ON BEHALF OF CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM: A CRITIQUE OF RAHNER ON THE TRINITY PHILLIP C CARY Yale University New Haven, Connecticut LASSICAL TRINITARIANISM, I shall argue, is one and the same doctrine, whether it be expressed in Latin or in Greek. Of course Latin Trinitarianism has its own special nuances and emphases, many of which it inherits from Augustine, but in its essential logic it does not differ substantively from the orthodox teaching of the Greeks, which was forged by the Cappadocian fathers. If my thesis is correct, then the effort current in our day to appeal to the Greeks in order to criticize the Latins is mistaken, and is liable to lead us away from the tradition of classical Trinitarianism altogether. I shall try to show this by a critical examination of the work of Karl Rahner, who is probably the most influential of the W·estern theologians who profess to find the Greek doctrine of the Trinity superior to the Latin. I shall be trying to show, first, that his criticism falls with equal weight upon both Greek and Latin Trinitarianism. Secondly, I shall inquire about the motives of this criticism, which amount to a dissatisfaction with classical Trinitarianism as a whole. I think these motives are specifically modern, and that a healthy dose of self-criticism directed toward some of the reigning assumptions of modernity would help us to see that classical Trinitarianism is not so unsatisfactory after all. The central conceptual issue, to anticipate, is the meaning and justification of the distinction between the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity. This distinction is fundamental to classical Trinitarianism, but Rahner moves in the direction of abolishing it or rendering it insignificant. 365 366 PHILLIP CARY I. Rahner' s Critique of Latin Trinitarianism Rahner's major essay on the Trinity is a contribution to Mysterium Salutis entitled "The Triune God as the Transcendent Primordial Ground of Salvation-History" ; 1 the title announces the theme of the relation between the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity, already suggesting Rahner's contention that to be drawn into the H eilsgeschichte (or economy of salvation) is necessarily to be drawn into the immanent life of its triune transcendent ground. The three aspects of the divine selfcommunication in the economy, Rahner claims, are identical with the three subsistent modes of being of the immanent Trinity: " each one of the three divine persons communicates himself to man in gratuitous grace in his own personal particularity and diversity. . . . these three self-communications are the self-communication of the one God in the three relative ways in which God subsists." 2 Rahner takes this claim to be a major reversal and correction of the role that had been assigned to the doctrine of the Trinity in the Roman Catholic dogmatics of previous generations. The " extrinsicist " theology of neoscholasticism had made the Trinity into a mystery that must be believed as a revealed article of faith but that had strangely little to do with us and our experience of salvation. As a result, the doctrine of the Trinity played little or no role in popular piety; even in scientific dogmatics it stood strangely isolated in a separate treatise, and its connection with the rest of dogmatics was unclear or even non-existent. 3 By insisting on the Trinity's immediate relevance for salvation-history Rahner hoped to show its pervasive relevance for the Christian life as well as for theology. Rahner sums up his basic thesis in an axiom identifying the 1 Mysterium Salutis: Grundriss heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik (Einsiedeln: Benziger Verlag, 1965-1981), vol. 2, chapter 5: Der dreifaltige Gott als transcendenter Urgrund der Heilsgeschichte. English translation by J. Donceel: The Trinity (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970). 2 Rahner, The Trinity, p. 34f. a Ibid., p. 15. CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM: RAHNER ON TRINITY 367 immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity: "The 'economic' Trinity is the ' immanent ' Trinity and the ' immanent ' Trinity is the ' economic ' Trinity." 4 What precisely does this axiom mean? Clearly it must be claiming more than just the identity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of salvation-history with the three persons of the immanent Trinity; for that is an identity already written into the Creed, which no Trinitarian theology could possibly want to contest. ( Try to imagine a doctrine of the Trinity that denied that Jesus Christ was identical with the second person of the Trinity, for example.) The distinction between the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity has never implied that there were two separate Trinities, but only that there is a difference between describing God in se and describing the work of God in the economy of salvation. If Rabner' s axiom is to amount to a major reversal or correction of anything, therefore, it must be taken to imply much more than the simple identity claim which is all it seems to amount to at first glance. I shall suggest that Rahner means to identify not just the economic Three with the immanent Three, but the relations between the Three at the economic level with the relations between the Three at the immanent level. In other words, according to Rahner the relations between the distinct roles played by the Three in salvation history are not something different from the inner-trinitarian relations of origin, such as generation (i.e., of the Son) and procession (i.e., of the Spirit), which are essential to God's being in se, and which the Latin theological tradition has long claimed are the only source of real distinctions between the Three. If we read Rahner's axiom in this way-and I think we should-it amounts to a very substantial claim indeed. It puts Rahner (and the many who follow him) at odds not only with the whole tradition of Latin Trinitarianism from Augustine onwards but with the Greek tradition as well. Let us consider what Rahner's axiom leads him to deny. One statement he specifically picks out as false on the basis of his 4 Ibid., p. 22. 368 PHILLIP CARY axiom is : " There is nothing in salvation history, in the economy of salvation, which cannot equally be said of the triune God as a whole and of each person in particular." 5 Rahner chooses his formulations carefully, so I will not flatly identify the statement he is denying here with the commonly accepted " Latin " rule omnia opera trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt (" all works of the trinity 'outward' are indivisible"). But this is a rule whose use in standard Roman Catholic dogmatics he has already questioned, 6 and I think it is fair to say that he wants to limit the implications that can be drawn from it, and specifically to deny some implications that were in fact drawn from it by many neoscholastic theologians. (Exactly which implications these are, we shall soon see). In the meantime let me dub this formula "Augustine's rule" and thereby flag it as a major issue in the investigations to come. It is a weakened and qualified version of a principle that appears throughout Augustine's treatise On the Trinity, and it seems fair to say that this rule entered the Latin tradition through him. 7 The next statement that Rahner picks out as false is: " that a doctrine of the Trinity treating of the divine persons in general and of each person in particular can speak only of that which occurs within the divinity itself." 8 This I take as another cautiously phrased formulation meant to limit the implications drawn from another rule that has played a major role in Latin Trinitarianism: in Deo omnia sunt unum, ubi nion obviat relationis oppositio ("in God all is one, wherever the opposition of relations does not stand in the way"). I shall call this "Anselm's rule," because the idea is taken from Anselm's treatise On the ProcesIbid., p. 23. Ibid., p. 13f. 7 As shall become evident in my quotations from Augustine later on, Augustine himself holds to a stronger and more unqualified claim than this. For him all workings of the Trinity are indivisible, whether ad extra or not. See e.g. On the Predestination of the Saints, # 13. This only goes to show his closeness to the Greeks, who initially formulated " Augustine's Rule " in precisely this unqualified fashion. Ibid., p. 23. 6 6 CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM; RAHNER ON TRINITY 369 sion of the Holy Spirit, 9 though the exact wording is derived from the Council of Florence's " Decree against the Jacobites" in 1441.10 The Council in fact defined this rule as dogma to believed on the authority of the magisterium of the holy catholic Church. As such we can hardly expect Rahner to be denying it. Yet in this case too, Rahner does call into question the use that the Latin tradition has made of the rule and the implications that have been drawn from it.11 Rahner never denies that the immanent oppositions of relation (i.e., the difference between begetting and being begotten, and so forth) are the source of distinction in the Trinity, but he does seem to be insismng (according to my reading of his basic axiom) that these inner-trinitarian relations are no different from the " economic " relations between Father, Son, and Spirit in the history of salvation. And this, I think, is an identification which defeats the very purpose of Anselm's rule, as it was first formulated by the Cappadocians and later taken over by the Latin tradition. The import of these two denials is summed up in a statement which Rahner proceeds to affirm: "that no adequate distinction can be made between the doctrine of the Trinity and the doctrine of the economy of salvation." 12 It is astonishing that anyone should think that such an affirmation would bring one into the orbit of the Greek view of the Trinity, for there is, arguably, no 11 In Anselm himself this principle is formulated as follows : " On the one hand, the unity does not lose that which follows from it, except when some opposition of relation stands against it; and on the other hand, the relation does not lose what belongs to it, except when the inseparable unity opposes it" (On the Procession of the Holy Spirit, chapter 1; translated in Trinity, Incarnation, and Redemption, edited by J. Hopkins and H. W. Richardson [New York: Harper and Row, 1970] p. 85 [Note: in Migne's edition for the Patrologia Latina this citation falls in chapter 2]). The balanced two-sidedness of this formulation is not retained by the Council of Florence, and when I speak of "Anselm's rule" I mean specifically the one-sided version of the rule that I have quoted in the text, which lays the burden of proof always on the side of anyone who wishes to see distinction rather than unity in God. 10 See Enchiridion Symbolorum, 36th edition, ed. Denzinger and Schoenmetzer (Barcelona: Herder, 1977), 1330. 11 Rahner, The Trinity, p. 25. 12 Ibid., p. 24. 370 PHILLIP CARY principle of organization more fundamental to Greek theology than the distinction between theologia (the doctrine of God proper or Gotteslehre, whose central topic was the immanent Trinity) and oikonomia (the doctrine of the economy of salvation, whose central topic was the Incarnation). It seems at any rate that we have reached the fundamental question raised by Rahner's axiom, which is simply: what is the point of the distinction between immanent Trinity and economic Trinity in the first place? Is there anything we really need it for? This question seems to me to get at the heart of the issue. Most of the Western theologians who advocate a turn to the Greek doctrine of the Trinity bewail the gap that the Latin tradition has put between the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity. I think that there is in fact such a gap, but that it is present in both traditions and that it is well-placed. The orthodox Greek theologians insisted on it for good reasons, mainly ontological ones. In our own time Barth has added what I think are good epistemological reasons for insisting on it. But I am getting ahead of myself. First of all, what does that gap look like? Here Rabner is very helpful, giving us a clear and sharply focused formulation of the objectionable gap. The recurrent targets of his attacks are theses like this: " that every divine person might assume a hypostatic union with a created reality." 11 Or, stated more generally, that" that which happens in salvation history might have happened through each other person." 14 The thesis under fire here is a version of what the Latin tradition calls the doctrine of appropriations-the claim that, because all works of the Trinity ad extra are indivisible, the various works of creation, redemption, incarnation, sanctification, and so on, are merely " appropriated " to a particular one of the Three. Interestingly, the thesis Rabner attacks is not a characteristic version of the doctrine of appropriations, which is usually stated in terms of the work of the three persons rather than their disia Ibid., p. 28. 14 Ibid. CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM : RAHNER ON TRINITY 371 tinct roles. In other words, the sort of claim to which the Latin tradition is most deeply committed is not " any one of the Three could have become incarnate " but rather " we appropriate the work of incarnation to the Son, but it is in strict truth the work of the whole Trinity." This latter claim is not one that Rahner ever denies. It is in fact a claim that enjoys the rather direct support of Holy Scripture, as the angel of the Annunciation says to Mary : " The Holy Spirit shall come upon you and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you ... " (Luke 1 :35). The principal claim is not that any one of the Three could have become incarnate, but that the event called " incarnation " was brought about by all Three working as one. Similar things can be said about the other works of God, also with rather direct Scriptural support. To take one especially pleasing example, the phrase " all things visible and invisible," with which the first article of the Nicene creed describes the Father's work of creation, is taken from a description of the work of the Son in the great Christ-hymn in the first chapter of Colossians (1 :16). Clearly the Latin tradition has good Biblical reason to say that the work of creation is " appropriated " to the Father even though in strict truth the Son also was fully and indivisibly at work in it. And to repeat, Rahner is denying none of this. The thesis he attacks is not about the indivisibility of the work of the Three but about the interchangeability of their roles in the work. In denying it, Rahner is asserting (for example) that only one of the Three could ever conceivably be identified as the incarnate God. The issue is the identities rather than the works of the Threewho they are rather than what they do. Rahner's claim is that the Three could not play different roles in the joint work of the economy of salvation than they actually do and, furthermore, that it is precisely because of their immanent identities (who they are in se) that they could not do so. This double claim seems to me to capture the essential import of Rahner's basic axiom. Assessing it is a complex matter that will take up most of our time in Part III. 372 PHILLIP CARY In the meantime, let us take note that the object of Rahner's attack is not the classical Latin doctrine of appropriations. Once again, as in the case of Anselm's rule and Augustine's rule, Rahner's aim seems to be to limit the implications which neoscholastic theologians had been drawing from the classical Latin doctrine. Let us also note that unlike the previous two doctrines, the doctrine of appropriations is specifically Latin and not to be found in the Greek tradition (so far as I am aware). N onetheless, I shall be claiming that it arises in direct consequence of the Greek teaching on the Trinity as soon as some natural questions about it are raised. Augustine gave us the doctrine of appropriations, I shall argue, precisely because as an inheritor of the Greek achievement he raised these natural questions. To sum up then: Rahner's challenge to Latin Trinitarianism is epitomized by his axiom identifying the economic Trinity with the immanent Trinity. This axiom seems to question the use made of three doctrines: Augustine's rule, Anselm's rule, and the doctrine of appropriations. Furthermore, and most fundamentally, it raises the question: what is the point of the distinction between the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity in the first place? I shall be arguing in response that Augustine's rule and Anselm's rule are originally to be found in the work of Greek theologians and that the doctrine of appropriations follows from Augustine's rule as a natural implication. The three doctrines come as a package, as it were, and once we have seen the motive for adopting the whole package, we will have seen the point of the distinction between the economic Trinity and immanent Trinity as well. It is only at that point that we will be able to give a fair assessment of Rahner's axiom, which, while it does not flatly deny the three doctrines, does attempt to limit their implications. The value of those implications, I shall argue, is a specifically modern issue, and it is Barth rather than Rahner who sees their value correctly. II. Two "Latin" Rules in John of Damascus My specific historical claim is that the Cappadocian fathers (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory of N azianzen, CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM: RAHNER ON TRINITY 373 the great Greek theologians of the generation after Athanasius) developed versions of "Anselm's rule" and "Augustine's rule" in order to explain why it is that the divine Three should not be spoken of as three Gods-an explanatory task that fell specifically to them in the aftermath of Nicaea. I shall document this indirectly, but conveniently, by examining a compendium of Greek theology entitled An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (commonly known in the West under the title De Fide Orthodoxa) written by John of Damascus almost four centuries after the flourishing of the Cappadocian fathers. The convenience lies in the fact that using John of Damascus will enable me to give a relatively close reading of one brief lucid, and conceptually dense text, instead of collecting the relevant passages from a sprawling mass of unsystematic letters, polemics, and orations. In effect, I am letting John of Damascus do the collecting for me. That this convenience should not be purchased at the price of inaccuracy is part of John's own declared intention in writing the book for which he claimed no originality but only faithfulness to the teachings of the great teachers who came before him. In the preface to the larger work of which the De Fide Orthodoxa is a part, he writes: "I shall add nothing of my own, but shall gather together into one those things which have been worked out by the most eminent of teachers and make a compendium of them." u Judging by the number of allusions to and quotations from the great Greek theologians which his modern editor Bonifatius Kotter found in the work, John is as good as his word. 16 John does more than compile and summarize and quote, however; he systematizes. He has been called the last of the church fathers, but he could also be called the first of the systematic the1 5 Preface to The Fount of Knowledge, in St. John of Damascus: Writings, trans. F. H. Chase (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1958), p. 6. 16 In John's chapter on the Trinity, Gregory of Naziansen's Orations are by far the most frequently cited. Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa are also cited occasionally, but not so often as Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria. See the remarks on the kompilatorische Charakter of John's work in Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos, edited by B. Kotter (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter 1969-), vol. II, xxvii. 374 PHILLIP CARY ologians, for in giving us an orderly summary of the one age of theology he inaugurates the other. And he does it beautifullyexpounding the subtlest of distinctions in extraordinarily simple Greek prose, with no waste of words and with compelling clarity. For all his real and professed lack of originality, he has virtues of conceptual precision and organization which are rare among the fathers who preceeded him and more characteristic of the scholastic theologians who would be his immediate successors. For his immediate successors were indeed the Latin-speaking scholastics of the Middle Ages, four centuries after him. The De Fide Orthodoxa was translated relatively early into Latin-early enough to be available in part to Peter Lombard and to become a major influence on the theology of Thomas Aquinas. The usual judgment, in fact, is that it exercised more influence in the West than in the East, mainly because it was among the few means of access to the thoughts of the East that the Latin scholastic had. 11 Ironically, one way it might have influenced the West was to cause (or help cause) the separation between the treatises De Deo uno and De Deo trino which Rahner laments. The two became separated in the interval between Lombard and Aquinas. Whereas the Master of the Sentences subsumes the general doctrine of God under a doctrine of the Trinity, Thomas adopts the arrangement which has since become standard among the Latins, putting a treatise on the nature of God before the treatise on the Trinity. This rearrangement, which Rahner regards as reflecting a characteristically Latin misplacement of the doctrine of the Trinity, comes after the introduction of a complete Latin translation of the De Fide Orthodoxa 18 and reflects John's order of 17 For the medieval translations of De fide orthodoza, see Ghellinck, Le M euvement Theologique du XII e Siecle (Paris: Desclee, 1948), pp. 374-404. For the judgement that the treatise had a greater influence on the West than on the East, See Kotter, vol. II, p. xxviii. is The translation which Lombard worked with was incomplete (Kotter I, xxii) and hence we may infer that the systematic character and organization of John's work only made itself felt later, with the introduction of the complete treatise in translation. For Rahner's remarks on the separation and rearrangement of the two treatises, which "took place for the first time in St. Thomas, for reasons which have not yet been fully explained," See his The Trinity, p. 16. CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM: RAHNER ON TRINITY 375 presentation, which treats of the nature, existence and knowability of God before proceeding to discuss the Trinity. Hence in the very arrangement of John's work we already see evidence against Rahner's expectation that the Greeks might be able to rescue us Latins from the mess we have gotten ourselves in. Perthe Greeks were the ones who got us in this mess in the first place. Turning from the arrangement of the work to its substance, we find more evidence that this is in fact the case. Let me present the evidence in the form of an overview and commentary on John's long central chapter on the Trinity. 19 The chapter begins with a confession of the one God and his infinite, simple, and incomprehensible nature. A noteworthy element of this confession is John's way of speaking in one and the same breath of both the immanence and the transcendence of God. I believe this to be an essential prerequisite for a doctrine of the Trinity, but I shall discuss this matter in greater detail in Part IV. John proceeds to discuss the Three, devoting one sentence to the Father, one paragraph to the Spirit, and most of the discussion to the Son. The conceptual distinctions made in his discussion of the Son then serve as the basis for a discussion of the relations between the Three, with which the chapter concludes. It is these conceptual distinctions that are our main interest here. The discussion of the Son is designed to uphold the equal deity of the Son without compromising the oneness of God. The equal deity of the Son is preserved first of all by the doctrine of eternal generation, which serves to repudiate the Arian claim that " there was once when he was not " (see the Nicene anathemas), while also affirming that the Son has the same nature and essence (physis and ousia) as the Father, as the notion of generation (i.e., begetting) implies. For just as whatever a human being begets has human nature and is truly human, so whatever God 1e John of Damascus, De Fide Orthodoxa, I, 8. I use the translation in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 9 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979 reprint edition). 376 PHILLIP CARY begets has divine nature and is truly God. What is distinctive about divine generation, however, is that it is eternal, without change or passion, precisely because the nature involved is eternal and without change or passion. These are the points of doctrine for which Athanasius strove so long and hard. But this leaves us with a problem: Why we should not say that there are two Gods, Father and Son, just as we say that a human father and son are two human beings? Answering this question takes up the second half of John's discussion of the Son. The question in its fully Trinitarian form-i.e., why should we not say there are three Gods ?-is the central issue of the last and longest section in the chapter, on the relations between the Three. This is the question which it originally fell to the Cappadocian fathers to answer, and especialy to Gregory of Nyssa in his famous treatise to Ablabius On 'Not Three Gods'. John's first stab at the problem is by way of combining two images for the relation of the Son to the Father. Both these images are taken from Hebrews I :3. According to the first, the Son is "the radiance of the Father's glory" and thus is related to the Father as light is to the fire from which it radiates : "And just as light is ever the product of fire and ever is in it and at no time is separate from it, so in like manner also the Son is begotten of the Father and is at no time separate from Him, but is ever in Him." 20 This image illustrates the unity of Father and Son, their co-eternity, and their sharing in all the properties of the one divine nature (Since according to Greek physics, there was no essential property of fire that light lacks, the two being of one nature in the sense that they were both made of the highest of the four basic elements). But there is something troubling about the little word " in " (en) which plays so significant a role in this passage, and consequently John must immediately mention a dys-analogy which mars the image: " But whereas the light which is produced from fire without separation, and abideth ever in it, has no proper subsistence of its own distinct from that of fire (for it is a natural 20 Ibid., p. 8. CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM: RAHNER ON TRINITY 377 quality of fire), the Only-begotten Son of God ... has a proper subsistence of its own distinct from that of the Father." 21 At this point we need the second image from Hebrews 1 :3, the Son as "the impress of the Father's subsistence." This image illustrates how the Son has his own complete and distinct subsistence ( hypostasis) and is not a mere quality (poiotes) of the Father. In this way the two images correct and complement each other, as is needful because " it is quite impossible to find in creation an image that will illustrate in itself exactly in all details the nature of the Holy Trinity." 22 Putting the two together, we must say both that Father and Son share all their properties and operations like fire and light, and that they are distinct, whole, individual subsistences like a stamp and its impress. Hence the Son "is in all respects similar to the Father, save that the Father is not begotten," or, in more technical language, "all the qualities the Father has are the Son's, save that the Father is unbegotten, and this exception involves no difference in essence or dignity, but only a different mode of coming into existence [tropos hyparzei5s]." ·23 Since the diverse modes of coming into existence are the source of what the Latins call "oppositions of relation," it is apparent that we already have arrived at the gist of Anselm's rule. How have we arrived at Anselm's rule so quickly? To see this we shall need to delve into the technical metaphysical language in the last section of John's chapter on the Trinity. However, in thinking through the two images from Heb. 1 :3 we have already aquainted ourselves with the nature of the key metaphysical moves. As we know from his specifically philosophical writings, John is an Aristotelian. This means that his metaphysical vocabulary is drawn from features of the empirical world. (Hence the term " metaphysical " in our discussion should not be taken in the sense that it bears in most philosophy after Kant, where it indicates an investigation into things beyond all empirical knowlIbid. Ibid., p. 9. 23 Ibid., p. 8. 21 22 378 PHILLIP CARY edge.) As a result the conceptual problem involved in combining the two images in the desired way, once stated in full abstraction, is none other than the metaphysical problem that John faces : how can the Son be fully God, co-eternal and possessing all the properties of Deity, and yet not be a second God? But this also implies that the metaphysical language will have essentially the same limitations as images drawn from the empirical world; no one metaphysical formula will say all that needs to be said, and, indeed, each formula will be positively misleading unless set beside another which complements and corrects it. 24 The metaphysical problem John faces has to do once again with that little word "in". To begin with, he wants to secure the unity and full divinity of the Three by saying that " all that the Son and the Spirit have is from the Father, even their very being." 25 This is best expressed by saying that the Son and Spirit have their being in the Father. But this way of speaking unfortunately implies that the unity of Father, Son, and Spirit is the unity of a compound ( syn1thesis), that is, the unity of a thing and its properties, such as a fire and its light and heat, a man and his height and color, and so on. This is why John also needs to affirm that the Son and the Spirit are complete individual beings, not mere qualities inhering in some other entity. This means, in the metaphysical vocabulary of Aristotle, that the predications " Son " and " Spirit " belong neither to the category of quality (poiotes) nor to any of the other categories of entities which have their being in another thing (such as relation, quantity, place, etc.), but to the category of entities whose defining characteristic is precisely that they do not have their being in another entity, namely substance. Human beings, stones, and trees, in which color (a quality) and height (a quantity) inhere, do not themselves inhere in any other thing. They therefore are in the fullest and most proper sense of the word, and the sort of 24 See Kathryn Tanner on the way that Christian discourse necessarily " fractures " the secular and philosophical language which it borrows, in Goa and Creation in Christian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 26f. 25 John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa, p. 9. CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM: RAHNER ON TRINITY 379 being they have, in contrast to the lesser sort of being which qualities and quantities have, is called in Aristotelian parlance ousia, which is simply the Greek word for " a being." 26 (This is the term which we "Latins" usually translate "substance.") Clearly this is the sort of being which we want to say the Son and the Holy Spirit have. But if we call them substances, then it follows from the Aristotelian definition of the term that they do not have their being in something else. To combine the notion of " substance " with the notion of " existence in another " is, therefore, to violate the rules of Aristotle's metaphysical grammar. John's treatment of the Trinity is based on the decision to violate this grammar by saying that these three very unique individual substances do indeed have their existence in something else: each one has its existence in the other two. To understand the meaning and motivation of this decision, we must look at the linguistic innovation that the Cappadocians made in Trinitarian discourse and see how it is related to Aristotle's way of talking about substance. Aristotle distinguishes two kinds of predication using the category ousia. " Primary ousia " is predicated of individual beings such as Socrates, Peter, and Mary, while " secondary ousia" signifies the form or nature or essence they have in common, in this case humanity or "human being." Hence to say "This is Socrates " is to make a predication of primary ousia, while to say "He is a human being" is to make a predication of secondary ousia. We Latins often translate "secondary ousia" with the word" essence." In the aftermath of Nicaea it was important to be clear about :2 6 I follow here John's definition of ousia or substance in the Dialectica or Philosophical Chapters (comprising part one of The Fount of Knowledge), chapter 4: "Being [to on] is the common name for all things which are. It is divided into substance and accident. Substance is the principal of these two, because it has existence in itself and not in another. Accident, on the other hand, is that which cannot exist in itself but is found in the substance." (St. John of Damascus: Writings, p. 13). This is a simplified version of Aristotle's definition of substance in chapter 5 of the Categories. 380 PHILLIP CARY which kind of ousia was meant when the church confessed that the Son was homo-ousios with the Father. If it was primary ousia, then the confession of homo-ousios would amount to the claim that the Father and the Son were one and the same individual being, and the charge of Modalism would seem wellplaced, as indeed it did to many non-Arian opponents of Nicaea. 27 But if it was secondary ousia, then the question arises, Why we should not say that there are three Gods? For in saying that Father and Son have one and the same substance in this sense of the word, all we have said is that both are truly divine, just as Peter and Paul are both truly human. The Cappadocians inherited the second horn of this dilemma in the wake of the compromise between the Nicene party (led by Athanasius) and the homoi-ousians, who came to the agreement that in order to rule out modalistic interpretations of Nicaea, the ousia referred to by the phrase "homo-ousios with the Father" must be interpreted as secondary rather than primary ousia.28 Interpreted this way, the homo-ousios does not adequately state the unity of the Trinity, but it does say what it was necesary to say against the Arians, namely that the Son is as truly God as the Father, just as Peter is as truly human as Paul. It merely leaves unexplained how the Three of the Trinity can be one God in contrast to Peter, Paul, and John, who are not one man . It was in order to explain this that the Cappadocians, making use of the image of fire and light from Heb. 1 :3 as well as the crucial passage" I am in the Father and the Father in me" from John 14 :10, violated the very definition of ousia and said that the Three individual substances of the Trinity had their existence in one another. In order to say this clearly, however, they needed a term meaning exclusively primary ousia, and for that purpose they kidnapped the term hypostasis (our " subsistence "), which had previously been more or less synonomous with ousia. This in turn allowed them to reserve the term ousia for use exclusively in the 27 See J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978), III, ix, 6. 2s Ibid., III, x, 1. CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM: RAHNER ON TRINITY 381 sense in which it was uesd in the Nicene formula (i.e. in the sense of Aristotle's secondary ousia). 29 The fundamental Cappadocian decision about how to deploy philosophical conceptuality in the doctrine of the Trinity can thus be represented as the decision to violate the very definition of the term " substance " (=primary ousia) and say both that the Three are complete individual subsistences and that they have their existence in each other. In saying both these things, the Greek theologians were defending both the oneness of God and the distinctions between the Three. But in saying both these things what exactly did they say? Combining the two metaphysical notions of subsistence and " existence in another " is like combining the two images from Heb. 1 :3-we have no good images or pictures for the result. This is something which we of course, must expect, since we are talking about the divine nature, which is incomprehensible. Here we can remark upon John's motives for placing a discussion of the nature of the one God prior to his exposition of the doctrine of the Trinity. A great many of the predicates he assigns to the nature or ousia of God as such ( incomprehensibility, boundlessness, perfection, and, above all, simplicity) play an active role in his explanation of why the subsistences which share the divine ousia should be treated in a way radically different from every subsistence in the created world. The utterly unique characteristics of the divine ousia lend intelligibility to the unparalled claim that these three subsistences have their existence "in " each other. The discussion of the nature of the one God plays another and opposite role: it establishes constraints on (or criteria of success for) the doctrine of the Trinity. In the brief fifth chapter of the De Fide, entitled " Proof that God is one and not many," John shows how predicating manyness of God would violate the nature or ousia of the deity, and thereby indicates what sort of 29 The locus classicus for this terminological innovation is Basil of Caesarea's Epistle 38, which is often ascribed to Gregory of Nyssa under the title "On the Difference between Ousia and Hypostasis." 382 PHILLIP CARY threeness would be incompatible with the oneness of God. John argues to the oneness of God from the perfection of the divine nature, via a principle which he later appeals to repeatedly in arguments about the Trinity: " difference [ diaphora] introduces strife." (A related formulation is " compoundness [synthesis] is the beginning of separation.") From this principle it follows that if (as John takes for granted) the divine nature is characterized by perfection, then there can be no such thing as a difference between gods with respect to any particular attribute: there cannot be one god which is less perfect in goodness, wisdom, power, and limitlessness than another god. Being equally perfect, they are to that extent identical and therefore one. John offers as illustration two specific versions of this argument, concerning two particular attributes. The first concerns perfection with respect to space (i.e., omnipresence) : "if there are many Gods, how can one maintain that God is uncircumscribed? For where one would be, the other could not be." The second concerns perfection with respect to power (i.e., omnipotence) : " how could the world be governed by many? ... if anyone should say that each rules over a part, what of that which established this order and gave to each his particular realm? For this would then rather be God." Notice, first, the similarity in structure of these two arguments since there can be no limits to the divine nature, either in filling all space or in having power over all things, there can be no boundary separating different gods in either respect. That one god should limit the other with respect either to space or to power is contrary to the very nature of the divine and therefore impossible. The common structure of these two arguments shall be given positive work to do in the discussion of the Trinity. Second, notice what the second argument explicitly excludes: the unity of what is divine cannot flow from a higher principle of unity, for then that higher principle would itself be God. This implies for the doctrine of the Trinity that the ousia of God cannot be made into a higher principle uniting the Three. The Three must be united in and of themselves and not by anything higher CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM: RABNER ON TRINITY 383 or prior to them. Though we can deduce the oneness of God from the nature of the divine ousia (for that is what the proof in chapter 5 does), the divine ousia itself is not a separate entity which could act as the source of divine unity. In this regard, the divine substance is like any other: properly speaking, only the individual subsistences "exist." To put the same point differently: if an ousia " existed,'' it would ipso facto be yet another subsistence, not an ousia. 30 Bearing in mind, then, the uniqueness of the divine ousia, which is to say the simplicity and limitlessness of all that is God, so This clarity about the divine ousia and its conceptual role is in my view the only significant reason to prefer the Greek treatment of the Trinity to the Latin. The Latins tended to be vaguer about what was meant by the one substantia of God and sometimes treated it-ineptly, I think-as if it were an extra thing above and beyond the Three which they each fully participated in. Much recent criticism of the Latin view may be a reaction against this inept way of talking about the divine substantia. This ineptness was only compounded by some modern patristics scholars, not especially astute philosophically, who spoke of the one substance of the deity materialistically, as if it were a stuff out of which the Three were made. (See Basil's Epistle 52:1 for a succinct refutation of such a materialistic reading of the homo-ousios, which would imply that there is a " substance anterior or even underlying " both the Father and the Son. Basil insists to the contrary that there can be nothing " anterior to the Unbegotten." Among the Latin fathers Hilary sounds a similar warning in his De synodis sect. 68.) ]. N. D. Kelly is a case in point. His scholarship is far too sound to allow him to miss the fact that the council of Nicaea, the Cappadocians, and Athanasius (in his final compromise with the homoi-ousians) all interpreted the divine ousia in the sense of Aristotle's secondary substance; but he was philosophically uninformed enough to think that the " real " meaning of the homoousios just had to be reference to " numerically identical substance," i.e., " an individual thing as such "-that is to say, to precisely what the Cappadocians called " hypostasis" ! (Kelly, p. 234). Hence in explaining how it is possible for there to be Three persons in this individual thing, Kelly's only recourse is to make use of inappropriately materialistic analogies such as that of the one substance " being simultaneously present in " the three persons (Ibid., p. 265). If this is Latin Trinitarianism, then by all means let us flee to the Greeks I It seems quite possible that part of the popularity of the Greek view of the Trinity is, indeed, a reaction by a new generation of scholars against the materialistic and nearly modalist version of Latin trinitarianism which Kelly's generation seemed to take for granted. 384 PHILLIP CARY let us return to the chapter on the Trinity. John makes a crucial distinction between the way the ousia/ hypostasis distinction works in creation and the way it works in God. In created things we see the distinctness of subsistences first and in actual fact (pragmati) and subsequently infer the unity of ousia, which we therefore see only through reasoning and in thought (logo kai epinoia). For instance, we see that Peter and Paul and John are all distinct beings and only infer from their common characteristics that they are of one essence, namely human. But with God it is the reverse. The first thing to be seen is the divine unity, their oneness of essence, working ( energeia), willing, and movement (kine sis). For in God all these are identical-not merely similar, John emphasizes, but identical. 31 One can see no distinctions here because none are possible (as the argument in chapter 5 showed). Thus in God it is the distinctions, not the unity, which are seen second. There is nothing in the working, willing, and acting of God which shows any difference or distinction; we can only infer the distinctions among the Three from their distinct manners of coming into existence-the one unbegotten and uncaused, the other begotten, the third proceeding but not begotten. This unique feature of the ousia/hypostasis distinction in God stems from the uniqueness of the divine ousia itself. Since, in accordance with their divine nature, each of the subsistences is limitless, it is impossible for them to be separate from each other in space the way Peter and Paul and John are. Hence with respect to space they must be co-extensive, and thus must in a rather literal sense dwell "in " one another. But this dwelling in one another extends to other respects also : just as there can be no boundaries or divisions between them with respect to space, there can be none with respect to time (they are co-eternal) nor with respect to will (they have but one will) nor with respect to working (there is but one divine energeia) nor with respect to anything else-except the inner-trinitarian relations of generation and procession. The similarity in structure we noted in the two illustrative arguments of chapter 5 now works as an analogy: just 31 John of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa, p. 10. CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM: RABNER ON TRINITY 385 as the Three dwell in one another in the literal spatial sense, they also dwell in one another in the more abstract sense of having the same will, work, and activity. John states the analogy this way: For with reference to the uncircumscribed Deity [theotetos] we cannot speak of separation in space, as we can in our own case [i.e., in the case of created beings like Peter, Paul, and John]. For the subsistences dwell in one another, in no wise confused but cleaving together, according to the Word of the Lord, " I am in the Father and the Father in me," nor can one admit difference in will or judgement or energy or power or anything else whatsoever which may produce actual and absolute separation in our case. Wherefore we do not speak of three Gods.... 32 John has thus shown what he needs to show : the distinctions which make Peter, Paul, and John three different men are not present in the deity to make three different Gods. While three men have three distinct locations, wills, qualities, and activities, the Three of the Trinity have but one location and will, one set of attributes and workings ( energeiai), and are thus one God. Anselm's rule follows from this: for the only thing left to distinguish the Three from one another is the difference between being unbegotten (the Father) and being begotten (the Son) and proceeding (the Holy Spirit), a difference with respect to what in the standard Latin version of Anselm's rule are called "oppositions of relation " or what John calls " modes of coming into existence." 33 Ibid., p. lOf. the presence of Anselm's Rule in the Cappadocians themselves, see Gregory of Nyssa's justly famous little treatise On "Not Three Gods", in Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 5, pp. 331-336. According to Gregory the unity of all divine operations (energeiai) is what primarily distinguishes the threeness of the one God from the threeness of Peter, James, and John (p. 334). This unity is so pronounced in Gregory's mind that in another treatise (which might actually be Basil's), he can argue from "the identity of their operation" to "the unity of their nature" (Ibid., p. 328). Hence it is not surprising to hear him say, at the end of the treatise On "Not Three Gods", that it is "the difference in respect of cause and that which is caused, by which alone we apprehend that one Person is distinguished from another" (p. 336). This, of course, is precisely Anselm's Rule. 32 33 For 386 PHILLIP CARY A little further on John gives the name perichoresis to this dwelling in one another which secures their unity of the Three. Hence we can say, in summary, that the Greek doctrine of perichoresis implies Anselm's rule. Or, to sum up the argument a bit more fully: once it is clearly recognized that the homo-ousios of Nicea refers to secondary ousia or essence, it is necesary to explain in some way why it is that the three primary substances or hypostases do not constitute three Gods (as they would if they behaved like any other primary substances). The explanation depends on the uniquely divine perichoresis, i.e., on the notion that the three subsistences have their existence " in " one another. This notion in turn implies Anselm's rule, which in fact John states on several occasions. And from Anselm's rule, Augustine's rule follows immediately, for if the three subsistences, distinguished only by their different modes of coming into existence, have only one working simpliciter, then it obviously follows that they have only one working ad extra. III. The Point of the Economic/Immanent Distinction. If John of Damascus is right, then Anselm's rule and its logical consequence, Augustine's rule, are inevitable and necessary conceptual elements in any fully worked-out post-Nicene doctrine of the Trinity, whether it be Greek or Latin. But we did not spy the doctrine of appropriations in our examination of John's discussion of the Trinity, and, in fact, it is not to be found anywhere in the De Fide Orthodo:ra. How, then, is it related to the other two doctrines? Very closely and necessarily, I think. Let the church father who originated the doctrine show us why. Here is Augustine, offering his initial formulation of the problem in his treatise On the Trinity: Some persons, however, find a difficulty in this faith; when they hear that the Father is God, and the Son God, and the Holy Spirit God, and yet that this Trinity is not thre·e Gods, but one God; and they ask how they are to understand this, especially when it is said that the Trinity works indivisibly in everything that God works, and yet that a certain voice of the Father spoke, which is not the voice of CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM: RABNER ON TRINITY 387 the Son; and that nonei e:rcept the Son was born in the flesh, and suffered, and rose again, and ascended into heaven; and that none except the Spirit came in the form of a dove.34 The problem Augustine is addressing is how we are to understand the relation between the immanent Trinity (as described in the affirmations, which he shares with the orthodox Greek fathers, that it is " not three Gods " and that it " works indivisibly") and the distinctive roles which the Scriptures assign to the Three in the economy of salvation (" none except the Son " and " none except the Spirit " etc.). The orthodox doctrine of the Trinity-and as a matter of historical fact this means specifically the Cappadocian doctrine-insists so strongly on the immanent oneness of God that it generates a hermeneutical problem concerning how we are to read the distinction of roles which the Scriptural narratives assign to the Three in the economy of salvation. For example, how can it be proper to speak of only one subsistence of the Trinity descending in the form of a dove, rather than the others, if all the works of the Trinity are one and indivisible? The Cappadocian doctrine, in other words, places a gap between the way we talk about the work of the Three in the economy of salvation and the way we talk about the Three in and of themselves. The task which Augustine sets himself is to bridge that gap, at least in understanding. The bridge must consist in an understanding of why it is not wrong to assign certain actions and works in the economy of salvation to one member of the Trinity rather than the others, even though all three are at work in every action and work which any one of them performs. Augustine's solution is to say " that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit . . . work indivisibly, but that this cannot be indivisibly manifested by the creature ... " Hence "the Trinity, which is inseparable in itself, is manifested separably by the appearance of the visible creature." 35 These separate manifestations of the 3 4 Augustine On the Trinity I, 5, 8, translated in The Nicene and PostNicene Fathers, first series, vol. 3 (my emphasis). ss Ibid., IV, 21, 30. 388 PHILLIP CARY inseparable Trinity are the reason for our appropriating the various works of God to one person rather than another. This is the doctrine of appropriations. Precisely because it serves to bridge the gap between the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity, it comes in for fierce attack from those who wish to deny that there is any gap to bridge. What its critics have failed to see, however, is that the gap they object to was not generated by the doctrine of appropriations, but by the Greek teaching on the immanent oneness of the Trinity, which the doctrine of appropriations presupposes. Anselm's Rule, as formulated by the Greek theologians, upholds the oneness of God by asserting that the only thing that distinguishes the three subsistences from one another is their diverse modes of coming into existence. Hence, the working of the Three is always one, not three. 36 That means, as Augustine's rule asserts, that the working of the Three ad extra in the economy of salvation is always one. The distinct roles by which the Three are manifested in the economy are a result of this one working rather than its source, and thus cannot be identified with the immanent relations which are the only real source of the distinctions between them, because these relations are intrinsic to the very being of God and thus logically prior to God's working ad extra. Hence what is manifest in the economy is always the one working of the one God and not the distinctive divine relations of begetting and proceeding. The relations between the Three in the economy are something different from the immanent or inner-trinitarian relations. It is this sharp distinction between the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity that makes the doctrine of appropriations necessary, and which ought to be recognized as the real target of critics of the doctrine of appropriations. In classical Trinitarian ... ism this distinction serves the ontological purpose of upholding the oneness of God. It has come under fire in recent times, I think, because in achieving its ontological purpose it has genae I use the term " working " as an equivalent to both the Greek energeia and the Latin operatio. CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM: RAHNER ON TRINITY 389 erated epistemological consequences which are unpalatable to many modern theologians. It upholds the oneness of God by distinguishing between the manifestations of God in the economy of salvation and the attributes of God in se, thus blocking any hermeneutical move to " read off " the inner-trinitarian relations directly from their counterparts in salvation-history. I think it is the desire to justify this sort of hermeneutical move which motivates the attack on classical Trinitarianism. Both the Greek and Latin fathers uphold the ontological oneness of God by establishing an epistemic gap between the diverse roles by which the triune God is manifested in the economy of salvation and the inseparable, simple, and incomprehensible attributes of the triune God in se. It is this gap which Rahner tries to eliminate with his axiom identifying the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity. Now Rahner's axiom does not, in fact, serve his purpose adequately, for identity statements do not necessarily close epistemic gaps. The fact that the economic Trinity is the immanent Trinity does not by itself justify the hermeneutical move of inferring basic truths about the immanent Trinity from basic truths about the economic Trinity. To see why it does not, consider a few features of the logic of identity statements. An example that is an old standard among logicians will serve to illustrate. It is possible to know a great deal about the morning star, including the fact that it is identical with the evening star (since both terms, "morning star" and "evening star," refer to the same planet, Venus) without knowing all that you might like to know about the characteristic featu res associated with the term " evening star". The fact that there is a second term, "evening star,'' which refers to the very same object, is an indication that there might be a whole set of truths about this object which you can get to know only by becoming familiar with a second and relatively independent source of information about it (namely, by looking at it in the evening instead of in the morning). There may, in sum, be an epistemic gap between the terms " morning star" and "evening star,'' even though there is no ontological 390 PHILLIP CARY difference whatsoever between the morning star and the evening star. I have argued that according to the Greek teaching there must be just such a gap between the terms " Father," " Son," and " Holy Spirit " as used in the doctrine of the immanent Trinity and the corresponding terms as used in connection with events in the economy of salvation. Trying to eliminate an epistemic gap of this sort amounts to the attempt to be sure beforehand that there is a source of information associated with one of the two terms that tells us everything there is to know of substance about both terms. A statement identifying A and B does not rule out the possibility that there is an epistemic gap between the two terms " A " and " B," but neither does it imply that there must be one. If there is a necessary connection between the terms "A" and "B" that can be known a priori, then it may be possible in principle to remove any epistemic gap between them-that is, knowledge about A may suffice to tell us everything worth knowing about B. So, for example, the arithmetical characteristics of the number 9 can be " read off " from the arithmetical characteristics of the term "8 l," so that there is no epistemic gap betwen the "9" and the term " 8 1." If, therefore, the aim of Rahner's axiom is to close the gap between the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity, it must amount to more than a simple identity statement. It must be taken to imply that there is a necessary connection between what is to be known of the economic Three and what is to be known of the immanent Three, such that the hermeneutical move of " reading off " the immanent Trinity from the economic Trinity is justified. The point of this hermeneutical move in Rahner is to secure the further claim that the revelation of God in salvation-history is a real self-communication, in which God gives his very own self, his immanent and in se self, as it were, to be known by his creatures. Rahner believes that there could not be such a self-communication if God's threefold relation to us in the economy were "merely a copy or an analogy of the inner Trinity." 37 It cannot be, for example, that " the fact of the incarnation of the Logos + 37 Rahner, + The Trinity, p. 35. CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM: RAHNER ON TRINITY 391 reveals properly nothing about the Logos himself, that is, about his own relative specific features within the divinity." 38 There must rather be a necessary connection between the Three and their manifestations in the economy-a connection so strongly necessary that it allows us to say, "the persons do not differ from their own way of communicating themselves." 39 Rahner's repeated attacks on the notion that the persons of the Trinity could have exchanged roles in the economy gets us very near the heart of his view of the Trinity. For in denying that such a thing is possible, he is affirming the necessity of its opposite. His basic axiom, therefore, must be taken to claim that the economic roles of the Three are what they are by the necessity of God's own being, since they are identical with the immanent characteristics which distinguish the Three in se. The relations between the Three manifested in the events of the economy of salvation are not something different from the innertrinifarian relations which establish their distinct identities in the first place. Thus the axiom identifies, not just the economic Three with the immanent Three, but the economic relations with the immanent relations. Its central claim is that the relations which allow us to distinguish the Three at the economic level are identical with the relations which are the real immanent source of the distinctions between the Three. This claim can then be used to justify the hermeneutical move of "reading off" the doctrine of the immanent Trinity from the Scriptural narratives of the economy of salvation. If this claim of Rahner's is accepted, it does not so much refute the doctrine of appropriations as render it otiose, because there is no longer any gap for the appropriations to bridge. But I have been arguing that this gap is an essential consequence of the Greek doctrine of the Trinity. Hence if the gap disappears then Greek Trinitarianism disappears with it. The Greek endeavor to secure the unity of God by talking of the mutual indwelling of the three divine subsistences requires such a gap, which guarantees a sort of separate space internal to the deity 38 Ibid., p. 28. s9 Ibid., p. 36. 392 PHILLIP CARY in which the utterly unique goings-on of the perichoresis may take place. Less pictorially (and less misleadingly), my claim is that Greek Trinitarianism cannot succeed without deploying a sharp distinction betwen the immanent properties of the divine subsistences, which are utterly unlike the properties of any created subsistence, and the characteristics which the Three display in the economy of salvation, in which the immanent properties cannot be made manifest, because the economy is a work of God in the created order. I am not claiming that Rahner has no way at all of securing the unity of the divine subsistences. My claim is that his way of doing so cannot be conceptually equivalent to the Greeks' whereas Augustine's is. Rahner is departing from classical Trinitarian theology as a whole, both Greek and Latin, in order to conceive of the Trinity in a way that surely has more affinities with Hegel than with Augustine or Gregory of Nyssa. This does not necessarily mean that Rahner is wrong. But it does suggest that he is asking new questions-that in his conversation with Augustine and the Greeks he has, so to speak, changed the subject. He is not so much concerned with how God can be both one and three in the way that Nicea commits us to believe; his question is rather how the doctrine of the Trinity is to illuminate the self-communication of God. (His answer is that it is precisely a self-communication.) 40 Unless the doctrine answers this second question, Rahner is convinced, it is doomed to the kind of neglect and irrelevance to which it had been consigned in the popular piety and textbook theology that he criticizes in the opening of his treatise. If this doctrine is to be more than a mystery affirmed piously but blindly and uncomprehendingly, it must show how the very Triune self of God is intelligibly related to our experience of salvation. 41 Rahner, in short, is asking not ontological questions about the Three and the One in God but epistemological questions about how we are to have personal knowledge of God rather than simply doctrinal knowledge about God. 4o Ibid., p. 27. 41 Ibid., p. 39. CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM; RABNER ON TRINITY 393 Let us see if we can get a closer view of the nature of these questions. This should help us see why the epistemic gap which classical Trinitarianism places between the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity is so offensive to many 20th-century theologians, including theologians as different from Rahner as Eberhard Jiingel and Robert Jenson. The problem seems to be that if there is such a gap, then knowing God in the economy of salvation is not the sam' as knowing God as God really is in God's own inner self. And that is what we want-isn't it ?-to know God's inner self. Hence in order to see Rahner's basic axiom as well-motivated, we must be able to make sense of a particular kind of epistemological want-the desire to know someone's inner self, the self behind the visible expressions, the appearances and utterances, conduct and activity, in which the self is available to ordinary perception. Thus the motives of Rahner's departure from classical Trinitarianism are closely tied to a set of epistemological assumptions about what true knowledge of another person consists in. According to these assumptions, to know another person is essentially to have epistemic access to their inner self. In light of these assumptions, the epistemic gap between the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity seems precisely to obstruct true personal knowledge of God. But, if these assumptions are false, then Rahner's basic axiom is not well motivated and we do not have a good reason for abandoning classical Trinitarianism. I believe that these epistemological assumptions are false. For philosophical reasons, I think the desire to have epistemic access to a person's inner self is based on a misconstrual of what it is to know another person. Indeed it is based on a misunderstanding of what persons are. I shall call this misunderstanding the expressivist anthropology, but it might also be called the " romantic view of the self." Its first great advocate was Hegel. 42 This view understands persons to be composed of an inner element and an outer element which expresses, represents, or symbolizes the 42 Cf. Hegel, Phiinomenologie des Geistes, paragraph 310, translated in Phenomenology of Spirit by A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 185f. 394 PHILLIP CARY inner element. Knowing a person consequently becomes a hermeneutical operation of " reading off " the inner constitution of the person from the person's external expressions, particularly their words and deeds. (The insight that this is a specifically hermeneutical operation becomes explicit in Schleiermacher's hermeneutics). Rahner spells out his commitment to expressivist anthropology in his essay " The Theology of the Symbol,'' where he claims that not just persons, but all beings are symbols of themselves in that they express themselves in an outer form and thereby "possess themselves in the other." 43 Thus Rahner grounds his expressivist anthropology in an expressivist ontology whose basic principle is, " all beings are by their nature symbolic, because they necessarily 'express' themselves in order to attain their own nature." 44 From the Hegelian language about "possessing oneself in the other" it is already clear what Rahner's basic strategy for upholding the unity of the Three will be.45 43 Rahner, Theological Investigations (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1961) vol. 4, p. 231. 44 Ibid., p. 224. James J. Buckley offers a useful discussion of Rahner's ontology of the symbol in " On Being a Symbol: an Appraisal of Karl Rahner " in Theological Studies 40 :453-473. Buckley demonstrates the breadth of topics to which Rahner applies his ontology of the symbol and traces it back to Rahner's unpublished theological dissertation of 1936. However, I cannot follow Buckley in his attempt to assimilate Rahner's view of the self, which is heavily laden with expressivist language and conceptuality, to a "performative anthropology". J. L. Austin's notion of "performative utterances" was in part an effort to get around the impasses of expressivist anthropologies, and it construes the relation of persons to their words in quite a different way than Rabner. As I hope my further discussion will show, if Rahner had in fact had something like a performative anthropology in mind, he would have had no motive for adopting his basic trinitarian axiom. ' 5 The Hegelian move of unifying the Three by talking of One finding itself in its Other, the very finding of which is a Third, is logically equivalent to neither branch of classical Trinitarianism. However, its closest affinities are ironically with the Latin branch, because the Hegelian notion of a finding which is itself a Third is a distant descendent of the Augustinian notion of the Spirit as the bond of unity between the Father and the Son. In genWestern phenomenon if eral, expressivist ontologies and anthropologies-a there ever was one-owe a great deal to Augustine, though the debt is often indirect and unrecognized. CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM: RABNER ON TRINITY 395 From Gilbert Ryle on, the criticisms of expressivist anthropology are well known at least in Anglo-American circles. We need not rehearse them now, however, because I think what is wrong in particular about Rahner' s trinitarianism shows itself pretty clearly on its own terms, and what is wrong in general about expressivist anthropologies becomes fairly clear from that point. What is wrong is the claim that the relations between the Three manifested in the economy of salvation are identical to the inner-trinitarian relations which establish their distinctive identities. This claim implies that the relations of the Three manifested in salvation-history are necessary constituents of their "innermost " identities. If this is to be the centerpiece of our account of what it is for God to communicate God's own self, then to know God's own self must mean to have an epistemic grasp of the structures or relations which are the necessary constituents of God's being. And this I think is a patently false view of what it is to know the self of any person, much less a gracious God who freely gives himself to be known. The point is that God's act of self-communication and its structure are not necessary constituents of God's being, but a free act that need not have been; the form or structure of this act (characterized by the relations between the roles played by the Three in salvation-history) is a matter not of necessity but of God's gracious choice. Indeed, what I find perverse about Rahner's account is precisely that it blocks a self-communication of God by making the object of our knowledge into an internal necessity of God's being rather than a free act in which God chooses to give God's self to us to be known. Selves communicate themselves in freedom and not of necessity. Thus my criticism of Rahner on this point is not just a matter of defending the freedom of God's grace (though it is that, too). The point is a general one about the nature of knowledge of other persons. To know any person is (at least in part) to know them in the way that they freely choose to give themselves to be known. That is to say (and this is my philosophical claim) that we misunderstand what knowledge of another person is if we think that it can take place without the say-so of the known. 396 PHILLIP CARY Let me support my claim with an example. One way of giving oneself to be known is by making a wedding vow. Now what does a wedding vow tell us about the one who makes it? It does not give us a view of their inmost self, whatever that would be. (What a mistake it would have been to think that my spouse's wedding vow was a report or expression of her " inmost feelings"! For I have it on good authority that her feelings on that day were as ambivalent, turbulent and overall terrified as mine.) The promise made on that day has its truth not in its correspondence to an inner self but in the subsequent life of the one who makes it-in a life of loving, honoring, cherishing, and so forth. There is thus no necessity which makes this word a true expression of the one who utters it; it is up to the promiser to make the word true by the way she lives. Nor is this word a necessary constituent of the one who utters it: the promiser existed before uttering this word and could have continued to exist without ever having uttered it. This is not to say, however, that the promiser's identity is in no way bound up with the promise; on the contrary, to make a wedding vow sincerely is precisely to choose what one's identity shall be. Such is the wedding vow which founds the economy of salvation : " You will be my people and I will be your God." Any reader of Barth will find this point familiar. One of the most characteristic features of Barth's talk about God is his use of a rhetoric of possibility to describe the freedom of God's choice to be our God. Again, and again, at key junctures in his discussions of the economy of salvation, Barth will speak like this : " There is no necessity of this event taking place. But it does in fact take place-by a free and gracious decision of God. We cannot arrive at this decision ourselves, nor can we say how it is possible. We must reckon with the actuality of this event, and we cannot inquire into its possibility prior to or apart from its actuality. But by the same token we must know that it was possible for God to do otherwise. He was not compelled to be gracious, nor to be gracious in just the way that he actually is gracious." This is not a quotation, but it could have been, for CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM: RAHNER ON TRINITY 397 passages like it can be found in any volume of the Church Dogmatics. Perhaps the central locus for this rhetoric of possibility, however, is the doctrine of Election. The Election, according to Barth, is God's decision to be God for us in Jes us Christ. This free and gracious decision is " the eternal beginning of all the works and ways of God in Jesus Christ" 46 and hence the foundation both of the creation and of the economy of salvation. What the Trinity is and is known to be in the economy of salvation results from this choice. The relations between the Three in the economy, therefore, are not necessary constituents of God's being in se but rather the identities which the Triune God freely chooses to adopt for our sake, the way a bridegroom chooses to be husband of his bride. What marks the place of this decision in Barth's doctrine of the Trinity is, naturally enough, the doctrine of appropriations. With Barth, as with the whole Latin tradition, the doctrine of appropriations is a bridge between the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity, and precisely in its character as a bridge it makes manifest the gap which it spans. Here, then, we may round off our discussion of the doctrine of appropriations by proposing an answer to the question, " What is the point of the gap between the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity? " Barth gives both an ontological and an epistemological reason for this doctrine. The ontological reason is straightforwardly Cappadocian: " The limit of our comprehension lies in the fact that even as we comprehend these distinctions [i.e., in the economy] we do not comprehend the distinctions in the divine modes of being as such. These do not consist in distinctions in God's acts and attributes. If we were to assume this we should be assuming three gods. . .. " 47 For Barth, as for Augustine, the doctrine of appropriations is derived from Anselm's rule. If we identify the distinctions in the economy with the distinctions in the Three as they are in se, we divide up God 46 Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956ii, p. 94. 47 Ibid., vol. 1/1, p. 372. ) vol. II/ 398 PHILLIP CARY by dividing up God's acts. This is the road to Tritheism, and it is precisely what Anselm's rule blocks; in blocking it Anselm's rule generates the epistemic gap between the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity. For Barth this epistemic gap is moreover a virtue in and of itself, as it secures the incomprehensibility of God, which in turn stems from the gracious freedom of God. This is in fact the epistemological reason for adopting the doctrine of appropriations: it secures the freedom of God in his revelation. 48 In sum, the point of the gap between the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity (which is marked by the doctrine of appropriations) is to uphold the oneness and the freedom of God. How deeply these two points are connected is worth long thought -but that will have to wait for another day. IV. On Being Drawn into the Trinitarian Life To criticize Rahner's epistemological assumption does not mean to denigrate all his motives. On the contrary, I am persuaded that the basic impetus of Rahner's theological work and the source of his greatness as a thinker is the profoundly pastoral nature of his concern, and especially his earnest desire that theology and Christian life be interwoven in mutually illuminating ways. 49 Clearly he is right that we should not be content to allow the doctrine of the Trinity to sink to the status of a truth of the faith that is piously acknowledged but plays no active role in guiding and shaping Christian life. Let me suggest that Rahner's over-riding pastoral concern with respect to the doctrine of the Trinity can be stated thus : that we should come to understand the life of grace as one in which we are drawn into the Trinitarian life itself. Indeed this phrase-" being drawn into the Trinitarian life "-epitomizes the pastoral aims of many theologians today, and it is of utmost importance to understand what meaning it Ibid., vol. Ill, p. 371. For a lively and moving expression of this concern, see the programmatic essay that opens the Theological Investigations, vol. I: "The Prospects for Dogmatic Theology." 48 49 CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM: RAHNER ON TRINITY 399 can have in the context of the non-expressivist conceptuality of clasical Trinitarianism. What does it mean to be " drawn into the Trinitarian life " if it does not means penetrating through the economic Trinity to the immanent Trinity? The foregoing discussion of knowledge of other persons does indeed suggest that, in its expressivist form, the desire to be drawn into the Trinitarian life is incoherent. It would be like trying to penetrate to the inner self of my spouse rather than letting myself be the object of a lifetime of loving, honoring, and cherishing. (This does not mean we cannot have such incoherent desires; it may well be that we do, and that may have something to do with the size of our divorce rate.) However, I do wish to propose a sense in which we are in fact drawn into the Trinitarian life by participating in the economy of salvation. In the sense I shall propose, being drawn into the Trinitarian life does not imply the epistemic accessibilty of the immanent Trinity. This is not because God's "inner self" is withheld from us, but because there is no such inner self to know. I have already given some reasons why selves in general are not like this ; but let me proceed to some theological reasons why the notion of God's "inner self" should be dropped and, in particular, why we should not conceive of the immanent being of God in se in a way modeled on the " inner self " of expressionist anthropologies. First of all let me take it for granted that the " immanent Trinity " or " God in se" are phrases designating that about God which is necessary to God's very nature or being (to God's ousia, in the Nicene sense). The inner-trinitarian modes of coming into existence are one example; the eternity of God is another. Now my claim is that this immanent being is not an expressionist "inner self." It is no more an "inner self" than my body is (and my body surely is necesary to my very being). Detailed medical knowledge of the bodily processes without which I could not live or be does not quite constitute knowledge of me. Of course, in contrast to my bodily processes, the attributes which are necessary or essential to God's very being remain forever incompre- 400 PHILLIP CARY hensible (in the strict theological sense of " beyond our full cognitive grasp") even in the beatific vision. But to know God's own self does not consist in knowing the why and wherefore of these attributes, which would be a highly abstract form of philosophical knowledge, rather than a way of knowing a person. Similarly, it would be a Platonistic misconstrual of the beatific vision to think that its object is the divine essence per se, for, as we have seen, in classical Trinitarianism the divine essense or ousia is not a fourth thing distinct from or residing in the Three. The New Testament instead connects our glorification with our beholding the fact of the glorified Christ-that is, with a knowledge of God as manifested in the consummation of the economy of salvation. 50 The notion that God has an inner self to which we must penetrate is the most recent version of the very old bad habit of conceiving the relation between us and God as a kind of ontological distance which needs to be crossed in one way or another in order for God to become accessible to us. It is very natural for us moderns to think that the epistemic gap which the founders of classical Trinitarianism observed between the economic Trinity and the immanent Trinity is derived from a conception of some such ontological distance. But to conceive of such a distance is our mistake rather than theirs. It would mean picturing the transcendence of the Creator as something in contrast to or even in contradiction with his immanence in the creation-and that would make nonsense of the very doctrine of creation. For we creatures could not possibly be if we were ontologically distant from God, whose right hand holds us in being each moment. 51 The notion of an ontological distance between us and God in se, therefore, runs counter not just to the doctrine of God's omni5o " We know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is " (I John 3 :2). And who is this " he " ? Let Paul answer : " When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory" (Col. 3 :4). 51 The importance of a "non-contrastive "-and thus non-platonistic-view of the transcendence of God is the main burden of Tanner's book, mentioned in note 24. The thesis I am urging here is compatible with Tanner's but stronger: it is that God's transcendence positively implies God's immanence. CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM: RABNER ON TRINITY 401 presence but to the very logic of the doctrine of creation. It stems ultimately from a Platonistic misconstrual of God's transcendence, which pictures the basic stuff of the material world as inherently low and infinitely distant from the source of all value and meaning. But the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo, with its claim that even matter is held in being by God's hand, makes such a distance literally inconceivable. Hence a proper theological understanding of God's transcendence needs to follow the lead of Paul's speech at the Aeropagus. If we were to impose a distinction between divine transcendence and divine immanence upon this speech, we would have to conclude that for Paul the transcendence of God does not contrast with the immanence of God but rather implies it. For example, the claim that " in Him we live and move and have our being " (Acts 17 :28) follows from the claim that God " made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth " (Acts 17 :24). Indeed, the distinction between transcendence and immanence looks artificial here, as it does in most of the Church fathers. For example, how exactly would one sort out the attributes of immanence from those of transcendence in a list like the following, taken from the confession of the nature of the one God at the beginning of John of Damascus's chapter on the Trinity: " having no contrary, filling all, by nothing encompassed, but rather Himself the encompasser and maintainer and original possessor of the universe, occupying all essences intact and extending beyond all things, and being separate from all things, and being separate from all essence [ ousias] as being superessential [ huperousion] and above all things and absolute God, absolute goodness, and absolute fullness. . . ." 52 That Augustine too had learned this lesson can be seen from the opening meditation of the Confessions, where he asks " Why, then, do I ask Thee to come into me, since I indeed exist, and could not exist if Thou wert not in me? " 58 52 J obn of Damascus, De fide orthodoxa, p. 6. Confessions, I, 2; in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 1st series, vol. 1, p. 46. 53 Augustine, 402 PHILLIP CARY Under the heavy influence of Platonism, however, theologians came to speak very differently. In middle Platonism, for instance, the transcendent One was conceived to be at such a disstance from the material world-a distance pictured in terms of celestial height-that a long series of emanations and demigods is considered necessary to bridge the ontological distance between us and God, in order to make God knowable to us temporal beings. This Platonistic style of thinking, if found persuasive by Christians, obviously puts a severe pressure on Christology, which is apt to be dragooned into providing the first and greatest of these emanating demigods. More than one scholar sees this Platonistic conceptual pressure as the main source of Arianism. 54 Thus the reasons for avoiding this bad old habit show something about the presuppositions of Trinitarian theology. Any theology which supposes that there is an ontological distance between us and God is going to be asking the kind of question which the doctrine of the Trinity had to overcome rather than answer. It is an essential precondition for sound Trinitarian theology to dismiss such questions as " How can the ontological gap between us and God be bridged? " as poorly posed. The transcendence of God imposes no sort of distance between God and us but rather implies that in him all creatures live and move and have their being. If God is closer to us than we are to ourselves, and equally and entirely close to every kind of creature from the highest angel to the lowest mud puddle, then it can no longer make sense to look for a mediator to meet us partway along the distance between God and us. There is, in other words, no point to the Arian Christ. But by the same token there is no point to a Christ who expresses or represents the inner being of God. There is no distance to cross between us and God, neither of celestial height nor of inner depth-hence no intermediary 54 See, for example, Robert Jenson's tracing of the origin of the Arian heresy to the breakdown of the Origenist settlement, in The Triune Identity (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), pp. 78-84; or see Frances Young's account of the place of the Logos in the Origenist theology of Eusebius of Caesarea, in From Nicaea to Chalcedon (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983), p. 17£. CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM: RAHNER ON TRINITY 403 being, no mediation of the immediate, no expression of the inexpressible or representation of the ultimate Mystery is called for. The epistemic gap between the immanent Trinity and the. economic Trinity is not an ontological distance. It is not a gap which we cross at all, for the nature of God in se remains to us incomprehensible. The knowledge of God is simply not a knowledge of God in se, and it never had to be. Above all, the knowledge of God is not the closing of any gap but precisely the reverse -it requires the establishing of a distance. The infinite ontological closeness of God to us is but one of many attributes of the divine nature which we cannot comprehend. In order for God to be knowable to us, God must become something other than merely God in se, something other than infinitely close to us (in addition of course, to remaining infinitely close to us). Hence the decisive feature of the economy of salvation is precisely that God becomes distant from us, the way that flesh and blood, bread and wine, word and sacrament are at a created distance from us. 55 The identity of the Three in the economy of salvation is God's way of meeting us in creatures, and this is precisely not God crossing a distance to meet us, but God's choosing to take up a distance from us so that we might meet him. On this view, being drawn into the trinitarian life means, first of all, to exist (i.e., to live and move and have our being in the triune God). But secondly, and epistemically, it means to be drawn into the life of God with God's people-to sigh "Abba," to obey the sacramental command to take and eat, to learn from the Holy Spirit how to love one another as God has loved us. To want something other than this-something higher (as a Platonist) or deeper and more inner (as an expressionist)-is to look away from the place where God has given God's own self to be known. It is to seek something that has already been given, in the mistaken notion that what we seek is necessarily hidden some place far away. 5 5 See John of Damascus's explanation of the term "the place of God" as meaning wherever in creation God's working is manifest: "by the place of God is meant that which has a greater share in His energeia and grace," as for example, the flesh of Christ, the Church, etc. (De fide orthodoxa I, 13, p. 15). 404 PHILLIP CARY What, then, are we to make of the popularity of the notion that being drawn into the trinitarian life means finding a way to penetrate into the inner self of God? Does it result merely from the desire to seek God rather than be found by him-that old, old desire to get a jump, as it were, on prevenient grace? Who could ever entirely rule out that motive? But there are also specific features of modern thought which make the notion of an ontological distance between us and God almost as compelling a notion for us as it was for the Alexandrian community which produced Arianism. These features evoke a longing to draw near to something invisible and impossibly distant. By all means let this longing be treated with pastoral respect, but let not a theologian indulge in it without a healthy dose of critical inquiry into its nature and historical origin. I have already made one suggestion about the sources of this poignant sense of ontological distance by pointing to the pervasiveness in the modern era of expressivist anthropologies, which put an ontological distance between inner and outer. This distance is pictured as depth rather than height, but it too probably has its ultimate origins in Platonism, mediated through the Augustinian notion of finding God in the inner depths of the soul, which seems to be a translation of Platonic dimensions of height into an inner dimension of depth. Surely another source is the Newtonian revolution in physics and indeed every other scientific development that contributed to what Max Weber called the Entzauberung, the disenchantment or de-animation of the world. Christian theology has not yet fully assimilated the fact that the created order can legitimately be treated in a wholly naturalistic fashion. I think this assimilation needs to be a major item on the theological agenda. (May I venture the opinion that " transcendental " and " existentialist " theologies often represent efforts to postpone this item of the agenda?) And yet another source of this sense of distance-allow me to grind quite a different theological axe-may be the Calvinist penchant for a rhetoric of distance between us and God. If Max Weber is at all CLASSICAL TRINITARIANISM: RAH:!o done out of duty (Handeln aus Pfiicht) and dutiful actions (pfiichtmiissiges H andeln). In attempting to describe the only thing which we can call " good," that is, the will, Kant argued that a dutiful act was only good if the act was done out of duty. For example, a state executioner who executes on account of his duty to execute is good and the action is good. But if the executioner performs the dutiful act on some other account, then the action is not good, though it is dutiful. Interestingly Kant did not consider whether an act not dutiful could be called good: Is an executioner who acts out of duty but botches the job still to be called good? George Moore in his Ethics made a similar point but for different reasons. Unlike Kant's interest in goodness, Moore wanted to describe a right action free of any consideration of an agent's motives and his solution was utilitarianism. In the process of separating the agent's action, Moore realized that the right act of a person with bad motivations involves a paradox: " A man may actually deserve the strongest moral condemnation for choosing an action which is morally right." 3 However, like 1 See his Fragmenta M oralia, no. 109, as cited in Stephen Toulmin, An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), 170. 2 Bruno Schuller of M iinster provides ample historical evidence in his Die Begrundung sittlicher Urteile (Diisseldorf: Patmos, 1980), 140. 3 George Moore, Ethics (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1912), 193-5. Cf. H. J. Paton, "The Alleged Independence of Goodness," in The Philosophy of G. E. Moore, ed. P. Schilpp (New York: Tudor, 1952), 113-134; Richard Hare, The Language of Morals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964). GOODNESS AND PRUDENCE AS RIGHTNESS 409 Kant, Moore did not discuss a person who sought to act rightly but who failed actually to perform a right action. Contemporary moral theology has carried the distinction further. Moral theologians like Bruno Schiiller, 4 Josef Fuchs, 5 Klaus Demmer, 6 Louis Janssens, 7 and Richard McCormick 8 maintain that if a person strives out of love or out of duty to realize right living, then the agent is good, notwithstanding the fact that the actual realization may be right or wrong. Goodness does not require right action; goodness requires that the agent be striving out of love or out of duty to realize right living. Good 4 Bruno Schuller, " The Debate on the Specific Character of Christian Ethics," in Readings in Moral Theology No. 2: The Distinctiveness of Christian Ethics, eds. Charles Curran and R. McCormick (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 207-233; "Direct Killing/Indirect Killing," in Readings in Moral Theology No. 1: Moral Norms and the Catholic Tradition, eds. Charles Curran and R. McCormick (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), 138-157; "The Double Effect in Catholic Thought: A Reevaluation," in Doing Evil to Achieve Good, eds. Richard McCormick and Paul Ramsey (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1978) 165-192; "Gewissen und Schuld," in Das Gewissen, ed. Josef Fuchs (Diisseldorf: Patmos, 1979), 34-55; "Neuere Beitrage zum Thema 'Begrundung sittlicher Normen '," in Theologische Berichte 4, ed. Franz Furger (Zurich: Benziger Verlag, 1974), 109-181; "Various Types of Grounding for Ethical Norms," in Readings in Moral Theology No. 2, 184198; Wholly Human (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1985). 5 Josef Fuchs, Christian Ethics in a Secular Arena (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1984); Christian Morality: The Word Becomes Flesh (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1987); Essere del Signore (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1981); Personal Responsibility and Christian Morality (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1983). 6 Klaus Demmer, Deuten und Handeln (Freiburg, Switzerland: Universitatsverlag, 1985) ; "La competenza normativa de! magistero ecclesiastico in morale," in Fede Cristiana e Agire Morale, eds. K. Demmer and B. Schuller (Assisi: Cittadella Editrice, 1980), 144-169; Leben in Menschenhand (Freiburg, Switzerland: Universitatsverlag, 1987) ; "Sittlich handeln als Zeugnis geben" Gregorianum 64 (1983) : 453-485; "Sittlich handeln aus Erfahrung" Gregorianum 59 (1978): 661-690. 7 Louis Jans sens, " Norms and Priorities in a Love Ethics," Louvain Studies 6 (1977) : 207-238; "Ontic Good and Evil," Louvain Studies 12 (1987) : 62-82. 8 Richard McCormick, "Bishops as Teachers and Jesuits as Listeners," in Studies in the Spirituality of the Jesuits 18/3 (1986); Notes on Moral Theology 1981-1984 (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1984). 410 JAMES F. KEENAN, S.J. people can act rightly or wrongly. This insight complements the insight of Kant and of Moore that bad people can act rightly or wrongly. Does Thomas Aquinas present any ideas that might be germane to this discussion in his Summa theologiae? Thomas conceived of right living and right acting in terms of the four virtues. Prudence unifies the acquired virtues and thus enables the virtuous person to attain the mean in both acting and living. Prudence perfects both the agent's life and the agent's act. Without prudence, the agent's life will be disordered, and his choices will more than likely be disordered (or wrong) as well. N onetheless, whether or not a person has charity, he will be able to live an ordered life as long as he has prudence and the other virtues. He will be able to attain at least to this degree of the virtuous state. On the other hand, whether motivations for right living are good or bad does not at all pertain to prudence per se nor to the other acquired virtues. In none of the questions concerning the acquired virtues does Thomas actually ask why one should seek the virtuous life. Certainly the entire Secunda pars begins with his treatise on the last end, and subsequent sections consider " those things by means of which man may advance towards this end" (I-II 1, prologue). In the treatise on the virtues, however, Thomas never makes a direct connection to the last end; he never asks, " why be virtuous?" In themselves the virtues may not necessarily presuppose that a person be united to the good last end. They may serve the purposes of the good person, but they may also serve a bad person's purposes as well. In light of the contemporary distinction, therefore, "why be virtuous" does not ask "why be good" but rather " why live rightly ". The decision to live rightly, like the choice to act rightly, can be made, as Kant and Moore knew, by people with good or bad motivations. Thomas, too, apparently anticipates the distinction, because he clearly considers it possible that a bad person could have the acquired virtues. On the other hand, according to the Secunda secundae, the virtue of charity has two functions. First, it complements prudence. In uniting us to the last end, charity obviously concerns GOODNESS AND PRUDENCE AS RIGHTNESS 411 right living, for with charity we are able to attain the most perfect end. 9 George Klubertanz studied how prudence is complemented by charity and called this full complement, the " ultimate rectitude." 10 Charity has, however, another function which is not a complement of prudence. Charity not only attains the supernatural end; it also occasions merit. The one who acts out of charity is the only one who merits. Charity alone serves as the moral description for the morally good person. Thus, on the one hand charity acts as the full complement of prudence directing action to the last end and attaining the ultimate rectitude or rightness. On the other hand, as a description of motivation-compare Kant's person who acts out of duty-only the person who acts out of charity is good. The one who has charity will attain by grace the most perfect end or most perfect terminus ad quem. But by charity one will also have a morally good terminus a quo: united to God in charity one has a morally good motivation for seeking right realization. One who strives out of love for God to be more united with God will strive to be more virtuous or rightly-ordered. In the striving, not the attaining, we find charity as opposed to prudence, and here we find goodness as opposed to rightness. My thesis is that through prudence Thomas unifies the virtues to give direction for a rightly-ordered life, but through charity Thomas gives a description both of the perfect complement to prudence and of the morally good person. II. Prudence In the Prima secundae Thomas states that virtue perfects the person in view of doing good deeds (I-II 58.3; 68.1). But what does " good " mean? The answer is simple : the good is that 9 On the importance of attainment in the Summa theologiae, see James Weisheipl, Friar Thomas D'Aquino (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1983), 222, 256ff. 10 George Klubertanz, "Ethics and Theology ", The Modern Schoolman 27 (1949): 38. 412 JAMES F. KEENAN, S.J. which is perfect. The good perfects, but the good perfects because it is itself perfect.11 In his Commentary on the Sentences, Thomas writes "goodness pertains to the communication of perfection" (lni IV Sen. d. 46, q. 2 a.1, sol. 2). In De veritate he tells us that "good is the status of that which perfects " ( D V 21.6). The Compendium of Theology states, "The perfection of anything is its goodness" (CT 103.203). In De malo 1, a work contemporary with Prima pars, Thomas proposes three uses of the word good, and each use is as a perfection. "The perfection of a thing is called good." 12 In the Summa theologiae, the definition of the good in terms of perfection is most clear. The question of God's goodness (I 6) follows the question of God's perfection (I 4). In the question between these two, Thomas states " something is good insofar as it is perfect" (I 5.5). When he asks whether God is good, he repeats his earlier remark that " something is good insofar as it is perfect" and offers three ways in which something is perfect. He concludes that no created thing but only God fulfills this threefold perfection within God's essence (I 6.3). God is, therefore, good in that God is at once the perfection or fulfillment of God's self. God is; nothing about God waits for completion. 13 The question of God's goodness does not concern another form of goodness often found in theological language. When we speak of God's goodness today, we often mean God's benevolence. The statement that God is good, therefore, can have two meanings: either we speak of the God who is the fullness of being, thoroughly without need, and fully perfect, or we speak of the God who loves, who is mercy and benevolence, and who willingly extends the divine presence to our lives. The first is Thomas's primary meaning : God is the most perfect being; in God there is nothing wrong. 11 Cf. Joseph de Finance, Essai sur l'agir humain (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1962), 86. 1 2 De malo 1.2: " Perfectio rei bonum dicitur." 13 Dalmazio Mongillo, "Le componenti della bonta morale," Studia Moralia 15 (1977) : 483-502. GOODNESS AND PRUDENCE AS RIGHTNESS 413 Thomas's concept "perfect" is similar to our term "right." The perfect lies not in striving or effort but rather in completion or attainment. In modern English, the attainment of what is due is what we call right, and the lack of what is due is what we call wrong. Thomas calls the attainment " good," but his meaning does not differ from our use of the word " right ". Hence, Thomas' s most perfect is our most right. The virtues are " good" (Thomas' s term) or " right " (our term) because they perfect, that is, they help us attain our perfection. As Thomas writes at the end of the Summa, nothing is perfect unless it attains its end (III 44.3 ad 3). The theological and acquired virtues are all called virtues because they perfect, but the theological virtues differ from the acquired in terms of what does the perfecting. In the former, the divine law perfects; in the latter, reason perfects. The divine law and reason both make us perfect, complete, or rightly-ordered. In the human, however, the perfection is two-fold (I 62.1; III 3.2 ad 4; 3.6). The first level of perfection is what we can attain with our own natural powers; the second is beyond our powers. The difference in the two levels, therefore, is the difference in the ends attainable: only by grace do we attain the second perfection (I- II 62.1). In either case, the good or the perfect is said to be seen insofar as it attains its end (II-II 184.1). Inasmuch as the virtues are about perfection, therefore, the virtues are about making us right or complete. But what makes the acquired moral virtues perfect ? Prudence, we know, perfects us with regards to things to be done (II-II 47.5). But prudence is not to be confused with art, a point that Thomas appears to enjoy making (I-II 57.4; 58.2 ad 1; 58.3 ad 1; 58.4; 65.1; II-II 47.4 and ad 2). Art concerns transient operations, but prudence concerns immanent operations (I-II 57.5 ad 1; Cf. 68.4 ad 1). Prudence does not simply make our choices right; prudential choices are not simply right choices or acts. Rather, as immanent operations prudential choices make both our action and ourselves right or more perfect. Thomas underlines the effect prudential choices have on us. 414 JAMES F. KEENAN, S.J. He clearly states that the matter perfected or made right by prudence is reason (I-II 61.2; 66.1; Cf. 61.3; 61.4; 63.2 ad 3). In this regard, prudence is an intellectual virtue, but unlike the other intellectual virtues, prudence engages a different material object (II-II 47.5). Through external operations, prudence always engages the same objects as the moral virtues. Though the moral virtues perfect the rational, irascible, or concupiscible appetites, they do this inasmuch as they engage objects which will perfect these appetites. The objects which they engage are right if they are prudential ones. If the object of justice, temperance, or fortitude is not prudentially chosen, then the act will not be just, temperate, or fortitudinous, nor will it perfect the agent. By making right choices willingly, the agent is on the way to becoming more rightly-ordered. Thomas states six times that among themselves the four virtues are interconnected (I-II 65 .1, ad 1, ad 3, ad 4; 66.1 ; 66.2). (That they are thus interconnected at least suggests the possibility of having the virtues without having charity.) Furthermore, he writes, without prudence the moral virtues are nothing more than inclinations (I-II 58.4 ad 3). They are only inclinations because they cannot perfect; and they cannot perfect because they cannot attain the right act. 14 The constitutive element for the acquired virtues is not that they partake in charity but that they partake in reason or prudence. Because the moral virtues require prudence, it is from that dependency on prudence that the three moral inclinations receive the title " virtue," a point explicitly made by Thomas. 15 Justice, temperance, and fortitude are not virtues without prudence. 16 14 ST I-II 65.l ad 1: "Sicut etiam naturales inclinationes non habent perfectam rationem virtutis, si prudentia desit." Cf. I-II 58.l; 66.2. 15 ST II-II 47.5 ad 1: "In cuius definitione convenienter ponitur virtus intellectualis communicans in materia cum ipsa, scilicet prudentia: quia sicut virtutis moralis subiectum est aliquid participans ratione, ita virtus moralis habet rationem virtutis inquantum participat virtutem intellectualem." rn That prudence requires the moral virtues (I- II 58.5) may lead one to think that the moral virtues are descriptive of moral goodness. But they are no more than rightly-ordered dispositions. A drunk, cowardly, or unjust person is disordered and incapable of rendering a prudential judgment. Further- GOODNESS AND PRUDENCE AS RIGHTNESS 415 Since prudence shapes natural inclinations into virtues, not surprisingly Thomas argues that the virtues are interconnected through prudence. He illustrates this interconnection by drawing a parallel between prudence and charity. In question 68 he writes that the moral virtues are brought together through prudence, just as the gifts of the Holy Spirit are connected through charity (I-II 68. 5). In question 66 he states, " the connection among moral virtues results from prudence, and as to the infused virtues, from charity" (I-II 66.2). In other places Thomas suggests a form/matter relationship between prudence and the virtues. Thus, " the whole matter of the moral virtues fall under the one rule of prudence " (I-II 65 .1 ad 3). According to another passage, in defining the mean prudence stands as that which is formal in all the virtues (I-II 66.2). Though he does not develop this form/matter relationship, it is related to the question concerning the mean and the measure of moral virtue. In the moral virtues, the mean has the character of rule and measure (I-II 64.3). To attain its proper perfection, a moral virtue must attain the rule of reason (I-II 63.2; 63.4; 71.6; 74.7; II-II 8.3 ad 3; 17.1; 27.6 ad 3) : the moral virtues are "good" (Thomas's term) to the extent that they attain that rule (I-II 64.1 ad 1). The virtues are measured by this rule of reason, i.e., it judges whether the virtues have attained the mean. But prudence 11 stands as that measure and rule (I-II 64.3). In establishing that rule or mean of reason, prudence makes the virtues " good," because the " good " in the acquired virtues is the good as defined by reason (I-II 62.1; 62.3; 63.2). more, one may think that what distinguishes the intellectual from the moral virtues is that the latter concern morally good persons. But clearly for Thomas the difference is that the former confer only aptness in use of the virtue, whereas the latter also perfect the appetite to be rightly inclined for the use of the virtue. Thus the intellectual virtues enable us to perform right acts, whereas the moral virtues enable us also to become rightly-ordered (III 57.1). On Thomas's frequent descriptions of virtue giving right order to the appetitive faculty, see I-II 55.2 ad 1 ; 56.3; 57.4; 57.5 ; 58.5 ; 63.2 ad 3. 17 On the importance of prudence as measurement, see Karl Merks, Theologische Grundlegung der sittlichen Autonomie (Diisseldorf: Patmos, 1978), 125ff. 416 JAMES F. KEENAN, S.J. Because prudence directs the moral virtues in the choice of means and, more importantly, because it appoints the mean that all virtues are to attain, prudence is the most excellent of the acquired moral virtues (I-II 66.3 ad 3; cf. modifications in II-II 47.6 and ad 3; 47.7). In a multitude of ways, Thomas demonstrates the superiority of prudence over the acquired moral virtues. In establishing the hierarchy among the virtues, Thomas argues that in terms of principles, prudence is superior because it puts order into acts of reason (I-II 61.2; 61.3; 61.4). Moreover, since the cause of human " good " or " perfection " is reason, (I-II 18.5; 61.2; 66.1) the virtue nearest the cause is more excellent (I-II 66.1). Furthermore, in terms of powers which virtues perfect, prudence is more excellent (I-II 61.2; 66.1). Finally, Thomas states that prudence alone is goodness essentially (inasmuch as the " good" is what reason appoints as the mean), whereas the other virtues are good by their participation in prudence (II-II 123 .12) . Prudence excels over the other virtues "simply" (I-II 66.3) ; it is the principle of all the human virtues (I-II 61.2 ad 1). In light of the foregoing, we can conclude (with both Thomas and Aristotle 18 ) that a moral virtue is " a habit of choosing the mean appointed by reason as a prudent person would appoint it " (I-II 59.1). The person who has the acquired moral virtues is, simply speaking, a prudential person. The ambit in which the moral virtues function is an ambit defined by prudence. Prudence, engaging the good (Thomas' s term) or the right (our term), engages the proper mean or perfection for the virtues. In doing that, it unifies the virtues, serving as form and the interconnecting link, making habits or inclinations genuine virtues. Unlike the other moral virtues, it is good in itself because of its relation to reason, which finds what is "good" (Thomas's term) or what we call the " right " for the person developing in virtue. The prudential decision-what we might call a reasoned decision-is always the right one. If the virtues require prudence, do they equally require charity? 1s NE II 6. 1106b 36 - 1107a 2. GOODNESS AND PRUDENCE AS RIGHTNESS 417 Thomas defines virtue by prudence and parallels the functions of prudence and charity in uniting the virtues. But what does he say about the person who is without charity but has acquired prudence? Thomas deals with this issue on several occasions. First, in his definition of virtue, Thomas adopts Augustine's definition of virtue but drops the coda, "that God works within us, without us " (I- II 55.4) . This makes clear that for Thomas virtue's essence is not necessarily derived from grace. Rather, from the beginning of his treatise on the acquired virtues, Thomas entertains the possibility of virtue in a purely secular ambit, and later on he explicitly considers the acquired moral virtues without charity. Thomas asks whether the acquired moral virtues are virtues without the person having charity. He responds that even though they are not perfect in attaining the last end, they are still virtues (II-II 23.7, ad 1 and ad 3). Here Thomas considers the simple fact that virtuous acts of themselves do not attain the final perfection yet are nonetheless virtuous. The final perfection is the second happiness which humanity can attain only through charity.19 In an earlier passage he makes a similar observation: the acquired virtues were in the Gentiles and can be considered per seas a perfection of the human natural powers (I-II 65.2). Here the absence of charity means not a lack of personal goodness but rather a lack of faith. On two other occasions, however, Thomas considers the absence of charity in the virtuous person specifically in terms of one's goodness or badness (our terms). First he mentions that a virtuous person without charity can sin (I-II 63.2 ob. 2) and adds that the acquired virtues are compatible with sin, even mortal sin (I-II 63.2 ad 2). Second, he mentions that virtues without charity can be in the good and bad alike (I-II 65.2 ob. 1) but then adds the clarification that he is referring to virtue in the imperfect sense (I-II 65.2 ad 2). That a person be a believer or 19 On charity and the attainment of the last end, see Jean Porter, " Desire for God: Ground of the Moral Life in Aquinas," Theological Studies 47 (1986) : 48-68. 418 JAMES F. KEENAN, S.J. unbeliever, be in mortal sin or not, indeed even be good or bad does not determine whether or not that person has the four acquired virtues. The absence of charity may actually be found not only in the good Gentile but also in the bad Christian who maintains a virtuous life of a sort. This paradox makes sense in a system where the acquired virtues are measured by the attainment of the rule of reason (II-II 17.1 ) . As we shall see later, this measurement is different from the measure of charity. One looks in vain for some concept of " goodness " akin to that used by Fuchs, Schuller, Kant, or Moore in any section on the acquired moral virtues in general or in the more specific sections of the Secunda secundae. Thomas does not consider people who try to be just, wish to be just, or strive to be just on account of benevolence or charity. The just person, like the temperate or the brave person, is the one who actually lives justly, temperately, bravely, regardless of charity. The entire focus of the treatise on justice is on perfection or attainment of humanity's first happiness. This ought not to be a surprise. If a person with the acquired virtues can be wicked or in mortal sin, then Thomas is certainly not far from the insight of the above-mentioned authors; people can live rightly despite the fact that they are bad, selfish, or egotistical. The function of prudence in unifying the acquired moral virtues is specifically the function of making our lives rightlyordered. But we must now ask whether the virtue of charity has a different function and whether that function is what makes us good. III. Charity Like any good scholastic, Thomas likes distinctions. In establishing charity as a theological virtue, Thomas distinguishes the theological from the acquired virtues and does so by reference to the two-fold meaning of happiness (I-II 62.1). Furthermore, inasmuch as the theological virtues refer to the supernatural end, they have God as their object, while the object of the acquired virtues is something comprehensible to reason (I-II 62.2). The GOODNESS AND PRUDENCE AS RIGHTNESS 419 object of the theological virtues is the last end (II-II 4.1). What subsequently distinguishes the three theological virtues from one another is their relationship to the last end. It is union with the last end which distinguishes charity from faith and hope. 20 Thomas specifically distinguishes charity on two counts. First, charity seeks union with God as. its end or terminus ad quem. Both faith and hope seek God, but faith seeks God for truth, an? hope seeks God for the sake of help; only charity seeks God for the sake of God alone (propter seipsum) (II-II 17.6). Charity seeks no other end, but the last end (II-II 26.3 ad 3) : to rest in God (II-II 23.6). Second, this union with God is not simply an end to be attained; it is also a union already enjoyed. This point, that charity's union with God is already enjoyed, is often emphasized by Thomas. 21 Charity unites the soul to God immediately (II-II 27.4 ad 3). It belongs immediately to charity that we should adhere to God through union (II-II 82.2 ad 1). Since faith and hope imply distance of things not yet seen or possessed, charity, which already has the object ( iam habetur), is the greatest of the theological virtues (I-II 66.6). Charity is already united to God (iam unitum est) (II-II 23.6 ad 3). Only charity has union with God (II-II 24.12 ad 5). As already enjoyed, charity becomes the source out of which all morally good actions are performed. The starting-point out of which charity acts, its terminus a quo, is an already existing union with God. Though Thomas rarely refers to the scholastic distinction between termin:us a quo and terminus ad quem, nonetheless he distinguishes charity from other virtues not only by the end it seeks, but more importantly by the starting-point out of which it acts : union with God, a union that is already present. As present and as the source of 20 Gerard Gilleman, The Primacy of Charity in Moral Theology (Westminster: Newman Press, 1959), 130ff. 21 Conrad van Ouwerkerk, Caritas et Ratio: Etude sur le double Principe de la vie morale chretienne d'apres S. Thomas d'Aquin (Nijmegen: Janssen, 1956)' 22ff. 420 JAMES F. KEENAN, S.J. action, Thomas provides a description of the terminus a quo or motivation for a virtue. Since both the beginning and end of charity consist in union with God, the increase of charity also involves this union. Charity in glory, which is perfect, is nevertheless identical in kind with that charity which is imperfect (I-II 67.6 and ad 1; 11-11 19.8). In heaven the imperfection of charity will be perfected, but what will be perfected already exists, namely, union (De spe 4 ad 13; cf. ad 7 and ad 14). The imperfection of charity is simply that the union one already has with God is not a union of final rest; the end out of which one acts points onward towards the end still being sought. Since charity remains the same in kind, it increases not through any new addition to itself. Charity increases not by going from a state of absence to a state of possession but by becoming more present (11-11 24.5 ad 3); charity increases by its adhering more and more in the subject (II-II 24.5). Furthermore, it increases not in external acts but in its internal exercise. Charity increases by having a deeper radication in the agent (II-II 24.4 ad 3). But this deeper radication in the agent does not occur by any particular mean being attained. When Thomas asks whether charity observes the mean, he responds that the love of God is not subject to a measure because there is no mean to be observed (II-II 184.3). The measure of charity is to love God above all (II-II 26.2 and 3; 27.3, 5 and 6; 44.4 and 5). Furthermore, this measure is, therefore, a measure without mean. The more we love God, the better our love is (II-II 27.6). When asking specifically how charity grows, Thomas responds: by an agent striving for greater union. Charity's increase does not occur in the particular execution of an act, but rather in the striving (conatur) to realize the act (II-II 24.6 and ad 1). In the act of striving, the deeper radication occurs. Effort, and not attainment, is the source of charity's increase because the deeper radication of union with God is an increased intensity of that union. Simply put, charity increases in the intensity of its exercise (II-II 24.4 and 5). Without having a mean to be at- GOODNESS AND PRUDENCE AS RIGHTNESS 421 tained, Thomas argues that charity grows by simply loving God as much as one can. Without referring to a mean to be attained, to some termin:us ad quem, Thomas focuses on the exercise of the union, on the terminus a quo. In this light, charity and prudence have different measures. Prudence measures whether an action has attained the mean. Charity measures whether we are loving God as much as we can. In fact, Thomas acknowledges these distinct measures and states that external acts must be measured by two rules, by charity and by reason (II-II 27.6 ad 3). On the one hand, we must ask whether one acts out of a striving for greater union with God; on the other hand, we must ask whether the reasonable mean has been attained. These two measures, I think, are not far from our concepts of moral goodness and of rightness. 22 We have seen two functions attributed to charity. The end which charity attains is related to our concept of rightness, for it is the ultimate perfection of prudence; it differs from the end out of which charity exercises itself, which is related to our concept of moral goodness. Thomas makes an analogous distinction in his use of two different concepts to describe consequences of charity: goodness and merit. These two effects reflect the two different functions of charity. 23 Thomas makes the assertion that charity has goodness essentially, whereas the other virtues do not (II-II 27.6 ad 1). This assertion apparently conflicts with another one that prudence has goodness essentially and the other virtues are only good through prudence (II-II 123.12). But the latter "good" is only understood as that which is attained through the reason. As he writes at the beginning of the treatise on human action, in human actions good and evil are predicated in reference to reason (I-II 18.5). The good which is fixed by reason is not the good which is convertible with being (I-II 55.4 ad 2). The only essential 22 Cf. parallel passages in In III Sent. d. 27, q. 3, a. 3 ad 1, ad 2, and ad 4; In Rom. 12.1, 964; De caritate 2 ad 13. 2 3 Odon Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux Xlle et XIIle siecles (Gembloux: Duculot, 1942-1954), III 599; IV 475. 422 JAMES F. KEENAN, S.J. perfection occurs through union with God (I-II 3.8). Only God is good essentially (I 6.3; II-II 161.1 ad 4) and it is that" goodness " which charity has. Thus the assertions that charity is the only virtue with goodness essentially and that prudence is the only virtue with goodness essentially only make sense when we realize that the word " goodness " refers to different causes for and different attainments of perfection. Nonetheless, the word " good" in both contexts does refer to perfection. In the case of prudence, reason perfects; in the case of charity, God's own essence perfects. In this sense our earlier insight returns: Thomas's "good" functions much the same way as our " right ". By God perfecting us we attain the fullness of our being. Attainment remains for Thomas intimately linked to the word" good." Thomas's "good" does not refer to our concept of striving or moral goodness; rather, it refers to our word " right ". As George Klubertanz put it, through charity we attain the "ultimate rectitude." Our concept of moral goodness appears, therefore, not in the fact that God gives us charity, for we receive salvation gratuitously and, as the Scriptures point out, we are made right. Rather, moral goodness appears as our response to the gift of charity and is recognized by God as merit. Here is the second function of charity. In the question on merit, Thomas argues that merit has two causes, God's ordination and the human free will, and both pertain to charity. As the fruition of the divine good is the proper act of charity, it is through charity that we merit. In union with the last end, charity can command all the other virtues (I-II 114.4 ad 1) and an act is meritorious only insofar as charity does command it. (I-II 57.1) The acts of all the other virtues are meritorious only insofar as they are commanded by charity (I-II 114.4), and no act is meritorious unless it is done out of charity (I-II 114.4 ad 3). We are only recognized as morally good when we have commanded acts out of charity. The command out of charity is particularly important, for charity does not elicit the acts of the other virtues but commands them (II-II 23.4 ad 2; De caritate 5 ad GOODNESS AND PRUDENCE AS RIGHTNESS 423 3). Charity does not pertain to the specific essence of a virtuous act; rather it functions as the command out of which one acts. Charity works formally (II-II 23.2 ad 3; cf. ad 1). Remaining formal, that is, without pertaining to the specific essence of a virtue, charity remains distinct from the other virtues. 24 Even when a virtuous act is commanded out of charity, two distinct measures remain operative. As if to underline the function of charity as source of merit, Thomas uses often the phrase "out of charity" or "ex caritate ". In the question about the object loved out of charity (II-II 25), the phrase " ex caritate" appears sixty-six times. In the parallel article in De caritate (De 7), it appears forty-nine times. No other virtue is used with this grammatical form, and the use of this form is evidence for my position: for Thomas only charity can serve to describe a terminus a quo for human action, i.e., only charity is developed by Thomas as a description for moral motivation. Indeed, Thomas's ex caritate is not far from Kant's aus Pfticht. In both cases it is the sole criterion for an agent's moral goodness. IV. Conclusion First, the virtue of prudence, like the other intellectual virtues, concerns the perfection of reason. This perfection, in turn, perfects the habits in the various appetites and makes these habits virtues. Just as moral goodness is not a necessary condition for science or art, neither is it a condition for the acquired moral virtues. Rather the function of prudence, like the function of the moral virtues, is to make us rightly-ordered and our actions right. Second, the virtue of charity has two functions. First, inasmuch as it perfects us in attaining the last end, it makes us complete or perfectly right. Inasmuch as charity is derived from God 24 On the centrality of charity's formality, see Gerard Gilleman, The Primacy of Charity, 34ff., 164; Klaus Riesenhuber, Die Transzendenz der Freiheit zum Guten: Der Wille in der Anthropologie und Metaphysik des Thomas von Aquin (Munich: Berchmanskolleg Verlag, 1971) 112ff; Conrad van Ouwerkerk, Caritas et Ratio, 46ff. 424 JAMES F. KEENAN, S.J. it makes us perfect as God is perfect. Thomas calls this perfection of God " good ". We see his usage as similar to our usage of the word "right". When charity makes our actions "good" (Thomas' s term), that is, when it directs our actions to the last end, charity attains ultimate rectitude and fully complements the other virtues. Third, the other function of charity pertains to moral goodness or what Thomas calls" merit". It is the human response to God's gift. It is the self-exercise of the agent striving to love God as much as one can. It has no measurable mean; its object of love is God and the neighbor in God. It seeks union and deeper radication of that union through intense striving. It exercises itself through commanding acts. Fourth, the two virtues have a certain independence from one another. Prudence and the acquired virtues can exist without charity. Similarly, charity does not elicit but only commands the virtues and remains formal. Thus any action requires two measures, one which pertains to whether the action is right or prudential, that is, one which asks whether the mean has been attained. The other measure asks whether the act originates from a command of charity, that is, whether the agent has striven to love God and neighbor as much as the agent could. Fifth, this being said, a caveat is needed. Thomas does not work out a distinction between goodness and rightness. He does not have the conceptual distinction at hand because it did not yet exist. Nonetheless, certain distinctions he does make parallel our own, and it seems to me that, were Thomas here today, he would draw the same conclusions as we have or, at least, similar ones. Finally, unfortunately for our purposes charity is a theological virtue and thus focuses on union with God. On the other hand, benevolence could provide a non-theological description of moral goodness. He states that benevolence differs from charity solely by the fact that the latter enjoys union with God (II-II 27.2, ad 2, ad 3). But he does not develop his thoughts on benevolence as he does with charity. 25 25 Karl Rahner, "Reflections on the Unity of the Love of Neighbor and the Love of God," in Theological Investigations VI (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1969)' 231-252. GOODNESS AND PRUDENCE AS RIGHTNESS 425 These insights gleaned from Thomas should help certain contemporary discussions concerning an ethics of virtue. First, the four related acquired virtues are observable. Our description of one another as temperate, fortitudinous, just, or prudent is based on experience. From experience we come to expect a certain rightly-ordered dependability in people who in the past have been consistently rightly-ordered, in judgment, temperament, or the like. The experience, the expectation, and the dependability are all based on observable behavior. But charity, without any mean, is not observable. Since there are no elicited or specific acts of charity, we cannot deduce from one's actions that someone is acting out of charity. Like the observations of Kant and Moore, we can see that people's actions are right, but we cannot know that their motivations are good. That the four virtues are observable, while charity is not, complements the distinction between goodness and rightness. Second, making the distinction is helpful for advancing the importance of virtue ethics. Philosophers like William Frankena 26 and Vernon Bourke 27 have argued against the usefulness of a virtue ethics on the ground that an ethics of duty refers to moral rightness whereas an ethics of virtue refers primarily to moral goodness. I think their position becomes untenable when we study Thomas' s treatment of the functions of prudence and charity, for inasmuch as the virtues are interconnected by prudence the virtues concern rightness. Like George Klubertanz, I argue that through rational discourse we can establish an objective ethics based on virtue. Whether a person has charity or not, that is, whether a person is morally good or not, is a separate matter. The question of moral goodness can be examined by moralists and ethicists, by spiritual directors and directees. But the question of rightness 2 6 William Frankena, "McCormick and the Traditional Distinction," in Doing Evil to Achieve Good, eds. Richard McCormick and Paul Ramsey (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1978), 146ff.; Ethics (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1973), 70. 27 Vernon Bourke, " Aquinas and Recent Theories of the Right," Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 48 (1974) : 187-197. 426 JAMES F. KEENAN, S.J. can be discussed readily by proponents of virtue, whether in theology or philosophy, without entertaining the issue of goodness. Finally, ethicians and moral theologians in describing persons and their actions as just, temperate, fortitudinous, and prudential inevitably help people toward self-understanding and toward defining life-goals. In the process, however, we must be aware of the fact that many good people lack the emotional development, personal freedom, and intellectual acumen which the virtues require. Some of these people strive to love God and neighbor, notwithstanding the fact that they do not arrive often at prudential decisions. These people are good. On the other hand, others, through nature and nurture, have attained a level of personal integration in which their conduct in society is predictably dependable. They are virtuous or rightly-ordered. But for these people there remains the same question which exists for all people, that is, whether given their talents they strive as much as they can to love God and neighbor. NECESSARY PROPOSITIONS AND THE SQUARE OF OPPOSITION MARK ROBERTS University of Rhode Island Kingston, Rhode Island I T IS COMMONPLACE to define contradictory, contrary, and subcontrary propositions in the following way: contradictory propositions cannot both be true and cannot both be false; contrary propositions cannot both be true but can both be false; and subcontrary propositions can both be true but cannot both be false. In his Introduction to Logic 1 Irving Copi raises a problem with two of these definitions which he believes forces him to limit the range of propositions which can be used in the square of opposition. Since contrary propositions can both be false, but the falsity of a necessarily true proposition is not possible, a necessarily true proposition has no contrary. Therefore, only contingent propositions can be contraries. Subcontrary propositions can both be true, but the truth of a necessarily false proposition is not possible.2 This problem is rarely raised in other logic texts, but, it is interesting to note, it is mentioned by a number of neoscholastic philosophers, for example, P. Nicholas Russo, 3 Rev. H. Grenier, 4 1 Irving M. Copi, Introduction to Logic (New York: Macmillan, 1986), pp. 178-179. Copi first introduced this problem in the fifth edition of his work on the basis of an article by David H. Sanford entitled " Contraries and Subcontraries,'' Nous 2 (1968) : 95-96. Sanford argues that the most reasonable way to resolve the problem of necessary propositions is to assume that contingent propositions comprise the square of opposition. 2 Copi, pp. 178-179. 8 Nicholas Russo, Summa Philosophica (Boston: Apud Marlier et Socios, 1[;85), p. 23. 4 Henri Grenier, Thomistic Philosophy, Vol. I (Charlottetown, Canada: St. Dunstan's University, 1950), p. 69. 427 428 MARK ROBERTS G. Sanseverino, 5 Jacques Maritain, 6 F.-X. Maquart,7 P. Coffey,8 and others. 9 (It is also mentioned by Bishop Whately. 10 ) Each of these philosophers makes necessarily true or false propositions an exception to the definition of contrary and subcontrary propositions. The reason is they and Copi interpret the definitions of contrary and subcontrary propositions to mean that the falsity of each contrary proposition is possible and the truth of each subcontrary proposition is possible. It should be mentioned, however, that the position of the philosophers cited above is not entirely the same as Copi's. Copi reasons that these definitions imply that necessary propositions have no contrary or subcontrary. The other philosophers believe that necessary propositions can be contraries and subcontraries. Thus, in the case of necessary propositions contrary and subcontrary propositions are, instead, defined merely in terms of their quantity and quality, not by whether or not they can both be false or can both be true. In fact, Coffey and some of the other philosophers cited above assert that, when the propositions composing the square are necessary, one can infer the truth of the universal from the truth of 5 Gaietano Sanseverino, Philosophia Christiana, Vol. II (Neapoli: Vincentii Manfredi, 1862), pp. DCCXXXVIII ff. 6 J. Maritain, An Introduction to Logic (London: Sheed & Ward, 1937), p. 135, notes 1 & 2. 7 F.-X. Maquart, Elementa Philosophiae, Vol. I (Parisiis: Andreas Blot, 1937)' p. 126 ff. 8 P. Coffey, The Science of Logic, Vol. 1 (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1918), p. 225, 226. 9 Joseph Gredt, Elementa Philosophiae, Vol. I (Friburgi: Herder, 1929), p. 46, notes 1 & 2; Sylvester J. Hartman, A Textbook of Logic (New York: American Book Co., 1936), p. 162 ff; Roland Houde and Jerome J. Fischer, Handbook of Logic (Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown Co., 1954), p. 61; Eduard Hugon, Cursus Philosophiae Thomisticae, Vol. I (Parisiis: P. Lethielleux n.d), p. 155; Dennis C. Kane, Logic: The Art of Predication and Inference (Providence: Providence College Press, 1978), p. 98 ff; Francis P. Siegfried, Essentialia Philosophiae (Philadelphia: Dolphin Press, 1927), p. 25; Francis Varvello, Minor Logic, trans. and supplemented Arthur D. Fearon (San Francisco: Univ. of San Francisco Press, 1933), p. 73 ff. 10 Richard Whately, Elements of Logic (Boston: James Munroe & Co., 1854), p. 77 ff. PROPOSITIONS AND THE SQUARE OF OPPOSITION 429 the particular and the falsity of the particular from the falsity of the universal. 11 Maritain maintains that in the case of necessary propositions one can infer the truth of one contrary from the falsity of the other and the falsity of one subcontrary from the truth of the other. 12 The positions of Coffey and Maritain are not essentially different, for each of them relies upon the principle that contrary propositions cannot each be necessarily false, since in necessary matter either the universal affirmative or the universal negative will be true. 13 If one assumes this principle, the forms of inference suggested by Coffey and Maritain can be done in a number of ways, and the truth or falsity of none of the four propositions comprising the square will be undetermined. Copi and these philosophers are probably not alone in interpreting the definition of contrary opposition to mean that the falsity of each contrary proposition is possible and the definition of subcontrary opposition to mean that the truth of each subcontrary proposition is possible. Although most logicians do not explicitly exclude necessary propositions, this is implicit by their use of contingent propositions in their examples of contrary and subcontrary propositions. The purpose of this article is to show that this interpretation is not correct and that necessary propositions are not an exception to the customary definitions of contrary and subcontrary propositions. I will argue that these philosophers have, in fact, misunderstood these definitions and that contrary propositions can both be false and subcontrary propositions can both be true even in the case of necessary truths or falsities. Before the correct interpretation of these definitions is explained, it should first be pointed out that Copi is not correct in suggesting that only contingent propositions can fulfill the requirement that the falsity of each contrary proposition be possible and the truth of each subcontrary proposition be possible. This requirement is also fulfilled when each contrary proposition 11 Coffey, p. 225; Grenier, p. 70; Houde and Fischer, p. 62; Hugon, p. 156; Maquart, p. 127; Whately, p. 77 ff. 12 Maritain, p. 135, notes 1 & 2. 13 See Sanseverino, pp. DCCXXXVIIIff; and Whately, p. 77. 430 MARK ROBERTS is necessarily false and the subcontrary propos1t10ns are both necessarily true. If each contrary proposition is necessarily false, then the falsity of each of them is possible; and if each subcontrary proposition is necessarily true, then the truth of each of them is possible. For instance, the contrary propositions that all propositions are true and no propositions are true are each necessarily false, while the subcontrary propositions that some propositions are true and some propositions are not true are each necessarily true. The set of propositions that all numbers are even, no numbers are even, some numbers are even, and some numbers are not even is another example. These counter-examples are also one reason why the forms of inference suggested by Coffey and Maritain are invalid, for in these examples one cannot validly infer the necessary truth of the universal from the necessary truth of the particular or the nec·essary falsity of the particular from the necessary falsity of the universal. Neither can one validly infer the necessary truth of one contrary from the necessary falsity of the other nor the necessary falsity of one subcontrary from the necessary truth of the other. It must be recognized, though, that if one contrary proposition is a necessary truth, then the other contrary must be a necessary falsity; and if one subcontrary proposition is a necessary falsity, then the other subcontrary must be a necessary truth. Yet, must one assume, as one does in these counter-examples, that in the case of contrary propositions the falsity of each of them is possible, or that the truth of each subcontrary proposition is possible? Is there another sense in which contrary propositions can both be false and subcontrary propositions can both be true which does not exclude any necessary propositions? The following analysis will show that there is. In certain valid deductions one speaks about the conclusion being necessarily true or necessarily false. For example, if an E proposition is true, the A proposition is necessarily false. An 0 proposition is necessarily true given a false I proposition. In speaking this way, one in no way implies or even suggests that the A proposition is itself a necessary falsity or that the 0 prop- PROPOSITIONS AND THE SQUARE OF OPPOSITION 431 osition is itself a necessary truth. The reason is that the falsity of the A proposition and the truth of the 0 proposition are conditionally (contingently, relatively) necessary. The falsity of the A proposition is conditionally necessary with respect to the truth of the E proposition, although the truth of the A proposition is in itself still possible if it is a contingent proposition. If the 0 proposition is contingent, then its falsity is in itself possible although its truth is conditionally necessary with respect to the false I proposition. These remarks reveal that the fundamental philosophical distinction between conditional and absolute necessity involves a distinction between conditional and absolute possibility. If an A proposition is contingent, its truth and falsity are each possible. Yet, if the E proposition is true, the A proposition is necessary false, which means its truth is not possible, but this impossibility is conditional upon the truth of the E. The A proposition remains a contingent proposition with its truth and falsity each possible, for the A proposition is necessarily false in relation to the truth of the E proposition and is not necessarily false in itself. Thus, contrary propositions can't both be true, not in the sense that one of two contrary propositions will be a necessary falsity, but in the sense that the truth of one of them is conditionally impossible with respect to the truth of the other. Similarly, if an I proposition is false, the 0 proposition is necessarily true, which means its falsity is impossible. However, its falsity is impossible in relation to the false I proposition, and the 0 proposition may still be contingent, with its truth and falsity each possible. In this way, subcontrary propositions can't both be false, not in the sense that one of two subcontrary propositions will be a necessary truth, but in the sense that the falsity of one of them is conditionally impossible with respect to the falsity of the other. The very same point must be made in the case of contradictory propositions. They can't both be true, but obviously not in the sense that one of them will be a necessary truth and the other a necessary falsity. Rather the falsity of one of them is condition- 432 MARK ROBERTS ally necessary with respect to the truth of the other, and thus the falsity of one of them is conditionally impossible with respect to the falsity of the other. This explains how contradictory propositions can be contingent propositions with their truth and falsity each possible while the falsity of one of them is also impossible in relation to the truth of the other and vice versa. When an E proposition is false, the A proposition is not necessarily true (or necessarily false). Because a false E proposition does not necessitate the truth of the A proposition, the A proposition is not necessarily true in relation to the false E proposition, which means its falsity is not impossible in relation to the falsity of the E. In this way, its falsity or truth are conditionally possible with respect to the falsity of the E proposition, since from the falsity of the E proposition neither the truth nor the falsity of the A proposition is necessitated. If the truth of an A proposition is conditionally impossible in relation to a true E proposition since the true E necessitates the falsity of A, then the truth or falsity of an A proposition must be conditionally possible in relation to a false E proposition since the falsity of the E does not necessitate the truth or falsity of the A proposition. This remains true even when the A proposition is itself a necessary proposition. In this case, while either its truth or its falsity is in itself impossible, its truth or falsity is conditionally possible in relation to the false E proposition. Just as the truth or falsity of a contingent A proposition is in itself possible while its truth is conditionally impossible with respect to a true E proposition, so also the falsity of a necessarily true A proposition is in itself impossible while its falsity is conditionally possible with respect to a false E proposition. There is no contradiction is saying that the falsity of a necessarily true A proposition is in itself impossible although its truth or falsity is conditionally possible with respect to a false E proposition, just as there is no contradiction in saying that the truth of a contingent A proposition is in itself possible although its truth is conditionally impossible with respect to a true E proposition. Thus, if an A proposition is in itself a necessary truth, one can still assert without con- PROPOSITIONS AND THE SQUARE OF OPPOSITION 433 tradiction that its truth or falsity is conditionally possible with respect to a false E proposition, for this simply refers to the relation the A proposition has to the false E proposition, since the latter necessitates neither the truth nor falsity of the A proposition. Thus, contrary propositions can both be false, not in the sense that the falsity of each proposition is in itself possible, but in the sense that, because the truth or the falsity of one of them is not necessitated by the falsity of the other, the truth or falsity of one of them is conditionally possible with respect to the falsity of the other. Subcontrary propositions can both be true in the sense that the truth or falsity of one of them is conditionally possible with respect to the truth of the other since the truth of one of them does not necessitate either the truth or the falsity of the other. Because the possibility referred to in these cases is a conditional possibility between propositions, necessary propositions are not an exception to the square of opposition. THE THOUGHT-EXPERIMENT: SHEWMON ON BRAIN DEATH 1 ANDREW TARDIFF University of Rhode Island Kingston, Rhode Island M ODERN TECHNOLOGY as it advances often brings with it new ethical problems. One such problem is "brain death." In times past, that is, up until the 1960s, medical men considered cardiopulmonary collapse as the criterion for the death of the person, for with heart failure the body ceases to function as a whole living organism. As technology and science advanced, however, scientists discovered that when the heart failed the very first organ to be irreparably damaged was the brain. Moreover, around this time they discovered how to revive the heart and to keep the body alive even after the brain had been destroyed. These discoveries and advances alone might not have sufficed to raise the issue of brain death. But science also discovered the crucial role the brain plays for consciousness and a fortiori for the specifically human abilities of knowing and willing. It is thus that we now have the question : once the brain has been irreparably damaged, and the possibility of consciousness and personal life thereby excluded, is such a person really dead, even though his body is alive and functioning? But it would be less than honest to say that this is an adequate history of the brain death criterion. For with the dawn of organ transplantation a new demand for living organs arose, one that had never been known before. Under the old cardiopulmonary criterion of death, the demand for living organs could not be met since the organs of a person " dead " in that sense of the word 1 " The Metaphysics of Brain Death, Persistent Vegetative State, and Dementia", The Thomist, 49 (January, 1985) : 24-80. 435 436 ANDREW TARDIFF could not be transplanted; under the brain death criterion they could. Such a situation will quite naturally give rise to, or at least heavily contribute to, a less than objective handling of the issue. Happily, however, the literature on brain death has recently seen a serious objective appraisal of the issue: D. Alan Shewmon's article The Metaphysics of Brain Death, Persistent Vegetative State, and Dementia. Shewmon argues persuasively that the new criterion of death is sound. He argues for an exact formulation of the criterion of the death of the person, viz., the death or irreparable destruction of one specific part of the brain, namely, the tertiary cortex. Thus, the death of the person occurs with the irrevocable destruction of the tertiary cortex, even if the rest of the body is still functional. In the following pages I will consider Shewmon's analysis of the issue and expose some of the major problems with his arguments. My critique will focus chiefly on an analysis of a certain thought-experiment of which Shewmon makes extensive use. I do this both because of its central role in Shewmon's argument and because of the light it sheds on the whole problem of using brain death as the criterion for the death of the person. The Thought-Experiment Shewmon has set out to show that only the teritary cortex is the critical structure or formed matter necessary for the human essence.2 In a later passage, however, he mitigates this claim slightly, in case science should someday discover that some other area (or just some fraction of this area) is the critical area. 3 But in either case, Shewmon maintains that the crucial area is to be found in the neocortex of the cerebral hemespheres. By the time his analysis has reached page fifty-nine, he believes he has established this much. The following is an examination of his thoughtexperiment and how he establishes the above claim. Shewmon begins with certain observations about how the human essence relates to the various parts of the body. Modern 2 Ibid., p. 56ff. a Ibid., p. 59. SHEWMON ON BRAIN DEATH 437 technology has developed ways to remove parts of a man's body without killing either the man or the part. Science can remove a person's kidney, for example, and transplant it into another person's body without killing either the person or destroying the living cells of the kidney. Moreover, neither person 4 undergoes a substantial change in the process, that is, both undergo some change, but neither becomes a different kind of thing because of the change. In Shewmon's terms the same substantial forms have endured in the respective bodies. On the basis of such facts, one might naturally ask oneself how much of the original tissue of a man can be removed before the person can no longer inhabit his body, before the body is no longer compatible with the human essence. In Shewmon's terms, when does the old human substantial form give way to a new nonhuman substantial form? What part of the body is the crucial part, and what parts are dispensable for the human substantial form? With these problems Shewmon begins his thought-experiment. After suggesting that if one removes a limb of the person (and does so carefully, so that neither the limb nor the person is lost) one would still have the same person with the same human essence as before, Shewmon writes, Now suppose this person were unfortunate enough also to have his other three limbs amputated and kept alive in the same way. Then his kidneys were removed so that he required regular hemodialysis. Although he is no longer in the best of health, he is obviously still alive and the same person as before. Now his intestines are removed, and he has to receive all his nutrition and fluids intravenously. At this point he is placed on a cardiopulmonary bypass machine, so that his heart and lungs may be excised without ill effect. The liver is also taken, and his blood is purified through a pig liver in series with the bypass machine. Air is forced through his trachea, permitting him to speak with us. As he describes his feelings about all this, it is undeniable that he is still alive and still the same person as before. Since the functions of all the vital organs except the brain are now subserved by mechanical devices, the torso has become a superfluous 4 We leave aside here the question whether the kidney has undergone a substantial change or not. 438 ANDREW TARDIFF shell and may be surgically removed from the neck without any detriment to the patient. Of course, all the machines are now reconnected to the blood vessels of the neck. In order to preserve communication with the patient air is maintained through the trachea. Although now reduced to only a head and neck, this is still the same person as before, as he himself will attest if we ask him. In the meantime all the removed parts have been connected to machines to keep them alive as well.5 Within this paragraph there has been a significant shift in the kind of evidence supporting Shewmon's speculations. The experiment starts by amputating an arm and ends by removing everything from the neck down. That is to say, the experiment starts with something science can in fact do, but ends with something it cannot in fact do. This means that at some point the experiment moves from having empirical evidence-that if we were to do X, say, to the person, his body would not be rendered incompatible with the human essence-to not having empirical evidence-that if we were to do Y to the person, his body would not be rendered incompatible with the human essence. And yet this latter is the crucial thesis of Shewmon' s paper. Therefore, the first question to be asked is: what evidence does Shewmon have for the claims of his thought-experiment? Now it must not be supposed that because Shewmon has no direct empirical evidence to support the claims of his thought-experiment that he therefore has no evidence whatsoever. First of all, there may be empirically evident facts which are related to and which indirectly support his claims. Second, there are other kinds of evidence besides empirical evidence. In fact, these other kinds of evidence-insight and logical inference-are more reliable than empirical evidence because they can afford greater certainty. But if we consider the kind of evidence Shewmon makes use of to support his thought-experiment, we do not find either insight or logical inference; we do find among the empirically related evidence some evidence that supports his claims, but weakly, and some that only supports his claims under certain false as1 Ibid., pp. 44-45. SHEWMON ON BRAIN DEATH 439 sumptions which Shewmon implicitly rejects. But most significant of all, we find a series of closely related question-begging assumptions upon which his claims stand or fall. We will start with this last. Before we begin, it must be noted that the direct empirical evidence in Shewmon's case is not simply missing (as it is in questions like, is there life in other galaxies?) but is actually against Shewmon's thesis. For if we did perform an experiment of this sort, amputating someone from the neck down, we would render his body incompatible with the human essence, for the person would die. Shewmon of course knows this but assumes (and this is the significant assumption) that the above is only true because of the technical underdevelopment of modern science, and that someday science will be able to keep such a person alive. Thus someday we will have the empirical evidence we lack today to show that the human essence is no more rendered incompatible by the loss of everything from the neck down than it is by the loss of a limb. In light of the technological advances of science, Shewmon's is not an unreasonable assumption. Advances that have already been made provide empirical evidence supporting (in the sense of lending plausibility to, but by no means even directly substantiating) Shewmon's claims. But this assumption has implications, implications that expose its significance. Suppose for a moment that the brain 6 is not the crucial part of the body that makes it compatible with the human essence.7 Then, even if science advanced beyond its present state and could develop a mechanism that could duplicate all that the body does for the functioning of the brain, the person would still die. In other words, if the brain is not the crucial tissue mass necessary and sufficient for the human essence, then even if the o Shewmon has not got this far in the above quoted passage, yet I anticipate here his more final result. 1 This is, of course, itself an assumption, one in fact contrary to Shewmon's claim. But it is legitimate because it is not used to prove, establish, or even support the contrary of Shewmon's claim. It is used only to expose the assumption upon which Shewmon's claim rests. 440 ANDREW TARDIFF extracerebral body could successfully be functionally duplicated and replaced, the original head and neck would nevertheless be rendered incompatible with the human essence. Only if the brain is the only tissue mass necessary for the human essence can it be true that it can be kept alive through some other means than the natural body and the human essence not lost. But this is what Shewmon seeks to establish by his thought-experiment. In other words, Shewmon's thought-experiment begs the question. How does Shewmon's thought-experiment beg the question? First of all, if the experiment were ever actually done, it would be as simple to verify (or falsify) Shewmon' s claim as it is to verify that the person is not lost when he loses a limb. But the fact that Shewmon's thought-experiment has never been done before and cannot be done now forces Shewmon to make an assumption, namely that it could at least in principle be done. Let us call this assumption, that it is in principle possible to amputate a person from the neck down or (as Shewmon claims in the end) from the tertiary cortex down without killing the person, P. Now if it is true that it is in principle possible to amputate a person from the tertiary cortex down without killing the person (i.e., without rendering the rest of the body incompatible with the human essence), then it is also true that the tertiary cortex alone is sufficient to support the human essence. Let us call this Q. Therefore P implies Q. But Q is exactly the conclusion Shewmon wants to support or establish with his thought-experiment. Therefore by assuming P, which implies Q, Shewmon assumes what he wants to show. Completely formalized the argument looks like this. p :. Q Again, why does Shewmon have to make the first assumption? Because the empirical evidence up to now is against him. This being the case he has to assume that it is only a matter of time before it is not against him, meaning that it is in principle possible to excise the extracerebral body without killing the person. SHEWMON ON BRAIN DEATH 441 But it is only when this assumption is given that it follows that the cerebral body is sufficient to support the human essence. And this is exactly what Shewmon wants to establish. Therefore by making the first assumption (into which he is forced by the empirical evidence to date) Shewmon also assumes the truth of what he wants to show and thus begs the question. What remains to be answered is the question: Is it in principle possible to excise the extracerebral body without killing the person, or in Shewmon's words "what is the minimum part of the human body still capable of supporting the human essence ? " 8 It would take considerable effort and resources to answer these questions. But the answer to a much simpler question will suffice for the purposes of this analysis (a critique of Shewmon's practical proposals regarding the brain dead) and this simpler question is : how can Shewmon' s claim about the tertiary cortex be established? Once we answer this question, its relevance to the larger question will be clear; it will shed light on the practical problem of brain death. What of Shewmon's claim? One way to substantiate it is, of course, empirically. Through empirical means science has already discovered that some parts of the body can be removed altogether, some can be removed and replaced, and some can be removed and even replaced with artificial devices. (The most notable example of this last is the human heart.) In these cases science has found that the person does not necessarily die from such operations, and from this one can draw the conclusion that in these cases the body is still capable of supporting the human essence. But the question Shewmon is asking is what is the minimum part of the body necessary for the human essence. He is seeking the border where the body all but ceases to be compatible with the human essence. And the answer he gives is the tertiary cortex. In principle his answer could be established empirically, just as it has been established that some parts of the body are not necessary for the body's compatibility with the human essence. Experiments of a theoretically simple nature but with a high degree of technical sophiss Ibid., p. 44. 442 ANDREW TARDIFF tication would suffice to verify or falsify Shewmon's claim about the tertiary cortex. Unfortunately, however, science cannot as yet perform even such operations as brain transplants successfully (which would still leave us short of substantiating Shewmon's claim) and therefore cannot even discover whether an old body with a new brain would be the person of the old body, the person of the new brain, or any person at all. Therefore for now the question cannot be answered empirically, although in principle it could be answered in this way. How then can the question be answered? I mentioned before that there are not only other kinds of evidence (and therefore other ways of answering a question) but kinds which afford greater certaj,nty than the empirical, namely, insight and logical inference. But these methods of answering a question, of gathering evidence, are only applicable in certain cases to certain kinds of objects. Insight 9 is only possible with natures which have a highly intelligible structure. 10 Take for example the nature of moral responsibility, and consider how intelligible it is that it presupposes a second nature, namely freedom. One can grasp with a simple act of insight that no one is responsible for an act which is not done freely. In such cases, because of the intelligibility of the natures at stake (and because of the power of the mind to understand), one can know with certainty that the one nature requires the other. But the relationship of the body to the human essence, to the spiritual entity that a person is, is not a relationship that is highly intelligible. That there is a relation is empirically verifiable, and, as we suggested, science has established to some extent what that relationship is. But how there ever could be such a relationship between spirit and matter is an apory of the first magnitude-let alone what the minimum of the matter for the relationship must be. The apory is generated in part by a failure to understand the nature of the human spirit. 9 Logical inference does not operate without insight into the entailment of one proposition by another (or others) . Therefore we consider only insight. 1 0 See Dietrich von Hildebrand, What is Philosophy (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1960) chapter 4, p. 63ff, SHEWMON ON BRAIN DEATH 443 But it is also generated by our inability to understand matter. Philosophically there is some hope that with insight we could penetrate far into the nature of spirit. But the nature of matter defies philosophical penetration. Matter, as Bacon saw, must be pushed and pulled, heated and cooled, cut into and sewn together; it must be physically manipulated and observed before it reveals the secrets of its nature. One must prod it and watch how it reacts to learn what its nature involves. Shewmon's claim can only be substantiated in this way. There is no insight that could substantiate it, for the natures in question are not open to insight. The body must simply be cut down to a tertiary cortex and prodded into personal life before Shewmon' s claim can be established. Until then it is unverifiable and unfalsifiable speculation. Shewmon could object that his article asks the question-what is the minimum part of the human body still capable of supporting the human essence ?-and gives the tertiary cortex as answer only insofar as this is useful and related to answering another question, the real question of the article: Are the brain dead still living persons, or have their bodies been rendered incompatible with the human essence? This question, he might say, does not lack empirical evidence at all. Those patients whose neocortex has been destroyed show no signs of presence in the vegetative body. . . . in spite of their apparent wakefullness,there is no real awareness of their body or environment. Even though their eyes are open and may even track a slowly moving object, they show no evidence of effort at communication through eye movements, as patients with ' locked in syndrome ' do.11 This objection brings up a second series of critical remarks one can make against Shewmon. First of all, it does not follow from the fact that there are no signs of the person present in his body that the person is not present in his body; it would only follow if to be in the body was the same as to exhibit signs of being in the body. Second, although Shewmon never commits himself to actu11 Shewmon, p. 34. 444 ANDREW TARDIFF alism of the above sort 12 and would reject the accusation were he accused of it, he often argues like an actualist. Indeed some of his arguments can only be seen as sound from the point of view of actualism. Above Shewmon writes that such patients show no efforts at communication. Later on, speaking of dementia and Alzheimer's disease, he writes: "Patients at this stage of the illness have sensory perception and can move around, but do not speak or show any evidence of intellectual understanding of their surroundings." 18 Shewmon takes this as support for the conclusion that " The body has been rendered incompatible with the human essence, so a substantial change must have taken place." u But this reaso.ning is only support if certain more fundamental actualist claims are true, namely (in this case), that to be present in the body it is necessary to exhibit some signs of awareness of one's surroundings, intellectual understanding, or attempts at communication. But this assumes that to be in the body is the same as to be active and functioning in the body, something which Shewmon in another place denies.15 Yet in spite of his denial, he makes arguments the conclusions of which rest on the truth of the claims of actualism. We shall see a second case of his implicit actualism in his answers to objections to which we tum now. In the course of answering various objections to his article, Shewmon significantly modifies the basic claim he has been making throughout the paper. In response to the objection that under his view the embryo could not be a person since it lacks the tertiary cortex, which alone is the tissue with which the human essence is compatible, Shewmon writes : What is necessary for the human soul is not the actual functioning of the essential brain structures but their potential for functioning. Someone who is asleep is not dead. . . . There is no structural damage to the neural substrate.... For the same reasons a brainless embryo is quite unlike a brainless adult, since the substantial form u The actualist holds the person is nothing but his actual conscious states, acts, etc. 1a Ibid., p. 60. u Ibid. u Ibid., p. 66. SHEWMON ON BRAIN DEATH 445 of the embryo makes its development always tend toward forming those brain structures essential for the human intellect. It is only a temporary absence of functioning, with as full a potential as that of the sleeping person.16 Shewmon's modified thesis is that the human essence is compatible with that which, because of its substantial form, will naturally tend to develop a tertiary cortex. The above reasoning, however, amounts to a retraction of the thesis Shewmon has been defending throughout the paper. For Shewmon has said that some particular matter is necessary to render the body compatible with the human essence, and he has said that this matter is the tertiary cortex. Now he is saying that the tertiary cortex 'is not necessary to render the body compatible with the human essence. That particular matter does not have to exist actually at all; it can be absent and the human essence nonetheless present. This admission alone undermines Shewmon's main thesis. It appears at first sight to be a simple modification, until one realizes that it modifies Shewmon's claim in its most essential aspect, namely that the tertiary cortex is necessary and sufficient for the compatibility of the human essence with the body. By admitting an exception to this, that the embryo without a tertiary cortex is nevertheless a human person, he has admitted that the tertiary cortex is not necessary and, therefore, a fortiori not sufficient to render the body compatible with the human essence. There are other problems raised by Shewmon's modification of his original claim, which, however, stem from his analysis of the sleeping and comatose cases and not from the case of the embryo. The evidence warranting this modification comes from the empirical fact that when a person's brain is temporarily unable to mediate the functions of the human intellect (say because of fatigue or a knock on the head), the person is not thereby lost; he is only asleep or in a coma. When such a person recovers, we see that he was never lost but only unable to function properly, and thus we 16 Ibid., pp. 66-67. In the opening line we see Shewmon's implicit denial of actualism. 446 ANDREW TARDIFF realize that his body was not rendered incompatible with the human essence. Shewmon points out that the structures of the brain, although incapacitated temporarily, never lost their potential to function again. All they required was the appropriate changes to revive and resume functioning. For these reasons Shewmon modifies his claim to this : if something has the potential to mediate intellect and will, then it is compatible with the human essence. On the basis of this modification the question of the presence of the person in the brain dead patient opens up again. Granting for the moment the actualist's view, one can ask: Given the appropriate changes and causes, does the brain dead person have the potential to redevelop the brain structures needed to mediate intellectual life? Under the old thesis (that if the brain structures were not actually present the person was dead), it was easy to judge that the person was gone from the brain dead patient, for it was easy to ascertain if the brain structures were gone. But how is one to ascertain that the potential for brain structures is gone? We can offer no evidence that the potential for brain structures is not gone, but could not someone like Shewmon argue that it is just a matter of time before science discovers the causes under which a brain dead person's body could regenerate brain cells? On the basis of this assumption and Shewmon's modified claim, a new thought-experiment could be conducted, one that showed that the brain dead person's body was all the while compatible with the human essence, even though it was lacking a tertiary cortex, because it had the potential to regenerate brain structures. Is there any more evidence that this is impossible than that a tertiary cortex floating in a nutrient bath will someday be the thinking, remembering, imagining, and wishing person he was before, when he was in possession of his whole body? But where would we be after the new thought-experiment was conducted and the new conclusions were reached? They are both for now unverified, unfalsified science-fiction type possibilities resting on the claims they are intended to establish. We would be not one whit closer to dealing with the practical problem of how to treat the brain dead. What we need is direct empirical evidence. SHEWMON ON BRAIN DEATH 447 Shewmon considers the possibility of brain transplants and the reconstitution of a brain for the brain dead and in this way considers the possibility of a new thought-experiment. Nevertheless he maintains that : Even if proper functional connections could be established for the redevelopment of human language and thought, nothing would remain of the original person's past experiences, personality, talents, etc.... In other words even if the destroyed brain could hypothetically be reconstituted, it would be no longer be the same perso'lis brain.17 Shewmon argues for this in two ways. The first argument involves the thesis that " our personality and lifetime of experiences are contained within the pattern of synaptic sensitivities and in our cerebral cortices." 18 Synapses are connections between nerve cells in the brain. These connections are profoundly affected by external stimuli during the development of the infant and during learning in general. If the neurons of the brain were new, as they would be in the revived brain dead patient, all the connections between the nerve cells would be different since they would develop from a clean slate, as it were, on the basis of what are certain to be different stimuli. Since a man's personality and experiences are contained within these connections, nothing of the original person would remain in the revived brain dead patient. There are two problems with this argument of Shewmon's, however. First, even if it be granted that a man's personality and experiences are contained within the pattern of synaptic sensitivities of his cerebral cortices, it cannot be granted that the person himself is contained within these sensitivities, for it is not true that a person is equivalent to his personality, past experiences, and talents. This is a subspecies of actualism. The person is that which has a personality, has talents, and acquires experiences. The personality of a person, his experiences, and his talents could all be different without the person being someone else. A personality can be suppressed or nurtured, yet the person who suffers 17 Ibid., p. 76. 18 Ibid., p. 75. 448 ANDREW TARDIFF or benefits thereby is the same person. The experiences of a person are extremely variable and clearly differ from the person who has them. And as for talents, they too can be destroyed without the person becoming someone else. Consider the effect of drugs or alcohol (or even tobacco) on talents. Thus it can be granted Shewmon that all that he mentions above is contained within the patterns of the cerebral cortices, and that all this would be forever lost to the person were these cortices destroyed and replaced. But it does not follow from this that the person would no longer be the same person, for the person is not the same as any one of these characteristics or all of them together. Second, it is more than doubtful that the person's experiences, etc., are "contained" within the pattern of connections in the cerebral cortex. Experiences and the like are not of a material nature so as to be containable within a material thing. They may be related to it, but the nature of that relation is neither rendered nor clarified with the precision necessary for careful analysis by the concept "contained." And yet the exact nature of the relation is the issue at stake, for only on the basis of what the nature is can Shewmon claim that the personality, etc., would be lost forever. If they are really contained within, then he is right. But if these synaptic sensitivities are only a condition for the development of personality, of talents, and for the occurrence of experiences, while the actual seat of these is in the person himself, then he is wrong. The second argument Shewmon makes is drawn from the thought-experiment. He writes: This [that the person with a reconstituted brain is not the same person he was] can be more clearly appreciated by reflection on our experimental room in which the person is kept alive through the isolated hemispheres. Suppose we now treat the vegetative cadaver with the hypothetical technique which will restore the brain. If the treatment is successful, it will be dear that there are now two people rather than one and that the original person is still with the original floating cerebral hemispheres.19 19 Ibid., p. 76. SHEWMON ON BRAIN DEATH 449 But appeal to the old thought-experiment is of no use, if for no other reason than that the old thought-experiment rests on a contrary assumption, and one may not refute an argument by assuming the contrary. In the meantime we have a practical problem to deal with, namely, what does one do with the brain dead? But now that we have answered the simpler question (how must Shewmon's claim be verified?), and now that we have seen how thought-experiments can be used either to " support " his claim or " refute " it, we can see the indispensable place of concrete empirical evidence. Such evidence we do not now have, but the answer to the question of what to do with the brain dead is nevertheless straightforward. We cannot now know whether the brain dead are living nonfunctional persons or not. If we knew that the person was no longer present in the brain dead patient, then we could remove the body from its life support, for we would run no risk of killing a person. But we do not have any way of knowing at the moment whether the person is present in the brain dead patient or not, because we do not know whether the brain is a necessary condition for the person or whether a person's extracerebral body is sufficient to support the human essence. Therefore we may not act on the basis of speculation as if we knew that the person was not present in the brain dead patient, as if we knew the brain was necessary, and as if we knew the extracerebral body was not enough. By removing such patients from their life support, because we do not know whether they are persons or not, we run the risk of killing a person. We are in essentially the same position as the hunter who sees something at a distance but does not know whether it is an animal or a man. If he does not know, he may not shoot at it even if it happens to be an animal, for he does not know that it is not a person, and he may not take the risk of killing a person. In conclusion, let me be clear about what I have shown by the above considerations and what I have not shown. None of what I have said shows that the tertiary cortex is not the necessary and sufficient tissue mass in virtue of which the body is rendered com- 450 ANDREW TARDIFF patible with the human essence. None of what I have said shows that the brain dead are more than vegetables. Therefore Shewmon may be right. What I have shown, however, is that Shewmon has not made his case and that he cannot make his case, that his claims are both unsubstantiated and (perhaps only for the time being, perhaps not) unsubstantiatable. The reason for this last has to do with how the question-How can Shewmon's claim that the tertiary cortex is the minimum part of the body required for the existence of the human essence in the body ?--can be answered. It can only be answered empirically, but it cannot be answered empirically at present. This being the case we must treat the brain dead as persons until we know they are not. AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL VISION OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE GERMAN V MARTINEZ Fordham University Bronx, New York IEWED FROM the institutional, interpersonal, or religious standpoint, marriage is not a distinctively Christian phenomenon, but it is a human partnership with inherently religious symbolism. Consider the complexity of its dimensions : it is a personal bond that is consummated in a sexual relationship; yet its full human reality contains different levels of meaning which point to a transcendent mystery; it is secular and social and at the same time spiritual and personal. Philosophical anthropology and the phenomenology of religion explore these dimensions and stress the complexity of marriage. An entire range of questions stem from the nature and mystery of the conjugal bond as well as from the multiplicity of forms in which this human partnership has been realized in different historical periods and cultures. Precisely because marriage actually takes place in a concrete historico-cultural context, theological reflection must recognize the complexity of this human experience, and this calls for interdisciplinary study. Theological anthropology sees a profound meaning in the created reality of marriage, for it recognizes therein the essential components of a community of love open toward God. An understanding of human values reveals how the experience of marriage touches the roots of people's lives; an understanding of redemption reveals how marriage belongs to both the order of creation and the order of redemption. An anthropological approach is essential. " In good theology one can no longer adopt the simplistic distinction between ' natural mar- 451 452 GERMAN MARTINEZ riage' and 'sacramental marriage .... '" 1 Marriage is not only a meaningful sign of an anthropological reality but also the expression of the human response toward transcendence. Furthermore, the lived experience of marriage in modern society makes us more and more conscious of human existential needs, and theology has to interpret and respond to them in correlation with the content of faith. Against the background of the human sciences and our awareness of the present historical reality, study of this complex experience that is marriage calls for constructive reflection on its anthropological roots. That is where the sacramental mystery is anchored. The crisis in the theological understanding of marriage stems primarily from a crisis of culture, and new anthropological perspectives can establish the possibility of a more personal theology. In fact, the underestimation of its human values or, more precisely, the lack of a personalist anthropology and of an adequate theological consideration of sexuality has been at the root of the weakness of the traditional approach to marriage.z As Theodore Mackin puts it, " The marriage sacrament, like all sacraments, has as its matrix a complex human experience. And there is no understanding of the sacrament unless we first understand its 1 W. Ernst, "Marriage as Institution and the Contemporary Challenge to It," in Contemporary Perspectives on Christian Marriage, ed. R. Malone and J. R. Connery (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1984), p. 69. The following studies are especially valuable in terms of an anthropological approach to Christian marriage: J. Ratzinger, "Zur Theologie der Ehe,'' in Theologie der Ehe, ed. H. Greven (Regensburg 1972), pp. 81-115; H. Doms, "Zweigeschlechtlichkeit und Ehe,'' in Mysterium Salutis, ed. J. Feiner and M. Lohrer, vol. 2, pp. 707-750; T. Mackin, "How to Understand the Sacrament of Marriage,'' in -Commitment to Partnership; Explorations of the Theology of Marriage, ed. W. P. Roberts (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), pp. 34-60. z Two major Catholic documents of the magisterium insist on the need for further theological reflection in terms of the personalistic reason behind the theology of marriage: John Paul II, The Apostolic Exhortation on the Family (see Origins, 2 (1981): 438-467); Gaudium et Spes, 47-52 (ed. W. M. Abbot, pp. 249-259). " The beginning, the subject and the goal of social institutions is and must be the human person, which for its part and by its very nature stands completely in need of social life" (Gaudium et Spes, 25; Abbott ed., p. 224). VISION OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE 453 matrix-experience." 3 In theological terms, the covenant v1s1on governs the partnership reality, but that divine call without this created reality would be meaningless. While the present essay does not include all the bases of the reality of marriage, such as the biological, psychological, or philosophical data, it will consider some basic anthropological presuppositions concerning marriage from a Christian perspective. The Anthropological Shift In the last decades, the understanding of the content of faith against the background of human sciences, especially anthropology, has meant a shift in cultural presuppositions from external and abstract conceptions derived from philosophical principles to a more personalist and existential vision of humanity and its destiny. Even before the Council, theological investigation that was renewed through a return to the sources and a dialogue with modern sciences made a new theological anthropology possible. 4 The mystery and contemplation of the person becomes a center of openness to the transcendent and a reflection of the divine; the body itself becomes a primordial symbol of wholeness in the sacramental reinterpretation of human experiences. If human sacramentality is a reality, our potential for a truly human, marital partnership is in itself a 'natural' sacrament because it is a meaningful sign of the human hunger for love, a hunger which points to God. Theological anthropology seeks the full meaning of human existence, not in abstract metaphysical speculation, but in the concrete historical reality of the person open to transcendence. This fullness of meaning reaches its ultimate and most radical possibility in God becoming a person in the Incarnation. As the center of creation, the person lives in the mystery of the grace of God s Mackin, " How to Understand ... ," p. 34. 4 Two examples of this anthropological shift in theology are: K. Rahner, " Allgemeine Grundlegung der Protologie und theologischen Anthropologie," in Mysterium Salutis, vol. 4, pp. 405-420; L. F. Ladaria, Antropologia Teologica (Rome: Gregorian University, 1987). 454 GERMAN MARTINEZ that urges him or her to full human potential and to transcendent destiny in the radical newness of Christ. Rooted in biblical models and symbols, especially those in Genesis, this line of theological discourse opens up the possibility for a more realistic understanding of the profound structure of the human being. Christian vision draws inspiration from seeing the person as the image of God in all his relationships but especially in his return to Him. This has always provided a foundation and a coherence to Christian thinking, but today this vision has to be critically yet decidedly sensitive to cultural anthropology. Early Christian writers drew inspiration from Hellenism: in their critical discourse they focused on the person as an ineffable mystery of openness to God. The "know-thyself" of Greek humanism became incorporated into an emphasis on the image of God as the mirror of human personhood. Later on, Augustine contributed neoplatonic influences, and in the Middle Ages Thomas Aquinas brought in Aristotle. The modern anthropological shift has meant a change from speculation concerning the static essence of human beings to a historical and dynamic perspective of the whole person, in the context of the Christocentric and eschatological horizon of the new humanity. Consequently, in the post-modern world, where all the efforts of theological and even anthropological and socio-cultural reflection center around the person and his/her crisis in present civilization, "all the pathways of the Church lead to man." 5 This study of the person pursues three key aspects of the concrete and human reality of his /her salvation story: the person, the body, and the image of God. The person in the fullest sense of the word is a singular being who chooses to be free (within the limitations of respect) in every actualization of his/her relation to the other. Such a person belongs to the new humanity as it is concretely realized in a 5 John Paul II, Redemptoris hominis, 14 (3-4-1979). Cf. Charles M. Murphy, " The Church and Culture since Vatican II : On the Analogy of Faith and Art," Theological Studies 48 (1987) : 317-331. VISION OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE 455 community and celebrates the mystery of grace whenever human life is lived authentically. With inalienable autonomy, dignity, and rights, one becomes a true person in choosing, in relating to the other, and in living in a community. There is no authentic person in social and individualistic alienation but only in the encounter of a love partnership within the context of a caring community. The body is not an object but a singular unified being where the spirit is. The Christian conception of the embodied spirit reJects any type of dualism or any kind of devaluation of the body and sexuality. "The body," in the words of J. Comblin, "is the foundation of the community, because it is the human being manifesting and communicating with others in a community." 6 The sexual character of the body is an essential dimension of the invitation to relate to others. The mark of the creator is on the human person, who is brought forth from the primordial chaos by God's liberating love and covenant. God is the foundation and continuing presence of that interpersonal relation, that community of two which is male and female. The two can never find a complete wellspring for their community of love in themselves but only in the original source of agape, in God. In Christian terms, the total person in his/her inability to overcome the experience of endemic alienation, division, and death, finds a new liberation in humanity become God in Christ. Through the mystery of the Incarnation, the old reality is transformed into the new person, capable of living the full value of freedom and love in solidarity with the other. Christ is the total splendor of the person as image of God. Personalist Theology The most challenging question a person must think about is how to articulate the feeling one has about oneself. If the question 8 tion In his creative approach to anthropology from the perspective of LiberaTheology, Antropologia Crista (Petr6polis, Brazil: Editora Vozes, 1985), p. 272. 456 GERMAN MARTINEZ is existentially the same, the answer is always complex and openended because it is rooted in the depth of the mystery of the person, a unique individual who nevertheless needs dialogue with others. The deeper and transcendent meaning of the person cannot be found through science alone or even through reason alone because it is fundamentally religious. Among religions, anthropologies of individual or cosmic dualism are common. But biblical revelation rejects dualism and establishes the unconditional value of the total person as male and female, originating and intersecting in the creative act of divine agape (Genesis). Thus neither the individual persons nor even the couple can find a total validation in themselves but only with God. In the relationship between God's mystery and the person's quest, a story of passion or meaning develops which only the language of love partnership can adequately describe. This story is articulated in the prophetic covenant. From this background of the prophetic covenant, the concept of the person develops even further within the community of the New Testament. But the socio-cultural context and the vision of the Church as institution, which has prevailed from the late Middle Ages, has prevented a deeper understanding of the personalist view of marriage in general and in ecclesial circles in particular. The search for the juridical essence of marriage predominated over the covenantal perspective found in Scripture and in the Patristic writers. As for Christian anthropology, classical theology did not go beyond Boethius's definition of a person at the beginning of the Middle Ages. 7 The modern dialogue between theology and contemporary culture has made it possible to develop a theology which considers the concept and complexity of the individual person with the seriousness it deserves. The person comes to be and is essentially enriched by the other, opening to and communicating one with the other in the encounter made possible by word and love. Among modern approaches to the different aspects of the human being, 1 " An individual substance of rational nature," see Ch. Schutz, " Der Mensch als Person," in Mysterium Salutis, vol. 2, pp. 637-656. VISION OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE 457 two philosophers in particular are especially significant as antecedents to a more personalist theology and, consequently, to a more personalist understanding of marriage: Ebner and Buber. Ebner's spiritual search led him to the conviction that personal fulfilment and authenticity are possible only in the word-and-love dialogue of communion between two people and their relationship with the personal God. Word and love are the keys to a relational understanding of the person and his/her mystery. A living word constitutes human spirituality and makes the deepest of human encounters possible. There is no truly living word except the one of love, which liberates a human being and opens him or her to transcendence and to participation in God's love. In his mystical and philosophical thinking, Buber strove to counter individualistic and impersonal conceptions of the person. He insisted on the relation of dialogue and reciprocity, the "!Thou," by which a person is constituted and is present to the other. The other level of relation, the "I-It", only produces alienation because it reduces the person to an object of manipulation. The interpersonal relation of mutual self-revelation stems from God's calling the human being to existence and to a relationship of dialogue with Him. " Extended, the lines of relationship intersect in the eternal You." 8 Many other philosophers have provided breadth and depth of vision to a renewed horizon of the person; they have added a great variety of perspectives but have especially noted the importance of human freedom and love. E. Levinas, also inspired by biblical interpretation, voiced a strong reaction against modernity and its thirst for power. He insisted on the primacy of the relationship with the other and exhorted us to see in the symbolic epiphany of one's naked face both the indigent human condition and the transcendent divine. From another point of view, G. Marcel spoke of the meaning of the human encounter made possible by fidelity and founded on a communion of love. Through the gift and interchange of love, one becomes existentially fulfilled in one's openness to the • M. Buber, I and Thou, p. 123. 458 GERMAN MARTINEZ other. This love brjngs about union, not confusion. From an existentialist perspective, L. Lavelle says, in the communion with the other everyone receives the same life he/she tries to communicate to the other. 9 When this interpersonal understanding of the person is applied to conjugal communion and sexuality, its theological relevance is obvious. It provides an intellectual grasp of human existence in the encounter with the other and in transcendence toward God, and this echoes the biblical notion of covenant as the basis of marriage. This also leads to a more profound understanding and better appreciation of the conjugal partnership and its sexual reality. It takes note of the totality of the human being, body and spirit, for it is by giving and receiving in one's totality that a person develops. In the words of Wilhelm Ernst, " the encounter of husband and wife in the love of the couple is, in the eyes of interpersonalism, the highest form of the I-Thou dialogue which constitutes the human being." 10 This philosophy of " existence as dialogue " has influenced the anthropology of theologians like K. Barth and K. Rahner. It grounds and provides insights for a more personalist and less objectivist interpretation of the sacraments. In the case of matrimony, it reaches back to the existential roots of a person's experience and brings out the nature and quality of the marriage relationship. From the point of view of the person, we can draw some major conclusions with regard to this relationship. A person becomes truly such only in communion with the other and for the other and thus is meant to attain his /her full complementarity and requisite mutuality in the conjugal community. With their solidarity in a common nature and basic needs, male and female are called to intimate coexistence, and this becomes a liberating and personalizing encounter. In fact, given the 9 L. Lavelle, L'erreur de Narcisse (Paris, 1939), p. 161. With regard to the phenomenological perspective of E. Levinas and its importance from the liturgical point of view, see Jean-Francois Lavigne, "A Propos du statut de la Liturgie dans la pensee d'Emmanuel Levinas,'' Maison-Dieu 169 (1987): 61-72. 1o Ernst, " Marriage as Institution ... ,'' p. 64. VISION OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE 459 existential needs of the human person, one's aspirations toward fulfillment cannot be achieved except through interpersonal relations. That is the important message of personalist philosophy that was so often neglected in classical anthropology. Other human sciences, like psychology, confirm the fact that the need for others is the center of gravity of all human needs.11 Although the ideal of interpersonal communion and the human need for others goes beyond the conjugal sphere, it is here that the spouses reach an integral actualization. The following comment that J. van de Wiele made in reference to the human person has its full confirmation in marriage. "To be a subject means ... above all to come out of oneself in a movement without return, (and) that promotes the other, makes the other be, makes him/her to be personally creative." 12 This dynamic and personalist view has even greater importance in an age of rampant individualism, when only the individual is seen as " the basic building block of society." 18 A person who is endowed with an inherent dignity and freedom is called to share his or her interiority and intimacy in a community of mutuality. Being equal but different, spouses are called to live within a relationship of freedom within and in relation to the other and to achieve a kind of balance therein. Finally, the human person, this reality always new, this mystery in search of meaning, is called to a permanent commitment to fidelity. Here is where the greatness of personal freedom and of human frailty are most manifest. Every interpersonal relation shares the reality of death with the fears and ambiguities it creates in the present, and this challenges the mutual receiving and giving of commitment in marriage. The greatness of freedom is revealed because this freedom " is capable of overcoming 11 Erik H. Erikson, Insight and Responsibility (New York: W. W. Norton, 1964). 12 J. van de Wiele, "Intersubjectiviteit en zijnsparticipatie," Tijdscrift 'tJoor filosofie 27 (1965): 655, quoted by J. Gevaert, El Problema del Hombre: Introduci6n a Antropologia Filos6 fie a (Salamanca: Sfgueme, 1981), p. 66. 1a John Naisbitt, Megatrends (New York: Warner Books), p. 261. 460 GERMAN MARTINEZ the obstacles, and of renouncing ... transitory values as needed to live in fidelity to one person." 14 A dynamic view of the human person shows marriage as a journey with cycles or stages throughout life, stages which entail possible crises and make growth necessary. Psychological studies have increased our awareness in this regard, and rightly so, but overemphasis on developmental concepts, especially when borrowed from a competitive and pragmatic culture, can also devalue the dignity of the person. Because each person has absolute worth, he or she can never be viewed merely as the means for someone else's development. Marital growth is an essential part of life, yet it cannot be equated with success in all the qualities human beings may consider important. It is being faithful that constitutes a personal relationship, and in this sense marital growth also means growth in fidelity. In Christian terms, crises and challenges mean an opportunity of grace for the spouses journeying towards the agapic love design brought about by God's Presence. The Sexual Person Openness toward others, which is part of the essential make-up of the person, is made concrete and actual in the sexual relationship. As Merleau-Ponty points out, the person is a unified being characterized by a sexually differentiated body; throughout the course of life and in one's whole personality, he/she is a "sexed being." 15 Sexual attraction and sexual desire are an integral part of each person and an essential means of communication between persons. Personal attachment, empowered by the physical appeal, points towards a complete integration of the gift of male and female sexuality in a relationship of love and commitment. This relationship should not remain at the peripheral level because it is meant to be personal in the deepest sense; it can represent concrete communication at its highest level, the giving of self envisioned in Christ's call to unity. Gevaert, El Problema del Hombre, p. 226. Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology Humanities Press, 1962), pp. 154-71. 14 15 P. of Perception (New York: VISION OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE 461 Sexuality, as a core of the conjugal community, is a powerful reality with complex meanings which have to be learned and cultivated. They are learned in the human process of personalization and psychosexual development through affective relations with others, and they enable the person to achieve a sense of identity, self-worth, and love. These complex meanings make sexuality a powerful symbol of the human community. Fulfilled in personal intercourse, the sexual encounter is meant to convey the meanings of total validation and openness to and acceptance of the other. It either has a profound human significance or else becomes deceptive. This is because its dynamism tends essentially to lock two human beings in an all-embracing relation. Sexual intercourse implies more than a matter-of-fact relationship remaining at a superficial level; sexuality configurates the person as embodied spirit in all his/her biological, psychological, and existential dimensions. Consequently, it is meant to move the person toward truthful and reciprocal acceptance and giving at the physical, emotional, and spiritual levels. Bernard Cooke states the link between the reality of human sacramentality-the fact that we are a symbol in our very way of being and communicating-and the profound importance of sexual honesty : Our sexuality can reveal our relatedness to others, our acceptance or rejection of them as equal human persons, our concern for and our interest in them. . . . Sexuality can be a unique link between people; it can also be an immense barrier. It can communicate love or hatred; it can provide great security for persons, or it can be a key symbol of one's self-depreciation. It can be used to establish and enrich intimacy among persons, or it can be used as a refuge from and substitute for real personal intimacy.16 The symbolic reality of sexual intercourse makes possible that creative freedom which characterizes true interpersonal encounters. The corporeal condition is seen as no accident but something inseparable from the unity which is the person. Though 1e B. Cooke, Sacraments and Sacramentality (Mystic, Conn.: Twenty-Third Publications, 1983), p. 52. 462 GERMAN MARTINEZ made possible by the flesh, sexuality depends more on a caring relation of male and female, both limited and gifted, than on functional capacity; sexuality is more something we are than something we have. Human sexuality is not simply biological or corporeal; its deep meaning and potential emerge mainly from an integral, personalist view of its erotic, genital, and spiritual dimensions. This integral vision rejects any spiritualistic or dualistic view of the person which denigrates the body or sexuality. Even more, it leads to the realization that only love can reveal the full meaning and value of sexuality. Perhaps the greatest challenge the person faces is the interpersonal relationship which the sexual dimension of heterosexual love calls for. Such an interaction is challenging because it is marked by the paradoxical and complex need of total openness, and this can make the continuing and dynamic journey with the other and for the other humanizing and meaningful. The complex existential meaning of human sexuality calls for the appreciation of all its dimensions. In the aftermath of the sexual revolution, modern society experiences a crisis in the meaning of human sexuality. The symbolic and meaningful language of erotic energy is a powerful yet vulnerable reality. Its very vulnerability points to how important it is to have a liberating and integrated representation of the full meaning of sexuality, how it can advance the process of personalization and socialization. Though progress has been made by the human sciences in the understanding of the phenomenon of sex, this has not been accompanied by a personalist view of the human mystery and the total context of sexuality. For this reason, sex has been reduced, especially in the popular media, to genitality, a mere commodity in a consumeristic society. This presents a real challenge for the Church, called, as herald and servant, to celebrate the mystery of the whole person in marriage. In regard to marriage, the most important task for the Church is to integrate all human values and especially the full meaning of sexuality into a more personal theology. A personalist and existentialist theology will acknowledge marriage as a sacrament and VISION OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE 463 recognize the importance of pastoral care. To be a welcoming and supportive environment of growth for couples, especially for newlyweds, the Church must first have a positive view of sexuality. This will enable the Church to serve as a model of intimate caring, a credible witness in the face of the emptiness created by post-modern culture. A positive view which embodies Christian ideals must be founded on the anthropological-biblical perspective. As J. Gevaert has rightly stated, Genesis provides " an acceptable and modern anthropology." 17 Being created " in the image of God " reveals the interpersonal nature of the man-woman structure. The archetypes presented by Genesis can still enlighten a modern person in search of authenticity and true freedom. Genesis illuminates two major foundational dimensions in particular : the meaning of sex and body and the meaning of the conjugal relation betwen the two sexes. The Bible witnesses in a unique way to the quality and transcendence of human origins. The person is "the other," different from and yet in complete dependence on the Creator; the only human answer to the challenge of life lies in liberating dialogue with God. God-created action is an action of covenant and liberation from the primeval chaos. There is union, fidelity, and communion in this created flow of life and goodness from the source, divine agape. Humanity created in sexually differentiated bodies is a reflection and mirror of God's goodness ; we image God in our very being as male and female. This prophetic vision leads to an open and positive appreciation of the body and sexuality; they are good because creation " was very good " (Genesis 1 :27-31). The whole of creation-including sexuality-is seen as sacred, but it is not sacralized to the point of idolization. 18 It 11 Gevaert, El Problema del Hombre, p. 114. 1a By "sacred" we mean that the whole of God's creation is holy by reason of its source. We affirm what E. Schillebeeckx says about the secular value marriage is given in the Old Testament; this stands in contrast with the rituals of the fertility gods, which attribute sexuality to the sphere of the divine. "Faith in Yahweh in effect 'desacralized,' or secularized, marriage-took it out of a purely religious sphere and set it squarely in the human, secular sphere" (Marriage, Human Reality and Saving Mystery, New York: Sheed and Ward, 1965, pp. 12-13). 464 GERMAN MARTINEZ is also transcendent, but it is never exalted to the point of euphoric naivete. While sexuality is sacred and transcendent in that the dynamic interpersonal relation of the couple manifests the divine source, it is also only human and fragile because sexuality and mortality are linked together. Sexuality is thus seen as a gift from God in the service of love to form community between man and woman. Even after sin darkens the capacity for love, the radical goodness of the gift remains the same (Genesis 3). Symbolic dynamics that are involved and what they imply about the interpersonal relationship of the couple are expressed in the biblical parable of the woman's origin. This simple Yahwist account (Genesis 2 :18-25) presents an answer to the human person's solitary loneliness; the foundation of the conjugal unity is seen in the two complementary poles of unerasable sexuality. Adam welcomes Eve as man's rib, as the answer to his innermost needs and desires. This has been rightly called " the first song of love." The relationship that is established is as important as the two differentiated sexes themselves. The two of them, individually and together, are God's image (Genesis 1 :26) and consequently of equal dignity in their mutual complementarity. They can only fully discover their individual identity in dialogue with the other and for the other. This is a differentiation of communion and togetherness, not of a dualistic brokenness and hostility, and therefore it rules out any dominance of one over the other. 19 But this joyful encounter becomes ambiguous when the male's supremacy is established (Genesis 4 :19-24 ). Despite the constant influence of biblical revelation, marriage tends towards sacralization, and some ambiguous attitudes toward sex prevail. The Song of Song celebrates human eroticism and love as a parable of the intimate love of God for his people. The couple image God's liberating creation and covenant in their faithful and 19 Two important articles from the theological and biblical point of view respectively: L. Eoff, "Visao ontol6gico-teol6gico do masculino e do feminino," Convergencia 7 (1974) ; P. Grelot, "The Institution of Marriage: Its Evolution in the Old Testament," Concilium 55 (1970) : 39-50. VISION OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE 465 creative love.20 A sexual relationship of this sort is both humanizing and truly fulfilling. Marriage " in the Lord " is a Christian sacrament. But here we speak not just in the narrow sense of the marriage ceremony but in the broader sense of the whole of conjugal life. This can only be properly understood from the order of creation. In the dynamic reality of conjugal love, the other person is embraced and the infinite human longing is fulfilled so that love conquers the fear and fact of death. But to speak more precisely, this fulfillment occurs "already, but not yet." In the perspective of Christian faith, there is an eschatological meaning to marriage, based on the salvific reality of natural marriage. As G. van der Leeuw wrote from the point of view of the phenomenology of religion: " The old primitive world knew marriage as a sacrament in the literal sense of the word. This implies that in some ways the end of marriage is not mutual comfort or procreation, but salvation to be found through it." 21 The husband-wife relation, like the divine-human self-communication, can only exist in a relationship which corresponds to the archetype of original love presented by Genesis and characterized by true freedom, profound intimacy, and fidelity. Freedom. The first characteristic which identifies conjugal love is freedom. A person is free because he has the power to choose and shape his life. In creating the meaning of one's life, one should choose love because love best expresses those human values which are inseparably linked to human freedom and, in the process, delivers a person from loneliness. Conjugal love must be more than an escape; it requires mature emotional growth towards that 2 °For a critique of the theological evolution of marriage in Scripture, see the important research of J. Cottiaux, La Sacralisation du Marriage: De la Genese aux incises Mattheennes (Paris: Cerf, 1982). 2 1 G. van der Leeuw, Sakramentales Denk en (Kassel, 1959), p. 152. The following statement of Pope Leo XIII is relevant in this respect : " Since marriage is a divine institution, and, in a certain sense, was since the beginning a prefiguration of the Incarnation of Christ, a religious quality is an ingredient in it, a quality which is not adventitious, but inborn, not bestowed upon it by human beings, but built-in" Arcanum divinae, in AAS 12 (1879) : 392. 466 GERMAN MARTINEZ authentic love which can be found in autonomous and stable relationships. Too often social conditioning, family dependency, and unconscious fears, originating from emotional scars or past and present anxiety, cripple the freedom of personal love. The challenge of conjugal love calls for personal decision; it presupposes a personality which is trying to be open to self-understanding and to understanding others. Love is something we are called to be and to experience deeply. It is an actualization of the most important reality of our being and the heart of the conjugal encounter which seeks the sharing of the other, is concerned for the well-being of the other, and promotes the growth of the other. 22 This kind of love is humanizing because it joins the two persons in a total relationship, an affective and effective union that results in mutual validation and meaning. Human love is never completely free and unconditional. Secondary and individualistic ends are inevitably part of the human experience of love, but they cannot be the main motivation if an authentic conjugal relationship is to develop. Love and freedom are inseparable in human experience, particularly in the most challenging of all, marriage. In fact, as J. Gevaert states, " love is the sacrament of freedom," 23 because love is at the same time a " sign " of mature freedom and the place where freedom can grow. In contrast with this vision of a true life-giving love in freedom, romanticized and idealistic love reduces a relationship to the sentiment of unrealistic expectations. It is a false " sign " because it prevents that true freedom which can only come from an all-embracing acceptance of the real person in an intimate and interdependent relationship. The experience of freedom and love points to the mystery of the inviolability and openness of the person and reveals both the greatness and fragility of human love. The personal journey that is marriage leads us to experience this at the deepest level. The greatness of human love stems from the potentiality for growth 22 Eric Fromm, The Art of Loving (New York: Harper & Row, 1956). p. 214. 23 Gevaert, El Problema del Hombre, VISION OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE 467 that it provides, for courage and generosity are engendered in an encounter of two freedoms won by love and fostered by love. To be authentically human, an encounter has to be free because, as Simone de Beavoir says, " authentic love should be founded on the reciprocal knowledge of two freedoms." 24 However, if freedom is the seal of authentic love, it is also the potential of its fragility. Awesome and ineffable though it might be, love is only human. Human unpredictability creates a positive tension to keep a relationship alive; love demands a continuing attitude of vigilance. Intimacy implies the total " nakedness " of two free people to one another; it creates the highest degree of personal vulnerability. This means love must be more than an occasional conquest; it can only be a life-time process, a process of self-giving. It is, in fact, a paradoxical dialectical process that makes both the individual freedom of each spouse and the positive dynamic of an intimate partnership possible. Understanding the conjugal journey as an act of freedom makes love both a gift and a challenge and calls for a lifelong celebration, in Christian terms, a " marriage in the Lord ". In fact, if marriage celebration has to respect and build upon the foundational insights of a personalist view, the theology of this celebration must also incorporate the human experience of love and interpret its natural sacramentality in the light of the covenantal view of Scripture. Both the personalist and the biblical views converge in the mystery of the plenitude of freedom and love for which " Christ has set us free." (Gal. 5 :1 ) Intimacy. An integral view of the person shows us the depth and complexity of genuine intimacy. Our being is, in all reality, sexual; but intimacy cannot be reduced to sexual desire. Intimacy in marriage is meant to be the expression of love in the complete sense. It involves the physical and the passionate, but it also implies an attitude of unconditional love (agape) and the caring of friendship (philia). Consequently, conjugal intimacy is 24 Simone de Beauvoir, Le deuxihne sex, Vol. 2, L'exp/:rience vecue (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), p. 505, quoted by P. E. Charbonneau, Amore liberdade (Sao Paulo: Herder, 1968). 468 GERMAN MARTINEZ sexualized love reflecting the whole of a relationship, both of the flesh and of the spirit, pleasurable and responsible, communicative and creative. The terms love and intimacy are ambiguous because their meaning is so often narrowed to only one of the components of the committed partnership: the physical, the affective, or the spiritual. Sexuality becomes a truthful symbolic language and a ritual of love only when love-making establishes an intimate bond in a meaningful manner. The sharing of the total self in the whole of a relationship culminates and is celebrated in the spontaneous way of corporeal communion through the irreducible power of eros. Rollo May's holistic view of eros is that "eros seeks union with the other person in delight and passion, and the procreating of new dimensions of experience which broaden and deepen the being of both persons." 25 This calls for not only physical but also emotional and spiritual nakedness. Committed couples describe this as "allowing themselves to be vulnerable." But they thereby validate one another's existence and bring bonding and intimacy to their relationship. 26 (And "risking the loss of self" by sharing the innermost self also holds true in our relationship with God.) Nevertheless, spiritual love cannot always remove the barriers to intimate closeness because there is fear. Fear is a deception which can block one's ability to allow oneself to be wholly and deeply touched by the other. It takes different forms in different people; it may involve dependencies or even idealization. But each of us does have innate capabilities for intimacy, and these can be developed through sharing, through mutual openness and trust, through personal reassurance. One needs a searching heart committed to a process of self-actualization by means of the twofold obligation in marriage : to accept and to give. The richness of conjugal love and its potential for growth are rooted precisely in this existential self-giving; as Teilhard de Chardin wrote: " Only those who are driven by passion love adequately, those 2 5 Rollo May, Love and Will 26 T. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1969), p. 74. J. Tyrrell, "Intimacy, Sexuality and Infatuation," in Intimacy, ed. A. Polcino (Whitinsville, Mass. : Affirmation Books, 1978), pp. 55-70. VISION OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE 469 who are led one by the other to a higher possession of their being." 21 This kind of loving self-gift, of self-sacrifice in the true Christian sense, is in itself an openness to transcendence. Our understanding of intimate sexual love would be incomplete without the inclusion of another essential dimension, namely, fruitfulness as an intrinsic gift and fulfillment of the sexual condition of the spouses. Love-making in the mutual self-giving and total possession of the union of intercourse is in itself a creative action which, by its natural meaning and dynamism, is oriented toward mutual enrichment and perpetuation in a third being. Anthropologists and psychologists have acknowledged this procreative component of the erotic state and order of being. As John F. Crosby points out, " Eros is the drive to create, to procreate, to communicate to another person in the most intimate way possible." 28 Love, freedom, and intimacy are not only inseparable as an intimate partnership; they are also essentially linked to a sense of ethical responsibility toward the other and indeed toward all other human beings. Consequently, this option of love calls not only for fidelity to the other spouse but also for care of one's children, a vocation to life and generativity in general, and finally service geared towards the future of the community. The vocation of parenthood requires a real decision of personal conscience. As Vatican II says, in reflecting on the equally important unitive and procreative meanings of marriage: " The parents themselves should ultimately make this judgment in the sight of God." 89 Fidelity. An intimate interpersonal relationship necessarily includes the dimension of fidelity. Freedom, intimacy, and fidelity are inseparable characteristics of a committed choice; they establish the two persons in one love, yet preserve the dignity of each inviolate. As a person cannot renounce his/her own dignity, a spouse cannot renounce commitment to a free, intimate, and faithful love without compromising the relationship. Teilhard de Chardin, L'energie humaine (Paris: Seuil, 1962), p. 82. John F. Crosby, Illusion and Disillusion: The Self in Love and Marriage (Belmont, Cal. : Wads worth, 1985), p. 71. 2e Gaudium et Spes, 50, see also 48 (ed. W. M. Abbott, pp. 250-255). :21 P. 28 470 GERMAN MARTINEZ Without fidelity, love is not an option of commitment to one another but only an unengaging action of affability or a simple transaction for a utilitarian purpose of common interest. Furthermore, faithful love demands commitment to a person-not to an idea, to a life style, or even to certain values. It is in fact a choice of loyalty, truthfulness, and concern for the sake of an inter-personal community. From a philosophical perspective, Gabriel Marcel described this kind of fidelity as the perpetuity of a creative testimony in the historical process, a creative fidelity which is required by the inexhaustible being of the person. Every egotistical retrenchment leads to a retrenchment of being both in the selfish one and in the other. so Consequently faithful love is an essential part of being human. It is an expression of our being which involves an open-ended process of radical commitment, always open to the mystery of an unpredictable person. It is a life-long journey of hope, because only when we hope can we love. In this sense, fidelity and love require each other and support each other-not in any forced sense but as essential parts of a process and a choice. In the many loving acts of ordinary conjugal interaction, fidelity and love are, in fact, dynamic and creative in the unfolding human pilgrimage. This orientation towards the future entails two qualities which are at the core of fidelity: unconditional love and a life-long commitment. Both are intrinsic demands of the conjugal covenant. As John Paul II states: "The total physical self-giving would be a lie if it were not the sign and fruit of a total personal self-giving in which the whole person, including the personal dimension, is present : if the person were to withhold something or reserve the possibility of deciding otherwise in the future, by this very fact he or she would not be giving totally." 31 Such emphasis on the total commitment that fidelity implies is even more important in our own time, when marriages are failing at a very disturbing rate. Our contemporary culture is characterized by rapid social change, high mobility, and longer life G. Marcel, Etre et Avoir (Paris, 1935), pp. 139 ff. Paul II, The Apostolic Exhortation on the Family: Familiaris Consortia (Origins 2 (1981): 441-442). Bo a1 John VISION OF CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE 471 expectancy. The many sociological factors that have fostered divorce are beyond the scope of this study. Here we can only point out once again the greatness and fragility of human freedom. But the Christian of the modern world has to live the ideal of faithfulness that the Kingdom calls for. This ideal demands even more creative ways of maintaining integral fidelity and stability. Sexual exclusivity, meaningful communication, and an attitude of flexibility and adaptation are, of course, imperative. But even beyond these, there must be a process of realistic growth, of " many marriages within a marriage," to achieve life-time fidelity today. 82 Furthermore, stability, the fruit of fidelity, is needed in order to accomplish the task of raising a family successfully, especially the challenge of forming a community of persons who are able to love and serve. This kind of faithful love has a transcendent dimension because, more than any other expression of love, it images the unconditional love of divine agape: a love that endures whatever comes, and does not come to an end ( 1 Cor. 13 :7-8). Conclusion This essay has attempted to elaborate on the new understanding of the person that Vatican II has provided and to show how this has resulted in a paradigm shift in the Christian vision of marriage. This new vision stresses the covenant significance of matrimony. It sees the essence of marriage as an intimate partnership from the center of love; it presents a positive view of sexuality, and stresses the dignity and freedom of the human person. The rational, juridical, and biological view of the past centuries needs to be balanced with a deeper personalist understanding of the whole of the marital and intimate life, now envisioned s2 For a deepened understanding of the sacramental experience of marriage as process, see Bernard Cooke, " Indissolubility: Building Ideal or Existential Reality?", in Commitment to Partnership, pp. 64-75. From the sacramental point of view, John Meyendorff calls marriage a " passage " and an "open door," in Marriage, An Orthodox Perspective (New York: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984), p. 20. Concerning the ritual perspective of "passage,'' see Kenneth W. Stevenson, To Join Together: The Rite of Marriage (New York: Pueblo, 1987). 472 GERMAN MARTINEZ as a community of persons. And with this balance the couple and the family will be better able to realize their vision within the larger community. A man and a woman in love are called to be a sign of the ongoing manifestation of God to his people, and so the conjugal community is to be understood primarily as being ordered to human sharing in the divine goodness. A community of genuine mutual giving is a creative force. It not only provides the appropriate context for intimacy and reveals both the human and divine mystery; authentic marriage is also a living sign of salvation. It has human sacramentality at its very core and is a call to realize the saving mystery of Christ in our lives. A more personalist approach to the complex and dynamic reality of this graced relationship will only enrich our current understanding of marriage. The human values we are called upon to actualize today in faith and the existential context of our times point to the grounds for a modern theological synthesis of marriage. Our approach has to start from a biblical and genuinely anthropological understanding of the person as the place of the theophany of God. This reveals to us the deep transcendent mystery of marriage embedded in today's historical reality. The human person is at the heart and center of it all. Precisely because marriage is a human reality and a natural sacrament with such various dimensions and complex intersecting meanings, our theological approach has to be interdisciplinary. Our method will involve critical interaction between biblical anthropology and Christian tradition; it will see marriage in the light of human sciences and the complex human experience of the couple. Such a personalist theology leads to a personalist sacramental vision of community; it sees us called (and gifted by that very calling) to live in" faith that makes its power felt through love." (Gal. 5 :6) BRUCE MARSHALL'S READING OF AQUINAS Lours RoY, O.P. Boston College Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts I N AN ARTICLE published by The Thomist, 1 Bruce D. Marshall argues that Aquinas should be viewed as a ' postliberal theologian,' that is to say, as propounding basically the same account of truth as the one put forward by George A. Lindbeck. 2 In the same issue of The Thomist, 3 Lindbeck not only approves Marshall's interpretation of his book but goes so far as to write: "My 'cultural-linguistic' account of religious belief is in part a clumsy rendition in modern philosophical and sociological idioms of what Aquinas often said more fully and more precisely long ago " ( 405). 4 And he adds : " Thus by showing how St. Thomas can be understood in a way consistent with Nature of Doctrine, Bruce Marshall has explained the view of truth which I had in mind better than I explained it myself " (406). In order to keep this note relatively short, I shall bypass the question of whether Marshall's presentation of Lindbeck's thought is merely a clarification or an actual revision of it. Let us simply note the fact that Lindbeck has praised Marshall's rendering without any reservation. 1" Aquinas as Postliberal Theologian," The Thomist 53 (1989) : 352-402. 2 The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984). a " Response to Bruce Marshall," 403-406. 4. This acknowledgment should not be taken lightly, given the remarkable acquaintance with the thought of Aquinas that Lindbeck has shown for many years. See his article, " The A Priori in St. Thomas' Theory of Knowledge " in The Heritage of Christian Thought, ed. Robert E. Cushman and Egil Grislis (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 41-63. 473 474 LOUIS ROY, O.P. The question I should like to raise bears on the accuracy of Marshall's representation of Aquinas. Marshall is undoubtedly a fine analyst of Thomas's writings. His selection of texts evinces a mastery of Thomas's corpus. He convincingly shows that there is a great similarity between Aquinas's and Lindbeck's views regarding the paramount role of faith in the access to truth. Marshall's piece may even have suggested to some readers that, in this respect, Aquinas could be closer to a confessionalist like Lindbeck than to a revisionist like Tracy. I shall return to this hypothesis in my conclusion. Therefore, if Marshall's reading of Thomas is sound, it should be a valuable contribution to a recent debate among some confessionalists, Thomists, and revisionists. G 1. Marshall wants to test Aquinas on some distinctions drawn from Lindbeck. He begins by acknowledging that Aquinas has a correspondence theory of truth. He adds that, in matters of faith, it is impossible to verify whether one's beliefs correspond or not with what is the reality. Far from demonstrating their tenets, believers simply hold as true what has been revealed by God. So far as truths that go beyond the capacity of human reason are concerned, Thomas repeatedly asserts that no one can prove them. Given the impossibility of showing that doctrines correspond with the reality of God, the question arises: How can Christians sort out which doctrines are true? In answer to this question, Marshall introduces a distinction between the theory of truth (namely, correspondence) and the criteria by which people can justify the truth of their assertions, especially in matters which are not susceptible of proof. There are two such criteria : linguistic G These three positions are represented in the articles written by William C. Placher, Colman E. O'Neill, James J. Buckley, and David Tracy for the "Review Symposium" of Lindbeck's book, published by The Thomist 49 (1985): 392-472. Marshall's piece, which I shall discuss here, is a reply to O'Neill. In order not to make things too complicated, I will not refer to O'Neill's article, since Marshall's treatment of Aquinas is clear in itself, regardless of his disagreement with O'Neill. READING OF AQUINAS 475 coherence and practical coherence. Marshall claims that both of them are operative in the thought of Aquinas. 6 Let us recall the question: How are we to find out whether a particular doctrine is true? The first part of Marshall's answer is that any singular tenet is a genuinely Christian one if it accords with revelation as expressed in Scripture and the creeds. This is linguistic coherence. If we look at Thomas' s actual performance as a theologian, we can see that he appeals to Scripture and the creeds when he wants to ground the truth of particular propositions. Marshall gives interesting examples of such practice in his article (375, n.47) as well as in a section of a book he wrote on Christology. 1 Those instances show that for Thomas any single affirmation must cohere with the wider web of Christian belief. Marshall remarks that there seems to be an exception to this economy of faith. For Aquinas a person cannot at the same time have both fides and scientia regarding the same object. As is well known, many Thomists have taken advantage of this principle to ground the legitimacy, for Catholic philosophers, of engaging in natural theology (or philosophical theology). According to this view, the progress of the believers in the field of natural reason would entail a shrinking of the domain belonging to faith. Marshall is right in claiming that such a reading of Thomas is inaccurate. To be sure, so far as the intellectual act is concerned, a particular object cannot be simultaneously believed and fully grasped. But this by no means entails the removal of that particular doctrine from the world of faith. For Aquinas, the tian's assent to that tenet remains within the general willingness to believe everything that has been revealed by God because it participates in the First Truth. And nothing less than such willingness, inspired by charity, is meritorious. 6 In section II of his article, Marshall introduces Lindbeck's three senses of truth: the ontological, the categorial, and the intrasystematic. In sections III and IV, where he examines Aquinas's thought, he presents only the ontological and the intrasystematic truth. The latter's criteria are linguistic and practical coherence. 1 " Thomas Aquinas's Logico-Semantic Explication of 'This man is God'," in Christo logy in Confiict: The Identity of a Saviour in Rahner and Barth (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), 176-189. 476 LOUIS ROY, O.P. 2. However, Marshall draws a dubious conclusion from that position. He states that, in the case of non-Christians, belief in God does not mean the same thing as in the case of Christian believers. To support his view, he adduces a few considerations. To make his point, Marshall judiciously outlines the distinction between the formal and the material object of faith. To believe God ( credere Deo) and to believe in God ( credere Deum) are respectively the formal and the material aspect of faith. But when he writes that " people without Christian faith . . . do not in fact believe that God exists " ( 380), his statement is ambiguous. On the one hand, it is obvious that they do not believe God; but when they affirm that God exists, they make a correct judgment and in so doing they do believe in God. In other words, they really know that ' God ' exists (even though both Christians and non-Christians do not know what God is). Marshall also affirms that Christians and people without Christian faith do not mean the same thing when they talk about God. Again the ambiguity noted above recurs. Against Marshall, I would say that they can very well mean the same thing in so far as they restrict themselves to stating that there is an unknown first cause of the universe. 8 But they part company at the moment they try to say more about God. And here Marshall correctly and very appositely refers to important texts ( 382-384). Thomas cites as an example those who think of God as a bodily reality. He adds that, in contrast to bodily beings, one cannot be partly right in one's knowledge of spiritual beings (God and the angels). In the case of composite beings, one may, for example, get the genus right and the species wrong. But as regards simple 8 Marshall writes, " even when they use the same words, philosophy and sacra doctn'.na are not saying the same thing" (393, n.93). Inasmuch as natural truths are concerned, this assertion contradicts Aquinas's explicit statements about philosophy, such as the following : " The study of philosophy is in itself lawful and commendable, on account of the truth which the philosophers acquired through God revealing it to them, as stated in Rom 1 :19." (II-II, q. 167, a 1, ad 3) Since the criterion of 'practical coherence' applies here, Marshall's assertion also fails to match Aquinas's actual philosophical practice as a disciple of Aristotle. READING OF AQUINAS 477 beings, one grasps either the totality of their essence or none of it. Thomas applies this principle of all or nothing to the intellectual plight of heretics, in II-II, q. 2, a. 2, ad 3, a text which Marshall discusses. The text reads : Credere Deum non convenit infidelibus sub ea ratione qua ponitur adus fi.dei. Non enim credunt Deum esse sub his conditionibus quas fides determinat. Et ideo non vere Deum credunt, quia ut Philosophus