AQUINAS ON THE EVALUATION OF HUMAN
ACTIONS
WILLIAM

H. MARSHNER

Christendom College
Front Royal, Virginia

A

MONG THE questions dealt with in the Prima
Secundae are those of what moral goodness "is" and on
what basis it is attributed to some human actions but
denied of others. Aquinas's answers are currently a matter of
contention between the proportionalists and their critics, as is his
answer to the question of how human actions are classified.
The presentation in the Prima Secundae does give rise to
problems, thanks in part to Aquinas's pedagogical procedure.
That procedure can be described as bit-by-bit exposition. Rather
than set forth his whole view of a topic in one place, in a synthesis of some sort, and applying it piecemeal thereafter as subsequent questions may demand, the Common Doctor keeps his
whole view back, exposing no more of it than is needed to resolve
the particular issue at stake in a given article. The result of this,
quite often, is that qualifications crucial to a fair comprehension
of what he holds are scattered over places far removed from each
other. Because what he holds on the classification and evaluation
of human actions consists of several parts, each complicated, and
all connected, his solution is unsuited to bit-by-bit exposition.
Genuine doubts as to what the parts are, and how they come
together, can arise. The purpose of the present paper is to present
a synthesis that lets the whole picture emerge; as it emerges, certain attempts to read Aquinas in a manner supportive of the proportionalist position will be shown to conflict with the design of
the whole.
In his preface to qq. 18-20 in the Prima Secundae, Aquinas
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describes their subject matter as the goodness or badness (bonitas vel malitia) of human actions. These abstract nouns are
derived from the corresponding adjectives, "good" and "bad,"
and the very first thing Aquinas tells us (in the first sentence of
q. 18, a. 1) is that "good" and "bad" are to be asserted of human
actions in the same way as they are asserted of other things.' So
how is that?
A BACKGROUND TOPIC: 'GOOD' AND 'BAD' IN GENERAL

If one should take up any item at all-an apple, a shoe-and
say that the item is good, would one be purporting only to
describe it as it is, or would one be purporting also to evaluate it
in light of how it ought to be? Differently posed, does a proposition of the form "x is good" represent a product of speculative
reason alone, or does it include an element, at least, from practical reasoning? Recent analytical philosophy is quite clear that
the latter option is correct. "Good" and "bad" are terms which
express evaluation rather than some sort of disinterested, theoretical description. 2 Aquinas can be read, at least, as holding the
same view.
In a text in which he defined a completely general sense of
"good" (more general, for example, than just "human good"), he
said: ratio boni est quod aliquid sit appetibile. 3 To make out
what this dictum means, two remarks are in order. First, the
ratio of a term "T" is the reason anything is called T. Aquinas
identified it as the aspect of things which the mind grasps and
signifies through "T." 4 He meant the aspect which would be
"what it takes" for a thing to merit or verify the term, in case the
term is applied to it. Thus the ratio of "good" is what it takes for
1 Respondeo dicendum quod de bono et malo in actionibus oportet loqui sicut de bono
et malo in rebus ....
' The analytical philosophers derive a portion of their clarity on this issue from the
celebrated remarks of David Hume on the difference between "is" and "ought": A Treatise
on Human Nature, III, i,l.
3 See ST I, q. 5, q. 1. corpus, and many other places. Aquinas often quoted Aristotle's
definition of "good" as what all things seek or tend toward (appetunt); the Stagirite's text
is in the Nicomachaean Ethics, book I, chapter 1.
4 Ratio enim significata per nomen est id quod concipit intellectus de re et significat
illud per vocem (ST I, q. 5, a. 2). Elsewhere, the ratio of a term is more closely identified

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anything to be called good; and in that sense it is the reason anything is rightly called "good." Second, appetitus and appetibile
are broad terms. The former means any sort of tendency or inclination whatsoever. 5 The latter (the appetibile) refers to anything
which has what it takes to satisfy any sort of inclination of any
sort of being. 6 So in the dictum at hand (ratio boniest quod aliquid sit appetibile), Aquinas is saying that, vis-a-vis any kind of
thing, S, an object or state having what it takes to satisfy an
inclination found in S-things is "good" to (or for) S-things.'
with its definition (cf. ST I, q. 13, a. 1). The ratio of a term need not be its sense but can
just as well be the real aspect of a thing which corresponds to that sense and so fits or
verifies the definition.
5 Aquinas takes appetitus so broadly as to include even gravitational or inertial phenomena. Hence those phenomenologists who prefer to start their account of "good" with
admiration are not, in fact, offering a rival starting point. For wherever there is an inclination to admire something, that inclination will be an appetitus.
6 Among these potential satisfiers Aquinas counts not only objects external to the
being, such as food, shelter, etc., but also states internal to it. In biological kinds, the
mature state of the individual satisfies tendencies which are present in, but not yet satisfied in, the larval or juvenile state of the individual.
1 This account coincides with Aristotle's definition, on the supposition that Aristotle
was offering a contextual definition of the phrase "good of," as in "the good of a stone."
For then he was saying that, for all things x, the good of x = what x seeks or tends toward.
Notice that the instrumental sense of"good," found in "pots are good for cooking," is
set aside by Aristotle and Aquinas as another (and secondary) affair. For pots do not seek
cooking; and stones, though good for throwing at malefactors, do not tend towards that
employment.
Rather, the focal and primary sense of "good" is the sense in which a benefit is good
to a beneficiary. Thus an elementary statement of goodness becomes something like
"Milk is good for me." The shorter sentence, "Milk is good," can then be construed. It is
either an abbreviation of "Milk is good for me" or else an implicit generalization of it,
meaning that milk is good for my species (people).
"It is good for the spider to eat the fly" is ambiguous. Taken one way, it means that
eating the fly is goodfor the spider, which is true for the most part. Taken the other way,
it asserts some larger interest in light of which it is good that the spider eat the fly. This
larger interest might be the environment, or the global eco-system. Artistotle and
Aquinas would have talked about the "common good" of the universe. If this larger system tends or inclines towards a balance in the numbers of the species, and this balance is
served by the spider's (rather often) eating the fly, then the tendency of the system is what
makes the spider's predation "good." Indirectly, the fact that we humans are part of the
system makes the spider's diet good for us as well.
Thus goodness claims which appear theoretical or "absolute" are found to retain a
core of intelligibility which is practical and evaluative. A person who literally had no
inclinations and who therefore could not experience anything as appetibile could not

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WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

Now, if there is a kind of being S0 which has only one inclination, the above remarks suffice to say all that can be said about
"good" for that kind of being. But for kinds of beings Si which
have more than one inclination, there is more to be said. An
object or state may have what it takes to satisfy one inclination
of an Si-thing but not its others. Such an object or state is only
"good to some extent" or "good in some respect." By contract, an
object or state which had what it took to satisfy all the being's
inclination would be good "period."'
Aquinas had inherited a famous thesis to the effect that good
is coextensive with being-that is, that "good" would be applicable wherever "exists" is applicable. To make this thesis come
out right, Aquinas posited in every being an inclination to stay in
being. In that way, for every being, the fact that it exists would
satisfy one of its inclinations, so that its sheer being would be, for
it, "good in some respect." 9 By salvaging (even in this way) the
coextensivity thesis, Aquinas escaped the "naturalistic fallacy."
That fallacy consists in thinking that goodness is a nature which
some things have and others lack. 10 If that view were correct,
"good" and "bad" would work like any contrasting pair of
descriptive adjectives, such as "colored" and "colorless" or "animate" and "inanimate." There would then be good beings and
bad beings, just as there are animate beings and inanimate ones.
And in that case, the class of good beings would be narrower
than the class of beings, just as the class of animate beings is narrower than the class of beings. Aquinas rejected all such ideas
with the sweeping declaration that good "adds" nothing to
being-adds nothing like a form or nature."
understand what was meant by any claim of goodness. As we shall see in a moment,
claims about the goodness of existence are no exception.
8 ST I, q. 5, a. I ad 1. Aquinas often thought of a thing's full maturity as a state toward
which it was inclined and in which it would find all its inclinations satisfied. Such a state
would represent its "perfection" and "complete good." To reach this state would be the
"ultimate purpose" of the thing's tendings, inclinings, striving, etc. Aquinas affirmed the
same connection between "ultimate purpose" and "complete good" in the case of man (ST
I-II, q. 1), though he could point to no non-theological or this-worldly state in which all
man's inclinations would be satisfied.
9 STI, q. 5, a. 1.
' 0 The classic discussion is G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica (Cambridge, 1959), 73.
11 See STI, q. 5, a. 3 ad 1.

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This account of "good" comes closer to the topic of human
action, of course, as Aquinas leaves behind the very wide use of
"good" just discussed and turns to the more familiar use that
arises from human experience of the human inclinations. In
human beings, the inclinations are managed (or mismanaged) by
the will. 12 So the reason we call something "good" is that it is
desirable. 13 Again the evaluative rather than disinterestedly
of "good" in Aquinas is unmistakable.
descriptive
Moreover, "desirable" is ambiguous as between "in some respect"
and "period." Because the will manages all the inclinations in the
light of reason, what would satisfy one of my lower inclinations
may be desirable at first blush (and so good "in some respect")
and yet may fail to be desirable "all things considered," that is, in
light of my other inclinations, needs, or interests (and so may fail
to be desirable "period"). There is thus a potential, at least, for a
conflict to arise between the desirability which is just "there
already,'' prior to a reasoned judgment, and the desirability
which consists precisely in a conformity to such judgment 14
This potential for conflict lends human interest to the difference between the desirability which is the reason we call something good "in that respect" and the desirability which is the reason we call something good "period." All the more interest
attaches to it, when one asks how the reasoned judgment just
mentioned, which in man's case is supposed to make this difference, is itself to be made. How do we reach an overall assessment? How do we compare the desirability (goodness) which a
thing may have "in one respect" with its undesirability in some
per voluntatem utimur omnibus quae in nobis sunt (ST I, q. 5, a. 4 ad 3).
On the connections and overlaps between appetitus, desiderium, and voluntas, see
ST I, q. 19, a. 9; I-II, q. 30, a. 1 ad 2; q. 56, a. 5 ad 1, etc.
14 According to I-II, q. 50, a. S ad 3, the "object" to which the human will is inclined
by its very nature is the good which consists in being in accord with reason (bonum rationis); cf I-II. q. 56, a. 6. By this Aquinas underscores the difference between the will (a
rational faculty) and the sense appetites. The goodness which is desirability to a sense
appetite is pre-rational and may be experienced as counter-rational, that is, as a pull felt
in the teeth of rational refusal. But the goodness which is willability is based on reason;
it cannot be experienced as against reason, though the accord with reason may be dishonestly contrived through "rationalization."
12 •••

13

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WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

other respect, so as to judge reasonably whether it is desirable or
not "all things considered"?
On this topic, the logic of applying "good" according to
Aquinas lines up perfectly with some modern accounts of "evaluation" and conflicts with others. Let us look at an account with
which he could agree.
In recent thought, an evaluation is a procedure in which items
of some kind are compared to certain criteria ("standards") and
are graded on how they measure up. Thus apples are compared
to criteria having to do with size, flavor, freshness. Shoes are
compared to criteria having to do with style, comfort, durability.
Each criterion is applied to the thing by checking some facet or
aspect of the thing. If the facet has the feature demanded by a
criterion, then the thing has some property which it ought to
have. It is as it ought to be, at least in that respect. If the thing
(apple or shoe) has every feature demanded by the criteria
applied to it, then it is as it ought to be in every respect. It is "all
it should be." If the thing fails to meet some criterion, it is "lacking" in that respect and so is "not all it should be." After the thing
is compared to the criteria by this sort of application (checking of
features), the thing is graded, and this grade is its evaluation
proper. 15
Notice that the term "good" (or its opposite) can appear at two
different places in this procedure. It can appear at the end as a
final grade (whether as one of many grades, like "excellent,"
"good," "fair," "poor," etc., or as one of only two, like "good"/
"bad" in the sense of pass/fail). But it can also appear earlier on,
at the feature-checking stage. As each facet of the item is
checked against a relevant criterion, satisfactory fulfillment of
that criterion can be marked by saying that the item is "good" in
that respect (and this preliminary goodness can again be one of
many marks or one of only two).
Thus far, the account corresponds exactly to St. Thomas 's discussion of evaluation. "Good" as a final grade he calls bonum
simpliciter, and he says in a crucial text that its ratio includes
15

159.

1 am indebted for this accounttoJ. 0. Urmson, "On Grading," Mind 59 (1950): 145-

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debita plenitudo essendi. 16 This last translates exactly as "all it
should be." So the reason we grade anything as "good" is that it
is all it should be. 11 "Good" as a mark on a feature, by contrast,
he calls bonum secundum quid.
But now we come to the interesting question, on which varieties of evaluation (and modern accounts of them) divide. The
fact that there are two places where the term "good" can appear
demands a way of getting from the one to the other. That is, the
marks given feature-by-feature must lead somehow to the final
grade. One kind of evaluation procedure will sum and average
the marks to reach the grade, and so it requires a commensuration of the features, and one will have had to import enough
arithmetic to allow for computation. Another kind of procedure
introduces an order of rank among the criteria (or, equivalently,
among the features that fulfill criteria), so that if a thing is good
in one feature and bad in another, its grade will depend upon
whether it is good in any feature that outranks the ones in which
it is bad. But it is also possible to have an evaluation procedure
without numbers or measures or rankings of any kind.
Such a procedure would be the following. No matter how
many features need to be checked, the marks applicable to each
feature are just two ("good"/"bad"), and the overall grades are
just two ("good"/"bad'), and the rule for getting from the former
to the latter is this: the overall grade is "good" if and only if the
mark on every required feature is "good"; otherwise, the overall
grade is "bad." (Hence the grade is "bad" if and only if the mark
on some feature is not "good.")
This extremely parsimonious example of an evaluation
scheme is of special philosophical interest for three reasons.
First, it allows "bad" to be defined entirely by negation. As a
final grade, "bad" simply means "not good." As a mark on a feature, "bad" also means "not good" (so that the ratio of the term is
the same in both places) and hence means that the feature
ST1-11, q. 18, a. 1.
does not forget that how-all-the-thing-is becomes how-all-it-should-be
(debita plenitudo) by the thing's having what it takes (in being how-all-it-is) to satisfy
the appetitive faculties. This point is made explicit in 1-11, q. 18, a. 5 corpus and ad 2.
16

17 Aquinas

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WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

demanded is "not there." Hence the famous neo-Platonic and
Patristic thesis that evil is privation-privation of a good, hence
absence of a "due" feature-is fully supported.'"
Secondly, this scheme can be formalized in a modal secondorder predicate calculus using only the quantifiers "all" and
"some." An object x of the kind Sis graded "good" if and only if,
for all predicates <j>, it ought to be the case that an S-thing is <j>,
and xis <j>." It follows by elementary logic that an object x of the
kind S is graded "not-good" if and only if, for some predicate <j>,
it ought to be the case that an S-thing is <!> and x is not <j>. 20 The
grade "bad" can then be introduced by definition as "not-good."
Such a formalization confirms that no recourse to rank, number,
quantitative, or arithmetical operation on measurements is
required.
Thirdly, the parsimonious scheme is explicitly that of
Aquinas. His basic rule for getting from the marks to the grade
is that a thing is malum simpliciter when it is merely bonum
secundum quid (that is, good in some respect but not in every
respect). This rule is stated in converse form at ST I, q. 11, a. 2
ad 1: if anything is merely bonum secundum quid, then it is
malum simpliciter. But there is no question that he accepts the
rule running the other way as well: if anything is malum simpliciter, then it is bonum secundum quid. For he holds that the
bad thing at least exists, and that whatever exists is good to that
extent (ST I, q. 5, a. 1 ad 1; a. 3 ad 2). For what fails to be good
in even that respect is just "nothing" and is not evaluated; if it is
18 By contrast, an evaluation procedure which averages the marks has to set an arbitrary number n as the cut-off point, has to define "good" as "higher than or equal ton,"
and has to define "bad" as "lower than n." Thus the ratio of "good" and the ratio of "bad"
include relatively opposed relations to n.
An evaluation procedure which ranks the criteria has to define the grade "bad" as
"lacking an important feature" or "not good in an important respect," whereas the mark
"bad" just means "lacking a feature." The ranking relation enters, in other words, into
the ratio of "good" and "bad" as grades but not into the ratio of "good" and "bad" as
marks. Hence the two rationes split apart, even though, in each, "bad" might be defined
as "not good."
19 In symbols: Sx ::::>(goodx = "ifq>(O((y)(Sy::::> q>y)) ::::> q>x)), where "0" is a deontic modal
operator ("it ought to be the case that").
20 That is: Sx ::::> (-good x = 34J(O((y)(Sy ::::> q>y)). -q>x)).

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not evaluated, it is not "bad." 21 In many places, Aquinas states
the rule in the form in which he found it in his source, Denis:
quilibet singularis defectus causat malum, bonum autem causatur ex integra causa. 22 In keeping with this formulation, he says
innumerable times that malum is privatio boni. 23 Hence "bad" is
defined by negation; "good" and "bad" as grades differ as "all
demanded features are there" differs from "some demanded features is not there", and "good" and "bad" as marks on a facet as
"the demanded feature is there" differs from "it is not there."
From mark to grade, the ratio remains constant; "bad" is rigorously defined by negation of "good," in whose ratio no appeal to
rank or measurement is made. Nor is any admissible. For a thing
which is good overall has to have no less than every feature
demanded by the relevant criteria.
THE EVALUATION OF HUMAN ACTIONS

With this background in place, St. Thomas 's opening declaration in I-II, q. 18, a. 1, that "good" and "bad" are to be asserted
of human actions in the same way as they are asserted of other
things, becomes informative. It allows one to predict much of
what the articles in Question 18 will cover. One can predict that
calling an action good will mean that it is good for man-a good
way for a human to act. One can predict that something will be
said about the "standards" or "criteria" by which human actions
are judged to be good for man. One can predict that the facets
upon which these criteria bear will be listed, so that one can see
what will need to be checked in evaluating a human action. One
can predict that the interesting goodness or badness of human
actions-their moral goodness or badness-will be reached via
marks on their features, in the parsimonious way already discussed.
These predictions are quickly fulfilled. We are told in article 1
21 Si vero nihil haberet de entitate vel bonitate, neque malum neque bonum did posset (ST I-II, q. 18, a. 1). Notice again that the famous slogan, Bonum convertitur cum
ente, concerns "good" as a mark on a feature-bonum secundum quid. It has nothing to
do with "good" as a final grade, which emphatically does not apply to every being.
22 Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, De divinis nominibus, chapter 4. See ST I-II, q.
18, a. 4 ad 3, for example.
23 E.g., ST I, q. 19, a. 9; I-II, q. 18, a. 2 ad 2; q. 21, a. 1

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WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

that a human action is not evaluated on the existential basis that
it takes place or fails to take place. For, while an action can be
called good just for existing (omnis actio, inquantum habet aliquid de esse, intantum habet de bonitate ), that talk is irrelevant.
For whether the action happens will not turn out to be a feature
that is marked in its moral evaluation. Rather, the basis for evaluation is whether the action is "all it should be" as a human
action: inquantum vero deficit ei aliquid de plenitudine essendi
quae debetur actioni humanae, intantum deficit a bonitate, et sic
dicitur mala. We are told that this "all" of what an action should
be is not reducible to causal issues like efficacy. For an action
will have its causal efficacy through the positive being it has and
not through what will make it bad, if it is bad (namely, its lack).
The example given is adulterous intercourse, which is highly
efficacious towards offspring and yet is not all a human action
should be. We are told that what it lacks is "order of reason." 24
This is a first indication that the criteria for human actions are
"ordinations" of reason, so that the features demanded in human
actions are conformities to these ordinations. A long way ahead,
in I-II, qq. 90ff., we shall be told that the "ordinations" set by
reason are universal propositions of practical reason bearing
upon actions and having what it takes to be called "laws" (having the ratio legis).25 We shall be told that these laws or precepts
derive from first principles such as "Good is to be done and its
opposite avoided" 26 and the Golden Rule 21 ; we shall be told that
the derivable precepts include the moral content of the
Decalogue,28 and that they therefore include precepts which
admit of no exception or "dispensation." 29
Thus a human acton will be "good" in case (and only in case)
it is "all it should be" in conforming to precepts derivable by rea24 Ad tertium dicendum quod actio mala potest habere aliquem effectum per se
secundum id quod habet de bonitate et entitate. Sicut adulterium est causa generationis
humanae inquantum habet commixtionem maris et feminae, non autem inquantum
caret ordine rationis (I-II, q. 18, a. 1 ad 3).
25 1-11, q. 90, a. 1.
26 1-11, q. 94, a. 2.
21 1-11, q. 100, a. 3.
28 Ibid.
29 1-11, q. 100, a. 8.

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son. This conclusion makes sense, because a human action is not
so much a good we seek (an object of inclination) as a way of
pursuing a good we seek. The "good" actions will be the good
ways of pursuing the things we seek. The "good" ways, in turn,
will be those which have what it takes to satisfy a desire we have
bearing upon our ways of pursuing things. Well, we have various
desires bearing on these: we want our ways of pursuing things to
be easy (if possible), efficient, enjoyable (if possible), not too tiring, and so on. But controlling all of these preferences, and generating them, is the constant desire which Aquinas calls the natural desire of our will, namely, that our ways of pursuing things
make sense, that they be intelligent, that they be reasonable. 30
The features demanded of these ways, therefore, will not be
physical features having what it takes to satisfy a drive but conformities-to-reason, having what it takes to satisfy a desire for
practical reasonableness.
Next, in articles 2, 3, and 4, we are quickly told which facets
of a human action have to be checked to see if the conformities
demanded are there. Three facets are listed: genus ex objecto,
circumstantiae,finis. These amount respectively to: (1) the specific kind to which the action belongs, when it is classified
according to the verb-and-object needed to express what the
agent is choosing to do to what, or to whom; (2) the circumstances in which a token of that specific kind would be realized,
if the agent were to perform the action as he has chosen; (3) the
further purpose (if any) for the sake of which the agent would be
choosing to do the action. These three facets are such that each
can have the feature of conforming to reason through consistency with a precept of reason, and each can lack this feature; each
mark of "good" (or "bad") means that a conformity-to-precept is
there (not there) and hence is a moral mark; and the procedure
for getting from the moral marks to the moral grade is just what
we should expect-every facet has to be marked "good" (has to
conform to precept), or else the action gets "morally bad" for its
grade. 31
30

See above, note 14.

31 See 1-11, q. 18, a. 4 ad 3.

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WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

(Next, a graded action is subject to further classification into
a "moral kind,'' according to article 5, as an act of some virtuea specific way of being completely reasonable--or as an act of
some vice-a specific way of being unreasonable-but we shall
not pursue that matter in these pages.)
Such, at least, is the classical interpretation of Aquinas's
remarks on the evaluation of human actions. Since it offers a
trouble-free reading of I-II, q. 18, and connects well with St.
Thomas 's more general goodness and badness, it has a degree of
plausibility. Yet the interpretation just presented has a rival
which deserves consideration. The rival has been advanced by
Josef Fuchs, Louis J anssens, and Richard McCormick, three of
the most eminent moralists writing in recent decades.
A QUESTION OF CLASSIFICATION

To introduce the view shared by these contemporary moralists, it is useful to note that, of the three facets which are to be
marked, according to Aquinas, the first, the genus ex objecto,
holds a special status. Aquinas says that a mark of "good" on this
facet is the "first goodness" of a human action-first, because it
is the goodness which the action has already in "being what it
is." 32 Likewise, a mark of "bad" on this facet is the "first badness." 33 In the classical interpretation, what this amounts to saying is quite simple. Nothing can be evaluated unless and until it
is classified. No hunk of stuff can have criteria applied to it, until
we are told what it is. Moral evaluation, too, falls upon a classified act. I cannot tell you whether you did right or wrong without knowing what you did. But as soon as I know, I have something to mark.
Now notice: if this first mark is "bad,'' I need not consider any
further facet (circumstance or purpose) given Aquinas's evaluation procedure. For badness in this first facet is quidam defectus,
32 Primum au tern quod ad plenitudinem essendi pertinere videtur est id quod dat rei
speciem .... Et ideo sicut prima bonitas rei naturalis attenditur ex sua forma quae dat
speciem ei, ita et prima bonitas actus moralis attenditur ex objecto convenienti; unde et
a quibusdam vocatur bonum ex genere (I-II, q. 18, a. 2).
3·3 Et sicut in rebus naturalibus primum malum est, si res generata non consequitur
formam specificam, puta si non generetur homo, sed aliquid loco hominis; ita primum
malum in actionibus moralibus est quod est ex objecto (I-II, q. 18, a. 2).

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and a human action is morally bad (grade) ex quocumque defectu. But this in turn means that a norm can be formulated, picking out a kind of action which is mala ex objecto, describing that
action only in its genus ex objecto, and saying that an action of
that kind is never to be done-and such a norm will be true. For
any exercise done by anyone, in any circumstance, for any reason, which has what it takes to fall into that kind will have the
defectum of that kind and so will be a morally bad action. 34
In a word: if Aquinas says that a moral mark can be put on an
action's kind-from-its-object, then his teaching leads at once to
"moral absolutes" of the sort which it has been fashionable to
question recently.35 Moralists of a proportionalist bent, who wish
to annex the prestige of the Common Doctor, must therefore find
a way to eliminate this feature from his teaching.
The move made by Janssens, Fuchs, and McCormick serves
this purpose. It can be explained but taking a look at a key text
in I-II, q. 1, a. 3. That article is about the classification of human
actions. In it, Aquinas says that human actions get classified on
the basis of their end. For if actions are looked at as man moving or changing himself, the end is their starting-point. For
actions are human insofar as they proceed from deliberated willing; what gets willed (the objectum voluntatis) is the good and
the end; hence the starting-point of human acts qua human is the
end. Alternatively, if human acts are looked at as man moved or
changed by himself, the end is their terminal-point. For that at
which a human course of action terminates is that which the will
intends as the end. In this article two of the objections are important. The first says that a thing has to get its species from something intrinsic to it; but the end is an extrinsic cause of the action;
34 In the language of his commentary on the Sentences, book II, d. 40, a. 2, such an
actus will be de se malus, qui nullo modo benefieri potest.
35 John G. Milhaven, "Moral Absolutes in Thomas Aquinas," in Charles Curran, ed.,
Absolutes in Moral Theology (Washington, D.C.: Corpus, 1968), 1S4-18S;John F. Dedek,
"Intrinsically Evil Acts: An Historical Study of the Mind of St. Thomas," The Thomist
43 (1979): 38Sff. For discusion and further bibliography see Patrick Lee, "Permanence of
the Ten Commandments: St. Thomas and His Modern Commentators," Theological
Studies 42 (1981): 422-443; William E. May, Moral Absolutes (Milwaukee, Wisc.:
Marquette, 1989), and John Finnis, Moral Absolutes (Washington, D.C.: Catholic
University Press, 1991).

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WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

so it cannot give it its species. Aquinas replies (adl) by denying
that the end is entirely "extrinsic" to the action. For the action is
a change, in which the end can be looked at either as startingpoint a quo or as terminal-point ad quem-neither of which is
extrinsic to a change. The other important objection is the third,
in which the issue is whether ends can secure uniqueness of classification. It reads: a thing can only exist in one "species," but
numerically one and the same human act can be ordered to
diverse ends; therefore the end does not give the act its species.
St. Thomas replies by distinguishing the minor and then by
bringing up a related item of business. So the reply (ad 3) falls
into two parts. Here they are.
(a) Numerically one action, as it flows from the agent at a unique
moment, is ordered to just one proximate end and gets its classification
from that; but it can be ordered to several more remote ends, of which
each is for the sake of the next.
(b) However, the following is possible. One and the same kind of action,
typed by natural kind, can be ordered to diverse ends of the will [fines
voluntatis, i.e. intended ends], and the result will be diverse actionsdiverse in moral kind. Thus the natural kind of action which is killing
a man can be intended to preserve justice or can be intended to slake
wrath. If intended the first way, it will be an act of virtue; if intended
the other way, an act of vice. For a change is not classified by that
which is its term per accidens but only by which is its term per se.
Moral ends are accidental to a natural thing; but the reverse is also
true: the natural basis for assigning an end to something is accidental
to a moral thing. Hence nothing prevents acts which are the same in
natural kind from being diverse in moral kind; and, vice versa, nothing prevents acts which are the same in moral kind from being diverse
in natural kind. 36

The obvious (and traditional) way to line this text up with the
Ad tertium dicendum quod idem actus numero, secundum quod semel egreditur ab
agente, non ordinatur nisi ad unum finem proximum, a quo habet speciem; sed potest
ordinari ad plures fines remotos, quorum unus est finis alterius.
Possibile tamen est quod unus actus secundum speciem naturae ordinetur ad diversos fines voluntatis, sicut hoc ipsum quod est occidere hominem, quod est idem secundum speciem naturae, potest ordinari sicut in finem ad conservationem justitiae et ad
satisfaciendum irae; et ex hoc erunt diversi actus secundum speciem moris, quia uno
modo erit actus virtutis, alio modo erit actus vitii. Non enim motus recipit speciem ab eo
quod est terminus per accidens, sed solum ab eo quod est terminus per se. Fines autem
morales accidunt rei naturali; et e converso ratio naturalis finis accidit morali; et ideo
nihil prohibet actus qui sunt idem secundum speciem naturae esse diversos secundum
speciem moris, et e converso.
36

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doctrine in I-II, q. 18 is to take one's clue from the part labelled
(a). One identifies "object" and "proximate end," so that kindfrom-the-object = classification from proximate end. Then, since
the proximate end is an intended end (finis voluntatis), it will follow that the action already classified by its object is a "moral
thing"-a human, willed action-so that it can be evaluated
morally, and the mark upon it will be a moral mark, just as articles 2-4 in q. 18 seem to say and were classically interpreted to
say.31
But part (b) is the text upon which Janssens, Fuchs, and
37 In other words, Aquinas provides two major texts in the Summa Theologiae on the
classification of human actions. In one he says that an action is put into its kind by its
proximate end, and in the other he says that an action is put into its kind by its object. If
these two texts are to hang together, there are three possibilities. Either (I) the kind based
on the object and kind based on the proximate end are identical, or else (2) they classify
on different levels, with one of them putting the action into a genus, the other putting it
into its sub-genus or species, or else (3) the kinds are independent but both apply.
Perhaps all three possibilities turn up, but the first is the common one-so common
that Aquinas seems to have thought it needed no discussion. A simple example, such as
washing the car, will serve to illustrate it.
The proximate end is the agent's most immediate purpose in acting. Oftentimes, a
statement of one's most immediate purpose will not differ (or will differ only slightly)
from what one ordinarily thinks of as a statement of what one is doing. For example, if I
am washing the car so as to get ready for a trip, the trip is my ulterior purpose, and to
prepare for it or "get ready" is the intermediate purpose, but my immediate purpose in
ading is to wash the car, or to get the washing over and done with. This is why I am
bustling about in the driveway with a hose. Thus, if we call this end (to wash the car) ewe•
we can say that it puts the bustling into the kind 'KwC' That is, the intended end classifies my bustling by putting it into the end-based kind ('K) which is washing the car.
The object is the matter with which the action deals (materia circa quam). One should
think of this "matter" in grammatical terms. I start with the verb that would be involved
in expressing what I am considering doing, e.g., "wash." I add whatever nouns or nounphrases would be needed to complete the expression of what I am considering doing, e.g.,
"my car." This is the object, and "wash my car" is a kind of action (genus ex objecto).
Suppose we call it °Kwc for short, and suppose I choose to do it. Do I also intend it? Do
we have the result that °Kwc = 'Kwc in the case at hand?
In the Commentary on II Sentences, d. 40, a. 2, Aquinas used objectus proximus and
finis proximus interchangeably. For they mean the same whenever one uses one's proximate end to describe one's means. An action of the object-based kind "wash my car"
could easily be chosen as a means in the project to get ready for a trip. Thus it is easy to
see that one's "means" will often be an object-based kind of action. Aquinas says that,
once a means is chosen, its execution becomes one's most immediate end, and in that
capacity it is intended (I-II, q. 12, a. 2). Hence the frequent identity of kind-from-object
and kind-from-proximate-purpose. See also I-II, q. 20, a. 4, and q. 72, a. 3 ad 2. These
texts are discussed in Joseph Boyle, "Praeter intentionem in Aquinas," The Thomist 42

(1978): 649-665.

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WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

McCormick seize. They identify the "natural kind" mentioned
here with the kind-from-the-object mentioned in q. 18.38 They
identify the "end of the will" mentioned here with the "purpose"
mentioned in I-II, q. 18, a. 4. It follows at once that the "object"
pertains to a pre- or sub-intentional "materiality" of the act, such
as bustling about in the driveway or causing a death-so that it
cannot connect with a definite moral evaluation. 39 Hence different action-tokens of any one genus ex objecto can be ordered to
different intended ends and thereby receive different and even
opposite moral classifications. 40 And so no action, taken only in
its genus ex objecto, will be open to receive a moral mark.
McCormick writes: "Acts that have the same features as
object-events can have a different morality." 41
Fuchs writes: "But now the critical question: what value do
our norms have with respect to the morality of the action as such
[he means, ex objecto ], prior, that is, to consideration of the circumstances and intention? We answer: they cannot be moral
norms unless circumstances and intention are taken into
account." 42
38 This move is most explicit in Louis Janssens, "Ontic Evil and Moral Evil," Louvain
Studies 4 (1972): 115-156, at 123-124.
39 Janssens et al. do not acknowledge adequately the clash which their interpretation
creates between these texts and the rest of Thomistic action theory. J anssens (Joe. cit.) recognizes that in Aquinas (I-II, q. 19) the agent's choice is the inner core of the action, so
that what one has chosen to do is what kind of action one is doing. But Janssens et al.
have to make this a secondary truth. For if the "object" gives the action its quiddity, but
this quiddity is "natural kind," then every human action is in essence some kind of natural process, some kind of limb locomotion. Such bustle is already what-it-is prior to
and independent of the agent's choice to do anything. The meaning given to the bustle
by the agent's intention must be at best a secondary and supervenient "whatness," as
when one reclassifies a rock as a sculpture, or an ink-spot as a symbol, by giving it a
meaning.
'° For Aquinas (I-II, q. 18, a. 6), some genera ex objecto are morally indifferent (so
that there will be some cases in which action-tokens of a common genus ex objecto
receive opposite moral evaluations, thanks to differences of circumstances or purpose);
but the J anssens-Fuchs-McCormick interpretation requires all genera ex objecto to be of
this nature.
41 Richard A. McCormick, Notes on Moral Theology, 1965-1980 (Washington, D.C.:
University Press of America, 1981), 534.
42 Josef Fuchs, Personal Responsibility
and Christian Morality (Washington, D.C.:
Georgetown University Press, 1983), 138. Chapter 7 of this book, from which the quote
is taken, bears the title "The Absoluteness of Behavioral Moral Norms"; it had been published separately in Gregorianum a dozen years earlier (1971).

AQUINAS ON THE EVALUATION OF HUMAN ACTIONS

363

The violence which this "we answer" does to the Catholic
moral tradition, destroying all moral absolutes at a single stroke,
has been widely discussed. 43 The untenability of the basic move
from which the "answer" follows, namely, the identification of
object-kind with natural-kind, has been thoroughly established
by William E. May. 44 I should like to highlight the impact upon
Aquinas's evaluation procedure.
THE "NUANCE" THAT ANNIHILATES

If object-kind = natural-kind = behavior described in "brute"

or sub-intentional terms, then the goodness or badness which
Aquinas says an action can have "first" in its object-kind must be
a pre-moral goodness or badness. The bustle produces this liked
(or disliked) effect as a sheer causal consequence, and that is now
the first goodness (or badness). What is the next? What about the
other facets which are checked, according to Aquinas, before a
grade is reached-the circumstances and purpose? Are their
goodness and badness pre-moral, too?
Yes, says Fuchs: "A moral judgement is legitimately formed
under a simultaneous consideration of the three elements (action,
circumstances, purpose), premoral in themselves."'' McCormick
praises this drawing together of the three elements as a balanced
"nuancing" of the tradition. 46
If that is so, then in successively checking object, circumstances, and end, one is registering pre-moral goods and bads.
The moral evaluation has not begun yet. The evaluation-logic
repeatedly stressed by Aquinas cannot be the moral evaluationlogic. It must be pre-moral. It must tell us that, if an action is
pre-morally good in some respect but not in another, then the
action is pre-morally bad "period." But since (the proportional43 See above, note 35; also John Finnis, Fundamentals of Ethics (Washington, D.C.:
Georgetown University Press, 1983), chapter 4; Germain Grisez, "Moral Absolutes, A
Critique of the View of Josef Fuchs, S.J.," Anthropos 112 (1985): 155-201. (This journal is
now called Anthropotes .)
44 "Aquinas and Janssens on the Moral Meaning of Human Acts," The Thomist 48
(J 984): 566-606.
45 Fuchs, Personal Responsibility, 137.
46 Notes, 534.

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WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

ists think) an action can be pre-morally bad but morally good,
this is only another way of saying that the moral evaluation has
not begun yet. And if that is so then nothing which Aquinas tells
us in I-II q. 18 pertains to moral evaluation.
"Unlikely" is rather too mild a word for an interpretation
which removes from the Prima Secundae all discussion of one of
its most important topics.
THE CONTROLLING BELIEF

Unlikely theories are sometimes true, however; and what one
thinks of the Fuchs-McCormick-Janssens
theory will depend
almost entirely on whether one believes that an action-evaluation is supposed to take one from a set of pre-moral goods and
bads to a judgment of moral good (or bad).
If one believes this, the account in Aquinas cannot seem complete. For a pre-moral bad is any damage whatsoever, including
the unintentional, from a disappointment to a death, from a
bruised tomato to a soul in hell. Aquinas can hardly have considered all such damages equal, but nowhere does he give us an
explicit account of "greater" evil or good. Call this the missing
piece. Now read q. 18 without the missing piece, as though it
were intended to be complete without it, and yet were intended
to take us from pre-moral marks to a moral grade. It would be
saying that any pre-moral badness in any action-facet to be
checked suffices to make the action itself morally bad. Aquinas
would be giving a moral veto power to any damage done, intentionally or unintentionally, however slight. The Common Doctor
would be a moralistic utopian. To save him from such an obvious blunder, one will entertain the hypothesis that Aquinas did
not really mean to use his doctrine of evaluation, but meant to
replace it with something more sensible, like a scheme in which
the pre-moral goods are added up, the bads are subtracted, and
the action is morally good as long as it scores above zero; alternatively, one might entertain the hypothesis that the entire text
of I-II q. 18 was intended to cover a preliminary question only
(how to get from pre-moral marks to a pre-moral grade). Either
way, one will be insisting that Aquinas left the central question

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365

(how to get a moral grade) undiscussed. For then the undiscussed
question can be answered by the missing piece. Tacit "weights"
or "ranks" can serve to distinguish the greater from the lesser
evil, and then those actions which do plenty of pre-moral evil can
still get the moral grade of "good" in case the evil they do is "lesser evil" compared to the good they do, or compared to the damage their alternatives would do, or something of the kind.
Many people writing about ethics today believe that an action
evaluation must (in some such way) move from pre-moral marks
to a moral grade. Fuchs and McCormick believe it. Therefore
they supply the missing piece (the weights and measures) while
still claiming to speak for the Catholic tradition. Fuchs writes:
"Negative values are to be avoided ... and only for adequate reasons may they be actualized concurrently with relatively higher
and more urgent values." 47 Higher values? Then there must be
ranks. More urgent values? Then there must be weights.
McCormick writes: "If it is only object-end-circumstances
together that can yield a final moral evaluation, the implication
is that it is a proportion within the entire action between the values and disvalues that justifies the causing or permitting of the
disvalues. "' 8 McCormick is talking here about Fuchs's view, but
he states several times that (certain matters of clarity aside) he
shares the view. For both men (and for Janssens), moral evaluation is looking at all three facets simultaneously, and is weighing
the pre-moral goods and bads found in each, and is assigning the
moral grade "good" to the actions which sport a proportionate
surplus of pre-moral value over disvalue. This last and crucial
fact Aquinas merely neglected (in their view) to mention.
But let us consider another possibility altogether. Suppose the
controlling belief of the three recent moralists is wrong. Suppose
the evaluation of a human action has nothing to do with premoral goods and bads in general, because such things are not
even relevant except insofar as they are intended or chosen.4 9
Personal Responsibility, 141
Notes, 533.
49 Proportionalists
assume that cases become "hard" independently of intentions
because of sheer causal problems-as when some event involved in the execution of an
47

48

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WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

Suppose further that all humanly intendable goods are participations in certain basic forms of human flourishing. Suppose
that all genuine precepts therefore take either (a) the positive
form of directing one to choose an action in which one would be
pursuing one of these forms of flourishing intentionally or else (b)
the negative form of directing one not to choose actions which
are such that, by choosing them, one would be damaging one of
these forms of flourishing intentionally-so that no genuine precept directs one to count or weigh up pre-moral goods and bads
in general, and so none directs one to abstain from doing any sort
of pre-moral damage except in conjunction with some higherranked pre-moral good, and so none tells one to choose such
actions as sport the better proportion or surplus of such things.
In short, suppose that rational precept-formation simply does
not generate any such precept as Fuchs et al. want to introduce. 50
Then no step in an action evaluation procedure will be an application of such a precept, and so no prior step will need to be an
assessment of pre-moral goods and bads in general. Rather, an
evaluation will move from preliminary moral judgments to a
action causally damages one good in producing another. Thus Peter Knauer, "The
Hermeneutic Function of the Principle of Double Effect," in Charles E. Curran and
Richard A. McCormick, eds., Readings in Moral Theology No. 1 (New York: Paulist,
1979); Bruno Schiiller, "The Double Effect in Catholic Thought: A Revolution," in
Richard McCormick and Paul Ramsey, eds., Doing Evil to Achieve Good (Chicago:
Loyola University Press, 1978). Such authors ignore or dismiss the long and profound
tradition which says that cases become hard because of complications in distinguishing
between intending evil (choosing to produce evil in order to produce good, which is
always wrong) and foreseeing evil (choosing to produce good when there will be a bad
side-effect, which is not always wrong). See Germain Grisez, The Way of the Lord Jesus,
vol. 1, Christian Moral Principles (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1983), chapters
8H, 9, and 12F; John Finnis, "Object and Intention in Moral Judgments according to
Aquinas," The Thomist 55 (1991): 1-27; idem, "Intention and Side-Effects," in R. G. Frey
and C. Morris, eds., Liability and Responsibility (Cambridge University Press, 1991).
50 Germain Grisez has argued that such a precept is without application because the
"thing" it directs one to discover in a given case (the greater good, higher value, or better proportion) cannot be found in that case, nor in any case, because it is not "there" to
be discovered; the terms "greater good," "higher value," and "better proportion" have
neither clear sense nor objective reference; what they mean is rather a projection of the
agent's own subjective preferences. See "Against Consequentialism," American Journal
of Jurisprudence 23 (1978): 21-72; The Way of the Lord Jesus, vol. 1, Christian Moral
Principles, 141-172.

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final and also moral judgment. And then the account in
Aquinas's q. 18 will not seem incomplete. For a moral bad is a
conflict with a moral precept-and in Aquinas's account such
precepts identify the basic human goods and direct that they not
be violated, by anyone, so that through one's actions one will
"love" one's neighbor as one's self. A conflict with moral precept
in any action-facet to be checked will make the action itself
immoral. To see this, consider the project of throwing a party
with plenty of liquor. One ought to be a generous host (precept);
so the projected action is good in its genus ex objecto (preliminary moral judgment). But what if the invited guests are recovering alcoholics? One ought not subject vulnerable people to
needless dangers (precept). So there is an immorality under that
circumstance (preliminary moral judgment). Or what if circumstances are fine, but one's further purpose is to enroll the invitees
in a fraudulent business scheme? One ought not steal (precept).
So there is an immorality in that motive (preliminary moral
judgment). Would either immorality suffice to make the partyproject as a whole immoral (final judgment)? The account of
action evaluation in I-II q. 18 is about exactly such a question,
and the Common Doctor's answer is yes. Does it any longer seem
utopian? Is there any longer room, or need, for a missing piece?
FIRST CONCLUSION

Neither Janssens nor Fuchs nor McCormick offers a reasoned
case that action evaluation does take one from the pre-moral
goods and bads to the moral. They just assume that it does. They
import their assumption into a matter of Thomistic interpretation. Under the influence of their assumption, the obvious and
traditional sense of I-II, q. 18 is swept away, to be replaced by a
sense which cannot be made plausible without the further
importation of weights or ranks plus a controversial sort of precept to go with them.
Yet any alleged precept which directs one to realize a weighted good (the greater good or the better proportion of good over
evil) is inadmissible within the ethics of Aquinas. It cannot be a
missing piece of his doctrine, which he would have supplied, if

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WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

he had had occasion to do so, or which we can patch into his system as a part consistent with the remainder of it. For as seen
above, Aquinas has an account of good (and of evil as a privation of good) which depends upon a single, parsimonious
account of evaluation, applicable across the board to anything
whatsoever, including human actions. Formalizable entirely
with "all" and "some," this account allows no room for either a
ranking of criteria or a commensuration of values and disvalues.
If Aquinas is right in his parsimony, then no application of a precept such as Fuchs, McCormick, and Janssens want would be a
case of practical reasoning. For practical reasoning is reason
evaluating, while any such precept would direct one not to evaluate (precisely not to do what Aquinas calls evaluating) but
instead to do something else-e.g. to prefer, so as to realize the
results one prefers to realize. Thus, in order to support their
interpretation, Fuchs, Janssens, and McCormick need to import
a sense of "evaluate" which has no foundation in Aquinas, and
which is in fact inconsistent with his theory of the good.
SECOND CONCLUSION

Is a proportionalist sense of "evaluate" really so unassimilable
as all that? Every teacher with a grade book, who averages test
scores at the end of the semester, proves in practice that there is
a richer and more nuanced evaluation procedure than the one
Aquinas espoused. Would it not be possible to replace the
Common Doctor's procedure with another one-if not in the
name of "interpreting" him, then frankly in the name of improving on him? And could not one manage some such replacement
without destroying, perhaps, the larger architecture of
Thomism?
Let us begin the answer with an elementary distinction. The
"good" is what we reasonably desire, and the "endurable" is what
we put up with. What we reasonably desire is one thing, and
what we will find endurable is often another: 5 '
51 A teacher reasonably desires each of his students to acquire and display a mastery
of the course material-which is, in effect, to earn an A. Yet a teacher will find C work,
or even worse work, endurable.

AQUINAS ON THE EVALUATION OF HUMAN ACTIONS

369

Any evaluation procedure which uses in a significant way a
ranking of the criteria or a commensurating and averaging of the
features looked for is a procedure to find the endurable. For
what one reasonably desires is articulated in the whole set of criteria and would be realized in their joint satisfaction. The point
of ranking or averaging is rather to allow some criteria to fail of
satisfaction without losing more than one will find endurable. A
"richer and more nuanced" evaluation procedure, then, reconciles its user to a poorer outcome. That is its whole purpose. 12
Proportionalists insist on using such a procedure because they
think that good human actions differ from evil ones not as the
rational (in every relevant respect) differs from the irrational (in
some relevant respect) but as more differs from less along a scale,
somewhat as one student paper offers more correct answers than
another. Proportionalism (1) posits such a scale in pre-moral
damages, and then (2) imagines that worse actions differ from
better ones as more damage differs from less along this scale, and
then (3) imagines that moral goodness consists in an action's
being better than (or no worse than) its alternatives by that measure. Thus, if taken seriously as an account of moral evaluation,
proportionalism identifies what we reasonably desire with an
impossible ideal of doing no damage (including no unintentional
damage), and so directs us to distinguishes the unattainable good
from the attainable but endurable evil, and then directs us to
choose those actions which are endurable. In so doing, proportionalism detaches moral goodness from reasonable desirability
52 Insofar as a teacher's familiar grading system is used to determine who gets an A
and who does not, it measures whether all the teacher reasonably desires is present in the
student's work. But insofar as the grading system is used to determine who passes or
fails, it measures whether a mere portion of what is reasonably desired is there. This portion is what the teacher will find endurable (putting up with the absence of the rest). So
if the teacher used his grading system to determine only A's and non-A's, his procedure
would be substantially the same as Aquinas describes. By contrast, the use of numbers,
the weighting of answers so as to map them to larger or smaller numbers (of points taken
off), and the averaging of numbers-these features play a significant role only in discriminating less-than-good-but-still-endurable papers from those which are not even
endurable.

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WILLIAM H. MARSHNER

and attaches it instead to possible or preferable endurability.
Endurability becomes the ratio bani moralis.
If that move is accepted, "good" as applied to human actions
will not have the ratio bani which is applied elsewhere in
Thomism, and nothing of its axiological architecture will survive. For under St. Thomas's ratio, the "good" (of a being) has
what it takes to be the object of an inclination (in that being). In
the universe of natures, every being has its inclinations, but no
being strives, inclines, or tends merely to what it will endure.
Each strives for a flourishing. 53 In the larger architecture of
Thomism, man forms a part of the universe of natures. Man, too,
has appetitus, and his distinctively human mode of appetition is
reasonable desire. Therefore, in the larger architecture of
Thomism, man not only desires to flourish (rather than just
endure) but also finds his desire fulfilled when he abounds in
reasonableness. The distinctively human strength (virtus) is the
strength of character whereby a human can keep all of his or her
actions in accord with rationally derived precepts or can even
exceed those precepts in the direction of a God-given charity.
Hence by no stretch of the imagination will man flourish by
declining to abound in reason, e.g., by settling for an endurable
level of irrationality. Therefore, in the larger architecture of
Thomism, proportionalism directs man to act against his nature.
Proportionalism counsels a certain moderation in the pursuit of
virtue, and Thomism construes such moderation as unnatural
vice.

53 Darwin would agree. In the bruising competition of the species, each plant and animal secures its hold on life only by striving for more than it will find endurable. Survival
depends on striving to flourish.

ST. THOMAS'S FOURTH WAY AND CREATION
LAWRENCE DEWAN,

0.P

Dominican College of Philosophy and Theology
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

E

XPLAINING that what he means by "creating" is "causing things ex nihilo," Jacques Maritain, the renowned
twentieth-century interpreter of Thomas Aquinas, says:

... it is clear that this very fact, that things are created, is only known
by us once we know that the First Cause exists; consequently, we cannot make use of it in order to demonstrate the existence of that First
Cause. All we know from the outset is that things are caused. 1

This remark is made concerning all five ways. At the same time,
Maritain presents the five not only as "typically distinct" from
each other, but as
... distributed in a certain order in which the depth of thought and the
complexity of the discussion increase. In proportion as the mind delves
deeper into the world of experience in order to reach the first starting
point of its thinking, it discerns in the First Being more and more
meaningful aspects, and richer perspectives are disclosed to it. 2

Now, I agree entirely as to the depth of the starting-points and
the progressively richer perspectives,' but I disagree with
Maritain as to the role of the creature's createdness in leading to
the knowledge of God in the Fourth Way. How is it "clear" that
the createdness of things is only known once we know that a first
cause exists? How, in general, does the createdness of things
1 Maritain, Jacques, Approaches to God, tr. Peter O'Reilly (New York: Collier Books,
1962), 64; see Approches de Dieu (Paris: Alsatia, 1953), 79.-ln this paper, "ST'' and
"SCG" stand for Thomas Aquinas's Summa theologiae and Summa contra gentiles.
2 Maritain, Approaches, 63; Approches, 76-77.
3 See my paper, "The Number and Order of St. Thomas's FIVE WAYS", Downside
Review 92 (1974): 1-18

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LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P.

come to light, and why should it not come to light in things and
so lead to the knowledge of the existence of the proper cause of
such an effect? Indeed, can one really arrive at a knowledge of
the existence of a "First Being" without having seen, by priority,
the createdness of being?
Let us recall the general plan for a way to God, as presented
in the Summa theologiae. We are to reason from the existence of
an effect, better known to us than its proper cause, to the existence of that proper cause. 4 What is the effect, seen as an effect,
in the Fourth Way, and to what "proper" cause does it lead us?
The Fourth Way leads to a maximal being, which is cause of
being for ALL beings. The universality of this effect is to be
noted. The cause in question is viewed as the cause of a universal effect. Thomas does not content himself with saying that
there is a first being which is the cause of being for all other
beings. That, I would say, would not be wrong, but it would be
mild and apt to mislead. Rather, he "goes out of his way," one
might say, to establish that the cause of which he is speaking is
such as to dominate an entire field in what I would call a "formal" way. After reasoning to the actual existence of the maximal
being, by what is clearly an efficient/exemplar causal route,S he
adds that such a maximal item is the cause of all things which
belong to the same order. He then comes to God, named precisely as he wished to arrive at God in this Fourth Way, viz. as "cause
of being for all beings."
The importance of the incorporation of this point about the
universality of the effect can be better apprec\ated if one looks
back at the Summa contra gentiles. The SCG 1.13 argument
which corresponds to the Fourth Way does not mention the point
about universality at all. It uses Aristotle's Metaph. 2 only to
4 ST 1.2 .2: "From any effect one can demonstrate the existence of its proper cause, if,
of course, its effects are better known to us; because, since effects depend on a cause, the
effect being posited, the cause must, by priority, exist."
5 Here, I am in disagreement with Leo ]. Elders, The Philosophical Theology of St.
Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: Brill, 1990), 115, who sees in the first stage of the Fourth Way
only formal causality. See my review-article of this work, in Science et Esprit 44 (1992):
205-220. So also I am in disagreement with Louis Charlier, "Les cinq voies de saint
Thomas. Leur structure metaphysique," in L'Existence de Dieu (Tournai: Casterman,
1963), 213 n. 96.

ST. THOMAS'S FOURTH WAY AND CREATION

373

assure the move from truth to being, and then uses M etaph. 4 to
prove the existence of a maximally true thing. It is content to
conclude to God as to a maximal being. 6 Then, in SCG 2, in the
presentation of God as creator, Thomas proceeds very gradually.
Chapter 6 only goes as far as saying that God is cause of being
for some things other than himself. Chapter 15 goes on to show
that everything other than God comes from him. Now, ch. 15 is
well known precisely as the place where one can see the fundamental "Fourth Way" thinking more thoroughly worked out. We
have an argument which concludes that God, as maximal being,
is the cause of all the items of which "being" (ens) is predicated. 7
What Thomas Aquinas has done in the Fourth Way, as contrasted with its SCG 1.13 counterpart, is to add the considerations worked out in SCG 2.15. Now, it is a fact that in SCG 2
Thomas does not use the term "creation" (creatio) until he has
added 2.16, viz., that God used no pre-existent matter in the universal production. This is of course quite in accord with serious
ecclesiastical usage, which links the vocabulary of "creation"
with the formula: "to introduce something into being without
any pre-existing matter." 8 However, the omni-penetrating character of the proper effect, i.e., its peculiar universality, is already
abundantly clear in 2.15. The point about matter is no more than
a corollary, though one requiring heavy insistence because of the
problem of the difficulty for the human mind to take up the
properly metaphysical standpoint. There is also the enormous
contextual weight of the authority, at that point in the thirteenth
century, of the remarks of Averroes at the beginning of the In
Phys. 8." One can see the presence of this problem, not only in
SCG 2.16, the first paragraphs of which take the trouble to argue
SCG 1.13 (ed. Pera, #114).
See especially SCG 2.15 (# 924).
8 See SCG 2.16 (# 944) and 2.17 (# 946). It is interesting that in# 944 Thomas uses the
word producere rather than the customary facere. At ST! .45 .1 sed contra and 1.45.2 sed
contra, we see the more usual formula. Thomas criticizesfacere in ST 1.45.2 ad 2, and
already at SCG 2.37 (# 1130 e and f), we see why philosophers who saw the createdness
of things might refuse to call it a "making" lfactio ).
9 See Averroes's remarks in his commentary on Aristotle's Physics, where he criticizes the Islamic teachers for their doctrine of generation where there is no matter
involved: Averroes, In Phys. 8.4 (ed. Venice, 1562, t. IV, fol. 34lrC-F).
6

7

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LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P.

the mere possibility of production without use of matter, but also
in the approach taken in ST 1.44.2, where the history of the
human mind regarding modes of production is given great
prominence (it is not presented in SCG 2 until chapter 3 7, on
duration and creation). The ex professo reply to Averroes, in
Thomas's own In Phys., accuses him precisely of failing to view
being universally, falling to take the properly metaphysical
standpoint, failing to rise to a knowledge of the cause of "that
which is, inasmuch as it is that which is" (ens inquantum est
ens). 10
In fact, the whole positive issue concerning God as cause even
of matter is contained in one tiny paragraph of SCG 2.16, which
simply points out that matter, after all, does have being attributed to it. 11 In ST 1.44.2, similarly, the point is that, once one has
really risen to the properly metaphysical outlook, the causing of
matter by God has already fallen into place.12
What is remarkable about the Fourth Way is its capacity to
combine the formal universality of the aspect of things taken
under consideration with the manifestation of the effect status of
that aspect. It differs from the Third Way in this, that in the latter the features considered were differences of being, i.e., the possible and the necessary. The effect character was first seen in the

10 Thomas, In. Phys. 8.2 (ed. Maggiolo, 974 [4]-975 [S]). For the vocabulary of causality with regard to ens inquantum est ens, see especially 975: "sed si fit totum ens, quod
est fieri ens inquantum est ens, oportet quod fiat ex penitus non ente: si tamen et hoc
debeat dicijieri." Here, we see once more Thomas's reserve on the wordsjieri and the
like as regards creation.
II SCG 2.16 (# 943).
12 ST 1.44.2 (ed. Ottawa 281al8-26) and ad 2. This is also the line taken in the direct
criticism of Averroes in Thomas's In Phys. 8.2 (ed. Maggiolo, 974): "Nor is [Averroes's
contention] in accordance with Aristotle's intended meaning. For he [Aristotle] proves in
Metaph. 2 that that which is maximally true and maximally a being [maxime ens] is the
cause of being for all existents [causa essendi omnibus existentibus]: hence, it follows that
the very being in potency [esse in potential, which prime matter has, is derived from the
first principle of being [essendi], which is the maximal being [maxime ens]."
Also of considerable interest for the general point of this paper, is the approach taken
in Thomas's Compendium theologiae 1.68-69. In ch. 68, the conclusions are practically
verbally identical with the conclusion of the Fourth Way; then, the first lines of ch. 69
speak of this already described role of God as "creating": in creando (ed. Leonine, ch. 69,
line 1).

ST. THOMAS 'S FOURTH WAY AND CREATION

3 75

possible, and was then extended to the necessary almost merely
by hypothesis. 13 In the Fourth Way, we have moved beyond such
"differences" to consider the form itself in its universality-we
consider goodness, truth, nobility or perfection, and being. They
are what Thomas calls, on at least one occasion, "universal form"
<Jonna universalis). 14 They are maximally communicable: they
"get into everything," we might say. Their universality is not
merely "extensive" but "intensive." They are common, however,
"according to priority and posteriority." They present themselves
in gradation. This is their typicalfonnal appearance. 15
It is this gradational formal unity, which as available to our
observation remains indefinite in its ascent towards the more
and more perfect, that constitutes the properly metaphysical
field of inquiry. On the one hand, it is a "nature with its proper
differences" (the possible and the necessary, or, perhaps better,
potency and act). On the other hand, it is an effect which elicits
the question concerning its cause (i.e., it is a gradation of indefinite extent towards the top).
We should keep in mind that in his sermons on the Apostles'
Creed given at Naples in Lent, 1273, as regards the existence of
God, Thomas relies on purpose vs. chance, considerations related most obviously to the Fifth Way; this is a markedly "providential" line of thinking: God as cause of directed movement. On
13 I say "almost," since Thomas has in view, not merely the Aristotelian theory of the
heavens, but, more metaphysically, his own doctrine of the incorruptibility of the human
soul.-On the possible and the necessary described as "differences" proper to thatwhich-is, see Thomas, In Periherm. 1.14 (ed. Leonine [new edition, 1989), lines 438-454);
in Thomas's In Metaph., 6.3 (1220), they are called "accidents," obviously in the sense of
properties; for presentations of the necessary and the contingent as the "perfect" and the
"imperfect" in the order of being, see ST 1. 79.9.ad 3; for the incorruptible and the corruptible as "grades" of being, esse, see ST 1.48.2 (305a41-45); see also Compendium theologiae 1.74.
14 See ST 1.19.6 (136bl).
15 See, among many possible texts, Thomas 's Quaestiones de anima l.ad 17: " ...
though being [esse) is most formal of all [formalissimum inter omnia], still it is also most
communicable [maxime communicabile], though it is not communicated in by inferiors
and superiors in the same measure. Thus, the body participates in the esse of the soul,
but not in such a noble way as does the soul" (ed. James H. Robb [Toronto: Pontifical
Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1968), 63 ).

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LAWRENCE DEWAN, O.P.

the other hand, when the createdness of reality is to be
addressed, he immediately uses the image of the house in winter,
with a little warmth felt at the front door, greater warmth as one
goes inside, even greater warmth as one advances to the next
room-with the judgment that afurnace radiating all this heat is
present somewhere within. The listener is urged to consider
observable reality as graded. In that way, the createdness of reality will be seen. 16
Reflection on the idea of a "cause of being as being" should
lead us to see why the Fourth Way takes the form it does.
Metaphysics has for its proper field of study being as being. Is
this a unified field for which one can point to a proper cause? 11
The doctrine of the nature of uni vocal causality (dogs producing dogs and cats cats) should be taken into consideration. A univocal cause presupposes the common nature which it communicates in causing individuals of that nature. The dogs which
reproduce are not causes of doghood as doghood, but of doghood-in-this-or-that. To say that they cause doghood would be to
make them causes of themselves, and thus prior to themselves,
a contradiction in terms. The cause of doghood as doghood must
have a nature nobler than doghood.
Since doghood is a particular nature, it is not necessary that it
belong to everything, and so there is no problem in the concepHowever, what is one to
tion of a cause of doghood as
say of "cause of being as being" ? Clearly, such a cause must have
a nature nobler than being. Or else, "being" does not name a
nature having the kind of community which doghood has. And
one will see the possibility of being's being an effect insofar as
one sees the sort of unity it has. Having a unity according to pri16 Thomas, In Symbolum Apostolorum expositio, in Opuscula Theologica, vol. 2, ed.
R. Spiazzi, O.P. (Rome/Turin: Marietti, 1954), 193-217. Concerning the existence of God,
see# 869; concerning creation, see # 878.
17 All five ways are metaphysical, but the Fourth is primary in this regard. All reduce
to the priority of act over potency, and so to the magis and minus as regards the ratio
essendi. See St. Thomas, De substantiis separatis c. 7, lines 47-52 (Opera omnia t. 40,
Rome: Ad Sanctae Sabinae, 1969): "Manifestum est autem quod cum ens per potentiam
et actum dividatur, quod actus est potentia perfectior et magis habet de ratione essendi;
non enim simpliciter esse dicimus quod est in potentia, sed quod est actu" (emphasis
added).

ST. THOMAS'S FOURTH WAY AND CREATION

377

ority and posteriority, or the more and the less, it reveals both the
possibility and the need for a cause; and that cause will be "a
being" in a distinctive way, a maximal in its line. 18
Maritain says that the Five Ways consider causedness in a
general way, without specifying either conservational or creational causality. His interest in this distinction arises from the
fact that, as Thomas teaches, only God can create, whereas creatures can take part in that causing of being which is conservation. Thus, from a creationist vantage-point, there are no "causal
series." There is only the one creative cause providing a hierarchy of effects. On the other hand, from a conservational point of
view, one speaks quite truly of causal hierarchy. 19
While all this is true, I do not believe it should lead one to see
the Fourth Way as taking a sort of abstract or neutral position
vis-a-vis conservation and creation. Rather, what is essential and
primary in the picture is creation, the causing of being in all its
universality. Participation in conservation is only intelligible as
regards a hierarchy among particular natures as such. For us,
making our intellectual journey starting from what sensibly
appears and going to the intelligible interiors of things, the radiation of an influence is causally hierarchical: we grasp the diffusion of warmth as having a structure such that the immediately
preceding part is giving warmth to what is more distant from the
original source. We see the act/potency structure inasmuch as we
see that, in a heat-distribution event originating at point A, and
radiating through B to terminate in C, B would be warm even if
C were cut off from it, but C would not be warm if B were cut
off from C. So also, we understand substance/accident proportion in such a way that, as regards their proper modes or measures of being, substance can be without accident, but accident
cannot be except by the power of substance.
What this ultimately leads to, however, is the firm grasp of
potency and act as modes or measures of being, each in itself
18 See my paper," 'Something Rather Than Nothing' and St. Thomas' Third Way,"
in Science et Esprit 39 (1987): 71-80, especially 72-73.
To call the cause of beings as beings "a being" requires the constrnction of a somewhat, though not altogether, new notion of being: see ST 1.13.S (81a38-48).
19 Maritain, Approaches, 64; Approches, 77-79.

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having a nature such that potency is proportionate to act. In the
Fourth Way, the consideration of "the more" and "the less" as
regards the good, the noble, etc., is not of one being derived from
the other, but of both of them as belonging to the same order.
And it is this rather "spartan" ontological consideration which is
properly operative in the Fourth Way. It is not so much a vision
of a hierarchy of causes as it is of an unmistakable sign of single
causal origin. As such, it has the structure appropriate to the
vision of causality of being as being. The entire "more and less"
zone of a less/more/most structure is grasped as having the status of potency, i.e., of an effect, and thus requires the positing of
the one cause (act), i.e., a unique level of being, viz., maximal
being.
To sum up, Maritain speaks the way he does because he is
thinking of causal chains in all the Five Ways. If one is working
with chains of heterogeneous causes, then the lower ones are not
creative. What we know are particular causes. Thus, what we
know at the start is that some things are caused by others, and
the creative aspect is not clear. However true this may be of the
other Ways, it is not "clear" concerning the Fourth. The reason is
that our view there is of a hierarchy proper to beings as beings,
and the effect whose proper cause is discovered is being as being.
Thus, it is the createdness of things which is leading us to affirm
the existence of the cause in question.

BENEDICT, THOMAS, OR AUGUSTINE?
THE CHARACTER OF MACINTYRE'S NARRATIVE
CHRISTOPHER

J. THOMPSON

University of St. Thomas
St. Paul, Minnesota

Introduction

I

N HIS Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry 1 Alasdair
Macintyre continues (with certain modifications) in a similar trajectory established in two earlier works, After Virtue
and Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Against postEnlightenment portraits of moral reasoning, he consistently
defends a conception of practical rationality which entails the
recognition of tradition, authority, and narrative as constitutive
components of any rationally determined moral enquiry. Despite
the consistent appeal to tradition, there is a significant development within Macintyre's reflections regarding the pre-eminent
resources we are to draw upon. At the end of After Virtue we are
asked to await a "doubtless very different" St. Benedict. In
Whose Justice? Which Rationality? the Thomistic tradition
emerges as the superior form of moral enquiry. While Thomism
maintains a pre-eminence in Three Rival Versions of Moral
Enquiry, I suggest that there is an increasingly Augustinian element emerging within his analysis and that this dimension
underlies Macintyre 's efforts in ways not previously specified.
There is a warrant, then, for seeing within Augustine's efforts
the paradigmatic "narrative form of moral enquiry."
1 Alasdair Macintyre,
Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1990). Hereafter RV.

379

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J. THOMPSON

That Augustine figures in Macintyre's reception of the
Thomistic tradition is not necessarily striking, for part of what
fuels Macintyre's increasing enthusiasm for St. Thomas is precisely the latter's capacity to draw upon the best of the
Augustinian tradition of enquiry. Beyond what Macintyre himself has overtly recognized as Augustine's contribution to the
thought of St. Thomas, however, I suggest that elements of
Augustine's thought directly influence much of Macintyre 's own
attempts at restoring a kind of tradition-guided enquiry. This
Augustinian strain, moreover, not only serves to highlight features of Macintyre's analysis of Thomism, but also brings to
light certain theological presuppositions essential to the kind of
moral enquiry Macintyre hopes to retrieve. The character of
Macintyre's narrative, then, leads us to St. Augustine.
In After Virtue it is largely the Aristotelian tradition of enquiry
which he defends against rival post-Enlightenment theories of
morality. He argues that the analytic, linguistic, and phenomenological tools brought to bear upon the task of formulating a
coherent conception of the moral life and moral enquiry have
failed miserably, principally for two reasons. The first is that
such contemporary efforts have neglected to realize that moral
enquiry is embedded in a broader context of social practices,
practices which are inevitably historically conditioned; thus a
failure to recognize the historically situated character of moral
enquiry distorts that account. The second reason is related to the
first in that failure to acknowledge the historical character of
such enquiry has resulted in a failure to recognize that much of
our contemporary terms and tools of moral analysis are remnants from previous contexts of enquiry which are no longer
mutually agreed upon nor recognized as relevant.'
What has been lost, among other things, is the teleological
metaphysics which serves as the context for nearly two millennia
in the West. Uproot the stock of ethical norms from this tradition
2 For this notion of "moral remnants" surviving beyond the historical contexts in
which they emerge, see Alasdair Macintyre, "Ought," Chapter 15 in Against the Self
Images of the Age (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 136-156, though in a different context and with very different effect.

THE CHARACTER OF MACINTYRE 'S NARRATIVE

381

of enquiry and what remains is simply an amalgam of unrelated
moral demands-some divinely sanctioned, some rooted in the
passions, some the outburst of emotive whimsy-yet all lacking
any coherent exposition.' The only hope is to retrieve something
of the Aristotelian tradition of moral enquiry in which the notion
of the virtues and the virtuous human person entails a conception of the moral life as bearing a narrative unity, a teleologically ordered whole in which one's actions bear an intrinsic unity
and significance to the extent they complement one's telos. The
narrative unity ascribed to the living of the good life is the narrative unity of a quest-a quest, it turns out, for the good life
itself. And hence: "The good life for man is the life spent in seeking for the good life for man, and the virtues necessary for the
seeking are those which will enable us to understand what more
and what else the good life for man is." 4
Central to Maclntyre's retrieval of the Aristotelian heritage is
the notion of the narrative quality of the moral life. What the
concept "narrative" brings to moral analysis is the notion of the
human person's life as an ordered, intelligible unity. Actions performed leave an enduring impression on the agent. Furthermore,
this intrinsic, incremental sense of development toward (or aversion from) our telos presupposes the fundamental notions of
accountability, character, identity, and virtue. 5 To be a moral
3 Max L. Stackhouse argues that Macintyre's critique simply "reasserts a teleological
test, which any attempt to define the issues of morality in deontological terms [i.e.,
Kantian morality] would automatically fail." But this suggests a kind of extrinsic criticism. Macintyre's thesis is not simply that Enlightenment rationality (and Immanuel
Kant specifically) is not teleological; rather, in jettisoning the notion of a teleologically
ordered self the Enlightenment project is intrinsically incoherent. It is this sense of the
intrinsic incoherence of the Enlightenment project which fuels Chapter 5 in After Virtue,
"Why the Enlightenment Project Had to Fail." Max L. Stackhouse, "An Overview and
Evaluation," Religious Studies Review 18/3 Ouly, 1992): 204. Hereafter, Overview.
4 Alasdair Macintyre, After Virtue, 2d ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1984), 204. Hereafter, AV.
5 " It is important to notice," Macintyre says, "that I am not arguing that the concepts
of narrative or of intelligibility or of accountability are more fundamental than that of
personal identity. The concepts of narrative, intelligibility and accountability presuppose the applicability of the concept of personal identity, just as it presupposes their
applicability and just as indeed each of these three presupposes the applicability of the
two others. The relationship is one of mutual presupposition" (AV, 218).

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J. THOMPSON

agent is to provide an intelligible account, a coherent narrative
of the history of one's actions such that praise or blame, reward
or punishment can be justly ascribed to one's self as a whole.
The social contexts in which this kind of narrative enquiry
into the moral life can be sustained are few. Thus at the end of
After Virtue the reader is admonished to adopt a kind of isolationism, to seek "the construction of local forms of community
within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be
sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon
us." 6 We are to await, Macintyre advises, the arrival of a newer,
"doubtless very different," St. Benedict.
In both Whose Justice? Which Rationality? and Three Rival
Versions of Moral Enquiry Macintyre continues his critique of
Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment
versions of moral
enquiry, but the isolationist theme is not present in these later
works. The persistent interminability of moral debate and the
apparent incommensurability of rival traditions of enquiry no
longer present an impasse, but an invitation to confrontation
with alternative modes of enquiry. The function of narrative in
these later contexts is more inclusive than its earlier version. It
takes on a more systematic quality of entire traditions of rationality (as opposed to single individuals) which serves as the
foundation from which his later critiques emerge. "What the
Enlightenment made us for the most part blind to and what we
now need to recover," Macintyre contends, "is a conception of
rational enquiry as embodied in a tradition, a conception according to which the standards of rational justification themselves
emerge from and are part of a history in which they are vindicated by the way in which they transcend the limitations of and
provide remedies for the defects of their predecessors within the
history of that same tradition." 7
The increasing significance of tradition within Maclntyre's
analysis is not simply the emergence of a historical sensitivity.
Tradition in these latter contexts bears apologetic weight as well,
6 AV, 245.

7 Alasdair Macintyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University
of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 7. Hereafter, WJWR.

THE CHARACTER OF MACINTYRE'S NARRATIVE

383

for "to justify is to narrate how the argument has gone so far." 8
In these later contexts narrative bears the added dimension of a
larger tradition of enquiry in which, if an interlocutor is said to
justify a conclusion reasonably, he or she must show how such a
thesis advances the discussion in a way that accounts for the best
of what has gone before. This is the primary sense in which to
justify is to narrate, and it signals within Macintyre's work an
increasingly systematic sense of the function of narrative as integral to rational justification. Without losing the sense of the
importance of viewing one's life as a narrative whole, later uses
of the notion of narrative illustrate the developmental, progressive sense of moral enquiry. In Three Rival Versions of Moral
Enquiry, Macintyre brings both the personal and the systematic
dimensions of narrative to his reflections. Since this is his latest
work to date, I intend to focus upon this work, though it should
be noted that it continues an analysis-as extensive as it is erudite-that began in his earliest works.
In addition to Macintyre's optimism concerning confrontations between rival versions of enquiry, one obvious development in his thought is the increasing dependence on St. Thomas
and, as will be shown, St. Augustine. 9 In After Virtue, the two are
treated only cursorily while in both Whose Justice? Which
Rationality? and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, he dedicates entire sections to each. It is not unfair to say, then, that
alongside his developments concerning dialogue with rival traditions and the systematic employment of narrative, there is a
decidedly, if inadvertent, Augustinian component which progressively emerges in Macintyre 's reflections.
I am well aware that it is Thomism and not Augustinianism
which Macintyre espouses in his latest works. Still, an investigation of the place of Augustine within his thought is not unwarWJWR, 8.
In the postscript to the second edition of After Virtue, Macintyre recognizes certain
lacunae in his analysis. In the Preface to Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, he openly
admits to misreading St. Thomas in his earlier work. In this sense his later efforts answer
a number of charges leveled against his earlier work. See, for example, Thomas Hibbs,
"Macintyre, Tradition, and the Christian Philosopher," The Modern Schoolman 68
(March, 1991): 211-223.
8
9

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CHRISTOPHER

J. THOMPSON

ranted, and this is so for two reasons. First, it is a chief contribution of Macintyre's reading of St. Thomas to have brought to
light how St. Thomas 's achievements include incorporating the
best of the Augustinian tradition. Thomas 's genius precisely lies,
according to Macintyre, in justifying (i.e., narrating) how his
own synthesis relies on the best of what the tradition of enquiry
had supplied thus far. Given Macintyre's portrait of St. Thomas
as incorporating the best of the Augustinian tradition, it is particularly relevant to investigate the place of Augustine within
this schema.
The second reason pertains to Macintyre's own methodology.
As indicated earlier, one of the central conditions of the kind of
rational enquiry Macintyre seeks to advance is the ability to narrate how the progress of that enquiry thus far leads to the kind
of theses presently advanced. To justify is to narrate both how
the tradition leads to the kind of synthesis put forward, and how
one's present thesis preserves the best of what has gone before.
To engage in this kind of justification, however, means that the
divisions between the historical and the systematic become
blurred. This blending of the historical and systematic, the taking on the role of both chronicler and advocate, can make for
some difficulty in interpreting Macintyre 's efforts, since it is not
always clear if Macintyre is simply "telling" the unfolding of
events or advocating a development of the story thus far. On the
other hand, it may well be that such difficulties are rooted in our
inability to keep in mind precisely what it is that he is advancing: namely, that to advocate is to narrate. And to seek an
objective, perspectiveless "telling" of the story before one can
advocate a position is to adopt the kind of Enlightenment rationality he seeks to reject. To advocate a position as rationally
superior to its rival contenders is to narrate how that position
both continues within the history of the tradition of discussions
thus far and corrects any defects within those traditions in ways
not previously possible. Macintyre's appeal to the Augustinian
10

10 See also J.M. Soskice, "Myths, Metaphors and Narrative Theology," Proceedings:
Seventh European Conference on Philosophy of Religion. Utrecht University, 1988; cited
in Wentzel van Huyssteen, "Narrative Theology: An Adequate Paradigm for
Theological Reflection?" Hervormde teologiese studies 4514 (1989): 767-777.

THE CHARACTER OF MACINTYRE 's NARRATIVE

385

tradition is not simply of historical interest. It is to build the conditions for a systematic defense of a certain vision of moral
enquiry.
Rival Versions of Enquiry
As the title of his latest work indicates, Macintyre identifies
three rival versions of moral enquiry, each with its own account
as to what constitutes the subject of morality, and each competing in various degrees for allegiance within the contemporary
culture, and specifically in the modern liberal university. The
"Encyclopaedist method,'' so called because of its similarities to
methods of enquiry exemplified by the compilers of the Ninth
Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, has among its features
"a guiding presupposition of thought that substantive rationality is unitary, that there is a single, if perhaps complex, conception of what the standards and the achievements of rationality
are, one which every educated person can without too much difficulty be brought to agree in acknowledging." 11
What such a unitary method seeks among other things is to
free itself from the imposed religious dogmas of the past, 12 especially in the areas of ethics and natural theology. In this regard
morality is seen as its own distinct discipline of enquiry, utterly
unrelated to any broader considerations of social and historical
context and certainly free of the distortions of religious and
metaphysical considerations. The virtue of the Encyclopaedist
mind was, then, (and is to the extent that remnants of such a
methodology still survive in the modern liberal university) to
adopt a "studied neutrality,'' to let "facts speak for themselves"
with regard to the issues at hand, and to take on the persona of
that particularly modern fiction, the impartial observer. "The
Encyclopaedist,'' Macintyre says, "aims at providing timeless,
universal, and objective truths as his or her conclusions, but
aspires to do so by reasoning which has from the outset the same
properties. From the outset all reasoning must be such as would
be compelling to any fully rational person whomsoever.
II

12

RV, 14.
RV, IS.

386

CHRISTOPHER J. THOMPSON

Rationality, like truth, is independent of time, place and historical circumstances." 13
According to Macintyre, the problem of the Encyclopaedists
is not so much that they seek timeless, universal truths. The
problem lies in the portrait of the process of rational enquiry
adopted; they took it for granted "that all rational persons conceptualize data in one and the same way and that therefore any
attentive and honest observer, unblinded and undistracted by
the prejudices of the prior commitment to belief, would report
the same data, the same facts, [and] that it is the data thus
reported and characterized which provide enquiry with its subject matter." 14
Yet, while truth may be timeless, the pursuit of it, Macintyre
argues, is inevitably historically conditioned. Every rational tradition of enquiry will have certain characteristics:
It will have some contingent historical starting point in some situation
in which some set of established beliefs and belief-presupposing practices, perhaps relatively recently established, perhaps of long standing,
were put in question, sometimes by being challenged from some alternative point of view, sometimes because of an incoherence identified in
the beliefs, sometimes because of a discovered resourcelessness in the
face of some theoretical or practical problem, sometimes by some combination of these. So the beliefs will be further articulated, amended,
modified, and added to in order that, in a newer, revised form, they
may provide some answer to the question thus raised and in that form
transcend the limitation of their earlier version.
From then on a tradition will move through stages, at each of which
a justification of the scheme of belief as a whole could be supplied in
terms of its rational superiority to the formulations of its predecessor,
and that predecessor in turn justified by a further reference backward.
But that availability of this type of reference from the present to the
past is not by itself sufficient to constitute a tradition of rational
enquiry. It is necessary also that a certain continuity of directedness
emerge so that theoretical and practical goals to guide enquiry are formulated and at later stages reformulated. 15

This failure to recognize the historical condition of its own
RV, 65.
RV, 16-17.
15 RV, 116.
13

14

THE CHARACTER OF MACINTYRE'S NARRATIVE

387

enquiry, indeed of all enquiry, prevented the Encyclopaedist
from providing a genuine account of that tradition's "rational
superiority to the formulations of its predecessors." For part of
the task of exhibiting one's perspective as rationally superior to
its rival is to provide an account of the history of the enquiry in
such a way that both the development and defects of previous
attempts can be adequately accounted for. And yet it was precisely this notion of progression and development from previous
enquiry which the Encyclopaedist, according to Macintyre,
ignored. "So," he says, "from the standpoint of the
Encyclopaedist no tradition is rational qua tradition; a tradition
is and can be in respect of rationality no more than a milieu in
which methods and principles are formulated, for it is only methods and principles to which rational appeal can be made." 16 The
historical context and tradition of enquiry leading up to the present discussion are accidentally related to the principles
advanced and play no constitutive role in the development of an
argument.
What such a tradition of enquiry lacked was the possibility of
even recognizing "that commitment to some particular theoretical or doctrinal standpoint may be a prerequisite for-rather
than a barrier to-an ability to characterize data in a way which
will enable enquiry to proceed." This inability to recognize
either the significance of the contingent and historical character
of enquiry or the significance of any pre-theoretical commitments to rational enquiry-commitments which help identify
the subject matter of the enquiry and characterize how progress
could be both identified and pursued-left the Encyclopaedist
tradition particularly vulnerable to the second mode of moral
enquiry, what Macintyre describes as the Genealogical mode.
The Genealogical mode, so named from Friedrich Nietzsche's
Zur Genealogie der Moral, sought in the latter half of the nineteenth century (and seeks in some current trends in postModernist thought) to unmask the apparent posture of universality and impartiality as a disguised will to power. Macintyre

CHRISTOPHER].

388

THOMPSON

shows that in Nietzsche's sustained attack upon the academic
modes of enquiry, modes aptly embodied in the Ninth Edition of
the Encyclopedia Britannica, what emerged was the notion: "To
think and speak of truth, knowledge, duty and right ... is to give
evidence of membership in a culture in which lack of self-knowledge has been systematically institutionalized." 11 According to
the Genealogist what is lacking is the recognition that to desire a
truth that is at once fixed, determinate, universal, and bindingthe kind of truth pursued by the Encyclopaedist-is "an unrecognized motivation serving an unacknowledged purpose." That
purpose turns out to be what Nietzsche was later to characterize as the will-to-power. 18
Yet it is not simply lack of self-knowledge with which the
Genealogist charges the Encyclopaedist. The Genealogist sought
to eradicate from the tradition of enquiry its implicit realism.
Macintyre continues: "Epistemologically what this lack of selfknowledge and the arguments which are assembled in its support sustain [according to the Genealogist] is a blindness to the
multiplicity of perspectives from which the world can be viewed
and to the multiplicity of idioms by means of which it can be
characterized; or rather, a blindness to the fact that there is a
multiplicity of perspectives and idioms, but no single world
which they are of or about." 1"
Moreover, Nietzsche's sustained attack upon the implicit realism signaled a much deeper critique than simply illustrating the
lack of awareness of foundations and methodology. Nietzsche's
point is rather "that that conception of rationality, indeed the
conception of language and its mode of application to the world
presupposed by that conception, is itself theological." 20 And so
the critique of the Genealogist is that "realism is inherently theistic. mi Realism is inherently theistic, Macintyre concurs, in that
it "has as its core the view that the world is what it is indepenRV, 35.
RV, 35.
19 RV, 35-36.
20 RV, 67.
17

IS

21

RV, 67.

THE CHARACTER OF MACINTYRE'S NARRATIVE

389

dently of human thinking and judging and desiring and willing.
There is a single true view of the world and of its ordering, and
for human judgments to be true and for human desiring and
willing to be aimed at what is genuinely good they must be in
conformity with that divinely created order. "22 It is this inherent
connection between realism and theism which makes the former
the target of the Genealogist's attacks.
Thus to the extent that the Genealogist accuses the
Encyclopaedist of harboring an unexpressed realism-a realism
which in turn depends upon the notion of a Creator-to that
extent the Genealogist seeks to eradicate the Judeo-Christian
tradition. This accounts, according to Macintyre, for the rather
vituperative attacks upon the Judeo-Christian tradition within
Nietzsche's corpus, attacks which have no less vitality in some
contemporary post-modern circles. Thus, what both the
Genealogist and the Encyclopaedist have in common is the
notion that belief (specifically religious belief) must be abandoned in order to clear the way for a more radical critique and
advancement of their respective methodologies.
The Genealogist is able to turn the corner on the
Encyclopaedist in that he or she holds the mirror to the
Encyclopaedist. Under such conditions of self-exposure it
becomes clear that the Encyclopaedic methodology, despite the
claims to universality and impartiality, is simply one more historically contingent method of enquiry. From this vantage the
Encyclopaedist's position collapses under the weight of self-contradiction, for according to its own standards of rationality, standards which entail the refusal of any historically contingent
starting point, it is unable to present itself as rational. It thus
emerges as grounded not in the universal canons of rationality
adopted by all rational agents qua rational, but is simply another outburst of an a-rational belief in the self-declared autonomy
of impartial, universal, objectivist rationality. It discovers itself
to be precisely what it sought to eliminate.
The victory for the Genealogist is short-lived, however, for
two reasons. In the first place, the Genealogist apparently fails to
22

RV, 67.

CHRISTOPHER

390

J. THOMPSON

recognize that insofar as the Genealogical critique had exhibited
the historical contingency and the arbitrary expression of a
veiled will-to-power on the part Encyclopaedist methodology, it
has defeated simply one method of enquiry and has in no way
closed off once and for all the possibilities of other rational traditions of enquiry. As Macintyre says in After Virtue, Nietzsche
becomes "the moral philosopher if the only alternatives to
Nietzsche's moral philosophy turn out to be those formulated by
the philosophers of the Enlightenment and their successors. "23
Just as the pretensions of the Encyclopaedists prevent them
from conceiving (let alone engaging in dialogue with) any substantive alternative traditions, so the Genealogists are unable to
recognize alternative traditions to their own methods of analysis.
Each tradition suffers from its own version of myopia: the one
through a kind of reductionism in which all contenders were
submitted to a scrutiny on grounds other than their own, the
other through a certain obsession with attacking those reductionist, objectivist, and universalist agendas.
The other limitation of the Genealogist, according to
Macintyre's analysis, pertains to the conception of the self. To
return to my analogy of the mirror, one must hold it long enough
and consistently enough in order for the Encyclopaedist to see
himself or herself in the light of the Genealogist's critique. To do
so, however, requires the kind of enduring, unified self, the permanent "I" of any sustained conversation. If the Genealogist
seeks to emancipate its hearers from the shackles of objectivist
thought, then it itself must take on an enduring persona, at least
as long as it takes to complete the task. As Macintyre argues:
"The function of genealogy as emancipatory from deception and
self-deception thus requires the identity and continuity of the self
that was deceived and the self that is and is to be. 1124 And yet it is
precisely these supposed metaphysical chimeras which the
Genealogist seeks to dismiss.
"Conversations are extended in time," Macintyre argues. And
this, in turn, demands that those engaged in conversation have
23
24

AV, 114.
RV, 214.

THE CHARACTER OF MACINTYRE'S NARRATIVE

391

certain qualities. Among them is some rudimentary notion of a
personal identity, an identity which entails the notion of accountability. "To be accountable in and for enquiry," Macintyre notes,
"is to be open to having to give an account of what one has either
said or done, and then to having to amplify, explain, defend, and,
if necessary, either modify or abandon that account, and in this
latter case to begin the work of supplying a new one." 25 The progressive character of enquiry and conversation demands, then,
some notion of an enduring personal identity. And it is precisely
the Genealogical suspension of this requirement by its modern
adherents (principally, and in varying degrees, by Michel
Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jacques Derrida) which forfeits
any substantive role in the conversation. "So we might conclude,'' Macintyre says. "that there is no way of posing questions
about accountability or, correspondingly, about the identity,
unity, and continuity of the self within a genealogical framework. "26
And yet, if there is no way to attribute accountability, there is
no good reason to consider the Genealogical tradition as a viable
contender among theoretical projects, vying for allegiance within the contemporary academy. "Make of the genealogist's self
nothing but what genealogy makes of it,'' Macintyre asserts,
"and that self is dissolved to the point at which there is no longer
a continuous genealogical project." 27
Thus the Encyclopaedist and Genealogist stand at loggerheads, each with his or her own insulated notions as to what constitutes critical enquiry, and yet each is unable to confront the
other in any kind of substantive way. To the Encyclopaedist, the
Genealogist appears as one outside the canons of rationality,
canons which emerge from an analysis of rationality free of any
impediment of contingent beliefs. To the Genealogist, the
RV, 201.
RV, 208.
27 RV, 54. Macintyre does not use the language of narrative here, but the earlier

25

26

remarks about the need for a narratively ordered self are relevant. What the Genealogist
suspends are the same conditions which make narrative a constitutive principle of moral
enquiry. He or she suspends the conception of an enduring self, one whose actions comprise an intelligibly ordered whole.

CHRISTOPHER J. THOMPSON

392

Encyclopaedist appears unwilling to recognize the true character of his or her enquiry as one which simply masks the deeper
desire for control and mastery over others. According to
Macintyre, what characterizes the history of this encounter both
in the latter half of the nineteenth century as well as its continuations in the modern liberal university is neither its erudition nor
its progress, but rather its interminability.
Part of the source of the conundrum lies in the fact that the
historical roots of these two competing methodologies are
embedded in a false dilemma: "Either reason is thus impersonal,
universal, and disinterested or it is the unwitting representative
of particular interests, masking their drive to power by its false
pretensions to neutrality and disinterestedness."2 8 This dilemma
conceals, however, a third possibility: "the possibility that reason
can only move towards being genuinely universal and impersonal insofar as it is neither neutral nor disinterested, that membership in a particular type of moral community, one from which
fundamental dissent has to be excluded, is a condition for genuinely rational enquiry and more especially for moral and theological enquiry. "29
The impasse is broken between the Encyclopaedist and
Genealogist, then, with the recognition of at least one tradition of
enquiry which avoids the pitfalls of those competing versions. A
willed assent to the parameters of the discussion advanced thus
far does not derail, as the Encyclopaedist might suggest, the project of moral enquiry. Nor does it betray, as the Genealogist suspects, a servile acquiescence on the part of a slavish enquirer.
Rather, with this third version of enquiry, a belief in the history
of the progress of enquiry thus far and a commitment to the
moral community of enquiry provide the conditions for the possibility of rational advancement and reform.
Such a vision of practical rationality, though, is systematically excluded from the two traditions outlined above. This third
28

29

RV, 59.
RV, 59-60.

THE CHARACTER OF MACINTYRE'S NARRATIVE

393

rival version of moral enquiry is embodied in the efforts of St.
Thomas Aquinas and was championed by still another late nineteenth-century text, Pope Leo XIII's Aeterni Patris.

Tradition and Enquiry
It is the mark of a successful "tradition-guided-enquiry," so
Macintyre has contended, to engage in rational debate with its
contenders in a way that not only accounts for whatever development such competing traditions might offer, but provides a
coherent account of and remedy for the limitations in those other
theories.
Thomism, according to Macintyre, shows itself as a superior
tradition of moral enquiry in at least three different contexts.
The first context is that of the thirteenth century in which
enquiry conducted at the University of Paris had become
stymied by the apparent impasse between the Augustinians and
Aristotelians. The superiority of St. Thomas 's efforts shows itself
in its ability to overcome this impasse. The second context is the
latter half of the nineteenth century, when the efforts of Pope Leo
XIII, Joseph Kleutgen, and others were directed toward challenging the primacy of the two rival traditions of enquiry outlined above. And to the extent that the modern liberal university has unwittingly adopted elements of all three versions of
enquiry in varying degrees and extent, the third context in which
Thomism as tradition-guided enquiry can prove itself as a viable
alternative is the modern university-albeit with significant
caveats and modifications.
Macintyre's approach to St. Thomas is both historical and
systematic. It is historical in that he illustrates the context in
which St. Thomas takes up the project of the Summa theologiae.
Yet it is systematic in that the history of that context leading up
to St. Thomas 's efforts exhibits the superiority of his systematic
vision of moral enquiry. Indeed, part of the project of introducing narrative as a useful concept into moral analysis is precisely
to introduce the significance of historical context, both in terms
of providing an account of what has gone before so as to provide
a rationale for whatever may be currently pertinent and in creating the conditions of any future enquiry that might emerge as

CHRISTOPHER J. THOMPSON

394

relevant in light of the current and previous efforts. St. Thomas,
Macintyre contends, narrates the history of enquiry up to the
time of his own reflections and does so in such a way as to show
how his own synthesis complements previously exclusive rival
traditions
of
moral
enquiry:
Aristotelianism
and
Augustinianism. In so doing, Thomism thereby exhibits its superiority as a tradition of rational moral enquiry. It is vindicated as
superior to its contemporaries in such a way that "inadequacies
are remedied by using the Bible and Augustine to transcend the
limitations not only of Aristotle but also of Plato ... and by using
Aristotle as well as Augustine to articulate some of the detail of
the moral life in a way that goes beyond anything furnished by
Augustine."3° Narrative in this context, then, serves as the paradigm of moral enquiry more broadly construed. Not only does
the individual come to place him or herself within a tradition of
rational enquiry, but the very conditions as to what constitutes
that enquiry as rational are narratively construed.
What Aquinas had gained from the Aristotelian tradition and
had used effectively in his own synthesis was, among other
things, a comprehensive analysis of practical rationality, the
virtues, and the nature of moral enquiry in a way never previously achieved in the Augustinian tradition. Thus Aristotle was
invoked to further the project of enquiry into the nature of practical rationality, an enquiry which for St. Thomas had its roots in
a tradition other than the Aristotelian tradition of the thirteenth
century. What he had gained from the Augustinian (and Biblical)
tradition, on the other hand, was a reformulation of both the end
of practical rationality and the conditions for the possibility of
achieving such an end.
According to Macintyre, despite the erudition expressed in the
Nicomachean Ethics, it had a tragic quality about it. The happiness which serves as the ordering telos of the moral life is not in
principle-even on Aristotle's terms-attainable
by human
beings. The conditions of happiness outlined in the
Nicomachean Ethics are such that only the Divine can properly
30

RV, 141.

THE CHARACTER OF MACINTYRE'S NARRATIVE

395

achieve that status. Given the characteristics of the complete
self-sufficiency of happiness, conditions which are essential to
Aristotle's analysis, such happiness, "would be more than
human. "31 We should, nonetheless, "try to become immortal as
far as that is possible and do our utmost to live in accordance
with what is highest in us." 32 Commenting on this inherent difficulty Macintyre notes:
Without some rationally warranted belief in, some genuine knowledge
of that perfect goodness in relationship to which alone the soul finds
ultimate good-that divine goodness by reference to which alone, in
Augustine's Platonic terms, the unity underlying and ordering the
range of uses and applications of the concept of good can be discovered-the soul would find itself directed beyond all finite goods, unsatisfiable by those goods, and yet able to find nothing beyond them to satisfy it. Permanent dissatisfaction would be its lot:"

As St. Thomas says: "It becomes sufficiently clear how these
great minds suffered from being so straitened on every side. "34
So, from the vantage point of the Thomistic tradition, the
Christian revelation complemented the Aristotelian enquiry by
supplying a more adequate characterization of the nature of the
end of practical rationality.
It had also (principally through the efforts of St. Augustine)
reformulated the process by which one achieves that end. Thus,
while it is true that for Aristotle to be practically well educated
means to be skilled in ordering one's passions in accord with the
good, no amount of education within the Aristotelian tradition of
moral enquiry is sufficient in achieving the ultimate end of
human life. For what the Augustinian tradition supplied for the
Thomistic synthesis in a way that no Aristotelian (or Platonist)
could was the notion of the perverted will, the mala voluntas,
that fundamental deformation at the center of every human
being due to his or her kinship with Adam.
31 N icomachean Ethics, Book X, Chapter 7; 1177 b2 7. English translation by Martin
Ostwald (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Publishing, 1962), 290. Hereafter, NE.
32 NE, 291.
33 RV, 13 7-38.
34 Summa Contra Gentiles, III, c. 48, in Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, vol.
2, ed. Anton C. Pegis (New York: Random House, 1945), 87.

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J. THOMPSON

The Augustinian discovery of the perverted will disturbs "the
intelligible scheme through which the individual (tutored exclusively in the tradition of the Greeks) is able to understand him or
herself as both directed towards and explicable in terms of that
end. "35 Central to the notion of Aristotelian practical rationality
is the notion that virtue is acquired through experience, through
repeated intentional performance of virtuous deeds such that
one's character begins to be shaped by such behavior. What the
Augustinian tradition adds to the Thomistic appropriation of
Aristotle is the notion that "there comes a point at which no
degree of prudence, or of the other virtues which are required if
one is to have and to exercise prudence, will avail to further one's
progress towards one's ultimate good." 36 As Macintyre poignantly remarks: "What one discovers in oneself and in all other
human beings is something surd and unaccountable in terms of
the rational understanding of human nature: a rooted tendency
to disobedience in the will and distraction by the passion, which
causes obscuring of the reason and on occasion systematic cultural deformation. "'1
Once the Augustinian notion of the defective will is introduced into the Aristotelian schema a radically new vision of
action and agency becomes necessary.38 What is required are radically new qualities of character, infused by the free grace of a
good God, whereby we may rationally pursue our ultimate end.
Such are the freely given gifts ·of faith, hope, and charity.
According to Macintyre, the discovery of willful evil does not
derail the Thomistic appropriation of Aristotle. Indeed, it complements it:

RV, 140. Cf. WJWR, 163 ff., 181.
140.
37 RV, 140. See WJWR, 181, 157.
38 " This Augustinian psychology, which in the place that it assigns to the will is strikingly different not only from Neoplatonism but from any ancient psychology, provides a
new account of the genesis of action" (WJWR, 154). See also, Albrecht Dihle," Chapter
VI: St. Augustine and his Concept of Will," in The Theory of the Will in Classical
Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 123-144.
35

36 RV,

THE CHARACTER OF MACINTYRE'S NARRATIVE

397

It is only the kind of knowledge which faith provides, the kind of
expectation which hope provides, and the capacity for friendship with
other human beings and with God which is the outcome of charity
which can provide ·the other virtues with what they need to become
genuine excellences, informing a way of life in and through which the
good and the best can be achieved. 39

Viewed from the vantage point of the Augustinian notion of the
perverted will, then, grace is the necessary complement in the
Thomistic analysis of practical rationality, even though (or better yet, because) that analysis is Aristotelian in character.
Thomas 's Summa, then, bears the marks of a superior tradition of rational enquiry in that it is able to take the best of the
competing traditions of enquiry thus far advanced, and to reformulate those traditions in such a way that not only are they
taken on their own terms (thus avoiding a kind of reductionism)
but also in such a way that the defects within each tradition are
both accounted for and remedied. Aristotle brought to the
Augustinian tradition a precision of enquiry not previously
achieved. Augustine (and the Bible), on the other hand, brought
to the Aristotelian tradition a complementary vision of the telos
of practical rationality. The genius of St. Thomas lies in his ability to bring what had become a stalemate of rival traditions to a
fruitful synthesis.
In terms of the challenges of the late nineteenth century,
Macintyre
indicates
that the Thomist
charges
the
Encyclopaedist with a certain naivete in rejecting belief (especially religious belief) as a condition of enquiry. For it has been
shown that belief in an eternal friendship with a good and loving God can and indeed does serve as the necessary complement
toward enquiry into the nature of the moral life. Against the
Genealogist, the Thomist can charge that the discovery (or impu39 RV, 140. Commenting on the notion of grace as the necessary ingredient to
Thomistic moral enquiry, Macintyre notes: "In this respect, although not only in this
respect, the structure of the Summa is Pauline and Augustinian" (WJWR, 181). In light
of these remarks it is difficult to understand Stackhouse's comment that Maclntyre's
account of Thomas "seems to miss the degree to which the angelic doctor depends on elements of Augustine's teleology ... and thus Maclntyre's account tends to remain in a
very Pelagian (or Arminian) mode" (Overview, 207).

CHRISTOPHER

398

J. THOMPSON

tation) of the will-to-power on the part of all traditions of rational enquiry is derived from a "misdirection of the intellect by the
will and with the corruption of the will by the sin of pride." 40
This characterization of all enquiry as rooted in a will-to-power,
then, turns out to be accounted for in the Thomistic analysis as
"an intellectual fiction disguising the corruption of the will." 41 In
illustrating the perversity of the will in its relentless drive for
absolute power and authority, the Genealogical critique unwittingly enters the center of the Thomistic-Augustinian analysis.
And yet in refusing to seek a resolution to such perversion within the tradition of enquiry shaped by the Christian revelation,
the Genealogist falls victim to its own methods of attack, for it is
unable to disqualify itself as simply another manifestation of
will-to-power.
Finally, the third context in which the Thomistic tradition of
enquiry can show itself as superior to its rivals is within the contemporary university. One of the aims of his Gifford Lectures
was to raise the question as to whether anything like traditionguided enquiry is even possible within the modern university.
For my purposes it is enough to say that serious revisions in the
curricula and philosophical presuppositions of many contemporary universities are required before one can hope to engage in a
sustained program of rational debate and enquiry-the kind of
enquiry, that is, best exemplified in the efforts of St. Thomas.

Augustine and Tradition
According to Macintyre, the Augustinian notion of the perverted will is one of the central tenets of the Thomistic moral
enquiry. To the extent that Macintyre has advocated Thomism
as a superior tradition, there is reason to investigate Maclntyre's
use of Augustine in advocating his own version of enquiry. This
is so, moreover, for at least two reasons.
The first lies in the nature of the challenges Thomistic tradition-guided-enquiry puts to the Encyclopaedist and Genealogist.
' 0 RV,147.
41

RV, 147.

THE CHARACTER OF MACINTYRE'S NARRATIVE

399

As it turns out, in Macintyre's account of the challenges presented to these rival versions of enquiry are elements which have
their historical roots in the Augustinian tradition of moral
enquiry. In other words, though it may be Thomism which rises
to meet the challenges of the Genealogist and Encyclopaedist, it
is principally Thomas 's Augustinian ancestry which provides
the lifeblood to his argument.
The second reason for drawing attention to this latent
Augustinianism is to argue that a more careful scrutiny of
Augustine's contribution-or at least Macintyre's account of
Augustine's contribution-points toward the outlines of a remedy to a certain defect within Macintyre 's own analysis.
Macintyre claims that Augustine's principal contribution to tradition-guided enquiry lies in the notion of the perverted will.
While this is true, there is more to Augustine's discussion of the
perverted will than Macintyre indicates.
Macintyre traces the Augustinian features of tradition-guided-enquiry back to the Platonic tradition in general. From the
Gorgias and the Republic emerges the notion that, "the enquirer
has to learn how to make him or herself into a particular kind of
person if he or she is to move towards the knowledge of the truth
about his or her good and about the human good." 42 Speaking
about these conditions of a Platonic notion of tradition-guided
enquiry, Macintyre notes:
We also need a teacher to enable us to actualize that potentiality [for
the good], and we shall have to learn from that teacher and initially
accept on the basis of his or her authority within the community of a
craft what precisely what intellectual and moral habits it is which we
must cultivate and acquire if we are to become effective self-moved
participants in such enquiry. Hence there emerges a conception of
rational teaching authority internal to the practice of the craft of moral
enquiry, as indeed such conceptions emerge in such other crafts as furniture making and fishing, where, just as in moral enquiry, they partially define the relationship of master-craftsman to apprentice.4 3

Introduction into the craft of moral enquiry demands that the
42
43

RV, 60.
RV, 63.

400

CHRISTOPHER J. THOMPSON

beginner enter into a relationship of trust with the community
and its authority. It demands a willingness to be vulnerable to
what has gone before. It demands a trust in persons, authorities
internal to the practice of the enquiry-not with the intention of
instilling a kind of servitude, but a kind of apprenticeship in
which the standards of excellence are gradually assimilated into
one's own spontaneous analysis.
Macintyre rightly observes that Augustine's epistemology
was essentially Platonic; but he notes this crucial difference
between the Augustinian and Platonic conception of moral
enquiry:
The intellect and the desires do not naturally move towards that good
which is at once the foundation for knowledge and that from which
lesser goods flow. The will which directs them is initially perverse and
needs a kind of redirection which will enable it to trust obediently in a
teacher who will guide the mind towards the discovery both of its own
resources and of what lies outside the mind, both in nature and in God.
Hence faith in authority has to precede rational understanding. And
hence the acquisition of that virtue which the will requires to be so
guided, humility, is the necessary first step in education or in self-education.44

Note well the integral relationships among the perverse will,
the inability to move naturally toward the good, the need for a
redirection and an obedient trust in a teacher "who will guide the
mind towards the discovery both of its own resources and of
what lies outside the mind, both in nature and in God,'' and
finally the need for humility as the pre-conditional virtue for
anyone embarking upon an enquiry into the good within the
Augustinian tradition.
The contrast with the Encyclopaedic methodology could not
be sharper. "The encyclopaedist aims,'' Macintyre contends, "at
providing timeless, universal, and objective truths as his or her
conclusions, but aspires to do so by reasoning which has from the
outset the same properties. From the outset reasoning must be
such as would be compelling to any fully rational person what44
45

RV, 84 (emphasis mine).
RV, 65.

THE CHARACTER OF MACINTYRE'S NARRATIVE

401

soever. Rationality, like truth, is independent of time, place and
historical circumstances." 45 In the Augustinian tradition no
progress in moral enquiry is possible without first committing
oneself in faith to the dramatic narrative of which one's self is a
part. To the extent that Thomism has adopted this Augustinian
view, it is clear how Thomism comes to meet the Encyclopaedist.
Participation in a Thomistic tradition-guided enquiry requires
"sharing in the contingencies of its history, understanding its
story as one's own, and finding a place for oneself as a character
in the enacted dramatic narrative which is that story so far." 46
The challenge to the Genealogist is equally Augustinian.
Earlier it was noted that the Thomist charges the Genealogist
with operating not from some privileged position of critique, but
with a will perverted by pride. Against this the Thomistic tradition poses a humility required on the part of a beginner in the
face of an authorized teacher and before a dramatic narrative
from which one learns to discover his or her place in that narrative. While on the surface it is the Thomist who confronts the
Genealogist, from the perspective of the narrative it is the
Augustinian contribution which fuels the critique.
It is essentially on Augustinian grounds, then, that the
Encyclopaedist and Genealogist meet their nemesis. For it is the
Augustinian dimensions of tradition-guided enquiry which are
largely the terms on which the Thomistic tradition is at odds
with the Genealogical and Encyclopaedic methods. Again, this
would follow since it is part of Maclntyre's project to direct our
attention to how St. Thomas takes the best of the Augustinian
tradition into his own methods.
But can it be that Thomism has defeated its opponents? Has
the Encyclopaedist been defeated simply by charging him or her
with a lack of an Augustinian consciousness? Has the
Genealogist been defeated with being charged with willful
pride? Could not one retort that the defeat is only apparent, in
that such charges "stick" only from within that particular narrative of enquiry? Abandon that tradition, and the charges disap46

RV, 65.

CHRISTOPHER J. THOMPSON

402

pear. Incommensurability, then, appears to have the final word,
and in so having it eliminates the conditions for the possibility of
a substantive critique.
Not so, Macintyre responds:
[In] judging of truth and falsity there is always some ineliminable reference beyond the scheme within which those judgments are made and
beyond the criteria which provide the warrants for assertibility within
that scheme. Truth cannot be identified with, or collapsed into warranted assertibility. And a conception of what is which is more and
other than a conception of what appears to be the case in the light of the
most fundamental criteria governing assertibility within any particular
scheme is correspondingly required, that is, a metaphysics of being, of
esse, over and above whatever can be said about particular entia in the
light of particular concepts.-47

This emerging realism indicates a marked development
beyond his earlier reflections in After Virtue. Many critics
charged Macintyre with an implicit relativism insofar as he had
not (in their minds) adequately provided a means of adjudicating which historical enquiry, which narrative, is to be advanced
over and against another. Rival modes of enquiry, if fully incommensurable, cannot provide criteria or methods for resolving the
conflict of choosing among them. 48
For the later Macintyre, however, genuine incommensurability is a fiction. 49 All traditions of enquiry must submit their theses to the tribunal of reality. It is the untamable character of esse
which prevents any tradition from exercising a hegemony on
truth. Reality will inevitably rear its ugly head in defianc.e of any
inadequate conception of it. The charge against the rival traditions, then, is not simply that they are outside the parameters of
the Thomistic discourse, it is that they are outside the parameters in such a way that they invite their own contradiction and
incoherence-and do so because they fail to take into account
what is.
47

RV, 122.

For a criticism of Maclntyre's early efforts along these lines, see Paul Nelson,
Narrative and Morality: A Theological Inquiry (University Park: The Pennsylvania
University Press, 1987), S4-61; also Jean Porter, The Recovery of Virtue: The Relevance
of Aquinas for Christian Ethics (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990),
82-8S.
49 See also, WJWR, 349-369.
48

THE CHARACTER OF MACINTYRE'S NARRATIVE

403

But how does metaphysics fit within the kind of traditionguided enquiry Macintyre has outlined above? It would seem
that metaphysics seeks timeless truths, truths which in turn bear
no relation to their place within the history of enquiry, the narrative of discourse leading to the point of discovery. And yet it is
the Encyclopaedist who seeks, "timeless, universal, and objective truths as his or her conclusions." 50 How, then, does the
Thomist differ from the Encyclopaedist?
The answer lies in distinguishing between timeless truths and
pursuits of that truth which seek to flee from history, which seek
to ignore the embeddedness in the narrative of enquiry. While it
may be that the Thomist seeks eternal, timeless truth, he or she
does so within a historical tradition of enquiry. A Thomist's
metaphysics is a historically ordered, forever revisable, openended tradition of enquiry. The pursuit of what is is a historically conditioned pursuit. As Macintyre says of the Thomist, "the
rationality in which he or she shares is always, therefore, unlike
the rationality of the encyclopaedic mode, understood as a historically situated rationality, even if one which aims at timeless
formulation of its own standards which would be their final and
perfected form through a series of successive reformulations,
past and yet to come." 51
What this means, then, for moral enquiry is that even an
appeal to what is does not negate the fundamental narrative
quality of tradition-guided enquiry advanced by Macintyre. It
means that community, tradition, authority, and humility are all
constitutive components of any enquiry into what is. It means
that one of the conditions for the possibility of enquiry into what
is is a willingness to trust in a tradition, to trust in the authority
of persons as an apprentice might appeal to the master of the
craft. Finally, it entails a belief in a canonical narrative of
enquiry and a community of interpretation as part of the necessary pre-conditions for any grasp of either what is or what is
good.

A tradition-guided
50
51

RV, 65.
RV, 65.

enquiry will not only be vindicated by its

404

CHRISTOPHER J. THOMPSON

capacity to narrate the discourse up to the present in such a way
that defects are both accounted for and remedied, but it will also
be partially vindicated (and thus open to further revisions) by
better accounting for what is in ways that previous traditions
could not. And the process by which an individual is initiated
into better and better traditions of enquiry will initially demand
a certain trust, a belief-in-persons, their canonical narratives and
traditions of interpretations prior to a complete understanding of
what such a tradition might offer as intelligible. And in growing
in one's trust in that tradition, one becomes better skilled in its
craft of enquiry.

Creation and Moral Enquiry
Granted that Macintyre has made a case for a narrative form
of moral enquiry, many questions remain. And it is precisely at
this junction of authority, community, traditions of enquiry, and
what is that Augustine emerges as the premier tradition-guided
enquirer. What does a consideration (even tradition-guided) of
what is have to do with the narrative of one's moral agency, the
configuration of one's self in one's quest for the good and happy
life? Are there some conditions in which what is is so configured
as to include one's own identity within the dramatic narrative
which is the story thus far? In the recognition of the account of
what is is there a recognition of what it means to be a character
in that dramatic narrative? Finally, will every tradition-guided
enquiry into what is supply the condition for the possibility of a
narrative of moral identity? It is precisely on these terms that
Augustine serves Macintyre 's analysis.
Augustine's Confessions depicts not simply an account of a
perverted will, as Macintyre suggests; rather it depicts his
appropriation of the canonical story of what is. In addition,
through appropriating the canonical account of what is,
Augustine re-configures the conception of himself precisely as a
moral character in the dramatic narrative of enquiry. Thus the
Confessions supplies a primary instance in which an enquiry into
what is signals an encounter with what it means to be a moral
character. The Confessions, moreover, indicates that Augustine
himself was confronted with rival versions of moral enquiry, and

THE CHARACTER OF MACINTYRE 'S NARRATIVE

405

so it appears that not every narrative enquiry (even an enquiry
into what is) will supply the sufficient conditions of Christian
moral agency.
Macintyre neglects to note that there were alternatives to the
mala voluntas which could have accounted for that inability to
achieve the good life, alternatives which at one point seemed
plausible to Augustine himself. Under the aegis of the
Manichees, our inability to approximate the good life was
accounted for on very different terms. From the perspective of
their canonical narrative, no authentic moral agency was possible, for the self was merely the plaything of rival, dualistic forces.
And yet for Macintyre as well as Augustine (or perhaps for
Macintyre because of Augustine) such a dualism cuts to the
quick of moral agency and identity. Central to Macintyre 's
approach to moral experience is the notion that we are somehow
able to account for our experiences-both successes and failures-as a whole, an intelligible unity whereby praise or blame
may be ascribed to ourselves. We describe our moral agency in
terms of a narrative of personal identity. For Macintyre, one may
recall, it is this kind of continuity of the self which provides the
conditions for the superiority of the Thomists against the
Genealogists. At the same time, it is this demand for a kind of
coherent unity to one's life which eventually leads Augustine to
the defeat of the Manichaean position. And so for Augustine and
those who follow, it is not the case that any narrative enquiry
into what is will suffice for the conditions of moral agency.
Rather, it will only be in coming to accept the canonical narrative of the Catholic Church, that narrative in which what is is
entirely good, that Augustine re-created himself as a moral character.
Of course Augustine's portrait of himself as a moral character
was colored by his failure to live with any enduring integrity and
this marks the conditions in which the mala voluntas becomes so
prominent. Yet the mala voluntas is not a feature of our authentic condition and hence it does not exhaust the conception of ourselves within the drama of moral enquiry. Augustine came to
understand that it is not enough to see that one is unable to live
the moral life with integrity. To be a Christian is to see this

406

CHRISTOPHER

J. THOMPSON

inability precisely in terms of a fall, our loss of an original condition in which we are partakers of supreme happiness, i.e., union
with Divine Love. More specifically, it is to see that Christ is the
Word through whom we are made and the principle by which we
are made happy. And thus our inability to pursue our supreme
happiness in God was due to something other than the nature of
our creation or the nature of the Creator.
Aristotle (and Plato) could not grasp this notion of Divine
Love and hence never saw fully the implications of our inability
to live the highest form of happiness. The Manichees, on the
other hand, never saw our inability to approximate this kind of
life as our fall, our loss; rather, it merely reflected the original
chaos inaugurated at the beginning of all things. To Augustine,
however, our inability to live a life ordered by supreme happiness in Divine Love signaled a profound loss, a profound failure
at the beginning of the human race. Our untutored wills are
understood as perverse precisely because he sees (if only in a
glass, darkly) the conditions of our authentic state, our union
with the Supremely Good Creator who has made us for Himself.
From this context the question of what is, what is good, and the
condition of our selves within the drama of moral enquiry
emerges.
The mala voluntas does signal an important dimension of the
tradition-guided enquiry Macintyre seeks to advance. And it
does seem to recognize the kind of bad faith at the heart of the
Aristotelian tradition as Macintyre suspects; yet it does so in
such a way that the very conditions under which one might come
to appropriate such a thesis are altered. Augustine does not
merely supply a fuller psychological portrait of the tragic
Aristotelian. He does not merely supply a fuller image of the restless heart. Rather, in his appropriation of the canonical account
of creation, Augustine grasped the central condition in which
one might come to understand one's self as a restless, responsible
character within the dramatic quest for moral integritybecause God has made us for Himself. It was not until he was
able to grasp that the term of supreme happiness (Divine Love)
is the same as the principle of all creaturely existence that he was
able to recognize the conditions of our present experience pre-

THE CHARACTER OF MACINTYRE'S NARRATIVE

407

cisely as fallen and thus able to account in more penetrating
ways for the limitations of moral growth intimated in rival
schemas, including Manicheism. The notion of the mala voluntas
allowed him to maintain that the term of his existence and the
term of his happiness were one and the same. At the same time,
the notion allowed him to see that what accounted for his failure
to live the good life was not, as the Manichees suspected, some
flaw in the divine principle; rather, moral inadequacy was the
result of an original refusal to be taken up within divine love.
And thus it is the case that to grasp truly what is, is to grasp at
the same time what it is to be a responsible creature within the
drama of the created order. It is in the theology of the good creation that one finds the conditions of our moral enquiry.
None of my reflections is intended to derail Maclntyre's
efforts nor to gloss the limitations in Augustine which Thomas
was later to rectify. Rather, my intention is to invite a fuller
appreciation of the appeals to Augustine within Maclntyre's
analysis, thus opening the way for a fuller appropriation. In
After Virtue we are invited to seek another, albeit different, St.
Benedict. In Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Benedict
appears to have stepped aside in order to allow St. Thomas to
serve. If my analysis of Macintyre is correct, St. Augustine plays
a leading role in the drama of moral enquiry of which we find
ourselves a part.

THE CONCEPT OF POVERTY IN
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS'S
CONTRA IMPUGNANTES DE/ CULTUM
ET RELIGIONEM
JOHN D. ]ONES

Marquette University
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

M

EDIEVAL CONCEPTIONS of poverty have been
given ongoing and serious attention by scholars during
this century. The extensive literature on the nature
and practice of poverty among the Franciscans bears witness to
this. Serious investigation of St. Thomas Aquinas's understanding of poverty, however, is virtually nonexistent. Except for a
very recent book by Ulrich Horst,' there are, so far as I know, no
monographs or dissertations treating this aspect of Aquinas's
thought. The most thorough discussion in English, which falls
far short of sustained textual or critical analysis, is given by
Philip Mulhern. 2 Apart from an article by Silvana Spirito, which
primarily focuses on historical issues, one finds only scattered
references and notes in other works. 3
1 Ulrich Horst, Evangelische Annut und Kirche:
Thomas van Aquin und die
Annutskontroversen des 13. und beginnenden 14. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Akademie
Verlag, 1992). This work was published after the present article was completed.
: Philip Mulhern, Dedicated Poverty (Staten Island: Alba House, 1973), 116-31.
"II problema dell a poverta e de Ila perfezione religiosa nell 'ambito de lie polemiche
tra clero secolare e ordini mendicanti," Atti Del Congresso Internazionale, ed. Congresso
internazionale Tommaso d'Aquino (Napoli: Edizioni domenicane italiane, 1974), 49-57.
Worthy of mention is Scott Swenson's concise, but detailed, note on poverty in the
Contra impugnantes (Emerging Concepts of Jurisdiction, Sacramental Orders and
Property Rights Among Dominican Thinkers From Thomas Aquinas to Hervaeus Natalis
[Ph.D. Diss., Cornell University, 1988], 265, n.159). For a brief discussion of poverty in

409

410

JOHN D. JONES

The absence of scholarship in this area stands in marked contrast to the lavish philosophical and theological attention given
to many other aspects of Aquinas's thought. If Thomas gave
only a cursory nod to the subject of poverty, this absence might
be understandable. Over the course of his career, however,
Thomas composed several extended discussions and numerous
shorter notes pertaining to poverty, concentrating particularly on
the nature and practice of poverty in religious life. In addition to
the Contra impugnantes Dei cultum et religionem, a relatively
early work devoted to a defense of the mendicant orders and
mendicant poverty, there are extended discussions of poverty in
the Contra pestiferam doctrinam retrahentium homines a religionis ingressu, cc. 14-16, the Summa contra gentiles, bk. III,
c.131-35, and the Summa theologiae (51), II-II, q. 184, a. 7, q.
186, aa. 3&6, q. 188, a. 7, etc. There are also brief discussions and
references to poverty (paupertas) and the poor (pauper) in nearly
thirty other works ranging from the In Sententiarum to various
Scripture commentaries. 4
My purpose in this paper is to present a close, but by no means
comprehensive, textual and critical analysis of Thomas 's treatment of poverty in the Contra impugnantes, concentrating on the
crucial sixth chapter. 5 I am interested in Thomas's conception of
Summa theologiae, 11-11, q. 188, a. 7, see John D. Jones, Poverty and the Human
Condition (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), 317-320. Also see Jones, "Poverty and
Subsistence: St. Thomas and the Definition of Poverty," Gregorianum 75 (1994): 135-49.
4 The Contra impugnantes dei cultum et religionem and Contra pestiferam doctrinam
retrahentes homines a religionis ingressu are contained in the Leonine Opera Omnia, vol.
XLI (Rome: St. Thomas Aquinas Foundation, 1970) and in Opuscula theologica, vol. 2,
ed. RM. Spiazzi (Turin: Marietti, 1954). An English translation of both works is contained in An Apology for the Religious Orders, ed. John Procter (London: Sands and Co.,
1902), 50-376 and 377-479 respectively. I am using the Blackfrairs edition of the Summa
theologiae (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964-81). By and large, I have followed existing
translations of Thomas 's works, although for the sake of accuracy, I have occasionally
modified them, especially Proctor's translations of the Contra impugnantes and Contra
retrahentes.
5 The discussion of poverty is contained chiefly in chapter 6 (cited in the Marietti edition as 2.5[6]). All citations in my paper will be to this chapter unless otherwise noted.
Following typical form, the chapter contains a set of objections, a responsio, and a set of
replies to the objections. In order to direct the reader to particular passages within the
long responsio or other extended passages, however, I shall list the paragraph number
and line numbers from the Leonine edition followed by the paragraph number from the
Marietti edition in brackets.

POVERTY IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

411

poverty, particularly in relation to the use and possession of
goods. I shall take the Contra impugnantes as a self-contained
work; that is, while I shall make reference to other works for
illustrative purposes or to set up problems for analysis, I do not
intend to engage in a comparative analysis of the Contra impugnantes with other works by St. Thomas. Also, I shall focus on
philosophical and conceptual issues, leaving aside a treatment of
more specifically theological or historical matters.
This paper is comprised of three sections. In the first section,
I shall discuss some significant differences between categorizing
poverty in terms of the use of goods, on the one hand, and the
possession of goods, on the other, since these two categories are
not strictly connected either empirically or logically. Also, I want
to consider Thomas 's definition of poverty with respect to modern definitions. Basically, in the Contra impugnantes, Thomas
adopts a subsistence approach to poverty with reference to the
use of goods or what we would call a standard of living. That is,
he discusses poverty solely with respect to factors related to
maintaining physical subsistence. While this is a very common
approach to poverty in our age (e.g., consider the "official" U.S.
definition of poverty), it must be distinguished from relational or
non-subsistence approaches which define poverty with reference
to the factors involved in achieving human welfare in a holistic
sense. Both of these approaches, which consider poverty in a
"teleological" manner so that poverty lines are determined with
reference to what is minimally required to achieve certain conditions, are distinct from definitions of poverty in terms of
inequality alone, i.e., as some specified degree of having less than
others.
In the second section, I take up Thomas's understanding of
actual poverty (paupertas actualis) with respect to the use and
possession of goods. In particular, I want to show that while
Thomas adopts a subsistence definition of poverty, he offers two
versions of this definition. That is, Thomas accepts three "standards of living": a state of need (egestate) in which people lack
to varying degrees the means of subsistence, a state in which
people have these means, and a state of wealth in which people
have a surplus beyond the means of subsistence (ad 1). One def-

412

JOHN D. JONES

inition of poverty, particularly stringent and "ascetic," restricts
poverty to the first state; the other definition includes the middle
state. I shall also explore tensions between these two accounts by
considering some problems in Thomas's view that involuntary
poverty involves a necessary desire for wealth.
The third section investigates three key notions in Thomas 's
understanding of (voluntary) poverty: "giving all" (dans omnia),
"relinquishing all" (relinquens omnia), and "reserving nothing
for self" (nihil sibi reservans). In light of a number of objections
and replies presented in the Contra impugnantes, I shall consider the different meanings which these phrases have in respect to
the use and possession of things. I am particularly concerned to
investigate a central question of many of the objections: Can
people not own any possessions, either individually or in common, and still have access to and use goods? I shall show that,
since in the Contra impugnantes Thomas never gives an explicit
account of the nature of "common possessions," his treatment of
this question in the Contra impugnantes is ultimately unclear.
I

In order to lay a foundation for my analysis of the Contra
impugnantes, I want to discuss some of the conceptual issues
involved in understanding poverty with respect to the use and
possession of goods. This dispute is important for several reasons. First, questions about the relation of poverty to the possession and use of goods are crucial in medieval discussions of
poverty, particularly as this relation bears on religious poverty.
For example, while Franciscans generally agreed that they had
neither individual nor common possessions, they were often in
sharp disagreement about the extent of legitimate use of goods,
with the Spirituals insisting on restricted use and the
Conventuals defending more moderate use. This matter was not
merely academic in character; it had profound practical bearing
on the character of the development and expansion of the Order
and its apostolates. 6 For another example, Thomas insists that

6

M. D. Lambert, Franciscan Poverty (London: S.P.C.K., 1961), 68-102.

POVERTY IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

413

the poverty of religious orders be proportioned to the proper
ends or apostolates of the order (ST, II-II, q. 188, a. 7). While he
formally distinguishes between various grades of poverty in
terms of the possession or ownership of goods, the distinction
itself is based on the kinds and scope of goods which orders must
use in order to carry out their work.
Second, while in the Contra impugnantes Thomas formally
poses the question of poverty in terms of the possession of goods,
there are a number of texts (to be discussed later in this paper)
which treat poverty in terms of the use and not just the possession of goods. Third, it is important to distinguish between
defining poverty in terms of the use of goods and defining it in
terms of possession because these two modes are not strictly connected either empirically or logically. Fourth, our modern interpretation of poverty in terms of standard of living is more clearly linked with medieval discussions of the use rather than of the
ownership of goods.
Aquinas formally defines (voluntary) poverty with respect to
the possession and not the use of goods. For example, at the very
beginning of the Contra impugnantes, the vow of poverty is
expressed in terms of renouncing (abrenuntio) the possession of
earthly wealth (possessio divitiarum terrenarum) (c. 1, §1, 77-86
[nn. 8-9]). Further, the discussion
poverty in chapter 6 is
framed in terms of whether it is licit for religious to join orders
which have no common property (possessiones communes). So,
too, there are several places in chapter 6 where the issue of
poverty is framed explicitly with respect to possession alone (so
that the issue of use does not arise). 7
Indeed, there is one text where Thomas apparently disengages
the issue of the use of goods from the discussion of the nature of
the vow of poverty:

7 See for example, §3, 376-388 [n. 216] and §3, 397-426 [nn. 218-220] as well as ad
17,18 (§6, 923-944, [nn. 252-53]) and ad 23 (§6, 1014-1025 [n. 259]). This formal definition of poverty in terms of possession is repeated at ST, 11-11, q. 188, a. 7, where Thomas
defines poverty as the privation of all property (privatio omniumfacultatum).

414

JOHN D. JONES

Through their vow, religious do not renounce the world in the sense
that they are not able to use things ... thus it is not contrary to their
vows if they use wealth or even at times delicacies.•

While this text does not imply that the vow of poverty allows for
the unrestricted use of goods, it does suggest that issues about
use are not central to the question of the nature of religious or
voluntary poverty.
In the Contra impugnantes, Thomas offers no specific criteria
for determining the nature of the ownership of or proprietary
dominion over goods. But I gather that for him people own those
goods which they control and can use or disburse according to
their own authority. For example, St. Thomas remarks that bishops "have true dominion over their personal goods" in the sense
that "they can either keep them for themselves or give them to
others as they please."" Religious, by way of contrast, cannot
give things to others without the permission of their superiors
(ST, II-II, q. 32, a. 8). So, too, Thomas writes that "the things
used by religious for their support are not absolutely their own
property, or under their own control, but are ministered to them
for their necessity by those who have the management of such
things." 10
Thomas does not, however, examine poverty exclusively in
terms of possession; the relation of poverty to the use of goods is
a constant theme in the Contra impugnantes. Although the use of
goods is rarely the sole topic of discussion (see ad 20),11 virtually
all of the responses to the objections (except ad 17, 18 and 23)12
either implicitly or explicitly treat the use of goods in relation to
poverty.
8 Religiosi enim per votum religionis non hoc modo abrenuntiant
mundo, ut rebus
mundi uti non possint .... Unde non est contra votus eorum, si utantur divitiis, vel
etiam quandoque deliciis ... (c. 2, §4 [n. 34)). (Chapter 2 is cited in the Marietti edition
as 2.1[2).)
9 Propriorum bonorum verum dominium habent ... possunt vel sibi retinere, vel aliis
pro libitu elargiri (ST, 11-11, q. 185, a. 7).
w Ea quibus utuntur religiosi ad sustentationem vitae, non sunt eorum quantum ad
proprietatem dominii, sed dispensantur ad usum necessitatis eorum ab his qui harum
rerum dominium habent (Contra retrahentes, c. 16, ad 9 [n. 858)).
II §6, 994-997 [n. 256).
12 §6, 923-935 [n. 252); §6, 936-944 [n. 253); and §6, 1014-1025 [n. 259)

POVERTY IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

415

Before considering some of the formal differences between use
and possession, let me briefly indicate the general framework in
which Thomas understands poverty in terms of the use of goods,
particularly by comparing and contrasting it with our modern
approaches to understanding poverty. My point is not to force
Thomas into modern modes of understanding poverty, but simply to clarify Thomas 's approach so that it not be confused with
more modern approaches.
In the Contra impugnantes, Thomas defines poverty-or what
he calls actual poverty (paupertas actualis)-with reference to
the "means of subsistence" (obj. l), 13 i.e., with what "pertains to
sustaining nature" (ad 10) or, equivalently, with what is "necessary for the body" (ad 20).14 In modern categories, Thomas
adopts what is called a subsistence or "absolute" approach to
poverty. 15 For us, this approach is contrasted with defining
poverty in terms of simple inequality or in terms of non-subsistence factors which typically are historical and contextual or
relational in character. So far as poverty is defined in terms of
inequality, poverty means some specified degree of having less
than others. Paradigm definitions of poverty in terms of inequality set poverty lines as some percentile of income level. The definition of poverty in terms of inequality may, but need not, correlate with what people require to maintain physical subsistence.
In part, this is because there is no necessity to choose any given
percentile of income as defining a poverty line. One could set a
poverty line as anything below the median income or as anything below the fifth percentile of income. More importantly,
All objections in chapter 6 are located in §1 [n. 200]
Respectively, "victum necessarium, ad naturam sustentandam pertinent" (§6, 758
[n. 245]) and "ad necessitatem corporis" (§6, 995 [n. 256]).
15 Subsistence approaches are "absolute" only if the requirements for human subsistence are socially and historically constant. For good discussion of the conceptual issues
involved in modern and contemporary approaches to poverty, see James Goudy, Shoot
Them if They Won't Work: A Study of Status, Economic Aspirations, and Attitudes
Toward Poverty and the Poor (Ph.D. Diss., Purdue University, 1970), ch. l; Robert
Holman, Poverty: Explanations of Social Deprivation (New York: St. Martin's Press,
1978), 35-83; and Amartya Sen, Poverty and Famine: An Essay on Entitlement and
Deprivation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), ch.1. For a philosophical analysis of these
issues see Jones, Poverty and the Human Condition, 92-109.
13

14

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JOHN D. JONES

defining poverty in terms of inequality does not formally connect
poverty lines with standards of living or with the ability or
inability of the people to realize certain goals, needs, or activities.
(This is particularly the case if poverty lines are applied crossculturally. The standard of living made possible by the median
income in the United States is quite different from that made
possible by the median income in Guatemala.)
In contrast, subsistence definitions of poverty are instrumental or teleological in character and they belong to the general category of what I call "insufficiency." Understood instrumentally,
poverty presents a basic blockage or frustration to human life.
Subsistence definitions of poverty take the maintenance of physical subsistence as the goal or state with respect to which poverty is defined. People are regarded as poor to the extent that they
fail to achieve this subsistence or, perhaps, achieve it but with no
additional surplus. Subsistence approaches to poverty may be
contrasted with non-subsistence approaches which typically
define poverty with respect to the achievement of human welfare
in a more or less holistic sense. Underlying non-subsistence
approaches is the view that subsistence alone often provides too
narrow a basis for understanding the nature of poverty, especially since people may meet subsistence needs yet still be profoundly thwarted in the realization of their welfare. 16 Such definitions are typically relational in character given that the
socio-economic requirements .to achieve human welfare are
socially and historically variable. 11
As I mentioned earlier, there is no direct connection between
the specification of poverty in terms of ownership of goods and
in terms of the use of goods. Consider the following example
which Philip Mulhern gives to portray poverty in religious life.
16 For brief, but concise, justifications of a relational approach to poverty see Holman,
Poverty, 11; Deborah Offenbacher, "The Proper Study of Poverty," in Chaim Waxman,
ed., Poverty, Power and Politics (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1968), 41; Peter
Townsend, "The Meaning of Poverty," in Joan Huber and Paul Chalfant, eds., The
Sociology of American Poverty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 41; and
Jones, Poverty and the Human Condition, 110-117.
17 The reader should note the three grades of poverty set forth in ST, II- II, q. 188, a.
7 to see Thomas's adoption of a relational approach to poverty. See Jones, "Poverty and
Subsistence" for a more complete discussion of this matter.

POVERTY IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

417

One place in which to weigh the reality of basic poverty in religious life
is the infirmary or the home for the aged and retired religious. The care
may be as good as money can provide; food, medicine, housing may be
first rate, although this is not always so. But the residents have just
about what they had at the beginning of their "career". . . . [This basic
poverty] shows up most clearly in death. The monk who collected great
sums to build a monastery, the sister who administered the funds of a
large hospital...are of less concern to the courts than a vagrant who dies
with a dollar in his pocket. The dollar was little enough but it belonged
to the vagrant; its disposition will occupy the attention of the law. Not
so the few effects of the religious. 18

Mulhern seems to suggest that the religious in question are
somehow poorer than the beggar since the beggar has a dollar to
his or her name, while individual religious apparently own nothing. Yet, given the description of the standard of living these religious enjoy (which, if not comfortable, is certainly not lacking
regarding basic subsistence needs), Mulhern's claim that the religious are poorer than the beggar makes sense only if poverty is
defined strictly in terms of the possession of goods and is unrelated to the use of goods. Conversely, if poverty refers to an inadequate standard of living (as lacking the means of subsistence), it
seems odd to call people poor who have reasonable access to
goods but who technically do not own those goods. Indeed, given
our everyday understanding of poverty in terms of standard of
living, we would regard beggars as poorer than the religious
Mulhern portrays.
By denying that there is any direct connection between ownership of goods and standard of living, I do no.t mean to suggest
that there is no relation between them. In everyday life, we
would expect people who "have nothing to their name" to be
poor, and even destitute. Mulhern's example, however, shows a
situation in which this relation need not obtain. Similar situations have occurred not only for religious, 19 but for other classes
of individuals as well, for example, children and even slaves. 20 In
Mulhern, Dedicated Poverty, 198.
See §4, 475-485 [n. 225) in which Thomas cites St. Jerome's complaint about religious who were wealthier as religious than they were in secular life.
2°Consider the Palantine
of the Roman empire. See Orlando Patterson, Slavery
and Social Death (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 300-309.
18

19

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JOHN D. JONES

any event, given that there is no strict empirical or necessary logical relation between owning and using goods, definitions of
poverty with respect to use or standard of living will bear no necessary relation to definitions of poverty with respect to possession of goods. People can be poor in terms of standard of living
who own many goods (e.g., wealthy people who may be reduced
to poverty in a situation where they cannot make use of their
wealth or assets). So, too, people may not own any goods, but
may enjoy a comfortable or even luxurious standard of living.
It seems to me that poverty qua non-ownership of goods is
more directly connected with economic dependency and vulnerability than with standard of living. People who do not own
goods depend on others to provide goods for them; such people
use goods at the pleasure of those who provide them and have
control over them. Non-ownership, then, is more directly linked
with mendicancy than poverty (understood as insufficiency). 21
This contrast between mendicancy and poverty is neatly given
in a comment in the Gloss on Ps. 39:18 ("I am a beggar and a
poor person") 22 which reads: "the beggar is one who is dependent
on another; the poor person is one who [does not have] what is
sufficient for himself." 23 William Hinnebusch gives a fine
description of the dependency which accompanies non-ownership in his portrait of the Dominicans after they renounced corporate ownership of goods in 1220.
[The Chapter of 1220] gave up possessions as well as rents. It closed off
all fixed income, all regular economic resources and placed the Order
in full reliance on divine Providence .... This threw the friars com-

21 I do not want to claim that non-ownership is necessarily linked with mendicancy,
since it is possible (in some contexts at least) for people to live simply by foraging and
using only what is wild or not owned by others. Of course, whether people would then
own the goods which they find is another question, a variation of which I shall discuss
later in the paper when considering whether people own the goods which they receive
through begging.
22 "Ego autem mendicus sum et pauper." Thomas quotes this in Chapter 7 (§8, 75051 [n. 289]) and construes the text as describing Christ. (In the Marietti edition, Chapter
7 is listed as 2.6[7].)
23 Mendicus est qui ab alio petit; et pauper qui sibi non sufficit (c. 7, §8, 753-754 [n.
289]).

POVERTY IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

419

pletely on the mercy of their fellowmen. Charity became the sole prop
of their economic existence and the quest for alms in kind became a
necessity. 24

Let me close this section with some analytical considerations.
While statements of the kind that "X owns Y" clearly and unambiguously assert that X has proprietary dominion over Y, the
similar assertions, in English at least, that "X possesses Y" and
"X has Y" do not. So far as "property" and "possessions" have
the same meaning,25 "X possesses Y" is a simple variant of "X
owns Y." On the other hand, in English at least, "X possesses Y"
could also mean that Y is in X's possession in the sense that X
has use of Y, without necessarily owning Y. Many of the items in
my office at the University are in my possession; I use them, am
responsible for them and, perhaps most importantly, have relatively exclusive access to and use of them. They are, however,
the property of the University.
The statement "X has Y" is similarly ambiguous. On the one
hand it can refer to what someone owns: e.g., she has - that is,
has just purchased- a new car. But the statement can also refer
simply to what someone uses: e.g., he has a place to stay for the
night (someone is letting him stay in a room or shelter). 26 In the
same way, "X does not have Y" could mean either that X does

24 William A. Hinnebusch, The History of the Dominican Order (Staten Island, N.Y.:
Alba House, 1965), vol. I, 153.
25 I gather that for Aquinas facultates and possessiones are often used interchangeably in an economic sense. He regularly uses the former term in the Summa theologiae
and the latter in the Contra impugnantes. Outside the economic domain, however, we
might be said to possess many things which we do not own: I may possess good health,
but I certainly do not own my good health.
26 See Bonagratia de Bergamo, a 14th Century Franciscan, who offers several senses
in which people can be said to have things ("Tractatus de Christi et Apostolorum paupertate," ed. L. Oliger, Archivum Franciscum Historicum 22: 324-5). Bonagratia's role
in the Franciscan controversy with Pope John XXII is examined in Decima Douie, The
Nature and Heresy of the Fratricelli (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1932),
158-160. See also the treatise of Hervaeus Natalis (a 14th Century Dominican and
Master General of the Dominican Order), whose detailed conceptual analysis of evangelical poverty hinges on the multiple meanings in which people can have things ("De
paupertate Christi et Apostolorum," J.D. Sikes, ed., Archives D'Histoire Doctrinale et
Litteraire du Moyen Age 12/13 (1937/38): 208-97).

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JOHN D. JONES

not own, but may have use of, Y or that X does not have access
to Y in order to use it. For example, to claim that Jesus did not
have a house could mean that he did not own the places in which
he stayed or it could mean that he was homeless (i.e., he could
find no place to stay). Both senses of the claim are used in the
Contra impugnantes. 21
II
This section will be devoted to examining Thomas's understanding of "actual poverty." Although St. Thomas formally
defines actual poverty with reference to non-ownership of goods,
I shall focus on the meaning of actual poverty as it relates to the
use of goods, since it is in this regard that there are a number of
complexities and problems in the text. To begin with, Thomas
distinguishes between actual poverty (paupertas actualis) and
habitual poverty (paupertas habitualis). The former involves
"stripping oneself of temporal things"; the latter is that by which
"someone condemns temporal things with the heart, even if he
possesses them." 28 Thomas does not offer this as his own distinction, nor does he name its source. Nevertheless he adopts it
in his exposition. 29
The concept of habitual poverty seems relatively clear. It
refers to what is often called "detachment" from things: a disposition of the soul (praeparatio animi) (ST, II-II, q. 184, a. 7, ad 1)
by which people are focused on what is eternal in their lawful
use and possession of things (§3, 320-23 [n. 210]).30 Negatively as
27 Cf. §3, 270-277 [n. 204]; §4, 448-455 [n. 223]; and c.7, §12, 1398ff. [n. 341].

Aliquis se rebus temporalibus expoliat ... aliquis rem temporalem contemnit corde,
et si re possideat (§2, 255-57 [n. 202D.
29 So far as I can tell, i.e., through an inspection of the listings for paupertas in the
Index Thomisticus (CD-ROM version), Thomas employs the phrases of habitual poverty and actual poverty only in Contra impugnantes. However, he makes a similar distinction between two kinds ofrenunciation (abrenuntiatio) at ST, 11-11, q. 184, a. 7, ad 1. The
phrase paupertas actualis is used explicitly in §3, 276 [n. 204]; §3, 284 [n. 205]; §3, 294 [n.
206]; §3, 297 [n. 207]; §3, 315 [n. 209]; §3, 326 [n. 210]; §3, 348 [n. 212]; §3, 367 [n. 214];
§3, 434 [n. 221]; §3, 444 [n. 222]. However, the entire first part of the responsio is devoted to showing that "actual poverty pertains to evangelical perfection" (ad peifectionem
evangelicam pertinere ... paupertatem actualem).
30 Habitual poverty is a matter of renunciation (renuntiare) which "convenit omnibus,
qui ita licite utuntur omnibus mundanis quae possident, ut tamen mente tendant ad
aeterna." This text is from the Gloss.
28

POVERTY IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

421

it were, "detachment" implies that "a person is ready to give up
or distribute everything if necessary."·" Such detachment "pertains directly to perfection" (pertinet directe ad peifectionem)
and, according to the Contra impugnantes, it "is necessary for
salvation" (est de necessitate salutis) (§3, 323-34 [n. 210]).
As we shall
the concept of actual poverty is somewhat
more complex and problematic. It will be helpful to review the
contexts in which Thomas uses this notion to determine the
varying ways in which the concept refers to the use and/or ownership of things. The basic characterization of actual poverty
given in the preface to the responsio (as quoted above) is framed
in terms of non-possession of goods. 32 Several other sections from
the first part of the responsio also define actual poverty in terms
of the renunciation of possessions. For example, various passages
in the responsio indicate that selling one's possessions and giving them to the poor is the mark of actual poverty. 33 Likewise,
other passages indicate that adopting actual poverty is the way
to avoid the dangers inherent in possessions. 34
On the other hand, there are several sections where actual
poverty is characterized by an impoverished standard of living
and restricted use of goods. So, for example, to describe Christ's
poverty, Aquinas quotes the Gloss text: "I am so poor that I have
no house nor a roof to cover myself" (§3, 284-6 [n. 205]), the
thrust of which seems to be that Christ was actually homeless
and not that he had the use of a house which he did not own. 35 A
similar description of Christ's (and the Apostles') poverty is
given by Chrysostom: namely, they were naked, hungry and
thirsty. Thomas echoes Chrysostom by describing actual pover-

31 Homo sit paratus, si opus fuerit, omnia dimittere vel distribuere (ST, 11-11, q. 184,
a. 7, ad 1).
32 In §3, 406-411 [n. 219), Thomas identifies "stripping oneself of mundane things"
with possessing nothing (nihil possidere). The phrase reads: "ille qui se rebus mundi
expoliat."
33 §3, 290-299 [n. 206] and §3, 330-355 [nn. 211-213).
34 §3, 376-388 [n. 216] and §3, 436-445 [n. 222).
35 Recall my earlier observation on the ambiguity of sentences such as "Christ had or
did not have a house." The Gloss text in question refers to the Gospel saying of Jesus that
"foxes have a den ... " (Luke 9:58).

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JOHN D. JONES

ty as a penuria rerum, which in light of other texts where the
term penuria is used, suggests a state of destitution. 36
Moreover, the most extended presentation of the distinction
between actual and habitual poverty focuses on the issue of use
and not possession. This distinction is found in a comment from
the Gloss on the Lucan text "He who does not renounce all that
he possesses cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:33).37 The Gloss
states:
There is a difference between renouncing all and relinquishing all,
since renunciation applies to all those who, as they licitly use all the
mundane goods which they possess, nevertheless keep their minds
focused on what is eternal. However, relinquishing [all] belongs only to
the perfect, who set aside all temporal things and are captivated solely
by eternity. 38

Note that habitual and actual poverty are contrasted in terms of
licit use of goods which people possess and the setting aside of
goods which "perfect people" undertake. It does not seem, however, that setting aside all things involves merely giving up ownership of things while continuing lawfully to use them, for the
point of the contrast would be lost. That actual poverty involves
renouncing even licit use of goods (and Thomas does not interpret the meaning of "licit use" as it is used in the Gloss) is also
indicated in §3, 427-435 [n.221], where Thomas comments on the
reward of judicial power which Christ gives to those who endure
actual poverty. Once again, Thomas approvingly quotes the
Gloss: those who have relinquished all things and have followed
the Lord shall be judges, while those who licitly possess and

36 See ad 15 (§6, 871-875 [n. 250)), where Thomas notes that the Apostles and members of the early Church at times sustained great need and penury for the sake of Christ
(multas egestates et penurias sustinuerint propter Christum). Also, see c.7, §12, 13981405 [n. 341), in the third set of responses to objections, where Thomas notes the variation in Jesus' and the Apostles' "standard of living" from penury to abundance.
37 Qui non renuntiat omnibus quae possidet, non potest meus esse discipulus.
38 Hoc tamen distat inter renuntiare omnibus et relinquere omnia: quia renuntiare
convenit omnibus, qui ita licite utuntur omnibus mundanis quae possident, ut tamen
mente tendant ad aeterna; relinquere est tantummodo perfectorum, qui omnia temporalia postponunt, et solis aeternis inhiant (§3, 319-325 [n. 210)).

POVERTY IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

423

rightfully use goods shall be judged. 39 In any event, neither of
these passages can be understood to characterize actual poverty
solely in terms of a non-ownership of goods which has no relation to the use of possessions.
But now the question arises: what use of goods or standard of
living defines actual poverty? I shall suggest that Thomas gives
two different accounts of actual poverty. One implies that actual poverty consists in a severely restricted use of goods or a living standard of destitution in which people lack what is required
for normal physical subsistence. The other broadens the notion
of actual poverty to include the state in which people have what
is required for such subsistence (but apparently with no surplus
or wealth [divitias] beyond that). 40
The first account, which identifies actual poverty with destitution, is given in §3, 389-96 [n. 217], where Thomas cites with
approval Chrysostom's remark "how did the lack of corporeal
things harm the Apostles? Did they not live in hunger, thirst and
nakedness" and then goes on to note that actual poverty consists
in the penury of things. 41 The identification of actual poverty
with destitution or penuria rerum is also implied in Thomas's
reply to the first objection which is based on the famous prayer
from Proverbs 30:9-Give me neither mendicancy or wealth, but
let me have the means necessary for myself (victui meo necessaria) ... lest compelled by need (egestate compulsusfurer), I per-

39 Qui relinquerunt
omnia, et secuti sunt Dominium, hi iudices erunt; qui licita
habentes, recte usi sunt, iubicabuntur (§3, 319-25 [n.210]).
40 The reader should note a certain ambiguity in the notions of possessing or lacking
the means of subsistence. People could be said to possess the means of subsistence in the
sense that they are barely able to stave off death by starvation, exposure etc., or it could
mean that they are able to satisfy basic subsistence needs in a minimal but adequate way.
In modern categories, we might express the difference in terms of a diet which avoids
starvation and a diet which avoids malnutrition. Conversely, people could be said to
lack the means of subsistence when they lack what is required to go on living: e.g., they
face more or less imminent death by starvation. On the other hand, lacking the means
of subsistence could refer to a state (more or less ongoing) in which, while people are not
vulnerable to imminent death, their subsistence needs are at best barely met. I assume
that when Thomas characterizes actual poverty as a penuria rerum, he includes both
senses of lacking the means of subsistence.
41 Actualis paupertas quae in penuria rerum consistit.

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JOHN D. JONES

jure the name of God. 42 The objection claims that when religious
(such as those in orders with no common possessions) deprive
themselves of the means of subsistence, they expose themselves
to mendicancy and fall prey to the dangers mentioned in the
prayer.
This objection is noteworthy for the three standards of living
it invokes: a state of mendicancy constituted by a need (egestate)
for or lack of what is required for physical subsistence, an intermediate state in which such needs are met, and a state of wealth
(divitias) in which there is some surplus beyond the means of
subsistence.
Thomas deals with this objection by arguing both that it is the
abuse of poverty and mendicancy (and not these things in themselves) which is evil and that this abuse includes an unwillingness to endure either. Indeed, he quotes Chrysostom with
approval: "the evil is not to be poor but not to want to be poor"
(ad 1).44 Thomas indicates that the Proverbs prayer will not be
offered by those enduring voluntary poverty since they are not
subjected to the danger inherent in involuntary or forced poverty (coacta or involuntaria paupertas [inopia]), as this poverty
"necessarily involves a desire for wealth" (ad 3).45
As we saw earlier, the Proverbs text distinguishes three states:
wealth, having what is necessary for one's life (but not more than
that), and mendicancy linked with neediness. The second
state-minimal but sufficient conditions to maintain one's life
-is not considered a state of poverty; otherwise the prayer
43

42 Mendicus translates the Hebrew term rash, one of the Old Testament terms we
translate as "poverty." The Proverbs text is cited in obj. 1.
43 It is important to note that the states mentioned in the prayer seem to be expressed
in terms of the use of goods or standard of living and not merely in terms of the possession of goods. Certainly, the Old Testament authors did not make the elaborate kinds of
distinctions between use and ownership proffered by later Christian theologians.
Moreover (as I shall consider somewhat later), there are texts in which Thomas argues
that religious should aim to achieve the means of subsistence which define the middle
state. He is certainly not implying, however, that they possess, i.e., own, these goods; cf.
ad 6 (§6, 659-666 [n. 240]).
44 Non pauperum esse malum est, sed non velle pauperum esse (§6, 603-604 [n. 235D.
45 Quae habet de necessitate desiderium divitiarum annexum (§6, 635-636 [n. 237D.

POVERTY IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

425

would make no sense. Now, if we accept Chrysostom's injunction that it is evil not to want to be poor, it would seem that religious should reduce themselves to a state of "nakedness, hunger,
and thirst" with no desire to abandon that state-including no
desire to have the means necessary for life. This interpretation is
suggested by Chrysostom's remark, cited above, that the poverty of Jesus and the disciples-their nakedness, hunger, and thirst
-did not hurt them.
This "ascetic" strand of argument, however, is offset by another, admittedly more dominant, strand in which Thomas suggests
not only that religious should aim to have the means necessary
for life, but that it would be wrong for them to deprive themselves of such means. For example, Thomas distinguishes
between "temporal things necessary for sustaining our present
life" and "temporal things reserved for providing for necessities
in the future" (ad 7).46 He makes the same point (but even more
strongly) in ad 10, where he writes that it is vicious (vitiosus) "to
deprive oneself beyond that with which it is possible to sustain
nature. " 47 This statement is based on the principle that, since
"grace is the perfection of nature, nothing which pertains to
grace can destroy nature" (ad 10).48 On the other hand, Thomas
notes in the same reply that trust in divine assistance makes it
"possible to conserve nature without dominion over temporal
possessions." 49 These texts point to a conception of poverty
which allows for no ownership or possession of goods, but which

46 "In rebus temporalibus
quaedam sunt quae sunt necessaria ad sustentationem
vitae praesentaliter," contrasted with "temporalia quae reservantur ad providendum
necessitati corporis in futurum." Certainly a "perfect person" will give up the latter type
of goods; nevertheless, for example, "I ought not deprive myself totally of [goods for present subsistence] so that I remain naked, or without the food and drink appropriate to
the season" (non debeo mihi totum eripere, ut scilicet nudus remaneam, vel absque cibo
et potu tempore comestionis) (ad 7 [§6, 667-683 (n. 241)]).
47 Sibi subtrahat ultra id quod natura sustinere potest (§6, 762 [n. 245]).
48 Gratia est perfectio naturae: unde nihil quod ad gratiam attinet, naturam interimit (§6, 755-757 [n. 245]).
49 Potest enim sine dominio possessionum terrenarum natura conservari (§6, 777-78
[n. 245]).

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JOHN D. JONES

justifies and in fact commands people to use goods at the level
needed to preserve nature.-rn
In sum, I think that Thomas presents two contrasting and,
indeed, conflicting accounts of the scope of use of goods which
should accompany relinquishing possessions. On the one hand,
Thomas offers what we might call a stringent, "ascetic" conception of poverty in which religious will subject themselves to
actual poverty as a penuria rerum, specified as being naked,
hungry, thirsty, and homeless; following Chrysostom's maxim,
they will not desire to escape this poverty. According to the second account, however, religious will seek to attain food, clothing,
and other goods sufficient to maintain the body and, indeed, will
avoid denying themselves what is required to sustain the body.
Of course, religious may find themselves without sufficient food
and clothing, but they will legitimately seek to acquire such
goods through begging or through manual labor.
The tension between these two accounts is well illustrated in
Thomas 's claim that a desire for wealth necessarily pertains to
involuntary poverty. 51 Let me close this section with an examination of this claim and some of the inconsistencies it raises with
Thomas's view of the nature of actual poverty. It is true (analytically) that those who are involuntarily poor desire not to be
poor, provided of course, that the involuntariness of the poverty
50 Also, see ad 20 (§6, 994-99 [n. 256]): "We petition God to provide us with temporal goods necessary for our nature. Thus, we ought not reject temporal things; rather,
they are to be used for the necessity of our body in food and clothing" (unde temporalia
non debemus abiicere, quin eis utamur ad necessitatem corporis in cibo et vestitu).
Incidentally, I am assuming that Aquinas does not restrict the notion of sustaining bodily nature to its most minimal sense (i.e., barely staving off death), otherwise the point of
ad 7 makes no sense. If one does not share that assumption, then ad 10 belongs to the
argument which identifies actual poverty with destitution.
51 Inopia involuntaria, quae habet de necessitate desiderium divitiarum annexum (ad
3 [§6, 635-36 (n. 237))). Since this desire is what leads people subjected to such poverty
into sin, it seems as if Thomas implies that the involuntarily poor are covetous (i.e, that
their desire for wealth is improper). Indeed, Proctor translates the occurrence of quae
habet de necessitate desiderium divitiarum annexum in ad 5 (§6, 653 [n.239}) as "which
causes covetousness." But Thomas does not explicitly say that poverty causes covetousness in either ad 1, 3, or 5 where the description of involuntary poverty is given.
Moreover, Thomas makes it plain that the poor who beg for what is necessary for life are
not covetous (c.7, §12, 1415-1419 [n. 342]).

POVERTY IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

427

is a matter of the will. If people are involuntarily poor because
of external constraints (they could not escape the poverty even if
they wanted to), but nevertheless accept that poverty and would
not escape it even if they could, then they presumably would not
be involuntarily poor in Aquinas's sense. Thus, I take it that
involuntariness solely due to external constraints is not what
Aquinas has in mind in his characterization of involuntary
poverty.
In any event, while involuntary poverty necessarily involves a
desire not to be poor, it is hard to see how it can necessarily
involve a desire for wealth, unless poverty and wealth are logically and really opposed to one another. If they were contraries
so that there were some state which was neither poverty nor
wealth, then the desire not to be poor would not necessarily
imply a desire to be wealthy, unless Thomas is making some a
priori, and unstated, assumptions about the character of those
who are subjected to or want to avoid involuntary poverty. 52
Recall the three "standards of living" given in Prov. 30:9mendicancy correlated with a lack of subsistence goods, a state
involving possession of such goods, and a condition of wealth
which involves some surplus beyond subsistence goods. There
are basically two ways in which poverty and wealth could be
opposed to one another. First, poverty includes the state of mendicancy and the state of minimal sufficiency so that both are
opposed to the condition of wealth. Second, poverty is restricted
to the state of mendicancy, while wealth includes both the state
of minimal sufficiency and wealth (as a surplus beyond minimal
sufficiency).
On the face of it, the second option might seem unreasonable.
Generally we do not think of wealth as referring to subsistence
goods. However, in the Summa Contra Gentiles, Thomas uses
divitias in a very broad sense that includes subsistence goods
(bk. III, c. 133). In this context, poverty would be restricted to
penury or need with respect to subsistence goods. The only way
52 If one recalls Thomas 's apparent agreement with Chrysostom (ad 1) that not wanting to be poor is a sin, then he (Thomas) might very well be making such assumptions.

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JOHN D. JONES

the voluntarily poor could be free from the desire for wealth is if
they had no desire for the means of subsistence. Such a view
would conform only to the stringent account of voluntary poverty. It would not conform to the second account in which religious
are justified in seeking subsistence goods. It should be noted that
Thomas does not completely oppose poverty and wealth in III
Cont. Gent., c. 133; for, since the life of contemplation requires
wealth (divitias) sufficient for life, then even those who are voluntarily poor would desire some wealth. There are, however, no
texts in the Contra impugnantes where Thomas uses divitias in
this broad sense.
Consider then, the first option, in which poverty includes the
state of minimal sufficiency as well as the state of need associated with mendicancy. The problem with this option is that it does
not seem to support Thomas 's interpretation of the thrust of
Prov. 30: 8-9. Basically, Thomas argues that this prayer refers to
involuntary poverty and to those who try to avoid it. But if such
people try to avoid involuntary poverty by seeking a middle state
between poverty and wealth, namely minimal sufficiency, then it
makes no sense to include the middle state within the concept of
poverty. Otherwise, what is the difference between those trying
to avoid involuntary poverty and those voluntarily poor people
who apparently seek, and are generally obliged not to abandon,
a condition of minimal sufficiency? In other words, Thomas's
interpretation of the Proverbs text makes no sense unless poverty and wealth are opposites, but this opposition blurs precisely
the distinction he wants to make between the voluntarily and
involuntarily poor.
III
My concern in this section is to discuss Thomas 's response to
a set of objections which comprise nearly half of the total presented in Contra impugnantes, chapter 6. This set is based on an
argument which is both moral and prudential in nature and
which focuses on key facets of Aquinas's notion of (voluntary)
poverty: "giving all" (dans omnia), "relinquishing all" (relinquens
omnia), and "reserving nothing for self" (nihil sibi reservans).
This argument is presented both in strictly rational terms as well

POVERTY IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

429

as with recourse to Christian Scripture and tradition. It is presented in schematic form in objection 9:
To give what is to be given as well as what is not to be given is an act
of prodigality. But he who gives everything, gives what is to be given
and what is not to be given, since he reserves nothing of what ought not
to be given for himself. 53

This objection does not specify exactly what things ought not
be given, but it is clear from other objections that the means of
physical subsistence are intended (obj. 1 and 5). As a basis for
considering the objections related to this formal argument, I
want to explore what might be meant by the notions of "giving
all," "relinquishing all" and the apparently correlative notion of
"reserving nothing for self." As we shall see, these phrases can
be understood either with reference to the possession of goods or
with reference to the use of goods in such a way that the phrases have quite different meanings and implications for religious
life.
A clear instance of "giving everything" is found in the life of
St. Francis when, after he was disowned by his father, he
renounced all claims to his own inheritance and, in a striking
gesture before the citizens of Assisi, stripped himself naked. 54 At
that moment, St. Francis relinquished everything in the sense
that he had no possessions which he could call his own and, in
the more radical sense, that he had no material goods immediately at hand which he could use (at least apart from the air
which he was breathing and the mantle which the Bishop gave
him to wear). Francis had, one could say, made himself poor.
How, then, might he deal with wants, desires, and needs
which require material goods for their satisfaction? Several
options are open. First, he could simply forage for such goods,
taking only what was wild or unclaimed by others. Second, he
could beg from others (solicit goods). Third, he could labor or
53 "Dare danda et non danda est actus prodigalitatis.
Sed ille qui dat omnia, dat
danda et non danda; cum nihil non dandum sibi reservet. Ergo talis peccat vitio prodigalitatis." Objections closely related to 9 include objs. 4-8, 10-15, 19 and 20.
54 Thomas of Celano, First Life of St. Francis, in Marion Habig, ed., St. Francis of
Assisi: Omnibus of Sources (Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 197 2), Book 1,15 (p. 241).

430

JOHN D. JONES

perform some form of service by which he would be compensated either with various goods, or with money and other items
which he could then exchange for goods. These possibilities
would hold true for any other people, individually or collectively, who might "renounce all."
If a religiously motivated poverty requires or consists in relinquishing all things, such a gesture cannot be accomplished on a
one-time basis at the entrance into religious life; rather, it must
be carried out on a daily basis. If poverty is understood in terms
of non-ownership, then religious will not "acquire" things in
ways that involve either personal and/or common ownership or
possession (depending on the order to which they belong). Of
course, avoiding possession of goods requires specifying (a) the
criteria for ownership or possession as well as (b) what kinds of
goods can be subjected to ownership or possession: e.g., any
material goods, goods for immediate consumption (the apple
which I just picked off a tree and am now eating), subsistence
goods kept for future use (the grain which I harvested today but
which will not be eaten for three months), durable goods, fixed
goods, etc. Regardless of the resolution of these two issues, so far
as voluntary poverty consists in the non-ownership of goods,
religious will satisfy the demand that they relinquish all things to
the extent that, regardless of what they "acquire,'' they reserve
nothing for themselves in the sense that they individually and/or
collectively own or possess things.
On the other hand, if poverty is understood with reference to
use-so that people are poor in the sense that they do not have
at hand and cannot get at hand what must be used for various
purposes (with respect to which poverty is defined), then religious will relinquish all and give all in the sense that they retain
nothing for their own use. Thus, any goods religious might
"acquire" would pass out of their hands, presumably by being
given to the poor. So far as people might eat, drink, or clothe
themselves from what they "acquire,'' they would retain something for themselves and, thus, would violate the criterion that
they relinquish everything and give everything (to the poor).
With these considerations in mind, let me continue with the
objections related to objection 9. Drawing on St. Paul's maxim

POVERTY IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

431

"that we are to be content with food and wherewith to cover us"
as well as the comment from the Gloss that we are not to cast
away all things, objection 6 concludes that orders which lack
temporal possession (temporalibus possessiones caret) cast away
all temporal things (omnino temporalia abiicit). However, it is
not clear whether or not the objection refers simply to renouncing ownership of possessions or, more radically, to giving up the
use of things.
The seventh objection, however, seems to employ the more
radical interpretation. This objection draws on a comment from
the Gloss that we are to give a tunic to the poor only if we have
(at least) two tunics, since if we have only one and tried to divide
it, no one would be able to use it. Giving everything to the poor
and reserving nothing for oneself is condemned because one
would strip oneself of everything whatsoever (unusquisque
totum eripiat), leaving nothing at hand to provide for one's subsistence. Surely, this objection makes no sense if "giving all" is
restricted exclusively to relinquishing proprietary dominion over
things. Moreover, the radical meaning of "casting away all
things" is repeated in objs. 11, 12 and 13 where it is argued that
people who relinquish all and reserve nothing for themselves
expose themselves to starvation and, in fact, commit suicide.
Objection 13 is quite blunt about this: "he, who relinquishes all
things to enter a religious order without common possessions to
sustain him, sins in a certain manner by suicide." 55 If such people expected nevertheless to go on living, they would certainly
appear to tempt God to perform miracles (obj.19).
It might seem downright ludicrous and captious for someone
to suggest that the criterion of complete non-use be adopted for
voluntary poverty, since this would result, sooner rather than
later, in suicidal death by starvation (as objections 12-14 properly note). Yet, it does not seem to me that the serious force of these
objections can be set aside as an egregious misunderstanding of
voluntary poverty, especially so far as the argument relates to
religious orders which have no common property. For (a) unless
55 Ergo peccat, se ipsum quodammodo occidens, qui omnia relinquit ut religionem
intret, in qua communes possessiones non sunt unde sustentunter.

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JOHN D. JONES

an order devises various strategies whereby the ownership of or
proprietary dominion over all of the goods it uses is transferred
outside of the order (as with the Franciscans) or to some specific members within the order or (b) unless certain kinds of goods
are exempted from ownership-either because of how they are
acquired (e.g., through begging) or because of the kinds of goods
they are (e.g., subsistence goods used for immediate consumption), then it is hard to see how an order which does not exercise
dominium over goods either personally or in common will be
able to keep any goods which it might acquire in order to use
them. The only way to justify the use of such goods seems to lie
in arguing that there can be a simple use of things (especially
consumable goods) which does not involve dominion over
them. 56
In response to this set of objections, Thomas (not surprisingly) rejects the radical meaning of "giving all," where the phrase
is understood in the category of use. Indeed, in his response to
objection 6, he notes that the phrase "temporal things are not
entirely to be given up" 57 implies that temporal things are to be
used for sustaining life in food, clothing, and drink. Of course,
this view accords with his observation that religious do not
abandon the world in the sense that they cease to use material
possessions (ch. 2, §4, 482-486 [n. 34]).58 In other words, in the
category of use, the phrase dat omni a does not ref er to all things.
On the other hand, Thomas is clear that the phrase "temporal
things are not entirely to be given up" does not preclude the
complete casting away of all temporal property either individually or in common (ad 6).59 He thinks that it is both licit and pos56 Of course, this is precisely the strategy which the Spiritualist Franciscans adopted
and which Pope John XXII rejected. See Lambert, Franciscan Poverty, 233 and Douie,
Nature and Heresy, 158.
57 Temporalia non sunt omnino abiicienda.
58 See also his response to objection 20.
59 I take issue with Swenson (Emerging Concepts of Jurisdiction, Sacramental Orders
and Property Rights, 266, n.159), who cites ad 6 as evidence that Thomas believes that
one cannot renounce one's property in goods used for immediate preservation of nature.
The text to ad 6 (§6, 659-666 [n.240]) reads as follows: "Ad sextum dicendum, quod illud
quod dicitur, quod temporalia non sunt omnino abiicienda, intelligendum, est quin eis

POVERTY IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

433

sible for people to live without common possessions. However,
can a community use goods without having at least some collective dominion over them? I suggested two possibilities: (a)
either the dominion over things does not lie in the hands of people who used those things or (b) some types of temporal goods
would not be considered as possessions. There is also a third
alternative: (c) some goods could be possessed by the order but
this possession would be compatible with the order not having
any common possessions.
It seems to me that Thomas 's analysis of this matter in the
Contra impugnantes is unclear in that he does not set forth what
he considers to be the criteria for possessing something, nor does
he clearly indicate what kinds of goods could possibly count as
possessions. I shall discuss alternative (a) by considering a text
from the Contra retrahentes which contains a much blunter
statement of the thrust of the set of objections to which I have
referred. The objection runs as follows: "it is impossible that
people possess nothing in common or individually, for it is necessary that people eat, drink and be clothed; they could not do
this if they had nothing." 60
Thomas dismisses this objection as "altogether frivolous"
(omnino jrivolum): "the things used by religious for their support
are not absolutely their own property, or under their own control, but are ministered to them for their necessity by those who
have the management of such things" (c. 16, ad 9).61 But while
this response might meet the objection in one sense-namely,
where the dominion over all goods can be transferred to those
utamur ad sustentationem vitae in cibo et potu et vestitu: quod patet ex hoc quod dicitur I Tim. 6, 8: habentes alimenta et quibus tegamur, his contenti simus: non tamen
intelligit quin homo possit omnium temporalium proprietatem a se abiicere."
I construe the response to mean that while one should not completely renounce the
use of goods, one can renounce possession of all temporal goods. [Note: the Marietti edition of the Contra impugnantes reads curam for proprietatem, which is found in the
Leonine edition.]
60 Hoc esse impossibile quod aliquis nihil in communi vel proprio possideat; quia
necesse est quod comedant et bibant et induantur; quod facere non possunt, si nihil
haberent (c. 14, obj.9).
61 Swenson rightly notes the similarity of this position to that held by the Franciscans
(265, n.159).

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JOHN D. JONES

who do not use them-it does not completely solve the problem
since it implicitly accepts the notion that management must be
exercised over the goods which a group has at its disposal. Yet,
if those goods are not formally controlled by someone outside the
group, it is hard to see how the group will not have common possessions if, after all, the management of the goods lies in the
hands of the group. It is hard to see how allowing some members
of the group to manage goods for the others can solve the problem of the group having no common possessions.
This general problem arises in Thomas's position that Jesus
and his disciples had no common possessions (§4, 446-455 [n.
223)), yet had a common purse. In response to the objection that
Jesus and the disciples had a purse which Jesus administered,
Aquinas argues that the money which was reserved therein was
not obtained from some personal possessions which Jesus had, 62
but rather was obtained through alms from the women who
ministered to him (ad 14).63 Thomas gives a similar analysis of
the money which the disciples administered (ad 15).64
Even if we grant that the money in the purse was not contributed from anything Jesus owned, this does not deal with the
more important issue of whether the money or goods which
Jesus and the disciples received through alms became their (common) property after they had been given to them. Thomas's
response to objection 15 works only if money and other goods
received through alms do not become the property of those who
receive the alms. This seems an odd position to take, especially
since Thomas affirms more than once in the Contra impugnantes
that religious who preach and teach are entitled to be supported
by alms, even though they cannot enforce that entitlement if they
are not given alms. 65 Moreover in the Summa theologiae,

Non tamen earn de aliquibus propriis possessionibus habebat.
§6, 850-865 [n. 249].
64 §6, 866-882 [n.250].
65 See, e.g., chapter 7, ad 9 (§10, 1164-1170 [n.327JHMarietti:
ad 10)-in the
responses to the first group of objections and ad 4 (§12, 1457-1463 [n. 344]) in the
responses to the third group of objections.
62

63

POVERTY IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

435

Thomas writes "something becomes one's own through the generosity of the donor." 66
While many people ministered to Jesus and the disciples, providing them with money and other goods, it certainly seems that
Jes us decided how those things were to be used. In other words,
it seems that money given to Jesus either became his property or
he became the custodian of it on behalf of the disciples. The latter alternative seems to be Thomas's position (ad 15).67 But if this
is so, it is not clear to me why Jesus and the disciples did not have
common possessions.
The same reasoning seems to apply to other things which the
disciples used, e.g., clothing. Even if they received such things
through alms, surely the donors did not exercise proprietary
dominion over those things after they were given away. Of
course, this would not hold for all of the goods which Jesus and
the disciples used. A house is something which they could have
used but which would have remained in the control of the people who owned it. We might say they were given the use of the
house but not the house itself. But in the case of money, food,
and clothes, it seems as if they were given these things and not
merely the use of them. So, too, if they used money to purchase
items for their own use, it is hard to see why those goods would
not count as common possessions.
In other words, the argument which might be used to explain
why alms given to individual religious are not the property of
those religious after they receive them-namely, that they do not
own those things since their superiors dictate the use of them does not apply to Jesus individually or to him and the disciples
collectively. Indeed, it is difficult to see how the argument would
work for any relatively independent religious (or secular) community, unless some people within the community had complete
control over the goods of the community and the other members
of the community were completely dependent upon them for
decisions regarding the use of the goods. But even in this case, it
Fit autem aliquid alicuius ex liberalitate donantis (11-11, q. 187, a. 4).
Hinnebusch notes that Aquinas apparently held a deposit of money for the use of
other Friars (History, I,160).
66
67

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JOHN D. JONES

is not clear why the community itself does not have goods in
common, since those who control the goods do so on behalf of the
community and as members of the community.
Let us, then, consider alternative (b): the concept of possession or ownership does not extend to all temporal goods (either
according to their kind or the conditions under which they are
used). The only explicit support for this alternative in Contra
impugnantes chapter 6 is Thomas 's distinction between goods
"necessary for the present sustenance of life" and "temporal
goods reserved for providing in the future for the necessities of
the body" (ad 7).68 Thomas includes possessions and money in
the latter category. As we indicated above, in light of the Gloss
text stating that people should part with a tunic only if they have
two, the seventh objection concludes that totally stripping oneself of everything whatsoever (unusquisque totum eripiat) is
wrong. The thrust of Thomas 's distinction, then, is to deny that
giving all one's possessions (dare omnia sua) amounts to totally
stripping oneself of everything, since goods used for the immediate preservation of nature do not count as possessions in the first
place.
If an order makes use only of goods needed for present subsistence, then exclusion of such goods from the class of possessions solves the problem of how an order can use goods and
renounce all common possession of goods. In light of his analysis
of actual poverty, Thomas. apparently thinks that such restricted
use is possible and licit. It is difficult, however, to determine how
much weight to place on this distinction. While I can find no
other text in Contra impugnantes chapter 6 which formally contradicts it-that is, which explicitly regards goods used for present subsistence as possessions-the clear impression created in
many other texts is that goods used for present subsistence can
68 Rebus temporalibus quaedam sunt quae sunt necessaria ad sustentationem vitae
praesentaliter (§6, 668-670 [n. 241]) ... temporalia quae reservantur ad providentiam
necessitati corporis in futurum (§6, 676-678 [n.241D. (In Contra retrahentes, c. 15,
Thomas cites lands, vineyards, or any other fixed property as goods which the disciples
were forbidden to possess in common. But whether these goods merely exemplify common possessions or define the set of common possessions is not made clear.)

POVERTY IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

437

count as possessions and are among the things renounced as possessions by religious.
For example, Thomas interprets the phrase "not all things are
to be cast away" to imply that we are to use things for the support of nature; he denies that it means that we cannot give up all
temporal property (ad 6). It seems "natural" to read this distinction as implying that it is possible for people to use but not possess goods for present subsistence. So, too, when Thomas extols
the virtue of possessing nothing (possidere nihil) (§3, 397-411
[nn. 218-219]), it is much less forced to take the phrase literally
than as meaning "possessing none of the things which can be
possessed," which is how the phrase would be read in light of the
distinction from ad 7.
Further, Thomas's responses to objections 11 and 12 seem
oddly framed if he adhered strictly to the distinction from ad 7.
Both objections reject relinquishing all things because doing so
exposes people to starvation and suicide. In both cases, Thomas
responds that people who give up everything for the sake of
Christ do not face suicide or starvation since God will assist
them. The clear sense of this response is that present subsistence
goods are included in "everything." If the distinction from ad 7
were employed, however, one would have expected Thomas to
say that those who give up everything do not face starvation
because they only give up their possessions, not goods used for
present subsistence needs.
Moreover, the exclusion of goods used for present subsistence
from the class of possessions raises serious conceptual problems.
It seems odd, to say the least, that the food, clothing, and drink
which people are now using or consuming are not possessed by
anyone either individually or collectively. It also seems odd to
say that the food which people stored for future use (and which,
as such, is among their possessions) ceases to be their possession
when they eat it. For example, with regard to objection 7, it does
not make sense to suggest that the coat which I constantly use is
not a possession, while the coat which I save for future use is a
possession.
Regardless of the extent to which Thomas accepts this distinction in the Contra impugnantes, he does not hold it in the

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JOHN D. JONES

Summa theologiae. For example, Thomas makes it clear that,
except in cases of extreme emergency, monks may not give alms
without the permission of their superior precisely because monks
have no property (11-11, q. 32, a. 8). Presumably, this principle
extends to all alms including food, drink, and clothing which are
listed among the seven kinds of alms (11-11, q. 32, a. 2). So too, in
his discussion of the legitimacy of common possessions, he
regards subsistence goods as capable of being counted as personal or corporate possessions (11-11, q. 188, a. 7, ad 3 and 4).
Let us, then, consider the third alternative: some goods could
be possessed by the order, but this possession would be compatible with the order not having any common possessions. Despite
its conceptual implausibility, this alternative seems to have been
chosen by the Dominicans. After all, despite the renunciation of
common possessions at the Chapter of 1220, the Dominicans
generally maintained control of and title to their priories and, for
example, manuscripts and books acquired by the order. 69 It
would not be surprising if St. Thomas held this view when he
wrote the Contra impugnantes, but he does not discuss it in the
Contra impugnantes. Indeed, one of the lacunae in the Contra
impugnantes is that Thomas offers virtually no discussion of
poverty with reference to non-subsistence goods; moreover he
talks about possessions and property as if the meaning and scope
of these terms is self-evident (at least to those who would be
reading the work). Of course, on this issue the Dominicans differed notably from the Franciscans, as the latter claimed they
did not own their priories or any other goods since they transferred ownership of them to people outside the order. While the
Dominican position avoids the contrivance of the Franciscan
position, it still seems conceptually ad hoc.
To sum up: The central purpose of chapter 6 is to show that
religious life without common possessions (e.g., as found in men69 Hinnebusch, History, I, 158.and 160. Hinnebusch writes: "[The order] permitted
the brethren to obtain manuscripts by buying them ... not considering the holding of
books for personal use, even beyond the immediate necessities of study, against poverty
or the common possession of goods ... the ownership of the collection remained with the
priory."

POVERTY IN ST. THOMAS AQUINAS

439

dicant orders) is licit. Thomas certainly thinks such life is possible, for he cites several historical examples of groups living without common possessions. 70 Apparently he also found this mode of
life conceptually intelligible and consistent, since in the Contra
impugnantes he never discussed the nature of and criteria for
common property. Given this lacuna as well as his ambiguous
specification of poverty in terms of use and possession, it seems
to me that the entire defense of mendicant poverty in the Contra
impugnantes is, in the long run, unresolved.

70 §4, 446-4 74

[nn. 223-224]; §4, 486-503, [nn. 226-227D.

THE ARISTOTELIAN FIRST PRINCIPLE
OF PRACTICAL REASON
KEVIN L. FLANNERY,

S.J.

Pontijicia Universitas Gregoriana
Rome, Italy

INTRODUCTION*

I

N THE Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 94, a. 2, 1 Thomas
Aquinas identifies what is often spoken of as "the first principle of practical reason"-that is, "that good is to be done
and pursued, and evil is to be avoided." Thomas explains:

All other precepts of the natural law are based upon this: so that whatever the practical reason naturally apprehends as man's good (or evil)

* I am grateful to Peter Ryan, S.J. and Stephen Brock for commenting on a draft of
this paper.
1 I shall use a number of abbreviations: ST= Summa Theologiae; An.Post. =Posterior
analytics; An.Pr. = Prior analytics; DA = De anima; EE = Eudemian ethics; EN =
Nicomachean Ethics; GA = De generatione animalium; lnsomn. =De insomniis; Int. =
De interpretatione; Metaph. =Metaphysics; MM= Magna moralia; Phys. =Physics; R.
= Republic; Rhet. = Rhetorica; SE = Sophistici elenchi; FPPR = the first principle of
practical reason; PNC = the principle of non-contradiction. I also use a number of
transliterated Greek terms such as akolasia (depravity), akolastos (depraved person),
akrasia (weakness of will), akrates (person subject to weakness of will), egkrateia (continence in spite of temptation), egkrates (person who remains continent in spite of temptation), and phronesis (practical wisdom). I use them for brevity's sake and since they
have also found their way into the standard philosophical vocabulary, at least in
Aristotelian studies. I also speak in this essay as if Aristotle was the author of MM. For
an argument in favor of a qualified understanding of this thesis, see note 14. For the
Greek text of the works of Aristotle I have for the most part used the Oxford Classical
Texts. The one major exception is Susemihl's edition of the MM: Franz Susemihl, ed.,
Aristotelis: Magna moralia (Leipzig: Tuubner, 1883). For most (but not all) of the translations from Aristotle, I have made use of Jonathan Barnes, ed., The Complete Works of
Aristotle: the Revised Oxford Translation, 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1984). For English translations of Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, I have used the
translation by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province (London: Burns, Oates &
Washbourne, 1920).
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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

belongs to the precepts of the natural law as something to be done or
avoided. Since, however, good has the nature of an end, and evil, the
nature of a contrary, hence it is that all those things to which man has
a natural inclination, are naturally apprehended by reason as being
good and consequently as objects of pursuit, and their contraries as
evil, and objects of avoidance. Wherefore according to the order of natural inclinations, is the order of the precepts of the natural law.'

As its name suggests, the first principle of practical reason
(FPPR) is no incidental tenet. Thomas compares it in this same
article to the first principle of theoretical reason, better known as
the principle of non-contradiction (PNC): "that the same thing
cannot be affirmed and denied at the same time." 3 On the
other hand, it is also commonly acknowledged that Thomas's
(philosophical) ethical theory is Aristotelian. How is it then that
we never hear of an Aristotelian first principle of practical reason, either in the secondary literature or (as it seems) in Aristotle
himself?
I shall argue in this essay that there is such a principle in
Aristotle's ethical theory and that it has the logical status that
Thomas attributes to it. It is none other than the well-known
paradoxical Socratic principle that no one deliberately does
wrong 4-understood in a certain way. (I shall refer to this principle as "the Socratic Principle.") I shall also argue that Aristotle
has a fairly elaborate theory about how, psychologically, a person
accommodates himself to a violatiqn of the first principle of
practical reason. I shall leave one issue unaddressed: whether (as
in the question from ST above) Aristotle's FPPR includes "all
other precepts of the natural law." It will be apparent, however,
2 The best exegesis of this article of ST is Germain Grisez, "The First Principle of
Practical Reason: A Commentary on the Summa Theologiae, 1-2, Question 94, Article 2,"
Natural Law Forum 10 (1965): 168-201. See especially 187-190, where Grisez explains
that FPPR is the principle of all human action-even of morally bad acts. See also Alan
Donagan, The Theory of Morality (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1977), 60-1.
3 ST1-11, q.94, a.2, corpus. Thomas refers to Aristotle's Metaph.,iv,3, so we can presume he does not mean to exclude the fuller formulation found at lOOSbl9-20: "the same
attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same
respect."
4 Gorgias 466a4-48lb5; Meno 78a6-b2; Protagoras 352al-357e8.

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in many of my remarks that I think that here too Thomas draws
on Aristotle.
The basis, especially of my initial comments, will be an exegesis of the first part of Nichomachean Ethics, book five, chapter 9, a passage that has not been well understood-and not
without cause on the part of the text, for it is quite obscure. 5
Having completed this exegesis, I shall turn (in section II) to the
question of the relationship between the first principle of practical reason and the principle of non-contradiction. Finally, in section III, I shall examine the psychological accommodation mentioned above.

I. AN ETHICAL SQUARE OF OPPOSITION
Aristotle begins EN,v,9 by saying that one might ask (or "puzzle") whether being done injustice and doing injustice have been
well-defined. The back-reference here is to the immediately preceding chapter in which Aristotle says that true injustice must be
voluntary and that by voluntary he means "any of the things in
a man's own power which he does with knowledge, i.e., not in
ignorance either of the person acted on or of the instrument used
or of the end that will be attained ... "(EN, v,8, 1135a23-5). When
these conditions are not met, says Aristotle in EN,v,7, a person
might do unjust things but he is not unjust: he does not, in the
full sense of the word, do injustice (EN,v,8,1135a15-18).
That Aristotle's puzzlement has primarily to do with the possibility of willingly being done injustice is clear from some lines
taken from Euripides which he now quotes (i.e., at
EN,v,9,1136a13-14). They speak apparently of a mother who
was to some extent willing to be killed by her son:" 'I slew my
mother, that's my tale in brief.' 'Were you both willing, or
unwilling both? "' 6 It also becomes clear at EN,v,9,1136b2 that
this in turn has to do with the issue of weakness of will (akrasia).
By "the first part of EN,v,9" I mean EN,v,9,l 136al0-bl4.
The lines have been subject to various efforts at emendation but always in order to
introduce at least some unwillingness on the mother's part (it being clear from what
appears in the manuscripts that the mother is at least to some extent willing).
5

6

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

What follows in EN, v,9,1136a16ff., then, although couched simply in terms of justice and injustice, pertains as much to "solitary" justice and injustice-Le., justice and injustice one does to
oneself.
As a preliminary move in resolving this issue of the nature of
doing injustice and being done injustice, Aristotle sets out a sort
of ethical square of opposition:
Is it truly possible voluntarily to be done injustice or is it all involuntary, as all doing injustice is voluntary? And so is it all one way or the
other, as also all doing injustice is voluntary, or is it sometimes voluntary, sometimes involuntary? So, too, with being done justice, for all
acting justly is voluntary, so that it would seem reasonable to set things
out similarly in either case-that being done injustice and being done
justice are either voluntary or involuntary. It would seem absurd however in the case of being done justice if all were voluntary, for some are
done justice involuntarily. 7

We can represent the points made here schematically: 8
a: do-injusticev
b: be-done-injusticei?

c: do-justicev
d: be-done-justice?

Aristotle is wondering whether, given that active justice and
injustice seem always to be voluntary actions, for the sake of
symmetry we should say that the corresponding passive states
are similarly of unitary character-Le., that all being done injustice is involuntary (which is more likely than that it should all be
voluntary) and that all being done justice should be voluntary
7EN,v,9,1136a15-23. The word avnKeicrllat at 1136a20 cannot be taken in the sense
of "to be opposed logically," for, on the one hand, if we consider the relationship between
passive and active justice or injustice, then being done justice would have to be (according to this supposition) all involuntary (i.e., opposed to the voluntariness of doing justice)
and 1136a21-23 would make no sense. On the other hand, if the supposed opposition is
between the voluntary-involuntary character of being done injustice and being done justice, 1136a21-23 is again at least out of place. For these lines presuppose that, up until
the point at which they are introduced, the voluntary-involuntary character of being
done injustice is still indeterminate. The sense of avnKei.crllat that Aristotle uses must
therefore be local one: see H. Bonitz, Index Aristotelicus, v.5 of Aristotelis Opera (Berlin:
Reimer, 1870), 64a15-19. It strongly suggests that Aristotle is employing a diagram of
some sort.
•The superscript letter "v" represents "voluntary"; superscript "i" represents "involuntary."

FIRST PRINCIPLE OF PRACTICAL REASON

445

(which Aristotle seems to regard as more likely than that it
should all be involuntary). He replies in the negative, for it is
clear, he says, that "some are done justice involuntarily"
[EN,v,9,1136a22-3].
At this point Aristotle introduces another puzzle:
One might raise this question also: whether every one who has suffered
what is unjust [1:0 aoucov] is being unjustly treated or is it with suffering as it is with acting. For with respect to both [i.e., the passive and the
active] it is possible to partake of just things
'l:cOV
oumirov] incidentally, and similarly it is clearly so also with unjust
things [E7tt 'l:cOV aoix:rov]. For to do unjust things [1:0 'l:UOtKCX 7tpcl1:'1:Etv]is
not the same as to act unjustly [aoix:eiv], nor is to suffer unjust things
[Cioix:a] the same as to be done injustice. It is similar with doing and
being done justice. (EN,v,9,1136a23-29)

Aristotle is clearly referring back, once again, to the two previous chapters. There he has very carefully distinguished between
acts of injustice and what is unjust, acts of justice and what is
just ('tO a8iK11µa Ka\ 'tO a8tKOV Kat 'tO 8tKairoµa Kat 'tO 8tKatOVEN,v, 7,1135a8-9). "What is unjust" is only incidentally (Ka'ta
an act of injustice; "what is just" is only incidentally an act of justice. Subsequently, he speaks of all these things in
the plural. Since the idea is that certain things might be objectively just or unjust but not subjectively (i.e., actually) so, I
translate the plural of 'tO Ci8tKOV (what is unjust) as "unjust
things" and the plural of 'tO 8iKmov (what is just) as "just things."
The syncopation of this passage ("For with respect to
both ... ")does indeed suggest that Aristotle has a diagram of
some sort before him which is bearing the weight of his explanation. 9 He has already concluded that d in the above square of
opposition would be mislabeled simply as voluntary and has
therefore in effect answered in the negative his question of
EN,v,9,1136a18: Is it not the case that "being done justice and
9 The repetition at EN,v,9,1136a29 suggests the same thing. Here Aristotle seems
quite literally to be pointing a second time to what he has already spoken of at
EN,v,9,1136a25-6. See also the words ciicmep Kai to alltKelv nav EJCouatov at
EN,v,9,1136a17, which Bywater feels constrained to bracket. See also note 7.

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

being done injustice are either voluntary or involuntary"? Both
b and d should therefore be split into two compartments: the voluntary and involuntary.
But how is this splitting to be conceived? In a way analogous,
it seems, to the way in which involuntary justice and injustice
are understood in EN, v, 7-8. Involuntary justice and injustice
involve things that are only incidentally just and unjust: as a
German might say, they are Nebenformen ("side-instances" or
"variants") of the real thing. It seems that we are to understand
a similar thing of their passive counterparts. We end up then
with the following,fairly symmetrical revised square, in which
the two central columns represent the central cases of justice and
injustice and the columns off to either side are incidental versions of the same. I use the abbreviations: AJ = active justice; PJ
= passive justice; AI = active injustice; PI = passive injustice.
The superscript letters v and i again signify involuntary and
involuntary.
AIV
pp

AJV

A]'

P}"

PJi

Just as AI; and AJi are not properly speaking doing injustice
and doing justice, so PP and PJ; are not properly speaking being
done injustice and being· done justice. Looking at the injustice
side of the scheme, that understanding seems fairly plausible
when we consider public injustice but implausible when we consider solitary injustice (i.e., akrasia); on the other hand, the justice side seems plausible when we consider solitary justice but
implausible when we consider public justice. That is, if a person
wants to be done an injustice, it seems not quite right to say that
the person performing the action is really doing an injustice; the
prevalence of akrasia, however, suggests that people are quite
often willing accomplices in actions that are to their own worst
interest. On the other hand, if a person does the right thing for
himself but reluctantly, it is not quite right to say that he is a
good person, since a good person voluntarily embraces what is
good; if, however, a person does not welcome just punishment,

FIRST PRINCIPLE OF PRACTICAL REASON

44 7

this seems just as much an instance of being done justice as the
instance in which a person accepts such punishment willingly. It
is also a good deal more common!
These implausibilities can, I think, be dealt with. I shall discuss the first shortly. With the respect to the second, it may be
that Aristotle-if he adverted to the problem at all-would have
invoked the opinion of Socrates, who in the Gorgias suggests that
properly speaking one should welcome just chastisement. To
resist it is to see it not as justice but as injustice-which it is not.
I shall come back to this.
In any case, immediately after the longer passage most recently quoted, Aristotle says: "For it is impossible to be done injustice without someone being unjust or to be done justice without
someone being just" (EN,v,9,1136a29-30). This is meant to
explain (yap-EN,v,9,1136a30) the idea that, just as when we are
done just things incidentally we are not really done justice, so
also when we are incidentally done unjust things it is not the
same as to be done injustice. 10 It is difficult to understand at first
precisely what bearing this has on the square of opposition but
this becomes clearer at the end of the section under consideration
(i.e., EN,v,9,1136b9-14).
At EN,9,1136a31, Aristotle comes back to the "definition" of
doing and being done injustice with which he began the chapter
(i.e., the definition given at EN,v,8,1135a23-5: the agent must
know whom he is injuring, with what, etc.), but this time he does
so in the same breath in which he talks about the weak-willed
man (the akrates): "This is one of our puzzles: whether it is possible for him to do himS'elf injustice" (EN,v,9,1136a34-5). J. A.
Stewart, one of several interpreters who find difficulties in this
remark, says of these latter words: "[they] come in strangely here.

' 0 See Rhet.,i,13,1373a27-8, where Aristotle defines being done injustice as "suffering
unjust things from a willing agent." Rhet.,i,13 contains much that is pertinent to the present study. Note too that at EN,v,ll,1138a4-14 Aristotle is insistent that an injustice
requires a patient. In the case of suicide, since it is an injustice, it is the state which is
done the injustice.

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

They seem to refer back to a list of a1topouµeva: but no list has
been given." 11 But Aristotle has signalled one aporia at
EN,v,9,1136a10 (i.e., the present one) and a second one at
EN,v,9,1136a23. This is clear evidence that the whole of this section of EN,v,9 is meant by Aristotle to be applied especially to
the problem of akrasia.
So, Aristotle is asking, What are we to make of the akrates
who voluntarily harms himself? It would seem that "he is voluntarily done injustice-that is, it would be possible for him to do
himself injustice" (EN,v,9,1136a33-4). It is clear from the context
that Aristotle thinks it absurd (and obviously so) that a person
might willingly harm himself: it is a "puzzle" that needs resolution. Thus, the first implausibility spoken of above is not, in
Aristotle's eyes, an implausibility at all. In fact, this is the
Socratic Principle which becomes in Thomas (and, as I argue, in
Aristotle) FPPR.
It is also absurd, suggests Aristotle at EN,v,9,1136bl-3, for
"someone willingly, through weakness of will, to be harmed by
another acting voluntarily, so that he would be voluntarily done
injustice." This remark shows that Aristotle regards the square
of opposition as a tool for analyzing not just solitary doing oneself injustice but also the public version of the same as well. It
also points to an aspect of Aristotle's ethical theory that most
moderns find unpalatable. He tends to regard taking less than
one is due as a fault: it goes hand in hand, he believes, with
ostentation. The person who voluntarily accepts injustice in fact
balances the books in praise that his supposedly selfless act elicits: he should simply be honest about this.
So perhaps the original definition (of EN,v,8) was wrong, suggests Aristotle at EN,v,9,1136b3-4, and it is necessary "to add to
'harming another, with knowledge of the person acted on and of
the instrument used and of the manner,' the phrase: 'contrary to
the wish of the person acted on.'" What does this accomplish?
we might ask. It rules out the case in which the person involved
wants the injustice-and therefore excludes the "obvious" absur11 J. A. Stewart, Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, 2 vols. {Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1892), v.l, 517. See also Franz Dirlmeier, Aristoteles: Nikomakische
Ethik {Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1967), 428, note 115,3.

FIRST PRINCIPLE OF PRACTICAL REASON

449

dity of a person willingly harming himself or being harmed and
wanting precisely the harm itself. This absurdity is by definition
prevented from entering ihto the scheme-or, at least, it is shunted off to the side, as in the revised square of opposition above. Of
course, the non-philosopher (and certainly the modern nonphilosopher) coming at these questions would say that any
absurdity lies in the notion that weakness of will might not be
possible. Aristotle's absurdity only exists given the axiom-the
first principle-that we always seek what we think good.
The argument concludes (ouv-EN,v,9,1136b5) with a couple
of sentences that indicate quite clearly that Aristotle's solution to
the puzzles discussed involves the notion of "unjust things."
Having said that we need to add to the definition of doing injustice the idea that the patient is unwillingly on the receiving end,
Aristotle remarks:
Then a man may be voluntarily harmed and [voluntarily] suffer unjust
things, but no one is voluntarily done injustice. For no one wishes [this],
not even the incontinent man; one acts rather contrary to one's wish.
For no one wishes for what he does not think good; the incontinent
man, however, does things which he thinks he ought not to do.
(EN,v,9,1136b5-9)

The distinction in the first sentence here ("a man may ... [voluntarily] suffer unjust things, but no one is voluntarily done
injustice") only makes sense given something like the square of
opposition I have identified. Aristotle can now legitimately
speak of Piv, but only because it has been put off to one side and
associated with unjust things.
At the end of the section under consideration, we find a very
important couple of remarks, again regarding the possibility of
doing oneself injustice. Aristotle quotes Homer's lines about
Glaucus who gave away "gold for brass"-thereby seemingly
doing himself injustice. 12 Aristotle insists that this could not be
12 As Stewart paraphrases this passage, the man "does not make his own loss or ruin
his end; nay, he may have his own good in the form of popularity or honour distinctly in
view" (Notes on the Nicomachean Ethics, v.l, 512). See also Dirlmeier, Aristoteles:
Nikomakische Ethik, 428. Aristotle makes this type of argument in a number of places,
including the final section of EN,v.9. See also MM,i,33,1195bl7-24; and also EN,ix,8
where even the selflessness of laying down one's life is an act done in order to secure
nobility for oneself.

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

true injustice since "there must be someone to treat him unjustly" (EN,v,9,1136b13). We can now see clearly what bearing
Aristotle's remark at EN,v,9,1136b29-31 about the necessity of
an agent of either justice or injustice has on the square of opposition. In the case in which a person seemingly takes less than his
due, there is not real injustice since real injustice requires two
parties. I shall return to this, for it pertains to how Aristotle
understands the psychology of the akrates, as I shall explain in
section II.B and in the conclusion.
II. AN ETHICAL PRINCIPLE OF NON-CONTRADICTION
It is clear that in EN,v,9 Aristotle considers the Socratic
Principle as a first principle of his ethical theory. First principles
are "most certain, best known, most believable, non-hypothetical, with respect to which it is not possible to err." 13 The way
Aristotle employs-or,
rather, presupposes-the
Socratic
Principle shows that he regards it in this way. 14 But I have not
yet shown that the Socratic Principle enjoys the same status in
See Bonitz, Index, 112al5-2 l.
I could just as easily have used MM,i,33 to show that the Socratic Principle plays
the role of a background assumption (in a similarly formal treatment). Indeed, the parallel structure of these two passages is well worth pointing out, for this sort of deeper correspondence argues more for an Aristotelian origin for MM than any thematic resemblances. (Stylistically, as is well known, the two works are quite some distance apart.) So
then, at MM,i,33,1195a8 begins a discussion of the distinction between objective and
actual justice and injustice. (Note though that objective morality is here determined by
law. Cp. Rhet.,i,13.) Then we find an initial definition of morally significant action in
terms of knowledge of "whom, with what, and for what" (see MM,1195a27f0. Then
(beginning at MM,1195b5) the issue of voluntarily being done injustice is introduced
(1t01:Epovfa:ovi:a E<Htv aouceicr0m), followed by a discussion of the person who takes less
than he deserves but derives other benefits in the form of glory, friendship, etc. Then we
find the problem of akrasia and a revised definition, precisely the revision proposed in
EN,v,9-i.e., that no one wishes to be done an injustice. This is followed by two sentences (MM,1195b31-34) that, like the sentence atEN,v,9,1136b5-9, are incomprehensible without presuming something like the square of opposition. The chapter goes on to
discuss in more detail the case of akrasia, mentioning explicitly the soul as divided into
parts (MM,1196a26-28). Neither the structure nor the content of the two passages is
exactly the same; but the similarities are sufficient, I think, to discern in each passage the
same author at work-if possibly across the distance of a student's note-taking and
reworking. See J. M. Cooper, "The Magna moralia and Aristotle's moral philosophy,"
American Journal of Philosophy 94 (197 3): 327-49.
13

14

FIRST PRINCIPLE OF PRACTICAL REASON

451

practical reason that PNC enjoys in theoretical reason. This can
be done in a preliminary way (in section II.A) by pointing to a
number of passages in which Aristotle establishes a connection
between the Socratic Principle and PNC. This leads into a discussion of the psychological effects of denying the principle. I
address this issue by first clearing away one incorrect interpretation of the square of opposition (section 11.B), and then discussing the psychological effects themselves (section Ill). Over
the course of this discussion, it will become quite apparent, I
think, that the Socratic Principle does indeed enjoy the same status in practical reason that PNC enjoys in theoretical reason. In
other words, it is FPPR.
A. Some texts pointing to FPPR

There are a number of places where, in connection with the
problem of akrasia (which, as we now know, Aristotle thought a
problem precisely because of the Socratic Principle), Aristotle
speaks of contradiction.
For instance, in a disputed and partially corrupt passage in
EE,viii,1, he nonetheless undoubtedly associates contradiction
with the akrates. Apparently as an objection to the idea that the
akrates might have reason and yet act against it, Aristotle says:
"But if so, supposing appetite to be strong, it will twist him and
he will draw opposite conclusions [A,oytci'tat 'tavav'tia]." 15
But also in EE,ii,7, we find a very compact formulation of the
Socratic Principle which bears a definite affinity to Aristotle's
formulation of PNC:
[W]hat a man does voluntarily he wishes, and what he wishes to do he
does voluntarily. But no one wishes what he thinks to be bad; but surely the man who acts incontinently does not do what he wishes, for to
act incontinently is to act through appetite contrary to what the man
thinks best; whence it results that the same man acts at the same time
both voluntarily
and involuntarily;
but this is impossible.
(EE,ii,7 ,1223b5-10).' 0
15 EE,1246b14-15. See Woods (1992), 160-61. The word £vaviia appears too at
EE,1246bl 9 and b29.
16 cilcrie iiµa
iov amov Eteovia teat ateovia itpanetv• ioino l)' al>uvmov
(EE,1223b9-10). See also a bit later: iiµa apa 0
io amo
Eterov teat iitemv
(EE,ii,7,1223b17). We find similar language also at EN,vii,2,1146a27-31 (see also
1146a5-6).

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

Especially noticeable here is the language of formal proof. What
is impossible? For the same man at the same time to act both voluntarily and involuntarily. 11 Why is this impossible? Since "no
one wishes what he thinks to be bad" and "what a man does voluntarily he wishes, and what he wishes to do he does voluntarily." All this recalls the most succinct of the formulations of PNC:
"the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not
belong to the same subject in the same respect"
( M etaph.,iv,3, 1005b 19-20).
In fact, in the chapter of the Metaphysics immediately following this formulation of PNC, Aristotle comes very close to saying
that PNC applies in the moral sphere. In ridiculing those who
deny PNC, he says:
Why does [a man] not walk early some morning into a well or over a
precipice, if one happens to be in his way? Why do we observe him
guarding against this, evidently not thinking that falling in is alike
good and not good? (Metaph.,v,4,1008b15-17) 1"

In effect, Aristotle is here restating the Socratic Principle: what
a person regards as good he cannot also, at the same time, regard
as not good.
If, however, M etaph. ,iv,4, seems to suggest identity between
the Socratic Principle and PNC, atEN,vi,2 Aristotle makes quite
explicit how they differ.
What affirmation and negation are in thinking, pursuit and avoidance
are in desire; 19 so that since moral excellence is a state concerned with
choice, and choice is deliberate desire, therefore both the reasoning
must be true and the desire right, if the choice' is to be good, and the latter must pursue just what the former asserts. Now this kind of intellect
and of truth is practical; of the intellect which is contemplative, not
practical nor productive, the good and the bad state are truth and fal-

For similar language, see EN,v,11,1138a18-24.
Both intellectual parts, i.e., the epistemikon and the logistikon, aim at truth:
EN,vi,2,1139b12.
19 See also DA,iii,7,431A9-10 where Aristotle also says that to perceive pleasure and
pain is something like affirming and denying.
17

18

FIRST PRINCIPLE OF PRACTICAL REASON

453

sity (for this is the function of everything intellectual); while of the part
which is practical and intellectual the good state is truth in agreement
with right desire. (EN,1139a21-31)

The differences between theoretical and practical reason must
certainly determine ways in which their respective non-contradiction principles have effect. The objects of theoretical reason
have an existence independent of the subject; accordingly, if a
person holds contradictory propositions, the effect is that it
becomes impossible for him to have a fully comprehensive grasp
of objective truth. The objects of practical reason, on the other
hand, are things yet to be: they are, that is, objects of deliberation.20 The effects of contradicting oneself in the practical sphere
cannot therefore be to diminish one's grasp of objective truth;
they show up rather in the way the person is oriented, practically, toward the future. He will be divided within himself with
respect to desires, wishes, and beliefs, such as have a bearing on
what he should and would do. 21 He will be, that is, in varying
degrees, psychologically fragmented.
Practical self-contradiction can have an effect in the theoretical sphere. As Aristotle notes in M etaph.,iv,4, if a person enunciates his inconsistent understanding of what is good, he will violate PNC. Within the practical sphere itself, however, there is a
separate first principle-as there must be, since its objects, not
yet being the case, cannot be said to be either true or false 22
' 0 EN,vi,1,1139a3-8; see Carlo Natali, La saggezza di Aristotle, vol. 16 of Elenchos:
collana di testi e studi sul pensiero antico (Naples: Bibliopolis, 1989), 75-6. Aristotle does
however acknowledge at EE,i,8,1217b25-41 that the objects of ethics are not unconnected with the objects of the other sciences-i.e., being as found in the various categories. As he says at EE,1217b29-30: "the good is in each of these modes." At MM,i,17,
1189a12ff., Aristotle emphasizes that choice is among alternatives. See especially
MM,i,17,1189a27, where he says that the options open to choice set up a controversy: i.e.,
an avn/..oyiav: ·teiiv avnA.oyiav itapaotoovi:wv 7t01:Epov i:oui:o ij 1:0\Ji:o aipei:ov.
21 "[A) man's friendship toward himself is at bottom friendship toward the good"
(EE,vii,6,1240bl 7-18).
12 See Int.,ix; cp. G. E. M. Anscombe, "Aristotle and the sea battle," in Collected
Philosophical Papers of G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing/Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota press, 1981), v.1, 44-55. For this general understanding of practical reason, see in the same volume, 66-77, "Thought and action in Aristotle: What is
'practical truth'?"

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

B. An incorrect interpretation of the square of opposition
The psychological fragmentation of those who contradict
themselves practically turns up any number of places in
Aristotle. An especially clear statement is found at EE,vii,6:
[L]oving and being loved ['to <l>tA.e'icr0m1cal. <l>tAf:'iv] requires two separate individuals. Therefore a man is a friend to himself rather in the
sense in which we have described the incontinent and continent as willing or unwilling, namely in the sense that the parts of his soul are in a
certain relation to each other. (EE1240al4-17)'

This splitting of the soul into an active and a passive part is, of
course, reminiscent of the square of opposition. 23 Slightly later,
Aristotle relates it directly to the personal fragmentation of those
who are less than good:
All these things [i.e., marks of unity] we find in the relation of the good
man to himself. In the bad man, e.g., the incontinent, there is variance,
and for this reason it seems possible for a man to be at enmity with
himself; but so far as he is single and indivisible, he is an object of
desire to himself. Such is the good man, the man whose friendship is
based on excellence, for the wicked man is not one but many, in the
same day other than himself and fickle. (EE,vii,6,1240bll-l 7)

But this approach raises certain questions about how we are
to understand this fragmentation-and indeed how we are to
understand the square of opposition. Two chapters after the
square of opposition, Aristotle seems to identify the parts
involved in injustice toward oneself-that is, the active and passive parts, which he also in EN,v,9 associates with akrasia-as
the rational and non-rational parts of the soul:
Metaphorically, and in virtue of a certain resemblance there is a justice,
not indeed between a man and himself, but between certain parts of
him; yet not every kind of justice but that of master and servant or that
of husband and wife. For these are the ratios in which the part of the
soul that has reason stands to the irrational part; and it is with a view
to these parts that people also think a man can be unjust to himself, viz.

23 At EE,vii,1240al 9-20 Aristotle says explicitly that this question of Jove of self is to
be treated in the same way as the question whether one can do oneself injustice.

FIRST PRINCIPLE OF PRACTICAL REASON

455

because these parts are liable to suffer something contrary to their
desires; there is therefore thought to be a mutual justice between them
as between ruler [apxovtt] and ruled [apxoµ£vcp]. (EN,v,11,1138b5-13)

As tidy an account as this provides, it presents a number of
conceptual difficulties if it is to be connected up with the square
of opposition of EN,v,9. Consider again that square:
A]'

PJV

Presuming that the parts of the soul of the akrates are to be fit
into this schema, with which of the sectors shall we associate his
"reasoning part"? With which the irrational? It would seem at
first that the rational part should be located at AJv-for it (voluntarily) seeks to impose the right thing-to-do on the irrational
part. But in that case, since the passive element must obviously
fall beneath the active, akrasia would not be doing oneself injustice-which is the basic presupposition of Aristotle's treatment.
So, let us say that in akrasia the rational part finds itself in the
position of PI;. But Aristotle says repeatedly in his ethical works
that the rational part of the soul is predominant. 24 Indeed, this
principle seems to be his second great inheritance from the
Academy: reason is not "dragged about like a slave." 25 On the
other hand, if the irrational part of the soul must always be in the
passive position, it is difficult to see how we can be held responsible for its actions, since we are responsible only for those
actions of which we are the authors (i.e., for which we are
active). 26
The problem, though, is not in the square of opposition but in
the introduction of the rational and irrational parts of the soul.
This only becomes clear in EE-where we also learn that the
square of opposition can be used to analyze not only public jus24 For instance:
EN,i,13,1102b30-l, 1103al-3; EE,ii,l,1219b36-1220a4, 10-11,
viii, 1, 1246bll-12.
25 EN,vii,2,1145b21-24, vii,3,1147b13-17; EE,viii,1,1246b19-21,34. His first inheritance is the Socratic principle itself which is not, however, unconnected with the second.
26 EN,iii,1.

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

tice and injustice and akrasia but also continence in spite of
temptation (i.e., egkrateia).
Although in EE,ii,l, Aristotle puts forward his standard
analysis of the soul whereby the intellectual part governs the
irrational, 21 in EE,ii,8 he makes it very clear that in akrasia and
egkrateia we must maintain the unity of the soul. He says:
Whence men apply the language [of compulsion] to the soul as a whole,
because we see something like the above in the elements of the soul.
Now of the parts of the soul this may be said; but it is the whole soul,
whether in the continent or the incontinent, that voluntarily acts; and
neither acts on compulsion, but one of the elements in them does, since
by nature we have both. (EE1224b24-29)

Aristotle takes a similar position at EE,vii,6,1240a13-2 l, where
he discusses love toward oneself by dividing the soul into two
parts, since (as he says) love involves relations between two elements. He is very careful to say that this is merely an analogy
(EE,vii,6,1240a13) and concludes the section by remarking: "so
far then as the soul is two, these relations can in a sense belong
to it; so far as these two are not separate, the relations cannot
belong to it." 28
If we apply these ideas within the square of opposition, the
difficulties we experienced understanding akrasia in its left-central column disappear: the rational part is not relegated to the Pii
position, since the soul acts as a whole. This is necessary in fact
precisely in order to maintain responsibility of the agent for his
own incontinence.
That Aristotle makes the remarks he does at EE,ii,8 both
about the akrates and about the egkrates also suggest a solution
to the difficulties we experienced on the right side of the square
of opposition. That side of the square comports more readily
27

EE, 1220a4-12.

EE,vii,6,1240a20-21. Also in EE,viii,1 Aristotle appears to criticize the notion of
explaining akrasia in terms of the rational working against the irrational in any strong
sense. At EE,1246b12-25, he toys with this approach, throwing it over as absurd at
EE,1246b26. AtEE,ii,8,1224a30-b15 he argues that it is not appropriate to speak of force
with respect to the egkrates and the akrates, force being what comes from outside a person. The akrates seems to be subject to force, but we can speak this way only 1ca6'
oµot6tTlta. Note the similar expression at EN,v,11,1138b5-6. See also EE,ii,8,1224b2925a2.
28

FIRST PRINCIPLE OF PRACTICAL REASON

45 7

with the concepts of egkrateia and phronesis. That is, when a
person does justice to himself, although reluctantly, we have an
instance of A}" combining with PJ;; when a person gladly does
himself right, we have an instance of A}" combined with P]'. The
square of opposition then does not represent the internal conflict
of the akrates or egkrates at all but is simply an aid in understanding what an actual instance of akrasia or egkrateia is-and
how it is possible.
It seemed to me when I first began studying these texts that all
this constituted evidence that EE contained in this respect a
more developed theory than EN,v,9 and therefore EE might be
later than EN. It is true that even in the passage quoted above
from the end of EN,v,11, about the rational and irrational parts
of the soul, Aristotle sounds a cautionary note, saying that he
speaks "metaphorically, and in virtue of a certain resemblance";
but this chapter bears marks of having been added later. 29 What
demonstrates clearly, however, that Aristotle, even in EN,v,9,
did not conceive of the soul as split are his remarks on Glaucus
at EN,1136b9-13. For there he says that Glaucus's giving away
"gold for brass" is not truly an act of injustice since "there must
be someone to treat him unjustly." Clearly he wants to maintain
the unity of the acting person even within the square of opposition; and, in fact, it is on account of this unity and the fact that a
single (unified) person cannot voluntarily do himself injustice
that the square of opposition takes the shape that it does. 30 If the
akrates, for example, could within himself accommodate the voluntary suffering of injustice, there would be no need to set Plv off
to the side.
29 The cobbled-together nature of the chapter is widely acknowledged: see Alexander
Grant, The Ethics of Aristotle, 2 vols., 4th revised ed. (London: Longmans, Green & Co.,
1885), 97; see also Franz Dirlmeier, Aristoteles: Nikomakische Ethik, 435-9; see also
Dirlmeier, Aristoteles: Magna Moralia (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1958), 328.
30 It seems to me that someone connected with MM does not have this well worked
out. Natali, La saggezza di Aristotele, 72-3, perceptively calls attention to a confusion in
MM about where to put phronesis: in the upper or lower part of the soul. The answer is
either "in neither" or "in both." The soul acts as a unit. (On the genuineness of MM, see
note 14.)

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.
Ill. PSYCHOLOGICALACCOMMODATIONS

What then are the effects of a violation of FPPR on the subject? We are now in a position to assess Aristotle's position more
knowledgeably. It will be useful, however, before proceeding further, to remind ourselves of something that Thomas says about
FPPR, which is part and parcel of the analogy he draws between
it and PNC. That is, for Thomas FPPR is not simply a rule
which we are free to follow or not, as we wish. As with PNC, it
is in a sense impossible to violate FPPR-in the sense, that is,
that we can violate, for instance, the moral precept "thou shalt
not commit adultery." Speaking of PNC, Aristotle says that it is
"impossible for anyone to believe the same thing to be and not to
be ... ; for what a man says, he does not necessarily believe." 31 A
similar thing can be said with respect to FPPR: it is impossible
for anyone at the same time both to regard something as good
and in the same respect as not to be pursued.
It is easier to get this idea across if we think of the effects of
self-contradiction on a person. These effects in either the theoretical or the practical sphere are in certain respects very similar.
To assimilate a theoretical contradiction into one's thinking, one
must break the system containing it into two parts. It is impossible in the strongest sense to hold 'p, q, r, s, t and not-P'-for it is
impossible to conceive of what the world would be like if both p
and not-p were true in the same respect. But one can in a weaker sense hold (for example) 'p, q and r' and 's, t, and not-p,' not
bothering-or not knowing how-to reconcile the inconsistency. 32 So also with practical reason: a person is able to assimilate a
practical contradiction-considering
something as to-be-pur-

Metaph.,iv,3,1005b23-25.
Aristotle devotes An.Pr.,ii,21, to a consideration of cases of just this sort-i.e., to
the question of how a person can in fact hold an inconsistent set of propositions. His
answer is the one I give here; see, for example, An.Pr.,ii,21,67a5-8. The final section of
the chapter (An.Pr.,ii,21,67b12-26) is especially interesting insofar as there he asks
whether someone can believe that "the essence of good is the essence of bad." His answer
is that one can do this, although only Kata
(An.Pr.,ii,21,67b25). And he
adds, "we must consider this matter better." Perhaps we have the fulfillment of this
promise in one of the texts considered in the present study.
31

32

FIRST PRINCIPLE OF PRACTICAL REASON

459

sued and not-to-be-pursued in the same respect-only insofar as
he is able to tolerate internal division. He does not bother or does
not know how to get rid of the inconsistency; he simply puts his
different practical attitudes toward g into different categories. 33
But what does this mean, to put opposing attitudes into "different categories"? This is precisely the question we encountered
above when we considered the square of opposition in connection with the "parts of the soul." It is again in EE that Aristotle's
most direct confrontation with this issue occurs-that is, in a
very compressed passage in EE,vii,6.
Aristotle begins the passage (at EE,1240b12-14) by saying
quite explicitly that it is only insofar as a person is fragmented
that he can be incontinent: "In the bad man, e.g. the incontinent,
there is variance, and for this reason it seems possible for a man
to be at enmity with himself. " 34 Then Aristotle proceeds to
explain how in effect this occurs.
He concedes for the sake of argument that it is possible to
divide a person into units, in the manner of certain unnamed
Sophists. 35 A good man, says Aristotle, has no argument with any
of his own units.
The good man does not revile himself at one and the same time, as does
the incontinent man, nor does the later revile the earlier as does the
regretter, nor does the earlier revile the later as does the liar. In gener-

33 For the sake of simplicity, here and in what follows I assume that g is a "basic
good"-i.e., something that is always good. FPPR applies, however, also to non-basic
goods. For instance, it may be good on Monday to visit Mr. M but (for some reason) without value to visit him on Friday. Nonetheless, it is impossible at the same time (e.g.,
_Monday) to regard in the same respect as good and not-good visiting Mr. M. In the above
paragraph, it should also be understood that at least p and not-p are necessary propositions. See on this note 39, below. The notion of basic good I am operating with here is
developed in John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1980), 59-99. I think that the notion of basic goods can be found in Aristotle. I shall not
argue for this position here, except to point to some pertinent passages on the basis of
which I would argue: EN,i,7,1097a25-b5; i,8,1099al5-16; iv,7,ll27a28-30; v,l,ll29b4-8;
MM,i,18,ll 90a3-4.
34 Notice here that Aristotle considers all the bad to be at variance with themselves.
(See also Plato, R.,352a5-8.) This must include the akolastos who does what he should not
without the regrets experienced by the akrates.
35 For another (somewhat less vague) report of this type of argument see Philebus
14cll-e4

460.

KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

al, if it is necessary to define things as the Sophists do, it is as if
'Coriscus' was also good Coriscus-for it is clear that the same unit 36
of them all is good. For when they accuse themselves, they kill themselves; but each seems to himself good.37

I give the Greek as well, since it is not easy:
6 B' a:yaeos ou0' aµa AOlBopELTat EaUT<j), WO"iTEp 0 aKpaTtjs, OUTE 6
UaTEpos T<j) rrp6TEpov, warrEp 6 µETaµEA'lTlKOS,OUTE 6 Eµrrpoa0Ev niJ
UaTEpov, warrEp 6 \jJEUaT'lS· oXws TE El BE'i warrEp ol ao<j>wTal Blop((oualv, warrEp To Kop(aKos Kal Kop(aKos arrouBa'ios. BilXov yap ws To
ffUTO rroaov arrouBruov aUTWV, EiTEL OTaV E)'KaAEO"WO"lVffUTOLS, aTIOKTlVVUaO"lV auTous· ciUa BoKEl rras auTOS aimji ciya06s.38

The text raises a number of questions, the addressing of which
will tell us a great deal about how Aristotle understands the psychology of his various ethical types.
The questions center around the words 'tO au'to nocrov ("the
same unit"-EE,vii,6,1240b26)--which
have good manuscript
backing, although in one manuscript nou ("somewhere"?) is
found after nocrov. The word nocrov ("unit"-or, perhaps, "quantity") suggests that Aristotle is conceiving of a time-line (t 11 t 21 t3 ,
t 4 , etc.).39 Assuming again that g is something to be pursued, the
regretter says to himself, for example, at t 1 that he wants not-g
but at t 4 that he wants g-and he reviles at t 4 his former "self."
The liar on the other hand says to himself at t 1 that he wants
not-g and at t 4 that he wants g but he despises at t 1 the prospect
of wanting g at the (or perhaps a) later time. This approach
36 Franz Dirlmeier, Aristoteles: Eudemische Ethik: (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1962),
79, translates to auto 1t6aov(EE,vii,6,1240b26) as dasselbe Quantum-which works better in German than in English.
37 A similar passage is found at EE,ii,8,1224b16-21.
38 EE,vii,6,1240b21-28. R. R. Walzer and ]. M. Mingay, Aristotelis: Ethica
Eudemia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), put oA.roc; te ... <11toooa1ovai.>trov in round
brackets. I do not think this helps make sense of the passage at all. Plato uses the word
A.otooperoin a very similar context at R.,iv,440bl.
39 Unless we are dealing, for example, with necessary propositions, in the theoretical
sphere, locating contradictory propositions at different positions on a time-line is not an
assimilation. It may be that at t 1 pis true but at t4 false. In the practical sphere, however, with the sort of practical entities I am concerned with here-i.e., basic goods-, this
expedient is not available. See above, note 33.

FIRST PRINCIPLE OF PRACTICAL REASON

461

works fairly well with the regretter and the liar but not with the
akrates who, it seems, at the same time wants both g and not-g.
It seems to me therefore that it is not quite right to associate
rt6crov strictly with time. But with what should we associate it?
In other places in Aristotle, Coriscus (employed as an example)
is segmented sometimes according to time-units ("Coriscus in the
Lyceum,'' "Coriscus in the agora"-Phys ., vi, 11,219b20-21),
sometimes according to qualities that apply to him ("musical
Coriscus,'' "musical and just Coriscus"-Metaph.,v,6,1015b1920).40 I would propose therefore that the units of which Aristotle
speaks in this passage in EE are references to Coriscus (or
whomever). 41 Thus, with respect to the passage under consideration, the regretter might include "Coriscus at t 1 wanting not-g"
and "Coriscus at t 4 wanting g and regretting his former self"; and
the akrates might include "Coriscus wanting g" and "Coriscus
wanting not-g but subordinating this want."
The second problem has to do with the word a\no in the same
phrase (-co au-co rt6crov-EE,vii,6, 1240b26). Aristotle says that
the unit "Coriscus" (what I shall call "unqualified 'Coriscus' ")
represents good Coriscus "for it is clear that the same unit of
them all [i.e., of the akrates, the regretter, the liar, and the good
man] is good." We find the unqualified unit in several of the
Aristotelian texts which deal with the sophistry. 42 Here Aristotle
tells us that this unqualified "Coriscus" represents good
Coriscus. He gives a reason for this: "For when they accuse
40 See also An.Post.,24,85a24-5: GA,iv,3,767b24-32; Metaph.,vi,2,1026b16-18;
SE,i,S,166b28-36, i,14,173b26ff, i,22,178b39-179al, i,24,179b26-33. For a device of this
type using the names MiIC1caA.o<; and i\ptcrroµEVT\<; instead of the more common
KopicrICo<;, see An.Pr.,i,33,47b15-32. There Aristomenes appears as "Aristomenes" and
"Aristomenes as an object of thought"; Miccalus appears as "Miccalus," "musical
Miccalus"-and dead Miccalus!
41 I speak here of "references" rather than "referring expressions," since in this whole
discussion, as often in Aristotle, we encounter an ambiguity between expression and
thing referred to. The paradoxes generated by the segments of Coriscus do not arise if
we consider only the expressions. We should assume too that these references are true:
that, for example, when talk is of "musical Coriscus," it picks out Coriscus at a time
when he is musical.
42 For instance: An.Pr.,i,33,47b29-32; Metaph.,vi,2,1026b16-18; SE,i,S,166b32-33,
i,24,178b39-179al.

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

themselves, they kill themselves; but each seems to himself
good."
Our first inclination is certainly to associate unqualified
"Coriscus" (="good Coriscus") with the Coriscus-unit in each of
the ethical types in which a good Coriscus reviles his other self,
the idea being that the reviling is what makes him good. But this
cannot be right for a number of reasons. First, the only reviling
that we know the liar does he does at t 1 when he is reviling himself as wanting g-and at that point he is not being good but
lying. Nor is there reason to assume that at t 4 he (having become
good) reviles his former self: he might, for instance, want g at t 4
for base motives and be unconcerned about his previous state.
Second, although, for instance, the regretter and the akrates
seem each to contain a good unit, it is not the same unit in both
cases-or, at least, it is not clear how it could be. Third, the
phrase "each seems to himself good" does not really call for the
location of "good Coriscus" at one of the specific units already
spoken of. The idea seems to be rather that, whatever Coriscus
does, he considers himself good. This attitude would seem to
extend over Coriscus's whole lifetime. I would suggest therefore
that, for Aristotle, if not for the Sophists, unqualified
"Coriscus"-who is "good Coriscus" in the sense that he "seems
to himself good"-is present in each Coriscus-unit. 43 We might
indeed think of unqualified "Coriscus" as "Coriscus himself."
All this has bearing, of course, on how Aristotle conceives of
the psychology of his various ethical types. In the first instance,
we have confirmation that, although he does conceive of the ethical types with the exception of the good man as fragmented,
Aristotle is insistent always that they not be conceived of as so
fragmented that they become disunited (and thereby forfeit culpability).
Secondly, although this fragmentation is associated with the
passions, it is not constituted by a separation between the ratio43 It is probably right therefore not to read nou at EE,vii,6,1240b26. The manuscript
that has this seems (understandably) to be presupposing a time-line of some sort and to
be attempting to bring sense to the passage by locating "good Coriscus" not at any one
time-point but "somewhere" along the line.

FIRST PRINCIPLE OF PRACTICAL REASON

463

nal and irrational parts of the soul. Aristotle mentions at
EE,vii,6,1240b34-i.e., almost immediately after the passage we
have been analyzing-the way in which the mind can be out of
harmony with the passions; but the gist of EE,vii,6,1240b11ff. is
certainly that fragmentation occurs not between such parts but
between the various aspects of a person of which we might
speak. These aspects involve desires and wants-in short, practical orientation-and might also involve talk of either the same
or different times. The only other stipulation is that they involve
"Coriscus," i.e., the person who, as one person, always pursues
the good (or what he regards as good).
CONCLUSION
Our results are somewhat negative in character. We know that
the souls of the akrates and egkrates are fragmented without
being fragmented into parts-in any case, certainly not into
rational and irrational parts. A segmentation, it would seem,
might occur anywhere that it might truthfully be said of
"Coriscus" that he has a practical attitude toward something in
the possible future. In order to avoid the suggestion that psychological fragmentation is into parts, we might speak rather of
"aspects." 44 But it must also be acknowledged that the nature of
these aspects is not entirely clear in Aristotle. What we do know
about them is that, insofar as one puts into them opposing practical attitudes, they allow one to assimilate practical contradictions. That is: they allow one to "avoid violating FPPR," insofar
as such violation is even possible.
How does this work? One cannot within the same aspect want
both of two incompatible things: if I might use some unconventional language by way of analogy, both of two incompatible
possibilities cannot be "lit up" in one's soul. If a person could be
two persons, incompatible wants would present no problem: person1 could want g and person 2 could want not-g. But since a single, unified person cannot (in a strong sense) both want and not
want g, when he acts with respect tog, he must turn one want
44 I suspect that our difficulty in grasping Aristotle's point is connected with the
Aristotelian confounding of linguistic entity and thing spoken about. See above, note 41.

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KEVIN L. FLANNERY, S.J.

off. This, I think, is what Aristotle has in mind when, in EE,v,9,
he puts off to one side of the square of opposition certain practical attitudes, calling them incidental.
A person might be voluntarily on the passive end of an injustice but only insofar as he considers it (in some aspect of himself)
not an injustice. A person might do himself injustice (i.e., fall
prey to akrasia) insofar as when he acts against g his orientation
toward g is not active. A person on the passive end of a just act,
if he is so involuntarily, does not appreciate the act for what it is:
something to be pursued. For him, it is that only incidentally. 45 If
this just act is something he (as egkrates) imposes on himself, it is
all the more obvious that he should remove this contradiction in
his practical thought.
It is clear from this analysis, I think, that, first, the aspects of
a soul that are in conflict have nothing at all to do with the way
the square of opposition is divided into active and passive sectors. The use of active and passive sectors is rather a way of
speaking about akrasia and egkrateia (etc.) in terms of justice
and injustice. Secondly, the square of opposition is put forward
by Aristotle in order to preserve what he, like Thomas Aquinas,
regards as the truth that is the basis of all moral action: "that
good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided."

45 Aristotle says at EE,vii,6,1240b33-34 that the self-contradiction that comes with
akrasia is only possible with choice: children, for example, are not subject to akrasia.
Thus, in a fuller treatment we would have to tie practical reason to choice. But that is
the subject of another essay.

THE SPLENDOR OF ACCURACY.· HOW ACCURATE?
WILLIAM

E. MAY

Pope John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family
Washington, D.C.

I

N THE introduction to the collection of essays published
under the title The Splendor of Accuracy: An Examination of
the Assertions made by Veritatis Splendor,1 Joseph Selling
and Jan Jans write that the "central question that needs to be
posed to the text of Veritatis Splendor" concerns the audience
and situation its author has in mind (p. 9). They maintain that it
appears to be addressed to "universal pastors (priests trained in
seminaries) who (should) have one set of universal solutions to
every conceivable pastoral problem one might face, anywhere,
anytime" (p. 9). Assuming that this is indeed the case, they then
say that the "best way to interpret what Veritatis Splendor says"
is "from the point of view of the pastors and their educators" and
that the Encyclical finds serious problems here (p. 9).
Notwithstanding the unmistakable implication of the book's
title, the subtitle, and, as we shall see, several of its main essays,
the editors claim that neither they nor the contributors to the
volume "wish or intend that this study be understood as a challenge or a rebuke to the teaching of the magisterium in the
encyclical" (p. 10). Rather, they wish to "respond to the assertions made in the encyclical that give the impression of pointing
to serious problem areas in contemporary Roman Catholic moral
1 Joseph Selling and Jan Jans, eds., The Splendor of Accuracy : An Examination of
the Assertions made by Veritatis Splendor (Kampen: Kok Pharos Publishing House;
Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1994).

465

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WILLIAM E. MAY

theology as it is being researched and taught in any number of
seminaries, universities and institutions of higher learning" (p.
10).

I believe that Selling and Jans seriously misconstrue the purpose of Veritatis Splendor. It is surely not intended to equip
priests trained in seminaries with "one set of universal solutions
to every conceivable pastoral problem one might face, anywhere,
anytime." Rather its stated purpose is to set forth clearly "certain
aspects of doctrine which are of a crucial importance in facing
what is certainly a genuine crisis" (VS, n. 4) and to address this
crisis by presenting "the principles of a moral teaching based
upon Sacred Scripture and the living apostolic Tradition, and at
the same time to shed light on the presuppositions and consequences of the dissent which that teaching has met" (n. S). In particular, the "central theme" of the Encyclical, as identified by
John Paul II himself, is to reaffirm the Church's teaching that
there are "intrinsically evil acts" prohibited "always and without
exception" by universally valid and immutable moral prohibitions (n. 115).
John Paul II likewise emphasizes that the "morality of the
human act depends primarily and fundamentally on the 'object'
rationally chosen by the deliberate will" (n. 78) and that "reason
attests that there are objects of the human act which are by their
nature 'incapable of being .ordered' to God because they radically contradict the good of the person made in his image" (n. 80).
Human acts specified by objects of this kind are the intrinsically evil acts prohibited by absolute moral norms, the teaching
which constitutes, as has been noted, the "central theme" of the
Encyclical. Thus the pope repudiates, as incompatible with
Catholic teaching, those moral theories which deny that one can
judge an act immoral because of the kind of "object" freely chosen and consequently deny that there are intrinsically evil acts of
this sort and, corresponding to them, absolute moral norms (cf.
nn. 74-77, 79). While repudiating these theories, John Paul II
does not name any contemporary Catholic theologians who
espouse them.
Some contemporary moral theologians who advocate the proportionalist method of making moral judgments are among the

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contributors to this volume, namely, Joseph Selling himself,
Louis Janssens, and Bernard Hoose. In their contributions,
Selling and Hoose name other theologians known for their advocacy of this moral theory, e.g., Joseph Fuchs and Richard A.
McCormick. The purpose of the essays by Selling, J anssens, and
Hoose seems to be, as shall be seen, to show that John Paul II, in
his "assertions," has misunderstood what is going on in contemporary moral theology. Thus this review of The Splendor of
Accuracy will focus on the contributions by these authors, centering on their examination of the "assertions" in Veritatis
Splendor to the effect that there are certain sorts of human acts,
specified by the objects freely chosen, that are intrinsically evil
and that, corresponding to these intrinsically evil acts, there are
absolute moral norms.
Before considering them, however, some brief comments
should be made about the other essays in the volume. Of these,
the one by Brian Johnstone is quite different in tone from the
others; those by Gareth Moore and Jan Jans, however, seem
intended to call features of the Encyclical into question and, in
the case of Jan Jans 's contribution, indirectly to support the positions of the theologians associated with the views espoused by
Selling, J anssens, and Hoose.
Gareth Moore's essay is called "Some Remarks on the Use of
Scripture in Veritatis Splendor" (pp. 71-98). Moore argues that
John Paul II's use of the story of the rich young man in Matthew
19:16-21 "appears motivated by a desire.not simply to listen to
what Jesus says, but to stress one particular mode of biblical discourse among several, namely, the legal" (p. 81). He tries to show
that this approach "distorts the natural sense of the passage" {p.
81), whose "central meaning," according to Moore, is to show
that the encounter between Jesus and the rich young man "provides an example of the power of riches over those who own
them and an occasion for the teaching of Jesus on how hard it is
for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven {l 9:23ff.)," a central
meaning that "the encyclical all but ignores" (p. 74).
Moore's critique here focuses on the alleged "legalistic" use of
this passage by John Paul II, but this distorts the use to which
John Paul II puts the passage. In reality, the pope repeatedly

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emphasizes, in his reflection on this passage from Matthew's
Gospel, the religious and existential significance of the question
addressed to Jesus by the rich young man when he asked,
"Teacher, what good must I do to have eternal life?" (Matt 19: 16).
The pope explicitly says, "For the young man the question is not
so much about the rules to be followed, but about the meaning of
life. . . . This question is ultimately an appeal to the absolute
Good which attracts and beckons us; it is the echo of a call from
God who is the origin and goal of man's life" (n. 7). It is, he continues, "an essential and unavoidable question for the life of
every man, for it is about the moral good which must be done
and about eternal life" (n. 8). He emphasizes that the question is
in reality "a religious question . ... the goodness that attracts and
at the same time obliges man has its source in God and indeed is
God himself" (n. 9).
It is surely true that, in reflecting on this passage, John Paul II
stresses the importance of keeping the commandments.
Nonetheless, he is at pains to show that the commandments, in
particular, the precepts of the Decalogue concerning our neighbor, are not legalistic prohibitions arbitrarily imposed on us.
Rather, they "are really only so many reflections on the one commandment about the good of the person, at the level of the many
different goods which characterize his identity as a spiritual and
bodily being in relationship with God, with his neighbor, and
with the material world .... The commandments of which Jesus
reminds the young man are meant to safeguard the good of the
person, the image of God, by protecting his goods" (n. 13). More
could be said on this point, but it should be plain enough that the
Encyclical is not here using Scripture legalistically.
Brian Johnstone's "Erroneous Conscience in Veritatis
Splendor and the Theological Tradition" (pp. 114-135) is, as
noted already, quite different in tenor from the other contributions. Johnstone in no way criticizes "assertions" in the
Encyclical. Rather he simply wishes to present the Encyclical's
teaching on erroneous conscience and to situate it in relation to
a wider moral theological tradition. He points out that in the
Encyclical John Paul II says that "the Church's Magisterium
does not intend to impose on the faithful any particular theolog-

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469

ical system, still less a philosophical one" (VS, n. 29, cited by
Johnstone on p. 114). He shows that the teaching of the
Encyclical on erroneous conscience strongly reflects the influence of the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas (pp. 118-123).
Although the Encyclical does reject some contemporary
understandings of conscience, it does not repudiate all nonThomistic theological understandings of erroneous conscience
and its binding character, for example, the teaching found in the
writings of St. Alphonsus di Ligouri, whose own understanding
of this matter differs from that of St. Thomas and whose position
was adopted by many authors of approved manuals of theology
in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The school of St.
Alphonsus and other schools of thought on erroneous conscience,
while providing accounts of the erroneous conscience different
from that of St. Thomas followed by John Paul II, are not incompatible with magisterial teaching and raise important questions
that merit consideration (pp. 124-134).
Johnstone's essay is, in short; an instructive study and is not
intended to call into question the substantive claims of Veritatis
Splendor.
Jan Jans's contribution, the final essay in the volume, is entitled "Participation-Subordination:
(The Image of) God in
Veritatis Splendor" (pp. 153-168). According to Jans, the relationship between God and man (or the way in which man is the
"image of God") is presented in two quite different ways in the
Encyclical. According to one model, which he calls "participation," "God only proposes in the commandments what is good for
human persons" so that "the proper contribution of the
Magisterium is to make visible those truths which Christian conscience already ought to know" (pp. 166-167). On this model,
which could also be called the participated theonomy model,
God, through the natural law, "calls man to participate in his
own providence, since he desires to guide the world-not only
the world of nature but also the world of human personsthrough man himself, through man's reasonable and responsible
care" (VS, n. 43, cited on p. 157).
But according to another model which Jans believes he finds
in the Encyclical, and which he calls "subordination," John Paul

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WILLIAM E. MAY

II, following in the footsteps of Leo XIII, stresses "the essential
subordination of reason and human law to the Wisdom of God
and to his law" (VS, n. 44, cited on p. 15 7). On this model, God
has the authority to "impose duties, to confer certain rights and
to sanction certain behavior" (VS, n. 44, cited on p. 157). This
"subordination" model is rooted in a hierarchical view of reality
which, Jans asserts, is "in the last resort ... based upon the
antagonism 'not human persons, but God': God alone-not the
human person-has the power to decide what is good and evil,
and since God is the Author of the Law and the Commandments
these are to be accepted and submitted to" (p. 163).
Jans acknowledges that "one might argue that such moral voluntarism must not in and of itself mean heteronomy"-a heteronomous morality was rejected by John Paul II himself inn. 41
of the Encyclical (p. 163). But Jans believes that he can detect the
tension between these two models in the Encyclical, which clearly favors the "participation" model. According to him the passages in the document reflecting the "subordination" model are
principally those critical of some "contemporary" developments
in moral theology. Jans holds that some of the theologians
"whose work is 'evaluated' by Veritatis Splendor" are actually
engaged in overcoming the "antagonism between God as ruling
king and human beings as obedient servants" (p. 168), and that
overcoming this antagonism "calls for a revision of some traditional understandings and interpretations of God's creative presence in the realm of 'nature', as well as a revaluation of the concrete norms following from this perspective" (p. 169). He suggests, in short, that in reaffirming some "traditional understandings" John Paul II is, despite·the general thrust of the Encyclical
toward the "participation" model, echoing the "subordination"
model.
Jans believes that the "hermeneutical key" to understanding
the Encyclical and the "tension" in it between the participation
and subordination models is to be found in an address given by
the pope to the participants of the second international congress
on moral theology, held in Rome to celebrate the twentieth
anniversary of Humanae vitae in 1988. In that talk John Paul II
affirmed that the teaching of Paul VI is not invented by human

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beings but inscribed by God's creative hand into the nature of
the human person and confirmed in revelation. He likewise held
that those who repudiate the norm taught by Humanae vitae
refuse the obedience of their intelligence to God, preferring the
light of their own reason against the light of divine Wisdom.Jans
holds that this address reflects the "subordination" model and
that its echoes are found in Veritatis Splendor.
Jans's essay is of remarkable ingenuity. Nonetheless, his
analysis of the Encyclical is questionable. The pope certainly
affirms that God is the sovereign arbiter of good and evil and
that human persons are to obey his law. Jans regards this as a
kind of "moral voluntarism." But there is not a trace of voluntarism in the Encyclical. In affirming that God's law is the
supreme norm of human life, John Paul II does no more than did
the Fathers of Vatican Council II in Dignitatis humanae, n. 3. In
maintaining that we are to obey this law, he does no more than
the Fathers of Vatican II in Gaudium et spes, n. 16, where they
say that "in the depths of his conscience man detects a law which
he does not impose upon himself and which he must obey." Here
it seems worth noting that both the Old Testament and the New
Testament are full of language that makes it clear that human
reason is subordinate to the wisdom of God and his law. Jans
considers this position, which he attributes to Leo XIII and
which he believes he finds in Veritatis Splendor, a "moral voluntarism." He nevertheless admits that this view does not of necessity lead to the heteronomous morality which the Encyclical
rejects.
The "tension" Jans discovers in the Encyclical between the
"participation" and "subordination" models is, I suggest, his own
invention. There is no inner tension or contradiction between
"participation" and "subordination." For example, through
God's grace we, his creatures, really become divinized, sharing
in his divine nature just as surely as his only-begotten Son-mademan truly shares in our human nature. We are in truth members
of the divine family by reason of our sharing, our participation,
in God's divine nature. Yet within this family we remain creatures, with created human natures, just as God's only-begotten
Son-made-man remains God, with his uncreated nature. And as

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WILLIAM E. MAY

creatures, as children of God, we are in truth subordinate to him.
Now to the essays of Selling, Janssens, and Hoose, which
directly confront the "central theme" of the Encyclical, namely,
the reaffirmation of "the universality and immutability of the
moral commandments, particularly those which prohibit always
and without exception intrinsically evil acts" (VS, n. 115), i.e.,
kinds of human behavior specified by the object of moral choice
which "are by their nature 'incapable of being ordered' to God
because they radically contradict the good of the person made in
his image" (n. 80).
Selling's essay, the longest in the volume, is called "The
Context and Arguments of Veritatis Splendor" (pp. 11-70). In
sketching the background and context to the Encyclical, Selling
flatly states that those who accepted the challenge of Vatican II
and "began the work of reconstructing moral theology on the
basis of scripture and tradition rather than natural and canon
laws ultimately came to be known as 'revisionists"' (p. 12). In
other words, according to Selling the only theologians who seriously sought to renew moral theology according to the mind of
Vatican Council II are the "revisionist" theologians, unnamed in
the encyclical but identified by him as including people like
Louis Janssens, Joseph Fuchs, and Bernard Haering. According
to Selling, consequently, only "revisionist" theologians have
sought to carry out the task assigned moral theologians by
Vatican II.
It is also surprising that Vatican II, according to Selling's
account, thinks that moral theology sho.uld disregard natural law
as one of its sources; the actual documents of the Council frequently appeal to the "universally binding principles of natural
law" (cf. Gaudium et spes, nn. 74, 79-80), refer to the "law" men
discover in the depths of their conscience (ibid., n. 16), and speak
eloquently of mankind's intelligent participation (=natural law)
in the "highest norm of human life," namely God's "divine laweternal, objective, and universal, whereby he governs the entire
universe and the human community according to a plan conceived in wisdom and in love" (Dignitatis humanae, n. 3).
Selling's observations here indicate his way of approach.
Equally surprising is his claim, in the introductory material,

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that "nearly everything that" Pope Pius XII's Encyclical
"Humani Generis stood for was reversed by the close of the
Second Vatican Council" (p. 19). Selling here implies that the
notion of theology and its work set forth in that Encyclical was
repudiated by the Council Fathers. But a Council document
explicitly concerned with the teaching of theology, not least of
moral theology, makes the teaching of Pius XII's Encyclical its
own. Optatam totius emphasizes that in order for the work of
Catholic theology to be carried out rightly, it must be done "in
the light of faith and under the guidance of the Church's
Magisterium" (n. 16). Precisely at this point in the directives for
the "renewal" of theology, we find a footnote referring to the
teaching of Pius XII in Humani Generis. Moreover, the passage
in this Encyclical to which Optatam Totius explicitly calls attention contains the following statements of Pope Pius XII:
Nor must it be thought that what is contained in encyclical letters does
not of itself demand assent, on the pretext that the popes do not exercise in them the supreme power of their teaching authority. Rather,
such teachings belong to the ordinary magisterium, of which it is true
to say: 'he who hears you, hears me' (Lk 10:16); very often, too, what is
expounded and inculcated in encyclical letters already pertains to
Catholic doctrine for other reasons. But if the supreme pontiffs in their
official documents purposely pass judgment on a matter of debate until
then, it is obvious to all that the matter, according to the mind and will
of the same pontiffs, cannot be considered any longer a question open
to discussion among theologians

Selling's strategy is evident. In his view John Paul II's
Veritatis Splendor is a document analogous to Pius XII's
Humani Generis. Just as the latter has now, so Selling avers,
been rejected, so too, the implication goes, will John Paul II's
Encyclical be repudiated in the future.
With regard to the question of human acts and their moral
assessment, Selling finds "rather bizarre" the concepts of freedom and the will found in the following statement of Veritatis
Splendor: "Some authors do not take into sufficient consideration the fact that the will is dependent upon the concrete choices
which it makes: these choices are a condition of its moral goodness and its being ordered to the ultimate end of the person" (n.

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75, as given in the translation provided by Selling, p. 4 7). Here I
want to note that the Latin text (and the official English translation) is more precise than the translation Selling provides. The
Latin reads: "Nonnulli non satis aspiciunt voluntatem definitis
implicari delectionibus, quas ipsa operatur" (translated, in the
authorized translations, as "some authors do not take into consideration the fact that the will is involved in the concrete choices which it makes"). The point is that the person's moral character is dependent on his specific free choices. Selling believes that
the idea that the action of the will is dependent upon its choices
for its goodness is a "relatively new idea that has developed in
the literature in order to substantiate the theory of the 'basic
goods"' (p. 47).
The position found in Veritatis Splendor, n. 75, however, is
hardly a "relatively new idea." Earlier in the Encyclical, John
Paul II had stressed that we determine ourselves through our
freely chosen acts. He emphasized that "freely chosen deeds do
not produce a change merely in the state of affairs outside of man
but, to the extent that they are deliberate choices, they give
moral definition to the very person who performs them, determining his profound spiritual traits" (n. 71). They are a "decision
about oneself and a setting of one's own life for or against the
Good, for or against the Truth, and ultimately for or against
God" (n. 65). The pope notes that the precise point he is making
has been "perceptively noted by Saint Gregory of Nyssa." The
pope then cites a beautiful passage from Gregory's De Vita
Moysis (II, 2-3, PG 44, 327-328):
All things subject to change and to becoming never remain constant,
but continually pass from one state to another, for better or worse ....
Now, human life is always subject to change; it needs to be born anew .
. . . But here birth does not come about by a foreign intervention, as is
the case with bodily beings ... ; it is the result of free choice. Thus we
are in a certain way our own parents, creating ourselves as we will, by
our decisions. (VS, n. 71)

Moreover, St. Thomas's entire understanding of morality
involves, centrally, the concept that Selling finds bizarre and
novel: good acts build up the virtues, which are precisely what
constitute the goodness of the person; vice consists precisely in

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bad actions, considered independently of any other effect (cf.
Summa contra Gentiles, III, c. 10).
In short, the understanding of free choice and its relation to
the will found in John Paul Il's statements is neither as "bizarre"
nor as "relatively new" as Selling asserts.
As noted, Selling believes that the "bizarre" and "novel"
notion of the significance of free choices in determining man's
moral character has been developed to substantiate the theory of
the "basic goods." He contends (p. 67) that the use of the term
"good" as a substantive in the Encyclical, i.e., to designate
"goods" of human persons that one ought not freely choose to
damage, harm, or destroy, signifies that the Encyclical has been
profoundly influenced by the "novel" doctrine of "basic goods"
developed principally by Germain Grisez and John Finnis (cf. p.
6 7, note 5 2). Selling says that he and other theologians are "comfortable" with using the word "good" as an adjective, but that its
use as a substantive is unusual.
But the use of "good" as a substantive identifying real goods
perfective of human persons is not novel; it is central to the
thought of St. Thomas. In fact, St. Thomas held that "God is
offended by us only because we act contrary to our own good,'' 2
and in discussing the primary precepts of the natural law he said
that, since the very foundational practical proposition on which
the whole natural law is founded is that "good is to be done and
pursued and evil is to be avoided,'' "reason naturally apprehends
as good, and thus to be pursued by action everything for which
man has a natural inclination." 3 He goes on to list one bonum
(substantive, not adjectival) after another (human life itself,
knowledge of the truth, especially truth about God, life in fellowship with others). In many places in the Summa theologiae he

2 Non enim Deus a nobis offenditur nisi ex eo quod contra nostrum bonum agimus
(Summa contra gentiles, III, c. 122).
3 Omnia ilia ad quae homo habet naturalem inclinationem ratio naturaliter apprehendit ut bona, et per consequens ut opere prosequenda ... (Summa theologiae, 1-11, q.
94, a. 2). Here "bona" probably is used adjectivally, but, as noted in my text, St. Thomas
goes on immediately to enumerate one bonum (substantive) after another.

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refers to "goods,'' i.e., bona, which have and bona which do not
have a necessary connection with beatitude (e.g., I, q. 82, a. 2),
temporal bona (e.g., life) and spiritual bona (11-11, q. 11, a. 4), etc.
Indeed, his whole treatment of law and of the goodness of the
will is placed under the aegis of the Psalmist's question, often
repeated by St. Thomas, "Quis ostendit nobis bona?" (Ps. 4:6;
cited in Summa theologiae, 1-11, q. 19, a. 4; q. 91, a. 2; also I, q.
84, a. 5). In addition, St. Thomas is very clear that one loves
one's friends by seeking what is good for them, the goods perfective of their personhood (cf. 1-11, q. 28, a. 4).
Thus Selling's claim that the Encyclical's use of the term
"good" as a substantive, i.e., to identify real goods of human persons (e.g., innocent human life, the marital communion, and so
forth) is novel and unique to the recent "basic goods" theory is
simply false.
It is important to recognize that the inaccuracy of Selling's
characterization of the position of the Encyclical corresponds to
the inaccuracy of his portrayal of the theory of basic goods. In
fact, in his antipathy to the line of reasoning that underlies the
theory of basic goods, Selling distorts it beyond recognition. For
example, in one passage he lists various beliefs, such as that it is
natural to accumulate possessions beyond one's needs, to stratify society into leaders and followers, to destroy one's enemies, to
accept that whites are superior to nonwhite persons, and then
declares: "That is the 'basic goods theory'-when one looks
below the surface" (p. 68). Such a characterization of the theory
of basic goods is simply untenable. Selling's interpretations, both
of the Encyclical and of the theory of basic goods, can thus be
seen to be quite unreliable.
Louis Janssens, emeritus professor of moral theology at the
University of Leuven, contributes an essay entitled "Teleology
and Proportionality: Thoughts About the Encyclical Veritatis
Splendor" (pp. 99-113).
The Encyclical, as we have seen, teaches that one can judge
that an act is intrinsically evil if the moral "object,'' i.e., the
object rationally chosen and willed, is not referable to God
because it radically contradicts the good of the person made in
his image, and that it is not necessary to consider circumstances

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and the end for whose sake the act is chosen in order to recognize
acts of this kind as immoral.
The thrust of Janssens's paper is to argue that the Encyclical
is mistaken in its central teaching-and mistaken in its rejection
of the theory that one can judge an action morally bad only if one
takes into account not only the object but also the circumstances
in which it is done and the end for whose sake it is chosen. (The
Encyclical, of course, teaches that one can judge an action to be
morally good only if all its elements, object, end, and circumstances, are good.) Janssens's thesis is that an appeal to proportionality is "unavoidable for evaluating human acts," and that
this assessment of proportionality is teleological in character, i.e.,
that it can be made only by taking into account the end for
whose sake the action is undertaken, and that one cannot judge
an act to be morally bad without making this teleological assessment of the proportionality of the means, i.e., of the object, to the
end.
In developing this thesis, Janssens first appeals (pp. 100-102)
to the Vatican Declaration on Euthanasia (1976) for support. He
emphasizes that this document sharply distinguished between
"disproportionate" and "proportionate" treatments of dying persons. The latter are morally obligatory, whereas the former can
be rightly withheld or withdrawn. Moreover, the judgment that
a particular treatment is "disproportionate" or "proportionate"
can only be made by assessing and balancing the harms and benefits it promises. Janssens thinks that this proves his point.
It is, however, pertinent to ask whe'ther the use of the terms
"disproportionate" and "proportionate" in this Vatican document
requires acceptance of the moral methodology Janssens advocates and which the Encyclical rejects, since the Encyclical holds
that one can judge an act intrinsically evil on the basis of its
moral object, i.e., the object rationally chosen, without considering circumstances and the end for whose sake it is chosen, if this
object is known to be contrary to the good of human persons.
If we examine the document to which Janssens appeals for
support, we find that this document does not support the
methodology Janssens advocates. For prior to considering the
reasons for judging that some means of medical treatment are

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WILLIAM E. MAY

disproportionate or proportionate, the Declaration had affirmed
that euthanasia or mercy killing is intrinsically immoral, not
because it is "disproportionate" but simply because it is the
inten.tional killing of an innocent human being: "nothing and no
one," the document maintained, "can in any way permit the
killing of an innocent human being." 4
J anssens appeals to the teaching of the Declaration on
Euthanasia to support his claim that one can judge actions to be
morally good or bad only by assessing teleologically the overall
benefits and harms of an action. For him this is the criterion for
making all moral judgments. Clearly this is not the methodology
employed by the Declaration because, as has just been seen, it
rules out absolutely as intrinsically immoral any act specified by
its object as the killing of an innocent human being. There is no
need of a "teleological assessment" in making a moral judgment
of this kind. The Declaration surely speaks of means that are
"proportionate" or "disproportionate," but in doing so it is no
way employing "proportionalism" in the same way as is
J anssens. Not all appeals to "proportionate" reason are proportionalistic in Janssens's sense of that term. John Finnis puts the
matter well. He notes that this Declaration
makes three references to proportion. (i) Medical experts can judge
when the pain and suffering imposed on a patient by certain techniques
are "out of proportion with the benefits which he or she may gain from
such techniques" [graviora quam utilitates quae inde ei afferri possunt];
as the reference to medical expertise makes clear, this judgment about

4 Here I should note that when the Declaration was published in 1976 I wrote to
Archbishop Jerome Hamer, then secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith. I thanked him for the document and its reaffirmation of the intrinic evil of all acts
of intentionally killing innocent beings, even for reasons of mercy. But I said that,
although I understood how the document used the terms "proportionate" and "disproportionate," I was concerned that some proponents of the proportionalist method of
making moral judgments ( e.g., J anssens) might appeal to this language of the document
to support this moral position. In his reply Archbishop Hamer, after thanking me
for my letter, stressed that the Congregation repudiated proportionalism (as was evident
in its affirmation of the moral absolute proscribing intentionally killing innocent human
beings) and that any appeal to the document to support this moral theory would be utterly inappropriate.

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disproportion pertains to points on a single scale, i.e., the scale of pain
and suffering: the matters on each side of the comparison are restricted
to pain and suffering and relief from pain and suffering. (ii) Medical
experts may also judge that "the investment in instruments and personnel is disproportionate to the results foreseen" [non respondet
effectibus qui praevidentur]; this should be regarded as an invitation to
the medical expert (whose judgment is being discussed at this point in
the Declaration) to consider the proposed "investment in instruments
and personnel" in the light not of an open-ended calculus of all the good
effects of keeping this patient alive (which would involve a senseless
weighing of incommensurables), but rather of his normal system of priorities-a system which is established not by calculus but by commitment. (iii) Refusal to undergo risky or burdensome treatment is not the
equivalent of suicide, but rather may be a "wish to avoid the application of a medical procedure disproportionate to the results that can be
expected" [cura vitandi laboriosum medicae artis apparatum cui par
sperandorum effectuum utilitas non respondeat]; this, too, should be
taken as a reference, not to a calculation of moral obligation by weighing the incommensurable goods of a longer life and freedom from pain,
but to a person's choice (not unrestrained by consideration of his existing moral responsibilities, e.g., to his family), a choice by which that
patient establishes for himself what counts (for him) as par utilitas (literally: equivalent benefit) in these respects. 5

In short, an appeal to proportionality is not proportionalist in
the sense in which J anssens uses this term if it expresses some
prior moral judgment or assessment or refers to the implications
of some prior commitment relative to which a proposed choice
would be proportionate or fitting, or disproportionate or unfitting.
This distinction between an appeal to proportionality understood as a norm necessary to evaluate the morality of all human
acts (Janssens's claim) and making some judgments of proportionality in the light of moral priorities is clearly made by the
bishops of the United States in their Pastoral Letter on War and
Peace, The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and Our Response
5 John Finnis, Fundamentals of Ethics (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University
Press, 1983), 106-107. On legitimate uses of"proportionalism" and how such uses are
profoundly different from the use of "proportionalism" as a method for making moral
judgements, see Germain Grisez, "Against Consequentialism," American Journal of
Jurisprudence 23 (1978): 49-62

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WILLIAM E. MAY

(1983). The bishops, appealing to the norm that military force
must be used discriminately, first rule out as absolutely immoral
intentionally attacking noncombatants, i.e., innocent human
beings. An intrinsically evil act of this kind is absolutely excluded by the principle of discriminate use of force. But they go on to
discuss the principle of "proportionality." In explaining it they
say:
When confronting choices among specific military options, the question asked by proportionality is: once we take into account not only the
military advantages that will be achieved by using this means but also
all the harms reasonably expected to follow from using it, can its use
still be justified? We know, of course, that no end can justify means evil
in themselves, such as the executing of hostages or the targetting of noncombatants [i.e., acts intrinsically evil by reason of the object rationally chosen and willed; cf. Veritatis Splendor, n. 78]. Nonetheless, even if
the means adopted is not evil in itself, it is necessary to take into
account the probable harms that will result from using it and the justice of accepting those harms. (n. 105)

Here the bishops are clearly not advocating the moral methodology championed by Janssens, namely, that "an appeal to proportionality is unavoidable for evaluating the morality of human
acts" (Janssens, p. 100). They hold, with the entire Catholic tradition, which Veritatis Splendor correctly summarizes, that one
can know that it is always wrong intentionally to kill innocent
human beings without appealing to proportionality. But they are
maintaining that, in the light of moral norm of justice, one can
determine whether or not unintended harms, i.e., unchosen
harms anticipated to result as an unintended effect of one's freely
chosen act, can be tolerated or accepted.
In the balance of his essay Janssens basically reiterates the
thesis of his enormously influential 197 2 article "On tic Evil and
Moral Evil" (Louvain Studies 4 [Fall, 1972): 115-156) in which he
argued that the proportionalist method of making moral judgments (the method he advances in this article and the method
repudiated in Veritatis Splendor) was central to the teaching of
St. Thomas. According to Janssens, for St. Thomas one could not
make a moral judgment about a human act without taking into
account not only the "object" (which J anssens in his 1972 article

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481

identified with the "external act" considered as a material event)
but also the proportionality of the means chosen (the "object") to
the final end intended by the agent, which served as the "form"
of the entire moral act. Here J anssens basically reiterates this
thesis, illustrating it by St. Thomas 's teaching on killing in selfdefense (p. 109). According to Janssens in his 1972 article,
Aquinas taught that one could rightly "intend" the death of the
assailant (an ontic evil) as the "means" to defend oneself from
unprovoked attack, an interpretation of the relevant Thomistic
text (Sum. theo., II-II, q. 64, a. 7) not faithful to the text.
It is not necessary to treat this matter at length here. I have
previously shown in detail how Janssens has radically misconstrued Thomas's teaching on the morality of human acts 6 and
need not here rehearse what was said there. Briefly put, while
insisting that one must consider not only the object chosen but
also the circumstances in which it is chosen and the end for
whose sake it is chosen in order to determine whether an act is
morally good (bonum ex integra causa), St. Thomas, contrary to
J anssens 's contention, taught that if one knows that any element
in the act is bad, one can judge the act morally bad ( malum ex
quocumque defectu), and he insisted that the morality of the act
derives first and foremost from the object freely chosen. If this
object is bad, then it cannot be made good by reason of the end
for whose sake it is chosen.
In his contribution Janssens insists that "official church documents [=documents of the Magisterium] maintain that contraception ... and homosexual acts are intrinsically evil according
to their object. All of these terms refer simply to factual events"
(p. 110; emphasis added). This is patently false. These terms do
not refer simply to mere factual events but to making a choice of
a "factual event." As we have seen already, John Paul II explicitly denies that the "moral object" refers to factual events. Rather
it refers to the intelligible proposal adopted by choice (what St.
Thomas called the external act as specified morally by the "sub6 See my "Aquinas and Janssens on the Moral Meanung of Human Acts," The
Thomist 48 (1984): 566-606.

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WILLIAM E. MAY

ject matter with which it is concerned" or the materia circa
quam, not the mere material event, or materia ex qua). Thus contraception is not a material event but is rather any freely chosen
act which, either in anticipation of a genital act, in its accomplishment, or in its natural consequences, "intends to impede
procreation" (cf. Humanae vitae, n. 14). Thus, Janssens is setting
up a straw man in his critique of the Encyclical. He fails to show
inaccuracies in its "assertions."
In summary, Janssens's contribution plays on the differences
between legitimate uses of "proportionality" and the use to
which he seeks to put it. It seriously misinterprets the teaching of
St. Thomas to support the thesis that an appeal to proportionality is necessary to evaluate a human act morally, and fails to
come to grips with the central teaching of the Encyclical.
Bernard Hoose's essay, "Circumstances, Intentions, and
Intrinsically Evil Acts" (pp. 153-168) is an effort to show that,
pace the contrary teaching of John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor,
one can make moral judgments only by considering circumstances and (further) intentions.
Hoose centers attention on n. 80 of Veritatis Splendor where
John Paul II appeals to the teaching of Vatican Council II in
Gaudium et spes, n. 2 7 to show that there are "intrinsically evil
acts" specified by the objects rationally willed and chosen. This
text from Gaudium et spes includes some actions described in
morally evaluative terms (e.g., "subhuman living conditions,"
"arbitrary imprisonment," "degrading conditions of work'). It
also includes others described in merely descriptive terms (e.g.,
"abortion," "euthanasia," "voluntary suicide'). Among the acts
described in non-morally evaluative language are "deportation"
and "mutilation." It should be noted, however, that "deportation"
appears immediately after "arbitrary imprisonment," so that one
might infer that the "deportation" deemed immoral by Gaudium
et spes is "arbitrary deportation."
Nonetheless, Hoose focuses on the fact that no morally
descriptive adjective precedes "deportation" and "mutilation,"
and he then goes on to argue that one cannot say that "deportation" is intrinsically evil insofar as there can be just deportations. Similarly, he argues that in the Catholic tradition

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483

approved authors had spoken of justifiable "mutilation." He
then concludes that, since these kinds of actions cannot be determined to be immoral without taking into account circumstances
and ends, no actions can be determined intrinsically evil merely
on the basis of the object chosen (e.g., deportation), but can only
be evaluated morally if one takes into account not only the object
chosen but also the circumstances and intentions (i.e., the moral
method repudiated by Veritatis Splendor).
I think it is easy to see the glaring non sequitur involved in
Hoose's argument. He rightly notes that some actions, described
in non-morally evaluative terms (e.g., deportation) cannot be
judged morally wrong without considering circumstances and
intentions, but then concludes that no actions described in such
way can be judged immoral without considering circumstances
and intentions.
From all that has been said, one can conclude, I believe, that
the essays by Selling, Moore, Jans, Janssens, and Hoose contained in this collection are seriously flawed and thus fail in their
attempt to show inaccuracies in "the assertions made by Veritatis
Splendor."

BOOK REVIEWS
The Perfection of the Universe According to Aquinas: A Teleological
Cosmology. By OLIVA BLANCHETTE. University Park, Penn.: The
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992. Pp. xvii + 334. $35.00
(cloth).
This work represents a significant and most welcome contribution to
Thomistic interpretation as well as to the broader study of medieval philosophy. While its tone is unpretentious, its theme, the structure and purpose of
the whole created universe, is crucial for Aquinas's philosophy. Those familiar with Thomas's corpus know how often this theme appears-frequently
supplying the foundation for the argument-and know equally well how elusive it becomes when one seeks an extended treatment of it. Hence, to have
recognized the chief elements of the larger picture, to have identified and collected the pertinent texts, and to have ordered and synthesized them as this
book has done represents a major and lasting scholarly achievement.
Moreover, while primarily concerned with Aquinas's own philosophical
thought, the book also places him in conversation with a number of classical
and modern thinkers, from Plato and Aristotle to Hegel and Collingwood.
Blanchette begins his study by clarifying the very notion of perfection
(Chapter 1). It first refers, in the order of our conceptions, to the completion
of a process. A thing is perjectum, "thoroughly made," when its process of
generation is finished. Motion, in fact, is precisely a passage from imperfection to perfection. By extension, the term can then be applied apart from
motion to anything which lacks nothing it should have, or, as in the case of
God, which lacks nothing at all. Analyzing the Greek and Latin terms connected with generation and perfection (poiein/facere; genesthai/fieri;
teleion/perfectum; telos/finis; teleiosislperfectio) Blanchette shows why it is
that for the Greeks the infinite usually signified imperfection, while Aquinas
was able to conceive of an infinity which was perfection.
For the present study, a crucial distinction among the kinds of perfection
is that between first and second perfection, i.e., between a being's "ontological" perfection, the complete generation of its nature with all its natural powers, and its "operational" perfection, the activities carried out by means of
those powers. Only in its operations does a being attain its ultimate perfection, which always lies in a relation to something exterior to itself. This fundamental distinction between first and second perfection underlies the basic
485

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BOOK REVIEWS

structure of the book. Part One describes the universe in its first perfection,
i.e., the constituent parts whose presence gives it its integrity. Part Two takes
up the activities of the parts which taken together constitute the order within
the universe and by which the universe attains to its external good, God himself.
At the level of first perfection, the universe is considered to be perfect first
of all simply because it is the universe, i.e., the whole of what is (Chapter 2).
As a whole, it is perfect (complete) in comparison to any of its parts. Thus it
is a priori impossible to have plural universes, since each "universe" would
in fact be only a part of the whole which was the universe. Second, simply as
a body, the universe enjoys the perfection of having all three dimensions.
Third, not having any bodies outside it, the universe does not share the
imperfection of being limited by bodies external to it, as does every particular body. Finally, in containing the perfection of each kind of being, the universe possesses a universal perfection not shared by any one kind of being.
These perfections belong to the universe simply qua universe.
Beyond these, however, we can speak of the perfection of this universe. As
Blanchette points out, for Aquinas there is no "best of all possible worlds" in
the sense that God could not create a better one. Yet we can speak of the perfection (or completeness) of this world that God, for reasons not accessible to
human reason, actually chose to create. The perfection of this universe is
such that were any new essential parts, i.e., new species, added, it would no
longer be the same universe, but rather a new universe of which the old now
constituted a part. One could, however, increase the accidental (improve or
increase the number of individuals within species) and so increase the intensity of the perfection, but the essential structure would remain unchanged. As
Blanchette points out, this seems to disallow the possibility of an evolution of
species within Aquinas's universe.
The following chapter shows how the perfection of the universe requires
integrity, the condition of all its parts coming together suitably. This implies
on the one hand that there be some one principle which causes the universal
order, and, on the other hand, a diversity of parts (species) and even a multiplicity of individuals. The diversity of species, intended by God for the perfection of the universe, implies a hierarchy in which some beings will be better than others. The final cause of diversity, ultimately, is to have the universe
represent the divine goodness; since no one creature can accomplish this
fully, diversity is called for. Aquinas distinguishes between perfection in the
present state of the universe wherein all species constitute essential parts,
and that of its final state at the end of time when there will remain only the
principal parts: the separate substances, the heavenly bodies, human individuals, and the four elements.
Blanchette concludes his description of the universe's first "ontological"
perfection with an analysis of causality (Chapter 4). Inasmuch as the universe
is ordered and this order arises in the action of some beings on others (action

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487

and passion), causality provides, as it were, the texture of the universe. Of
particular importance here is the universal causality of the heavenly sphere
which is the cause of the universal order in the terrestrial world. The recognition of a universal order requires positing such a cause beyond all particular causes; Blanchette remarks here that it is characteristic of modem
Darwinism to restrict its explanations to particular causes.
The theme of causality leads into that of activity, and this is treated in Part
Two according to three different levels which together make up the universe's
second perfection. First is the activity of physical bodies as such, that is, their
local motion (Chapter 5). Simply as a body, each body attains its perfection
by achieving its natural place. The inclination to this place produces the natural rectilinear motions of the simple elements toward or away from the
earth's center. In contrast, the circular motions of the heavenly bodies are not
directed to any one place and so cannot be natural; hence the need for an
exterior mover. These basic motions give rise to all other motions, including
those of generation. Seen from this perspective an evolution of species might
be possible as part of the temporal process through which the essential
species of the universe are generated.
The second order of activity is that of generation as it occurs over time
(Chapter 6). Aquinas accepted Aristotle's understanding of the heavenly
sphere as the universal cause of all generation; nevertheless, he departs significantly from Aristotle in that the generations occurring in the terrestrial
realm are not just a sort of by-product of the sphere's motion but rather its primary goal. Moreover, all of material generation from the lowest level upwards
aims at the production of rational beings. Thus, on Aquinas's view, the purpose of the motion of the heavenly sphere is ultimately the production of a
determinate number of human beings. When that number is reached, the
motion of the sphere will end. As Blanchette points out, this view of motion
and generation clearly puts man at the middle of the universe and demotes
the heavenly bodies to a sub-human level. There is, for Aquinas, an anthropic principle informing the whole universe.
Given this last view, it becomes clear that the most perfect activity of the
universe, that in which its perfection principally lies, is the activity of its
principal parts, the rational beings (Chapter 7). Intellectual beings, being.
both material and spiritual, occupy a central place in the universe. As immaterial and capable of intellectual activity, the soul can become all things (quodammodo omnia); in so doing it overcomes the particularity of each created
being and gathers the universe together, so to speak, within itself. In this way
the rational being has a special affinity with the whole universe and its perfection, for through it the universe achieves a unity beyond what it could
achieve by its physical interactions. It is not only by intellectual activity,
however, that the rational creature perfects the universe. It is called to participate in divine providence and activity to promote the good of the materi-

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BOOK REVIEWS

al world and of other rational beings. This latter is accomplished by adhering
to justice, dedicating oneself to the common good of all rational creatures.
Through the knowing and loving of rational beings, which constitutes the universe's intrinsic common good, the universe attains its extrinsic common good
which is God himself. Thus Blanchette can give the following summary of the
Thomistic universe: "For him (Aquinas], the universe is ultimately a community of intellectual beings, each intelligent and free, all capable of the
highest good, moving toward completion through an activity in which this
community expresses and perfects itself' (300). We have, in the end, a sort
of "kingdom of ends," a universe which is, at its peak, ethical.
It is worth noting a few key ideas that run throughout Blanchette's treatment. First, the notion that human intelligence cannot explain the universe
as a whole. This particular universe is created as a result of God's free-will
(vs. all emanationist accounts) and hence there is no necessary rational
explanation available to the human intellect for its being as it is (vs. Hegel).
This is the "voluntaristic" side ofThomas's account. Still, it is possible, given
this universe, to say why such or such thing is required for the perfection of
a being or even for the universe. This gives rise to Thomas's "rationalism,"
his conviction that the intellect can penetrate the world and arrive at necessary truths about it.
Second is the understanding of how the unity of a whole that is made up
of several distinct substances rests on the interaction of these substances. A
universe of multiple beings without activity would not be a true universe.
Neglecting this point, one might consider the order of the universe, its highest perfection, in a static sense, and then take it as distinct from the activity
of the rational beings. Rather, the order of the universal is found most fully
in the very activity of its rational members.
Third is the distinction Blanchette draws between the idea of the universe
with its perfection and the model which at a given historical period represents
that idea. This distinction allows him to speak of those elements of Aquinas's
larger view which remain valid when some particular understanding of the
universe is altered or even replaced by discoveries in the physical sciences.
Given the replacement of the Aristotelian cosmology which Aquinas largely
accepted, this is clearly necessary if the book's theme is to have a more than
historical value. Such a distinction, moreover, highlights the real philosophical issue of what constitutes a universe as such and what sort of perfection
must it have. Here, one wishes that Blanchette might have said a bit more
about how and to what extent the idea, the "logic of perfection," is independent of a given model. For example, he makes it clear that when the universe
is said to be perfect because it contains all that is, this sort of perfection
would apply to any model of the universe (102-3). But this independence
seems to derive from the almost tautological nature of such perfection (94). It
seems, however, more problematic when we come to the perfection which the

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universe enjoys as an ordered whole. What happens if the model does not present a universal order, as seems to have been the case for the last three centuries? Should we then remove the corresponding perfection from our idea of
universe's perfection? Or is there some metaphysical reason for asserting that
the universe is an ordered whole, regardless of any particular model? If the
latter, it would be interesting to have at least a sketch of how we would arrive
at this position.
On the whole, certainly, the book provides an invaluable overview of the
Thomistic universe for anyone working on Aquinas's cosmology, metaphysics,
or even ethics. Blanchette is to be commended for his clear and orderly presentation of the material, especially the many subdivisions within the chapters. The quotations of Thomistic texts are almost all in English, well translated by Banchette himself. The placing of key phrases in Latin within parentheses helps in some measure to overcome the lack of the original text in the
footnotes. Finally, the book's selected bibliography as well as its indices
(index of names, analytical index, and index of citations) render the book an
even more useful tool.
DAVID M. GALLAGHER
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

Freedom and Creation in Three Traditions. By DAVID B. BURRELL, C.S.C.
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993. Pp. xi + 225.
$29.95 (cloth).
According to the author, this book, Freedom and Creation in Three
Traditions, is a comparative work designed "to illustrate the worth of explicitly tradition-directed inquiry, as well as the fruitfulness of comparative
inquires in philosophical theory" (6). In addition, among other things, the
author contends that, "because the pressure of comparative perspectives
demands that we mine hitherto unsuspected reaches of what we have thought
we know," not only the author but also the "traditional disciplines of philosophy and theology may each be enriched by the forays of such inquiry" (6).
Specifically, the three traditions to which Burrell is referring are the Jewish,
Islamic, and Christian; and, as the title of this book suggests, the central topics of consideration used as the basis for a comparison among these traditions
are the respective notions of freedom and creation.
In order to achieve his goals, Burrell places his discussion within the general context of the notion of creation, which, as he rightly observes, "is notoriously difficult to classify" (7). In so doing, he divides the work into nine
chapters; which he entitles as follows: 1) "The Context: Creation"; 2) "On

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Characterizing the Creator"; 3) "On Characterizing Creation"; 4) "On
Characterizing the Relation: Jewish, Christian, Muslim"; 5) "God's Acting in
the World God Creates"; 6) "Creatures Acting in a Created World"; 7) "On
the Relations between the Two Actors"; 8) "Sin and Redemption"; 9) "The
God Realized in Renewed Creation."
Having placed his discussion within the general context of the notion of
creation, Burrell begins his analysis by comparing and contrasting this notion
in St. Thomas and Moses Maimonides vis-a-vis the necessitarianism of
Aristotle as interpreted by lbn Sina. In so doing, Burrell stresses that what
predominates in both Maimonides and Aquinas is a notion of God as a "free
originator" of all creation not in relation to an "exegesis of the opening chapters of Genesis" but in relation "to the rest of the Bible and the subsequent
tradition of Judaism and Christianity" (12).
This "distillation" having been noted, Burrell then examines the distinctive features of the notion of creation as this is influenced by the "faith assertion" of the three respective religious traditions-Jewish, Christian, and
Islamic. Within Judaism Burrell finds emphasis placed upon the need to
interpret creation against the background of the "covenant" with Israel (19).
In Aquinas and Barth he understands this activity to be interpreted against
the background of the relation of the Father to His Eternal Word (19-21); and
within Islam he finds the regulating theme in the conviction of God's absolute
sovereignty vis-a-vis the created order.
In chapter 2, Burrell goes into more precise detail regarding the specific
ways in which God is characterized as a creator within the three traditions.
Within Judaism, once again, he focuses upon Maimonides and finds the decisive point which determines the Rabbi's reasoning "against accepting what
Aristotle was said to have taught regarding the origins of the universe" to
have been the philosopher's contention that "the world exists in virtue of
necessity, that no nature changes at all, and that the customary course of
events cannot be modified with recourse to anything" (28). According to
Burrell," ... what offends him about such a contention is that 'it destroys the
Law in its principle, necessarily gives the lie to every miracle, and reduces
to inanity all the hopes and threats that the Law held out ... "' (28).
Furthermore, in Burrell's view, from the theological presumption that God is
a free originator of everything, Maimonides is led to draw the philosophical
conclusion that it must be the very nature of God to exist. Consequently,
Maimonides's use " ... of Avicenna's distinction between essence and existence offers a way of parsing the claim that 'His existence is necessary always'
... as but another way of saying that it 'has no cause for its existence'" (30).
Within Aquinas Burrell finds a completion of "the grammar of divinity" (31),
in particular regarding the way existence and essence are to be understood in
God and creatures; and to make the position of Aquinas regarding the relation of essence and existence clearer he explains this against the background
of lbn Sina's teaching on the matter.

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All this having been done, Burrell begins to make the notion of creation
more precise by relating the created order to the Creator-first regarding the
notions of act, possibility, and necessity; and then by characterizing the relation within the context of the three traditions. Within this latter context
Burrell finds certain central facts to be present. Within Judaism this is the
covenant; within Christianity it is the Word made Flesh; and within Islam, as
represented by such thinkers as al-Ghazali and the Asharites, it is the
omnipotence of God.
After finishing the above analysis, the author turns to an examination of
the structure of the religious narratives of the traditions in order to focus
attention both upon how each respectively understands God's action within
creation and the free action of creatures in relation.to God. Within each tradition Burrell finds some difficulty grappling with what he calls "the zerosum impasse" of created freedom-as-autonomy in the face of an omnipotent
freely originating God. Within Islam he notes this difficulty in particular
within the Mutazilite school between the Qadarites and the Asharites-the
former accepting and the latter rejecting the notion "that rational creatures
are the originators of their actions by a power created by God" (76-83).
Within Judaism he again turns to Maimonides, whose views on these matters
he finds heavily developed in reaction to the aforementioned Islamic debates
(84). Finally, within Christianity Burrell refers to Augustine's notion of freedom; and he considers this notion both as it is understood by Scotus (88-94)
and "as it has been employed by Aquinas to 'make explicit' what Aristotle left
in umbrage: the inner dynamics of voluntary human action" (87).
In Chapter 7, Burrell turns to what he calls "explicit philosophical reflection" regarding the relations between divine and human free agency within
each of the three traditions which are the focus of his study (95). In so doing,
he intentionally "gravitates toward Aquinas as the most credible spokesman
for any of the traditions" for several reasons: 1) he intends to "focus on the
philosophical tools needed to explicate the unique relations obtaining
between existents who are creatures and their creating source"; 2) "Thomas
incorporated into his synthesis the results of three centuries of prior labor by
Muslim and Jewish thinkers on the very issues which confronted him"; and
3) "because of his metaphysical acumen, perhaps also a function of his prior
tutelage, he was able to transform the inherited Hellenic schemes in such a
way as to exploit the implications of creation ex nihilo and so create a specifically 'Christian philosophy' that would also prove of considerable use to Jew
or Muslim alike" (95-96). Interestingly, the main "philosophical tool" for
which Burrell appears primarily to tum to Aquinas seems to be a rather
decidedly theological one-namely, Aquinas's faith conviction that human
beings need an infused knowledge (such as that of the Trinity) in order to
have the correct idea of creation. With this tool in hand, Burrell notes that,
even though Aquinas's faith dependence is distinctively Christain, nonethe-

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less, all three traditions share the same conclusion that " ... God produced
creatures not because he needed them, nor because of any other extrinsic
reason, but on account of His own goodness." Then he concludes this Chapter
by considering four issues which he finds to be relevant to his treatmentnamely: "l) causality: primary and secondary, the cause of being and causes
of manners of being; 2) eternity and time as a corollary of creator/creature; 3)
the efficacity of providence with respect to a world subject to failure; 4) the
relative merits of a metaphysics which privileges the possible or the actual to
explicate this unique relation" (96).
Chapters 8 and 9 deal with "the pattern of love (or friendship) as an analogy for the interaction involved" between God and created, voluntary agents
(96). Chapter 8 considers this interaction against the background of the
notions of sin and redemption and of the distinctive ways in which each of
the three traditions understands these ideas; and, once again, Burrell stresses: the Jewish tendency to interpret these notions in relation to "the covenant
with Abraham and Torah with Moses" (143); the Christian inclination to
interpret these same ideas against the background of "the person and actions
of Jesus" (146); and the Muslim propensity to view these same issues in relation to the "Warning and Guidance" of the Qur'an (150). In Chapter 9, he
notes that, despite their differences, within each of the three traditions, there
is an analogous, threefold pattern of elaboration utilized by each tradition in
its discourse about the relation of the Free Creator to His free creationnamely, "source, word, and community" (161-171); and he concludes, with
Aquinas: "It is the trinitarian structure of God's saving action which can serve
as an operative pattern to correct the principal tendencies to self-destruction
endemic to each of the three traditions which we have been considering"
(183).
In my opinion, both generally and specifically, Burrell's treatment of his
chosen topic is an excellent piece of scholarship-one which could not be
matched by many thinkers today. First of all, the topic which he is examining
is not an easy one, even from the perspective of one tradition and one area of
expertise. Burrell, however, is able to move back and forth between philosophy and theology not only within his own tradition, but he displays an exceptional grasp of the problem from the perspective of other theological traditions as well-even to the point that he recognizes the difficulty of talking
about the kalam as theology (196, note 8), which is a subtle problem of which
few scholars tend to be aware. Secondly, the topic which Burrell examines is
one of major philosophical and theological import which, in all its parts,
demands both tremendous linguistic and historiographical skills to articulate.
Yet, despite these complexities, Burrell is able not only to formulate the issue
under consideration with clarity, succinctness, and precision but also, utilizing these same intellectual skills, to achieve all the goals which he has established for himself.

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There are, however, a couple of areas in the work where I find it difficult
to understand the author's point. For example, I think it would have been
helpful for Burrell to explain more precisely within his text what he means by
Christian philosophy. The more I study this notion the more I become convinced this is simply an analogous concept for a particular way of doing theology-namely, of using the habit of philosophical argumentation within the
context of theological investigation. Burrell, however, seems to think that
Christian philosophy is something other than the theological use of the habit
of philosophical argumentation (for instance, that it is a "logical system"see 55); but when he gives instances of Aquinas's application of Christian
philosophy (for example, 21) what is formal in Aquinas's activity seems to be
the habit of theological reasoning illuminating that of philosophical reasoning. Certainly, however, against the background of Burrell's overall purpose,
these issues are of minor import and do not detract from the metaphysical
beauty of Burrell's scholarship-which, as I have already noted, is difficult
to match.
PETER A. REDPATH
St. John's University
Staten Island, New York

Theology and Narrative: Selected Essays. By HANS W FREI. Edited by George
Hunsinger and William C. Placher. New York: Oxford University
Press, 1993. Pp. 274. $35.00 (cloth).

To review a collection of ten essays, with introduction and afterword by the
editors, poses several challenges. One temptation is to attempt the impossible: to give an adequate reading of each of the essays as well as an assessment of the work of the editors as to their choice of materials and their comments upon them. One risks writing a dozen reviews rather than one. Another
temptation is to offer either a synthetic view of the collection, thereby imposing a unity which may not be entirely warranted by the essays themselves, or
a highly selective view according to a single theme which the reviewer takes
as most important or interesting. Theology and Narrative demands a following of ancient advice: pecca fortiter.
The reader can be exceedingly grateful for the fine "Introduction" by
William Placher, and the brief but clear introductions to each essay. In his
usual lucid and flowing style, he offers us much more than a mere chronological precis of the essays. His remarks offer an albeit brief but thorough
synthetic and critical view of the work of Hans Frei. In fact, I would suggest,
his introduction is itself an excellent "book review." By contrast, the
"Afterword" by George Hunsinger is principally focussed outside this col-

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lection. He takes the first essay of the collection, "Remarks in Connection
with a Theological Proposal," as the light by which to interpret "the principal work by which he [Frei] is known to us not as an intellectual historian or
as a commentator on the theology of others but as a theologian himself' (235).
That work, The Identity of Jesus Chri-st, is the subject of a careful analysis for
its "polemic," "method," and "content." Hunsinger applies the same grid to
The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (chiefly in the footnotes), and in sketchy
form to the other posthumous collection of writings by Frei, Types of Chmtian
Theology.
Hunsinger is at his best in laying out the argument of Identity. There is little doubt that to understand Frei one must grasp and evaluate the theological
positions from which he takes his distance, the methods by which he makes
their problems his own, and the deep principles which guide his solutions, at
least as evidenced in the Christology he proposes, and by implication in the
rest of the doctrinal areas of Christian thought. The excursus in footnote thirteen on the relation of meaning and truth in the gospel narratives, and the
relation of faith and history that it presupposes, deserves a careful reading.
To clarify the argument of Identity is no small job, and Hunsinger offers many
felicitous insights. However, whether one can do so without integrating the
historical work of Eclipse, the initial stance found in Frei's doctoral dissertation, and the admittedly fragmentary but nonetheless definite position taken
in Types I doubt. That is not to ask of a short afterword more than it can possibly do, but to suggest that a fuller work is much hoped for.
After a brief biography of Frei, the "Introduction" by Placher confines
itself somewhat more to the essays presented in the volume. It does so, however, by offering the reader two helpful sections on the background to Frei's
work in the authors Erich Auerbach and Gilbert Ryle. Despite their brevity
these sections are valuable aids to the reader unfamiliar with the literary and
philosophical theory upon which Frei is dependent. As Placher himself
notes, H. Richard Niebuhr is a third essential component of the background,
and the essay by Frei himself, the last in the collection, is a welcome statement of his appreciation and understanding of at least part of Niebuhr's work.
As Placher suggests, Frei's important movement away from an emphasis on
the formal characteristics of biblical realistic narrative as normative to an
appreciation of its function as the rules of discourse within the common life
of the Church both locates a shift which frees his theological work from an
unnecessary constraint but, needless to say, opens it into an area of complexity which he was yet to engage fully. In addition, Placher notes that a fundamental question for Frei's project is whether it resolves itself into a form of
deconstruction (one might add, in another direction, into the kind of fundamentalist reading of the biblical text he was so careful to avoid).
How can such a collection be best read? The introduction, I have suggested, is truly introductory, and while the afterword takes the reader far

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495

afield it does so with ultimately helpful materials. The essays of Frei are
themselves arranged roughly historically, with only one very early essay (the
sixth, on Barth) placed later in the collection, obviously to be a companion
with the essay in which Frei reconsiders Schleiermacher and a possible rapprochement between him and Barth. They could be simply read in the order
presented. But, as Hunsinger shows well with his use of the other early essay
"Remarks in Connection with a Theological Proposal" to clarify the argument
of Identity, there is much to be said for reading both early essays first. If nothing else, they pose a clarity and freshness which becomes increasingly rare
as Frei contends with, in Hunsinger's words, "the concrete and complex
embeddedness in the matrix of the whole, with all the subtle interrelations
and contrasts which that embeddedness seemed to entail" (236).
It might be well, before proposing a scheme for reading, to name briefly
that complex whole. Simply put, it was a conviction that matters of method
and matters of doctrine are inextricable. There is no settling the difficulties
of clear doctrinal exposition, appropriate development, and pastoral application without attention to the content and claims of doctrine itself, and vice
versa of course. This is most evident in Frei's chosen test case of the doctrine
of the person and work of Christ, in which decisions as to the appropriate use
of general theories of human nature and interpretation of the Scriptures, as
well as the tradition of reading and applying them, are ingredients. This is not
strange. In the acts of God in Christ which constitute human salvation the
what and how are coincident. There are those who might argue that this is not
the statement of the Scriptures or the formula of the early tradition, or that
even if it is, it need not be held normative. Frei would not agree, and labored
at length to unravel the threads of argument and presupposition, of historical
and contemporary reasons which account for the divergence of opinion. His
deepest convictions may not have been easily visible, and Hunsinger is correct to observe that the few written works which remain are themselves as
complex as the problems Frei engages and his appreciation of their subtleties. Frei quite evidently tried very carefully to understand alternative perspectives and claims, and hence I am somewhat hesitant about Hunsinger's
use of the title "Polemic" to name Frei's relation to and presentation of the
last three centuries of Western Christian theology. If doctrine and method are
inextricable, so is the effort of taking account of the ruling discourse while
proposing an alternative conversation. Essential to that conversation is testing the grammar of two basic Christian claims: Jesus is Lord; Jesus is risen.
With these matters in mind, let me briefly review the contents of Theology
and Narrative.
One can profitably begin by reading the short piece "Of the Resurrection
of Christ." With a very clear focus and in a very brief space, Frei employs for
us his basic analysis and critique of current views and presents his own basic
position (see especially 205). The reader familiar with Frei's work will find
many hints of his more technical writings, and the reader unfamiliar will

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undoubtedly discover a multitude of questions to be answered by further
reading. Of particular importance here, I think, is the function of the piece as
a commentary on a confession of faith. Though his life's work was within the
university context, there can be little doubt of the deep faith which shines
through the texts. I would recommend also reading the other two essays that
were contributed by Frei to the same commentary on the Thirty-Nine Articles
of the Church of England and that make passing mention of a very early entry
in A Handbook of Christian Theology published in 1958 on the subject of natural and revealed religion which is valuable for its succinct observations.
Next, an early short essay, "Karl Barth: Theologian," will introduce the
reader to all the preoccupations of Frei's later work, as well as signal his
indebtedness to the work of Barth in general. His wonderment about the success or failure of Barth's theology (174-75) occasions remarks about the central task of theology, and about its ironic character, which provide a glimpse
of Frei's own motivation and style. Following these two short essays taken as
the ouverture to what follows, one might profitably read the "Remarks in
Connection with a Theological Proposal." The editors rightfully note that this
early essay announces all of the themes of Frei's career:
the distinction between explanation and description, and a decided preference
for the latter, across a number of academic disciplines; the plea for modest, nonspeculative interpretive devices in expounding scripture; the nontheological
modes of conceptual analysis used to elucidate the logic and content of dogmatic theology; the distrust of apologetic strategies that dissolve into the worst fonns
of relativism; the insistence on the particularity of the synoptic gospel narratives
and the figure of Jesus as they depict him (26-7),

It ends with a succinct statement of the coincidence of meaning and truth, as
Frei finds it to be given in the account of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.
He admits that "the question of the transition from the aesthetic, nonapologetic understanding to the truth claim_.__historical,metaphysical, and existential" must be addressed, but he takes his place alongside Anselm, Calvin,
and Barth, offering the following remark about the story of Jesus as given in
the gospels: "Understanding it aesthetically often entails the factual affirmation and existential commitment that it appears to demand as part of its own
storied pattern" (44).
To understand this remark, the reader must labor through "Theological
Reflections on the Accounts of Jesus' Death and Resurrection," an earlier
version of the argument presented in The Identity of Jesus Christ. Here, the
reader unfamiliar with Frei might wish to read parts one to four of
Hunsinger's "Afterword" before, or in conjuction with, a reading of this rather
dense piece of writing. In sum, Frei argues that the unique identity of Jesus
as clarified by the use of formal elements of identity description requires both
a notion of identity and a reading of the New Testament which "quests for the
historical Jesus" inevitably cannot sustain. In a somewhat ironic remark he
offers the following summation: "I believe further that this descriptive availability, identity, and continuity (of Jesus) represents not a transformation of

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497

Jesus into a myth but the demythologization of the savior myth in the person
of Jesus" (75). And put in other words: " ... there is a kind of logic in a
Christian's faith that forces him to say that disbelief in the resurrection of
Jesus is rationally impossible" (87).
Four other essays in the collection will aid the reader to discover more
clearly the hermeneutical problems involved in the sort of Christology which
Frei has proposed. "Theology and the Interpretation of Narrative" has an
important discussion of the meaning of the "literal sense." This is furthered
in the essay previously published and much discussed, ''The 'Literal
Reading' of Biblical Narrative in the Christian Tradition: Does it Stretch or
Will it Break?" which contains remarks on recent literary criticism, particularly deconstructionism, and on phenomenological hermeneutics. Of particular note are the concluding pages (l 43ff) in which one can detect a movement
away from the formal characteristics of realistic narrative (and Frei's association with New Criticism) towards a notion of the literal sense in connection
with communal discourse (and Frei's association with the work of George
Lindbeck). "Conflicts in Interpretation" continues this trend, and the short
piece in response to Carl Henry is valuable for its somewhat blunt but clear
remarks on a whole range of issues that the three other more technical essays
discuss.
Finally, there are the two late works, on the convergence of Barth and
Schleiermacher as reconstructed by Frei, and on H. Richard Niebuhr. Both
are instances of the kind of generous, even if critical, reading Frei could offer,
and of the continual reassessment he was engaged in throughout his life.
While both selections offer remarks on historical figures, hermeneutical
issues, and philosophical matters, I would like to highlight the glimpse of a
discussion of the Trinity in the first (82ff.) and the remarks on Christian
ethics in the second. Pervading both are hints of the same topic which
engaged him in his doctoral dissertation, how to speak about revelation in
Christian thought and life.
Another "review" of this collection might take as itg theme the importance
of its contents for many contemporary theological discussions. Most obviously, anyone interested in questions about ways of reading the Bible, about the
presuppositions of recent efforts to search for the historical Jesus, about the
use of literary theory in conjunction with Christology, and about hermeneutical questions generally will find them placed in a large historical and theological context. Those wishing to explore the implications of Frei's work for
all forms of theological construction, and for theological education as well,
will find this volume a distinct convenience. There now lacks only an edition
of Frei's doctoral disseration to make available the resources for a broad discussion of the shape and significance of his work. Such a comprehensive
study would be not only of historical interest, but might be able to lay out
more clearly the lines of possibility in which Frei's work, in conjunction with
that of George Lindbeck, can be properly said to be an inspiration for other

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generations of theologians across denominational lines.
Both Placher and Hunsinger at the end of their essays choose quotations
from within Frei's own writings to give a synoptic portrait of the man and his
work. Placher chooses a remark about Niebuhr's sense of vocation as a theologian (20), and Hunsinger one about knowledge of that seemingly elusive
reality, a person's identity (257). However one might come away from this
challenging collection of essays, further confused or more enlightened, more
in agreement or disagreement, I think every reader will recognize the coincidence of intellectual perspicuity and generosity with passionate faith.
GEORGE P. SCHNER, S.J.
Regis College, Toronto School of Theology
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Reasoned Faith. Edited by ELEONORE STUMP. Ithaca,
University Press, 1993. Pp. x + 364.

N.Y.: Cornell

As the editor remarks in her "Introduction," it is not so long ago that the
analytical philosophy of religion consisted very largely of discussions of the
meaningfulness of religious language, and of arguments about the existence
of God. Nowadays it is more adventurous, ranging over such topics as creation, providence, and God's responsibility for sin.
According to Robert Merrihew Adams, the statement "truth is subjectivity," though one of the most famous, is also one of the most misunderstood in
Kierkegaard's writings. He argues that, taken in context within the
Concluding Unscientifu: Postscript, the statement is by no means incompatible with the objective truth of religious belief. From the point of view of the
Postscript, a member of an idolatrous community who prays to her God with
"the entire passion of the infinite" has more of the truth than one who prays
in a false spirit from within Christendom; but this implies that the latter does
have some truth. Whatever the deficiencies in her faith, she is clearly admitted to be in possession of the true concept of God objectively speaking (223). Adams maintains, quite rightly in the reviewer's opinion, that the
Postscript is excessively pessimistic about the integration of the ideals of subjectivity and objectivity, of passionate commitment on the one side and rational assessment of evidence on the other, in religious faith (21).
A useful distinction is made by Scott MacDonald between "occurrent" and
"dispositional" belief; this seems to resolve some of the more puzzling paradoxes about the relation of the more cognitive and propositional side of faith
to other aspects which may be thought essential to it. The demons alluded to
by St. James (2:19) might believe dispositionally that their highest fulfillment

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499

was to be found in obeying the divine will, and so performing acts of charity
and service to other creatures. But to avoid the inconvenience of acting in
such a way, they could think of God occurrently as just a powerful being who
makes burdensome demands (55). For MacDonald, the cognitive component
of faith has only two elements, belief that certain propositions are true, and
belief that the kind of response of the will which is also essential to faith may
be grounded on these (56). "We can make sense of Christian faith if we think
of it simply as belief that Christianity is true plus an appropriate volitional
response to that truth" (69). Against mainline Christian accounts like those
of Augustine and Aquinas, he sees no good reason to suppose that one cannot have faith in propositions for which one has conclusive proof, but only in
those for which one's justification is relatively weak. He provides interesting
grounds for contradiction of a view which has been expounded by both Robert
Adams and John Hick, that only such uncertainty can ground the trust which
is essential to the relationship which human beings ought to have to God (59).
"My ability to love and trust my wife, to commit myself without reservation to
her well-being and to the goals and purposes we have chosen as definitive of
our common life seem in no way dependent on my being uncertain about what
she is like or what she will do" (60).
On the question of how faith ought to be related to the demands of reason,
Robert Audi remarks that, up to the middle 1970s, it was usual to assess the
rational requirements of faith in evidentialist terms; but this is no longer so.
(The reviewer believes that the older assumption was quite correct, and that
the new-fangled notion that there might be a rationality to faith which is
somehow of a non-evidentialist sort is largely sophistry and illusion. But this
is by no means to impugn the interest of this article as a whole.) Audi suggests that a rational faith, if it were "volitional" rather than "doxastic," might
result in one's praying in the hope of being heard by God, even without confident belief that this will happen. "Even if there should be neither cogent
arguments for God's existence nor experiential grounds adequate to warrant
unqualifiedly believing that God exists, rational faith is possible" (89). This
kind of faith would have some cognitive constraints; it would be incompatible, for instance, with a definite belief that God did not exist (78).
Peter van lnwagen brings new light to the overworked topic of how Jews
and Christians are to understand the Biblical accounts of creation, against
the background of modern scientific knowledge of the origins of the universe
and of humanity. He distinguishes two extreme positions, which he labels
"genesiac literalism" and "saganism," and repudiates both of them. He suggests that what Genesis is right about-that it is not the case that there are
many gods whose wills may be in conflict with one another; or that kings but
not ordinary folk bear the divine image; or that it is proper to worship heavenly bodies-is of fundamental importance to all human beings everywhere,
and that what it is wrong about is not of such importance (104). Furthermore,
until an age of high sophistication, truths relating to such matters as sin and

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moral knowledge can be communicated to human beings only in the form of
concrete stories (106). No doubt eventually the Holy Spirit could have produced an "abstract" Genesis without factual error (the reviewer is inclined to
say that She has done so, or at least is in the course of doing so, by means of
the corrective supplied by modem palaeontology); but it is difficult to see in
what respect it would have been an improvement on the "concrete, suggestive, effective" document that we have. And what would have been the point?
"Only this: that a few saganists in our own time would have had to find some
other excuse to reject the Word of God than its disagreement with the fossil
record" (108). The article ends with some salutary reminders that many eminent authorities are now unhappy with Darwin's account of the causal mechanisms underlying evolution on purely scientific grounds (127).
A curious meditation on the beginning of Genesis, from rather a different
point of view, is provided by Harry G. Frankfurt. This reviewer can only make
sense of it as a kind ofjeu d'esprit; it is certainly fascinating and thought-provoking as such. The first two verses (we are told) inform us that before the
first creative act-the making of light-there were already three entities, the
earth, the deep, and the spirit of God. In other words, there is no question of
a "creation out of nothing" (130). It even looks as though God becomes God,
as opposed to merely "the spirit of God," by imposing form on "the earth" and
"the deep," and so making them describable in terms of intelligible speech
(132). "This first creative act both transforms a dark world into a lighted one
and transforms the spirit of God into God" (134). God realizes and defines
God by imposing order on chaos, and indeed needs humanity to accept the
imposed order, for the completion not merely of the creation of the world, but
of the divine being itself (140).
Of what is as a whole an extraordinarily rich collection, William Alston's
paper seems to the reviewer to be among the finest. Plainly the terms we use
of God are derived from our discourse about creatures, particularly human
beings. However, God is so different from creatures that it seems impossible
for the terms to be used in quite the same sense in the two cases. But if that
is so, just how is one to articulate the difference? Among the many historical
solutions to the problem, that of Thomas Aquinas stands out for its depth,
complexity, and subtlety (145). Yet it seems irretrievably flawed. The trouble
is, according to Alston, that Aquinas "has disavowed any attempt to be specific about what knowing or willing come to in the divine case, except that
they constitute a 'higher mode' of the sort of thing we have in human knowing or willing.... By his own admission he is in no position to spell out the
respects of similarity and dissimilarity between divine and human causal
agency, willing, and so on" (173). Aquinas's teaching on the subject seems to
derive from his doctrine of the divine simplicity-that there is no real distinction between the divine being and any of the divine attributes. This doctrine, as Alston sees it, has to be rejected (178). (The reviewer considers that
at least "understanding" and "will" have to be understood in the same sense

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501

as between God and creatures. Human understanding is in very restricted
potency [to put the matter in Aristotelian terms] what divine understanding
is in infinite act; human will is extremely narrow in extent and power, while
whatever happens in the cosmos-with qualifications where free created
agents are concerned-is due to the divine will. The doctrine of God's simplicity should be retained, if at all, only so far as it is consistent with the
account just summarized.)
A claim that is quite common among theists, that the primary object of
religious faith is "not the final and most profound reality," which is somehow
behind, above, or beneath it, is investigated by George Mavrodes. He discusses two versions of the claim, in the work of Paul Tillich and John Hick,
and concludes that, seductive as it may seem, it is viable in neither form.
Such "Gods above the Gods ... may, on the one hand, be construed in a way
which makes them irrelevant to religious life and experience. Kicked
upstairs, they can thenceforth largely be ignored. On the other hand, they
may be construed in ways that make them religiously attractive. In that case,
they are likely to be assimilated by some allegedly lower gods that belong to
the particular religions" (203).
In another important paper, Richard Swinburne raises the question of how
God is related to time, and defends what he calls the "simple, naive, initial
answer ... that God is everlasting" (204). The most well-publicized alternative, that God is as it were present to all events, even when to us they are past
or future, he rejects as incoherent. His own account, he insists, does not have
the inconvenient consequence often attributed to it, of making God a prisoner of time; since "the unwelcome features of time--the increases of events
that cannot be changed, the cosmic clock ticking away as they happen, the
uncertainty about the future--may indeed invade God's time; but they come
by invitation, not by force-and they continue for such periods of time as God
chooses that they shall" (221-2).
The problem of how divine perfection is to be reconciled with divine freedom is discussed in a pair of papers by William Rowe and Thomas Morris.
Rowe asks, How can God be at once free, and unable to do anything which is
not for the best? (223) He concludes that God's perfection rather severely
limits the scope of divine freedom in creation, and suggests that one might
get out of the difficulty either by giving up the libertarian idea of freedom as
applied to God, or by maintaining that God might be better than God actually happens to be (233). Morris approaches the problem from a somewhat different angle, contrasting the conception of God as "ultimate in causation" to
that of God as "ultimate in value" (234). "How could a perfectly wise, good,
and powerful being," he asks, "choose to create anything less than a perfect
world?" (235) In opposition to Rowe, he argues that, since the very idea of
"the best of all possible worlds" is incoherent, God cannot be faulted for failing to create such a thing (244).
"What is hope," demands William Mann, "that it should be in the com-

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pany of faith and love?" (251). Some passages in Luther's commentary on
Romans tacitly imply an indictment of hope. As Luther sees it, if one is in the
highest rank of the elect, one will have an unalloyed desire to conform to the
will of God, which entails desiring to be damned if that is what God wishes
(256). However, Aquinas seems right in arguing that charity, as a state of
friendship with God, presupposes hope. "I cannot enter into a relationship of
amicitia with you as long as I despair of the possibility, deeming myself
unworthy of obtaining the good that the relationship would bestow" (279). (It
should be mentioned in passing that Mann's paper is a regular feast from a
purely literary point of view.)
Peter Abelard's views on the atonement are commended, in the teeth of
contemporary fashion, by Philip Quinn. As he says, Abelard's critics object
to his so-called "exemplarism" on the ground not that it is utterly wide of the
mark, but that it is insufficient as an exhaustive account (282). In one famous
text, Abelard is often taken to be saying that our redemption consists in the
love Christ manifests by suffering for us; and some of his translators have rendered the passage accordingly. But, argues Quinn, Abelard's Latin is not necessarily, or even most naturally, to be read in this sense; and comparison with
what Abelard writes elsewhere shows that it ought not to be so taken. His
meaning appears rather to be that our redemption consists in the love wrought
in us by Christ's passion (289). In one place, Abelard actually defends a
straight penal substitution theory (290). Bernard's claim, that Abelard's views
amounted to Pelagianism, is quite unjust; it can only appear plausible if one
takes some of his more extreme statements in isolation, and then exaggerates
them (292).
Marilyn Adams's paper on hell makes the case for universalism with a
splendid compound of moral passion and rigorous argument. She takes particular exception to the views of William Craig, who espouses the traditionally standard view that a very substantial proportiop of human beings are to
suffer eternal damnation. Adams reminds us of all the "traumas, impairments, disasters and hardships" which people have to struggle against in this
life; for example, the physical and sexual abuse endured from childhood
onwards by youths in the gangland of South Central Los Angeles. "I do not
find it credible that all such antemortem situations contain grace sufficient
for faith in and cooperation with God (Christ) were it not for the creature's
incompatibilist free refusal" (319). Adams admits that her own universalism
is supported by only a selection of the texts relevant to the subject in the New
Testament; but reasonably urges that the same applies to the views of her
opponents. Some serious people, as she says, reject universalism on the
grounds that it is apt to lead to religious and moral indifference. But she finds
in her own pastoral experience "that the disproportionate threat of hell . . .
produces despair that masquerades as skepticism, rebellion, and unbelief'
(325).
The final contribution, by the editor, assesses Aquinas's treatment of the

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503

sufferings of Job, which she finds instructively different from the sort of
account which would come naturally to people of our own time. We are apt to
wonder how a good God could possibly permit the many and frightful evils
which infest the world. Aquinas, however, believed that all human beings are
afflicted with "a terminal cancer of soul," for which pain and suffering are the
divinely-appointed remedies (340). If we are not cured, we will lose for ever
the ultimate bliss of communion with God. At this rate we are to expect that
the best people are precisely those who are liable to suffer the most (342).
Aquinas would agree with Pope Gregory, who says that it is frequently difficult to understand the ways of providence, but never more so than "when
things go ill with good people and well with bad people" (343). Stump concludes that what Aquinas's interpretation of Job, and his overall account of
evil, has to show us is "that our approach to the problem of evil is a consequence of our attitude towards much larger issues, such as the nature of
human happiness and the goal of human life" (356).
The reader will have inferred that this is a remarkable volume. None of the
contributions is to be sneezed at, and some are very impressive indeed.
HUGO MEYNELL

University of Calgary
Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Christ the 'Name' of God: Thomas Aquinas on Naming Christ. By HENK J. M.
SCHOOT. Nijmegen: Peeters Leuven, 1993. Pp. 231 (Paper).

The hiddenness of God in Christ and "the relation between the Word
Incarnate and human words for this Word" animate this study of Aquinas's
christological epistemology; it is a study of Aquinas's understanding of "the
mystery of Christ, and [of] human ways of signifying him" (1). And because
"all human understanding and signification fails [sic] to reach Christ as he
is," Schoot believes that all christological knowledge is primarily negative
and heavily reliant on analogy (1). He applies to the names of Christ what
another author (Mark Jordan) has applied to the divine names: "the surest
approach to the divine is by the scrutiny of linguistic failure" (153).
The structure of the book reflects these insights. In the first chapter the
author stresses the negative character of christological language by reflecting
upon Aquinas's use of mysterium in christology.
The second chapter is an analysis of his use of "the concepts of signification, supposition, predication and reduplication," in the context of the most
current knowledge of medieval grammar and logic (7). It is here that the
author stresses Aquinas's strongly linguistic approach to christology, as well
as the distinction between supposition ("standing for") and predication ("sig-

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nification"), which will be crucial to his analysis of the hypostatic union in
later chapters. In fact, "the whole of christology is built on the distinction
between signification and supposition" (55). Schoot believes that Aquinas,
following medieval "modist" grammarians, thought that "a fundamental parallel exists between different modes of signification, modes of understanding
and modes of being" (43), and hence a linguistic approach is often a decisive
entry into questions of theological (and christologiocal) epistemology and
metaphysics. In this context, the author examines the distinction Aquinas
made between a number of modes of signification.
Chapter Three is devoted to Aquinas as a biblical theologian. His use of
biblical names of Christ {over ninety in his commentary on Isaiah alone) suggests that "a large part of Aquinas' treatment of the person and life of the
Word Incarnate is devoted to a discussion of names" (104), and that the fact
that Christ is a mystery "is rooted in (his] being the 'name' of God" (105).
Schoot finds that "Aquinas employs the same rules concerning signification
examining those names as he does concerning the divine names" (193).
Chapter Four applies the key insights of Aquinas's "theory of supposition
to the theology of Christ incarnate" (194). Following an analysis of such key
concepts as first and second substance, esse, suppositum,singularis,particularis, and individuum, Schoot concludes that
The subject-term having both signification and supposition expresses a linguistic unity that Aquinas deems analogous to the unity in Christ. Just like words that
have different significations can be one in their supposition for one and the same
supposit, Christ can be called one since two natures are united in one person.
The mode of signifying Christ is analogous to Christ's mode of being. (194-5)

He holds that this distinction between supposition and signification is the
"linguistic parallel" to the distinction between being and essence (120), and
that since the unity of Christ finally escapes all human signification, it "can
only be approached by human supposition" (156). Aquinas's principal concern here is "to safeguard, in all interpretation and construction, the unity of
Christ (198), and Schoot demonstrates that "Aquinas' linguistic treatment of
the names of Christ and the hypostatic union employs the same basic ideas
that are used in his treatment of the divine names: analogous signification,
divine simplicity, and mixed relation" (197). Indeed, the theory of the communicatio idiomatum "is for christology what the 'theory' of analogy is for the
doctrine about God" (139).
The next chapter discusses the esse of Christ, and the importance of
Aquinas's affirmation that he est creatura, even though he does not possess a
subsistent, personal human act of being. In this densely written and brief
chapter, Schoot denies that Aquinas changed his view between the Quaestio
DisputataDe Unione Verbi lncamati and the Summa Theologiae.Rather, the
author holds that Aquinas always thought that Christ possessed a human esse
in the sense of "second substance," that which permits an essence to exist by

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itself, but which does "not contribute to the personal being itself' (164).
Further, since Christ's human nature is "attached" to the personal esse of the
Word by means of a mixed relation, nothing can be "be lacking to the being
of Christ's human nature. In fact, whoever objects that a personal human
being is lacking in Christ violates the distinction between supposition and
signification" (164).
The final chapter makes explicit the connection between naming God and
naming Christ: "all true naming of God is related to the hypostatic union as
its paradigm" (169), and in particular the author shows what he believes to
be the connection between the naming of God and the relation between the
three types of created knowledge in the soul of Christ.
Perhaps the most accessible and theologically rewarding chapter is the
first, and it is worthwhile to develop some of its insights. Schoot stresses that
Aquinas rarely speaks of mysterium in regard to the Godhead; rather, it is for
him the paramount christological term, because it connotes both hiddenness
and disclosure, the thing signified and that which signifies. According to
Schoot, Aquinas understood Christ's humanity (and his entire human life) to
be a mode of signifying God, a mode in which God is at once hidden and disclosed, as in a mysterium. Since the Godhead itself is absolutely pure light in
which nothing is hidden, the term does not properly apply to it. One can only
properly speak of mystery when the divine light is disclosed through creaturely reality, and the paradigmatic revealing/veiling is the humanity of
Christ. The author then develops four modes of revelatory hiddenness that are
important for Aquinas, and which may be expressed as follows: the Word is
hidden in the articles of faith, in the Old Testament, in the eucharist, and in
his human nature.
In his consideration of the articles of faith, Schoot again stresses that the
formal object of faith (the First Truth) is not a mysterium in itself, but only
inasmuch as it is understood by us, only inasmuch as God is revealed to us
as the material object of faith. God is revealed to us as a mystery, in a mysterious, and hence hidden, way. The mystery that is Christ is also revealed in
the Old Testament in a mysterious way: those things that it refers to literally,
"refer mysteriously to the mystery of Christ" (27), and are unlocked by the
spiritual senses of scripture. Christ, especially in his passion, is also
revealed/hidden in the mystery of the eucharist under the signs of bread and
wine: they, too, mysteriously and hence hiddenly reveal him. Thus "mysterium is something hidden with the hiddenness of the propositions of faith and
also with the hiddenness of the spiritual signification of Scripture" (28), as
well as with the eucharistic species. And all of those modes of hiddenness
reflect the primary hiddenness of the Word in his humanity. He ends this
treatment with the following analogy, in which the second (italicized) term is
the mysterious mode of signifying the res signifzcata: The First Truth is signified by the propositi.on of faith, Christ is signified by the Old Law, the
Incarnate Word is signified by his human nature, and the passion of Christ is

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signified by bread and wine (39). Schoot sums up the concept of mysterium
operative here by saying that it is "something hidden, voiced truly but inadequately, spiritually signified by the Old Testament and now fulfilled in
Christ and the sacrament of the eucharist" (38).
Despite the meticulous scholarship displayed in this work, students of
Aquinas's theological epistemology and christology may well be struck by
what seem to be gratuitous harmonizations between theology and christology
(the parallel between the analogy of being and the communicationem idiomatum, making the hypostatic union paradigmatic in the naming of God), the
overwhelming weight given to the signification/supposition distinction, and
the seeming reduction of the principles of christology to linguistic rules. In
addition, the complex and often turgid style serves to obfuscate certain
important questions, such as Aquinas's understanding of Christ's esse. Is
Aquinas being forced into a theological mold that he himself would not recognize?
EDWARD L. KRASEVAC, 0.P
Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology
Berkeley, California

An Introduction to the History of Exegesis, vol. III: St. Augustine. By
BERTRAND DE MARGERIE, S.J. Petersham, Mass.: St. Bede's
Publications, 1993. Pp. xi+ 169 (paper).

Unfortunately, today many scholars and general readers neglect the work
of the Fathers of the Church. One often hears that the writings of the Fathers
have become less relevant or less important because there has been so much
progress in Scripture studies and because the Fathers did not really try to
find out what the inspired writer meant to say-for they relied on allegory.
St. Augustine's exegesis poses a particular difficulty in terms of its
reliance on allegory. Augustine was strongly influenced by the allegorical
exegesis of bishop Ambrose and recounts in his Confession.5(VI, iv, 6) how
he used to hear Ambrose teaching in his sermons, as though he were most
diligently teaching a rule: "The letter kills, but the spirit gives life."
Father de Margerie admits that Augustine did indeed suffer from "excessive allegorism" (126), but he insists that this is no reason to give up entirely on Augustine. Instead, with keen scholarly analysis he shows that, in spite
of some defects, Augustine did in fact give us some really fine work in
Scripture study.
Father de Margerie stresses that according to Augustine the purpose of all
Scripture is to teach love: " ... the plenitude and the end of the Law and of

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all the sacred Scriptures is the love ... of a Being which is to be enjoyed and
of a being that can share that enjoyment with us" (20; from De Doctrina
Christiana, I, xxv, 39). This love is taught even at the beginning of Scripture:
" ... on a subjective level, Moses wrote for the love of all men" (30).
But how could this be? "It seems to us nowadays that Augustine failed to
perceive adequately the progressive nature of the disclosure of religious
truths by the God who revealed them" (30). Father de Margerie responds to
this objection by pointing out that given the belief that Moses had been given
a transient, "face to face vision of the Divine being ... and that this experience was granted him precisely in favor of the universal Church," it makes
sense to assume that "the prophet and maker of the old Law received knowledge, during this vision and through divine revelation, of how future interpretation of the Law he was issuing-like that which Jesus was to issuewould extend even to enemies the love of one's neighbor" (31).
Augustine was led to this view in the light of the varied interpretations
being proposed in his own time for Genesis (48). Father de Margerie admits
that "Augustine himself limits the scope of his theory concerning the plurality of literal meaning to a few rather exceptional verses of scripture" (65).
Augustine believed, however, that Moses had received most remarkable
gifts:
I cannot think that Moses Your most faithful servant was given by you lesser gifts
than I should have wished and longed to have for myself if I had been born at the
same time as he .... I should have wished that you would grant me such a skill
in writing, such an art for the construction of what I had to say, that those ... who
can grasp so much [how God creates] would find fully contained in the few words
of your servant whatever truths they had arrived at in their own thinking; and if
in the light of truth some other man saw some further meaning, then that too
would be discoverable in those same words of mine. (50; from Confessions XII,
xxvi, 36)

Furthermore, "Augustine acknowledges in De Genesi ad litteram that Moses
beheld God face to face, and in the Confesswnsthat the biblical law-giver had
a foreknowledge of the interpretations readers would draw from what he wrote
in Genesis 1:1" (52-53). This was needed, Augustine thinks, so that Moses
could actually intend all the interpretations that others would later find in his
words.
Today there is much discussion of the possible plural literal sense. The
Second Vatican Council, in Dei verbum §12, had an opportunity to affirm or
deny this plural literal sense, but intentionally passed it by. Yet the same
Council in Lumen gentium §55 nonetheless used the very same principle in
speaking of Gen. 3:15 and Is. 7:14: ''These primeval documents, as they are
read in the Church and understood in the light of later and full revelation,
gradually bring before us the figure of the Mother of the Redeemer." In other
words, the Holy Spirit, the chief author, surely could have more in mind than
what the human author saw. Vatican II refrains from asserting that the author
did or did not see in these texts all that the Church now sees. Father de

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Margerie tells us that Augustine surely held that Genesis contains such a
plural sense, with the added affirmation that Moses, whom Augustine considers to be the author of the Pentateuch, thanks to a transient beatific vision,
personally foresaw and intended all the interpretations that would later be
given.
In keeping with his careful and cautious approach, near the end of the
book Father de Margerie admits the limitations of Augustine, limitations
which Augustine himself often perceived. "First, Augustine's strictly exegetical works are rather limited .... His sustained commentaries are few, those
which have reached us concern Genesis, Job, the Letters to the Galatians and
part of that to the Romans, the Gospel, and the First Letter of John" (126).
Secondly, Augustine had only a slight knowledge of Biblical Greek. He usually worked from the Latin Bible. He seldom referred systematically to the
Greek. Further, he had "but a smattering of Hebrew, acquired indirectly
through his familiarity with Punic" (126). Finally-a very large admission"he, along with nearly all the Fathers, failed to analyze adequately the literal meaning of numerous texts he sought to interpret" (126).
In spite of such limitations, Augustine and the other Fathers do provide us
with many insights into sound doctrine. This is especially useful since so
many of the errors of today, advertised as new, are merely ancient mistakes
rejected centuries ago by the Fathers. Therefore we are all indebted to Father
de Margerie for helping to call us back to what is so very good in the Fathers.
Father de Margerie has rendered a singular service to scholarship in his
first two volumes of study of Patristic exegesis. The present volume, the third,
is a worthy successor to the first two.
WILLIAM G. MOST
Notre Dame Institute

Alexandria, Virginia

The Primacy of Love: An Introduction to the Ethics of Thomas Aquinas. By
PAUL J. WADELL, C.P. Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1992. Pp. 162.
$11.95.
Friends of God: Virtues and Gifts in Aquinas. By PAUL J. WADELL, C.P.
American University Studies, Series VII: Theology and Religion, vol.
76. New York: Peter Lang, 1991. Pp. x + 148.
Drawing from the virtue-ethics orientation of his earlier work, Friendship
and the Moral Life (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), Paul
Wadell has written two books that seek to accomplish two distinctly different

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objectives: to produce a work that can serve as a general introduction to
Thomas Aquinas's teaching about ethics, and to produce a monograph that
urges a different approach to the interpretation of Thomas's ethical teaching.
But both books share a common interest of Wadell's: showing that Thomas's
ethics is an ethics of genuine affection. Whether he is judged to have reached
the two objectives is a question that is likely to be answered differently by
moralists, depending upon the issues and approaches that shape their own
understanding of Thomistic moral theology. At the very least, Wadell has produced two well-crafted books that are trend-setting works in a long and
promising career, works whose approach is surely to become familiar as more
and more writers emphasize virtue ethics with regard to the moral teaching of
Aquinas. And at most, Wadell has shown himself to be both a fine teacher of
Thomas's ethical thought and an incisive scholar in identifying the subterranean movements of the Common Doctor's thought. I shall consider The
Primacy of Love first, which, although it appeared second, is a good intelligible backdrop for presenting the more sophisticated and important argument
of Friends of God.
Waddell's introduction to Thomas's ethics is not really a synopsis of the
Secunda pars of the Summa theologiae, though the lion's share of the material he employs is from there, and in something of its original order. It is rather
a sympathetic, almost affectionate, portrait of Thomas's ethical teaching. The
book does not introduce the reader to the technicalities of Thomas's thought,
or to the bewildering debates surrounding the practical syllogism and natural law that have characterized the secondary literature in the second half of
this century. Wadell-and others, I imagine-would consider this a strength
of the book, since its goal is to encourage readers to go to Thomas's texts
themselves. The introductory chapter quickly presents Thomas's life, relying
upon Weisheipl and Pieper, notes briefly the outline and nature of the Summa
theologiae, and most importantly addresses something that characterizes
Wadell's whole perspective on Thomas's moral teaching: the intimate, indeed
inseparable, link between his moral and spiritual teaching (17-21). Using the
life-stance Thomas shows us in his famous non ni.si te, domine experience
("Nothing else but you, Lord") as an intelligible entrance-point into his whole
reason for writing the Summa theologiae, Wadell reins in his reader of
Thomas's moral teaching away from the mechanical "nut-and-bolts" to which
we are otherwise accustomed, and rather directs that reader to consider
Thomas's rationale for the whole project: ''Thomas wrote the Summa because
he loved God, and like all great lovers he believed he had something fabulous to share" (19).
Proceeding loosely according to the order of the Prima secundae, Wadell
investigates the nature of human happiness, noting how Thomas's investigation leads him to assert that only God is humanity's happiness (Wadell never
really engages Thomas's heavy emphasis upon the cognitional element of

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human happiness). He then quickly imports some of the treatment of charity
(from I-II, 65, and II-II, 23) into the discussion, noting how Thomas terms
charity as a "kind of friendship with God" (63-78). Returning to the original
order of the Prima secundae, Wadell bypasses the account of morality (I-II,
18-21), and very ably addresses the human emotions-an element of
Thomas's teaching rarely mentioned in the literature, even by Thomistic
moralists. The virtues are treated next, along with the Gifts, and then finally
he concludes, emphasizing that love, and especially the love of God, is the
"cornerstone of Thomistic ethics" (145).
Veteran readers of Thomas's ethics, particularly of the Secunda pars of the
Summa theologiae, might wonder how an introduction to Thomas's ethics can
afford not to treat of any number of important topics: the constitution of
human acts, the treatment of morality, law, or even grace. Likewise, the
emphasis upon charity would seem to call for the other two theological
virtues, faith and hope. And the desire to highlight love of God results in little treatment being given to what concrete items-the defining objects of the
various virtues and vices-aid or endanger the moral agent in seeking God.
But Wadell's goal of providing his reader with an attractive introduction to
Thomas's ethics does not commit him to addressing all the various and difficult issues that continue to confound even professional readers of Aquinas.
And he has served his reader well by instructing that person, and reminding
us, that Thomas's ethics is surely radically incomplete if it is considered without reference to the role of the emotions relative to the virtues and the gifts,
or, even more importantly, if considered without reference to the love of God
that arguably gives shape to Thomas's theological ethics, and surely grounded his own moral life.
This theological emphasis continues in Friends of God, a more sustained
account of Thomas's teaching. Here Wadell is concerned to demonstrate the
following thesis: Thomas's moral teaching in the Summa theologiae, particularly that of the Prima secundae, must be read under the rubric of charity if
his treatment of the passions, the virtues, and the Gifts, is to be understood
fully. Starting, accordingly, with a consideration of charity, Wadell notes how
Thomas appropriated Aristotle's teaching on friendship in the Nicomachean
Ethics, yet how he in moral theology bases the primary instance of "friendship" upon the primary relationship that exists between God and human persons. Wadell again emphasizes how human happiness is to be found in union
with God, but again does this with almost no reference to the intellective formality of that union-I shall return to this later.
Turning to consider the role of the passions in the moral life, Wadell
argues that the passion of love is primary, and, further, that our learning to
love things in the right way is essential to our happiness. And learning to love
God is, of course, learning to love what is most important, bar none. To do all
this well we need the virtues, which are dispositions of the various passions,

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and, Wadell notes, which are all to be informed by charity if a truly integrated moral life is to be achieved. A discussion of charity as the "form" of the
virtues naturally follows, and in it Wadell points out how, for Thomas, charity in many ways becomes the standard of goodness for all the virtues it
informs.
The Gifts of the Holy Spirit enter the discussion at this point, though,
Wadell insists, not as an appendage. As Wadell sees them, the Gifts are, once
charity is granted its proper role as ultimate defining source of virtues, genuine, efficacious means of loving God, and through them, of attaining to
human happiness (127-133). Seen in this light, the Gifts form a truly integral
part ofThomas's moral theology. The book comes to a close at this point, without a final summation, but Wadell's thesis has been so clearly defined
throughout the book that the reader is at every tum referring the current treatment to the book's larger aims.
About the strength of the book a few comments are in order.
Methodologically, the book does not in any serious way engage some of the
disputes concerning charity (e.g., with Lombard) and the Gifts (e.g., with
William of Auxerre) that quite likely shaped some ofThomas's treatment, and
no sustained account is given to the trends that Thomas's treatment of charity underwent in the course of his writing career. The lacunae present in The
Primacy of Love are found here, too. Thus no treatment is given to Thomas's
teaching on law, though a prime candidate for "reading the text under the
rubric of charity" would obviously and fruitfully have been Thomas's account
of the New Law-and the Old Law's "forward glance" to the New Law could
have been excitingly illuminated by employing this reading.
Wadell's not having addressed the ultimately intellectual basis of
Thomas's treatment of human happiness results, I worry, in an emotivism that
threatens to undercut what it is in human nature that makes us really interesting to God: our likeness to him tlirough intellect. This absence of intellect
in the book leaves Wadell without access to any number of texts and tools that
could actually give his point greater cogency: qq. 19-24 (on God), q. 59 (on
angels), qq. 82-83 (on humans) in the Prima pars, as well as any number of
questions in the de actibu.shumani.ssection of the Prima secundae (qq. 6-21),
all ground "love" in the will, which is in turn grounded in intellect-Wadell
prefers texts in the treatment of the passions, which are acts that human
beings have in common with the lower animals (1-11, q. 6, prol.). I say this,
not to be pedantic, but rather to point out that, for Thomas, the act of charity, being an act of the will, is the fullest sense of the term "love" in the vocabulary of his moral theology. But this love of God lasts, while faith and hope
do not, precisely because, in eternal beatitude, "we will become like him, for
we see him as he is" (1 Jn 3:2), a seeing that is an unmediated intellectual
vision of God himself, whom we become more like, through knowledge. And

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knowing God, particularly in eternal blessedness, explains that and why he
is so much to he loved. Thomas's intellectualism has a greater role in his
moral theology.
But Wadell's point is still well-taken. The love of God is operative throughout Thomas's moral instruction in the Summa theologiae, and treatments of
his teaching on the passions and the virtues that do not see them as linked in
some real way to charity are doomed to incompleteness. Both The Primary of
Love and Friends of God are genuine contributions in this regard. I am not
sure whether they achieve the golden mean of presenting Thomas's moral
teaching "dot-on," hut I am sure that embracing the tenor of these hooks will
help us to achieve that mean in due time.
MARK JOHNSON
Saint Joseph's College
Rensselaer, Indiana

English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors. By
CHRISTOPHER HAIGH. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993. Pp. 300.
$19.95 (paper).
Church Papists: Catholicism, Conformity and ConfessionalPolemic in Early
Modem England. By ALEXANDRA WALSHAM. The Royal Historical
Society Studies in History, vol. 68. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1993.
Pp. xiii + 142. $53.00 (cloth).
The revision of the history of the English Reformation continues at great
pace in these two recent hooks. The first, by Christopher Haigh, is one-volume account of the English Reformation that clearly attempts to replace A.
G. Dickens's masterful The English Reformation. which has held the field
since 1964. Haigh admirably succeeds in this attempt. His style is very readable, forceful, and compelling-reminiscent of Hilaire Belloc's headlong historical narrative, hut without Belloc's confessional loyalties (Haigh is not a
Catholic) or oversimplification. This is not a facile account of a complicated
Reformation. Haigh knows what the complications are and does not hesitate
to discuss them.
The hook gets its name from the author's thesis that the English
Reformation was the result of political accidents and coincidences, lurching
along to an Elizabethan "Settlement," which succeeded only because Henry
VIII died eight months too late, because Mary Tudor died too soon, or
because Elizabeth lived too long. In other words, the English Reformation did
not have to happen; it was not inevitable; it could have been (and was)

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reversed any number of times. Grand, long-term causes and patterns (e.g. the
popularity of Lollardy, the corruption of the Church) are dismissed as the
hindsight of propagandists. In fact, the Reformation happened largely
because the people involved did not know that it was happening; they had not
read A. G. Dickens on the subject.
There are excellent critiques of church warden accounts and will preambles, similar to the critiques offered by Duffy in his recent Stripping of the
Altars (Yale, 1992), and caution is urged in seeing in this evidence too much
enthusiastic Protestantism. People may have stopped mentioning the saints
and the Virgin in their wills, not necessarily because they were convinced
Protestants, but more probably because it had become illegal to mention such
things. Characters such as Colet, who have long been viewed as being incipient Protestants, are given a more convincing reading by Haigh: "Colet was
not a proto-Protestant, disgusted with the ecclesiastical structure and the
sacramental system; he was a high clericalist, anxious to maintain the privileges of priests by raising their prestige." Chesterton said this years ago, of
course, in his comment that Chaucer (who was resurrected as a hero by the
Reformers) did not criticize monks because he wanted to destroy monasticism; he only wanted to improve the monks.
The book is not without its shortcomings. Haigh overstates the de-construction of the Reformation. While it is true that there were lurches and
reactions and reversals, there was also a continuum which appeared with
each separate Reformation, which can be traced to a previous one, be it
Henrician or Edwardian. When Edward came to power, the monasteries, convents, friaries, religious orders, shrines, and chantries were gone. When Mary
came to power, much of the artwork was gone and people had become wary
of giving money towards prayers for the dead-not because they stopped
believing in prayers for the dead, but because they were afraid another government would simply confiscate the money. This meant a change in attitude,
in practise. Conservative bishops only slowed the process, and eventually
lost. When Elizabeth came to power, there was already a liturgy and body of
legislation which had previously been enacted and needed only to be put
back in place. Each Reformation may have been separate and piecemeal, but
each one depended on and built on what had gone before.
But what was the Reformation in England? On this Haigh is somewhat
confusing. On one page he seems to insist that politics was primary:
It was politics which made the difference, politics which provided the dynamic
of change, politics which made English Reformations instead of the Reformation
in England. . . . English Reformations were about changing minds as well as
changing laws, but it was the changing laws which made the changing of so many
minds possible. (p. 20)

So far so good, but on p. 14 he has said something which sounds contradictory: "What made English people Protestant-some English people
Protestant-was not the three political Reformations, but the parallel evan-

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gelical Reformation."
The confusion, however, is more apparent than real and stems more from
the confusing nature of the English Reformation itself. Was it a puritan evangelical revolt, a political change of power, a mere ecclesiastical break with
Rome? It could not be all three. Haigh claims that the people carried on
despite the politicians and the new theologians. They clung to some rituals
and some beliefs despite the preaching of the godly. And what had changed
at the end of the day for the typical Englishman, Haigh claims, was not very
much. "Some reformations," he concludes. The radical Reformation of
Cranmer and Latimer did not succeed at all. Some people went into recusancy, while most conformed reluctantly to the established Church. There was
not much difference between them. For the majority and for Haigh,
Catholicism had simply slipped a little. He sees continuity, not in theological
content so much as in the majority who rejected the negative aspects of
Reformation and struggled on.
Haigh does not discuss the relative merits or demerits of conformity.
Unlike Duffy, he does not care if the people conformed or not; but he does
care that the story of how the Reformation happened has been told inaccurately for too long. Protestantism was not thick on the ground before the
Reformation, nor was Catholicism unpopular or little-practised, nor was
Protestantism welcomed. In fact, it seems rather to have been more widely
opposed; if it had been up to the people, there would not have been an
English Reformation. All this has become evident from the same evidence
which made A. G. Dickens so famous.
There is possibly a little too much looking-over-the-shoulder at the great
Dickens, but then Haigh is looking at centuries of inaccurate British history.
He has made sure that the history of the English Reformation will not be told
so inaccurately again.
Alexandra Walsham's book takes the question of conformity head-on. She
contends that many, if not the majority, of conforming churchgoers in
Elizabeth's reign were theologically or instinctively Roman Catholic, and
were caught between the rock of conversion and the hard place of bankruptcy, social ostracism, or even death. She then provides a very helpful summary of the debate which raged between the government (which was amazingly
minimalistic in its enforcement of conformity) and its more enthusiastic parsons, as well as the debate within Roman Catholicism itself.
While this would be sufficient for a useful book, Walsham moralizes about
conformity and decides that it was the best way to go. John Fisher and
Thomas More are thus necessarily viewed as extremists who mistakenly went
too far. (Haigh, incidentally, agrees that Fisher could have accomplished
much more by dissembling and staying on in Rochester to prevent the radical Hilsey from his place.) There are many problems with this position. It presumes, first of all, that the religion did not change, or did not change that
much. If it did change substantially, as the Romans believed, then conformi-

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ty may not be looked on so benignly.
But even more cogently, the politics and theology of resistance are overlooked. While it should be admitted that the majority will follow the path of
least resistance, in this case, survival, and that some compensation should be
made for their weakness (as early popes did with the apostates under the various Roman persecutions), this should not be held up as the ideal. To canonize weakness is to go too far. Martyrs exist not to elicit sympathy from the populace so much as to define the religion. A religion which conforms as a matter of principle is no religion at all.
Despite their flaws, these two books mark a refreshing improvement in the
way the history of the English Reformation is being told.
JOHN VIDMAR, 0.P
Dominican House of Studies
Washington, DC