The Thomist 61 (1997): 501-24 WOMEN'S ORDINATION AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINE SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T. Mundelein Seminary' Mundelein, Illinois S OME MONTHS AGO, the Catholic papers reported that Patrick Kennedy, Democratic congressman from Rhode Island, was obliged to apologize to Bishop Gelineau for wondering aloud when the Catholic Church would "crawl out from the Stone Age" and ordain women. He understands failure to ordain women to contradict the Gospel message that all people are equal. Young Catholics can probably be excused for thinking everything is in flux. The implementation of the Second Vatican Council's reforms has accustomed us to change and has generated new controversies as the implications of change have made themselves felt. Given that this emphasis on change is driven by a concerted effort to bring the Church into a more effective relationship with the modem world, many Catholics are extremely puzzled by the Pope's insistence that women cannot be ordained to the priesthood. It is not surprising, then, that Patrick Kennedy should be confused. In the apostolic letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis, of Pentecost, 1994, Pope John Paul II stated that "the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women," and that this teaching requires the definitive assent of all the faithful.' Many who did not pay much attention to that letter were caught short 1 "Apostolic Letter on Ordination and Women," Origins 24, no, 4 (9 June 1994): SJ, 501 502 SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T. when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith clarified that the Pope intended to reaffirm a teaching which had already ''been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium." 2 The word "infallibly" certainly caught everyone's attention, but it also left many seriously dismayed about how this position could be justified theologically. I believe a case can be made in support of this teaching. The whole case cannot be laid out here, but perhaps some light can be shed on the papal teaching by taking up the commonly asked question, Why isn't this tradition open to development? Why isn't this another case of the "development of doctrine"? If so much could be re-thought and then adapted in significant ways at Vatican II, what prevents the same thing from happening in this case? First I will identify three different lines of reasoning in favor of such development. Next I will provide evidence that there has, in fact, been significant development in the Church's teaching in relation to each of these three lines of argument. My conclusion is that the developments that have taken place do not suggest that the tradition ought to change. In fact, they stand in some tension with change and, in my view, favor the existing practice. 3 I. THREE WAYS OF ASKING THE QUESTION Let me briefly sketch three ways in which some Catholics pose the question. First, some believe that Catholic practice ought to change in response to the changed social circumstances of women. This just seems to them like common sense, an obvious part of human rights. Just as eligible women are now admitted to the other professions, justice requires that women be admitted to the ordained ministry. Many women are surely as well qualified as men to serve the Church as priests, they note, if demonstrated competence in ministry is taken as the criterion. Origins25, no. 24 (30November1995): 401. These reflections do not attempt to address the immense practical question of the clergy shortage. 2 "Inadmissibility of Women to Ministerial Priesthood," 3 WOMEN'S ORDINATION AND DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 503 Second, some would argue the case on the grounds of Catholic doctrine regarding the equality of the baptized. It is not just a question of catching up with society, they point out; the foundation for change may be found in the Church itself. Appeal is made to St. Paul's assertion in the Letter to the Galatians, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus" (3:28). These people ask the Church to implement its own teaching on the baptismal equality of women and men. Third, some who are acquainted with how Catholic theology approaches such matters appreciate the need to evaluate the reasons that have been offered in the past to justify the tradition. They recognize the special nature of the Church as divinely instituted; they also know that the question whether women can be ordained has been posed before and answered in the negative. Are the answers given then still persuasive? Let me review some of the evidence that leads many to suppose that the old reasons are not, in fact, persuasive. In the 1960s, one of Xarl Rahner's students, Haye van der Meer, re-examined the reasons commonly given in defense of reserving ministerial priesthood to men. His research suggested that the Church's practice may well be determined by sociocultural considerations related to the status of women rather than by a genuine theological tradition. (He subsequently withdrew his thesis.) 4 The question of women's access to priestly functions and to priestly and episcopal ordination had indeed been raised, and resolved in the negative. But the attitudes of the Fathers of the Church and of some medieval Scholastics appear to have been heavily influenced by presuppositions about women's natural inferiority to men, or women's divinely willed subjection to men in consequence of the Fall. Even relatively without modem manuals of theology repeated-apparently 4 See Haye van der Meer, Women Priests in the Catholic Church?, trans. Arlene and Leonard Swidler (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1973; German original, Przestertum der Frau?, 1969). Van der Meer withdrew his thesis twenty years later: "De vrouw en het priesterschap," Communio (International edition) 14: 1 (1989): 72-76. 504 SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T. embarrassment!5-several arguments about women's incapacity for priestly ministry that few theologians would defend today. Van der Meer showed that early witnesses to the tradition usually appealed to what is called the "Pauline ban." According to two New Testamenttexts (1Cor14:35-36and1 Tim2:12-14) the Apostle forbade women to engage in public teaching in the Church and to exercise authority over men. The ban in the First Letter to Timothy was explained in these texts by reference to the second chapter of Genesis, namely, "Adam was formed first, and then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor." The same ban, as it appears in Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, reads: ''women should keep silent in the churches. For they are not allowed to speak, but should be subordinate." Other Pauline texts often cited (1 Cor 11:3, 8-12; Eph 5:22, 24) affirm what is called the doctrine of male headship: if "the husband is the 'head' of his wife" (1 Cor 11 :3), she owes him submission and obedience. According to van der Meer' s hypothesis, women have been excluded from priestly office by mf,n who regarded them as naturally inferior to themselves. Their faulty estimate of women was taken over from the surrounding culture and supported by means of the Pauline texts, backed up by the teaching of Genesis. Those who favor this hypothesis maintain that the only real reason for the tradition of reserving priesthood to men is a faulty view of women, a faulty anthropology. Once the faulty anthropology of ancient times has been exposed and refuted, they suppose, it becomes apparent that there is no theological obstacle to women's admission to priesthood. I will anticipate my argument a bit to point out that the Magisterium rejects this hypothesis. Twenty years ago the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith insisted on the binding character of the tradition, and traced it not only to the teaching of 'See, for example, Joseph A. Wahl, The Exclusion of Women from Holy Orders (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1959); and Emmanuel Doronzo, Tractatus dogmaticus de ordine, vol. 3, De causis extrinsecis (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1962), 405-25. WOMEN'S ORDINATION AND DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 505 St. Paul-the "Pauline ban"-but also to the will of Christ, made known in his deliberate choice of the Twelve, and to the apostolic practice which continued to entrust the office of bishop and presbyter by a laying on of hands only to men.6 Still, many theologians espouse van der Meer's hypothesis. They express grave doubts that an appeal to the will of Christ, seen in his choice of twelve men, can be sustained in the face of critical scholarship. In fact, they tend to dismiss this argument. With this appeal out of the way, the third group continues to maintain that no theological obstacle exists. According to the first line of reasoning, then, the acknowledgment of women's equal personhood and equal human rights should overturn the tradition; according to the second, women's equal dignity with men as baptized Christians should qualify them as candidates for priestly orders; and according to the third, given that the traditional explanation-distorted by a faulty anthropology-has been rejected and that the new explanation cannot be proved, there is no theological obstacle to a development of doctrine. My plan is to respond to each of these positions and, in the course of so doing, to offer an evaluation favorable to the Magisterium's judgment. II. STATEMENT OF THESIS The teaching Church has not ignored these objections. On the contrary, it seems to me that we are witnessing in the Catholic Church a threefold development of doctrine that bears on each of these points. It leads, I believe, not to a change in our practice but to its reaffirmation. First, Catholic teaching has met contemporary feminism with a clear, if cautious, development of doctrine regarding women's equality-but not identity-with men in '"Declaration on the Question of the Admission of Women to the Ministerial Priesthood" (Inter insigntores), 15 October 1976. See Origins 6, no. 33 (3 February 1977) for text and commentary (minus the footnotes). This line of argument has been ably defended in a book-length study by Manfred Hauke, Women in the Catholic Priesthood? (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988; first published in German in 1982). 506 SARA BUTLER, M.S.B. T. society. Second, both at Vatican II and in subsequent Church teaching and legislation, the baptismal equality of women with men has been clearly established and there has been a significant development of doctrine regarding the vocation and mission of the laity. Third, we are witnessing a development in the doctrine regarding the sacramental nature of the ministerial priesthood that is integrally linked with the new line of reasoning-namely, the appeal to the Lord's choice of the Twelve-proposed in support of the constant tradition of reserving ministerial priesthood to males. III. WOMEN AND HUMAN RIGHTS: WOMEN AS PERSONS There has been in the twentieth century a significant development of doctrine regarding the dignity of women and their full equality, as persons, with men. This development belongs to the tradition of Catholic social teaching. It took place quite apart from the question of women's access to ministerial priesthood and it does not, in fact, overturn the traditional prohibition. Three stages have been discerned in what has been a centurylong development in papal teaching: from Leo XIII to Pius XI; from Pius XII to John XXIII; and from Paul VI to John Paul II. 7 In the period 1878-1939 women's place, prerogatives, and social roles were addressed in the context of concern for the restoration of the social order and for the defense of the family as the basic unit of society. (Recall, for example, the demand for a ''family wage" and for protective legislation for women and children in the work force.) The popes did not examine but simply presupposed a feminine identity, deduced from traditional roles-the submissive wife and devoted mother. They understood women's equality with men before God to be compatible with their subordination to their husbands' governance within the 7 See Robert Harahan, The Vocation of Woman: The Teaching of the Modem Popes from Leo XIII to Paul VI (Rome: Pontificia Universitatis Lateranensis: Academica Alfonsiana, 1983). Unfortunately, the published version only takes the reader through the writings of John XX III. See also William B. Faherty, The Destiny of Modem Woman in the Light of Papal Teaching (Westminster, Md.: Newman, 1950). WOMEN'S ORDINATION AND DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 507 family. They promoted Catholic women's organizations to counter the message of secular feminism which-in Europe more than the United States and Britain-identified women's liberation with the right to free love, contraception, abortion, and divorce. The popes came to appreciate the moral influence of women in the social order and encouraged the work of both married and single women in organized Catholic Action. The second period, 1939-63, saw multiple shifts in the social, political, economic, scientific, and cultural landscape. To meet accusations that the Church was hostile to women's liberation, Pope Pius XII laid less emphasis on woman's place (viz., the home) and more on her role as a responsible person, complementary to man. In his early writings he identified motherhood as the source of feminine dignity, but later he came to see that the source of feminine dignity was-notwithstanding woman's prerogatives as mother-personhood. He affirmed that women and men have equal dignity, but diverse roles-they are equal, but different. His attention to woman as person was carried forward in the teaching of Pope John XXIII, who was sensitive to the question of woman's vocation and of her right to personal development, not only in the family but also in public life. The anthropology adopted by the Second Vatican Council reflects this focus on the person. Women began to be regarded not only in terms of their place in the familial or social structure, and not only in terms of their unique and indispensable social roles, but in terms of their identity as persons, that is to say, as subjects of personal rights and responsibilities in the human community. The Council's articulation of Catholic principles of social justice is based on the dignity of the human person, a dignity rooted in each one's creation in the divine image (Gen 1:27). All have the same nature and origin; all are redeemed by Christ; all share the same vocation or destiny: communion with God. The rights and duties of human persons are universal and inviolable. Because of this basic equality among persons, the Council taught, all ''forms of social or cultural discrimination in 508 SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T. basic personal rights on the grounds of sex, race, color, social condition, language or religion must be eradicated as contrary to God's design." 8 It took as an example the case of women "who are denied the chance freely to choose a husband, or a state of life, or to have access to the same educational and cultural benefits as are available to men." The third phase, 1963 to the present, has progressed from the defense as women as persons to an examination of the mutual relations of women and men, and then to a vigorous condemnation of the exploitation of women. Pope Paul VI asserted the full equality of women with men, created in the image of God, but he also insisted that a woman has a proper vocation which "must be realized along the line of her sexual difference." He defended women's equal rights and co responsibility with their husbands in the family and committed himself "to labor everywhere to have discovered, respected, and protected the rights and prerogatives of every woman in her life--educational, professional, civic, social, religious-whether single or married. " 9 While insisting on women's rights, Paul VI advocated "an effective complementarity" between men and women and cautioned against "an egalitarian and impersonal elimination of differences" which might undermine women's "prerogatives." 10 Pope John Paul II has given Catholic teaching on the status of women a new direction by considering man and woman together, in their common personhood and their mutual complementarity, in their communion. He alludes to the development of Catholic doctrine on this in his apostolic letter "On the Dignity and Vocation of Women" of 1988. 11 Galatians 3:28 ("no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, woman and man"), he observes, continues to challenge every generation. "How many generations were needed for [this] principle to be realized in the historyofhumanity 8 Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et spes; hereafter, GS) 29 (emphasis added). 9 "Women/Disciples and Co-Workers," Ongins 4 (1May1975): 719. 10 Ibid., 718. 11 Mulieres dignitatem 24; see Origins 18, no. 17 (6 October 1988). Hereafter, cited as MD. WOMEN'S ORDINATION AND DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 509 through the abolition of slavery!" What the Pope calls the "Gospel innovation" with respect to the status of women still remains to be achieved. What does it require? An awareness that "in marriage there is a mutual 'subjection of the spouses out of reverence for Christ,' and not just that of the wife to the husband." 12 The Gospel carries within it the principle of the emancipation of wives from unilateral subjection to their husbands, the Pope writes, and, by extension, the general emancipation of women from unilateral subjection to men. Here we come face to face with a development in doctrine, a new conviction that equal personhood before God must be given more complete expression in fully mutual relations within marriage and in society at large. This is not achieved by disregarding differences between the sexes, but by respecting them. According to much feminist theory, the remedy for male domination and female subjection is to emancipate women from their "subject" status and declare them to be free and autonomous like men. The Pope's solution is quite different: the remedy is not the emancipation of women from the burden of interpersonal relationships, but the conversion of men to a mutual subjection out of reverence for Christ, a mutual service in self-giving. In his most recent letter to women, the Pope emphasizes women's contributions not just to family life, but to the life of whole societies and nations. He explicitly condemns the abuse and exploitation of women, applauds the efforts of women who have promoted reform, and calls for a "new feminism" that will transform culture so that it supports life.13 This first point of development of doctrine is concerned with women's human rights. It is argued at the level of social justice, for it pertains to all women, but finds its rationale in the doctrines of creation-all persons created in the image of God have an inviolable dignity-and redemption-all are equally redeemed by Ibid., emphasis added. Pope John Paul II, "Letter to Women," Origins 25, no. 9 (27 July 1995): 137-43; and the 1995 encyclical letter "The Gospel of Life" (Evangelium vitae) 99. 12 13 510 SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T. the cross of Christ. Catholic teaching affirms women's human and civil rights, b;ut insists that equality is not identity. Man and woman, equally human, are made for mutual help. They are equally responsible for humanity, for the earth, for history and culture, but theirs is neither "a static and undifferentiated equality'' nor "an irreconcilable and inexorably conflictual difference." 14 Something "original" can be expected from women as well as from men. Sexual identity is regarded as a value, as meaningful, on the basis not of an empirical investigation of the relations between the sexes but of a metaphysical anthropology. Sexual identity is understood to affect the whole person profoundly, with the consequence that respect for the person requires attention to and respect for sexual difference. IV. WOMEN AND BAPTISMAL RIGHTS: WOMEN AS CHRISTIANS The development of doctrine just described begins with the insight that women's dignity is grounded in a personhood held in common with men, and leads to the recognition that the hierarchical ordering of male/female relationships must give way to a full mutuality which does not sacrifice but rather preserves and values the "original" contribution made by each sex. The next point concerns the status of baptized women, and in fact of the lay faithful, in the Church. The baptismal equality of women with men has now been established in law, and there has been a significant development of doctrine regarding the dignity of the baptized and the vocation and mission of the laity. A) Juridic Equality of Baptized Women with Baptized Men Baptism, the sacrament of faith, is the foundation of Christian life; it is completed by confirmation and by participation in the mystery of the Eucharist. All believers who receive these sacraments of initiation gain access to the fullness of Christian 14 John Paul II, "Letter to Women," art. 8. WOMEN'S ORDINATION AND DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 511 living. They receive the indwelling Holy Spirit, live in communion with Christ, and share in the divine nature as adopted children of God and heirs of heaven. Are baptized women full members of the Church? Do they have equal dignity with baptized men? Vatican II claimed that they do: There is a common dignity of members deriving from their rebirth in Christ, a common grace as [children of God), a common vocation to perfection, one salvation, one hope and undivided charity. In Christ and in the Church there is, then, no inequality arising from race or nationality, social condition or sex. 15 The council goes on to cite the ancient baptismal text quoted in the Letter to the Galatians: "there is no longer male and female" (3:28). Baptism, then, is the foundation of equal rights in the Church. Baptismal unity in Christ "does not cancel out diversity," but it ends the mutual opposition between the sexes which is the inheritance of sin. 16 Pope John Paul II teaches, as we have seen, that the Gospel carries within it the principle of the emancipation of wives from unilateral subjection to their husbands, and, by extension, of women in general from unilateral subjection to men. Has this baptismal equality been translated into practice? A comparison of the 1983 Code of Canon Law with the 1917 code reveals that it has, at least, been translated into law. 17 The 1917 code betrays the legislator's opinion that women are in need of male governance, instruction, and protection. It regards married women as unilaterally subject to their husbands; gives preference to the rights of fathers over those of mothers; provides clerical oversight for female, but not male, religious; accords lay men precedence over women as a general principle; excludes women, but not lay men, from various types of participation in ecclesial affairs; and even provides legislation to protect clerics from women! The unequal juridical condition of baptized women, based on common opinion regarding their weakness and incapacity, was reflected in approximately 33 canons of the 1917 code. Though never affirmed as a doctrine or in principle, this judgment on on the Church (Lumen gentium; hereafter, LG) 32 (emphasis added). MD 11, 16. 17 The following analysis draws upon the work of Nancy Reynolds, S.P., chair of the Committee on Women in the Church of the Canon Law Society of America (unpublished report); Rose McDermott, "Women in the New Code; The Way Supplement 50 (Summer 1984): 27-37; and John V. Dolciamore of Mundelein Seminary. 15 Dogmatic Constitution 16 512 SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T. women's limitations was inscribed and in some sense "institutionalized" in canon law. But equity between baptized women and men was adopted as a principle for the revision of canon law, and most canonists believe that it has been substantially achieved in the 1983 code. As a result of the revision, baptized women have essentially the same juridic status as baptized men in the Catholic Church. Gone are the canons that give men as husbands and fathers more say-so than their wives. Gone are the protective canons that sought to protect women from themselves and priests from women. Gone are most canons that opened certain ecclesial responsibilities to lay men but explicitly excluded women. Women as well as men can be members of diocesan synods with consultative vote, chancellors, professors of theology, promoters of justice, and so on. One exception to juridic equity that remains is that women cannot be permanently installed in the lay ministries of lector and acolyte (canon 230 §1). They may, however, be admitted to the exercise of these and other liturgical functions (canon 230 §2). Another exception discriminates against men: the impediment of abduction can be incurred only when a man abducts a woman for the purpose of marriage, not vice versa! The bishops at the 1987 Synod on the Laity urged that "the acknowledgment in theory of the active and responsible presence of [women] in the Church must be realized in practice." 18 They also identified the need for a critical anthropological study of ''the values and specific gifts offemininity and masculinity" and the need to address the widespread absence of lay men from their ecclesial responsibilities. 19 Again, the presumption is that both women and men have a special witness to give, something "original." The new opportunities for women in the teaching, sanctifying, and governing functions of the Church are also new opportunities for lay men. These are considerable, and they reflect the teaching of the council. The real distinction that remains in canon law, then, is not between men and women, but between the ordained and the non-ordained. This is a differentiation based on "condition and function" in the Church, that is, the ordained are assigned responsibilities and accorded rights not given 18 Pope John Paul II, post-synodal apostolic exhortation, "The Vocation and The Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church and in the World" (Christifideleslaici; hereafter, CL) (30 December 1988) 51. "CL50. WOMEN'S ORDINATIONAND DOCTRINALDEVELOPMENT 513 to the laity. It is perhaps surprising, then, to fmd in the Code of Canon Law the following affinnation of a true equality between the ordained and the lay faithful: In virtue of their rebirth in Christ there exists among all the Christian faithful a true equality with regard to dignity and the activity whereby all cooperate in the building up of the Body of Christ in accord with each one's own condition and function. 20 It is here that we confront the development of doctrine with respect to the vocation and mission of the laity that took place at the Second Vatican Council. BJ The Vocation and Mission of the Laity The council deliberately introduced certain correctives into the Church's life. Two of them are important for the case I am attempting to build: the theological development of the vocation and mission of the laity and its corresponding development of Catholic teaching on the sacrament of holy orders (my third point). From the early part of this century on, the movement to promote the active role of the laity and their indispensable contribution to the life and mission of the Church had been gathering momentum. Allow me to recall three points from the teaching of Vatican II-the first ecumenical council to address the vocation and mission of the laity. First, the lay faithful share in their own way in the threefold office of Jesus Christ, priest, prophet, and king. 21 The council Fathers wanted to overcome the perception that the hierarchy "is" the Church, while lay people are simply the passive recipients of clerical ministry, the "objects" but not the "subjects" of the Church's mission. The laity share in Christ's priestly office when they offer their daily work, prayers, and apostolic undertakings, family and married life, and the hardships oflife as "spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." Through their Eucharistic worship, they offer all of these and consecrate the world itself to God. The laity share in Christ's prophetic office by steadfastly clinging to the faith they have received, seeking to understand it, and announcing the Gospel in direct proclamation and by the witness of holy living in the world. The laity participate in Christ's °Canon 208; see LG 32. 2 21 LG 34-36; CL 14. 514 SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T. royal office when they acquire mastery over sin in their own lives, draw others to Christ, serve the poor and suffering, and work to overcome evil by promoting justice and instilling moral values in social institutions and culture. Second, the laity participate in the saving mission of Christ and his Church by reason of a commission from the Lord himself, given through baptism and confinnation, and nourished at the Eucharist. Lay people, then, do not need a special "mandate" from the hierarchy, though the clear presumption is that they act in communion with their pastors; 22 Third, the laity bear special responsibility for the Church's mission in the world. The opening of Gaudium et spes still has the power to stir hearts: "The joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the people of this age, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted, these too are the joys and hopes, the griefs and anxieties of the followers of Christ." 23 This document sets out an agenda for the laity: the world-consecrating, world-transforming task of bringing faith directly to bear on the realities offamily, culture, politics, peace, and the relations among nations. The council envisioned the laity as working from within-like the leaven that makes the dough rise or the salt that gives savor to the feast-ushering in God's kingdom, bringing to birth a civilization of love.24 By fulfilling their ordinary duties in the spirit of the Gospel, by their work, and by the witness of their faith, hope, and charity, the Catholic laity announce Christ to their neighbors. In those places to which they alone have access, they are the Church. They have the indispensable role of "incarnating" the Gospel, bringing it to bear on the common human tasks of living in dignity and harmony, justice and peace-in other words, of evangelizing culture. Some protest that because women are excluded from the priesthood, they are "second-class citizens," or that they are excluded from full participation in the life of the Church. But if all women are excluded from the priesthood, so are all lay men. Shall we say then that the laity are, by definition, excluded from full participation in the Church's life and mission? Or that the laity are not equal in dignity and activity to the clergy? The council answered no. The answer hinges on how "equality" 22 LG 33. 23 24 15. GS 1. See LG 31; Decree on the Apostolate of Lay People (Apostolicam actuositatem) 1-14; GS 43; CL WOMEN'S ORDINATION AND DOCTRINALDEVELOPMENT 515 and "full participation" are defined. First, equality. Lumen gentium recalls that the order and diversity of functions, ministries, and charisms serve the unity of the Body of Christ (Rom 12:4-5). "By Christ's will some are established as teachers, dispensers of the mysteries and pastors for the others," without prejudice to "a true equality" based on the dignity and activity common to all the faithful. 25 "Equality" here does not mean "identity." It describes the equal personal dignity of persons who bear diverse roles. It allows for a functional "inequality''-if you will-in the service of the community. 26 This recalls St. Paul's message: "The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you, nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you" (1 Cor 12:21). Baptismal equality does not preclude a diversity of gifts and charisms, services and offices. These are indispensable to common life. The distinction between the people and their pastors is ordered to their communion; pastors and people depend upon one another. They "are bound to each other," the council says, "by a mutual necessity." 27 Both are essential to the accomplishment of the Church's mission. This is the council's version of the "discipleship of equals." Second, full participation. "Full participation" in the Catholic Church, as the council defined it, belongs to fully initiated members who are united by bonds of a common faith, sacraments, and ecclesiastical government, and who possess the Spirit of Christ by persevering in charity. 28 Full participation is available to all baptized-confirmedcommunicant members of the Church. The vocation of the Christian faithful is to holiness, the perfection of charity. 29 This goal is achieved by those-lay and ordained-who live in a communion of love with God and neighbor in this world and attain everlasting life in the next. Our vocation is to be saints! And the mission of the Church is to continue Christ's saving work until he returns: to proclaim the good news of our salvation in word and deed; to bring sinners to baptism and reconciliation and to form the Christian community; and to transform culture through doing the works of mercy and justice, reconciliation and 1.5LG 32. 26 See Benedict Ashley,]usticein the Church (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 1996), chapter 1, for the use of this distinction. 27 LG 32. 28 LG 14. 29 LG 39-42. 516 SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T. liberation. This is the common mission of the baptized. Although the full potential of lay participation in the life and missi9n of the Church has yet to be achieved, and much more needs to be done to promote and foster this, no doctrine or law prohibits it. We can all begin immediately! Sexist attitudes and prejudices against lay involvement may in practice prevent what the Church calls for and allows, but no one can be stopped from striving for holiness and proclaiming the Gospel in word and deed. This is the point of development: the laity have a vocation to holiness, the call to become saints, and a mission to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to daily life, families, culture, science, the arts, politics, economics, in order to establish the reign of God in this world. When "full participation" is defined in terms of the specific service of the ordained, the appropriation of this vision of the laity's vocation and mission is compromised. Advocacy for women's ordination can be an expression of a new clericalism. The effort to introduce women into a "renewed priestly ministry" can give exaggerated importance to the ministry of the ordained. It can betray a failure to grasp the ecclesial value of lay work and witness in the world. It risks downplaying the contributions of women whose participation is shaped by marriage, by some form of consecrated life, or by a professional commitment to ecclesial service. But the Spirit's gifts are shared with all the faithful, and the service and witness of the laity, women and men, is essential to the Church's common life and to its mission of salvation in the world. The Church teaches that all the baptized, each "according to his or her particular condition," participate in the Church's mission. 30 The qualification is important, for although the whole people of God is a priestly, prophetic, and kingly people, there are two distinct titles or modes of participation in this triple office. Lumen gentium also speaks of two modes-common and ministerial--of sharing in the one priesthood of Christ. fu a sentence whose significance has been appreciated only gradually since the council, it affrrms that the common priesthood and the ministerial priesthood differ from one another in kind and not only in degree, and that they are ordered to one another.31 Ordination does not confer a new and higher degree of baptism; it is a distinct gift, a different share in Christ's priesthood, given not for one's °Code of Canon Law, canon 204 §1. 3 31 LG 10 (emphasis added). WOMEN'S ORDINATIONAND DOCTRINALDEVELOPMENT 517 own salvation but for the service of God and of the Church. The ministerial priesthood does not replace the common priesthood but exists to promote it. For this reason, the difference in kind does not derogate from the equality-that is, the equal personal dignity-of the laity with the ordained. Women suffer no injustice, then, in being excluded from this office. V. WOMEN ANDTHEMINISTERIALPRIESTHOOD The third line of reasoning that views women's ordination as a necessary and authentic development points out that the traditional objection to the admission of women has been eliminated, namely, a use of the biblical doctrine of male "headship" which portrayed women as unilaterally subordinate. It doubts that the theological obstacle-Jesus' choice of twelve men-identified by the Magisterium can be established by modem critical methods to be normative for the ordained ministry through the ages. Twenty years ago attention was focused on the plausibility of the theological reasons proposed to support the Tradition; today the focus has shifted to the scriptural argument from the choice of the Twelve. 32 Does the Lord's choice of twelve men in the first century have an ongoing sacramental significance in the Church today? The question turns not on the status of women and their capacity (or lack of it) to represent the eminence of degree proper to males, but rather on whether the Lord intended to give the apostolic charge only to men for reasons that continue to hold good (e.g., men's capacity to represent Jesus Christ in his relationship with the Church). I will pass over the objections of those who deny that the Lord intended to found the Church and to entrust his ministry of shepherding the flock to a particular group within the community. 33 Some scholars who accept the divine institution of the Church and of holy orders 32 Inter insigniores 5 and 6 supplied theological reasoning to support its decision. Pope John Paul H's apostolic letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis does not directly invoke these arguments. 33 For a recent, sober judgment from a Catholic exegete, see Adelbert Denaux, "Did Jesus Found the Church?" Louvain Studies 21 (1996): 25-45. See also Guy Mansini, "On Affirming a Dominica! Intention of a Male Priesthood," The Thomist 61 (1997): 301-16 for a look at the question from a dogmatic standpoint. These objections touch the very constitution of the Church and threaten to sever the episcopal pattern of ministry that evolved in the early Church from its roots in the will of Christ. Moreover they undermine the nature of holy orders as a sacrament instituted by Christ. 518 SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T. sincerely question, however, whether Christ's choice of men to fill this role is actually normative. They point out, for example, that the function of the Twelve as witnesses of the resurrection cannot be handed on, and therefore the fact that women could not be official witnesses in apostolic times has no further relevance. Or, they point out that the symbolism of twelve men pertains in a special way to the twelve patriarchs as heads of the twelve tribes and therefore to the eschatological restoration of Israel. 34 But this, too, is particular to the Twelve, not to their successors, so it seems to have no permanent relevance. Even if the truth of these objections is gr!'.mted,they do not account for all the evidence. Note that a re-examination of the traditional arguments was carried out by theologians in preparation for the Vatican Declaration of 1976. It revealed that some ancient authors and liturgico-canonical collections did appeal to the Lord's example when the Church's practice was challenged. His choice of men and not women-neither his female disciples nor his Mother-to be among the Twelve was used as a justification for reserving priestly functions and ordination to men by sources as early as the second century, and was laid out at some length in the fourth century. 35 It is not just the Pauline ban which has served to explain the Church's practice. Early sources also appeal to "the command of the Lord" and the "law of the Gospel." There is a tradition of appealing to the Lord's example, and specifically to his choice of men, not women, as members of the Twelve. 36 It is important to correlate this question with the teaching of Vatican IL The council prepared the way for an understanding of the sacramental significance of the Twelve and their successors the bishops, that is, their function as "sacramental signs" of the Lord's own presence as Head and Shepherd of the Church. My third point, then, is that there has been a development of doctrine regarding the sacramental nature of the ministerial priesthood, a question integrally linked with the Lord's choice of the Twelve. This development, affirmed and then set in motion at the Second Vatican Council, took place without reference to the question of ordaining women. After the fact, however, several features See Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Discipleship of Equals (New York: Crossroad, 1993), chap. 8. on Inter insigniores (Washington, D.C.: USCC, 1977), 22-23, notes 26-29. See also Louis Ligier, "Women and the Ministerial Priesthood," Origins 7 (20 April 1978): 694-701, at 696. 36 For a review of the data, see Hauke, Women in the Priesthood?, 404-44. 34 35 Inter insigniores 1, notes 5-6; Commentary WOMEN'S ORDINATION AND DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 519 of the council's teaching appear relevant. The first is one I have already mentioned: the council taught that the common priesthood and the ministerial priesthood differ from one another in kind, not in degree, and that they are ordered to one another. They do not exist on a continuum of less to more, but are distinct and complementary ways of participating in the one priesthood of Christ. The ministerial priesthood, moreover, exists for the sake of the common priesthood. It serves to promote the holiness, worship, and mission of the rest of the baptized. Second, by ordination, the priest and bishop are established in a new relationship to Jesus Christ which, in turn, places them in a new relationship to the rest of the baptized. 37 Their ecclesial identity, in other words, has a Christological foundation. Ordination is not simply an intensification or specification of the common priesthood they already possess. The Holy Spirit confers a different gift on those ordained to the priesthood and the episcopate, namely, the authority and capacity to act in the person of Christ the Head (in persona Christi capitis)38 with respect to the rest of the baptized. They are called and equipped to rule and form the holy people, to be the teachers, dispensers of mysteries, and pastors. Third, the fullness vf the sacrament of orders, the fullness of the priesthood, is conferred by episcopal ordination. 39 The council settled a long debate when it taught that episcopacy is conferred by a sacrament, not just by a juridical appointment or canonical mission. It opened a new line of reasoning when it taught that episcopal ordination confers authority not only for sacramental functions reserved to bishops (confirming, ordaining) but also for their teaching and governing functions. 40 Fourth, the bishop is called to exercise Christ's own ministry of High Priest, Teacher, and Shepherd of the flock. The bishop's ministry is a 37 LG 21; see Pope John Paul II, post-synodal apostolic exhortation, "I Will Give You Shepherds" (Pastores dabo vobis), Origins 21, no. 45 (16 April 1992): 717, 719-60, at art. 16. 38 See the Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests (Presbyterorum ordinis) 2, and Catechism of the Cath9lic Church (hereafter CCC), nos. 875 and 1585. For more on the Council's intention, see my article, "Priestly Identity: 'Sacrament of Christ the Head,'" Worship 70, no. 4 Ouly 1996): 290-306. 39 LG 21. 40 Ibid. See CCC 1558. See also Peter J. Drilling, "The Priest, Prophet and King Trilogy: Elements of its Meaning in Lumen gentium and for Today," Eglise et theologie 19 (1988): 179-206. What was previously thought to belong to bishops by virtue of papal appointment-the power of jurisdiction-is now accounted for as the consequence of episcopal ordination. 520 SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T. visible sign of Christ's ongoing service to the Church: through him, Christ calls, gathers, builds up, and unifies his Church. 41 The council taught that ordination, which presupposes the sacraments of Christian initiation, confers-by the anointing of the Holy Spirit-a special character which configures the bishop (and also his co-worker, the priest) to Christ in his role as Head of the Church. As High Priest, Teacher, and Shepherd, the bishop is the pre-eminent sign of Christ's headship; he exercises authority in the name and in the person of Christ, the supreme Pastor. Fifth, the council taught that the bishops "have by divine institution taken the place of the apostles as pastors of the Church in such wise that whoever listens to them is listening to Christ and whoever despises them despises Christ and him who sent Christ. •'4 2 Jesus called the Twelve and set Peter at their head; today-by a kind of analogy-the episcopal college represents the apostolic college, and the bishop of Rome, Peter at its head. 43 This hierarchical structure belongs to the very constitution of the Church, and has a sacramental function. According to the council's teaching, it is not just the result of an historical development, arising from the practical need to organize for mission. It is de jure divino, willed and instituted by Christ. When the council taught, then, that the fullness of the sacrament of orders i1> conferred by episcopal consecration, its teaching had reference to the sacramental structure of the Church. This completed the teaching of Vatican I on the nature of the Church by showing how the bishops share, with and under the pope, the bishop of Rome, responsibility for the Church. What has this to do with reserving priestly orders to men? Why couldn't any baptized Christian, man or woman, be chosen to fulfill this office of apostolic leadership and be a sign of Christ the Head? On what grounds is it reserved to men? Here is where the argument from Jesus' choice of the Twelve comes in. It is intimately associated with the theology of holy orders advanced at the council, but takes the further step of identifying the choice of men and not women as something included in the Lord's own intention. As I have already noted, this step is based on an ancient precedent elicited precisely by innovations and challenges to the Church's customary practice. 41 LG 21. 42 LG 20. 43 LG 22, prefatory note of explanation, no. 1. WOMEN'S ORDINATION AND DOCTRINALDEVELOPMENT 521 This is the Magisterium's account: Jesus called the Twelve, as Scripture tells us, after spending a whole night in prayer (Luke 6:12), and he chose them only from among his male disciples. Since he had broken with the customs of his time by including women among his disciples (Mark 15:40-41; Luke 8:2-3; 23:49), it cannot be demonstrated that his choice of men for this office represents acquiescence to religious or cultural norms that dictated appropriate roles for women. His indifference to such conventions is apparent in the Gospels and commands wide agreement. (It is the presupposition, in fact, of a leading feminist reconstruction of Christian origins. )44 Tradition has consistently taken Jesus' example in choosing men for the Twelve to be deliberate. And since the tradition has always seen in the Twelve the foundation and model of the ministerial priesthood, it has regarded this choice as binding for the faithful transmission of the sacrament of apostolic ministry. 45 In his apostolic letter of Pentecost, 1994, the Pope does not introduce any new arguments but states authoritatively that the Church is bound by the Lord's own "way of acting in choosing twelve men whom he made the foundation of his church. •'46 He afftnns that the Twelve did not receive "only a function which could thereafter be exercised by any member of the church; rather, they were specifically and intimately associated in the mission of the Incarnate Word himself. " 47 When the apostles chose fellow-workers who would succeed them in their ministry, they followed Christ's example in choosing only men. Texts from Vatican II, specifically Lumen gentium 20 and 21, are cited in the footnotes to link this with previous teaching regarding the representative function of the apostles and their successors. My third point, then, is that the development of doctrine achieved at Vatican II included a clarification of the sacramental structure of the Church. By reason of the sacrament of holy orders, a bishop is the 44 Elisabeth Schiissler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her: A Feminist TheologicalReconstructionof Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1984), 99-159. 45 Two helpful essays on this topic are Othmar Perler, "L'eveque, representant du Christ scion !es documents des premiers siecles," in L'episcopat et fEglise universe/le, Unam Sanctam 39 (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1962), 1-66; and Robert Murray, "Titles Shared by Christ and the Apostles or Bishops," in Symbols of Church and Kingdom: A Study in Early Syriac Tradition (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 159-204. ""Ordination and Women," 2. 47 The New Testament texts offered in support of this are Matt 10:1, 7-8; 28:16-20; Mark 3:13-19; 16:14-15. 522 SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T. representative of the Lord Jesus in the midst of the community; in his office as Shepherd, Teacher, and High Priest he acts by the power and in the person of Christ the Head. By that same sacrament the bishop becomes a member of the episcopal college and a successor of the apostles. We know from the Gospels that the Lord chose men to represent him and continue his ministry. From this, the Church concludes that in instituting this sacrament as a gift for his Church, the Lord intended to reserve it to males. 48 Since the Church cannot change the substance of the sacraments, it has no authority to change this. The key to understanding why the Catholic Church judges that this question is not open to a development of doctrine in the direction of ordaining women may lie in the discovery that an alternative development, in clear continuity with previous teaching, has already taken place. This alternative development recognizes that the Lord provided his Church with a sacramental ministry which acts not only by his power but as his representation-in his person. Taken together, the council's teachings on the difference in kind between the common and the ministerial priesthood, the sacramentality of the episcopate, and the collegial structure of the Church as rooted in the apostolic college all reinforce the plausibility that those who exercise the Lord's ministryvisa-vis the rest of the baptized, and make him present in his capacity as Head and Shepherd, should be identifiable by some visible sign. 49 The constant tradition confmns this by insisting that the ministerial priesthood is reserved to baptized males. In response to the third objection, then, the Magisterium presses the point that the ordained do not only carry out a function; they also have, like the Twelve, the role of representing Christ. They are signs of Christ in his relationship with the Church. In addition, as we have seen in relation to the first two points, the Church's "anthropology"-its account of the human person and the "According to a clarification offered by the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission and accepted by the Holy See in 1994, the derivation of holy orders from the will and institution of Jesus Christ "does not necessarily imply a direct and explicit action by Jesus in the course of his earthly life," but may fulfill his implicit intentions which received explicit formulation only after the resurrection, "either in words of the risen Lord himself or through his Holy Spirit instrncting the primitive community Un 14:25-26)." See "Vatican Says Clarifications Strengthen Agreement," Origins 24, no. 17 (6 October 1994): 299-304, at 303. 49 Louis Ligier ("Women and the Ministerial Priesthood") develops this in the categories of sacramental theology. He argues that the specification of the subject belongs to the "substance" of the sacraments that cannot be changed (697). WOMEN'S ORDINATION AND DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENT 523 significance of sexual difference-consistently acknowledges the value of sexual difference. It is entirely in keeping with this to admit the significance of maleness for the sacramental representation of Christ. The priest gives visibility to the presence of Christ "facing" the Church. He is the sign of the "absolute priority of the grace of the Risen Christ upon which the whole Church depends." 50 VI. CONCLUSION I conclude, then, that there has been a significant development of doctrine in response to the first two objections, and that it clearly establishes the human and baptismal equality of women with men. This equality does not cancel out the diversity of the sexes but presupposes it. There has also been a development of doctrine with respect to the equality of dignity between the laity and the ordained, between the common and the ministerial priesthood. This too presupposes diverse functions and gifts. The call to ministerial priesthood is a gift to which no one has a right; consequently, no one-man or woman-can lay claim to it. The equality of the baptized has to do with access not to particular offices within the Church but to salvation. Finally, in response to the third objection, I suggest that the development of doctrine regarding the sacramental nature of the ministerial priesthood that took place at Vatican II anticipated this question. It provides a trajectory that meets the question by highlighting the Lord's choice of the Twelve, and by linking that choice to the call to represent him in the midst of the Church. It is not just his ministry but his person that the bishop (and the priest) represent. The condition for sacramental signification, in this case, is maleness. 51 Maleness, in this scenario, is not a sign of superiority in the order of values, or of eminenceof degree. It is certainly not a sign of domination. The equality of the sexes is not in question, but only the difference between the sexes. There is a certain correlation, here, between the mutual differentiation of roles in the Church-the common and the 50 Pastoresdabo vobis 16. Ligier, anticipating the objection that baptism, not maleness, is the only "sign of Christ" required for ordination, argues that the res of one sacrament-baptism-cannot serve as the sacramentumtantum of another-holy orders. From this he concludes that a baptized male is the perceptible sign that is a prerequisite and condition for ministerial priesthood ("Women and the Ministerial Priesthood," 700). 51 524 SARA BUTLER, M.S.B.T. ministerial priesthood-and the mutual differentiation or 52 complementarity of the sexes. Those who dismiss too quicklythe appeal to the Lord's choice of the Twelve overlook, in my opinion, the solution that stands in clear continuity with the tradition and allows the simplest correlation with other truths of our faith. They propose a radical solution-even a reconstruction of Christian symbols-where a course correction will suffice. A doctrinal corrective, of course, will not be enough. It must be augmented in practice by the conversion of men-and women-to a mutual subjection out of reverence for Christ, by the determination of the laity to take full possession of their baptismal rights and responsibilities, and by the commitment of bishops and priests to the love. imitation of Christ's sacrificial service in self 52 See John McDade, "Gender Matters: Women and Priesthood," The Month 255 (July 1994): 25459; and Mary Douglas, "The Gender of the Beloved," The Heythrop Journal 36 (1995): 397-408. The Thomist 61 (1997): 525-48 ETERNITY AND DURATION IN AQUINAS BRIAN J. SHANLEY, 0.P. The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. C ONTEMPORARY DISCUSSIONS of the classical doctrine of divine eternity as a timeless (rather than everlasting) mode of existence tend to follow the pattern and the agenda established by Elenore Stump and Norman Kretzmann in their influential 1981 article, "Eternity." 1 Their original paper is a persuasive analysis, defense, and creative appropriation of the traditional Boethian definition of eternity as "the complete possession all at once of illimitable life" ("aeternitas igitur est interminabilis vitae tota simul et perfecta possessio"). 2 The defenders of the classical doctrine of timeless eternity have targeted for cr1t1c1sm three major problems in the Stump-Kretzmann position: (1) the historical claim that the Neoplatonic tradition in general and Boethius in particular conceiyed eternity as involving an extended duration; 3 (2) the related philosophical claim that timeless eternity necessarily implies some kind of infinite, atemporal, extended duration; and (3) the attempt to conceptualize the relationship between eternity and time in terms of a species of simultaneity that is relative to a particular frame of reference. I do not intend to rehearse these critical exchanges over the Stump-Kretzmann position or to provide a direct evaluation of its 1 2 The Journalof Philosophy78 (1981): 429-58. Consolatio philosophae,book 5, prose 6, p. 422, 11. 9-11, in the Loeb Classical Library, vol. 74 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973). 3 In chapter 8 of Time, Creation,and the Continuum (Ithaca: Cornell UniversityPress, 1983), 98-130, Richard Sorabji claims that the Neoplatonic tradition in general, and Boethius in particular, rejected the idea that timeless eternity is a kind of extended duration. I find Sorabji's analysis to be convincing. 525 526 BRIAN J. SHANLEY, O.P. philosophical viability. 4 I am concerned instead to argue that their lumping together of Aquinas with Augustine, Boethius, and Anselm as a proponent of their version of eternity has resulted in a misinterpretation of Aquinas's position. 5 While much of what Stump and Kretzmann say about eternity does indeed hold true for Aquinas, their interpretation of him errs in identifying his position with their version of the Boethian view, especially on the much-debated issue of whether eternity is an extended duration. 6 I will show that while Aquinas does hold that divine eternity is an atemporal duration, it is not infinitely extended in the way that Stump and Kretzmann claim. Aquinas's understanding of eternity has received relatively scant attention in the contemporary literature, 7 where he has been largely relegated to passing references and footnote discussions. 8 'A summary, analysis, and bibliographical guide to the debate can be found in Brian Leftow's Time and Eternity (Ithaca: Cornell UniversityPress, 1991), 14 7-82. Stump and Kretzmann have subsequently written another response to their critics: "Eternity, Awareness, and Action," Faith and Philosophy 9 (1992): 463-82. A more recent entrant into the fray is Kathrin A. Rogers, "Eternity Has No Duration," ReligiousStudies 30 (1994): 1-16. She argues against both Stump-Kretzmann and Leftow on historical and philosophical grounds. 5 Stump and Kretzmann specifically name Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, and Aquinas as proponents of their interpretation of the classical doctrine in "Eternity, Awareness, and Action," 464. 6 In the context of attributing a view of eternity as an infinitely extended duration to Boethius, Stump and Kretzmann write: "Medieval philosophers after Boethius, who depend on him for their conception of eternity, also clearly understand eternal existence in that sense" (433). In the corresponding footnote, they specifically attribute this view to Aquinas in Summa theologiaeI, q. 10. They reiterate that claim in "Eternity, Action, and Awareness," 479 n. 5; here they acknowledge, however, that their interpretation of Aquinas is not in line with what he says in the Sentences. This leads them to claim that there is development in Aquinas from the Sentences to the Summa; I will contest that claim. ' Ironically, the analytic philosopher who seems to have the best grasp of Aquinas on eternity is Christopher Hughes, On a Complex Theory of a Simple God (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 115-20; the irony stems from the fact that the book is largely critical of Aquinas. Yet it would be unfair to pin the blame for neglect upon analytic philosophers. A perusal of Thomistic bibliographical materials reveals that not much attention has been paid to his views on eternity by thinkers of any stripe. The best recent overview of Aquinas's position is in chapter 6 of Brian Davies's The Thought of Thomas Aquinas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). See also Markus H. Worner, "Der Sinn von 'Ewigkeit' und seine Deutung bei Thomas von Aquin," in Ontologieund Theologie:Beitriigezum ProblemderMetaphysik bei Aristoteles und Thomas von Aquin, ed. Matthias Lutz-Bachmann (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1988), 79-101. Much the same appears again in W iirner's "Eternity," Irish PhilosophicalJournal6 (1989): 3-26. The most recent treatment of Aquinas is Nikolaus Wandinger's overview of the literature in "Der Begriff der 'Aeternitas' bei Thomas von Aquin," Zeitschrift fur KatholischeTheologie 116 (1994): 301-20. 8 All of Stump and Kretzmann 's references to Aquinas in "Eternity" are found in the footnotes. Leftow is slightly more generous and certainly more careful in his comments, but he too tends to marginalize Aquinas and erroneously conflate his thought with that of others (e.g., Anselm). ETERNITY AND DURATION IN AQUINAS 527 Following the lead of Stump and Kretzmann, the prevailing assumption seems to be that Aquinas's understanding of eternity adds little to the original position of Boethius. Ironically, Aquinas himself appears to encourage this interpretation insofar as he usually cites and endorses Boethius's definition of eternity; this is true in STh I, q. 10, for example, which is the discussion most often cited by contemporary interpreters. Yet while Boethius is certainly a strong influence on Aquinas, anyone familiar with medieval thinkers in general and Aquinas in particular knows that an approving citation of a definition from a recognized authority does not automatically entail an identical understanding. 9 It is a mistake to conflate Aquinas and Boethius on eternity. Aquinas certainly stands squarely in the Neoplatonic tradition regarding eternity, but he works out his position in the light of his own original metaphysical insights and doctrine of God. My central purpose in this paper is to remedy the current neglect and misinterpretation of Aquinas's position by providing a full account of his understanding of divine eternity. I shall follow a chronological approach and provide a careful textual analysis of Aquinas's three major treatments of the subject.1°First is his discussion in book 1 of the Scriptum super libros Sententiarum (begun in 1252). This neglected text provides some details not found in other places and reveals that the substance of Aquinas's position was settled early in his career. Second is book 1 of the Summa contra gentiles (begun in 1258-59), where the freedom to follow his own designs makes clearer the role and meaning of eternity within his doctrine of God. Third is the summation of his position in STh I, q. 10 (begun in 1266). In each case I shall be attentive to both content and context; attention to the latter will not only make Aquinas's methodology more explicit but will also reveal his reasons for ascribing eternity to God and its role in his overall approach to God. Finally, once Aquinas's position has been adequately articulated, it will then be 'See chapter 4 of M.-0. Chenu, O.P., Toward an Understandingof Saint Thomas, trans. Landry and Hughes (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1964) for an explanation of the role of authorities in Aquinas's thought. 10 I have adopted the chronology proposed by Jean-Pierre Torrell, O.P., in his Initiation a saint Thomas d'Aquin (Fribourg: Editions Universitaires; Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1993). 528 BRIAN J. SHANLEY, O.P. possible to return to the contemporary discussion. I. DIVINE ETERNITY IN THE SCRIITUM SUPER LIBROS SENTENTIARUM The Sentences of Peter Lombard, essentially a synthetic compilation and exposition of authoritative patristic teachings (especially Augustine), was the standard theological textbook of Aquinas's era. 11 As a bachelor of theology, Aquinas was required to lecture on Lombard's Sentences and his Scriptum super libros Sententiarum is the fruit of those early lectures. Although Aquinas was free to choose which issues he would discuss, he was also bound to adhere to the theological architectonic of the original text. As is evident with the subject of divine eternity, however, the Lombard's presentation did not always lend itself to order and economy. Eventually Aquinas would be able to articulate his own approach, but at this point it is important to keep in mind that he is constrained by the text that he is commenting on. Aquinas's first discussion of divine eternity comes in the context of book I, distinction 8, a mosaic of mainly Augustinian passages regarding the divine essence. Following the Lombard's procedure, Aquinas first offers his own interpretation of Exodus 3: 14 ("Qui est") as expressive of the ultimate perfection of the divine nature. 12 Question 1 establishes that "Qui est" is the most proper name of God because God's nature or quiddity is nothing other than the pure act of being (esse) itself. 13 In every other being 11 For the historical background to Aquinas's work on Peter Lombard, see Torrell, Initiation, 58-66; and Chenu, Toward an Understanding,264-76. 12 For an analysis of Aquinas's approach to Exodus 3: 14 and its relationship to the Augustinian tradition of interpretation, see Emilie Zurn Brunn, "La 'metaphysique de l'Exode' selon Thomas d'Aquin," in Dieu et fetre: exegesesd'Exode3,14 et de Coran 20, 11-24, ed. Centre d'etudes des religions du livre, CNRS (Paris: Etudes augustiniennes, 1978), 245-69. 13 There are four arguments to show that esse is the nature of God in d. 8, q. 1, a. 1. The fourth is the most important and shows the influence of Avicenna's distinction between esse and essentia:"Quarta ratio potest sumi ex verbis Avicennae, tract. VIII Metaph., cap. I, in hunc modum, quod, cum in omni quod est sit considerare quidditatem suam, per quam subsistit in natura determinata, et esse suum, per quod dicitur de eo quod est in actu, hoc nomen res imponitur rei a quidditate sua, secundum Avicennam, tract. II Metaph., cap. I, hoc nomen qui est vel ens imponitur ab ipso actu essendi. Cum autem ita sit quod in qualibet re creata essentia sua differat a suo esse, res ilia proprie denominatur a quiddate sua, et non ab actu essendi, sicut homo ab humanitate. In Deo autem ipsum esse suum est sua quidditas: et ideo nomen quod sumitur ab esse, proprie nomen ipsum, et est proprium nomen ejus: sicut proprium ETERNITY AND DURATION IN AQUINAS 529 esse is determined to a particular, finite, received mode by a distinct essence. 14 Aquinas then goes on to consider three attributes as expressive of the divine perfection of being: eternity as the measure of divine esse (q. 2); immutability (incommutabilitas) (q. 3); and simplicity (q. 4). This is an Augustinian ordering of attributes that does not suit Aquinas well and that will not be repeated once he is free to proceed according to his own lights. 15 Specifically, it does not permit Aquinas to argue for divine eternity by showing its connection with immutability; here he simply assumes and explains eternity. The heart of Aquinas's discussion is contained in q. 2, a. 1, where he introduces Boethius's definition of eternity (it is not in the Lombard's text) and asks whether it is appropriate. His exposition hinges upon taking eternity to mean "being beyond limitations" (ens extra terminos). 16 Eternity is thus to be defined negatively as a transcending of temporal and metaphysical limitations. He explains that there are three main ways in which something can be limited. The first two limits concern temporal duration: (1) something can be limited by having a beginning and an end or (2) it can be limited by having flowing temporal parts. The third possible limitation is metaphysical: every esse received in a distinct supposit or form is limited to a particular finite mode nomen hominis quod sumitur a quidditate sua." (I am citing the Sentences text as edited by Mandonnet [Paris, 1929]. I shall follow the orthography of the cited edition throughout this article.) It should be noted that although Aquinas adopts Avicenna's distinction between esse and essentia, he criticizes Avicenna for regarding esse as a kind of accident rather than as the basic actuality and perfection of being. For more on this controversial point and an overview of the relationship between Aquinas and Avicenna, see John F. Wippel's "The Latin Avicenna as a Source for Aquinas's Metaphysics," Freiburger Zeitschrift fur Philosophie und Theologie 37 (1990}: 65-72. 14 In a. 2 Aquinas explains: "Nihil habet esse, nisi inquantum participat divinum esse, quia ipsum est prim um ens, quare causa est omnis en tis. Sed omne quod est participatum in aliquo, est in eo per modum par ticipantis: quia nihil potest recipere ultra mensuram suam. Cum igitur modus cujuslibet rei creatae sit finitus, quaelibet res creata recipit esse finitum et inferius divino esse quod est perfectissimum." For an overview of the distinction between esse and essentia in Aquinas, see chapters 5 and 6 of John F. Wippel's Metaphysical Themes in Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1984 ). For an overview of participation in Aquinas, see the same author's "Thomas Aquinas and Participation," in Studies in Medieval Philosophy, ed. Wippel (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1987), 117-58. 15 Zurn Brunn, "La 'metaphysique de l'Exode,"' 250-51. 16 The same approach to eternity is found later (1272) in his In Uber de causis, q. I, a. 2, n. 48: "Nomen igitur aeternitas indeficientiam quamdam sive interminabilitatem importat: dicitur enim aeternum quasi ens extra terminos" (Rome: Marietti, 1955). 530 BRIAN J. SHANLEY, O.P. of existing. 17 Aquinas then goes on to show that Boethius's definition is tantamount to a denial of these three kinds of limitation in God. Interminabilis vitae is a denial of the possibility of a beginning or an end in God, thus distinguishing God from what is generable and corruptible. 18 Tota simul is a denial that there is either succession or temporal parts within the divine life; the divine life is not sequential or divisible like beings that are subject to time and motion. 19 Perfecta implies that the divine esse is absolutum and perfectum because it is not limited by the potentiality of a distinct receiving principle; thus even though spiritual creatures are not subject to temporal motion, they nonetheless are not eternal because their esse is immersed m created potentiality. 20 Three of the responses to objections merit explicit consideration. The first reveals that Aquinas's approach to divine eternity is a conscious exercise in the via negativa of the Dionysian tradition. As we shall see, this is a consistent theme in 17 "Esse autem aliquod potest dici terminatum tripliciter: vel secundum durationem totam, et hoc modo dicitur terminatum quad habet principium et finem; vel ratione partium durationis, et hoc modo dicitur terminatum illud cujus quaelibet pars accepta terminata est ad praecedens, praesens et sequens: sicut est accipere in motu; vel ratione suppositi in quo esse recipitur: esse enim recipitur in aliquo secundum modum ipsius, et ideo terminatur, sicut et quaelibet alia forma, quae de se communis est, et secundum quad recipitur in aliquo, terminatur ad illud." Note that the fourth objection also identifies duration with temporal parts: "Sed de ratione durationis est quad partes ejus non sunt simul." " "Dico ergo, quad ad excludendam primam terminationem, quae est principii et finis totius durationis, ponitur, interminabilis vitae, et per hoc dividitur aeternum ab his quae generantur et corrumpuntur." " "Ad excludendum autem secundum terminationem, scilicet partium durationis, additur, totum simul: per hoc enim excluditur successio partium, pro qua unaquaeque pars finita est et transit; et per hoc dividitur aeternum a motu et tempore, etiamsi semper fuissent et futura essent, sicut quidam posuerunt." In the reply to the fourth objection he specifies each term's meaning: "Ad quartum dicendum, quod in successivis est duplex imperfectio: una ratione divisionis, alia ratione successionis, quia una pars non est cum alia parte; uncle non habent esse nisi secundum aliquid sui. Ut autem excludatur omnis imperfectio a divino esse, oportet ipsum intelligere sine aliqua divisione partium perfectum, et hoc ver, with the full array of vivifying effects brought about by the communion of souls or spirits. Ortega y Gasset eloquently describes this bivalency of love: When the other person reciprocates, a period of transfusive union follows, in which each one transfers the roots of his being to the other, and lives-thinks, desires, acts-not from himself but from the other. Here the beloved is no longer an object to be thought about, for the simple reason that you have him within you. 30 We must observe, however, that Thomas is always careful to append quodammodo or a similar qualifier to the phrase exiens extra se ipsum (cf. STh I-II, q. 28, a. 3). The qualification is important, inasmuch as man cannot strictly speaking "leave himself behind," which would be a description of physical death, not of love. The legend of Tristan and Iseult, especially as retold by Wagner-culminating in the famous Liebestod of his opera-explicitly identifies the sublimity of erotic love with the finality of death. As Denis de Rougemont convincingly argues,3 1 such a presentation of ecstasy is a perversion of its true character, and leads in the end to the death of love itself. For love is perfective and bettering, not corruptive (cf. STh I-II, q. 28, a. 5); and if to pass outside of oneself means to lose one's reason or to be severed from the body, it is no better than insanity or dismemberment. Attending to Thomas's words, we learn that the appetite of the ecstatic lover is borne, especially by the desire for affective and real union, towards the beloved and his intrinsic good. Thus understood, extasis expresses with added emphasis the central truth Thomas iterates in his discussions of amor amicitiae, namely, that the human being is perfected by and through the loving of other persons for their own sake. "Every passion of the soul implies either movement towards something, or rest in something" (STh I-II, q. 27, a. 4), 32 and of these passions, love is On Love: Aspects of a Single Theme, trans. Toby Talbot (New York: Meridian Books, 1957), 65. Love in the Western World, trans. Montgomery Belgion (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1957). 32 "omnis alia passio animae vel importat motum ad aliquid, vel quietem in aliquo." 30 31 ST. THOMAS,EXTASIS, AND UNION WITH THE BEWVED 603 the absolute origin and goal (d. STh 1-11, q. 28, a. 6). "Just as fire cannot be restrained from the motion that befits it according to the exigency of its form, save through violence, so neither can the lover do anything apart from love" (Ill Sent., d. 27, q. 1, a. 1).33 If the beloved is good in itself or the Good Itself, then in some sense it will always remain beyond a man's own limitations and will be worthy of his indwelling. The person who keenly desires perfection must reach towards and work to assimilate the good, so far as may be done; for there will never be an end to this ecstatic discovery of the beloved. In order to make the beloved "one with himself," he must go forth from his naturally delimited self, enlarging the good he will inhabit. As is clear from Thomas's teaching on extasis, the Christian's final rest in the beatifying vision of the divine essence will be the supreme example of going forth from oneself, a mere creature, to the Beloved who is all in all, the God who is the principle of one's being, life, and bliss.34 33 "Et sicut ignis non potest retineri a motu qui competit sibi secundum exigentiam suae formae, nisi per violentiam; ita nee amans quin agat secundum amorem." 34 I am grateful to Timothy B. Noone for his valuable comments on an earlier version of this paper. The Thomist 61 (1997): 605-15 THE ROLE OF THE ORDINARY MAGISTERIUM: ON FRANCIS SULLIVAN'S CREATIVE FIDELITY LIVIO MELINA PontificiaUniversitaLateranense Rome, Italy T HERE WAS A TIME, before the Second Vatican Council, when there were manuals of ecclesiology and canon law, and even specific handbooks, that offered sound criteria for determining the "theological notes" relative to the doctrinal affirmations and teachings of the Magisterium. These works clarified the type of assent required on the part of the faithful, the censure foreseen for whoever denied them, and the sin such people incurred. Cartechini, Salaverri, Schmaus, Choupin, to cite only the most authoritative and widespread manuals, offered such criteria, explanations, and examples for identifying, according to the widest variety of nuances, what was "dogma fidei" ("de fide," "de fide catholica" "de fide divina et catholica") "de fide ' ' ecclesiastica definita," "de fide divina," "pro::idma fidei," "theologice certum," "doctrina catholica," "certum," "commune et certum," "moraliter certum," "securum seu- tutum," "probabile." "communius," "communissimum," With these objective points of reference theological inquiry could develop within the limits of tradition and of a consensus among the experts, becoming as complicated as one could imagine, yet 1 FrancisA. Sullivan,S.J., Creative Fidelity:Weighingand InterpretingDocuments of the Magisterium (New York and Mahwah, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1996). Pp. 209. $14.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8091-3644-9. This article was translated by Bethany Lane. 605 606 LMOMELINA without running the risk of casting doubt on the structure of Catholic doctrine. Certainly these were different times: theology was confined to scholastic debates, undertaken in Latin among a few specialists; the context of substantial reception of the teachings of the Magisterium and a common philosophical and methodological system offered a solid basis for dialogue and discussion on individual points. Sometimes the deliberation of the theological notes seemed to be an exercise of academic hairsplitting, posing no threat to the faith. There is no need to say how radically the theological context has changed. The disputes have passed from the theology of the school to the doctrine of the Magisterium, from the ecclesiastical academy to the mass media, taking full account of public opinion and the life of the faithful. The hermeneutical perspective first developed in the field of the interpretation of Sacred Scripture has been applied to the interpretation of the tradition of the Magisterium of the Church. The historical awareness of changes in conceptions and in practical orientations urges that what is handed down receive new verification. The demand for autonomy and for scientific scholarship in theological research, making it comparable to any other university discipline, tends to counterpose itself to the very idea of a Magisterium doctrinally binding once and for all. It was in this context-and consequently with excellent reason-that the Council of the Faculty of Theology of the Gregorian University of Rome, quite some time ago, asked Professor Francis A. Sullivan, S.J., to hold for the students who were candidates for the licentiate a course on the fundamental criteria of evaluation and interpretation of magisterial documents. In what way are we to live out today the permanent need of referral to the Magisterium without sacrificing the creativity of theological research? Sullivan's book, which substantially relates lectures given first in Rome and then at Boston College, offers a reply that intends to follow in the footsteps of the manual tradition, while at the same time opening it to present applications of theology, in the manner of Karl Rabner and Avery ORDINARYMAGISTERIUM 607 Dulles and, above all, following the great inspiration of John Henry Cardinal Newman. The essay that has now been offered to the general public is at once invaluable and unfortunately misleading. Its undeniable value derives first of all from the wealth of information and documentation that it contains, a mark of the great competence acquired by the author in long years of research and teaching. The historical perspective of the reading of the sources and the hermeneutical approach undeniably recommends the work and offers valid examples of an interpretative labor. Compared with the radical tendencies unfortunately present today in Catholic theology, the tone appears balanced and sensible. On pages 119-21, citing both Rahner and Dulles, the author recognizes the right and need of the Magisterium to protect the common profession of faith, affixing the limits of theological pluralism. Nevertheless, as has been said, the volume merits some reservations, even grave ones, both in its general perspective, which tends to be misleading, and in some specific points. I. A MISLEADING AND REDUCTIONIST PERSPECTIVE The general spirit in which the learned treatment of the subject is conducted is seen in the second chapter, in the critique that Sullivan makes of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism presents the teaching of the Church as "a sure norm for the faith" in 2865 paragraphs, but does not offer criteria for distinguishing the level of different authority of respective doctrines. Above all, in Sullivan's opinion paragraph 88, which speaks of the exercise of the magisterial authority of the Church, does not make a distinction between the dogmas contained in revelation and that truth not revealed but only connected with revelation which can be the object of infallibly proposed affirmations but cannot claim an irrevocable assent of faith (17-18). The author hopes that the final revision of the Latin text, promised by Cardinal Ratzinger, will also touch on this point, expressly signifying the type of response required of the faithful following the diverse levels of authority which the doctrines 608 LMOMELINA taught in the Catechism enjoy. Careful theological research would need to identify these articulations in all their nuances. This book intends precisely to offer criteria for making such distinctions. Furthermore, the author wishes to base his project on the new formulation of the Professio fidei proposed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1989, interpreted in the perspective of an exact delimitation of the conditions of infallibility. The author begins then from an extremely rigorous definition of the term "dogma." "Dogmatic definition" refers to a truth divinely revealed, proclaimed with a solemn judgment, that requires an irrevocable response of faith and excludes the opposite proposition as heretical (41). The accent put on the fact that a dogma needs to be proposed as divinely revealed in order to be able to claim the assent of faith tends to obscure what the Second Vatican Council deliberately anticipated, which is that the Church can define doctrines without proposing them as divinely revealed (d. Mansi 52, 7, B). The distinction made in the second paragraph of the Professio fidei thus becomes, in Sullivan's interpretation by means of the category of "dogma," the source of a first reduction. The emphasis on the fact that the so-called secondary object of the Magisterium cannot exact an irrevocable assent of faith, in as much as it is not a matter of truth divinely revealed, obscures the necessity of an acceptance and a firm reception of that which nevertheless is proposed in a definitive manner. The theological discussion of the type of assent needed does not in fact negate the characteristic of irrevocability with which the teaching must be received. The underlining of the solemn nature of the judgment required so that one can speak in the proper sense of dogma opens the way to a weakening of that which is proposed by the ordinary universal Magisterium of the Church as considered to be definitive (d. 43, 103). The second paragraph of the Profe.ssio fidei speaks of how much is proposed as definitive: a doctrine can be proposed in a definitive way by the ordinary universal Magisterium even without being put in the form of a solemn judgment. In such a case, in line with the doctrine of Lumen ORDINARYMAGISTERIUM 609 gentium 25, 2, the infallibility of the Church is involved. Indeed, it is rightly observed that "this ordinary Magisterium is the normal form of the infallibility of the Church" Q. Ratzinger, II nuovo popolo di Dio [Brescia,1971], 180). The fundamental limit of Sullivan's position on the entire question of the infallibility of the ordinary universal Magisterium and on the interpretation of the second paragraph of the Professio fidei is his way of understanding the concept of "definition," which does not take into account the distinction between the act of definition and the doctrine taught as definitive. It is true that the two notions can be simultaneously presented in a magisterial pronouncement (as in the case of a solemn judgment) but that does not necessarily always happen. In fact, "quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus creditur vel tenetur" can be taught infallibly as a definitive judgment with an act of the ordinary Magisterium of the Supreme Pontiff without resorting to the form of a solemn definition (cf. Paul Vi's Credo [1968]). This is properly the case of such encyclicals as Casti connubi on the unlawfulness of onanism, Humanae vitae on the unlawfulness of contraception; Evangelium vitae on the unlawfulness of direct killing of an innocent human being, of procured abortion, and of euthanasia; and the apostolic letters Ordinatio sacerdotalis on the non-admission of women to the priestly ministry and Apostolicae curae on the non-validity of Anglican orders. If, in fact, the Pope intervened with a solemn dogmatic definition in order to proclaim the certainty of a doctrine constantly proposed as definitive by the universal tradition of the Church, this would carry implicitly a depreciation of the ordinary universal Magisterium and infallibility would be reserved only for the "ex cathedra" definitions of the pope and for the those of an ecumenical council. Furthermore, one must affirm that the decisive verification and confirmation that a doctrine is taught as definitive comes from the Magisterium itself, and in particular the Magisterium of the pope as head of the episcopal college that gives voice to the whole episcopal body. 610 LNIOMELINA Instead, according to Sullivan, this definitive character that necessarily characterizes the proposal of the ordinary Magisterium must be verified by means of "the universal and constant consensus of Catholic theologians." Moreover, since in the Code of Canon Law of 1983 (can. 749, 3) it is affirmed that "no doctrine is understood to be infallibly defined unless this fact is clearly established" (cf. 106), the infallible character itself is limited to that which is made the object of a solemn judgment or else to that which the constant and universal consensus of theologians holds to belong to the definitive doctrine proposed by the ordinary universal Magisterium of the Church. The role of the theologian becomes decisive and discriminating, according to Sullivan, for establishing that to which the faithful owe an irrevocable assent of faith. II. SOME SPECIFIC POINTS The consensus of theologians and the reception on the part of the faithful shallbe our beginning point in discussing the proposal of the celebrated Jesuit theologian. Clearly he plans to place the theme of the Magisterium in a wider ecclesiological context, which allows his proposal to be compared to other suggestions that have been made among the people of God. In a much more radical way Father Sullivan's confrere, John Mahoney, had outlined an overcoming of the rigid distinction between the teaching Church and dissenting Church and an introduction of the idea of a diffuse Magisterium that would be realized as the harmony of the diverse authorities of pastors, theologians, and the faithful, in which alone the fundamental authority of the Spirit in the Church would be manifested (cf. J. Mahoney, The Making of Moral Theology, A Study of the Roman Catholic Tradition [Oxford, 1987], in particular chap. 4, pp. 116-74; and chap. 8, pp. 302-47). Regarding this first theme, based on the letter of Pius IX to the Archbishop of Monaco on 21 December 1863 (Tuas libenter), Sullivan believes that one may find in the "universal and constant consensus of the catholic theologians" the decisive criteria for ORDINARYMAGISTERIUM 611 determining how much belongs to the ordinary Magisterium of the whole Church (99). Aside from the fact that, following the criteria proposed by Sullivan himself, such a pontifical letter need not to pertain to the infallible Magisterium, but if anything to the ordinary Magisterium of the Supreme Pontiff, and besides would need to be hermeneutically interpreted in a context in which the expression "universal and constant consensus of the catholic theologians" had a completely different meaning, it seems to me important to note that in the text of the letter the consensus of the theologians is evoked with a disjunctive and consecutive conjunction (ideoque, "and therefore") after it is recalled "how much is transmitted as divinely revealed by the ordinary Magisterium of the whole Church dispersed throughout the world." Such a consensus is therefore if anything the consequence that would necessarilyfollow, rather than the hermeneutical criterion that would identify, the ordinary Magisterium. Otherwise would there not be a risk, perhaps, of emptying of meaning the very concept of the ordinary Magisterium, whose verification would be entrusted to a contemporary theological consensus, in the fragmented plurality of languages which would make it almost impossible, and subject to changes in time? The possibility of the advent of something unforeseen, in the changing of cultural horizons, would not permit anything to be affirmed in the present with irreformable certainty (d. 106-7). It seems obvious to me that Pius IX meant by "catholic theologians" those approved by the church and belonging to its tradition and not simply some scholars that accredit themselves with this title. The constancy and universality would then need to be not simply simultaneous but also diachronic. The association of the question of monogenism with that of the prohibition of contraception seems to me to be particularly wanton, and misleading (104-5). As for the reception on the part of the faithful, Sullivan presents it as a key element for verifying the definitiveness of a conciliar judgment (43), and of a pontifical teaching (88). Notwithstanding the tentative subtleties adduced in explanation of this proposal, it is not dear how it is in accord with the 612 LNIOMELINA affirmation of the First Vatican Council, according to which those definitions are irreformable in which the Roman Pontiff enjoys infallibility "ex sese, non autem ex consensus Ecclesiae" (DS 3074). On this point Sullivan's exposition would have profitted on both the historical and the dogmatic levels by a critical confrontation with the short and lucid work of an author certainly agreeable to him: Newman's On Consultingthe Faithful in Matters of Doctrine (ed. T. Coulson; London, 1986). The great English cardinal explains that the faithful are the subject of a sensus fidei doctrinally relevant insofar as they are Ecclesia docta. So they express the voice of tradition which testifies to the patrimony of faith lived in the Church. The consensusfidelium is therefore a mirror in which is faithfully reflected what the pastors have always taught. The consultation or reception is not therefore a democratic procedure or a sociologically determined verification, but the testimony of the tradition that has its principle of authoritative discernment in the authentic Magisterium. A second point regards the place of moral truth within the Magisterium. On the one hand our author limits the expression of the second paragraph of the Professio fidei "circa doctrinam de fide vel moribus" to those moral truths that are necessarily connected with the deposit of faith, thus excluding the natural law as such from that which can be the subject of infallible definition (cf. 18, 81, 158-59). He is thus forced to distinguish between the infallibleMagisterium and the authentic Magisterium on the basis not so much of the act but of the object (cf. 18, 42). On the other hand, Sullivan distinguishes between "principles" and "practical applications." Even that authority which governs the teaching of the principles would have to allow room for personal discernment in concrete applications, in respect of which the value of the pronouncements of the pastors would only be of a disciplinary nature (171-72). Concerning the former point, based on the tradition of the Church, revived by Paul VI in Humanae vitae no. 4, it is certain that the Church can also authentically teach the particular norms of natural morality in as much as there is an objectively necessary ORDINARYMAGISTERIUM 613 relationship between their observance and the salvation of man. Furthermore, the foundation of such a magisterial competence of the Church is the fact that these things are necessarily included in the revelation that is Christ, the new Adam. As to the distinction between the principles and applicative norms, John Paul II has clearly affirmed: "this law [natural morality] is not only made up of general orientations, whose precision in their respective contents is conditioned by varied and changeable historical situations. There are moral norms which have a precise content that is immutable and unconditioned ... the norm that prohibits contraception and that which forbids the killing of the innocent human person, for example. To deny that norms having such a value do exist can be held only by one who denies that there is a truth of the person, an immutable nature of man" (Discourse of April 10, 1986: AAS 78/1986, p. 1101). The encyclical Veritatis splendor has clearly confirmed that the Magisterium, as authentic interpreter of revelation, has the authority to teach determinate moral norms as valid without exception (cf. nn. 71-83, 115). Moreover, it is not at all clear how one can, as does the author, accept the teaching of Evangelium vitae concerning the grave immorality of the direct killing of an innocent human being, of acquired abortion, and of euthanasia, and, even more, recognize it as infallible teaching because it pertains to the ordinary universal Magisterium, and then practically denude it of any obligatory force, relegating it to something that concerns only principles, but leaves open the possibility of diversified applications (154-61). A third specific point merits attention: that of the value of the ordinary teaching of the Pope and of the declarations of the Roman congregations. Sullivan states that only rarely have the popes had recourse to the exercise of infallibility (cf. 2, 86). Their role has been rather that of supporting and confirming the authority of the great councils that have dogmatically defined the faith of the Church. On the other hand the ordinary Magisterium of the Pope and of the Roman congregations, which participate in the former's authority, would have a predominantly prudential character (146, 160). This is the final fruit of the initial 614 LIVIO MELJNA concentration on dogmatic infallibility: only in the face of that which is clearly defined as dogma and therefore as truth proposed as belonging to the faith does one have to make a decision between a yes and a no; in the face of teaching that is simply authentic but not infallible the question is only one of "certainty" or of "uncertainty" and thus of prudence. In the tenth chapter Sullivan gives a long and detailed list of historical cases in which the ordinary Magisterium of the Pope has erred, claiming to show thus the disciplinary and pastoral nature of its affirmations. Finally, a word on the appendix to the book, in which Sullivan questions precisely what is taught in the Responsum ad dubium of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the doctrine of Ordinatio sacerdotalis.In order to do this he lowers the level of the teaching to that referred to in the third paragraph of the Professio fidei, and, therefore, reduces the assent needed to a simple submission of intellect and will, when in fact it is a matter of a firm and definitive assent, founded on the faith in the action of the Holy Spirit in the Church and on the catholic doctrine of the infallibility of the Magisterium (cf. Declaration Mysterium ecclesiae no. 3, sec. 3). Ill. CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS In the end, the title of Sullivan's book does not seem to correspond adequately to its expressed substance: the adjective ("creative") is no longer a dimension that derives from fidelity but rather a substantive that is emancipated from it, that earns for itself an ever-increasing area of appropriation through an ever-more rigorous delimiting of the obligating value of the Magisterium. The Magisterium and the creative liberty of the theologian are seen as tending to be opposed, and the "charitable duty" of the theologian would be that of seeking to defend the faithful from the exorbitant claims of the Magisterium through the work of distinctions, delimitations, and hermeneutics. It seems to me that the debatable consequences put forth in the completed analysis derive ultimately from a restricted, reductionist, and potentially misleading perspective that has ORDINARYMAGISTERIUM 615 governed the development of the topic-although we must not deny the value of this treatment. The concentration on the category of infallibility and of dogma has opened the way to a minimalization of the Magisterium, interpreted in a juridical key. In practice the defense of the freedom of the faithful is seen as a rigid delimiting of the binding character of teaching to those things of which the Magisterium speaks with the title of infallibility. Beyond this there would tend to be only an authority of a prudential sort, relative to expediency and not the truth. In this way the vision of the unity of that auctoritas that constitutes the original gift of Magisterium in the Church and for the Church is lost (cf. J. Ratzinger, Natura e compito della teologia [Milan, 1993], 97-100). How could we see a strong relationship in a son who said to his father or a young man who said to his bride-to-be: "I will only believe you when you solemnly swear to me on the Bible that you are not lying to me"? Analytical distinctions are valuable only within a greater context, otherwise concentration on them destroys the vital synthesis (losing the forest for the trees). Authority is that charism that makes life grow in truth. It is realized as a complete and ordinary phenomenon, before distinctions and formal and solemn expressions. The loss of this basic and fundamental dimension runs the risk of reducing the discussions on the Magisterium to a dry and minimalistic juridical formalism. Its recovery allows us to focus on the ordinary exercise of the universal Magisterium as the normal dimension of the charism of infallibility, and welcomes also the ordinary Magisterium of the Pope as the authoritative witness of the head of the college of this same Magisterium. The Thomist 61 (1997): 617-24 REPLY TO STEVEN LONG NORRIS CLARKE, S.J. Fordham University Bronx, New York I N AN ARTICLE entitled "Personal Receptivity and Act," 1 Dr. Steven Long has criticized Prof. Kenneth Schmitz and myself for violating one of the fundamental metaphysical principles of St. Thomas: the universal applicability of the act-potency composition to explain all communication of perfection between beings. The main thrust of his critique (some twenty pages) is directed against Professor Schmitz; only three or four pages are directed at my position. I will not concern myself with the critique of Professor Schmitz but only with what concerns my own position.2 I do not find it helpful to answer all criticisms, but in the present case I think it is well worth doing because there are wider and more important issues at stake "behind the scenes," namely, the intelligibility of a distinctively Christian philosophy. The particular position of mine that is being attacked is my suggestion that the notion of receiving ("receptivity" in the abstract)-which is ordinarily associated in our world with potency, limitation, and imperfection-should be reevaluated and taken as signifying in itself a positive ontological perfection, which is always realized indeed in the world of creatures as mixed 1 Steven A. Long, "Personal Receptivity and Act: A Thomistic Critique," The Thomist 61 (1997): 1-31. 2 [Editor's note: Professor Schmitz has also responded to Dr. Long: Kenneth Schmitz, "Created Receptivity and the Philosophy of the Concrete," The Thomist 61 (1997): 339-71.] 617 618 NORRIS CLARKE, S.J. with potency and limitation, but in itself signifies a purely positive perfection, with all the implications this connotes. 3 My defense of this position is quite explicitly an exercise in "Christian philosophy," that is, using the Christian revelation of the Trinity (one God in three Persons) as a principle of illumination (not rigorous, purely philosophical argument) to shed new light on the deeper meaning of both person and being, helping us to notice more positive aspects of both even in our own world that may have escaped our attention so far. This kind of specifically Christian philosophizing has been practiced very fruitfully in recent years in this country by Christian thinkers, including some of the Editors of The Thomist (e.g., taking the Trinity as model of human social relations). My own contribution to this creative and exciting project is its application to receptivity, leading to a reevaluation of receptivity as a positive ontological perfection. The source of this reevaluation is reflection on the inner interpersonal life of the Trinity, where we find that giving and receiving are integral and inseparable aspects of the very fullness of perfection in the loving communion of persons within the unity of one divine nature, that actually constitutes the very infinite fullness of perfection of being itself in its highest realization. For just as the Father's whole personality as Father consists in his communicating, giving, the entire divine nature that is his own to the Son, his eternal Word, so reciprocally the Son's whole personality as Son consists in receiving, eternally and fully, with loving gratitude, this identical divine nature from his Father. The Son, as distinct from the Father, is subsistent Receiver, so to speak. Since this communication is always going on, yet always full and complete, there is absolutely no potency, limitation, or imperfection here. Both are aspects of pure actuality, of Pure Act-in the Thomistic, though not the Aristotelian sense of the term. And according to Christian dogma, explicitly defined by the Council of Chalcedon in 451, both aspects, giving and receiving, the status of the Father 3 This position is laid out in my book Person and Being (Marquette University Press, 1993 ), chap. 1, sect. 3, and chap. 3, sect. 5; in my article "Person, Being, and St. Thomas," Communio 19 (1992): 601-18; as well as in the forty-page discussion of the point, including a strong defense by the Editor against my critics, in Communio 21 (1994): 151-90. REPLY TO STEVEN LONG 619 as Giver and that of the Son as Receiver, are of absolutely equal value and perfection. Any denial of this would be heresy. All this follows from the basic definition (1) that the three Persons are really distinct as persons; (2) that this distinction is a distinction only of relations of origin, of origination, that is, of giving and receiving the identical divine nature in all its fullness. As Jesus said (and this is the scriptural source of the doctrine), "All that I have I have received from my Father" (or, "I have from my Father"); "All that the Father has he has given me." There is real communication here; and where there is real communication, there is real giving and receiving: giving and receiving are complementary antonyms-there is no giving without receiving. To deny this is to deny the real relations of origin that constitute the Persons as distinct, and so the real distinction of the Persons collapses too. It is dearly unorthodox to consider all this as merely metaphorical. Yet this communication between the Persons is so perfect that it does not break up into two separate beings, which would require some limitation on the part of the receiver in order that the two beings could be distinguished, but folds together into the unity of one being. That is why in Christian theology it is not called a causal communication (which implies the real distinction of cause and effect as two different beings), but rather a "procession." It is not a communication between beings, but between persons within one being. What follows from this is the truly illuminating conclusion that receiving, receptivity, does not, cannot of itself signify limitation and imperfection in its very meaning, but rather is in itself a pure positive ontological perfection, a necessary aspect of the very fullness of being itself as Persons-in-communion, as opened up for us in the revelation of God as Trinity. The term must be, of course, analogous as applied to both creatures and God. But it cannot be simply equivocal. One of my critics has said, "Receptivityand Pure Act are incompatible." But then Jesus' own words lose all meaningful content; they confer no new information to us at all, but merely a word play-which is quite unacceptable to a Christian. Moreover, if "receiving" becomes 620 NORRIS CLARKE, S.J. equivocal, emptied of meaning, so too does "giving." Therefore the very fullness of being itself, Pure Act, which is now identical with Persons-in-communion, contains g1vmg-rece1vmg as inseparable aspects of its very perfection of being, of equal value and importance. Not at all an Aristotelian conception of Pure Act, but certainly a Thomistic one, for Thomas's own metaphysics, as illumined by his theology. Let us look briefly at the rich implications of the above for shedding new light on our own world of interpersonal relations among humans. Since both giving and receiving are integral components of the full perfection of being, as found in God, our Creator, then it must be that we, as images-however imperfect-must somehow imitate both aspects of this divine perfection as best we can in our own personal lives. For us too the highest human perfection must be persons-in-communion, and both giving and receiving must have their place there as part of the perfection of our lives as persons. The notion of the self-sufficient self, who gives indeed magnanimously of his own riches but who would feel himself somehow diminished if he had to receive from another, make himself "dependent" on another, is a dangerously illusory and misleading myth, not only from a Christian point of view but from any adequate phenomenology of interpersonal relations. In fact, as we observe and reflect on the success or failure of human interpersonal relations, especially those of love of friendship, it becomes clear that the higher we go, the more receiving, as well as giving, becomes an integral part of the very perfection-not imperfection-of our love relations. The balance becomes more perfect and equal as we approach slowly, though without ever being able to reach, the perfectly balanced status in God. Potency always remains to some degree on our level as creatures-because of motion and progression, because we can never fully express or communicate our whole being to another human person as the Persons in God can. Still, the point is that the potency in us, at the personal conscious level, as we progress in personal love relations, becomes more and more interwoven with positive perfection, that is, with active, welcoming, grateful REPLY TO STEVEN LONG 621 acceptance, which are modes of actuality, not simply passive potency. For notice how at the level of a conscious love relation the receiving potency itself must be fully conscious, conscious precisely of receiving from the other. And the process of conscious giving and receiving is not completed until it is received consciously, gratefully accepted. Receiving here is not an unconscious process, upon which follows a conscious grateful acceptance. The receiving itself contains as an integral part the grateful acceptance. Therefore, in a conscious potency actuality and act are mixed in with the very potency itself. It is not pure passivity, pure passive potency, but a potency that is mixed, partly passive, partly active. The active part grows and grows toward matching the giving part, as far as it can. The abstract consideration of act and potency as pure giving on one side and pure passivity on the other is much too crude a lens to do justice to the richness of interpersonal relations, either on the divine or on the human level. Now we come to the criticism of Steven Long, who, by the way, I respect from elsewhere as both a good young Thomistic scholar and a committed Christian philosopher. He will have none of this reevaluation of receptivity. He insists on defining receptivity as intrinsically including the notes of potency, limitation, imperfection. He defines it as the causal communication of perfection from one being to another being: One must first settle what the term "receptivity" designates. If it indicates the possession of a perfection by virtue of another and not by virtue of oneself, then the subject receiving does not originate the perfection .... indicating that it does not, simply speaking and through itself, possess the perfection. If the receiving subject does not originate the perfection ... [it] is not simply self-actualizing . From this very datum it becomes manifest that a received .pure perfection cannot be received in its totality. The totality of a pure perfection excludes potency, while the potency for some perfection-to be actualized through another rather than simply through itself-is necessary for receptivity. Potency is discernible in the subject's nonpossession of the perfection apart from the causality of another. Naturally speaking, receiving indicates potency. 4 4 Long, "Personal Receptivity and Act," 27-28. 622 NORRIS CLARKE, S.J. Although there is much in this text and in the rest of Long's discussion that I find acceptable on the strictly creaturely level of interchange between beings, I must also say with regret that I find his reply as a whole seriously inadequate, missing the mark, so to speak, as a critique of my position as I have expounded it. Specifically,he has omitted any mention of the higher dimension of the interpersonal life of the Trinity, opened up to us by Christian revelation, which was my principal source of evidence for throwing new light on what it means to be and to be a person; thus he has missed the point of what I had explicitly intended as an exercise in Christian philosophy. Let me spell out my response briefly. To begin with, it is obvious, as he says, that "the totality of a pure perfection excludes potency" in a Thomistic metaphysics-and in mine .too; it is also obvious that to receive perfection "from the causality of another" implies potency and imperfection. But it is not obvious-nor does he attempt to prove it-that all receiving of perfection by one subject from another implies potency, nor that "a received perfection cannot be received in its totality." For the latter is precisely what happens in the Trinity, in the communication of the divine nature from . the Father to the Son. It is indeed communication between persons, not separate beings, and by "procession," not efficient causality. Long does not draw these essential distinctions, but makes an unqualified general statement that is clearly false when applied to the Trinity. One must ask what sense then can be made of the revealed and defined doctrine of the Trinity, as indicated above, where both giving and receiving are integral to the interior life of self-communicating love between the three Persons. The scriptural texts themselves are stunningly precise: "All that I have I have received from my Father"; and "All that the Father has he has given to me" (the "All" in the latter text shows that this concerns the eternal divine life of the Son, not his created human nature, to which the Father did not give all that he had). I see no way that one could question this and still remain a Christian thinker. Long's argument, in fact, includes no reference to the Trinity, which was the main source of evidence, the central REPLY TO STEVEN LONG 623 point, of my whole development. His critique is therefore at its heart inadequate. To hold that theology and revelation are irrelevant for philosophy is inadmissible for a Christian philosopher. The more common position, that theology must be separated from philosophy so as not to influence it unduly, is a respectable position for a Christian thinker. But even here theology is always taken as a negative norm, in the sense that no statement in philosophy will be allowed that contradicts or renders unintelligible a statement from theology, at least in its formally defined parts. Unfortunately that seems to be exactly what Long has unwittingly-and I am sure unintentionally-done when he says that "a pure perfection cannot be received in its totality." But it is, by the Son in the Trinity-not from one being to another, but from one Person to another Person! And it is real communication, real giving, and real receiving. How can the antinomy be reconciled? It may be that Long has fallen into the Aristotelian trap of considering complete self-sufficiency, self-originated perfection, not only in the order of being but of persons too, to be the necessary condition for any authentic fullness of perfection, of Pure Act. Even in Aristotle's admirable book 9 of the Nicomachean Ethics, on friendship, with its stress on the reciprocity between friends, there occurs this revealing sentence, which might indicate that some further refinement of the perfection of the love of friendship may have escaped him: "Further, love is like activity, being loved like passivity; and loving and its concomitants are attributes of those who are the more active" (c. 7 [ll68al9]). Not so in the world of the divine Persons, not so without qualification even among human persons, and therefore not so for an adequate Christian philosophy, and not for St. Thomas, who asserts clearly the non-self-origination of the perfection of the Son in the Trinity: "It is of the nature [or meaning: de ratione Filii est] of the Son to be related only to the Father as existing from him [ut existens ab eo]" (De Potentia, q. 10, a. 4). Finally, Long seems to think that I believe receptivity is realized as a pure perfection among creatures, including created 624 NORRIS CLARKE, S.J. persons. Not at all; my point is that receptivity in its very meaning is a pure perfection, contains no limitation or imperfection in its very meaning so as to become intrinsically a "limited or mixed perfection." But it is always realized in creatures-as is true of all pure perfections, unity, goodness, truth, etc.-in an imperfect, limited way. That is why receptivity in creatures is not simply receptivity, but limited, imperfect receptivity. I rest my case here. It may seem that I have been somewhat harsh in my reply to my critic. I am not accustomed to writing in this way. I did so only because I consider it so important today to make it clear how incomplete, even misleading, it can be when a Christian philosopher tries to ignore, or take no account of, the distinctively new and powerful light that Christian revelation, in particular that of the Trinity, sheds on what it means both to be and to be a person. My final word: Is there a authentic and intellectually respectable project of distinctive Christian philosophizing? My answer is a resounding ''Yes!" The Thomist 61 (1997): 625-40 ON WILLIAM A. WALLACE, O.P., THE MODELING OF NATURE1 BENEDICTM. AsHLEY, 0.P., and ERIC A. REITAN, 0.P. St. Louis University St. Louis, Missouri TER HALF A CENTURY of logical reconstructionist hilosophy of science, the academic iconoclast Paul eyerabend declared in 1970 that the philosophy of science was "a discipline with a great past." In this masterful volume, after a lifetime of research, teaching, and writing in the history of science, philosophy, and theology, William A. Wallace shows that the philosophy of science may indeed be a discipline with a future-as long as it remains in contact with the actual historical episodes of real scientific achievement. By his many studies on the scientific methodology of Galileo2 and its origins and by his important two-volume work, Causality and Scientific Explanation, 3 Wallace had laid the foundation for the present clearly written, eminently readable, and well-documented volume, in which he presents and defends a realistic philosophy of nature and natural science. Basing his presentation on empirical common sense, a realist view of nature and causality, and on critically accepted scientific achievements, Wallace shows how a natural philosophy that does not presuppose but rather grounds a metaphysics, in concert with a realist interpretation of scientific methodology and scientific discovery, has in fact served as the 1 WilliamA. Wallace, O.P., The Modeling of Nature: Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Nature in Synthesis (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), xvii+ 450 pp. 2 His major studies are Galileo and His Sources: The Heritage of the Collegio Romano in Galileo's Science (Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 1984) and Galileo's Logic of Discovery and Proof (Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992). 3 Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1974. 625 626 BENEDICT M. ASHLEY, 0.P., and ERIC A. REITAN, O.P. foundation for the unique cumulative growth of scientific knowledge throughout the history of Western civilization. Wallace divides his book into two main parts. In the first (chaps. 1-5) he discusses the fundamental concepts of the natural sciences, including physics, chemistry, biology, and human psychology. In the second part (chaps. 6-10), using actual successful episodes from the history of science, he shows how a realistic scientific epistemology enables the human mind to acquire true scientific understanding of natural realities in terms of their real causes and natural properties. The first part is essentially a contemporary version of the first few books of Aristotle's Physics and De Anima, rewritten in light of modern scientific advances, with the aid of "modeling techniques." Using the models (diagrams and schemas) that he has developed in major articles over the years, Wallace elucidates the Aristotelian concepts of "physical substance," "form," "matter," "nature," and cause" in order to present a holistic understanding of the physical realities that serve as the basis for both our common everyday experience and our sophisticated scientific theories. After a general discussion of "nature," "form," and "matter" (chap. 1), Wallace considers atoms and molecules and their compounds, as well as the processes of radioactive decay and chemical interaction, and even the distant realities of stars and planets in his discussion of the inorganic (chap. 2). Building on his discussion of the inorganic, Wallace considers living things-plants and animals-in chapter 3, where he discusses the vital operations of metabolism and homeostasis, morphological development and growth, as well as DNA replication, and the animal activities of sensation and desire. In the next two chapters, he turns to a consideration of knowledge and human nature. Using some of the insights of contemporary cognitive science, along with recent researches involving Periplaneta computatrix (a computer-simulated "insect"), as well as traditional concepts of sensation, perception, and intellection, the external and internal senses, and intentionality, Wallace presents an up-to-date version of an essentially Aristotelian-Thomistic theory of cognition (chap. 4 ). Then, by bringing together the principal concepts and insights ON WILLIAM A. WALLACE, THE MODELING OF NATURE 627 of the first four chapters, he discusses the character of the human person and human nature, showing how the inorganic elements and the life functions of vegetative and sensory powers serve as the foundation in human nature for the emotional, appetitive, intellectual, and volitional activities of the human person (chap. 5). Though grounded in the actualization of "proto-matter" by a "natural form" {the human soul) that is "essentially immaterial," the human being cannot ultimately be explained in terms of physical principles alone. This leads us, according to Wallace, from the empirical considerations of natural philosophy to the brink of metaphysics, without presupposing it. In the second part of the book, Wallace argues that the physical realities we investigate and the concepts we derive from them are more fruitfully engaged by a realist methodology of science, based on the distinctions between formal and material logic, and between dialectical and demonstrative reasoning, than they are by the essentially mathematical and symbolic logic and so-called empirical concepts of the logical reconstructionist and neo-empiricist philosophy of science of the twentieth century, which have never freed themselves from Kant's epistemology. Using historical examples of significant scientific contributions, Wallace shows how eminent scientists used dialectical reasoning, based on sense experience, experiment, and measurement, to prepare the way for actual scientific demonstrations that greatly enhanced our understanding of phenomena as diverse as rainbows, planetary motions, circulation of the blood, and the structure of DNA. He begins this part of his book with an updated version (chap. 6) of his important article "Defining the Philosophy of Science,''4in which he surveys briefly the history of the development of the discipline of the philosophy of science from its modern roots in the thought of Descartes, Hume, and Kant, through its nineteenth-century developments at the hands of Whewell and Mill, to the rise of logical reconstructionism (the "orthodox" or "received view") and the more recent critical assessments of Popper and Kuhn. 4 Reprinted in his book of essays, From a Realist Point of View (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America Press, 1979; 2d ed., 1983), 1-21. 628 BENEDICT M. ASHLEY, O.P., and ERIC A. REITAN, O.P. After evaluating several Thomist interpretations of the philosophy of science, Wallace offers his own view, that the "Philosophy of science is a specialization or subdiscipline within the philosophy of nature," and as such does not differ formally and essentially from modern science itself nor from natural philosophy as understood within the Aristotelian-Thomist tradition. The philosophy of science is a critical reflection on and analysis of the methods actually used by investigators of nature, whether natural philosophers or scientists, who have advanced our scientific knowledge of the world through valid insights and cogent arguments concerning physical phenomena, their causes, and their properties. In order to articulate and defend this view of the philosophy of science, Wallace first discusses the probable and dialectical argumentation of the natural sciences (chap. 7). Critical of Hume's notion of causation and probability, and aware of the limitations of the hypothetico-deductive method, Wallace shows how physical concepts (observable, metrical, and theoretical) combined with mathematical concepts, can be applied dialectically to "topics," or problems of cause-effect, antecedent-consequent, and similarity-dissimilarity, in order to arrive at reasonable principles or at least probable hypotheses from which a causal explanation of natural phenomena might be drawn. Often, he shows, these dialectical probings have historically led the way to more penetrating scientific analysis of those same realities, ultimately enabling us to understand the causes of those realities and demonstrate their essential properties. Next Wallace considers this demonstrative argumentation as it is expressed in scientific syllogisms founded on indemonstrable first principles, arrived at through critical reflection and analysis of the data of our experience (chap. 8). He explains the "material" or content logic of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, addressing problems of definition, supposition, foreknowledge, and causal connection, all of which are necessary for "scientific knowledge" in the full sense of necessary knowledge through causes. The "certitude" in question is not Cartesian mathematical ON WILLIAMA. WALLACE, THE MODELINGOF NATURE 629 clarity, nor metaphysical necessity, but that proper to physical knowledge, namely the necessity of causal laws that apply in pluribus, based on the factual certitudes of observation. Thus we have arrived at certitude not only that the earth is a spheroid, but why it is such according to the laws of gravitation and mechanics. Using such examples from his earlier, pioneering studies of the Aristotelian roots of Galileo's science, Wallace provides examples of this logic in action (logica utens as contrasted to logica docens, logical theory), showing how the search for causes-used and defended by Galileo, Newton, and the other founders of modern science-must be adapted to the subject matter at hand and its causes and attributes being investigated, and how this differs radically from the merely formal character of contemporary symbolic logic. Wallace also shows how models and analogies can be used in the formulation of the "demonstrative regress" promoted by the seventeenth-century Paduan Aristotelian Jacopo Zabarella, in order to lead us from knowledge of observed effects to some understanding of the causes responsible for them. According to this method of demonstrative regress scientific reasoning proceeds from observed effect to explanatory cause and then from this cause to explain the observed effect. This induction from effect to cause does not demand, as many writers suppose, an exhaustive enumeration of particulars, because "in a necessary subject matter where objects have essential connection with each other," after "a certain number of these have been examined, the mind straightway notices the essential connection, and then, disregarding the remaining particulars, it proceeds at once to bring all the particulars together in the universal. "5 • Thus Newton did not have to examine every case of a falling body to get the insight that massive bodies attract each other after he had seen not only that apples fall, but that closed, elliptical orbits of the planets and Jupiter's moons show they tend to fall toward the more massive body. Nor is this inductive-deductive demonstrative regress logically circular because in the regressive induction from effect to cause, the cause is only grasped "materially," that is, we 5 Modeling, 302. 630 BENEDICT M. ASHLEY, O.P., and ERIC A. REITAN, O.P. need only know that the cause of the effect exists; while in the deductive return from cause to effect, the cause is seen "formally," precisely as the necessary cause of the effect, as Newton in the Principia demonstrated that gravitational "attraction" is the vera causa of planetary motion. As Wallace points out, the fact that later Einstein was to argue that this "attraction" was not an actio in distans but due to the curvature of space-time produced by the presence of massive bodies or by the exchange of gravitons, in no way shows that Newton's conclusion was false or merely probable, but only tells us more about his (certainly true, but) approximate conclusion. 6 In the final two chapters, Wallace looks to a series of significant episodes in the history of science in order to support his argument concerning the human mind's ability to grasp, at least in part, the natures of physical realities and to understand their attributes and activities in terms of their various causes. First, he presents the scientific arguments themselves in historical context, evaluating their demonstrative force (chap. 9). He discusses Theodoric of Freiberg's treatment of the rainbow, Galileo's argument concerning the moon and planets and his analysis of free-fall and projectile motion, William Harvey's work on the circulation of the blood, Newton's theory of light and color and his understanding of universal gravitation, the work of Lavoisier, Guy-Lussac, Dalton, Avogadro, and Cannizzaro in the determination of the "units" in chemistry, and the discovery of the structure of the DNA molecule by Watson and Crick. In light of these scientific achievements, Wallace then addresses the problem of scientific progress in relation with Thomas Kuhn's historical and sociological notion of "paradigm shifts," first proposed in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions7 and very influential in recent thought. Wallace considers the initial (and in some cases still ongoing) controversies that surrounded each of his examples. He argues that each of these episodes involved the scientist in a movement toward a fuller and more complete understanding of the reality under ' Ibid., 359-64. 7 Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1962; 2d ed., enlarged, 1970. ON WILLIAMA. WAl.LACE, THE MODELINGOF NATURE 631 investigation. Beginning with partial knowledge, based on sense experience and previous scientific insight, the scientist proceeds through experimentation and "agitation of mind" (Galileo's phrase) to uncover more of the truth that previously lay hidden in the obscurity of material processes and contingencies. This process of discovery, according to Wallace, is not reducible to the rules of symbolic logic and basic empirical statements, but is better served by the realistic content logic of Aristotelian dialectical reasoning and is at its best in causal demonstration. Moreover Wallace admits, with Kuhn, that historical and sociological factors have an immense influence on the understanding, acceptance, and final form of scientific achievements.He believes,however, that there is a real continuity in the history of natural science, manifested by the historical uncovering of ever more of the truth about nature, a truth that does not conflict with previous insights, but moves beyond them, bringing to light what was before hidden and obscure. The partial truth that was known then and the partial truth that we know now, is not, for Wallace, simply probable and revisable, subject to contradiction by new and different theories that may arise in the future. Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, and Watson and Crick made real and lasting contributions to the human understanding of nature, contributions that while capable of further refinement, and even profound rethinking, enable us today to move forward in the pursuit of truth. Wallace rightly traces the misinterpretation of modern science to the skeptic David Hume, who denied the objective reality of causality and hence of the possibility of knowing the natures of things through their causes. Though he retained the term "causation" it was reduced merely to our subjective anticipation of an "effect" from the repeated experiences of its "cause." No wonder then that in this context Thomas Kuhn's "paradigm shifts," resulting not from objective evidence so much as from cultural changes, have fostered the current notion that science is only a social construct reflecting an ideology. Wallace gives less attention to the even more decisive influence of Immanuel Kant's attempt to save Newton from 632 BENEDICT M. ASHLEY, 0.P., and ERIC A. REITAN, 0.P. Hume by arguing that even if causality and the nature of things are unknowable, yet we can still construct a science of necessary natural laws by attributing their necessity not to things themselves but to the way our minds necessarily think about things. 8 It was because of their Kantianism that the logical empiricists insisted that scientific verification can never be more than approximate and probable. Karl Popper, however, showed that in complex theories such relative probability cannot be established by verification, and tried to substitute falsification instead, until Willard Van Orman Quine demonstrated that falsification too is indecisive.9 A determinant probability rests on good reasons. Hence if one is to avoid an infinite regress in probable reasons resulting in zero probability, one must posit some good reasons that are certain. Very important to Wallace's exposition is his rejection of the black-and-white conception of objective truth with which Descartes in his mathematicism burdened modern philosophy and which was so prominent a feature of logical empiricism. This notion of certitude supposed that it depends on clarity and distinctness. Aristotle's doctrine that physical reality has being (reality) not only in its actuality but also in its potentiality, its real capacity for change, had its consequences also for our knowledge of reality. Human concepts, based as they are on abstraction from sense perceptions, are never completely clear and actual; they always contain, even in their objectivity, a degree of confusion, of potentiality. It is not strange, therefore, that the hopeless search for mathematical clarity has again and again led to skepticism about the possibility of an objective, rational understanding of the world and ourselves. For some time many philosophers have claimed that moral standards have no more than a subjective basis. Now some have begun to argue that the hard sciences, so long trusted 8 On the stages of this development see Lewis White Beck, Early German Philosophy:Kant and His Predecessors(Cambridge,Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969), 465ff. However, Michael Friedman, in a detailed study on Kant and the Exact Sciences (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UniversityPress, 1992) shows that there were other factors than Hume's destruction of causality at work in Kant's life-long preoccupation with natural philosophy, especially his desire to free it from the metaphysics of Leibnitz and Wolff which has continued to influence neo-Scholasticism. 9 Modeling, 248-49. ON WIILIAM A. WALLACE, THE MODELINGOF NATURE 633 for their critical objectivity, are just as much a matter of social construction as are ethics and politics. 10 The theoretical claims of natural science are suspected to be ideologically motivated and rhetorically promoted. Many excellent popularizing expositions 11 make clear that current science is directed by what are often very paradoxical and ambiguous theories that condition its search for the very same data on which it relies to confirm these same dubious theories. What are we to think, for example, of cosmologies that logically require us to suppose that countless new worlds are constantly being created, although they will remain forever inaccessible to our experience? Or that the universe emerged from nothing by quantum fluctuations in empty space as if these laws were not simply properties of an already existing cosmos? Or theories of evolution that explain the existence of the brilliant brains of scientists who study evolution by saying these brains have been created by a series of purely chance events that might much more probably have resulted in a merely random assemblage of particles? All these magnificent efforts at understanding our world seem to result in a cosmos without human meaning and hence to require us on our own to give that cosmos meaning. Thus in a collection of interviews with twenty-seven distinguished cosmologists, a Nobel laureate in physics, Steven Weinberg, was asked whether he stood by a statement in his book The First Three Minutes "that the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless"; Weinberg could only add that "one of the things that makes life worthwhile is doing scientific 10 Thus Michael Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeologyof the Human Sciences (New York: Vintage Books, 1994) argues that "man" as we now know him/her, that is, "modern man," has existed only since the rise of modern sciencein the seventeenth century and is probably about to pass away along with his/her trust in objective science (see 386f.). 11 We are engulfed in a deluge of such books, for example, on physics: John D. Barrow, Theories of Everything: The Quest for Ultimate Explanation (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1991); Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory: The Search for the Fundamental Laws of Nature (New York: Vintage, 1993); Murray Gell-Mann, The Jaguar and the Quark: Adventuresin the Simple and Complex (New York: W. H. Freeman, 1994); and on biology: Niles Eldredge, ReinventingDarwin: The Great Debate on Evolutionary Theory (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1995); Daniel Dennett, Darwin's DangerousIdea: Evolutionand the Meaningsof Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995); and Michael J. Behe, Darwin'sBlack Box (New York: The Free Press, 1996). 634 BENEDICT M. ASHLEY, O.P., and ERIC A. REITAN, 0.P. research."12 Most of the other scientists interviewed are less blunt (a few sharply disagree with Weinberg) but are unable to say anything much more positive. Can the goal of science be nothing more than the scientist's self-expression-and the expression of an empty self at that? Fortunately there are contemporary thinkers, like Wallace, who are pointing a more hopeful way for twenty-first-century thought not by denying the objectivity and rationality of scientific thought but by what the French call ressourcement, a return to the sources. Because modern science has achieved so much and in so short a time, we need to review its progress to see whether it has been consistent with its truest self. Defenders of scientific realism have found the clue to its revision in the careful study of its history so as to discover when it has been on track and when it has been shunted off into dead-ends. Historical studies can mislead, but happily they tend to be self-correcting. Thus Kuhn's stimulating but dubious theory of "paradigm shifts" started the trend of accusing science of being a mere social construct, but it also favored deeper research into the rise of modern science and the alleged paradigm shift from ancient and medieval science to modern science with the "Copernican Revolution" and the work of Galileo. 13 Thus Wallace's book puts together the major results of his own lifetime of historical and philosophical research and splendidly fulfills a project in which he has encouraged others to labor. 14 Our conviction is that the current interpretation of the investigation of nature, which has made such remarkable progress 12 Alan Lightman and Roberta Brawer, Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990), 466; referring to Weinberg's, The First Three Minutes (London: Trinity Press, 1977). In his later work Dreams of a Final Theory Weinberg discusses this question more cautiously. 13 For the various theories of the historical development of science and the debate about Kuhn's theory see the excellent work of H. Floris Cohen, The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), which refers to Wallace's work (see index, p. 660). 14 Modeling, xvii. For the history of this line of Thomistic interpretation and application in the United States see BenedictAshley, O.P., "The River Forest School of Natural Philosophy," in R. James Long, ed., Philosophy and the God of Abraham: Essays in Memory of James A. Weisheipl (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1991), 1-16; and idem, "The Loss of Theological Unity: Pluralism, Thomism, and Catholic Morality," in Mary Jo Weaver and R. Scott Appleby, Being Right: Conservative Catholics in America (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995), 63-87. ON WILLIAMA WALLACE, THE MODELINGOF NATURE 635 since the seventeenth century, became seriously distorted in the eighteenth century by the skepticism of Hume and the idealism of Kant, which have resulted in the conceptual tangles and frustrations already mentioned. To overcome this situation modern science must be freed of these misguided philosophical influences and exhorted to follow with courage its own deeper and more continuous tradition. While the work under review is a fine synthesis of these efforts, it also shows that much work is still to be done. To retain focus on his principal thesis Wallace has wisely chosen to pass over lightly the questions raised by quantum physics and by neo-Darwinianism. These issues are highly technical and the theories are rapidly changing; to pursue them might obscure the main point which is to show that there is now a very large body of scientific knowledge that is not called into question by these cutting-edge questions. We may be on the edge of a grand unified theory of natural forces or a major improvement on Darwin, but such advances will not invalidate the major achievements of the past. They can only put them in a new context. Wallace justifies this limitation of his treatment of current science by showing that subatomic entities, cosmological origins, and the history of life on earth cannot be explored scientifically except by grounding the search in a scientific account of the present cosmic and earthly situation at the level of entities that we can well describe in a realistic way consistent with common experience. Within the limits of his treatment, Wallace demonstrates that in fact the scientific view of the world as developed by modern science can be understood as an authentic "philosophy of nature" which seeks a causal understanding of the material world, independent of metaphysics, ethics, and politics, that is not reducible to the mathematical models which are its tools. Thus this book takes a different approach than do many current synthesizing works which attempt to begin with quantum theory, cosmology, and evolutionary theory to explain the world. This is to go from the lesser known to the better known, thus exposing 636 BENEDICT M. ASHLEY, O.P., and ERIC A. REITAN, O.P. science to the fantastic paradoxes that Gell-Mann calls "flap-doodle. " 15 While Wallace's decision not to enter more deeply into the problems of quantum physics, cosmology, and evolutionary theory is well justified, he might have done well to have touched, at least in summary fashion, on the most important questions these unifying theories raise for an Aristotelian reinterpretation of the current scientific world picture, since these questions are the ones today most discussed in popularizing works. 16 First of all, it is important to note that a "paradigm shift" has been quietly taking place from the attempt, dominant from Newton to Einstein, to explain the universe in terms of universal laws to a new mode of explanation in terms of historical sequences of particular events that are not governed by any such universal law but are ultimately matters of chance. While it is true that, as Steve Weinberg says in Dreams of a Final Theory, cosmologists long for a mathematical law from which, without the specification of any initial conditions, the entire evolution of the cosmos could be deduced, this kind of determinism is at odds with quantum indeterminism and chaos theory. The slightest surprise at one point of cosmic development could make for an utterly different universe in the future, and such a surprise is always possible considering random quantum fluctuations. It could be added that Weinberg's universe without initial conditions would be the equivalent of the classical philosophical definition of God, that is, the absolutely necessary Being. That a material being, that is, one that is changing and thus in part potential and yet to be determined, should be absolutely necessary, is absurd. We must, therefore, accept that by all evidence the universe in which we live is not necessary, but wholly contingent, and that its development involves the chances of history and a genuine (i.e., unpredictable) future. The same is true of the evolution of life. Stephen Jay Gould is right (and this eliminates the whole system of Teilhard de Chardin) in declaring that the theory of biological evolution 15 "Quantum Dynamics and Flapdoodle," in Quark and jaguar, 167-76. 16 See note 10 above for examples. ON WILLIAM A. WALLACE, THE MODELING OF NATURE 637 contains no universal law of progress. 17 Nothing in present evolutionary theory makes it inevitable that intelligent human life should have appeared on earth or anywhere else. It is much more likely that evolution would have ended with insects, or bacteria, or no life at all. The Anthropic Principle of Barrow and Tipler 18 is valid only in the weaker form of a look backward in time which requires us to affirm that human life could not have emerged if the universe had been much different than it is. We cannot claim that given the universe as it is intelligent life must necessarily have emerged. At this point, as Wallace tells us, the methods of natural science reach their limits. What they do and should affirm is that our universe as such is not ultimately self-explanatory, that is, the cosmos is a fact but not a necessary fact. This becomes very evident in the fortunate emergence of intelligent life from a universe that might just as well go in an entirely different direction. That it has not done so, however, cannot be attributed to the mere throw of the dice, since the improbability of the emergence of so extremely complex an entity as the human brain (as well shown by Wallace's description of human nature) is so vast that we must infer the existence of non-material causes for the material universe and its dramatic history, and hence consider the possibility of a metaphysics. This metaphysics, however, requires as its condition precisely this sort of physical proof of the existence of non-physical causes of the physical. A special point we would like to make, not elaborated by Wall ace, concerns the ambiguous use in current science of the term matter as if it were somehow identical with energy. Gell-Mann in the work referred to 19 points out that it is not 17 See his recent defense of his views against Daniel Dennett, "Darwinian Fundamentalism: Part I," The New Yo1* Reviewof Books 44 no. 10 (12 June 1997): 34-37: "The radicalism of [Darwinian] natural selection lies in its power to dethrone some of the deepest and most traditional comforts of Western thought, particularly the notion that nature's benevolence, order, and good design, with humans at a sensible summit of power and an omnipotent and benevolent creator who loves us most of all (the old-styletheological version), or at least that nature has meaningful directions, and that humans fit into a sensible and predictable pattern regulating the totality (the modern and more secular version)," (34; emphasis added). 18 J. D. Barrow and F. D. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). For discussion see Gell-Mann, Jaguar and Quark, 212-13. 19 jaguar and Quark, 124. 638 BENEDICTM. ASHLEY, O.P., and ERIC A. REITAN, O.P. correct to say that matter is converted into energy and energy into matter, since in fact what happens is that one sort of matter is converted into another sort with the release or absorption of energy in accordance with conservation laws. Moreover current science seems to identify matter with mass, which is said to be a measure of the quantity of matter. An Aristotelian, however, would say that Descarteswas mistaken in identifying matter with quantity but that quantity (extension) is the first property of matter. Thus it is not at all evident that all matter must have mass. In Newtonian science one could speak of "empty space" devoid of matter, a notion that Aristotle considered a confusion of real quantity with abstract mathematical quantity, which cannot as such exist in the physical world. Einstein returned to a more Aristotelian view when he replaced Newton's absolute space with a gravitational field which cannot exist without the presence in it of a massive body but which itself has no mass. In current quantum physics the so-called vacuum within the atom and in interstellar space is filled with all sorts of particle-waves carrying the four fundamental forces, and some of these particles, photons and neutrinos and their anti-particles, although material are said to be of zero mass. An Aristotelian must conclude that these "fields," since they constitute an extended real plenum between massivebodies and thus have quantity (as well as being the subject of "curvature," "waves," etc.) must also be considered to be material. Hence mass is a property of some matter but not of all kinds or states of matter. The rethinking of the history and achievements of science that Wallace proposes opens up an objectiveway to pass from modern science to ethics and politics in the practical realm and to metaphysics in the realm of the ultimate meaning of reality. It should be studied by scientists, moralists, and metaphysicians if they want to open interdisciplinary dialogue and seek a coordination and mutual communication between the fields of research. An example of such dialogue is the especially interesting chapter 8, section 1, in which Wallace compares his own Aristotelian-Thomist ontology with that of one of the most ON WILLIAMA. WALLACE, THEMODELINGOFNATURE 639 respected of contemporary American philosophers, Willard Van Orman Quine. This work, therefore, is an excellent defense of the scientific enterprise against such current mistaken notions as that (1) science is a mere social construct, incapable of objective truth; (2) the achievements of science are unworthy of the title of "philosophy" because they arrive only at an accidental superficial knowledge of things ("perinoetic" science in Jacques Maritain's terms) rather than their natures; (3) they are merely dialectical (i.e., arrive only at probable truths); (4) real philosophy (i.e., metaphysics) is independent of natural science because it has access to "being as such" by some mental abstractive or judgmental process by which the ens of ens mobile is shown to be distinguishable from the mobile; (5) natural science encompasses the whole range of reality accessible to objective human knowledge; (6) human nature, along with the natures of the other physical things of our experience, lacks any intrinsic teleology which could supply an objective basis for ethics, so that it is a fallacy to reason from the "is" to the "ought." Thus science as conceived by Wallace supplies a firm foundation for both ethics and metaphysics. Hence The Modeling of Nature should be read and consulted by serious scholars of the sciences, their history, and their significance for the understanding of ourselves and our world. Its sustained argument is richly illustrated with historical examples, and it is philosophically sophisticated and scientifically relevant. The modest size of the volume and its convenient divisions into chapters and sections make it useful as a textbook as well. Moreover, its wide-ranging and thorough bibliography and its index make it an ideal teaching tool for graduate seminars devoted to historical and philosophical treatments of science. And its interdisciplinary character enables it to serve as a text in undergraduate courses concerned with the relationship between the sciences, humanities, and theology, as well as upper-level courses in the philosophy of science and the history of science. This is an important book for scientists, philosophers, and 640 BENEDICTM. ASHLEY, O.P., and ERIC A REITAN, O.P. theologians, providing all of us with a realistic and critical approach to the study of nature. BOOK REVIEWS Heart of the World, Center of the Church: Communio Ecclesiology, Liberalism, and Liberation. By DAVID L. SCHINDLER. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1996. Pp. 357. $37.59 (cloth). ISBN 0-8028-3809-X. The centrality of the communio theme in the documents of Vatican II is hardly a new discovery,yet often this is relegated to an inner-ecclesial domain. Schindler's aim is to show the implications of such an ecclesiology for the mission of the Christian and the Church in the world, within the concrete context of post-Vatican II North America. For this it is necessary to take up a dialogue with liberalism or, more specifically, "with other Catholics who also have been in dialogue with liberalism" (xiv). There are many aspects to this polemic that make the book stand out. Notably, it is the range of opponents the author finds, and, more importantly, the basis for his criticism. The book operates on both a regional level (variousspecific dialogues) and a general level (underlying theological and ontological presuppositions). Although the entire first part of the book, and the tone of the book in general, is primarily concerned with issues as they appear in an American context, the significance of the book is not limited to this continent. Indeed, after the collapse of the Communist regimes, many countries in Eastern Europe have embraced enthusiastically the promises of market capitalism. Some theologians in Poland, notably, have adopted many of the ideas put forth by Michael Novak and see in liberal capitalism the opportunity to move beyond clericalism. For Schindler, this merely changes one form of dualism for another. After showing the deficiencies of various ecclesiologies (integralist, liberationist, and dualist), Schindler turns to a communio theology, with its proper Trinitarian and Christological emphases, in order to ground the Church-world relation. The Church is intrinsically turned to the world as the continuation of the incarnational mission of Jesus Christ. Its mission is therefore essentially tied to its self-understanding that it exists within the communion between Christ and the Father. Schindler questions a central claim of liberalism, namely, the theological-philosophical neutrality of its institutions, which allows them to come to terms with Catholicism. He shows that all forms of professed neutrality, on the part of liberalism, already carry some stand towards key 641 642 BOOK REVIEWS theological issues and that this stand is contrary or at least inimical to basic Catholic doctrine. Upon critical examination, the various areas where liberalism claims an "empty" or "neutral" stance reveal a specifjc, although often hidden, philosophical and theological position, "a definite 'sense of the primacy of human agency or 'construction' in the self's affective-volitional and cognitive relations with God and others (however inconsistent this may be with the claim of neutrality)" (xiv). Hence the characterization of liberalism as "finesse" (33) or "con game" (44, 87). This critique is not aimed so much at the achievements of those who have contributed to mediate Catholic thought to American liberal institutions as rather at the "logic" of their positions which is often unintended but which carries a problematic tension toward the Christian faith in light of communio ecclesiology. The disproportionate emphasis on the self and its action is inconsistent with the notion of person and the person's mission in the world, derived from communio ecclesiology. Stated positively: "the trinitarian communio, present in the sacramental communio, reveals the meaning of all being in its full integrity, and thereby reveals as well the inner logic and dynamic of the Christian presence in the world" (xvi). Borrowing a phrase from John Paul II's address to the Argentine bishops, Schindler says that the Church is called to be forma mundi. In the political and cultural arena, the debate is with John Courtney Murray, the inspirational force behind Vatican II's Declaration on Religious Freedom, over whether the discussion with the First Amendment concerns articles of peace or articles of faith. Schindler argues that Murray's notion of religious freedom as immunity from coercion (i.e., articles of peace) is not empty of religious theory. In giving logical priority to a notion of freedom defined negatively, it precludes the priority of a positive notion of freedom for a relation with God. Religion is then something "added on," and thus privatized. There is here a fundamental ambiguity that calls for clarification on the part of proponents of liberalism. In economics, the conversation picks up a long-standing debate Schindler has conducted with three representatives of neoconservative liberalism: George Weigel, Richard John Neuhaus, and Michael Novak. Here again, the argument is whether market capitalism is indeed "empty" of moral or doctrinal content and therefore able to be embraced by Catholicism. The central point concerns human freedom and capitalism's emphasis on enterprise, inventiveness, and responsibility. Without denying the importance of human freedom and action, Schindler questions the implied priority of "doing" over "being." Thus, "liberalism of any stripe-including the liberalism of 'open' capitalism-remains unacceptable insofar as its freedom remains conceived as primarily creative-or rather, insofar as its creativity is not conceived as anteriorly receptive" (119). Created being, as derived from the notion of communio, involves an emphasis on I "am" prior to I "do," a priority of "being" over "doing" or "having" (see 103). The neoconservative view leaves BOOK REVIEWS 643 no room for the centrality of the Marian fiat which is decisive for an understanding of creaturely being and action (and their proper relation) in a theology of communio. More importantly, the stakes here concern the interpretation of John Paul H's social teaching, which neoconservatives have claimed as an authority, particularly in relation to the human creation as image of God. In the neoconservativeview, human agency images the creativity of the Father. A communio perspective will insist that human agency images the creativity of Father only in the receptivity of the Son, presupposing this prior receptivity. Schindler convincingly shows that the neoconservative reading of John Paul H's Centensimus Annus, with its emphasis on an ethics of "realism" oriented to success, ignores the Pope's strong Christological (and thus Trinitarian) basis. The third foray into liberalism deals with the academy and its commitment to neutrality, whose very proposal of an "empty" forum precludes the entry of authentic Catholicism. The question is whether a Catholic university ought to adopt uncritically the standards of secular universities. For Schindler, critical methods and scholarship in the secular university "do not embody a pure rationality" (145), which seems to be the assumption of Fr. Theodore Hesburgh. Schindler questions this assumption and, here and in a later chapter on "Sanctity and the Intellectual Life," sketches the requirements of a Catholic mind, that is "the implications for the mind of the call to holiness" (149). The Cartesian roots of today's academy are examined, uncovered, and are shown to hide a mechanistic separation of subject and object. As an alternative, the author calls for an a priori where the analogical convertibility of logic or order and love is operative. In short, Christian faith in light of communio requires that "love is the truest and deepest meaning of both the methods and contents of all disciplines" (169-70). The mere fact of anticipation of substantive meaning is no different from liberalism's anticipation of mechanism or subjectivism.The integrity of individual disciplines is preserved and the charge of revelational positivism is avoided through an appeal to the notion of analogy. The second half of the book develops some of the implications of communio and shows that an emphasis on love, espousal, and receptivity includes the intellectual life. Two chapters in particular stand out: "Catholic Theology, Gender, and the Future of Western Civilization" and "'Thomism' and the Human Person: The Question of Receptivity and the Philosophy-Theology Distinction." The first is notable for its ontological discourse on the issue of gender: "Created being as a whole is 'feminine' with respect to God. The first act of created being, in other words, is receptive. What the creature first 'does' is receive its be-ing (being): what it first 'does' is 'be'" (256). The second, which is also the last chapter of the book, tackles the notion of person which underlies much of the debate with liberalism. Once again, Schindler's point of view is resolutely ontological and flows from the implications of a communio ecclesiology. In the revelation of the concrete Trinitarian God in the 644 BOOK REVIEWS incarnation of Jesus Christ, being receives its meaning from love. This suggests that receptivity, far from being an imperfection, something to be overcome through an autonomous project of self-construction, is in fact a perfection. In fact, it is through receptivity, as "sons in the Son," that we participate in the creativity of the Father. This leads to a recognition of the priority of being over doing in anthropology. In other words, we cannot generate unless we are generated. This provides the thematic unity to the whole book. The aim of the book is not to present an ecclesiology based on the idea of communio in a systematic and exhaustive manner. Clearly, such a book would also be useful. After the present book, which in many ways whets our appetite, the desire for such treatment is all the greater. Throughout the book, the teaching of Vatican II is seen in the light of the interpretation given by John Paul II and Hans Urs von Balthasar (along with Joseph Ratzinger and Henri de Lubac). That such an interpretation is here privileged, admits the author, is "hardly uncontroversial," but "it will suffice for the present study to offer a communio ecclesiology on the grounds of its intrinsic explanatory power, relative to the Church-world relation that is so central to the Council" (30, n. 48). The dominant influence and inspiration for Schindler is clearly found in the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar.Yet, just as clearly, this is not a book about Balthasar. The Swiss theologian is often perceived, rightly or wrongly, as being hermetic. Schindler brings some of Balthasar's key ideas into the public debate and effectively shows their creative power. This is very useful and helpful. In doing so, he also confirms that the context of post-Vatican II Catholicism is far more complex than a discussion between left and right, progressive and conservative. This last point also addresses the issue of whether Schindler has not fallen into another form of integralism. The relation of Church to world that is here put forward is not based on coercion but on the form of love; this makes all the difference. Schindler's starting point, while it disavows the so-called neutrality of liberalism, has its own theological a priori. Yet, this is not a case of theological positivism. Following Balthasar in his important dialogue with Barth, Schindler describes his position as being based on the analogy of being (see Balthasar's The Theology of Karl Barth), and developed through an analogy of love. He can thus break the logjam of the alternative between the so-called neutrality of liberalism, which in effect leads to philosophical atheism, and theological or revelational positivism. CHRISTOPHE POTWOROWSKI Concordia University Montreal, Quebec, Canada BOOK REVIEWS 645 The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels. By LUKE TIMOTHY JOHNSON. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1996. Pp. vii +182. $22.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-06064177-0. New Testament scholarship usually identifies three waves of research, most often referred to as "Quests" for the historical Jesus. All of these have been characterized by the application of the methods of historical research to the Gospels and other first-century material in order to reconstruct the life of Jesus. The first such quest was initiated by the posthumous publication of H. S. Reimarus's study, then promoted by D. Strauss's The Life of Jesus Critically Examined (1835) and ended by Albert Schweitzer's assessment of the whole enterprise in 1906 in his Quest of the Historical Jesus. The second quest began with the 1953 Marburg Lecture by Ernst Kasemann, "The Problem of the Historical Jesus." Seeking to overcome the pessimism cast by Schweitzer and repeated by Bultmann regarding what can be known historically about Jesus, the second quest also produced "Lives" of Jesus, often tinged with notions of the existential relevance of the Jesus who emerges from these studies. The original momentum of this quest began to wane in the 1970s. The third quest began in the 1980s. Its character has been intimately linked to the Jesus Seminar under the direction of Robert Funk and John Dominic Crossan, and it has resulted in several critical historical studies that purport to give us the "real Jesus." It is from this starting point, and with reference to this particular reconstructive effort, that Luke Timothy Johnson undertakes a critique of "the misguided quest for the historical Jesus." Johnson's work is one of several that have criticized the methods and goals of the "third quest." It has several advantages over most of the others: clarity, brevity, a popular and engaging style, and especially theological clarity. Chapter 1, "The Good News and the Nightly News," introduces the primary target of Johnson's critique. It is the messianic pretensions of the Jesus Seminar as these have found their way into public consciousness through an astute manipulation of the media and the publication of The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words ofJesus (Macmillan, 1993). Johnson identifies the goal of all these efforts by chronicling various press statements of Funk himself. It is to produce a "new narrative, a new Gospel if you will" (8) which, in contrast to the "mythic" or "cultic" Jesus whom most people want, will produce the "real Jesus" (7). Chapter 2 briefly analyzes seven different historical reconstructions of Jesus whose divergence from one another is enough to alert anyone to the fact that not only is the "historical Jesus" nothing more than the Jesus reconstructed by the methods of history, something commonly acknowledged, but that the methods themselves can be used to produce a Jesus who looks remarkably like the particular ideal of the one who employs the methods. Most telling among the six consistent deficiencies Johnson finds in all these studies are the privileging of non-canonical over canonical material on 646 BOOK REVIEWS the dubious presumption that these latter are earlier; the ignoring of any canonical material except that found in the Gospels; the obvious theological agenda which presides over the way the material is presented; and the premise that historical knowledge is normative for faith. Later, Johnson will also point to another manifestation of the hermeneutics of suspicion, namely that the structure of the canonical Gospels is ignored and (some of) the discrete pieces isolated by source criticism are reassembled to suit the presuppositions of each investigator. After the two chapters of critical survey, the remaining four chapters of the book deal with questions of philosophical and theological principles. Chapter 3 presents two sets of perceptions regarding Jesus, each possessing its own internal logic: on the one hand, "faith," and, on the other, the Enlightenment presuppositions of "historical criticism" (58). This distinction is pivotal, though it is seldom averted to. Faith is a God-given interpretation of reality, particularly historical reality, and as such it is a way of knowing. While it does not replace or suppress the legitimate autonomy of historical investigation, it does have something to say about the same events being studied by the historical disciplines. From a Christian perspective, as Lonergan and others have long pointed out, none of the human sciences can arrive at a complete understanding of its subject matter without taking into account sin and grace, that is, God's plan for and activity within history. The treatment in chapter 4, which approaches this problem of the character of historical knowing, while adequate to the immediate purpose, could have profited from a more extended consideration of the epistemological status of historical knowledge. This is lightly touched upon later (127££.) in a discussion of John Meier's A Ma18inalJew (Doubleday 1991, 1994 ). Meier's work, which is certainly exempt from the tendentious character of the essays previously considered, still labors under the mistaken notion that the autonomy of historical disciplines means that they can maintain an independence from faith's interpretation of the same events. But there cannot be two conflicting interpretations which are both true: reality is, after all, one. In chapter 5, Johnson treats explicitly of what can be obtained from a historical inquiry that consults extrabiblical sources, respects the narrative framework of the canonical Gospels, takes the New Testament material outside the Gospels into account, and, most importantly, grasps the basic pattern of meaning present in the whole of the New Testament witness to the life, self-giving death, and resurrection of Jesus. This sets the stage for the most creative part of the book, chapter 6. Having observed the manner in which the New Testament presents its readers with Jesus' pattern of life, including his obedient death, as a present and empowering reality communicated by Jesus himself now to the believer, Johnson concludes, correctly, that the real Jesus is the living Lord who interacts with believers both communally and individually. If one begins with the set of perceptions described previously as "faith," rather than those of the reductive rationalism of the Enlightenment's BOOK REVIEWS 647 understanding of history, if one leaves the New Testament intact rather than dismantlingit and fitting its pieces into a pattern conformed to a more "general hermeneutic," it is easy to appreciate the continuity between the New Testament and the present worshiping community Oohnson could have done more with the theme of worship in the New Testament itself). Johnson has performed a valuable scholarly and pastoral service. The task that remains is to describe the manner in which the New Testament, especially the Gospels, speaks of the events of Jesus' life as they exist now in his transformed humanity, thus forging an unbreakable link between the Jesus of history and the Christ in glory. There are hints of this in Johnson's book (144-58). When we have sublated the achievements of historical research into the biblical vision of time and history, we will once again read the Gospels as the privileged means of coming into contact with the real Jesus whose life on earth exists now in a resurrected state of divine glory: we will recover the ancient understanding of the mysteria vitae Christi. FRANCIS MARTIN John Paul II Institute Washington, D.C. The Context of Casuistry. Edited by JAMES F. KEENAN, S.J., and THOMAS A. SHANNON. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1995. Pp. xxiii + 231. $55.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper). In the introduction, Keenan and Shannon explain that this collection of essays "is a deliberate response to Albert Johnson and Stephen Toulman's The Abuse of Casuistry" (xv). The response comes as a general endorsement of Johnson and Toulman's attempt to rescue ca:.uistry from the disrepute it has suffered ever since Pascal's Provincial Letters. Specifically, the editors endorse Johnson and Toulman's "claim concerning the distinctiveness of high casuistry: that is, the method of moral reflection practiced in the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries was considerably different from the science associated with the 'manuals' of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Catholic thought" (ibid.). Along with Johnson and Toulman, Keenan and Shannon do not want the deductive methodology of later forms of casuistry, which issued in an inflexible mode of moral reasoning, to obscure the inductive approach to casuistry undertaken in the centuries before the later ossification set in. The essays explore the emergence of this early form of casuistry and also suggest that this inductive mode of reasoning is pertinent today. The book is divided into five parts. The first part, entitled "Franciscan Roots," includes two essays. In "Method in Ethics: A Scotistic Contribution," 648 BOOK REVIEWS Shannon argues that a profound shift in ethics came with Scotus's claim that creation's final cause is derived not from a necessary discernible plan but from God's free will. Because God's activity is free, and because we cannot know from natural things our ultimate end nor the things that lead to our ultimate end, "there is no necessaryconnection between an act and our final end. While such an act may be appropriate to our final end, such appropriateness is contingent" (9). In the absence of a teleological goal to constitute objective moral goodness, Scotus identified moral goodness not with the act as such, but with the intention of the agent. In this scheme, only two acts have intrinsic moral worth: the act of loving God, which is intrinsically good, and the act of hating God, which is intrinsically evil. Beyond these two, "all acts must be contextualized for them to receive their full moral status. While the object is significantin establishingthe natural goodness of the act, one must still situate the act with respect to its end, manner, time, and place for it to be a truly moral act" (11). Thus when it comes to divorce or lying, specific circumstances can qualify moral prohibitions. In conclusion, Shannon suggests that Scotus's method can make a contribution to present-day debates in moral theology, a contribution pointing in a revisionist direction. At one point, Shannon argues that for Scotus right reason is sufficient in determining when circumstancesloosen the binding nature of natural law. This point is reinforced in the second essay in this collection, "The Structure of Ockham's Moral Theory," by Marilyn McCord Adams. By a close reading of primary texts, Adams shows that, contrary to what many scholars claim, Ockham did not simply pit right reason over against divine freedom. Rather, beginning with a standard medieval distinction between nonpositive and positive morality, Ockham held that a pagan committed to conforming her life to (unaided) right reason is capable of discovering what is needed to live a virtuous life. Only as regards positive morality-that is, only as regards merit and demerit-are divine commands fundamental for Ockham. Here God may well make things deserving of eternal life demeritorious and things deserving of eternal punishment meritorious; in which case, Adams concedes, "God could tie acts to consequences in such a way that created persons would have to act contrary to reason or inclination to collect the reward of eternal life"; but this is a far cry from the "authoritarian divine command ethics" often attributed to Ockham (45). Instead, he put forth a "modified right reason ethics" (ibid.), an ethics in which unaided reason leads one to embrace divine commands that may or may not run contrary to a nonpositive, philosophical ethics. While this subtle distinction may not appease Ockham's "cultured detractors" (44), who shudder at the prospect of extensive divine power, Adams urges a more sympathetic reading by seeing "Ockham first and foremost as a Franciscan," who "beginswith a vivid sense of God's enormous generosity, in creating us in His image, in redeeming us, and in preserving us forever" (46). The essays in part 2, "Precursors of Casuistry: Preaching and Teaching Cases," continue the exploration of the antecedents to casuistry, though in a BOOK REVIEWS 649 more pastoral vein. Franco Mormando, S.J., examines the sermons of the popular fifteenth-century preacher Bernadino of Siena. Mormando finds that Bernadino's preaching exemplified the black-and-white, "geometric" reasoning that comes with extracting absolute moral principles from scriptural, patristic, or canonical sources. His moral theology, cast in a ratio-auctoritas-exemplum pattern of argumentation, was nonetheless riddled with inconsistencies, not only when it came down to actual cases, such as usury or marital separation, but also on the question of whether or not evil may be done that good may come of it. For Mormando, this serves as "a humbling reminder to us that the complex realm of moral theology excludes the possibility of an infallible, all-encompassing map or black-and-white navigational chart" (81). James Keenan, S.J., finds that John Mair, the early-sixteenth-century nominalist professor at the University of Paris, also wrestled with outdated theoretical categories, but (unlike Bernadino) had the theoretical resources to move beyond them. "Mair was a transitional figure," says Keenan, "and ... his nominalism afforded him some footing in a world no longer comfortable with older systems. When his scholasticnominalism engaged new practical concerns, the result resembled what later became mature casuistry" (87). Keenan examines two such concerns closely, maritime insurance and the practice of lending money at an exchange, and from these cases he offers ten "foundational insights into casuistry." They can be summed up as follows: by endorsing the nominalist denial of essential objects, Mair was free to eschew the Thomist preoccupation with general moral actions and to take on specific moral cases, which he judged not in terms of acts in their essence, but acts in particular situations. While this led to a kind of legalism, Mair's taxonomic pattern of moral reasoning is resourceful, Keenan suggests, particularly if combined with a virtue ethic. The third part of the book, "British Casuists," contains two articles. The first, again by Keenan, recounts "William Perkins (1558-1602) and The Birth of British Casuistry." After tracing the birth of British casuistry in general, Keenan turns to Perkins himself, noting that "for Perkins, all moral matters were matters of faith. To this end, he invoked the authority of the reader's own conscienceto consider the pertinence of the Scriptures, and he did this, in his practical writings, almost always by cases" (118). Of the conclusions Keenan draws from Perkins' casuistry, two are particularly significant. First, his casuistry flowed from his preaching and was thus marked by a mixture of deductive and inductive reasoning. Second, he prevented his focus on specific cases from collapsing into atomistic disarray by emphasizing the virtues, cast in terms of "progress in the Lord" (124). Both insights, it should be noted, suggest the importance of the ecclesial setting within which Perkins worked. Another British casuist, Jeremy Taylor, is examined in the next essay, by Richard Miller. Taylor, an eighteenth-century bishop, "ardent royalist," and "tireless Erastian" (131), was both a medieval and a modern figure, according to Miller. His major work, Ductor Dubitantium: Or the Rule of Conscience, was 650 BOOK REVIEWS "Janus-faced," one part reflecting the medieval Thomist view in which the will must be guided by right reason, the other part reflecting an Ockhamist skepticismabout the existence of universals and an emphasis on divine will and law. This resulted in a tension in his work, but not a debilitating one, for it pushed him to find a middle way between an overemphasis on freedom or on authority. Thus his moral theology espoused "a theory of presumptive, but not absolute, rules" (142). As regards truth-telling, for example, he affirmed Augustine's use of temporal goods to determine various levels of seriousness of lying, but he also moved beyond it by claiming that the prohibition against lying may sometimes be broken for the sake of a temporal good, such as saving an innocent life. "The result is an ethic that is not only more permissive than Augustine's position, but also more complex" (152). This, for Miller, is a strength, for it acknowledges genuine moral perplexity. Part 4, "The Legacy of Casuistry," contains two essays on more recent developments. Charles Curran looks at Aloysius Sabetti, a Jesuit teacher at Woodstock whose moral theology was set forth in the influential manual Compendium Theologiae Moralis (1884). Sabetti, Curran maintains, operated out of a "legal model" that is "common to all the manuals" and that "coheres very well with the purpose of the manuals, to point out what acts are sinful and their degree of sinfulness" (166). He credits this approach for its precision and conciseness,but criticizes it for minimizing the role of grace, neglecting social ethics, and sponsoring an ultramontane ecclesiology. As for the logic of Sabetti's casuistry, Curran focuses on how he permitted the taking of the life of the fetus in ectopic pregnancies in order to protect the life of the mother from unjust aggression, even when this was inconsistent with his prohibition of craniotomies. This was perhaps due to a willingness to allow intuitions to shape his reasoning, though never in a decisive way. As Curran writes, "Sabetti's casuistry recognized a role for comparisons with other cases and for intuitive, nondiscursive moral judgments, but these were always subordinated to and controlled by the accepted principles and rules" (184). In "Development in Moral Doctrine," John T. Noonan, Jr., shows that change has occurred in the church's moral teaching in four areas-usury, marriage, slavery, and religious freedom-and then offers a way to think about change. "In each case," Noonan concludes, "one can see the displacement of a principle or principles that had been taken as dispositive" (193), and in each case, "these were replaced by principles already part of Christian teaching" (194). In explaining the reality of change, Noonan draws on Newman's understanding of doctrinal development, which "acknowledges an objectivity in the idea or ideas at issue," yet also "recognizes that development occurs through conflict, in which the leading idea will effect the 'throwing off' of earlier views now found to be incompatible with the leading idea more fully realized. Principles, broadly understood, underlie and control specific changes" (196). Applied to morality, this notion of development affirms the importance of consistencyin moral teaching, but also allows for change as a response to the great commandments to love God and neighbor. BOOK REVIEWS 651 The fifth part, "The Context for Casuistry Today," contains two more Thomas R. theoretical essays. In "Science, Metaphor, and Moral Kopfensteiner argues that the casuistry of the neoscholastic manuals was modeled on a modern understanding of science and epistemology, in which the world is "out there" waiting to be read by means of immediate experience. This positivist, empiricist outlook instilled into casuistic reasoning a method whereby one applies eternal, unchanging principles to particular, contingent situations. As a result, guidelines to everyday life get locked within a closed system of norms and precepts. Kopfensteiner contrasts this modern understanding with what he calls a "postempiricist and historical view of science" in which "language does not merely report what is in the world; language is the medium through which we have a world" (209). This postempiricist model brings into full view the interpretive, hermeneutical, context-dependent nature of scientific inquiry, and enables us to understand nature metaphorically. The upshot is that "the natural inclinations are necessarybut not sufficientcriteria for the determination of normativity. They are underdetermined in a normative sense" (214). This renders an "objectivist and essentialist understanding of the natural moral law" untenable and shifts the analysisof the moral act "from one based on an objectivist and essentialist metaphysics to one based on a personalist and historical metaphysics" (218). In the closing essay of the volume, Keenan and Shannon summarize the leading emphases of the previous essays. They note that the changes of the sixteenth century caused an essentialist, deductive moral methodology to give way to a context-dependent, inductive method that placed a premium on circumstances,conscience,and new principles in moral reasoning. The fact that casuistryis drawing the attention of ethicists in recent years is no coincidence, according to Keenan and Shannon, for our own tumultuous situation is not unlike that of the early modern period when high (or early) casuistry arose. Not surprisingly, therefore, the main criticism of casuistry now is the same as it was then, that is, that its historicized, context-dependent, pragmatic methodology lapses into moral relativism. In anticipation of this criticism, a proposal is put forth in the closing paragraphs of this volume calling for a coupling of casuistry with an account of the virtues. The hope is that this will guard against moral relativism without reinstating the kind of essentialism and legalism that has afflicted casuistry in the later modern period. This volume represents an important, early phase of inquiry into a largely unexplored area. The findings are sure to have bearing on current debates in moral theology over the relation of the object, intention, and circumstances of human action, and especially the nature of intrinsically evil acts. Taken together, the essays explain how nominalist moral theory could and did provide Christianswith personal guidance and consolation as they struggled to get their moral bearings in the context of a changing social, political, and economic order. As inquiry in this area continues, we will have to move beyond 652 BOOK REVIEWS crediting casuistryfor providing a way for Christians to make judgments about new and complex moral issues, and begin asking critical questions about the actual judgments themselves. Several of these essays, for example, seem to assume that the church's gradual lifting of the ban on usury was a positive development. The ban appears to be thoroughly irrelevant now, but whether or not this is a good thing is, of course, an open moral question. To Christians in the early modern period it may have made good sense to practice usury, if for no other reason than that their businesseswould have folded without it. But we in this late-capitalist period are obliged to re-examine this issue, from a perspective that was not available back then. Was the church's acceptance of the practice of usury an instance of casuistry providing an effective means of dealing with a complex modern issue? Or was it an instance of casuistry facilitatingthe church's accommodation to the emergent capitalist order? The impression given in these essays is that the church's prohibition of usury was solely the product of an objectivist, essentialist, deductive, and rather useless methodology of moral reasoning. But perhaps this methodology should be read as a form of ecclesial resistance, albeit a theoretically problematic one, to an economic order that was replacing practices of production and exchange that were crucial for the flourishing of Christian life with a set of practices that were (and still are) corrosive to life in Christ. An opening for this line of reasoning emerges in several of the essays, which suggest that the primary social context within which casuistry is practiced is the church. This ecclesial setting is also brought into relief in the concluding call for further study of casuistry to be coupled with the recent retrieval of virtue ethics in the Augustinian-Thomistic tradition. With the practice of casuistry placed more firmly in an ecclesial setting, we will be able to avoid the pitfalls of both moral relativism and objectivism by embracing an historicized, metaphorical, and thus more malleable "nature," but one that is ordered to its supernatural end. Here the closing remark of Noonan's essay is pertinent: change has a place in traditional Catholic moral teaching-"if the principle of change is the person of Christ" (201). MICHAEL]. BAXTER, C.S.C. University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana Pattern of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. By EDWARD T. OAKES. New York: Continuum, 1994. Pp. xii + 334. $29.50 (cloth), $14.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8264-0685-8 (cloth), 0-8264-1011-1 (paper). Pattern of Redemption may be the single most effective summary and presentation in English of Balthasar's massive work. The Mount Everest of BOOK REVIEWS 653 contemporary theology, it takes a while to climb up to Balthasar's level, as Lonergan said about St. Thomas. Pattern of Redemption is a Baedeker of Balthasar, and more; it is a guidebook that has intellectual depth and actually begins to get the reader into Balthasar's world through carefully chosen texts. The book is divided into four parts: part 1, "Tributaries of Influence"; part 2, "The Aesthetics"; part 3, "The Theodramatics"; part 4, "The Theologic." The first part explores the theological background and methodological context of Balthasar's work; parts 2, 3, and 4 achieve a theology student's dream, a summary of Balthasar's famous trilogy in under two hundred pages. To make matters even better, Oakes's style is (considering the subject matter) light and, at times, conversational and witty, even while he carries out his didactic purpose with directness and a literary urbanity. Chapter 1, "Erich Przywara and the Analogy of Being," unveils what Oakes considers to be the skeleton key to Balthasar's thought, his understanding of the analogy of being. It is St. Thomas who has freed the doctrine of being from the incompatibilities of the Greek understanding. For Aristotle, each being is primarily what it is, its form, and there is no act above this. Thomas, however, having distinguished existence and essence, found creatures analogous to God (Pure Act) "in and by existing" (32). Przywara's dynamic and heuristic interpretation is decisive here: "analogy of being" means "creation as directed upon God, but not God as a supplement to creation" (39; see Przywara, Polarity, 46); the pathos of modern philosophy may be interpreted according to how it reacted to ana/ogia entis (36). Chapter 2, "The Dialogue with Karl Barth," primarily deals with Balthasar's The Theology of Karl Barth. While sympathetic to Barth's critique of liberal theology's subjectivism and his belief that the objective content of revelation should determine method, Balthasar has some extremely significant caveats for Barth. To the accusation that natural theology functions as a controlling a priori framework in Catholicism, Balthasar finds that the Protestant (and Barthian) dialectic functions in an a priori way that undermines the distance between Creator and creature and results in theopanism. While Barth comes to ana/ogia (fidei) in his Church Dogmatics, the main issue for Balthasar is Barth's Christological exclusivity. By refusing the analogy of being and thus the value of creation distinct from the incarnation, Balthasar thinks that the possibility for true mutuality and relationship between Creator and creature is hindered. Analogia entis is the presupposition for the real drama that takes place between the Word of God and human being. "Goethe, Nietzsche and the Encounter with German Idealism" (chap. 3) is a fascinating tour through the Germanistik of Balthasar's teeming three-volume Apokalypse der deutschen Seele. Balthasar's option for Goethe's objective "form" is developed, in opposition to the Kantian, transcendental starting point-which, in Balthasar's view, was taken by Rahner. Thus, the differences between Balthasar and Rahner are situated deep within the conflicting 654 BOOK REVIEWS trajectories of the German tradition. For Balthas'ar, the manifesting object exceeds the transcendental starting point, which therefore must be looked out of and toward the appearance. But, from Kant to Hegel and Nietzsche, the distinction between God and the world collapses with tragic consequences. Balthasar is sometimes seen as wanting to return to a repristination of patristic theology; chapter 4, "Balthasar and the Church Fathers," shows how this is not the case, and that Balthasar'stheology has a "startlingly anti-patristic polemic" (109). Oakes draws upon and translates excerpts from Balthasar's very important but untranslated and never reprinted "Patristik, Scholastik, und wir" (Theologie der 'Zeit 3 [1939]: 65-109). According to Balthasar, the basic forms of Hellenism did, through Origen in particular, penetrate into Christianity. Neo-Platonic emanation affected Trinitarian theology; spiritualization affected asceticism. The attractive template of Platonism confused some basic issues of nature and grace. Part 2 presents The Glory of the Lord (Herrlichkeit), the first part of Balthasar'strilogy. Its first volume, Seeing the Form, is the focus of chapter 5, "The Splendor of Light Invisible." Oakes describes Balthasar's effort to restore beauty to its rightful and central place in theology: "The beautiful guards the other [transcendentals]and sets the seal on them: there is nothing true or good, in the long term, without the light of grace of that which is freely bestowed" (182; see The Glory of the Lord, 2:38-39). Revelation is intrinsically beautiful, and to forget this is to overlook how God is perceived in history-from within the splendor of the form. "The central question of so-called 'apologetics' or 'fundamental theology' is thus the question of perceiving form-an aesthetic problem" (151; see The Glory of the Lord, 1:173). As Oakes points out in chapter 6, "The Archeology of Alienated Beauty," Balthasar holds that Catholic theology began to go seriously awry in the thirteenth century (164-66); the tradition of Scholasticism, with its divorce of theology and spirituality and its ensuing rationalism, has had bad effects in the history of the Church (106). In Clerical Styles and Lay Styles, Balthasar describes "how we have come to the point where those theologians most attuned to the beauty of the Christian religion have come to feel alienated from it" (167). In the first era of the Church, beauty had an official, hence "clerical," place in the Church; but, in the "lay" era, those "in love with the holiness and spontaneous Eros of Beauty felt (and still feel) exiled from the official ('clerical') Church" (164). In the two volumes of The Realm of Metaphysics, Balthasar traces this fall through the history of philosophy, and locates its origin with Kant. On the other hand, Thomas's view of Being is seen as advancing the cause of theological aesthetics. The last two volumes of The Glory of the Lord, Old Covenant and New Covenant, "attempt to offer the cure" (176) to this alienation through "the theme of glory in the Old and New Tt::staments"(183); Oakes succinctly lays this out in chapter 7, "The Wave and the Sea." The relationship between the BOOK REVIEWS 655 Testaments is resolved in terms of the extra-textual Christ-Form who coalesces Old Testament images with his appearance (198). Part 3 deals with the second part of Balthasar's trilogy, the Theo-Drama,in the chapters, "The Drama of Finite and Infinite Freedom," "The Strife of Shadows: Converging Darkness, Exploding Light," and "The Finite Yes." Oakes situates Balthasar's discussion of dramatic freedom as a way of going beyond the Dominican (Banez) and Jesuit (Molina) impasse. Our life is "encompassed and surrounded by the prior drama of Christ, which determines the outcome of all secondary dramas (hence predestination) without infringing on the freedom of the actor to script his own life (hence free will)" (220-21). In terms of his typological ecclesiology, Balthasar gives precedence to the foundational frat of the Marian (and Johannine) Church; the Petrine (official, institutional) Church is situated in this more basic and "feminine" drama (260-62). According to Oakes, the "great principle" of Balthasar's Theodramatics is that "the creation of finite freedom by infinite freedom is the starting point of all theo-drama" (226; see Theo-Drama, 2:271); however, its "central moment" is the "wondrous exchange" of the Triduum which alone resolves the "antinomies that inevitably result" from these freedoms (226). It is here, in the last three volumes of the Theo-Drama, that Oakes believes Balthasar has achieved the culmination of his work and should be judged (230). Jesus' radical solidarity with death and hell incorporates "godforsakenness into the trinitarian relation of love," and reverses it by means of the unity of love-the Holy Spirit-that "perdures even in this division" (247; see Theodramatik,4:232-36, the last quote being from Adrienne von Speyr). In part 4, "The Theologic," Oakes sums up that final part of Balthasar's trilogy and concludes his book, all in two brief chapters. In "The Logic of God" (chap. 11), Oakes insists that "Balthasar develops his theology of the Trinity out of his conviction of what it meant for Jesus to become cursed for our sake and experience the condemnation of the Father in hell" (282). Because God is love, there is positive distance in the Trinity; God is capable of integrating the separation of sin into that trinitarian distance, thus bringing about salvation (288-89). Oakes also draws attention to Balthasar's notion of "trinitarian inversion," where the relations of the immanent Trinity are "inverted" in the incarnation-the Son is now "determined" by the Spirit who, in a kenosis, empties himself of being the immanent product of love between the Father and the Son. The final chapter, "Last Things," briefly and sensitively explores Balthasar's revolutionary eschatology, as well as his "unprecedented" and inseparable relationship to Adrienne von Speyr. According to Balthasar, the logic of trinitarian love compels us to hope that all may be saved; moreover, "when a person is condemned to hell, Jesus is still able to meet the one condemned, for he too has been there and can meet the sinner in solidarity with him" (316). Oakes finds that this universalist hope ends in a mysterious aporia, but that it 656 BOOK REVIEWS has much to recommend it-not the least being an eradication of the "us vs. them" psychology behind the populated-hell advocates that has broken the solidarity of the human race and led to atrocities. My only criticism with Oakes's presentation has to do with the absence of a discussion of Henri de Lubac's significant influence on Balthasar. Both Medard Kehl, S.J., in The Von Balthasar Reader, and John O'Donnell, S.J., in Hans Urs von Balthasar, list de Lubac as one of the four decisive influences on Balthasar, the others being Przywara, Barth, and von Speyr (all dealt with in Pattern of Redemption). Balthasar's own The Theology of Henri de Lubac and The Theology of Karl Barth, which he said owed almost everything to de Lubac (cf. Balthasar's letter in de Lubac, Theology in History), would seem to attest to de Lubac's formative influence in the central areas of nature and grace, ecclesiology, patristics, and hermeneutics. Oakes believes that "an adequate assessment of the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasaris not possible at this time" (301). He holds that there simply has not been time to assimilate Balthasar's work and that of his mystical influence, Adrienne. It would appear to this reviewer that, to complicate matters further, Balthasar is advocating a "paradigm shift" in theology-in fundamental methodology (theological aesthetics and dramatics), doctrine (trinitarian inversion and descensus eschatology), and praxis (secular institute)-as important and decisive for the Church as those of Augustine and Thomas. MARK D. NAPACK The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. Religion and Creation. By KEITH WARD. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. 346. $70.00 (cloth), $19.95 (paper). ISBN 0-19-826393-7 (cloth), 0-19-826394-5 (paper). Keith Ward, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University, has written previous books on the philosophy of religion, such as The Concept of God, Images of Eternity, and Revelation and Religion. In the first part of this book on comparative theology, he takes classic texts of four religions-Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism-and one twentieth-century reinterpreter of each (Heschel, Barth, Iqbal, and Aurobindo). He finds that each of these reinterprets God as more relational, more dynamically involved with the world than the classicaltexts of their tradition did. He elides the differences between these religions rather too easily-one wonders whether the book will help interreligious dialogue. BOOK REVIEWS 657 In the second part he begins by noting that contemporary materialists and empiricists denythe existence of God, largely because of the dominance of the scientific view of the world that entails for them a naturalism. He finds these philosophies do not do justice to such things as design or purpose in the physical world. Theism is more an expression of a practical attitude toward the universe than a theoretical view of the world, but-contrary to many philosophers of the analytic tradition-an attitude that supposes metaphysical beliefs. Since metaphysicsis also needed to show the coherence of a reality such as God, it is essential to religious faith. Ward also has a chapter on metaphor and analogy. Contrary to Tillich, not all statements about God are symbolic. For example, Anselm's statement that God is that greater than which nothing can be thought is realist and literal. Contrary to Sallie McFague, her metaphorical statements about God suppose literal assertions about deity (e.g., her statement that God is on the side of life and human fulfillment). Thomas's view of analogy is helpful here. God is indeed wise, but with a wisdom that totally transcends the wisdom we experience. Perhaps this part shows us that the audience Ward is primarily addressing is one that has some respect for traditional religions but whose faith is eroded by the inconsistency of these religions with one another and with the modern scientific and humanistic view of the world. The third part of the book, "The Nature of the Creator God," is the longest and addresses this latter difficulty with belief in God. In the first chapter here, on "Divine Power and Creativity," Ward holds that God has a necessary nature-one that he does not choose-and that he is endowed with ultimate power. God is all perfect, not in the sense that all possible goods are found in him actually but in the sense that he has the power to bring about goods in a certain order. Ward does not agree with process theology that there is an incompatibility between God as ultimate power and the reality of created goods. But he agrees with them that there must be a created universe, for it is better that there be such an order of good than not. In God "the possession of the great good of creativity entails the non-possession of many goods yet to be creatively realized" (186). Ward distinguishes in God 'dispositional properties' that are necessary and 'occurrent properties,' such as creating, that are contingent. God creates the world out of desire. "It is good for God to be happy, and to be happier than any other actual being. But whatever state God is in, it is always logically possible to be happier . . . . Yet this would not render the previous state of the divine being less than perfect, since it would still be the greatest actual degree of happiness at that time, and there simply is no maximum possible degree" (189). This view, he holds, gives created reality a value that it would not have if God were from all eternity the fullness of value. The other chapters in this part continue this theme. For example, Ward holds that the classical view of God's creating was a "heroic failure"; it could not account for the contingency of the universe (200), since creation comes 658 BOOK REVIEWS from God's will and, in Thomas's view, God's will is identical with the divine being and thus necessary. Moreover, if God could create and did not, "God would have the unrealized potential to create .... [Against the flassical view:] Far from being purely actual, God will be infinitely potential" (210) in the sense that he has the capacityto create a great variety of universes. God would be good without creation, but he would not be self-giving love; "if God is essentially of supreme value, it will be of the nature of God to create some universe of persons within which love can be realized" (224 ). Thus creation is necessary, not logically or morally but because good is diffusive of its loving and being. Another difficultywith the classical view is its conclusion that "God cannot really enter into loving relationship with created persons" (243), and that all talk of God having feelings is simply metaphorical. Knowledge of particulars is experiential, and for God to have joy in creatures implies that he has such knowledge. Also, if he knows beauty and order in this fashion, he also must be aware of suffering.Ward's view supports the position that "God would be directly aware of all creaturely sufferings, and respond to them both in compassionand in activd concern" (254). The classical view leaves God "in an important sense indifferent to suffering" (ibid.). Ward's analysis of God's relation to time is similar. God is both timelessly actual and temporally potential (268); without this he cannot have the capacity to enter into genuinely reciprocal relation with human persons. The price of this capacity is an incompleteness in the divine being, but only in its temporal aspect. What is true here is true too of God's omniscience. Divine knowledge of free particulars is dependent upon their occurrence in time. God's knowledge of particular free acts grows, but God's lack of knowledge at any point is due to the free futures not yet being determinately true, since the future is truly open (277). God can also, in his providence, make new decisions based on the changing realities that he guides towards his ultimate purpose. This is a 'dual-aspect theism' or a two-tiered God. In the fourth part, "Cosmology and the Trinitarian God," Ward has a chapter on creation and modern cosmology where he holds that theism is in a sense "the completion of that search for intelligibility which characterizes the scientific enterprise" (311-12), since it shows why the universe is and has the structure it has. The best model of the universe is that of 'creative emergence'-"a novel imaginative expression of specific intrinsic values ... chosen preciselyby the sort of creative spontaneity in God which is itself a very great value to possess" (312). He proposes that his four modern representatives of different religious traditions (see above) tend toward this view. Miracles are consistent with such a universe, since they are in accord with God's ultimate providential purpose. In his final chapter, "Creation and the Trinity," he argues that if it is essential for God to be loving, "it will be essential to God to create beings other than the divine self, with which God can enter into fellowship" (319). Those who propose a social understanding of the Trinity would oppose this BOOK REVIEWS 659 view. But their position approaches polytheism, whereas Scripture tells us that "the Lord is one" (Mark 12:29). Ward finds support for his position in Rahner's conviction that there are not distinct subjectivities in God. Rahner holds that there "exists in God only one power, one will, one self-presence"; that "within the Trinity there is no reciprocal 'Thou'"; and that "there is properly no mutual love between Father and Son" (323, 325; quotations are from Rahner, The Trinity, 75, 76n., 106). Ward agrees with Catherine LaCugna that the divine processions are inconceivable without the divine missions, the life and death of Jesus and the sending of the Spirit. This is not to reduce the Trinity to a mere role in the economy of salvation, because the divine threefoldness is a real quality in God in se, "But that in se is not existent out of relation to creation" (329). Ward's support of a God who changes is part of a chorus of views in our time, and he argues for it primarily in contrast to the classical view as articulated by Thomas Aquinas. He misinterprets some of Thomas's views (e.g., on God's freedom in creating and his knowledge of free human acts). But we should also note that a number of philosophers and theologians who have good Thomistic credentials support some of Ward's goals, albeit by other means. Ward seems to think that the primary obstacle in Thomas to an adequate contemporary theism is his view of God as actus purus or ipsum esse, because this does not allow real reciprocal relations with human beings. I rather think that what has to be changed in Thomas is his acceptance of being as the primary analogue for God; the primary analogue should be personalbeing. God is totally perfect personalbeing. This idea is present in Thomas, but should be given greater prominence than he accords it. It transposes the context within which he treated some of the problems that Ward addresses. For example, Thomas stated that God does not have real relations with creatures, because he interpreted these as either transcendental or predicamental, both of which would entail limits to God's total and independent perfection. If we look rather at God as transcendent personal being we can understand his relation to creatures as coming from his free creative love, that is, from his intentionality. He has real relations with us because he freely and lovingly chooses to have these relations. A free man acts out of inner desire, whereas a slave may well act out of constraint; God's freedom does not mean simply that he could create or not create, but also that he does so out of an inner fullness of desire. God has relationshipswith us as intentional objects of his love and knowledge he would not have if he had not created us, and so God is different from what he would be if he had not created. We make a difference to him. This does not mean that God is more perfect, however, because what are ascribed to God here are relationships.A relationship refers to another, not to a perfection within the one who has it. This could be developed to support the view that God changes and even, in a sense, suffers, as I do develop it elsewhere (see Belief in God in Our Time [Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1992], 312-21, 329-31). 660 BOOK REVIEWS Another part of Ward's thesis is that God is not triune without the temporal missions of the Son and the Spirit. He supports this view by holding that in God "there is one ultimate subject which possesses three distinct forms of action and awareness" (323), a position he thinks is that of Karl Rahner. If this is the case, there is not real reciprocity in God. But real reciprocity is essential in love. Counter to this view, I would recall that Thomas holds, with Christian tradition, that the Father is the subject of an action of which neither the Son nor the Spirit is subject, namely that of generating the Son. This is a 'notional' action, that is, an action by which the Father is known as Father. The same can be said of the Son (he alone is generated and images the Father as such) and the Spirit (who alone 'proceeds'). This is not inconsistent with the divine simplicity; and so we must, it seems, hold that the Trinity is constituted by three subjectsreally distinct from each other by distinct and mutually opposed relationships. If mutually opposed relationships can constitute three distinct persons without this entailing a distinction of being, they can constitute three distinct subjectsof action and consciousness, because it is the person who acts. Of course, we ascribe this to the Trinity in a strictly analogical sense. This seems to. be demanded by Scripture ("The Father and I are one") and by Christian prayer that addresses the three persons differently, as though addressing distinct consciousnesses. So, contrary to Rahner, but in accord with an increasing number of Catholic theologians, I would hold that there is a reciprocity of personal relationship and love among the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, without this in any way depending upon the temporal missions of the Son and Holy Spirit. M. JOHN FARRELLY,0.S.B. St. Anselm's Abbey Washington, D.C. The Quest for the Origins of John's Gospel: A Source-Oriented Approach. By THOMAS L. BRODIE, O.P. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Pp. 194. $32.00 (cloth). $15.95 (paper). The Gospel according to John: A Literary and Theological Commentary. By THOMAS L. BRODIE, 0.P. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Pp. xiii + 625. $55.00 (cloth). In writing his longer commentary the author became convinced that the evidence for John's dependence on Mark, Matthew-Q, Luke-Acts, and Ephesians was such that he should track these sources in a separate work: hence the shorter volume. His argument in the Quest is more convincing in general than in its many particulars. This he expects to be told but with the BOOK REVIEWS 661 hope that his overall proposal will bring an end to the prevailing wisdom that John is either totally independent of the Synoptics or else may draw on a finally edited Mark for the account of the multiplication of bread and fish, Jesus walking on the Sea, and a few elements of the trial and passion narratives, but nothing more. Brodie thinks that the search for John's purposes in writing, all quite various according to the authors who suggest them, and for the history of John's communities as traceable through Gospel and Epistles, are fated to failure for lack of solid evidence. He likewise finds a generalized orality as a way to account for free composition in John to be an insufficient explanation. Of the evangelist's awareness of oral traditions he has no doubt, but he understands the process that led to his gospel composition to be a carefully contrived literary one, namely the creative transformation of written sources. A strong feature of Brodie's argument is his demonstration of the preference of pagan and Jewish authors of the period for the transformative rewriting of classic texts over entirely fresh creation (much seen in the apocrypha, the Bible, and midrashim, Virgil's retelling in the Aeneid of the Iliad and the Odyssey, etc.). The paradox he finds in John is a weaving of down-to-earth stories about people in actual situations in place of Mark's detailed and "rather exotic account," as he terms, for example, the narrative of Jesus' transfiguration (Mark 9:2-7). This characterization will come as a surprise to readers conditioned to think of Mark as presenting a Jesus rooted to earth and John as more ethereal. The latter is described in these pages as "a spiritual gospel" in Clement of Alexandria's sense (Eusebius, H.E., 6.14). This does not mean "unworldly" but prophetic and interacting with the church at large as well as with John's immediate community. Theories of successive editings of John, whether by the original author or another hand, do not find a place here. Instead, there is a concentration on the way the writer of the canonical gospel makes use of his sources in the transformative process he engages in. His Greek was that of the Hellenized Judaism common to Palestine and adjacent lands. He knew his people's scriptures and the writings of other early Christian believers. He wished to convey who Jesus was and what he had come to do in a series of coherent narratives and reflections derived from various places in already existing writings. Brodie's technique in tracing what he calls the Johannine progression "from history to spirit" is to identify what Raymond Brown, in a 1961 CBQ article, called "incidents that are units in the synoptic gospels but dispersed in St. John." He does this first in a lengthy chapter on "John's Systematic Use of All of Mark," then in other, shorter chapters on the gospel's systematic use of Matthew, part of Luke-Acts,the Pentateuch, and Ephesians. In the first case he dividesJohn and Mark into nineteen sections each, makes a table of pericopes in parallel, and proceeds to analyze the passages in his tentative outline that suggestJohn's derivation from Mark. The second of three sections into which both gospels are divided, Mark 7-16 and John 7-21, suggests that Jesus' journey 662 BOOK REVIEWS toward death in Mark, which is essentially a picture of profound vitality, provided the basis for John 11-17, in which death threatens powerfully Uairus's daughter; Lazarus;Jesus' hour that has come) but is met with a greater power for life. Sometimes the similarities in both word usage and content are striking and help to make the author's case. At other times two motifs will be set in parallel, such as the prudent bridesmaids of the parable and the Bethany sisters Martha and Mary, that leave the reader wondering whether John had any such thought in mind. The moving of passages in Mark to find a place in John (helpfully indicated by thirteen tables of parallels, once with the use of chiastic arrows) at first reminds the reader of Bultmann's scissors-and-paste reconstruction of John until the total of common elements in the two gospels strikes home. John's hypothetical dependence on the other gospels, Acts, and the Pentateuch is demonstrated to be less than his dependence on Mark, although not non-existent. There is also less dependence on some portions of Mark than on others. Twice is the author caught nodding: in declaring that the place names in the land of Israel found in John are totally uncertain (Palestinian archaeology has some solutions); and that the fourth gospel's particulars of setting and community life, even if speculative, are fated to be completely unknown. Finally, the absence of any discussion on which Jews "the Jews" of John might be contributes to the continuance of a stereotype, which is particularly noteworthy in a book so rich in exploring literary motifs. Brodie's Commentary is literary and theological, as the subtitle says, precisely not historical or social-historical. He takes the canonical version to be the one the author produced and intended, with the exception of the later-added 7:53-8:11. Aporias and contradictions are explained not as the work of successiveeditings but as literary devices either to catch the audience up short or to show development in Jesus' thought as the narrative presents it. As to theology, the commentary seeks to discover the religious meaning of each passage above any other meaning. All that the gospel recounts is taken as having happened to Jesus, although the commentator is fully aware that he is dealing with an artfully woven narrative calculated to persuade. The persuasion hoped for is a realization that a new life in the Spirit (hence, "spiritual") is available in Jesus. This life constitutes a sharp turn away from the Judaism his contemporaries knew. Brodie demonstrates acquaintance with a broad range of Johannine scholarship, citing in his text rather than in footnotes the treatments of others he finds supportive. He does not attend to the relation of John to the Synoptics which absorbs so much of their attention, having dealt with the matter of sources in his Quest. He views the fourth gospel as able to stand on its own without being regularly compared or contrasted with the others. The structure of John as a narrative is his chief absorption. He finds in the framework of three Passovers(the identity of the feast of 5: 1 remains a mystery) a three-year ministry. The first year is described in 1:1-2:22, the second in 2:23-6:71, and BOOK REVIEWS 663 part A of the third in chapters 7-12. Combined, they make book 1. Book 2 is composed of chapters 13-21 and is part B of the third year. The first year is marked by the initiatory experiences of Jesus' public life after a prologue that sums up the history of salvation: his presence at John's baptizing activity but not his own baptism; a variety of calls to his disciples and acknowledgments by them of who the one is whom they have discovered; the "sweet wine" of a wedding which is also Jesus' betrothal to his new friends; intimations of his death in the temple of his body. In the second year Jesus encounters persons the limitations of whose lives he is able to remove (Nicodemus, the Samaritans of Sychar). He witnesses the decrease of John's importance, even as John baptizes at Aenon; likewise the emergence of a new order with his second sign, the healing of the royal official's son. Portraits of God as life-givinghealer and provider are given in chapters 5 and 6. In part A of the third year Jesus begins to teach in the temple area in mid-feast (7:14), the autumn harvest Festivalof Tents. For Jesus it is a "death-evoking" occasion (7:19). Chapter 8 spells out a life-giving union with God and its opposite, a death-dealing union with the devil. The blind man's healing in chapter 9 is called "a drama of creation" in six scenes, the shepherding images of chapter 10 a "parable of Providence." The Lazarus story that follows and the Bethany anointing are together an evoking of burial and resurrection. Jesus' washing of the disciples' feet (chap. 13) has as its outcome love, his comfort offered to the troubled heart (chap. 14), peace. Purifying and sanctifying are seen as themes of chapters 15 and 16, having as their outcomes greater love and confidence respectively. In chapter 17 Jesus' ascent will be the cause of his disciples' sanctification, with unity as the outcome. The arrest and interrogation of 18:1-24 are taken to be a matter of six scenes, the trial before Pilate (18:28-19:16a), the same. Crucifixion and death (19:16b-42), resurrection (chap. 20), and abiding presence (chap. 21) are the concluding headings. The schematization is first done in a three-page chart followed by the author's translation of the gospel, which incorporates the phrases of the schema as the headings of its divisions. The English is purposely wooden to reflect the Greek word choices accurately. The reader must consult it to see how the author constructs his arguments from John's vocabulary. A question that arises throughout, as in all such outlines, is whether the evangelist would claim it as his own or declare it an alien imposition. The answer is probably acceptance of the skeleton but not of some of the flesh proposed in the running commentary on his flesh. Brodie opts for the gospel's portrayal of Jesus' public career as one of ascent to a plateau of reception of his word (logos, 12:48), which is at the same time God's word (17:14, 17), descent toward death, and ultimately ascent to the Father (20:17). The evangelistframes his narrative, in the author's view, as the soul's journey of Jesus that believers too must make. Brodie's identification of motifs is at times startling. Examples might be Jesus' threefold charge to Peter in 21:15-19, understood as shepherding people in the three basic stages of life; 664 BOOK REVIEWS the woman at the well leaving her water jar as she goes into the city, corresponding to hurrying in the conventional betrothal scene; the drinking of blood (6:53-56) to signalize acceptance of death and the flow of water (7:37-38) to signalize life and spirit, which come out of Jesus' side together (19:34) to manifest loss and gain, death and life. What one reader will say is a psychologizingof the gospel another will, with the author, say is a spiritual message implanted by John to be discovered. All students of John's gospel are at ease in declaring it a book of symbols in which spirit is consistently manifested in flesh. Brodie has found a secondary meaning of every word and phrase, which in his view the evangelist intended as primary. The Dominican friar scholar is by any reckoning a member of the exegetical guild. Many will undoubtedly find his word hard and walk with him no longer. But if they persevere with him they will find themselves thinking a few new thoughts. GERARD S. SLOYAN The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. The Quest for Moral Foundations: An Introduction to Ethics. By MONTAGUE BROWN. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1996. Pp. 192. $45.00 (cloth), $14.95 (paper). ISBN 0-87840-602-6 (cloth), 0-87840-613-1 (paper). This clearly-written and thoughtful book makes an important contribution to the debate about moral foundations. Brown offers a well-reasoned and succinct exposition of a contemporary theory of natural law. His non-technical language and careful exposition make the present debate on foundations accessible to the educated reader. He writes for the "ethical amateurs" (xiv), who will be so vital to any renewal of moral foundations in society at large. Relativismdominates the debate on moral foundations in the United States. "I have my values and you have your values and as long as we don't hurt each other everything is fine" is a commonly heard expression of this popular point of view. Brown's work challenges the validity of these ideas. He seeks to show that relativism is an incoherent moral position. He contends that only a theory that holds absolute moral norms makes ultimate sense. Brown develops his book in a logical and systematic way. He begins with a discussion of relativism. He then devotes chapters to emotivism, egoism, and utilitarianism. He proceeds to Kant's utilitarianism and to natural law. Toward the end, he revisits all the theories as he seeks to include their best aspects in BOOK REVIEWS 665 his overall synthesis. His consistent tone is balanced and the chapters are packed with information on the theories proposed. His first chapter is an extended discussion of relativism in its many forms. He begins to address a question that plays a large role in his discussions throughout the work-the role of science. Science and technology are major factors in our contemporary world as they have been for several centuries. "To insist on scientific method as the sole method by which knowledge can be justified is to assume that all that is real is material" (12). Brown argues convincingly that if "meaning is real then materialism is false." Our acts of understanding and judgment transcend the merely material. It is "incoherent to hold that only matter is real" (13)-though, of course, one cannot deny that matter itself is real. A second critical question which Brown discusses in the first chapter is human freedom. First he discusses the "freedom to do as one pleases." This is an external political or social freedom. If there are moral norms, then this freedom is constrained. He then discusses moral freedom: "the deepest meaning of freedom is moral freedom, the freedom of choice. Without freedom of choice, which depends on the ability to know that some intentions and actions are really better than others, all one's choices are ultimately meaningless, mere reactions rather than self-initiated actions" (20). If all decisions are relative, then there is no right and wrong, and thus no moral choice. We are then determined by our emotions, self-concerns, pragmatic results, and the like. Relativism is ultimately determinism. Brown then proceeds to devote chapters to the five major candidates for moral foundations mentioned above. The first three of these believe that "the scientific method is the only way to know reality," while Kantian formalism and the ethics of natural law believe that "reason can know what is good and evil as well as understanding the world scientifically" (21). The discussion of each of these candidates is insightful. The views of major proponents of each point of view are presented and discussed rather straightforwardly. We will be able to note only a few of the salient points made. In discussing Hume's emotivism, Brown notes that our emotions vary over time and are not a solid foundation for moral responsibility. And even if our emotions are benevolent, why follow them at all? Moreover, for Hume "reason is but a technical tool of the passions to help the passions achieve what they desire" (31). This is eerily reminiscent of today's "spin-doctors," for whom reasons and reasoning are just tools to attain the ends they feel like advancing. A discussion of social contract theories dominates and enlivens the chapter on egoism. Both for Thomas Hobbes and for John Rawls, the passion of self-interest is the key to justice. Yet why we should concern ourselves with others at all is still an unresolved question in their theories. Brown offers an extended discussion and critique of the varied types of utilitarianism. Again, as with emotivism and social contract theories, he sees utilitarianism as ultimately a determinism. For example, Jeremy Bentham's 666 BOOK REVIEWS utilitarian theory is "relativism insofar as it is an explicit determinism: Pleasure and pain are our absolute masters" (65). They determine what we are to do. In the course of his arguments throughout the book, Brown consistently adopts Hume's contention that facts do not imply moral obligation. Whether the facts are drawn from psychology or physical science, they do not provide a foundation for moral responsibility. Facts do not imply that we ought to do one thing or another. Brown discusses Immanuel Kant's formalism in much detail and with sympathy. His concludes that the weakness of Kant's ethical theory is that his moral directives are so general that they provide little direction for concrete moral cases. The last of the five theories Brown discusses is natural law. "What may be most surprising about natural law ethics is just how basic, obvious, and commonsensical-in short unsurprising-it is" (87). The precepts of natural law are known throughout the world and not merely in Western Christianity: "the basic insights into human good upon which natural law ethics is founded are common to the whole human family" (88). Thus Brown begins an extended exposition of natural law with frequent reference to the theories discussed in the preceding chapters. His presentation of natural law refers regularly to Aquinas and the contemporary interpretation of natural law offered by Germain Grisez and John Finnis. Thus he presents the first principle of practical reason: "do good and avoid evil." And he goes on to discuss the self-evident human goods as presented in the natural-law tradition. For Finnis, these are "life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, sociability, practical reasonableness, and religion" (96). The norms of natural law flow self-evidently from the first principle and these goods. Interestingly, Brown believes that Kantian formalism, the natural-law ethics of Aquinas and Cicero, and the virtue ethics of Aristotle, while different in emphases, agree on the foundations of moral responsibility. Natural law provides both greater specificity to Kantian formalism and the knowledge necessary for the formation of true virtues. Brown's embrace of the Grisez-Finnis approach to natural law, influenced as it is by Kant, enables him · to unite these three theories, which he argues are complementary. Brown also seeks to acknowledge the true insights of the theories he has rejected. "Every moral theory is at least partly right, or at least begins with some correct moral insight" (133). He embeds an understanding of these true insights within the natural-law tradition. Emotions, for example, are quite important to moral decision making and the life of virtue. Overall, Brown's work offers a lucid introduction to his approach to natural law, which is akin to that of Grisez and Finnis. He mentions in his notes but does not discuss the work of Hittinger, Porter, and others who are critical of this view. I believe that he is correct in seeking first to convince the reader that natural law is the viable foundation for moral responsibility. Unless people can be convinced that the dominant relativism of our culture is mistaken, further BOOK REVIEWS 667 elaboration of approaches to natural law is futile. Discussion among natural law's varied proponents might follow as a sequel. Brown's approach could be developed from this basic introduction. He devotes little space to the virtues and to friendship though these are part of his synthesis. I believe that he will need to do so to speak effectively to many contemporaries and in particular to women. Women thinkers are not prominent in the discussions in this book. Yet the effective integration of the concern of many women and men these days for relationships and communities is crucial for the acceptance of natural law. Reason and reality call for this integration. Discussion of the virtues and the relationships and communities that nourish virtues is an important element missing from Brown's presentation. Approaches like Brown's are very important if natural-law thinking is to become a major force in our social reflection on morality and ethics. The current moral crisis in our society can lead us to see the importance of reason and moral standards. A pathway is opening for a reconsideration of natural law if this commonsensicalsystem can be presented in a balanced, informative, and suasive manner. I believe that Brown's exposition can make a significant difference for those seeking deeper foundations for their moral lives. JOHNW. CROSSIN, 0.S.F.S. De Sales School of Theology Washington,D.C. GENERAL INDEX TO THE THOMIST VOLUME 61 (1997) ARTICLES Ashley, Benedict M., O.P., and Eric A. Reitan, O.P., "On William A. Wallace, The Modeling of Nature" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 625 Butler, Sara, M.S.B.T., "Women's Ordination and the Development of Doctrine" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501 Carl, Maria, "Law, Virtue, and Happiness in Aquinas's Moral Theory" 425 Cavanaugh, Thomas A., "Aquinas's Account of Double Effect" . . . . . . 107 Clarke, Norris, S.J. "A Reply to Steven Long" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 617 Cote, Antoine, "The Five Ways and the Argument from Composition: A Reply to John Lamont" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123 Dewan, Lawrence, O.P., "St. Thomas, Lying, and Venial Sin" ....... 279 __ , "St. Thomas, Physics, and the Principle of Metaphysics" . . . . . . 549 377 Jensen, Steven J., "A Defense of Physicalism" ................... Kelly, Thomas A. F., "Ex Possibili et Necessario: A Re-examination of Aquinas's Third Way" ............................... 63 Kwasniewski, Peter A., "St. Thomas, Extasis, and Union with the Beloved" 587 Long, Steven A., "Personal Receptivity and Act" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 __ ,"Reply to Kenneth Schmitz" ........................... 373 Kaczor, Christopher, "Exceptionless Norms in Aristotle" . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Melina, Livio, "The Role of the Ordinary Magisterium: On Francis Sulllivan's Creative Fidelity" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 606 Madigan, Kevin, "Aquinas and Olivi on Evangelical Poverty: A Medieval Debate and Its Modern Significance" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 67 Mansini, Guy, O.S.B., "On Affirming a Dominica! Intention of a Male Priesthood" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 301 McAleer, Graham J., "Matter and the Unity of Being in the Philosophical Theology of Thomas Aquinas" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257 Meyer, John R., "Striving for Personal Sanctity through Work" ....... 85 Mirkes, Renee, O.S.F., "Aquinas's Doctrine of Moral Virtue and Its Significance for Theories of Facility" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Peterson, John, "The Interdependence of Intellectual and Moral Virtue in Aquinas" ....................................... 449 Pugh, Matthew S., "Maritain, the Intuition of Being, and the Proper Starting Point for Thomistic Metaphysics" ..................... 405 INDEX OF ARTICLES (Continued) Schmitz, Kenneth L., "Created Receptivity and the Philosophy of the Concrete" ....................................... 339 Shanley, Brian J., O.P., "Eternity and Duration in Aquinas" ......... 525 _, "Sacra Doctrina and the Theology of Disclosure" . . . . . . . . . . . 163 455 Wallace, William A., O.P., "Thomism and the Quantum Enigma" Williams, A. N., "Deification in the Summa Theologiae: A Structural Interpretation of the Prima Pars" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 219 REVIEWS Auer, Johann. Dogmatic Theology, vol. 6. (Richard C. Hermes, S.J.) .. 334 Brodie, Thomas L. The Quest for the Origins of John's Gospel: A Source-Oriented Approach. __ . The Gospel According to John: A Literary and Theological Commentary. (Gerard S. Sloyan) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 660 Brown, Montague. The Quest for Moral Foundations: An Introduction to Ethics. Uohn W. Crossin, O.S.F.S.) .................... 664 317 Colish, Marcia. Peter Lombard. (W. Becket Soule, O.P.) ........... Gallagher, David M., ed .. Thomas Aquinas and His Legacy. (Steven A. Long) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 7 Gormally, Luke, ed .. Moral Truth and Moral Tradition: Essays in Honour of Peter Geach and Elizabeth Anscombe. (Mark Johnson) . . . . . . 493 Guagliardo, Vincent A., O.P., et al., trans. Commentary on the Book of Causes of St. Thomas Aquinas. Uohn Tomarchio) ............... 477 Harak, G. Simon, ed. Aquinas and Empowerment: Classical Ethics for Ordinary Lives. (Charles Pinches) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 480 Jones, L. Gregory. Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis. Uoseph L. Mangina) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Johnson, Luke Timothy. The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels. (Francis Martin) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 645 Keenan, James F., S.J. and Thomas A. Shannon, eds. The Context of Casuistry. (Michael J. Baxter, C.S.C.) .................. 647 Kent, Bonnie. Virtues of the Will: The Transformation of Ethics in the Late Thirteenth Century. (Romanus Cessario,O.P.) . . . . . . . . . . . . 473 Nichols, Aidan, O.P. The Splendor of Doctrine. Gohn E. Pollard) . . . . . 331 Oakes, Edward T., S.J. Pattern of Redemption: The Theology of Hans Urs van Balthasar. (Mark Napack) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 652 INDEX OF BOOKS REVIEWED(Continued) Placher, William C.. The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modern Thinking about God Went Wrong. Games F. Keating) . . . . . . . 469 __ . Narratives of a Vulnerable God: Christ, Theology, and Scripture. (Francis Martin) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 328 Porter, Jean. Moral Action and Christian Ethics. 488 (Christopher J. Thompson) .........•................ Rogers, Eugene F., Jr. Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth: Sacred Doctrine and the Natural Knowledge of God. Games J. Buckley) . . . . . . . . . . . . 320 Schindler, David. Heart of the World, Center of the Church: Communio Ecclesiology, Liberalism, and Liberation. (Christophe Potworowski) ...............•.......... 641 Schmitz, Kenneth L. At the Center of the Human Drama: The Philosophical Anthropology of Karol Wojtyla/Pope john Paul II. (Philip Blosser) ...................... ; . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 Suso, Bl. Henry. Wisdom's Watch upon the Hours. (Sr. Mary Ann Follmar) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154 Thompson, William M. The Struggle for Theology's Soul: Contesting Scripture in Christology. (Roch Kereszty, 0. Cist.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Torrance, Thomas. Divine Meaning: Studies in Patristic Hermeneutics. Geremy Driscoll, O.S.B.) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 Tracey, Gerard, ed. The Letters and Diaries of john Henry Newman, vol. 7. (Edward Jeremy Miller) ............................ 325 Velde, Rudi A. te. Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas. (Desmond A. Fitzgerald) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Ward, Keith. Religion and Creation. (M. John Farrelly, O.S.B.) ...... 656 __ . Religion and Revelation. Gohn Lamont) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491 Zagzebski, Linda. Virtues of the Mind: an Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge. ( Thomas S. Hibbs) 485