AQUINAS ON NATURE, HYPOSTASIS, AND
THE METAPHYSICS OF THE INCARNATION
RICHARD CROSS
Oriel College, University of Oxford
Oxford, England

A

CCORDING TO Christian orthodoxy, Jesus Christ is
one person-the second person of the Trinity-who has
both divine and human natures. As the Council of
Chalcedon (451) puts the matter, the two natures are united in
one person. The claim that the two natures are united in one person is contrasted, in the creed of the Council, with something like
the claim that the two natures are mixed together into one new
nature. Thus the creed clearly presupposes some kind of distinction between the senses of "person" and "nature." 1 I think that it
is fairly clear that the distinction that the Council of Chalcedon
presupposes must be something like the distinction between an
individual, on the one hand, and its kind-nature and non-essential properties on the other. The position would then be that the
second person of the Trinity began to instantiate some kindnature (viz., human nature) which he did not previously instantiate, without this entailing that the person ceased being divine.
The human nature, on this view, would be a non-essential property-or a non-essential kind-nature-of the second person of
the Trinity. As Thomas Morris points out, this will mean that the
orthodox Christian
1 "We teach the confession of ... one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten,
acknowledged in two natures which undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no
separation. At no point was the difference in natures taken away through the union, but
rather the property of both natures is preserved and comes together into a single person
and a single subsistent being": thus the creed of the Council of Chalcedon, in Decrees of
the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman J. Tanner (London: Sheed and Ward;
Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1990), 1:86. I have used Tanner's translation, making slight alterations in the punctuation.

171

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RICHARD CROSS

will reject the view that every nature [i.e., kind-nature] is an essential
property of every individual who exists in that nature. 2

Since the second person of the Trinity did not cease being divine,
the Chalcedonian account will also entail acceptance of the possibility of some individual having more than one kind-nature.
But, as Morris again points out, this does not seem to be necessarily inconsistent-it might be the case that, for some sets of
kind-natures, such a state of affairs is indeed possible. 3
In this paper, I want to look in some detail at Aquinas's
account of the distinction between person and nature. In so
doing, I hope to get a fairly clear grasp of Aquinas's account(s) of
the . metaphysics of the incarnation. I shall argue that the
accounts which Aquinas gives of the metaphysics of the incarnation other than in De Unione Verbi Incarnati fail to be coherent and that the somewhat different account in De Unione Verbi
2 Thomas V. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate (Ithaca and London: Cornell
University Press, 1986), 41.
3 Morris, 40. It is worth noting that this interpretation of Chalcedon is not found unanimously in the literature. For example, Bernard Lonergan claims: "The distinction
between persons and nature [in the decree of Chalcedon] is added to state what is one
and the same and what are not one and the same. The person is one and the same; the
natures are not one and the same. While later developments put persons and natures in
many further contexts, the context of Chalcedon needs no more than heuristic concepts"
(Bernard Lonergan, "The Origins of Christian Realism," in A Second Collection, ed.
William F. J. Ryan and Bernard J. Tyrrell [London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1974],
259: my italics). Kenneth Surin makes a similar point: "The 'classical' christological formulations function-'negatively'-as
'meta-linguistic' or 'grammatical' principles, and
not as ontological 'descriptions' of the 'mind' or 'will' of Christ" (review of Morris in
Theology 90 (1987]: 55). By way of external support for the interpretation suggested here,
however, I would cite a recent attempt to show that Cyril of Alexandria-whose work
was of great importance for the formulation of the Chalcedonian creed-operated with
a set of logical and ontological tools, derived from Aristotle's Categories and Porphyry's
I sagoge, which allowed him to formulate a christological model based upon the distinction between subject, on the one hand, and essence and property on the other (see Ruth
M. Siddals, "Logic and Christology in Cyril of Alexandria," Journal of Theological
Studies, n.s., 38 (1987]: 341-367; also R. A. Norris, "Christological Models in Cyril of
Alexandria," in Studia Patristica 13, Texte und Untersuchungen, 116 [Berlin: Akademie
Verlag, 197 5], 225-68). For the importance of Cyril for Chalcedon, see A. Grillmeier,
Christ in Christian Tradition, vol. 1, trans. John Bowden, 2nd ed. (London and Oxford:
Mowbray, 1975), 544-549; also R. V. Sellers, The Council ofChalcedon (London: SPCK,
1953), 207-28. It is, of course, my claim that something like this distinction can be found
in Chalcedon, too.

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Incarnati achieves coherence at the expense of explanatory
power. 4 While I shall be criticizing Aquinas's christology, my
main purpose is to provide an accurate summary of Aquinas's
position, and to trace the way in which his position changes
through the different accounts he offers.
It may be felt that it is wrong to concentrate merely on the
philosophical aspects of Aquinas's account of a doctrine that
must ultimately remain a theological mystery. But Aquinas sets
high philosophical standards both in his discussions of metaphysics and in his analyses of Christian doctrine: in the very first
question of the Summa Theologiae, he expressly notes that arguments directed against the faith are not merely false but demonstrably false. By calling them "demonstrably false,'' Aquinas
means that they can be refuted philosophically. The context
makes this clear: the opponent Thomas has in mind at this point
in the discussion is one who does not believe the truth of any
position which can be derived merely from revelation. 5 Of
course, Aquinas's theological program is consistent with the
claim that some doctrine might turn out to be a mystery, or ineffable. This claim allows that our philosophical categories are not
sufficient to deal with the requirements of theology: the descriptions which we give of Christian doctrines may all turn out to be
mere analogies for the real thing. But Aquinas's claim that arguments against the faith can be refuted philosophically entails
that our descriptions of some theological doctrine, even if they
are all analogies, must themselves be philosophically coherent. If
4 I refer to the following works of Aquinas: the Sentences commentary(=
Sent.); the
Quodlibetal Questions (= Quodl.); the disputed question De Unione Verbi Incarnati (=
De Un. Verb. !near.); Summa Theologiae (= STh); Compendium Theologiae (= Comp.
Theol.); De Ente et Essentia (= De Ente). I use the following editions: Scriptum super
Libras Sententiarum, ed. P. Mandonnet and M. F. Moos, 4 vols. (Paris: Lethielleux, 19294 7); Quaestiones Quodlibetales, ed. R. M. Spiazzi (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1949);
Quaestiones Disputatae, ed. R. M. Spiazzi et al., 2 vols. (Turin and Rome: Marietti,
1949); Summa Theologiae, ed. Petrus Caramello, 3 vols. (Turin and Rome: Marietti,
1952-56); Opuscula Theologica, ed. R. A. Verardo, R. M. Spiazzi, and M. Calcaterra, 2
vols. (Turin and Rome: Marietti, 1954); De Ente et Essentia, ed. M.-D. Roland-Gosselin,
Bibliotheque Thomiste, 8 (Kain, Belgium: Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et
Theologiques, 1926).
5 STh I, q. 1, a. 8 (1:7a-b).

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they are not, it is difficult to see how the arguments of the opponent Thomas mentions can really be refuted by philosophywhich, as I have noted, is the claim he makes. In this paper, I
shall argue that Aquinas's account of the metaphysics of the
incarnation fails to be coherent, and that it therefore fails to meet
the requirements of his own theological program. In my conclusion, I shall suggest some ways in which we might modify some
of Aquinas's metaphysical presuppositions to allow him to give
a philosophically coherent account of the incarnation.
I. DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN SUPPOSITUM AND NATURE

What is important about persons, for Aquinas, is that a person will necessarily be an (onto )logical subject: the kind of thing
that has attributes. In this sense, the term "person" is equivalent
to a number of other terms, two of which I shall need for this
article: "hypostasis" and "suppositum." Aquinas restricts the use
of the term "person" to the set of logical subjects that are rational.6 But he does not rely on the rationality of persons to draw
his distinction between person and nature: it is not rationality
which makes something an ontological subject. To avoid confusion, I shall use the more general term "suppositum" instead of
the term "person"-since, in the relevant sense, these two terms
are equivalent, and since the term "person," in much modern
usage, tends to emphasize the status of persons as psychological,
not ontological, subjects.
As far as I can tell, Aquinas has two quite distinct ways of
drawing a distinction between suppositum and nature in his
christological discussions. (1) The first runs as follows:
"Person" signifies something different from "nature." For "nature" signifies "the essence of a species, which the definition signifies." 7 ••• It
happens that in some subsisting things we find something which does
not pertain to the nature of the species, viz., accidents and individuating principles. This is most apparent in those things which are composed of matter and form. Therefore, in such things nature and sup-

6
7

See, for example, STh III, q. 2, a. 2 (3:13a) and STh III, q. 2, a. 3 (3:14a).
Aristotle, Physics 2.l (193a30-31).

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positum are really distinct, not as two things totally separate [from each
other], but since the nature of the species is itself included in the suppositum and certain other things are added which are beyond the
nature of the species. Whence, a suppositum is signified as a whole,
having a nature as a formal part, perfective of it."

One or two surprising facts emerge from this account. One is
that a suppositum is not some subject underlying a nature. It is
not quite like Locke's substance. Rather, the suppositum is a
whole which includes a set of parts. These parts, however, do not
all exist on the same kind of ontological level. They fit together
in a rather complicated way. (Thus, it would be quite wrong to
saddle Aquinas with any kind of mereological bundle theory of
particulars.) Aquinas, in fact, mentions three types of part
included in a suppositum: the nature, the individuating features,
and the accidents.
"Nature" is clearly here to be taken as something like kindnature. It is not a particular thing, but just a way of talking
about the kind of thing some suppositum is. Talk of a nature, on
this account, is thus talk about, roughly speaking, an abstract
part. Nature, according to Aquinas, is what is susceptible of definition: thus, we can meaningfully talk of the intension of suchand-such a nature.
The second thing included in the suppositum is its individuating feature. For Aquinas, the kind-nature of a material substance
is individuated by matter-with-dimensions. The kind-nature of
an immaterial substance is self-individuating. 9
• Persona aliud significat quam natura. Natura enim significat "essentiam speciei,
quam significat definitio." . . . Contingit autem in quibusdam rebus subsistentibus
inveniri aliquid quod non pertinet ad rationem speciei, scilicet accidentia et principia
individuantia: sicut maxime apparel in his quae sunt ex materia et forma composita. Et
ideo in talibus etiam secundum rem differt natura et suppositum, non quasi omnino separata: sed quia in supposito includitur ipsa natura speciei, et superadduntur quaedam
alia quae sunt praeter rationem speciei. Unde suppositum significatur ut totum, habens
naturam sicut partem formalem et perfectivam sui (STh III, q. 2, a. 2 [3:12b-13a]).
Aquinas gives similar accounts in STh I, q. 3, a. 3 (1:16a-b); III Sent., d. 5, q. 1, a. 3, par.
57-62 (3:196-197); Quodl. IX, q. 2, a. 1 [2] (178b-180b); De Un. Verb. /near. 1 (2:421a425b).
9 On the question of individuation, see for example De Ente c. 2 (pp. 6-23); STh I, q.
50, a. 2 (1:253a-254b); STh I, q. 75, a. 7 (1:356a-357b). The clearest account of Aquinas
on individuation is found in Anthony Kenny, Aquinas, Past Masters (Oxford: Oxford

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The third thing included in a suppositum is its accidents.
Accidents are the features that a thing has contingently. Granted
this description of accidents, and granted the account of
Chalcedonian orthodoxy given above, we might expect Aquinas
to argue that the human nature is an accident of the second person of the Trinity. But Aquinas would regard such an account as
highly problematic. I shall return below to the question of why
Aquinas rejects the view that the union could be accidental.
In the passage just quoted, Aquinas does not claim that the
various parts are parts of the suppositum, but rather that they
are included in a suppositum. Nevertheless, Aquinas does not
name any other parts; so we must conclude that the suppositum
for him will not be anything over and above these parts. The
unity of the suppositum is guaranteed just in virtue of the peculiar types of entity that its parts are. Its parts are not in themselves supposita; they are types of entity that will naturally unite
with each other to produce just one suppositum.
I think that a fairly clear and workable distinction between
suppositum and nature emerges on this account. But it does not
accord easily with Aquinas's account of the hypostatic union.
The reason is that, according to Aquinas, human nature is necessarily individuated by matter-and matter, of course, cannot
be an essential part of the immaterial divine suppositum. 10 Thus,
as Aquinas realizes, he cannot use the account just given to
explicate the mechanics of the hypostatic union.
(2) Aquinas therefore presents a second account of the distinction between suppositum and nature:
Not every individual in the genus of substance--even in rational
nature-counts as a person, but only that which exists in itself, and not
that which exists in some other more perfect thing. . . . Therefore,

University Press, 1980), 43-45. For a fuller account, with bibliography, see Joseph
Owens, "Thomas Aquinas," in Individuation in Scholasticism: The Later Middle Ages
and the Counter-Reformation, 1150-1650, ed. Jorge J. E. Gracia, SUNY Series in
Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 173-194. Owens importantly brings out senses in which both form and esse can be said to have a role in individuation.
10 STh I, q. 3, a. 2 (1 :15b).

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although [Christ's] human nature is a certain individual in the genus of
substance, it does not have proper personality, because it does not exist
separately in itself, but rather in some more perfect thing-viz., the
person of the Word. 11

In this passage a nature is a particular individuated substance. What distinguishes a suppositum from a nature is just a
negative condition: that of failing to be assumed by some more
perfect suppositum. 12 On this account, "nature" is used to refer to
some entity which includes matter (i.e., the part of the entity
responsible for individuation): it is thus a part of the nature
which is responsible for individuation. u Presumably, then, for a
non-assumed nature, the individual nature and its suppositum
will be identical (a negation is not a thing which a non-assumed
nature could have); whereas in the case of the hypostatic union,
the individual nature will be a (non-essential) part of the suppositum. It will be something like a concrete part of a suppositum. I will assess the results of this second distinction in a
moment.
11 Non quodlibet individuum in genere substantiae, etiam in rationali natura, habet
rationem personae: sed solum illud quod per se existit, non autem illud quod existit in
alio perfectiori. ... Licet igitur humana natura sit individuum quoddam in genere substantiae, quia tamen non per se separatim existit, sed in quoddam perfectiori, scilicet in
persona Dei Verbi, consequens est quod non habeat personalitatem propriam (STh III,
q. 2, a. 2, ad 3 [3:13b]). See also STh I, q. 29, a. 1, ad 2 (1:156a);similar accounts are given
in I Sent., d. 25, q. 1, a. 1, ad 7 (1:605); III Sent., d. 5, q. 2, a. 1, ad 2, par. 76 (3:200);
Quodl. IX, q. 2, a. 1 [2] (179b); De Un. Verb. !near. 2 (2:425b-428a).
12 I think we can be fairly sure that what distinguishes a suppositum from a nature in
this account is just a negative condition: i.e., that Aquinas does not mean that some
nature will be a suppositum only if it has some further entity added to it. My reason is
that Aquinas always seems to speak of the non-assumption of some complete nature as
a necessary and sufficient condition for its being a suppositum: see STh I, q. 29, a. 1, ad
2 (1:156a); STh I, q. 29, a. 2 (1:156a-157b); STh III, q. 2, a. 2, ad 2 and ad 3 (3:13b); STh
III, q. 4, a. 2, ad 2 (3:33a). For a review of the debates on Thomas's view of the distinction between individuated nature and person, see 0. Schweizer, Person und
Hypostatische Union bei Thomas van Aquin, Studia Friburgensia, N.F., 16 (Freiburg,
Switzerland: Universitatsverlag, 1957), 6-10, 15-17, 23-53. Schweizer himself holds that
what distinguishes person from individuated nature is just the negative condition of
non-assumption (Schweizer, 114-17).
13 On the claim that the second person of the Trinity assumed an individuated human
nature, see STh III, q. 4, a. 2, ad 1 (3:33a); STh III, q. 4, a. 4 (3:34a-34b); III, q. 6, a. 4
(3:44a-44b).

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Of course, the context makes it quite dear that the salient feature distinguishing these two accounts, as far as Aquinas is concerned, is that the two accounts serve two different purposes.
The first distinction shows that the union of two natures, divine
and human, if it is to be a union at all, must be a union in a suppositum-where a union in suppositum is contrasted with a
union in nature. Aquinas considers three types of union in
nature: (I) some artificial nature which is constituted by a layout
of parts, where each part retains its own nature and numerical
identity; (2) a mixture of two (or more) elements resulting in some
third type of substance; (3) a union of two incomplete things
which together constitute a whole of some particular type (e.g.:
the union of soul and body in a human being). 14
Aquinas rejects all of these accounts as irrelevant to the incarnation. (I) This type of union is only accidental: and Church doctrine excludes an accidental union in Christ. Secondly, this type
of union. does not result in a genuine unity at all. Thirdly, the
resulting form is artificial, not natural: and thus it could not
count as one nature in any case.
(2) This type of union is impossible since the divine nature is
totally immutable, and thus could not mix with a human nature
to produce some composite type of thing. Secondly, if per impossibile the two could unite to produce some composite thing, this
composite thing would count neither as human nor as divine:
hence, we could not talk of a divine person being human-which
is required for the incarnation. Thirdly, the two natures are too
dissimilar for any such mixing to occur. One of them would be
completely obliterated.
(3) This type of union is not analogous to the incarnation,
since both divine and human natures count as complete types:
not incomplete parts of some further nature. Secondly, the divine
and human natures cannot be constitutive, as quantitative parts,
of some quantitative whole, since the divine nature is incorporeal. Neither could they constitute some whole as matter and form,
since the divine nature cannot be the form of a body. Thirdly, on
14

STh III, q. 2, a. 1 (3:1 la-b).

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this account the whole nature of which the divine and human
natures are parts would also be some third type of nature-and
Christ would be neither divine nor human, but some other type
of thing. 15
In Summa Theologiae III, q. 2, a. 2, quoted above, Aquinas
argues that any unmixed natures, if they are to be united to each
other in any way at all, must be united in a suppositum, on the
grounds that unmixed parts are necessarily parts of a suppositum. By "unmixed natures," I mean natures that are not united
in any of the three .ways rejected in Summa Theologiae III, q. 2,
a. 1. Roughly, we might claim that an unmixed nature is one that
does not fall under the intension of any other nature.
The second distinction between nature and suppositum, on
the other hand, is supposed to explain why Christ's human
nature fails to be a suppositum. And this is an issue just because,
in the case of the hypostatic union, a human nature is individuated by a part of itself (and not by an essential part of its suppositum). I shall refer to a nature individuated by a part of itself
as a self-individuated nature.
It is here that the problem arises. The aim of the first distinction between "nature" and "suppositum" which Aquinas proposes is to show that Christ's human nature must be united to his
divine nature in his suppositum. It does this by listing the kinds
of parts that a suppositum can have. But, oddly, not included in
this list is exactly the type of part that Christ's human nature
turns out to be: i.e., a non-essential self-individuated naturewhich is some kind of concrete part. So we cannot conclude, on
the basis of the discussion in Summa Theologiae III, q.2, a. 2,
that it is possible for a self-individuated nature to be a part of a
suppositum (as opposed to being the whole suppositum). In other
words, we cannot show that a self-individuated nature can be
part of a suppositum unless we can show how a self-individuated nature can be part of a suppositum. Furthermore, the account
in Summa Theologiae III, q. 2, a. 2, seems to mean that a suppositum will standardly be identical with an individuated
15

STh III, q. 2, a. 1 (3:11a-b).

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nature. 16 In addition, then, to showing that a suppositum can
have concrete parts, Aquinas will have to show how a concrete
self-individuated nature can be such a concrete part of some suppositum. In fact, however, Aquinas elsewhere does attempt to
show how an individuated nature could be part of a suppositum.
He does this by means of an account in terms of the unity of
Christ's esse.
II. EssE, HYPOSTASIS,

AND THE INCARNATION

(1)

In Summa Theologiae III, q. 2, a. 2, ad 3, Aquinas spells out
his second account of the distinction between nature and suppositum by means of the example of a concrete part existing in a
concrete whole-viz., in a suppositum. Aquinas argues as follows:
The hand of Socrates, although it is a certain individual, is not however a person, because it does not exist in itself, but in some more perfect
thing, viz., in its whole."

He later uses this example to explain not only the distinction
between nature and suppositum but also to explain how the
human nature can be united in the divine suppositum. Roughly,
Aquinas claims that the human nature is united in the suppositum rather as a concrete part exists in a whole suppositum.
In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas spells out his account in
terms of his metaphysic of esse (i.e., being, or existence). He
begins with a distinction between the esse that pertains to a suppositum and the esse that pertains to a nature:
Esse pertains to hypostasis and to nature: to a hypostasis as to that
which has esse; and to a nature as to that by which something has esse;
for nature is signified through the mode of form, which is called a being
from the fact that something exists by it. 1•
16 On this, see Alfred J. Freddoso, "Human Nature, Potency and the Incarnation,"
Faith and Philosophy 3 (1986): 46-48.
17 Manus Socratis, quamvis sit quoddam individuum, non est tamen persona: quia
non per se existit, sed in quoddam perfectiori, scilicet in suo toto (STh III, q. 2, a. 2, ad

3 [3:13b]).

'" Esse ... pertinet ad hypostasim et ad naturam: ad hypostasim quidem sicut ad id
quod habet esse; ad naturam autem ad id quo aliquid habet esse; natura enim significatur per mod um formae, quae dicitur ens ex eo quod ea aliquid est (STh Ill, q. 17, a. 2
[3:11 lb]).

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The point of this distinction is that only supposita may be said to
exist. A nature exists just in so far as some suppositum instantiates it. Hence the nature is that in virtue of which the suppositum is of a particular kind. (This is another way, of course, of
claiming that a nature is a formal part of a suppositum.)
Peter Geach distinguishes three possible usages of the verb
esse, "to be" (for convenience, Geach gives negative propositions):
A. There is no such thing as Cerberus; Cerberus does not exist, is not
real.
B. There is no such thing as a dragon; dragons do not exist.
C. Joseph is not and Simeon is not. 19

The first usage is of no concern to us in this context. The second
and third of these two usages correspond to the distinction that
Aquinas makes in Summa Theologiae III, q. 17, a. 2. Geach
explains the differences between B propositions and C propositions as follows:
[In B propositions, the term "dragon"] is not ... used as a name, as a
subject of predication, but as a logical predicate .... The importance of
B propositions is that the question whether there is a so-and-so, what
Aquinas calls the question an est? has to be answered with an affirmative or negative B proposition. Aquinas realized the logical peculiarity
of B propositions: that the B proposition "an F exists" does not
attribute actuality to an F, but F -ness to something or other.' 0

In the case of C propositions, Geach suggests:
It would be quite absurd to say that Jacob in uttering these words was

not talking about Joseph and Simeon but about the use of their names.
Of course he was talking about his sons; he was expressing a fear that
something had happened to them, that they were dead. We here have a
sense of "is" or "exists" that seems to me to be certainly a genuine predicate of individuals .... The fact that in ... B propositions the verb
"exist" or "be" is not such a genuine predicate tells us nothing about C
propositions. 21
19 Peter Geach, "Form and Existence," in Aquinas. A Collection of Critical Essays, ed.
Anthony Kenny, Modern Studies in Philosophy (London and Melbourne: Macmillan,

1969), 43.
20

Geach, 44-45, with reference to STh I, q. 48, a. 2, ad 2 (1:245a).

21 Geach, 46-47.

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C propositions express what is going on when we attribute
esse to a suppositum; B propositions express what is going on
when we attribute esse to a nature. Since, however, something
which exists will necessarily be a thing of some type, it will necessarily be the case that the esse attributed to a suppositum corresponds on a one-to-one basis with the esse attributed to an
essential nature. Thus, we could say of some suppositum that it
exists and that, necessarily, it is a thing of some identifiable kind
(i.e., that, necessarily, it belongs to some natural kind). Aquinas
refers to the esse attributed to a suppositum as "personal esse,''
"substantial esse," and "esse simpliciter." 22
It would be tempting to claim that, in the case of B propositions. which pick out the esse which a thing has in virtue of its
essential nature, there are no real grounds for distinguishing B
propositions from C propositions. This would mean, in terms of
the discussion in Summa Theologiae III, q. 17, a. 2, that the esse
of the suppositum and the esse of its essential nature are just one
and the same: the suppositum exists just in virtue of its being a
suppositum of a particular kind. On this account, we could simply dispense with C propositions altogether, at least as logically
perspicuous ways of talking about things. But this is not quite
how Aquinas construes the matter. He makes a distinction-for
all beings except for God-between the esse (i.e., the esse
expressed by C propositions) and nature. Geach puts the basic
reason for the distinction as follows:
If x is F and y is F, then in respect of F -ness x and y are so far alike; the
F-ness of x will indeed be a different individualized form from the F ness of y, but they will be, as F-nesses, alike. But when x is and y also
is, the esse of x and the esse of y are in general different as such. 23
22 For "substantial esse," see III Sent., d. 6, q. 2, a. 2, par. 81 (3:239). The remaining
terms occur in all the accounts I discuss.
23 Geach, 49, with reference to STh I, q. 3, a. 5 (1:18b). The literature on the distinction between essence and esse is extensive. See the articles by J. Wippel, "Aquinas's
Route to the Real Distinction: A Note on De Ente et Essentia, c. 4," The Thomist 43
(1979): 279-95, reprinted, together with a reply to criticisms by Joseph Owens, as
"Essence and Existence in the De Ente, ch. 4,'' in John F. Wippel, Metaphysical Themes
in Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D. C.: Catholic University of America), 107-32, and
"Essence and Existence in other Writings,'' in Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas,
133-61, together with the works cited in the notes of these articles. The argument for the

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Thus far, in Summa Theologiae III, q. 17, a. 2, Aquinas has
examined the esse that the suppositum has in virtue of its formal
part, together with the corresponding personal esse of the suppositum. In the rest of q. 17, a. 2, Aquinas spells out the esse that
a suppositum will have in virtue of its other parts. He does not
mention matter, because in his metaphysic matter does not contribute existence to the suppositum. Matter is wholly potential,
and is actualized only in virtue of being united to some form.
The other part of the suppositum mentioned in Summa
Theologiae III, q. 2, a. 2, is its accidents. In q. 17, a. 2, Aquinas
argues that a suppositum receives further esse in virtue of its
accidental forms:
If there is some form or nature which does not pertain to the personal
esse of a subsisting hypostasis, that esse [viz., the esse which the suppositum has in virtue of its accidental forms] is not said to be of the person simply, but secundum quid [i.e., according to some form or another]: just as being white [esse album] is the esse of Socrates, not in so far
as he is Socrates, but in so far as he is white. And nothing prevents this
type of esse being multiplied in one hypostasis or person: there is one
esse by which Socrates is white, and another by which he is musical. 24

The point is that a suppositum is all sorts of things in virtue of
its accidental forms: Socrates, for example, is musical, and is
white, in virtue of his accidental forms. One way of putting this
is by claiming that Socrates instantiates these different accidental forms. Another way of putting this is by claiming that accidental esse can be multiplied in one suppositum. The type of esse
at issue, of course, is that exemplified in Geach 's B propositions,

real distinction between essence and esse in Aquinas which I gave above is labeled the
"genus" argument by Wippel, following Leo Sweeney (see "Essence and Existence in
other Writings," 134-39, where Wippel gives a complete list of the places in Aquinas's
work where the argument can be found). For a discussion of Geach's way of putting the
argument, see Anthony Kenny, The Heritage of Wisdom: Essays in the History of
Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), 24-28.
24 Si aliqua forma vel natura est quae non pertineat ad esse personale hypostasis subsistentis, illud esse non dicitur esse illius personae simpliciter, sed secundum quid: sicut
esse album est esse Socratis, non inquantum est Socrates, sed inquantum est albus. Et
huiusmodi esse nihil prohibet multiplicari in una hypostasi vel persona: aliud enim est
esse quo Socrates est albus, et quo Socrates est musicus (STh III, q. 17, a. 2 [3:111b)).

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where B propositions pick out the esse had by a thing in virtue
of its accidents. Aquinas calls this esse "esse secundum quid": the
(many) esses that a suppositum has in virtue of (secundum) its
accidental forms.
In the hypostatic union, however, the human nature is not an
accident of the Word. It is worth exploring a bit more deeply
why Aquinas rejects the view that the human nature could be an
accident of the divine person. Basically, his account of the relation between substance and accident means that it is impossible
for the divine person to be the subject of any accidental forms.
He argues for this in three ways. (1) On a standard Aristotelian
account of the relation between substance and accident, we can
claim that the accident actualizes some potentiality in the substance: for some substance x and some accidental form F, x is F
if and only if F -ness actualizes x 's potentiality to be F. But on the
standard Thomist account of God, God is pure act, not admixed
with any potentiality. Hence God cannot have any potentiality to
be F, and thus cannot be a subject of accidents. (2) God's essence
is just to exist (esse), and according to Boethius 25 nothing can be
added to what is just esse. Hence accidents cannot be added to
God. (3) Substance is logically prior to accident. But God is logically prior to everything. Hence, he cannot include accidents. 26
Clearly, there is no reason for us to accept these arguments. If
we reject either Aquinas's account of the relation between substance and accident, or his account of the divine nature, or both,
then we might be able to provide a coherent account of the hypostatic union by arguing that the human nature is something like
a non-essential property of the divine person. But my interest
here is simply with the internal coherence of Aquinas's strictly
christological arguments: hence I would regard arguments (1) to
(3) as sufficient to block the possibility of Aquinas's giving an
account of Christ's human nature as an accidental property of
the second person of the Trinity. Hence, I would regard them as
25 Boethius, Quomodo Substantiae [De Hebdomadibus], in The Theological Tractates:
The Consolation of Philosophy, ed. H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester, Loeb
Classical Library, 74 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London:
Heinemann, 1978), 40.
26 STh I, q. 3, a. 6 (1:19a).

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sufficient to rule out, for Aquinas, the possibility of the second
person of the Trinity receiving accidental esse from his human
nature.
Oddly, in his discussion of the hypostatic union, Aquinas does
not develop his rejection of the multiplication of accidental esse
in just this way. The reasons for this are partly historical. In his
Sentences, Peter Lombard posited three possible accounts of the
hypostatic union. According to one of these, the human nature is
united to the second person of the Trinity by being the vesture
(habitus) of that person. 21 This account aims to avoid the possibility that the divine person could be a human being essentially.
Aquinas labels the union posited in this account "accidental." 28
As Aquinas reads this account, it is just a version of the
Nestorian heresy, according to which the incarnation is to be
understood as the divine person dwelling in a human person.
Hence, Aquinas reasons, we must reject the opinion that the
union between the second person of the Trinity and his human
nature is accidental. And it is for just this reason that he disallows talk of new accidental esse in the divine person in the discussion in Summa Theologiae III, q. 17, a. 2.
But we might guess also that Aquinas would reject the accidental union view on the grounds that the only possible category into which the human nature could fit would indeed be that
of vesture: we could see this simply by running through the
remaining eight accidental categories and noting their unsuitability. (I leave this task for the reader: I think it is quite clear, for
example, that the human nature could count as neither a quality
nor quantity of the second person of the Trinity.) Granted that
the accidental categories are exhaustive of the types of accidental predicates that can be attributed to subjects, then it will follow that, if the human nature is an accident of the second person
of the Trinity, it will be the vesture of the second person of the
Trinity. And I think that we could fairly claim that this would
indeed be a version of the Nestorian heresy. The union between
27 Peter Lombard, Sentences 3.6.4, nn. 1-3, Spicilegium Bonaventurianum, 4-5, 3rd ed.
(Grottaferrata: Editiones Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas, 1971-81), 2:55.
2 • STh III, q. 2, a. 6 (3:18a).

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a person and his vesture is a fairly loose kind of union: not at all
the sort of thing that the Fathers of Chalcedon had in mind.
If the human nature is not an accident of the Word, Aquinas
reasons that the Word cannot receive any further esse secundum
quid from the human nature. What about the personal esse of
the suppositum corresponding to the esse which it receives from
its essential nature? In Summa Theologiae III, q. 17, a. 2,
Aquinas claims that, necessarily, one suppositum can have only
one personal esse. And he clearly supposes that, in the hypostatic union, the divine suppositum receives no esse from the human
nature. 29 Aquinas's reason is that the only natures which can
give esse to supposita are essential natures or accidental natures.
But it makes no sense to speak of a thing having more than one
essential nature; and Aquinas will not allow that the human
nature is an accident. So: the divine person receives neither esse
simpliciter nor esse secundum quid from the human nature. In
fact, part of Aquinas's talk about esse is just another way of
claiming that certain predicates can be attributed to some subject. So Aquinas's discussion of Christ's esse thus far amounts to
the rejection of the two following claims: (I) the human nature is
the essential kind-nature of the second person of the Trinity; (2)
the human nature is an accident of the second person of the
Trinity. I think it is perfectly clear that (1) would not make any
sense at all, and certainly could not count as an explanation of
the hypostatic union. And I have tried to indicate the grounds
upon which Aquinas would reject (2).
Clearly, since Aquinas is committed to the endeavor of
remaining faithful to Chalcedonian orthodoxy, he will have to
propose a third way in which a suppositum can instantiate a
nature. He does this by analyzing his conception of personal esse
a bit more closely. This esse is the esse which corresponds on a
one-to-one basis with the esse that the suppositum has in virtue
of its essential nature. This personal esse is analyzable as the esse
of the concrete parts of the suppositum. For example, Aquinas

29

STh III, q. 17, a. 2 (3:lllb-112a).

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talks of the esse of heads, bodies, and souls, as parts of a (human)
suppositum, such that they together compose just one personal

esse:
Having a head [esse capitatum], being bodily [esse corporeum] and
being animate [esse animatum]all pertain to the one person of Socrates;
and therefore from all of these there is made just one esse in Socrates.Jo
Aquinas uses the analogy of a suppositum and its concrete
parts to spell out the metaphysics of the incarnation. The concrete parts that Aquinas mentions in this context are a person's
hands, feet, and eyes. Socrates's hand, for example, will be a concrete part of the suppositum Socrates. This is what Aquinas
means when he claims that the parts pertain to a person's one
esse; or that they are parts of a person. Aquinas goes on to argue
in a way which makes it clear that a concrete part like a hand
can be individuated independently of the suppositum of which it
is a part:
If it should happen that, after the constitution of the person of Socrates,

there should come to Socrates hands, or feet, or eyes (as happens in
someone born blind), there would not from these accrue to Socrates
another esse, but only a relation to this sort of thing, since he would be
said to be [esse] not only in virtue of those things which he already had,
but also according to those things which came to him later.J1
On this account, we could claim that Socrates has a hand-or
predicate "is-handed" of him-not in virtue of any new esse
attributed to the suppositum, but simply in virtue of a new relation between the suppositum and some concrete part.
Aquinas labels the type of unity spoken of in this passage "personal unity"; and he expressly contrasts it with accidental unity.
In an accidental unity-unlike a personal unity-we can talk of
Jo Esse ... capitatum, et esse corporeum, et esse animatum, totum pertinet ad unam
personam Socratis: et ideo ex omnibus his non fit nisi unum esse in Socrate (STh III, q.
17, a. 2 [3:112a]).
JI Si contingeret quod, post constitutionem personae Socratis, advenirent Socrati
manus vel pedes vel oculi, sicut accidit in caeco nato, ex his non accresceret Socrati aliud
esse, sed solum relatio quaedam ad huiusmodi: quia scilicet diceretur esse non solum
secundum ea quae prius habebat, sed etiam secundum ea quae postmodum sibi adveniunt (STh III, q. 17, a. 2 [3:112a]).

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as many additional esses as there are additional accidental
forms. This contrast makes it look as if Aquinas would hold that,
when we predicate "is-handed" of Socrates, we are in effect just
predicating of Socrates one of his essential parts. Thus, we
would not be ascribing to Socrates any further nature or property not included in his kind-nature. This is presumably what
Aquinas means when he claims that Socrates receives no new
esse when his previously lacking hand is grafted onto him. 32
It is worth pausing here to tighten the account up a bit. A
hand, after all, is very different from a head: a head is certainly
essential for being human, but I am not at all sure that I should
want to say that a hand is. And Aquinas seems to deny that a
hand is an essential part of a suppositum when he claims-in the
last-quoted passage-that the suppositum is complete even without the hand. As he puts it, the suppositum has (all?) its constituent parts prior to the missing hand's being grafted on.
In fact, the evidence here is fairly ambiguous: and it is not
impossible that Aquinas changes his mind. In the ninth
Quodlibet (Easter 1258, and therefore fourteen years earlier than
the third part of the Summa Theologiae), 33 Aquinas is quite clear
that a hand falls under the intension of human nature. He
expressly refers to hands, feet, and bones as parts of human
nature. 34 He also claims that hands are concrete parts of a suppositum:
Parts of substances, even though they belong to the nature of subsistent
things, do not themselves subsist, however, but exist in another.
Whence the above-mentioned terms [viz., "hypostasis,""person," "sup32 Aquinas is not denying that the nature of such a concrete part has the kind of esse
that is properly attributed to a nature: i.e., the esse in virtue of which some suppositum
is F: "All those things which do not subsist in themselves, but in another and with another-whether they are accidents or substantial forms or any kind of part---do not have
esse such that they themselves are. But esse is attributed to them in another way, i.e., as
that by which something is" (Omnia vero quae non per se subsistunt, sed in alio et cum
alio, sive sint accidentia sive formae substantiales aut quaelibet partes, non habent esse
ita ut ipsa vere sint, sed attribuitur eis esse alio modo, idest ut quo aliquid est) (Quodl.
IX, q. 2, a. 2 [3] (181a); affirmed also in STh III, q. 17, a. 2 [3:111b]).
33 See James A. Weisheipl, Friar Thomas d'Aquino: His Life, Thought, and Works
(Oxford: Blackwell, 197 5), 36 7.
34 Quodl. IX, q. 2, a. 1 [2] (179b).

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positum," "thing of a nature"] are not said of the parts of substances: for
we do not say that this hand is a hypostasis, or a person, or a suppositum, or a thing of a nature.Js

I think that it is fairly clear that "substance," in the first sentence,
is being used to refer to a subsistent thing-viz., a suppositumand that Aquinas's claim is that a hand is a (concrete) part of
that suppositum. Now, Aquinas does not think here that a hand
is an accidental part of a human suppositum. Rather, as just
noted, he refers to hands as parts of human nature: and thus,
presumably, the explanation of why a concrete thing like a hand
is part of a suppositum is that it is part of the intension of that
suppositum's kind-nature.
On the other hand, as I have just noted, Aquinas seems to hold
in the Summa Theologiae that a human suppositum is complete
without a hand: and this would prima facie be evidence that he
now rejects the assertion that a hand can count as a part of
human nature. The claim that having a hand is not essential to
a human suppositum is just the same as the claim that having a
hand is not part of the intension of human nature. As we shall
see, the claim that a hand is not part of the intension of human
nature raises some problems. Particularly, Aquinas consistently
denies that a concrete part like a hand is an accident of anything;
but, on the other hand, he also denies that it is essential to a
human being. In his metaphysic, there is a further possible class
into which attributes can fall: it could be a property following
necessarily from the essential principles of its subject. This refers
to attributes which we would probably label "essential": the kind
of attribute that a thing of such-and-such a type cannot fail to
have. 36 For Aquinas, however, they do not count as essential
since they are not defining properties: parts of the definition of a
thing. And since Aquinas, like Aristotle, identifies "nature" or
"essence" with "definition," it follows ex hypothesi that nonJs Partes vero substantiarum quamvis sint de natura subsistentium, non tamen per se
subsistunt, sed in alio sunt. Unde etiam praedicta nomina de partibus substantiarum
non dicuntur: non enim dicimus quod haec manus sit hypostasis vel persona, vel suppositum, vel res naturae (Quodl. IX, q. 2, a. 1 [2] [179b]).
36 See, e.g., STh I, q. 3, a. 4 (1:17a)

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defining but necessary properties are not essential properties (in
this sense).
This is not much help in trying to sort out the status of a hand
for Aquinas. Necessary but non-essential attributes are the kind
of attributes which a thing cannot be without: and so they cannot be much like hands, which (according to Aquinas's later
account) a thing can be without. On the other hand, if having a
hand does not fall under the intension of human nature, it is difficult to'see why the advent of a handfails to give some new esse
to the suppositum.
Aquinas uses the analogy of a concrete whole and some of its
concrete parts to explain the metaphysics of the incarnation. I
shall argue that much the same problem dogs the accounts
Aquinas gives of the hypostatic union (with the exception of his
account in De Unione Verbi Incarnati, which I consider below)
as is troublesome for his discussion of the unity of a concrete
whole. The unity of a concrete whole (whatsoever that might
entail) is called personal unity; and personal unity gives us a further model for construing part-whole relations such that the relevant whole is the suppositum, i.e., it gives us a further type of
relation between a suppositum and its parts. Furthermore, the
relation is one of concrete whole (suppositum) to concrete partwhich is just the type of relation that Aquinas requires for his
understanding of the hypostatic union. Granted this, it is perhaps no surprise to learn that Aquinas uses this concrete wholeconcrete part model as an analog for the how of the hypostatic
union:
Since the human nature is united to the Son of God hypostatically or
personally ... and not accidentally, it follows that no new personal esse
comes to him in virtue of the human nature, but only a new relation of
the preexisting personal esse to the human nature, such that the person
can now be said to subsist not only according to the divine nature but
also according to the human."'
37 Cum humana natura coniungatur Filio Dei hypostatice vel personaliter ... et non
accidentaliter, consequens est quod secundum humanam naturam non adveniat sibi
novum esse personale, sed solum nova habitudo esse personalis praeexistentis ad naturam humanum: ut scilicet persona iam dicatur subsistere, non solum secundum naturam
divinam, sed etiam humanam (STh III, q. 17, a. 2 [3:112a])·

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Some of the limitations of Aquinas's account can be made
fairly clear. I argued above that, if having a hand does not fall
under the intension of human nature, it is difficult to see why the
advent of a handfails to give some new esse to the suppositum.
And this is the same as claiming that, if the hand fails to give
new esse to the suppositum, then having a hand will be an essential attribute of the suppositum. (Aquinas wants to deny-at
least in the Summa Theologiae-both that the hand gives new
esse to the suppositum and that having a hand is an essential
attribute of a human suppositum.) Analogously, it seems difficult
to see both that the assumed human nature fails to give new esse
to the second person of the Trinity and that the assumed human
nature fails to be an essential attribute of the divine person.
In fact, just as Aquinas is unclear about the essential or nonessential status of a human hand, so too he is equivocal about the
essential or non-essential status of the assumed human nature
vis-a-vis the second person of the Trinity. Although Aquinas is
always clear that he wants to reject a union of divine and human
into one nature (i.e., some third type of thing), he sometimes uses
language which suggests that his understanding of the hypostatic union fails to keep the two natures sufficiently distinct. For
example, in the Sentences commentary (1252-56)38 Aquinas
claims that the divine and human natures are constitutive
parts--or at least very like constitutive parts--of the second person of the Trinity. 39 In the same article, Aquinas uses the example of the advent of a hand to a human being as an explanation
of how the incarnation took place. 40
Similarly, in the ninth Quodlibet, Aquinas argues that the
divine and human natures in Christ are integral parts of the suppositum. 41 On Aquinas's standard account of integral parts, an
integral part is a concrete constitutive part, 42 though he occaFor this date, see Weisheipl, 358-59.
III Sent., d. 6, q. 2, a. 2, par. 82 (3:239).
40 III Sent., d. 6, q. 2, a. 2, ad 1, par. 84 (3:239); note that here Aquinas is silent about
the claim that a human person lacking a hand is a complete human being-a claim
which, as we have seen, he makes explicit in the Summa Theologiae.
41 Quodl. IX, q. 2, a. 2 (3] (181a).
42 See, e.g., III Sent., d 33, q. 3, a. 1, sol. 1, par. 268 (3:1073).
38

39

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RICHARD CROSS

sionally distinguishes two senses of integral part: (1) concrete
constitutive parts; (2) parts of the kind-nature of the whole. 43 The
relevant contrast which Aquinas makes in the Quodlibet is
between integral parts and accidental parts; and it is clear from
his account of integral parts that he construes such parts standardly as essential parts of a suppositum. If integral parts are
concrete, non-accidental parts, Aquinas's claim that the divine
and human natures in Christ are integral parts of the suppositum·
will amount to the claim that some entity will count as a concrete
part of a suppositum if and only if, considered abstractly, that
part is a part of the intension of the kind-nature of the suppositum. Applied to the hypostatic union, this would be a version of
the monophysite heresy.
On the other hand, much of what Aquinas says in both the
Sentences commentary and in the Quodlibet is inconsistent with
the position I have just outlined. For example, even though
Aquinas defends the claim in the Sentences commentary that the
divine and human natures are constitutive parts of the divine
suppositum, he carefully rejects the claim that the divine suppositum is in any sense composed by the conjunction of concrete
parts. 44 Furthermore, in the Quodlibet Aquinas argues that the
human nature is not a constitutive part of the divine suppositum
(thus rejecting the claim he made in the Sentences commentary).45In the Quodlibet, Aquinas also claims that the divine suppositum is complete prior to the assumption of the human
nature. 46 This is contrary to the claim that the human nature is
an integral part of the suppositum-at least as I have understood
this claim. In the Sentences commentary, Aquinas carefully
rejects the monophysite claim that the incarnation could be a
union in (one) nature, using much the same arguments as those I
outlined above from the Summa Theologiae.41
In the Summa Theologiae, Aquinas's account of unity in
See, e.g., IV Sent., d. 16, q. 1, a. 1, sol. 3, par. 41 (4:774-75).
III Sent., d 6, q. 2, a. 3, par. 95 (3:241-42).
45 Quodl. IX, q. 2, a. 1 [2] ad 1 and ad 2 (180a-b).
46 Quodl. IX, q. 2, a. 1 [2] ad 1 (180a).
47 III Sent., d. 5, q. 1, a. 2, par. 41-51 (3:191-94).

43

44

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Christ-in terms of Christ's one esse-avoids most of the difficulties and ambiguities found in the one-esse accounts of both
the Sentences commentary and the Quodlibet. But it does so at a
price. The one-esse account defended in the Summa Theologiae
has lost all three of the possible conceptual underpinnings found
variously in the Sentences account and the Quodlibet account,
and discussed above: (1) that a hand is an essential part of a
human suppositum, and that Christ's human nature is analogous
to a hand; (2) that a person without a hand is incomplete, and
that the second person of the 'Irinity without his human nature
is like a person without a hand; (3) that the human nature in
Christ is an integral part of the divine suppositum. Any one of
these claims would be sufficient, of course, to commit Aquinas
either to a version of the monophysite heresy, or-granted elsewhere a clear rejection of this heresy-to some degree of incoherence. So Aquinas has good reason to drop them. The one-esse
account in the Summa Theologiae is an attenuated version of the
earlier positions, clearly aiming to avoid some of the monophysite tendencies of the earlier versions.
Despite Aquinas's commitment, in the Summa Theologiae, to
the claims that having a hand is not part of the intension of
human nature, and that a human person lacking a hand will still
count as a complete person, Aquinas still regards the advent of a
hand to a human person who previously lacked a hand as a good
one for the hypostatic union. And there are some obvious reasons
for this. As Aquinas understands hands in the Summa
Theologiae, a hand is a non-essential concrete part of a human
person. The account thus far enables us to formulate three theses about the relation between a concrete whole and its nonessential concrete parts which will explain why the analogy of a
non-essential concrete part is a good one for the hypostatic
union.
(1) A non-essential concrete part can be (is?) individuated

independently of its suppositum.
(2) A concrete whole subsists with respect to (i.e., having a relation to)
its concrete parts.
(3) A concrete whole does not receive any additional esse from its concrete parts.

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And the relation between the assumed human nature and the
second person of the Trinity is in all significant respects just like
this.
The problem, for the Summa Theologiae account, is in justifying the second and third theses about the relation between a concrete whole and some non-essential (viz., non-necessary) concrete part: i.e., how can we justify the claims that a concrete
whole subsists as having a relation to some non-necessary concrete part, and that a concrete whole does not receive any new
esse from a non-necessary concrete part? In the Summa
Theologiae account, it is here that Aquinas's account encounters
difficulties in the metaphysics involved, which difficulties seem
to produce some degree of philosophical incoherence. If a concrete part is non-necessary (viz., accidental), then Aquinas ought
to allow that it contributes esse to the concrete whole (the suppositum) of which it is a part. This is a problem for the Summa
Theologiae account in a way in which it is not a problem for the
accounts of the Sentences commentary and the ninth Quodlibet.
In these latter two accounts, Aquinas implies that a hand is an
essential part. His problem in these two accounts, then, is in justifying the claim that the example of an essential concrete part is
a good one for the hypostatic union, since it looks as if, according to Aquinas, some concrete part fails to contribute esse to its
suppositum just if the concrete part is an essential part of its suppositum.
In fact, in Summa Theologiae III, q. 2, a. 6, ad 2, Aquinas suggests a new image to underpin his account of a concrete nonessential part and its concrete whole-and thereby to underpin
his one-esse account of the hypostatic union. He argues as follows:
That which comes after complete esse comes accidentally, unless it is
brought into communion with that complete esse.4"

This image of "communion in
shall call it "sharing in
esse"-does not occur in the earlier accounts, and clearly repre48 Illud quod advenit post esse completum, accidentaliter advenit, nisi trahatur in
communionem illius esse completi (STh III, q. 2, a. 6, ad 2 [3:19a])

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sents Aquinas's attempt to clarify his account in a way which
will avoid both monophysitism and a merely accidental union.
We can now add a fourth thesis to the description of the relation
between a concrete non-essential part and its concrete whole:
(4) A concrete non-essential part shares in the personal esse of its sup-

positum.

This fourth thesis looks as though it will explain the problematic second and third theses-and I take it that it is certainly consistent with them. (Thus, I take it that the account in Summa
Theologiae III, q. 2, a. 6, ad 2, is consistent with that in q. 17, a.
2.) But this thesis cannot in fact do very much properly explanatory work. Aquinas does not spell out what exactly "sharing in
esse" might mean. The term "communio"-which I have translated as "sharing"-does not have a technical sense in Aquinas's
writings. In his discussions of christology, Aquinas uses the
word in two other senses: (1) the three divine persons have communion in one nature; 49 (2) each of the two natures in Christ acts
with the communion of the other. 50 Neither of these has much in
common with the use of the term in the phrase "sharing in esse."
Since in the above quotation Aquinas contrasts the type of parts
which qualify for sharing in the esse of a suppositum with accidental parts, we might imagine that the kind of parts that qualify for sharing in the esse of a suppositum are essential parts. But
Aquinas clearly wants some non-essential parts to share in the
personal esse of the suppositum too. Effectively, an old problem
reappears in a new guise: just why do some non-essential parts
share in personal esse, while others (e.g., predicamental accidents) do not? More specifically, Aquinas fails to spell out what
he means by claiming that some non-essential parts--e.g.,
hands-fail to be accidents.
STh III, q. 3, a. 6 (3:28b).
STh III, q. 19, a. 1, ad 5 (3:12lb). Here are some of the non-christological ways in
which Aquinas uses the term: (1) "communio politica" (i.e., political association): see STh
I-II, q. 90, a. 2 (1:41lb); (2) the "communion" of household life: see STh I-II, q. 105, a. 4
(1:510b); (3) the ban on "communion" (i.e., any form of contact) between Christian and
non-Christian: see STh II-II, q. 10, a. 9 (2:59b-60a); (4) communion in the eucharist (as
in modern English usage): see STh III, q. 80, a. 6 (3:494b).
49
50

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RICHARD CROSS

In Summa Theologiae III, q. 2, a. 6, ad 2, Aquinas spells out
what types of entities can share esse by means of another example. At the resurrection of the body, the soul reassumes its body.
The body begins to share in the esse of the soul: it does not give
any new esse to the soul. The reason is that the body is animated (has "vital esse") from the soul.51
This example clearly avoids some of the problems of the hand
analogy. But if the body/soul analogy is taken seriously, it makes
the case in favor of Aquinas's monophysitism look rather strong.
Body and soul are two constituent parts of a human person, 52
and they are a human person's essential parts. 53 If, on the other
hand, the union of body and soul is not to be taken as an analogy for the hypostatic union,54 then the use of the body/soul union
as an example of sharing in esse does not help us understand at
all how Christ's human nature can share in the esse of the divine
suppositum.
It looks as though the claim that some individual shares in the
esse of another, or (equivalently) that one individual communicates its esse to another, is not a claim whose meaning is transparent. I have attempted to show that the elucidations that we
can attempt all turn out to have unorthodox consequences.
If we grant the four theses proposed for the nature of the
union between a concrete part and its concrete whole, we can
summarize the account of the relation between the human
nature and the divine suppositum in the Summa Theologiae as
follows:
(1 ') The assumed human nature is individuated independently of its
suppositum (viz., the divine suppositum).
(2 ') The divine suppositum subsists in relation to its concrete human
nature.

STh III, q. 2, a. 6, ad 2 (3:19a-b).
STh III, q. 2, a. 5, obj. 2 and ad 2 (3:16a-b).
53 STh I, q. 75, a. 4 (1:353b).
54 As, according to STh III, q. 2, a. 1, it should not be: the union of body and soul is
here taken as paradigmatic of the third type of union in nature (viz., the union of two
imperfect things into one complete and perfect thing [3:11b])-a type of union which
would, as Aquinas realizes, have monophysite consequences.
51

52

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197

(3 ')The divine suppositum does not receive any additional esse from its
concrete human nature.
(4 ')The concrete human nature shares in the personal esse of the divine
suppositum. ss

Theses (4) and (4') yield a third way in which a suppositum
can instantiate a nature; and Geach 's B propositions will be true
just if they correspond to one of these ways. Here is the complete
list of the ways in which a suppositum can instantiate a nature:
(i) A suppositum can instantiate its essential nature (i.e., its essential
kind-nature).
(ii) A suppositum can instantiate some accidental nature (i.e., a property or non-essential attribute).
(iii) A suppositum can instantiate some nature which, as individuated,
shares in the personal esse of the suppositum.
(In the earlier Sentences commentary and Quodlibet accounts,
Aquinas affirms merely the narrower claim,

[iii'] A suppositum can instantiate some essential part of its essential
nature [i.e., some part of the intension of its essential nature],
in place of [iii].)
The position which Aquinas defends in the Summa
Theologiae is very difficult to understand. Affirming (4) and (iii)
in place of (iii') weakens the charge of monophysitism: but it also
lessens any possible explanatory value of Aquinas's analogy. As
I have indicated, we would expect the concrete whole-concrete
part analogy to rely on the fact that a concrete part is essential to
its concrete whole and hence on the fact that a suppositum can
instantiate some essential property of its essential nature. On this
model, the concrete essential part shares in the personal esse of
the suppositum just if its essence is also a part of the intension of
an essential kind-nature. And this would only be the case, of
course, if the human nature and the divine nature were in some
sense parts of the intension of some third type of nature: i.e., if
the union of divine and human in Jesus were in fact a union in
ss The accounts in the Sentences commentary and in the Quodlibet include (l ') to (3 '),
but not (4').

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nature. And this would be a version of the monophysite heresy,
which Aquinas in all three accounts elsewhere rejects, for reasons given above. 56
III. EssE, HYPOSTASIS, AND THE INCARNATION (2)

Spelling out just what the nature of the hypostatic union is
clearly caused Aquinas even more trouble than I have suggested
thus far. About the same time as he was writing the opening few
questions of the third part of the Summa Theologiae-though
before he had reached question seventeen-Aquinas proposed a
totally different solution. In the disputed question De Unione
Verbi Incarnati 51 he denies that the best analogy for the hypostatic union is that of a concrete part and its whole:
The human nature in Christ ... exists in another, i.e., the hypostasis of
the Word: not like an accident in a subject, or properly like a part in a
whole, but by an ineffable assumption. 58

56 Interestingly, Duns Scotus found just this problem in Aquinas's account as well.
Scotus rejected Aquinas's concrete whole-concrete part analogy on the grounds that, in
the relevant sense, the human nature fails to be a part of the divine suppositum: the
human nature does not fall under the intension of the essential nature of the suppositum:
"A part coming to a whole does not give esse to the whole, but rather receives [esse], since
it is perfected by the form of the whole .... But the human nature united to the Word is
not informed by the Word, but remains simply distinct [from the Word]" (Pars adveniens
toti, non dat esse toti, sed recipit, quia perficitur a forma totius .... sed natura humana
unita Verbo non informatur a Verbo, sed manet simpliciter distincta) (Duns Scotus,
Ordinatio 3.6.1 [Assisi: Biblioteca Communale], MS 13 7, fol. 14 7vb]; see Opera Omnia,
Wadding-Vives edition [Paris: Vives, 1891-95, 14:310a). "The existence of a foot is not
different from the existence by which I exist. It is rather only some partial existence in
that by which I exist. But the opposite holds here [i.e., in the union of the Word and the
his assumed nature]" (Existentia pedis non est alia ab ilia qua existo; sed tantum est aliqua existentia partialis in ilia qua existo. Sed oppositum est hie) (Ordinatio 3.6.1, MS
137, fol. 147vb; see Wadding-Vives edition, 14:310b-311a). It is perhaps not surprising
that for Scotus the closest analogy for the hypostatic union is that of the relation between
an accident and its subject (Ordinatio 3.1.1, n. 3, MS 137, fol. 139v; see Wadding-Vives
edition, 14:9a).
57 The date of this disputed question is spring 1272. Aquinas left Paris shortly after 25
April, 1272, and, according to Weisheipl, Aquinas could have completed no more than
"the first two or three questions of the tertia pars before leaving Paris" (Weisheipl, 307).
58 Humana natura in Christo ... existit in alio id est in hypostasi Verbi Dei (non quidem sicut accidens in subiecto, neque proprie sicut pars in toto, sed per ineffabilem
assumptionem) (De Un. Verb. /near. 2 [2:427b]).

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199

As this quotation might suggest, the De Unione account is rather
more agnostic than Aquinas's other accounts. Having rejected
the concrete part analogy, Aquinas does not replace it with any
further explanation.
There is, however, an important consequence of the rejection
of the concrete part analogy, of which Aquinas is cognizant. If it
is not the case that the concrete whole-concrete part union is a
good analogy for the hypostatic union, then a one-esse account
cannot be used to explain Christ's unity-or if it is used, it will
have to be given a rather different explanation from that offered
in the Sentences commentary, the Quodlibet, and the Summa
Theologiae. In fact, in De Unione Aquinas drops the one-esse
account of Christ's unity. 59
Most of Aquinas's strictly metaphysical presuppositions are
shared among the various accounts. Thus, Aquinas still holds
that a suppositum is what properly speaking has esse, and that
natures-essential and accidental-have esse just in the sense
that some suppositum instantiates them. But he now argues that,
since the divine suppositum instantiates human nature, it must
be the case that the divine person receives some esse from the
human nature. This esse is not accidental: but neither is it the
esse simpliciter of the suppositum.
Christ ... has one esse simpliciter in virtue of the one eternal esse of the
eternal suppositum. But there is also another esse of this suppositum,
not in so far as he is eternal, but in so far as he is made man temporal-

59 For other discussions of Aquinas's accounts of the esse to be attributed to Christ,
see: Franz Pelster, "La Quaestio Disputata de Saint Thomas 'De Unione Verbi
Incarnati,'" Archives de Philosophie 3 (1926): 342-89; Paul Bayerschmidt, Die Seinsund Formmetaphysik des Heinrich von Gent, Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie
und Theologie des Mittelalters, 36/3-4 (Miinster-in-W.: Aschendorff, 1941), 43-67; H. M.
Diepen, "L'existence humaine du Christ," Revue Thomiste 58 (1958): 197-213; A.
Patfoort, L'unite d'etre dans le Christ d'apres s. Thomas (Tournai: Desclee, 1964);
Etienne Gilson, "L'esse du Verbe incarne selon saint Thomas d'Aquin," Archives
d'Histoire Doctrinale et Litteraire du Moyen Age 35 (1968): 23-37; Weisheipl, 307-13;
Francis Ruello, La Christologie de Thomas d'Aquin, Theologie historique, 76 (Paris:
Beauchesne, 1987), 115-19, 317-20, 352-55, 391; Edouard-Henri Weber, Le Christ selon
saint Thomas d'Aquin, Collection "Jesus et Jesus Christ," 35 (Paris: Desclee, 1988), 229235.

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ly. This esse-even if it is not accidental esse (since "man" is not predicated accidentally of the Son of God ... )-is not however the principal
esse of its suppositum, but secondary [esse].60
Here, Aquinas has dropped the claim that the human nature
does not contribute esse to the suppositum: and the reason for
this is presumably that he no longer admits the relevance of the
concrete whole-concrete part analogy, which is sufficient to
explain why the human nature-which is united to the divine
suppositum-fails to contribute esse to the divine suppositum.
The esse which, according to the De Unione account, the human
nature contributes to the suppositum is labeled "secondary esse":
it is the secondary esse of the suppositum, and is contrasted with
the principal esse of the suppositum, which the suppositum has
in virtue of its essential nature.
By way of observation on this account, I have two offerings.
(1) The account has no explanatory value (unlike the one-esse
account in the Sentences commentary and the Quodlibet, and to
an extent in the Summa Theologiae as well). It offers no explanation of how a concrete nature, individuated separately from its
suppositum, can be united to the suppositum, and serves merely
to reiterate the claim that the human nature is united to the suppositum in some way or another-Le., that the suppositum is
human, albeit as the result of some unspecified type of union.
(2) On the other hand, by remaining fairly agnostic, it clearly
avoids the undesirable consequence of the one-esse account: i.e.,
either monophysitism or a tendency towards incoherence. For
this reason, it is a preferable account. It does not violate
Aquinas's basic methodological claim that good metaphysics
will be wholly consistent with the Christian faith: and it achieves
this by frank acknowledgment that the doctrine of the hypostatic union exceeds the possibilities of any philosophical explanation.
6° Christus ... habet unum esse simpliciter propter unum esse aeternum aeterni suppositi. Est autem et aliud esse huius suppositi, non in quantum est aeternum, sed in
quantum est temporaliter homo factum. Quod esse, etsi non sit esse accidentale--quia
homo non praedicatur accidentaliter de Filio Dei ... -non tamen est esse principale sui
suppositi, sed secundarium (De Un. Verb. /near. 4 [2:432b]).

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201

If Weisheipl is right about the relative dates of the Summa
Theologiae and De Unione (see note 5 7 above), Aquinas will
have been committed to two quite different accounts of the
incarnation in the spring of 1272: one found in De Unione, and
the other in Summa Theologiae III, q. 2, a. 6, ad 2. And I have
argued that this latter account is consistent with the slightly later
account in Summa Theologiae III, q. 17, a. 2. So his flirtation
with the De Unione account must have been remarkably brief:
perhaps its non-explanatory nature did not appeal. (As we might
expect, Aquinas's last account, a brief summary in the
Compendium Theologiae, adopts a fairly attenuated one-esse
account.) 61
IV. CONCLUSION

Perhaps the most striking philosophical lesson to be learnt
from all this is that Aristotle's list of accidental categories is by
no means a complete list: there are (all sorts of) other non-essential properties which could be added to the list. And human

61 As Christopher Hughes points out, with reference to Comp. Theol. 211, "the treatment of the Incarnation in the Compendium theologiae appears to stress the mysterious
and ineffable nature of the union more strongly than the treatment in either of the
Summas, or in the disputed question 'De unione verbi incarnati'" (On a Complex Theory
of a Simple God, Cornell Studies in the Philosophy of Religion [Ithaca and London:
Cornell University Press, 1989], 243 n. 6). The Compendium Theologiae is a one-esse
account, though it denies the relevance of the hand example, and claims instead that the
human nature is most like an accident. But this is not as much of a shift from the earlier accounts as it looks. In the Compendium Theologiae, Aquinas has a rather different
account of accidents from that of the earlier texts; and the new account makes an accident look fairly like the essential parts of the earlier discussions: "An accident is taken
into the personality of the subject" (Accidens autem trahitur ad personalitatem subiecti)
(Comp. Theo!. 211, par. 413 [1:97a-b]). On the other hand, while expressly denying that
the divine person is in any sense composed from parts (one of which would be human
nature: see Comp. Theol. 211, par. 412 [1:97a]), Aquinas defends the one esse account by
noting: "If therefore we consider Christ himself as a certain integral suppositum of two
natures, then there will be just one esse in him, just as there is one suppositum" (Si ergo
consideremus ipsum Christum ut quoddam integrum suppositum duarum naturarum,
eius erit unum tantum esse, sicut et unum suppositum) (Comp. Theol. 212, par. 418
[1:98a]). This bases the one-esse account on the supposition that the incarnate person
can be thought of as if he is a whole composed of two parts (one of which would be
human nature, the other divine nature).

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kind-nature will be one of these, if Christian orthodoxy is right.
But Aquinas's account of the hypostatic union also teaches us
that we go wrong if we take Aristotelian talk of accidents "actualizing the potentiality of their subjects" too literally. The claim
that it is possible for God to instantiate human nature does not
imply that God has some non-actualized potentiality, some
intrinsic lack of actuality and perfection. If Aquinas had seen his
way to these two conclusions, he could have made a straightforward claim that the human nature could be accidental to the
Son of God-and thus have contributed new accidental esse to
the Son of God. This would have enabled him to avoid all sorts
of theologically damaging claims about unity of esse in Christ.
The De Unione account comes closest to the account that I am
suggesting. It sensibly distinguishes three possible ways in
which a nature can contribute esse to a suppositum: (1) as its
essential kind-nature (contributing esse simpliciter); (2) as an
Aristotelian accident (contributing esse secundum quid); (3) as a
non-necessary nature that is not one of the Aristotelian accidents
(contributing secondary esse). And it is of course the third of
these which is relevant for the hypostatic union. But, granted
the view
some of Aquinas's other presuppositions-particularly
that the assumed human nature is individuated independently
of the divine person-the De Unione account is less explanatory even than the fairly attenuated one-esse account of the
Summa Theologiae. 62

62 I am most grateful to Richard Schniertshauer for reading an earlier version of this
paper and making a number of helpful suggestions.

BALTHASAR AND ECKHART:
THEOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES AND CATHOLICITY
CYRIL O'REGAN

Yale University
New Haven, Connecticut

Or pleas'd to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a Fault, and hesitate Dislike;
Alike reserv'd to blame or to commend,
A tim'rous Foe and a suspitious Friend 1

T

HE TENDENCY to avoid exclusion is a mark of the
thought of Hans Urs von Balthasar. It represents an
identifying habit, an incorrigible feature of style and sensibility. His texts in which theologians, philosophers, poets,
dramatists, and saints are christianly praised give testimony to a
catholicity that barely brooks limits. Not only in true Gospel
fashion are a multitude invited to the eschatological banquet,
they constitute the vast medium of tradition, in which Maximus
the Confessor rubs shoulders with Plato, in the company of
Claudel, Calderon, and Therese of Lisieux. At different times
Balthasar thinks of the tradition as one huge symphony in which
notes sound only to be transcended and as a conversation
between particular perspectives on the great mystery of redemption, no one of which is final and which meet only in the infinity
of their object. The decision for plurality and variety in the tradition certainly validates difference and counts against its reduction. 2 Yet at the same time tradition, precisely as a matter of variety, exhibits a measure of coherence or concordance that pro1 These couplets are from Alexander Pope's poem Atticus. See Minor Poems, ed.
Norman Ault, completed by John Butt (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd.; New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1954), p. 143.
2 See, for example, The Theology of Karl Barth, trans. Edward T. Oakes, S.J. (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), pp. 39, 187, 251.

203

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CYRIL O'REGAN

hibits difference from becoming truly excessive. It is this prohibition of excessive difference in Balthasar's reading of tradition
that I would like to examine here.
I take as my case study of Balthasar's rhetoric of reading his
conflicted response to Meister Eckhart, about whose inclusion in
the Christian tradition Balthasar expresses no doubts, yet whose
theological message is such as to cause anxiety. We shall occupy
ourselves in this paper with the way in which Eckhart's nonnegotiable inclusion within the tradition serves to repress the
account of those features that present a fundamental challenge,
that represent difference that would make the Christian field
radically heterogeneous. In the first two sections, focusing mainly on the fifth volume of The Glory of the Lord (=GL),3 I shall
offer outlines of both the positive and negative contributions
Eckhart is deemed to have made to the theological tradition.
Though I do not wish to give the impression of Scholastic pro
and contra, Balthasar's positive remarks being imbricated with
the negative and vice versa, it will be suggested that the elements
adduced in both cases constitute mirror images of each other.
Balthasar takes a bifocal, though not stereoscopic, view of a
group of five elements: aesthetic disposition, the sameness of
Being and God, the whylessness of the divine, Gelassenheit, and
Gottesgeburt. This group is in effect read twice, once in a way
that affirms and confirms Eckhart's unproblematic inclusion in
the tradition (section 1), and again in a way that, in the light of
basic Christian principles, raises serious questions about such
inclusion (section 2). In a final section the question is raised
whether the conflict in interpretation suggests a deeper underlying conflict between Balthasarian commitment to Catholic theological principles and catholicity.

I. BALTHASAR'S AFFIRMATIVE RENDERING OF ECKHART
On the surface there is little reservation about the approbation Eckhart receives in the fifth volume of The Glory of the
3 The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. S, The Realm of Metaphysics in
the Modern Age, trans. Oliver Davies, Andrew Louth, Brian McNeil, C.R.V., John

Saward, and Rowan Williams, ed. Brian McNeil, C.R.V. and John Riches (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991).

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205

Lord. If the depths of Balthasar 's analyses of the medievals in his
volumes on metaphysics (vols. 4 & 5) never reach the level of his
account of Anselm and Bonaventure in volume two, it would be
caviling to suggest that his intention at the start of volume five is
anything other than the continuance of the praise of Thomas
that completed volume four. Thus, even if Balthasar eventually
turns out to be something of a "suspitious friend," to use Pope's
locution, the charge of disingenuousness can be ruled out from
the beginning. How we are to talk of an interpretation that
seems to take back with one hand what it gives with the other,
we can leave until later. What is important to get on the table at
the moment is the religious and theological content in Eckhart
that earns Balthasar's praise. Balthasar seems to espy a five-fold
contribution made by Eckhart to Christian thought.
Basic to Eckhart's inclusion at Balthasar's Christian banquet
is his status as an aesthetic theologian. Though it helps the assignation of "aesthetic" to a Christian system if beauty is an express
category of thought, this is not a requirement. On the basis of
Balthasar's systematic outline of theological aesthetics in the
first volume of The Glory of the Lord, "aesthetic" can appropriately be applied to a modality of religious thought provided it
satisfy the following conditions: (1) there is a fundamental aisthesis or perception of divine presence more primitive than dogmatic formulation and religious apologetics; (2) the perception of
presence involves the whole person and has the character of
response, even surrender; and (3) presence is compelling because
it is at once radiant and formed, where the former gives it its
power, the latter its comprehensibility. 4 Balthasar's attitude with
respect to Eckhart in volume five is that these criteria are sufficiently satisfied for him, provisionally at least, to stake a claim
for Eckhart's not being a radical iconoclast, a raging lover of the
4 I intend these conditions to represent a digest of Balthasar's reflections in The Glory
of the Lord, vol. 1, where he offers his most coherent and detailed account of what he
means by "aesthetics" in general, "theological aesthetics" in particular. See The Glory of
the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 1, Seeing the Form, trans. Erasmo LeivaMerikakis, ed. Joseph Fessio, S. J., and John Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius Press; New
York: Crossroad, 1982). In this volume Balthasar's influences are many. Nevertheless,

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CYRIL 0 'REGAN

formless. This is not to say that Balthasar is comfortable with
the level of apophasis in Eckhart, or that he believes it should go
unchecked. Yet he does understand that the Christian tradition
in general, the Catholic tradition in particular, is a scene of tension between kataphatic and apophatic demands in which it is
difficult always to strike the correct balance. Eckhart is not
eccentric in showing some signs of overemphasizing the
apophatic, but then he is in a long tradition that includes such
exemplary ecclesial figures as Pseudo-Dionysius and John of the
Cross (GL 1: 125). As long as the apophatic emphasis does not
become so radical as to break free altogether from the kataphatic anchor provided by revelation, and especially by the consummate revelation of Jesus Christ, the stress is bearable and helps
toward correction of overemphasis in the other direction by
reminding Christians that the comprehensibility of God is to be
seen against the backdrop of the ever-greater incomprehensibility. s
More specific than the affirmation of Eckhart as aesthetic theologian is the validation of Eckhart's experience of the fundamental sameness of God and Being (GL 5:30). This experience
discourages hyperbolic apophatic formulas such as God is
beyond Being or God is nothing, particularly as these formulas
tend toward hypostatization. Though he suggests that this experience is authentically Christian, the indissolubility of ontophany
and theophany was one of the truly important lessons of
Balthasar's review of ancient metaphysics in volume four, where
metaphysics functioned as a term broad enough to include classical myth and philosophy. The assertion of the christianness of
Eckhart's identification of God and Being is predicated on the
Balthasar's free borrowing from Bonaventure, Thomas, and Albert indicates that
medieval aesthetics, with its dual emphasis on radiance and form, is at the forefront.
Radiance or splendor suggests the transcendent power that is the condition of form even
as it appears in form, just as form is what makes available to cognition what is more
than form. Needless to say, given Balthasar's aesthetic emphasis, such cognition ought
not to be considered as discursive in the strict sense.
5 This relation of incomprehensibility-comprehensibility
reflects Balthasar's often
stated support for the Lateran Council's version of analogy-similarity (similitudo) is
always subtended by an ever-greater dissimilarity (dissimilitudo).

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207

relation of analogy between Christianity and the classical mythical and philosophical traditions, where Christianity is understood to represent their completion and supersession. From
Balthasar's point of view the Eckhartian experience, which is
consistent with the Thomistic experience, shows its superiority
to Scotus's essentialist metaphysics, where Being, abstract and
formal (GL 5:12-13) and univocal (GL 5:21), is specified by God
and creature alike. Not only is Scotus summarily dismissed in
the way few medieval figures are in Balthasar, 6 the dismissal
smacks of rank stereotyping once typical of Catholic infighting
between Dominicans and Franciscans. Plausibly, however, the
dismissal is overdetermined, with Balthasar taking into account
Heidegger's influential critique of metaphysics,7 which found
one of its earliest and most emblematic targets in Scotus.
6 An emblem of Scotus's banishment is provided by Balthasar's reading of Gerard
Manley Hopkins in volume three. In the face of the erosion of glory, both cosmic and
transcendent, in modernity, Hopkins is regarded as offering an exemplary Christian
antidote. Despite Hopkins's express assertion, however, that his cosmic and christological vision is fundamentally Scotist, hardly a mention of this is found in the approximately one hundred pages Balthasar devotes to exegesis of the Victorian poet.
7 While the influence of Heidegger is most conspicuous in volume five, which concerns metaphysics in the modern age, it extends also over the preceding English volume
treating of metaphysics in the classical period. The unity of Balthasar's reflection on
metaphysics is best captured in the German edition, which does not mark off the treatment of classical and modern metaphysics by volume. For Balthasar's treatment of
metaphysics in the classical period, see The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics,
vol. 4, The Realm of Metaphysics in Antiquity, trans. Brian McNeil, C.R.V., Andrew
Louth, John Saward, Rowan Williams, and Oliver Davies, ed. John Riches (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989). Nevertheless, however influential Heidegger's reading
of the history of metaphysics is for Balthasar, it is contested at every point. As volume
four makes clear, the Platonic tradition abjured by Heidegger is regarded highly by
Balthasar. For Balthasar, this tradition is the scene of the preservation of mystery rather
than its overcoming. Moreover, while with Heidegger Balthasar thinks of modernity as
problematic, he is prepared to exonerate significant numbers of philosophers, including
Heidegger, theologians, and writers from modernity's constitutive deformation, that is,
the eclipse of glory. Again, the medieval philosophical and theological tradition, so consistently and summarily dismissed by Heidegger, is regarded by Balthasar not only as
relatively benign, but also in general as a source of philosophical, theological, and aesthetic opportunity. Nevertheless, Balthasar does make some concessions to Heidegger
regarding Scholasticism in general and Scotus in particular. In some of its forms, it is
conceded, Scholasticism does involve the eclipse of glory, just as Scotus 's formalist metaphysics loses touch with what is both most aesthetic and concrete in the medieval metaphysical tradition.

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Whatever the fairness regarding Scotus, Balthasar's general
point is an important one: Christian theology can be unfaithful
as well as faithful to the classical interlacing of ontophany and
theophany that it not only retrieves and redeems but also elevates into a norm. Eckhart successfully passes, then, a normative
test other theologians fail. The logical limits of Balthasar's
approval, however, should be noted, since the order of explanation is different from the order of description. Approval of
Eckhart's identification of ontophany and theophany need not
imply validation of Eckhart's actual formula of Esse est Deus,
which represents his conversion of Thomas's Deus est Esse. 8
Eckhart's trope of the "whylessness of God" (GL 5:31-34) is
also affirmed. For Balthasar, in this trope is displayed, as perhaps nowhere else, Eckhart's fidelity to biblical witness.
Eckhart's God renders "the infinite free 'I' of the God of Israel,"
the one who announces "I am who am" (45).9 Ingredient in the
trope is an embargo against finitizing and instrumentalizing
God. If Balthasar pictures an Eckhart who is not absolutely aiconic, here he feels called on to praise the kind of non-radical
iconoclasm typical of the Bible and the protection afforded the
sovereign freedom of God (GL 5:31, also 214-215). The warrants
for Balthasar's approval are not rendered in volume five and
await the volumes on the Old and New Covenant (vols. 6-7).
Here he charts the full context from which affirmation of a sovereignly free God, neither subject to the immanentization of language (e.g., GL 6:54; 7:15-16), nor constrained by means-ends
8 Balthasar is demonstrably aware of Eckhart's inversion of key Thomistic tropes like
Deus est Esse. While inversion is not absent from Eckhart's German texts, it is clearest
in the Latin texts where actual Thomistic formulae are rearranged. The locus classicus
for inversion of Thomas's famous identification of God and Being (STh I, q. 13) is the
Prologue to the Opus Tripartitum. For a convenient translation of these prologues, see
Parisian Questions and Prologues, trans. Armand A. Maurer (Toronto: Pontifical
Institute of Medieval Studies, 1974), pp. 77-108, esp. 85-93. For a good discussion of
Eckhart's inversion, see Frank Tobin, Meister Eckhart: Thought and Language
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986), pp. 38-42.
9 The Exodus formula of ego sum qui sum was a favorite of Thomas's (STh I, q. 13,
also q. 2) as it was of Eckhart's. It is central to Eckhart's Parisian Questions, the
Prologues to the Opus Tripartitum, and his interpretation of Exodus. See Parisian
Questions and Prologues, pp. 50, 86-87, 107-113, respectively.

BALTHASAR AND ECKHART

209

relations specified in the final analysis by the human subject
(e.g., GL 6:317), emerges and is confirmed. The biblical volumes
in the Glory of the Lord do not depart in any way from the kind
of avowal Balthasar made in his great study of Barth. Rather
they supply the evidential norm for judging the fidelity of theological constructions. That theological constructions can and do
swerve from the biblical norm is clear, as far as Balthasar is concerned, in the propositionalist tendency in neo-Scholastic
thought and certain trends in Christian Neoplatonism. For
instance, while Christian.Neoplatonism hardly shows a predilection in the direction of valorizing language and the concept, The
Glory of the Lord does worry about its tendency to undermine
the freedom of God by conceiving of the God-world relation as
being necessary in some way (GL 4:287-288). The fruitfulness of
the trope of whylessness in the Christian tradition is, for
Balthasar, an additional virtue. Pivotal in the pre-Reformation
German mystical tradition (GL 5:65), in the shape of Angelus
Silesius it can be said to outlast the tearing of the Christian fabric (GL 5:31-32). And given the relation of Heidegger to Eckhart,
mediated through Silesius, that Balthasar takes for granted in
volume five, it can even be said that something of this trope survives in the post-Christian thought of Heidegger who conceives
of the mission (Sendung) of Being as ohne Warum (GL 5:441).10
This brings us to Eckhart's fourth major positive theological
contribution.
Gelassenheit in Eckhart (GL 5:36-39), Balthasar insists, most
authentically describes the normative Christian disposition to
reality. The very opposite of the libido dominandi exposed by
Augustine as being at the heart of the self, and the very opposite
of the titanic posture so rampant in modernity, Gelassenheit is
not so much indifference to reality as diffidence, the "letting be"
of reality calling for response, the rendering of oneself as the
' 0 Balthasar's treatment of Heidegger in volume five (429-451) makes it clear that at
his best the "later" Heidegger is in line with the whyless emphasis of Eckhart and
Silesius. For the same reason, Heidegger is in line with the biblical tradition. Balthasar
is convinced, however, that this thrust in Heidegger exists in tension with an anthropological tendency that carries over from the earlier existential problematic of Being and
Time.

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space for the perception and acceptance of reality as gift. Like
other Eckhart commentators, 11 Balthasar understands that
Gelassenheit should not be confused with Stoic apatheia (GL
5:36-38), even though Eckhart frequently invokes the authority
of Stoic authors like Cicero. Balthasar is perfectly clear about the
discrimen.
Eckhart thus completely transforms Indian/Greek/Arab apatheia. It is
the opposite of a technique for preserving oneself from sorrow; it is not
a question of pain or pleasure but a total gift of oneself to eternal love.
(GL 5:37-38}

Gelassenheit, however, is not without classical prototypes.
Trading on the close relationship between Greek tragedy and
Christianity argued for in volume four (101-104), Balthasar
maintains that Greek tragedy's enjoining of waiting in patience
(hypomene), in its coincidence of passion and passivity, proves a
model for specifically Christian Gelassenheit. Interestingly, in
making this connection Balthasar at once validates Simone
Weil 's sense of the connection between the tragic and Christian
posture of exposure and their difference. 12 Acknowledging that
Eckhart does in fact typically make a distinction between
Gelassenheit and love, Balthasar argues that this distinction
should not be taken at face value (GL 5:36-37). While Balthasar
does not make available his rationale, his general acceptance of
the distinction between agape and eros (GL 5:220), and his general reservations about eros (GL 5:263, 284 ff.), make it likely
that he understands Eckhart's discrimination to be that between
Gelassenheit and eros and not that between Gelassenheit and
agape. Accordingly, agape can be regarded as being in good
standing. 13 Moreover, a particular reading of the history of
11 See, for example, Reiner Schilrmann, Meister Eckhart, Mystic and Philosopher:
Translations with Commentary (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978), pp. 1617, 76-77, 170.
12 Simone Weil, Waiting on God, trans. Emma Craufurd (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1952).
13 Yet as Balthasar makes clear throughout volume five of The Glory of the Lord, particularly in his treatment of Renaissance N eoplatonism, his criticisms of eros are restricted. While eros sometimes shows a tendency toward a will-to-power, rightly appropriat-

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211

effects of Eckhart's thought, its link with the thought of Suso,
Ruysbroeck, and Tauler in particular (GL 2:37, 52-77), reinforce
the rhetoric on behalf of the presence of agape in Eckhart. The
point seems to be that if love functions conspicuously in orthodox mystical theologians rightfully regarded as belonging to the
Eckhartian line, then at the very least it must be regarded as
latent in Eckhart. Balthasar even goes so far as to suggest that
Christ is seen by Eckhart as the mediator of this love, love
moreover that is not without passion and agony (GL 5:37).
Balthasar's attempt at hermeneutic generosity is at its most
strained here. Eckhart's express denial of the connection
between Gelassenheit and love is an embarrassment, and the historical argument made in the interest of Eckhart's Christian crebetween
dentials is obviously a two-edged sword. The
Eckhart and later mystical writers influenced-though
not
determined-by him can also warrant thinking of this later tradition as corrective and supplemental. Indeed, as we shall see
later on, when he withdraws the cloak of absolute hermeneutic
generosity with which he tends to clothe Eckhart here, Balthasar
can take advantage of this second, more negative reading of the
relation between anterior and posterior. For if .Balthasar wants
to insist in the section on Eckhart that Suso and Tauler add nothing to their master, he also acknowledges that they recall the passion more frequently and penetratingly than he (GL 5:37). In
addition, he is convinced that Ruysbroeck's more consistent
trinitarianism provides a safer haven for Christian love (GL
5:70).
In volume five Balthasar is rightly emphatic about the connection between Gelassenheit and Eckhart's image theology,
particularly the Gottesgeburt, the trinitarian birth in the highest
part of the soul: "The doctrine of Gelassenheit attains its
Christian completion in a Trinitarian context" (GL 5:39).
Openness is openness to and receives its completion in the trinied and put in context by grace, eras has its own legitimacy as the enactment of human
freedom in response to the divine call. The two kinds of love are not to be construed as
in principle antithetical in the manner of Anders Nygren. Interestingly, Balthasar does
not interpret Karl Barth to be supporting anything like Nygren's distinction. See The
Theology of Karl Barth, p. 116

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CYRIL O'REGAN

tarian birth, conceived as grace in the form of the self-communication of divine persons, a self-communication of the Son, but
also of the Spirit (GL 5:38). Balthasar both recognizes and
approves of Eckhart's choice of Mary as the prototype of the letting-be that makes the trinitarian birth possible. He writes:
The Marian womb receivesthe seed of the Father, and since the Father
is eternally, at every moment, begetting the Son, the eternal procession
of the Son takes place in the pure medium of receptivity.(GL 5:39)
The Gottesgeburt also comes in for discussion in Theo-Drama 2, 14
where Eckhart's rendition is said to represent the culmination of
a history of the cipher (310). Even allowing for Balthasar's tendency toward nervous inclusion by means of excessive praise,
this superlative is especially notable since Eckhart is said to
complete a trajectory having its origin in Maximus the Confessor
(302), an icon in the Balthasarian universe and a critical measure
of theological health. 15 Though Balthasar provides no clue as to
how Eckhart improves on Maxim us, rhetorically the association
is good for Eckhart, effectively disbarring the suspicion that
Eckhart's use transgresses the grammar of faith. Only insinuated, Balthasar's point in Theo-Drama is still at best quite formal.
He does, however, offer something like a sketch of a ruled use in
volume one of The Glory of the Lord. Importantly, the doctrinal
locus of the Gottesgeburt is sanctification, and not the doctrine of
God or some confusion between the two. Focusing his account,
as Eckhart did, on the metaphors of virginity (599-600) and fertility (364, 539, 599-600), Balthasar insists, as he does in volume
five, on the Marian context of Gottesgeburt. Within the ambit of
a doctrine of sanctification what is crucial about Mary is her role
14 Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 2, The Dramatis Personae: Man in
God, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1990), pp. 302-310.
15 This is the explicit theme of Liturgie Cosmique: Maxime le Confesseur (Paris:
Aubier, 1947). The fact that Maximus is not promiscuously cited in The Glory of the
Lord, arguably, indicates not so much Maximus's lack of theological purchase as the
thorough assimilation of his christocentrism and trinitarian horizon. By contrast, in
Theodramatik there is consistent invocation of Maximus. In Theodramatik 211 and
Theodramatik 3, it is not only Maximus's christological sensibility that is functioning as
a norm, but Maximus's actual christological elaboration.

BALTHASAR AND ECKHART

213

as prototype. It is faith as receptive to the Word, and her fertility as bearing the Word in faith, that is relevant for our following
at a distance. What is not relevant for us, because not possible in
the order of imitation, is Mary's ontological status as theotokos,
the immediate doctrinal site of which is that of Christ and/or
redemption but which bears a relationship to a doctrine of God.
The Marian constraint upon the Gottesgeburt, then, involves
prohibiting the literalization of the metaphors of virginity and
fertility in that transcendent dimension of human being, such
that it becomes the womb of the Word and ontologically commensurate with it. On the basis of Balthasar's positive remarks
in volume five we are entitled to view Eckhart as standing within this Marian tradition. To say that this is somewhat ironical is
a huge understatement, for on the surface, at least, it would seem
that the normative account stipulated in volume one is necessitated precisely because of Christian thinkers like Eckhart taking
the Gottesgeburt out of the order of sanctification and homologizing the fertility of the virgin self with nothing less than the
theotokos, understood metaphysically rather than physically.

II. BALTHASAR'S NEGATIVE RENDERING OF ECKHART
The assertion of multiple positives obviously neither prohibits
serious qualification, nor rules out a balancing list of negatives.
Histories of philosophical and religious thought typically adopt
some version of "on the one hand-on the other" formula. What
Balthasar tends to do, however, goes beyond this commonplace
interpretive practice. He seems in fact to withdraw credits given
to Eckhart at the same time that he deposits them. The list of
debits turns out to be a function of the list of credits that provides the raison d'etre of Eckhart's inclusion in the history of
christianly friendly metaphysics, indeed their mirror image.
Here we will deal with Balthasar's withdrawals point by point,
leaving until section three further reflection as to what this
means for Balthasar's interpretation of Eckhart and his style of
interpretation in general. We begin with the problematization of
Eckhart's aesthetic stature.
It is evident from his book on Maximus and his early reflec-

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CYRIL O'REGAN

tions on truth, 16 as well as from The Glory of the Lord, which
comes a generation later, that Balthasar is thoroughly exercised
by the legitimacy and limits of Christian apophaticism.
Consistently proposed is a distinction between biblical mystery
and the mystery of speculative or negative theology (e.g., GL
7:265-272). 17 He recognizes the danger in Christian
Neoplatonism for apophaticism to be cut loose from its proper
revelational-ultimately
christological-moorings,
and so
unloosed God will come to be regarded not only as other than the
one who answers the question of proper name by the odd name
of ehyeh asher ehyer (Exodus 3:14), but also as other than the
most ultimate of realities, the Trinity (GL 1:44; 5:228). Suspects
in the Christian Neoplatonic field are named, only for charges to
be subsequently withdrawn. In Balthasar's Maximus text,
Pseudo-Dionysius is regarded as guilty of a christianly forgetful
apophasis that borrows too heavily from Proclus, a position that
seems to be sanctioned by the first volume of The Glory of the
Lord (196). But in volume two all such reservations are
dropped. 18 Pseudo-Dionysius is depicted as the most aesthetic of
all Christian theologians, with "aesthetic" carrying all the positive evaluative freight referred to above. And counterintuitively,
16 See Liturgie Cosmique, pp. 45-47, 52-60; also Phenomenologie de la verite, trans. R.
Givard (Paris: Beauchesne, 1952).
17 See Balthasar's essay, "Bibel und negative Theologie,'' in Sein und Nichts in der
abenliindischen Mystik, ed. Walter Strolz (Freiburg: Herder, 1984), pp. 13-33. In maintaining the distinction in principle, Balthasar wishes to offer as generous an interpretation as possible of the negative theology tradition. There is also a wide-ranging discussion of the place of negative theology vis-a-vis biblical theology in Theologik 2: Wahrheit
Gottes (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1985), pp. 80-116. Balthasar is clear that the appropriate kind of negativity for Christianity is that mediated through the biblically rendered
God who approaches in the Old Covenant and becomes consummately present in the
New. It is not simply transcendence to which the Church in a biblically"wrought world
responds, but rather the dialectic of transcendence and immanence. Certain kinds of
negative theology, for example, non-Christian Eastern varieties, fail to meet the biblical
test, and historically speaking not every ingestion of Neoplatonism into Christianity is
christianly fruitful, though on the whole Balthasar finds himself to be fairly sanguine
about the historical outcome.
18 Liturgie Cosmique, pp. 17, 45, 48; also The Glory of the Lord: A Theological
Aesthetics, vol. 2, Studies in Theological Styles: Clerical Styles, trans. Andrew Louth,
Francis McDonagh, and Brian McNeil, C.R.V., ed. John Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press; New York: Crossroad, 1984), pp. 144-210.

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215

not only is apophasis not as wild as some commentators and critics of Pseudo-Dionysius have thought, but Pseudo-Dionysius
also has a centripetal revelational force that is in line with scripture and the christocentrism of the best of patristic thought (GL
2:142, 172).19
Similar vacillation attends Balthasar's reading of Eckhart. If
in his most extensive treatment of Eckhart in volume five
Balthasar signals an Eckhart of limited apophasis, in volume one
Eckhart is placed among the apophatic radicals who privilege
darkness over light, beyond being over being, and assert that the
former is the truly primal ground of all else thereby relegating
the God of revelation and even the Trinity to the secondary status of manifesting the immanifest one (196). Theo-Drama 2
seems to support this latter position when it expresses considerable discomfort with the designation of God as nothing (255), a
designation typical of Eckhart. 20 By doing so, of course, a more
historically real Eckhart emerges, a theologian who constitutes a
challenge to the tradition that prioritizes revelation, whether
direct or indirect, but a theologian also with whom theologians
of Balthasarian-like convictions can enter into disputation and
accuse of forgetfulness. One thing is certain, however. Eckhart
cannot seek the sanctuary of Thomas (TD 2:274) or Maximus, in
both of whom apophaticism is vitally alive but constrained,
albeit constrained in different ways; in Thomas 's case by the
analogy of Being, and in the case of Maximus by Christ as the
center of all analogy of Being. 21
In his discussion of Thomas at the end of The Glory of the
Lord, volume four (393-412), Balthasar calls attention to a war19 Similar reservations expressed in the Maximus text about Eriugena are also withdrawn in The Glory of the Lord. See vol. 4, pp. 345, 350-351. Interestingly, in vol. 7 the
earlier accusation of the non-christocentric nature of the thought of Pseudo-Dionysius is
revived. See The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 7, Theology: The New
Covenant, trans. Brian McNeil, C.R.V., ed. John Riches (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,

1989), p. 273.
' 0 The radical divine ascription of nothing is more typical of Eckhart's German sermons, yet it can also be found in Eckhart's Latin works with which Balthasar seems to
be more engaged. For a good example of its use in a Latin text, see Parisian Questions
and Prologues, p. 51.
21 Liturgie Cosmique, p. 58.

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rying corollary of Eckhartian apophasis, that is, the way in
which predicating goodness of God is undermined (397).22
Balthasar has available to him a number of texts, the most
famous being a sermon from the period of the Parisian
Questions where Eckhart, arguing against Thomas, asserts that
goodness is as predicable of God as blackness is of the sun. 23
Balthasar's issue with Eckhart's view is not that of antinomianism; it is rather the purely theological issue of the concept of God.
What is existentially at stake is clarified only later (GL 5:22),
when Balthasar comes to discuss the modern fragmenting of the
kalokagathon, particularly in the case of Heidegger, Eckhart's
most famous twentieth-century lionizer. Separating goodness
from God, qua presence, leaves a space open for a demonic substitution for the Christian God (GL 5:59). The refusal of the attribution of goodness to God, it is implied, is essentially the refusal
of the transcendentals, whose function in Albert, Bonaventure,
and Thomas Balthasar takes to be Christianly normative (GL
4:372 ff.). The other side of the Eckhartian refusal is the prioritizing of oneness, which seems to be placed beyond the bounds
of predication, either categorical or transcendental. 24 The tendency to prioritize oneness has the consequence of placing
Eckhart's status as an aesthetic theologian in real jeopardy, for

22 Numerous examples can be found throughout Eckhart's German sermons. See, for
example, sermons 54, 63, 67, in Sermons and Treatises, trans. and ed. Maurice O'Connell
Walshe, 3 vols. (London: Watkins,
reprint: Dorset, England: Element Books,
1987). These sermons correspond to numbers 12, 40, and 9 in the Kohlhammer edition of
Eckhart's works edited by Josef Quint (Die deutschen und lateinischen Werke [Stuttgart:
Kohlhammer, 1936-]). See Sermons and Treatises, 2:71-72, 118, 149-150.
23 See German sermon 17.
24 Here Balthasar notes a tendency observed by other commentators on Eckhart.
Maurer, for instance, in his introduction to Parisian Questions and Prologues underscores the tendency towards assertion of the primacy of unity (p. 32). Maurer's identification of the nub of the problem as the dominance of the Proclean element in Eckhart's
Neoplatonism bears a close resemblance to Balthasar's general anxiety with respect to
the Proclean dimension of Christian Neoplatonic thought. Though Balthasar does not
directly accuse Eckhart of a repristination of Proclus, this is the general thrust of his
reading. In his Maximus book, Proclus is regarded as the great danger for Christian
thought, one to which Pseudo-Dionysius and Eriugena-both masters of Eckhart-succumb. In The Glory of the Lord, vols. 2 and 4, Proclus still remains a danger for Christian
thought, even if Pseudo-Dionysius and Eriugena can prove their Christian credentials.

BALTHASAR AND ECKHART

217

such a divine ceases to have shape and form (GL 1:196). But
there is perhaps an even more ultimate danger, one diagnosed in
Gregory of Nyssa, that is, that God may be refined so out of existence that one can no longer talk about presence, and apophaticism blends with a kind of sophisticated agnosticism. If Thomas
is up to the first aesthetic challenge in insisting that God is
known in species, he is up to the second in construing relations
between God and world to be effective and intimate. Analogia
entis, for Balthasar, is not simply an epistemological requirement, it is at once a metaphysical and a theological necessity.
On the very same pages in volume five that praise Eckhart for
his insight into the intimate relation of God and Being, Balthasar
argues that the way in which this is conceived establishes a system of identity with invidious theological consequences (42-43).
The consequence that gets most emphasis is the ontological
devaluation of the world precisely as different from God. The
radical divinization of Being both evacuates and elevates.
Balthasar cites the famous passage from German sermon 40 that
played a role in Eckhart's condemnation: "All creatures are pure
nothing .... All creatures have no being, for their being consists
in the presence of God" (GL 5:42).25 It is with some justice, then,
that Eckhart can be seen minimally as a significant figure in the
pantheistic trend within Christianity, and plausibly even its
source (13-14, 45). Though Balthasar is extremely careful to distinguish Eckhart from Scotus, always in favor of the former (GL
1:13), the identity orientation of Eckhart's thought, which subsequently has quite a different trajectory (GL 4:397-399), itself is
destined to issue in a kind of essentialism. The lack of commitment to the distinction between essence and existence, the loss of
"the Thomistic mediation of the non-subsistent actus essendi,"
cannot but prove harmful to the status of the concrete world of
particulars that Thomas philosophically and christianly sought
to defend (GL 5:31).
In his overall questioning of the way in which Eckhart understands the sameness of God and Being, Balthasar appears to be
25 See also German sermons 57, 68, 69, in Sermons and Treatises, 2:89, 160, 168. These
sermons correspond to sermons 12, 11, and 68 in Quint's edition of the Deutsche Werke.

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CYRIL 0 'REGAN

rejecting the Eckhartian move of converting Thomas's Deus est
Esse into Esse est Deus and the dismantling of analogy that this
involves. That the decision for Thomas's formula is crucial for
Balthasar is underscored when he insists on the prerogatives of
the theological difference between God as summum esse and
finite being as secondary esse over Heidegger's ontological difference regarded as the critical alternative (GL 5:472). At the
same time, of course, analogy is affirmed (GL 5:447). There are
good reasons to believe that Balthasar has the Opus Tripartitum
in mind. This text is, of course, the locus classicus of the Esse est
Deus formula, That Balthasar's textual concern seems to be the
Latin texts in which Eckhart self-consciously takes issue with his
master is further evidenced when he highlights the related
thought of the ordering of being to knowing that distinguishes
the Parisian Questions (43-44). In that text, he writes: "The
quaestio whether in God Being and Intellect (intelligere) are
identical, is first of all answered by Eckhart in the affirmative, in
keeping with the tradition, but then he explains that the actus
secundus is nobler than the actus primus." Balthasar proceeds to
quote Eckhart to the effect that "God does not know because He
is, but He is because He knows; knowledge is the foundation
ifundamentum) of His being" (GL 5:43). Once again Eckhart is
engaging a key element of Thomas 's doctrine of God only to subvert it. Balthasar finds himself no more happy with this subversion than the previous one, and clearly takes sides with Thomas.
This decision too can be said to lead to either a fundamental
decision between identity or analogy or be predicated on it. For,
as Balthasar reads him, Eckhart's prioritizing of intelligere over
esse subserves his identity program (GL 5:43-44). By contrast,
Thomas's assertion of the final prerogative of esse over intelligere in Summa theologiae, I, q. 14 guarantees both real difference and real relationship. Read in the context of Eckhart's relationship to Thomas, the aim of Eckhart's support of intelligere
would be to subvert the analogical field and the particular kind
of discontinuity and continuity it allows. At the core of Eckhart's
subversion is his willingness to grant merely intentional being to
creatures in the mind of God. Beyond their status as intenda
creatures are devoid of ontological status, or correlatively pos-

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219

sess only meontological status. Moreover, as it operates in
Eckhartian discourse in concert with esse,26 the apparent equivocist form of intelligere obscures its depth logic, which is that of
identity. Assertion of the prerogatives of intelligere dictates not
only that if esse is predicated of the world it is denied of God, it
also suggests that if esse is predicated of God, then it is to be
denied of the world. But this rule of absolute incommensur.ability between the divine as divine and the non-divine as nondivine ultimately clears the way for the view that the relative
non-divine obscures what it really is, and what really is. And
what really is is intelligere as dynamic divine Being that is not
the property of the transcendent beyond, but a divine milieu
inclusive of the terms "God" and "human being," terms it turns
out that do not name substantial entities, but rather point to
polarities of event. It is this concern about the identity implications of Eckhart's preference for intelligere that seems to prompt
Balthasar's general acceptance of Eckhart as a plausible origin
for modern Geistphilosophien, which for him always has an
identity physiognomy. One can construct, he believes, a plausible
genealogy from Eckhart to Hegel via Cusanus (GL 5:45).
Balthasar is convinced in the case of both Eckhartian inversions of Thomas that analogia entis is compromised. In this he
agrees with Ebeling. 27 And on the basis of the Parisian Questions
and the Prologues to the Opus Tripartitum, where Eckhart most
directly engages Thomas, he also agrees with Fabro and Otto in
judging Eckhart's thought to drift in a monist direction. 28 The
drift for him is certainly not such, as with Otto, that Eckhart
becomes the occidental Sankara. Nor is the drift such that he
would think it justifies Fabro's rendering of Eckhart as a
26 While in Parisian Questions the association of Deus and intelligere seems to involve
the denial of the association of Deus and esse prominent in the Prologues to the Opus
Tripartitum, Eckhart commentators have not taken this to imply a substantive dissociation of esse and intelligere. See Vladimir Lossky, Theologie negative et connaissance de
Dieu chez MaUre Eckhart (Paris: Vrin, 1960), pp. 217-220.
27 See Heinrich Ebeling, Meister Eckharts Mystik (Stuttgart, 1941), p. 204.
2• Cornelio Fabro, Participation et causalite selon Saint Thomas d'Aquin (Louvain:
Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 1961), pp. 551-609; also Rudolph Otto, Mysticism
East and West: A Comparative Analysis of the Nature of Mysticism, trans. Bertha L.
Bracey and Richenda Payne (New York: Macmillan, 1970).

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CYRIL 0 'REGAN

Parmenidean monist, despite the assistance supplied Fabro in
this respect by Eckhart as he points back at his own philosophical precursors. 29 Given Eckhart's Neoplatonic heritage, most
commentators would be prepared to say that this drift does not
rule out analogy altogether. In fact, the position that Eckhart's
denial of analogy lexically extends only as far as the analogy of
proportion and not the analogy of attribution corresponds well
with Balthasar's at once positive and negative reading of
Eckhart on analogy. 30 Moreover, support for the analogy of attribution not only would not necessarily rule out an identity program, but could in fact encourage it. If being spoken of in many
ways (:pollachos legetai) is always emphatically referred to the
first term (alla pros en), 31 which in the Christian context is God,
then, there is not, as Thomas recognized, protection against the
imperialist claims of the prime analogate. Certainly, in forms of
Neoplatonism untempered by the biblical doctrine of creation,
the real tends not only to get defined by, but exhausted by "the
really real," with the result that the finite, as the not really real,
is not. In advocating the nullity of the posterior term, Eckhart
suggests that he belongs to this radical N eoplatonic tradition in
which identity metaphysics proceeds by way of difference presupposed and then annulled. We will treat somewhat more
sketchily Balthasar's withdrawal of support for the remaining
three elements of Eckhartian espousal that initially are taken as
markers of positive contribution.
Expressive of the biblical view of God's transcendence with
respect to language, thought, and ritual and his untrammeled
freedom, the Eckhartian trope of the whylessness of God represents a highpoint of theological and doxological response to God
as the mystery that grants a reality that can be received appropriately only as grace. There are, however, two kinds of danger
to which the Eckhartian rendition is exposed. On the one hand,
as Balthasar in his defense of theology against Heideggerian crit29

See Parisian Questions and Prologues, pp. 94-95.

° For this point, see Schiirmann, Meister Eckhart, p. 172; Lossky, Theologie negative,

3

pp. 286-320.
31 See Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1028a.

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221

icisms in volume five of The Glory of the Lord makes clear, whylessness may be associated with sheer contingency (444), a road
traveled by Heidegger, a sometime champion of Eckhart. On the
other, as suggested in volume four and elsewhere, whylessness
may be understood to be consonant with some kind of conceptual or ontological need, whereby manifestation becomes definitional of the divine. Again, Balthasar does not so much accuse as
insinuate. The insinuation in the latter case takes the form of
hemming Eckhart in by means of Neoplatonic precursors and
Idealist successors who are deemed to have this problem. The
Glory of the Lord shows time and again Balthasar's awareness
that not all varieties of Neoplatonism are christianly healthy (GL
4:238-241; 5:43-45, 214). If Plotinian Neoplatonism can be
regarded as benign (GL 4:280ff.), the Proclean strain cannot. In
its parsing of the relationship between immanifest and the manifest, or the unparticipated and participated, 32 it introduces a
logic of necessity invidious to the biblical freedom of God normative for Christianity (GL 2: 158). A similar logic of necessity
characterizes German Idealism, where creation is said to complete God (GL 5:302, 319-321).33 If such is the case, the axiom of
the self-sufficiency of God that served as the linchpin of the classical tradition, and receives something like a summation in
32 At various points throughout The Glory of the Lord, Balthasar invokes the Proclean
formula of "participation in the unparticipatable" in order to show that the Christian
view is qualitatively different. In volume two (188), for instance, he wishes to underscore
the extent to which Pseudo-Dionysius 's adoption of the formula (here amethektos metaxoumena) overcomes the suggestion of immanence that is contained in Proclus 's use of the
formula in The Elements of Theology. Using a slightly different version of the formula
(amethektos metexetai), he makes essentially the same point in volume six. See The Glory
of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 6, Theology: The Old Covenant (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1991), p. 10. This time, however, Pseudo-Dionysius is no longer called to
mind. Balthasar is obviously convinced that Christianity is capable of adapting and constraining any valuable item of pagan wisdom. Thus his use of the Proclean formula for
non-Proclean purposes is a good example of spolatio Aegyptiorum.
33 See also Theo-Drama, vol. 2, pp. 205, 256-257, 261, where he criticizes Hegel for
thinking that God must go out of the Trinity to complete himself. For a good account of
the relationship between Balthasar and Hegel on this point, see James Naduvilekut;
Christus der Heilsweg: Soteria als Theodrama im Werk Hans Urs von Balthasars (St.
Ottilien: EOS Verlag Erzabtai, 1987), pp. 160-172.

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CYRIL O'REGAN

Thomas, is undercut. 34 Lack or need indicate that if one considers God as love, then this love is erotic. Poros haunts the now relativized penia of divine love. 35 While Balthasar believes that the
whylessness of God is reconcilable with divine love, indeed must
be reconcilable, if the divine is to correspond to the biblical reliability of God, it is so only if love is interpreted as agape. The
erotic interpretation of love introduces a why into God, in which
otherness is invested in only insofar as God becomes more himself. God is no longer pleroma, but the process or movement
towards realization, the filling of lack, that is, plerosis. At its
best, Eckhartian whylessness is just the opposite of this; it is the
joyous, unaccountable fertility of giving and expenditure. But it
is caught in Eckhart, Balthasar thinks, betwixt and between
sheer irrationality and a rationality as instrumental as it is
restricted.
In his account of the movement of the Eckhartian line in mystical theology Balthasar affirms its increasingly horizontal and
practical focus, as well as the way in which it gets christologically anchored. Ruysbroeck, Suso, and Tauler represent not so
much speculative subtractions from Eckhart as Christian additions. As we saw earlier, Balthasar does not claim that the values
ascribable to Eckhart's successors are in a zero state in him. His
position is simply that the level of their existence is such that it
calls for improvement. Eckhartian Gelassenheit defines rather
than stands as an exception to the rule. Eckhart's successors are
more successful than he in seeing how, as a state, Gelassenheit is
incorporable into the Church with the consequence that the
community context of its operation and practical focus is more to
34 It is clear from Theo-Drama, for instance, that while Balthasar is anxious to open
reinvestigation concerning the way in which we construe the relation of God to suffering, and thus the way in which God is to be affected by the world, he does not wish to
undermine divine self-sufficiency, nor the attendant classical views of divine immutability and impassibility. He does suggest, however, that the forms in which these ideas have
been expressed may have to be rethought and more nearly adapted to biblical witness,
and particularly the consummate witness of the cross.
35 Balthasar tries to counter the view that lack is somehow an ingredient of divine love
throughout his work. This is especially the case in Theo-Drama and Mysterium
Paschale. See especially, Theo-Drama, vol. 2, pp. 49, 256-257. See also Mysterium
Paschale: The Mystery of Easter, trans. Aidan Nichols, O.P. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,
1990), pp. 29-34.

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223

the fore. Rightly understood, Gelassenheit is the ground of
action, even apostolic action, not its substitute (GL 5:291). A further lack in the Eckhartian construal may be implied in
Balthasar's praise of the dramatic figuration of Gelassenheit in
Eckhart's successors. In their more Augustinianly rendered universe Gelassenheit has to be wrested not from the darkness of
the created but from the compelling darkness of the sinful self.
For Eckhart, as is well known, darkness is applied to the "not"
of the materiality, temporality, and multiplicity of the created
order, a "not" more passive, less aggressive than sin.
Any and all problems regarding Gelassenheit, however, in
Balthasar's view, finally devolve from lack of appropriate christological focus. This point is made in a number of different
places in The Glory of the Lord, volume five, and repeated in
Theo-Drama 2. Without christological orientation, Gelassenheit
is bereft of aim. While such erring would not particularly disturb
either committed Christian critics of institutional religion and
theological orthodoxy, who sometimes appeal to Eckhart, or
Eckhart's postmodern, post-Christian celebrators, 36 it manifestly
disturbs Balthasar. Gelassenheit, even in its most episodic form,
is detachment for, not from. It is the ground and possibly the
enactment of a form of attentiveness toward reality not ordinarily present, but not demanding superhuman strength or genius.
This is even more the case if Gelassenheit is understood nonepisodically as a disposition toward reality that is constant, that
at once is an ingredient in a life and the power that shapes the
story of a life. Ultimately this means that Gelassenheit is a form
of imitatio Christi wherein the self models itself on the way
Christ offered himself to the Father and whose story took the
shape of this offer. In affirming the christological focus of
Eckhart's successors Balthasar, interestingly, recalls Maximus, 37
and when he insists on their christological improvement on
Pseudo-Dionysius in particular (GL 5:78), he effectively is setting
36 An obvious example of the former is the creation spirituality group led by Matthew
Fox that finds in Eckhart a source for spiritual and theological renewal. Postmodern celebrators of Eckhart would obviously include Schtirmann and John Caputo.
37 Liturgie Cosmique, pp. 150-170.

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CYRIL O'REGAN

up an analogy between Maximus's improvement of PseudoDionysius, which was one of the main drifts of the Maximus
book, and Eckhart's successors' improvement on him. But he is
also indicating something like a normative rendering of
Gelassenheit. Maximus is in a privileged position to provide such
a normative rendering, since he represents one of the most satisfactory translations in the Christian tradition of its scriptural,
specifically Johannine expression (GL 7:323). For John describes
a Christ who not only utters the words "thy will be done," Gn
6:38) but whose life and death are also testimony and, as such,
also utterance . .And it is John's Gospel that also sets this surrender in the ample theological context in which the Father's sending and the Son's obedience are seen as moments of divine love. 38
We come to Balthasar's fifth and final querying of the
Eckhartian contribution.
Instead of directly condemning Eckhart for transgressing the
grammar of image theology and for actually literalizing the
metaphors of virginity and fertility associated with the
Gottesgeburt, Balthasar simply stipulates the undesirability of
transgression and explicates the consequences of literalizing. If
there is a charge on the table against Eckhart, it has to be regarded as conditional. As with anyone else, Eckhart is to be condemned if he undermines the incommensurability of the divine
and the human and if the literalization of metaphors of virginity
and fertility has the consequence of thinking of the Gottesgeburt
in the transcendental dimension of self as being on the level of
Mary's bearing Christ. Of course, this irenic strategy is especially effective, since it will be unlikely, if not impossible, for anyone
with the slightest acquaintance with Eckhart's texts not to concede that Eckhart breaks the rule of incommensurability and literalizes in a quite extraordinary way. Indeed, if anything
Eckhart's German and Latin sermons make it clear that our
gynecological capacity may very well surpass that of Mary as
theotokos. For if she gives birth to the incarnate Son of God,
38 This Johannine trope becomes central to Balthasar's constructive theological work.
It is particularly central to his profound christological reflection of Theodramatik 211
and Theodramatik 3.

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225

each self, as constituted by the spark in the soul beyond the order
of creation and time, gives birth to the eternal Son.
Not alone, then, does Eckhart move his image theology out of
the ordinance of sanctification, but out of the ordinance of christology, and resituates it at the level of the doctrine of God. And
the claims are truly astounding, as Balthasar well recognizes. At
one level, the challenge presented by Eckhart is his particular
view of uncreated grace (GL 5:39). Balthasar, certainly, is persuaded that assertion of the self as the site of an intratrinitarian
process from which it emerges divinized, and even announcements that it too is engendered as the Word, as the Son, need not
conflict with the tradition. For the conflict not to arise, however,
one has to recognize that Eckhart was primarily a giver of sermons, not a philosopher, and not even a systematic theologian.
Without generous allowance for metaphor and hyberbole,
Eckhart has to be regarded as going decisively beyond not only
the divinization tradition in the West, fundamentally specified
by Augustine, but also the more radical Eastern Christian tradition, with which through Eriugena he is in contact. Certainly, he
goes beyond Maximus, who provides a classic rendering of the
symbol of the Gottesgeburt, and who insists, no less than
Augustine does, on the createdness of image, and on sonship
being both christologically mediated and thus the adoptive mode
of sonship. In Eckhart's exemplarist christology, Christ is only
our elder brother who points the way beyond the shackles of
temporality and createdness to our common eternity with the
Trinity (GL 5:554). The last thing Christ is in Eckhart is the site
of the difference between the divine and the human, even while
he is the overcoming of a distance that separates.

III. THE AGON OF THEOLOGICAL NORMS AND CATHOLICITY
Since my primary interest here is Balthasar's rhetoric of interpretation, the adequacy of Balthasar's interpretation of Eckhart
need not be assessed in any detail. Still, it would be hermeneutically irresponsible not to say something about the relative merits
of the two sides of Balthasar's conflicted reading. While there is

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CYRIL O'REGAN

no reason to doubt the sincerity of Balthasar's appreciation of
Eckhart's contribution to the tradition of aesthetic Christian
thought, yet the fact that every element of this contribution is
effectively contested in the very pages where we find the positive
estimate, at first sight, seems to indicate that the latter is more
basic. Certainly, it seriously undermines the case that can be
made on behalf of Eckhart's inclusion as an important Christian
and spiritual resource. Yet it turns out that the positive and the
negative are not on the same level and that Balthasar's argument with Eckhart only functions in the context of a prior
acknowledgment that Eckhart is part of the great Christian conversation. In this regard the function of the more positive
appraisal is to establish the intramural horizon of critique.
Placed safely beyond the possibility of extrusion from the tradition, or excommunication from the company of theologians with
orthodox credentials, questions can be raised as to whether
Eckhart's thought as a whole reflects, in the way the thought of
orthodox Western and Eastern theologians and mystics do,
inalienable Christian beliefs without detriment to theological
perceptiveness and insight. A very definite ceiling is, therefore,
set on criticizability. With regard to the first three areas of contestation, it seems that Thomas is in effect Eckhart's main interlocutor. Two points are important. First, it is clear that as measured by Thomas the radically apophatic thrust in Eckhart, his
explicit inversion of basic Thomistic formulae, and the particular slants possibly implied in Eckhart's rendition of the whylessness of the divine are to be regarded as temptations. At the same
time, however, these temptations are not fully rendered. Second,
at no point in volume five does Balthasar explicitly integrate his
first three objections to Eckhart or argue that they are integrated in Eckhart, though there are plenty of hints regarding both.
With respect to the first point, for example, Balthasar supplies
a mere notice of the extensivity and intensivity of the apophatic
language rampant in Eckhart's German and Latin sermons, and
present even in his exegesis. Taking a cross-section of a narrow
band of Eckhart's German sermons, one comes across the fol-

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227

lowing statements made about God: God is without name, even
I (S49); is hidden (S53); is darkness and unknown (S53); is
beyond goodness and truth (SS4); is nothing (SS4); beyond God
(S56); is formless (S65); beyond being (S67).39 The situation is
hardly different in the Latin sermons. Tobin has pointed to the
currency of such epithets "innominabilis," "ineffabilis," "innarrabilis," "incomprehensibilis." 40 Whatever its intent, the effect of
this radically Dionysian language in both German and Latin sermons is to challenge the theistic and biblical God, the one who is
revealed, and point to the divine that is beyond God, the
Godhead who is wesen ane wesen, the equivalent of the
Hyperousias Thearchia of the Divine Names. 41 Arguably, its
effect is even to go beyond Pseudo-Dionysius, if one agrees that
in the Divine Names the Trinity is coextensive with the superessential Godhead. 42 Balthasar definitely gestures towards the
radicality of Eckhart's apophatic challenge, but not rendering it,
together with the surrounding positive corona, enables him to
mitigate the challenge and to avoid the emergence of an either-or
decision.
With regard to the issue of integration, while it is clear that
the support of analogy is a major issue in the reservations
expressed concerning Eckhart's inversion of Thomas, Balthasar
suggests rather than demonstrates how analogy, or its failure,
relates to Eckhart's apophaticism or divine whylessness. The

39 Sermon numbers are taken from Sermons and Ireatises, vol. 2. These sermon numbers correspond to 77, 23, 23, 12, 6, and 9 respectively. See pp. 38-39, 67, 71-72, 74, 7981, 134, 149-150.
40 See Tobin, Meister Eckhart, p. 66.
41 The locution wesen ane wesen, or in modern German, wesen ohne wesen, was the
German mystical tradition's way of translating the hyper-ousias of the hieratic
Dionysian tradition.
42 Whether or not the superessential Godhead transcends the Trinity remains a disputed issue in Dionysian studies. While many scholars often fall into opposing camps,
some are not persuaded that Pseudo-Dionysius has a unified position. In this context the
issue gets reduced to the issue of the drift of different texts, with a text such as the Divine
Names seeming to support the orthodox position in a way that the Mystical Theology,
arguably, does not.

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CYRIL O'REGAN

texts of Eckhart, certainly, permit the argument to be made that
the undergirding issue is that of analogy. At a number of points
in Eckhart, apophaticism is brought into relation with an
ontotheology of esse. In Parisian Questions and Eckhart's commentary on Exodus in particular-a text also read by
Balthasar-Thomas's famed connection of the ego sum qui sum
of Exodus with his construct of esse is deconstructed. In the former text Eckhart remarks that ego sum qui sum should not be
taken to mean that God reveals who he is; rather the name indicates that God hides himself in a dark night. 43 And_given the conversion of Thomas's Deus est Esse formula, Eckhart can argue
straightforwardly that if esse and God are the same, then esse, as
immanifest, has nothing in common with manifestation or revelation, which accordingly belongs to an antithetical order.44
Again, in the commentary on Exodus esse is discussed in the context of an elucidation of negative names and their superiority
and is paired with the Tetragrammaton, which name, Eckhart
confesses, is conceptually odd since it is hidden, secret, and inexpressible. In this context, esse is the nameless name, i.e., the
nomen innominabile applying only to the divine. 45 But its applying only to the divine does not mean that the extension of esse is
exhausted by a discrete entity, God, as distinct from other entities, creatures. Rather esse covers all being insofar as it is divine.
As the nameless name, it is also the name of all things, i.e., the
nomen omnium. This text repeats a move in operation in
Parisian Questions. In both cases radical apophaticism insures
the collapse of analogy.
Arguably, the brevity of Balthasar's discussion prohibits the
kind of rendering that would bring out connections between
Eckhartian themes that would allow the systematic swerve of
this view from more traditional construal to become transparent.
Still, read against the background of his interpretation of a sim-

43 See Parisian

Questions and Prologues, p. 50.
Questions and Prologues, p. 48.
45 Parisian Questions and Prologues, pp. 107-113.
44 Parisian

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229

larly situated mystical theologian, Pseudo-Dionysius, and even
on its own terms, there is evidence that Balthasar is involved in
repressing a systematic difference between a radical theological
figure and the more mainline tradition, or, at a minimum, refusing to have it loudly announced and fully articulated. In any
event, Balthasar does a considerably better job of making explicit the connection between the Eckhartian trope of ohne warum
and the ontotheology of esse. Eckhart's refusal to mark the relation between the divine and non-divine as one of epistemological
and ontological reliability goes hand in hand with a refusal to
construe God in Thomist terms as summum esse. Certainly,
Balthasar might have been more explicit about linking divine
whylessness and a disagreement with Thomas 's understanding
of esse with a disagreement about analogy, though this relation
is probably implied. 46 In summary, then, even if there is some
measure
of repression
in Balthasar's
account,
the
Auseinandersetzung of Eckhart with Thomas that expresses
itself throughout the first three points does finally seem to be a
dispute about analogy, its nature and limits, in which Balthasar
takes the side of Thomas. Yet Balthasar's taking sides with
Thomas is more than a little muted by the fact that he does not
bring out into the open the level of integration in Eckhart's position and the systematic nature of its swerve from a canonic theological model. Whatever role Thomistic analogy plays as the
rule of Eckhartian metaphysical reflection turns out to be limited, since banishment of Eckhart beyond the pale of tradition is
not a possibility. One might say that Thomas functions as a kind
of ontotheological measure not only for diagnosing but also for
correcting deficiencies in Eckhart's thought, thereby stabilizing
it and making Eckhart a more mainline member of the Christian
tradition and more fully serviceable within the ecclesial community. This raises the interesting question whether Thomas will
continue to play the role of measure with regard to the final two

46 For an argument for the close connection of the problematics of esse and analogy in
Eckhart, see Schiirmann, Meister Eckhart, p. 191

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Eckhartian topoi and again what kind of role a theological measure as such plays.
There seems an evident change of concern in Balthasar's
treatment of the last two points. As he begins to worry about
Eckhart's
rendition
of Gelassenheit and Gottesgeburt
Balthasar's concern seems less that in both cases there is some
infraction, implied or on the surface, with regard to analogy.
Rather the issue is primariJy christological. Specifically,
Balthasar is concerned that both tropes are, at the very least,
christologically underdetermined. Balthasar's objections are
clear enough. The pattern of existence intended by Eckhart in
Gelassenheit does not find its measure in Christ, and the exemplarist tendency displayed in the symbol of the Gottesgeburt
proximally undermines differences between Christ's would-be
followers and Christ himself, and ultimately undermines differences between would-be followers of Christ and the intratrinitarian Word. Again Balthasar does not delve into the extent and
depth of Eckhart's christological subversion. In particular, he
neither examines the extent of Eckhart's neglect of dogmatic
christological language, 47 nor Eckhart's subversion of such language when he uses the traditional deification formula of Christ
becoming human in order for the human to become divine. 48
Now while the christological turn does not imply that analogy
ceases to be an issue-this is particularly the case with respect to
the Gottesgeburt-all suggestion of Eckhart's dispute with
Thomas disappears, and with it any confidence that Thomas
continues to be the measure when the main issues cease to be
those of religious epistemology and the doctrines of God and creation. If there is another theological measure for Balthasar, then,
it is likely that this theological measure has to be looked for elsewhere.

Meister Eckhart, p. 157.
See, for example, sermons 47 and 75 in Sermons and Treatises, 2:27-28, 207. These
correspond to sermon 46 in Quint's edition and to sermon 75 in that by Franz Pfeiffer,
res pee ti vely.
47 For this point, see Schiirmann,

48

BALTHASAR AND ECKHART

231

The nearest thing to a clue is perhaps provided by Balthasar's
mentioning of Maximus in the context of a discussion about the
history of the Gottesgeburt. When at the end of volume one
Balthasar formulates his requirements for standard Christian
usage of the Gottesgeburt, he could be talking about Maximus.
For in the Ambigua Maximus brings a whole patristic tradition
of such talk, beginning at least as far back as Clement and
Origen, to conclusion. 49 Despite Balthasar's positive suggestion
that it is Eckhart who completes Maximus, the norm by which
Gottesgeburt renditions are to be judged, it turns out, is
Maximan, rather than Eckhartian. Eckhart himself, therefore, is
judged by a norm he does not provide. Even more generally,
however, from his book on Maximus, it is clear that Balthasar
regards Maximus as offering a mystical and ascetical theology,
extraordinary in its balance and sobriety and christological specification. The goal of asceticism and the mystical life in general
is not one of mystical or contemplative flight, but rather of imi-.
tation of Christ. This imitation means that one's life is to be rendered christiform, ultimately cruciform, but this cannot be done
unless there is a surrender of will to the Father after the pattern
of Christ's surrender. One surrenders not to or toward the formless divine but within the matrix of the relation of Christ to the
Father. One's path is thereby an accountable path, however
mysterious it is. One does not get lost in the desert of the superessential God, become pathless in the One to whom and from
whom there is no path, but moves safely within the precincts
defined by the self-giving and receiving of the trinitarian persons. The surrender of the self, illustrated by Maximus, expresses the Christian sense that the Gottesgeburt is event only as narrative, indeed is the condition of the possibility of narrative.
Maxim us 's recognition that as Christ is first in the order of
knowledge, the Trinity is first in the order of explanation, dictates the Christian parameters of the mystical life that is short49 This point is made by Schiirmann (Meister Eckhart, pp. 24-26) and supplements
the point that Balthasar made in Theo-Drama, vol. 2, p. 302. Schiirmann's supplement
is consistent with the general view of Maximus elaborated by Balthasar in Liturgie
Cosmique, where Maximus is regarded as completing and correcting the whole patristic
tradition of divinization.

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changed outside the context of christological optics and trinitarian foundation. Of course, it should be said that, for Balthasar,
trinitarian foundation is much more event and act than the static hypokeimenon or supposit underlying beings.so
For Balthasar, Maximus is not an exemplary christological
theologian simply because his optics are christological. He is so
because he also shows the way by demonstrating how in practice
a Chalcedonian allegiance founds rather than restricts a mystical
theology. In The Glory of the Lord, volume five, Balthasar does
not invoke the norm of a Chalcedonian base for mystical theology that earlier in his Maximus book he had invoked against the
Neoplatonic mystical tradition that preceded him.s1 Judged
against this norm Eckhart's thought would not only have
seemed to be christologically underdetermined, but christologically problematic. Nevertheless, even in the event of a successful
case for a christology quotient in Eckhart, there would still be
the problem of what Eckhart does with the ancient mystical formula respecting the incarnation: God became human in order for
the human to become divine. For Eckhart, whose interpretive
manifold is here supplied by the Neoplatonic exitus-reditus
schema, the descending and ascending movements are perfectly
symmetrical. The humanity assumed by the Word is such that it
presents no obstacle against conceiving it as becoming divine,s 2
or revealing itself as divine. Chalcedon is evoked, but only onesidedly. The event of the Word in Mary, and in us, reveals that
humanity and divinity are without division and separation.
Lacking, however, is the correlative Chalcedonian stress on the
preservation of the essential distinction between humanity and
divinity. But, then, Eckhart shows no interest in preserving, as
50 One of the major insights Balthasar gleaned from the work of Barth was to conceive of God as act or event rather than in static terms. See The Theology of Karl Barth,
pp. 63, 162-163. Balthasar tries to carry this over into his major constructive work. As is
clear from his criticisms of Heidegger in The Glory of the Lord, vol. 5, in particular, however, Balthasar does not tolerate any and all versions of event.
·11 See Liturgie Cosmique, pp. 150-170.
52 A number of Eckhart's German sermons are particularly important here. See especially, sermon 47, in Sermons and Treatises, 2:27-28. This sermon is 46 in Quint's
Kohlhammer edition.

BALTHASAR AND ECKHART

233

Chalcedonian christologists do, the becoming of Christ. The
term "humanity" does not designate a nature with limited possibilities and extraordinary fragility due to its createdness. 53
Rather "humanity" as such is uncreated and the event of the
Word ultimately occurs on a level beyond the flesh. Eckhart,
therefore, effectively redescribes the logos sarkos as the logos
asarkos. In addition, the incarnation is not unique in any fundamental way. This humanity is a general property, no more particular to a Conrad or Henry-to avail of Eckhart's nominal
choices-than a Mary or Jesus of Nazareth. And since the event
is essentially beyond any time frame, an essential contemporaneity exists. Thus the decreation of the event of the incarnation
is matched by a correlative dehistoricization. By insisting on the
unmixedness of humanity and divinity in the hypostatic union,
Maximus goes some way toward protecting mystical theology
against claims of apotheosis. By indicating that the incarnation
is not built into the order of things, and thus mysterious,
Maximus goes some way towards underscoring its unrepeatability and historicity. While there are other possible versions of a
Chalcedonian Christology, as Balthasar indicates clearly in his
great essay on Anselm in volume two, 54 Maximus's rendition
proves sufficient to diagnose and counter a christological frame
like Eckhart's.
As was the case with the first three points, Balthasar neither
renders Eckhart's positions on Gelassenheit and Gottesgeburt
with sufficient clarity for them to be subject to a fundamental
critique, nor shows how their respective insufficiencies integrate
into a christological deficiency that could only be taken as the
kind of challenge that must be met. Like Thomas, Maximus
functions as a measure for diagnosis and rehabilitation. The mission of diagnosis, however, is definitely not that of search and
destroy. Eckhart is to be kept intact for rehabilitation, even if
this means that as judged by the Maximan measure he fails the
53 For this trend in Eckhart's thought, see sermons 70 and 75 in Sermons and Treatises,
2:176-177, 207.
54 See The Glory of the Lord, 2:211-259.

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CYRIL O'REGAN

test only to be allowed to pass anyway. We will return to this
point once again at the conclusion of the essay.
That Maximus functions as Balthasar's christological measure need not necessarily imply that Thomas is regarded as an
unsatisfactory resource. What is compliment to Maximus is not
insult to Thomas. Yet there are some indications that Thomas is
not regarded as a full-blown theological, that is, trinitarian and
christological, resource in the way Maximus is, or for that matter Anselm and Bonaventure. Discussion of these other theologians invariably brings these matters to the surface; discussion of
Thomas by and large does not. Since Balthasar's account of
metaphysics in volumes four and five is not intended to be a
straightforward historical account, it is not incumbent on him to
outline the relationship of Eckhart's view on Gelassenheit and
the Gottesgeburt to Thomas 's view of love with which
Gelassenheit is in actual negotiation and Thomas's view of the
trinitarian character of the mystical life and the role of Christ.
Nevertheless, as with the issues of apophaticism and analogy, it
is Thomas 's views that provide the proximate background of
Eckhart's more radical proposals. What amounts to a virtual
historical acknowledgment in the case of the former in volume
five, therefore, seems to suggest a particular reading of Thomas
as primarily, if not exclusively, a metaphysical and not at all a
spiritual theologian. With regard to the reading of the Summa,
for instance, the logic of this reading is such as effectively to cut
off the thematic of De Deo Uno from the De Deo Triuno, even
more importantly the doctrines of God and creation from the
subsequent theological anthropology and christological material
from which answers to Eckhart's provocation might be supplied. Certainly, it is outside the context of De Deo Uno that
Thomas elaborates his views about deification, where deification
is construed as nothing less than sharing in the trinitarian life,
under the conditions of finitude and createdness, and where the
energy and ambiance of deification is divine love. Moreover, as
the third part of the Summa makes clear, Thomas has going for
him his own version of a Chalcedonian christology that at once

BALTHASAR AND ECKHART

235

makes possible participation in the divine life, and yet keeps
intact the uniqueness of Christ and his role as the indispensable
mediator. 55
Thomas 's neutralization in the case of Gelassenheit and the
Gottesgeburt provokes the interesting question about the relationship in volume five between the misgivings regarding the
analogy of being and the christological misgivings. Specifically,
do the misgivings about analogy and Christology function as two
coordinate but ultimately different types of misgiving? What
Balthasar writes about Eckhart makes it difficult to answer the
question. While the concern for the status of analogy and christological determination seem polymorphous enough, in practice
these concerns tend to get distributed over specific Eckhartian
determinations and symbols. Nevertheless, in the context of
Balthasar's opus as a whole, it is clear that one can say that (a)
all theological concerns are in some way or other concerns of
analogy, and (b) all theological concerns are in some way or other
christological concerns. For instance, problems with Eckhartian
Gottesgeburt can easily be seen to be a function of a lack of
respect for analogy that protects against identifying the divine
and the human. Similarly, problems with apophaticism are ultimately solved theologically by appeal to the form of Christ. But
this still leaves the question of superordination-subordination.
Granted that all concerns with a thinker like Eckhart could be
thought of either as problems of analogy or as problems of
Christology, what is determinative in the last instance?
Balthasar's answer to this question is fairly decisive, as his operative theological practice illustrates. It is the latter. This has the
consequence that if one were forced to choose between Thomas
and Maximus-though the choice is not a realistic one, given
Balthasar's view of the tradition--0ne would choose the latter
because of the presumptively greater christological determinass The only place where this seems partially recognized by Balthasar is Theo-Drama,
vol. 3, where Balthasar discusses Thomas's treatment of the consciousness of Christ in
Summa Theologiae III, qq. 10-12. See Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, vol. 3,
Dramatis Personae: Persons in Christ, trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 1992), p. 174.

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CYRIL O'REGAN

tion. Balthasar's reading of the Confessor demonstrates that he
believes that Maximus, in contradistinction to his non-Christian
and Christian Neoplatonic predecessors alike, has grasped the
meaning of the analogy that serves as the bulwark against identity programs within the Neoplatonic Christian tradition. But
analogy receives its ultimate anchor in Christ. Balthasar fails to
suggest that Thomas has similar advantages, though arguably
with Przywara Thomism is on its way toward the recognition.
Christ is the true analogia entis, a position that Balthasar early
on gleaned from his reading of Maximus and confirmed in his
encounter with Barth. 56 This is the center from which the whole
theological enterprise radiates, even if, with certain limitations,
a non-christologically specified analogy of being can continue to
play some role in apologetics.
It is, then, the more nearly Maximan criterion, which is at the
center of Balthasar's own constructive proposal in his great trilogy, that in effect sets a more stringent criterion of inclusion than
the analogy of being. This is exacerbated when it is realized that
it is in Christ, particularly in the cross and resurrection, that
reality, brought to the ultimate point of contradiction and nonidentity, is embraced, yet in such a way as not to reduce difference to identity. An authentic theological aesthetics, therefore,
invariably surpasses itself in a theodramatics of the dialogical
play of freedom between the divine and the human. This in principle leaves theological or mystical work that is not Christ-centered at best competing for "aesthetic theology" status, the bad
side of Balthasar's contrast of "aesthetic theology" with "theological aesthetic." The former is not yet what a Christian view is
or ought to be, but is capable of recontextualization and reconfiguration. Perhaps, it is this capability that facilitates
Balthasar's consistent practice of reading generously Christian
thinkers who would be found on the "aesthetic theology" side of
56 On this point Balthasar announces his full agreement with Barth in his The
Theology of Karl Barth, pp. 326-363. For a particularly explicit statement, seep. 55. And,
just as with Maximus, Balthasar is approving of the Chalcedonian thrust of Barth's
thought, even down to its dyothelite development (pp. 115-116). As a matter of historical fact this development is only completed, of course, by Maximus.

BALTHASAR AND ECKHART

237

the "aesthetic theology"/"theological aesthetic" divide. In
Eckhart's case this would mean that deficiencies in analogy are
virtually compensated for by being corrected in Thomas, and
lack of christological focus, and error of christological and trinitarian substance, are compensated for by being corrected in
Maxim us.
Of course, this can be interpreted in two different ways. One
could view Balthasar as presuming that the tradition corrects for
its own anomalous formations. Alternatively, one might read
him as discouraging anomaly by imputing theological virtues
regarding analogy and christological formation to a Christian
thinker diagnosed as being deficient in these dimensions.
Needless to say, not every mode of Christian thought is rehabilitatable. For instance, non-aesthetic, propositionalist treatments
of Christianity would not be granted the same kind of generous
reading; their claims or overclaims are not redeemable. In
Balthasar's scheme of things the advantage is given to aesthetic
Christian
modes of thought such as Neoplatonism,
N eoplatonism in particular. At one point or other Balthasar is
able to point out analogy and/or christological deficits in PseudoDionysius, Eriugena, Cusanus, as well as Eckhart. Nevertheless,
their aesthetic thought encourages Balthasar not so much to
drop the criteria that would force a discrimen between these and
more orthodox forms of thought, as to consider that these
thinkers in fact realize an analogy and christology minimum.
Indeed, in the case of Pseudo-Dionysius in volume two we are
asked to believe counterintuitively that Pseudo-Dionysius realizes a christological maximum, an idea denied in Balthasar's text
on Maximus, for there Pseudo-Dionysius was regarded as
Maxim us 's foil. Interpretation then seems to be a scene of imputation and donation of forgiveness by which the tradition is
given amplitude and abundance. Yet the self-evident dismantling of accusations made by Balthasar himself with respect to
Eckhart and other Christian thinkers in the Neoplatonic tradition has a price. Eckhart, the apophaticist, disanalogist, the
christologically underdetermined Christian thinker, is granted
entrance into the tradition. He adds to the variety of the
Christian tradition and joins the other symptomatically prob-

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CYRIL 0 'REGAN

lematic cases of Pseudo-Dionysius, Eriugena, and Cusanus, but
arguably at the price of his own measures of analogy and
Christology operative throughout The Glory of the Lord and the
authority of those theologians who exemplify these measures. 57
Perhaps as an enduring sign of his disaffection with manual
theology, Balthasar is resolutely anti-monolithic in his view of
tradition. If the Catholic tradition is deep, it is also broad. Most
certainly, it is not constituted by a narrow band of creedal confession. Yet neither is it reducible to the thought of one thinker,
as was the tendency in the first decades of the century. As
Balthasar writes in his book on Barth:
... even an Aquinas is only one Doctor of the Church among others.
Even if he is the greatest of the cathedrals, there are still others built in
different styles from the Gothic. 58

Indeed, given Balthasar's numerous full-length studies on theologians, saints, and literary figures, and in particular his determined attempt in his analyses of clerical and lay styles in The
Glory of the Lord, volumes two and three (and five) to present a
truly pluriform tradition, it can be said that the Catholic tradition has more than ·a few and, arguably, a considerable number
of able representatives. Thus, as "and" functions in the theological domain as an approximate marker of the difference between
the Catholic and the Protestant traditions, insofar as locutions
like nature and grace, free will and grace are sayable within
Catholic theological grammar, "and" is also a marker of the formation of a tradition where one contribution can be laid alongside another, tradition being the sum of such historical deposits.
Yet, however pluralist Balthasar's conception of tradition is, it is
not altogether without hierarchy; just as however decentered the
tradition is by style and emphasis, it is not radically decentered
or disseminative in the postmodern sense of the term. The
promiscuity of "and" is structurally resisted by the "either-or" of
57 Balthasar Jays down these measures in the first, "foundational" volume of The Glory
of the Lord.
58 The Theology of Karl Barth, p. 261.

BALTHASAR AND ECKHART

239

theological measures found in general theological principles and
embodied more deeply in some Christian thinkers (and believers
and doers) than others. If the result in the case of Eckhart and
others is a conflicted response, it is not because there is no resolution, but rather because of its complexity. That irenicism wins
out over the critical exercise of theological measures does not
mean that these measures and their critical potential are fully
neutralized. Pope's divagations on hesitant judgment in the epigraph brilliantly capture the symptoms that articulate this recoil
from facile
praise without ringing endorsement, faults
hinted at without being fully explored, criticism as a kind of selfconsuming artifact. Balthasar's practice, however, differs from
that portrayed by Pope in one profoundly important respect:
there is in it nothing of conscious contrivance. What becomes
manifest is not an animus toward Eckhart incompletely hidden,
but rather the hermeneutic counterpull to the pull of inclusion
that is more comprehensive and deep. While Balthasar, as we
have seen, is prepared to exclude, exclusion is invariably reluctant, particularly so in the case of Christian N eoplatonic
thinkers who satisfy the aesthetic hunger of modernity.
Thinning the Catholic ranks of Eckhart and other Christian
Neoplatonists, then, not only removes a resource to meet a modern need, but more importantly leaves the Catholic tradition less
rich, less textured, and less polyphonic. And for Balthasar to be
less polyphonic is to be less "catholic." It is catholicity, then, that
dictates inclusion of difference and, at the same time encourages
the tendency toward domesticating any difference that might be
divisive, any difference that would strike an unresolved discordant note jangling within the symphony of truth.

THOMISTIC PRIDE AND LIBERAL VICE 1
PAUL

J. WEITHMAN

University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

L

IBERALISM IS often portrayed, and sometimes portrays
itself, as a moral and political view that rejects the claims
of tradition. Thus liberals characteristically claim that the
traditional standing of a social arrangement contributes little or
nothing to its political legitimacy. Whether an arrangement is
legitimate depends upon whether or not those who currently live
under it can understand and accept its rationale. Members of
each generation must be able to examine arrangements as if they
themselves were signatories of the social contract; the justification of regimes must, as it were, be susceptible of renewal in
every age and to every citizen. Jefferson gave this view its most
extreme expression when he claimed that each generation has
the right to begin its nation's political life anew, and that national constitutions should be rewritten every two decades. 2
Liberals often seem no kinder to intellectual than to political
traditions. As they think political life can periodically begin
anew, so they sometimes seem to think that political and moral
philosophy can begin anew. Hobbes famously castigated the
obscurities of scholasticism and argued that political philosophy
could achieve firm footing only if the rubble of the past were
swept away. 3 Liberal contract theorists have followed Hobbes's
lead, developing political theories that rely not at all upon classi1 Thanks to Alasdair Macintyre, David O'Connor, Michael Pakaluk, David Solomon,
Eleonore Stump, and Allen Wood for helpful comments on earlier drafts. This paper is
dedicated to the memory of my teacher and friend, Prof. Judith Shklar.
2 See Jefferson's famous letter to Madison of September 6, 1789 (The Portable
Jefferson, ed. Merrill D. Peterson [New York: Viking, 1977], 444ff.), as well as his lesser
known missive to Samuel Kercheval of July 12, 1816 (ibid., SS2ff.).
3 See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C. B. MacPherson (New York: Penguin Books,
1985), 72 7, for an especially pungent expression of a view that runs throughout the
Leviathan.

241

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PAUL J. WEITHMAN

cal and medieval moral philosophy. To take but one example of
this neglect of the past, the ethical writings of scholasticism are
dominated by richly detailed analyses of the virtues and vices,
yet liberal writers roundly ignore these discussions.
Liberals have been quick to defend their suspicions of the
thought and politics of the past, but critics of liberalism have
been equally quick to seize upon them. Champions of virtue
ethics have been among the most vocal critics of liberalism in
recent years, arguing that liberals court philosophical peril by
neglecting the insights of earlier moral theories. Edmund Burke,
the eighteenth-century opponent of liberalism, had an additional complaint. Burke discerned an arrogance in the liberal rejection of intellectual and political tradition. It was mere pride,
Burke thought, to suppose that politics and political theory could
be made transparent to the reason of every individual in the way
that liberals sometimes claim. 4
Burke's allegation that the liberal rejection of tradition
reflects pride is ironic, for pride is a central element of one of the
traditions of moral thought that liberals seem determined to
reject. During a lengthy period of philosophy's history, pride was
thought to be a motive of all wrong action. The biblical book of
Sirach says that pride is the beginning of all evil 5 and a long line
of medieval moralists labored to explain how this might be so.
Yet the tradition of moral thought that accorded pride so central
a role now suffers from neglect at the hands of many philosophers. And pride itself is a vice that many philosophers now consider unworthy of attention. Most fail to consider it seriously as
a motive for any wrong action at all.
I have three aims in this paper. One is to examine pride's
neglect more closely. I shall argue that pride suffers this neglect
because of its centrality to a religiously based tradition of moral
thought that many philosophers no longer accept. The alleged
connection between pride and religion is, I shall argue, suggestive. It suggests what an account of pride would have to include
4 See Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, in Selected Works, ed.
Edward John Payne (Oxford: Clarendon, 1883), 102.
5 Sirach 10:15.

THOMISTIC PRIDE AND LIBERAL VICE

243

if contemporary philosophers are to find it useful. My second
aim is to recover one medieval analysis of pride, that of Thomas
Aquinas, and to show that Aquinas provides a much richer
account of pride than the conception that contemporary philosophers reject. Finally, I want to show the usefulness of Aquinas's
account as an account of the motive to do wrong. In doing so, I
shall focus on acts that liberals, at least Kantian liberals, are
committed to condemning as failures. I shall argue that the concept of pride proves more useful in explaining those actions than
do the Kantian accounts which reject it.
I

One reason for pride's neglect is that many philosophers concur with Thomas Nagel in thinking partiality to one's own inclinations, interests, and commitments is the primary motive of
immoral action. 6 It follows from this view that a systematic
analysis of immoral motivation must first come to grips with
partiality. Pride, if it plays any role in this analysis, will be a
derivative notion because pride will appear as but one of its
manifestations. And it may seem an uninteresting one when
compared with the greed, intolerance, and hedonism on which
philosophers have lavished so much attention.
Partiality seems so important because other religiously based
moral considerations have been eclipsed. Indeed, contemporary
philosophers quite consciously neglect pride out of a concern to
sever the connection between religion on the one hand and moral
and political philosophy on the other. To see this, recall that
humility is among the most important virtues of the Christian
life. That virtue is accorded such centrality because it is thought
to reflect the proper attitude toward God, whom Christians are
enjoined to love with their whole hearts. Pride, it might be
thought, is the vice opposed to humility, a vice which consists in
failure to maintain the proper attitude toward divine greatness.
To the extent that philosophers once regarded pride as an impor6 For one statement of Nagel's view, see his "Moral Conflict and Political Legitimacy,"
Philosophy and Public Affairs 16 (1987): 215.

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PAUL J. WEITHMAN

tant source of immoral motivation, its importance was derived
from the religious importance of the virtue it opposed.
If pride seemed important only because humility was deemed
essential, then humility's decline in importance as a virtue
explains the decline of pride's importance as a vice. 7 If philosophers no longer think that maintaining a proper attitude toward
God is the central component of living well, then they will
accord pride far less attention in their analyses of immoral motivation. Discussion of pride and its connection with immoral
action is, for example, notably absent from Martha Nussbaum's
work. This is because maintaining a proper attitude to the God
of biblical religion is not important to her Aristotelianism.
Humility does not appear on her list of the virtues, for she
regards it as a "competitor" of the magnanimity she favors. 8
Elsewhere, Nussbaum maintains that rebellion against a divinely imposed moral law is not an important component of human
moral experience as Aristotelians describe it. 9 The claims that
humility is not an important virtue and that prideful rebellion
does not figure in the experience of one's own immorality explain
why discussion of pride has no place in Nussbaum's rich analysis.
Judith Shklar's denial that pride and humility are important
ethical concepts is quite explicit. Her argument for that claim
and her attempt to distance political theory from biblical religion
are equally so. Shklar notes that Judaism and Christianity take
pride to be the worst of sins because it is essentially a "rejection
of God.'" 0 Political theorists within those traditions-most
notably Augustine-accordingly took it as fundamental to their
accounts of the moral education government should provide.
7 I am indebted

to Michael Pakaluk for this way of formulating the point.
Nussbaum, "Non-Relative Virtues: An Aristotelian Approach," in Peter A.
French et al., eds., Ethical Theory: Character and Virtue, Midwest Studies in Philosophy,
vol. 13 (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), 38.
9 Martha Nussbaum, "Recoiling from Reason," The New York Review of Books 36
(1989): 40. "Recoiling from Reason" is Nussbaum's review of Alasdair Maclntyre's
Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press,
1988).
10 Judith Shklar, Ordinary Vices (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984),
8 Martha

241.

THOMISTIC PRIDE AND LIBERAL VICE

245

Augustine, for example, argued that the primary purpose of
political authority should be to chasten pride and foster humility.11 This thesis about the proper aims of political authority is,
Shklar argues, opposed to the liberalism she endorses. Liberals,
Shklar states, should not see government as an instrument for
fostering humility or any other virtue; government can at best
hope to restrain the vices in their grosser manifestations. The
vices with whose expression Shklar thinks liberals should be
concerned are those she, following Montaigne, dubs "ordinary"-hypocrisy, snobbery, treachery, misanthropy, and cruelty.
Shklar focuses on these vices, rather than on pride and the other
deadly sins of medieval Christianity, because she claims that liberal governments should regard the infliction of pain on other
human beings as the summum malum. 12 It is the ordinary vices,
she argues, that ought to be restrained because it is they that
motivate the infliction of pain. Shklar neglects pride expressly
because she rejects the moral agenda that Augustine and others
thought biblical religion set for political theory.
Liberals as different as Nagel, Nussbaum, and Shklar thus
reject pride as a concept inadequate to the description, explanation, and evaluation of our most important moral and political
experiences. They do so because of the connections they see
among the condemnation of pride, the elevation of humility, and
the necessity of reverence toward the Judaeo-Christian God. I
want to suggest, however, that they neglect the concept of pride
because they have an unduly narrow understanding of it. A
proper understanding of pride would show that notion to be adequate to the tasks for which Nagel, Nussbaum, and Shklar reject
it. Nussbaum and Shklar neglect or reject what might be called

See Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos 124, 8.
Shklar, Ordinary Vices; see also Shklar's "Liberalism of Fear" in Nancy L.
Rosenblum, ed. Liberalism and the Moral Life (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1989), 21-38, especially 23. Annette Baier's review of Ordinary Vices is indicative
of how far from philosophical view the vice of pride has slipped. Baier says of the book
that Machiavelli is its villain. She makes no mention of Augustine, Gregory, Aquinas, or
of any other of the theologians who preached against the sin of pride; see Shklar,
Ordinary Vices, 240. For Baier's review, see Political Theory 14 (1986): 56-59.
11

12

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PAUL J. WEITHMAN

"the Miltonian conception" of pride, after Milton's Lucifer. 13 The
pride Milton attributes to Lucifer is directed against God and
includes a "high disdain" for or contempt of God. Second, it is a
trait of character of which its possessor is aware and from which
he knowingly acts. Third, acting from and sustaining it require
great strength of character. Any plausible account of pride must
be capable of accommodating these three features. If contemporary philosophers like Nagel, Shklar, and Nussbaum are to find
that account useful, however, it cannot be exhausted by the
Miltonian conception.
A usable account of pride can, I believe, be found in the work
of Thomas Aquinas. According to Aquinas, pride can serve as
the primary motive for any kind of evil act. Pride is also needed
to explain fully evil acts done knowingly, even if it was not the
primary motive of those acts. But pride is not exclusively a rebellion against God, in Aquinas's view. Acts of pride need not be
motivated by a desire for goods that are God's nor accompanied
by contempt for God. The proud person need not exhibit extraordinary strength of character, though she can. She need not be
aware that she acts from pride, though she may be. Aquinas's
conception of pride is thus a richer and more inclusive one than
that described by Milton. It can accommodate the Miltonian
paradigm. It can also be useful even to those like Nagel, Shklar,
and Nussbaum who do not share Aquinas's and Milton's theological presuppositions and who are little worried about offending God.
II

Aquinas produced two discussions of pride or superbia, one in
the Summa Theologiae and one in the Quaestiones Disputatae de
Malo. 14 These discussions, like much of Aquinas's work, are
remarkable for their reconciliation of views that seem to conflict
13 For the characteristics of the Miltonian conception, see John Milton, Paradise Lost,
Book I, lines 95·112. I have referred to the critical edition edited by Alastair Fowler
(London: Longman, 1980).
14 References to both of these works will hereafter be included parenthetically in the
text. Throughout I have referred to the Parma edition of Aquinas's Opera Omnia.

THOMISTIC PRIDE AND LIBERAL VICE

247

and that are drawn from a diversity of sources. The tradition to
which these sources contributed took for granted that pride bore
some causal connection to other sins. The nature of the connection, however, was a matter of debate. Thus among the problems
with which tradition presented Aquinas was that of whether
"pride" names a particular sort of sin that is the efficient cause of
others or whether, on the contrary, it names some matter or form
common to every sin or to every kind of sin. The earlier-cited
passage from the book of Sirach can be interpreted to support
the latter view and was taken by many of Aquinas's predecessors
to do so.
As we shall see, Aquinas does think that there is one sense of
the word "pride" that accords with the latter view and therefore
with a powerful current of theological tradition. His considered
view, however, is that pride is a particular kind of desire, "an
appetite for one's own excellentia" (STh II-II, q. 162, a. 2). This
desire is, by definition, sinful: Aquinas says that superbia is a
desire that exceeds the rule of reason (De Malo, q. 8, a. 2). Pride
is therefore a sin of a particular kind. It is, finally, a sin that can
stand in a variety of causal or explanatory relations to other sins,
sins directed against God and man. Let us see how Aquinas
establishes each of these claims.
Aquinas thinks that desires are distinguished in kind by the
kinds of their objects. The burden of establishing the first
claim-that the desire for excellentia differs in kind from other
desires-therefore rests on the claim that excellentia is a distinctive kind of object of desire. Obviously this depends upon what
Aquinas means by "excellentia," a word usually translated into
English as "excellence."
To say of someone that she wau.ts her own excellence is to say
that she wants to have the property of being excellent or that she
wants to excel. Note two conditions on having such a desire.
First, the person who wants his own excellence must employ
(possibly subjective) standards by which people can be compared or assessed. Sometimes, of course, people compare themselves to others in one or another respect and rely on standards
by which people's beauty, intelligence, taste, or ability at chess,
for example, are compared and assessed. Second, whatever stan-

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PAUL J. WEITHMAN

<lards of excellence the person in question employs would, were
they fully articulated, specify the conditions under which someone is to be judged excellent. They would specify the criteria for
judging someone excellent. When some person meets those standards, she does so in virtue of her possession of certain properties. Her possession of those properties furnishes the grounds for
the judgment of excellence. When someone has a desire to excel
by certain standards, when she has a desire for her own excellence, she has a desire to possess whatever properties satisfy the
standards she employs. Therefore if we are to ascribe to someone
a desire for her own excellence, we must also be able to ascribe
to her a desire to have good grounds for judging or believing that
she is excellent by the standard she employs.
The employment of standards by which persons can be
assessed and a desire to have grounds for believing oneself excellent by those standards are therefore necessary conditions for
desiring one's own excellence. Since Aquinas says that pride is
an undue desire for one's own excellence, the proud person of
Aquinas's account must satisfy those two conditions.
One of Aquinas's few examples of a proud person is found in
De Malo, q. 8, a. 2. There Aquinas says that a bishop is not
deemed guilty of pride if he enjoys the prerogatives that "pertain
to his proper excellence." On the other hand, a priest who arrogates those prerogatives would be guilty of that sin. What
Aquinas has in mind is that the priest wants the excellence that
is proper to a bishop and is not satisfied with the excellences the
priesthood confers. It is out of this desire that he arrogates episcopal prerogatives. The example thus implies that the priest does
employ a standard by which to assess excellence, in this case, the
excellence conferred by ecclesiastical offices. Other of Aquinas's
remarks also suggest that he thinks the proud person accepts and
employs standards by which to compare and assess persons in
one or another respect. "Pride," Aquinas says at one point,
"implies a certain superiority" (STh II-II, q. 162, a. 1, ad 3). The
argument of which this claim is a premise is quite compressed
and difficult to interpret. It seems to turn, however, on the claim

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that the proud person desires superiority with respect to the possession of what Aquinas calls "great things." If this is correct,
then it confirms the suggestion that the proud person employs
standards by which persons are assessed in one respect-in their
possession of "great things."
Aquinas must also think that the proud person wants what
she takes to be good grounds for the belief that she excels in some
respect. That he does so can be established by examining the
ways in which pride typically manifests itself. There are,
Aquinas says,
kinds or "species" of pride (STh II-II, q. 162,
a. 4 ). The first is believing that one has acquired something on
one's own that has really come from God. The second is believing that God has given one something on the basis of one's merits when in fact God has bestowed it gratuitously. The third is
attributing to oneself more of some good than one in fact possesses. The last is, Aquinas says, "when someone, despising the
rest, wants to stand out."
The fourth of these species of pride I shall discuss later; for the
moment I want to concentrate on the first three. Each of these
crucially involves a false belief. Let us consider how Aquinas
might explain the fact that pride manifests itself in these false
beliefs. Why, for example, might someone who desires to be
excellent believe that she has achieved something on her own
that God has given her? One explanation is that she wants to
judge herself to be excellent, she believes that achieving the
goods in question on her own would be good grounds for that
judgment, and she so wants to be excellent that she comes to
believe she really has attained those goods on her own. Her
believing that she has done so is thus the way in which the
strength of her appetite shows itself.
This explanation of the genesis of the false belief appeals to the
proud person's desire to be able to judge herself excellent. It also
presupposes that she wants that judgment to be well-grounded.
Otherwise, she could judge of her own excellence without
accepting the false belief about her own achievements. Thus
what explains her accepting the false belief, what explains her

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pride's having manifested itself in this way, is precisely the
desire that Aquinas must say proud persons have: the desire for
what they take to be evidence that they are excellent. A similar
argument could be given for the other cases in which pride
shows itself in false belief. This is the best explanation for pride's
showing itself in the ways that Aquinas enumerates. Aquinas's
account of pride therefore satisfies the second as well as the first
of the two necessary conditions on desiring one's own excellence.
Note that on Aquinas's account the proud person cares about
her belief that she is excellent. This is compatible with her having a wide variety of grounds for her belief. In particular, the
proud person might take as reasons for her belief the fact that
others praise her or seem to believe that she is excellent in some
respect. But Aquinas's account is also compatible with her judging herself to be an excellent person without relying on the judgments of others. Aquinas distinguishes pride from vainglory,
which he characterizes as the undue desire for others' acknowledgment of one's excellence. 15 This is as it should be, for some
people do nourish their own pride, persisting in the belief that
they are better than others even without anyone else's encouragement.
There may, however, seem to be serious difficulties with
Aquinas's argument that pride is a particular kind of desire, difficulties that can be brought out by comparing Aquinas's
account with Hume's. Hume noted that the proud person must,
as a matter of logic, recognize that the object of her pride reflects
well on her; the object must be thought by the proud person to
confer excellence on her or to show her excellence in some
respect. 16 Aquinas, too, notes a conceptual connection between
pride and excellence. Pride is, in Aquinas's view, an undue desire
for excellence. Objects sought from pride are, as we shall see,
15 In fact, of course, pride and vainglory are closely related. People often both enjoy
praise for its own sake and take it as a reason to believe that they are excellent. The intimacy of this relationship is no doubt why Aquinas says that vainglory is "born of" pride:
see STh 11-11, a. 132, a. 4, ad 1).
16 See Annette C. Baier, "Hume's Analysis of Pride," Journal of Philosophy 84 (1978):
39.

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sought because their possession is taken by the proud person as
a good reason to judge herself excellent. Thus there is an important area of agreement between Aquinas and Hume: both claim
that the object of pride must be recognized by the proud person
as conferring or confirming her excellence.
But for Hume, pride can take as its object a wide variety of
particulars-particular
qualities of character, fine houses, or
well-trained hunting dogs, for example. Aquinas's account
seems quite different. He says that the proud person has a single
characteristic desire, the desire for her own excellence. Insofar as
Hume's account seems a plausible one, this difference might
seem to tell against Aquinas's view. More specifically, it might be
thought, Hume's account is more plausible because some proud
people seem not to have the desire Aquinas thinks characteristic
of the proud person. Surely it is possible that a proud person
desire the sorts of objects Hume claims are the objects of pride
without any separate and concurrent desire that they themselves
be excellent or that they excel in some respect. Moreover, ordinary ascriptions of pride seem to be parasitic on affective states
that have as their objects the variety of things Hume takes to be
objects of pride. We say that people are proud or that they want
to excel others because they are affected in the relevant ways by
fine houses or social status, for example. Thus on the occasions
when we do ascribe to people the desire Aquinas seems to think
definitive of pride, it is only because we first take them to have
the affective states Hume associates with it.
Yet Aquinas does not have the option of claiming that the
desire associated with pride can have the many kinds of objects
Hume admits. The claim that the desire characteristic of pride
can have but a single kind of object is a position Aquinas was
forced to adopted by two other of his claims. Those claims are
that pride is a particular kind of desire and that desires are distinguished in kind by their objects. The latter claim is one he
cannot give up without surrendering large stretches of his moral
psychology. It therefore seems that Aquinas is caught in a dilemma: either he must deny a claim central to his account of pride or
he must defend a primafacie implausible account of the appetitive states associated with it. To address this problem, it is nee-

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essary to look further into the conditions under which Aquinas
thinks we ascribe the desire characteristic of the proud person.

III
Aquinas would begin addressing this dilemma with the obvious point that objects can be desired for very different reasons.
A tomato can be desired to eat or to throw at a stumping politician. Knowledge can be sought for its own sake or as a means of
gaining power over others. One can want to be a certain sort of
person for its own sake or in order to impress others. In each of
these cases, something-a tomato, knowledge, a virtue-is
wanted as a such-and-such-as a projectile, as a means to power,
etc. Aquinas would claim that the objects of desire in these cases
are complex. The object of desire is not merely the tomato, the
knowledge, or the virtue; it is the tomato-as-projectile, the
knowledge-as-instrument-for-securing-power,
the something-asa-such-and-such.
On analysis, Aquinas would say, objects of desire can be seen
to have component parts. The complex of tomato-as-projectile
can be resolved into the tomato and the purpose for which it is
sought. Aquinas presses hylomorphic language into service to
describe the relationship between these two components of an
object of desire. The tomato itself, he would say, is the matter of
the object of desire and the property of being a projectile is its
form. Even immaterial objects like virtues or states of affairs can
function as the material component of objects of desire; the form
specifies the purpose or reason for desiring the state of affairs or
the virtue.
Aquinas's claim that objects of desire are complex and his
claim that the proper analysis of these complex objects looks at
the reasons for which the matter is sought are significant. They
show how intimate a link Aquinas sees between desire and
intentionality. Annette Baier has credited Hume with being the
first to recognize the complexity of the objects of the passions.
This was, she suggests, his "pioneering contribution." The foregoing remarks suggest that, though their analyses differ significantly, Aquinas in fact anticipated Hume's discovery of this

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complexity. 11 For present purposes, however, what is more
important is the way Aquinas's treatment of objects of desire
enables him to evade the dilemma posed at the end of the last
section.
Aquinas says in De Malo, q. 8, a. 2 that excellentia is a distinctive formal nature of a desirable thing. 18 If we follow out the
implications of his hylomorphic analysis, then Aquinas's claim
entails that excellentia or one's own excellence is not itself an
object of desire, but is one component-the formal componentof such an object. Excellence is therefore that element of a complex object of desire that explains why the material component
of that object is sought. Aquinas can rely on this analysis to
avoid claiming that those who desire their own excellence have
such desires in addition to desires for the objects by which they
attempt to secure or confirm their excellence.
Objects of desire are sorted into kinds, Aquinas thinks, by
their formal natures, by the reasons for which the material components of their objects are sought; desires are classified by the
formal natures of their objects. A given desire is therefore a
desire for one's own excellence if and only if excellence is the reason for seeking the desire's material component, whether that is
a five-pound tomato, a fine house, or a battlefield victory. Saying
of someone that he has a desire for his own excellence does not,
in Aquinas's view, require ascribing to him an affective state
that is numerically distinct from the desire for another object
like a fine house.
Aquinas's hylomorphic analysis of objects of desire thus supplies the details of his argument that pride is a distinctive kind
of desire. That argument turns crucially, as we saw at the beginning of the last section, on the claims that pride is an undue
desire for excellence and that desires for excellence are desires of
a distinctive kind. Since Aquinas thinks that desires are classi17 Ironically Baier credits Hume with this discovery in her own exegesis of his theory
of pride; see her "Hume's Analysis of Pride," 37. For her further work on Hume, the passions, and their complex objects, see Baier, A Progress of Sentiments: Reflections on
Hume's Treatise (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991), chapter 6,
"Persons and the Wheel of Their Passions," 129-51.
18 "[E]xcellentia habet propriam rationem cuiusdam determinati appetibilis."

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fied by the formal natures of their objects, he need only maintain
that one's own excellence is a distinctive reason for seeking the
material components of objects of desire. He can maintain this
without having to claim that people are proud in virtue of having a desire for their own excellence rather than in virtue of their
having desires for the sorts of things Hume took to be the objects
of pride.
These claims about the classification and ascription of desire
also fit with the parasitic character of desire-ascription, though
Aquinas'? account originally seemed not to do so. To ascribe a
desire for excellence to someone is to provide an intentional
explanation; it is to state her reason for seeking other things. In
many cases, such an explanation will be called for only when her
attempts to secure the material components of her object of
desire come to our attention. Thus ascription of someone's desire
for her own excellence depends upon our first noticing that she
seeks the sorts of things which she might think would secure her
excellence.
Finally, the complexity of Aquinas's account fits well with the
second of the necessary conditions I attached to a desire for one's
own excellence. That second condition required of someone
desiring her own excellence that she also desire grounds for her
own judgment that she is excellent. Consider someone who seeks
a fine house to secure her excellence. Presumably she seeks it
because she thinks that its possession will confer on her excellence of a certain sort. In this case the house will be the material
component of her object of desire. But it will also, if possessed,
be the grounds for her judgment that she is excellent. Aquinas
thinks it often the case that the material component of the object
of a desire for one's own excellence also functions in this way.
This explains the fact, noted earlier, that he thinks that desires
for one's own excellence concern "great things." Great things are
sought to secure excellence and to provide the seeker with
grounds for judging that she is excellent in the relevant respect.

IV
Pride, in Aquinas's view, is therefore a desire of a particular
kind. But what of his claim that pride is sinful because "inordi-

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natus." What is the "inordinatus" desire for one's own excellence
in which Aquinas thinks pride consists? I have so far spoken of
pride rather blithely as an "undue" desire for excellence. Some
translators render Aquinas's "inordinatus" as "inordinate," thus
ascribing to Aquinas the view that pride is the inordinate desire
for one's own excellence. 19 Care must be taken here, however, for
the English word "inordinate" has connotations of excess; so too
does the word "undue," at least in some contexts. Translating
"inordinatus" with either of these words therefore suggests that
Aquinas thinks pride is an excessive desire for one's own excellence.
It is hard to know what an excessive desire might be. Surely
an excessive desire for one's own excellence is not simply a desire
for an excessive amount of excellence for oneself. More plausibly,
an excessive desire is a desire of excessive intensity. If this is correct, then pride is a desire for one's own excellence that is wrong
because it is more intense than it should be. The problem with
this conclusion, and consequently the problem with translating
"inordinatus" with a word that suggests excess, is that nothing
could be further from Aquinas's view.
Recall the conditions on a desire for one's own excellence as
Aquinas conceives it. The desire for one's own excellence is, first,
a desire to be excellent or a desire to excel in some respect.
Second, someone can properly be said to have a desire to be
excellent, in Aquinas's view, without having a separate desire for
excellence over and above the desire for those "great things" by
which excellence is secured. Rather, Aquinas thinks it suffices if
one's own excellence is the reason for which other things are
sought. These great things-the fine house, the battlefield victory, the virtue of courage-and one's own excellence together constitute a single object of desire of which the great thing in question is the matter and the excellence is the form. Third, to have
a desire for excellence, one must employ a standard by which to
compare oneself to others. It is excellence by that standard that
one intends to obtain by possessing the other goods. Finally, one
19

See STh II-II, q. 162, a. 2 of the Benziger Brothers' edition of the Summa Theologiae

(New York, 1947).

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must want grounds for judging oneself excellent by that standard. Sometimes those will be provided by the material component of the object of one's desire for excellence.
Aquinas's recognition of these conditions on a desire for excellence implies that there can be many ways in which such desires
differ. It is therefore possible to mine his views for a very sensitive account of the ways in which some of those desires can be
faulty. This will be a far more nuanced account than would be
possible if, for example, Aquinas thought that desires took only
simple objects and differed only in intensity and duration. To see
this, consider the fourth of the species of pride Aquinas enumerates: "when someone, despising the rest, wants to stand out"
(STh II-II, q. 162, a. 4).
One way in which someone might exhibit pride of this sort is
by trying to "stand out" or attain excellence as measured by
wrong or inappropriate standards. Someone might, for example,
assess himself by standards inappropriate for measuring the
excellence of members of the kind to which he belongs. As a consequence, he may aspire to an excellence inappropriate for members of his kind. Of course some such cases would strike us as
ridiculous or fanciful rather than proud. A person who truly
aspired to hop like a kangaroo would not be said to have conceived this aspiration out of pride. Aquinas rightly notes that
pride concerns things "above" us (cf. STh II-II, q. 162, a. 4, ad 3).
The remark intimates if it does not entail that the proud creature
who aspires to an excellence inappropriate to his kind must
aspire to an excellence characteristic of a kind higher than his
own.
This seems to fit Milton's Lucifer perfectly. Where Aquinas
speaks of "despising others" Lucifer speaks of his "high disdain"
for God. 20 The good which Lucifer seeks and by which he tries to
secure excellence is lordship over creation. Possession of this
good would undoubtedly enable Lucifer to excel and "stand out,''
but the excellence thus attained would be an excellence proper to
God and not to a creature. Aquinas's analysis of the impropriety
of Lucifer's desire would therefore point to two failures. Lucifer
20

Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I, lines 95-112.

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employs or measures himself against an inappropriate standard
by taking divine excellence as his standard; he aspires to or
desires divine greatness and tries to attain it by securing a good
that he should not have.
It is certainly consistent with Aquinas's account that prideful
attempts to stand out be directed against other creatures and not
against God. To see this, note that Lucifer's pride is quite similar to that of the proud cleric Aquinas himself discusses in De
Malo. The priest who wants to enjoy the prerogatives of a bishop compares himself to the prelate. He thus looks to a higher
ecclesiastical office than his own for the standards to which he
should conform, aspires to the excellence of that office, and
thinks he can secure it by possessing the goods associated with
that office and not his own. Aquinas does not mention that the
priest of his example despises bishops or other priests. Nothing
in his discussion of pride, however, implies that the contempt
and disdain implicit in "despising others" need be directed
against God, as Satan's was. One of Aquinas's crucial arguments
in De Malo, q. 8, a. 2, presupposes that contempt for those whom
one wants to excel is a necessary condition for ascriptions of
pride. And he hastens to add that "there can be a perverse desire
for excellence, not only if one contemns God, but also if one contemns man" (De Malo, q. 8, a. 2, ad 4).
Another and common example of prideful attempts to stand
out also reflects a defective standard or conception of excellence.
Pride is often associated with a desire to "win," a desire to stand
out and attain excellence by beating others out in some way or
other. In some contexts this competitive attitude toward human
excellence is acceptable. Where it is not, Aquinas's analysis of
desire provides the resources for describing the defect. In such a
case, the formal aspect of the desire is defective and the proud
person is acting for a bad reason. The material component of the
object of desire may be defective as well if the agent tries to beat
out others by securing a good she should not have or in a way
(like cheating) by which she should not secure it.
Consider someone who wants to beat out others by excelling
them in knowledge, someone whose life of scholarship is largely
motivated by a desire to stand out over others in this respect.

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Such a person has, Aquinas would say, misconceived human
excellence, since it does not consist in beating others out in this
way. Moreover, this defect in what Aquinas would call the formal component of her desires leads to defects in their material
components as well. Augustine's analysis of pride famously
includes the claim that the proud person "uses" what should be
"enjoyed"-he uses as a means to some
what should be chosen and appreciated for itself.21 This is a failure, Aquinas would
argue, committed by a person who seeks a good like knowledge
for the sake of gaining superiority over others. In such a case,
excellence in the guise of superiority over others informs knowledge so that the latter is sought for the sake of the former. But
truth should, Aquinas thinks, be sought for its own sake.
Aquinas does not provide so fine-grained an analysis of how
proud people sin by trying to "stand out." The various examples
through which I have worked, however, show how his account
of complex and intentional desire can be applied to locate the
formal and material defects in various desires for excellence.
They thereby convey some idea of what Aquinas means when he
characterizes pride as a defective desire for excellence. They also
confirm my earlier claim that a translation of "inordinatus" as
"inordinate" would seriously mislead. "Inordinate," with its connotations of excess, suggests that desires are defective simply
because of their intensity. This suggestion, as my examples illustrate, is false to the account of defective desire Aquinas would
provide. 22
Aquinas's discussion points to but does not fulfill the need for
further analysis of the mistakes and defects that faulty desire for
excellence entails. Especially helpful would be a nuanced discussion of why the proud sometimes desire excellence as if it
were a good that could only be had by denying it to others.
Though such an analysis would broach interesting questions of
moral psychology, it is not Aquinas's primary concern. He is
Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana, Book I.
of "inordinatus" as "disordered" could, I believe, be supported on both
philosophical and textual grounds. I do not, however, have either the time or the space
to supply the requisite argument here.
21

22 Translation

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most interested, as I am, in tracing pride's connection with other
sorts of moral failure. Read with Aquinas's priorities in mind, his
discussion of the desires associated with pride is quite useful. It
suggests that pride can show itself in the desire for a wide variety of goods.
Excellentia, Aquinas notes, is a form that can be found "materially in many things" (De Malo, q. 8, a. 2). It can combine with
or inform a wide variety of matters-from tomatoes to battlefield victories-to constitute objects of desire. The variety of
material components that eminence can inform suggests that
Aquinas thinks pride can move us to secure a wide variety of
objects. Pride can thereby provide us a motive, he thinks, to perform a wide variety of actions. It is Aquinas's discussion of how
pride can function as a motive of action that shows pride's ordinariness. Aquinas's account of pride as a motive of action is
embedded in his treatment of pride as what he calls a general sin.

v
In De Malo, q. 8, a. 2, Aquinas distinguishes two ways in
which sins can be common or general: they can be "general by
diffusion" and "general by effect." A sin is general by diffusion
when other sins are committed to secure the object of the original sin. Pride exhibits generality by diffusion when, for example,
Anne swindles John out of a fine house so that she can enjoy the
superiority over others that the fine house confers. Aquinas's
idea seems to be that Anne's unfocused desire for some fine
house or other depends upon her desire for her own excellence.
That excellence informs or diffuses itself over John's house in
particular. The excellence that possession of John's house would
confer therefore becomes Anne's reason for desiring it. Her
desire for excellence then becomes, via this diffusion, her motive
for performing the acts required to swindle John out of the
house. Aquinas says that acts, like desires, are classified by the
kinds or natures of their objects. It follows that Anne's act,
which might initially have looked like one of theft, is more properly described as one of pride because its real goal was Anne's
own excellence (cf. STh 1-11, q. 18, a. 6).

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Once the force of Aquinas's diffusion metaphor is felt and its
implications appreciated, it is clear that acts that appear to be
acts of theft, lust, drunkenness, or foolhardiness might sometimes be more properly described as acts of pride. This is because
excellence can, as I noted, "be found materially in many things"
and because excellence is often sought in the form of superiority
over others. This superiority over others can be sought through
theft of a fine house, seduction of a desirable person, consumption of extraordinary quantities of alcohol, or daring deeds on a
battlefield. Pride can therefore "diffuse" itself by giving rise to
the theft, seduction, consumption, or charge, provide the real
reason for their performance, and become the real nature of the
acts. This is not, of course, to say that pride does in fact motivate
every act of theft or lust, as Aquinas hastens to remark (STh III!, q. 162, a. 2). But pride can motivate a wide variety of acts, far
wider than the Miltonian paradigm suggests. 23
If a Miltonian view of pride has led contemporary moral
philosophers to neglect that fault, then Aquinas's analysis
already has provided reason to remedy that neglect. The conception of pride that has emerged from this analysis is a far more
inclusive one than Milton's. Pride, according to Aquinas, is a
desire for excellence. Sometimes, as in Lucifer's case, the proud
creature wants to excel God. Often, however, pride as Aquinas
understands it is a desire to excel those who should be one's
peers; the proud cleric in De Malo is a case in point. The prideful desire for excellence is, Aquinas thinks, necessarily accompanied by contempt, but that contempt can, as we saw, be contempt for man as well as contempt for God. And Aquinas's discussion of pride by diffusion makes clear that pride can motivate
acts directed against other human beings as well as acts against
God.
Recall that Milton's Lucifer was also well aware of his pride
and was, indeed, proud of it. Lucifer was also a character of
great strength, possessed of the courage to stand up to divine
wrath. How much strength of character does Aquinas think
23 See the insightful discussion of C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York:
Macmillan, 1958), 94-99, especially 95-6. Thanks to Fred Freddoso for this reference.

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pride requires? How strong must one be to sustain the contempt
for others that he thinks pride entails? And how aware of her
own pride does Aquinas think the proud person must be? The
answers to these questions can be teased out of Aquinas's discussion of the other way in which sins can be general or common
to all sins: generality by effect.

VI
Aquinas contrasts deeds that are sinful in effect with those
that are sinful in affect. Since Aquinas says later that the property pride-in-effect "remains in" or is "found in" every sin, he
must think that sins exhibiting pride-in-affect also exhibit pridein-effect. This contrast therefore cannot be between two mutually exclusive properties; pride-in-effect-but-not-in-affect and
pride-in-affect must, of course, be mutually exclusive. Grasping
the contrast between sins-in-effect-but-not-affect and sins-inaffect is crucial, Aquinas thinks. Once we do so, we shall appreciate that every sin exhibits pride-in-effect and therefore that
pride can be a sin general in effect as well as by diffusion.
Aquinas thinks that calling a sin a sin-in-affect implies that
the agent has certain states of mind or emotion characteristic of
the sin in question; calling a sin sin-in-effect carries with it no
such implication. Aquinas offers two examples to help us grasp
his distinction. One, common to De Malo, q. 8, a. 2, and to the
Summa, concerns someone who accidentally kills his father in
the mistaken belief that he is killing an enemy. Such a person,
Aquinas says, commits patricide-in-effect. The person does not,
however, commit patricide-in-affect, Aquinas remarks, because
"he did not intend this" (STh 11-11, q. 162, a. 2, ad 2). The other
example, found only in De Malo, concerns the Milesians. The
Milesians, Aquinas says, "act as if they were stupid," though he
adds charitably that "they certainly are not." The accidental patricide, then, is patricide-in-effect-but-not-in-affect; the acts of
the Milesians are stupid-in-effect-but-not-in-affect. Reflection
on these examples is, presumably, meant to help us understand
pride-in-effect-but-not-in-affect. In the case of the Milesians, the
affect is stupidity and the effect stupid acts. In the case of the
person committing patricide, the affect is the intention to kill

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one's father, perhaps accompanied by certain passions like dislike of one's father. The effect, of course, is killing him.
In the case of pride, the affect is contempt together with the
undue desire for one's own excellentia; all sins of pride by diffusion are thus sins of pride-in-affect. The effect of pride, Aquinas
says, is a failure to subject oneself to the rule of one's superior
(De Malo, q. 8, a. 2). Since every sin is an instance of violating a
divine command and since God is the superior of all, Aquinas
concludes that every sin exhibits pride-in-effect. He claims that
not all exhibit pride-in-affect, however, since people sometimes
break moral rules even when the affective states associated with
pride are absent. 24 These prominently include, he says, the wrong
acts people commit "from ignorance or infirmity."
The category of pride-in-effect-but-not-in-affect
enables
Aquinas to accommodate, if somewhat backhandedly, the tradition of thought according to which pride is somehow present in
every sin. It does little, however, to show how pride can function
as a reason for action. Indeed, Aquinas introduced the concept of
pride-in-effect-but-not-in-affect in order to argue that pride is
present even in sins for which it is not a motive. For present purposes, what is interesting about Aquinas's discussion of pride-ineffect-but-not-in-affect is what the contrast with pride-in-affect
reveals about the latter. To see this, a closer examination of
Aquinas's examples is required.
These examples, like most in Aquinas's work, receive maddeningly little elaboration. Aquinas's reticence is especially vexing in this case because there is a striking difference between the
two examples he employs. In the case of patricide-in-affect, the
agent must intend the act of killing his father under that description. If he does not, then his killing his father will instead be a
case of patricide-in-effect-but-not-in-affect. This is very different from the stupidity case, since while people who commit acts
stupid-in-affect may intend their acts, they surely need not
intend them qua stupid.
I believe, however, that Aquinas intends us to take seriously
24 In this connection, see Cajetan's illuminating commentary on STh II-II, q. 162, in
the Leonine edition of the Summa.

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his suggestion that the affective elements of pride can be like the
affective elements in either of his examples. The striking difference between the two examples thus conveys how different
instances of the same sin can be. The affective elements that
motivate acts of pride are sometimes like those that motivate the
act of patricide. Some proud people knowingly attempt to further their own excellence, choosing their acts under a description
referring to the fact that their excellentia will be promoted. And
these proud intentions, like the patricidal ones of Aquinas's
example, may be accompanied by the pertinent emotions. It is
affections of this sort that Milton attributes to Lucifer. At other
times or in other persons, however, the affective elements of
pride may be more like those called to mind by stupidity,
Aquinas's other example. The proud person may act on a desire
for his own excellence without being aware that he is doing so,
just as the stupid person may be unaware of his stupidity. Indeed
the proud person may be firmly convinced that he is acting for
other reasons, much as the stupid person prefers to think that he
is not acting from stupidity. Certainly there are times when
agents are unaware of or self-deceived about their pride. In such
cases, pride is the motive for their action, but it is a motive better recognized from a third- than from a first-person perspective.
The stupidity model of affectivity captures this nicely, for stupidity too can be a cause better recognized from a third- than
from a first-person point of view.
Drawing out the implications of both of Aquinas's examples
shows that his treatment of pride accommodates the Miltonian
paradigm of that vice, but is not exhausted by it. The person
whose pride conforms to the patricide model, who knowingly
and willfully intends acts precisely because they secure him
excellence, and who is well aware of his concomitant contempt
for others, conforms to the Miltonian paradigm of pride. But
because Aquinas's account also includes the stupidity model, he
is not committed to the view that everyone who acts from pride
does so with full knowledge. Nor is he committed to the view
that acting from pride requires the strength of character Lucifer
exhibited in defying God.

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VII
I have argued that Aquinas's conception of pride is more
nuanced than the Miltonian view that many philosophers reject.
It is not a vice that requires extraordinary strength of character,
it is a vice that is sometimes better recognized from a third- than
from a first-person perspective, and it is vice that can motivate
offenses against other human beings as well as against God. This
does not, however, show that pride is an ordinary vice in
Shklar's sense, for the ordinary vices are vices about whose exercise Shklar thinks liberal democrats should be especially concerned. Various liberal democratic theories endorse various measures of equality. All, however, take it as axiomatic that citizens
are political equals and that offenses against others are offenses
against one's peers, one's equals. To show that pride poses a
threat to liberal democracy, it is necessary to show, not just that
it can motivate offenses against other human beings, but also
that it can motivate offenses against those to whom the agent
stands in a relation of equality. 25
It might be objected that Aquinas's account of pride rules out
this possibility. I noted in the last section that Aquinas numbers
among pride's effects a failure to subject oneself to the rule of
one's superior. The claim that pride presupposes relationships of
superiority and inferiority is suggestive. It suggests that acts of
pride are acts in which one offends one's superiors by flouting
their authority. It also suggests that relations of authority and
subjection are established by a traditional hierarchy or by natural supremacy in intellectual endowment, wisdom, or moral
discernment. Aquinas's explicitly political writing does not discuss feudal hierarchies in any detail. There is, however, a passage in the First Part of the Summa where Aquinas discusses differences in natural endowment and argues that, at least under
very special circumstances, the more gifted should, in virtue of
their superiority, exercise political authority. 26 These remarks
25 I am in Allen Wood's debt for raising this objection.

The special circumstances Aquinas takes up in this passage are those found in the
state of innocence; cf. STh I, q. 96, aa. 3 and 4.
26

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might seem to support the view that the societies Aquinas envisioned were those in which positions of authority were to be
occupied by those in some way better and that pride, to the
extent that Aquinas thinks it a social sin, must be understood as
an offense against those above one in a social hierarchy of this
kind.
Aquinas's treatment of pride can surely be developed to show
how that vice could be exhibited in meritocratic or hierarchically ordered societies. But whether this objection succeeds
depends upon whether Aquinas's account of pride's effects
entails that that vice can be exhibited only under such social circumstances. This depends crucially upon what Aquinas means
by "superior" in the passage on which the objection is premised.
The passage from the Summa, which I used to fortify the objection, presupposes a distinction between supremacy in natural
endowment and the authority to make rules and prescribe conduct. This distinction shows the ambiguity of the word "superior." Aquinas might be referring to: (1) someone who has
supremacy in natural endowments; (2) someone who has authority to promulgate rules; or (3) someone who has authority in
virtue of having supremacy. What effect Aquinas associates with
pride when he speaks of a refusal to obey the rule of one's superior is correspondingly ambiguous.
It is clear that Aquinas does not think that refusal to obey
someone who has supremacy but not authority is an effect of
pride. Pride is a sin, in Aquinas's view, and the effect of which
he speaks is a moral failure as well. If failure to obey one's superior were a failure to obey someone with supremacy but not
authority, then Aquinas would be committed to the view that it
is wrong to disobey someone who has no authority. But he cannot mean this, for that one person has authority over another
itself means that it is wrong for the latter to disobey the former.
(1) is therefore not the proper interpretation of "superior."
Perhaps Aquinas intends (3), and perhaps the effect of pride he
has in mind is a refusal to obey someone who has authority in
virtue of natural supremacy. This interpretation, however, seems
problematic for Aquinas's account of the religious life. Aquinas
discusses monastic obedience to religious superiors, using the

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same Latin word for "superior" in that context (STh II-II, q. 161,
a. 6). Nowhere does he claim that religious superiors hold their
positions only in virtue of natural supremacy. Aquinas thinks
that those in religious life are bound to obey their superiors
regardless of their natural gifts and that they offend against
humility when they fail to do so (STh II-II, q. 161, a. 6). This
does suggest-in accord with (3)-that Aquinas thinks superiors
are those who have authority, and that the effect he has in mind
is a failure to obey a rule laid down by a duly constituted authority. It also suggests-contra (3)-that Aquinas thinks authority
can be grounded in a number of ways: there is the authority of
those who hold political office, the authority of those who hold
ecclesiastical office and, as his discussion of divine commands
indicates, the authority of God. It therefore suggests that (2) is a
better interpretation of "superior" than are (1) and (3). Thus
Aquinas does think pride requires a context in which there are
moral authorities who promulgate rules that are morally binding. Nothing in his discussion of pride, however, commits him to
a view about the origin of that authority.
Thus nothing in Aquinas's discussion of pride commits him to
the view that pride must be understood against the background
of a feudal, aristocratic, or meritocratic hierarchy. He did not
have democratic societies in mind when he authored his treatment of pride. But since nothing in that treatment commits him
to a view about the origins of authority, nothing precludes that
authority from being democratic in origin. Indeed there is nothing in Aquinas's account of pride that rules out any account of
legitimate moral authority.
The source of this authority is irrelevant to Aquinas's discussion of pride because his emphasis is on breaches of precepts
rather than on affronts to persons bearing authority. Thus
Aquinas is silent on whether or not the authority who promulgated the rule need know whether the rule has been broken for
its breach to count as an effect of pride. He does not connect
pride with offending or provoking the person who promulgated
the broken rule. The effect of pride with which Aquinas is concerned is not a sort of lese-majeste, but is a failure to submit to
rules that are authoritative. His treatment of that vice can there-

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fore be exploited to describe or explain the violation of a wide
variety of moral injunctions. It can even be used to describe or
explain breaches of rules that define relationships of political
and social equality.
To see how Aquinas's discussion of pride might be thus
employed, recall that at the opening of the paper I canvassed
three reasons for pride's neglect. One is the belief that pride is
primarily or exclusively a sin committed against God. Another is
the claim, which I located in Nussbaum's work, that pride is not
a useful concept for describing and explaining our moral and
political experience. Still another is that some philosophers take
partiality or egoism to be the primary motive of immoral action.
I have tried to rebut the first of these claims. Let us now look
more closely at the second and third.
For contemporary Kantianism, morally authoritative principles, principles that we are obligated to follow, are those that
would be adopted in an idealized moral point of view. That point
of view is one in which the legitimate interests of all are equally
taken into account. Kantian views that rely on this moral standpoint use it to define relations of equality among persons: To
treat others as equals is to govern one's actions toward them by
principles that would be accepted in the initial standpoint of
equality. Therefore to act in accord with rules that are morally
authoritative is to treat others as equals. To breach a morally
authoritative rule, a rule that would be accepted in the moral
standpoint, is to fail to treat someone as an equal. I mentioned
early in this section that liberals characteristically take offenses
against other human beings as offenses against one's equals. We
now see how the neo-Kantianism I have been describing satisfies
this condition. Since failure to treat others as one's equals is
equated with immoral action, failure to treat another as one's
equal is a failure to treat her as she ought to be treated.
Everyone, then, ought to be treated as one's equal; any offense
against another is an offense against those to whom one stands,
or should stand, in a relation of equality.
Kantians sometimes connect moral motivation with an interest in acting on principles that would be adopted in the moral

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standpoint. 27 It is a corollary of this view that immoral motivation is connected with acting on maxims that favor only some or
that favor only the agent in question. The essence of immoral
motivation, according to this version of Kantianism, is what
Nagel calls "partiality." 28 Now it is clear how neo-Kantians like
Nagel describe the motive for offenses against those to whom the
agent stands in a relation of equality. To fail to treat others as
one's equal is to act immorally. Since partiality is the essence of
immoral motivation, partiality is the motive for failing to treat
others as one's equal. It is the motive for offenses committed
against those to whom one should stand in a relationship of
equality. Partiality, on this view, is the root of the ordinary vices.
In Equality and Partiality, Nagel employs the distinction
between partiality and the impersonal standpoint to analyze
many of the most salient moral and political problems facing
contemporary liberal democracies. 29 The second and third reasons for pride's neglect are therefore connected. Nagel 's neoKantian claims about immoral motivation derive confirmation
from their suitability for doing precisely what Nussbaum claims
pride cannot: describe some of our most important moral experiences.
But how informative an explanation is provided by appeal to
impartiality? Note first that partiality must be a concept of
extremely broad application. Ordinarily moral failures that are
due to incontinence are thought to be interestingly different from
those that are not. Yet partiality, if it is the motive of all wrong
action, must motivate acts of incontinence as well as the intentional and unjust neglect of another. Those who rely on partiality thus blur rather than explain an interesting moral distinction.
Moreover, appeals to partiality seem unhelpful in describing and
explaining intentional injustice. Saying of someone who intentionally and unjustly neglected the legitimate claims of another
27 T.M. Scanlon "Contractualism and Utilitarianism," in Amartya K. Sen and Bernard
A. 0. Williams, eds., Utilitarianism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1982), 103-28.
28 In the title of Thomas Nagel, Equality and Partiality (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1992).
29 N age! 's chapter 11 is exemplary in this respect.

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269

that she did so from partiality to her own projects is unilluminating.
A more useful explanation would begin with the claim that
there are a number of things human beings characteristically
seek-money, pleasures of various sorts, their own excellence.
Sometimes human beings pursue these objects well and sometimes badly. Immoral action consists in the failure to pursue such
things well. Helpful explanations of immoral behavior show
where in the pursuit such failure occurred; a properly rich moral
vocabulary would have resources adequate to the details of such
explanation.
Consider the failure to act on principles that would be accepted in the moral point of view. This is, according to Nagel, a failure to act on morally authoritative principles. Since one of
pride's effects is a failure to obey such principles, it is an instance
of the pride-in-effect that Aquinas thought characteristic of
every moral failure. Since it is also a failure to treat others as
one's equals, this shows that pride is a concept Kantians could
use to describe offenses against those to whom one stands in a
relationship of equality. But this shows only that that concept is
minimally useful since it does not show that pride is a concept
that can be employed to describe the motive or the reasons for
failing to treat others as equals. Aquinas introduced the notion of
pride in effect, after all, to show how pride could be present in
sins for which it was not the motive. The usefulness of pride in
describing motives depends upon the presence of pride's characteristic affects as well as its effects.
Disregard for the claims of impartiality is sometimes intentional. Someone might intentionally refuse to adopt a point of
view according to which she is one among others whose interests
are to be equally taken into account. She might intentionally
refuse to act from principles that would be chosen in that point
of view and thereby refuse to regard others as her equals. Such a
case could present some of the affects of pride, even if the agent's
action is ultimately motivated by something other than an undue
desire for her own excellence. To see this, note first that Aquinas
distinguishes two elements in an instance of moral failure. One
is what he calls a "turn toward" (conversio ad) the end of the sin-

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ful action: the turn toward money that is not one's own or sex
with another's spouse, for example. The other is the "turn away"
from what ought to be chosen. Thus even in cases in which the
ultimate motive is greed or lust, for example, Aquinas would
think it important to explain why the agent was not deterred by
moral principles prohibiting that act (cf. De Malo, q. 8, a. 1, ad
1). Pride, Aquinas thinks, can sometimes provide the requisite
explanation.
Consider someone who refuses to pay her taxes because she
does not want to give up the sum of money in question. Greed
explains why the agent does not want to part with her money but
it does not entirely explain her refusal to pay her taxes.
Performance of this act of greed depends, not only upon an
excessive desire for money, but also upon a refusal to be submit
to tax laws that give legal force to certain principles of equity.
How is this refusal to be explained?
Suppose that, when asked why she does not obey the tax code,
the agent responds caustically that tax laws apply only to "little
people." If this were an instance of incontinence in which the
agent were carried away by a passion for money so strong that
she neglected the law, then the affects Aquinas associates with
avarice would explain both the elements of her act that he distinguishes. The case I have described is not, however, such an
instance and another explanation is required. It seems more
plausible to say that the agent refused to submit to the law
because she "despises others and wants to stand out." Her
remark about "little people" and its caustic tone testify that she
despises others or has contempt for them. Such contempt is, as
we saw, one of the affects of pride. The agent also wants to stand
out or wants to believe that she does. This may take a number of
forms. Perhaps she wants to believe that she will be not be
caught, or that if she were caught she would not be prosecuted
and punished as others would be, or simply that she need not
regard herself as bound by the same obligations as others. Which
of these is correct is immaterial for present purposes. The point
is that the agent's contempt for others and her desire to believe
that she stands out from them are one of the forms of pride that
Aquinas enumerates. It is therefore pride in one of its forms that

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explains why the agent would not obey the law. Pride-in-affect
thus explains, or partly explains, her intentional refusal to submit to rules that are authoritative.
Next, note that the agent refuses to regard others as her
equals. She evinces contempt for them as somehow beneath her,
refusing to acknowledge herself as their peer under the law.
Nagel would argue that these manifest a deeper moral failure. It
is a failure to adopt the impersonal point of view from which her
interests, desires, and projects deserve no more consideration
than do anyone else's, a point of view in which parties would
accept those principles of equity and reciprocity to which tax
laws are supposed to give legal force. I have tried to show how
Aquinas's treatment of pride can be employed to state and
explain the diagnosis Nagel offers. The agent's desire to stand
out and to see herself as above others explains why she will not
regard them as her peers. The example shows how pride can be
a fully ordinary vice.
I argued in the previous section that pride is a vice of which
one can be unaware or about which one can be self-deceived.
Pride is sometimes, according to Aquinas, a vice better recognized from the third-person perspective. Cases of the sort I have
just described, cases in which the affects of pride are present
though pride is not the primary motive of the action, illustrate
how such self-deception or opacity might come about, even in an
agent who carefully examines her own motives. In my example,
pride played an ancillary role, removing an impediment to bad
action in the form of a moral principle. Though its affects were
present and though the failure to obey moral principles was
intentional, it is easy to see how both the effects and the affects
of pride might be obscured. Greed was the agent's primary
motive, inclining her to the money, the object of the bad action.
It is greed that the agent might naturally be inclined to notice in
examining the motive of her action.
There are also cases in which pride plays an even larger role
in unjust action than it does in the previous example. In Equality
and Partiality, Nagel explores the possibility of a more egalitarian distribution of goods than currently characterizes first world
economies. Significantly egalitarian changes in these economies
/

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are, he thinks, unlikely, for "they require too exclusive a reliance
on egalitarian impartiality for support of the economic framework. "30 For present purposes, the pressing question is what
motives prevent people's acting on the demands of what Nagel
calls "egalitarian impartiality."
There is no one answer to this question, for a number of causes and motives are responsible. I want to suggest, however, that
pride bulks large among them. Consider the possibility that large
numbers of people in a given society take wealth and material
goods to be evidence that they excel. They pursue and retain
these things in part because they take the accumulation of
wealth and other material goods to be signs of their superiority
to those who lack them. Suppose further that, because of the
widespread association of material possessions with personal
excellence, there is widespread resistance to political attempts at
a redistribution of wealth and income that is more egalitarian
and, ex hypothesi, just. We need not suppose that this resistance
takes a violent form; it suffices to imagine that egalitarian political initiatives fail to attract the support they should in democratic processes.
The notion of pride as Aquinas conceives it is crucial to
describing and explaining this phenomenon. Recall that
Aquinas's account of pride points to a number of ways in which
the desire for one's own excellence can be faulty. One of those is
a misapprehension of the standards by which human superiority is assessed. Aquinas would argue that someone who takes
material possessions as the standard of human excellence makes
such a mistake. To defend this claim, he need not argue that possession of material goods is no part of human excellence. He can
grant that it is, and argue for the weaker claim that there other
elements of human excellence that must also be pursued and that
limit the acquisition of material goods. This weaker claim is
surely correct: however human excellence is to be measured, it is
not by the accumulation of material goods alone. Those whose
desire for their own excellentia, whose desire to "stand out,''
30

Nagel, Equality and Partiality, 123.

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273

takes the form of a desire to accumulate as many such goods as
they can are therefore mistaken about in what excellentia consists. Their desire for excellentia is therefore defective.
Suppose, moreover, that their desire for excellentia (thus mistakenly conceived) leads them to ignore the legitimate claims of
others. It is responsible, we might suppose, for their failure to
support those attempts at redistribution that are demanded by
"impartiality." Their desire for excellentia is therefore responsible for their failure to act on, or support the institution of, those
principles that are morally authoritative. Pride therefore
explains why they fail to heed the principles impartiality dictates. Given the neo-Kantian claim that to conform to such principles is to treat others as equals, then pride-undue desire for
excellentia-is responsible for a failure to give others their due
as one's political equals.
I have argued that Aquinas's account of pride can be exploited to describe and explain precisely the sort of moral failures
with which liberal and democratic theorists should be concerned. These are failures to treat others as one's social and political equals, failures to obey rules that are passed by democratically constituted authority and that give force to moral principles that would be recognized in the impersonal point of view.
Aquinas's account of pride can therefore do what Martha
Nussbaum claimed traditional treatments of pride cannot:
enable us to describe and explain important elements of our
moral and political experience.
I opened this paper with an allusion to Edmund Burke's critique of liberalism as a doctrine born of pride. I want to conclude
with another appropriation of Burke. The inattention from
which pride now suffers has not, to adopt and adapt a phrase of
Burke's, been a neglect that has proven salutary for contemporary moral philosophy. Rejection of the long tradition of ethical
thought that accorded pride a central place has resulted in the
neglect of an ethical concept that would greatly enhance liberals'
ability to describe and explain actions that are wrong by their
own lights. How the notion of pride might be grafted on to a
body of thought that takes partiality to be the essence of immoral
motivation is a question that I cannot consider here. I do hope to

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have shown, however, that the vice of pride can be an ordinary
vice and that the concept of pride is worth incorporating into the
moral vocabulary of liberal and democratic theory.

THE ORIGINALITY OF ST. THOMAS'S POSITION ON
THE PHILOSOPHERS AND CREATION
TIMOTHY

B. NOONE

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

A

S IS WELL KNOWN, Thomas Aquinas stands out from
his contemporaries in his apparent willingness to defend
the possibility of an eternal but created universe,
although, like all orthodox Christian believers, he affirmed that
the world had a temporal beginning in the light of Scriptural
teaching. That Thomas Aquinas defended the possibility of an
eternal creation was amply demonstrated over a decade ago by
Fr. John Wippel, who pointed to Aquinas's discussion of creation and endless temporal duration in the De aeternitate mundi,
a work written in 12 71 or earlier. 1 More recently, Professor Mark
Johnson wrote an article in which he concluded that, no matter
what doctrine the historical Aristotle may have held, St. Thomas
consistently attributes a doctrine of creation to Aristotle. 2 Most
recent of all have come a pair of important studies by Wilks and
Macintosh defending the coherence of Thomas's claim that the
1 John F. Wippel, "Did Thomas Aquinas Defend the Possibility of an Eternally
Created World? (The De aeternitate mundi Revisited)," The Journal of the History of
Philosophy 19 (1981): 21-37; on the date for Aquinas's De aeternitate mundi, see James
A. Weisheipl, "The Date and Context for Aquinas' De aeternitate mundi," in Lloyd P.
Gerson, ed., Graceful Reason: Essays in Ancient and Medieval Philosophy Presented to
Joseph Owens, C.S.S.R., Papers in Medieval Studies, 4 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of
Mediaeval Studies, 1983), 270. Arguments for an earlier dating can be found in Thomas
Bukowski, "An Early Dating for Aquinas' De aeternitate mundi," Gregorianum 51
(1970): 277-303 and more recently, "Understanding St. Thomas on the Eternity of the
World: Help from Giles of Rome?" Recherches de theologie ancienne et medievale 58
(1991): 113-25. The main thesis of this paper is unaffected by the dating of the De aeternitate mundi.
2 Mark F. Johnson, "Did St. Thomas Attribute a Doctrine of Creation to Aristotle?"
The New Scholasticism 63 (1989): 129-55.

275

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world could be both eternal and created, while another pair of
studies by Aersten and van Veldhuijsen have begun to explore
from a more historical perspective the importance of Aquinas's
formulation of the doctrine of creation for understanding his
thought and its distinctiveness. 3 The present paper is intended
not so much to challenge the conclusions of any of these
admirable studies as to put their findings into a wider historical
framework through which we may hope to discover what is
unique in Aquinas's doctrine of creation.
In reading the Scriptum super Sententias of Thomas Aquinas,
one is immediately struck by the novelty of Aquinas's claim that
the philosophers and thus reason itself may reach the conclusion
that the world is created. Such a claim seems quite different from
the account of the philosophical knowledge of creation given by
several of St. Thomas's immediate predecessors and contemporaries. What, then, emboldens Aquinas to make such a claim? Is
Aquinas's reading of the philosophers so original and so superior to that of his contemporaries that he is capable of seeing in the
philosophers a doctrine of creation that they missed? Or does
Aquinas's originality on the philosophical demonstrability of
creation have more to do with a reformulation of the doctrine of
creation? Or does Aquinas both have an original interpretation
of the philosophers and a different understanding of the doctrine
of creation? In an attempt to answer these questions, the present
paper will survey early and mid-thirteenth century views on the
philosophers and the doctrine of creation and compare those
views to Aquinas's position in the Scriptum super Sententias.
The thirteenth-century authors included in this survey are
chosen for their prominence in thirteenth-century thought, not
3 See Ian Wilks, "Aquinas on the Past Possibility of the World's Having Existed
Forever," The Review of Metaphysics 48 (1994): 299-329; J. J. Macintosh, "St. Thomas
and the Traversal of the Infinite," The American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 68
(1994): 157-77; J. A. Aertsen, "The Eternity of the World: The Believing and the
Philosophical Thomas, Some Comments," in J.B. M. Wissink, ed., The Eternity of the
World: In the Thought of Thomas Aquinas and His Contemporaries, Studien und Texte
zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters, Band 27 (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990), 9-19; P. van
Veldhuijsen, "The Question on the Possibility of an Eternally Created World:
Bonaventura and Thomas Aquinas," in The Eternity of the World, 20-38.

ST. THOMAS ON PHILOSOPHERS AND CREATION

277

for any lasting influence over the centuries. Hence some of the
authors singled out for special treatment may be known to many
of us only by name because they have long since been overshadowed by later figures. The justification for their inclusion here is
that, however obscure they may be to us, they provide the immediate background for Aquinas's writings, since they are the
authors whom Aquinas and the contemporaries he is addressing
are reading and against whose opinions Aquinas formulated his
own ideas. Authors from both Oxford and Paris are included,
moreover, to give breadth to the survey and as a corrective to the
prevailing but regrettable tendency to study the two major censpeculative thought in isolation,
ters of thirteenth-century
despite recent research demonstrating the influence they exerted
upon each other. 4 The authors will be treated approximately in
chronological order beginning first with Paris, then continuing
with Oxford, and finally returning to Paris. From Paris, we shall
consider the secular masters William of Auxerre, Philip the
Chancellor, and William of Auvergne, the Franciscan theologians Alexander of Hales and St. Bonaventure, and the
Dominican St. Albert the Great. From Oxford, we shall examine
the writings of the secular master and later bishop of Lincoln
Robert Grosseteste and the Franciscan master Richard Rufus,
who provides a convenient bridge between the two centers since
he taught at both.
As a preliminary to a discussion of these thinkers, we must
recall their immediate situation. A wealth of information regarding philosophical doctrines had been put at their disposal by the
recent translation of the Aristotelian treatises, the commentaries
upon them, and the independent philosophical works of Jewish
and Islamic philosophers such as Alfarabi, Avicenna, Averroes,
4 See, for example, Servus Gieben's articles documenting the use of Grosseteste's writings by Gilbert of Tournai, a Parisian master: Camille Berube and Servus Gieben,
"Guibert de Tournai et Robert Grosseteste: sources inconnues de la doctrine de )'illumination suivi de )'edition critique de trois chapitres du Rudimentum doctrinae de Guibert
de Tournai," Sanctus Bonaventura: 1274-1974 (Grottaferrata:
Collegium S.
Bonaventurae, 1973), 627-54; Servus Gieben, "Four Chapters on Philosophical Errors
from the Rudimentum doctrinae of Gilbert of Tournai, O.Min. (died 1284)," Vivarium 1

(1963): 141-64.

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Avicebron, and Moses Maimonides. Indeed, the direct access
that these theologians enjoyed to philosophers such as Aristotle
made necessary a reappraisal of what philosophy was and rendered judgments of earlier theologians, such as Peter Lombard,
obsolete. Regarding the doctrine of creation, for example,
Lombard had reported that Plato posited three principles of the
universe-matter,
Idea, and the Artificer, while Aristotle,
according to Lombard, posited only two principles-matter and
species, but had also a "third" that Lombard called the operatorium.5Such a simplified account of what the philosophers taught
was no longer sufficient when one could read their works in
Latin translations and understand the complexity and richness
of their doctrines. Another point we should bear in mind as we
approach these theologians is that, in response to the Albigensian
heresy and the influx of Islamic and Greek philosophical ideas,
the Church had reaffirmed her traditional teaching in clear and
precise terms at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215: God had
through His Omnipotence created the world out of nothing at
the beginning of time. 6 In turning to these thinkers, then, we
shall be interested to see, in light of these developments, what
they understand the philosophers, especially Aristotle, to say
about the origin of the universe and how they relate what they
understand to be the philosophical view of the universe to the
doctrine of creation.
I. PARIS: THE EARLIER TRADITION, 1220-40

First, let us see what view prominent theologians of this period take of philosophical accounts of the universe's origin. Three
different approaches to the philosophers were taken. In the ear5 Peter Lombard, Sententiae in IV libris distinctae, ed. tertia ad fidem codicum restituta (Grottaferrata: Collegium S. Bonaventurae, 1971), II, dist. 1, cap. 1-cap. 3 (330-31).
6 " ••• [Credimus in] unum universorum principium: creator omnium visibilium et
invisibilium, spiritualium et corporalium: qui sua omnipotenti virtute simul ab initio
temporis utramque de nihilo condidit creaturam, spiritualem et corporalem, angelicam
videlicet et mundanam, ac deinde humanam, quasi communem ex spiritu et corpore
constitutam" (Henricus Denzinger and Adolfus Schonmetzer, eds. Enchiridion symbolorum, definitionum, et declarationum: de rebus fidei et morum, 34th ed. [Freiburg:
Herder, 1967], 259, n. 800).

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2 79

liest period theologians such as William of Auxerre simply compared and contrasted the views of Plato, Aristotle, and the other
philosophers to the doctrine of creation by pointing out that the
philosophers believed in an eternal and necessary universe. The
ultimate source of the philosophers' error, William tells us in his
highly influential Summa aurea, was in their failure to alight
upon the proper analogy for understanding the Divine Activity;
God causes the world not in the manner that a physical cause
gives rise to an effect but through His Will and Intelligence. 7 As
to Aristotle, besides mentioning him as the author of the opinion
that the world is eternal, William devotes a section to the magistri philosophi, scilicet peripatetici, who argued that since the
sufficient reasons for creation were present ab aeterno, namely
the Divine Power, Will, and Wisdom, creatures themselves must
have existed from eternity. Again, William blames the philosophers for failing to see that the act of creation is at root a voluntary act. 8
A quite different approach, as Richard Dales has recently
reminded us,9 was taken by other theologians writing slightly
later. This second group of theologians, led by such luminaries as
Philip the Chancellor and Alexander of Hales, advanced a much
more benign interpretation of Aristotle. On this interpretation,
the notion that the world is eternal is not truly Aristotle's opinion but one that has been foisted upon him. According to their
view, all Aristotle really meant to claim was that the mobile,
motion, and time are coeval; that if there was something mobile
there would be motion and time and they are perpetual in the
sense that, on natural principles at least, there would be no rea7 Magistri Guillelmi Altissiodorensis, Summa aurea, ed. Jean Riballier (Grottaferrata;
Paris: Editiones Collegii S. Bonaventurae ad Claras Aquas; Editions du Centre de la
Recherche Scientifique, 1982), lib. II, tom. 1, tract. 1, cap. 2 (18-21).
8 Magistri Guillelmi Altissiodorensis, Summa aurea, II, tom. 2, appendix i (ed.
Riballier, 715-16).
9 Richard C. Dales, Medieval Discussions of the Eternity of the World, vol. 18 of Britt's
Studies in Intellectual History (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1990), 57-70; for the same observation earlier, see Gedeon Gal; "Commentarius in M etaphysicam Aristotelis, cod. Vat. lat.
4538: Fons doctrinae Richardi Rufi," A rchivum Franciscanum H istoricum 43 (1950): 14
n.1.

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TIMOTHY B. NOONE

son to think they would cease or end. Furthermore, there is the
suggestion in Philip's Summa de bono that the reasoning of
Aristotle never reaches the point of asking why the mobile exists,
but that philosophy simply remains content with the conclusion
that motion originates from something immobile. 10 In distinguishing Aristotle's approach to the question of origins from the
theological approach based on Church teaching, both Philip and
Alexander allowed for an accommodation, as Dales aptly terms
it, of Aristotle's natural philosophy within Christian intellectual
circles that was to prove quite popular.
Finding any such accommodation of the Stagirite 's philosophy unpalatable, a final group of theologians, the most prominent of whom is the bishop of Paris, William of Auvergne, maintained that Aristotle meant what he appeared to say in the
Physics and claimed that not only Aristotle but all his followers
conceived of the universe as eternal in that it had neither a
beginning of its motion nor of its being. 11
Turning from the matter of philosophical opinions about the
world to the doctrine of creation proper, we find continuity and
consensus rather than discontinuity and disagreement. The first
10 Philippi Cancellarii, Summa de bono, ed. Nicolai Wicki, vol. 2 in Opera philosophica mediae aetatis selecta (Berne: Editiones Francke, 1985), "De bono naturae," q. 3 (49:
48-54): "Haec enim est intentio secundum proprietatem illius philosophiae ut ostendatur
mobile et motum et tempus esse coaequeva, neque in amplius possunt rationes quae ibi
sumuntur ex principiis illius philosophiae. Quod si ipsum mobile esset aeternum, motus
esset aeternus et tempus. Nonfuit autem de proprietate illius philosophiae investigare
exitum primi mobilis in esse et sic separare mobile ab immobili, ut in planetis, sed quod
motus sit ab immobili. Nee determinat quod ille motor sit prima causa" (emphasis
added). Philip is probably one of the proximate sources, if not the ultimate source, of the
opinion expressed in later theological literature that Aristotle's God is simply a cause of
motion, not a cause of the being of the heavens.
11 Guillelmi Alverni episcopi Parisiensis, De universo, tom. 1 in Opera omnia, (Amiens:
Hotot, 1674), Secunda pars primae partis principalis, cap. 8 (690, col. 2, H): "Quidquid
igitur dicatur, et quicumque conentur excusare Aristotelem, haec indubitanter fuit eius
sententia, quod mundus est aeternus et quod non coepit esse; et de motu similiter sensit,
et Avicenna post eum. Et adduxerunt rationes et probationes ad hoc. Similiter et alii
expositores eiusdem Aristotelis id ipsum senserunt atque fecerunt." On the interpretation of this text and evidence that Grosseteste was not quite as singular in his opposition
to the accommodation of Aristotle as Dales proposes, see Roland J. Teske, S.J., "William
of Auvergne on the Eternity of the World," The Modern Schoolman 68 (1990): 187-205,
especially 197-99.

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281

of the four theologians we have been considering, William of
Auxerre, discusses the possibility of an eternal created world in
a question of his Summa aurea devoted to the work of the First
Day. William begins by suggesting that it was unfitting for God
to create from all eternity since this would make a creature like
the Creator in something, namely, duration. Yet this unfittingness is soon transformed by William into something approximating impossibility:
Moreover, it is not proper [non autem sic debet] for something that is
from something else [ab aliquo] to be equal to the thing from which it
arises, although that which is out of it [de illo] may have such equality.
This is clear in the case of a human being who can well make from himself, that is out of his own substance, another equal himself, but cannot
make equal to himself other things which are not out of him. Know
that things are the same way with God. For what is out of His very Self,
as is his Son, is equal to Him; what, however, is from Him can be made
equal to Him in no way [nullatenus ei aequari potest]. 12

Philip the Chancellor develops a slightly different line of reasoning to account for why there should not be an eternal created
world which, through its subsequent restatement in the
Quaestiones of Alexander of Hales, will become highly influential within the Franciscan school at Paris. The basic insight of
Philip is that to claim something comes to be from something
else (ab aliquo) is tantamount to saying that the thing in question
passes from non-existence to existence (de non esse in esse), and
this in turn is taken to imply necessarily that the thing that
comes to be has a finite duration. 13 Alexander of Hales restates
this argument in succinct terms:
12 "Non autem sic debet esse ut quod est ab aliquo adaequetur ei, Iicet quod de illo est,
ei possit aequiparari, sicut apparet in homine qui bene facit de se, id est de sua substantia, hominem aequalem sibi. Sed alia quae non sunt de ipso, non potest facere aequalia
sibi. Eodem modo intellige in Deo. Quod enim de ipso est, ut Filius eius, aequale est ei;
quod autem ab ipso est, nullatenus ei aequari potest" (Guillelmi Altissiodorensis, Summa
aurea, lib. II, tom. 1, tract. 8, cap. 2, quaest. 1, art. 1 [ed. Riballier, 176]).
13 Philippi Cancellarii, Summa de bono, De bono naturae, q. 3 (ed. Wicki 51): "Esse
enim ab aliquo, non de ipso, est exire de non esse in esse. Sed nullum tale aeternum est.
Habere enim principium non esse et habere principium durationis convertibilia sunt;
mensura enim accipitur non ex parte principii quod est ens, sed secundum quod esse est
inter duplex non esse."

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TIMOTHY B. NOONE

Wherefore, we should note that 'to be out of nothing' is part of the very
nature of a creature and for this reason 'not to have a beginning' is
repugnant to the creature itself, since that which is out of nothing has
being after non-being and thus has a beginning. 14

Indeed, Alexander uses his account of a creature's nature to
answer a perennial problem in speculative theology. If God suffers no lack of knowledge or power and possesses an immutable
will, then we must allow that, since He is the author of the universe, all that is required for the universe to come into being,
namely, God's knowing it, ability to produce it, and willingness
to produce it, have been actual from all eternity. Yet if all that
has been required for the universe to be actually produced has
been present from all eternity and nothing ex hypothesi is capable of thwarting God's Will since He is the Supreme Principle of
the universe, we must then also grant that the world has existed
from all eternity. To solve this seemingly incontrovertible objection to the theory of creatio de novo, Alexander does not appeal,
as had earliertheologians such as William of Auxerre, 15 simply to
the Divine Will as the reason why the world is of finite duration
in the past. Instead, he claims that God cannot make an eternal
world because eternality is incompatible with a created world:
To the objection that the aforesaid three things [God's Knowledge,
God's Power, and God's Will] are sufficient in the order of actual existence to bring things forth into being, I say that [the claim that the
aforesaid three things suffice] is true, but the fact that things have not
existed from eternity arises from the incompatibility and opposition [ex
repugnantia et oppositione] of the creature [itself] to eternality. For a
creature does not simply connote 'being from another' (indeed, in this

14 "Uncle notandum est quod esse de nihilo de natura creaturae est, et ideo ipsi creaturae repugnat non habere principium, quia quod est de nihilo habet esse post non-esse,
et ita habet principium" (Alexandri de Hales, Quaestio de duratione mundi, ed. Donald
Melvin Nathanson [unpublished Ph.D diss., "Alexander de Hales: 'Quaestiones de aeternitate, aevo, et tempore et de duratione mundi'" (Univ. of Southern California, May
1986)], 66; Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale MS 16406, f. 6rb [=P]).
15 Guillelmi Altissiodorensis, Summa aurea, lib. II, tom. 2, app. 1 (ed. Riballier 716).

ST. THOMAS ON PHILOSOPHERS AND CREATION

283

way both the Son and the Holy Spirit who are from the Father would
be creatures) but in his 'being from another' the creature also connotes
'being from nothing.' Wherefore, it is necessary that a creature have a
beginning.16
Presumably what Alexander intends by the incompatibility is
that a creature, if its nature is to arise from nothing, must have
being after non-being and thus must have the property of finite
duration. On this basis, it would indeed be logically impossible
for God to create an eternal creature (or world) since to do so
would mean that God would create a thing both limited and
unlimited in its past temporal duration.
The final Parisian theologian we have been considering from
this period, William of Auvergne, also tries to argue that the
nature of a creature is incompatible with eternality. 11 His proofs,
however, are more Avicennian in character and are part of a
larger effort to prove the finite duration of the universe, since,
unlike Philip the Chancellor and Alexander Hales, he understands the Aristotelian arguments to constitute a direct and
immediate threat to the truth of the Christian doctrine of creation.18
16 "Quod obicitur quod praedicta tria sufficiunt ex parte esse ad producendum res in
esse, dico quod verum est, sed quod res non fuerunt ab aeterno, hoc est ex repugnantia et
oppositione creaturae ad aeternalitatem, quia creatura non solum importat esse ab alio,
quia sic Filius et Spiritus Sanctus qui sunt a Patre essent creaturae, sed in hoc quod est
esse ab alio, importat esse de nihilo. Propter quod necesse est ipsum [sc. mundum] habere
initium" (Alexandri de Hales, Quaestio de duratione mundi, ad tertium, [Nathanson ed.,
68-69]; P, f. 6va [Punctuation altered from that found in Nathanson]; cf. Albertus
Magnus, Physica VIII, tract. 1 cap. 1, ed. Paul Hossfeld [Cologne: Aschendorff, 1993],
SSOb-Sla).
17 "Quare manifestum est quod a parte mundi fuit istud impedimentum cuius natura
non fuit ab aeterno creabilis nee susceptibilis aeternitatis; et hoc declarabitur tibi in
praenominato capitulo non solum de mundo, sed de omni possibili quia ipsa sua natura
quae est possibilitas prohibitum est ab aeternitate" (Guillelmi Alverni, De universo,
Secunda pars primae partis principalis, cap. 10 [694, col. 2, G-H]).
18 "Quia igitur potentialitas est ei naturalis, erit et non-esse eidem naturale; quare erit
prius [sc. non-esse] ex necessitate quam ipsum esse. Naturalia autem priora sunt
unicuique rei ex necessitate quam adventitia. Similiter et quod per se est unicuique prius
est ei quam quod aliunde, vel ab alio. Quare mundus, his omnibus consideratis, confitetur se accepisse esse post non-esse" (Guillelmi Alverni, De universo, Secunda pars primae
partis principalis, cap. 11 [f. 696, col. 2, G]).

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TIMOTHY B. NOONE

In sum, we find the following features in Parisian theologians
writing during this period. First, they generally acknowledge
that the philosophical account of the universe is one in which the
universe is beginningless, although there is some disagreement
about the exact intention of Aristotle in presenting his proofs of
endless motion and considerable disagreement about the extent
to which the Aristotelian arguments represent a challenge to the
Christian doctrine of creation. Second, the theologians of this
period all develop the doctrine of creation in such a way as to
preclude the possibility of an eternal created world.
II. OXFORD: 1230-50
Since at Oxford the Aristotelian writings had never been subject to any proscription, the early Oxford commentaries and
other studies of the Aristotelian treatises are often remarkable
for their sophistication and manner of anticipating later doctrinal controversies. Among those who either wrote commentaries
on Aristotle or spent considerable time studying Aristotle in this
early period, Robert Grosseteste and Richard Rufus are two of
the leading names. Grosseteste expressed his views on what
Aristotle and other philosophers thought about the origin of the
world in two works, his De finitate temporis and his
Hexremeron, produced between 1228 and 1235. Likewise,
Richard Rufus voiced his opinions in a S criptum super
Metaphysicam written sometime during the 1240s. What we
shall find in both of these authors is considerable and substantial
disagreement about what the philosophers taught, but unanimity on the doctrine of creation itself.
If we turn to Grosseteste 's H exremeron, we find him contrasting the Biblical notion of creation with various philosophical
conceptions of the universe, especially the theories of Plato and
Aristotle. Regarding the philosophical conceptions of the universe, Grosseteste maintains that many of the philosophers, even
the greatest of them, have believed in a multitude of causally distinct, mutually irreducible, and eternally existing principles.
Commenting on the first words of Genesis, Grosseteste claims
that the opening words "In principio" are intended both to strike

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285

down the idea of an eternal existing universe and the notion that
the world has many principles, the two convictions Grosseteste
attributes to the philosophers.
Grosseteste proceeds to support his interpretation of the first
point of philosophical teaching, the eternity of the world, by
appealing to the texts of the philosophers as well as their commentators and the Fathers of the Church who better understood
the philosophers, especially Aristotle, since they, like Grosseteste
himself, read the texts in the original language:
From these authorities . . . it is sufficiently clear that many of the
philosophers asserted along with Aristotle that the world lacks any
temporal beginning. Moses, however, strikes at and defeats them with
the blow of a single word when he says 'In the beginning .... ' We have
brought forward all of these points against certain modern thinkers
who try, contrary to Aristotle himself, his commentators, and likewise
holy writers, to make a Catholic out of Aristotle, the heretic, thinking
most presumptuously and naively that they understand Aristotle more
clearly and interpret him more truly from the corrupt Latin text than
the philosophers, both pagan and Catholic, who knew intimately the
pristine and unsullied Greek text. Let them not, therefore, deceive
themselves and vainly labor to make Aristotle a Catholic, lest they
waste their time and powers of wit, and, while making Aristotle a
Catholic, make of themselves heretics. 19

The other main contention of Grosseteste is that the philosophers posited many eternal principles distinct from God.
Although Grosseteste acknowledges that many of his contemporaries do not interpret the chief philosophers, Plato and Aristotle,
19 "Ex his itaque et multis aliis quae afferri possent nisi prohiberet prolixitas, evidenter patet quod plurimi philosophorum simul cum Aristotele asseruerunt mundum carere
temporis principio; quos unius verbi ictu percutit et elidit Moyses dicens: In principio.
Haec adduximus contra quosdam modernos, qui nituntur contra ipsum Aristotelem et
suos expositores et sacros simul expositores de Aristotele haeretico facere catholicum,
mira caecitate et praesumptione putantes se limpidius intelligere et verius interpretari
Aristotelem ex littera latina corrupta quam philosophos, tam gentiles quam catholicos,
qui eius litteram incorruptam originalem graecam plenissime noverunt. Non igitur se
decipiant et frustra desudent ut Aristotelem faciant catholicum, ne inutiliter tempus
suum et vires ingenii consument, et Aristotelem catholicum constituendo, se ipsos
haereticos faciant" (Robert Grosseteste, Hexremeron, ed. Richard C. Dales and Servus
Gieben [London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1982), I.viii.4 (60-

61)).

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TIMOTHY B. NOONE

in this fashion, he maintains that their confidence in the ancients
is misplaced, relying as it does on a misapprehension of the
philosophers' true intentions:
But these two philosophers are not seen by many to be reproachable in
this matter .... But we should note that what these philosophers
understood in the name of a principle is a lack of origin; and they claim
that a principle is the cause of continued existence for other things; the
principle itself, however, would not be from something, nor from nothing, nor from some beginning in time. Therefore, they were mistaken in
that they posited such a principle, other than God, which was neither
from nothing, nor from something else, nor from some starting point of
existence. For this is a property that belongs to God alone. 20

The doctrine of creation itself undergoes fairly little development in Grosseteste's writings. He is content to juxtapose directly the Christian doctrine of creation with the pagan view of an
eternal uncreated world. He is, however, interested both in casting doubt on the plausibility of the philosophers' notion of an
eternal world 21 and in rejecting any suggestion that the world
could be both made and eternal. Hence he spends a considerable
amount of time in H excemeron describing and then refuting the
position of the later Platonists who posited that the world was
both made and coeternal with God. 22 Drawing on the wisdom of
St. Augustine, Grosseteste argues that the world, because it is
composite, gives evidence that it has been made. What has been
20 "Sed hi duo a multis in hac positione non videntur esse reprehensibiles .... Sed sciendum quod hi philosophi intellexerunt in nomine principii carentiam initii; et dixerunt
hoc esse principium quod aliis fuit causa subsistendi; ipsum tamen non esset ex aliquo,
neque ex nihilo, neque a temporis initio. In hoc igitur erraverunt quod posuerunt aliud
a Deo tale principium quod neque esset ex nihilo, neque ex aliquo alio, neque ab aliquo
essendi initio. Hoc enim est solius Dei proprium" (Robert Grossteste, Hexcemeron, l.ix.1
[ed. Dales-Gieben, 63)).
21 See his efforts at criticizing the internal coherence of Aristotle's proofs of eternal
motion in Definitate temporis: Richard C. Dales, "Robert Grosseteste's Treatise Definitate motus et temporis," Traditio 19 (1963): 258-60.
22 Robert Grosseteste, Hexcemeron, I.viii.3 (ed. Dales-Gieben, 59): "Alii autem, ut ipse
[sc. Augustinus) ait, mundum 'quidem factum fatentur, non tamen eum temporis volunt
habere sed suae creationis initium, ut modo quodam vix intelligibili semper sit factus'.
Afferunt etiam quidam de antiquis Platonicis huius rei exemplum .... "

ST. THOMAS ON PHILOSOPHERS AND CREATION

287

made ifactum est), however, must acquire being after non-being
and so must have a beginning in time. 23
As to Richard Rufus's attitude toward the philosophical theory of the universe and its connection to the notion of creation,
we have a quite handy text in which Rufus illustrates both. In
the third lectio of the second distinction, bk. 12 of his Scriptum,
Rufus asks pointedly whether Aristotle posited creation. Rufus's
answer may be terse, but it presents quite a distinctive and innovative interpretation of the philosophers-indeed, one strikingly
similar to that found later in the writings of Albert the Great and
Thomas Aquinas-while upholding contemporary viewpoints
on the relation of philosophical thought to the doctrine of creation:
To this question, we should reply that all the philosophers, however
many there have been, agreed in this: out of nothing, nothing comes
and God is the cause of all things and of prime matter. They posited,
however, the Cause and the caused as being simultaneous, yet Cause
preceding the caused by nature. And they used to give the following
example. If a foot were in the dust from all eternity, its trace would be
there too from all eternity; and, nonetheless, the trace would be caused
by the foot. Likewise, if there were light from all eternity, there would
also be resplendence; yet the resplendence would be but the resplendence of light. And in truth these examples are not rightly applied to
the Creator and the creature, because He can and has made many
things out of nothing. But these examples are rightly said of the Father
and the Son. For John Chrysostom says that the Father is prior to the
Son by reason of causality not nature.' 4

First, we should note that Rufus claims that all the philosophers
thought God was the source of all things, even prime matter.
23 Robert Grosseteste, Hexremeron, I.viii. 7 (ed. Dales-Gieben, 62): "Mundus enim, quia
compositus est, factum esse se clamat. Quod autem factum est, habet esse post non-esse,
et ita essendi initium temporale."
24 "Ad hoc dicendum quod omnes philosophi, quotquot fuerint, in hoc consenserint ex
nihilo nihil fieri, et quod Deus est causa omnium et causa materiae primae. Tamen
posuerunt causam et causatum simul tempore esse, causam tamen causatum antecedere
natura. Et ponebant tale exemplum. Si pes esset ab aeterno in pulvere, esset vestigium
causatum a pede. Similiter si lux esset ab aeterno, esset et splendor et tamen splendor
tantum lucis. Et in veritate ista exempla non recte ponuntur inter Creatorem et creaturam, quia potest omnia facere ex nihilo et multa fecit. Ista au tern exempla proprie dicuntur de Patre et Filio. Di cit enim Ioannes Chrysostom us quod Pater prior Filio causalitate
non natura" (Richard Rufus, Scriptum super Metaphysicam, lib. 12, d. 2, Ject. 3, qu. 1,

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Here Rufus is undoubtedly opposing Grosseteste's interpretation
of philosophical doctrine from whose writings he draws the quotation of John Chrysostom and the analogies for understanding
the philosophical view of the universe. 25 According to
Grosseteste, what the philosophers believed was that there were
principles, such as prime matter, that in no way depended on
God and were co-eternal with Him; according to Rufus, the
philosophers conceive of the universe as entirely causally and
ontologically dependent on God. Second, we should note that
Rufus is not concerned to prove that the philosophers' world is
a beginningless one, although elsewhere he mentions, as does
Grosseteste, a group of thinkers who try to excuse Aristotle. 26
Finally, we should notice that Rufus's answer to the question
asked, whether Aristotle posited creation, is that Aristotle and
the other philosophers had the notion of the universe depending
on God but could not conceive properly the nature of the creature, as something which comes to be out of nothing. Hence
philosophers used metaphors appropriate to the internal processions within the Godhead when talking about the procession of
the world from God. What Rufus is proposing is that the world
of the philosophers is a world that is caused by God but not created, since creation means not simply ontological dependence
but also finite duration in the past, which is taken by Rufus, following Alexander of Hales, to be a necessary feature of anything
that is made out of nothing.
What we have seen in the Oxford writers of this period is differing interpretations
of what the philosophers taught.
Grosseteste advanced an interpretation according to which the
philosophers' universe is an eternal uncreated one having no sinVatican City, Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, MS lat. 4538 [= V], f. 97'"). For the authenticity and dating of the Scriptum super Metaphysicam, see Timothy B. Noone, "Richard
Rufus of Cornwall and the Authorship of the Scriptum super Metaphysicam,"
Franciscan Studies 49 (1989): 55-91, and Rega Wood, "Richard Rufus of Cornwall on
Creation: The Reception of Aristotelean Physics in the West," Medieval Philosophy and
Theology 2 (1992): 1-30.
25 Robert Grosseteste, Hexcemeron, I.viii.6 (ed. Dales-Gieben, 61-62).
26 Richard Rufus, Sc1·iptum super Metaphysicam, XI, d. 2, lect. 1, dubium secundum,
V, f. 95ra: "Et volunt quidam hie excusare Aristotelem sic."

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gle u.ltimate principle, and advised his contemporaries to oppose
any compromise with Aristotelianism on this score. Although
acknowledging the eternality of the philosophers' universe,
Rufus understood the philosophers to say that there was a single
ultimate principle of the universe, namely, God. Yet both writers
have the same notion of creation: creation is the coming to be of
something out of nothing such that the created thing must have
being after non-being and thus be of finite temporal duration in
the past. In this respect, the Oxford authors seem content to rely
on the proofs advanced by the Parisian theologians to show that
the notion of a created thing implies finite duration.

III. PARIS: THE LATER TRADITION: 1241-52
In turning to the scene at Paris from 1241 through the time
that St. Thomas lectured on the Sentences, 1252-56, we
encounter, prior to Thomas himself, two figures whose writings
on the Sentences undoubtedly influenced and affected Thomas's
own: St. Albert the Great, Thomas 's teacher and friend, and St.
Bonaventure, future minister general of the Franciscan order.
Each of these immediate predecessors to Aquinas brings to
fruition many of the doctrinal developments that we have seen
thus far.
St. Albert acknowledges, in his Commentary on the
Sentences, that Plato posits eternal Forms that exist apart from
God's mind. In recounting Aristotle's views, however, it is clear
from the very question he asks that Albert is continuing the
benign interpretation begun by Philip the Chancellor and
Alexander of Hales, for he asks whether Aristotle has sufficiently demonstrated that the world is eternal as is imputed to him
(An Aristoteles sufficienter determinavit mundum esse aeternum
sicut ei imponitur). 21 After outlining, in an order taken from
Moses Maimonides, various arguments through which philosophers prove the eternity of the world, Albert maintains that
27

Albertus Magnus, Commentarius in II Sententiarum, ed. August Borgnet (Paris:

Vives, 1894), d. 1, B, art. 10 (24a).

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Aristotle's arguments simply amount to the claim that the world
did not arise and cannot end through generation and motion and
thus teach nothing contrary to the faith. 28 Furthermore, Albert
finds Lombard's notion, more recently upheld by Grosseteste,
that Aristotle believed there were two (or more) ultimate principles to be without any real basis in Aristotle's texts, for Aristotle
and all the other philosophers (here he is doubtless thinking of
the better philosophers) grant there is one ultimate principle of
the universe. 29
What then of the doctrine of creation? Do the philosophers
hold that the world is created since God is its Ultimate Principle?
Albert's answer here in the Sentences, written in 1246,30 is
emphatically that they do not. The philosophers cannot come to
understand the notion of creation; creation is an opus miraculi
transcending reason and only knowable by faith, although some
probable reasons have been advanced in its favor. 31 Writing
somewhat later in his Physica 32 , however, Albert seems inclined
to say that the more prominent Aristotelians, apparently including Aristotle himself, held that the prime matter together with its
substantial form was produced by God ex nihilo and refers us to
a book by Aristotle entitled De natura deorum. 33 Yet even in his
Physica Albert gives us reason to doubt that he considers this
In II Sent., d. 1, B, art 10 (ed. Borgnet, 29a).
Albertus Magnus, In II Sent., d. 1, B, a. 11 (ed. Borgnet, 30b): " ... Aristoteles in
veritate non dicit hoc, quod tria vel duo sint principia mundi. Sed ipse probat duo non
incepisse per motum, scilicet materiam et motorem primum: et ideo imponitur ei quod
duo dixerit esse ab aeterno"; In II Sent., d. 1, B, a. 10 (ed. Borgnet, 27a): " ... ergo etiamsi concedunt philosophi quod Deus est principium totius mundi, sicut omnes
philosophi concedunt, non est necesse ponere propter hoc mundum incepisse" (emphasis
added).
3° For the date, see James A. Weisheipl, "The Life and Works of St. Albert the Great,"
Albertus Magnus and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays, 1980, ed. James A.
Weisheipl (Toronto: P.I.M.S., 1980), 22.
31 Albertus Magnus, In II Sent., d. 1, A, a. 8 (ed. Borgnet, 22a); d. 1, B, a. 10 (ed.
Borgnet, 29a).
32 1250 is the probable date according to Weisheipl, "Life and Works of St. Albert," 30.
33 Albertus Magnus, Physica, lib. VIII, tract. 1, cap. 4 (ed. Cologne, 557a): "Non autem
negant praecipui Peripateticorum, quin actu simplici praecipue causae primae, essentia
materiae primae cum forma substantiali educta sit de nihilo in esse a Deo: quod etiam
Aristoteles in libro suo De natura deorum mundum a Deo opifice dicit esse creatum."
28 Albertus Magnus,
29

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291

philosophical account of prime matter's origin to be tantamount
to creation. For he hints that both creation and its mode may
exceed the realm of what reason can discern. 34
When we turn to the Commentary on the Sentences of St.
Bonaventure, produced between 1250-1252,35 we find several
features of the earlier traditions being brought together. First, St.
Bonaventure inclines towards the method of interpreting the
philosophers initially advanced by William of Auvergne and
Robert Grosseteste, although he acknowledges the more benign
interpretation found in the writings of his teacher Alexander of
Hales, Albert the Great, and his confrere Richard Rufus. Second,
Bonaventure accepts the notion of creation formulated by
Alexander and, like Grosseteste, directly juxtaposes the notion of
creation with what he considers to be, in all probability, the opinion of the philosophers. In doing so, moreover, he undertakes to
show that creation, when so understood, is simply incompatible
with an eternal world.
In treating the philosophers in the first question of Book II of
his Commentary on the Sentences, St. Bonaventure divides them
into four groups. The first group, the most ancient philosophers,
posited that the world arose out of God Himself, since they could
not conceive of anything coming forth from nothing. Rejecting
the opinion of the first thinkers because it identified the Divine
Essence with matter, a second group of thinkers, led by
Anaxagoras, advocated the theory that the world had arisen
from pre-existing matter and form through the activity of an
34 Albertus Magnus, Physica, lib. VIII, tract. 1, cap. 1 (ed. Cologne, 551a): " ... quia
non procederemus ex probatis vel per se notis, sed potius transcenderemus <ad> ea quae
ratione non valent comprehendi, sicut est creatio et modus creandi omnia simul et
divisim." A similar interpretation of Albert's position on the creation of matter is offered
by Lawrence Dewan, "St. Albert, Creation, and the Philosophers," Laval theologique et
philosophique 40 (1984): 295-307; for an account of how Albert's position developed
from the earlier commentaries on the Sentences and the Physica to the later commentary on the Metaphysics and the Liber de processu universitatis, see Steven C. Snyder,
"Albert the Great: Creation and the Eternity of the World," in Philosophy and the God
of Abraham: Essays in Memory of James A. Weisheipl, O.P., ed. R. James Long (Toronto:
P.l.M.S., 1991), 191-202.
35 For the date of St. Bonaventure's Commentary on the Sentences, see John Francis
Quinn, The Historical Constitution of St. Bonaventure's Philosophy (Toronto: P.l.M.S.,
197 3), 91.

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TIMOTHY B. NOONE

Intelligence that separated the latent forms from their material
conditions. The third school of philosophers, founded by Plato,
advanced a still more sophisticated account of the origin of the
universe according to which there were separate Forms, eternally existing matter, and a Maker that introduced the Forms into
the matter. Aristotle instituted the fourth school of philosophy
whose followers are the Peripatetics. The universe, according to
these philosophers, is made but eternal. 36
Immediately, St. Bonaventure confesses his uncertainty about
how the Aristotelian doctrine of the universe's origin is to be
understood, by openly stating that he is in doubt as to whether
Aristotle posited any creation of matter and form. In the succeeding question which deals with whether the world is eternal,
he gives his most comprehensive treatment of the Peripatetic
philosophy. Recognizing that some more recent authors (moderni) claim that all Aristotle meant by his proofs of eternal
motion is that the order of motion was not brought into being
through generation or any other natural motion, he officially
reserves judgment; but the force of his words indicate that he is
more inclined to accept a harsher interpretation, while the words
themselves suggest that Bonaventure has read Grosseteste's
H exremeron:
And this view [i.e., that matter eternally existed under some form]
seems more reasonable than its opposite, namely, that matter existed
eternally incomplete, bereft of form and divine influence, as some of the
philosophers posited. Indeed, this view seems so reasonable that the
most excellent of the philosophers, Aristotle, fell into this error, at least
as the saints impute it to him, his commentators expound him, and his
own words indicate. 17

36 Saint Bonaventure, Commentarius in II librum Sententiarum, tom. 2 of Opera theologica selecta, ed. Patres Collegii S. Bonaventurae, ed. minor (Florentiae ad Claras
Aquas: Collegium Sancti Bonaventurae, 1938), d. 1, pars 1, art. 1, q. 1 (II: 10b-11a).
·17 "Et magis rationabile est quam suum oppositum, scilicet quod materia fuerit aeternaliter imperfecta, sine forma et divina influentia, sicut posuerunt quidam philosophorum; et adeo rationabilius, ut etiam ille excellentior inter philosophos, Aristoteles, secundum quod Sancti imponunt, et commentatores exponunt, et verba eius praetendunt, in
hunc errorem dilapsus fuerit" (Saint Bonaventure, In II Sent., lib. II, d. 1, pars 1, art. 1,
q. 2, resp. [ed. minor, II: !Sb]).

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Yet the most striking feature of Bonaventure's account of
philosophers is the manner in which he juxtaposes the doctrine
of creation, as he understands it, with the philosophical theory of
origins. According to Bonaventure, only two theories regarding
the origin of the cosmos are really tenable: first, the theory of the
philosophers according to which the world is eternal and the
matter of the universe is without ultimate causal origin; second,
the Christian doctrine of creation according to which the universe depends entirely for its being on God, is produced ex nihi'lo, and is temporally finite in the past. The third possibility,
namely that the world is both produced ex nihilo and eternal,
Bonaventure vehemently rejects on the grounds that such a position is inherently contradictory:
We must reply that to posit that the world is eternal or eternally produced, while positing likewise that all things have been produced ex
nihilo, is altogether opposed to the truth and reason, just as the last reason stated [in the ad oppositum] showed. Indeed, it is so opposed to reason that I do not believe any philosopher, however small his intellectual abilities, took this position. For this involves, in itself, an obvious
contradiction. To posit, however, that the world is eternal on the supposition that matter is eternal seems reasonable and understandable ... :'"

Returning to the last argument in the ad oppositum, we find the
argument to which Bonaventure refers. The argument is an elegant synthesis and restatement of the position of Parisian theologians since the time of William of Auxerre, but is especially
indebted to the Quaestiones of Alexander of Hales. Everything
that depends entirely for its being on something else is produced
by that thing ex nihilo. The world depends entirely for its being
'18 "Respondeo: Dicendum quod ponere mundum aeternum esse sive aeternaliter productum, ponendo res omnes ex nihilo productas, omnino est contra veritatem et
rationem, sicut ultima ratio probat; et adeo contra rationem, ut nullum philosophorum
quantumcumque parvi intellectus crediderim hoc posuisse. Hoc enim implicat in se
manifestam contradictionem. -Ponere autem mundum aeternum, praesupposita aeternitate materiae, rationabile videtur et intelligibile ... "(Saint Bonaventure, In II Sent,,
d, 1, pars 1, art. 1, q, 2, Resp, [ed, minor, II: lSa]), For the proper interpretation of
Bonaventure's position on creation and the eternity of the world, see Stephen Baldner,
"SL Bonaventure on the Temporal Beginning of the World," The New Scholasticism 63
(1989): 206-28.

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TIMOTHY B. NOONE

on God. Hence, the world must be produced ex nihilo. If the
world is produced ex nihilo, it must either arise out of the nihil
as out of matter or out of the nihil as out of a point of origin. The
world cannot arise out of nihil as out of matter. Thus the world
must arise out of nihil as out of a point of origin. If, however, the
world arises out of nihil as out of a point of origin, then the
world has being after non-being. Nothing having being after
non-being can be eternal. The world, as a created thing, has
being after non-being. Therefore, the world, precisely as created
ex nihilo, cannot be eternal:'"
Before exammmg, then, the texts of St. Thomas's
Commentary on the Sentences, we may characterize the tradition that St. Thomas inherited in the following way. There was
considerable disagreement among St. Thomas's predecessors
about how to interpret the recently received philosophical literature regarding the philosophical theory of universe's origin.
Some, led by such figures as Robert Grosseteste and William of
Auvergne, thought that the philosophers believed in an eternal
universe that arose from several distinct co-eternal principles,
one of which was God. Others, such as Philip the Chancellor and
Alexander of Hales, doubted that Aristotle ever meant to claim
that the world was eternal; rather, he simply adduced proofs that
the world could not have arisen out of a process of natural gen" 9 Saint Bonaventure, In II Sent., d. 1, pars 1, art. 1, q. 2 (ed. minor, 15a): " ... impossibile est, quod habet esse post non-esse habere esse aeternum, quoniam hie est implicatio contradictionis; sed mundus habet esse post non-esse; ergo impossibile est esse aeternum. Quod autem habeat esse post non-esse, probatur sic: omne illud quod totaliter
habet esse ab aliquo, producitur ab illo ex nihilo; sed mundus totaliter habet esse a Deo;
ergo mundus ex nihilo; sed non ex nihilo materialiter; ergo originaliter. Quod autem
omne quod totaliter producitur ab aliquo differente per essentiam, habeat esse ex nihilo,
patens est. Nam quod totaliter producitur, producitur secundum materiam et formam;
sed materia non habet ex quo producatur, quia non ex Deo; manifestum est igitur quod
ex nihilo." The term "after" needs to be carefully understood here; "after" does not function as a temporal designator since we are explaining, in part, the very origin of time
itself. Bonaventure himself prefers the locution that things are created with time (see
Bonaventure, In II Sent., d. 2, p. 1, dub. 2 [ed. minor, 61]). The philosophical force of the
expression that there be a logical moment at which we could say that the world is not
and with reference to which the world begins to be. The ontological reference of such a
logical moment is the divine eternity with respect to which (after which) the world
begins.

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295

eration. Still others, such as Richard Rufus and St. Albert, took
up the second more benign interpretation, but emphasized that
the philosophers had posited God as the Cause and Source of all
things. Yet there is a point of common agreement among all these
writers. They are agreed that the philosophers did not posit creation and they are agreed as to why. The philosophers cannot be
construed as positing a doctrine of creation because the notion of
creation involves the coming to be of something out of nothing,
which is universally understood to mean that the created thing
must acquire being after non-being; whereas the philosophers'
universe is a beginningless universe, a universe wherein things
besides the First Principle have always existed. Bearing in mind
this understanding of the doctrinal tradition prior to Aquinas, let
us turn to his earliest major theological work to see how his doctrine differs from theirs.
IV. THOMAS AQUINAS: IN II SENT. (1253)

If we turn to the fifth article, question 1 of distinction 1, Book
II of Aquinas's Commentary on the Sentences, we find Aquinas
raising the same issue St. Bonaventure did in his second question, namely, whether the world is eternal. Thomas's presentation of the philosophers, here, is similar to that of his predecessors; following Moses Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed, 40
Aquinas arranges the arguments of the philosophers under different headings representing the basis of their various proofs.
Even Thomas's answer to the question is not without some
anticipation in previous writers: like Bonaventure, Thomas commends Aristotle's opinion among those advanced by philosophers, but rejects all the philosophical opinions on the subject of
40 Moses Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1963) II, c. 14 (II, 285-89); on Maimonides's position regarding creation, see the two excellent articles of William Dunphy, "Maimonides and
Aquinas on Creation: A Critique of Their Historians,'' in Gerson, ed., Graceful Reason,
361-79, and "Maimonides' Not-So-Secret Position on Creation,'' Moses Maimonides and
His Time, ed. Eric L. Ormsby, vol. 19 of Studies in Philosophy and the History of
Philosophy, ed. Jude P. Dougherty (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America
Press, 1989), 151-72.

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TIMOTHY B. NOONE

the eternity of the world as false and heretical 41 ; like Albert,
Thomas defends the position that belief that the world began is
not demonstrable by reason and must be held by faith. 42 Indeed,
the originality of St. Thomas's presentation here seems to consist
in the clear and straightforward manner in which he contrasts
the philosophical views positing the eternity of the world and the
theologians claiming that creatio de novo is demonstrable by reason as two extremes to his own view, cast in the role of the mean.
Yet Aquinas's way of relating the philosophical account of the
origin of the universe to the doctrine in the Sentences is quite
original, as is seen in the second of the articles in the same question. The title of the article asks the question whether something
can come forth from the First Principle in the manner of creation. After listing five arguments denying, for a variety of reasons, that creation is possible, Aquinas gives his startling
response. Creation, he claims, is not only held on faith but
demonstrable by reason. Knowing that Aquinas is chary in his
the sophisticated and
use of the term 'demonstration'-witness
well-reasoned arguments on behalf of the eternity and non-eternity of the world that he denies to be demonstrations-we
should pay close attention here to why he believes creation to be
demonstrable. His reasoning is that the things in the world are
akin to items in a genus that imperfectly possess a generic quality, like the way that items that are hot, according to medieval
physics, imperfectly and incompletely possess the quality of heat
found per se and completely in the element of fire. Similarly, each
41 Thomas Aquinas, Scriptum super libros Sententiarum magistri Petri Lombardi
episcopi Parisiensis: Commentum in I I librum, ed. P. Mandonnet and M. F. Moos (Paris:
P. Lethielleux, 1929), d. 1, q. 1, a. 5, sol. (II: 33): "Alii dixerunt quod res fuerunt ab aeterno secundum ilium ordinem quo modo sunt; et ista est opinio Aristotelis, et omnium
philosophorum sequentium ipsum; et haec opinio inter praedictas probabilior est: tamen
omnes sunt falsae et haereticae."; Saint Bonaventure, In II Sent., d. 1, pars 1, art. 1, q.
1 (II: 1 la): "ideo et ipse [sc. Aristoteles) etiam deficit, Iicet minus quam alii."
42 Thomas Aquinas, In II Sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 5 (ed. Mandonnet-Moos, II: 33): "Tertia
positio est dicentium quod omne quod est praeter Deum incepit esse; sed tamen
mundum incepisse non potuit demonstrari, sed per revelationem divinam esse habitum
et creditum .... Et huic positioni consentio: quia non credo, quod a nobis possit sumi
ratio demonstrativa ad hoc ... "; Albertus Magnus, In II Sent., d. 1, B, art. 10, sol. (ed.
Borgnet, 27): "Absque dubio nihil probabilius etiam secundum rationem est, quam quod
mundus inceperit, sicut dixit Moyses, et hoc fide tenendum."

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and every being in our experience participates, according to the
measure of its being, in the act of being (esse) and is thus, in
respect of the act of being, something imperfect. Therefore, there
must exist a Primal and Perfect Being from which each and
every thing arises. But for something to be produced according
to the entirety of its being is for something to be created. Thus,
all things must arise from the First Principle by way of creation. 43
In short, what Aquinas gives as his demonstration of creation is
a brief sketch of the proof for the existence of God eventually to
be seen as an alia ratio in the Summa contra gentiles and the
quarta via of the Summa theologiae.44
Upon first reading Aquinas's text, one may be inclined to
think that St. Thomas has achieved a tremendous economy in
both proving the existence of God and the truth of the doctrine
of creation in one fell swoop. After some further reflection, however, one may well grow suspicious and question the legitimacy
of the whole enterprise. How, after all, can a proof for the existence of God be considered the basis for inferring that the world
was created?
The answer to this question lies, of course, in what Aquinas
understands to be the doctrine of creation, a matter to which he
devotes the remainder of the article's solution. According to
Aquinas, two points belong to the notion (ratio) of creation.
First, creation, unlike any other change, presupposes nothing in
the thing created, neither matter nor subject. Second, in the
thing created non-being is prior to being, not in the sense that
there is any priority of duration, but in the sense that there is a
priority of nature; if the created thing were left to its own
devices, so to speak, it would cease to be. In light of these two
features of creation, one may say that the created order comes to
be out of nothing (ex nihilo) in two ways. The negative, nihil,
denies that the ordinary notion of subject applies; in other
Thomas Aquinas, In II Sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 2 (ed. Mandonnet-Moos, II: 18).
See Thomas Aquinas, Liber de veritate catholicaefidei contra errores infidelium seu
'Summa contra gentiles,' ed. Celsai Pera, D. Petro Marc, and D. Petro Caramello (Turin;
Rome: Marietti, 1961), lib. I, cap. 13 (20: para. 114); Summa theologiae, ed. Inst. stud.
med. Ottaviensis (Ottawa: Commissio Piana, 1948), I, q. 2, a. 3, resp. (14b).
43

44

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TIMOTHY B. NOONE

words, created things come to be out of nothing in that they
come to be out of no pre-existing subject. In another way, ex
nihilo signifies that the ordination of created things to nothing
remains even after they are created, for each created thing more
naturally possesses non-being than being, since its being is ab
alio whereas non-being belongs to it per se.45
Now what is perhaps most remarkable is the way Aquinas
concludes this account of creation. At the beginning of this paragraph, Aquinas had begun quite magisterially in the indicative
mood by stating ad rationem creationis pertinent duo; he concludes with the following comments:
And if these two points would suffice [su.fficiant] for the notion of creation, then creation can be demonstrated and in this way the philosophers have posited creation. If, however,we should accept [accipiamus]
a third point as required for the doctrine of creation, namely that the
created thing have being after non-being with respect to duration, in
such a way that it can be said to be out of nothing because it is in time
after nothing, then creation cannot be demonstrated, nor is it granted
by the philosophers; but it is rather supposed by the faith.46
Aquinas has now shifted to the subjunctive mood. Creation is
knowable by reason, if the two points or notes that Aquinas just
explained are considered sufficient. If, however, one adds the
notion, much emphasized by his contemporaries and reaffirmed
by the Church at Fourth Lateran Council, that the created thing
is of finite temporal duration ex parte ante, then creation is not
knowable by reason and philosophy. Clearly, Aquinas's hesitation concerns what one includes in the notion of creation. There
can be little doubt, however, that, of the three points mentioned
as constituents of the doctrine of creation, the first two are the
ones that are essential; they are the ones that Aquinas unwaveringly affirms belong to the very notion of creation.
Aquinas, In II Sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 2 (ed. Mandonnet-Moos, II: 18).
et si haec duo sufficiant ad rationem creationis, sic creatio potest demonstrari,
et sic philosophi creationem posuerunt. Si autem accipiamus tertium oportere ad
rationem creationis, ut scilicet etiam duratione res creata prius non-esse quam esse
habeat, ut dicatur esse ex nihilo, quia est tempore post nihil, sic creatio demonstrari non
potest, nee a philosophis conceditur, sed per fidem supponitur" (Thomas Aquinas, In II
Sent., d. 1, q. 1, a. 2 [ed. Mandonnet-Moos, II: 18]).
45 Thomas

46 " •••

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299

Viewed against the historical background sketched earlier,
Aquinas's doctrine of creation, as it embraces the two essential
notes, is quite unique and novel. The emphasis among earlier
theologians, especially Parisian theologians, was that ex nihilo
entailed being after non-being; as Bonaventure so aptly stated it,
the world came out of nothing as out of a point of origin.
Aquinas recasts the doctrine of creation in such a way as to interpret the ex nihilo not to imply the need for finite duration in the
past on the part of the creature, but to express the nature of creaturely being: left to themselves created things would resolve into
nothing since the source of their actuality and existence is outside themselves. Aquinas's account of the philosophers in the
Sentences, on the other hand, does not seem to be that original,
as we saw above. Consequently, based on an examination of the
historical evidence reviewed here, we must conclude that
Aquinas's originality in the matter of the knowability of creation
on the part of philosophers relies much more on his own reinterpretation, not to say reformulation, of the doctrine of creation
than in any profoundly novel reading of the philosophers.
Yet in a sense the conclusion reached is incorrect. For we seem
on the verge of missing Aquinas's whole point. Although we
might say that Aquinas's claim that the philosophers know creation amounts to a truism once he has redefined, to his own satisfaction, the doctrine of creation, we should ask, if we are really to understand his position, why he is so willing to reformulate
the doctrine of creation and why he thinks that the philosophical
proofs of the First Principle are tantamount to admissions of the
doctrine of creation. The answer to both these questions is given
by Aquinas in the texts we have reviewed. The heart of creation
is total ontological dependence, not temporal finitude. Aquinas
consciously and deliberately brings to bear his doctrine of being
in an effort to explain what that dependence means. Likewise,
the philosophers posit a First Principle to account for the universe of beings. Whether they realize it or not, they are positing
a God, a Being Itself, upon which every other thing depends at
each and every moment; they are positing not just a cause, as
Richard Rufus thought, but a Creator. What Aquinas seems to
be engaged in when he grants philosophers knowledge of ere-

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TIMOTHY B. NOONE

ation is not simply a restatement of the doctrine of creation, but
a lectio humilis; he is, in effect, granting to their metaphysical
theories of being precisely that notion of being that he himself
thought so obvious.
What of the questions raised at the beginning of this paper?
Does Aquinas's acumen consist in perceiving a doctrine of creation in the philosophical texts unnoticed by his contemporaries? Certainly not; his discovery of creation in the texts of the
philosophers is more a function of his revamping and nuancing
the notion of creation than in any unique textual interpretation
or historical insight. Hence there both is and is not originality in
Aquinas's interpretation of the philosophers. There is no originality in that Aquinas seems to know just about as much (or as
little) about the philosophers as his contemporaries and attributes to them fundamentally the same doctrines; there is great
originality in that Aquinas, blessedly ignorant of the historical
genesis of the philosophers' thought, is reading their doctrines in
terms of a quite different metaphysical outlook.

ENVIRONMENTAL THEOLOGYA REVIEW DISCUSSION*
KEVIN W. IRWIN

l

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

UST OVER a decade ago the Norwegian philosopher Arne
Naess coined the term deep ecology to encapsulate his challenge that while others have dealt with short-term views of
ure and ways of dealing with the ecological crisis, 1 he urged a
deeper probing of "why, how and where" educational systems,
religious bodies, and societies themselves can deal with environ-

* The books under discussion are: Leonardo Boff, Ecologia, Mundializacao,
Espiritualidade (Sao Paolo: Editora Atica, 1993), English translation by John Cuming,
Ecology and Liberation: A New Paradigm (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1995); Denis Edwards,
Jesus the Wisdom of God: An Ecological Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1995); Catharina J.
M. Halkes, New Creation: Christian Feminism and the Renewal of the Earth, trans. C.
Romanik (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991); Michael J. Himes and
Kenneth R. Himes, Fullness of Faith: The Public Significance of Theology (New
York/Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1993), especially chapter 5, "Creation and an
Environmental Ethic"; Tony Kelly, An Expanding Theology: Faith in a World of
Connections (Newtowne: E. J. Dwyer, 1993); Richard N. Fragomeni and John T.
Pawlikowski, eds., The Ecological Challenge: Ethical, Liturgical and Spiritual
Responses (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1994); Albert J. LaChance and John E.
Carroll, eds., Embracing Earth: Catholi.c Approaches to Ecology (Maryknoll: Orbis,
1994); Sean McDonagh, The Greening of the Church (London: G. Chapman; Maryknoll:
Orbis, 1990); and Passion for the Earth: The Christian Vocation to Promote Justice,
Peace and the Integrity of Creation (London: G. Chapman; Maryknoll: Orbis, 1994).
1 From the outset it is important to clarify terminology and to indicate the meaning of
some terms used in this review. In accord with common usage we understand that the
term "ecology" (from the Greek oikos, "home") refers to our being at home on the earth,
and "ecological crisis" refers to the destruction that has been worked to make the
earth/home less inhabitable for a variety of species. "Creation" refers to the whole created world and all living beings as gifts from God the creator. "Environment" refers to the
life context in which we live, our habitat as given to us by God and for which we are
responsible.
301

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mental deterioration and devastation.2 That Roman Catholicism
has an important contribution to make to this issue 3 is clear from
recent magisterial statements as well as from the theological literature under review here. For example, in 1990 John Paul II
articulated a number of avenues from within the Catholic tradition that relate to the ecological crisis and the Church's corporate responsibility to face it theologically, spiritually, and practically.4 In 1991 the U.S. bishops issued a more focused document,
Renewing the Earth, which was drawn largely from the
Church's social teaching tradition. 5
The purpose of this article is to review some recent Roman
Catholic theological literature in English (originally or recently
translated) on environmental theology and ethics that can be
understood as deep ecology from within mainstream Catholic
thought. The contention of these authors is that the ecological
crisis is a matter of theology, ethics, and values. Not surprisingly, given the comparative infancy of Catholicism's theological
contribution to this issue, these works include collections of
essays with a variety of approaches of varying quality, monographs that deal with the issue with greater methodological pre2 "Intuition, Intrinsic Value, and Deep Ecology," The Ecologist 14 (Sept./Oct., 1984): 56; also see Devall Bill and George Sessions, Deep Ecology (Layton, Utah: Gibbs Smith,
1985).
3 It is important to note that other Christian faith traditions have offered pertinent and
challenging statements on this issue, especially the Orthodox. See, for example, the statement by Patriarch Dimitrios, Orthodoxy and the Ecological Crisis (Geneva: Ecumenical
Patriarchate, 1990).
4 See "Peace with God the Creator, Peace with All of Creation," Origins 19 (Dec. 14,
1989): 465-68. This is but one example of John Paul's voice on this issue, which is not
univocal. Among other statements, his 1993 Lenten Message is particularly interesting
in the way it addresses the devastation caused by "uncontrolled industrial development
and the use of technologies which disrupt the balance of nature [that] have caused serious damage to the environment and caused grave disasters." He cites specifically the
lack of potable water and the expansion of the desert "to lands which only yesterday
were prosperous and fertile." For perspectives on John Paul's writings on the environment, see Daniel Cowdin, "John Paul II and Environmental Concern: Problems and
Possibilities," The Living Light 28:1 (Fall, 1991): 44-52 and Peter C. Phan, "Pope John
Paul II and the Ecological Crisis," Irish Theological Quarterly 60:4 (1994): 333-38.
5 "An Invitation to Reflection and Action on the Environment in Light of Catholic
Social Teaching," Nov. 14, 1991, text in Origins 21(Dec.12, 1991): 425-32.

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cision and theological substance, and works of a pastoral-theological-spiritual nature that speak to the need for integrating theory, practice, and worldview so that ecology is appreciated as
intrinsic to Catholic faith and life as well as theology.
That a diversity of approaches to environmental theology and
ethics exists in Catholic theological literature today is evident in
the comprehensive collection of essays, Embracing Earth. If
American ecologist Eugene Odum is correct that ecology is the
study of organisms "at home," and as intrinsically interrelated,
interconnected, and interdependent, then a chief contribution of
this book is the way an ecological theology and vision is
espoused as integral and integrating of a number of aspects of
Catholic life and theology. The book's early chapters emphasizing the interrelatedness of God, creation, and humanity lead to
more thoughtful essays on human productivity (Richard Haas,
"A Loaves and Fishes View of Productivity") and "appropriate"
technology (Albert Fritsch, "Appropriate Technology and
Healing the Earth"). Both articles are thoroughly Catholic in
that their world views embrace such seemingly diverse aspects of
life as economics, sexual morality, and the Eucharist (Haas), and
liturgy, technology, and the world's many nations as intrinsically interconnected (Fritsch). What would have enhanced this latter argument would have been some discussion of the equally
compelling Catholic characteristics of the way the liturgy itself
uses things that are the result of human ingenuity and technology (for example, church buildings and the eucharistic bread and
wine) and of how a broad notion of sacramentality grounds liturgical participation in the seven sacraments. Gratefully, some of
these issues surface and are developed in the essay that follows
("Eating the Body of the Lord" by Marc Boucher-Colbert),
which stresses the fundamentally communal aspects of farming
and liturgical participation-themes that lead to the challenge
that "we cannot poison our land and our food [and] remain aloof
from agriculture and expect to find a profound ecological meaning in the eucharist" (12 7). The rootedness of the eucharistic
species through human productivity from the fruit of the earth is
worth recalling in this regard.

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The breadth of Catholic spiritual traditions and what they
can contribute to ecology is indicated in helpful essays on St.
Francis (R. Rohr and K. Warner), St. Benedict (T. Kardong), and
the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola (W. Wood). Of
these the most "contemplative" (in the sense of offering a way to
"see" creation as the Lord's) is from R. Rohr. T. Kardong asserts
that more is said indirectly than directly about ecology in the
Rule of St. Benedict. The key assertion that harmony of oneself
with, not against, the world, however, is a chief characteristic of
Benedictinism (164) and deserves fuller treatment; this would
complement his helpful statements linking ecology with characteristics of the monastic life: humility, stability, and frugality. An
additional exploration into the intrinsic linkage of work, prayer,
and the common life--characteristic of a Benedictine vision of
life-would be another avenue worth pursuing. 6 Similarly, the
contribution on the Spiritual Exercises to this issue seems diminished in the White essay, since it is focused on the cosmic Christ.
Further probing of the Ignatian corpus might yield a richer harvest of insight on creation and the environment more generally.
Finally, even though Wayne Teasdale's essay is entitled'
"Concluding Reflections," his article is a most provocative foray
into ways in which the Church might deepen its commitment to
this issue in the already established forum of interreligious dialogue (notably through the East-West monastic dialogue) and the
Parliament of the World's Religions, specifically the concluding
statement from its 1993 meeting entitled Towards a Global
Ethic. 1
The Ecological Challenge is a much more focused collection of
essays that helpfully fill in areas often neglected in recent literature on the environment. Thus the benefit of D. Bergant's essay
on Hosea 2 is that it presents an integral rereading of Genesis in
6 The brief statement from St. Benedict's Rule, chapter 32, that the person chosen by
the abbot as cellarer of the monastery should "regard all the utensils and goods of the
monastery as sacred vessels of the altar" summarizes the kind of integral vision of life
interwoven throughout the entire Rule.
7 In this connection some reference to the helpful statement of Cardinal Joseph
Bernardin to that assembly held in Chicago Aug. 28-Sept. 5 1993 would have enhanced
this section.

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305

which ideas of "stewardship," "dominion," and the unity of all
created beings (not just humans alone) are helpfully nuanced. 8
Two particularly important essays of a general nature include
that of Thomas Nairn about contemporary Roman Catholic
social thought on ecology and that of John Pawlikowski exemplifying the helpful rediscovery of the integration of systematic
theology with ethics. This integration serves both theology in
general and ecological theology in particular where theology and
ethics are partners. The most focused and precise essay from the
theology derived from the celebration of the Eucharist concerns
"the preparatory rites" (formerly the "offertory") by E. Foley, K.
Hughes, and G. Ostdiek. This article succeeds as a careful historical and theological study of the nature of these rites and a
helpful critique of the present Roman liturgy. One additional
avenue for creative critique of the present rite might have been
derived from research into contemporary practices from parts of
the Catholic Church that emphasize or have adapted this rite
(e.g., Africa) or from other Christian churches, specifically the
(American) Lutheran Book of Worship, which (paradoxically)
gives greater emphasis on the gifts presented by the sung anthem
"Let the Vineyards Be Fruitful."
In line with the Pawlikowski essay in The Ecological
Challenge on integrating theology and ethics is the keenly
insightful and methodologically helpful work Fullness of Faith:
The Public Significance of Theology by Michael and Kenneth
Himes. The first chapter on "the Public Church and Public
Theology" sets the agenda and method for what follows about
creation and an environmental ethic (chapter five). A chief aim
of "public theology" is to move religious belief away from a narrow concern with personal life to serve the church's mission to
the wider realm of society and social existence. The distinctive
contribution of Catholicism to public theology and policy
according to the authors is to make "explicit the theological component of social ethics so that believers can understand and test
8 Most notable in this connection is the ground-breaking study by Robert Murray, The
Cosmic Covenant: Biblical Themes of Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation,
Heythrop Monograph Series, 7 (London: Sheed and Ward, 1992).

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the coherence of their religious beliefs with their public policy
decisions" (23).
The chapter of Fullness of Faith on "Creation and an
Environmental Ethic" is true to the authors' intent to raise questions and demonstrate the interrelationship of theology and
ethics. Here they support the move away from viewing creation
through "instrumental rationality" toward retrieving the biblical
view of "relational anthropology." To regard all creatures as
"thou" forms the basis for the theological themes of "companionship," "a sacramental vision" of the world, "an ethic rooted in
sacramentality," "constructing an environmental ethic," "ecology,
justice and economic development," "sustainable development,''
and "the right attitude [for] seeing the world" (124). Hence a theologically inspired vision of creation and the world can "revision
all beings as united in their creatureliness, given to one another
as companions, sacraments of the 'love that loves the sun and
other stars' (Dante)." Here a lucid and penetrating analysis is
accompanied by a truly sacramental vision of all of life and a
requisite ethic about reverencing all of its forms. The brevity of
this work (one chapter among seven) is its limitation. One can
only hope that the authors draw out more fully in a monograph
what they have so successfully undertaken here.
The most substantial and thorough contributions to method
in environmental theology and ethics under review here are by
two Australians, Tony Kelly and Denis Edwards. An Expanding
Theology by Tony Kelly is thoroughly researched and documented (almost all are English language sources), clear in intent,
scope, and outline. Sometimes rather tersely written, this work is
modest in size yet rich in insight about a method for theology
that embraces the centrality of environmental issues and that
articulates connections from the Catholic theological tradition
that can influence the combining of environmental theology and
ethics. Kelly ascribes the "thinness of the modern theologies of
ecology and creation" to a "theological reinvention of the wheel .
. . without taking into account ... past achievements" (xii). Kelly
relies on a significant number of theological forebears of many
stripes (both classical and contemporary). He also willingly
admits the strengths and weaknesses of some key Catholic voic-

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es, Aquinas for example, and invites continued dialogue with
such theological mentors about ecology and the environment.
For Kelly, a characteristic strength of Roman Catholic theology throughout history has been its ability to reread and rethink
its traditional beliefs in the light of contemporary issues, challenges, and pastoral needs. Thus he begins his work by stating
that the environmental crisis offers the challenge of remaking
and making connections among faith, theology, creation, and
ecology-hence the book's subtitle, "faith in a world of connections" and its structure as a "spiral of connections" (213) that
include: the import of making connections itself; contemporary
contexts for theology; the Logos in the cosmos; working from
within the theology of creation itself (as a Catholic hallmark); the
human being in the world; the Trinity as center of Christian
faith; the eucharistic universe; and the specifically human
dimensions of death and love. The breadth and depth of the section on "making connections" bespeaks a firm grasp of the way
Catholic theology discloses and betrays a keen sense of the integral and unified understanding of the world, of God's pervasive
presence in it, and of the need to articulate these connections for
the sake of contemporary theology-especially
theological
method-and for Catholic life and practice. This section also
offers a paradigm of the way Kelly converses with and articulates important insights from contemporary philosophy and
(what he terms) "the new science."
Kelly is careful and judicious both in making distinctions, for
example, of how humanity relates to but is not on the same level
as the rest of creation in the cosmos (in section five), and in critiquing popular movements that attempt to engage the ecologically minded, specifically New Age and "pathological holism" (in
section two). An invitational stance imbues his treatment of the
Word, creation, and human beings wherein he relies on the work
of others, articulates his own keen insights, and opens the door
for further elaboration by others. Less successful because of
brevity, but still most insightful and rich, are the sections on
Trinity, eucharist, and death and love. The section on the Trinity
is the briefest, but remarkably profound in that here Kelly
argues for a relational theology of God that leads toward the cen-

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tral theological insight that "ultimate reality is relational" and
that the relationships within the Trinity image and invite the
communion of all creation in the Godhead. 9 Having made other
important observations on sacramentality and liturgy earlier on
in the book, it is lamentable that the eucharistic section derives
more from others' than from Kelly's own thought. Here some
fuller explication of sacramentality could help fill out this otherwise significant chapter.
Perhaps the most important contribution which Kelly makes
here is to invite other theologians to rethink the shape of theological method, the conventional separations among theological
disciplines, especially the nature and place of the theology of creation, and to see the environment as an integrating force for
Christian theology today. Kelly's aim here is to probe the
breadth of theology as seen from an environmental perspective
and not to construct a "theology of ecology." Taking up this challenge is made the more challenging and urgent because of the
publication of this book.
Edwards's book, Jesus the Wisdom of God: An Ecological
Theology, consists of three parts: "Jesus of Nazareth as the
Wisdom of God"; "The Trinitarian God and Creation"; and
"Human Beings in the Community of Creatures. 1110 In some ways
it follows up on Kelly's work by explicating the intrinsic relationship between the Catholic theological tradition and (what he
terms) "ecological praxis." He is concerned to probe the "profound inner link between an adequate theology and an ecological stance" and argues that "theology is necessarily ecological"
(3). From the outset he states that the ecological issue "is not just
about flora and fauna, but is also a people ... justice issue" (4).
At the same time he will argue that "the truths of Christian faith
push us beyond anthropocentrism to an ethics of intrinsic value"
(10). A careful balancing of these theological polarities marks
9

Something of the same argument can be gleaned in Fullness of Faith, chapters 3 and

7.
' 0 The table of contents does not indicate the separation between parts two and three
nor does it list the title of the third part. Correcting this editorial oversight in any succeeding printings would be helpful.

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this book; at times, however, their integration could be more
forcefully presented.
By intention this book is more focused than Kelly's work on
theological method in general. Edwards 's work is a straightforward and clear argument from wisdom Christology to an economic theology of the Trinity to the human participation in the
community of creatures to ecological praxis. (One detects here
the seminal insights of Jiirgen Moltmann.) In Part One, Edwards
argues from the wisdom tradition in the Bible, through wisdom
Christology to "wisdom ecology." In the process he summarizes
(and carefully documents) main points of the retrieval of wisdom
Christology in (English-language) theological literature today.
His aim is to suggest how proper exegesis of scriptural texts
about Christ, notably Jn. 1:1-18 and Col. 1:15-20, indicate the
important link between wisdom Christology and a cosmic
Christology, where the transformation of the universe is through
Jesus, the wisdom of God.
In Part Two, Edwards picks up on the Trinitarian theme frequently reflected in the current theological literature on the environment (exemplified in many of the works under review here)
and does so in a compelling and substantive way. Here he draws
fully and richly from Richard of St. Victor (specifically, the
Trinity as mutual love) and Bonaventure (the universe as God's
self-expression) to substantiate his central thesis that wisdom
Christology leads necessarily to an economic Trinitarian theology that leads to an integral notion of Christian theology, ecology,
and praxis. The import of this argument is significant in that
through it Edwards gives substance and offers nuances to the
now commonplace assertion that the themes of mutuality, relationship, and intimacy among persons that characterize much
economic Trinitarian theology can well ground-if not compelthe move toward a view that Trinitarian theology and ecological
theology converge. Edwards's discussion of Richard of St. Victor
and Bonaventure (chapter four) leads to a significant delineation
of "some theses" for an economic theology of the Trinity (chapter
five).
In Part Three, Edwards moves to a consideration of "human
participation in the community of persons" and the relationship

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among science, theology, and the future of the universe, with
important reference to contemporary developments in cosmology (chapter six), and then to the final chapter on ecological praxis. Here he argues for the intrinsic value of all creatures and reverence for all life. In a very important section (termed "ecological
sustainability") he urges the necessary commitment "to an ecologically sustainable economic and political system and to a
lifestyle congruent with sustainability" (163).11 This section contains a brief but important articulation of the criterion that the
discernment between competing interests of different species "is
that of the level of consciousness of the creatures involved" (161).
With regard to depth and substance, Edwards 's book is an
important contribution. It is focused and complete. It also exemplifies what can be undertaken by others who wish to probe the
Catholic theological tradition more fully about creation and the
environment. The linear progression from scriptures through the
arguments of theologians to ethics is exemplary. At the same
time the book's clear focus may also be its weakness, that is, it is
so Christological and Trinitarian that other theological themes
are not explored. For example, while he states at the outset that
he "will not be able to deal at all with other aspects of theology,
such as the theology of church and the sacraments, which clearly are relevant to an ecological theology" (14), it is surprising and
disappointing that these precise aspects of Christian theology are
absent from his compelling critique of individualism and the
requisite move to a conception of persons-in-mutual-relationship
(chapter six). In fact, ecclesiology and theology derived from the
celebration of sacraments would provide strong theological
arguments to substantiate this counter-cultural thesis. This may
be asking for a theological encyclopedia on environmental theology, however, rather than respecting a significant monograph
that goes far beyond the limitations of collections of essays. Jesus
the Wisdom of God is an important contribution toward a truly
11 One of the few theologians to deal with this issue, often argued (or posited) in ecological circles, is John Cobb, Sustainability: Economics, Ecology and Justice
(Maryknoll: Orbis, 1992). Also see, John Cobb and Herman E. Daly, For the Common
Good: Redirecting the Economy toward Community, the Environment, and a
Sustainable Future (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989).

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substantial theology and ethics grounded in the theology of creation and reverence for the environment.
In ecological literature in general and in theological literature
about the environment, feminist voices have been clear, challenging, and compelling. One particularly useful work is New
Creation: Christian Feminism and the Renewal of the Earth by
Catharina J.M. Halkes (emeritus professor, Catholic University
of Nijmegen). Written in part as a response to the World Council
of Churches' appeal for a world-wide conciliar process to reconsider the meaning of justice, peace, and the becoming-whole of
creation in 1990, Halkes 's book draws on both American and
European ecological and feminist thought. In Part One, designed
as a prelude to the theological arguments in Part 1\vo, she discusses the relationship of nature and woman from diverse, principally philosophical, points of view. In chapters seven and eight
(the beginning of Part 1\vo) she offers a theology of creation that
leads to her approach to ecological theology. Her nuanced observations about the nature of God and God's relatedness to creation are worth further reflection. She observes that "the onesided God transcending the world has led to deism ... the overemphasis on God's immanence in the world has led to pantheism
... [where] everything becomes deified" (91). Hence the need for
a more nuanced approach which she terms the "sacramentalization" of the world. (Others argue for a panentheism.)
Common perspectives on feminist theology and the ecological
movement are discussed in chapter nine. Of particular note is the
treatment of insights for theological anthropology in chapter ten
derived from the convergence of ecological and feminist theology, which discussion is prefaced by reference to George Tavard 's
insight that the starting point for Christian anthropology is
humankind as it now is, not as it is imaged in the scriptures (128).
Thus the transition from exegesis to contemporary theological
movements that inform her thought about the need for greater
interrelatedness among the earth's species, a deepening sense of
community and humankind's "receptivity, and (another insight
derived from Tavard) humankind's openness to the sanctifying
and fulfilling work of the Holy Spirit (137).

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The original publication date of 1989 is to be noted since
much of the terrain covered here has been traversed more deeply
in the meantime by others (some already discussed here) which
indicates the maturing going on in theological circles on this
issue. What makes this work unique is its reference to a wealth
of philosophical sources, classical and contemporary, and its concern to deal with themes from the theology of creation in dialogue with currents in contemporary culture.
Leonardo Boff's contribution Ecology and Liberation is comprised of three parts entitled "Ecology: A New Paradigm,''
"From Ecology to Global Consciousness,'' and "From World
Consciousness to Mysticism." 12 The key insight throughout is
that "ecology has to do with relations, interaction, and dialogue
of all living creatures ... among themselves and with all that
exists. This includes not only nature (natural ecology) but culture
and society (human ecology, social ecology, ... ). From an ecological viewpoint everything that exists, co-exists"(7). Boff engagingly offers insights about a wealth of human experience and
new fields of learning to demonstrate his passion for just such an
interaction. Without a proper theology of creation in Catholic
theology he poignantly asserts that "we tend to exaggerate the
importance of the Bible (fundamentalism), inflate the role of the
church (ecclesiocentrism), and exaggerate the function of the
sacraments (sacramentalism)" (47). Further on he observes that
theological thinking must be seen in passionate commitment to
social justice, which for him is broader than relations among persons. It concerns the relations among all creatures in and with
God.
In Part Two Boff links ecology and global consciousness and
challenges that consciousness to produce a new and alternative
model of society that seeks to project "a participatory, egalitarian, sharing society, one capable of combining imagination and
analytical reasoning, technology, and utopia" (91-92). This new
model needs to rebuild the social fabric: "work has to be bal12 The book's English title, Ecology and Liberation, is not a translation of Ecologia,
Mundializacao, Espiritualidade. The editors would have served the readers better by
translating the title more literally because it suggests what the book actually is and does.

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anced with leisure time, efficiency with gratuitousness, and productivity with playfulness. We need to place a higher value on
imagination, utopia, dreams, symbols, poetry and religion" (92).
Here Boff is at his finest in terms of insight and challenge. He is
also the most "catholic" in the sense that our faith tradition
incorporates all of these aspects and integrates them: theology
with ethics, liturgy, and aesthetics, the arts with reflective
thought. It is also in this section that Boff makes the most
poignant criticism of the unjust economic structures of society
and the need for an ecological liberation that frees persons,
enables them to share resources and to value every living thing
as intrinsically interrelated. Part Three begins with the observation and challenge that "to be spiritual means living in accordance with the thrust of life toward and in unison with society
and nature ... [and that] in its mature stage, spirituality becomes
mysticism" (13 7-38). Regrettably, this last section is the least
developed and ultimately the least satisfying. Boff 's references to
the scriptural foundations for this kind of spirituality and the
(regrettably few) glimpses into the thought of St. Francis of
Assisi might have been more fully drawn out and organized in
order to make this section the more cogent and compelling.
Two books that reflect the Philippine experience with ecological and economic devastation and that provide some of the theoretical underpinnings of the Philippine bishops' conference
statement on the environment 13 are from Sean McDonagh, The
Greening of the Church and Passion for the Earth. 14 The
Greening of the Church is divided into three parts: the first deals
with the confluence of ecological and economic oppression in the
third world; the second offers an overview of creation in scripture and tradition; the last part contains two appendices, the first
of which is "a new decalogue" that results from ecological con13 Entitled "What Is Happening to Our Beautiful Land? A pastoral letter on ecology
from the Catholic bishops of the Philippines."
14 A poignant first-person account of the move to an ecologically centered theology,
spirituality, and pastoral ministry is Niall 0 'Brien's Revolution from the Heart
(Maryknoll: Orbis, 1987).

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sciousness and the second is the Philippine bishops' statement of
1988. Part One is both engaging and challenging in the way it
demonstrates how international economics, specifically, how
international debt affects the poor and the earth itself. What
could be a dry review of statistical data here becomes involvement with people whose lives are daily diminished because of
the debt crisis. Part 1\vo is equally engaging as a survey of the
roots of the J udaeo-Christian tradition on the theology of creation (chapters four to seven) and then some particular Roman
Catholic voices. Chapter eight reviews spiritual traditions such
as the Fathers of the Church, monasticism, Sts. Benedict and
Francis, and Celtic spirituality, and chapter nine presents the
state of the question in magisterial statements and in issues that
need to be revisited, including population. The book is a helpful
balance of theological fact and economic reality as well as of
Catholic tradition and contemporary voices on the environment.
The subtitle of McDonagh's (carefully researched and documented) second book, Passion for the Earth, "The Christian
Vocation to Promote Justice, Peace and the Integrity of
Creation," is significant, for it summarizes the author's thesis
and present work to spread this challenge among his fellow
Columban missionaries and to the wider Church. Chapters one
to five update and deepen the argument in Part One of The
Greening of the Church on the impact of the global economy and
international debt on the poor and environmentally disadvantaged. (Particularly acute are his observations on the GATT
trade agreement, on the policies of the World Bank, and on "the
controlling interests" of transnational corporations.) McDonagh
is at his best in these chapters when he translates thorough
research and documentation into a language that comparative
laypersons can understand. The links with a challenging environmental theology and ethics are clear. Chapter six on "Church
response and prophecy" complements the last chapter of The
Greening of the Church and updates the review of current
Church teaching (e.g., The Catechism of the Catholic Church), as
well as providing some indication of statements of episcopal con-

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ferences 15 and other Christian bodies. McDonagh 's critique here
is more compelling than in the first volume, and his suggestions
for how Catholicism can contribute to deepening a prophetic
stance on this issue are most poignant and pertinent. 16 In discussing "eco-centered ethics and Christian hope" (chapter seven),
McDonagh critiques the anthropocentrism of much of Christian
ethics and moves to an eco-centered ethic by way of the biblical
and classical Christian view of stewardship. In the concluding
chapter the author offers a series of suggestions (not all fully
thought through or thorough in presentation) that could assist "a
pastoral ministry of sustainability." The suggestions on "renewing liturgy and devotions" are polyglot, from adopting the
Orthodox custom of having a "feast of creation," to adjusting the
present liturgical rites to be more primal and cosmically engaging, to adjusting the mysteries of the rosary and the stations of
the cross to critique ecological devastation and offer hopeful
images for a prophetic and productive resolution to this crisis. It
would seem that the revised liturgy does offer some of what
McDonagh argues as desirable. Appropriate catechesis and
delineation of a contemporary liturgical theology of the revised
rites could enhance the author's legitimate agenda here.
A characteristic strength of Roman Catholic theology
throughout history has been its ability to reread and rethink its
traditional beliefs in the light of contemporary issues, challenges,
and pastoral needs. Today the environmental crisis offers such a
challenge. The works reviewed here (among others) attest to the
deep roots within Catholicism that speak to this issue theologically, spiritually, and pastorally. The maturity of thought
expressed in the literature reviewed here augurs well for an even
more substantive Catholic contribution to environmental theol15 Additional notable episcopal conference statements on the environment are: from
Germany on the future of creation and the future of humanity (1981); from Zaire on
development and the environment (1988); from Indonesia on development that respects
and develops the environment (1989); from Burundi on the world day of peace (1990);
and the concluding statement from the seminar for Brazilian bishops (1992).
16 For example, he laments that in the new catechism "the possibility of a link between
liturgy and creation as a way of developing an ecological catechesis is never raised ...
[n]or does the present devastation of the natural world figure in the discussion of sacraments" (109).

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ogy and ethics. It may well be that the desired integration and
integral vision of creation expressly called for in some ecological
writing may well be supplied by the characteristically Catholic
appreciation for the integration of theology, ethics, and the spiritual life. The variety of approaches currently taken on this issue
reflects the depth and breadth of Catholicism's resources to deal
with the ecological challenges of our day. It is clearly one pivotal
source for deep ecology.

BOOK REVIEWS
Galileo: For Copemicanism and for the Church. By ANNIBALE FANTOLI.
Translated by George V. Coyne, S.J. Studi Galileiani Vol. 3. Vatican
City: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1994. Distributed by the
University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana. Pp. xix+ 540.
$21.95 (paper).

This exhaustive treatment of Galileo and his relationship to the Church
was first published in Italian by the Vatican Observatory in 1993 as Vol. 2 of
its Studi Galileiani series, bearing the title Galileo: Per il Copemicanesimo e
per la Chiesa. So excellent was the study that Father George Coyne, the director of the Vatican Observatory, took it on himself personally to translate the
volume into English. Although not a member of the Galileo Commission set
up by Pope John Paul II to review the Galileo case, as were Coyne and
myself, Fantoli has admirably complemented the work of the Commission and
his book surely belongs in the Studi Galileiani collection. A former Jesuit
with degrees in mathematics and physics, Fantoli began the book more than
twenty-five years ago when he was preparing a course on Galileo at Sophia
University in Tokyo. His intention was to show that for Galileo it was never a
question of choosing between Copernicanism and the Church, and that the
saddest drama of his life was being faced with an injunction that forced him
to be for the Church and against Copemicanism. The subtitle of his book proclaims Galileo's true intentions, despite his failure to convince others that
this was what his life was all about.
A great strength of Fantoli's treatment is its documentation, which
abounds in excerpts from Galileo's writings and his correspondence as found
in the National Edition of his works and also in citations from new materials
that have been uncovered by the Galileo Commission. Thanks to Coyne, all
of these texts, many of which were hitherto available only in Latin or Italian,
can now be easily accessed in English translation. Another strength of
Fantoli's work is that he has kept abreast of Galileo literature over the years
and thus is able to offer scholarly critiques of authors whose works exhibit a
bias against the Church. Especially welcome are his careful discussions of
the positions of earlier writers such as Giorgio de Santillana, Ludovico
Geymonat, and Stillman Drake, as well as those of more recent authors, Mario
Biagioli, Maurice Finocchiaro, Pietro Redondi, William R. Shea, and
Richard S. Westfall.
The book is a tour de force and there is little to criticize in it.
Unfortunately, however, a typesetting error at its very beginning might create

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the wrong impression and throw off prospective readers. About six lines of
text were omitted at the bottom of page 9. To remedy this the following words
should be inserted between the end of page 9 and the beginning of page 10:
confused with the Sun) which had heen worked out by Philolaus (about 475 B.C.)
within the context of the Pythagorean school.9 In a further modification of this
theory the central fire as well as the hypothesis of an anti-earth were done away
with, which left the earth at the center of the universe.

To offset this addition, the last six lines on the bottom of page 10 should be
deleted, for these lines are repeated at the top of page 11. Otherwise, with this
change, the exposition reads correctly. The remaining typographical errors
are few and in no case do they affect the sense.
After a brief introduction in which he presents the astronomical concepts
necessary for understanding the details of the Copernican debate, Fantoli
divides his treatment into seven chapters. The first two of these are devoted
to Galileo's early life and teaching at the Universities of Pisa and Padua, his
perfection of the telescope, and the beginnings of the controversies about the
earth's motion that were provoked by his telescopic discoveries, The next
three chapters then take up the scriptural arguments in detail, Galileo's battle with the Jesuits over the comets of 1618 and his The Assayer of 1623, and
his resumption of the Copernican program with the publication of his
Dialogue of 1632. The eighth chapter is devoted to the storm that broke loose
after that publication, culminating in the trial and condemnation of 1633, and
the ninth chapter, to the "Galileo Affair" as this extends from the trial's end
to the present. The work concludes with an extensive bibliography and an
index of names.
Some specific comments may now serve to provide a more complete picture of Fantoli's volume. Most studies of Galileo begin right off with his discoveries with the telescope, their authors apparently unaware of the fact that
these were not made until Galileo was already 45 years of age. Fantoli's opening chapter remedies this defect by giving a full account of Galileo's intellectual formation, including his early contacts with the Jesuits and his use of
lectures given at the Collegio Romano on logic and natural philosophy. He
also takes note of the De motu Galileo composed at Pisa, and how this foreshadowed much of his later work. Unfortunately he does not follow this up
with a discussion of the expe1iments on motion that Galileo performed at
Padua shortly before perfecting the telescope. By 1609 Galileo had in effect
established his "new science" of motion, which he was not to bring to print
qntil 1638, after his condemnation by the Inquisition. But it is important to
observe that he knew much about the laws of motion before he embarked on
his Copernican crusade, and most of this knowledge resulted from the use of
notes on the Posterior Analytics he had appropriated from the Jesuits (on this,
see my
Logic of Discovery and Proof [Kluwer, 1992]). How much
Galileo knew but did not tell of the new physics is surely part of the background required to make sense of his later claims and activities.

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Undoubtedly Fantoli abbreviated his treatment of the early period to make
room for the telescopic discoveries and the long series of controversies in
which Galileo became embroiled as a result. The first series, which culminated in Copernicus's De revolutwnibusbeing placed on the Index "until corrected" and Galileo's being served the famous injunction of 1616, is the focus
of Fantoli's second and third chapters. Of note here are his treatments of
Galileo's Letter to the Grand Duchess Chri.stina,of Cardinal Bellarmine's key
letter to Foscarini and Galileo, and of the injunction itself. With regard to the
first Fantoli is perhaps too favorable to Galileo, defending the latter's views
on Scripture and science, and particularly his statements that science should
take precedence over exegesis not only when it had demonstrated its results
but even when there was the possibility of their being demonstrated in the
future. Fantoli also agrees with Galileo that it is the burden of theologians,
before condemning any scientific result, to show that proofs alleged in the
support of that result are not conclusively demonstrated. Obviously Fantoli
takes little account of Galileo's clever but ill-fated use of rhetoric in the
Letter. This aspect has been carefully analyzed by my colleague at Catholic
University, Jean Dietz Moss, first in her "Galileo's Letter to Chri.stina: Some
Rhetorical Considerations," Renai.ssanceQuarterly 36 (1983): 547-576, and
then more fully in her Novelties in the Heavens: Rhetoric and Science in the
CopernicanControversy(Chicago, 1993).
Much emphasis has been placed by Catholic apologists on Bellarmine's
letter of April 12, 1615, addressed to the Carmelite Paolo Foscarini and
Galileo and calling for a "true demonstration" that the sun is at the center of
the universe and that the earth moves before setting out to reinterpret texts of
Scripture that hold the contrary. Fantoli cautions against making too much of
this demand, particularly in view of Bellarmine's going on to state: "I will not
believe that there is such a demonstration, until it is shown me," and then
adding that he is extremely doubtful that one will ever be given. Making use
of Richard Blackwell's recent studies of Bellarmine and Foscarini, Fantoli
argues that Bellarmine had personally gone far beyond the Council of Trent
in thinking that every word of Scripture is divinely inspired, and thus that its
teachings about the Sun's motion are matters of faith that can never be overturned, regardless of how much science might progress in the future (p. 178)
These views, as Fantoli sees them, were informed by a mind-set that
Bellarmine had acquired during his long polemic with the Protestants in
defense of the Catholic faith, and this disposed him to be fearful of any new
ideas that might upset the Church's philosophical-theological synthesis, a
synthesis he had been called upon constantly to uphold.
On the matter of the injunction of 1616, this is the important document,
dated 26 February of that year, that contains admonitions to Galileo: first,
that he relinquish altogether the opinion that the sun is at the center of the
world and the earth moves, and second, that he is not "to hold, teach, or
defend it in any way whatsoever, verbally or in writing." It is this document

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that formed the basis for the Trial of 1633. Two problems have exercised historians with regard to it, namely: (1) how the words enclosed in quotes came
to be in the document, and (2) what precisely was their juridical force. The
work of the Galileo Commission has turned up new documents that provide
answers to both these questions, and they are given full consideration by
Fantoli. In his view the words quoted were not in the actual minutes of the
Holy Office, which have only recently been uncovered, but were inserted
there in a second document prepared by the over-zealous Commissary of the
Holy Office, Michelangelo Segizzi. The second document was the one preserved in the Galileo file of the Holy Office through the centuries, and despite
its use in the Trial it had no juridical force whatever (pp. 200-206).
Fantoli's fourth chapter focuses on Galileo's dispute with the Jesuit
astronomer and mathematician Orazio Grassi over the nature of comets.
Grassi has been poorly treated and much maligned by historians in the past,
and Fantoli sets the record straight on his competence in treating comets the
way he did. Grassi was well informed on recent work in astronomy, including
Kepler's publications, he was superior to Galileo in the field of optics, and he
did catch Mario Guiducci, Galileo's foil in attacking him, in overt contradictions on the subjects of parallax and the comets' being an optical illusion.
Fantoli also gives a detailed analysis of Galileo's final answer, The Assayer,
which is commonly regarded as a masterpiece of polemical literature. It has
been singled out by many historians of science as his best exposition of a scientific methodology, essentially on the basis of its statement that the book of
nature "is written in the language of mathematics." Galileo's intention here,
Fantoli argues, was not to make a mathematical claim about the nature of
physical reality, but simply to emphasize the difference between the subjectivity of poetical literature and the objectivity of reasoning about nature that
is based on quantitative techniques (p. 268).
The Trial of 1633 was precipitated, of course, by the publication in 1632
of Galileo's Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, which Fantoli treats in
Chapter 5, and then the Trial itself, which he covers in Chapter 6. In many
ways these two chapters are the heart of Fantoli's book. He can only be commended for the impartial way in which he evaluates the records and the
intrigues of all parties involved in censoring the draft of the book, in evaluating it after it was published and Pope Urban VIII had turned it and its
author over to the Inquisition, and finally in analyzing all the documents now
available for assessing the legal process that ensued. Here we only mention
two of Fantoli's conclusions that are illustrative of his balanced treatment.
The first relates to his judgment about the validity of Galileo's crowning argument for the earth's motion, the ebb and flow of the tides, which provoked
Urban's anger and was probably the proximate cause of his condemnation,
and the second about the Church's having taken the action against him that
it did, seeing that he had failed to offer conclusive proof of the earth's motion.

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321

Much ink has been spilled over whether or not Galileo had offered a conclusive proof of the earth's motion in the Dialogue. Many think that he himself thought he had given such a proof, and some, that he actually had.
Stillman Drake has argued against both positions, maintaining that Galileo
was convinced that such a proof was forever beyond human reach. Fantoli's
judgment is partially in agreement with Drake's but more nuanced. He holds
that Galileo was under no illusion of having offered a "definitive proof' that
the earth moves and was particularly well aware of the limitations in his argument from the tides. On the other hand, he was firmly convinced that one day
a scientific proof would be offered, and that this would show Copernicanism
to be the true system of the world. His intent in the Dialogue, therefore, was
to show that the totality of arguments he had offered, even though not constituting apodictic proof, was sufficient to tip the balance from a position of
equal probability for the two systems, the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic and the
Copernican, to a position clearly favoring the latter (p. 365). This agrees substantially with my own analysis based on Galileo's knowledge of logic as presented in Galileo's logic of Discovery and Proof, pp. 214-216 and 226-233.
On the second point, Fantoli opposes the efforts of Catholic apologists
such as Walter Brandmi.iller to use Galileo's failure to offer conclusive proof
of the earth's motion in the Dialogue to justify, or at least to excuse, the position taken by the Church in 1633. In Fantoli's view the totality of the arguments offered in the Dialogue were entirely probative against the Ptolemaic
system, and so, considering the physical limitations of the Tychonian system,
the Copernican hypothesis was really the only alternative left. Fantoli further
observes that the question of conclusive proof never entered into the deliberations at the trial in 1633, and that even in 1616 the qualifiers who condemned Copernicanism never did, nor were they in a position to, weigh the
scientific evidence in its support. In the final analysis, then, Fantoli agrees
with Galileo's position as argued in the Letter to Christina that the Church
should not condemn scientific propositions that one day might be shown to be
true and, a fortiori, those that enjoy a high probability of being so. It is interesting to note that, in presenting the final results of the work of the Galileo
Commission to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences on October 31, 1992,
Pope John Paul II affirmed that position, stating that the very purpose of the
Academy was to advise him, considering the current state of science, not only
of matters that can be regarded as acquired truths but also of those that enjoy
such a degree of probability that it would be imprudent or unreasonable not
to take them into account.
Fantoli's concluding chapter is a somewhat grim account of the aftermath
of the trial and the many missteps taken by the Church throughout the centuries until Galileo was finally "rehabilitated" in our own day. There are few
bright spots in that history. Dominicans can rejoice that one of the heroes was
Father Benedetto Olivieri, an ex-Master of the Order and then Commissary of

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the Holy Office, who in the early 1800s recognized that empirical demonstrations of the earth's motion had finally been given and convinced Pope
Pius VII to revoke the longstanding decree against Copernicanism.
Unfortunately his greatest opponent turned out to be another Dominican,
Father Filippo Anfossi, Master of the Sacred Palace at the time, who had
views similar to those voiced by Cardinal Bellarmine in 1615 (pp. 473-475).
The story is told in great detail by Walter Brandmiiller and Johannes Griepl,
Copemico, Galilei e la Chiesa: Fine delta controversia (1820), gli atti del
Sant'Uffizio, Vatican City 1992-summarized in my notice in The Catholic
Historical Review 80 (1994): 380-83. It is ironic, of course, that the battle was
fought out by two Thomists, the one a progressive and the other a traditionalist, but it is indeed fortunate that it was the progressive Thomist who won out
in the end.
WILLIAM A. WALLACE, O.P.
The Catholic Universityof America
Washington, D.C.

Love Your Enemies: Discipleship, Pacifism and Just War Theory. By LISA
SOWLE CAHILL. Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress Press, 1994. Pp. xii +
252. $17.00 (paper).
Lisa Cahill's Love Your Enemies: Discipleship, Pacifism and Just War
Theory provides an excellent introduction to questions of peace-making and
war-making in the history of Western Christianity. Cahill canvasses the standard sources for her history: the generally pacifist period of the New
Testament and the early church (chapters two and three); the emergence of
the just war tradition with Augustine and Aquinas (chapters four and five);
just war, crusade, and pacifist responses during the Reformation period
(chapters six through eight); and just war and pacifist responses in the twentieth-century American debate (chapters nine and ten). Love Your Enemies is
relatively comprehensive, even-handed, and well-written. Beyond its general
competence, Love Your Enemies provides rich theological fare, situating questions on war and peace in the context of Christian discipleship as a whole.
One result of using discipleship as the organizing motif is that pacifism gets
an unusually sympathetic and fair hearing.
Cahill serves as an excellent reporter on these contentious questions.
While often intimating her sympathies, she consistently avoids taking decisive positions or closing avenues of exploration. The title of her final chapter-the "Fragility of the Gospel"-reflects this approach. In this chapter
Cahill emphasizes that Christian communities must continuously challenge
themselves and their society to live out the gospel of peace (239-44).

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323

What does it mean to live as a follower of Jesus today (ix)? This is Cahill's
central question. To this end she asks two further questions. First, what is the
way of discipleship established by Jesus with regard to doing violence?
Second, to what extent can Christians hope to apply this ethic of discipleship
to the wider civil society (40)? These questions arise in a variety of forms
throughout the book. For instance, Cahill elegantly shows how a Christian's
eschatological commitments (i.e., beliefs about the extent to which God's
peaceful rule can be established by a community of believers and/or the
extent to which this can be realized in "the world") can affect her response to
the possibility of doing violence.
While setting as one's task the attempt to find a way to combine Christian
discipleship with public responsibility has many strengths, it is not without
possible pitfalls. Typically, "Christian responsibility" is contrasted with "the
evangelical imperative of non-violence" (see 55-56). But this notion of
"responsibility" often begs the central question-i.e., for the Christian, can
the most "responsible" stance be anything but what Cahill proclaims to be
the evangelical stance of non-violence? While Cahill does acknowledge the
strength of the argument by advocates of "responsibility" (i.e., those
set
up the non-violent stance in opposition to the faithful following of Jesus), she
does not explicitly endorse their move. From her self-professed Catholic context, Cahill strives fo harmonize a neo-Thomist understanding of natural
law-that there is "an objective moral order, knowable by reason, that yields
universal moral laws by which all human persons and communities should
abide" (3)-with a more particularistic gospel ethic of discipleship to Jesus,
a way of life that cannot be expected of those who are not disciples.
While love Your Enemies is generally comprehensive, I see two significant
omissions. First, in the chapter "War in God's Name," one senses that Cahill's
(understandable) abhorrence of all crusade-like movements makes her reluctant to explain them in more than cursory fashion. When she turns to the
recent debate, she neglects to discuss crusades at all. To be fair to Cahill, she
is not attempting to address general attitudes in contemporary American culture, but some acknowledgment and explanation of the continued prevalence
of the crusade ideal in our culture would have been helpful. One only has to
think of the drill sergeant in Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket-said by many veterans to be the most realistic film depicting the Vietnam War-or read the
training manuals of American military and paramilitary groups to realize that
theological justifications remain central for the crusade ideal in America
today.
Second, love Your Enemies lacks any extended discussion of liberation
theology or contemporary theories of revolution. Though her passing references to liberation theology are sympathetic (she even defends it against the
charge of it having a "crusade mentality" [122]), it never receives serious
attention. This is unfo11unate for such an excellent introduction, because liberation theology in particular has challenged the very terms of the tradition-

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al debates about pacifism and just war theory, as well as conventional notions
of what constitutes "violence."
This book has much to recommend it. Besides its clear and accessible
introduction to the issues of pacifism and just war theory, it signals a movement (which we can hope will further flower) to give theological questions
concerning pacifism and just war theory a more central place. There has been
a recent movement within Catholicism-yea, from the Vatican itself-to
approach the just war tradition from a broadly evangelical (i.e., gospel) perspective, and Cahill's work analyzes this movement in insightful ways.
Towards this end, Cahill contrasts "obediential" pacifism (H.R. Niebuhr,
Yoder, Hauerwas) with "empathetic" pacifism (Rauschenbusch, Merton,
Dorothy Day). Though the distinction is not entirely convincing, her efforts to
display a plurality of pacifist orientations is helpful and illuminating.
Love your Enemies can be highly recommended for undergraduate courses on issues of war and peace, and as background reading for graduate seminars. From my own experience, I can attest that it works very well with
undergraduates, providing a comprehensive and comprehensible context for
a wide variety of primary materials on these questions. Also, each chapter
concludes with helpful summaries, and there are both author and subject
indexes.
In conclusion, Love your Enemies is a work in the spirit of the NCCB's
1983 letter, The Challenge of Peace, in that both strive to wrestle seriously
with and find complementary roles for just war theory and pacifism. Is Cahill
more successful than The Challenge of Peace in showing their complementarity? Cahill's primary move is to make a category distinction, to claim that
just war theory and pacifism are like apples and oranges. Whereas just war
theory is a theory of statecraft, pacifism is a form of life requiring discipleship (235). Is this convincing? It seems to me that Cahill has not adequately
made a case for thinking that Christian just war theory can be sustained as
merely a theory. I would argue that its faithful application requires a set of
practices, wisdom, and a form of life as demanding and disciplined-or nearly so-as does pacifism. Thus I would argue that this is precisely why it is
doubtful whether contemporary political leaders are capable of applying just
war criteria, at least applying them in a way faithful to the best of the classical Christian tradition. Whether or not Cahill has been more successful than
The Challenge of Peace in giving complementary characterizations of just war
and pacifism, whether or not Cahill has supplied convincing answers to her
many questions, she has succeeded in both the vital task of asking the right
questions, and has surveyed the key theological categories necessary for
working out a Christian ethic of discipleship. Cahill's book is a sign that some
theological ethicists are presently fulfilling their vocation-to be both theological and ethical.
JOHN BERKMAN

Sacred Heart University
Fairfield, Connecticut

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325

Recapitulations: Essays in Philosophy. By THOMAS PRUFER. Washington,
D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1993. Pp. 112.
$34.95 (cloth).
Re-reading and pondering this little volume, it is hard not to remember
John Milton's commendation of a good book as "the precious life-blood of a
master-spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life."
This is, indeed, the distillation of a life's intense reflection on the central
issues of philosophy, parceled out misleadingly in a collection of essaysmisleadingly, because (as the preface asserts) the collection is not a heap. It
is not a heap or agglomeration, despite the essays having been published over
a period of thirty years, partly because the author gathered them together,
organized, and revised them before his untimely death, and partly because
they are unified by the pervasiveness and centrality of the careful reflection
on the inflections that philosophers have effected in the sense of the word
"being" and the word "nature." Indeed, it might have been entitled Nature
and Being or Physis kai Einai.
The essays are arranged chronologically, from ancients to modems. In
tracking their philosophical themes, the author is constantly and perceptively attentive to the form of the language in which thought comes to expression:
to the form (and genre) of the texts and to the ways in which language is
troped into philosophical uses. So the first essay is on "The Dramatic Form
of Plato's Phaedo," and deals with the way the dialogue's narrative framework
interacts with the dramatic discussion. And the last essay deals with the relation between structure and story in Waugh's Brideshead Revisited ("The Death
of Charm and the Advent of Grace"). In between these are eleven essays on
Oedipus and the Poetics, Aristotle, solitude and creation, nature in Epicurus
and Hobbes, Augustine's Confessions, comparisons of Aristotle, Aquinas, and
Leo Strauss, and studies of Hume, Husserl, and Heidegger. Most of them are
brief: dense because condensed, shipped to essentials. They demand attentive reading, but they repay it.
Three philosophers are foci or axes: Aristotle, Aquinas, and Heidegger.
Aristotle serves as a foil, a reference point for the inflections that-in particular-Aquinas and Heidegger bring to the senses of "nature" and "being."
In addition, Husserl serves as a foil for Heidegger, so that each illuminates
the other.
For Aristotle, although separate being-the noesis noeseos-is primary
being, it is necessary that it not be the only sense of "being." It is necessary
that "being" mean being in common to many and being in common with
many. Separate being is part of the whole of what is. But, for Aquinas,
although it is true that God is not the only sense of "being," it is meaningful

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(though false) to say that "being" means not God and others but God alone.
God cannot not be, but for creatures-even necessary creatures, those with
no intrinsic potentiality not to be-their being is a gift, an act ofliberality and
generosity by God. That means that God's necessity is utterly different from
the necessity of necessary creatures, which not only can be annihilated but
which form a whole with all other creatures, which are complemented and
completed by other created beings. A greater whole is formed by what complements, but as Aquinas wrote: "Created good added to uncreated good does
not result in something greater."
Moreover, God's necessary nature, unlike that of the necessary nature of
separate being, is not opposed to, does not exclude, the freedom to create.
Nor is that freedom to create (or not to create) an indeterminacy or arbitrariness in God's nature. God does not act in order to gain what He lacks or does
not have, but as willing to communicate what He has. As Prufer summarizes:
For Aquinas the superahundant and therefore necessary and self-sufficient goodness of God is His freedom, ... freedom that is free-of-and-for whether or not
there be many others, freedom that is free.to be generous because, being self-sufficient, it need not be generous.

One of the most interesting essays reflects on this understanding of God
and creation from the point of view of hiddenness and manifestness (fundamental terms for Heidegger, of course). God is a deus absconditus, but His
hiddenness is manifested, while if God were to choose that creatures not be,
hiddenness would be all there is. Being would be God alone in, so to speak,
solitude. (Think of the light which is the first of creation, and which makes
manifest the dark, that is, not created.) With creation, not only is hiddenness
manifested (as hiddenness) but creatures are totally manifested to God, if
hidden from each other and indeed from themselves. This last aspect is taken
up in Prufer's reflections on Augustine's Confessionsand Augustine's attempt
to bring himself-his life, his being-in recollection from hiddenness to
manifestness. These chapters on solitude and creation and on Augustine are
intellectually delightful and informative examples of the way in which Prufer
brings classical themes to insightful expression in the language of Husserl
and Heidegger. Prufer moves with deceptive ease from the grammar of
Aristotle and Aquinas to that of Husserl and Heidegger without ever becoming the captive of any of those grammars. He has thought with them long
enough to be able to appropriate them for his own.
The longest chapter in the book deals with Husserl, Heidegger, and
Aquinas, who clearly are, along with Aristotle, the major formative influences
on Prufer's own thought. There Heidegger is charged with fundamental misinterpretations of Plato, of Husserl, and of the nature of creation. Of Plato,
because Heidegger reduces Plato to the theme of eidos or form, and seems
blind to the otherness, the sameness, and difference of the forms and of their

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unity, which is not that of a one kind. In a Scholium to the book, Prufer shows
that Gadamer's analyses of Plato are incompatible with Heidegger's reduced
"Plato."
Husserl is misinterpreted by Heidegger because the latter reduces
Husserl's phenomenology to the reflexive objectification of subjectivity, to the
analysis of intentional acts and their objects. But the deepest theme of
Husserl's thought is the flow of so-called inner time consciousness, the unity
of presencing and absencing in the primary showing together with its
absenced presence in retention and its protentional absence. This unity is not
the unity of (intentional) act-and-object, not an act intending an object, but
the primal distention
of (to use Heidegger's language) the
"presencing/absencing
of the presence/absence
of that-which-ispresent/absent." That which is present is different from its presence (or
absence), but the latter tends to be occluded, forgotten, or, if the presencing
of presence uncovers it, it is reduced to a that-which-is-present. Husserl in
distinguishing the primal presencing from the act-object structure of intentionality distinguishes it from that which is present to consciousness. Prufer
acknowledges that Husserl did not always succeed in freeing his thought from
inappropriate language, but then neither did Heidegger ever cease to struggle to find the appropriate modus significandi for the res significata he wished
to make the theme of thought.
And finally Heidegger misinterprets the theme of creation in medieval
thought by reducing it to making or production, and thereby reduces the difference between essence and existence to the issue of making "ideas" real,
of adding existence to them. Creation is thus understood by Heidegger not
only as production ex possibili instead of ex nihilo, but essence is interpreted
as a variant of the eternal eidos of Greek thought. Heidegger acknowledged
that in medieval thought creation was said to be different from making, but
he argued that the philosophical categories in which beings were analyzed
subverted that claim.
There are illuminating clarifications of a number of Heidegger's fundamental terms (e.g. Lichtung) and of an analogy between Sein and Seiende for
Heidegger and esse (not ens) commune and ens for Aquinas.
I said above that Aristotle and Aquinas, Husserl and Heidegger are the
major interlocutors in these essays. Indeed, few contemporary philosophers-and, if I am not mistaken, no philosophers from the analytic or AngloAmerican tradition-other than these are discussed or even mentioned
(except in a few footnotes). There are two exceptions to that: one, already
mentioned, is the brief discussion of Gadamer's studies of Plato and Aristotle
in the context of some critical remarks on Heidegger's reading of these classical figures.
The other exception is perhaps more important: it is Leo Strauss. Indeed,
the central chapter (the seventh of thirteen) juxtaposes thi1teen quotations,

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mostly from Strauss and Aquinas, and then thirteen interpretive theses of
Prufer, on something that concerned Strauss, namely, the incompatibility
between philosophy and taking creation to be true. Three other themes of
Strauss's work are mentioned: the relation between esoteric and exoteric
readings of texts, the senses of "political philosophy," and the quarrel of
ancums et modemes. While these three are not discussed explicitly, anyone
who knows Strauss's writings will not be unaware of the shadow of his ideas
in the background of many of these essays.
For example, I mentioned that the middle chapter deals with Strauss, who
taught many to attend to the structure of texts written by careful thinkers in
seeking to read them as the author intended them to be read by some, at least,
of his readers. It may seem excessive or amusing to remark such facts. Yet
consider that the last page of the text of this book calls attention to just such
a structure in Waugh's Brideshead Revisited:
"It is time to speak of Julia .... " is at the center; it is the beginning of the seventh of thirteen chapters; it is preceded and followed by an almost equal number
of pages. At the center is the turn from Sebastian to Julia.

But more to keep in mind, or in the back of one's mind, in reading the other
essays are the other two Straussian themes mentioned, namely, the quarrel of
ancients and modems and the importance of political philosophy bien entendu.
The Preface, which is described as "both too long and too short" (it is
three pages) is supplemented or complemented by summaries added to several of the chapters. One must also note the additions of numbers of scholia
and addenda, as returns to or retrievals of the themes. An index, at least of
proper names, would have helped a great deal in tracing the discussion of
Prufer's central themes through the book.
The foregoing examples of Prufer's reflections and clarifications are
indicative of the centrality of the philosophical issues dealt with in the
essays, but, without long quotation, they cannot give a sense of the precision
and terseness which characterizes his analyses. These essays are not commentaries on texts, but dialogues with the authors of texts about the res significata. They show Prufer to have been an incisive, thoughtful, careful reader and thinker on the deepest and most important metaphysical issues. Or, if
"metaphysics" has critical overtones for readers of Heidegger, let us simply
say they show him to be a thinker.
FREDERICK

University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

J. CROSSON

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]oumeybread for the Shadowlands: The Readings for the Rites of the
Catechumenate, RC/A. By PAMELA E. JACKSON. Collegeville, Minn.: The
Liturgical Press, 1993. Pp. 171. $12.95 (paper).
The purpose of this book is to promote interior conversion of adult catechumens by means of its meditative and complex interpretation of the readings for the last, pre-baptismal stages of the Rite of Christian Initiation for
Adults. The author anticipates that the baptized and unbaptized alike,
together comprising "the Elect," will come from unbelief to belief by the
process of hearing the Word, recognizing and abhorring their sinfulness,
rejecting Satan, trusting Jesus, and entering his church.
The author expects that, if read slowly and carefully, the book will move
its readers closer to understanding and living the biblical story as their own,
so that they may become viatores leaving the darkness of the present world
and entering the light of the kingdom of heaven (p. 171). Jackson intends the
book to be "a source-book for meditation," based on some of the possible
combinations specified for each of the final rites of the catechumenate. Its
genre is liturgical theology, and it claims as its patrimony the early Christian
exegesis of the Bible. Indeed, ]oumeybread is an eloquent expression of one
aspect of the Christian life, and of one type of Christian spirituality: the soul
poised between the claims of the world and the Deceiver (e.g., pp. 58-59) and
Christ, pictured in one passage as the Captain of Salvation spoken of by the
Church:
To those engulfed in death's black nothingness they cry: "Come to Him whose
bright obedience reaches out to encircle you with the infinite hues of His divine
compassion! Let Him Hold you in that rainbow of His arms .... " (p. 41)

In eight chapters Jackson comments on the proper readings for the rites of
the catechumenate: Acceptance in the order of Catechumens, Election (Years
A, B, and C), the Three Scrutinies, Presentation of the Creed, Presentation of
the Lord's Prayer, and Recitation of the Creed. Her commentary is an unusual one, however. Because it attempts to revive a patristic approach to the
Biblical texts, which shows by interpretation the living Word speaking to
believers through the inspired Scriptures, the book's style and substance will
be unfamiliar to many readers accustomed to the historical-critical or literary
approaches to the Scriptures. Jackson aims to have the readers experience
not only this more traditional, spiritual reading of the Bible, but also experience the profound existential crisis and decision of those approaching baptism. Therefore, the Scripture passages cease to be an object of study in her
treatment; rather, they are read as different lines of the same melody.
Harmonized, all the passages specified for the RCIA sound the call to depart
from the world with its "service of individualistic self-fulfillment" (p. 67),
repent, convert, and be united with Ch1ist.

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As the Introduction explains, the book is informed by the catecheses and
mystagogies of Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose, and John Chrysostom:
In my studies of the Fathers I came to share their perception of the Church as living in the world of the Bible in the sense that the Church understands itself in
Biblical terms and sees itself as a continuation of the story of God's saving work
recorded in the Bible .... (p. 5)

The resulting book "is offered simply as one example of what can happen
when one gazes into the kaleidoscope of the Word, believing it to be a catalyst for conversion" (p. 6). Thus, Jackson intentionally places the book within the context of the half-century of patristic revival in Roman Catholic theology usually associated with the names of de Lubac, Danielou, Balthasar,
and, more recently, Schoenborn. Having its origins in European theology, the
revival of patristic studies as a foundation for modern theology is now an
American and ecumenical project as well. It has received official validation
of a sort in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church, a document abounding
in references to patristic authors, and in the recent Vatican instruction on the
role of patristic studies in priestly formation. Such a movement reflects the
urgency of the classical Christian tradition in crisis, in which various writers
and church teachers return to the roots of the tradition.
It is striking, then, that many aspects of Jackson's book and its theology
bear a marked resemblance to the theology of evangelical Christianity. Surely
this is in part due to the character of the RCIA, a rite which in itself seems
to require believers' baptism following a clear interior conversion. The book,
following the RCIA, assumes that adult catechumens will not have been
raised as Christians knowing their place in the story of sin and salvation, and
both may well be correct. Yet other aspects of ]ourneybread are evangelical,
such as its obvious debt to the thought of C.S. Lewis, its concentration on the
importance of the Word instead of the sacraments and sacramentals of initiation, and the lack of mystagogy normal in patristic treatments of initiation.
]ourneybread constructs a dialogue between the iay Faithful and the lay
Elect, who accompany each other on the path to conversion and the latters'
baptism largely without benefit of clergy.
Perhaps due to the influence of C.S. Lewis, or perhaps to that of John
Bunyan, ]ourneybread portrays the catechumens at the beginning of Lent as
being possessed by a mortal illness (sin and death), and enslaved to the
deceiver (p. 51). Given the "inseparability of the rite and faith experience,"
"what the catechumen must learn is a relationship with God" (p. 23); abandoning the "horrifying [internal] blackness" (pp. 111, 113) they must join the
Faithful against the Deceiver as they begin a pilgrimage toward adoption as
Sons of God (pp. 144-145).
This portrait owes much for its dramatization of the progress of the embattled Christian soul to Bunyan and to Lewis, from whom the term "shadowlands" derives. The latter term appears twice as a synonym for the "land of
unlikeness." On p. 119 it connotes both spiritual blindness and life outside

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331

full membership in the church, and in the last sentence of the book (p. 171)
it signifies, apparently, the present dispensation: "the shadowlands of the catechumenate have prepared [the initiates] well for the shadowlands of the
Church, where the kingdom is always here, and always just out of sight." For
Lewis, the term derived ultimately from the Platonic view that the present
world is merely a shadow of the Ideal realm, but as a Christian metaphor it
stood for the darkness of a world ruled by Satan, and betrayed the persistent
dualism that fueled Lewis's pessimism (cf. That Hideous Strength) and disturbed his Catholic friend Tolkien.
The other word of the title, "journeybread" (Greek ephodion), has rich
associations in early Christian thought and practice, but Jackson interprets it
in conjunction primarily with the battle preceding baptism. Jackson uses it to
mean the Gospel (p. 21) or the verbal announcement of a Christian's adoptive
relation to the Father. For instance, at the Presentation of the Lord's Prayer,
on the verge of the Paschal Vigil, the Elect again receive the journey bread:
What a mystery, they think: here, so close to the destination of their pilgrimage,
the All-Powerful One they sought so long shows Himself to them simply as
Father; the final Word He gives them as journey bread is that He has always loved
them, been with them, cared for them, leading them every step as they sought
after Him, even though they didn't know it or appreciate it. (p. 144)

The term ephodion (Latin viaticum), however, in the early Christian tradition
had a much wider meaning than the Word of scripture. What had signified "a
day's provisions" came in the church's lexicon to mean prayer and baptism
(Basil), Eucharistic communion (Gregory of Nyssa, Nicaea, Canon 13), almsgiving (Cyprian), or the entire collection of Christian practices (1 Clement).
But Jackson's connotation of the term "journeybread," is actually closer to the
post-Tridentine understanding of viaticum as provision for the dying (which
definition ironically echoes the pagan viaticum as "Charon's wages").
In these two instances, and throughout the book, Jackson adapts her
patristic sources to the evangelical mood in Christianity. The Biblical interpretation on which she founds the dramatic narrative of the pilgrimage of the
Elect in Lent to their reception of the Lord's prayer is a spiritual exegesis not
unlike that of the fathers, but its emphasis on combat and sin conforms more
to the apocalyptic strain in early Christianity than it does either to the catechetical writings or to monastic spiritual theology.
]ourneybread is a powerful echo of some patristic conceptions of Christian
initiation. An account like Jackson's is perhaps one way of convincingly staging the Christian drama. In that case, the main recourse of the Christian is
the departure from the enemy world and identification with a transcendent
victor. This is the vision that enlivens Jackson's book; it has more in common
with the Apocalypse than with the comprehensive synthesis of Origen,
Gregory of Nyssa, or Augustine, each of whom successfully incorporated ear-

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lier Christian dualism into a balanced, theological whole. As a protreptic
device, Jackson's book may be, in a certain way, part of a collective movement that may form a prolegomenon for a new synthesis-informed by the
patristic authors but written as a vademecum for contemporary inquiry.
ROBIN DARLING YOUNG
The Catholic Universityof America
Washington, D.C.

Ministry: Lay Ministry in the Roman Catlwlic Church, Its History and
Theology. By KENAN B. OSBORNE, 0.F.M. (New York: Paulist Press,
1993). Pp. 722. $29.95 (paper).
In his Lay Ministry, Fr. Kenan Osborne, O.F.M., sustains his effort to
introduce a program of reform in ecclesial self-understanding inaugurated in
his earlier Priestlwod: A History of the Ordained Ministry in the Roman
Catlwlic Church (New York: Paulist Press, 1988). The project undertaken in
this second installment aims primarily to undermine those traditional patterns of distinguishing klerikos/laikos and ordained/non-ordained that locate
"lay ministry" at a lower latitude on the ontological map, and in this way to
clear a path for a more adequate understanding of the place of the laity in the
ministry of the Church.
Of the 609 pages of text, 548 are dedicated to genealogical analysis of the
transmission of Christian understanding of ministry. The author's narrative
might be condensed as follows.
The first millennium was a period marred by theological definitions of
ministry and order derived from the terms of debate that emerged in the conflict between temporal and spiritual rulers. Necessary for successful participation in this cultural debate was the embrace of a hierarchical view of reality, a view destined to obscure the truth about the distinctively egalitarian
Christian form of life in common (48-332). The second millennium is interpreted as a period of the gradual reemergence of a vision and practice of
evangelical life that had been surrendered to alien philosophical and religious doctrines. The primary historical moments in this recovery, treated in
three successive chapters, include the late medieval vita evangelica movements (333-90), the Protestant Reformation (391-463), and the French and
American Revolutions (464-517). The Second Vatican Council, where it
treats of lay ministry, consolidated these post-medieval insights gained into
the Christian religion and the nature of man (518-95) and advanced the conclusion: Equality of discipleship is primary in the Christian religion and differences in ministerial function serve only to promote this fundamental good.
Osborne is aware that this basic line of thought was that taken by the
Reformers and found inadequate by the Council of Trent. But Osborne does

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333

not present his position as an instance of theological dissent. Rather, he
argues that the magisterium acting in the Second Vatican Council teaches
that there exists no meaningful sense in which "lay ministry" can be understood as subordinate (ontologically) to "ordained ministry" in the sacramental life of the Church.
This review will focus on this latter aspect of Osborne's argument which,
while limited in scope, appears to be the more original and important element
of the book. Osborne himself provides a further narrowing of scope with his
selection of two key sources upon which he relies: Lumen Gentium and the
1983 Code of Canon Law.
In his interpretation of Lumen Gentium, Osborne argues that the rejection
of the preparatory documents signaled the majority bishops' desire to distance themselves from a "hierarchical approach" and move toward "a new
form of ecclesiology" (516). This new form is rooted in the primacy of Jesus,
and it is He (and not the Church) who is the sole lumen gentium, from which
it follows immediately that there can be only one form of "gospel discipleship" (530). "All Church ministry, whether ordained or non-ordained, is relativized by the identical christological base" (528), Jesus, who transcends the
distinction between clerical and lay (558). Osborne argues further that Lumen
Gentium supports this position in its identification of the Church as "the people of God," "christifidelis," and "priesthood of all believers" (530-40). On
the basis of this recovery of the "foundational and most sacred level of discipleship" (541), at which level the distinction between ordained and nonordained "makes no difference" (39), Osborne maintains (in accord with what
he takes to be the teaching of the magisterium) that Christians share in the
tria munera of Christ in a manner "COMMON and EQUAL to ALL" (542).
His case is further supported, Osborne believes, by the shift in language
that occurs between Canon 107 in the 1917 Code-which speaks of a divinely instituted distinction between clergy and laity-and Canon 207 in the
1983 Code, which refers to a divinely instituted distinction between "sacred
ministers" and "other Christian faithful," which groups are only juridically
distinguished as clergy and laity. Osborne finds here not only a sign of reluctance to specify (in law) the divinely ordained characteristics proper to clergy and laity (the characteristics of which are in part bound up with changing
pastoral circumstances), but proceeds further to argue that this new canon
cancels "any effort to turn this typological description (of the clergy/lay distinction) into an ontological one" (45).
To reinforce these points, Osborne argues that this position is confirmed
in the New Testament and the concept of "gospel discipleship" contained
therein. While "gospel discipleship" remains a somewhat underdeveloped
concept given its centrality for Osborne's work, it is clear enough that this
concept includes an immediacy to the person of Jesus, mediated through
encounter with the "enscriptured word," prior to the ministerial structures of
the Church (112, 463), and a mystical dimension that "goes far beyond offi-

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cial church documents ... , systematic theology, ... and liturgical celebration" (329), and as such "is first and foremost a lived reality, not a cogitated
reality" (330).
In light of these criteria, Osborne maintains that the distinction between
clergy and lay "is in many ways devoid of a gospel foundation" and is without christological basis (39). Further, "gospel discipleship" is opposed to "a
theologically based view of ordo" (509), the latter which intrudes upon the
purity of the former from Greco-Roman politics, philosophy, and culture
(114-62, esp. 159-62). The statement "that there is an ontological difference
in the ordained priesthood, episcopal and presbyteral, is a questionable statement at best" (576); elsewhere, Osborne concludes: '"Ontological difference'
appears to be no longer a viable theological approach to determine the difference between klerikos/laikos"(581). While he affirms "that the sacrament
of orders confers a character" is a defined teaching, he denies that the what
of this character is defined (567).
It is not Osborne's goal in the present book to determine the whatness of
sacramental character in orders. It is his aim, however, to deny that speech
about sacramental character signifies an ontological change in the one upon
whom the sacrament of orders is conferred (569, 576, 581). Osborne prefers
to limit the signification of the difference between clergy and lay to one of
"degree." What this amounts to in Osborne's mind is unclear in his text; it
would appear, however, to run into an explicit contradiction with the text
upon whose authority he relies, at that point where lumen Gentium at nn. 10
and 27 speaks of the "essential difference" between laity and clergy and of a
hierarchical understanding of the Church that this entails. For his part,
Osborne simply rests his argument on the sentences from lumen Gentium
cited above and attributes any possible contradiction here to that internal to
the Council document.
Finally, these arguments are linked with the wider findings of Osborne's
historical exploration into the "meaning, function, ministry, and role of the
presbyter and bishop over the centmies," which investigation yields the conclusion that "there is no permanent element or dimension in the ordained
priest, whether presbyteral or episcopal, which through the centuries has
remained constant" (569). According to Osborne, any speech about sacramental character merely begs the question concerning the permanent element in these ministries in the absence of an "immutable definition" of
orders that can survive historical analysis of the Christian tradition.
What are the rules that govern whether a particular definition qualifies?
That the power to consecrate bread and wine, as an example, might so qualify is ruled out in part because it fails to appear in the most primitive extant
ordination ritual. Yet Osborne does not rely solely upon "conservative"
appeals to antiquity. In the end, the possibility that a power of action proper
to the ordained alone might be found in a historical survey of Christian tradition is ruled out a priori by the positions established in Osborne's reading

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335

of Lumen Gentium. For example: The power to act in persona Christi capitis
fails to qualify as a definition of the whatness of sacramental character, not
on historical grounds, but rather because, on Osborne's account, the authoritative teaching of Vatican II (in continuity with the New Testament) denies
that there can exist any power of action proper to the ordained with its affirmation that all powers of action in Christ and his tria munera are shared by
the "baptized-eucharistic Christian" (570).
It should be made clear that Osborne does not intend to threaten differences in the way ordained and non-ordained ministers function in the
Church. He holds, for example, that his position can sustain the beliefs that
only the hierarchy teaches with ultimate authority, exists as "the duly
appointed and official leaders in the Church," and possesses a priestly ministry that is eucharistically and penitentially effective (553).
Yet a fundamental problem with the book remains, one that might be
described as a misapplication of his concern to affirm the universal call to
holiness for all members of the Church. Osborne appears to think that there
exists some intrinsic connection between an ontological interpretation of
sacramental character (in holy orders) and a pernicious clericalism in the life
of the Church, one that impedes an evangelical understanding of lay ministry.
The scholastic tradition makes clear, however, that the sacramental character
effected in holy orders establishes a pre-eminence, not in the order of grace
or holiness, but in the order of instrumentality: the ordained priest possesses
a power to act in such a way that the saving action of Christ upon the cross is
made present in the Eucharist. Yet viewed from another perspective, according to the order of holiness or theological virtue, greater pre-eminence
belongs to the Eucharistic act of participating in Christ's sacrifice of love and
obedience to the Father than to the priestly act of the ordained that makes
Christ's sacrifice present to those assembled.
Osborne acknowledges that the difference between lay and ordained
members of the Church functions "empirically" in the life of the Church, but
commits himself to a position that denies that the action of the priest might
be said really to effect (as an instrumental cause), in the time and place of
those gathered to celebrate the Eucharist, what his actions signify. In his promotion of an interpretation of Christian ministry shorn of ontological realism,
Osborne severs the link between the community that is the Church and the
Lord Jesus Christ capitis ecclesia who acts visibly in her midst. Not surprisingly, Osborne leaves unexplored in this work the sacrament of Confirmation
and its conferral of a spiritual character equipping the adult Christian for
indispensable forms of public ministry in the Church.
GARY M. CULPEPPER

ProvidenceCollege
Providence,Rhode Island

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The De-Moralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values. By
GERTRUDE HiMMELFARB. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. Pp. 314.
$24 (paper).

If there were a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Words, its members
would undoubtedly be protesting the unfair treatment that has been meted out
to that much-abused adjective, "Victorian." (Meanwhile, the Sub-Committee
on False Claims and Deceptive Practices would be casting a cold eye on the
broken promises of "Romantic," but that is a story for another day.) Except in
the phrases "Victorian literature" and (sometimes) "Victorian architecture,"
"Victorian" has largely degenerated into a shorthand for a certain combination of priggishness and prudery. My dictionary duly notes in its first definition that the word pertains to the reign of Queen Victoria (1837-1901). But
its second definition is more to the point: "Exhibiting qualities, as moral
severity or hypocrisy, middle-class stuffiness, and pompous conservatism"
that are "usually associated" with that period. In fact, an inventory of what is
usually meant by "Victorian" would include just about every sin currently
enrolled on the Index of political incorrectness. The Victorians, we are told,
were guilty of being patriarchal, imperialistic, sexist, elitist, racist, classist,
and Eurocentric. They were also grossly materialistic and, sin of sins, sexually repressed.
For many years, the eminent historian Gertrude Himmelfarb has been providing an antidote to these distorting prejudices. In two classic studies about
poverty in the Victorian period, she has shown that the popular image of
Dickensian squalor-epitomized by the figure of young Oliver Twist in the
workhouse-must be supplemented by the countless reform movements that
proliferated in Victorian England and that did so much to relieve the condition of the poor and the working class. In this new collection of essays, The
De-Moralization of Society, Professor Himmelfarb continues to correct our
understanding of the many received ideas that have accumulated around the
word "Victorian."
Consider the piano leg. If there is a single image that crystallizes the popular conception of Victorian prudery and sexual squeamishness, it is the
image of piano legs decorously swathed in pantaloons. How refreshing to
learn from Professor Himmelfarb that those piano legs-like such other
"Victorian" kinks as home libraries in which male authors were rigorously
segregated from female authors-were generally "the invention of satirists,
foisted by the English on gullible Americans and perpetuated by unwary historians." (The covered piano legs, for example, originated with a traveler to
America who reported seeing a piano in a girls' school sporting "modest little trousers with frills at the bottom" [15].)

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Again and again in these essays, Professor Himmelfarb invites us to peek
behind a stereotype or cliche or presupposition. Most of us think that we have
a pretty good idea of what feminism is. But in her thoughtful essay
"Feminism, Victorian Style," Professor Himmelfarb shows that the real history is more complicated, and more various, than we might have appreciated.
Given the common stereotype of patriarchal Victorian society, it may seem
odd to say that feminism is itself a Victorian phenomenon. Yet the word-and
the smorgasbord of movements, principles, and sentiments that the word
names-is of Victorian provenance. Most contemporary readers will be surprised, too, to discover the positions that many eminent female Victorians
took on women's issues. For example, when the movement to give women the
vote gained momentum, there seemed to be as many women opposing female
suffrage as there were supporting it. The feminist Millicent Fawcett campaigned tirelessly to secure the vote for women; but those opposing it included such luminaries as George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Mrs. Gaskell,
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, Margaret Oliphant, Florence
Nightingale, and even the socialist Beatrice Webb (99-101). There was a similar diversity on the controversial question of birth control. Detailing this
diversity, Professor Himmelfarb observes that "One is reminded once again
that Victorian feminists were not all of a kind and did not all subscribe to the
same 'program'" (123).
Or consider that hearty myth that the guiding ethos of Victorian life was
"ruthlessly materialistic, acquisitive, and self-centered," not to say cruel,
exploitative, and unfeeling (143). Professor Himmelfarb is not Pollyanna. She
readily acknowledges the sometimes vicious inequities that marred Victorian
life. And she several times pauses to note that "no-one ... is proposing to
revive Victorianism" (252). But she also shows that "Humanitarianism
became, in effect, a surrogate religion" for the Victorians (14 7). Indeed, whatever else it was, the Victorian age was an age of reformers and do-gooders of
all varieties, some of whom actually managed to do considerable good. "In
addition to societies for the promotion of piety and virtue," Professor
Himmelfarb notes, "others were established for the relief of the poor and
infirm-for destitute orphans and abandoned children, aged widows and penitent prostitutes, the deaf, dumb, blind, and otherwise incapacitated" (6). By
the mid-nineteenth century, there were legislative reforms to limit working
hours, to improve sanitation and the condition of prisons, to establish public
education, and to extend the legal rights of women.
This reforming impulse had many beneficent social consequences. In her
lengthy epilogue, "A De-Moralized Society," Professor Himmelfarb cites
studies showing that the number of indictable criminal offenses declined by
nearly half during the Victorian age, from 480 per 100,000 in 1857 to 250 in
1901. It was not until after the Second World War that things really started to
change for the worse. In the last three decades, the change has been cataclysmic. By 1981 the number of indictable offense per 100,000 had risen to

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5,600. By 1991, the number was 10,000 (221-27). Then there is that other
powerful index of social pathology, the rate of illegitimacy. At the tum of the
nineteenth century, the illegitimacy rate was just over five percent. It crept
up to seven percent by 1845, but then declined to less than four percent by
the tum of this century. It remained fairly stable until the late 1950s. Then it
skyrocketed. In both the United States and Britain, the illegitimacy rate
increased sixfold between 1960 and 1991.
Professor Himmelfarb introduces such comparative statistics not because
she prefers Victorian answers to contemporary social and moral problems,
but because she recognizes that many of the problems the Victorians faced
continue to plague us. Her discussion of the New Poor Law, introduced in
1834, is a case in point. Like most debates over welfare policy, it was deeply
controversial. The basic intent of the law was to circumscribe the right to
public relief. It did this by stigmatizing the able-bodied poor, requiring them
to live in sexually segregated workhouses in order to obtain relief. Dickens
indelibly, if not quite accurately, fixed the horrors of workhouse life a few
years later in Oliver Twist. Opposition to the law was fierce. Benjamin
Disraeli, for example, wrote that "I consider that this Act has disi;raced the
country more than any other upon record."
Professor Himmelfarb is quick to note that "by the standards of the present day, the New Poor Law was grudging and harsh" (141). But she also
points out that it was not the simple punitive measure it has often been portrayed as. It arose partly from the conviction that habitual dependency on
relief was demoralizing, especially to those who were able to work. Thus it is
that the debate over the New Poor Law has a contemporary relevance. Today,
Professor Himmelfarb writes, "the very word 'stigma' has become odious,
whether applied to dependency, illegitimacy, addiction, or anything else. Yet
stigmas are the corollaries of values. If work, independence, responsibility,
respectability are valued, then their converse must be devalued, seen as disreputable. The Victorians, taking values seriously, also took seriously the
need for social sanctions" (142).
Taking values seriously: that is the leitmotif that echoes throughout these
essays, binding them together into a continuous narrative. Not that the term
"values" is unproblematic. On the contrary. Professor's subtitle-"From
Victorian Virtues to Modern Values"-hints at the change that she explores
in her prologue and touches on repeatedly throughout The De-Moralization of
Society. The central Victorian vi1tues of thrift, self-reliance, hard work, and
dutifulness were not the classical virtues of wisdom, justice, temperance, and
courage; nor were they the traditional Christian virtues of faith, hope, and
charity. Neve1theless, they were "vi1tues" in the sense that they were regarded as objective moral standards that pertained to everyone even if everyone
did not live up to them.
Today, we are much more apt to speak of "values" than of "virtues." But
the words are not synonyms. As Professor Himmelfarb points out, the term

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"values," which did not come into vogue until the end of the nineteenth century, "brought with it the assumptions that all moral ideas are subjective and
relative, that they are mere customs and conventions, that they have a purely instrumental, utilitarian purpose, and that they are peculiar to specific
individuals and societies" (11). It is perhaps this above all that separates us
from the moral universe of the Victorians. We all know the ways in which our
world is freer and less stratified than the world of the Victorians. We must be
grateful to Professor Himmelfarb for so vividly recalling us to the moral and
spiritual resources we have lost.
ROGER KIMBALL
The New Criterion
New York, New York