The Thomist 62 (1998): 333-54 NAMES FOR THE INEFFABLE GOD: ST. GREGORY OF NYSSA'S EXPLANATION JAMES LE GRYS New York, New York I N RECENT YEARS the traditional theological doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God has emerged as an important topic in terms of its consequences for our understanding of the role and the status of our names for God, particularly with regard to the ongoing discussion concerning the question of God-language and sexism. While some attention has been given to the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas as representing the classical theological tradition, 1 it is a bit disappointing that systematic theologians have not done more to bring the theology of the Fathers into the discussion. 2 The basic outline of the traditional doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God was developed in the Patristic period, most importantly in the progression from St. Athanasius through the Cappadocians to Dionysius the Areopagite. As for St. Gregory of Nyssa in particular, while prior to this century he and his theology had received little attention, today it is recognized that 1 For examples from various perspectives, see Lynne C. Boughton, "More Than Metaphors: Masculine-Gendered Names and the Knowability of God," The Thomist 58 (1994): 283-316; J. A. DiNoia, O.P., "Knowing and Naming the Triune God: The Grammar of Trinitarian Confession," in Alvin F. Kimel, Jr., ed., Speakingthe Christian God: The Holy Trinity and the Challenge of Feminism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1992), 162-87; Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1992), esp. 104-20; Gregory P. Rocca, O.P., "Aquinas on God-Talk: Hovering over the Abyss," Theological Studies 54 (1993): 641-61. 2 Catherine Mowry LaCugna's God For Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991) constitutes an exception in that LaCugna there devotes the first three chapters to Patristic theology and draws anti-patriarchal conclusions from the Cappadocian conception of the Trinity (see 390££.).This work is a study of the doctrine of the Trinity, however, and touches on the particular question of names for God only in passing (see 18 n. 7). 333 334 JAMES LE GRYS a central role in this development was played by the youngest of the Cappadocians. Yet beyond its strictly historical importance for Patristic theology regarding this doctrine, Gregory of Nyssa's conception of the relationship between the incomprehensibility of God and our names for God is especially rich, containing important insights for the contemporary discussion of God-language. On the one hand, his strong affirmation of the incomprehensibility of God brings into sharp relief our dependence upon divine revelation for teaching us what we could not otherwise learn. The names for God that have been given to us by divine revelation are not adequate, but they are nevertheless indispensable for our initiation into the divine mystery. On the other hand, however, because Gregory understands the function of the revealed names in the context of human perfection as consisting in perpetual progress in participation in the life of God, these names cannot be a source of a fideistic self-satisfaction. Receipt of divine revelation does not mean that the quest has ended, for the divine pedagogy that brings us names for God also embarks us on a never-ending pursuit of God. There is no point at which we can stop, satisfied with our knowledge of God. An investigation of Gregory's understanding of the role and function of the Church's names for God will not answer all of the issues in the contemporary discussion, but it will provide important insights as to how the discussion should be framed in terms of a theology of revelation. I. THE DIVINE TRANSCENDENCE AND NAMES FOR GOD For Gregory, the radical distinction between created and uncreated being is a central theological truth. "The ultimate division of all that exists is made by the line between 'created' and 'uncreated,' the one being regarded as a cause of what has come into being, the other as coming into being thereby." 3 Because of 3 Contra Eunomium III, 6, 66 (GregoriiNysseni Opera [GN0] 2:209; PatrologiaGraeca [PG] 45:793C; English translation by M. Day, W. Moore, H. C. Ogle, and H. A. Wilson, in Nicene and Post-NiceneFathers, [NPNF], series two, 5:209). NAMES FOR THE INEFFABLE GOD 335 this gulf, it is impossible for the same terms to refer to both Creator and creature adequately. Now the created nature and the Divine essence being thus divided, and admitting no intermixture in respect of their distinguishing properties, we must by no means conceive both by means of similar terms, nor seek in the idea of their nature for the same distinguishing marks things that are thus separated. 4 For Gregory all language about God must be understood within the context of the chasm between created being and uncreated being. A) The Diastematic vs. the Adiastematic A crucial way in which Gregory describes this gulf is by means of a distinction between the diastematic and the adiastematic. According to Gregory, it is integral to created being to be dispersed or extended in space and time. Created nature is thus diastematic, for it is characterized by &tacrT1iµa, "interval" or "space." 5 The diastematic has a delimited, discrete extension in space and time; it has points of beginning and end. The diastematic is also necessarily characterized by change and movement within the intervals. As T. Paul Verghese explains it: All creation is in movement-and all creation is O!aaTT1µa, as a journey from Kai ciKo/.ou8(a one point to another, ordered and sequential, a EK n Tfj otoo£1.louaa." 6 All creation is in time, and an from apxrj and has a beginning and an end, an apxrj and a to All things move in time, not only locally from one place to another, 4 Contra Eun. III, 6, 66-67 (GNO 2:209; PG 45:793C-D; NPNF 5:209). 5 See Hans Urs von Balthasar, Presence and Thought: An Essay on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory of Nyssa, trans. Mark Sebanc (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1995), 27-35; Aloisius Lieske, S.J., "Die Theologie der Christusmystik Gregors von Nyssa," Zeitschrift (Ur katholische Theologie 70 (1948): 154-56; Brooks Otis, "Cappadocian Thought as a Coherent System," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 12 (1958): 95-124; Walther Volker, Gregorvon Nyssa als Mystiker (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1955), 32-36. 6 "an order and a sequence 'travelling on by degrees from one point in another in its life'" (Contra Eun. II, 70 [GNO 1:246; PG 45:933B; NPNF 5:275]). 336 JAMES LE GRYS but by a process of internal change-Tpontj, like a flame which looks constant, but is never the same in two subsequent moments. 7 The divine essence, on the other hand, is TO a8Lammov, the adiastematic, for it is beyond any possible limits of space and time; it has neither extension, nor movement, nor change. [W]ide and insurmountable is the interval that divides and fences off uncreated nature from created nature. The latter is limited, the former is not. The latter is confined within its own boundaries according to the pleasure of its Maker. The former is bounded only by infinity. The latter stretches itself out within certain degrees of extension [01aaniµanKtjnv1 naproaan auµnapi:KTdvnai], limited by time and space; the former transcends all notion of degree [nifoav 01amtjµaTOc; (vvoiav], baffling curiosity from every point of view. 8 The human mind searches for the boundaries, for the limits that give things in our world a discernible contour, but that which is a8Lammov has none, and thus has no perceptible shape. No form, no place, no size, no reckoning of time, or anything else knowable, is there: and so it is inevitable that our apprehensive faculty, seeking as it does always some object to grasp, must fall back from any side of this incomprehensible existence, and seek in the ages and in the creation which they hold its kindred and congenial sphere. 9 The divine essence thus remains definitively outside the grasp of the human intellect. The existence of the ontological gulf between creature and creator, manifest in the fact that God is infinite and we are finite, poses what is ultimately an insuperable barrier to knowledge of the Divine essence. 10 A finite creature can know only that which is likewise finite. 7 T. Paul Verghese, "t.lAITHMA and t.IAIT AIII in Gregory of Nyssa: Introduction to a Concept and the Posing of a Problem," in Heinrich Dorrie, Margarete Altenburger, and Uta Schramm, eds., Gregor von Nyssa und die Philosophie, Zweites Internationales Kolloquium iiber Gregor von Nyssa, Sept. 1972 [Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1976], 251). Cf. Robert S. Brightman, "Apophatic Theology and Divine Infinity in St. Gregory of Nyssa," Greek Orthodox Theological Review 18 (1973): 102-6. 8 Contra Eun. II, 69-70 (GNO 1:246; PG 45:933A; NPNF 5:257). 9 Contra Eun. I, 369 (GNO 1:136; PG 45:365D; NPNF 5:69). 10 Brightman argues that for Gregory the idea of the incomprehensibility of God is prior to the idea of God's infinity ("Apophatic Theology and Divine Infinity in St. Gregory of Nyssa," 109). NAMES FOR THE INEFFABLE GOD 337 Consequently, no name that expresses finite creaturely thought is adequate to express the divine essence. Here is the core of Gregory's dispute with the Neo-Arian Eunomius. Eunomius asserted that the essence of God can be known, and that this knowledge is expressed by the term ciy£vvT]TOc;,"ungenerate." For Eunomius, ciy£vvT]TOc; stands as the true definition of God. Eunomius's rationalistic theology is based on a theory of language according to which names designate essences. We do not understand his [the Son's] essence to be one thing and the meaning of the word which designates it to be something else. Rather, we take it that his substance is the very same as that which is signified by his name, granted that the designation applies properly to the essence. We assert, therefore, that this essence was begotten-not having been in existence prior to its own coming to be-and that it exists, having been begotten before all things by the will of its God and Father. 11 Against this, Gregory will argue that such an understanding of our names for God ignores the utter transcendence of God with regard to created nature. We ... following the suggestions of Holy Scripture, have learned that His nature cannot be named and is ineffable. We say that every name, whether invented by human custom or handed down by the Scriptures, is indicative of our conceptions of the divine nature, but does not signify what that nature is in itself. 12 The tidy syllogism "God is ungenerate; the Son is generate; therefore the Son is not God" does not apply if the names such as Father and Son, or Ungenerate and Generate, do not express the very essence of God. 11 Eunomius,Apology 12, in Eunomius: The Extant Works, trans. Richard Paul Vaggione (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 49. "[S]ince the names are different, the essences are different as well.... the designations in fact indicate the very essences" (Apology 18 [p. 57]). 12 AdAblabium: Quad non sint tres dei (GNO IIV1:42-43; English translation by Cyril C. Richardson, "To Ablabius: That We Should Not Think of Saying That There Are Three Gods," in Edward R. Hardy, ed., Christology of the Later Fathers, Library of Christian Classics, vol. 3 [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1954], 259). 338 JAMES LE GRYS B) Knowledge of Essence vs. Knowledge of Operation The question arises at this point: What do our names of God provide us if they do not express the essence of God? To begin with, Gregory makes a distinction between those that can be applied "absolutely" and those that express a relation. Some names can be applied to God without reference to another; they are applied "absolutely, i.e., simply as they are, and no more: viz., 'imperishable,' 'everlasting,' 'immortal,' and so on. Each of these, without our bringing in another thought, contains in itself a complete thought about the Deity." 13 Other names express a relation in which God is one term, rather than anything that is in God or that applies to God directly; "thus, Helper, Champion, Rescuer, and other words of that meaning; if you remove thence the idea of one in need of the help, all the force expressed by the word is gone." 14 The question here is how Gregory can say that the first class of names can be applied absolutely to God without saying that these names refer to God's essence. Part of the answer is that many of the names that refer to God involve negation. Indeed, the first examples Gregory gives of names that can be applied "absolutely" to God are all negative names-"imperishable," "everlasting," "immortal." Yet this is only part of the answer, for there are other names that neither contain the idea of negation nor directly involve the idea of relation, such as "good" and "wise." The ultimate answer is that for Gregory such names express not our knowledge of the divine essenceitself, but our knowledge of the divine operations or works, £v£pynat. The names of God found in Scripture and used by the Church refer to the divine I, 570-71(GNO1:191; PG 45:428A; NPNF 5:88). I, 571 (GNO 1:191; PG 45:428A; NPNF 5:88). Elsewhere, Gregory explains that the one class refers to the "transcendent power of God," while the other class refers to the "operations of the Divine loving-kindness in the creation"; for example, "immortal" applies to the "transcendent power of God," while "almighty" implies a relation to the creation over which God is almighty (Contra Eun. II, 124-25 .[GNO 1:365; PG 45:524A; NPNF 5:119]). 13 Contra Eun. 14 Contra Eun. NAMES FOR THE INEFFABLE GOD 339 operations or tv£pyElat, notto God's unknowable essence. 15 God "is named, by those who call upon Him, not what He is essentially (for the nature of Him Who alone is is unspeakable), but He receives His appellations from what are believed to be His operations in regard to our life." 16 This applies even to the name "God," which also refers to an tv£pyEla and its relation to us. In his letter to Ablabius, "That There Are Not Three Gods," Gregory suggests that the word enS<; is derived from the same root as the verb "to behold," 9Eaa9m. 17 We find the same idea in the writings against Eunomius. "When we speak of Him as God, we so call Him from regarding Him as overlooking and surveying all things, and seeing through the things that are hidden. " 18 For Gregory, while we cannot know God's essence, we can know as much about God as can be known from his tv£pyElat, his works or operations; "the human mind can speak only so much in respect of God as its capacity, instructed by His works [tv£pyElat], will allow." 19 These works or operations reveal to us many aspects of God, though the essence itself remains ineffable. 20 Similarly, our knowledge of the three persons of the Trinity as Father, Son, and Spirit reflects our knowledge of the relationship of causality among the three, but no knowledge of the divine essence. Arguing against Eunomius that the fact that we 15 There is a special class of names that refer neither to the divine essence nor to the divine operations: the names that refer to the persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Spirit. These names do not designate operations, for the divine operations are common to the three persons. Rather, they refer to the relations of causality among the three persons. At the same time, to say that God is Father, Son, and Spirit does not provide a definition of the divine essence (in contrast to Eunomius's understanding of the name "ungenerate"). 16 Contra Eun. II, 149 (GNO 1:268; PG 45:960C; NPNF 5:265). 17 Ad Ablabium (GNO III/1:44-45; Christology of the Later Fathers, 260). 18 Contra Eun. II, 149-50 (GNO 1:268-69; PG 45:960C; NPNF 5:265). 19 Contra Eun. II, 154 (GNO 1:270; PG 45:961B; NPNF 5:265). 20 A related distinction used by Gregory is that between knowledge of essence and knowledge of "attributes": "For every name which you may use is an attribute of the Being [n£p [ TO ov], but is not the Being,- 'good,' 'ungenerate,' 'incorruptible,'- but to each of these 'is' does not fail to be supplied ... Any one, then, who undertakes to give the account of this good Being, of this ungenerate Being, as He is, would speak in vain, if he rehearsed the attributes contemplated in Him [Td: lm8£wpouµ£va], and were silent as to that essence which he undertakes by his words to explain" (Contra Eun. III, 60 [GNO 2:182; PG 45:764A; NPNF 5:198-99]). 340 JAMES LE GRYS know that the Father is ungenerate and that the Son is generated by the Father does not give us a definition of the divine essence, Gregory points out that "the question of what exists is one thing: the manner of its existence is another [aAAO<; oov o mu ·Tl fon Kai a/ilia<; o nw<; fon /ioyo<;]. To say that something exists without generation explains the mode of its existence. But what it is is not made evident by the expression." 21 We can know something of how God exists, but we cannot define what that existence is itself. C) A Multiplicity of Names One consequence of the fact that even the best of our names for God only apply to the divine operations and not to the divine essence is the possibility and, indeed, the necessity of using a multiplicity of names for God. In contrast to Eunomius, who held that there is one proper name for God (because dytvvrirn<; defines the divine essence), Gregory argues that, since our names never designate the divine essence, we can use many names of God in order to express the various characteristics that we able to discern from God's £v£pyELat. Now, seeing that we mark with an appellation only those things which we know, and those things which are above our knowledge it is not possible to seize by any distinctive terms (for how can one put a mark upon a thing we know nothing about?), therefore, because in such cases there is no appropriate term to be found to mark the subject adequately, we are compelled by many and differing names, as there may be opportunity, to divulge our surmises as they arise within us with regard to the Deity. 22 Indeed, the plurality of names expressing various characteristics helps us to gain a better understanding of that which we can never fully grasp. 21 Ad Ablabium (GNO III/1:56; Christology of the Later Fathers, 266). See Contra Eun. III, 60: "the definition of 'Being' is one thing, and that of 'being in some particular way' is another (aJ.Jioc; 8£ TOU dvm, Kai aJ.J.oc; TOU nwc; dvm 0 Aciyoc;]" (GNO 2:182; PG 45:764A-B; NPNF 5:199). 22 Contra Eun. II, 577-78 (GNO 1:394-95; PG 45:1104C-D; NPNF 5:308). NAMES FOR THE INEFFABLE GOD 341 For whereas no suitable word has been found to express the Divine nature, we address God by many names, each by some distinctive touch adding something fresh to our notions respecting Him-thus seeking by variety of nomenclature to gain some glimmerings for the comprehension of what we seek. 23 . While the divine essence is simple and unitary, we can never grasp this essence as it is in itself; therefore, the human mind, "in its inability to behold clearly the object of its search, feels after the unutterable Being in divers and many-sided ways, and never chases the mystery in light of one idea alone. " 24 According to Gregory, the various names all work together harmoniously to provide a less-obscure picture of God. In this way, the unity of the divine nature is reflected in the various names. For it is "not that we split up the subject of such attributes along with them, but believing that this thing we think of, whatever it be in substance, is One, we still conceive that it has something in common with all these ideas. " 25 The multiple names all refer to the same existence. There is a harmony within the diversity of the various names. Every name of God, every sublime conception of Him, every utterance or idea that harmonizes with our general ideas with regard to Him, is linked in closest union with its fellow; all such conceptions are massed together in our understanding into one collective and compact whole; namely, His Fatherhood, and Ungeneracy, and Power, and Imperishability, and Goodness, and Authority, and everything else. 26 No one name can be given priority over the other names as if it and it alone truly expressed the divine essence, for no name can. Each name rather adds a partial glimpse. II. THE DIVINE PEDAGOGY So far we have been investigating the question of how our names apply (and do not apply) to God. This investigation would be incomplete, however, if we did not press further and ask why Contra Eun. II, 145-46 (GNO 1:267; PG 45:9570; NPNF 5:264). II, 475-76 (GNO 1:365; PG 45:1069B; NPNF 5:298). 25 Contra Eun. II, 477-78 (GNO 1:365; PG 45:1069C; NPNF 5:298). 26 Contra Eun. I, 588-89 (GNO 1:196; PG 45:432C-D; NPNF 5:90). 23 24 Contra Eun. 342 JAMES LE GRYS we have these names for God in first place, in terms of both their origin and their purp_ose. A) The Divine Condescension and the Gift of Revelation' When Gregory speaks of the names for God, for the most part he has in mind the names that have come to us through Scripture and the lived tradition of the Church. Saint Thomas, on the other hand, will be very careful to distinguish between names for God that can only have their origin in divine revelation (such as those that apply to the three persons), and other terms (such as "good" or "simple") that are at least theoretically within the grasp of the human intellect without any extraordinary aid of grace. There are points in Gregory's writings that suggest an implicit distinction between natural knowledge of God and revealed knowledge, such as when he explains that God's existence, though not what God is, is apparent to the Christian "both from what he has learnt from the sacred writers, and from the harmony of things which do appear, and from the works of Providence." 27 Gregory does not develop this distinction, however, and prefers rather to speak of the gift quality of all our knowledge of God, focusing particularly on what has been revealed to us in Scripture. This gift aspect of our names for God is very important, for in Gregory's theology one cannot understand the meaning of our names for God without recognizing both that the Church's names for God are divine gifts and that they are given to us to teach us what we could otherwise never learn. As finite, diastematic creatures we cannot attain to God on our own. God, however, can condescend to come to us and reveal to us as much as we are capable of understanding. For Gregory, this is a key principle of our knowledge of God. Out of love, God condescends to bring us into communion with him, a condescension whose primary 27 Contra Eun. IT, 98 (GNO 1:255; PG 45:944B; NPNF 5:260). See De Beatitudinibus, sermon 6 (PG 44:1268D-1269B; English translation by Herbert Musurillo, S.J., in From Glory to Glory: Texts from Gregory of Nyssa's Mystical Writings [Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1995], 99-100). NAMES FOR THE INEFFABLE GOD 343 expression is in the person of Jesus Christ. 28 God thus reveals to us what we could not know ourselves, m a way that we can understand. Since that which is by nature finite cannot rise above its prescribed limits, or lay hold of the superior nature of the Most High, on this account He, bringing His power, so full of love for humanity, down to the level of human weakness, so far as it was possible for us to receive it, bestowed on us this helpful gift of grace. 29 This is the background for all the teaching about God and all the names of God found in Scripture. God comes to us on our level. This accommodation on the part of God is clearly seen in the less-exalted expressions, such as the corporeal depictions of God, for in this way the Holy Spirit, in delivering to us the Divine mysteries, conveys its instruction on those matters which transcend language by means of what is within our capacity, as it does also constantly elsewhere, when it portrays the divinity in bodily terms making mention, in speaking concerning God, of His eye, His eyelids, His ear, His fingers, His hand, His right hand, His arm, His feet, His shoes, and the like-none of which things is apprehended to belong in its primary sense to the Divine Nature-but turning its teaching to what we can easily perceive, it describes by terms well worn in human use, facts that are beyond every name, while by each of the terms employed concerning God we are led analogically to some more exalted conception [ava>.oy1Kw<; r')vwv 81' £Kamou Twv TIEpi 0rnu AEyouµevwv 11p6<; Tl Va avayoµevwv Ulj>T]AOTepavu116voiav].30 The crucial qualification is that the names employed by the Holy Spirit are adequate for us and for our education. While they apply only to the works or operations of God and not to the divine essence itself, these names teach us as much as we are capable of understanding, and as much as we need to know, for "when we have learnt that of which we are capable, we stand in no need of 28 "Versagt vor dem iiberbegrifflichen Leben giittlicher Uberwel tlichkeit auch all unser gegenstandlich denkendes Erkennen und alles Gott-Begreifen-Wollen, so eriiffnet sich uns in der gnadenhaften Seins- und Lebensgemeinschaft mit dem menschgewordenen Wort .oytcrµwv] supplies us with but a dim and imperfect comprehension of the Divine nature; nevertheless, the knowledge that we gather from the terms which piety allows us to apply to it is sufficient for our limited capacity." 32 While Gregory does· not deny that the names are analogical, for him their primary importance comes from the fact that they are anagogical and mystagogical: by the names we are led higher and deeper into the mystery of God. Because he recognizes the condescension on the part of God in this pedagogy, Gregory compels us to acknowledge the extent to which we are dependent upon divine revelation. 33 We are able to learn something of the unknowable God because this God comes to us. What are the consequences of this dependence on revelation for the use of language about God in the Church? While this dependence will obviously place some limits on the language to be used for God, it is not sufficient to say that the Church will use the names for God given in Scripture, for one must always ask: Which names? In what contexts? Obviously there are some contexts within the life of the Church-for example, hymns, poems, or theological treatises-where there is a good deal of freedom to employ the many names of God found in Scripture and also to devise new ways of speaking about God that are themselves informed by the revelation given in Scripture. The question becomes more urgent when one turns to central aspects of the life of the Church such as the baptismal rite or the Creed. 31 Refutatio Confessionis Eunomii 17 (GNO 2:319; PG 45:473C; NPNF 5:103). II, 130-31(GNO1:263; PG 45:953B; NPNF 5:263). 32 Contra Eun. 33 Gregory was not alone in drawing this conclusion from the fact of the incomprehensibility of God. Cf. Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names I, 1: "We must not then dare to speak, or indeed to form any conception, Qf the hidden super-essential Godhead, except those things that are revealed to us from the Holy Scriptures" (trans. C. E. Rolt [Naperville, Ill.: Allenson, 1920; reprint: Kila, Mont.: Kessinger PublishingCompany], 51). See Seeley J. Beggiani, "Theology at the Service of Mysticism: Method in Pseudo-Dionysius," Theological Studies 57 (1996): 214-16. NAMES FOR THE INEFFABLE GOD 345 Here we must recognize that Gregory did not envision the question that is so crucial to the contemporary debate about God-language, the question of ideological distortion in the Church's tradition resulting from social and political power relations. The task of discernment on this question has been left to us. Yet Gregory's understanding of revelation does set certain parameters as to the particular questions that may be posed legitimately. For example, given that the language referring to the Trinitarian God as "Father," "Son," and "Spirit" is central to the divine revelation, deriving from the preaching of Jesus himself and of those who were the first witnesses to him, these names cannot be replaced wholesale by different language. For Gregory, not all the names for God given in Scripture are of the same importance. This was implicit in the fact that his debate with Eunomius centered on the crucial terms "Father" and "Son of God" rather than other Scriptural terms for God such as "rock" or "warrior." The Church as a whole was caught up for many years in the same debate. Moreover, Gregory will say explicitly that divine revelation itself informs us that the names for the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are to be our primary names for God, names for which we are not permitted to substitute other names of our own choosing, even if these be scriptural names. The Arians, such as Eunomius, do not pay proper respect to divine revelation when they give preference to their own names for God. We say that it is a terrible and soul-destroying thing to misinterpret these Divine utterances and to devise in their stead assertions to subvert them-assertions pretending to correct God the Word, Who appointed that we should maintain these statements as part of our faith. For each of these titles understood in its natural sense becomes for Christians a rule of truth and a law of piety. For while there are many other names by which Deity is indicated in the Historical Books, in the Prophets and in the Law, our Master Christ passes by all these and commits to us these titles as better able to bring us to the faith about the Self-Existent, declaring that it suffices us to cling to the title, "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," in order to attain to the apprehension of Him Who is absolutely Existent, Who is one and yet not one. 34 34 Refutatio confessionis Eunomii 17 (GNO 2:314; PG 45 :468D-469A; NPNF 5: 102). 346 JAMES LE GRYS What is crucial for Gregory is the divine pedagogy. The Church must remain faithful to the divine revelation if it is to remain within the divine pedagogy. If, as Gregory insists, the knowledge we have of God we have only because of' divine revelation, we have no independent standpoint from which to make a judgment about the names that have been given to us. In this sense, there are certain names that are irreplaceable because we are not in a position to choose substitutes for them, for this would be presuming "to correct God the Word." One might ask how it is determined that certain names are central to the divine revelation and others are not. For Gregory, this is learned from a correct understanding of the Scriptures, which in turn brings out another aspect of the divine pedagogy, the working of the Holy Spirit in the Church not only in the inspiration of the Scriptures but also in the enlightening of the Church as a body in receiving the truth of the faith that has been passed down from the Apostles and that has been revealed in Scripture. One cannot grasp the meaning of the Scriptures without the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the hearts and minds of the members of the Church is crucial, for Gregory makes it clear that it is through the indwelling of the Spirit that the Church is united to Christ and partakes of the innertrinitarian life.35 In his Commentary on the Canticle, Gregory brings out the unifying and glorifying role of the Spirit, with reference to the Gospel of John: "That they all may be one," He says, "as Thou, Father, in me, and I in Thee; that they also may be one in us" Uohn 17:21). Now the bond of this unity is glory Uohn 17:22), and no one, who would seriously consider the Lord's words, would deny that this glory is the Holy Spirit. For He says: "The glory which thou hast given me, I have given to them" Uohn 17:22). Actually He gave His disciples this glory when He said to them: "Receive ye the Holy Ghost" Uohn 20:22). And He Himself received this glory when He put on human nature, though He had indeed always possessed it since before the beginning of the world. And now that His human nature has been glorified by 35 Lieske stresses this theme ("Die Theologie der Christusmystik Gregors von Nyssa," 84-93). NAMES FOR THE INEFFABLE GOD 347 the Spirit, this participation in the glory of the Spirit is communicated to all who are united with Him, beginning with His disciples. 36 It is this indwelling of the Spirit in the Church that will.enable the Church to undertake the discernment necessary to answer the current questions about appropriate language for God. 37 B) Never-ending Progress and the Pursuit of God If we pursue further the function of the Church's names for God, however, we shall find more radical consequences of Gregory's position. The question remains: If the names are not really adequate to God and do not express the divine essence, how can they be said to be truly sufficient for us? To put it in a different way, we are drawn to God as the source of all goodness. Indeed, the more one approaches God, the more one's longing is inflamed. Must we be satisfied with never knowing the essence of God? On the one hand, the answer is yes, for Gregory asserts that the highest knowledge of God attainable is the recognition that God is unknowable. In this sense the best way of speaking about God is silence, a silence that corresponds to the divine darkness. 38 The highest knowledge of God that we can attain, paradoxically enough, is the realization that the essence of God escapes our comprehension, that the divine essence is only vaguely indicated by all that we can learn. This realization marks the height of Abraham's progress in the knowledge of God: 36 In Cant. 15 (PG 44: 1117 A-B; From Glory to Glory, 286-87); see In Illud: TW:C et Ipse Filius (PG 44: 1320C-D). 37 Verna E. F. Harrison notes that there are instances where Gregory draws on Scripture for feminine names for the persons of the Trinity, but points out that for him the language of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit must remain in the position of primacy because of the authority of divine revelation ("Gender, Generation, and Virginity in Cappadocian Theology," Journal of Theological Studies, n.s., 47 [1996]: 41). It must be added here that Gregory was not facing the question of feminine language in the form in which it is currently faced by the Church. For a discussion of the Cappadocian understanding of the relationship between male and female, see Harrison, "Male and Female in Cappadocian Theology," Journal of Theological Studies, n.s., 41 (1990): 441-71. 38 Volker points out that "dieses Schweigen is kein Verstummen aus Verlegenheit, sondern entspringt dem Gefiihl eines iibergrogen Besitzes" (Gregor van Nyssa als Mystiker, 201). 348 JAMES LE GRYS when he had gone beyond every conjecture respecting the divine nature which is suggested by any name amongst all our conceptions of God, having purged his reason of all such fancies, and arrived at a faith unalloyed and free from all prejudice, he made this a sure and manifest token of the knowledge of God, viz. the belief that He is greater and more sublime than any token by which He may be known. 39 For Gregory, therefore, the recognition of the unknowability of God is not so much a presupposition or starting point as the culmination of the search for God. There are two moments, a kataphatic and an apophatic, with the kataphatic always leading up to the apophatic (without being left behind entirely). As Gregory explains in The Li(e of Moses, after climbing the mountain of the knowledge of God, Moses entered the darkness and there found God. Scripture teaches by this that religious knowledge comes at first to those who receive it as light. Therefore what is perceived to be contrary to religion is darkness, and the escape from darkness comes about when one participates in light. But as the mind progresses and, through an ever greater and more perfect diligence, comes to apprehend reality, as it approaches more nearly to contemplation, it sees more clearly what of the divine nature is uncontemplated. 40 This is not a plain ignorance, but a learned ignorance, for one knows that one does not know. Still, the more one comes to know God, the more one realizes how little we know positively of God, for one comes to see more clearly God's infinity and transcendence. On the other hand, the answer is no, for we are never satisfied as if we could desire no more. The key here is that it is possible to progress into the mystery of God infinitely, so that our desire is neither frustrated nor sated. For Gregory this initiation by the Holy Spirit into the mystery of God is not a process that simply comes to an end with our recognition of the incomprehensibility Contra Eun. II, 89 (GNO 1:253; PG 45:941A; NPNF 5:259). De Vita Moysis II, 162 (English translation, The Life of Moses, trans. and ed. Everett Ferguson and Abraham J. Malherbe [New York: Paulist Press, 1978]; La Vie de Moise, ou Traite de la perfectionen matiere de vertu, introduction, texte critique et ,traduction de Jean 39 40 Danielou, S.J., 3d ed. [Paris: Cerf, 1968]). NAMES FOR THE INEFFABLE GOD 349 of God. On the one hand, real progress appears impossible in that the ineffable divine essence will always remain beyond our grasp. On the other hand, we can move forward because through the Holy Spirit in union with Jesus Christ 41 we can participate ever more fully in the divine goodness and be ever more perfectly assimilated to the divine likeness. There are thus two sides to the infinity of God. It means both that God is ultimately incomprehensible, and that there is no end to our progressive initiation into the mystery of God. Thus it is not that we know simply nothing of God, but rather that there is always more to be known. The First Good is in its nature infinite, and so it follows of necessity that the participation in the enjoyment of it will be infinite also, for more will be always being grasped, and yet something beyond that which has been grasped will always be discovered, and this search will never overtake its Object, because its fund is as inexhaustible as the growth of that which participates in it is ceaseless.42 The finite can approach the infinite by an infinite progression. Indeed, if we are to be like God, somehow there must be an infinity in us to correspond to the infinity of God. 43 Our infinity lies in our progress in participation in God's goodness. The 41 Brian E. Daley, S.J., points to the central importance of Jesus Christ for Gregory as the foundation of all mystical knowledge of God and all participation in the life of God: "What is new in his approach to this unitive 'knowledge' of the transcendent Mystery is the clarity with which he rests it on the paradox of Christ's own person as the place where the Mystery has come palpably near and where the absorption into God of all that is knowably human has already begun. As Gregory peers into the divine darkness, it is for him of paramount significance that his feet are firmly planted on the rock which is Christ" ('"Bright Darkness' and Christian Transformation: Gregory on the Dynamics of Mystical Union," in Michael J. Himes and Stephen J. Pope, eds., Finding God in All Things: Essays in Honor of Michael]. Buckley [New York: Crossroad, 1996], 225-26). 42 Contra Eun. I, 291 (GNO 1:112; PG 45:340D; NPNF 5:62). 43 "Here mutability is not simply the mark of man's fallen state, whether this be viewed from a Plotinian or a Christian perspective. Rather, mutability is a fundamental condition for man's unlimited assimilation to his archetype. It is only as a moving image of infinity that man can be infinity humanly contracted, or infinite in a human way" (Donald F. Duclow, "Gregory of Nyssa and Nicholas of Cusa: Infinity, Anthropology and the Via Negativa," Downside Review 92 [1974]: 106). See Jean Danielou, Platonisme et Theologie Mystique: Doctrine Spirituelle de Saint Gregoire de Nysse (Paris: Aubier, 1944 ), 299; Balthasar, Presence and Thought, 103. 350 JAMES LE GRYS diastematic imitates the adiastematic by an infinite becoming. It is by this never-ending progress that Gregory helps to explain how there can be assimilation of the human to the divine and communion of divine and human while preserving God's absolute transcendence. Perfection for the human person is not a static, completed condition, but a never-ending progress. "For this is truly perfection: never to stop growing towards what is better and never placing any. limit on perfection." 44 For Gregory, such an endless progression in knowledge and love of God is our ultimate blessedness. As he puts it in The Life of Moses: This truly is the vision of God: never to be satisfied in the desire to see him. But one must always, by looking at what he can see, rekindle his desire to see more. Thus, no limit would interrupt growth in the ascent to God, since no limit to the Good can be found nor is the increasing of desire for the Good brought to an end because it is satisfied. 45 Gregory's image of ultimate human blessedness does not have at its core the idea of a vision, at least not in the precise sense of a grasp of the divine essence by the human intellect, as in Thomas's conception. Or perhaps one should say that Gregory has a singular understanding of what constitutes the vision of God. Everett Ferguson has pointed out that "one of Gregory's profoundest insights is that the vision of God consists in following God. " 46 Referring to Exodus 30, Gregory explains that although Moses desired a direct vision of God, he was told that this was impossible, for "no one can look on my face and live." Instead, Moses is taught that his real task is to follow God who is his guide on the way. "To follow God wherever he might lead is to behold God." 47 In fact, Gregory points out that to face one's guide requires one to be pointed in a direction opposite to that of the guide. "Therefore, [God] says to the one who is led, My face 44 De Perfectione (PG 46, 285C; English translation by Virginia Woods Callahan, in Saint Gregory o(Nyssa: AsceticalWorks [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1967], 122). Cf. De Vita Moysis I, 10: "the very perfection of human nature consists perhaps in its very growth in goodness." 45 De Vita Moysis II, 239. 46 Everett Ferguson, "God's Infinity and Man's Mutability: Perpetual Progress according to Gregory of Nyssa," Greek Orthodox TheologicalReview 18 (1973): 63. 47 De Vita Moysis II, 252. NAMES FOR THE INEFFABLE GOD 351 is not to be seen, that is, 'Do not face your guide.' If he does so, his course will certainly be in the opposite direction, for good does not look good in the face, but follows it.''48 Here we see that for Gregory the idea of movement is crucial. The key 'is to be moving in the right direction, toward God. Not relying on the image of a vision to describe human perfection and ultimate human blessedness, Gregory instead offers the image of a pursuit, a movement toward the good that one desires. Thomas speaks of the essence of beatitude as consisting in an act of the intellect; the act of the will in love provides for the movement toward the end, but the end itself is the intellect's possessing a vision of the divine essence through its immediate information by that essence.49 Our deification is thus rooted in our intellect's conformity to the divine essence. For Gregory, on the other hand, there is no final possession of its desired object on the part of the intellect. Thus the pursuit of the good is itself the end and loving occupies the central position instead of knowing. We pursue God out of love; in following God we participate more fully in the divine life; the more fully we enter into the mystery of God the more our love for God is inflamed and the more ardently we pursue God. The progress in our love of God and our participation in the life of God is endless and infinite. For Gregory the progression that is made possible by divine revelation is more accurately described as a progression in participation in God than a progression in knowledge of God. Commenting on the sixth beatitude (Matt 5 :8), Gregory asserts: "The Lord does not say that it is blessed to know something about God, but rather to possess God in oneself. "50 One knows more about God in the sense that one becomes ever more assimilated to the divine archetype, and that one progresses deeper into the divine mystery by an ever-increasing desire for God. Our desire for God is our desire to be filled with the divine life. To desire the Good is ultimately to desire to participate in it, to become the Good. Speaking of Moses' desire to see the Lord De Vita Moysis II, 253. See Summa theologiae I, q. 12, a. 5; I-II, q. 3, a. 4; Suppl., q. 92, a. 1; Summa contra Gentiles III, c. 51. so De Beatitudinibus, Sermon 6 (PG 44: 1269C; From Glory to Glory, 100). 48 49 352 JAMES LE GRYS face to face as an example of the experience of "the soul that loves what is beautiful," Gregory explains: Hope always draws the soul from the beauty which is seen to what is' beyond, always kindles the desire for the hidden through what is constantly perceived. Therefore, the ardent lover of beauty, although receiving what is always visible as an image of what he desires, yet longs to be filled with the very stamp of the archetype. 51 Our deification, our partlClpation in the life of God, is accomplished through our endless pursuit of God. While there is a sense in which we can progress in knowledge of God even having entered the divine darkness and having acknowledged the incomprehensibility of God, this does not mean that we would learn "more things about God," as if these were discrete insights that could be expressed in concepts. One does not mark one's progress by exchanging the names that have guided one so far for new and better names. The movement is not from name to name. Rather, the movement is within the names; we journey ever deeper into the mystery indicated by the names. In this way, the names have an infinite depth. Thus the names with which the Holy Spirit initiates our education provide for our entry into an infinite journey. They do not present us with a resting place, as if our search for God had reached some kind of plateau, the arduous exertions of the ascent being behind us. For Gregory, being faithful to the revelation that has been given does not entail a fideism that would be satisfied with a given knowledge of God as if this were a secure possession. Here is the radical aspect of Gregory's position. To receive the divine revelation is not to come into possession of an assortment of concepts, so that fidelity to the revelation would mean mere repetition of a concept or its expressed formulation. The knowledge of God provided by the gift of the divine names is a knowledge that must always be transcended by a movement ever deeper into the mystery. To enter into the divine pedagogy is to leave behind the static security of acquired knowledge for the perpetual motion of the infinite progression in knowledge and ' 1 De Vita Moysis II, 231. NAMES FOR THE INEFFABLE GOD 353 love of God, where the only security is precisely in the constant movement toward God. CONCLUSION: THE ROLE OF THE CHURCH'S NAMES FOR GOD In brief, Gregory urges us to hold fast to what has been revealed to us as a gift, always holding up the incomprehensibility of God as a reminder of our incapacity to name God adequately. At the same time he forbids us to be self-satisfied in the possession of God's revelation, for to possess the revelation of God means to be summoned on an endless journey into the mystery of God. On the one hand, since God is beyond our comprehension, we are dependent upon God's self-revelation. God reveals to us what we are capable of understanding, establishing a pedagogy that progressively initiates us into the divine mystery. No name is adequate to the divine essence, but some names must be recognized as less inadequate than others, in that the Holy Spirit uses them to teach us as much as we are capable of grasping. Furthermore, no name exhausts the divine essence; a multiplicity of names for God is used both in Scripture and in the life of the Church as a whole. In a sense, there is always room for more names, though one must add that no name created by human ingenuity can occupy the central position of those names revealed to the Church in Scripture and in the Church's lived tradition. Here it is important to see that conceding a special status to some names is not idolatry, 52 as if this status implied an assertion of the essential adequacy. of the designated names. Rather, conceding this special status to certain names that have been given tQ the Church through the Scriptures and through the Church's lived tradition is an acknowledgment on the part of the Church of its dependence on divine revelation. If we are to enter into the divine pedagogy, we must make use of these names as indispensable starting points. 52 Cf. Elizabeth A. Johnson, "The Incomprehensibility of God and the Image of God Male and Female," TheologicalStudies45 (1984): 441-65; Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, "Feminist Spirituality, Christian Identity, and Catholic Vision," in Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow, eds., Womanspirit Rising (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979), 136-48; Gail Ramshaw Schmidt, "De Divinis Nominibus: The Gender of God," Worship 56 (1982): 117-31. 354 JAMES LE GRYS On the other hand, while we must recognize our dependence on the names given to us by God, the process itself served by the names requires a constant acknowledgment of the inadequacy of our understanding of God. The divine pedagogy insists on a perpetual obeisance before the incomprehensibility of God. There is no standing still. The names are not resting places, for they force one to keep moving forward. To stop is to turn away from God. We can never be satisfied with our knowledge of God. The self-satisfaction that underlies many forms of fideism has no place in the thought of St. Gregory of Nyssa. Finally, this understanding of the role of the divine names has significant implications for the understanding of the role of theology in the Church. For Gregory, just as the names for God given to the Church are not to be stored like possessionsas theses in a manual, but rather provide a point of entry into an endless search for God, so the theology that is founded on these names is not to be closed in on itself and its concepts; instead, it must lead out beyond it-selfand contribute toward the practical end of all Christian life, which is union with God. The Thomist 62 (1998): 355-72 NEO-DARWINIANS, ARISTOTELIANS, AND OPTIMAL DESIGN MICHAEL W. TKACZ Gonzaga University Spokane, Washington S IR KARL POPPER once pronounced that every science, "as long as it used the Aristotelian method of definition, has remained arrested in a state of empty verbiage and barren scholasticism. " 1 Standing as a verdict on the many generations of natural philosophers working under the influence of Aristotle, these words summarize the modern assessment of premodern science. Many historians of biology, having arrived at essentially the same conclusion, discount the contributions of ancient and medieval researchers. 2 One of the primary instances of such "empty verbiage and barren scholasticism," as it relates to biology, concerns teleological explanation. Indeed, if there is any one characteristic that is typical of Aristotelian biology, it is the prevalence of attempts to explain plant and animal morphology in terms of final causes. This was one of the reasons why Francis Bacon was so concerned to produce a new organon to replace what he, and so many since him, have taken to be, at best, a 1 Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (London, 1952), 2:9. 2 See, for example, T. Dobzhansky, Genetics of the Evolutionary Process (New York, 1970), 351; D. Hull, "The Effect of Essentialism on Taxonomy-Two Thousand Years of Stasis,"British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 40 (1965): 314-66, and41(1966):1-18. M. Caullery contrasts Aristotle, representing a mystical tendency in ancient science, to Democritus and Epicurus, representing a more modern outlook, in A History of Biology (New York, 1966), 4-6. Cf. E. Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution, and Inheritance (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 87-94, who provides a more sympathetic assessment of Aristotle's biology, though he still considers Aristotle's medieval followers to have introduced non-naturalistic forms of explanation into the discipline. 355 356 MICHAEL W. TKACZ superseded scientific methodology or, at worst, an activity hardly worthy of the appellation "scientific". at all. Fortunately, historians and philosophers of science are beginning to reappraise Aristotelian biology and its teleological explanations. Where such explanations were once variously misunderstood as anthropomorphic and even mystical, 3 many recent Aristotle scholars have rightly stressed their naturalism. 4 More sympathetic readings of Aristotelian biology have noted that its founder attempted to steer the middle course between Platonic cosmic functionalism and Democritean reductive materialism, 5 and in so doing demonstrated a care in the application of teleological explanation which can be appreciated by the modern philosopher of science. While this cannot be said for all of Aristotle's ancient and medieval followers, it certainly can be said for the best and most influential biologists of the tradition. 6 Chief among these must be counted Albert the Great, whose thirteenth-century commentaries on Aristotle, as well as his own original zoological research, display a methodological con3 For example, Aristotle's teleology is essentially anthropomorphic, according to G. Simpson, This View of Life (New York, 1964), 100£. M. Ruse notes that Aristotle and his Christianized followers held biological teleology to be the result of a cosmic order by which causes somehow work backward out of the future in Philosophy of Biology Today (Albany, 1988), 44. E. Mayr speaks of the "conscious directedness" of Aristotelian teleology in "Cause and Effect in Biology," in Cause and Effect, ed. D. Lerner (Glencoe, 1965), 39; cf. Mayr's more recent treatment in The Growth of Biological Thought, 87-91. 4 See D. Balme, Aristotle's De partibus animalium I and De generatione animalium I, Clarendon Aristotle Series (Oxford, 1972); A. Gotthelf, "Aristotle's Conception of Final Causality," Review of Metaphysics 30 (1976): 226-54; W. Wieland, "The Problem of Teleology," in Articles on Aristotle, vol. 1: Science, ed. J. Barnes, et al. (London, 1977), 141-60; M. Nussbaum, Aristotle's De motu animalium (Princeton, 1978), esp. 59-106; R. Sorabji, Necessity, Cause and Blame (London, 1980); and D. Balme, "Teleology and Necessity," in Philosophical Issues in Aristotle's Biology, ed. A. Gotthelf and J. Lennox (Cambridge, 1987), 275-85. 5 On this contrast see A. Preus, Science and Philosophy in Aristotle's Biological Works, Studien und Materialien zur Geschichte der Philosophie, Kleine Reihe I (Hildesheim, 1975), 183f. 6 For example, J. Lennox, "Theophrastus on the Limits of Teleology," in Theophrastus of Eresus: On His Life and Work, ed. W. Fortenbaugh, P. Huby, and A. Long (New Brunswick, 1985), 143-63, argues that evidence from the commentaries of Theophrastus suggests a debate among the early Peripatetics about the proper scope and use of teleology in biology precisely where its use would depart from or obscure a purely naturalistic explanation. NEO-DARWINIANS AND ARISTOTELIANS 357 cern for the natural causes of organic forms. 7 Albert, in fact, was critical of the Platonists who postulated that there exist forms that are not in matter. He insisted that all biological forms exist in matter and derive their potentiality for biological function from matter. 8 In developing Aristotle's philosophy of zoological method, Albert emphasized a naturalistic teleology derived from the observed morphology of animals and their material causes. It is arguable, in fact, that modern European biology owes its beginnings to Albert's careful expositions of Aristotle's zoological method. 9 While appreciation for the naturalistic teleology of Aristotelian biological explanation is greater now than in the recent past, its similarities to methods of current biological research are only beginning to be appreciated. A case in point concerns a common explanatory strategy among Neo-Darwinians who attempt to understand adaptation in terms of optimal states. This strategy involves the construction of optimality models which provide designs or blueprints showing how a given organism would have to be structured to adapt to certain environments. Such an "engineering" model sets forth the optimal adaptive strategy of the organism in terms of its morphology or behavior for living and flourishing within a certain environmental niche on the basis of certain assumptions about the functional requirements of the organism in question. The model is compared with the actual structures found in nature, and, if the model mirrors nature 7 Albert commented twice on Aristotle's zoological treatises: the first in a series of Quaestiones super De animalibus disputed at the Dominican studium at Cologne in 1258 and preserved for us in the reportatio of Conrad of Austria and published in Alberti Magni Opera Omnia (Munster, 1955), 12/3:281-309; the second, and more extensive, is the paraphrastic commentary accompanied by Albert's original researches and edited by H. Stadler as De animalibus libri XXVI, nach der Koiner Urschrift, for Beitriige zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters (Munster, 1916 and 1920), Bd. 15: libri 1-12 and Bd. 16: libri 12-26. 8 Albert, De animalibus XI, tr. 2, c. 4 (ed. Stadler 15:797.15-18). For Albert's general attitude toward his Platonic contemporaries see J. Weisheipl, "Albertus Magnus and the Oxford Platonists," Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Assoication 32 (1958): 124-39. 9 One of the clearest examples of the debt modern biology owes to medieval Aristotelians is the work of William Harvey; see W. Wallace, Causality and Scientific Explanation (Ann Arbor, 1972), 1:184-93. 358 MICHAEL W. TKACZ closely enough, this is accepted as evidence in favor of the functional explanation provided by the model. 10 While this explanatory strategy has its problems and .critics,11 it has been successful in accounting for organic morphologies as adaptations. As such, optimality arguments have played an important role in evolutionary biology. Given the assumption that the cause of an organism's morphology is natural selection for the characteristics observed, it is concluded that the organism is as good at solving the problems of living in a particular environment as its genetic limitations allow. Optimal-design models, then, can provide an empirically verifiable account of how things should be when natural selection operates over time within the material constraints of the organism. Such models also have the advantage of providing a heuristic account of observed morphologies which stands in place of a detailed explanation in terms of the underlying genetic variation and efficient causality of natural selection. Aristotelian biologists, of course, were not concerned with understanding the morphology of organisms as the result of an evolutionary process. They did, however, make use of optimaldesign arguments in accounting for the existence and persistence of organisms in their environments. They also used optimality arguments to understand the underlying material requirements for organic form and development. This establishes an interesting parallel with Neo-Darwinian uses of optimal design. While Neo-Darwinians are primarily concerned to explain organisms genealogically, Aristotelians were not concerned with temporal antecedents except in terms of the individual organism's generation and growth. Yet both Aristotelians and Neo-Darwinians share a common concern with optimality. As the ways in which 10 A good account of the use of optimal-design models in Neo-Darwinian biology is J. Beatty, "Optimal-Design Models and the Strategy of Model Building in Evolutionary Biology," Philosophy of Science 47 (1980): 532-61. 11 Among the most prominent critics of Neo-Darwinian optimal-design explanations has been Richard Lewontin; see S. Gould and R. Lewontin, "The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme," Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, series B 205 (1979): 581-98; also R. Lewontin, "Adaptation," Scientific American 239.3 (1978): 212-30. NEO-DARWINIANS AND ARISTOTELIANS 359 Aristotelian biologists used optimality arguments are not generally known, this study will discuss the place of optimality in the historically influential scientific methodology of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. I. THE STRUCTURE OF OPTIMAL DESIGNS The contemporary biologist Richard Lewontin draws attention to a distinction between the optimal and the maximal. 12 Optimality, he notes, is a qualitative characterization of a particular organic state-say, morphological-understood as one of a number of alternative states. As such, an optimal state cannot be identified only with respect to the alternatives, but must have reference to something beyond the possibly optimal alternatives. The claim, for example, that a birth weight of seven pounds is optimal for a human infant cannot be made from a definition of the range of all possible birth weights. Reference must be made to something other than possible birth weights to make sense of optimality. Maximality (or minimality), on the other hand, is the quantitative characterization of states based on an internally defined scale. In the range of one to ten pounds of birth weight the maximal is ten. Thus, optimality is not internally defined, but maximality is an internally defined characterization of a metric scale. Lewontin goes on to note that, despite this distinction, maximality is foundational to optimality. A state is optimal among all the possible alternatives when it maximizes whatever state characterizes optimality. Thus, if the optimal weight for sustainability outside of the womb is seven pounds, then seven pounds is maximal sustainability, six pounds is 85 percent sustainability, and so on. The optimal weight for the infant, then, is the weight at which its life and growth is maximally sustainable. Thus, the task for the biologist using optimal-design explanations is to define a maximality scale that provides a criterion for optimality. Generally, Neo-Darwinian biologists use 12 R. Lewontin, "The Shape of Optimality," in The Latest on the Best: Essays on Evolution and Optimality, ed. J. Dupre (Cambridge, Mass., 1987), 152. 360 MICHAEL W. TKACZ fitness to characterize optimality and consider the state that maximizes fitness to be optimal. This will also be true for the of Aristotelian biologist who understands fitness as a final the organism's morphology or behavior. The Aristotelian will emphasize that questions of fitness always arise out of a puzzle concerning some observed characteristic of an organism. If a researcher is able to determine that escape from predators by means of locomotion is optimal for an organism's survival in a particular environment, then that morphology which allows for the maximal fleetness or evasion will be optimal. Establishing a scale for fleetness will involve measurement. Thus, the Aristotelian biologist shares with his Neo-Darwinian counterpart a common concern with quantitative methods as well as fitness. II. ARISTOTELIAN OPTIMAL DESIGN In commenting on Aristotle's distinction between unqualified and sophistical knowing in the Posterior Analytics, Albert agrees that we can have true unqualified knowledge only when we understand the cause of what we are studying. He adds: We say "when we understand the cause," not causes in the plural, because there is one original cause which is the cause of causes, which is the end, through which above all something is known: because each thing is determined and known with respect to its maximal end [maxime fine] and its essential optimal state [optima essentialt].Cause is said in such a way that it is understood as one with respect to the subject, for there are three things which together constitute the beginning of knowing: the efficiency, the form, and the end, as Aristotle says in the second book of the Physics. Moreover, although there are many causes of any given thing, one is always the completing cause, which is the cause above all, and it is with respect to that completing cause that it is said: knowing is when we understand the cause. 13 13 "Cum autem dicimus cum causam cognoscimus, non causas in plurali: ideo quia una est principalis causa, quae est causa causarum, quae est finis, per quam potissime scitur; quia unumquodque maxime fine suo et optimo essentiali determinatur et scitur. Dicitur etiam causa ut subjecto intelligatur una: quia tres quae principium sunt sciendi, in unam coincidunt, efficiens et forma et finis, ut (av TOU Koaµov." 23 "Einen solchen sich als Grund er-springenden Sprung nennen wir gemag der echten Bedeutung des Wortes einen Ur-sprung: das Sich-den-Grund-er-springen" (Heidegger, Einfiihrung in die Metaphysik, 5). 24 "Das Sein des Seienden besteht in seinem Geschaffensein durch Gott (omne ens est ens creatum)" (Heidegger, Nietzsche, 2:132). 382 LAURENCE PAUL HEMMING valuation in which the ground becomes the certitude of being-human (ens certum), 25 and culminates in Nietzsche's eternal recurrence of the same. As an ontology, even Nietzsche's metaphysics is at the same time theology, although it seems far removed from scholastic metaphysics. The ontology of beings as such thinks essentia as will to power. Such ontology thinks the existentia of beings as such and as a whole theologically as the eternal recurrence of the same. Such metaphysical theology is of course a negative theology of a peculiar kind. Its negativity is revealed in the expression "God is dead." That is an expression not of atheism but of Onto-Theology, in that metaphysics in which Nihilism proper is fulfilled. 26 All of this comes about in consequence of onto-theo-logy, that is, theology thought metaphysically. A) The meaning of "esse" in Aquinas and Heidegger It should be dear from what has preceded that for Heidegger the Seinsgeschichte, or history of being, can be construed as unfolding a history of God, thought metaphysically. A critical juncture in this history is the way in which God is thought in medieval metaphysics. When, therefore, in Zurich in 1951 Heidegger is asked "need being and God be posited as identical?," 25 Cf. Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, in ffiuvres de Descartes, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (Paris: Vrin), 7:27 (Meditatio secunda): "Cogitare? Hie invenio: cogitatio est; hie sola a me divelli nequit. Ego sum, ego existo, certum est.... Nihil nunc admitto nisi quod necessario sit verum; sum igitur precise tantum res cogitans, id est, mens, sive animus, sive intellectus, sive ratio, voces mihi prius significationis ignote. Sum autem res vera et vera existens; sed qualis res? Dixi, cogitans." See Heidegger, Nietzsche 2:166: "Im Herrschaftsbereich dieses subiectum ist das ens nicht mehr ens creatum, es ist ens certum: indubitandum: vere cogitatum: 'cogitatio' ."Cf. also Heidegger's discussion of the ens cerium in relation to Descartes in Hegels Begriff der Erfahrung, 143£. 26 "Auch Nietzsches Metaphysik ist als Ontologie, obzwar sie weit von der Schulmetaphysik entfernt zu sein scheint, zugleichTheologie. Die Ontologie des Seienden als solche denkt die essentia als den Willen zur Macht. Diese Ontologie denkt die existentia des Seienden als solchen im Ganzen theologisch als die ewige Wiederkehr des Gleichen. Diese metaphysische Theologie ist allerdings eine negative Theologie eigener Art. Ihre Negativitat zeigt sich in dem Wort: Gott ist tot. Das ist nicht das Wort des Atheismus, sondern das Wort der Onto-Theologie derjenigen Metaphysik, in der sich der eigentliche Nihilismus vollendet" (Heidegger, Nietzsche 2:348, from a text composed in 1944-46 and published in 1961 as Die seinsgeschichtliche Bestimmung des Nihilismus). HEIDEGGER'S GOD 383 he replies, referring specifically to St. Thomas Aquinas, "God and being is not identical. .... being and God are not identical, and I would never attempt to think the essence of God through being . . . . If I were yet to write a theology-to which I sometimes feel inclined-then the word 'being' would not occur in it. " 27 There is no syntactical error here; the move from "is" to "are" is the very movement of Heidegger's thinking through the separation of being and God from their metaphysically posited togetherness. To fail to understand the meaning of the polemic, the sheer violence of Heidegger's desire to break with metaphysics (whilst at the same time paying it the deepest respect) leads, for instance, Jean-Luc Marion to argue in explaining this very passage that "A single indication comes to us: the word Being must not intervene in a theological discourse." 28 Once again, that is not what Heidegger says here--<>r rather, that is not all that he says here. Heidegger speaks of the essence of God while wishing to exclude from the discussion of this essence the word being, existence. Heidegger is saying here nothing other than that all theology has been onto-theo-logy, that God and being are the same, metaphysics, and that he, Heidegger, would not speak of the essence of God in the terms of being-existence-and that for him (Heidegger) to undertake theology would be to say-before we had even begun to undertake a theology-"The essence of God and God's existence are not the same." This does not disbar the word "being" from theological discourse, but sets it in its proper place. In this sense the separating of the thought of the essence of God from any "proofs" or discussion of God's existence is the same thing as the overcoming of metaphysics. Heidegger is speaking in the context of an explicit reference to Aquinas. He adds that he knows a Jesuit whom he has asked 27 "DRITfE FRAGE: Diirfen Sein und Gott identisch gesetzt werden? ... HEIDEGGER: .. . Gott und Sein ist nicht identisch .... Sein und Gott sind nicht identisch, und ich wiirde niemals versuchen, das Wesen Gottes durch das Sein zu denken .... Wenn ich noch eine Theologie schreiben wiirde, wozu es mich manchmal reizt, dann diirfte in ihr das Wort 'Sein' nicht vorkommen" (Martin Heidegger, Seminare, Gesamtausgabe Band 15 [Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1986), 436). 28 Marion, Dieu sans l'etre, 95; English translation by D. Tracy, God Without Being (Hors Texte) (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1991), 63. 384 LAURENCE PAUL HEMMING repeatedly "to show me the place in Thomas Aquinas where he says what 'esse' specifically means and what the proposition means that says 'Deus est suum esse'. I have to this day received no answer." 29 This phrase is from Aquinas's Summa Theologiae I, q. 3, a. 4: "whether essence and existence are the same in God." He responds, "Therefore God is his own existence, and not merely his own essence. " 30 Aquinas believes that the identity of the existence and the essence of God must be demonstrated. It is clear therefore that Heidegger regards Aquinas's position as inextricably determined in consequence of metaphysics, and therefore, ontotheology. What exactly is the character of this belonging? Already I have indicated how Heidegger articulates a number of the Scholastic determinations of esse, 'being' and ens, 'a being' and ens commune, 'being overall'. There is, however, a further determination requiring explication, esse commune. In the passage I have cited from the Zurcher Seminar there is a hint that Heidegger is well aware that Aquinas wished to avoid the later Scotist position of subsuming God as summum ens under the logical category of ens commune, when he says, "I believe that being can never be thought as the ground and essence of God." 31 There is here a deliberate play on the words "believe" and "think." Heidegger begins by saying that faith (der Glaube) and the thinking of Being (das Denken des Seins) have no need of each other. 32 The next sentences begin "I think ... " and "I believe .. .".In what follows it becomes clear that thinking points us away from determining the essence of God, believing points us towards that place where God appears within the dimension of being ("insofar as he meets with humanity"). Each mode of human 29 "lch habe einen mir wohlgesinnten Jesuiten gebeten, mir die Stellen bei Thomas von Aquin zu zeigen, wo gesagt sei, was 'esse' eigentlich bedeute und der Satz besage: Deus est suum esse. Ich habe bis heute noch keine Antwort" (Heidegger, Seminare, 436). 30 "Est igitur Deus suum esse, et non solum sua essentia." 31 "lch glaube, daB das Sein niemals als Grund und Wesen von Gott gedacht werden kann" (Heidegger, Seminare, 436). 32 What happens when faith is explained solely in terms of metaphysics, and is therefore determined by and out of the unfolding of the history of being, is explained in some depth by Heidegger in his Die Metaphysik als Geschichte des Seins, published in Nietzsche, 2:399-458. HEIDEGGER'S GOD 385 being (Dasein) determines us differently with regard to God. Thinking, then, points us in one direction with regard to God: thinking yields its own history as a coming to itself in both appropriating and pointing towards the overcoming of metaphysics. Believing points us towards the experience of God's revelation: to God as a being in the realm of being "insofar as he meets with humanity." Thinking cannot determine in advance (which means from out of the content and structure of thinking itself and what is given to thinking to think of) the God who will be met, who might appear "insofar as he does" in the realm of being. Each mode of being (thinking, believing) is held together by this Dasein, Heidegger. This holding together cannot be notig-a necessity, literally, "needy" or "wanting." So the separation of faith and thinking opens up a critique of the necessity of explaining God metaphysically. Thinking opens up a space in which theology as reflection on faith can clarify and correct its reflection. Above all, this space is not "founding," which means it does not determine the outcome of what is to be thought, only a how as a reflection on experience, on a content given from elsewhere than thought itself. 33 The hint then is that, for Heidegger, Aquinas was aware of the problem of subsuming God under the category of ens commune whilst still wishing to think of God as summum ens, and this problem is as much a problem for faith as it is for metaphysics. We have here, however, only a hint. What happens in the carrying through of this medieval problem is made explicit in the 1931 lecture course on division 0 of Aristotle's Metaphysics. Here Heidegger makes explicit the problem in its formulation, and shows both how Aquinas avoids the problem and how this avoidance results in an impasse and an indeterminacy. 33 Heidegger adopts this position as early as 1928 in the lecture Phiinomenologie und Theologie (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1928; English translation by James Hart and John Maraldo, "Phenomenology and Theology," in The Piety o(Thinking [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976]), where he envisages "ontology" as acting as a "corrective" to the ontic sciences, amongst which must be included Theology. Cf. p. 30 (trans., p. 19): "Die Ontologie fungiert demnach nur als ein Korrektiv des ontischen, und zwar vorchristlichen Gehaltes der theologischen Grundbegriffe. Hier bleibt aber zu beachten: diese Korrektion ist nicht begriindend"; "Here one must note this correction is not grounding?' (my translation). 386 LAURENCE PAUL HEMMING In the Middle Ages, the analogia entis which nowadays has sunk again to the level of a catchword played a role, not as a question of being but as a welcomed means of formulating a religious conviction in philosophical terms. The God of Christian belief, although the creator and preserver of t/le world, is altogether different and separate from it; but he is being [Seiende] in the highest sense, the summum ens; creatures infinitely different from him are nevertheless also being [seiend], ens finitum. How can ens infinitum and ens finitum both be named ens, both be thought in the same concept, "being"? Does the ens hold good only tequivoce or univoce, or even analogice? They rescued themselves from this dilemma with the help of analogy, which is not a solution but a formula. 34 There are two things to note. First, here in 1931 Heidegger was carrying out a distinction between the Seinsfrage and the God of Christian faith in exactly the same way as in the Zurcher Seminar in 1951. Second, the appeal to analogy in some sense safeguards faith as such in that the appeal to analogy is not truly a statement of metaphysics, it is merely "playing a role." It both represents and, as this representation, also forestalls determining the God of faith metaphysically, in which a purely univocal understanding of being, ens commune (das Seiende "allgemeine," uberhaupt) subsumes and determines God. How (for Heidegger at least) might Aquinas have achieved this? In other words, how does analogy stand with esse? By an appeal not to ens but to esse commune. To the Summa question "whether any created thing might be like God," Aquinas replies that there are numerous ways that one thing can be like another, and lists them. Similitude to God, however, is of a different order from similitude between things, and is similitude specifically and 34 "Im Mittelalter hat die analogia entis-die heute wieder als Schlagwort verkauft wird-eine Rolle gespielt, aber nicht als Seinsfrage, sondern als ein willkommenes Mittel dazu, eine Glaubensiiberzeugung mit philosophischen Ausdriicken zu formulieren. Der Gott des chrisdichen Glaubens, obzwar Schopfer und Erhalter der Welt, ist schlechthin von dieser verschieden und getrennt; er ist aber das im hochsten Sinne Seiende, das summum ens; seiend sind aber auch die von ihm unendlich verschiedenen Geschopfe, das ens finitum. Wie kann ens infinitum und ens finitum beides ens genannt, beides im selben Begriff 'Sein' begriffen werden? Gilt das ens nur requivoce oder univoce, oder eben analogice?Man hat sich aus der Schwierigkeit gerettet mit Hilfe der Analogie, die keine Losung ist, sondern eine Formel" (Martin Heidegger, Aristoteles: Metaphysik E> 1-3, Gesamtausgabe Band 33 [Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1981), 46; English translation by Walter Brogan and Peter Warnek,Aristotle's Metaphysics E> 1-3 [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995)). HEIDEGGER'S GOD 387 only in virtue of a thing's being. This kind of similitude is "only according to some sort of analogy, as existence is common to all [sicut ipsum esse est commune omnibus]. In this way all created beings are like God as the first and universal principle of all being. " 35 In this sense beings are in virtue of being-caused, and not beings but being-caused is in virtue of the being of God. Esse commune is therefore, when understood in relation to God, understood as esse analogice. In relation to things it is not their logical unity (ens commune) but their common being-caused. In his Commentary on the Divine Names (of Dionysius) Aquinas makes a number of distinctions concerning esse commune. First, esse commune is not a merely mental or logical construct; it really inheres in things. 36 Second, created beings depend on esse commune, but not God. Esse commune depends on God. In this sense we understood that beings are not grounded in God, but beings are grounded in being-caused, which is in consequence of God, thereby protecting God from dependency on beings, and separating beings from a formal or univocal dependence on God. Rudi te Velde notes that esse commune coincides with created being. The 'commune' is added in order to distinguish the being that all beings have in common from the divine being that is self-subsistent and therefore radically distinct from all other things. The reason for making this distinction is to exclude the pantheistic error which might arise from the thesis that God is "being" without any addition. 37 35 "sed secundum aliqualem analogiam, sicut ipsum esse est commune omnibus. Et hoc sunt a Deo, assimilantur ei inquantum sunt entia, ut primo et principio totius modo ilia esse" (Aquinas, STh I, q. 4, a. 3). 36 John Caputo, in treating this subject, appears to confuse the logical concept of ens commune with esse commune (Heidegger andAquinas [New York: Fordham, 1982]; see esp. p. 141, "Esse commune is a universal constructed by the mind in the light of actual beings"). Fran O'Rourke shows decisively from a multiplicity of Aquinas's texts that this is not the case: "it exists primarily within the multiplicity, not as an abstract unity but as a concrete perfection realised differently in the individual members of the many ... esse inhi:erens" (Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas [Leiden: E J Brill, 1992], 144£.). 37 Rudi te Velde, Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: E J Brill, 1995), 188f. Te Velde supplies an extended discussion of the problematic term "esse commune" in chapter 10 of this book. 388 LAURENCE PAUL HEMMING Third, although things participate in esse commune, God does not participate in esse commune but rather the reverse, esse commune is that way in which created things participate in God. Fran O'Rourke's extensive investigation into esse commune· and its dependence as a formulation on Dionysius concludes "It would appear evident that ... ipsum esse commune is identical with St. Thomas' notion of actus essendi, the intimate act of existing which is at the heart of every reality." 38 Earlier in the Aristotle lectures Heidegger had argued that analogy as a "formula" is also a "stringent aporia," which is no answer to the Seinsfrage but actually the mark of its not being asked at all, and that it represents an "impasse in which ancient philosophy, and along with it all subsequent philosophy right up to today, is enmeshed." 39 In this sense it is both a figure for metaphysics as a history, and a figure of Christianity's lack of need of metaphysics for faith. Is this the same as saying that with the notion of analogy Aquinas frees God from being, esse? To some extent at least, this question asks about the extent to which Aquinas's and Aristotle's understandings of analogy are the same. Heidegger pointed out elsewhere that the enquiry into causes is an enquiry primarily guided not by metaphysics but by faith, because faith dictates that God as causa prima is also creator of the world. 40 He concludes, "Thus prima philosophia is knowledge of the highest cause, of God as the creator-a train of thought which was completely alien to Aristotle in this form. " 41 38 O'Rourke, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas, l43f. His whole discussion may be found in chapter 6, "Dionysian Elements in Aquinas' Notion of Being." 39 "(die) Ausweglosigkeit, in der das antike Philosophieren und damit alles nachfolgende bis heute eingemauert ist" (Heidegger, Aristoteles, 46). 40 "Im hiichsten Sinne ist etwas erkannt, wenn ich auf die letzte Ursache zuriickgehe, auf die causa prima. Diese aber ist, wie durch den Glauben gesagt wird, Gott als Schiipfer der Welt" (Martin Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt, Endlichkeit, Einsamkeit, Gesamtausgabe Band 29/30 [Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1983], 71f.). 41 "Also ist die prima philosophia Erkenntnis der hiichsten Ursache, Gones als des Schiipfers-ein Gedankengang, der Aristoteles in dieser Form vollkommen fernlag" (ibid.). HEIDEGGER'S GOD 389 B) Beyond Being Jean-Luc Marion has continued to ask "does specµlative Christian theology as understood in its exemplars-and in this context I am of course thinking primarily of St. Thomas Aquinas-belong to metaphysics in the strict sense, or has it been a response to the specific conceptual demands of the Revelation which gave rise to it?" 42 With the publication of his Dieu sans l'etre he made his now renowned attack on St. Thomas, suggesting that Aquinas's denomination of God as ipsum esse is determined out of God as ens and so determined "before the doctrine of divine names, hence of analogy." 43 He concluded, "can one not hazard that, according to what Saint Thomas himself freely insinuates, the ens, related to 'God' as his first name, indeed could determine him as the ultimate-idol?" 44 This troublesome statement led him in the Preface to the English edition, God without Being, to say (without much explanation), "even when he thinks God as esse, Saint Thomas nevertheless does not chain God either to Being or to metaphysics. " 45 This is less of a retraction than it seems. No medieval metaphysician worth his salt would have chained God to being or metaphysics, which is not at all to say that he would not earnestly have sought to chain the being of things (and so metaphysics) to God. If esse commune is precisely that which in St. Thomas protects God from being chained to the finitude of creatures, it is also the figure of how creatures are formally dependent on God. In January 1995 42 "La theologie speculative chretienne, entendue clans ses figures exemplaires (et en ce lieu je songe evidemment d'abord saint Thomas d'Aquin) appartient-elle a la metaphysique prise au sens strict, ou a-t-elle repondu aux exigences conceptuelles propres de la Revelation qui l' a provoquee?" Uean-Luc Marion, "Metaphysique et Phenomenologie: Une releve pour la Theologie," Bulletin de Litterature Ecclesiastique 94, no. 3 [1993): 21f.). 41 "!'apprehension thomiste de DiXeu comme ipsum esse, done sa denomination a partir de I'ens intervient, clans l'ordre des raisons, avant que ne se constitue la doctrine des noms divins, done de l'analogie" (Marion, Dieu sans /'etre, 120). 44 "ne peur-on pas risquer que, selon ce que saint Thomas lui-meme se laisse aller a insinuer, l'ens pourrait bien, rapporte a 'Dieu' comme son premier nom, en fixer l'ultime-idole?" (ibid., 122). 45 Marion, God without Being, xxii. 390 LAURENCE PAUL HEMMING Marion retracted his attack on St. Thomas altogether. 46 Has Marion arrived in his retraction at the same place from where Heidegger began? How did he achieve this retraction? . Whereas Marion can say "if the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas could assimilate itself to an onto-theo-logy ... ", 47 Heidegger could not. For Heidegger there are not onto-theo-logies, only onto-theo-logy as that figure of the concealment of being which, while on the one hand it determines God in a particular direction, is yet on the other also the name for the impasse of metaphysics and the name of the history of being itself, when understood as metaphysics. For Heidegger the question concerning Aquinas is solely how what he says stands in relation to onto-theo-logy. What is revealed here is a fundamentally different perspective from Marion's. Heidegger is concerned to illustrate how the God of faith becomes subordinated to metaphysics, whilst admitting that the subordination has not been decisive for faith, at least in the case of Aquinas. Marion, however, is concerned to free God from a metaphysics that he has already accepted as decisive. Having so decisively freed Aquinas from metaphysics, he is unable to show how he genuinely relates to it, and so whether and how Aquinas's understanding belongs to the history of being. This places Marion in an unfortunate position as one who still wishes to appeal to the history of being as a critique of Nihilism. For, like so many "post-modern" theologians, he is thereby incapacitated from showing how the God of revelation and the world to whom God is revealed belong together. Based on his reading of Aquinas, Marion argues that the concept of analogy evades the force of esse commune and in fact works in the opposite direction to it. He concludes, "Analogy is scarcely the tangential univocity of esse commune, but on the contrary opens the space where all univocity of being is 46 "Thomas d'Aquin recuse done absolument le premier critere d'une onto-theo-logie en general: ('inscription de 'Dieu' dans la champ metaphysique unifie par l'etant, voire par un meme concept d'etant" Gean-Luc Marion, "Saint Thomas d'Aquin et l'onto-theo-logie," Revue Thomiste 95, no. 1 Uanvier-Mars 1995]: 45). 47 "Si la doctrine de Thomas d'Aquin pouvait s'assimiler aune onto-theologie ... "(ibid., 33; emphasis added). HEIDEGGER'S GOD 391 exploded. " 48 Despite earlier in his article having explained the Thomist revision of Dionysius's conception, he simply fails to show how esse commune and analogy work together precisely to provide the impasse that might free Aquinas's faith from his conceptuality. Marion's stress on the separation of esse commune and esse divinum in Aquinas means that he is driven towards an assertion that esse divinum is construed in an exclusively negative sense; this leads him to conclude his retraction by an appeal solely to God as "luminous darkness." Marion's critics have remained skeptical as to the extent to which he has really understood Aquinas. Brian Shanley makes the pertinent point "Marion's reading simply cannot be reconciled with Aquinas's position that certain terms can be predicated of God positively and substantially (though non-quidditatively) through analogy. " 49 The question is not decided in the separation of esse divinum and esse commune. In their being brought together analogice nothing is decided for metaphysics. How then should Heidegger's reading of Aquinas be understood? For Heidegger Aquinas's God is determined out of the historical unfolding of metaphysics but is not finally determined by metaphysics. If Heidegger demands to be shown what esse actually means in Aquinas, he is being ironical, because for Heidegger esse commune and esse analogice (what he refers to as analogia entis) 50 are already indeterminate at the point where Aquinas receives them and applies them as a solution to the problem of univocity in medieval metaphysics. The indeterminacy is not in the counterposition of God as ipsum esse subsistens and ens infinitum with ens finitum but in the fact that the analogical relationship of beings and God is already indeterminable. Esse is 48 "L'analogie ne gere pas l'univocite tangentielle de 1'esse commune, mais ouvre au contraire l'espace ou toute univocite d'etre doit exploser" (ibid., 44). 49 Brian J. Shanley, 0.P., "St. Thomas Aquinas, Onto-Theology and Marion," The Thomist 60 (1996): 623. so This phrase has the feeling of having always been a description of Aquinas's position. In fact Hans Urs von Balthasar attributes it exclusively to the twentieth-century German theologian Erich Pryzwara in 1932 and suggests that it has no prior history to him; see Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Barth: Darstellung und Deutung seiner Theologie (Koln: Hegner Verlag, 1951), chap. 4. 392 LAURENCE PAUL HEMMING indeterminate in advance of Aquinas, and Aquinas relies on this indeterminacy for the sake of faith. The irony is still more emphasized as a demand made of a Jesuit to explicate a Dominican's thinking, as this understanding of Aquinas is (ironically at least) achieved through the incontrovertibly metaphysical position of the Jesuit Suarez. 51 Of greater interest should be the question of why Aquinas appeals to the metaphysical conception of being, esse, in the first place. What understandiilg of being led the medievals to want to chain being to God? It is not possible to do anything more than sketch an answer here, an answer that has entirely to do with the intellection (intelligere, VOE ( v) of being. This is somewhat clearer if the dispute between Caputo and O'Rourke is recalled concerning the meaning of esse commune. While Caputo argues that it is purely an intellection, O'Rourke demonstrates that while it can be an intellection, it also must and does refer to the reality of beings; it is an "esse inhaerens." For Dionysius, the relation between knowing and God is clearly explicated in chapter 7 of De Divinis Nominibus. The question is how we approach God. Dionysius stresses that we do not know God in his nature (uaEwc;). He is not one of the things that are, he cannot be understood, words cannot contain him, and no name can lay hold of him. In this sense he "is" beyond being. Dionysius adds, "the most divine knowledge of God, that which comes through unknowing, is achieved in a union far beyond mind, when the mind turns away from all things, even from itself. " 52 I do not want to underestimate the force of Dionysius's notion of "beyond being" (unf:p navTa Ta OVTa, unEpoua(ac;). O'Rourke interprets Dionysius's use of the term "non-being" (ouK ovTwv) in a way guided by Maximus, "The interpretation of non-being as referring 51 I might be accused of simply reading too much into the text. That this is not so, however, is indicated by Heidegger's own comparison of Aquinas and Suarez in the 1929 lecture course published as volume 29/30 of the Gesamtausgabe. In§ 14 he says, "Thomas and medieval philosophy ... are important only to a lesser extent for the development of modern metaphysics ... direct influence ... was exercised by one theologian and philosopher ... the Spanish Jesuit Franz Suarez." 52 "Kat EaT!Y ii 0ElOTclTT] TOU ewu ii 81' y1vwCJKoµEYT] KaTcl u11Ep vouv £wa1v, OTa o Twv OYTWY 11avTwv i:TIE!TaKa[ fouTov (Dionysius, De Divinis Nominibus, 7 [PG 3:872]). HEIDEGGER'S GOD 393 to God and to formless matter is generally espoused by Dionysius's commentators and would appear to be correct." 53 This is confusing. When applied to God, non-being can be a figure for beyond-being, but not in the sense of non-being as formless matter. This is confirmed in the Mystica Theologia when Dionysius says, "[God as Cause] falls neither within the predicate of non-being nor of being. " 54 God is as unknowable because he does not exist, he exceeds existence. Aquinas concurs with this insofar as what is at issue is finite knowledge of God. He considers the objection that God is non-existent and beyond existence, "as Dionysius says." It follows from this that God exists as "above all that exists" and is in this sense alone non-existent. Hence it follows not that he cannot be known, but that he exceeds every kind of knowledge. 55 Still more importantly, to know and to be are the same, "everything is knowable according as it is actual. " 56 God is comprehensible absolutely, but only to any finite being in proportion to its capacity to know. God, therefore, as infinite alone knows himself. God is omniscient. The assertion that God is ipsum esse is in part a defense of his (metaphysical) attributes as summum ens and causa omnium. Dionysius, in contrast, seeks only to show that God is the cause of all that is, and has no concept of God as highest being. In this sense, Dionysius's position is less overtly in consequence of metaphysics than is Aquinas's. O'Rourke notes, "whereas for Dionysius it is a hindrance to our discovery of God that human knowledge is oriented towards finite beings, this for Aquinas is the very foundation of our natural disclosure of God. Through the notion of being, and via its analogous value, our certitude of his existence is existentially 53 O'Rourke, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas, 82. (Dionysius, Mystica Theo logia [PG 54 "oulit TO TWV OUK OVTWV, oulit Tl TWV OVTWV foTiv" 3:1040]). ss "(3) Sed Deus non existens, sed supra existentia, ut Dionysius umc;, that in the two meanings of oucr(a, "becoming present" and "being present," "being present" takes over and dominates so that "being present" becomes "that which always already underlies," later UTTOKE(µEvov and substantia as the under-lying (sub-stans), and therefore ground. Thus "grounding" becomes "being-caused." Substance as such then becomes the "being caused" of all and any given "being. " 100 All of this is in consequence of speaking, as the "speaking to myself' that knowing is. Western thinking names the relation to being of beings in a reversal, where the being-present of things takes over and masters their "how" of becoming-present in Myoc;, where the I-speaking that produces disappears in favor of the already-present of any given being in itself. This reversal determines an outcome for human being, and also for God. In this reversal the 'I' that 99 "der Entwurf