The Thomist 63 (1999): 1-48

FAITH AND REASON RECONSIDERED:
AQUINAS AND LUfHER ON DECIDING WHAT IS TRUE 1
BRUCE D. MARSHALL
St. Olaf College
Northfield, Minnesota

I

N WHAT MAY REMAIN the most widely read book in
English about Thomas Aquinas, G. K. Chesterton locates
Thomas's chief contribution to the Church, and to the whole
human enterprise, by contrasting him with Luther. "It was the
very life of the Thomist teaching that Reason can be trusted: it
was the very life of the Lutheran teaching that Reason is utterly
untrustworthy. " 2
Thomas's great achievement, Chesterton argues, was to
achieve a perfect balance and harmony between faith and reason,
Christ and Aristotle. Luther's great importance lay in his
singleminded effort-remarkably successful, Chesterton ruefully
concedes-to destroy what Thomas achieved. Luther's passionate
hatred of reason rudely dissolves the problem Thomas had so
exquisitely solved. Thus no comparison between them on the
problem of faith and reason is really possible, since properly
speaking Luther, having simply rejected reason, has no position
on the issue at all. Indeed, while the two figures can rightly be
compared for their great though antithetical historical influence,
in the nature of the case there can be no comparison of their
views on any matter of theological and philosophical substance.
1 This paper considerably revises a presentation first given at a conference on Trinitarian
theology in Neuendettelsau, Germany, in March 1993, and published in German in the
proceedings of that conference: Joachim Heubach, ed., Luther und die trinitarische Tradition:
Okumenische und philosophische Perspektiven (Erlangen: Martin-Luther-Verlag, 1994).
2 G. K. Chesterton, Saint Thomas Aquinas (New York: Doubleday, 1956; first published
1933), 33.

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BRUCE D. MARSHALL

"To compare these two figures bulking so big in history, in any
philosophical sense, would of course be futile and even unfair. On
a great map like the mind of Aquinas, the mind of Luther would
be almost invisible. " 3
This paper argues that Aquinas and Luther hold basically the
same view of faith and reason: the view that the most central
Christian beliefs, those generated by communal interpretation of
Scripture according to creedal rules, enjoy unrestricted epistemic
primacy. It is not my purpose here to argue that this is the right
theological view to have of how to decide which beliefs (or
candidates for belief} are true; that I have done elsewhere. 4 But of
course in order to hold this view one need not rely upon the
contemporary idiom I have just used to state it. Despite their
distance from us and their genuine differences from each other,
Aquinas and Luther each counts as a rich precedent for a
theological epistemology which accords unrestricted epistemic
primacy to the Christian community's most central convictionsto the deliverances of faith rather than to those of reason.
Of course much has changed since Chesterton's dismissal of
Luther sixty years ago. A generation of Catholic and Lutheran
scholarship has found Aquinas and Luther to be not only
comparable, but in profound agreement, on some utterly central
theological matters-above all the justification of the sinner and
the wider complex of issues surrounding that topic, traditionally
regarded as the most important and most divisive in CatholicLutheran theological controversy. 5 Unfortunately school theology, both Catholic and Protestant, has barely begun to get the
message that Aquinas and Luther might both be greatly misunderstood if they are assumed to be opposites.
Perhaps nowhere is this more clearly the case than on the
question of faith and reason. Though in our day few would put
the matter quite so bluntly as Chesterton, the assumptions which
lead him to play Aquinas and Luther off against one another
remain largely in place. Defenders of Aquinas on faith and reason
3 Ibid., 194.

In Trinity and Truth (Cambridge: University Press, 1999).
Above all see Otto Hermann Pesch, Die Theologie der Rechtfertigung bei Martin Luther
und Thomas van Aquin (Mainz: Matthias-Griinewald-Verlag, 1967; reprint 1985).
4

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(most, though not all, Catholic) still tend to assume that Luther
was a naive if perhaps admirably passionate fideist, whose hatred
of reason isolates Christian theology from the rest of human
knowledge and thereby makes it impossible to give reasonable
people any grounds for thinking that Christian beliefs are
plausible, let alone true. Defenders of Luther on faith and reason
(here the Lutherans have the field pretty much to themselves) still
tend to assume that Aquinas was more a philosopher than a
theologian, a rationalist who skews-perhaps perverts-the
gospel by trying to harmonize it with Aristotle, and thereby fails
to see that the gospel contradicts all human wisdom, as it
contradicts all human righteousness.
Even among specialists, the suggestion that despite obvious
and important differences in concept, interest, and style, Aquinas
and Luther might basically agree on faith and reason has made
little progress compared with the suggestion that they agree on
the justification of the sinner. In part this reflects the persistence
of those readings that support the assumption that their
opposition on the matter of faith and reason is basic and obvious.
I will therefore try to suggest how the standard readings might be
undermined in both cases. In part, though, the assumption of
opposition has nothing specifically to do with Aquinas and
Luther, but with the vagueness of the question of "faith and
reason." Our chance of progress in sorting out their respective
views on this nest of issues will likely increase if we pose to each
of them a more precise question: how should we decide what
sentences and beliefs are true? The hope is that by attending to
this question about epistemic justification we will be able to
uncover broad and deep agreement between the two theologians
on how it should be answered.
I. AQUINAS ON FAITH, NATURAL REASON, AND EPISTEMIC
PRIORITIES

Since my primary aim is to test the claim that Aquinas and
Luther basically agree on how to decide what is true, I will here
only outline a reading of Aquinas on this matter. I have
developed and defended this sort of reading in more detail

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elsewhere. 6 The interpretation of Aquinas outlined here is,
moreover, broadly congruent with those proposed at book length
by Michel Corbin and, more recently, by Thomas Hibbs and
Eugene Rogers. 7 In what follows I will try to identify the main
elements in Aquinas's account of how we should decide what is
true, and-since the way I will read him departs rather drato some
matically from standard interpretations-respond
objections to this reading which naturally arise.
"The chief matter in the teaching of the Christian faith,"
Thomas observes in commenting on 1 Corinthians 1: 17, "is the
salvation accomplished by the cross of Christ." In order to teach
any subject matter successfully, he goes on to say, the manner of
teaching must befit the distinctive character of that subject matter.
Otherwise the matter itself will be distorted or destroyed in the
attempt to teach it, and the learner will come to understand and
know not the intended subject matter but a different one, or
perhaps none at all-as happens, for example, with those who try
to teach the inexact science of ethics deductively. 8 Here as
elsewhere, Thomas maintains, Aristotle had the right idea: "The
way of making the truth manifest in a given science must be
suitable to the matter which is the subject of that science."9 What
then is the proper way to make manifest that truth which is the
chief matter of Christian faith? Thomas seems to propose two
main conditions for rightly teaching (or preaching) "the salvation
accomplished by the cross of Christ."
6 See Bruce D. Marshall, "Aquinas as Postliberal Theologian," The Thomist 53 (1989):
353-402; idem, "Thomas, Thomisms, and Truth," The Thomist 56 (1992): 499-524; idem,
"Absorbing the World: Christianity and the Universe of Truths," in Theology and Dialogue,
ed. Bruce D. Marshall (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 69-102, esp.
90-97.
7 Michel Corbin, Le chemin de la theologie chez Thomas dAquin (Paris: Beauchesne,
1974); Thomas S. Hibbs, Dialecticand Narrativein Aquinas:An Interpretationof the Summa
Contra Gentiles (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995); Eugene F. Rogers, Jr.,
Thomas Aquinasand Karl Barth: SacredDoctrineand the Natural Knowledgeof God (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995). The last includes an instructive comparison
with Barth (who, as we will argue here about Luther, apparently turns out not to be the
epistemic antithesis of Thomas that he himself supposed).
8 In I Cor. c. 1, lect. 3 (no. 45). S. Thomae Aquinatis Super EpistolasS. Pauli Lectura, vol.
1, 8th ed., ed. R. Cai, O.P. (Turin: Marietti, 1953). All translations are my own.
9 S. Thomae Aquinatis in Decem Libras Ethicorum Aristotelis Expositio, ed. R. Spiazzi,
O.P. (Turin: Marietti, 1949), c. 1, lect. 3 (no. 32).

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First, this matter cannot be taught rightly if we attempt to
decide about its truth by the standards of human reason. That
person teaches "according to human wisdom" (in sapientiaverbi),
Thomas explains, "who accepts the wisdom of human reason as
the primary basis of his teaching, so that he accepts only those
teachings which are supported by human reason, and rejects those
which are not. But this destroys the faith. " 10 As Thomas sees it
(in, for example, his commentary on Col 2:8), the great
temptation of philosophy for Christian faith and theology lies in
its power to lure those who would teach the faith into this
self-destruction, which happens "when someone wants to measure
the things of faith according to the principles of [created] reality
and not according to divine wisdom ...u Philosophy deceives
when it seduces us into "measuring the truth of faith according to
the truth of creatures"; the greatest temptation to this fatal
epistemic reversal comes, of course, precisely from good
philosophy, that which judges per principia realia philosophiae,
and not per sophisticasrationes-but presumes to render a verdict
where no philosophical principia have the right to judge. 12 For
those who succumb to the temptation and decide about truth
"according to the world" (secundum mundum) and its wisdom,
the preaching of the cross of Christ inevitably turns into
foolishness, "since it includes something which seems impossible
according to human wisdom, namely that God dies [Deus
moriatur],and that the omnipotent becomes subject to the power
of the violent." 13
On Thomas's account two outcomes, in fact, seem possible
when the annuntiatio crucis Christi is measured for truth by the
standards of human reason: either it will be taken to propose
beliefs inconsistent with these standards, and so be rejected as
false, or the meaning of the sentences that make up the
annuntiatio will be changed in order to make them consistent
10 In I Cor. c. 1, lect. 3 (no. 43). On the equivalence of sapientia verbi and sapientia
humanae rationis, cf. ibid. (no. 42).
11 In Col. c. 2, lect. 2 (no. 92); Super Epistolas S. Pauli Lectura, vol. 2, ed. R. Cai, O.P.
(Turin: Marietti, 1953).
12 Ibid. (nos. 94, 91).
13 In I Cor. c. 1, lect. 3 (no. 4 7).

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BRUCE D. MARSHALL

with, and so capable of being held true by, these same standards
(so that God is not really held to die, be subject to the violent,
and the like). Either way the chief matter of Christian faith fails
to be taught; Paul's point in this passage, Thomas argues, is
precisely that those who rely epistemically "primarily upon the
wisdom of human reason" empty the cross of Christ of its power
to save, because in so doing they fail to teach the chief matter of
Christian faith in "a manner suitable to" the matter itself. 14
Interpreting this claim depends in part on specifying the beliefs
or classes of beliefs that are supposed to count as "the wisdom of
human reason," and as such may not be used to assess the truth
of the chief matter of Christian faith, however legitimately they
may be applied to test the truth of other beliefs. The long way to
go about this would be to search out a definition (what Thomas
calls a formalis ratio) of "human wisdom," "human reason," or
"philosophy" that would enable us to pick out those beliefs that
are humanly wise, reasonable, or philosophical, but there is, I
think, a more direct way to get at what Thomas is claiming. He
objects not to "human reason" and "philosophy" per se but to a
particular use of those beliefs that human beings will naturally
tend to regard as reasonable. That person rightly "uses the
wisdom of human reason," Thomas argues, "who, presupposing
the foundations of the true faith, if he finds anything true in the
teachings of the philosophers, takes it into the obedience of
faith." 15 Any belief, it seems, no matter how reasonable or
obvious, becomes for Thomas "human wisdom" in the sense Paul
rejects when it is set up as a standard by which to assess the truth
of those beliefs which constitute "the foundations of the true
faith"; conversely, the right use of the "true faith" is to take it as
the final standard by which to assess beliefs we otherwise regard
as reasonable, in order to see decisively if we can "find anything
true" in them. Thomas's first rule for teaching the Christian faith
is thus that we keep our epistemic priorities straight: we ought to
14 Ibid. (no. 45). On principaliter mundo innititur, cf. In I Cor. c. 3, lect. 3 (no. 179),
which contrasts this sort of disordered epistemic use of the res huius mundi with use rightly
ordered by the sapientia Dei.
15 In I Cor. c. 1, lect. 3 (no. 43). Thomas gets this idea from Augustine (De doctrina
christiana 2.40).

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decide whether other beliefs are true by seeing whether their
contents agree with those interpreted sentences which together
identify and describe "the salvation accomplished by the cross of
Christ," and we ought not to decide whether those same interpreted sentences are true by seeing whether they agree with the
contents of other beliefs. (fhe precise range of "other beliefs" to
which this rule applies will occupy us later on.)
Thomas's second rule for teaching the Christian faith is that
we treat the beliefs which together identify and describe its chief
matter as a complex but indivisible whole.
The Church's creed (specifically the Apostles' Creed) enumerates the leading elements in this complex of belief; Thomas
counts fourteen of them, grouped into those having to do with
the hidden majesty of God and those having to do with the
narrative (what Thomas calls the "mystery") of Christ's particular
humanity, by which we are inducted into the vision of God's
otherwise hidden majesty-or, as Thomas elsewhere puts it, those
pertaining to the Trinity and those pertaining to the incarnation. 16 Thus the interpreted sentences which (according to the
first rule) are tests of truth for other beliefs but not tested by them
are those which, when believed, shape more than any others the
identity of a particular historical community; the Church is
constituted as a coherent community, Thomas maintains, by its
assent in love to what the creed teaches (though not, of course,
only by that). 17 The articles of faith themselves collect innumerable further sentences for belief, chiefly those of Scripture.
The Church's Trinitarian and Christological confession adds
nothing to Scripture, but rather is drawn from Scripture in order
to organize communal reading of the biblical text (an aim which
includes, on Thomas's view, proposing for assent a clear summary
of Scripture's content for those who would not know what to
make of the text on their own). 18 "Canonical scripture alone," he
Cf. STh II-II, q. 1, a. 8 (Turin: Marietti, 1948); In I Cor. c. 15, lect. 1 (no. 894).
Cf. STh II-II, q. 1, a. 9, ad 3: "The confession of faith is handed on in the creed by the
person, as it were, of the whole Church [quasi ex persona totius Ecclesiae],which is united
by faith. Now the faith of the Church is formed faith ... ".
18 Cf. SI'h II-II, q. 1, a. 9, ad 1: The creed "is certainly not added to sacred Scripture, but
rather taken from sacred Scripture"; on the creed as a binding rule for scriptural
interpretation, cf. STh II-II, q. 5, a. 3 (cited below, n. 21), and ad 2.
16

17

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argues, "is the rule of faith," and so no one ought to teach
otherwise than it does. 19
Thus the epistemic priority over other beliefs which belongs to
"the salvation accomplished by the cross of Christ" may be
ascribed more precisely to the body of beliefs (the specific
contents of which naturally change somewhat over time)
generated by Scripture interpreted in the Christian community
according to shared creedal rules. Communally interpreted
Scripture has this high status because "it is a kind of light, flowing
like a ray from the first truth"-that is, from God, who is the
source and measure of all truth. 20 So understood, Scripture is the
self-testimony of God as first truth, and faith is that act and habit
defined by its reliance upon this self-testifying God (and so upon
"divine truth itself") in its assent to (or dissent from) interpreted
sentences about God, and about creatures in their relations to
God. 21 Faith, in other words, clings to the incarnate and triune
19 Thomas Aquinas, Super Evangelium S. Ioannis Lectura, 5th ed., ed. R. Cai, O.P. (furin:
Marietti, 1952), c. 21, lect. 6 (no. 2656); cf. In I Tim. c. 6, lect. 1 (no. 237): "The teaching
of the apostles and prophets is called canonical because it is a kind of rule for our intellect.
And therefore no one ought to teach otherwise [than it does]."
20 "The truth of sacred Scriptm e is a kind of light, flowing forth like a ray from the first
truth" (fhomas Aquinas, In Dion. de Div. Nom., ed. C. Pera, O.P. [furin: Marietti, 1950],
c. 1, lect. 1 [no. 15]). Therefore: "If the principles on the basis of which this teaching [of the
faith= theology] proceeds are those which have been received through a revelation from the
Holy Spirit and handed on in the sacred Scriptures, it follows that in this teaching nothing
else is handed on than those things which are contained in the sacred Scriptures" (ibid., no.
11, but I cite from the fuller text of this passage provided by Bruno Decker in "Sola Scriptura
bei Thomas von Aquin," in Ludwig Lenhart, ed., Universitas: Dienst an Wahrheit und Leben,
Festschrift for Albert Stohr [Mainz: Matthias-Grunewald, 1960], 117-29; here, 118). On
God as prima veritas, cf. STh I, q. 16, aa. 5-6; Summa Contra Gentiles I, c. 62 (no. 519) (3
vols., ed. C. Pera et al. [furin: Marietti, 1961]).
21 STh II-II, q. 1, a. 1: "Faith ... does not assent to anything except because it is revealed
by God: hence faith relies upon divine truth itself as its means [media]," that is, as the
"formalis ratio obiecti" by which the act and habit of faith are defined. Regarding faith as
reliance precisely on the testimony of the first truth, which therefore necessarily includes
holding specific sentences true, cf. De Spe, a. 1: "Faith does not count as a virtue except
insofar as it clings to the testimony of the first truth, such that it believes that which is made
manifest by him" (fhomas Aquinas, Quaestiones Disputatae, vol. 2, ed. P. Bazzi, et al. [f urin:
Marietti, 1965]). And: "The formal object of faith is the first truth, according as it is
manifested in the sacred Scriptures and the teaching of the Church. Hence whoever does not
cling to the teaching of the Church, as to an infallible and divine rule which originates
[procedit] from the first truth made manifest in the sacred Scriptures, does not have the habit
of faith" (STh II-II, q. 5, a. 3).

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God who manifests himself to us as first truth by way of the
scripturally normed discourse of the Christian community.
Indeed, the teaching and preaching of the Church are not simply
this community's talk about God, nor even God's talk about
himself, but God's way of giving the world a share in his own
self-knowledge: "By assent faith . . . joins the human being to
God's own knowing." 22
Epistemically, the articles of Christian faith are for Thomas
strictly a package deal. The central nexus of Christian teaching is
made up of many beliefs, but they are all mutually fit for one
another in such a way that the "perception of divine truth"
depends upon holding them all true together. 23 That is: if one of
the sentences which make up the articles of faith is held true-say,
"Deus est unus"-while another is not-say, "Deus est trinitas
Personarum" or "Deus moritur"-then the sentence held true is,
in the mind and on the lips of that holder, false.
Thomas makes this point in a particularly striking way when
he considers the possibility of what later came to be called
"natural theology," that is, whether a person without Christian
faith (specifically a pre-Christian philosopher) is able, at least in
some respects, to know the truth about God. Commenting, for
example, on the statement "O righteous Father, the world has not
known you" Gohn 17:25), he remarks that "while some of the
Gentiles knew God with respect to certain things which were
knowable by reason, nevertheless they did not know him insofar
as he is the Father of the only-begotten and consubstantial Son,"
that is, they did not know about the Trinity and the incarnation.
In this way they were wrong about God, if only by error of
22 De Verit., q. 14, a. 8 (S. Thomae Aquinatis QuaestionesDisputatae, vol. 1, 8th ed., ed.
R. Spiazzi, 0.P. [Turin: Marietti, 1949)). Correlatively sacra doctrina, having as its first
principles the articles of faith, is able to talk about God not only with respect to what may
be known per creaturas(about which more momentarily), but "with respect to that which is
known to God alone concerning himself, and which is shared with others by revelation" (STh
I, q. 1, a. 6).
23 STh II-II, q. 1, a. 6: "Those matters which the Christian faith proposes for belief
[credibiliafidei Christianae]are said to be distinguished into various 'articles' insofar as they
are divided into certain parts having a mutual fitness for one another [coaptationemad
invicem]"; ibid., sed contra: "We attain the perception of divine truth in a way which
involves a certain distinction, in that those things which are one in God become manifold in
our intellect."

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omission (though Thomas also ascribes errors of commission to
all the ancient philosophers, including Aristotle). But "even if they
err in the smallest way regarding the knowledge of God, they are
said to be completely ignorant of him [Unde etsi in minimo aliqui

errent circa Dei cognitionem, dicuntur eum totaliter ignorare]."24
The beliefs that God is and is one are true on Thomas's account,
it seems, only when they are held true together with the rest of
the articles of faith ("under the conditions faith defines," as
Thomas puts it). 25 Otherwise the holder labors under a cognitive
defect so drastic that his holding true completely fails to attain
any real object; in this case defectus cognitionis est so/um in non
attingendo totaliter-any defect of knowledge is complete
ignorance. 26 In other words: under these conditions a person's
holding true lacks the adaequatio or correspondentiamentis ad
rem by which (however more precisely construed) truth is
defined, and so his beliefs are false.27
Thomas's technical device for making this point is a notion,
derived from Aristotle, of the way a simple or incomposite reality
may be known. The idea, roughly, is that while our minds can be
conformed to any reality (be "true" with respect to that reality)
only by holding true interpreted sentences, in "simple things,"
unlike the composite objects of our ordinary sense experience,
there are no real distinctions which correspond to the distinctions
between the relevant true sentences. As a result, while it is
logically and psychologically possible to hold some of the relevant
sentences true without others, in the case of "simples" there can
be no partial conformity; one either believes enough sentences to
bring about the conformity, or one does not have it at all. Applied
24 In Joan. c. 17, lect. 6 (no. 2265); for the text and a more detailed discussion, cf.
Marshall, "Thomas, Thomisms, and Truth," 501-4. On Aristotle's errors of commission, cf.
ibid., 502 n. 4.
25 SI'h 11-11, q. 2, a. 2, ad 3. For a fuller discussion of this text see Marshall, "Aquinas as
Postliberal Theologian," 380-84. On the Trinity as falling "under the conditions faith
defines," cf. III Sent., d. 23, q. 2, a. 2, qcla. 2, ad 2 (no. 151) (ed. P. Mandonnet, O.P., and
M. F. Moos, O.P. [Paris: Lethielleux, 1929-47]).
26 SI'h 11-11, q. 2, a. 2, ad 3.
27 For a more detailed discussion of the notion of truth as adaequatio,correspondentia,
and the like, see my essay, "'We Shall Bear the Image of the Man of Heaven': Theology and
the Concept ofTruth," ModernTheology 11 (1995): 93-117; and Trinity and Truth, chs. 8-9.

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(in a supreme or supereminent sense) to God, this notion of
simplicity means that "those things which are one in God become
manifold in our intellect," and only taken together does the
manifold yield "perception of divine truth. " 28
However, the force of Thomas's apparent claim that the
prospective natural theologian-someone who believes that God
exists but not that God is incarnate and dies-fails (totaliter) to
"reach" God cognitively, need not depend, I think, upon recourse
to a theory of the knowledge of simples. The same point can be
made by attending to the way the sense or interpretation of the
sentence "Deus est" is fixed in such a way that when held true, it
is true. According to Thomas, someone in the epistemic situation
of the would-be natural theologian "does not believe under the
conditions faith defines," and therefore "does not really believe
that there is a God [nee vere Deum credunt]."29 In the first place
this seems simply to mean, as the conclusion of this reply goes on
to state explicitly, that the natural theologian's beliefs about God
(and in particular his belief that God exists) are not true (defectus
... est ... in non attingendo totaliter). But it also suggests that
the natural theologian, not believing "under the conditions faith
defines" (for example, together with belief in the Trinity and the
incarnation), does not believe the same thing as the Christian
when he asserts "Deus est" (that is, "does not 'really' [vere]
believe that God exists"). The point would then be that "Deus
est" when spoken by the natural theologian does not mean the
same thing as it does when spoken by the believer, and indeed
cannot have a meaning which agrees with the way the world is
arranged, that is, which makes for a true sentence.
Read in this way, Thomas's claim that "Deus est" can be, as
spoken, false-even when spoken as the conclusion of a formally
valid argument, as it was, so Thomas supposes, by the ancient
28 STh II-II, q. 1, a. 6, sc (cf. above, n. 23). Thomas applies this argument in both of the
passages just discussed (STh II-II, q. 2, a. 2, ad 3 and In Joan. c. 17, lect. 6 [no. 2265]); cf. also
IX Metaphys., lect. 11 (nos. 1905-7) (ed. M.-R. Cathala, O.P., and R. Spiazzi, O.P. [Turin:
Marietti, 1964]). The general principles at work here are: "Every knower has knowledge of
that which is known not in the manner of the thing known, but in the manner of the
knower," and "No creature's manner [of knowing] reaches the height of the divine majesty"
(I Sent., d. 3, q. 1, a. 1).
29 STh II-II, q. 2, a. 2, ad 3.

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philosophers-might be interpreted along the following lines. The
meaning and interpretation of any one sentence a speaker utters
are fixed by ascertaining the truth value the speaker assigns to
that sentence, and establishing the logical location of the
interpreted sentence by working out its connections to a host of
other more or less closely associated sentences the speaker holds
true. (I group meaning and interpretation together on the
assumption, argued for in different ways by Wittgenstein, Quine,
Davidson, and others, that meaning is public-that a speaker
means just what an interpreter can correctly make out, where
"correctly" does not involve any question-begging appeal to prior
knowledge of the speaker's beliefs and intentions.) 30 When the
believer asserts "Deus est," the meaning of that sentence is fixed
by its location in the logical space of the articles of the creed;
what the believer means by "Deus," for example, is established by
his assent to closely related sentences like "Verbum [therefore
"Deus"] caro factum est" and "Deus moritur."
These are sentences which, per definitionem, the natural
theologian does not hold true. However, if the sense of the
natural theologian's "Deus est" is supposed to be what compels
the believer to regard it as false (apart from a theory about the
knowledge of simples), then that sense will presumably have to be
incompatible with the meaning the sentence has in the logical
space of assent to the creed, and not simply different from it.
Now believers, according to Thomas, "recognize in the cross of
Christ the death of God, by which he has conquered the devil and
the world"; in so doing, as we have seen, they attribute to God
what "seems impossible according to human wisdom." 31 That is:
people who fix the sense of "Deus est" by holding true sentences
like "Verbum [=Deus] caro factum est" and "Unus de trinitate
passus est" (people who are eo ipso believers) will also, indeed
necessarily, hold true "Deus moritur." By contrast, people who
fix the sense of "Deus est" otherwise than by holding true
30 As Davidson observes: "We cannot hope to attach a sense to the attribution of finely
discriminated intentions independently of interpreting speech ... interpreting an agent's
intentions, his beliefs and his words are parts of a single project, no part of which can be
assumed to be complete before the rest is" ("Radical Interpretation," in Inquiriesinto Truth
and Interpretation[Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984], 127).
31 In I Cor. c. 1, lect. 3 (no. 47); cf. above, n. 13.

FAITH AND REASON RECONSIDERED

13

sentences like these will, Thomas supposes, inevitably reject "Deus
moritur," indeed will find it foolish. Consequently what they
mean by "Deus" when they assert "Deus est" will not only be
different from, but contradictory to, what the believer means; if
the believer's assertion of "Deus est" is true, the natural theologian's cannot be.
Of course many more people hold true the sentence "Deus est"
than hold true sentences like "Verbum caro factum est" and "Deus
moritur," and the existence of God can (when he is adequately
identified as the God who dies on the cross) be demonstrated,
while his death cannot (about which more in a moment). But it
seems that on Thomas's view "Deus est" is no more central
epistemically than "Deus moritur," since the latter fixes the
former's sense, that is, the sense according to which "Deus est" is
part of the creedal network of belief to which epistemic primacy
belongs.
In either case Aquinas apparently rejects natural theology in
the sense in which it is usually attributed to him; people without
Christian faith, despite having sometimes mastered formally valid
arguments concluding in sentences like "Deus est" and "Deus est
unus" (as did the ancient philosophers), do not actually speak and
think truly about God--even about God's existence and unity.
Despite initially appearing to offer strong resistance, Thomas's
treatment of natural theology turns out, I think, to exemplify with
particular force the rule that the articles of faith can only be
rightly taught as a package.
To be sure, Thomas thinks God can be known per creaturas,
in that matters like God's existence and unity can be
demonstrated on the basis of beliefs about the world one need not
be a Christian to hold. He takes this to be the clear teaching of
Scripture (Rom 1: 19-20a invariably serves as the textual support),
but he takes it to be the equally clear teaching of Scripture that
the possibility of knowing God per creaturashas been effectively
withdrawn by God from fallen human beings on account of sin
(for which Rom 1 :20b-21 provides some of the textual support). 32
32 For such a juxtaposition of Rom 1:21 with Rom 1:19, see In Joan. c. 17, lect. 6 (no.
2265). For more on Thomas's commentary on Rom 1, see Marshall, "Thomas, Thomisms,
and Truth," 509-15; Rogers gives a much more detailed analysis in Thomas Aquinasand Karl
Barth, 73-180.

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BRUCE D. MARSHALL

What the Vulgate of Romans 1: 18 calls impietas and iniustitia,
caused on Thomas's account by that "vanity" in which "the
human mind ... having bypassed God, relies upon some sort of
creature," so that human beings "place their trust in themselves,
and not in God," results in the loss of the interior light by which
God enables us to know him per creaturas-a situation which can
be analyzed, I have argued, in part as an inability to fix the sense
of "Deus" in a way adequate to making true assertions about
God. 33
The possibility of such knowledge becomes available once
again only through "the salvation accomplished by the cross of
Christ," that is, only through faith's reliant apprehension of the
cruciform self-testimony of the prima veritas, and consequent
participation in God's own knowledge: "Creatures were
insufficient to lead to knowledge of the creator, hence 'the world
was made through him, and knew him not' Uohn 1:10].
Therefore it was necessary that the creator himself come into the
world in the flesh, and be known through himself [per
seipsum]." 34 "The human mind is freed from vanity"-and so
33 In Rom. c. 1, lect. 7 (no. 129). Thus, "'Their heart has been made foolish,' that is, it has
been deprived of the light of wisdom, by which a person truly knows God" (ibid. [no. 130]).
34 In Joan. c. 1, lect. 5 (no. 141). Thomas's argument here that even without sin human
beings would have to believe in the future incarnation of the Word in order to know God at
all contrasts sharply with the view generally attributed to him, namely that God would not
have become incarnate had there been no sin-a view which, to be sure, he often enough
endorses (cf. STh III, q. 1, a. 3; In I Tim. c. 1, lect. 4, [no. 40]; the latter cited in Marshall,
"Thomas, Thomisms, and Truth," 514-15 n. 32). Yet in Thomas's commentary on the
Johannine prologue, in contrast to the Lectura on Romans 1 just discussed, the inability of
human beings to know God from creatures comes explicitly from a "defect of creatures"
(creaturarum defectum), who cannot by themselves serve as an adequate basis for the
knowledge of God, and not from the darkness of the human mind brought on by sin. These
are two different reasons, here clearly distinguished by Aquinas, "why God willed to become
incarnate." This suggestion is not without parallel in Thomas's texts. Even before the fall, he
elsewhere argues, human beings could know God demonstratively per creaturasonly together
with knowledge available by faith alone, in particular only together with faith in the future
incarnation (though not yet passion) of the Son: "Faith, which clings to the first truth, is
common to all who have knowledge of God, but have not yet reached the blessedness to
come" (STh II-II, q. 5, a. 1); "Before the state of sin human beings had explicit faith
concerning the incarnation of Christ, insofar as this was ordered toward the attainment of
glory [consummationemgloriae],but not insofar as it was ordered toward liberation from sin
through the passion and resurrection, because humans lacked foreknowledge of the sin which
was to come" (STh II-II, q. 2, a. 7). For some provocative reflection on these issues in

FAITH AND REASON RECONSIDERED

15

from ignorance of God-"only when it relies upon God"; God
can be known through creatures only when human beings do not
rely primarily upon creatures for this knowledge. 35 The believer
who works out a demonstration of God's existence or unity
attains genuine knowledge of God per creaturas,but continues to
rely primarily on God's self-testimony in order to speak and think
truly about God even with respect to these matters, rather than
on his own apprehension of the principles upon which the
demonstration is based or on the cogency with which he draws
the conclusion. "A human being is much more certain about what
he hears from God, who cannot be deceived, than about what he
sees by his own reason, because his reason can be deceived. " 36
Thus if it comes to a conflict between what seems self-evident
(and in that sense certain) to us and the articles of faith (which are
not certain in this way), then one holds the articles true. Here too
it is necessary to keep one's epistemic priorities straight, and
primacy continues to belong to the articles of faith. 37
Thomas, cf. Michel Corbin, "La Parole devenue chair: Lecture de la premiere question de la
Somme Theologique de Thomas d'Aquin," in L'inoui"de Dieu: Six etudes christologiques
(Paris: Desclee de Brouwer, 1980), 109-58.
35 In Rom. c. 1, lect. 7 (no. 129); cf. the "credere Deo" of STh 11-11, q. 2, a. 2.
36 STh 11-11, q. 4, a. 8, ad 2. Similarly, "No one ought to have any doubt concerning the
faith, but ought to believe what belongs to the faith more certainly than what he sees, since
human vision can be deceived, but the knowledge [scientia] of God is never mistaken"
(Nicholas Ayo, C.S.C., ed. and trans., The Sermon-Conferencesof St. Thomas Aquinason the
Apostles'Creed [Notre Dame: University Press, 1988], 24. Ayo here publishes a preliminary
version of the Leonine text [vol. 44, still forthcoming] of Aquinas's Collationes Credo in
Deum, a work known in the "vulgate" tradition of Thomas's texts as In Symbolum
ApostolorumExpositio [cf. OpusculaTheologica,vol. 2, no. 868]). Therefore, "The believer's
assent to what belongs to the faith is greater and more stable even than assent to the first
principles of reason" (I Sent. pro., q. 1, a. 3, qcla. 3). As a result, "just as knowledge [scientia]
is certain, so also faith. Indeed much more so, since the certainty of knowledge relies upon
human reason, which can be deceived, while the certainty of faith relies upon divine reason,
which cannot be contradicted" (In Joan. c. 4, lect. 5 [no. 662]). And conversely: faith "does
not rely upon human wisdom, which very often [plerumque]deceives human beings ... faith
relies upon divine power, and therefore it cannot fail" (In I Cor. c. 2, lect. 1 [no. 79]).
Regarding the believer's continuing reliance in love upon God's self-testimony even with
respect to those articles (called by Thomas, in light of their demonstrability, "praeambula")
which may be demonstrated, see STh 11-11, q. 2, a. 10, ad 2.
37 The way Thomas conceives the epistemic relation between what we "hear from God"
and what we "see by our own reason" helps explain his lack of interest in the question,
greatly troubling to rationalist apologetics since the Enlightenment (including that of many

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BRUCE D. MARSHALL

How far, then, does the epistemic primacy of the articles of
faith-materially, of the beliefs sufficient to identify and describe
"the salvation accomplished by the cross of Christ"--extend?
Thomas, I think, dearly regards the epistemic primacy of the
articles as unrestricted-as extending to decisions about the truth
of all possible sentences. The articles, moreover, are unrestrictedly
decisive. They are epistemic trump: whatever interpreted
sentences are inconsistent with them cannot be true. In the nature
of the case this unrestricted criteriological primacy of central
Christian beliefs (that is, the beliefs which most centrally
constitute the identity of this community) can only be stated
negatively: "Whatever is not in agreement with Christ is to be
rejected [lit., 'spewed out']. "38 The positive complement, of
course, does not follow; whatever is in agreement with Christ is
not, on that ground alone, to be accepted as true.
Thomists), of how we can be sure that Scripture and creed actually are God's speech. For
Thomas supreme certainty belongs not to those beliefs which seem most compelling for us
in via, but to what God says-God's speech is, indeed, that than which there can be nothing
more certain, since it declares and gives us a share in God's own knowledge, itself the
measure of all truth. Thus, "when a person has been led to believe by [natural reason, the
testimony of the law and the prophets, and the preaching of the apostles], then he can say that
he does not believe on account of any of these things: not on account of natural reason, nor
on account of the testimony of the law, nor on account of the preaching of others, but on
account of the truth itself" (In Joan. c. 4, lect. 5 [no. 662]; cf. STh II-II, q. 4, a. 8 and above,
nn. 20-22). Since what God says is much more certain for us than what we see by our own
reason, anything we could without circularity adduce in support of the claim that the articles
of faith are actually God's speech would be less certain than the content of the speech itself.
Because the conclusion of an argument cannot be any more certain than its premises (as
Thomas, following Aristotle, assumes), any attempt to conclude on the basis of what we can
see by reason that the articles are God's speech will, if successful, diminish rather than
enhance the certainty of the articles (since "human vision can be deceived"). Thus any
attempt to demonstrate that the articles are in fact God's speech (though not the more
modest effort of attempting to reply to objections which maintain they could not be) is in the
nature of the case, like other endeavors to measure God's own wisdom by the principles of
created reality (cf. above, n. 11), not only fruitless but counter-productive. Only the Holy
Spirit can teach us to hear God's speech, and to rely upon it beyond even the most compelling
of our own reason's certainties (about which more below). For a more detailed analysis of
Thomas on certainty, see Marshall, "Aquinas as Postliberal Theologian," 393-401.
38 In Col. c. 2, lect. 2 (no. 95). And: "What is against [Christ] is to be spewed out, because
he is God" (ibid. [no. 96]). In an earlier article I confused the issue by suggesting that the
unrestricted epistemic primacy of the articles of faith could be stated positively; cf. Marshall,
"Aquinas as Postliberal Theologian," 376.

FAITH AND REASON RECONSIDERED

17

One way to get at Thomas's view here is to recall that for him
Christian faith and Christian theology are, each in its own way,
a kind of wisdom (sapientia).Wisdom for Thomas is the capacity
to grasp the highest cause and to judge and order other things
"most certainly" with reference to, or on the basis of, that cause
(the definition is Aristotle's, and here "cause" has the roughly
Aristotelian sense of "explanation"). "Highest cause," however,
can be taken in an unrestricted sense or in a limited sense
(simpliciter,vel in aliquo genere, as Aquinas says). When "highest
cause" is taken in a limited sense, "wisdom" is the capacity to
judge and order beliefs and actions according to explanatory
principles of restricted application; the range of application for
these principles defines a particular domain of human knowledge,
like medicine or architecture. But when "highest cause" is taken
simpliciter, then "wisdom" is the capacity to judge and order
beliefs and actions according to the highest possible explanatory
principles, which, as such, are of unrestricted application. The
highest cause simpliciter is the triune God, and the highest
principles are the articles of faith. Faith assents to these principles
as the prima veritas (more precisely as the self-testimony of God,
who is the prima veritas) and therefore not on account of any
other beliefs held true (otherwise they would not linguistically
embody the prima, but at best secunda, veritas). The capacity to
order the total field of human belief and action according to these
principles is wisdom as a gift of the Holy Spirit to believers. The
unrestricted epistemic application of the articles of faith (that is,
the exercise of the capacity the Spirit gives) defines not a
particular domain of knowledge but a comprehensive system of
the world, a world-view. This system of the world, now as
content rather than capacity, constitutes the highest wisdom: the
Christian faith itself. "The person who knows the highest cause
without restriction [simpliciter],which is God, is said to be wise
without restriction [simpliciter],insofar as he is able to judge and
to order all things according to divine rules [viz., according to the
articles of faith]. "39
39 STh II-II, q. 45, a. 1. On the connection between faith in the articles and the Spirit's gift
of the highest wisdom, see ibid., ad 2: "Faith assents to divine truth on account of itself, and
that judgment which is in accord with divine truth belongs to the gift of wisdom. Therefore
the gift of wisdom presupposes faith."

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BRUCE D. MARSHALL

Thomas's discussion of the way in which theology (that is,
sacra doctrina) is itself in a certain sense the highest wisdom helps
to clarify the way he conceives the connection between faith's
supremely wise ordering of the whole field of possible belief and
the local, subordinate wisdom of medicine, architecture, and the
like-that is, between the articles of faith taken as epistet;nically
primary and all the rest of what we think we have good reason to
believe.40 Sacra doctrina, Thomas maintains, is a science in
basically Aristotle's sense, roughly, a set of interpreted sentences
(or propositions) tied in logically tight ways to other interpreted
sentences which are themselves either proven or beyond proof
and doubt alike (and so are the "first principles" of the science).
But "the knowledge proper to this science [sacra doctrina] is that
which comes through revelation, not that which comes through
natural reason," that is, the first principles of sacra doctrina are
the articles of faith by which the prima veritas bears witness to
himself. "Therefore it does not belong to sacred doctrine to prove
the principles of the other sciences, but only to judge them: for
whatever is found in other sciences which contradicts the truth of
this science is totally to be rejected as false, according to II Cor.
10: [5]."41

40 Wisdom as a donum Spiritus sancti is related to sacra doctrina as the actual capacity to
order the total field is related to the acquired ability reflectively to articulate what that
capacity (which itself cannot be acquired, but only freely given by the Spirit) accomplishes.
The former is wisdom per modum inclinationis, the latter is wisdom per modum cognitionis
(STh I, q. 1, a. 6, ad 3).
41 STh I, q. 1, a. 6, ad 2. Similarly, "Those who use philosophy in sacred doctrine can err
in two ways. In one way when they use those [philosophies] which are contrary to faith ...
In another way when what belongs to faith is included within the boundaries of philosophy,
such that one is only willing to believe that which can be maintained by philosophy, when,
on the contrary, philosophy is to be brought within the boundaries of faith, as the Apostle
teaches in 2 Cor 10" (In Boet. de Trin., q. 2, a. 3 [ed. Bruno Decker (Leiden: Brill, 1955); cf.
the text from In I Cor. cited above, n. 10). Conversely, "secular wisdom and eloquence" are
rightly used "in [the study of] sacred Scripture ... when they are not one's chief aim, but
rather when one submits them to sacred Scripture, to which one chiefly clings, in order that
in this way Scripture may take all other things into obedience to itself, according to 2 Cor.
10, 5" (Contra Impugnantes sect. 3, c. 5 [no. 414], in Opuscula Theologica, vol. 2). Indeed:
"Those who use philosophical texts in sacred doctrine by bringing them into obedience to
faith do not mix water with wine, but transform water into wine" (In Boet. de Trin., q. 2, a.
3, ad 5).

FAITH AND REASON RECONSIDERED

19

Two points important for our purposes may be gathered from
these remarks. (1) The unrestricted epistemic primacy of the
articles of faith gives the content of sacra doctrina the rank of
highest wisdom, as it gives the same rank to the habit of wisdom
which the Spirit imparts to the faithful. Once again the logical
relationship of inconsistency, not consistency, defines the unrestricted character of that primacy: of the articles of faith alone
may it be said that whatever beliefs are inconsistent with them
cannot be true. 42 (2) The epistemic primacy of central Christian
beliefs with respect to the total field of possible belief is, by
contrast, almost never deductive or inferential, and need be
warranting in any sense only when the meaning of the beliefs in
question is dose enough to that of the articles to call for it.43 We
42 This may seem to overstate the case, since Thomas clearly supposes that there are beliefs
besides the articles of faith with which no true sentence can be inconsistent; the clearest
example is what he calls principiaper se nota (lit., "principles known through themselves"),
beliefs whose truth is directly and non-inferentially apparent, and thus self-evident (including
particularly what Thomas calls "the first principles of reason," and beliefs like "the whole is
greater than the part"; cf., e.g., STh I, q. 17, a. 3, ad 2; STh 11-11, q. 1, a. 5). But as we have
already seen, (1) Thomas takes the believer's assent to the articles of faith to be "greater and
more stable" (magis ... et firmius) than his assent "even to the first principles of reason" (cf.
above, n. 36), and (2) consistency with the articles of faith (or with Christ) is required of "all
other" (omnia alia) beliefs, such that "whatever" (quidquid)is inconsistent with them cannot
be true (cf. nn. 41, 38). This suggests that in order to decide whether a belief which appears
self-evident to us is actually true, we need to test it for consistency with the articles of faith;
should it turn out not to be we need not suppose we have found a self-evident principle
which is false, but simply that we have failed, despite initial appearances, to identify a
self-evident principle (cf. In Boet. de Trin., q. 2, a. 3: "If anything is found contrary to the
faith in the sayings of the philosophers, this is not philosophy, but rather an abuse of
philosophy arising from a defect of reason"; the dicta philosophorumof course contain much
more than principiaper se nota). Read in this way, Thomas seems to hold that principiaper
se nota are indeed of unrestricted epistemic application, in that nothing inconsistent with
them is true, but not of unrestricted epistemic primacy, since we decide whether we have a
principiumper se notum by seeing whether the belief in question is consistent with the articles
of faith, but we do not test the articles for their consistency with the principiawhich they
help identify, or with any other beliefs (assuming throughout, of course, that we have
interpretedthe articles correctly, on which see Marshall, "Absorbing the World," 90-97, and
the penultimate section of the present article). This means, to be sure, that Thomas's account
of faith and sacra doctrina as (each in its own way) the highest wisdom calls for greater
revision of Aristotle's notion of self-evidence than Thomas actually undertakes (cf. VI Ethic.,
lect. 5 [no. 1179]); if we have to repair to other beliefs in order to decide whether a putative
"principle" is actually true, we obviously do not know the principle "through itself."
43 The "almost" is to account for inferences within theology after the pattern of STh I, q.
1, a. 2; STh I, q. 1, a. 8. Cf. the remarks below, n. 58, regarding Luther on inference.

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BRUCE D. MARSHALL

cannot on Thomas's view deduce the chief points of what we
ought to believe about medicine or architecture from the articles
of faith, the way we can deduce, and in that sense prove, the first
principles of optics from geometry. The reasons we have for
holding the vast majority of our beliefs (or, if it is reasonable to
have some beliefs without reasons, our very holding of them) will
not be traceable to those which are central to the whole field of
belief, and they need not be in order to maintain the unrestricted
epistemic primacy of the articles.
That the highest wisdom is a gift specifically of the Holy Spirit
suggests its irreducibly Trinitarian character; formed faith and the
correlated spiritual gift of sapientia (along with the gifts of
intellectus and scientia) together constitute the specifically
cognitive way of being drawn into the one life of the triune God,
or of sharing in God's self-knowledge.
Thomas's view seems to be something like this. To have the
gift of the highest wisdom is to assess everything else in light of
the highest cause or explanation, namely God. But "the root and
source of the knowledge of God is the Word of God, that is,
Christ ... insofar as human beings share in the Word of God,
they know God"-not, it should be stressed, in a fleshless and
therefore anonymous Verbum, but precisely in the eternal Word
become our flesh, the human being Jesus of Nazareth: "this
human being is divine truth itself."44 Wisdom is therefore the
practice of interpreting and assessing everything else in light
specifically of Scripture's identification and description of the
human being Jesus Christ, and above all of the salvation
accomplished by his cross. Only the Holy Spirit can teach us this
practice. The beliefs according to which it is the highest wisdom
to assess all others are not self-evident, empirically obvious,
demonstrable, or widely shared; when assessed in light of those
which are (according to what Thomas calls "the wisdom of
human reason"), the articles of faith will be rejected as false
(indeed, foolish), not taken as the highest wisdom. Taught by the
Spirit the practice of ordering all things around the crucified and
risen Jesus, however, we "become sharers in the divine wisdom
44

In Joan. c. 17, lect. 6 (no. 2267-68); ibid. c. 1, lect. 8 (no. 188).

FAITH AND REASON RECONSIDERED

21

and knowers of the truth. The Son teaches us, since he is the
Word, but the Holy Spirit makes us capable of being taught by
him. " 45 We become sharers in the divine wisdom: we begin,
however incompletely and feebly, to order all things in the way
the highest and uncaused cause does, namely, the one whom Jesus
calls Father, who orders all things around the Word whom he has
sent into the flesh, and whom this Word alone enables us to know
because, in Thomas's phrase, he "expresses the total being of the
Father." 46 And we are able to be wise in this way because the
Spirit gives us the gift of wisdom-inducts us into God's own
wisdom-by giving us a share in the incarnate Word's total
correspondence to the reality of the Father-in that unique relation to the Father on account of which Jesus Christ is "wisdom
itself' and "truth itself. " 47
For Thomas, then, it seems that if "the salvation accomplished
by the cross of Christ" is the "chief matter" of the Christian faith,
it must turn out epistemically to be the chief matter across the
board.
II. LUTHER ON NATURAL REASON, FAITH, AND EPISTEMIC
PRIORITIES

Reading Aquinas this way greatly increases, at least at first
glance, the likelihood that he and Luther basically agree on how
to decide what is true. Much modern interpretation of both
figures has, of course, made agreement between them seem
unlikely, especially on this matter.
For a great many post-Enlightenment Protestant interpreters
of Aquinas (including particularly some of the leading figures in
Protestant theology and Dogmengeschichte since the nineteenth
century), the intellectual labor of medieval Scholasticism in which
45

46

In Joan. c. 14, lect. 6 (no. 1958).
In Joan. c. 1, lect. 1 (no. 29).

47 That is, the Son's perfect correspondence to the Father is the reason why "wisdom" and
"truth" are appropriated to the Son; cf. De Verit. q. 1, a. 7; STh I, q. 39, a. 8; In Joan. c. 18,
lect. 6 (no. 2365). Thomas, however, has no trouble dropping the languageof appropriation:
"Truth belongs to Christ through himself because he is the Word ... the Word of God is
truth itself" (In Joan. c. 14, lect. 2 [no. 1869]; cf. also the text cited in n. 45). On
appropriation see Trinity and Truth, ch. 9.

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BRUCE D. MARSHALL

he was (they assumed) the dominant force brought forth, in the
phrase of the seventeenth-century Lutheran dogmatician Abraham
Calov, an enormous "mixo-philosophico-theologica." This grotesque and sterile hybrid was both bad theology and bad
philosophy. As these interpreters saw (and in some cases still see)
it, Aquinas and others tried to build the chief matters of Christian
faith onto a foundation already laid by philosophy. Naturally
only that can be added onto a foundation which the foundation
will support, so Aquinas on this view both trimmed the teachings
of Christian faith to fit the requirements of reason (which is bad
theology) and refused to let reason go digging about wherever it
saw fit in pursuit of truth, demanding instead that it stick to
constructing a foundation for a suitably trimmed Christianity
(which is bad philosophy). These interpreters attribute to
Aquinas, one can say, a view of the epistemic status of Christian
belief roughly like Locke's: some Christian beliefs are above
reason; this does not necessarily mean they are false, but they can
only be true if they are not against reason, that is, not contrary to
what any suitably diligent human being, regardless of his
historical and communal location, can find out.48 With his battle
cry "crux probat omnia," so these interpreters often suppose,
Luther hit on the chief axiom of a genuinely theological
epistemology and in so doing overthrew the dubious medieval
"mixo. " 49
48 Cf. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. H. Nidditch
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 4.18-19, especially 18, §§ 2, 10; 19, § 14.
49 For a recent reading of the medievals along these lines, and of Luther as solving
medieval problems, see Ingolf U. Dalferth, Theology and Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell,
1988), 71-88. On "crux probat omnia" cf. Gerhard Hammer and Manfred Biersack, eds.,
Archiv zur WeimarerAusgabeder Werke Martin Luthers, vol. 2 (Cologne and Vienna: Bohlau
Verlag, 1981), 325.1 (Operationes in Psalmos, 1519-21). As Luther uses it (cf. also
301.14-17) this is not a general theological axiom, epistemological or otherwise. What the
cross (more exactly, the cruciform suffering of believers) tests or proves is specifically the
believer's own existence in gratia: "If the joy and praise of God continue eternal and fixed
even in suffering, this cannot be a fallible sign [whether we are (as they say) 'in grace']"
(324.17-20). Similarly Luther's famous remark, "CRUX sola est nostra Theologia" (319.3),
functions for him not as a general dictum, but specifically as the proper basis for the mystical
ascent "into the darkness ... above being and non-being": "I truly do not know whether [the
mystical theologians] understand themselves when they attribute that [ascent] to elicited acts
and do not rather believe that the sufferings of the cross, death, and hell are signified. THE
CROSS alone is our theology" (318.20-319.3; cf. D. Martin Luthers Werke Kritische

FAITH AND REASON RECONSIDERED

23

Modern defenders of Thomas on truth and justification have
rightly objected to this crude reading of him, but they too have
generally taken the deliverances of reason-which is to say, in
practice, Thomas's refinement and elaboration of Aristotle's
philosophy, including a large dollop of natural theology-to be
epistemically central for him. As these interpreters read Aquinas,
Scripture and creed are of course to be believed on the authority
of the revealing God, but they have little or no epistemic role;
their interaction with the beliefs which are epistemically central
is kept (deliberately, it seems) to a minimum. Indeed, the
possibility of regarding the scriptural and creedal description of
"the salvation accomplished by the cross of Christ" as epistemically central in Thomas seems never to arise. One gets the
impression from these interpreters that this would be a bizarre
excess unsuited to serious reflection on these matters.so
If correct, the reading of Aquinas I have outlined in this article
obviates the main assumptions of both sides about Thomas's
views, and to that extent suggests the possibility of closing the
presumed distance between him and Luther. Whether this can
actually be done, however, depends on what Luther's own views
are.
A) Epistemic Priorities

In his sermons of 1532-33 on 1 Corinthians 15, Luther
proposes that the resurrection of Jesus is the "chief article"
(heubtstuck) of Christian doctrine.st Jesus' resurrection can only
be preached and believed, however, if we take it as the decisive
criterion for making judgments about the nature and destiny of

Gesamtausgabe [Weimar: Herman

Bohlaus Nachfolger, 1883££.], hereafter WA,
40/1:204.23-27). Note that Luther here seems to accept the ascent super ens et non ens; what
he rejects is any way of ascent that bypasses the cross.
5 For a classic interpretation of Aquinas along these lines, see Etienne Gilson, The
ChristianPhilosophyof St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. L. K. Shook (New York: Random House,
1956).
51 Paul "stakes everything on the ground from which he has set out: that Christ is risen
from the dead, which is the chief article of Christian doctrine. No one can deny it who wants
to be a Christian or a preacher of the gospel" (WA 36:524.31-34).

°

BRUCE D. MARSHALL

24

the embodied beings we are-and this requires blocking
inferences which would otherwise seem quite reasonable.
Against everything reason proposes, or against the way reason wants to
measure things and find out about them, indeed against what all the senses feel
and grasp, we must learn to cleave to the word and to judge entirely according
to it-even though we no doubt see before our eyes that a human being is
buried in the earth, furthermore, that he or she must decay and become food
for worms and finally crumble to dust. 52

There seem to be two complementary claims here about the
epistemic priorities compatible with holding it true that Jesus is
risen from the dead.
First, our ordinary, empirically obvious beliefs about ourselves
and our bodies, while surely pertinent and no doubt true as far as
they go, cannot be employed as criteria by which to "judge" or
"measure" the truth of those interpreted sentences which identify
and describe Jesus' resurrection, nor those which promise our
own resurrection in him. Luther attacks reason in many different
contexts and to many different ends; here the crucial point seems
not to be that beliefs which most people (Christians and
non-Christians alike) regard as reasonable or obvious are false.
Believing that we die and rot in the ground is not by itself the
problem; evidently we do. 53 The problem arises when from these
manifestly true beliefs we draw conclusions about the ultimate
destiny of human beings, and so deny the resurrection of the body
in general, and Jesus' resurrection in particular. Drawing
inferences from these otherwise unobjectionable beliefs to
conclusions about the resurrection attributes to these beliefs an
epistemic centrality which must be denied to them-or, more
precisely, which can be attributed to them only at the cost of
"destroying and losing the gospel entirely." 54
52 WA 36:494.13-17.
53 It seems right to group these under "what nature teaches everyone and what all human

reason and understanding has to allown (WA 36:526.35-36).
54 So Luther paraphrases Paul on the contrast between his own gospel and that of the
Corinthian enthusiasts: "For I did not preach it, as they claim and say, in a human way,
according to reason and our understanding. For to preach in such a worldly form, or to judge
according to such a form, destroys and loses the gospel entirelyn (WA 36:492.23-26). Luther

FAITH AND REASON RECONSIDERED

25

This reversal of epistemic priorities Luther calls "rhyming" or
"harmonizing" (reimen) the gospel with reason, and it can, he
observes, have two different results: either the truth value of the
gospel or its interpretation will have to change. That is: because
reason "sees that [the gospel] is entirely against its understanding
and all sense and feeling, and against experience as well, it rejects
and denies [the gospel]"; or, "when it cannot get away from
God's word"-that is, supposing the interpreter wants to hold the
gospel true- "it twists and trims it with glosses, so that the word
must harmonize with its understanding. Then faith no longer has
any room but must give way to reason and perish. " 55 One of these
equally unhappy outcomes ensues when any aspect of the gospel
ends up in an epistemically subordinate position; what Luther
says about Jesus' resurrection recurs in his discussions of (for
example) the eternal and consubstantial divinity of the Logos, and
the suffering and death of God on the cross.56
Luther's second claim is the positive complement of this.
People who do not already believe in the resurrection of the
body, he concedes, will likely find Paul's argument for it in 1
Corinthians 15 entirely unconvincing. As Luther reads him, Paul
explicitly characterizes this judging "according to reason" (and its opposite, faith in the
gospel) as a matter not simply of the beliefs one holds true, but of the patterns of inference
one follows: "For human wisdom and reason cannot go any higher or further than to judge
and draw conclusions [scbliessen]as its eyes see and it feels, or than it grasps with its senses.
But faith has to draw conclusions beyond and against such feeling and understanding, and
cleave to what is presented to it by the word" (WA 36:493.4-7).
ss WA 36:494.7-12. Similarly: "This article does not agree [rei1net] with [reason] at all.
Indeed many foolish things have to follow if people try to judge concerning this article
according to their own understanding and darkness. They must either take this article for a
lie, or interpret it with great cleverness, so that it somehow harmonizes [reimeJ with their
understanding" (632.13-16; cf. also 661.28-31).
s6 Thus on John 1:1: "Many heretics of all kinds have attacked this article and wanted to
measure, grasp, and master it by reason, but they have all gone to ground. The Holy Spirit
has preserved this article against all of them, so that God's word still stands fast against all the
gates of hell" (WA 46:545.23-26; cf. 551.7-9; "this article" ="the high article of our holy
Christian faith, which we believe and confess: that there is a single true, almighty, and eternal
God, and nonetheless that in the same single divine essence there are three distinct persons:
God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit," and with that the article
"concerning the eternal divinity of Christ"; 541.5-8; 542.29). Faced with this set of beliefs,
"Reason draws another conclusion, and says: if the Word is with God, are there then two
Gods?" (549.21-22). On the cross, cf. WA26:321.19-28; 39/2:279.26-280.3; also the text
cited below, n. 90.

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BRUCE D. MARSHALL

there infers the bodily resurrection of believers to life with Christ
in God from the premise that Christ is risen. Those who want to
"rhyme" the proclamation of the gospel with reason by deciding
about the resurrection on the basis of what is otherwise obvious
will naturally find this procedure at best a petere principium.57 But
the point, as Luther sees it, is precisely that the gospel of Jesus'
resurrection, together with the other articles of faith (including a
nest of beliefs about the truthfulness of God, the reliability of the
apostolic witness, and God's preservation of the Church in the
truth), is the principium from which the Christian community
draws inferences about human nature and destiny, and by decisive
appeal to which this community and its members assess the truth
of what they otherwise believe and infer. 58 As principia, the
resurrection of Jesus and the rest of the articles of faith are criteria
by which the truth of other beliefs may be assessed, but whose
truth may not be assessed by those beliefs; they are, more
particularly, premises from which other beliefs may be inferred,
but may not themselves be inferred as conclusions from any other
beliefs-or regarded as false because no such inference may be
made (in this, of course, Luther follows the broad pattern of
Aristotle's PosteriorAnalytics, which he would presumably have
learned from his Erfurt teachers Trutfetter and Arnoldi).
For Luther this side of the issue becomes particularly pressing
not (as with Thomas) when the Christian community is
57 "To the heathen and unbelievers it appears to be a weak dialectic or proof, since they
deny not only the article he attempts to prove, but everything which he introduces in order
to prove it. This is called 'probare negatum per negatum' und 'petere principium'" (WA
36:525.16-19).
58 "These are our principles, our grounds and chief article, on which the whole of
Christian teaching stands" (WA36:527.17-18). "Thus St. Paul contended for this article [the
general resurrection] on the basis of the correct and strictest principles, so that whoever
wants to deny the resurrection of the dead must also deny that Christ is raised" (529.28-30).
Cf. 527.12-13, 34-36. This is not, it should be noted, contrary to Aquinas's denial of an
inferential relationship between the articles of faith and the rest of the epistemic field;
Aquinas does not deny the possibility of such inferences in certain cases (in the articles
referred to above, n. 43, he insists upon it), but denies that those subordinate principia
coherence with which defines various sciences (regions, one could say) within the total field
can be deduced from the articles. Luther agrees with this, indeed has a strong version of it (cf.
below, n. 76). For Aquinas what can be deduced from or otherwise warranted by the articles
constitutes theology or sacra doctrina as a special science, which differs from the others,
however, in being able to judge them all.

FAlTH AND REASON RECONSIDERED

27

confronted by a powerful belief system originating from without,
but in the intra-Christian conflict between the Churches of the
Augsburg Confession and Rome, the outcome of which looked to
Luther's eyes increasingly distressing in the late 1530s. Judging by
the evidence of the senses, Rome has everything on its side:
numbers, prestige, political and military power, even, Luther is
willing to concede for the sake of argument, miracles. But the
Christian community judges not primarily by the evidence of the
senses but by the gospel of Christ; consistency with the gospel is
the chief test of truth, and by this standard the Lutherans can be
confident that they will carry the day. In this connection Luther
argues as follows, preaching in 1534 on John 16:13 ("[The Holy
Spirit] will declare to you the things that are to come").
The Holy Spirit himself must be there with his revelation in order that one may
hold to the word of Christ and his wisdom, and judge in accordance with it
concerning all teachings and signs, life and work. What goes against this chief
doctrine and article of Christ [viz., the gospel] ... one should neither value nor
accept, even if it snows miracles every day. For what is against this doctrine is
certainly false, and concocted by the devil for the seduction of souls. 59

On Luther's account believing the proclamation that Jesus is
risen and we too shall rise in him is not simply a matter of
holding true a range of sentences, but a way of configuring a wide
field of belief-of deciding where truth and falsity lie within the
field. It cannot be otherwise: unless the proclamation of the
resurrection orders a wider epistemic field, it will either be
rejected or interpreted in a sense contrary to that which it has
when it is epistemically central. Configuring a wide field of belief
in this fashion involves an ongoing struggle to reconfigure the
field we otherwise inhabit, since at minimum we have (1) to block
a whole range of inferences from the obvious, inferences upon
which our "carnal" (i.e., fallen) reason seizes in its self-destructive
59 WA 46:65.13-20; cf. also WA 45:570.19-32. On the gospel's identification of Jesus
Christ as the chief test or criterion for resolving the dispute about what is true within the
Church, cf. WA 45 :573.34-36: "Everything rests on this man Christ alone, for he is the test
of which is the right Spirit or the Spirit of truth"; cf. also 576.28-34. For the dating of
Luther's sermons on John 14-16, first published in 1538 (chaps. 14-15) and 1539 (chap. 16),
cf. WA 59:255-60.

28

BRUCE D. MARSHALL

defiance of God, and also (2) to make a whole range of inferences
from beliefs which, in this life, can never be obvious for us. 60
Only the Holy Spirit is up to the epistemic effort involved. 61 In all
this Luther seems in vigorous agreement with Thomas's first rule
about teaching and preaching the Christian faith: keep your
epistemic priorities straight.
B) The Package of Articles

Before we look at the way Luther handles Thomas's second
rule, we should pause briefly to observe that a long tradition of
Luther interpretation (of which Albrecht Ritschl and Wilhelm
Herrmann may be regarded as the progenitors) has maintained
that "faith" for Luther is at bottom not a matter of holding
sentences true at all, and thus not a matter of having "beliefs" in
the sense in which I am using the term. Guided by neo-Kantian
philosophical assumptions, these interpreters variously contend
that for Luther faith is an interior trust in Christ (Vertrauen auf
Christus, or auf Gott in Christo) which can of course be expressed
by, but is not dependent upon, any Fur-wahr-halten-upon
having any particular beliefs about God or Christ. 62
As many of the passages we have already cited indicate,
however, Luther himself seems to have no trouble supposing that
faith involves holding sentences true under particular
interpretations-that is, having beliefs. The interpreted sentences
which faith holds true are what Luther calls Christian "articles"
or "teachings"; these seem straightforwardly to be the contents of
60 On "carnal reason," see De Servo Arbitrio: "These are the arguments of human reason,
which is accustomed to this sort of wisdom ... [at present] we dispute with human reason
concerning an inference, for it interprets the Scriptures of God by its inferences and
syllogisms, and turns them in whatever direction it wishes" r:tfA 18:673.6-10). On the
equivalence of "human reason" and "carnal reason" here, cf. 676.38.
61 "Thus it was and still is with true Christians: they see and experience that this
truth-that is, the faith which should hold fast to the article concerning Christ and his
kingdom-cannot be held by human reason or power, but rather the Holy Spirit himself must
do it" r:t!A 46:55.26-30).
62 Regarding the influence of neo-Kantian philosophical assumptions on modern
Protestant Luther interpretation, see Risto Saarinen, Gottes Wirken au( Uns: Die
transzendentale Deutung des Gegenwart-Christi-Motivs in der Lutherforschung (Mainz: Verlag
Philipp von Zabern, 1989).

FAITH AND REASON RECONSIDERED

29

propositional attitudes like "to believe" and "to hold [true]," as
evinced by Luther's repeated placement of them as the objects of
"that" (quad or da{5) clauses which express such attitudes. And
Luther seems to make no significant distinction between having
saving faith in the gospel and "holding firmly" to these
articles-that is, to these sentences.
So, for example, in an extended Christological commentary on
Psalm 2:7, Luther argues that "you are my son; today I have .
begotten you" ought to be taken to assert the following article of
faith: "This person born of the Virgin Mary is at once [simul] a
true human being and true God. "63 He admonishes his readers to
follow "with simple faith" this "Verbum"-that is, sentencetaught to us by Christ himself. In other words: "Let us believe
that this article is shown and handed on to us by God, rather than
being discovered by us, and let us not judge [aestimemus] such
things on the basis of our own mendacity." Indeed, in this Psalm
"you have ... now shown to you the chief articles of our faith,"
in particular what sort of king Christ is: one begotten of the
Father in eternity, and set up by the Father as king on Mount
Zion in time. Christ teaches us this article-"that he is the eternal
Son of God"-precisely in order that we may trust him alone for
salvation: "so that he might arouse us to embrace him and to trust
his merits and works." Holding true this article (that is, sentence)
seems, moreover, to be a necessary condition for saving fiducia in
Christ. "To the person who believes these [chief articles] the King
will soon magnify himself by his words and deeds; you will not
neglect his word or hold it in contempt, for you know that he is
the Son of God." Christ's facta are nothing less than to liberate
us from death, sin, and the tyranny of Satan. But "all these things
happen, when you firmly hold [retinent] this article, that Christ
is the eternal Son of God." Those (like "Turks" and "Papists," as
Luther puts it) who "do not firmly hold" this article regarding the
eternal generation of the Son thereby lack saving faith. They
know of Christ's birth to Mary and his suffering under Pontius
Pilate, but "all these things are for them mere history, and they do
not arouse to faith." This notion of being "aroused to faith," such
63 WA 40/2:258.30-31.

I am grateful to David Yeago for pointing out this passage to me.

30

BRUCE D. MARSHALL

that the gospel becomes the message of salvation for me and not
"mere history," may seem tailor-made to support the view that
faith for Luther is at root a prelinguistic Vertrauen auf Christus.
But Luther is quite dear that the difference between these two
opposing "takes" on the gospel depends on the sentences one
holds true; the believer is "aroused to faith" (that is, trust) in
Christ just because he has a different propositional attitude from
the Turk-just because he "firmly holds [true]" what the Turk
denies: "The whole gospel becomes mere history if this primary
belief about the eternal birth of Christ is lost [amissa hac capitali
sententia de aeterna nativitate Christi]. For with this belief
everything else is given. " 64
Luther also seems to have no trouble seeing "the heart" as the
seat of both trust in Christ and having true beliefs about Christ.
Indeed, these two aspects of faith are not only alike indispensable
to it, but are very closely bound up with one another, as Luther
suggests in remarks directly pertinent to our present concern:
Faith is nothing other than the truth of the heart, that is the right knowledge
[cogitationeml of the heart about God. Faith alone, and not reason, is able to
think rightly about God. A person thinks rightly about God when he believes
God's word. However, when he wants to measure and to believe God by his
own reason, apart from the word, he does not have the truth about God, and
therefore neither thinks nor judges rightly about him .... Therefore the truth
is that very faith which judges rightly about God. 65

64 All quotations from WA 40/2:258.23-259.30.
I have been citing the printed version
of 1546; that "believing the gospel" and "firmly holding the articles" are more or less
interchangeable is particularly clear from Rorer's handwritten notes of Luther's lectures,
which were given in 1532. "The gospel is therefore a new teaching beyond the law of Moses,
which the Son preaches at the command of the Father, namely [the teaching] that he is the
true King on Mount Zion and the true Son of God. Given this article, you have the gospel
[Isto posito articulo habes Euangelium]. Later he will glorify himself through his words and
deeds; now you must believe that this true human being and the Son are one person. When
this article is lost nothing remains of piety" (258.10--259.1). When this version goes on to
say, "Christ's words and deeds become [mere] history if the gospel principle fprincipium
Euangelit]is lost" (259.3-4), the "principium Euangelii" clearly refers, once again, not to an
interior Vertrauen, but back to "isto posito articulo."
65 WA40/1:376.23-377.14;
cf. 377.3-4: "If I believe, I have that true thought which is
nothing other than faith. I can neither grasp [this thought] nor prove it by reason, but I can
hear it preached."

FAITH AND REASON RECONSIDERED

31

Thus it seems that for Luther faith, while it certainly involves
more than holding sentences true, cannot involve less; unless we
hold true particular sentences which identify and describe God in
Christ, we cannot have faith, and unless those sentences are true,
our faith is false-it fails "to think" and "to judge" correctly about
God.
Luther also agrees with Thomas's second rule, that the articles
of faith come only as a package. "If you deny God in one article
you have denied him in all, because God is not divided into many
articles, but all of him is in each article and he is one in all the
articles." 66 Luther's reasoning here seems quite close to Thomas's.
We know God only by holding true a range of interconnected
propositions and associated beliefs, but there is no multiplicity in
God corresponding to the multiplicity of our beliefs. The articles
of faith (or, we could equally well say, the constitutive features of
the gospel) "all hang on one another" in what Luther takes to be
a logically tight way, so that believing any one requires believing
the others, and rejecting any one involves rejecting the rest. 67
Denying any one of the articles lands the denier in unbelief about
all of them not only by implication, but, as it were, by definition,
since one can reject an article of faith only by holding the
66 WA 40/2:48.22-24 (or as the handwritten version has it, God is "whole [totus] in every
article" [48.7]). Cf. WA 28:199.21-28 (on John 17:26): "To know the Father is not only to
know that he made heaven and earth, and how he helps the pious and punishes the wicked,
but to know that he has sent the Son into the world and given him to us in order to take away
sin and death, and to win for us and give us the Father's favor and grace. That is the right
name of God; it shows us what is in his mind and opens up for us his fatherly heart, will,
thought, and blessing. Whoever does not know him in this way does not know him rightly,
and does not know he should serve or praise him."
67 With stress on the positive (to believe one article involves believing the rest): "Because
every Christian must believe and confess that Christ is risen,he is immediately driven to grant
that the resurrection of the dead must also be true-<>r else he has to deny in a heap the
whole gospel and everything which is preached about Christ and God. For it all hangs
together like a chain, such that where one article stands, they all stand. Thus [Paul] draws
everything together, and always infers one thing from another" (WA 36:524.37-525.15).
With more stress on the negative (to deny one article involves denying the rest): "Thus you
see that everything hangs on our certainty about this single article [the general resurrection,
in this case]. For where this article wavers or is no longer valid [nicht mehr gilt], all the others
have no use or validity, because everything-Christ's coming and setting up his kingdom in
the world-has occurred for the sake of the resurrection and the future life. Where this, the
basis, cause, and aim of all the articles of faith, is overturned or taken away, all the others
must fall away with it" (605.16-22).

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BRUCE D. MARSHALL

truthfulness of God in contempt, and this roughly defines
unbelief; the person who declines to believe in the coming general
resurrection, for example, rejects the trustworthiness of the God
who makes this promise and thereby rejects all the other promises
as well. 68
Luther's notion of the mutual inherence of the articles of faith
also helps explain how he can combine insistence upon upholding
the "chief article" of Christian faith with relative insouciance
about what the chief article is. He variously names not only (as is
well known) justification by faith, but also the Trinity, the
incarnation, the distinction between law and gospel, and (as we
have seen) the resurrection; since each can be understood
properly and held true as so understood only in intimate
connection with the others, we need not, and perhaps should not,
settle which is "chief." 69 Luther is content to suggest that three
complexes of belief together have primacy: Trinity, incarnation,
and justification. 70 If what Thomas means by "the salvation
accomplished by the cross of Christ" is at least compatible with
what Luther means when he talks of "justification by faith" (and
68 In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul "thus wants to say that whoever wants to deny this article
[here, Christ's resurrection and ours in him] has to deny much more. First, that you
[Corinthians] believe correctly, second, that the word which you believe was correct, third,
that we apostles preach correctly and are God's apostles, fourth, that God is truthful-in
sum, that God is God" (WA 36:526.23-27). In Thomas's terms, someone in this epistemic
situation declines not simply one article of faith, but the formal object by which faith is
defined, namely God as self-revealing first truth (he does not "believe God" [credereDeo]),
and so does not have faith even with regard to those creedal sentences to which he assents (d.
STh II-II, q. 1, a. 1; q. 5, a. 3).
69 John's Gospel presents the Trinity as "the high article of our holy Christian faith"; therefore this article "is the highest art of Christians, who alone know and believe it" (WA
46:541.5; 550.26-27). At the same time: "This is our chief article ... and our right, true, and
Christian faith, beside which there is no other, that Christ is true God and true man"
(599.38-40; cf. also 601.4-12). But also: "The highest art and wisdom of Christians is not to
know the law and to be ignorant of works and all active righteousness" (WA 40/1:43.25-26);
"It is supremely necessary to know this matter [locus] of the distinction between law and
gospel, because it contains the sum of all Christian teaching" (209.16-17).
7 Cf. the Vorrede to Luther's sermons on John 14-16: "Here [in John 14-16] the right,
chief, and high articles of Christian teaching are grounded and presented in the most
compelling way. Nowhere else in Scripture are they found so dose together: the article about
the three distinct persons of the holy Trinity, and especially the article about the divine and
human nature of the eternal and undivided person of the Lord Christ, and likewise about the
righteousness of faith and the right consolation of the conscience" (WA 45:467.29-35).

°

FAITH AND REASON RECONSIDERED

33

it has, as I suggested at the outset, been well demonstrated that
they are more than merely compatible), then it seems that he and
Luther not only agree that those beliefs which are central to the
Christian community ought to be epistemically primary, they
agree on what these beliefs are.
C) Unrestricted Primacy

The step from endorsing the two rules we have first found in
Thomas to ascribing unrestricted epistemic primacy to the gospel
and the articles of faith is not a long one, and Luther takes it
boldly: "In God, a person who has grasped one thing has grasped
all things, and a person who does not grasp God never grasps any
part of the creation. "71 Believing the gospel, it seems, involves
configuring (that is, interpreting and assessing) not only the local
neighborhood of belief-what we hold true about God-but also
all our beliefs about creatures in accordance with it. And that is
the whole field; there is nothing about which to have beliefs
besides God and creatures. As Luther's remarks about not
accepting anything that "goes against" the gospel of Christ
already suggest, the range over which the gospel and the articles
of faith extend in deciding what is true-negatively, by excluding
what is inconsistent-has no boundaries. Again like Thomas,
Luther can also put the point in terms of higher and lower (or,
one could say, more and less central) criteria of truth, with appeal
to the same scriptural text Thomas favors when this issue comes
up: "When it comes to the works and words of God one should
take captive reason and all wisdom, as St. Paul teaches in 2
Corinthians 10, and allow them to be blinded and guided, led,
instructed, and mastered, in order that we do not become judges
of God in his words. "72
Ill. LUTHER ON RESOLVING EPISTEMIC CONFLICT

Were this the only line of thought in Luther about deciding
what is true, we could stop at this point and declare him-nolens
71
72

WA 18:605.12-14.
WA 26:439.31-35.

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BRUCE D. MARSHALL

volens, to be sure-in virtually complete agreement with Aquinas
on the matter. But Luther often seems to think quite differently
about these issues. In an academic disputation in January 1539,
for example, Luther responded to the objections of his Wittenberg
colleagues and students to a series of forty-two theses he had
proposed on the question, "Whether this proposition is true in
philosophy: 'Et Verbum caro factum est."' 73 The text of this
disputation is corrupt in places to the point of being
indecipherable, but Luther's answer is unmistakable: no. 74 "In
theology it is true that the Word became flesh, but in philosophy
this is entirely impossible and absurd," as he puts the point in his
second thesis. 75 If Luther took "Ver bum caro factum est" to be
not only true but epistemically primary across the board, as my
analysis to this point suggests, and if, as here, he takes
"philosophy" to be committed to rejecting this belief completely,
one would expect him to bite the bullet and say that "philosophy"
is just false: however strongly held or well-grounded our
philosophical beliefs (whatever these turn out more precisely to
be), since they "go against" one of the chief articles of faith, we
will have to do without them. Interestingly, he declines to do this.
He argues instead that theology and philosophy, like the bishop
and the prince, each ought to keep to its own territory and not
try to decide about truth outside its area of competence. "For as
God has created distinct spheres in the heavens, so also he has
WA 39/2:1-33; here: 6.2-3.
For an analysis of this text and its companion piece, the Disputatio de divinitate et
humanitate Christi, including helpful suggestions for more intelligible readings of some
passages, see Reinhard Schwarz, "Gott ist Mensch: Zur Lehre von der Person Christi bei den
Ockhamisten und bei Luther," Zeitschrift {Ur Theologie und Kirche 63 (1966): 289-351. An
alternative interpretation of both disputations, sharply critical of Schwarz's reading of both
Luther and the Ockhamists (especially Biel)-and much better informed about the logical
issues involved-may be found in Graham White, Luther as Nominalist (Helsinki:
Luther-Agricola-Society, 1994). Cf. also Reijo Tyorinoja, "Proprietas Verbi: Luther's
Conception of Philosophical and Theological Language in the Disputation: Verbum caro
factum est Ooh. 1:14), 1539," in Faith, Will, and Grammar: Some Themes of Intensional
Logic and Semantics in Medieval and Reformation Thought, ed. Heikki Kirjavainen (Helsinki:
Luther-Agricola Society, 1986), 141-78; and Stefan Streiff, Novis Linguis Loqui: Martin
LuthersDisputationuber Joh 1,14 "Verbum CaroFactumEst" ausdem]ahr 1539 (GOttingen:
Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1993).
75 WA 39/2:3.3-4; cf. 12.5-7; 16.12-13.
73

74

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35

created distinct kingdoms on earth, so that every matter and art
may keep to its own place and kind and not be engaged outside
its own center, in which it has been placed." 76 This is not to say
that theology contradicts philosophy, exactly; rather, theology is
"outside and inside, above and below, on the near side and on the
far side, of every philosophical truth." 77 The point seems to be
that theology and philosophy each has its own legitimate sphere
of judgment; one does not eliminate (and in that sense contradict)
the other. But the relation between the two spheres is not a
harmonious one; what theology finds most vital to hold true
philosophy is compelled to hold false. Insisting as Luther does
that philosophy has no business passing judgment on theological
matters (or theology on philosophical ones, as the distinction of
legitimate spheres also suggests) may enforce an armed truce
between the two, but seems not to eliminate their logical
conflict. 78
Luther himself appears to realize this, and other binary
oppositions which feature prominently in parts of his theologyespecially those between law and gospel and between God hidden
and revealed-sometimes seem to be used in ways which reinforce
the conflict. Far from proposing a coherent Christian "system of
the world" defined by the epistemic primacy of the gospel and the
articles of faith across the whole range of possible belief (however
incomplete and only partially coherent such a "system" will
inevitably be in practice), Luther when he thinks in this vein
seems convinced that we neither need nor can have a system of
the world. Our most basic beliefs and epistemic commitments are
locked in a conflict we cannot resolve. God will clear the matter
up at the Last Judgment, and in the meantime our job is to bring
even demonic--efforts to usurp
down pretentious-perhaps
God's prerogatives by resolving the conflict prematurely. On this
76

WA 39/2:8.5-8.

n WA 39/2:4.34-35; cf. 4.33. "Theology is not contradictory to philosophy" (14.8-9).
78 "The chief issue at stake in this disputation is that God is not subject to reason and to
syllogisms, but to the word of God and to faith" (WA 39/2:8.4-5). "The syllogism is not
allowed [admittitur] into the mysteries of faith and theology. Philosophy is error in theology"
(12.29-30). "I grant that the legal wisdom of God is not against the wisdom of the
gospel-but neither is it included in the wisdom of the gospel. Theology, the incarnation, and
justification are above and outside reason and philosophy" (13.27-14.26).

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BRUCE D. MARSHALL

view the gospel and the articles of faith do not have unrestricted
epistemic primacy, not because other beliefs have primacy over
them, but because no beliefs, not even these, have unrestricted
epistemic application.
Whether Luther in fact holds such a robustly paradoxical view
of how to decide what is true depends at least in part on what he
thinks "philosophy" is, and why he supposes philosophy will find
itself compelled to reject "Verbum caro factum est." Later
Protestant theologians (not least some Lutherans) have regularly
assumed that when Luther talks like this he is proposing a
universal dialectical conflict between theology and philosophy,
which they have taken as precedent and warrant for their own
love-hate relationships with philosophy. It turns out, however,
that he is objecting to something quite specific. The "Parisian
theologians" are the target, and more broadly the nominalist
tradition stemming from Ockham, which Luther knew best in the
version developed by Biel; the problem lies in the use to which
they put their formal logic and philosophical grammar. For the
logic and grammar themselves Luther had high respect ("My
master Ockham was the greatest dialectician"). 79 But when they
try to harmonize theology with philosophy-"to hold the same
thing true in theology as in philosophy and vice versa"-and
when they do so, more precisely, by "measuring everything
theological according to their own philosophical reason," they
end up holding theologically decisive sentences like "Verbum caro
factum est," "Deus est homo," and "Homo est Deus" false.80
7"WATr 2:516.16-17 (no. 2544a); "I am of the Ockhamist faction" (WA 6:600.11). Cf.
Peter Manns, "Zurn Gesprach zwischen M. Luther und der katholischen Theologie:
Begegnung zwischen patristisch-monastischer und reformatorischer Theologie an der
Scholastik vorbei," in T. Mannermaa, A. Ghiselli, and S. Peura, eds., Thesaurus Lutheri: Auf
der Suche nach neuen Paradigmen der Luther-Forschung (Helsinki: Finnischen Theologischen
Literaturgesellschaft, 1987), 63-154 (here: 63-64), and Heiko A. Oberman, Luther: Man
between God and the Devil, trans. E. Walliser-Schwarzbart (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1989), 120.
80 "We are disputing against the Parisian Sorbonne. For the Parisian theologians have
determined that the same thing is true in theology as in philosophy, and conversely" (WA
39/2:7.8-10). "The Parisian theologians ... want to measure everything theological by their
philosophical reason" (7.30-31; regarding the identity of these "Parisians"and their theology,
see White, Luther as Nominalist, 367-76). On Ockham and Biel, see WA 39/2: 11.35-37. Like
the medievals, Luther thought that "Verbum caro factum est" should be interpreted as

FAITH AND REASON RECONSIDERED

37

The "Parisian theologians" would no doubt have been
surprised to hear their views put this way, since they dearly
assumed, as had theologians east and west for over a millennium,
that Scripture plainly teaches these things, and whatever Scripture
teaches is true. But in order to hold these sentences true, Luther
argues, the nominalists have to give them a forced sense contrary
to that which they have when embedded in the scriptural and
creedal matrix of belief, so that what Scripture (more precisely,
the person who speaks scripturally) teaches when it asserts
"Verbum caro factum est" the nominalists in fact hold false, and
what the nominalists teach with the same sentence, Scripture
holds false. As Luther reads the situation, the misguided use of
two assumptions in particular drives the Parisians to this
untenable position. One is logical, the other ontological.
In nominalist logic--Qr so Luther seems to suppose, at any
rate-an identity statement, indeed any affirmative statement, is
true only if the terms it joins have the same res significata. It
seems obvious enough that in order for a statement like
"Hesperus is Phosphorus" to be true, the terms "Hesperus" and
"Phosphorus" must refer to the same thing (have the same
"supposition," in medieval logical terminology). As Luther reads
the nominalists, though, such statements are true only if subject
and predicate have not only the same referent, but the same
meaning or sense (roughly what the medievals would have
thought of as the same "signification"). "Hesperus is Phosphorus"
is true, in other words, only if it can be taken to mean
"Phosphorus is Phosphorus." 81
implying both "Deus est homo" and "Homo est Deus"; see, e.g., 12.5-10.
81 In a letter to Prince George of Anhalt in late 1541, Luther comments as follows:
"Aristotle says in Meta. 6 [MetaphysicsE, 1027b.20-22] (if I have understood him correctly},
'An affirmative proposition requires composition of the extremes, a negative one division,
etc.,' that is, when two words refer to or are supposed to speak of the same thing [ein Ding
deuten oder sprechensol/en], they have to be put together, e.g., 'God is a human being.' [fhe
Scholastics, including the nominalists] have made of this text the following: subject and
predicate stand for the same thing [supponunt pro eodem]'.... Their view is that the two,
subject and predicate (that is, the thing signified [res significata]),must be one thing" (W ABr
9:444.37-42). That Luther has the nominalists specifically in mind here is evident from his
ensuing discussion of what he took (cf. WA 39/2:95.34-37) to be distinctively nominalist
Christological claims.
Luther's text is unclear as to whether he accepts the logical principle the nominalists

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BRUCE D. MARSHALL

In nominalist ontology, as Luther reads it, the infinite distance
between God and creatures, between uncreated and created being,
must be maintained in all contexts. "In the old use of language,"
according to Luther, '"creature' signifies that which is separated
from divinity in an infinite way." 82 The nominalists take this "old
use of language" as a rule for thinking about the incarnation, and
consequently propose a theology of the hypostatic union that
strives to uphold the infinite distance between the divine and the
human even while saying, in conformity with Chalcedon, that
divine and human natures are one person in Christ. They do this
by arguing on the one hand, under pressure from Chalcedon, that
human nature in Christ has no independent existence or personal
reality of its own; it is sustained, supported, or borne by the
divine Logos. On the other hand, under pressure from the
assumption of infinite distance, this human nature never becomes
the nature of that divine person the way Peter's or Socrates'
human nature is his own, or the Logos's divine nature is his own,
namely, by sharing fully in the unique independent, personal
existence of that subject; rather, the human nature always

derive from Aristotle, but rejects its theological application (as White supposes; cf. Luther as
Nominalist, 392-96), or whether he attributes to them a logical principle which he himself
rejects (as Schwarz supposes; cf. "Gott ist Mensch," 339-43). That Luther explicitly charges
the nominalists not only with basing their theology on philosophy, but "on philosophy falsely
understood" (WABr 9:444.34; cf. 444.50) suggests the latter; he goes on to mock the
Scholastic interpretation of Aristotle's logic, though only after considering a case of its
theological application: "If Aristotle were alive and heard such a thing, he would say: 'Who
in the devil has made such complete mockery and foolishness out of my book? The blockhead
has no idea what I mean by "substance," "subject," or "predicate"'" (444.46-49). In any case
Luther's interpretation of the nominalists on identity statements (and affirmative predications
more generally) here seems implausible, since it apparently depends on his own equation of
supposition and signification ("'Subiectum et predicatum supponunt pro eodem' ... Ist aber
die Meinung ... res significata, mussen ein ding sein"), which the norninalists were at pains
to distinguish {White questions Luther's reading on other grounds; cf. Luther as Nominalist,
394-95). For our purposes whether Luther got the norninalists right is, of course, less
important than the epistemic principles which emerge from his engagement with them.
82 WA 39/2:94.19-20. We will return to Luther's talk of "old" and "new" language a bit
later on.

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39

remains--or so Luther worries-"extrinsic" to the divine subject
who sustains it. 83
For Luther the key problem arises not from accepting these
assumptions (at least the second he clearly regards as legitimate in
many contexts or "spheres"), but from interpreting "Verbum caro
factum est" and its cognates so as to harmonize with them. He
wants to avoid, in other words, an interpretation of "Verbum
caro" (to the truth of which the nominalists are of course fully
committed) which will allow these assumptions to apply as tests
of truth across the board, and so be epistemically primary. From
this equivocation inevitably results, and "all equivocation," Luther
warns, "is the mother of errors." 84 As the nominalists interpret
"Homo est Deus," for example, the rules for identity statements
require that if this sentence is true, "homo" and "Deus" will not
only have to refer to the same thing, but mean the same thing. So
the identity statement "Homo est Deus," with help from the
83 Nominalist views of the hypostatic union are complex, and an adequate treatment of
them, and of the extent to which Luther's criticisms are fair to them, is beyond the scope of
this essay. For a more detailed discussion, cf. White, Luther as Nominalist, esp. 231-98.
White argues that Luther is in the end much closer to the nominalists than he admits; for the
older view which takes their positions to be basically opposed (and which White criticizes
extensively), cf. Schwarz, "Gott ist Mensch," 293-303.
While it may initially look similar to the view Luther imputes to the nominalists, on closer
inspection Thomas's claim that human nature in Christ "does not exist separately, through
itself, but in something more perfect, namely in the person of the Word of God" (ST'h III, q.
2, a. 2, ad 3) apparently turns out to be the opposite of the nominalists' position on this point.
The nominalists typically argue that Christ's human nature "does not subsist in its own
supposit, but is supported [sustentificatur]by the Word, in the manner in which an accident
is supported by its subject" (the language is Ockham's, In III Sent. 1 [OperaTheologica6:9-10
(St. Bonaventure, N.Y., 1982)]). Thomas by contrast rejects (indeed considers heretical) any
attempt to conceive the hypostatic union (or union "in supposit" [ST'h III, q. 2, a. 3]) along
the lines of the unity of accident to substance (cf. ST'h III, q. 2, a. 6; q. 17, a. 2), while
granting that certain scriptural passages, not least Philippians 2:7, require that this question
be handled carefully (cf. In Phil. c. 2, lect. 2 [nos. 61-62]; In Gal. c. 4, lect. 2 [no. 204]). In
the incarnation a human nature comes to be by fully acquiring the one divine act of existence
(esse) of the Logos: "it comes to share that complete act of existence" (SI'h III, q. 2, a. 6, ad
2; cf. q. 17, a. 2, ad 2; I Sent. d. 16, a. 3, ad 4: "The visible nature in which the Son appears
has been taken into the one act of existence in the person of the Son of God"). Thus for
Thomas the assumption of a human nature by the Logos cannot leave that human nature
"extrinsic" to the divine subject who sustains it, as Luther criticizes the nominalists for
supposing; instead the Logos sustains his human nature precisely by making it fully intrinsic
to his own act of existence.
84 WA 39/2:28.28; cf. 28.10; 17.2-3, 31-36.

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BRUCE D. MARSHALL

nominalist theology of the hypostatic union, must be taken to
mean something like "the Son of God, who sustains human
nature, is God. " 85 In order to hold "Homo est Deus" true, in
other words, the nominalists find themselves compelled to offer
"Deus est Deus" as its proper interpretation. This saves the truth
value of the troublesome sentence at the cost of taking "homo" to
mean "Deus"; by the nominalists' own standards (the "infinite
distance" assumption), it would be hard to conceive a more
radical equivocation. 86
Whether Luther's interpretation does justice to the nominalists
we need not decide for our purposes. We can now see more
clearly, though, what Luther means when he denies that "the
same thing" can be true in both philosophy and theology:
"philosophy" -that is, nominalist logic and ontology-inevitably
ends up giving equivocal interpretations to sentences like
"Verbum caro factum est," and so even when it holds these
sentences true does not in fact assert the same thing as theology
(that is, Scripture) does. The "philosophical" interpretation is
equivocal precisely with respect to the theological one, which
always tries to take the words of theologically decisive sentences
in the same sense they have in the other sentences in which they
are used (and to which we have assigned a truth value). So with
regard to the case in point:
The philosopher does not say that God is a human being or that a human being
is God and the Son of God. But we do say that a human being is God, and we
prove [or: "assert" = testamur] this by the word of God, without a syllogism
and without philosophy, since philosophy is nothing in our grammar .... It is
true to say that God has become a human being, just as you and I are. 87
85 "So they say, as though this were much better, 'Homo est Deus,' that is, 'The Son of
God, who sustains a human nature, is God,' because it is necessary that the subject and the
predicate stand for the same thing" (WABr 9:444.55-57).
86 As White puts the point: "Thus, the error is ... to argue from identity of reference to
identity of sense" (Luther as Nominalist, 394).
87 WA 39/2: 12.5-10. In the same vein, on John 1: 14: "The loftiest treasure and the highest
consolation of Christians is that the Word, the true, natural Son of God, has become a human
being, who certainly has flesh and blood like any other human being. He has become a human
being for our sake, so that we might attain the great glory of having our flesh and blood, hide
and hair, hands and feet, belly and backside reside in heaven like God" (WA 46:631.26-32;
cf. 625.1-10; 626.25-28).

FAITH AND REASON RECONSIDERED

41

Equivocation between the interpretation of these scripturally and
creedally mandated sentences and the rest of the sentences whose
truth value we know (which is almost all of them) is, so far as
possible, to be avoided. "Est homo" should be taken to mean the
same thing when we say "Deus est homo" as it does when we say
"Petrus est homo. " 88 Luther generalizes the point in his argument
with the Swiss Reformers over the interpretation of another
difficult but theologically crucial identity statement: "This is my
body." The burden of proof always falls on taking words in any
one sentence differently from the way we take them in the other
sentences in which we use them. "In Scripture one should take
words just as they go, according to their natural force, and give
no other interpretation unless a dear article of faith requires it."
About this, it seems to me, Luther shows not inconsiderable
linguistic-philosophical sophistication: "Otherwise one would no
longer have any definite text, interpretation, speech, or
language. " 89
Remarks of this sort abound in Luther's corpus, usually in
connection with the interpretation of specific scriptural passages.
Let us look at a somewhat more complicated argument along the
same lines, from De servo arbitrio. Luther is here arguing about
the interpretation of "I will harden Pharaoh's heart" (cf. Exod
4:21; Rom 9:17f.), which Erasmus takes to mean "God allowed
Pharaoh to harden his own heart." But Luther takes "Deus est
homo" as the chief example of the sort of interpretive problem
posed by the passages about Pharaoh's hardening.
88 "Ockham does not want to be univocal, but equivocal, so that humanity in Peter is
different from humanity in Christ." Similarly, "The Sorbonne demands that we make every
word ambiguous. This should be resisted. We should not allow it in order to reconcile
theology and philosophy with regard to this proposition (that is, 'Deus est homo') by
distinguishing between 'human being' and 'human being' [Non admittendum, ut concilietin
hac propositionetheologiam et philosophiam,id est, Deus est homo, cum distinguiturinter
hominem et hominem]" (WA 39/2:11.36-37; 17.32-34).
Thomas's position on the Christological issue, it should be noted, is the same. In "Deus
est homo" and similar sentences, the subject, the predicate, and the predication are all to be
taken "in their true and proper sense [vere et proprie]"; "est homo" means the same thing
when applied to "Deus" as it does when applied to "Petrus," or, to use Thomas's examples,
"Socrates" and "Platon" (cf. STh III, q. 16, a. 1).
89 WA 26:403.27-29; 279.7-8.

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BRUCE D. MARSHALL

Absurdity is one of the principal reasons why the words of Moses and Paul are
not taken literally [simpliciter].But what article of faith does this absurdity sin
against? Who is offended by it? Human reason is offended, which, although it
is blind, deaf, stupid, impious, and sacrilegious with regard to all the words and
works of God, is introduced here as the judge of the words and works of God.
By the same argument you will deny all the articles of faith, because it is far
and away the most absurd thing of all ... that God should be a human being,
the son of a virgin, crucified, and seated at the right hand of the Father. It is
absurd, I say, to believe such things. Let us therefore dream up some tropes
with the Arians, so that Christ might not be literally [simpliciter]God. 90

Some reflection on the logic of these passages may help us
understand how the relationship between plausible interpretation,
the ascription of truth to sentences, and epistemic primacy works
in Luther's theology.
We can begin by considering just the relationship between
truth and interpretation. Luther's argument here can perhaps be
put in the following terms, which owe something to Davidson.
We seek an interpretation of "Homo est Deus" and "Deus est
homo"; the especially problematic word for our purposes is
"homo." The aim of the interpretation is to fix the sense of
"homo," or perhaps the coherent range of senses which the word
may have; we want what Luther calls a "definite interpretation."
If the interpretation is to be genuinely radical (that is, if we do
not beg the question by assuming in advance that we know what
"homo" means), we will have to try to fix the sense by
maximizing the ascription of truth to sentences held true by Latin
speakers in which "homo" is used, and especially those in which
it is used as a subject or predicate nominative. So we note that
Latin speakers hold true a host of sentences like "Petrus est
homo" and "Maria est homo," and from the rest of the beliefs
they (and we) hold true about "Petrus," "Maria," and others, we
begin to get a fix on the sense of "homo." But we also observe
that these speakers hold true the sentences "Homo est Deus" and
"Deus est homo" (perhaps we are conducting our radical
interpretation in a far-off monastery where Latin is still spoken).
This gives us pause; we already have at least a partial fix on the
sense of "Deus," and this word seems to denote something of a
90 WA 18:707.19-29.

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radically different sort from "Petrus," "Maria," and ourselves.
Assuming for present purposes that we are confident in our
interpretation of "Deus" so far, and do not want to change it, we
are faced with two alternatives. We can come reluctantly (since
we always interpret by seeking to maximize agreement on
sentences held true) to the conclusion that in the case of these
particular sentences our speakers are uttering falsehoods; aiming
for a coherent and "definite" interpretation of "homo," we decide
we can maintain it only by holding "Homo est Deus" and the like
false. Or we can sense that something strange and wonderful is
going on here, perhaps that this "Deus" is giving us the gift of an
inconceivably intimate share in his own life by having freely made
our life absolutely one with his own; and for this reason we may
come to agree with our speakers in holding "Homo est Deus"
true, convinced that we can do so without sacrificing the
coherence and definiteness of our interpretation of "homo,"
which would of course vitiate our reason for holding the sentence
true. This confronts us with the additional task, of course, of
trying to show how these semantically unanticipated sentences
may be held true without interpretive incoherence. The one thing
we cannot do, however, is agree with our speakers in holding
"Homo est Deus" true by taking "homo" to mean something like
"Deus"; semantic economy and plausible (that is, coherent and
definite) interpretation would be served simply by taking "Homo
est Deus" to be false, rather than resorting to so drastic an
equivocation. And as Luther sees it, this is just what the
nominalist position comes to in the end.
These considerations may also help explain why the gospel
and the articles of faith can retain their "natural force" or plain
sense and be held true only when they function with unrestricted
epistemic primacy across the whole field of possible belief. In
these late disputations, Luther sometimes says theology speaks a
"new language" and uses "new words," in contrast (as we have
already noted) to the "old language" and "old words" of
philosophy (the idea is of course not a new one in his theology;
recall, inter alia, the "modus loquendi theologicus" of the early

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BRUCE D. MARSHALL

lectures on Romans).91 The "new" discourse of theology does not
differ from the "old" discourse of philosophy by assigning
meanings to words radically discontinuous with those they have
in the rest of human speech; this would presumably be just the
sort of equivocation which Luther goes out of his way to reject.
Theology is new not primarily in the meaning it gives to terms
but in the way it combines them, that is, in the radically
unexpected sentences it holds true. Holding these sentences true
may of course extend or otherwise alter the sense of their terms,
but not in such a way that the terms utterly lose their "natural
force"; alluding to an old medieval distinction (much exploited by
Thomas Aquinas) Luther argues that the terms in theological
sentences signify (or, we could say, refer to) the same thing they
do in the rest of our discourse, but signify it in a new way. 92 So,
to use two of Luther's examples, "mother" when applied in
theology to Mary continues to signify a woman who gives birth,
but does so in a new (viz., virginal) way; "creature" when applied
to Christ continues to signify that which God makes by an act of
will, but which he now makes by uniting it absolutely to himself,
rather than by separating it infinitely from himself.93

91 "21. 'Creature' in the old use of language and in other matters signifies something
separated from God in infinite ways. 22. In the new use of language it signifies something
inseparably conjoined with divinity in the same person in ineffable ways" (WA39/2:94.19-22;
cf. above, n. 82). "In theology a philosophical term [vox] becomes entirely new"; "the
customary vocabulary of philosophy becomes new" (19.7; 19.34-35). On "modus loquendi
theologicus," cf. WA 56:351-52.
92 "20. Nonetheless it is certain that all terms [vocabula] receive a new signification in
Christ, although they continue to refer to the same thing [in eadem re significata].23. In this
way it is necessary that the words 'human being,' 'humanity,' 'suffered,' etc., and everything
said about Christ be new terms. 24. Not that they signify a new or different thing, but they
signify it in a new and different way, unless you also want to call that a new thing" (WA
39/2:94.17-18; 23-26). For Thomas's understanding of the distinction between the res
sign.ificataof terms and their modus sign.ificandiwhich lies in the background here, cf. STh
I, q. 13, a. 3; I Sent. d. 22, q. 1, a. 2. For examples of its theological use, see STh l, q. 39; STh
III, q. 16.
93 "'Mother' in philosophy signifies a woman who is impure, in theology 'mother of
Christ' signifies a pure and virgin [woman]" (WA 39/2:19.33-34). "In the old language
'creature' is that which the creator makes and separates from himself, but this signification
has no place in the creature Christ. There creator and creature are one and the same" (WA
39/2:105.4-7).

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"Philosophy" goes beyond its "sphere" and becomes a problem
for theology, an "old" language to which the "new" language of
theology must stand opposed, when it takes our ordinary ways of
combining terms into sentences as the key to interpreting and
assessing the truth of the scriptural and creedal sentences theology
is charged to uphold (a temptation "reason" finds itself powerless
to resist). The scripturally and creedally formed discourse of the
Christian community is, as Luther sees it, God's own way of
talking in our language; as such the sentences it teaches us to hold
true are shockingly novel and odd by comparison with the way
we combine terms in the rest of our discourse. If we take
consistency with "Petrus est homo" and similarly quotidian beliefs
as the chief test for deciding whether a radically unexpected
sentence like "Deus est homo" is true, and we are good
interpreters who know how to take words according to their
natural force, then we will naturally be inclined to regard such a
novel sentence as false, indeed absurd. If we (like the nominalists)
are bad interpreters who also want to hold true the sentences of
Scripture and creed, then we will take "Deus est homo" in a way
opposed to its natural force, which an efficient theory of
interpretation converts to falsity according to the natural force.
If we want to be both good interpreters and believers in the
teaching of Scripture and creed we must not, it seems, try to
decide about the truth of sentences such as "Deus est homo" by
measuring them for consistency with the rest of our beliefs, but
must rather take these sentences as the standard by consistency
with which the truth of all the rest of our beliefs is chiefly
measured. This means, of course, that there is no standard for
deciding to hold true "Deus est homo" and the nest of beliefs in
which it is most closely imbedded, that is, no higher or more
central beliefs against which we could test their truth. This is, I
suppose, part of what Luther means when he says that theology
must hold to the word of God "without a syllogism," without any
further principiato which it might appeal. We seek, to be sure, an
interpretation of our daily discourse-indeed our whole field of
belief-which is consistent with holding true the novel sentences
of Scripture and creed, an interpretation which eschews
equivocation and allows the natural sense to reign wherever

BRUCE D. MARSHALL

46

possible in the sentences we hold true. Such an interpretation
seems to require that we proceed in a certain way, that we speak
the new language of theology rather than the old language of
philosophy. But this is simply to say that the discourse of
Scripture and creed can be held true, and all of our beliefs
together can have their natural force, only when we take that
discourse in a way suited to its radical novelty: as the principle for
reconfiguring the whole field of belief, that is, as epistemically
primary across the board.
So Luther's argument that the same thing cannot be true in
theology and philosophy need not be taken for a denial of the
unrestricted epistemic primacy of the gospel read in accordance
with the articles of faith. Theology and philosophy each has its
own "sphere"; neither provides the content for the other's
discourse, and each has its own rules for forming true sentences.
But this distinction turns out to be a way of insisting that theology
has to keep its epistemic priorities straight. Theology's "sphere"
ends up being the whole; theology puts philosophy in its place by
defining philosophy's sphere, that is, by marking out the
boundaries within which its rules for forming true sentences may
apply (viz., wherever they do not conflict with the truth of
Scripture and creed taken in their natural sense). Luther
accordingly concludes his disputation on John 1:14 with an
appeal to 2 Corinthians 10:
This is the point of this disputation: that when it comes to the mystical articles
of faith we are not permitted to rely in argument on philosophical reasons, but
must cling to the naked word and truth of Scripture, and that in faith the
judgment of reason should not hold sway against the word, but should submit
and subject itself to the obedience of Christ. 94

IV. CONCLUSION: DESPOILING THE EGYPTIANS

Despite Chesterton, to say nothing of others more ·scholarly
than he, it seems that Luther was not a naive fideist who sought
to isolate Christian belief and Christian theology from the rest of
human knowledge and inquiry. Or if Luther was a fideist then so
94

WA 39/2:30.15-18.

FAITH AND REASON RECONSIDERED .

47

was Aquinas, since the logic of their positions on how to decide
what is true seems to be the same. But rather than think of either
of them as fideists, it seems more plausible to think of them both
as scripturalist and creedalist theologians much concerned to keep
their epistemic priorities straight, and that on the widest possible
scale.
How then did Chesterton (and others) go so far wrong? The
short answer might be that he never read Luther. But even if true,
this would not really be fair. Many who have read Luther, both
Catholics and Protestants, share Chesterton's conviction that the
difference between Luther and Thomas on faith and reason is
radical, not superficial-they share, in other words, Luther's own
assumption that he and Aquinas are at fundamental odds on this
issue. Luther's assumption has a certain obvious plausibility.
However little he had read Thomas, Luther, like Chesterton,
rightly perceives that Thomas likes Aristotle, finds him
intellectually fascinating and challenging, and thinks him
theologically useful. Luther, by contrast, often says that Aristotle
is useful only for non-theological purposes, and expresses deep
contempt for Aristotle's world-view (his ethics and metaphysics,
as distinct from his logic) and for those who find that world-view
theologically useful.95 If the reading I have proposed here is right,
then interpreters of Luther and Aquinas, of whatever confessional
stripe, have widely been mislead by surface issues-like the
different attitudes the two theologians have toward Aristotleand so have missed the deeper logical and structural likeness in
their views of faith and reason, a likeness which comes to the
surface when one attends to the question of how to decide what
is true.
To be sure, the differences between Luther and Aquinas on
Aristotle and philosophy generally, while not radical in the way
95 Cf. e.g., the famous comments about "the blind heathen master Aristotle" in An den
christlichen Adel deutscher Nation of 1520 (WA 6:457.28-458.40). As Theodor Dieter
shows in "Der junge Luther undAristoteles" (HabilitationschriftTiibingen, 1997), however,
in practice Luther's attitude towards Aristotle during this period was quite different from
what this sort of rhetoric suggests; he took Scholastic, including Aristotelian, questions very
seriously, and sought to answer them in his own way. Cf. also White, Luther as Nominalist,
320-25. On Luther's knowledge of Thomas, cf. Denis R. Janz, Luther on Thomas Aquinas:
The Angelic Doctor in the Thought of the Reformer (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1989).

48

BRUCE D. MARSHALL

appearances sometimes suggest, are not trivial. If this reading is
correct, however, they stem not from fundamentally different
epistemic priorities and outlooks, but from the quite different,
and in important respects diametrically opposed, situations in
which the epistemic outlook the two theologians basically share
had to work.
Confronted in Aristotle and Moslem Aristotelianism with a
highly sophisticated world-view new to his Christian culture and
deeply challenging to some of its most basic assumptions, Thomas
vigorously and self-consciously sets about despoiling the
Egyptians. He follows, with astonishing thoroughness and
success, Augustine's advice that Christians who find themselves in
this situation sort out the "simulated and superstitious imaginings" from the useable truths. 96 He tells the difference between
the useless and useful goods of the Egyptians, as we have
observed, by keeping his epistemic priorities straight-by seeing
whether the goods in question are compatible with the gospel and
can be put to its service.
Luther sees himself confronted not so much with fresh
Egyptian goods as with wayward children of Israel who, enticed
by the local finery, have gone native-have forgotten how to keep
their epistemic priorities straight. Overwhelmed by the beauty of
Egypt to the point where they can no longer tell useable goods
from useless idols, these wayward Israelites must have their sights
set once more on the promised land. This Luther vigorously sets
out to do, by insisting that everything in Church and theology
cohere with the gospel, and ruthlessly discarding whatever does
not-by insisting that we keep our epistemic priorities straight.
That is: logically, if not rhetorically and stylistically, Luther did
just what Aquinas would have done if Aquinas had been living
and writing in Luther's very different situation.
Or so I would seek to argue if my aim were to account for the
differences between Aquinas and Luther on faith and reason
rather than to display their more fundamental likeness. But the
fulfillment of that aim reaches beyond the scope of this essay.

%

Augustine, De doctrina christiana2.40 (cf. above, n. 15).

The Thomist 63 (1999): 49-63

FROM SCHRODINGER'S CAT TO THOMISTIC
ONTOLOGY 1
WOLFGANG SMITH
Hayden, Idaho

I

AM PLEASED and honored to give this Templeton Lecture on
Christianity and the Natural Sciences. I regard the objective of
these Lectures as a cultural task of prime importance. I believe
that the reputed conflict between science and religion does exist,
and is in fact far more serious than one tends to think; but, at the
same time, I am persuaded that the conflict arises not from
science as such but from a penumbra of scientistic beliefs for
which in reality there is no scientific support at all. This oftoverlooked distinction between scientific truth and scientistic
belief has long been a special concern of mine. I have, for many
years, made it my business to hunt down and ferret out major
articles of scientistic belief-not as an academic exercise, but in
the conviction that the acceptance of such contemporary dogmas
is injurious to our spiritual well-being. I have no doubt that the
ongoing de-Christianization of Western society is due in large
measure to the imposition of the prevailing scientistic world-view.
Meanwhile something quite unexpected and as yet largely
unobserved has come to pass: this scientistic world-view, which
still reigns as the official dogma of science, appears no longer to
square with the scientific facts. What has happened in our century
is that unprecedented discoveries at the frontiers of science seem
no longer to accord with the accustomed Weltanschauung, with
the result that these findings present the appearance of paradox.
It seems that on its most fundamental level physics itself has
disavowed the prevailing world-view. This science, therefore, can
1 The following lecture was given at Gonzaga University on February 5, 1998.

49

50

WOLFGANG SMITH

no longer be interpreted in the customary ontological terms; and
so, as one quantum theorist has put it, physicists have, in a sense,
"lost their grip on reality." 2 But this fact is known mainly to
physicists, and has been referred to, not without cause, as "one of
the best-kept secrets of science." It implies that physics has been
in effect reduced to a positivistic discipline, or, in Whitehead's
words, to "a kind of mystic chant over an unintelligible
universe. " 3 Richard Feynman once remarked: "I think it is safe to
say that no one understands quantum mechanics." To be sure, the
incomprehension to which Feynman alludes refers to a philosophic plane; one understands the mathematics of quantum
mechanics, but not the ontology. Broadly speaking, physicists
have reacted to this impasse in three principal ways. The majority,
perhaps, have found comfort in a basically pragmatic outlook,
while some persist, to this day, in the attempt to fit the positive
findings of quantum mechanics into the pre-quantum
world-picture. The third category, which includes some of the
most eminent names in physics, convinced that the pre-quantum
ontology is now defunct, have cast about for new philosophic
postulates, in the hope of arriving at a workable conception of
physical reality. There seem to be a dozen or so world-views
presently competing for acceptance in the scientific community.
It is not my intention to propose yet another ad hoc
philosophy designed to resolve quantum paradox. I intend in fact
to do the opposite: to show, namely, that there is absolutely no
need for a new philosophic Ansatz, that the problem at hand can
be resolved quite naturally on strictly traditional philosophic
ground. What I propose to show, in particular, is that the
quantum facts, divested of scientistic encrustations, can be readily
integrated into a very ancient and venerable ontology: namely,
the Thomistic, which traces back to Aristotle. Rejected by Galileo
and Descartes, and subsequently marginalized, this reputedly
outmoded medieval speculation proves now to be capable of
supplying the philosophic keys for which physicists have been
groping since the advent of quantum theory.
2 Nick Herbert,
3

Quantum Reality (Garden City: Doubleday, 1985), 15.
Alfred North Whitehead, Nature and Life (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), 10.

THOMISTIC ONTOLOGY

51

I

First formulated in 1925, quantum mechanics has shaken the
foundations of science. It appears as though physics, at long last,
has broken through to its own fundamental level; it has
discovered what I shall henceforth term the physical universe-a
world that seems to defy some of our most basic conceptions. It
is a world (if we may call it such) that can be neither perceived
nor imagined, but only described in abstract mathematical terms.
The most useful and widely accepted representation is the one
formalized in 1932 by the Hungarian mathematician John von
Neumann. In this model the state of a physical system is
represented by a vector in a so-called complex Hilbert space. This
means, in effect, that a state can be multiplied by a complex
number, and that two states can be added, and that non-zero
linear combinations of states, thus formed, will again be states of
the physical system. Now, it is this fundamental fact, known as
the superposition principle, that gives rise to quantum
strangeness. Consider, for instance, a physical system consisting
of a single particle, and then consider two states, in which the
particle is situated, respectively, in two disjoint regions A and B,
which can be as widely separated as we like. A linear combination
of these two states with non-zero coefficients will then determine
a third state, in which apparently the particle is situated, neither
in A nor in B, but somehow in both regions. Now, one may say:
"State vectors actually describe, not the physical system as such,
but our knowledge concerning the physical system. The third
state vector, thus, simply signifies that so far as we know the
particle can be in A or in B, with a certain probability attached to
each of the two possible events." A grave difficulty, however,
remains; for the state of the physical system corresponding to the
third state vector can in fact be produced experimentally, and
when one does produce that state one obtains interference effects
which could not be there if the particle were situated in A or in B.
In some unimaginable way the particle seems thus to be actually
in A and B at once.
What happens then if one measures or observes the position of
the particle in the third state? It turns out that the act of

52

WOLFGANG SMITH

measurement instantly throws the system into a new state. The
detected particle, of course, is situated either in A or in B; which
is to say that only unobserved particles can bilocate. All this, to be
sure, is very strange; but let me emphasize that from a
mathematical point of view all is well, and that in fact the theory
functions magnificently. As I have said before, what puzzles
physicists is not the mathematics, but the ontology.
Thus far I may have conveyed the impression that superposition states are rare and somehow exceptional. What is indeed
exceptional, however, are states in which a given observable does
have a precise value (the so-called eigenstates); and even in that
case it happens that the system remains necessarily in a superposition state with respect to other observables. The quantum
system, thus, is always in a state of superposition; or more
precisely, it is at one and the same time in many different states
of superposition, depending upon the observable one has in view.
On the quantum level superposition is not the exception, but
indeed the fundamental fact.
At this point one might say: "There is no reason to be unduly
perplexed; superposition applies, after all, to microsystems too
minute to be observable without the aid of instruments. Why
worry if 'weird things' happen on the level of fundamental
particles and atoms? Why expect that one can picture things or
happenings which are by nature imperceptible?" Most physicists,
I believe, would be happy to adopt this position, if it were not for
the fact that superposition tends to spread into the macroscopic
domain. It is this quantum-mechanical fact that has been
dramatized in the celebrated experiment proposed by Schrodinger, in which the disintegration of a radioactive nucleus triggers
the execution of the now-famous cat. According to quantum
theory, the unobserved nucleus is in a superposition state, which
is to say that its state vector is a linear combination of state
vectors corresponding to the disintegrated and undisintegrated
states. This superposition, moreover, is transmitted, by virtue of
the experimental set-up, to the cat, which is consequently in a
corresponding superposition state. In plain terms, the cat is both
dead and alive. It remains, moreover, in this curious condition
until an act of observation collapses its state vector, as the

THOMISTIC ONTOLOGY

53

expression goes, and thus reduces it to one or the other classical
state.
Of course, the mystery here has nothing especially to do with
cats; it has to do with the role of measurement in the economy of
quantum mechanics. Now, measurement is a procedure in which
a given physical system is made to interact with an instrument,
the resultant state of which then indicates the value of some
observable associated with the system. For example, a particle is
made to collide with a detector (a photographic plate, perhaps)
which registers its position at the moment of impact. Prior to this
interaction, the particle will in general be in a superposition state
involving multiple positions; we must think of it as spread out
over some region of space. Its evolution or movement, moreover,
is governed by the so-called Schrodinger equation, which is linear,
and hence preserves superposition, and is moreover strictly
deterministic: an initial state uniquely determines the future
states. At the moment of impact, however, this deterministic
Schrodinger evolution is superseded by another quantummechanical law, a so-called projection, which singles out one of
the positions represented in the given superposition stateapparently for no good reason!-and instantly assigns the particle
to the chosen location. This simple scenario exemplifies what
happens generally in the act of measurement: a physical system
interacts with an instrument or measuring apparatus, and this
interaction causes the Schrodinger evolution of the system to be
superseded by an apparently random projection. It is as though
the trajectory of a particle, let us say, were suddenly altered
without an assignable cause. Why does this happen? Inasmuch as
the instrument is itself a physical system, one would expect that
the combined system, obtained by including the instrument,
should itself evolve in accordance with the corresponding
Schrodinger equation; but in fact it does not! What is it, then,
that distinguishes the kind of interaction we term measurement
from other interactions between physical systems, in which
Schrodinger evolution is not superseded?
Quantum theory holds many puzzles of this kind; the scandal
of superposition assumes many forms. I would like to mention
one more of these enigmas, which strikes me as particularly

54

WOLFGANG SMITH

central. One might think of it as a simplified version of the
Schrodinger cat paradox. In the words of Roger Penrose, the
problem is this:
The rules are that any two states whatever, irrespective of how different from
one another they may be, can coexist in any complex linear superposition.
Indeed, any physical object, itself made out of individual particles, ought to be
able to exist in such superpositions of spatially widely separated states, and so
be "in two places at once"! ... Why, then, do we not experience macroscopic
bodies, say cricket balls, or even people, having two completely different
locations at once? This is a profound question, and present-day quantum
theory does not really provide us with a satisfying answer. 4

These matters have been debated for a very long time, and
various interpretations of the mathematical formalism have been
proposed in an effort to make philosophic sense out of the
theory. However, as Penrose observes, "These puzzles, in one
guise or another, persist in any interpretation of quantum
mechanics as the theory exists today." 5 After more than half a
century of debate it appears that no clear resolution of the
problem is yet in sight. One thing, however, one crucial point,
has been consistently overlooked; and that is what I must now
explain.
II

As is very well known, it was the seventeenth-century
philosopher Rene Descartes who laid the philosophic foundations
of modern physics. Descartes conceived of the external or
objective world as made up of so-called res extensae, extended
things bereft of sensible qualities, which can be fully described in
purely quantitative or mathematical terms. Besides res extensae he
posited also res cogitantes or "thinking entities," and it is to these
that he consigned the sensible qualities, along with whatever else
in the universe might be recalcitrant to mathematical definition.
One generally regards this Cartesian partition of reality into res
4

Roger Penrose, The Emperor'sNew Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989),

256.
5 Ibid., 296.

THOMISTIC ONTOLOGY

55

extensae and res cogitantes as simply an affirmation of the
mind-body dichotomy, forgetting that it is much more than that;
for not only has Descartes distinguished sharply between mind
and body, but he has at the same time imposed an exceedingly
strange and indeed problematic conception of corporeal nature,
a conception, namely, that renders the external world unperceived and unperceivable. According to Descartes, the red apple
we perceive exists-not in the external world, as mankind had
believed all along, but in the mind, the res cogitans; in short, it is
a mental phantasm that we have naively mistaken for an external
entity. Descartes admits, of course, that in normal sense perception the phantasm is causally related to an external object, a res
extensa; but the fact remains that it is not the res extensa but the
phantasm that is actually perceived. What was previously
conceived as a single object-and what in daily life is invariably
regarded as such-has now been split in two; as Whitehead has
put it: "Thus there would be two natures, one is the conjecture
and the other is the dream. " 6
This splitting of the object into a "conjecture" and a "dream"
is what Whitehead terms "bifurcation"; and this, it turns out, is
the decisive philosophic postulate that underlies and determines
our interpretation of physics. Beginning with his Tarner Lectures
(delivered at Cambridge University in 1919), Whitehead insistently pointed out and commented upon this fact. "The result," he
declares, "is a complete muddle in scientific thought, in philosophic cosmology, and in epistemology. But any doctrine which
does not implicitly presuppose this point of view is assailed as
unintelligible. " 7 After seventy years of quantum debate, the
situation remains fundamentally unchanged. Just about every
other article of philosophic belief, it would seem, has been put on
the table and subjected to scrutiny, whereas bifurcation continues
to be implicitly presupposed by physicists, as if it were a
sacrosanct dogma revealed from on high. And so "the muddle in
scientific thought" continues, and has only been exacerbated by
the demands of quantum theory.
6 Alfred North Whitehead, The Concept of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1964), 30.
7 Whitehead, Nature and Life, 6.

56

WOLFGANG SMITH

That's the bad news; the good news is that the situation can be
remedied. In a recent monograph I have shown that physics can
indeed be interpreted on a nonbifurcationist basis, with the result
that quantum paradox disappears of its own accord. 8 No need
any more for such things as the "many worlds" hypothesis or
other ad hoc stipulations; to resolve the semblance of paradox
one needs but to relinquish a certain philosophic postulate foisted
upon us by Galileo and Descartes. Quantum paradox, it appears,
is Nature's way of repudiating a spurious philosophy.
III

We need thus to take a second look at quantum mechanics,
this time from a nonbifurcationist point of view. Now, to deny
bifurcation is to affirm the objective reality of the perceived
entity: the red apple, thus, is once again recognized as an external
object. That perceptible entity, moreover, is to be distinguished
from what may be called the "molecular apple," a thing that,
dearly, cannot be perceived, but can be known only through the
methods of physics. One is consequently led to distinguish
between two kinds of external objects: corporeal objects, which
can be perceived, and physical objects, which can only be observed indirectly through the modus operandi of the experimental
physicist. The two ontological domains are of course closely
related, failing which there could be no science of the physical at
all. The basic fact is this: Every corporeal object X is associated
with a physical object SX from which it derives all of its
quantitative attributes. The red apple, for example, derives its
weight from the molecular. The crucial point, however, is that the
two are not the same thing; X and SX belong to different
ontological planes-to different worlds, one could almost say.
The bifurcationist, obviously, does not recognize this
distinction, since he denies the existence of the corporeal object
X; but in so doing, he implicitly identifies X with SX. The credo
of bifurcation thus entails a reduction of the corporeal to the
8 Wolfgang Smith, The Quantum Enigma (Peru, Ill.: Sugden, 1995). A helpful summary
of the book with commentary has been given by William A. Wallace in "Thomism and the
Quantum Enigma," The Thomist 61 (1997): 455-67.

THOMISTIC ONTOLOGY

57

physical. And in that reductionism, I say, lies the fundamental
fallacy-the
illusion, if you will-of the prevailing
Weltanschauung.
The amazing thing is this: whereas classical physics seemingly
tolerates that error, quantum mechanics does not. It turns out that
the new physics itself distinguishes between X and SX; it insists
in fact upon that distinction-which is precisely what perplexes
the physicist. In its very structure, that is to say, in its categorical
distinction between the physical system and its observables,
quantum mechanics affirms in its own way the ontological
distinction between the physical and the corporeal planes. The
system thus belongs to the physical domain, whereas the act of
measurement terminates dearly on the corporeal, in the
perceptible state, namely, of a corporeal instrument. It is true that
the corporeal instrument I is associated with a physical system SI:
but the point, once again, is that the two are by no means the
same. What is special about measurement is the fact that it realizes
an ontological transition from the physical to the corporeal
domain. No wonder, therefore, that quantum theory should be
conversant with two very different "laws of motion," for it has
now become apparent that Schrodinger evolution operates within
the physical domain, whereas projection has to do with a transit
out of the physical and into the corporeal. In the language of
metaphysics one can say that the former describes a horizontal
and the latter a vertical process. One can now see that the
discontinuity of state vector collapse mirrors an ontological
discontinuity; and that is the reason why the phenomenon cannot
be understood from a reductionist point of view. State vector
collapse is inexplicable on a physical basis because it results from
the act of a corporeal entity.
These considerations strongly suggest that the superposition
principle must be amended for subcorporeal systems, that is to
say, for the SX of a corporeal object X; for it is altogether
reasonable to suppose that the state vector of SX can admit only
superpositions consistent with the perceivable properties of X.
That is no doubt the reason why cats cannot be both dead and
alive, and why cricket balls do not bilocate. Penrose is absolutely
right: if cats and cricket balls were "made of individual particles,,;

58

WOLFGANG SMITH

they would indeed be able to exist in unrestricted states of
superposition; but the point is that they are not thus made. From
a nonbifurcationist point of view, corporeal objects, as we have
seen, are not simply aggregates of particles, but something more.
We need therefore to inquire what it is that differentiates X from
SX; and for this we shall turn to Thomistic ontology.
IV

We must begin where St. Thomas himself began: namely, with
the fundamental conceptions of Aristotle. The first step, if you
will, in the analysis of being is to distinguish between substances
and attributes: between things that exist in themselves and things
that exist in another. Having thus distinguished between what is
primary and what is secondary, one proceeds to the analysis of
the primary thing. The problem is to break substance into its
components-to split the atom of substance, if you will; and for
this one evidently requires the conception of things more
primitive than substances, things "out of which" substances are
made. Aristotle solved this problem with one of the great
master-strokes in the history of philosophy: the distinction
between potency and act. The customary definition of these terms
is simple and quite unimpressive: That which is capable of being
a certain thing, but is not that thing, is that thing in potency;
whereas that which a thing already is is so in act. A seed is a tree
in potency, and a tree is a tree in act. Aristotle goes on to define
matter, or prime matter, to be exact, as that which is in potency
to substance, to substantial being. Prime matter as such has
consequently no being; but it has nonetheless a capacity or an
aptitude for being. What actualizes this capacity is indeed an act,
and that act is called a form, or more precisely, a substantial form.
Substance has thus been split into two components: matter and
form. It is the form, moreover, that contributes to the substance
its essential content, its quiddity or "whatness," what the
Germans so expressively call its Sosein. And yet that form is not
itself the substance, is not itself the existent thing; for the form
without matter does not exist.

THOMISTIC ONTOLOGY

59

It is at this point of the analysis that the genius of St. Thomas
Aquinas becomes manifest. And here we come to a second
master-stroke in the history of philosophy. Saint Thomas
recognized that substantial form is itself in potency to something
else: to an act, namely, which is not a form; and that is the
act-of-being itself. To put it in his own words: "The act-of-being
is the most intimate element in anything, and the most profound
element in all things, because it is like a form in regard to all that
is in the thing. "9 That innermost element constitutes the point of
contact, as it were, between created being and its uncreated
Source, which is God. The act-of-being, thus, belongs in the first
place to God, who creates and sustains the universe; and yet it
also belongs to created substance as its innermost reality. We may
think of it as radiating outwards, through the substantial form, to
the very accidents by which the being communicates itself to us.
Each being, moreover, is endowed with a certain efficacy, a
certain power to act outside itself, which likewise derives from its
act-of-being, and thus from God. Yet that efficacy, that power, is
distinctly its own. As Etienne Gilson has beautifully explained:
The universe, as represented by St. Thomas, is not a mass of inert bodies
passively moved by a force which passes through them, but a collection of
active beings each enjoying an efficacy delegated to it by God along with actual
being. At the first beginning of a world like this, we have to place not so much
a force being exercised as an infinite goodness communicated. Love is the
unfathomable source of all causality. 10

We are beginning, perhaps, to catch a glimpse of the Thomistic
ontology; but let us continue. Not only is God's love the
unfathomable source of all causality, but all causation, as we
know it, imitates that love. To quote Gilson once more:
Beneath each natural form lies hidden a desire to imitate by means of action
the creative fecundity and pure actuality of God. This desire is quite
unconscious in the domain of bodies; but it is that same straining towards God
which, with intelligence and will, will blossom forth into human morality.
9 Aquinas, STh I, q. 8, a.

1.

10 Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (University of Notre

Dame Press, 1994), 183.

60

WOLFGANG SMITH

Thus, if a physics of bodies exists, it is because there exists first a mystical
theology of the divine life. The natural laws of motion, and its communication
from being to being, imitate the primitive creative effusion from God. The
efficacy of second causes is but the counterpart of His fecundity. 11

This same Thomistic vision of Nature has been expressed by
Meister Eckhart in a passage of rare beauty, where he writes:
You must understand that all creatures are by nature endeavoring to be like
God. The heavens would not revolve unless they followed on the track of God
or of his likeness. If God were not in all things, Nature would stop dead, not
working and not wanting; for whether thou like it or no, whether thou know
it or not, Nature fundamentally is seeking, though obscurely, and tending
towards God. No man in his extremity of thirst but would refuse the proffered
draught in which there was no God. Nature's quarry is not meat or drink nor
clothes nor comfort nor any things at all wherein is naught of God, but
covertly she seeks and ever more hotly she pursues the trail of God therein. 12

Here we have it: a vision of Nature that penetrates to the very
heart of things, to that "most profound element" which St.
Thomas has identified as its act-of-being. This is no longer an
Aristotelian, but an authentically Christian Weltanschauung. I
propose to show next how the findings of quantum theory fit into
that Christian world-view.

v
It needs to be pointed out, first of all, that the Thomistic
philosophy, no less than the Aristotelian, is unequivocally
nonbifurcationist. There is in neither philosophy the slightest
trace of Cartesian doubt. What we know by way of sense
perception are external objects, period; and these are the objects
with which the Thomistic ontology is principally concerned. It
follows that the findings of physics (in our sense) can be
assimilated into the Thomistic world-view only on condition that
they be interpreted in nonbifurcationist terms.

11 Ibid., 184.
12

C. de B. Evans, trans., Meister &khart (London: Watkins, 1924), 1:115.

THOMISTIC ONTOLOGY

61

The fundamental problem, dearly, is to situate the physical
domain in relation to the corporeal. Now, we know that transitions from the physical to the corporeal are effected by acts of
measurement in which a certain possibility inherent in a given
physical system is actualized; and this constitutes, Thomistically
speaking, a passage from potency to act. Every physical system,
in fact, is to be conceived as a potency in relation to the corporeal
domain. I might add that this point has been made very forcefully
by Werner Heisenberg with reference to microphysical systems:
"a strange kind of physical entity just in the middle between
possibility and reality" 13 he called these, and went on to observe
that in certain respects they are reminiscent of what he termed
"Aristotelian potentiae." When it comes to the macroscopic
domain, however, Heisenberg identifies in effect the corporeal
object X with the associated physical object SX, and thus submits
(as does virtually everyone else!) to a reductionist view of
corporeal nature-as if the mere aggregation of atoms could effect
a transition from potency to act. Nonbifurcation, on the other
hand, implies, as we have seen, an ontological distinction between
X and SX, which is to say that SX itself, no less than the quantum
particles out of which it is composed, constitutes in fact "a strange
kind of physical entity just in the middle between possibility and
reality." To be precise, fundamental particles and their
aggregates-be they ever so macroscopic!--occupy a position,
ontologically speaking, between primary matter and the corporeal
domain. Contemporary physics, it appears, has discovered an
intermediary level of existence unknown and undreamt of in
premodern times. It is this intermediary domain below the
corporeal that I term the physical universe.
What then distinguishes the two ontological planes? From an
Aristotelian or Thomistic point of view the answer is dear: what
distinguishes a corporeal object X from SX is precisely its
substantial form. It is this form that bestows upon X its corporeal
nature and specific essence, its "whatness" or Sosein, as we have
said. It is important to emphasize that this substantial form is not
a mathematical structure; if it were, X and SX would necessarily
coincide. Substantial forms fall therefore beyond the ken of an
13 Heisenberg,

Physics and Philosophy (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 41.

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WOLFGANG SMITH

exclusively quantitative science, a fact Descartes himself clearly
recognized, for instance, when he writes:
We can easily conceive how the motion of one body can be caused by that of
another, and diversified by the size, figure and situation of its parts, but we are
wholly unable to conceive how these same things can produce something else
of a nature entirely different from themselves, as for example, those substantial
forms and real qualities which many philosophers suppose to be in bodies. 14

But is this not in fact the reason why Galileo and Descartesprotagonists of universal mechanism-rejected substantial forms,
and banished sensible qualities from the external world? In so
doing, however, they cast out the very essence of corporeal being;
one is left with a de-essentialized universe, a world emptied of
reality.
We need today to free ourselves from the iron grip of this
dehumanizing scientistic dogma. We need to rediscover the
fullness of the corporeal world, replete with substantial forms and
real qualities, and harboring deep within itself the mystery of
what St. Thomas calls "the most profound element in all things."
We have need of this discovery in every domain of life, including
the scientific; but most especially, we have need of it in the
spiritual domain. The fullness of the Christian life, in particular,
demands a sacramental capacity on the part of matter which is
totally inconceivable in terms of a reductionist ontology. There is
no room for the Christie mysteries in a universe made up simply
of fundamental particles. The deeper truths of religion have thus
become unthinkable for us. In the final count, we know neither
man nor the universe, because neither can be comprehended in
separation from God; "I am the truth," said Christ. To postulate,
as we have, a self-existent universe productive of man is to beget
an illusion. Like the prisoners in Plato's cave, we are thenceforth
confined to an illusory world, constrained to gaze upon a realm
of shadows. I surmise that of all the true philosophies-and I
believe there are more than one-the Thomistic may be for us the
safest and most efficacious means by which to effect the liberating
14 Cited in E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modem Physical Science (New
York: Humanities Press, 1951), 112.

THOMISTIC ONTOLOGY

63

intellectual rectification. Whosoever has sensed that "love is the
unfathomable source of all causation" has already broken the
chains; and whoever has grasped, even dimly, what St. Thomas
terms the act-of-being, is well on his way.

The Thomist 63 (1999): 65-82

ISRAEL AND THE SHAPE OF THOMAS AQUINAS'S
SOTERIOLOGY
MAITHEW LEVERING
Boston College
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

T

HE CONTEMPORARY understanding of Thomas
Aquinas's soteriology has been succinctly expressed in a
recent study, Christology, by Gerald O'Collins, S.J.
O'Collins divides his treatment of Christo logy into three sections:
biblical, historical, and systematic. In his historical section, he
offers a brief appraisal of Thomas Aquinas's views. He concludes
that Aquinas made both positive and negative contributions. On
the positive side, Aquinas "mitigates" Anselm's theory of satisfaction by emphasizing the role of charity. Second, rather than
focusing only on Christ's passion, Aquinas treats Christ's entire
"human story." Third, Aquinas recognizes the redemptive role of
Christ's resurrection.
These positive points are followed by three criticisms. The first
is that by including the question as to whether Christ would have
become incarnate had Adam not sinned Aquinas separates the
order of creation and redemption. O'Collins is concerned that the
incarnation not be seen as a "divine rescue operation, mounted
subsequently after an original plan of creation went astray." His
second criticism is directed against Aquinas's theory that Christ,
because of the grace of the hypostatic union, possessed the beatific
vision. O'Collins speaks for many modern theologians in arguing
that this theory posits a docetic Christ. His third criticism is that
Aquinas contributes to the development of the notion of penal
substitution. Anselm had proposed that Christ's death restored
the divine order of justice; Aquinas adds a new emphasis on
65

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MATIHEW LEVERING

Christ's penal suffering. This emphasis on Christ's suffering is
seen as helping to "open the door to a monstrous version of
redemption: Christ as the penal substitute propitiating the divine
anger." Aquinas thus stands as the unwitting predecessor of
Luther. 1
Without unfairly singling out O'Collins, I wish to challenge his
approach to Aquinas's soteriology. Given the breadth of his
project, O'Collins could only be expected to offer a summary of
the scholarly consensus about Aquinas's soteriology. Precisely for
this reason, his treatment is representative of a widespread misappropriation of Aquinas. Aquinas's treatise is viewed as a collection of propositions from which the modern theologian may
select the propositions that remain valuable today. This approach
is justified by the assumption that Aquinas's greatness lies in his
ability to collect the best Scholastic propositions and organize
them according to Aristotelian rules. 2 Such an assumption is not
entirely unwarranted: Aquinas certainly desired to assemble the
best insights of his predecessors, and he sought to give theology
scientific form. And yet, this approach fails to give due credit to
Aquinas's theological gifts. When we seek what unifies the
propositions of one of Aquinas's treatises, we should look for
theological as well as philosophical intelligibility.
In this article, I will argue that Aquinas's soteriological propositions are unified by his insight into how Christ's passion fulfills
the Old Law.3 By overlooking this unifying factor, O'Collins
misunderstands Aquinas's reasons for emphasizing Christ's
charity, beatific vision, and penal suffering. The main task of this
essay, therefore, will be to examine the role of the Old Law in
Aquinas's treatise on Christ's passion. Before we undertake this
1 Gerald O'Collins, S.J., Christology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 206-7.
2 A theologian as great as Hans Urs von Balthasar fell into this mistake. He treats Aquinas

as "more of a philosopher than a theologian," whose gift lay in philosophical organization
rather than theological insight (cited in James J. Buckley, "Balthasar's Use of the Theology
of Aquinas," The Thomist 59 [1995]: 517).
3 For Aquinas, since Christ is the incarnate Word, everything that he does (from his
coming into the world to his resurrection and ascension) has redemptive significance.
Nonetheless, Christ's passion represents the apogee of his redemptive work, since it is
primarily here that he brings the Old Law to completion.

ISRAEL AND AQUINAS'S SOTERIOLOGY

67

task, however, we should briefly summarize Aquinas's conception
of the place of the Old Law in the history of salvation.
The rational faculties of Adam and Eve were originally rightly
directed to God. This state of "original justice" was itself a gift of
grace (STh I, q. 95, a. 1). Original sin, as a fall from grace,
disordered the rational faculties: they no longer were subject to
God, nor did they rule the sense appetites (STh I, q. 85, a. 1).
Under the sway of the sense appetites, the rational faculties'
promptness to perceive and obey the "natural law" (i.e., the
rational creature's participation in the "eternal law," the holy
order that God has inscribed in creation) was weakened. As a
result, in addition to the state of sin brought about by the original
rejection of God's grace, human beings became culpable for
numerous personal sins.
The giving of the Old Law on Sinai began in earnest the
process of extricating man from sin. The Decalogue, Aquinas
argues, reveals the tenets of the natural law (STh I-II, q. 100, a.
1). The other precepts of the Old Law structure Israel's cultic and
political life around these tenets. Aquinas explains that in
addition to the moral precepts, the Old Law contains ceremonial
and judicial precepts-determinations of the moral precepts by
which man is directed to God and to fellow men, respectively.
These precepts, while good in themselves, are not "perfect,"
because they prefigure something higher (STh I-11, q. 104, a. 2).
The ceremonial precepts, primarily those instituting the sacrificial
system, cultically represent the right order of man to God; but the
sacrifice of animals inevitably falls short of this right order. The
judicial precepts, primarily those instituting the regulation of
exchange and punishment for crime, are also figurative, although
in a different way. By shaping the government of Israel, they
suggest the right order that should exist between man and fellow
men, but in practice, like any human politics, they are unable to
produce this right order.
Thus the Old Law could only prefigure the final restoration of
"right order" and the meriting of salvation. Nonetheless, Aquinas
insists, participation in the Messiah's salvific action did not begin
only after the event had taken place. Rather, such participation

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MATrnEW LEVERING

was possible for the people living under the Old Law, insofar as
by faith, hope, and love they were joined to the prefigured salvific
action of the prophesied Messiah. 4 Since the New Law is simply
the grace of the Holy Spirit that enables man to participate in the
Messiah's transcendent fulfillment of the Old Law, the New Law
is active even during the period of the Old. Still, the New Law is
not ahistorical: it hinges upon Christ's salvific work. Aquinas
emphasizes that "the New Law fulfills the Old by justifying men
through the power of Christ's Passion" (STh 1-11, q. 107, a. 2).
When Christ's passion occurs, of course, it brings to an end the
Old Law, now taken up into his salvific action. As members of his
mystical body (since his person is divine, all people can be joined
to him through the grace of the Holy Spirit), we share in the
profound reconciliation that his suffering brings. And by sharing
in the merit of his suffering, we receive the promise of rising with
him to eternal life.
Having reviewed the relationship of the Old and New Laws,
we are now ready to turn to Aquinas's treatise on Christ's
passion. Since Adam and Eve fell through disobedience, Christ's
salvific action must be (as St. Paul says) an act of obedience. In
STh III, q. 4 7, a. 2, Aquinas deepens this insight. He argues that
Christ's supreme act of obedience-his passion-actually fulfills
the Old Law. He points to St. John's Gospel, which records
Jesus's final words from the cross, "It is consummated." Aquinas
understands Christ to mean that the Old Law has finally been
consummated in him. Aquinas then shows briefly how Christ's
perfect act of obedience, flowing from the supernatural grace that
infused his soul at the moment of the hypostatic union,
simultaneously fulfills all three aspects of the Old Law. Since
charity is the form of all the virtues, Christ's perfect charity,
which he displayed "inasmuch as he suffered both out of love of
4 Significantly, the final question that Aquinas treats before taking up Christ's passion
concerns his transfiguration (STh III, q. 45). The presence of Moses and Elijah signifies
Christ's intimate relationship to the saints of the Old Covenant, who recognized him in the
Old Law, and foretold his coming in the prophetic books. Although these saints, by the grace
of the Holy Spirit, possessed the supernatural virtue of faith in Christ's passion, as well as the
virtues of hope and love, their final restoration awaited the event of Christ's passion, in which
he paid the "debt" incurred by original sin (STh III, q. 49, a. 5, ad 1).

ISRAEL AND AQUINAS'S SOTERIOLOGY

69

the Father ... and out of love of his neighbor," perfectly fulfilled
the moral precepts of the Law. Secondly, Christ perfectly fulfilled
the ceremonial precepts (which direct man to God) in the
self-sacrifice that he offered upon the cross. Finally, Aquinas
employs Psalm 63 :5 to explain how Christ perfectly fulfilled the
judicial precepts (which direct man to fellow-man): "He paid that
which He took not away, suffering Himself to be fastened to a
tree on account of the apple which man had plucked from the
tree against God's command." In other words, Christ, though
innocent, took upon himself the suffering due to all others.
In STh III, q. 4 7, a. 2, therefore, Aquinas provides the basic
framework that unites the material of his treatise, which spans qq.
46-49. He seeks to explore, and to balance, the three ways in
which Christ's passion simultaneously fulfilled the Old Law.
Aquinas, of course, does not arrange his questions around the
three kinds of precepts. He arranges his material in a more
scientific order: q. 46 concerns the passion itself; q. 47, the
efficient cause of the passion; and qq. 48-49, the effects of the
passion. Yet in each of these questions, his concern is to show
how Christ's passion is redemptive within the context established
by Israel's Law. This concern enables Aquinas to achieve a
profound balance between Christ's charity, his sacrifice, and his
suffering.
I. THE CEREMONIAL PRECEPTS

We will begin with Christ's fulfillment of the ceremonial
precepts, because this aspect of the Old Law has a special place in
Aquinas's understanding of Christ's passion. 5 Earlier in his
Christology, Aquinas had devoted an entire question to Christ's
priesthood (STh III, q. 22), underscoring the special significance
of the ceremonial precepts of the Old Law. The ceremonial
5 This thesis is defended by Romanus Cessario, O.P., in The Godly Image (Petersham: St.
Bede's Publications, 1990). Cessario notes the dependence of Aquinas's treatment upon the
Epistle to the Hebrews, which focuses upon Christ's priestly mediation. See also Albert
Patfoort, O.P., "Le vrai visage de la satisfaction du Christ selon St. Thomas," in Ordo
Sapientiae et Amoris, ed. Carlos-Josaphat Pinta de Oliveira, O.P. (Fribourg: Editions
Universitaires Fribourg, 1993), 247-66.

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MATIHEW LEVERING

precepts, as Aquinas states in STh I-II, q. 101, a. 1, are properly
the determinations of the moral law "which pertain to the Divine
worship," and so it is not surprising that they have foremost
dignity in his presentation.
Before turning to the fulfillment of the ceremonial precepts in
Christ's passion, we should examine more closely how Aquinas,
in his treatise on the Old Law, interprets the ceremonial precepts,
in particular the laws about sacrifices. In contrast to the modern
view of sacrificial offerings, Aquinas attributes to sacrifice a
positive symbolic force. In STh I-II, q. 102, a. 3, ad 8 he notes
that Christ's sacrifice is prefigured in the Old Law by three kinds
of sacrifices: burnt offerings, peace offerings, and sin offerings,
each of which represent a stage of the spiritual life. Since Aquinas
holds that people living under the Old Law truly participated
(through the Old Law) in the New Law, he can apply the later
Christian distinction between the "counsels" and the "commandments" to the spiritual life of the Israelites. Burnt offerings, he
suggests, were intended to "show reverence to His majesty, and
love of His goodness: and typified the state of perfection as
regards the fulfilment of the counsels." Burnt offerings were burnt
completely in order to represent the self-offering of the whole
man. Similarly, peace offerings were offered out of thanksgiving
for divine favors received, and also in supplication for new
favors. Aquinas holds that this kind of sacrifice "typifies the state
of those who are proficient in the observance of the
commandments." The peace offering was divided into three parts,
one to be burnt, one for the priests, and one for the offerers.
Aquinas explains that this threefold division signified the way in
which salvation is from God, is mediated through priests, and is
received by those who ask for it.
The third kind of sacrifice, the sin offering, represents (as the
name implies) imperfection. Aquinas states that this kind of
sacrifice "was offered to God on account of man's need for the
forgiveness of sin: and this typifies the state of penitents in
satisfying for sins." This sacrifice was the special duty of the
priests of the Old Law.

ISRAEL AND AQUINAS'S SOTERIOLOGY

71

With this background, we will understand more easily how
Christ fulfills the ceremonial precepts. 6 In STh III, q. 48, a. 3,
Aquinas asks whether Christ's passion operated by way of
sacrifice. His answer explores the nature of Christ's sacrifice. The
proper meaning of sacrifice, he notes, is "something done for that
honor which is properly due to God, in order to appease him [ad
eum placandum]." This definition emphasizes the reconciling
aspect of sacrifice; and in this sense, Christ's sacrifice was
primarily a sin offering. On the other hand, Christ's sacrifice also
embodied the other two kinds of sacrifice. Aquinas cites Augustine to make clear the relationship between sacrifice as a perfect
act and as a sin offering: "'A true sacrifice is every good work
done in order that we may cling to God in holy fellowship, yet
referred to that consummation of happiness wherein we can be
truly blessed."' Christ's perfect charity meant that his sacrifice was
both a burnt offering and a peace offering, since as a reverential
and thankful gift of the whole person, his sacrifice anticipated the
"consummation of happiness"; but his sacrifice was also a sin
offering, intended to enable us to regain "holy fellowship" with
God. Christ's sacrifice thus draws together the three kinds of
sacrifices in the Old Law. Aquinas concludes with two more
citations of Augustine. Augustine compares the relationship of
Christ's one sacrifice to the various sacrifices of the Old Law with
6 See also ITh 11-11, q. 85 "Of Sacrifice," where Aquinas discusses sacrifice as part of the
virtue of religion, which is in turn part of the virtue of justice. In this question, Aquinas
conceives of sacrifice as part of holiness, rather than as a penance for sin. In a. 1, he holds
that offering sacrifice belongs to the natural law. In a passage that might well serve as a
commentary upon the famous "five ways" to show the existence of God, Aquinas explains:

Natural reason tells man that he is subject to a higher being,on account
of the defects which he perceives in himself, and in which he needs
help and direction from someone above him: and whatever this
superior being may be, it is known to all under the name of God. Now
just as in natural things the lower are naturally subject to the higher, so
too it is a dictate of natural reason in accordance with man's natural
inclination that he should tender submission and honor, according to
his mode, to that which is above man.
In a. 2, Aquinas explains that "the sacrifice that is offered outwardly represents the inward
spiritual sacrifice ••• since, as stated above [STh III, q. 81, a. 7; q. 84, a. 2), the outward acts
of religion are directed to the inward acts."

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MATIHEW LEVERING

the relationship of a single concept to the many words in which
it may be expressed. Indeed, Christ's sacrifice not only unifies the
various kinds of sacrifices of the Old Law, but also unifies the
priest with the victim, and the one who offers with the one who
receives.
Emphasizing that Christ's sacrifice unifies the various kinds of
sacrifices of the Old Law leaves Aquinas with a difficult problem:
if Christ's sacrifice is a "positive" sacrifice, then why is it a
sacrifice of human flesh, an act explicitly forbidden in the Old
Law? In the same article, Aquinas confronts this objection.
Because the ceremonial precepts are "figures," we should expect
that the reality would surpass them. Although it would have been
unfitting to sacrifice human flesh under the Old Law, Christ's
flesh is a fitting sacrifice for four reasons. As with many of his
arguments from fittingness, Aquinas draws these reasons from
Augustine.
First, Christ's sacrifice is ordered to the redemption of human
beings, and specifically to the sacramental system. Therefore, the
sacrifice of Christ's flesh is fitting, since otherwise men could not
truly receive Christ in the Eucharist. Second, God took on flesh
precisely in order to offer it in sacrifice; otherwise, God would
not have needed to become incarnate. Third, Christ's flesh was
unblemished by sin, and therefore constituted a perfect offering
which, when participated through the sacraments, "had virtue to
cleanse from sins." Fourth, in Christ's case the offering of human
flesh was acceptable, since he himself willed in perfect charity to
offer his own flesh. 7
Having demonstrated that Christ's sacrifice must be seen as a
positive offering, Aquinas devotes the next article (STh III, q. 48,
7 It is worth having in mind Aquinas's understanding of "charity." Charity requires
expending oneself for the beloved, even to the extent of sacrificing one's own life. The
well-being of the state, for example, requires a political love by which citizens "love the good
of the state so that it might be preserved and defended .... So much is this so, that men
would expose themselves to dangers of death or neglect of their own private good, in order
to preserve or increase the good of the state" (fhomas Aquinas, On Charity, trans. Lottie H.
Kendzierski [Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1984], 43). Supernatural love,
therefore, requires at least a willingness to sacrifice the life of the body. Christ's bloody
self-sacrifice perfectly manifests this supernatural charity. A lesser sacrifice could not have
provided an adequate exemplar of supernatural charity.

ISRAEL AND AQIBNAS'S SOTERIOLOGY

73

a. 4) to exploring the nature of Christ's sacrifice specifically as a
sin offering. As a sin offering, Christ's sacrifice operates according
to the mode of redemption. In STh 1-11, q. 87, Aquinas had
already explained that mortal sin incurs a "debt" of eternal
punishment, because the order of divine justice is transgressed. So
long as man is infected by original sin, he owes this "debt" of
punishment. Moreover, he cannot pay it of himself: "if a sin
destroys the principle of the order whereby man's will is subject
to God, the disorder will be such as to be considered in itself
irreparable, although it is possible to repair it by the power of
God" (STh 1-11, q. 87, a. 3). Original sin imposed an ontological
"debt" upon human nature; precisely by turning away from God,
man incurred the punishment of being turned towards death.
Christ's death, as the death of a sinless man, pays this "debt." The
order of divine justice is restored. Indeed, Christ's perfect sin
offering is "superabundant" compensation for our sin because of
the dignity of his bodily life, which is united to the divine nature
in the Person of the Word.
Christ's sacrifice can also be described as a "satisfaction."
Anselm developed the concept of satisfaction that Aquinas uses in
STh III, q. 48, a. 2: "He properly atones [satisfacit]for an offense
who offers something which the offended one loves equally, or
even more than he detested the offense." In this article, Aquinas
notes three objections to the idea that Christ's passion brings
about our salvation by way of atonement. The first objection
argues that no one can make compensation for the sins of
another. The second objection points out that since crucifying
Christ, God incarnate, was the most grievous of all sins, the
crucifixion could not atone for this new sin. The third objection
holds that Christ's passion is merely one good act, which cannot
balance out all sins.
Aquinas's answers reveal how he overcomes the legalistic
tendency of Anselm's definition by exploring the dynamics of
Christ's priesthood. To the first objection, he responds that all
who believe in Christ participate in his passion, as members of his
mystical body. Repeating an argument previously made in STh
1-11, q. 87, a. 7, he notes that oneness in charity enables the lover
to atone for the beloved. To the second, he insists once again that

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MATfHEW LEVERING

Christ's sacrifice should be seen as positive, since Christ, in his
human will (perfectly conformed by charity to his divine will),
chose freely to atone for our sins. To the third, Aquinas explains
that the compensation offered by Christ is not merely the suffering of a particular instance of human nature, but rather the
suffering of a human nature hypostatically united to the divine
Person of the Logos. It is the hypostatic union which accounts for
the perfect virtue of his human soul, and which makes the
suffering of his human nature more than sufficient compensation
for all sins.

II. THE MORAL PRECEPTS
Anselm is known for his theory of satisfaction, Abelard for his
insistence that charity is the key to Christ's saving work. Aquinas
argues that both are right. In this he is again following the Old
Testament, which considered love to be the primary element of
sacrifice, and indeed of worship. 8 Christ could not have fulfilled
the ceremonial precepts without also perfectly fulfilling the moral
precepts. The prophets of the Old Law had condemned the
Temple sacrifices of their day as mere external forms, undertaken
without faith or charity. Aquinas, therefore, is careful to emphasize the role of charity in Christ's sacrifice.9
In STh 11-11, qq. 23-25, Aquinas notes that charity is the
movement of the will toward the Divine good as good, "according
as it can be apprehended by the intellect" (q. 24, a. 1). The
charitable will loves the Divine good for the Divine good's own
sake, and loves all human beings insofar as they are referred to
this good. As a supernatural virtue, charity is "created"
participation in the Holy Spirit, who is Love. No true virtue is
possible without charity, since all virtue is ordered to the good,
and charity, which is ordered to the ultimate good, is necessary
to direct all virtues perfectly towards the good. In this sense
8 See for example Deut 6:5; Lev 19:18; Isa l:llf.; Ps 50:8-13; Sir 34:19-21; Mic 6:7.
Aquinas makes clear that although the moral precepts of the Old Law concern "natural"
virtues, it is impossible to fulfill the Old Law without the supernatural virtue of charity (cf.
STh 1-11, q. 100, a. l; q. 100, a. 10, ad 3).
9 Cf. STh III, q. 47, a. 4, ad 2; q. 48, aa. 2 and 3; q. 49, a. 4.

ISRAEL AND AQUINAS'S SOTERIOLOGY

75

charity is called the "form" of all the virtues as well as the "source
of merit" for all our acts.
Although it might seem that charity is the same in every person
who possesses charity, in fact there are various degrees of charity,
corresponding to the degree of the person's participation of the
Holy Spirit. In STh 11-11, q. 24, a. 8, Aquinas notes that human
charity can be called "perfect" in three ways. For our purposes, it
will be sufficient to note the highest perfection of human charity,
that manifested by Christ. Aquinas explains that the most perfect
kind of human charity is reserved for those who are fully united
to Christ in heaven. On earth, only Christ displays this most
perfect charity, which requires "that a man's whole heart is
always actually borne towards God." The grace of the hypostatic
union provides Christ with this perfection, which enables his
human will always to be in accord with his divine will. In this
state of highest human charity, the person is able to "think always
actually of God, and to be moved by love towards Him."
The connection that Aquinas makes here between always
thinking of God and always loving him is highly significant for
our purposes. Christ possesses while on earth the most perfect
charity possible for man, precisely because of his possession of the
beatific vision, which consists of contemplating God always. It is
this perfect charity that enables Christ to fulfill perfectly all aspects of the Law. Only Christ's possession of the beatific vision
enables him to love perfectly, as man, the ultimate end that his
intellect fully apprehends; and thus Christ can fulfill perfectly the
ceremonial precepts corresponding to this ultimate end. Likewise,
Christ can fulfill perfectly the judicial precepts because he suffers
out of charity for each and every man, known to him only by
means of the beatific vision. 10
10 Aquinas discusses Christ's beatific knowledge (or contemplative enjoyment of God) in
Sfh III, q. 10. In the first article of this question, Aquinas explains how Christ's
contemplation (as man) of God includes knowledge of all created things.

The soul of Christ knows all things in the Word. For every created
intellect knows in the Word, not all simply, but so many more things
the more perfectly it sees the Word. Yet no beatified intellect fails to
know in the Word whatever pertains to itself. Now to Christ and to
His dignity all things to some extent belong, inasmuch as all things are

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MATIHEW LEVERING

Christ's beatific vision, in short, enables him to know perfectly
what he is doing, and this knowledge enables him to love
perfectly both God and those whom he is reconciling to God.
Since Christ knows, as man, how his acts fit into the divine plan,
his acts truly express the incarnate manifestation of the love of
God. Thus for Aquinas, as for Abelard, the person who meditates
upon Christ's passion is able to "[know] thereby how much God
loves him, and is thereby stirred to love Him in return, and herein
lies the perfection of human salvation" (STh III, q. 46, a. 3).
God's movement of love towards us inspires, by the power of the
Holy Spirit, a corresponding movement in us towards God. By
this love, we appropriate the reconciliation gained for us by
Christ's passion. Faith alone does not cleanse from sin; only faith
working through love can truly participate in Christ's passion
(STh III, q. 49, a. 1, ad 5).
Aquinas thus sees Christ's passion as the most complete human
expression of charity. Indeed, he argues that even the smallest
details of the passion are totally infused by charity. Christ, on the
cross, remained always an active Lover, never a passive victim.
This activity manifested itself most evidently in his prayer for his
persecutors (STh III, q. 47, a. 4, ad 1). Since the perfected soul
has complete governance of the body, Aquinas can also hold that
Christ's charity governed the very entrance of the nail into his
flesh. In Aquinas's view, Christ's charitable will must actually
permit the infliction of the wounds of the crucifixion, because
subject to Him. Moreover, He has been appointed Judge of all by God,
because He is the Son of Man, as is said John v. 27; and therefore the
soul of Christ knows in the Word all things existing in whatever time,
and the thoughts of men, of which he is the Judge.
The knowledge of all things in the Word cannot cause sadness, because all things are,
ultimately, ordered fittingly to God. Therefore, charity, which loves all things insofar as they
are ordered to the ultimate end, cannot coexist with sadness. Yet a person possessing charity
in this life can have sorrow, in the practical intellect, for the temporal disorder of man. In STh
11-11, q. 28, a. 2, ad 1, discussingjoy, Aquinas explains that while the joy of charity cannot be
mixed with sorrow, nonetheless in another sense "charity makes us weep with our neighbor
in so far as he is hindered from participating in the Divine good." See also Guy Mansini,
O.S.B., "St. Thomas on Christ's Knowledge of God," The Thomist 59 Uanuary 1995):
91-124. It should be noted that once we grant the fact of the hypostatic union, the idea that
Christ's soul is beatified by this union seems unsurprising.

ISRAEL AND AQUINAS'S SOTERIOLOGY

77

Christ's "spirit had the power of preserving his fleshly nature
from the infliction of any injury; and Christ's soul had this
power, because it was united in unity of person with the Divine
Word" (STh III, q. 47, a. 1). Had Christ's soul not had this
power, Aquinas suggests, his perfect freedom in submitting to his
passion would have been compromised, since he would have lost
his freedom at the moment when the soldiers bound him and led
him away. In short, Aquinas can truly affirm that "Christ's love
was greater than his slayers' malice" (STh III, q. 48, a. 2, ad 2).
Although Christ's passion may seem to represent the triumph of
sin, it is in fact the triumph of Christ's charitable human will,
acting as an instrument of the divine will.
In Aquinas's view, therefore, Christ's human will is empowered, by the grace of the hypostatic union, to embody at
every moment of his life the love of God for all human beings. As
he says in STh III, q. 47, a. 3, ad 3, "The Father delivered up
Christ, and Christ surrendered Himself, from charity." Thus
Christ, in fulfillment of the moral precepts of the Old Law, willed
his death with perfect charity-that is, with complete love for his
death's object, known to him by means of the beatific perfection
of his human intellect. The necessary conformity between Christ's
two wills provides a basis for estimating Christ's psychological
state upon the Cross: both his intellect and his will must remain
clear and ordered to their object, since intellectual confusion
always distorts the will.
Finally, by participating in Christ's passion as members of his
mystical body, we are conformed to him to such a degree that his
moral perfection becomes a true example for us. In STh III, q. 46,
a. 3, Aquinas notes that Christ's passion was the most suitable
means to achieve the end of man's salvation, first because it
revealed God's charity, but second "because thereby He set us an
example of obedience, humility, constancy, justice, and the other
virtues displayed in the passion, which are requisite for man's
salvation." Christ's perfect charity does not therefore make him
"superhuman"; rather he becomes the "exemplar," or formal
cause, of the holiness which is objectively the ultimate end of
every human being.

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MATIHEW LEVERING

III. THE JUDICIAL PRECEPTS

Thirdly and lastly, Christ fulfills the Old Law's judicial
precepts, that is, those which determine the moral precepts
towards our fellow man. In a sense, we have already touched
upon the fulfillment of the judicial precepts by discussing how
Christ's passion operates according to the modes of "redemption"
and "satisfaction." Although God could have redeemed man
simply by command, he chose to restore the order of justice by
the death of a sinless man, in other words, by a satisfactory sin
offering. By this choice, Aquinas argues, God displays "more
copious mercy" than he would have had he simply forgiven sins
by fiat (STh III, q. 46, a. 1, ad 3), since in Christ's passion, God
enabled man to restore the order of justice. Christ, as man,
restores justice both between man and God, and between men.
"Redemption" and "satisfaction" primarily concern the former,
since they are directed to God. However, Christ's satisfactory
suffering was also a suffering for all men. He is related to all other
men by his suffering, as the one who bears their suffering. In this
way, his suffering is the fulfillment of the judicial precepts of the
Old Law, which concerned punishment for crime and the rules of
exchange.
The fulfillment of the judicial precepts, like the fulfillment of
the ceremonial and moral precepts, could not have been
accomplished by a mere man. In his treatise on the Old Law,
Aquinas had explained that some of the judicial precepts call for
severe punishment "because a greater sin, other things being
equal, deserves greater punishment" (STh I-II, q. 105, a. 2, ad 9).
Since Christ suffers for all sins, it is fitting that he undergo the
greatest punishment. He is able to do so because his human
nature, as the human nature of the Logos, could suffer with more
physical and spiritual sensitivity than other men. Therefore,
although Christ's "slightest pain would have sufficed to secure
man's salvation, because from His Divine Person it would have
had infinite virtue" (STh III, q. 46, a. 6, obj. 6; cf. ad 6), Christ
fulfilled the judicial precepts by undergoing the greatest suffering.
Moreover, in contrast to the limited scope of the actions of a
mere man, Christ was able to fulfill the judicial precepts because

ISRAEL AND AQUINAS'S SOTERIOLOGY

79

he could direct his suffering to each human being: while suffering
our penalty, he contemplated our ultimate end, and referred his
suffering to the end of our being united with God.
We have already examined why Aquinas holds that Christ
must have possessed the beatific vision, even on the cross.
Aquinas argues that the hypostatic union would have permanently
glorified Christ's soul at the very moment of its creation. This,
then, has to be balanced with the fact of Christ's supreme
suffering on the cross. Aquinas explains that the higher part of
Christ's soul (that is, his speculative intellect) "was not hindered
in its proper acts by the lower," and therefore "the higher part of
His soul enjoyed fruition perfectly while Christ was suffering"
(STh III, q. 46, a. 8). But if Christ's speculative intellect was
perfectly serene, how could Christ be said to suffer? Aquinas
answers that if by "suffering" one means the confusion of the
speculative intellect, then it is true that Christ could not have
suffered in this way.
According to Aquinas, Christ suffers in two ways. First, he
suffers through the sensitive powers of his soul, which apprehend
his bodily pain. Second, he suffers in his practical intellect by
seeing what is contrary to the love of God, even while his
speculative intellect continues to enjoy perfect contemplation of
God. As Aquinas explains in STh I, q. 77, a. 3, the intellect is one
power, but it has two functions, which may be termed the
speculative and the practical intellects. The speculative intellect is
concerned with the contemplation of eternal things, the practical
intellect with the disposal of temporal things (STh I, q. 79, a. 9).
Aquinas uses this psychology to explain Christ's suffering on the
cross: Christ "suffered indeed as to all His lower powers; because
in all the soul's lower powers, whose operations are but temporal,
there was something to be found which was a source of woe to
Christ" (STh III, q. 46, a. 7). In contrast, Christ's higher reason or
speculative intellect could not experience sadness, because its
object is God, who is infinite Goodness.
In STh III, q. 46, a. 6, Aquinas details these two aspects of
Christ's suffering. The cause of his sensitive pain is evident: the
wounding of his body. In contrast, his "interior pain" or
"sadness" must have had multiple causes. Aquinas suggests that

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MATIHEW LEVERING

Christ's practical intellect would have experienced acute sadness
especially for the sins of humankind; for the sin of those (including his apostles) who betrayed, abandoned, or condemned him;
and for his approaching death. Aquinas then argues that Christ's
sensitive pain and intellectual sadness were the greatest possible
on earth. In this regard, he notes that the sources of Christ's pain
were the greatest, because the wounds of the crucifixion afflicted
the most sensitive parts of the body, and because Christ grieved
for all sins. Second, Christ's body and soul were perfectly made,
and so they possessed a greater sensitivity to suffering than any
inferior body and soul would po'Ssess.Third, Christ did not allow
the higher powers of his soul to soothe the sensitive pain or
interior sadness experienced by the lower powers of his soul.
Fourth, Christ chose to suffer, "and consequently He embraced
the amount of pain proportionate to the magnitude of the fruit
which resulted therefrom." He freely willed to endure the greatest
suffering, and all classes of suffering (STh III, q. 46, a. 5), in order
to make manifest his fulfillment of the judicial precepts.
Aquinas is careful to add two caveats. First, although Christ's
interior sadness is "the greatest in absolute quantity," his sadness
remains governed by the "rule of reason"; that is, the sadness in
his lower reason is governed by his higher reason (STh III, q. 46,
a. 6, ad 2). Therefore, Christ's sadness is not despairing or
estranged from the truth, and so exteriorly it may not have
seemed to be the greatest sadness. Interiorly, however, since his
sadness is measured by his higher reason's perfect wisdom, his
sadness has, of all human suffering, the greatest intensity: "this
grief in Christ surpassed all grief of every contrite heart, 11 both
because it flowed from a greater wisdom and charity, by which
the pang of contrition is intensified, and because He grieved at
the one time for all sins, according to Isa. liii. 4: Surely He hath
carried our sorrows" (STh III, q. 46, a. 6, ad 4). Aquinas also
points out that Christ's grief for his approaching death would, by
itself, surpass every other human grief, since Christ's bodily life
is that of the Son of God.
11 Guilt does not add any intensity to grief.Thomas points out that although a guilty man
"grieves not merely on account of the penalty, but also because of the crime," nonetheless the
grief of an innocent man is more intense "by reason of his innocence, insofar as he deems the
hurt to be the more undeserved" (STh III, q. 46, a. 6, ad 5).

ISRAEL AND AQUINAS'S SOTERIOLOGY

81

Second, Aquinas notes that in order to take on the penalty for
our sin, Christ does not need to take on the penalty of eternal
suffering, or damnation. The judicial precepts require a punishment proportionate to the sin. Since Christ bears all the sins of
this world, his suffering is fittingly the greatest of this world. His
suffering does not need to match the suffering of the damned,
since their suffering pertains to the next world. As Aquinas states,
"The pain of a suffering, separated soul belongs to the state of
future condemnation, which exceeds every evil of this life, just as
the glory of the saints surpasses every good of the present life"
(STh III, q. 46, a. 6, ad 3). Christ could not take on this eternal
suffering, since eternal suffering consists precisely in having
rejected Christ's passion.
This context stands behind Aquinas's interpretation of certain
scriptural passages which, when not interpreted in light of
Christ's perfect charity, confuse theologians. In STh III, q. 46, a.
4, ad 3, Aquinas gives his interpretation of four such passages:
Deuteronomy 21:23 ("He is accursed of God that hangeth on a
tree"); 2 Corinthians 5 :21 ("Him that knew no sin, for us He
hath made sin"); Galatians 3:13 ("Christ hath redeemed us from
the curse of the law, being made a curse for us"); and Romans 8 :3
("having the resemblance of the flesh of sin"). Following
Augustine, he holds that these texts refer to Christ having
"become sin" by taking on "the penalty of sin," which is death.
God willed that Christ, as man, pay this penalty. On this basis,
Aquinas approaches another difficult text. He argues that Christ's
words from the Cross, "My God, my God, why hast Thou
forsaken me?" (Matt 27:46), are intended to reveal that God
could have shielded Christ from the passion, but did not (STh III,
q. 4 7, a. 4 ). The cry of abandonment reveals the central truth of
the passion: God gave his only Son into the hands of sinners, to
be numbered among the guilty. As we have seen, Aquinas teaches
that God did this so that the order of justicemight be restored not
extrinsically by divine compulsion or fiat, but intrinsically, by
enabling man to fulfill the the threefold Law and merit beatitude.
Christ receives this complete beatitude in his resurrection, which
thus becomes the "formal" cause of our salvation.

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MATIHEW LEVERING

IV. CONCLUSION

Aquinas's soteriology belongs among his more important and
lasting theological achievements, if only for its articulation of the
manifold way in which Christ brings Israel's history to fulfillment.
Beginning with the moral precepts of the Old Law (fundamentally
the Decalogue, in which Aquinas found the basic tenets of the
"natural" law, our rational participation in God's divine wisdom
for creation), Aquinas shows how Christ's perfect charity
grounded his fulfillment on the cross of the Old Law's ceremonial
and judicial precepts, through which he reconciles all things in
himself. Aquinas thereby demonstrates the profound unity of the
Old Law and the New Law, even while underscoring the infinite
newness of the New Law, by which we share in Christ's divine
Spirit. Moreover, Aquinas at the same time provides a rich
understanding of the relationship between nature and grace: the
moral precepts of the Old Law are "natural," but they are fulfilled
and elevated to the ultimate end by Christ's supreme charity, a
supernatural virtue. Calvary thus represents the transcendent
fulfillment not only of Sinai, but also of the order of all creation.
Aquinas was able to hold together these elements in a profound
and delicate balance. Attending to his example, we should strive
to do the same.

The Thomist 63 (1999): 83-104

THE BROTHERS OF JESUS AND HIS MOTHER'S
VIRGINITY
JOSE M. PEDROZO
PontificalCollegeJosephinum
Columbus, Ohio

I

N CONNECT! ON WITH his extensive work on the historical
Jesus during the last few years, John P. Meier has dealt with
the issue of the "brothers and sisters of Jesus" on several
occasions. 1 In particular, he has maintained that "from a purely
philological and historical point of view, the most probable
opinion is that the brothers and sisters of Jesus were his siblings." 2
He has arrived at this opinion from his treatment of the data in
the New Testament and "a few noncanonical passages, viewed
purely as potential historical sources. "3 In this paper the
discussion will center on the latter, postponing a detailed study of
the biblical evidence and examining only the relevant noncanonical sources. 4
1 John P. Meier, A MarginalJew: Rethinkingthe HistoricalJesus, vol. 1, The Roots of the
Problem and the Person (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 318-32, 354-63. See also the two
articles, "The Brothers and Sisters of Jesus in Ecumenical Perspective," Catholic Biblical
Quarterly54 (1992): 1-28; and "On Retrojecting Later Questions from Later Texts: A Reply
to Richard Bauckharn," Catholic BiblicalQuarterly 59 (1997): 511-27.
2 Meier, A MarginalJew, 332.
3 Cf. Meier, "The Brothers and Sisters of Jesus," 7.

4 For a concise but insightful critique of Meier's methodological and philosophical
presuppositions see J. Augustine DiNoia, review of A MarginalJew: Rethinkingthe Historical
Jesus, by John P. Meier, Pro &clesia 2 (Winter 1993): 122-25. Also expertly to the point is
Joseph T. Lienhard, The Bible, the Church,and Authority (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical
Press, 1995), 1-8, who delineates some basic flaws in Meier's biblical method, including the
fact that it is not quite as objective as it claims to be (cl. 7). For additional material, see Roch
Kereszty, "Historical Research, Theological Inquiry, and the Reality ofjesus: Reflections on
the Method of J.P. Meier," Communio 19 (1992): 576-600; Avery Dulles, "Historians and
the Reality of Christ," First Things 28 (December 1992): 20-25; and Richard J. Neuhaus,

83

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JOSE M. PEDROZO

Although historical labels are often misleading, I will denote
as Epiphanian 5 the notion that "the brothers and sisters of Jesus"
were the children of Joseph by a previous marriage. I will denote
as Helvidian 6 the opinion that "the brothers and sisters of Jesus"
were the natural children of Mary and Joseph after Jesus' birth.
By Jeromian 7 I denote the idea that Jesus was Mary's only child,
virginally conceived, and that the "brothers and sisters of Jesus"
were individuals related to him, not as true half siblings but via
close non-filial blood ties to either Mary or Joseph.
Meier believes that, in contrast to what he calls the "cousin
approach," "both the Epiphanian solution and the view that the
'brothers of Jesus' were real brothers can find supporters in the
2d and 3d centuries." 8 He goes on to assert that "the antiquity
"Reason Public and Private: The Pannenberg Project," First Things 21(March1992): 55-60.
Kereszty observes that "if Meier had more 'empathy' for the biblical meaning of Mary's
virginity as a definitive consecration of her body-person by the Holy Spirit, he would not be
so selective in evaluating the biblical evidence" ("Historical Research," 597 n. 33).
5 After St. Epiphanius,
bishop of Salamis (ca. 315-403), who opposed the
antidikomariamitoi, a heretical sect in Arabia that denied Mary's virginity postpartum. Cf.
Epiphanius, Panarion 78 (GCS 37:452-75); and Augustine, De haeresibus 56 (CCL46:325).
6 After the layman Helvidius who around 383 espoused the idea in Rome. Cf. Augustine,
De haeresibus 84 (CCL 46:338).
7 After St. Jerome (331 ?--420) who defended Mary's perpetual virginity against Helvidius.
Cf. Jerome, De perpetua virginitate beatae Mariae adversus Helvidium (PL 23:193-216).
8 Meier,A Marginal Jew, 329. The label "the cousin approach" is misleading. First of all,
the argument is not that "brother" means "cousin." The argument is that, in the special case
of Jesus, the term "brother" does not necessarily denote "blood brother." Secondly, no one
in the early Church held the Epiphanian view and argued against aJeromian interpretation.
The question was, did Mary and Joseph have children after Jesus' birth? Historically, it is
more accurate to differentiate only between those who held Mary's virginity postpartum and
those who held the Helvidian position. To say the Epiphanian view enjoyed support is
equivalent to the assertion that the doctrine of Mary's virginity postpartum enjoyed support.
Theological reflection on the virginity of Joseph was a development that simply had not
occurred. During the first three centuries of the Church Christ's origins were widely
challenged, his true humanity as well as his true divinity. From this point of view, it should
not be surprising that the focus would be on Jesus' virginal conception and his true birth ex
Maria, and less on her virginity postpartum and in partu, let alone the virginity of Joseph (a
teaching not de fide, however true). Even in the fourth century, around 360, Eunomius of
Cyzicus-bishop and leader of those who advocated the anomoios (the Son is "unlike" the
Father) and denied the homoousios-attacked Mary's perpetual virginity in a sermon
delivered on the feast of the Epiphany (d. J. Bidez, Philostorgus Kirchengeschichte 6.2 [GCS
21:71]). In another sermon ascribed to Basil of Caesarea, who supposedly answered that
attack, it is proclaimed that "the lovers of Christ [philochristot] cannot bear to hear that the

THE BROTHERS OF JESUS

85

and spread of the opinion that the brothers of Jesus were real
brothers are often overlooked by supporters of the cousin
approach. " 9 I will argue that this claim of "antiquity" and
"spread" of the Helvidian opinion is an inaccurate estimation at
best. Moreover, the implication that the Helvidian opinion had
a genuine place in the tradition of the early Church is untenable.
Although the explicit evidence in favor of Mary's virginity post
partum is indeed very sparse, to assert that this doctrine had a
fragile basis prior to the fourth century is quite misleading. 10 I will
show for example that the lack of pre-Nicene testimony in favor
of Mary's virginity post partum is not unlike that of other
doctrines even more fundamental in the hierarchia veritatum.
Certainly, the doctrine of Mary's perpetual virginity was not
"thought up" 11 by Jerome and defended by him and other ascetics
of the fourth century to justify the notion of the superiority of
virginity over marriage and their "pessimistic" evaluation of
human sexuality. 12 In fact, it is the Helvidian opinion that cannot
Theotokos ever ceased to be a virgin" (seeln Christigenerationem[PG 41: 1468]). From other
indications in the text, however, it is clear that Christ's divinity was the principal issue at
stake.
9 Meier, A MarginalJew, 329.
10 Cf. ibid. See also David G. Hunter, "Helvidius, Jovinian, and the Virginity of Mary in
Late Fourth Century Rome," Journal of Early ChristianStudies 1 (1993): 69.
11 Cf. Meier, A Marginal Jew, 324.
12 Cf. Hunter, "Helvidius, Jovinian, and the Virginity of Mary," 68. Hunter views the
Protoevangeliumof James (known to Origen as the Book of James) as "the ultimate source
of almost all later Marian doctrine" (63). He casts doubt on the veracity of Mary's perpetual
virginity by associating it with "Encratite or Origenist accounts of the origin of sin and
sexuality" (69). Evidently, he thinks that this doctrine represents "faulty notions of sin,
sexuality and the church" (47). He seems to recognize that the Book of James had as its
primary objective the defense of Mary's perpetual virginity from calumnies corning from
certain Jewish and pagan circles that impugned not only the virginal conception, but also her
marital chastity (see 63 and n. 66). But he seems to forget this fact and assumes a connection
this work may or may not have with marginal or heretical sects such as the Encratites.
The truth of the matter is that the insistence on Mary's virginity in the Book of fames
represents a popular response to the vulgar slanders of that era referring to Jesus' illegitimate
birth and Mary's marital infidelities. That Jesus was the son of a prostitute (quaestuiaria)was
a common slander. (Cf. Tertullian, De spectaculis30.6 [CCL 1:253]: "Hie est ille, dicam,
fabri aut quaestuariae filius, sabbati destructor, Samarites et daemonium habens; hie est quern
a Iuda redernistis. ") In Jewish legend, Jesus was denoted as the illegitimate son of a married
woman (Miriam the hairdresser), who, to top it off, had been unfaithful to her husband with
a member of the oppressor's legionary forces (the soldier Panthera, so Jesus was ben panthera,

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JOSE M. PEDROZO

find one single explicit witness prior to the fourth century. 13
I

Let us proceed to examine in detail the first noncanonical
source. Hegesippus seems to have been a second-century
Hellenistic Jew who converted to Christianity. His testimony is
found only in fragments in Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History. We
can gather from the text of Eccl. Hist. 4.22.2-3 that Hegesippus
visited Rome during the time of Pope Anicetus (155-56) and
remained there at least until the time of Pope Eleutherus
(174-89). Meier stresses that he does not accept all of what
perhaps a play on words for ben parthenos). Cf. S. Kraus, "Jesus of Nazareth," in The Jewish
Encyclopedia (New York: KTAV Publishing House, n.d.), 7:170-73. Thus, there are no
objective reasons to assume that the Book "of fames represented Encratite distortions of
human sexuality. Moreover, Hunter's insinuation that second-century belief in Mary's
perpetual virginity, popularly expressed in that book, was limited to Encratite circles is also
mere speculation.
Hunter also casts doubt on Origen's witness by associating his belief in Mary's perpetual
virginity with the notion that "all sexual relations were somehow contaminating" (68). There
is no doubt that Origen (and Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, et al.) linked original sin to the act
of human generation. In this sense sexual relations are "contaminating." If this is a
"pessimistic" view of human sexual relations, so be it. But what is striking about Hunter's
argument is the underlying assumption that this belief was held, not because it is true in itself,
but because it was necessary to support other preconceived notions. Hunter's insinuation is
that Origen held that Jesus was Mary's only child, virginally conceived, not because it is true,
but because Origen's notions of defilement in sexual intercourse and original sin required it
(68). In other words, Origen had to create a historical falsehood (e.g., Mary's perpetual
virginity) to fit his preconceived notions on human sexuality and sin (e.g., that a child who
is born through sexual intercourse is tainted with original sin). This is tantamount to ascribing
to Origen a fundamental lack of intellectual integrity that would be appalling. An alternative,
which is more consonant with what we know about Origen's character and scholarly
qualities, must be considered: namely, that Origen simply knew and truly believedJesus was
Mary's only child, virginally conceived, and that from this truth he theologized about things
such as original sin and human sexuality, arriving at some conclusions that perhaps some
would find questionable today.
13 Hunter concludes that "when Helvidius cited the evidence of scripture and the tradition
of the Western church regarding Mary's other children, he had a legitimate argument which
Jerome, for all his efforts, could not deny" (" Helvidius, Jovinian, and the Virginity of Mary,"
70; emphasis added). Since Hunter has in mind by "the tradition of the Western church" the
same sources available to Helvidius, presumably he means Tertullian and Victorin us of Pettau,
the only two witnesses Helvidius could marshal for his case. It is surely an exaggeration to
characterize the ambiguous testimony of two individuals (Victorinus' text is not even extant}
as "the tradition of the Western church regarding Mary's other children."

THE BROTHERS OF JESUS

87

Hegesippus says as historically true, but he adds that Hegesippus
is "capable of distinguishing carefully between the brother, the
uncle and the cousin of Jesus." 14 Meier seems to think that the
simple use of the terms "cousin" and "uncle" in Eccl. Hist. 4.22.4
and the denotation of James as "the brother of the Lord" in Eccl.
Hist. 2.23.4 (two texts from different contexts) are sufficient to
validate his point of view.
Let us look more closely at one of the texts in question:
Kai µETcl TO
TOY lHKalOV we; Kai 0 KUptoc; foi T4' auT4J
AcSyqi ndA1v o EK 9dou mhou
o wu K.Awna Ka9fomm1 fo(aKonoc; ov
npoe9EvTonavTE<; ovm avEljnov Tou Kupwu
(And after James the Just had been martyred for the same reason as the
Lord, in turn Symeon [of Clopas, his uncle] was aypointed bishop whom they
all proposed being a second cousin of the Lord.) 1

The situation seems evident. James the Just-who is known in the
New Testament as "the brother of the Lord" (cf. Gal 1:19)-has
been martyred. To replace him as bishop of Jerusalem, Symeon
(or Simon), son of Clopas, is proposed. And why is Symeon
proposed to succeed James? Symeon is proposed because he is a
second cousin of the Lord. That is, second with respect to
another, 16 namely James, the only other possibility. In other
words, James who is known to Hegesippus as "the brother of the
Lord" is also one of two cousins of Jesus who have been the first
two bishops of Jerusalem. For Hegesippus, therefore, James is
clearly not a true sibling of Jesus, even if he is denoted as "brother
of the Lord." Note also that Symeon is not really a blood relative
of Jesus. Interestingly, Symeon is denoted not only as cousin, but
14 Meier,

A Marginal Jew, 329.

15 Eusebius, &clesiastical

History 4.22.4 (GCS 9.1:370). Cf. Josef Blinzler, Die Briider

und SchwesternJesu, Stuttgarter Bibelstudien 21 (Stuttgart, 1967), 105-8.
16 deuteros of course means second as a point of order or rank as well as a second of two
(i.e., another). Note that the accusative deuteron should modify anepsion and not the
nominative episkopos. Compare Hegessipus in Eccl. Hist. 4.22.4 with Eusebius in Eccl. Hist.
3.32.1 where deuteron does modify episkopon. Notice how Hegessipus emphasizes the reason
for the election of Symeon while Eusebius simply recounts how Symeon "who had been
appointed second bishop of the church at Jerusalem" (on deuteron katastenai tes en
Ierosolymois ekklesias episkopon) was martyred, apparently during the reign of Trajan, nearly
four decades after James.

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JOSE M. PEDROZO

also as a so-called cousin (cf. Eccl. Hist. 3 .11.1 ). Let us also
observe that Hegesippus denotes Clopas as "his uncle." In the
translation above, the brackets indicate that it is not clear whether
Hegesippus means to say that Clopas is the Lord's uncle or
James's uncle. However, in two other passages (Eccl. Hist. 3.32.6
and 3.11.1), Hegesippus identifies Clopas as "uncle of the Lord"
(theiou tou kyriou) and as "brother of Joseph" (adelphon tou
Ioseph), respectively. If Hegesippus really thought that James and
Jesus were blood brothers, then it would have been natural to
denote Clopas as "their uncle" and not simply as "his uncle"
when he used both names ("James" and "the Lord") in the same
sentence. For if James was a blood brother of Jesus (i.e., a son of
Joseph and Mary), then Clopas as a brother of Joseph was a true
uncle of James.
Using Hegesippus's testimony there is some further evidence
to be considered, independently of this passage and its translation. It involves particular qualifiers used whenever an individual is identified as a "brother" of Jesus. Meier asserts:
Since Hegesippus knows perfectly well how to apply the words "cousin" and
"uncle" to specific relatives of Jesus, it becomes extremely difficult to claim
that a precise phrase like "brother of the Lord according to the flesh" really
means "cousin," or simply refers to spiritual as opposed to physical
brotherhood. 17

Meier obviously considers Hegesippus's denotation of Judas as
"the brother of the Savior according to the flesh" an unambiguous
indication that Judas is a blood brother of Jesus. He considers
other explanations "desperation attempts at explaining away" the
phrase kata sarka.18 But once again he skirts over a very significant point. Judas is equally denoted by Hegesippus as he who is
"said to have been his brother [of the Lord] according to the
flesh" (kata sarka legomenouautou adelphou [Eccl. Hist. 3.20.1]).
Eusebius himself denotes Judas as "the so-called brother of the
Savior" (ton pheromenon adelphon tou soteros [Eccl. Hist.
3.32.5]) and as he "who is said to be the brother of the Savior"
Jew, 330.

17 Meier, A Marginal

18 Cf. ibid., 361 n. 42 and following.

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89

(touton d'einai adelphon kata sarka tou soteros [Eccl. Hist.
3.19.1]). Similarly, according to Eusebius, James is he "who was
called or said to have been the brother of the Lord" and he "who
was named a child of Joseph" (tou kyriou legomenon adelphon
and tou Joseph onomasto pais [Eccl. Hist. 2.1.2]). Meier is aware
of at least some of these phrases. 19 But he does not draw the dear
conclusion that by these expressions Hegesippus (and Eusebius)
are indicating that they do not consider Judas to be a blood
brother of Jesus but only "so-called." 20 That the unqualified term
"brother" is used equally with the qualified term seems to indicate
that for these authors the phrase "brother of Jesus" did not
denote a true blood brother of Jesus. In general, among extant
early Christian literature it seems there are no examples in which
a particular person is identified as a "brother" of Jesus without
some of the qualifiers we have discussed above also arising. Such
"philological" observations are at odds with Meier's assessment
of probabilities. 21
19 Meier,

"Later Questions from Later Texts," 524 n. 27.

20 Similarly, Eusebius clearly considers James to be a so-called

brother of Jesus. I have
maintained a distinction between statements from Eusebius and statements from Hegesippus
to avoid any charge of uncritically mixing texts (cf. Meier, "The Brothers and Sisters of
Jesus," 23 n. 42).
21 As another example, what is the probability that Mary the mother of James and Joseph
in Matt 27 :56 is not the mother of two of the four "brothers" ofjesus listed as James, Joseph,
Symeon and Judas in Matt 13:56? Meier alludes to the modern insights of redaction criticism
and narrative criticism. He asserts that "most likely" the name identification between Mark
6:3 and Mark 15:40 should not be made because the phrase "the Small" (ho mikros)
modifying the name James in Mark 15:40 does not occur in Mark 6:3. Meier does not
consider a possible identification between Matt 27:56 and Matt 13:56 where that particular
redaction difficulty does not occur presumably because of the commonly assumed
dependence of Matthew on Mark (cf. Meier, "The Brothers and Sisters of Jesus," 11 n. 21).
But by comparing the names of the women listed in Mark 15:40 (Mary Magdalen, Salome,
and Mary the mother of James the Less and Joseph) with those listed in Mark 16:1 (Mary
Magdalen, Salome, and Mary [mother] of James), it seems highly probable this James could
be identified as one of those listed as "brothers" of Jesus. Clearly, he would not a blood
brother of Jesus, although his mother is also named Mary.
We also could ask, what is the probability that Symeon of Clopas, who has been identified
as a close relative of Jesus and as a significant figure in the early Christian community, is not
the Symeon listed in the Gospels as a brother of Jesus? Already, Eusebius indicates the
possible connection (cf. &cl. Hist. 3.11.1). James and Judas. known to have been significant
figures in the Christian community, are mentioned as "brothers" in the Gospels. Why would
the Gospels have mentioned a blood brother of Jesus called Symeon with no known historical

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II

Let us now address the testimony of Tertullian, who is often
considered to be a dear witness against Mary's virginity post
partum. 22 With Tertullian, however, we have a similar problem
as with the New Testament evidence. That is, we can try to
decipher what he means to say whenever he deals with the New
Testament texts that mention the "brothers" of Jesus or whenever
he discusses a relevant topic such as virginity or marriage. 23
T ertullian, however, never asserts explicitly that Mary and Joseph
had children of their own. This is somewhat remarkable if one
considers that the existence of a group of men and women, born
from the same womb as Jesus was born, would have provided
T ertullian with an effective and elegant rhetorical weapon against
his Docetist adversaries. It seems unlikely that an accomplished
polemicist like T ertullian would have missed the opportunity to
use that weapon in a very explicit manner. 24
Hunter observes that Tertullian nowhere attacks Mary's post
partum virginity explicitly. He adds, "indeed, he seems to show
no awareness that such idea existed at all. " 25 He wants to make an
argument from silence. But arguments from silence are notorious
for begging the question. If T ertullian seems to show no
awareness of Mary's virginity postpartum, it does not follow that
the Helvidian opinion must have been widely held.
significance? Is it also a coincidence that Maty of Clopas is mentioned quite distinctively in
the gospel (cf. John 19:25)?
On the other hand, what is the probability that the testimony of Flavius Josephus provides
anything new? Meier assigns great significance to his witness. But that Josephus denotes
James as a "brother of Jesus" is perfectly consonant with the fact that at this time James, the
most prominent figure in the Jerusalem Christian community, was well known as "the
brother of the Lord." Obviously a nonbeliever is not going to call Jesus Lord. Unless one
assumes that Josephus took the time to inquire into the exact family tree of an "insignificant"
Jew crucified over thirty years before, his testimony provides nothing new.
22 Cf.J. Quasten,Patrology, vol.2 (Westminster, Md.: Christian Oassics, 1994),329. See
also Eamon R. Carroll, "Our Lady's Virginity postpartum," Marian Studies 7 (1956): 78.
23 The relevant texts from Tertullian are: AdversusMarcionem 4.19 (CCL 1:592-94); De
monogamia 8.1-3 (CCL 2:1239); De came Christi 7 (CCL 2:886-89); De came Christi 23
(CCL 2:914-15); and De virginibusvelandis 6.2-3 (CCL 2:1215-16).
24 Cf. John McHugh, The Mother of Jesus in the New Testament (Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday, 1975), 458-60.
25 Hunter, "Helvidius,Jovinian, and the Virginity of Maty," 66.

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91

By way of comparison, the divinity of the Holy Spirit
(obviously a very foundational doctrine of the Christian faith) can
barely count on one witness prior to 360. 26 Before then, only
Origen had developed a significant pneumatology, even if it is not
free from some ambiguities by post-Nicene standards. Despite the
fact that he dealt at some length with the Trinity, Tertullian-a
great contributor to the Trinitarian language of the Latin
Church-did not write on the Holy Spirit per se in any systematic
way. And apropos, Tertullian provides some "embarrassing
patristic evidence" 27 when he calls the "word of God" (sermo
Dei), which he equates with the Spiritus Dei, "a portion of the
whole" (portio aliqua totius). 28 The main point is that explicit
testimony on the Person, the divinity, and the consubstantiality
of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son is remarkably
sparse prior to the second half of the fourth century. It does not
follow, however, that the tropikoi or the pneumatomachoi were
the genuine bearers of a more ancient and widely held tradition
in the Church. 29 Nor does it follow that the aforementioned
teachings on the Holy Spirit-previously
not part of the
pre-Nicene literature-were post-Nicene "thought up" doctrines
of Athanasius et al. The correct conclusion is that before the
fourth century these teachings had not been seriously called into
question and thus they had not taken up much space in the
pre-Nicene literature. Even the symbol of Nicea limited itself to
the plain assertion, "[we believe] in the Holy Spirit." But with the
increasing number of challenges to the divinity of the Holy Spirit
up until the council of Constantinople in 381, pneumatological
26 Around 360 Athanasius wrote the Epistolae ad Serapionein (PG 26:529-676), which can
be considered to be the first treatise on the Holy Spirit.
27 Cf. Meier,A Marginal Jew, 362 n. 43. This is an epithet Meier uses when referring to
those who defend Mary's virginity postpartum in view of Tertullian's witness, which in his
opinion is clearly against it.
28 Cf. Adversus Praxean, 26.6 (CCL 2: 1197).
29 Tropikoi is the term Athanasius used to describe those who Serapion had informed him
were questioning the divinity of the Holy Spirit, interpreting texts such as Amos 4: 13; Zech
1:9; and 1Tim5:21 in a tropical (i.e., figurative) manner. Cf. Ad Serapionem 1.10 (PG 26:
556B), the paragraph where I found the term tropikoi used for the first time. Basil of
against the Spirit") to characterize those
Caesarea uses the term pneumatomachoi
who denied the consubstantiality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and the Son. Cf. Basil,
On the Holy Spirit 11.27 (SC 17:340), a treatise written in 376.

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JOSE M. PEDROZO

treatises became relatively abundant. Shortly before that time, in
addition to Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, Didymus the Blind, and
Ambrose of Milan wrote important works on the Holy Spirit. 30
In summary, despite the lack of pre-Nicene evidence, it would be
a mistake to say that belief and reflection on the divinity of the
Holy Spirit had a "fragile basis" prior to the fourth century. As
Henri Crouzel has observed, that would be the same mistake "that
a historian of the 21st century would make if he attempted to
write the history of a period in the 20th century relying solely
and uncritically on newspapers that favoured the sensational at
the expense of the ordinary facts of every day life. " 31
The history of the doctrine of Mary's virginity postpartum is
perfectly analogous. Until the fourth century, it had been a relatively unchallenged doctrine and thus the pre-Nicene literature is
quite sparse. Among early Christian writers, only Origen can be
said to have developed a significant "Mariology." Other available
testimony left many questions unanswered. But once the doctrine
was seriously challenged, it was defended and widely upheld. In
fact, although Jerome is the only author who wrote a separate
tract on Mary's virginity-the pamphlet against Helvidius--every
Father of the Church in the fourth century who addressed the
issue of the "brothers of Jesus" upheld Mary's virginity post
partum. 32
As I have noted previously, Tertullian is often considered to be
a witness against Mary's virginity post partum, even by some
scholars who defend this teaching. But the fact is that Tertullian
30 See Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 31, theologica quinta (PG 36:133-72), written
around 380; Didymus the Blind, On the Holy Spirit (SC 386), written certainly before 380;
and Ambrose, On the Holy Spirit (CSEL 79:15-222), written in 381.
31 Henri Crouzel, Origen, trans. A. S. Worrall (Edinburgh: T & T. Clark, 1989), 198.
The witness of other authors like Irenaeus is extremely reserved. Their pneumatological
testimony-in much the same way as their Mariological testimony-left many questions
unresolved.
32 Athanasius, Hilary, Ephraem, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus,
Jerome, Augustine, and Cyril of Alexandria-all of them designated in the Catholic Church
as not only as Fathers, but also as Doctors--clearly taught Mary's virginity postpartum.
There were several other Fathers such as Epiphanius, Gregory of Nyssa, Didymus the Blind,
and Zeno of Verona who also clearly upheld Mary's virginity postpartum. One would be
hard pressed to find a doctrine that elicited a clearer consensus (no Father ever opposed it).

THE BROTHERS OF JESUS

93

could be interpreted differently. 33 As an example, let us analyze
the text of De monogamia 8 .1-3. First of all, he is arguing against
the remarriage of widows. To achieve Christian holiness, he
believes, there are two options to follow: monogamia or
continentia. He proceeds by developing an analogy between
Zechariah and his son John the Baptist as representatives of these
two options: "monogamia et continentia, alia pudica in Zacharia
sacerdote, alia integra in Ioanne antecursore, alia placans Deum,
alia praedicans Christum, alia totum praedicans sacerdotem, alia
plus praeferens quam propheten." According to Tertullian, one
should either be monogamous like Zechariah or remain
unmarried like John the Baptist (and of course, in this case a
Christian would be bound to practice continence). But the
emphasis is on being married only once. Notice that the term used
by Tertullian is continentia, not virginitas. In a sense, virginity has
only an incidental character in this analogy. T ertullian adds that,
due to Christ's holiness, it was appropriate that he was born of a
woman who was both a virgin and married only once (uirgine et
uniuira). This is all that Tertullian is saying. Meier assumes that
since married people usually are not perpetually continent, then
sexual intercourse and childbearing must have followed in the
case of Mary and Joseph. But there is no reason to assume this
from the text itself. That Mary must have had children is obvious
to Meier by the fact that Zechariah himself had a son. But this is
an irrelevant observation since only Zechariah's monogamous
status is at issue in Tertullian's argument. His particular emphasis
is revealed further when he mentions Anna, the female prophet
in the temple (cf. Luke 2:36), who was uidua et uniuira. For
T ertullian, it is irrelevant whether she had children or not. He is
only interested in pointing out that Anna was married, that she
became a widow, and that she remained a widow. Therefore,
unless one begs the question by assuming what must be shown,
this text of the De monogamia-and similarly the other four
aforementioned texts from T ertullian--cannot be used as proof
of Tertullian's denial of Mary's virginity postpartum. In fact, in
the present example one could press the analogy in the other
33 Cf. McHugh, The Mother of Jesus in the New Testament,

448-50.

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direction. It could imply that Mary belongs to both groups
(continent and monogamous) permanently. After all, Tertullian
compares Mary's virginity directly to John the Baptist's virginity
(he does not compare Zechariah directly with Mary).
Meier writes: "It is sad to see so fine a scholar as Blinzler (Die
Brader, 139-41) strain to water down or make ambiguous what
Tertullian clearly says." 34 But a careful reading of the Adversus
Marcionem 4.19 (in Meier's opinion, the strongest evidence
against Mary's virginity postpartum) rejects Meier's insinuation
that one compromises intellectual integrity by insisting that this
long text says nothing conclusive against that teaching. 35
Even if we grant that Tertullian denied Mary's virginity post
partum, it would still not follow that the Helvidian opinion must
have been widely held. Tertullian often rejected doctrines and
customs held by orthodox Christians of his time. For instance, his
purpose in writing theApologeticum (perhaps his most important
work, written well before he joined the radical Montanists) was
to convince the Roman government officials of the usefulness of
Christian citizens to the state. 36 But by 207, Tertullian seems to
be obsessed with the idea of Christians participating together with
pagans in civic affairs and succumbing to idolatry as a consequence of that relationship. This real or perceived danger led
T ertullian to condemn customs that his contemporaries held as
perfectly legitimate. He even condemned Christian involvement
Meier, A Marginal Jew, 362 n. 43.
also asserts that the fact that Mary bore children to Joseph is implied
in De came Christi 23, more clearly in De monogamia 8, and explicitly in Ad.versus
Marcionem 4.19. Cf. "Helvidius, Jovinian, and the Virginity of Mary," 66 and 66 n. 77.
However, the fact of the matter is that in the De came Christi 23 there are no statements for
or against Mary's virginity beyond the birth of Christ. The brothers of Jesus are not even
mentioned. Tertullian simply affirms that Mary was a virgin mother. His expression "uirgo,
quantum a uiro, non uirgo, quantum a partu" reflects his anti-docetist agenda. Nothing
beyond the birth of Christ is considered. The text of the De monogamia I have alreadyshown
to be inconclusive at best. In theAdversus Marcionem 4 .19, T ertullian does indeed answer the
Marcionites about their interpretation of Matt 12:48 by arguing that the meaning of the text
is that Jesus prefers the relationship of faith to one of blood. But once again, only by assuming
what needs to be shown-namely, that the brothers of Jesus are children of Mary--can one
conclude that Tertullian's rhetorical statements constitute an explicit assertion against Mary's
virginity postpartum.
36 Apologeticum (CCL 1:85-171).
34

35 Cf. ibid. Hunter

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95

in professions such as school teacher and especially teacher of
literature. 37 We also have, as witnessed by his De monogamia,
Tertullian's denial of the legitimacy of the remarriage of widows,
contrary to the dear orthopraxis of the Church, which has always
praised widowhood, but has never prohibited second nuptials to
widows among the laity.
III

Let us turn to the last patristic source Meier discusses: Irenaeus
and the so-called adhuc texts found in Adversushaereses,3 .21.10
and 3.22.4. Over six decades ago Hugo Koch attempted to
reconstruct the teaching of Mary's perpetual virginity from an
"original" historical form, which he theorized had passed through
several revisions, until the doctrine found its final form in the
fourth century. 38 This original historical form had Jesus as the
eldest son among many children of Mary and Joseph. Later, the
myth of a virginal conception was introduced, forcing Joseph to
be presented only as the foster father of Jesus, and the idea of post
partum virginity forced the explanation that the brothers and
sisters of Jesus were Joseph's children from a previous marriage.
Finally, the ideas of Mary's virginity in partu and the virginity of
Joseph were added in the fourth century, under the influence of
extreme ascetical ideals. 39 Koch's use of the adhuc texts to press
his argument suffered from one major deficiency, which one finds
again in Meier's argument. In the texts in question, neither the
words nor the terms of comparison go beyond the Incarnation
and the virgin birth. Irenaeus's analogy between Virgo Eva and
Virgo Maria has no connection whatsoever with the issue of the

37 Cf. De idololatria, 10 (CCL 2:1109-10).
38 For the original argument see H. Koch, Adhuc Viigo. MariensJungfrauscbaftund Ebe
in der alterkircblincben Uberlieferungbis zum Ende des vierten ]ahrbunderts (Tiibingen,
1929); and also his follow-up Vngo Eva-Viigo Maria. Neue Untersucbungenuber die Lebre
von der Jungfrauscbaftund der Ebe Mariens in der iiltesten IGrcbe (Berlin-Leipzig, 1937),

17-60.
39 Cf. E. R. Carroll, "Our Lady's Virginity postpartum," Marian Studies 7 (1956): 77-79;
see 79 n. 20 for a list of critical responses to Koch's work at that time. See also A. Eberle,
TbeologiscbeRevue 29 (1930): 153-55.

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JOSE M. PEDROZO

"brothers" of Jesus. In the long text of Adversus haereses3 .22.4 40
the analogy centers on the obedience (obaudiens) of the virgin
Mary and the disobedience (inobaudiens) of the virgin Eve. To
the divine commandment, the virgin Mary responded per (idem
("behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord ... ") while the virgin
Eve responded per incredulitatem (that is, not believing the
prohibition of Gen 2: 17). It is hardly ever noticed that Irenaeus
develops the analogy even further in Adversus haereses 5.19.1.
There, the virgin Eve is seduced (seducta)by the word of the (evil)
angel to escape from God (effugereDeum ), disobeying his Word,
while the virgin Mary is evangelized (evangelizata)through the
word of the (good) angel to carry God (portare Deum), obeying
his Word. 41
Irenaeus continues by noting that Eve was still a virgin ("adhuc
erat uirgo") at the moment she received God's commandment to
abstain from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Thus, upon
her disobedience she became a cause of death, not only for herself
but also for the entire human race ("et sibi et uniuerso generi
causa facta est morris"), as mother of all humanity. This is the
only significance of virginity in the analogy. That is, if Eve had
obeyed while still a virgin (i.e., while no member of the human
had yet been born), then she would have become (as Mary did) a
cause of salvation for herself and for the entire human race ("et
sibi et uniuerso generi causa facta est salutis"). Instead, Eve
disobeyed and became, ironically, the mother of all the dead (in
sin obviously). By her obedience, Mary, "adhuc erat uirgo,"
becomes the mother of all the living, because she is the mother of
the Firstborn from the dead who regenerates them to the life of
God ("primogenitus enim mortuorum natus Dominus et in sinum
suum recipiens pristinos patres regenerauit eos in uitam Dei").
Christ becomes the beginning of the living as Adam became the
beginning of the dead ("initium uiuentium factus quoniam Adam
initium morientium factus est"). It should be evident that the
phrase "adhuc erat uirgo" when applied to Mary in the context
40 See Irenee de Lyon, Cantre les Heresies, Livre 3, SC 34 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1952).
The Latin texts of 3.22.4 and 3.21.4 quoted throughout are taken from this edition.
41 See Irenee de Lyon, Cantre les Heresies, Livre 5, SC 153 (Paris: Editions du Cerf,
1969), 249-53.

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of this analogy has absolutely nothing to do with sexuality per se,
let alone Mary's virginity post partum. The parallel between
Virgo Eva and Virgo Maria in Irenaeus's soteriology of
recapitulation in Christ intends to say nothing about Mary's
virginity beyond the virgin birth. 42
The text of Adversus haereses 3.21.10 is shorter than 3.22.4
but very similar. Irenaeus's analogy begins with the observation
that the first Adam had no human father and neither did the
second Adam. The first Adam was made from the earth by the
hand of God. The second Adam was also from the hand of God.
But unlike the first Adam, he is born from a woman, from a
"virgin." In his recapitulation scheme Irenaeus finds a somewhat
forced parallel. The first Adam is also born from a "virgin," the
red earth ("de rudi terra") which is still (adhuc) "virgin" when the
first Adam is created, since God has not rained upon the earth
and man has not worked it ("nondum enim pluerat Deus et homo
non erat operatus terram"). There is no other reason even to
mention virginity. Since Adam himself is considered a possible
cause for the earth to lose her "virginity" once it is worked by
him (even though he himself comes from the "virgin" earth), to
press the term adhuc in the analogy with respect to the Virgin
Mary is patently absurd.
In summary, to claim these two texts as possible witnesses
against Mary's postpartum virginity by focusing on words such
as adhuc and uirgo is simply to do violence to the texts and to
their context. Irenaeus's soteriology of recapitulation in Christ
has nothing to do with Mary's virginity postpartum. Even Meier
shows himself to be somewhat tentative when he writes: "Since
every analogy limps, it is difficult to say how far Irenaeus's
analogy should be pressed. "43 But it is not a matter of pressing an
42 It should be noted that Irenaeus assigns to Eve a physical causality of death for the
human race. But he does not lose track in the analogy that it is Adam who is the responsible
cause. Cf. Antonio Orbe, Antropologfa de San Ireneo (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores
Cristianos, 1969), 247.
43 Meier, A Marginal few, 331. In his "Later Questions from Later Texts," 525, Meier
asserts: "Irenaeus' statements are ambiguous, but I think it more likely than not that they
point in the direction of the Helvidian solution." As I have shown, this assertion has no basis
in the texts. For more details, see the masterful exposition of Orbe, Antropologfade San
Ireneo, esp. 244-53. It is significant that, despite his anti-docetist concerns, Irenaeus is a

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JOSE M. PEDROZO

analogy that limps or that lrenaeus's statements are ambiguous.
The fact of the matter is that Irenaeus is quite clear in his analogy;
he is simply not saying what Meier claims.
IV

Although Meier considered the witness of T ertullian (born ca.
155), he omits any reference to Origen (born ca. 185). But
Origen's testimony cannot be omitted in a serious treattnent of
the subject. As Henri Crouzel has noted,
[Origen] was the first theologian clearly to teach the perpetual virginity of
Mary, for the writers of the 2nd century, like Justin and Irenaeus, only did so
implicitly by calling her Mary the Virgin. For Origen this is by no means, as has
been suggested, an open question, with no obligation on the Christian to
believe it: it is the only "healthy" view of the matter and that word is used to
express a close connection with the faith; those who uphold the contrary are
treated as heretics; Mary among women is the first fruits of virginity as Jesus
is among men. 44

This paragraph brings out at least two important points. First,
Meier gives no historical or philological significance to the fact
that in early Christian literature Mary is called "the virgin,"
beyond the immediate context of the virginal conception and
birth of Christ. 45 Second, Meier implies that the Helvidian
witness for Mary's virginity in partu. Cf. Demonstratio apost. praed. 54 (Patrologia Orienta/is
12.5:700): "Praetera de nativitate eius propheta alibi <licit: 'Antequam parturiret, peperit;
antequam veniret partus eius, peperit masculum [Is 66, 7].' Ipse nuntiavit modum insperatum
inopinumque nascendi ex virgine."
44 Henri Crouzel, Origen, translated by A. S. Worrall (Edinburgh: T & T. Clark, 1989),
p. 141. For more details on Origen's mariology see, Origene, Homelies sur s. Luc, SC 87
(Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1962), pp. 36-44.
45 In addition to the fact that Mary is denoted, not as virgin, but as "the virgin," there is
some other evidence that should to be considered. For example, an inscription of a certain
second-century bishop named Abercius (discovered in the nineteenth century and dated
before the year 216) uses the phrase parthenos hagne (chaste virgin). Cf. "Inscriptio Abercii"
in Dictionnaire d'archeologie chretienne et de Liturgie (Paris, 1907-50), vol. 1, p. 83. The
phrase could refer to the Church as well as to Mary. When applied to Mary, the expression
in this context seems to signify virginity beyond the virginal conception and birth of Jesus.
A similar denotation for Mary is found in the troparion known as the "Sub tuum praesidium,"
which is one of the oldest prayers addressed to Mary. In this prayer Mary is called mone
hagne, mone eulogemene (only chaste, only blessed), once again indicating virginity beyond

THE BROTHERS OF JESUS

99

position he defends as most probable had a genuine place in the
tradition of the early Church. 46 But according to the positive
historical witness of Origen, this is simply not true. Origen asserts
that "no one who sanely thinks about Mary would imagine she

Christ's conception and birth. The papyrus containing this prayer has been dated from the
third century by expert paleographic examination. Some have assumed a later dating, because
the prayer contains the word Theotokos. But there is no literary or theological reason for that
assumption. Cf. G. Giamberardini, "II 'Sub tuum praesidium' e ii titolo 'Theotokos' nella
tradizione egiziana," Marianum 31 (1969): 324-61.
46 This is an important issue also for the Church today. The article "The Brothers and
Sisters of Jesus in Ecumenical Perspective" asks an interesting question: "Is the problem of
the brothers and sisters of Jesus a point on which two churches in the process of uniting
could agree to disagree without detriment to the foundation of the Christian faith?" (5). It
is evident that for Meier the answer to this question is "yes." He warns his readers that
intelligent, well-educated, and sincere Christians have differed and can differ on the question
of the brothers of Jesus (cf. A Marginal Jew, 319). He recounts how R. Pesch "raised a fire
storm of controversy among German Catholics" but "has never been officially censured or
condemned by Rome for his views" (ibid., 319 and 354 n. 14). Since he stresses that these
views have never been censured or condemned, does Meier mean to imply that Rome finally
realized that the Helvidian opinion could be held without detriment to the foundation of the
Christian faith?
Some Catholic scholars continue to down play the role of Marian doctrines in attempts
to overcome the separation of Christians. Ecumenism only suffers when the concept of the
"hierarchy of truths" is mistakenly used to imply that Marian doctrines could be put aside to
achieve a fruitful dialogue. Mariology is not excess baggage that Catholics carry because of
confessional idiosyncrasies or devotional practices. Mariology is a place where Christology,
soteriology, ecclesiology, eschatology, and a host of other important theological issues
concretely meet. In particular, the perpetual virginity of Mary is intimately connected with
the person and mission of Christ, and with the nature of the Church, which has Mary as the
mother and model- hardly peripheral issues in the hierarchy of truths.
Meier never explicitly denies Mary's virginity postpartum. He stresses that by reason of
method he prescinds from faith and Church teaching as sources of knowledge but by no
means denies them (cf. "The Brothers and Sisters of Jesus," 7 n. 15). He differentiates
between what one holds by faith and what one knows by reason. But the difficulties created
by this differentiation are quite significant. Even at the psychologicallevel this differentiation
is problematic. For if Meier holds Mary's virginity post partum, then he must do so by
believing what his reason has shown him to be least probable. J. Lienhard has observed that
Meier's method, since it cannot provide the foundation for faith, has two choices: "either to
abandon faith, or to fall into fideism" ("The Bible, the Church, and Authority," 7). Meier
thinks that his differentiation is well within Catholic tradition. He attributes it to Aquinas (A
Marginal Jew, 6). But St. Thomas would never recognize this differentiation as his. Reason
could never generate an independent body of knowledge that would oppose what is known
by faith.

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JOSE M. PEDROZO

had a son but Jesus." 47 As Crouzel points out, in the theological
vocabulary of Origen, the adjective uyt
the adverb
translated above as "sanely" ("healthily" is also correct and
perhaps gives a better connotation in our case)-implies a normative view with an obligation to believe. 48 Origen does not call the
Helvidian opinion heretical, but he treats it as such. For him
Mary's virginity is hardly an opinion open for debate; it is a fact
identified with the rule of faith. In other words, according to
Origen's witness (i.e., since at least the early third century),
Mary's virginity postpartum has been considered part of the truth
Christians should hold. Origen's explicit testimony is the more
significant since he, despite his theological speculations, which led
him to commit some serious errors, knew to distinguish carefully
between theological speculation and the rule of faith, between an
opinion open to debate and what should be held as the truth. 49

v
In conclusion, the Epiphanian explanation for the "brothers
and sisters of Jesus" provided a convenient, not fully reflective,
answer to scriptural objections that could be brought against
Mary's virginity postpartum. It is in this sense that this opinion
had early supporters. 50 The idea of the virginity of Joseph as
47 Origene, Commentaire sur s. Jean, SC 120 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1996), 70. D.
Hunter weakly translates uyiwc; as "properly" and although he cites Crouzel's work he
ignores the special significance of that terminology in Origen. Cf. D. Hunter, "Helvidius,
Jovinian, and the Virginity of Mary in Late Fourth Century Rome," p. 67.
48 In his Homilies on Jeremiah (5.14) Origen says: "As communicant [koinonikos] you
conform to the rule of the Church [kata ton ekklesiastikon kanona], to the purpose
fprothesin] of the sound teaching [tes hygious didaskalias]. You are not only circumcised but
you are circumcised by God" (Origene, Homelies sur Jeremie, SC 232 [Paris: Editions du
Cerf, 1976], 316). P. Nautin points out that a "communicant" is equivalent to one who
participates in the Church as opposed to what heretics do (ibid., 317). See also Origene,
Homelies sur Luc, SC 87 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1962), 36-37.
49 "Only what does not differ from the ecclesiastical and apostolic tradition should be
believed as the truth" ("ilia sola credenda est veritas, quae in nullo ab ecclesiastica et
apostolica traditione discordat" [Origen, De principiis 1.praef.2 (GCS 5:8)]).
50 It would be inaccurate to say, however, that people like Origen held the Epiphanian
view. Certainly, Origen was well aware of the so-called Gospel of Peter and the Book of
James. But Origen never authenticates these sources and simply recognizes in them a

THE BROTHERS OF JESUS

101

spouse of the Mother of God had not been considered. 51 But the
Epiphanian view was never held and defended in opposition to
a Jeromian interpretation. Moreover, the claim that the Helvidian
position enjoyed antiquity and widespread support cannot be
sustained even under superficial scrutiny. Before the fourth
century, exactly who was a supporter of the Helvidian position?
There is not one single explicit witness in favor of it. Helvidius
himself could produce only two potential witnesses: T ertullian
and Victorin us of Pettau. I have shown that T ertullian need not
be taken as a dear witness against Mary's virginity. As far as
Victorinus is concerned, there is no reason to believe that his
testimony is as Helvidius implied. 52 In addition, although his
testimony could be considered, strictly speaking, pre-Nicene,
Victorinus is still a fourth-century witness. And if Mary's virginity
post partum has few explicit pre-Nicene advocates, one could
further point out that doctrines held by the Church without
attack take up much less space in the literature (in the early
Church possibly none at all) than what is attacked and must be
defended. 53 From a historical point of view, it is hard to see how
possibility. His belief in Mary's virginity cannot be said to depend on these apocryphal
writings. Cf. Origen, Commentaria in Evangelium secundum Matthaeum, 10.17 (SC
162:216).
51 Two older but useful works dealing with the "brothers of Jesus" and the person of St.
Joseph are Bonifacio Llamera, Teologfa de San Jose (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos,
1953); and J.-M. Voste, De Conceptione Virginali Iesu Christi, excursus 2, De Fratribus
Domini (Rome, 1933).
52 I have noted that whatever text of Victorinus was available to Helvidius is not extant.
Jerome asserts that Victorinus does not call "the brother of the Lord" "sons of Mary,"
implying that Victorinus was just following the gospel use of the terms and nothing else. Cf.
Jerome, De perpetua virginitate b. Mariae adversus Helvidium, 17 (PL 23:211B). The only
extant text from Victorinus that deals with the Virgin Mary seems to be De fabrica mundi 9
(CSEL 49:8): "Ut Adam ilium per septimanan reformaverit atque universae suae creaturae
subvenerit, nativitate Filii sui Iesu Christi Domini nostri factum est. Quis itaque lege Dei
doctus, quis plenus Spiritu Sancto non respiciat corde ea die Gabriel angelum Mariae
evangelizasse, qua die draco Evam sedu:xit, ea die Spiritum Sanctum Mariam Virginem
inundasse qua lucem fecit?" The text is reminiscent of Irenaeus's recapitulation analogies.
With respect to possible additional witness againstMary's virginity postpartum, I have shown
that neither Hegesippus nor Irenaeus can be counted among them. On the contrary,
Hegesippus could be counted as an indirect witness for it, and lrenaeus gives evidence of
Mary's virginity in partu. Therefore, those who wish to uphold the Helvidian position must
do so, at best, with the highly ambiguous testimony of Tertullian.
53 Cf. Henri Crouzel, Origen, trans. A. S. Worrall (Edinburgh: T & T. Clark, 1989), 198.

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JOSE M. PEDROZO

Mary's virginity postpartum, if false, could have been asserted at
all in the second century without an explicit denial. After all, the
"brothers and sisters" of Jesus and their descendants are known
to have occupied prominent places in the Christian community
well into the second century. The Book of James is a product of
that era. If belief in Mary's perpetual virginity was a falsehood
promoted only by gnostic groups, then it seems unlikely that
some of the early Christian apologists who wrote against the
gnostics would not have denied such mendacity explicitly.
Furthermore, since history did not stop at the dose of the
third century one has to explain why, if the Helvidian view
enjoyed such antiquity and widespread support in the early
Church, it was so widely and immediately rejected in the fourth
century. Mary "ever Virgin" was taught by individuals coming
from different parts of the world, with a variety of theological
styles and agendas: Athanasius of Alexandria, Ephraem of Syria,
Hilary of Poitiers, John Chrysostom, Ambrose of Milan, and
Augustine of Hippo among several other lesser mortals. 54 After
some denials of Mary's virginity in the Arianized atmosphere of
the fourth century, 55 followed by the historical blips of Helvidius,
Jovinian, and Bonosus (all three within the last two decades of the
54 For more details see Candido Pozo, Maria en la obra de la salvaci6n(Madrid: Biblioteca
de Autores Cristianos, 1974), 250-84; and Jose A. de Aldama, Virgo Mater (Granada, 1963),
213-47.
55 I have alluded to the fact that denials of Mary's virginity often came from individuals
with strong Arian credentials (e.g., Eunomius of Cyzicus). Helvidius himself was connected
to the Arian Auxentius who preceded Ambrose as bishop of Milan (cf. J. Quasten, Patrology,
vol. 4 [Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics, 1991), 239). This does not seem to be a
coincidence. After the fourth century, Mary's virginity was seriously questioned only with the
beginning of denials of Christ's divinity in liberal Protestantism. Meier acknowledges that "it
was only with the rise of the Enlightenment that the idea that the brothers and sisters were
biological children of Mary and Joseph gained acceptance among 'mainline' Protestants"
("The Brothers and Sisters of Jesus," 6). What does this historical observation say about the
post-Enlightenment presuppositions that dominate Meier's method? What does it say to
Protestants today who accept the Helvidian opinion? It should be more than "a startling fact"
(ibid.) that the great figures of the Protestant Reformation rejected the Helvidian opinion.
Martin Luther beautifully expresses the sensus fidelium when he declares that "after realizing
she was the mother of the Son of God, [Mary] could not want to be the mother of the son
of a man and remained in that gift" ("Nam postquam sensit se esse matrem filii Dei, non
optavit fieri mater filii hominis, sed mansit in illo dono" [Anton LauterbachsTagebuch aus
Jahre 1539 (WA48:579)]).

THE BROTHERS OF JESUS

103

fourth century), followers of the Helvidian opinion practically
became extinct. 56
Some have asserted that Helvidius, Jovinian, and Bonosus
"sought to meet the overvaluation of the ascetic ideal partly by
appealing, in line with the older western tradition, to Mary's
later, natural marriage with Joseph." 57 In opposition to this
attempt, "Ambrose, Jerome and many others put forth the new
doctrine of the aeiparthenia and upheld it passionately. The
words of Scripture no longer avail against it." 58 Thus Jerome and
others are credited with the "invention" of the perpetual virginity
of Mary (and if that was not enough novelty, Jerome also
reinvented Joseph as a virgin). He did this supposedly to appropriate the example of Mary and Joseph for his argument on the
superiority of consecrated virginity over marriage. That someone
would go to such lengths in order to bolster an opinion is
remarkable enough, especially since the example does not prove
anything in itself. Proponents of this "invention" theory do not
seem to give serious thought to its logical implications: namely,
Jerome and others would have to be ranked either among the
most dishonest or among the most horrendously self-deceived

virginity in partu.
The Virgin Birth in the Theology of the Ancient Church,

56 Actually Jovinian is said to have denied only Mary's
57 Cf. Hans von Campenhausen,

Studies in Historical Theology 2 (London: SCM, 1964), 72. This is Hunter's basic thesis also
(see "Helvidius, Jovinian, and the Virginity of Mary," 47). The connection between virginity
as an ascetical ideal and Mary as a model is evident. But it is absurd to claim that the ascetics
of the fourth century invented the doctrine to suit their opinions and biases and adhered to
this doctrine if there was clear evidence to the contrary from Scripture and through an
ancient established tradition. It is interesting that Meier asserts that Helvidius "[was] not
inventing something out of thin air" when he argued against Mary's virginity postpartum (A
Marginal Jew, 331). On the other hand, Meier has no qualms in suggesting that Jerome just
"thought up" solutions to defend Mary's perpetual virginity (ibid., 324).
58 Von Campenhausen, The Virgin Birth, 72. The erudite physicist/theologian Stanley Jalci
has characterized with precision Campenhausen's monograph as a "'scholarly' spoofing" of
Mary's virginity. Cf. S. Jaki, "The Virgin Birth and the Birth of Science," The Downside
Review 107 (1989): 265. Apparently, the words of Scripture "did not avail" either against
Campenhausen's denial of the virginal conception of Jesus, once again showing a connection
between Arianizing tendencies and denials of Mary's virginity. See the list of opponents and
defenders of the virginal conception in McHugh, The Mother ofJesus in the New Testament,
457.

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JOSE M. PEDROZO

men in history. 59 What else can be concluded about a group of
men who either could not see the reality of Jesus' true siblings in
the Scriptures and in a well-established "tradition of the Western
church" or purposely chose to ignore this truth and vigorously
attack it because of their own biases? But one could not stop
there. One would also be forced to conclude that no one in the
fourth century (except Helvidius, Jovinian, and Bonosus) and no
one until relatively recent times was willing to point out or
capable of pointing out the inability or unwillingness of Jerome
and others to see the truth. 60

59 Interestingly Jerome is known to be remarkably faithful even with theologically
problematic translations. Rufinus--<>nce a close friend but later an acerbic critic-can find
nothing worse to say about Jerome's translation of Origen's homilies on Luke than that he
adds the words "and nature" to Origen's term "substance." Jerome also leaves intact
"passagesthat would be theologically problematic to him, such as Origen's reference to Mary
and Joseph's imperfect faith (Hom. 20.4)" (Origen, Homilies on Luke, Fragments on Luke,
trans. Joseph T. Lienhard [Washington: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996],
xxxvi).
60 Some notable adversaries of Jerome did not think much of the Helvidian opinion either.
Pelagius in his Ad Galatas, 19 (PLS 1:1273) writes: "Contra eos qui dicunt beatam Mariam
alios filios habuisse, quia duos Iacobos apostolos fuisse legimus, unum Alphaei et alterum
Zebedaei, neminem Mariae vel Ioseph, sed fratres Domini de propinquitate dicuntur." Note
that Pelagius seems to identify James the Just with James of Zebedee or James of Alphaeus.

The Thomist 63 (1999): 105-24

THE RELATION OF CULTURE AND IGNORANCE TO
CULPABILITYIN THOMAS AQUINAS
GREGORY DOOLAN
The Catholic Universityof America
Washington,D.C.

I

N BOTH THE De Malo and the Summa Theologir.e Thomas
Aquinas asks whether ignorance can diminish sin or even
excuse from it altogether. Given current discussions of
multi-culturalism, his consideration of this question takes on a
particularly contemporary relevance. Proponents of multiculturalism argue at times that cultural influences can pose serious
impediments to responsible agency. At the root of this contention
is the belief that culture can cause in individuals an ignorance of
the natural law which excuses them from sin. Through Thomas's
writings on ignorance, conscience, and the natural law, we can
discern a clear response to such arguments, delineating Thomas's
sense of the culpability for such acts.
I

Examples of cultural practices that violate the natural law
would be bride burning in India, hari-kari or ritual suicide
formerly found in Japan, and polygamy in certain Arab countries.
Clearly these activities are influenced by cultural norms, but can
such norms be said to excuse any moral culpability whatsoever?
The question is posed well by Michelle Moody-Adams, who asks,
"But what might the link between culture and agency mean for
the practice of holding people responsible for action, and for
moral and legal conventions of praise and blame?"

105

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GREGORY DOOLAN

A currently influential answer to this question-to be found in much recent
philosophical psychology, as well as in the social sciences and in history-is
that cultural influences can, and often do, constitute serious impediments to
responsible agency, and our attitudes toward praise and-especially-blame
should acknowledge the existence of such impediments. Some of these views
attempt to establish that, at least sometimes, widespread moral ign.orancecan
be due principally to the cultural limitations of an entire era, rather than to
individual moral defects. 1

In the De Malo Thomas acknowledges that "Since it is of the
nature of sin that it is voluntary, to whatever extent ignorance
excuses sin either wholly or in part, to that extent it takes away
the voluntariness. " 2 Every act of the will, he explains, is preceded
by an act of the intellect that presents the will with its object. If
the intellect's act is excluded through ignorance, therefore, so too
is the act of the will. Hence, Thomas concludes that "there is
always involuntariness so far as concerns that which is
unknown. " 3
Nevertheless, he cautions that while ignorance may at times
excuse from sin, it does not always excuse from sin altogether.4
To discern, then, whether Thomas would accept the notion that
there can be "widespread moral ignorance" due principally to
cultural limitations-and whether such ignorance would alleviate
or excuse from sin altogether-we must first consider those
circumstances under which he says that ignorance fails to excuse
from sin altogether.
Thomas explains in the Summa Theologitethat there are two
reasons why ignorance may fail to excuse altogether from sin.
One is on the part of the ignorance itself which determines the
voluntariness of the act, and the other is on the part of the thing
which is not known. 5 Regarding the first, he notes that ignorance

1 Michelle M Moody-Adams, "Culture, Responsibility, and Affected Ignorance," Ethics
104 (January 1994): 291-2; emphasis added.
2 De Malo, q. 3, a. 8 (trans. Jean Osterle [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press,
1995]).
3 Ibid.
4 STh 1-11, q. 76, a. 3 (trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province [New York:
Christian Classics, 1981]).
5 Ibid.

CULTURE,IGNORANCE, AND CULPABILITY

107

may be related to the act of the will in one of three ways:
concomitantly, consequently, or antecedently. 6
Ignorance is concomitant (concomitanter) to the will's act
when there is ignorance of what is done, but in such a way that
even if it were known the act would be performed anyway.
Thomas gives the example of a hunter who unknowingly kills a
foe whom he had wished to kill anyway. The act cannot be said
to be involuntary because it did not cause anything contrary to
the hunter's habitual desire to kill that foe. Rather, Thomas
explains, such ignorance should be called nonvoluntary since
what was unknown could not have been actually willed. While
the involuntary signifies that the will is opposed to what is done,
the nonvoluntary signifies a mere privation of the act of the will.
Thus, all ignorance causes the nonvoluntary, but not all ignorance
causes the involuntary. 7 Properly speaking, concomitant
ignorance is not the cause of the consequent sin because the man's
habitual will was sinful before the ignorant act. For this reason,
Thomas explains, such ignorance neither increases nor diminishes
the sin since the outcome of the ignorant act would have been
willed had the man not been ignorant from the start. 8
Thomas describes ignorance as being consequent (consequenter) to the will's act insofar as the ignorance is voluntary.
In the De Malo he delineates three ways in which ignorance may
be voluntary: directly, indirectly, or incidentally. In the first way,
voluntary ignorance occurs when a person directly wills to be
ignorant so that he may have an excuse to sin. Thomas describes
this ignorance in the Summa as "affected ignorance" (ignorantia
affectata). Such ignorance does not excuse sin either wholly or in
part, he explains, but rather increases it, "for a person seems to be
afflicted with a great love of sinning that he would will to suffer
the loss of knowledge for the sake of freely engaging in sin. " 9
In the second way, ignorance can be indirectly voluntary when
a person does not make an effort to know. Such ignorance
Thomas calls "negligence" (negligentia) because a person omits
1-11, q. 6, a. 8.
Ibid.; De Malo, q. 3, a. 8.
8 STh 1-11, q. 76, a. 4.
9 De Malo, q. 3, a. 8; STh 1-11, q. 6, a. 8.

6 STh
7

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GREGORY DOOLAN

what he is obliged to do, namely, consider that which he can and
ought to consider. In the Summa, Thomas refers to this ignorance
as "ignorance of evil choice" (ignorantia malce electionis) and
notes that it arises from some passion or habit or when one does
not make the effort to know what he is obliged to know. 10 The
third manner of voluntary ignorance, the incidental (per accidens), is similar to the second. 11 Such ignorance occurs when a
person directly or indirectly wills something from which ignorance follows. Thomas gives as an example of direct incidental
ignorance the drunkard who wills to drink too much wine and
hence deprive himself of reason; indirectly, Thomas explains,
incidental ignorance occurs when one does not resist rising
passions which will bind the use of reason in a particular choice. 12
Like direct ignorance, both the indirect and incidental forms
are voluntary and as such do not cause involuntariness in the act
that follows since the voluntariness of the ignorance makes that
act to be in some measure voluntary. "But nevertheless," Thomas
explains, "the preceding ignorance lessens the voluntary nature of
the act, for that act is less voluntary which proceeds from
ignorance of this sort than if a person knowingly would choose
such an act without any ignorance, and so such ignorance does
not excuse the following act altogether but only to some
degree. " 13
Finally, ignorance is antecedent (antecedenter) to the will's act
when it is not voluntary but is nonetheless the cause of a man's
willing what he would not will otherwise. Thus, as with
concomitant ignorance, a man may be ignorant of some circumstance of his act which he was not obliged to know. However, in
contrast to the man with concomitant ignorance, he would not
perform that act if he knew those circumstances. For example,
10

SI'h 1-11, q. 6, a. 8.

11 While Thomas

considers indirect and incidental ignorance as two distinct forms of
ignorance in the De Malo, in the Summa Theologitehe considers them together in opposition
to direct ignorance.
u De Malo, q. 3, a. 8; SI'h 1-11, q. 6, a. 8.
13De Malo, q. 3, a. 8 (emphasis added). Thomas adds, "it must be noted that sometimes
both the act itself that follows and the preceding ignorance are one sin just as the will (to do
a thing) and the external act are called one sin; hence it can happen that the sin is no less
increased by the voluntariness of ignorance than it is excused by the diminished voluntariness
of the act" (ibid.).

CULTURE, IGNORANCE, AND CULPABILITY

109

after taking proper precautions, a hunter may be unaware of the
presence of a passerby and shoot him, regretting the accident.
"Such ignorance," Thomas explains, "causes involuntariness
simply." 14 Consequently, antecedent ignorance excuses from sin
altogether.
In summary, then, Thomas describes the relation of ignorance
to sin as follows: directly voluntary ignorance increases sin,
concomitant ignorance neither increases nor diminishes it,
indirect and incidental ignorance diminish sin to some degree,
while antecedent ignorance excuses from sin altogether. Since
ignorance excuses from sin only insofar as it removes voluntariness, and since it removes voluntariness only inasmuch as it is
itself involuntary, Thomas describes only two instances of
antecedent ignorance. "If the ignorance be such as to be entirely
involuntary," he explains, "either [1] through being invincible
[invincibilis], or [2] through being of matters one is not bound to
know, then such like ignorance excuses from sin altogether. " 15
Thomas defines invincible ignorance as that which is unable to
be overcome by study. 16 Given this fact, we see that ignorance
excuses from sin altogether only when it is an ignorance of that
which one either (1) cannot know, or (2) is not bound to know. 17
And since that which a man cannot know he is also not bound to
know, in order to answer the question whether the influences of
culture can excuse moral evils, we must first consider what
everyone is obliged to know regardless of his cultural identity.
II
"Because a person is said to be negligent only when he omits
what he is obliged to do," Thomas explains, "it does not seem to
pertain to negligence that he fails to apply his mind to know
anything whatsoever but only if he fails to apply his mind to
14 STh I-II,

q. 6, a. 8.

15 STh I-II, q. 76, a. 3.
16 STh I-II, q. 76, a.

2.

notes an exception that "If the ignorance be such as to exclude the use of
reason entirely, it excuses from sin altogether, as is the case with madmen and imbeciles: but
such is not always the ignorance that causes the sin; and so it does not always excuse from
sin altogether" (STh I-II, q. 76, a. 3, ad 3).
17 Thomas

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GREGORY DOOLAN

know those things he ought to know." 18 Thomas makes dear that
not all "non-knowing" is properly called ignorance. There are
some things that man by nature does not have the aptitude to
know (e.g., he cannot know the nature of God or of angels in this
life). Such "non-knowing" Thomas calls "nescience" (nescentia)
which denotes a simple negation or absence of knowledge. Hence,
even a stone or a tree can be called nescient inasmuch as-<lue to
its very nature-it has an absence of knowledge. For this reason,
nescience has neither the nature, nor is the cause, of sin. 19
In contrast to nescience, ignorance denotes a privation of
knowledge that a person has a natural aptitude to know. 20
Nevertheless, as we have seen, not all ignorance is sinful or is the
cause of sin. As Thomas notes, "ignorance considered in itself
signifies the nature of punishment, but not all ignorance has the
nature of fault, for ignorance of those things a person is not
obliged to know is without fault. " 21 It is dear, then, that those
things of which one is nescient one is not obliged to know.
Similarly, those things of which one is invincibly ignorant one is
not obliged to know; for example, pre-Columbian Indians were
invincibly ignorant of the articles of faith since, as Thomas notes,
man cannot judge on such matters without help from divine
instruction. 22 Since their ignorance could not be overcome by
study, it would have been of an invincible nature. Furthermore,
there are some things for which man has a natural aptitude and
can learn through study but which he is still not obliged to know
(e.g., geometrical theorems). Nor, as a general rule, is one obliged
to know contingent particulars, (e.g., that it is now raining). 23
What, then, are we obliged to know? Thomas answers this
question in the Summa by saying that "we are under an obligation
to know those things, to wit, without the knowledge of which we
are unable to accomplish a due act rightly." 24 In the De Malo he
Malo, q. 3, a. 8.
De Malo, q. 3, a. 7; STh 1-11, q. 76, a. 2.
20 De Malo, q. 3, a. 7.
18 De
19

21 Ibid.
22
23

STh 1-11, q. 100, a. 1.
STh 1-11, q. 76, a. 2.

24 Ibid.

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111

states that "everyone is obliged to know those things by which he
is directed in his own acts." 25
To begin with, Thomas explains that one ought to know
certain details which direct one's acts "in a particular case." He
gives the example of the hunter who shoots his arrow in a place
where men customarily pass. If the hunter does not make the
effort to know whether someone is passing when he intends to
shoot his arrow, Thomas explains, then this man is guilty of
negligence. Should his arrow hit someone, the hunter would be
guilty of that act as well. Thus, while the presence of a passerby
is a contingent particular, the hunter is nonetheless obliged to
know whether the passerby is present. 26
More generally, anyone in a position of authority is bound to
know those things pertaining to his office. While Thomas gives as
examples those things pertaining to the offices of clerics, this
manner of obliged knowledge would seem to apply to any
office-even such roles as motherhood and fatherhood. 27 More
generally still, Thomas explains that everyoneis obliged to know
those matters that regard his duty to the state. Here, he is
apparently referring to a citizen's civic duty to know and abide by
the law. 28 "For before a civil judge, also, one who thus appeals to
ignorance of a law which he should know is not excused. " 29
Hence the legal maxim that ignorance is no excuse for breaking
the law.
Thomas notes, furthermore, that one is obliged to know the
artides 30 or truths of faith "because faith directs intention." 31
Nevertheless, as we have noted, there may be situations in which
a person is invincibly ignorant of these truths because of circumstances; hence, such knowledge may be considered to be obliged
De Malo, q. 3, a. 7.
De Malo, q. 3, a. 8.
27 De Malo, q. 3, a. 7. Thomas does not mention this species of obliged knowledge in the
Summa Theologiae.
28 STh I-II, q. 76, a. 2. Thomas does not explicitly refer to this form of obliged knowledge
in the De Malo.
29 De Veritate, q. 17, a. 4, ad 5 (trans. Robert W. Mulligan, S.J. [Indianapolis: Hackett
25

26

Publishing, 1994]).
Jo STh I-II, q. 76, a. 2.
JI De Malo, q. 3, a. 7.

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GREGORY DOOLAN

in a qualified sense-obliged to those who have the opportunity
to acquire it and not to those who absolutely have not. While
such obliged knowledge may be qualified, however, Thomas does
list one form of obliged knowledge which all men-regardless of
time or place-are obliged to know: what he terms "the universal
principles of right" (universaliaiuris prtecepta).32
III

The universal principles of right, Thomas explains, are found
in the practical reason, that is, the intellect directed towards
practical matters. As the speculative reason argues about speculative matters, so the practical reason argues about practical ones.
Thus, Thomas concludes, we must naturally have an understanding not only of speculative principles but of practical ones
as well. While the first speculative principles belong to the habit
which Aristotle had called the understandingof principles,33 the
first practical principles belong to the natural habit called
synderesis.34 Such principles are what Thomas terms the universal
principles of right.
This habit of first practical principles is, he tells us, "bestowed
on us by nature. "35 Nevertheless, it is not natural to man as
though these principles were impressed upon his soul as
intelligible species are impressed in angels. Rather, Thomas
explains, their existence is due partly to nature and partly to some
extrinsic principle. 36 To make this fact dear, he gives an example
from the speculative principle that "every whole is greater than its
part."
For it is owing to the very nature of the intellectual soul that man, having once
grasped what is a whole and what is a part, should at once perceive that every
whole is larger than its part: and in like manner with regard to other such
32 STh1-11,q. 76, a. 2. Thomas refers to these principles as the Ten Commandments in the
De Malo (q. 3, a. 7), not simply inasmuch as they are part of revelation but inasmuch as they
are naturally known.
33 Aristotle, Nichomachaean Ethics 6.6.
34 STh I, q. 79, a. 12.
35 Ibid.
36 STh 1-11, q. 51, a. 1.

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113

principles. Yet what is a whole, and what is a part-this he cannot know except
through the intelligible species which he has received from phantasms: and for
this reason, the Philosopher at the end of the Posterior Analytics shows that
knowledge of principles comes to us from the senses.37

The first principles of practical reason are instilled in the same
way. In this respect, then, the habit of synderesis is a natural one.
Whereas the habit of these principles is synderesis, the act
whereby these principles are applied to particular actions is
conscience. As Thomas explains, "the precepts of the natural law
are to the practical reason what the first principles of demonstrations are to the speculative reason. " 38 Conscience, therefore,
is nothing other than "a judgment of reason derived from the
natural law." 39
Hence, those universal principles of right which man is obliged
to know he knows naturally. But what are these principles?
Thomas begins by explaining that the first thing that falls under
the apprehension of the intellect simply is being, for this notion
is included in everything that is apprehended. Consequently, the
first principle of the speculative intellect is the principle of
noncontradiction: that the same thing cannot be affirmed and
denied at the same time. Now the practical reason is directed
towards action, so the first thing that falls under the apprehension
of the practical reason is good, for every act is performed for
some end under the aspect of good. Thus, while the first principle
of the speculative reason is founded upon the notion of being, the
first principle of the practical reason is founded upon the notion
of good; this principle is that "good is that which all things seek
after." The first precept of the natural law is therefore that "good
is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.'"' 0
All the other precepts of the natural law-Qr first principles of
practical reason-follow from this first principle as all the first
principles of the speculative reason follow from the principle of
noncontradiction. Thus, as Thomas explains, "whatever the
practical reason naturally apprehends as man's good (or evil)
37

Ibid.

38 STh I-II, q. 94, a. 2.
39
40

De Verit., q. 17, a. 1, sed contra (first series) 1.
STh I-II, q. 94, a. 2.

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114

belongs to the precepts of the natural law as something to be
done or avoided." 41 The other secondary general precepts follow
from the first according to the order of natural inclinations. The
first of these secondary precepts follows from man's inclination
to the good in accordance with his nature simply as a substance.
Thus, since each substance seeks to preserve its own being
according to its nature, "by reason of this inclination, whatever
is a means of preserving human life, and of warding off its
obstacles, belongs to the natural law. " 42
Secondly, inasmuch as man is an animal, he has an inclination
according to the nature he shares in common with other animals.
Thus, Thomas explains, "those things are said to belong to the
natural law which nature has taught to all animals, such as sexual
intercourse, education of offspring and so forth. " 43 But man is
more than simply an animal, he is a rational animal. Hence,
Thomas concludes that, thirdly,
there is in man an inclination to good, according to the nature of his reason
which nature is proper to him: thus man has a natural inclination to know the
truth about God, and to live in society: and in this respect, whatever pertains
to this inclination belongs to the natural law; for instance, to shun ignorance,
to avoid offending those among whom one has to live, and other such things
regarding the above inclination. 44

While the precepts of the natural law are founded upon one
common foundation, they are nonetheless many. Man is obliged
to know these precepts inasmuch as they are the universal
principles of right, but he naturally knows them inasmuch as they
are the first principles of the practical reason. Consequently,
knowledge of these precepts transcends culture: one cannot be
invincibly ignorant of them.
These precepts of the natural law are thus self-evident to
everyone. Nevertheless, not everything which belongs to the
natural law is self-evident. As every judgment of the speculative
reason proceeds from natural knowledge of first principles, so
41

Ibid.

42 Ibid.
43 Ibid.
44

Ibid.

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115

every judgment of the practical reason proceeds from first
principles. Now there are some matters that the practical reason
judges are "so evident" that one needs little consideration in order
to approve or disapprove of them according to the general first
principles. Some, however, require more careful judgment regarding the various circumstances; and these matters, Thomas
explains, only the wise are competent to deal with carefully-as
with certain matters of the speculative reason only the wise are
competent (e.g., metaphysics). Finally, some matters one cannot
judge at all without assistance from Divine instruction. Thomas
gives as an example the articles of faith. 45
What judgments, then, can be deemed to be so evident that
everyone is able to approve or disapprove of them from the first
principles? Is it possible because of cultural influences for one not
to know, for example, the basic moral precepts outlined in the
Ten Commandments? In discussing whether all the moral
precepts of the Old Law belong to the natural law, Thomas gives
examples of the three types of moral judgments that can or
cannot be made through natural reason alone.
It follows, of necessity, that all the moral precepts [of the Old Law] belong to
the law of nature; but not all in the same way. For there are certam things
which the natural reason of every man, of its own accord and at once, judges
to be done or not to be done: e.g., "Honor thy father and thy mother," and,
"Thou shalt not kill," "Thou shalt not steal": and these belong to the law of
nature absolutely.-And there are certain things which, after a more careful
consideration, wise men deem obligatory. Such belong to the law of nature, yet
so that they need to be inculcated, the wiser teaching the less wise: e.g., "Rise
up before the hoary head, and honor the person of the aged man," and the
like.-And there are some things, to judge of which, human reason needs
Divine instruction, whereby we are taught about the things of God: e.g., "Thou
shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of anything;" "Thou
shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. "46

Thomas considers the precepts contained in the second tablet
of the Decalogue, then, to be known of their "own accord and at
once." Consequently, all men naturally know that it is wrong to
kill, to steal, to commit adultery, etc. The knowledge of these
45 STh I-II,

q. 100, a. 1.

46 Ibid. (emphasis added).

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GREGORY DOOLAN

precepts, he maintains, man has immediately from God. 47 Unlike
the precepts that must be "inculcated" in all by wise men, these
precepts are naturally and immediately acquired. With the
speculative reason, when one first understands the nature of a
whole and that of a part he immediately recognizes that the
whole is always greater; so too with the practical reason as soon
as one recognizes the nature of a man he recognizes of his "own
accord and at once" that it is wrong to steal or kill.
In order for there to be probity in these judgments, however,
it is necessary that "there be some permanent principle which has
unwavering integrity, in reference to which all human works are
examined, so that that permanent principle will resist all evil and
assent to good. " 48 The habit of synderesis or practical first
principles therefore can never be in error; 49 hence, no one errs
regarding these first principles. 50 And since the precepts expressed
in the second tablet are known immediately in light of these
principles, no one can err regarding these principles either.
As synderesis is not learnt, furthermore, neither can it be lost.
Synderesis, like the habit of the first principles of understanding,
is caused immediately by the active intellect; consequently, it is
incorruptible either directly or indirectly. And so, the habit of the
first practical principles "cannot be corrupted by any forgetfulness
or deception whatever." 51
If one cannot err regarding either the first precepts of the
natural law or the evident judgments which follow immediately
from them, it might seem as though there should be no error
regarding our actions. Nevertheless, when Hindus practiced
suttee-the ritual of burning a bride upon the death of her
husband-they did so in the belief that the act was a good one;
but this act nonetheless violates the precept of the natural law
which forbids killing. Similarly, when Nazi soldiers executed
millions of Jews, they did so in the belief that their actions were
justified. Given the fact that everyone is possessed of an
1-11, q. 100, a. 3.
De Verit., q. 16, a. 2.
49 Ibid.
50 STh I, q. 79, a. 12, ad 3.
51 STh 1-11, q. 53, a. 1.
47 STh

48

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117

immediate and unerring knowledge of the first precepts of the
natural law, one may ask how such violations of the natural law
could occur. The answer, Thomas explains, lies in the nature of
these precepts as universal.

IV
Reason, Thomas notes, directs all human acts according to a
twofold knowledge: both universal and particular. When
presented with a choice, the reason confers about what should be
done through the use of a syllogism, the conclusion of which is a
judgment or choice made. The precepts of the natural law are
universal judgments, but actions concern singulars: viz., that this
act should or should not be performed. Consequently, the
conclusion of a practical syllogism is a particular proposition. But
a particular proposition follows from a universal one only
through the medium of another particular proposition. Thus, one
rejects the sin of parricide by considering the universal proposition that it is wrong to kill one's father as well as the particular
proposition that this man is one's father. "Hence ignorance about
either of these two propositions viz. of the universal principle
which is a rule of reason, or of the particular circumstance, could
cause an act of parricide. " 52
As we have seen, there can be no ignorance regarding universal
propositions from either synderesis or the other evident precepts
of the natural law. Consequently, the error in such matters
originates from ignorance of the particular judgment. 53 Error can
result, furthermore, when the practical reason does not make a
correct application of the universal principle to particular acts,
just as the speculative intellect can neglect to construct a syllogism
according to the proper form of argumentation, thereby arriving
at a false conclusion. 54
As we have noted above, it belongs to conscience to apply the
principles of synderesis to particular acts. Thus, while synderesis
52 STh I-II, q. 76, a. 1.
53 Thomas notes in the De Veritate that the erroneous

minor premise may result from an
error in the judgment of either the higher or the lower reason (De Verit., q. 17, a. 2).
54 Ibid.

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never errs, conscience can. Thomas explains, however, that the
fallibility of conscience does not threaten the probity of the first
principles of practical reason precisely because conscience is not
the first rule of human activity; rather, synderesis is. "Conscience,
however, is a kind of rule which is itself regulated. Hence it is not
strange that it can make mistakes. " 55 Nevertheless, Thomas
emphasizes that conscience can never err when the particular act
to which it is applied has a universal judgment about it in
synderesis. 56
What significance does this fallibility of conscience have
regarding the natural law, though? In matters of action, truth is
not the same for all in matters of detail but only as regards the
general principles; "and where there is the same rectitude in
matters of detail, it is not equally known to all." 57 Thus, while the
truth or rectitude regarding the general principles of the natural
law is the same for all and known equally by all, the proper
conclusions from these principles are not.
Consequently we must say that the natural law, as to general principles, is the
same for all, both as to rectitude and as to knowledge. But as to matters of
detail, which are conclusions, as it were, of those general principles, it is the
same for all in the majority of cases, both as to rectitude and as to knowledge;
and yet in some few cases it may fail, both as to rectitude, by reason of certain
obstacles ... and as to knowledge, since in some the reason is perverted by
passion of evil habit, or an evil disposition of nature; thus formerly, theft,
although it is expressly contrary to the natural law, was not considered wrong
among the Germans, as Julius Caesar relates. 58

In Thomas's example, he acknowledges that culture can cause
a certain ignorance regarding the natural law. When he notes that
the ancient Germans did not consider theft to be wrong, however,
Thomas is not suggesting that they were ignorant of the precept
"Thou shalt not steal." As we have seen, one cannot be ignorant
of either the first principles of the natural law or those precepts
which "the natural reason of every man grasps of its own accord
q. 17, a. 2, ad 7.
q. 17, a. 2.
57 STh 1-11, q. 94, a. 4.
58 Ibid.

55 DeVerit.,

56 De. Verit.,

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119

and at once" from these principles. Thomas notes at the start of
this passage that knowledge of such a general principle is the
same for all; rather, it is as regards the details that ignorance may
result. Hence, the German acceptance of theft which Caesar
described was not an ignorance regarding the substance of the
Fifth Commandment; rather, it was an ignorance that theft is
wrong regarding certain details: for example, that it is wrong to
steal from these tribes or from non-Germans. Again, such ignorance is an error concerning the minor premise of the practical
syllogism.
The pervasive cultural ignorance among the early Germans
regarding the evil of theft, or that of Hindus regarding the
practice of Suttee, is not simply the result of individual error. In
the Summa, Thomas explains that regarding the detailed precepts
of the natural law which follow from the general ones, "the
natural law can be blotted out from the human heart, either by
evil persuasions ... or by vicious customs and corrupt habits. "59
He seems to allude to the consequence of such cultural influences
in the De Malo as well. There Thomas notes that while ignorance
generally signifies a privation of knowledge, "sometimes
ignorance is something opposed to knowledge, and this is said to
be ignorance resulting from a perverse frame of mind, for
instance, when a person has a habit of false principles and false
opinions by which he is impeded from knowledge of truth. " 60
When Hindus would burn widows or when the Nazis would
kill Jews, they did so following certain false principles which
custom and law had taught them-which is to say, they did so
believing these principles to be true. Thomas explains that while
these acts are essentially evil, inasmuch as reason apprehends them
as good they accidentally receive the character of goodness; for
the object of the will is proposed by reason. And so, such acts are
performed according to conscience-albeit an erring one. When
a Hindu burned his brother's widow, he did so following his
conscience. Similarly, when a Nazi killed a Jew he did so
following his own. The question arises, therefore, whether an
59 SI'h

1-11, q. 94, a. 6 (emphasis added).
3, a. 7.

60 De Malo, q.

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erring conscience binds, and if so whether it is capable of excusing
one from such cultural sins. 61

v
Conscience, as we have seen, directs human acts inasmuch as
it applies universal precepts to particular actions. Now any
precept of law is only said to bind insofar as it is known or is
required to be known. Consequently, conscience binds by the
power of a precept. 62 Since one is bound by a precept which
conscience dictates, Thomas concludes that one is bound by one's
conscience no matter how false it may be, even though it
contradict the natural law. 63 As Thomas explains, "Although that
which a false conscience dictates is out of harmony with the law
of God, the one who is mistaken considers it the law of God.
Therefore, taking the thing in itself, if he departs from this, he
departs from the law of God, although it would be accidental that
he does not depart from the law of God. " 64
The Hindu whose conscience dictates that "All widows should
be burned" and the Nazi whose conscience dictates that "All Jews
should be killed," then, are bound by their consciences. Nevertheless, this does not necessarily excuse from sin. The question
whether an erring conscience excuses from sin returns to the
question whether one's ignorance is voluntary or not. For this
reason, Thomas explains that if the ignorance of an erring
conscience concerns some circumstance and is without any
negligence thereby causing the act to be involuntary, then such a
conscience does excuse from sin. If, however, conscience errs
from an ignorance which is either willed directly, or willed
indirectly through negligence, then it does not excuse the will. 65
Accordingly, one who acts against such a conscience becomes a kind of
transgressor of the law of God, although one who follows such a conscience
61 STh I-II, q. 19, a. 5.

q. 17, a. 3.
q. 17, a. 4, sed contra 5.
64 De Verit., q. 17, a. 4, ad 1 (emphasis added).
65 STh I-II, q. 19, a. 6.
62 De Verit.,

63 De Verit.,

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and acts according to it acts against the law of God and sins mortally. For there
was sin in the error itself, since it happened because of ignorance of that which
one should have known. 66

As we have seen, Thomas acknowledges that custom can
inculcate false principles, thereby causing an erring conscience. To
discern whether such a conscience excuses from sin, then, we
must first consider the character of the ignorance which custom
can cause. If the Hindu possessed of the false principle that "All
widows should be burned" and the Nazi that "All Jews should be
killed" truly possess such false precepts as principles, then their
ignorance of the truth cannot be said to be directly voluntary. As
we have seen, directly voluntary ignorance is willed because the
individual desires to sin. Such cultural evils, however, are
performed under the belief that they are really good. Thus, the
Hindu burns his brother's widow in the pious belief that the
couple will be reunited in the next world, while the Nazi kills
Jews because of the benefits he sees for the "master race."
We must consider, then, whether such cultural ignorance is
indirectly voluntary, involving negligence concerning what ought
to be known and hence involving culpability. Now because of
their particular nature, such precepts as "No widow should be
burned" and "No Jew should be killed" are not among the first
principles of the practical reason which consist of the most
universal principles. Nor are they among the first evident precepts
of the natural law which are also more universal in character.
Neither do such precepts fall under the articles of faith which
Thomas says everyone is required to know. And they do not
necessarily fall under those matters regarding one's duty to the
state, since human law as well as custom is capable of being
contrary to the natural law-as is evidenced by India and Nazi
Germany which had sanctioned their respective evil practices. 67
It remains to be considered, then, whether such precepts
constitute that which is obliged to be known in particular cases.
It will be recalled that, in his discussion of knowledge which
is obliged in a particular case, Thomas gives the example of the
66 De Verit., q. 17, a. 4, ad 3 (emphasis added).
67

STh I-II, q. 94, a. 6, ad 3.

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GREGORY DOOLAN

hunter's duty to know whether anyone is present in an area
where there are customarily passersby. Because such knowledge
concerns a particular case, it is itself particular knowledge,
namely, whether someone is passing by at that moment. Now, a
precept, insofar as it is a precept, is universal knowledge. Thus,
when the Hindu acted according to the precept "All widows must
be burned" and the Nazi according to the precept "All Jews must
be killed" they acted according to false principles which formed
universal propositions. These precepts would thus act as major
premises in practical syllogisms (e.g., "All widows must be
burned, this woman is a widow, therefore she must be burned").
The fact that such false precepts-and their contrary true
ones-are themselves universal, however, does not suggest that
such cultural sins preclude an obliged particular knowledge.
While a false precept is universal and forms the major premise of
a practical syllogism, the act which follows from that precept is
not referable to it alone. Both the Hindu who burns his brother's
widow and the Nazi who kills a Jew do act according to the false
precepts inculcated in them by custom; but they also act in light
of the evident precept "Thou shalt not kill." Thus, in both
instances, these acts also follow from a practical syllogism which
includes the Fifth Commandment as the major premise. For the
Hindu or Nazi to perform such an act in good conscience, then,
he must provide a minor premise for a syllogism by which he
judges that these acts are not murder; thus, the Hindu would have
judged that "Widow burning is not murder," and the Nazi that
"Killing a Jew is not murder."
The universal judgments that "Widow burning is murder" and
that "Killing Jews is murder" in and of themselves do not fall
under obliged knowledge insofar as they are universal; yet the
cultural belief in the contrary judgments nevertheless does not
result in an involuntary ignorance of the truth, for the particular
circumstances which result from culturally false precepts do
involve obliged knowledge. Just as the hunter is obliged to know
whether passersby are present when he shoots, so too anyone
who kills.a creature is obliged to know whether this creature is a
man. But what a man is is evident to anyone who has encountered human beings, just as part and whole is evident to

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123

anyone who has previously encountered parts and wholes. Such
particular judgments, therefore, are obliged in light of the
universal precept "Thou shalt not kill."
The Hindu or Nazi is culpable for his actions regarding a
particular judgment precisely because he is able to change a
universal one. Thus, while the Hindu must abide by his
conscience which dictates that "All widows must be burned," he
is culpable for burning his brother's widow precisely because he
can change his conscience. Hence, Thomas explains that an erring
conscience "does not oblige in every event. For something can
happen, namely, a change of conscience, and, when this takes
place, one is no longer bound. " 68
Thus, when Thomas says that a person who has a habit of false
principles and opinions is "impeded from knowledge of truth,"
he does not mean that that person is impeded absolutely so that
he can never have knowledge of the truth. A false principle
impedes knowledge inasmuch as the intellect does not admit of
contraries. Thus, the Nazi who judges that "All Jews should be
killed" is impeded from the knowledge that "No Jews should be
killed" insofar as it is not possible for the intellect to affirm and
deny the same thing at the same time. It is for this reason that
Thomas describes such ignorance as being opposed to knowledge
of the truth rather than a mere privation of it.
If such erroneous judgments are removed, however, so too is
the impediment to knowledge. The Nazi possessed of his false
precept is capable of learning that a Jew is a man inasmuch as he
is capable of discerning the nature of a man. Insofar as he is
capable of making this particular judgment, so too is he capable
of changing his conscience. Unfortunately, despite man's ability
to change his erring conscience, such cultural sins frequently
persist for generations and longer. As Moody-Adams suggests,
"Sometimes-perhaps most of the time--cultures are perpetuated
by human beings who are uncritically committed to the internal
perspective on the way of life they hope to preserve. " 69 Because
conscience can be changed, however, it is impossible for custom
to cause ignorance of an invincible character.
q. 17, a. 4; cf. ad 8.
Moody-Adams, "Culmre, Responsibility, and Affected Ignorance," 296.

68 De Verit.,
69

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124

Inasmuch as such cultural ignorance regarding secondary
precepts of the natural law is indirectly voluntary, however, it
nonetheless does excuse from sin to some degree. As Thomas
explains, "Even ignorance which is a sin insofar as it is voluntary
diminishes the voluntariness of the following act, and by reason
of this diminishes the following sin; and it is possible that such
ignorance makes the following sin less grave than its own
gravity." 70 Thus, while such cultural acts are not excused from sin
altogether, their sinfulness is diminished insofar as they are
performed according to conscience.
VI

Contrary to Moody-Adams, Thomas does not deny that a
"widespread moral ignorance" can be due principally to cultural
influences. But neither does he deny the role of individual
responsibility. A habit of false principles can be caused by
perverse custom, but it can also be changed. Hence, according to
Thomas, the false conscience inculcated by cultural mores does
not excuse from sin altogether. Even when custom does prevail
over an individual's choices, the moral agent nonetheless remains
responsible for his individual acts.

70 De Malo,

q. 3, a. 8, ad 4.

The Thomist 63 (1999): 125-37

ANALYTICALTHOMISM
BRIANJ. SHANLEY, 0.P.
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

NALYTIC PHILOSOPHERS have become increasingly
nterested in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Several
actors help to explain this phenomenon. A remote cause is
the work of Peter Geach, who both modeled and validated
serious analytic study of Thomas; many of those writing in the
analytic tradition today owe an obvious debt to Geach. Another
remote cause has been the renewed interest in medieval
philosophy among analytic philosophers. More proximately, the
emergence of philosophy of religion as an accepted analytic
speciality has also spurred interest in Thomas. As a result,
Aquinas is now taken seriously as a philosopher by many trained
within the Anglo-American tradition that previously would have
been inclined to consign him to the pre-Frege dustbin of
benighted thinking.
Indeed, analytic interest in Aquinas has now reached the point
where some writing in this vein consider themselves to be
"Analytic Thomists." A recent issue of The Monist (vol. 80, no. 4
[October 1997]) is entirely devoted to Analytical Thomism and
a forthcoming volume in the Oxford Companion to Philosophy
series will explore the same topic. While Thomists of every stripe
should be glad to see Aquinas get his analytical due, many
traditional readers of Aquinas will doubtless wonder whether
"Analytical Thomism" is oxymoronic in the same way that
"Transcendental Thomism" seemed so. Can one really be both a
Thomistand an analytic philosopher? Are the basic philosophical
commitments of the one compatible with those of the other? A
125

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BRIANJ.SHAN"LEY

close look at The Monist volume, which is the purpose of this
essay, will hopefully shed some light on this topic.
The obvious first question to be considered regarding
Analytical Thomism is Quid sit? The advisory editor, John
Haldane, offers the only definition in the volume:
Analytical Thomism is not concerned to appropriate St. Thomas for the
advancement of any particular set of doctrines. Equally, it is not a movement
of pious exegesis. Instead, it seeks to deploy the methods and ideas of
twentieth-century
philosophy-of
the sort dominant within the
English-speaking world-in connection with the broad framework of ideas
introduced and developed by Aquinas. Form, matter, existence, individuation,
concepts, mental utterances, good and evil all get some treatment in the pages
that follow.

Each of Haldane's sentences raises some important questions.
Right off the bat the negative contrasts make it clear that
Analytical Thomism understands itself to be offering some kind
of alternative or nontraditional reading of Aquinas; no names are
named, but it is clear that Analytical Thomists have some problems with nonanalytical Thomists. First, it is claimed that
Analytical Thomism is not committed to "the advancement of any
particular set of doctrines." What does this mean? Are the
doctrines in question religious or philosophical? How could one
possibly identify oneself as a Thomist and not thereby be
committed to certain particular doctrines of St. Thomas himself?
Are there no basic doctrines ingredient in Thomism of any kind?
Second, Analytical Thomism does not involve "pious exegesis."
Is this meant to exclude piety and exegesis or just the former? Can
there be a Thomism without at least some intellectual piety? Can
one be a Thomist without the ability to do textual exegesis
informed by a knowledge of medieval philosophy and theology?
Third, is Analytical Thomism a methodological approach to
Aquinas or is it rather an attempt to reinterpret Aquinas in the
light of the leading ideas of analytic philosophy? Fourth, is it
enough to be a Thomist that one discuss some interesting central
concepts in Aquinas? Haldane does not provide answers to these
questions and it is not at all clear that the other contributors to
the volume would agree on a common answer.

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127

Hilary Putnam opens the volume with "Thoughts Addressed
to an Analytical Thomist." Putnam acknowledges that he is not an
Analytical Thomist because he is outside the Roman Catholic
tradition and because he has a different approach to philosophy;
the former reason is noteworthy as an example of how Thomism
is perceived by some to entail a religious commitment. Putnam's
remarks are offered as friendly questions meant to engage
Analytic Thomists in dialogue. Presumably the friendly nature of
the queries originates in a common opposition to certain
antimetaphysical, antirealist, and antireligious strains in contemporary philosophy.
Putnam's first set of questions concerns arguments for the
existence of God. Putnam rejects the formerly widespread and
facile analytic dismissal of the classical proofs as patently invalid,
while acknowledging that the premises are questionable because
of their metaphysical presuppositions. He argues, however, that
the conception of reason embodied in the arguments reflects deep
intuitions that have not been refuted by modern science and so
need to be taken seriously. But after having defended the
traditional project in this way, Putnam goes on to pose a problem
that Thomists do need to pay greater attention to: How do these
philosophical "proofs," and the resulting conception of God as at
the head of the metaphysical line, connect up with religious
belief? Surely for Aquinas such argumentation is not foundational
for belief, so how does it relate to belief? A step towards
answering this question in a way that takes into account
contemporary analytic discussion can be found in Lubor Velecky' s
underappreciated Aquinas' Five Arguments in the Summa
Theologiae la 2,3 (Kampen, The Netherlands: Kok Pharos,
1994).
The second set of questions posed by Putnam concerns
predication with respect to God. Putnam wants to argue that
religious language is incommensurable with empirical description
and scientific theorizing without, however, getting trapped in
language-game compartmentalism, because he believes there is a
universal potentiality for religious questioning. What is needed,
then, is a way to account for meaningful religious language about
God that respects its religious context without thereby sealing it

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BRIAN J. SHANLEY

off compartmentally from all other kinds of discourse. Putnam
sees Aquinas's theory of analogical predication as trying to do just
that. He is dubious, however, that Aquinas really improves on
Maimonides, specifically regarding how a simple God can be
meaningfully said to have attributes. I would argue that Putnam
does not fully understand Aquinas's doctrine of analogy, but it is
more important here to acknowledge how someone sympathetically reading Aquinas from outside the tradition can offer
fresh perspectives and raise critical questions. Putnam is surely
right, for example, that Thomists need to recognize the way in
which "univocal" and "literal" are context-dependent terms that
have no simple meaning and that the nonliteral use of religious
language cannot be readily explained in terms of a scientific
theory.
The next contribution, by Brian Davies, O.P., on "Aquinas,
God, and Being," is the most significant in the collection because
it bears on the central doctrine of God as esse per se subsistens
and the degree to which the metaphysics underpinning that claim
can be made credible analytically. Davies wants to salvage the
analytic respectability of Aquinas's teaching by steering what he
takes to be a middle course between traditional views (e.g.,
Gilsonian) of esse per se subsistens as the crown jewel of Thomistic metaphysics on the one hand and the analytic dismissals of
the doctrine as either symptomatic of sophistry or evidence of
pre-Fregeau confusion on the other. Davies' middle course,
however, steers quite closely along the analytic bank. He begins
by endorsing the Kantian claim that existence is not a predicate
in the following sense: to say that __ exist(s) can never serve to
tell us anything about any object or individual (i.e., something
that can be named). He offers three arguments in favor of this
view. First is a reductio ad absurdum claim that to deny his view,
to claim that existence does tell us something about something,
leads to the conclusion that all positive predications of existence
must be true and all negative predications must be false. Second,
he argues that the phrase __ exist(s) is really equivalent to
saying that some X are Y; for example, to say that "Some
fun-loving Welshmen exist" is equivalent to "Some Welshmen are
fun-loving." So just as "some" does not ascribe a property to

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something, neither does "exist(s)." Davies' third argument
borrows from Frege and C. J. F. Williams and presumes a parallel
between the ascription of existence and the ascription of number.
Affirming the existence of something is really nothing other than
the denial of the number nought to whatever object or concept is
said to exist. Statements of existence are really statements of
number, and just as the assertion of number does not ascribe a
property to some object, neither does the assertion of existence.
Davies then entertains and dismisses four possible objections
to this interpretation of existence in a somewhat cursory and
sometimes problematical way, but these objections are not
relevant here. The objection that matters most, of course, is that
this post-Frege understanding of existence seems prima facie far
removed from Aquinas' doctrine of esse. The bold, central, and
to me utterly incredible claim of Davies, however, is that if we dig
a little deeper into what Aquinas says about God as ipsum esse
subsistens and the source of the esse of creatures, we will discover
that his understanding of esse is quite compatible with the
post-Frege understanding of existence! Davies purports to find
textual evidence for this reading of esse in the opening chapter of
the De ente et essentia, where he claims that Aquinas holds that
"the verb 'to be' is used in at least two distinct ways" (5 09). What
is actually in the text, however, is a standard reference to the
Aristotelian doctrine of how ens (not esse or "to be") is said in
two ways: either according to the ten categories or as joining the
subject and predicate in a true proposition; in the latter sense
even privations can be said "to be" in some sense, as when we say
that "blindness is in the eye." Davies asserts that this distinction
is tantamount to a distinction between "sentences which tell us
something about a distinct individual and sentences which look
or sound as though they were doing this, though in fact they are
not" (510). Before considering how Davies construes Aquinas on
existence-statements regarding individuals, it is important to note
two serious flaws in Davies' procedure. The first is the failure to
attend to the distinction between esse and ens in Aquinas's Latin
texts; the two terms are not interchangeable, since Aquinas thinks
every created being (ens) is composed of two distinct principles:
esse, as the fundamental actuality making the ens to be; and

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BRIAN'J.SHAN'LEY

essentia, as a potency for esse that formally determines the kind
of existence the ens exercises. Davies' use of English translations
sometimes occludes these important distinctions; as already
noted, Davies implies that Aquinas is going to explain "to be" in
the sense of existence or esse when it is really ens that he is talking
about. This leads to a second and related difficulty. In his footnote (n. 23 on p. 517) regarding the distinction between the two
senses of being, Davies refers to three putatively parallel passages
where he claims that Aquinas is making the same distinction:
Commentary on the Metaphysics, book V, lectio 9; Summa
Theologiae I, q. 3, a. 4, ad 2; and Summa Theologiae I, q. 48, a.
2, ad 2. The first and third passages concern how ens is said in
two ways, but the second passage is really about something else.
There Aquinas explains how esse can be said in two ways: as actus
essendi or as signifying composition in a proposition. It is the
former sense of esse, as actus essendi, that Davies cannot easily
account for and his strategy therefore seems to be to ignore it by
citing texts where Aquinas is discussing Aristotle's doctrine of
being. It hardly seems fair to Aquinas, however, to explain his
doctrine of being in terms of the Aristotelian distinction between
the categorical and predicational senses of being.
Davies argues that, for Aquinas, statements about an individual
do not tell us that it exists because genuine statements can only be
in terms of the categories and being is not a category. Hence if
being and existence are interchangeable, and neither is
categorical, then statements of existence tell us nothing genuine
about an individual. The only genuine ascriptions that we can
make about individuals are in terms of the categories and hence
in terms of form. The ultimate reduction of all genuine
predication to form is really at the root of Davies' interpretation
of Aquinas. In Davies' own words:
On Aquinas's account, the existence of Thor is reportable by saying what Thor
is. "No entity without identity," says W. V. Quine. Or, as Aquinas, puts it,
existence is given by form (forma est essendi principium). "Every mode of
existence," says Aquinas, "is determined by some form" (quodlibet esse est
secundum formam). For Aquinas, we cannot describe something by saying that,
as well as being feline, intelligent and so on, it also exists. To exist is to be or
have form. Hence, for instance, Aquinas can only make sense of statements like

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"Thor exists" (Thor est) on the understanding that they tell us what something
is. Thor est, said of Thor the cat, means, for Aquinas, "Thor is a cat." (511)

Davies accords primacy to form or essence as determinative of
esse; esse is just the denial of the number nought with respect to
what can be described by form. Although I cannot make a long
case here, I believe that Davies misrepresents Thomas's doctrine
of the relationship between esse and essence. While it is true that
Thomas does speak of form or essence as causing esse iforma dat
esse), Cornelio Fabro and others have taught that such sayings
need to be read carefully in the light of the more fundamental
doctrine of esse as foundational act and form as potency to that
act. Form is a real co-principle of being and constitutes every
being as a specific kind of being with specific causal powers, but
it is related as potency in the transcendental order to the esse that
it receives from God. Davies' treatment obscures the differences
(1) between the transcendental (God-creature) and the
predicamental (creature to creature) orders, (2) between efficient
and formal causation, and (3) between concept formation and
judgments of existence.
Davies goes on to show how this reading of the essence-esse
relationship allegedly illuminates Aquinas's doctrine of God as
esse per se subsistens and the causa esse. To describe creatures as
having esse is not to attribute a property to them. All that we do
when we ascribe esse to something is to say that the thing in
question is more than the meaning of words, that we are saying
what is the case. Davies says that Aquinas's "idea is that in truly
knowing what, for example, a cat (as opposed to a unicorn) is, we
are latching on to the fact that cats have esse" (514). Davies thus
concludes that "Aquinas's teaching on esse is decidedly matter of
fact and even pedestrian. For him, we lay hold of the esse of
things by living in the world and by truly saying what things are"
(ibid.). When we ask the question "Why is there any world at
all?", as opposed to what accounts for this or that particular
thing, we get to God who, as ipsum esse subsistens, explains how
creatures are more than the meaning of words. To say that God
is ipsum esse subsistens is ultimately just a shorthand way of
saying that God is not created because God is not composed; it is

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BRIAN J. SHANLEY

an exercise in the via negativa. Whatever accounts for particular
beings must somehow transcend those beings.
Davies concludes his essay:
I have tried to expound Aquinas's teaching so as to indicate that, if nothing
else, it is something of which a modern philosopher might well take account
since it accords with what a modern philosopher might well want to say on the
topic of existence. I am tempted to say that it is something of which a modern
analytical philosopher might take account; but I cannot really claim to know
what makes a philosopher analytic. (517)

In these words surfaces the major problem facing the entire
Analytical Thomist project: the tendency to domesticate Aquinas
metaphysically so that he fits neatly into analytic categories.
Without referring explicitly to Davies, Stephen Theron
nonetheless aptly characterizes the import of an approach like
Davies' in the concluding essay: "What emerges, after all, is a
view of the medieval colossus as not out of harmony with the
later, supposedly more sophisticated researches of Frege and the
tradition in which Frege stands, at the same time as Frege himself
can by this route more easily appear as the continuator of an
original philosophia perennis" (614). To use the language of
Gilson, Frege-friendly readings of Aquinas end up as some form
of essentialism. Aquinas's authentic doctrine of being-with its
emphasis on esse as the actus essendi, the act of all acts and the
perfection of all perfections-simply cannot be harmonized with
post-Frege analytical dogmas. It is rather the case that Aquinas
challenges those dogmas. What is really called for in Analytical
Thomism is a thoughtful and critical confrontation with prevailing analytic dogmas on existence as in David Braine's The
Reality of Time and the Existence of God (Oxford, 1988). Any
version of Analytic Thomism that gives up defending the
uniqueness and richness of Aquinas's decidedly pre-Frege notion
of esse has given up the game. The best of the essays in this
volume, and the model for the kind of Analytical Thomism that
would be salutary, demonstrate not how Aquinas fits neatly onto
the analytic map, but rather how he does not.
John Lamont's "Aquinas on Divine Simplicity" begins with an
interesting discussion of form. He argues that we can make good

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sense of Aquinas on the distinction between form in esse naturale
and form in esse intentionale through Frege's distinction between
Eigenschaft (property} and Merkmal (characteristic). The form as
thought (esse intentionale) is the same as the form in the material
object (esse materiale);there is no difference in the characteristics
of the form, but rather the form as thought takes on a property.
Lamont argues that Aquinas's doctrine of form is superior to
Frege's doctrine of concepts because Aquinas does not have to
account for abstract objects. Lamont rightfully stresses, in the face
of persistent misunderstanding, that the form as thought for
Aquinas is not a mental image; knowing involves formal identity,
not a representational matching of image and original. Overall
Lamont's discussion of form is intriguing, yet it is flawed by his
failure to respect Aquinas's distinction between form and essence.
Lamont goes on to apply this account of form to the question
of divine simplicity, but it turns out that his main interest is what
divine simplicity implies for divine necessity. The crux interpretatum is whether God's existence is necessary in a logical sense.
Brian Davies and Patterson Brown want to argue that necessary
existence can be attributed to God (as in the tertia via) without
that entailing a commitment to the thesis that "God exists" is
logically necessary. But as Lamont shows, Aquinas argues that the
identity of essence and esse in God does entail that "God exists"
is logically necessary, only we cannot see this because the divine
essence is beyond our grasp; it is true per se, but not quoad nos.
Lamont asserts that Brown and Davies' denial of this claim is
rooted in their underlying adherence to Frege (and Geach).
According to this view, "God exists" cannot be logically necessary
because existence is a property of concepts, an assertion that there
is an object answering to the concept. Since existence is not a
property of objects, it cannot be a logically necessary property of
God. As we have already seen, Fregean metaphysical commitments skew the interpretation of Aquinas. Lamont argues that
there is a modified Fregean way of understanding how existence
can be a necessary to God if we see being actual as a unique
characteristic mark (Merkmal) of God rather than as a normal
property (Eigenschaft).

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BRIAN J. SHANLEY

Aquinas's notion of form is central also to Jonathan Jacobs and
John Zeis's "Form and Cognition: How to Go Out of Your
Mind." While it is unfortunate that Jacobs and Zeis lump
Aristotle and Aquinas together in what they describe as an
"Aristotelian-Thomistic" approach to cognition, they rightly stress
the centrality of formal causation in both cases. It is formal
causation that obviates the modern problem of how the mind gets
back to the world. Jacobs and Zeis point out that Aquinas's
doctrine of abstraction is radically different from post-Lockean
doctrines. It is not a matter of empiricist abstraction wherein the
input is a set of particular ideas and the output is some kind of
general image or idea. The authors argue that the doctrine of
formal causation, and so formal identity in knowing, that is
ingredient in Aquinas's notion of concept formation allows
Aquinas to avoid the skeptical problems endemic to modern
doctrines of abstraction as typified in Hume, Putnam, Quine, and
Kripke. Jacobs and Zeis then discuss how to place Aquinas's
doctrine of cognition on the contemporary epistemological map.
They argue that it is primarily externalist, non-evidentialist, and
natural, but that it also incorporates elements of foundationalist,
coherence, internalist, and normative theories of cognition. This
leads to the simple but important conclusion: "The standard
dichotomies in the contemporary discussion of the justification of
belief do not apply to the A{f [Aristotelian-Thomistic] theory of
knowledge" (553). Contrary to Davies, who interprets Aquinas as
confirming contemporary presuppositions, Jacobs and Zeis find
him challenging them.
Eleonore Stump comes to rather the same conclusion in her
"Aquinas's Account of Freedom: Intellect and Will." Stump wants
to argue that Aquinas's view of freedom is not voluntaristic
because he associates freedom not with the will alone, but rather
with will and intellect: "the dynamic interactions of intellect and
will yield freedom as an emergent property or systems-level
feature" (576). This aspect of Aquinas's account is often obscured
by a narrow focus on liberum arbitrium that neglects the complex
interplay of intellect and will in the various other moments of a
human act. While I think Stump's aversion to voluntarism inclines
her too far in the opposite direction of intellectualism, she

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nonetheless does an excellent job of highlighting how both
freedom of action and freedom of will are systems-level
properties.
Stump argues that Aquinas is not a compatibilist because he
believes the causal chain resulting in a voluntary act has to
originate in principles intrinsic to the agent. She holds that "if
something extrinsic to the agent were to act on the will with
efficient causation, then the tie of the will to the intellect, from
which acts of the will get their voluntary character, would be
broken, and so the act of the will wouldn't be voluntary" (585).
This is a debatable claim, however, given what Aquinas holds
about the relationship between God and the will. Stump considers
the God-will problem to be restricted to theology's consideration
of grace, but it is clear from many passages in Aquinas that God
is operative in the will quite apart from grace. This would imply
that while Aquinas is surely not a compatibilist in the normal
sense of the term, he does think that human freedom is
compatible with divine causation. Aquinas does not fit neatly into
either compatibilism or incompatibilism. As for the other contemporary category, libertarianism, if it is understood to entail the
principle of alternative possibilities or the freedom to do
otherwise, then Aquinas does not really fit here either. As Stump
shows, Aquinas does hold that liberumarbitriumentails the ability
to do otherwise, but ultimately that freedom is rooted in a
freedom that does not involve the will's ability to do otherwise.
We are not free with respect to alternative possibilities when its
comes to the will's natural inclination to the bonum commune or
ultimate end. When confronted with God the ultimate Good, the
will cannot nill; the blessed in heaven freely will God, but they
cannot do otherwise. Stump argues that what really matters then
for freedom is not the presence or absence of alternative
possibilities, but rather that the agent's volition causally originate
internally from his own intellect and will. Stump therefore
concludes that Aquinas does not fit neatly into any preexisting
libertarian mold. Ultimately the will is free in Aquinas not because
of its independence from intellect, but rather precisely because of
its relationship to intellect.

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The title of Stephen Theron's concluding essay reveals a
negative verdict on the project of Analytical Thomism: "The
Resistance of Thomism to Analytical and Other Patronage."
Theron considers Analytical Thomism as a capitulation to the
Zeitgeist that is incompatible with Thomism's claim to be a
philosophia perrennis. He roundly and harshly condemns a long
list of analytic corrumptores. Theron seems to think that one
cannot be a Thomist without abandoning analytic philosophy
altogether. While I am sympathetic to some of Theron's worries,
I do not share his deep pessimism about Analytic Thomism.
Thomists not trained in analytic philosophy can learn much from
analytical readers of Aquinas. Analytic Thomists can help nonAnalytic Thomists to see new themes in Aquinas, to pose new
questions to him, to push his thought in new directions, to
acknowledge areas where his thinking is no longer tenable, and
so bring his thought into the contemporary arena. The logical and
argumentative rigor of the best of analytic philosophy can indeed
be a necessary corrective to overly pious expository readings of
Aquinas; St. Thomas himself can stand such scrutiny, even if some
of his followers cannot.
The influence needs to go in both directions, however, because
one of the principal flaws in many analytic readings of Aquinas is
an astonishing unfamiliarity with nonanalytic treatments. One
often has the impression that Analytic Thomists are writing only
for each other, oblivious to the fact that many of their points have
already been made by nonanalytic scholars; they often merely
reinvent the Thomistic wheel. They need to read more
non-English, nonanalytic literature. They need to become more
historically informed. They need a greater familiarity with
Aquinas's larger theological picture. Analytic and non-Analytic
Thomists have much to teach each other if only they would listen.
Together they would have much to offer current analytical
philosophy by offering a way of thinking that transcends the
standard problematic by challenging the dogmas and idols of the
age.
There is cause for optimism then about the stimulus to
Thomism that could come from Analytical Thomism. As noted in
this discussion, however, the major cause for concern is

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metaphysical. At the heart of Aquinas's philosophy is his
understanding of being as ultimately rooted in esse as actus
essendi. This does not fit with analytical metaphysical dogmas.
Here then is where the ultimate test of allegiance lies. It is
possible, of course, to be an analytic philosopher who offers
interesting readings of Aquinas without any commitment to his
doctrine of being. But I would not call such a one a Thomist, nor,
I presume, would he call himself one. What I am arguing is that
to be a Thomist of any stripe requires some primary commitment
to Thomas's metaphysics; without that commitment, one may be
an interpreter or even a specialist, but one is not a Thomist. It is
a matter of debate, of course, what other doctrines of St. Thomas
one must adhere to in order to be a Thomist and surely the items
are broader than the metaphysics of esse. But however one draws
the Thomistic circle, the core must be esse in St. Thomas's sense,
not Frege's.

BOOK REVIEWS
Thomas Aquinas, Theologian. By THOMAS F. O'MEARA, 0.P. Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1997. Pp. 302. $36.00 (doth), $16.95
(paper). ISBN 0-268-01898-7 (cloth), 0-268-04201-2 (paper).
O'Meara's treatment is impressive. Most books nowadays aim to be all
things to all readers; they seek especially to address the uninitiated and the
specialist. Few succeed. O'Meara's book is in this regard a happy exception.
Because of its accessible style and its comprehensive approach to its topic, it
will serve as an introductory text. Because of the author's far-ranging
knowledge of the texts of Aquinas and his success at combining attention to an
array of specific passages with a synoptic vision of texts and themes, long-time
scholars of Aquinas will find the book a profitable read, even as they may
disagree with some of the book's underlying assumptions. O'Meara offers a
remarkably broad approach to Aquinas: he locates Aquinas's work within its
historical context, expounds some of the basic themes and structures of his
thought, provides an introduction to the history and main lines of dispute in
the interpretation of Thomas, and ends with suggestions about the contributions of Aquinas to contemporary issues and debates. What unifies these
topics is the insistence that Aquinas must be read as preeminently a theologian;
thus O'Meara's book stands in an impressive, if relatively recent line of
interpretation that stresses the primacy of theology in Aquinas and sees itself
as correcting the neo-Scholastic emphasis on Aquinas as philosopher.
O'Meara opens by situating Aquinas in the context of medieval monasticism
and of the novel functions of the friars in the cities and nascent universities.
Some of the most suggestive historical observations underscore the parallels
between the style and structure of Aquinas's texts and those of Gothic architecture. He applies to the Summa Theologiae the principles of Gothic art
enunciated by Arnold Hauser, where the accent is on "expansion ... not
concentration, coordination . . . not subordination, ... the open sequence
rather than the closed geometric form" (47-48). Instead of reading the Summa
in a linear, discrete, and static manner, as a sort of deductive encyclopedia, we
must attend to the multiple connections among the parts, to their dynamic
interaction, and to the relationships of parts to structural wholes (54).
Building on Chenu's famous reading of the structure of the Summa
Theologiae in terms of the neo-Platonic motif of the exitus-reditus, O'Meara
notes passages where Thomas speaks of the work of creation as a circle. The

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reditus is not simply a "collapse backward" or merely a recovery of what was
latent in the beginning. "The goals of being and grace draw creatures not
backward but upward and forward. Aquinas spoke not of a return but of a
journey" (58). Echoing, with Aquinas, Dionysius's preference for the image of
the spiral over the circle, O'Meara holds that the spiral hints at the role of
history and freedom rather than mere process in the depiction of human
destiny. At the center of this conception lies the distinctively anti-pagan
teaching on the Incarnation. O'Meara's suggestions here are fertile, not just for
reading the Summa but also for the distinctively Catholic approach to history,
an approach that explodes the pagan, cyclical view of time while avoiding the
modern, linear conception of progress.
Throughout, O'Meara makes use of some of the best recent literature on
Aquinas: Pesch on principles of exegesis and the theology of grace, Patfoort on
the structure of the Summa Theologiae, Torrell on the integration of Thomas' s
thought and life within his spirituality, and Boyle on the historical setting of
the Summa Theologiae. He is especially helpful in drawing out the theological
implications of Boyle's claim that the Summa was Thomas's distinctively
Dominican work, an attempt to correct the disorganized and excessively
casuistical methods in early Dominican textbooks for the care of souls.
O'Meara outlines a reading of the unity of the three parts of the text. The
culmination of the first part (on the imago Dei) "serves as a bridge to the
graced anthropology of the second part" (107), while the simultaneous insistence on divine sovereignty and the dignity of creatures provides the basis
for a view of nature as infused and perfected by grace. This in turn reaches its
pinnacle in the "Incarnation as the fulfillment of the God's loving plan for the
human race" (128-36).
O'Meara applauds the freeing of Aquinas from the hold of neoScholasticism. Although interest in Aquinas may have diminished immediately
after the Second Vatican Council, appreciation of his work has increased
steadily in recent years, especially among non-Catholics. This is indisputable
and to be welcomed. Nonetheless, one wonders whether the neglect of
synthesis to which O'Meara attributes the failure of Thomism in the early
modern period does not equally bedevil recent exegesis of Aquinas. Since most
of those now writing on Aquinas lack the sort of training in the reading of
Aquinas that was characteristic of O'Meara's generation, they are often unable
to transcend a piecemeal appropriation of his texts. Indeed, O'Meara's own
style and method are anomalous today. With his attention to historical context,
to the multiple genres in which Thomas composed, to the analogically rich use
of terms, and to the complex structure ofThomas's pedagogy, O'Meara's work
recalls the best of neo-Thomism. (O'Meara would of course object to this
alignment on the grounds that neo-Thomism attempted to extract an autonomous philosophy from what was properly a theological project and thus
truncated and eviscerated Aquinas's thought.)

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O'Meara approves Pesch's depiction of neo-Thomism as holding Aquinas
"under house arrest" up to 1962 (197). He rather sweepingly disdains what he
calls the neo-Scholastic reaction against all things modern and contemporary.
Not surprisingly, for him the two heroes of twentieth-century Thomism are
Rahner and McCool. The latter's history of Thomism celebrates an emergent
pluralism, both as the most accurate description of the diversity of Thomistic
schools and as normative for the appropriation of a thinker as complex as
Aquinas. Such an interpretation has the apparent advantage of quelling the
internecine warfare among different schools of Thomism and of accommodating Thomas to an age of diversity. Of course, McCool's pluralistic
interpretation arises not from some position of neutrality among the competing
schools but from a specific branch of Thomism, namely, transcendental
Thomism, which he thinks can better explain the fact of pluralism. Yet, if
O'Meara can flippantly dismiss Gilson for his "eccentric metaphysics" (181),
transcendental Thomism is at least equally open to the charge of basing its
reading in an eccentric epistemology, which gives too much ground to Kant (in
the case of Lonergan) or Heidegger (in the case of Rahner).
This is precisely where O'Meara's neglect of the properly philosophical
dimension of Aquinas's thought becomes problematic. As we have noted above,
the great contribution of O'Meara's project is his restoration of the primacy of
theology in Aquinas; this allows for a more historically accurate understanding
of the context and motivation for Aquinas's writings and for a comprehensive
reading of his mature writings. Yet this should not lead us to a neglect of the
importance of philosophical pedagogy and disputation for Aquinas. To many
of the philosophical disputes of his day, Aquinas sought to give properly
philosophical responses. Lack of attention to these disputes, in Aquinas's time
and in our own, engenders a philosophically naive theology, unaware of its
philosophical presuppositions or implications. It was only natural that in the
sustained philosophical assault on ancient and medieval philosophy in the
modern period followers of Aquinas would focus on the underlying
philosophical disputes. How many contemporary, theological approaches to
Aquinas provide us with a philosophically thin and unsatisfying Aquinas?
Indeed, O'Meara himself rather uncritically adopts the philosophical principles
of transcendental Thomism. In his survey of modern Thomists, O'Meara gives
inordinate attention and praise to Rahner. He quotes, with apparent
approbation, Rahner's claims that Catholic theology must embrace the
"transcendental-anthropological turn of modern philosophy" and that modernity is itself a "moment in Christian philosophy and theology" (190). As much
as one wants to insist that modernity must be engaged, not simply dismissed,
one wonders whether such a depiction of modernity does not fail to allow its
distinctive voices to be heard. In the interest of accommodation, the elements
of modernity that are deeply anti-theological and especially anti-Catholic are
suppressed. And so the dialogue never really begins.

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O'Meara is right to see the goal of reading Aquinas as twofold: (1) to
acknowledge, in the words of Pesch, the "basic distance" between Aquinas's
thought and that of our time-not just in terms of conclusions but in terms of
the kinds of questions posed and the shape of the inquiry itself; and (2) to find
in Thomas a way of addressing contemporary issues and concerns. Without the
former, we will have only superficial, fashionable applications of Aquinas to
contemporary problems; without the latter, Thomas ceases to be a living
interlocutor. The supposition of all serious reading of old books is that by
underscoring their otherness we allow them to put into question the unreflective dogmas of our time. Thus we may be freed from the tyranny of the
present. When O'Meara turns to the present, his Aquinas too often speaks in
terms that confirm rather than unsettle current assumptions. This is especially
true when it comes to ethical and political matters. At times we are given
platitudes about the need to embrace "process, historicity, and individuality"
(249) and bland descriptions of postmodernism as seeking a "union of theory
and life" and as respecting "past cultures and present diversity." O'Meara aptly
notes the complexity of the political world of Aquinas's time and of Aquinas's
own political thought, which distinguishes between faith and politics, law and
morality (221). While he notes that not freedom of choice but the common
good (219) is the ultimate standard of good government, the tenor of the
discussionleads the reader to see Aquinas as an anticipation of modern political
insights, albeit one whose thought might help temper certain of its excesses.
Nowhere do we get the sense that modern conceptions of the common good,
be they conservative or liberal, are diametrically opposed to that of Aquinas.
If O'Meara's book does not quite fulfill the twofold task, this is sobering
testimony to how difficult that accomplishment is. But O'Meara is right. We
must do both. We cannot settle for less.
THOMAS S. HIBBS

Boston College
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts

History of Vatican II, vol. 2, Formation of the Council's Identity, October
1962-September 1963. Edited by GIUSEPPE ALBERIGO and JOSEPH A.
KOMONCHAK. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1997. Pp. 654. $80.00
(cloth). ISBN 1-57075-147-1.
I have previously written an extended reflection on the first volume of this
series under the title "Vatican II as a Program in Applied Philosophy" (The
Modern Schoolman 75:4 [May. 1998] 315-27). Even though the council is a

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religious event, I agree with Rocco Buttiglione's statement: "To interpret the
Council is par excellence to do the work of Christian philosophy. But that does
not imply an effort only of aggiornamento of Christian culture but much more
progress in the general self-understanding of man, a step forward in the
philosophical consciousness of all humanity" (emphasis added). However, as
Alberigo makes clear, any discernment of the metamorphosis that took place
in the ecclesial consciousness at Vatican II is no easy matter.
In introducing this second volume Alberigo points out that the
historiographical and literary norms shaping the first volume had to be radically changed for this second one. The work of the central and preparatory
commissions (1959-62), described in volume 1, organized the preconciliar
schemata along generally accepted neo-Scholastic (conceptualistic) lines. This
second volume, however, narrates the maelstrom of the bishops' abreaction to
such unimaginative thinking. One of the simpler ways to cope with this
complex chaos would have been to tease out various issues from the first
session's controversies and treat them thematically. The editorial board voted
against this and decided to follow historical-critical method in a professional
way. In this process priority has been given to the concrete development of the
conciliar undertaking in all its twists and turns. The editors have made every
effort to move beyond mere chronicle in order to achieve a multidimensional
understanding of the conciliar event at its various levels.
Let it be known from the start that the crux of this investigation is the
council as event. The Resurrection of Christ, Pentecost, and the explosion of
the atomic bomb are all events, spectacular change-agents that have irrupted
into human reality and existence in a largely unanticipated way; it sometimes
takes years, even centuries, to gain an insight into their authentic meaning and
implications. The basic thesis of this book's editorial board is that only
present-day historical-critical research can reveal Vatican II in depth as an
event: that is, a great existential change-agent for the Catholic Church. In such
a context to equate the council with its corpus of texts not only impoverishes
the hermeneutics of these texts but forecloses any authentic knowledge of
Vatican II as a journey whereby the assembly gained its self-identity. In
Alberigo's opinion the really paradigmatic events (i.e., Vatican II's "New
Pentecost") took place in the council's first session and its 1963 intersession,
and these are the topic of this second volume.
The ten chapters of this book have been written by seven authors. (1)
Andrea Riccardi (Rome): I. "The Tumultuous Opening Days of the Council."
(2) Gerald Fogarty (Charlottesville): II. "The Council Gets Under-Way." (3)
Mathus Lamberigts (Leuven): III. "The Liturgy Debates" and VI. "The
Discussion of the Modern Media." (4) Hilari Raguer (Montserrat): IV. "An
Initial Profile of the Assembly."(5) Giuseppe Ruggieri (Catania): V. "The First
Doctrinal Clash" and VII. "Beyond an Ecclesiology of Polemics: The Debate on
the Church." (6) Jan Grootaers (Leuven): VIII. "The Drama Continues Between
the Acts: The 'Second Preparation' and Its Opponents," and IX. "Ebb and Flow
Between Two Seasons." (7) Giuseppe Alberigo (Bologna): Preface and X. "The

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Conciliar Experience: 'Learning on Their Own'." The book is completed by a
fulsome Index of Names and Index of Subjects.
It would be rather futile in such a short review as this to try to summarize
the contents of the above chapters. Suffice to say, they are all competently
researched and written. However complex these chapters may be, certain "red
threads" run through them like woof to warp. It is only in the last chapter, as
in some detective story, that Alberigo unravels the underlying plot. The broad
scenario shapes up like this. The pre-Vatican II Church, ghettoized by modern
thought and culture, had become introverted and self-absorbed. Its authoritarianism and outmoded Scholasticism not only choked off large elements of
creativity but also magnified the ecclesial self-identity at the cost of aggravating
separations and contrasts. In the popular mind (as propounded mainly by
intellectuals of Northern Europe) John XXIII called the council to remedy such
problems and open the Church to the "new horizons" of the modern world. As
a result of the confrontations provoked early in the council by Cardinals Frings
and Lienart, a new freedom of action-the primordial event of the councilwas enjoyed by the bishops in developing their conciliar self-identity and
expression. The way, it seemed, had been opened for a radical and apparently
unconditioned reshuffling of the "certainties" grounding the preparation for
Vatican II. In this new climate the movements that irrupted before the council
unexpectedly became the lode-stars of renewal. The liturgical movement,
ecumenism, ressourcement, the return to the Bible-movements often suspect
and only tolerated in previous years-exploded in conciliar reflections like
chain-reaction events out of the primordial event of the bishops' newfound
freedom of action.
Emphasizing event like this leads us into a religious "world" where
charismatic dynamisms-under the guidance of the Holy Spirit-communicate
a "fuller" doctrinal attunement superior to any later verbal formulations. This
is an early case of an emotive orthopraxis taking precedence over a conceptualistic type of orthodoxy. Alberigo offers an enlightening example of the
implications of such a situation:
Some [bishops] had perhaps not been entirely aware of the doctrinal
significance of some crucial passages in the schema on the liturgy (the
liturgical celebration as "source and summit" of the Church; the
central place of the local church; the importance of episcopal
conferences; the equal emphasis placed on the liturgy of the word and
the liturgy of the Eucharist), yet these were gains that, as would be seen
later on, constituted meaningful guidelines for ecclesiology and had the
potential to condition all the subsequent work of the Council.

Inasmuch as the introduction to the liturgy schema stated that the document
did not intend to issue dogmatic definitions but gave priority to the renewal of
the liturgical life as such, apart from any theological debates, it seems
somewhat odd that such significant doctrinal implications are so readily

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discerned embedded in essentially pastoral formulations. No doubt Alberigo
would here appeal to "Lex orandi, lex credendi." However, even today the
great, unresolved question of Vatican II is, how are significant doctrinal tenets
or shifts generated out of the matrix of an essentially pastoral council?
On the assumption that such is the case, Alberigo recognizes that the logic
of the situation caused the bishops no small dilemma. At Vatican II they were
faced with some daunting challenges: for example, how to transcend the old
Scholastic anthropology, how to reintegrate pneumatology into ecclesiology,
how to get beyond the Church-State problematic of the past, and how to
promote the unity of Christians without uniformism or "return." The past
supremacy of Scholastic theology had been so oppressive as to hamper any
creative efforts to cope innovatively with such problems. As a result, Vatican
II was not able to draw upon preexisting and mature doctrinal statements. One
has the impression that during the 1962-65 period the bishops found
themselves having to address new problems or new perspectives on old
problems as a "work in progress." This accounts in some degree for the
widespread opinion that the council's documents are more a springboard into
the future than anything chiseled in granite. In such an environment there
tends to be a much greater reliance on the human sciences to read the signs of
the times accurately. All of these factors tend to fit or accommodate the
Church to our modern age of worldwide cultural and intellectual pluralism.
What are the implications of this radical adjustment to contemporary
modernism? Modernism, as I view it here, is related to five ideas (cf. William
R. Everdell, The First Moderns [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997],
347). (1) There is embedded in every system for arriving at truth a recursiveness or self-reference that automatically undermines the consistency of the
system. (2) Objectivity, the possibility of mutual agreement on "reality," gets
no closer to truth than its contrary, a radical subjectivity bordering on
solipsism. (3) Every truth implies the subjective perspective from which it was
derived and no one of these perspectives is privileged. (4) Any "objective"
truths there are to be found are inductive in the extreme, seeming all to lie in
statistical regularities. All of the above ideas derive from (5) the assumption of
ontological discontinuity-of atoms and void. If we may assume the hypothesis
of our traditional Catholic beliefs for a moment, all of these problems exist
outside the Church as do such global issues of war and peace, the imbalances
of world poverty, and widespread moral indifference. My own research
convinces me that John XXIII called a pastoral, not a doctrinal, council to
confront such world problems in an efficacious way. It is somewhat ironic that
the bishops grappled with the renewal of the world and humanity by a massive
program of religious introversion such as it has been described in this essay.
Possibly our understanding of the council needs much more rethinking than
offered thus far.
Whatever may be my reservations about the hermeneutics of the council
presented in this volume, I wish to endorse it wholeheartedly as a much-needed

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academic reflection on a watershed event in the Catholic Church. At the same
time I look forward eagerly to volume 3 where John XXIII's council becomes
that of Paul VI. My own research on Vatican II has given me an enhanced
appreciation of Paul Vi's understanding and monitoring of the council's
religious dynamics. He understood the epistemological techniques whereby a
pastoral vision of a new humanity was being constituted by the council. It is
interesting to note that there is no science in any modern sense employed in the
council's style of reflection and analysis. This is a quite significant point in
terms of the dominant phenomenological philosophy in Northern Europe. The
new strategic vision is based on the Church's religious appreciation of the
Whole Christ as the Whole Man. As embodying a concrete universal, this vision
of a renewed humanity transfigured by the Glorified Christ projects an image
of the new People of God as the global Good Samaritan ministering to the
wounds of present-day mankind. It is this type of ecclesial self-identity, rather
than that projected for the bishops by this volume, that displays Buttiglione's
important insight into the council's "step forward in the philosophical consciousness of all humanity." I hope this type of catalytic notional exchange in
the future volumes of this series will stimulate the excitement of anticipation
and satisfying enjoyment to be had from research into the nature of the Second
Vatican Council.
John F. Kobler, C.P.
Immaculate Conception Monastery
Chicago, Illinois

Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The Case of Thomas Aquinas. By
JANA.AERTSEN.Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996. Pp. 454. $152.50 (cloth). ISBN
90-04-10585-9.

The title of Jan Aertsen's Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: The
Case of Thomas Aquinas does not quite convey the ambition of this book. In
the first place, Aertsen's book offers us yet another hermeneutical key to the
thought of Aquinas, to be added to the ranks of such twentieth-century themes
as analogy, participation, and the primacy of esse. Aertsen wants to show that
Thomas's doctrine of the transcendentals is foundational for his thought. In so
doing, he means both to fill a lacuna in Thomistic scholarship and to rescue the
medieval doctrine and its name from Kantian appropriations and misinterpretations. The book's second ambition is to show that medieval philosophy is
distinguished by a transcendental way of thought absent in antiquity and

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modernity. Aertsen offers this conception of medieval philosophy as a
correction of Gilson's existential medievalism, the Analytic school's linguistic
medievalism, and Alain de Liber's ethical medievalism, all three of which his
transcendental conception seeks to incorporate.
In his introduction, Aertsen announces that he wants to show that
"philosophy in the Middle Ages expresses itself as a way of thought which can
be called 'transcendental"' (xi) in answer to the ever-pressing question, what
is philosophy in the Middle Ages? He takes Thomas as a representative of
medieval thought and his metaphysics as one example of medieval
transcendental thought. He criticizes Gilson's notion of "Christian philosophy"
for not doing justice, on the one hand, to the historical pluriformity of
medieval thought, which includes both alternatives to and criticisms of the
metaphysics of being, and, on the other hand, to the independence ascribed by
Thomas to philosophy both in method and in principle, notwithstanding the
thoroughly theological nature of his own overall synthesis. Aertsen criticizes
the new medievalism of the Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy
(1982) for the logico-semantic skew that results from its editorial criterion of
philosophical recognizability to the modern (Analytic) mind. He criticizes De
Libera for confining the medieval experience of human intellectuality to the
faculty of arts and for introducing a separation between philosophy and
Christian faith alien to the age.
Aertsen prepares the way for his own representation of medieval philosophy
as transcendental thought by citing ego-statements of Bonaventure, Aquinas,
Scotus, and Eckhart on the resolution of the intellect's concepts to prima,
communia, or transcendentia. He then makes an ego-statement of his own:
"The doctrine of the transcendentia, among which 'being,' 'one,' 'true' and
'good' are reckoned, is not just another doctrine alongside many others, for it
concerns what is the first and the foundation of thought. Over time, my
conviction has grown that medieval philosophy can be regarded as a way of
transcendental thought, as a scientia transcendens" (19). Aertsen maintains that
the object of medieval philosophy is the result of a modern hermeneutical
intervention which wrests texts from their contexts, and he proposes
epistemological reduction as the proper viewpoint for the reconstruction of a
medieval philospohy. He sees in the medievals' reduction of human thought to
self-evident transcendental concepts their answer to the challenge posed to
Christian theology by Aristotle's comprehensive philosophical explanation of
reality. In their doctrines of the transcendentals they sought to give a proper
foundation to philosophy by uncovering "the conditions for all thought and the
basis of philosophical reflection" (20).
One might wonder whether Aertsen's epistemological medievalism has
escaped the sort of skew for which he criticizes Analytic interpreters of
medieval philosophy, namely the hermeneutic criterion of "philosophical
recognizability to the modern mind," where the minds at issue are Kantian.
However, Aertsen is insistent on the difference between Kantian and medieval

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transcendental thought. The former is transcendental-logical and concerned
with the a priori constitution of objects of cognition, whereas the latter
concerns the primary attributes of being that run through all the categories of
being and the concepts of which arise a posteriori in the intellectual apprehension of sensible objects of experience. Against transcendental Thomism,
Aertsen emphasizes that for Thomas the knowledge of being is not an a priori
condition or formal category of the intellect, but rather a relation to being that
is potential and receptive. Against L. Honnefelder's Scotistic critique of
Thomas, he argues that Thomas's account of this relation is sufficient to ground
a transcendental openness of the human intellect to being in general and to
God as the cause of all being.
Aertsen employs three contexts for his interpretation of Thomas's doctrine
of the transcendentals: the medieval conception and development of the
doctrine, the historical sources that occasioned this medieval innovation, and
a systematic framework ofThomas's own thought. In chapter 1, Aertsen locates
the beginning of the doctrine of the transcendentals in Philip the Chancellor's
Summa de bona (ca. 1225-28). Philip begins, "The understanding of questions
is extracted from the commonness of principles," without which "the rest falls
into darkness." Aertsen takes this as expressive of Philip's intention to go into
the ground of thought, motivated by a desire to defend the transcendentality
of the good against the Manichean dualism of the Cathari. Aertsen consistently
renders Philip's account of the communissima or the prima as a resolution to
first concepts. For the first time in the history of Western philosophy, Philip
brings together the four basic notions of "being," "one," "true," and "good,"
and explicates their mutual relations: they are convertible according to their
supposits, but differ according to their concepts; they may be ordered according to the notion of indivision; and they are founded on the threefold causality
of God's creative action. Alexander of Hales takes over Philip's sketch of the
transcendentals and elaborates a threefold systematization of them according
to three orders of being: an ontological determination of being in its own
domain, a theological determination of being in relation to divine causality,
and an anthropological determination of being in relation to man. Albert the
Great elaborates two systematizations, an ontological one based on the dual act
of an entity's form (i.e., form both gives being and determines matter), and a
theological one based on the creative causality of God. The problem that
emerges from this early history of the transcendentals is to say what the other
transcendentals positively "add" to "being" if they are at once convertible but
not synonymous with it. This is the state of the question when Thomas takes
it up and begins what Aertsen calls a new phase of transcendental thought.
In chapter 2, Aertsen gives an interpretation of Thomas's general account
of the transcendentals in terms of three basic texts-I Sent., d. 8, q. 1, a. 3; De
Verit., q. 1, a. 1; and De Verit., q. 21, a. 1-and in terms of three basic issuesthe resolution into something first, the idea of being as the first known, and the
problem of the addition. Of the three basic texts, De Verit., q. 1, a. 1 is central

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to Aertsen's epistemological reading of Thomas's general doctrine, as the other
two basic texts do not include any resolution of human knowledge to its
foundation. When Thomas raises the question in De Verit., q. 1, a. 1, "What
is truth?," and approaches it with the assertion, "Just as in demonstrable
matters a reduction must be made to principles known to the intellect per se,
so likewise in investigating what something is [quid est]," Aertsen sees him as
inquiring into the conditions for all inquiry into what something is (74). "This
approach could be called 'transcendental' in the Kantian sense because according to Kant, in transcendental science the point is no longer to go forward but
to go backward. Thomas's resolutio is a going back to that first which is
presupposed in all knowledge" (79).
According to Aertsen, De Verit., q. 1, a. 1 shows that for Thomas what is
first is a conception of being: "That which the intellect first conceives, as best
known, and into which it resolves all its conceptions, is being [ens]." Aertsen
does not say much about what this conception consists in, except to argue
against existential Thomism that the concept of being is attained first of all in
simple apprehension and that it is conceived of immediately upon the human
intellect's beginning to act. In his close analysis of the ensuing text, he does not
distinguish in translation between ens and esse, so that he does not make
anything of Thomas's calling an Aristotelian category a modus essendi and a
transcendental a modus entis. In any case, Aertsen emphasizes that the medieval
transcendentals are called such because they transcend the Aristotelian
categories in the direction of being in general, that is, because they run through
all of them and are common to them. What is distinctive in Thomas's account
is his argument that being is primary because it is first known and best known
and because nothing else can be conceived without it. Aertsen remarks, "Being
is so familiar to us that it usually remains hidden to us that human knowledge
is principally a conception of being. Only in reflexive analysis, in the resolutio,
does it become clear that 'without being nothing can be apprehended by the
intellect"' (84 ).
Aertsen makes much of the fact that in De Verit., q. 1, a. 1 Thomas gives an
account of the transcendentals verum and bonum relative to the human
soul-to intellect and will respectively-and so assigns a "special place" to man
among other beings in the world. "This acknowledgment," Aertsen suggests,
"resembles Heidegger's thesis of the priority of Dasein over all other beings.
Heidegger actually refers to Thomas's exposition" (105). Besides stressing the
"noetic" character of Thomas's resolutio in this text, Aertsen emphasizes that
in none of the basic texts is there is a theological grounding of the
transcendentals, as there was in Thomas's predecessors. Lastly, Thomas's
transcendental explication of being in terms of modes that add determinations
in concept rather than in reality is his distinctive solution to the "problem of
the addition" he inherited from Albert.
In chapter 3, Aertsen takes up the theme of the relation of the doctrine of
the transcendentals to metaphysics in general. He argues that Thomas

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transforms the concept of metaphysics from a theological conception based on
transmateriality to an ontological conception based on commonness. For
Thomas, first philosophy is transcendental in that it concerns being and its
properties, rather than transcendent divine being. God enters into the science
of metaphysics at the end, as the cause of its subject. The method of the science
is twofold: a resolutio secundum rationem to intrinsic forms or principles, and
a resolutio secundum rem to extrinsic causes. This twofold resolution leads to
a twofold commonness: commoness by predication and commonness by
causality. There is, moreover, a Thomistic resolution of the first principle of
demonstration to the concept of being, as well as a parallel resolution of the
first principle of practical reason to the concept of the good.
As the maxime primum, being is Thomas's Archimedean point, that is, the
condition of the possibility of cognition and science. Although Aertsen is
concerned to emphasize against Kantian interpretations of Thomas that his
transcendental resolutio is concerned with the things themselves and not with
logical concepts, with modes of being and not with modes of expression, it is
not always clear that Aertsen's nearly exclusive reading of Thomas's expositions in terms of a cognitive firstness does not capitulate somewhat to modern
transcendental thought. After all, as Thomas says in De Verit., q. 1, a. 1, the
name ens is taken from the actus essendi, and presumably the primacy of this
actus essendi in and for the being has something to do with the priority of the
concept ens for the human intellect. Moreover, it is by no means clear whether
the first conception of the intellect is a concept of "a being" or of "being in
general," of ens particulare or ens universale, an important distinction in De
Verit., q. 21, a. 1, one of Aertsen's three basic texts. In any case, Aertsen states
clearly that he understands Thomas's metaphysics to be a transcendental
consideration of each thing that resolves it into that which is and its being (id
quod est and esse), and as a second beginning of metaphysics that transcends
the Aristotelian accounts of substance and the categories.
Equipped with the hermeneutic framework sketched above, Aertsen goes on
in the next five chapters systematically to explicate five transcendentals: ens,
unum, verum, bonum, and pulchrum. Although Aertsen notes that Thomas is
unique among his contemporaries for naming res and aliquid as
transcendentals, and that half of the times that Thomas uses the word
transcendentia it is in connection with multitudo, these notions do not receive
a separate treatment in the book or in the conclusion. Rather, Aertsen treats res
with ens (ch. 4), and aliquid and multitudo with unum (ch. 5). Although
pulchrum receives its own chapter, Aertsen concludes that it is but a
specification of bonum and not a proper transcendental, pace more than one
prominent Thomist. The book's ninth chapter deals with the transcendentals
in theology, and in particular the transcendentals as divine names and the
divine foundation of the transcendentals. The concluding chapter summarizes
well the book's contents and conclusions.

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In the course of his explications and commentary Aertsen gives much
attention to the historical sources for Thomas's reflection. He considers
Thomas's use of Aristotle's remarks on being and the one in Metaphysics 4.2,
on being and the true in Metaphysics 2.1, and on being and the good in
Nicomachean Ethics 1.6. He shows Thomas's debt to Avicenna's discussions of
the notion of scientia and the subject of metaphysics, the primary notions or
"seeds" of scientific knowledge, the relation of being and the one, and his
transcendental notion of "thing." He also explores the profound influence on
Thomas of Boethius's axiomatic treatment of the question whether things are
good by substance or by participation. Lastly, he points to the influence of
Dionysius, whose discussion of the order of the divine names provided Thomas
with the context of his first discussion of the transcendentals in I Sent., d. 8, q.
1, a. 3.
For Aertsen, the theory of the transcendentals reveals the properly
philosophical dimension of medieval thought. It constitutes an innovation in
the history of philosophy and a second beginning of metaphysics. The most
original aspect of Thomas's doctrine is its anthropological motif, namely the
account in De Verit., q. 1, a. 1 of the good and the true in relation to the
human soul rather than to God. "When the transcendentia are the prima of
human intellectual knowledge, and the first intelligible are communia, the
distinctive mark of human beings must consist in their transcendental
openness" (431). Aertsen emphasizes this anthropological perspective to the
prejudice of Thomas's accounts of ontological truth in the rest of De Verit., q.
1, accounts in terms of a twofold relation of things to the divine as well as to
created intellect; Aertsen gives attention to this in the latter part of chapter 6
on verum but it is otherwise absent from the book, including the conclusion.
In any case, Aertsen argues that Thomas's doctrine of the transcendentals
metaphysically grounds his theories of knowledge, morality, and divine
causality. His effort to show that the transcendental way of thought is
foundational for Aquinas's philosophy is an impressiveand informative venture
not to be passed over by any serious student of Thomas, metaphysics, or the
history of philosophy.
JOHN TO MARCHIO

Villanova University
Villanova, Pennsylvania

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Walking with Faith: New Perspectives on the Sources and Shaping of Catholic
Moral Life. By WALTER}. Woons. Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical
Press, 1998. Pp. xvi + 528. $39.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8146-5824-5.

This book's primary concern is "moral life in the faith community" (xii). It
is an ambitious work, one that seeks "to illuminate the sources of moral life in
faith, show how moral life in the Church has developed over the centuries, and
encourage a more integral, comprehensive view" (xv). As such, it is a welcome
addition to the mounting body of literature that demonstrates the ongoing
historical interplay of the Christian faith with the ethical conduct of believers
and their official worship from the pews and in the sanctuary.
The author shows particular interest in the temporal, contemporary, and
transcendent factors that went into the shaping of Catholic moral life. He
orders his presentation in a chronological sequence of eleven balanced and
well-written chapters. He reflects on the scriptural, historical, intellectual, and
liturgical dimensions of this important walk with faith and provides a helpful
summary of his findings in the closing Epilogue.
The book has many strengths, not the least of which is the author's
competent and judicious use of the principle of correlation, the historiographical assumption that a complex web of interrelated sociological and
cultural factors must be taken in account when examining the way ideas arise,
develop, and function through time. It is exceedingly difficult to study any
particular facet of Church life in this manner for any single historical period,
let alone the entire span of its existence. Although his selection and
presentation of the material is not beyond reproach (as will soon become
evident), the author maintains a largely convincing level of scholarly discourse
that conveys not only a sense of the great complexity of factors which must be
taken into account when examining the relationship between morality and faith
in the Church's life, but also a sensitivity to the continuities and discontinuities
that such an organic relationship necessarily entails. For this reason alone, the
book can be read with interest and to great benefit. While it does not qualify
as a "history" of moral theology as such (nor does it purport to be), the
perspectives it offers into the shaping of Catholic moral life-both historical
and otherwise-will need to be examined and reckoned with by all future
historians of Catholic moral theology. This reader was also impressed with the
methodological consistency with which the author constructs his chapters
(enabling less expert readers to navigate the often turbulent waters of the
Church's history with a relative degree of calm), his ability to find common
threads in the Church's doctrinal and moral teachings (some of which have not
been explicitly adverted to until now), and his balanced integration of the
history of Christianity with the general history of Western civilization
(especially in chapters 9 through 11, where he maps out the Church's response
to the modern Western outlook). If that is not enough, his "Reflections" at the
end of each chapter summarize the salient points regarding the impact of the

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faith on the Church's moral life and offer many astute insights into why the
Church's teaching developed the way it did.
The author's penchant for method and his high level of scholarly discourse,
however, do not dispel a number of serious concerns resulting from certain
lacunae in his historical presentation. Although this is to be half-expected in a
large synthetic work of this kind (it would be virtually impossible to investigate
every instance in the Church's life where the faith has contributed to a deeper
understanding of the believer's moral responsibilities), the number and scope
of the author's omissions tend to weaken and, at times, even blemish this
otherwise outstanding effort of historical inquiry.
It seems strange, for example, that the author would spend so much time in
chapters 1 and 2 outlining the relationship between faith, moral conduct, and
worship in the Old and New Testaments and say hardly anything at all about
the evolution of the canon of Scripture itself, that is, how these particular texts
became a part of the Christian Scriptures and why others were deliberately
excluded. Questions pertaining to canonicity bear directly on the faith and
worship of the believing community, highlight the evolution of the structures
of authority in early Christianity, and have important consequences for the
community's understanding of acceptable moral behavior. By failing to treat
this topic at any great length, the author misses an important opportunity to
demonstrate his thesis on one of the foundational levels of early Church
history.
At various times in his presentation, the author discusses the role heresy
(and orthodox reactions to it) played in the development of the Church's faith
(e.g., 100-103, 123-26, 157-59), but misses yet another opportunity to spell
out the far-reaching influence such reactions had on the worship and moral
vision of the believing community. The Church's reaction to Arianism is
particularly relevant in this regard. Nicea's depiction of Christ as a single
divine person with two natures successfullycountered on a dogmatic level the
Arian threat of Christ's creaturely or only semi-divine status. This same threat
was countered liturgically, however, by emphasizing the divinity of Christ and
then de-emphasizing anything that might be seen as having Arian overtones.
The eventual result was the separation of the sanctuary from the congregation,
the turning around of the altar, and the priest celebrating with his back to the
people. Christ became increasingly seen as the divine Pantocrator and devotion
to the saints filled the void left by the liturgy's neglect of Christ's humanity.
The influence of this neglect in the popular piety and moral outlook of the
period is hardly referred to by the author.
On another front, the author admits the allegorizing tendencies in the
biblical interpretation of the patristic period (in Ambrose, Augustine, and
elsewhere), but fails to develop the underlying philosophical principles supporting this approach or to refer in any great detail to the enormous impact it
had on succeeding centuries. When read in its appropriate historical context,
the allegorical interpretation of the Bible ("Christian allegoresis," as it is also

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termed) reveals itself as one of the dominant ways in which theologians of late
antiquity and the early Middle Ages integrated their understanding of history,
dogma, morality, and spirituality with the dramatic movements of the Christian
narrative. The fourfold sense of Scripture (i.e., the literal, the allegorical, the
moral or tropological, and the anagogical) preserved for them a deep sense of
the richness of God's revelation to humanity and was able to sustain a unified
vision of sacred doctrine. The allegorizing tendency in the liturgy during the
latter part of this period can be understood as a natural extension of this vision
and as yet another example of how the Church sought to sustain an integrated
vision of faith, life, and worship.
In chapter 7, the author mentions the importance of Anselm of Canterbury's
satisfaction model of redemption for theology (288-93), but does not say much
about the impact this theory had on the moral life and worship of the Church.
By replacing the ransom model, which had been dominant in the preceding
centuries, the satisfaction model initiated a shift in Christian spirituality that
can best be described as a movement from a baptismal spirituality to a
penitential-Eucharistic one. This shift came about by the renewed emphasis
Anselm's model gave to the suffering and death of Christ (and thus to his
humanity). The directives of Lateran IV (1215) for yearly confession and
communion during Easter time can be traced to this paradigmatic shift in the
Church's understanding of the doctrine of redemption. If the mendicant orders
such as the Franciscans and the Dominicans were instrumental in implementing
these directives for the Church, Anselm's refutation of the ransom model and
his proposal that, in Christ the God-Man, the infinite demands of God were
satisfied by his infinite mercy was a major catalyst in the rise of this
fundamental shift in Church life and worship.
It is within the context of the development of the doctrine of redemption
that the author's reflections in chapter 6 on the impact of Peter Abelard's Scito
te ipsum need to be examined (256-67). There can be little doubt that
Abelard's ethics played an important role in giving a "subjective turn" to the
Church's developing understanding of the sacrament of reconciliation. This
influential role, however, needs to be tempered by the fact that Abelard's
subjective model of redemption which supports it (and which rejected both the
ransom model of the Fathers and the satisfaction model of Anselm) was judged
not comprehensive enough to stand alone and could be invoked only in an
ancillary way. When taken together with the inadequacies of Abelard's stance
on the moral indifference of external acts, the combined effect of the
condemnations of Soissons (1121) and Sens (1140), and the subsequent hesitation by later Scholastic theologians such as Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure
to refer to him explicitly in their texts, one has to wonder, first, if Abelard's
influence on the development of sacramental penance was as pervasive as the
author makes it out to be and, second, how such a conclusion can be verified
through a critical examination of the relevant texts. For this reason, it might
have been better for the author to have depicted Abelard more as an early
Scholastic thinker whose fundamental insights into the theology of forgiveness

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were accepted by a small group of followers, reacted against by others, tempered by still others, and, in time, quietly refined by later Scholastic thinkers.
The author's presentation of the intellectual thought of the high Middle
Ages in chapters 7 and 8 also leave something to be desired. For one thing, he
says very little about the impact of Peter Lombard's Sentences on theological
thought and pedagogy from early history of the universities up to the Council
of Trent (1545-63). To become a master of sacred doctrine, it was necessary
for the university student to write a detailed commentary on all four books of
this influential work. The impact of this work on Catholic faith, morality, and
worship cannot be underestimated and deserves much more than the mere
passing mention given it in the book (cf. 300, 308). The author's treatment of
the theology of Thomas Aquinas (cf. 308-20), moreover, is limited mainly to
the Summa Theologiae and gives little indication of the evolution in Thomas's
thinking during his long career as a university professor in Paris and Naples and
as a lector in the Dominican order's Roman Province. Even within the
treatment of the Summa, little is said about Thomas's understanding of the
basic structures of moral cognition and how he uses these structures to create
a synthesis between a morality of law and a morality of virtue. As far as the
penitential literature is concerned, the author fails to bring out the already
well-documented continuity between the early medieval penitentials and the
summa confessorum of the high and late Middle Ages (cf. 203-5, 356-60). This
failure shows that, at least this instance, the author is more concerned with
depicting the history of the Church's penitential practice in terms of "periods"
or "stages" rather than of ongoing transitions.
Space does not permit pointing out the other lacunae which diminish the
work's claim to be a comprehensive treatment of moral life in the Catholic
faith community. This reviewer, however, cannot conclude without first
pointing out the near-total absence in chapters 10 and 11, of the life, thought,
and impact of St. Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787) and the tradition of moral
theology he proposed and championed. What is disturbing about this particular
omission is that St. Alphonsus, a doctor of the Church and the patron saint of
moral theologians and confessors, demonstrates time and again in his more
than one hundred works how the life of faith impacts upon the moral life of
the Christian believer. His Theologia Moralis, which underwent nine editions
in his own lifetime, was developed largely out of his own pastoral experience,
and sought to present the abundance of Christ's redemption to the poor and
those distanced from the Church. Within the largely casuistic mind-set that was
prevalent in his day, he developed a system of equiprobablism to demonstrate
when and where freedom had priority over the law and how conflicting moral
traditions in the Church could be digested, evaluated, and refined for the
benefit of the believing community. Not to mention the enormous impact his
moral theology had throughout the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
and for much of the twentieth century, but to bury him in an obscure footnote
on page 454, cannot possibly serve the author's goals of providing a
comprehensive historical presentation of moral life in the faith community.

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These om1ss10ns in the author's presentation are pointed out not to
denigrate his powers of synthesis (which are substantial), or to deflate the
relevance of his own penetrating insights into Christianity's walk in faith
through the last twenty centuries (which are themselves highly creative), but
to point out the difficulties involved in writing a truly comprehensive account
of the developing moral outlook of the believing community, the Church. Any
attempt to write such an account must, of necessity, be selective. The present
work is no exception. For this reason, those interested in getting a better idea
of "the bigger picture," as the author puts it (505), would do well to read this
work in the light of others of similar scope and purpose, most notably Louis
Vereecke's De Guillaume d'Ockham asaint Alphonse de Liguori (1986); John
Mahoney's The Making of Moral Theology (1987); John Gallagher's Time Past,
Time Future (1990); and Servais Pinckaers's The Sources of Christian Ethics
(Eng. trans. 1995). While these works have their own weaknesses, are selective
in their own right, and are not as comprehensive in scope, they will help to fill
in some of the gaps left by the present work and, in some instances, go much
further
This book is worthy of notice and deserves to be read by a variety of
audiences: academic, pastoral, even popular. It helps the reader move from a
general reading of the history of Western Christianity to a more focused look
at how that same history has influenced some of the broadest themes of the
Church's theological vision. It would serve as a useful historical point of
departure for courses in the Christian faith and moral life offered in colleges,
seminaries, and, if the above precautions are taken into account, even as
introductory material for doctoral level courses.
DENNIS}. BILLY, C.Ss.R.

The Alphonsian Academy
Rome, Italy

Christians among the Virtues: Theological Conversations with Ancient and
Modern Ethics. By STANLEY HAUERWAS and CHARLES PINCHES. Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997. Pp. xvii + 230. $29.95
(cloth), $16.95 (paper). ISBN 0-268-00817-5 (cloth), 0-268-00819-1
(paper).
Hauerwas and Pinches collaborate in this engaging series of essays,
developing further a number of themes for which the former is now widely
recognized. The notions of "narrative," "character," and "community" are
consistently drawn upon throughout the text; nonetheless the reflections

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offered here mark an advance in the conversation, focusing more specifically
on the concept of "friendship" as treated in both Aristotle and Aquinas.
Aquinas's treatment of our "friendship with God," or charity, becomes the
authors' central point of departure as it is this notion, they argue, that sets
Christian ethics apart from both Aristotelianism and other contemporary
traditions of modern liberal (read: Enlightenment) moralities. In this sense they
display their indebtedness to the efforts of Paul Wadell who, among others, has
contributed to the revitalization of the study of charity in Thomistic ethics.
The text is divided into three major sections, the first of which is dedicated
to a careful reading of Aristotle's account of the virtues in the Nicomachaean
Ethics. Among the more provocative insights of this section are the authors'
reflections on the "magnanimous man" in Aristotle's ethics. The "magnanimous" person is identified not so much through a painstaking analysis of
metaphysical niceties and teleological considerations as through an appropriation of the public, communal understanding of what constitutes human
excellence. An Aristotelian discernment of the life of virtue, the authors
contend, occurs within the life of a polis and among the common bonds of
friendship. By focusing on this political dimension of moral reflection
Hauerwas and Pinches open the way to a genuine consideration of the
importance of friendship and community and the narratives that inform them
in the life of moral reasoning. This signals, in their estimation, an implicit
recognition of the importance not so much of "human nature" and other
metaphysical notions as the community in which one's moral reflections take
shape. "Reading Aristotle this way makes it easier for Christians to remember
that the moral life does not derive from some general conception of the good,
nor even from an analysis of those skills or excellences that allegedly allow
human nature to flourish" (29). Scholars familiar with Hauerwas's work in the
area of narrative ethics will recognize a renewed defense of the primacy of
community and historical experience in the formation of moral character.
In the last part of the first section the authors turn their attention to the
notion of friendship as treated in Aristotle, noting especially the distinctive
difference between Aristotelianism and Christianity on the significance of
human suffering. In contrast to Aristotle's account in which the magnanimous
man is expected to insulate his friends from his own misfortunes and bear his
suffering alone, the Christian (in imitation of Christ) sees the happy life as
involving being drawn to the suffering of others and being willing to bear one
another's burdens. The contrasts developed in this section are striking and
particularly well developed.
The second section of the book addresses the works of contemporary virtue
theorists, especially Alasdair Macintyre, Martha Nussbaum, and John Casey.
Scholars conversant with these figures will find much in this section to grapple
with. Of particular interest is the authors' criticism of Casey's work, for one
begins to get a better insight into the kinds of presuppositions operating in
Hauerwas's and Pinches's own minds.

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In the third section, the authors take up an analysis of various virtues
normally associated with the Christian life: prudence, hope, obedience,
courage, and patience. These last essays could just as easily be understood to
be meditations on the primacy of the virtue of charity, or the primacy of God's
befriending us in Jesus. Indeed, while the initial chapters speak of Aristotle's
and Aquinas's treatments of human friendship specifically, these later chapters
drift from these considerations and allow the theological concept of charity to
carry the weight of the discussion. Chapter 8, on "obedience," is especially well
done.
All throughout these reflections is the now familiar critique of "standard
accounts of morality" in which the abstract formulation of Enlightenment
models of morality (especially Kantian) are said to be inadequate in the face of
the embodied, historical character of Christian faith and living. It is not always
clear, though, what precisely is the problem as the authors' critique often runs
broad enough to include claims very close to the Thomistic tradition. Though
Hauerwas and Pinches themselves think there is a difference here, their account
of that distinction is not always played out successfully.
One of their strategies of saving Thomas from the charge of employing
"formalistic and universalistic presuppositions" is to bypass much of his
metaphysics, choosing instead to concentrate on his psychology and theology
of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. But it is open to challenge whether such an
the
approach to Thomas would be considered adequate-notwithstanding
question as to whether formal and universal reasoning is indeed as problematic
as one is led to believe. Thomas's theology of the gifts as well has his
psychological portrait of human virtue is in large measure dependent upon his
philosophy of nature and his theology of God. The God of the five ways is the
God who befriends us in Jesus; such "formalistic" considerations of God and
human nature are related analogously to the scriptural narratives.
The divisions the authors seem to wish to establish between these more
metaphysical considerations and the lived Christian experience influences other
areas of their analysis. Consider, for example, their interpretation of St.
Thomas's dictum (S7h 1-11, q. 66, a. 6, ad 1) that in matters that are "above us"
it is better to love them than to know them. Hauerwas and Pinches suggest that
this is so because "Knowledge grasped solely by intellect (as Aquinas
understands it in faith) is susceptible of a certain objectification, as here with
God. By contrast, charity demands participation with what is known." (105)
If I am reading them correctly, it seems clear that for Hauerwas and Pinches
the intellect's penchant for "objectification" is something to be avoided.
Granted that Aquinas will concur that our knowledge of God in faith is limited
and may be strengthened by charity, it is not clear that his observations are
rooted in any antipathy to "objectification."
One also wonders whether similar charges cannot be leveled against these
newer approaches. Granted there are richer and poorer accounts of rational
human nature, such that the latter seem to lack any useful resemblance to lived

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human experience, could not the same be said of such notions as "community,"
"narrative," or even "Christian"? It is not always clear how appealing to the
notion of "Christian" is much more helpful than the appeal to "rational
agency" when the questions concern holy orders, the Eucharist, war, marriage,
divorce, contraception, homosexuality, revelation, Scripture, and authority-in
short, all of those areas of vital importance to embodied, historical Christian
life. A more extensive account of the issues of authority and the "Christian life"
would be very helpful. The chapter on "obedience" offers one of the most
compelling beginnings.
Such questions are hardly new to scholars in these conversations. They
simply affirm that Hauerwas and Pinches are to be counted among the more
engaging Christian thinkers of the age.
CHRISTOPHER}. THOMPSON

University of St. Thomas
St. Paul, Minnesota

Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology. By MICHAEL
RUSE. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996. Pp. 628.
$49.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-674-58220-9.

No concept has caused more difficulties for the philosophy of biology than
that of progress. For "progress" (from the Latin for "going toward" some
direction) implies a goal, and goal conjures up the dread specter of teleology,
that supposedly revanchist relic from the days of Aristotle and his medieval
commentators. In fact much of the historiography of science in the West
couches its narrative in terms of modern science's gradual weaning from
teleology toward a more mechanical framework, as in the abandonment of
Aristotle's "push" explanation of motion as motion toward a goal (that is,
something falls because, as Aristotle once said, it is seeking its natural place) in
favor of Newton's "pull" model of bodies moving toward other objects by
virtue of their mutual gravitational attraction operating by a mechanical law
that knows nothing of goals or "natural" places for objects.
Inside this narratology Darwin takes pride of place, for according to the
standard interpretation Darwin freed the world of biology from William
Paley's (and Aristotle's) explanation for organs and organisms as obvious
objects of design in favor of his theory of natural selection: a process that
seems designed (as the word "selection" implies) but is in fact blind and
unthinking (in contrast with the "artificial" selection of professional breeders
who breed with an end in mind).

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An everyone knows, Darwin's hypothesis revolutionized not just the world
of biology but also that of culture at large. However, there is an irony to his
wider influence: for to the extent that one denies any role for teleology in
evolution, the less applicable the theory is to other philosophical issues
(especially ethical ones, but also extending to other areas), whereas if evolution
displays a record of increasing progress in its history of increased complexification, then one is able that much more easily to apply that record to human
behavior by extrapolating that directedness into the future.
This is because, however blind evolution might be, man is certainly an
animal who designs things all the time (in fact, so ubiquitous is the human
species' design-making habit that it misled Paley to apply it everywhere).
Therefore, if evolution is as blind as many theorists hold, then it cannot by
definition be of much use in helping to guide the goal-determined behavior of
humans, especially in their ethics, an inherently teleologically determined form
of reflecting and behaving. But if evolution does have a goal "in mind," so to
say, then the way is at least open to using that extrapolated goal as an end in
view for determining our own undeniably goal-driven activities.
This fusion of the notion of progress with applied Darwinism is strikingly
obvious in the case of the career of social Darwinism, the failed attempt to base
ethics on Darwinian principles. For without the notion that evolution is going
somewhere, there was no way to generate a norm for judgment out of the
zigzagging that would otherwise characterize evolutionary tracks. As is well
known, this initial foray of evolutionary theorists to generate an evolutionary
ethic, now called social Darwinism, ended in a total failure. This collapse of
social Darwinism as an influential option in political economy and ethics is
usually attributed to the rise of Progressive politics in England and America,
which eventually succeeded in mitigating some of the worst features of
laissez-faire capitalism (whose apologists, like John D. Rockefeller, were strong
advocates of social Darwinism; indeed Darwin only came to his theory of
natural selection after reading Malthus's Essay on Population,itself one of the
classics of apologetics for laissez-faire capitalism, so that in a sense Rockefeller
was merely returning the favor).
This story of how social Darwinism met its demise, however, is really not
quite accurate, as emerges from Michael Ruse's fascinating tale of how the
concept of progress keeps cropping up even in theorists who most loudly
complain of the idea, either because of their well-earned phobia against social
Darwinism (as in the case of Stephen Jay Gould) or because of their fear of
bringing Aristotle in through the back door after he had been rejected at the
front (as in the case of Richard Dawkins, at least in his earlier writings). As
Ruse makes clear, one reason progress is hard to expel from the repertoire of
biological thought is not just the obvious point that increasing complexification
is the story of evolution, but also because of the sheer plasticity of the theory:
in the second half of the nineteenth century, abolitionists and slaveholders,

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socialists and capitalists, believers and atheists not only supported Darwin's
theory but appealedto it as justification for their views!
The historiography of Darwinian theory tends to stress the support given to
social Darwinism by capitalists but downplays Karl Marx's support for the
theory (not to mention the large amounts of social-Darwinian elements in Mein
Kampf). The reason for the wide-ranging appeal to Darwin by such
contradictory theories is that all one has to do is to choose one's own favorite
group within the species (Aryans, the proletariat, captains of industry, etc.) as
the predestined favorite of evolution in the future and then seek to help that
process along.
Of course that is thereby to introduce our own goals into the process, not
evolution's! Moreover, the process of natural selection is so relentlessly
unforgiving that any attempt to apply that same process to some hypothesized
future in order to benefit the favored group leads to an "ethic" of
mind-numbing criminality, as the careers of both Nazism and Communism
amply testify. So really, it was Hitler and Stalin, and not so much the
Progressivists of the turn of the century, who defeated social Darwinism by
showing the twentieth century its real implications.
But again, as Ruse makes clear, the temptation to apply evolutionary theory
in biology to ethics and philosophical anthropology cannot be that "easily"
exorcised, precisely because evolutionary theorists are themselves still so
ambivalent about how to place the notion of progress in their theories; and so
the last decade has seen a remarkable resurgence of Darwinian theorists trying
to apply Darwin's principles to human society, of which E. 0. Wilson's recent
best seller Consilience is but the latest example and Daniel C. Dennett's
Darwin's Dangerous Idea one of the most influential (Wilson's book was
published too recently for inclusion by Ruse, but Dennett's book has been out
for some time, making it puzzling why Ruse never treats Dennett or his
theories-one of the few lacunae in this remarkably comprehensive book).
The largest part of this quite large book is a comprehensive treatment of the
concept of progress in a vast array of evolutionary biologists and philosophical
Darwinians, but perhaps its most fascinating feature is the set of interviews that
comprise much of the treatment of the most recent thinkers. Both parts of the
book, the historical and the topical sections, bring to the reader the same
fascinating result: no matter how hard the antiteleologists try to expel the
notion of purpose from their thought, this pesky notion keeps cropping up.
This is most evident in Gould, whose interview is a painful backingand-forthing around the notion of progress-and scarcely for biological
reasons, as he openly avers (502). In fact, among almost all the figures treated
in this teeming book one notices how much prior ethical or political
convictions determine the biology (or at least the philosophical implications of
the biology). Gould might be the most obvious in his ambivalence but J.B. S.
Haldane, the brilliant mathematical biologist and son of the noted Scottish
physiologist J. S. Haldane, must certainly be the most oblivious: after obtaining

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his undergraduate degree at Oxford, he "converted" (in his case, the word is
not too strong) to Communism, supported the Republicans during the Spanish
Civil War, and wrote copiously for the Daily Worker. But weirdest of all, this
brilliant geneticist defended the Stalinist biology of T. D. Lysenko, the Soviet
biologist who insisted, against all the Mendelian evidence of modern genetics
and neo-Darwinism, that evolution operated by the inheritance of acquired
characteristics. (Lysenkoism holds, in effect, that bodybuilders give birth to
more muscle-bound babies and makes human nature that much more malleable,
if only it were true, for fashioning the New Soviet Man, which is why it was
so popular with Stalin.)
In perhaps the finest pages of the book, there is noted sociobiologist E. 0.
Wilson, whose office at Harvard is adorned with a portrait of the founding
father of social Darwinism, Herbert Spencer! Nothing daunted by Marx,
Rockefeller, or Hitler, Wilson is quite sure that evolution provides the key that
can unlock all the mysteries that make human existence so enigmatic. Although
Consilience appeared after Ruse's book, all of the elements of Wilson's
biological reductionism are on view in Ruse's excellent tour d'horizon of this
latest reviver of social Darwinism.
In the midst of the vast and teeming encyclopedia of biological thought it
might seem to be mere cavilling to express regret that Ruse has not discussed
Etienne Gilson's fine book From Aristotle to Darwin and Back Again, but my
regret is not based on a desire to have Ruse's catalogue be even more complete
than it is. Rather, my lament is because Gilson was the one who saw how much
man's own goal-driven behavior says something about the nature that selects.
Moreover, he did not assert this in the manner of Bergson or Spencer or
Teilhard de Chardin, that is, by assuming a notion of progress merely by virtue
of the emergence of homo sapiens. Like Aristotle before him, he saw human
designs and human goals as but a more elaborate version of what we have
inherited from nature in any case. In his recent book Kinds of Minds Daniel
Dennett speaks of how easily we may spot an implied intentionality when we
see natural processes speeded up (for example, a five-minute film of a day in
a plant's life shows the plant bobbing and weaving almost like a boxer). And
it is this implied intentionality that Gilson has illuminated so well:
In nature the end, the telos, works as every artist would wish to be able
to work: in fact, as the greatest among them do work, or even the
others in moments of grace when, suddenly masters of their media,
they work with the rapidity and infallible sureness of nature. Such is
Mozart, composing a quartet in his head while writing down its
predecessor. Such is Delacroix, painting in twenty minutes Jacob's cap
and cloak on the wall of Saint-Sulpice. A technician, an artist who
worked with the sureness of a spider weaving its web or a bird making
its nest would be a more perfect artist than any of those that anyone
has ever seen. Such is not the case. The most powerful and the most
productive artists only summon from afar the ever-ready forces of
nature which fashion the tree, and, through the tree, the fruit. That is

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why Aristotle says that there is more design, more good, and more
beauty in the works of nature than in those of art.

Although he is a noted philosopher of biology in his own right (next to Ernst
Mayr perhaps the premier philosopher of biology in the world), Ruse has given
us in his latest book more history than direct philosophical reflection. But as
one reads through all these biologists and thinkers as they thrash about trying
to exorcise, or baptize, the notion of progress, one sighs and wonders how
different things could have been if they could only have discussed the idea of
progress in biology with, not against, Aristotle.
EDWARDT. OAKES, S.J.

Regis University
Denver, Colorado

Robert Grosseteste:On the Six Days of Creation.Translated by C. F. J. MARTIN.
Auctores Britannici Medii Aevi 6 (2). New York: Oxford University
Press, 1996. Pp. ix + 373. $55.00 (cloth). ISBN 0-19-726150-7.
In the decade before the great English Scholastic Robert Grosseteste
received consecration as bishop of Lincoln he turned his energies increasingly
to the study and teaching of theology and to learning Greek so as to read in the
original the classics of the Greek Fathers and the antique philosophers,
especially Aristotle. The combination of these activities yielded, at the very end
of this period, between 1232 and 1235, his extraordinary commentary cum
rumination on the first chapters of Genesis, a work that can stand as introduction to the state of science as well as theology among the intellectual
luminaries of Latin Europe in the first half of the thirteenth century.
Fifteen years ago the critical edition of the Latin original of Grosseteste's
commentary appeared under the title Hexameron, expertly edited by Richard
C. Dales and Servus Gieben. Now Christopher Martin of the University of
Glasgow has done us the favor of making the text available outside the circle
of Latin readers by translating it into a clear, sometimes even elegant English.
Since this work deserves the attention not only of medievalists of all stripes but
also of philosophers, theologians, and anyone interested in the history of
European thought, its translation with such obvious attention and care-and
Martin confesses in his preface how exhausting the task proved to be-was
surely worth the effort. Scholars and students alike can rely on his rendering
to be both faithful to the original and sufficiently explanatory to provide a

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modern readership with all that is needed to comprehend it. Though Martin
has not ventured farther than Dales and Gieben in searching for sources and
references-indeed, on the infrequent occasions where the original editors
failed to annotate a quotation he has simply replicated their silence-the
critical edition was so well supplied with citations that the most curious of
readers will be satisfied with the result.
There are, to be sure, a few typos as well as a number of spots where the
translation is dubious or imprecise, but for the current world of expedited
publishing the instances are delightfully rare, almost always inconsequential.
The only cases in which the reader might be seriously misled come in the
following places: page 4, where the heading for chapter 9.1-2 ought to read
that "by means of signification he (i.e., Moses) overthrows various errors
claiming that there are many principia"; page 18, paragraph 16, where
Grosseteste talks about the solicitude required for illness serving to break the
onslaught of libido; page 83, paragraph 2 of chapter 23, where he argues not
against "darkness" as having been "created together with heaven and earth" but
rather against its having existed, uncreated, alongside them from the start; page
148, chapter 23, which should read that the order of production of herbs
existed only naturally if they arose all at once, not that it "existed naturally .
. . only if" such was the case; and finally page 298, paragraph 5, where
Grosseteste prescribes that flesh should serve and obey the spirit, not, as the
translation reads, "the body." Against these few examples must be balanced, of
course, the numerous occasions where Martin's insight into the Latin opens the
way to understanding where the text might baffle even the best Latinist.
As for Grosseteste's work in itself, it is, as Martin's rendition makes
abundantly clear, the product of a perspicacious and exceptionally learned
mind. Grosseteste knows he sits upon the shoulders of giants, whose work he
amply quotes, convinced, no doubt, that his readers would rather draw from
the source than receive the authorities in paraphrase. Not surprisingly
Augustine heads the list, for his two commentaries on Genesis made him the
explicator of first resort in the medieval and early modern West, but Jerome
and Ambrose are also frequently cited among Latin authors as well as Bede and
Isidore, the latter particularly serviceable for Grosseteste's purposes, and, of
non-Christians, the famous natural historian Pliny the Elder. More telling in
light of Grosseteste's efforts at the time to improve his Greek is the plentiful
use and quotation of Fathers of the Eastern church, most of all Basil of
Caesarea, whose own Hexameron made him second only to Augustine as guide,
but also time and again Gregory of Nyssa and John Damascene. Aristotle
appears continually as well, being of all Greek writers certainly the most
familiar to anyone educated in the Western universities after the second decade
of the thirteenth century, but here again Grosseteste betrays his exceptional
linguistic bent, warning readers that the common Latin text was more than a
little corrupt and yearning for an Aristotle resplendent in the pristine Greek.

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From all these sources and from his own ingenuity Grosseteste fashioned a
most complicated and multivalent work. Befitting the Scholastic who wrote the
first Latin commentary on Aristotle's Posterior Analytics, he was from the
outset insistent on defining the epistemic character of the discourse in which
he was engaged. The Hexameron was not a work of science in anything like the
Aristotelian sense, an apodictic presentation of certain and universal truths
grounded in equally certain, and evident, universal principles, but instead a
rational presentation of subject matter received through faith and developed
further sometimes with the nonevident certainty of belief, sometimes with only
probabilistic argument. It was, in short, sacred wisdom, or what was becoming
known technically in the schools as theology. But science in the technical
sense-"rational knowledge" as Martin translates it on page 52, "sciencia
racionalis" in the literally more precise Latin of Grosseteste himself-was not
entirely excluded either, for as a work seeking to explain through God himself
the foundations of all things created by him, the Hexameron laid out not only
what was supernaturally revealed but also the basis for morality and the natural
rules and reasons upon which human science was built.
Indeed, while writing this work Grosseteste clearly thought of himself as
sometimes scientist and natural philosopher, sometimes theologian, sometimes
moralist, sometimes even preacher or Christian apologist, never doubting that
all these roles were at heart congruent with the ultimate goal of bringing the
reader closer to the divine truth fully available only in the beatific vision, the
glory toward which Christian virtue was designed to lead. As he himself made
clear in part 7, chapter 12, acquisition of scientific learning was, at its best,
directed toward "the building up of the spiritual life," thus not foreign to
theology but presupposed by all theologians and something to which they set
themselves even in their most religious compositions. We can consequently
treat the Hexameron as a treasury of Biblical exegesis and Christian teaching
in the high-medieval university, even an exemplar of homiletics for a church
increasingly committed to the apostolate in the challenging atmosphere of an
urbanizing Europe, but we can equally well mine it for what it teaches of the
philosophy and science of Grosseteste's day.
Whatever approach we take, Grosseteste does not disappoint. For so
accomplished an ecclesiastic, who would become a prelate deeply engaged in
politics, both clerical and secular, he retained an astounding flexibility of mind.
Willing to investigate opinion even when he could not be certain of the truth,
he surveyed the field of Christian and pagan learning with an equanimity hard
to find in the centuries of Scholastic debate after his death. Part 3 reveals him
at his most nimble, prepared for instance to tolerate ambiguities about the
structure of the cosmos, even about the precise manner God deployed in
creation, whether operating formally in an instant or successively over days,
rather than to attempt to reconcile opinions, reasons, and authorities that were
patently discordant and none more clearly resonant of divine inspiration than
the next. Thus his discussion of the heavenly spheres and the motions of the

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planets presents a compendium of key opinions from antiquity up to his day,
holding in equal regard the reasonings of the church Fathers, the pagan
philosophers, especially Plato and Aristotle, and astronomers like Ptolemy as
well. No argument short of absolute evidence-or in rare instances the
requirements of faith, as with the principle of a beginning of the world in
time-could prompt him peremptorily to decide such matters, whether they be
regarded as scientific or as theological, and thus derogate from the true
complexity of reason and the seriousness of intellectual honesty as he
conceived it.
Moreover, neither worldly philosophers nor celebrated divines escaped his
critical gaze, which restricted each to no more than he could prove, by reason
or by faith, and demanded confession of ambiguity wherever it was rightfully
due. "I am not," he said in chapter 8 of part 3, "ashamed to admit my
ignorance about the number of the heavens, and about their movements," for
the state of knowledge being what it is, "no-one can say anything with certainty" about them, "even though worldly philosophers pride themselves vainly
on knowing" more than they really do. Or in a more theological vein, to
expound on the goodness, and the allegorical and moral import, of all the
particular actions of each of the separate days of creation would, as he
explained in part 2, chapter 6, far exceed his, or perhaps any human's, abilities,
though such revered authorities as Basil and Ambrose had tried their hand at
it, more with ostentation than any realistic hope of success.
There is of course much in this work one would associate with the
Grosseteste of the earlier scientific works or that would live on in followers
such as Roger Bacon and many Parisian Franciscans: the emphasis on number
and calculation, the conviction that the material and mathematical properties
of light lay at the heart of most basic attributes of nature, a fierce opposition
to astrology sitting alongside absolute confidence that the movement of stars
and planets played a critical role in the generation of animate and inanimate
objects here below. For these as well as so many other topics examined by
Grosseteste throughout his life, the Hexameron bears study and ought to be
included in classroom readings for the history of philosophy, science, and
analytic powers,
theology. Composed when its author was at the height of
it often presents his ideas as concisely and clearly as anywhere in his work.
Martin could hardly have chosen a more interesting text to translate. He
deserves our thanks not just for doing it but also for doing it so well.
STEVEN P. MARRONE

Tufts University
Med( ord, Massachusetts

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167

Werke in acht Biinden. By JOSEF PIEPER. Edited by BERTHOLD WALD. Vol. 3:
Schriften zum Philosophiebegriff (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1995).
Pp. vi + 345. DM 76.- (cloth). ISBN 3-7873-1223-4.
Vol. 4: Schriften zur Philosophischen Anthropologie und Ethik: Das
Menschenbild der Tugendlehre (Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1996).
Pp. vi + 442. DM 96.- (cloth). ISBN: 3-7873-1224-2.

The third volume of the complete works of Josef Pieper assembles diverse
writings spanning a period of several decades and systematically treating the
notion of philosophy (What is Philosophy?, In Defense of Philosophy), as well
as interpretation, tradition, language, the Platonic concept of philosophy, and
the future of philosophy. Among these the reader will discover two previously
unpublished essays: a discussion of the Heideggerian notion of truth and an
essay on intellectual work and philosophical formation. This volume also
contains an instructive postface written by the editor which brings out the
originality of Pieper's point of departure against the backdrop of contemporary
(especially analytic and hermeneutical) philosophy.
Pieper defines the philosophical act as a reflection upon the totality of that
which the subject experiences, both sensually and intuitively. This totality of
reality is considered in its ultimate significance, in its deepest roots, and in all
its aspects. In contrast to the scientist who, at least theoretically, is able to find
definitive responses to the questions he raises, the philosopher treads upon an
unending path. Unable to emerge from the state of astonishment which is
natural to him and which determines his vocation, he never entirely
understands the aspect of the real upon which he focuses his attention. "The
philosophical act begins at the boundary where knowledge and the
unfathomable touch; it begins with the grasping of the incomprehensibility of
the world and Dasein" (125; cf. 80, 119ff., 128ff., 17, 51ff., 53, 56).
This unfathomability of the world follows as a consequence of the
distinction between res naturalis and res artificialis. Referring to the Sartrean
position according to which "there is no human nature, because there is no
God to conceive it" (173ff.), Pieper affirms the intrinsic relation between the
nature of a res and an intellect, between existence and a will, and maintains
that the intellect and will at the origin of the res naturales are those of God. It
is certainly natural to the human being to know all things insofar as his intellect
is capax universi. Having thereby access to the essence of beings, he seizes their
"after-forms." He cannot, however, know the analogy between the after-forms
and the pre-form which lies in the creating intellect: rerum essentiae sunt nobis
ignotae. The impossibility of fully comprehending the ultimate foundation of
the world and of existence-which Pieper explains in terms of a metaphysic of
the creation, the heart of his philosophy-does not require that the search of
wisdom be conducted with agnostic resignation or despair, but that hope be its
certain guide (38-39, 51ff., 128f., 135f., 151).

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Pieper desires to preserve a metaphysical dimension of being and gift present
not only in the philosophical act but also in celebration, poetry, leisure, art,
etc. In a world that is increasingly dominated by the categories of utility,
efficiency, and production and that, by the exclusion of all nondirected
activity, threatens to become totalitarian, the true philosophical question takes
on the character of an intellectual luxury, a useless activity; senseless, at best,
it is regarded as possibly harmful or even dangerous, since it neglects or even
prohibits the concrete and practical goals of daily life (86, 90ff.).
Philosophy is not the "knowledge of a servant" but the "knowledge of a
gentleman" (Newman). The existential astonishment that it necessarily implies
is opposed to the embourgeoisement of thought which accepts the nearest
reality as ultimate and no longer perceives the world of essences and the
ultimate sense of encountered realities. It is characterized by a total or partial
calling into question of one's comprehension of the world, of one's place
therein, and of the significance of one's life. This "anti-bourgeois upheaval,"
which Pieper likewise refers to as a "de-proletarianization," can be effected in
many ways, but especially in the confrontation of death and/or eros. The
"banalizing" of these contributes, meanwhile, to the further enclosing of the
human person within the world of utility and work (for the sake of work
itself), in the Umwelt (as opposed to the Welt). Philosophical astonishment, by
contrast, implies the loss of certitude, an uprooting that enables a more
profound rooting. It expresses a new consciousness of the world which suddenly appears more profound and larger than the familiar framework of daily
life. One realizes that being is, in itself, incomprehensible.
Pieper also discusses the legitimacy of integrating into philosophical
discussion information about the world and existence that is obtained from a
tradition, a belief, or a theology. The last, as an act of thought, presupposes a
God who speaks to the human being, a theios logos, bearing a message whose
content cannot be known from an analysis of the world. Pieper conceives
theology uniquely in relation to revelation, a message of a speaker-author
addressed to a listener. Here we return to his interpretation of Plato's ex akoes,
as well as to his interesting analyses of the notions of tradition, transmission,
and interpretation (156-72, 212-35, 236-99). Revelation and theology are not
confined to Christianity but extend, according to Pieper, to every attitude
expressing a willingness to accept (i.e., by an act of "faith") information
revealed outside of Christianity (e.g., Plato's myths). In this, Pieper admits the
possibility of a primary revelation (57f., 265, 283ff.), a notion accepted by
certain Fathers of the Church and by some modern thinkers such as Newman,
Mohler, and Scheeben. Theology, so understood, strives to interpret the
content of a message the subject accepts as true-that is to say, to which he
assents by faith-and that is transmitted by a tradition proceeding from a
revelation of the Other (for Jews and Christians) or of the Ancients (for Plato).
In both cases, it is admitted that human subjects are the recipients of a divine
word (264ff.).

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Philosophy is, by nature, necessarily open to all of reality-however it be
perceived or analyzed-provided that the perception or analysis is faithful to
that reality (i.e., does not falsify or misinterpret it). If the philosopher reflects
on love, for example, he should consider all the information on this subject that
may be obtained not only from psychology and history, from medicine and
from biology, from sociology and culture, but also from theology. If he would
disregard the information furnished by the latter or any other facts that are
known either by experimental demonstration or a priori, or believed (i.e.,
obviously not without due consideration and critical sense, which is to say, not
without a rational foundation), he can no longer claim to philosophize, given
that he no longer considers love in all of its possible aspects so as to seize its
ultimate foundation. This does not mean that a systematic philosophical
exposition should contain theological phrases, but that the philosopher should
consider in his reflection those aspects of faith which he bears in himself. Here
Pieper does not address philosophy but the person who philosophizes with
implicit reference to the Maritainian distinction between the nature and state
of philosophy, as such, in its order of specificity and exercise.
This recourse to prephilosophical data does not mean that the philosopher
ceases being a philosopher to become a theologian-nor, for that matter, that
the philosopher who seriously considers the facts of psychology should be
considered a psychologist. The requirement that the philosopher not formally
exclude from his reflection any accessible knowledge concerning the subject
treated is intrinsic to the structure of the philosophical act itself. All truly
philosophical reflection-an activity that represents a type of fundamental
relation to reality and that is only possible when proceeding from the totality
of human existence-implies, at least unconsciously, a certain knowledge, an
a priori orientation, a taking of position (even an ultimate position) with regard
to being in its totality, a taking of position which is not only of the order of
knowledge, but also of the order of belief, whether positive or negative (as,
e.g., in Sartre). Philosophical reflection finds its impulse and its vivacity from
an interpretation of the sense of the world that is initially accepted without
criticism. It is not enclosed within an attitude of academic sophism having as
its ideal absolute neutrality. "To philosophize requires a fully unbiased regard
which can only exist in the absence of all prejudice. Philosophy is abandoned
the very instant in which it takes itself for an academic discipline. The one who
philosophizes is not characterized by the fact that he is interested in the
discipline of 'Philosophy'; it is the totality of the world and the totality of
wisdom which interests him" (160).
Although Pieper repeatedly discussesand applies to his philosophic discourse
this "kontrapunktischenPolyphonie"(154) between philosophy and theology,
this necessary complementarity between logos and mythos (Plato), he nonetheless fails to enter fully into the often tumultuous debate concerning the
question of Christian philosophy. Devoting very little attention directly to this
question, he asks instead if there can be a non-Christian philosophy. Given (if

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one grants his assumption) that the philosophical act is by nature orientated to
theology (understood in a large sense), Pieper-referring to a careful analysis
of the texts of Plato, as well as to the occidental philosophical tradition-asks
which "theologies" occidental philosophy is turned toward post Christum
natum. Since, Pieper reasons, the diverse mythic revelations (Ur-Offenbarung
of the Greeks) have been replaced by Christian revelation, the unique
"theology" within the occidental tradition is the Christian one. That is to say,
in concreto there is, since the birth of Christ, no longer a non-Christian
philosophy within Western culture. This position, it must be admitted, is as
original as it is worthy of criticism. "A philosophy that is both living and true
will either never be realized (and it is altogether possible that we must wait in
vain!) or, if it is realized, then (and in just this sense!) it is a Christian
philosophy" (63).
A Christian philosophy does not thereby possess neat, predetermined, and
certain solutions-a false characteristic for which it is often reproached (e.g.,
by Heidegger)-but is, rather, correctly characterized by its relation to the
mystery of being as a relation of astonishment, thereby surpassing a superficial,
rational harmonization of the world and of the human being The Pieperian
concept of the loving search of wisdom, which Hegel wished to transform into
certain knowledge, is explicitly opposed to a scientific philosophy, to a
philosophy of a speculative system, and to historicism.
The analysis of the virtues undertaken by Pieper in the fourth volume of the
complete works and his elaboration of an ontological foundation are at least
in part-that is, with the help of certain of his contemporaries (Scheler [1915],
Hartmann [1925])-responsible for the recent renewed interest in the virtues
in moral and political philosophy and in law (e.g., Anscombe, Philosophy, 195 8
[33]; Jankelevitch, Traite des vertus, 1968; Geach, The Virtues, 1977;
Macintyre, After Virtue, 1981; Comte-Sponville, Petit traite des grandes vertus,
1995). This volume, which assembles diverse studies edited between 1934 and
1972, constitutes not only an excellent philosophical synthesis of his theory of
the cardinal and theological virtues-which he analyzes in a brilliant and
original manner-but also a marvelous reference work, the only one of its kind.
Pieper develops his theory within the Greek-Christian tradition, clarifying
certain of its interpretations in the context of modernity and integrating this
tradition in the life-situation of the contemporary human person including its
particular challenges. This reinterpretation is not conducted in an all-inclusive
manner, but each virtue is treated within a precise historical context: courage,
against the Hitlerian regime; prudence, against an extreme casuistic tradition;
justice, against a priority of right over good (cf. the actual liberalcommunitarian debate); temperance, against the curiosity, or verbositas which
Heidegger has so well described; hope, against the despair resulting from such
historical events as Hiroshima and Auschwitz as well as from the end of the
ideology of progress; love, against its misunderstanding and the separation

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between eras et agape; belief/faith, against its negation within a rational and
scientific discourse.
Pieper does not try to follow the latest philosophical fashion. Rather, he
seeks to reactualize an ethic of virtues opposed to that of a nineteenth-century
bourgeois conception of the same, as well as to a formal Kantian ethic of laws
and obligations, to a Stoic ethic, and to a utilitarian ethic. To this end, he does
not refer to a Schelerian notion of value, but to the concept of the "total life,"
of the Aristotelian architectonic good, of eudaimonia. This ethic of virtue is,
for Pieper, integrated in his conception of the universe as reflecting a precise
(divine) order in which the human being is himself conceived in a nonmechanical, nonreductionist manner, open to the totality of the real, to
transcendence, to God. Such a comprehension of the human person is opposed
to that of the individual conceived as a self-sufficient conscience whose
freedom, understood as absolutely autonomous, is independent of every
preestablished conception of the good (principle of neutrality). Following the
Thomistic tradition, Pieper sustains an ontological realism whereby the good
(that which is conformed to reality) presupposes the true; that is to say, the
realization of the good presupposes knowledge of the real-of being-in which
moral law is inscribed. The virtue of prudence (intellectual and moral) realizes
that which it conceives. Pieper's thesis is that all obligation has its origin in
being. He thus maintains an essentialist interpretation of nature and a
naturalization of ethics-a delicate position, rejected by Hume's law and
submitted to much criticism in contemporary context of metaethical
discussion-whereby it is possible to deduce an obligation from a being and
ethical values from ontological ones.
Pieper develops an ontology of the not-yet-being of Dasein with its
categories of possibility and of temporality. The human being is not perceived
with regard to his deficiencies but with regard to his positive development
towards fulfillment (or perfection) by means of his own action, as taught by
Thomas Aquinas. He constantly surpasses himself, transcending his present
state in a movement towards the actualization of his possibility-to-be
(Sein-konnen), towards the full accomplishment of his person which is that
towards which he is projected. Virtue, for Pieper, constitutes the ultimate
perfection of potentiality, the summum of that which the human being can be
by his nature. (Translated by Michele Schumacher)
BERNARD SCHUMACHER

University of Fribourg
Fribourg, Switzerland