TOWARD A THOMISTIC PERSPECTIVE ON ABORTION AND THE LAW IN CONTE:MPORARY AMERICA M. CATHLEEN KAVENY Yale University New Haven, Oonnecticut W; Introduction HEN THE SUPREME COURT handed down its abortion decision Webster v. Reproductive Health Services 1 in the summer of 1989, it was widely pre- l 109 S. Ct. 3040 ( 1989). All further citations to Webster will be given parenthetically in the text. To summarize the most significant aspects. of the decision: A. Chief Justice Rehnquist authored an opinion of the Oourt (of the highest precedential value) which was joined by Justices White, Kennedy, Scalia, and O'Connor. The majority found the lower courts to be in error in striking down as unconstitutional the preamble to a Missouri statute which asserted that "the life -0f each human being begins at conception." The opinion of the Court also found that Missouri could constitutionally prohibit the use of public employees and facilities in the performance of abortions not necessary to save the mother's life. B. The Court also upheld the Missouri statute's provision requiring a. doctor to perform viability tests before aborting a fetus the doctor believes is of 20 or more weeks gestational age. In the plurality opinion (of less precedential value than an opinion -0f the Court, since it is not joined by a majority of the justices), Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice White, and Justice Kennedy argued that since most fetuses are not viable at twenty weeks, the provision would impose substantial restrictions unrelated to the health of the mother upon what are, in fact, simply sec-0nd trimester abortions. Because they believed such restrictions to be in tension with Roe's trimester system, the plurality decided to abandon that system, along with its stipulation that the state's interest in unborn life became compelling only at viability. The plurality contended, however, that Webster presented no occasion for reconsidering Roe's holding, which deemed unconstitutional a statute prohibiting all abortions except those necessary to save the life of the mother. In a concurring opinion, Justice Scalia went further, arguing that the Court should explicitly overrule Roe v. Wade. On the other hand, Justice O'Connor, 848 344 M. CAT'HLEEN KAVENY dieted that this would exaicerbate a dangerously bitter social ·struggle. In its 1973 decision Roe v. Wade (410 U.S. 113), the court had e1abo:raJted.a woman's right to abortion, and, in rthe sixteen years that fo11owed it, it ga,V'e that right unwavering support. Webster 'seemed to mark a retl.'eat from that support. The new scope it offered for state regulation of rubortion promised rto ignite gra,ss-roots forvor and a stiate..:by-state battle between those seeking rto maintain the abortion rights est1ab1isihed by Roe and its sequalia and those st:dving to limit the s1oope of these rights in significant ways. Much of the criticism of Webster has fooused narrowly upon how weM the ,decision has aiocorided with various views on the morality of abortion. Yet important 1as this issue is, thorough ethicaJ ana:lysis of Webster must address severa1l additional tors. The ethiicatl aidequacy of positive law, induding judicial interpretations of faw siuch as Webster, must he ev1alruated in terms of whetheir it aidvanices or impedes the common good. The common good requires not only that we consider the moml substance of legal requirements but tha:t we ailso attend to the manner in which law is made, promulgated, ml!d interpreted. Such an analysis is ,sorely needed; it should. specify the severa1l factors involved in determining whether any given legal 1 also concurring in the plurality's judgment, maintained that this provision of the statute could be upheld without any reconsideration of Roe, since it co· hered with that decision's recognition of the compelling state interest in viable fetal life. C. Justice Blackmun authored an opinion dissenting from the majority on the issues discussed above, and he was joined by Justices Brennan and Mar· shall. The thrust of his opposition is directed against the plurality's treatment of the viability testing ,provisions. Blackmun first suggested that i.f understood according to the canons of proper statutory interpretation, these provisions unconstitutionally restrict the attending physician's discretion in determining fetal viability. Alternatively, he argued that, under the construal of the provisions which the plurality did in fact adopt, they were clearly consistent with Roe. Consequently, he accused the plurality of overreaching itself in its eagerness to undercut that decision. Also writing a predominantly dissenting opinion was Justice Stevens. Focusing upon the Missouri statute's declaration that human life began at conception, he contended that it violated the Establishment Clause since it could be supported only on a :religious and not a secular basis. ABORTION AND THE LAW 845 response to abortion will contribute to or detract from the commonweal in late twentieth-0entJury America. I suggest that at least some of the critical leverage necessary for this task can ·be found in the philosophy of liaw developed by Thomas Aquinas in I-II of his Summa Theologica, questions 90-97. Taking Thomas's analysis of rthe nature, purpose, and limits of secmJar law as my criteria of assessment, I will argue in the first section of this essay that the plruraJlityopinion in Webster is a bad piece of jurisprudence. To anyone who acknowledges rthe intimate nexus Aquinas describes between wise faw and a srtable common good, it should come as no surprise that Webster has only intensified the polarization in our society il."egardingahortion. Recognizing that Webster returned some of the responsibility for forging wise and practicaible abortion laws to the state legislatures, the focus of the essay's second section shifts from constitutional interpretation to statutocy draftsmanship. I suggest that the pro-lifre·conviction of the immorality of abortion too often translates into a caJ11 for stringent criminaJl penalties, hurt that this caH ignores the proper differences between moral and legal sanctions. Consequently, the pro-life movement needs to ·supplement its analysis of the aot of abortion with analysis of the law of abortion. What is necessary, in other words, is a pro-life jurisprudence. Taking Aquinas's co111cept of the .law as a teacher orf virtue as my ing theme, I attempt to sketch the concerns a pro-life jurisprudence must face in our culture. I. A Thomistic Critique of Webster v. Reproductive Health Services In question 95 of his Treatise on Law, Thomas Aquinas approvingly cites Isidore of Seville's enumeration of the features which positive law ought to exhibit. According to Isidore, " Law shall be virtuous, just, possible to nature, ·according to the custom of the country, suitable to place and time, necessary, useful; clearly expressed, lest by its obscurity it lead to misunderstanding; framed for no private benefit, but for the 346 M:. CATHLEEN KAVENY common good." 2 One might properly view Isidore's list as a thumbnail sketch of the considerations Thomas himsellfheld to he important in ev.aluiatingpositive laiw. Taken together, it is clear that they are pragmatic in focus, multi-faceted in concern, and mutiua1lyillll.J:cinating.For no law can 3.ICIOOOO with a oountcy's customs unless it aiLso takes cognizance of the specific pl a1ce and time in which it is enacted. Similarly, without making alilowances for the inevitruble limitations of human nature, no law can be neioessary or use:liul. The general tenor of Thomas' s philosophy of law requires us .to reject straightaway three common ways of mounting .a critique against Webster, because they are insufficiently prootical or e:roessively narnow in their conrerns. With .this .a;ooomplished,the path wi11 he clear for ·a mo11e nuanced and rcons:tructive analysis of the opinion'·s flaws. 1 A. Three Unhelpful Criticisms Isidore's criteria emphasize that good law must be fonnulated with sensitivity to the particular ·character and needs of the community whose life it wirll regiulate. We should not judge Webster without iconsidering its context in the history of American constitutionail Given this contem, even the most committed pro ...choiice advocates must admit that not evien a liberal Court couLd (at this time) justify giving Constitutional protection to a woman's ruutonomous decision to 1ahort through rto the stages of heT pregnancy. 3 However imporrtant the rights to privacy and bodily self-deter2 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 3 vols., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (New York: Benzinger Bros., 1948), I-II. 95.3.1. All further dtations from the Summa will be given parenthetically in the text. a Beverly Harrison, for example, considers Roe already a compromise, albeit not a totally unjustified one, in that it balances fetal life in late gestation against the claims of women to full autonomy o:ver their own bodies. See her Our Right to Choose (Boston: Beacon Press, 1983), 225-26, and chap. 8. For a more recent argument, see Barbara Katz Rothman, Recreating Motherhoopriam rationem formalem, which is :to grasp the essence of the obj,oot. Then Thom!lis draws his conclusion " therefore, ... the inte!llecrbuaJsoul itse[f is an absolute form." The conclusion that the irntellect's mode of being is immaterial, a " form without matter," follows from the premises: majorr premise, the objeclt is ,in the knower in an ahso1uite way, i.e., without matter; minor premise, the object is received in the knower .ruooording to rthe mode of he:ing of the knower. 32 Thomas often contrasts the senses with the inte[lecrt in regard rto the way they possess the object known. The eye sees particular cars or trees, never the notion of car or tree. Senses receive the aociderutal form withourt matter but nort without the conditions of matter, hut the intellect receives the S1Uhstantial form without matter or even the conditions of matter. 33 The second argument is a hypothetical sylfogism modus tollens that confirms the first .argwnent. This syllogism turns the argument around aind argues thwt, if the inteHectua,I soul were composed of matter ,and form, then impossible consequences would foUow: For if the intellectual soul were composed of matter and form, the forms of things would be received into it as individuals,. and so it would only know the individual: just as it happens with the sensitive powers, which receive forms in a corporeal organ; since matter is the principle by which forms are individualized. It follows, therefore, that the intellectual soul, and every intellectual suba1 "Anima autem intellectiva cognoscit rem aliquam in sua natura absolute, puta lapidem inquantum est lapis absolute. Est igitur forma lapidis absolute, secundum propriam rationem formalem, in anima intellectiva." 8umma theologiae I, q. 75, a. 5. a2 Note that the minor premise is a more specific version of the major premise of the first argument. as See Ewpositio super librum Boethii De trinitate, ed. R. P. Mandonnet (Paris: P. Lethielleux, 1929), English trans., Division and Method in the 8oienoes, A. A. Maurer. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1953. 426 DAVID RUEL FOSTER stance which has knowledge of forms absolutely, is exempt from composition of matter and form. 3 4' The firs:t premise is the omy part of the argument explicitly stated (antecedent and comequent); the second premise (deniwl of consequent) is understood and is rthe same as the major pl.'lemisein the second syllogism of the first argument, namely: "but the in:te11ectualsoul knows a thing in its na;ture absolute." The conclusion is left unstated, except insofar as it is induded in the gener:al conolrusion of ,the entire second way. Hence the argument: first premise, if the inteMect were composed of matter and form, then the forms C1.1eceived wou1d he l'!eceived a:ocol'lding to the conditions of matter, ije., they would be re1ceivied as second p11emise, but the intelloot knows forms aJbsolutely; conclusion, the intellectual soul, indeed every inte11ectua1lsubstance, must be free from the composition of matter and form. IV. Critique A. In General I .argue that type l is so weak that it can he salvaged only by riecorn.'.se to type 2. Fom ohieictions to type l ave: l) it is an moompfote 11enderingof Aristotle's argument; 2) it is not in ,aiocord with Thomas"s tewching about the interior senses; 3) it is not in ruocord with a better understanding of brain function; 4) it detr:acts from Thomas's teaching on the unity of the person. The first objecition indicates the reason for the dependence 'Of type 1 on type 2, while the other three objections point out further weaknesses in type 1. Type 1 errs by stl'essing the intelfoct',s potentiaility to know 34" Si enim anima intellectiva esset composita ex materia et forma, :formae rerum reciperentur in ea ut individuales; et sic non cognosceret nisi singulare, sicut accidit in potentiis sensitivis, quae recipiunt formas rerum in organo corporali. Materia enim est principium individuationis formarum. Relinquitur ergo quod anima intellectiva, et omnis intellectualis substantia cognoscens formas absolute, caret compositione formae et materiae." Summa the ologiae I, q. 75, a. 5. 0 IMMATERIALITY OF THE INTELLECT 427 all corporeal tlrings raither than swessing its manner of knowing. The intellect can be shown to be immateTial not because :iit knows all corporeail things hut hecaiuse it knows things in a strictly immaterirul manner. The inteHect is immaterial because it knows in a unique way, i.e., by gmsping the universal. The onJy way to gert a foc1.1ceful argument from type 1 is by emphasizing what it means to know in the fuH irrteMectual sense. To this, howev;er, is to reduce the argument to type fl. For Thomas, the interior senses can know all corporeal things hut only in a qualilled way; know'ing in :the strict sense is ithe of the immaterial intel1ect. Knowing in a broad sense can describe 1certain activitfos of the interior senses, and this broad sens e ha;s a basis in both Aristotle and Thomas. 35 To show the impact of this brorud sense of knowing on type 1 is the burden of the second objection. The second and the third objections do not oonfus:e sense kn0W1ledge with intellectual knowl1edge, nor do they suggest a type of materialism. Hut they do suggest that according rto Thomas and Aristotle (and oontempomry kno,wledge of brain the interior senses " know " in a limited but function as significant sense and that this knowing e:xfonds to all corporeal things. In light of this, type 1 must be reconsidered. 1 B. First Obj,eiction The first objection is that type 1 is an incomplete rendering oif argument. Thel'e is no question that Thomas's t:he main sense of Aristotle's argiument. .argument Thel'le is, howevier, reason to believie that :an element of type 2: is implied in Aristotlie's argument. 36 In De anima 3, 4,37 where 35 See Aristotle, De anima 3, 7 and Thomas In De anima, 3, lecture 10. See also f!fumma theofogiae I, q. 78, a. 4. Thomas often uses the word oognitio is this broad sense; see Deferrari and Barry, p. 164. as This supports my position that the type l argument is inadequate when it is not undergirded by the type 2 argument. 117 " ••• the intellect should be related to the object of thought in a manner similar to that in which a sense is related to its sensible object. And, since th\l intellect [can] think every [object of thought], it must exist without be· 428 DAVID RUEL FOSTER Aristotle says tha1t 1the intellect can think eV'ery object of thought, two lines of argument come together" The more appal'ent line, inspired by Anaxagoras and based on the principle of potency, is a new argument; 38 the less apparent line, based on the grasp of essienioes,has been on Aristotle's mind since Book l" Aristotle senses his indebtedness to Anaxagoras for the major line of a:rgumenL In De anima 1, 2, he notes that his predecessors (eXJcepting Anaxagoras) , following the principle "likie 1is known by ilike," claim tha1t the soul is oonstituted out of whateV1er they take to be the most fundamental element or elemenrts" Fire, air, water all haV'e their supporters" Anaxagoras, who proposes mind as a first efficient caiuse, claims that the mind afone has nothing in common with anything elseo39 Aristotle sees this a1s an insight into the nature of the intellect, and he t:r:ans1forms:rthis insight into an argument for the immateriality of the inteJJect based on its potential to beoome all things" The principle for this argument is not subtle, and later Aristoteilians wi:ll someitimes use it like a cfob: THE INTELLECT CANNOT BE WHAT IT IS TO BECOMR The principle is adapted from the Physics 40 and the sheoc physicalness of the argument causes two confusions: one from ignoring the different types of potentiality, the other from blurring the difing blended [with something else] in order that, as Anaxagoras says, "it may rule'', that is, in order that it may know. For, if it appears along [with some other thing], the [later will] prevent or obstruct [the knowledge of] another kind [of thing]." Aristotle, De anima, 3, 4 429a 17-20; trans. Hippocrates Apostle, Aristotle's On the Soui, p. 49. ss Aristotle has discussed the potentiality of knowledge, but this is its first use as an argument for the immateriality of the intellect. 39 "Accordingly, those who assert that there is only one cause or one element, such as fire or air, posit the soul, too, to be one; but those who assert that the principles are many posit the soul, too, to be many. Anaxagoras alone says that Intelligence cannot be affected ancl that it has nothing in common with any of the other things. But how Intelligence, if it is such, will know and through what cause, he did not say anything, nor is it evident from his writings." De anima, 1, 2, 405b 17-24; trans. Apostle, On the Soui, p. 1" 40 Aristotle, Physics I, 6-8. IMMATERIALITY OF THE INTELLECT 429 fe11ence between iwtentional and real being. Potentiality occurs differently in different things: the potency of the inteHeet is different from the potency of prime matter, and the potency to change is different from the potency to substantial change. 41 The argument does not qualify its sense of potentiality, and this causes isome confusion. Furrthermo:re, there is 1an ambiguity in the argument between intentional being and real being. The way the apple has the form of apple is di:fferenrt from the way the intellect has the form of a,pple, y;et they are both modes of being for the form. On the one hand, the argument depends on the sameness between intentional being and real being; on the other hand it counts on the difference. This sameness and difference, however, is never acknowledged in the .argument. The second line of argument is present in a muted fashion and apparent only when the argument is read in light of an ear:lier argument. At 1,5 409b25 Aristotle explains why it is that the princip1e " like is known by like " will not work. 42 The crux of ·the expl.anation is that intellectual knowing is a knowing of essences. Aristotrle a1dmit:s for the sake of the argument that one element might know its kind, and that a soul composed of the four elements cou1d 11ecognizethose four elements that go into the composition of ev;erything. But there is a fundamentail di:fference between knowing a mi:i"ture of earth, 1 41 Summa theologiae I, q, 75, a. 5, ad 2. these thinkers say that the soul [consists of elements] in order that it may both sense [all] things and know each of them, but their doctrine necessitates many impossibilities; for they posit that like is known by like, as if they are positing the soul to be the things. But these [elements] are not all that exists; there are many other things-or rather, perhaps an infinite number of them-which are distinct from the elements and consist of them. So let it be granted that the soul can both know and sense the elements of each existing thing; then by what will it know or sense the composite of each thing [which, besides its elements, has also a form], e.g., by what will it know or sense what is God or man or flesh or bone or, similarly, any other composite thing? F·or each of these is not merely its elements regardless of their relation to each other, but those elements in a certain ratio and composition," Aristotle, De anima, l, 5 409b; Apostle, Aristotle's On the Soul, pp. 14-15. 42 "Now 430 DAVID RUEL FOSTER air, :fuie, an:d Wiater, and knowing a man, a dog, a tree, or any one of a potentially infinite number of knowable objects. The theory " like is known by likle " is insrufficient becaiuse what would be actually known al'e the material principles, Le., the elements, that axe only portentiailly all corporeal things. Knowl1edge, howevier, to he knowfodge must be ructuail.; to know the obje!Ct potentfall:y is not to know it. This pre-Socratic view of knowledge leav:es aside form, which is the most knowable aspect of things. 43 How is it that the mind knows man, dog, and tree a:nid not just an aggl'!egation of elements? Human knowing is explained hy a grasp of essenoes aDJd not by the grasp of their material principles. Thus, when Aristotle begins the argument in 8,4 by observing that the intenercrt can know all things, this ,l"ecai1ls the .argument at 1,5: that because man knows many things, perhaips an infinite number of things, the of the elements knowing their like wi11 not suffice. Aristotle's argument at 1,5 also provides an insight inito what it means £or the mind to become all things. The theory he re:liuters holds thrut the intellect is e¥ecything thart irt knoWis (Hke is known by like). Aristotle's denies that intel1lect likeness; is ailw:ays aiotuaJ.izedbut ,affirmsrthat knowing the likeness is achieved by the intellect becoming everything thart it knows:. Thus, the weakness in Thomas's argument shows up first in his rendering of Arisrtotle's axgument. That Thomas to some degree recognizies this weakness is shown by his qualification of the argument in the Summa theologiae, w:her:e he stress1es that the intellect lmow:s the natures of a;M sensible things. 44 He does not .always make this qualification, howev;er, and the qualiifioation by itself does not rescue the argument. 43 St, Thomas De immortalitate animae, a recently recovered Quaestiones disputatae. A copy of this text, edited by Leonard Kennedy along with arguments for its authenticity, is found in Archives d'Histoire Doctrinale et Litte'T'aire du Moyen Age (Paris: J, Vrin, 1978), pp. 203-223. 44 Summa theologiae I, q. 75, a, 2. IMMATERIALITY OF THE INTELLECT 431 C. Second Objection The .second is that the .argument of type 1 is not in .accord with Thomas':s :teacl:ringon the interior senses, i.e., that the interior senses hav;e the potential to know, in a broad sense, a1l oorporeail ,things.45 Thomas fo.liowsAristotle in making sense lmowledge a function of a corporeal organ rather than of a spiritual substance, as Pilato truught. Thomas' s teaching on the interior senses is more dev;eloped than Arisitotle's and is part of a tradition begun by the Aristotelian commentators. For St. Thomas, knowing in the full ·sense is the act of the immaterial intellect, hut ithere is a qualified knowing that is the act of the mterior senses. In Summa theologiae I, q. 78, a. I, in speaking of the po•wers of the soul, Thomas says that all of the powers, evien the vegetative, transcend in some way the operation of corporeal nature. The reason for this diversity lies in the various souls being distinguished accordingly as the operation of the soul transcends the operation of the corporeal nature in various ways.46 In the same article, ,speaking of the range of objects of the sensitivie soul, Thomas says that it has" a more universal object----'1l3.II1ely,every sensible hotly, not only the body to which the soul is united." 47 Thus Thomas ind:icrutes that the range of the sensitive soul includes: all those objects, i.e., every sensible body, that type 1 denies to it. It may be said in defense of type 1 ithrut the sensirbi.ve soul does not possess the formaJ natures of the objects as does the intehloot. This is undoubtedly true for Thomas, but to apperul to the intelJ.ect's grasp of the formal natures is to appeal to a differerut argument, i.e., type 2. 45 The internal senses are usually listed as follows : common sense, imagination, memory, cognitive sense. See Summa theologiae I, q. 78, a. 4. 46" Et huius diversitatis ratio est, quia diversae animae distinguuntur secundum quod diversimode operatio animae ·supergreditur operationem naturae corporalis." Summa theologiae I, q. 78, a. 1. 47 " ••• quod respicit universalius objectum, scilicet omne corpus sensibile, et non solum corpus animae unitum." Summa theologiae I, q. 78, a. I. 432 DAVID RUEL FOSTER Question 78, article 4, discrusses the interior sense powers. The extent to which Thomas attributes knowing power to the senses is striking. Thomas says that rthe estimative power in " perfect animals " 48 goes beyond the mere response to stimulus and some knowing power. Animals need to pe11ceive things as useful or harmful, and this is a power beyond that of the exterioil' senses. Furthermore, for the apprehension of intentions which are not received through senses, the estimative power is appointed. 49 It is partioolarly the apprehension intentions which are not l'eoeived through ,the exterior senses that points to a sort of thinking or discourse. Thomas points out that while we see that other animals demonst:ra:te powers of the estimative sense, in the human animal this sense power is much mol'e astute. But there is a difference as to the above intentions: for other animals perceive these intentions only by some natural instinct, while man perceives them by means of coalition of ideas. Therefore the power which in other animals is called the natural estimative, in man is called the cogitative, which by some sort of collation discovers these intentions. 50 In reply to the fourth objection, Thomas goes further along this v;ein by recognizing a simifarity between the inteHect and the cogitrutive sense in that both work by comparing, adding, and dividing. Like the intellect, the cogitative sense comes to know things that go beyond what it might be expected to lrnow by sense perception. 48 A perfect animal is one that has all the powers of the soul possible to an animal, but not necessarily the rational power. 49 "Ad apprehendendum autem intentiones quae per sensum non accipiuntur ordinatur vis aestimativa." Summa theologiae I, q. 78, a. 4. 50" Sed quantum ad intentiones praedictas differentia est, nam alia animalia percipiunt huiusmodi intentiones solum naturali quodam instinctu, homo autem etiam per quandam collationem. Et ideo, quae in aliis animalibus dicitur aestimativa naturalis in homine dicitur cogitativa, quae per collationem quandam huiusmodi intentiones adinvenit." Summa theologiae I, q. 78, a. 4. IMMATERIALITY OF THE INTELLECT 433 .. the intellect knows many things which the senses cannot perceive. In like manner does the estimative power, though in a less perfect manner. 51 This affinity between the cogitative sense and the inte1lect elevates the cogiita,tive by association. To desicribe the ' how' of this association between intellect and cogitative sense is beyond us; we must settle for some type of analogica.l knowledge. One thing is clear: Thomas is not suggesting two paraHel thinking faculties, one corporeal and one spidtua,l, but rather two aspects of the thinking person. 52 In !'eply to the fifth objection Thomas points out the interplay between intellect and interior senses that results from this unity. The cogitative and memorative powers in man owe their excellence not to that which is proper to the sensitive part; but to a certain affinity and proximity to the universal reason,. which, so to speak, overflows into them. 53 We are perhaps more familiar with Thoma:s' s teaching that the inteHect is dependent upon the phantasms found in the interior sense powers for the object by which it knows. 54 The passages just ci:ted shows there is also a by the interior sense powers in the intellect's activities and an elevation of the inte,rior sense powers by this activity. Type 1 fails to recognize the significanoe of the knowing power of the interior senses. 51 " ••• intellectus multa cognoscit quae sensus percipere non potest. Et similiter aestimativa, licet inferiori modo." Summa theologiae I, q. 78, a. 4, ad. 5. 52 See De unitate intellectu& contra Averroi&tas, chap. 3, and Siimma theologiae I, q. 75, a. 4. 53 "Ad quintum dicendum quod illam eminontiam habet cogitativa et memorativa in homine, non per id quod est proprium sensitivae partis, sed per aliquam affinitatem et propinquitatem ad rationem universalem, secundum quandam refluentiam." Summa theologiae I, q. 78, a. 4, ad. 5. 54 See In De anima Bk. 1, lectio 2 and Bk. 3, lectio 11. 434 DAVID RUEL FOSTER D. Thi11d Obj,eotion The thil'd objection is that the first type of argument does not permit easy assimilation of modern understandings of brain function. This objection is reil.ated to the second objection, that itype l fails to match Thomas's own description of brain function. The third objection contends that type 1 fruHs to mabch contempoirary advances in bra,in reseavch. Two considemtions support my thesis; and both have heen the subject of much con:tempomry invies1tigation: the study of animal havior and the study of the brain. I a,rgue not that Thomas's psychology is a:t variamce with contemporary :findings-the contrary is evident from our second objection 55-but thait type l is inconsistent wiith contempora.ry findings as well a:s with Thomas's own psychology. The &amat:ic increase in knowledge about animal behavior has led some to think tha.:t human knowing does not differ from animal knowingo The study of other animals is important becaruse on this level there is little ment between the materiaJrist and the Thomist. Both agl.'ee that whatewr knowing is evident in other animals is the function of a physica1 organo56 Thomas suggests that human brain activity far outstrips that of other animak 57 Considering this, the evidence of even animal 'reasoning' ,ability tends to support the materialistsr's elaim that a spwitual principle is not necessary to explain human reasoningo N at1urailists continue to impress us with evidence of tool-ruse by champanzees, by the rapid adaptations or learning of Japanese ma;caques, and by the ability to communicrute exhibited by dolphins and whale:s.58 Even if theoZogiae I, q. 78, aa. 1, 4. I do not mean to suggest that there is no difference between a materialist and Thomist understanding on this level; the Thomistic understanding of form and the operations of the soul are significantly different. 57 Summa theologiae I, q. 78, a. 4. 5SR, Binney and M. Janson, Atlas of the Body and Mind, (Chicago: Rand McNally and Co., 1976), pp. 20-240 Duane Rumbaugh, ed., Language Learn55 See Summa 56 IMMATERIALITY OF THE INTELLECT 485 we are armed with a healthy skepticism regarding the many claims made for animal inteilligence, we cannot help but be impressed. Further, there the more common experience of being outsmarted by one's own dog. If we are to be respecters of the common opinion, as Aristotle was, then our arguments must somehow respect ithe opinion that animals can be ' smart.' A1l of this is to say that other animals do manifest a significant amount of knowing 59 and that maiteriwlisrts and Thomist:s agree that this activity is carried on .by physical organs. A respoooe in the spirit of St. Thomas would somehoiw iniooriporatethis information withoult making the additional but mistaken claim that human intelligence can be !'educed without remainder to brain activity. Thomas offers a balanced approach to the reiLation of man to other animals. On the one hand, there is a vast area of commonality we share with other animals, especially other primates; on the other hand, there is a deep, unbridgeable chasm that separates the hruman person from brute animals. As with the themes of nature and grwce, the themes of the sameness and difference between men and brutes are prominent in St. Thomas. 60 The unbridgeable chasm refers to the spil'litllliaJnature of the human person that manifests itself in intellecbual oper:aitionsand free acts of the wilL The vast area of common ground that we share with other animails encompasses the vegetative and sensitive aspects of life. Recent developments in understanding brain function form the other avea of contemporary learning that supports it.he tmro objection. Knowledge o[ the intricate workings of the brain encourages olll:l' beil.ief that interior sen:ses play a fuller role than the first type of argument allows. Success in mapping ithe ing by a Chimpanzee: The Lana Project, Communication and Behavior Series, vol. I (New York: .Academic Press, 1977). 59 .Again, this is ' knowing ' taken in a broad sense and not a claim that other animals have intellectual knowledge. eo See Summa theologiae I, q. 75, aa. 2 and 3; Compendium th,eologiae chap. 79. 436 DAVID RUEL FOSTER brain has girven more detailed information about which areas of the brain are ronnecbed with specific mentaJ. activities, e.g., the frontal lobe 1with planning and judgment; 61 the left hemisphere wiith fangiuage, memory, and logic; the right hemisphere with visio-.spatial ability. 62 There is :also knowledge of the mech1anismof short- and Jong-:bermmemory, and of the devielopment inCl'easein knowledge of 'pruthways ' in the hrain. 63 This rightly cruuses one to marvel at the complexity and ability of the brain. While there is nothing in this new knowledge that contradicts Thomas's basic understanding of the relationship between the ::interior.senses and the inbelloot, it has, neverthe1esis, ied many to believe thwt to understand how the brain works is to understand how human thinking takes place. Many rash claims for explaining human inwliligence by brain function have heen mwde (claims eXJceeded only by tho·se for axtificial :inte!IJ.igence).64 The propeir way to confront such claims is to appreciate all that brain activity represeDJtsand not dismiss it as irrelev:ant or unnecessary for human knowing. E. Eourth Objection The fourth objection is that the first type of argument detracbs from Thomas's tewch:iing on the unity of the person. 1 s1 Nancy .Andreasen, "Brain Imaging: .Applications in Psychiatry," Soienoe, March 18, 1988, pp. 1381-1388. There is no objection to efforts to associate certain brain areas with certain types of intellectual activity, but there is an objection to claims that judgment is an act of the frontal lobe. 02 Francis Schmitt, " The Role of Structural, Electrical, and Chemical Circuitry in Brain Function," in The Neurosciences: The Fourth Study Program, Francis Schmitt and Frederic Worden, eds. (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1979). Jack Fincher, The Brain, (Washington, D.C.: U.S. News Books, 1981). 63 :Mark Rosenzweig and Edward Bennett, eds., Neural Mechanisms of Learning and Memory, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1975). Edward Gurowitz, The Molecular Basis of Memory (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: PrenticeHall, Inc.). R. Binney and M. Jason, Atlas of the Body and Mind, pp. 120128. 64 Stanley Jaki, Brain, Mind and Oomputers (South Bend, Ind.: Gateway Editions, 1969). IMMATERIALITY OF THE INTELLECT 437 Anton Peg[s has pointed out the importance of Thomas's acceptance, with modificatio:rus:,of A'ristotle's doctrine that the soul is to the body as form is to matrter.65 Thomas teruches that the soul is the form of the body and that the soul, insofar as it is inte11ootive sowl, is also a subsistent form. The human person is unique in its composition. Understanding the soul as ithe form of the body marl<'ed an important rudvance for Christian theology. This teruching provided a more satisfactory explana.tion for the unity of the human person, overcame confusions caused by Platonic dualism, and gav;e a clearer meaning to the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. The argument of type 1, because it minimizes the role of the interior senses, undermines the very unity of the person that the hyfomorphic model is meant to express. Unless the full role of the body in perfecting the person is understood, the rational soul appears as the Hatonic person, and the oilid question arises as to why God imposed a body upon the S01Ul. The objection is timely because popiufar and scholarly thinking continues to exhibit two extremes. 66 One extreme, materialism, reduces all human activity to the moviement of bodies. The other exweme, a type of Cartesian dualism, does see the mind as spfr]tual brut cannot effectiv;ely unite ,the two worlds of mind and body. Thomas has set a course between these extremes by choosing the form-matter relation as his model. The chaJ1Iengefor Thomists. today is to artilC'ulatemore clearly this unity of soul and body. This effort is not helped by repeating arguments that unduly disparage the ability of the interior senses. Type 1 not only fails fo demonstrate the immareriaJity of the intffilect; it ru1so detracts from the unity expresis1ed by the model of form and matter. 65 .Anton Pegis, St. Th-Omas and the Problem of the Soul in the Thirteenth Oentury, (Toronto: Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1934). 66 For an example of the materialist extreme, see R. Taylor, Metaphysics, (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1983), pp. 50-51. For an example of dualism, see C. Joad, How Our Mind Works, (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947). 438 DAVID RUEL FOSTER V. CONCLUSION In sum, I judge thrut type 1 is an incomplete rendering of Aristotle and is inconsistent with Thomas's own description of the internal .sense powers. A type l argument claims that only the :intet11e1crt can know all corporeal rbhings, yet this conffiots with the significant" knowing" ascribed by Thomas to the internal sense powers. Insofar as one fortifies the first type of argument hy pointing to the diffe!Vent way the intellect has its object (e.g., it grasps the natures as such), one is actually using the seoond type to maintain the :first type. Furthermore, the first argument does not aUow a proper assimilation of modern findings about hra,in function, and, :finally, it does a disservice to the unity of the perrson. MARITAIN ON RIGHTS AND NATURAL LAW THOMAS A. FAY St. John's University Jamaica, New York T: HE WAY RIGHTS a11e viewed in our time creates urmoil in our society. But this one-sided view of rights ad ]ts origin in the philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseaiu, in which the" Rights of Man" were divinized and hence made unlimited. In contrast, Maritain based his notion of rights on the natu:rail law, and this phifosophic base can ground a more balanced view of rights, one which can protoot both against those who would assert arbitmry rights without any restraints whatever and against an authoritarian State which would subordinate an individual rights to its requirements. I. Maritain's Notion of the Natural Law For Marita:in, the ultimate groundiing of human rights is in the natural law. 1 But just what does he mean by the term "natural law? " It is by no means obvious. Certa:inly from antiquity man has had some gmsp of a narturaJ faw, rthat is, of a law which transcends merely positive law, the law fashioned by men. In !J1an and the State, Maritain cites the case of Antigone, the heroine in Sophocles' pJ.ay of the same name. She breaks a positive faw in giving buriaJl to her brother 'and justifies her act by making an appeal to a law higher than any merely human law. And so she says " Nor did I deem Your ordinance of so much binding force, As that a mortal man could overbear The unchangeable unwritten code of heaven; 1 Les droits de l'homme et la, loi naturclle Maison Frnncaise, Hl42), p. 84. 439 (New York: Editions de la 440 THOMAS A. FAY This is not of today and yesterday, But lives forever, having origin Whence no man knows ... 2 The Stoic philosophers spol{'e of a natural law; so did tnpian in the ancient Roman period, and St. Augus:tine in the early Middle Ages. The se-y;enteenth and eighteenth century saw the classical Law of Nature philosophers, such as Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes, Benedict Spinoza, and John Locke. And of course, by no means least on our list, there was Thomas Aquinas. Mal11'tain takes Thomas's to be the most perfect statement of natural law. But even here there are certain ambiguities and problems. For example, with 11egard to the "primary" and " seconda,ry" precepts of natural law, the statements of St. Thomas in early work The Commentary On The Sentences are at variance with the vocabulary and the teaiching of the Summa theologiae, I-II, q. 94. Maritain attempts to clarify these obscurities by introducing what he rtakes to he the key to Thomas's doctrine of natUl"al law-the notion of knowledge through inclination. 3 As Maritain sees it, there are two aspects of natural law, one ontological and the other gnoseologicaL4 The ontological .aspect of natural law means that man has a being-structure which is the locus of inrtelligible necessities, that he possesses ends which necessarily correspond to his essential constitution and which are common to all men. This means that there is, by virtue of human nature itself, an order or a disposition which human reason can discover and accol'lding to which the human will should act if lit is to attain the necessary and essential ends of being human. This order or disposition is what he means by nrutural law. From this it follows that 001y being in nature, be it a tree or a dog or whatevier, has its own na.tural law, which is the normality of its funotioning, the proper way in which, by reason 1 2 Man and the State (Chicago: s Ibid., p. 91. 4 !bill., pp. 85-94. University of Chicago Press, 1951), p. 85. MARITAIN ON RIGHTS AND NATURAL LAW 441 of its specific structure and specific ends, it " should " achieve the fullness of its being, The " shou1d " here is not a moral imperative but rather an ontological one, just as we say that a "good" eye" shou1d" be :able to perceive certain objects with clarity at a certain disrtance. But as soon as we enter the realm of free beings, human persons, this natural 1aw becomes the moral law. Natural law is moral law for man because he should freely obey it in order to acillevie his end, the fuHness 0£ being, which is, in the eudaimonistically ethical te:rrns of rui Aristotle or a Thomas Aquinas, happiness. But the second aspect of natural law is the gnoseological element, that is, natural law as known. Accol'ding to Maritain, the natural law and the knowledge of the natural law are two quite di:ffel'ent things. True, fbo be "la,w" at aill, ,at >least according to Thomas, 1the law must be promulgated; it is only insofar as it is known and expl'essed in assertions of practical 11eason that natural faw has the fo11oe of law. For Maritain, this knowledge of natural law is not gained so much by man's abstractly reflecting on what it means to be human and what actions will oonduce to the fulfillment of this nature. Rather, knowledge of natural law-and this is a key point for Maritain-eomes ilirough inclination. Maritain claims that man's knowledge of the natural law is not rational knowledge at all hut is knowledge through inclination, and it is his belief that this is the way in which St. Thomas is to be understood. Thus he remarks: " I think that Thomas Aquinas' teaching here should be understood in a much deeper and more precise fashion than is usual. When he says that human reason discov,ers the regulations of Natural Law through the guidance of the foclinations of hum:m nature, he means that the very mode or manner in which human reason lmows natural law is not rational knowledge, but knowledge through inclination, This kind of knowledge is not clear knowledge through concepts and conceptual judgments; it is obscme, unsystematic, vital knowledge by connaturality or congeniaility, in which the intellect, in 1 THOMAS A. FAY ordex to bear jrurdgment,consults and ecienoe and insight of wll of them is the same." 24 Knitter ag'l'ees: "The origin o.f all religion lies in the rooognition of ,evhl-ithat is, in facing the devastation that human self-interest ,can inflict on the world. To offset such havoc, humans rea1ize---0r rather, they 'believ;e '-thart they musrt recognize 1and be in harmony with some greater reality."' 25 The chief 1agent of self-interest .among the world religions for Toynbee is Christianity; thus," We ought ... to try to purge our Christianirty of the trruditional Christian beJief that Christianity is unique." 26 Tlris olaim was a non-essential. The same spiritual prese'Il!ce within ailJ. religions calls us away from s,elfcenteredness, tmv1wd some absolute reaility, and forbids any claims that one revelartion is uniqrue or that the:ve is only one tme religion. Hence," We can ... be folly committed to our own l'leJ.igion and at the same time £ully open to the truth of o.ther religions." 27 Faced with a choice among different religions, Toynbee " felt that personal adhe!'ence to one !'eiligion rather than ito another would not be determined hy the intrinsic superiority of that religion ov;er wlJ othffi'\S.. Rather, it would be a matter of psychological need and preference." 28 Wilfred Cantwell Smith iconcrurs: 1 a tradition is true insofar as persons participate in it and find through it a genuine contact with transcendence. Therefore the 2s Ibid., 24 Ibid., p. 41. p. 38. 25 Ibid., 26 Ibid., p. 40. p. 41. 2; Ibid., 2s Ibid., p. 42. p. 43. 456 PAUL D. MOLNAR tradition of Christianity or Hinduism is not true in itself; rather it becomes true. And 'it can become true, if and as you or I appropriate it to ourselves and interiorize it, insofar as we live it out from day to day.' 2 9 This faith identifies tmth with "this subjective basis " and argues that Christians must surrender traditional beliefs that their religion or their Christ is superior to or normative for others; this be less threa.tening instead of arguing that God has been revealed ' fully ' or ' normatively ' in Christ, let Christians assert that God has ' really ' been revealed in Christ and that this revelation is 'potentially fuller than it is actually.' This assertion still allows for total commitment to Christ, but it also leaves room for a deeper understanding of Christ through recognition of other revealers. Such a christology will also bring about ... a theology that is more theocentric than christocentric; a theology that is not limited only to what God has done in Christ but is more open to what God is doing universally in all religions. 30 The Easbern met,aphy:sician-mystic Frithjof Schuon promotes non-dualism based on mystical experience; he provi1des the sort of unitiV'e pluralism which Knitter insists: is not simple pantheism. This is esoteric and not exoteric religion; exoteric religion cannot cope with the mystery which the esoterics describe and so makes Jesus the only Son of God (rather than just one of the rieliahle ways rto God) .31 Nonduality tries to express ... the experience of Ultimate Being as it manifests ... itself in and through everything that is finite. So one can say, with the mystics, that the soul is God, but at the same time one must also say that it is not. God and the world are not one, but neither are they two. This is the esoteric mystery of nonduality .... The faith of exoterics is real " .. yet they still perceive this God as some kind of Superperson distinct from the world. They mill the deeper and more satisfying oneness between divinity and humanity. 32 But non-dualism inv:olves an ir,reeoncil1able(lonfl1ct which 29 Ibid., p. 46. so Ibid., p. 47. Bllbid., p. 49. a2 Ibid., pp. 48-49, emphasis mine. KNITTER'S UNITARIAN THEOCENTRISM 457 forms the fabric of Knitter's theology. For if the soul is God, then there can be no reail God independent of the soul; they are one and the same by way of synthesis. Thus, while Knitter as:serts thrut God and the wor1d are not one, he simuJtaneously deolares that God's relation with the wodd is a" more satisfying oneness between divinity and hu1nanity ." Yet if they are neither one nor two, how can we speak of a " oneness" between two distinct entrties at all? If this esoteric mystery unites all religions, then there can be no o1ear distinction between God and creation. Etienne Gilson asse11ted that "Mystical experience itself is both unspeakable and intransmissihle; hence, it cannot become an objective experience." 33 But Knitter presumes that mysticism is an objectivie experience, and thus he is drawn directly into this impasse. Carl Jung Originally agreeing with Freud's projection theory, Jung later realized that the image of God wa,s necessary for psychic health; this insight adds momentum to Knitter's quest for a "common essienoe" of reHgions. Although Jung "cou1d never fully and olearly say just what the unconscious was and what it contained," he believed " it contains our true selves." 34 Thus, the archetypes, "the silent voiice of the unconscious," which al'e ;innate ideas nor pre-padmged messages, are the ".inbuilt stirrings or lures that, if we can feel and follow them, wiJ[ lead us into the depths of what we are and where we are going." 35 This a!]'.>plies ito individuals and to a hidden 33 Etienne Gilson, God and Philosovhy (New Haven: Yale Press,. 1979), p. 119. 34 Knitter, p. 56. p. 57. This has become a popular point of departure in contemporary thought for the doctrine of God. Cf., e.g., John F'. Haught, What is God? How to Think about the Divine (New York: Paulist, 1986), chap. l. Unable to distinguish experiences of "depth" from the being of God, Haught, following Tillich, writes " 'God ' is a name for the dimension of depth that all of us experience to one degree or another, even if only in the mode of flight from it .... " (p. 15). With this equation of anthropology and the35 Ibid., 458 FAUL D. MOLNAR unity mrimaiting everything human, i.e., a " collective unconscious." This lea.ids ito severrul insights which Knitter assumes to be normative for our grasp of any religion. First, since Jung eou1d not distinguish, psychologica1ly, the realization of the seilf from the imago Dei, he concluded that " To realize what we are :is to real,i:lie God." Yet," iStrictly speaking, the God-image does not coincide with the ullloonscious .as s1Uch, hut with a :special content of it, nameily the Self .... The encounter with ithe mystery of :the psyche cannot be distinguished from an experience of God." 36 Has Jung confused God with human psychic p])ooesses? Knitter responds: "To say that God can be experieIIIC'eo;r process does not :identified with a 37 mean that God is only that." Second, Jung's insights "aid many today in making sense of the reality of religious plurailism." Silllce for Jung revelation has its origin "or at Jeas:t part of its origin, in the individual and oolJective unconscio1Us," Knitter concludes that " The differing dogmas and dootrines are ruttempts rto give symboilic expression rto this essentially ineffable experienve. They do difler, and yet they are rooted in the same archetypes." 38 Thus, since eaich reiligion expresses. its grrusp of God and differently, no one 1.1eligion can claim to be the only way to religious truth. Third, this: thi:nlcing affecits rbhe way we perceive Christ. ' The Christ symbol is of the greatest importance for psychology insofar as it is perhaps the most highly developed and differentiated symbol of the self, apart from the figure of the Buddha.' ... Jesus is called Christ because he represents the completion of the process of individuation,. the realization of the self, the integration between the individual person and the universal God.39 Since Jesus is one of the " best symboils of the Chris1t, but . . . not the ocly one," when .the N.T. refers to Jesus as the one and only ReveaJlm", Savior, and Mediator, "One and only means ology, the concept of the Christian cendent being and existence. 36 Knitter, p. 58. 37 Ibid., p. 60. God no longer refers to a truly transss Ibid., emphasis mine. a9 Knitter, p. 61. KNITTER'S UNITARIAN THEOCENTRISM 459 the symbol really wol'ks, fake it seriously. Yet there are for Jung other symbols thrut work as effootivieilyfor othe11s."410 Ina:SilllUlchas Jung''S analysis " convinces many conrbemporariesof the essentiail. sameness of all. religions and the contemporary need for interreligious dialogue." n Christians muSlt that: If God is actual ... then there must be some evident psychological traces of all this in one's experience ... for if religious experience is not a psychological experience ... it is no longer his or her experience . . . religious experience will be based purely on something outside one's own self, on someone else's experience or someone else's authority. It will give rise, as Gregory Baum warns, to a religion of extrinsicism, grounded mainly in ' what the bible says ' or ' what the pope declares.' 42 Can Christian theofogians take Jung's analysis as normative withorut ai1so :adoprtingrthe weaknesses of Gnosticism? 43 Within rthis scheme two choices ,seem to emerge: (I) We can identify God, grace, and rey;e1ation with M. aspeot of the individuail or collective Self and thereby reduce rtrue knowledge of God and of revielation to the common psychic fonction of a;ll religion within human life. We can rthen idenrtify the truth of religion without having rto make a choice ,about Jesus as Peter once did (Matt. 16: . We might even avoid having to make the required choice hetween the Christ of rthe N.T. canon and the Gnostic and Docetic portraits of Jesus. Any conflicit between orthodox Christians and Gnostics: wou1d only manifest the human failure to be faithfrul :to our own arohetypes. Or we can rucoeptthe authority of the hihlicrulwitness ruid the pope when one or the other telL.s us thait the foundation for truth lies in ,someone [Christ] distinct from our conscious or unconscious Self. The problem here concerns the ultima:te basis: for oothority. How e:mctly do we know if our ideas of God, revelation, and gr:ruoe point to God or to an apotheosis? 4o Ibid., p. 62. p. 63. 42 Ibid., p. 66. 41 !hid., 43 Cf., e.g., Hanratty, p. 212. 460 PAUL D. MOLNAR While biblicail fondamentrulism 44 all!d ·ecclesiastical frundamentailism ;are forms of extrinsicism which compromise divine and humaJU freedom, we cannot go to the other extreme and ignore 1the canonicail .a.uithorityof scriptul'le or the eoclesiaistica1 aiuthority of the pope, claiming ,that truth stems: mily from our This solution, based on Jiung's presuppositions, is manifestly a Gnostic answer.45 The very nature of theology and its norm for truth are at .stak!e here. Without denying the impol'ltanoe of our psychological needs, can theologians really aiNow ·any one (or a11) of them to dictate their understanding of God ;andJ Revelation? Is: that truth not grounded in God afone? 46 The Bible and 1t:r:aJdirtionoffer us a God who is free in 44 For an excellent description of the problems here cf. T. F. Torrance, Reality and Evangelical Theology (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1982), pp. 14-20. 45 Cf. esp. Elaine Pagels' University lecture. It begins and ends with our experience. "The Gospel of Philip [argues] you are to 'become not a Chris· tian, but a Ohrist.' This, I suggest, is the symbolic meaning of attributing the Gospel of Thomas to Jesus' 'twin brother.' The statement is meant to say, in effect, that 'you, the reader, are the twin brother of Christ; when you recognize the di'Vine within you' . . . he who has known himself has simultaneously already achieved. knowledge about the depth of all things," pp. 6-7, emphasis mine. Jesus, therefore, is no longer the source of all truth. 46 When, e.g., the Fathers spoke of God as Father, they were not projecting their sensual images into the Godhead but, through revelation, were recognizing that God was our Father in an utterly unique way; no gender therefore was predicated of God, since that is part of our limited creatureliness. Allowing our needs to dictate how we speak of God compromises the meaning of the trinitarian doctrine. One recent theology follows Jung's search for a "quaternity" and argues that "Mary in some way represents a Jungian fourth to the Trinity .. .'' and that "The Feminine principle of God is Jesus Christ risen as he is the whole Christ that includes ... the Church .... This is the Jungian fourth that makes the Trinity a quaternity ... we are the feminine fourth, we and all humanity .... Mary ... represents the feminine element, all of creation, that complements and even, in a mysterious way, completes God," Robert Faricy, S.J., "Jung and Teilhard: The Feminine in God and in the Church," in Raising the Torch of Good News', ed. by Bernard P. Prusak, The Annual Publication of the College Theology Society, vol. 32 (New York: University Press of America, 1986), pp. 239-250, at 244 and 246-7, emphasis mine. Here Faricy's own logic leads him to contradict his own clear statement that Catholics in no way believe that Mary is divine or a fourth in the Trinity. For more on this question and how it relates to Arianism see Thomas F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith, (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, KNITTER'S UNITARIAN THEOCENTRISM 461 himself and for us, while Knitter (following Jung) says "As mystics in aiU the religions have asserted (in varying terminology), we are divine!" 47 Yet if this so, then God's being cannot be distinguished from human being, and we al'e led to think that the truth claims of Chris1tianity can be grounded in some " arbitrary " :mthority based on e:i,,.rperienoed need or preference. In fact this is exactly what Irenaeus acoused the Gnostics of doing. 48 To aiooept the truth of the Gospel requires ithe same faith of us as it did of the disciples. As Jesus spoke and acted with authoirity, it hecame dear that he was no mere man but the Lord himself in the flesh. But this truth was not a universally V'erifiab1edatum of religious e:x!perience. Any attempt to grasp God's grace and revelation on 1the basis of a 11eligionfounded on a psyiohological analysis of experience ignores this need for fia>1th; grace and revelaition then cease to be seen as acts of the triune God and are viewed as realities which are universally ruocessib:le to reason reflecting on experience. While Knitter propel'lly desires to avoid a dualism which" sees God as tota;lly other, unchangeable and impassabJe, and mmb1e to be a:ffecited by human events," 49 his norm for reHglious tmth is not the gmce of God revealed in Christ but mther the grace of God re-· constructed from human re11igious and experience and then equated with T:roeltsch's idea of "uniV'ersal revelation." Yet, as we shaH see, this p:vocedul'e depriv;es our !'eligious dialogue partners of the actual truth of the gospet 1 1988), p. 69 and Roland M. Frye " Language for God and Feminist Language: Problems and Principles," in Scottish Journal of Theofogy, 41 ( 1988) : 441-469. My point is that, since the truth of revelation is grounded in God alone, there is no need to find a fourth in the trinity and then assert that. this element completes God, who in fact needs no completion. This very idea of a " fourth " impedes any proper perception of the freedom of the triune God, because it allows the dogmatic question to be set by Jung's quest rather than by the simple truth that God's nature is defined only by God. 47 Knitter, p. 67, emphasis mine. 48 T. F. Torrance, "The Deposit of Faith," in Scottish Journal of Theology, ( 1983) : 1-28, at pp. 6-7 accurately illustrated the conflict between Irenaeus and the Gnostics. 49 Knitter, p. 67. 462 PAUL D. MOLNAR We also ha,ve a marked contmst between rthe bib1ical view of God and of Christ m1:d Jung's view. While ,the N .T. insists that the man Jesus is the one and only Messiah (e.g. Martt. 8: 27-30, Matt. 24: 24 and 1 Jn. 4: 1) and that those who hear the gospel hear 1this paflticular truth, Jung sees J es1us as a symbol for the Christ, which is itself a principle for describing psychic wholeness, which he equates with salvation. For Jung, Christ cannot be the only Messiah and Savior. While Jung insists that God is inoarnate in the world of human experience and while religious ideas, like ideas, may perform a 1therapeurtic function, his ideas of God and religious truth are not subo1dinate ilo the Jesus of the N.T. Thus the historical Jesus is a symbol or an appearance of the Christ, but the Christ is only a term representing the psyichic wholeness which can be pe:rceivced1as a functional feature of a!1l :religion. This thinking is in that it makes Jesius an appearance of a truth which can be disoovceredorntside of a specific relation of faith to Jesus, the Messfah. It equates reason and l'evielation, nature and grace in pantheist fashion ais it claims" we are divine." Whereas the evidence suggests that the Gnostics asseflted rthat creatures are divine, 50 the canonical .scrip1t:ures teach the vcery opposite and distinguish God from creatures, insisting that Jesus the GodMan alone can save us. The Gospel faces us with a choice: Will the sou11ce of our knowledge of the truth he our seH-experience [Gnostic self-reliance] o:r Jesus as the unique Revealer and Reconci1er? Knitter's non-dualism embodies his dream of unitivce pluralism, built on the " psychic origin '' of religion. For this reason its content really can be no more than a Freudian illusion; 51 it describes merely the content of our own needs. 1 1 50 See, e.g., Hanratty, pp. 289-90, Pagels, The University Lecture, p. 4, and Lee, pp. 26ff. For the practical effect of this thinking on American theology cf. Lee, pp. 112ff. 51 Sigmund Freud, The Future of !l'n Illusion, trans. and ed. by James Strachey (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1961). Religious ideas "are fulfillments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind," p. 30. KNITTER'S UNITARIAN THEOCENTRISM 463 For the nondualist, God and the finite are not one (that would be pantheism or monism); nor are they two (that would lead to supernaturalism) . God and the finite are bonded in a mystical, inexpressible unity beyond 'one' and ' two'; this unity can really be known only in experience. God and the finite have their being in each other (of course in different proportions). Distinct, they cannot, however, really exist without each other. 52 Here the irreconcilable conflict of Knirtter's method becomes ,clearer. Unable to distinguish God from 1Cl'eatures, Knitter argues that God and the finite are not one (though 1above he states that oneness is the main idea of nondua:lism and ought ito he rthe main idea of a Christianity which is not extrinsicist) . Then he asserts that they are indeed one, but in such a way that .this oneness cannot he knnwn without the mystical experience of the non-dJUa:list;God ·and the wor1d exisrt in a unity beyond one and two and cannort reaJJy exist without eruoh other. y;et, beoruUiSe the Creator God and creation are ·distinct in being :actually mther than proportionally, rthe truth is that God wou1d still be God evien if he never created. Creatio ex Nihilo-Pantheism The Christian God does not need rcreaitmes but creaites, reconciles, and redeems us w.ithout beooming dependent on us. 53 God's freedom with rega:rid to us cannnt be seen if he is perceived as dependent upon us; God in his freedom musrt be perceived ,as " He Who Is." Walter Kasper explains, if God needs the world in order to be able to be the one God, then he is not really God at all. The transcendence and freedom of God are perceived only if the world is not necessary for God to be himself.54 Because God is free in himself and in his .ructinnsad extra, there is 1a priority of faith ,and revelaition ov;er understanding and 52 Knitter, p. 68. 53 Cf., e.g., Etienne Gilson, God and Philosophy, chap. 3. Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ, trans. Ma.tthew J. O'Connell, (New York: Crossroad, 1986), pp. 293-4, citing Gregory of Nazianzus. 54 Walter 464 PAUL D. MOLNAR reason. Wheveais " theology itself is a science whose conclusions necessarily follow from their pri:ncipJes, ... those principles are artioles of faith, and faith itself is .an ,assent to rthe word of God .accepted as word of God." Thevefore, faith is no rational prob.ability or opinion but the cevrtitude which trusts thait " what God has said is rtrue." 55 Without this foundation, oocoroi:ngto Aquinas, "' rthe Catholic faith [might] :seem to be founded on 1empty reasonings, and not . . . on the most solid teaching of God.'" 56 Mysrt:iicailpantheism asserts a mutual need between God and ·t:he world, 57 thereby obviating the fveedom of the Christian God; 58 to 1applyrthis philosophy to the God of Christian revielat.ion would he to confuse God's graice and truth (which are inconceivable apart from faith in Christ 59 ) w:ith the nooessities inherent in creation itself. Ignoring this problem, Knitter concludes that Christians can recognize Jesus' divinity as an element within his humanity: Might Jesus have discovered his divine self within his human unconscious? He would be divine because he achieved the fullness of 'individuation' .... From Jung's perspective, if deity has its being within our unconscious, it is not dependent on extraordinary events to reveal itself; it does not have to ' step down' and enter history here and there ... the divine is already there. . . . Historical events of revelation remain important. . . . But they ,are not simply mess55 Etienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages, (New York: Scribner's Sons, 1938), pp. 76-77. 56 Thomas Aquinas, Summa contra gentiles, Bk. II, ch. 38, cited in Gilson, p. 77. 57 Following Unamuno, Jurgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, The Doctrine of God, trans. Margaret Kohl (New York: Harper & Row, 1981), e.g., pp. 37ff. and 108ff., has this problem. See also God in Oreation: A. New Theology of Oreation and the Spirit of God, (New York: Harper and Row, 1985), pp. 13ff. 86-89, lOlff. 'and 204ff. 'Since God needs to suffer in order to love, "God 'needs' the world and man. If God is love, then he neither will nor can be without the one who is beloved," The Trinity, p. 58. 58 See Paul D. Molnar, "The Function of the Immanent Trinity in the Theology of Karl Barth: Implications for Today," in the Scottish Journg,l of Theology 42 ( 1989) : 367-399, for more on this problem. 59 Cf. 1 Cor. 12 :3 and 1 Cor. 8 :5-6. KNITTER'S UNITARIAN THEOCENTRISM 465 ages from above, messages that come to us entirely from outside ... they come from within each one of us. . . . As theologians such as Karl Rahner assert,. this process of universal revelation within all history is what one should expect to find in all religions of the world. Such universal revelation, Jung would say, is not only a theological conclusion; it is a psychological fact. 60 Ralmer himself would reject Knitter's suggestion that Jesus' divine self might he discovered within his human unconscious. But Rahner's belief ·that Christ's humanity as such reveals his his theory of quasi-formal causality, and his appa.rent " degree " Christology leaJd logically to the conclusions Knitter draws. 61 In contrast to both Jung and Knitter, Rahner insists upon Jesus' uniqueness, yet his transcendental method does not allow him to maintain this insight consistently.62 For Knitter, "Modern theoJogy seems to be moving in a Jungian direction by viewing Jesus more as cause' of salvwtion (thvough revelation) rather than as an 'efficient caJUSe ' (through working a change in divine-human refationships);" 63 thus, Christians must change their traditional view of Christ as the only savior. Yet, the tradition perceived Jesus 1as dficient cause and not just finaJ or formal cause of salvation and revelrntion. This is an essential recognition tied to the specifically trinitarian confession. 64 so Knitter, p. 68. He is not alone in this. For example, relying on Rahner, David Coffey, " The 'Incarnation' of the Holy Spirit in Christ," Theological Studies 45 ( 1984) : 460-80, at p. 467 writes: "The divinity of Christ is not something different from his humanity; it is the humanity, i.e., human nature at the peak of its possibility .... " s1 For a criticism of this degree Christology in Rahner, see Colin Gunton, Yesterday and Today: A Study of Continuities in Christo logy, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), pp. 15ff. For an extended analysis of the other items cf. Paul D. Molnar, "Can We Know God Directly? Rahner's Solution From Experience" in Theological Studies 46 ( 1985) : 228-61. s.2 See Paul D. Molnar, "Is God Essentially Different From His Creatures? Rahner's Explanation From Revelation,'' in The Thomist 51 (1987): 575-631 for how this pertains to the relationship between philosophy and theology. es Knitter, p. 71. 64 If Jes us can be viewed more as final cause "rather than" as efficient cause, then he cannot share equally the power of the Father as Creator. Any 466 PAUL D. MOLNAR Theological Method and Revelation Knitter's method moV'es from experience (praxis) to a univiersal l'evefa:tion present within everyone and igno11es the contrast between philosophy and theology. Yet any theological meithod starting with experience rather than :the Word of God reveailed must make a choice hel"e. Can openness to religious ideais he equated with openness to the Christfan God without subverting our need for reve1ation and gr.ace? Evien tiheologians who intend to maintain Christ's uniqueness inadve_ritently compromise our need for Christ by beginning rtheir theology of revelation by moving from a universal to the particiular. Michwel Schmaius, for exampJe, argues that " Jung 'assures us that no patient can he truly cured until he at1t1ains a religious attitude. Such an attitude means that man is open to use of this method rais·es God." 65 But the question is: Can we equate openness to a supreme heing of which we aware with openness rto the God revea:led in .are Christ? If we 1oan, how can anyone contest the views of the Gnostics, Deists, or non-dua1lists? Schmaus iappeails to Rahner's supernatural exis1tential to solV'e this. Biut Knitter also appeals 1to this exisitentia[. Is ithere anything in the method of these theologians which allows Knititer to identify grace with the structul'es of human consciousness? This cannot he explored in detail here. Let me just note that, on the one hand, Rahner ·sees God's self-communicaition as "the innm·-most constitutive element in man," 66 while, on the other hand, he says it is an 1 idea of a choice here compromises the trinitarian doctrine by introducing subordinationism and tritheism. The traditional patristic principles of opera trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa, perichoresis, and appropriation were formulated to avoid just this predicament. On this point in relation to Rahner's theology see, e.g., William J. Hill, The Three-Personed God: The Trinity as a Mystery of Salvation, (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1982), pp. 14lff. 65 Michael Schmaus, Dogma 1, God in Revelation, p. 21, emphasis mine. Schmaus's method moves from the universal to the particular in chaps. l and 2. 66 Karl Rahner, B'oimdations of Christian F'aith: An Introductfon to the KNITTER'S UNITARIAN THEOCENTRISM 467 offer that he1ongs to all as a charaeteristic of their transcendentaility .67 Thus, Jievielation "is not something known objectively, buit something within the realm of consciousness." 68 Indeed" graee is present and 1aocepted and justifying if and when this transoendent quality of man [the supernatural existential] is accepted and sustained by man's freedom;" in fact "grace from the outset .[is] an existentiaJ of man's itranscendentality as such." 69 ConsequenUy self-acceptance means " saying ' yes ' to Christ even if [oneJ does not know it." 70 .But the:re is a problem with this reasoning. If Rahner s1ays that revelation is not " something known objectively," he cannot then assume it is something within our consciousness without contradicting himsdf. If he argues that God's revelation is signified by our categorizing something within rthe realm of our conseiousness, then he cannot logically hold rtha:t we need Christ, .for ;then rev;elation and grace wou1d be identical with our tmnscendient.ality 1as such [which he 1does say]. Yet, to accept the gospel means [aoco:rding to Jn. 8: 31-2 'and 36] to make Jesus' word our home and then to come to know the truth which sets us free. Revelation discloses that only the Son can set 'll'S free [this is what is known objectively], and this aieit of the Son is not identical with our transcendentality as s1Uch, even if ithis is conceived as a supernatural existential. It is stiM ours, to the creaited rewlm, and can even he categorized as God's transeendenta;l revielation without allowing God's act in Christ and the Spirit to determine its tmth. 71 Rahner'.s re-· Idea of Christianity, trans. Wiiliam V. Dych, (New York: Crossroad, 1978), p. 11. Hereafter abbreviated FOF. 67 Ibid., p. 129. 6s Ibid., p. 172. 69 Karl Rabner, Theological Investigations, volume 18, God and Revelation, trans. by Edward Quinn, (New York: Crossroad, 1983), "Experience of Transcendence from the Standpoint of Catholic Dogmatics," pp. 173-188, at p. 182. [This series, which now includes 21 volumes, hereafter will be abbreviated as TI] 10 FCF, p. 228. n See Rlso TI 6: 72-3 for more on this. Rabner even writes: "According to the Chnrch's teaching, the world in which we live is in fact supernatural, that 468 PAUL D. MOLNAR fosrul to make a clear choice here stems from his method; 12 it 1eaidls rto this 1conilicit in his theology opens the door to Knitter's position. Against Knitter, Rahner would insist that Christ is necessary for man's perception of revelation. in his interpretation :rev;eiation and grace cannot he differentiated in the end from the basic structures of human transcendence, becaiuse 11evdation and grace are present as "modifications" of those very ,structu:l'es. Thus, to say "yes" to our existence means that " grace is :an exis1tentiwl of ou1· transcendent1ality as suoh." Hence, in his description of the "supernatural existentiail," Knitter mafoes his choice and draws the logicail which Rahner refused to do: is, part of grace infuses and becomes part of human the psychological structures of human consciousness. . . . Grace, then, infuses or energizes this natural openness and gives it a new dynamism. . . . Therefore . . . there is no such thing as ' only nature' .... With images similar to Jung's view of divinity within the unconscious, Rahner sees our very ' existence ' as ' supernatural': nature is more than just human nature. 73 Huit the Gospel demands that the question of method he dictated hy the itmth of who Jesus was and is. The truth of Christo logy is distorted by :attempting to defend the idea that Jesus is one Savior among others. A specifically theological method stands in markced cont:mst to a method of investigating the natul'e and meaning of Christian revieilation as a particullhl' in stance of a generaJ. religious, psy;chological, or historical development. To the ertent that Rahner, Schmaus, and. Knitter all start theology human experiences of self-transcendence and only from there proceed to investigate revelation and faith, ·each in his own way makes it more difficult to perceive and to maintain the uniqueness of Christianity. 74 is, a world which as a whole is ordered to the personal, Trinitarian God beyond the world" ("Theos in the New Testament," TI 1:70-148, at 80-81). 12 Cf. Molnar, "Is God Essentially Different ... ," for more on this methodological difficulty. 73 Knitter, p. 125 and n. 71 above. 74 This explains why, for example, William Collinge can say that Knitter KNITTER'S UNITARIAN Special Revelation-General THEOCENTRISM 469 Revelation-Unitarianism The central issue, then, is whether or not we will abide by the truth of Jn. 1: 14 and the principle that "what was not assumed was not savced." 75 Our definition of special revcelation must be determined not by what is found in uniGod alone. Knitter apperuls religious experiences but to genera,l revcelaition, which he identifies with his non-dualist "unitive pluralism." He wants to demonstmte that the traiditional christoi1ogies were mistaken in assigning exdus.ive uniqueness to Jesus. He feels that these christo1ogies sever any possible dialogue and perpetuaite prejudice and division. But his christology is d.iot:ated not hy the risen Lord wcting in the power of his Spirit ad extra, by the principles of nondiualism and ends up being doceitiic. Jesus is only one appearance of many possib1e "truths" which can be derived from the expedence of non-dua1ism. Knitter's presentartiion reveals a deeper problem. Both Catholics and Protestants who define 1specialrevcelation a:s 1an instance of general revelaition must face T11oevtsch's dilemma: 76 how can they hoM thait rev;elation is 1 1 presents a "systematic and coherent defence from within Christian and indeed Roman Catholic theology, of the view that we may and ought to regard Jesus ,as one Savior among others," "Review Syrn.posium," Horizons 13 (1986): 116, even though he is not persuaded of its truth. The point here is that this position can only be defended if one moves from the universal to the particular. 75 Quoted in Dermot A. Lane, The Reality of Jesus: An Essay In Ghristology, (New York: Paulist Press, 1975), p. 108. 76 This same problem surfaces in the work of various recent theologies of world religions. See, e.g., Maurice Schepers, O.P. "Conversion and Convergence: Personal Transformation and the Growing Accord of Theology and Religious Studies," in The Thomist 51 ( 1987): 658-679. This article assumes that the truth of theology can be grasped in the assumption that all religions have a common object of study; that assumption is unwarranted in a Christian doctrine of God and Revelation and opens the door to Knitter's conclusions. For similar problems see William Thompson's "transcultural Christ," in "The Risen Christ, 'franscultural Consciousness, and the Encounter of the World Religions," in :rheological Studies 37 ( 1976) : 381-409. 470 PAUL D. MOLNAR known independently of Christ 1and srtiM maintain that Christ is the only Savior? 77 Evangelic;al Theology Knitter sees four weaknesses tin ,eviangelicaJ. theology that bring rthis problem into fooos. Fi11srt, "Any method for a .theological undersrtanding of religions that insists on Christian tradition (the Bible for Protestants, the magisterium for Catholics) as the onll.y or the final criterion of religious truth seems rto or at least blur the vision of what the othm' religions arie saying." Belief in Christ as true God 'and true man eliminates authentic dirulog;ue with other religions. Scripture, tradition, 1and human e:xiperioooemust " ,be brought into a murbuaMy clarifying and mutually criticizing correlation." 78 -y';et rthe quesrtion persists: what determines rthe truth of the correlation? Second, evangelica:l theology sees authentic reve1rution only in Jesus Christ. But" contemporary N.T. scholarship, the profound experience of historicail relativity by our culture and our broader knowledge of other religions " make this untenable. We cannot follow Protestant or Catholic " models " which claim no authentic reve}aition eris1ts " .apart from Chrisrt." 79 Consequently when the N.T. refers :to Jesus as the onily be11 J. A. DiNoia, O.P. analyzes this problem in "Implicit Faith, General Revelation and the State of Non-Christians," in The Thomist 47 (1983): 209241. This article argues that general revelation must be subordinate to special revelation and opposes both self-justification and a justification without Christ; thus a " theology of religions should assert that they [non-Christiansl can lead lives which are pleasing to God in ways known only to him ... they will share in the divinely willed consummation of human history which Jesus Christ makes possible and for which Christians hope," p. 237. In "Authority, Public Dissent and the Nature of Theological Thinking," in The Thomist 52 ( 1988) : 185-208, DiNoia analyzes this problem in relation to Pannenberg's theology ( p. 192ff.) and "the revisionist theologians" such as David Tracy. 1s Knitter, p. 91. 10 Ibid., p. 92. Regarding historicism and N.T. as canon see Brevard S. Childs, The New Testament as Oanon: An Introduation, (Phila.: Fortress, 1985), pp. 16-33. KNITTER'S UNITARIAN THEOCENTRISM 471 gobten Son of God we must realize that this expression belongs to the language of the N.T. writers 1and refers only to their value judgement. Thus, "Evangelicals should face the further possibility that Christians can maintain and prodaim the partioular importance of Christ ... as a universal truth for all :veJigions-without having 1to negate the importance of univ;ersal truth in other religions." 80 But the question remains: Can we know" univiers1al truth" in other religions without first knowing the truth of God revealed in Christ? 'Jihird, the E vangelicals, especially Karl Ba11th, distorted the BiMe and the Reformers by arguing that we are not justified by works but by faith and that revelation always contradicts religion. This is faJs.e since " 1as much Roman Catholic and process theology contends ... the divine assumption of human na:ture in Jesrus does no't stand as one grand exception in the historical process, if mther it is the (or a) fuM expression of wha1t God is up to in history, then it follows that grace is given as a constitutive part of nature." 81 The question remains: Can we think of grace as grace while conceiving ]tin this way? Fourth, " where Christians encounter 11eligions that, from appea11ances, are fulJ of good recognizing the l'ea1l]ty of a Transcendent Being and living lives of love and justic:e-1here Christians should also expect to find God's revefation and graice." 82 This expectation itself dictates Knitter's theological discoveries. 1 Jesus and General Revelation: Protestant, Catholic, and Unitive Views Knitter presents several mainline Pmtestants who argue for a general rev'C'lation which is called by Althaus "original revelaition," by Brunner " creation l'eve1ation," and by Tillich "gen80 Knitter, p. 93. pp. 94-95, emphasis mine. s2 Ibid., p. 95. The weakness of William Lowe's suggested "heuristic" for interreligious dialogue is his basic agreement with this reasoning, Horizons 13 ( 1986) : 125. 81 Ibid., 472 PAUL D. MOLNAR era;l rievdation; " 83 they :confirm his dream of unitive plumlism. These theologians believe they are presenting the authentic Reformation doctrine, i.e., tha1t there is and must be a tion as an adion of the triiniitar,ian God 'drawing all people to the Father which cannot be the content of a naitural theology. As notes " this revelation has a va1idity and efficacy illidependent of revelation in Christ: ' lt is valid through itself; i1t shines on its own light; it is not essentially bound to faith in Jesus Christ and to his Gospel.' " Experience confirms this; thus, the "prodding.s of conscience ... available to aU, attest to a divine rev;elation given in the very stuff of human existence." 84 Til:lich's argiument rests on the belief that " every human be:ing seeks and can he' gm.sped:' by an Ultimaite Congm1sped by an ultimarte cern .... Reiigion is tha:t st1a1be of concern." 85 Pannenherg confirms this by insisting that faith in Christ " is possible only if ]t is the response to 'and fuffillment of a person's previous knowledge of God in general revefation," i.e., the idea of a benevolent and personal l'eality, a need for iredemption, and the idea thwt the various world religions are " willed by God; their gods are ' representatives ' of the Alon experience and Scripture, Knitter shows mighty." 86 thait these mainline Protestants idisagJ:9ee with the Evangelicals by detaching revefa1tion from faith in and identifying it with a person's knowledge of the Absolute. Yet a conflict remains because these same theologians argue, in V1arying wa,ys, thait Christ i1s the only savior. For Knitrter ss Ibid., p. 98. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid., p. 99. Cf. also Haught, cited above who follows Tillich. John A. T. Robinson, Honest To God, (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1963) concurs, "Belief in God is a matter of 'what you take seriously without any reservation', of what for you is uitimate reality," p. 55. These theologians take this to refer to our ultimate concern and identify that with God. This is compatible with Rahner's identifying the "whither" of transcendence with the term of our self-experience, then with mystery and finally with God. The problems with that thinking are analyzed extensively in Paul D. Molnar, "Is God Essentially Different. . . " s6 Ibid., pp. 99-101. KNITTER'S UNITAPJAN THEOCENTRISM 473 salvation does not mean " what no eye has seen, nor ear heard ... regarding whait God has pTepal'ed for those who love him" [1 Cor. :Z: 9]. 1!t means" •bhe beginnings of salvation in this life: what Christians mean when they talk about ' being in Christ Jesus,' funowing the Frather, the experience or a,wareness of God that brings both meaning and fll'eedom." 87 He emphasizes that the above-mentioned theologians aH argue that outside of Chris1t there is both a self-manifestation and a knowtledge of God " but it does not lead ·to salvation." 88 Pannenberg even implies thrut " salvaition, a true experience of the tme God, is ait best only partial and inadequate" in other 11eiligions. WhiJe Christ restores "the ontological stl'iuctures of the God-humanity relationship," he is "the only begotiten Son of God, not as a savior, but as the Savior .... He is the one and only Savior or he is no Savior at all." 89 The mainiline Protestants disagree with the Evangelica1ls by affirming a general re¥elation, whi1e agreeing thart the11e can be no other savior t:han Christ. He11e Knitter distingiui:shes between an ontological and an epistemologicail need for Christ. An epistemological need meians thart " direct contaot with Christ via the wm1d is the only way salvation can be media:bed because it is the onJy way salvation can be properly undersitood. Outside Christ one simply does not know how sahnation works." 90 Thus, we are ,saved only by :llaith and graioe as a mirade and not by works. In Brunner's words, " The only power that in principle unconditionally exdudes self-redemption is the message of the mediaition of Christ." 91 Becaiuse of Christ there can be no form of self-jusitificrution. Acco11ding to Knitter, because Hans Urn von BaHhasar and Jean Danielou recognize a " cosmic revelation," they fit within this "Pmtestanrt Catholic model." Sti lil, rthey are reluotant to admit that other can be "channels of genuine salvation .... To move in this direction, they argue, 1 1 Ibid., p. 100. ss Ibid., p. 102. 89 Ibid., p. 104. 87 90 Ibid., 91 Ibid., p. 106. p. lOG. See also p. 107. 474 PAUL D. MOLNAR is to flirt with Pelagianism (salv:aition by works) ." 92 Thus, some recognition of universal revelation is the keystone for any Christian approach to other religions .... Tillich was correct when he insisted that the :first ' presupposition' for interreligious dialogue must be ' that both partners acknowledge the value of the other's religious conviction (as based ultimately on a revelatory experience)'. Without this keystone, a theology of other religions cannot really call itself Christian. 93 Mmieover, the religions should he evaluated positively and not negaitively as in evangeJical theology. This }eaids to Knitter's main thesis: It seems that both human logic and Christian theology require that if one admits the fact of divine revelation apart from Christ, one must also admit at least the possibility of salvation apart from Christ. 94 Here Knitter has found the weakness of the mainline Protesitant critique of Evangelical theology. If one admits the fact of revelation apart from Christ, why can there not be salvartion apart from Christ? Is there any way to avoid 'this predicament? I 'Suggest that we rnusrt hold faith, grace, and reviefation together in a way which Paul Knitter and these theologians do not. Since it is the one Lord [Deut., chaps. 4-5] whose objective truth wa.s recognized in different historical circumst1ances and in disparate ways by both the prophets and the apostles [e.g. Jn. 8: 56] we are hound to believie that Jesus Christ has spoken through the prophets and is the Incarnate Word who savies:. Faith receives its truth fl'om this Word as God's unique aot of revelation and gr1aice within history. Therefore, the Church, which was hidden in Im·ael and disdo1sed in the history of Christ, has both a prophetic and apostoaic form. Yet, this is exactly the truth which no 'unhnersalist' or unitarian religion can It perceives religious 1fauth from a universal p. 113. p. 114 . .94 Ibid., p. 116, 92 Ibid., 93 Ibid., KNI'l'TEm's UNITARIAN THEOCENTRISM 475 revela:tion and maltheism, which necessarily :identifies the rewliity of God with eaich expression of :it. Thus, the peak, God, wouM not exist ii the paths leading to it, the ic11eatures,disappeared. How does this ,affect his " Ch::ristofogy" ? In hi:s " .authentically universal Christology ": wew No Other Name?, p. 152. p. 153. 111 Knitter, 112 Ibid., 480 PAUL D. MOLNAR Christ is ... a living symbol for the totality of reality: human, divine, cosmic. This totality of reality is what he calls the ' primordial theandric fact,' or, more recently, the 'cosmotheandric reality.' These terms try to express 'that intimate and complete unity ... between the divine and the human.' Panikkar explicitly calls this unity a 'non-dualist vision.' It is essentially the same vision expressed by Schuon ... and implied by Jung. God and the finite world make up a unity neither monistic nor dualistic.113 Christ is a symbol of this non-durulist unity of God and rthe wor1d.114 As 1seen here, Christ symbolizes the totality of reality-human., divine, .and cosmiic; thus, there oan be no clear distinction between God and crerutures. And iany theologian. who WiOlu1d hold mhat an incrurnrution has taken place solely, finally, and nornlaitive[y in Jesus of Naziareth is guilty of idolatrous historicism booa;nse "no historicail name or form. can be the full, fill!al expression of the Christ." Christ :Ls not unnecessary here. He is necessary as •a parrti(mlar historical embodiment of the "cosmotheandric fact." Jesus is the ultimate form of Christ .... Though a Christian believes that 'Jesus is the Christ' ... this sentence is not identical to ' the Christ is Jesus ' .... Jesus, therefore is a concrete historical name for the 'Supername '-that is, the Christ which is always 'the name above every name' .... The name above all namesthe Christ-can go by many historical names: Rama, Krishna, Isvara, Purusha, Tathagata .... Jesus ... would be one of the names of the cosmotheandric principle. 115 And this thin.king is confirmed for Knitter by John Macquarrie'1s propo·srul that interreligious dialogue be based on " ' commitment and openness '-total commitment to Jesus and Mdical openness rto other revelaitions beyond Jesus." 116 Douetism considers Jesus an :appearance of a genem1ly l"ooognizaible truth, a timeil.ess truth. 111 It foils to recognize that na Ibid., p. 154, emphasis mine. p. 155. 115 Ibid., pp. 155-56. 11s Ibid., p. 157. 117 Cf. e.g. Eduard Schweizer, Jesus, (Atlanta, 1971), pp. 88ff. In this context Schweizer refers to Gnosticism which is itself docetic. See also Karl 114 Ibid., KNITTER'S UNITARIAN THEOCENTRISM 481 Jesus is the Christ and that the Christ is Jesus because of an act of God (Jn. 1: 14). The starting poinJt of docetism is not the Jesus, and it is not hound to his present his1torical mediation through the Church, its teachings, and the sacraments. It can describe itself as rtotally committed to Christ and open to other revelations beyond him because it views Christ as a principle by which creatul'es attempt to synthesize their own a:ots of self-transcendence with the being of God, whom they thinlc they l'ecognize in Christ. The commitment is not to Christ as an independently existing being (the Living Lord acting in his1tory through power of the Holy Spirit) but ito an idea which is ,supposed to represent the truth of what Jesus was. Paniikkar's synthesis cannot respect Jesus as the my;stery of 'l'e¥elation because it cans us beyond him to the higher synthesis demanded by a non-dualist unitive pluralism. Consequently, Panikkar does not even begin to describe the unique union and distinction between God and creatures established 1in Christ. He has, in fact, :changed oontent of Christology from a sita,tement abourt his ,significance fm history inJto a statement about all reality, he hlen:ds together into an historical process and reduces to his cosmotheandric prrincip1e. 118 In a viery similar foshion, Krruitter's non-nonnative Christo1ogy 1ogicailily misconstrues the meaning of the tm;ditional christo1ogie:s; it is an " honest intellectual " constrwot built upon a docetic ideaJ and ire-constructed according to his un:iti¥e pluralism. Here docetism issues in Unitarianism; its truth Dests u:pon finding experienoes in Jung, Pianikkar, and others to Barth's descriptions of ebionite and docetic Christologies. Neither is actually willing to begin thinking about truth from the particular man, Jesus from Nazareth, who was the Word of God in the flesh. Karl Barth, Churoh Dogmatics, Vol. 1, pt. l, The Doctrine of the Word of God, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, trans. G. W. Bromiley (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1975), pp. 402ff. Cf. also Church Dogmatics, I, 2, pp. 16ff. and 180ff. 11s And of course John l'vfacquarrie does not realize that commitment to Jesus excludes openness to other revelations beyond him, since there is no other God who continues to reveal than the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. PAUL D. MOLNAR verify a umtarian position. Knitter cannot accept the traditional Christologies hecaiuse they olearly do not teach what he, through John P.awlikowski, teaches, i,e., thait "each human per!Son is somehow divine," .that Christ is the theological symbol that the Church selected to try to express this reality .... Thus in a very real sense one can say that God did not become man in Jesus. God always was man .... The Christ event was crucial,. however, for the manifestation of this reality to the world.119 The reality ,,signifiedhere is that of human peil'ISOns who, a:s div:ine, simply created a god for themsclves and selected Jesus to be their 1symbol. With Tom Driver 1and Ro\SffillaryRuether, Knitter concludes that " The church 'should teach nothing 1rubout God or Jesus which does not make a positive contribwtion to social justice." 120 "Driver st/ates clearly, 'my methodoilogicaJ. proposal [is] to loca;be chrisito1ogy within ethiios and not prior to it.' " 121 Trruditiionrulnormative Chris:tology is immoral bemuse it has fositered anti-Semitism, 11rucism, and serism. 122 Irt ailso elllOOurages the " oolturrul imperiruLismof the West." 123 Thus, If . . . we step back from our analysis of these different thinkers, if we try to describe the forest from above the treetops, what we see is not an abrupt change but a gradual evolution. What these different theologians are part of, what they are promoting, is an evolution that has been taking place within Christian consciousness from the early part of this century, an evolution from ecclesiocentrism to christocentrism to theocentrism. 124 From where does the truth of theocerutriism emerge? " TradirtioinaJ christology, with its insistence on finality and normattiviity, jru.st doe s not :6.rt whrut is being experienced in the arena of l"eligious pLurialism. We are in the midsrt of an evoiLuti.onf11om chcistocentrism to theooentrism." Modem theologians "are 1 No Other Na,me'!, p. 162. p. 163, 121 Ibid., p. 164. 122 Ibid., pp. 164-65. 119 Knitter, 120 Ibid., 123 Ibid., 124 Ibid., p. 165. p. 166. KNITTER'S UNITARIAN THEOCENTRISM 483 placing God, not ·the chmch or Jesus Christ, at the center of things. And .as with all change they feel they are not negating Oll" 1rubandonmg what went befo11e."125 Here we need to ask: is this evolution rea1l or imagined? It is a 11eail evoLution for those who beHeve that eaich person is somehow divine and tha.t the sour:oe of truth now the experiences of those who, because of religious dialogue, plaice God but not Ghrist at the center. Hut ·to me it is only imagined because this very evolution .a1ctrually does negate Christi·an tmth: Jesus is at the ioenter because he is none other than God himself in the :flesh. One cannot think of God and by-pass Jesus or ·the Chul'lch as .the sphere w11thin which God is met. Here theologians must make a choice between Knitter's evolutionary ideal, which paist Christ and rthe Church to a God who oannot ultimately be distinguished from humanity, and the God of Christian revela,,tion, who caills us to sailvation in Christ and ca:lls us to be his eschatoiogical community on earth. Once truth is seen as grounded in God's aotion in Christ rand the Spirit, it wiH he seen that the traditional Chrisitofogies do not fos1ter division and keep peop1e fmm folilowing the truth; mther division is fos:te:red by Christians and others constmcting truth aoco:rding to various ideals grounded in mdividrual and conflicting experiernces and then using the traditiona1 Ch:ristoiogies to vail:Udaitethose "truths." Knitter argues that his theocentrism does noit violate the N.T. and t:raditiona1l understanding of Christ. His docetic Chris1to1ogyis tme because all the titles and proclamations about Jesus, have their origin in the saving experience of Jesus by individuals and the community ... they originated in a big-bang experience .... This experience of a saving power or revelation was the source and sustenance of all the interpretations of Jesus found in the New Testament. 126 Here Knitter at.tempts. to Link Rahner's transcendental 125 Ibid., 126 Ibid., p. 167. p. 175. Chris- 484 PAUL D. MOLNAR 1Jology with pi'OCess theofogy and "panentheism" in oroer to defend his thesis. 121 Both Rabner and the process theoJogians show thait the incairnation is " thoroughly consistent with our experience of ourselv;es and the worM," even though the process modeil. differs from Rahner's. Knitter then argues that an experience of the world in process leads to a panentlwistic experience of God's relationship to the world. God is not identified with the world (pantheism), but everything and everyone in the world exists in God. Such a view is not, I should say, opposed to Rahner's understanding of divinity within us; but it does make for a tighter bond between the infinite and the finite. In the process model, divinity, in a limited but real sense, is dependent on the world for the unfolding of its being. Panentheism can be more clearly understood under one of its synonyms: incarnation.128 Whiile Rahner does aooopt a modified panentheism 1211 he differs fJJOm Knitter by holding that the Incamaition happened only once; Rahner :vejected ithe idea that the Incarnrution was a myth. Sti11, Knitter contends that " Rahner and the process theologians respoot the myth" because rthey view it as: a " true myth, a meaningfu[ model, for expres,sing what Christians have 'experienced Jesrus rbo be ... they take the myth .seriou:sily,hut not 111Jrerahly."130 Expressing confusion 1aboiut why Rahner " cannot admit other incarnations, " Knitter even ·sruggeststhrut Cha1Joedon'1s:distiootions1 of nmbwes impli1ed other incarnations [which of course it did not]. Again, he asks "F01r truth to be truth, for truth to· call forth total commitment, must it be the only rtruth? " 131 Here, once again, Knitter has hrought rthe problem of method into focus. He accepts Rahner's: idea that the IDJcarnation "is not 'Something totaly unexpected [hut] i:s .the almost natural or logical fulfi!Llmentof the .awesome, mysterious nature that is ours as human " 132 and then logica[[y asks pp. 187-89. p. 189. 12a K. Rabner and H. Vorgrimler, "Panentheism," Theological Dictionary, ed. C. Ernst (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965), pp. 333-34. 1ao Knitter, No Other Name? p. 191. 1s1 Ibid. t32 Ibid., p. 187. 121 Ibid., 12s Ibid., KNITTER'S UNITARIAN THEOCENTRISM 485 Rahneir amid the process theologians a very important question (giv;en their mmmon sta:riting point): If Chrisrt is the full realiz,a:tionof potential God ha.s given to us all, why ilimit the Incarnation only to Chrisrt? 133 He:ve Rahner's: method returns to· haJUlltus. Accoricli.ngto the rtranscellldentJailmethod, the Incarnation can onJy make sense in light of our .transcenidenibalexperience, i.e., in light of various potentirulrirtiesinherent in the human spirit .acting within history. If ithis is true, it is logically impossible to argue that Jesills is uibberlyunique and neoess1aryas rt.he one and only savior. Instead, he must be OOillceived as the highest achievement of human po·tentia1lirtyirreversibly pl"esent among us. This very thinking compromises the truth which Rabner wished to uphoM, i.e., thait the Incarnation was an aat of the one true God becoming man in the history of Jesus, and he wia.s: the only selfexpression of :the Father ad extra. Knitter has established that, [if we ho1d .that] the truth of Christianity rests on a " bigbang" [or 1any] eJq>erience, then it cannot be a self-sufficient truth----0.t needs other ·truth "to be." 134 But, ·as: ·seen above, Christians believe that God created the wo:vld from nothing, and the truth of Christianity is seilf-sufficient. Knitter clearly summarizes his overaH prurpose in this analysis: Transcendental and process christologies interpret the myth of God's incarnation in Jesus as an expression of the nondualistic unity between divinity and humanity .... This is what Troeltsch and Toynbee perceived with their view of God as coterminous with history, what Jung suggested with his own myth of our divine unconscious, what the conservative Evangelicals and mainline Protestants miss in their stress on the gulf between God and the world, what the Catholic model holds with its notion of the supernatural existential, what Panikkar asserts with his 'cosmotheandric principle.' Incarnation is not a one time event. Rather it is an ideal 133 Ibid., p. 192. of course, is the inherent difficulty of panentheism. It claims to make a distinction between God and creatures but really cannot. Rahner, of course, would not hold that Christianity rests on a "big bang" experience but on an experience of the nameless which itself is tied to Jesus. 134 This, 486 PAUL D. MOLNAR for all, an ideal rooted in the ancient Christian belief in the one universal logos or wisdom of God.135 Doing Before Knowing The aim and scope of of this should not be underestimated. Starting from experience rather than doctrine, Knitter's norm for truth has become the Christian God '!'educed to a theocentcic ideal, reconst1mcted from Panildmr's non-dualism. He has incorpomted a pantheism into the fabric of his theology, e¥en rthorugh Christians hav>e ail.ways l1ejectersal truths emerge." 137 The uni¥ersal truth which Jon Sobrino, Leonardo Boff, and Rosemary Ruether teach is that 1 1 We cannot begin to know who this Jesus of Nazareth is unless we are following him, no matter what that demands. That is the starting point. Furthermore, everything we know or say about him No Other Name?, p. 191, emphasis mine. 1ss Gilson, God and Philosophy, pp. 78-79. Furthermore, biblical anthropology sees people as lost and in need of redemption, i.e., they need to repent and believe before knowing the truth about God and revelation [Matt. 13: 1012]. 137 Knitter, No Other Name?, p. 194. 1s5 Knitter, KNITTER'S UNITARIAN THEOCENTRISM 487 must be repossessed and reclari:fied in the praxis of following him through the changing contexts of history. 188 Since the historical Jesus did not preach about himsieH hut a.bout the kingdom of God, " what is most important is to put this kingdom in the center of concern and to work toward bui1d:ing it; doctrinal purity and clarity about the church, the nature of God, and Jesus himself will fonow. Christians must keep their priorities clear." 139 Knitter drnws four concfosions from this. Fir:sit, ins;bead of seeing Jesus' uniqueness in dogmatic formulas we can see it only in the praxis of involv;ement w:ith others. Second, " By restoring the kingdom to the center of the gospel ... We cannot speak of Jesus as having 'ful:filileid' the hopes of Israel, for these we11e hopes for the kingdom of God;" 140 it is thus impos1sible to claim for Jesus any final normativity. Third, liberaition theofogy cliarifies why normative claims for Jesus are unneoessary and impossible today. For liberation theology, the one thing necessary to be a Christian and to carry on the job of theology is commitment to the kingdom vision of liberating, redemptive action. . .. Jesus of Nazareth is a means for liberation .... Not knowing whether Jesus is unique, whether he is inclusive or norrnative for all others, does not interfere with comitment to the praxis of following. 141 Fourth, " liberartion christology allows, even requires, rtha;t Christians recognize the possibility of other liberaitol's, or saviors, other inca.rnations." 142 Here we have an irreconci1ah1e confliot. If we can use Jesus as a symbolic means rto abtain salvation, then we can in fact savT"ruaticingand living hfus, message in our concrete sitiua.tion, can we reaJJly know who he is a.nd what he means." Jesus' message must be 1.1eshaped by a" new form of pra:ris," ha:sed on a" new originating and 'Self-correcting fo!UilJdationfor Christian belief." 143 Thus, Chrisima:ns must pass over from their religion to others before they can who and 4 what Jesus really is in their own M and the foundafor Christian tl'!Uth becomes " The srpiritual .rudventure of than Jesus, 1the one medirutor. Indeed this adilialogiue," 1 143 Ibid., 144 Ibid., p. 206. pp. 206-7. KNITTER'S UNITARIAN THEOCENTRISM 489 venture alone can viecify or qurulify " the tmditionaJ. Chris:tian olaim that in Jesus of Naz,areth God hrus 'surprised' us .... Without dialogue, •s111ch a truth might !be S1U1spected and suggested, but it cannot he kno:wn." 145 Here the antithesis between what Chmstiamity really tieruches and what Knitter disoovers stands in hoM relief. First, he !asserts that rthe foundation for 8Juthentic dia:logue is: " religiorus experience." Then, he alleges that Dialogue must be based on the recognition of the possible truth in all religions; the ability to recognize this truth must be grounded in the hypothesis of a common ground and goal for all religions .... Authentic listening requires a total openness to the possible truth of what the other person in pressing .... I can never understand another's position as he does ... unless I share his view; in a word, unless I judge it to be true. 146 Consequently, "there must he rthe same ultimate reality, the same divine p:vesence ... the same God--1alllimating all reiligions." Therefore " Christian belief in a universal divine revelation within a11 l'eligions," seen and described by Jung, Toynbee, Troeltsch, by Protestants and Catholics: rulike, supplies the common soul.'loe and direction for all faiths.L47 Eaith must be distinguished from belief: The word 'faith' indicates both the personal experience and the ineffable content behind all authentic religion. It is the intuitive contact with, the grasping and being grasped by, the ultimate .... Beliefs are the cultural, intellectual, emotional embodiment of faith. . . . Faith, in its experience and in its content, is transcendent, ineffable, and ever open. 148 Here rthe truth of religion can be identified with a human act of reality, without asilcing if thrut reality surrender to an corresponds to the Christian God. p. 207. p. 208. 147 Ibid., p. 209. 148 Ibid., p. 212. 145 Ibid., 146 Ibid., 490 PAUL D. MOLNAR Critiool Analysis and Conclusion In a Christian doctrine of God and of revelation, God al,one defines truth. Authentic freedom colllsisrtsin obeying the Worn heard and believed. But this Word is the ,act of God himsielf in the h:isto:ryof Jesus and the essence of the Church mits preaching, teruching, swcraments, 1and theology. Obeying arny other word will mean not thait we may possibly be 1ed rto· a deeper apprehension of truth but, rather, that we a;re necessarily led 1away from the truth. Thus, to judge as true some other religion which is clearly in conflict with Christianity qui'be simply misses the .fact that there is no other somoe of revelation and salviation tham the one unique savior and reveruler himself, Jesus, the God-man. Moreover, an "authentic" dialogue requires that some acruaJ. recognition of truth take plruce. To ground this in religious experi.enre (Christian or non-Chrisrtian) woru1d deprive one or both dialogue partners (Christian or non-Christian) of the viery truth of the Gospel. By arguing that we cannot ;step outside our own traiclit:ion,Knitter appears to mainrtain the uniqueness of Christianity. Yet hooause it is our experience which makes it rtrue, he is forced -to say exactly what the theology of the N.T. does not say, i.e., that there is 1another reviealer or savior besides Jesus. Rejecting Jesus' uniqueness as Christians have .ailways understood it, Knitter substitutes his definition of univiers1ailreve1ation for the truth revieai1ed in Christ. Convie11sionno Longer means repentance 3!11d .belief in Jesus but" conversion to God's truth, as it is mrude known in ·clirulogue."1411 But dia1o.gue means .accepting a die!finitionof ultimate 11eail:iity based upon the common essence of religions, which by definition, cannot allow Jesus to be the sole revealer or savior. Here Knitter appeails to and to John Dunne's idea of" paissing over." Passing over is a shifting of standpoint, a going over to the standpoint of another culture, another way of life, another religion. It is followed by an equal and opposite process we might call ' com149 Ibid. KNITTER'S UNITARIAN THEOCENTRISM 491 ing back,' coming back with new insight to one's own culture, one's own way of life, one's own religion .... If I keep in mind the relativity of standpoints as I pass over from one standpoint to another, therefore, I efjectively hold myself open toward mystery .150 Whi1e every human stall!dpoint is indeed relative, the question here :iis whether in fact we can equate the mystery of Christ w.iith a common essell!Ceof religion, an essence which we imagine to exist and to be attainable by passing over from one reiligion to another. But we have no existential method to hoM our'Selves open to God, hemll!Se there is only one forundation which none of us has laid. 151 It is ChriS!t himself who keeps us open to God; in him our lives werre re-created, and baptism signifies this.152 There is an epistemological message here. Liberation theology and Knitter's method of do.ing-befo:rie-knowing purport to sepamte pm:xis from knowledge of the truth, rull for the purpose of distinguishing !the oulturally ooll!d:illtionedfrom the sential in the world religions. But the truth is that no one can express an ildea of p11actiioe,ethical or otherwise, except by concepturulizing it in relation to some view of the truith. Thus, the notion of pure praxis is ·the consummate myth that has been oontrived to cwoumvent the tiiuth of ChristianiJty. Instead of alfowing the kingdom of God 1and l'eligious. pmctioe to· be dictated by the person ·and working of Jesus, these thinkers focus on the kingdom and on religious practice in an effort to find a truth which is universally recognizable but which avoids the scandal of the gospe[. With Knitter's conclusion we are back to where we starited. Knitter's claim that wie have no knowledge of tmth without pmxis is oontrrudicted by his claim that " con versaition must be anJChored in what can he milled a ' new model ' of truth," for that model presupposes a notion of truth that has aJcturul1y 150 Ibid., pp. 214-15. See also pp. 211 and 216. 3, esp. v. 11 " For the foundation, nobody can lay any other than the one which has already been laid, that is Jesus Christ." 152 Cf. Ac. 2: 37-38 and compare Col. 2: 6ff. and Rom. 6: 3-4. 1s1 Cf. 1 Cor. 492 PAUL D. MOLNAR preceded praxis. That new model begins with the mystica:l experience of panJtheism (Shuon) 1and then argues tha;t triaditionaJ Western philosophy (.following Aristotle) is impoverished, for it defines truth 10000J:1dingto the principle of contradimion, which hoMs that " Truth . . . is essentially a matter of either-or." 153 In the 1tr1aiditionalmodel, the truth of religion is defined "through exclusion." Since our new model must be " inoluffive" mther than 1excliusive,the traditional model must he called inrto question. Anid partioo1arily by modern Roman Catholics, for they realize that "insis:tence on truth-throughe:m1usion easily atrophies personal faith and reduces faith to doctrine, moraility to legalism, ritual to superstition. Cathoiliics haive 1seen how such concern for absoLute truth denigrates the vrulue of other religious tmditions." 1 5-4 Catholics haive come :to rerulize that, though the!ir symbols still mediate the mystery, .they are not the mystery itself. Yet what is this mystery? Acco11ding to Knitter it is the mystery " Christiains caJl God." But that is the problem we fore. Can Christi!ans call anything God in truth unless the concept is subo11dinateto Christ himself as the trinitarian self-revelation of God ad extra? Can ithey recognize God without the present ,action of the Ho[y Spirit Cl'eating and sustaining £aith in the risen Lord? Here Knitter's suggested method of doing before thinking reverses itself. In the new model, truth will no longer be identified by its ability to exclude or absorb others. Rather, what is true will reveal itself mainly by its abuity to relate to other expressions of truth and to grow through these relations-truth defined not by exclusion but by relation .... The new model reflects what our pluralistic world is discovering: no truth can stand alone; no truth can be totally unchangeable. Truth,. by its very nature, needs other truth. If it cannot relate, its quality of truth must be open to question. Expressed more personally . . . Without you, I cannot be unique. Truth, without 'other' truth, cannot be unique; it cannot exist ... truth through relationship ... allows each religion to be unique. 155 153 Knitter, No Other Name'!, p. 217. 154 Ibid., p. 218. 155 Ibid., p. 219. KNITTER'S UNITARIAN THEOCENTRISM 493 Yet this hmlusivist definition o.f tmth can only work on one presupposition, nameiy, that the truth of Christianity be excluded foom the relationship. ]for Christianity, as we have seen, 1speaks of a God who is free in himself 1and in his aotions ad God who is independent of the world and whose relationship with us i1s established and maintained in his free gmce. Whereas an indrusivist and relational notion of truth sounds appealing in .a plumlistic society, this particufar model exdudes only the heresy that Jesus is the unique (one and only) rev;eailer, savior, :and Son of God. And that view, which for KnitteT is a heresy, is the v;ery truth upon which Clwistian doctrines :rest. Here Knitter's epistemology cannot delivcer. It claims fo be ino1usive but actually is exclusive. Why this mutuaJJy conditioning notion of truth? Because "unitive plura:lism" demands it. " The wor1d :religions, in all their .amazing diffe11e111ces, a11e more complementary than contradictory. Wha.t this complementarity implies extends beyond the imagination of most Westerners." 156 And this: "new" insight is tha;t 11eligiousexperience is dipolar, i.e., aM :religions by their very na:bu11e incorporate the " coincidence of opposites," as we learn faiom the 'taoist principle of the yin-yang. This prinniple contradicts the Judeo-Christian idea of a self-sufficient truth. From this we learn that " the Chris1tian teaching on the distinction between the ultimaite and the finite needs the Hindu insight into the nonduality between Brahma and !31tman."157 Thus, the norm for all tmth, mciLuidiingthe truth of Christillanity, which emerges from this anaJysis is the unitive pluraJism [non-duaJity] of F. Shuon. On this pl'esupposition, can no fonger be normartive for an unde11standing of tme Teiigion becruuse Christ himseil.f can no longer be normative. Revelation then can only mean exactly wha,t Feuerbach thought it meant, i.e., the contents of the divine revelation are of human origin, for they have proceeded not from God as God, but from God as determined 1s6 Ibid., p. 220. 157 Ibid., p. 221. 494 PAuL D. MOLNAR by human reason, human wants, that is, directly from human reason and human wants. And so in revelation man goes out of himself, in order, by a circuitous path, to return to himself! Here we have a striking confirmation of the position that the secret of theology is nothing else than anthropology-the knowledge of God nothing else than a knowledge of man! 158 But to think that the question of tmth in religion can be solved by detaching the messiage of Christ from Christ himself as the one mediator and then setting the message up as the Lol'd means either thait we are serving two masters or that we have col1apsieid revefatfon into antlwopo1ogy; both alternatives compromise 1the Gosp:el. Knitter's dream, his utopia, borrow the wol'ds of Wilfred Cantwell Smith-that "No s1tatement a:bout Christian faith is to which in a non-Christian cou1d not agree." Raimundo Panikkar, speaking of Hindu-Christian dialogue, srtates "What we aiie looking for here is not 1a Christianization of Hinduism or a Hinduization of Christianity, but insofar as it is a genuinely va1id 1theology for both Hindu and Christian." 159 We have a:ll'eaidyseen that Knirtterr's presentation of Chrisit is far 1fl'om a genuinely v;ail.id Christian theo1logy. Even the best possible evailuation of Jesus ::JJocording to Knitter's method wouM 1see Jesus ·a1s 1a "unifying symbol" for peoples. Such a symbol however can oily function as long as one's Christology is docetic. The only way to avoi d this conclusion is to ahsr!Ja,infrom conceiving the Christian God according to Unital'ian presuppositions at the outsert. Hel'ein Lies the neces1sity of a trinitarian theology which 1sees God's oneness only by aicilmowledging his thl'eeness. In such a theology the deity of the Son and Spirit will. be manifest in each of its refleetions. For Knitter the mis:sionary's job is done if ",au are converted to a deeper grasp and following of God's tmth . . . the goal of 1 1 158 Ludwig Feuerhach, The E8senae of Christianity, trans. by George Eliot, intro. by Karl Barth and foreword by H. R. Niebuhr, (New York: Harper, 1957)' p. 207. 159 Knitter, No Other Name?, p. 228. KNITTER'S UNITARIAN THEOCENTRISM 495 works is being achieved when announcing the gospel to aH peopleis makes the Christian a better Christian and the Buddhist a better Buddhist." 160 Yet this y;ery thinking re-dUJces the question of truth to a religious practice which ignores the pmblem of whether and to wha,t extent the object of reflection is any;thing other than onesieJ.f. Thus, both the Gnostics 1and foenaeus daimed ,to be raiuthenticalrly Christian, the truth was determined only by the extent to which their thinking arcLua1ly pointed towal1d Chdsrt a;s the source of all famth. And, .a;coording to Niels Nielsen, the Buddha, e.g., "did not advocate dependence on the favor of the gods or a supreme being ars a divine revdation." 161 While ther:e were many Buddhas or gurus in East Asia, 162 the Christian God cannort be recognized by arcknowledging them or a supreme being. A sup11eme being is not necessarily the Christian God; this God is certainly supreme, but precisely as the one and only God of the DercaJogiue. This insight neither denigrates :Buddhists nor exailts Christians; ist simply recognizes that unless both Christians and :Buddhists perceive the gmoe of God for what it timly is, they do not recognize the tmth of the Gospel, which is that Jesus alone is the univ1ersaJ Savior and ReV'ea1er. And no one is e2iic1uded from this Good News. 1 1 1 160 Ibid., p. 222. C. Nielsen et al., Religions of the World, Press, 1983), p. 190. 162 Ibid., pp. 233ff. 161 Niels (New York: St. Martin's A RETURN TO THE SUBJECT: THE THEOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF CHARLES TAYLOR'S SOURCES OF THE SELF JAMES J. BUCKLEY Loyola College Baltimore, Maryland ECENT THEOLOGIANS have widely argued (or pve-. sumed) that modernity's 1turn to the subject creates deep p11ohlems for imagining, thinking about, or enacting who we m'e. These theologians do not aJwaJ"s agree on what constitutes "modernity." And they ra11e!ly agree on the 'alternative to " the turn to the :subject.'' That is, some theologians airgue or presume that the turn from the subject ought to he baiekwa:rid, retrieving our sou11ces prior to what Vatican II and others c:a:lrl "the modeTn world;" others argue o'l.' presume tha:t the turn ought be forwavd to "post-modernity," either accommodating ourseh 11es to the decentered selves of the post-modern secular avant garde or proclaiming the strange, new wo1'1d of the Bible. Hut neo-Augustinians and Thomists, liberation theologians and pragmatists, Wittgensrteinians and Barthians all roughly agree (in spite of deep disagx,eements) that we need to turn from the subject; 1 Charles Taylor's Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity is a massivie challenge to these presumptions and argument1s.2 It is, we might s'ay, a call to re-turn to the :subjeict-;hut quwlified this time by a gl'e3.1ter sense of this subject'is historiml context in the Enlightenment and Romantioism of different turns to the subject, see David 1 For a summary of critiques H. Kelsey, "Human Being," in Christian Theology: An Introduction to Its Traditions and Tasks, ed. Peter C. Hodgson and Robert H. King, Second Edition (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985 [Firnt Edition, 1982]), Chapter 6. 2 Charles Taylor Sources of the Sdf: The Making of the JJiodern Identity (Harvard University Press, 1989), referred to in the body of this essay by page numbers in parentheses. 497 498 JAMES J. BUCKLEY a1s weU .as this subject's constant ternptaition to undermine the very world it mak!es. A rea1der's response to the book wilil depend not only on how one rea1ds Taylor (e.g., does he under- or over-qualify his ca11 to return to Lhe subject?) but also on where the reader finds heriseilf on the tlieological spectrum. However, the fact that T.aylor',s book has been greeted with critical enthusiasm by both theologiical 'agnostics and contempomry Augustinians and Thomists suggests tha1t it is a book whose power and scope will resonabe with very different sort1s of men and women. 3 My aim here is not to summarize or assess the riches of this book. Soumes of the Self is a book of such clarity, power, and 1scope that lit will takce some 1time for rea;ders (or, ak least, this reader) fo absorb it a;nd to respond :to Taylor adequateJy. My aim is much more modest, nameJy, to pursue some of the connections between Tayl:or's proposal and theology. These connections vv:i.11 suggest some chores Taylor has discoveil'ed or crea;ted for theoilogians. I rea:lize that I risk doing an injustice to a book by a philosopher, not a theologian. Tayfor is candid about hls own theologica1l convictions, while not pretending fully to ddend or evcen fully those convictions. Nonetihe1ess,I wiill show tha:t his theses challenge n1any of us in ways tha:t justify a foous on theo1ogica,l isisues.Je objecition to. Tayloi; rightly speaks of the "anti-humanism of much evange[ieail ligion today," bu:t I be1ievie he is mistaken when he fails to 1 1.2 He carefully distinguishes neo-Nietzscheans like Lyotard, Derrida, and even Foucault, from Nietzsche himself, who had a kind of "saving inconsistency " ( 489) in his simultaneous affirmation and denial of a " sense of the magnificent, of the categorically affi.rmable, of the infinitely worthy of love " ( 453) . ON CHARLES TAYLOR 509 qualify lthis "murch" and also when he caMs "figures like Cardina1l Ra:tzinger" anti-humanistic (318). He !thinks that abortion debrutes a're not so murch deep disagreements as they are exceptionail disagreements that only provie h0:w suhs1tantial our agreements are (515) . But Taylor may not he aware of the diffffi'ence between the debate in his orwn homeland and that in our country, which is so eommitted to capitaJ punishment which Talor abhors [39Q]) 1and to nuclear determnce. More cmciaHy, interprreting aibortion debates as the exception rather than the l'lu1e is diffieult to squaJ'e with Taylor's criticism of positions which do not " movie us to extend help to the irremedia:hly hl'oken, such 13JS the mentally handi!Capped, those dying withoUit dignity, fetus es with genetic defects" (517) . But tills is a side-comment on one of Taylor's side-comments. Tayilolr's hook is a complex po11tra.yiailof a comp1ex topic. It de1serV1es the eareful attention of all theologians. ( 1 1 BOOK REVIEWS Consider Jesus: Waves of Renewal in Christology. By ELIZABETH A. JOHNSON. New York: Crossroad, 1990. Pp. 149. $14.95. Elizabeth A. Johnson, associate professor of theology at Catholic Uni· versity of America, first delivered the chapters of this present study as occasional lectures. They have already been published in book form in South Africa, hut we now have an American edition. Her purpose has been " to present the fundamental rethinking taking place in christology to persons who are actively involved in ministries in the church or who are seeking greater understanding of their faith. Given the vital interests of this audience the lectucres took on a certain character, seeking il:o inform about the reams of scholarship pouring forth about Jes us Christ in order to open doors for more effective preaching, teaching, prayer, and pastoral action" (p. ix). Thus this book is more popular than scholarly in nature. Johnson makes no pretense of breaking new ground but offers instead a rather comprehensive and highly lucid synthesis of contemporary thinking in christology since 1950, specifically within the Catholic tradition. Johnson has chosen the metaphor of waves breaking upon a beach to unify her subject matter. "As a wave is created by wind at sea and then rises up, rolls in, and breaks as it comes close to land, so too it seems that successive understandings of Christ have formed, swelled, and broken upon Catholic consciousness since the mid-twentieth century" (p. x). Some of the waves Johnson examines are: the re-emer·· gence of the human Jesus; christology and the questions of justice and liberation; feminist christology; Jes us and world religions; and chris· tology and ecology. Johnson places these christology currents in the context of doctrinal development. The vitality of contemporary christology manifests the present effort to speak anew to our world the truth of the gospel. It is the ongoing story of the Christian community blending the old and the new " or the historically given with its current form of reception" (p. 2). The first wave to come ashore was a renewed interest in the humanity of Jesus. Given the doctrine of the Incarnation that Jes us is one person existing in two natures, Johnson explores the transcendental christology of Karl Rahner to show how this traditional doctrine can be better appreciated and proclaimed in our day. Contemporary philosophy and psychology, unlike the Greek philosophy of classical christology, accentuate the subjectivity which defines 511 BOOK REVIEWS our humanity. As human subjects we are open to the infinite-in· finite truth and love, a hope for " infinite " life. " What is human na· ture? It is a finite reality with a capacity for the infinite, a thirst for the infinite " (p. 24) . Thus human beings are defined by their sub· jective openness to the God who is truth, love, and life itself. In defining God's triune nature, Johnson, again following Rahner's lead, believes that the term " person " as applied to the Trinity is mis· leading within our contemporary context because it suggests that God is composed of three individual people. Instead it would be better to speak of three distinct manners or modes of self-being: the Father as the unoriginate source of all, the Son as the self-expression of God as he manifests himself outward, and the Holy Spirit as the unifying love (see pp. 25-27). Johnson admits that some theologians, such as Walter Kasper, believe this to he an inadequate interpretation, a form of modalism. Nonetheless, Johnson argues that these contemporary con· ceptions of the human and the divine natures form the basis for a more intelligible and therefore preferable articulation of the Incarnation, demonstrating and guaranteeing both the authentic humanity and divinity of Jesus. If human beings are defined by their openness to the infinite and if God eternally expresses himself in self-giving love, then the closer one draws near to ,the God of love the :more truly human one becomes. In the case of Jesus of Nazareth we are dealing with someone who was more profoundly united to God than any of us. We even talk about hypostatic union, a union at the metaphysical level of the person. If his humanity is united with God in this most profound way, what are we to say about him as a human being? That he is genuinely human, and in fact more human, more free, more alive, more his own person than any of us, because his union with God is more profound. (pp. 29-30) The point that Johnson makes is valid, but will it sustain a satis· factory exposition of the Incarnation? Johnson believes it will. As a genuinely human being, Jesus Christ is God with us ...• If we do not think of God literally as three different people but rather as the triune mystery of self-giving love, then it becomes possible to see Jes us existing as the Word of God in time who, in his humanness, embodies the self· emptying of the God of love...• As this human being,. Jesus is the Son of God. Precisely as this human being he is God in time. He is fully human . . . and as such he is God who has self-emptied into our history. (pp. 30-31) This expression of the Incarnation raises both christological and trinitarian concerns. Firstly, the church's traditional understanding has been that God was incarnate in Jesus in a manner different in kind, and not just in BOOK REVIEWS 518 degree, from the way God is present in others. Jesus is more than the greatest prophet or Spirit-filled individual. Jesus is more than the highest expression of God's presence within a continuum or trajectory. [This is the error of Schleiermacher's theory of" God-consciousness"that Jesus embraces consciousness of God to a higher degree than any· one else.] That Johnson conceives of the Incarnation in this manner becomes apparent when she concludes: since we too share the same human nature with Jesus, we also incarnate God in a similar fashion (cf. pp. 31-33). Secondly, while it's true that what is fully human best expresses and manifests the divine, and the more intimate our relationship with God the more human we become, yet it is not true that the human is the divine. Jesus' authentic humanity fully reveals his divinity in a fully human manner, hut his humanity is not his divinity, contrary to John· son's suggestion: "He is fully human ... and as such he is God." This " union " which Johnson describes is reductionistic in nature and not a union of the truly divine with the truly human, in which the integrity of each is preserved. Thirdly, the real source of difficulty is not Johnson's conception of what it means to he human (to he genuinely human is to he open to God) hut her conception of the Trinity. While the term person must he applied analogously to God (I know of no mature Christian, much less Christian theologian, who envisages God as three people), yet its use avoids both Johnson's and Rahner's flirtation with moclalism and positively upholds something essential to a true understanding of the Trinity and the Incarnation. Within Johnson's understanding of the Trinity, the Son and Holy Spirit have no subjective depth and integrity of their own. They are only the personified, hut nonetheless impersonal, self-expressions of the one person of the Father. [This is a return to the emanationism of neo-platonic christology prior to Nicea, or a variety of more recent Hegelian christology.] The Son is more than the expression of the Father's self-giving, that is, of the Faither's own subjectivity. The Father does beget the Son and the Son does come forth from him as the perfect expression and stamp of his nature, hut the begetting and the coming forth terminates, not in some impersonal hut personified manifestation of the love of God going forth, but rather in another suhj ect who perfectly renders the nature of God in his own unique subjective manner, different from the Father. The term "person," when applied to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, expresses, specifies, and guarantees the authentic ontological depth of each. Thus, contrary to Johnson's claim, in the Incarnation the man Jesus does more than just embody and personify within his human person- 514 BOOK REVIEWS hood (which alone has any ontological depth and subjective integrity) ithe outward expression of the Father's love to the highest degree; rather, the unique divine subject of the Son (with his own personal integrity) comes to exist as a man and as man manifests the love of the Father. The fullness of this human love and mercy finds its source in the ontological and subjective depth of the Son's divine personhood, in his unique divine subjectivity. These concerns are accentuated when Johnson takes up the question of the human consciousness and knowledge of Jesus. Johnson is correct in saying that as an infant Jesus (as man) had no conscious per· ception that he was God but needed to grow into this awareness. Likewise, she correctly judges as :inadequate rthe medieval and Thomist thinking that Jesus, from his infancy, possessed the beatific vision and thus (as man) always knew he was God, However, following again the thought of Rahner, Johnson's own solution is also questionable. Johnson first argues that for Jesus to have complete knowledge of who he is and to possess a comprehensive knowledge of his mission would jeopardize his freedom, This itself is a curious argument. I agree that Jes us did not know everything: he was not an astrophysicist nor a greek philosopher; he probably thought the earth was flat and that Moses was the author of the entire Pentateuch. Nonethe· less, knowledge is not opposed to freedom hut the a priori precondition for it. The more one knows the more freely one can make rational choices. If this were not so, it would logically follow that an omniscient God is not free. Yet this is not the heart of the difficulty. Johnson poses the question of Jesus' human self-consciousness in Rahnerian fashion, Did the historical man Jesus know he was God (as if the divinity were an object ,to be known, standing over against the man Jes us) ? She concludes: yes and no, Yes, at the subjective level; Jesus is who he is and has the intmtwe knowledge of that, No, at the objective level; he had to grow concretely into that knowledge in the course of his lifetime up to the end, In other words, he knew who he was implicitly but not in clear terms and in clear concepts, Consider this same question in a more historical way, Did this first century Jewish man think he was Yahweh? No; for a first-century Jew to think he was Yahweh would have been either idolatrous or a little crazy. Before Jesus could be professed as God by Christian believers, our very idea of God had to undergo transformation into trinitarian form. Another way to consider this question: When Jesus prayed, was he talking to himself? No; he was praying to Yahweh, the God of Israel, whom he called Abba, In the clear words and concepts of categorical knowledge he was not thinking of himself in divine terms, , , . During his lifetime Jes us himself did not have the benefit of later reflection about himself, (p. 46) Johnson correctly states that Jesus needed to grow in his self-under· BOOK REVIEWS 515 standing and in the awareness of his mission. However, it is not the man Jesus, separate from his divine nature and personhood, who intuitively and preconceptually knows he is God and then gradually comes to a greater objective understanding-as if his divinity were something to he objectively known as one would know a tree. (Johnson must frame the question and answer in this manner since it is the man Jesus who is the true "who " who becomes conscious and knows and not the eternal Son who becomes conscious and knows albeit in a thoroughly human way.) Persons do not come to know themselves as objects over against themselves; rather, they come to know themselves subjectively within their own experience. From their conscious experience of themselves they conclude clearly and simply: I am a human being. Thus within the Incarnation it is not the man Jesus, separate from his divine personhood, who came to know that he was divine in some objective manner, but rather the eternal Son as man gradually, through his authentic human experience, came to a conscious human awareness that he was the eternal Son existing as man. With a thoroughly selfconscious human " I," the Son beoame aware and able to· articulate (in terms of his own historical consciousness and milieu) that he [the Son] is both God and man. Does this mean that Jesus would have answered "yes" to Johnson's question: Am I Yahweh? If one means by the question: Did Jesus believe that he was the Father?, the answer is a resounding No. How· ever, did he believe that he was the Son equal to and one with the Father, and thus God [Yahweh in that sense]? The answer is: Yes. Did Jesus then pray to himself? No, he did not pray to himself. The eternal son as man, for that is the manner of his existence, prayed to his Father; and, as contemporary christology has eloquently demonstrated, it was within ·that human prayer that the Son recognized, in a human manner under the auspices of a self-conscious human "I," his uniquely divine relationship to the Father (Abba). Johnson implies that we, the later church, know Jesus better than he knew himself: because he was locked into his cultural milieu, he could not conceive of himself as divine and distinct from the Father; this would be the insight of the later church Fathers and councils. Granted, Jesus was not pondering within himself whether or not to add an iota to homoousios. Nonetheless, if he had no human trinitarian self-understanding, then he could not have revealed it, and thus the later church would have no basis for its subsequent development, and the church's doctrine of the Trinity would be a groundless and untenable hypothesis. The only way the apostolic church could have broken free of Jewish monotheism and begun to grasp and articulate Christian itrinitarianism was for Jesus himself to perceive first and in 516 :BOOK REVIEWS a human mode the mystery of his relationship to the Father and the Holy Spirit and then in turn to reveal this mystery in human words and actions. This rather lengthy criticism in no way implies that Johnson is con· sciously dabbling in heresy. She is at great pains within these chapters to be true to the tradition, even while striving to :render the truth in a more intelligible manner. My conclusion is only that this contemporary attempt has many stumbling blocks and inadequacies. The second wave to wash the christological beaches was :renewed interest in the historical Jesus. Johnson gives an excellent overview of Jesus' life and ministry culminating on the importance of his bodily resurrection (cf. p. 60). She likewise presents a creative, clear, and evenhanded exposition of Pope John Paul H's concerns for justice within a descending christology and the American bishops' statements on peace and economic justice given from within an ascending ch:ris· itology. He:r analysis of Liberation Christology is clear and concise, but she avoids addressing the more controversial issues. If aU one read was Johnson's account of Liberation Theology, one might wonder why it has caused so much heated discussion and debate. P:rio:r to the chapter on feminist christology, Johnson makes every effort to he objective and fair in discussing the issues involved in re· cent christology. She frequently points out how others might have differing but plausible opinions. Even if one disagreed with some of her conclusions, as I have, her fairness could not be faulted. However, her tone changes in ;the chapter on feminist christology. J ol:mson provides again an intelligent survey of the varieties of feminist ch:ristology, criticizing the most :radical expressions. She wishes to place herself in what she believes is a moderate Christian position. Nonetheless, Johnson sees no scriptural or theological obstacle to referring to God as Mother and believes that " the Son " could have become incarnate as a woman. The issues involved here are too immense to do justice to at this time, hut a few comments are in order. Firstly, unlike previous chapters, Johnson here allows no :room for honest difference and debate. The only mocking remark within the entire hook lies within this chapter. She :implies that those who would disagree with her position do so out of fear of losing their " oppressor " status (cf. p. 112) . This is doing theology by intimidation. Secondly, she is too facile in her presentation that God can be called Mother. She does not adequately address the genuine scripture issues involved nor does she acknowledge that there are scholarly scriptural and theological studies which differ from her conclusions and deserve a candid and open hearing. Thirdly, she presumes that all Catholic/Christian women think as BOOK REVIEWS 517 she does on these issues; this is hardly the case. And lastly she fails to discern that some feminist christology does not spring from a love for Jesus and what he has done through his cross and resurrection; rather, Jesus is merely used (and thus abused) to further a theological and political agenda. [Men obviously are not immune from this either.] Despite my disagreements with some of Johnson's arguments and conclusions, and despite my disappointment at the way she addresses the feminist issues, I found this hook to he a basically reliable and clear summary of the christology of the last forty years. Whether it has all been true development, as Johnson maintains, is a debatable question. Nonetheless, this book does elaborate the contemporary issues and possible answers that confront christology today, and for this makes it a book well worth reading. THOMAS WEINANDY, O.F.M. Cap. Mother of God Community Washington. D.C. The Philosophical Theology of John Duns Scotus. By ALLAN B. WOLTER, O.F.M. Ed. Marilyn McCord Adams. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990. Pp. ix+ 356. $47.50. Duns Scotus was a brilliant light that flashed a brief time across the medieval sky hut was destined ultimately to he outshone by other luminaries immediately preceding him (Aquinas) and following him (Ockham). Perhaps no individual in the past half century has done more to illuminate the Subtle Doctor's thought and times than Allan B. Wolter, O.F.M. Both his editing and his translating of primary sources as well as his detailed readings and expositions of Scotus's theories have put medieval scholars in his debt. The present volume is a collection of thirteen essays on particular aspects of Scotus's work, preceded by an introduction. Ten of the essays have been previously published in other sources ranging from .the late 1940s to the present. But as editor Marilyn McCord Adams points out in her forward, many of these can be found only with difficulty in often inaccessible journals and books. Thus the value of this single volume. The essays are grouped under three headings: metaphysics and epistemology, action theory and ethics, and philosophical theology. As is often true with any volume spanning a number of topics and years, the quality of exposition and analysis is uneven. Obviously, in a limited space, I cannot hope to treat all subjects in a volume as comprehensive 518 BOOK REVIEWS as Wolter's. Permit me, however, to begin by making some general comments and then to narrow my remarks to one particular issue. Wolter's introduction to the volume is as clear and concise an overview of Scotus's ideas as one is likely to find anywhere in the literature. In general, the essays in the first part of the book on matters meta· physical and epistemological are quite solid. Here we find explicated many of the concepts which have become identified with Scotus: the formal distinction, univocity of being, the common nature and the hraecceity that constitutes distinct individuals. Wolter does justice to the subtlety and brilliance of Scotus's thinking and allows readers both old and new to Scotus to acknowledge him as a metaphysician for the ages. The author is particularly adept at explicating with helpful analogies some of the Subtle Doctor's most difficult concepts. I benefitted from his thought-provoking comparison between the formal distinction and a spotlight on a stage which can illuminate different and distinguishable aspects of the same reality. The next section on action rtheory and ethics draws in part on Wolter's work which culminated in the 1986 publication of Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality. Wolter has been in the forefront of those who urge that Scotus's description of an innate affection for justice in the will is crucial in understanding the freedom Scotus thought proper to humans. What remains unclear to me is how this strand in Scotus's writing relates to others which clearly imply a libertarian view of free• dom emphasizing the will's utter self-determination. The problem I see is this: if the will truly is self-determining, then an innate affectio justitiae seems to mean the will is gripped by something not entirely of its own choosing and so is no longer entirely self-determining. If, on the other hand, an affectio justitiae does not conflict with Scotus's other libertarian-sounding claims, then I fail to see the need for speaking of the former when all it could then mean is a inclination to justice autonomously chosen {or rejected) and freely consented to {or disavowed) by the will. In short, Scotus's ideas on freedom seem either to conflict or to be redundant. The final section of this volume concerns Scotus's philosophical theology. Wolter is exactly right in his portrayal of Scotus as first and foremost a theologian who used philosophy to serve the ends of theology. The cumulative weight of the essays in this book impresses upon the reader how truly difficult an intellectual enterprise scholastic theology was. Not only did the frequently competing authority and testimony of Augustine and Aristotle have to be adjudicated, but concepts having to do with cognition and the freedom of the will needed to be applicable both to this life and the life to come. In highlighting many instances where these tasks produced special challenges to Scotus's BOOK REVIEWS 519 abilities, Wolter preserves across the centuries the evidence of a firstrate mind. In this final section two areas stand out especially. The first is Wolter's explication of the Subtle Doctor's proof for God in chapter 11. Wolter is at his best here: a reliable guide through the intricacies of Scotus's thought, who pauses occasionally along the way to remark to us how fascinating he himself finds the views. Anyone who perceives beauty in the intricacies of human thought cannot fail to he struck by this most elegant of attempts to establish the existence of God. The second area I wish to note involves the last entry in the volume, "Scotus' Paris Lectures on God's Knowledge of Future Events." I consider this previously unpublished essay one of the most thought-provoking contributions found in the book, both for its potential impact on the future of Scotus scholarship as well as for its novelty of interpretation. In it, Wolter tries to show that Scotus's understanding of divine omniscience did not abrogate the reality of human freedom. This interpretation is at odds with that found in Professor Douglas Langston's recent monograph, God's Willing Knowledge: The Influence of Scotus' Analysis of Ominscience (1986), which claims that the Subtle Doctor's explanation of God's foreknowledge reduces creaturely activity to a divine determinism. Wolter has previously reviewed Langston's hook and responds to him in the present volume in a brief footnote. The gist .of the response is that Langston has not considered all the relevant texts, has attributed to Scotus texts which are of doubtful authenticity, and has mistaken Scotus's statements that God foreknows all with an attempt to explain how God foreknows all. According to Wolter, Scotus offered no such explanation. I must, however, disagree with Wolter's interpretation of Scotus on foreknowledge for four reasons: (1) Wolter points out that the sections in the Vatican edition of the Ordinatio dealing with omniscience were in all probability composed by a later disciple of Scotus. This neglects to mention that there are other sections of the Ordinatio whose authorship is not as contested where Scotus is quite clear on how God knows. Thus, distinction 41 says, " God does not foresee that that man would use his free will well unless he wills or preordains that he would use it well, because-as seen in distinction 39-certain prescience of future contingents is from the determination of his will " [" Deus non praevidet istum bene usurum libero arbitrio, nisi quia vult vel praeordinat istum bene usurum eo, quia-sicut dictum est distinctione 39-certa praevisio futurorum contingentium est ex determinatione voluntatis suae." ] God knows because God wills. That is not a lack of explanation, though it may be (as I think it is) an inadequate one. (2) Nor can Scotus's account be saved, as Wolter attempts, by com- 5QO BOOK REVIEWS paring th.e operation of divine and human will to either the concur· rence of the human intellect and free will in th.e act of volition or th.e operation of Aristotelian causes. Scotus's point here, according to Wolter, is that the four Aristotelian causes (material, formal, efficient, and final) together produce a common effect, hut none of the four has priority over the other three, and none can cause without the other three. In the same way, says Wolter, "Scotus' clear analysis of how God's causality and that of the creature are interrelated makes it clear that God's cooperation in no way determines what the creature does. In other words, it does not specify th.e act. The act could have been otherwise. This is precisely where the second reason for contingency enters in, that which stems from th.e creature's free will and ability to determine itself. The essential order that obtains between God's causality and that of the creature is literally that of a ' concursus,' not that of a ' primum movens ' or ' praemotio physica.' " There seem some obvious disanalogies in these comparisons. Neither the human will nor intellect nor the four Aristotelian causes are omnipotent agents which infallibly produce their effects. Likening their causality to God's and deducing consequences from this comparison begs several important issues. In particular, it makes it hard to see how God's lmowledge would not now somehow be dependent upon (and therefore made imperfect by) the actions of creatures. (3) If Langston misinterpreted Scotus because of neglecting some important texts that effectively rule out divine determination of human action, then he is in very good company. Archbishop Thomas Bradwardine, for example, writing only a few decades after Scotus's death. in his De Causa Dei, proposed a view in which God's activity imposes necessity on created causes by quoting exactly Scotus's earlier statement that " Certa praevisio futurorum contingentium, est ex dete:rminatione voluntatis suae " and explicitly attributing this view to the Subtle Doctor. Given the dangers of holding a theological determinism in the wake of the Condemnation of 1277, it is hard to believe that Scotus's disciples would not have worked assiduously to clear their master's name of the position attributed to it by Bradwardine, if resources had actually been available in Scotus's writing to do soo ( 4) Wolter writes of Scotus' s view : " Where free agents are concerned, however, it is essentially the created agent th.at determines what th.e effect will he. God simply cooperates with. whatever action the creature chooses to perform. Hence in the last analysis, although God knows what the effect will be because of his willed cooperation, the effect is contingent in the sense of being what it is rather than something else because of th.e determination of the creature, not because of God's determination." This seems to place in Scotus a view which came BOOK REVIEWS 521 much later in the writings of Luis de Molina, the sixteenth-century Spanish Jesuit, who also said that God did not determine hut merely cooperated with the free actions of creatures. Such attribution becomes all ·the more ironic because Molina himself explicitly criticized Scotus's views, labelling them in his De Scientia Dei " dangerous " and " neither safe nor true " because they effectively eliminated human freedom. If Wolter is correct in his interpretation of Scotus on foreknowledge, then he owes an explanation of how others so much closer to Scotus's own time could have so badly misread him. I tend to see Scotus as somewhat of a tragic figure, a brilliant man in unstable times. The ground was moving under his feet, and many of his most interesting theoretical constructs (e.g., instants of nature and the not-so-evident power for opposites without succession) were pro· visional at best and destined to topple in the years immediately following his death. Perhaps this explains why those standing on either side of the canyon (Aquinas and Ockham) have received more prominent notice and more favorable press than the one who historically served to bridge their gap. This instability was largely ecclesial and theological (witness the Condemnations of 1270 and 1277), hut it severely constricted what Scotus-or anyone else at the time--was able to say about two crucial issues of their day: the freedom of human beings and the activity of God. Wolter frequently takes account of some of these external influences on Scotus's thought and in general does a fine job situating Scotus in his historical context of responding to the particular issues and thinkers of his day like Thomas Aquinas and Henry of Ghent (both a favorite foil and a generous benefactor) . My final comment comes from one who has already learned much from Wolter hut hoped to learn more from this volume. Scotus has been as neglected as he has been controversial. Many aspects of his thought, especially areas concerning human freedom and divine activity, remain highly disputed. This is due largely but certainl,y not exclusively to the lack of a complete critical edition of Scotus's writings. In a work as comprehensive as the present volume, I wish Wolter had done more to sort through some of the recent controversies in the interpretation of the Subtle Doctor's thought. Though it is obvious that Wolter's views differ in significant places from other interpretations currently propounded, not many modern commentators are explicitly taken to task (only a few, like Langston, are mentioned in footnotes) . One wishes from someone with Wolter's stature and skills a hit more retrospective evaluation, where Scotus scholarship has come in the past half century and whither it goes. In fact, of the ten previously published essays, only one (a work from 194 7 on " The ' Theologism ' of Duns Scotus ") is listed as "slightly altered" and two others are presented BOOK REVIEWS in abbreviated form. The subject matter of many of the previously pub· lished essays overlaps, which produces several instances where whole passages are repeated practically verbatim. This can he distracting for some readers, but those largely unacquainted with Scotus may benefit froon