HOW CAN WE LEARN WHAT
VER/TATIS SPLENDOR HAS TO TEACH?
ALASDAIR

V-

MAclNTYRE

University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

ERIT ATIS SPLENDOR can be read in two very different ways. It can be read, and of course it should be
ad, as a papal encyclical, a piece of authoritative Christian teaching. As such, it is addressed to the Catholic bishops and
its subject-matter is not only Christian moral teaching in general,
but more particularly the present condition of the academic discipline of moral theology. I of course am neither a bishop nor a
theologian, so it might seem that all that I can be asked to do in
reading Veritatis Splendor is to listen quietly to what is being
said in a conversation between others. Yet the complexity of the
experience of reading V eritatis Splendor makes it impossible for
me to restrict myself to this role of a more or less innocent bystander. For Veritatis Splendor is not only a work of authoritative Christian teaching about moral judgment and the moral life,
it is also a striking contribution by the Polish phenomenological
and Thomistic philosopher, Karol Wojtyla, to ongoing philosophical enquiry, one in which an incisive account is advanced of
the relationship between biblical and other Christian teaching, the
various moralities of the various cultures of humankind and the
argumentative conclusions of moral philosophers. (I am well
aware that generally several anonymous writers contribute to the
drafting of encyclicals, and doubtless they did so on this occasion. But any reader of Karol Wojtyla's major philosophical
writings, from his doctoral dissertation onwards, will recognize,
both in the style of arguments and in the nuances with which particular arguments are developed, a single nameable authorial
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presence in this text.) The central theses of this encyclical thereby challenge a range of rival philosophical accounts of that relationship: Kantian, utilitarian, and Kierkegaardian, to name only
the most important. But how can any one text perform both of
these very different tasks? Insofar as V eritatis Splendor genuinely contributes to argumentative moral philosophy, must it not
be precluded from presenting itself as authoritative teaching?
And insofar as it is authoritative Christian teaching, how can it
possibly be a contribution to the contentious debates of moral
philosophy? Part of what is impressive about V eritatis Splendor
is that in the course of answering a number of other questions, it
also answers these questions about itself.
Even so, any philosophical discussion of this encyclical which
finds its argumentative conclusions compelling will be committed
to an acknowledgment that philosophy itself, what it is and what
it can legitimately hope to achieve, has to be understood in the
light afforded by the Christian gospel. V eritatis Splendor never
lets us forget this, so that even if I begin from the philosophy in
the encyclical, I do so already knowing that it is going to direct
me beyond philosophy. Nonetheless this is where I do have to
begin, and this for two reasons. First of all this encyclical has an
important argumentative structure and arguments are always
matter for philosophy. Secondly, quite apart from any concern
with Veritatis Splendor itself, what is inescapable for moral
philosophers who are also Catholics, such as myself, is a strongly
felt need for some definitive answer to the question of how their
own peculiar philosophical conclusions about the nature of moral
judgment and the moral life are related both to the dominant
moral theories and practices of their own culture and to the biblical and Christian teaching by which they have been instructed.
Each of these three presses upon us its own type of claim to our
attention and allegiance and these sometimes conflicting claims
define the situation in which and formed by which each of us
encounters the theses and arguments of Veritatis Splendor. What
then is my particular situation in these three respects, as Thomistic Aristotelian, as North American immigrant, and as Catholic?

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Thomists do of course quarrel a good deal among themselves.
But there are two distinctive sets of conclusions which many of us
take to be of crucial importance in the practical life. What are
they? A first set concerns those rules which we take practical
reason to apprehend as precepts of the natural law. Those rules
enjoin and prohibit certain types of action as such. It is only insofar as our actions conform to what those precepts require, and
do so just because those precepts require it, that we can become
the kind of people who are able to achieve that final good towards
which we are directed by our nature. So the human good can be
achieved only through a form of life in which the positive and
negative precepts of the natural law are the norms governing our
relationships.
Thomists support this first set of conclusions by a variety of
arguments drawn from Aristotle, Aquinas and others. These
arguments can be reinforced by a second set of considerations
which concern not so much the theories, but rather the practices
of their anti-Thomistic philosophical critics, whether these are
Humeans, Kantians, utilitarians, existentialists, relativists, or
what you will. For it is a Thomistic contention that such antiThomistic philosophers inadvertently give evidence by and in
their activities of the truth of just that Thomist view of the practical life which as theorists they suppose themselves able to refute. What is it about those activities which warrants this conclusion? Such philosophers generally and characteristically pursue
the truth about moral and philosophical matters in a way and with
a dedication that acknowledges the achievement of that truth as
one aspect at least of what seems to be being treated as a final
and unconditional end. They do so moreover generally and characteristically under constraints imposed by rules which prescribe
unqualified respect for those with whom they enter into debate,
precisely as enjoined by the primary precepts of the natural law.
So we find that relationships within philosophical debate about
morality are themselves governed to a surprising extent among a
variety of non-Thomists and anti-Thomists by a practical recognition of exceptionless norms whose point and purpose is the
achievement of the final end of that activity, thus exemplifying

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something that Thomists take to be characteristic of well-ordered
human activity in general. For it is indeed a Thomist thesis that
all practical reasoners, often unwittingly and often very imperfectly, exhibit in significant ways the truth of the Thomist account of practical reasoning by how they act, ·even when, as in
this case, they are engaged in the enterprise of constructing antiThomistic philosophical theories.
That this is so would of course be strenuously denied by such
anti- Thomistic moral philosophers, moral philosophers who not
only are in a large majority among our academic colleagues, but
who enjoy one great advantage over us in contemporary debate.
For they, unlike us, generally represent in their theories the
standpoints of the dominant moral culture of everyday life in
modern North America. Even in their fundamental disagreements with ·each other-Kantians
against utilitarians, both
against Humeans, all three against Nietzscheans-they articulate
at the level of theory standpoints and disagreements which inform a good deal of everyday practice in our culture. This is after
all a culture in which there is an unusual degree of awareness that
moral thought and practice have varied from one culture to another and that disagreement between and within cultures has
often been intractable. So that a Thomistic Aristotelian, unlike
most of her or his philosophical colleagues, must in certain respects find her or himself at odds with this dominant North
American culture, involved in recurrent argument and contention
at the levels both of philosophical debate and of everyday practice. We are participants in a conversation with many disputing
voices.
Yet as Catholics we have to listen first to what a very different
set of voices have to say to us, those inspired and authoritative
voices which declare the Word of God concerning those same
moral matters about which our own culture speaks to us so vociferously and about which we have arrived at our own philosophical conclusions. Part of what we have to learn, or rather to relearn, from V eritatis Splendor is that, at least so far as the fundamental and central precepts of the moral law are concerned, the
truths about those precepts declared to us by God through Moses

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and the prophets, in the revelation by Jesus Christ of the New
Law and in the teaching of the Catholic Church, culminating in
this very encyclical, are no other than the truths to which we have
already assented as rational persons, or rather to which we would
have assented, if we had not been frustrated in so doing by our
own cultural, intellectual, and moral errors and deformations.
Yet the encyclical also teaches us that what we encounter in
Jesus Christ is immeasurably more than this. We also have to
learn of our forgiveness and our redemption and of the transformation made possible in our acknowledgment of law when we
come to understand it in the light afforded by Jesus Christ. Nonetheless the law declared to us by God in revelation is the same
law as that which we recognize in the moral requirements imposed by our own human practical understanding and reasoning,
when they are in good order. So that when we become able to
hear and to respond to what Jesus Christ has to say to us, we do
not have to leave behind or discard anything that we had genuinely learned concerning the moral law through reasoning. Grace
often corrects, as well as completes, what we have so far taken to
be conclusions of reason, but, when grace does so correct us, it is
always because we have in some way failed as reasoners. And
therefore Veritatis Splendor, just because it is true to this biblical
teaching, will be grotesquely misunderstood if it is understood as
an act of coercive imposition by an external authority, rather than
an invitation to become more thoughtful and more perceptive. It
does indeed speak in the name of an authority external to us,
God, but that to which it invites us-that to which He invites
us-is in part an act of moral and rational self-recognition. And
V eritatis Splendor as a work of philosophy does itself exhibit
just that moral and rational awareness to which as an encyclical
it invites its readers.
What then are those truths to which we are invited to attend?
In Veritatis Splendor we are presented not only with a reassertion of central truths, but also with a characterization of a number of types of contemporary error-philosophical,
theological
and moral. It would be a great mistake to treat this focus upon
errors as merely an irritable expression of the censoriousness of

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authority. It is rather that unless and until we have understood
these particular errors, and why they are errors, we shall have
failed to grasp important features of the relevant set of truths.
So, we cannot begin by attending exclusively to the statements
of the truths and only afterwards go on as a secondary matter to
that of the errors, for the exposition of the truths will remain
radically incomplete until the four types of error have been characterized. What then are these truths which we shall sufficiently
understand only by considering some mistakes about them into
which we and our contemporaries are peculiarly liable to fall?
Veritatis Splendor begins with biblical and Christ-centered meditation and exegesis, as all Christian theology must begin. But, because my commentary is that of a philosopher, I take the liberty
of beginning elsewhere-in fact at a middle point in the encyclical's argument. I begin with the encyclical's creative and constructive restatement of what I have already noticed as the
Thomistic account of natural law, an account which, as the encyclical stresses, the Church has included " in her own teaching on
morality" (Section 44, p. 59; page references are to the Vatican
translation into English, Boston: St. Paul Books and Media,
1993). And here in consequence there is a tension and a danger
peculiarly for Thomists. We, like all other Catholics, have to receive this teaching with attentive obedience, and we must not be
misled into thinking that our own philosophical conclusions, as
philosophical conclusions, can make our attentive obedience unnecessary. Indeed, we, more than anyone else, may be tempted
into treating V eritatis Splendor as a restatement of what was already sufficiently known, so deceiving ourselves about our own
need to learn. What then is it that we do need to learn?
"The negative precepts of the natural law," the encyclical reminds us, " are universally valid. They oblige each and every individual, always and in every circumstance. It is a matter of prohibitions which forbid a given action semper et pro semper, without exception, because the choice of this kind of behavior is in no
case compatible with the goodness of the will of the acting person, with his vocation to life with God and to communion with
his neighbor " (Section 52, p. 70). The examples given are from

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Jesus' reaffirmation of the Decalogue (Matthew 19: 17-18):
" ... You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You
shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness" (p. 71). What
we are told in these and other passages is that we cannot adequately characterize-adequately,
that is, for practical life, let
alone for theory-that good towards the achievement of which
we are directed by our natures and by providence, except in terms
which already presuppose the binding character of the exceptionless negative precepts of the natural law. And correspondingly
we cannot characterize adequately that in our natures which
alone makes us apt for and directed towards the achievement of
that good except in the same terms. Unless our passions, habits,
motives, intentions, and purposes are ordered by the negative
as well as the positive precepts of the natural law, they will not
be ordered towards our own good and the good of others. For
the negative precepts structure or fail to structure our relationships with others as well as our characters. " They oblige everyone regardless of the cost, never to offend in anyone, beginning
with oneself, the personal dignity common to all" (p. 70).
Obedience to these negative precepts is then enabling, both individually and communally. It frees us from a variety of hindrances and frustrations that would otherwise bring to nothing the
pursuit by each of us of our own positive good and that of others.
And they can be universally apprehended by rational persons as
at once required and enabling, for they are " valid for all people
of the present and the future, as well as those of the past " (Section 53, p. 71). They belong to "the permanent structural elements " of human beings. What God commands of us in commanding these precepts is therefore what we already knew or
could have known for ourselves as required for our good. What
God asks of us, both in the Old Law and in its reaffirmation by
Jesus Christ, is what, if we were adequately rational, we would
ask of ourselves. God's commands are to be and do what will restore us to our freedom and the Church's teaching concerning the
divine commands has the same aim and content. " Hence obedience to God is not, as some would believe, a heteronomy . . ."

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(Section 41, p. 57). We are not to have divided wills, divided
minds, or divided hearts.
The use of a Kantian idiom in this passage is instructive. For
the encyclical is both in agreement and in disagreement with
Kant. It is in agreement in understanding the negative precepts
of the moral law as exceptionless prohibitions. It is in disagreement in its assertion that human reason needs to be instructed
and corrected by this revelation of God's law. For not only is it
the case that what God commands coincides with what is demanded of us by our own rational natures-that is something to
which Kant could have assented-but to act in some particular
way, just because God commands us so to do, is always to conform our wills to the good will, knowing that what His goodness
requires of us is what goodness requires of us. So the " self-determination " of human beings is compatible with a " theonomy "
of the reason and will, since "free obedience to God's law effectively implies that human reason and human will participate in
God's wisdom and providence" (p. 57). But this is not the only
difference from Kant.
According to Kant we are to do our duty by obeying the moral
law for its own sake. The doctrine of the encyclical is that we
are also to obey that law for the sake of the further good of ourselves and of others. The natural law teaches us what kinds of
actions we need to perform, what kind of actions we need to refrain from performing, and what kinds of person we need to become, if we are to achieve our own final end and good and to
share with others in achieving our final end and good. In achieving that good we shall be perfected, something possible for us
sinful human beings only by grace. And what we shall lose, if we
fail to achieve it, will, Jesus taught us, be God Himself " who
alone is goodness, fullness of life, the final end of human activity
and perfect happiness" (Section 9, pp. 19-20). "To ask about
the good, in fact, ultimately means to turn towards God, the fullness of goodness " (p. 19).
What this underlines is that the conception of a final good for
human beings is that of a good that cannot be weighed against
any other, a good whose loss could not be compensated for by

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any other. It is not merely that of some good which contingently
happens to outweigh all other goods, so that one might intelligibly
ask about it how far it outweighs them and whether or not some
combination of other goods might not possibly outweigh it. But,
if obedience to the precepts of the natural law, including the negative exceptionless precepts, is necessary for the achievement of a
final good of this kind, is indeed partly constitutive of a life
whose choices are directed towards that good as its end, then it
makes no sense to ask whether some particular violation of one
of those negative precepts might not be justified, because some
good to be brought about by that particular violation in these
circumstances on this occasion would or might outweigh the good
to be achieved by conformity to that particular precept. The notion of outweighing cannot have this kind of application.
It may be instructive to consider-the example is mine, not that
of the encyclical-the difference between St. Thomas Aquinas's
view of why I may not be guilty of murder, even if, in the course
of defending myself as a private person from a murderous onslaught by someone else, I happen to kill the aggressor, and a
utilitarian view of why in those same circumstances I may not
be guilty. The utilitarian will weigh the consequences of my
undertaking an effective defence of myself or others-let us suppose that we are dealing with a case in which the only available
effective defence will as a matter of fact result in the death of
the aggressor-against the consequences of my failing to do so.
If, as will commonly be the case, the benefit to be produced by an
effective defence will in fact outweigh the harm of killing the
aggressor, then, so the utilitarian will conclude, it will be right
for me to mount an effective defence and I will do no wrong, if
I intend, because of having so concluded, to kill the aggressor as
the means of producing this balance of benefit over harm.
Aquinas's view is importantly different (Summa Theologiae
Ila-Hae, 64, 7). I may not, whatever the predictable outcome in
terms of a balance of benefit over harm, intend the death of the
aggressor. What I may and should intend is only to defend myself-or other innocent persons-by using the minimum force
necessary, even if in the course of so doing I do have to act so

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as to bring about the aggressor's death. The intentional killing
of another by a private individual is prohibited by the natural
law as a wrong which cannot be outweighed by any benefit whatsoever.
One recurrent source of error here has been too simple a view
of what some of the negative precepts of the natural law require
and a consequent misunderstanding of how certain practical conclusions follow from them. For some negative precepts of the
natural law have a certain complexity. Consider the act of theft.
"The primary and decisive element for moral judgment is the
object of the human act, which establishes whether it is capable
of being ordered to the good and ultimate end, which is God"
(Section 79, p. 100). St. Thomas first identifies the object of
the act of theft as to take possession of what is the property of
another where what is taken is a thing possessed (and not the
other's person or some part of it) and to do so secretly (this distinguishes furtum, theft, from rapina, robbery). But a right
understanding of what the precept of the natural law forbidding
theft requires is therefore impossible without a right understanding of the concept of property. To own something is not, as in
some views, to have inviolable rights over it. Owners hold their
property as stewards for those in need, and in cases of extreme
and immediate need, need which can only be met by taking what
is otherwise to be regarded as your property, I do no wrong in
taking what, because of that need, has become my property as
much as yours, common property, and my taking is not rightly
to be called theft or robbery, even if you have not consented to
it (Summa Theologiae IIa-IIae 66, 7).
Compare this mode of argument once again with an erroneous
method which might in some particular situations lead to the
same practical conclusion. A utilitarian might suppose that what
has to be done is to weigh the good of upholding property rights
against that of aiding this particular individual in need, in each
case taking the relevant set of consequences into account, and
perhaps arriving at the conclusion that, on balance, good will be
maximizing by aiding the needy individual. Two prima facie
moral principles are in conflict and the utilitarian's conclusion re-

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solves the dilemma by appeal to the principle of utility. But of
course some change in contingent circumstances, such that the
upholding of property rights became of greater and more urgent
importance, might well lead by the same utilitarian mode of argument on another occasion to the conclusion that the needy person
should be allowed to starve to death. The consistent utilitarian
has to deny that it could be right to hold that no one should ever
be allowed to starve to death, when there are any resources available to prevent this, whatever the consequences. But just what
the utilitarian denies the natural law affirms.
So even when in particular cases and circumstances what the
negative precepts of the natural law enjoin does coincide with
what a consequentialist would prescribe, they do so on a basis
that is deeply at odds with all notions of weighing and balancing
consequences or of giving proportionate weight to different considerations. It is not of course that there are not greater and
lesser goods. To do evil is always to prefer a lesser good to a
greater. But the good at stake in all situations in which obedience or disobedience to the natural law is in question is such that
no other can be weighed against it. Hence, when the encyclical
explains the mistake made by those consequentialists and proportionalists who have supposed that somehow or other some good
can be weighed against the evil of violating some particular negative precept, this identification of error is not just one more addendum to an exposition of God's law, whether understood as the
natural law or as received through revelation from Moses and
Jesus Christ. It is rather that recognizing that and why this is
an error is itself a sine qua non, a necessary condition, of any
well-founded understanding of the natural law and of our human
relationship to it.
This is also true of a different, but not unrelated, error concerning the intentions of agents. It has been sometimes supposed
that an intention or purpose can be good prior to and in independence of the character of the actions in which it is embodied,
and that the goodness of that intention or purpose can make the
acts that flow from it good, independently of their character in
respect of the precepts of the natural law. Here the mistake is to

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suppose that the agent's willing, expressed in the formation of
its intentions and purposes, can derive its goodness or badness
from any source except the object of the act deliberately chosen
in that willing. The object of each particular action is the proximate end of that action, embodied in that action, and unless that
action so characterized, accords with the precepts of the natural
law, the action cannot be good and the willing cannot be good
either. And to will badly, as to act badly, is to fail in the achievement of human freedom. In making this claim about freedom
Veritatis Splendor challenges a good deal of what is commonly
received nowadays as wisdom.
There is in the dominant moral culture of our particular time
and place a widespread and influential conception of human beings as individuals who initially confront a range of possible objects of rational desire, a range of goods, among which each of
them has to make her or his own choices, and which each individual has to rank order for her or himself, in accordance with
her or his set of preferences. It is in accordance with those
choices and that rank ordering that individuals formulate their
principles, attempting in so doing to arrive at agreement with
other rational persons, so that each in affirming and implementing her or his own preferences and choices may do so in a way
consonant with those of others. Hence it is on the basis of individual preferences and choices that values and norms, including those of morality, come into being and from those preferences
and choices that they derive their authority. Different versions
of this view have been presented in the idioms of more than one
type of philosophical theory. But the view itself is tacitly presupposed by many people who are quite unaware of themselves as
having any philosophical commitments. And such people have
often come to believe that this purported ability to create moral
values and norms is central to their freedom. Their choices and
preferences are to be treated as sovereign and their liberty consists in the exercise of this sovereignty. Hence any assertion of
the objective authority of norms and values seems to constitute
a serious threat. So, for example, during the Senate Judicial
Committee's hearings on the nomination of Mr. Justice Thomas,

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Senator Joseph Eiden expressed a fear " that natural law dictates
morality to us, instead of leaving matters to individual choice"
(Washington Post, September 8, 1991). But this conception of
moral freedom as a power in each of us to make our own fundamental premoral choice of moral norms and values is illusory
and deceptive.
What freedom is for human beings depends upon what their
capacities are, upon what difference it makes to them how they
set about actualizing those capacities, and upon what success they
are able to have in so doing. To have become free is to have been
able to overcome or avoid those distractions and obstacles which
frustrate or inhibit the development of a capacity for judgment
by standards whose rational authority we are able to recognize
for ourselves and for action in accordance with such judgment.
To have failed to become free is to have rendered oneself subject
to frustration or inhibition in respect of such development. And
the exercise of choice as such may contribute as easily and as
often to failure as to success in becoming free. What we all have
to learn is how to make right choices, on the basis of judgments
that are genuinely rational and genuinely our own, so that our
choices contribute to the development and exercise of our capacities. The virtue which we need if we are to become capable of
right choice is the Aristotelian virtue of phronesis, prudentia.
The acquisition of that virtue is impossible without a recognition
of the rational authority of the precepts of the natural law, most
of all perhaps of the negative exceptionless precepts. Thereby
we become able to choose in a way that is not self-frustrating, but
liberates our capacities for judgment and action directed towards
our good. This is why the negative precepts are what I called
them earlier, enabling, and why acknowledgment of their rational
authority is a constitutive element of human autonomy. But just
how is this so? We can usefully begin by considering first how
they structure our relationships to others and then how they correspondingly structure our relationship to ourselves and so our
selfhood.
We find ourselves engaged with others in a variety of ongoing
institutional and informal enterprises and projects, through which

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we and they seek to achieve a variety of goods, goods of enduring
relationships in the family and in friendship, goods of productive
work, of artistic activity and scientific enquiry, goods of leisure,
goods of communal politics and of religion. In each of these
projects and types of activity individuals have to learn how to
discern and to order the specific goods of each area and how to
make those choices through which they can be achieved. How
those goods are understood and what means there are for achieving them will of course vary a good deal from culture to culture.
What will not vary is two-fold: the need for a presupposed understanding that such goods will contribute to the achievement
of the human good and the need for recognition of a set of requirements which enable human beings to benefit from the disciplines of learning. Those universal and invariant requirements
specify the preconditions for the kind of responsiveness by one
human being to others which makes it possible for each to learn
from the others' questioning. They are the preconditions of a
kind of rational conversation in which no one need fear being
victimized by others as the outcome of their engagement with
those others. Without acknowledgment of them, implicit or explicit, there would be lacking the basis for rational conversation
about goods and about the good and for rational cooperation in
achieving good and the good either within cultures or between
cultures. They are definitive therefore of what human beings
share with one another by nature, as rational beings. And they
are in fact the requirements imposed by the precepts of the natural
law.
What is true of relationship with others also holds of our relationship with ourselves. The same preconditions necessary for
rational conversation with others are necessary also for rational
deliberation with and by myself. My ability to learn from my
own experiences in a way that will conduce to the achievement of
my good depends upon my adopting a certain standpoint toward
myself, a standpoint in which I am able to evaluate myself as a
rational agent with, so far as possible, the same objectivity that I
would evaluate another. Truthfulness, the courage of endurance
and the courage of patience, a considerateness and a generosity

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which avoid both mean-spiritedness and self-indulgence, are as
necessary in my treatment of myself as they are in my treatment
of others. And the minimal requirements of those virtues are none
other than the precepts of the natural law.
If then conformity to the precepts of the natural law is a precondition of the kind of learning, both for oneself and in relationship to others, which develops maturity of rational judgment,
any attempt to locate human freedom in a freedom to make
choices which are prior to and independent of the precepts of the
natural law is bound to be not only theoretically mistaken, but
also practically misguided. Theoretically those who accept such a
view understand law as primarily a constraint upon, rather than
an enabling condition of freedom. And this is why they suppose
that acknowledgement of the natural law is incompatible with
freedom. As the encyclical puts it, they posit "an alleged conflict
between) freedom and law," supposing that individuals and social
groups have a " right to determine what is good or evil" (Section 35, p. 51). Their belief has practical consequences. It leads
them on to a reformulation of moral rules, so that no moral rules
are held unconditionally and unqualifiedly. The rule about truthtelling, for example, becomes "Never tell a lie, except when ... "
and there then follows a list of types of exception, a list which
will vary from person to person and group to group, except that
all their lists are apt to end with an "etc.," and, as with the rules
about truth-telling, so also with other moral rules. The social
and political consequences are those described in Sections 100 and
101 of the encyclical.
What this erosion of rules is always apt to lead to is a surrender of human relationships to competing interests, economic
interests which, if not shaped by temperateness and justice, will
reduce persons " to use-value or a source of profit " (Section
100, p. 122, quoting the Catechism of the Catholic Church 2407),
political interests which, if not likewise shaped, will threaten integrity and legality. These are evils not only of totalitarianism.
They may also result from " an alliance between democracy and
ethical relativism" (p. 123), a relativism according to which each

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individual was treated as free to decide upon her or his own
moral rules.
One strong contention of the encyclical is that the only barrier
to such an erosion and its consequences is a recognition of the
objective authority of the precepts of the natural law, a recognition not only of the significance of the content of the natural law,
but also of its function in structuring human nature. Each individual human being is a unity of body and soul and the body is to
be understood in terms of this soul-informed unity. Bodily inclinations are of moral significance and bodily movements give expression to meanings. Human bodies are more than physicochemical and biological structures, although they are both these
things. This conception of the body as primarily a bearer of
meanings links Aristotelian themes in the philosophy of mind
and body with perspectives developed within Polish phenomenology by, among others, Karol Wojtyla, but also, of course, by
a variety of followers of Husserl, there and elsewhere, most
notably perhaps by Merleau-Ponty, but also, earlier and as strikingly, in her dissertation by Edith Stein. It is " in the body," the
encyclical declares, following both St. Thomas and Stein, that the
person discovers those " anticipating signs " which are " the expression and the promise of the gift of self " (Section 48, p. 66).
Moral direction therefore is not something to which the body is
merely subjected as something alien and external. Physical activity is intelligibly structured towards the ends of the whole person, something that is rendered invisible by any reductive physicalism. It is the whole human person as a unity of body and soul
which is ordered to its ends by the natural law, when the human
being is in good functioning order. The truth that it is by being
so ordered that the person is enabled and empowered-a bodily
enabling and empowerment-is among those truths without a
grasp of which an understanding of freedom cannot be achieved
(Section 50, pp. 67-8).
The concept of truth here invoked is, in some sense of that
variously employed adjective, a realist one. Our judgments about
how it is right for us to act and about how human nature is
structured have authority only in virtue of their conformity to

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standards independent of and prior to judgment, desire, choice
and will, standards of truth as well as of rational justification.
Conscience has no authority in and by itself, but only insofar as
its subjective deliverances conform to those objective standards.
"Once the idea of universal truth about the good is lost, inevitably the notion of conscience also changes" (Section 32, p. 48).
And it is not just that conscience is thereby accorded a false selfsufficiency and a misleading authority, important although that is
(pp. 48-9). There is also a consequent failure in our self-knowledge, a failure to identify and to recognize that in our human nature which makes our freedom a real possibility, and beyond this
sometimes a denial of the reality of a determinate human nature.
An inadequate conception of truth is thus not just a source of
failure in semantics or epistemology. Both the relationship of our
understanding of truth to our understanding of freedom and the
relationship of our capacity for achieving truth to the actuality
of freedom make it crucial for moral philosophy and also for
moral theology that we should have an adequate conception of
truth. But the required standard of adequacy is of course compatible with more than one philosophical theory of truth.
What is required is that truth should be understood to be
something other and something more than warranted assertibility. What we take to be warrantedly assertible is always relative
to the standards of warrant presently upheld in our particular
time and place, in our particular culture. But in asserting that
something is true we are not talking about warrant or justification, but claiming rather that this is in fact how things are, whatever our present or future standards of warrant or justification
may lead us to state or imply, that this is in fact how things are,
not from the point of view of this or that culture, but as such.
Such assertions of course often turn out to be false, but once
again what they turn out to be is not false-from-a-point-of-view,
or false-by-this-or-that-set-of-standards,
but simply false. Without this culture and standpoint transcending aspect of the true
and the false, those twin concepts could not play the part that they
do in our lives. Without them we could not be the culture-transcending rational animals that we are.

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It is only of course in terms provided for each of us by our
own culture that human beings can initially formulate whatever
truths we may apprehend about human nature and about the
natural law. And it is from the resources provided by our own
culture that we first set about trying to provide " the most adequate formulation,, for those truths (Section 53, pp. 71-2). But
insofar as the conception of human nature which we arrive at is
indeed that of human nature as structured by the natural law,
we will have succeeded in transcending what is peculiar to our
own or any other culture. It will have become a conception of
that which " is itself a measure of culture," of that in human beings which shows that they are " not exhaustively defined " by
their culture and are not its prisoner (Section 53, p. 71). So
once again a connection between truth and freedom appears. Just
as we are not to be explained as wholly determined by our
physical and biological make-up, so we are not merely products
of our cultural environment, but actual or potential creative
shapers of it, precisely insofar as we can evaluate its perspectives
in terms which are nonperspectival, the terms of truth.
What I have tried to do so far is no more than to sketch the
philosophical content of V eritatis Splendor, and I hope that something at least of the coherence and the complexity of that content has emerged. But, if the encyclical is not to be seriously misrepresented, another dimension needs to be added. Someone
might well remark that, if and insofar as the encyclical is philosophy, it does indeed have one characteristic property of philosophy: every thesis thus presented is one treated as contestable
within contemporary academic philosophy and denied by the protagonists of one or more influential philosophical standpoints.
Moreover nothing in the encyclical's presentation is going by itself to change the philosophical convictions of any of those engaged in the debates of contemporary moral philosophy. The
question therefore arises : Is anything achieved by the encyclical
other than a salutary reminder both to Catholic philosophers and
to others of some of the philosophical commitments and presuppositions of Catholic Christianity? The answer is: a good deal
more is achieved, both at and beyond the level of philosophy, for

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the encyclical not only spells out the philosophical commitments
and presuppositions of Catholic Christianity, it also explains just
why these commitments and presuppositions are going to be regarded as contestable, at what points their rejection is of the
greatest significance, and what the intellectual and moral costs of
such rejection are. It does so by presenting us with what is in
effect a theology of moral philosophy embedded in a theology of
the moral life.
The starting-point for the reflections which yield that theology is a meditation on the conversation of Jesus with a rich
young man in the nineteenth chapter of Saint Matthew's gospel
(Sections 6-27). We are to recognize in that young man " every
person who, consciously or not" (p. 17) poses to Christ the
Redeemer questions about morality which are in fact questions
about the meaning of one's own life. This is a form of unquiet
questioning, present in everyone, to which each significant action
and decision implicitly or explicitly proposes an answer. The rich
young man makes explicit both the question and his own answer.
Jesus redirects the young man's questioning from the law to
God, who is not only the author of the law, but is Himself the
final end of the law, "the final end of human activity" (pp. 1920). What is required of the rich young man, and so correspondingly of each of us, is that he give up everything to God, so that
by holding back nothing he will acknowledge that God, the supreme good, his supreme good, cannot be weighed against any
other good. He must go beyond mere conformity to the law to a
kind of obedience which understands the point of the law as an
expression of God's love. But it is not in the young man's power
to achieve this by himself. That is a possibility opened up to
him and to others " exclusively by grace" (Section 24, p. 37),
grace which Jesus offers as a gift to the young man, who, even
although he has observed all the commandments, " is incapable
of taking the next step by himself alone " (Section 17, p. 29).
But the young man refused Jesus' invitation and " went away
sorrowful, for he had many possessions" (Mt. 19 :22). What did
the young man lose by preserving his attachment to his possessions? V eritatis Splendor does not answer this question directly

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in the sections which bring this initial scriptural meditation to a
close. But in an important way the whole of the rest of the encyclical constitutes an answer to it.
Unless, unlike the rich young man, we respond to God's offer
of grace by accepting it, we too shall be unable fully to understand
and to obey the law in such a way as to achieve that ultimate
good which gives to such understanding and obedience its point
and purpose. But unless we can understand and obey the law
adequately, we will be unable to recognize the truth concerning
our own natures and to realize their potentiality for an exercise
of rational freedom through which we can perfect our individual
and communal lives (Section 38-40). This inability would constitute a loss in ourselves of that which is of most value to ourselves
and to others. What we have to learn from the story of the rich
young man is that attachments to what it seems to us that we cannot bear to lose-in his case his possessions-may, if they come
between us and the possibilities that obedience to the law and
grace together open up for us, that is, if they come between us
and God, result in a far more radical loss to and of the self. But
what has this to do with the philosophical parts of the encyclical?
Each of the errors about the natural law and its relationship
to the human good identified in the encyclical is a dangerous obstacle to the achievement of right understanding of and fruitful
obedience to the law. It is not too much to say that each represents an attachment comparable to the rich young man's attachments to his possessions. But how can this be so? I have so far
presented these errors very largely as philosophical errors-although I have at certain points gone a little further than thisand we are generally unaccustomed in our culture to think of
philosophy as having so interesting a potentiality as that for
moral danger. But in fact those errors identified in the encyclical
which I catalogued earlier are not only philosophical mistakes.
They are the articulation at the level of moral philosophy, at the
level, that is, of rational and reflective argument, of everyday
practical, moral errors and ones that are peculiarly influential in
our own particular culture. They can be usefully classified under
three headings. And in each of the three types of case particular

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mistakes are symptomatic of some more general habit of mind
and practice.
First then there are those mistakes which derive from distorted conceptions of the freedom and autonomy of the individual
self, mistakes which involve a repudiation of the Kantian standpoint just as much as of the Thomistic. One expression of these
conceptions is attachment to some notion of the self as constituted
in key part by its prerational and premoral choices, an attachment sometimes expressed in resentment and indignation that
moral standards should be thought to have any other authority
than those choices. From this point of view claims about the objectivity of the natural law are construed as attempts at an alien
imposition upon the self of something that it has not chosen. Another expression of this distorted view of the self is the conferring
upon the individual conscience of a sovereign independence of any
standards external to its own judgments. Both these distortions
are commonplaces of the justifications for actions and judgments
often offered in the everyday life of our culture, in families, in
workplaces, and in schools. What each presupposes is a denial
of just that connection between the objectivity of the law and the
autonomy and freedom of the self which is asserted in the encyclical. And therefore any philosophical theorizing which seems
to afford sufficient rational grounds for denying this connection
lends dangerous credibility to everyday error.
Secondly there are those mistakes which derive from the
tendency in our culture to conceive of all practical situations as
ones in which it is appropriate for rational agents to weigh benefits and costs, and in which every benefit and every cost can be
weighed against every other, so that each may achieve for her or
himself the greatest possible, or at least a satisfactory, balance of
benefits over costs. This generally has two bad consequences. If
and whenever changing social circumstances alter the balance of
costs and benefits, so that what was hitherto a profitable principle
for me to live by becomes an unprofitable one, then it also becomes, on this view, rational and right for me to exchange that
principle for another. So it comes about that no principles are
held unconditionally, no commitments are unqualified. But, insofar

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as this is so, human relationships are fundamentally altered. Unconditional trust in another becomes a form of moral superstition.
Temporariness becomes a crucial feature of the moral life and
the virtue of integrity, of a willingness and an ability to stand by
one's central commitments, whatever the consequences, becomes
thought of not as a virtue, but as a piece of moral irrationality.
So a consistent consequentialism in everyday life would entail
the loss of what is from the standpoint of the natural law a constitutive virtue of the mature self.
Another consequence of this same attitude, according to which
all rational decision issues from this kind of calculation of benefits and costs, is that what is in fact incommensurable is too often
treated as though it were commensurable and, when this is so,
what is presented in the guise of rational calculation in fact conceals, usually unwittingly, an underlying set of evaluative judgments of quite another kind. The apparently rational may thus
disguise, and often enough does disguise, arbitrariness of preference and power. And the self is once again injured by such concealment and deception.
To this someone may respond that I-and by implication the
encyclical-seem to have contradicted myself. I insisted a little
earlier, as does the encyclical, that the precepts of the natural law
are to be obeyed, whatever the consequences. But now I am
emphasizing, as also does the encyclical, the bad consequences of
certain errors which both derive from a disregard for and serve
to obscure the character of the natural law. How can I first deny
the relevance of consequences and then assert it? The answer is
that consequences are wholly irrelevant to the prohibitions of the
negative precepts of the natural law. The rational justification of
those precepts is not a matter of the consequences of disobeying
them and to justify my actions and omissions by reference to
what those precepts forbid is not to appeal to consequences.
Among the positive precepts of the natural law however is that
we should all have an abiding concern for the flourishing of our
families, our social and political order, and our culture. Here
right action does involve the promotion of certain consequences
and the avoidance of others, so far as that is possible. Some goods

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in these areas are indeed greater than others. Hence derives the
moral relevance of the consequences for familial, social, and cultural life of widespread disobedience to and confusion concerning
the natural law. There is no inconsistency.
It is just this type of concern for the condition of our culture,
as well as for individuals, which receives expression in the encyclical's insistence that for any culture to flourish those whose culture it is must recognize the need to call upon those intellectual
and moral resources which belong to human beings as such and
not only to what is specifically its own. The belief that our only
resources are those provided by and specific to our own particular
culture and the corresponding belief that the highest standards
that we can know are the highest standards of that culture sometimes present themselves in our own culture in the form of a
crude relativism. But even the sophisticated who disown any such
relativism in theory often behave in practice as if something very
like it were true, by their attitude to alien cultures, engaging with
those cultures only on assumptions that take for granted the
superiority of the dominant standards of our own culture. So far
too often, for example, North Americans treat human beings
everywhere as though it could be taken for granted that they are
primarily consumers of whatever the most advanced technology is
able to supply.
This attitude allows people to conceal from themselves what
they are and have become, for they lose sight of any standard
more fundamental than those upheld in their own culture by
which important aspects of that culture might be judged defective.
And without an adequate acknowledgment of the natural law,
which provides just such a standard, we can have no sound
basis for the kind of conversation with the representatives of alien
cultures in which we might learn how to see ourselves from their
point of view and so learn further about ourselves. Such failure
can "eliminate awareness of one's own limits and of one's own
sin" (Section 105, p. 127), so leading to a further deprivation
of the self. We can avoid such failure not only by calling upon
what is already ours, but also by recognizing what is to be learned
from a variety of other traditions, " the great religious and sapi-

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ential traditions of East and West, from which the interior and
mysterious workings of God's Spirit are not absent" (Section 94,
p. 116).
Relativism is then a third type of error identified in the encyclical which appears both in everyday life and as a contending
position in the enquiries of moral philosophy. The importance
which attaches to the identification of all three kinds of error is
thus both moral and intellectual. And, if moral philosophers are
to dispose themselves rightly in relation to those errors, they need
not only what can be afforded by their own enquiries, but much
more than this, that grace necessary for the redirection and
restoration of the self of which the gospel speaks. Each of these
three kinds of error turns out to be an attachment to something
which in the end deprives us not only of our good, that is, of
God, but also of something crucial in ourselves, something without which we will become incapable of achieving that which alone
in the end gives point and purpose to our activities. One central
moral and theological lesson of the encyclical is that, without understanding of and obedience to God's law, we become self-frustrating beings.
Yet, if this is so, if, that is to say, both our moral lives and our
philosophical enquiries are bound to be ultimately frustrated, unless we are able to learn what the gospel has to teach, then it
would be tragic and seemingly paradoxical, if what interposed itself between us and the gospel, obscuring what the gospel has to
say about these errors, was some aspect of the discipline of Catholic moral theology. The history of Catholic theology suggests
however that this can indeed happen and in two ways. One is by
some theologians making themselves independent of authoritative
Catholic teaching, so that for premises derived from that teaching they substitute premises of their own. And this is most notably and harmfully the case when they try to make themselves
the authority which declares what authoritative Catholic teaching
is. The other is by theologians deriving from such premises particular erroneous conclusions. How the pope and the bishops
should respond is for them and, happily, not for me. But were
they to have failed to respond, this would itself be a failure quite

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as great as that of any theological error. Even so, the significance
of theological errors becomes somewhat different, when those
errors providentially provide matter and occasion for a declaration of the truths of the gospel. One way of missing the point of
V eritatis Splendor would be to tie its reading too closely to the
work of those particular moral theologians whose writings may
have been the occasion for its composition. For, quite apart from
any errors that they may have committed, Veritatis Splendor is
and will remain a striking Christian intervention in moral debate,
at once authoritative teaching and a voice in that continuing philosophical conversation between Christianity and modernity to
which Pascal and Kierkegaard, Newman and Barth and von
Balthasar, have all been contributors. Veritatis Splendor continues the same evangelical and philosophical conversation with
secular modernity, and the appropriate initial response of each of
us to it should concern our own past and present defects and
errors rather than those of others. There is much work to be
done. 1

1 I am indebted for very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper
to my colleagues Alfred J. Freddoso, Ralph M. Mcinerny, and W. David
Solomon, as well as to the participants in a discussion sponsored by the John
Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, Communio, The
Thomist, and the American Maritain Society.

THREE NOTIONS OF RESOLUTIO
AND THE STRUCTURE OF
REASONING IN AQUINAS 1
EILEEN

c. SWEENEY

Boston College
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

R

ESOLUTIO,

better known by the English transliteration of its Greek counterpart, "analysis," has been
touted as " the conceptual model for some of the most
important ideas in the history of philosophy, including the history
of the methodology and philosophy of science." 2 But while resolution/analysis may be important in the histories of philosophy
and science, its own history is, to say the least, confused. A Renaissance commentator, Jeremias Triverius gives some sense of
this when, after giving a list of four methods of dialectic ( division, definition, demonstration, and resolution) ,3 he writes,
1 I have used the following abbreviations for works by Thomas Aquinas.
All translations of Aquinas are my own. Commentum in Quatuor Libros
Sententiarum (ed. Busa): In Sent; Compendium Theologiae (ed. Busa):
Comp Theo!; E:rpositio Super Librum Boethii De Trinitate (ed. Decker):
Exp de Trin; In Aristotelis Libros Posterium Analyticorum (ed. Marietti) :
In Anal Post; In Duodecem Libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis E:rpositio
(ed. Marietti): In Meta; In Librum Beati Dionysii De Divinis Nominibus
E:rpositio (ed. Marietti): In Div Nom; Sententia Libri Ethicorum Aristotelis
ad Nichomachum: In Ethic; Sententia Libri Politicormn Aristotelis (ed.
Leonine): In Pol; De Substantiis Separatis (ed. Busa): De Sub Sep; Summa
Contra Gentiles (ed. Leonine): SCG; Summa Theologiae (ed. Leonine): ST;
Questiones Disputatae de Veritate: QDV.
2 Jaakko
Hintikka and Unto Remes, The Method of Analysis (Boston:
D. Reidel, 1974), p. 1.
s These four methods of dialectic are also given by a number of ancient
commentators, for example, Ammonius (In Porphyrii Isagogen, in Commentaria in Aristotelem Graeca [hereafter, CAG], ed. Maximilian Wallies [Berlin, 1891], vol. IV, pt. 6, p. 34, 11. 19-20) and a later commentator, David
(Davidis Prolegomena et in Porphyrii Isagogen Commentarium, CAG, ed.
Adolf Busse [Berlin, 1904], vol. 18, p. 88, 11. 6-10).

197

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C. SWEENEY

Now anyone who has some knowledge of dialectical matters knows
what Definition, Division, and Demonstration are. There is no general agreement, however, so far as I can see, on Resolution. Some
identify it with Division. Others regard it as contrary [to Divi•
]
S!On
, ••• 4

Triverius, like many modern commentators, adds to, rather than
sorts out, the confusion, continuing, " And since each one is entitled to his opinion, I am now maintaining that Resolution is
contrary to Demonstration .... " 5 Many centuries before Triverius we find a similar ambiguity in Greek commentators on Aristotle, who outline several types of analysis. Unlike Triverius,
however, most seem untroubled by the multiple types; Ammonius
and David, without puzzlement, explain carefully that analysis is
the opposite of each of the other three methods. 6 The lack of
4 Jeremias Triverius, In texnhn [sic] Galeni clarissimi commentarii (Lyon,
1547), p. 14; cited and translated in N ea! Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of
Method (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), p. 106. Galen's opening remarks of the Ars medica, giving three methods of teaching (analysis,
synthesis, and definition) is a common locus for the discussion of resolution/
analysis in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Galen's contribution, at least
for Aquinas, seems to have been completely mediated by Medieval Arabic
commentators. Galen's own discussions are either incomplete, as in the opening passage to the Ars medica (in Claudii Galeni Opera Omnia, ed. C. G.
Kiihn, [Repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1965], vol. I, pp. 305-306), which
merely mentions the word, or are unclear accounts of analysis (Cf. Galen's
discussion of analysis in De Peccatorum, in Opera Omnia, vol. 5, ch. 5, pp.
80-81). On two of the Arabic commentaries' descriptions of analysis to accompany medieval translations of Galen, see below, nn. 80 & 83. On Galen's
supposed contribution to the notion of resolution and method in the development
of experimental science, see A. C. Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and the Origins
of Experimental Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), especially pp. 7680, and Gilbert, Renaissance Method, pp, 13-27, 44-46.
5 Triverius, In texnhn, p. 14; Gilbert, p. 106.
6 For analysis as the opposite of division, definition, and demonstration,
see
Ammonius, In Aristotelis Analyticorum Priorum Librum I Commentarium,
CAG, ed. Maximilian Wallies, (Berlin, 1891), vol. IV, pt. 6, p. 7, !. 29-p. 8, I. 9,
and David, In Porph, p. 90, 11. 4-24. For other descriptions of multiple types
of resolution often named " physical," " geometrical," " syllogistic," etc., see
Alexander of Aphrodisias, In Analyticorum Priorum Librum I Commentarium,
CAG, ed. Maximilian Wallies, (Berlin, 1883), vol. II, pt. 1, p. 7, 11. 12-27;
Ammonius, In Anal Pr, p. 5, 11. 10-34; Idem., In Porph, CAG, vol. IV, pt. 6,
p. 36, 11. 1-9; David, In Porph, p. 103, 11. 23-32; Ioannis Philoponi, In Aristotelis Analytica Priora Commentaria, CAG, ed. Adolf Busse, (Berlin 1888),
vol. XIII, p. 5, 11. 16-19.

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199

"general agreement" Triverius mentions, however, whether explicitly articulated or not, whether seen as a problem or not, runs
throughout the history of resolution. Though unarticulated by
Aquinas and only seen as a problem by his commentators,
Aquinas's use and discussion of resolution are a mirror of this
complexity and a mark of the importance and resilience of the
notion.
The choice of this particular chapter in this extraordinarily
complex history is, I think, defensible on several fronts. First,
most of the contemporary secondary literature on analysis ignores
medieval uses of resolution. It either leaps from ancient to
modern sources, or mentions thes·e medieval uses as " pale reflections " of its use as the " opposite of demonstration " (to use
Triverius's categories) originating in early Greek geometry; it
is this latter sense that seems to have most interested contemporary scholars. 7 When apparently different ancient uses or
sources of the term are mentioned, they are often only incidentally brought forward as examples of " misunderstandings " of true
analysis. 8 On the other hand, as I will try to show below, those
7 Hintikka and Remes, Method of Analysis, p. 11. For references to other
recent discussions of geometrical analysis, see below, section III. A. C.
Crombie's discussion of Robert Grosseteste's use of the resolutive method in
Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science (pp. 61-90) is
an exception to the silence about medieval uses, but Crombie's understanding
of resolution is subordinated to and slanted by his attempt to read into
Grosseteste the beginning of a scientific method of falsification. L. OeingHanhoff's article "Analyse/Synthese," in the Historisches Worterbuch der
Philosophie I (Darmstadt, 1971), pp. 232-248 gives a history which goes from
Plato to the 20th century and discusses some medieval uses. It is an amazing
effort, mentioning a huge number of authors, but it is a descriptive rather
than critical survey. I will discuss Oeing-Hanhoff's views of analysis in Aristotle and Aquinas below.
8 See, for example, Thomas Heath, A History of Greek Mathematics (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921), vol. I, pp. 291-292. Heath takes Proclus to be
"confused" for calling a method associated with Platonic dialectic analysis.
On Proclus's view of analysis and its connection to geometry, see below, sections II and III. Again, two exceptions are F. M. Cornford's "Mathematics
and Dialectic in the Republic VI-VII," Mind, vol. 41 (1932), pp. 37-52 and
Norman Gulley's "Greek Geometrical Analysis," Phronesis, vol. 3 (1958), pp.

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who discuss resolution in Aquinas seem to have little sense of
the long and vexed tradition of the term to describe reason's
movement, and hence give incomplete accounts of the notion in
Aquinas. Aquinas's understanding of resolution is rich and his
use varied, drawing on most of the major strands in the complicated fabric of the history of the idea; thus, to understand his
uses and sources is to understand much about the history of
resolution. Secondly, this episode serves as an example of the
coexistence and almost seamless intertwining of philosophical
terminologies in medieval and specifically Thomistic texts. 9 It
reminds us of the complex nature of Aquinas's relationship to his
many sources, named and unnamed. Though his notions of resolution are drawn from diverse accounts of reasoning and reality,
they are not set in opposition to one another; rather the dissonances between the multiple strains in the tradition Aquinas inherits he exploits to his own ends by contextualizing and ordering the different senses.
Lastly, while traditionally resolution/analysis has not been seen
as a major category in Aquinas, it is important in two respects.
First, Aquinas describes the path of reasoning in metaphysics as
resolutive, and in this context describes two types of resolution
corresponding to the two different names and tasks of this science
as "metaphysics" and "divine science." 10 As such, to understand what Aquinas means by resolution is a key part of understanding what he means by metaphysics and its task. Thus discussions of resolution are an obligatory part of discussions of the
nature of metaphysics. 11 My interest here is to provide back1-14. Cornford tries to connect analysis as a method of Platonic and Neoplatonic dialectic with geometrical analysis, and Gulley includes a survey of
texts on analysis from the Greek commentators and Albinus and Proclus.
For further discussion of these two interpretations of geometrical analysis, see
below, section III.
9 For this way of thinking about this issue I am indebted to Mark D.
Jordan's "The Plurality of Technical Terminologies in Thomas Aquinas," a
paper given at the University of Notre Dame.
10 See Exp de Trin, q. 6, a. 1, sol. c, discussed below, in section II.
11 See for example John Wippel, " ' First Philosophy' According to Thomas
Aquinas," in Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.:
The Catholic University of America Press, 1984), pp. 55-67; ]. Doig, Aquinas

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OF RESOLUTIO

201

ground and context to this description of metaphysics as proceeding according to two kinds of resolution, in the form both of a
discussion of the other senses of resolution, and of the sources
and implications of metaphysical resolution. Secondly, resolution
or analysis is one of the most consistent terms Aquinas uses to
describe the path of reasoning (ratio) from one thing to another,
and, along with composition, division, and abstraction, is one of
the most important ways Aquinas specifies the essentially discursive character of human reason. Hence Aquinas's account of
resolution is an important aspect of his account of human knowledge, and affords an interesting perspective on that view of knowing because resolution/analysis is, as we will see below, a part
of many different philosophical traditions. Thus, a grasp of how
analysis works in Aquinas brings him into conversation with
those traditions in a way that an examination of other aspects of
his description of reason, because they are not as widely and diversely (and almost equivocally) used, might not.
It is exactly this complicated background and diversity of uses
which causes a fundamental textual problem in the Thomistic
corpus : the starting and end points which define resolution
change dramatically and without notice when we move around in
Aquinas's texts in much the same ways described by Triverius
as well as ancient commentators. In some passages Aquinas defines resolutio as the movement from something complex to its
simple components. In these places, resolutio is the first movement of reason which is followed by compositio, the movement
from components to compound. In this sense, resolution seems
to be a breaking down into parts, and, thus, a kind of division,
like the first description given by Triverius. 12 Though I will
on Metaphysics: A Historico-Doctrinal Study of the Commentary on the Metaphysics (The Hague, 1972), pp. 64-76; Cornelio Fabro, La nozione metafisica di partecipazione secondo S. Tomaso d'Aquino, 3rd. ed. (Turin: Societa
editrice internazionale, 1963), pp. 80-81, and "The Intensive Hermeneutics of
Thomistic Philosophy," Review of Metaphysics 2713 (1974), pp. 463, 486-489;
Jan A. Aertsen, "Method and Metaphysics: The via resolutionis in Thomas
Aquinas," Modern Schoolman 63 (1989), pp. 405-418.
12 E.g., In Pol, I, lee. 1.

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argue below that the root sense of this kind of resolution is the
physical division into independent and atomic parts, e.g., of a
sentence into its words and letters, this sense also includes the
division of a thing into its logical or metaphysical " parts," e.g.,
of a genus into its species, of an essence into genus and differentia, and of a thing into its essence, properties, and accidents or
into matter and form. These are also " parts " of a whole, but
not parts into which a thing can be actually divided.
In other places, Aquinas describes resolutio as the movement
from effects, conclusions, and particulars toward causes, premises,
and universals and as following the opposite path of compositio.18
This usage seems roughly equivalent to the view of resolution
that, again using Triverius's categories, opposes it to division
because, unlike Platonic/ Aristotelian division, which moves
" down " from genus to species, this movement goes back " up "
from particular to general, species to genus, and effect to cause,
following the path in N eoplatonism of the return of all things to
the One.14 In still other places, Aquinas describes counsel as proceeding " resolutively " since it assumes the end and works backward from it toward what can and should be done immediately.16
This last type seems to mirror Triverius's own preference, i.e.,
resolution as opposed to demonstration or, as its opposite is sometimes called in geometrical texts, " synthesis." As the opposite of
demonstration/synthesis, which moves from premises (ideally,
axioms, postulates, definitions) to conclusions, this resolution
moves from conclusions to premises. Translated into the realm
of practical reasoning, then, it moves from the end to be achieved,
a " conclusion " in the realm of doing rather than knowing,
toward "premises," i.e., actions which will precede that end.
While I agree with others who have examined the role of resolution in Aquinas's thought that a common thread ties all his
uses of the term together, I want to insist that those threads are
drawn from truly diverse sources and that the fabric Aquinas
is E.g., Exp de Trin, q. 6, a. 1, sol. c.
1 • For Plato's description of division, see Sophist 253b-d; Phaedru.s 265d266b; Philebus 18b-d. For Aristotle's, see Posterior Analytics, II, 5, 13.
15 E.g., ST I-II, q. 14, a. 5.

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weaves from them gains its interest and character from these differences. Edmund Dolan, for example, concludes that " there is
a resolutive mode in a general or loose sense every time there is
a movement from what is complex or composite to what is simple, or from effects to causes." 16 But if one fails to distinguish
between the different ways in which things can be related as simple and complex and between the different ways in which one can
move from conclusion to premises, it is very difficult to reconcile
various texts in Aquinas. Dolan himself notes that while Aquinas
claims that the speculative disciplines are "resolutive" in mode
and the practical sciences "compositive," Aquinas nonetheless
maintains that taking counsel, an undertaking of practical reasoning, is " resolutive " and that perfect demonstrative syllogisms, surely a speculative use of reason, are " compositive." 11
In his paper on analysis and synthesis, Louis Regis juxtaposes
without comment texts from both Aquinas and his apparent
sources in which resolution is described both as a method of discovery and as preceding composition with others in which he sees
it as a way of judgment, following composition and confirming
what has already been discovered. 18 Jan Aertsen's recent article
16 Edmund Dolan, " Resolution and Composition in Speculative and Practical
Discourse," Laval Theologique et Philosophique, vol. 6 (1950), p. 62.
1 7 Dolan, pp. 10-12. Dolan calls demonstrative syllogisms "compositive"
because, like composition, they proceed from causes to effects. For descriptions
of composition in these terms in Aquinas see, for example, Exp de Trin, q. 6,
a. 1, sol. 3 and ST I-II, q. 14, a. 5. Dolan discusses many Thomistic texts in
detail and concludes that the contradiction disappears when one distinguishes
between "strict " and " loose " senses of resolution and composition. Practical
discourse is only resolutive in a loose sense because its formal object is the
operable and is, hence, complex; speculative discourse is compositive only in
a loose sense, on the other hand, because its object or "end" is always simpler
causes (pp. 61-62). While there are elements of Dolan's explanation that are
helpful and convincing, in order to make his case Dolan is required to work
very hard to develop a very complex set of senses and their interrelationship,
the very complexity of which seems problematic and still leaves unexplained
why Aquinas would develop such an elaborate set of uses for the term. Cf.
Oeing-Hanhoff, p. 238, who repeats but passes over in complete silence the
apparent contradiction implicit in these two claims.
18 Louis-M.
Regis, O.P., "Analyse et synthese dans !'oeuvre de saint
Thomas," Studia M edievalia ( Bruges, 1948), pp. 303-330. Regis cites a passage from Calcidius in which resolution is clearly the first movement and one

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distinguishes between "judicative" resolution, and resolution
secundum rem and secundum rationem, but also states that resolution " is always directed to a terminus which in a certain respect is first," without explaining the differences in those " respects." 19
First, then, I will delineate what I take to be Aquinas's three
main sources: 1) Calcidius's Commentary on the Timaeus and
its 12th century commentators (in turn based on certain texts in
Aristotle) ; 2) N eoplatonism, most notably Proclus and Scotus
Erigena; and 3) Greek geometry, filtered through Aristotle. I
will in the process describe how these sources would most likely
have been transmitted to Aquinas-Calcidius through 12th century physical texts and commentaries on Boethius, reiterated in
Bonaventure and Albert; Greek geometrical method through
Aristotle and Albert the Great; and Proclus through PseudoDionysius, Erigena, and again, Albert the Great. I contend that
from Scotus Erigena where it clearly follows composition. See especially pp.
305-307, 308-309. I am indebted to Regis for locating these and other mentions
of resolutio by Boethius and Albert the Great. Cf. Isaac's account of resolution in Aquinas which attempts to get around differences in the descriptions of
resolution by arguing that there are two resolutions of the same type, resolutions of judgment which seem to differ only in producing varying degrees of
certainty. See J. Isaac, "La Notion de Dialectique chez Saint Thomas,"
Revue des sciences philosophiques et thealogiques 34 (1950), pp. 486-493.
19 Aertsen, p. 408. I find Aertsen's
interpretation of the text in the commentary on Boethius's De Trinitate (q. 6, a. 3, sol. c) which distinguishes between whether the simpler, more universal principles reached by resolution
are intrinsic (secundum rationem) or extrinsic causes (secundum rem) helpful. However, I argue below that these two kinds of resolution are different
versions of only one of the types of analysis I will discuss here, N eoplatonic
analysis. Aertsen, perhaps because concerned with the method of metaphysics,
does not discuss any of the passages that articulate the other two senses which
I have found in the Thomistic corpus. See also L. Oeing-Hanhoff, "Die
Methoden der Metaphysik im Mittelalter," in Die M etaphysik im Mittelalter,
!hr Ursprung und ihre Bedeutung (Berlin, 1963), pp. 71-91, to whom Aertsen
is primarily responding. Oeing-Hanhoff argues for two types of resolution in
Aquinas, " conceptual " and "natural " resolution, corresponding to resolution
secitndum rationem and secundum rem. Aertsen objects to the association of
"conceptual " analysis (begriffs-analyse) with resolutio secundum rationem
because he thinks it implies that the categories resulting from this analysis
are merely logical and not real (Aertsen, pp. 412-414).

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Calcidius, Proclus, and Greek geometry are the main sources for
Aquinas not so much because they would have been his immediate
sources, as because they are the originators (or at least the
clearest proponents) of these distinct senses of analysis as a
technical term describing a path of reasoning which reappear in
Aquinas. Though there are similar uses in Aristotle, I do not
take Aquinas's debt to be mainly or directly to Aristotle because
such an appeal would not explain Aquinas's more systematically
technical use of analysis, nor the more sharply different versions
of analysis which occur in the long tradition of analysis and in
Aquinas's text but not in Aristotle.
One might think that there is some pattern of change discernible from a chronological consideration of Aquinas's works
for the diverse uses of analysis. But even a cursory juxtaposition
of senses and texts reveals that certain senses are not restricted
to certain periods of Aquinas's work. The N eoplatonic sense appears in the early exposition of Boethius's De Trinitate ( 12581259), in De Veritate (1256-1259), and the later Summa Theologiae (1268-1272) and Commentary on the Divine Names
( 1265-67) ; the Calcidian/ Aristotelian sense is found in the later
commentaries on the Metaphysics and on the Politics ( 12691272), and in the Compendium Theologiae (1269-1273); lastly,
the geometrical sense occurs in both the Commentary on the
Nicomachean Ethics ( 1271) and the Summa Theologiae. 20 Thus
all three senses seem to have been retained until the end of
Aquinas's career. If there is any pattern here, it seems rather to
be that Aquinas was more influenced by the language and metaphysical and noetic assumptions of the texts on which he was
commenting; he gives strongly N eoplatonic descriptions of analysis commenting on Boethius and Dionysius, and strongly Aristotelian/Calcidian accounts while commenting on Aristotle. Notwithstanding this, however, all three senses occur in Aquinas's
autonomous works.
2 0 These
dates are taken from James
d'Aquino: His Life, Thought, and Work
1974)' pp. 355-405.

Weisheipl, O.P., Friar Thomas
(GMden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,

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Since I do not, however, take Aquinas's account to be merely
syncretistic, I want to argue, secondly, that what ties the different
processes together for him is more than the term, or even that in
some vague sense the different traditions all describe resolution
as movement from simple to complex or " last " to " first." 21
While there seem to be no grounds for associating different
senses with different periods in Aquinas's work, there is a coherent way to understand the apparent inconsistency in Aquinas's
texts. I want to suggest, first, that the different uses Aquinas
makes of resolutio are each different specifications of the nature
of human reason as discursive designed for distinct contexts. But
each type reiterates this discursive and dialectical structure, beginning from and returning to a " starting-point " known incompletely and confusedly at first, and returned to with more distinct
and complete knowledge. Secondly, I will argue that behind this
rather loose commonality, the various types are ordered in terms
of the type of discourse with which they are associated, practical
or theoretical, physical or metaphysical, and the ontological structure they uncover and imply.

I. Aristotle and Calcidius : · Resolutio as Division
The first sense of resolution as a kind of division or reduction
is derived most purely from Calcidius's Commentary on the
Timaeus, which in turn (and less purely) seems to be derived
from Aristotle. Let me begin with Calcidius and then proceed
to Aristotle and Aquinas. Calcidius's clearest account of resolution occurs during his discussion of the methods or theories which
will bring us to a discovery of principles. He writes,
If, by means of our intellect, we wish to take away these qualities and
quantities, these shapes and figures, and then consider what keeps
all these things inseparably together and contains them, we shall find
that there is nothing else than that which we are looking for, i.e.,
matter, and herewith we have found the material principle. This
then is one of the two possible methods of arguing, called resolutio.22
21 Cf. Dolan, p. 9, and Aertsen,
22 "

p. 408.
Si ergo has qualitates et quantitates, etiam formas figurasque volemus

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The opposite movement, compositio, which " follows resolutio as
union follows separation," works by reconstructing the object, by
adding back in, if you will, the genera, qualities, and forms which
have been separated from it. 23
This type of resolution is mentioned by Alexander of Aphrodisias and Ammonius commenting on the Prior Analytics; these
two commentators, like others, insert a discussion of " analysis "
into their introduction to the Analytics under the rubric of explaining Aristotle's titles to the two Analytics (an explanation
Aristotle himself never gives). 24 Among several senses, they describe an analusis (which Ammonius calls physiological analysis)
of complex living beings into the elements and into matter and
form. 25 The same process, I think, reappears in Thierry of
Chartres and Herman of Carinthia's De Essentiis to describe a
physical process analogous to reason's taking away of forms until
one arrives at matter; Thierry, commenting on Boethius's De
Trinitate, describes resolution as arriving at matter, and comratione animi separare, tum demum deliberare, quid sit illud, quod haec omnia
inseparabiliter adhaerens complexumque contineat, inveniemus nihil aliud esse
quam id quod quaerimus, silvam; inventa igitur est origo silvestris. Et hoc
quidem est unum duarum probationum genus, quod resolutio dicitur." Calcidius,
Timaeus a Calcidio translatus commentarioque instructus, eds. W. J. Verdenius
and J. H. Waszink, in Plato latinus, vol. IV (London & Leiden: Warburg
Institute and E. J. Brill, 1962), sec. 303, p. 305; translated by J. C. M. Van
Winden, O.F.M. in Calcidius on Matter: His Doctrine and Sources (Leiden:
E. J. Brill, 1959), p. 132.
23 Calcidius, In Tim, sec. 304; eds. Verdenius and Waszink, p. 305; trans.
Van Winden, p. 134.
2 4' Aristotle does use analysis in reference to the titles of the Analytics but
without further explanation. On the explanations offered by Boethius, Albert
the Great, and Thomas for the title of the Analytics, see below nn. 70-71.
25 Cf. Alexander, In Anal Pr, p. 7, 11. 17-20: "alla kai ho ta suntheta somata
anagon eis ta, hapla somata analusei chretai kai ho ton haplon hekaston eis ta,
ex hon autois to einai, hoper estin hule kai eidos, analuei "; Ammonius, In Anal
Pr, p. 5, 11. 14-19 : " estin de kai para tois phusiologois sunthesis kai analusis,
. . . analusis de kath' hen apo ton suntheton epi ta hapla erchontai, oion ho
anthropos ek ton tessaron chumon, oi tetra chumoi ek ton tessaron stoicheion."
Oeing-Hanhoff refers to this as "natural analysis" (" Analyse/Synthese," p.
247).

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position arriving at God and form. 26 De Essentiis describes resolution as follows : " Every resolution of a composite thing is a
resolution into mixtures and finally of the mixtures into the four
general principles [i.e., the elements], which, because they are
simple, cannot be resolved further." 27
Explaining that it is very difficult to come to a clear conception of matter since matter per se does not exist, Calcidius states
that in order to arrive at such a conception. " ... one eliminates
all bodies which, in the womb of matter, are formed in a rich
variety by resolutio from one to another .... " 28 Even though
Calcidius is describing the same rational process of elimination
he calls resolution elsewhere, here he uses resolutio to describe
the physical transformation of one body or element into another,
the same process for which the related term, dissolutio, is sometimes substituted in 12th century texts. 29 Both the easy shifting
from resolutio to dissolutio and a strongly Calcidian description
of analysis also occurs in Bonaventure. Bonaventure describes
two ways in which a thing may be corrupted: " by dissolution, or
2 6 Thierry of Chartres, Commentum super Boethii librum De Trinitate II,
in Commentaries on Boethius by Thierry of Chartres and His School, ed. Nikolaus M. Haring (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1971),
sec. 23, p. 75. Thierry writes, " Per resolutionem invenitur materia, per compositionem vero Deus et forma."
27 " Omnis autem compositi resolutio in commixtiones, commixtionum demum in generalia .iiii. principia, que, quoniam simplicia sunt, ulterius resolvi
non possunt." Herman of Carinthia, De Essentiis, ed. and trans. Charles
Burnett (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982), p. 60vD.
28 ". • • hoc est ut universis corporibus, quae intra gremium silvae varie
formantur mutua ex alio in aliud resolutione, singillatim ademptis .... " Calcidius, fo Tim, sec. 274b; eds. Verdenius and Waszink, p. 279; ed. Van Winden,
p. 49. Rather than use Van Winden's translation of resolutio as "transition,''
I have retained the Latin resolutio.
29 See, for example, Clarenbald of Arras's Tractatus super Librum Boethii
De Trinitate, in Life and W arks of Clarenbald of Arras, ed. Nikolaus Haring,
S.A.C. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1965), sec. 21, p.
93, in which the process of abstracting qualities is described as dissolutio. Cf.
Clarenbald, Tractatus super librum Genesis, also found in Haring, Commentaries on Boethius by Thierry of Chartres, sec. 21, p. 235. Here Clarenbald
writes, "Quicquid enim est ultimum in dissolutione, primum est in conpositione."

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the separation of the principles of its composition or its parts, and
by corruption of the form " ; the same passage goes on to describe,
in contrast to the corruption of the form, the resolutio of an
animal into the four elements or of the elements into one another. 30 It is an instructive variation since it captures the main
force of this kind of resolution as the dissolving of a composite
and as closely associated with physics and physical change.
This notion of resolution seems in part to be derived from
Aristotle's discussion in the Metaphysics ( 1029al0-15) of the
" taking away" ( aphairesis) of all forms and qualities until one
arrives at matter, and later on of the analusis of material compounds into their ultimate matter or original constituents
( 1044a22-25). 31 I say it is only " in part " derived from these
passages in Aristotle for three reasons. First, Aristotle uses the
term analusis and its derivatives in many contexts; his understanding of it is fluid and non-technical (except when referring
to geometrical analysis), showing in these different passages a
kinship with each of the three senses. 32 Secondly, an examination
of the context of these passages in the Metaphysics shows that
Aristotle himself rejects this "method" as the way to arrive at
metaphysical principles. In this passage Aristotle is in fact outlining the aporia that results from attempting to arrive at primary
substance by this kind of mental decomposition or " taking
3 0 Bonaventure, In Sententiarum Lib. IV, d. 43, a. 1, q. 4. "Et propter hoc
dicunt alii aliter, quod duplex est corruptio: quaedam per dissolutionem sive
separationem principiorum componentium sive partium; quaedam per corruptionem f ormae. ... Certum est enim, quod forma carnis humanae corrumpitur,
generatur inde vermis et serpens; et sicut potest corrumpi in carnem serpentis
vel alterius animalis, sic resolvi potest, sicut et illus animal, etiam in quatuor
elementa, et unumquodque elementorum corrumpi in aliud, et ita corrumpuntur
formae mixti et elementi." Cf. Bonaventure, ln Sententiarum Lib. II, d. 8,
dubia 3; d. 21, a. 1, q. 3.
31 Cf. Stephen Gersch, Middle Platonism and N eo-P latonism: The Latin
Tradition, 2 vols. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), I,
p. 438, n. 70.
32 For a very thorough and persuasive account of the richness and fluidity
of Aristotle's uses of analysis, see the forthcoming book by Patrick Byrne,
Analysis and Science in Aristotle, especially chapter one which examines many
of these passages.

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away " of forms until one reaches matter. The paradox that
would result, Aristotle argues, is that the substance of a thing
would be itself completely undetermined and incapable of separate
existence ( 1028b35-1029a30). 33 And even though analysis as
division or decomposition is used without such qualifications in
Aristotle, these uses occur in the context of physical and, even
more specifically, elemental change, not change in more complex,
animate beings. H
Though I cannot fully defend this here, it seems to me that in
the context of Aristotle's larger theories of physical change and
metaphysical principles, analysis as decomposition or division is
rejected as the path to ultimate principles and explanations; this
kind of analysis is the sort offered by the ancient physicists who
arrived at the various elements as the ultimate principle of things,
views Aristotle consistently rejects, both as physical and metaphysical theories. This, of course, is the ultimate direction of
Aristotle's search for principles in books seven and eight of the
Metaphysics. After abandoning matter as the primary substance,
Aristotle continues his search for substance and principles, by
examining form and the " parts" of form which are contained in
the definition. The material principles, Aristotle argues, are that
into which the concrete thing is " analyzed " or " resolved," but
only the parts of the form are included in the definition ( 1034b201035b2). Further, returning in book eight to the issue of parts
and definition, Aristotle argues that these principles, form and
matter, are not really "parts" because they form a real unity in
the concrete thing, not the unity of a mere heap ( 1045a51045b7). Calcidius, however, extracts the notion of analysis or
resolution into material parts and elements from Aristotle and
pairs it with composition, a process which " reconstructs " the
complex out of its parts.
aa Aquinas makes an even stronger argument for the same conclusion on the
basis of our inability to understand matter by trying to arrive at it in this
fashion. See De Substantiis Separatis, c. 6.
84 See for example, Meteorology, 339a36-b2; On the Cosmos, 394b17-18; On
the Generation of Animals, 724b27-28 and 726b25-29. I am indebted to Patrick Byrne for these passages. See his Analysis and Science in Aristotle, ch. 1.

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The blurring of the distinction between Aristotle's more complex use of analysis and Calcidius's literal interpretation of it is
evident in some of Aquinas's uses of analysis in this sense. On
the one hand, the descriptions of resolutio in Aquinas which most
closely resemble those of Calcidius occur in his commentaries on
Aristotle and Aquinas attributes this notion of resolution/analysis to Aristotle. On the other hand, the passages Aquinas explains and refers to in Aristotle do not exactly articulate this
sense of analysis. Both these elements are present in a passage
commenting on Aristotle's Metaphysics. Noting the difficulty of
knowing whole and part simultaneously, Aquinas describes two
ways of arriving at truth, the first of which is resolution " by
which we go from what is comr,lex to what is simple or from a
whole to a part, as it is said in Book I of the Physics that the
first objects of our knowledge are confused wholes." 35 Aquinas
then describes a second, complementary path of composition, by
which we move from simple parts to complex wholes. First,
Aquinas is describing the breakdown of a whole into its actual
parts, while Aristotle in the opening of the Physics explains that
moving from " confused wholes " is like the process of specifying
and clarifying our perceptions ( 184a25). For example, Aristotle
explains, children first call all men " father " or all women
" mother " and later they learn to distinguish individuals
(184b13-16). This process seems to be different from Calcidius's
notion of analysis as the stripping away of forms to arrive at
matter. First, Aristotle does not call this process "analysis," and
he clearly has in mind the movement from general to particular,
not literally that from whole to part or from form to elements and
matter. Secondly, Aquinas adds what we do not find anywhere
in Aristotle, the notion of a complementary process of recomposition, which seems to be Calcidius's contribution.
35 "Est autem duplex via procedendi ad cognitionem veritatis.
Una quidem
per modum resolutionis, secundum quam procedimus a compositis ad simplicia,
et a toto ad partem, sicut dicitur in primo Physicorum, quod confusa sunt
prius nobis nota." In Meta, II, lee. 1. Cf. Aristotle's Physics, I, 1, 184a22-b10.

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Perhaps the most striking passage in which Aquinas takes his
source to be Aristotle but in which he articulates a Calcidian
sense of analysis is in the opening lectio on the Politics. Here
Aquinas elaborates Aristotle's claim that governments really differ in kind:
Just as in other things in order to know the whole, it is necessary to
divide the composite until one arrives at incomposite things, i.e.,
until one arrives at indivisibles which are the smallest parts of the
whole: for example, in order to know sentences, it is necessary to
divide until [one arrives J at letters, and to know natural, mixed
bodies, it is necessary to divide them until [one arrives] at the elements. 36
So also, then, Aquinas continues, in political science one must divide the state into the basic units of which it is composed, an analysis which will reveal the differences between one constitution
and another. This process of dividing a composite until one
reaches its indivisible elements Aquinas calls resolutio and the
"first work" necessary for knowledge of composite things; it is
followed by the via compositionis, in which "from indivisible
principles already known we judge of those things which are
caused by the principles." 37 Thus "composition" follows resolution in this sense, which in light of the simple components/principles we now understand the complex as complex. This analogy
between analysis and the breakdown of sentences into words and
letters is not used by Aristotle, but is by his commentators,
Alexander and Ammonius, and, again, it makes of analysis a
36 " Quad sicut in aliis rebus ad cognitionem totius necesse est dividere compositum usque ad incomposita, id est usque ad indivisibilia quae sunt minime
partes totius : puta ad cognoscendum orationem, necesse est dividere usque ad
litteras, et ad cognoscendum corpus naturale mixtum, necesse est dividere usque
ad elementa." In Pol I, lee. 1. Cf. Alexander of Aphrodisias's example of the
analysis of a logos into syllables and letters (Alexander, In Anal Pr, p. 7; 11.
20-22) and Ammonius's example of analysis of a body into its elements (Ammonius, In Anal Pr, p. 5; 11. 14-19).
3 1 My emphasis. " Ad cognitionem compositorum Primo opus est via resolutionis, ut scilicet dividamus compositum usque ad individua; postmodum vero
necessaria est via compositionis, ut ex principiis indivisibilibus iam notis diiudicemus de rebus quae ex principiis causantur." In Pol I, lee. 1.

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literal division or decomposition, a notion of analysis which has
no clear and unambiguous parallels in Aristotle. Further, the
coupling of resolution with recomposition is never found in Aristotle, but only in Calcidius and in some of the Greek commentators on Aristotle; hence, there must be a source additional
to Aristotle himself.
Though the issue of whether Aristotle or Calcidius is the true
" parent" of this notion of analysis in Aquinas is complicated, I
would like to put forward the following compromise answer. The
formulae Aquinas uses to describe this sort of resolution (the examples, and coupling resolution with composition) are clearly indebted not directly to Aristotle but to Calcidius (or to someone
who read him, or someone whom Calcidius read), but the way
in which Aquinas understands these formulae owes more to Aristotle. This follows, I think, from the passage in Aristotle with
which Aquinas associates this type of analysis, the opening of the
Physics. The opening chapter of the Physics introduces Aristotle's search for the "elements and principles" which will explain nature and, more specifically, change ( 184a22-184bl4).
Nature and change are the "confused wholes" which Aristotle
will bring into focus by specifying their elements/principles,
which turn out to be matter, form, and privation. Aristotle is
engaged in intellectual analysis to arrive at principles which are
not physical parts into which a thing can be actually divided, but
which are nonetheless constitutive of a thing's nature; this process does not, as it does for Calcidius, follow the steps of physical
dissolution.
Aquinas's analogies for this process are physical dissolution or
literal division, but his meaning seems to be broader, and to apply to Aristotle's search for principles, in which one is involved
in conceptual analysis rather than a literal reduction to elements
or components. That Aquinas grasps this broader notion of this
type of resolution is clear from his use of resolution at times as
the equivalent of abstraction. In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas
describes the process of abstraction, whereby the intellect can ascend to a higher level of understanding than the senses which

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cannot sense anything but the individual, concrete object, as involving the resolution of the concrete thing into form and matter :
" For while [the intellect] knows the thing as having a form in
matter, it nonetheless resolves the composite into these [form
and matter], and considers this form in itself." 38 Further equating abstraction as the grasp of the form with resolution, Aquinas
continues, our intellects " apprehend the concrete form and concrete esse by abstraction, by a kind of resolution." 39 Thus
Aquinas holds the view that the reasoning process is the same in
structure, whether the components one reaches by this type of
analysis are or can be actually distinct (like material parts or elements) or are real but not independent (like matter and form;
species and difference). 40
Whether this breakdown of a complex is literal or conceptual,
this sense of resolutio shares two elements with the Calcidian/
Aristotelian account-one metaphysical, one epistemologicalwhich, we will see below, are not present in other accounts of
resolution in Aquinas. First, the examples used to illustrate the
method of resolution Aristotle will follow-the breakdown of a
sentence into letters and a body into elements-manifest the process as a division of a whole into its constitutive parts. Thus,
metaphysically one is moving " down " the ontological ladder to38 ST I, q. 12, a. 4, ad 3. Cf. Comp Theol, c. 62. "Una quidem secundum
abstractionem formae a materia, in qua quidem proceditur ab eo quod formalius
est ad id quod est materialius: nam id quod est primum subiectum ultimo remanet, ultima vero forma primo removetur." Aquinas continues with a second
sense of resolution, which he describes as " the abstraction of universal from
particular, which is in a way the opposite in order from the first, for first
the material, individuating conditions are removed, so that one arrives at that
which is common [Alia vero resolutio est secundum abstractionem universalis
a particulari, que quodam modo contrario ordine se habet: nam prius removetur
conditiones materiales individuantes, ut accipiatur quod commune est]." See
also Dolan's discussion of these passages, pp. 21-31. Cf. SCG II, c. 100 n. 4.
39 ST I, q. 12, a. 4, ad 3.
As we will see below, Aquinas distinguishes between resolution secundum
rem and secundum rationem within which what I will call the second sense of
resolution, the N eoplatonic sense. See Exp de Trin, q. 6, a. 1. What I am essentially arguing for here is that he implicitly makes the same distinction for
this sense of resolution as well.

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ward the parts of a complex whole, whether those " parts " are
literal parts, like letters in relation to words, or conceptual parts,
like form and matter. And for Aquinas, even when resolution qua
abstraction arrives at form rather than matter or material parts
or elements, it is still a breakdown of what is " higher" ontologically into what is lower because all created forms are composed
with matter and/ or esse and are the incomplete " parts " of a
more complete, subsistent whole.41 At the farthest remove from
literal division, this sense stretches to include the movement from
general to specific, i.e., the process described at the opening of
the Physics as focussing on and specifying "confused wholes,"
which is still a kind of movement down the conceptual ladder.
Secondly, resolutio is clearly viewed as a preliminary movement
of reason, a first sorting out of a complex and indistinctly known
whole. As such it is not an end in itself but a preparation for
the rebuilding, the compositio, of the whole out of its parts.
II. N eoplatonism and Resolutio as Reversion :
Resolutio Opposed to Division
When we move to another set of passages describing the movements of reason as resolution and composition, we notice that this
second sense is the opposite of the first in terms of its implications
for metaphysics and knowledge. Unlike the first sense, in the
order of knowing this resolution follows its complement, compositio, and its movement in metaphysical terms is not downJ the
ladder of being toward simple components, material or formal,
but rather upward toward higher, more complete, and more general causes and principles.
The peculiarities of this sense of resolutio are peculiarities
which, I think, flow from its connection with a N eoplatonic metaphysics and epistemology. In Proclus and Scotus Erigena resolutio takes its place along with the other methods or movements
of reason as imitating the movement of being to and from the
41 On the fundamental incompleteness of all simple " parts " of created beings
see I Sent d. 8, q. 5, a. 1 and SCG I, c. 17.

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One. In the Platonic Theology Proclus introduces the dialectical
method of resolution ( analusis) as follows : " Our dialectic makes
great use of division and analysis as the principal means of knowledge and as imitating the procession of beings from the One and
their reversion back again .... " 42 What is here formalized by
Proclus and, as we will see below, Erigena, seems to draw on
Plotinus's less technical description of dialectic as first dividing to
reach the forms, then "weaving together" the intelligible universe from these primary genera, and finally resolving or analysing back to the starting point. 43
Scotus Erigena gives a more complete description of the task
of resolutio as the return and collection of what has been divided:
There is no rational division, whether it be of essence into genera
or of genus into species and individuals or of the whole into its
parts . . . or of the universe into those divisions which right reason
contemplates therein, that cannot again be brought back again by the
same stages through which the division had previously ramified into
multiplicity, until it arrive at that One which remains inseparably itself from which that division took its origin. 44
42 My emphasis. "he de par' hemin dialektike ta men polla diairesesi chretai
kai analusesin os protourgois epistemais kai mimoumenais ten ton onton
proodon ek tou henos kai pros auto palin epistrophen." Proclus, Theologie
Platonicienne, ed. H. D. Saffrey and L. G. Westerink (Paris: Societe
d'Edition, 1968), vol. I, Bk. I, 9, p. 40. On the relationship between division
and procession see A. C. Lloyd, " Procession and Division in Proclus," Soul
and the Structure of Being in Late Neo-Platonism: Syrianus, Proclus and
Simpliciits, ed. H. J. Blumenthal and A. C. Lloyd (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1982), pp. 18-45.
43 "Tei diairesei tei Platonos chromene men kai eis diakrisin ton eidon,
chromene de kai eis to ti esti, chromene de kai epi ta prota yene, kai ta ek
touton noeros plekousa, heos an dielthei pan to noeton, kai anapalin analuousa,
eis ho an ep' archen elthei .... " Plotinus, Enneads, I, 3, 4; ed. Loeb, vol. I,
p. 158, 11. 12-17.
44 " Nulla enim rationabilis divisio est sive essentiae in genera sive generis
in formas et numeros sive totius in partes . . . sive universitatis in ea quae
vera ratio in ipsa contemplatur quae non iterum possit redigi per eosdem
gradus per quos divisio prius fuerat multiplicata donec perveniatus ad illud
unum inseparabiliter in se ipso manens ex quo ipsa divisio primordium sumpsit."
Iohannis Scotti Eriugenae, Periphyseon, ed. and trans. I. A. Sheldon-Williams,
4 vols. (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1968), II, 526a-b.
Cf. Erigena's Expositiones super hierarchiam caelestem S. Dionysii, in Patri-

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Since resolutio parallels the return of diverse and complex things
into their higher and simpler causes and ultimately into the One,
its movement is from what is more particular, specific, and complex, to the universal, generic, and simple. It is in one sense like
the first type of resolution in that it moves from complex to simple; however, the metaphysical character of that simplicity is different in each case; one is the simplicity of parts, the other the
simplicity of seamless unities. What is at work here is really a
difference over the nature of metaphysical principles. For the
Neoplatonists, A. C. Lloyd explains, "[a principle] must not be
deficient in any respect ... consequently it must not be in a subject . .. , nor (rather surprisingly) [can it] be an element or composed of elements, since elements require each other as well as the
logia Latina, vol. 122, VII, col. 184C12-185A3: "Duae quippe partes sunt dialecticae disciplinae, quarum una diairetike, altera analutike nuncupatur. Et
diairetike quidem division is vim possidet; dividit namque maximorum generum
unitatem a summo usque deorsum, donec ad individuas species perveniat, inque
eis divisiones terminum ponat; analutike vero ex adverso sibi positae partis
divisiones ab individuis sursum versus incipiens, perque eosdem gradus quibus
illa descendit, ascendens cumvolvit et colligit, eosdemque in unitatem maximorum generum reducit, ideoque reductive dicitur et reditiva." For further
discussion of the dialectical methods in Erigena, one of which is resolutio,
see Giulio d'Onofrio, " ' Disputandi Disciplina ': Procedes dialectiques et
' logica vetus ' dans le langage philosophique de Jean Scot," Jean Scot:
Ecrivain, ed. G.-H. Allard (Montreal: Editions Bellarmin, 1986), pp. 229263, and Jean Trouillard, "La Notion d'analyse chez Erigene," Jean Scot
Erigene et l'histoire de la philosophie (Paris : R. Roques, 1977), pp. 349-356.
It is worth noting, as a measure of just how intertwined these various traditions become, that Erigena himself does not always keep them straight. In
Erigena's Versio Maximii Sheldon-Williams relates that resolutio is connected
to procession, a kind of Neo-Platonic division, as the overflowing from the
One which is also its fragmentation, rather than with reversion, as it is in the
Periphyseon and Dionysius commentary; Erigena writes, "divina in omnia processio analutike, dicitu, hoc est resolutio; reversio vero theosis, hoc est deificatio." (PL 122, 1195C6-1196A2). See Sheldon-Williams's translation of
the Periphyseon, vol. II, nn. 11, 15, pp. 214-215. Though Sheldon-Williams
refers only to "different derivations " of analusis without explanation, Erigena
seems to be aware at least of the geometrical sense of analysis, for he distinguishes between analusis and analutike, the former "used in connection with
the solution of set problems," the latter "used in connection with the return
of the division of the forms to the origin of that division." Erigena, Periphyseon, trans. Sheldon-Williams, II, 526B6-8.

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whole; finally it must revert to itself and consequently be separable." 45 Since resolution moves to principles which are not elements but which are simple, for Proclus the direction of this
movement, like that of reversion, is upward toward higher and
simpler causes, unlike Aristotelian/Calcidian resolutio, which
moves down the ontological ladder from the complex to its components because it envisions those elements as principles.
Further, because in Neoplatonism being and intelligibility
originate from and reside in the simpler causes and principles, for
Proclus and Erigena the overall pattern of reason must follow
the same path, originating from and returning to an understanding of those simpler causes. 46 Hence, as Erigena's description of
resolutio as "returning again" to the One makes clear, within
such a context not only does resolutio mirror the return to the
One, it also must follow its complement, just as reversion follows
procession. Again in contrast to Calcidian resolution, here the
order of being and knowing are the same; while in Calcidian
resolution simples are at some level discovered in their complexes,
in Neoplatonic resolution the simpler, higher causes can only be
returned to with greater knowledge, and never discovered absolutely from that which derives from and returns to them. The
overall picture of the movement of reason in Calcidius is from
complexes, something "first" only quoad nos, to that which is
first per se, i.e., simples, and back again to complexes; in the Neoplatonics it is from what is first both quoad nos and per se to
lower, complex objects, returning to simpler and higher causes.
45 My emphasis. A. C. Lloyd, "The Later Neoplatonists,"
in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 308. Lloyd is here describing what he
calls " the formal requirements " of principles put together by Damascius in
Dubitationes et solutiones de primis principiis, ed. C. A. Ruelle, 2 vols. (Paris,
1889), I, pp. 19-21, 23. What surprises me is that Lloyd is "surprised" at the
N eoplatonic rejection of elemental principles.
46 Cf. Aquinas's
agreement as he comments on Pseudo-Dionysius: "Inquisitio enim rationis ad simplicem intelligentiam veritatis terminatur, sicut incipit a simplici intelligentia veritatis, quae consideratur in primis principiis." In
Div N om, c. 7, lee. 2.

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In his commentary on Euclid's Elements Proclus applies this
emanative schema to the " unfolding " of the mathematical sciences from nous. The " elements " of geometry are, for Proclus,
"those theorems whose understanding leads to the knowledge of
the rest and by which difficulties in them are resolved." 41 The
task of Euclid's text, then, Proclus continues, is "to select and
arrange properly the elements out of which all other matters are
produced and into which they can be resolved." 48 Here Proclus
seems to be thinking of the " elements " not as the parts out of
which more complex figures are composed but as the simpler
sources from which the complex figures "proceed." For Proclus,
the line is simpler than the plane; the genus, simpler than the
species; common notions and general principles simpler than more
determinate notions and propositions. 49 These simples are alsoand this is the unusual part-in some sense "causes" of their
more complex counterparts. All the movements return ultimately to the One, which is both the simplest and highest cause. For
Proclus the movement of reason mirrors the order of being, i.e.,
its conclusions flow from and return to a single most simple principle, the One. This structure organizes Proclus's Elements of
41 My emphasis. " Stoicheia men oun eponomazontai, hon he theoria dukneitai
pros ten ton allon epistemen, kai aph' hon paraginetai hemin ton en autois
aporon he dialusis." Commentary on the First Book of Euclid's Elements,
trans. Glenn R. Morrow (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970),
Prologue, Part II, p. 59. Greek text: Procli Diadochi in primum Euclidis
Elementorum librum commentarii ex recognitione Godofredi Friedlein (Leipzig, 1873), p. 72. Though Proclus's term here is not analusis but the related
dialusis, Proclus uses analysis in exactly the same sense; see the passage quoted
below, n. 48.
48 " kai to eklexasthai
kai taxai kata tropon ta stoicheia kath' hekasten
epistemen, aph' hon ta alla proagetai panta kai eis ha ta alla analuetai." Proclus, On Euclid;
Murrow, p. 60; ed. Friedlein, p. 73.
' 9 On the relationship of genus to species, see Proclus, Procli Commentarium
in Platonis Parmenidem, ed. Victor Cousin [Hildesheim: Georg Olms, col.
981; English version, Proclus, Commentary on Plato's Parmenides, trans.
Glenn R. Murrow and John M. Dillon (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1987), p. 335]. On the relationship of general notions and principles to
more determinate ones, see Proclus, Plat Theo, I, 10, ed. cit., n. 42.

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Theology and the Liber de Causis based on it. 50 It would have
made its way to Aquinas not only through the Elements of Theology and the Liber de Causis but indirectly through PseudoDionysius and Erigena's commentaries on Dionysius, which accompanied the Dionysian corpus in the 12th and 13th centuries,
and through Albert's lectures on Dionysius which Aquinas is
known to have heard. 51
The Latin term resolutio occurs in a number of Albert's works,
but it occurs most frequently in his Dionysian commentaries,
especially on the Divine Names. What is most interesting about
these passages is that Albert seems to confront directly (though
not quite solve) the conflict between what I have here called the
Calcidian and N eoplatonic senses of analysis and between the two
notions of simplicity and the principles they imply. Albert raises a
series of objections to the "resolution" in the Dionysian text,
which arrives not at a single, first principle but rather seems to re5 °For a description of this model of science and its influence on medieval
thinkers, see Charles H. Lohr, "The Pseudo-Aristotelian Liber de Causis and
Latin Theories of Science in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries," in PseudoA ristotle in the Middle Ages: The Theology and Other Texts, ed. Jill Kraye,
W. F. Ryan and C. B. Schmitt (London: Warburg Institute, 1986), pp. 5362. Cf. A. C. Lloyd, "The Later Neoplatonists," in The Cambridge History
of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), p. 306. Vv. J. Hankey's "Theology as System and as
Science: Proclus and Thomas Aquinas," Dionysius 6 ( 1982), pp. 83-93 argues
for many connections between Aquinas's and Proclus's theology, but attributes
the structure of emanation and return present in Aquinas's Summa as a whole
only indirectly to Proclus and more directly to Dionysius, Boethius, and Erigena (pp. 86-88).
51 See H. F. Dondaine, Le Corpus dionysien de l'Universite de Paris au
xiii 0 siecle (Rome, 1953). Dondaine also gives the locations of the six percent of the Periphyseon which glossed Erigena's Latin translation of the
Dionysian texts. Though the passage from the Periphyseon describing analysis
quoted above is not among them, Erigena's translations, commentaries, and the
12th century figures influenced by the then banned Periphyseon are, I think,
sufficient to guarantee Aquinas's familiarity with Erigena. On Erigena's influence, see I. A. Sheldon-Williams's discussion of Erigena in The Cambridge
History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. A. H. Armstrong
(London: Cambridge University Press, 1967), pp. 532-533. According to William of Tocco's Vita s. Thomas, Thomas read Dionysius's Divine Names and
Aristotle's Ethics with Albert at Cologne. See below, n. 80.

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solve to two separate principles. 52 All resolution, the objections
argue, " must be to one, as all multiplicity comes forth from
one." 53 One objection considers the possibility of resolution to
two rather than a single principle: " one can resolve to many
principles, for example to matter and form and other causes";
however, Albert counters this possible solution by arguing that
Dionysius assumes a single process of resolution which retraces
the steps of a single e:ritus, a view inconsistent with resolution to
multiple principles. 54
Later in the commentary, Albert articulates a whole series of
objections drawn from Aristotle's Metaphysics, introducing the
view that the single first principle to which we must resolve is
matter; Albert's response distinguishes between different kinds
of first principles, one passive (matter) and another active. 55 The
implication, though not explicitly drawn, is that there must be
two resolutions as well to these different kinds of principles. This
implication becomes explicit later in the text, which distinguishes
between " the resolution of composite things in the simple parts
of which they are composed" and "resolution into the more
universal." 56
52 Alberti Magni, Super Dionysium de Divinibus N ominibus, Opera Omnia,
vol. 37, pt. 1. (Ashendorff, 1972), c. 4, p. 230, 11. 21-71.
53 Ibid., 11. 33-34.
54 Ibid., 11. 36-40: " Si dicatur, quod aliquid potest resolvi in plura principia
sicut materiam et f ormam et alias causas, contra: non est uni us modi resolutio
in diversas causas, sicut nee unus exitus ab eis; sed ipse intendit unius modi
resolutionem; ergo non debuit reducere in duo." Albert does not respond
directly to this objection and so never confronts the real opposition between
the different kinds of resolution his objections describe; instead he refers the
reader to another response as sufficient: " quod resolutio non est nisi in unum
sicut in ultimum, potest tamen esse in plura citra ultimum, ita tamen quod
etiam ilia non sint unius ordinis, sed unum ordinetur ad alterum, et sic est
in proposito" (Albert, De Div N om, p. 231, 11. 28-33).
55 Albert, De Div N om., p. 235, 11. 13-60.
56 Ibid., c. 5, p. 314, 11. 65-77. "quod esse non sumitur hie pro actu essentiae
in supposito, sed pro ipso ente, in quo stat resolutio intellectus. Quamvis enim
resolutio compositi in simplex stet in partes componentes, tamen resolutio in
magis universale stat in eo quod praedicatur. Illud autem quod praedicatur,
est forma totius hoc modo significata; forma enim partis non praedicatur, ut
anima, sed tantum forma totius, ut animal, quod est potentia totius. Omnis

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Though there are a number of other relevant passages in Albert, certain things important for understanding Aquinas's use of
resolution emerge from those discussed here which are confirmed
by those other uses. First, these passages from Albert's Divine
Names and other Dionysian commentaries confirm the N eoplatonic origin and context for Aquinas's similar uses; the description in the Divine Names repeated elsewhere is of resolution as retracing the emanation of all things from the One. 51 Secondly, Albert seems aware of a competing notion of resolution,
i.e., resolution to matter or to matter and form, which he sets up
in explicit opposition to the N·eoplatonic resolution to the first
cause. Thirdly, even when Albert is commenting on Aristotle,
his account of resolution, when explaining the title of Aristotle's
Analytics, for example, is tinged with this Neoplatonic understanding. 58
Lastly, Albert also raises what becomes an important issue for
the assimilation of Neoplatonic resolution into Thomas's metaphysics. The resolution Albert finds reflected in the Dionysian
texts is the resolution to a single formal principle, to the forma
autem forma significata ut in abstracto significatur per modum formae partis,
quia animalitas secundum rationem est partis habentis animalitatem. Animal
autem <licit utrumque, et ideo resolutio non stat in essentia, sed in ente, et
propter hoc ens est primum."
57 Cf. Albert, De Div Nom, p. 179, Super Dionysii Mysticam Theologiam,
Opera Omnia, ed. cit., vol. 37, pt. 2, p. 467; De Caelesti Hierarchia, Opera
Omnia, ed. Vives, v. 14, pp. 192-193.
5 s See, for example, Liber de Praedicabilibus, tr. 1, ed. Vives, v. 1, pp. 4-5,
and Commentary on the Prior Analytics, tr. l, c. 1, ed. Vives, v. 1, pp. 159-160.
In the latter, Albert describes the two parts of logic, discovery and judgment,
and as Boethius did before him and Aquinas after, associates both the Analytics
and analysis/resolution with judgment (on Boethius and the association of
resolution with the judgmental part of logic, see below, n. 63). He distinguishes between two kinds of analysis/resolution corresponding to the Prior
and Posterior Analytics; the first, found in the Prior Analytics, is the resolution of arguments into their principal syllogistic forms; the second is the resolution of the things concluded into their principles and causes. All resolution,
Albert writes in this context, " is toward that which is prior by nature, since
there is no resolution except of the posterior into the prior, either of the composite into the simple, or of the material into its formal principles." Cf.
Albert, In De Anima, ed. Aschendorff, vol. 7, pt. 1, Bk. I, Tr. 1, c. 2, p. 29.

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uwiversalis, which is not, for Albert or Thomas, identical to the
first cause, God. aP In other words, Albert quite correctly finds in
Dionysius what seems also to be true for Proclus : that these more
universal and general principles-being or esse in general, the
forma universalis-to which one resolves are not merely conceptual but are the causes of the being of their effects and of their
being knJown. J. N. Findlay describes the lack of this distinction
in the N eoplatonists as part of " the peculiar logic of N eoplatonism," which is one in which
substantiality and agency reside in the generic or specific pattern and
never in the poor instance, and it is, moreover, a logic in which the
hierarchical rise from the more specific to the more generic ; though
it may lessen determinateness, it also deepens and widens power.
The true genus . . . contains all its subordinate species dunamei or
in power, and holds together in a rich unity what must necessarily fall
apart in the species and the instance.60
Albert is careful to prevent precisely this identification of the most
general conception and the first, efficient cause, between what Albert calls the f orma universal is and " the first principle of all
effects," Le., God. As we will see below, Aquinas also distinguishes between them by distinguishing between the order of
extrinsic and intrinsic causes. Following the order of intrinsic
causes, reason moves up to greater levels of generality but not to
greater and higher levels of efficient causality. However, though
the two orders of intrinsic (formal and material) and extrinsic
(efficient and final) causality are not identical for Aquinas, the
ae Albert, De Div Nom, c. 4, p. 179, II. 6-16.
J. N. Findlay, "The Logical Peculiarities of Neoplatonism," in The
Structure of Being: A N eoplatonic Approach, R. Baine Harris, ed. (Albany:
SUNY, 1982), pp. 6-7. A. C. Lloyd argues that for Proclus the distinction
between the causes of being and of being known would not arise; it is, according to Lloyd, the materialism of the Stoics which raises the question about
the ontological status of non-empirical principles, placing them in the realm of
the conceptual rather than the real, a move which Proclus realizes is " contrary to the spirit of Platonism," when he (Proclus) writes that "the principles are principles per se and not through our concepts." Lloyd, " Later
Neoplatonists," p. 308, quotes Proclus here from the Commentary on Plato's
Parmenides, VI, 23, ed. Cousin, col. 1054, 11. 27-31.
&o

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structure of the path for reason as moving " up" to higher levels
is the same in both orders.
Despite this important difference to which we will return below, Aquinas, like Albert, in a way clearly indebted to Proclus
and Dionysius, describes the via resolutionis as the path of all
things returning to their first cause, and the path of reasoning
which resolves things into their principles. In the Commentary
on the Divine Names, Aquinas notes that things strive for the
good by a process of resolution, in which "from composition
things aim toward the simple, which is found in the highest degree in God." 61 Again, as for Proclus, this ontological process
is mirrored in human reasoning, which moves from and returns
or resolves back to its principles what unfolded from them. In
the Summa Aquinas writes,
Since movement always proceeds from something immovable and
ends in something at rest, hence, it is that human reasoning, according to the path of inquiry or discovery, proceeds from certain things
simply understood, which are the first principles; and on the other
hand, according to the path of judgment returns by resolutio to first
principles, in which it examines what it has discovered.62
Here, as opposed to the Calcidian/ Aristotelian sense of resolution
we have seen elsewhere in Aquinas, compositio is linked with the
path of discovery and resolutio with that of the judgment that follows on and confirms discovery. 63 As Aquinas remarks more
61 De Div N om, c. I, 1. 2, n. 51. It is noteworthy that Aquinas argues that
things tend toward the good "by the way of composition " as well; the
" composition " he goes on to describe seems to be the composition which is
the counterpart of Calcidian/ Aristotelian analysis; this process " moves from
multiplicity to unity, until from many one is made."
62 " Et quia motus semper ab immobili procedit, et ad aliquid quietum terminatur; inde est quod ratiocinatio humana, secundum viam inquisitionis vel
inventionis, procedit a quibusdam simpliciter intellectis, quae sunt prima principia; et rursus in via iudicii, resolvendo redit ad prima principia, ad quae inventa examinat." ST I, q. 79, a. 8.
63 The association of judgment and discovery, the two parts of logic given
by Cicero, with resolution and composition, respectively, seems to originate
with Boethius's In Ciceronis Topica, Bk. I, PL 64, col. 1074A-B; cf. Regis,
p. 308. Boethius associates analysis/resolution and judgment with the subject
matter of Aristotle's Analytics, which he understands as the relationships be-

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than once using resolution in this sense, we have science, i.e.,
certain, necessary knowledge, only when we have resolved to
first principles; 64 in the Summa, emphasizing the sense in which
resolution is the later movement of reason, Aquinas writes, "the
end of discursion is when the second is seen in the first, by resolving effects into causes; and thus discursion ceases." 65 Further, the confirmatory movement of resolutio is understood to
terminate not in simple components, such as the four elements
and matter, but rather in higher and more universal causes and
general principles.
Thus, in contrast to Calcidian resolution, which involves the
breakdown of a complex into its parts and thereby displays its
connection to physics, this type of resolution is especially associated with the metaphysical search for and examination of the
highest causes and principles. Aquinas's most eloquent description of resolution in this sense occurs in the context of explaining
the sense in which metaphysics is both the beginning and the end
of reason's journey toward intellectus and thus is said to proceed
intellectualiter. Aquinas writes,
Thus it is clear that rational consideration ends in intellectual consideration, following the process of resolutio, insofar as reason
gathers one simple truth from many things. And conversely, intellectual consideration is the beginning of rational thinking, following
the process of compositio or discovery, in so far as the intellect comprehends a multiplicity in unity. 66
Here Aquinas depicts the other sciences as originating from the
simplicity and unity of metaphysics and metaphysics as gathering
tween propositions and their composition, the analysis of which into propositions and terms allows one to judge arguments. Thus, Boethius seems to explain the title Analytics with the Calcidian/ Aristotelian notion of analysis as
the breakdown into components. See also below, n. 71.
64 ln Ill Sent., dist. 23, q. 2, a. 2, sol.i & iii; QDV, q. 15, a. 1, ad 4.
65 " Terminus vero discursus est, quando secundum videtur in primo, resolutis
effectibus in causas: et tune cessat discursus." ST I, q. 14, a. 7.
66 My emphasis. " Sic ergo patet quod rationalis
consideratio ad intellectualem terminatur secundum viam resolutionis, in quantum ratio ex multis
colligit unam et simplicem veritatem. Et rursum intellectualis consideratio est
principium rationalis secundum viam compositionis vel inventionis, in quantum
intellectus in uno multitudinem comprehendit." Exp de Trin, q. 6, a. 1, sol. c.

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together and unifying their many and diverse conclusions and
principles, just as Proclus envisioned the diverse mathematical
sciences as emanating from and resolving into a higher and more
general science of mathematics. Not only is the movement always "upward," it is always toward principles which are simpler and higher in a peculiarly N eoplatonic sense; the sciences
and principles to which one resolves are simpler not because they
are parts of some complex whole, as for example meteorology is a
part of physics and the elements parts of a body, but rather because they are the higher, more unified, and powerful sources
for the diverse and fragmented consequences which flow from
them.
As I mentioned above, these higher and more universal principles may, for Aquinas, either be extrinsic causes or intrinsic
causes; the movements following these orders end in the separate
substances and the properties of being qua being, respectively. 67
This distinction is important because it allows Aquinas to relate
and distinguish aspects of metaphysics not clearly distinguished
in Aristotle, i.e., metaphysics as natural theology and as ontology. 68 It also allows Aquinas to absorb this N eoplatonic notion
of reason's movement without taking on a metaphysics which
does not distinguish between the order of intrinsic and extrinsic
causality, in which, in other words, the more common or generic
is also the more powerful and real. For Aquinas, God, who is
being per se, and being-in-general are clearly different and are
the termini of resolution secundum rem and secundum rationem,
respectively. 69
67 Ibid.

as Cf. Aertsen,

pp. 415-416 and Wippel (op. cit., above, n. 11).
the criticisms of Cornelio Fabro, "Platonism, Neo-Platonism and
Thomism: Convergencies and Divergencies," New Scholasticism 44 (1970), pp.
69-100, and John Wippel, "Thomas Aquinas and Participation," in Studies
in Medieval Philosophy, John Wippel, ed. (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic
University of America Press, 1987), pp. 136-137, of the argument of Klaus
Kremer's Die Neoplato1iische Seinsphilosophie und ihre Wirkung auf Thomas
von Aquin (Leiden, 1966). Kremer claims that Aquinas does identify God
and esse commune, despite Aquinas's numerous statements to the contrary. See,
for example, SCG I, c. 26; QDP, q. 7, a. 2, ad 6; ST I, q. 3, a. 4, ad 1.
6 9 Cf.

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As with the Calcidian sense of analysis, here, it seems, we
have a "conceptual" version of the literal sense of this analysis.
Just as analysis considered as the literal division into physical
parts was transformed by Aquinas, following Aristotle, into an
analogous process of analysis into conceptual and formal parts
(a process not unlike abstraction), here analysis as following the
return of all things to the one is given a less literal, more conceptual counterpart in the resolution to highest principles. One
form this type of analysis takes, according to Aquinas, is the
analysis or reduction of syllogisms to the first figure, which
grounds their validity. In his Commentary on the Posterior Analytics Aquinas gives this description of analysis, and then adds,
"and since certain judgment concerning effects cannot be
achieved unless they are resolved into first principles, this part [of
Aristotle's logical writings] is called Analytics, i.e., resolutive." 70
This is an explanation for the title of Aristotle's two Analytics
found in some Greek commentators as well as Albert, that the
" analysis " of syllogisms consists in " reducing " them to the
first figure in virtue of which they are judged to be valid or invalid. 71 Aristotle himself seems to use analysis in this sense, and
to equate it with anagein which means to " lead up " or " elevate," a Greek verb that seems to capture the sense of analysis as
movement "upward" to higher causes and principles. 72 Further,
this logical sense belongs with the N eoplatonic sense, I think, because both are movements of confirmation or judgment rather
than discovery-which is what the Calcidian sense of analysis is.
The " reduction" of syllogisms to the first figure is just one kind
of "judgment"; when the subject is arguments, one "resolves"
In Anal Post I, lee. 1.
n On Albert, see above n. 58. On Boethius's explanation, see above n. 63.
Cf. Alexander, In Anal Pr, p. 7, 11. 25-34, who gives the same explanation
and Oeing-Hanhoff (" Analyse/Synthese," p. 233) who attributes this view to
Aristotle even though not explicitly found in Aristotle. Aertsen makes of what
I have described here as a logical application of N eoplatonic analysis a separate sense of analysis, "judicative analysis" (Aertsen, pp. 407-409).
7 2 See Prior Analytics 46b40-47a21 and 50al6-32. I am indebted to Patrick
Byrne for supplying these references, and the connection between analuein and
10

anagein.

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to the first principles of argumentation (the first figure), but
when the subject is physics or metaphysics, one "resolves" to the
first principles of those disciplines.
Hence, resolution secundum rationem does not, as Aertsen
claims, move in a different direction from resolution secundum
rem and in effect make the former equivalent to Calcidian resolution. 73 Even if there are ways of construing both types of resolution to terminate in the same things, i.e., being, matter, form,
act, and potency, one would still be arriving at those notions by
a different kind of reasoning, i.e., by breaking " down" vs. generalizing " up," and would be thinking about them as related differently to that of which they are principles, as wholes to parts
vs. particular to general. Whether following the chain of intrinsic
or extrinsic causes, reason is still moving toward what is higher,
simpler, and more universal, not downward to parts of some
whole. That is, we can resolve to the principle of non-contradiction for propositions, the first figure of the syllogism for arguments, and being and the properties of being, and God and the
separate substances within metaphysics. For Aquinas, in all
these orders, having scientia of something consists not merely in
knowing it but rather in knowing it in or resolving it into its
higher and simpler principles and causes; when we resolve into
higher causes and principles not merely relatively but per se, i.e,
to God, we have not mere scientia but rather wisdom. 74
III. Greek Geometry and Resolutio
as Opposed to Demonstration
Like the first two senses of resolution, this third sense, described as the method of taking counsel by Aristotle in the Ethics,
73 Aertsen, p. 414. Aertsen is arguing against Oeing-Hanhoff when he writes
that the distinction between resolution secundum rem and secundum rationem
" is not the distinction between analysis of concepts and natural analysis ; it
concerns rather the different direction of the discursive movement." I agree
with Aertsen that there are two types of analysis/resolution in Aquinas which
move in opposite directions but disagree that the distinction in the Boethius
commentary between resolution secundum rem and secundum rationem corresponds to this distinction.
1 4 QDV, q. 22, a. 2. Cf. ST I-II, q. 57, a. 2; ST II-II, q. 9, a. 2; QDV,
q. 12, a. 1.

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is one of a pair of movements. Like resolution as the division of
a whole, it is followed by its complement, also called compositio
(synthesis) ; like resolution as reversion or return to the One,
this type of resolution involves returning to the end or goal of
action. One taking counsel " resolves," according to Aristotle, by
assuming the end to be achieved and reasoning back from this
end, considering the various means until one arrives at an action
that can be undertaken immediately toward that end (EN III,
1112bl6-20). This process, Aristotle continues, is analogous to
the analysis or resolution of a geometrical construction (EN
l 112b20-25) .75 The reference to geometrical constructions links
the description of counsel in the Ethics to the geometrical method
known as analysis. The locus classicus for the description of this
method is the Greek geometer, Pappus of Alexandria, who,
though he lived well after Aristotle, gives the earliest full description we have. 76 According to Pappus,
[A]nalysis is the way from what is sought-as if it were admittedthrough its concomitants [to akolouthon] in order to attain something admitted in synthesis. For in analysis we suppose that which
is sought to be already done, and we inquire from what it results,
and again what is the antecedent of the latter, until we on our backward way light upon something already known and being first in
order. 77
75 "ho gar bouleuomenos eoike zetein kai analuein ton eiremenon tropon
hosper diagramma . . . kai to eschaton en tei analusei proton einaien tei
genesei."
76 Oeing-Hanhoff
dates Pappus in the 3rd century A.D. (p. 234). Cf. Hintikka and Remes, Method of Analysis, p. 7.
77 "Analusis
toinun estin hodos apo tou zetoumenou hos homologoumenou
dia ton hexes akolouthon epi ti homologoumenon sunthesei. En men gar tei
analusei to zetoumenon hos gegonos hupothermenoi to ex hou touto sumbainei
skopoumetha kai palin ekeinou to proegoumenon, heos an houtos anapodizontes
katantesomen eis to ton ede ynopizomenon he taxin arches echonton." Pappi
Alexandrini Collectionis Quae Supersunt, ed. Hultsch (Berlin, 1876-1877), vol.
II, pp. 634-635; trans. Hintikka and Remes, in Method of Analysis, p. 8. I
have used Hintikka and Remes's translation because of their rendering of
akolouthon as the vaguer "concomitants" as opposed to the usual translation
of it as " consequences." This is crucial for whether we understand analysis
to consist in strictly deductive steps or not; see below for my discussion of
this issue.

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In other words, working from the conclusion to be proved rather
than the premises and axioms which will form its proof, one assumes the conclusion proved and asks what else we would know
if it were proved (i.e., what would follow from the conclusion
and what steps would have led to it) until one reaches something
which does not depend on the assumption of the conclusion but
is known independently to be true, e.g., an already proved
theorem. The point of the process is not to discover the premises
and axioms but to discover the path from those premises to the
conclusions. This discovery of the path the proof should take is
then followed by the proof itself, which Pappus calls synthesis,
the Greek equivalent of compositio. It works in the opposite direction from the analysis, forward from the premises and axioms,
like a traditional proof or Aristotelian demonstration, which is
why Triverius opposes analysis in this sense not to synthesis or
composition but to demonstration ; demonstration has the same
form as geometrical synthesis.
In his Commentary on the Ethics, Aquinas elaborates Aristotle's allusion to geometry as follows:
He says that the cause that is first in operation is the last in discovery because one who deliberates seems to inquire, it is said, by a
kind of resolutive method, just as one who wishes to prove a conclusion by a diagram, i.e., a geometrical representation, must resolve
the conclusion into principles until reaching the first indemonstrable
principles.78
Thus, it seems, just as one can solve a geometry problem not by
working from the premises and axioms toward the conclusion to
be proved, but from the conclusion by constructing a diagram of
it, so one can decide what to do, not by working forward from
present circumstances, but by working backwards from the end
to be achieved. Though Aquinas drops explicit reference to the
7s " Et <licit quod ideo causa que est prima in operatione est ultima in inventione, quia ille qui consiliatur videtur inquirere sicut dictum est per modum
resolutionis cuiusdam, quemadmodum diagramma, id est descriptio geometrica
in qua qui vult probare aliquam conclusionem oportet quod resolvat conclusionem in principia quousque perveniat ad principia prima indemonstrabilia."
In III Ethic, lee. 8.

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geometrical method in the Summa, he retains its structure, characterizing counsel in exactly the same way: "Hence the inquiry
of counsel must be resolutive, namely beginning from that which
is intended in the future, until it arrives at that which is to be
immediately done." 79
While the geometrical method later given canonical form by
Pappus seems to be the ultimate source for both Aristotle's and
Aquinas's descriptions of counsel as resolutive, Aquinas's access
to accounts of the geometrical process seems to have been indirect
and incomplete. The evidence which would support Aquinas's
having had a detailed understanding of this process is ambiguous.
On the one hand, there are examples of roughly contemporary
texts which reveal a relatively complete understanding of geometrical analysis. Albert the Great's commentary on the Ethics,
written while Thomas was Albert's student, gives a specific example of geometrical analysis; also, a description very closely
paralleling that of Pappus was inserted by an Arab commentator
into Galen's Ars Medica or Tegni in the translation of Gerhard
of Cremona. 80 Oeing-Hanhoff cites Galen as contributing heavily
79 " Et secundum hoc, oportet quod inquisitio consilii sit resolutiva, incipiendo
scilicet ab eo quod in futuro intenditur, quousque perveniatur ad id quod statim
agendum est." ST I-II, q. 14, a. 5.
so See Albert, Super Ethica, ed. Aschendorff, vol. 14, pt. 1, Bk. III, lee.
V, p. 163. Albert writes, " Sicut si volumus ostendere, quod triangulus habet
trcs . . ., accipiemus, quod angulus extrinsecus valet duos intrinsecos sibi oppositos, et ad hoc necessario ostendendum sumimus, quod si linea recta cadat
super duas aequidistantes, facit angulos coalternos aequales, et ad hoc iterum
probandum, sumimus aliud, et sic, quousque veniamus ad primas propositiones.
Ita si aliquis vult ditari, invenit, quod potest fieri per negotiationem et noc per
navigationem, et ad hoc quaerit navem et ad hoc ligna." The preface to this
critical edition (pp. V-VI) gives the argument for the 1250-1252 date, based
heavily on William of Tocco's Vita s. Thomae, in which William relates that
Thomas read Dionysius's Divine Na.mes and Aristotle's Ethics with Albert at
Cologne. See also Gerhard's translation, Liber Tegni cum Commento Hali,
MS Vat. Pal. Lat. 1102, f. 117; ed. 1487, ff. 151r-152r. 'Hali' is Ali ibn
Ridwan or Haly Rodohan, an 11th cenutry Egyptian physician. This passage
is given in both English and Latin by A. C. Crombie, Grosseteste and Experimental Science, pp. 77-78. The description of resolution (called solution here)
is as follows: "Una earum est que fit secundum viam conversionis et solutionis,
et est ut statuas rem ad quam intendis et cuius inquiris scientiam in mente tua

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to the tradition of analysis by applying this method to medicine, 81
and Aquinas seems to know something of the medical, as well as
the ethical, application of the mathematical method, though he
does not go quite so far as to call the medical version resolutio.
Aquinas describes the process of producing health as reasoning
back from the definition and requirements of health, i.e., the balance of the four humors, to that which is necessary to maintain
that balance, i.e., heat, " and so on always proceeding from the
posterior to the prior, one understands that which produces heat,
and that which produces this, until one is led back to something
ultimate which can be done immediately, such as giving a certain potion .... " 82 On the other hand, an earlier translation of
the same Galenic work by Constantine the African, with a different accompanying commentary, glosses Galen's mention of
resolution as dissolution or division, the sense of analysis found
secundum finem complementi eius. Et deinde consideres in propinquiori, et
propinquiori ex eo sine quo non stat ilia res ; neque completur usquequo pervenias ad principium complementi eius." Crombie claims that " Gerhard's
translation was certainly well known by the end of the thirteenth century and
probably by a much earlier date " but gives no specific evidence for the earlier
date. This passage continues by associating demonstration quia with resolutio
and demonstration propter quid with compositio, but though Aquinas certainly
knows and uses the distinction between the two types of demonstration, I have
found no passages where he makes them equivalent to resolution and composition, though Dolan's account of resolution in Aquinas assumes that Aquinas
associates these two pairs (Dolan, "Resolution and Composition," pp. 10-12).
s1 Oeing-Hanhoff, "Analyse/Synthese,"
p. 238. Cf. Galen, Opera Omnia, ed.
C. G. Kiihn, I, 305; 5, 224ff.; 10, 39-44. This view of Galen is shared by
Crombie (cf. Grosseteste and Medieval Science, pp. 27-28; 76-79) and Gilbert
(Renaissance Met hods, pp. 13-24). Oeing-Hanhoff distinguishes between the
" analysis of a goal " and geometrical analysis, though it seems to me that
these differ only in subject matter, not in structure; Oeing-Hanhoff also claims,
despite the (at worst) mixed evidence, that Aquinas seems not to understand
the geometrical sense of analysis (" Analyse/Synthese," p. 238).
82 " Et ideo necesse est, si sanitas debet contingere, quod hoc existat, scilicet
regularitas vel aequalitas humorum. Et si regularitas vel debeat esse, oportet
quod sit calor, per quern humores reducantur ad aequalitatem; et ita semper
procedendo a posteriori ad prius, intelliget illus quod est factivum caloris, et
quod est factivum illius, donec reducatur ad aliquod ultimum, quod ipse statim
posset facere, sicut hoc quod est dare talem potionem." In Meta, VII, lee. 6.

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in Calcidius, not Pappus. 83 These two versions of the same text,
one with and one without a reference to the geometrical method,
and the uneven use of the terms " resolution " and " composition " to describe like processes, might be evidence of a certain
uneven and superficial knowledge of it in the 12th arid even 13th
centuries, though there are references to geometrical analysis in
the Greek commentators. 84
My own sense is that Aquinas lacked (and was perhaps uninterested in) a technical knowledge of this process which would
have given him a sense of how complicated and sophisticated its
actual use in geometry could be, but that he had an accurate general grasp of its structure and purpose, enough to allow him to
use the notion and fit it into his larger picture of the various
forms discursivity could take. Hence, I would like to take a nontechnical look at geometrical analysis in order to ·examine how
Aristotle and Aquinas thought it might work analogously in
practical reasoning. While there are longstanding and complicated debates about the character of the particular steps of geometrical analysis-whether one deduces consequences from the
conclusion or looks for possible antecedents of the conclusion, for
example-Pappus's description is clear enough to allow us to see
why Aristotle and Aquinas saw the structure of searching for the
correct course of action as symmetrical to this search for the right
way to the conclusion. 85 As all remember from geometry class, it
83 Constantine's
Pantegni theorica gives Galen five methods: "secundum
dissolutionem, aut secundum compositionem, aut secundum dissolutionem termini, aut secundum notationem, vel descriptionem, aut secundum divisionem."
It goes on to describe "dissolutio" per se as the dissolution of a body into
its elements, and the dissolution of terms as the breakdown of a definition into
genus and specific differences. I wish to thank Mark Jordan for giving me
drafts of a critical edition of this text he is working on.
84 See for example, Alexander,
In Pr Anal, p. 7, 11. 15-18; Ammonius,
In Pr Anal, p. 5, II. 26-31.
85 For the debate on analysis, see F. M. Cornford, op. cit., n. 8, for the view
that the steps are the " intuitive" search for antecedents, according to a method
connected to Plato's description of the upward movement of dialectic in the
Republic; see Richard Robinson, "Analysis in Greek Geometry," Mind, vol.
45 (1936), pp. 464-473, for the view that the steps are deductions from the

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is inefficient, if not impossible, to solve a geometry problem by
beginning from what is given, and trying to find one's way to
the conclusion to be proved without being directed by and in some
sense working back from that which is to be proved. The method
known in geometry as analysis is ultimately, I think, the formalization and sophistication of this process in which one examines
the conclusion in light of both what might lead to it and follow
from it in order to avoid striking out aimlessly from the premises. 86 Similarly in practical reasoning, beginning with the end
rather than with its equivalent of the given, present circumstances,
excludes from the outset of the inquiry that which will not bring
it to the desired conclusion, i.e., possible courses of action which
are irrelevant to the end for which action is undertaken. Such a
process must involve in practice keeping both extremes (the given
and conclusion, present circumstances and the end) in mind and
working between them. Even though analysis is described only
as working from the end, the inquiry must still be constrained at
the other end; in geometry, one must also exclude paths to the
conclusion which premises and axioms will not allow, and in action we must exclude those acts that would achieve the end but
which are neither immediately nor mediately possible to us.
conclusion; this view is repeated by Michael Mahoney, " Another Look at
Greek Geometrical Analysis," Archive for the History of the Exact Sciences,
vol. 5 (1968), pp. 318-348, who also develops the view that analysis is not so
much a set method as a set of techniques, a " mathematical toolbox," for solving problems. See also Norman Gulley, op. cit., n. 8, who, in a way, splits the
difference, arguing that there are two kinds of analysis in Pappus, one corresponding more closely to Cornford's view, the other to Robinson's et al. I
discuss Hintikka and Remes's view below.
86 I take from Hintikka and Remes the notion that analysis moves to things
that " go with" or are concomitant with the conclusion, whether logically
consequent, antecedent, or parallel to the conclusion. They remark, quite correctly, in response to the objection (made by Mahoney in " Another Look")
that looking for antecedents is " aimless," that " looking for antecedents is not
an intrinsically more 'aimless' procedure (nor a less aimless one, for that
matter) than casting about for suitable consequences" (Method of Analysis,
p. 19). My view, perhaps not shared by them, is that it is exactly this possible aimlessness of inquiry that analysis is meant to mitigate (though not
eliminate) by giving the inquiry direction from the conclusion.

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Especially for thinkers not completely familiar with geometrical
uses of analysis, this type of analysis shares certain resonances
with the other two meanings, which helps explain why it is so
often confounded and conflated with the other two notions outlined here. It is, first, in an extended sense at least, a division of
a complex whole and thus like Calcidian resolution. We " breakdown " or reduce a complex practical problem (like a complicated
geometry problem) into its smaller parts, moving from the complex, "What should I do ? " to more workable chunks, "What
do I want to achieve ?," " How can this end be achieved ?,"
" What are the possibilities at present which will move me in
that direction?,'' and " Which of those paths will bring me most
surely and completely to that end ? " These are exactly the steps
or parts of taking counsel that both Aristotle and Aquinas describe immediately before calling counsel " resolutive.'' 87
However, as is clear from Aquinas's description of taking
counsel, the breakdown of a problem is meaningless unless done
in light of the end or conclusion and, hence, as Pappus notes,
"in order"; secondly, then, because the N eoplatonic notion is
grounded in the direction of reasoning to the first principle, the
resolution of counsel/ geometry is in an equally important sense
aligned with this sense. There are ultimately two " ends " in the
resolution of a practical problem : the final end to be achieved,
which serves to direct reasoning, and the "end" in the sense of
the conclusion of a resolution as it returns to present circumstances from the end to be achieved. Both are analogous to the
" end " of N eoplatonic resolution in the first, highest, and simplest cause. Just as a geometrical resolution ends when one
reaches the simpler axioms and premises from which one began
s1 EN 1112b16-20; In III Ethic, lee. 8: "Ostendit de quibus et quomodo sit
inquisitio concilii. Circa quod tria ponit. Quorum primum est quod, supposito
aliquo fine, prima intentio consiliantium est qualiter, id est quo motu vel actione
possit perveniri ad illum finem. . . . Secunda autem intentio est quando ad
finem aliquem per plura potest perveniri, ... per quid eorum facilius et melius
perveniatur. . .. Tertia autem intentio est, si contingat quod per unum solum
instrumentum vel motum, vel per unum optime, perveniatur ad finem, ut procuretur qualiter per hoc ad finem perveniatur."

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and from which the more complex conclusion is now understood
to follow, so in practical reasoning one's resolution ends where
it began, from the present from which, by the discovered series
of steps, the end will follow. Moreover, that end of action, notably for Aquinas the same as the goal of N eoplatonic resolution,
i.e., the divine, is that in terms of which action is both possible
and intelligible; it is the origin to which we are by action and in
inquiry returning. Aquinas, indeed, makes the analogy between
the "end" of speculative reason in higher principles and the
" end " of practical reason in the final goal of action : " In the
speculative sciences the judgment of reason is not perfected until
conclusions are resolved into first principles; hence, neither in
practical matters is [judgment] perfected until a reduction is
made to the last end." 88 Like the simpler, higher causes to which
N eoplatonic resolution returns, the final end of action contains in
a unified way all the steps taken toward it.
As applied to action, even while this sense of resolution has
connections to the other two, it is, I think, unique. In Aquinas (if
not in others describing this type of resolution), it points not, as
the other types do, to different kinds of metaphysical principles,
but rather primarily to the process of acting and reasoning to
reach those ends or principles. 89 To put it another way, while
the other senses focus on the first principles which reason discovers ( Calcidius) or to which it returns (Proclus), this notion
88 "In speculativis autem scientiis non perficitur iudicium rationis nisi quando
conclusiones resolvuntur in prima principia; unde nee inoperabilibus perficitur
nisi quando fiat reductio usque ad ultimum finem." QDV, q. 15, a. 3.
89 This type of analysis/resolution
is not metaphysically neutral or ambiguous, for example, in Proclus ; his descriptions of analysis in the context of
Euclid is shot through with his own metaphysics, with a N eoplatonic conception of science as mirroring the emanation and return to the One. In the
Renaissance, this conception of resolution/analysis is formulated to serve a
quite different notion of science. According to J. H. Randall resolution becomes an important " method " in a fledgling experimental science searching
for explanations of phenomena in the Renaissance; it is sometimes equated
with demonstration quia and even with induction. See above, n. 80 and J. H.
Randell, Jr., " Scientific Method in the School of Padua," Journal of the History of Ideas 1 ( 1940), pp. 177-206, and Crombie, Grosseteste and Experimental Science (cited inn. 4 above).

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focuses on the process of connecting principles and conclusions.
For Aquinas, this is the essence of a discursive rather than a
wholly intuitive or synthetic reason, i.e., one that moves from one
thing to another but does not grasp everything at once. 90 We
need geometrical analysis and its analogues not only because we
do not synthetically grasp principle and conclusion together, but
because we cannot even always see the direct and necessary path
from one to the other, from principles to conclusion; instead we
sometimes must work backward from the conclusions to the principle, or back and forth between them. 91 Our actions are, for
Aquinas, equally discursive, i.e., our ends are achieved piecemeal
rather than instantaneously, and only when directed by that end.
Moreover, because both reasoning and action are achieved in
stages, the possibility of failing to reach that end is essentially
and constantly present; for Aquinas, it is of the nature of our intellect and will that we can grasp premises without reaching the
right conclusion, and that we can will ends without willing the
means and achieving our end. 92
IV. Conclusion
This conclusion about the ultimate incompleteness and intrinsic
possibility of failure of human action and reasoning brings us, or
rather returns us, to what these three types of resolution share
in Aquinas : their expression of human reason as discursive.
The metaphor Aquinas uses to illustrate the structure of reason's
discursive path, moving from and toward principles, is that of a
circle:

°

9 For one of several places where Aquinas gives this definition of reason as
opposed to intellectus, see Exp in Trin, q. 6, a. 1.
a1 Cf. ST I-II, q. 14, a. 5: "Quod quidem si, sicut est prius in cognitione,
ita etiam sit prius in esse, non est processus resolutorius, sed magis compositivus, procedere enim a causis in effectus, est processus compositivus, nam
causae sunt simpliciores effectibus. Si autem id quod est prius in cognitione,
sit posterius in esse, est processus resolutorius; utpote cum de effectibus manifestis iudicamus, resolvendo in causas simplices."
92 " Unde intellectus aliquando intelligit medium, et ex eo non procedit ad
conclusionem. Et similiter voluntas aliquando vult finem, et tamen non procedit ad volendum id quod est ad finem." ST I-II, q. 8, a. 3, ad 3.

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The circularity [of reason J is observed in this, that reason arrives at
conclusions from principles according to the way of discovery, and
examines discovered conclusions according to the way of judgment,
resolving them back into principles.93
Even though in this particular passage Aquinas uses resolution in the Neoplatonic sense, in one way or another all the
types of resolution fit into the pattern of reasoning outlined here.
Though whether resolution precedes or follows its complement
changes, in each case resolution is seen first as a movement and
second as a movement which is n:ever complete in itself; it requires its complement, compositio, to form a "circle" of reasoning which begins from and returns to that from which it started
with greater understanding. Calcidian resolution, the breakdown
of a complex whole, is followed by the recomposition of the complex from its parts. Thus reason is led back to the object from
which it began, now understood more completely both as a whole
and in its parts. Resolution, as a problem-solving technique
derived from Greek geometry, in which one moves from conclusions to premises, is also followed by an opposite movement. Just
as the resolution of geometry is followed by the actual proof of
the conclusion moving forward from the premises, the resolution
of counsel, which works back from the end, is followed by a judgment of those connections and the actual execution of that course
of action moving forward from the present. Lastly, in the N eoplatonic sense, resolution is the return to simple and unified principles and causes which is preceded by compositio, the movement
from principles and causes, less than completely understood, to
conclusions and effects. In each case resolutio fits into this dialectic or circle of understanding as the movement from those
things better known to us to those things better known per se. 94
However, how it fits in, as the first movement of reason in discovery or as the last movement of reason confirming and judging,
93 " Haec autem circulatio attenditur in hoc quod ratio ex principiis secundum
viam inveniendi in conclusiones pervenit, et conclusiones inventas in principia
resolvendo examinat secundum viam iudicandi." QDV, q. 10, a. 8, ad 10.
94 See ST I-II, q. 14, a. 5, quoted above, n. 91.

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as movement toward parts, causes, or present and immediate circumstances, differs depending upon the needs of the inquiry at
hand and the sort of principles it seeks.
In fact, the different sources I have argued for here and the
diverse contexts in which Aquinas makes use of these different
senses suggest different, though not exclusive, realms of discourse for which the different types of resolutio are appropriate.
The Aristotelian and Calcidian sources for the divisive/reductive
sense align this type of resolution especially with physics and its
need to begin from and break down the complex objects and processes with which we are confronted in our experience of the
world. Hence Aquinas, explaining resolution in this sense, refers
us back to the opening of the Physics and Aristotle's reminder
that we begin inquiry with confused wholes whose parts we will
analyze. Moreover, analysis in this sense is combined with and
followed by a compositive movement back toward the complex
from which the original resolution began. This accords with
Aquinas's frequently stated view that it is the particular character
of natural science to return to the sensible object from which it
began. 95 The source of the third sense in a set of problem-solving
techniques called analusis in Greek geometry suggested to Aristotle and Aquinas an analogy with ethical discourse. Ethical reasoning, though perhaps only in a more immediate sense than
other types of reasoning, has a special need for direction toward
an end, for a technique that allows one to narrow down the possible options so that one can more quickly and efficiently come to
a decision, i.e., for a way of thought that will connect present
circumstances and final ends. Finally, the sense of the term I
have traced to N eoplatonic thinkers, the resolving of effects into
higher causes and principles, Aquinas associates with metaphysics' consideration of things in light of their highest causes
and most universal principles. Hence, though these notions of
95 See, for example, Exp de Trin, q. 6, a. 2 and ST I, q. 85, a. 8. It is important to note that in both these places, Aquinas makes it clear that the return
to the sensible object is the end of natural science, and in De Trinitate explicitly sets up this endpoint in contrast to the termini of mathematics and
metaphysics.

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resolution are truly different in terms of their origin and their
use by Aquinas, all the senses are retained and used strategically
in association with different uses of reason; what we have, then,
in Aquinas's notion of resolution is the coexistence of terminologies from different epistemological traditions which have been
appropriated, rather than merely borrowed, and reshaped by their
placement within his notion of human reason and its sciences.
There is also, I think, a deeper but less explicit division among
these types of resolution/analysis in Aquinas. Geometrical and
divisive resolution are initial movements of reason which understand reason to begin from the complex conclusion or a compound substance. N eoplatonic resolution, on the other hand, follows a process which is understood to begin with some implicit
grasp of simple principles. Thus their respective epistemological
implications are different, one envisioning knowledge as grounded
in and made possible by a knowledge of principles, the other two
describing knowledge as beginning in our experience of the composite being. In the Summa Aquinas confronts the dilemma implied by the opposition between the processes' beginning points,
asking whether the "universal" is first in our knowledge.
Aquinas's response carefully places both pictures of the beginning
of knowledge within his own view. He argues that if we take
sensation and intellectual comprehension separately, the more
common and universal is first, as each moves from a general but
confused grasp to a defined and distinct knowledge of the thing;
thus we move from the grasp of a thing as a being to a grasp of
it as possessing a specific nature. However, if we take the process
of knowledge as it moves from sensation through intellection, the
particular, complex individual is " first " in knowledge because
knowledge begins with sensation, which apprehends the individual. 96
But these processes not only " begin " differently, they " end "
differently as well. Resolution as division and resolution in the
geometrical sense are both halves of processes which " end"
96

ST I, q. 85, a. 3.

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with composition, i.e., by returning to conclusions and complexes,
not to the principles they began by seeking. N eoplatonic resolution, by contrast, is the second half of a process whose ultimate direction is toward principles, not conclusions. In this sense, N eoplatonic resolution is different from the other two, and for
Aquinas is a more perfect representative of human reason, whose
ultimate goal is the understanding of things in the highest and
most universal causes. It is only resolution in this sense that
Aquinas calls wisdom; wisdom " judges all things and sets them
in order, because there can be no perfect and universal judgment
that is not resolved into first causes." 97 Wisdom, it is worth noting, is not just the grasp of principles but of all things resolved
into principles, understood as grounded by those principles. 98
Thus though both of these processes " end " with principles or
with conclusions, neither consists in only the grasp of one or the
other, but of one in the other. And this is exactly the problem for
the human knower, i.e., that our reason is always attempting but
never quite succeeding in holding together the grasp of principles
and conclusions by knowing one in the other.
Though this would in some sense have to be qualified and expanded by a study of the other terms and other ways Aquinas
uses to describe the movement of reason, the theme of the ultimate incompleteness of human reasoning, of its failure to grasp
things completely in a unified fashion, appears in two important
passages dealing with resolution and composition, one in the relatively late Commentary on the Metaphysics in a discussion of
Calcidian/ Aristotelian analysis, and the other in the early Commentary on De Trinitate expanding on the Neoplatonic resolution of multiplicity into unity. In the first passage, Aquinas in97 " Et circa huiusmodi est sapientia, quae considerat altissimas causas, ut
dicitur in I Meta. Uncle convenienter iudicat et ordinat de omnibus: quia
iudicium perfectum et universale haberi non potest nisi per resolutionem ad
primas causas." ST I-II, q. 57, a. 2. Cf. ST II-II, q. 9, a. 2.
98 Cf. ST I-II, q. 57, a. 2, ad 1 where Aquinas describes wisdom as the
grasp of principles and conclusions.

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terpolates the discussion of resolutio and compositio into an explanation of Aristotle's remark that "we cannot simultaneously
grasp a whole and its parts (993b5-7) ." After describing resolutio and compositio, Aquinas writes, "Thus the fact that a
human being is unable to know perfectly in things a whole and
a part shows the difficulty involved in knowing the truth by both
of these methods." 99 Though the resolution described here is the
division of a whole into its parts, his point seems to apply to all
three types, i.e., that these two halves of the movement of reason
have as their goal either the whole or the part, the simple or the
complex, the conclusion or the principles, but reason by its very
nature as discursive cannot grasp both equally well at the same
time. In the Summa Aquinas explains that "the intellect can indeed understand many things at one time, but not as many." 100
Our choice is either to know many things at once but only indistinctly as one, or to know
things or multiple aspects as
multiple but not at once, but only sequentially, under different intelligible species.101 The problem is not quite that we are absolutely incapable of knowing part and whole, premise and conclusion together, but that we can only grasp them together by knowing one in the another, always " losing" in a sense the whole
when focused on the part, and the part when focussed on the
whole. Thus reason's dialectic is never completely resolved, never
reaches complete closure and rest.
In the description of resolution and composition in his De
Trinitate commentary, as in De Veritate, Aquinas likens our reasoning to this circle. Ratio as movement and intellectus as rest,
Aquinas cites from Boethius, are related to each other " as time
99 " Sic igitur hoc ipsum, quod homo non potest in rebus perfecte totum et
partem cognoscere, ostendit difficultatem considerandae veritatis secundum
utramque viam." In II Meta., lee. 1.
100 " Intellectus quidem potest multa intelligere per modum unius, non autem
multa per modum multorum." ST I, q. 85, a. 4.
101 " Quod partes possunt inte!ligi dupliciter.
Uno modo, sub quadam confusione, prout sunt in toto : et sic cognoscuntur per unam formam totius, et sic
simul cognoscuntur. Alio modo, cognitione distincta, secundum quod quaelibet
cognoscitur per suam speciem: et sic non simul inte!liguntur." ST I, q. 85,
a. 4, ad 3.

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to ·eternity and as a circle to its center." 102 The metaphor is apt
because, like the circular path of the heavenly bodies imitating
the first mover, the " circular " path of reasoning is for Aquinas
the human imitation of the intellectus of God and the angels, who
comprehend immediately and intuitively a multiplicity in unity
and a unity in multiplicity. Ultimately and in all senses the need
for resolution and composition, the movements describing and
circumscribing the dialectical structure of our reasoning, is a
mark of the imperfection of our imitation of the divine intellectus,
of human reason as sequential rather than synoptic, as discursive
rather than intuitive, in short, as incomplete yet directed from
and toward principles.

102 " Quod similiter se habent ratio ad intellectum et tempus ad aeternitatem
et circulus ad centrum." Exp de Trin, q. 6, a. 1, sol. c.

SUMMA CONTRA GENTILES III, CHAPTERS 131-135:
A RARE GLIMPSE INTO THE HEART AS WELL
AS THE MIND OF AQUINAS

LA WREN CE B. PORTER
Setoii Hall University
South Orange, New Jersey

B

Introduction

ERNARDO GUI, Saint Thomas's thirteenth-century
biographer, relates in his Legenda S. Thomae the story
of how once upon a time Saint Thomas was seated at the
table of King Louis IX of France. Far removed from mere dinner conversation, the scholar was absorbed in profound rumination on no less a problem than the existence of evil. Suddenly in
the midst of the meal Aquinas came to an insight and " he struck
the table, exclaiming : ' That settles the Manichees ! ' " 1 More
than a century later Fra Angelico presents us with a comparable
image of the saint though in an appreciably different setting, not
a royal dinner table but a cloister walk. If the reader were to
walk in the cloister garden of the priory of San Marco in Florence, he or she would eventually come upon a portrait of Saint
Thomas painted by Fra Angelico (in the lunette above the door
to the right of the entrance on the south side of the cloister).
The saint stands erect facing the viewer, holding open upon his
chest a book with the pages facing us so that we might read
them. Saint Thomas is looking off into space, not distractedly
but with concentration, with arched eyebrows and fixed gaze. It
is as though he sees directly what we can only read about in the
text of his open book.
1 " The Life Of Saint Thomas Aquinas by Bernard Gui," in The Life of
St. Thomas Aquinas: Biographical Documents, trans. and ed. Kenelm Foster
(London, 1959), pp. 44-45.

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The image of Saint Thomas presented in these hagiographic
and iconographic traditions is distinctly that of an intellect-at
one time engrossed in speculative thought, at another time in
mystic contemplation-but it is always the mind that is foremost
engaged. The image is always that of the intellectual genius entirely taken up with recondite or divine ideas, far removed from
this-worldly concerns or domestic distractions. These images
cannot be easily dismissed, nor indeed should we want to do such
a thing, for there is much truth in these images. Certainly
Thomas was at times a mystic, and his powers of abstraction and
concentration were nothing less than extraordinary. His own
writings are the best witness to this. The method displayed
therein-the dispassionate objectivity, the unrelenting logic, the
economy of expression, the precise and telling distinctions, not to
mention his encyclopedic knowledge of scriptural, mystical, and
philosophical sources-makes for the impression of an almost
disembodied intellect at work. No wonder he was given the title
"angelic doctor" ! However, the problem with such images and
titles is that they never allude to the fact that Saint Thomas also
had a human heart and human feelings, and that these, too, could
at times have had an effect upon his thinking, especially when his
feelings had been hurt.
To illustrate this thesis, I propose to examine the interplay between thought and emotion, history and analysis, in the Summa
Contra Gentiles III, especially as concerns Chapters 131-135.
Chapters 131-135 constitute a small treatise on religious poverty
and as such appear as a peculiarly recondite consideration amid
Aquinas's much more general treatment there of the themes of
divine providence and human freedom. I believe this peculiar
feature can only be understood in relation to an historical controversy of the times, namely, the attack upon the new mendicant
orders by the secular clergy. Indeed, I believe the true nuances
of this small treatise can best be understood when it is seen more
as the heartfelt response of Aquinas to a slur upon his dignity
rather than as his dispassionate or purely reasoned response to a
contest of ideas. Aquinas was once personally embarrassed dur-

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ing his professorship at the University of Paris when a student
demonstration broke in upon a Sunday sermon of his with pamphlet literature that poked malicious fun at his considerable body
size and privileged social status. And I believe it is this more
than any logical considerations that dictates the theme and character of the treatise on religious poverty in Chapters 131-135 of
the Summa Contra Gentiles III.
In order to make clear the precise offense and the precise quality of emotion in Aquinas's response, we must first survey here
several analytical and historical themes. First we shall consider
the character of the Summa Contra Gentiles III in general and
the position and character of Chapters 131-135 in particular;
there follows a treatment of the novelty of mendicant poverty in
Saint Thomas's time, the attack upon the. mendicants, and
Aquinas's larger, more general defense of the mendicant way of
life; finally, the more personal attack upon Aquinas is investigated
in order to gain insight into the precise emotion in his final response in the mendicancy debate.

The Intellectual Proportions of the Summa Contra
Gentiles I II
As a piece of moral literature, Book III of Saint Thomas's
Summa Contra Gentiles can be considered among the foremost
works of ethical analysis produced by Western culture. The reasons for this are the breadth of its moral vision and the thoroughness with which that vision is articulated. Book III of the Summa
Contra Gentiles sets forth a comprehensive vision of moral order
embracing God and the universe as well as humankind, and
elaborates that vision with logical consistency and precision of
detail. It does this as a work of apologetical theology, that is, it
presents itself as a rational defense of a principal tenet of Christian faith, namely, the Christian belief that existence-the world
-is neither haphazard nor perverse but the creation of an intelligence and will that informs and gives meaning to all its
movements.
To grasp something of the proportions of the task which Saint

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Thomas had set for himself in Book III of the Summa Contra
Gentiles we can compare it with Dante's Comedia. Dante's poetic
vision of the three moral orders, heaven, hell, and purgatory,
concludes with these lines :
High phantasy lost power and here broke off;
Yet, as a wheel moves smoothly, free from jars,
My will and my desire were turned by love,
The love that moves the sun and the other stars. 2
What Dante proclaims with artistic genius in language and
images that delight the senses and stimulate the imagination,
Saint Thomas must explain by means of rationally comprehensible terms and intellectually cogent arguments. And this is a
most vital task; otherwise for a Christian to preach that it is
love that moves the sun and the stars will sound like little more
than mere poetic fantasy.
Saint Thomas's method is first to place at the head of his
treatise the thesis to be demonstrated. The thesis is presented
there in the form of a selection of Old Testament texts illustrating
the essential points in the doctrines of providence and creation :
"The Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods" (Ps.
94 :3). "For the Lord will not cast off His people" (Ps. 93 :14).
"For in His hand are all the ends of the earth, and the heights of
the mountains are His. For the sea is His and He made it, and His
hands formed dry land" (Ps. 94:4-5). 3
These Scripture passages dictate the outline of the treatise.
Chapters 1-63 might well be called "the morality of God," for
as an exposition of Psalm 94 :3, "The Lord is a great God and
a great King above all gods," it sets forth an image of God as a
sovereign of omnipotent power and universal rule, but a power
and rule that are without arbitrariness or oppression. God indeed has the power to move all, but He does this with eminent
justice, setting forth an appropriate end for all things. With re2 Dante, Paradise, trans. D. L. Sayers and B. Reynolds (London, 1962),
Canto XXXIII, vs. 142-145.
a Summa Contra Gentiles, Book III: Providence, trans. V. J. Bourke
(Notre Dame, 1956), Vol. I, p. 31.

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spect to the human person this means God has the power to move
by being an object of desire, thus respecting human freedom.
Chapters 64-110 might well be called Saint Thomas's essay on
"the morality of the universe or nature," for here he must reconcile the apparent randomness of nature with the Biblical text
"For in His hand are all the ends of the earth, and the heights
of the mountains are His. For the sea is His and He made it,
and His hands formed dry land " ( Ps. 94 :4-5). Here the moral
question reaches something of a high point in the problematic
posed by natural disasters or the irrational processes of nature.
In response, Saint Thomas poses the concept of secondary
causality, that is, not everything that happens in this world can
be blamed on God. An earthquake, for Saint Thomas, is not
necessarily an act of God (insurance agents take note). Rather
it is due to natural, that is, secondary causes. Finally, Chapters
111-163 demonstrates the thesis of Psalm 93 :4, "For the Lord
will not cast off his people." Accordingly, its sections demonstrate the means which God has provided for human moral action : the moral law ( chs. 114-129) , moral precepts ( chs. 130138), and punishment of moral transgression (chs. 147-163).
Here Saint Thomas's thought is, however, more than just an
apologetics. It is also a theology of correlation, that is, a theology in genuine dialogue with sources other than revelation.
Indeed, we would be misrepresenting Saint Thomas's thought
here if we gave the impression that it was merely an exposition
of Scripture. If this treatise can be understood as an exposition
of the biblical texts cited in its prologue, we must also acknowledge there are long stretches of the Summa Contra Gentiles III
that make little or no reference to Scripture and read more like
a footnote to Aristotle's Physics. Even so, this fact requires
careful qualification. Saint Thomas's appropriation of classical
philosophy is no gross and simple importation or " baptizing "
of pagan thought. The god of Aristotle and the God of the Sermon on the Mount have little if anything in common and Saint
Thomas knew this. David Knowles observes:

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Aristotle, had he been restored to life to read the Summa Contra
Gentiles, would have had difficulty in recognizing the thought as
his. . . . While Aristotle, the empiricist, looked most carefully at
the universe of being as it was displayed to the senses and intelligence, and explored in his Metaphysics the veins and sinews of substance, he became imprecise when he rose to consider mind and soul,
and hesitant when he looked up towards the First Cause of all things.
His God is a shadow, an unseen, unknown, uncaring force and reason necessary to give supreme unity to the Universe. . . . With
Thomism, on the other hand, the infinitely rkh, dynamic existential
reality is God, the creator and source of all being by power and
essence, holding and guiding and regarding every part of creation .... 4
Thus in Book III of the Summa Contra Gentiles, biblical faith is
informed and rendered intellectually incisive by a raid upon, a
selective appropriation of, the rich wealth of wisdom of pagans
such as Plato and Aristotle.
But there is more to Book III than philosophy and theology;
there is also history. Not everything here can be explained
by recourse to philosophical or theological appraisal. For example, from the perspective of logical development, the subject
matter of chapters 131-135 is quite gratuitous. Chapters 131135 comprise a treatise on religious poverty. As a discussion of
an appropriate Christian attitude toward material wealth they can
stand on their own apart from their place in this treatise. But
more importantly, for a reader contemporary with Saint Thomas,
these chapters would have read more like a report on a contemporary debate, even a summary, erudite though it be, concerning one of the great social novelties of the day. For these
chapters deal with one of the great, burning social issues of the
time: whether there is any place for mendicancy, that is, pious
beggars, in a Christian society. 5
4 David Knowles, The Evolution of Medieval Thought (New York, 1962),
pp. 257-258.
5 The English word " mendicant " comes from the Latin mendicant, mendicans which is the present participle of mendicare, "to beg," from mendicus,
"beggar."

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Mendicant Poverty 6
The twelfth century in Europe witnessed the advent of something like a spiritual awakening in parts of the Church. A peculiar characteristic of this new spirituality was its emphasis upon
evangelical or religious poverty, that is, a simplicity of life in
imitation of the Sermon on the Mount's "Look at the birds of
the air, they neither sow nor reap .... " The phenomenon exhibited itself in various and at times bizarre expressions. But two
expressions-the Franciscan and Dominican orders-found not
only legitimation but powerful approval from the highest authority within the Church. These were called mendicant or begging
orders, because, unlike traditional religious orders (monastic
communities), these new religious orders put aside manual labor,
after the initial Franciscan venture, so as to dedicate themselves
exclusively to evangelical work. Thus they depended upon the
charitable support of others for their sustenance.
The Dominican Order to which Saint Thomas belonged had been
originally conceived as a response to the Albigensian heresy, a
medieval expression of dualistic Manicheism in the south of
France. The Dominican order embodied a two-fold tactical response to the heresy: first, Dominic recognized the need for intelligent and articulate, well-educated preachers to combat the
intellectual sophistries upon which the heresy was based-an
elaborate, rationalistic explanation of the universe. However,
Dominic also saw that intellectual arguments would not be
enough. The Cathari or Albigensians were moral rigorists and
thus had to be responded to not only on the level of ideas but also
that of moral example. In fact, Dominic surmised that the failure
of previous missionary efforts against the Albigensians had been
in great measure due to the fact that the monks who preached
against them represented the power and wealth of great monasteries, the intellectual refinement of a genteel culture. Thus
Dominic formed the idea of a community of religious men who
6 For the history of the foundation of the Dominicans I have followed principally M. H. Vicaire, Saint Dominic and His Times, trans. K. Pond (New
York, 1964).

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were not only well-educated, eloquent preachers, but whose personal lifestyle was one of austerity and discipline.
When we come to Saint Thomas however, we are now at least
two generations removed from Saint Dominic's historical situation. The Dominicans are no longer a strategic missionary effort
but a more general phenomenon in the church. In addition to
disputing with heretics in the hinterland, they had now come to
the great cities and were making a name for themselves as theologians in the great universities. But their general success had
been much wider than this. At first these itinerant preachers
were welcomed by bishops and local clergy for the assistance
which they provided in the general ministry of preaching and
cure of souls. But soon after these mendicants settled in a place
problems arose : as preachers and counsellors, their learning
made them more attractive than their diocesan or parochial
counterparts; secondly, their mendicant or begging status meant
they needed financial support which their numerous clientele were
willing and grateful to supply. But this was support which
normally would have gone into the local churches to the benefit
of the local clergy. Such a situation was volatile and bound
eventually to find a response. The response came from one who
was both a university professor and a secular priest.

Attack upon the Mendicants 7
Guillaume de Saint-Amour was a priest of Grenville and a
regent master at the University of Paris. When Guillaume became
regent master, that is, full professor, in 1250, the Dominicans
held two professorial chairs in the university faculty, one more
than the early statutes of the university had allowed. Guillaume
set about to amend this situation. But his aim proved to be more
than just that of controlling the number of mendicant professors
in the university. Rather he worked up a polemic that challenged
7

For the history of the controversy I have followed the chronology in

J. A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d'Aquino (New York, 1974); A. J. Heinan,
"William of Saint-Amour" in The New Catholic Encyclopedia 14 (New
York, 1977), pp. 936-937; and D. L. Douie, The Conflict between the Seculars
and the Mendicants (London, 1954).

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the very right of such religious orders to exist, arguments that
portrayed these friars as a threat to the organizational structure
of the entire church.
On February 4, 1254, the university, at Guillaume's instigation, declared the two Dominican professors suspended for not
having participated in a general strike the previous year. The
Dominicans had been able to continue teaching because their
order conducted private studia or " colleges " at the university
for the training of their own men. These studia, though within the
university environs, were administratively independent, and thus
during a general strike they could continue their schedule unimpeded. About the same time as this formal expulsion, Guillaume
produced his Liber de Antichristo et eius ministris, written
ostensibly against the radical " Spiritual Franciscans," an apocalyptic and arguably heterodox off shoot of Francis of Assisi.
But Guillaume's Liber was written in such a way that the "false
teachers" and "false prophets" which he railed against bore an
amazing likeness to contemporary Dominicans and Franciscans,
the mainline mendicant orders.
In March of 1256, Guillaume followed up his first, oblique
attack with a more precise and direct indictment in his De periculis novissimorum temporum. Here he argued quite openly and
directly that these mendicants were a threat not only to the ecclesiastical order but to the general social order as well. These mendicants were interlopers in the vineyard usurping the proper functions of bishops and pastors. Guillaume argued that the office of
preaching was given to bishops and pastors and that hearing
confessions is of paramount importance to a pastor if he is to
know his flock and their needs. However, Guillaume's most lethal
shot was reserved for last. He argued that only those who have
no other means to sustain themselves should be allowed to beg;
any who are able should work for their living. Such reasoning,
quite correct in itself, could only lead to the death of a religious
order that depended upon the charity of the people for its sustenance and its labors. Guillaume's arguments were not without
effect. They could not help but raise the thought on the part of
bishops and parochial clergy that perhaps their prerogatives were

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indeed being usurped, their authority undermined; what place
was there in the community for a group of men with such a lifestyle and ministry? Moreover, if one's own ministry was failing
or less than it should be, here to hand was an easy explanation.
Within a few months of its publication, King Louis IX forwarded a copy of the De periculis to the papal curia for scrutiny
of its arguments. However, mendicant representation at the curia
was strong and Guillaume's work was condemned on October 5,
1256. The papacy was too convinced of the value and achievement of the mendicant orders to allow them to be impeded, much
less suppressed. Even so, this did not stop Guillaume. In Paris,
he continued to preach against the mendicants until in early 1257
the king exiled him from the city to his native village. Throne
and papacy together were too much to battle and so the polemic
subsided for several years until a change in the occupant of the
papal throne seemed to proffer new hope.
In 1265 a Frenchman, Guy Foulques, cardinal archbishop of
Narbonne, succeeded to the papal throne as Clement IV. Guillaume obviously felt a pope who was a native Frenchman might
be more receptive to a complaint from native French clergy. In
October of 1266 he sent the pope a new work entitled Collationes
catholicae et canonicae Scripturae. It was really not so much a
new work as a revision of Guillaume's De periculis though now
expanded with more canonical and Scriptural citations. The
work failed to convince, however, even with a French pope. But
more importantly, the battle back in Paris had not been left
leaderless. Gerard d' Abbeville, likewise a secular priest and professor at Paris, attacked the mendicants in a public disputation at
about the same time that Guillaume was appealing to the new
French pope. But the real battle did not begin until after
Clement's death in November of 1268. A three year interregnum
passed before the election of another pope and the anti-mendicant
forces seized upon the opportunity which this vacuum of power
seemed to create. In December of 1268, Guillaume railed against
the mendicants in his sermons while Gerard d' Abbeville drew
up his attack in another academic disputation in Paris. From

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here on, however, it was really Gerard who carried the brunt of
the battle. And he did this with bold determination.
On New Year's day, 1269, Gerard preached from the pulpit
of the Franciscan church in Paris. Before the assembled Franciscan community, which probably included Saint Bonaventure,
Gerard proceeded to defend the wealth of the church in the face
of what he claimed was a prominent and pernicious theory of
evangelical poverty. The theory of poverty which he denounced
was one of several interpretations given to religious poverty after
the death of Francis and a subject which was hotly debated
among his followers. It is obvious that Gerard hoped to stir up
controversy among the Franciscans and defeat his enemies by
dividing them against themselves.
Gerard's efforts soon turned literary. A few months later he
published Contra adversarium perfectionis christianae, arguing
that mendicant spirituality denigrated the status of laity and regular clergy. Gerard had written it twelve years earlier in the first
phase of the conflict, but decided not to publish it at that time because of the condemnation of Guillaume's work. But now with
no pope reigning, he could publish it with impunity. The work
renewed the earlier polemic regarding the place of the mendicants
in the church, repeating much of Guillaume's arguments from De
periculis. However, it was innovative in two senses. It dropped
the attempt to identify the mendicants with kindred though
heretical spiritualist movements, only to add a new argument
against them. While the Dominican constitution of the day had
forbidden the reception of young men under the age of eighteen,
the popularity of the mendicant vocation had become such that
boys younger than this were in fact being admitted. But there
were papal decrees, and recent ones at that, restricting the age
at which a youth might take religious vows. Gerard accused
the mendicants of gross violation of papal directives.
Defenlse of the Mendicants

The mendicant orders responded to all this with the considerable intellectual talents which were theirs, the most important

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B. PORTER

contributions being made by Bonaventure and Aquinas. Guillaume's De periculis was published in March of 1256, at about
the same time as Thomas' s promotion to full professor of theology. Within weeks of Guillaume's publication, in April or
May of 1256, Thomas chose the topic De opere manuali religiosorum for his first academic disputation as full professor. In
this work he refuted Guillaume's contention that mendicants
should perform manual labor like monks instead of preaching and
teaching like secular clerics. A few months later, b_etween September and October of that same year, Thomas produced his
more formal reply to Guillaume's work.
Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religion'em 8 was the work
of a young professor who had arrived only recently in his academic position, a self-conscious work adhering strictly to proper
academic style. Thomas was careful to restate all of Guillaume's
arguments, after which he proposed possible counter arguments,
and finally delivered a lengthy determination to the question,
much in the manner of a master deciding an academic debate.
The work is full of very careful distinctions, for Thomas was attempting to do two things at once: to make a place for the mendicants in the church while at the same time not appreciably altering the existing structure. Thus he conceded the point that no
one has a right to preach without permission of the bishop, but at
the same time he insisted this does not prevent the bishop or the
pope from extending this privilege to others.
When the second phase of the assault broke out in 1268,
Thomas was no longer at Paris. He was at Viterbo, Italy, working on the first part of the Summa Theologiae. He had been assigned there just the year before when the Dominican general
chapter decided there should be a suitable group of friars in
residence at the papal curia (Pope Clement and his curia resided at Viterbo). But the master general of the order decided
the trouble brewing in Paris required nothing less than the talents
8 English translation in J. Proctor, An Apology for Religious Orders
(Westminster, Maryland, 1950).

SUMMA

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of Thomas, and thus he returned. For the next three years
( 1269-1272), the term of his second professorship in Paris,
Saint Thomas would be much taken up with the anti-mendicant
controversy. In fact, the principal burden of the controversy
would be borne by the Lenten and Advent disputations between
Thomas and Gerard d'Abbeville. This time, however, Saint
Thomas was a much more self-confident and seasoned scholar.
Upon arrival in Paris, Thomas set about composing his
reply to Gerard's Contra adversarium perfectionis christianae.
Thomas's answer was no cautious point by point review and
criticism but a formidable and organic treatise setting forth a
complete theology of Christian perfection. For Thomas, "perfection " is nothing else than charity, and he was quick to insist
this perfection is demanded of all Christians clergy and laity
alike. However, he argued, there are some who freely vow themselves to such perfection by professedly denying themselves such
things in life as make the attainment of perfection difficult, namely, wealth, the concerns of spouse and family, and one's own willfullness: the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Thomas
was careful to note that the Lord counseled these; he demanded
them of no one. Those who take such vows are considered to be
in the " state of perfection," not that they have attained it but
that they are formally bound to it. Not only was Thomas's conception thoroughly conceived and well argued, but it was also
very generous : " Thus it is evident that some people are perfect,
who do not have a state of perfection, while others have the
state of perfection, but are not perfect " (ch. 15). 9
Chenu rightly judged this work to be " the most important and
best constructed document of the whole debate." 10 But not only
was it a work of serene intelligence and high theology, it was also
as clever and calculated a ploy as Gerard's sermon with its intent
to divide the Franciscans. The -great part of the treatise is given
over to an exposition of a theology of perfection, but in the final
9Leonine edition of the Opera Omnia, Vol. 41, B (Rome, 1969).
D. Chenu, Toward Understanding St. Thomas, trans. A. M. Landry
and D. Hughes (Chicago, 1964), p, 342.
10 M.

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section Thomas, by a maneuver arguably more politic than theological, grants that bishops, too, are in a state of perfection.
Such a thesis, with its omission of any reference to the secular
clergy, could not help but be seen by Gerard as a provocation.
And sure enough Gerard grabbed at the bait. In a rapidly written reply, Gerard labored theologically to claim the perfection of
the secular clergy. And thus with a stroke of the pen Thomas
had put his enemies on the defensive and diverted attention from
the mendicants.
This method of diverting attack away from the medicants
seems to have been the tactic which Saint Thomas decided to pursue from that point on. At the beginning of Lent, 1271, in the
academic disputation De ingressu puerorum in religione, Saint
Thomas gave his answer to the question of admitting young boys
to religious life before puberty. In this work he never mentions
the mendicant orders but instead considers the " immemorial
custom of the Benedictines " by which he himself had been entrusted by his parents to the monks as a child. However,
Thomas was not trying to win solely by means of diversion or
changing the subject; quite the contrary, during this second
phase he followed up his " serenely " theological works with
vehemently polemical replies.
In January or February of 1270, Thomas came out with a new
edition of his De perfectione spiritualis vitae. This time six new
chapters had been appended in response to Gerard's criticism of
the first edition. Here Saint Thomas's style was thoroughly
polemical, as was the case in his Contra doctrinam retrahentium 11
of summer 1271, wherein he answered specifically and point-forpoint Gerard's accusations regarding the admittance of boys under-age to the mendicant communities. Here Thomas even resorts to the sort of tactics he might have seen in Jerome's Contra
J ovinianum, labelling his enemies derisively as " the Gerardines "
and suggesting that Gerard himself was a corruptor of youth by
poisoning their minds against the mendicants.
11

See Proctor, An Apology for Religious Orders.

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Popular Hostility 12
If we stopped here in our account of the secular/ mendicant
controversy at the University of Paris we would be telling but
half the story. The controversy was not fought solely in the
academic arena, and the disputants were not limited to professors
armed with treatises. The secular clergy pursued an assault upon
the friars from several strategic points at once. We have seen
something of the intellectual and legal aspects of this assault in
the appeals to reason and authority (the hierarchy). But there
was yet a third point of attack: an attempt was made to arouse
popular hostility against the friars, and for this effort there was
ready to hand a man of appropriate talents.
" Rustebeuf" is the pseudonym of a French medieval trouvere
(fl. 1245-85). A characteristic element in his work was the incisive and often humorous depiction of the various social classes.
In his satirical works his principal theme was the iniquities of
the friars. Therein, he not only championed the cause of the
university but he defended Guillaume of Saint-Amour when he
was condemned and driven into exile. Nine of his poems were
directly connected with the quarrel and may well be described
as political pamphlets: La Discorde de l'Universite et des
Jacobins, La Dit de Guillaume de Saint-Amour, Du Pharisien,
Complainte de Guillaume, Des Regles, La Dit de Sainte Eglise,
La Dit d' H ypocrisie, La Bataille des Vices contre les Vertus, and
Des Jacobins.
These poems were copied as handbills and distributed at the
taverns in and about the university. There they were read to the
amusement of students and non-university people alike. That they
were effective in their appeal is obvious :

The winter of 1255-56 was the severest the Dominicans at Paris
had to endure. William and his colleagues ... had aroused not only
the secular students of the university, but a section of the laity as
well, to physical violence. No sooner was a friar caught sight of,
wrote Humbert of Romans in April 1256, than he was surrounded
12 For the description of Rustebeuf and his poetry I am indebted to N. F.
Regaldo, Poetic Patterns in Ritstebeitf (New Haven, 1978).

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by the human swarms that poured forth from every house and hostel
in the narrow street, hurrying as if to a spectacle. Instantly the air
was full of the " tumult of shoutings, the barking of dogs, the roaring
of bears, the hissing of serpents," and every sort of insulting exclamation. Filthy rushes and straw off the floors of the dwellings were
poured upon the cowled head from above; mud, stones, and sometimes blows greeted him from below. Arrows had been shot against
the priory, which had henceforth to be guarded day and night by
royal troops.13
Thomas himself was not free from such harassment. We have
a letter of Pope Alexander IV written on June 26, 1259, to
Reginald Mignon of Corbeil, Bishop of Paris, wherein the pope
condemns recent turbulence and scandal among the students of
Paris prompted by " wretched little pamphlets, renowned for
their infamy and slandering these same friars ... both in literary
and vernacular language, in indecent rhymes and songs." 14 The
pope singled out for censure a student leader, one Guillot of the
Picard Nation (the French and Italian contingent of the University), who got up in the middle of a Palm Sunday (April 6,
1259) sermon by Saint Thomas and started to peddle pamphlets
against the mendicants right there in the church.
Henry Denifie, in his edition of the letter, notes at this point
that it is not easy to say precisely which pamphlet was distributed.
However, there is one poem of Rustebeuf's which if it had been
distributed that day would have been a particularly indicting one
as regards the preacher. And since the leaflet was distributed so
as to interrupt the sermon it might be argued there was some
personal affront to Thomas intended.
The poem Des Regles, 15 written early in 1259, has as its theme
how the friars have enriched themselves at the expense of the
parish priests. The poet illustrates his theme by means of a
comparison of the library of a devout cure with that of the friars.
1a W eisheipl, p. 93.
14 H. Denifle and
E. Chatelain, Chartulariimi Universitatis Parisiensis
(Paris, 1889), pp. 391: "alias libellos famosos in infamiam et detractationem
eorundum fratrum ab eorum emulis in letterali et vulgari sermone necnon
rismis et cantilenis indecentibus."
15 See Oeuvres Completes de Rustebeuf, Vol. I, ed. A. Jubinal (Paris, 1874),
pp. 224-232.

SUMMA

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It is a scene of high melodrama: the one little book the devout
cure needs to say his evening prayers is denied him, while the
friars, who do not labor long at pious tasks, have many and welledited texts. The cure must struggle just to get enough bread to
eat, while the friars have fat bellies below their plump and rested
faces. Rustebeuf exclaims, so as to be sure no one misses the
point, " Without work they have wealth! "
The portrait drawn of the friars certainly would not apply to
all-not all would have books, not all would be fat-but it is a
portrait that would have applied all too accurately to the preacher
that Palm Sunday. Surely every effort was made to supply
Thomas with whatever texts he needed and his corpulent physique of ample proportions was well known. But Rustebeuf's
poem becomes even more pointed when he proceeds to develop
his contrast of friar and parish priest by a description of the visit
of one of the fat friars to the home of a poor parish priest.
The friar is haughtily condescending while the anxious parish
priest does his best to serve up the meal in style. The friar's
regal arrogance is contrasted with the truly apostolic if involuntary poverty of the priest. Is this an even more pointed satire of
Thomas's noble lineage and the fact that even now as a mendicant friar he was the table guest of wealthy and powerful men
such as the King of France? This portrait of a friar makes for
an interesting contrast with Bernardo Gui's anecdote of Thomas's
visit with King Louis for supper. Could Gui's stress upon
Thomas's unwillingness to go-" Thomas wished to decline the
invitation on the plea that he was busy with study and writing;
but his prior, on behalf of the king, made him accept "-and the
Saint's mental abstraction from the dinner be the hagiographer's
attempt to repair the portrait of Saint Thomas popularized by
Rustebeuf? Perhaps I am playing these materials for more than
they will allow; however, there is evidence that Thomas was
aware of the applicability of such a caricature to himself.
Thomas's pamphlet war with the secular priests on the faculty
at the University of Paris was not limited in its significance to
the small body of minor Thomistic literature which we have sur-

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B. PORTER

veyed thus far. For example, Thomas's writings during the second phase of the conflict ( 1269-72), in the words of Chenu,
"came to a serene conclusion" 16 in the articles of the Summa
Theologiae dealing with the religious and pastoral states (2a2ae,
185-189). But the earlier phase of the conflict (1252-59) also
had its ultimate fruition in high theology, namely in the treatise
on religious poverty, chapters 131-135, of the Summa Contra
Gentiles III.
The title of Chapter 131 is "On the error of the attackers of
voluntary poverty." And the catalogue of objections to evangelical
poverty listed there is identical with that which Saint Thomas
employs in his Contra impugnantes in response to Guillaume's
De periculis. However, the other chapters of this section also
betray that earlier historical conflict in a less obvious though
perhaps more telling way.
In Chapters 131-135 Saint Thomas is as disciplined and unemotional as ever. Here reason reigns supreme. In reviewing
the various defenses given throughout history for a religious
sense of poverty, Saint Thomas concedes nothing to history. Instead of listing the arguments in the sequence of their historical
development, he lists them according to their intellectual character. Thus he gives first consideration to the arguments of cenobitic monasticism of the patristic era because these are speculative, and he considers Saint Paul's arguments last because they
argue purely from convenience and practical concerns. Nor does
Thomas concede anything here to authority, dismissing Paul's
argument in II Thessalonians ( 3 :8) with the remark, " this
way of living does not seem to be appropriate." Nor does Saint
Thomas hesitate to quote Scripture against itself, as when he
quotes Paul's " the Lord ordained that they who preach the
gospel should live by the gospel " (I Cor. 9 :13) as a defense of
evangelical poverty.
Thomas himself in his own answer to the problematic appeals
only to reason, arguing that riches in themselves are neither good
1s Chenu, p. 342.

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263

nor bad, rather it is in how we use them that morality resides.
Thus discretion is the important virtue here.
However, the most important point here is that when these
passages are read in the historical context we have described,
certain words and phrases take on an emotion otherwise not
recognizable. For example, in Chapter 132, "On the ways of
life of those who practice voluntary poverty," at one point Saint
Thomas makes reference to :
. . . those who have devoted themselves to the pursuit of wisdom,
but who have been reared in wealth and comfort, which they have left
behind for the sake of Christ.
It is an obvious autobiographical reference, a rare occurrence in
Saint Thomas's work! Admittedly, however, it is hardly obtrusive to a modern day reader. Indeed it appears to us so oblique
that we might pass it over, except that when the passage is read
in the context of the historical drama we have recognized as its
background the passage takes on a great precision not only of
meaning but emotion.
The moral example offered in chapters 131-135 to illustrate
Saint Thomas's teaching regarding human discretion in matters
which do not fall under precise moral law is entirely gratuitous.
Saint Thomas could have illustrated his point here by many
other examples. However, he chose to illustrate it with the example of religious poverty. This was an eloquent tactical response to his enemies' derision of his ideal of religious poverty
by means of satirical tavern rhymes. In response, Saint Thomas
chose to enthrone, as it were, the doctrine of religious poverty
amid his most serious ethical analysis of the human situation.
There it stands alongside his doctrines of God and the universe,
at the high point of his treatise on the morality of the human
person. One can conclude there is poetry and not mere logic or
calculation in this design. Indeed, it can be called nothing less
than poetic justice. It is something like reparation for injured
pride. It shows as much Saint Thomas's heart as his mind.

THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHIES OF
AQUINAS AND AWOLOW0 1
FRANCIS

I.

0GUNMODEDE

Semlnary of SS. Peter and Paul
Ibadan, Nigeria

W:

Introduction

HA T POSSIBLE connection is there between the
hought of Aquinas and that of Awolowo? We must
first observe a sharp difference in personality and approach to politics between the two men. Obafemi Awolowo
( 1909-87) was a recent Nigerian philosopher and politician
whose works on politics include The People's Republic (1968)
and Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution ( 1970), among
others. 2 St. Thomas, on the other hand, was a medieval Italian
priest who, because of his intensive academic pursuits and religious calling, did not engage in practical politics. In fact, it has
been said that St. Thomas was the greatest philosopher that ever
lived after Plato and Aristotle, but one without a political theory.
This opinion is drawn from the fact that he has left no complete
work on politics to which we can turn as we do to the Politics
of Aristotle or to the Social Contract of Rousseau. Thomas
never completed his Commentary on the Politics of Aristotle or
his treatise De Regimine Principum (De regno).
There is another good reason to say that St. Thomas does not
provide his readers with an adequate political doctrine. This is
1 This is an adaptation of an original lecture titled "Elements of St. Thomas's
Politics in Awolowo's Social Philosophy" given to mark Aquinas Day at
the Dominican Institute of Philosophy, Ibadan, Nigeria on January 28, 1989.
2 For other works and writings by Awolowo, see F. Ogunmodede, Obafemi
Awolowo's Socio-Political Philosophy (Rome, 1986), pp. 269-272.

265

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I. OGUNMODEDE

his " essentially theoretical " 3 approach to the study of politics.
Aquinas's political reflections did not arise from any practical
issue. The impact of philosophy was the determining factor. His
views on state and government were part of a philosophical system. The approach of Awolowo to politics is quite different. It
is empirical and practical. For, as D'Entreves says, modern man,
unlike his medieval counterpart, has " become so entangled in
particulars, in the practical side of politics, that it is only with
an effort that we can be brought to realize the existence of the
more general issues which lie behind our immediate predicament." 4
Nevertheless, one can relate the political thought of both men.
History is already filled with cases of scientific discoveries made
at the same time by men in different places without any prior
knowledge of one another's achievements. For instance, the controversy over the discovery of calculus was resolved by crediting
both Newton and Leibniz with the discovery at the same time,
each in his own country. Perhaps we can add that fundamental
ideas about man and society can be shared, because of their universal nature, by people in different ages, places, and circumstances. This is the basis for the present comparison of Awolowo' s and St. Thomas's socio-political philosophies.
This position is favored by the fact that, whichever way one
looks at it, both have a political theory, a set of propositions systematically related to one another in such a way and manner that
it is meaningful and realistic for us to talk of a "theory." Perhaps the contribution of this paper is to demonstrate that Awolowo and Aquinas do share many basic ideas and concepts about
reality, about religion, and especially about polity. This view is
supported by the fact that, even though Awolowo wrote no treatise
on metaphysics, 5 as Aquinas did, he nonetheless built on sound
3 A. P. D'Entreves,
Aquinas: Selected Political Writings (Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1959), p. viii.
4 Ibid.
5 Unfortunately,
Awolowo died before he could write works setting out his
metaphysics systematically. But he gave a very long interview to Dr. Makinde
of the 0.A.U., Ile-Ife, just before he died. This gives some insight into his

A QUIN AS AND A WOLOWO

267

fundamental postulates and principles which are metaphysical in
nature in his thinking about politics. 6
Now, there are many approaches and methods in the study of
any political theorist. According to B. J. Dudley, " we can concern ourselves with the sort of assumptions he makes, how legitimate or realistic these are. Alternatively, we can concern ourselves with the judgments he makes and the compatibility between these and the assumptions he started out with. Or, we can
attempt to relate both his assumptions and his judgments to the
prevailing circumstances of his time in an attempt at understanding why he said what he did." 7
While we could take one or all of these approaches, a thematic
approach will be adopted here. The aim of this essay is to identify and analyze those themes which are common and which we
consider essential to understanding their respective socio-political
philosophies. These themes are as follow : Man, Politics, the
State, Government, Natural Law, Political Obligation, and
Church and State Relations.

Man
It is necessary to point out from the start a common background to Awolowo's and Aquinas's thought. As Christians,
both men have certain religious beliefs underlying and guiding
their political philosophies. It is in their anthropology, which is
essential to understanding their politics, that this fact first manifests itself.
Man is a person, a psycho-physical entity, or a union of body
and soul-essential parts which cannot be conceived separately
but which always remain together if he is to exist and remain
metaphysical perspectives. See M. A. Makinde, Awo As A Philosopher, a
paper presented at the National Conference on " Obafemi A wolowo, The End
of An Era?," O.A.U., 1987.
s Ogunmodede, p. 45.
7 B. J. Dudley, "The Political Theory of Awolowo and Azikiwe" in Onigu
Otite, Themes in African Social and Political Thought (Enugu: Fourth Dimension Publishers, 1978), p. 200.

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I. OGUNMODEDE

alive. Man is a rational creature of God and is created according to His image and likeness. Aristotle says that nature does
not operate without a purpose and goal. 8 Both Awolowo and
Aquinas identify the ultimate end of man as God. This is the
supreme goal that gives meaning, value, and dignity to human
life and existence. As John Abbo says, " any other aim not subordinate to and conducive to this end is to be rejected as derogatory to man's dignity." 0 On the other hand, "any other aim, the
fulfilment of which brings man closer to God, may be safely
pursued." 10
While Aquinas begins with this theological tenet as a principle
from which he draws political conclusions, Awolowo's politics
culminates in it via a psycho-ethical theory he calls " mental
magnitude." 11 According to St. Thomas, therefore, the enjoyment of perfect happiness (i.e., the knowledge and love of God)
by man is fully possible only in heaven. In the meantime, man
engages in politics and moves towards God through the Church
established by Christ. This is necessary and legitimate.
Man communes with and knows God through prayer, meditation or contemplation, and other spiritual activities. 12 But, when
St. Thomas talks of final happiness or beatific vision of God as
He is in Himself, he is also cognizant of the value of the appetitive and voluntary faculties and aspects of human nature. Happiness is equated with the good which is the principle of human
activity. 13 Behind love, desires, and the choices of men, there is
always the concept of the good. 14 Put differently, while happiness
is the subject of the intellectual life, particular goods are the object of the practical life.
8 Aristotle,
9

Politics, Bk. 1, ch. 1, 10.

J. A. Abbo, Political Thought: Man and Ideas (Maryland: The Newman

Press, 1960), p. 116.
10 Ibid., p. 116.
11 Awolowo,
The People's Republic (Ibadan:
1986), Chapter 9.
12 Ogunmodede, pp. 71-72.
18 Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, q. 94, a. 2.
14 Ibid.

Oxford

University

Press,

AQUINAS

AND AWOLOWO

269

Man seeks earthly goods and happiness while he lives. They
are imperfect and temporal compared with the vision of God, but
they are natural, legitimate, and necessary for him according to
St. Thomas.
The good that man seeks and desires on earth takes the forms
of food, shelter, health, property, friendship, and peace. Man as
an individual can seek to attain them, but he needs to live in a
community or state if he is to achieve them. In fact, the state
exists so that men within it can achieve these goods and enjoy
well-being and happiness more abundantly.
While man is secondary to God in the reflection of Aquinas,
Awolowo starts with man and then moves on to God. This is
why the point of departure of his political philosophy is man. His
work The People's Republic states this focal point clearly.
The sole object of our discourse in this work is man.16
The reality of man is that he is suffering from several wants.
He is underdeveloped and unhappy. If there is anything a politician should do, it is to care for man's welfare in society, to
strive to provide for his needs and make him happy on earth.
This view, according to Awolowo, is not materialistic but Christian in nature, since it agrees with the plan and command of
God-" increase and multiply and fill the earth." 16 Awolowo
will, however, qualify the realization of human happiness. It is
contingent and feasible only if man conforms to and follows God's
law.

Politics: Its Role
The theory of human happiness leads to the role of politics in
human life. In the tenth book of his Ethics, Aristotle considers
politics as the science of statecraft and as the greatest of the practical sciences. Aquinas does not dispute this point. However, he
wants the importance of politics understood in the right perspective. Politics cannot be separated from or rated higher than the
15 Awolowo,

The People's Republic, p. 211.

1s Genesis 1 : 28.

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I. OGUNMODEDE

ultimate end of man (perfecta beatitudo). For politics is about
the choice of means which are contingent to attain ends which
are moral in nature. The object or end of politics is the common
good, an end which is higher in value than that of either the individual or the family.
Awolowo's view of politics is also not one that separates politics from ethico-religious principles and values. He rejects those
modern positions which make politics absolute, and is far from
the amoral Machiavellian prototype (the means justify the end).
Rather, his concept of the nature of politics is a return to the
medieval or scholastic position held by St. Thomas. Thus, for
the two of them, politics is concerned with the welfare of the
people and the office of leadership rather than the person of
leadership; it is about service rendered by leaders, rather than the
glorification of leaders.
The State

It is in the state, the realm of secular affairs, that politics
properly belongs. In this temporal sphere it finds its proper scope,
role, and goal. One might expect St. Thomas to follow up his
notion of politics with a theory of a theocratic state. This would
fit squarely into the Middle Ages considered as the age of faith.
But this is where his views and ideas were a bombshell and revolution in politics somewhat as the Copernican revolution was in
astronomy in the 17th century. Prior to the thirteenth century,
the teachings of St. Augustine of Hippo in the City of God had
dominated the other-worldly political thought of the medieval
world. With his eyes fixed in rapture on the splendors of the
heavenly city, the Christian could only look upon his world as a
valley of tears. Politics was conceived not as natural, right, and
proper to man but as a necessary punishment for his fall and sin.
Because of the need for atonement and redemption, the earthly
city was recast as a godly theocracy.
This medieval pessimism was challenged by St. Thomas. This
challenge was only symptomatic and characteristic of the crisis of
thought which had gradually emerged in the heart of medieval
society. According to D'Entreves, men were beginning to take

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AND A WOLOWO

271

pride in the work of their hands, and to doubt whether all that
they did was utterly sinful. Richer blood was beginning to circulate inside the veins of Western Europe. New ideas and modes
of thought were shaping the intellectual life which had arisen in
the universities. The study of Roman Law, which had spread
from Bologna, had disclosed new perspectives upon government
and administration.
Many of Aristotle's writings which had
long been ignored were brought within the reach of the student.
A strange and insidious philosophy (Averroism) was percolating
through the Iron Curtain separating the Islamic and Christian
worlds.
Never had a peril so threatened Western Christianity. 17 As
usual, when the basis of any establishment is questioned and
shaken, there follows a resort to the same defense-mechanisms or
to the same storehouse of ideas. Some believed that the challenges
presented by the new political theories could be stemmed with a
reinforcement of the doctrine of theocracy according to St.
Augustine.
This would counterbalance Aristotelianism and
A verroism, both of which had disclosed a new conception of the
state as a high achievement of man which could well set the
stage for the transfiguration of the earthly into the heavenly city.
This uncompromising attitude could perhaps succeed. In later
days, after the Renaissance, when a large part of Europe was on
the verge of becoming altogether pagan, Protestantism was to
find in the theocratic ideal a powerful inspiration for action and
reform. Luther restored the fundamental values of Christianity
within the sanctuary of the heart. But he also abandoned entirely the realm of politics to the rule of the sword. St. Thomas
Aquinas's answer was quite different.
The basis of Aquinas's novel doctrine in politics is expressed
in the dictum : " Gratia non tollit naturam sed earn perficit "
(grace does not abolish nature but perfects it). In other words,
the natural order exists and is distinct and autonomous from the
supernatural order and it is good. Man belongs to this order and
thus he is good per naturam. Original sin does not incapacitate
11

D'Entreves, p. x.

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I. OGUNMODEDE

and prevent him from performing good and wholesome acts. Man
is still rational and free. The state is his domain, and it is here
that he engages in politics and carries out other activities. These
are not and should not be seen as evil, but as good. Through
them man can realize and develop his potentialities and attain
dignity, sanctification, and unification with God if he chooses.
The state is the central theme of Awolowo's socio-political
philosophy, and Aristotle and Plato are sources for his work.
Like St. Thomas, he employs a combined theory of human nature and human needs to explain the origin of both society and
the state. In The People's Republic he writes:
By his very nature, man is a social animal. He was never and could
never be solitary.18
The great basis and peculiarity of Awolowo's social theory is the
fact of the family, a theme Aquinas did not develop. Awolowo
uses this to advantage. He claims that everyone is born into a
family and that there is nobody without a family,19 from which
man derives love and protection. 20 Thus, the best disproof of the
Hobbesian theory of solitary human existence is provided. Now
society (and later on, the state) is the union of families rather
than atomistic individuals. 21 But need, as observed by Plato, 22
and especially the inability of families to satisfy adequately all
basic needs, like peace and protection, 23 is the factor that immediately brought about the existence of society and later of the
state.
Aquinas deduces his doctrine of the origin of the state from
the nature of man itself. So does Awolowo. Man as a solitary
being cannot survive; he lives in community because he is social by nature. In the De Regimine principum, Aquinas writes:
1s Awolowo, The People's Republic, p. 76.
19 Ibid.

20 Ibid., pp. 76-77.
21 Ibid., p. 83.

22 Plato,

The Republic, Bk. 2, 369B.

2s Awolowo, p. 78.

AQUINAS

AND A WOLOWO

273

When we consider all that is necessary to human life, however, it
becomes clear that man is naturally a social and political animal,
destined more than all other animals to live in community.24
Aquinas does not share the contractualist views of Hobbes and
Rousseau, who think that the state is solely a product of the
human will. Rather, he thinks the element of necessity or need is
crucial to the scholastic and medieval view he propounds about
the state:
One man alone would not be able to furnish himself with all that is
necessary, for no one man's resources are adequate to the fullness of
human life. For this reason, the companionship of his fellows is
naturally necessary to man. 25
But Aquinas goes beyond this argument of Aristotle and his
contemporaries. He adds another reason for the origin of the
state, what might be called the economico-epistemological principle. The mode of human reasoning and knowledge, he claims,
is deductive, and as such, it is impossible to know everything
there is to know about human well-being. There must be a division of duty or specialization.
Nature has destined him to live in society so that, dividing the labor
with his fellows, each man devotes himself to some branch of the
sciences, one following medicine, another some other science, and so
forth. 26
It would follow that it is unwise for anyone to refuse to share
his knowledge or place it at the service of the community. Also,
the well-being of all, or the common good, is the end and purpose of the state. This is what keeps men united and together
in the community.
While Aquinas fails to explain the mechanism of the formation of the state, Awolowo made some attempts. In his views,
the mechanism of this formation is akin to that of the contract2 4 Aquinas, De Regimine Principum, trans.
Blackwell, 1981), p. 2.
25 Ibid., p. 3.
2s Ibid.

J. G. Dawson (Oxford:

Basil

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FRANCIS

I. OGUNMODEDE

ualists. For he says that the state was formed by means of negotiation and social contract among various and different autonomous groups of families. Awolowo, like Hume, adds the element
of occasional use of force, as in the case of belligerent and expansionist groups, to the factors that brought about society and eventually the state. The process, in his view, was also gradual and
evolutionary. Thus, we first had " village states," " city states,"
"national states," and finally "multi-national states." 21
One important thing must be mentioned. For both Awolowo
and Aquinas, the state is a "welfare state." It is not an end in
itself, as Hegel and others contend, but an instrument for the
realization of the happiness of all citizens in society.
Government
Both Awolowo and Aquinas believe in the necessity of government as the instrument for realizing people's aspirations within the state. The duty and responsibility of government is the
provision of the common good for the welfare of all. However,
there is a divergence in opinion as to the best type of government
to be chosen. On the basis of dedication to the common good,
Aquinas identifies monarchy, aristocracy, and polity as the good
types of government in opposition to dictatorship, oligarchy, and
democracy. He opts for monarchy as the best type of government.
So it is better for one to rule rather than many who must first reach
agreement.28 It follows of necessity that the best form of government
in human society is that which is exercised by one person.29
Awolowo, on the other hand, cannot understand why modern
men must continue the practice of the monarchical system which
he thinks should be relegated to the political archives. For him,
the best form of government is democracy, and, specifically,
democratic socialism. This type of government concerns itself
with the equitable distribution of resources and the well-being of
21 A wolowo, p. 81.

2s Aquinas,

De Regimine, p. 6.

2 9 Ibid., p.

7.

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275

AND A WOLOWO

all the people. In a state of democratic socialism, basic needs like
food, shelter, health, and employment are provided or the opportunity to attain them is created. To ensure maximum wellbeing in the state, Awolowo opines that education and health facilities should be free for all. Education will develop the latent
potentialities in each person, while good health provides a guarantee and insurance for a maximum tapping, development, and
utilization of resources. Universal provision of such goods will
offer equal opportunity to all to develop according to their ability
and power.
One can explain the diversity of opinion in the choice of the
ideal government. St. Thomas was writing and giving personal
advice to a prince who wanted to rule well. Besides, he was born
into a noble rich family and had never been exposed to the hard
life of the masses. Awolowo, on the other hand, had to struggle
and fend for himself from childhood. so He also lived with the
ordinary people throughout his life. In any case, both were one
in their concern for the well-being, welfare, and happiness of all.
Their welfarist concept of the state is illustrated further by their
common opposition to any form of tyranny and oppression.
Aquinas was harsh in his denunciation of tyrants. He refers to
them as " beasts," irrational, sick, and weak.
For a man who exercises authority not according to reason, but according to the desires of passion, in no way differs from a beast.81
Indeed, history is replete with tyrants and dictatorial rulers.
But in contemporary African history, military dictatorship is
what particularly plagues our societies. Awolowo is vigorous in
his condemnation of tyrants, be they civilian or military. But it
is military dictatorship which disturbs him most, and which he
most severely condemns. For the worst democracy is, in spite of
its inconveniences and difficulties, still better than the best military rule. Military regimes are not only guilty of the crime of
so Awolowo, Autobiography of Chief Obafemi Awolowo
bridge University Press, 1960), p. 34.
a1 Aquinas, De Regimine, p. 10.

(London:

Cam-

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I. OGUNMODEDE

holding on to power like the civilian dictators, but are even more
corrupt.
In the day of foreign rule, corruption was not unknown, but then it

was an occasional and isolated rash. Under self-rule, it has become
an endemic small-pox in the body politic of every African State. In
this matter, the military, Africa's self-proclaimed messiahs, are the
worst. 32
In the making of unjust laws and the use of unnecessary force
tyrants show their true color. 33 In order to deal adequately with
the nature of government, therefore, it becomes useful to talk
about the place of law in society.

Natural Law
For both Aquinas and Awolowo, it is a fact that men in society live under the rule of law. It must be so if there is to be
political order and if the welfare and common good of the people
are to be realized. The importance that each attaches to law as
the basis of the political order is shown by the fact that St.
Thomas wrote a treatise on law in his Summa Theologiae, 34 as
did Awolowo in his reflections on the Nigerian constitution. 35
But whereas the problem Awolowo concerned himself with was
that of good government and practice of the rule of law in a
democratic but developing state, Aquinas's concern was theoretical, namely, to know the basis of the moral obligation of law
itself. He wants to know by what power and warrant the human
legislator binds the consciences of men.
First, in scholastic fashion, Aquinas defines law as " the
ordinance of reason directed toward the common good and
32 A wolowo, " Introduction,"
in Ebenezer Babatope, Coups: Africa and the
Barracks Revolt (Enugu: Fourth Dimension Ltd., 1981), p. viii.
33 This illustrates the point that in spite of the human rights posture of the
Babangida government, the recent decree No. 2 and the arbitrary arrest of
people make it dictatorial and tyranical in nature.
84 The treatise on law consists of sixteen questions:
eleven belong to divine positive law, one to eternal law, one to natural law, and three to human
law.
35 Awolowo, Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution (Ibadan:
Oxford University Press, 1966).

AQUINAS

AND AWOLOWO

277

promulgated by the one who has the care of the community." 36
In other words, law is a rational and moral order and its purpose is to bind the conscience and control human conduct in such
a way that the common good of the community can be attained.
The question now arises : Where is the source of the power to
bind citizens? Aquinas traces the moral obligation to God and
his eternal law. The thought leading to this conclusion, though
complex in its full expression, can be articulated in three simple
and basic propositions :
a) Obligation is a property that inheres in the nature of things. 87
b) Since man has no control over the nature of things, he has
no power to determine the basic outlines of obligation. 88
c) Since the nature of finite things is not self-explanatory, the
ultimate source of obligation must be found in the infinite Being
who does determine the nature of things. 89
It will follow that the source of obligation in the political order
is in the divine conception of the order proper to the universe.
As Aquinas himself concludes :
The plan of government is derived by secondary governors from the
governor-in-chief. . . . Since then the eternal law is the plan of government in the chief governor, all the plans of government in the inferior governors must be derived from the eternal law.40
This is where Aquinas disagrees with Awolowo and Hobbes,
who contend that human will is the source of law. In actual fact,
Awolowo's Thoughts on the Nigerian Constitution fails to define
law, but another of his works, The Voice of Wisdom, advances
the voluntarist definition of law : Law is the overt expression of
the will.41
This needs a clarification. Awolowo, as a lawyer, knows that
the decision to enact any law or even to issue a decree (positive)
Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 90, a. 4.
q. 95, a. 2.
ss ST I-II, q. 93, a. 5.
3o ST I-II, q. 93, a. 4.
40 ST I-II, q. 93, a. 3.
41 Awolowo, Voice of Wisdom (Akure: Fagbamigbe Publishers, 1981), p.
100.
86

37 ST I-II,

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I. OGUNMODEDE

has to be done through a clear and definite expression of the will
of the legislator in an external form dictated by the Constitution.
In actual fact, Awolowo, like Aquinas, belongs to the school of
natural law which claims that the natural law is a cosmic law
and is the basis of any positive or civil law. Indeed, natural law
is the immutable law 42 called the "Universal Mind which permeates and pervades all things." 43 The Universal Mind is God
Himself according to Awolowo. 44
Aquinas's analysis of natural law is, however, more penetrating
and incisive. First, it is the objective link between the mind of
men and the mind of God. Like Awolowo, he says it is not different from eternal law, but a "participation thereof." The
human legislator must, however, study to discover the mind of
God 45 before enacting any law in the state.
It is clear for Aquinas then that eternal law, natural law, and
positive law are distinct. Eternal law is the plan of divine wisdom directing all actions and movements of creatures to their
proper end, namely God Himself. Natural law is the participation
in the eternal law by creatures according to the dictate of natural
reason. Positive law is the law enacted by legitimate authority in
conformity to natural law and according to the specific needs of
the community.

Political Obligation
Thus, a civil law is deemed just only if it conforms with natural law, and thereby with eternal law. But what if the law is unjust?
Aquinas says that one may continue to obey the ruler, although
under certain conditions disobedience may be permitted. In such
a case, the ruler would have already lost every moral right to
allegiance on the part of his citizens. But all the same, caution
is required so that greater evil does not befall the community.
The People's Republic, p. 186.
Ibid., p. 206.
44 Ibid.
45 Aquinas, ST I-II, q. 92, a. 2 & 3.
42 Awolowo,
43

AQUINAS

AND A WOLOWO

279

Awolowo also advocates non-violence under any circumstance.
Instead of violence, constitutional means of resistance such as
political boycott and " constructive agitation " 46 should be
adopted. If everything else fails, then prayer, fasting, resignation,
and appeal to the Lord, who is the Supreme Judge, 47 should be
our recourse. Awolowo believes that God does not fail his people when they really need his help; the messiah comes when the
conditions are ripe.
Church and State Relations

Earlier on, we noted the part played by the religious factor in
explaining the similar views held by both Awolowo and Aquinas.
Before we end our discourse we should examine the attitude of
the two thinkers towards religious belief and practice in the political society.
St. Thomas and Awolowo once again agree on the separation
of the religious institution from the political institution because
they belong to two distinct realms which, however, in the final
analysis are not unrelated. It is in the explanation of the relationship between the Church and state that St. Thomas betrays his
medieval outlook. He claims that the Church is superior to the
state even in temporal matters. This, he says, is because the
supernatural end of man, which is the care of the Church, is
superior to the natural and temporal ends of man, which are the
concerns of the state. So when the Pope speaks e.x- cathedra on
matters of faith, people should obey. But what if Archbishop
Okogie asks the people to overthrow President Babangida?
Ought they also obey in this matter?
It would seem that St. Thomas may not go so far. For he
denies the direct power of the Church in temporal and secular
affairs, a position defended by John of Salisbury and Giles of
Rome, and so leans rather towards the theory of indirect power
later propounded by Cardinal Bellarmine.
46 Awolowo,

4 7 Awolowo,

Autobiography, p. 297.
UPN Presidential Address (1983), pp. 20-22.

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I. OGUNMODEDE

Awolowo, for his part, is very blunt in stating that the Church
and other religious bodies should keep out of politics. It is even
dangerous for the clergy to support government in power, especially if it is corrupt. But this does not mean that they should
not cooperate and collaborate with the government in providing
social services to the people. The welfare of the people is the concern of both the Church and the state; each is concerned, however, in its own way.
At a time when Nigeria is engulfed in the Shariia controversy,
many might be repelled when they learn that St. Thomas also
subscribes to the doctrine of the confessional state. To those
who have never received the faith, the ruler must be tolerant and
kind. But it is not so, he maintains, for those who have changed
their religion or have lapsed into heresy and apostasy, or even
engaged in rebellious activities towards the Church. They should
be punished.
Conclusion

In this paper we have, through the thematic method, identified the salient elements in the political philosophy of St.
Thomas Aquinas and related them to the socio-political philosophy of Obafemi Awolowo. What remains now is an overview
of the two philosophies on the basis of what has been established.
St. Thomas has been described as the best interpreter of the
spirit of his age and of its deepest aspirations. His philosophical
victory over the A verroist interpretation of Aristotle has been
compared to the victory of Charles Martel over the Moors five
centuries earlier, and the crusaders' halting of the Turks at the
battle of Lepanto in 1571.48 In the realm of political philosophy
in particular, his distinction between the two ends of man enabled
him to distinguish the spiritual order from the temporal order,
and to affirm the status and dignity of politics and political activity in the state as "holy " and " worthy" of divine favor.
Here Aquinas won a significant victory over the rigid Augustinianism of many of his predecessors and contemporaries.
48

D'Entreves, pp. x-xi.

AQUINAS

AND AWOLOWO

281

Thomas lived at the ·end of an era in history and his ideas live
on and have been propounded in another period of history and by
another thinker of a different race and culture, namely, A wolowo
of Nigeria. But Awolowo has analyzed the same political problems which confronted St. Thomas from a fresh African angle
and with new insights. This explains Awolowo's pragmatic
democratic socialism and his penchant for detailed analysis of
politico-economic problems. What we insist upon is that the
same principle of human welfare as the end of the state guided
their political thinking. And, given the factor of Christian religious influence on both of them, we can infer that St. Thomas
would approve much, if not all, of the political manifesto and
program of Obafemi Awolowo if he were living in Nigeria
today.
One must not be carried away by emotions and feelings in
philosophy, however. Philosophy requires a critical and objective analysis and impartial evaluation. After all, both Awolowo
and Aquinas are rational and intellectual in their approach to
things. So it remains to consider some of their shortcomings.
One point that we should mention right away is the lack of a
clear distinction between society and the state, especially in St.
Thomas. A society, like the "family," " community," or " nation,'' is not necessarily a state or polity, according to Maritain. 49
To be one, it must have a central and highest power and authority 50 to unite the heterogenous and diverse groups of people who
may not even share originally the same history, culture, and language, as in the case of Nigeria. With regard to the state,
Aquinas's recourse to " human nature" involves too great an abstraction upon which to build a political theory, and points to an
incompleteness in his work. Here, Awolowo has an advantage
with his non-Hobbesian type of social contract theory and his emphasis on gradualism and evolutionary development.
49 See J. Maritain, Man and State (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press,
1951), pp. 1-15.
5 0 Onigu Otite, "Issues in African Socialism," in Themes in African Social
and Political Thought, pp. 151-152.

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The issue of government and the use of political power will always be a subject of controversy, but one thinks that the age of
monarchy has passed as society becomes more complex and
diversified. The trend is towards democracy, the defects of which
are apparent, though, if we take cognizance of the many forms
of human rights violation that exist even in the most democratically developed nations like Great Britain and the United States.
What we then mean to say is that the issue of human welfare
within the confines of the state is not assured by St. Thomas with
his acceptance of monarchy as the superior form of government.
Nor is the common good assured by A wolowo with his democractic socialism as a blueprint. But the common good is something for which we today must continue to search and hope to
find.

MORE THAN METAPHORS: MASCULINEGENDERED NAMES AND THE KNOWABILITY
OF GOD
LYNNE

C. BOUGHTON

Chicago, Illinois

W:

HAT WAS ONCE a phenomenon confined to advocacy groups has appeared in ordinary Catholic
parishes. Priests celebrating liturgies offer blessings
"In the name of the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Holy Love."
Such invocations of Persons of the Trinity by names indicative
of divine action, as well as the " naming " of God with either
gender-combined (Mother-Father) or gender-neutral (Friend)
designations of personal relationships, suggest that the way in
which God is addressed need not be different from the way in
which one describes divine actions. Many argue that since one
may refer to God's specific act as " Creator," characterize God's
eternal and temporal activity as " Love," or note that in certain
ways people experience God's care as that of a "Friend" or
"Mother," these terms are suitable for addressing a divine Person. In early 1992 the Catholic Church's International Commission on English in the Liturgy endorsed non-gendered invocations by proposing that English language liturgical texts delete
all masculine pronouns referring to God and replace "Father"
in several prayers with gender-neutral names.
Willingness to depart from the Father /Son/Holy Spirit
terminology found in scripture and the Church's creedal statements is often grounded in the belief that God does not merely
excel beyond human comprehension the fatherhood and sonship
traditionally attributed to divine Persons, but rather that God,
as transcendent being, is essentially unlike any quality that can
be named. Those who define transcendence in this " epistemologi283

284

LYNNE

C. BOUGHTON

cal" way maintain that God is free of definition or distinction
and that Persons of the Trinity negate and contradict, in their
acts of existence, any permanent identity that the human mind
may have " attributed " in scripture or Church doctrine to divine
Personhood. Theologians such as Karl Rahner and David Tracy
see no departure from the Church's authoritative theological
teachings in their definition of transcendence as God's existential
freedom from the limitations of eternally existing attributes of
Persons. According to Rahner the names most indicative of who
God is as God are " ineffable one," " nameless one," " silent one."
For Tracy, the central " metaphor " and " doctrine" of Christianity is a " triune understanding" of the words " God is
Love." 1
For theologians who define transcendence as God's being unconfined by categories, names by which divine Persons are addressed in Scripture are merely ways in which inspired communities or individuals likened God's dealings with them to lifeaffirming actions or admired personal qualities. If traditional
names for God were " revealed" in this way, modern worshippers
could reasonably address God in terms of likenesses to other, more
1 Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea
of Christianity, tr. William Dych (NY: Crossroad, 1982), pp. 46-71; David
Tracy, "The Hermeneutics of Naming God," The Irish Theological Quarterly, 57 (1991) : 253-264. For an analysis and defense of the concept of transcendence as absence of metaphysical reality see Mark I. Wallace, "Can God
Be Named Without Being Known?: The Problem of Revelation in Thiemann, Ogden, and Ricoeur," Journal of the American Academy of Religion
59/2 (1991): 281-308. Although the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) listed "ineffable " among the attributes of God, God was not named in this way and,
moreover, the context of other listed attributes (omnipotence, eternity) suggests that " ineffable " does not mean God is without anything that can be
described but that descriptions of God are not comprehensible to humans
[H. J. D. Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, 30th ed., trans. Roy Deferrari
(London: Herder & Herder, 1955), # 428]. This point is illustrated by the
First Vatican Council (1869-1870) which refers to God as "ineffably most
high above all things " and then proceeds to list a series of attributes (Denzinger, # 1782). In the Council of Toledo, "ineffable" was used as a modifier
("ineffable Trinity," "ineffable substance," "ineffably begot") for terms
that were defined in the Council's creed (Denzinger # 275-276). Further discussion of " ineffable" is in note 6, below.

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inclusive, human qualities. Invoking, rather than merely describing or praising, God with names derived from creative/redemptive/loving acts or from divine likenesses to abstractions/combinations/contradictions of human qualities, seems, to those who
equate transcendence with undefinability, an appropriate way to
name God.
Nevertheless, to say, as does I John 4.7-21, that "God is
Love " after twice placing this predication in the context of the
" love of God " that is manifested in the " Father " sending the
" Son " is, according to most exegetes, a declaration that love is
an eternal activity essential to the divine Persons, not an assertion that "love" identifies who these Persons are. To say, as
Tracy does, that the central Christian metaphor is " God is
Love " or to invoke a divine person as " Love " suggests that
God's central act of existence is not as Persons but as an activity
"like" that of Persons. 2
2 Although the word " love" in I John 4.8, 17 is a noun denoting essence,
the declaration that " God is love " is set within the context of thought of
union with God's action rather than knowledge of who God is. A. Wilder,
"Introduction and Exegesis of the First, Second and Third Epistles of John,"
The Interpreter's Bible (NY: Abingdon, 1957), 12: 284. Raymond Brown
also holds that the author of I John is not naming God as " love" but rather
using a formula (as is done in the " God is light " reference of I John 1.5) to
indicate that by knowing the love that is revealed, one knows the Person/ s
who are the source of this love. Thus Brown maintains that he is in line with
other commentators on the J ohannine Epistles such as A. E. Brooke ( 1912)
and A. Plummer (1886) who maintain that the "God is Love/Light" formulae
in John are not statements of identity but descriptions of a quality of God.
See The Epistles of John, vol. 30, Anchor Bible, ed. William Albright and
David Freedman (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1982), pp. 549-553, 560-561,
195. Brown also argues that I John uses the word "love" to describe the
unity of God's being, not as a metaphor for God's act of personhood. See The
Gospel According to John, vol. 29a, Anchor Bible, eds. William Albright and
David Freedman (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970), 2:681. C. H. Dodd
also notes that " God is love" is not a reference to God's identity, but refers
to a characteristic that qualifies all of God's activities: He creates in love,
judges in love, etc. See The J ohannine Epistles (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1946), pp. 110-118. See also Andre Feuillet, La m.ystere de !'amour divin
dans la theologie johannique (Paris, 1972), pp. 194 ff. A major error in
terminology was made by Pope Paul VI, who in an otherwise careful de-

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The equation of divine transcendence with the idea that God is
unbounded by objective qualities of personhood is also an element in " metaphor theology." Originating in Protestant traditions, metaphor theology holds that any name ·expressing human
experiences of God's loving acts is valid for addressing divine
Persons. Whereas theologians such as Tracy and Rahner who
focus, respectively, on act or on negation/ contradiction as the
source of names for God, metaphor theologians often choose
names such as " friend " or " mother " to stress that God is revealed in the human experience of personal relationships with no
one relationship being a more real expression of divine activity
than another. 3
Despite the acceptance by many Catholics of metaphor theology
and other " epistemological " notions of transcendence, the implication of the Church's formal teaching is that God does not
existentially negate all attributes and analytical categories. Instead, Church pronouncements suggest an " ontological " notion
of transcendence as God's infinite, eternal, and substantial perfection of certain attributes which are revealed to, not merely by,
created intellects and are understandable, though not fully comprehended, by finite minds. The Council of Toledo, XI (675)
scription of the Persons of the Trinity, declared that " two names, Being and
Love, express ineffably the same divine reality of him who wished to make
himself known to us." Paul VI's statement carried no doctrinal authority. See
"Credo of the People of God," June 30, 1968.
3 Specific applications of "metaphor theology " to the naming of God may
be found in Sallie McFague, Models of God: Theology for an Ecological
Nuclear Age (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), p. 182: Sallie TeSelle, Speaking
in Parables (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), pp. 43-65; and Warren McWilliams, "God the Friend: A Test Case in Metaphorical Theology," Perspectives in Religious Studies 16 (1989) : 109-120. Critical of "metaphor theology " for producing a feminist God-language that fails to account for the
full scope of metaphor is Garret Green, " The Gender of God and the Theology
of Metaphor" in Speaking the Christian God: The Holy Trinity and the
Challenge of Feminism, ed. Alvin Kimel, Jr. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992),
pp. 44-66. Several essays in Speaking the Christian God address issues discussed in this essay. Since the anthology was published after this article was
completed and accepted for publication, references to ideas parallel to those in
this essay are noted in footnotes.

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declared that in biblically revealing the names Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, the " Trinity itself has so deigned to show " to
created intellects knowledge about the relationships of divine Persons, the unique " property " of each Person, the distinctions of
Persons, and that the Son being from the "viscera " (not
" womb " as in some inaccurate English translations) of the
Father is of the same inseparable substance.4 Pope John XXII
affirmed in 1329 that human minds could understand distinctions
in the divine essense and condemned the theory that " every distinction is foreign to God, either in nature or in Person." In
1887 the Church's Holy Office again stressed the knowability of
God by repudiating the theory that God could not " communicate
his essence . . . except in that way which is accommodated to
finite intelligences." The same decree declared that God is not
manifested only through " relations " with human beings " as
their creator, provider, redeemer, and sanctifier." 5
4 Council of Toledo, XI, Denzinger # 275-282. Some argue that Toledo XI,
in declaring that the Son is "from the womb of the Father " to clarify that
the Son is begotten from the substance of the Father, endorses a "motherly " reference to God. But the " maternal " language comes from an inadequate
English translation, not from the original Latin decree. In Latin the words
are "de Patris utero." The Latin word uterus, -i (m.) or uterum, -i (n.)
does not specifically designate what English speakers would call the " womb "
or "uterus." Instead it is a more general reference to "viscera," "abdomen,"
or "belly." The Latin Vulgate uses "in utero" of Elizabeth's pregnancy to
translate Luke's original Greek phrase "en te koilia" (Luke 1 :42, 44). In
biblical Greek these words refer to the whole contents of the abdomen of any
male or female creature ( eg. Matt 12.40; 15.17), not specifically to a female
organ of generation. On the other hand, when " womb " or "uterus " is specifically designated, as in Paul's reference to Sarah, the Latin word is "vulva"
not "uterus" (Romans 4.19). The Greek text and Vulgate translation are
from Novum Testamentum Graece et Latine, ed. A. Merk, S.J. (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1957). Misunderstanding of the nature of God caused
by mistranslation of "uterus" characterizes Jiirgen Moltmann, "The Motherly
Father: Is Trinitarian Patripassianism Replacing Theological Patriarchalism,"
in God as Father?, ed. J.-B. Metz and Edward Schillebeeckx, English editor,
Marcus Lefebure, Concilium 143 (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1981), p. 53
and Elaine Pagels, "What Became of God the Mother? Conflicting Images
of God in Early Christianity," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society Z (1976) : 293-303.
5 Pope John XXII, Errors of Meister Eckart, "In agro dominico," (1329),
# 524. Errors of Antonius de Rosmini-Serbati (1887), # 1930).

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The Church's consistent emphasis on God's knowability as
Person/sand on certain names correctly expressing what ought to
be known is developed systematically by Thomas Aquinas. For
Aquinas, God, though not comprehensible, is " supremely knowable." Human minds can know God as God not merely by likenesses but in the divine essence itself (Summa Theologiae
la.12.1 and 9). Consequently, certain names properly designate
the divine substance (ST la.13.2). In the Church's formal decrees and in Aquinas's reasoning, transcendence is God's freedom " in," not freedom from, certain Personal attributes. Liturgical and theological use of names that abstract from or offer
gender-free or female-gendered alternatives to biblical names
contradict Catholic traditions of exegesis and worship by precluding ontological exploration of divine Personhood and denying that divine attributes are eternal realities understandable to
human reason.
It is the contention of this essay that the gendered "names"
by which God is addressed in the biblical canon and from which
Councils have derived precise, consistent Trinitarian and Christological meaning, convey the reality of God's eternal act of existence as three infinite Persons. The names given to God in the
Bible and in the Church's doctrinal statements present God's
transcendence not as a negation, abstraction, composition, or
contradiction of the qualities attainable by human persons but as
an absolute perfection-beyond what would constitute perfection
in a finite person-of certain qualities that distinguish the eternal
nature of the divine Persons. If certain attributes of God are real
and eternal, one cannot equate divine transcendence with an absence of specificity in the divine essence nor can one say that attributes are merely human designations of ways in which God
can be metaphorically " like" any admirable human quality.
Instead, it may be more accurate to maintain, as does Aquinas,
that there is a difference between "metaphorical" names that
"signify" a way in which a divine act is like a human act and
" analogical " names that reveal that some quality found in
human persons exists in infinite perfection in God. What
Aquinas designates as an " analogical " or " proportional " name

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is one that indicates that an eternal reality in the divine substance
is related to something imperfectly found in the created order. In
other words, God is wise not " as " a human being but human
wisdom is analogous to the wisdom that has real and perfect
existence in God. Such perfection is not inconsistent with
"limits" that distinguish ·even an infinite being's separate substance (ST la.5.5 and la.13.5-6). A God who can be described
as "living" and "just" is a more perfect being than one whose
act of existence transcends life and whose act of will is not limited
by a standard of justice.
The idea that divine attributes are not abstractions of admirable human qualities which are attributed metaphorically to God,
but instead are eternally real and revealed to human reason in
certain analogies found in scripture and created natures, suggests
that God's act of existence is properly designated by some attributes but not others. 6 Just as God is eternal and not changeable (though certain changes are good in humans), three-personed and not four-personed, active and without potential, simple
and without admixture or complexity, so too does God's perfection consist in being Spirit and not matter (though it is perfection in a human to be both), Father and not Mother (though
among human persons spiritual or physical motherhood is as
much a perfection as spiritual or physical fatherhood), One who
eternally loves but who cannot be metaphorically named "Love."
Before tracing the biblical and theological basis for liturgically
addressing the God of the J udeo-Christian tradition with names
that designate only certain specific attributes, it may be useful to
consider how non-biblical religious traditions may appropriately
invoke or address a deity by names suggestive of either the consequence of divine action in time or by metaphor. In the Hindu
Vedas and Upanishads, for example, ultimate reality does not exist
eternally and substantially as person or persons but as an imper6 Aquinas rejected Maimonides's negative interpretation
of divine attributes
because there would be no basis for using some words rather than others in
describing God. See Neil Stubbins, " Naming God: Moses Maimonides and
Thomas Aquinas," The Thomist 54 (1990) : 232.

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sonal cosmic substance that transcends personhood and, therefore,
transcends the attributes (will, intellect, goodness, gender) that
distinguish persons from other entities. Random expansion of
the eternal substance produces a spiritual universe of deities who,
through the acts by which they bring themselves into being, give
existence to physical phenomena. Ensuing relationships among
the gods and the objects or forces produced by their actions establish what kind of identity each deity acquires in the course of
time. " Creator" or " Breather" (Brahma) suitably invokes the
deity whose identity results from bringing brightness, water, and
earth into existence and whose anguished interaction with these
temporal forces yields heat, fire, and life. Similarly, the deity
Vishnu, by governing the temporal order, attains existence as
" Preserver " and becomes a variety of persons (avatars)
shaped by the needs of the moment. Thus divine persons can be
addressed by the name " Father," " Mother," or any other personal identity the believer chooses to name. 7
In Hindu, Buddhist, and other Vedic traditions, personhood is
not eternal. When a deity's acts produce personhood, it is a quality subordinate to existence and subject to process and change.
Divine persons are, therefore, indefinite, transitory, and characterized not by perfection of absolute qualities but by relationships that emerge in the course of time.
Christians, of course, reject the idea of a God whose existence
is less than eternal. Yet in the course of history, some who approach the Gospel message from certain philosophical perspectives
and methods of spirituality have proposed that God's eternal
existence transcends the categories with which the human mind
invests personhood. Consequently, they avoid addressing God
with names that designate the permanent identity of eternal Persons in God and prefer invocations which, like those used in
Vedic religions, designate actions that establish God's personality
and identity in relation to the temporal world.
7 Rig Veda, 10 :129; Brhadaranyaka
Upanishad, 1 :2.1-7, Bhagavad-Gita, 9,
in Sacred Texts of the World: A Universal Anthology, ed. Ninian Smart and
Richard Hecht (NY: Crossroad, 1986), pp. 182-183, 219.

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In the second through third centuries, theorists such as N oetus,
Praxeas, and Sabellius denied that the Personhood of Jesus was
that of the eternal Second Person. Their followers, though regarding themselves as Christians, expressed their denial that God
existed as three eternal, distinct, knowable Persons by invoking
the deity as " Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier." The idea that
God's temporal acts revealed modes of divine existence rather
than God's eternal act of existence as Persons came to be
called " modalistic monarchianism." Although some orthodox
thinkers had, prior to the rise of modalism, used names such as
" Creator " and " Sanctifier " in praising God, such usage ceased
entirely or was applied only in certain appositions after such
terminology became associated with modalism. By the middle of
the third century the condemnation of N oetus by the presbyters
of Rome and the excommunication of Sabellius by Pope Callistus
limited modalism's influence. 8
8 Archibald
Robertson notes that although some orthodox writers in the
subapostolic era (90-150 CE) were "naively monarchian" in their language,
the official condemnation of modalistic monarchianism and the early creeds rejected this use of terminology for invoking God. See "Prolegomena," Select
Writings and Letters of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, ed. and pro!.
Archibald Robertson, vol. 4, A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene
Fathers of the Christian Church, second series, ed. Philip Shaff and Henry
Wace (reprint, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971), p. xxiv. See also J. N. D.
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (revised, San Francisco: Harper & Row,
1978), pp. 120-123, and Philip Hughes, History of the Church, 3 vols. (revised, NY: Sheed & Ward, 1949), 1 :100-103. In an effort to refute postNicene Arians who argued that the work of sanctification was not the work
of Persons, liturgists like Ambrose of Milan stressed the operation of all
three Persons in consecrating Eucharistic elements. As a result some liturgies
invoke at the offertory the power of the Son and sometimes the Holy Spirit
to change the elements. This is why the Holy Spirit is invoked as " Sanctifier"
at the offertory in the Tridentine Rite, but this is done not as a separate
address but in apposition to an address of the triune God. See Paul Palmer,
S.J., Sacraments and Worship: Liturgy and Doctrinal Development of Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist (Westminster, MD: Newman Press,
1963), pp. 61-62. The modalism present in many non-gendered substitutions for
"Father" and "Son" has been noted by J. A. DiNoia, O.P. in "Knowing
and Naming the Triune God: The Grammar of Trinitarian Confession," in
Speaking the Christian God, p. 170.

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A more persistent influence on theories of divine Personhood
and attribution came, according to Bernard Lonergan, from
speculation that the basic categories designated by biblical names
are not those of being or substance but place or time. As Lonergan points out, Tertullian ( d. 230) correctly held that divine Persons were not separate substances but failed to conclude, as
Aquinas would eventually do, that although the names Father
and Son are relational, relationship in God is not " accident " but
the divine essence itself and, therefore, subsistent. " Divine paternity," said Aquinas, "is God the Father" (ST la.29.4 ). 9
The idea that God is not eternally characterized by qualities
which identify human persons appears not only in the writings of
pre-Nicene apologists like Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria
but also among proponents of N eoplatonist philosophy. In N eoplatonism, any quality or attribute indicates limit (a person who
is Father is not Mother) and since a transcendent God would not
be subject to limit, God exists at a level of abstraction devoid of
the qualities of Persons that divine acts might suggest. The resistance of Church leaders to Neoplatonist concepts of personhood was apparent in the second century when the bishop and
martyr Irenaeus of Lyon rejected as heresy Valentinus's view
that God transcends personal attributes and could be addressed
only as " Ineffable " and " Silence." In Valentinus' s mind, the
creation of the temporal world or "pleroma" enabled an eternal
but inchoate being to become the persons of " Father " and
" Mother" who in turn produced the more temporally involved
persons revealed in the Gospel as " Christ " and " Holy Spirit
or Truth." 10
Lonergan, De Deo Trina, 2 vols. (Rome: Gregorian, 1964), 1 :93, 197-198.
Adversus haereses, 3.4-15. On Valentinus, see J. Quispe!, "The
Original Doctrine of Valentine," Vigiliae Christianae 1 (1947) : 43-73. Note
the similarity of Valentinus's names to those used by Rahner, Foundations of
Christian Faith, p. 46. Irenaeus also criticized the concept of God as being
anousias or beyond substance in Adversus haereses, 1.14.1. Such ideas were
common in Gnosticism as evidenced by the apocryphal Gospel of Truth
(especially 39.12) which declared God to be beyond names (akatonomatos).
Such notions were refuted by Bishop Hippolytus, who maintained that God's
"ineffability" was not a matter of God's being without qualities that could
9

1 0 Irenaeus,

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Despite Irenaeus' s argument that the abstract, change-oriented
names used by his opponents displayed the weakness of their
understanding of divine Persons, Neoplatonism in modified forms
survived and influenced otherwise orthodox Christians. In the
twelfth century, Alan of Lille argued that although almost any
name given to God describes some aspect of God's relationship
to the created world, no name conveys God's ·eternal nature,
which is beyond existence. In a similar way the Augustinian
cleric Giles (Egidio) of Viterbo, in speaking to the Fifth Lateran
Council ( 1512), reflected his education at the University of
Padua under N eoplatonist Marsilio Ficino by designating the
three divine Persons as " Parent, Child, and Love." 11
The idea that God is not knowable as eternal Person/s but only
in the personalities expressed through divine action in time has
also been accepted by proponents of certain forms of spirituality.
Many who adopt what George Lindbeck calls an " experientialexpressive " rather than " cognitive-propositional" approach to
Christian faith view biblical texts not as narratives of divine acts
that reveal eternal truths but as expressions of human experiences
be objectively named but rather being "above" every name that could be
named. See Elenchos, 7.20.3. See Jean Danielou, Gospel Message and Hellenistic
Culture, tr. John Austin Baker, vol. 2, A History of Early Christian Doctrine
Before the Council of Nicaea (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1973), p. 339;
Gerard Vallee, A Study in Anti-Gnostic Polemics: lrenaeus, Hippolytus, and
Epiphanus (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier, 1981) ; Lonergan, De Deo Trina, pp.
100-104.
11 Alan is cited in Etienne Gilson, Elements of Christian Philosophy (Garden
City, NY: Doubleday, 1960), p. 140. Alan held that only negative statements
may be properly made about God; thus one could not even say that God
"exists." Many of Alan's ideas were grounded in Neoplatonism acquired
through reading of the Asclepius, a hermetic writing of the 2nd/3rd centuries
which combined Platonism, mysticism, and the idea that humans were deified
by knowledge. See G. R. Evans, Alan of Lille: The Frontiers of Theology in
the Later Twelfth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 32, 5357; Giles of Viterbo, "Address to the Fifth Lateran Council, 1512," in The
Catholic Reformation: Savonarola to Ignatius Loyola, ed. John Olin (NY:
Harper & Row, 1969), p. 46. For discussion of medieval ideas related to names
given to God, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the
Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California,
1982).

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of God's acts in the temporal world. 12 This Christian experientialism affirms that there is one God who has existed from all
eternity. But because this God is transcendent, and because
transcendence is defined not as God's infinite perfection of "attributes " consistent with reason and scripture but as the fundamental contradiction in God's true nature of every "attribute"
or ontological category traditionally assigned to the deity, God is
best recognized in the changes and contradictions in the way devout people experience God.
For many modern Catholics, acceptance of an experiential-expressive idea of God comes not from acquaintance with theological writings that imply attributes are inconsistent with transcendence but from what appears to be an ancient, Church-approved, mystical tradition. Often cited as exemplifying this tradition is the anchorite Julian of Norwich ( 1342-1416 /23). With
publication in 1978 of an authoritative text of Julian's Showings
of Divine Love and promotion of her ideas by Catholic publishers
and authors of scholarly, popular, and even high school level publications, many Catholics have developed or refined a belief that
names for God reflect shared, subjective, experiences of human
communities rather than anything inherent in God's eternal
nature. 13
Although Julian believed in the eternal God of biblical revelation, she took an almost Vedic approach to divine Personhood in
her concept of "substance." Instead of viewing God as an eternal
being whose unique substance exists as three Persons and who
created a universe by bringing other substances (including each
one-personed human substance) into existence, Julian thought of
substance as an impersonal property of God that was expanded
12 George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in
a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984), p. 16.
13 Julian of Norwich, Showings, tr. and intro. Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. and
James Walsh, S.J. (NY: Paulist, 1978). Promotion of Julian's ideas as consistent with Catholic theology is found in Hans U rs von Balthasar, Dare We
Hope "That All Men be Sa'l}ed," tr. David Kipp and Lothar Krauth (San
Francisco: Ignatius, 1988), pp. 101-102; and Gloria Durka, Praying with
Julian of Norwich (Winona, MN: St. Mary's, 1989).

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by creation to produce entities that remain, to greater or lesser
degree, substantially one (" knit in this knot ") with God.
" [O]ur substance" wrote Julian "is a creature in God" and,
since the God who creates is "nature's substance," divine Personhood is experienced by human beings not because divine Persons reveal what is eternal and objective in the divine nature but
because there is " no difference between God and our substance." 14 For Julian, personhood, whether divine or human, is
not a substantial identity as rational being but the result of temporal actions and relationships within an eternal substance. Consequently, Julian addressed God by names suggesting the deity's
substantial oneness with creation: " Maker, Protector, Lover." 15
Although Julian writes of three " Persons " of the Trinity and
often uses the names (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) found in scripture and creed, she adds, from her mystical experience, the name
" Mother." In doing so, Julian assigns the name arbitrarily:
sometimes to the creator, sometimes to the redeemer, sometimes
to the whole Trinity. 16 Julian associates God's triunity not with
eternal relationships in the Godhead but with modes of operation.
God's creative, sustaining, and perfecting acts ("I may," "I
can," " I will") in the temporal world are unified in the " I
shall" that expresses God's eternal intention to eliminate the
created entities that appear to be separate from God by completely reabsorbing them into the divine substance. Just as the
divine substance does not, in Julian's experience, exist as eternal
and distinct Persons, neither do human persons exist as separate
substances. Instead, the redemptive act of Christ joins human
persons within "each person" of the Trinity. 17
Neither Julian nor many of those who apply her mystical experience to liturgical expression systematically discuss the implications of her idea of divine and human personhood being
14 Julian,

Showings, (long text, chs. 56, 54), pp. 290, 285.
Ibid., (long text, chs. 53, 4, 5, 60), pp. 284, 181, 183, 297-299.
1a Ibid., (long text, chs. 52, 58, 54, 62, 51, 52), pp. 279, 293-294, 285, 303,
278, 279.
17 Ibid., (long text, chs. 31, 51, 73), p. 229, 270-271, 323.
15

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transitory. Nevertheless, Julian's concept of divine personhood
is not only modalistic, but akin to a particular form of modalism
developed in the third century by the Bishop of Antioch, Paul of
Samosata. According to Paul, God not only transcended Personhood but infused the temporal world with divine substance. The
perfect degree to which this substance was contained in Jesus
was, in the bishop's estimation, the reason scripture called Jesus
the "Son" of the Father. This Christology (called "dynamistic
modalism " or " dynamistic monarchianism ") along with its
corollary notion that divine substance expanded in the course
of time was rejected as heresy in 268 by a synod at Antioch. 18
Julian's expression of similar ideas, because they were presented privately, did not receive formal censure. Yet Julian's
theory of substance was a naive formulation of heretical theories
that were often advanced publicly and, therefore, consistently rejected by the Church. The Council of Toledo declared in 400 that
"the human soul is not a divine substance." In 1864 Pope Pius
IX repudiated contemporary expressions of the theory that
created things have the same substance as God. 19 Meister Eckart' s ( d.1328) theory that creatures are " nothing " because they
have no substance separate from God and will ultimately be
absorbed by God-a formulation strikingly similar to Julian'swas declared in 1329 to be inconsistent with Catholic faith. 20
Although conceiving of God as transcending personhood seems
to show reverent awareness of God's otherness, it raises several
problems. For example, a God who cannot be confined to " Person " and in whom gender, like other aspects of personhood, is
merely an attribution made by humans, is a God who is " essentially " unknowable. The moral commands of an unknowable,
18 Dynamistic Monarchianism is discussed by Karl Adam, The Christ of
Faith, tr. Joyce Crick (NY: Pantheon, 1957), p. 20.
19 Creed of the Council of Toledo, ( 400), Denzinger, # 20, 31. Pius IX,
Syllabus of Errors (1864), # 1701.
20 Pope John XXII, "In agro Dominico"
(1329), Denzinger, # 526, 510.
Julian's view of personality is quite different from that of Thomas Aquinas
who holds that personality means completeness, not particularity, in a common nature. See I In Sent., 23.1. 2 ad 4.

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changeable God are easily viewed not as expressions in time of
what God eternally wills and loves but as standards arbitrarily
chosen by God for the utilitarian needs of creatures. Julian, for
example, assumed that, " a man regards some deeds well done
and some as evil, and our Lord does not regard them so for everything that exists in nature is of God's creation, so that everything
which is done has the property of being God's doing." 21 Accordingly what people call God's goodness is also a metaphor
rather than a designation of what is real. So although Julian
referred to God's "forgiveness," since this quality of God is
mentioned in scripture and experienced by believers, she held that
God can neither forgive nor be angry because the human soul is
"united to him who is unchangeable goodness." ·22 Julian concluded that all people attain a salvific blending with God and that
"sins" would "be rewarded with various joys ... to the degree in which the sin may have been painful and sorrowful to
the soul on earth." 23 This notion of sin as inconsequential was
similar to the idea, attributed to Eckart and condemned by the
Church in 1329, that a person ought not wish that the sins of
his life had not been committed. 24
Leaving aside the moral implications of eliminating "anger"
or " forgiveness " as acts flowing from a distinctive, eternal Personality, one needs to return to the fundamental issue of whether
transcendence limits what can be named in the divine essence. As
far as biblical texts are concerned, it is God's essence, not God's
actions, that are the source of " addresses " for God. In both Old
and New Testaments, God is not addressed, but only described,
by names derived from time-bound acts. On the other hand, the
names with which biblical figures address God or are asked to
address God suggest something of the divine personality that intends and wills certain actions.
Consider, first of all, the biblical description of the act of creation. The emphasis in the Book of Genesis is not only on
21 Julian,

Showings, (long text, ch. 11), p. 198.
Ibid., (long text, chs. 46, 49, 50), pp. 258-259, 263, 265.
2a Ibid., (long text, ch. 38), p. 242.
24 Pope John XXII "In agro dominico," ( 1329), Denzinger, # 515.
22

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God's timeless existence prior to creation (" In the beginning,
God ... ") but also on God's act of evaluating what is created
(God saw " that it was good "). The suggestion in Genesis that
God evaluates the created world according to an eternal, not
created, standard indicates that God's personal identity and even
the relationships appropriate to that identity are only revealed,
not established, by the act of creation.
Accordingly, in Exodus, the Person who creates offers deeper
insight into the divine nature by telling Moses that " I am " is
the identity by which human beings can know God. It is out of
this eternal personhood that transcends the role of " Creator "
that God interacts with those who develop their wills and intellects by obedience and worship. In other words the God who
gives laws in the Torah or Pentateuch, who plays favorites to
" chosen " people in the historical narratives, and whose
Prophets speak of divine "jealousy" and "forgiveness," is a
God who emphasizes not his role as creator but his identity as
person. 25
Since ancient Judaism, awed by the identity conveyed in the
sacred " I Am," restricted its use as an appellation to the Day of
Atonement when the high-priest entered the sacred part of the
Temple to invoke the deity, readers of the Torah and writers of
prophetic and wisdom books substituted the name " Adonai " or
"Lord." This appellation by which believers called on the eternal, unspeakable " I Am" was not a description of God's role
in the universe but a reference to who God eternally is. When
people call another human being " lord " they refer not to what
the " lord " does but to a person whose existence establishes the
terms in which they develop and express their own identities.
25 According to the Bishop Athanasius, " if so be the same terms are used
of God and man in divine Scripture, yet the clear sighted, as Paul enjoins,
will study it and thereby discriminate and dispose of what is written according to the nature of each subject, and avoid any confusion of sense so as
neither to conceive of the things of God in a human way nor to ascribe the
things of man to God." "Defense of the Nicene Definition," (3.10) in Select
Writings and Letters of Athanasius, p. 156.

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Accordingly, Psalms and wisdom literature emphasize "fear
of the Lord " as the source of wisdom-not in the sense that one
wisely fears an unknown power but in the sense that recognizing
the perfect beauty and goodness of another Person inspires awe
and provides a standard of evaluation ( Sirach 1. 5-12 and Psalm
22.24). Wisdom, that pattern that God <:stablishes even before
the initiation of acts in the temporal realm, is the means by which
human beings can understand God as a Person "because God is
the witness of his inmost self" (Wisdom 1.66). 26
Of significance to Christians is the way in which the gospels
indicate the names by which Jesus is addressed. As important as
the role of messiah or redeemer may be, these roles do not generate the title by which petitioners and members of the Twelve
reportedly invoke Jesus. Matthew's Gospel, for example, distinguishes between "crowds" and officials who addressed Jesus
by his function as " teacher " and the seekers of mercy and members of the Twelve who consistently called him " Lord." 27
Mark's Gospel similarly suggests that Christ's primary role is
not redemption but, revelation of the personal identity of the one
whom David addressed as "Lord" (Mark 12.35-37). More
evocative is John's Gospel which reports that those who see Jesus
benefit not only from redemption, friendship, or love, but from
having "seen the Father" (John 14.8-12). It is the Person of
Jesus who reveals divine Personhood.
The gospels, of course, also emphasize the human nature of
Jesus and his existence in a particular time and place. Consistent
with this focus the evangelists record names for Jesus that, unlike
26 For a discussion of early Christian
views of Wisdom books see Jean
Danie!ou, The Origins of Latin Christianity, tr. David Smith and John Baker,
vol. 3, A History of Early Christian Doctrine (Philadelphia: Westminster,
1977), pp. 367-368.
2 7 William F. Albright and C. S. Mann, The Gospel According to Matthew,
vol. 26, Anchor Bible, ed. William Albright (Garden City, NY: Doubleday,
1971), p. clv. Raymond Brown observes that gnostics apparently disliked the
name "Lord" and substituted " Savior" as the faithful person's address for
Jesus. In the apocryphal Acts of Thomas 10, Jesus is praised as "the Savior
of all creation, the one who gives life to the world." Epistles of John, p. 558,
note 47.

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names for the Father and Spirit/Paraclete, include references to
relationships outside the Trinity. Thus Jesus describes himself as
the" Son of Man" (Matthew 11.19; Mark 9.31; Luke 6.22; John
3.14) and John the Baptizer addresses Jesus as "Lamb of God"
(] ohn 1.29 and 36). Yet in both of these phrases there is a connection of temporal action that Jesus undertook in time (life as
a man, life as a sacrificial offering) with his eternal Person (He
is God's Son, not a man's son, and he is God's sacrificial offering,
not the worshipper's lamb). As Karl Adam has noted, when
Jesus used the phrase " Son of Man," it was already known to
those familiar with Prophetic writings as the way in which God
addressed those who conveyed his " word" and as the name given
in the Book of Daniel to one who "comes on the clouds of
heaven" to receive dominion from the "Ancient One" (7.13).
In other words, the name " Son of Man " suggests the coming
of what is eternal into what is temporal. The " hypostatic "
union suggested by these phrases has been affirmed by Conciliar
definitions and thus "Lamb of God" is an address that is used
prominently in authorized liturgical practice. 28
Even if one leaves aside the issue of Christ's Personhood being
that of the eternal Second Person and considers only the New
Testament descriptions of Christ's salvific role, one finds that
canonical texts subordinate the effect of Christ's action to how
" seeing " his action enhances human understanding of God. In
developing the question of how Christ's actions affect the temporal world, Paul's Epistles propose that Christ's death and resurrection redeems human beings from sin but also makes them
adoptive sons and daughters who can appropriately address God
as "Abba, Father" (Romans 8.3-4 and 11-17). What St. Paul
implies is that, although God is unchanging, Christ's action has
not just mended but perfected the human understanding of God's
personal identity so that believers can recognize that the " Lord "
can be approached and, more importantly, named in a way that
28 Adam, Christ of Faith, pp. 107-114. According to the Council of Toledo,
" This Son of Man is called [named] also the Son of God but the Son of
God, God, is not likewise called the Son of Man." Creed of the Council of
Toledo, 400 [additions in 447], Denzinger, # 20.

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recognizes who the Lord is as Person/s. The Person who was
always known to the Son as "Father" also becomes known to
the adoptive children as "Father."
In both Old and New Testaments, one's relationship to God is
expressed by invoking the deity by names that designate essential qualities rather than by ways (creator or redeemer) in which
God acts "upon" us. Even the man or woman who rejects not
only the existence but the conceptual plausibility of an eternal
Person can conceive of something that "creates,'' " saves," or is
" prime mover." But for the person who loves God, loves an
idea of God, or even rages against God for seeming not to exist
or act, only vocatives such as " Lord ! " or " God ! " or, for the
Christian, " Abba ! " express the human awareness that the
anguish, anger, happiness, or love in the exclamation mean something to the One whose name is called.
What troubles some people is that in the Hebrew scriptures
the masculine connotations of " Lord " can always be referred
back to the unspoken and, apparently, ungendered " I Am"
whereas in the New Testament the ultimate reference is the
gender-specific invocation of God as " Father." Jesus not only
tells disciples to address God as " Father" (Matthew 6.9; Luke
11.2) but also addresses God as " Father" in his personal prayers
(Matthew 11.25-27 and 26.39; Luke 10.21-22; John 17.2ff) and
as "Abba, Father" at Gethsemane (Mark 14.36).
Some exegetes like Robert Hammerton-Kelly propose that the
combination of the word " Father" with "Abba" in Mark's
Gospel and in Paul's Epistles (Romans 8 :15 and Galatians 4.6),
along with gospel passages that reject the paternalism of the
scribes and Pharisees, indicate that New Testament authors
thought of God as transcending the role of " Father." According
to Hammerton-Kelly, the intimacy conveyed by the child-like
pellation " abba " promised a relationship with God devoid of the
formality and submissiveness demanded by fathers in the GrecoRoman world and suggested a young child's dependence on a
mother's leniency and tenderness. Moreover, Jes us' admonition
to "call no man 'father' " is interpreted by Hammerton-Kelly

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not only as rejection of rigidity and authoritarianism but as a
warning against limiting one's understanding of God to masculine
images. 29
Hammerton-Kelly is, however, incorrect in assessing the role
of a father in first-century J udean culture. As James Barr observes, " abba " was not, as well-meaning but poorly instructed
homilists and educators propose, a child's appellation equivalent
to the modern "daddy." Instead, "abba," in the vocative form
attributed to Jesus and cited by Paul meant " the father " or
" my father " and was used by Hebrew as well as Aramaic
speaking adults to address a father with whom a relationship of
trust and affection had developed. 30 Since J udean fathers were
involved intimately and affectionately in the lives of their children (Matthew 7.9-10; 9.18), "abba" does not suggest a
mother-child relationship. Moreover, Jesus' criticism of scribes
and Pharisees was not a rejection of paternalistic religious leadership since the gospels report Jesus' acceptance of religious authority (Matthew 8.4 and 23.2).
But the issue is larger than possible shaded meanings of the
names found in scripture. Even if we grant that names should
refer to who God is rather than what God does, do these names
signify the real and eternal essence of God ? Or are the names
given to God merely symbols which do not tell us what the
"thing in itself" (God) is but show only how God's relationship
to us is comparable to what we experience in the physical world?
When we address God through metaphors that compare the deity
to other beings, can we say that some metaphors are not only
more experientially understandable but more " real " than others?
This brings us back to the matter of metaphor. Part of the
difficulty many modern Catholics have with conceiving of distinct attributes of God is that much of their thinking about scripture and liturgy has been shaped by scholars whose ideas were
29 Robert Hammerton-Kelly,
God the Father: Theology and Patriarchy in
the Teaching of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), pp. 70-81.
3 0] ames Barr, " ' Abba ' Isn't ' Daddy'," J oiirnal of Theological Studies 39
(1988): 28-47.

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formed in certain branches of the Protestant theological tradition. Some aspects of Protestant Christianity systematized older
theological perspectives which emphasized scripture as the source
of knowledge of God's relationship with believers rather than as
the basis for rational analysis of the eternal nature of God.
It was the contention of the early Protestant Reformers that all
language referring to God is merely metaphorical. John Calvin,
Philip Melanchthon, Martin Luther, and Theodore Beza, for example, maintained that the way in which God chooses to be
known through creation and scripture does not reveal the true
nature of God. Like Julian's mysticism and Giles' s N eoplatonism,
foundational Reformed theology defined transcendence not as
God's perfection of knowable attributes but as God's negation of
even the metaphysical existence of such categories. The Reformed theology unequivocally insisted that God, infinite being,
could not be limited by the personality traits that would express
themselves as mercy, justice, fatherliness, or forgiveness. Instead
God arbitrarily chose to act in this way toward human beings and
covenanted to do so consistently. 31 Consequently, the Lutheran
theologian Melanchthon denied the validity of speculation on
Persons of the Trinity or on divine purposes, and the Calvinist
theologian Beza maintained that it was improper to think of
God as " just " or "merciful " since all that could be objectively
attributed to God was that he punished sin and freely bestowed
gifts of saving grace. 32
a1 Elimination of metaphysics from theology was apparent by the thirteenth
century. Dorothea Sharp, Franciscan Philosophy in the Thirteenth Century
(London: Oxford, 1930), p. 287. For discussion of Reformation theology's
rejection of " attributes " in God and denial of the metaphysical reality of divine Personhood see Lynne C. Boughton, " Supralapsarianism and the Role of
Metaphysics in Sixteenth Century Reformed Theology," Westminster Theological Journal 48 (1986): 63-96. See also Gerhard 0. Forde, "Naming the
One Who is Above Us," in Speaking the Christian God, p. 113.
32 Philip Melanchthon, Loci Communes Theologici (1521) in Melanchthon
and Bucer, ed. Wilhelm Pauck, vol. 19, Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1969), p. 21; Theodor Beza, A Book of Christian
Questions and Answers (London, 1572), Rare Book Room, Northwestern University, Evanston. Cf. Aquinas, ST la.31.1-4 and 32.1.

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Although foundational Protestant thought did not suggest that
the masculine identity attributed to God in scripture was metaphorical, many twentieth-century Protestants accept the metaphorical character of God as " Father " or " Son," although they
disagree over how this idea should be reflected in public worship.
Some, like John Miller and Eve MacMaster, propose remaining
faithful to the masculine terminology found in the Bible and accepted by the Reformers because addressing God as "Father"
encourages reflection on the way God has, in the Biblical record,
acted in the fatherly role of provider and protector. Yet Miller
and MacMaster also insist that the title "Father" is no more
indicative of something in the divine nature than any of the other
entities, e.g., " rock" or " shepherd," to which Biblical authors
compare the deity. 33 Other Protestant theologians, like Paul
Tillich, reject even the consistent use of biblical metaphors.
Tillich warns that to use metaphors is to employ " symbols " as
a way of understanding God and yields " idolatrous " notions
that such symbols participate in the identity of God. 34
Tillich's dialectic, which confines knowledge of God to metaphors and regards metaphors as " symbols " by which humans
represent God rather than as revelations of mysterious realities,
has influenced Catholic theorists who choose to discard or
counterbalance masculine names for God. Anne Carr, for example, draws directly on Tillich in arguing that it is as appropriate to call God " mother " as " father " since the concept of
parenthood in God is by " attribution " rather than through definable reality. For Carr, as for Tillich, all biblical names are
metaphors and as such do not reveal the nature of a transcendent
God. 35
3 3 John
W. Miller, Biblical Faith and Fathering: Why We Call God
"Father" (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1989) and Eve MacMaster, "Is 'Inclusive
Language' Theologically Sound or Just This Year's Fashion? " America, Feb.
2, 1991, p. 90.
34 Paul Tillich, Theology of Culture, ed. Robert Kimball
(NY: Oxford,
1964)' pp. 53-67.
35 Anne E. Carr, Transforming
Grace: Christian Tradition and Women's
Experience (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1988), p. 141.

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In traditional Catholic and some Protestant exegesis, however,
a presumption that God reveals the divine nature analogically allows exegetical distinction between biblical texts in which metaphorical language is used to show how God is " like " some reality in natural human experience and other texts where something
experienced in the natural world is analogically "like " something that is real only in God.
Certainly God, as infinite being, transcends the phenomena in
created nature that scripture uses to represent the divine nature.
But transcendence does not mean, as metaphor theologians,
foundational Reformers, disciples of Tillich, or students of preReformation mystics presume, a negation of any logical continuity
with created phenomena. Instead, certain elements in the created
world are designated by scripture as giving insight into the divine nature.
Moses, for example, confers with a bush that burns but is not
consumed. In this respect the burning bush is a symbol that is
" like " an attribute that fully exists only in God : The divine being, as pure act, is the source of other beings without change in
his own nature. But God is certainly not " like " a burning bush.
He is not a created object of temporary duration. In a similar
way Jesus calls God " Father " not to indicate that the holy one
in heaven is merely "like" a father: Nowhere does Jesus indicate that the heavenly " Father " is older than his son, or works
for a living, or has a wife "like" an earthly father.
Instead of God being " like " a father or a son, fatherhood and
sonship are " like " something in the eternal relationship of the
divine Persons. As Paul tells the Ephesians, the " Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ " is the one " from whom all fatherhood takes
its name" (Ephesians 3.14). For Paul, God is not "like" a
father. Rather, fathers in relation to their genetic or spiritual
(in Acts 22.1, Paul calls Jewish religious leaders " fathers ")
offspring are in some way " like " an eternal divine Person. That
mothers, genetic or spiritual, do not also imitate a distinguishing,
relational, eternal act of a divine Person is no more an indication that mothers are inferior to fathers than is God's being a
Trinity an indication of the inferiority of the number four.

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Many people are perplexed by passages like Isaiah's comparison of God to a woman crying out in labor or Jesus' declaration
that he would like to gather and protect the people of Jerusalem
as a hen gathers her chicks. Are these texts suggesting that
motherhood is like God too? Apparently not, because in these
passages the comparisons are cast differently. Created qualities
are not compared to God. Instead God's response to human persons is compared to phenomena in the created world. Such
phenomena are certainly good but there is no suggestion that the
actions involved imitate the eternal divine nature. In similar
metaphors, God longs for the sinner's reformation as the husband in Hosea's parable yearns for his unfaithful wife or the
woman in Jesus' parable misses a lost coin. In these passages it
is not the femininity of the searching woman or the masculinity
of the disappointed husband that is compared to something in
God. Instead, the focus is on how God's efforts to reclaim a lost
soul are like those undertaken by people \Vho have lost something
they value highly. The metaphor is not an exploration of God's
identity as Person/ s, since no divine Person is lonely like the
husband or impoverished like the searching woman. Only God's
patience is " like " that of a loyal spouse; only God's effort to
restore what is lost is "like" that of a careful housekeeper.
For the Christian who takes seriously the reference Jesus
makes in John's Gospel to himself, the "Father," and the
"Paraclete/Spirit"
( 14.15-26), the expectation is that knowledge of the relationships among the three Persons "in" God is
expected of believers. 36 One needs to begin with an understand3 6 In its usual translation as " advocate," the name " Paraclete " seems to
suggest a temporal action as one who reconciles created beings to God. But as
a Semitic language loan word in biblical Greek, the noun, which is masculine
in gender, designates one who speaks through another. Since the Father
speaks eternally and the Word who becomes man is eternally with God, so too
would the one who " speaks through " be a Person whose act of speaking
through indicates eternal identity and an eternal act of existence. Aquinas
noted that in humans a "word" is not a substance but a divine "Word" is
subsistent in the divine nature (ST la.33.2 ad 3). The Gospel of John indicates that Jesus' eternal Sonship makes him a " paraclete" and that everything that the Son is also exists in the one whom Jesus calls " another Paraclete," Brown, Gospel According to John, 2;1140-1141.

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ing of these eternal relationships to understand the eternal identities of the three persons. If, as Aquinas maintains, God is pure
act (ST la.14.2), it is eternal activity that defines relationships
among the members of the Trinity, not temporal acts which seem
to us "like" the acts of shepherds, mothers, or eagles, that offer a
correct way of addressing God in public worship.
But even if one addresses divine Persons in terms of an eternal
rather than temporal act, should the terms of address indicate,
as Mary Daly suggests, an identity " beyond God the Father "
as well? 37 Can the " parental " relationship between the First Person and the Second be adequately expressed by referring to the
First Person as " Parent " rather than " Father " ? Can we detach the human maleness of Jesus from an eternal identity as
Second Person that transcends gender?
In order to consider whether there are valid substitutes for
traditional Christian references to God as "Father" and " Son"
it may be useful to note the logical and theological difficulties
produced by gender-neutral names for God. One influential
theologian who has encouraged departure from masculine names
for God is Daniel Helminiak, a former student and associate
of Lonergan. In an article entitled " Doing Right by Women
and the Trinity Too," Helminiak suggests names inclusive of
feminine aspects of personality that could be applied to the Trinity
without distorting '"distinctions" among the three Persons. 38
He proposes that the First Person be addressed as " Parent " and
the Second as " Eternal Off spring " because the fact that " the
Eternal Off spring is born of the Parent sets up a relation between
them." 39
To imply, as Helminiak does, that it is the existence of the
Second Person that "sets up" a relation and to describe the Second Person as being " born " of the First ignores certain principles that can be logically ascertained about the nature of rela37 Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's
Liberation (Boston: Beacon, 1973), pp. 33-34.
38 Daniel A. Helminiak, "Doing Right by Women and The Trinity Too,"
America, Feb. 11, 1989, p. 110.
39 Ibid., p. 119.

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tionships that would exist within an eternal triune being. First
of all, it is not the existence of the Second Person that " sets up
a relation." Rather it is the eternal nature of God existing as
three Persons to act in ways that express the eternal identity of
each divine Person. Secondly, use of the verb "born" to describe the relationship of the Second Person to the First evades
semantic and logical distinctions between being " born " and being, as careful English translations of the Nicene-Constantinople
Creed state, " eternally begotten."
To be truly divine the Second Person would of logical necessity
exist eternally and be, as the Creed indicates, of the same eternal
"being" as the First. To say that the Second Person was
" born " of the First Person is to say that the First Person was
at one time not the Father (or Parent) or was only potentially
so. Use of the word " born " also suggests that the Second Person emerged in some sort of temporal process. If there were such
a process through which the Second Person attained being, then
the feminine aspects of procreation might reasonably be included
in our notion of divine personality. Yet the idea that the Second
Person had a beginning or took form from the first Person violates the eternity and immutability of God and contradicts the
eternity of the relationship among the Persons of the Trinity. If
the Trinity were at some point not triune, then its becoming so
would " change" the nature of God.
It was only the second Person's acquisition of a human nature
through Mary that enables one to refer to the temporal process
of this person being, as Nicea declared in 325, "born of the virgin Mary." When the Council of Ephesus ( 431) stated that
Mary was " Mother of God " it emphasized that Christ, though
fully human and fully God, was one Person not two. This one
Person, the eternal Son, did not come into existence by being
born or conceived by Mary or by the First or Third Persons.
The willingness of some modern theologians, or even a fourth
century apologist like Hilary of Poitiers, to use " born " to refer to relationships within the Trinity results from misunderstandings of the original Greek of the Nicene Creed. In Latin
versions, Jesus is spoken of as " Fili um Dei unigenitum. Et ex

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Patre natum ante omnia saecula." English translations from the
Latin often render this as " Only begotten Son of God. Born of
the Father before all ages." But although "natum" has been
rendered into English as " born " and in that sense is thought
of by some English speakers as a more motherly than fatherly
act, the Latin participle "natum" actually comes from the verb
" nascor." Taken actively, this verb means " to spring" or " to
rise." Only passively does "nascor" convey being born or giving birth. 40
If one returns to the Creed's Greek wording, "ton Yion tou
Theou ton monogene ton ek tou Patras gennethenta pro panton
ton aion6n,'' one observes that the verb "gennethenta" (infinitive: gennao), in active voice, refers to the act of the father
rather than the mother. Although in biblical Greek the verb, in
passive voice, can mean " to be born,'' even this usage usually
designates the father's role (as in "Abraam egennesen ton
Isaak ") in establishing a child's identity.
That the makers of the Creed intended to refer to identification rather than birth as an analogy of eternal relationship is apparent in the next passage's insistence that the Son is "homoousion to Patri " or " one in being with the Father." Some
translators, recognizing that God's substance, since it constitutes
God's infinite act of being, cannot be changed, separated, or
multiplied, have correctly suggested this implication by translating "homoousion" as "one in substance." The point is that
it is logically impossible for the substance of God to exist as persons who are not eternally God. Only an eternal Person can be
4 ° For example, the Vulgate rendering
of Matt 1.20, in which the angel
tells Joseph of Mary's pregnancy, is "quod enim in ea natum est." DouaiReims translators (1582) rendered this as "For that which is born in her."
But this and similar English renderings ignore the distinction between the
active and passive use of " nascor" in making sense of the passage. See
Cornelius Nary, "Preface to the New Testament" (from his 1718 revision of
the Douai-Reims Bible) in Henry Cotton, Rhemes and Douay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1855), Appendix, pp. 298-304. Hilary uses "born" in
Trinity (3.4), tr. Stephen McKenna, vol. 25, Fathers of the Church (NY:
Fathers of the Church, 1954), p. 67.

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of divine being and substance. Anyone conceived, generatedi
and/or born in the course of time is not of the same being as
either parent but is a separate being as well as a separate person. Moreover, temporal beings as a composite of substances can
share substance with parents but cannot be one in substance
without ceasing to be distinct as persons. What the Creed is describing in its reference to "homoousion" is the eternity and consubstantiality of the Second Person's interaction with the First
Person. Thus the most apt English translations of the Creed are
those that refer to the Second Person as " eternally begotten "
and avoid all suggestion of process, change, or emergence of substance. Since an eternal Person cannot experience a change or
growth in substance, the maternal role of giving birth has no
analogy in the eternal relationships in the Trinity. 41
That the First Person is more than a " Begetter " even in
eternal relationship with the Second Person has been noted by
Aquinas. Any being, Aquinas argued, is properly named " according to its perfection and end." Since generation of the Second Person by the First is eternally complete and brings about
no change in the number of beings, the First Person is not addressed as the begetter who is the source of the Second Person
but as the Father who is the "principle" of the Second Person's
existence and identity. One cannot properly address the First
Person as " Genitor or Begetter " since that would designate the
" process " rather than the eternal effect of generation. Although
credited with composing a hymn that praises the First and Second Persons as " Genitori, Genitoque," Aquinas maintains that
Father is the name that properly identifies the First Person and
that the Second Person is " properly and not metaphorically
called Son." The names " Father " and " Son" are not derived
from creatures because a human father exists before his son and
the act of paternity increases the number of beings as well as
41 See note 4 above.
Elizabeth Achtemeier notes that maternal imagery,
by making the creator one with creation, is contrary to the Biblical focus on
God not being part of or changed by the universe. " Exchanging God for
'No Gods': A Discussion of Female Language for God," in Speaking the
Christian God, pp. 1-16.

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persons. In God both Father and Son are eternally existent and
numerically the same (ST la.33.2, ad 2). The implication in
Aquinas is that certain names are appropriate for God not because they are like a created quality (fatherhood) that is somehow better than its complementary (motherhood) or abstracted
(begetting) quality. Instead the names Father and Son more accurately convey an eternal act of divine existence that has analogies in some created relationships.
Some who accept the concept of eternal begetting might at
this point object to the masculine identity of the eternal begetter
and begotten on the grounds that since no divine Person possesses a body from all eternity, God as God " cannot possibly
have gender" or must in some way transcend gender by encompassing male and female personality traits. To deal with this
issue, it is necessary to explore two areas : the existence of gender
in the created order (and the way in which scripture treats
gender differences in created beings) and the nature of the divine Person who became man.
Observation of created nature reveals that among higher creatures gender differences make reproduction possible. Consequently many people conclude that where there is no gender there is
no reproduction. Yet reproduction does not require gender.
Many lower species reproduce effectively without any gender at
all. Gender, then, is a quality more complex than, and unnecessary for, the reproductive function. This point is communicated
in the Book of Genesis which suggests that gender fulfills its
purpose not in allowing reproduction but in expressing personal
autonomy. In describing God's gift to gendered, higher animals
to " increase and multiply " there is no reference to gender differences. It is only the first humans, made in the "image and
likeness " of God, who are described by Genesis as being created
male or female. The implication is that gender is most significant
in those beings who differ from the rest of physical creation not
only in being persons but also in possessing will and intellect so
that reproduction is not an irresistible instinct. What human beings have in common with God but not with the rest of nature
is that they exist as persons and can exist without a physical

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body. It seems then that it is personhood and spiritual existence
that are the conditions necessary for the perfection of gender. If
gender is a perfection of personhood, then it must exist most perfectly in God.
But would a person, especially a divine one, be more perfect
by having two genders? Such a hypothesis is based on the idea
that perfection is indicated by quantity. Yet quantity is not, in
the natural, or by analogy, supernatural, world an indication of
perfection. Perfection in a created species does not consist in
members of that species having a larger number or wider variety
of qualities in relation to another life form. Mammals, implied
by Genesis to be more perfect than " creeping things," have fewer
legs than insects and lack the variety of action made possible by
having wings or egg-laying capacity. On an entirely different
level, but in an analogous way, logic tells us that the First Person
of the Trinity is not less perfect than the incarnated Second Person or even ordinary human beings because the First Person does
not have physical existence.
And so it is with gender. The individual human person is more
perfect in having one gender than in having two genders like some
invertebrates or changeable genders like certain fish. In human beings perfection consists of single genderedness. Moreover, a
human being's identity as a person cannot be separated from
gender. A human being is the same person at different ages of
life, or if the skin becomes lighter or darker, or if placed in a
different ethnic culture. Only the person's actions or responses
might change. But a change in gender would affect more than
feelings or actions-it would give an entirely different identity.
There would be a " substantial " change.
It is erroneous to suggest as Helminiak does that the term
"Father-Mother " is appropriate for the First Person because it
" conveys that God is not like us." 42 Of course God is not like
us. But this dissimilarity lies in God's infinity and perfection.
4 2 Helminiak, " Doing Right," p. 121. For criticism of the combined gendered
names for God as having implications of hermaphroditism and for information
on Gregory Nazianzen's criticism in 380 CE of such naming among the
Gnostics, see Roland M. Frye, "Language for God and Feminist Language:
Problems and Principles," in Speaking the Christian God, p. 25.

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313

For a person of the Trinity to be called "Father-Mother" suggests not perfection but defect. Although the scriptures remind
us that God is incomprehensible, they also reveal a God whose
attributes are knowable and analogous to our own. For the
human person identity is inextricable from awareness of being
male or female. One develops an appreciation of the beauty and
dignity of one's own gender, and of the opposite sex, not by
thinking of gender as " half " of something but by seeing how
personality is enriched by the presence of a distinct gender identity. To call a Person of the Trinity "Father-Mother" conveys
to the human mind not the completeness of each gender but the
tragic defectiveness of the androgyne. Daughters as well as sons
can take delight in defining themselves in relation to their fathers,
and wise fathers regard daughters as being as much in their own
image as sons. But a parent who is not distinctly male or female
-who is Father-Mother-provides no context in which sons and
daughters can define their own identities as persons.
If having a single gender constitutes perfection for the human
person, and gender in human persons is analogous to something
that exists in divine personhood, this analogy would be communicated most effectively through Christological analysis. It
must be recognized at the outset that the Person called Jesus,
despite his human nature, is not a human person but a divine
Person. As previously noted, conciliar formulations insist that
the two natures of Jesus, the divine and the human, exist in one
divine Person.
Some theorists, apparently believing that human nature is diminished in not being the source of the historical Jesus' personality, have opted for a notion that the historical Jesus was a
human person who "became" a divine person through an ahistorical Resurrection event. Helminiak, for example, claims
that
"In the Resurrection that human being [Jesus] was raised to divine
glory. His human mind came to lmow even as God knows.... In
the Resurrection, Jesus, a human being, was divinized." 48
43 Helminiak,

" Doing Right," p. 121.

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Such a view produces two logical inconsistencies. The first is that
the Person who lived and taught in Nazareth would be a different " person " from the " Person " who now exists in the
heavenly realm. The second would be that God did not become
man but rather that he made a man into God-a violation of
human personal integrity and a logical impossibility since it
would involve a change in the divine nature by multiplying the
number of divine Persons in the course of time.
The idea that one sees a human, not a divine, person in Jesus
supports the implication that male gender in Jesus is an " accident" of his human personhood just as it is an accident for each
human person to be either male or female. But thinking of Jesus
as acquiring the composite accidents of human personality denies
his eternal existence as divine Person. Such denial that the Person of Jesus is the Person of the eternal Son not only produces
the logical impossibilities mentioned above but is also the " Adoptionist " heresy condemned in 451 at Chalcedon. 44 Jesus is not a
man who became divine but God become man-an event that
dignifies rather than diminishes men and women because it shows
that God does not change human nature in redeeming and perfecting it. Since human nature was created by God to exist as a
multiplicity of male and female persons, God's preservation of
this nature in the act of redemption indicates that God wants
each human to live eternally as either man or woman. That Jesus
became a human male does not indicate that human femaleness is
inferior or rejected by God. Instead the manhood of Jesus indicates that some qualities found in created persons are more
analogous to what exists in God than others.
The God revealed in the biblical canon intervenes in creation
but does not change created natures. Scripture does not record
God's changing angels into humans, nor fig trees into junipers,
nor lions into lambs. Instead miracles involve controlling the
effects of nature (a bush burns without being consumed, a storm
produces dry land for the Israelites, lions do not attack Daniel,
withered hands and lepers are healed) or bypassing part of a
44 Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, pp. 115-119.

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315

natural process (water that " becomes " wine through the slow
process of nature becomes so instantly at Cana). Since natures are
not changed, divine acts involve choosing certain natures rather
than others as suitable for revealing divine power or the presence
of a divine Person. Exegesis of texts dealing with " sacramental signs " has led in Catholic Christianity to certain doctrinal positions. In sacramental theology, the substance of bread
and wine became Christ's substance without a change in the nature of bread and wine or a change in the divine or human nature
of the resurrected Christ. In the incarnation, there is yet another
level of divine intervention in nature. Whereas the divine presence in the eucharist replaces a natural substance with Christ's
substance, the incarnation is the act in which divine and human
substance are hypostatically united in Christ. As the Council of
Constantinople II ( 553) held, two substances are preserved distinct and " unconfused " yet " without division." 45 Since, as the
Council of Ephesus asserted, the Person of the Son has unified
by incarnation but has not destroyed the distinction between substance (and nature) of God and the substance (and nature) of
a human being, the natural qualities of that individual human
nature would be consistent with the divine substance. 46
In Jesus, since the Person present is the eternal Second Person, all qualities that constitute the acquired human nature are
appropriate to the Second Person's divine substance. Since a
human nature exists as either male or female, the divine choice
of manhood indicates by analogy something about the nature of
all three Persons.
If one truly wants to make women feel included in the worshiping community one might follow the example of Jesus. He
in no way rejected or trivialized women. Yet in speaking to and
of God, Jesus consistently referred to the First Person as Father
and designated the Third Person by either the masculine noun
"Paraclete" or by masculine pronouns. In stressing his unique
45 Denzinger,
46

# 216.
Denzinger, # llla, 115.

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LYNNE C. BOUGHTON

identity with the Father, Jesus urged men and women to recognize that their own relationship to the Father, though different
from his own, was one that led to a universal, eschatological resurrection that preserves for all eternity each man and woman's
physical and spiritual individuality as a person. If, as Catholic
doctrine asserts, Mary, along with Jesus, now exists as a gendered human nature in heaven, there is no reason for women to
object to God's Personhood being understandable through analogies to human maleness.

GOD'S KNOWLEDGE OF FUTURE CONTINGENTS:
A REPLY TO WILLIAM LANE CRAIG
DAVID B. BURRELL,

I

c.s.c.

University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

T IS FORTUNATE that other duties kept me from responding to William Lane Craig's "Aquinas on God's Knowledge
of Future Contingents" when it came out (Thomist 54
[1990]: 33-79), for my initial perusal found me at once impressed and dismayed, and quite unable to disentangle the two
responses. A more careful subsequent reading allows me, I believe, to pinpoint where he goes wrong in reaching the conclusion
which he does, yet to do so in such a way as to send readers back
to an essay which is otherwise quite remarkable in the way it
learns from Aquinas and offers us useful ways to read him on
these perplexing issues. In doing so, he corrects many a misreading, and amasses sufficient textual and conceptual clarifications as almost to correct his own misreading. And best of all,
I can hope that my rejoinder will send readers back to Aquinas
above all. Indeed, one cannot but feel that the current climate of
controversy regarding the proper understanding of his nuanced
synthesis in philosophical theology would please Aquinas far
more than attempts earlier in this century to distill it all into a
" doctrine."
Craig's conclusion reads:
In maintaining that God's knowledge is the cause of everything God
knows, Thomas transforms the universe into a nexus which, though
freely chosen by God, is causally determined from above, thus eliminating human freedom (79).

I shall claim that he reaches this conclusion only because ( 1) he
presumes God's knowledge to be propositional knowing ( 52-53),

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C.S.C.

even though he asserts that it is not (60, n.61); and (2) that
such a presumption leads him to overlook the vast difference between scientia visionis and scientia simplicis intelligentiae,
though he insists on the difference and formulates it nicely in
parallel with practical and speculative knowing in God ( 40).
Such presumptions about divine knowing are not uncommon, of
course, and what they lead to is one's overlooking what Josef
Pieper called the "hidden element in the philosophy of St.
Thomas "-creation. Indeed, my critique could begin there, remarking how Craig's careful delineation of Aquinas on God's
eternal knowing of contingent things proceeds oblivious of the
central fact that God's knowing in such cases is that of a creator
(" In summary, then, Thomas has appealed e%clusively to the
tradition of God's timelessness in order to defuse the threat of
fatalism" [61, emphasis mine]).
The simple observation that the God in question is always the
free creator of all-that-is would have allowed him to see that
Aquinas does not make the relation of God to contingents turn
solely on that of an eternal knower of temporal things, but that
the eternity /time relation subserves that of creator/ creature.
(This ordering is the more crucial, we shall see, for its power to
correct the endemic tendency to equate " eternal " with " timeless," which Craig manifests throughout.) And despite Pieper's
reminder that creation is largely hidden, it remains sufficiently
present to a careful reader that Craig must indeed confront it at
the end. Yet by the time he does so, his earlier presumptions have
led him to complain that Aquinas's insistence that "God's knowledge is the causa essendi of the things that are going to happen ...
seems nearly unintelligible " ( 73). Indeed what I shall offer as
the key to resolving his crucial dilemmas, and so overturning his
stated conclusion, Craig introduces as a " final issue [which]
threatens to undermine Thomas's attempt to preserve contingency
in the face of divine knowledge, [viz.] his doctrine that God's
knowledge is the cause of its objects rather than the objects' being the cause of God's knowledge" (70-71).
The theologian in me would prefer to begin right here, with
the radical eruption into an Aristotelian world of a free creator,

GOD'S KNOWELDGE

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319

whose relation to the universe is indeed such as to turn our sense
of knowing inside-out. 1 And perhaps something like that is required to challenge philosophers' unexamined presumption that
any use of "knows" must be parsed propositionally as a subject
knowing that something is indeed the case. That presumption
leads inevitably to one's picturing God as a knower alongside a
world to be known, and so effectively obscuring the sui generis
relation of creator to all-that-is. As a result, assertions of
Aquinas regarding the causal efficacy of God's knowing will be
misread as that knowledge "causally determining" (78) what
happens in the world. But just as the creator's knowledge is not
one knowing among others, so the causa essendi cannot be one
cause among others. 2 So let us try to trace how Craig's presumptions about knowing lead him at first to overlook contentions so
central to Aquinas, and then to find them " nearly unintelligible "
as they press in upon him. This exercise, while critical, will also
indicate how instructive the path can be which Craig has taken
to familiarize himself with a position as subtle as that of Aquinas
on these recondite matters.
He begins by helping readers to see how Aquinas uses divine
eternity to correct any mention of "foreknowledge" in God: "in
seeing all things as present, God technically foreknows nothing "
( 47). Yet he goes on to equate that eternity with timelessness,
finding that Aquinas "seems compelled to admit that God's
knowledge of vision [scientia visionis] is exclusively of such
tenseless propositions" ( 53). But neither God's eternity nor
God's knowing can be comprehended by " the timeless truth of
propositions " ( 53), for divine knowing is not propositional (as
he avers at 60, n.61), nor can the eternity which belongs to God
alone (ST 1.10.3) be characterized by that timelessness which
abstract entities share. The difference lies in God's being "his
own invariable existence [suum esse uniforme ]" (ST 1.10.2), so
i See my Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1993).
2 On this crucial point, one may be usefully instructed by the arguments of
Kathryn Tanner in God and Creation in Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988).

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that one may not miss an allusion to the source of all-that-is.
(Craig confuses himself here by mistaking a thoroughly exceptional prophetic statement [" the Antichrist will he born " (de
Ver. l.5)] as establishing that there can generally be "truth in
the intellect which has formed the future-tense proposition" even
when such things do not exist ( 50). Truth is invariably existential for Aquinas, as Craig manifests in parsing his treatment of
Aristotle on future contingencies, as well as in noting his insistence that what will be is eternally present to God.)
Similarly, by failing to note Aquinas's crucial premise of Godas-creator, and taking him to have "appealed exclusively to the
tradition of God's timelessness" ( 61), which comprises a double
misreading, Craig is led to foist upon him a view of time as unreal (McTaggart's " B-theory ") even when he knows that this
contradicts Aquinas's own dicta. (Once again, however, his
modesty helps: " Despite this, however, I must admit that I can
only make sense of Aquinas's position [in this way].") In the
course of this treatment (61-67) he insists on taking what can
only be fafons de parter, such as the use of "iam [already]" in
discourse about God's eternal acting, as prima facie evidence that
"what Aquinas's doctrine of God's eternity and knowledge of
future contingents was seen to imply [on Craig's presumptions]
seems to be positively affirmed by Aquinas, namely, that the past,
present, and future are all ontologically on a par with each other "
( 66). Again, one can applaud the " seems to be," for any skilled
reader of Aquinas cannot escape the power of the present as alone
yielding that existing of which God alone is the cause and which
in created things affords them their constituting relation to the
creator. 3
So far from it being " perplexing [how the understanding of
God as creator is related to] God's knowledge of future contingents " ( 68), that link will provide the key to Aquinas's understanding of the creator's knowing them. But not, as Craig him3 I cannot forbear mentioning here David Braine's exceptional Reality of
Time and the Existence of God (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), where he
speaks of the "dramatic now."

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321

self sees ( 69) via an exemplar-theory of creation ; 4 nor, as Craig
feels compelled to read him, as "indirect objects" subsequent to
"the proper object of God's knowledge: ... the eternal divine
essence " ( 68). For while it is true that Aquinas insists that
God knows all that God knows in God's own essence, it cannot
be true that "the divine essence [is] the simple intelligible
species" by which God knows what God creates, such that they
would be known "indirectly," for that would make God's knowing conceptual. And once these mistakings of divine knowing
by comparison with our own are exposed, there will be no need
to reconstruct Aquinas on creation in the way in which he does
(74-76), introducing an alien term (scientia approbationis), as
well as a hiatus between knowing and willing which greater attention to " practical knowing " could have averted.
In conclusion, then, having failed to exploit the crucial distinction between scientia visionis and scientia simplicis intelligentiae, which he had ably linked with practical and speculative
knowledge, respectively, Craig was unable to see how crucial
is the assertion of free creation to understanding the meaning of
God's knowing for Aquinas, and especially of God's eternal knowing of things which God creates. (Or perhaps it was his inattention to this crucial premise that made him overlook the distinction in knowing, for Aquinas's treatment is seamless here.)
This led him to attempt to construe Aquinas's account of God's
knowing of future contingents e:rclusively from the inexpressible
relation of eternity to time-a relation which he notes that
Aquinas can state only in metaphor and image (62). From that
base, plus some correlative presumptions about "possibles," Craig
had finally to acknowledge the importance of creation, but was
impelled to reconstruct it according to a pattern quite foreign to
Aquinas, as he himself admits while undertaking it! And out of
all this issues the conclusion which I contested at the outset, one
which construes Aquinas's account of the practical knowledge by
which God creates as a " causal nexus " which must determine the
4 Cf. James Ross, "Aquinas's Exemplarism;
Aquinas's Voluntarism," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 64/2 (1990) : 171-198.

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actions of all creatures. 5 It is perhaps telling that the picture he
feels compelled to reconstruct is more reminiscent of Scotus than
of Aquinas, for the Scotistic notion of freedom as pro-active
choice seems to be one accepted without criticism by contemporary philosophers of a " libertarian " persuasion. But Aquinas's account of God's freedom is as nuanced as that of God's
knowing-indeed, both turn on the elusive key of " practical
knowing."
If all this sounds trenchantly critical, it is. But the fact that
one can make these points as straightforwardly as I have been
able to do here is due to the expository clarity of William Lane
Craig's article. He has submitted himself to learn from Aquinas,
and in the process illuminates a great deal for today's reader.
The points which I have been making require a fresh effort to
move beyond current unexamined presumptions to see that there
is even more there than he sees; and to begin to savor the fruit of
such understanding.

5 I have shown, in Knowing the Unknowable God (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), how Aquinas guts the emanation scheme
bequeathed to him by Avicenna while continuing to use it as an image for the
inexpressible relation of creation.

SHE WHO IS: WHO IS SHE?
ROBIN DARLING

*

y OUNG

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

W

HEN ON AN ordinary Sunday morning in any
Catholic church, women sign themselves with the cross,
eciting the Trinitarian names of Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit as they do it, are they unwittingly, or perversely,
conspiring in their own oppression and suffering? What of
their prayers to God the Father, or to Jesus their Lord and
brother, or their communion with him in the sacrament of the
Eucharist? Or what of their salutation and veneration of Mary,
called the Blessed Mother?
She Who Is begs these particular questions because its author
has neglected to consider the import of the Christian sacramental
life as she forms a theology which primarily aims to benefit
women. But the ·entire direction of the work makes it hard to conclude anything but that the answer to the above would be "yes."
Women who profess and practice a Catholicism unreformed by
feminist theory must by implication be deluded (at best) or malicious (at worst) because they have failed to realize the connection, personal and communal, between a " classical theism " which
has produced masculinized language for God supported by a consonantly oppressive institution, and the worldwide political and
economic domination which has yielded massive human suffering, most notably among women. Extend the logic, and it is not
too much to say that the hypothetical women of the first paragraph might as well consume without objection every papal pro*This essay is a review of Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is. The Mystery
of God in Feminist Theological Discourse. New York: Crossroad, 1992. Pp.
xii + 316. $24.95 (cloth).

323

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YOUNG

nouncement along with right-wing political policy: traditional
language for the Godhead is an analogue for the politics of imperialism in church and world.
Of course, this connection is only hinted at in the book; references to political realia are allusions only, such as in the following evocation of a feminine God's revolutionary power:
[The theological symbol of] She Who Is challenges every structure
and attitude that assigns superiority to ruling men on the basis of
their supposed greater godlikeness. If the mystery of God is no
longer spoken about exclusively or even primarily in terms of the
dominating male, a forceful linchpin holding up structures of patriarchal rule is removed (p. 243) .
The book's actual purpose is to promote a revisionist theological
(or thealogical) language in order to repair the damage purportedly done to women by centuries of the other. If the pretended
area of discussion is the language we employ to designate the
mystery of the Godhead, the actual theater of operations is the
language used in the church to communicate the faith and to
evangelize. Johnson's book wishes to promote, not primarily
theological reflection, but a program of revision in which-based
on the premise that since God is unknowable, one set of terms is
as good as another-" masculine " language for God will give
way to feminized language, in which the deity appears in the
image of the female human being. As opposed to the projected
imago viri who presides over creation as a remote and unresponsive God, the mother God of Johnson's proposal is essentially
a manifestation of the eternal feminine : in a panentheistic theology, She Who Is both plays and suffers with her wounded
creatures.
When She is recognized, Johnson asserts, " theology will have
come of age." Not only that, but justice is more likely to be accomplished on earth. But will the faith of those women, not all
of whom are subservient, who live and thrive within the Catholic
tradition, have been counted? This is unlikely, because those who
have not experienced the feminist "awakening" are in the view
of this book primarily missionary objects who remain to be converted. Women who are unaware of their oppression by " classi-

SHE WHO IS

325

cal theism " are presumably afflicted by the " false consciousness "
with which leftists of this century have characterized those potentially liberated souls who have not yet realized their enslavement. As Johnson herself says, those who disagree exhibit the
symptoms of blindness, or "scotosis" (p. 13). Furthermore,
Relegating the theological question of God-talk in relation to women's
flourishing to the periphery of serious consideration in academy,
church and society is an instance of this phenomenon. It is the refusal of insight as a function of group bias. The only remedy is conversion (p. 14).
Such language belies the books' irenic reputation, but it is an
important sign of the primary agenda of the author. The criterion
by which all theological language-both the terminology of Christian doctrine and theological reflection-must be measured is an
external criterion, that of feminist theory. And Christian feminism has become, in the past fifteen years, a largely separate
religion from Christianity, a religious exodus for which the
agenda of Woman Church could be adduced as primary evidence.
Thus Johnson here applies a feminist criterion, with its divergent
epistemology and world-view, to the language used in classical
Christianity for worship, thought, and expression. It is no wonder
that the outcome is so skewed, and no wonder that it must base
itself as a project in the experience of only a small minority of
women. However, Christians should not ignore a feminist
project like Johnson's, because it has much to tell them about
the aridity-unto-death of much modern religious language.
The Feminist Proposition of She Who ls
Several of the chief contentions of feminism in which this book
shares can hardly be doubted. It is incontestible that women
have been oppressed and continue to be, in almost all human social arrangements, including institutional expressions of Catholic
Christianity. Their extreme vulnerability due to physique and
childbearing, and the custom of restriction to the private sphere
has until recently rendered them neglected and exploited, or in
some cases subjected to gross violence as a class. It is also incontestible that male language used of chief gods, or in the case

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of Christianity, the Godhead, can and has been used to justify
everything summed up in the familiar term, "sexism." On the
level of individual women, as in the case of impoverished human
beings generally, it is not going too far to suggest that this state
of oppression, apparently justified by the highest celestial powers,
has had terrible consequences for women's very survival, let alone
energy and creativity.
This feminist critique, familiar now for decades, is taken for
granted by many as a just and correct assessment of a sociocultural malfeasance not unlike the instance of racism. Both androcentrism /sexism and racism need correction, although reasonable people may disagree on the means.
Within the Christian religion, and specifically within the
American theological profession, the feminist " awakening " to
the history and import of sexism has generated a number of
projects. These mirror those of the cultural world. One is the
programmatic attempt to engender change in church structures,
notably by opening the ranks of the ministry to women candidates. Another is the critique of official or unofficial texts for
their sexist language, usually leading to the proposed solution of
inclusive language. Again, the professional cultures have led the
way, and in many forms of literature the inclusive has replaced
the once-familiar generic pronoun because the feminist argument
has been accepted, namely, that the use of "mankind," "he," and
the like promotes a tacit idealization of the masculine form of
the total humanity it is supposed to represent.
It is now a moot point whether the generic pronoun was the
agent of oppression, because the feminist interpretation largely
has won the day. Still under discussion is the related, but much
more serious, project in which She Who Is participates: to advocate, and even to accomplish, a re-naming of the Godhead
which, in the interest of reparations for the ill-effects of supposedly masculine language, will constitute a complete rethinking of
what we intend when we utter the word " God," and hence a
reorientation of the entire human being who worships that One
with a whole heart. It will also require that Christians jettison
much of their inherited doctrine.

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327

What earnest American theologian could resist the following
cri de guerre, with its appealingly therapeutic tone?
What is at stake is simultaneously the freeing of both women and
men from debilitating reality models and social roles, the birthing of
new forms of saving relationship to all of creation, and indeed the
very viability of the Christian tradition for present and coming generations (p. 15).
For such a goal, whatever practical measures it entails, the adjustment of theological language, at its most metaphysical and at
its most scriptural, seems a small price to pay. Throughout the
book it is asserted, but not shown, that inclusive language on
both levels, the human and the divine, will result in the above
goal; and indeed, it is assumed, but not demonstrated, that the
amelioration of ecclesiastical and social injustice should be the
aim of theology.
Here is where secularist, nontheistic feminism and Christian
theological reflection intersect with the professionalization of
theology to create such a project. Feminism seeks social change,
and has accomplished substantial change. Because it is a critique,
and an angry one at that, it is primarily a catalyst. It requires a
sustained anger and a tragic view of life, i.e., that a true community of males and females is unattainable, and can even be seen
to generate both : it proceeds by warfare, and not without a just
cause. Christian theological reflection, on the other hand, is a
meditation upon Christian doctrine in the light of present conditions, and it takes place within the life of prayer and the sacraments-within the larger life of the religion. Its aim is pastoral,
evangelical, and pedagogical. Its practical results may not be immediately apparent, but they exist. Because it is Christian, it
promotes hope, among other things hope in the possibility of
human community. On yet a third hand, the profession of theology has incorporated the feminist critique because its licensed
practitioners have appropriated the norms of any professional society, among which norms are the parity of the sexes, and it seeks
action because that is what professionals do, by definition. For
professional theologians, theology gains what Johnson calls
" practical and critical effects "-the power to promote change in

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church and society. The question of cui bona? may be raised here
profitably.
At this crossroads may She Who Is be found. Like other
feminist theological writings it criticizes sexism, particularly in
church and theology. But it goes beyond that familiar diagnosis
rightly to criticize by implication the truly limited, even dessicated, character of much late-twentieth-century theology afflicted
with academic myopia. Johnson and others have realized that
theology, on the defensive since the Enlightenment, has become
increasingly unable to articulate the human experience of yearning for and participating in the divine. Many of its (male) practitioners have either defended traditional dogma in a reactionary
way, or abandoned the high ground for some version of Tillichian relativism. The eminence grise for modern theology has
been the purported scientific world-view with its threats to scripture and tradition, or sometimes the American intelligentsia's
contempt for religion and its thought as irrational and rude.
With its insistence on human experience, Christian feminism
has sought to participate in the postmodern theological endeavor.
She Who Is begins with a such a road-marker:
The present ferment about naming, imaging and conceptualizing God
from perspectives of women's experience repristinates the truth that
the idea of God, incomprehensible mystery, implies an open-ended
history of understanding that is not yet finished (p. 7).
Her own particular task among other feminist theologians is to
inquire whether there is anything worth saving in classical theology, from the point of view of the feminist hermeneutic. She
announces at the outset (p. 9) that the answer is affirmative, and
that there is something " in the classical tradition in all of its
vastness that could serve a discourse about divine mystery that
would further the emancipation of women." As noted above, the
author asserts that she would " braid a footbridge " between
classical and feminist " Christian wisdom" so that some may
cross over to the paradigm of women's coequal humanity without
leaving behind all the riches of the tradition that has been their
intellectual and spiritual home (p. 12).

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Here, as elsewhere, the aim of theology is largely that of social
amelioration : the parity of the sexes. This is an important goal,
but perhaps not the aim of theology as distinguished from legislation or other forms of persuasion.
The Approach of She Who Is
In the service of the feminist goal, then, Johnson constructs a
new theology which recovers what it can from prior Christian
literature. She Who Is contains four sections. The first is a general reprise of the feminist approach, and constitutes what Johnson terms " Background: Speech about God at the Intersection
of Mighty Concerns." She concludes the section by considering
the logical consequences of her feminist critique for language
about God, reviews previous proposals for toning down masculine
language (e.g., by stressing some stereotypically feminine
" side "), and advocates the use of female images for God. The
motivation for doing so is practical and temporary, Johnson
states : " Theoretically I endorse the ideal of language for God
in male and female terms used equivalently, as well as the use of
cosmic and metaphysical symbols " (p. 56). However, given the
urgency of the moment and the underdeveloped state of female
language, Johnson seems to think that for a time these should be
employed almost exclusively: " In my judgment, extended theological speaking about God in female images, or long draughts
of this new wine, are a condition for the very possibility of
equivalent imaging of God in religious speech." Although this
" choice " is " not intended as a strategy of subtraction, still less
of reversal,'' it nevertheless " must be received as an essential element in reordering an unjust and deficiently religious situation."
Apparently parity on this level is " unrealizable in actual life,''
and the reader must conclude that Johnson wishes all contemporary language properly called theological, that is, language
naming the blessed Trinity, to be non-inclusive-feminist.
In the second section, "Foreground: Resources for Emancipatory Speech About God,'' Johnson prefaces a review of scriptural images fitted for use in feminist theological language with
a chapter on the experience of women. The gist of this chapter is

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to claim the imago Dei, the quality in which humans are Christlike, for women, to appropriate portions of the prior Christian
tradition in which women have acted as agents, and to dethrone
the idol who is God as patriarchal religion has presented him.
This is a constructive proposal, as is the recovery of the feminine
images of God which are to be found in the Scriptures. Unfortunately, when Johnson examines the resources of classical theology for reformist/feminist theology, she insists that the traditional assertion of divine incomprehensibility is a charter for
supplying names for God which occupy equal rank with the central Trinitarian names.
This is because " Ultimately, the highest human knowledge
about God is to know that we do not know, a negative but entirely valid knowing pervaded by religious awareness" (p. 110).
Surely, though, this is not correct; scripture and tradition have
consistently taught that ultimately, we will know God, and that
the state of knowledge we have through revelation is not discontinuous with what Augustine describes as communion with God
in the famous last lines of The City of God: "We shall rest and
we shall see ; we shall see and we shall love ; we shall love and we
shall praise. Look what will be, in the end, without end: For
what is our end but to reach that kingdom which has no end? "
The role of apophatic theology here is misconstrued. In classical Christian thought, apophatic language for God is based in the
cataphatic terms familiar from scripture and doctrine; it functions
as a via negativa for bringing the human being closer to the
paradoxically incomprehensible-yet-knowable God. Apophatic theology rests upon the revelation that God is known in Christ. It
is not a tool for deconstruction. Nonetheless, with a critical
" apophaticism " in place, Johnson then reinterprets the doctrine
of analogical language to assert a kind of equality of value
among the " many names " for God. This can then mean, of
course, that no name, such as Father or Son, need have priority
over another name, such as Mother or Rock.
Using a set of names for God, or perhaps aspects of God in the
original text, Johnson next proceeds to construct in Part Three
a Trinitarian theology based on the elusive notion of God's Wis-

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dom (Greek sophia) to be discerned in certain Biblical books.
"Speaking About God from the World's History" proceeds in
three chapters to construe God's inner life as the relation of
" Spirit-Sophia " to " Jesus-Sophia " and " Mother-Sophia," so
that a divine triad is elaborated which removes the sting from
the traditional Father, Son/Word, Spirit language and emphasizes the involvement of this triad in the world. This is a Trinitarian theology consciously written "from below," so that each
person's function is construed primarily as a relation with the
world. Because the incarnate Logos is largely discounted, intraTrinitarian relations remain unknowable.
In Part IV, "Dense Symbols and their Dark Light," Johnson
returns to the project of the feminist critique in disowning the
supposedly remote and uninvolved patriarchal God inherited from
Greek philosophy by early Christian theologians, in order to describe a triune God who is a "mystery of relation." The liberating effect of this God is to reduce the " apathic, omnipotent "
power of the male God and redirect it toward the human predicament, so that the " suffering God " is embraced at the end.
Renaming the Godhead: Pro and Con
Because She Who Is proposes no specific programme of reform for the Catholic church's doctrinal and liturgical language,
it is easy, perhaps, to miss the revolutionary import of Johnson's
thought-experiment. Once the reader sorts through the book's
grandiose language and utopian goals, she can easily see that the
end toward which it tends is a net reductio.
It is one thing to propose that all the richness of the Christian
tradition should be mined and offered as the wealth belonging to
all believers; justice demands that they be enriched with their
own heritage. But it is quite another to apply an external criterion as a rationalization for overturning Jesus' own command
to baptize in the Trinitarian name, and, moreover, to deprive believers of the centuries of profound teaching which belong to
them.
Johnson's book claims for itself a universally-salvific mission
with regard to theology:

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SHE WHO IS discloses in an elusive female metaphor the mystery
of Sophia-God as sheer, exuberant, relational aliveness in the midst
of the history of suffering, inexhaustible source of new being in situations of death and destruction, ground of hope for the whole created
universe, to practical and critical effect (p. 243).
But classical theism offers the same, and grounds it firmly in a
knowable, divine person who has freely chosen to reveal himself in human form. Like other feminists, Johnson proposes language for God which ultimately slips toward deism or simple
theism, perhaps because feminism ultimately requires a universalizable religion appropriate for all women.
Johnson claims that Christianity would gain from the She
Who Is metaphor an image of a more approachable deity than
the one it has at present; She would be more attentive and empathic, the ideal mother. She would match the feminine experiences
of birth/labor, anger, grief, and degradation with her compassion.
But Johnson's interest goes beyond the metaphor to systematic
reform in the arena of human endeavor, for which She is presumably more supportive. Such a move seems to result in a net
loss, however, though it is familiar enough since the liberal Continental theology of the nineteenth century yielded on American
shores the Social Gospel. Perhaps Catholic theology here again
recapitulates the devolution suffered by Protestant thought.
Certainly androcentrism, unjust and boring as it is, should give
way to a just attitude and practice-that is, sexual equality-in
church and world. But would Johnson's brand of invented inclusive language for God aid in this endeavor? This is the great
a priori assumption in the book, and it remains unproven.
What also fails to appear is sufficient explanation of the
patristic and medieval discourse about the Trinitarian God, in
which it could be demonstrated easily that what Johnson requires is, in fact, available in the tradition. Early Christian
writers, far from accepting any notion of God as Unmoved
[male] Mover, wrote of-and prayed to-a God revealed in
Christ's human experiences. The knowledge through revelation
that God, free of the limitation of human gender, expresses his
philanthropia by divine compassion was the foundation of an-

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cient Christian worship and thought. And from the first, mainstream Christianity understood that the mystery revealed in and
by Christ of the inner life of the Trinity was not precisely like
human fatherhood, but encompassed it as a primary foundation of
all generation. Furthermore, when human life was reordered by
metanoia to God's life, women and men could begin to participate
in the life of the Trinity. The Greek writers called this metousia
Theou, but they expected its effects to be manifested in justice
and virtue in the present life of human beings dwelling in God's
good cosmos.
The true problem of She Who Is rests precisely in its misrepresentation of the Catholic Christian tradition. The accurate retort could be made that androcentrism has also played false with
the tradition. That accepted, the real mission of theology is
neither revolutionary nor utopian, but pedagogical: instead of
using a feminist hermeneutic to select remnants of acceptable
Christian teaching, theologians ought to learn and communicate
the entire body of Christian tradition in order that theology rightly develop and deepen. To follow Johnson's lead would be to depart from the language for God made known in and by Christ,
and preserved in the tradition. Instead, believers are asked to
worship a God who, because " She " is unknown, and cannot be
known, may be anyone. Her identity is a crucial theological
question.

BOOK REVIEWS
The Immutability of God in the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar.
By GERARD F. O'HANLON, S.J. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1990. Pp. 246. $59.95 (cloth).
O'Hanlon unfolds Balthasar's theology in four main chapters, which
treat the question of immutability in terms, respectively, of Christ·
ology; creation; time and eternity; and inner trinitarian life in God.
In Chapter 5, O'Hanlon compares Balthasar's approach with some
English-speaking authors (B. Davies, A. Kenny, E. Stump, Kretzmann,
P. Geach, J. Kvanvig, D. H. Mellor, A. E. Williams). Finally, in
Chapter 6, O'Hanlon ofiers a summary and assessment of Balthasar's
proposals.
(1) Regarding his treatment of Christology in Chapter 1, O'Hanlon
discusses how Balthasar's attempt to find a "middle way" between
simple mutability and a traditional sense of immutability in God lies
in uncovering the trinitarian presuppositions of Christology. Whether
God is open to being afiected by dialogue with creatures hinges decisively on how we understand Jesus Christ or, more precisely, on how
we understand the humanity of Jesus to reveal what God is like (9-10).
This is an approach difierent from .that of those who would criticize
the traditional axiom of divine immutability on the basis of certain
philosophical assumptions regarding the priority of becoming over being (10-11). Balthasar's approach is first theological: when we con·
sider the soteriological and eschatological dimensions of Christ's work
for us, we are forced to ask the question about the nature of God:
"does he too not sufier, is he not afiected by sin, can he he simply
apathetic to the prospect of any final loss of his creatures to hell? " (9).
At the heart of Ba1thasar's position, then, lies an affirmation of a
kenosis within the inner life of God, which already provides a foundation for the possibility of the (second) kenosis revealed in the incarnation and the cross (11-14). That is, the "kind of emptying and self.
giving we see in the incarnation is both the image and the effect of the
eternal ' externalization ' of God that is involved in the intra-trinitarian
life" (14). It is imperative that one see the nuances of this affirmation.
On the one hand, Balthasar is careful to avoid a simple identification of the second with the first kenosis: this would make the incarna·

335

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tion and cross natural and necessary to God, thus entailing theopaschism (14-15). On the other hand, the suffering love of Christ does truly
reveal God's sovereign power to be absolute love and self-giving, because there " is a certain analogy between the divine and human natures
of Christ which is due to the identity of the person, the pre-existent
Logos" (14). Thus Balthasar is led to qualify the traditional understanding of divine immutability ( 15) : there is " some real kenosis
within God which has ontological status and is not merely functional,
soteriological, or a simple addition which does not affect God" {16).
O'Hanlon makes clear how Balthasar is at pains always to respect
the mysterious nature of the issue, as well as the limits set by the great
Christian tradition. At the heart of the matter lies a return to the person-nature distinction as set by Chalcedon. Traditionally, the affirmation has been of a divine nature in Christ which remains immutable
and a human nature which changes and suffers. Balthasar goes beyond
this affirmation. On the basis of Philippians 2 :5-11, he arrives at the
necessity of positing a real kenosis in God ; and from his recognition
of the ontological, personal identity of the Logos as the subject who
unites the two distinct natures in Christ, he refuses to limit the change
and suffering which Christ experiences to his human nature alone. In
fact, the tendency to understand the human nature of Christ as an instrumentum conjunctum which does not affect the divine person he
considers as Nestorian in character. Yet, at the same time, Balthasar
affirms the incommensurable difference between God and the world, between the divine and human " unmixed " natures of Christ. The relation between the two natures is precisely analogous (after the manner
of the maior dissimilitudo of the Fourth Lateran Council). Any facile
attribution of change and suffering which would fail to recognize this
difference between natures Balthasar therefore rejects as a fall into
monophysitism (42-46) .
In sum, then: the relation between God and the incarnate Christ is
one of expression and of dialogue. As " expression of God, Christ tells
us about the Father, himself, the Spirit, and the one trinitarian divine
being of God. As word of the Father he is the archetype of every self.
expression of God ad extra" (47). But, as personally other than the
Father, Christ reveals at the same time that God is "a trinitarian event
in which there is mutual interaction and dialogue between the personal
poles " (4 7) . " This trinitarian relationship between God and Christ
is the model for the relationship between God and us. In particular
the reality of Christ as personal expression and dialogue partner of
the Father becomes the exemplar of our relationship with God " (4 7).
(2) O'Hanlon's discussion of Christology sets the context for his
subsequent treatment of Balthasar's theology regarding creation and
time and eternity. With respect to creation, once again Balthasar be-

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gins by accepting some main principles of the Christian tradition:
namely, that the act of creation does not change God, and specifically
that the creation of human freedom, with all that it entails, likewise
does not change God (50). At the same time, Balthasar does go he·
yond the traditional Thomistic axiom that God is not really related to
creatures (51; see 52ff.). How does he maintain both of these perspectives simultaneously ?
The answer is to be found in the trinitarian presuppositions of crea·
tion. These presuppositions show how difference and otherness are not
threats to divine unity hut on the contrary the very way of that unity.
The (precisely infinite) difference and otherness which is already char·
acteristic of God's inner divine life makes possible the difference and
otherness entailed in creation: that is, it provides grounds for being
able " to speak in terms of the effect of creation on God, without elimi·
nation of the divine transcendence" (168). And since the mystery of
the Trinity shows us that God is already love in himself, the way is
cleared for a specifically Christian notion of a free creation, against
all Gnostic-type emanationist or Hegelian·type attempts to see creation
as the way in which God becomes himself. Balthasar, starting with the
Trinity and in contrast to these latter theories and attempts, makes a
double affirmation: on the one hand, because God is already the full·
ness of love, there is no necessity or external exigency for him to
create (51); on the other hand, "the freedom with which he creates
is in accordance with his nature as love in the self.giving way that is
revealed in the Trinity" (52).
The consequences of all of this for our understanding of how God
can he really related to creatures, or again, of how creatures can
really make a difference to God, become clear when we recall Balth·
asar's Christology, which, once again, sees the kenosis of the incarna·
tion and the cross as (in a significant hut carefully qualified sense)
revelatory of the inner being of God-and therefore (in the same
qualified way) as a perfection. Poverty and weakness and self-empty·
ing are not defects. They indicate for us not so much " negatives "
which are a function of finitude (or sin), as " positives " which dis·
close the inner meaning of love. O'Hanlon puts it thus:
There is no ontological negativity in God; no evil, no sin, no defeat.
The " death" that is the trinitarian event of utter self-giving is an en·
tirely positive reality of divine beatitude. This means that there is no
original image of sin in God. There is, however, that which gives rise
to and can contain what in us, due to our use of freedom, issues in sin

(81).

Similarly, the receptivity which in God is simply a perfection can
give rise to and contain that which becomes suffering in Christ's in·
carnation and crucifixion. The analogy is to a loving personal rela·
tionship, wherein one's receptivity to the other is innerly-disposed to

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becoming a suffering with respect to the other, in the face of the
other's (sinful) use of freedom. As the relationship becomes truer or
more perfect, one does not thereby cease to he affected by the other or
to he innerly-disposed to suffer-indeed precisely to the contrary. At
the same time, one is never-again, if and to the extent that the relationship is true---controlled by (and in this sense dependent upon) the
other. The way is thus prepared for recognizing affectivity and even
suffering as perfections; and thus, in turn, for affirming some truly
analogous sense (maior dissimilitudo) of supra-suffering in God (see
O'Hanlon's carefully qualified remarks on 81-87).
It is precisely here, then, that we see the theological-ontological
grounds for Balthasar's ascribing to God many attributes and activities
which seem so unusual from a traditional perspective: surprise, wonder,
faith, hope, prayer, nostalgia, expectation, joy, newness, trust, obedience, increase and becoming ( 79) : the " positivity " of kenosis as the
way of God's being, with its receptivity to difference and otherness,
makes it possible to attribute all of these characteristics to God. This
does not mean that Balthasar thereby rejects the more traditional attributes of omnipotence, infinity, eternity, immutability, and the like.
It means only that these traditional attributes must now he modulated
in terms of the deeper and more comprehensive sense of perfection(s)
required by " the intrinsically inter-personal nature of trinitarian love "
(80; see O'Hanlon's nuanced comments on 80-81).
(3) In Chapter 3, O'Hanlon makes thematic the relationship between time and eternity which operates so centrally in all that can he
said about a " supra-mutability " in God. Eternity for Balthasar is
more a "supra-time" than a "non-time" (92). Eternity, in other
words, contains all the liveliness and movement proper to time, albeit
in an utterly intensive way (90-96). The "becoming which is proper
to time is like a copy (Abbild) of its original image or idea (Urbild/
/dee) which is the lively, ever-new, eventful aspect of eternity" (95).
Again, it is in Christ that we find the analogue for the relation between
temporality and eternity.
(4) With the analysis of the preceding chapters in hand, O'Hanlon
returns in Chapter 4 to the central issue of his inquiry, namely, the
immutability of God. As we have seen, " Balthasar accepts the traditional credal and Conciliar teaching on the Trinity as normative for his
own theologizing. This means that the theology of the trinitarian event
is developed from within an explicitly traditional Christian view of the
Trinity" (llO). Most of the elements in Balthasar's carefully qualified
answer to the question of immutability, which are drawn from the tradition even as they lift into relief overlooked aspects of the tradition,
have already been indicated. His qualified answer is that we must
continue to speak of the immutability of God-given the serious

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dangers inherent in the language of mutability; but that we must nonetheless understand immutability in such a way that it is made to include " the perfection of trinitarian love within which there is ... intrinsic supra-mutability " ( 136) .
In the final section of Chapter 4, O'Hanlon takes up the question of
the nature of theological discourse. This question, evidently, is operative all along the way in any attempt to clarify the legitimate sense
in which one can speak of God as immutable-or indeed supra-mutable.
O'Hanlon points out that Balthasar's language is the language of paradox (not dialectic) (317), and again that the language of paradox is
proper to mystery (137ff.). The key to both paradox and mystery in
Balthasar's sense is trinitarian love. The oppositions within the trinity
are not inversely but directly related to the divine unity. That is, these
oppositions are not dialectical (Hegel), even as they challenge a more
conventional (i.e., unparadoxical: abstract) human logic (see 138).
The theologian, on Balthasar's understanding of theology, has a responsibility to show how affirmations about God which seem contradictory-such as that God is both immutable and supra-mutableare not contradictory; at the same time, he or she has a responsibility
to " extend " human logic to show how it must be inclusive of paradox.
Such extension involves the enrichment of abstract, conceptual language
with analogical, metaphorical, and image-laden terms (137, 141).
Balthasar accepts the complementarity indicated in the words of G.
Sohngen: " Metaphysics without metaphor is empty; metaphor without
metaphysics is blind" (142). Only in the context of some such complementarity can theology be faithful to Scripture.
(5) In the concluding two chapters, O'Hanlon compares Balthasar's
position regarding immutability with the English-speaking thinkers
named at the outset, and then provides his own final assessment. Despite the fact that the dialogue between Balthasar and these other
thinkers is mutually enriching, O'Hanlon points out the difficulty in
mediating the discussion, due to the " very real differences in presupposition, language and tone" among them (166). The key to the difference in their approaches, for example, with respect to the matter of
formal-linguistic precision, lies in Balthasar's insistence on a primacy
of love. Only a context of love can begin to make sense of how the
freedom of surprise can be compatible with the divine omniscience (" as
people get to know one another better there is, if anything, an increase
in those aspects of surprise, mystery and freedom which are characteristic of love ": 166) .
In his own assessment, O'Hanlon notes especially the question raised
by some regarding whether Balthasar's " unashamedly theocentric theological approach " does not entail a " denial or neglect of the reality
and importance of creation in its temporal, historical, and social dimeu-

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sions," as well as a tendency to dialogue with the tradition to the ex·
clusion of contemporary theologies (170). Allowing that some of this
criticism may he justified with respect to Balthasar's theology more
generally, O'Hanlon says that on the question of divine immutability
it is not j ustificd: Balthasar " has found a way to establish that creation is real and that God is involved in it, without reducing God to
creation and without making God's involvement any less real by preserving his transcendence " ( 171) .
O'Hanlon says that Balthasar is more vulnerable to criticism with
respect to his imprecision of language ( 171), but O'Hanlon recognizes
that such imprecision is in fact largely due to an appropriate sense of
mystery in theological inquiry ( 172) . Within the framework of his
overall positive assessment of Balthasar's position, O'Hanlon suggests
that this position he treated as a hypothesis, one that fits well into the
notion of doctrinal development (172-75). That is, Balthasar's position
may he considered as a stage in the process of theological inquiry. In
analogy with the development of the doctrine of the Trinity in early
Christianity, " an important sense of mystery always remains, and yet
definitive steps forward may he possible and are signalled by the recep·
tion of the Church" (172-73). In this context, Balthasar's proposals
regarding immutability in God should he tested both in the light of the
whole of the tradition and in terms of " a broad theological consensus
concerning the need to modify the traditional teaching " ( 173) . This
testing, says O'Hanlon, should involve more discussion with opposing
views. The precision of Balthasar's position would he enhanced, for
example, with more sustained treatment of the debate surrounding
process theology ( 173) .
O'Hanlon concludes that Balthasar's theology on the question of immutability is probably, hut not certainly, correct.
In a very difficult area, with the need to keep a delicate balance in the
inter-relationships between the witness of Scripture, tradition, Christian
experience, the inherent logic and dynamic of philosophical systems and
his own presuppositions and biases, Balthasar has provided us with a
way of speaking about God which resonates with the intuition of the
Christian faithful concerning God's consoling intimacy and yet his reassuring otherness (174).

O'Hanlon's hook brings out well what is perhaps most important and
distinctive about the work of Balthasar: how his traditwnal theology
opens up creative perspectives concerning a central truth of Christian
faith. Balthasar is at pains to protect what is indispensable in the traditional affirmation of God's immutability: namely, God's infinitetranscendent perfection. He therefore retains the term "immutability."
Nonetheless, he wishes equally to insist on a "liveliness in God, an
' event,' which the more usual understanding of immutability does not

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convey and so he attempts to invest the term with new meaning and to
call for a new image of God " ( 6) . It is important to understand that
Balthasar does not mean simply to replace more traditional " ontological " categories in our understanding of God with more " personalist "
categories. On the contrary, he means to take " personalism," as disclosed above all in the divine trinitarian relations, as revelatory of the
being of God. The result is a genuine alternative to either (static) state
or (dynamic) event as characterizing divine life: an alternative, that
is, which goes beyond state and event even as it includes crucial features of both (135; 111-112).
O'Hanlon repeatedly makes clear: all of the deepening and development that Balthasar proposes with respect to the tradition hinge on taking trinitarian love as one's starting point. It is trinitarian love, with
its inherent receptivity to the other (to otherness and difference) that
makes possible, indeed warrants, all of the attributes in God which express God's supra-mutability and supra-suffering.
In sum, then: realization of the purpose of his book required
O'Hanlon to show how Balthasar's theology, at various critical junctures, operates with presuppositions different from those which we have
become accustomed to take as traditional. These presuppositions do not
so much depart from the tradition as they lift up from the tradition
elements which have heretofore not received sufficient emphasis. The
presuppositions can be framed in terms of five main questions: ( 1) To
what extent has a traditional, philosophically-dominated, approach to
the tract De Deo Uno determined our idea of what attributes are appropriately ascribed to God (see 80)? Is our deepest sense of unity
given in " substance" or in the " intrinsically inter-personal nature of
trinitarian love," and in what ways (80; see the question O'Hanlon
poses to Balthasar in this respect: 115-116)?
(2) How does one conceive the distinction of divine and human natures ("unmixed") in Jesus Christ in a way that is consistent with
the unity of Jesus' divine person? Is Jesus' self-emptying and suffering-receptivity-unto-death (kenosis) revelatory of the inner being of
God in some truly analogous sense?
(3) What does a trinitarian (and christocentric) starting point entail regarding the Thomistic understanding of God as Actus Purus or
Esse? Specifically, in what sense is receptivity to be affirmed of Esse,
and thus as a perfection? What does this imply for the relation of
God and the world?
( 4) If receptivity is a perfection of esse, what consequences does
this hold for the Aristotelian conception of the feminine in terms of
" matter " (wherein receptivity is tied first to the potency and hence
passivity of " matter ") ?

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( 5) What follows for the " critical " and " systematic " dimensions
of theology, if, accepting Balthasar's centering of thought in (the paradoxes of) love and beauty, one sees mystery, metaphor, concrete
imagery, and indeed "myth" as essential and not "accidental" to all
theological meaning?
In opening up these questions, O'Hanlon's important book identifies
the areas where dialogue with Balthasar's work might best begin, even
as it makes its own constructive contribution to theology.
DAVID

L. SCHINDLER

John Paul II Institute
Washington, D.C.

Goodness and Rightness in Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae. By
JAMES F. KEENAN, S.J. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University
Press, 1992. Pp. xii
212. $25.00 (paper).

+

James Keenan says that he began his work on this book " believing
the simple presupposition that goodness describes persons and rightness describes actions" (p. ix). The main focus of the study is the
question of whether and to what extent this distinction can be found
in the work of Aquinas. The author holds that the understanding of
the relation of reason and will in the early work of Aquinas precludes
the distinction of goodness and rightness held by the author and other
contemporary moralists. Keenan claims, however, to find in the Prima
Secundae of the Summa Theologiae a significant shift in Aquinas's
notion of the will and its relation to reason, a shift toward an " autonomous will." Keenan states in the Introduction: "The will's autonomy
is a necessary condition for understanding moral goodness "; indeed
he proceeds to note that " without it there can be no distinction " between goodness and rightness (pp. ix-x).
Before commenting on Keenan's work I will first briefly summarize
the basic points of the book. The book is divided into four parts. In
the first part we see the distinction between goodness and rightness.
Keenan explains the distinction:
Goodness and badness describe whether or not we strive to the extent
we are able to attain rightness in our lives and actions. Rightness and
wrongness describe whether or not we attain the end that reason dictates
is proper and necessary for our lives and actions (p. ix).

Keenan finds the foundation for this distinction in the reasoning of
G. E. Moore. A person's actions can he judged right or wrong independently of a consideration of the person's motives. For instance, a

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right action might be performed by a good person or by a bad person,
the goodness or badness being determined by the motive. There are,
then, two distinct moral descriptions; one, goodness or badness, pertains to persons and the other, rightness and wrongness, pertains to
actions.
Keenan joins several contemporary moral theologians in claiming
something which Moore did not, namely, that " a person who performs
a wrong action can be called good for performing the action" (p. 6).
This assertion is based upon an understanding of goodness as determined " antecedent to action " (p. 15) , and likewise as " antecedent to
and distinct from rightness" (p. 7). Moral goodness is determined by
the motivation, and motivation alone, of the person acting (p. 14). For
example, does the person act out of love for God and neighbor, or
rather out of a desire for self-aggrandizement?
Jn question here is
what Keenan calls the " fundamental, formal self-movement of the
agent" (p. 14). Rightness on the other hand is a moral description
determined by the measure of reason. It describes actions, and can also
describe the agent, in terms of right order in relation to the end of
human life.
In Part II (the second and third chapters) Keenan turns to the
supposed shift in the thought of Aquinas regarding reason and will.
Keenan finds the early position of Aquinas incompatible with the distinction of goodness and rightness, but the later position compatible
with the distinction. Keenan also presents Aquinas's distinction between specification and exercise in the act of the will as crucial to the
distinction between goodness and rightness. I will return to this point
shortly.
Part III (the fourth and fifth chapters) considers Aquinas's treatises
on the human act and moral virtue found in Summa Theologiae I-II.
Keenan holds that Aquinas's considerations are restricted exclusively
to questions of rightness: "Thomas's only concern in these treatises is
whether acts and persons are rightly ordered" (p. x). He supports
this claim by noting that the "object" has primacy in Aquinas's moral
writings. The role of the object in moral action is in the realm of spe·
cification, which for Keenan is the realm of rightness.
In the first chapter of Part IV Keenan claims to find in Aquinas's notion of charity a parallel for his notion of moral goodness. It becomes
clear here that for Keenan moral goodness and badness are found only
in what he calls the "will's primary exercitium," which he explains is
"its self-movement toward specification" (p. 119). He asserts that in
the notion of charity as commanding virtues and actions Aquinas has
finally articulated what can be called a description of moral goodness.
Charity as commanding is a description of the will's primary exercitium, and as such is prior to any description of the will as measured

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by reason in specification (cf. pp. 129-30). Keenan notes that according to Aquinas the interior act of charity is measured by one measure
alone: the measure of charity; while external acts are measured by
two measures: the measure of charity and the measure of reason (IIII, 27, 6 ad 3, cited on p. 131). Keenan asserts that these two measures
correspond indirectly to the distinction of goodness and rightness.
Goodness is measured by one measure, charity, and rightness by a different measure, reason.
The final chapter of the book considers the question of moral badness, and finds that Aquinas did not distinguish moral badness (the opposite of goodness) and wrongness (the opposite of rightness) in his
treatment of sin. As in his treatises on the human act and moral virtue,
Aquinas gives primacy to the object in his treatment of sin. However,
in the treatises on charity, says Keenan, Aquinas's starting point is
the agent himself as striving for God (p. x).
As noted earlier, Keenan himself says that without autonomy of will
there can be no distinction between goodness and rightness. I wish
then to focus our attention on the question of autonomy. What does
Keenan mean by autonomy? At issue is the relation between willing
and knowing. Keenan says, "If we can will to know, then the will is
autonomous " (p. 23) . He develops this notion further in his exposition of the purported shift in Aquinas's view of will and reason, a shift
to an autonomous will. Keenan, finding the shift in I-II, 9, explains
the new understanding: " As first mover, the will's movement is independent of and prior to reason's presentation of the object ... " (p.
4 7) . Here is the heart of this notion of autonomy: the will can move
in total independence from reason. There is a first movement or exercitium of the will which is antecedent to specification (p. 50) and requires no object presented by reason (p. 66). Since the last end
"exists a priori in the will" (p. 4,3), the will in its antecedent exercitium wills the end and thus moves itself " into the willingness to be
determined" (p. 46). This willingness is alternatively described as a
"willingness to be presented with any object" (p. 46), and as a willingness to strive to do the right (Cf. pp. 54-55) . The specification by
reason is said to have an "a posteriori influence on the will" (p. 48).
The autonomy of the will for Keenan, then, is in the power of the
will to move itself with no influence from reason, and to determine its
own "attitude" (my term) toward reason. Moral goodness or badness is found in this movement of the will, and there alone.
I now turn to commentary. I intend to center my critique on autonomy of the will, the linchpin of Keenan's study. I must omit a consideration of the various subordinate claims and discussions. I will
argue first that Aquinas does not shift to an autonomous will in the

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Summa Theologiae. In light of this argument, I will examine Keenan's
assertion that moral goodness is constituted prior to the specification of
reason. In my examination I find Keenan's position incompatible with
Aquinas's moral teaching, including that on charity, and discontinuous
with the broader moral tradition which Aquinas's teaching represents.
There is, I contend, questionable basis in Aquinas for the assertion
that the will moves independently of and prior to the specification of
reason. To illustrate this point, let us look at the distinction between
exercise and specification to which Keenan appeals. In I-II, 9, 1, in
considering whether the intellect moves the will, Aquinas distinguishes
two ways that a power of the soul can be in potency. It can either act
or not act (order of exercise), and it can do this or that (order of
specification). Given this duality, the power must be moved in two
ways; the first comes from the subject (or power) itself, the second
from the object. As is clear in the example of sight, which either sees
or does not, and sees white or sees black, there are two distinct sources
of one movement. The power of sight cannot be exercised without an
object. Aquinas's distinction between the two orders does not imply
some first exercitium which is independent of specification.
Indeed, the flow of the argument in I-II, 9, taken as a whole, militates against Keenan's notion of the primum exercitium. Aquinas explains that the will must be moved quantum ad exercitium into its first
act by some exterior principle, which is God, the author of nature.
There is no indication that this or any other act of the will is "independent of " the apprehension of reason. Reason cannot move the will
to exercise its act, but this does not mean that there is any act of will
independent of reason. Indeed in I-II, 19, 3 ad 1 (note that this text
comes after the purported shift) Aquinas states: "The will cannot
desire a good, unless that good be first apprehended by reason."
This position does not compromise the freedom of the will. Aquinas
explains in several texts (e.g., ST I-II, 10, 2 and 13, 6) that the will is
free inasmuch as it can either will or not will (order of exercise) , and
can will this or that (order of specification) . Given God's initial movement of the will toward universal good, no object can necessitate the
will in the order of exercise, and no particular good can necessitate it
in the order of specification. The will is always free not to act. Yet
when it does act, it must be specified by reason. The will remains free,
however, because it has control over its own specification: it controls
whether an object will be considered by reason, and also how it will be
considered. This " dominating indetermination " of the will, to use a
phrase of Jacques Maritain, constitutes our human freedom.
I now turn to Keenan's notion that moral goodness is found in a
willingness antecedent to specification. When Keenan speaks of the

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willingness to be determined, and the willingness to strive for the right,
he touches on issues of foundational importance in morality. Moral
goodness indeed requires such willingness on the part of the agent.
Keenan's reading, however, fails to take account of two important
points found in Aquinas. First, as discussed above, there is no willing
antecedent to all specification of reason. Second, human moral goodness is not completely accounted for in any willingness alone; it is
more complex.
To expand the first point, I simply ask, how can one will to strive
for the right prior to any conception of the right? Further, what is a
" willingness to be determined " in the absence of any notion of what
might or might not determine me, or be determined by me? An agent
must have some " thing " to will, with some specific (or specified) con·
tent, if he is to exercise his will at all. Keenan claims that the end
exists in the will a priori, and that it can be willed a priori. Since
" a priori " here clearly means prior to the action of reason, he must
then hold that the will itself has cognitive power. Other philosophers
have held such a view of the will; but again, I see no evidence that
Aquinas does.
Let us turn to the second point. In the questions on goodness in
human action Aquinas refers several times to a dictum from Dionysius:
" any single defect causes evil, but good results from the complete
cause, ex integra causa" (ST I-II, 18, 4, ad 3). He further explains:
" But in order for the will to be good, it must will the good under the
aspect of good; that is, it must will the good, for the sake of the good "
(ST I-II, 19, 7 ad 3.) Simply having a good motivation, for instance,
is not sufficient to constitute moral goodness. Now Keenan claims that
when Aquinas says " good " in passages such as these from the treatise
on action, it should be read " right." This claim cannot be reconciled
with Aquinas's moral thought as a whole. I believe that I have shown
that Aquinas does not shift to a position of autonomy of the will as
described by Keenan. Since by the latter's admission such an autonomy
is a condition for the distinction between goodness and rightness, we
can reject the claim that Aquinas is speaking of something distinct
from goodness in his treatise on human action.
For Aquinas" good and evil in human actions are said through reference to reason," precisely because the good of man is " to be accord·
ing to reason" secundum rationem esse (ST I-II, 18, 5). The good
pertains to the intellect, under the aspect of the true, prior to pertaining to the will under the aspect of the desirable (Cf. ST I-II, 19, 3 ad
1). In order to be good, human beings must will and act upon the true
good, as known by reason. That reason is the rule or measure of human
action is ordained by the eternal law (cf. ST I-II, 19, 4 and 91, 1).

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But what about the measure of charity, and Keenan's claim that this is
the true and only measure of goodness?
In one text (ST II-II, 27, 6 ad 3), which Keenan quotes at length
(p. 131), Aquinas is distinguishing the interior act of charity and external acts. The interior act of charity is not measured by reason, since
the object of charity, God, surpasses the judgment of reason. Keenan
claims, as noted earlier, that the interior act of charity (as commanding) can be called good prior to any consideration of specification. He
also claims that the two measures (charity and reason) of external acts
correspond to goodness and rightness. As regards the first claim, we
should note that while the interior act of charity is not measured by
reason, it is still specified by its object-God, known by faith. Only
as specified can it be good. Perhaps more importantly, as regards the
claim about external acts, I see no basis for denying that the two
measures both pertain to goodness. The supernatural measure of charity does not wipe away a natural requirement of goodness, namely, that
the act be in accord with reason. Were it otherwise, grace would not
build upon but rather subvert the natural order.
As a final consideration I turn to what is probably the most crucial
implication of the distinction of goodness and rightness. I noted earlier
that Keenan asserts that " a person who performs a wrong action can
be called good for performing the action" (p. 6). He returns to this
point in the concluding pages of the book. Here he states that the " defect in rightness does not affect the description of goodness" (p. 173),
whether of person or action. Moral goodness, then, of persons and actions is determined by one thing, and one thing alone-motivation.
I have two comments. First, I want to reiterate that Keenan's claim
on this point is incompatible with Aquinas's moral teaching, including
that on charity. As just noted, actions commanded by charity are measured by two measures, not only that of charity but also that of reason,
precisely because the latter is always required for moral goodness. It
follows then that any action which falls short in its object from the
measure of reason is thereby to some degree rendered morally evil,
regardless of motivation.
Second, it seems to me the assertions that a person performing a
wrong action can be called good for performing the action, and that
the wrong action itself can be called good, are not consonant with the
moral tradition which Aquinas exemplifies. In his recent encyclical
V eritatis Splendor, Pope John Paul II considers the basic principles of
the Christian moral understanding. To find an answer to the question
of moral goodness he turns, as does Aquinas, to God's ordering of man
to the final end through natural law. Through an examination of
Christ's response to the rich young man's question: "Teacher, what
good must I do to have eternal life ? ," the Pope argues that obedience

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to God's commandments is "the way and condition of salvation" (VS
# 12). Now obedience to the commandments entails, in addition to a
good motivation or a willingness to strive, the conformity of an action's
object to the specifying content of the commandment. What is the significance of a commandment to honor one's father and mother, if it
does not specify actions? The commandments of God specify what
kinds of action are, or are not, in conformity with the true good of
man.
In his analysis of the moral act, the Pope holds that the object of the
act is "the primary and decisive element for moral judgment" (VS
# 79). Actions which by the nature of their object are unable to be
ordered to man's true end can never be "good" actions. Further, he
notes that acts, even individual acts, are determinative of the goodness
or badness of the person. These points are summarized nicely in the
following passage:
Activity is morally good when it attests to and expresses the voluntary
ordering of the person to his ultimate end and the conformity of a concrete action with the human good as it is acknowledged in its truth by
reason. If the object of the concrete action is not in harmony with the
true good of the person, the choice of that action makes our will and
ourselves morally evil, thus putting us in conflict with our ultimate end,
the supreme good, God himself (VS # 72).

I believe that Keenan's study commendably highlights the freedom
of the will in the order of exercise, and its power to exercise dominion
over the intellect in the order of specification. Keenan also insightfully
emphasizes the central role of the love of God as the root of our striving to live well. Yet any willing can only be consequent to some knowing. Further, the willingness to strive and be determined, if it is good,
is a willingness to be determined, or specified, by the true good known
by reason and faith. This willingness, which is a crucial element in
moral goodness, must be completed by actions in conformity with the
true good. Human goodness is in freely, and lovingly, living out the
truth of human nature and its end.
JOHN

A. D. CUDDEBACK

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision, and Truth. By JOHN FINNIS.
Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press,
1991. Pp. 113. $24.95 (cloth), $9.95 (paper).
Not long after his conversion to Roman Catholicism, Alasdair MacIntyre told a group of Catholic bishops: " As a matter of autobio-

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graphical fact, I came to the conclusion that there were exceptionless
and binding [moral] norms prior to and quite independently of any
faith in Divine Revelation." Within the Church Macintyre entered,
however, there existed, and exists, widespread doubt and confusion
about "moral absolutes" or " exceptionless moral norms." Certain
eminent Catholic moral theologians today dissent from Pope John
Paul's teaching that " there exist acts which per se and in themselves,
independently of circumstances, are always seriously wrong by reason
of their object." In the face of this dissent, John Finnis has produced
a powerful philosophical and theological defense of the papal teaching.
Moral Absolutes presents the 1988 Michael J. McGivney Lectures
which Finnis delivered at the John Paul II Institute for Studies on
Marriage and the Family. The hook consists of four chapters: "Foundations," "Clarifications," "Christian Witness," and "Challenge and
Response." Like Macintyre, Finnis maintains that the authority of
scripture and tradition supplement reason's grasp of certain specific
types of act as intrinsically wicked and, therefore, never to he performed. Although his goal is to vindicate the proposition that there
are moral absolutes, rather than to say which, or even how many, moral
norms qualify as " exceptionless " (and therefore as, in the relevant
sense of the term, " absolute ") , his examples include norms against
abortion (and, more generally, the direct killing of innocent human
beings), adultery, fornication, contraception, homosexual sex, blasphemy, and disclaimer of the faith.
As Finnis observes, the Church's tradition of proclaiming these
norms and their absoluteness is "massively solid." Against certain neoscholastic defenders of the tradition, however, he rejects "legalistic"
understandings of these and other norms of morality. A common mistake of pre-conciliar Catholic moral theology was to conceive of moral
norms as rules which God lays down much as human laws are rules
which legislators lay down; all too often, the rewards and punishments
for obeying or disobeying human laws then became the model for
thinking about the relevance of heaven and hell to Christian moral life.
Finnis argues that the point of moral norms (including moral absolutes), rather, is to secure and advance the real good of flesh and
blood human beings in this world as well as the next: " they guide one
toward human fulfillment, by disclosing the plan, the mind, the consilium of God for that fulfillment."
Hence, a sound understanding of moral norms as intrinsic to " the
integral human fulfillment which cannot be found outside that King·
dom whose material is being formed here on earth but whose completion lies beyond history " will not be subject to the familiar complaint
that the idea of moral absolutes "honors rules above values."
Although Finnis is critical of various aspects of neo-scholastic moral

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thought, his principal targets in Moral Absolutes are the contemporary
" proportionalist " theologians who have, over the past twenty years
or so, become the " establishment " in Catholic moral theology in the
United States as well as in Europe. Finnis sums up the characteristic
moral principle and method of these theologians as " Pursue the course
which promises, in itself and its consequences, a net greater proportion
of good states of affairs, or . . . a net lesser proportion of had, overall, in the long run." This principle and method effectively exclude
moral absolutes in the sense that the tradition affirms them, i.e., as exceptionless moral norms that exclude types of action that are specifiable,
as possible objects of choice, without reliance on any evaluative term
that presupposes a judgment of the morality of the action. (Proportionalists can, of course, affirm purely formal absolutes which, by incorporating evaluative terms, implicitly provide in advance for exceptions, e.g., "do not murder," where murder is defined as "wrongful killing," or "do not commit adultery," where adultery is defined
as " sexual intercourse between a spouse and someone not that person's
spouse that is not justified by a proportionate reason.") At most, proportionalists claim that there are some " practical " or " virtual " absolutes that exclude some types of act as falling afoul of the proportionalist principle " practically " or " virtually " all of the time.
Drawing on (and developing) the philosophical and theological
critique of proportionalism that he and his collaborators, Germain
Grisez and Joseph Boyle, have presented in various books and articles,
Finnis subjects the proportionalist principle and method to intense and
rigorous philosophical scrutiny. He concludes not merely that the proportionalist method is incapable of rationally guiding human action in
situations of morally significant choice, but that its principle is quite
literally incoherent. Thus, according to Finnis, proportionalism is not a
method of rational moral judgment at all; rather it is, and cannot help
but be, a technique for rationalizing behavior chosen on grounds independent of the application of proportionalist method.
The core of Finnis's case against proportionalism derives from his
claim that the goods and bads involved in options for morally significant choice are incommensurable in such a way as to render nonsensical the comparisons of value by which proportionalists propose to
guide human action. In the twenty years over which Finnis, Grisez,
and others have pressed this " incommensurability thesis " against proportionalism, no proportionalist has come up with anything resembling
a plausible answer to it. To my knowledge, only Richard McCormick,
SJ., among notable proportionalists, has made any kind of serious attempt to come to terms with the problem of incommensurability, and
he concludes not by refuting or even rebutting the incommensurability

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thesis, hut merely by asserting that "somehow or other, in fear and
trembling, we commensurate."
McCormick's claim is easily answered, however. He and other proportionalists propose their method precisely as a rational way of guiding morally significant choice; but it cannot be a rational method of
moral judgment unless it can present reasons for assigning certain
weights to certain values in certain circumstances or for adopting a premoral "hierarchy of values " according to which choices can be ra·
tionally guided. To suggest that by, or in, choosing we bring human
goods into a kind of commensurability or, in a sense, establish for ourselves a hierarchy of values is not to provide reasons to guide the
choosing. In contrast to proportionalists, Finnis, Boyle, and Grisez, in
their constructive work, have presented and defended moral norms as
providing conclusive reasons for action that guide morally significant
choice (i.e., paradigmatically, choice as between incompatible practical
possibilities each or all of which have some intelligible appeal-and
thus provides a reason for action-by virtue of the possible good that
can be instantiated by a choice in its favor.
In Nuclear Deterrence, Morality and Realism (1987), Finnis, Boyle,
and Grisez presented an argument that exposes the inability of pro·
portionalist method to provide rational guidance in situations of morally significant choice. In Moral Absolutes, Finnis restates the argument
and responds to its critics. I will present the argument in my own
terms: Proportionalist method requires the identification of one option
rather than its alternative ( s) as promising unqualifiedly greater good
(or lesser evil) . Such an option would necessarily include everything
of value available in the alternative ( s) plus some more. Someone who
recognizes this situation, however, has no reason (though he might
have powerful subrational motives, such as hatred, selfishness, or mere
laziness) to choose an alternative. The rational appeal of any alternative
would simply fade away. In such circumstances, however, the choosing
subject would simply have no need for the proportionalist method
which, after all, is proposed not as a method of overcoming subrational
(e.g., emotional) impediments to rational (i.e., fully morally upright)
choosing, but rather as a rational method of deciding between or among
incompatible options both or each of which has some rational appeal.
It will not do to respond to this argument, as Robert McKim and
Peter Simpson have responded to it, by pointing out that one might
egoistically " choose " an alternative which one has identified as promising the lesser good or a greater evil. This response merely equivocates
on the idea of "choice." The decisive point is that one could not
" choose " the lesser good or greater evil in the strong and relevant
sense of choosing for a reason (as opposed to acting egoistically or on
some other suhrational motive) . If the options available for choice were

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in fact commensurable, and one really could, prior to choosing, identify one option as promising the greater good (or lesser evil), then
one would have no reason for choosing an alternative. One's motives
for choosing an option promising lesser good or greater evil could only
be subrational (e.g., egoistic). And, to repeat, proportionalists do not
propose their method as a way of overcoming subrational impediments
to morally upright choosing, but rather as a rational method of identifying the morally correct option.
In addition to his philosophical arguments, in Moral Absolutes
Finnis develops a powerful theological argument against proportionalism which Grisez articulated briefly in his The Way of the Lord Jesus:
Christian Moral Principles. This argument is in the form of a reductio
ad absurdum which highlights the inconsistency of proportionalist goals
and assumptions with a Christian understanding of divine providence.
He begins by observing that God's providence, as Christians understand it, involves the permission of evils only so that from them God
may somehow bring about a greater good. If proportionalists are right,
however, that it is the obligation of humans to choose the state of
affairs promising the greater good, then " the moral norm in every
problem-situation would be, quite simply, Try anything. That is, Do
whatever you feel like! " If, as Finnis points out, you succeed in what
you attempt, then you can rest assured that your choice conduced to
the long run net good (since God's providence permitted your goal to
be accomplished); if, on the other hand, you fail to accomplish your
goal, then you can content yourself with the knowledge that your failure
tended to the overall good (since God's providence frustrated your
effort). "So," as Finnis says, "try anything."
It will be interesting to see whether advocates of proportionalism
make a more serious effort to come to terms with this argument than
they have thus far in the case of the argument from the incommensurability of options available for morally significant choice. If they do, I
am certainly curious about whether their strategy will be to question
the traditional understanding of divine providence or to attempt to
show that Finnis's reductio ad absurdum miscarries. If I may anticipate
a wholly unsatisfactory response, it will not do to argue that belief in
divine providence generates Finnis's reductio ad absurdum not merely
for proportionalism, but for every method of moral judgment. What
renders proportionalism particularly vulnerable to this argument is its
implicit replacement of divine with human providence. By shifting to
human beings a responsibility that only God can hear-a responsibility
for states of affairs in the world that are ultimately far beyond the
control of particular men and women-it effectively renders the whole
idea of human moral responsibility meaningless. It is this feature of

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proportionalism that Finnis's theological argument exploits. In this
regard, there is no moral theory, good or bad, which overreaches so
far as proportionalism does.
ROBERT

P. GEORGE

Princeton University
Princeton, New Jersey

Faithful Persuasion: In Aid of a Rhetoric of Christian Theology. By
DAVID S. CUNNINGHAM. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1991. Pp. xvii
312. $29.95 (cloth) ; $16.95 (paper).

+

The relation between words and the Word has always been of in·
terest in Christian theology. Earlier in this century a school of writers
approached " the Bible as literature " with a view to bringing Scripture
into a more persuasive relation with literature at large, but their insistence on the rigorous exclusion of dogmatic elements from literary
scrutiny impoverished their work. A later set of procedures and perspectives on rhetoric and language in their relation to reality was bet·
ter able to allow the utterances of a text's speakers their own integrity,
whether sacred or secular. In any case, a thematic interpretation of the
founding texts of Christianity, influenced by Aristotle's Rhetoricwhere form is a means for persuasively communicating an idea-content-had long predominated in ecclesial usage, germane as it was to
the didactic concerns of the Church. An alternative tradition, more indebted to Aristotle's Poetics, where form, content, and functions are
treated as factors making for the indissoluble whole which is the literary work, has been less conspicuous-though its offer of initiation into
the " world " of the sacred writers gives it great exegetical potential.
The text's "word " should be encountered at the level of its own patterned imagery and wrought design. In the appreciation of the Gospels
this has become in recent decades a commonplace. However, as the
T. S. Eliot scholar Helen Gardner warned, one should not so react
against the older approach as to treat the biblical text as the product
of a disembodied imagination, rather than a human being writing a
work that might make his readers "wise unto salvation."
David S. Cunningham's Faithful Persuasion extends this discussion
of the propriety or impropriety of a rhetorical approach to Scripture to
the discourse of Christian theology as a whole. The intent is a laudable
one but its execution vitiated, to my mind, by the excessive concessions
to scepticism from which the author sets out. Because his theological
epistemology, aware of the limitations of the propositions in which we
assert the truths of faith, will grant those assertions no more than a

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(continuously) revisable character, he falls back on an account of theology as rhetoric so as to make the best of a bad job. For persuasion
is what we use when we know demonstration is hopeless. As a result,
Professor Cunningham's study, which could most usefully have
"placed" a variety of theologies of past, present, and, prospectively,
future on the spectrum of (onto-) logic, poetic, and rhetoric, concludes
instead that theology must regard itself as rhetorical or perish! This
inevitably narrows the several services theologies of different kinds can
perform for the Church. Imagine how biblical studies would be reduced were the exegete only to treat his text as paraenesis, and never
as history or as a symbolic world.
Nonetheless, on the way from its (as I find) unsatisfactory startingpoint and to its depressing conclusion, Faithful Persuasion has worthwhile points to make about a number of authors (of various periods)
and topics, though it might have made them more persuasively (its
author's key term) had the intended audience (middle-brow or academic?) been more clearly viewed in advance.
AIDAN NICHOLS, O.P.
Blackfriars
Cambridge, England

Church and Culture: German Catholic Theology, 1860-1914. By
THOMAS FRANKLIN O'MEARA, O.P. Notre Dame/London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991. Pp. x
260. $35.95 (cloth).

+

" In 1925, Baden's Kultusminister, a Protestant, began an address to
the Gorresgesellschaft in Heidelberg by describing this era: ' Brave
men like Hertling, Schell, Julius Bachem, and Carl Muth, shook the
German Catholic world in order to lead it out of its fortress, to lead it
again into the midst of the life and activity of the entire people, even
when this seemed at first strange and uncomfortable ' " (pp. 159f.) .
Even to many theologians, the era in question-the last four decades
of the nineteenth century through the outbreak of the "Great War"is comparatively unknown. There has been, of course, renewed interest
in prominent theological figures like John Henry Newman, but his
German-speaking contemporaries are for the most part strangers to
the English-speaking world. And this is the first reason why this book
is important: it describes a forgotten world of a century or so ago, yet
one whose theological problematic was strikingly similar to our own.
The " contours " of this period, deftly described in the first part of
this book, were both varied and complex. Politically speaking, during
the nineteenth century, " Germany " changed from an assortment of

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355

geographically contiguous minor and medium-sized states to an Empire dominated by Prussia. Such a political re.arrangement had ecclesiastical implications: Roman Catholics, who previously had been the
majority in places like Bavaria found themselves a persecuted minority
during the Kulturkampf under Bismarck. And like many other victims
of persecution, Roman Catholics adopted a "fortress mentality"fearful of Berlin, which was influenced by both the Lutheran Reformation and the Enlightenment, and mesmerized by Rome, which was
coming under the increasing influence of neoscholasticism in doctrine
and ultramontanism in discipline.
German Catholic theologians found themselves in a quandary: what
direction should they take? Many, like Joseph Kleutgen, took refuge
in Rome; a few, like Joseph Schnitzer, found the appeal of Berlin more
attractive; still others, however, tried to steer an independent course in
dialogue with the culture of their day. The second and major part of
this book focuses on five such theologians: Matthias Joseph Scheeben,
Alois Schmid, Paul Schanz, Herman Schell, and Carl Braig.
Scheeben (1835-88), "the best known and the most read in the first
half of the twentieth century " (p. 53) , pursued an independent route
in seeking a " transcendent synthesis " incorporating both patristic and
idealist thought; indeed, his lengthy Mysteries of Christ"ianity continued
to enjoy a certain popularity up till the time of Vatican II, though
more as a resource for spiritual reading than as a work of systematic
theology. Like Newman, Scheeben's thought was sui generis, "and inspired the most divergent evaluations " (p. 65) ; unlike Newman,
Scheeben has few disciples today.
In contrast to Scheeben, the other four theologians attempted to
emerge from the " fortress " of Roman Catholic defensiveness and to
engage the historical and philosophical currents of their age. The most
creative of these, Herman Schell (1850-1906), expounded an immanence apologetics intended to overcome the estrangement between the
Church and contemporary culture. And, in order to address that world,
Schell insisted that theologians need appropriate freedom; otherwise,
they are caged like a bird: "The bars of the bird's cage are the dogmas; the owner watching that the bird does not fly away is the church's
teaching office; the possibility to hop from the bar to the base of the
cage and back is the freedom of the theologians" (p. 121). Such
opinions (or at least such rhetoric) about the compatibility of Catholicism and the modern world brought Schell into bitter conflict with ultramontane theologians and eventually led to his major works being placed
on the Index. Though Schell declared his submission, both his reputation and his theological enterprise were severely damaged.
The third part of this book treats the emergence of Reformkatholizismus and Modernism in the years before World War I. Like Americ-

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anism in this country, Reformkatholizismus had the disadvantage of
appearing at a time of ultramontane ascendancy, when "conversation
with modernity equalled advocating heresy" (p. 184). However, reform endeavors in Germany found an unusual champion in a prominent layman, Georg von Hertling (1843-1919), whose career began as
a professor of philosophy and ended as chancellor of the German Reich
(1917-18). Unlike professional theologians, "the philosopher-statesman [Hertling) had an eye for concrete problems which he did not
solve with a new theory but clarified practically" (p. 158). Nonetheless, his positions have a modern ring: " If Christianity ... had hypothetically moved more toward Asia rather than toward Europe, theological form and expression (but not its content) would have been quite
different from today's approach, marked by Greek thought-forms" (p.
158).
It is both ironic and tragic that this era, which began with the
Syllabus errorum (1864), ended with Lamentabili (1907). To many
non-Catholics, both documents appeared as the Church's declaration of
hostilities with the modern world. One could, of course, claim that the
modern world was really not prepared to listen to the Church and so
used the documents as pretexts for its own brand of intolerance. Yet,
however debatable their effects on the contemporary world, both documents certainly had a deleterious intramural effect in stifling theological
efforts to address contemporary culture. As Karl Adam remarked about
the " Oath Against Modernism ": " What makes the oath for professors
a burning issue in the life of higher education is the issue of the right
of the historical-critical method in the area of Catholic theology" (p.
173).
One concludes this volume with a sense of deja vu-not that one has
previously met the participants or witnessed the incidents, but with
the sense that much of the scenario has been replayed in recent years,
though with different actors and different settings. It is then upsetting
to read of injustices committed, of reputations impugned, and of careers
destroyed. It is disheartening to read of theologians oblivious to both
the facts of history and current intellectual developments, yet self-assured in the righteousness of their own positions. It is dismaying to
read of ecclesiastical authorities refusing to listen to their subordinates
and insisting on blind obedience. But most of all, it is discouraging to
read of the Church's refusal to engage the contemporary world in
genuine dialogue about Christian revelation. Thus, the relationship of
the " Church and Culture " is as much an issue for today as it was for
German Catholics of the nineteenth century.
Accordingly, this volume is not only an important contribution to
understanding that era, but to understanding our own. Moreover,
O'Meara is a skilled theological artist, who has the admirable ability to

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paint the trends of an age in impressionistic strokes backed by a formidable, indeed overwhelming, amount of research (as indicated in the
impressive footnotes, pp. 209-252). Yet, as in any masterpiece, one can
find a few flaws: sometimes (particularly in Part II), the leitmotiv of
" Church and Culture " gets obscured in the details; also, while some
portraits, like those of Schell and Hertling, are captivating, others, like
those of Schmid and Schanz, seem perfunctory. There are a few typographical errors and other errata; in particular, the Oxford Movement
began in 1833, not 1883 (as in the "Synchronology," p. 2) ; also the
data on the number and the percentage of German Catholics do not
correspond (p. 249, n. 37).
Yet, such minor criticisms aside, this work is a notable addition to
the literature on nineteenth century theology.
JOHN

T. FORD, c.s.c.

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

The Stripping of the Altars. By EAMON DUFFY. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Pp. 608. $45.00 (cloth).
Eamon Duffy's most recent contribution to the debate about the Eng·
lish Reformation is a two-edged sword. His goal is to correct two very
different errors about the English Reformation, the classic one, the
" Whig version," lately and brilliantly set forth by A. G. Dickens in his
English Reformation (1964), and the other, the more recent "discontinuity" thesis of John Bossy (The English Catholic Community,
1580-1850) and Hugh Aveling (The Handle and the Axe). Something
must be known about the two theses before Duffy's work can be fully
appreciated.
The Whig Version is the idea that the English Reformation was the
necessary, popular, and wholesome reaction to centuries of superstition,
corruption, and clerical manipulation by the Roman Church. The people conquered because the people were right. There was Good Queen
Bess who was Protestant, and Bloody Mary who was Catholic. It is a
theory which has held sway in the popular (and even the intellectual)
mind of England for the last four hundred years.
Bossy and Aveling make the combined (and seemingly different)
point that the Roman Catholic Church which re-surfaced in England in
the 1800s cannot lay claim to representing the Church catholic because it broke radically with its own traditions in the late 1500's. Trent
had no effect on a dwindling English Catholic Church, which became
no more than a separating community. Aveling curiously uses an in-

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organic example to underline his contention that there was an organic
discontinuity. His grandfather's axe had hung over the mantel and
eventually had its blade and handle replaced. The Roman Catholic
Church in England, said Aveling, was continuous with its medieval
counterpart only in the same sense that the axe over the mantel is the
same as his grandfather's. It is a theory which depends on Dickens because it makes popularity, or the majority, the determining factor of
the Church catholic.
Refuting all of this is a big order and is accomplished most effectively in Duffy's encyclopedic account of the pre-Reformation Church. This
information has long been the missing piece of the Reformation puzzle,
and Duffy has finally catalogued it-with results that are devastating to
the causes of the above-mentioned historians. Duffy has found, through
the same exacting local research that is being applied to the English
Reformation itself, that the pre-Reformation Catholic Church was not
corrupt and was popularly practiced by both peasants and gentry. Related to this, Duffy discovers that the distinction between the educated
spirituality of the elite and the " superstitious " practices of the illiterate
populace was not so decisive as has been proposed by Jean Delumeau. Invocations against the devil, for example, were not the exclusive domain of illiterate husbandmen, hut were part of the mainstream, both clerical and lay, educated and uneducated, and found expression in the liturgy itself. " They did not have a different religion .
. . . Late medieval Catholicism was a broad Church" (p. 298). Furthermore, Duffy finds that this pre-Reformation Church was well-informed as to the meaning of sacraments, ceremonies, and creed, and
was in good shape morally when the Reformation struck.
Duffy accomplishes all of this by marshalling an impressive array of
the latest local research: church wardens' accounts, wills and will preambles, sheriffs' reports, diaries, catechisms, and primers. Furthermore,
he demands of this body of information an interpretation which is
sensible and balanced. In addition to this massive body of information,
Duffy has provided photographs of surviving existing artwork from the
pre-Reformation period and has woven them convincingly into the text.
One is astonished that so much of this art still exists in the parts of
the country where Duffy found them-areas which were supposedly
very favorable to the Reformation.
Much has been lost, of course, and Duffy (less calmly) catalogues
the destruction in three gruesome chapters, concluding that " Iconoclasm was the central sacrament of the reform" (p. 480). The style
of the final chapters is reminiscent of Aidan Gasquet's " tear-stained
pages " of a hundred years ago, and of David Knowles's understated
anger at the wholesale destruction of the monasteries:

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359

Men might well wonder (Knowles wrote) if any reverence towards the
things of God remained in those who ordered this pillage, and if any
human faith could be looked for in those who desecrated great abbeys
dedicated to the divine service, and trafficked in their treasures. . . .
Visible beauty of form and line and hue is as nothing in comparison
with the eternal beauty of things unseen, but those who wantonly de·
stroy the one will not readily be supposed to value the other (Religious
Orders of England Ill, p. 387).

Duffy is angry (the last few pages are elegantly evocative) and it is
because, like Gasquet and Knowles before him, he is theologically involved. His religion has been misrepresented for four hundred years
and he has, I think, proved and detailed the misrepresentation. Duffy
believes the theological content of the Reformation is essential to the
debate. He sees continuity in the small band of recusants who held to
the same beliefs as had been held for a thousand years and who hold
them still. This is not sentimentality or nostalgia. Duffy is simply
stating the fact that the pre-Reformation Church was "another country,
another world " from the Anglican Church which followed, and that
any attempt on the part of Anglicans to claim continuity with the
Medieval Church is wishful thinking at best. The English Reformation
represented a profound theological change in the English nation, and,
even though some of the ceremonies and ecclesiastical forms of the
traditional religion were kept, the heart of it, the content, was gone.
One important consequence of Duffy's attention to theology is that
the continuity of the English Catholic Church from the late medieval
period even to the present day (let alone 1850) becomes obvious.
Prayers for the dead, the liturgy, the Pope, the Eucharist, vestments,
devotions involving ashes and palms, pilgrimages (Have you been to
Walsingham lately?) , the veneration of the saints-they are all with
us today just as they were with Catholics of pre.Reformation England,
sometimes in startling similarity.
Duffy has produced a masterpiece of historical investigation and
evaluation and this book must be read by any serious student of the
English Reformation.
JOHN VIDMAR, O.P.
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, D.C.

An Introduction to Moral Theology. By WILLIAM E. MAY. Huntington, Ind.: Our Sunday Visitor, 1991. Pp. 239. $7.95 (paper).
In this present work William E. May, Michael McGivney Professor
of Moral Theology at the Pope John Paul II Institute for Studies on

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Marriage and Family in Washington, D.C., sets for himself a twofold task. The first and more ambitious is to respond to the call of
the Second Vatican Council for a renewal of moral theology which
displays " livelier contact with the mystery of Christ " and is " more
thoroughly nourished by biblical teaching" (Optatum Totius, n. 16).
While this work makes no claim to be the definitive response to this
summons, May sees it as a contribution especially as it presents in
compact and accessible form some of the more positive developments in
moral theology since the Council, including both the work of others
(especially Germain Grisez, upon whom he relies heavily) and some
of his own previously published work. The second and more immediate task of the book is to provide " an alternative moral vision " to
some of the currently popular revisionist introductions to moral theology such as those of O'Connell and Gula (p. 16). For May, the two
tasks are not unrelated insofar as revisionist moral theology is not
representative of authentic renewal because of its departures from
Church tradition and teaching.
In light of the first task of the work, May loosely structures the work
to reflect the " central biblical themes of crucial significance to moral
theology and the moral life, ... creation, sin, incarnation and redemption, and eschatology" (p. 14). The theme of creation is taken up in
the first three chapters of the work. While there is little biblical or
theological analysis of the notion of creation, May lays the foundations
of his natural law approach to morality through a treatment of related
ideas: human dignity, human action, conscience, and the primacy of
reason in Aquinas's natural law theory. After sketching the content of
this natural law theory as discussed in the Prima Secundae, May argues
that this basic structure is greatly improved by the work of Grisez,
Finnis, and Boyle who fill in certain gaps in Thomas's account (e.g., by
identifying all of the basic goods which are integral to human flourishing and not merely a partial listing) and make it more precise (e.g.,
their restatement of the first principle of morality which Aquinas
formulated in the biblical language of love of God and neighbor in
more precise language of choosing in accord with a " will toward integral human fulfillment "-see p. 66). May also believes that this account better demonstrates the movement from first principles to specific
moral norms, some of which may be regarded as absolute, specifying
acts as intrinsically evil. May reviews revisionist arguments against
moral absolutes and finds them wanting on a variety of grounds: their
false notion of the totality of human action (with Aquinas an act
must be good in its circumstances, end, and object in order to be
morally good); their impossible attempt to commensurate human
goods; their failure to acknowledge the reflexive character of human

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361

action, and their inadequate notion of " concrete " human nature as
subject to change in history. The most creative part of this critique is
found in the theological rationale which May offers concerning the need
for moral absolutes. He suggests that such norms serve to show the
Christian " what love cannot mean " and to " liberate man from servitude to every partial, fragmentary, and illusory horizon, from servitude
to every aspiration to assume the role of divine Providence itself "
(pp. 123-24) .
The final three chapters of the book take up the remaining biblical
themes of sin, incarnation, redemption, and eschatology, adding to
them a consideration of the role of the Church. Here May considers
biblical teaching more directly, offering a largely synchronic overview
of scriptural understandings of sin and the role of Jesus as Redeemer,
especially as these have been developed in subsequent Church tradition. With Thomas, he emphasizes that this new law of the gospel is
primarily the grace of the Holy Spirit working within the lives of the
faithful (cf. ST 1-2, q. 106, a. 1). Hence the foundation of the moral
life is Jesus himself to whom Christians are joined in baptism and in
whose divine life they now share. The primary vocation of Christians,
therefore, is to join themselves to the redemptive work of Christ and
to love " even as we have been loved by God in Christ " (p. 185) • This
command to love is specified by Jesus' own teaching in the beatitudes
(Mt. 5 :3-12) which leads to distinctively Christian moral norms generated by the light of faith. Having recapitulated Catholic teaching concerning the Church's ability to teach infallibly, May closes by arguing
that not only can the Church teach infallibly through its ordinary
magisterium, but that it has done so, citing the understanding of the
Decalogue within the Roman Catechism as an example. In regard to
non-infallible teaching, May insists on its authoritative character and
the proper response to it of a " ready and respectful allegiance of mind
( obsequium religiosum)" (p. 207; cf. Lumen Gentium, n. 25) . While
an informed person may " withhold assent " to such teachings or even
raise questions concerning them, this can in no way be equated with
the public dissent advocated by some theologians (pp. 216-20).
May's work constitutes an important and substantial introduction to
moral theology. His exposition of the teaching of Aquinas and the
Second Vatican Council concerning natural law is cogent and thorough,
demonstrating a high level of scholarship. His presentation of opposing positions is generally fair and the criticisms which he makes regarding them, while often not new, are substantive. May generally
avoids heavy polemic even while dealing with controverted issues.
Hence, in regard to May's stated purpose of providing "an alternative
moral vision" to revisionist introductions to moral theology, this work
is largely successful.

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Nevertheless there are aspeots of the work which could be developed
further or clarified. May rightly insists on the reflexive character of
human action and points out the inadequacy of some revisionist ac·
counts of moral agency and fundamental option theory which:
needlessly shift the locus of self determination from the free choices
we make every day ... to an alleged act of total self-disposition deep
within the person that remains prereflexive, unthematic and incapable
of being articulated explicitly in one's consciousness ( p. 156) .

It would seem that such an observation could be enhanced if this reflexive component of human action were linked to a more extensive
consideration of character and virtue. There is a dynamic interplay
between character and choice in the moral life which is obscured by
the division of the person into layers in the inherently idealist anthropologies of some fundamental option theories. But one's character is
not simply shaped reflexively through one's actions. Actions are also
the products of one's character. An expanded account of virtue would
also serve to balance the rather intellectualist account of natural law in
this book, just as Aquinas's natural law theory is complemented by
the treatise on virtue in the structure of the Summa.
May's overall fairness to those with whom he disagrees has always
been evident in his writings and the present work is no exception. In
regard to the discussion of disputed matters in the present work two
points might be mentioned. First, on the matter of " distinctively
Christian ethics," the norm generated by Christian faith which he cites
from Grisez, that one " should find, accept, and faithfully carry out
(his or her) personal vocation" (p. 192), seems to beg an important
question. That is, the positive form of this statement appears to leave
in doubt its status as an absolute moral norm which would specify
particular actions as morally evil. The real issue in this debate is not
therefore directly addressed. Second, regarding the issue of Church
teaching authority and the formation of conscience-an area where the
debate is often most strident-one wonders if there would be less polemics if the role of Church teaching authority were better contextualized
by a corresponding emphasis on the development of a Christian worldview and the cultivation of spiritual discernment rooted in a life of
prayer (as in, for example, the recent introduction by David Bohr).
May's Thomistic foundation is evident and solid. However, one cannot help wishing for more development of the history of moral theology
outside of Aquinas. Besides Augustine and a brief mention of Lombard, there is little discussion of other patristic or medieval theologians
and their contributions to moral theology. Likewise, in spite of some
perceptive observations on historical development within the thought
of Aquinas and contemporary revisionist theology, there is no overview

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363

of the history of .the discipline provided. Such a history would greatly
aid readers in appreciating the import of some of the primary arguments in the hook. For example, it is hard to grasp the difficulty involved in reappropriating Aquinas's natural law theory in the present
context without knowing something of its deformation in neo-scholastic
theology or the impact of the Enlightenment on conceptions of human
nature. It is likewise difficult to appreciate the nature of the renewal
of moral theology called for hy the Second Vatican Council without
noting the legalistic tendencies of the manualist tradition or its inclination toward prooftexting.
There also appears to he room for some development in the way in
which the hook utilizes scripture. Leaving to biblical scholars to judge
the use of some individual texts in ways which do not seem to reflect
their original meaning or context (e.g., Mt. 15:18-19 as an illustration
of the reflexive character of human action-see pp. 25, 147-48), even
the admittedly rather loose and thematic approach to scripture employed here is not free of problems. May's five biblical themes " of
crucial significance to moral theology and the moral life " betray the
influence of the standard history of salvation approach. However, flowing from the renewal of biblical studies, recent works in New Testament
ethics would suggest the centrality of other themes for the New Testament writers themselves. Some of these, such as conversion, covenant,
righteousness, and faith, are mentioned in the hook hut could he developed further. Others, such as the Kingdom of God, or discipleship,
are omitted altogether. While such additions might not greatly change
the overall structure or focus of the hook, they could enhance its effort
to be " more thoroughly nourished hy scriptural teaching."
A final area in which the argumentation of the work could be developed or clarified pertains to its description of the relationship between natural law and Christian faith-nature and grace. Some of the
difficulties in the account provided by Grisez of the good of religion
and its relationship to his vision of Christian faith and revelation have
been ably pointed out elsewhere by others. Here it can be noted that
some features of the present work could also he clarified in this regard.
The fact that three chapters are devoted to the natural law basis of
ethics and only one chapter each to the realities of sin and redemption
appears to place much of the weight of the moral life on natural human
reason in its fallen condition. Such a concern is underscored by the
ambiguity concerning the content which Christian faith provides to the
moral life, as I noted above, and the lack of development of the grounding of morality in the spiritual life and in prayer, which May treats
only in passing. Perhaps a more complete exposition of the role of
grace, and particularly the theological virtues, in the moral life could
clarify some of these ambiguities and demonstrate more clearly the

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opening of natural law into the Christian economy of salvation for
which May argues. It should be noted that May displays an admirable
openness to further development along these lines with his appreciation
of some of the questions raised by Aurelio Ansaldo (see pp. 97 -98, n.

135).
In spite of some limitations, this is a significant work well-deserving
of consideration by any student of moral theology. It highlights the
ongoing contribution of an authentic and well-grounded Thomism to
current efforts toward the renewal of moral theology-a contribution
also recommended by the Second Vatican Council (cf. Optatum Totius,

n.16).
JOHN

S. GRABOWSKI

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

From Existence to God; A Contemporary Philosophical Argument. By
BARRY

MILLER. London and New York: Routledge, 1992. Pp. x

+ 206. $42.50 (cloth).

Can the existence of God be proved from the existence of any con·
crete individual thing? Many religious thinkers-theists as well as
atheists-might regard this as a vain project. The criticisms of Hume
and Kant, as well as a certain suspicion of the validity of the principles
of sufficient reason and intelligibility, appear to have demolished all
grounds for such an argument. Many find no contradiction in affirming the existence of the whole universe while denying the existence of
God.
Barry Miller, on the contrary, does find a contradiction in affirming
the existence of even one concrete individual unless the existence of
God is also affirmed. His book is a sustained and intriguing attempt
to show that contradiction. His argument is based not on the principles
of sufficient reason or intelligibility, but strictly on the principle of non·
contradiction (172-4). The concrete individual which serves as his
starting point and remains his faithful companion throughout the book
is a particular existing dog named " Fido," and the way to the existence
of God begins with the simple question: " How ever can it be that
Fido does exist ? "
Miller's first task is to establish that his question is not gratuitous
by showing that Fido's existence is not a " brute fact" requiring no
explanation. The argument given in chapters two and three shows that
Fido's existence is very puzzling indeed, requiring conditions that are
"apparently impossible to satisfy" (10). The argument begins with

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the Fregean position that ontological categories are to he assigned in
accordance with linguistic categories. (While Miller admits that this
Fregean view is not the only legitimate one, he does not think that this
limits the effectiveness of his argument [10, 87-88.]) Since the name
"Fido" in the linguistic expression " Fido exists " is a complete expression, while the predicate " exists " is not ( 15, 23), Fido's existence
is understood as " exemplifying two ontological categories, viz., a complete entity (Fido) and an incomplete entity (Fido's existence)"
(Prop. 1.1, p. 10). It is then argued that "Fido's existing must he
constructible conceptually from Fido and his existence" (Prop. 1.2, p.
10). This conceptual construction would he impossible, however, "if
Fido were inconceivable except in terms of Fido's existing." The fact
is, however, that Fido is inconceivable except in terms of Fido's existing: "Fido could neither he referred to nor conceived of before he
existed" (Prop. 1.3, p. 11). Indeed, prior to its existing, "no concrete individual could be conceived of by anyone or in any way " (42) .
One is thus left with a dilemma that requires one conceptually to construct Fido's existing from Fido and Fido's existence, but prevents one
from doing so since Fido is only conceivable in terms of Fido's existing.
In chapter four and its appendix, Miller presents detailed arguments
in response to C. J. F. Williams, B. Russell, W. V. Quine, and others
to show that existence is a real property. He then goes on in chapter
five to review the dilemma and to offer his solution. Fido's existing
must he conceptually constructible from two ontological categories,
"Fido" and "Fido's existence." But "Fido's existing" cannot he
constructed from them since one of them, "Fido's existence," is not a
complete entity and the other one, " Fido," is itself not conceivable
until Fido actually exists (83). In order to solve the dilemma, Miller
must find some way for Fido to he the first step in the conceptual construction of Fido's existing even though Fido is not conceivable until
Fido exists. Fido could he the first step in constructing " Fido's existing " only if Fido were somehow able to complete his existence. But
how could Fido be able to do that before he exists? Miller's answer is
that Fido has this capacity neither in virtue of being a concrete individual (since the concrete individual Fido is not conceivable until Fido
exists), nor in virtue of being an existing concrete individual (since
this would make Fido's existence ontologically prior to Fido, and Fido
must be a constituent of Fido's existing), hut in virtue of "something
other than either his being a concrete individual or his being an existing concrete individual." For the moment, this "something other" is
called" a" (84).
The next step is to investigate the nature of " a." If "a " were a
concrete individual of the same kind as Fido, " a " would require an,

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explanation for its existence just as Fido does, and the explanation of
" a " would require a similar explanation, etc. How long could such
a series of explanations continue? In chapter six, Miller analyzes various kinds of causal series to show that some must be terminated if they
are to be effective. It is to such a terminating (rather than infinite)
series of causes that Fido's existence must belong. The first member
of that series, unlike all the other members, will be something that
causes others to exist without itself being caused to exist.
Miller goes on in chapter seven to explain just how that " uncaused
cause " is different from Fido and all of the members of the series.
Fido requires an explanation beyond himself since Fido's existing is
constituted by Fido and Fido's existence in a way that Fido alone is
unable to account for. This kind of dilemma arises for each member
of the series which is itself distinct from its existence. The dilemma
does not arise, however, for the first member of the series since there
is no distinction between it and its existence (117).
Once the existence of this first member of the series (the uncaused
cause) has been established, Miller can then consider its properties.
The uncaused cause is, first of all, unique. For if there were more than
one such cause, each would be an individual instance of subsistent
existence, but this would imply that each was distinct from its existence.
But if they were distinct from their existence, they could not be the uncaused cause (126). Since every concrete individual is distinct from its
existence, the uncaused cause cannot be an individual, except perhaps in
some analogical sense (126-127). Nor is the uncaused cause to he
identified with the whole universe since the universe, being made up
of individuals, is itself an individual ( 132, 135). Since the uncaused
cause is not distinct from its existence, it can neither begin to exist
nor cease to exist hut must exist necessarily ( 151) .
Finally, in chapters nine and ten, Miller reviews a number of traditional objections to the contingency argument for the existence of God
and shows how his form of the argument has overcome them.
A particularly creative and insightful element in Miller's argument
is his use of Frege's linguistic philosophy in conjunction with the
metaphysics of Avicenna and Aquinas. Both belong to the realist tradition and both become aware of an element of incompleteness in the real
world-Frege, through his notion that the objective correlates of predicates have an incompleteness that corresponds to the incompleteness of
the predicates themselves, and Aquinas and Avicenna through their
understanding of the relation between essence and existence. By using
Frege's philosophy, Miller can inquire into that incompleteness in a
way that avoids the usual criticisms of arguments which rely on the
principle of sufficient reason. The scholastic insight into the rela-

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367

tion of essence and existence is then used to answer the question that
arises from the Fregean analysis of any concrete existing individual.
Whether Miller's argument succeeds, however, depends at least in
part on the validity of the shifts that it makes between the ontological
and conceptual orders. It is clear that Miller does not wish to offer a
purely conceptual argument such as Anselm's (150). He wants to
begin with the ontological fact of Fido's existence and move to the
ontological fact of God's existence. The Fregeau path he travels in
doing this, however, seems to lead the argument from the ontological
into the conceptual order, and it is difficult to see whether the argument ever really emerges once more from the realm of concepts into
the realm of being. From the ontological question, " How ever can
it be that Fido does exist ? " Miller moves immediately to a conceptual
consideration about a " legitimate way of conceiving of Fido's exist·
ing" (Prop. 1.1, p. 10). The ontological principle that "Fido and his
existence are ontologically ... prior to Fido's existing" is also immediately explained in conceptual terms: " ... which is to say that Fido's
existing must be constructible conceptually from Fido and his existence " (Prop. 1.2, p. 10) . The dilemma which validates the inquiry
into Fido's existence is also framed in conceptual terms: "It would be
impossible to take even the first step in that conceptual construction if
Fido were inconceivable except in terms of Fido's existing." The dilemma thus seems to be located in the conceptual rather than the ontological order: " Fido could neither be referred to nor conceived of
before he existed" (Prop. 1.3, p. 11).
At this point we seem to have lost our grounding in the ontological
order. Whatever we are forced to affirm or deny in order to avoid
violating the principle of non-contradiction in this conceptual order
therefore seems to have no necessary relation to the ontological order.
In this sense Miller's argument, like Anselm's, may (if we accept its
premise) force us to admit some conclusion in the order of logic, but
it does not seem capable of establishing any relationship between that
conclusion and the order of ontology: "The conflict between (1.1) and
(1.2) on the one hand and (1.3) on the other will leave us logically
no option but to ask, ' How ever can it be that Fido does exist ? ' "
(p. 11).
Miller does recognize and discuss the objection that "the argument
proves not that 'a' does exist, but merely, that we have to think that
it does" (p. 89). His response, however, does not consider the problem that, since the argument is conducted on the conceptual level (what
we can or cannot conceive) , it may not be able to yield a conclusion
on the ontological level (what can or cannot be) . Miller does try to
establish a link between ·the linguistic (logical) and ontological orders
through his use of Frege: "I begin by adopting the Fregean position

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that the ontological categories exemplified in Fido's being black are to
be assigned in accordance with the linguistic categories of the expressions in the proposition made true by it: ' Fido is black ' " ( 15) .
Whether this Fregean link between the order of language and the order
of reality is sufficient to validate Miller's metaphysical conclusion, however, remains a question.
MICHAEL

Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology
Berkeley, California

J. DODDS, O.P.