The Thomist 63 (1999): 173-90

"GIFTED KNOWLEDGE":
AN EXCEPTION TO THOMISTIC EPISTEMOLOGY?
CARL N. STILL
St. Thomas More College
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

T

that the following essay aims to explore
concerns the knowledge treated by Aquinas as one of the
intellectual gifts of the Spirit, and its relation to the
much-better-known types of natural human knowledge. Aquinas
accepts that the intellect's natural power is strengthened by a
graced gift of spiritual illumination, and therefore that "we have
a more perfect knowledge of God by grace than by natural
reason." 1 For convenience, the knowledge made possible by
spiritual gifts, although differentiated by Aquinas into specific
functions, may be designated by the generic term "gifted knowledge. " 2 What is at issue here is the coherence, or lack thereof,
between natural and supernatural types of knowledge, which as
a matter of consistency must be expected of any thinker who
admits both. I shall argue that, without forgetting the limitations
of natural cognition, Aquinas shows how intellectual gifts make
a distinctive contribution to knowledge of God.
In previous scholarship on Aquinas, the intellectual giftswisdom, understanding, and knowledge-have usually been
treated in their own right or in the larger context of the life of
HE PROBLEM

1 Summa Theologiae I, q. 12, a. 13: "Dicendum quod per gratiam perfectior cognitio de
Deo habetur a nobis, quam per rationem naturalem." Unless otherwise noted, all translations
from the Summa Theologiae are my own.
2 The concept that there are seven gifts of the Holy Spirit has a biblical source in Isaiah
11:2-3. The intellectual gifts of the Spirit comprise wisdom, understanding, and knowledge.
In the precise but artificial Scholastic categorization of the gifts, each gift is linked to a power
of the soul and characterized as contemplative, practical, or both. Aquinas treats all seven
gifts in detail in STh 1-11, q. 68.

173

174

CARL N. STILL

faith. 3 Only rarely has their relevance to his theory of knowledge
been explored. 4 In contrast to this tendency, I shall focus on
Aquinas's epistemological claims for gifted knowledge, especially
as these appear in light of the most basic of conditions that he
accepts for all human knowledge: namely, that no knower can
actually understand without recourse to an image. 5 As we shall
see, Aquinas incorporates into gifted knowledge the suggestion
made by some of his Neoplatonic predecessors that there can be
a type of cognition that, while requiring images, remains unaffected by certain limitations typically attributed to knowledge
by images. The precise textual evidence that I shall cite pertains
to the gift traditionally designated by the term intellectus, usually
translated as the "gift of understanding" (donum intellectus).
Even among the intellectual gifts, the gift of understanding
seems especially to promise a mode of knowledge exceeding the
cognitive limits ordinarily imposed by the analysis of mind
Aquinas accepts from Aristotle. This forcing of noetic limits seems
especially apparent in the Scriptum on the Sentences, and if it
were found only there, it might be dismissed as a forgettable
instance of youthful overstatement. Yet essentially the same claims
made for gifted knowledge in that early work reappear in the
mature Summa Theologiae. Without forgetting the development
in Aquinas's thought between the two works, I shall treat these
3 Aquinas's thought on the gifts has been studied in 0. Lottin, Psychologieet Morale aux
Xlle et XIIIe siecles (Gembloux, 1954), vol. 4, pp. 667-736; M. M. Labourdette, "Dons du
Saint-Esprit: Doctrine Thomiste," in Dictionnairede Spiritualite,vol. 3, cols. 1610-35; M.
Llamera, "Unidad de la teologfa de los dones seglin Santo Tomas," Revista Espanola de
Teologfa 15 (1955): 3-66, 217-70; M. M. Philipon, "Les dons du Saint-Esprit chez St.
Thomas d' Aquin," RevueThomiste 59 (1959): 451-83; and A. Kelly, "The Gifts of the Spirit:
Aquinas and the Modern Context," The Thomist 38 (1974): 193-231. On the gift of
understanding in particular, see J. McGuiness, "The Distinctive Nature of the Gift of
Understanding," The Thomist 3 (1941): 217-78.
4 A discussion remarkable for integrating the gifts into a theory of knowledge is found in
Jacques Maritain, The Degreesof Knowledge,trans. Gerald B. Phelan (New York: Scribners,
1959), ch. 6, sect. 2. Particularly striking is the remark that "when, in the act of infused
contemplation, the gift of wisdom ... frees faith from the human mode of concept and
analogy ... it suppresses in some way ... that distance from its object, which is the case in
faith all alone" (264-65). I argue for the same point in terms of the gift of understanding.
s STh l, q. 84, a. 7: "Dicendum quod impossibile est intellectum nostrum, secundum
praesentis vitae statum, quo passibili corpori coniungitur, aliquid intelligere in actu, nisi
convertendo se ad phantasmata."

GIFTED KNOWLEDGE

175

discussions as composing a unified account, and ask how gifted
knowledge sheds light on the possible range of human cognition,
especially when assisted by principles originating outside its
normal, empirical context.
The question, then, is whether gifted knowledge is subject to
or exempt from the rule that one cannot think, know, or acquire
knowledge without an image. Consequently, it will be necessary
to ascertain how this Aristotelian rule is interpreted by Aquinas
and applied to natural cognition, and to clarify how exactly
Aquinas characterizes the knowledge made possible by supernatural cognition. Yet before attempting to locate gifted knowledge in its unknown relation to the processes of natural knowing,
it will be useful to review its known relation to the total structure
of cognition, as Aquinas conceives it.
I. GIFTED KNOWLEDGE IN THE SCHEME OF HUMAN COGNITION

As is well known, Aquinas holds that all human knowledge
attainable by natural means begins from sensible things external
to the knower, which become known through their reception into
the bodily senses and thereafter into the intellect. He does not
hold, however, that all knowledge humanly attainable is attained
through natural means and processes. For beyond natural, or acquired, habits of knowledge he recognizes also supernatural, or
infused, habits, which do not derive from human cognitive
operations, but must instead be superimposed on such processes.
In this light, the twofold distinction between gifted and natural
knowledge becomes threefold: cognition by the gift differs both
from natural knowing and from the infused habit of theological
faith. 6 As will become clearer, gifted understanding is for Aquinas
the proper complement of faith, as in the Anselmian slogan "faith
seeking understanding" (/ides quaerens intellectum). The understanding attained amounts to penetrating insights into revealed
6 Faith as an infused ("theological") virtue is discussed in STh II-II, qq. 1-8, which
culminates in a discussion of the gift of understanding (q. 8). The other theological virtues,
hope and charity, are also infused, yet as their perfection is assigned to the gifts of fear (timor)
and wisdom (sapientia), respectively, they may be omitted here. For Aquinas's discussion of
the gift of fear, see STh II-II, q. 19; on the gift of wisdom, see STh II-II, q. 45.

176

CARL N. STILL

doctrine, which nevertheless always fall short of total comprehension. Consequently, such understanding as any type of gifted
knowledge makes possible is not itself the end sought, but serves
a means to an end attainable only after this life, the direct (or
"beatific") vision of the objects of faith. The total structure of possible human cognition requires, then, a fourfold distinction; but
the fourth and final mode of beatified knowledge lies outside the
focus of the present study.
Gifted knowledge differs from natural knowledge and faith in
distinct ways, yet it exceeds them both. As already noted, the
objects of natural cognition are material things subject to sensory
apprehension, while the objects of gifted knowledge are supraempirical inasmuch as they are spiritual. Faith, on the other hand,
shares with gifted knowledge the same objects, and arises as a
supernaturally caused, or infused, virtue. Yet the human mode in
which faith operates renders it liable to all the limitations of
natural human knowledge. Indeed, Aquinas suggests that without
the cognitive strengthening provided by gifted knowledge, faith
would likely give way to the pressure of contradictions 7-a
problem familiar to theologians of every epoch.
The operative distinctions that distinguish gifted from natural
knowledge and from faith can be further clarified only if the
relevant texts are now broached. It should be clear already, however, that knowledge by the gift exceeds natural knowing with
respect to both object and mode of knowing. Nevertheless, it may
appear that supernatural cognition has nothing at all to do with
our usual processes of knowing, and that discussion of this higher
form of knowledge will be unintelligible to all but those mysteriously endowed with it. This would be to misconceive what Aquinas means by a cognitive strengthening beyond the human mode.
For though a suprahuman mode of knowing remains to be
In STh II-II, q. 8, a. 2 Aquinas cites the case where someone might draw away from
things held on faith "on account of things which appear outwardly" (propterea quae exterius
apparent).Although gifted knowledge is unable to grasp the essential meaning of doctrinal
faith, such knowledge suffices on Aquinas's account to defuse the temptation to apostasy,
since it can show that "those things which appear outwardly are not contrary to the truth"
(ea quae exteriusapparentveritatinon contrariantur)of faith. For a different rendering of this
passage, see M. D. Jordan's translation of STh II-II, qq. 1-16 in On Faith (Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 153-54.
7

GIFTED KNOWLEDGE

177

explained, the strengthening is precisely of human intellects, in
their native condition and subject to their usual limitations. I turn
first, then, to the overlap of the gift of understanding with natural
understanding; second, to the discrepancies between them; third,
to the effect of cognitive strengthening on the otherwise human
mode of faith; and fourth, to the reconciliation of gifted knowledge with the conditions of natural knowing.
II. GIFTED AND NATURAL UNDERSTANDING
The continuity of natural understanding with its supernatural
counterpart becomes apparent when simple understanding
(intellectus) is distinguished from reasoning (ratio). Though careful not to suppose these to be distinct powers, Aquinas insists that
understanding and reasoning are different operations of the
intellect.
For to understand [intelligere]is to apprehend the intelligible truth simply. But
to reason is to proceed from one thing understood to another, so as to know
the intelligible truth. 8

Reasoning therefore presupposes simple understanding as the
condition for its discursiveness. The objects of natural understanding so understood comprise the first principles of reasoning,
grasped immediately by their terms, and the essences of material
things. It is by no means accidental, then, that gifted knowledge
as apprehensive of the objects of faith is called a gift of understanding, and not a gift of reason. For gifted understanding
(donum intellectus) takes its name from natural understanding
(intellectus), on the grounds that it reproduces the simplicity and
immediacy of the latter's activity. The most conspicuous continuity of natural and gifted knowledge consists in the parallelism
of their modes of operation; gifted understanding may in this
respect be thought of as simple understanding transposed to the
8 SI'h I, q. 79, a. 8: "Intelligere enim est simpliciter veritatem intelligibilem apprehendere.
Ratiocinari autem est procedere de uno intellecto ad aliud, ad veritatem intelligibilem
cognoscendarn." Consequently, simple understanding is a more perfect activity than
reasoning: "Patet ergo quod ratiocinari comparatur ad intelligere sicut moveri ad quiescere,
vel acquirere ad habere: quorum unum est perfecti, aliud autem imperfecti" (ibid.).

178

CARL N. STILL

apprehension of purely spiritual objects. Indeed, the reason
Aquinas cites for speaking of a gift of understanding (rather than
a gift of reason, in keeping with the characteristically human
discursive mode) is that this superadded light relates to things
known supernaturally exactly as the natural light of intellectus
does to things known "primordially" (primordialiter).9 In both
cases, the things known are principles of further cognition, and
the mode of knowing them is simple apprehension.
Both penetration to the essence of things and immediate
assimilation of first principles are replicated in the gift's activity.
In the Scriptum, Aquinas asserts that the gift of understanding
"illumines the mind about things heard so that things heard might
be approved immediately in the manner of first principles." 10
Likewise, the parallel with natural penetration to the depths of
things (ad intima rerum) is explicitly reprised, in terms indebted
to Dionysius the Areopagite. For
just as the human mind does not enter into the essences of a thing except
through accidents, so also [it] does not enter into spiritual things except
through bodily things and likenesses of sensible things. 11

The work of understanding, gifted no less than natural, thus
presupposes abstraction from particulars. After all, the recognition of first principles depends on the intelligibility of the terms
in which such principles are exemplified, just as the discernment
of a thing's essence requires a likeness in which the thing's
essential nature is implicitly present.
Of course, the objects that specify the gift's acts are unmistakably different from those of natural understanding. The latter
power is suited to know temporal objects, their essences (or at
least their "depths"), and the conditions that govern their
STh II-II, q. 8, a. 1, ad 2; that is, by way of abstraction from particulars, but without
discursiveness.
10 III Sent., d. 35, q. 2, a. 2, sol. 1; ed. M. F. Moos (Paris: Lethielleux, 1933), 4 vols.,
3.141 (p. 1199): "Et hoc facit intellectus donum quod de auditis mentem illustrat, ut ad
modum primorum principiorum statim audita probentur, et ideo intellectus donum est." The
reference to "things heard" is an echo of the Pauline phrase fi<ks ex auditu (Rom 10: 17).
11 III Sent., d. 35, q. 2, a. 2, sol. 1; 3.139 (p. 1198): "Sicut autem mens humana in
essentiam rei non ingreditur nisi per accidentia, ita etiam in spiritualia non ingreditur nisi per
corporalia et sensibilium similitudines, ut dicit Dionysius."
9

GIFTED KNOWLEDGE

179

existence in the world. To protest that what natural intellectus
knows is the formal, hence nonmaterial, dimensions of material
things is true enough, yet this objection merely reinforces the
distinction being drawn between nonmaterial objects that are
temporal and nonmaterial objects that are supratemporal,
although represented by temporal objects. These latter are classified by Aquinas as "spiritual things" (spiritualia),of which more
specifically "divine things" (divina) are a subset. Because these
objects are assembled under the aspect of being revealed, they
presuppose faith on the part of one aiming to know them. Even
if it were appropriate to speak of them as known by natural
under-standing, Aquinas has a reason why natural cognition
would certainly fail to penetrate them: as the lowest and least·
powerful of intellects, human cognitive power cannot shed
sufficient light on the darkness in which supratemporal, "spiritual" objects appear, at least from a human point of view.
Yet neither can faith. For even faith stands in need of illumination by the amplified light of gifted understanding, inasmuch
as faith by itself beholds spiritual things "as if wrapped in darkness." The knowledge afforded by faith (cognitiofidei) "is beyond
the natural knowledge of God not only of a human being, but
even of an angel. " 12 If elevated by the gift, however, the mind of
the believer may be "introduced to seeing spiritual things [spiritualia] themselves. " 13 And while apprehension by faith remains at
the human level of cognition, gifted knowledge is beyond the
human mode (supra humanum modum), precisely because it can
cognize spiritualiain se, instead of relying (as faith does) solely on
12 STh II-II, q. 5, a. 1: "Cognitio enim fidei est supra naturalem cognitionem de Deo non
solum hominis, sed etiam angeli." Though I translate cognitio above as "knowledge," it is a
vague term for cognitive awareness falling short of scientific knowledge, which is called
scientiaby Aquinas. As implied above, cognitio fidei may be taken as a subjective genitive; the
assertion seems to be that faith's knowledge of God is higher than natural knowledge of God,
both in discursive knowers (human beings) and in intellectual knowers (angels).
13 III Sent., d. 35, q. 2, a. 2, sol. 1; 3.140-41(p.1199):
"Unde fides quae spiritualia in
speculo et aenigmate quasi involuta tenere facit, humano modo mentem perficit; et ideo
virtus est. Sed si supernaturali lumine mens intantum elevetur ut ad ipsa spiritualia aspicienda
introducatur, hoc supra humanum modum est." In speaking of spiritual things as "in a
mirror" and "as if wrapped in darkness," Aquinas is echoing the Pauline phraseology of 1
Corinthians 13:12, the Vulgate version of which reads, "Videmus nunc per speculum in
aenigmate; tune autem facie ad faciem."

180

CARL N. STILL

the authority of spiritualiaquoad nos, that is, as depicted in the
signs and figures of revealed doctrines.
III. GIFTED KNOWLEDGE AND FAITH

Thus far, it has been said that gifted knowledge surpasses the
human mode of knowing, and that it is this feature that divides
such knowledge from faith. That the gift of understanding supplies the believer with an aptitude for an understanding of
spiritual objects not otherwise possible further appears in Aquinas's most basic characterization of the gift as a supernatural light.
For gifted knowledge allows one with faith to "penetrate further
to knowing certain things which one cannot know through
natural light." 14 The "certain things" to be known are again
spiritualiaas described above, of which there can clearly be no
abstractive cognition as they are in themselves. Instead, these
spiritual things are introduced through signs and figures, 15
sensible symbols of which the mind can form images to assist its
comprehension of the supraempirical order.
Here arises the perennial inadequacy of approaching transcendent reality with faith alone: to the mind whose every concept is
necessarily an effect of abstraction from sensory images, there can
be no adequate concept of the spiritual. Confined to the human
mode of knowing, the believer cannot fail to reduce the
symbolized to the symbols themselves, and so confine the transcendent to the categories of the mundane. For Aquinas, this may
be called the problem of the "overshadowing of images"
(obumbratiophantasmatum), and it presents itself whenever and
wherever a spiritual object is eclipsed by the sensible (and
especially visible) objects to which our minds are habituated. And
yet if the psychology that Aquinas accepts from Aristotle is correct
in specifying the object and mode of human knowledge, it seems
14 STh11-11, q. 8, a. 1: "Indiget igitur homo supernaturali lumine ut ulterius penetret ad
cognoscendum quaedam quae per lumen naturale cognoscere non valet. Et illud lumen
supernaturale homini datum vocatur donum intellectus."
15 Aquinas alludes to this Dionysian terminology in order to point out that the use of such
"coverings" for divine things is a necessary concession to the human mode of knowing. See
III Sent., d. 35, q. 2, a. 2, qcla. 2 arg. 2 and sol. 2; 3.130, 146 (pp. 1197, 1200).

GIFTED KNOWLEDGE

181

to follow that "it is impossible that in the present life [in statu
viae] we might know without the overshadowing of images." 16

Can a suprahuman mode of knowledge exercised in an embodied
human knower overcome this problem?
It is important to recall that this problem is not purely theoretical for Aquinas, since it arises inevitably when people subscribe to beliefs for which there is no naturally knowable, publicly
accessible means of verification. The recourse to gifted knowledge
should at least underscore once more that the natural grasp of
revealed doctrines is insufficient to meet the demands of religious
belief and practice. In light of these exigencies, gifted understanding must constitute a new intellectual perspicacity with respect to
the first principles of faith, including the "First Truth"-God, as
presented propositionally. In the Summa Aquinas says that
the gift of understanding is about the first principles of graced cognition, but
otherwise than faith is. For it pertains to faith to assent to these principles, but
it pertains to the gift of understanding to penetrate mentally those things which
are said. 17

The explication of this key statement will provide, I believe, the
best method for distinguishing gifted knowledge more clearly
from the framework of faith in which it lives and moves. One way
of explicating this schematic claim is by filling in some apposite
details from Aquinas's other remarks. In particular, an observation comparing faith and the gift of understanding in his
commentary on Galatians is instructive:
Thus, to know the invisible things of God darkly is in keeping with the human
mode, and such knowledge pertains to the virtue of faith; but to know the

16 III Sent., d. 35, q. 2, a. 2, qcla. 2, arg. 1; 3.130 (pp. 1196-97): "Sed impossibile est quod
in statu viae cognoscamus sine obumbratione phantasmatum, ut Philosophus ostendit." The
reference is to Aristotle, De anima, 3.8 (432a7-8), which is discussed below.
17 STh 11-11, q. 8, a. 6, ad 2: "Dicendum quod donum intellectus est circa prima principia
cognitionis gratuitae, aliter tamen quam fides. Nam ad £idem pertinet eis assentire: ad donum
vero intellectus pertinet penetrare mente ea quae dicuntur."

182

CARL N. STILL

same things more penetratingly and above the human mode pertains to the gift
of understanding. 18

The gift is distinguished now from faith because its grasp is more
penetrating, as was said above of the gift compared to natural
intellectus. Moreover, the phrase "invisible things of God," like
the "things heard" mentioned earlier, suggests the content
attributable to the "first principles of graced cognition." But with
what greater efficacy does the gift attain these principles?
At this point an application of gifted knowledge to the role of
images may serve best to call attention to the cognitive features of
the gift's activity. Perhaps the most characteristic terms in which
Aquinas depicts the gift of understanding are its purgative effect
on the mind and its contribution to the via negativaof Christian
theology. Both purgation and negation point up the role of
images in human knowledge of spiritual things, precisely by
working to minimize the shadows cast by those images. As
suggested above, however, Aquinas accepts as a psychological fact
the judgment of Aristotle, that "no one can learn or understand
anything in the absence of sense." And from this it follows as a
corollary that "when the mind is actively aware of anything it is
necessarily aware of it along with an image." 19
Aquinas understands this dictum to mean that the soul
"understands nothing without an image," or more precisely that
the human intellect cannot understand in actuality (actu intelligere) except by turning to images. For only the images represent
the individual thing the soul aims to understand. So great is Aquinas's insistence on turning to images that although the intellect is
actualized upon reception of a universal likeness of a thing, not
In Gal. c. 5, lect. 6, no. 329 (on Gal. 5:22-23): "Puta cognoscere invisibilia Dei sub
aenigniate est per modum humanum: et haec cognitio pertinet ad virtutem fidei; sed
cognoscere ea perspicue et supra humanum modum, pertinet ad donum intellectus" (in Super
Epistolas S. Pauli Lectura, ed. R. Cai [Turin: Marietti, 1953), 2 vols., 1.636). The translation
cited is from F. R. Larcher, Commentary on Saint Paul's Epistle to the Galatians (Albany:
Magi Books, 1966), 179.
19 Aristotle, De anima, 3.8 (432a7-8). I have used the revised Oxford translation of On
the Soul in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1984), 1:687. Cf. ibid.,3.7 (43la15-17): "To the tltinkingsoul images serve
as if tltey were contents of perception ... that is why the soul never thinks without an image"
(1:685).
18

GIFTED KNOWLEDGE

183

until the intellect converts to particularized images will he allow
that it actually understands. 20 Nor is knowing through images an
incidental result of the intellect's union with the body. As Aquinas's analysis of the separated soul serves to show, the intuitive
mode of separated cognition, though nobler in itself, is so ill
suited to the human soul that its knowledge in this state is "confused. " 21 In short, the reliance on images in human cognition
applies at every level, in every state, and to every object. Yet
however indispensable they are in ordinary human cognition,
images pose a stumbling block to any understanding of the
spiritual as possessed of positive qualities not derived from
creatures. As Aquinas says in the Scriptum, if the wayfarer is to
have his cognition perfected, he must understand God to be
"separate from all things [and] above all things. " 22 But this
understanding requires a practice of "removal" (via remotionis),
by which the traces of corporeality derived from mundane things
may be gradually removed, or strained out, from one's
conceptions of the spiritual. Yet no such method of negation of
images will suffice for knowledge of spiritual things, if its
operation remains (like faith) in the human mode. The mind must
be purified, with respect to both its contents and its manner of
conceiving those contents.

IV. UNDERSTANDING BEYOND IMAGES
Hence Aquinas is faced with a dilemma about the role of
images in knowing supratemporal, spiritual objects. If he holds
with Aristotle that there is no cognition apart from images, he
must also accept that images overshadow the intellection of
nonimaginable objects. Against this view, however, Aquinas must
20 This point, already stated in STh I, q. 84, a. 7 (cited above in note 5), is applied to
knowledge of singulars in STh I, q. 86, a. 1.
21 STh I, q. 89, a. 1: "Si igitur animae humanae sic essent institutae a Deo ut intelligerent
per modum qui competit substantiis separatis, non haberent cognitionem perfectam, sed
confusam in communi."
22 III Sent., d. 35, q. 2, a. 2, sol. 2; 3.142-43 (p. 1199): "In statu viae intellectus ingreditur
ad spiritualia primo modo [i.e. per viam remotionis], maxime ad divina; quia in hoc perficitur
cognitio humana secundum statum viae, ut intelligamus Deum ab omnibus separatum, super

omnia esse."

184

CARL N. STILL

also take account of Augustine, who refers to corporeal images as
a "human weakness which it is necessary for those aiming for
God to remove through understanding," 23 that is, through the gift
of understanding. This is not to deny the Dionysian principle
already accepted, that divine things are proposed in signs and
figures, which require images. Yet if images really do obscure the
mind's grasp of spiritual realities, their "removal" may well be
described as a purging of the mind. But how can the removal of
images be affirmed together with the reliance on images as the
most basic of conditions governing all human knowledge?
If a resolution of this tension is to be found, it must be sought
in the activity of gifted knowledge itself. Three interpretations are
at least possible. Gifted knowledge may be (1) superfluous, a mere
verbal trick to make faith seem more scientific than it can ever be;
(2) exceptional, that is, a contradiction of the conditions governing all other abstractive knowledge and inexplicable in natural
terms; or (3) distinct from faith and natural cognition, yet subject
to their conditions. Though this last is hardest to explain, it is
also clearly the only sense worthy of serious consideration, since
the first reading attributes dishonesty to Aquinas, while the second implies obscurantism at best, and at worst self-contradiction.
Nothing said thus far entails either of these drastic conclusions,
and I shall therefore explore below the positive alternative: that
gifted knowledge, while living within faith, is nevertheless a
possible mode of human cognition, distinct from that of natural
understanding qua mode, and not merely as a result of having
distinct objects.
Supposing there is such a distinct mode, the aporia it involves
can be restated as the requirement of harmony between the
grasping of spiritualiain se and the need for images to support
thought. Certainly, there are limits on the first of these elements.
After dividing the two means intellect has of approaching spiritual
things into affirmative and negative ways, Aquinas flatly denies in
the Scriptum that the gift can afford the wayfarer a direct gaze
23 III Sent., d. 35, q. 2, a. 2, sol. 2, ad 4; 3.148 (p. 1200): "Dicendum quod Augustinus
nominat 'infirmitatem humanam' corporalia phantasmata, quae oportet removere per
intellectum tendentes in Deum."

GIFTED KNOWLEDGE

185

into the divine essence,24 or even into spiritual things themselves,25 mysteries of faith included. Seeing God and understanding propositions of faith are not nearly so carefully distinguished
here as they are in the Summa, but the crucial reason for denying
positive knowledge of spiritualiais ineluctable: there is darkness
in the human intellect. Inherent in the state of being a human
knower, this darkness undoubtedly includes the intellect's
dependence on phantasms, already characterized as an obfuscation in Aristotelian terms and an infirmity by Augustine. The
central contrast between these diagnoses of human cognition by
phantasms appears in Augustine's exhortation to remove them, so
that God might be seen by purified minds, as against Aristotle's
dictum that there is no human cognition without relying on
images. Aquinas's solution is to reconcile these opposed perspectives by insisting that while images cannot be deleted, their
limitations can be transcended. The strengthened light that is
brought to bear in gifted knowledge allows a piercing glance at
spiritual reality, which is present though hidden in the doctrinal
symbols that convey it. The images formed from these symbols
are not then the objects, but rather the instruments, of cognition;
like slides in a projector, they serve to focus light passed through
them in a structured way. If illumined by a relatively weak light,
only the slide itself will be seen. But if amplified by an incommensurably greater light, not only the slide but its image will
become visible at a depth far beyond the slide's own surface. To
complete the analogy, the form imprinted on the slide serves to
focus the light, yet without overshadowing the resulting illumination of its image.
If the analogy of transparence of photographic images to
images formed of spiritualiais useful, it provides a clue to what
is meant by cognition that relies on images, yet escapes their
obscuring influence. Another clue may be found in Aquinas's
24 III Sent., d. 35, q. 2, a. 2, sol. 2, ad 1; 3.145

(p. 1200).
III Sent., d. 35, q. 2, a. 2, sol. 2; 3.142 (p. 1199). This does not contradict the claim that
gifted knowledge cognizes spiritualia in se, for a "direct gaze" into the essence would mean
comprehending their essences. Since Aquinas allows no perfect knowledge of the essences
even of natural things, the same presumably applies a fortiori to spiritual objects. This
reasoning explains why he often prefers to speak of penetration to the "depths of things," as
noted above, instead of attainment of their essences.
25

186

CARL N. STILL

interpretation of the sixth beatitude, which he sees as promising
the overcoming in purified minds of overshadowing by images.
Those who will see God will do so only if they are "pure in
heart," that is, only if their intellects are purified of all corporeal
things. 26 Yet this mental purgation, while fully realizable only in
direct vision beyond this life, will be at least partially accomplished in this life by way of removal (per viam remotionis).This
removal must include distinguishing the symbolized from the
symbols, while still relying on the symbols to focus the mind's
illuminating power. If the way of removal were to become one's
principal way of knowing spiritualia,and the light of the mind
were to be strengthened, it is possible that a third dimension,
comparable to depth perception, would become perceptible in the
otherwise two-dimensional symbols of doctrine.
Finally, the distinction between negative and affirmative ways
is paralleled in the Summa by a distinction between doctrines
proper to faith (sub fide), such as the Trinity and the Incarnation,
and propositions that are "ordered to faith" (ordinataad {idem),
a class that can include any scriptural data that support doctrinal
faith. 27 This distinction poses the problem of grasping spiritualia
in yet another way. The first class of propositions cannot be
positively understood, or comprehended, in this life; while those
of the second type, though comprehensible by means of gifted
knowledge, serve only to cast light on the central truths of doctrinal faith. In other words, those spiritualia susceptible to
positive understanding presuppose the context of doctrines proper to faith. But the doctrines, far from being comprehensible in
this life, can be approached only by way of negation or removal.
The believer's relation to them is always more a matter of faith
than understanding. And as we have seen, faith perfects the mind
in a human mode of knowing. Yet if the gift of understanding is
to be "otherwise than faith," Aquinas must allow for some
26 III Sent., d. 35, q. 2, a. 2, sol. 2; 3.143 (p. 1199): "quantum ad statum viae munditia
ponitur in sexta beatitudine quae pertinet ad depurationem intellectus ab omnibus
corporalibus." The scriptural locus for the sixth beatitude is Matthew 5:8: "Beati mundo
corde, quoniam ipsi Deum videbunt" ("Blessedare the pure in heart, for they shall see God").
Aquinas has thus interpreted purity of heart as referring to purification of the intellect.
27 For this distinction, see STh 11-11, q. 8, a. 2.

GIFTED KNOWLEDGE

187

cognition of the principles of faith, without of course compromising divine incomprehensibility. How is this dilemma to be
resolved?
Aquinas's answer requires a further analysis of purification. He
speaks variously of purification of the intellect's contents,
especially of human conceptions of spiritual things, and of the
intellect itself. In both processes he finds gifted knowledge at
work: in the intellectual task of correcting distorted ideas about
spiritual realities, and in the spiritual therapy of preparing the
mind to be receptive to supernatural light. These two processes
coincide when the gift has so purified the believer's intellect that
he habitually and easily removes material images from his
thoughts about the spiritual. Accordingly, the intellect is said to
be purified when "those things which are proposed concerning
God are not taken in the manner of corporeal images. "28 To the
extent that the spiritual therapy presupposes the intellectual task,
it must be that the purification of the intellect means especially
the purification of its mode of knowing spiritual objects.
How implausible it is that such purification could be accomplished by any disinterested technique of "removal," divorced
from the exigencies of faith, bears some reflection. Indeed, this
view of intellectual purification strongly suggests that the purified
mode is more passive than active, more the effect of having light
passed through it than a result of its focusing and refocusing its
own light on the images in which it conceives of spiritual objects.
Images are undoubtedly still present in the purified intellect, yet
it is precisely in looking through, rather than at, them that the
mind becomes aware of the reality and integrity of the spiritual,
now recognized against normal cognitive tendencies as much
more than a thin abstraction from the obvious and solid world of
material objects. To the extent that this apprehension of spiritualia as unbounded by images becomes more and more effortless,
immediate, and guided from above, this gifted cognition might be
28 STh Il-Il, q. 8, a. 7: "Alia vero munditia cordis est quae est quasi completiva respectu
visionis divinae; et haec quidem est munditia men tis depuratae a phantasmatibus et erroribus,
ut scilicet ea quae de Deo proponuntur non accipiantur per modum corporalium
phantasmatum, nee secundum haereticas perversitates. Et hanc munditiam facit donum
intellectus."

188

CARL N. STILL

said to constitute, if not a distinctive mode of knowing, then
certainly a new quality to the mode connatural to an embodied
knower.
CONCLUSION

Because Aquinas regards purity of heart and vision of God as
mutually inclusive, he concludes that seeing God begins in the
present life, as a kind of inchoate vision. 29 To state this thesis
negatively is not difficult: to know God as well as is possible in
this life is to know that the divine nature exceeds whatever is
comprehended by the intellect. The burden of this essay has been
to find a Thomistic way of stating the point positively. Perhaps an
example will clarify afresh the solution that I have pursued. On
viewing a icon of Christ, one may abstract, as from any such
image, the universal notion of human being, and connect this
intelligible notion back to the image in which the form is
exemplified. On an abstractive account this is one way that
someone might judge that Christ is a man. But what is the
analogical process for concluding that Christ is God? How is one
supposed to abstract a proper notion of divinity from any possible
assemblage of images, visual, auditory, or otherwise?
Considering the question again in these terms will permit, I
think, the refutation of one tempting, but mistaken, dismissal of
gifted knowledge in Aquinas. For it may still seem most
reasonable to suppose that, apart from the distinction drawn
between spiritualiaand temporalia,gifted knowledge is nothing
more than natural understanding working on the objects proper
to faith, while deriving support from faith. If there are achievements of understanding what is believed, these are human
attainments, explicable in the categories of abstraction, conversion to images, and reasoning that explain all our propositional
knowledge. But because one cannot abstract a concept of divinity,
even with the whole panoply of revealed symbols at one's
disposal, one can know only what God is not. Even the provision
of the supreme symbol of all, Christ as "express image" of God
29 STh 11-11, q. 8, a. 7: "dona autem et hie nos perficiunt secundum quandam inchoationem, et in futuro implebuntur."

GIFTED KNOWLEDGE

189

(Heb 1 :3 ), can make no difference to one's conceptual knowledge
of God.
No doubt faith would allow one to believe far more than one
sees. And if gifted knowledge could be shown to be in no way
discontinuous with faith, Aquinas's account of such knowledge
would of course be superfluous, if not frivolous. On the other
hand, by following the assumption that Aquinas does not allow
human cognition at any time to be entirely free of reliance on
images, I have aimed to suggest how a mode of cognition working
with images of nonmaterial things might nevertheless see far
enough through such images to grasp something of the character
of those things themselves. As a corollary it seems plausible to
suppose that this operation, if possible, is not in the mode of
natural understanding. To know doctrinal images by way of
abstraction is still to know them qua images, and not yet as
symbols. For if they are images of transnatural and supratemporal
realities, none of them (nor even all together) can adequately
reflect the essence of the symbolized. Seeing an image as a symbol
requires seeing both its likeness and its unlikeness to the
symbolized. In Aquinas's terms, seeing the likeness requires a
strengthening of our cognitive light, to see through the shadows
cast by images. Seeing the unlikeness depends on removal of
images, not as an occasional technique, but as the means of
recognizing all such images as symbols, yet as only intimations of
the symbolized.
·
One conclusion that may be drawn is that gifted knowledge
merits serious study by those interested in the full range of
cognition in Aquinas's thought. Of course, such study will have
to delineate gifted knowledge much more broadly than has been
attempted here, in terms that encompass the gifts of wisdom and
knowledge, as well as their role within the economy of faith. Yet
if the contribution of gifted knowledge to Aquinas's theory of
knowledge is to be clarified, one must also pay attention to the
range, modes, and objects of natural human cognition. Inasmuch
as the topic thus described lies at the intersection of the topics
usually delegated to theologians and those usually handled by
philosophers, the task will require interdisciplinary attention. As
noted at the outset, such an approach to gifted knowledge has

190

CARL N. STILL

scarcely been attempted in modern scholarship on Aquinas. Apart
from disciplinary segregation, however, there may be good reason
for this lacuna. Much depends on establishing that gifted
knowledge is properly a form of cognition, and that it is not
reducible either to faith or to natural knowledge. Yet because
gifted knowledge relies on faith for its cognitive efficacy, some
may suspect that it resists meaningful analysis within a theory of
knowledge, for the simple reason that (ex hypothesi) the disjunction between faith and knowledge is exclusive. Some theorists
interested in the epistemological assessment of doctrinal faith may
suppose that this distinction settles the matter. But Thomas
Aquinas evidently disagrees. 30

30 I wish to express special thanks for the invaluable assistance of the late Monsignor
Edward A. Synan in bringing this piece to fruition.

The Thomist 63 (1999): 191-216

TRANSCENDENTAL METHODS AND
TRANSCENDENT AL ARGUMENTS:
A CRITICISM OF RAHNER'S TRANSCENDENTAL
THEOLOGY 1
MICHAEL G. PARKER
Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universitiit
Frankfurt am Main, Germany

INTRODUCTION

N

UMEROUS RAHNER SCHOLARS have drawn attention to the

importance of the "transcendental" turn for Rahner's
theology. Karl-Heinz Weger has referred to the
"transcendental-anthropological method" as the "instrument" of
Rahner's thought. 2 J.B. Metz has described Rahner's "anthropologically oriented theology" as the "inner form" of his theological
program. 3 Finally, Karl Lehmann has spoken of "transcendental
questioning" as the philosophical and theological "starting point"
for understanding Rahner's treatment of particular themes and
issues.4
1 This is a slightly revised version of my lecture entitled: "Transcendental Methods and
Transcendental Arguments: A Criticism of Rahner's Transcendental Theology" delivered to
the theology faculty of The Catholic University of America on 17 February 1998.
2 Karl-Heinz Weger, Karl Rahner:Eine Ein{Uhrungin sein theologischesDenken (Frei burg:
Herder, 1978), 20. The English translation speaks rather awkwardly of the transcendental
method as the "apparatus" of Rahner's thought (Karl Rahner:An Introduction to His Theology [New York: Crossroad/Seabury, 1980], 11).
3 J. B. Metz, "Karl Rahner," in Tendenzen der Theologie im 20. ]ahrhundert: Eine
Geschichtein Portriits,ed. Hans J iirgen Schultz (Stuttgart: Kreuz-Verlag, 1966), 517. See also
J. B. Metz, "Karl Rahner-Widmung und Wiirdigung," in Gott in Welt: Festgabe{Ur Karl
Rabner, vol. 1, ed. J.B. Metz, W. Kern, A. Darlap, and H. Vorgrimler (Freiburg, Basel,
Vienna: Herder, 1964), 8.
4 K. Lehmann, "Karl Rahner," Bilanz der Theologie im 20. Jahrhundert Bahnbrechende
Theologen, ed. H. Vorgrimler and R. Vander Gucht (Freiburg, Basel, Vienna: Herder), 158f.

191

192

MICHAEL G. PARKER

But although critics agree about the importance of the
"transcendental turn" in Rahner's theology, they rarely give more
than a schematic account of it. For his part, Rabner has offered
them little encouragement, either by playing down methodological considerations in his work or denying that he has a method
that is uniquely his. 5 Nevertheless, the "transcendental anthropological method" is characteristic of Rahner's theology and any
treatment of his thought must come to terms with it.
In this article, I shall examine and criticize Rahner's "transcendental method" insofar as it is understood as an application of
transcendental philosophy to the subject matter of theology. My
main criticism is that his "transcendental method" is flawed
insofar as it appeals to deductive "transcendental arguments,"
since such arguments are unable to prove that the conditions they
deduce as necessary are unique. My criticisms focus primarily on
Rahner's fundamental theological arguments for infallibility since
they furnish particularly dear and fruitful examples of the kinds
of arguments I shall be criticizing, but they apply to all arguments
of the same type. This paper is therefore an attempt to bring some
general criticisms that have been advanced against transcendental
arguments to bear on Rahner's transcendental method.
In general, Rahner's statements about the relation between
transcendental theology and philosophy express two opposing
views on the subject. One set of statements reflects the view that
transcendental theology is an application of transcendental philosophy (or the "transcendental method") to the subject matter of
theology. So, for instance, Rabner can say: "Transcendental
theology is that theology which uses transcendental philosophy
as its method." 6 By contrast, a second group of statements expresses the view that transcendental theology has its source within
theology itself. As Rabner says, "The approach of transcendental

5 Karl Rahner, "Anthropologie und Protologie," Mysterium Salutis: Die Heilsgeschichte
vor Christus, vol. 2, ed. Johannes Feiner and Magnus Lohrer (Einsiedeln, Zurich, Cologne:

Benzinger, 1967), 406.
6 Karl Rahner, "Reflections on Methodology in Theology," TheologicalInvestigations,vol.
11, trans. David Bourke (London: Darron, Longman & Todd, 1994), 85.

RAHNER'S TRANSCENDENTAL THEOLOGY

193

theology is genuinely theological. " 7 He can even go so far as to
assert the independence of transcendental theology from transcendental philosophy as when he says a transcendental form of questioning "must continually be posed from the essence of theology
itself ... the express recourse to transcendental philosophy [is]
not at all necessary. " 8
A complete account of Rahner's "transcendental method"
would have to consider these conflicting claims. Here, however,
we shall limit ourselves to the contention that transcendental
theology is an application of transcendental philosophy or the
"transcendental method" to the subject matter of theology. This
decision is justified by the fact that the arguments we shall be
considering are straightforwardly philosophical ones.
I. "TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY"

In a shorthand definition of transcendental theology, Rahner
writes that "One could call [transcendental theology] that
systematic theology which .... uses transcendental philosophy as
its instrument. " 9 If "transcendental philosophy" is to serve theology as its "instrument" then it presupposes philosophy as an
independent discipline. Rahner himself explicitly draws this
conclusion when he says that "theology of its very nature presupposes philosophy as a condition of its own possibility." 10
Assuming the importance of "transcendental philosophy" for
theology, what does Rahner mean by the term? There are, in fact,
several different meanings to be found in Rahner's writings. 11
7 Karl Rabner, "Transzendentaltheologie," SacramentumMundi,vol. 4 (Freiburg: Herder,
1969), 986 (my translation; cf. "Transcendental Theology," in SacramentumMundi, vol. 6
[New York: Herder and Herder, 1968], 287).
8 Karl Rabner, "Uberlegungen zur Methode," Schri#enzur Theologie9 (Zurich: Benziger,
1970), 102 (my translation; cf. Rahner, "Reflections on Methodology in Theology," 90-91).
Also see Friedmann Greiner, Die Menschlichkeit der Offenbarung: Die transzendentale
Grundlegungder Theologie bei Karl Rabner (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1978), 94.
9 Rahner, "Tranzendentaltheologie," 987 (my translation; cf. "Transcendental Theology,"
287).
10 Karl Rahner, "Philosophy and Theology," Theological Investigations,vol. 6, trans.
Karl-H. Kruger and Boniface Kruger (London: Darton, Longmann & Todd, 1969), 71. Cf.
Greiner, Die Menschlichkeitder Offenbarung, 10.
11 Greiner, Die Menschlichkeitder Offenbarung,94£.

194

MICHAEL G. PARKER

Without attempting a complete classification, we can generalize
and say that Rahner uses the term both in a loose, non-technical
way and in a narrower, more technical manner.
Rahner employs the term "transcendental philosophy" in a .
loose sense to refer to the way any philosophy must proceed. 12
Every philosophy (and here "philosophy" is closely identified
with metaphysics) makes apodictically certain judgments which
imply, as a condition of their possibility, an a priori knowledge
of the structures of the subject whose judgments they are. 13 By
maintaining that there are "transcendental" elements in the
writings of "pre-critical" philosophers such as Augustine, Origen,
Aquinas, and others, Rahner seems to suggest that a "transcendental" hermeneutic is legitimate for interpreting their writings,
as he himself interpreted the texts of Aquinas in Geist in Welt. 14
But Rahner also employs the term "transcendental philosophy"
more narrowly to refer to "modern" philosophy since Descartes,
especially the tradition from Kant to German Idealism. 15 He
sometimes widens the concept further to include existentialism,
phenomenology, fundamental ontology, and contemporary
hermeneutics. 16
If we limit ourselves to Rahner's more technical definition of
the term, "transcendental philosophy" has two central features:
it is characterized by a transcendental "turn" to the subject and it
employs a "transcendental method" or "transcendental ques-

Rabner, "Reflections on Methodology in Theology," 85.
TheologicalInvestigations,vol. 9, trans.
Graham Harrison (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1992), 29.
14 Rabner, "Reflections on Methodology in Theology," 85-86.
15 "What then is this note 'transcendental'? Basing ourselves on Kant's definition of [the]
concept we can say: A question is posed on the transcendental plane when it asks for the a
priori conditions that make knowledge of an object possible" (Rabner, "The Concept of
Existential Philosophy in Heidegger," trans. Andrew Tallon, PhilosopbyToday 13 [1969]:
129). This article was originally published as "Introduction au concept de philosophie
existentiale chez Heidegger" in Recherches de sciences religieuses 30 (1940): 152-71. It
appeared mistakenly under the name of Rahner's brother Hugo.
16 Rabner, "Reflections on Methodology in Theology," 86. Cf. "Theology and
Anthropology," 38.
12

13 Karl Rabner, "Theology undAnthropology,"

RAHNER'S TRANSCENDENTAL THEOLOGY

195

tioning. " 17 Hence "transcendental philosophy" in the technical
sense refers to philosophy of a broadly Kantian stripe.
Central to Rahner's notion of transcendental philosophy is the
"transcendental method" or "transcendental questioning." He defines it as follows: "Transcendental questioning asks in such a
manner, that the necessary conditions of the possibility of knowledge or action in the subject is questioned. " 18
For Rahner, a "transcendental philosophical theology" seeks
"the theological subject's a priori 'structures' implicit in a particular theological statement." 19 Or, to put the matter in terms used
by Rahner in Hearer of the Word, a transcendental theology seeks
to "establish that it is a priori possible for us to hear an eventual
revelation of God." 2° Friedmann Greiner, in his book on the
transcendental groundwork of Rahner's theology, thus concludes:
"Transcendental reflections involve [beinhalten] the question
about the necessary conditions of the possibility of experience of
God's revelatory act in the subject." 21
One of the difficulties in characterizing Rahner's notion of
"transcendental philosophy" or the "transcendental method" is
that he uses the term "transcendental" in a number of ways.
Hence, "transcendental" can refer to the act of human selftranscendence or to the concrete historical realization of this
transcendence. 22 Both meanings have implications for Rahner's
understanding of the formal question about the conditions of the
possibility of experience. So, for instance, Rahner refers to human
self-transcendence as "the a priori presupposition for the
17 L. Bruno Puntel's characterization of the Transcendental Thomists' interpretation of
Kant applies to Rabner as well. He writes, "Kant is interpreted and assimilated by these
authors very superficially [iiugerJich] insofar as he is seen as the founder of a new method,
namely the transcendental one." Puntel writes further, "Kant's transcendental move is
interpreted entirely generally as the turn to subjectivity and the conditions of the possibility
of knowledge contained therein, and insofar affirmed" (L. Bruno Puntel, Analogie und
Geschichtlichkeit [Freiburg: Herder, 1969], 350).
18 Rahner, "Theology and Anthropology," 29 (translation slightly modified).
19 Ibid., 30.
20 Rabner, Hearer of the Word, 1st ed., trans. Joseph Donceel (New York: Continuum,
1994), 5. Cf. Greiner, Die Menschlichkeit der Offenbarung, 16.
21 Greiner, Die Menschliehkeit der Offenbarung, 16.
22 See Greiner for the distinction between Rahner's "formal" and "material" usages of
"transcendental" (Greiner, Die Menschlichkeit der Offenbarung, 19-20).

MICHAEL G. PARKER

196

possibility ... of hearing a Word of God. " 23 Or he says that a
transcendental inquiry is "a reflection of man upon himself ... in
the realization of his existence" in which he is "always oriented
toward a very concrete history." On the basis of the latter,
Rabner sometimes characterizes his transcendental inquiry as the
attempt to discover the "inner correspondence" between the content of revelation and the concrete, historical, self-understanding
of man. 24 Rahn er employs this usage in the following characterization of the transcendental method:
The transcendental method attempts, stated very briefly, to reach conclusions
of faith by asking about the conditions of the possibility of revelation in human
self-understanding and history. 25

A concise summary of the three central meanings of "transcendental" we have mentioned here is provided by Greiner in the
following passage:
First, if with regard to epistemological-theoretical considerations "transcendental" describes the formal question about the conditions of possibility of experience of revelation in the subject and second, in terms of its subject matter,
the transcendence of human subjectivity beyond itself toward the divine being,
so it describes, thirdly, also materially, the demonstration of the practicalexistential relevance of divine revelatory action for the realization of human
being's identity. 26

II. TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY AND TRANSCENDENTAL
ARGUMENTS

We have said that Rabner sometimes describes his
"transcendental theology" as a theology that uses transcendental
philosophy as its "instrument," and a determining characteristic
of transcendental philosophy is its employment of the "transcendental method" or a "transcendental form of inquiry." We have
identified three meanings of the term "transcendental" which
Rahner, Rorer des Wortes, 2d ed., 71.
"Anthropologie und Protologie," 406. Cf. Greiner, Die Menschlicbkeit der
Offenbarung, 19.
25 Rahner, "Anthropologie und Protologie," 406.
26 Greiner, Die Menschlicbkeit der Offenbarung, 19-20.
21

24 Rahner,

RAHNER'S TRANSCENDENTAL THEOLOGY

197

determine Rahner's characterization of transcendental philosophy
or the transcendental method. Now we are in a position to
consider more carefully Rahner's characterization of his own
transcendental procedure.

A) Two Types of Transcendental Arguments: Deductive and
Reductive
In his extensive study of Rahner's thought, Peter Eicher
distinguishes three stages in his transcendental method: (1)
phenomenological description, (2) transcendental reduction, and
(3) transcendental deduction. 27 The latter two stages correspond
to the distinction in the philosophical literature between two
types of transcendental arguments whose origins can be found in
Kant: a "reductive" or regressive argument and a "deductive"
progressive one.
Rahner sometimes refers to his transcendental arguments as
"deductive" and at other times as "reductive." An example of the
former can be found in Hearer of the Word where Rahner says
that the essential connection he makes between "the transcendence of the human spirit and human historicity" was "transcendentally deduced from a peculiarity of the human spirit as such. " 28
Similarly, in an encyclopedia article entitled "Transcendental
theology" Rahner says that the essential unity and difference
between human transcendentality and historicity is made clear in
a "'transcendental' deduction." 29 Negatively, Rahner admits that
the concrete historical content of God's self-communication
cannot be "derived" through a transcendental procedure so that
while, for example, a transcendental Christology can affirm that
man searches in history for a "absolute savior," whether he actually encounters Jesus of Nazareth as this absolute savior cannot be
"transcendentally 'deduced. '" 30

27 Peter Eicher, Die anthropologischeWende: Karl Rahners philosophischerWeg vom
Wesen des Menschen zur Persona/enExistenz (Freiburg: Universitatsverlag, 1970), 55-64.
28 Rahner, Hearer of the Word, 119. Cf. Harer des Wortes, 2d ed., 173, 175-76.
29 Rahner, "Transzendentaltheologie," 990. Cf. "Transcendental Theology," 28.8.
30 Rahner, "Theology and Anthropology," 30.

198

MICHAEL G. PARKER

Rahner also refers to his transcendental procedure as "regressive" or "reductive." For instance, he says that a transcendental inquiry "means a clarifying reduction [erhellendeRUckfuhrung]
of everything meaningful for salvation ... to [a] transcendental
essence."31 And he further characterizes his transcendental
reflection as a Reduktion, RUckfuhrung,or Ritckgrandung.32
Although Rahner does not discuss the differences between a
"deductive" and "reductive" form of argument, the distinction is
common enough in Transcendental Thomist discussions of the
transcendental method. In general one can say that Transcendental Thomists understand a "reductive" transcendental argument as one that seeks the formal conditions of the possibility of
a particular reality in the transcendental subject. Such an argument seeks to uncover the subjective a priori element in knowledge. By contrast, a "deductive" procedure seeks to derive the
necessary structures of the object from the formal structures of
subjectivity. This type of argument seeks the objective a priori
element in knowing. 33
We have established that Rahn er distinguishes between "reductive" and "deductive" elements in this transcendental method and
we have given a general characterization of how Transcendental
Thomists understand the difference. But is this distinction useful
for characterizing Rahner's actual procedure? We shall argue that
it is and that, furthermore, this distinction helps to lay bear the
logical force of a number of Rahner's fundamental theological
arguments and provides grounds for criticizing them.

B) ..Reductive" and ..Deductive" Arguments in Rabner
In the following section I shall provide examples of both
"reductive" and "deductive" transcendental arguments in Rah31 Rabner, "Transzendentaltheologie,"

51-52.

32 Ibid.
33 "linter

'Reduktion' verstehen wir den Riickgang auf die subjektiven, unter 'Deduktion'
die Ableitung der objektiven apriorischen Elemente" (Eicher, Die anthropologischeWende,
59-64). Cf. Emerich Coreth, Metaphysik,70-71; Otto Muck, Die transcendentaleMethode
in der scholastischenPhilosophieder Gegenwart(Innsbruck: Felix Rauch, 1964), 75-76. For
a general introduction to the use of "transcendental arguments" in theology, see: Kathryn
Tanner, God and Creation in ChristianTheology (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 20-27.

RAHNER'S TRANSCENDENTAL THEOLOGY

199

ner's writings. As examples of the reductive type, I shall take
Rahner's arguments for a preapprehension (Vorgriff) of the universal form and for the identity of knower and known. As
examples of deductive arguments, I shall consider Rahner's transcendental Christology and his "eschatological" argument for the
infallibility of the Church in teaching.
Rahner's argument for a preapprehension of being or Vorgriff
auf esse appears in his early philosophical work Spirit in the
World in the context of his discussion of the Thomistic theory of
abstraction. Following Aquinas, Rahner argues that the intellect
knows material things by a process of abstraction which involves
the liberation of the universal form from matter. Abstraction
presupposes the knower's ability to recognize the universal form
as limited in a particular material concretion. This is the work of
the agent intellect.
The agent intellect is ... the capacity to know the sensibly intuited as limited,
as a realized concretion, and only to that extent does it "universalize" the form
possessed sensibly ... [and] liberate the form from its material concretion. 34

The ability to recognize the particular form as limited is, at the
same time, a recognition of it as universal since it is potentially
the form of many "this-es." Hence the capacity for abstraction is
the ability to recognize the unlimitedness of the universal particularized in a concrete "this."
The power of abstraction is the power of knowing that the quidditative
determination presented by the senses in its singularity is, of itself, unlimited.
The quidditative determination is first presented to us as restricted to a single
sense object. If then we know at once that this determination as such is unlimited, we must somehow grasp that its limitation comes from the single sense
object as such. If we are aware of this limitation as such, and as brought about
by the "thisness" of the single object, we are also aware of the limitlessness of
the quiddity as such. 35

Rahner then asks how the recognition of the limitation of the
form is possible. He argues that the anticipation of further
34 Karl Rahner, Spirit in the World, trans. William Dych, S.J. (New York: Continuum,
1994), 141.
35 Rahn er, Hearer of the Word, 46-4 7.

200

MICHAEL G. PARKER

possibilities through which the concrete sensible form is grasped
as limited is possible by virtue of a preapprehension or Vorgriff
(excessus in Aquinas's terminology).
We are aware that the quiddity experienced in sensibility is limited in and
through the single sense object. The fact that we are aware of this limitation
reveals to us the limitlessness which belongs to the quiddity as such. This is
possible only if the activity that grasps this individual sense object reaches out,
prior to this grasping, beyond this individual object, for more than the latter
is. New this "more" can only be the absolute range of all knowable objects as
such. We shall call this reaching for more the "Vorgriff." 36

Hence Rahner's argument for the Vorgriffis reductive because
it asks about the formal conditions of the possibility of knowing
within the subject.
Another example of Rahner's reductive procedure is his argument for the identity of knower and known, one of the central
premises of his fundamental ontology. 37 On Rahner's account of
knowing as self-presence it would seem that the proper object of
knowledge is the knower's own subjectivity. But how then is
receptive knowledge of the "other" of sense possible? Rabner
concludes that it is possible only if the knower himself is the being
of the other.
How must a knower be understood ontologically, if, in spite of the metaphysical premise that knowledge is the presence-to-itself of an existent of a
definite intensity of being, nevertheless there is to be an intuitive knowledge
of another as the proper object? If according to the fundamental premise of the
Thomistic metaphysics of knowledge only that which the knower itself is is
known as proper object, and if, nevertheless, there is to be a knowledge in
which this known as proper object is the other, then both of these can be
understood as simultaneously possible only by the fact that the knower itself is
the being of the other. 38

Rahner's argument that "the knower itself is the being of the
other" is reductive because it asks about the formal conditions of
the possibility in the subject. But unlike his argument for the
36 Ibid., 47.

des Wortes, 2d ed., 44.
Rabner, Spirit in the World, 79.

37 Rahner, Harer
38

RAHNER'S TRANSCENDENTAL THEOLOGY

201

Vorgriff, the conditions are not merely epistemological but
ontological. They do not concern the conditions of the possibility
of knowledge but rather the nature or essence of the knower. This
is consistent with Rahner's intention in Hearer of the Word to
provide a "metaphysical analysis of human being" 39 rather than
simply an account of the transcendental conditions of the possibility of human knowledge.
By contrast, an example of the "deductive" type of argument
is provided by Rahner's "transcendental Christology" in which he
seeks to give a "transcendental deduction" of faith in Christ. 40
Rabner argues that man is both a historical being and a being of
absolute transcendence toward God. Consequently, he searches
in his history for something like a "God-man" who would be the
historical fulfillment of man's search for the absolute. 41 He also
provides certain "existential" features such an ideal figure would
possess including "absolute love of neighbor," "readiness for
death," "hope in the future." 42 This transcendental deduction of
the "idea" of a God-man attempts to show how the factual,
historically conditioned faith in Jesus is necessary. "The transcendental deduction of an 'idea' is ... a reflection, which notes explicitly the 'necessary' in the factual ... and thereby justifies it. "43
This deductive procedure is also characteristic of the "eschatological" argument Rabner provides for the infallibility of the
Church in teaching. His starting point for that argument is the
claim that by virtue of the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ,
history has entered its "eschatological," "irreversible," and "definitive" (endgultige) stage. The Church is thus the continuing
presence of God's final self-communication in Christ. 44 The
deduction of the Church's infallibility follows from an analysis of
39 Rahner, Hearer of the Word, 24.

4° Karl Rahner, "Current Problems in Christology," Theological Investigations, vol. 1,
trans. Cornelius Ernst, O.P. (Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1961), 185ff.
41 Ibid., 192; "Reflections on Methodology," 97; "Transecndental Theology," 288-89.
42 Rahner, Grundkurs des Glaubens, 289-90; cf. Foundations of Christian Faith, trans.
William V. Dych (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 208-10.
43 Rahner, "Transcendental Theology," 288 (translation slightly modified; cf.
"Transzendentaltheologie," 990).
44 Karl Rahner, The Church and the Sacraments, trans. W. J. O'Hara (New York: Herder
and Herder, 1963), 18.

202

MICHAEL G. PARKER

consciousness. For Rahner, the Church becomes conscious of its
own identity in acts in which it realizes itself. He speaks of these
as acts of "absolute engagement." They seem to include all "official" acts of the Church in which it realizes its identity as the
historical community of God's final self-communication in Jesus
Christ. In addition to the sacraments, Rahner includes infallibility
among such acts. Hence infallibility is seen to be necessary if the
Church is able to realize its essence. If the Church were not
infallible, it would lose its function as the sacrament of the "irreversible and victorious" salvation offered in Christ and would
become a mere religious institution like the Jewish synagogue. 45
Rahner's eschatological argument for the infallibility of the
Church is deductive insofar as infallibility is seen to be necessary
as a result of the self-realization (Selbstvollzug) of the Church. In
this case we have a deduction not from the subjectivity of the
individual but rather from the self-consciousness of the Church as
a community. This self-consciousness comes to expression in the
"official" acts of the Church and its representatives.
Ill. RAHNER'S FUNDAMENTAL THEOLOGICAL ARGUMENTS FOR
INFALLIBILITY

In this section we shall examine Rahner's fundamental
theological arguments for the infallibility of the Church as examples of transcendental arguments that combine both reductive
and deductive elements.
Rahner provides three different versions of his fundamentaltheological or apologetic argument for the infallibility of the
Church in teaching. The basic point of each of them is that "being
in the truth" necessarily requires expression in language and
hence the preservation of the Church in the truth of the gospel
necessarily requires propositions. I shall consider three versions
of this argument: (1) the argument from the truth of propositions,
(2) the argument from moral truth, and (3) the argument from

45 Rahner, Handbuch der Pastoraltheologie, vol. 1 (Freiburg, Basel, Vienna: Herder,
1964), 133ff.

RAHNER'S TRANSCENDENTAL THEOLOGY

203

basic trust. Each of these arguments, I shall argue, has both
reductive and deductive elements.
A) The Truth of Propositions

In his debate with Hans Kiing about infallibility, Rabner
maintains that "being-in-the-truth" is possible only by means of
true assertions. "Man lives in the truth only through true
propositions, although 'being-in-the-truth' ... and having true
propositions are not identical. "46 Rabner goes on to argue that
the validity of every true judgment is grounded in a nonpropositional knowledge of being and the first principles as the
condition of its possibility.
The evidence of every judgment is ultimately grounded in the evidence of first
principles. These are essentially metaphysical, i.e., they purport to apply to
being as such.... The evidence of the first principles ... is an objective
insight, that affirms the metaphysical validity of these principles in every
judgment which man makes and this affirmation implicitly posits the a priori
conditions of the possibility of knowledge within the material world. With the
necessity with which man judges he also co-posits and affirms the
transcendental a priori structures of being as such.47

The first step in Rahner's argument is reductive. The condition
of the possibility of any existential judgment is a non propositional
knowledge of being and the first principles. This argument has a
reductive form because it presupposes the fact that people make
true judgments and asks about the conditions of this possibility.
Then, having established these conditions, Rabner moves deductively to conclude that true propositions are necessarily an
expression or objectification of nonpropositional knowledge of
the truth. This argument itself depends upon the view that human
being realizes itself by "thematizing" its prelinguistic knowledge
of being in objective judgments. This epistemological insight into
46 Karl Rahner, "Kritik an Hans Kiing," in Zum Problem Unfelhbarkeit:Antworten auf die
Anfrage von Hans Kung (Freiburg: Herder, 1971) 39.
47 Karl Rahn er, "Die Wahrheit bei Thomas v. Aquin," Schriftenzur Theologie 10 (Zurich:
Benziger, 1972), 34-35 (my translation; cf. "Thomas Aquinas on Truth," Theological
Investigations,vol. 8, trans. David Bourke [London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1975], 26).

204

MICHAEL G. PARKER

the structure of knowing is interpreted ontologically in Rahner's
"ontology of symbol" where he argues that human being is
necessarily "expressive" or "symbolic": "every being is of itself
necessarily symbolic, because it necessarily 'expresses' itself in
order to find its essence. " 48
B) Moral Truth

Rahner argues, in effect, that the Golden Rule is a categorical
imperative which demands one's absolute assent. When it is
realized with an "absolute engagement" it is "infallibly true" in
virtue of the structure of practical reason.
[That] Every single person is to be respected as being of intrinsic worth and
[that one is required] to love his neighbor as himself, is a proposition; ... [and
I] recognize ... the duty and justification of an absolute assent to this
proposition, and posit it before the absoluteness of practical reason as infallibly
true. 49

Rahner later gives up the view that this argument establishes
the infallibility of propositionally true judgments. This admission
alone would seem to condemn the argument to failure since it
cannot show what it sets out to prove. Nevertheless, it is unclear
why Rahner believes that he must show anything more than the
possibility that such claims express true moral values. If the values
expressed by the imperatives are permanently or "irreversibly"
true then they are "infallible," since this is what the term implies
with respect to doctrines.
There are, of course, problems with maintaining that truth can
be predicated of moral imperatives. Generally speaking, truth or
falsity is considered a predicate of propositions. By contrast,
Rahner's appeal to moral imperatives is a defense of the possibility and necessity of ethically true propositions. According to

48 Karl Rahner, "Zur Theologie des Symbols," Schriften zur Theologie, 4 (Zurich:
Benziger, 1961) 283-84 (my translation; cf. "The Theology of Symbol," Theological
Investigations, vol. 4 [Baltimore: Helicon Press, 1966], 225-26).
49 Rahner, "Kritik an Hans Kiing," 41.

RAHNER'S TRANSCENDENTAL THEOLOGY

205

Rahner's view, our interest in being moral stems from an interest
in believing the truth. 50
But Rahner's moral argument is not convincing. He defends
the certainty of the judgments of conscience and our obligation to
obey its dictates but once he gives up the claim that his argument
can prove the infallibility of individual moral judgments he seems
to retreat to the position of defending the absolute binding
. character of decisions of moral conscience. The following passage
from Rahner's article entitled "Conscience" sounds remarkably
like his "moral" argument for infallibility.
where people must make decisions and act within the framework of their
possibilities, after having given the alternatives sufficient thought, if they reach
the conclusion that one of the alternatives is the right one, then their decision
is absolutely binding on them. 51

The most this argument could hope to establish is the duty of the
individual to obey his conscience. It does not establish that
decisions of conscience are true.
A better argument is already available to Rahner and follows
the pattern of his argument for the truth of propositions generally. The fact that people make ethically true judgments is presupposed. Then one asks about the conditions of the possibility
of such judgments and finds that they are possible by virtue of a
nonobjective knowledge of "the Good" and moral first principles.
Then one asks why one's factually moral judgments are necessary
and deduces that it is so because human beings must necessarily
express their moral judgments in symbolic or linguistic form in
order to become conscious of the fact that what they take for
"good" is truly good. Hence the necessity of expressing our
nonobjective relation to goodness is deduced from the essential
structures of the human consciousness.
Like his argument for the truth of propositions generally, this
argument from moral truth would have both reductive and
deductive elements.
50

Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard, 1985),

29.
51 Rahn er, "Conscience," Theological Investigations, vol. 22, trans.Joseph Donceel (New
York: Crossroad, 1991), 6.

206

MICHAEL G. PARKER

C) Basic Trust

Finally, we turn to Rahner's argument from basic trust. This
argument has the same structure as the one from the truth of
propositions. The condition of the possibility of affirming the
truths of faith is a "basic trust" (Grundvertrauen) in the meaningfulness of existence. This argument is reductive and generally
presupposed. Rahner then argues deductively from this fundamental or basic trust to its necessary expression in propositions.
The Church's propositions of faith (Glaubenssiitze) are examples
of propositions that express such a basic trust.
Rahner's most extensive presentation of his argument from
basic trust is his article "Does the Church Offer Any Ultimate
Certainties?" There he argues as follows:
There is a certain basic state or basic attitude ... an ultimate trust in the
meaningfulness of human existence, in the possibility of a full, all-embracing,
and definitive salvation .... There are individual propositions, consisting of
human concepts and words, which are put forward with the claim of being real
and true-true and assured beyond any shadow of doubt, and so offering
ultimate certainties. 52

For Rahner, "basic trust" is a description of the phenomenon of
religious faith. This "basic trust" is always mediated through "an
objectified knowledge expressed in propositional form. "53 Rahner
also speaks of the attitude of "basic trust" as a decision (Grundentscheidung) in which one is faced with the question whether
existence is fundamentally meaningful or trustworthy. Propositions that express or objectify this basic trust both originate from
it and participate in the certainty it provides:
There is ... a kind of consciously objectifying human knowledge which is
expressed in terms which present the reality signified as object, and which
shares in the special quality of the basic decision of man. In other words it
participates in his ultimate sureness and certainty and in the temptations by

52 Karl Rahner, "Does the Church Offer Any Ultimate Certainties?" Theological
Investigations,vol. 14, trans. David Bourke (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1976),

48-49 .
.B Ibid., 51.

RAHNER'S TRANSCENDENTAL THEOLOGY

207

which these are assailed in virtue of his human freedom .... There are many
such statements which share in the nature of this ultimate sureness.54

Rahner's argument from basic trust presupposes the grace of
faith, but it can be read as a straightforward .apologetic argument.
As such it presupposes his account of freedom. On Rahner's view,
the "original freedom" of the subject is conceived as a "basic decision" in which he decides for or against God as the transcendental
ground and goal of freedom. Rahner's argument from basic trust
is that the objectifications of such free decisions must necessarily
express themselves in propositions. When such propositions are
expressions of a "basic decision" they are necessarily true although whether particular propositions participate in this "basic
trust" always remains partly hidden from the subject. This argument has a deductive structure because it moves from the experience of basic trust to its necessary expression in language.
As we have seen, the three fundamental-theological arguments
for infallibility that we have discussed all have reductive and deductive elements. Now that the form of these arguments has been
established, we shall turn to some of the criticisms that have been
made of transcendental arguments in the philosophical literature.
IV. TRANSCENDENTAL METHODS AND TRANSCENDENTAL
ARGUMENTS

Rahner's understanding of the "transcendental method" can be
traced to the influence of the Belgian Jesuit Joseph Marechal who
used this term to characterize Kant's transcendental procedure. By
focusing upon methodological considerations, Marechal was able
to appropriate Kant's procedure without accepting his idealism.
In a similar way, analytic philosophers have attempted to revive
Kantian-style "transcendental arguments" as a way of following
Kant's method without necessarily having to accept his conclusions. Since both Transcendental Thomists and analytical philosophers focus on the formal features of Kant's thought, it should be
possible to give an account of the transcendental method by
54

Ibid., 52.

208

MICHAEL G. PARKER

appealing to the structure of transcendental arguments. That is
what I shall attempt to do here.
Following Kant, Reinhold Aschenberg has distinguished
between a "regressive-analytical" and "progressive-synthetic"
method or argumentative structure. 55 The "regressive" or "reductive" method presupposes the reality of certain synthetic a priori
judgments as a "fact" and attempts an "analysis" of the
elementary conditions of the possibility of such judgments. This
corresponds roughly to the notion of a "transcendental reduction" as described by Rahner. The "progressive" method, by contrast, attempts to "deduce" the reality and existence of synthetic
a priori judgments entirely from the principles that make experience possible. This approximates Rahner's description of the
"transcendental deduction."
Aschenberg points out that the "regressive" and "progressive"
methods differ in logical force. The "reductive" method is
concerned with the possibility of something that is taken for
granted or presupposed. It seeks sufficient conditions for the
affirmation of that reality. By contrast, the "progressive" method
is concerned with the necessity of the preconditions of something
that cannot be taken for granted. It seeks to convince the skeptic
by providing necessary conditions for the affirmation of the
reality in question. 56
Aschenberg has argued that the "progressive-synthetic"
method, if it is possible at all, represents the only type of argument that can convince the skeptic and is thus is a cardinal
condition for any sort of transcendental philosophy of the

55 Reinhold Aschenberg, Sprachanalyse und Transzendentalphilosophie(Stuttgart:
Klett-Cotta, 1982), 257ff.; "Transzendentale Argumentation, progressiv und analytisch: Zu
Ross Harrisons analytischer T ranszendentalphilosophie," Bedingungen der Moglichkeit:
''TranscendentalArguments" und transzendentalesDenken, ed. Eva Schaper and William
Vossenkuhl (Stuggart: Kletta-Cotta. 1984), 57-79; "Uber transzendentale Argumente:
Orientierung in einer Diskussion zu Kant und Strawson," PhilosophischesJahrbuch 85
(1978): 331-58; "Einiges iiber SelbstbewuBtseinals Prinzip der Transzendentalphilosophie,"
Kants transzendentalDeduktion und die Moglichkeitvan Transzendentalphilosophie,
Forum
fiir Philosophie, Bad Homburg (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988), 53-55.
56 Aschenberg, Sprachanalyseund Transzendentalphilosophie,
260-61.

RAHNER'S TRANSCENDENfAL THEOLOGY

209

Kantian type. 57 For Aschenberg, a "regressive" argument has a
"meta-theoretical" rather than a strictly transcendental structure.
Although the distinction between "regressive" and "progressive" arguments is generally accepted, some defenders of the
transcendental method have tried to unite them as two "moments" of one single process of transcendental reflection. Klaus
Hartmann, Otto Muck, and Peter Eicher can all be read as trying
to unite the "progressive" and "regressive" types of transcendental
arguments under a single "regressive" rubric. 58 The paradigm for
such an attempt would be Hegel's philosophy which, when read
from the perspective of the history of self-consciousness, proceeds
"genealogisch aus einem Anfang" while, read in terms of his logic,
can be understood as a "Riickgang in den Grund. " 59 But unless
one begins from an intuitive grasp of self-consciousness or proceeds on the basis of some special logic, it is unclear how the
demands for a "structural progressivity" and a "reductive" logic
can be united.
Assuming the distinction between two types of transcendental
arguments, the philosophically more interesting claim is represented by the "progressive" type. The "regressive" argument is
less interesting by virtue of its being circular. It presupposes the
sort of knowledge for which it then seeks grounds. By contrast,
the "progressive" type seeks to ground knowledge of a certain
type without presupposing such knowledge from the outset. 60
There are, however, problems with transcendental arguments
of this "progressive" type. The prime example of a "progressive"
argument is a "transcendental deduction" of which Kant's
deduction of the categories is the most notable example. But Kant
57

Aschenberg, "Transzendentale Argumentation," 54.

58 Klaus Hartmann, "Transzendentale Argumentation," 38-41; Muck,

Die transzendentale

Methode, esp. 61-71; Eicher, Die anthropologischeWende, 55-64.
Hartman, "Transzendentale Argumentation," 40.
Aschenberg, Sprachanalyseund Transzendentalphilosophie,260-61. Kathryn Tanner
writes, "Transcendental arguments on the whole provide conditions of possibility for
something; but the rhetorical force of their employment varies depending upon whether that
something is problematic or taken for granted prior to the argument. If that for which
conditions are supplied is problematic, the point of the argument is to support it by providing
those conditions. If conditions are supplied for something unproblematic, the purpose is to
argue in support of those very conditions themselves" (f anner, God and Creationin Christian
Theology, 20).
59

60

210

MICHAEL G. PARKER

assumes, in the words of Hilary Putnam, "that our conceptual
choices are fixed once and for all by some thick transcendental
structure of reason. " 61 More precisely, Kant believes that the
conceptual scheme discovered by a transcendental deduction is
the only possible one. But Stephan Korner has argued persuasively that transcendental deductions fail precisely because of
the impossibility of demonstrating the uniqueness of any particular conceptual scheme. 62
Korner defines a transcendental deduction as "a logically
sound demonstration of the reasons why a particular categorical
schema is not only in fact, but also necessarily employed, in
differentiating a region of experience." 63 The possibility of a
transcendental deduction rests on two conditions: (1) that a
categorical schema can be established and (2) that its uniqueness
can be proven. 64 Although Korner accepts the possibility of
establishing a particular categorical schema, he denies that one
can demonstrate its uniqueness. In order to demonstrate the
uniqueness of a particular conceptual schema, one would have to
show that every way of differentiating experience belongs to it
and is made in accord with it-and this, according to Korner, is
impossible.
Korner considers three prima facie possibilities for demonstrating the uniqueness of a conceptual scheme. 65 First, one can
compare it with experience undifferentiated by any prior scheme.
But this is impossible since the statements by which one makes the
Hilary Putnam, Pragmatism: An Open Question (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1995), 30.
Kathryn Tanner notes, "Kant ... assumes (1) that the preconditions of experience he
adumbrates are necessary preconditions, the only preconditions of our experience of objects,
and (2) that there are no alternative modes of meaningful human experience that cannot be
accounted for with reference to the conditions of possibility he specifies" (Tanner, God and
Creation in Christian Theology, 21-22).
62 Stephan Korner, "The Impossibility of Transcendental Deductions," The Monist 51
(1967): 317-31. Kathyrn Tanner applies Korner' s criticisms to transcendental arguments in
theology and Karen Kilby has done so to criticize Rahner's transcendental theology; see: "The
Vorgriff auf Esse: A Study in the Relation of Philosophy to Theology in the Thought of Karl
Rahner" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1994). My argument follows the general line of thought
developed by Kilby.
63 Korner, "The Impossibility of Transcendental Deductions," 318-19.
64 Ibid., 320.
65 Ibid., 320-21.
61

RAHNER'S TRANSCENDENTAL THEOLOGY

211

comparison "cannot be formulated without employing some prior
differentiation of experience." Second, one could compare the
scheme with rival conceptual schemes, but the very notion of
competing conceptual schemes concedes that one's scheme is not
unique. Third, one could "examine the schema and its application
entirely from within the schema itself, i.e., by means of statements
belonging to it." But this could only show how the scheme
functions with regard to the concepts we actually employ and
"not that it is the only possible schema" by which we can order
expenence.
In her article "Arguing Transcendentally," Eva Schaper criticizes Korner's arguments because "they are conducted in terms of
whether there could be, or could be proved not to be, a choice
between [sic] categorical schemes without inquiring whether there
might not be a restriction upon us in the way of what can be
envisaged as alternatives. " 66 Her criticism focuses primarily on the
third of Korner's objections. She argues that if alternatives to the
scheme that we are employing are not stateable except in terms of
that scheme, then they are either variants of the scheme or unintelligible as alternatives. 67 The "necessity" of a scheme consists
in the inability to conceive alternatives to it. 68
This line of argument is developed by Rudiger Bubner in
relation to the self-referentiality of transcendental arguments.
Bubner believes that the central structure of any transcendental
argument is its self-referential character. 69 That is, "the possibility
of a transcendental reflection is connected with the possibility of
the knowledge toward which the reflection is directed. Tran66 Eva Schaper, "Arguing Transcendentally,"

Kant-Studien 63 (1972): 111-12.

67 lbid., 108-9.
68 "In the case of some transcendental arguments, it may be that things at least analogous
to meaning relations or conceptual connections help underwrite the relevant necessary
connection. Other transcendental arguments seem to turn at least in part on considerations
of conceivability. Though we can in some weak sense conceive the impossible, it is traditional
to maintain that there is a connection between conceivability of some suitably regimented sort
and possibility, and the necessary seems to be that whose falsehood is not possible" Ooseph
Mendola, "Transcendental Arguments," A Companion to Metaphysics [Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1995], 498-99).
69 Riidiger Bubner, Modern German Philosophy, trans. Eric Matthews (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981), 86-87; Bubner, "Kant, Transcendental Arguments and
the Problem of Deduction," Review of Metaphysics 28 (1975): 463-64.

212

MICHAEL G. PARKER

scendental reflection itself, therefore, demonstrates ... that in the
conditions of our knowledge, once given, alternatives are inconceivable. "70 The process of showing that alternative conceptual
schemes to the one in use are inconceivable consists in "ruling out
alternative forms of knowledge. " 71 If this can be done, then it
shows that "transcendental argumentation recognizes something
about understanding in general. "72
Richard Rorty has criticized that notion that there might be
"restrictions upon us in the way of what can be envisaged as
alternatives" 73 to our present conceptual scheme. Rorty says that
transcendental argumentation "merely recognizes that one suggested alternative description to our present understanding won't
work. "74 It does not "show that every alternative proposed would
have the same defect" since this would require us "to know in
advance the range of the skeptic's imagination." 75 This would
require us to be able to imagine every possible future alternative
and rule it out as an alternative. As Rorty says:
To know in advance that every alternative description of the content to which
we hope our scheme corresponds (or, which comes to the same thing, every
alternative conceptual scheme) would have the same defect would be able to
do in philosophy what nobody dreams we can do in science-predict that any
new theory to come along will merely be a disguised version of our present
theory. 76

Thus Rorty rejects the notion that transcendental arguments place
restrictions upon what we can in principle conceive as alternatives
to our present conceptual scheme. As he writes, "Pace Bubner,
nothing in heaven or earth could set limits to what we can in
principle conceive; the best we might do is show nobody has in
70 Bohner, Modem German Philosophy, 86-87. See Bohner, "Kant, Transcendental
Arguments and the Problem of Deduction," 464-65, for a more detailed analysis.
71 Bohner, "Kant, Transcendental Arguments and the Problem of Deduction," 463.
72 Ibid., 465.
73 Eva Schaper, "Arguing Transcendentally," 111-12.
74 Richard Rorty, "Transcendental Arguments, Self-Reference, and Pragmatism," in
Transcendental Arguments and Science: Essays in Epistemology, ed. Peter Bieri et al.
(Dordrecht and Boston: D. Reidel), 82.
75 Ibid.
76 Ibid.

RAHNER'S TRANSCENDENTAL THEOLOGY

213

fact conceived of an exception. So there can be no advance on a
'merely factual demonstration'
by introducing
selfreferentiality. "77
We have argued that the "transcendental method" can be
understood in terms of a distinction between two types of
transcendental arguments: a "progressive" and a "regressive"
type. In addition, we have maintained that these two types of
arguments vary in logical force. Finally, we have indicated
problems with the "progressive" type of transcendental argument
based upon interpreting the notion of "necessity" in terms of
"conceivability." Now we are in a position to consider how these
criticisms might apply to Rahner's transcendental arguments.
V. APPLICATION OF CRITICISMS TO RAHNER'S ARGUMENTS

In our examination of some of the criticisms that have been
directed against transcendental arguments, we focused on
criticisms of the "progressive" or "deductive" type of argument
rather than the "regressive" or "reductive" type. We did this for
a number of reasons. First, as Aschenberg has argued, a "progressive" or "deductive" argumentative structure is central to any
transcendental philosophy. If this so, then an approach to
theology that purports to apply transcendental philosophy in its
service must employ such arguments. Second, it is the philosophically more interesting argument. A "deductive" or "progressive" argument, if successful, would show the necessary and
not merely the sufficient conditions under which a particular state
of affairs must obtain. It therefore constitutes a stronger claim
than the regressive argument. This has implications for Rahner's
arguments as well. If one can show that the objections to the
deductive type of argument can be overcome, then they succeed
as arguments. This would mean, for instance, that the infallibility
of the Church could be deduced transcendentally from the
structure of human knowing and willing. Such an argument
would in principle constitute a successful apologetic argument for
infallibility because it would be universal and necessary; it would
77

Ibid., 83.

214

MICHAEL G. PARKER

be unreasonable to deny such an argument, whether one were a
Catholic Christian or not.
We have shown that Rahner's arguments for infallibility have
both reductive and deductive elements. To characterize the
arguments schematically: Rahner argues from a particular
phenomenon (true propositions, moral truths, faith or dogmatic
propositions) to the conditions of its possibility (nonpropositional
knowledge of being and the first principles, moral first principles,
basic trust in the meaningfulness of existence) and then to the
necessity of the phenomena. The final stage in each of these
arguments is deductive and this is decisive because it establishes
the necessity of true propositions and this is the heart of Rahn er' s
argument for infallibility in each case.
As we have seen, however, transcendental arguments of the
deductive type have been subject to criticism because they cannot
establish that the conditions argued for are necessary or unique.
It has been argued that to justify the claim that A is a necessary
condition of the possibility of B one would have to enumerate all
the possible cases of B and show that in all cases but A, B would
be impossible. 78 This would imply the ability to survey all
conceivable possibilities of B in order to rule out possible counterexamples; such a possibility appears doubtful.
It is important to remember that the conditions about which
we are talking are always conditions that obtain in virtue of a
conceptual scheme. The question is not only whether A is a
necessary condition of the possibility of B, but whether there are
alternative schemes to our current one in which this is not the
case. Hence, we do not have to consider the question whether
there are counter-examples within a particular scheme, but
whether there are alternative schemes that present counterexamples which we cannot currently conceive or imagine.
The difficulty with Rahn er' s transcendental arguments for
infallibility is the presupposition that a Transcendental Thomist
philosophical scheme is unique or necessary. We have seen that
there are reasons to deny this is the case on general philosophical
grounds but, in addition, there are also reasons internal to
78 Kilby,

"The Vorgriff auf Esse," 51.

RAHNER'S TRANSCENDENTAL THEOLOGY

215

Rahner's theology for doubting that this is the case. First, Rahner
sometimes argues that transcendental theology is not simply an
application of transcendental philosophy to the problems of
theology but involves arguing reductively from within faith itself.
Second, he sometimes contrasts his "transcendental method" with
more "indirect" modes of argument which involve inductive and
informal modes of argument that are cumulative in character. 79
Such arguments do not require one to assume that the conceptual
scheme one employs is unique since such arguments yield results
that are probable rather than necessary. Third, Rahner's claim
that a genuine pluralism in theology and philosophy means that
the attempt to establish a perennial philosophy is obsolete applies
equally to the system of Transcendental Thomism. 80 If there is no
longer any one philosophy that can integrate and mediate the
insights of the various human and natural sciences, then there is
no single conceptual scheme that is necessary or unique for understanding reality. Hence Rahn er' s recognition of the fact of pluralism undermines his own defense of transcendental theology when
this is understood as an application of transcendental philosophy
to the subject matter of theology (where the employment of transcendental arguments of the deductive type is seen as a cardinal
feature of such a transcendental philosophy).
CONCLUSION

In this paper I have criticized Rahner's "transcendental
method" to the extent that it is understood as the application of
"transcendental philosophy" to the subject matter of theology. I
have done so mainly by applying some general philosophical
criticisms of transcendental arguments to Rahner's apologetic
arguments for the infallibility of the Church in teaching. If the
argument of this paper is correct, Rahner's "transcendental
method" is much more problematic than many of its proponents
have assumed.
79 Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, 346£.; "Reflections on Methodology in
Theology," 75f.; cf. N. H. Healy, "Indirect Methods in Theology: Karl Rahner as an ad hoc
Apologist," The Thomist 54 (1992): 613-33.
80 Rahner, "Reflections on Methodology in Theology," 74-75.

216

MICHAEL G. PARKER

Nevertheless, one ought to be careful in drawing general
conclusions about Rahner's theology from this limited examination of his method. There are several reasons for this. First, as we
have seen, Rahner at times denies that his "transcendental
method" is a systematic application of transcendental philosophy
to the subject matter of theology. A complete evaluation of his
method would have to attempt to reconcile his conflicting
statements on the issue. Second, for theological reasons having to
do with the relation between nature and grace, Rahner believes
his transcendental method enables him to conceive revelation so
as to steer between the Scylla of neo-Scholastic extrinsicism and
the Charybdis of Roman Catholic modernism. 81 A complete
evaluation of his method would therefore have to consider and
evaluate its possible theological advantages. Third, Rahner
sometimes says that this method is "transcendental" only in a very
loose or "prephilosophical" sense. He speaks of the "prescientific"
character of his theology and the need for an indirect appeal to
evidence similar to Newman's appeal to the illative sense. The
conclusions of these broadly inductive arguments would yield
results that were probable rather than necessary and hence would
not be subject to the criticisms advanced here. Moreover, the
critique of transcendental arguments we have presented does not
rule out a priori arguments or appeals to logical necessity in
general but only the type of transcendental necessity we have been
criticizing. Fourth, as we have seen, Rahner sometimes employs
broadly reductive "transcendental arguments" that presuppose
faith and merely seek conditions of possibility that will render a
particular belief coherent. There is nothing in the criticisms I have
presented that would rule out such arguments. But given these
qualifications, I believe that these criticisms represent a strong
challenge to Rahner's transcendental method and its proponents.

Karl Rahner, "Observations on the Concept of Revelation," in Joseph Ratzinger and
Karl Rahner, Revelation and Tradition, trans. W. J. O'Hara (New York: Herder and Herder,
1966), 9-25.
81

The Thomist 63 (1999): 217-40

DEPOSITUM GI.ADIUS NON DEBET RESTITUI FURIOSO:
PRECEPTS, SYNDERESIS, AND VIRTUES IN
SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS
ANA MARTA GoNzALEZ
Universityof Navarra
Navarra, Spain

C

AREFUL READERS of Thomas Aquinas's work soon become

aware of his liking for using the same or similar examples
to illustrate all kinds of argument. This method actually
makes the researcher's task easier, as he can set out from the
assumption that the subjects explained using the same examples
are in some way connected. Moreover, if we look further into the
history of these correlations, we often find that they provide an
important key for problems that may arise from the text.
This is the case when we seek out all the occasions on which
Aquinas uses a particular example to shed light on the controversial subject of the immutability of natural law. The example
in question has a long history, going back to the first book of
Plato's Republic; Aquinas usually transcribes it as "depositum
gladius non debet restitui furioso," although some variations also
occur. We shall first look at the context in which Plato situates
this idea, then go on to examine the occasions on which Aquinas
draws on it: in the Summa, when discussing the question as to
whether the natural law is the same for everyone; in his
Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, when he explains in
what sense natural law may change, and in what sense it remains
the same; and finally, where he examines the virtues of gnome
and epieikeia, also in the Summa.

217

ANA MARTA GONzALEZ

218

I. PLATO'S TEXT: REPUBLIC331C-332A

The first book of the Republic, the Thrasymachus, deals in a
general way with justice. After Cephalus speaks, Socrates responds
by asking for an explanation of his definition of justice:
An admirable sentiment, Cephalus, said I. But speaking of this very thing,
justice, are we to affirm thus without qualification that it is truthtelling and
paying back what one has received from anyone, or may these very actions
sometimes be just and sometimes unjust? I mean, for example, as everyone I
presume would admit, if one took over weapons from a friend who was in his
right mind and then the lender should go mad and demand them back, that we
ought not to return them in that case and that he who did so return them
would not be acting justly-nor yet would he who chose to speak nothing but
the truth to one who was in that state. 1

This is the example that Aquinas was to appropriate and apply to
the issues mentioned above concerning the immutability of
natural law and the nature of justice: "depositum gladius non
debet restitui furioso." It is therefore interesting to analyze this
with care, especially Socrates' query, "Are we to affirm thus without qualification that it is truth-telling and paying back what one
has received from anyone, or may these very actions sometimes
be just and sometimes unjust?" In this context, it is useful to bear
in mind a nuance in the Greek text which the English translation
does not always make clear. What Socrates says is not that the
actions of returning what is owed and telling the truth may
sometimes be just or unjust. What he says is that these actions are
sometimes done justly, sometimes unjustly. 2
As we can infer from the text, the counterpoint is set up between an excessively "casuistical" view of justice, as shown by the
condition "in all cases," and a view of justice as a "way of acting,"
which is reflected in the use of adverbs: things that are done justly
1 Plato,

Republic l.33 lcl-12.

2 TOUTO o' mh6,

Tliv OlKQIOOUVflV,rr6n:pa
aMj0nav aUTO
ELVOI arr7u7ic;
ouTWc; Kai TO arro0106vat av Ttc; Tl rrapa TOU Aclj3i:J,
aUTcl mum fonv EVlOTE µEV
OtKa(wc;,EVloTE of. aOIKwc; 1TOtETv;olov TOlOVOE AEyw·
av 1TOU ElrrOl, d nc; Aclj301 napa
<j>(AOU avopOc; aw<j>pOVoUVTCJ<; OlTAa, El µavcic; CtnatTOl, OTI oUTE
Tel TOtaUTa
anoo106vat, oUTE O(Katoc; av Elfl 6 CtlTOOlOOIX;, ooo' au npOc; TOV OUTWc; £xovrn navrn
tett.wv TaAf18ij Atyn v (ibid.).

DEPOSITUMGLADIUS

219

and unjustly. This view, as far as everything else goes, is valid not
just for justice but in general for every other virtue. For the
possession of a virtue means acting in a certain way, rather than
materially carrying out certain actions. Plato himself insisted on
this on other occasions, as in the l.Aches, when he speaks of
valor. 3 He uses this to draw attention to the shortcomings of a
casuistic definition of the virtues: there are actions that generally
show certain virtues, but that might in some cases not do so. Plato
thereby diverts attention from the matter to the form of the act.
Aristotle was to emphasize this point more clearly by associating
the form of acts with the moral disposition of the agent: "actions
are called just and temperate when not only are they such that the
just or temperate man may do them, but also the man who does
them does them as just and temperate men do them. "4
In the Republic, however, Socrates perseveres with the suggestion that the definition of justice should be modified, because
he understands that the idea of justice must include all the acts of
this virtue. Thus, according to Socrates, "this is not the definition
of justice-to tell the truth and return what one has received, "5 as
on occasions acting justly means that one should not give back
what one has received. But Polemarchus, his conversation partner
at this point, opposes this. Calling on Simonides' authority,
Polemarchus insists that the just action is to return to everyone
what one owes. Without passing judgement on Simonides' words,
Socrates can do no more than repeat his difficulty concerning the
way of interpreting these words:
I must admit, said I, that it is not easy to disbelieve Simonides. For he is a wise
and inspired man. But just what he may mean by this you, Polemarchus, doubtless know, but I do not. Obviously he does not mean what we were just speaking of, this return of a deposit to anyone whomsoever even if he asks it back
when not in his right mind. And yet what the man deposited is due to him in
a sense, is it not? 6

3 Plato, Laches 190e2ff.

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 2.4. l 105b6-9.
Republic l.331dl-2.
6 Ibid. 33 le8-16.

4

5 Plato,

ANA MARTA GONzALEZ

220

The difficulty outlined by Socrates finds no satisfactory solution
in the dialogue. In other places, Plato sets out the problem in a
slightly different way: conflating the virtues and the arts almost
entirely,7 he understands that both have a single proper end, 8
which requires in practice the intervention of a "royal art" that
can direct the use of both in concrete cases. 9 This "royal art"
consists of "knowing how to use," which partly recalls Aristotle's
concept of prudence. It seems clear that this "knowing how to
use" is what Socrates felt the lack of in Simonides' definition of
justice, if it was supposed to apply to all possible cases. Aristotle
resolved this problem in his own way: when he introduces the
distinction between natural or imperfect virtue (which can be
defined as the simple tendency to good works) and moral or
perfect virtue, he points out that the latter cannot exist without
prudence. 10
To return to the main point, in the light of the above, what
interests us here is to examine Aquinas's use of the example
quoted by Socrates to see how far the philosophical issues latent
in this example afford us a deeper understanding of the frequently
contested Thomist doctrine of natural law. 11
II. PRECEPTS AND PRACTICAL WISDOM

One of the places in which this example appears is in STh I-II,
q. 94, a. 4, illustrating the sense in which natural law can be said
to vary. What this article asks is "whether the natural law is the
same for all." To answer this question, Aquinas begins by establishing one basic thesis as his starting point: "to the natural law
belong all those things to which man has a natural inclination,

Ibid. 332dl-2.
Plato, Cratylus 386e8-387b9.
9 Plato, Euthydemus 278e4-282a9; 288e-292e. See Volker Hildebrandt, Virtutis non est
virtus: ein scholastischer Lehrsatz zur naturgemiissen Bestimmung vernunftigen Handelns in
seiner Vorgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1989).
10 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 6.13.1144b31.
11 See Robert A. Gahl, "From the Virtue of a Fragile Good to a Narrative Account of
Natural Law," International Philosophical Quarterly 37 (1997): 457-72.
7

8

DEPOSIIUM GIADIUS

221

among which there figures as proper to man the fact that he
inclines towards acting according to reason." 12
As Aquinas himself states, reason proceeds by setting out from
common principles and reaching proper, more specific conclusions, though this takes place in one way for speculative reason,
and in another for practical reason. After comparing the way
these two types of reason proceed, he concludes that, in contrast
to what happens on the speculative level, where the conclusions
enjoy the same universality as the premises, on the practical level
the conclusions (secondary precepts) 13 do not always have the
same validity in all circumstances. In fact, Aquinas says, if we are
talking about "the particular conclusions of practical reason, truth
or rectitude is not the same in all, nor is it equally known in those
in which it is the same." 14 To illustrate this point, he brings in the
example of the "depositum":
Thus it is right and true for all to act according to reason. And from this
principle it follows as a proper conclusion that goods entrusted to another
should be restored to their owner. Now this is true for the majority of cases,
but it may happen in a particular case that it would be injurious, and therefore
unreasonable, to restore goods held in trust; for instance if they are claimed for
the purpose of fighting against one's country. 15

According to Aquinas, then, the secondary precepts of natural law
may fail or miscarry ut in paucioribus not only as far as knowledge of them is concerned (as in the case of people whose inadequate disposition means that they never manage to understand
that some precept is good) 16 but also as far as their reliability is
concerned, "in the same way that generable and corruptible

12 STh 1-11,

q. 94, a. 4.

Primary and Secondary Precepts in Thomistic Natural Law
Teaching (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966).
14 STh 1-11, q. 94, a. 4.
IS Ibid.
16 "Et hoc propter hoc quod aliqui habent depravatam rationem ex pasione, seu ex mala
consuetudine, seu ex mala habitudine naturae; sicut apud Germanos olim latrocinium non
reputabatur iniquum, cum tamen si expresse contra legem naturae, ut refert Iulius Caesar, in
libro de hello Gallico" (STh 1-11, q. 94, a. 4).
13 See R. A. Armstrong,

ANA MARTA GONzALEZ

222

natures are sometimes defective because of some impediment." 17
(The reference to the mutability of generable and corruptible
natures therefore constitutes a key for interpreting correctly the
variable character of natural law. We shall return to this subject
below.) Nonetheless, this lack of reliability should not be attributed so much to the precept considered in itself as to the precept
seen through its application to action. This variation has taken
place in its turn only because, in the action which that precept
was designed to regulate, a "circumstance" has been introduced
that notably modifies the object of the action itself, to the extent
that this action can no longer be regarded in the first instance or
exclusively as yet another case of the same precept, at least as long
as the "perturbing" circumstances are present. While circumstances of this kind remain, the action has to be governed by a
different precept which practical reason must determine. 18
The fact that the secondary precepts of natural law are open
to erroneous application demonstrates that this law cannot be reduced to a code of regulations, as this would be of less practical
use. If natural law is to govern action effectively, it must provide
us with certain knowledge as to what precept should be used in
any particular case. If not, then how can we determine which precept to use? We must return here to the classic answer that prudence, seen as a very special way of "knowing how to use" that
does not exist without moral virtue, was for Aristotle the practical
criterion governing action: only prudence equips us to discern in
each case which precept (or habit) it is appropriate to use. 19
For Aquinas too, prudence is at once an intellectual and a
moral virtue: an intellectual one because it is a way of knowing,
and a moral one because it does not exist without the correctness

"sicut etiam naturae generabiles et corruptibiles deficiunt ut in paucioribus, propter
impedimenta" (ibid.).
18 These are not circumstances that belong to the sources of the morality of a given action,
aside from its object and its end, but rather circumstances that, by modifying the object of the
act, place it under a different moral species.
19 Although I do not share all his criticisms and analyses, see D. M. Nelson, The Priority
of Prudence: Virtue and Natural Law in Thomas Aquinas and the Implications for modern
Ethics (University Park, Pa.: The Pennsylvania University Press, 1992).
17

DEPOSITVM GLADIUS

223

of appetite that is the product of moral virtue. 20 Like Aristotle,
Aquinas maintains that prudence is an acquired virtue, 21 and he
frames Aristotle's problem concerning moral learning in a similar
way: if moral virtue cannot exist without prudence, and prudence
cannot exist without moral virtue, and if all these virtues are
acquired, then how can someone act righteously? In this context,
it seems timely to underscore the fact that when we call prudence
an acquired virtue, this does not rule out the previous existence
of an imperfect form of prudence, that is, a more or less steady
natural inclination to direct one's own conduct in accordance
with reason. According to Aristotle, this inclination exists. It is an
inclination that does not consist simply of acting in accordance
with a morally neutral reason, 22 as, for him, acting according to
reason is the same as acting according to the virtues, to which we
have a natural aptitude. However, speaking of an inclination
within the reason (the reason being for Aristotle a potency for
opposites) 23 presupposes the existence of something that robs
reason of its original indeterminateness. Aristotle himself did not
discuss this, but Aquinas alludes to the problem when he mentions
the existence of a natural habit of the reason known as
synderesis, 24 which he refers to elsewhere, significantly, as "the
nursery of virtues."
Of course, the idea of a natural habit implies more when it
comes to finding a basis for ethics. What interests us here, however, is that in the operational order Aquinas attributes to synderesis the function of prescribing intellectually the ends of the
virtues of practical reason, thus clarifying a point that Aristotle
left implicit. 25 Thanks to synderesis, then, practical reason knows
20 This was to be modified in Duns Scotus's writing, as Professor Fernando Inciarte
(Munster) has shown me.
21 See P. Hall, Narrative and the Natural Law: An Interpretation of Thomistic Ethics
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), 94.
22 As could be understood from the explanation by A. Gomez Lobo in "The ergon
Inference," Phronesis 34 (1989): 170-84.
23 Aristotle, Metaphysics 9.2.5.
24 See STh 1-11, q. 49, a. 4, ad 3; De Verit., q. 16, a. 2, ad 4.
25 The idea that Aquinas's moral thinking attempts in part to address the problems
Aristotle had left open, making explicit matters that in Aristotle were only implicit, is the
main thesis of the book by M. Rhonheimer, PraktischeVernunft und die Vernilnftigkeit der

224

ANA MARTA GONzALEZ

two important things when the time comes to act: that it must act
in accord with the ends of the virtues, and that it must avoid acts
that are contrary to such ends. This knowledge of the principles
is what makes practical learning possible later, in that it enables
people to acquire moral virtues and prudence. 26 Moreover, this
knowledge of the principles is what the prudent man has managed to incorporate naturally into his actions.
In Aquinas's thinking, it is synderesis that makes it possible to
refer to natural law as something greater than a collection of
codifiable precepts. Of course, every law, especially the natural
law, is "something that belongs to reason" 27 and not just a habit.
For this reason, it consists properly speaking of a series of
precepts ordered towards the human good. 28 However, these
precepts are "promulgated" by practical reason to regulate our
concrete action in accordance with certain principles that we
know through a natural habit. It is this natural habit which so to
speak "feeds" the practical reason, guiding it in all cases. The fact
that synderesis is a habit means, among other things, that the
judicial formulation of its contents, in the form of a code of
precepts, will never be exhaustive. At most, it will be able to
indicate the normal route by which the virtues are acquired, and
the actions that never accompany virtue. All this means that the
precepts alone, without synderesis, do not constitute a definitive
criterion. There are times when a general precept must not be
applied, as in the case of the borrowed sword. To recognize such
cases, it is not enough to have a selection of precepts: what is
needed is the practical wisdom proper to the prudent man, who
can judge concrete actions in the light of the principles. The
formulation of the precepts is always a later task, which, as has
occasionally been noted, Aquinas does not credit with particular
importance. That is why he does not seem concerned to
enumerate them. All this shows us that if we want to understand
Praxis: Handlungstheorie bei Thomas von Aquin in ihrer Entstehung aus dem Problemkontext
der aristotelischen Ethik (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1994).
26 See D. Westberg, Right Practical Reason: Aristotle, Action and Prudence in Aquinas
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).
27 See ITh I-II, q. 90, a. 1; q. 91, a. 1; q. 94, a. 1.
28 See ITh I-II, q. 94, a. 1. M. Rhonheimer emphasizes this: see Naturals Grund/age der
Moral, 67-76.

DEPOSITVM GLADIUS

225

the way that Aquinas sees the natural law, we must emphasize the
connection of precepts through a form of wisdom responsible for
directing action.
Ill. MUTABILITYAND lMMUTABILITY OF NATURAL LAW
To shed further light on the connection of the precepts
through wisdom, we can look at another passage referring to
Plato's example, this time from the Commentary on the
Nicomachean Ethics. This is the commentary on the text by
Aristotle in which the latter asserts that "with us there is
something that is just even by nature, yet all of it is changeable. " 29
Aquinas, like Aristotle before him, understands that it is
important to dispute this point, as the thinkers who reject the
existence of something that is by nature just use this as support
for their arguments, maintaining that everything that is whatever
it is by nature is immutable, whereas what is just varies on
occasions, as in the case of the borrowed sword. In fact, "nothing
would seem to be more just than returning what has been
borrowed to its owner, and yet you do not have to return a
borrowed sword to a madman, or money for arms to your
country's enemy." 30
To answer this objection, Aquinas begins by distinguishing two
types of nature: the divine nature, which is immutable throughout, and human nature, which dwells among corruptible things
and which thus lies halfway between the two spheres:
For us men who live among corruptible things, there is certainly something
natural, yet everything in us is mutable, either per se, like having feet, or per
accidens, like having a tunic, and similarly, even though everything that is just

29 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 5.7.1134b30. According to Jaffa this is one of the most
mysterious passages in the Nicomachean Ethics. See H. V. Jaffa, Thomism and
Aristotelianism: A Study of the Commentary by Thomas Aquinas on the Nicomachean Ethics
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952), 179.
30 "Nihil enim videtur esse magis iustum quam quod deponenti depositum reddatur et
tamen non est reddendum depositum furioso reposcenti gladium vel proditori patriae
reposcenti pecunias ad arma" (V Ethic., lect. 12 [1134b24], 147-53).

226

ANA MARTA GONzALEZ

for us is in some sense mutable, it is also true that some of these things are just
by nature. 31

It is important to distinguish between what is mutable per se
and what is mutable per accidens,because Aquinas's answer goes
along the lines of asserting the mutability per accidensof what is
just by nature. In fact, one of the features of what is natural or
secundum naturam proper to corruptible natures is that it occurs
ut in pluribus but may not be borne out ut in paucioribus.
According to Aquinas, the secondary precepts of natural law are
secundum naturam in this sense, like generable, corruptible
natures, in such a way that they are mutable per accidens:
It is manifest that also in other things that are natural for us the same
determination is true as in the case of naturally just things; since those things
that are natural for us are certainly the same most of the time, but occasionally
fail. For example, it is natural for the right side to be stronger than the left,
even though there are some people whose left hand is as strong as the right and
who become ambidextrous. Similarly, even those things which are naturally
just, like returning a deposit, should be observed most of the time, but on
occasions change.32

The above text hints at the possibility of a change in human
nature, something that Aquinas states more clearly elsewhere.
What I would like to do here is consider a text from the Secunda
Secundaereferring to the mutability of human nature, which then
goes on to use the example of the borrowed sword:

31 "Apud nos homines, qui inter res corruptibiles sumus, est aliquid quidem secundum
naturam, et tamen quicquid est in nobis est mutabile vel per se vel per accidens; nihilominus
tamen est in nobis aliquid naturale, sicut habere pedes, et aliquid non naturale, sicut habere
tunicam, et sic etiam, licet omnia quae sunt apud nos iusta aliqualiter moveantur, nihilominus
tamen quaedam eorum sunt naturaliter iusta" (V Ethic., lect. 12 [1134b27], 160-68).
32 "Manifestum esse quod etiam in aliis naturalibus quae sunt apud nos eadem
determinatio congruit sicut et in naturaliter iustis; ea enim quae sunt naturalia apud nos, sunt
quidem eodem modo ut in pluribus, sed ut in paucioribus deficiunt, sicut naturale est quod
pars dextera sit vigorosior quam sinistra et hoc in pluribus habet veritatem, et tamen contingit
ut in paucioribus aliquos fieri ambidextros qui sinistram manum habent ita valentem ut
dexteram; ita etiam et ea quae sunt naturaliter iusta, utputa depositum esse reddendum, ut
in pluribus est observandum, sed ut in paucioribus mutatur" (V Ethic., lect. 12 [1134b33],
185-96).

DEPOSITVM GLADIUS

227

That which is natural to one whose nature is unchangeable must needs be such
always and everywhere. But man's nature is changeable, wherefore that which
is natural to man may sometimes fail. Thus the restitution of a deposit to the
depositor is in accordance with natural equality, and if human nature were
always right, this would always to be observed; but since it happens that man's
will is unrighteous, there are cases in which a deposit should not be restored,
lest a man of unrighteous will make evil use of the thing deposited: as when a
madman or an enemy of the common weal demands the return of his
weapons. 33

What is natural for man is modified as his nature undergoes
modification. What is permanent is the relationship between
nature, which is the origin, and what is natural, which is what is
originated. It is interesting to note that in the above text the
reference to a possible perversion of the human will appears as a
cause of human nature's lack of rectitude and, in the last instance,
of the fact that a precept which is naturally right ceases to be so
when it is put into practice. On such an occasion, Aquinas
maintains that the perversion of the human will is not only
responsible for the defective knowledge of a precept of natural
law, as is the case in the text of the Prima Secundae referred to
above, but even for the fact that this precept is not always correct
(a shortcoming that is always relative to the application of this
precept in a given situation).
The term "perversion of the will" is a way of referring to sin,
as when someone sins the will becomes sick, not so much because
it wants something that is positively bad as because it wants
something good, but the manner of its wanting is bad. This is why
Aquinas says that sin occurs praeterintentionem:34 what the agent
wants when he sins is not something bad, but a given good,
though in such a way that per accidens the will is perverted and
is diverted away from the good apportioned to it. In any case, by
stating that sin has a cause per accidens, and that the variable
correctness of the precepts of natural law ultimately depends on
this cause per accidens,Aquinas excludes an essential mutation of
natural law, for the same reason as he rules out an essential
mutation of nature.
II-II, q. 57, a. 2, ad 1.
See J.M. Boyle, "Praeter Intentionem in Aquinas," The Thomist 42 (1978): 649-65.

33 STh
34

228

ANA MARTA GONzALEZ

In fact, in Aquinas's view nature is always a teleological
principle which, of itself (per se) always strives for a good,
although it sometimes, per accidens, gives rise to a defect. 35 The
same goes for the movements and properties we call natural, as
we can see from his commentary on the text in the Ethics in
which Aristotle speaks of the right hand and the left hand.
According to Aristotle, the right hand is stronger by nature, and
this, which is secundum naturam, is true for the majority (ut in
pluribus).If in other cases this is not true, then the reasons are
accidental (per accidens), be it for natural reasons or through
habit (i.e., because someone exercises the other hand).
It is clear that in this last sense (by habit) we could also talk of
a change in the natural law (as long as this is a secondary
precept): exercising the other hand gives rise to a contrary
disposition which seems to be natural. However, this type of
change does not so much affect the correctness of the precepts as
the knowledge and practical application of them. What we are
interested in here is the other kind of variation: variation in the
correctness of a precept or, rather, variation relative to the
correctness of its application in a given case. In this sense, there
is evidence that Aquinas admits a certain variation analogous to
that which is registered in the natural/physical order-a variation
through accidental causes which, as we have read in the text from
the Secunda Secundae, Aquinas also attributes to the perversion
of the human will.
Nevertheless, it is important to point out that the ailing will in
this case is not that of the agent (e.g., the person who ought to act
in accord with the precept of giving back borrowed items), but
rather that of the sword's owner (who was to be given it back), in
view of which the agent decides not to apply a precept which is
correct in principle. Presuming that the sword's owner will use it
badly, the agent decides not to return it. To the extent that the
bad use of something is the product of an ailing will, and an
ailing will is nothing other than a will that has become used to
sin, we must assert that sin has introduced an accidental factor to
the world which the prudent man must not ignore when
35 See A. Quevedo, Ens per accidens: contingencia y determinaci6n en Arist6teles
(Parnplona: EUNSA, 1989).

DEPOSIIVM GIADIUS

229

exerc1smg his power of judgment. This is a factor which, for
example, makes it inappropriate in some cases to apply the
positive precept recommending the return of property. Thus,
When the thing to be restored appears to be grievously injurious to the person
to whom it is to be restored, or to some other, it should not be restored to him
there and then, because restitution is directed to the good of the person to
whom is made, since all possessions come under the head of the useful. 36

By saying this, Aquinas is not inviting us to reason exclusively
with regard to whatever consequences might follow: he adds an
essential reason. For him, external goods are ordered by their
very nature to the good of the body; at the same time, external
goods are ordered by their very principle to humanity in general
(if private property belongs to natural law, this is only because, in
principle, private property is a better way of safeguarding the
common good). This means that external goods are also ordered
by their very nature to usefulness or the common good.
It is vitally important to have this ordering of goods in mind
if we are to understand why in some cases it is justifiable not to
return a borrowed item. A careful reading of the versions Aquinas
offers of a possible variation in the rightness of the precept of
restitution will show us that all cases are justified with reference
to a definite practical damage to the common good (almost
always illustrated by the idea of an "attack against the patria").
Plato before him had considered the possibility that the man who
is given the sword back might use it against himself. 37 These are
not contradictory motives, as both the man who uses an external
good to attack his own physical integrity and the man who uses
it against the common good are contradicting the natural use of
goods which is presupposed in the exercise of justice.38 According
q. 62, a.5, ad 1.
"He who has to return gold to a lender does not give back what he owes if there is some
disadvantage incurred by retutning or receiving" (Plato, Republic 1.332al 1-b2).
38 The idea of the "natural use" of goods does not entail any kind of fixity. It is not an
attempt to limit the ends of human action a priori, but of expressing a condition for their
moral consistency. Using is always a voluntary act (the active use of the will), and as such, it
can be morally good or bad, which is different from a good or bad technical use. Unlike the
technical use, a good moral use makes it necessary to preserve the integrity of the human
good, and this only happens if the agent, while it pursues its particular objectives, preserves
36 STh I-II,
37

230

ANA MARTA GONULEZ

to this, returning the borrowed sword in certain cases would
mean betraying the very essence of justice. In effect, this virtue
cooperates with the human good, by guaranteeing that in human
relationships each person will want everyone to have his own
property, in the conviction that having one's own things is good
for everyone. In our example, keeping the precept of restitution
would mean attacking the very essence of justice, because giving
the madman his sword back would mean giving him the
opportunity to misuse it by doing harm to himself and to others.
Naturally, if we are to make this decision, and deprive someone
of something that in principle belongs to him, then we must have
well-grounded reasons. Where such reasons are not present, the
just action is always to return the sword.
In principle, all this is in keeping with Aquinas's thesis that the
lack of rightness of a precept goes back to the perversion of the
human will. We have seen repeatedly that, considered in
themselves, all the precepts that derive from the first principles
are correct. Any possible lack of rectitude would depend on their
application to certain actions that appear to come under the
heading of that precept, but that really do not, because the course
of the action has been crossed by some circumstance that actually
turns round the meaning of the precept if it is applied. If the
precept is of itself ordered to justice, the presence of this
circumstance will rightly make us fear that justice itself would not
be a good, should that precept be applied. The only thing capable
of inverting the sense of a precept which is good per se is a bad
use of the precept on the part of a will. For this reason, Aquinas
states that these "perturbing" circumstances depend on the
perversion of the human will. In this sense, if there were no sin,
all precepts would be universally applicable, as such circumstances
would not arise. 39
Thus the variation in the rightness of a precept depends on
accidental causes. This would seem also to be confirmed in
Aquinas's commentary on Aristotle's text, as there Aquinas echoes
word for word the comparison Aristotle draws between the
in its action the prescribed order: external goods for the well-being of the body, and the body
for the well-being of the soul.
39 See Aristotle, Politics7.13.1332all-25.

DEPOS11VMGLADIUS

231

mutability of physical nature (illustrated by the example of the
hand) and the mutability of what is just by nature. Just as the
right hand is stronger by nature, but this may not be the case per
accidens, so the secondary precepts of natural law are right by
nature (in themselves and in their application) but can vary per
accidens, for accidental reasons.
However, according to Aquinas this mutability has a limit, as
does the mutability of human nature. Continuing the analogy
with the natural-physical order, Aquinas expresses this limit as
follows:
And given that the essences of mutable things are themselves immutable, if
there is something natural in us which belongs to the very essence of man, this
cannot vary in any way: for example, that man is an animal; however, what
follows nature, for example, the dispositions, actions, and movements, changes
from time to time. Similarly, those things that belong to the very essence of
justice cannot change in any way, for example, that one must not steal, as this
is to commit an injustice; however, what follows from this may change from
time to time. 40

In both the natural-physical and the natural-moral order, it is
necessary not to lose sight of a fundamental metaphysical distinction that is the very reason why Aquinas was able to maintain the
essential immutability of the natural law, at the same time as he
accounts for the variable reliability of the secondary precepts. 41
This distinction is between what, in the order of essence, belongs
to human nature, and what is the consequence of essence in the
order of performance. What belongs to human nature is per se
absolutely immutable. What is the consequence of essence in the
order of performance is mutable: some things are mutable per se,
others per accidens.Among the first, to borrow an example from
40 "Quia rationes etiam mutabilium sunt immutabiles, si quid est nobis naturale quasi
pertinens ad ipsam hominis rationem nullo modo mutatur, puta hominem esse animal, quae
autem consequuntur naturam, puta dispositiones, actiones et motus, mutantur ut in
paucioribus; et similiter etiam ilia quae pertinent ad ipsam iustitiae rationem nullo modo
possunt mutari, puta non esse furandum, quod est iniustum facere, ilia vero quae
consequuntur mutantur ut in minori parte" 01 Ethic., lect. 12, 1134b33 [184-207]).
41 In reality, it is this very immutability that offers us a criterion for discernment and thus
enables us to judge on the variable nature of the secondary precepts. See P. Lee, "The
Permanence of the Ten Commandments: St. Thomas and his Modern Commentators,"
Theological Studies 42 (1981): 422-43, esp. 442.

232

ANA MARTA GONzALEZ

Aquinas, there is the fact of possessing a tunic. Among the second,
there is the fact of having feet. Analogously, what belongs per se
to the reason of justice is immutable, whereas what is a consequence of the reason of justice is mutable-some things per se
(e.g., what is legally just) and others per accidens (e.g., what is
naturally just).
Among "what is a consequence of the reason of justice" there
figures the precept of returning borrowed items, 42 a precept of
natural law that does not have universal validity, only general
validity, ut in pluribus. We have already seen why this is: on some
occasions this precept may not be just, not so much because of the
precept itself as because circumstances may be present at the time
of action that are not normally taken into account when
ing things only from the point of view of what is generally just.
So to be able to judge whether or not it is rational to apply the
precept in given circumstances, it is necessary to understand the
good towards which this precept is ordered, and the way in which
this good plays a part in the integrity of the human good. This is
what the prudent man does.
What the prudent man assumes in his judgment is that, on the
one hand, the precepts are not irrational, but obey principles, and
on the other, that these principles are accessible to us. This last
condition is always fulfilled because, as we have seen before, such
principles are contained in natural reason or synderesis. And it is
to this very synderesis, through which we learn the ends of all the
virtues and therefore also of the "reason of justice," that Aquinas
attaches the essential immutability of the natural law. In fact,
according to Aquinas, synderesis is never extinguished, 43 which is
compatible with two of his other statements: on the one hand,
that the light of synderesis is the light of the agent intellect itself,
which is numbered among the incorruptible natures, and on the
other, that synderesis is the basis for the reason of justice, which,
as we have seen, is also immutable.
42 "Per restitutionem fit reductio ad aequalitatem commutativae iustitiae, quae consistit
in rerum adaequatione, sicut dictum est. Huiusmodi autem rerum adaequatio fieri non posset
nisi ei qui minus habet quam quod suum est, suppleretur quod deest. Et ad hanc suppletionem
faciendam necesse est ut ei fiat restitutio a quo acceptum est" (SI'h 11-11, q. 62, a. 5).
43 See De Verit., q. 16, a. 3.

DEPOSITVM GLADIUS

233

IV. TYPES OF ACTION
Synderesis is the habit of the practical first principles. These
principles are immutable. To the extent that the agent keeps the
principles, the "seed-bed of the virtues," when he acts, his action
will be good/virtuous. If the opposite is the case, his action will be
bad, and it will constitute vice. Good acts can be divided into
types, as different specific virtues exist, and can become the object
of positive precepts which are valid semper sed non ad semper:
semper because one must always act secundum virtutem; sed non
ad semper for the simple reason that we cannot fulfill all the
precepts under all circumstances. Nor is it necessary to do this.
What we must do is act virtuously, and to do this it is necessary
to discern when one precept should be applied, and when
another. And this is the task that falls to prudence.
Nonetheless, as Finnis has emphasized, 44 the nature of negative
precepts is quite different, as they are valid semper et ad semper.
There are acts that must never be performed, because they
themselves entail a contradiction of the principles. To continue
using our own example about justice, it is one thing to prescribe
an action like returning borrowed items because it is an act of
justice (leaving open the possibility that in some concrete case, in
Aquinas's view because of sin, it is not), and quite another thing
to prohibit theft absolutely, because stealing is always and in all
circumstances an act which runs counter to justice (and this can
also be said of keeping other people's property). 45
44 See J. Finnis, Moral Absolutes: Tradition, Revision and Truth (Washington D.C., The
Catholic University of America Press, 1991), 91.
45 Taking or keeping someone else's property is intrinsically bad. The problem that can
be raised here does not lie in questioning the suitability of the precept, but in determining
what someone else's property is. As is well known, in Aquinas external goods are naturally
ordered for the human race to use them. Private property is only justified in the name of this
common use. It is part of natural law, but only a secondary part, deriving from common use
(see STh I-II, q. 94, a. 5, ad 3). Therefore, in the case of extreme need property becomes
common, and so someone who takes or keeps what in normal circumstances would be
someone else's cannot be accused of theft. Something analogous happens in the case of
keeping things back: "Quando aliquis non potest statum restituere, ipsa impotentia absolvit
eum ab instanti restitutione facienda: sicut etiam totaliter a restitutione absolvitur si omnino
sit impotens. Debet tamen remissionem vel dilationem petere ab eo cui debet, aut per se aut
per alium" (STh II-II, q. 62, a. 8, ad 2).
·

234

ANA MARTA GONzALEZ

What is permanent in both cases is the principle of the
"essence of justice," which is nothing other than the very essence
of the virtue of justice, that is, the habitual disposition of the will
by which we wish to give each person what is his. For this very
reason, even when in a particular case the appropriate action is
not to return the borrowed item, the will to do justice must
remain intact, which means that there must be a desire to give it
back when circumstances return to normal. So after pointing out
the possible "exception" to the precept of restitution, Aquinas
concludes:
Yet he who retains another's property must not appropriate it, but must either
reserve it, that he may restore it at a fitting time, or hand it over to another to
keep it more securely. 46

This serves to bring out an aspect of Aquinas's moral doctrine
that has occasionally been obscured, but which is of prime importance: rather than being a morality of precepts, Thomist morality
is a morality of virtues, for the basic reason that it is the function
of virtue (not only human virtue but all supernatural virtue) to
rectify the human will. As Aristotle writes, "all virtue perfects the
condition of the person whose virtue it is, and makes him perform his operation well. " 47 According to this, human virtue is
what makes man act according to his specific nature: it is what
makes a man into a good man. If we lose sight of this, it is easy to
end up with a rationalist vision of Aquinas's morality, which has
often been the case in modern treatises on morality, and even in
the manuals of this century. 48
At the heart of a rationalist view of ethics there are often
"conflicts" between precepts which do not appear in an ethics
based on virtues. Thus using one good habit instead of another,
for example liberality instead of justice, does not contradict the
essence of the moral virtue when this use is governed by prudence. The only thing that contradicts the essence of moral virtue
STh II-II, q. 62, a. 5, ad 1.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 2.6.1106al4-15. See STh I-II, q. 55, a. 2, sc.
48 See M. Rhonheimer, Natur als Grund/age der Moral. Die personale Struktur des
Naturgesetzes bei Thomas van Aquin: Eine Auseinandersetzung mit autonomer und
teleologischerEthik (Innsbruck-Wien: Tyrolia Verlag, 1987), 141-42.
46

47

DEPOSITUM GLADIUS

235

is any act which, in its very structure, includes a contradiction to
any virtue, because this kind of contradiction perverts good will,
which is central to moral action. 49
Understanding the nature of moral virtue and its central role
in ethics is in itself a hermeneutic key that can be used to interpret
properly those cases that seem at first sight to be "exceptions to
the law," like the case of the borrowed sword. If we bear in mind
the unity of the virtues, it is clear that acting counter to justice is
different from acting according to criteria that are higher than
justice. Not everyone who does not practice the habit of justice
(by which we wish to give everyone his own property) acts against
this habit: there are times when it is appropriate to apply another
habit, and by doing so one is not failing in justice. It would not
occur to anyone to say that, for example, being generous or
showing solidarity constitutes a lack of justice. Yet it is obvious
that in this case we are not giving "each man his own," at least
not in the literal sense of the expression. In other cases, it is
perfectly possible for the practical reason to prescribe such an
action to someone with particular urgency, simply because what
is at stake is, according to moral wisdom, not some precept or
other, but the good of man.
V. GNOME AND EPIEIKEIA

Prudence and moral virtue are what the agent needs in order
to act well in practice: moral virtue which rectifies his ends (so
that he can deliberate correctly), and prudence by which he
considers the circumstances and prescribes the most appropriate
act in each case. With this very aim in mind, Aquinas mentions
three potential virtues in prudence: eubulia, by which the
deliberation preceding the precept of prudence is perfected, 50 and
synesis and gnome, by which the judgement of prudence is
perfected. 51 The difference between the latter two (synesis and
49 See D. M. Gallagher, "Aquinas on Goodness and Moral Goodness," in Thomas Aquinas
and His Legacy, ed. D. M. Gallagher (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America

Press, 1994), 37-60.
so See STh II-II, q. 51, a. 1 and 2.
51 See STh II-II, q. 51, a. 3 and 4.

236

ANA MARTA GONzALEZ

gnome) lies in the fact that the first judges those cases that fit
easily under the general headings, and the second is used in cases
that do not obey the general rules:
It happens sometimes that something has to be done which is not covered by

the common rules of actions, for instance in the case of the enemy of one's
country, when it would be wrong to give him back his deposit, or in other
similar cases. Hence it is necessary to judge of such matters according to higher
principles than the common rules, according to which synesis judges: and
corresponding to such higher principles it is necessary to have a higher virtue
of judgment, which is called gnome, and which denotes a certain discrimination
of judgment. 52

Gnome, which is the virtue that perfects the judgment prior to the
precept of prudence in those matters that are not covered by the
general rule, is also a virtue necessary to exercise epieikeia. In
recent years, epieikeia has been the object of increasing attention,53 because it has often been interpreted as being in conflict
with the idea of a natural law of universal validity. In this respect,
. it is useful to remember that in Aquinar's thought epieikeia is
above all a virtue that, like any other, presupposes respect for the
ends generally known through synderesis and that can therefore
never be counter to the reason of justice.
The object of this virtue is the equitable which, as Aristotle
explains, is "just, but not the legally just, but a correction of legal
justice."54 What is presumed is that the literal application of the
law might turn out to be unjust. Thus epieikeiais the virtue that
makes it possible to rectify possible injustices resulting from
applying the law literally in all cases.55 This description of
epieikeia concurs with what Aristotle says in his Rhetoric, where

52 SI'h 11-11, q. 51, a. 4.
53

See A. Rodriguez Lufio, "La virru dell'epicheia: Teoria, storia e applicazione (I)," Acta

Philosophica,Rivista Internazionaledi Filosofia6 (1997/2): 197-236.
54 Aristotle, NicomacheanEthics 5.10.1137bll-13.
55 Thus Aristotle defines the equitable man: "the man who chooses and does such acts, and
is no stickler for justice in a bad sense but tends to take less than his share though he has the
law on his side, is equitable, and this state of character is equity, which is a sort of justice and
not a different state" (NicomacheanEthics 5.10.1137b35-1138a3).

DEPOSITUM GLADIUS

237

he contrasts epieikeia with legal justice, because he is taking the
latter in its literal sense.56
Aquinas distinguishes two ways of referring to epieikeia according to whether legal justice is regarded as the law in its purely
literal sense, or as including the intention of the legislator. 57 In
the former case, epieikeiais distinguished from legal justice, which
it governs. In the latter case, it is not: epieikeia itself is part of
legal justice. The following text from the Commentary on the
Ethics seems to reflect the first sense best:
That which is equitable is certainly something just, but not like what is legally
just, but like a certain direction of what is legally just. In fact, it has been said
to be contained within what is naturally just, from which what is legally just
takes its origin; and each thing is born to be directed according to its
principle. 58

However, whether we say that epieikeiacan be distinguished from
legal justice or not, what is certain is that it is responsible for rectifying the injustices occasioned by literal applications of the law,
and this by virtue of its referring back to the principle of law
itself. At this point, to avoid unnecessary arguments about the
scope of epieikeia,it is necessary to look back at how Aquinas envisaged the relationship between natural law and positive law. In
concrete, we have to remember that, first and foremost for Aquinas, both originate in the same source-the nature of justiceeven though they emanate in different ways.59 We should also
See Aristotle, Rhetoric 1.13.
"Epieikeia correspondet proprie iustitiae legali: et quodammodo continetur sub ea, et
quoadammodo excedit earn. Si enim iustitia legalis dicatur quae obtemperat legi sive quantum
ad verba legis sive quantum ad intentionem legislatoris, quae potior est, sic epiekeia est pars
potior legalis iustitiae. Si vero iustitia legalis dicatur solum quae obtemperat legi secundum
verba legis, sic epieikeia non est pars iustitiae communiter dictae, contra iustitiam legalem
divisa sicut excedens ipsam" (STh 11-11, q. 120, a. 2, ad 1).
58 "Id quod est epiikes est quidem aliquod iustum, sed non est iustum legale, sed est
quaedam directio iusti legalis. Dictum est enim quod continetur sub iusto naturali, a quo
oritur iustum legale; unumquodque enim natura est dirigi secundum principium a quo oritur"
(V Ethic., lect. 16 [1137bll], 76-82).
59 Both the secondary precepts of natural law and the precepts of positive law have one
and the same principle, the essence of justice. However, natural law and positive law have
diverse origins, as the force of the former follows directly from the principles of law as a kind
of conclusion, and the latter as a kind of determination or concrete expression.
56

57

ANA MARTA GONzALEZ

238

note that in the Thomist view, what is just by nature-and therefore, natural law-includes obedience to positive law; and that
positive law is only just if it adheres to the principles of natural
law. This apparently circular argument becomes clear if we distinguish between principles of law on the one hand, and the
conclusions and resolutions of law on the other. For Aquinas,
natural law includes the principles, on the one hand, and on the
other, all the precepts that derive directly from the principles.:
these precepts are conclusions of the principles, and as such are
known as secondary precepts. Positive law also originates in these
principles, but it decides or specifies the way in which they are to
be put into practice in a particular society and particular
circumstances.
Since this is the case, it would appear to be obvious that it is
impossible to draw a clear dividing line between natural law and
positive law: natural law is embodied in positive law. Living
positive law is usually the same as living natural law. This is the
reason why we are bound by conscience to obey the law. The
problem raised here-that of the unjust law-falls outside the
scope of epieikeia.Aquinas offers a series of criteria for discerning
unjust laws.60 Nonetheless, when he writes of epieikeiahe does so
on the basis that the laws are just. In this context he asserts
repeatedly that the purpose of epieikeiais not to call into question
the rightness of the law, which he does not doubt, but only t_o
judge whether, in some particular case, it is just to apply it
literally. To do this, it has to judge this case in the light of the
principles of law, that is, in the light of the essence of justice.
For this very reason, it is immaterial whether the case in
question is supposed to be governed by a secondary principle of
natural law or a principle of positive law. After all, these are not
distinguished from the point of view of the use made of them by
the agent, but only in the means of proceeding from this
principle. It would be quite another thing to apply epieikeiato the
principles of law themselves: this goes against the very concept of
epieikeia, as, if it is a virtue, it cannot exist apart from those

60 See STh I-II, q. 96, a. 4.

DEPOSITVM GLADIUS

239

principles. 61 But when it is a conclusion of natural law, Aquinas
has no objection to applying epieikeia.This is what he does when
he applies it to the precept of restitution, which is a (secondary)
precept of natural law, independently of the fact that its formulation as a law has to be attributed to a human legislator:
Since human actions, with which laws are concerned, are composed of
contingent singulars and are innumerable in their diversity, it was not possible
to lay down rules of law that would apply to every single case. Legislators in
framing laws attend to what commonly happens: although if the law be applied
to certain cases it will frustrate the equality of justice and be injurious to the
common good, which the law has in view. Thus the law requires deposits to be
restored, because in the majority of cases this is just. Yet it happens sometimes
to be injurious-for instance, if a madman were to put his sword in deposit,
and demand its delivery while in a state of madness, or if a man were to seek
the return of his deposit in order to fight against his country. In these and like
cases it is bad to follow the law, and it is good to set aside the letter of the law
and to follow the dictates of justice and the common good [sequi id quod poscit
iustitiaeratio et communis utilitas].This is the object of epieikeiawhich we call
equity. Therefore it is evident that epieikeia is a virtue. 62

Like Aristotle, Aquinas insists that epieikeia does not conspire
against the law, which is good in itself, as long as it is directed
towards the common good, 63 nor does it speak of a defect in the
legislator, who introduced the law because of what happens ut in
pluribus regarding a specific matter. Indubitably, the need for
epieikeia implies some kind of deficiency, but this is an intrinsic
shortcoming of the very nature of human acts,64 which are not
always of the same kind: "just as returning a borrowed item is just
in itself, and good most of the time, it may also be bad in some
cases, for example, if a sword is returned to a madman. "65
Aquinas sometimes places the treatment of epieikeiaon the same level as that of the
dispenser of the law; see STh I-II. q. 97, a. 4, ad 3.
62 SI'h Il-Il, q. 120, a. 1.
63 See STh 1-11, q. 96, a. 6.
64 See SI'h 11-11, q. 120, a. 1.
65 The complete text reads as follows: "Praedictus defectus non tollit rectitudinem legis
vel iusti legalis, dicens quod, licet peccatum accidat in aliquibus ex observantia legis,
nihilominus lex recta est, quia peccatum illud non est ex parte legis, quae rationabiliter posita
est, neque ex parte legislatoris, qui locutus est secundum condicionem materiae. sed est
peccatum in natura rei. T alis enim est materia operabilium humanorum quod non sunt
universaliter secundum se iustum est et ut in pluribus bonum, in aliquo tamen casu potest esse
61

240

ANA MARTA GONzALEZ

According to the text quoted, the possibility of disagreement
between the letter of the law and the intention of the legislator
lies in the contingency of human actions itself. Earlier, we saw
that Aquinas attributes this disagreement to the disorder introduced to the world by a bad will, as the negative use which is
practically sure to result from returning the sword in such cases
is something that depends on the will. In any case, it is patent that
the defect in question is not in the law itself, about whose
goodness epieikeia does not judge. Epieikeia confines itself to
evaluating the advisability of applying the law literally in certain
problematic cases,66 which it does by reference to the essence of
justice,67 a principle generally known through synderesis. This
reference to synderesis is what, in the last instance, justifies the
application or nonapplication of a positive secondary precept,
and which in all cases justifies the universal validity of the
prohibitions against intrinsically evil acts.

malum, puta si reddatur gladius furioso" (V Ethic., lect. 16 [1137b17], 116-30).
66 "Ille de lege iudicat qui dicit earn non esse bene positam. Qui vero dicit verba legis non
esse in hoc casu servanda, non iudicat de lege, sed de aliquo particulare negotio quod
occurrit" (STh 1-11, q. 120, a. 1, ad 2).
67 "Epieikeia est pars subiectiva iustitiae. Et de ea iustitia per prius dicitur quam de legali:
nam legalis iustitia dirigitur secundum epieikeiam. Unde epieikeia est quasi superior regula
humanorum actuum" (STh 11-11, q. 120, a. 2).

The Thomist 63 (1999): 241-67

LOVING THE LORD YOUR GOD:
THE IMAGO DEI IN SAINT THOMAS AQUINAS 1
MICHAEL A. DAUPHINAIS
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana

T

HEN GOD SAID, 'Let us make human beings according to our

image and likeness"' (Gen 1:26). 2 From this verse and St.
Paul's references to the image of God developed a stream
of theological reflection on what we now term the doctrine of the
imagoDei, or image of God. Patristic theologians often employed
this doctrine either to present the orthodox teaching on the
redemption worked by Christ or to investigate our knowledge of
God. 3 The teaching of the image of God in humans was placed
within the overall drama of salvation, which included both
creation and redemption, thus forging a unity within the narrative
that has too often been forgotten. 4
1 A version of this paper was presented at the Midwest Regional AAR, DePaul University,
Chicago, 20-22 March 1998.
2 Following the quotation as used by Aquinas, "Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et
similitudinem nostram" (STh I, q. 93 a. 1, sc). All translations of the Summa Theologiae are
my own. I have relied on the Latin of the 1953 Ottawa edition and have occasionally
consulted the English translation by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province.
3 For an example of the former see St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word; for
the latter see St. Gregory of Nyssa, Sermons on the Beatitudes; and St. Augustine, De
Trinitate.
4 On the need for theology to include both creation and redemption see David Burrell,
C.S.C., "Incarnation and Creation: The Hidden Dimension," Modern Theology 12 (1996):
211-20. The Catechism of the Catholic Church grounds human dignity both in creation in
the image of God and in redemption by Christ: "Created in the image of the one God and
equally endowed with rational souls, all men have the same nature and the same origin.
Redeemed by the sacrifice of Christ, all are called to participate in the same divine beatitude:
all therefore enjoy an equal dignity" (CCC 1934; emphasis added).

241

242

MICHAELA.DAUPHINAIS

St. Thomas Aquinas shared these assumptions, as is seen in the
overall structure of his Summa Theologiae, which brings a certain
order (ordo disciplinae) to the history of salvation. He begins with
God and his creation of the universe and then treats the return of
the human creature back to God through Christ. Situated within
the Summa, Aquinas's teaching on the image of God in humans
must not be viewed as a static or abstract anthropological datum;
rather, it manifests the dynamic character of the relation of the
human creature to God, for the image is moving through various
levels of potency and act, on the one hand, and obscurity and
beauty, on the other.
In contemporary discussion one often hears the affirmation
that the image of God is in all human beings as a way to
underscore our duty to respect the dignity of all people. Such a
characterization may be true, but it has the tendency to reduce the
Christian teaching of the image of God to the Kantian categorical
imperative: "Act in such a way that you always treat humanity,
whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never
simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end. "5 Kant's
abstract notion of humanity provides such a thin account of
human agency that the particular traditions in which one stands
become an impediment, rather than the path, to the realization of
full humanity. 6 In what I am calling the Kantian approach, the
image of God is removed from the Christian narrative. Aquinas's
questions, however, are not those of Kant. To understand the full
theological significance of Aquinas's teaching on the image of
God we must explicitly situate the doctrine within its narrative
context: humans have been created to know and love God, with

5 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H.J. Paton (New
York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1964), 96.
6 As an alternative to this interpretation of Kantian ethics see Barbara Herman, The
Practice of Moral Judgment {Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), in which
she argues that Kant's focus on the maxims of the subject's willings provides a way of
including the particularity of the subject. For the argument that practical rationality is
constituted by traditions of inquiry rather than by a momentary divorce from the empirical,
see Alasdair Macintyre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame: University of Notte
Dame Press, 1988); and idem, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia,
Genealogy, and Tradition (Notte Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990).

IMAGO DEI IN AQUINAS

243

this created capacity culminating in the friendship with God made
possible in Christ. 7
Aquinas's discussion of the image of God in humans both
presupposes and displays his teaching about God and humans. He
brings the Scholastic quaestio to bear on the wealth of patristic
reflection. Some scholars have suggested that in the Summa
Theologiae Aquinas moves beyond the Augustinian view of the
image of God because he relies increasingly on an Aristotelian
psychology. 8 This view, however, can be challenged in two
respects. First, as his own view develops, Aquinas does not leave
Augustine aside, but rather treats him more subtly, with more
nuance. 9 In the Summa, written toward the end of his earthly
life,10 Aquinas presents the image of the Triune God in humans.
chiefly as the procession of the word from its principle and the
procession of love from both, the same image with which
Augustine concludes his De Trinitate.11
Second, when Aquinas includes Aristotelian notions such as
potency, habit, and virtue, he often mediates between Augustine
7 On the relation between the image of God and Christ see David Schindler's discussion
of the tension (not contradiction) between the theistic account of the image of God in
Gaudium et spes 12 and the Christocentric emphasis of GS 22, in "Christology and the Imago
Dei: Interpreting Gaudium et Spes," Communio 23 (1996): 156-84. On a related issue see
Thomas Hughson, "John Courtney Murray and Postconciliar Faith," Theological Studies 58
(1997): 480-505.
8 For example, Marie-Joseph Serge de Laugier de Beaurecueil, "L'homme image de Dieu
selon saint Thomas d'Aquin," Etudes et Recherches 8 (1952): 45-82 and 9 (1955): 37-97,
cited in D. Juvenal Merriell, To the Image of the Trinity: A Study in the Development of
Aquinas' Teaching (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1990), 5-6. For a more
pronounced objection to Aquinas see David Cairns, The Image of God in Man (New York:
Philosophical Library, 1953), who concludes, "In spite of all that is noble in the teaching of
Aquinas on the divine image in man, it is clear that here we are moving far more in the world
of Aristotle than in the world of Christ, with His Gospel of the Kingdom and the Fatherhood
of God" (119).
9 In this way, Aquinas becomes a better reader of Augustine's De Trinitate by the time he
writes the Summa Theologiae. Merriell presents this thesis through an examination of the
development of Aquinas's discussions of the image of God in humans as found in the
Scriptum, De Veritate, and Summa Theologiae (see To the Image of the Trinity). I will focus
on Aquinas's mature teaching, as presented in the Summa.
10 J.-P. Torrell, O.P., dates the Prima Pars of the Summa Theologiae between 1266 and
1268 (Saint Thomas Aquinas: vol. 1, The Person and His Work, trans. Robert Royal
[Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1995], 142-46).
11 Cf. STh I, q. 93, aa. 6-7.

244

MICHAELA. DAUPHINAIS

and Aristotle by means of a Christian authority. 12 The (oftenheard) criticism of the triumph of Aristotelianism over Augustinianism in Aquinas collapses in his teaching on the image of
God in humans. We should view this teaching of Aquinas as a
meeting of East and West, appreciating the skillful way in which
he places Latin and Greek theological traditions of reflection on
the image of God so that they can mutually illumine one another.
From the Latin tradition of Augustine, Aquinas takes the theme
that the image of God is in humans insofar as we turn, or are
capable of turning, toward God in knowledge and love. From the
Eastern tradition of John Damascene, Aquinas takes the theme
that the image of God is in humans insofar as we have
understanding, free-will, and creative power (per se potestativus). 13 The combination of these two traditions allows Aquinas to
develop the moral significance of the teaching of the image of
God in humans. He thus argues that humans are fundamentally
ordered toward God in a way that elevates our freedom instead
of thwarting it. The teaching of the image of God exemplifies the
way in which Aquinas remains indebted to his sources and yet
goes beyond them.
In this paper I will argue that by including John Damascene's
authority alongside that of Augustine, Aquinas transforms the
teaching of the image of God so that it serves both as an entrance
into the mystery of the Triune God and as a figure forthe human
progression in the moral life toward friendship with God. I will
begin with an analysis of Augustine's teaching on the image of the
God in humans in his De Trinitate. Then I will explicate Aquinas's presentation of the image of God by offering a reading of
question 93 of the Prima Pars, where Aquinas, while remaining
indebted to Augustine, nevertheless employs the authority of John
Damascene to widen the scope of the doctrine of the image of
God to include a greater explication of the moral life of the

12 I am thankful
13 I render

to Thomas Hibbs for showing this pattern to me.

per se potestativusas "creative power" as an alternative to "self-movement" (in

the English Dominicans' translation) and "man's mastery over himself" (in the translation by
Edmund Hill, O.P., in the Blackfriars edition).

IMAGO DBI IN AQUINAS

245

human creature. 14 The shift between Augustine and Aquinas can
also be seen through a comparison of the structures of the
principal works. Although Augustine treats the image of God in
humans as part of an investigation into the divine Trinity,
Aquinas includes the image of God as part of his discussion of the
human creature. 15 Moreover, the succinct style of the Summa
Theologiae is quite different from Augustine's rhetorical invitation
in the De Trinitate. Aquinas's teaching is only obscured if read
through the textbook caricature that sees him as orchestrating a
synthesis between Aristotelianism and Christian faith. The actual
contours of the Summa Theologiae reflect other complex interactions between many strands of the Christian tradition: the
Eastern Fathers, the conciliar documents, the Latin West, and so
on. The recognition of the Western and Eastern traditions within
Aquinas's teaching on the image of God enables us to approach
it as the theological gem that it is. The image of God, if properly
understood, defies categorization into either what is now classified as moral theology or systematic theology. Aquinas, instead,
presents us with a thoroughly theological view of the human
person made to the image and likeness of God, whereby the
moral life presupposes, as well as perfects, the knowing and
loving of God.
I. THE IMAGE OF GOD IN ST. AUGUSTINE'S DE TRINITATE:
FAITH LEADING TO CONTEMPLATION

Augustine's De Trinitate is divided into fifteen books. In the
first four books, Augustine puts forth the doctrine of the Trinity
14 Although it is easier to see the moral implications of the image of God in Aquinas,
Augustine also presumes that intellectual inquiry into the faith has a moral dimension. "If this
[the Word made flesh] is difficult to understand, then you must purify your mind with faith,
by abstaining more and more from sin, and by doing good, and by praying with the sighs of
holy desire that God will help you to make progress in understanding and loving" (De

Trinitate 4 .31).
15 Within the Prima Pars, q. 93, on the image of God, falls within the larger section of qq.
75-102, on the human creature as processing forth from God. Aquinas's placement of the
discussion of the image of God is closer to that employed by John Damascene in De fide
orthodoxa, in which the treatment of the human creature follows that of God Three and
One.

246

MICHAEL A. DAUPHINAIS

as found in Scripture. In the next three books, he challenges the
Arian heresy of subordinating the Son to the Father. Then in
book 8, he changes course and proceeds in a more interior
manner (modo interiore)to attempt to understand the mystery of
the Trinity in light of the human creature which is called the
image of God. After suggesting an understanding of the Trinity as
lover, what is loved, and the love shared, Augustine draws back
from the dazzling brilliance of this Trinity of love to "the more
familiar consideration of our own mind insofar as man has been
made to the image of God." 16 In the ninth book Augustine
presents the triad of the mind, its love of itself, and its knowledge
of itself.17 He investigates the mind's knowledge and introduces
the concept of the mental word (verbummentis), which he defines
as knowledge loved (amata notitia). Augustine concludes book 9,
"And so you have a certain image of the trinity, the mind itself
and its knowledge, which is its offspring and its word about itself,
and love as the third element, and these three are one (1John5 :8)
and are one substance (una substantia)."18 We will see this mental
triad employed by Aquinas in his discussion of the image of God
in humans as a representation of the uncreated Trinity. Augustine,
however, leaves behind this triad for the next few books and
considers the better-known triad of memory (memoria),
understanding (intelligentia),and will (voluntas).19
Augustine distinguishes between knowledge (scientia)and wisdom (sapientia) and examines them in books 13 and 14 respectively. Knowledge is of temporal things and so fails to meet the
requirement that the image of God be found in what is eternal in
the human mind. 20 Nevertheless, Augustine shows that it is the
Word incarnate who reveals to us the wisdom of the eternal
Word through our knowledge of the Word made flesh.21 Since it
is one and the same Word whom we encounter, knowledge in this
16 Augustine, De Trinitate, 15.10. Unless otherwise noted, all citations are from The
Trinity, translated by Edmund Hill, O.P. (Brooklyn: New City Press, 1991). References to
the book and chapter follow the standard division of the De Trinitate.
17 Ibid., 9.8.
18 Ibid., 9.18.
19 Ibid., 10.17-18.
20 Ibid., 14.4.
21 Ibid., 13.24.

IMAGO DEi IN AQUINAS

247

life leads to wisdom in the next, just as faith leads to contemplation. The proper image of God in humans can only be found,
therefore, in wisdom, which Augustine defines as the true worship
of God. 22 Humans are said to be made to the image of God
insofar as their soul has the capacity "to use reason and understanding in order to understand and gaze upon God. " 23 Augustine
does not depict the image of God in humans primarily in terms
of humanity's dominion over creation, but in terms of the
capacity to worship God. 24 Although humans have lost participation in God, with the consequence that the image of God
becomes worn out and distorted, this image nevertheless remains
in all humans insofar as they have a mind, which itself has the
capacity for knowing and loving God. 25
We have noted that Augustine examines the image of God in
humans in an attempt to gain a greater understanding of the
divine Trinity. He summarizes his consideration of the image of
God in humans by noting that "we lingered over the creature
which we ourselves are from the ninth to the fourteenth book in
order to descry ... the invisible things of God by understanding
them through those that have been made. "26 How does Augustine
evaluate his achievement of this self-described project? He clearly
states what he has not accomplished. In book 15, he shows the
various ways in which the trinity in humans fails to mirror
adequately the divine Trinity. Concerning the mental triad of the
memory, understanding, and will it must be said that humans
remember nothing without the memory, understand nothing
apart from the understanding, and love nothing apart from the

22 Ibid., 14.1.
23 Ibid., 14.6.
24 Joseph Ratzinger argues along these lines in his commentary on Gaudium et spes, in
Commentary on the DocumentsofVaticanll, ed. H. Vorgrimler, vol. 5 (New York: Herder
and Herder, 1969), 115-63. David Schindler writes, "For Ratzinger, it is crucial to see that
this dominion as understood in the document is the consequence (Folge) and not the content
(lnhalt) of God (121-22). The content, (Ratzinger] says, as indicated by St. Augustine, is the
capacity for God" ("Reorienting the Church on the Eve of the Millennium: John Paul H's
'New Evangelization,'" Communio 24 [1997]: 728-73).
is Augustine, De Trinitate, 14.11.
26 Ibid., 15.10; cf. Rom 1:20.

MICHAEL A. DAUPHINAIS

248

will. 27 This mental triad is therefore inadequate according to
Augustine because each of the Persons of the Trinity must have
his own understanding, memory, and will. Who could rightly say
that the Father has no wisdom except through the Son? 28 This
triad fails as an image of the Trinitarian relations in God because
it refers to essential attributes of God, that is, attributes possessed
in virtue of his substance, rather than by any of the Persons
uniquely. So Augustine concludes that any direct understanding
of the Trinity from the human creature is impossible. 29
Despite the optimistic attempt to understand the Trinity in
light of the image of God in humans, there is a strong negative
element in the De Trinitate, indicating the inadequacy of human
characterizations of the Triune God. Augustine states that "only
when [the image of God in humans] comes to the perfect vision
of God will this image bear God's perfect likeness. " 30 Theological
inquiry into the image of God in humans cannot be viewed as a
"saving" natural theology, but presupposes for Augustine that the
image is only an aid for understanding insofar as the human
creature knows and loves God more and more through faith in
this life and contemplation in the next. Thus Augustine still
attempts to bring forward those aspects of the image of God in
humans that represent the personal relations within God.
Augustine, seeking God's face always, turns to 1 Corinthians
13:12, which says, "For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then
face to face. " 31 He then returns to the earlier triad of the mind, its
knowledge, and understanding, but specifies this knowledge in
terms of the inner word that makes understanding possible: "this
is the word that belongs to no language." 32 He seeks a relation
between this word and the Word of God insofar as this inner
word completely manifests the knowledge that begets it, just as
the Word of God is the true image of the Father. Augustine
describes this inner word as follows: "For when we utter some27

Augustine, De Trinitate, 15.12.

28 Ibid.

29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.,

14.23.
RSV; cf. Augustine, De Trinitate, 15.14.
32 Augustine, De Trinitate, 15.19.
31

IMAGO DEi IN AQUINAS

249

thing true, that is when we utter what we know, a word is
necessarily born from the knowledge which we hold in the
memory, a word which is absolutely the same kind of thing as the
knowledge it is born from. "33 The movement progresses beyond
all sensible words "to come to that word of man through whose
likeness of a sort the Word of God may somehow or other be
seen as an enigma. " 34 Augustine is caught, however, moving back
and forth between affirming the vast dissimilarity between our
inner word and the Word of God and also affirming at least some
likeness.35 Those who grasp the significance of the mental triad
have no greater understanding of the divine Trinity, unless they
see the mind precisely as an image of something greater, and so
"in some fashion refer what they see to that of which it is an
image."36 Faith is therefore necessary to see the human mind as a
mirror of God, a faith that now sees through a mirror in an
enigma but will one day be brought to a contemplation in which
the Trinity will be perceived directly. 37
As has been noted, Augustine distinguishes between two
primary ways in which the image of God can be considered in
humans. First, there is the triad of memory, understanding, and
will; it is to this triad that Augustine devotes the most space.
Second, there is the triad of the mind, the procession of the word
in knowledge, and the procession of love from both. Although
Augustine sets aside this latter triad in book 9, he returns to it in
book 15 because the former triad refers to what are essential attributes in God and so does not fully represent the Trinitarian
relations. 38 The inner word, begotten of our knowledge, is the
most proper image of the Word begotten of the Father, but this
inner word requires actual thought. These two triads, nevertheless, can be said to overlap one another insofar as thoughts can be
33 Ibid., 15.19.
34 lbid.,

15.20.

35 Ibid., 15.22-24,

39.
Ibid., 15.44.
37 Ibid., 15.44-45.
38 My interpretation differs here from that of John Edward Sullivan, O.P ., who argues that
Augustine permanently sets aside the triad of the mind and the processions of knowledge and
love; see The Image of God: The Doctrineof St. Augustineand Its Influence (Dubuque, Iowa:
The Priory Press, 1963), 115-48.
36

MICHAELA. DAUPHINAIS

250

brought forth from memory just as they can be formed in the
mind. 39
Augustine concludes his work with reference to the mental
trinity of the procession of word and love, which among the
mental trinities is the best image of the divine Trinity. 40 Despite
his many affirmations of the vast dissimilarity between the image
and God, Augustine says that divine illumination does allow us to
see ourselves as the image of the supreme Trinity which we
cannot yet contemplate. 41 Having come to know of the Trinity in
the revelation of Scripture, we can see the trinities in our knowing
and loving, and these can aid our understanding of the Trinity,
which always remains beyond our grasp. Augustine leads the
reader on a rhetorical path of give-and-take between our
complete inability to comprehend God in this life and the
understanding we can have of him from created reality, above all
from the Word made flesh-a path that would be impossible to
traverse without the incarnation, death, and resurrection.
As I will show, Aquinas inherits this Augustinian vision of the
image of God in the human creature. Nevertheless, Aquinas subtly
transforms this vision as well-sometimes shifting the use of
terminology within the Augustinian framework, and at other
times adding themes from the Eastern theological tradition, such
as the likeness of God as the love of virtue.
II. A READING OF THE IMAGE OF GOD IN ST. THOMAS
AQUINAS'S SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: THE PERFECTION OF
CONTEMPLATION AND ACTION

In STh I, q. 93, Aquinas first asks whether the image of God is
in humans. He replies in the affirmative, citing the authority of
Genesis 1 :26, "Let us make man to our image and likeness," and
De Trinitate, 14.10.
divine light] has shown you that there is a true word in you when
it is begotten of your knowledge, that is when we utter what we know, even if we do not
think or speak a meaningful sound in the language of any people; provided our thought is
formed from what we know, and the image in thinking attention is completely like the
awareness which was already contained in memory, with will or love as the third element
joining these two together as parent and offspring."
41 Ibid.
39 Cf. Augustine,

40 Ibid., 15.50: "ffhe

IMAGO DEi IN AQUINAS

251

then explains what the image of God does not mean. It does not
mean that humans share a likeness of equality with God, because
the exemplar (God) infinitely exceeds the image (the human
creature). Properly speaking the image of God is in humans not
perfectly, but imperfectly. Aquinas thus reminds the reader of the
uniqueness of Christ the Son of God as the only perfect image of
God, as in Colossians 1: 15.
After explaining that the image of God in humans is imperfect
and does not place humans on a par with the Son of God,
Aquinas then considers the other extreme to show that humans
are made to the image of God in a way that distinguishes them
from irrational creatures. 42 Since humans as creatures cannot have
an equality with the uncreated God, in what sense do they
resemble God any more than the rest of his creation does?
Aquinas here clarifies that image requires likeness of species. This
likeness of species presupposes an ultimate difference, otherwise
it would be likeness of equality. Aquinas introduces three ways in
which creatures share in a likeness to God: first, because they
exist; second, because they live; and third, inasmuch as they know
or understand. 43 Rational creatures possess all three ways of
likeness to God and so they alone can be said properly to be made
to the image of God. Since Aquinas has described the image of
God as likeness of the species of the intellectual nature, he is
ready to interpret the theologoumenon inherited from Gregory
the Great that the image of God is also in angels. Here he claims
that the image of God is greater in the angels than in humans
because the angels' intellectual nature is more perfect or higher

(perfectior).44
Aquinas then asks whether the image of God is found in every
human being. This question arises on two fronts: Romans 8:29,
which says that those God predestined he conformed to the image
of His Son; and an apparently deliberate misquotation of 1
Corinthians 11: 7, reading, "man is the image of God, and woman
STh I, q. 93, a. 2.
Mark Jordan argues that these three pure perfections (existere, vivere, intelligere)
correspond to the three transcendentals (unum, bonum, verum);see "The Grammar of Esse:
Re-Reading Thomas on the Transcendentals," Thomist 44 (1980): 18.
44 STh I, q. 93, a. 3.
42
43

252

MICHAEL A. DAUPHINAIS

is the image of man. " 45 To respond to these objections, Aquinas
must clarify in what manner the image of God is in the human
creature as regards its intellectual nature. As Aquinas moves along
in his teaching on the image of God, he continually adds levels of
specification, in this case specifying that the intellectual nature
chiefly imitates God insofar as God knows and loves himself.
Hence, the image of God in humans can be viewed in three ways:
first, as each human has the capacity for knowing and loving
God, a capacity that is in the nature of the mind itself and so is
common to all humans; second, when the human creature actually or habitually knows and loves God imperfectly, as in the
conformity of grace; and third, when the human creature knows
and loves God perfectly in act, as in the likeness of glory. Aquinas
cites the Gloss saying that there is a triple image, of creation, of
re-creation, and of likeness.46 All humans, men and women alike,
share this capacity for knowing and loving God, which means
that the image of God is in each human being. Aquinas thus
presents the image of God as existing in various modes of
potentiality and actuality, so that the image of God only reaches
perfection in the beatific vision in which the human creature
knows and loves God. 47
Aquinas here narrows the scope of image to knowing and
loving God, but he has not yet discussed whether this refers to
essential attributes or personal relations. He raises this question
45 Jaroslav Pelikan notes the misquotation in the objection, in" Imago Dei: An Explication
of Summa Theologiae, Part I, Question 93," in Calgary Aquinas Studies, ed. Anthony Pare]
(f oronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978), 27-48. In the reply to the
objection, Aquinas correctly quotes St. Paul, "man is the image and glory of God, and woman
is the glory of man" (STh I, q. 93, a. 4, ad 1). Aquinas argues that in that which principally
constitutes the image of God, that is, the intellectual nature, the image is equally in men and
women. St. Paul's statement, for Aquinas, refers to some secondary sense of the image of God
found in men alone, namely that "man is the principle (principium) and end of woman, as
God is the principle and end of all of creation."
"" STh I, q. 93, a. 4.
47 In an otherwise insightful article, J aroslav Pelikan anachronistically divides the structure
of Aquinas's discussion of the image into that belonging to natural theology and that
belonging to revelation. Pelikan's division leads him to the odd suggestion that the image of
God is split between reason, which belongs to natural theology, and love, which belongs to
revelation ("Imago Dei," 38-39). Aquinas, in contrast, states that in the natural state the
image exists as the capacity for both knowing and loving God; so also in the graced state the
image consists in both knowing and loving God (see STh I, q. 93, a. 4).

IMAGO DEI IN AQUINAS

253

in article 5 and answers with a brief summary of Trinitarian
theology. The distinction of Persons in the Trinity is only
according to their relations of origin. Since modes of origin are
appropriate to their corresponding natures, it must be said that
the distinction of the divine Persons is suited to the divine nature.
Aquinas summarily disposes of any strong division between the
Persons and the nature of God: "Hence to be to the image of God
by imitation of the divine nature does not exclude being to the
image of God by representation of the divine Persons; but rather
one follows from the other." 48 There can be no conflict between
understanding the image of God in the human creature with
respect to the divine essence and with respect to the Trinity of
Persons, just as there is no conflict in God himself who is one
nature in three Persons. There is in Aquinas's Trinitarian theology
no divine essence that stands behind the three Persons. 49 Aquinas
finds it necessary to affirm statements that attribute to humans the
image of the divine essence and thus interprets John Damascene's
teaching on the image in this light. He accepts Damascene's
statement that the human creature is said to be the image of God
as "an intellectual being, having free will and creative power
(potestativusperse)."50 Because Aquinas affirms the identity of the
Trinity of Persons and the divine nature, he can present
simultaneously Augustine's understanding of the image of the
Trinity in humans as well as Damascene's notion of the image of
48 SI'h I, q. 93, a. 5. Jurgen Moltmann makes the following erroneous claim concerning
Augustine's and Aquinas's account of the image of God: "The soul does not correspond to
a single Person of the Trinity, or to the fellowship of Persons in the Trinity. It corresponds
to the One divine Being and the One divine sovereignty" (God in Creation [Minneapolis,
MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 238). Moltmann thus assumes a division between the divine
essence (the One divine Being) and the divine Persons (the fellowship of Persons in the
Trinity) that Aquinas has clearly denied. Aquinas states that the human creature can be said
to be the image of God both with respect to the one divine essence and with respect to the
Trinity of Persons. If we recall Ratzinger's statement that the image of God is not in humans
primarily with regard to dominion, but with regard to the capacity to worship God, we can
offer a better Augustinian and Thomistic way to avoid justification for the environmental
exploitation that rightly concerns Moltmann.
49 For example, Aquinas says "in God, Person and nature are really the same" (SI'h ill, q.
16, a. 5, ad 1). Aquinas explicitly states elsewhere that "divine simplicity requires that in God
essence is the same as suppositum, which in intellectual substances is nothing other than
person" (SI'h I, q. 39, a. 1).
50 SI'h I, q. 93, a. 5, obj. 2; cf. Damascene, De fide orthodoxa 2.12.

254

MICHAEL A. DAUPHINAIS

God as a representation of God's power. As we will note later,
Aquinas cites this same passage in the prologue to the Prima
Secundae, thus introducing his section on morals with Damascene's description of the image of God.
Aquinas then asks in article 6 whether the image of God is in
humans according to the mind only. This appears redundant since
he has already shown that the image of God is in the intellectual
nature. To unravel this apparent redundancy we may compare
Aquinas's use of the mind and the intellect in the Summa Theologiae to his earlier discussion in the De Veritate. 51 In this article
of the Summa Theologiae Aquinas identifies the mind with the
intellect when he writes, "it is the intellect or the mind (intellectus
sive mens) whereby rational creatures exceed other creatures." In
De Veritate, q. 10, a. 1, ad 5, however, he indicates a division
between the mind and the intellect:
since in applying the image [of God] mind talces the place of the divine essence,
and memory, intellect, and will take the place of the three Persons, Augustine
attributes to mind those things which are needed for the image in creatures
when he says: "Memory, understanding, and will are one life, one mind, and
one essence" (De Trinitate 9.12) .... These three are called one essence since
they flow from the one essence of the mind, one life because they belong to
one kind of life, and one mind because they are included in one mind as parts
in the whole, just as sight and hearing are included in the sensitive part of the
soul.52

Whereas in this earlier treatment Aquinas accepts the Augustinian
psychology of the mind as something from which flow memory,
intellect, and will, in the later treatment the mind becomes a
synonym for the intellect. Here we see another reason why Aquinas moves toward the dual procession of word and love as the
preferred model of the Trinity in comparison to the other Augustinian triad of memory, intellect, and will: the former model
avoids establishing the mind as an essence distinct from its
powers. Aquinas may have come to this conclusion through his
51 John P. O'Callaghan, Creighton University, brought to my attention this change in
Aquinas's use of 'mind'.
52 Thomas Aquinas, Truth, vol. 2, trans.James V. McGlynn, S.J. (Chicago: Hugh Regnery
Company, 1953), 8.

IMAGO DBI IN AQillNAS

255

employment of a more Aristotelian psychology, which posits no
such mind, but he maintains the philosophical conclusion in the
theological discussion of the image of God. He thus uses the
Augustinian language of the mind as the image of God in both the
De Veritate and the Summa Theologiae,but in the later work the
dominant usage of the term "mind" is synonymous with
"intellect. "53
Aquinas thus argues that the image of God is in rational
creatures only with respect to their intellect or mind. This does
not deny the bodily character of human existence, but indicates
that the human body only bears a likeness to God in its relation
to the intellect and will.54 The argument in article 6 that the
image of God is in the intellectual nature is not repetitive, since
Aquinas there qualifies how humans are like God. From this
starting point, Aquinas introduces a way of understanding the
image of God in humans to account for God as One and Three.
The human creature bears a likeness (according to species) to the
divine nature insofar as it understands. (Other creatures bear a
trace of the Trinity insofar as they are and as they live.) The will
only bears the image of God insofar as it is directed by the intellect; Aquinas calls the will the rational appetite, as opposed to the
sensitive appetite which humans share with nonrational creatures.
Thus in the discussion of the image of God the will's loving is
more akin to a husband's decision to love his wife than to a person's craving for chocolate. Humans are drawn to God by knowing and loving, where loving is a free response to the divine call.

53 Whether

this synonymous usage of mens and intellectus holds in the rest of the Summa

Theologiaeis an interesting question, but one that will not be addressed here.
54 If the human body were in itself an image of God, then other animal bodies would also
share this image. Aquinas argues that human corporeality manifests the image of God in a
secondary sense-this likeness depends on the primary likeness of the intellect (STh I, q. 93,
a. 3). From a different perspective, Jacques Derrida approaches this question in a reflection
on the role of the face in the encounter with the other: "the expression of infinity is the face.
• . . Thought is speech, and is therefore immediately face. In this, the thematic of the face
belongs to the most modern philosophy of language and of the body itself" ("Violence and
Metaphysics: An Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas," in Jacques Derrida, Writing
and Difference,trans. Alan Bass [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978): 98, 100).
The face both presumes, and points beyond, our bodily existence.

256

MICHAEL A. DAUPHINAIS

Aquinas then specifically addresses the Trinitarian character of
the image of God. The likeness of species in rational creatures
extends to a representation of the uncreated Trinity:
as the uncreated Trinity is distinguished according to the procession of the
Word from the One speaking, and of Love from both ... so we may say that
in rational creatures, in which is found the procession of the word in the
intellect, and the procession of love from the will, there is an image of the
uncreated Trinity by a certain representation of species.55

The image of God as a representation of species is found only in
the mind or intellect of the human creature. The image of God in
humans consists both in the intellectual nature and in the dual
procession of word and love. That the image of the divine nature
is in the intellectual nature of humans leads to the conclusion that
humans also represent the image of the Trinity in the activities of
knowing and loving. Although Aquinas gives no direct authority
for the image of the dual procession of word and love, it is clearly
taken from Augustine's De Trinitate, a work cited more than any
other throughout this question.
In light of the earlier consideration of Augustine's De Trinitate,
it is obvious that Aquinas is very Augustinian in his discussion of
the image of God in humans, and yet, as I have also shown, he
quietly transforms the notion of mind to be interchangeable with
intellect. His argument that the rational creature is an image of
the Trinity by the procession of the word in the intellect and of
love in the will echoes Augustine's final conclusion that the word
begotten in understanding is the least inadequate image for the
eternal procession of the Word of God from the Father. Continuing to draw heavily upon Augustine, Aquinas argues that the
image of God is in the human soul principally when the soul is
engaged in knowing and loving. He describes the mind's engagement as follows: "from the knowledge which we have in thinking
we form an inner word, and from this we burst forth in love. "56
This dual procession of word and love, described here in such
dynamic terms, requires the engagement of the human intellect
ss STh I, q. 93, a. 6; cf. STh I, q. 28, a. 3.
s6 STh I, q. 93, a. 7.

IMAGO DEI IN AQUINAS

257

and will. Aquinas claims that the image of the Trinity may be said
secondarily to exist in the human soul in the mere capacity for
understanding and willing, but the image of the Trinity is principally in the soul when the person is actively knowing and loving
someone or something.
Aquinas then offers the possibly surprising claim that the
image of God is in the human creature only with respect to God
as the object of human knowing and loving.57 Not only must the
soul be engaged in activity, but it must be engaged in at least the
beginning of contemplation of God for it to be the image of the
divine Trinity. Aquinas cites Augustine's statement that "the
image of God exists in the mind, not because it has a remembrance of itself, loves itself, and understands itself; but because it
can also remember, understand, and love God by whom it was
made. "58 This does not contradict the earlier affirmation that the
image of God is in every human being, for the necessity of God
as the object of our knowledge and love includes the capacity for
knowing and loving God. Aquinas describes this in terms of
turning to God: "the image is in the soul inasmuch as it turns to
God, or by nature can turn to God. " 59 Self-reflection, for Aquinas, finds an image of the Trinity in the mind not when the mind
is considered by itself, but only when it possesses the ability to
turn to God. 60 It is not merely the procession of the word in
understanding and the procession of love in willing that
constitutes the image of the Trinity in the human creature; rather
the image is in humans "according to the word born of the
knowledge of God, and to the love derived from there." 61
Aquinas has already argued that the image of God is in the human
creature according to representation of species. So if the Word of
God is begotten by and the Love proceeds from God's knowledge
and love of himself, then the word and love proceeding from
human understanding only represent the same species as the
divine Trinity when the human creature turns to God.
STh I, q. 93, a. 8.
STh I, q. 93, a. 8, sc.
59 STh I, q. 93, a. 8.

57

58

60 Ibid.
61 Ibid.

258

MICHAEL A. DAUPHINAIS

In Augustine and Aquinas, the identification of the image of
God with the activities of the will and intellect presupposes a
conception of these activities that diverges from many contemporary caricatures of the will and intellect as static faculties. 62 For
Augustine, memory, understanding, and will are action words
that do not refer chiefly to functions of the human mind. The will
is understood in terms of the act of willing, memory in terms of
the act of remembering, and understanding in terms of the act of
understanding. Aquinas accepts this basic context for the intellect
and will; he adds that they can also be viewed through the aspects
of potency and habit, but the paradigmatic form of the will and
intellect lies in the engagement of desiring the good and understanding the true. Aquinas distinguishes between the soul's essence, faculties, and acts. Because the essence of the soul is not its
faculties, Aquinas can identify the image of God with the essence
of the soul insofar as the soul by nature can turn to God through
the activities of knowing and willing. 63 Therefore the soul imitates
God who is pure act chiefly in activity ordered toward God. 64
This is even clearer in the Latin, in which "faculty" or "power" is
"potentia." Aquinas makes the obvious point that a faculty as such
is ordered to an act, because potentia qua potentia is ordered to
actus. 65 Faculties, as potencies, are incomplete without their
activities. "Static faculties" are unintelligible in Aquinas's usage.
When the intellect and will are (mis)understood as primarily static
faculties, then the Augustinian and Thomistic teaching of the
image of God likewise becomes static and loses its sense of the
human creature's dynamic relationship toward God.
62 James Halstead, O.S.A., directed me to clarify this ambiguity in the language of
intellect, memory, and will. Ghislain Lafont also argues for the primacy of active knowing
and loving in his discussion of Aquinas's Trinitarian theology: "in mental activity, the Word
and Love are effectively the two distinct terms of knowing and willing considered as
operations,and they thus can characterize the intra-divine processions" (Peut-on connaitre
Dieu en Jesus-Christ?[Paris: Les Editions de Cerf, 1969], 116; emphasis and translation
mine). Also see Aquinas, "the word is understood as proceeding by the action of
understanding (per actionem intelligibilern),and not as the thing understood (res intellectus).
For when we understand a stone, what the intellect conceives comes from the thing
understood, and this is called the word" (SI'h I, q. 28, a. 4, ad 1).
63 Cf. STh I, q. 77, a. 1; STh I, q. 93, a. 4.
64 Cf. STh I, q. 79, a. 10.
65 STh I, q. 77, a. 3.

IMAGO DEI IN AQUINAS

259

Turning to Aquinas's earlier discussion of the Triune God, it
is noncontroversial to say that he employs throughout Augustine's
psychological image of the Trinity. 66 Aquinas argues that we only
know and name God through creatures, which are expressions of
his perfections and subsistence.67 He thus speaks of the intellect
and will of God, and of the processions of the Word and the
Holy Spirit, in language that was originally at home in discussions
of rational creatures. Following Augustine, who is following St.
Paul, Aquinas believes that we learn about the invisible things of
God from the visible things of his creation. The image of God in
the human mind was, for Augustine, primarily a tool for the
inquiry into God. Augustine, however, concludes his De Trinitate
by recognizing the great difference between the image of the
Trinity within us and the divine Trinity itself. He also explicitly
argues that our knowledge of God from creation can only concern the substance of God and thus cannot attain to God as
Trinity. Faith is therefore necessary for the proper recognition of
the image of the Trinity in humans. Although Aquinas does not
present the image of God in humans in the context of his
elucidation of the mystery of the Trinity, he nevertheless relies on
Augustine's analysis in his description of the procession of the
Son from the Father, and the procession of the Spirit from both.
Aquinas writes,
As God is above all things, we should understand what is said of God, not
according to the mode of the lowest creatures, namely bodies, but from the
similitude of the highest creatures, the intellectual substances; while even the
similitudes derived from these fall short in representation of the divine
objects.68

Although creatures, as Aquinas insists, cannot adequately
represent the uncreated divinity, our understanding of God must
be mediated through our knowledge of creatures. Aquinas employs in this manner the procession of the intelligible word,
which remains in the speaker, and the procession of love whereby
66

SI'h I, qq. 27-43.

67 STh

I, q. 13.

68 STh I, q. 27, a. 1.

260

MICHAEL A. DAUPHINAIS

the object loved is in the lover. 69 In this instance we can observe
that Aquinas, following Augustine, affirms that the image of God
in the human soul is a necessary, but insufficient, mode of
understanding God.
The reader might object that Aquinas has not yet spoken of the
image of God in humans in his discussion of the Trinity. One
needs, however, only to read closely the way in which he says
that the image of the Trinity is in human beings in order to
recognize that his discussion of the Triune God in the earlier part
of the Summa Theologiaedepends on the notion of the image of
God. He discloses the significance of the image of God in humans
for his discussion of the Trinity some fifty questions later in the
question on the image of God. 70 In the latter question, Aquinas
makes explicit what was implicit in the earlier account:
Likewise, as the uncreated Trinity is distinguished by the procession of the
Word from the Speaker, and of Love from both of these as we have seen (I, q.
28, a. 3); so we may say that in rational creatures wherein we find a procession
of the word in the intellect, and a procession of the love in the will, there exists
an image of the uncreated Trinity, by a kind of representation of the species

(per quandam repraesentationemspeciei).71

Aquinas uses the psychological image for his discussion of the
Triune God, but he also explicitly emphasizes that the image of
the Trinity in us is not sufficient for us to come to knowledge of
the divine Trinity. Our soul has a kind of representation of the
species of the Trinity, but any such representation remains
necessarily incomplete.
To see Aquinas's explicit interpretation of Augustine's use of
the image of God, we can examine two specific instances where
Aquinas claims that Augustine did not attempt to prove the
STh I, q. 27, a. 3.
Here is an example of why the Summa Theologiaeshould not be read in a strictly linear
fashion, as though the earlier parts stand independently of the later parts (i.e., as a series of
semi-autonomous "treatises"). The Summa presupposes in addition a certain background in
the reader. See John Jenkins, C.S.C., who argues that the Summa Theologiae is a kind of
second-order pedagogy that presumes the reader's acquaintance with the details of theology
and training in Aristotelian philosophy, in Faith and Knowledgein Thomas Aquinas (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997).
71 STh I, q. 93, a. 6.
69

76

IMAGO DEI IN AQUINAS

261

Trinity through natural reason alone. The first instance occurs in
STh I, q. 32, on our knowledge of the three Persons. In article 1,
"Whether the Trinity of divine Persons can be known by natural
reason?", Aquinas answers negatively, but views Augustine's De
Trinitate as a possible source for those who want to claim that
such knowledge is available by natural reason. Accordingly,
objection 2 proposes that "Augustine (De Trinitate 9.4; 10.11-12)
proceeds to show (procedit ad manifestandum) the Trinity of
Persons by the procession of the word and of love in our own
mind; and we have followed him in this (I, q. 27, aa. 1, 3)." 72
Aquinas concludes his reply to this objection by claiming that
Augustine began with faith in revelation: "Nor is the image in our
mind an adequate proof in the case of God, since the intellect is
not in God and ourselves univocally. Hence, Augustine says that
by faith we arrive at knowledge, and not conversely." 73 Before we
evaluate the status of Aquinas's interpretation of Augustine, let us
observe one other objection and reply concerning Augustine's De
Trinitate.

In question 93, on the image of God, Aquinas raises the
question whether the image of God is in humans according to the
Trinity of Persons (we have already noted how he combines
Augustine and John Damascene in answering this question). 74 He
poses the objection that if the image of God were in humans
according to the Trinity, then humans would be able to possess
knowledge of the Trinity through natural reason, which is
contrary to his previous argument. 75 He replies:
This argument would avail if the image of God in man represented God in a
perfect manner. But, as Augustine says, there is a great difference between the
trinity within ourselves and the Divine Trinity. Therefore, as he there says:
"We see rather than believe the trinity which is in ourselves; whereas we
believe rather than see that God is Trinity" (De Trinitate 15.6). 76

n STh I, q. 32, a. 1, obj. 2. In this objection, Aquinas distinguishes fJrobare from
manifestare.
73 STh I, q. 32, a. 1, ad 2.
74 STh I, q. 93, a. 5.
75 STh I, q. 93, a. 5, obj. 3; cf. STh I, q. 32, a. 1.
76 STh I, q. 93, a. 5, ad 3.

262

MICHAEL A. DAUPHINAIS

Although Aquinas does not quote Augustine out of context here,
he presents what was originally a rhetorical question as an
indicative statement and thus adds a measure of clarity and
specificity not originally present. Compare the quotation in its
original setting:
Or is it that we see rather than believe these trinities which belong to our
senses or our consciousness, while we believe rather than see that God is a
trinity? If this is so, it either means that we observe none of his invisible things
by understanding them through those that were made, or that if we observe
some of them we do not observe trinity among them, and so there is something
there which we can observe, and something also which being unobserved we
must just believe. But the eighth book showed that we do observe the
unchanging good which we are not, and so did the fourteenth persuade us of
this when we were talking about the wisdom which man has from God. Why
then should we not recognize a trinity there? 77

Augustine moves with a sense of urgency in his endeavor to find
an image of the Trinity. Just after he admits that we do not see
the Trinity in created things, but must believe the Trinity, he
exhorts us to recognize the Trinity in the wisdom given humans
by God. Augustine identifies the image here with the wisdom
given by God and thus suggests that natural reason cannot suffice
to discern the image. Augustine earlier attacks Cicero's
commendation of contemplative reason because the return to God
cannot be made without the faith of the Mediator. 78 Nevertheless,
in the De Trinitate Augustine is not as concerned as is Aquinas to
demarcate clearly the line between that which is attainable by
natural reason and that which is directly revealed. The rhetorical
character of the De Trinitate could include more easily the
orthodox Christian, heretical, and pagan audiences. Aquinas
reads back into Augustine a systematic demarcation between

77 Augustine, De Trinitate, 15.10. I have substituted the verb "observe" for Hill's usage of
"descry." The Latin edition of the CorpusChristianorumsimilarly presents the first sentence
as a rhetorical question.
78 Ibid., 14.26.

IMAGO DBI IN AQIBNAS

263

natural reason and revelation that was probably more of an
inchoate division within Augustine's works. 79
Aquinas also clarifies Augustine's thought concerning the
inability of natural reason to come to knowledge of the Trinity.
Aquinas says that understanding is not used of God and humans
univocally. Although Augustine lacks the description "not used
univocally," he affirms that God's knowledge is "vastly dissimilar" to our knowledge. 80 So too our inner word, born from our
knowledge, is unlike the Word of God, born from the essence of
the Father. 81 Always the preacher, Augustine employs the explicitly rhetorical movements of the De Trinitate to emphasize a
similarity and then to point out a dissimilarity. Aquinas and
Augustine share the sense that God is both knowable and
unknowable. But given Aquinas's attempt to treat theology as
scientia, he shows a greater concern to isolate among the
principles of the scientia of sacred doctrine those principles that
are available to philosophy, or the human intellect unaided by
light of grace. In this manner, the Triune God and the image of
the Trinity in us become for Aquinas occasions to address the
relation between natural reason and revelation.
Ill. JOHN DAMASCENE AND THE LOVE OF VIRTUE
In the last article of question 93, Aquinas inherits the traditional practice of distinguishing between the meaning of "image"
and "likeness" in Genesis 1:26. 82 He cites in the sed contra
Augustine's statement that if likeness and image referred to the
same thing then one word would have sufficed. It must be noted,
however, that in this article Aquinas introduces elements that are
foreign to the Augustinian inheritance. Aquinas says that image
(imago) and likeness (similitudo).can be related to one another in
two ways. First, likeness can be a preamble to image so that
79 Consider the Confessions, specifically Augustine's discussion of the elements of
Christian truth that he learned from the Platonists and those elements concerning the
incarnation of the Word (7.9).
80 Augustine, De Trinitate, 15.22.
81 Ibid.
82 The Septuagint reads "eikon" and "homoiosis." The Latin Vulgate reads "imago" and
"similitudo."

264

MICHAEL A. DAUPHINAIS

likeness is the more general category of which image is a further
specification as a likeness of species. Aquinas uses this notion of
image throughout his discussion of the likeness of species in terms
of Augustine's trinity of the mind with the dual procession of
word and love. Likeness as a preamble to image is employed as
well by Augustine.
Second, likeness may be understood as the "expression and
perfection of the image. " 83 Aquinas cites the same passage from
John Damascene that we have already seen, but this time he cites
the second half as well: "that which is an image, signifies an
intellectual being, with free will and creative power (potestativus
per se); and what is a likeness, implies likeness of virtue (virtus),
inasmuch as this is possible for a human being. " 84 The image of
God indicates that the human creature can think, act, and has
creative power. That humans are also made to the likeness of God
indicates that this capacity can reach a perfection of power and
virtue (virtus means both). In other passages, John Damascene
describes this perfection of virtus in the more familiar language of
deification or divinization. 85 Aquinas likewise speaks in the
second part of the Summa Theologiae of the theological virtues
that make possible a certain participation in divinity-according
to 2 Peter 1 :4, that by Christ we are "participants in the divine
nature. " 86 Although Aquinas does not explicitly state the
connection between the "likeness of virtue (virtus)" and the
theological virtues, he already indicates in the teaching on the
image of God the human trajectory toward participation in God.
83

STh I, q. 93, a. 9.

84 Ibid.
85 James J. Meany, S.J., distinguishes three levels in John Damascene's doctrine of the
image of God in humans. There is an image of God in all humans because of their free,
rational nature. Some have an additional moral likeness built up from virtuous acts. Some
have an ontological likeness received in baptism and intensified in the Eucharist. "This
[ontological] 'likeness' ••. is a prerequisite in order that man might be able to obtain the
'likeness' which is through virtue" (The Image of God in Man according to the Doctrine of
Saint John Damascene [Manila, P.I.: San Jose Seminary, 1954), 68, d. 67-74).
86 STh I-II, q. 62, a. 1. See A. N. Williams, "Deification in the Summa Theologiae: A
Structural Interpretation of the Prima Pars,"Thomist 61 (1997): 219-55. Although Williams
addresses the image of God in humans by focusing on the capacity for humans to turn to God
and to grow in virtue, she does not indicate what authorities or sources Aquinas employs to
develop these motifs.

IMAGO DEi IN AQUINAS

265

The inclusion of Greek notions of the image of God becomes
even more apparent when Aquinas raises an objection to Peter
Lombard's statement from the Sentences, "the image is in the
understanding of truth, and likeness in love of virtue (virtus)."
This cannot stand because Aquinas has already shown that
understanding and willing are the two parts of the image of God.
To distinguish image from likeness on the basis of the
understanding of truth and the love of virtue could separate the
intellect from the will and thus render void Aquinas's discussion
of the image. Aquinas responds to the objector by quietly
changing the language of the objection, replacing the phrase
"understanding of truth" with "love of the word." Image and
likeness cannot be distinguished by the difference between love
and understanding, but rather both image and likeness must be
primarily understood in terms of love. Aquinas says, "It must be
said that love of the word, which is knowledge loved, pertains to
the idea of image; but love of virtue pertains to likeness; as does
virtue." In this one line, Aquinas conjoins the Augustinian notion
of the image as the processions of word and love and the Eastern
notion of likeness in terms of the perfection of virtue.
A reader of Aquinas might object that the inclusion of the
likeness to God as love of virtue does not play a significant role
in his treatment of the moral life. Aquinas, however, begins the
moral section (pars moralis) of the Summa Theologiaeby saying
that after treating the exemplar, God, we now turn to the image
of God, human beings. There he cites again John Damascene's
identification of the image of God with the free will, but he does
not include the full citation that identifies the likeness with the
love of virtue. 87 I have suggested that Aquinas uses the doctrine
of the image of God toward a more explicit moral end than did
Augustine. I have also indicated that this more explicit moral end
is conceived in terms of participation in God. The objector,
nevertheless, might respond that in the prologue to the Secunda
Pars Aquinas is limiting his application of the image of God to the
similarity of power and free will and not employing the more
theological notions of participation in God or love of virtue.
87

STh 1-11, pro!.

MICHAEL A. DAUPHINAIS

266

Should we then conclude that the inclusion of John Damascene
does indeed enable Aquinas to apply the doctrine of the image of
God to the moral life, but at the expense of Augustine's theological commitment that the image of God exists in the human
capacity for worshiping God? To show that this is not the case,
we must examine another place in the Summa where Aquinas
identifies the love of virtue with the perfection of the human
being.
Aquinas discusses the love of virtue (amor virtutis) in the
questions on the New Law or the Evangelical Law. The questions
on the New Law and grace are the culmination of Aquinas's
treatment of morals in general in the Prima Secundae. According
to Aquinas, the New Law is a written law, but it is first and
foremost "the grace itself of the Holy Spirit, which is given to the
faithful of Christ. "88 The New Law is called the law of love (lex
amoris) because those who truly have virtue do not act from the
fear of punishment nor from the desire for external rewards, but
from the love of virtue. 89 The New Law has "spiritual and eternal
promises, which are the object of the virtues, above all of
charity. "90 Acting from love of virtue, for Aquinas, is synonymous
with acting as led by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. In the
discussion of the New Law, Aquinas completes his statement that
the perfection of the image of God in humans is a kind of likeness
to God by the love of virtue. In the overall structure of the Prima
Secundae, from the prologue to the treatise on the New Law,
Aquinas felicitously employs these elements of John Damascene
concerning the image and likeness of God in humans.

IV. CONCLUSION
Aquinas's reading of Augustine helps him to see that the image
of God in humans expresses their dynamic orientation toward
knowing and loving God, an orientation only perfected in the
vision of God in the next life. Aquinas's reading of John
Damascene enables him to exploit the moral significance of the
88 STh I-II, q. 106, a. 1.
89 STh I-II, q. 107, a. 1, ad 2.
90

Ibid.

IMAGO DEI IN AQUINAS

267

image of God in humans by showing that we are prepared for
participation in God by the perfection of virtue. Augustine brings
out how our being orients us to God; Damascene highlights our
action. Anthropology spills over into morality. The teaching on
the image of God encapsulates the history of salvation moving
through creation, sin, redemption, and glory. Aquinas thus
presents the heart of his anthropology within the context of
God's action in creation and salvation. The comparison of the
processions of intellect and will in the human creature to the
eternal processions within the Godhead does not relegate
Trinitarian theology to abstraction. Instead, Aquinas elaborates
the human relation to God in terms of the characteristically
human activity of knowing and loving. It is in the graced activity
of the New Law through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit that
the human orientation to God is fully awakened, opening the
human creature to the mystery of divine friendship. 91

91The connection of the image of God and the New Law suggests a complementary way
of viewing the image of the Trinity in terms of adoptive sonship. Christians are taken as sons
and daughters of the Father, through Christ our Lord and brother, in the Holy Spirit by
whom we call on God as Father. As St. Paul teaches, "And because you are sons, God has sent
the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba, Father'" (Gal 4:6, RSV).

The Thomist 63 (1999): 269-81

PROPORTIONALISM AND THE PILL:
HOW DEVELOPMENTS IN THEORY LEAD TO
CONTRADICTIONS TO PRACTICE
CHRISTOPHER KACZOR
Loyola Marymount University
Los Angeles, California

O

NE MAY BE TEMPTED to think that thirty years after the

publication of Humanae vitae scholars have heard almost
every argument for and against contraception and almost
every argument for and against the moral theory most commonly
invoked to justify contraception, namely, proportionalism.
Authors on both sides of the matter have pointed out the connections between the theory of proportionalism and the practice
of contraception. All proponents of proportionalism argue that
this theory justifies the use of contraception at least under some
circumstances, and most, but not all, critics of proportionalism
hold that contraception is an intrinsically evil act that cannot be
justified. As Edward Vacek notes:
An argument could be made that Humanae vitae has fueled the development
of P[roportionalism] in Catholic thought, and that the birth control debate has
been so drawn-out and intense precisely because it is really a debate over a
style of moral reasoning and a vision of what it means to be human, not to
mention over what God is doing in the world-therefore over much larger
matters than the use of a pill. 1

Vacek is absolutely correct in saying that Humanae vitae led to a
greater and greater questioning of traditional formulations of
1 Edward Vacek, "Proportionalism: One View of the Debate," TheologicalStudies 46
(1985): 293.

269

270

CHRISTOPHER KACZOR

moral theory. 2 If one surveys the literature that began what was
later called proportionalism, 3 one will find a recurring pattern;
first basic principles are laid down and defended, and then,
invariably, it is shown that these principles justify the use of
contraception. John Finnis puts the point as follows:
The formal attack on the moral absolutes emerges, among Catholics, in
response to the problem of contraception. Not in response to the desire to
maintain a counter population deterrent strategy of annihilating retaliation; or
to tell lies in military, police, or political operations; or to carry out therapeutic abortions; or to arrange homosexual unions; or to relieve inner tensions
and disequalibria by masturbation; or to keep slaves; or to produce babies by
impersonal artifice. Those desires were and are all urgent enough, but none of
them precipitated the formal rejection of moral absolutes. The desire to
practice and approve of contraception did. 4

Indeed, early formulations of proportionalism, formulations that
understood proportionate reason simply as the injunction to
choose the lesser of two evils and lacked a developed application
of the goodness/rightness distinction, seemed to justify the use of
contraception in most cases. What has been overlooked, however,
is how the development of proportionalism itself leads to the
conclusion that the use of contraception, for the most part if not
entirely, is illicit. In other words, proportionalism itself, given a
proper understanding of proportionate reason and the goodness/
rightness distinction, leads one to a rejection of the use of
contraception.
Unlike consequentialism or act-utilitarianism, proportionalism
is not mere maximization of premoral goods or minimization of
premoral evils. Though maximization of premoral goods and
minimization of premoral evils primarily define proportionate
reason, there are other, secondary conditions that establish it as
2 In his book Proportionalism:The AmericanDebateand Its European Roots (Washington:
Georgetown University, 1987), Bernard Hoose makes similar remarks (p. 37).
3 See, for instance, Readings in Moral Theology vol. 1: Moral Norms and Catholic Tradition, ed. Charles E. Curran and Richard A. McCormick, S.J. (New York: Paulist Press, 1979);
Christopher Kaczor, ed., Proportionalism:For andAgainst (Milwaukee: Marquette University
Press, forthcoming).
4 John Finnis, Moral Absolutes (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 1991), 85.

PROPORTIONALISM AND THE PILL

271

well.5 These conditions were worked out through the responses
to critics who suggested that proportionalism justifies any sort of
behavior whatever, even for example allowing a sheriff to frame
and execute an innocent man to prevent a riot. Proportionalists
responded by clarifying that proportionalism does not advocate
the maximization of nonmoral goods irrespective of all other
considerations. Certain secondary conditions must be met for
there to be a truly proportionate reason.
First, proportionate reason includes a condition of necessityof
cause.6 The premorally evil means used by the agent must stand
in a necessary causal relationship to the premoral good sought.
Hence, in the often-cited case of abortion to save the life of the
mother, one may legitimately effect the death of the child in order
to save the life of the mother because the killing and the saving
stand in a necessary relationship to one another. On the other
hand, a sheriff may not frame an innocent person for a murder he
did not commit even in order to prevent a riot that will kill many
others. There is no necessary relation between framing an innocent person and preventing a riot, hence the act contemplated
by the sheriff lacks a proportionate reason.
Second, proportionate reason has a condition of chronological
simultaneity. Proportionate reason is present only in the preservation of a good here and now, not some future good. One cannot
have an abortion because one wants to avoid paying the unborn
child's tuition; one cannot sleep with the prison guard to be reunited with one's family. On the other hand, one can kill in selfdefense, since this killing preserves the good of life here and now.
Finally, proportionate reason excludes causing more evil than
necessary. If one can defend oneself by injuring, rather than
killing, then one should only injure. If one can defend oneself
without even injuring, then one is obliged to take this course of
5 I am indebted here to the summary of James Walter, "Proportionate Reason and Its
Three Levels oflnquiry: Structuring the Ongoing Debate," Louvain Studies 10 (1984): 30-40,
esp. 33-36, though I have changed his order of presentation and slightly altered the list itself.
' Richard A. McCormick and Paul Ramsey, eds., Doing Evil to Achieve Good: Moral
Choice in Conflict Situations (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1978), 238; Richard A.
McCormick, Notes on Moral Theology, 1965 through 1980 (Washington, D.C.: University
Press of America, 1981), 718-719, hereafter, Notes 1.

CHRISTOPHER KACZOR

272

action. This final secondary condition excludes the causing of

superfluousevil.
According to revisionists, these three secondary conditions of
proportionate reason (namely, the causal necessity of the evil to
achieve the good, chronological simultaneity, and the curtailing
of superfluous evil) sharply delineate proportionalism from
straightforward consequentialism, especially if each is construed
as a necessary rather than as a sufficient condition. Finally, of
course, proportionalism demands that one must choose the lesser
of two evils and in this it does not differ from consequentialism.
How do these conditions relate to the use of contraception?
The condition of necessity, that there must be a causal necessity between the evil used and the good achieved, excludes, for
example, the possibility of terror bombing, bombing innocent
civilians to terrorize the enemy into submission. There is no
necessary connection between these deaths and the capitulation
of military leaders. Richard McCormick explains as follows:
extortion by definition accepts the necessity of doing nonmoral evil to get
others to cease their wrongdoing. The acceptance of such a necessity is an
implied denial of human freedom. But since human freedom is a basic value
associated with other basic values (in this case, life) undermining it also thereby
undermines life. 7

In this context, "necessity" means that there is no other way
imaginable to prevent greater loss of life, save the taking of life.
If there is another way available, for example, the cessation of
wrongdoing by others or heroic efforts on one's own part, then
there is no necessary connection.
However, this causal necessity excludes many common
grounds for the use of contraception, including financial wellbeing, stable family life, and desire to pursue a career. There is no
necessary connection between these goods and the use of
contraception. Some who use contraception never achieve the
goods of stable family life, financial well-being, and career
fulfillment. Some who do not use contraception do achieve the
goods of stable family life, financial well-being, and career
7 McCormick,

Doing Evil to Achieve Good, 260.

PROPORTIONALISM AND THE PILL

273

fulfillment. There are undoubtedly other ways to secure these
goods aside from contraception. The spouses themselves, family
members, and the community can make or break efforts to
achieve the goods in question. The only case in which there is the
requisite necessary connection would be use of contraception in
cases in which a pregnancy would endanger a woman's life or
health. Here, it is the pregnancyitself that is the problem and not
negative effects accidentally related to pregnancy that could be
lessened or even alleviated with the help of others. Hence, either
proportionalism is inconsistent in its invoking of the necessity
condition in some cases (terror bombing) but not in other cases
(contraception) or if the necessity condition is consistently applied
then one is forced to reject many common justifications for the
use of contraception, leaving only contraception to preserve the
health of the mother.
Another secondary condition of proportionate reason is
chronological simultaneity of the good and evil effects. McCormick puts the point in the following way:
Here [in the work of a critic of proportionalism] we have evil now-good to
come. Thus it is sometimes said that adultery now justifies a future good. This
misrepresents what Fuchs-Schiiller-Bockle-Janssens-Scholz-Weber-Curran and
many others are saying. What they are saying is that the good achieved here
and now (though it may perdure into the future) is sometimes inseparable from
premoral evil. Thus, an act of self-defense achieves here and now the good of
preservation of life. A falsehood achieves here and now the protection of a
professional secret. Taking property (food) of another saves the life of the taker
here and now. 8

When the condition of chronological simultaneity of good and
evil effects is applied to the case of contraception, the result is
that most uses of contraception become unjustified. For example,
contraception used to avoid the costs that will be incurred at the
birth and upbringing of a child is a case doing evil here and now
for the sake of preventing an evil feared in the future. Contraception for the sake of family stability or career advancement
likewise is doing evil now so that one may have some good or
8 Richard A. McCormick, Notes on Moral Theology, 1981-1984 (Washington, D.C.:
University Press of America, 1984), 3 n. 10; hereafter, Notes 2.

274

CHRISTOPHER KACZOR

avoid some evil in the future. Once again, the only cases of
contraception that would be justified would be cases in which the
life or the health of the woman would be threatened by the
pregnancy itself.
Third, proportionate reason demands that one cause as little
premoral evil as possible to secure the end in question. One
should use deception in self-defense rather than injuring another
if both means will secure safety. One should not kill if self-defense
that merely injures the adversary will achieve the same goal. This
aspect of proportion corresponds precisely to Thomas's use of the
word in his famous treatment of self-defense in STh 11-11, q. 64,
a. 7. 9 The act of self-defense must be proportioned to the end of
defense. Hence, one who uses more force than necessary in
defending himself acts wrongly.
If one may not bring about superfluous evil in achieving the
end, certain methods of contraception would seem to be excluded. For instance, the pill, Norplant, and IUD can act as abortifacients.10 Particularly in association with smoking, women
using oral contraceptives run a higher risk of cancer, blood
clotting, strokes, and heart attacks. 11 Although these dire side
effects are not usual, women taking oral contraceptives commonly
report weight gain, mood swings, and increased irritability. The
IUD is also not without its disadvantages. In the words of Hanna
Klaus, M.D.:

9 On this famous article, see Thomas Cavanaugh," Aquinas's Account of Double Effect,"
TheThomist61(1997):107-21; Christopher Kaczor, "DoubleEffectfromGurytoKnauer,"
Theological Studies Qune 1998): 297-316.
10 In the words of Dr. Hanna Klaus: "[Although oral contraceptives are not ipso facto
abortifacient, it] is important to understand that there are four mechanisms of action of oral
contraceptives: when the dose of estrogen and progesterone is high, the drugs suppress the
LH (lutenizing hormone) surge, and ovulation does not occur. At all effective levels the
cervical mucus is rendered hostile to sperm entry (becomes G mucus only), tubal motility is
interfered with making conception less likely (or ectopic pregnancy more likely if conception
occurs), and the endometrium is changed so that it is much thinner than normal and contains
much fibrous tissue while the glands are suppressed to a large extent. Such an endometrium
could not support the imbedding of the blastocyst, and would therefore cause it to abort" (Sr.
Hanna Klaus, M.D., "The Reality of Contraception," Catholic Dossier 3, no. 5 (Sept.-Oct.
1997): 42.
11 Ibid.

PROPORTIONALISM AND THE PILL

275

The IUD at the very least introduces a foreign object into the uterus. Plastic
IUDs were primarily abortifacient. Later copper devices would prove to have
a mixed action. Initially the copper produces a toxic fluid in the uterus which
destroys spermatozoa in transit to the tube, and washes into the tube to destroy
any ova. If the gametes succeeded in uniting, the embryo was usually destroyed
before embedding. The IUD also interferes with normal tubal motility .... If
the device is not inserted skillfully, the woman's uterus can be perforated. Even
when properly placed, it can be the channel for bacteria or viruses to enter the
uterus and cause pelvic infection. 12

Although sterilization avoids the side effects associated with the
IUD, it too is not without its drawbacks. In addition to being
expensive and difficult to reverse, sterilization for women by
means of tubal ligation brings with it an increased chance of
ectopic pregnancy . 13 Other forms of contraception such as a
diaphragm and the condom do not have these disadvantages.
They are not abortifacients, nor do they have harmful side effects.
They are both relatively inexpensive and easily reversible. If one
is obliged to avoid causing superfluous evils, then one is obliged
not to use many of the most common forms of contraception, the
anovalent pill, the IUD, Norplant, and sterilization in favor of
other means available, such as condoms and diaphragms, which
bring about less superfluous evil in achieving the desired end.
Thus far, if consistently applied, no case of contraception
would be licit on grounds given by proportionalists save for contraception used in cases in which a woman's health is endangered
and the only forms of contraception that could be licitly used in
such cases would be condoms or diaphragms. However, one must
not forget that the primary condition of proportionate reason
demands the maximization of premoral goods and minimization
of premoral evils. The requirement is sometimes formulated as
follows: given the choice between two evils, one must choose the
lesser of two evils. As McCormick suggests, the only alternative
would seem to be that in such conflict situations one must choose
the greater of two evils, which seems clearly absurd.
12 Ibid., 43. See also F. Alvarez, et al., "New Insights on the Mode of Action of Intrauterine Contraceptive Devices in Women," Fertilityand Sterility49 (May 1988): 768-73.
13 Klaus, "The Reality of Contraception," 43. See also H.B. Peterson, M.D., et al., "The
Risk of Ectopic Pregnancy after Tubal Ligation," New England Journal of Medicine 336
(1997): 762-67.

276

CHRISTOPHERKACZOR

Given that proportionalism holds that one must choose the
lesser of two evils, it would seem commonsensical that, given the
choice, one must choose something indifferent or good over
something that is evil, even if only a premoral evil. Condoms and
diaphragms are not entirely free from premoral evil. In the words
of Richard McCormick:
Contraception represents a type of intrusion, a nuisance, an interference. That
is clear from the description of the "perfect contraceptive": it must be inexpensive, effective, without side effects, aesthetically acceptable, and easy to use.
Lack of these qualities would spell evils of some kind. 14

Unlike condoms and diaphragms, Natural Family Planning (NFP)
would seem to fulfill all the criteria laid down by McCormick for
the "perfect contraceptive." Its only necessary expense is perhaps
the time taken out from work or play to learn the method. Well
aware of the difference between the "rhythm method" and NFP,
McCormick echos the findings of numerous scientific studies:
"Natural family planning is a highly effective method. " 15 When
both are used properly, NFP's failure rate is roughly the same as
the pill's. NFP has no side effects on male or female health. It is
aesthetically acceptable insofar as it does not disturb the natural
structure of the sexual act. Finally, NFP is easy to use, requiring
no specialized technique or knowledge. James P. Hanigan acknowledges additional advantages of NFP over contraception:
Ironically, if one considers the virtues and relational dynamics needed to
practice NFP effectively, one discovers many of the values and virtues advocated for marital relationships by revisionist and feminist theologians who
emphasize "quality of relationship" norms to evaluate the morality of sexual
behaviors. NFP, more than any other means of birth control, calls for honest
communication, for mutual equality, for shared responsibility and joint
decision-making between the sexual partners. The burden of responsible
parenthood through the techniques of NFP, while still heavier on the woman
than on the man, is not placed exclusively on the woman. 16
14 Richard McCormick, Health Care and Medicinein the Catholic Tradition(New York:
The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1987), 98 and 99.
15 Ibid., 98.
16 James Hanigan, "Veritatis Splendor and Sexual Ethics," in VeritatisSplendor:American
Responses (Kansas City: Sheed & Ward, 1995), 212.

PROPORTIONALISM AND THE PILL

277

Given the advantages of NFP over all forms of contraception,
considered purely within the framework of premoral goods and
evils, the greater good is not difficult to discern. If one is required
to choose the greater good or the lesser evil in avoiding pregnancy, NFP is obligatory and contraception impermissible.
Usually, revisionists acknowledge that NFP is an obligatory
ideal but that this ideal, like many other ideals, must be tempered
by realistic considerations. These considerations are of two kinds.
First, NFP requires knowledge of the female reproductive system
as well technical devices that may be too expensive or unavailable
to some, such as thermometers for measuring body temperature
in determining time of ovulation. 17 Second, and much more important, NFP "requires a high degree of motivation and mutuality
on the part of the couple which cannot be readily presumed,
training in the practice of the method and a good deal of selfknowledge and self-discipline on the part of the couple. " 18 Not all
couples can meet these demands; hence, given the practical alternatives, contraception may be justified.
The first objection has the theoretical drawback that it applies
much better to forms of contraception than it does to NFP. Like
NFP, the proper use of contraceptives requires knowledge, at least
minimal, of the reproductive system. If sex-education experts are
to be believed, one must learn how properly to use a condom or
diaphragm. Presumably, before a doctor prescribes the pill or
Norplant, he teaches the patient something about the drug so as
to allow the patient an opportunity to give informed consent. In
terms of technical devices, the requirements of NFP are much
more modest than the requirements of artificial contraception.
Strictly speaking no technical devices are needed for NFP, though
a thermometer and chart may be useful. If buying a thermometer
or a chart for NFP taxes the family budget, certainly a visit to the
doctor, pill prescriptions, condoms, or diaphragms would be too
expensive.
The second argument is more substantive. NFP is simply too
demanding for couples. Not all couples have the heroic virtues
necessary to abstain from intercourse for as long as nine to twelve
17 Ibid., 212-13.
18 Ibid., 212.

278

CHRISTOPHER KACZOR

days per month. Morality does not demand the impossible. I
ought to do such-and-such implies I can do such-and-such. Some

people, good people, just cannot bring themselves to such a long
period of abstention. Not everyone is called to heroism, and a
lack of moral perfection should not be considered evil-doing in a
moral sense.
To understand why this argument too fails on proportionalist
grounds, one has to invoke a further distinction common to
proportionalist writings, the distinction between goodness and
rightness. Although in the early seventies proportionalists spoke
of good and bad actions, through the intervention of William
Frankena and more importantly Bruno Schiiller they came to
insist on distinguishing moral goodness and badness from
rightness and wrongness.
Unfortunately, there is no precise definition of this distinction
upon which all authors agree. Some scholars describe goodness as
a disposition or striving to do and know what is right and rightness as action in accordance with nature or reason. "Acting from
love (agape) is morally good," writes Bruno Schiiller; "Doing
what on the whole is impartially beneficial to all persons concerned is morally right. Therefore, an action may be morally bad
because performed from pure selfishness, but nonetheless be
morally right on account of its beneficial consequences. " 19 Josef
Fuchs offers this example of how to parse the distinction between
goodness and rightness in a particular case:
Perhaps someone makes a great contribution to the well-being of humankind
but is only motivated in his activity by egotism-for instance, in order to be
honored. He has done the morally right thing, for he has created premoral
human goods or values; but he is not morally good. 20

What is common to all the ways in which the distinction is made
is this: Goodness and badness refer to persons in their motivations and in their striving or failing to strive to do what is right;
19 Bruno Schiiller, "The Double Effect in Catholic Thought: A Reevaluation," in
McCormick and Ramsey, eds., Doing Evil to Achieve Good, 165-92, at 183.
20 Josef Fuchs, "Intrinsically Evil Acts?" in Christian Ethics in a Secular Arena, trans.
Bernard Hoose and Brain McNeil (Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1984),

81.

PROPORTIONALISM AND THE PILL

279

rightness and wrongness refer to acts. According to this view, one
cannot resolve any question of the rightness or wrongness of an
act by reference to virtues, that is, the interior dispositions of a
person. The virtues are habits of seeking and desiring to do what
is right; they cannot determine what is right.
How is the goodness/rightness distinction (GRD) justified?
One argument given in favor of GRD is that it does not confuse
the aretaic with the deontic realm of discourse. 21 Todd Salzman
puts the point in the following way:
Aretaic terms concern moral predicates that designate the goodness or badness
of the agent, his or her motive, intention or disposition. Aretaic terms apply to
acts as well when the description of the moral nature of the act includes the
motive or intention of the agent. Deontic terms concern predicates of right or
wrong acts.... In discussion of concrete norms that concern deontic judgments
on the rightness or wrongness of an act, it is best to avoid aretaic terms. 22

Virtue, vice, holiness, sin, and salvation are aretaic terms.
Rightness and wrongness are deontic terms. For revisionists,
rightness is determined on the basis of the premoral goods and
evils involved, but goodness is determined by whether or not
agents seek to do what is right. Hence, to invoke virtues or vices
in determining the rightness or wrongness of an action is to use
aretaic terms in answer to a deontic question, confusing the issue.
How does this relate to contraception? Let us assume that it is
an empirical fact that many people cannot bring themselves to
practice NFP. People who lack the requisite virtues of temperance
and self-denial will find it difficult, if not practically impossible,
to abstain during times when they judge abstinence is required.
Granting that this is the case, if we invoke the goodness/rightness
distinction the inability of such people would not alter the
character of contraception as right or wrong in the least. Right or
wrong, according to those who hold the GRD, is a matter of the
objective premoral goods and evils brought about by a given act.
Virtue, seeking what is right, pertains to goodness, not rightness.
If someone lacks the virtues to seek and effect that which is
21 Todd Salzman, Deontology and Teleology (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1995),
510-11.
22 Ibid.

280

KACZOR

objectively right, the consistent revisionist must hold that the
person is lacking in the fullness of moral goodness. Even supposing that people with excellence in all the virtues, including
temperance, cannot practice NFP, this still would not alter the
rightness or wrongness of contraception, for moral rightness in
human action is maximizing premoral human goods or values. If
contraception brings about more premoral evils than NFP, it is
wrong, even if people, good people, cannot bring themselves to
seek to use NFP. According to those who invoke the goodness/
rightness distinction, to invoke the virtues or vices of people in
determining the rightness or wrongness of an act is to confuse the
aretaic with the deontic realm of discourse. 23 Hence, the GRD
undercuts one of the most common arguments given in favor of
contraception and against NFP.
For the sake of argument, suppose that the GRD itself fails.
Would the proportionalist premise then be acceptable? Does
ought imply that most can? Of course, a lot depends upon what
is meant by "can." Surely, the sense meant is that most people
cannot bring themselves to do it. If this principle is invoked, however, many more "laws" will have to be abandoned. A good place
to start would be with those two fundamental laws which none of
us have successfully kept.
"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied:
"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with
all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is
like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself."' (Matt 22:36-39)

These two laws in particular have not been obeyed since the
beginning of human history. If we are to adjust the moral law to
the practice of the people, then we will have to adjust it all the
way down to its fundament.
Hence, proportionalism, though originally conceived as a way
of justifying the use of contraception, in the course of clarifying
itself and responding to objections ends by excluding the use of
contraception. The development of the theory to exclude cases of
bombing civilians in war or framing innocent people led to the
23 Ibid.

PROPORTIONALISM AND THE PILL

281

conditions of necessity and chronological simultaneity in proportionate reason. These conditions exclude the most common
motives for using contraception, including financial stability,
family harmony, and career advancement. The condition of
avoiding superfluous evil leads to the elimination of various
means of contraception, including the pill. The principle that in
conflict situations one should choose the lesser of two evils or the
greater good leads to the conclusion that one should choose NFP
over contraception. Finally, the goodness/rightness distinction
undermines the frequently heard argument given in favor of
contraception that the ideal of NFP is too difficult for most
people to strive after or achieve because the common couple lacks
the requisite virtues. Of course, I am not, in this discussion, taking
any substantive views on the matters of proportionalism or
contraception. Rather, I am only making the disquieting suggestion that either the developed view of proportionalism or approval of contraception must be abandoned by the many who
advocate both.

The Thomist 63 (1999): 283-306

ECCLESIAL BEING AND ONE THEOLOGIAN:
PANNENBERG'S DOCTRINE OF FAITH IN ITS
SACRAMENTAL CONTEXT

GARY M. CULPEPPER
Providence College
Providence, Rhode Island

I. INTRODUCTION

T

HE APPEARANCE OF Wolfhart Pannenberg's Systematic
Theology, Volume 3 1 completes his explorations into the
God of Jesus Christ with an ecumenically oriented elaboration of the theological reality of the Christian Church. Readers
familiar with Pannenberg's Christology and doctrine of God will
be prepared for his distinctive treatment of the "provisional" and
"proleptic" aspects of the Church as "sign and instrument" of an
eschatological form of life wherein all sin, and the death and division that accompany sin, are overcome in the Kingdom of God.
Less well known, however, is the path taken by this ardent
Lutheran opponent of theological subjectivism and authoritarianism in his explorations into the conditions for Christian
consciousness and life in its essentially communal setting. In this
final volume of his dogmatics, 2 the subjectivity of the Christian
1 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 3, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1998). Henceforth cited as ST3. Volume 1
(1988) and Volume 2 (1994) have the same translator and publisher as ST3, and are cited
below as ST1 and ST2 respectively.
2 I employ the term "dogmatics" here to underscore Pannenberg's emphasis on the
primacy of the object (God) in theological science, though this object is investigated by
Christian theologians in the subjectivity of faith. For Pannenberg, dogmatics is always
reflection upon dogmata theou, which is distinguished from, but inseparably connected to,
the doctrinal content of Scripture and the articuli fidei (the complex unity of revealed
teaching that Aquinas and others called sacra doctrina). Dogmatics takes the form of

283

284

GARY M. CULPEPPER

believer comes into view especially in Pannenberg's development
of the theology of faith as both gift and personal appropriation
of the gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit in the sacramental
life of the Church. For Pannenberg, saving faith is actualized most
fully in the moment of Eucharistic doxology, understood as both
sacrifice and "eschatological anamnesis." This understanding of
the Eucharist, Pannenberg believes, can underscore the primacy
of the eschatological Kingdom in a salvation-historical approach
to theology, and at the same time affirm that it is the real
presence of Christ and his passion in the present life of the
Church that constitutes its identity as Body of Christ and its
mission as People of God. Eucharistic doxology is for Pannenberg
the supreme moment wherein Christ in his objective reality
determines the identity of the believer, in the subjectivity of faith,
as an adopted child of God the Father in fellowship with all those
for whom the future eschatological life has already dawned.
Volume 3 begins with chapter 12, "The Outpouring of the
Spirit, the Kingdom of God, and the Church," which shifts attention from the person and work of Christ (the theme of Volume 2)
to that of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, at work in the creation
and "continuous creation" of the world, consummates this work
in the eschatological elevation of human creatures to an eternal,
interpersonal form of life in the communio of Father, Son, and
Spirit. In this pneumatological perspective, Pannenberg will
identify the essence of the Church as a society that exists
"between" a temporal social order governed by a rational quest
for justice ("Law") and the arrival of the Kingdom of God,
wherein the "new law" of grace alone governs all creatures.
systematic theology when faith initiates a search for understanding and rational confirmation
of dogmata theou through exploration of the systematic coherence of revealed dogma '3s an
aspect of the reality of its truth-see STl, 48-61) in the Church (STl, 17-19), together with
all other truth or claims to truth in philosophy, science, and especially the history of the
religions. Citing Anselm, Pannenberg argues that the interpretive reconstruction of
theological dogma in academic theology takes place sola ratione (in distinction from Karl
Barth's interpretation of Anselm; see STl, 51). On this basis, many identify Pannenberg as a
"rationalist." The present volume presents a more complex understanding of the relation
between theological faith as an ecclesial reality and theology as systematic inquiry into the
truth of dogma sola ratione (in the limited but important sense of truth attained by way of
arguments of convenientia; see STl, 21).

PANNENBERG'S ECCLESIOLOGY

285

Chapter 13, "The Messianic Community and Individuals,"
explores the working of the Spirit to establish individuals in
relations of immediacy to Christ through the mediation of the
Church and the sacraments. The depth of Pannenberg's ecumenical experience, reflections, and concern is on display here,
particularly in his treatment of justification (211-36), and in the
nearly two hundred pages dedicated to reflection upon the
sacraments of the Church. 3 This section concludes with a discussion of ministry as a "sacrament" of the unity of the Church, 4
a ministry that ought to be exercised within the universal Church,
according to Pannenberg, in a reformed papal office. The sacrament of ministry, however, is sharply differentiated from the
Eucharist in terms of its power and effects: whereas the Eucharist
constitutes the Church in its fundamental identity as the Body of
Christ, the sacrament of ministry exists to serve the Body of
Christ, constituting the Church as an elected People of God in
history-"a sign of the future fellowship of humanity in the kingdom of God" -by the exercise of a spiritual auctoritas dedicated
to reconciliation among Christians. 5
Chapter 14, "Election and History," develops the doctrine of
election as a theology of God's agency in the history of the
Church. Pannenberg locates the problem faced by the doctrine of
3 Pannenberg is concerned first to explore the analogical sense of the term "sacrament"
when predicated of the seven symbolic liturgical actions in the Church defined at Trent as
instituted by Christ, together with their significance and interdependence in the Christian life,
that this
and only then to determine the question of their number. Pannenberg
approach to the question respects the complexity of theological judgments concerning
Christ's institution of sacraments, though it cannot dismiss concern for such judgments.
Institution by Christ remains for Pannenberg an indispensable condition for the judgment that
a symbolic liturgical action imparts grace.
4 Pannenberg argues that it is admissible to call ordination a sacrament insofar as it confers
the grace of character, marking one for public service to the gospel. He parts ways with
Aquinas's teaching that ordination confers sanctifying grace (ST3, 393-99)
5 ST3, 429-32. Pannenberg does not strictly speaking deny that potestas belongs to the
ministry of the bishop of Rome, but writes that the work of this office is "less a function of
power (potestas) than of the ability to persuade (auctoritas)." Pannenberg's connection
between divine election and the constitution of the Church as People of God would appear
weakened if the basis of ministry lies solely in the moral authority of its ministers (auctoritas).
In this same connection, however, he cites G. A. Lindbeck and others (ST3, 430 n. 1015) who
argue that the problem in defining the authority of the Roman primacy lies in the inadequacy
of the alternative between divine and human right.

286

GARY M. CULPEPPER

predestination in the modern period in a concern for the eternal
salvation of the individual considered in abstraction from the
social and historical existence of the believer in the Church. For
Pannenberg, election is a "repeating" (Nachvollzug) of the selfactualization of God in the history of Jesus in the lives of
individuals empowered by the grace present in the sacraments of
the Church. 6 While at one level this chapter is concerned with the
history of the Church as a source of theological reflection, its
deeper roots lie in Pannenberg's attempt to place the Church in
the context of a universal historical process wherein the Triune
God is active in drawing all creatures into the eschaton through
his providential government.
In the concluding chapter, "The Consummation of Creation
in the Kingdom of God," Pannenberg defends the realism of
Christian belief in an "eschatological future" in the light of
modern calls for a demythologization of the idea or its transformation into a this-worldly hope for universal reconciliation
among peoples. Pannenberg wants to point out that theological
investigation cannot remove completely the obscurity of the
content of eschatological belief, especially in light of the ongoing
existence of evil in the world, underscoring once again the
provisional quality of faith's subjective certitude. Pannenberg's
emphasis upon the extra nos of the truth of faith is summarized
in his insistence that only God can justify himself beyond all
questioning through the definitive revelation of his love and
power in the eschaton. The truth of Christian belief has its basis
in the God whose Triune identity has not yet been fully manifest
in history. The Christian believer, who sacrifices his finite images
and rational understanding of God in the moment of Eucharistic
praise, is assured, according to Pannenberg, that "The distinction
and unity of the immanent and economic Trinity constitute the
heartbeat of the divine love, and with a single such heartbeat this
love encompasses the whole world of creatures. " 7
6 ST3, 435f. The term "self-actualization of God" summarizes Pannenberg's discussion of
the incarnation in ST2, 389-96. The "repeating" of which Pannenberg speaks, however, must
be distinguished from Mohler's idea that the Church is an "ongoing incarnation of the Son
of God" (ST3, 26).
7
ST3, 646.

PANNENBERG'S ECCLESIOLOGY

287

The breadth of Pannenberg's achievement in this work makes
it attractive to search for some single theme, the exploration of
which might disclose central features of the author's theological
vision as a whole. Pannenberg's theology of faith and the sacraments, inspired by what he regards as Luther's "breakthrough"
into understanding the inseparability of faith from the personal
relation to Christ extra nos, strikes me as a particularly fruitful
way to engage Pannenberg's thought in Volume 3, and indeed the
whole of the Systematic Theology. The present essay proceeds
from this judgment into an exploration of Pannenberg's theology
of faith in its coordination with other theological topics, according to this order: (1) faith and its general ecclesial, political, and
moral setting; (2) faith and its object; (3) faith and the sacraments.
A further word might be said about a still larger context in
which I will interpret Pannenberg's theological achievement. A
number of Pannenberg's readers might concur with Hans Frei in
his judgment that Pannenberg is among those theologians who
seek to correlate Christian belief and general cultural assumptions
against the background of a shared philosophical scheme. 8
Pannenberg shares with the so-called correlationist school the
conviction that the structure of the relation between theology and
philosophy is mediated in the light of an understanding of human
consciousness as an openness to various modes of determination,
one of these modes being that of Christian consciousness, or theo8 Hans W. Frei, in Types of Christian Theology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992),
3, writes that Pannenberg effects "the subsumption of theology under a general philosophical
Wissenschafrslehre, but under the governing auspices of the latter seeks to correlate
specificallyChristian with general cultural meaning structures," a correlation "made possible
by the same underlying transcendental philosophical structure." This charge can be traced
back as least as far as R. Bultmann in his claim that Pannenberg's theology of revelation as
universal history is a variant of Hegel's secularization of Christian eschatology in which "the
content of history is reduced to the movement of ideas coordinated to man's rationality"
(cited in J. M. Robinson, TaH, 18 n. 53). Pannenberg consistently rejects these interpretations
of his work, arguing early in his career that "to locate a theological thought in German
idealism is not automatically to condemn it" (RaH, 5). While there is no question that
Pannenberg's thought borrows significantly from Hegelian phenomenology, he clearly
indicates where he parts ways with Hegel (e.g., Basic Questions in Theology, vol. 1, trans.
George H. Kehm [Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1970], 219-20; Sf3, 636) and identifies
himself more nearly with both Aquinas and Barth on the strictly theological and extra nos
character of divine revelation (e.g., ST1, 2, 16).

288

GARY M. CULPEPPER

logical faith. But this observation left to itself tends to conceal
Pannenberg's reliance upon Luther as a "pre-Enlightenment"
source of reflection upon human subjectivity and identity, a reliance that displays itself in Pannenberg's vigorous concern to show
that and how Christian theology must avoid the collapse into
subjectivism (including the reduction of Christian theology to a
purely philosophical mode of reflection). The question of whether
Pannenberg's theology is "governed" by philosophy will be left
for other readers to determine. My own interest in Pannenberg is
guided by the belief that he seeks to "baptize" the post-idealist
phenomenological tradition through incorporation of its categories and themes into a "Christian personalism" capable of
establishing the ontological distinctions necessary for Christian
theology. 9 This "Christian personalism" has its subjective basis in
his theology of faith, a faith determined, however, by the object
of Christian consciousness: God's historical appearance in the
person of Jesus and his presence in the sacraments of the Church.
II. FAITH AND ITS GENERAL ECCLESIAL, POLITICAL,
AND MORAL SETTING

One expects to find in Pannenberg's ecclesiology a confrontation with the question about the Church's essence in light
of the immediacy of the relation of the individual believer to
Christ. Volume 3 sets this question within the doctrine of the
Trinity by appropriating to the Holy Spirit the work of consummating the creation and redemption of the world "as he teaches
us to know the eternal Son of the Father in Jesus of Nazareth and

9 Connected with this thought is the work of Robert Sokolowski, EucharisticPresence
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1994) and his own distinction
(5) between a "theology of disclosure" (rooted in phenomenology) and "speculative theology"
(rooted in ontology), together with his suggestions about their relation in dependence upon
the work of Edmund Husserl and Hans Urs von Balthasar. Balthasar's manner of speaking
about the content of faith as lying within the visible appearance, and not behind it, resonates
with Pannenberg's retrieval of similar themes in Luther. Distinctive in this regard is
Pannenberg's effort throughout the whole of Systematic Theology to work out the relation
between phenomenology and ontology in a Christian dogmatics within the categories of what
he argues is a Hebraic concept of the relation of time and eternity.

PANNENBERG'S ECCLESIOLOGY

289

moves our hearts to praise of God by faith, hope, and love. " 10
The same Spirit who gives to all creatures their own ecstatic
existence and life (Pannenberg appeals to impersonal metaphors
such as "wind" or an "incomprehensible field of force" here) 11 is
communicated, in connection with the manifestation of the Risen
Christ, as a personal donum of divine life in fellowship with
Christ and the communio sanctorum. 12 In sum, the Church is the
sacrament-the sign and instrument-of the Kingdom of God,
and as sacrament is rightly said to be the "mother" of believers.13
In Pannenberg's distinctive salvation-historical approach, the
Church exists as sacramental presence of the Kingdom only in its
ontological connection with that which remains absent: more
specifically, the Church exists as an efficacious instrument of the
consummating work of the Spirit only in the doxological act of
acknowledging its distinction from the Kingdom as the work of
God. Pannenberg's understanding of the "constitution" of Jesus'
own divinity, mediated in his eternal act of self-distinction from
the Father, lies in the background of the thesis that the
participated divinity of the Church is mediated in its liturgical
practice of distinguishing creature and Creator in the act of
worship. 14 Pannenberg's emphasis upon the "relational" and in
10 ST1, 1.
11 ST3, 7; Pannenberg develops the "indirect" connections between the biblical ruah
'elohim, the Stoic pneuma, and field theories of motion in modern physics in ST2, 79-84; he
also applies field theory to his concept of divine Spirit in ST1, 370-84.
12 ST3, 8-9, 12-15, 99-110. It is impossible to do justice here to the profound way that

Pannenberg brings together Greek and Latin sources on the relation between the Spirit,
creation, Church, and eschaton at ST3, 1-20. Christian "personalism" shows itself here in the
thesis that it is the "person," and not merely the "humanity," of Jesus who receives the Spirit,
thereby breaking with Augustine's equating of donum and processio,and thus opening a space
for a social, rather than psychological, analogy of the Trinity (ST3, 8-9; ST1, 300-336).
13 ST3, 38-48. Even taking into account Pannenberg's suggestion that the notion of
Church as Ursakramentis more properly communicated in speaking of the Church as a
sacrament "in Christ," he presents his position as materially in agreement with the teaching
of Lumen gentium. The way in which the Church exists as "mother" (a metaphor that stands
in for Pannenberg's notion of signs as instrumental causes rather than an analogical reference
to the Mother of God [ST3, 47)) does not follow the teaching of Lumen gentium at every
point, as will appear below.
14 ST3, 31-32; ST1, 375££. Pannenberg's phenomenological approach to the doctrine of
the Trinity yields a rather surprising reversal in the order in which systematic theology
develops the doctrine of God. For Pannenberg, it is the Trinity of "social" identity-forming

290

GARY M. CULPEPPER

this sense "provisional" understanding of the Church (such that
the "provisional" can function as both a "mark" of the Church
and moral imperative) 15 yields the conclusion that Church and
Kingdom are not an undifferentiated identity: the Church exists
as sacrament in "anticipation" of the arrival of the Kingdom.
Unlike some theologians working in the area of interreligious
dialogue, Pannenberg does not find in the difference between
Church and Kingdom the seeds of a "regnocentrism" that would
undermine the essentially missionary nature of the Church. Such
an approach would undermine the realism of Christian belief that
eschatological hope for reconciliation among all human beings
has already begun in Christ, and, further, that it is proclamation
of Christ that prepares the way for the overcoming of the
distinction between the visible Church and "the nations" in the
Kingdom. 16 Pannenberg, rather, exploits the distinction between
Church and Kingdom to develop an ecumenical understanding of
the Church as a spiritually imperfect society for which faith
remains a way toward a more perfect communio of believers with
one another in Christ. Pannenberg's conviction that all the
Christian Churches are historically implicated in the ongoing sin
of separation among Christians leads him to deny that there exists
"a full presence of the one Lord in their separated eucharistic
celebrations." Here Pannenberg's communio ecclesiology seems
to part ways with the teaching of Lumen gentium and Unitatis
redintegratio, especially in the weight he gives to the subjective
and moral dimensions of the Spirit's presence in the Church. 17
relations in God that "appears" in the history ofJesus, whereas the unity of the divine essence
is precisely what lies hidden in faith. Pannenberg demonstrates his concern for "ontological"
theology precisely in his move beyond a "personalist" or social-analogical doctrine of the
Trinity into a consideration of the oneness of the divine essence in ST1, 337-448.
15 ST3, 32. "Only in the spiritual poverty and humility of this self-distinction [between
Church and Kingdom] is it the place at which, by the power of the Holy Spirit, the
eschatological future of God's lordship is already present and at work for human salvation."
16 SI3, 45-46.
17 In particular, LG 8, 26, and UR 3. For more detail, see Pannenberg's dialogue with
Tillard, Rabner, Ratzinger, and others in ST3, 103-10. Pannenberg believes his position is
logically entailed (though not intended) in J. Ratzinger's statement (in "The Ecclesiology of
the Second Vatican Council," Communio 13 [1986], 239-52, at 244) that "Christ is
everywhere wholly .... But he is also everywhere only one, and therefore I can have the one

PANNENBERG'S ECCLESIOLOGY

291

The presence of Christ in the Church appears more clearly
when the Church is considered in relation to political society and
the legal norms that animate its life. Considered from this point
of view, Pannenberg describes the relation of Church and political
society as a relation of ultimate and provisional, though in such
a way that the theologically "provisional" character of the Church
checks Christian aspirations toward the establishment of a theocracy.18 According to Pannenberg, the irreducible distinction
between Church and State (what Murray called "social dualism")
is implicit in the eschatological nature of the Christian reality. But
what is their relation?
Pannenberg, developing his position primarily in dialogue with
the Lutheran tradition, follows a path between what he takes to
be two extremes: the first, a Scholasticism that would place
natural law "within" the gospel of grace as an ethical demand, the
contents of which are accessible to universal reason; the other,
Luther's own one-sided restriction of the "theological use" of law
to its function in accusing the believer of sin. For Pannenberg, the
Pauline dialectic of law and faith yields a broader theological understanding of law as prophetic foretelling of Christ, which means
that the political task of establishing a social order rooted in
justice is properly understood as standing in a constitutive
relation to the Kingdom of God. 19 For Christians, on the other
hand, the law is abrogated, not in the antinomian sense, but as
taken up into apostolic paraclesis as an exposition of the new
being in Christ. 20
Pannenberg affirms the importance of the insight of both
Augustine and Aquinas concerning caritas as the deeper element
of law, precisely in that the gift of the Holy Spirit brings the law
to fulfillment in us. Affirmed as well is the medieval synthesis of
Lord only in the unity that he himself is, in unity with others who are also his body and are
constantly to become this afresh in the Eucharist. Thus the unity of congregations that
celebrate the Eucharist one with another is not an external addition to eucharistic
ecclesiology but its basic condition" (ST3, 105).
18 See ST3, 96, for Pannenberg's concluding thoughts on the relation between Church,
state, and law.
19 ST3, 49.
20 ST3, 89.

292

GARY M. CULPEPPER

the concepts of "natural law" and "human nature" with the Thomistic insight into the "new law" of grace, especially as concerns
the function of natural law in mediating the relation between the
Church and political society. 21 Despite these achievements, Pannenberg continues to set the Lutheran refusal to interpret the
Gospel as "ethical demand" above any synthesis of natural law
and grace, though he acknowledges that the difference between
Reformation and medieval perspectives here is not as great as it
is often presented. 22 The deeper question, Pannenberg contends,
concerns what might be called the "ontology" of Christian freedom, considered in distinction from how one conceives the
relation between grace and law from a moral point of view.
Pannenberg seems to locate the Lutheran insistence upon the
difference between Gospel and law in the idea that
the gift of faith that always determines the Christian life precedes all action.
Faith must have a precedence that proclamation of the gospel has constantly
to recall, though this must not result in a quietistic attitude that does not let
one's own life be drawn into the dynamic of love that issues from the content
of faith. 23

21 ST3, 70-74. Pannenberg, however, stresses the historical and cultural "relativity" of the
natural law considered in its Christian setting, attributable both to the brokenness of our
insight into its contents because of sin and the tradition-guided character of its development.
Pannenberg also points out that the modern natural-law tradition departs sharply from
'T!edieval and Reformation natural-law traditions in its theses concerning the clarity with
which the natural law is known and its basis in individual freedom as distinct from the
traditions of a community.
22 That is, for Luther the law condemns in order to open the space for forgiveness of sin,
which is the basis for our living in freedom according to divine law. Aquinas seems to
recognize this function in his own way (SI'h I-II, q. 106, a. 1, ad 1), though he adds the
perspective that human nature possesses an instinctus toward the good in which grace can
work dispositively, such that this personal instinctus can receive the proclamation of the new
law in its subordinate sense as ethical demand (SI'h I-II, q. 108, a. 1). In another context,
Pannenberg appeals to Scotus's argument that instinctus cannot be a basis for faith, for as an
intellectual act it must have the judgment of credibility, and not a preconceptual instinct, as
a component of its motive (SI'l, 25).
23 SI'3, 79. Pannenberg connects this theme of the effect of grace prior to human action
in speaking not of an "ontology" of freedom, but rather'a "force field (ein Kraftfeld) that
comes from God and binds us to him" (ST3, 78). This can be compared favorably, I think,
with Aquinas's "ontological" perspective on the grace of the new law in STh I-II, q. 110, aa.
3 and4.

PANNENBERG'S ECCLESIOLOGY

293

These reflections contribute to Pannenberg's view of the
relation between Church and political society. As noted above, he
argues for putting aside the sharp Lutheran separation between
the principles that govern political and Christian life, especially
in his thesis that the political quest for justice stands in a constitutive relation to the Kingdom (as prophetic foretelling of Christ).
His understanding of the difference between gospel and law,
however, 24 leads him to the conclusion that the mission of the
Church to society lies primarily in calling the world to Eucharistic
worship of the true God, while it belongs to secular institutions
to govern the temporal order of human life according to autonomous rational principles in a world that is destined to pass
away. 25 It is somewhat disappointing that Pannenberg did not
introduce the theme of conflict between Church and state here in
a more explicit way, especially in light of his analysis of the antiChristian basis of modern secular law and his claim that modern
doctrines of "human rights" are in many situations implicitly
atheistic in character. For Pannenberg, the Church as a society is
situated today between two social "illusions": a false eschatology
arising out of certain forms of liberation theology, and liberalism,
with its autonomous conception of natural law and "human
rights." Where does the Church stand amid these "illusions"?
Does the faith of the Church shed a distinct light upon political
reality that authorizes the Church to teach the "new law" as "ethical demand" in response to developments in modern political life,
and is this teaching authority as constitutive an aspect of the
Church in its proclamation of the gospel as the theme of justice
is constitutive of the life of the state? Or is the voice of the
Church as provisional as that of autonomous reason in matters of
social justice?26
24 Pannenberg summarizes this difference in pointing out (1) the cultural relativity of
expressions of "natural law"; (2) the limits of law generally in its orientation to abstract
universality compared with the spontaneity and particularity of love; and (3) the priority of
the "divine field of love" (grace) over human action.
25 IT3, 54, 95.
26 These issues concerning the question of a moral authority derived from the freedom of
the gospel surface again in Pannenberg's distinction between the Church as Body of Christ
and as People of God, discussed below.

294

GARY M. CULPEPPER

III. CHRISTIAN FAITH AND ITS OBJECT

According to Pannenberg, "Faith is a form of the way we relate
to truth and is comparable in this regard to knowledge. " 27 He
develops his understanding of Christian faith in connection with
Christian hope and love, opening out to the still larger context of
the doctrine of justification, wherein the Christocentric and
ecclesial character of the gift of faith is secured. He explains that
the Christian faith is the most perfect form of the human relation
to truth, for Christian faith involves personal knowledge of the
eternal identity of the Triune God disclosed in a historical mode
proportioned to our way of knowing, above all in the history of
Jesus' life, crucifixion, and resurrection.
From the start, Pannenberg's career has been dedicated to a
rigorous defense of the constitutive role of the historical events of
the incarnation and resurrection in Christian understanding of
revelation and faith. Christian faith, as personal entrusting of the
self to God, exists in an inseparable connection with a knowledge
of, and assent to, the meaning of the historical events in which
God presents himself to be known in faith. In this way,
Pannenberg seeks, proximately, to overturn a broad movement in
modern Protestant ("pietist") theology which "separates" the act
of "God revealing" from "the event in which God is revealed" in
a strategy of retreat, he argues, from critical historical interpretation of the Scriptures. 28 A more remote target of his criticism,
however, which he believes lies in the background of the pietist
retreat from history, is Aristotelian-oriented Scholasticism, with
its characteristic distinction between natural and supernatural
realms of knowing. 29 Representative here is Aquinas, according to
Pannenberg, who taught that the material object of faith is the
SI'3, 136.
146-52. Pannenberg speaks of "God revealing" as the formal object, and the
interpreted event in which God is revealed as the material object. He affirms the theological
intention at work in pietist and existentialist Protestantism, that is, to secure both the
certitude of faith and a "personalist" rather than propositionalist or moralist view of faith.
29 Pannenberg, Basic Questions in Theology, 1:13: "The origins of the 'positivism of
revelation,' underlying the rise of Protestant theology, are to be found in the setting of
intrinsic limits between a realm of supernatural knowledge and a contrasting realm of
so-called natural knowledge."
27

28 SI'3,

PANNENBERG'S ECCLESIOLOGY

295

term of an assent motivated by faith's formal object, the authority
of God, and not by the evident intelligibility of the material object
itself.30 Against these traditions, Pannenberg proposes a contemporary retrieval of Luther's theology of faith, which does not
emphasize the distinction between a formal and material object of
faith, but rather their unity when considered from the perspective
of faith's supreme moment, the personal act of entrusting the self
to God (fiducia). But how does human understanding grasp the
complex notion of "trust in God's Word to man" in its unity?
Pannenberg argues, first, that for Luther the material content
of faith ("the gospel") is convertible with the significance of the
historical events to which the Scriptures testify. Secondly, he
recalls Luther's denial that Christian faith could separate itself
from the perspicuous and manifest content of this gospel. Pannenberg believes that both of these doctrines have their basis in
the principles of medieval Scholastic exegesis, and he seeks to
rehabilitate these principles for contemporary theology, though
actualized in a new mode: whereas Luther's appeal to the perspicacity of faith's content in the Scriptures rested upon the philologically mediated principle of sola scriptura, modern theology must
be based upon an historical-critical mediation of this principle.
In this way, according to Pannenberg, Christian faith and
theology are shown to be rooted in the extra nos of its object,
God's historical self-revelation, against all fideistic efforts to make
the subjective act of faith its own basis. Christian faith must
incorporate rational reflection upon its object as the "presupposition and basis" of the salutary act of faith considered as

30 ST3, 138, 141. Pannenberg acknowledges that there is an immediacy to God in
Aquinas's account of faith, but refers to this immediacy as "indirect," insofar as the
intellectual assent of faith to authoritative Church teaching is itself motivated by the will in
its going "immediately" to God in charity. On this basis, Pannenberg concludes that the
intentionality of the assent of faith is oriented not to God, or the divine promise, but to
"some different sacramental impartation" (Sf3, 141), in such a way that the unity of formal
and material objects is severed. Aquinas teaches that the graced movement of the will in the
act of faith is a modification of its own natural desire for the good, and not supernatural hope
or charity, and that the intellectual assent is itself a supernatural act of judgment, which, as
is well known, terminates not in the enuntiabile but in the res.

296

GARY M. CULPEPPER

personal trust in God revealing himself in the event. 31 The assent
of faith is an "assertion" that resolves, provisionally, the rational
effort to understand the object, and, because this object is God,
the assent is taken up into a total entrusting of the self to this God
in a synergy of reason and affect-charged volition. This entrusting
of the self to God in faith finds its most perfect expression in the
doxological act of surrendering the finite conceptual content of
faith in the Eucharistic praise of the Infinite God, such that the
assent of faith is properly said not to have "attained" the reality
analogically, but rather to stand in a relatively adequate relation
of "anticipation" towards the object as it presents itself to the
believer. 32
From this reader's perspective, Pannenberg's approach, insofar
as it tends toward the simple identification of God's selfrevelation with the form of the historical appearance, does not
bring out the complexity of faith as an assent to God who is
Truth Itself, disclosed, nevertheless, in a relative form (an
historical event and its interpretation) proportioned to the human
mode of understanding. An appeal to the "historical event" as the
object of faith is undifferentiated at best, for this at least poses the
problem that something relative and subjective (historical events
and their interpretation) lies at the basis of the assent of faith.
Pannenberg contributes two points here: (1) faith considered as
fiducia must be said to supplement merely historical knowledge
of the object (which is gained through notitia and assensus); and
(2) the certitude of Christian faith must always be understood in
connection with its historical relativity.
The first point may strike some readers as a retreat to the
position that Pannenberg appears to have criticized throughout
his career, especially when he writes that "historical knowledge
needs to be supplemented by confident trust that grasps the true
meaning, 'the effect' of the history of Jesus, namely the forgive31 ST3, 150. It must be made clear that Pannenberg does not identify Christian faith with
assent to the evident intelligibility of its material content, but that this content is
"presupposition and basis."
32 The connection between Christian faith and Eucharistic doxology as sacrifice is most
clearly illustrated at this point in this rather powerful systematic connection in Pannenberg's
thought.

PANNENBERG'S ECCLESIOLOGY

297

ness of sins. "33 Here trust appears to be associated with insight
into a meaning that is not evident in the mere appearance of the
object, suggesting a more complex relation between formal and
material object than Pannenberg indicates in his appeal to Luther's "personalist" breakthrough. While he does not investigate
this complexity in great depth, Pannenberg acknowledges the real
distinction between "God's act of historical revelation"and "the
historical event in which God acts" in locating the motive (formal
object) of faith not in the perspicuous meaning of the event but in
"the broad sphere of the ineffable relation of human existence to
the divine mystery that surrounds and sustains our living it. " 34
One can acknowledge the importance of Pannenberg's insights
into the intelligibility of the material object as preparatory (in the
assensus) to the full act of Christian faith (fiducia). His effort to
unify what Scholasticism (and, in its own way, pietism)
distinguishes as the material and formal object of faith appears
unstable, however, to this reader at least, in light of his appeal to

33 ST3, 143. One can hardly help but interpret this appeal to fiducia as a kind of lumen
fidei which not only moves the will, thereby securing the certitude of the assent, but also
illuminates the meaning of the event in terms of its final cause, as Pannenberg himself points
out in reference to Luther's own position on the matter. Compare this position to Basic
Questions in Theology, 1:86, where Pannenberg cites M. Kiihler's distinction between an
historical fact and "testimony to its revelatory value, which is supplementary to it and exists
precisely for faith alone," and argues that "the whole problem is already contained in this
distinction. Is not the 'revelatory value' related to the 'fact' as added from the outside?" In
the final analysis, Pannenberg eschews distinctions between intellect and will in the analysis
offaith, "as long as the 'dialectical interplay' between the two is preserved" (Braaten/Clayton,
319).
34 ST3, 150. Pannenberg acknowledges his indebtedness to K. Rabner for this particular
formulation of the formal object, and in other places appeals to Max Seckler's work on
instinctus fidei in Aquinas. It should be noted that Pannenberg moves here in the world of
transcendental Thomism, which has been charged with a failure adequately to distinguish the
formal object of faith from the self-transcendent movement of the human spirit by those who
reject the transcendental interpretation of Thomas. Whereas transcendental Thomists such
as Rabner worked with a dogmatically mediated material object, Pannenberg remains in the
sola scriptura tradition in his dedication to an historical-critical mediation of the material
object; however, they converge in that they tend to locate the act of faith, with Augustine,
in the will.

298

GARY M. CULPEPPER

the supplemental character of faith as fiducia in distinction from
historical knowledge and assent. 35
Concerning the question of the certitude and relativity of faith,
Pannenberg argues that while Christian faith has for its object
"God alone," the "personal relation of faith to God comes
through the historical self-revelation of God and through our
knowledge of it. "36 Appeals to either the authority of the Scriptures or the teaching Church cannot overcome the relativity of a
faith that has its basis in a revelation inseparably connected with
historical events and their interpretation. There remains, however, an important sense in which Christians can speak of subjective assurance, and Pannenberg identifies Newman as a primary
source for an authentic understanding of this aspect of faith. For
Newman, Pannenberg writes, the "repose of mind" associated
with subjective certitude can be attained "in the process of
increasing confirmation and certainty in forming our judgments
by way of the integration of individual experiences into broader
contexts," or in what Newman called the advance "from wholes
to wholes. "37
Nevertheless, Pannenberg cannot follow Newman's doctrine
of an "infallible certitude" and argues that "the certainty of
judgment can never be more than provisional and anticipatory, to
be tested in the further course of experience and hence always
exposed to the danger that it might be undermined and proved
null. " 38 Moreover, the appropriation of a coherence theory of
truth to explain the subjective certitude of faith must be comple35 Pannenberg suppresses the difference that fiducia makes in faith's perception of the
object in its difference from mere (ides historica. This shows up in his disagreement with
Barth's claim that "obedient acknowledgment" (assensus) is prior to notitia. While Barth's
claim that acknowledgment "is not preceded by any other kind of knowledge" certainly needs
qualification, Pannenberg avoids the deeper issue here, namely, the nature of the act which
is prior to personal knowledge of the revealing God in its distinction from a knowledge of the
historical event.
36 ST3, 152.
37 ST3, 168. The quotation from Newman is found in Essay in Aid of a Grammar of
Assent (Oxford and New York, 1870; repr. 1973), 301ff.
38 STJ, 168, 170. In STl, 56ff., Pannenberg explains that the statements of Christian
doctrine have the logical form of "hypotheses" when they become the focus of theological
reflection, but he denies that the believer actually doubts the content of what is believed in
the act of faith itself (STl, 57 n. 127).

PANNENBERG'SECCLESIOLOGY

299

mented, Pannenberg argues, by an insistence that correspondence
of understanding to the reality is, together with coherence, a
necessary element of truth. Yet the knowing that Christian faith
brings, Pannenberg never ceases to emphasize, cannot deliver one
from the limited conditions of our present existence to a point of
view wherein one can verify the relation of correspondence
between the understanding that faith brings and the reality to
which it refers. How is one to interpret Pannenberg's emphasis on
the provisional character and hypothetical structure of the
truth-claims of Christian faith? Does this emphasis verify H.
Fries's claim that Pannenberg subsumes theology under a general
philosophical Wissenschaftslehre? Or is this emphasis upon the
limits of the subjective certitude of faith a theological expression
of the "absolute priority of God and God's revelation over all
human opinions and judgments," as Pannenberg himself insists?39
In summary, it can be concluded that the subjective restlessness
of faith emerges as a central theme in Pannenberg because of the
real though subordinate place he assigns to the propositional
character of the assent of faith. Rational understanding of and
assent to the material object is constitutive for faith (as notitia and
assensus), but not exhaustive of the act, as the "reasons" for faith
considered as fiducia both determine and are determined by the
affective and volitional effects of the Holy Spirit active in
Christian hope and charity. Following Luther and his exegesis of
Romans 3:22-26, Pannenberg argues that justifying faith already
contains charity as its form and hence is inseparable from it,
though faith, hope, and charity are nevertheless distinguishable

39 ST1, 24. In IT3, 154, Pannenberg argues that the restlessness of faith and its provisional
certitude may exist together with a trust in God that "can be the basis of quiet confidence
that no historical criticism can destroy the truth of God's revelation but that this truth will
emerge even from the results of critical exegesis and reconstruction of the history of Jesus if
revelation really did take place in that history." While he insists that the Christian faith can
be presented as a form of knowledge only if it acknowledges its openness to rational criticism
on the pattern of procedures in modern science (placing the emphasis upon the hypothetical
or "as if" character of knowledge), and thereby opens the door to Fries's criticism,
Pannenberg also links his discussion to Christian testimony to the subjective absence of
certitude in faith, especially Luther's experience ofAnfechtung (ST3, 171).

300

GARY M. CULPEPPER

one from the other. 40 The larger theological task at this point,
according to Pannenberg, is to deliver an account of how "faith"
in this comprehensive sense works concretely to initiate believers
into the divine life as adopted children of God, a life which is
both extra nos as divine favor and immanent in our own being as
divine gift.41
IV. FAITH AND THE SACRAMENTS

At the conclusion of his discussion of faith, Pannenberg argues
that justification by faith can be properly understood only in
connection with the sacraments of the Church as the efficacious
significatory form of the presence of Christ to the believer.
The immediacy of fellowship with Jesus Christ by the Spirit in which the aim
of the event of reconciliation with God is reached comes into effect basically
as faith, hope, and love. Dogmatically it thus forms a theme in the doctrine of
the regeneration and justification of believers and their adoption into the filial
relation of Jesus to the Father.
According to the NT witness, however, the event of the regeneration of
believers takes place in baptism. Here again, then, we see the mediation of the
faith fellowship of individuals with Christ by the Church. 42

With this thesis concerning the inseparability of faith and
sacraments, Pannenberg begins his exploration into the way in
• 0 ST3, 222. Pannenberg identifies the teaching that faith is the fundamentum et radix of
justification as "the most severe defect of the Tridentine decree," as faith ought not be
abstracted from charity or crederein Deum as in the thesis of an "unformed theological faith"
(see ST3, 190-92). Concerning the centrality of the doctrine of justification in Lutheran
dogmatics, Pannenberg acknowledges that its abiding significance lies in its power to criticize
moralism in religion, as in the Pauline doctrine, and in this way serves as a corrective to
misguided emphasis upon human acts of love and obedience as completions of the divine gift
(ST3, 236 n. 450)
41 Pannenberg parts ways with the purely "forensic" doctrine of justification inaugurated
by Melanchthon, and stresses the importance of Luther's metaphors drawn from bridal
mysticism alongside his forensic descriptions of justification. For Pannenberg, the new life of
the believer in his relation to Christ through the gift of faith is the ob;ectof God's judgment
of righteousness, not its consequence (ST3, 213-31).
42 ST3, 237. Pannenberg argues that Luther's sola fide is far removed from any position
that would separate faith from the sacraments, and finds evidence that Luther's theology of
baptism, though incomplete, is consistent with Trent when it "rightly put baptism at the heart
of its justification decree" (ST3, 233).

PANNENBERG'S ECCLESIOLOGY

301

which sacraments, as instruments of the person of Christ, are
efficacious in the Christian life.
In the background of Pannenberg's sacramental theology lies
a theory of personal identity formation derived theologically from
reflection upon the relation between Jesus and the Father in light
of modern dialogical personalism, or those efforts which view the
"self" as dynamically constituted in the ongoing ego-Thou
relation. 43 Sacramental theology, for Pannenberg, is concerned
with how this self is reconstituted by a "Triune Thou" made
present in efficacious signs instituted by Christ. Faithful to the
insights of Christian personalism, Pannenberg makes it clear that
in the sacramental life the relation between subjective faith and
the divine Thou present in the efficacious sacramental sign is
reciprocal, as the sacrament of baptism makes clear: faith is constituted only in its assent to and trust in the reality made present
in baptism (the "seal of faith"), and baptism depends upon faith
for its reception (and hence, is "the sacrament of faith").
In this complex relation, Pannenberg will emphasize the
priority of the sacramental sign in keeping with Luther's
insistence upon "the constitution of the identity of believers
outside themselves in Christ."44 Pannenberg will repeatedly
differentiate his position from theories that diminish the place of
the outward sign, as he does here in speaking of baptism:
Baptism is not just a depiction of individual self-givenness in general along the
lines of an illustration of something universal. ... In other words, the
appropriation and outworking of baptism are done by Christians, i.e., by
subjects newly constituted in the act of baptism, not subjects that are
supposedly present already behind all experience and that remain the same as
its contents change. 45

Pannenberg considers another aspect of this reciprocal relation in
recalling Luther's attack upon Scholasticism, when Luther argued
43 The anthropological background to Pannenberg's sacramental theology is developed
more fully in ST3, 181-202, and his Anthropology in TheologicalPerspective,trans. Matthew
J. O'Connell (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1985), 157-312.
44 ST3, 273- 74. Pannenberg insists that Luther's sola fide was corrupted in the seventeenth
century, and issued in a turn to faith as an inward subjectivity that Luther never had in mind.
45 ST3, 274. He writes similarly about the sacrament of the Eucharist at 291-93.

302

GARY M. CULPEPPER

that the efficacy of the sacraments depends upon faith and not
"sacramental administration." Pannenberg points out, however,
that Aquinas had already taught the necessity of faith for the
efficacy of the sacraments before Trent made this its teaching in
its decree on justification. But Luther's attack upon what he took
to be Scholastic "extrinsicism" does raise what Pannenberg takes
to be an unresolved issue in sacramental theology: how to explain
the efficacy of the sacramental sign without undermining an
understanding of the immediacy of the believer's personal relation
to Christ in faith.
Pannenberg negotiates this issue by setting up a dialogue with
G. Ebeling and Aquinas on the efficacious nature of the sacrament
as a verbum visibile.According to Ebeling, Aquinas's doctrine that
sacraments effect what they signify in the present overtakes the
place of Jesus, the promissory Word, as the efficacious object of
faith. Pannenberg, who agrees that the Christian sacraments have
a promissory dimension, argues that the incarnation of Christ
makes undifferentiated speech about a "Word of promise" inadequate. Ebeling's approach, in sum, does not fully appreciate that
the incarnation is a fulfillment of prophetic promises that makes
participation in this fulfillment possible now, though we also
await its consummation. According to Pannenberg, Aquinas's
understanding of the causal relation between Christ's passion and
its sacramental sign, with its threefold reference to the passion
itself, its present effects, and its prognosis of future glory, more
adequately captures the realism of the incarnation as historical
event. Pannenberg will not follow Aquinas, however, in his emphasis on instrumental efficient causality as the explanatory key
to a sacramental theory. Pannenberg believes that this approach
tends toward an extrinsicist doctrine of grace that fails to grasp
the unity of the relation between Christ and the subject's
appropriation of his work in the complexity of its sacramental
mediation, together with its interpersonal character.
The limits of Aquinas's theory, according to Pannenberg, are
contained already in Augustine's sharp distinction between sign
and reality, an approach that fails to do justice to the presence of
Christ in the sacramental sign itself. Pannenberg cites Luther's
argument that "sign" must be evaluated differently in theological

PANNENBERG'S ECCLESIOLOGY

303

and philosophical understanding (implicating Augustine here):
"The sign considered philosophically denotes the absence of the
thing, the sign considered theologically denotes its presence."
Pannenberg acknowledges that it is difficult "to make this distinction with any precision conceptually," and even insists further
that sign and reality cannot be completely identified in sacramental theology, above all when one considers the temporal difference between the present of the sign's appearance, on the one
hand, and the past event and eschatological future present within
it, on the other. Pannenberg's more phenomenologically oriented
distinction between sign and reality (relying primarily upon
human consciousness of time) is very different from Aquinas's
reliance upon an ontological distinction between created and
uncreated acts of existence, and this difference allows Pannenberg
to locate the efficacy of the sacraments in a theory of anamnetic
participation, that is, in a "quasi-formal" theory of sacramental
causality.
Pannenberg credits Rahner with the initial insight into a
possible theology of grace based on a quasi-formally causal selfimpartation of God to the soul in the beatific vision, and seeks to
take it a step further in the direction of "biblical concreteness":
the sacramental sign causes the believer, through faith, to "share
the 'form' of Uesus'] sonship in the relation to the Father. "46 This
takes place above all in Eucharistic anamnesis, which Pannenberg
describes as the Church's participation in the one act of Christ's
self-gift in obedience to the mission of the Father, such that
"faith's offering of praise and thanksgiving is then a letting
oneself be taken up into the actual sacrifice of Jesus Christ, not an
additional offering to God. "47
Anamnesis, wherein the "form" of Jesus' relation to the Father
becomes present for our participation in it, is not to be understood as the cause of this participation, but rather its condition.
The efficacy of the sacraments resides in the action of both the
Word and the Spirit, considered in a relation of mutual causality.
Pannenberg takes this occasion to incorporate Orthodox insight
into the place of epiclesis in the Eucharist, underscoring the point
46

ST3, 201.
316.

47 ST3.

304

GARY M. CULPEPPER

that human recollection alone cannot empower the ecstatic movement of a creature beyond itself to participation in the Trinitarian
life. A complete account of sacramental efficacy, for Pannenberg,
must link anamnesis of Christ, through the sign instituted by him,
and the invocation of the power of the Spirit, who responds to
the prayer of the assembly and elevates believers to a share in
Christ's relation to the Father. In the example of the Eucharist,
the Word is active in the words of institution (as the "center" of
a larger, communal liturgical act), but this action can never be
understood apart from epiclesis, wherein the Spirit responds to
the prayer of the assembly to make Christ "actually" or "personally" present among them, and "really" present in the bread and
wine. 48
How does all of this relate to Pannenberg's critique of
Aquinas's deployment of instrumental efficient causality in his
sacramental theory? Pannenberg' s correlation of operations of the
human soul, recollection and prayer, with actions of the Word
and Spirit respectively, enables him to avoid an overly extrinsicist
account of divine action, especially as this approach permits him
to locate this action in the human signs themselves as efficacious
in communicating the "form" of Christ's relation to the Father.
His reliance upon the reciprocal action of Word and Spirit in his
interpretation of the dynamics of faith within the sacramental life
may also suggest ways beyond one-sided emphases upon either
spiritual interiority or the external word. For Pannenberg, the
Word is not merely an expression of the depths of the Spirit's
activity in the soul, but a Thou differentiated from the believer in
the form of an historical Other, the God-man Jesus; conversely,
the Spirit is not extrinsic to the incarnate Word active in the
sacramental sign (in which case the sign would exist merely as a
human artifact), but is already active as the "depth dimension" of
all activity in creation, including human religious consciousness,
48 Pannenbergborrows this distinction fromJ. Betz, "Eucharistie als zentrales Mysterium,"
in Mysterium Salutis IV/2 (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1973) 267ff. His own discussion of "real
presence" interprets "transubstantiation" as the essential change in a thing's nature based not
on human intentionality or conferral of meaning, nor upon "extrinsicist" appeals to Christ's
deity, but upon the "divine lordship" present in Jesus' activity at the Last Supper.
Pannenberg's Christological doctrine of "revelational presence" is at work here as well.

PANNENBERG'S ECCLESIOLOGY

305

though this consciousness does not already constitute the self as
"Christian" apart from the encounter with the Word in its
sacramental form.

V. PROVISIONAL CONCLUSIONS
The question was posed above concerning the balance
Pannenberg strikes in his understanding of the place of critical
reason in theology and his equally strong emphasis upon the
transcendence of God, who can be worshiped by Christians only
in their sacrifice of the rational content of their belief in an
ecclesial act of praise. This survey of Pannenberg's development
of the doctrine of faith and sacraments in their ecclesial context
was aimed at bringing out these two diverging aspects of his
thought. A common and perhaps unifying theme in Pannenberg's
treatment of faith and sacraments is his appeal to Luther's distinctive emphasis upon the immediacy of the believer's encounter
with Christ, not in some invisible Word, but in the sacramental
sign itself. So emphatic is Pannenberg's insistence upon the "identity" of Christ and the sacramental sign in its appearance (or the
identity of the formal and material object of faith) that the reality
of their difference-ultimately a difference between the Creator
and the creature-becomes secondary.
It is this initial suppression of the difference between sign and
reality that makes it possible for Pannenberg to give greater scope
to the place of critical reason in its relation to the revelatory
object (and thereby avoiding appeals to extrinsic authority or
special states of consciousness), applying the force of his doctrine
of the divine transcendence to the relation, not of critical reason,
but of "the whole person," as a synergy of reason and affective
willing (credere in Deum), to the Infinite God. The transcendence
of Jesus in relation to the believer is secured through critical
historical judgment, whereas the transcendence of God, whom
Jesus makes present, is secured anthropologically, that is, not so
much by appeal to the essential incomprehensibility of the divine
being as by the inherent limits of reason. The fiducial quality of
the act of faith leaves space for critical reason to do the work of
theology, as faith's object is, from the phenomenological point of

306

GARY M. CULPEPPER

view, genuinely proportioned to reason; it is the disproportion,
however, that moves the whole person beyond "reason" into the
infinity of the Triune life through faith.
The judgments submitted here in the interpretation of Pannenberg's work ought to be taken in the spirit that this twentiethcentury master of ecumenical theology would heartily endorse: as
provisional and open to the correction of the theological community. It goes without saying that this brief survey of select themes
in Pannenberg's ecclesial understanding of faith cannot begin to
do justice to the erudition, subtlety of thought, and brilliance of
insight that inform Pannenberg's work, as anyone who has
approached these volumes of his Systematic Theology already
knows.

BOOK REVIEWS
The Exercise of the Primacy: Continuing the Dialogue. Edited by PHYLLIS
ZAGANO and TERRENCEW.TILLEY. New York: Crossroad, 1998. Pp. 192.
$14.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8245-1744-X.
Papal Primacy and the Episcopate: Toward a Relational Understanding. By
MICHAEL J. BUCKLEY. New York: Crossroad, 1998. Pp. 96. $12.95
(paper). ISBN 0-8245-1745-8.
Towards a Papacy in Communion: Perspectives from Vatican Councils I & 11. By
HERMANNJ.POTIMEYER.New York: Crossroad, 1998. Pp. 140. $14.95
(paper). ISBN 0-8245-1776-8.
Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Ut unum sint asked for suggestions
regarding ways of exercising papal primacy that are open to the new situation
and yet renounce nothing essential to the mission of the papacy. The pope's
request was directed in the first place to leaders and theologians of non-Roman
Catholic churches, but it has provoked no small amount of discussion within
the Church itself, as attested by the three books here under review.
Among the early Catholic responses was a lecture on "The Exercise of the
Primacy and the Costly Call to Unity," given on June 29; 1996, at Campion
Hall, Oxford, by John R. Quinn, retired archbishop of San Francisco, which is
the focal essay in The Exercise of the Primacy. In essence, this lecture is a plea
for a more collegial exercise of the primacy. Quinn finds a lack of collegiality
in a number of recent decisions and current policies including the appointment
of bishops, the approval of documents such as the Catechism of the Catholic
Church, the celibacy of the clergy, the ordination of women, the role of women
in the Church, the permissibility of contraception, the conditions for general
absolution, the treatment of divorced and remarried Catholics, the inculturation of the liturgy, and the procedures of the Synod of Bishops. The real
questions, Quinn asserts, are not simply about the manner in which the
primacy is exercised but rather, he suggests, about substantive claims.
On the whole, Quinn refrains from direct criticism of the Pope and puts the
blame on the Roman Curia and the papal diplomatic corps. Both these
agencies, he holds, tend to wield authority over residential bishops, thus
violating the principle of collegiality. Among his positive proposals are a
reorganization of the Curia under the direction of a committee with three
presidents-a representative of an episcopal conference, a representative of the
Curia, and a lay person. Quinn favors an ecumenical council to mark the
beginning of the new millennium and regular councils thereafter-perhaps

308

BOOK REVIEWS

every ten years, according to the decree of the Council of Constance. He
proposes that the Synod of Bishops should be given a deliberative rather than
a merely consultative vote. He calls for serious consultation of bishops and
episcopal conferences before major doctrinal pronouncements are issued. He
maintains that the principle of subsidiarity can and should be applied in the
Church. His proposals, he contends, reflect an "ecclesial" rather than a
"political" model of ecclesiology.
The Exercise of the Primacy, after reprinting the lecture of Archbishop
Quinn, adds five responses delivered at the November 22, 1997, meeting of the
Roman Catholic Studies Group of the American Academy of Religion. The
responses focus on two main questions-the "new situation" and structural
reform-but they have more to say about the former than the latter.
Unfortunately, also, the respondents are more intent on promoting the
particular concerns and agendas of their writers than on discussing the concrete
reforms proposed by the archbishop.
In the first response, R. Scott Appleby compares the present situation with
the integralism that "pervaded the Roman curia during the AmericanistModernist crisis." He portrays Archbishop Quinn as a new J oho Ireland standing up against the Romanization of the American hierarchy. But he also points
out that younger Catholics of his generation are uninterested in debates about
primacy and collegiality. They are asking whether it is possible to believe in the
existence of any objective moral order.
The second respondent, Elizabeth A Johnson, offers a feminist reaction to
Archbishop Quinn's proposals. Pressing for an egalitarian model of the Church
based on baptism, she rejects structures that are clerical, hierarchical, and patriarchal. God's will for Peter, in her view, is that he listen to Mary Magdalene.
John F. Kane, the third respondent, agrees with John Paul II's perception of
the current crisis of moral and religious authority, but he is convinced that
Roman centralism makes the crisis worse and that Quinn's proposed reforms
have little chance of being accepted. He places his hopes in grass-roots
initiatives, even while recognizing that these initiatives may tend to sectarian
fragmentation.
Thomas Rausch, in the fourth response, points out that the issues dividing
Christians go far beyond questions of style in the conduct of the primacy. He
also observes that the prevalent religious individualism makes any exercise of
authority in the Church very difficult. But, with these preambles, he gives a
cautiously favorable response to the Quinn proposals. Several of them, he
points out, run contrary to the current canon law of the Church, and others,
such as his call for an ecumenical council, seem premature.
Wendy Wright, the final respondent, reflects on the Quinn lecture from the
perspective of spirituality. The "new situation" in spirituality, she remarks,
involves two major shifts. In ecumenical and interreligious discourse the
borders between different groups are melting away. And in American society,
she holds, the medieval emphasis on states in life and social roles is vanishing.
Thus we must be prepared to hear the word of God wherever the Spirit is

BOOK REVIEWS

309

pleased to speak. Her "family model of mutual discernment" goes beyond
Archbishop Quinn's proposals, though it is, like his, intended to be "ecclesial."
Each of the respondents speaks on the basis of considerable thought and
experience. While their contentions deserve to be taken seriously, they are too
numerous, complex, and far-reaching to be adequately set forth, not to say
defended, in so brief a volume. With the exception of Rausch's, these essays
pay little attention to the specific proposals in the focal essay.
In his response to his critics Archbishop Quinn is on guard against efforts to
extend his principles beyond his own intentions. He reminds Rausch that he is
not calling for changes of doctrine but only of style and manner in the exercise
of the primacy. To Appleby, he replies that the term "Romanization" ought not
to be taken in a pejorative sense, since true Romanization involves a rediscovery of Rome as the center of communion and the guardian of legitimate
diversity. To Kane he answers that "subsidiarity" should mean simply giving to
bishops the authority they need to govern and serve their Churches. To Johnson he remarks that the "discipleship of equals" should not be interpreted in
ways that infringe on the power of orders or on the unique role and prerogatives of the successor of Peter. And finally he insists, in his answer to Wright,
that the Church has a solemn and specific responsibility to guard the deposit
of faith.
The issues raised by Archbishop Quinn, not to mention those raised by the
respondents, must be treated all too summarily in this short review. I agree
with Quinn that the "new situation," however it be appraised, should never be
allowed to erode the deposit of faith. His proposals are not new. Many of them
have been debated for generations. As for the principle of subsidiarity, Joseph
Komonchak, whom Quinn invokes as an authority, concludes that its applicability to the Church is "not yet ripe for solution" <Jurist [1988]: 352). The
special charisms of the papal office, I believe, are especially important in the
present era of globalization, when episcopal conferences are exerting unpre- ·
cedented power. Great vigilance is needed to prevent multiple inculturation
and the dispersion of authority from becoming divisive. Collegiality is essential,
but it should not be understood in opposition to primacy, since the college of
bishops cannot exist or function except with and under the primacy of Peter.
Before demanding that the Synod of Bishops have a deliberative vote one
should carefully ponder who would be bound by its decrees. Does the whole
Church really want to be legally bound by the majority vote of a hasty
gathering of selected bishops? The enthusiasm for the election of bishops that
exists in some quarters might be tempered if Catholics had some experience of
the party politics and electioneering that this could involve.
I register these reservations without wishing to make light of Archbishop
Quinn's concerns, which are more carefully phrased than I have been able to
indicate. Quite evidently, relationships between Rome and the episcopate can
always be improved. The current procedures for the appointment of bishops
are no doubt imperfect. The mode of exercise of the papal office is subject to

310

BOOK REVIEWS

change. Each pope has his own style, reflecting his own gifts and his appraisal
of the current situation.
Buckley's slim volume, Papal Primacy and the Episcopate, is another
outcome of the discussion initiated by the pope. It grows out of a paper
composed for a meeting convened by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the
Faith to consider the nature of papal leadership in the Church. Buckley was
asked to provide a theological synthesis that would identify the indispensable
elements of the papacy, distinguishing them from others that are dispensable.
Buckley goes about this task in a serious and deliberate way, carefully
delineating the steps of his argument. After defining the problem he calls for
purity of heart or lgnatian "indifference" as a condition for finding the right
solution. He establishes, rather too laboriously, that both primacy and
collegiality belong to the Aristotelian category of "relation." Episcopal ordination, he recalls, involves the conferral of the threefold office of teaching,
sanctifying, and governing. Primacy adds to this a responsibility for overseeing
the unity of the whole Church and the whole episcopate in faith and communion. The theology of communion, happily recovered at Vatican II, calls attention to the nature of the Church as a communion of persons and of particular
Churches. The primatial office therefore involves a responsibility to strengthen
the bonds of communion among Catholics and between them and Christians
who are not in full communion with the Catholic Church. The primacy of
Rome is, as Vatican I declared, truly episcopal. It emerges from within the
episcopal college and serves the unity of that college.
At this point in his argument Buckley makes a crucial distinction between
the habitual and the substitutional functions of authority-two terms borrowed
from Yves Simon. The habitual functions are permanent and essential. Substitutional functions are those assumed in some particular crisis, when the local
bishop or his Church lacks the needed resources to perform its tasks. Among
the habitual functions of the Apostolic See Buckley emphasizes its unitive role
but passes rather lightly over its mission to maintain purity of doctrine. He also
calls attention to the symbolic value of the Petrine office-a function that some
authors neglect.
Crucial to Buckley's argument is the principle that the effectiveness of the
primacy is measured by its success in strengthening the bishops and their
collegial union. The authority of the bishop of Rome, therefore, does not enter
into competition with that of other bishops in the Church.
Toward the end of his essay Buckley discusses two problem areas. The first
is the lack of effective participation of the local Church in the naming of its
bishop-a point on which he quotes from Archbishop Quinn's lecture mentioned above. The other problematic issue is the frequent transfer of bishops
from smaller to greater sees. This practice, he contends, weakens the
quasi-nuptial relationship between the bishop and his Church; it also stimulates
ambition and maneuvering for power.
Altogether, Buckley has written a very solid essay that takes account of the
complexity of the problems. On points where he tends to be critical he

BOOK REVIEWS

311

expresses himself in measured language. He leaves a number of matters, such
as the Synod of Bishops and episcopal conferences, for future study. I personally wish he had said more about the importance of guarding and heralding the
deposit of faith and about the "charism of truth and unfailing faith" that
Vatican I attributes to the successors of Peter. Perhaps, also, he minimizes the
importance of papal primacy in offsetting recurrent threats to ecclesial unity.
He has, however, made a useful contribution to the existing literature.
In Towards a Papacy in Communion the German professor Hermann Pottmeyer, like the authors already discussed, seeks to answer the question raised
by John Paul II about the style of exercise of the primacy. He asks more specifically whether primacy must, in fidelity to the recent councils, be exercised
centralistically.
In a brief sketch of the early history at the beginning of his book, Pottmeyer
contrasts the first millennium with the second. In the first millennium, he
believes, the idea of communion;was fundamental, whereas in the second
sovereignty and jurisdiction became the dominant categories. If communion is
pitted against jurisdiction, one's preference will have to be, as Pottmeyer's
plainly is, for the former. But jurisdiction itself, I believe, can be understood
as a modality of pastoral government and as a guarantor of communion.
Although legalism can be pressed too far, the Church as an enduring visible
society surely needs legislation and jurisdiction. Pottmeyer, like many other
authors since Yves Congar, seems overinclined to idealize the first millennium
and to dismiss the second as a regression.
In the early nineteenth century, Pottmeyer believes, the juridical model led
to an exaltation of the pope as an absolute monarch. This view was enthusiastically embraced by the Ultramontanist party in France, but was opposed by
Bishop Henri Maret, who believed that sovereignty could be shared by the
pope and the bishops. Maret's view, although condemned by Vatican I, expressed concerns that would resurface at Vatican II.
Pottmeyer's account of Vatican I, including the official relatio of Vincenz
Gasser, is a model of clarity and objectivity. He convincingly shows that
Vatican I did not embrace the extreme infallibilism of the Ultramontane party,
even though much Catholic theology in the ensuing century did portray the
papacy in absolutist terms.
Vatican II, in Pottmeyer's estimation, was a healthy retrieval of the patristic
communio model. The majority of the bishops, anxious to correct the excesses
of Roman centralism, successfully incorporated into conciliar teaching many of
the ideas that Gasser had expounded in his relatio. The minority, however, saw
to it that no limitations were placed on the freedom and independence of the
pope. Hence Vatican II did not effectively offset Roman centralism. This
failure, Pottmeyer contends, is exemplified by the Synod of Bishops, which has
not functioned as a check on papal and curial dominance.
Pottmeyer describes two views of collegiality. The first, which he attributes
to Karl Rahner, is universalist. Defining the episcopate by reference to the
college into which one gains admission by episcopal ordination, it depicts the

312

BOOK REVIEWS

government of dioceses as one of the ministries most appropriate to bishops.
The second view, which Pottmeyer attributes to the early Ratzinger, begins
from below. It defines the bishop primarily as the head of a particular Church
and treats membership in the episcopal college as a consequence of such
headship. Pottmeyer's preference is dearly for the second view, which seems
to have a better patristic grounding and to be more ecumenically acceptable.
Against Pottmeyer it can be argued, I believe, that Rahner's universalism has
the stronger biblical basis. Peter was the primate before the other apostles
became heads of local Churches, if they ever did. In our own day nearly half
the bishops-and more than half in countries such as the United States-are not
in charge of dioceses. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in 1992,
firmly rejected the view that the universal Church arose as a fellowship of local
Churches. The universal Church, said the document, is not the result of such
a communion of Churches but rather its source. The Church "in its essential
mystery ... is a reality ontologically and temporally prior to every individual
particular Church." It is surprising that Pottmeyer nowhere alludes to this
important document, which seems to teach the opposite of his own thesis.
A further contention of Pottmeyer is that the Church of our day should
restore the triadic model, dominant in patristic times, in which patriarchates
exercised a role intermediate between the universal and the local Church.
While something analogous has been coming to the fore in regional bishops'
conferences, the experience of history gives many reasons for caution. The
patriarchates quarreled among themselves, with Antioch against Alexandria and
Constantinople against both. Eventually Constantinople itself split off from
Rome. In the Eastern Churches today, the historic rivalries between Constantinople and Moscow, and among the autocephalous national Churches of
Eastern Europe, exhibit the need for a strong universal authority. Even in the
West, ecclesiastical nationalism in England, France, Germany, and Austria has
wrought great harm. These negative experiences do not invalidate Pottmeyer's
proposal, but they disclose problems that he does not consider in this brief
work.
Like several of the authors already mentioned, Pottmeyer is favorable to the
principle of subsidiarity. Here again, caution is in order. This principle would
be self-evident if the Church were considered to have arisen from below,
through the association of local Churches, which gradually cede certain powers
to a higher central authority. But the universal ministry is not in fact a
subsidium contrived to make up for the limitations of local ministries. From the
New Testament it would seem that the powers of teaching, sanctifying, and
governing were originally conferred upon the total college, with Peter at its
head, and were only later apportioned to particular or local sees. Thus the
principle of subsidiarity, if it has any application to the Church, functions in a
vastly different way in ecclesiastical than in secular society.
In saying this, I in no way deny the entirely valid point that particular
Churches should enjoy an appropriate measure of autonomy in their own
jurisdictions. They are not mere administrative districts but realizations of the

BOOK REVIEWS

313

universal Church in a particular place. Bishops acquire their ordinary powers
by episcopal ordination, not simply by delegation from the See of Rome. These
points are uncontroversial.
Pottmeyer, to be sure, is no Gallican. He recognizes that the Gallicans and
Maret himself erred in taking insufficient account of the special position of the
pope. Yet he agrees with Maret that the bishops ought to have a role in framing
legislation for the universal Church. While this may well be desirable in principle, it is difficult to devise structures whereby the entire episcopate can be
actively engaged in drawing up legislation. Under present procedures, the
bishops' conferences are normally consulted, though there may be instances of
insufficient consultation. The consultation with regard to the Catechism of the
Catholic Church was exemplary.
Another proposal of Pottmeyer is that, for the sake of greater force and
credibility, papal teaching should be issued collegially, with the evident
consensus of the whole episcopate behind it. On the whole, the point may be
conceded. But this would normally require a prior public consultation, which
might actually excite opposition. The widespread discussion leading up to
Humanae vitae shows that public debates are unhelpful unless the Church is
prepared to adopt the position favored by the opinion-makers of the day. If the
Church considers itself obliged to maintain a tradition that runs against the tide
of public opinion, it is unwise to raise false expectations by seeming to open
the question up for reconsideration. Pottmeyer's proposals on public consultation prior to decision-making do not take account of this difficulty.
The reservations I have expressed about Pottmeyer's book would probably
not be shared by Michael Buckley, Archbishop Quinn, or Quinn's five commentators. All three books represent a similar tendency, which is probably dominant among the Catholic intelligentsia of Western Europe and North America.
The prevailing opinion seems to be that the minority at Vatican II prevented
the majority from fully succeeding in their laudable efforts at reform. It might
be more correct to hold that the minority enabled the council to maintain
proper continuity with the Catholic tradition.
All three books raise issues that deserve to be carefully weighed. Of the
three Pottmeyer's is the most substantial. In precise and lucid prose (admirably
translated by Matthew J. O'Connell) he shares the fruits of many decades of
scholarly study, especially in the history of nineteenth-century European
Catholicism. Even readers who differ, as I do, from some of Pottmeyer's
opinions will be in his debt for his concise and insightful history and his clear
delineation of the alternatives.
AVERY DULLES, S.J.

Fordham University
Bronx, New York

314

BOOK REVIEWS

Knowledge and Faith in Thomas Aquinas. By JOHN I. JENI<INS, C.S.C.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. 267. $59.95 (doth).
ISBN 0-521-58126-5.

This work is motivated by the conviction "that Aquinas's distinctive notion
of scientia shaped his thought and writing in ways that have not been fully
appreciated in the literature" (3). According to Jenkins, the principal reason for
this has been the tendency to read the central cluster of Aquinas's epistemic
concepts through a post-Cartesian lens that distorts the original, premodern
meanings of those concepts. Jenkins's project is to recover the authentic,
premodern notion of scientia at work in Aquinas in order to show how this
sheds new light on the notion of theology operative in the Summa Theologiae.
As this description and the title indicate, the book has both an epistemological
and a theological agenda. My review will argue that Jenkins is more successful
in the former area than in the latter.
The first chapter aims at the recovery of Aquinas's understanding of scientia
in Aristotle's Posterior Analytics as revealed in his commentary on that work.
Jenkins offers an interpretation of Aristotle's doctrine of episteme that has
acknowledged affinities with the work of Myles Burnyeat and Richard
McKirahan. According to this interpretation, the premises of a demonstrative
syllogism must express the prior grounds for one's belief that the conclusion is
true. The premises (which must be true) therefore have to meet the following
criteria: they must be primitive (universal and per se); prior, both epistemically
and metaphysically; immediate; state the cause of the conclusion; and better
known than the conclusion. According to Jenkins, the last criterion has been
much misunderstood; what it essentially enunciates is a restriction on the
doxastic structure of the inquirer such that the prior knowledge must be doxastically causal of the conclusion. This kind of scientia is premodern in the sense
that it is not formulated to meet the demands of skepticism, even though it is
a kind of foundationalism insofar as it requires that all derivative knowledge
have the appropriate relationship to what is epistemically basic. There is a
robust epistemological optimism ingredient in such scientia, particularly
concerning our ability to grasp essences as the starting point of demonstrative
knowledge. It is central to Jenkins's project that there can be genuine scientia
even when not all the priority conditions obtain. The paradigm case of scientia
does indeed have strict conditions, but there is the possibility of qualified
scientia when limitations in the knower or the known make the paradigm
unrealizable. How this is so becomes intelligible when it is remembered that the
Posterior Analytics is more about the logic of pedagogy than the logic of discovery; it is more about how an intellectual tradition organizes its knowledge
for teaching than about how it begins new research programs. When one is a
pupil, one serves an intellectual apprenticeship involving a two-stage process
that begins with the movement from basic principles to quia demonstrations
and then culminates with propter quid knowledge wherein one's doxastic

BOOK REVIEWS

315

structure mirrors the causal structure of the real. Prior to achieving full
intellectual habituation, the apprentice has genuine but limited scientia that is
ordered towards and dependent upon that of the teacher.
The second chapter argues that the understanding of scientia operative in
Aquinas's sacra doctrina reflects the essential features outlined in the first
chapter. Jenkins acknowledges that Aquinas adapts Aristotelian episteme to the
needs of theology (hence there is not simple or strict identity), but Jenkins
maintains that there is a "deep continuity" with the PosteriorAnalytics's ideal
that has not been hitherto sufficiently recognized. Jenkins thus specifically
contests the influential view of M.-D. Chenu, who argued that sacra doctrina
cannot be a scientia in a strong sense principally because its principles (the
articles of faith) are not per se nota to us. Even when it is considered as
subalternate to the scientia Dei et beatorum, it still remains suspect according
to Aristotelian canons of subalternation. Chenu therefore concluded that
theology can only be a science in a special and attenuated sense, as
quasi-subalternate.Jenkins disputes Chenu by offering alternative interpretations of some key passages on sacra doctrina, arguing that the usage of
scientiain the Summa Theologiaereflects an analogous relationship to the focal
meaning of scientiain the PosteriorAnalytics, and asserting that Chenu's interpretation is infected by modern presuppositions. Jenkins concludes that sacra
doctrina is a genuine scientia in two basic ways: it moves discursively from
cause to effect and it meets the doxastic causality condition.
The third chapter goes on to show how the recovered sense of scientiasheds
new light on the purpose and structure of the Summa Theologiae.If Jenkins is
right about the meaning of scientia, then it follows that the Summa must have
been intended as a work of second-order pedagogy rather than as a textbook
for beginners. Jenkins therefore argues that the incipientes mentioned in the
prologue to the Summa could not be students just beginning their study of theology in a Dominican studium but rather must be relatively advanced theology
students who had already had been through a first-order pedagogy. These
future teachers now would be taken through the material previously assimilated
so as to induce in them the right kind of doxastic causality conditions. In
advancing this view of the purpose of the Summa, Jenkins explicitly rejects the
conclusions drawn by Chenu, James Weisheipl, and especially Leonard Boyle
in their previous historical studies. Jenkins goes on to argue that the very
high-level and complex formal structure of the Summa Theologiae is best
understood according to the model of second-level pedagogy that is articulated
in the Posterior Analytics. He concludes this first part of the book by
formulating some objections to his thesis that he will answer in the second part.
Before considering how Jenkins handles his own objections, however, let me
raise some of my own. In the first stage of his approach, Jenkins attributes to
Aquinas a reading of episteme in the Posterior Analytics that has strong
affinities with an important current of contemporary Aristotelian scholarship.
While this contemporary resonance makes Jenkins's reading of Aquinas quite

316

BOOK REVIEWS

attractive, it does raise a worrisome question that Jenkins does not ask: Do
these medieval and contemporary interpretations converge because we have
gotten out from under the baneful influence of modern foundationalism so that
we can finally appreciate how a premodern nonfoundationalist like Aquinas
would read Aristotle, or because we are reading Aquinas on Aristotle too much
through a certain set of late-twentieth-century lenses? Jenkins could have
addressed this issue by showing how his reading of scientia is plausible in the
light of what is known regarding the interpretation of Aristotelian scientia in
Aquinas's own day. The second stage of Jenkins's argument involves attributing
a much stronger sense of scientia to sacra doctrina than would be admitted
within the scholarly tradition established by Chenu. His critique of Chenu is
unpersuasive and severely weakened by the fact that he never directly engages
any of the subsequent scholarship by specialists in thirteenth-century theology
that corroborate Chenu's reading (see Jean-Pierre Torrell's amply documented
"Le savoir thfologique chez saint Thomas," Revue Thomiste 96 [1996):
355-96). I find it odd and somewhat gratuitous when Jenkins imputes to Chenu
(and other medievalists) a post-Cartesian understanding of scientia as a partial
explanation of their alleged misinterpretation. When Jenkins tries to show that
Aquinas's general use of scientia in the Summa presupposes the strong Posterior
Analytics sense as its focal meaning, he runs into serious problems with God's
scientia; specifically, his argument that the relevant sense of necessity applies
even to God's knowledge of contingents involves equivocation (65). With
respect to the original purpose of the Summa, Jenkins's argument against Boyle
is essentially that if Aquinas had meant it to be a first-order pedagogy textbook
for the fratres communes, then his influence in his own province was such that
it would have become the common textbook. But it did not. Ergo Aquinas
could not have meant it as such. I would deny the major premise of this argument on the grounds that there are more plausible construals of the pedagogical
fate of the Summa. This is another point where Jenkins does not engage the
most authoritative recent historical work on Aquinas (i.e., Torrell) that endorses Boyle's view. When it comes to the claim that the formal structure of
the Summa reflects second-order pedagogy, Jenkins does not do much to show
how that is so and he does not engage the long-standing scholarly debates on
the structure of the Summa.
Overall, Jenkins's failure to engage the latest historical and theological
scholarship on the Summa Theologiae means that his provocative thesis is not
likely to get a sympathetic hearing from those steeped in that literature. Yet I
do not think this is his intended audience, since his consideration of anticipated
objections ind,icates that his main concern is in a dialogue with contemporary
analytically trained philosophical readers of Aquinas. These readers are presumably less interested in whether Jenkins's claims fit the original context and
more concerned with whether it makes sense in the contemporary context.
The first objection that Jenkins explicitly considers in chapter 4 questions
the very possibility of grasping the first principles of a scientia. Jenkins focuses

BOOK REVIEWS

317

on what he calls the "indefectibility doctrine" of Aquinas: the claim that in the
first operation of the mind, the grasping of essences or quiddities, the intellect
cannot be false. Jenkins argues against others (especially Lonergan) for a
"strong reading" of the doctrine: "the ideas of natural, essential kinds which
the intellect forms spontaneously in its first operation, invariably correspond
to the essences of things with whose phantasmata the intellect is presented"
(114 ). He notes this does not mean that the intellect's first grasp of an essence
is perfect or complete, but rather only that it is a good initial purchase for
further investigation. His overall reading makes Aquinas a conceptual externalist by contemporary categories. Jenkins argues that this prepredicational
grasp of essences is what justifies the basic judgments of first principles.
Overall, his discussion is insightful and helpful, yet one does wish that he had
spent some more time on the connection between the grasp of essences in the
first act of the mind and the subsequent formation of judgments that can serve
as first principles; there is some serious epistemological work to be done in
making the transition from one to the other. There are also some particular
points where one might take exception to Jenkins's account of Aquinas on
knowledge. For example, there is a misleading reference to the respective roles
of the agent intellect and the possible intellect in human knowledge (125); like
many contemporary readers of Aquinas, Jenkins attributes too much activity to
the former and not enough to the latter.
In order to deal with objections regarding the nature of faith, Jenkins
devotes the fifth chapter to an overview of Aquinas's understanding of grace.
He acknowledges that it is nearly impossible to do justice to this large topic in
the space of thirty-one pages and specialists will find much there to dispute.
For example, there is no mention (that I can find) of the idea that the life of
grace includes infused moral virtues. More troublingly, Jenkins attributes to
Aquinas the view that God's causal action with respect to the free activity of
rational creatures is purely final and in no way efficient. I have argued
elsewhere that this is not Aquinas's view; at the very least, Jenkins's
interpretation is at odds with the standard reading and so it is puzzling that he
offers it without any reference to the alternative view or the obviously
problematic texts for his position. This is symptomatic of a major deficiency in
Jenkins's account of Aquinas's theology: there is no reference to any standard
treatments of the central issues. He offers his own reading without any
dialectical encounter with the scholarly literature and without any indication
of what has influenced his reading of Aquinas.
The sixth and longest chapter in the book is a defense of the claim that faith
is enough like intellectus to make theology a genuine science. Jenkins begins by
arguing against some prevalent misinterpretations of Aquinas on faith by
contemporary philosophers. The first is a naturalistic view of faith; that is, the
claim that faith is justified by rational arguments of credibility (e.g., Penelhum).
Jenkins succeeds in showing that this is a misinterpretation of Aquinas. He then
argues against voluntarism: that is, interpretations that overemphasize the role

318

BOOK REVIEWS

of the will in faith's assent. He argues successfully that James Ross and
Eleonore Stump do not get Aquinas right on the role of the will. Jenkins's own
view is that Aquinas's account of faith makes him a "supernatural externalist"
in a way parallel to his externalism about first principles; the "supernatural"
quality of the externalism here is a reference to the way in which the grasp of
the first principles of faith requires the grace of God. He goes on to provide an
account of the relationship between the theological virtue of faith and its
attendant gifts of the Holy Spirit, intellectus and scientia. Jenkins argues that
in the mature view of Aquinas the theological virtues are only "inclinations
toward their actions, but not yet steady dispositions or habits. For this steady
disposition the prompting of the Holy Spirit is required, along with the Gifts
of the Holy Spirit, which are dispositions to respond to such promptings. Thus
a theological virtue is complemented by its corresponding Gift so that a steady
disposition to the corresponding act results" (188). I would argue that Jenkins
has misunderstood Aquinas on the relationship between the theological virtues
and the gifts. If the theological virtues are genuine virtues, then they must
dispose the agent as a habit toward the relevant operations. What the gifts do
over and above the theological virtues (which they presuppose) is dispose the
agent to the special promptings of the Holy Spirit in actively exercising the life
of the virtues; the gifts are necessary for the perfect operations of the virtues,
especially in the face of our human weakness and in difficult situations, but
they are not related to them as a virtue is related to an inclination. Jenkins's
specific accounts of the gifts of intellectus and scientia and their roles in the
overall process of faith are likewise problematic. He says that through the gift
of intellectus a person "understands that the articles are to be adhered to on
divine authority even in the face of considerations which seem to render them
implausible.... This is understood in a non-discursive intuition in the first
operation of the intellect in the process leading to the assent of faith" (194).
Then in an alleged second moment, one judges that these propositions which
are to be believed are true (how we moved from the nondiscursive intuition of
the first operation of the intellect to a second act proposition is not dear).
Here is where the will is necessary to explain the assent and the gift of scientia
comes into play as helping the assent of the will. Once again Jenkins offers his
reading without engaging any other scholarly views, and it leads him to get
Aquinas wrong on both the psychogenesis of faith and its relationship to the
gifts and the other virtues (especially charity).
In offering an overall assessment of Knowledgeand Faith in Thomas Aquinas
it is necessary to distinguish along the lines of the title. The analysis of
knowledge contains much that is of value as a contemporary reading of
Aquinas. One would like to see Jenkins fill out his epistemological picture in
the future so as to show what his comprehensive account of Aquinas on
knowledge would look like. When it comes to his analysis of faith, however,
Jenkins falters. He sees correctly that most contemporary accounts fail to get
Aquinas right because they do not appreciate the essentially theological

BOOK REVIEWS

319

dimension of faith. But Jenkins himself is unable to provide a comprehensive
theological account of faith in the broader context of Aquinas's doctrine of
grace. There is ultimately something ironic about the failure of the theological
side of Jenkins's project because it results from his failure to adhere to his own
account of the need for intellectual apprenticeship within a tradition: you
cannot acquire scientia about sacra doctrina without a long period of apprenticeship within a Thomistic theological tradition. Jenkins could learn a lot
about sacra doctrina, grace, faith, and the structure of the Summa from the
Dominican tradition that he wants to correct about scientia.
BRIANJ. SHANLEY, 0.P.

The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.

Quaestiones de quolibet in Sancti Thomae de Aquino Opera Omnia (Editio
Leonina). Edited by RENE ANTOINE GAlITHIERand others. Tomus 25/l
and 25/2. Rome: Ad Sanctae Sabinae, 1996. Pp. 160* + 174; xxi + 502.
Although the literary genre of the quodlibetal question is well known to
students of medieval philosophy, theology, and canon law, it appears to be
among the least-consulted portions of St. Thomas's literary legacy, as scholars
prefer consulting his more thorough and magisterial texts, such as the Summa
Theologiae and Summa contra Gentiles, or the various sets of disputed questions on narrowly-defined topics (e.g., De anima, De malo, etc.). And perhaps
this should not be a surprise, given the nature of the quodlibetal question, and
the collections comprised of such questions. Like its sibling the disputed
question, the quodlibet was a public event, attended by interested parties, in
which a master would offer his answers to questions presented for discussion.
Those gathered would raise single doubts or concerns about the question at
hand, and the master would see to it that his answer laid the groundwork for
answering those doubts in their turn. What characterized the disputed question
was that it was the master himself who set the topics for consideration. The
topics might be ones he specialized in, or ones he was considering at the
moment for some other purpose; perhaps he was working on a summa in which
that topic figured prominently.
The quodlibetal question differed from the standard disputed question in a
few ways, as we know from the work of Palemon Glorieux (La litterature
quodlibetique de 1260 a1320 (Vol. 1 [Paris: Le Saulchoir, 1925]; Vol. 2 [Paris:
J. Vrin, 1935]) and John Wippel ("Quodlibetal Questions Chiefly in Theology

320

BOOK REVIEWS

Faculties," in B. Bazan, et al., Les questions disputees et Jes questions
quodlibetiquesdans Jes facuJtesde theologiede droit et de medecine [Turnhout:
Brepols, 1985], 155-222). The chief difference in the quodlibetal question was
that the subject to be considered by the master was decided upon by those in
attendance, and it could be literally "anything you like," or, as the Master
General of the Dominican Order, Humbert of Romans, described it, it was
"about anything, at anyone's pleasure" (de quoJibet,ad voJuntatemcuiuslibet)
-though he was speaking more narrowly about the tasks of the Master of
Students in Dominican houses of study ("De officio magistri studentium," in
Humbert of Romans, Opera de vita reguJari, ed. J. J. Berthier [Turin: Marietti,
1956], 2:260).
Other differences doubtless existed, but we should in honesty admit to less
certainty about their origin or actual practice, at least as regards how quodlibetal questions would have functioned at the University of Paris during
Thomas's two regencies there (1256-59; 1268-72); the university statutes that
survive date from the fourteenth century, and it is all too easy to fall into ante
hoc sicut hoc historical reasoning. Generally, though, it is thought that a quodlibet at a university was a two-day affair, in which the master and his bachelor
would function as something of a team. At the first meeting, the disputatio, the
topics to be discussed would be set, and various arguments pro and con would
be given, with the bachelor, not the master, fielding these objections (obiecta);
it seems that a goal for the quodlibet was a kind of on-the-job training for the
bachelor. The master might jump in, but only regarding small details, or
perhaps to direct the intellectual traffic. All would retire, the master would go
through the objections one by one, arrive at his answer, then return on a
second day (though not necessarily the following day) to give his presentation,
the determinatio. At this session the master would answer the question originally addressed to him, and take up the various objections that had been fielded.
With this exercise in intellectual dialogue and academic training completed, he
would take whatever written account of the proceedings there might have been
(a reportatio) and mull over the material, and the success or failures of his
answers to objections. He would then either tidy up the written report, thereby
creating an ordinatio, or render in writing the whole thing from scratch.
As a Dominican Thomas would have been quite familiar with the format of
the quodlibetal dispute, even had he not spent part of his career in the rarified
air of the University of Paris, for quodlibetal dispute was a piece of the
intellectual training of Dominicans, and was often a part of daily Dominican
life. Dominican houses throughout Europe were to have a house Jector whose
task it was to ensure that the brethren's intellectual faculties were constantly
challenged, and Humbert of Romans, in his description of the Jector's duties,
suggests that there be regular discussions on this or that point in standard
summae of canon law (e.g., Raymond of Peiiafort, Godfrey of Trano, William
of Rennes) or of individual cases known to the brethren, or even de quoJibet,
as quoted above. Indeed, some have suggested that it was the Dominicans who

BOOK REVIEWS

321

brought the format of the quodlibetal dispute with them to Paris from the
canon law classrooms of Bologna, where the order thrived early on.
Whatever the case with the origins of the quodlibetal dispute, we known
that Thomas, holding one of the two Dominican chairs of theology at the
University of Paris, produced two sets of quodlibetal questions, now edited
critically and authoritatively by the Leonine Commission for the critical edition
of all of Thomas's writings, under the lead editorship of Rene-Antoine
Gauthier, O.P. Like the other Leonine editions published since the edition of
the Summa contra Gentiles in 1930 (i.e., beginning with the publication of the
De Veritate in 1970), this edition sets a high watermark, employing the best in
editorial techniques and historical research. Because of the Leonine
Commission's efforts, students of Thomas's thought now have another topflight resource for learning from the Common Doctor.
The mass of material in the edition necessitated dividing the edition into two
large folio volumes, which is probably for the best, given the particular, and
curious, history of this portion of Thomas's literary corpus. Since Thomas was
master at Paris twice, and since he followed the custom of holding quodlibetal
disputations during the Christmas and Easter seasons of the academic years
during which he held tenure, we have two sets of quodlibetal questions from
him; Gauthier duly places the twelve quodlibets in separate volumes, from the
first Parisian regency (1256-59) and the second (1268-72), respectively. Yet the
matter is not so simple as that, for the internal chronological order of Thomas' s
quodlibets is all hash, a result of the haphazard way in which they were
originally published. As it happened, the "traditional" sequencing of the
quodlibets was set with a Cologne edition from 1471 with the later set of
Thomas's quodlibets placed first, and the earlier set placed second. To muddle
matters further, the last numbered quodlibet, nunber 12, while contained in the
second set, turned out to be the last quodlibet Thomas held (Easter, 1272), but
never matured from its reportatio form because of Thomas's departure from
Paris back to Naples.
So what was Gauthier to do in editing the all the quodlibets, tracing them
pro more back to the base-families (+ 1 and + 2) via the pecia markings, and
therefore being able to detect which manuscripts had their origin in the earlier
publication by the Parisian stationers, and which from the later? Why not just
start a whole new scheme of numbering and ordering the quodlibets? Gauthier
made the judgment call-the right call-that changing the numbering of the
quodlibets would create massive confusion in the way things were cited in the
literature; what he chose to do instead was to keep the bogus numbering, but
to arrange the quodlibets in his edition in their chronological order. In the
present edition that means at least three things of importance: (1) volume 1
contains the quodlibets disputed during Thomas's first Parisian regency
(1256-59), and volume 2 contains those disputed during the second; (2) the
orphaned quodlibet 12 is now reunited with its chronological family in the
second volume; {3) quodlibet 6 is placed in its proper place within the second

322

BOOK REVIEWS

set of quodlibets, between 3 and 4. Thus, at the end of the day, the Leonine
editions two volumes are: Volume 25/l (quodlibets 7-11) and Volume 25/2
(quodlibets 1-3, 6, 4-5, 12).
Users of the Leonine editions have long been spoiled by the quantity and
quality of the information located in the apparatus fontium at the bottom of
each page, and the same holds true in this edition. But this is particularly welcome here, for the often historical, particular, character of an article makes the
reader crave for detailed historical information about the context in which a
question is asked, and the sources Thomas uses to formulate his answer. To
take but a single example, Gauthier did a splendid job of tracking down crucial
historical references in Quodlibetum 8, q. 6, a. 3, and its sibling, Quodlibetum
9, q. 7, a. 2, on the morality of a plurality of benefices. He provides the reader
with citations from a few modern critical editions, from older editions (e.g.,
William of Auvergne's Tractatus de col/atione beneficiorum), and from solitary
manuscripts containing Thomas's oft-employed notion of the moral indeterminacy of "picking up a stick off of the ground" (John of La Rochelle, Summa de
vitiis [Ms. Assisi Com. 587)). But Gauthier is human, too, and in the second
question on plurality he was not able to track down two references Thomas
makes-somewhat to my relief, as I had announced in an article once that the
references in question simply could not be found where Thomas said they
were!
While even full-time students of Thomas's thought might not wade through
the dense editor's preface, which explains in detail the constituent elements of
each pecia that helped comprise the manuscripts containing the quodlibets,
they might want to look occasionally at the apparatus criticus on each page,
which gives variant readings found in the manuscripts. In some cases Gauthier
now provides a reading that is of equal manuscript authority to the one he has
selected for inclusion in the body of the Thomas's text, signaled in the apparatus with a small black diamond (+). Other small, but nice, touches help the
reader. Varying editions through the ages did away with the question/article
enumeration and simply listed a quodlibet's articles in ordinal form (e.g.,
Quodlibetum 8, a. 16), as distinct from the more standard way (e.g., Quodlibetum 8, q. 8, a. l); Gauthier provides both types of references, which will
help scholars as they migrate to this new, finalized edition. Also, the indexes
are particularly useful. One index lists all the references that Thomas himself
makes throughout the course of the twelve quodlibets, while another lists the
texts the editors have referred to in the apparatus fontium, including texts of
Thomas, which are listed in chronological order, occasionally departing from
the authoritative order of Fr. Torrell.
In conclusion, we have here the very best of the craft of producing critical
editions of medieval theological texts. The quodlibetal questions are usually
consulted because this or that article is listed in, say, the Summa Theo/ogiae as
a "parallel place," and for such usage the edition is a godsend. But the
quodlibets on their own, seorsum, constitute informative and occasionally-if

BOOK REVIEWS

323

one is interested in the vibrant intellectual milieu in which Thomas actually
worked-even riveting reading. Unfortunately the cost of the volumes, which
is understandable, prohibits all but committed research libraries from acquiring
them, even if what they contain is essential to the scholar's task. Now, if only
the Leonine Commission and Editions du Cerf can start producing manual
editions of this and other Leonine texts ...
MARK F. JOHNSON

Marquette University
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

The Flowering of Mysticism: Men and Women in the New Mysticism
(1200-1350), vol. 3 of The Presence of God: A History of Western
Mysticism. By BERNARD MCGINN. New York: Crossroad, 1998. Pp. xiv
+ 526. $59.95 (cloth), $24.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8245-1742-3 (cloth),
0-8245-1743-1 (paper).
This is a work of encyclopaedic scholarship on a Teutonic scale (over two
hundred of its xiv-plus-526 pages are devoted to notes, bibliography, indices).
It should really have been sent to a Franciscan not a Dominican reviewer, for
reasons which will become clear. But its combination of material informativeness, religious vitality, and methodological clarity give its author an affinity
with the Dominican and Thomist tradition nonetheless.
In his Preface Professor McGinn explains the change of plan which leaves
this book somewhat out of kilter if placed in a line with its predecessors in the
early 1990s (The Foundations of Mysticism [1991], and The Growth of
Mysticism [1994]). Those volumes were straighforwardly chronological in
scope, assessing, as their titles imply, the origins and development of the
Christian mystical tradition, above all in the West, between (as it turned out)
the third and twelfth centuries. In the work under review, by contrast, McGinn
determined to abandon a strictly time-based scheme for one that combines
theme and context with chronology. Essentially, if I understand him aright, the
first of two overlapping volumes on the mediaeval inheritance is to consider the
Franciscan mystics and the women mystics of the early Middle Ages in
separation from that other influential contemporary tradition, the Dominican,
not simply for reasons of space (though that was certainly a consideration), but
also because of a greater family-resemblance between the more devotional
mysticisms of the Franciscans and the early mediaeval women, on the one hand,
and, on the other hand, the more speculative mysticisms adopted by the

324

BOOK REVIEWS

Dominicans and (to some extent at least) the later mediaeval women. The
inconveniens of this approach is that it means regarding Meister Eckhart as the
fulcrum of Dominican mystical thought and sensibility, and treating the masters
of the early Dominican school as harbingers and premonitions of the
Eckhartian dawn, while also regarding Eckhart's "moment" as the true center
from which later mediaeval spirituality is to be interpreted. Whether this
(prima fade somewhat questionable) schema can be justified will of course turn
on what McGinn makes of it, as a way of organizing his materials, in the as yet
unpublished fourth volume of what will be eventually a five-volume series.
The Preface also contains some animadversions, prompted, we are given to
think, by the skirmishing of reviewers, on the method of his study-in which,
in mild and courteous tones, the author announces his refusal to be shaken,
either by the anti-experiential school of interpretation of the mediaeval
mystical corpus whose doyen is Professor Denys Turner, or by the rumblings
of feminist critics complaining that his earlier volumes were excessively dosed
to women's voices.
In the Introduction McGinn states his approach more positively in his own
terms. We can note first that, despite (or because of?) his anxiety not to be
wrongfooted as a methodical investigator of the mystical, he presents himself
as above all a Church historian. The texts of mediaeval mysticism are firmly
located within the wider institutional movement in the high mediaeval Church
to recover the vita apostolica, not simply as the common ecdesial life ascribed
to the apostolic community in Jerusalem in the Book of Acts but as an evangelical life with three key components: penance, poverty, preachingunderstanding the latter, in the case of those other than bishops and priests, as
the verbum exhortationis, exhortation to conversion of life. Such a refiguring
of Christian existence in its maximal form encouraged the belief that the properly disposed could find God's intimate presence outside of monastic
cloister-a conviction hardly new to Christianity, it should be said (the sayings
tradition of the desert Fathers was well aware of it) but one which, in its new
mediaeval setting, McGinn terms, not altogether happily, the "democratization" and "secularization" of the (elite and sacrally withdrawn) monastic
engagement. These words function, perhaps, as a captatio benevolentiae of a
University of Chicago audience.
Secondly, while gender wars seem peculiarly out of place in mystical
theology, McGinn has been provoked by feminist historians of religion to
develop a nuanced account of the likely interweaving of male and female
contributions, as men-in their capacities as confessors, scribes, biographersassisted women mystics in making their voices heard in the wider public realm
of ecdesial society. And thirdly, in an especially subtle conclusion to this
lengthy Introduction, McGinn grapples with the peculiarly difficult problem
of the experiential . presuppositions of a literature which is at all times
revelation-dependent, and indebted to a definite culture of transmission of that

BOOK REVIEWS

325

revelation, with its own conventions of discourse. One especially judicious
sentence gives the flavor of his response:
Without some kind of claim to an underlying experience these textual
expressions would probably not have come into existence and certainly
would not have won acceptance; but to say that every expression of
such a claim was intended as a more or less literal account of a divinely
given vision is neither provable nor required in order to demonstrate
how the new modes of presenting visions argue for a new stage of
Western mysticism. (29)

The meat of the book consists of six substantial chapters on: first, the origins
of the "new mysticism" (a phrase Professor McGinnis trying, evidently, to
launch into general currency); second, the early Franciscans, culminating in
Bonaventure; third, the rest of the Franciscan tradition, im Grossen und
Ganzen, till the waning of the Middle Ages; fourth, budding developments
among women mystics; fifth-and here McGinn spreads himself more
spaciously in a chapter twice the length of the others-the three "great"
Beguine mystics Hadewijch (a Fleming),Mechthild (a German), and Marguerite
Porete (a Frenchwoman);lastly, if we leave a short postscript out of the count,
come the women mystics of the religious orders-where, despite the
self-denying ordinance announced in the Preface, McGinn does look at
Dominicanesses in the Preachers' "second" order, the houses of moniales.
The measuredness and freedom from ideological parti pris of McGinn's
surveys of a huge number of pertinent texts inspire this reader at least with
confidence. If the writing lacks the rhetorical excitement of one who has a case
to make, it nonetheless suggests, by its tone of concentrated seriousness, that
here is an historian who gives their due weight to the theological
realities-Trinitarian and Christological, soteriological and eschatological;
Mariological and sacramental-with which the mysticsfound the truth of their
being, and their social relations, inseparably confounded.
I especially enjoyed the careful reconstruction of Francis's inspiration; the
lucid account of Bonaventure's mystical theology; the exploration of the
extraordinary imagery of the Hadewijch texts-only just orthodox, perhaps,
in their account of the "pre-creational self's" exemplary existence in God.
Some of the minor figures who-necessarily in a would-be exhaustive chronique
pieuse-occupy much space in the book made me think back wistfully,
however, to what Professor McGinn calls that "older Christian tradition in
which depth of spiritual teaching was more important than personal charisms
or accounts of one's own experience of God" (56).
for instance, on the
The book contains many thought-provoking
relation of poetry to the mystical impulse, a matter, at least in part, of "the
ways in which poetry tests and subverts ordinary language-overcoming
language within the realm of language being also one of the essential tasks of
mystical discourse" (229); or again, on the apophatic force of a sufficiently

326

BOOK REVIEWS

innovatory and varied imagistic cataphaticism: "perhaps just as apophatic in the
long run as the great game of constructing structures of negative predications
employed by other mystics" (230).
The notes and bibliographies are a mine of information, though it would
have been preferable, in what will be for many years a standard work of
reference, to have extracted the primary sources for listing in their own right.
AIDAN NICHOLS, 0.P.

Blackfriars, Cambridge
Cambridge, Great Britain

Faces of the Church: Meditations on a Mystery and Its Images. By GEOFFREY
PRESTON, O.P. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 1997. Pp. x + 310. $35.00 (paper). ISBN 0-8028-4353-0.
After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity. By MIROSLA vVOLF.
Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998. Pp.
314. $28.00 (paper). ISBN 0-8028-4440-5.

These two recent works of ecclesiology, though both published by the same
company, represent two quite different theological perspectives. Geoffrey
Preston writes as an English Catholic and a Dominican Friar, a retreat master
and a novice master. Miroslav Volf, though now a professor at Fuller
Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, comes from Yugoslavia where
he grew up in a parsonage as son of the pastor who represented what Volf calls
the "free Church" tradition but what we in the United States might recognize
more readily as the English Baptist tradition emanating from the sixteenthcentury Reformer John Smyth. That a publishing house more traditionally identified with Calvinist thought would publish both of these authors demonstrates
considerable ecumenism as well as a significant service to Christian scholarship.
Friar Preston's Faces of the Church is a collection of thirty-two essays
organized into four thematic parts. Part 1 consists of ten essays, each treating
a New Testament image of the Church. In Preston's terminology these are:
Ekklesia, People of God, Brotherhood, Temple, Flock, Kingdom, Poor of the
Lord, Bride of Christ, Body of Christ, New Creation. Part 2 comprises nine
essays under the thematic heading, "Focusing the Church: The Sacraments,"
wherein after the question "What is a Sacrament?" all seven are treated. In part
3, entitled "Living the Church: Some Privileged Moments," Preston treats in
nine chapters various manifestations of Church, individual and collective.

BOOK REVIEWS

327

Included are: places and forms of assembly (Church as sacred space, councils,
and synods), groups (pilgrims, saints, and martyrs) and individuals Gohn the
Baptist, Joseph, and Mary). Part 4, entitled, "The Mystery of the Church,"
begins with an essay on koinonia and then presents us with three separate
chapters on Trinitarian themes: the Church of the Spirit, the Church of the
Father, the Church of the Son. The book concludes with three indexes: names,
subjects, and references.
The first thing to be noted about Faces of the Church is that it is a
posthumous publication assembled and edited by an admiring religious confrere, Aidan Nichols, a work perhaps never intended for publication. This fact
makes for two difficulties. For one thing, there is at times a paucity of references which, no doubt, had Preston lived to see this work into print, he would
have supplied. For example, when on page 158 he says, "Of the Hebrew
functionary who stands behind the New Testament apostle it was said that 'a
man's shaliach ['apostle'] is as the man himself,"' one would like to know
precisely who said that and where, but unfortunately there is no footnote
reference. Similarly, when on page 160 Preston quotes Saint Thomas Aquinas
on the mission of the Church, one might assume (correctly) that it was St.
Thomas's Commentary on Ephesians and not a reference in the Summa
Theologiae or some other work, but one is not quite certain because there is no
precise documentation for the quotation. The other problem created by this
work's posthumous publication is the fact that at times Preston's comments
appear rather dated. Preston died in 1977, and at times the concerns and issues
that he treats here are more distinctive of the 1960s and 1970s than of today.
For example, when on page 18 he says, "The existence of the Christian people
as a unity does not depend on its having a common language," one cannot help
but think Preston had in mind the plight of those English Catholics who in the
decade after Vatican II rued the loss of a Latin liturgy. Also the language of
"change" and "adaptation" is somewhat dated when it is accompanied by so
potentially wistful an observation as, "The Catholic rule of fish on Fridays had
an extraordinary power to shape a common solidarity" (20), an observance to
which some in the late 1990s appear eager to return if only out of desperation.
On the other hand, despite these flaws there is much in Preston's book to
recommend it: for one thing, its method. It is not apparent that Preston was a
professional theologian. He was primarily a spiritual guide, a retreat master,
and master of novices. Thus his essays here do not pretend to systematic exposition, but Preston is no less a theologian for all that. Moreover, he is one
with a sure method. In fact, the subtitle, "meditations on a mystery ... " is a
precise indication of his method. For, arguably, it embodies an intentional echo
(on the editor's part?) of the title of an important ecclesiological work by the
French Jesuit Henri de Lubac. De Lubac's Meditation surl' eglise (195 3) was not
only a significant contribution to Catholic ecclesiology but also a representative
work of what came to be called the nouvelle theologie, with its emphasis on a

328

BOOK REVIEWS

return to biblical and patristic sources. Here we can see one of the advantages
of Preston's theological method, for his focus on biblical images of the Church
in his lengthy first chapter is a welcome alternative to the recent rage for
"models of the Church." While models are self-contained, mutually exclusive,
and paradigmatic (and thus lend themselves to rigid stances), images are
allusive, suggestive, and supplemental of each other (encouraging a more
holistic vision of the Church). It is arguable-and Nichols in his introduction
suggests as much-that Preston's method is the equivalent of "a 'post-critical'
theology which would integrate the gains of modern biblical scholarship with
a contemplative, ecclesial reading of the bible" (vii). But most importantly,
Preston often treats ideas and issues in ecclesiology that are very much with us
today. For example, his treatment of Church order (in chapter 16, "Ministry"),
where he teaches that "hierarchy is basically the whole ordered body and not
some group of people within the body" (152-53) and that all the members of
that body are "each other's counterpart or Gegenuber" in a sort of "reciprocity
of the Church and Christ" (154), is a welcome contribution to the contemporary argument over the ordering of ministries in the Church (see especially
the joint statement from various Vatican dicasteries of September 1997).
Miroslav Volf's After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity
is a considerably more complex work; indeed, it is the editing of an academic
exercise, Volf' s Habilitationsschrift written at the University of Tiibingen under
Jiirgen Moltmann, now translated by the author and with an introduction for
an American audience. As with Preston's book, here. too, historical circumstances account for certain stylistic and intellectual traits. Stylistically, though
Volf for the most part exhibits an admirable command of English idiom, there
linger problems of diction. For example, on pages 50 and 51, Volf refers to
Ratzinger's "commentary to Dei Verbum," whereas standard British as well as
American usage would say, Ratzinger's "commentary on Dei Verbum." But,
more importantly, as Preston's work, in terms of title and method, is more or
less a follow-up on De Lubac's work, so here in Volf's work there is evident at
times a considerable debt in terms of thought and method to Moltmann's The
Church in the Power of the Spirit (1975) and The Trinity and the Kingdom
(1981). This is reflected not only in the title of the work but also in a certain
methodological assumption Volf makes. Not only does he share with his
mentor the systematic focus on ecclesiology supplied by a Trinitarian approach,
but he chooses a Trinitarian approach with a decided bias, quite freely stated
in his "Introduction to the American Edition" (4): "I have tried to develop a
nonhierarchical but truly communal ecclesiology based on a nonhierarchical
doctrine of the Trinity." This methodological presupposition means that Volf
is able to give more prominence to the work of the Spirit within the individual,
as a protection against the demands of nature and society (the work of the
Father in creation) and even history (the Son, who in the role he gave to Peter
and the Twelve gave precedent for a hierarchy in community). In other words,

BOOK REVIEWS

329

Volf's methodological assumption allows him to emphasize the freedom of the
Spirit over the ordered organic corporeality of the body of Christ. The power
of such a methodological assumption to control the material treated is evident
in the fact that even though no allusion is made to this in the title of the work,
After Our Likeness is in fact a study of the concept of communion in two contemporary representative theologians of the Catholic and Orthodox traditions,
Joseph Ratzinger and John Zizioulas. But, given the more incarnational,
sacramental character of the theological traditions represented by Ratzinger
and Zizioulas, Volf's methodological option will appear to some as effectively
setting up Ratzinger and Zizioulas as straw men to be mowed down.
After Our Likeness is divided into an introduction and two parts. The
introduction has three sections entitled, "A Cry of Protest and Its Fate," "Free
Churches: The Churches of the Future?" and "An Ecumenical Study." In part
1, which consists of two chapters, Volf surveys the thought of Ratzinger and
Zizioulas on communion. In chapter 1 he treats first of "Ratzinger: Communion and the Whole," and then in chapter 2 of "Zizioulas: Communion,
One, and Many." Part 2, consisting of five chapters, is Volf's own treatment of
communion according to principles of the Baptist tradition as set forth by John
Smyth. Here the chapter headings are: "The Ecclesiality of the Church," "Faith,
Person, and Church," "Trinity and Church," "Structures of the Church," and
"The Catholicity of the Church."
In his introduction Volf makes it clear that he has a twofold aim: on the one
hand he wants to dialogue with Ratzinger and Zizioulas, and on the other hand
he intends to be rather apologetic regarding his own religious tradition. This
is a complex but not unrealistic aim, and Volf often has many good points to
make. However, all too often there is present in this work, lurking not far
below the surface, a resentful and even polemical spirit that from time to time
occasions remarks more contentious than probative. For example, Volf leaves
himself open to the accusation of gross caricature and gratuitous assumption
when he complains:
Should, for example, a Catholic or Orthodox diocese whose members
are inclined more to superstition than to faith and who identify with
the church more for nationalistic reasons--should such a diocese be
viewed as a church, while a Baptist congregation that has preserved its
faith through the crucible of persecution not be considered such?
(133-34).

Some will judge that the ecumenical character of this work is more than a
little marred by the fact that the author is not only apologetically defensive of
his own tradition and considerably critical of these other traditions but is at
times quite triumphalistic in touting the claims of his own tradition over these
others. For example, though the third essay in Volf's introduction is couched
in the form of a question, "Free Churches: The Churches of the Future?," tile

330

BOOK REVIEWS

text itself, while starting with a modest claim, grows increasingly sententious:
"The various Free Churches are growing most rapidly among Protestants";
"Just as significant as the rapid growth of the Free Churches, however, are the
incipient structural transformations within the traditional Protestant and
Catholic churches"; "This 'process of congregationalization' is clearly evident
even in the Catholic Church, which is (still?) committed to a hierarchical structure"; "Today's global developments seem to imply that Protestant Christendom of the future will exhibit largely a Free Christian form"; "It seems to me
that we are standing in the middle of a clear and irreversible 'process of congregationalization' of all Christianity"; and "The Free Church model is without
a doubt being borne by irreversible social changes of global proportions."
Most ofVolf's claims here are over blown. Not only would many Catholics
challenge his thesis as regards the Catholic Church but the recent Lambeth
Conference seems to witness to the fact that the old hierarchical structures in
Protestantism, vestigial though they may be, can serve even today as the most
salient means for addressing a contemporary issue. At the recent Lambeth
conference, a world synod of Anglican bishops, native African bishops representing the ancient biblical tradition were able, if I may use Preston's words,
to stand Gegenuber, over and against, in a sort of "reciprocity of the Church
and Christ," the proposals of those bishops from Europe and North America
who represented an attitude of sexual liberalism popular in their congregations.
l.AWRENCEB. PORTER

Seton Hall University
South Orange, New Jersey

Christology from Within: Spirituality and the Incarnation in Hans Urs von
Balthasar. By MARK A MCINTOSH. Notre Dame: University of Notre
Dame Press, 1996. Pp. 224. $29.00 (doth). ISBN 0-268-00815-9.
Various attempts have been made to introduce the work of Hans Urs von
Balthasar, from general treatments to methodological and thematic ones. In
Christology from Within, Mark Mcintosh has taken a dogmatic locus and guides
the reader through its constructive attunements by von Balthasar. In doing so
he really manages two things: an excellent treatment of von Balthasar's
Christology, but one that really gets to the core of his entire work. No surprise
really for those already familiar with von Balthasar but enlightening to veteran
and novice readers alike of this theological master.

BOOK REVIEWS

331

Long recognized by those attracted to von Balthasar is the more innovative
aspect of the book's thesis, namely, the integration of spirituality and theology.
I say "long recognized" for avid readers of von Balthasar are often drawn to
him because of this, and in Mcintosh they will now find an interpreter for
whom such integration is of special interest, continued by the way in a more
recent publication (MysticalTheology:The Integrity of Spiritualityand Theology
[Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998]). Often issues of Christian life, holiness,
and perfection have been left to spiritual, ascetical, and mystical theologies (as
Mcintosh is quick to point out), but this is not the case with von Balthasar. It
is merit of this book to test and affirm the constructive and systematic
implications for Christian dogma.
The hard questions are posed from the beginning and would be a litmus test
for any contemporary Christology. To what extent does von Balthasar accede
to a docetic Christology, one that in the overall flavor of his oeuvre ignores
historical-critical method, does not give sufficient attention to the humanity of
Christ, and prefers the inner life of God as the real spectrum by which to
measure Christology? A further complication attends the whole project. Not
all are enthusiastic over von Balthasar's spirituality, whether played out in the
inner-Trinitarian life, the person of Jesus Christ, or the call of Christians to
holiness and mission. Best come to expression programmatically in Mysterium
Paschale, von Balthasar seems absorbed by Christ's transposition into kenosis,
suffering, and death, such that the humanity that emerges is one totally
dominated by an overbearing passiology. As stated before, one has almost to be
drawn to this sort of thing really to appreciate it. Mcintosh is sensitive to this
reaction and confronts these questions head on. His case for von Balthasar is
thus perforce the stronger and must engage any serious Christian thinker.
Mcintosh's strategy is to set the methodological issues within the overall
structure of Balthasarian spiritual theology and its sources. Two stand out
consistently: the saints and the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola.
Clearly (even for the casual reader) von Balthasar is thoroughly Ignatian both
in his Christological focus and in his overall Trinitarian framework. The
Christian life is Christomorphic because it is caught up in the mission of the
Son sent by the Father. One is identified with Christ in his mission by baptism
and by existentially responding to his call (Ignatian election). This is at the core
of what it means to exist as a Christian, as a person in Christ. But von Balthasar
is not limited to Ignatius. He draws on Therese and Berulie, not to mention
Maximus (absolutely decisive for his Christology), and ranges over the entire
Christian mystical tradition especially wherever intimations of darkness,
suffering, or loss of self attend mystical experience or instruction (more of this
later). Key to this type of employment of the saints is their theological role as
"that essential 'spiritual medium' in which a theology alive to the divine springs
of faith can flourish" (16). More formally, they represent Christian participation in the life of the risen Christ, a point not insignificant for Mcintosh's
evaluation of Christological possibilities.

332

BOOK REVIEWS

He begins by identifying four Christological states in von Balthasar's work,
all part and parcel of the transition in thought from the categories of essence
to those of existence, from the union of natures in Christ to "the union of
divine and human activity in Christ" (5). The fourfold activity includes Jesus'
availability for mission, his actual obedience in mission, the momentum of this
mission into the depths of the paschal mystery, and the resurrection fulfillment
of Jesus' existence, which is inclusive and participable. Each is the subject of a
chapter and is correlated with a significant Ignatian theme. The latter-clearly
an innovation in the history of spirituality-is nicely summarized as a
reinterpretation of the traditional theme of "the purifying ascent of the soul to
its divine archetype ... [into] the obedient descent of the disciple into the 'ever
greater' love of Christ's own mission" (42).
Determinative for each of these states and for the project as a whole, namely
a Balthasarian affirmation of the significance of Christ's humanity, is the
utilization of the key Maximian Christological insight that "the humanity of •
Christ reveals the divine precisely by being so human" (41). Here von Balthasar
is in sync with much of contemporary Christology, perhaps best expressed in
Rahner's affirmation of the axiom that the human and divine in Christ exist in
direct and not inverse proportion. Von Balthasar's contribution on this matter
is to parse this strictly in terms of Jesus' mission, which explicitly correlates the
Christological, Trinitarian, and discipleship aspects of the matter. Thus, for
example, the state of self-surrender of Christ to the Father in mission reflects
his active human love for God and humanity, the lgnatian principle of
indifference which the disciple is invited to inculcate at the beginning of the
Spiritual Exercises, and the Trinitarian orientation of the divine Son to the
eternal Father. Christ's mission is nothing other than the enactment in Jesus'
humanity of his "self-surrendered union with the Logos," hence the human
living and activity of the person of the divine Son himself (74). The same
pattern follows for each of the other Christological states.
The state of obedience bespeaks the intimacy with God that is the fruit of
freedom and love, both divine gift and human response. Jesus' own consciousness is essentially missional, disposed toward the Father within the horizon of
obedience. Hence it is a fully human consciousness, neither dissolving into a
divine omniscience which negates the human nor thinking of itself in the
dogmatic language of Nicea and Chalcedon. Hence the mystery of the Son's
kenosis extends into the entirety of Jesus' human existence. Likewise, the
disciple discovers his own self in Christ by participation in Christ's obedience,
being ever at the disposal of the Son's mission in the world.
By the time then that Mcintosh deals with von Baltahsar's view of the
passion and his emphasis on Holy Saturday, the logic of his position has already
been made clear. Far from involving a tendency to prefer suffering for its own
sake, it becomes dear that the paschal transitus involves fidelity to God and
abandonment to mission within the reality scarred by the alienation that sin
introduces into the human condition. Jesus' loving identification with the

BOOK REVIEWS

333

sinner in obedience and self-surrender, the disciple's response to this same
paschal love and the eternal Son's infinite openness to the Father in his very
distinction from him are all of a piece. Here Mcintosh demonstrates how von
Balthasar interprets those saints who still bear traces of Neoplatonic and
Areopagitic "radiant darkness" in their abandonment of the soul to God.
Indeed it is the Christomorphic nature of Christian mission that effects this
identification with the cross not as a state of the soul but in the obedience that
is faithful to Christ amid "the aimless, loveless chaos of sin" (113).
Mcintosh effectively correlates each of the four chapters on the Christological states with the four weeks of the Spiritual Exercises: from indifference
to obedience to passion to soteriological culmination in resurrection where in
effect Christology begins. Resurrection is really at the center of Christology and
ought not to be interpreted as a mere vindication of Jesus and his cause. In the
resurrection the contemporaneity of the believer with Christ, the continuity
with the apocalyptic preaching of Jesus, and the eschatological impulse of the
gospel as "new act of self-bestowal" all coalesce. Put soteriologically in the
eloquent language of the author, it "effects the ecstasy of those to whom he
draws near" (129). Ecstatic love and being as communion characterize (once
again) Jesus, the disciple, and the Trinitarian life of God. If we turn back to the
question of how theology and spirituality are integrated, Mcintosh locates the
integration in this inclusive participability as the way the believer enters into
the inner reality and dispositions of Christ; in other words, a Christology from
within.
Mark Mcintosh has succeeded in offering the reader a synthetic and
constructive reading of von Balthasar. This will be a contribution not only to
Balthasarian studies but to Christology as well. With respect to the former
Mcintosh has not left many stones unturned in von Balthasar's Christology.
Perhaps a similar approach to the integration of theology and spirituality can
be ventured with respect to pneumatology and its relation to Christology in his
work. But that is another book. The fruits of this study await engagement with
other contemporary Christologies and their methodological choices. Certainly
this book will establish a retrieval of the humanity of Christ from the
perspective of so-called high Christology, but it will also discover that
humanity as one that plumbs the depths of our own humanity and calls it into
a unitive imitation of the freedom and self-givingness of Christ.
RALPH DEL COLLE

Marquette University
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

334

BOOK REVIEWS

God, Reason, and Theistic Proofs. By STEPHENT.DAVIS. Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1997. Pp. xiv +204. $26.00
(paper). ISBN 0-8028-4450-2.
Is There a God? By RICHARD SWINBURNE. New York: Oxford University Press,
1996. Pp. 144. $10.95.(paper). ISBN 0-19-823545-3.

These two books share the conviction of John Paul II's latest encyclical,
Fides et Ratio, that there can be no contradiction between faith and reason,
theology and philosophy, science and religion. While Davis is concerned with
"proofs" for the existence of God, Swinburne is interested in establishing the
"probability" of God's existence.
Davis defines a theistic proof as an attempt to prove, by sound and valid
argument, that God exists. The God he has in mind is the God of theism: "a
unique, eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, and personal spirit who created the
heavens and the earth and who works for the salvation of human beings" (1).
Theistic proof may have various purposes, but fundamentally they are meant
"to demonstrate the existence of God and thus the rationality of belief in the
existence of God" (6).
Before considering individual proofs, Davis effectively addresses certain
objections to the whole notion of theistic proofs, including the contentions that
they are unconvincing to skeptics and irrelevant to believers, that they do not
attain the living God of the Bible, and that they tend to place God on the same
level as finite beings.
The heart of Davis's project is a careful consideration of various kinds of
theistic proofs. Using his considerable talents in logic, he presents each type of
argument and reviews various objections that have been raised historically
against it. He begins with Anselm's ontological argument, considering pros and
cons from Gaunilo to Richard Swinburne. One of Gaunilo's objections, which
Davis titles "the boy scout objection," is of particular interest since it is similar
to Aquinas's objection (STh I, q. 2, a. 1, ad 2). The argument is that, while a
boy scout may be able to rub two sticks together to make a fire, one cannot, as
it were, rub two ideas together and produce an actually existent reality. The
argument rests on the distinction between existence in idea and existence in
reality, a distinction that Davis carefully employs earlier in his work, but seems
to downplay in his response here (3, 27). This may account for his conclusion
that "there are versions of the ontological argument that have not been
refuted" (10).
In his presentation of cosmological arguments, Davis gives special attention
to Aquinas's first three "ways." Recognizing that each of these ways presupposes the impossibility of an infinite regress (whether of movers or causes
or contingent beings), Davis offers his own arguments in support of Aquinas's
position that an infinite causal regress is not possible.

BOOK REVIEWS

335

In dealing with arguments from design, Davis emphasizes their contemporary versions (chap. 6). Science now recognizes that any number of very
slight variations in any number of factors at the moment of the "big bang"
might have prevented the formation of the universe as we know it. How, then,
can we account for the initial "fine tuning" that made our universe possible?
Davis argues for the theistic solution that posits God as the initial designer. He
refutes other explanations including the "weak" version of the anthropic
principle and the hypothesis of many universes. He concludes that "we should
not be surprised that we do not observe a universe that is incompatible with
our existence. But we should be surprised that we do observe that we as living
and intelligent creatures exist" (113).
In the final section of the chapter, Davis salutes Richard Swinburne as "one
of the foremost contemporary proponents of theistic proofs" (116). He
questions, however, whether Swinburne adequately establishes the premise of
divine simplicity upon which his argument from design depends. Davis notes
that our philosophical and theological understanding of God is far from simple
and argues that divine simplicity as such is by no means obvious: "It is not easy
to see how God can be simple. Since there exists in any omniscient mind a
complete specification of the actual world (let alone other possible worlds), the
nature of God is presumably going to be as logically complex as the universe
God created" (119). This argument might well cause us to question the adequacy of Davis's own understanding of divine simplicity. Aquinas's distinction
between the thing known (which may be complex, material, etc.) and the mode
of one's knowing it (which may be simple, immaterial, etc.) might be useful to
Davis on this point (STh I, q. 13, a. 12, ad 3).
In discussing proofs based on religious experience, Davis refers especially to
Swinburne's argument in The Existence of God. He agrees with Swinburne that
theistic religious experience does not "all by itself constitute evidence for the
existence of God," but that it can "constitute a successful proof that antireligious naturalism is false" (135, 137).
As alternative arguments for theism, Davis looks at Pascal's "wager
argument" and WilliamJames's argument for the epistemological justification
of religious belief (chap. 9). He also discusses the relation of theistic proofs to
religious realism and foundationalism (chaps. 3 and 5). At issue in the discussion of religious realism is whether the practice of religion or spirituality is
possible for one who denies the existence of God. Davis sees the existence of
God as essential to theistic faith, but allows that those who deny the existence
of God but still find some personal value in religion may consistently follow the
way of religious nonrealism (58-59). His treatment of foundationalism is concerned with what constitutes valid evidence for the assertion that God exists.
Here Davis adopts a balanced position, not requiring that such evidence be
immediately known or self-evident, but avoiding the relativistic attitude that
all evidence is equally valid (80, 93).

336

BOOK REVIEWS

Davis concludes with a retrospective chapter which considers the importance
of the question of the existence of God, the validity of identifying the God of
theistic proofs with the God of revealed religion, and the value of the whole
enterprise of formulating theistic proofs. He argues that, even though theistic
proofs may not be able to convince nonbelievers that God exists, they are still
valuable for showing that belief in God is not irrationaL He ends with a candid
personal statement that, while he enjoys discussing theistic proofs, his own
religious convictions have "almost nothing to do with theistic proofs." They are
based rather on personal experiences "that I interpret in terms of the presence
of God," and that explain "why I claim to know that God exists" (193).
Reflecting this conviction, his book provides a judicious review of a wide
spectrum of theistic proofs from the sympathetic but not uncritical vantage
point of a believer.
In his book Is There a God? Richard Swinburne intends to address the widespread opinion that religious faith is not rational by presenting "for a wider
public a short version of the positive case for the existence of God put forward
in my earlier book The Existence of God" (1-2).
The God whose existence he wishes to establish is fundamentally the
personal God of Western religion (3-4). He proposes certain "refinements" of
that traditional notion of God, however, and claims to be following the
methods of Aquinas in doing so (8). One might wonder, though, whether
Aquinas would recognize the God that results from Swinburne's refinements.
Swinburne's God, for instance, is not said to know "what someone will freely
do tomorrow" since for Swinburne such knowledge is "logically impossible"
(7). The notion of divine omnipotence must also be qualified to accommodate
the reality of human free will (8).
Nor can Swinburne "make much sense" of Aquinas's notion of divine
eternity (9). Since Swinburne's God cannot know "in the same act of knowledge" what happens in two "different years," it is hard to see how he might
know himself and all that is in the one act that is his very being. Instead,
Swinburne's God is said to "learn about" the world, though not through bodily
organs as we do (10). He always chooses the good, but the motivations for his
choice seem to be very much like our own (12-14). Swinburne sees God as "the
source of moral obligation," but then claims the authority of Aquinas to assert
that "there are moral truths independent of the will of God" which "God can
only enforce" but "not alter" (15). Though he does not give any references to
Aquinas here, he did provide them in his argument for the same assertion in his
The Coherence of Theism (Oxford, 1977), 204. In the texts cited there, however, Aquinas seems to be asserting just the opposite of what Swinburne proposes. Aquinas's position is that "whatever is commanded by God is right" (STh
I-II, q. 94, a. 5, ad 2; cf. STh I-II, q. 100, a. 8, ad 3). The only thing God
cannot do-the only thing that would be self-contradictory-would be to direct
a human being to an end other than God himself (STh I-II, q. 100, a. 8, ad 2).

BOOK REVIEWS

337

All of this is not because God is arbitrary, but because moral obligation is
founded in the order of nature. And since God is the author of nature, the
Creator of all that is, whatever God does "is not against nature" (STh I, q. 105,
a. 6, ad 1). Swinburne seems to be in accord with Aquinas's premise, since he
also thinks that "God is the ultimate brute fact which explains everything else"
(19). But he has not followed Aquinas in recognizing the consequences of that
premise.
After describing the God whose existence he intends to establish as the best
explanation of all that is, Swinburne then discusses the criteria that are
generally used in science to determine whether a particular explanation should
be considered true or at least probable (chap. 2). He lists four, but believes
that, when one is seeking a theory of ultimate explanation, they may be reduced to one: "That theory of ultimate explanation is most likely to be the true
one, which is the simplest theory which predicts the observable phenomena
when we would not otherwise expect to find them" (41).
The rest of Swinburne's book is concerned with showing that theism best
satisfies this criterion for a valid ultimate explanation. Since the existence of
God provides the simplest way to explain the world and its order (chap. 4 ), the
existence of human beings (chap. 5), and the incidence of miracles and religious
experience (chap. 7), while also accounting for the reality of evil (chap. 6),
Swinburne concludes that it is "significantly more probable than not that there
is a God" (139).
At a time of increasing interest in the dialogue between science and religion,
Swinburne's arguments are particularly intriguing since they establish the
probability of God's existence by employing "the very same criteria which
scientists use to explain their own theories" (2, 139). There is no contradiction
between science and theism. God is not invoked as a replacement for scientific
explanation; nor is God understood as a mere addendum to science, a way to
explain the gaps that science has not yet explained. Rather, theistic
explanations complement those of science: "I am postulating a God to explain
what science explains; I do not deny that science explains, but I postulate God
to explain why science explains. The very success of science in showing us how
deeply orderly the natural world is provides strong grounds for believing that
there is an even deeper cause of that order" (68). All who are interested in the
dialogue between science and theism will find a refreshing and helpful
perspective in Swinburne's arguments.
MICHAEL]. DODDS, 0.P.

Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology
Berkeley, California

338

BOOK REVIEWS

Belief in God in Our Time: Foundational Theology I. By M. JOHN FARRELLY.
Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1992. Pp. 381. $19.95 (paper).
ISBN 0-8146-5706-0.
Faith in God through Jesus Christ: Foundational Theology II. By M. JOHN
FARRELLY. Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1997. Pp. 350.
$29.95 (paper). ISBN 0-8146-5859-8.
The author understands foundational theology as different from systematic
theology in that the latter uses arguments that rely on faith whereas the former
addresses an audience of inquirers who do not necessarily have faith. Foundational theology is nevertheless practiced by Christians who accept the norms
of Christian faith. It aims at propounding the meaning, the relevance, and the
grounds for believing. Among its tools are contemporary experience, reason,
and modern critical study of Scripture.
As the respective titles indicate, volume 1 of Foundational Theology makes
a case for belief in God in our time, while volume 2 presents the grounds for
faith in God through Jesus Christ.
Farrelly foresees and discusses the objections likely to be leveled (not
exclusively by Neo-Barthians) at his option in favor of tackling belief in God,
in volume 1, without straightway tying it to Jesus Christ as mediator-which
is done only in volume 2. His two-step approach is historically justified by the
fact that, according to the divine dispensation, prior to the New Testament
there existed genuine belief in God among the Israelites. As he rightly points
out, "Jesus proclaimed his message to a people who had already undergone a
divine pedagogy leading them to give primacy to God in their lives and to
understand somewhat the relation that was appropriate for them to adopt with
God" (1:8-9).
Farrelly construes Paul's discourse in Acts 17 not as a failed strategy which
Paul would have subsequently abandoned, but as a valid apology which most
of the patristic writers assumed and creatively expanded in their dialogue with
the Graeco-Roman world. He also observes that such an incremental advance
toward faith accords with the experience of at least some twentieth-century
converts. Moreover he notes that Jews, Moslems, and many others believe in
God as transcendent personal being without basing their faith on Jesus. Hence
his ecumenical-minded and yet perfectly orthodox statement: "We cannot
claim to accept God's revelation of himself through Jesus Christ if we reject
God's lesser revelations of himself, nor is it Christian to use God's greater
revelation of himself to deny his less ultimate revelations" (1:303).
Insofar as the relations between faith and reason are concerned, Farrelly
prefers the dialogical model to the dialectical one. He finds plenty of historical
evidence in favor of the former, all the way from the New Testament to Vatican II. Although his model makes room for dialectic, that is, for actual oppositions, it persistently exhibits and praises the incomplete meanings that are

BOOK REVIEWS

339

found on lower levels (see the quotation above). For example, divine revelation
in the human conscience and in the physical world can be taken up, corrected,
and deepened thanks to the mediation of Jesus Christ.
As another interesting illustration of the legitimacy of this approach Farrelly
gives the two-stage experience of Peter. In an early stage Peter acknowledged
the messiahship of Jesus and yet resisted the suggestion that suffering and
humiliation should be attached to it; only after the resurrection and Pentecost
did he become fully enlightened and converted. And yet, we can see partial
truth in his pre-Easter confession.
With respect to Scripture Farrelly adopts Vatican Il's position that the Gospels present to us substantively what Jesus did and said. However, he observes
pluralism in the New Testament. He tries to show (successfully, in my opinion)
that this pluralism did not unfold only according to personal vision or collective needs. While he unreservedly recognizes the important role of creative
imagination, he maintains that it was put at the service of a tradition alive
during New Testament times. He thus excludes the fashionable, indiscriminate
pluralism that amounts to relativism. This review cannot do full justice to the
details of his demonstration, which are complex and supported by solid
acquaintance with exegetical works.
Furthermore, Farrelly underlines the transhistorical dimension of what took
place in the Jesus event. One cannot drive a wedge between the Jesus of history
and the Christ of faith. Time and again Farrelly emphasizes that a naturalistic
view of reality is incompatible with the recognition of a transhistorical dimension. The acceptance of this transhistorical dimension requires a conversion
that is both affective and intellectual. Like Peter, contemporary men and
women cannot access Christian revelation without letting their basic assumptions be challenged.
Readers will find in these volumes sound hermeneutical reflections on language, with a stress on the importance of symbols. Farrelly's considerations on
world religions fit in well with his other thoughts on revelation and inculturation. Well argued are his discussions of issues such as the objectivity and
personhood of God, and the responsiveness and suffering of God, in dialogue
with personalism, Buddhism, and the telling fact of the Holocaust. On the
other hand, there seems to be an unresolved intellectual tension at times between the nature of God as totally actual being and the personal intentionality
of God (see for instance 1:330-31). Moreover I wish chapter 5 of volume 1 had
shown how the ground of ethics and the absolute ground are connected and
why the former cannot stand without the latter.
Farrelly's fine historical consciousness punctuates his exposition with insightful remarks concerning varying perspectives and problematics. He is sensitive to inculturation, namely, to the numerous ways in which the gospel
embodies itself in successivecultures. He highlights human historicity, people's
shaping and being shaped by their environment and their decisions. He rightly

340

BOOK REVIEWS

underscores the significance of the absolute future, understood as the return of
Christ. However, when he advocates "an exercise of causal influence from the
future of history," when he speaks of the apocalyptic kingdom of God as "an
incursion of the age to come into this age," or when he states that the "age to
come is already having an impact upon the present age" (2:229, 328, 329), not
only those who know about Thomas Aquinas's understanding of time and
eternity but also students of Einstein's concept of space-time may discern here
a view of time that is more imaginative than theoretical.
A leitmotiv that recurs in Farrelly's books is the necessity to relate Christian
experience to the historical consciousness displayed both in the Bible and in
contemporary culture. He rightly complains that because of the Neoplatonic
influence, Thomas Aquinas does not make this connection explicitly enough.
However, I wonder if his criticism of Thomas's view of faith and revelation is
perfectly consistent. He writes: "Thomas frequently speaks of the relation
between God the revealer and human beings as that between teacher and
students: revelation is passively received" (2:223). But the rest of the paragraph
shows that the prophetic paradigm introduced by Thomas consists of many
activities which situate the learning process (itself by no means purely passive)
within a larger experiential context. Farrelly also mentions Thomas's theme of
"the interior instinct impelling and moving one to believe" (2:223). In the
treatise on grace, Thomas tells us that such impulsion or motion is both passive
(operative grace) and active (cooperative grace).
On the following page, we read another ambiguous assertion: "In
consequence of the context of Thomas's reflection on revelation and faith, he
emphasizes its character as an intellectual act, though moved by the will, rather
than dealing with it primarily as the path to conversion or as a basis for
justification distinct from works" (2:224). I cannot see how this statement is
compatible with Farrelly's own (more perceptive) remark elsewhere: "The kind
of illumination of the mind Thomas means here is 'one that effects the affection
of love' (I, 43, 5, ad 2) and so one that involves a certain experiential knowledge" (2:281 n. 21). Of course, faith is an "intellectual" act in the sense that
it is intelligent and takes place in the mind; but faith is a member of a
trio-faith, hope, and charity-three musicians who always play together and
whose score consists in the tract on grace (see STh 1-11, qq. 106-14).
Finally, a suggestion about the cross-reference of 1:363 n. 28: could it be
chapter 6, section 2?
Farrelly writes, "This study is an introductory one such as would be
given-and I have frequently given it-to first-year students in theology"
(2:11). Despite my few reservations, I believe that this study can also be of
great help to graduate students and indeed to theologians themselves. This
work may very well prove to be the standard text for Roman Catholic
foundational theology for years to come. I eagerly await Farrelly's forthcoming

BOOK REVIEWS

341

book, which will evaluate the Christian norm of faith and the nature of
theology.
LOUIS ROY, 0.P.

Boston College
Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts