceptual systems, as
argued for by Modernism, served only to enervate dogmatic
statements of actual cognitive penetration. This essentially
pragmatic understanding of doctrinal formulations caused a
suppression of the emerging attempt to handle the difficulties involved in the reconciliation of theological plurality with
the unity of faith.
The entire issue re-emerged in the Forties with the so-called
"nouvelle theologie ". The distinction made ,by Henri Bouillard between representations and affirmations was an attempt
to preserve the stable determinacy of fajth across a variety of
conceptual frameworks. For example, Bouillard argued that
despite linguistic, philosophical and cultural differences, the
Johannine, Augustinian, Thomistic, Tridentine ·and post-Tridentine theological anthropologies contained one starble affirmation of faith: Grace is a free 1gift of God iby which man is
truly justified and empowered to do the good.2
This attempted rapprochement between historical contingency and uni'V'ersal truth-claims was greeted only cautiously
by Humani Generis. By the time of Vatican II, however, the
distinction :between a multiplicity of conceptual representations and an undergirding affirmation of faith was unqualifiedly sanctioned. 3 Theologically, this fundamental refinement haid
been honed and ¥a:riously expressed in the works of Rahner,
Lonergan and Schillebeeckx. 4 The distinction was forcefully
(London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1900), and J . .A. Mohler, Die lilinheit in
der Kirche, (Mainz: Matthias-Grunewald Verlag, 1925), sections 35-48.
2 Cf. Henri Bouillard, Conversion et grflce chez S. Thomas d'Aquin: liltude
historique, (Paris: .Aubier, 1944), pp. 212-224.
s The relevant passages are Gwudium et Spes # 62, Unita,tis Redintegra,tio
# 4, and Unita,tis Redintegra,tio # 6.
4 Cf. K. Rahner, "Considerations
on the Development of Dogma", in Theologica,l Investiga,tions v. IV, trans. by K. Smyth, (Baltimore: Helicon Press,
1966), pp. 3-35. .Also, Rahner, "What is a Dogmatic Statement", in TI, v.

HERMENEUTICS

OF DOGMA

637

promoted hy the Declaration Mysterium Ecclesiae and, most
recently, the Final Statement of the Extraordinary Synod of
Bishops.5
The greatest theological effect of this con.tent/context, affirmation/representation distinction has been the emergence in
Catholic theology of a variety of conceptual systems. The
theoretical possibility of dogmatic re-conceptualization has
given rise to numerous theological methodologies. Process
theology, liberation/praxis methodology and feminist hermeneutics, simply to name three systematic aipproaches, owe
their present vibrancy in Catholic thought to the identity/
multiplicity principle.
II. Criticisms of the Identity /Plurality Distinction.
The 'solution to the problem of contingency/universality,
originally proferred theologica.lly and finally sanctioned :by the
Magisterium, has itself spawned questions. The chief issue is
the epistemological presuppositions which govern the entire
affirmation/repl'esentation proposal. For the entire solution
rests precisely on the ability of the theologian (or, in the case
of final dogmatic validity, the Magisterium) to 1) reconstruct
the intended meanings of theological systems, hoth ancient or
modern, as these ·a:re embodied ·in varying texts; and 2) " abstract" the undergirding affirmation from the differently developed conceptual frameworks.
The chief contention of those questioning the affirmation/
representa;tion distinction is that reconstructive and abstracV, trans. by K.-H. Kruger, (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1966), pp. 42-66.
B. Lonergan, Doctrinal Pluralism, (Milwaukee: Marquette Univ. Press,
1971). .Also, Method in Theology, (London: Darton, Longman and Todd,
1971), pp. 324-326. E. Schillebeeckx, "Towards a Catholic Use of Hermeneutics'', in God the Future of Man, trans. by N. D. Smith, (New York: Sheed
and Ward, 1968), pp. 1-50.
5 For Mysterium Jlloolesiae, cf. AAS, v. LXV, p. 396fi. For the Synodal Report, cf. Origins, v. 15, (Dec. 19, 1985). The Declaration makes the distinction between dogmatic unity and a plurality of changeable conceptions. The
Synod distinguishes between unity and a proper theological pluriformity.

638

THOMAS GUARINO

tiV'e acts, ,as called for by the proposal, do not take OO:equate
account orf the ·radical demands of historicity. Especially critical of the proposed solution are those theologians influenced
by the Gadamerian current of hermeneutical phenomenology.
David Tracy, for example, in his significant attempt to estahfoh a "public " criteriology for systematic thought, rejects
any notion of the fusion of horizons (Horizontverschmelzung)
which is re-cognitive or re-:productive in kind. A reoonstructive interpretation of the hermeneutical moment represents,
for Tracy, a misguided forgetfulness of the structures of tempora.lity. Following Gadamer, Tracy understands interpretation as mediative or c11eative rather than 1:1erproductive. The
fusion of horizons, then, ibetween interpreter and text not only
the extraction orf content from context, it necessitates
the production of •an understanding which is essentially diV1erse from that of the original text. It is precisely the radical
epistemological consequences of historicity which cause Tracy
to deem the reconstructive act of the identity /plurality distinction to ,be illusory.
It follows, naturally enough, from the exclusion of reconstructive interpretation, that Tracy would find the "abstractive " act, i.e., the search for an undergirding affi.rmation within ,a variety of conceptual systems, to he gratuitous. Since the
structures of temporaJity characteristic of context are inextricably linked to the content itself, there is no epistemological
ibasis for the possible extraction of a singular affirmation. For
Tracy, the rfundamental identity which manifests itself in
hermeneutica.l theory is not that, in various interpretations,
the same thing is affirmed; rather, identity is manifested in the
[act that the same (classic) text continues to make a" claim"
thereby releasing itself to interpretation. The various trajectories of interpretation will themselves differ widely, subject
as they are to the historicality of understanding. 6 Ultimately,
for its own sake, and he
6 Tracy, of course, does not advocate plurality
seeks to establish public criteria for the adjudication of conflicting theological claims. Ultimately, however, Tracy's thought, based as it is on the

HERMENEUTICS

OF DOGMA

639

then, Tracy finds the affirmation/representation distinction to
rest on the unfounded epistemological presuppositions which
Heidegger's ana:lysis of the " world " should have laid to rest.
Edmund Farley is another significant systematic theologian
who sees a misguided understanding of finitude in the identity /plurality distinction characteristic of much Catholic theology. Farley slowly estaiblishes his case hy presenting an
archeology of knowledge in which the various axioms and presuppositions of Revelation are exposed. 7 The fundamentail
axis upon which Revelation turns is the principle of divinehuma.n identity. This simply means that an identity-syn.thesis between the divine will and human understanding has
heen traditionally rpredicated of the Scriptures, conciliar statements aind dogmatic formulations in general. These loc-i are
theologically categorized as "vehicles orf secondary representation," i.e., it is by means of these texts and statements th.at
original events are transmitted. For example, the dogmatic
statements of the early Christological councils have been theologically understood as secondary representations of the actual inner Trinitarian life. According to Farley, the revelatory
"event " has here been " levded " to its secondary form.
As a result of this " leveling '', the theological foous is no
longer the original event (in this case, Jesus), and the event's
validity, hut the vehicles (in this case the conciliar statements) and their validity. The inexorable consequence of the
Principle of Identity and the axioms of secondary vepresentation and leveling is the process of de-historicization. If the
vehicles of secondary representation are to be worthy of the
divine/human nexus, they can ·hardly he relative and errant.
On the contrary, dogmatic formulations can only perdure if
1

Heideggerian/Gadamerian
understanding of temporality, allows for a variety
of interpretations, even conflicting ones. The author may speak of this as
an ' analogical' imagination because of his unique interpretation of both the
ground and function of analogy which, in the last analysis, is highly dia·
lectical. Cf. The Analogical Imagination, (New York: Crossroad, 1981), pp.
319ff, 372ff.
Fortress Press, 1982).
1 Cf. Edmund Farley, Eoolesial Reflection, (Phila.:

640

THOMAS GUARINO

they are always a.nd everywhere valid and true. Farley concludes, therefore, that the process of de-historicization gives
rise to the axiom of Immutability.
The principle of Identity along with the axioms of secondary representation, leveling and immutability are seriously
challenged hy the awareness of the radical historicity of
thought and language. According to Farley, recent Catholic
theology has sought to rescue these constitutive axes of Re¥efation theology hy resorting to the context/content, affirmation/representation distinction. " The search is on to focafo
that about dogma, that element in dogma, beneath the relativity and errancy of the time-bound and human £ormulat:ions,
which is inerrant." 8 To that end, Catholic theologians generally admit that dogmas are formulated in particular languages,
philosophical frameworks and cultural horizons. It is conceded
that the epistemofogical constraints imposed by these historical factors never allow dogmas to 1be absolutely precise cognitive statements. As such, dogmas always retain their status
as true hut severely restricted attempts. Nevertheless, while
Catholic theology acknowledges a relativity to the expressi.on
of the content of faith, it also claims to recognize an "immutable" element, which is the content itself. It may hold, therefore, by way of example, that one may express the content of
the homoousion without utilizing the language of Chalcedon.
Like Tracy, Farley sees this identity /plurality distinction
as a naive answer :to historical requisites. He accepts as valid
what he calls the epistemological presupposition of contemporary philosophy: " Every entity occurs in an ever-changing
situation and is itself ... an ·ever-changing situation." 9 From
this ip'l'inciple,Farley infe'l's that the re-cognitive and abstractive identity assumed 'by the affirmation/representation distinction is unattainruble. One may not conclude that an equivalent meaning rperdures in new conceptual frameworks. To do
so is to igno11e the historica;l situationality of all understands Ibid., p. 96, note # 19.
p. 138.

9 Ibid.,

HERMENEUTICS

OF DOGMA

641

ing. Conciliar and dogmatic statements are determinate historical responses, intel'pretative in kind, of a pre-dogmatic
faith which inexorably seeks cogniti¥e expression. Faith, then,
is always linguistic in character. However, the structures of
temporality dictate that the cognitive expressions of faith attain to no universal or immutable validity. Ultimately, for
Farley, the epistemological archai of historical consciousness
have de-constructed the principle of Identity and the axiom of
immutability on which the content/context, affirmation/ representation distinction rests. 10
III. Emilio Betti: Historicity and Interpretation Theory.
The hermeneutical theory of Emilio Betti presents theology
with one major alternati¥e to the current of thought which
claims that the content/context, affirmation/representation
solution to the history/doctrine question is an ,illusory construct. Betti is not himself a theologian and is not primarily
interested in theological questions; howe¥er, his extensive work
on hermeneutical theory and its epistemological presuppositions qualifies him as a potential contributor to the theological
discussion. As with most recent Catholic systematic theology,
Betti is acutely concerned with assessing the relationship hetween historicity and understanding.1 1
10 It should be noted that Farley is not as immediately
dependent on
Hediegger/Gadamer as is Tracy. Ultimately, however, he embraces the notions of historicity and understanding as developed by hermeneutical phenomenology. He cannot, therefore, subscribe to the type of recognitive and
re-productive interpretative acts necessary for the gnoseological support of
the content/context distinction.
While both Tracy and Farley seek a more "public" systematic theology,
their uses of contemporary hermeneutical theories differ. Farley implies that
the notion of "claim" could develop into an individualism which ignores
man's social, intersubjective existence and, a, fortiori, his ecclesial existence.
This would undercut his attempt to establish theology as a "more rigorous "
discipline on the basis of the evidential appresentation of redeemed social
existence.
11 Betti's work has been more fully discussed on the Continent
than in
the English-speaking world. Summaries of his thought may be found in

THOMAS GUARINO

In his two ¥olume work,. Betti presents an exhaustive phenomenology of the hermeneutical situation. 12 The cornerstone
on which his work rests is the determined and invariant structure of the interpretative act. This movement is triadic in nature, involving 1) the interp11eterwho is called to understand
the meaning of texts, symbols, monuments, etc. These products
of the creative spirit are called Representative Forms or, less
frequently, Objectifications of the human spirit; fl) the
"other " spirituality who calls and speaks to the interpreter
through the Representative Form; and S) the Representative
Form itself. Betti offers a detailed analysis of each of these
constitutive elements.
In all noetic situations, the interpreter finds himself before
a Representative Form. This Form or Objectification may he
defined as perceptible material (whether text, musical notation or work of art), mediating a spiritual endowment which
is embodied within it. Through the Representative Form, one
spirituality calls to another. The Form thereby serves as the
inaugurator of a colloquy between the interpreter and the
spiritual endowment now living within the Objectification.
This correlation hetween the message fixed within the form and
the interpreter to whom it calls marks the beginning of an
actual historical dialogue.
Where Betti differs from several contemporary hermeneutical theorists is in his analysis of the message embodied in the
Representative Form. Betti emphasizes both the sta.ble deRichard Palmer, Hermeneutics, (Evanston: Northwestern Univ. Press, 1969),
pp. 54-60; Josef Bleicher, Contemporary Hermeneutics, (London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1980), pp. 27-50; and, briefly, Randy Maddox, " Contemporary Hermeneutic Philosophy and Theological Studies", in Religious
Studies, v. 21 (Dec., 1985), pp. 521-522.
i2 Betti's opus magnum is Peoria G-enerale della Interpretazione,
(TG-I),
(Milan: Dott . .A. Giuffre, 1955). The work was translated into German as
Allgemeine .Auslegungslehre als Methodik der G-eisteswissenschaften, (Tiibingen: J. C. Mohr, 1967). This later edition included an evaluation of
Gadamer's Wahrheit und Methode. Also important is Betti's response to
Gadamer in Die Hermeneutik als Allgemeine Meth-Odik der G-eisteswissenschaften, (Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1962).

HERMENEUTICS

643

OF DOGMA

terminacy of meaning affixed within the Form and, more strikingly, the possibility of its re-cognition by the historical interpreter. The Representative Form embodies a meaning and
messa:ge which has been objectified ;by the creative act of an
"Other". The process of re-cognition involves the reconstruction and
of precisely that spiritual endowment
now mediated through the Form. For Betti, the very possiibility of such re-cognition and re-construction is undergirded
by the commonness of human nature and the cognitive " openness" of the historical given.18
The re-oognitive act of the interpreter seeks to be as faithful as possible to the spirituality eJq)ressed in the Representative Form. Precisely insofar as the interpretative act succeeds
the creative act, interpretation properly called demands some
type of controllable subordination of the interpreter to the
Representative Form itself. Only this interpretafiv;e fidelity
and subordination to the Objectification of the human spirit
protects the hermeneutical axiom, "Sensus non est inferendus,
sed efferendus." 14
Along similar lines, the subordination of the interpreter to
the Representative Form emphasizes the objectified "Otherness " before which the interpreter stands. It is, of course,
precisely this otherness, the voice of a different human spirit
calling, which engenders the hermeneutical project. However,
the very " otherness " affixed in the Representative Form must
be protected from attempts to level its message to the horizon
and self-understanding of the interpreter. Once the canons of
subordination and fidelity to the Representative Form are
ignored, the "otherness" of the spiritual endowment is forgotten and there looms a temptation to validate understand1

is For Betti, shared humanity allows for an inversion of the creative and
hermeneutical moments. For his reliance here on Husserl and especiall!)'"
Nicolai Hartmann, cf. TG:I, pp. 260-262.
14 This phrase is repeated by Betti throughout his work and serves as an
epigrammatic clue to his entire hermeneutical project.

644

THOMAS GUARINO

ing by means of a framework which is imposed subjectively
and a priori.15
For Betti, however, the "otherness" of the Form does not
stand as a barrier to the re-cognition of its affixed spiritual
endowment. Precisely because of the humanity the interpreter
shares with the "other" who speaks, the interpreter is able to
re-construct the other's thought in a retrospective sense. It is,
of course, precisely at this point that the entire weight of contemporary philosophy is brought to bear on Betti's hermeneutical project. Is not Betti's work merely a reprise of historically naive systems? Does his re-cognitive pvoject take into account the undeniable fact that both thought and language
come to light within history? Must it not he recognized that
the finitude of the interpreter necessarily obviates the repro-'
ductive element of the hermeneutical task and transforms it
into a creative one?
Betti emphasizes that he is not ignorant of the demands of
historicity and temporality. His very stress on the noema/
noesis correspondence excises any possible myopic dogmatism.
He prefers, however, to speak of the unique visual angle of the
interpreter and the manner in which this undergirds the multiplicity of interpretations vis-a-vis the stab1e determinacy
of meaning of the Representative Form. A phenomenology of
epistemic .action reveals that man always interprets from his
unique perspective. It is precisely this perspectival character
of knowing and the distinctiveness of each visual angle which
issues forth in a plurality of interpretations. However, the
proper understanding of interpretative plurality must not be
15 Since a true sense of " otherness " must exist in every truly hermeneutical act, Betti holds that the act of "understanding" may be applied only
analogously to cognitive activities such as " interior " experiences.
Along similar lines, Betti thinks that speculation concerning the major
themes of existence, life and world may be called "interpretation" only in
a wide sense. Lacking Representative
Forms in which spiritual endowments
are affixed, and to which the canons of fidelity and submission may be applied, these themes necessarily lend themselves to hermeneutically ' uncontrollable' speculation.
Betti's hermeneutical (rather than metaphysical)
concern here is simply the imposition of alien conceptual frameworks.

HERMENEUTICS

OF DOGMA

645

confused with those theories which conclude from the perspectival character of knowing to the essential relativity of every
perspective. The logical inference therefmm is the rejection
of re-cognitive interpretation.
Betti claims that there are always two demands accompanying the hermeneutical task: 1) objectivity, i.e., re-cognition
and representation must he faithful :bo the "otherness " of the
determinate meaning of the Representative Form; fl) mediation, i.e., such objectivity is possible only inasmuch as the interpreter perceives the Fomn fmm his unique visual angle.
Each interpreter necessarily "interprets" within an original
context. For Betti, however, it is a misunderstanding to conclude that .context so go-verns content that ·any search for the
stable determinacy of meaning of the Representative Form
within the multiplicity of interpTetations is illusory. This is to
confuse the essentially re-constructive and mediative tasks of
interpretation with the creative and productive tasks characteristic of creation.16
it should be noted that Betti is not opposed to " productive" and "creative" readings, which he calls "speculative"
interpretation. He simply claims that such a procedure must
be distinguished from a. hermeneutical methodology which, although recognizing that understanding is necessarily determined hy the given forestructure of the unique visual angle,
seeks to protect the struhle determinacy of the Representative
Fo:mn. This latter methodology is concerned to safeguard the
" otherness " and the " autonomy" of the spiritual endowment affixed in the Representative Form. Speculative interpretation, on the other hand, is not concerned with mediating
16 Those who, given their notion of historicity,
understand interpretation
as primarily creation are necessarily locked into a constraining particularism.
"The existential limitation of understanding, which ignores the spiritual
basis of interpretation within common humanity, leads to the inhuman and
barbaric result of raising insuperable barriers among circles of men reciprocally excluding them and attributing an absolute basis to particularism."
TGI, p. 262. For Betti, this is simply the unavoidable collapse of the sensus
efjerendus into the sensus inferendus.

646

THOMAS GUARINO

and re-producing the " alien " thought objectivated in the
Form; it seeks to interpret given events and Representative
Forms from the a priori framework of a chosen conceptual
system. 11
IV. Hermeneutical Canons.
The invariant triadic structure of the hermeneutical process
gives rise to four methodological canons which, according to
Betti, govern the properly interpretative moment. 18
1. The Autonomy of the Text (Representative Form)

This canon merely serves to affirm and preserve the " otherness" affixed in the Representative Form. As such, the Form
must not be interpreted by way of any heteronomous or extrinsic standard. All tendencies to reduce or relativize the text
to one's own horiwn must be suppressed. The Representative
Form stands alone with its own objectivated spirituality; it
bears within it a stable and determinate meaning. As such it
must he considered and studied according to its own internal
coherence, rationality and necessity.
2. Reciprocal Illumination
The canon of reciprocal illumination calls .attention to the
correspondence hetween the whole and the parts of the Representative Form. The interp·reter, respecting the Form's
autonomy, must e:XJcavate from individual elements the meaning of the whole and understand the individual elements themselves in function of the whole. According to Betti, this is
merely another way of calling attention to the autonomy of
the text. By stressing the critical norms of totality and internal
coherence, Betti hopes to avoid the deficiencies of contemporary hermeneutical "extrinsicism ".
17 .Although not explicitly stated, this is certainly how Betti would interpret Heidegger's readings of the thought of Ka.nt and Nietzsche as well as
Gadamer's work on Plato and Hegel.
is TGI, pp. 305ff.

HERMENEUTICS

OF DOGMA

647

3. The Actuality (Topicality) of Understanding

The emphasis in this third canon is markedly on the side of
the interpreter's contribution to the noetic moment. The interpreter always approaches the "otherness" of Representative Forms with his own interests, concerns and mental categories. The Representative Form constitutes an embodied
spiritual endowment which the interpreter must reconstruct
and re:produce in acco11dancewith his own sensibilities and intelligence. According to Betti, it 'Would be absurd to aspire to
strip oneself of one's sll!bjectivity; on the contrary, the subjectivity of the interpreter is the indispensable condition for the
possibility of hermeneutical reconstruction. 19
4. The Canon of Hermeneutical Consonance
In this [oorth canon, Betti posits a certain hermeneutical
" congeniality " which must exist between the interpreter and
the Representative Form. Betti refers to this as ,a " fraternal
disposition " which must exist between the interpreter Mld the
spiritual endowment. 20 It '.l.'epresents a sense of
pieta:s before true humanita:s. This disposition, however, is not
some ".affective" element covertly introduced within hermeneutical methodology. The attitude of ,empathy is meant to
underscore the necessary excision of prejudices in the interpreter's confrontation with the Representative Form. It serves
to accent the fact that, if spirit is to speak to spirit, then a true
transportation must take place. The interpreter must understand the objectified spirit precisely as he intends to speak. 21
19 "While it is true that the office of interpreter
is that of researching
and understanding the meaning of the ' other ', this can hardly mean that
the interpreter is an inert recipient with a passive and mechanical operation." TGI, pp. 315-316. However, Betti again rejects the inference that the
dimension introduced by the subjectivity of the interpreter vitiates the recognitive goal of interpretation.
20 Betti notes that this is something akin to what is found in Nietzsche,
Die Frohliohe Wissensohaft, # 339, 334, 310, 305.
21 This canon, then, must be understood as another safeguard against the
epistemological bias which blurs the horizon between interpreter and inter-

648

THOM.AS GUARINO

V. The Achievement of Interpretation.
For Betti, the end or goal of interpretation is, in the first
place, re-cognition of the spiritual endowment affixed in the
Representative Form. However, as he also makes clear, this
re-cognition is never simply imitation, but is reproduction in a
wider sense. This is necessarily the case since the new Representative Form achieved by the interpreter reflects a distinct
visual angle. Further, in its didactic character, a reproductive
understanding is meant for a new circle of hearers. Therefore,
its very purpose is to re-express an original meaning in a diverse dimension, accessible to a new " audience ".
Interpretation, then, never results in simple identity. This
would be impossible given the two horizons which confront
each other in the hermeneutical situation. However, Betti
notes, some theorists confuse identity and correspondence.
The former, outside of mathematics, is epistemologically impossible. It assumes that the consonance between two spiritual
totalities could result in a rigid identity. The latter, however,
is the achievable telos of interpretation. Betti describes correspondence as an equivalency of meanings in various Representative Forms. 22 This consonance may not be understood as
an anti-dialectical identity which ignores the two horizons;
rather, it represents the highest goal of interpretation, viz., a
dialectical unification. Precisely because the process of re-cognition and re-construction can only be in accord with the education, culture and mental categories of the interpreter, the
preted. The " congeniality" called for represents, in a positive sense, the
necessity of "bracketing" prejudices vis-.a-vis the novum confronted in the
objectified Form .
.A misunderstanding of the last canon, which does borrow elements from
the thought of Schleiermacher, Boeckh and Dilthey, has occasioned the criticism that it endorses a naive immersion into the culture, Lebensioelt, etc. of
the authors of the various Representative Forms. This has caused some
hermeneutical theorists to dismiss the realistic epistemology which undergirds Betti's hermeneutics as mere nineteenth century Romanticism. Notice
the perceptive comment on this point in W. Hill, The Three-Personed God,
(Washington: CU.A Press, 1982), p. 246.
22 TGI, p. 324.

HERMENEUTICS

OF DOGMA

649

new understanding achieved will be equiv<ilent to the original
Representative Form, not identical to it. As Betti notes, "It
is a gnoseologica.l error to believe that the subject is able to
'contact' the object directly without need of his own categories." 23 On the other hand, Betti cannot countenance hermeneutical theories which discount the possibility of equivalent re-cognition. What is always at stake in interpretation
is the tension between the dual criteria o.f the autonomy of the
Form and the subjective horizon of the interpreter. For Betti,
the hermeneutical ideal demands allowing the object to speak,
even as one understands it within one's own categories. 24
The hermeneutical task, properly .fulfilled results in the
issuance of an equivalent Representative Form which expresses
the original meaning in a different dimension. Here, Betti goes
on to make a subtle distinction between understanding as pure
re-cognition and as re-production. Even re-cognition is, in a
certain sense, re-production. This is necessitated by the unique
visual angle of the interpreter. But whereas re-cognitive interpretation stresses the identity of the Representative Form and
the subsequent interpretations to which it gives rise, re-productive interpretation consciously emphasizes the uniqueness of the
representation dimension. This is simply to say that, while reproductive understanding is always essentially re-cognitive, it
more forcefully assumes the office of substituting a different
p. 326.
p. 326. Betti thinks his own formulation puts him at a certain
distance from the axiom associated with Schleiermacher, Wach, Dilthey, et
al.: "The ideal of interpretation is to understand the author better than he
understands himself." Betti claims that this formulation is equivocal since
it does not take account of the qualitative difference between the author and
the interpreter.
The author does not have an understanding which presupposes an "Other". His interpretation of his own work, therefore, will be
more or less reliable given the difficulty of placing himself at a distance
from it. The interpreter, on the other hand, has an understanding which is
more aware of the reflexive consciousness of the author, i.e., he is in a position to render explicit what was not said, but supposed; to throw light on
unexpressed motives and currents; to take account of the total spiritual attitude in which the work was generated, etc.
23 Ibid.,
24 Ibid.,

650

THOMAS GUARINO

(although equivalent) Representative Form. As such, re-productive understanding does not simply seek to understand, but
to make something newly understood. 25 Unlike pure re-cognition, re-productive interpretation is never exhausted in inte'liore hominis; it always seeks a dimension of transposition.
As transitive and social, re-productive understanding presents a new Representative Form, sometimes widely different
from the original one.26 Especially here, given the new Objectification, the critical demands of fidelity and subordination to
the original Representative Form must be rigorously invoked.
The original remains, then, as the control. It is the standard
by which the fidelity of the re-production is judged. But precisely because of the inevitable indeterminateness, ambiguity
and lacunae which exist in any Representative Form, the reproduction will draw out the suriplus of meanings which lie
fallow in the original. 21 Of course, Betti notes, this further interpretation must be governed by the canons of totality and
internal coherence.28 Only then will it achieve its goal, viz.,
the communication of a corresponding message to a circle of
listeners different from the one to which the Original Form
was first destined.
VI. The Physiognomy of Interpretation and the Hermeneutical Status of Dogmatic Statements.
The work of Betti clearly seeks to integrate the insight that
2s Cf. TGI, v. II, p. 636.
26 Again, Betti notes that pure re-cognitive
interpretation, precisely because of the actuality of understanding, posits a new Representative Form.
However, re-cognitive interpretation intends strict identity and so is less subject to the possibility of infidelity to the original Form.
21 Cf. TGI, v. II, p. 641.
2s For Betti, the significant interpretative
contrast exists between re-productive interpretation (which is essentially re-cognitive) and speculative interpretation, which dismisses on historical grounds the possibility of fidelity
to a Representative Form. For Betti, the work of Bultmann and Heidegger
(his interlocutors in TGI), as well as that of Gadamer (his chief adversary
in the German-language works), is more analogous to, rather than representative of, the actual hermeneutical project.

HERMENEUTICS

OF DOGMA

651

the structures of temporality are ontologically constitutive of
all understanding and interpretation. Unlike various Enlightenment theorists, he rejects the thesis that interpretative perspective bears a ,pejorative connotation. For him, only historical perspective accounts for legitimate multiplicity in interpretation. However, Betti's admission of the ontofo.gically constitutive character of historicity in all noetic situations is not
the equivalent of a denial of 11e-cognitiveand :re-productive
hermeneutics. To reject man's Bictual cognitive recovery of
the past (in favor of the tertium quid of a certain type of
fusion of horizons) is 'a reprise of an historicism as misguided
as the naive autonomy espoused by the Enlightenment.
Of course, it should he recognized that Betti does indeed
allow for the fusion of horizons. The horizon of the interpreter
is always confronted with the spiritual endowment affixed in
the Representative Form. Further, the interp.veter approaches
this Form with all of the philosophical, spiritual, sociological,
and psychological categories which constitute his individuality.
But Betti does not conclude from the historical subjectivity of
the interpreter to the excision of a re-cognitive understanding.
A Horizontverschmelzung must take place, but it is a fusion
which gives rise to "dialectical identity" or correspondence.
This is an obviously no denial of finitude or temporality, but
an affirmation of both the stable determinacy of meaning inherent in a text and the re-cognitive and re-productive powers
of the interpreter.
As a corollary to the fusion of horizons, one must emphasize
Betti's positive valuation of tradition. It is precisely the
" prejudice " of tradition which 'endows man with his unique
visual angle. Any denial of the subject's presupposed Lebenswelt, saturated ·as it is with epistemological ,biases, results, as
both Heidegger and Gadamer have noted, merely in Enlightenment mythology. Betti, however, seeks to conjoin rather than
to dichotomize the undeniable forestructure of understanding
and the critical rationality of the interpreter. It is certainly
true that all thought and understanding come to light in a

THOMAS GUARINO

particular linguistic and historical tradition. It is true as well
that the autonomous, "world-less" ideal of certain eighteenth
and nineteenth century thinkers has been relentlessly exposed.
Betti thinks, ho-wever, that the achievement of critical rationality lies precisely in the recognition of the inquiring subject
as inquiring. It is the interpreter's awareness o[ the ontologically constitutive structures of temporality, the pre-understanding which he "brings" to the Representative Form, the
Lebensw'elt which permeates his formulations, which ultimately allows him to perceive the differences between himself and
the endowment embodied in the Representative Form. Far
from obviating possible re-'Cognition, the elements ,which constitute the historicity of understanding both allow it, and, in
re-productive interpretation, enrich it.
Therefore, with regard to the two axioms which epigrammatically characterize the Gadamerian current of hermeneutical theory, Betti stands in qualified agreement: 1) Understanding is always interpretation and 2) understanding is an
event over which the inte11pretingsubject does not ultimately
preside. Both axioms seek to emphasize the nameless but everpresent "world " which saturates the hermeneutical moment.
With the presence of this "world", Betti is in complete concordance. With the inference that this " world " inexorably
vitiates the re-cognitive and re-productive ta.sk, he firmly disagrees.
Betti's hermeneutical phenomenology presents theology with
a theoretical ha.sis for the content/context,
resentation distinction which has slowly emerged since the
nineteenth century. With his careful analysis of re-cognition,
Betti supports the claim that the thought of an ancient text
may he recovered by an interpreter. For example, the determinate meaning embodied in the definitions of the great Christological councils may be re-presented. This possibility is
rooted in the commonality of human nature and the achievement of critical rationality vis-a-vis distanciation.
Secondly, the stable meaning affixed in these definitions may

HERMENEUTICS

OF DOGMA

658

he re-conceptua:lized by means of re-productive interpretation.
In fact, re-conceptualization is essential for conciliar definitions
precisely rbecause of the changed philosophical and cultural
horizons in which contemporary thought comes to language.
Mysterium Eoolesiae stands as the most recognizable magisterial endorsement of this and, in fact, most contemporary
Catholic theology finds here the solid basis for conceptual
pluralism. Process theology, liberation/praxis thought, •and
various schools of phenomenology are here understood as conceptual frameworks which seek re-productive interpretation
of the original Representative Forms.
A8 suoh the varying systems will always respect the dual
facets of the hermeneutical project. In the first place, there
must he faithfulness to the" otherness" and autonomy of the
original text. This involves the canons of submission, fidelity
and coherence in interpretation. The new contextualization
and conceptualization called for hy re-productive interpretation will always be rgoverned by the wntent of the original
Representative Form.
Secondly, it is precisely the new context of the proposed
conceptual system which allows re-productive interpretation
to be truly mediative and creative. The newly-wrought interpretation is mediative because it seeks to present an equivalent meaning by means of a more intelligible framework; it is
creative :because the new conceptual system necessarily reflects a unique visual angle. In its distinctness, the new Representative Form rserves to. clari.fy some of the possibilities and
ambiguities which latently exist in any formulation. The proffered re-productive understanding will extract the surplus of
meanings which lie fallow in the original Form. Theologically,
this clarification of ambiguities and the genetic expansion of
further possibilities is precisely what Ca.th<Jlic theology has
understood as the development of doctrine.
Betti's re-productive hermeneutics, then, serves both to undergird the conceptual pluralism of theology as well as to protect it from a random plurality. His work supports the "re-

654

THOMAS GUARINO

cognitive '' and " abstractive " dimensions which have dominated fundamental dogmatic thought since the late nineteenth
century. As such his interpretative theory displays the confluence between the historicity of thought and the invariant
claims of doctrinal formulations. Ultimately, hy accounting
for identity within plurality and unity within multiplicity,
Betti's hermeneutical theory allows for the cognitive penetration of theological statements even within the constricting
horizons of temporality and finitude.

TOWARDS A 'MATERIALIST' CRITIQUE OF 'RELIGIOUS PLURALISM': A POLEMICAL EXAMINATION
OF THE DISCOURSE OF JOHN lliCK AND
WILFRED CANTWELL SMITH
KENNETH SURIN

Duke University
Durham, North Oarolina

HE FACT THAT thinkers of such different theologia.I persuasions as David Tracy and John Hick regard
hemsel¥es as 'religious' and (or) 'theological pluralists ' serves to indicate that ' pluralism ' must itself be irreducibly 'plural.' In this paper I shall confine my attentions to
the version of ' pluralism ' advertised in the writings of John
Hick and, to a lesser extent, in those of Wilfred Cantwell
Smith. I am proposing, in other words, to make the assumption that what Hick and Cantwell Smith say, and assume
tacitly, about 'pluralism ' will apply, mutatis mutandis, to
other versions or manifestations of 'pluralism' which have
features in common with the position espoused hy Hick and
Cantwell Smith. I should perhaps conclude this prefatory
section of my paper by saying that the thrust of my argument will :be polemical, an admission which will probably not
excuse the aggressive tone of some of my remarks.
John Hick has written movingly about the 'spiritual pilgrimage' (his term) which .brought him to the kind of Christian self-understanding that came to he articulated in his
'Copernican theology of world religions,' a self-understanding
in which a ' Christ-centered' picture of the universe of faiths
has givcen 1way to one that is ' God-centered.' 1 It is Hick's conpilgrimage,' see God Has Many
1 For Hick's account of his 'spiritual
Names (London: Macmilla.n, 1980), pp. 1-5; and the essay 'Three Contro-

655

656

KENNETH SURIN

tention that the diversity of l"eligious and cultural traditions
necessitates ' ... a paradigm shift from a Christianity-centered
or Jesus-centered to a God-centered model of the universe of
faiths.' 2 In making this ' paradigm shift,' ' one . . . sees the
great world religions as different human responses to the One
divine Reality, embodying different perceptions which have
been formed in diffe:vent historical and cultural circumstances.' 3 Given Hick's espousal of the autobiographical mode
when prefacing his many presentations of the third ' Copernican revnlution,' it could plausibly be al"gued that these presentations are perhaps best seen as a kind of narrative, in this
case a secondary narrative-one constituting an abstract second-order discourse-whose typical and primary function in
this instance is that of a theological 'sense-making.' Hick's
theology, we are suggesting, is a ' sense-making ' narrative
which ranges over the more immediately personal, first-order
narratives recounting his decisive encounter with the cultural
and religious realities that prevailed in Birmingham when he
went to live there a couple of decades ago. The themes, categories, al"guments, etc., of Hick's 'philosophy of world religions' can thus ,be said to constitute him as a narrative character, in this case a character who of course features in his own
narratives. Now the emergence of narrative characters reversies' which introduces his recently-published collection Tke Problem of
Religious Pluralism (London: Macmillan, 1985), pp. 1-15. .A similar 'Godcenteredness ' is evinced in Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Tke Meaning and End
of Religion: A Revolutionary Approaak to tke Great Religious Traditions
(London: SPCK, 1978), pp. 170-92. Note especially the remark which concludes the chapter titled "Faith": 'The traditions evolve. Men's faith
varies. God endures ' ( p. 192) . The subtitle to this book is somewhat misabout it.
leading, because there is nothing recognizably 'revolutionary'
Cantwell Smith's work is a tepid liberal corrective to the 'exclusionary' discourse sponsored by certain strands of Christianity and the hegemonic
'Western' culture in which these strands are socially legitimated.
2 God Has Many Names, p. 6.
s Loa. ait. .A similar emphasis on religious traditions as 'historical constructs' is to be found in Cantwell Smith, Tke Meaning and Iilnd of Religion,
pp. 154ff.

RELIGIOUS PLURALISM

657

quires historical and social preconditions, and my purpose in
this paper will be to conduct an examination of the particular
historical and social preconditions that have to he assumed if
the ' religious pluralist' in general, and John Hick in particular,
are to emerge as narrative cha.racters. 4
In his 'Author's Introduction' (1920) to the 'Collected
Essays on the Sociology of World Religions,' Max Weber addresses himself to the prohlem o:f the cultural specificity of
modem 'Western' civilization. Speaking as a child of this
civilization, Weber says:
A product of [this] civilization, studying any problem of universal
history, is bound to ask himself to what combination of circumstances the fact should be attributed that in Western civilization,
and in We.stern civilization only, cultural phenomena have appeared which (as we like to think) lie in a line of development
having universal significance and value. 5

As manifestations of the 'West's' self-advertised universality,
Weber cites a wide range of cultural phenomena: systematic
methods of experimentation in the natural sciences, the elevation o:f rationality to a canonical status in philosophy, rational
harmonious music, the widespread utilization of lines and
spatial perspective in painting, systematic theology, bureaucratic administration in the political and social spheres, a
wholly capitalistic economic order, and rational industrial organization. Weber does not o:f course :wish to suggest that these
cultural phenomena emerged at the same historical moment.
The central thrust of Weber's' Introduction,' however, is that
the above phenomena are variables which progressively combine to constitute a comprehensive ' mind-set,' an episteme,
which Weber designates by the category o:f ' rationalization.'
of what I
4 The reader who is interested in the theoretical underpinnings
am proposing to undertake is referred to Fredric Jameson's quite brilliant
The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (London:
Methuen, 1981).
5 The English version of this ' Introduction ' is to be found in The Protestant ]j}thio and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (London:
Unwin, 1930), pp. 13-31. Quotation taken from p. 13.

658

KENNETH SURIN

Rationalization and its concomitant ideological manifestation,
cultural rationalism, emerged in the so-called 'early modern'
period, that is, over the course of the 15th, 16th, ·and 17th centuries. However, as Jurgen Hrubermas has argued, this process
reached its ·culminating-point in the 18th century, when traditional society is decisively and irrevocahly supplanted by its
modern successor.6 In this transition, there was a fundamental
shift from societies governed by cosmologiool world views to
those governed by de-centered or differentiated world-views.7
As a result, society ceases to be based on a single, homogeneous value-system which penetrates and orders its component
subsystems. Each subsystem is then able to function according to its own ' inner logic.' The upshot is the creation of a
whole range of autonomous and non-wbsolute ' value-spheres,'
each legitimized and rendered plausible by radically contextualized criteria that axe internal to the ' value-sphere' in question. This, as Weber sees it, is the inevitable outcome of the
' rationalization ' of ' value-spheres.' I do not wish to get embroiled in questions of Weberian scholarship. Nevertheless, I
want to make the rather trivial point that the phenomenon of
'religious pluralism ' is on all fours with those other items,
unique to the' West,' which Weber takes to be illustrative of
its self-avowed universality. Without the intellectual legacy
of modernity, in other words, the notion of
pluralism ' would lack historical grounding in any kind of socially
supported oode of public discourse. Or to put it bluntly: the
categories of 'religious pluralism ' are dialectically constituted,
in that they are constructed through intellectual and practical activities which have concrete temporal, historical and
political conditions. The names ' John Hick' and ' Wilfred
6 See Habermas, The Theory of Oommu'lllioative Action: Volume One (Reaof Society), trans. T. McCarthy, (London:
son and the Rationalization
Heinemann, 1984) . See especially pp. 173-271.
Telos, # 62,
7 On this see Richard Wolin, 'Modernism vs. Postmodernism,'
p. 10. I am much indebted to Wolin's essay for my presentation of Weber's
seminal contribution to our understanding of the constitutive features of
'modernity'.

RELIGIOUS

PLURALISM

659

Cantwell Smith ' can denote characters in a narrative that purports to 'be ' about ' a 'religiously plural ' reality precisely because historical-dare
one say ' material '?--circumstances
ha,ve generated a quite specific political economy of relations
between individuals, classes, and nations; an economy which
allows the self-professed universality of the 'West' to be articulated and sustained. Admittedly, everything that I have said
about this economy has been put in a rough-and-ready, somewhat programmatic, way. Nevertheless, this rudimentary account does specify the general lines of an approach which enables us to understand how ' religious pluralism ' comes, historically, to be constituted as a discourse.
Now I must acknowledge that none of the foregoing considerations are ,even remotely mooted by Hick in his writings.
Of Weber there is no mention. Troeltsch is mentioned once or
twice. But he is invoked only in connection with his
Oxford lecture on the place of Christianity in the world religions.
And even here his position is that of a purely titular figure,
the revered patron saint of the hrand of ' religious pluralism '
promoted by its exponents. Of Troeltsch's profound interest
trajectory of 'Western' civilization, and the
in the
philosophico-historical problems generated by this trajectoryan interest which Tmeltsch shared with Weber-thel'ie is absolutely no discussion. Instead we are told that the ' Copernican revolution ' is ' demanded by the facts of religious experience.' 8 The 'facts ' in question coalesce round the fundamental ' pluralist ' insight
s See John Hick, 'Christ and Incarnation,' in God and the Universe of
Faiths (London: Fontana/Collins, 1977), p. 148. In his Towards a World
Theology: Faith and the Comparative History of Religion (London: Macmillan, 1981), Cantwell Smith confidently announces that the 'new categories' he espouses mean that 'the line from Schleiermacher to Troeltsch ...
can be transcended now, if not indeed dismantled .. .' (p. 120). While I
am inclined to share this estimation of the tradition of nineteenth century
liberal theology (albeit on grounds that are entirely different from Cantwell Smith's), I nonetheless believe that two caveats are in order: ( 1) that,
whether he likes it or not, the brand of ' pluralism ' espoused by Cantwell
Smith is the direct theological descendant of the very libe·ral theology that

660

KENNETH SURIN

that the great world faiths embody different perceptions and conceptions of, and correspondingly different responses to, the real
or the ultimate from within the major variant cultural ways of
being human; and that within each of them the transformation of
human existence from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness is
manifestly taking place-and taking place, so far as human observation can tell, to much the same extent. Thus the great religious traditions are to be regarded as alternative soteriological
spaces within which, or ways along which, men and wome.n can
find sal va tion/libera tion/fulfillmen t. 9

There appears to be no realization that this acknowledgment
of our' religious ethnicity' (to use Hick's term) can be articulated from Hick's 'Copernican' standpoint precisely because
certain quite specific political and cultural configurations provide the requisite 'grid of intelligibility' (to use a technical
term of Michel Foucault's) for the 'religious pluralist's' discourse. The phenomenon of plurality (as opposed to ' pluralism') is of course not new. After all, the early Church had to
confront Marcion's heretical affirmation of an aibsolute antagonism between the two oovenants, an antagonism in which the
creator God of the Old Testament is subordinated to the redeeming God of the New Testament, and it is clear that the
problem of 'alternative soteriological spaces' to which Hick
and Cantwell Smith address themselves was the very one
which oonfronted Tertullian and lrenaeus (the principal theological aidversaries of Marcion) . And yet Tertullian and
Irenaeus did not, or could not, avail themselves of the linhe purports to subvert and supplant; and (2) that any denigration of liberal
theology (such as Cantwell Smith's) should not blind us to, Troeltsch's profound, and still germane, insights into the historical trajectory of 'Western' culture.
Pluralism and Absolute Claims,' in The Problems
9 John Hick, 'Religious
of Religious Pluralism, p. 47. Cantwell Smith makes a similar point in
Towards a World Theology: ' ... of this I am sure: that the cosmic salvation too is the same for an African tribesman and for a Taoist and for a
Muslim as it is for me, or for any Christian' (p. 170). Both Hick and Cantwell Smith thus espouse what Philip Almond has called 'the principle of
the soteriological equality of all faiths '. See his 'Wilfred Cantwell Smith
as Theologian of Religions,' Harvard Theologioal Review, 76 ( 1983), pp. 33542 and 'John Hick's Copernican Theology,' Theology, 86 ( 1983), pp. 36-41.

RELIGIOUS

PLURALISM

661

guistic and conceptual resources integral to contemporary
'religious pluralism.' To say, as the 'pluralist' might be inclined to say in response to this kind of objection, that theologians such as benaeus and Tertullian were creatures still
constrained by the imperatives of a benighted Christian 'exclusivism,' is simply to reintroduce the problem that confronts
us: this rejoinder fails to indicate, in a way that is even remotely plausible, why it is that historical forces generate certain discursive practices at quite specific times and places;
practices which permit the enunciation of this rather than that
set of canons (canons which are determinative of such matters
as intelligibility, truth, relevance, propriety, conviction, and so
on). Our' religious pluralist' seemingly fails to recognize that
his theories commit him to a number of quite distinctive signifying practices, practices which he can engage in only because a certain immensely compfox tissue of interests and relationships places him thus, and thereby enrubles him to be
precisely the kind of signifier that he happens to be. The signifying practices of the ' religious pluralist ' are by any standards a form of impressive human activity, and so these practices must perforce be correlatable with other forms of historically and geopolitically situated human activity. 10 In
Hick's (and Cantwell Smith's) writings, the requirement, integral to any historically situated reflection, that we ' map'
the materially-determined possibilities of signification, is totally displaced. It is displaced by the necessity, imposed by a
'morality of knowledge ' (if I may .be forgiven for putting to
another use a phrase of Van Harvey's), that we curb our inclinations towards a ' religious ethnicity ': an ' ethnicity '
which Hick and Cantwell Smith take to be incompatible with
(and here I quote Hick) 'the awa.reness of •a common human
1•0The reader of Edward W. Said's 'The Problem of Textuality: Two
Exemplary Positions,' Oritical Inquiry 4 ( 1978), pp. 673-714, and 'The Text,
the World, the Critic,' in Josue V. Harari, Textual Strategies: Perspectives
in Post-Struoturaiist Oritioism (London: Methuen, 1980), pp. 161-88, will
be only too aware of how deeply indebted I am to Said's essays.

KENNETH BURIN

history and a common human relationship to the mysterious
transcendent reality which we in the west call God.' 11
The time has come for me to venture a few wildly speculative remarks. The high--point of the ' Christian triumphalism '
decried by Hick is associated by him with the organized
Church's assertively apologetic and agg11essivelymissionary attitude towards the non-christian refigions, an attitude which
received its decisive, and some would say its most virulent, expression in the period which extends l'oughly from the time of
the Islamic threat to European Christendom in the Middle
Ages up to the first-half of the present century. This somewha;t combative stance on the Church's part was paralleled
by the rise and growth of a number of discourses in specifically
non-religious spheres, new discourses which have as their explicit focus of enunciation a geographical entity that is nonWestern and non-Christian, namely, that pa.rt of the glohe
which is designed as ' the East: The two discourses in question are those spoken by the practitioners of ethnography and
Orientalism. If religion and commerce are two dimensions of
a common historical prooess w:hich enables the alien reaiity of
11 God has Many Names, p. 9. This 'morality of knowledge ' is very much
the motivational dynamo of Hick's theology. It has an undeniable affective
power, a power which will be acknowledged by anyone who has some awareness of Hick's tireless and unstinting efforts to combat the endemic racism of
present-day British society. Cantwell Smith subscribes to the same universalizing 'morality of knowledge' in adumbrating his flagrantly ideological
personalism. It is better to keep silent than to utter such platitudes as
' the truth of all of us is part of the truth of each of us ' (Towards a World
Theology, p. 79). See also his The Faith of Other Men (New York: Harper
and Row, 1962), p. 11. Such platitudes can only bring comfort and satisfaction to those who do not want the screams of our society to be heard.
For a similarly ideological affirmation of an 'increasingly common history,'
see George Rupp's contribution to Cantwell Smith's l!'estsohrift, titled 'The
Critical Appropriation of Traditions: Theology and the History of Religion,'
in Frank Whaling, ed., The World's Religious Traditions: Essays in Honor
of Wilfred Cantwell Smith (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1984), pp. 165-80. See
also the section titled 'Pluralism in an Emerging World Culture,' in Rupp's
Beyond Flmistentialism and Zen: Religion in Pluralistic World (New York:
Oxford University, 1979), pp. 13-16. We shall see later why this affirmation
of an 'increasingly common history ' is ineluctably ideological.

RELIGIOUS PLURALISM

668

the unChristian, barbarous East to be distanced, separated and
then subjugated, the discourses of Orientalism and ethnography must be seen as the third component of this self-same
historical process. It is being suggested, in other words, that
religion, trade and knowledge operate conjointly to confine
non-Europeans to their position as non-whites, in order to
make the notion of whiteness-a notion threaded seamlessly
into the fabric of European culture and so-called Christian
civilization___;superior,purer, stronger. I am well aware that I
•am trafficking in ideas that are highly controversial, and which
have generated a lot of bad-tempered discussion in the last
decade or so. The thesis I have just outlined has been argued
for most .persuasively by a number of scholars, most notably
Edward Said, Bryan Turner and Johannes Fabian. 12 To their
credit, Hick and Cantwell Smith are fully cognizant of Christianity's massive complicity with the political and economic
forces which occupied, ruled and exploited almost all 0£ the
non-European world. Indeed, one of the primary motivations
behind their adoption of a 'theocentric' or 'Copernican'
standpoint is precisely the desire to discredit ·and to undo the
theological legacy of this shameful complicity. The criticism
that I wish to direct to Hick and Cantwell Smith (and, a:ll
else being equal, their fellow ' religious pluralists ') is this: in
seeking to dismantle the dogmatic and institutional framework which reflects and reinforces Christianity's taicit and
overt collusion with those structures of coloni·al power and aiuthority that enabled the European powers to occupy 853 of
the earth's surface by 1918, they are addressing themselves to
only one (or perhaps two) of the three dimensions of the historical process which culminated in the subjection of the East.
I want to argue now that, as a disaourse, 'religious pluralism'
is at depth hardly different from the discourses of ethnography,
12 See Edward W. Said, Orientalism
(Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1985);
Bryan S. Turner, Marm and the End of Orientalism (London: Allen and Unwin, 1978); and Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology
Makes Its Object (New York: Columbia University, 1983).

664

KENNETH SURIN

anthropology and Orientalism. That is to say, when it comes

to representing other cultures, societies, histories, etc., the
'political economy,' ' the imaginative geography' 13 presupposed by Hick's 'global theology' and Cantwell Smith's
' world theology ' is not materially different from the similar
economies and geographies sponsored iby anthropology and
Orientalism. If the discourses of the anthropologist and the
Orientalist are sectarian, coercive and dominative, in that they
effectively override the historical reality of that part of humanity which is non-Western and non-<white, then Hick's and
Smith's 'pluralism,' its protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, is essentially such that it is unable to remedy and
to subvert the exclusions, discriminations, separations and a;bsences which lie at the heart of these discourses. In the discourse of Orientalism the Orient serves as the anti-type of
Europe and everything that Europe purports to represent.
In the discourse of 'religious pJuralism' we have what is
fundamentally the liberal corrective to Orientalism. For the
Orientalist, the Orient is the Occident's 'silent Other.' 14 For
the ' religious pluralist,' howev;er, the non-European and nonChristian are incorporated into a common humanity having,
in Hick's words, 'a common human history and a common
human relationship to the mysterious transcendent reality
which we in the west call God.' 15 The first point to note
about this ahistorical affirmation of ' a common human history' is that it is irreducibly ideological. There can be no
'common human history ' as long as the existing politcial and
economic order constitutes a 'world-system ' whose structures,
group members, rules of legitimation, etc., require the systematic consignment of masses of human beings into political
and economic subjugation. 16 To say that the hungry nomad in
1s To use a phrase of Said's in his 'Orientalism Reconsidered,' Race and
Olass 27 ( 1985), p. 2.
14 Said, ' Orientalism Reconsidered,' p. 5.
15 Quoted above, p. 7.
is On the modern economic ' wor Id-system,' see Immanuel W allerstein, The
Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the FJuro-

RELIGIOUS

PLURALISM

665

Chad and the prosperous investment banker in Zurich have
' common human history ' as long as the existing political and
nomie forees and relationships which maintain the nomad in
his or her poverty and the well-off citizen of Zurich in his or
her affluence. To dress up the imperatives of a one-way history in the garbs of a universalistic ' pluralism ' is effectively
to maintain reality in its existing unredeemed form. In transcending or ohscuring the radical historical particularity of the
situation of the nomad in Chad, the ' religious pluralist,'
despite his or her best intentions, succumbs inevitably to a
most profound illusion, an illusion which has been characterized thus by T. W. Adorno:
The familiar argument ... that all people and all races are equal,
is a boomerang ... Abstract utopia is all too compatible with the
insidious tendencies of society. That all men are alike is exactly
what society would like to hear. It considers actual or imagined
differences as stigmas indicating that not enough has yet been
done; that something has still been left outside its machinery, not
quite determined by its totality .... An emancipated society, on
the other hand, would not be a unitary state, but the realization
of universality in the reconciliation of difference. Politics that are
still seriously concerned with such a society ought not, therefore,
propound the abstract e:quality of men even as an idea. Instead,
they should point to the bad equality today, ... and conceive the
better state as one in which people could be different without fear.
To assure the black that he is exactly like the white man, while
he obviously is not, is secretly to wrong him still further. He is
benevolently humiliated by the application of a standard by
which, under the pressure of the system, he must ne:cessarily be
found wanting, and to satisfy which would in any case be a doubtful achievement. The melting-pot was introduced by unbridled
industrial capitalism. The thought of being cast into it conjures
up martyrdom, not democracy. 17

I am suggesting, in other words, that it is no mere coincidence
that 'global' theologies have appeared at the precise historipean World-l!Joonomy in the Bi(J)teenth Century (New York: Academic Press,
1974); Fredric Jameson, 'Postmodernism, of the Cultural Logic of Late
Capitalism,' New Left Review, # 146, (1984), pp. 52-92.
11 Minima Moralia, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott,
(London: Verso, 1974), pp.
102-3.

666

KENNETH BURIN

cal moment when capitalism. has ·entered its multinational
struge; a stage in which (and here I quote Peter Worsley):
The,se [multinational corporations] operate, by definition, at a
new, 'transcendental' global level, ... their operations are worldwide. The largest, Exxon,. has some 300 subsidiaries in over fifty
countries. Political influence apart, the sheer scale of their operations means that the decisions they take are often more important
to a country than those taken by its government, and not only in
the case of the smaller countries. Even large, developed countries
are losing the capacity to control their own economic future. Today, General Motors spends more than the Japanese government
(and Japan is the world's fourth largest industrial Power); Ford
spends more than the French government's defence expenditure;
and Imperial Chemical Industries has a budget larger than that of
Norway. In the Third World, in 1970, only three Latin American
countries-Brazil, Mexico and Argentina-had a GNP superior to
the annual sales of General Motors, Standard Oil, Ford and Royal
Dutch Shell. The capacity of governments in societies with a
GNP of less than $450 per capita per annum to exercise sovereign
choice is thus extremely limited. 18
But we need to look a little more closely at Hick's theological method if we are to see how exactly it is that ' religious
pluralism' is a comprehensive and homogenizing historical
scheme which assimilates to itself, and thereby tames and
domesticates, the practices and beliefs of the different religious
traditions. The bare bones of ' Copernican theology ' can be
specified thus: the ultimate and transcendent divine reality
which is common to all the world religions is a noum,enon that
is Peter Worsley, The Three Worlds: Culture and Development (London:
Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1984), p. 317. Cantwell Smith exults that evidently the new way that we are beginning to be able to see the global history
of humankind is presumably the way that God has seen it all along'
(Towards a World Theology, p. 18). This is a 'global history' in which 67
per cent of the population of Africa, Asia and Latin America are designated
as ' seriously poor ' and 39 percent as ' destitute ' by the ILO; in which
Africa's debt burden multiplied 22 times between 1960 and 1976 (figures
quoted from Worsley, The Three Worlds, p. 203 and p. 317). One can only
hope that Cantwell Smith is mistaken in his presumption, and that God sees
the world somewhat differently from the author of Towards a World Theology.

RELIGIOUS

PLURALISM

667

' is schematised or concretised in a range of divine images,'
phenomenal 'images ' whioh are culturally-conditioned and
henoe culture specific.19 From the standpoint of the ' Copernican
theology', these culture specific claims are of course claims that
have to be' bracketed': they merely' concretize,' in culturallyspecific ways, abstract ' Copernican ' theological principles
such as ' the ultimate divine reality is the uncreated creator of
the universe' and ' salvation occurs when the individual
abandons self-centeredness for Reality-centeredness,' and so
forth. Now quite a few theologians and philosophers of religion have dealt with Hick's delineation of the rela6onship between the universal (and ' pluralist ') ' Copernican theology '
and the various particular (' exclusivist ') 'Ptolemaic theologies,' and I do not think that there is much more that can
be added to the great deal that has already been said on this
matter. It would pel'haps be more profitable if we attended instead to the political cosmology which underlies the ideology
that is 'religious pluralism.'
Our starting-point in this enterprise is Hick's conviction
that it is in the nature of an (' exclusivist ') 'Ptolemaic theology' to ,be saturated hy mytho1ogical elements that are
culturally-conditioned.
(The 'Copernican theology,' by contrast, is quite free of such problematic elements.) In this
scheme of things, the adjective ' mythological,' and its cognate
expressions, are used as part of a process of temporal distancing: ' once upon a time there were Christians who really believed that God was in Jesus,' ' once upon a time there were
Christians who really believed that Jesus' death was a vicarious atonement for human sin,' and so on. Hick's qualified
espousal of the thesis of ' cultural relativism' therefore serves
two purposes. First, it justifies the supersession of the ('exclusivist ') 'Ptolemaic theologies ' by the glohal ' Copernican '
theology. Hick, rufter all, believes that there is a world-his19 On this see Hick's ' Towards a Philosophy of Religious Pluralism.'
N eue
Zeitsohrift fiir Systematisohe Theologie and Religionsphilosophie 22 ( 1980),
pp. 142-3.

668

KENNETH SURIN

torical sanction ·for this supersession--1we now live in ' the
post-eolonial era,' etc. Second, it facilitates the ' translation'
of ' Ptolemaic' religious images, symbols, dogmas, etc., into
the ' Copernican' idiom. Thus, for example, to say, a;s a certain kind of Christian would say, that Christ's death was a
ransom for my sin is, in Hick's terms, a 'culture specific' way
of saying that Jesus has an unsmpassruble significance for me
when I endeavour to make the transition from self- to Realitycenteredness. It is hard to know whether one is doing Hick
justice here. Be gives the impression in his writings that the
adjective 'culturally-specific' is virtually coextensive with the
adjective' mythological.' (I am not totaUy sure of my grounds
for saying this-it would ibe interesting to find out if the impression I have gained is sha11ed by others.) But regardless of
this difficmlty, the thrust of Hick's strategy is quite evident:
the category of ' myth,' and by implication the underlying
thesis of 'cultural relativity,' function in Hick's theology as
distancing devices. They are used by him in a way which
effectively petrifies the doctrinal components of the different
religious traditions, a petrification that is a necessary prreliminary to their subsequent integration or 'translation' into
the ' common soteriological structure' posited by the ' Copernican theology.' ·20 The strate gy pursued is, despite Hick's best
intentions, that of Procrustes: the global discourse that is the
'Copernican theology'-regiments or 'irons out' the somewhat messy, idiosyncratic and recalcitrant historico-culturaJ.
features of the particular religions. The discourse of the ' religious pluralist' appropriates and displaces the si·gnifying and
representing functions of the various religious traditions. It
creates an optic which gently overrides their historical reality.
Orientalism imposed, and still imposes, a muteness on its
1

1

20 On this 'common soteriological structure,'
see Hick, ' On Grading Religions,' in The Problems of Reiigious Pluraiism, pp. 67-87. Cantwell Smith
explicitly endorses the principle of such a structure in the passage quoted in
note 9 above. .Also significant in this context is Cantwell Smith's resolutely
Bultmannian stress on the 'presentness' of the faith-event. For this see
Towards a World Theofogy, pp. 176:ff.

RELIGIOUS PLURALISM

669

(Oriental) objects. Hick's position can he seen as an essentially liberal corrective to the discourse of Orientalism-his own
discourse gives the members of all 'non-Western' religious
and cultural traditions a voice and a hearing, on one unexpressed condition, namely, that they acquiesce in his homogenizing world historical scheme, a scheme which sedately, but
relentlessly, uses its distancing devices to assimilate histories,
cultures, peoples and religious traditions to itself. In this
scheme, the different religions are only different ways of saying
or experiencing or striving for the 'same' thing, that is,
' Reality-centeredness.' In the process, the ' otherness,' of the
Other is traduced, and the :veal possibility of any kind of
dialectical confrontation between the different religious traditions is extinguished. The faiths have the structure of commodities: they are fungible, homogeneous entities which are
to be consumed according to the preferences of the individual
consumer. 'Pluralism,' thus conceived, shamelessly reinforces
the reification and privatization of li£e in advanced capitalist
society. Such is the political cosmology of' religious pluralism.'
As you would probably have gathered by now, I am inclined
to the view that this cosmology, and the discourse in which it
is articulated, need to be overturned. To aocomplish this we
need a discourse that will fragment, dislocate, decenter and
dissolve the experiential and linguistic terrain covered iby
' religious pluralism.' I shall conclude by indicating,. in a crude
and grossly schematic way, how this overturning might in principle .be accomplished.
Intrinsic to the ' Copernican theology ' is a vulgar historicism: one that is sweepingly classificatory, empathizing and
relativist, and thus concerned above all with the ' average '
characteristics of the different religions. This historicism
evinces no real understanding of the central problematic which
confronts anyone who is concerned about the relation between
religion and truth: namely, how can something enduring and
ineffable (which is what truth itself is), emerge from something sensuous and time-bound (which is what religion is)?

670

KENNETH SURIN

The historicist outlook, by valorizing the latter aspect to the
exclusion of the former, merely dissolves this problematic.
What we need, therefore, is an approach that will accept that
reHgions are historically-conditioned, while seeking at the same
time to preserve wha.t is enduring in them (their truth-content,
shall we say) , a truth-content that is distorted by the cBJpricious idealism of the historicist outlook. The historicism of
the ' veligious pluralist ' prompts him to look for commonalities of theme and structure, the 'average traits' of the reli·gions as it were; and in the process the religions, which should
themselves be the object of critical analysis, are degraded into
mere examples and illustmtions of the pervasive themes of the
'Copernican theology.' An appvoach which seeks to dismantle
this historicism will focus on the intrin8W mak!e-u;p or 'natural
history' of the religions. It will focus in particular on the extreme or ' non-average ' features, that is, the unique material
content, of each religion. It will be a aipproach which realizes,
with Adorno, that
the matters of true philosophical interest at this point in history
those in which Hegel, agreeing with tradition, expressed his
disinterest. They are nonconceptuality, singularity, and particularity-things which ever since Plato used to be dismissed as transitory and insignificant, and which Hegel labelled 'lazy Existenz.' 21

A:gainst the seBJmless and totalizing arrangement of concepts
that is the 'Copernican ·theology,' this non-heteronomous alternative approach wi.U rivet itself on that which qualifies as
'lazy Existenz,' Le., that which is particular and peculiar. In
so doing, it will conform to Walter Benjamin's injunction that
' truth is not a pvocess of exposure which destroys the secret,
but a revelation which does justice to it.' 22
.21 T. W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), p. 8. Translation slightly altered.
22 The Origin, of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne, (London:
NLB, 1977), p. 31. The alternative approach that I am seeking to expound
is essentially an application of a number of ideas developed by Benjamin in
his famous ' Epistemo-Critical Prologue' to the Trauerspiel study. Central
to Benjamin's position is the thesis that 'truth-content is only to be grasped

RELIGIOUS PLURALISM

671

Hick employs the noumenal-phenomenal distinction, and insists that the noumenal divine reality is 'schematized' or
' roncretiz·ed ' in the phenomenal realm. But he does not really
tell us how access to the rioumenal sphere is in principle to
:be secured. He observes the Kantian injunction that theology
should remain within the hounds of phenomenal experience,
but he has not, as far as I am aware, s·aid anything a;bout the
modalities where.by the phenomenal sphere yields noumena.I
truth. At any rate,. there is no specification in his work of the
way (or ways) in which noumenal truth can he extracted from
concrete objects, but without transcending their historical particularity.
In Benjamin's 'materialist' hermeneutic, the material-content of an object originates at a specific, transient moment in
history, and so the noumenal truth locked in objects can be
released only when historical truth contained in the concrete
particulair is released. And this truth is released only when the
interpreter refrains from seeking to justify, to homogenize,
reality. To quote Benjamin:
The structure of truth ... demands a mode of being which in its
lack of intentionality resembles the simple existence of things, but
which is superior in its permanence. Truth is not an intent which
realizes itself in empirical reality; it is the power which determines
the essence of this empirical reality. 23
through immersion in the most minute details of material-content'
(p. 29).
Translation slightly altered. I must emphasize that it is simply not possible to do justice to Benjamin's recondite theory of knowledge in such a brief
discussion. Politically, one is reminded of Foucault's injunction that 'a
progressive politics is one which recognizes the historic conditions and the
specified rules of a practice, whereas other politics recognize only ideal necessities, univocal determinations, or the free play of individual initiatives.'
See his 'Politics ·and the Study of Discourse,' Ideology and Oonsoiousness
3 (1978), p. 24.
2a The Originai of German Tragic Drama, p. 36. I have chosen to read
Benjamin as the exponent of a 'materialist' hermeneutic, but accept tbe
need to qualify this reading by agreeing witb Susan Buck-Morss that tbe
'Epistemo-Critical Prologue' was not intended to be a 'materialist' text.
See her 'The Dialectic of 'T. W . .Adorno,' Telos, # 14 ( 1972), pp. 137-44.
However, I believe that the 'completion' of Benjamin's text requires tbe
reader to construe it as a text tbat is ' dialectical ' and 'materialist.'

KENNETH SURIN

Truth lies beyond all intention. The universal is not to be
accorded primacy over the self-contained particular, the hypostatized general concept OVier the concrete object. The uniViersal must be deduced from within the boundaries of the particular. The truth embodied in the idea has to emerge from
the concrete particular in purely immanent, non-coercive, intentionless fashion. The essentially heterogeneous object cannot be reduced to a £unction of the conceptual system; it cannot be constituted by the thinking subject. The particular has
an isolated singularity, it ha:s certain concealed contours, which
resist assimilation by the oognizing subject. Or as Adorno, who
was profoundly influenced by Benjamin, put it:
Contemplation without violence, the source of all the joy of truth,
presupposes that he who contemplates does not absorb the object.

' A distanced nearness.' This should be the motto of anyone
who seeks to overturn the deep-I1ooted monism of those who
pI1ofess to he exponents of ' religious pluralism.' ' A distanced
nearness ' would express the conviction of someone who believed that a. true philosophy of the relationship between the
faiths would be one that safeguarded the 'otherness,' the
'strangeness,' of the other, and this precisely by not incorporating the various faiths into the comprehensive, totalizing
framework of the ' Copernican theology.' The ' Copernican '
theological paradigm evinces a profound idealism (in the
pejora;tive sense of the term) , an idealism which shows itself
in Hick's programme-where the different world faiths are unrelentingly assimilated by an abstract and ahistorical theoretical superstructure-with 1an outcome that is potentially just
as insidious as the ' exclusivism ' of the old ' Ptolemaic ' theologies. There are some who might go further, and say that
the ' .Copernican theology ' is even more baneful that its
' Ptolemaic ' alternatives precisely because this homogenizing
tendency is obscured by the ' pluralist's ' loud disavowal of
'exc1usivism.' The compl1omised record of political liberalism
24 Minima

Moralia, p. 89.

RELIGIOUS PLURALISM

673

vis-a-vis the so-called ' post-colonial' world should serve as a
salutary reminder to those who are spellbound by the 'religious pluralism ' that is the theological companion of this
ambivalent political liberalism. The Christian who is seeking
to :feature as a character in any narrative :featuring other :faiths
is perhaps best advised to avoid the narrative :framework supplied by the ' religious pluralist.' This :framework is incapable
o:f sustaining negation, the real negation that betokens a true
' Copernican turn ' to the disturbing, intractable ' otherness '
of the Other. The 'pluralist's ' na:r:rative, in rendering this
'otherness' tractable, subverts it in the viery process of affirming it. In truth: it is no ' Copernican revolution.' 25

25 A version of this paper was read in March 1986 to the Comparative
Religion Seminar at the Divinity School, University of Cambridge, England.
I am grateful to Julius Lipner, Don Cupitt, Brian Hebblethwaite and Graham
Miles for their helpful comments and criticisms during the seminar, and to
Gerard Loughlin for subsequent discussion. This ess.ay is to appear in Ian
Hamnett, ed., Religious Pluralism and Unbelief: Studies Oritiaal and Comparative (New York and London: Routledge, in press) .

THE MARVELOUS EXCHANGE:
RAYMUND SCHWAGER'S INTERPRETATION
THE ffiSTORY OF SOTERIOLOGY

OF

JOHNP. GALVIN

The Oath-Olia University of America
Washington, D.O.

I

N A WIDE-RANGING series of studies of disparate material, the French ethnologist and literary critic Rene
Girard has proposed 'a remarkably comprehensive anthropological theory. Girard identifies imitation, which inevita.bly
issues in rivalry and violence, as the decisive force in human
conduct. In primitive societies, ,Jacking centralized civil authority and confronted with recurrent threats to survival, a
fragile social order is preserved solely by discharging violence
upon an arbitrarily chosen victim. According to Girard's
analyses, periodic ritual reenactment of this primal event is the
source of all great social institutions; the "scapegoat mechanism " thus lies at the root of human culture. 1
While Girard has devoted increasing attention to examining
the Judeo-Christian tradition from the perspective of his anthropology,2 more thorough application of his thought to
Christian theological themes has been undertaken by Raymund Schwager, a Swiss Jesuit professor of dogmatics at
the University of Innsbruck. In a book published in 1978,
Schwager argued that Girard's theory offers a useful framework for addressing various biblical issues (the pervasiveness
1 Cf. especially Violence and the Sacred (Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins, 1977) ;
Des choses cachees depuis la fondation du monde (Paris: Grasset & Fasquelle, 1978); The Scapegoat (Baltimore: John Hopkins, 1986). For discussion of the bearing of Girard's thought on biblical issues cf. Robert North,
"Violence and the Bible: The Girard Connection," OBQ 47 (1985), 1-27.
2 Cf. esp. Des choses cachees depuis la fondation du monde, pp. 163-304.

675

676

JOHN P. GALVIN

of violence in the Old Testament; the diversity of Old Testament depictions of God; the prophetic critique of sacrifice; and
the salvific significance of Jesus' public life and death) which
have pvoven intractable from other perspectives. 3 Since the appearance of that work, he has extended his testing of the theological value of Girard's thought, chiefly through publication of
a series of ten articles in the Zeitschrift fur katholische Theologie on major figures and themes from the history of soteriology. These essays, always conceived as an integral whole,
have now been gathered in a single volume; as a unit, they
form a significant account of the history of Christian thinking
on a central theological topic. 4
Sohwa;ger devotes his first six studies to the patristic period.
His historical survey begins with an examination of the contrasting soteriologies of Marcion and Irenaeus, under the title
" The God of the Old Testament and the God of the Crucified" (pp. 7-31). Marcion's questioning of the inner unity of
the Old Testament and the apostolic writings led him to reject
the Old Testament as the revelation of a creator God of rigorous justice, far inferior to the God of love manifest in Jesus
Christ. Corruption of Christ's teachings by his disciples led to
the calling of Paul, who alone preached the gospel in pure
form. Marcion therefore assembled a canon of Pauline writings (minus alleged regressive intevpolations) rand reconwhat he judged to he the sole authentic
structed f:vom
written gospel, one communicated directly to Paul hy Christ.
In opposition to such Gnostic thought, Irenaeus rejected any
dualism in the understanding of creation and :vedemption and
1

1

a Brauahen wir einen Siindenbook?: Gewalt und ErlOsung in den biblisohen
Sohriften (Munich: Kosel, 1978); an English translation has recently been
published: Must There Be Scapegoats?: Violenoe and Redemption in the
Bible (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987). For presentation and discussion of this stage of Schwager's work cf. John P. Galvin, "Jesus as Scapegoat?: Violence and the Sacred in the Theology of Raymund Schwager,"
Thomist 46 ( 1982), 173-194.
4 Der wunderbare Tausoh: Zur Gesohichte und Deutung der ErlOsungslehre
(Munich: Kosel, 1986). Pp. 327. DM 34.00.

RAYMUND SCHWAGEll AND SOTERlOLOGY

677

consequently defended the unity of the two testaments. Their
distinct economies of salvation result from a wise divine pedagogy, ev;er attentive to different stages in the gradual maturation of the human raee. The Old Testament is a preparation
for the recapitulation of all things in Christ; it should be understood typologically, iby reference to its fulfillment, in a
manner not possible within the Old Testament itself. In unfolding this 1conception, Irenaeus maintained aigainst Marcion
the inseparability iof divine justice and goodness: God's love
is manifest in the Old Testament as well as in the New; if anything, the New Testament is harsher than the Old in imposing
punishment on the unrepentant sinner.
In assessing this :fundamental controversy, Schwager recognizes the legitimacy of Irenaeus's hasic convictions, but finds
his theological stance inadequate in several respects. The application of typological exegesis is at times arbitrary (cf. e.,g.
Adversus Haereses V 8,8, where the distinction of clean and unclean animals [Lev 11.1-8] is imaginatively interpreted as a
reference to Christians, paigans, Jews and heretics); no
thorough theology of the cross is developed; and portions of the
Old Testament (e.g., Ezek 21.1-17) whose portrayal of God
contrasts sharply with that of the New remain unexplained.
Despite deficiencies in his solution, Marcion must he credited
with keen awareness of a real problem posed by the widely
varying conceptions of God in different biblical passages. The
unity of the Bible is still a serious issue; if anything, modern
exegesis has exacerbated matters by uncovering more precisely the diversity of theological perspectives reflected in the text.
In Schwager's judgment, Girard's theory represents a significant advance in grasping the complex interrdationship of the
two testaments. The Old Testament is a mixed collection of
texts, which reflect in widely varying proportions human projection of attributes onto God and divine revelation of God's
true nature. A soteriology developed from Girard's perspective
and accenting the recapitulation of all human sin in the fate of
Jesus can provide a critical foundation for consistent inter-

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JOHN P. GALVIN

pretation of Old Testament texts: precisely those passages in
which God is seen as infected by jealous violence are to be
criticized theologically. The New Testament's use of the Old
is thus less eclectic than it may at first seem to be.5
A second phase in the post-biblical history of soteriology is
examined under the rubric "Christ's Victory over the Devil"
(pp. 32-53). Here Schwager assesses patristic thought on the
descent into hell, the deception of the devil through concealment of Christ's divinity, and the idea of divine payment of a
just ransom to the devil in the redemption of the human race
through Christ's death. Considering especially Augustine,
Gregory of Nyssa and a homily ascribed to John Chrysostom,
Schwager finds that patristic efforts to specify the content of
Christ's triumph often succumb to unacceptable theological
constructions which attribute deliberate deceptive intent to
both God and Jesus.
Recourse to the New Testament in the light of Girard's
theory provides a more promising avenue of thought. Satan is
mentioned frequently in the New Testament, where he is characterized chiefly as deceiV"er and tempter; yet his defeat is only
foretold, not described. Schwager suggests that the ultimate
form of deception may he the classification of Satan as a
separate being. The charructeristics attributed to Satan in the
New Testament are in fact the public fo:nces motivating Jesus'
opponents; the New Testament interprets them as a collective
conspiracy of universal scope, hidden too deepJy to be recognized by the individual, hut operative as a surreptitious human
effort to usul'l> the place of God. Through Jesus' rejection and
crucifixion this satanic undertaking is exposed. God is revealed
as pure love, ·willing:freely to offer even sinners participation in
5 Sch wager's obsel'V'ations (" Eindriicke von einer Begegnung," in GewaZt
und Gewaltlosigkeit irn Alten Testament [ed. Norbert Lohfink; QD 96; Freiburg: Herder, 1983], pp. 214-224) after participating in a. convention of the
"Arbeitsgemeinschaft
deutschsprachiger
katholischer
Alttestamentler"
in
Neustift bei Brixen, August 24-28, 1981, accent this theme. The meeting w.as
dedicated to examining the implications of Girard's thought for Old Testament exegesis.

RAYMUND SCHWAGER

AND SOTERIOLOGY

679

his own divine life. The satanic human will is thus overcome
on the cross. Analysis from Girard's perspective thus provides
a way to wrest acceptable meaning from most patristic soteriological themes; only the motif of a just ransom paid to Satan
must he rejected as totally inappropriate. In Schwager's judgment, these reflections have immediate contemporary relevance, for enhanced alertness to collective mechanisms of deception, which Christianity has traditionally found difficult to
detect, is especially needed in modern society.
Returning to examination of individual patristic theofogians,
Schwager analyzes the soteriology of Athanasius under the
title " Curse and Mortality-Sacrifice and Immortality " (pp.
54-76) . In his anti.Arian writings, Athana:sius developed a
conception of redemption which aiooented the theme of divinization. Through Adam's sin, the human race was subjected to
the material iworld, fell under the verdict of the Law, a.nd regressed to the naturiail state of creation, hereft of the divinely
promised immortality. Through the Incarnation, the Logos
made it rpossibleto find God in the flesh, bore the curse of the
Law iby offering his body .for condemnation, and inserted into
human history ·a fimn principle of immortality.
Schwager praises Athanasius's critique of Arianism and his
effort to consider sin ·in the context of a doctrine of creation.
Yet some points remain problematic. The idea of sin as orientation toward the material world is a remnant of Platonic
thought, insufficiently reexamined in light of Christian understanding of creation. The explanation of Jesus' death as bearing the punishment imposed on violators of the Law overlooks
a deeper mechanism of evil, which "necessarily " seeks a scapegoat .for its deeds. The emphasis on natural conferral of immortality through the Incarnation, as a way of insuring its
stable presence, leaves insufficiently illuminated questions regarding the role of Christ's human freedom and the final significance of the freedom of other human beings. These issues
thus remain for further investigation.
·Gregory of Nyssa's "physical" doctrine of redemption is
1

680

JOHN P. GALVIN

then examined in the essay from which the book derives its
title ("The Marvellous Exchange" [pp. 77-100]). In extended
confrontation with R. Hiibner's Die Einheit des Leibes Christi
bei Gregor von Nyssa (Leiden: Brill, 1974), Schwager unfolds
Gregory's anthropological conception of a. fundamental ontological unity of humanity even prior to moral action. Soteriology developed within this anthropology necessarily accents
the salvific significance of the Incarnation, which involved a
real divine acceptance of human nature. In addition, Gregory's
soteriology is intrinsically affected by his conviction that
created freedom is naturally incapable of final perseverance in
evil-an important aspect of his doctrine of apokatastasis.
Yet Gregory also presents inchoative theologies of the crucifixion and resurrection. Christ's death on the cross was necessary to pay the just ransom due the devil for fallen man.
Through deception with regard to Christ's divinity the devil
was overcome, inaugurating a process whose eventual effect
will be the reconciliation of all, even the devil himself. Gregory
also presents cosmic speculations on the symbolism of the
cross, and suggests in some texts an unusual theory of sacrifice, according to which the Logos separated his hotly and
blood at the Last Supper to offer himself at that time to the
Father. The resurrection is the restitution of our nature to its
pristine state; the body is not shed, but assumes angelic form.
Schwager acknowledges the value of Gregory's exalted concept of God and his profound awareness of the marvellous exchange in which the Logos assumes human mortality and
weakness in order to adorn us with iglory and immortality.
But, as in the case of Athanasius, weaknesses exist in the understanding of created freedom and in a corresponding underestimation of the salvific significance of Christ's human freedom. Needed is a more adequate theology of the c:voss, a;ble to
recognize the human burdening of sin upon Christ and the divine 11esponse of pa.rdon and love. Pursuit of this thought will
demand clarification of the respective functions of representation .and freedom in the process of redemption.

681

RAYMUND SCHWAG:ER AN'.D SO'.l'ER!OLOGY

The theme of freedom emerges more strongly in the following essay, as Schwager discusses the Pelagian controversy
("Infallible Grace versus Divine Education" [pp. 101-134]).
Oriented on the classical Greek ideal of paideia, Pelagius developed a practical theology of salvation which accented the
proper exercise of freedom in imitation of the good example of
Christ. The efficacy of the cross is restricted to remission of
sins committed prior to baptism; the convert is .subsequently
charged to follow the inviting model of Christ to perfect holiness. As Gishert Greshake has argued in his study of Pelagius, 6
the theme of divine education through imitation of the incarnate Logos has strong foundation in the Greek Fathers.
Schwager notes, however, that in the Greek patristic tradition
this idea was underpinned hy strong emphasis on the salvific
" physical " effects of the Incarnation, before all human action,
so that any danger of a theory of self-redemption was a priori
excluded. In Pelagius, this background was lacking; Augustine's critique of the Pelagian position was thus correct. Yet
Schwa1ger detects a further problem. Girard's analyses show
that even imitation of •a good model tends toward rivalry and
violence, since model and mimic pursue the same object. Full
Christian consideration of the topic shoold therefore lead to a
break ,with the ideal of paideia, not merely to orientation on a
superior example.
Bchwager then weighs the position which Augustine developed in opposition to Pela,gianism. Augustine produced a
distinctive doctrine of predestination .by combining a strong
emphasis on the efficacy of divine 1grace with a conception of
original sin according to which all individuals sinned in Adam:
only relatively few human beings were elected in advance for
salvation hy God's sovereign and infallible freedom. Although
he cites biblical texts on God's universal salvific will and the
1

6 Gnade als konkrete
Freiheit: FJine Unternuohung zur Gnadenlehre des
Pelagius (Mainz: Grunewald, 1972); cf. also Greshake's essay, "Der Wandel
der ErlOsungsvorstellungen
in der Theologiegeschichte," Gottes Heil-Glilck
des Menschen (Freiburg: Herder, 1983), pp. 52-63.

682

JOHN P. GALVIN

universal scope of Christ's redemptive work, his theology of
grace forces him to interpret these passages restrictively. At
the root of this narrowing of the scope of salvation lies an inability, on Augustine's part, to rethink the doctrine of grace
from the perspective of Christ's death and resurrection. Needed
to overcome this serious flaw is a soteriology which avoids the
temptation to replace grounded Christian hope for all with assured speculative knowledge. If a subtle rivalry with God's
omniscience is eschewed, both the Augustinian doctrine of
double predestination and the opposing theory of universal
apokatastasis can he circumvented.
A final patristic study examines the work of Maximus Confessor ("The Mystery of the Supernatural Doctrine of Na.ture" [pp. 135-160]). Proponents of monothelitism, such as
Sergius of Constantinople, presumed that a human will in
Christ would inevitably conflict with his divine will, and therefore denied the presence of two wills in the one Christ. In confrontation with this approach, Maximus defended a true
human will in Christ as a necessary component of his complete
human nature. Ma.ximus held that Christ's human will existed
in a supernatural form which guaranteed its sinlessness; he
thus rejected monothelitism's basic presumption that two
wills would necessarily oppose each other. Yet Maximus attributed to Christ only a natural human willing stemming from
internal spontaneity, not a free choosing, as his human will is
,formed and moved by his divine will.
Distinguishing between guilt and punishment as a double
·sin of Adam, Maximus developed his theology of the Incarnation in strict parallel to this hamartiology. The Logos assumed
a human nature immune from the first form of sin due to his
virginal conception, but afflicted with sin's second form, subjection to suffering and death. Because of his innocence,
Christ's crucifixion transformed death into a weapon against
evil, giving death to nature for the destruction of sin. As yeast
affects the entire dough in which it is immersed, so too Christ's
humanity transforms the whole human race.

RAYMUND SCHWAGER AND SOTERIOLOGY

688

Schwager praises Maximus's recognition of the possibility of
union in distinction and his overcoming of ,a conception of the
divine and human natures in Christ as competitive rivals. In
addition, Maximus's placing of the demands of the Law in the
effects of sin on human nature itself, rather than in an extrinsically imposed divine penalty, represents important progress, as it enables a grasp of the drama of the cross without
oompl'Omisingdivine mercy. It is doubtful, howe¥er, that even
Maximus drew the full consequences of his insights as far as
Jesus' human willing is concerned, and his concentration on
na.ture in the understanding of sin leaves the full role of human
freedom insufficiently examined. These issues, and the notion
of the reversal of evil through Christ's death, invite reflection
on redemption from the perspective of Girard, in which freedom, rivalry and reversal are central categories.
'JJhese studies of the Fathers suggest that the central probJem requiring r£urther investigation is the issue of freedomhuman ,freedom in general, and Christ's human freedom in particular. Patristic theology was unable to make :further progress on these matters " because it understood freedom of choice
as a choice between good and evil, and neither could nor wished
to ascribe such possibility of choice to the
(p. 814).
To pursue matters further, Schwager turns to Western medieval soteriology, beginning with an examination of Anselm of
Canterbury (" Logic of Freedom and Nature Willing " [pp.
161-191]); some comments on Thomas Aquinas are included
in this chapter.
Anxious to promote deeper rational penetration of the truths
of faith, dissatisfied ,with traditional answers to the question of
redemption, Anselm applied ,a new and distinctive method of
theological argumentation to soteriological issues. The resulting theory of satisfaction ,reflects an exalted conception of divine justice and mercy akin to Anselm's notion of God as that
greater than which nothing can ibe conceived, hut also places
increased emphasis on Christ's human freedom.
Anselm brackets faith in the Incarnation and begins with

684

JOHN P. GALVIN

the conviction that sin must he rectified, by punishment or by
satisfaction, to restore the proper order ibetween creature and
Creator. Here sin is conceived in formal terms, as a disordered
exercise of freedom which damages the whole of human nature; contrition alone, unable to alter the consequences of the
original misdeed, cannot suffice for restitution. Since failure to
aichie¥e the goal of creation would he unworthy of God, salvation must he accomplished through the Incarnation.
As a member of Adam's race, Christ is a;ble to offer the
needed satisfaction
all. Since he is sinless, he need not die,
and can therefore offer his death freely to God. Due to his
divinity, this death possesses infinite value, outweighing all
sin. To account for Christ's freedom in performing this deed,
Anselm outlines a notion of freedom as an 'ability to choose between what is good and what is better. The salvation which
derives from Christ's crucifixion is pure divine gift, but as a
communication between free beings it must in turn be accepted
through the exercise of human freedom.
After comparing Anselm's procedure with Girard's method,
Schwager appends a brief account of the position of Thomas
Aquinas. Unlike Anselm, who sees punishment and satisfaction as alternatives, Aquinas interprets satisfaction as a vicarious hearing of the punishment of others. Thomas accepts
Anselm's central emphasis on Christ's free self-gift ·as man to
the Father, though not the whole of Anselm's theory, and
uses the Aristotelian categories of matter and form to articulate the relationship of suffering and love in Christ's satisfaction.
In Schwager's judgment, while Aquinas achieved a balanced
synthesis of Anselmian and Eastern conceptions, the Aristotelian categories which he used to unify the various dimensions
of the redemptive event BJre not fully suited to articulate its
dramatic character. In addition, 1both Anselm and Thomas
suffer from questionable ;presuppositions about the connection
of our freedom with the sin of Adam. Schwager therefore proposes a working hypothesis which draws critically on selected
1

RAYMUND SCHWAGER AND SOTERIOLOGY

685

aspects of Anselm and Thomas to express a i'eal effect of
Christ's deed while .fuJly respecting the freedom of each individual. Free ·personal decisions not only determine one's own
will, hut also codetermine, intrinsically, the will of others.
Christ's love, which climaxed on the cross, once and for all reestrublished human willing, heretofore weakened and bound by
a history of sin. While granting the need for further clarification and testing. Schwager sees his hypothesis as a way of add:r:essing central questions unresolved in the entire history of
soteriology, but particularly evident in Anselm's dedicated
pursuit of the problematic of freedom.
Against this background Schwager turns to Protestant
soteriology, beginning with a study of the thought of Martin
Luther (" The Joyous Exchange and Strife " [pp.
]) ;
particular ·attention is devoted to Theobald Beer's recent interpretation of Luther's thought. 7 In pursuing a consistent
christological inteJ.l>retation of the Old Testament, especially
of the psalms, Luther developed a p:mfound conception of an
exchange of properties between Christ and other human beings
by referring the admirabile oommercium primarily to the cross
rather than the Incarnation. For our sake Christ became sin
and curse, as he experienced in his inner self the heights of
temptation and abandonment hy God while remaining fully
innocent in his willing. At the same time, his justice was transferred to the believer. The punishment for sin which Christ
:bore in our stead is an active power that exposed him to the
assaults of the Law, death and the devil. To develop these
themes, Luther draws on patristic imagery, as he depicts the
hidden divinity of Christ as victorious in the ensuing battle.
Christ's human freedom does not play a significant role. The
inner unity of Luther's christology and anthropology leads
logically to denying freedom of choice in the realm of human
relationships with God. Finally, exaltation of belief contrary
to appearances suggests the idea of a hidden God whose good1

1 Der frohliche
Wechsel uncl Streit:
Luthers (Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1980).

Grunclzilge cler Pheologie Martin

686

JOHN P. GALVIN

ness and justice are present in this world in their opposites.
By this point, the initial christological concentration has been
abandoned.
Schwager acknowledges the depth of Luther's new vision of
the cross, especially manifest in his interpretation of Psalm
Yet other elements of his thought require more critical appraisal. First, the ideas of the tra.nsferral of sin from us to
Christ and the bearing of sin hy Christ need amplification
through awareness of the active role of sinners in the dramatic
battle; a subtle theological anti-Semitism and a tendency to
refer too directly to satanic powers impeded Luther's efforts to
achieve greater clarity in this matter. The scapegoat theory
can account better for the imposition of sins on Christ, in that
he obediently made himself the servant of all, while the human
race transferred its own evil to him in individual and collective
1blindness. Through his non-retaliation, Christ responded to
hatred with love, thus " meriting " the Spirit who brings a.bout
conversion and new justice. Second, Luther's denial of free
will to Christ (with further implications for general theological
anthropology) reflects a conception of divine providence and
omnipotence as competitive with human freedom. As Girard
has shown, human thought is constantly tempted to conceive
distinct realities in terms of rivalry and opposition. This inclination, to which Luther partiaUy succumbs, can be overcome by a more consistent orientation on Christ's passion,
which affords a better grasp of human freedom (and thus of
human guilt as well) . Finally, the theme of the continued conflict of sin and ·grace within the believer can alert us to objective ·evils of whioh we, collectively and individually, easily remain unaware. He11e Schwager defends (with Augustine and
Luther, but wgainst many modern exegetes) an interpretation
of Rom
as ;reference to conflicts within the believing
Christian.
Continuing his appraisal of Protestant thought, Schwager
century, with a
moves immediately from Luther to the
study of the soteriology of Karl Barth (" The Judge Is

RAYMUND

SCHWAGER AND SOTERIOLOGY

687

Judged " [pp. 232-272]) . Barth developed a doctrine of reconciliation as a. central element of his comprehensive theological
vision. Rejecting the analogy of being and any form of natural
theology, he insists on orienting thought on the Word of God
in its threefold form as written, preached and revealed. A firm.
christological concentration enables us to pursue the analogy of
faith, as the concrete Jesus Christ makes possible speech about
God in human words. Christ is simultaneously the true man,
from whom (nonwithstanding his uniqueness) we are able to
conclude to characteristics of our own humanity. All this derives from God's original gracious choice, revealed in time in
Jesus' crucifixion •and resurrection, but based in God's eternal
free decision. Understanding predestination in christological
terms, Barth concludes that for the good of the human race
God freely and eternally destines himself for suffering and condemnation. On the cross Christ is judged in our stead, in God's
personal confrontation with evil. In bearing a.lone the sin of
all, Christ overcame evil iby allowing God's wrath to expend
itself fully. Yet God raised Christ from the dead, thus vindicating both him and us and overcoming the Nothingness which
itself stems fvom God's eternal decision.
Schwager's judgment of Barth's theology is complex. On the
one hand, he praises its christological concentration and focus
on the cross. On the other hand, he argues that Barth's concrete theology of double predestination of Christ is an illegitimate extrapolation of dubious theological traditions into God's
very being. Barth suffers from a .failure to distinguish clearly
the orders of creation and grace, and wrongly sees judgment
and grace as parallel realities, equally retraceable to God.
Theology cannot proceed directly from God's eternal decision,
but must consider the historical realization of his covenant in
time. This procedure will bring into clear focus Christ's freedom of choice between the good and the better, and will also
bring to light the freedom of other human beings, who are not
mere instruments of a plan fixed from eternity. At the same
time, pmlongation of conflict into God-an idea which Barth
1

688

JOHN P. GALVIN

repudiates but which seems to lie in the logic of his systemcan be avoided. In developing these criticisms, Schwager also
stresses the differences between Girard and Barth, with whose
early theology Hans Urs von Balthasar has connected Girard's
thought. 8
'.Dhe final chapter ("The Son of God and the World's Sin"
[pp. fl73-3lfl]) is dedicated to von Balthasar, who thus becomes
the sole representative of modern Catholic dogmatics. Beginning with the devdopment of a theological aesthetics as a
study of the revelation of the glory of God, Balthasar proceeded to a theodramatics in his effort to uncover categories
suited for articulation of the history of salvation. In the interplay of infinite and finite ueedom the decisive role is assumed
by Jesus Christ, whose consciousness of God is a consciousness
of mission. In the " hour " of his passion and death, Jesus
vicariously hears the judgment of divine wrath on the sin of
the world. On a surface level, all human beings place their
guilt on God's Son. But the true drama lies in God's expelling
his Son into the powers of destruction, laden with the world's
sin. In the mystery of Holy Saturday Christ tasted the depths
of sin; in his resurrection from the dead he receives the power
to overcome human evil through bestowal of the Spirit (rev;ersal of the " trinitarian inversion " which took place at the
Incarnation) . The range of this gift of ·grace cannot be demarcated ·with certainty, but the ·extremes of the cross give rise
to the possibility of hope for the salvation of all.
Schwager acknowledges the profundity of Balthasar's theology and is in many respects more favorable to him than to
the other authors he has an·alyzed. Yet questions remain.
Despite the volume of Balthasar's writings, the political dimension of reality, including the problem of violence, receives
little attention in his ·work. Schwager expresses reservations wbout Balthasar's interpretation of the descent into hell,
which is influenced by the mystical experiences of Adrienne
s Cf. Theodmmatik 3: Die Handlung (Einsiedeln:
291.

Johannes, 1980), pp. 276·

RAYMUND SCHWAGER AND SOTERIOLOGY

689

von Speyr. He welcomes the analysis of the crucifixion, but
suggests that this theology could be complemented by .developing the theme of mimesis in the account of sin. Above all, however, Schwager concludes that Jesus' preaching of the kingdom
is inappropriately neglected in Balthasar's concentration on
the passion. A theology which ,conceived of the cross as the
result of the human rejection of Jesus' public offer of divine
forgiveness and salvation would :find Jesus the decisive agent
in his own passion; through his free acceptance of suffering he
converted evil into good, respecting human freedom yet transforming it .from within through his non-retaliation in death.
The theodrama is thus performed in two acts, and the danger
of attributing violence and evil to God, in contradiction to
Jesus' message, is averted.
A concluding summary (pp. 313-317) recapitulates major
conclusions of the ten studies. In Schwager's judgment, his investigation of selected soteriologies in the light of Girard's
thought affords new insights into numerous important issues:
the relationship of the Old and New Testaments; God's justice
and goodness; Christ's freedom; the connection of human freedom and concrete human nature; the tension between public
actions and the individual decisions of the heart; and the understanding of sin. In addition, the historical course of Christian thinking on redemption has been clarified. Yet further
preliminary work, including more thorough investigation of
other icontemporary theologies and additional attention to
modern non-theological reflections, is needed before a comprehensive systematic doctrine of redemption can be ventured. 9
Der wunderbare Tausch rpvovides an informative and in9 Since the appearance of Der wunderbare Tausch Schwager has published
two essays on such wider issues: " Selbstorganisation und Theologie: Skizze
ZKT 109 ( 1987) : 1-19: and "Theologie-Geeines Forschungsprojekts,"
schichte-Wissenschaft,"
ZKT 109 (1987): 257-175. Cf. also "Versohnung
und Siihne: Zur gleichnamigen Studie von .Adrian Schenker," ThPh 58
( 1983), 217-225; and "Christ's Death and the Prophetic Critique of Sacrifice," Rene Girard and Biblical Studies, ed. .Andrew J. McKenna, Semeia 33
(Decatur, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1985), pp. 109-123.

690

JOHN P. GALVIN

sightful account of selected major figures and themes from the
history of soteriology, past and present, in their respective contexts. Schwager's essays are particularly effective in illuminating the diverse notions of God and of human freedom which
hav,e accompanied and at times distorted Christian thought
on redemption. The consistent recourse, in varying degrees, to
Girard's anthropological theory draws the themes of violence,
deceit and freedom into the £o11eground; this common thread
links together Schwager's accounts of different soteriological
proposals, and prevents his hook from disintegrating into a.
collection of disparate studies. Nonetheless, the thorough and
balanced discussion of individual authors, each of whom is
presented in an objective manner, without excessive intrusion
of Girardian considerations, makes the work useful for all interested in soteriological questions, even those who would differ from some of Schwager's theological judgments. In addition, Schwager's own theological perspective, while not yet
fully developed, commends itself initially by its aibility to place
due emphasis on the crucifixion without isolating Jesus' death
from his public life.
Some reservations do, however, remain. First, while lacunae
are obviously inevitable in an undertaking of this scope, the
absence of any authors between Luther and Barth (e.g.,
Friedrich Schleiermacher) and of several prominent contemporary theologians (Edward Schilleheeckx, Ji.IDgen Moltmann
and especially Karl Rahner, Schwager's own predecessor at
Innsbruck) remains regretta;ble. Secondly, while the historical
studies show the ability of Girard's thought to shed light on
numerous issues, the concluding comments in many sections
(though not the overall conclusion to the hook) seem to advance extrava:gent claims for the theory's explanatory power.
The fear of monocausal explanation, which Schwaiger has elsewhere sought to dispel,10 seems not to be totally unwarranted.
10 In " Eindriicke
von einer Begegnung" (pp. 218-220), Schwager maintains that Girard's theory identifies the scapegoat mechanism as the unitive
factor in explanation of the sacral realm, but not as the only factor. In

RAYMUND SCHWAGER AND SOTERIOLOGY

691

Finally, while making due allowance for the difficulty of testing comprehensive theories, it would be instructive to see how
Girard's theory would fare when subjected to a different type
of examination. To date, most of Schwager's studies have
taken Girard's thought as a framework and shown how it aids
in examining biblical texts and treating long-standing theological problems. A reverse procedure might also be in order: to
subject the theory to possible falsification by searching for
biblical themes and theological issues which may prove less
amenable to examination from Girard's perspective. 11 In any
case, however, Schwager's pl'oject in general and Der wunderbare Tausch in particular are a stimulating and significant contribution to contemporary christological discussion.

addition, he argues that Girard's interpretation relates solely to religious
activity in societies without central civil authority, and acknowledges the
presence of mixed forms of religious expression, in which multiple factors
are operative, between primitive rites and Christian revelation.
11 Jurgen Ebach
("Gewalt: Verharmlosung durch ein Theoriemonopol?:
Zur Rezeption Rene Girards durch Alttestamentler," Orientierung 49 [1985],
207-210) has charged that Girard's theory is so constructed as to be immune
to possible falsification.

BOOK REVIEWS
The Incarnation of God: An Introduction to Hegel's Theological
Thought as Prolegomena to a Future Christology. By HANS
Kii'NG. Translated by J. R. Stephenson. New York: Crossroad,
1987. Pp. 601. $37.50 (cloth bound).
This is an imposing book (first German edition, 1970), not only
in length, but in breadth of presentation. Kiing, in the introduction,
outlines the philosophical, theological and cultural milieus out of which
Hegel's theology and philosophy emerged. In the next 400 pages (seven
chapters), Kiing thoroughly articulates the historical development of
Hegel's theological and philosophical thought as expressed in his successive writings, specifically examining and evaluating the christological elements. Kiing's final chapter interprets Hegel's Christology in
light of recent biblical historical/critical methodology, by way of a
prolegomenon to a future Christology. The book concludes with five
integral historical/theological excursus which take up specific questions
that arise out of this Hegelian enterprise, for example: "Does God
suffer?," "The Dialectic of the Attributes of God," "Immutability of
God?".
In the preface to this English edition, Kiing states that the purpose of
this work is to "provide theologians with an introduction to Hegel's
theological and christological thought. ... [It will be] a many-leveled
'invitation' into Hegel's life and 'thought, with particular reference to
his religious world, and then into his theology and Christology " (p.
ix). "Moreover, .this book is an introduction to Hegel's thought by
way of 'prolegomena to a future Christology '. In ·these pages we endeavour to return . . . a provisional reply that will take us some way
in the right direction" (p. x). Why did Kiing look to Hegel for the
clue to a future Christology? His thesis is that "the biblical message
concerning a God who is by no means separated from the world but
rather operates within it, and who is by no means stuck immovable
and immutable in an unhistorical and suprahistorical realm but rather
performs living acts in hi&tory can be better understood [along the
lines of Hegelian thought] than in terms of the metaphysics of either
classical Greece or the middle ages" (p. xii).
Any student of historical or philosophical theology/christology will
be captivated by Kiing's treatment of .the development of Hegel's
ilhought. Undoubtedly he has mastered Hegel's life, writings and

698

694

BOOK REVIEWS

thought, and presents these in a clear, complete and engaging manner.
Kiing notes that Hegel, beginning with his student days at Tiihingen,
was influenced by three strong cultural and intellectual currents: the
Enlightenment as it specifically culminated in the thought of Kant, the
French Revolution, and the rise of the Romantic movement. Kiing
shows that, while the young Hegel was acquainted with the Bible, and
even ,though he already displayed an interest in the role of religion
(folk religion) as formative of society, nowhere was he "seized in a
lively and inward fashion by the Christian faith, by the figure of Christ
himself" (p. 54). To rthe contrary, Hegel's early experience of Christianity was lifeless and joyless.
During his subsequent time in Bern, Hegel's evaluation of Jesus un·
derwent a transformation. Hegel became fascinated with Greek religion, not because it was true, but because it embodied the culture and
spirit of the people. Developing this train of thought, he stated that
"The supreme end of man is morality, and his religious bent is pre·
eminent among his aptitudes for promoting that end" (p. 69). In
light of this, Hegel considered Jesus ,to lack the humane and universal
scope of Socrates, who was " the paradigm of a free, good and humane
Hellenism and of harmony with nature, world and state " (p. 63) .
Jesus' teaching was too much an authoritarian imposition upon people
rarther than, like Socrates', a nurturing of their inner spirit and life.
Shordy, as reflected in his Life of Jesus, Hegel's view of Jesus was
to change. Now he was placed above Socrates, not because he was
acknowledged to be the eternal Son of God, nor because he reconciled
mankind to God by his death on the cross, but rather because he per·
sonified the divine ideal of virtue that is so necessary for social order.
" Whart is truly divine about Christ consists in the fact ' that his Spirit
and his way of thinking coincided with the moral law'" {p. 71). Here
as Kiing recognizes, Hegel is very much the disciple of Kant: Jesus
incarnated the moral imperative.
Kiing again acknowledges that at this juncture Hegel "shows no
sign of a living relationship to Christ in the sense of a positive, existential relationship of faith" (p. 66). However, he does not fully appreciate the parameters Hegel had already set for subsequent Christology due to this absence of a living faith. While he recognizes that
Hegel's Kantian view of Jesus was unbiblical, Kiing places too much
hope in his mature Christology. For example, granting that Hegel
would move beyond Kantian moralism, which Kiing rightly demands,
yet because he, along with Kant, is imbued with the Enlightenment
mentality, any theological development, even metaphysical, will be
made at the expense of the traditional understanding of the super·
natural. Already there is no room for historic Christianity's teaching

BOOK REVIEWS

695

on God as wholly other than created reality, who directly and freely
intervenes in the world and history through such events as the Incarnation, resurrection and miracles. Moreover, while it is true that the
person of Jesus would attain prominence in Hegel's future writings,
he, nonetheless, was already relegated to being a mere exemplar, a role
that he would never surpass. At the time, he was the moral archetype
of divine virtue; later he would become the pictorial metaphor of the
Absolute coming to know itself as Spirit. The lasting distinctiveness
of Jesus' personhood and of his redemptive work was already compromised. Lastly, religion's, and thus Jesus', usefulness was seen sole·
ly within the context promoting the social order. Its bearing on a life
after death and the importance of that future life had already dis·
appeared, never to be resurrected. Kiing is not completely blind to
these concerns, yet he fails to recognize the full significance of what
Hegel had embarked upon. The reason for this lies in Kiing's own desire to work within many of these same parameters. Kiing reveals that
he, too, is a child of the Enlightenment.
In order to pass beyond Kantian moralism, Hegel set out to destroy
the barrier ,that existed between God and man, and to give to the God/
man relationship a metaphysical foundation that was missing in Kant.
Here Jesus gave Hegel the key he needed. In Jesus, the dichotomy
was overcome. As Son of God, Jesus was, according to Hegel, "the divine in a particular shape" (p. 127). Jesus incarnated that which is
divine in history and in the world. The good news was that this unity
of the divine and human is inherent in everyone. "Jesus was the first
one to discern and experience the unity of man with God, ·that is, to
discern and experience that he was in the Father and the Father in
him. The same can happen to everyone who lets himself he liberated
by him: such a man experiences in himself the unity of the divine and
the human" (p. 129).
Kiing does not believe that Hegel had walked into pantheism. Rather,
Hegel was more rightly a panentheist "in the sense of a vitally dynamic 'being in God' of man and the world, of a oneness-in-distinction of life, love and all encompassing Spirit" (p. 132). While everything incarnates God, God is always more than what is incarnated.
Moreover, while the world is in need of God, so is God in need of the
world. It is in and through the world and human persons that God
expresses himself. Kiing believes that Hegel made here a major contribution to theological and christological thought. " There is a shift
away from the separation of God and man characteristic of the Enlightenment and of Kant toward the oneness of infinite and finite, di·
vine and human in the oneness of life, of spirit, indeed of the divine "

(p.132).

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In a series of rhetorical questions, Kiing gives his imprimatur to
Hegel's ,thought. "Has not Hegel impressively brought out the divine
love over against any false understanding of a vindictive, punitive
justice on God's part? Cannot many of the formulas used by Hegel,
such as Son of God, as modification of God, etc., be just as properly
understood as may Greek or Latin formulas of classical Christology?"
(p. 134). Simultaneously, (and he does this repeatedly throughout ,the
book, contributing to a sense of schizophrenia) Kiing wonders whether
!J:he incarnation of God is really the same as the deification of man.
Did Hegel domesticate the Gospel to his own philosophical ends?
Kiing records that Hegel thought !J:hat prayers to Jesus were " monstrous" (p. 139).
Hegel, having moved to Jena, next developed the mature metaphysical expression of his thought in his Phenomenology of Spirit and, in
Berlin, the subsequent working out of this system in his Logic, Encyclopedia, Philosophy of World History, Philosophy of Religion, and
History of Philosophy. Kiing states repeatedly that both in Phenomenology and in many of Hegel's later works, "the figure of Jesus appears to have vanished-one might almost say without trace " (p.
156; see pp. 181, 254, 277, 304, 382). The reason for this is obvious.
Hegel's own philosophy had superseded religion and it had specifically
displaced Jesus as the authentic interpreter of truth.
Religion, for Hegel, became the pictorial expression of what philosophy knows by pure reason, that is, the process by which the Absolute
externalizes itself in the world and history and, in turn, comes to know
itself as Spirit through human self-consciousness. All religions figuratively express this one truth. " Each national religion is but a form of
the one religion, of ·the self-consciousness of Spirit, albe1t only for that
historical form" (p. 206). Absolute religion would be that religion
which most perfectly exemplifies the process of the Absolute coming
to self-conscious Spirit. Christianity fulfills this function. Jesus symbolizes the Absolute manifesting (incarnating) itself in a human selfconscious manner. As Hegel stated: "This incarnation of the divine
Being, or the fact that it essentially and directly has the shape of self.
consciousness, is the simple content of the absolute religion " (p. 207) .
Within Hegel's philosophy the whole of reality is "incarnational ".
Because religion uses imagery and pictorial representation, which retains a separation between infinite and finite, it cannot be the absolute
expression of truth. Only philosophy finds the truth in its pure form,
that is, the Absolute coming to be conscious of itself as Spirit. Hegel
faulted traditional Christianity for not recognizing that it was but the
pictorial expression of what was truly real and fully grasped and understood by pure reason-his philosophical system.

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697

Not only has the Incarnation been" suhlated," that is, subsumed into
and reinterpreted in light of Hegel's speculative system, hut also the
whole of Christian doctrine. The Trinity, for example, was transformed
into :three phases of the Absolute coming to self-consciousness. The
Father was the Absolute in itself; the Son was the objectification or
manifestation of the Absolute in the world; and the Spirit was the Absolute having come to know itself as Pure Thought in human reason
(see pp. 361-366). Hegel could even speak of a "Speculative Good
Friday". Jesus' death on the cross symbolized the metaphysical truth
that the Absolute had to " die " to itself through expressing itself as
finite in order that it could rise to full self-conscious unity as Spirit
(see pp. 162, 366-373).
For Hegel the domain of religion was primarily that of the ordinary
masses. It was the privilege of the philosopher to know the truth in its
pure form. Philosophy did not create a new religion for Hegel, hut
" rather aims to reflect on and to deepen actual religion. In absolute
philosophy, though, thinking is now thoroughly at home. Here it is
no longer a thinking that pictures reality through fantasy in the heart,
mind and intellect, hut a thinking that operates through pure thinking " (p. 375) .
Jesus may appear to have assumed an inferior position in Hegel's
metaphysical system, yet Kiing holds that actually " Christ has ended
up by keeping a firm place in this philosophical form of religion. . . .
He appears for this philosophical religion as the one in whom the grand
reconciliation has been revealed: in him heaven and earth, supreme
abstraction and absolute immediacy, have found each other; in him
divine nature and human nature appear as one" (p. 224). Kiing does
acknowledge that Christianity and Jesus have been thoroughly "sublated" in Hegel's system (see for example, pp. 220, 279), yet he again
refuses to he consistently critical and thus does not see the force of
his own criticism.
For example, Kiing admits that Hegel's enterprise may be, in many
respects, " problematic," yet it " remains a grand and highly fruitful attempt at achieving a comprehensive reconciliation between philosophy and theology, insight and revelation, enlightenment and dogma,
modern humanity and a deeper form of Christianity " (p. 225) . Or
again, Kiing sees that the historical Jesus within Hegel's thought was
of only passing relevance in the development of the Absolute coming
.to self-conscious Spirit; his only value was that of a figurative, poetic,
and thus lesser, expression of what is truly real (see p. 381-382), and
yet in the same breath he showers Hegel with praise: "Hegel's God
is not a Spirit beyond the stars, who operates on the world from the
outside, but rather the Spirit who is at work in the spirits, in the

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depths of human subjectivity. His doctrine of the Trinity is nol: a
brand of conceptual mathematics remote from reality, but a trinitarian
'oikonomia' brought into relationship with history. . • . The incarna·
tion is not simply whittled down in a pietistic manner . . . nor is it
pocketed as ,the special theological property of the Church; rather, there
is a demonstration of its significance as a global event for the whole of
humanity .... Ought fa1th to have anything to fear in all of this .•. ? "
Kiing's
sentence is telling: "Even so, we may now fittingly register
yet again all those reservations •.. " (pp. 384-385). Kiing is torn in
heart and mind, for, despite the reservations, he wants to seize as his
own a significant por-tion of Hegel's thought.
What then is the fruit that Kiing wishes to pluck from the Hegelian
tree ,to nourish a future Christology? Christianity and any future
Christology must acknowledge, along with Hegel, that God is not an
immutable, impassible, transcendent deity who is completely other
than the world and history; that God, if he is to be intimate and active in the world and history, if he is to become truly incarnate in
Jesus, must be a God who is inherently present and dynamic in the
world, who expresses himself in and through history, who is able to
change, suffer, and experience human life in his inner divine being.
Kiing maintains that such a view of God not only conforms to the best
of Hegel but is demanded by biblical revelation. Like the God of the
Old and New Testaments, Hegel's God is "the living God who does
not stubbornly remain within himself in a lofty posture of splendid
isolation above the world, but who comes out of himself and externalizes
himself in the becoming of the world, a movement which comes to a
climax when God himself becomes man . . . In brief, according to
Hegel, the true God is the one who is both finite and infinite, both God
and Man " (pp. 433-434) .
Why did Christianity not recognize this Hegelian insight sooner?
Greek philosophy! The early Church, despite its valiant attempts to
snap the shackles of Greek thought, nonetheless maintained an immutable, transcendent God, one that is ill-suited for biblical revelation.
Nonetheless, classical Christology itself has pointed the way to this new
development. Classical Christology has fought to maintain the truth
that God truly became man and suffered and died in the real world and
in real time, despite its inability to articulate this consistently because
of its notion of an utterly transcendent and immutable God. " While
the trains of thought developed from classical Christology clearly led
away from the Greek metaphysical concept of God, which proved too
static or transcendent, they led at the same time toward Hegel's concept of God. The dialectical dynamism of the latter is manifestly better
suited to express what must be stated by a classical Christology which
has been thought through to the end " (p. 457).

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Admittedly, Kiing has taken up a central issue of Christian revelation. God must he such that he can act in time and history. The tradition demands that Christians hold that God actually came to exist as
a itrue and full human being. Moreover, Kiing does point out (quite
extensively in his excursus) the theological concerns that are present
in the traditional doctrine of God. How can an immutable and impassible God enter into a relationship with the world of change, and
specifically how is he able to become man? (Kiing's account of the
traditional understanding of God and his relationship to the world,
specifically in the Incarnation, is often more a simplistic characteriza·
tion than an objective, unbiased account of the problems.) Nonetheless, Kiing too readily accepts that Hegel's conception of God is the
solution to all Christological problems and the hope of the future. He
fails to address the critical issues that his own Hegelian enterprise
brings to the fore.
For example, there is .the question of creation. If God is not a being
who exists in and of himself ( ipsum esse, actus purus), distinct, hut
not separate, from the world, how is one to account for the existence
of the world? Hegel's philosophy cannot account for creation, hut only
for the necessary inter-relationship of the "infinite" and the "finite'',
which is one of mutual dependence. To say that this dependence is
eternal is to beg the question. One still must ask: How did this " eternal
process" and those realities within the process come to he or exist?
This leads to ,the question of determinism. While Kiing wishes to
keep God's activity in the world free (unlike Hegel), yet he states that
" a future Christology may join Hegel in thinking in terms of a unified
understanding of reality in which the world is not without God nor
God without the world, hut in which God is in this world and the world
in this God" (p. 461). In such a view of reality, not only does God
lose his freedom to act in the world as he wishes, hut the world and
human persons lose their dignity as beings in their own right. Instead,
they necessarily become mere manifestations of divine becoming.
Moreover, faith does demand that God truly act in the world and in
history. Kiing is correct in insisting that this is what both the Old
and New Testaments reveal. However, within the Hegelian framework
it is not God as God, in the wholly otherness of his divine being-perfect in love, goodness and mercy, who acts in time and makes himself
known, hut a lesser immanent manifestation of the transcendent divine reality. The transcendent God, as transcendent (as wholly other),
never truly interacts with historical men, yet this is what the Bible
proclaims. This is especially important for any future Christology.
The Incarnation, within the Hegelian enterprise, is not .the Son of
God, in the fullness of his divine being, who actually becomes man and
lives as a man, but again a lesser immanent manifestation of divine

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being. The primary concern of Nicea and Chalcedon was to protect,
for the sake of the Incarnation, the full divinity of Jesus. They declared
that the one who was on earth, in the real world, was homoousios with
ithe Father. It is in the man Jesus that the fullness of God dwells bodily.
For Hegel and for Kiing, God in the fullness of his reality as God does
not and cannot enter time and history. (Recently, there have been a
number of studies that address .the issue of God's immutability and
his " becoming " man from within the classic christological tradition.
See Thomas Weinandy. Does God Change: The Word's Becoming in
the Incarnation. Petersham MA: St. Bede's Press, 1985.)
Kiing also loses sight of the Trinity. From what he states, one must
presume that ·there is only an economic Trinity, that is, the Son and
Holy Spirit are finite manifestations of the infinite Father.
Lastly, the work of salvation, as traditionally understood, is complete·
ly undermined. Jesus does not save us from sin and death and establish a new relationship with God, one that differs from previous relationships not in degree hut in kind. Rather Jesus reveals and mani·
fests the relationship that all human beings have with God already: that
everyone, by necessity, incarnates the divine reality.
Kiing believes that his Hegelian enterprise has laid the metaphysical
foundation for a Christology " from below ". If God is present and
active in the world in an Hegelian manner, then one would not seek
to find the significance of Jesus " from above ", hut rather from within
the earthly, human Jesus, for he manifests the divine. This is how
Kiing defends the complete absence of Hegel in his next Christological
work On Being a Christian (p. xi). There is logic and truth in this,
hut it seems :to undercut Kiing's present contention that Hegel is essen·
tial for a future Christology.
By way of conclusion, there can he litle doubt that Kiing's presen·
tation of the development of Hegel's theology and Christology is one of
the best in English today. Likewise, if one is able to sort out Kiing's
Jekyll and Hyde approach to Hegel, one will find both valid insights
and criticisms. What will not he found within Kiing's own thought is
a great deal that will further the course of a future Christology.
THOMAS WEINANDY, O.F.M.Cap.
Mother of God Community
Washington, D.C.

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701

Theological Investigations XXI: Science and Christian Faith. By KARL
RAHNER. Translated by Hugh M. Riley. New York: Crossroad,
1988. Pp. 279. $29.95 (hard bound).
Volume XXI of Theological Investigations is the translation of the
first three sections of Volume XV of Schriften zur Theologie, which
was published in 1983 by Benziger Verlag. The appearance of the
volume was somewhat of a surprise since in 1980, when Volume XIV
was published, Rahner had assured the readers that in all probability it
would be the last volume of the series, which together with the index
volume amounts to some 7500 pages-long enough, as Rahner puts it,
for <the reader and for him. As it turned out, however, two more
volumes appeared, which together come to about 1000 pages. One sus·
pects that Volume XVI might not be the last of the Schriften zur
Theologie either.
Like its predecessors Volume XV is a collection of essays and lectures which Rahner published or delivered on different occasions. The
editor, Paul Imphof, gave them the general .title of Science and Christian Faith. As a focal point of the volume, it is more appropriate for
the first six essays than for the rest. The purpose of this review is not
to give a detailed report on the articles contained in Volume XXI of
the English translation. These articles are grouped into three parts entitled "Science and Theology," "Faith," and "Christianity." In this
review, I shall draw attention to certain salient ideas which Rahner
espoused with regard to the relationship between :theology and natural
science, faith, and christology and which seem to go beyond-at least
to some extent--ithe opinions he had expressed in earlier volumes regarding the same issues.
"Natural Science and Reasonable Faith" (pp. 16-55) is Rahner's
most sustained treatment of the relationship between faith and natural
science to date. Of course he has touched upon this subject before
(e.g. Theo. Inv., XIII, "Theology as Engaged in an Interdisciplinary
Dialogue with the Sciences" [pp. 80-93]; "On the Relationship he·
tween Theology and the Contemporary Sciences" [pp. 94-102]). Elsewhere he has also attempted to develop a transcendental christology
within an evolutionary world view. In this article, however, Rahner
outlines a philosophical and theological framework for understanding
1the relationship between theology and natural science and for resolving their potential conflicts. Basically, in Rahner's view, the two dis·
ciplines have distinct areas of investigation and methodologies. Whereas
natural science investigates concrete individual phenomena and their
inter-relation in a posteriori experiences, theology is concerned with
the a priori question about the totality of reality and its ground. And

BOOK REVIEWS

whereas the method of natural science is empirical, that of theology is
transcendental.
Rahner is quite aware that while these differences in subject-matter
and methodology may prevent head-on collisions between science and
theology, they do not necessarily lead to a positive synthesis of the two
disciplines. At the present time the best that can be achieved is perhaps
a " truce " or a " peace treaty " between them.
With these presuppositions in mind Rahner examines seven issues in
which science and theology can achieve some measure of common understanding: matter and spirit, createdness and temporality, creation
and evolution, empirical-biological anthropology and theological anthropology, biological death and its theological interpretation, the
size of the cosmos as an " existentiell " and theological problem, and
finally, the history of human salvation and the natural history of the
cosmos. In assessing Rahner's solutions to these areas of potential conflict one can admire the virtuosity of his theology, which on the one
hand remains deeply rooted in the Christian tradition and on :the other
is capable of reconciling the data of science with the teachings of faith.
It should be pointed out, however, that for Rahner, just as for Barth,
the question of the relationship between science and theology is first
and foremost an apologetical question. For them, as for the majority of
theologians, with .the exception of perhaps Lonergan, the sciences have
not yet become a source for theological methodology and theological
thinking.
Another article relating to the nature and tasks of theology which is
of great interest to our understanding of the relationship beween classical theology and other more recent " local " theologies is " Aspects of
European Theology" (pp. 78-98). While recognizing the need of a
new theology appropriate to the emerging world Church, Rahner still
believes that European theology, thanks to its long history, its developed categories, and its socio-economic resources, can and must serve
other local theologies by being the "guardian of Tradition", the
" mediator " among them, and the " safeguard " against the dangers
threatening them. In this regard it must be acknowledged that Rahner's
assessment of the virtues of European theology is to a large extent realistic. Nevertheless one may take issue with his statement that" ... since
the Christianity represented by these other theologies comes from
Europe and these other theologies necessarily bear the stamp of this
origin, but at the same time manifest no further relationship to one another than what they have in common with European theology, European
theology is in the best position .to exercise the function of mediator
among them" (p. 94). Theologically speaking, is it not .the case that
" peripheral " theologies (e.g. South American liberation theology)
have developed to such an extent that they are now in a position not

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703

only to mediate between different European theologies hut also to judge
them?
Regarding the contemporary situation of Christian faith, the essay
"A Hierarchy of Truths" (pp. 162-167) deserves special notice. In
this article Rahner explains not so much the "objective" hierarchy
of truths (see Vatican H's Unitatis Reintegratio, no. 11) as their "ex·
istentiell" hierarchy. Not only do Christian truths possess different
degrees of importance according to their relationship to the foundation of faith hut they also vary in their relevance and value according
to a particular time and space, individual or community. From a pastoral point of view Rahner suggests that we ought to become more at·
tentive to this " existentiell " hierarchy of truths. Indeed, his challenge
is rather awesome: " Given no more than a quarter of an hour can you
tell pagans of one of Europe's big cities who have never experienced a
really challenging encounter with Christianity what a Christian really
believes? " Even if one does not take " a quarter of an hour " literally, still the task is herculean. Rahner's formula, as is well known, is
the "reductio in mysterium," that is to say, the concentration of all
Christians truths upon the doctrine of God as the Incomprehensible and
Holy Mystery which has communicated himself to humanity definitive·
ly, irreversibly, and victoriously in ,the history of Jesus Christ and
which is now present visibly and efficaciously in the Church. In this re·
gard, the four essays contained in the third part-" Christianity's Absolute Claim" (pp. 171-184), "The Specific Character of the Christian
Concept of God" (pp. 185-195), "The Question of Meaning as a Ques·
tion of God (pp. 156-207) and "Jesus Christ-The Meaning of Life"
(pp. 208-219)-can well he considered a succinct and powerful presen·
tation of the Christian truths in their "existentiell" hierarchy.
Finally, the last essays of Part Three on christology are vintage
Rahner. He defends the validity of Chalcedonian christology even for
today hut rejects superficial parroting of its formulas. He strongly advocates a christology of ascent and a transcendental christology (see
"Brief Observations on Systematic Christology Today," pp. 228-238).
He rejects the juridical interpretation of redemption (the theory
of vicarious representation) as inadequate and suggests that our reconciliation with God was effected by Christ's death on the cross
through his solidarity with us: " Our Christian faith further affirms
that this single unlimited solidarity is ultimately constituted or, if you
will, consolidated by the deed of the one Jesus Christ who as love freely given remained steadfast in his predestined solidarity with human
beings and did not renounce it even when it meant for him the cross
and the death of one forsake by God" (p. 268).
Hugh M. Riley did an excellent job in translating Rahner's prose

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into clear and readable English. There are, however, some minor faults
that can easily be removed in the next edition. Rahner's acknowledgement of gratitude to Frau Dr. Annie Kraus and Frau Rosmarie and
Roswitha Imphof in the Preface has inexplicably been omitted. On p.
102, 'Fachtheologie' would be better rendered as academic discipline;
on p. 156, the words in parentheses 'des Trostes, der Zuversicht usw.'
(p. 156 of the original text) have been omitted; on p. 162, A. Pangrazio was .the archbishop of Gorizia-Gradisca, rather than of Gorz;
on p. 231, .the important phrase 'der absolute Heilsbringer' referring
to Jesus is missing; on p. 233, the opinion attributed to Leo Sche:ffczyk
is obscurely translated; and on p. 252, :the title should read :the ' re·
demption' (Erlosung) of the body, and not the 'resurrection' of the
body.
There are some misprints: On p. 15 (1. 15); p. 52 (1. 14); p. 57
(1. 2 from bottom, delete the comma after 'back'); p. 59 (1. 6);
p. 89 (1. 10); p. 131 (1. 6 from bottom, 'who' instead of 'whom');
p. 133 (1. 18, a period instead of a comma after 'them'); p. 264
(1. 9).
PETER c. PHAN
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

The Believer and the Powers That Are: Cases, History and Other Data
Bearing on the Relation of Religion and Government. By JOHN T.
NOONAN. New York: Macmillan, 1987. Pp. xvii
510. $35.00.

+

In his essays on Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that religion in the United States "takes no direct part in the
government of society, but it must nevertheless be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country." John Noonan's unusual and useful book delivers substantial evidence for that 19th
century observation and lends support for those who contend that religion has much .to do with and say about contemporary public affairs.
Noonan is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals, a legal historian, and a law professor, and he brings all these occupations to bear
(especially the last), presenting a casebook-anthology that contains
nearly as much non-legal material as judicial writings.
Religious liberty in America is the subject of the book, particularly
as the Supreme Court for good or ill has shaped the contours of religious liberty by its 20th century interpretations of the Religion Clauses
of the first amendment. At the outset, however, Noonan recognizes that

BOOK REVIEWS

705

the substance of that liberty, "ithe experience that undergirds the constitutional principles," must be gleaned from an awareness and sense
of "the hard, living reality of religion for believers" (p. xiii). Taking
his cue from Justice Holmes ("The life of the law has not been logic
but experience ") , Noonan submits that one must sense the reality of
religion for the believers to perceive .their stake in religious liberty,
" to glimpse how the law was modeled " (p. xiv) . The search for this
constitutive experience takes us back, first of all, to the Decalogue (pp.

3-5).
The book has three Parts: Roots; the American Experience; and
Contemporary Controversies. Each Part contains a great variety of
writings-essays, letters, portions of addresses and, of course, casessupplemented by .the editor's own notes. " Roots" holds the greatest
variety of offerings, reaching from the Ten Commandments to John
Locke's Letter Concerning Toleration (pp. 78-90). The path is instructive. Noonan introduces the biblical material no:ting that public
human history is the theater of Judaco-Christian faith: e.g., the Decalogue " has a date, a place where it was issued, and a direct sanction: God's favor," and among other things it provides "permanent
criteria for judging human enterprises, including governments" (p.
3). Other OT texts exhort God's people to lives of mercy and justice
and encourage fidelity to God's law even at the risk of martyrdom by
the State. The NT selections demonstrate the Christian distinction between the Reign of God and "this world."
The further "Roots" chapters present St. Augustine's letters on the
quasi-ecclesial duties of Christian magistrates and St. Thomas Aquinas
on freedom of conscience. Issues of throne and altar {their mutual cooperation, competition and usurpation) are played out in documents
concerning the state martyrdoms of Thomas Becket, Joan of Arc,
Thomas More, Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley, as well as in Innocent Ill's hull nullifying Magna Carta. The writings of Menno
Simons, Spinoza, John Winthrop, Roger Williams and Locke set the
stage for ·the American enterprise in religious liberty.
" The American Experience " first .takes the reader into the political
efforts concerning religious liberty in the young republic: the debates
over Virginia's Episcopalian establishment that eventually resulted in
adoption of Jefferson's "Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom"
(pp. 93-113); Massachusetts's constitutional "Declaration of Rights,"
which in one article provided that no one should be " hurt, molested,
or restrained ... for worshipping God in the manner and season most
agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience," and in the next authorized local jurisdictions to assess taxes to maintain "Protestant
teachers of piety, religion, and morality" and empowered the state

706

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legislature to make church attendance compulsory (p. 114); and the
development of the Religion Clauses of the first amendment to the
Constitution of the United States. Further selections (e.g., Thanksgiving Day proclamations; oaths; cases enforcing anti-blasphemy
statutes, public subsidies for clergy, and Sunday blue laws; de
Tocqueville's reflections) and Noonan's notes invite the reader into
the current debate about the " original intent " of the Establishment
Clause. Is the present Chief Justice right in stating that the current
constitutional ban on any government " endorsement " of prayer
" would come as much of a shock to those who drafted the Bill of
Rights" (Wallace v. !affre, 472 U.S. 38, 114 (1985): Rehnquist,
J., dissenting from a decision that Alabama's moment-of-silence statute
for " meditation or voluntary prayer " in public schools constituted an
"establishment of religion")? And would that historical datum alone
justify revoking the ban?
Additional chapters are devoted to ,the mainline churches' divisive
ambiguity on the abolition of chattel slavery (pp. 168-188) and the
federal government's idiosyncratic refusal to accommodate Mormon
polygamy (e.g., because polygamy " has always been odious among the
northern and western nations of Europe, and . . . ahnost exclusively a
feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people," Reynolds v.
United States, 98 U.S. 145, 164 (1878)) (pp. 194-207). The remaining selections of Part 2 set ,the stage for the present array of Supreme
Court decisions about the relation of government to America's religions, amplified in Part 3.
These " Contemporary Controversies " begin in 1940. The great majority of the writings in this Part are Supreme Court and other federal court opinions addressing issues that continue to concern Americans: tax exemption of religious institutions; conscientious objection
to war; the relation of government to religious schools; the place vel
non of religion in public schools and other public arenas; the role of
civil courts in the resolution of ecclesiastical controversies; disruptive
religious speech and behavior; the extent to which civil courts may inquire into the existence, extent or even definition of "religion" (including secular humanism) ; and the bounds of government's obliga·
tion to accommodate society's religions.
Part 3 reveals the basic " casebook" character of the anthology.
The overall format of selected writings followed by editorial notes and
questions dominates Noonan's coverage of the modern period in a
fashion quite familiar to veterans of legal education. The notes cite
intriguing cases, and send the reader hunting for their subsequent histories; the questions are rhetorical, or leading, or insoluble. However,
no one interested in rthe intellectual, religious or legal history of the

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707

American people should he put off hy the casebook format or price, for
Noonan has succeeded where few others even have tried. This volume
is a rich, informative and often delightful survey that depicts the several levels of the American church-state relations.
There is no reason to object to Noonan's decision to concentrate most
of the early material on the "interpenetration" of religion and govern·
ment in England. The struggles of church and state in other realms
(e.g., 14th century France or the 16th century German states) con·
trihuted relatively little to the " hard, living reality of religion " operating in this country's colonial and early republican politics. Additional discussion of religious events in England-Wyclif and the Lollards, the Peasants' Revolt, the Pilgrimage of Grace, the Elizabethan
Settlement and its attendant plots, the Civil War-would in fact help
to fill in the undergirding experience rather than narrow the background.
Where religious impulses do not have Anglo-American origins,
Noonan normally succeeds in acknowledging their presence (e.g.,
Mennonites, Latter-Day Saints and Native American religion) and describing their religious sense. Indeed, his attention to the variety of
religions in America and their impact on public life, with the one exception discussed below, yields wonderful vignettes (e.g., snake handling services at the Dolly Pond Church of God With Signs Following)
(p. 290).
Noonan's alitention to such details leaves one wondering about some
omissions. For example, the "Roots" discussion leaps in three sentences from Jesus' confrontation with Pilate (Jn 18:33-38) to the Edict
of Milan. Very few generally-educated Americans--certainly not those
in law schools-have a working knowledge of the three centuries of
Christian experience between those two events. Further notes, essays or
letters concerning the history of Christianity's success in the Roman
world would he very helpful: covering ·the evolution of Roman opinion
about Christians in relation to the State and official religion; discussing
the emperor's adoption of .the faith and its effect on the public life of
believers, clergy and laity (which would put in context the writings
from Augustine) ; and describing the important heresies of the imperial period. The paucity of such religious definitions raises a similar
problem. Donatists, Anabaptists, Arminians and Unitarians find men·
tion, but Noonan does not favor ithe reader with an understanding
either of their beliefs or of the ol'thodoxy that opposed .them. Given
their importance to the subject of Christian relationships with govern·
ment, ithis lack of explanation is regrettable. One also questions ithe
propriety of using such anachronisms as "feminism" and "mach·
ismo" to characterize the English crown's canonically perverse inquisi-

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tion process against Joan of Arc (p. 46), or suggesting that Massachusetts "played hardball" with Roger Williams (p. 66).
The most lamentable omission, however, is any substantive coverage
of Black American religion. The chapter titled " Emancipation " (pp.
168-193) contains but one note addressing the subject: a discussion of
Bouldin v. Alexander, 82 U.S. (15 Wall.) 131 (1872), which was merely a dispute about ownership of a Black Baptist church building.
Neither Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, nor their religiously motivated
insurrections is even mentioned. Contrary to a good deal of evidence
and a large variety of scholars on the subject of slave religion, Noonan
states that " slaves were one large class of human beings whose minds
were not permitted to be free " and " learned what religious doctrine
their masters thought suitable" (p. 113). Later, in Part 3's discussion
of the Civil Rights Movement, little more than two pages are devoted
to" the most stable institution in Negro culture-the church" (p. 450).
Where this " church " came from is left to the imagination. Given this
skimpy treatment, the reader is hard put to account for the slaves' revolts or their rapid acceptance of emancipation, for the persistence of
freed people of color in the pursuit of equal political opportunity, or
for the continuing prominence of Black clergy in our nation's politics.
Noonan's treatment of the Black experience of religion, a force that
animated the only two successful, religiously motivated political realign·
ments in American history, leaves much to be desired. It is the single
significant flaw in an otherwise remarkable volume.
In general, Noonan succeeds in describing .the types of experiences
that underlie American religious liberty. The writings disclose the
sincere intensity that various believers invested in their religion. Likewise, they successfully provide a sense of certain figures' principled
dedication to expelling government from the arena of religious institu·
tions, doctrine and conscience. Best of all, the book demonstrates that
the interpenetration of political and ecclesiastical concerns will continue to be a fact of American public life. The Religion Clauses impose
the dilemma on the government to organize, protect and otherwise operate in our society alongside vigorous and diverse religions. If the
past and current judicial solutions do not provide us with a coherent
tapestry of legal principles, then at least they give something to encourage us to weave and darn the collection of raveled opinions, or
even .to decide that some need discarding.

D. R. WHITT, O.P.
University of Kentucky College of Law
Lexington, Kentucky

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Reason and Religion: Essays in Philosophical Theology. By ANTHONY
KENNY. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987. Pp. x
182. $24.95
(cloth).

+

This volume collects eleven of Anthony Kenny's essays, written over
a period of almost thirty years. Six of them have previously appeared
in print; the other five are published here for the first time. As the
volume's subtitle indicates, all of them discuss topics in the area of
philosophical theology. The collection as a whole nicely illustrates the
wide range of Kenny's work in philosophical theology during the past
three decades. This hook will he of particular interest to the readers
of this journal; the index records more references to Thomas Aquinas
than to anyone else.
Within the hounds of a brief review, I cannot discuss each of ,the
essays in detail. So I shall limit myself to doing two things. In order
to give readers a sense of .the scope of the collection, I shall first summarize its contents; in order to convey an idea of its philosophical in·
terest, I shall then make some critical remarks about :the views set forth
in the three most recent essays, all dated 1986.
The volume is divided into four parts. Each part gathers together
essays that share themes or concerns. Thus the first part, which contains two papers from 1964, focuses on the nature of theological thinking. In "The Use of Logical Analysis in Theology," Kenny advances
the claim that many contemporary philosophical discussions are of immediate relevance to theology and argues for it by example. The example involves the use of analytic metaphysics as practiced by such
philosophers as Anscomhe, Geach and Strawson both to explicate and to
criticize the Tridentine understanding of the doctrine of Transubstantiation. "The Development of Ecclesiastical Doctrine" outlines the difficulties history raises for the view that Catholic dogma is immutable.
Kenny is harshly critical of attempts to explain away all the apparent
changes of doctrine in the historical record by means of such ad hoc
devices as representing them as merely making explicit what had been
implicitly believed all along or writing down what had been orally
transm1tted for many generations. He argues that such explanations
can account for some hut not all of the doctrinal change history reveals.
The second part of the volume, which is about the nature and existence of God, contains two papers dating from the 1960s on divine
necessity, a recent discussion of the argument from design, and an older
piece analyzing the description by John of the Cross of mystical experi·
ence. In "God and Necessity," Kenny proposes an analysis of proposi·
tional necessity according to which a necessary proposition is one which
never changes its truth-value. Because it is usually supposed that God

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exists always or never, this analysis has rthe consequence that rthe propo·
sition that God exists is necessary. But so too are propositions ascribing
existence to everlasting entities such as the proposition that Demo·
critean atoms exist. Indeed, as Kenny explicitly notes in "Necessary
Being," if polythene is literally indestructible (and has always existed),
then the proposition that polyithene exists is a necessary truth hut not,
of course, a logically necessary truth. " The Argument from Design "
contends that teleological explanations in terms of purpose cannot be
ultimate hut must be reducible either to mechanistic explanations or
to explanations in terms of design. So the fate of the design argument
hangs on whether there is purpose in nature that is both irreducible
to a product of mechanistic chance and necessity and has no designer
in the natural world. And in "Mystical Experience: St. John of the
Cross," Kenny casts doubt on the suitability of the contemplative state
of union with God described by John for justifying belief in God. As
he sees it, rthere are difficulties involved in knowing that anyone is in
such a contemplative state. John allows that a person may think he
is contemplating when he is not and may he contemplating without
knowing it, and he gives no reason for supposing that the tranquility
and virtue he takes to he effects of contemplation cannot occur in the
absence of contemplation.
The third section of the book contains three papers, the earliest written in 1958 and the latest in 1985, devoted to exploring the relation·
ship of divine knowledge and power to human freedom. Each of these
papers explicates the thought of an important Christian theologian.
" Grace and Freedom in St. John Chrysostom " takes up the question of
whether Chrysostom held semi-Pelagian views. Kenny concludes that
Chrysostom did share with the semi-Pelagians .the unorthodox opinion
that predestination is not the cause of salvation and so reduced predestination to mere foreknowledge. In " Aquinas on Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom," Kenny criticizes and then tries to improve
upon the response Aquinas gives to the argument that future human
actions are necessary rather than free because God's foreknowledge of
them is past and so necessary. He complains that Aquinas fails to reconcile foreknowledge and freedom because his view that God's knowledge is timelessly eternal amounts to a denial that there is any divine
foreknowledge, and he goes on to mount an attack on a premise of the
argument by trying to show that there is no reason to think propositions
attributing foreknowledge to God are necessary merely because they
are past-tensed. " Realism and Determinism in the Early Wyclif "
argues that in the De Universalibus Wyclif explicitly rejected the view
that divine volition necessitates human action in any way that would
transfer moral responsibility for sin from humans to God. According

BOOK REVIEWS

711

to Kenny, Wyclif holds both that divine volition causes human action
and that human action causes divine volition; when Peter repents
of his sin, it is true to say both that Peter is repenting because God
wills him to repent and that God wills him to repent because he is repenting.
The final section of the book, which contains two papers from 1986,
addresses issues in morals and politics .that currently divide societies
along religious lines. In "Abortion and the Taking of Human Life,"
Kenny offers a philosophical defense of the view that abortion is wrong
because it is taking innocent human life and taking innocent human
life is always wrong. He qualifies this strong position by acknowledging that a newly fertilized embryo is not yet an individual human
being, since it may naturally develop into identical twins, and so does
not fall under the prohibition against terminating the life of an individual human being. " Religion, Church and State in History and
Philosophy " was originally an invited lecture meant to contribute to
the debate in Pakistan about the role of religion in a modern Islamic
state. After rehearsing a couple of the familiar liberal arguments for
the separation of Church and State, Kenny makes the point that in
Western countries disputes over the proper boundary between Church
and State are apt to break out these days as a result of the intervention of the Church in the affairs of the State. His own suggestion is
that the overlap between the spheres of Church and State be limited
by the general rule that those who hold authority in the one institution
should not hold authority in the other.
Some of .the older papers in this collection are now mainly of historical interest. For example, though it has been influential and widely
cited, the paper about Aquinas on foreknowledge and freedom is no
longer at the cutting edge of the philosophical debate on that topic.
The recent explosion of work on the question of whether divine fore·
knowledge and human freedom are compatible has produced papers by
Alvin Plantinga, William Hasker, John Martin Fischer and others that
advance the discussion beyond the point to which Kenny brought it in
terms of depth, clarity and rigor. Similarly, the important work on
modal logic and metaphysics done by Saul Kripke, David Lewis and
Plantinga has made it possible for recent discussions of divine necessity to reach a level of sophistication that represents progress beyond
anything to be found in Kenny's ·two papers on that subject. To mention these advances is, of course, not to detract from .the contribution
Kenny's work has made to progress in philosophical theology over the
years. But it does suggest that .the material in this collection which is
most likely to attract interest and criticism from philosophers is :to be
found primarily in the more recent essays. Let me give some examples

BOOK REVIEWS

of claims Kenny makes in those essays that seem to be worthy of fur·
ther discussion.
Kenny concludes the paper on the argument from design with a ques·
tion. If it were to turn out that proposed explanations of biological
purpose in terms of chance and necessity are inadequate, what would
be added to the recognition of their inadequacy by attributing such
purpose to design? As he sees it the difficulty here is in giving con·
tent to the notion of a supernatural designing mind. Because he takes
design to be purpose deriving from a conception of the good, he
wonders how the conception of the good of a disembodied supernatural
designer could be manifested or made known to us. But it seems to
me that there is a straightforward way of dealing with this difficulty.
Kenny allows that human conceptions of the good may he manifested
by their representations in patterns of action, blueprints, descriptions
and thoughts. So if the notion of a supernatural mind that can act to
produce effects in the natural world is coherent, it would seem that a
divine conception of the good could he manifested by its representa·
tion in the patterns of divine action constitutive of salvation history
or in the descriptions contained in scriptural revelation. To he sure,
construing historical events as products of divine volition or reading
scriptural texts as divine revelation involves interpretation and pro·
duces fallible results. But interpretation is also required in seeing
human behavior as action expressive of a conception of the good, and
it too is fallible. The two activities appear not to differ in kind hut
at most in the degree of epistemic risk associated with them, and so I
fail to see that Kenny has provided a special reason for skepticism
about the possibility of giving content to the notion of supernatural
design.
In the paper on abortion, Kenny endorses the principle that taking
innocent human life intentionally is always wrong. As he is well aware,
this absolutist prohibition is rejeoted by consequentialists, and so it
requires some defense. His counter to consequentialism is the bald
assertion that absolute prohibitions are constitutive of morality. It is
essential to morality, he tells us, that the shared pursuit of non-mate·
rial values he carried out within a framework which excludes cer·
tain types of behavior, this is what distinguishes morality from
aesthetics. Needless to say, consequentialists are not likely to he impressed by this line of argument. They are apt to consider it question·
begging, for it has about it the air of a stipulative definition of morality. Moreover, identifying morality as such with absolutism in this high·
handed fashion cannot serve to recommend morality to us. Even if we
concede the term 'morality' to Kenny, we may still he puzzled about
whether ;there are any good reasons for supposing we ought to subject

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713

ourselves to the constraints of the peculiar institution of morality as
he defines it. Kenny does not provide such reasons. Hence, for all he
has said, it remains an open question whether the moral life, as he understands it, is rationally preferable .to the aesthetic life for purposes
of the shared pursuit of non-material values. In short, Kenny's defense
of moral absolutism appears to he a failure.
There are a number of questions worth raising about Kenny's proposal that the overlap of Church and State be limited by the principle
.that no one should he an authority in both institutions. Some of them
have to do with how such a proposal might he implemented in a modern
democracy. Should clergy be legally disqualified from holding public office? Should churches forbid their clergy to engage in partisan
political acivity? Kenny seems to wish the proposal to be understood
as a general rule to which there may be exceptions; he explicitly allows
if:hat clergy may have a responsibility to act as political leaders when
an oppressed group lacks educated secular leaders. But I am reluctant
to concede that there should be any formal restrictions on clerical participation in democratic politics, at least under regimes, like that in
the United States, in which there is a constitutional separation of
Church and State. Though the risk Kenny sees of confusion of roles if
clergy hold government office is not eliminated by such constitutional
provisions, it does not in present circumstances seem to me a very
serious risk in the United States. In the current situation of religious
pluralism in the United States, the clergy as a group strikes me as no
more likely than the laity to pose a serious threat to the separation of
Church and State. So I am not persuaded that Kenny's way of limiting
overlap of the spheres of Church and State (even if it is regarded as no
more than a general rule to which exceptions can be made) should be
adopted in the United States or in similarly situated constitutional
democracies.
As I hope these examples have indicated, the sample of Kenny's recent work included in this volume contains a good deal of material
that should serve to provoke philosophical discussion. The older papers
make available in a convenient form part of the record of his distinguished contributions to recent philosophical theology. This is a
collection I recommend to anyone inerested in philosophical theology
and its development in the past three decades.
PHILIP L. QUINN

University of Notre Dame
South Bend, IN

714

BOOK REVIEWS

The End of Life. By JAMES RACHELS. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1986. Pp. 204.
The rise of advanced medical technologies, especially life-sustaining
ones, has brought to center stage the hioethical issues which arise in
acute and long-term care contexts. Especially pressing have been problems about the nature and permissibility of euthanasia. Roughly
speaking, there are two major views about euthanasia. The traditional view holds that it is wrong intentionally to kill an innocent
human being, hut that, given certain circumstances, it is permissible
to withhold or withdraw treatment and allow a patient to die. A more
radical view, embraced by groups like the Hemlock Society and the
Society for the Right to Die, denies that there is a morally significant
distinction between passive and active euthanasia. Further, mercy killing, assisted suicide, and the like are permissible. James Rachels's hook
is the most articulate expression of the radical view.
The work contains 'ten chapters which can he broken down into l:wo
main sections. In chapters one through four, Rachels draws a distinction between what he calls biographical and biological life, and he
maintains that, whereas ithe traditional view places emphasis on the
latter, the former is what should he considered in euthanasia cases. In
chapters five through ten, the distinction between active and passive
euthanasia is analyzed. Rachels argues that ithere is no distinction between the two and that euthanasia is permissible in certain circumstances.
Chapter one traces the rise of the traditional view in the west from
1the Greeks and Romans to the development of Christanity. According
to Rachels, the Greeks and Romans allowed aotive euthanasia-infanticide, suicide-in some cases, because they believed that life held
little value apart from the chance of a meaningful or happy existence.
But the coming of Christianity caused the traditional doctrine to arise.
Until Augustine, the Church taught ·that all killing was wrong. But
Christendom during Augustine's time made a politically expedient decision to change its views in 1the face of pressure from the state. The
Church adopted the position that all taking of innocent human life
was wrong.
Two observations should be made here. First, Rachels would have
a difficult time proving that the Church changed its views for reasons of
political expediency. He makes no attempt to analyze the theological
aspects of the situation during Augustine's time, e.g. the shift from a
premillenial to an amillenial eschatology with a concomitant change in
how the two kingdoms should he related, Second, and more importantly, Rachels discussion of 1the Greeks and Romans contains a serious

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715

omission which is quite revealing in light of later chapters. He does
not distinguish happiness and the good life in its formal and material
aspects. For many Greek and Roman thinkers, e.g. Aristotle, happiness
was more than a mere formal principle. It contained substantive content, viz. the progressive embodiment of intellectual and moral virtues.
For Rachels, the good life is whatever an individual finds to be in his
own best interests.
Chapter .two focuses on the sanctity of life. After surveying eastern
views (all life is equally sacred, including that of insects) , Rachels
criticizes the sanctity-of-life view. As it is expressed in Christianity,
this view, as understood by Rachels, holds that all human life is sacred
merely because it is biological human life. Being homo sapiens is
what gives value to human life. According to Rachels, this is a mistaken
understanding of why life is valuable. The sanctity of life should he
construed as protecting biographical life, not mere biological life. One's
life has value from tlie individual's point of view because he has a
biographical life; that is, he can pursue interests and goals that are
important to him. The importance of being alive is derivative from
the importance of having a life.
The traditional view, says Rachels, has lost sight of the point of the
rule against killing. H we fail to ask for the purpose of a moral rule,
we may sometimes fulfill its letter by going against its spirit. For example, we are taught to drive on ,the right side of the road. But if we
fail to realize that the point of this rule is to avoid accidents, we may
fail to drive on the left if a car is coming toward us in the right lane.
The point of the moral rule against killing is to protect those with biographical lives, not those with mere biological lives.
Rachels draws two implications from his emphasis on biographical
lives. First, human vegetahles--defective infants, terminally ill-have
only biological lives and not biographical ones, since they have no interests or point of view. Second, some nonhuman animals have biographical lives and, thus, should he protected. The chapter concludes
with a defense of the independence of morality from religion. Morality
is justified independently from religion.
I will reserve comment on Rachel's biological/biographical distinction until later. But two other problems stand out in 1this chapter. First
Rachels's traffic example of moral rules begs the question against rule
deontological theories. Traffic rules are mere procedural rules which do
get their point from the consequences they seek to promote-avoidance
of accidents. But, according to deontological theories, some moral rules
are their own point. Many defenders of the sanctity of life hold to some
form of deontological ethics. Rachels may not agree with deontological
theories, hut he should at least discuss them and argue against them.

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Instead, he merely asserts that rules have a point outside themselves
and offers a question-begging illustration to prove his assertion.
Second, his dismissal of the role of religion in moral justification is
far too hasty. For the sake of argument, even if one grants that religion does not play a justificatory role from within the moral point of
view, one can still ask why one {rationally) ought to adopt the moral
point of view as a part of one's rational life plan. The strength of the
Christian understanding of the sanctity of life does not lie merely in the
moral rule "Treat human life as an end." Rather, the metaphysical
framework which is part of Christianity, specifically, the imago Dei
{which I take to be ontological and not merely functional), grounds
this moral rule and gives it epistemic justification. Rachels's failure to
treat this aspect of the Christian version of the sanctity of life is a
serious omission.
Chapters three and four clarify and apply the biological/biographical life distinction. Chapter three argues that an answer can be given
to why it is wrong il:o kill by focusing on why it is wrong to die.
Hedonists say death is bad because it removes the possibility of having pleasant sensations. But, argues Rachels, the value of life does not
lie in having good sensations and avoiding bad ones. This is illustrated
by the case of W onmug, a stupid and vain college student interested
in physics. His fellow students and professors conspire to fool him into
ithinking he is a great physicist. He eventually gets his Ph.D., is
honored at scholarly meetings, and the like, but all along he is being
ridiculed behind his back while he enjoys a false pride.
Wonmug had a life of pleasant experiences, but his life was still a
tragedy. Why? According to Rachels, Wonmug is unfortunate beand
cause he doesn't really have the things he values-friendship
achievement.
According to Rachels, the case of W onmug shows that we should replace hedonism with the concept of a life. Death is evil because it is
the end of a biographical life, not because it is the end of a biological
life. Biographical life is the sum of one's aspirations, goals, human
relationships, and the like which are important interests judged worthwhile from the point of view of the person himself. The value of one's
biographical life is the value it has for that person, and something has
value if its loss would harm that person.
In chapter four, Rachels applies his conception of biographical life
l:o cases like that of Baby Jane Doe: innocent human beings without a
biographical life. What is important here is not membership in a
biological species, but whether or not the human being has a biographical life. Since Baby Jane does does not have such a life, there is nothing about her of concern from a moral point of view.

BOOK REVIEWS

717

Rachels's choice of biographical life over biological life is inadequate
for at least three reasons. First, he caricatures the traditional notion of
being a human being by treating it as a mere biological concept. Notice
the way Rachels himself describes biographical life. It is a unity of
capacities, interests, and so forth, which the individual freely chooses
for himself and which unites the various stages of one's life. Now it is
precisely these (and other) features of life that the Aristotelian/
Thomist notion of secondary substance (essence, natural kind) seeks to
explain. It is because an entity has an essence and falls within a natural
kind that it can exist as a continuant, possess a unity of dispositions,
parts, and properties, and move teleologically towards ends. Further,
being a human being does not mean that one is in a biological species.
The nation of humanness used in the itraditional sancity of life view is a
metaphysical one which includes moral properties as well as biological
ones. It is the natural kind which determines what kinds of acrtivities
are appropriate and natural for that entity. So Rachels caricatures the
traditional notion of being human by treating ii: as a mere biological
concept.
Second, Rachels's view seems to collapse into subjectivism. According
to him, the importance of a biographical life is that a person has the
capacity to set and achieve goals, plans, and interests which are important from the point of view of the individual himself. But if this is
true, there is no objective moral difference in the different goals one
chooses for himself. One can only be right or wrong about the best
means to accomplish those goals.
To see this, consider Rachels's treatment of ,the 1973 "Texas burn
case " where a man known as Donald C. was horribly burned but kept
alive for two years against his will and is still alive today. Rachels
believes that his desire to die was rational because he had lost his biographical life. What was that life? It was a life of enjoying rodeos,
aeroplanes, and women. But surely some rational life plans are more
valuable than others. It is hard to believe that Donald C. was no longer
of value because he could not chase women and go to rodeos.
Or consider Wonmug again. What if his life goal was to have pleasant experiences no matter how he got them? In that case, he would no
longer he an unfortunate person on the Rachels theory because he
would have a biographical life. What if the things of interest from his
point of view centered around being the best male prostitute he could
he? H he then had an accident which confined him to a wheelchair
without sexual activity, would he he of no interest from a moral point of
view? It seems that Rachels would say yes. But it is possible to choose
a biographical life that is trivial, dehumanizing, and immoral. Some
forms of life are appropriate for humans and some are not. And the
difference is grounded in the kind of creature-a human being-one is.

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BOOK REVIEWS

Rachels's view cannot ground in " biological" life the value of some
forms of biographical life vis-a-vis others, and thus his view is sub·
jective.
Rachels denies that his view is equivalent to moral subjectivism. He
argues that it is objectively true that something has value for someone
if its loss would harm that person. But his is a mere formal principle,
and the material content one gives it, i.e. what it is to he harmed, will
depend in large degree on what interests constitute one's biographical
life, as seen in the Donald C. case. But, since a choice of interests is
subjective for Rachels, then his view is subjectivist. To escape this
charge, he would have to argue 1that there is an objective ground or
viewpoint beyond the subject himself which distinguishes some biographical lives as valuable and others as not. The traditional view
grounds this distinction in the notion of being human, hut this move
is obviously not available to Rachels.
Third, on Rachels's view people like Baby Jane Doe are of no value
from 1the moral point of view since they have no biographical life.
There is not even a prima facie duty not to kill them, But in this case it
would seem that the human being would be a mere thing from the
moral point of view. One could experiment on it or kill it brutally and
there would he no moral objection against such acts except utilitarian
problems like causing grief in family members of the one killed, weak·
ening respect for the medical profession, and the like. But surely any
view which implies this possibility is mistaken.
In chapters five through ten, Rachels turns to consider the distinction
between active and passive euthanasia. In chapter five the case of
Barney Clark is used to argue that suicide is rapidly becoming accepted
in our culture. In December, 1982, Clark was the first man to receive
a permanent artificial heart. For the rest of his life he would he forced
to he tied to a large, bulky compressor. He was given a key which
he could use at any time to turn off ithe compressor, if he no longer
wished to live. The key symbolized our culture's growing acceptance of
suicide. And, says Rachels, if suicide is permissible, so is assisted
suicide so long as such an act does not violate third party rights.
Chapters six and seven are the most crucial for the argument Rachels
advances in 1the second half of the book. According to the traditional
view, treatment may be withdrawn or withheld from a patient under
certain circumstances, e.g. death is imminent, treatment is extraordinary,
and death is not intended hut merely foreseen. Fur.ther, the traditional
view holds that active euthanasia-the intentional killing of a human
beins--is forbidden.
In chapter six, Rachels attempts to debunk ·the traditional distinc·
tions of intentional/non-intentional termination of life and ordinary/
extraordinary treatment. The effect of debunking these distinctions,

BOOK REVIEWS

719

says Rachels, is this. In end-of-life cases we should focus directly on
the individual patients and attempt to balance risks and benefits for
them. Rachels is correct to argue that the ordinary/ extraordinary distinction should not he made regarding kinds of treatment in isolation
from a risks-and-benefits analysis for specific cases. But he fails to
distinguish between substituted-judgment and best-interests analyses.
The former seems easier to incorporate into his emphasis on biographical life, while the latter seems easier to incorporate into the traditional
view. Whether or not the reader agrees with this judgment, Rachels
should have discussed the distinotion.
His omission makes it easier to interpret a risks-and-benefits analysis as an aspect of his biographical view and, by implication, one gets
the impression that the traditional view is stuck with applying the
ordinary/ extraordinary distinction to kinds of .treatment in isolation
from considerations of specific cases. But that is just not the case.
More impor.tant for Rachels is his attempt to debunk the intentional/
non-intentional distinction. Rachels sets up a case where he tries to
show that the traditional view is wrong in holding that an act which is
otherwise permissible may become impermissible if it is accompanied
by a had intention.
Consider Jack and Jill. Jack visits his sick and lonely grandmOither
and his only intention is to cheer her up. Jill also visits the grandmother and provides an afternoon of cheer. But Jill does it to influence
the grandmother to put her in the grandmother's will. Both of them,
says Rachels, did the same ,thing-they spent an afternoon cheering up
the grandmother. Jill should he judged harshly and Jack praised, not
because they did different acts, hut because Jack's character is good
and Jill's is faulty. Two acts can he the same with different intentions
and, thus, intentions are not part of an act.
But Rachels's case fails to make its point. Intentions do not accompany moral acts; they constitute those acts. Jack and Jill did not do the
same actions. Their aotions may he identical at the level of means-toends, hut their intents were different. Jack's action was one of loving
his grandmother and cheering her up by being wih her. Jill's action
was one of securing a place in the will by being with her. I am certain that, if the grandmother knew the whole story, she would (rightly)
conclude that they did different things that afternoon.
The inseparability of intentions and means from moral actions can
also he seen by asking how it is possible for an action to reveal one's
character. Character is a relatively stable unity or structure of virtuous
dispositions which underlies and expresses itself in the moral acts of
the person. A moral virtue is an ingrained habit of the embodied will,
a tendency to act in certain circumstances. Thus, character is to some

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BOOK REVIEWS

extent formed by and an expression of intentional actions. That is why
one's character is revealed by one's aotions and actions shape character.
On Rachels's analysis, moral actions are separate from intentions and
vice versa. If that is the case, how is it that one can infer character
from one's actions? It would seem that no necessary connection exists.
In chapter seven, Rachels offers his most important argument against
the killing/letting die distinction. He calls it the Bare Difference argument. Two cases are offered which are supposed to he exactly alike except that one involves killing and the other involves letting die. In the
first case, Smith stands to gain an inheritance if his young cousin dies.
One evening while the child is bathing, Smith drowns the child, makes
it look like an accident, and gets the inheritance. In the second case,
Jones also stands to gain an inheritance if his counsin dies. Like Smith,
Jones sneaks in planning to drown his bathing cousin. But as he enters, the child slips, hits his head, and falls into the water. Jones is
delighted; he stands by, ready to push the child's head hack under if
necessary, hut it is not. The child drowns by himself, as Jones watches.
Like Smith, Jones gets his inheritance.
According to Rachels, neither man behaved better from a moral
point of view even though Smith killed the child and Jones merely
let the child die. Both acted from the same motive (personal gain) and
the results were identical (death). The only difference between the two
cases is killing versus letting die, and since the cases are morally
equivalent, then this distinction is morally irrelevant.
There are at least two main problems with the cases. First, they have
what some philosophers call a " masking " or " sledgehammer " effect.
The fact that one cannot distinguish the taste of two wines when both
are mixed with persimmon juice fails to show that there is no difference between the wines, The taste of :the persimmon juice is so strong
thait it overshadows the difference. Similarly, the intentions and motives
of Smith and Jones are so atrocious and both acts are so clearly unjustified that it is not surprising that other features of .their situation
(killing versus letting die) are not perceived as ·the morally determinative factors in the cases.
But :this observation, valid as it is, does not take us to the heart of
the problem with Rachels's Bare Difference argument. The main diffi-

culty with the Bare Difference argument lies in its inadequate analysis
of a human moral act. Rachels makes the distinction between the act
of killing and the act of letting die turn on a mere difference in overt
behavior-moving or not moving one's body parts-while totally ignoring the intentions of the agents.
A richer and more intuitively correct analysis of human moral action is one which finds its classic expression in Aquinas's Summa

BOOK REVIEWS

Theologiae I-II, qq. 6-20, and which is often defended by those who do
phenomenological analyses of human aotion in general. According to
this view, a human action, moral or otherwise, is a composite whole
that contains various conditions and various parts, among which are
these two: the object, end, or intention of the act, and the means-to-theend of the act. To determine the morality of the human aotion, both
of these parts must be taken together.
To see this consider the following case. Suppose a man named Jones
is hypnotized and told to punch in the nose the first person he encounters wearing a red shirt. The hypnotist does such a good job
that Jones is causally determined to do this aot. He will reaot spontaneously and he will have no memory of the command or any control
over his bodily movements upon seeing a red shirt. Jones wakes up,
leaves the office, and strikes the first person he sees wearing a red
shirt.
Now consider Smith. He hates his football coach because he is jealous
of his good looks. His coach happens to he wearing a red shirt that day
and Smith, out of hatred and jealousy and with an intent to hurt his
coach, strikes him on ,the nose. It seems obvious that Smith's act was
immoral and Jones's was not. In fact it does not seem that Jones
really acted at all. What is the difference? Both acts have the same
set of physical happenings or means-to-ends. The difference is that Smith
intended an immoral end and Jones did not act out of an intent at all.
Rachels's Bare Difference argument leaves the intent of the two acts
out of his analysis of the moral acts of Smith and Jones. Their acts
of drowning the two children differ only in physical properties. But
that is just part of a human act, not the whole. When it comes to the
killing/letting die distinction, the traditional view does not rest the distinction on a difference in the movement of body parts. Rather, .the difference is primarily one of intention.
In chapters eight through ten, Rachels offers more arguments for active euthanasia and he discusses implications from the breakdown of
the active/passive distinction. Chapter eight includes a discussion of
one such implication. If we let people starve in foreign countries by
not helping il:o feed them, we are not just gui1ty of letting them die.
We are actually guilty of killing them. Chapter nine considers more
arguments for and against active euthanasia, including arguments from
mercy, utility, and ·the Golden Rule. Chapter ten closes ithe book with
a treatment of issues involved in legalizing aotive euthanasia. It contains a helpful treatment of two different slippery slope arguments.
The logical version says that if practice A is forbidden, and if no good
reason exists for separating practice B from A, then B is forbidden as
well. The psychological version says that if practice A is accepted,

BOOK REVIEWS

people will in fact he causally influenced to do B as well. The former
is a philosophical issue and the latter is an empirical one.
There are many interesting issues in these last three chapters. But
the most important planks in Rachels's radical view are his distinction between biological and biographical life and his Bare Difference
argument against the active killing/passive letting die distinotion. This
hook contains a number of very important moral issues which are rich·
ly discussed. But his case against the rtraditional view must ultimately
he judged inadequarte. Rachels himself admits that until now the traditional view has been the only one that is sufficiently worked out in a
sophisticated and satisfactory way. In my opinion, Rachels's contribution to the discussion has not changed that situartion.

J.P. MORELAND
Lynchburg, Virginia

Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction and the Hermeneutic
Project. By JoHN D. CAPUTO. Studies in Phenomenology and
Existential Philosophy. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press, 1987. Pp. 319.
Professor Caputo's impressive book, which is composed of an introduction and three parts, is a closely reasoned, scholarly explanation
and defense of what its author calls radical hermeneutics. In his Jn.
troduction, which he entitles "Restoring Life rto Its Original Difficulty," Caputo presents what he takes to be the problem of trying l:o
make sense of contemporary experience, given the thought developments of the last two centuries. Central to Caputo's project is his
reading of traditional metaphysics as a betrayal of the human experi·
ence of the flux. He claims that, though metaphysics makes a show of
beginning with questions, it quickly forecloses those questions as soon
as things begin to look uncertain. In Being and Time Heidegger tried
to restore the original difficulty of Being that metaphysics had swept
under the rug. Viewing Kierkegaard in his pseudonymous masks, such
as the disguise of Contantin Constantius, as involved in making life
difficult rather than easy, Capuito links the Danish existentialist's con·
cerns to Heidegger's. Caputo argues that radical hermeneutics is for
the hardy and not for those who seek some way out of the flux. Meta·
physics has illegiitimartelyclaimed some transcendental high ground ac·
cording to Caputo, hut radical hermeneutics will have none of that ap·
parently consoling hut ultimately unjustifiable comfort. Rather, her·

BOOK REVIEWS

meneutics wants to describe the difficulrty we are in and rather than
rise above the flux " gets up the nerve to stay with it " (p. 3) .
Caputo's book is evidence of the author's attempt to "get up the
nerve to stay with it " and though difficult reading the hook is nonetheless exciting. Caputo argues
Philosophy is scandalized by motion and thus tries either to exclude
movement outright from real being (Platonism) or more subversively,
to portray itself as a friend of movement and thus to lure it into the
philosophical house of logical categories (Hegelianism). Kierkegaard objects to the mummifying work of philosophy, not because he thinks that
eternity-the sphere of that which lies outside of time and movement
-is an illusion, that the real world is a myth (Fabel), as does Nietzsche,
but because he thinks that philosophy makes things too easy for itself.
It is ready to sneak out the back door of existence as soon as life begins. It does not have the courage for the flux, for the hard work of
winning eternity in time, of pushing forward existentially for the prize
which lies ahead. It is not eternity as such (Nietzsche's 'real world')
to which he objects but philosophy's effete manner of seeking it. He
takes the side of becoming against Being, of existence against thought,
of existential 'interest' against metaphysics. For it is on the basis of
interest that philosophy founders, that metaphysics comes to grief (pp.
11-12).

Impressed with :the radicalization which hermeneutics provides,
Caputo sees the protohistory of hermeneutics in thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Husserl, Nietzsche, Meister Eckhart, the late Heidegger and
even Derrida, who is a critic of hermeneutics. In Part One Caputo discusses Kierkegaardian repetition and Husserlian conS<titution and
argues persuasively that the two come :together in Heidegger's Being
and Time. If we accept as basically correct that reading of philosophy
which sees the entire history of philosophy as a battle between Parmenides and Heraclitus, then in situating Kierkegaard we would have
to place the father of existentialism on the side of Heraclitus. One of
Kierkegaard's chief opponents was what he despisingly called the System, by which he meant Hegelianism. According to the Danish
philosopher this method of philosophizing did not take time sufficiently
seriously. A cursory consideration of Hegelianism might suggest that
Hegelianism stresses the importance of history but this is only a surface impression according to Kierkegaard, who says that there was no
real contingency or risk in Hegelian time. With his mediation Hegel
had made a mistake similar to the one that Plato had made with his
rotation. Neither gave sufficient weight to time and paradoxically in an
effort to emphasize the eternal lost it.
The proper response to the flux was neither Platonic nor Hegelian
for Kierkegaard but rather what he called repetition. This supplied
the courage necessary for the flux. Through repetition the individual

7M

BOOK REVmws

becomes himself, that is, the individual has the courage to become the
being he was to he by circling hack on the being that he already was.
In other words only through repetition can a person achieve selfhood
on the deepest level. Unlike rotation and mediation, repetition is an
act that takes time and the flux seriously and thus enables the person
to achieve what is genuinely new in existence.
Husserl is a bedfellow of Kierkegaard in the boudoir of hermeneutics because, according to Caputo, Husserl's constitutive consciousness,
his consciousness of, is always interpretive. The only constant in
Husserl is the flux itself. So the insights of Kierkegaard and Husserl
lead to a respect for the flux and Heidegger retains that respect for
ithe flux in his notion of Dasein. Caputo notes
Heidegger's hermeneutic wager in Being and Time is all along that
the projection of Dasein in terms of 'existence ' represents the most
fruitful hermeneutic presupposing, that it has the evident range and
makes the deepest penetration, in short, that it has the greatest elucidatory power. The wager is that the momentum of this project will catapult
us into the meaning of the Being of Dasein and ultimately into the meaning of Being itself. And if this bet pays off, Heidegger owes a massive
debt to Kierkegaard, where he first found this suggestive hermeneutic
principle (p. 72) .

Though the wager is basically correct Heidegger has to he tempered
by Derrida in Caputo's vision of radical hermeneutics. Suggesting that
after Being and Time the idea of hermeneutics underwent three significant developments, in the work of the later Heidegger, in Gadamer's
work, and in structuralism and post-structuralism, especially Derrida's
deconstructionism, Caputo identifies Gadamer's reflections as the movemerrt of the hermeneutic project to the right, Derrida's as the movement to the left, and the later Heidegger as movement straight ahead.
Caputo notes that in the later Heidegger, instead of Being fitting in as
a prepossession of Dasein's understanding, Dasein is prepossessed by
Being. The work of hermeneutics thus becomes the recovery of that
sense of the world before it was disrupted by objectifying thinking.
Caputo sees this as a project to regain the sense of what was close before it was made distant by objeotificartion. For Caputo the gateway
through which radical hermeneutics must pass is deconstructive criticism.
Caputo contends that after hermeneutics is tempered by deconstructionism we are able to face up to our limitations and that this is not
dehumanizing hut rather liberating. Ultimately it is Heidegger's sense
of mystery that wins Caputo's allegiance. Our human situation calls
for reverence and care. Having granted so much to Derrida and
Heidegger, Caputo asks what is left for us. If the flux is what ultimately is and linguistic and historical structures are relativized, what can

BOOK REVIEWS

7fl5

we know or hope and what may our ethical commitment be? Confidently Caputo believes that reason is not destroyed by ,the loss of meta·
physics hut liberated. He proposes an ethics of dissemination, an ethics
that insists that all institutions are partly the buildings of prudence and
partly power politics, and hopes that this will help to keep people
honest. Radical hermeneutics leads us to the groundlessness of the
mystery and refuses to allow metaphysics to control that mystery.
Near the end of his book Caputo goes back to Meister Eckahrt's re·
flections about God. The German mystic wanted us to reach the sheer
transcendence of God beyond our words about God. Thus there would
the soul be chastened and achieve a new sense of the mystery of God.
Caputo compares rthis to the result of radical hermeneutics: at the end
there is something like the ground or deep part of the mind or soul.
Caputo's study is stunning in its scope and scholarship. How many
are ready to go as far as Caputo does and to surrender as much as
he surrenders? Few, I suspect. Though aputo finds that radical her·
meneutics leads to a new freedom, this reader was not convinced by
Caputo's concluding seotions-largely because of difficulty in under·
standing why precisely Caputo was so hopeful. In desiring that Caputo
he more clear in his defense of radical hermeneutics I may he asking
for what is impossible if one accepts radical hermeneutics. I do think
that readers who are ready to follow rthis exceptionally gifted philosopher in his argumentation should benefitt greatly from both Caputo's
insights and his learning, even if they cannot be as enthusiastic as the
University of Villanova Professor is for the possibilities offered by
radical hermeneutics.
ROBERT E. LAUDER
St. John's University
Jamaica, New York

Nicolai de Gusa Opera Omnia XI/1: De Beryllo. Ed. by HANS GER·
HARD SENGER and KARL BORMANN. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Ver·
lag,, 1988. Pp. 148. DM 160.
Nicolai de Gusa Opera Omnia X/2b: Opuscula II, Fasciculus 2b. Ed.
by KARL BORMANN and HEIDE DOROTHEA RIEMANN. Hamburg:
Felix Meiner Verlag, 1988. Pp. 88. DM. 98.
Nothing so grand as the present series of volumes making up the
Opera Omnia of Nicholas of Cusa was envisioned by the Heidelberg
Academy of Sciences when it set about in 1927 to produce a critical
edition of the fifteen-century cardinal's philosophical and political wri·

BOOK REVIEWS

ings. Over 17 volumes have now appeared and they span the entirety.
of Cusanus's intellectual output from his sermons to his mathematical
writings, from philosophy to astronomy and calendar reform, from scientific experiment to theology. The very range of his interests is stunning, and when it is seen coupled with the depth and passion of his
theological vision ithe impression is unforgettable.
As the critical editions make the works of Cusanus accessible to
scholars, interest in his thought develops apace. And .this interest is
global, as the existence of a Japanese Cusanus society attests! The reason for the interest is not difficult to grasp. No other thinker of his
time was as poised on the brink of modern thought as was Cusanus.
Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza and Hegel show evidence of his influence,
as do Kepler and Giordano Bruno. In the view of Ernst Cassirer
" Cusanus is the only thinker of the period to look at all of the fundamental problems of his time from the point of view of one principle
through which he masters them all. His thought knows no barriers
that separate disciplines. In keeping with the medieval ideal of the
whole, it includes the totality of the spiritual and physical cosmos "
(The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, p. 7).
Whenever the name of Nicholas of Cusa is mentioned, the ideas
which come most readily to mind are the notions of docta ignorantia
and coincidentia oppositorum. " Learned ignorance " is itself a " coincidence of opposites " and for Nicholas it expressed the essential reality
of the human condition. The human person is by nature a knower,
ordered essentially to truth, yet constitutionally incapable of grasping
that truth as it is, for between the finite and the infinite there is no
proportion. Nominalist epistemology placed God outside the realm of
intelligibility and cut nature from her moorings to divine causality.
" Learned ignorance " heals that schism, for it is the only kind of
knowing which enables man to look beyond the principle of contradiction to the essential unity which grounds it and all reality.
The De beryllo was offered by Nicholas to assist the reader in the
intellectual " vision " which " sees " beyond the wall of contradiction.
A beryl is a clear, crystalline substance which is convex on one side
and concave on the other. We think of a lens or a pair of glassesBrille in German-which enables us to see what is otherwise invisible.
The beryl is itself the embodiment of contraries, concavity and convexity, and, as such, is an apt metaphor for what Nicholas calls an "intellectual beryl." This involves his insight into the essential unity of
the maximum and the minimum, neither of which can be greater than
it is nor less than it is. Reason itself must be left behind and the mind
must have recourse to images and enigmas if it is to progress furither
toward vision of the absolute. Mathematical symbols are among the

BOOK REVIElWS

most useful in this enterprise. They are to the human mind what
creatures are to God, and in grasping the relation between the angle
and the line from which it is generated, the mind might " see " into the
relation between the creature and the creator who is its principle.
The " daring dialectic of identity and unity " (Louis Dupre) which
sees God both in and beyond all differences is the basis of Cusanus's
program of theological deconstruction and religious reform. The two
new additions to Cusanus's Opera Omnia make it clear that Nicholas
was intent upon reestablishing the intelleotual link between the human
and the divine, a connection which the mystical tradition had never
lost. For complex historical reasons Cusanus's creative initiative never
developed momentum in Christian culture even though it has exerted
a perennial hut sporadic fascination. Today's developing interest in
Cusanus's thought may stimulate some creative reappropriation of insights from this " road not taken " (Clyde L. Miller) .
For the contemporary scholar these are simply excellent editions.
The impressive adnotationes to the De beryllo offer an astonishing
wealth of information on the sources and meanings of Cusanus's ideas.
The present fascicle of Opuscula II presents the text of Cusanus's
treatise " Tu quis es" -De Principia, perhaps a sermon, which deals
with the knowledge of God as source and origin of being. While not
among the most important of Cusanus's works it offers an unusual ex·
ample of his theological method. These editions, especially the longer
and more important De beryllo, are first-class examples of scholarly
achievement and the publisher's arit. They live up to the perfeotionist
standards we now expect in the Opera Omnia.
JAMES E. BIECHLER
La Salle University
Philadelphia, PA

Understanding Maritain: Philosopher and Friend. Ed. By DEAL W.
HUDSON and MATTHEW J. MANCINI. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1987. Pp. xvii
334. $39.95 (clothbound).

+

In all [of his work] Maritain powerfully demonstrates the
capacity for renewal which belongs to the philosophia
perennis, and rthe scope of its application to contemporary
problems.
John MacQuarrie
However time-conditioned Matthew Arnold is, he often "writ wiselier than he knew," and much of his work has a saving sense
and reverberation a century after his death. (As usual, it was that

BOOK REVIEWS

saintly sage and wit G. K. Chesterton who noted, in a 1906 Everyman
Introduction to selections from Arnold's works, this quality and its
unique, gracious combination of clarity and obscurity, of strength and
weakness.) Thus Arnold could write well and truly, but half-heartedly and too lightly, of our modern deficiencies-" the disbelief in right
reason, il:he dislike of authority." He could properly and eloquently
and briefly define, and to large degree himself embody, culture itself:
" the disinterested and active use of reading, reflection, and observation, in the endeavour to know the best that can be known " (Culture
and Anarchy, 1868). But his own theism and Christianity were, like
the " Sea of Faith " in his great poem " Dover Beach," on the ebb,
with a "melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,/Retreating."
Yet in Arnold's conduct and ideal, the Christian leaven was still
alive, as his phrasing so frequently shows. It can, I il:hink, be persuasively argued that two of his successors, Chesterton and Maritain,
achieved Arnold's great cultural aims, but by reversing his direction,
by recovering an awareness of the intelligible Being of God, the ens
realissimum, the summum bonum, " the best that can be known " because it is the ultimate source of all goodness and being. Chesterton
and Maritain recovered "right reason," the mean between irrationalism
or fideism on :the one hand and endless, rootless, fruitless, relativistic
rationalism on the other; they recovered a proper and rational attitude to authority, seeing in it our only safeguard against the anarchy
or tyranny of mere present passion or power, alternative forms of the
" universal wolf " perennially hungry to devour sane and humane living and being.
Yet another of Arnold's brief but massively felicitous and wise
phrases justifies Chesterton's high praise of him: Educated, reflective,
and cultured persons ought to strive, he said, " to see life steadily and
see life whole." What the great modern ChriSJtian humanists-Chesterton, T. S. Eliot, Maritain, and C. S. Lewis-did was precisely this, and
in the effort each one came, from agnostic or secularized Protestant
backgrounds, to encounter yet again Him Who Is, ' ever ancient, ever
new'. Chesterton and Maritain read St. Thomas, "ithe apostle of the
intelligence," in whom they finally heard the argument and the note
of Heavenly Wisdom, of Sapientia itself, the sermo sapientiae.
Like Gilson, Maritain praised Chesterton as a metaphysician, as an
interpreter of St. Thomas, and as a celebrant of Being itself. But
Chesterton was an artist-the greatest English literary artist in our
century, I believe; his tone was too light, and his learning too informal
and too lightly worn, to qualify him as an academic philosopher, as a
school-man. This, I believe, was Maritain's achievement: "to see life
steadily and to see it whole," and systematically and in all the major

BOOK REVIEWS

areas of intellectual life to express what he saw. Who, in our anarchic
century with its declining standards of culture and literacy, could be an
appropriate judge of Maritain's work as a whole? His learning was
massive, his literary output prodigious. We can tie his shoe-laces and
perhaps correct some of his footnotes in specialized areas, but the
ascent to such philosophical eminence, in both height and breadth, is
of so rare occurrence, especially in an era of information glut and spe·
cializing, as to be astounding. Only the charlatan, the maniac, and
the genius attempt the climb toward the peak, however much in some
moments we all long to do so. Maritain was the genius.
How high up the mountain Maritain got, how much he saw, and
what he said about it are documented in this beautifully produced and
edited volume of essays on him and his work. It is an embarrassment
of riches to which justice cannot be done in a short review. Those,
like the present reviewer, who have always read Maritain "on the
side " and never as prescribed or encouraged in college or graduate
school courses will be particularly grateful for so compendious and
comprehensive a view of the various aspeots of his personality and
thought. In addition if:o a Foreword by Martin Marty, a fine ln>troduction by the editors, and a helpful " Bio-Bibliography " by Henry Bars,
there are essays on "Maritain and America-Friendships " (B. Doer·
ing), on Raissa Mariitain (W. Bush), on Leon Bloy and Maritain (E.
Leiva-Merikakis), on Maritain and St. Thomas (P. Redpath), on "The
Humanism of Jacques Maritain" (J. Hellman), on "Maritain's Demo·
crntic Vision" (M. Mancini), "Maritain on Politics" (Paul Sigmund:
"A hundred years from now ... the political philosophy of Jacques
Maritain will still be read."), on" Angelism and Culture" (R. Fafara),
on Maritain and Science (Stanley L. Jaki), "An Introduction to Maritain's Metaphysics and Epistemology " (R. Dennehy), on his Aes·
thetics (D. Hudson), his views on Mysticism (C. Hancock), his philos·
ophy of education (D. Gallagher), his Ethics (J. Pappin), and his
philosophy of history (T. Flynn).
Not a Maritain scholar, the present reviewer can only point out essays
that he found particularly impressive or helpful, remarking at the out·
set the high quality of all of them. The essays by Hellman, Mancini,
and Sigmund are outstanding. Dennehy's detailed essay on Maritain's
metaphysics and epistemology displays for the philosophically literate
but non-specialist reader a powerful and precise philosophical mind at
work. But for me the most impressive and useful essays in the book are
the ones by J. Pappin on "Maritain's Ethics for an Age in Crisis"
and Stanley Jaki on "Maritain and Science." Father Jaki has some
claim to be a major successor to Maritain, with a world-class mind
of the first order, one that has followed in Maritain's tradition of
Thomistic metaphysical realism but gone beyond him ,to take explicit

730

BOOK REVIEWS

and detailed possession of the vast and vastly important iterrain of the
philosophy and history of science. He shows that Maritain, who with
his wife studied biology at Heidelberg with Hans Driesch from 1906 to
1908, saw and identified the gigantic mistake, evil, and idolatry of
scientism as early as 1910, and was almost certainly the first person to
use the word in French (first English usage: 1877 (OED)).
The importance of the careful critique of " scientism " in the interest
of rationality, truth, ethics, and of science itself, is impossible to overstress. Maritain's role in it is a noble one, well-informed, precise, and
judicious, as Father Jaki shows. Jaki himself has continued this
line of analysis in profound, detailed, ground-breaking books that comprise one of the most important and impressive bodies of learning and
thought of which I have any knowledge. Chesterton, too, was an early,
profound, and persistent critic of scientism, without going to the opposite extremes of fideism, irrationalism, or idealism, as Jaki has
shown in his superb recent book Chesterton: A Seer of Science (University of Illinois Press, 1986). A fine appreciation of this book, this
important line of analysis, and of Jaki himself has been written by the
distinguished Oxford nuclear physicist Peter E. Hodgson (Chesterton
Review, Vol. XIII, 1987; reprinted in the indispensable Oxford Science and Religion Forum, # 13, November 1988, pp. 44:ff.). Jaki's work
is the living tissue of the tradition of Maritain and of St. Thomas himself and a profound vindication of it.
Yet there are not many other signs of the vindication of Maritain's
school on the landscape today, as John Hellman points out in his essay
on Maritain's humanism. What Arnold called "this strange dis-ease of
modern life " has become an epidemic a century after his death.
Joseph Pappin's "Maritain's Ethics for an Age in Crisis" is a superb
meditation on our dangerously confused and anarchic culural condition, invoking contemporary commentators who prophetically bear
witness against our nihilism and for the normaitive truths of our tradition, especially Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Malcolm Muggeridge. One
could wish that in addition to Alasdair Maclntyre's oft-cited After
Virtue Pappin had also mentioned C. S. Lewis's Abolition of Man and
Basil Mitchell's Morality: Religious and Secular (Oxford, 1981; finely
appreciated in America, 10 January 1981), which is now available in
paperback. Burt his essay is a gem of judiciousness nevertheless.
What somehow those of us who teach the young must get across to
them, in light of Maritain's and Thomas's teaching, is that the death of
God inevitably spells the death of the human person, res sacra homo;
that anthropocentric humanism (Dawson: 'secular humanism') is a
lethal impersonator of and parasite on theocentric humanism, and at
best only a fickle friend to Rational Goodness. " There are no men

BOOK REVIEWS

731

who has no idol; there are no men who have no god." Chesterton wrote
in 1905.
They may have a wrong idol, or a wrong god.
Idolatry, heresy, believing the wrong thing, admiring the wrong thing,
that there is. . .. but there are no men who do not believe or admire at
all. The people who follow wicked visions, fallacious visions, wrong
visions, end in great disasters and terrible punishments, but the people
who do not follow any vision at all do not exist or cannot exist for long.
" Where there is no vision the people perish."

No modern imaginative writer more effeotively transmiA:s this set of
il:ruths than Chesterton; no modern philosopher taught it to more people, in more languages, in more countries, than Maritain. He foughtand through his works continues to fight-the nihilistic revolution in
the midst of which we live, and move, and have much of our being.
At the heart of this revolution, as Maritain well knew from his acquaintance with the French diaholist tradition, is the denial of the goodness
(or reality or intelligibility) of being itself. The breakdown of the
orthodox tradition of reason and authority in our era has effectively
enthroned power, accident, whim, appetite, and peer pressure at all
ages, and these are jealous and exacting gods. "For what is liberty,"
Burke wrote two hundred years ago, " without wisdom and without
virtue? It is the greatest af all possible evils." The libertarian revolution is as lethal, and more beguiling, than the scientistic Marxist one,
now in such evident collapse everywhere but in American universities.
From Sade and Stimer through Nietzsche to today's popular commercial culture, debauching and cretinizing the masses through television,
the heresy has been more and more effectively propagated that there is
nothing obligatory or authoritative that is 'anterior, exterior, or su·
perior ' to ithe self. This poisonous plant hears black fruit in absurdism,
lihevtinism, or diabolism.
In defense of the common sense of the race, :the image of God in man,
the implicit disposition of the human creature to the Divine and Rational Good, Maritain wrote toward the end of his life against our
tenured anarchists who " foster . . . a corrosive doubt about that prephilosophy which people are constantly obliged to use, hut in which
they are believing less and less." Understanding Maritain: Philosopher
and Friend is an anitidote to this corrosive nihilism, keeping alive the
leaven and the remnant.
M. D. AESCHLIMAN
The University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia

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Symbol and Sacrament: A Contemporary Sacramental Theology. By
MICHAEL G. LAWLER. New York/Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1987.
Pp. 290. $11.95.

In this book Michael Lawler, Dean of 1the graduate school and pro·
fessor of Theology at Creighton University, offers both foundations for
a contemporary Roman Catholic sacramental theology (chapters one
and two) and presentations of each of the sacraments (chapters three
to nine) that summarize the historical evolution of each sacrament's
theology and praotice and (most usually) apply insights from the first
il:wo chapters that are aimed to present a contemporary theology of
each sacrament. In general the foundational presentations on " prophetic symbol" (chapter one) and "sacrament: a theological view"
(chapter two) are the more interesting and thought provoking. The
later chapters are merely adequate summaries of the :tradition which
sometimes rely on dated research and oversimplified understandings
of historical periods. Unfortunately therefore, the book's usefulness,
especially as a text, is marred.
In chapter one Lawler argues that sacraments are most adequately
understood as prophetic symbols because through both the sacramental
word and sacramental action believers experience God's revelation and
continuing action in human life. Lawler often reiterates that those who
experience the prophetic symbols of sacraments must live into them
and thus experience God through them (p. 19). "To say symbol is
not to say not real, but rather fully real, ithat is, representatively and
concretely and effectively and personally real. Prophetic symbols realize
sacred reality precisely by symbolizing it" (p. 28). In this chapter
Lawler offers some intriguing approaches to sacraments and sets up
the way he will deal with individual sacraments. The second chapter
is much less satisfying because in it the author attempts to do too
much: to present the history of the definitions of sacrament in Catholic
theology, the nature of sacraments as signs (and then as causes), as
signs of faith, and their institution by Christ. Here the absence of any
reference Ito the way the Franciscan school understood sacramental
causality (when discussing the Scholastic contribution to sacramental
theology) , or to the usefulness of the number seven, or to the role of
the Spirit in sacramental theology and practice, or to ithe indwelling
of the Church in the Trinity through sacraments is disappointing. What
is particularly noteworthy, however, is the way the author describes the
sacramentality of all of creation, how "sacramentality is a bedrock in
the Christian tradition" (p. 60) and how the Church can be undersitood as sacramental.
Chapter three on " baptism: ritual of life and death " is particularly

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733

well presented since the author combines the biblical notion of corpo·
rate personality with a communal understanding of Church as essen·
tial bases for understanding initiation, especially infant baptism.
While one could argue that his presentation of infant baptism ought
to follow from a theology of adult initiation (thus using more fully
his quotation on p. 82 from von Balthasar that " the baptism of in·
£ants is not a proper model for the sacramental process ... [and] that
it must be considered an exception ... "), his consideration of the
pastoral problem of baptized non-believers here and in the chapters on
confirmation and marriage is most useful. Where the Rite of Chris·
tian Initiation for Adu1ts is discussed most fully is in chapter four on
confirmation, where Lawler takes careful, moderate and pastorally
realistic positions on what to do with those whose sacramental initia·
tion has nol: been followed up with Christian education or practice.
Here the author refers in a useful way to the present rite for confirmation as a source for sacramenital theology.
The author's emphasis on the role of the church in sacraments is care·
fully described in his treatment of penance and reconciliation (chapter
five) . Here the church is viewed as the agent of reconciliation, which
agency is seen in history most clearly in the early evolwtion of public
penance. The author offers good insights about the present rite of
penance and carefully critiques it where appropriate. Unfortunately
his appreciation of exhomologesis seems not to include praise and
thanksgiving in penance; he leaves these joyful aspects of reconciliation
to sharing in the eucharist as the term of the process (p. 125) .
Lawler's reliance on dated research is most glaring when he dis·
cusses the eucharist (chapter six). His New Testament sources are
particularly weak (e.g., there is no reference to Leon-Dufour's impor·
tant work Sharing the Eucharistic Bread) . His almost complete reliance on J.P. Audet's understanding of the Jewish berakah prayer from
as background for interpreting both the texts of the Last Supper and
the early eucharistic prayers betrays his ignorance of some early critiques of this work (e.g., R. Ledogar) or more recent advances in
liturgical research that put into question larger parts of Audeit's thesis
(e.g., T. Talley). Lawler leaves out any discussion of transubstantia·
tion before Trent and thus hinders the reader's understanding of its
roots and original meaning. In addition Lawler's interpretation of
Paul VI's encyclical Mysterium Fidei makes one wonder whether he
abandons here his own crucial emphasis on symbol since he seems to
separate an understanding of transubstantiation from the prior emphases in the tradition and present reemphasis on the symbolic nature
of the eucharist. Also unfortunate is the author's description of the
echatological aspect of the eucharist, since it is primarily temporal;

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more useful would have been joining eschatology to ecclesiology and
anamnesis.
Lawler's treatment of anointing (chapter seven) is generally well
done; however greater recourse to the present anointing rite would
have clarified importanit ways thait the church is involved in the pastoral
care of the sick as well as in anointing itself. The section on marriage
(chapter eight) is unique in that here .the author deliberately moves to
a description of .the reality of marriage as experienced by a couple as
thait experience helps to focus the tradition of church teaching and
practice on marriage. Given the chapter's length it is regrettable that
Lawler did not utilize and develop some important insights on marriage
recently offered by J. Dominian and T. Mackin. The final chapter on
holy orders is much less useful since here ithe author identifies the
church's ministers raither than what a theology of ministry consists in.
Most unfortunate is the author's reliance on Schillibeeckx's Ministry
rather than the corrected and expanded book The Church With a
Human Face (even granting the epistemological and exegetical criti •
cisms which this work has received).
In sum, this attempt at a contemporary Roman Catholic sacramental
theology is somewhat useful but not without flaw. It could serve as a
textbook in college or adult education courses in sacraments with a
skilled teacher who can correct and expand on the text as needed.
KEVIN w. IRWIN
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

Evangelical Theories of Biblical Inspiration: A Review and Proposal,
By KERN ROBERT TREMBATH. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1987. Pp. 154. $24.95 (cloth).
Although it is often stated that interest in the question of biblical
inspiraition has declined greatly in recent years (as witnessed, for example, in how little space it receives in current introductions to the
Bible or to Systematic Theology) , there have been a large number of
books published on the subject during the last decade. Trembath has
added his voice to the present discussion from a very specific concern: namely, to explore the possibility of a theory of inspiration in
an Evangelical tradition that rejects deductive approaches and literal
reliance on verbal inspiration in favor of an inductive approach. He
set out to show ithat inspiration of the Bible refers " not to the empiri·

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735

cal characteristics of the Bible itself but rather to the faot that the
Church confesses the Bible as God's primary means of inspiring salvation within itself." (p. 5)
The key term here is salvation. The final criterion of inspired writing is not in the material or formal aspects of the books themselves,
but in the effect they have on the believing community which receives
.them. Mirabile dictu, after investigating the shortcomings of all previous evangelical attempts at formulating :the issue, he turns to a Roman
Catholic, Karl Rahner, and his transcendental Thomism for the most
adequate basis on which to articulate an answer for modern Evangelicals! Of course, since this book is a barely-revised doctoral disserta·
l:ion done at Notre Dame University under Fr. James Burtchaell, C.S.C.,
perhaps this is not ·too surprising. But it is certainly a major departure
from traditional theologizing within the Evangelical tradition. The
author clearly recognizes his role as spoiler and sees this book as a
challenge to be taken up and wresitled with by his co-religionists.
Before examining the development of ·the argument, it will be valuable to sum up the author's own conclusions. He sees the concept of
biblical inspiration pointing not to the Bible but to Christian believers
who have already experienced salvation from God through the Bible.
This salvation is a saving experience, an act of self-transcendence,
whose ultimate initiator is God. In any kind of divine inspiration,
God initiates and humans receive. This means the sine qua non of
biblical inspiration is salvation by God. Any .theory to account for
biblical inspiration that fails to rest upon the presence of salvation in
the human recipient is at best only ambiguously Christian, and at worst
grounds the specificity of Christianity in such nonreligious concepts
as logic, interior feelings, historical accuracy, or the like (cf. pp. 114115).
Trembath saw the need to undertake this new study of inspiration
because all the Christian churches assert the Bible to be authoritative
and generally account for its authority by saying it is inspired yet have
largely been unsuccessful in proving ii:. This last point results above all
from associating inspiration entirely with the process of producing a
book and, secondly, from confusing talk about the Bible with talk
about God. In light of this j udgmenl:, the author organizes his own
book to address the question of book-oriented inspiration in chapter
one, entitled "Deductivist Theories of Biblical Inspiration," and the
question of talk about God in chapter ll:wo, on " lnductivist Theories of
Biblical Inspiration." From these he moves on to formulate his own
theory in the next three chapters that concentrate on the three key
aspects of a properly inspired act: the receiving agent (chapter three:
" Inspiration and the Human Recipient ") , the medium (chapter four:
"Inspiration and the Means"), and the initiating agent (chapter five:

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BOOK REVIEWS

" God as ithe Initiator of Inspiration ") . The book closes with a short
conclusion, adequate footnotes, a bibliography, and indices of names
and subj eots.
The deduotivist approach grounds knowledge upon beliefs which are
not subject to empirical cerification but still guide or influence empirical observations. Both the doctrine of God and the doctrine of inspiration are held a priori and are " independent of any human experiential consideration, especially any critical or reflective experience with
the text of the Bible" {p. 9). Trembath then analyzes four key theologians of the deductivist school: Charles Hodge (1797-1878), Benjamin Warfield (1851-1921), John Montgomery (born in 1931), and
Edward Carnell (1919-1967).
What seemingly characterizes all of these thinkers is their concern
to establish a very careful philosophical basis for understanding inspiration. They give serious attention to method, but unfortunately the
method they wish to use is that of natural science and its principles
of verification. Natural science, of course, works from an inductive
observation of the world. In reality, however, these authors actually
work from uninspeoted premises that foreclose what conclusions they
come to. They so tie the authority of the Bible to absolute inerrancy in
all of its statements that it forces them to hold inspiration as a divine
control over the writers of biblical books that in effect made them passive recipients and not active agents. Inspiration was applied directly
to the words of the Bible, and Trembath concludes that this approach
does not really understand the meaning of inspiration at all.
Given the heavy reliance on the deductivist approach among Evangelicals in the past, his rejection of its validity in effect forces a new
start. This has particular significance since Benjamin Warfield is widely considered to be the founding father of the modern principles of
the Fundamentalist Movement, and by critiquing his thought the most
severely, the author decisively opts against any fundamentalist outlook
for Evangelicals today.
In the second chapter, three Evangelical theologians who have
pioneered an inductive approach to the nature of biblical inspiration
are examined. They are Augustus Strong (1836-1921), Bernard Ramm
(born in 1916), and William Abraham (born in 1947). All of these
take inspiration in the Bible to refer to the effects which the Bible has
among those persons who call it inspired. They also meet Trembath's
criteria that true theories of inspiration (whether artistic, divine, or
biblical) require two agents in act with each other (the initiator and
the recipient) and a means. Each, however, has his own special em·
phasis on how biblical inspiration works. A. Strong stresses the role
of faith in the inspired person; B. Ramm calls attention to the role of

BOOK REVIEWS

·737

the internal witness of the Holy Spirit; and W. Abraham notes the con·
fusion from unconscious identification of divine inspiration and divine
speaking. The three all contribute directly to the understanding of the
process of inspiration at work. They focus on the faith of the person
or community as a necessary constituent in the concept of inspiration
and argue that limiting the concept to what was said is sure to lose what
was meant.
In the final three chapters, the author develops these inchoate insights of the inductivists further. He begins by affirming an Evangelical anthropology that sees all humans as creatures of God bound by
sin and in need of salvation which only God can initiate. Thus even
biblical authors stand in need of this healing. Ultimately, therefore,
the present community of Christian believers has been inspired to its
understanding of God through, and not by, the biblical authors. Similarly, the human mind acts in the same way for all kinds of inspiration: (1) the turning to the question, (2) understanding, and (3) an
appropriation which is critical and deliberative. This third step is the
most important, for it is here that the hearer actively accepts the mess·
age of the book as his or her own message.
Trembath next turns to the means of inspiration, the Bible itself. He
traces the centrality of Evangelical commitment to verbal inspiration
(i.e., inspiration as a property of the words of the Bible per se) to the
psychological need for certain knowledge of God's will and to the fear
of subjectivism. Its strength is that it firmly places the initiative with
God. Its weakness is that it takes the act out of human judgment and
puts it entirely in the written object.
He then looks at another pillar of the conservatives: plenary inspira·
tion. To hold that all parts of the Bible have equal and sufficient authority as God's word for salvation is to go against the actual experi·
ence of the church which recognizes some books as far more crucial
than others. He refers us to Lonergan's "differentiated consciousness"
which reveals the pluralism among peoples who hear the word. Thus
plenary inspiration should refer to the range of outlooks by which
Christians reflect on the process by which they validate the Christianness of their experience of salvation. In short, rather than see this
fullness in the words per se, it is better to locate it in the recipients.
Finally, under means, he rejects the traditional view of inerrancy as
the absolute correctness of every word in Scripture, at least in the auto·
graphs. In fact, the church and the readers depend for salvation not
on the original .at all, but on the historically defective copies. This re·
veals the arbitrariness of such a stance and the mistake. that again puts
the infallibility that belongs to God alone into .the human instrument.
Inerrancy about salvation belongs to God the revealer, not to the sacred
books of themselves.

788

BOOK REVIEWS

In his final chapter, he turns to the question of God as the initiator
of inspiration by applying Karl Rahner's "transcendental subjectivity."
Humans are by nature questioning creatures who judge by the good.
The " good " in turn, is a quality properly of God who is the ground
and the giver of the possibility of knowing. He then draws from
Rahner a four-point definition of biblical inspiration: It is (1) one
example of divine inspiration, (2) with respect to salvat"ion in Jesus
Christ, and (3) normative for the believing community, and finally (4)
foundational in that it refers only to the originating books of the canon.
Rahner's transcendental Thomism can be a breakthrough for Evangelicals because it takes the essential nature of inspiration out of the written words per se and places it both in the dynamism of God the ini·
tiating agent and in human judgment as the receiving agent.
This study is carefully argued and properly reserved about overstating either criticisms of important Evangelical theologians or the absoluteness of the author's own position. It certainly becomes clear from
the treatment of the prevailing deductivist approach that they were very
inconsistent in applying their beloved scientific inductive method to
biblical "facts," and, despite their philosophic frameworks, they were
really quite naive in distinguishing objective fact, the human appropriation of fact, and the difference between science and religious truth.
Trembath has shown the ultimate dead end of such approaches. At the
same time, he offers a new direction that he considers faithful to the
heart of Evangelical theology which stresses the experience of salva·
tion through the Church. He makes a good case for equating salvation,
the process of inspiration, and Rahner's divine initiative that corres·
ponds to human transcendence.
He holds back, however, from Rahner's conclusion that follows most
naturally-that the role of the faith-community, the church, is the essen·
tial place where the process of inspiration between divine initiative
and human reception in certitude with authority must occur. One
wonders if he really can establish an authority of Scripture that isn't
pluralistic in the sense of open individualism. Church and Bible imply
one another and any concept of foundationality must begin with acceptance that the Church is prior to the Bible in the act of inspiration. To
use Rahner's theology but withdraw from his conclusion risks the same
sort of inconsistency, on a minor scale, that his predecessors (such as
Warfield) were guilty of.
I believe this is an important book for Evangelical theology. It
would have been strengthened by further reflection on the nature of
revelation as ultimately not conceptual truths but a self-revealing God
as agent. Revelation plays around the edges of this study but is never
integrated into the problem of inspiration to reinforce what the author
wishes to show. Fuller exploration of the Thomistic via negativa as cru·

cial lor knowfog God'. in the process of inspiration would also have
helped, and even some reflection on the central insights of Paul,
medieval Catholicism and Luther on the mysterium that stands at the
heart of the divine-human interraction as agents. A small criticism
is that the author obviously finished this dissertation in 1982 and has
not troubled to update his bibliography, even though quite a bit has
appeared since, including Robert Gnuse's The Authority of the Bible
(Paulist Press, 1985), which addresses the same need for Evangelicals
to reconsider their theologies of biblical inspiration.
LAWRENCE BOADT, C.S.P.

Washington Theological Union
Silver Spring, Md.