The Thomist 62 (1998): 499-517 REPRESENTATION AND AGENCY INTHE EUCHARIST GUY MANSINI, O.S.B. Saint MeinradSchool of Theology Saint Meinrad, Indiana I N SEVERALRECENT ARTICLES on how to understand the presbyteral ministerium within the Eucharist, Dennis Ferrara proposes to return us to a core doctrinal commitment of Catholic Eucharistic theology that he thinks compromised by bad arguments both for and against the ordination of women. 1 This core commitment is that the realization of the sacramental presence of the true body and blood of the Lord is first of all and principally the work of the Lord himself. Whatever we want to say about whatever it is that the ordained priest does or effects in the celebration of the Eucharist, therefore, is to be governed by this principle, which makes of the priest a strictly instrumental agent of the realization of the true body and blood. Ferrara finds, however, that the standard symbolic or "iconic" argument against the ordination of women (as well as some rejoinders to it) in fact obscures the primacy of the agency of Christ. In sorting out questions of agency and representation, agency and its signification, Ferrara furthermore proposes that we be guided by a strict attention to the visible rite of the Eucharist. Whatever we want to say about the priest's representative function within the Eucharist, about who and whose agency is 1 I will deal principally with his "Representation or Self-Effacement? The Axiom In Persona Christiin St. Thomas and the Magisterium," TheologicalStudies55(1994): 195-224 (hereafter RSE); and "In Persona Christi: Towards a Second Naivete," TheologicalStudies 57(1996): 65-88 (hereafter SN). But see also his "Reply to Sara Butler," TheologicalStudies 56 (1995): 81-91; and "In Persona Christi: Representation of Christ or Servant of Christ's Presence?" CTSA Proceedings50 (1995): 138-45. 499 500 GUY MANSINI, O.S.B. signified, and how and in what manner it is signified, must be supported by the rite as actually celebrated. In all of this, moreover, Ferrara thinks himself to be recovering St. Thomas's understanding of what it means-and what it does not mean-to say that the priest consecrates the elements at Mass in persona Christi. It is of course difficult to take exception to a concern for the primacy of Christ's agency and the priority of the rite as evidence for what we say about sacramental signification. And it is almost just as difficult (for some of us) to resist an appeal to St. Thomas. Unfortunately, Ferrara's development of his position, especially in "Second Naivete," compromises the very things he wants to make good about Christ's agency and the priority of the rite. Moreover, his reading of St. Thomas cannot be sustained. In what follows, I first present Ferrara's position. Second, I argue that, when pressed, his position paradoxically leads him where he does not want to go: it obscures the agency of both the principal and instrumental agent, Christ and the priest, and offers a construction little consonant with the immediate signification of the visible rite. Third, I raise the question of his reading of St. Thomas. 2 I. FERRARA'S POSITION In the article "Representation or Self-Effacement," Ferrara says he will propose a wholly nonrepresentational view of the priest. 3 The priest is indeed an instrument of Christ, and rendered such by the reception of the character that ordination imparts; however, instruments do not have to be representations of the principal agent using them. 2 See also the criticism of Sara Butler," A Response to Dennis M. Ferrara," Theological Studies 56 (1995): 61-80; and "In Persona Christi," CTSA Proceedings 50 (1995): 146-155. Her rebuttal of Ferrara's charge that the symbolic argument against the ordination of women remains covertly an appeal to the natural subordination of women is important. As to the differences between Ferrara and Butler on the argument from tradition, Ferrara's remarks on the texts in question, though arguably just, are also beside the point that Butler is making. 3 RSE, 196. REPRESENTATION AND AGENCY 501 Formal to Ferrara's argument is an appeal to St. Thomas according to which there need be no likeness between instrumental and principal agent. 4 On the contrary, the minister's own "form" is indifferent to his instrumentality. The instrumental power of the priest, moreover, is something invisible, residing in his soul. 5 It therefore follows that whatever is visible and sensible about the priest is indifferent to the ministerial instrumentality effected by orders. 6 Even more, since the form of the instrument is immaterial to its functioning as instrument, St. Thomas's position "excludes in principle any representation of Christ in the sacramental minister. " 7 Nor does the assertion that the priest acts in persona Christi argue the contrary, according to Ferrara. In its "technical sense," the phrase has an "apophatic" sense relative to the minister and means that Christ alone is signified as speaking or acting. 8 Further, since this signification is accomplished by word alone, by pronouncing the forma sacramenti of the Eucharist, it requires nothing more in the priest (given his having been made an instrument by ordination) than the ability to quote. 9 To act in the person of Christ means not the representation of Christ, therefore, but on the contrary the priest's self-effacement. 10 If to act in persona Christi means to act in such a way that only the word and act of Christ is signified, which happens through the quotation of the word alone, the priest's maleness is evidently irrelevant. In a footnote, Ferrara distances himself not only from the view that women can be priests because they can image and represent Christ but also from the view that a woman can be a priest because the priest's representation of Christ is grounded on a prior representation of the Church-he acts in persona Christi 4 Ibid., 201. See especially STh III, q. 64, a. 5; and STh suppl., q. 19, a.4, ad 1. 5 RSE, 204; SN, 68-69. 6 RSE, 213-14. 7 Ibid., 202. 8 Ibid., 212; see also 206. 9 Ibid., 211. 10 Ibid., 212. 502 GUY MANSINI, O.S.B. because he first acts in persona Ecclesiae. 11 On the contrary, for Ferrara the priest is not a representation of anything at all, of either Christ or the Church. But, he continues, if the priest is not a representation, this does not mean he is not a representative. 12 He is an ambassador, a representative speaking the word of Christ. The distinction Ferrara is drawing is plain enough. To say that Xis representative of Y may mean may mean that Xis a good example ofY: this oak is a good example of the oaks you will find in this forest; the particular oak will look a lot like the other oaks; it will share many properties with them. But if X is a representative of Y, we will fill the blanks with persons: George is a representative of Bill because George is charged to speak or act for Bill. Of course, George might also be representative of members of his family, and so, looking at George, you will see some of the same features you would if you looked at Bill, his brother (e.g., all the brothers are tall). Here, in some measure, George is a representation of Bill. And whether he is a representative or a representation of Bill, we will say that he "represents" Bill. But as a representative, George rather makes a representation for or on behalf of Bill, and is not himself a representation of Bill. He makes a representation on Bill's behalf by speaking Bill's mind or conveying his intention, or pleading for him. The priest, Ferrara wants to say, makes a representation for Christ, and is his representative, but is by no means his representation. The representation he makes is to speak the words of Christ that he quotes within the institution narrative. In the article "Second Naivete," Ferrara speaks of the priest as also a representative of the Church, and grounds his being a representative of Christ on that fact. But again, the priest is not a representation of the Church. He is a representative of the Church as speaking her word of faith, because sacramental acts are first of all acts of the believing Church. 13 11 Ibid., 196 n. 3. 12 Ibid., 215. 13 SN, 71. REPRESENTATION AND AGENCY 503 Why this development of the second article? Ferrara says he wishes to allay the impression that the priest is "hanging in midair between Christ and the Church." 14 We might say: the priest, even as the pure and nonrepresentational instrument the first article has made of him, is not distinct from the Church as standing over against her in the celebration of the Eucharist. 15 The only thing standing over against the Church is Christ. The second article, therefore, undertakes to insert the priest firmly within the Church, not just in the sense that the priest is himself of course a believer, but in his ministerial signifying function, even as speaking the words of institution. And indeed this seems to be required by the nonrepresentational line Ferrara embraces in the first article, for if the priest were between Christ and the Church, then to that extent it would be possible to think of him as representing Christ precisely in Christ's own distinctness from the Church. The second article accomplishes this placement of the priest by observing that the sacraments are first of all acts of the Church. 16 Further, they are acts of the Church in that the Holy Spirit, the principle of the union between Head and members, is the agent of the sacramental action. 17 However, because the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ and as such the basis of the union of Christ and the Church, 18 the Eucharistic word is not only a word of the Church but also becomes a word of Christ, spoken in persona Christi, spoken by the priest as representative of Christ. This occurs in that the Spirit transforms the priestly word of the Church into the word of Christ. This bears quoting at length. In the midst of the ecclesial proclamation [of the Eucharistic Prayer], that which is recalled out of the past becomes actual in the present: the living word 14 Ibid., 70. 15 I mean here to recall Pastores Dabo Vobis 16: "Quatenus repraesentat Christum Caput, Pastorem et Sponsum Ecclesiae, sacerdos non tantum in Ecclesia, sed etiam erga Ecclesiam ponitur." The priest occupies a place coram &clesia through his ministerium, "quod non nisi signum et continuatio sacramentalis et visibilis est Ipsius Christi, qui coram Ecclesia et mundo unus auctor et origo est Salutis." 16 SN, 70-72. 17 Ibid., 77-79. 18 Ibid., 7 6. 504 GUY MANSINI, O.S.B. of Christ supervenes upon the priestly anamnesis to change the elements into his body and blood. This Christ does by the agency of his sovereign Spirit, the fire from heaven that transforms the gifts, as Eastern theology insists, an agency exercised by the Spirit not "from below," as anima Ecclesiae,but "from above," as sent by the heavenly Christ from the Father of Lights, for, like the creation of the world, it is a strictly divine act. And in this supervening word of Christ, this descending fire of the Spirit, lies the true meaning and the true mysteriousness of in persona Christi, for in virtue of this divine fire, the priestly word of the Church is transformed and sacramentally identified with the word of Christ. 19 Evidently, speaking anamnestically ("On the night before he died ... "), the priest speaks in the person of the Church, with the faith of the Church. Because of this anamnestic frame, the words of consecration remain a word of the Church. 20 While this seems to mean that the priest acts in persona Christi because he acts in persona Ecclesiae, Ferrara wishes to avoid this implication for the Eucharistic word. He seems to grant the implication for the sacraments generally, 21 but wishes to deny it for the Eucharist. He maintains that, in the Eucharist, to speak in the one person is complementary, and not opposed, to speaking in the other, 22 and he affirms the magisterial teaching that the priest celebrates the Eucharist in the person of the Church because he first celebrates it in the person of Christ. 23 It is the activity of the Spirit of Christ which ensures this priority. Finally, as to the texts of St. Thomas that seem unmistakably "representational," and that seem to make of the priest a representation of Christ as Head and Spouse of the Church, Ferrara undertakes already in the first article to deny of them any 19 Ibid., 8 6. 20 Ibid., 83: "That the priest consecrates in persona Christi pertains solely to his recital of the words of Christ. It does not pertain to the anamnestic form in which Christ's words are recited. But it is precisely this anamnestic form which makes of the eucharistic recital the act of the Church's faith." · 21 Ibid., 79, 82. 22 Ibid., 81. 23 Ibid., 82: "the priest, as the magisterial texts ... state, does celebrate the Eucharist as representative of the Church (in persona Ecclesiae) only because he first celebrates it as representative and minister of Christ (in persona Christi)." REPRESENTATION AND AGENCY 505 gender-specific symbolic significance for the Eucharist. 24 In the first place, he notes that nuptial imagery does not enter expressly into the form of the Eucharist, or into the sacramentum tantum; 25 there is therefore no need in the Eucharist of such a symbolic resonance as provided by a male priest. Second, the hierarchical and pastoral function of the priest, apropos of which some of these texts appear, is subordinate to his sacramental function, and not vice versa. 26 Fitness for pastoral ministry, in the sense of acts bearing on the corpus Christi mysticum, should be determined solely by the requirements for discharging sacramental acts bearing on the corpus Christi verum, and not the other way round. Since males are not required for the latter, neither are they for the former. II. WORDS AND SPEAKERS, ACTIONS AND AGENTS While he intends to maintain and indeed bring to the fore the agency of Christ in the Eucharist, Ferrara in fact obscures it because of a confusion about the consecratory word and who speaks it. This is of course highly paradoxical in view of his emphasis in the first article on the fact that the priest does nothing except quote Christ. However, in order to avoid the possibility that the priest may be taken to represent Christ precisely in His distinction from the Church, Ferrara is led to attribute this word to the Church as well. But it is this very attribution, such that the consecratory word is also said to be spoken in persona Ecclesiae, that both is refractory to the plain sense of the. quotational form of the consecration that Ferrara 24 STh III, q. 8, a. 6 (prelates and as well those who take Christ's place by preaching and by binding or loosing are called heads); SI'h III, q. 65, a. 1 (orders generally are said to be for ruling); IV Sent., d. 8, q. 2, a. 3, ad 9 (the priest, in express distinction from the Eucharistic word, is said to play to role of Christ); IV Sent., d. 24, q. 3, a. 2, qcla. 1, ad 3 (every minister is in some way a type of Christ, and the bishop especially is said to be sponsus &:clesiae);In I ad Tim., c. 3, lect. 1, n. 96 (presbyters and bishops [seen. 87] are to be the husband of one wife "propter repraesentationem sacramenti, quia sponsus ecclesiae est Christus"). 25 RSE, 214; SN, 69-70. 26 RSE, 219, appealing to the well-known texts on binding and loosing.as the secondary act of the priest. 506 GUY MANSINI, O.S.B. himself emphasizes and obscures the agency of both Christ and the priest. The way Ferrara attributes the consecratory word to the Church in "Second Naivete" presents a number of contradictions. We start off unexceptionally enough: Christ and the Church are "other" but "inseparable"; 27 the Bride is always united to her Spouse and the Spirit is the bond of their union; 28 the Head works through the Body. 29 Beyond this we are warned of the danger of a "formally 'ecdesial' view" that "threatens the uniqueness of the Eucharist" as differing not only in degree but in kind from the other sacraments. 30 How then can one say that the consecratory word is spoken in persona Ecclesiae? "In the foundational act of consecration ... the priest does not speak 'in the person of the Church' ... as an active subject distinct from Christ, but in the very person of Christ." 31 The priest is therefore a passive subject, indistinct from Christ. Will this not preserve the uniqueness of the Eucharist? Again, "the consecrating word of Christ is uttered through and in the Church"; it belongs to the Church; it "is also the word of the Church, indeed its supreme word. "32 To say that it is a priestly but not an ecdesial word would deny that the priesthood is the Church's priesthood. 33 After all, the consecration is framed by the anamnesis of the Eucharistic Prayer, spoken for and by the Church, in the faith of the Church. 34 Further, if we say that the priest "utters the consecratory words" not only in persona Christi but also in persona Ecclesiae, these must be taken as "complementary rather than opposed assertions. " 35 All of this is undertaken in order to avoid the consequence of agreeing with John Paul II in Pastores Dabo Vobis, for did we not affirm that the consecratory word is SN, 76. Ibid., 77. 29 Ibid., 79. 30 Ibid., 80. 31 Ibid., 82. 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid., 82-83. 34 Ibid., 83. 35 Ibid., 81. 27 28 REPRESENTATION AND AGENCY 507 spoken in persona Ecclesiae, there is the danger we would so identify the priest with Christ "that he faces the Church as Christ does, as Head of the Body." 36 And that would mean the priest is a representation of Christ, and that might mean we cannot ordain women. We will examine more closely three of Ferrara's assertions: the invocation of complementarity ("complementary assertions"); the idea of a speaking subject, the Church, that is at once indistinct from another subject, Christ, and passive; last, the appeal to instrumentality (Christ speaks the word through the Church). First, complementarity. Truly, it is not contradictory to assert that "the Church says X" and then again to assert that "Christ says X," and this is so whatever X is. But it may be that the Church and Christ contradict one another, and this depends very much on what they are saying. Christ and the Church might be said to speak the same word, as for instance in the Mass both Christ and the Church (especially the present congregation), the whole Christ, offers itself, the whole Christ, to the Father. However, this is not how the consecratory word can be understood. The consecratory word is "This is my body." But the people do not say "this is my body," for the very good reason that the bread does not become their body, but Christ's (and it is rather that they become the Body, sacramentally, at communion). It cannot be that it is "complementary" to say the consecratory word is spoken in both persons. It is simply false. Next, there is the idea of a passive speaker or subject indistinct from another speaker or subject. As for the indistinction: as already said, two speakers can speak the same thing, depending on what they are saying. Once again, however, the deictic "my" in the consecratory word prevents this here. What is new at this point is the idea of passivity, the idea of a passive speaking, that is, the idea of a passive acting. This, if not straightforwardly contradictory, leads to the idea of instrumentality. Therefore, what Ferrara envisages is a situation of one word, two speakers, where the speakers are related as principal and instrumental speaker. Even where Christ and the Church are 36 Ibid., 80; see note 15, above. 508 GlN MANSINI, O.S.B. offering the sacrifice, moreover, we might think that this is a better way to describe things. So, Christ speaks through the Church, and the word of consecration is the speaking of both, just as in the action of making the bed, there is one action of both carpenter and saw, not in the way two men pull on the same rope, but in that the saw is moved by the carpenter. But this will not do either, for, while speaking may be an action, words are not. The consecratory word is not the word of the Church, once again for the simple reason that the Church does not say that "this" is her body. That is the point, one would think, of drawing attention to the fact that the priest is quoting. The one who quotes, though he may agree with the statement quoted (part of the point of saying that the priest quotes significative and not just recitative), 37 indicates that it is not his word, the one who quotes, but another's, the quoted person's. Nor is the speaker's word the instrument of the one quoted. The speaker is the instrument-his voice, the speaker intending to quote and signifying that he is quoting. My word might be said to be an instrument of another's when I explain another's word; a commentary on a text, a commentarial word, might be called an instrument of the word of the author of the text. But the consecratory word is nothing like that. It is not the priest's word, nor the Church's word; it is Christ's word. That it is not the priest's word, which Ferrara seems to want to say in his first article, means that it is not the Church's word, either, though that is what he does want to say in the second article. And this is true because of the order of signification: the priest's quotation signifies that it is the word only of the one he is quoting, Christ. 38 The attribution to the Church, moreover, is an easy enough, though mistaken, slide from the attribution of a quotation to the Church to the attribution of what is quoted to the Church. Now, to make it the Church's word is to make problematic the agencies involved. So that the priest cannot appear as signifying the distinction of Christ from the Church, Ferrara holds that the 37 STh III, q. 78, a. 5. 38 This, moreover, is the "technical sense" of speaking in personaChristi in the Eucharistic context picked out by Bernard Dominique Marliangeas, Cles pour une tMologie du ministere: In persona Christi, In persona &clesiae (Paris: Beauchesne, 1978), 98-99. REPRESENTATION AND AGENCY 509 consecratory word is "also" the word of the Church. In fact, the persona of the Church would seem to be first in the field as a speaker, from the beginning of the Eucharistic Prayer. Ferrara thus finds himself in the position of having to explain how the word of the Church becomes the word of Christ. To this newly invented problem, the solution is a new and unwonted invocation of an agency bearing on the word of the Church. Just so, "the priestly word of the Church" (the words of consecration) is "transformed" by the fire of the Holy Spirit to become the word of Christ. 39 There is first a word and so an action of the Church speaking through her representative, the priest. Second, Christ sends the Holy Spirit onto this word of the Church to make it his word. Third, this word of Christ effects the transformation of the elements. How are we to think that Christ through the Holy Spirit makes a word that is not his own into his own? One person can make the word of another his own by repeating ("Yes, I think that Xis Y too") or otherwise signifying that he adopts the word as his own. But there is nothing like that in the Mass. The word is already signified as Christ's: it is a quoted word. What agency is signified bears on the elements, not on the words. The Holy Spirit is invoked indeed-but to transform the elements, not the words of the priest. On the contrary, St. Thomas's point in saying that the priest speaks in persona Christi is that since it is the real body and blood of Christ, Christ himself, that is made present on the altar, the principal agent of this making present is Christ; and for this reason, the instrument, the priest, speaks purely as Christ's representative, and not in his own person. 40 Speaking purely as a representative, he also perforce represents Christ precisely in distinction from the Church. Here, indeed, the word is the word of Christ in a simple and straightforward manner: the priest is quoting Christ. And since it is Christ's word, and not the Church's word, the priest speaks in the person of Christ, and not in that of the Church. 39 SN, 86. 40 STh III, q. 78, aa. 1 and 4. 510 GUY MANSINI, O.S.B. As the agency of Christ, so that of the priest is obfuscated by Ferrara. This agency is by way of a word, by way of quoting, but it is more than the proffering of an ordinary declarative word: it effects something. It is not just a matter of the ability to speak, of the ability to manifest the real, or even to quote. Anybody can quote; but only the priest can quote and (instrumentally) effect now at the celebration what first was effected at the Last Supper. 41 Two things follow from Ferrara's position. First, he cannot really make good why the character of orders is required to speak the confecting words. For St. Thomas, priestly character is required-it is known to exist in the first place-because the priest does something not every baptized person can do, namely, confect the Eucharist. But for Ferrara, all the priest does is produce a sort of word-material that it is the part of the Holy Spirit to consecrate and so make effective. The priestly doing is collapsed into a mere speaking. Furthermore, if the word of the priest is also and necessarily a word of the Church, it should follow that the Church can remove a priest's sacramental power, just as she can withdraw his mandate to preach in her name. But she cannot. The distinction between potestas ordinis and potestas jurisdictionis, maligned or misused as it may be, recovers here its point. 42 III. FERRARA'S READING OF ST. THOMAS Ferrara's appeal to St. Thomas is in two steps: first, an argument about instrumentality, and second, an argument from the form of the Eucharist. The argument bearing on instrumentality proceeds as follows. Generally, agents act so as to produce a likeness of themselves. But we must distinguish principal and instrumental causes. In STh III, q. 64, a. 5, St. Thomas tells us that an instrument does not act in accordance with its own form, but by the power of the 41 STh III, q. 82, a. 1 and ad 1. This is the other part of the point of saying that the priest says the words not just recitativebut also significative;see Sara Butler, "Response to Ferrara," 70-73. 42 See STh III, q. 82, a. 7, ad 3; and a. 8, ad 2. Ferrara does see this implication and denies it (SN, 87), but his denial does not refute the logic of his position. REPRESENTATION AND AGENCY 511 principal agent. Therefore, as the reply to first objection has it, a sacrament likens its recipient not to the instrument, but to Christ, the principal agent. Congruently with this, the Sentences commentary, whose material reappears in STh suppl., q. 19, a. 4, ad 1, tells us that just as there is no requirement of similarity of form between an instrument and its effect, so there is no such requirement between the instrument and the principal agent. Whence Ferrara concludes that St. Thomas excludes similarity between the priest, an instrumental cause, and Christ the principal agent of the Eucharist: the priest cannot be a representation of Christ. This conclusion is stronger than warranted: strictly, one can conclude only that there need be no similarity of form, not that there cannot be. The modesty of this conclusion is important. In a second step, Ferrara observes that St. Thomas says that the only thing the priest does in the confection of the Eucharist is to quote the words of Christ (STh III, q. 78, a. 1). There is nothing else that the priest does or may do that is relevant to the confection of the Eucharist and upon which some argument for representation (in addition to being a representative) might be built. Moreover, according to Ferrara it is in the Eucharist that we find St. Thomas's "technical" and "theoretical" sense of the instrument-minister's action in persona Christi. 43 Those texts in a Eucharistic context that relate acting in the person of Christ to being a representation of Christ are nontheoretical and ad hoc remnants of an earlier and uncritical style of symbolic theology (e.g., St. Bonaventure). Moreover, when texts that speak of pastoral power make the same connection, it is to be remembered that the theology of orders finds its formal essence in its relation to the corpus verum, not to the corpus mysticum. Therefore, neither are those texts coercive. Ferrara's reading requires certain unwarranted moves. First, he claims that St. Thomas uses the locution in persona Christi in technical and nontechnical senses back to back, as it were. In STh III, q. 82, a. 1, St. Thomas refers back to q. 78, a. 1, and argues from this "technical" sense of the phrase. But in the reply to the 43 RSE, 212; see Marliangeas, Cles pour une theologie, 97, 98-99. 512 GUY MANSINI, O.S.B. fourth objection, in the same article, where the bishop is said to exercise pastoral power in the person of Christ, we have an ad hoc sense of the phrase that Ferrara dismisses as nontechnical. Second, he ignores the limited context for which St. Thomas invokes the principle that an instrument need have no similarity of form with the principal agent. The issue of STh III, q. 64, a. 5, is whether wicked ministers can confer the sacraments, and the "form" in question, the likeness at stake between instrument and effect, is therefore that of habitual grace (see also STh suppl., q. 19, a. 5). Just so, in STh suppl., q. 19, a. 4, the issue is whether the personal sanctification of the instrument-minister is formal to the use of the keys, and the answer is that it is not. It is quite a stretch to argue from the nonnecessity of this kind of likeness to the irrelevance of any likeness whatsoever and in all cases between instrument and effect. In fact, St. Thomas's "technical" consideration of sacramental agency calls for just such a likeness in the visible, properly sacramental order. The argument is quite simple. In STh III, q. 62, a. 1, St. Thomas asks the foundational question whether sacraments are causes of grace. The first objection argues that, since the sacrament is a sign of grace, it cannot also be a cause of grace. The reply is as follows. A principal cause cannot properly be called a sign of an effect, though hidden, even if this cause itself be sensible and manifest. But an instrumental cause, if it be manifest, can be said to be a sign of a hidden effect, for the reason that it is not only a cause, but in some way also an effect, insofar as it is moved by the principal agent. And according to this reasoning, the sacraments of the new law are causes and signs. Thus, for instance, baptismal washing, an instrumental cause of the cleansing of the soul, is also a sign of that cleansing, insofar as it is moved by God. 44 If it were true, as Ferrara thinks, that instruments cannot represent or signify the effect they are ordered to producing, then St. Thomas's sacramental theology would be at odds with itself at a quite fundamental level. For that is 44 See STh III, q. 66, a. 10. REPRESENTATION AND AGENCY 513 precisely what a sacrament is: an instrument that is a sign of its effect; a sign that is an instrument. Ferrara is well aware, of course, of such texts that assert a likeness between the sacrament and the effect of the sacrament. 45 He does not gainsay the similitude of sacrament to sacramental effect, yet he circumscribes it quite carefully: the likeness is absolutely not any likeness to the mysteries of Christ. Rather, appealing to STh III, q. 65, a. 1, where the number of the sacraments is made intelligible by an argument ex convenientia from human life both individual and in community, we read that, as natural signs, the sacraments "represent the basic structure and dynamism of human existence." This is true enough, as far as it goes. But the exclusion of the relation of the natural symbolism to the mysteries of Christ is false. Speaking of the matter of baptism in STh III, q. 66, a. 3, St. Thomas argues its suitability both as signifying the effect of the sacrament, as spiritual cleansing, and as signifying the mystery of Christ's death and burial, by which we are saved. For Ferrara these two things must be really distinct, the second being a hold-over of precritical, pretheoretic mystical and symbolic theology. Of course it is nothing of the sort. Spiritual cleansing is conformation to the death of Christ, and dying with Christ in baptism is the dying to sin that is spiritual cleansing, 46 and the faith required for the sacrament of faith is faith in the saving passion and death of Christ. 47 To drive a wedge between the effect of the sacrament and its signification of conformity to Christ's death is to see St. Thomas taking his leave not only from the entire patristic tradition but from St. Paul himself. 48 But why the wedge? Why such a huge effort to separate St. Thomas not only from his tradition but from his own text? Only so that there can be no argument contrary to the ordination of women on the basis of a See his "Reply to Sara Butler," 86. See STh III, q. 66, a. 12: "Passio Christi operatur quidem in baptismo aquae per quandam figuralem repraesentationem"; q. 69, a. l; and the Lectura on Romans, c. 6, lect. 2, nos. 473-74. 47 STh III, q. 61, a. 4. 48 I am grateful to Professor Lawrence Welch of Kenrick Seminary for this point. 45 46 514 GUY MANSINI, O.S.B. relation of natural resemblance between the ministerial priest and the unique High Priest. If it is kept well in mind that sacramental instruments are likenesses of their effect, St. Thomas's next premise is easily anticipated: the priest is an instrumental cause of consecration. He is rendered an instrument in virtue of the character, the instrumental power, imparted at ordination, as we discover in STh III, q. 63, a. 1, and q. 64, a. 1. The priest's instrumentality in the consecration of the Eucharist is explicitly affirmed at STh III, q. 82, a. 1, ad 1. The instrumental cause that the priest is, however, is a manifest and visible one, and so he can also be a sign of the hidden effect, which in the case of the Eucharist is the true body and blood, that is, Christ, insofar as he is moved by the principal agent. Lastly, it is to be noted that the "effect" of this exercise of agency is not distinct from the principal agent, Christ. Therefore, in the Eucharist, the priest can be a sign-a representation-of Christ. The foregoing argument concludes with a possibility; it induces an expectation that St. Thomas will affirm the symbolic, iconic, representational function of the priest in the Eucharist. The expectation is realized in STh III, q. 83, a. 1, ad 3: the priest bears the image of Christ in whose person and power he pronounces the words to consecrate, as is evident from what was said above. And so in a certain way the priest and the victim are the same. 49 That is, the minister is the same as the victim of the sacrifice, Christ, in that he is a representation of Christ. The reference to "what was said above" is to STh III, q. 83, a. 1 (and a. 3), which itself refers us back to STh III, q. 78, a. 1, on the form of the Eucharist, where Ferrara finds the "technical sense" to be displayed. In other words, there is no gap, not the slightest 49 "Sacerdos gerit imaginem Christi, in cuius persona et virtute verba pronuntiat ad consecrandum, ut ex supra dictis patet. Et ita quodammodo idem est sacerdos et hostia." This is even stronger in IV Sent. d. 8, q. 2, a. 3, ad 9, where there is a comparison of the word and the priest as instruments: "quiasacerdos est similior principali agenti quam verbum, quia gerit eius figuram, ideo, simpliciter loquendo, sua virtus instrumentalis est m:;iior et dignior, uncle etiam permanet." REPRESENTATION AND AGENCY 515 crevice, between the representational and the representative senses of in persona Christi. The above text from STh III, q. 83, moreover, is not the only one where it is either stated or implied that the priest is a representation of Christ. In the Lectura on 1 Timothy, commenting on the requirement that an episcopus be the husband of one wife (3:2), we read: 50 But what is the reason of this institution? ... I answer that it must be said that the reason is not because of incontinence alone, but on account of the representation of the sacrament [propter repraesentationem sacramenti; cf. the magnum sacramentum of Eph 5:32], because the spouse of the Church is Christ, and the Church is one, as it says in the fifth chapter of the Song of Songs, "my dove is only one." Furthermore, St. Thomas explains earlier that "presbyters are to be understood with bishops" here, since the names, though not the realities, are interchangeable. 51 It is hard not to see in this text a recognition of an "iconic" value to priests and bishops that includes more than the quite narrow representative function, manifested in quotation alone, that Ferrara recognizes. There are more "Bonaventuran" patches in St. Thomas, it would seem, than STh III, q. 83, a. 1.52 Is not this witness from the Lectura on 1 Timothy a "hierarchical-regitive" text, however? Indeed it is. But then it is to be observed, first, that however one wishes to relate the munera of sanctifying-sacramental ministry and hierarchical pastoral rule, whether giving primacy to the first or to the second, there is no difference between them as to the matter of representation: for St. Thomas, sacramental action in persona Christi not only does not exclude, but rather calls for, the priest as a representation of Christ, and so there is no warrant for 50 C. 3, lect. 1, no. 96. 51 C. 3, lect. 1, no. 87. The same holds good for deacons; they are to be husbands of one wife on account of the significatio sacramenti (c. 3, lect. 3, no. 120). 52 On the basis of this text from the Lectura on 1 Timothy, one easily erects the same argument against the ordination of women as St. Bonaventure offers, IV Sent. d. 25, a. 2, q. 2. For a contemporary presentation of the argument, see Sara Butler,, "The Priest as Sacrament of Christ the Bridegroom," Worship 66 (1992), 498-517. 516 GUY MANSINI, O.S.B. dismissing the same implication of the hierarchical-regitive texts because they do so as well. Second, and more importantly, Ferrara evidences a sort of suspicion of hierarchy that hardly seems theological. So he asks rhetorically in the first article: "Is the priest first and foremost the hierarch, among whose ruling powers the sacramental power is included? Or is the priest first of all and formally Christ's servant and instrument whose hierarchical authority is grounded in and normed by this Christ-derived and Christ-directed service?" 53 Let the priest be first and foremost the instrument of Christ in the Eucharist; but it is hard to understand the fateful consequence Ferrara seems so evidently to feel-unless "ruler" and "hierarch" are being taken in some extra-ecclesial sense according to which they are synonyms for "oppressor" and "tyrant." Of course, when all is said and done, it might be the case that while St. Thomas affirms a representationalist view of the priest in the Eucharist, Ferrara is right about the devastating and harmful consequences of such a view. Ferrara thinks assigning such a role to the priest is "out of place" in the Eucharist, "since, both symbolically and functionally, it interposes the priest between Christ and that Church which is, after all, Christ's and not the clergy's bride." 54 But then, it must be added that St. Thomas does not himself think these deleterious consequences follow. He does not think representations function the way Ferrara does. In STh III, q. 25, a. 3, taking up the question of whether images are to be adored latreutically, he writes: there is a twofold motion of the soul to an image: one to the image itself according as it is a certain thing; in another way, to the image insofar as it is the image of another .... the second motion, which is unto the image insofar as it is an image is one and the same with the motion which is unto the thing [of which it is the image]. 55 53 RSE, 219. SN, 81. "Duplex est motus animae in imaginem: unus quidem in imaginem ipsam secundum quod est res quaedam; alio modo, in imaginem inquantum est imago alterius. Et inter hos motus est haec differentia, quia primus motus, quo quis movetur in imaginem prout est res quaedam, est alius a motu qui est in rem: secundus autem motus, est in imaginem inquantum est imago, est unus et idem cum illo qui est in rem." 54 55 REPRESENTATION AND AGENCY 517 Reverencing the image of Christ as an image of Christ is "one and the same" with reverencing Christ. 56 This holds for icons, pictures, crosses, and crucifixes (see a. 4 ). It is hard to see why it does not hold for the priest when, moved by the Principal Agent, he bears the image of Christ (gerit imaginem Christi) in the Eucharist, unless one takes "representation" in a typically Cartesian and modern sense, one that has nothing to do with the ancient and medieval context. 57 IV. CONCLUSION Ferrara pretends to show us a rigorous but hitherto unnoticed implication of St. Thomas's sacramental theology according to which there can be no representational function of the priest relative to Christ, and therefore no argument for the exclusion of women from orders on that basis. It is to be feared that he has rather kidnapped than read the text. Contrary to Ferrara, instrumental causes can be representations of their effect, and indeed must be if a sacrament is to be a sacrament. Contrary to Ferrara, sacraments do signify the mysteries of Christ. Contrary to Ferrara, representations or icons or symbols or signs of Christ are presences of Christ, not blocks to the faithful and adoring Christian mind. 58 56 Here it is useful to consult Robert Sokolowski, "Picturing," in Pictures,Quotations, and Distinctions (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 3-26. 57 See Robert Sokolowski, Eucharistic Presence (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1994), 179-86, 198-200. 58 I would like to thank Dennis Ferrara for a lengthy review of an earlier draft of this paper. It may not appear to him that I benefitted from his effort, but in fact I did and am grateful for his careful attention. The Thomist 62 (1998): 519-31 APOPHATIC THEOLOGY'S CATAPHATIC DEPENDENCIES MARK JOHNSON Marquette University Milwaukee, Wisconsin D ARING TO SPEAK of the God "who dwells in light unapproachable" (1Tim6: 16), 1 systematic theologians in the Western tradition regularly employ the twofold methodology of apophatic and cataphatic theology regarding knowledge and discourse of God. The former mode of theological discourse emphasizes that in knowing God we know more 'what-God-is-not,' rather than 'what-God-is.' And in the latter mode we associate with God terms about which we have solid understanding in our this-worldly experience, terms we apply first to this-worldly things, but whose signifying core we attribute to God as well. But even to this cataphatic mode of discourseanalogical naming of God-we are compelled to add a rectifying dose of apophasis, since in attributing to God a particular property by means of a name we also claim not to know the mode of that property's existence in God, even as we are sure that such-and-such a property is in God. Thus even analogy when used of God must genuflect before God's hiddenness, God's incomprehensibility, 2 and it is fair to say that apophatic theology 1 "